Hello everyone! So this story is a collection of oneshots I haven't written yet, each focusing on whichever character has captured my fancy as of late. It doesn't have a chronological order, and will include AU's which I will warn you about in these beginning author's notes, so if you don't read those, you'll be rather confused. ;)
This story today focuses on Mirana and gives a slight character study behind the eyes of Tarrant Hightopp. Written for the lovely and wonderful tumblr blogger mxrmoreal.
Sorry this is so late, dearie. I hope it was almost worth the wait!
Enjoy.
Watch The Cracks
Days are starting to run into each other.
Today, there's a black forest being chopped down, a country in turmoil, and a murderous witch living under the crown's protection.
Some would call it Underland's normal.
You call it wrong.
Just yesterday, or perhaps it happened tomorrow, Iracebeth of Crims was halfway pardoned.
Sent away to some secluded desert, rarely to be seen unless the queen requests counsel.
A far kinder punishment than you desired, but you don't make the laws.
You make hats.
You made hats.
Hard to work when everything's in shambles.
Now, you watch helplessly as your father's hands tremble over thread and material. The once smooth knuckles cracked and swollen from hard labor. The nimble fingers that once wove magic in a hat brim now shake the needle.
You watch as your mother stands in a kitchen she does not know, eyes far away and distant, still stuck in a glass cage.
You hug your siblings and feel a height they've never been before, and you talk on and on for ages because they don't have much to say but they've missed so much.
You try to explain the world as it is now but you're rubbish at it, because you don't really know either.
You've never been one for logic or routine, but you cling to it.
Anything to keep the world right.
All the best people are bonkers, but you fear you're going mad.
There's a rage in you.
An inferno that hasn't been quenched by tea or riddles or verdicts.
This is not fair.
This is not just.
These thoughts torment you in all your waking moments, of which there are many, as you cannot sleep.
They shout within you at every step, and every strike of the axe against the falling forest reminds you of a hooded executioner and a moat that was always and constantly filled.
You shouldn't be here.
The memories clamor about you, and it's too much, too much—
If you have to swing the axe again, its target would not be wood, and it would not breathe once you'd stopped swinging.
You drop it, a dull thud, then it's gleaming innocent yet malignant in the charred grass.
You let your feet take off, not caring where, so long as it's not here.
They take you to the edge of the forest, farther from the din, closer to the lake that ripples silver, a wetter version of the sky.
You stand.
Breathe.
The fires that licked your brain and stole your reason recede, rise higher when you remember it was here.
Your capture, hauled to Red Queen to play dress up with the childish tyrant.
You'd saved her, of course, so it was worth it.
But it doesn't erase the memory of the wait, or the death sentence you still feel hanging around your neck.
Bile stains your tongue; you twitch as gold bleeds into your vision.
An axe fells a tree, very near.
You whirl around, wary, stalk to the figure hacking up a storm.
It's the Queen, a manic flurry of white and dirt as she demolishes all around her.
It gives you pause, then her weapon fills your ear and you will scream anything to stop the sound.
"Majesty," you say quietly instead, ice and daggers at the foolishly kind monarch who let a nightmare survive twice.
Startled, she jumps at the sound, turns quickly.
The fury dies in your throat.
Dark circles under exhausted eyes, cheeks hollow and collarbones deep, she is a collapse just verging.
"Good day," you mutter.
She just nods, the ever present smile replaced by a line of weariness.
She returns to her chopping, you stumble away.
Something soft thrums in your chest, faint and only slightly linked to your mind.
There's one thing in your thoughts now, and only one thing.
Mirana is cracking.
You just hope she won't shatter.
Marmoreal is cold.
Marble complains in elegant clicks as your shoes abuse their polished surface.
You don't hate it here, but you are far from comfortable.
The nobility float past, wraithlike and somber.
Your friends cannot lift the gloom, despite their many efforts.
Perhaps it is you that dampers the atmosphere and keeps the laughter away.
You have what you wanted, you have your family, but first came loss and now comes sharp reminders of the absence.
Nothing is like you imagined it'd be, and the universe will not shift to your favor.
The thoughts steal your sleep and eat up your dreams, you try to starve their intrusions by wandering aimlessly through the quiet halls.
You quote the Carpenter's essays and the Walrus's songs to combat the silence.
You're interrupted mid stanza by a crash followed by a curse.
A turn, a skip, and a hop later, you find the late night culprit.
The queen, sleeves of her dressing gown bunched up around her elbows, kneeling to clean a spill of dark purple and fennel head.
"Your majesty, it's nearly five hours from any sort of decent time to be awake." Your handkerchief rather useless against the runny puddle, you try regardless.
She smiles softly, slowly, delay in her seemingly effortless charm.
"I was trying to work on a potion for my sister's..." She pauses delicately. "Condition. I suppose I lost track of the night."
You grimace, both at the mention of Iracebeth and the dripping cloth in your hand.
She takes it from you, a real grin adorning her features this time and wrings it out in the sink, suppressing a gag at the liquid globbing at the bottom.
"You really ought to get some sleep," you say, she brushes away the concern with fluttering fingers.
"I will, but first, I think I've almost got it..."
A dash of pink dust, dollop of something blue, she avoids the purple vial at your warning tut.
"What are the ingredients?" You ask, arms folding under your chin as you settle onto a stool more comfortably.
"Crushed particles of frozen fire, the depression of a daisy, a liquidated rose that grew from a gravestone, the tongue of a miniature giant, a toadstool's seventh son, a dead thief's stolen jewel, and... A bit of everything else." She drifts off, coloring at how long the list goes on.
"This must take a long time to create, even without fetching all the ingredients," you muse.
She shrugs but the weariness slips through.
"I'm happy to do it."
"Are you though?"
The question was not meant to sting; regardless you know it did. And you cannot apologize, for it's a foreign injury that only she could explain and probably never would.
She sips from a porcelain teacup instead, then gasps in scandalized horror.
"Oh—how rude of me—care for some tea?" She asks quickly. "I have several healing poultices I need to mix together before I slumber, but I can easily make you one as well—"
"Unnecessary, but appreciated," you interrupt, standing. "I shouldn't bother your important work, thank you very much for your company."
A smile happens.
Her dimples warm your tired bones a shade happier.
"Most welcome, goodnight."
You walk to the door, hesitate the last step out.
"Majesty, you should really sleep too."
"In a bit, I just have to finish this, there are so many in need of healing."
"Must you heal them all yourself?"
A pause.
You haven't moved, but you've made a misstep again.
"I suppose..."
"Why?"
Silence.
You've fallen, down that dark hole filled with insulting and ungrateful brutes.
You turn, regret heavy in your eyes.
She refuses to see it, won't meet your gaze.
"Goodnight."
It's quiet and final.
"Goodnight, your majesty."
You leave, wander through the cold corridors once more, returning to colder chambers.
Your mind no longer caught up in past grievances and present problems, you simply wonder.
About her majesty, the gentle care taker.
But while she's taking care of everyone else, who is taking care of her?
The queen is a generous monarch.
Graciously hosting you and your family as your house is several sizes too small, and now she's building you a new one.
Quite literally.
The chessmen long gone for the day, she is still here, on the roof, whatchamacallit in one hand, nail for the railing in the other.
You work alongside her, very often distracted by the view circling around you.
You can't help it, it's astonishing.
A Hightopp house, smack dab in the middle of a lake.
Permanent magic keeping it afloat and dry, the walkway invisible on top of the water. It should feel isolated, but it doesn't.
It makes the world seem a bit more impossibly possible and open, if a bit more confusing, and a lot more fantastical.
It's something you once dreamed of and had desired ever since.
You're rather amazed she remembered you telling the dream, it seems such a long time ago, but very, very glad.
"Could you possibly hand me another nail, please?" She asks politely, bent over a board. You hand it to her, frowning nervously at the rather precarious position she's leaning into.
"Be careful, majesty."
"Tarrant," she says lightly. "We've been through enough; you can call me Mirana, you know."
You shake your head vigorously.
"T'isn't proper, your highness."
She sighs, goes back to hammering.
"No, I suppose not."
You work together in silence, until you finally insist you both need a cuppa and she reluctantly acquiesces.
"Iracebeth's coming to visit soon," she says softly, wincing at the rage sure to boil within you.
Shockingly, it is only a simmer.
Iracebeth has hurt you in many, many ways, but Mirana is here and her presence always soothes, and the past is slowly starting to release its grip on you.
"You don't need her counsel," you say, unable to stop your teeth from gritting.
You are moving forward but not quite ready to forgive. Perhaps you never will be.
"I do, but not this time."
"Then why is she coming?"
"Because I'd like her company."
"Why?"
You don't understand, and her melancholic smile just confuses you more.
"Because, she's my best and only friend."
It's later, she's still here.
Working.
If you're being honest with yourself, it hurts that she doesn't consider you a friend.
If you're denying it and pretending your heart is stinging for a different reason, she's been here too long and needs to return home.
You appreciate the help, but you'd prefer a bit more independence.
That is definitely the reason her continued presence irks you, the only reason.
You head to the roof, frustration and denied emotion slowing your steps.
It immediately fades as you see her, exhaustion etched even into the folds of her dress.
You know she's been working herself to the bone, but you hadn't realized the price had been so steep on her health.
She is a pale death walking.
Everything you'd felt before is replaced with concern.
"Majesty, it's getting late," you say.
"I know, and I do hope I'm not intruding too much, but I've almost gotten this last part finished."
"You need rest, your highness."
She turns, leans back as she sees the conviction and worry in your sight.
"I'm fine."
"Balderdash. Whether you think we're friends or not, I care about you, and you need to take a break."
She winces, leans back heavier against the rail.
"About that, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just—I only meant—well Tarrant, you won't even call me by my name."
"I'm trying to be respectful."
"I'd rather you be my friend."
"I am, we are, I—"
You're interrupted.
The railing's given way, and Mirana is tumbling.
Falling.
Headfirst into the freezing water.
You shout as she crashes through the surface.
Watch, terrified, as she struggles to rise upward.
Then, she pauses.
Stops fighting.
It's a conscious decision, you feel it, though you couldn't even begin to guess why.
She sinks.
Panicked now, you dive off the roof.
The initial shock and cold knocks the breath out of you, but you keep swimming, grasping at the white always just out of reach.
Inches away, your lungs burn and freeze all at once.
Your pulse marches in your head, alerting your body you need oxygen.
Now.
You grab onto lace, latch your arm more solidly around a too-thin waist.
Then your lungs give out, and you suck in a breath.
You suck in water.
You cough as you pull Mirana's limp form onto the magicked sidewalk.
She's breathing, barely, and her lips are blue.
You thump on her back until she's gasping into consciousness, choking as she coughs up the water from her lungs.
Once the immediate danger is out of the way, you wrap her in blankets, then yourself, though you're bewildered they're in the unfinished house at all.
Your family must have left them before heading back to the castle.
You and the queen—Mirana were supposed to have gone back hours ago.
She coughs once more, jerking you out of your thoughts.
"Are you alright?" You ask, twitching hands hovering over her as she shrugs.
Then her face crumples inwards, only a hint, and the fact she's hiding damage means there's a lot to hide.
"I think I have a few splinters."
You stand to get the medical kit she had insisted they bring for other people; she grabs your hand.
"Tarrant... Thank you."
"You're welcome, Mirana."
A few splinters turn out to be several long and jagged pieces of wood sticking into her delicate skin.
You wince as you pull them out, she seems merely relieved.
She stares into the fire you'd made out of the other wood beams, the flames crackling merrily on the invisible sidewalk, seemingly burning atop the water.
You stare too, but at the lake that darkens in the absence of the sun, and you remember her near intentional brush with death.
"Why?" You ask in a murmur, facing her back, allowing her this shield from vulnerability.
She heaves a deep sigh; you dab at the blood that oozes from a particularly angry wound.
"I don't know. It was cold and terrifying, but in a way, it was peaceful. The desire to fight just wasn't there. I know it was incredibly selfish, but I was just so tired.
"It was only a moment. It won't happen again." She says at your silence, biting her lip.
"I should hope not. I couldn't bear to lose my friend, Mirana."
She smiles.
It's trembling and still slightly tinged with blue, but it is radiant.
"As I said before, I was being terribly selfish."
Carefully, ever so carefully, you lay your arm around her shoulder and hug her gently.
She is weak and heartbreakingly fragile, but her fingers cling to you, begging not to be let go just yet.
Loving queen, love starved.
"Will you take a break now?" You ask, she changes from relaxed tiredness to alert and alarmed.
"But there's so much work to be done! I need to fix your roof, reinforce the rails, and there are still so many people I haven't healed yet, and—"
You sigh, her gaze flicks to yours, and there's a different sort of frenzy there.
Panic, and a sad sort of insecurity.
"Mirana, why do you try so hard to fix everyone?"
It dulls, and then hidden feelings clash behind those butterfly lashes.
"Atonement?" She asks meekly, you shake your head, corkscrews springing around as they've finally dried.
"There's nothing to atone for. Even if there was, you have paid it back tenfold."
She turns back to the fire, something other than orange shining in her brown orbs. She pulls her knees to her chest, and suddenly she's very small.
"I just... There's something inside me that promises, if I only think of others, if I help everyone, if I fix them, they'll love me.
"And if I love everyone and they love me back, then maybe I'd hate myself a little less."
It's been a week since the fall.
Iracebeth came and went, loud in between that, and you find yourself healing.
It still stings, but it no longer burns and torments.
Not quite bonkers, but no longer madness.
The castle is silent once more.
You almost miss the redhead's volume, if only because this quiet is rather deafening.
You haven't spoken to Mirana since the incident, and you're a bit ashamed.
You hadn't known what to say then.
Still don't now.
She understands, shares a smile with you anyway as you pass each other in the hall, but it's not enough.
She's back on duty, back to being queen, but your friend is missed.
You long to tell her you're finally working again, that a duchess required a hat.
But she is busy.
So you work.
It's like greeting an old friend.
You only wish you could speak to a different friend.
Instead, you focus on the duchess' order.
Diamonds sown into the side of an olive green fascinator, arranged to shape an ostrich.
Interesting choice, but you don't comment on customer's ideas, you just create them.
As the finished product shines in the light, diamonds twinkling decadently, you have nothing more to distract yourself.
And you don't really want to anymore.
You still don't know what to say, but it doesn't matter, you're going to see your friend.
"Hello Mirana," you say jovially, waltzing into the throne room.
"Tarrant, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I simply wanted to see my friend."
She beams at that, relaxes a fraction in her blue-in-silver chair.
"That looks rather uncomfortable," you state dazedly, staring at the strict lines the seat forces. She raises one shoulder delicately.
"It's said one must not have a comfortable throne, so as to not grow comfortable with power."
"Surely they allow for a little bit of luxury, after all, I'd imagine this chair cuts the flow of blood to your legs."
"I usually take short walks about the room when that happens."
You cannot tell if she's jesting.
Probably not.
"How are your citizens today?" You ask, changing the subject, staring out the window to the courtyard below.
She stands gracefully, the snowflakes shiver on her dress as she swishes next to you.
You watch the hustle and bustle of servants and nobles alike, all swift over marble to get to homes and dinners and parties.
And you realize, Mirana is up here, and must be up here often.
Alone.
"Why are you not at Lord Tennington's celebration? I know he invited you."
Her contented smile turns wistful.
"It was very kind of him to do so, but...well, I didn't want to intrude."
"It's not intrusion if you've been invited," you say.
You cannot understand her self-isolation when you know she so desperately and yet quietly yearns for companionship.
"He deserves to relax in his own home, Tarrant. I make him wary. I make all the nobles wary."
She walks back to her throne, sits proper and rigid on the stone.
The fragmented vision of her words start aligning, the picture becomes clearer.
She is a kind ruler.
Considerate.
Takes great pains to put others' happiness before her own, and it costs her much.
You'd rather be a hatter any day.
"I did attend a ball once, as queen," she says, the memory dancing behind her eyes.
"Not one I was obligated to attend, of course, or one I threw myself. Everyone was so beautiful, all shimmering and happy, glowing in their laughter. I thought to myself, Look at the way they shine with their friends. Like diamonds. I wish I could do that.
"But I never seem to."
She pauses, a hand to her lips, as if to take back the private words that slipped through.
"You are not a diamond, Mirana. You do not need others' light to shine. You are a star, and you shine brilliantly all on your own."
It rings sincere, but hollow from across the room.
Her forever smile is freckled with appreciation, but resignation overlays it.
"So it would seem, I must shine alone."
It's not what you meant, not at all.
But you can't keep bungling things up with words, the best is to act.
So you do.
You grab her hand, she follows you willingly, a cloud of airy lace and sweet patience behind you.
"I refuse for you to stay here all night," you say, determined. "You're going to come with me, Mally, and Chess, and we are going to spend the evening with tea cakes and hunting borogroves until the shrieking beasties chase us off."
She laughs, doesn't protest in the slightest, and you feel this a small victory.
Not huge yet, but there's room for more victories in the future.
For now, it's time to chase after the shabby-looking birds and make Mirana laugh so hard she'll forget she's queen for a night, and to make sure she actually rests.
She still might shatter, has the right to.
But you're here, and you'll stay.
You'll watch the cracks.
