A/N: Okay, this is a little one-shot fic based on an idea that simply wouldn't leave me alone while reading Silently Watches' frankly amazing Black Queen series, around speculation on how Jen may reveal everything about herself to Luna - though I imagine Silently Watches has something more dramatic and well-written planned. Also, reading back on this, I think it might have been slightly inspired by the last episode of Sherlock series three, but I digress.
Of course, in addition to the normal disclaimer, I must state quite clearly that the universe I am playing in was brought to life by Silently Watches, and all credit goes to them, and I do have approval from them to post this. And I would really recommend you go check out the Black Queen series – it's much better than the crap I occasionally decide to share with the world, and is really a very gripping story.
Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING, property of respective owners etc.
Queen of the Blacks – The Choice
When the squeezing, stretching sensation of apparition ended, Luna stepped out of the air before a small cottage on a darkened moor, still grasping Jen's hand tightly.
"You know, it's generally ill-advised for an underage witch to apparate, you could lose something along the way," the blonde commented lightly, her silver eyes watching entranced as her breath misted in the air in little white clouds. "Where are we?"
"Nowhere, it's just a little place I own," Jen muttered as she turned to look at Luna, and in that moment her stomach turned slightly queasy. Many emotions had she seen flitting through Jen's amethyst eyes; happiness, joy, anger, lust, frustration, and everything in-between. But never had she witnessed fear behind the purple orbs.
"You're scared," she stated, not in a questioning way, it was quite plain to see.
"Yes, I am," the ravenette replied simply, turning from her girlfriend to pull a key from within her signature, dragon-hide coat, swiftly bringing it up to the lock on the door.
"Why?" Luna breathed out, concern colouring her voice as her counterpart rattled the key in the doorframe, the lock apparently refusing to budge.
"Because…because," Jen slammed a fist against the oaken portal in frustration, her shoulders slumping for a moment as she gave in. Slowly, she spun back around to face the blonde, the fear still present – it was just so alien an emotion to see on the unflappable teen. "Because I love you," she finally said quietly.
"And I love you too, you know that," Luna replied softly, leaning forward and reaching arms around Jen to lay a kiss upon her lips. The black-haired teen latched on, laying hands on Luna's head to pull them together with desperation, as if it were a lifeline she were hanging on to. When they pulled apart, her counterpart looked slightly more confident, but still gripped with that same terror.
"It's because you may not love me when we're finished here," Jen admitted, before spinning to smack her elbow against the door, making it grudgingly judder open. Without a further word she swept inside, flicking a hand to make gas-lamps flicker on, while leaving Luna paused on the threshold trying to understand her lover's words. What could possibly make her…? The only time they had truly been shaken was that incident with Katie Bell; had Jen done it again?
With hesitant steps, she moved into the house, a slight shiver of uneasiness running up her spine as she did. Automatically, she closed the door behind her, before following Jen's path into what looked like the living room.
It was seemingly cosy, but somehow felt…wrong, unused perhaps if the slight layer of dust was anything to go by. Aside from the normal furniture, there was a stone slab resting on the floor, visibly carved with detail, and with a large cushion resting either side of it. The other oddity, was the table at the far end by which Jen was standing, upon which rested two items she could just make out. The ravenette finally broke the silence as she approached.
"Once we are done with what we came here to do, I am going to offer you a choice, Luna," she said quietly, but with confidence colouring her voice, not a waver in sight.
"What did we come here to-," her question was cut off with a pale hand held up to stop her talking. As she stayed silent, her girlfriend continued:
"This, is a ring," she stated, gesturing at what looked like a band of onyx, inset with silver or the like, sitting innocently on the green tablecloth, "it's an old heirloom of the Black family, to signify bringing a new member into the house – either in an adoption, if they are already of Black blood, or as an engagement ring of sorts." Luna's heart leapt as her mind quickly surmised exactly what Jen was getting at, and a smile graced her lips at what it meant. She still stayed silent though, respecting Jen's still outstretched hand. "This," she gestured to a golden goblet full of a dark liquid that sent wisps of steamy white into the air, "is a potion that will make you forget all that you will learn this evening." Luna blinked her silver eyes at the revelation, giving the chalice a second look-over. "This is the choice I am going to offer you."
"I already know what I want," Luna replied firmly, reaching out for the ring.
"No." Jen commanded, and her hand stilled halfway to the band. The ravenette pinched the bridge of her nose and took a second to calm herself before continuing. "I am offering you this Luna because I'm in love with you. Properly, honestly in love, and I never want to lose that. By doing this, I'm showing you I'm prepared - no," she shook her head; "I want to be bound to you, forever." She turned those expressive, jewel-like orbs back on her lover, "and I'm not prepared to enter into that under false pretences. Nothing but the honest truth and the truth is that I haven't been entirely honest with you."
"What do you mean?" Luna asked quietly, her uneasy feeling returning and compounding a hundredfold. Had she been lying to her?
"Ever since we met," Jen began, looking away and out of a window to avoid looking Luna in the eyes, "I've been telling you half-truths, and if not outright lies, then lies by omission. I've been keeping things from you, a lot of things. That ends here, tonight." With those words said, the teen guided Luna away from the table to the centre of the room, gesturing for her to sit on one of the cushions as she herself did so with crossed legs on the other.
Slowly, Luna lowered herself onto the cushion which provided a little comfort from the hardwood floor, but her interest was mainly on the thoughts broiling in her head, and the great stone slab between them. Now that she was closer, she could see the hundreds of runes artfully carved into its surface, in lines, and concentric circles and triangles, forming sweeping patterns and fractals of Elder Futhark characters.
"This is the project I've been working on; I've been planning this evening for a while," Jen broke her from her reverie. "I got to look at a pensieve - which I was originally going to use - but decided to make this instead. It's based on the runes from a pensieve, and a bit of work from the present I gave you a while back. Put your hands in the centre circle," she commanded, to which Luna hesitantly complied.
"What is this going to do?" she asked quietly.
"I'm going to show you my life, from my point of view. All of it; no more lies, or half-measures, no abbreviation or omission. The whole thing. And then I'm going to offer you a choice," Jen looked deeply into her eyes, the fear that had remained ever present all evening close to the surface. "You can accept who I am, and take the ring, or you c-cannot, and take the goblet, forget all you've seen, and I will…break off our relationship." The pain in her voice was obvious, and finally Luna fully understood her dread; Jen was laying her soul bare tonight, offering everything up, but taking the chance she might lose her love.
"Jen…" she began, not quite knowing what to say, but she was given no chance as pale hands moved either side of her own, on triangles pointing towards the blonde, and it began.
The sensation was indescribable, she was no longer a blonde teenager sitting on a cushion in a little cottage; she was Jenny Potter, at Privet Drive, stuck up a tree with an angry dog growling with flecks of spittle flying from its mouth as it jumped up at her, her shrieks for help going unheard. She was 'freak', as she scrubbed floors, and watched as a plate of sauce was deliberately poured in front of her to increase her workload. She was 'the girl' bawling in agony, in a cupboard under the stairs as her relatives debated sending her to a hospital – her uncle not wishing his taxes used on a freak like her – even as her eyesight dwindled, and light faded from her small world. She was the street-rat, crawling in an alley to rummage through bins for food, her stomach gnawing at her in hungry pain. She was the tiny body clasped between the forms of bulky men, high on whatever it was they took, as they ruined her young form, deaf to her screams. She was the girl who crawled up onto the spread-eagled man and took out all her anger on him, taking her death focus from his very body. She was the budding witch, learning the practices of dark magic, Black magic, and everything in-between as she danced through one ritual circle to another, her hands continually coated in scarlet. She was the tentative girl, receiving her first client at Candyland as she writhed beneath him, a fake smile upon her face. She was the child who grew into a woman far before her natural time, learning to enjoy her time peddling flesh, learning to feel the power of magic move from the earth through her body, learning to become strong so that she might never be used, or abused, or broken ever again. And then wizards, and Blacks, and Potters, and Hogwarts, and Voldemort, and then…
Luna.
She was the teenage girl, slowly falling in love with the strange blonde, feeling the ache to be with her, and yet the counteracting repulsion of the Light magics she embodied.
She felt it all, experienced it first-hand through years and years of events from vague remembrance of two men shouting and a green light, to spending days setting up a cottage for the important event to come, worrying herself out of her mind over what her lover would choose.
When finally the tidal wave stopped crashing over her, she recoiled backwards, suddenly feeling the aches in her muscles from the sudden movement – as if she'd been sitting cross-legged for far longer than mere moments. Jen too, rolled her shoulders and cracked limbs as she withdrew her hands from the slab, rubbing feeling back into her body.
Luna half-wanted to ask how long that had taken, but it was brushed away by the mass of other thoughts. Jen studied and used black magic. She was a Black witch. And she knew full well that there were no ifs-and-or-buts about Black magic, but continued to use it, with a trail of bodies in her wake…
All that blood. Luna shivered on the spot, and she looked over at Jen, almost seeing a new person and trying to reconcile it with the one she knew.
"All those people, people you killed. And you never felt…" Luna stuttered out the words, merely trying to comprehend.
"Remorse? No, not really," Jen answered, rubbing at her wrist – which she now knew held the scar from where it was oft cut open, lined in the Baron's flowers. "I'm a murderer, plenty of times over."
"And Candyland, you actually…"
"It was just a job, albeit one I enjoyed," the ravenette was far too calm, likely having expected these questions – in-fact she knew she expected these questions, she'd seen as much in the past week of memories.
"And Death. You serve Death himself, and you…" she couldn't say it, her gaze dropping to the floor – not actually looking at the wooden planks, but through them, to the ritual room beneath where many a man had bled their lifeblood into the earth, and even now a prepared ritual circle awaited. "And around your neck," she snapped her eyes back up to the choker on her pale neck, "that's the Resurrection Stone, the Hallows are real."
"Your father could have – and I imagine has – told you that much," Jen replied, "though they obviously don't work quite as the legends go; not in the mortal's favour, certainly."
"And the prophecy, and your relatives, and the Baron's orders, and…" she trailed off; there was just too much to comprehend.
"I've lived a pretty messed up life," the teen admitted as she hesitantly stood up. She took a step towards Luna, reaching out a hand to help her up, but stopped when the blonde flinched back. She couldn't help but imagine the outstretched limb coated in blood, as it had been so many times before. With a sad expression flitting across her face, Jen withdrew and walked over to the table, to stare at what rested upon it. "Now you understand why I did all of this."
"Y-yes, that I understand at least," Luna replied hesitantly as she stood, her own gaze equally transfixed upon the table.
"Then you know that no matter what you choose, I will not hold it against you." 'And I will still love you,' her mind completed silently. Her eyes moved from the table to the raven-haired girl, her braced form seemingly preparing for imagined hurt to come.
She was the only one, on the whole of this earth, that Jen had trusted with everything. She and she alone now truly knew Jen Black; all her trials and tribulations, her successes and sorrows, her memories, her very soul laid bare to her.
And through all of that, she had felt Jen's love. For her family, her friends, and for her. Luna knew that Jen had wanted – oh-so wanted – to just take her blonde for her own, whether she wanted to go or not. She knew that the girl couldn't stand to feel as dishonest as to enter into a marriage or any kind of binding without the full truth disclosed. She knew how desperately hopeful she was that she would take the ring, and how despairingly fearful that she would take the cup.
And so, as if drawn magnetically, her eyes fell back upon the table.
And the choice.
The Ring or the Cup.
To join with Jen Black, forever. Or to lose her completely.
A/N: Originally, I was going to have a little bit more added to this, where Luna would choose the ring and they would go down to the basement were a ritual circle is already drawn to bind them together in a sort of Celtic marriage ceremony, but then I decided I wasn't sure, and I wondered if she'd try and take the cup, or both, or even neither. So, I decided to end it like this, and I'll let you make up your own worlds with decisions and choices in your head – as I did myself when writing this based on SW's original work.
And so, I leave it to you.
The Ring or the Cup?