A/N: I am going to start publishing a multi-chaptered Banna fic soon – called: '[No one Ever Said It Would Be] This Hard'. The prequel will be called 'Muted Angels' and will focus on Anna's childhood – because it bothers me that the fandom largely ignores the information we've been given about that aspect of her life. I wanted to develop a canon-compliant backstory for her, to look at what events brought her to the point we meet her at in Series 1 and made her the amazing person she is. It will mainly focus on the relationship between her and her sister (who I have named Flora, for reasons which will hopefully become clear in the full fic). I take her sister to be 5 years older and I have extremely strong headcanons about what she was like and what happened to her. All of this will be elaborated on in the proper fic but I wanted to share this slightly festive excerpt with the fandom to see what kind of reception it gets.
For this excerpt some context is necessary. Anna is 7. They live in the slums of Manchester. Her mother and 12-year-old Flora work in a cotton mill. [I take Anna being a 'country girl' to mean that her heart belongs to the countryside/that is where she is happiest, not that she grew up on a farm] Her father has been dead for almost a year. Her mother remarried a couple of months after his death – at this point she is still virtually catatonic with grief over her late husband however. The girls' relationship with their stepfather has been difficult from the beginning. At this point he largely ignores Anna however, for reasons which Flora is keeping secret from her (I don't want to explain too much – I want you to see it through Anna's eyes and have to try to figure it out through the unreliable/child pov). They had a cat named Sooty who was useless but loved. Their stepfather tried to drown him on the grounds that he was another mouth to feed and served no purpose. Flora intervened (she elaborates on this in the fic).
See if you can guess who the 'prince' is!
All credit to the wonderful Kristen APA for the name 'angel princess Anna' - it is beautiful and I have her permission to borrow it for little Anna.
Trigger warning: Implied references to child abuse.
Mentions of animal cruelty
I have rated this 'M' not because I think this section warrants it but because the completed fic (and the other 2 in this trilogy) will be strong 'M's with trigger warnings that should be taken seriously.
(Excerpt from 'Muted Angels')
December 1893: You make it feel like Christmas
'You make it feel like Christmas, even when things go wrong'
'The saddest people smile the brightest'
Anna snuggled against Flora, nestling her head in the crook of her neck. Flora's still sopping hair soaked her nightie and irritated her cheek but she didn't care. She breathed in the reassuring scent of her sister – the seven year-old's favourite smell in the world, if only because it belonged to her favourite person: cotton fluff and machinery oil from the mill, coal smoke and dirty snow (it smelled – of Manchester) lavender water (made the previous summer - from headily scented blooms Anna had given her a fistful of, delighted by her discovery - and lovingly preserved in a milk bottle) sparingly daubed on the nape of her neck, and a whiff of the harsh homemade soap she rigorously used on them both. However, there was another scent that Anna didn't recognise, something foreign and unfamiliar and frightening. It smelled bad, dark, somehow, and not like Flora at all, even though it was on her skin when Anna inhaled her…she screwed up her nose in distaste. Her older sister noticed and chuckled lightly at her disdainful expression.
"You don't like the smell of the river, then? I'm sorry – I'll wash it out my hair if the pump ever thaws." She waggled her head so that the dripping tendrils – stiff with ice in places - of hair whipped Anna's face. The latter shrieked and almost ended up on the floor with how enthusiastically she attempted to avoid the soggy strands. Flora caught her and tumbled sideways with her onto the lumpy mattress where they both lay giggling helplessly.
Anna was a bit perplexed though. She could smell the slightly fetid river water her sister had been submerged in, but it just smelt like the industrial countryside she loved their increasingly rare excursions to, it didn't smell nasty – and it didn't smell like whatever was tainting Flora's skin.
She was distracted from her musings by the sudden and intense tickle attack. She squirmed around violently, squealing in harmony with the ancient mattress springs' creaking protest but incapacitated with laughter. Flora, who was laughing nearly as hard as she was, did not relent until they were both gasping on tears of mirth. "You don't smell too marvellous yourself you know," she playfully teased her little sister, who had not been subjected to Flora's ordinarily weekly overenthusiastic motherly ablutions in nearly a month [because the tenements' pump had frozen] and consequently bore no small degree of resemblance to a chimney sweep (what had she even been doing!?). Anna cheerfully agreed with this assertion with an impishly unconcerned little grin that had Flora tickling her again in retaliation. This time though, the mischievous attacker broke off racked with a terrifyingly vicious coughing fit that shuddered through her entire body so that she doubled over, convulsing. Anna scrambled backwards with wide, frightened eyes listening to her sister try to hack up the fluff that, even at her age, she understood lined her sister's lungs like a sick parody of snow.
By the time Flora regained her composure, Anna was huddled at the other end of the mattress, all huge eyes and trembling bottom lip. Her sister offered her a weak smile and opened her arms. Anna entered them tentatively, wary of inducing another coughing fit, but Flora's hug was firm, her arms wrapping her tightly in a blanket of protection where nothing could harm either of them.
"I'm fine, you daft ha'porth" she scolded her gently, "Just silly old cotton fluff, nowt to worry about."
Somewhat reassured but still disconcerted, Anna pulled back to survey her big sister properly. She didn't look unwell, which was immensely comforting – Anna knew what unwell looked like… it was the grey hue tinging her father's face when he couldn't hear her talking to him just before the end; Flora didn't look like that at all. There was, however, a purple bruise blossoming like lavender across her sister's pale cheek that she hadn't noticed before. A bemused frown creased Anna's forehead and she reached up to touch the mark tenderly. The recipient of her anxious caress flinched a little and Anna withdrew her fingers hastily, startled. Flora grinned apologetically.
"Does it hurt?" Anna asked worriedly.
"No, I was clumsy earlier and I've made an ugly mess of my face as a result is all." She spoke lightly but there was a self-deprecating bitterness in her tone that the confused little girl didn't fully understand but didn't care for at all. She shook her head vehemently.
"No, you're pretty." She informed her sister-mother severely.
Flora stroked her wispy blonde hair – which had been mussed out of its straggly plaits by the tickling earlier - off her face gently. "Not as pretty as you are." She replied fondly "My beautiful angel princess Anna."
"No, you are - you're prettier!" Anna insisted fiercely, but she was beaming at the nickname.
Flora merely shook her head but didn't pursue the matter. Anna was struck by a sudden desire "Will you tell me an angel-princess-Anna story? Please." She begged. This was Anna's favourite time – when she got to cuddle up against Flora and let her elaborate, whispered tales of magic and fearsome angels and brave sisters against the world and story-loving girls who saved broken princes and became princesses (yes, the rewrite of 'Beauty and the Beast' so that angel princess Anna was Beauty was her favourite – it was so much better than the other fairy tales because she saved him) wash over her while she nestled, curled in a cocoon of security and love and story-worlds that more than made up for the meagre threadbare blanket and running out of the lumpy gruel Flora had not yet mastered the art of botching and mammy not answering her or hugging her back and Him…
Flora agreed with weary willingness and Anna eagerly wriggled to burrow more deeply into her embrace – settling herself firmly in her lap and sticking her grubby thumb in her mouth contentedly, not noticing her big sister's suppressed wince at the impact of her little body.
"Do you want a Christmas one?" Flora enquired with mock-uncertainty, knowing full well what the answer would be. Anna's 'best thing in the whole world ever' was Christmas, and she had been informing Flora of this fact every day since the middle of October. Anna's delighted affirmation was as overenthusiastic as anticipated but, before the story could actually begin, Anna sat up abruptly, bumping her head on Flora's chin. The familiar scene was missing a vital component… what had happened to the heavy, reassuring warmth of Sooty crushing her legs (or, on occasion, her chest)? She scoured the dingy little room but could not see him slinking through any of the shadows nor make out his bright eyes peeking from any of his little nooks.
"Flo where's Sooty?!" She demanded urgently, a sense of panic rising in her throat in a way that reminded her of the time when the bad water made her throw her dinner up. "You said you rescued him! He isn't here. He's never not here-"
Flora sighed and tugged the frantic Anna back into her arms. "I did rescue him but I couldn't bring him home because He'd only have tried to get rid of him again – maybe some other way so I couldn't stop it."
"But where is he?!" Anna's voice rose shrilly in distress but Flora began to stroke a calming hand through her mop of tangled hair and she relaxed into the familiar affectionate touch in spite of herself.
"He's with a brave prince who helped rescue him. Well…" she amended "I rescued Sooty and the prince rescued me." Anna looked up at her in wide-eyed amazement, eyes shining at the way Flora's explanation was becoming a story, and her concern about the well-being of her beloved cat sufficiently assuaged for her to enjoy the telling of it.
And so she listened as her sister painted a picture with dancing words and her intensely dreamy look that she got when she was like this. She listened about how Flora had splashed out to the struggling sack and snagged it in her arms –tugging the pitifully mewling ball of soggy fur from the sodden sacking and tucking him inside her dress; but it had been so cold and her saturated clothes had been dragging on her and she couldn't feel her limbs and they weren't responding to her commands and she had started to sink into the icy numbness because it was taking all of her fumbling efforts to hold the squirming feline above the water; but suddenly someone had heaved her from the river, as she had Sooty, and dragged her back to damp land where she had knelt in a bedraggled heap, choking up scummy river water, while her rescuer draped his heavy coat (which, obviously, was dripping, but still warmer than not having it) around her and wrapped the forlorn Sooty – who had been successfully saved too – in his scarf. She'd been too stunned and freezing to ask as many questions as she wished she had in hindsight and he did not volunteer information, but he was holding Sooty right and the traumatized cat was purring with a deep affection it usually only afforded Flora and Anna and so she had asked him outright – too cold to be polite, just bold as you please – whether he would look after him for them. They parted ways, once he had reassured himself that she wasn't going to collapse and she had (with some difficulty) convinced him that she didn't need escorting home, with him having gained a shivering cat and a fierce hug of gratitude and her having gained an enormous coat (which would have swamped her and Anna put together) that he refused point blank to accept back.
By the time she finished her tale – all the more fantastical for being true, they were both lying entwined together, Flora struggling to increase the limited warmth that the feeble excuse of a blanket offered Anna by transmitting her own (equally limited) body heat to the little bundle of 7 year-old she was clutching to her – the chilled feet of whom sent tingles up her legs, Anna awestruck and entranced but with defiant eyelids drooping against her will. Stubbornly forcing them back open she mumbled sleepily "Can we go away to live with the nice prince like Sooty? I think I'd like it better than living here."
"Maybe someday my angel princess Anna… Why don't you go and visit Sooty in your dreams now - see how happy he is with the prince?"
"But I'm not sleepy…" A yawn belied her words "To dream I'd have to be sleepy…"
Flora pressed a lingering kiss to the top of the grimy little blonde head tucked neatly under her chin. "I think you are sleepy."
"'M not…" she retorted, but was dozing before she could completed the sentence.
Anna was only half-asleep though – caught in that in-between place of dulled senses and exhaustion that has not quite crossed over into unconsciousness – and she thought she heard Flora mutter into the darkness "I think I'd like it better than living here too. I think I'd like anything better than living here…" and was perplexed, but was too deliciously warm and heavy feeling to ask her sister what she meant. Instead she just nuzzled her nose into Flora's cheek to offer comfort and try to drive out the bitterness that had taken up uninvited and unwelcome residence in her best friend's mouth. Flora's thin but surprisingly strong arms tightened around her in response until she was hugging her almost uncomfortably hard but Anna didn't complain because she knew that it meant nothing could hurt her all night long – that she was safe with her protector there.
Listening to her own breathing even out, the drowsy little girl wondered why Flora's hot breath in her ear sounded so much more ragged…maybe it was just because of the fluff. Yes that must be it. It made her cough and presumably it made her breathing funny, but Flora said it was nowt to worry about and so she didn't – because Flora didn't lie. Her sister must have been cold, because her body was shuddering, and so Anna extracted one arm from the cocoon of entangled limbs to ease the blanket off herself and tuck it clumsily over Flora, who didn't appear to notice. Pressing her now cold cheek against Flora's, she wondered how Flora's hair could still be making her cheek wet when they were lying so close to each other and her hair was trailing on the mattress behind them…
Oh well…They were all questions to ponder in the morning. Now she wanted to relish being still and warm and utterly safe in Flora's arms, knowing that their cat was curled up on the prince somewhere - somewhere they might go someday, and Christmas was soon (-ish – sooner than it had been yesterday, Flora had promised) …and nothing could change the perfect, eternal, total sanctuary of her sister's presence and her arms.