Till a Century
Genius only comes around in tales of fabled foreign tongues.
Education
Year four
"A, B, C, D –"Percival huffed in annoyance, "E, F, G…" Then she slumped, "Mister Monrey, I already know my alph- al-" The child struggles on syllables; she clears her throat then sits up in her chair once the older man set down his tools, organizing the insides of clocks that spewed out over his workspace, "alphabet! Can I please go play now?" Impatiently, Percival swings her legs back and forth over the ledge of the chair; her fist bunched at the hem of her dress with annoyance.
"Absolutely not. Your mother has informed me to keep you rooted in that very seat. Now, to subside your need to move – might I suggest writing out your alphabet instead? Practice makes perfect." The Mortician drolly went on. Pulling back in his seat to rummaging through his desk drawers. Julius pulled out a white sheet of paper and a pen, scratching the surface several times to get the ink to flow. "How about this? I'll name off some words and you'll try to spell them to the best of your ability."
Percival's studies were rather tiring. Annoying to a child's standard of fun. Percival stressed the issue to whomever that was educating her, that she'd rather be learning her routine around the circus – or peek her head through the bars of the animal cages (much to her mother's horror) because she heard that one of the lions had given birth to healthy cubs. The idea of playing hide-and-seek through her father's jail cells even seemed more appealing than learning trivial things that she could easily learn at the circus.
Percival had many teachers. Mister Julius Monrey has taken it upon himself to take the brunt of Percival's learning. Blood Dupre was a rare case of an educator – he'd teach her boring things: classifying tea-leaves, taking in the aroma of tea, and drinking tea in a precise manner. Lastly, Prime Minister Peter White dubbed it reasonable that it would be he, to teach Percival the perfect ethic of being a young woman. Humorously, that would be how Percival gained another teacher, because The Queen of Hearts deemed the Prime Minister 'an ignorant bastard' that doesn't understand the principles of being a 'young miss.' And that a woman should learn from other women; that a woman should be strong and be able enough to crush the heads of men. Whatever that meant.
"Spell cat." Julius droned, and Percival heaved a sigh; shoulders slumping, her childlike glint disappearing in her vast hues. Her hands felt small compared to the pen. Tiny digits wrapping around the base, an ungraceful method of how she curved every letter upon the paper. Percival would pause, straining to remember the letter placement, muttering to herself.
"Here." She slid the paper across the table. "Now can I go?"
"We've only begun, and you spelled cat with a k. Cat should begin with a c and not with a k. Try again."
"I'd rather draw a cat instead. It's easier." The child groaned, her messy red hair flooding the sides of her face once she pressed her forehead to the solid surface of Julius's desk.
The man sighed, "You are too much like your mother."
White
Circuses usually had the habit of attracting strays. With people leaving food out, and showing illusion of a safe atmosphere with small hiding spots. It wasn't unnatural that cats prowled about the popcorn carts, or lapped at the buckets of water that were usually left out for the elephants. Patron children would always stop just to admire the feline faces, hands sprawled out so they could also pet the cats; grinning to the low purrs of satisfaction that the cats gave off. Voicing, in their own way, their appreciation of being petted.
"Come out, kitty-kitty." Percival was on hands and knees, trying her best to pry underneath one of the pull-trailers, a hand reached out and stretching. The child puffed out her cheeks, holding her breath when she flattened her chest against the ground in hopes in lengthening her chances in catching attention from the cat that sought refuge underneath the structure. "Come on. I won't hurt you."
Percival found out that one of the neighboring cats from the circus have given birth to a litter of kittens, much like her father's lions, and she wanted to see the equivalent difference in the feline family. Noticeably, cats were smaller than lions and this piqued Percival's interest greatly. She's already seen the cubs, now, she wished to see the kittens.
The mother cat hunched her back, her back-hair standing on end as a warning. Percival didn't know the ethic of cats, she knew she wasn't allowed to stick her arms through the bars of the lion cages, but she was never told the signs for when to leave a cat alone. So, she continued to reach for the mother cat and her litter of kittens that curled and mewed for their mother's attention.
It took one swat and a yelp, and that was all the life lesson Percival wanted to learn. She jerked her hand back and quickly held it to her mouth, once she finally sat up properly, she began to cry. Pain barely bothered Percival. There was many bouts of her falling, where she'd simply get up and play again like it was nothing, it was more when something startled her or if she was yelled at for something. That would be an appropriate reason to cry.
Her porcelain skin lit up, blurry eyes squinting painfully over the newfound pain, and she can taste a bitter, copper flavor from pressing her hand up to her mouth to subside the sting. She sat on the ground for the moment, legs tucked underneath her ribbon-dress, a hand cradling the other. She licked at her wound, too scared to actually look over her scratch.
"And just why are you crying, love?" Percival quickly snapped her head upward, her wine-stained eyes staring up at the matching color of her father's. Her eyes squinted painfully from being rubbed raw, scooting closer to her father once he knelt down on one knee so he could assert the situation on her level.
"T-the cat!" She detached her mouth from her hand, her words coming off in broken sobs. "I didn't know!" Clearly, the child wasn't making any sense. Normally, it left them, mostly, stringing together a proper conclusion to what distressed Percival in the first place.
The Jester's single eye narrowed down at the hand his daughter was cradling. His usual, manipulative smile dulled when he caught three single lines etched against his daughter's hand. "Let me see." He hummed pleasantly, presenting his hand in front of her.
"No! It hurts…" Her eyes threatened to brighten with fresh tears, her face pinching up when she jolted away from her father's delicate touch. "You're going to touch it!"
"It's only going to hurt more, Percy, if you don't show me what the cat did. I promise I'll be gentle." The Ringmaster simply stated, patiently waiting while Percival hesitated in placing her palm against his. Carefully, he tilted her hand to the side to observe the scratch. Nothing serious, of course, just a petty lesson she learned quickly. The scratch was still lined in a bright crimson, but stopped its blood-flow once it was exposed to open air. "You say a cat scratched you?" The man chimed, his smile flooded his features while Percival, pitifully, nodded her head. "And you're crying over this little scratch, love? This cat barely nicked you." Humbly, White laced his wording with drawn out chuckles, amused by the way his daughter's facial structure went from pain to utter annoyance.
"It did hurt!" The child's tempted to pull her hand away from her father's larger ones. But his hands were so much warmer than her icy ones. She sighed out in frustration.
"I bet." He teased lightly, "And why do you think the cat would scratch you? Were you being rude, perhaps?"
"I just wanted to see her kittens, honest Papa. I've already seen the lion cubs, but I also wanted to see the cat's babies, too." She pouted, and The Ringmaster slowly caressed his thumb over the tiny scratch. His daughter barely noticed the exchange, preoccupied in explaining herself.
"You'll see them soon enough, I'm sure. Just – that the momma cat is going to be protective of her babies right now." He worded it to the best of her understanding.
"I wasn't going to hurt them! I just wanted to see them." Percival countered defensively.
"Well, she doesn't know that." White's head tilted to his daughter's frown, "I'd be protective of you, too, if some stranger simply wanted to see you for no apparent reason. The mother cat only assumed you were going to hurt her kittens, because you did intrude on her home. Do you see now, love?"
Percival didn't say anything upon that retort, she simply nodded her head in understanding. "It still hurts," She softly whined.
"Hm." Percival's cheeks flooded velvet once her father raised her hand to his lips, softly kissing the scratch. "Feel better?" The child nodded, quickly throwing her body against her father's chest and smothering her face against his shoulder.
White gathered up his daughter, cradling her close while he walked her back to the big-top tent.
Black
His posture was exact, straight, and punctual. His only good eye narrowed down in his daughter's wake, arms crossed, and idly tapping his riding crop against his arm. Percival, not intimidated by her father's usual body language, simply smiled and innocently crossed her arms behind her back. She rocked back on her heel, humming a distant tune that she remembered her mother hummed every morning-cycle or whatever cycle that Wonderland dubbed as morning.
"Why are you so happy?" Black Joker didn't mind his daughter's sunny disposition, in fact, he was enthralled by it. The child may strike up the fool's manipulative smile, Alice's rose-colored glasses, but she had his mischief and personality. When she smiled like that – it simply meant she was getting into business she had no business in.
"Hm?" The child's ruby eyes widened, faking the appeal of being surprised by her father's blunt observation. "What do you mean, Papa?" She was playing coy. She was working him up before she truly asked for something ridicules. Like fostering thirty stray cats within the prison, and feeding them a dish of milk every five time-cycles. Or insisting on gutting the cells, hang paper decor, and make room for afternoon tea parties with her stuffed rabbit and bear. Black Joker declined all his daughter's wishes – much to Percival's disdain.
"What do you mean? What do you mean?" He scoffed at the decency, and the innocence of her little mockingbird voice, "Eh. Listen here, child, I know you well enough to know that you are planning or planning to ask me something that I will not like. Out with it. And don't lie to your father. I know lies." Of course, he would. Black Joker is the jester of lies. Silver-tongue was a trade to him.
The child finally huffed, arms falling to her sides to smooth out her dress. "Well there was something I was going to ask –"
"– Of course." Black Joker intervened which earned him a familiar scowl from the tiny girl. "Well? What were you going to ask? Posture, child! Posture!"
Percival halted her fidgeting, now firmly pressing her arms against her sides. "I was just curious if – we could play hide-and-seek." The Warden's eye widen and his daughter began to mutter faster, making sure he didn't have the time to interject her offer, "I mean – ah! We never play games, Papa. You are much too busy to even come and see me at the circus. I just think we should play a game. Momma plays with me all the time – but not right now since she said she is sick."
The Warden is silent for a longtime. The suffocating silence leaves Percival to fidget again but her father doesn't correct her this time around.
Yes, the matters of playing a children's game was rather obnoxious. But Percival was enduring enough and he certainly, very much, enjoyed to see his daughter happy – in his own sadist ways. He wasn't so use for caring of others, he wouldn't clarify himself as a humanist; the notion, itself, was very foreign in his point-of-view. Truly it baffled him when his daughter enjoyed his company: following him down barely lit halls, eyeing empty cells, and singing her own little song to keep her preoccupied while her father, purposely, patrolled the vacant end of the prison; majority of the time the child would try to hold her father's hand, which he complied. Half of the prison was vacant for her sake, she had no idea what her father did. Percival hasn't been down the populated section of the penitentiary, not since she was a small babe and still relied on him, the fool, and Alice to take her from one place to another. It was only reasonable that Percival wouldn't remember the masked prisoners.
"Papa?" Her head tilted, stepping forward so that her hand could ring the loose fabric of the bottom of his uniform jacket. The man hummed in acknowledgement. A hand patting the top of Percival's head.
"We cannot play that here." He lamented over the fall of his daughter's face. His voice wasn't as harsh as usual, and it seemed almost alien to Percival when her father used his calm voice. She expected the tone from the jester that lived at the circus, but not the father that lived down here.
"But why?" Her voice pinched off on a whine. Her arms now dawning to wrap around her father's leg, her face pressed against the side of his leg while she stared up at him. Black Joker kept his hand on his daughter's head, ruffling the tresses of her curly red hair.
They couldn't play hide-and-seek because of the possibility of her wandering to the wrong end of the prison was a high risk.
"Prisons are not places for that matter. They are for holding things. Things that have lost their way." Percival had no idea what he was talking about, but she quickly smothered out an, "oh…" Disappointment made evident on her vocal cords.
"Come on." Black offered his hand to Percival, and she was quick to unlatch from his leg, curling her tiny hand in his much larger ones. "We can still walk down the halls. Perhaps – we can play a different game. Would eye-spy do?"
Percival perked up. It was a start and she began thinking of things from around the prison that she could use. "I got one!"
"Is it gray?" The little girl nodded her head, following her father down the long stretch of hall, "Metal?" The child nodded again, lips curling in amusement. "Is it iron cages?" The child gasped, cheeks puffing out. The man smugly grinned.
"Yes! Now it's your turn!"
"Very well."
As morbid as the thought was, he would keep that section of his life secret from his daughter for a long time. As long as she claims to be naïve and continues to think well of him. For the first time in his life – he felt a bitter feeling of being self-conscious in how his daughter perceived him.
Bed:
"This is why you were sick?" Percival scrunched up her face, leaning over her mother's arms to take in a better visual of what was inside the bundle. "Does anyone that gets sick end up with a baby?" Percival was an inquisitive four-year-old, as expected. Alice didn't lie about her condition of being sick, and being pregnant with her second born certainly dragged out the morning sickness in her, along with the fits of backache that was almost intolerable.
"Not everyone. It is a special type of sickness." Alice simply said. Laying back against the pillows of her cot. Percival laid snug, close to her mother, very much intrigued by the new attention to her family. Her mother said that babies were a lot like kittens. They needed care from their mother, but not as willing to play. Not yet. Percival would have to wait before playing with her new baby brother, Corvo. She would have to wait when he was much older and was able to walk on his own, but that seemed utterly boring.
Percival wanted to learn about Corvo now.
"Well," Percival shifted against her mother's warm body, her legs curling underneath her nightgown that her father changed her in, "I'm glad that you're feeling better, Momma. When you were sick, Papa made all the meals." Percival cringed, "He can't cook as well as you. But at least he knows how to braid my hair. That was about the only thing I could ask him to do." Alice grinned, but it was faint. Alice is beyond exhausted. She needed sleep. But she hasn't seen Percival all day.
"Is that right?" Alice humored her daughter.
"Uh-huh. Papa from the circus tried. But it only left Papa from the prison even more upset." Then Percival whispered in her little, bird voice, "Papa from the prison even used a swearword."
It should be an oddity to Alice that a family consisted of two fathers, plus her as a mother. This was defiantly something taboo, and by some unexplained nature – both Jokers could be one, but also coexist without each other. Percival never questioned it, so Alice never explained the reasoning behind it. All that Percival knew was that she had two fathers, and she loved them both immensely. Even if it was a little confusing when Percival would try to explain to Alice which father did what today.
"Truly?" Momma was defiantly going to use swearwords on Papa now.
"Yes! Then he threatened to shove Papa's head in the pot of boiling water. Something about hard-boiled eggs – or did he say head?" Percival was quiet for the moment, like she was reliving an old war scene, but continued on after she contemplated her memory, "I never did get eggs. Or whatever Papa was talking about. But he did make me a peanut butter and honey sandwich." She finally said, innocently.
"Well, at least you ate." Alice sighed. She shouldn't be surprised. She knew both of the men were incapable in fixing one meal for Percival, but she had to give them credit for trying – even if it almost led to bloodshed.
Alice's eyes were growing heavy and her grasp on Corvo tightened, hoisting the bundle close to her chest, sinking into covers that flooded her and Percival. Percival found peace in her mother's presences, inhaling deeply, then exhaling in content.
"Corvo is different, Momma." The unorthodox question was rather jarring coming from the tiny girl, but it wouldn't surprise Alice that Percival has been so observant; remarkably curious.
"In what way, Percival?"
"His hair's red like mine. But his eyes are blue like yours." Percival began to settle underneath the covers of her mother's cot, situating herself before her eyes fluttered to close. "They're different. Not in a bad way. But in a beautiful way." Silence lingered, and Percival's breathing swallowed to her signs of sleeping.
It would be a long time before someone entered the medical tent. After everyone within the tent has already found peace with dreams.
White Joker dipped his head and stepped through the flaps of the tent, drawling the flaps closed so that prying eyes wouldn't spy the new addition. He slowly moved to the side of Alice's cot, silently standing there for the moment, until he hooked a finger against the fabric of the bundle that Alice held, moving away the blanket that covered his son's face. His eyes roamed over the child for the first time, tilting his head, watching the way the child slept without disturbance.
The movement startled Alice, and she quickly jolted to the blurry figure over her. She was held back down by the Ringmaster's hands; pushing her back against her bedding. "You did well. Settle. It's me." His hand moved up to stroke the hollow of her cheek. Alice didn't reply, only nodded and stumbled back into slumber that accepted her greedily.
His fingers twiddle with the cloth of the bundle again. Still very much curious, and proud about the healthy birth of his second child. Once he's captured the child's view, and deemed it time to leave Alice alone with his son, he moves to the adjacent end of the cot to bundle up his daughter so he could move her to her bed.
It seemed odd that his counterpart never muttered from the glassy face of the mask. There would be a time and place for everything.
A/N: Updated with mistakes that I will fix later on.
Yep, Alice's second child, Corvo. I came across the name Corvo from my favorite video game: Dishonored. Ever since then, I always thought the name Corvo was extremely beautiful, being that of a boy's name.
Corvo: means "crow" or "raven" in both Italian and Portuguese.
Side Note: I actually don't see the Role Holders being rude to Alice's children. They own hearts, just like their mother, which means people will still adore them. (Since, technically, they're foreigners; not owning clocks, not being able to be replaced, etc.) There is bitterness in how Alice ended her game with the villain, considering that the Jokers "really can't partake in the game". But still, the children are welcomed enough - just not their father(s).
Once the children grow older, they'll become more aware in how people treat them differently. And they'll learn how evil their parent is. It's inevitable and it will happen.