Notes - a) To AirBorne3: I typed wrong, I promise! Even though I'm pretty sure he knows, Lisanna is not a good liar. Or that's at least what I think.
b) oh my god, I failed, I've changed it now, and sorry, again, AirBorne3
c) Babbie- short for Barbara
I don't own Fairy Tail or its characters.
The small dining room smells like one of the expensive restaurants in Magnolia, or heaven. Or maybe both.
Dan's sitting in a chair by the dinner table with his back to her, and Babbie is leaning over him, cutting his food.
"Mother! I can do it myself!" Dan whines, and Babbie hits him on the back of his head with an arm that seems to come out from nowhere. "No, I'll do it for you, Daniel!"
A boy two or three years younger than Lisanna, who sits across the table, laughs at Dan and Lisanna can't see what Dan does as his back is against her but he earns a second hit on his head from Babbie.
"Who's that?" a girl with braids the same color as her mother asks as she points at Lisanna, and Lisanna stands a little more upright as the kids stare at her.
"umm, I'm Li—Lou" Phew, saved, "I come from India" she says, and when Dan looks at her with a lifted eyebrow, she avoids his gaze.
"LiLo?" The girl asks, and Lisanna almost gets a panic attack. "No!" she shouts. And the family in front of her all raises an eyebrow, seems like its a family trait. "It's...My name's Lou, just Lou" she stammers, and then Babbie claps her hands and tells her to sit down. Lisanna takes the chair next to the girl with braids. With a closer look on her, she sees that the girl's nose is not so different from a dogs, weird.
"I'm Coco!" the girl squeals a little too high, and Lisanna winces. Her poor poor ears.
"And I'm Hugh" The boy says, and Lisanna frowns, both of the names feels familiar in some way. Like she used to know them, but this is the first time they meet. Right?
.
The stew is delicious, a long time ago Lisanna hated cooked vegetables. But after weeks with only hardtack to keep her full, the soft carrots and potatoes are ia delicacy. And though the meat is a bit tasteless and leathery, its delicious. And for once, the drinking water's cold, not lukewarm, cold. She drinks at least four glasses of the perfect liquid before Hugh even finishes his first.
Nothing really happens during the dinner, everyone's silent, the only sound Lisanna can hear is chewing and low music coming from the pub under them. And then Babbie orders Lisanna another portion stew, and Lisanna reaches out her hand so Babbie can pour up more of the delicious food. And Hugh looks up, and sees a red button on Lisanna's sleeve.
"Is that my shirt?" he exclaims, and Lisanna flushes a bright red. "Well—" she begins, but Babbie cuts her off, "Hugh, don't be rude. I threw away Lou's clothes, I found some... stains" she says. And Lisanna remembers months of bleeding in her pants. Damn it.
"What stains?" Coco asks, and Dan leans forward on his elbows. "yeah," he says, "what stains, Lou?"
Lisanna avoids both their gazes, "uuhh..." she mumbles, and once again, Babbie saves her; "Don't tease out guest" she says with a voice filled with steel. Coco returns to her stew, but Lisanna can feel Dan's gaze on her. She doesn't look up from her plate for the rest of the dinner.
.
After dinner, Lou's assigned a bed in a small closet. And after Babbie helps her with making the bed, its tea time.
They sit around the same table as they did during dinner, slowly sipping on their tea. Lisanna takes as small sips as possible, she never learned to drink tea without milk and sugar in it. At the Straight's home they offers none.
They don't talk much, again, it's just Dan telling his mother what they've seen in India, and Hugh teasing his sister. Lisanna is quiet like a mouse.
"I didn't know they let sailors wear wigs" Hugh comments when Lisanna runs a hand trough her now dry hair, and she looks at him, not knowing if he's going to get angry again.
"They don't" she responds, "this is my real hair".
And in less than two seconds later there's two persons hands in her hair. Stroking it and patting it and pulling in it, "ouch!" she exclaims.
"sorry" Coco says, and she stops pulling at a chunk of hair, but Hugh is still holding a strand of hair between his fingers. "I've never met someone with white hair" he mutters, "and it's so silky".
"And fluffy!" Coco adds loudly. Lisanna pursues her lips, when she was just a small kid a pair of children used to bully her because of her hair. After that she was always a bit unsure of it, and she hasn't really done anything with it since she left India two years ago, and it's not in the best shape. She'll have to cut it soon.
"You've got really girly hair, Lou" Hugh says and later adds "amazing", and Lisanna's eyes widen. She knows she's the worst liar north of Africa, but if people finds out her secret after just four hours, she really are the worst liar in the world.
As she thinks that, she remembers the time when Levy tried to make an actor of Cana, but that it just ended with the producer laying unconscious in the middle of a sea of puke Cana had left behind and Gray and Natsu destroying the camera. Cana hadn't talked to Levy for two weeks afterwards. She almost smiles at the memory.
"Funny that you say that, once a guy tried to get me into his bed after I accidentally tripped over him" She says, and it's actually the truth, though the man thought that Lisanna was Mirajane and actually just wanted to have sex with a celebrity.
Hugh laughs, Babbie swats him on the back of his head, Coco looks confused, and Dan. Well, Dan just looks thoughtful. A look Lisanna never seen him with, it doesn't fit his reputation of optimistic idiot. She feels the tea coming up her throat, and she swallows nervously. "I, I think I'm going to bed now, it was years since I slept in a bed" she hurriedly says. And then she rushes from the table.
.
The best thing with having the small room is that Lisanna can take off the bandages that hides her breasts. They are dirty and the edges are brown of dried blood. Her chest is even worse, her breasts are sore and there's red and blue bruises everywhere. Lisanna winces, she's become so used to the chest pains that she never really thought of them. But now it hurts like hell and she tries to move as little as possible.
She doesn't really need to be discrete, as she's alone in her room, but Lisanna still sleeps with her(Hugh's) shirt on. It's a reflex.
.
She can't fall asleep. She just twist and turns on the small bed. It should probably feel like the best thing in the world to actually sleep on a real bed. But Lisanna actually misses how she would slowly swing. And how John, who slept in the hammock next to her, would quietly snore. And how she could hear the water when it hit the ship's side.
In the bed, Lisanna can't not be scared of falling down to the ground, even though she would just fall around then inches. So he grips the edges and hopes on the best.
Eventually, she drifts off to a restless sleep.
.
She wakes up in the middle of the night, she needs to pee. So she searches under the bed, and of course, she finds a pot that she knows the use of.
It's times like this, when Lisanna squats over a pot made of china in the middle of the night, that she misses Earthland. Like misses so much that it hurts in her stomach. She misses the toilets and the food and the showers and the beds and the sugar and milk in tea and goddamnit, she misses her real identity so much. She misses the person who once had the loudest laugh and who could cheer up anyone with just a few words, the girl with the pretty shoes and the short hair. Who loved rain but hated mud, who cats sometimes followed as they thought she smelled like them. The girl with the ability to change into an animal.
Lisanna buries her head in the thin pillow and cries.
.
It's not the sun that wakes her, it's the girl with braids. It takes Lisanna two minutes to remember the girl's name was Coco.
"What are you doing?" she groans, just as two small hands presses against her chest.
"Mother was right!" Coco squeals, "you were a girl!"
Suddenly Lisanna is wide awake, she takes her pillow and hits Coco, square in the face. "I. am. not. a. girl!" she shouts, and her voice is as usual too high for a boy's. And Coco shouts "You are!" back.
Then Babbie opens the door, and she's wearing such a grave look on her face Lisanna becomes worried that someone has died.
But then the busty woman opens her mouth; "Lou, why are you, a girl, working as a sailor?" and her voice is even more serious than her face. Lisanna wonders if she'll faint soon.
"Eh, I kind of... got into some trouble in India, and the easiest way was to get on board the Pegasus." she says, because even though she doesn't know Babbie very well, she knows that if you lie to her, you'll end up as a corpse twenty years to early. And Lisanna's pretty keen on living, thank you very much.
Babbie just sighs, "youths nowadays" she says, and Lisanna blushes.
.
Dan is out of London, visiting some friends. So Lisanna follows Coco and Babbie to the pub downstairs, where Babbie works as a barmaid. Coco gives her one of her skirts, then she leaves, she'll visit some friends she says.
It feels weird for Lisanna to once again wear a skirt, like, there's no thing that chafes between her thighs. And when Babbie drags a brush trough her hair and braids it, she feels like she's a girl again.
One hour after Coco woke her up, Lisanna's walking down the stairs, behind Babbie. Clad in a new shirt that fits her frame, without bandages for once, and a skirt that just reaches her knees. She also has a red flower in her hair.
"Babbie" she quietly says, and the busty woman doesn't turn around, but her shoulders stiffens, so Lisanna continues, "you won't tell Dan, right?" she pleads. And Babbie turns around, takes Lisanna's hand in hers, and squeezes it. "No, of course not"
.
Her arms are tired and her feet hurts. But Lisanna knows how to fake a smile, and she knows how to serve drinks, and she knows that Babbie will give her food when the night is over. So she doesn't complain.
She has worked for around four hours, there's not many men in the pub, not more than a dozen. But they are all frequent drinkers. So she has to carry out tray after tray. Sway her hips a special way, lean forward a little too far and a little too long. She has to do all the right things.
Around thirty minutes ago, Babbie left her when it came out that an important ship had come to London. She had said something about different spices she needed to buy. She would come back soon, she had also said.
She's all alone in the bar now, except for the dozen men and the girl playing piano. The girl is sitting so the only thing Lisanna can see off her is her hands. Long pale fingers moving over the tangents, it's a slow song. And Lisanna stomps her bare foot against the floor in the same rhythm as the melody as she waits for a man to give her a shilling.
The door opens, and Lisanna stands up from her leaning over a man in his fifties. She looks at the door and sees Coco, the girl's bloody and she sports a black eye.
"Coco!" Lisanna exclaims, "what happened to you?" she half walks half runs to the bar there she gets a wet napkin. She returns to Coco's side and begins to dab her eye, Coco winces.
"There—" she winces again as Lisanna begins to dab an abrasion on her cheek., "I got kinda overrun by a herd of men" wince. "they say that Kraken destroyed a ship" wince.
Lisanna frowns, "there is no such thing" she says, and Coco's eyes widen. "of course there is!" she shouts. And Lisanna presses the napkin a little too hard against the girl's cheek, Coco backs away. "But I've seen it!" she sputters.
Lisanna can hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, "then you've must have seen wrong" she breathes. And then she feels a hand on her arm, she turns around.
"Miss, the girl's not wrong" it's an old man in his sixties, stinking of alcohol, Lisanna can't remember serving him. So he must have come in after Coco.
"of course she is, there's no Kraken!" she exclaims, and in the corner of her eye she can see Coco rolling her eyes and giving the piano girl a look.
"Miss, you've must have heard the—" the old man continues, but Lisanna cuts him off "don't 'miss' me, I've heard the legends, and you must be an idiot to believe them!" she screams.
Suddenly Babbie's there, putting a hand on her lower back, "Lou," she begins, but Lisanna doesn't listen. "no!" she cries. The old man grips her arm, and Lisanna tries to hit him.
.
It ends with someone hitting her in the head with a chair. A terrible end off the conversation.
.
Lisanna wakes up in the back of the pub, with the same napkin she used to dab Coco's bruises with on her forehead. She throws it away.
Her head hurts and she feels the beer she drank before treating to come up
"How are you feeling?" a voice behind her asks, and Lisanna spins around, on a chair in the corner she sees the piano girl. "better" she answers, and the piano girl nods.
"You sounded pretty crazy out there," the piano boy says with a chuckle, and Lisanna frowns. Who is she to tell her that she's the crazy one when the girl herself is sitting in a corner, hiding her face behind her pink locks.
"huh" Lisanna says, "you're looking pretty creepy yourself"
"I do?" the piano girl asks, and her voice is familiar. Too familiar. But it shouldn't be, this is the first time Lisanna's in this club. This is the first goddamn time in London for her, for god's sake!
Lisanna takes a step towards the corner, she needs to see the girl's face. At the same time, the piano girl stands up from her chair.
One step at a time, they slowly crosses the room, Lisanna feels sweat running down her back, the only part she can see of the piano girl's face is her mouth. It's painted red, and then all pieces fall into place. She reaches her arm up to the girl's hair, "But, you're..."
The door opens, and Babbie's standing there with a glass of water. "Are you feeling better?" she asks. And Lisanna steps away from the girl. "yeah" she answers, "I'm fine now"
She walks out the door, leaving the piano girl behind. She has to get out, she has to get away.
Soo what did you think? Leave a review if you wonder something or finds something wrong with the text.
Sorry, again, AirBorne3