Marlene found a pair of gloves. She found them when Tifa wasn't home, inside a velvet lined drawer that smelled like perfume, and kind like the shining lips of all the freshly opened wine bottles she'd ever smelled but wasn't allowed to taste. The gloves were warm and soft inside, and even though they were a couple sizes too big she modelled them in front of the mirror.
She made a fist, a fist her father would never be able to make with his right hand, a baby fist, sweaty and righteous in a tattered black glove. And he was standing in the doorway, but she didn't move to put the gloves back. There was no hurry, and standing in front of her tightlipped reflection, she realized she didn't care if she was caught.
She didn't care. She didn't care. But when he came to stand behind her, an earring, nose and mouth hanging high above the reflection of her face, she felt her eyes grow hot. She told herself that being eleven meant no more tears for things she couldn't change, but she wasn't like Tifa, the gloves didn't even fit her and even though he was never around much anymore, he was a hero.
A hero, her daddy was a hero too and being a hero meant having a lot of important things to do. So they couldn't be there all the time. She had even explained it to Denzel, who had wrecked her garden after Cloud left again and told her---they're not heroes, if they were heroes my parents---and just stopped, and told her to go away.
Terrorists, it had never been on word on her spelling list, but she'd gone up to the attic and found a dictionary anyway. She knew what violence was and terror...terror was the sound of a door shutting, an engine growling under the sound of glasses breaking, but her daddy once told her that---sometimes, the people in them high buildings gotta fall down with 'em, to understand what's going on at ground level, baby---and it made sense, because nothing really works right if everyone's far away from eachother.
Her daddy brought people together, and looking around her Marlene knew it was just another way she wasn't like him at all. She dreamt sometimes, that she had brown skin and that she was brave.
But she wasn't brave, because when Cloud came home with pink ribbons she let him tie them in her hair, even though the color made her stomach upset, made her think about a woman who used to wear one in her hair too.
She didn't refuse any of the dresses either. Even though she wanted to tear each one off, sending buttons flying everywhere, imagining that in the rain of pink buttons she could proclaim, righteously, bravely, that she didn't care if he ever came home again.
But lies aren't brave, and so she wears the ribbons and the dresses, even now when he's reaching above her for one of Tifa's perfumes that smells like flowers, kneeling before her with it wet on his fingers, she lets him lay one warm hand against her cheek, her neck.
Looking into his eyes, she thinks that this is her best chance, she thinks that maybe this is how she'll bring him to groundlevel. In her mind's eye she sees his building tumbling to the ground, and she wonders if her daddy would be proud of her.
She wants to ask him what to do if you're in the building too.
Author's Note: I've concluded that I need to write more lighthearted things. Though I guess I should be grateful since regrettably, I'm having a bit of a tough time writing anything these days. This premise is actually something I've been playing with for a while, so I'm glad I could finally put it into words. I hope you enjoyed it, I'm relieved to have been able to write it. Comments and Criticism are not only welcome, but really awesome. An enormous thankyou to all the reviewers whose comments I appreciate like whoa, and to the repeat reviewers, thanks so much for your constant input, I'm totally flattered. Bye for now.
Oh, and I figured I'd give a reason for the weird title. I looked all over for a good title, and Swallowtail seemed right. If anyone wondered, a Swallowtail is a type of butterfly who mimics to survive.