Hey, it's a new story! Charlie hears nothing, for all her abilities.
Un-beta'ed, so quibble away.
- o – o -
Kikazaru: Hear No Evil
Charlie sits in her room, staring at the window, pretending she's not eavesdropping. There's no one she can pass the information to anyways. Who would she tell? Nora is, most likely, dead. She hasn't seen Danny in three weeks. Uncle Miles isn't allowed to speak to her—Monroe's a sadistic bastard, but an intelligent one, Charlie has to give him that. Charlie doesn't want to talk to her mother, the bitch who sold her young, defenseless children and her husband out to live in luxury while her family suffered deprivation after deprivation.
She's always been good at listening.
The girl—a young woman, really, but she feels more like a child as she sits in her elegant, comfortable cage—knows how to listen for the faintest sounds. She's good at picking them out. She knows how to tell birds apart by the tiniest rustle of their wings, what a deer sounds like as it noses for food in the underbrush, what her brother sounds like before his lungs close and he has an asthma attack as he sleeps. She hears everything.
Charlie knows what her guards wish they could do to her. She hears them, but she never says anything. Monroe, if he learned anything, would probably let them—it would guarantee Miles' compliance, force it so he could protect his niece. The huntress wishes she had a crossbow again. She doesn't know who she'd shoot first, though: Her guards, or General Monroe, or her uncle… Charlie knows killing her uncle would be a mercy.
She hears everything. But who would she tell?
This is the price she has to pay to protect her family. General Monroe sends her guests, sometimes. Jason Neville, the boy she'd known as Nate, is a frequent fixture in her room, which is still nothing more than a particularly plush cage—a cage that might as well be a lie, because Charlie knows it will be taken away the second her uncle steps out of line.
Charlie has to wonder why Jason is such a frequent visitor. He brings her flowers (which she throws out as soon as the young man leaves, because she despises them), or a book (which she gives to her maid, who smiles when she receives the newest book), or anything he can think of. Charlie suspects—and hears the whispers—that he's attempting to court her. General Monroe approves—just another way to tie his pretty captive to the republic, to tie her stubborn uncle to the general so he can't simply steal Charlie away and run for the Wasteland, or to Georgia, or to Canada.
The huntress paces around her room, trying to block out the whispers she can hear. She hears everything. It's her punishment for her pride, for her stubborn pride in believing that she could, somehow, defeat the republic with a small, ragtag group of civilians and a soldier who ran away when he couldn't fight back against the monster he'd created. Charlie's fingers itch for a crossbow. She can't talk to anyone about the whispers she hears, but she longs for someone she could talk to.
She misses her brother sharing her bed at night. Charlie's never slept alone, or never more than five feet from someone she trusts. Her room is dark, and cold, and too quiet but for the whisper-whisper-whisper of her guards outside the door. There's no one to share midnight secrets with, or to hide the lamps she uses to read books at night with. She misses sharing secrets with her brother, her responsibility. Danny was her responsibility. She learned to listen for his sake.
Now she can't stop listening. She eavesdrops on everyone from her room in what had once been the birthplace of a mighty government. She eavesdrops and collects secrets and realizes that listening is her penance. She will hear everything, and do nothing.
She hears no evil. Because this is her penance.
She will hear everything, and everything will echo, but she will never hear it.
Her pride brought her here. Her stubbornness brought her here. Her need to hear that her brother was still alive brought her here, brought the fearsome monster of hushed stories at night the man he needed at his side to rule the world.
Her penance for pride is to hear everything, and acknowledge none of it.
Charlie knows she deserves this.
General Monroe visits her almost as often as Jason Neville does. He kisses the side of her neck. Charlie stares straight ahead, using years of patience to ignore his touches—touches that should light a fire in her belly and make her gasp with pleasure. She doesn't hear how he whispers in her ear as he bends her over a desk, still attempting to make her speak.
The girl thinks that, perhaps, her penance should have been to speak nothing. But that's not her penance. She doesn't speak, because she doesn't hear. She ignores the evil that her guards talk about, ignores the evil that Jason brings her news of. She ignores what she hears about her uncle, her mother, her best friend, the woman she thought of as an older sister.
She never hears tales of her brother.
This is her penance.
She hears nothing.
- o – o -
So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Am I being too mean to Charlie, or not mean enough? Drop a line and let me know!
Author's note: Tomorrow is my birthday! Hallelujah! Also, I have no classes tomorrow. *is happy*