Disclaimer: Blackbird, Veloce, and the manga Carciphona aren't mine. They belong to the wonderfully talented Shilin Huang, who did give me permission to post this, so I won't be sued, anyway. That doesn't mean I got everything right or anything (this is probably way AU, somehow); it just means no lawsuits, heh.
A/N: What can I say? Carciphona is awesome. Usually I write fanfics because I want to change something in the canon, but in this case, I just wanted to be part of the world for a while, and it was lovely. This little fic is inspired by one of Shilin's paintings, Carciphona: Attic, which is of course available for oggling on her deviantART account.
A/N the second: If you haven't read the manga and just ended up here by accident, my god, go read it. It's available in its entirety online, but you should totally buy the books. That being said, I hope you enjoy my jaunt with the characters, and if you do, reviews are always appreciated!
In the Warm Glow of Evening
It took Blackbird some time to find Veloce.
They had just moved into this house—old and majestic, full of floor-length windows and vast fireplaces—and mostly, she had been astonished by how much stuff the Visrin had. There had been enough books to build a house, for one thing, and then there were all sorts of odds and ends: globes and weapons and clocks and miscellaneous paraphernalia, not to mention an impressive profusion of pillows. Compared to her own glaring lack of possessions—she had brought one bag, and even that had not been full—Blackbird felt somewhat lost amongst it all.
These were trappings of someone else's life, and even knowing that someone else was Veloce…
She had disappeared for a while, claiming brightly that she wanted to familiarize herself with the new city, the fresh surroundings, and Veloce had accepted it with a silent nod, already sorting through her things in an effort to assign them new homes. But all Blackbird had really wanted was air; she couldn't care less about the neighborhood, even though it did have good trees, the kind of huge and stately trees that one could sit under for hours and simply listen to the soughing of the wind.
It had felt safer out there, in the open—granted, a peculiar thought for a former assassin, and an infamous assassin at that—but the thought had been a hard one to shake. Inside, beyond the drapes, beneath the dust…that was Veloce's domain, the world of a scholar and a sorceress, a world composed of carefully inked words and delicate parchment pages and that, somehow, was infinitely more world than the mostly-empty rooms would suggest.
It was a world that Blackbird didn't entirely understand. It was too silent, too still; she longed for the thrill of riding an adrenaline rush, the trick of crafting a deceit, the heady intoxication of victory, and the conviction that, in that sublime triumphant moment, nothing at all could touch her—not death, not disease, nothing. In victory, she was immortal, blazing like a supernova perfectly preserved.
Her bare feet were quiet as she ascended the stairs to the attic, every other room in the house searched in vain. All she had found was walls already lined with books, and she had felt irrationally judged by them, as if they knew she would never read them and silently condemned her for such a choice. She had almost thought to call out, to just stand in one place and shout for Veloce until the sorceress, vaguely annoyed, teleported into her presence, but that would have been childish and weak.
Besides, she had always tracked Veloce down before.
"Once more, for old time's sake," she said under her breath, and with a long, low creak, the attic door swung open, and Blackbird finally found what she sought.
In the corner, reclined on a veritable mountain of pillows as if furniture were for lesser mortals, Veloce Visrin read in silence, her features set in a neutral but content expression, not bored by the contents of her volume. Here, the clutter seemed more pronounced, as if Veloce had tired of organizing halfway through, or as if here, in the attic, she felt permitted to slack because no one would see that a Visrin was untidy.
That was the thing about Veloce, Blackbird could admit. Always so guarded. And here, surrounded by stacks of books and cocooned in pillows, she was guarded still.
Swallowing against the thickness that threatened to rise in her throat, Blackbird rapped her knuckles against the door jamb and summoned the most disarming, casual expression that she could manage. "Well, well: here you are," she remarked, sauntering into the room. "You lead me on quite the chase."
Veloce's turquoise eyes remained focused on the text. "I wouldn't want you to get rusty," she observed dryly, and she turned a page, the parchment rustling in the silence. "Or to get it into your head that I've become easy prey."
Blackbird waved a hand. "Oh, come now," she teased. "I haven't thought of you as prey in years."
The sorceress hummed in reply, but the assassin couldn't tell if it were an affirmation or something else entirely. In an effort to disguise her confusion, she wandered over to the other girl, climbing the dais steps and avoiding a pile of books to gaze out the window. Beyond the glass, the sun was nearing the horizon, and its shallowly angled rays were dyed the most beautiful gold.
"Blackbird," Veloce drawled from behind, "you're standing in my light."
Gracelessly, the former assassin stumbled out of the way, tripping over that dratted pile and creating a miniature avalanche. The Visrin observed the entire embarrassing affair with an arched eyebrow, and then her gaze flicked to catch Blackbird's.
"You seem…off," she said at length.
"Nothing's bothering me," the other girl denied in false and chipper tones, and she rubbed absentmindedly at the black, spidery marks that swirled across the flesh of her left arm.
Veloce hesitated, treading rather outside her comfort zone with empathetic analysis. "I didn't say that anything was," she finally pointed out, and the technical accuracy of that statement meant two things: that the Visrin was being emotionally obtuse as ever, or that she was, in fact, being disturbingly perceptive.
Blackbird didn't want her to be either, so she shifted the focus well away from herself. "What's with all the books, eh? I mean, how much can a person really read?"
Veloce glanced aside at her veritable library, as if she had never considered it before. "Magic is a demanding discipline," she offered with a shrug. "There is always more to learn."
"Even for a Visrin?" the former assassin teased weakly.
A shadow passed across the sorceress's brow. "Lamentably, being a Carciphona does not grant me omniscience, because I'd suffer it rather more happily if it did," she replied, the words at once both flat and sharp, and Blackbird knew she had trod upon a nerve.
Carefully, she guided the conversation back to calmer waters. "But seriously, the books: there's no end to them. I shouldn't think there's any left elsewhere in Kronzel, or possibly all of Maelstrom."
Veloce lowered her current volume, gazing around again. "Is it that strange?" she wondered, conceding in the next moment, "I guess it might be. But I've always been around a lot of books. When I was little, I…well, I was weak, you know, from the whole Carciphona business, so I didn't go outside much, and then even after Vocruen got me my necklace, he still thought it best that I didn't make too many public appearances, what with being Auresque's daughter and all." She paused, her eyes dimming, and lowered her gaze back to the flowing lines of script; Blackbird knew that Vocruen's departure would go unmentioned, even as it clouded the sorceress's thoughts. "After the Prohibition was enacted, I wasn't even supposed to really exist, so I couldn't leave my house, so…"
"So they're your home," Blackbird concluded quietly.
"In many ways, I suppose that's true," she agreed, and she ran her fingers delicately down the page. "I'd never really thought of it that way before."
Blackbird just looked at her for a long moment, feeling as if something in her chest were on the verge of cracking. Veloce's expression had recovered much of its former serenity as she resumed reading, and her posture remained as comfortably languid as ever. Caught halfway in warm gray shadow and halfway in warm gold light, she was more strikingly beautiful than she'd ever been, and Blackbird could hardly contain the rush of emotion that made her ribs discomfitingly tight.
You're my home, she wanted to say, wanted to whisper over and over again into Veloce's ear until the words were scored into the other girl's soul. But it seemed far too saccharine a sentiment, and she bit it back as her fingers rolled into impotent, white-knuckled fists.
Unaware of this swirling storm, Veloce thoughtfully remarked, "You know, with the books and the reading…I think it might be because they augment reality. Real life can be so…dull sometimes, so unfulfilling. Whether you're stuck inside because of rain or the Prohibition, though, reading can always take you wherever you want to go, let you be whoever you want to be. It's the freedom of it, I think."
Hollowly, Blackbird asked, "Is reality still so unsatisfying?"
Veloce frowned, a subtle downwards curve. "That's…not what I meant." She paused before echoing, "Are you sure nothing's wrong?"
Closing her eyes, the former assassin exhaled a long and trembling sigh, the kind of release that slumps the shoulders and hangs on the heart. And then she lowered herself to the silken blankets, the velvet pillows, and practically crawled up Veloce's body until their foreheads were touching. The sorceress stiffened in ancient, unconscious reflex from the sheer proximity, but it was a subtle reaction, one she had worked hard to suppress around Blackbird and one that only Blackbird would still be able to discern.
Leaning her weight on her right hand, Blackbird lifted her left and watched her fingers' progress as they slid down Veloce's cheek. "I don't…know where I belong sometimes," she whispered, a hoarse and honest confession. "The way things are now, the way the world has changed, I…I'm just trying to find out how I fit into your life. It's hard to see any room…your life is so…well, crowded. Is there space beside you, or…" She trailed off, her lips twisting in a humorless smirk. "Or are there just too many books?"
Veloce's brow pinched, and she was saddened and bewildered by this sudden sorrow that seemed to haunt and define Blackbird's every contour. At a loss for what she could possibly say, she simply tilted her head and gently kissed her, and she could almost taste the salt of tears that had never quite fallen on the other girl's lips.
"I do believe," she said softly, patting the ground next to her left hip, "that there's plenty of space right here."
Blackbird glanced down, absorbing all the unspoken facets of the gesture, of the invitation, and with a flickering smile, she listed onto her side and rested her head on Veloce's chest, one arm draping across her waist to make it clear that she wasn't about to be budged.
And Veloce slipped her arm about Blackbird's shoulders, her book forgotten in her hand, to make it clear that she wasn't going to be.
The tension fading from her frame, Blackbird leaned a little more heavily on Veloce's side, tugged a little more firmly at her waist, before she relaxed entirely, drowsy in the warmth of the dying sun.
Veloce glanced down at her from beneath the shadow of her lashes, and then she, too, closed her eyes, succumbing to the tenderness and comfort of the moment. In this place, with the woman she loved beside her, she found the strength to be weak. "Reality is…more than I ever could have dreamed," she murmured.
Blackbird let out a breath that might have been a laugh, and fondly, she teased, "You're such a sap."
Veloce's lips quirked, and she smiled a small, sincere smile before the expression smoothed away, leaving no evidence behind.
But even with her eyes shut and Veloce's steady heartbeat lulling her to sleep, Blackbird knew that she had.
fin