An Introductory Note from the Author: After careful consideration and in response to reader comments, for the sake of clarity I have reverted all characters' names to their cannon versions/spellings regardless of whether that name was historically/geographically common at the time. (For those interested, the originally-conceived tweakings are on my Tumblr account.) The gents tend to refer to one another by surname. Hope this helps!
'Flowers' revealed so far: Iris - Ymir; Peony - Mikasa; Lily - Historia; Poppy - Sasha.
Chapter 9: Night of a Hundred Stars
(Annie, Christa, Mercedes [OC], Levi Ackerman, Eren Yaeger, Sasha)
Annie finished loading up a tray of drinks and set them off with the waitgirl, and like a punctuation mark wiped up a single spilled drop with the side of her hand. She placed a hand on her hip and eyed the blond at the heel of the bar where she'd left him. He'd pretty much drunk his water already and was tipping the glass from side to side, watching the ice clink back and forth. Every so often he would look over his shoulder, searching for his companions though she suspected they both knew they wouldn't be seen again for some time.
He needs to loosen up – he'll be sore in the morning if he spends all night so tense, she thought. As if they knew before her mind knew, her hands reached for a fresh shaker and some ice. Besides, I could use someone new to talk to.
She stole glances at him, reading him as she would read a new cocktail recipe and already knowing how the end result would turn out. Without even knowing his name, she picked up on the Scotch whiskey in his bearing and added it to the shaker, followed by the Italian vermouth she saw in his eyes, and the dash of Angostura bitters she remembered detecting in his voice. She span the lid of the shaker closed and grasped it tightly between her hands, shaking it vigorously. After a minute, she plucked first the stem of a cherry out of her garnish tray, and then that of a chilled, shallow-bulbed cocktail glass. She dropped the cherry in the bottom of the glass and brought both it and shaker back down to him.
She placed the glass in front of him, unscrewed the shaker's lid and poured the orange-red Rob Roy. "Here. On the house," she said.
"Err, thank you, but I…"
"I think you'll like it," she added by way of explanation, "and I think you'll be here a while. Why not just try it?"
He looked up at her and for the first time, she saw the sweet, naïve worry in his eyes dissolve and in the process, felt as though she had also been seen for the first time. "I'll make you a deal," he said, surprising her.
"A deal?" she repeated, tucking the hair that had fallen over one eye behind one ear and in the process, running down the tapered silver bar of one of her earrings, brushing over the large pearl at the end. She saw his eye drawn to it and the self-consciousness she'd felt a moment previous resurfaced.
"If I sip, you answer a question," he said.
Annie was well familiar with games. But this wasn't coming from a drunkard. Curious despite herself, she nodded. "All right," she said, lifting her chin in challenge. She set down the used shaker and reached for her water. "Shoot."
She sipped as he sipped, the glasses falling at the same pace.
His eyes drifted ever so slightly to one side, presumably back to her earring. "You weren't always behind the bar, were you?"
"No," she said, quirking her eyebrows. "What gave that away?" But she knew.
"You're another of Lord Stohess' flowers – only his favorites wear pearls," he said, twisting the glass by its stem. "I don't think that happened because you pour a good glass of claret."
Although she should have suspected this line of inquiry, Annie felt it like a prod into an old wound. Not that she was too sad about what had happened – Lord Stohess had insured she wasn't cast out completely when she fell from favor, after all – but rather…rather, that it reminded her of what she'd overheard, what she knew was going to happen, possibly even tonight. It all compounded into this bitter feeling of being pitied.
"I am – was – the Crocus," she said lowly at length.
He sipped his cocktail again and seemed to like it as far as she could tell. "What happened?"
Annie blinked rapidly and breathed deeply in, looking up and down the bar. She regretted having agreed to this, but at the same time…no one had ever asked her. She'd narrated this story to herself over and over, and now that it came time to tell it she was tongue-tied. An unfortunately familiar feeling of defensiveness constricted her throat. Who did he think he was, anyway? It was none of his business. She grabbed her water glass and downed the last mouthful as though it were a shot.
"Do you always sip from the same spot on the rim?"
Annie froze and for the first time in the two years she'd been behind the bar, she dropped a glass – her glass – but was staring at him before it even hit the floor. Judging by his shocked expression, she figured her own must have become intimidating and so tried to compose it into neutrality, however futile that was. She used the act of cleaning up the broken glass to compose the rest of her body – she was heating up, as if she'd been found out or done something embarrassing.
"I'm sorry, I…" she heard him begin but not know how to continue.
"What is your name?" she demanded, more forcefully than she intended.
"Stop," said Springer, and ironically, the word felt like a link in a chain holding him back had been broken.
He took the pipe away from the Poppy's mouth with its smeared lipstick, and repeated the word over and over. He cast the pipe aside and wrestled himself upright; she slipped down his chest and onto the pillows they'd propped themselves against, looking up and him confusedly as her haze parted somewhat.
He took hold of her shoulders. "What is your name?"
"Does it matter?" she croaked and there was an unexpected melancholy to her voice.
He thought by asking yet again that it'd be obvious that it was, but apparently not. "Why won't you tell me?"
"Why do you care?"
"I want to know who I'm spending time with! Unlike some, I don't think you're here to just be used – I don't want to forget you," he said, surprising himself with the words as much as he appeared to surprise her.
Some of the clarity was back in her eyes, now. He let her go as she sat up, staring at him intently in disbelief.
"I don't want to forget you," he repeated in a whisper, since it finally seemed to grab her attention. He reached out to her face and pushed back one of the disheveled black feathers that had decorated her hair.
Her mouth parted, and she started to tremble. Her brow knitted and Springer saw her eyes begin to water as they lowered, searching through some unseen middle distance – perhaps a memory. Abruptly, she started to cry. A gloved hand went to her mouth, the pearls around her wrist glimmering in the amber light. "Sasha," she choked out. "My name is Sasha," she sobbed, doubling over and allowing him to uncertainly take her in his arms.
"Nice to meet you," Annie said, having regained some of her cool. "My name is Annie," she added as she poured herself a new glass of water.
Reluctant – no, she had to be honest; as scared – as she felt by the prospect of telling him, she couldn't ignore the fact that he had unknowingly passed her one test: he had picked up on the way she always drank from the same part of the glass. No one else ever had. Hard as it was to believe, she knew it was a sign – he was special. And now…now she had to follow the sign and see where it led.
"How's the Rob Roy, Mr Arlert?" she asked, trying his name out on her tongue.
"Good, thank you. You were right."
He took another sip; he was almost halfway done and Annie looked at it like the sands of an hourglass running out, as if it represented the finite window of opportunity she had to find out what she needed to know from him and he from her – even though she was sure neither of them had the faintest idea what they were looking for.
She shrugged to herself. "A deal's a deal, I suppose," she said, thinking back to his question. "I used to perform in a seasonal revue around Christmas, the 'Nuit d'une Centaine Étoiles' – Night of a Hundred Stars, as a chorus girl, nothing special. That's how I originally met Lord Stohess. But, I was never suited for this life – I'm not sure why he took an interest in me to begin with – and it wasn't long before Master Cyrus wanted to 'retire' me."
"That makes it sound as though they treat you like show horses," Arlert said with a tinge of regret in his voice.
Annie replaced clean wine glasses on their shelf on the wall behind the bar, bulb down. "In many ways we are, but…" she glanced at him and as if he detected her unspoken chide, he sipped his drink again as though paying a toll. She turned to face him, now empty tray held in front of her. Her head tipped to one side. "You have to understand, while on the surface this may appear to be solely a man's world, it is also the women's."
Christa felt Ymir's hand on her own more hotly than she felt Mr Braun's mouth on her neck. She glanced to one side, found Ymir eyeing her with hooded eyes from her position on the floor even as she took the Earl's son's member into her mouth yet again. Christa flushed and trembled, and disguised it with a hum deep in her throat. Gently, she pushed her partner away with a smile; seeming to detect her plan, Ymir also broke away, though she continued to stroke him with one hand. Christa could feel Mr Braun's hand finding its way under her petticoats, discovering her lack of stockings, strong fingers parting her thighs.
Christa lowered herself until she lay fully on her back on the couch, and reached for Ymir. Ymir was already leaning toward her and, much to the men's delight, kissed her without reservation. Did they understand, she wondered? Could they know that their delight was merely a convenience, an excuse, for their own? Her thoughts became jumbled; she kissed Ymir as though it was the only way she could even begin to seek answers much less find them.
"We may have come here due to a variety of misfortunes, and exist in a world that has very clear hierarchies and a guiltless, blatant commerce, but that doesn't mean that the exchanges are all one-way," Annie said. She thought of the conversation she'd overheard between Lord Stohess and Master Cyrus, the knowledge of his plan – why he bought them, what he was going to do with them – jagged inside her like a piece of swallowed glass; a secret she'd kept from the other women. "Men take their pleasure, but so do women. Only, ours can take a different form, and it's not as though we don't discover something about ourselves on occasion."
Just think of home, Mercedes thought.
But it was hard to think of home. Lord Stohess had insisted that she sit astride Mr Kirstein's lap while he stood behind her, providing gentle and insistent ministrations to her sex. Though she had recognized the same initial apprehension in his face that she had felt tightening her own, soon the soothing hues of the suite and Lord Stohess' equally pacifying and tempting words to them both had eased that apprehension.
At Lord Stohess' whispered, "Was there something you wanted? I know there is; why don't you come and get it?", the man beneath her had untied the satin bow that did a poor job of holding her breasts in place and, caressing them, leaned forward to kiss her.
Though some distant part of her figured Lord Stohess must get some voyeuristic enjoyment from this, Mercedes was more consumed by the alien and exciting notion that she no longer cared. In that kiss, none of it mattered.
She only half-heard Lord Stohess murmur, "I'm so glad the three of us found one another." How could he have known she and Kirstein wouldn't revolt at the very notion of what they were doing? She felt him tug ever so slightly, perhaps unintentionally, on the lariat and it tightened a little around her throat. "I think I'll call you my Orchid, in honor of this."
Annie placed a trio of Singapore Slings on a waitgirl's tray and watched them disappear into the smoky room. She felt the narrative of her life – of all their lives – being pulled out of her like a ribbon she'd swallowed entire long ago. "It's not as though we never receive any reward, or keep ourselves from feeling anything. We know where we are."
Ackerman looked up at the brief, mistaken entry of another couple into the Moonlight Suite, a frustrated grimace pinching his features as he barked at them to take their drunkenness elsewhere. It only served to remind him of where he was and what he was forced to endure in order to see Petra.
"Hey," she said gently, her soft hand turning his head to look back at her. Her smile relaxed him. "Eyes here."
He saw love in her eyes. It'd taken him so long to realize it wasn't a ploy – that she genuinely let herself care for him despite her situation – despite his. It was the most precious thing he'd ever encountered and he was determined to keep it.
"Soon. Soon I promise I'll get you out of here," he said, smoothing a hand over her leg that lay across his lap. "I've almost saved enough."
Her smile took on a sadder taint. "I know. But…why not ask Lord Stohess –"
"No," he said fiercely. "I don't want him to have anything to do with you. You're mine."
At his request, Annie served Arlert another glass of water. She watched him fish the cherry out of the bottom of his glass and pop it into his mouth, and unexpectedly, this made her smile, albeit briefly. He looked back up at her like a boy listening to a bedtime story and she continued, "We know what we can do – while often that may be little, sometimes it can mean the world."
Yaeger hung back a little, mostly in confusion, at the Peony's warning. They were in one of the darker portions of the large hall after she had headed straight for a smaller booth, where a gentlemen with a bushy beard was getting too rowdy with a dancer. Yaeger himself was a little alarmed when he saw the man grab a handful of the girl's dark hair and tug it violently in an attempt to bring her face to his lap.
Next, he saw the Peony pull something out of her kimono and slip into the booth beside the man, and he was just close enough to hear her as she threatened lowly, "That is not how we do business here. If you were looking for a common whore to abuse, you are in the wrong establishment. Let her go." Startled, the man did so. "I suggest you've had enough for the night."
Though the man spluttered some kind of objection, he did indeed get up and maneuver his way out of the booth and blustered past Yaeger. With one more concerned glance at the sobbing girl, the Peony also stood, and Yaeger saw her tucking a small blade back into the folds of her kimono.
"Lord Stohess creates a garden where no light shines. He did that by purchasing us. But what is more powerful: the man who has money to part with, or that which makes him part with it?" Annie queried, retrieving Arlert's empty glass.
"I see what you mean," he acknowledged. He stared thoughtfully into the translucent landscape made by the ice floating in the top of his glass.
Annie took his contemplative pause to clean up a few more things, eyeing the room to gauge the likely demand. It was emptying, slowly but surely.
"Did you love him?"
Annie looked up in surprise at the question, and then around to see if anyone else had heard him. Fortunately, they were alone. She laughed briefly, even though his expression told her his question had been a serious one. "Oh, no. An appreciation, maybe, or admiration, or gratefulness, but never that. Don't you think that a little too romantic for someone like me?"
"I suppose," he agreed.
She wasn't sure how to take that. To distract herself, she added, "Though I know some have. Despite everything I said, this place still has the power to ruin as well as comfort."
Sasha was consumed by the memory of Lord Stohess' first visit – that night she'd uncertainly taken him to the Moonlight Suite, the dreams and fears they'd shared under the star-painted indigo ceiling, the solace they'd found in one another. They'd talked wistfully about how flowers picked from a garden were saved from the ravages of their natural world. It hadn't been long after that he'd started giving them names, choosing flowers. And yet…and yet it'd been so long…were they never to be saved? Had it all been a dream? Had it – had she – not mattered to him in the slightest?
She sobbed into Springer's chest. "He forgot me." She repeated it over and over; the more she repeated it and the more she cried, the better she felt. She heard him whispering soothing noises in her ear as he stroked her hair.
"I won't," he said.