Prompt: "redheaded stepchild" and "my mother is a fish"

Originally Written: 1/26/11

Notes: ...apparently I've never posted this! Here is a Cousland. She grows up to survive the Cousland origin wearing only boots and her smallclothes, and I love her.

When Susan Cousland was six years old, her brother Fergus told her she was adopted.

"I am not," Susie said, with all the dignity a six-year-old could muster with her brother's prize collection of painted skyballs strewn in pieces before her feet.

Fergus's eyes were dark and spiteful. "Yes you are," he said. "No one in our family has red hair. Mother and—my mother and father must have found you on the doorstep and felt sorry for you."

"Nuh-uh," she said, but her brother—if he was her brother—was caught up in the story, his anger providing a wealth of detail too true to ignore.

"Oh yes," he said, grinning spitefully into the tears welling in her eyes, "it's why you're so sneaky—your real parents are paupers from Denerim. Your father cuts purses and your mother's a fishwife and they begged Mother and Father to take you in. They said your hair was pretty and would catch any noble's eye, but really it's just the color of an apple gone bad. Nan wanted to throw you out but luckily Mother and Father are nice and decided to keep you anyway. It's only 'cause they're generous that we keep a spiteful, clumsy, dumb little fat brat like you around." He shoved her with a shoulder, rocking her on her feet, and stormed out of the room.

Susie's lip trembled, but she wouldn't cry. He wasn't really her brother, after all. It all made sense: why Fergus had dark hair and she didn't, why Nan was constantly chasing her around with a broom, why Fergus always got to do things and she had to sit in the corner and stay out of sight, why all of the Couslands' friends said she was "pretty." And now she'd smashed his skyballs and her real parents wouldn't be able to pay for it and they'd cast her out of the house and—

"Wait!" she said, nearly tripping over her feet to catch up to him. He barely glanced at her over his shoulder, but she took that as encouragement to continue. "Maybe my mommy is Gilmore's mommy!" She stumbled and grabbed his hand from habit, and he didn't drop her, which was nice. "Gilly has red hair too."

The faint frown of confusion melted into malicious delight. "No," he said, shaking off her hand, "your mother is definitely a fishwife."

He didn't wait to see if she would follow him; for her part, Susie stood on the cobblestones, fat tears running down her fat cheeks as if her own personal stormcloud had unleashed its fury upon her fat little head. Fergus would go tell the teyrn what she had done and there was nowhere she could hide because no one (other than Gilly, who would've been a much better brother than Fergus could ever hope to be) had hair like hers.

There was only one solution.

o.O.o

"Susie, pup, please come down," came the teyrn's voice, gentle and coaxing. From her position thirty feet up the tallest tree in Highever, she couldn't see him; the flickering light of the torches necessary to illuminate the courtyard at approximately two o'clock in the morning filtered through the summer leaves, thick and green and providing plenty of cover.

Fergus had found her about half an hour ago, but she'd refused to let go of her branch and kicked him in the face when he tried to pry her loose. She was tired and her arms hurt from hugging her branch, but she was determined to stay in the tree until her fake family went away and she could safely make for Denerim. Her knapsack held all the rolls and sweetmeats she could swipe from Nan, as well as the teyrn's letter-opener and the teyrna's face cream, which had been described during one of the parental arguments as costing "a fortune" and therefore would probably let her buy stuff she would need once she got to Denerim, like pauper clothes. No matter what the future held, she wasn't going back.

"Susan, quit making a fool of yourself and come down." The teyrna's voice was angry and tired and, Susie thought in a fit of childish exhaustion, afraid.

"You can't make me!" she yelled, shaking the branch for emphasis.

"Pup, it's late, and if you fall asleep you'll fall and break your neck." There was a pause, which she refused to fill with a reply, and then he called, "Pup—"

"Come on, Susie," Fergus called, and he definitely sounded afraid. "Stop playing around. We all want to go to bed."

"I'm not going to bed!" Safe in the knowledge that no one could get her, she added, "I'm going to Denerim!"

"Denerim," the teyrna said in disbelief; she couldn't hear what was said next, but there was a definite threat in the words that followed. "Susan Cousland, I don't know what has put it into your head that you want to go to Denerim. Put that foolish nonsense out of your head and come down at once."

"Listen to your mother, pup," said the teyrn, with a note of weary defeat in his voice.

She couldn't believe they were still bothering to lie. "She's not my mother!" She took a deep breath and hollered, for all of Highever to hear, "MY MOTHER IS A FISH!"

The silence stretched forever. Then Fergus said, "I said fishwife, you dope."

"You said what?" the teyrna said, her voice dangerous. Fergus mumbled something, and lots of yelling and threats and general unpleasantness happened on the ground, and Susie's eyes drooped and she tried to pinch herself to stay awake but her hands were an integral part to holding onto the tree branch and-

The branches below her rustled, and a head belonging to Rory Gilmore, Highever's newest squire, appeared. "Hey, Susie, I—you..." He stared at her for a moment, taking in her appearance: scratched face, snotty nse, once-long hair now raggedly cut short with a letter-opener and Nan's sewing shears and black from where she'd tried to color it with ink. She sniffled, and he recovered himself and said, "Your father sent me to bring you down."

"My father's a purse," she said, and his face twitched.

"No, he's not," he said. "Your father's the teyrn of Highever, and you're as Cousland as they come. Fergus was just angry about the skyballs."

She sniffed again. "They're not going to throw me out?"

He shook his head and the leaves rustled for emphasis. "I'm here to help you down," he said. "Come on, I'll give you a piggy back ride."

She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and, clutching her knapsack, carefully climbed down to him, squirreling her way onto his back, wrapping her arms around his skinny chest. He made surprisingly good time down the tree, and she barely had time to touch her feet to the Maker-blessed ground before her father had swooped her up in a tight hug, squeezing the breath from her body and kissing her head. Her feet flew out as he swung her around in a circle, and then he set her down and said, "Pup, don't you ever scare me like that again."

"Sorry, Papa," she said, looking down at the ground and sneaking triumphant glances at a red-faced Fergus. His ear looked as though it had been thoroughly pinched, and something told her she'd be eating his desserts for a month to come.

"Susan—oh my little girl—" and her mother clutched her and covered her face with salty kisses "—never again, young lady, do you hear me, oh my goodness, my baby—" She drew back and stopped short, staring at her daughter in the torchlight. Susie smiled up at her in relief; over her mother's shoulder she could see her father, and her big stupid brother was there too, and the whole family was together, and she was a part of it, and—

"Susan Elethea Cousland, what have you done to your hair?"

—all was well.