So I believe I'm over two weeks late now? Ho boy… I'm sorry. I'm doing my best, but I am just such a slow writer… w; Additionally, I just got accepted to study abroad in Japan next year, so even though I was already busy with work, I've now been busy getting all of that settled… I'm very excited to go, but it means I have even less time to write.
On the brightside, I have now finalized how many chapters there will be in this story! I was waffling between 8 and 9 for a while, but now I'm sure there will be 9. My hope is to get these last two done before I head to Japan in September, but we'll see, won't we?
One final request? I usually take months on these chapters, but I only got about a month on this one, so if you see any spelling/grammar mistakes (or any awkward sentences in general), could you please tell me? I wanted to get this out to you guys as soon as possible, and I tried to edit, but I'm sure I missed stuff. In fact, I think there are still mistakes in other chapters, too, so if you see any, don't be afraid to let me know. It really helps me out, honestly.
-Year 717 A.B.S.-
"Wait….you did….you did what?"
An's disbelief was about what Victoria had expected to receive after telling her about places removed from time and space and Gilbert clones and possibly almost drowning. She hadn't actually planned on telling An about what had happened back in Hearts only a couple of days earlier, but because of her own business or the business of others she hadn't yet been able to talk with the people she needed to about the whole thing, so the story came pouring out to An as the two sat in Victoria's bedroom.
"That's the thing, An. I didn't…." Victoria groaned in frustration and stood from her bed to pace. "I didn't really do anything. The whole time I was getting pulled and pushed and played with. I… I yelled at Gilbert once, but it was childish, and I think all it really did was make the situation worse. Or maybe better? I'm not sure how much Peter did or when he did it, but now I am pretty sure he's trapped in some stormy nightmare because of me and-"
An grabbed Victoria's shoulders, stopping the pacing and rambling. "Whoa, whoa, I think you need to slow down, Victoria. Did you tell anyone else about this yet? Like Mathieu?"
Victoria shook her head. "Mathieu has had his hands full just getting the King of Hearts to agree to postpone any foreign actions until more talks have been set up, and I couldn't trust anyone in Hearts. No, I need… I need to talk to Nana about this. She's the key. Or she has the key. Either way, I know she's involved in all of this somehow, and I need to know how so I can solve whatever this," she gestured desperately at the air, "this damn thing is."
An held her firm grip on Victoria's shoulders as her eyes crinkled in concern. "Victoria, I… I am not saying I do not believe you about all of this, but… as your friend, I have to ask you: are you sure this is real?"
"Look, I know Gilbert abstracting into shapes and colors sounds crazy, and it is, probably, but-"
"Not just what happened in Hearts, Victoria. Everything. Before we went to Spades, you… I saw you fighting back fantasies everyday. When it is just you and I, you always have this look in your eye like you are a moment away from fading into a daydream, and while you get trapped in your thoughts, I never saw you fall into fantasies. You tried to stick to the rationality of your Uncle Vash's lessons on math and political theory, lessons that gave the appearance of the comfort of definite answers. But ever since we went to Spades, it has become increasingly obvious that not only is the world not definite, but you… you do not have the power or position to fix what is happening in Fabulacor right now."
"An, that's not-"
"I am just worried that because you feel helpless in altering whatever course Fabulacor is tumbling down at the moment, you have created this story about Fabulacor's past that only you are qualified to solve. Your nana, the Queen… she is not doing well. You have noticed, right? She tries her hardest to seem lively at public events, but her health has been deteriorating along with the King's. According to Michelle, she hardly left her bed while you and Mathieu were gone. I do not want you going to see her in such a state looking for something when…." She squeezed Victoria's shoulders, and her eyes took a desperate edge. "What if there is no this? What if there is no story to solve?"
Victoria searched An's eyes, hoping to find an answer. An was right about the Spades visit changing Victoria. She had been so careful to question everything over the years, but she had never stopped to ask if everything she had uncovered and experienced recently was connected. It seemed obvious that it had to be, right? How could the young boy described in the Spades Archive not be Peter? Wasn't Gilbert so frustrated with her because she had begun to uncover the truth?
The more she thought about it, the more unsure she felt. Gilbert hadn't said he was frustrated that she was right, just that she was questioning at all. What if she was connecting clues the wrong way, and Gilbert had come to her to prove that? Because of her interruption, she never saw the end of the story Gilbert planned to show her (and, based on his reaction to the final scene she did see, the end she saw had not been planned). So, really, she was left not knowing what all of that nonsense Gilbert had forced her through had been about. But then what was Peter's deal? It seemed like he had saved her, but she suspected that Peter was the one to draw out and force the performance of the final scene -the scene that nearly drowned her. And his final words -"Never stop questioning!"- they were in direct opposition to what Gilbert wanted her to do! She easily considered Peter more of a friend than Gilbert, but should she start to question the validity of that friendship, too?
"Vic? Victoria?" An slowly dropped her hands from Victoria's shoulders. "I'm sorry. You are spiraling again, aren't you? I'm sorry, I should not have-"
Victoria grabbed An's falling hands and squeezed them. "An, I don't… I don't know! I don't know any of the answers because no one will tell me! But there's one person who's always promised me that she's telling me the truth, even when she's telling me stories, so… so I'm going to go to her. I'll ask her my questions, and after I get her answers I'll decide what to do next."
This time it was An's turn to search Victoria's eyes. Victoria wasn't sure how long she had been silent in her thought spiral, but it took An no time at all to relax her brow and smile.
"What more can you do, right?"
Victoria smiled back at her friend and nodded. "Right."
The two hugged. Victoria was grateful because she needed a hug to boost her confidence in herself and her mission.
"Do you want to come with me," she asked An quietly.
An pulled back and shook her head. "No, this feels like something that needs to be between just you and your nana. Besides, I have to meet with Mathieu. Unlike my troubling best friend, I had a wonderful week with just the King and I, and I think Mathieu would like to know that."
"Yeah, yeah." Victoria tried to act offended, but even their typical playful banter was hard given her current mood. "Go tell Mathieu about your fun week while I ask my nana if she knows anything about the murder of some important people and the death of history as we... don't know it, I guess."
After a couple more half-hearted teases were tossed in an attempt to lift each other's moods, Victoria and An parted in opposite directions in the hall outside of Victoria's room. The walk from Victoria's room to her nana's could have been thirty seconds if she gave in to her desire to run through the halls, but she didn't want to cause any concern, so she took the five-minute walk instead. Michelle, posted outside of Nana's room, let her in with a smile and a soft warning that Nana might still be sleeping.
The first thing Victoria noticed when she entered the room was the old rocking chair as it sat in its usual position besides the large, floor-to-ceiling window that let in the view of the capital. From beneath knitted blankets and plush quilts that Victoria had fallen asleep in thousands of times with her nana the carved wooden frame of the chair poked out, and from these teasing glimpses one could tell the frame had been worked by an expert carpenter. What hurt about seeing the chair through the light of the early morning and the lazily drifting dust was that despite its plush coverings it was so obviously empty without Nana in it. When she opened the door, Victoria had wanted to see her grandmother rocking gently in the chair, smiling and telling her everything was going to be alright.
Instead, Nana looked painfully small as she slept uneasily in a bed big enough fit the whole Diamonds court.
Victoria closed the door and approached the bed quietly. She wanted answers, yes, but not if it meant stealing sleep from her grandmother who so obviously needed it. The pale light that had illuminated the emptiness of Nana's rocking chair now emphasized how frail she had become in the last few years. The progression of Nana's sickness was something Victoria had been wilfully ignoring, but An's words had shaken her to take full notice of what time had done to the Queen of Diamonds. From the dark circles beneath her sunken eyes wrinkles spread like vines across her gray face. Her lips, thin and faded, parted to exhale shaky breaths and then struggle to inhale them back in. Hair that Victoria remembered bouncing freely by her nana's chin in golden brushes now lay long and limp in silver tangles all around her. Seeing her so lifeless sent a chill down Victoria's spine, and she distracted her thoughts before they could dwell on the disease that had seized her nana's lungs.
Time passed. How much, Victoria was unsure, but after her experience with Gilbert time passing was just something she noticed with relief. Nothing was different about the moment preceding Nana waking up -Victoria had not moved or made a noise that would have suddenly alerted her nana to her presence- but the moment after Victoria felt a new jolt -something akin to excitement or hope or an anxious mixture of the two because when Nana opened her eyes, they weren't gray and lifeless like the rest of her. They were green and aware and warm, and as soon as they landed on Victoria she knew she hadn't lost her grandmother just yet.
"Hm…?" Nana's eyes squinted in confusion, but then shot open in realization. "Victoria!" Her thin lips spread into a large smile as she slowly pushed herself up to lean against the pillows on the bed's backboard. The movement ripped a cough from her lips, but her smile didn't waver. "What are you doing here? Wait, no, what are you doing standing over there? Come cuddle up next to Nana. There is plenty of room."
Nana patted a spot next to her on the bed, and Victoria filled it without hesitation. She had grown taller than Nana, so even as they sat she had to bend down to press and gentle kiss to her nana's forehead. However, no matter where she aimed for she got mouthfuls of long silver hair, and even after the kiss some of the hair clung to her glasses and ears.
"Nana," what was meant to be a playful scold was unraveled by a soft laugh as Victoria tried to push Nana's hair away. "When did your hair get so long and mischievous?"
Nana pushed down a laugh that surely would have led to another cough, yet still her smile didn't waver. "Oh, it has always been this way, dear. I just gave up cutting and fighting it and now it does as it pleases."
"Well, I'm not letting it get the best of us. Where's a brush?"
On the nightstand to Victoria's left she found a golden brush with an emerald encrusted on the back that she had to leave Nana to grab. Once she returned, however, Nana was happy to readjusted herself so that she was leaning more heavily on Victoria as Victoria ran the brush through her naughty hair. Nana looked so comfortable that Victoria didn't want to interrupt the peace with talk, but Nana was the origin of Victoria's own inquisitive nature, and so Nana had already opened her mouth after the second brush stroke.
"How was the Hearts Kingdom? It was your first time going, and, gosh, I haven't been in quite a long time. Isn't the castle lovely? Oldest one in Fabulacor, you know."
"Yeah, it was nice." After passing out, Victoria had spent most of her time in one room, so she couldn't say she had really seen much more than the entrance and the Fortress, but, well, what she saw had been nice.
"Did you get to meet everyone? How did Feliciano seem to be doing?"
Visions of Feliciano getting stabbed by a Gilbert on the brink of reality assaulted Victoria's mind, but she banished them quickly. "I only saw the King very briefly, but while Lovino was escorting me to the Fortress we pretty much ran into everyone else. Even as he was getting chewed out by Lovino for not being at the Fortress already, Felicano seemed to be in high spirits."
"I suppose it is true that Feli will always be Feli. And everyone else?"
"Honestly, they were far more relaxed than I expected for a Kingdom on the brink of war. It…" With everything else that had happened, Victoria hadn't had time to think about how irksome the behavior of the Hearts Court had been considering the political circumstances. She was stressed beyond belief, and they had been joking about philosophy and cats. "It didn't feel right. Nothing in Hearts really did."
Nana's smile fell in sympathetic confusion. "What do you mean?"
"Well, I… When I got to the Fortress, Gilbert came up to me and-"
"Gilbert? Really?"
Victoria nodded.
To Victoria's surprise, Nana let out a sigh of relief. "Finally. He has been so scared of talking to you this entire time, but I guess he finally, finally listened to me and-"
"Wait." Victoria stilled the brush in her nana's hair. "He was scared of talking to me? Gilbert? The pale Joker with red eyes?"
Nana nodded. "Of course! You and I know there are-"
"Nana, when we met he, I, I -Nana, I think he tried to kill me! And if that wasn't his plan, he was at least trying to scare the shit out of me! And he succeeded! I was terrified while he trapped me in some crazy space removed from here and now!"
"Wh...What? No… no, that can't…." Nana stared at Victoria with wide eyes, and Victoria looked back at her as earnestly as she could. Nana had to believe her. "Why would he…?"
"Nana." Victoria put the brush down. "Why… Why has he been 'scared' of meeting me? He said something about me being 'trouble', but I have literally never done anything to him!"
"He… ah…."
"Nana." She grabbed one of her nana's hands and held it tightly between her own. "Please… please tell me what's going on. Everything is in fragments! I know someone killed Peter hundreds of years ago, but he's clearly not dead now. Instead he just seems frozen at thirteen, but how? I don't know if Gilbert died, but I know he killed people, and now he seems to be frozen, too! There's all this talk of curses, but they don't make sense and I don't know how they connect, if they do connect at all and -and how do you even factor into all of this, Nana? You haven't been mentioned in the stories others have told me, but you know what's going on, don't you? How? Why?"
Nana didn't answer right away. How could she, considering the weight of information Victoria was asking for? As Nana's gaze drifted to the window by the rocking chair, Victoria picked up the brush again and went back to untangling the silver threads of Nana's hair.
"Victoria," Nana said, her voice delicate. "May I tell you a story?"
With apprehension in her gut, determination in her heart, and sadness in her eyes, Victoria replied, "I would love to hear one, Nana."
Nana nodded shakily as she kept her eyes locked on the window. "A long….long time ago, my best friend ruled the Diamonds Kingdom as its Queen. One night, as we sat together quietly in each other's company, busy with separate things, he looked up from his work and asked me something strange. He said, 'Lili, if something were to happen to me, would you be willing to take my place in looking after this Kingdom?'
"Apprehensive, I asked him what he meant. He told me he had been thinking in hypotheticals, and -hypothetically, he assured me- he had been trying to figure out who, if he had the choice, he would entrust to protect the Kingdom he had grown to love. I asked him, I asked Mathieu -why am I even pretending this is a mystery? You know it's Mathieu. It has been so long since I have talked to someone about all of this and they believed me and-"
"Nana."
"And they weren't Gilbert or Peter and-"
"Nana, it's okay. I understand. Just continue."
Nana took a deep breath that rattled in her throat. "I...I asked him why he wouldn't leave the kingdom to Francois, and he said he believed Francois would need looking after in his absence as well. So I told him that I would look after Francois and the whole Diamonds Kingdom if something were to happen to him, but I refused to replace him. I said, 'I will keep everything steady and safe until you return.' The heartbreakingly warm and grateful smile he gave me after that is one of the few clear images left in my memories.
"A week later, he vanished."
"What," Victoria cried in disbelief. "What do you mean he vanished?"
Nana's shoulders sagged. "He, he vanished, Victoria. Not just physically but -but entirely. His portraits, his notebooks, his signatures, they were all gone in an instant. No one could remember his name or his face, just that there was a Queen because, logically, there had to be one. No one remembered him except for me, and when I tried to tell anyone they would say that my words became gibberish to their ears. His memory vanished along with the record and the popular memory of, of what I believe Gilbert has told me ended up being over 1000 years of Fabulacor's history. People erupted into a panic, and Fabulacor quickly crumbled into the 100-year-long stretch of war and disaster. Now people refer to the entire century as the 'Blind Shuffle', but, in reality, the Blind Shuffle was that original erasure of memories and records. I lived for a few years after the initial event, but when supply chains got disrupted I stopped receiving the medicine I needed and I passed away, leaving behind a devastated Vash and a devastated Kingdom.
"One-hundred years later, I was reborn into a hand where Fabulacor had just put an end to the Blind Shuffle. After one-hundred years of chaos, the Four Kingdoms were anxious for stability, and the populace demanded a scapegoat to blame for their pain and grief. The Kingdoms noted that the Queen of Diamonds was suspiciously absent at the beginning of the Blind Shuffle, and so the Queen they couldn't remember was charged with the highest order of treason against all four states. Since they had neither a name nor a face, the whole Diamonds Kingdom was punished."
"That doesn't -that's not fair. How did they even punish a whole kingdom?"
"Well, a lot of shuffling of people and land had occurred over the Blind Shuffle century, so borders had to be redrawn at the end. The Diamonds Kingdom became completely landlocked, though even today it retains access to most of the Collier River, which does eventually lead down to the sea. All of this was decided just a year before I gained the mark of the Diamonds' Queen and, with it, all of the memories of my past life."
"So... you didn't remember everything until you became Queen?"
Nana nodded.
"Was… was it that way this hand, too," Victoria questioned further.
A bittersweet smile quirked a corner of Nana's lips. "It's like that every hand."
"Wait, Nana, how… how many hands do you remember?"
Nana tensed for a moment, but then finally turned her eyes up to Victoria. She was sure that there was a turbulent mix of emotions going on inside of her nana, but on the outside, all Victoria could make out was an exhaustion that seeped deeper than the skin.
"I remember seven hands spread out over eight-hundred years. Excluding that first hand, I have been Queen of Diamonds every time. I may have come back more than seven times, but I only remember when this Q," she raised her left hand to display the Q organically baked into her skin, "appears, so I guess hands I was not Queen do not get recorded, which may be for the best."
"For the best?"
Nana nodded. "The first time I regained my memories, I believe I was very active in trying to remind people of Mathieu because I wanted to know the truth. I didn't know what had happened -why he had disappeared or why history had been erased- so I hoped to clear the 'Unknown Queen's' name. Even then I don't believe people stopped hearing gibberish when I spoke about Mathieu, but what was worse was that they simply didn't believe me. No one ever believes me, so I am always stuck watching as people struggle to fill holes they don't understand. In that second hand, I remember most vividly trying to remind Francois over and over and over again about Mathieu because in that hand Francois had been reborn into a husk of himself as my King, searching for something, someone, he couldn't remember, but knew he felt missing. He threw himself into new lovers everyday, and it hurt to watch. I… I do not think Alfred was the King of Spades during that time, but… but even this hand there were stories of a young Alfred tossing balls and talking to people who weren't there. I have seen Mathieu's parents -such lovely people, I think you've met Berwald?- suffer a heartbreak of absence as well. They have all suffered, but I cannot help them, because the words I speak sound more and more fantastical as the years fall away.
"The other problem with time, however, is that it has been eating at the memories in this Q like moths at a scarf. Our minds aren't built to retain centuries of thoughts and emotions, and every new hand brings with it the threat of more lost memories. I, I don't, I don't even know what memories I don't have anymore and it-" a swallowed cry broke up her words "-Did I lose something important? Why can I only remember silly little romantic tales of first meetings and dramatic smalltalk from that first hand? I've tried writing down what clear images I can, but the books always disappear by the next day. And the strangest part is that I know some of the memories I have from the very first hand… they can't possibly be mine, but I have them delicately preserved in my mind with all the others."
"What do you mean they aren't yours?"
"Victoria, so you remember the very first story I told you about Mathieu as the Queen of Diamonds?"
"The one where he was at the ball and first met Francois? Of course I do."
It was a story that had danced in Victoria's imagination for years, and even though she had tried so many times to banish it away as fanciful, it would always come to mind whenever she passed the old maple tree she had once searched for so tirelessly.
"I am sure Mathieu did tell me about that night, but… but not in the detail that rests in my mind. It is one of only a handful of memories that I have that I know, I know, are left from him. Memories that he clung to -perhaps even subconsciously- because they were moments that shaped him. Memories of Francois and Alfred and Berwald and Tino and Vash and -and me. I can see myself in my mind promising to maintain the world he loved until he returned. Mathieu's memories were always proof to me that Mathieu wanted to see us again, that he wanted to exist, so I never stopped searching for him all this time. I couldn't do it alone, however, and that is where Gilbert and Peter come in.
"Before you ask, I… I do not know how they became Jokers. If I ever asked, I've forgotten, and when I ask now they won't answer. After Mathieu vanished, I didn't see either of them again until the first hand I became Queen, but they did remember Mathieu and they always searched for him when I couldn't. I never doubted that either of them were dedicated, but there was an extra desperation to Gilbert's search. I used to think it was because Francois and Gilbert have always been close friends, but… but I know there is more to it that I just can't remember. It's a memory that tempts me at the edge of my mind, but I just… can't…."
Victoria rested her head on her nana's. "It's okay, though, isn't it? You did find him, and he's the Ace of Diamonds now. He's back where he belongs."
"But… but we didn't. When I saw him standing among Vash's newest batch of Guards forty-one years ago, that was the first time any of us had seen him in our centuries of searching. He entered the castle without any of us noticing, and if he did that… how could we have missed him? Did we really miss him for centuries, or was he really never there?
"I… I am so happy to have finally found my best friend again, but…" The deep breath Nana took shook her body. "Things still aren't right. He… he trusted me with everything -his kingdom, his love, his memories- but he never trusted me with the truth. I can never ask him, but I want to know so much. Why did he not tell me he was going to disappear? Where did he go? How could he leave all of us behind? How..." Finally, the sob Nana had been pushing and swallowing broke through. "How could he leave me behind?"
It was at that moment that words finally failed Nana, and so she sobbed out frustration and loneliness that she had been trying to keep contained for centuries. Nana's desperate questions resonated within Victoria as they transported her to a time she also felt them wring her heart -to the day she lost faith in stories and refused to hear any more. In the midst of the hurt and confusion of a child's mind pushed to an unimaginable extreme, she had put partial blame for getting left behind in the wake of her parents' deaths on her Nana, and so she had ignored and refused her grandmother's attempts at comfort until she fell into a restless sleep. She wasn't mad at herself for how she acted -she had only been a child- but her mind began to imagine all that could have happened if she had remained open that day. She had felt so lonely and betrayed that day and for years afterward, but Nana had felt those emotions and more for 800 years. No one could have understood Victoria's pain better.
She held her nana and Nana held her and together they cried. Crying brought relief, and relief made tears that started bitter turn grateful because Victoria finally knew that the aspect of her life that made her feel the loneliest actually brought her closer to Nana.
As both of their tears began to dry up, however, Victoria realized that a very key question remained unanswered.
"Nana, you… you're amazing. You've withstood so much."
"I would do the same again for anyone I love."
"I know. That's part of what makes you so amazing, but… but none of this explains Gilbert's actions towards me."
Nana smiled as she dried Victoria's cheeks with the sleeve of her sleeping gown. "This story has been quite the downer so far, but I always felt the part you've played in it is worth celebrating. You have been the only person -Peter and Gilbert excluded, of course- to believe my stories in 800 years. Do you know why?"
"Dear Fortuna, was I… was I there, too?!"
Nana shook her head. "The complete opposite! You, Victoria, are a brand new soul to the land of Fabulacor."
"I… what?"
"Fabulacor and her people get caught in cycles, so people like Gilbert notice when someone new arrives because their existence will always change things. Gilbert told me the last new souls in Fabulacor were Mathieu and Alfred, and when they appeared the Blind Shuffle threw Fabulacor into chaos. Gilbert was scared of meeting you because he didn't know what your existence would mean to a world he felt responsible protecting, but I," she tenderly cradled Victoria's cheek in her hand, "I was never worried. The girl who came into this world as my granddaughter after I finally married the love of my life can only mean a wonderful change is about to occur for Fabulacor."
Victoria smiled, trying to hold back a fresh wave of tears that reflected how overwhelmed she suddenly felt. "Is… is that why you told Yao to show me the oldest remaining record of Fabulacor's history?"
To Victoria's surprised, Nana looked confused at this question.
"I didn't ask Yao to show you that. Is that how you know about Peter getting killed?"
Victoria reflected Nana's confusion. "What do you mean? Yao said that someone-"
Just then a crash followed by a jumble of muffled shouts filtered in from outside of the door, putting both of the women inside the room on alert.
"What was that," Victoria asked.
"I don't know." Nana pushed aside the blankets of the bed and tried getting up, but she hadn't even gotten to her feet before a coughing fit curled her back.
"Nana!" Victoria scrambled to her grandmother's side and gingerly rubbed her back. "Nana, stay here. I'll go see what's going on."
"You," another cough, "can't go by yourself!"
"And you can't go at all right now. Just let me check it out, and then I'll come right back."
Frustration flashed across Nana's features, but still she relented once the coughing stopped. "Alright. Be careful, please."
"I will. Don't worry!"
Victoria hopped off the bed, and just as she reached the door she heard Nana say, "I may not worry about what you mean to Fabulacor, but I do always worry about you. That is what it means to love someone."
"I love you, too, then, Nana," Victoria replied, smiling.
"Let me through!"
The shout came as soon as Victoria opened the door and the shock of it froze her in place. Slowly, painfully slowly, she turned her head in the direction of the shout to see Michelle and a couple other Ranked Guards with their backs towards her as they tried to hold someone back a few feet away. The sound of the door opening had frozen the group as well, and they, too, slowly, so slowly, turned to face her. The person they were impeding did not have to turn, however, because she was already facing Victoria. Their gazes locked and their minds hitched as the two of them tried to reconcile the person they saw with the ten-year-old memories they retained of the other.
"Ba...Babushka?"
"Victoria?"
Time had changed Babushka as much as it had changed Nana. Most of her was covered by either the Guards between the two of them or tattered clothing that hung loosely on her frame, but her face -where Nana had wrinkles, Babushka had scars, scars that told enough of a story to turn Victoria's stomach into knots.
Babushka reached out a shaky hand, and Victoria moved forward instinctively, but before they could touch, Michelle reasserted her position between the two of them. Victoria stumbled to a stop while Babushka turned a sharp glare to Michelle.
"You will not even let me touch my granddaughter," she roared.
"No one is allowed near the royal family at the moment except authorized Guards, especially not unexpected visitors from another Kingdom," Michelle shot back. Victoria couldn't remember the easygoing Michelle ever looking so on-edge and exasperated, and she certainly hadn't looked like that when Victoria first entered Nana's room.
"Babushka, what -what's going on? What are you doing here? How are you here?"
Her anger subsided into guilt and sorrow as Babushka turned her attention back to Victoria. "Victoria, I -I am so, so sorry. Things have been -they have been impossible, but I had to come, I had to come see you and Lili because I have heard, I have been told of Lili's state and I have to see her, but," the poison her tongue injected into the "but" signaled the return of her rage towards the Guards in front of her. "But they will not let me pass! I have traveled in secret across two Kingdoms, and they will not let me pass because I do not have the permission to be here!"
"That's not why I can't let you pass right now, Natalya," Michelle interjected. "I should be arresting you, but-"
"Natalya?"
The soft voice that had been preceded by a chorus of coughs stopped everyone again. Nana had managed to get to the door, but even as she stood she had to heavily rely on the doorframe for support.
Seeing Nana surged Babushka forward, but again she was thwarted by Michelle and the other Guards. Her frustrated growl was nearly primal as she grabbed Michelle by the front of her uniform.
"Fortuna damn you all, let me through!"
"I can't!"
"Why?!"
Michelle shoved Natalya off. "Because the castle is on lockdown!"
"Because of me?!"
"Because Mathieu was attacked!"
Silence.
"Mathieu…. was attacked," Michelle repeated, her breaths heavy and ragged. "He was attacked, he's not doing well, and anyone who doesn't have a solid alibi for the last hour is a suspect."
The two guards on Michelle's sides moved forward and grabbed Babushka's arms. Babushka stood still, her one eye not covered by a makeshift eyepatch wide.
"So….so I can't let you near Victoria or the Queen because…. because you are under arrest on suspicion of participating in the attempted assassination of the Ace of Diamonds." Michelle's body sagged and her voice grew soft. "I'm sorry."
Boom! And that's chapter 7! For those of you who saw my post on tumblr about how important this chapter is, hopefully you now understand what I meant. Lots of big reveals, and then I ended it with a cliffhanger. Ain't I just a stinker?
The next chapter, which will hopefully be out sooner rather than later, will be titled The Diary. Whose diary? Tune in next time to find out! Love you all!
