Hello! Finally I can publish the fanfiction that kept me busy for almost a week; it will be made up of 4 or 5 chapters and it's about the crack ship ArchiexCruella (how should I call it by the way? Cruel Cricket, Devil Cricket, Furry Cricket? LoL).
Anyway I really hope that you like it, I would really appreciate a feedback! Thanks for reading.
Part 1
"Is that really necessary?" Archie asked with a slightly annoyed tone.
The reason of such disapproval was represented by the new client – or maybe it would have been more appropriate to say guest – of his studio, sitting on the couch in front of him with a red cigarette holder in one hand and a half empty glass in the other.
"Well, you have invited me here to talk and, honestly, I can't do that without the right amount of alcohol" the woman replied, with an unfriendly glance, before taking another sip. And it was then her turn to be annoyed. "Even if I would prefer by far some gin instead of this sort of whiskey…"
"It's scotch, actually" he precised, almost automatically.
Cruella stood with the glass still in mid air and quickly looked up.
"Well done, doctor Hopper! And yet you don't seem an expert…" she commented ironically, while an amused half smile went forming on her lips, that didn't go away saying the next sentence "Let's see: I always smoke , I probably have an addiction to alcohol and I eat so little that my physician in New York thought I was going to be anorexyc at some point. Which is the reason of this meeting?"
The man looked at her for a while in silence and it wasn't a silence full of fear. Sure, there was a little of that, but the main emotion in his soul was a strange form of empathy and maybe also symphaty for her; smoke, alcohol, willing fastings: there were all signs of desperation, pain, void, male de vivre. And unfortunately they were sings which not even him cared to give an interpretation about, at least before that moment.
"I would like you to tell me about your obsession for Dalmatians" he finally said, remembering also to himself the real reason for the invitation.
"Oh, right. I'm a villain" she murmured with an icy chuckle, as to confirm that appellative. Then she finished her drink and allowed herself a short break. "Look, I don't consider myself a villain, to tell the truth. I mean, what is the suffering of a herd of animals without intellect compared to my happiness?"
The plainness she showed drawing her strange logic was impressive and it left the doctor litterally without words. However, the astonished silence didn't last long and it was Pongo to break it, coming out for the first time from the corner he had secluding himself in, and starting to snarling against the woman, as if he had actually understood the subtle accusation.
"Oh, I was asking myself where the old dear Pongo was!" she exclaimed with fake cordiality staring – maybe for a bit too long – at the dog.
"You happiness… Does it really depends on furs?" Archie asked, regaining the ability to speak, and lingering, as a doctor, on the most interesting particular emerged in the conversation.
"Of course!" she immediately replied "Someone once said that diamonds are a woman's best friends[*]. I agree and add that furs are her true love"
"Miss De Vil… So you really consider the skin of dead animals you true love…"
"Don't act so surprised, doctor. Apparently, your true love is an alive animal" she replied shrugging and taking the chance to give another sinister look at the dog. "Perhaps your situation is even more sad than mine, after all" concluded then, making a deep sigh.
A new silence filled the room and this time not even Pongo seemed willing to break it. The truth was that the woman appeared to the man's eyes as an enigma impossibile to solve; she was different from any other existing villain and that not only because she had committed minor crimes after all and never thought about a global destruction for example, but also and most of all because she didn't seem led by a reason or a material purpose. With her only existence, she denied the theory of "evil isn't born but made", actually the cruelty seemed to be implicit even in her name.
"I know the real reason why I am here" Cruella suddenly started off, after taking a long breathe from the cigarette holder. "You want to know why I became like this, you are trying to find some kind of trauma in my past that could justify somehow my wickedness… But I can assure you that you won't find anything of this. I don't have a grain of magic in my veins, I wouldn't give my life to gain a crown, I didn't have a mother who tortured me and surely my true love wasn't killed in front of my eyes."
Archie listened carefully to her, letting those words confirm his supects and moving at the same time the pen in his right hand to erase the whole list he had previously outlined on his agenda.
Power. Magic. Revenge. Loss of a loved someone. Desire of payback.
"And so?" he wasn't able to hold himself from ask, not hiding the discouragment in his voice and a trace of frustation in his eyes.
"So what? Are you really so idiot as you seem?" she replied, stressing the appellative, while her usual irritation was starting to be showed "I didn't have anything in my life, no chance, no real feeling; there only had been a heap of clothes and my father's money. I've lived in a world of subtle and indifferent cruelty and so I bacame cruel too. Or maybe, who knows, I've always been cruel, since my birth"
She had said those words with apparent indifference and ended with a nervous chuckle, but she had kept her look to the ground all the time and right when she had finished she took another breath from the cigarette holder. Her next predictable move was to search for the bottle of whiskey to fill again the glass, but this time Archie wasn't taken by surprise and instantly stretched his hand on the table between them, stopping her red gloved one. Both of them looked up quickly and their eyes finally met for the first time, green against green and for a moment - just a moment – he seemed the confident one and she the insecure one.
"Frankly, I don't believe that you will ever find your happy ending in a fur" he murmured with convinction, as if he wanted to take advantage of that situation to try to change her mind.
Cruella stared at him without answering for a while, then unexpectedly slightly nodded and gave him a quick bitter smile. But any glimmer of connection opened between them in that moment, soon vanished in thin air; the woman took her hand back, almost burned by the contact, and stood up, grabbing her purse and adjusting the fur on her shoulders.
"I think our conversation is over, doctor Hopper" she simply said, abruptly, without looking at him, before heading to the exit.
"Cruella, wait!" he called her back instinctively, stading up as well "Do you want a piece of advice? Stop smoking and drinking and try to eat more" she said in a friendly and sinceretone.
Miss De Vil chuckled once again, but didn't stop, deciding to turn around only when she reached the door.
"Do you want a piece of advice, Archiebald?" she replied, stressing with slight irony the name of the man "Throw away that whiskey, because it really is disgusting"
After that, with the echo of a last laugh, Cruella made her way out, leaving behind her Pongo's predictable bark and the more unsuspected smile of his owner.
[*] Marilyn Monroe.