Till a Century
Children only grow up to break your heart.
Golden Locket
Percival: Ten
Corvo: Six
Atlas & Amity: Five
"Miss Atlas –," said The Performer, rather nervously behind the lens of the set-up camera, twiddling with the focus and careering his neck over the heavy machinery once or twice just to check if the children were still sitting in the same positions. "Please – quit taunting your sister. I'm trying to take your picture, yes?" The man smiled nervously, his eyeless face twisted in astonishment that he managed to get all of his bosses' children to sit down for more than twenty minutes. Though, it did help to have the mother of the children sternly, but silently, threaten them.
"We are so bored!" Atlas whined.
"And so very tired." Amity added, jerking away from Atlas's hand that kept pulling at the back of her dress collar. "Can't we do this another time? I'm so hungry, Mommy."
"Will you two hush?" Snapped Percival. She was equally annoyed by the arrangements of photos and dressing up for such trivial matters, but if her mother asked of it – then she was not one to disobey. "The quicker we settle down and take the photo – the quicker we'll be out of this tent."
Corvo rolled his eyes at the notion of sitting between both of his younger sisters, silently pleading to be sitting next to Percival for this. His shoulders bumped Atlas and Amity's from their horseplay, causing his glasses to slide down the bridge of his nose; the boy would sigh and fix his spectacles. "I hate pictures," said Corvo, mumbling under his breath.
"Corvo, dear, do try to smile for this one." Alice grinned and the boy fumbled. His mother knew too much.
"You think they're going to actually going to sit still today?" The Performer wryly smiled, turning to Alice's watchful glare, flashing between her children and to the faceless gent.
"They better –," said Alice, out loud. "I'd hate for my children to – disappear." All of the Jester's children straightened their posture and cleared their throats, faking smiles with the tilt of their head. Though, faking a grin seemed to be their talent. Sly demons.
"Mother is going to kill us." Atlas whispered to her siblings through her fashioned smile.
"I believe so, sister. Mommy is – scary," said Amity, smiling extra hard while she watched the performer go back to readjusting the lens of the camera.
"Shh. She knows fear." Percival finally added, quickly brushing the wrinkles out from her dress before the camera flashed a blinding light.
Once pictures were developed Alice had the tiny portraits sized to fit the most ordinary of plain lockets; a lowly shine of gold could barely be hinted from the small detail of jewelry. The Foreigner would smile faintly when she held all three of them.
She bestowed the first locket to the Jester, gently dropping the chain and locket into the man's palm. Alice helped undo the clasp of the necklace for White, clipping the jewelry around his neck. The locket is hid behind his layers of clothing.
The second locket, Alice gifted to The Warden. At first, the man would cringe until Alice told him to open it. After that, his face held a true blank and was rather devoid of emotion. Her hand graced his and his fingers curled around the tiny locket; he carries the tiny locket everywhere, always fiddling with it mindlessly in his pocket.
Alice kept the third one, she held it in her apron pocket. Always pulling it out and looking at the faces of her children's smile.
White: Dying
"No, no – Papa." Percival wrapped her lanky arms behind her father's head, hunched over to where her forehead pressed against his; her body curled protectively over her father's body, listening to the ragged breathing of his bullet-holed lungs rattle. "Please, Papa, don't die – not again. No, no, no. I always hate it when you die. I hate it so much. Don't go, please, no."
The child was repeating herself, fumbling in vain to block the holes of the entry wounds that riddled White's chest; her hands are stained from her father's blood, her performer wear tainted and ruined from today's events of witnessing another malice murder of her father. One death was too much for Percival. She was never use to her father's blunt passing.
"No, Papa." White tried to push his daughter away; though, the lack of blood was starting to carry a heavy burden when he was too weak to push his daughter safely off of him. The girl grew more frantic with every light push, but she indulged in the fact that her father hasn't left her yet.
"Go to Momma." The Jester smiled faintly; his lungs were beginning to pool with blood and his breathing became more infrequent, less desirable as the seconds passed. He wished his daughter not to see him in this display of carnage, he merely wished to die alone. "I'll be back. I'll always come back." And for some ungodly reason her father was always right. Percival was beginning to slowly understand The Ringmaster's role within Wonderland: a total enigma. The child already heard, and knew, her father was an evil man bent on reincarnating. Selfishly, she ignored. She never believed in the lavish tales to begin with.
"I don't want you to go, Papa." Percival cried, cradling the sides of her father's dulling face with shaking hands, losing the luster of life that once flooded his face. Her eyes blurred, her vision obscured with unshed tears that threatened to fall on her father's face. "Don't leave me alone. You promised! You promised me you were not going to die again." The back of her throat burned with that bitter note, despising the mellow expression her father blessed her with, her father's smile never fading.
"Percy, love, forgive me for my ill use of time." White said, rather calmly for the matter of civil pleasures, such as dying.
Percival choked up, finally letting the tears roll down the hollows of her cheeks and warmly drop against the jester's face. He was numb to the sensation, but welcomed it regardless. The man's vision was also abstracted by the waterfall of red hair that framed his face; his daughter's hair blanketed the sides of his face, objecting anyone to watch the dying expression of The Ringmaster take hold and set in.
"Well, promise me again." Percival said softly, counting the minutes aimlessly. Almost knowing the exact departure time of when her father would leave her. "Promise me you won't die again when you come back."
The Jester, her father, would humor her. He would continue on with his hollow-point grin, haunting her to no end. "My dearest, Percival." She watched a lining of blood drip from his lips, his body rejecting the blood that seeped from his lungs and spurted, "Don't have your father making promises he cannot keep. Even when he loves you so much." It hurt to chuckle, morbidly.
Perhaps the infamous sadist enjoyed it that someone cared whenever he'd die and rejoiced when he returned. Maybe that's why he couldn't keep such a damning promise. He was enthralled by being considered precious to another.
As he died, Percival laid against his chilling body, waiting for his return and expecting another heartache in return.
The Performers crowed the child, letting one of them pick her up and carry her off to her mother; they ignored the body that laid bloody in the middle of the circus ring.
Black: Monster
"He doesn't seem nice, sister," said Atlas.
"Not a nice man at all." Amity agreed, clicking her shoes impatiently together.
"You little brats are a little far from comfort," said the prisoner with his voice muffled by the fluff of his mask. "A damn shame. Too bad Daddy-dearest isn't here to help ya out." The man was all talk behind bars, reaching out through his bars in attempt to grab one of the twins.
The girls shied away from the man's grubby hands, cringing over the fine layer of dirt that laced between his digits.
"He calls us mean things, sister." Amity acknowledged.
"Which only makes him even a meaner man, sister." Atlas nodded her head to her sister, then flashing her set of eyes back up at the man on the other side of the bars. "You should really wash your hands, sir. How else are you going to be allowed to eat dinner? Our Momma tells us we are not allowed to eat until we wash our hands."
The prisoner gritted his teeth, "Wouldn't fuckin' know. Haven't had supper for the past two days." The man finally curled his fingers around the bars, jerking the bars impatiently. He was in the mood for some revenge and knowing The Warden's younger daughters stood in front of him, unarmed and unprotected, seemed too damn good to pass up. He's heard that The Warden produced new offspring other than his eldest daughter – the haunting eyes of blood was repulsive and he wanted to pluck them out from their little heads.
"No supper," Amity squeaked, reeling to her sister's side, "Sister! This man hasn't eaten!"
"How sad!" Atlas whined, "We should tell Daddy – but," the man watched the little conversation the children carried out, still tugging away at the eroded bars and creaked and that was riddled with rust. "Daddy will be so mad that we came on this side of the prison. He'll know if we tell him about this man!"
"But we can't let this man go to bed without food. That would be rude."
Atlas huffed, nodding to her sister's wise words, "True. Very true."
The bars finally jolted and squealed with a thrash, the bars jingled violently as the heavy gate slid open to reveal the masked prisoners. The Children's outlooks turned from fascination to horror when they were jerked up effortlessly, but crashed and slid away from the man desperately. The prisoner preyed upon them like a lion cornering field mice.
"I was getting so fuckin' pissed listening to you both little – rats go on about dinner. Dinner, eh? You want to talk about fuckin' dinner in the likes of this place?" The prisoner grunted, amused by how much these children cowered under his baleful voice; truly, this man wasn't in his right mind and was rather sick of being rendered silent for so long behind these iron cages. "Time for you to realize that some are not as fortunate as you bloody rats, and that, indeed, your father is a damn monster. Both of you are wastes from a whore mother that laid on her back for too long."
And how very eerie, the twins voices died and they simply listened to the man rant about stuff that seemed so horrid – but they were too young to truly understand. "I think – I'm going to strangle both of you. Leave you both as a little partin' gifts for your father's cheap hospitality, rip those horrid little red eyes out of your heads."
Before the man considers a right motive, he is quickly denied by a hard push. His back pressed sternly into iron bars, his throat clamped over by a forearm, a fist balled to assert authority.
"Well, at least you thought about me." The Warden chuckled warmly, but his actions did not match up with his charisma. He bear his arm harder on the man's throat, threatening to block the man's breathing pathways. "And how kind for you for finding my daughters while they ran off without me today. Certainly, such kindness should be rewarded." The Warden hummed. "But – oh, yes. How rude of you to say that my hospitality is cheap. That almost hurt my feelings, you know?"
The prisoner said nothing, he couldn't. The Warden's anger got the best of him and he was slowly choked out. If the prisoner had the pleasure to own a set of eyes he would had understood the horror of pressure pushing against the back of his eye sockets, too bad he owned a pair of lungs.
Once the prisoner's deadweight hit the concrete floor, the warden turned at ease, watching both of his daughter's huddle together out of fear.
"I told you not to go this way," he said sternly, too stressed to think about Alice who was going to blow a casket when she found out that the twins knew about this area of the prison and that he turned his attention away from them for more than five minutes.
The Twins backed away from The Warden, crying, "Daddy."
How very interesting. The girls gathered their wits when they felt arms swarm them, cradling them. They were much too young to understand what Percival would had known if she walked down these halls. Only time would tell when Corvo and Percival would discover the prison's layout.
Atlas and Amity hid their faces against the sides of their father's neck, trying to subside their tremor and falter their bleeding voice.
Alice: Memory
"Where did you come from, Mommy," inquired Corvo, rather shyly. He helped push clean clothing closer to his mother on the bed, she folded what he brought her.
"Hm -." Alice was rather ashamed that it took her a moment to remember. It seemed that her memories collided and all she could reel now were painted memories of her times wandering Wonderland. Still, The Foreigner smiled sweetly down at her only son, "I came from Oxford. A little town in England, really."
Corvo's eyes widened and seemed adorable behind his thick framed spectacles. "Truly, Mommy? Ah!" He pushed more clothing to his mother, helping sort through his fathers' clothing. "What was it like? Did you have sisters and brothers? What about your Mommy and Daddy? Do you ever miss it, Mommy?"
Alice softly chuckled over the enthusiasm Corvo showed; it was always a rare treat to see him so focused and engaged rather than reserved and silent.
Corvo silenced when he heard his mother's chimed laughter, becoming rather embarrassed over his shift in personality. "England had its days, love. Rained a lot, actually. But that's just England. Yes, I did have siblings; two sisters, in fact. One was older while I had a younger sister. Hm – my mother died when I was very young, she caught scarlet fever. And my father was a decent man and has held several jobs through his line."
"What were their names?"
"I-"Alice froze and it startled her. She couldn't remember. She has spent so much time in Wonderland and she truly could not remember their faces nor their names for that matter; the negative bits of her memory stuck out more than her more positive ones.
"I don't know, love. It has been so long."
"You don't remember?" This troubled Corvo. His mother's cheerful outlook quickly turned grim over her simple reminiscing. "How can you not remember, Mommy?"
"Corvo, love, please. Can you push me another basket of clothes?"
Corvo's lips thinned, but he did what his mother asked.
Dimly, the boy thought to himself, he was going to help his mother in some form of another.
Bed
"I want to go to bed." Alice muffled into her pillow, ignoring the weight that pressed to her back and pinned her to the bed. "I have a headache."
What a cheap lie. The Warden frowned over her, his lips trailing soft kisses down the back of her neck till he nipped her nape, he then slowly licked his way back up her neck with the point of his tongue. "Tsk. You always have a damn headache."
"Because you give me the headaches. Now get off."
"Na –"He moved enough to force her on her back, she frowned up at The Warden, and he simply returned her outlandish frown with a subtle grin. He moved down to kiss her, and she was kind enough to nip at his bottom lip, letting him pull back to the sharp, dull pain. She finally kissed him back and he was more than pleased to skim his fingers up the sides of her thighs and underneath the thin material of her nightgown.
Just when The Warden started to unbuckle his trousers, the room door swung open to reveal The Jester and all their children behind him.
"We're home! Oh?!" The Ringmaster tilted his head, smiling faintly at the scene before them.
"What – No!" Percival gagged and pushed her way away from the door frame, mentally scarred. Old people, such as her parents, should never be caught in that act.
The younger children truly didn't understand, but was quick to move behind their father from The Circus.
"Well," The Ringmaster coughed, "If I had known – I would have put the children to bed beforehand. Silly me." A sly grin knitted its way upon his porcelain lips, "Dear, Alice, does this also mean that we'll be having alone time, too?"
"Ugh! Get out," Alice screamed, ignoring the chuckling from The Ringmaster, pressing her face against Black's shoulder; she was horribly embarrassed.