Notes: Spoiler warning for those who do not know the identity of Dr. Davis.
I initially sat down to write something completely different, but this is what came out. No, I don't know where this came from, either. Warnings for pretentious writing and general messed up shit. No, really.
Summary: Mai is not Little Red Riding Hood and red is not her colour. Vaguely NaruMai, MaiNaru. Dark.
Through the Woods
(little red riding hood)
First, there is The Girl. Oliver is a scientist, but even scientists are familiar with literary traditions and social expectation, and he'd grown up in England, for the love of God, so of course he knows what fairy tales are. He knows four different variations of Little Red Riding Hood, three of Cinderella (and honestly, they tell these stories to little children? To little girls? What were they thinking?) and he doesn't care for them, any of them, not one wit, because there is nothing witty about stories of girls going into the forest to be raped, stories of girls cutting away the bits of themselves that don't fit into a gilded shoe.
And it's always a girl. It's always a girl, a sweet, fresh-faced girl who is young, so young, and she's always got such a pretty smile, a slice of kindness for everyone; she is a clumsy, coltish thing, still wriggling in her new skin, too old to be sheltered but too young to know any better (do not stop off the path or talk to strange wolves; good advice is lost to girls whose hearts live in the sky).
She is always a young, wide-eyed kind-hearted thing, the kind of girl that never lasts long in a forest full of trees and shadows and even though she's got a temper and a voice to match it, in the end it means nothing at all; once in the belly of the wolf, there is no one to hear her screaming.
And when Oliver looks at Mai, he only sees Mai; he doesn't think of wolves and forests and misplaced kindness and even though she is wearing red today, he only thinks, red is not a good colour on you, but doesn't bother saying so (he barks, "tea!" and Mai makes a face and leaves in a half-huffy kind of way to do his bidding). And when Mai leaves the office at five-forty in the evening, passing under his office window, there is no reason for him to glance around the street for a flash of grey fur on human legs and human feet – because Mai doesn't remind him of wolves and trees and silly pretty girls in red.
There is no reason to look. Oliver sips his tea and resumes his paper work. He thinks, red is not a good colour on you, but he doesn't know why he cares. The shadows crawl up the walls of his office as the sun disappears under the sill of his window, but Oliver is too busy reading to notice.
