.a/n.: so the evillious archive...really is dead
.x.
Once upon a time, there was a princess, and she had everything.
She had a beautiful mansion, with stained-glass windows like the churches from her hometown and proud stairwells that spiralled up into the glittering chandeliers. She descended those steps with a rushing sea of a dress cascading behind her, her hair as bright as the tide, skin pale and icy as the froth.
She had enviable beauty and all the accessories and silks and endless sunlight she could ever dream of to enhance that beauty. She had a father who dearly loved her and taught her all he knew, and so she had intelligence too, and now the resources to learn even more. If she wanted an ingredient, she could send for it, no matter how far: they'd take to their horses and rush across the world for her, and bring her things to make her happy.
And she had a husband, too. A man who, when she was only a little princess, with big glittering eyes and eyelashes dark like crow's wings and lips as perfectly painted as roses, gave her a ring.
She slipped that ring under her pillow every night. She set her head upon her pillow, and stared into the dark, and waited for when she could one day have it around her finger, and stared, and stared, and stared, and then the sun came up, and she had forgotten to sleep, but she had dreamed from sundown to sunup.
.x.
Margarita sits at the edge of Kaspar's bed.
What time is it? She has a little pocket watch, strung on a thread of gold and put down the front of her nightdress. She doesn't care for them, but ever since Kaspar…discovered her secret, she can tell it comforts him to see her put on the silky negligee and have her makeup washed away, and drink a warm glass of milk, and try to kiss him good night, although it's hopeless. Sweet dreams. The skirt is thin and her ankles are so cold.
Asleep, her husband wrinkles his nose a little as she takes his arm out from under the blankets, but he doesn't wake. She knows his patterns – and besides that, she knows what alcohol does to the body. Especially Kaspar's. She knows that he'll be terribly cranky in the morning, complaining of a headache, and vomiting if he's lucky.
Margarita cleans the inside of his elbow with a sterilized cloth. Very gently. She's lit a single dim candle and it plays over his palm, his face, a frantic liquid sunlight trying to shake him awake. She'd blow it out, but she needs it to see where she's going to put the needle.
He flinches in his sleep when it pierces his skin. She slowly depresses the plunger. Her father told her just the right pace. Too fast, and you could damage something with the increased pressure of forcing so much into the vein. And she'd been very careful to check that there weren't any air bubbles in the needle. That would be a fool's mistake. The air could trap in his brain. Made him brain-dead.
Margarita pulls the needle free and dabs away the tiny spot of blood. She's still holding the needle aloft when Kaspar awakes. At least it was after she was done, she thinks, as she takes in his expression: it's bleary, then surprised at the sight of her, and finally, horrified at the needle catching the candlelight.
"Miss Felix – " he snaps, and she clasps his hands in hers so he can't tug away.
"Only a tonic to help you in the morning."
He pulls away. Presses his thumb to the puncture like he can stop the rush of it through his body. She can see his pulse in his neck. His heart is racing. Why is he scared enough for his pulse to go wild like that? It's travelling fast. Soon it'll seep into his brain. Then he'll feel better. She just wants him to feel better. He makes everything harder for her when he isn't happy.
She knows what Rita would say. No one you let close to you should scare you. Even if you think you can tame them, or you think maybe that evil gleam in their eye is just a trick of the light. We may be wrong when we're worried or sad, sometimes even when we're happy, and often when we're mad. But we're never, ever wrong when we're scared.
Kaspar says, dragging himself away from her, "Even if you mean well – it's dark, Margarita, and who knows where those crackpots get the ingredients you use. You might poison me."
"I…" Margarita starts gathering her things. "You'll see. In the morning. You'll feel much better than usual, and then you can have a good day at work."
"Just go back to your room, Felix."
Blankenheim, she thinks. But she listens.
.x.
They had had a beautiful wedding. Her father attended, wiping his tears as he walked Margarita down the aisle – it had made her tear up a little too, but she wanted to hold back because she would surely cry during her vows and she didn't want to look a mess before that. Instead she kissed her father's haggard cheek and thanked him for everything, as if she was to be sent out to sea.
That wasn't the case. Her father still had so much left to teach her. She wasn't sure how to phrase it without it seeming like the end.
She held Kaspar's hands at the altar. The veil was down over her face like a deluge of snow and the priest began reading. You're going to marry him! she thought, biting her lip. Isn't this every girl's dream? A childhood sweetheart, lives and time and age all entwined, and now hearts entwined too. She searched his eyes, blue like a summer's evening, and he lifted her veil, and she…should have let herself cry at her father's hug.
She stares at Kaspar, feeling her veins fill with ice.
He slid the ring down her finger and she begged herself to be happy, but everything crashed up against her like a tide on a cliff, splattering and breaking and roaring through her ears. All her secrets. Every moment she considered being empty and aimless, but it didn't matter then, and now it mattered, because if she wasn't everything for him, then what good would she be as a wife? Would he still be amused by her as he was when they were children? She used to bandage his scrapes from running through the fields and climbing with her over river rocks. Now, she can set a bone, clear a head-fog, cure a cut that's turned black. Does he still, she wondered, want to be taken care of by me?
What does he want from me?
That night, it was just as Rita explained to her, in hushed voices in her bedchamber. How she'd blushed when Margarita asked for drawings! Margarita didn't find it that shocking. Not on paper, anyways. She'd just been wary when Rita said that she could become pregnant. She didn't want that. Not yet. She wanted to take care of Kaspar to the best of her ability while she could. Another person would be a distraction. And during the negotiations between their parents, Kaspar said he didn't want a kid with her anyways, because they could be greedy and patricide was really in fashion.
It was wonderful. It was nice to finally kiss him, and not just dream of it. Rediscover the man that had been taken from her so long ago, and count veins, and measure his pulse. Afterwards, she'd been so enamoured that she didn't realize that she didn't sleep at all until Kaspar woke up at daybreak and turned to her and jumped, finding her so close.
"I – " he'd said, and laughed softly, voice groggy with sleep. "I forgot it'd be you."
.x.
We're never, ever wrong when we're scared.
Sometimes Margarita wonders about that. Rita had said it after one of the many negotiation meetings between the families Felix and Blankenheim. Margarita had felt so terribly awkward around Kaspar, both of them accidentally tripping their sentences over the others', or falling into endless silences that made the air heavy and apt to collapse on them. Something about Kaspar reminded Margarita of some heavily-loping, prowling animal, and she'd laughed self-consciously in the retelling of it to Rita.
Rita had looked at her, very, very seriously. "Your father loves you more than anything. He would listen if you told him you didn't want the wedding."
"Kaspar made a promise," Margarita said. "I don't want to be the reason he has to break it."
They've been married for five months. He's never struck her, or even raised his voice, or called her an unkind name. She's doing leagues better than some of her childhood friends who are married too. She thinks of what Rita said, and scoffs to herself, giggles, and says to the empty bedroom that's all her own, "I tease him so much. Maybe I'm even crueler to him than he is to me!"
It's true that he vanishes more often than not, and drinks heavily, and will leave a room if she enters it. He has his friends over to gamble; it's them that say awful things to her. It's like no matter what she does, she's too pretty that it makes them crass, or she isn't pretty enough and it turns them rude. She thinks about their poor wives while Kaspar peers at her over the rim of a glass and lifts an eyebrow: you may as well laugh too. Sometimes she asks for new equipment for her growing room of medical supplies and he watches her like she's a wayward branch he'd like to prune. And other times, she finds that they don't have the money for medicines, and other times, they have too much all at once.
One night, Kaspar has been spending the evening with a girl. She's a perfect stranger but he laughs with her and talks with her far more easily than he ever does with Margarita, like their personalities just perfectly click. She's so beautiful that Margarita can't help but stare too, hidden as she is, at the woman's lovely skin and shining hair. The woman's heart flickers beneath her jaw. Kaspar kisses it and she giggles.
Margarita isn't stupid. He's going to screw her.
Kaspar likes to bring the girls here. Kaspar wants the girls to see how rich he is. So rich that he can spend his money on excessive things like maids (Margarita, always awake, can do the cleaning), and bouquets of flowers that explode from every surface (Margarita likes to garden and trim flowers on her own), and whores (Margarita…she would do that too, if he kissed her gently, and held her close afterwards so she can sink into his skin if she can't sink into dreams).
Margarita has learned to make herself small, and disappear along the wallpaper. Until the next morning. She watches the women leave, blushes in their cheeks. Kaspar smokes in bed.
Eventually (time is so slow for Margarita), it's midnight and they've gone quiet. Margarita slips her watch back into her blouse. She jumps as the woman passes her in the hall.
"Oh!" the woman exclaims. She holds a hand to her chest. Her hair is a little mussed, her lips a warm bruised red. "I'm so sorry if I surprised you, honey."
"No, my apologies. I shouldn't've been skulking."
The woman smiles warmly. She seems awfully nice. Margarita can see why Kaspar picked her. Maybe if Margarita gave off such warmth as a first impression… The woman says, "I'm just heading home. Sweetie, could you lead me to the carriages, and find me a footman willing to work this hour? I'm sorry to trouble you, I just have to return to…um, my home."
She thinks Margarita's a servant. And maybe she's married too – she's blushing. Margarita dips her head and takes the girl where she wishes. Thankfully, the footman she nudges awake in the servant's quarters doesn't treat her suspiciously, and the two of them are soon off on their way.
Margarita waits a little longer to be safe. Watches the hand spin on her watch. Then goes into Kaspar's room.
It smells like tobacco and sweat, and maybe it's because of why that sweat came around, but the smell isn't entirely unpleasant. Margarita doesn't light a candle, but she does pause at the side of the bed. She measures the sound of his breathing in the dark.
Her father taught her to understand the human body even when it was trying hard to keep its secrets. Like a tone of voice or a flicker in an expression, the organs can't help but betray when they're lying. She knows the difference in speed and depth in breathing when someone is awake and lively, asleep, ill, or sliding, sliding away, deeper than her ear can follow, into death.
Kaspar is asleep.
Margarita slides off her little shoes. Peels off her stockings. She's very good at undoing the stays in her dresses on her own, twisting her arms behind her with nimble fingers plucking free the laces. She pulls her dress over her head and leaves it in a puddle, deep like a tidepool and shifting with colours, around her feet. Her underclothes next; she's shivering.
She slides under the blankets and finds the residual warmth of the other woman. Kaspar is on his back. She's noticed he always sleeps halfway through some sort of fit, or like he's arming himself to stomp into dangerous dreams: his arm is folded over his face, the other crossed over his stomach like holding a shield on his forearm. Margarita slips her fingers around that wrist. Guarding him, too. Epidermis, internal oblique, transversus abdominis, diaphragm, and liver: where the courage is kept.
She presses close in the warm under the blankets. Wraps her legs around his, presses her breasts to his side so she can feel her heart bump against her ribs. Rests her cheek on his bicep. Closes her eyes. Imagines sleep.
She'd wanted a prince so badly. And why? She wasn't trapped by any dragon. She was always in castles, always wore a crown. Why? She didn't start off looking for one, but Kaspar was one, and, well, when a prince walks into your life, you take hold. Tightly.
Margarita thinks of princes with their crowns and their sashes. He didn't always look like that. Kaspar dresses smartly, but she met him when he wore too-short trousers and shirts scuffed on the elbows with grass stains. Sometimes her fault. She shoved him around in the fields and berry patches and made him chase her. And he'd chased her all the way into adulthood. All the way into this bed, where she curls her fingers through his and feels his breathing lift his arm, whisper past his lips. If she could have anything, what would she want? She'd want Kaspar to look at her like he used to.
When?
Not as a child. How sweet that was, but she's still a woman, and she wants to see devotion and eternity and loving lust in his look. Again. When was that? She can see his face, sensitive and gently lined, dappled green with leaves overhead. She laughs and climbs her way onto a stump, tapping away a chopped log with her foot, so she's tall enough to reach him. Wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him until both their heads spin. He's holding an axe. Just as good as a sword, she'd laughed, leaning back in his grasp. Confident in how he'd hold her steady.
My hero. He built me his castle all on his own! Brick by brick, every day, but all in secret. Shh, all in secret. When did you find the time?
Well, technically, it was already half-done by previous tenants. I just expanded it, fixed the roof –
Shh! All in secret. I'm telling you. What a hero. Drew up four walls around me and put on a roof like a music box, and closed the door, keeping us safe inside.
You're nuts, he scoffed gently, nuzzling her neck. He hooked an arm behind her knees and picked her up. She laughed.
See! Tell me, where would a scientist get strong enough to do that? Only if he chopped down all the best trees in the forest and set them all together.
Of course. For his princess.
Oh, yes. And then she wonders, why, why didn't her prince build her a tower instead of this dinky little cottage?
He laughs again and carries her into the house, where the kisses melt into something less chaste, and she's grinning the whole time. She's never been happier.
When did this happen?
Ah, she realises, pressing her lips to his skin.
She's dreaming.
.x.
Once upon a time, there was a princess, and she had everything. The sun always shone on her beauty, and her mansion, and her riches, and her husband.
But in the night, she was swallowed up by the shadows that all these perfect things cast. They made her run and hide: in her chores and her books, her science and her math.
It wasn't enough. One night, she was running through the mansion. The shadows were bigger than ever. They grew teeth and they snarled when she wasn't looking, and when she was, they smiled.
Then, suddenly, she saw a glowing vial. She didn't know what it was, and usually the princess was very pragmatic and would have to do proper tests to see if this was safe, but she was so scared that she didn't care. It didn't snarl at her, so it felt safe. It didn't smile either. It just looked to her and asked for her to take it.
She undid the stopper and swallowed all the liquid inside. She closed her eyes. Counted to ten. Felt her pulse carry the toxin through her body, and was patient for it to reach her brain.
She got to her feet and turned around.
The shadows were all still there.
"Why?" she cried. "This was supposed to save me!"
No, it wasn't. There's no way for the shadows to disappear entirely. They are here because of how bright the sun is.
"I'll just get rid of the sun, then," she said.
Then, everything would be shadow.
The princess cried like never before. She cried for so long that eventually the sun came back up and the shadows lapped at her heels.
That night they came again for her. But she found she had a new way to hide: she was a scientist, but she could also do magic because of the vial.
She loved it. She did all sorts of spells to turn red flowers white and make mice dance and make snow fall on summer butterflies. Everyone loved her for it, and soon amongst all her riches, she was loved as well.
One night, as she hid in her magic, one of the shadows stepped to her. It was solid and swam in colour and had lovely lights in its smile, but she still, somehow, knew it was a shadow, and for all its beauty, it would hurt her. He was handsome, just like her husband. He said, "You're the strongest witch in the land, aren't you? How is that so? It doesn't seem fair."
"Fair?" she'd asked. "Oh, sir, I'm not cruel, you misunderstand."
"I mean to say… How is it possible that you have all the magic in the land, plucked from the hands of all the women, and you also have all their beauty too? All their kindness, all their warmth? You, little witch, hold the entire world inside of you."
She was so flattered that she blushed. Her? Her, in this little village? "Oh, sir. Maybe I have all that, but I have no riches. Hardly any smarts. What would a man like you want with a girl like me?"
He'd smiled. All the sparkling lights, and she forgot, in time, that he was a shadow. He took her hand. Warm as the sun. "I'd like, if you want, to make a new world."