Well against my better judgement I rise from my self imposed grave with my gender trans'd and my fucks firmly not given.
Anyway, all old projects have been abandoned, don't ask for more. Maybe I'll look back on 'em one day and shit out a new chapter, but it's not fuckin likely.
If anyone is familiar with Touhou, you know exactly what this altpower is.
The first five chapters will be posted all at once, and then afterwards once a day until I run out of backlog, and then after that whenever I finish a chapter.
Constructive criticism only please, I don't need you all bitching about how you don't like this or that and then not offering any thoughts on how to fix it.
Maid in Discovery 1.1
In the Victorian Era, household servants were employed en masse, generally recruited between the ages of 10 and 13, after some preliminary schooling. Many employers hoped for the servants they hired to have at least some elementary literacy and numeracy. It was difficult to get in the 1850s, but by the '80s and '90s, it was becoming a more realistic expectation.
If you went to work for a middle-class family or an upper-class family, you would usually have to go to live in the house where you were working. If you were working for an upper working-class family, it was more likely that you would live at home and simply migrate over every day to do the work.
There were very few things in life that tickled the fancy of one Taylor Anne Hebert, daughter of Annette Rose Hebert and Daniel "Danny" Hebert. Books were one such thing- as the daughter of an English professor, there were always books aplenty in the Hebert household, and she pored over them with all the curiosity and wonder of a child untethered by the stresses and failings of Brockton Bay's tanking school system. Another thing was expressing the knowledge she learned, her mouth running at miles and miles a minute every hour of every day as she spouted out the stories and themes she read out of her mother's well worn texts- the notes scribbled in the margins proving just as much of an insight as the actual texts themselves. She loved to tell stories, to take the images in her mind and bring them to life with wide, sweeping gestures and all the energy she could put into her limited vocabulary- an expert orator she may not have been at six years old, but she made up for it with sheer gusto and enthusiasm.
It was hard not to be carried along by the streams of her words, in all honesty, and many an adult (mostly just her parents' friends) had found themselves ensnared in long, winding stories without pause or end. The only one who could keep up with her energy was one Emma Barnes- a bright young girl with fiery red hair and a personality much like that of a sparkling firecracker- hot and bright and full of life in a way that seemed tireless.
The latest thing to tickle Taylor's fancy was one of the few books in Annette's collection that was not some form of literature- not poetry, not classical literature, not epic poem, nor fiction. It was a holdover from when Annette had thought to pursue a different field of study, thought that history was more to her liking than literature- but now was mostly just a medium sized book collecting dust. Or at least, it had been until Taylor had pulled it free of one of the many boxes in the attic that had gone rather uncleaned for several years, brandished it like King Arthur freeing Excalibur from the stone, and immediately set about reading it with a fascination that was both surprising and completely unsurprising to Annette- surprising in the sense that Taylor generally avoided more dry, rote, and informational texts, but unsurprising in the sense that if Taylor found something interesting she'd read it cover to cover no matter what it was.
And this, it seemed, was no different.
Annette had left her daughter to read in peace- only doing the bare minimum to get the girl down out of the attic and onto the living room couch where it wasn't quite so dusty or dirty before leaving her to her newly found adventure.
"Mom! Mom!" Taylor cried out excitedly, waving the book about several hours later, an almost wild look in her eyes as she stared at her mother with a level of determination usually only found in those who had found their purpose in life. "I wanna be a maid!"
Annette winced a bit, clearing her throat awkwardly as she beheld Taylor's grinning face and tried to comprehend the eldritch thought patterns that could have possibly spawned such a line of thought.
"Er- that's… great, little owl, but um… why?" Annette asked, kneeling down to Taylor's level and placing her hands on her daughter's shoulders, schooling her expression into something more curious than outright dismissive. "I don't think maids- or anyone in any service industry- are treated all that well, even now. It's not really… a great occupation?"
Taylor shook her head emphatically, flipping through the book before pointing out a section that seemed to deal with personal servants for aristocracy- specifically, the section on Lady's Maids, who at the very least, from what Annette could read of the book as Taylor halfway waved it around, seemed to get a fairly better deal than the average housemaid. "Nuh uh! Not that kind of maid! I wanna be like this! For Emma, cuz she's rich!"
"... Well, I guess that's… um… not as bad?" Annette halfway grimaced, trying to think positively even as the idea of her precious daughter working a position of servitude- even to a friend her own age and gender- rankled against the long held ideals of her errant youth. "But you'll have to ask Emma about it first, you know- and Alan's family isn't exactly that much richer than we are."
"But they live closer to the nice part of town, and besides, lots of middle class families had maids too!" Taylor protested, quickly flipping through pages at a speed that would have astonished Annette if she didn't know just how well Taylor could devour a book and retain its information. "See! Right here! It says in chapter three! 'In Victorian England, all middle-class families would have "help", but for most small households, this would be only one employee, the maid of all work, often known colloquially as "the girl".' Which means that I can totally be Emma's Lady's Maid!"
"... Danny help me out here," Annette hissed off to the side, where her husband had been uselessly snickering the whole time while Taylor had been outlining her newfound life goal of being a maid to apparently the richest person she knew.
"Well- well," Danny cleared his throat and finally regained his composure, still grinning faintly as he stood up from where he'd been seated at the kitchen table and ruffled Taylor's hair, "It'd be a lot of work you know? Even for normal cleaning staff these days, it takes a lot of time and effort to clean a house, especially if you're thinking about doing it all on your own-"
"But a Lady's Maid only needs to do a few things! Like helping with makeup and laundry and sewing!" Taylor countered, holding up her book as she flipped through the pages again. "I wouldn't need to clean the entire house by myself!"
"But it's still a lot of work either way-" Danny paused and rubbed his chin, blinking slowly behind his thick glasses. "And you'd need to take a lot of lessons on etiquette besides… there's a lot of restrictions on behavior for Victorian maids, you know."
"I can do it!" Taylor responded, with all the moxie and bravado of a child dead set on whatever strange course of action they decided was sensible. "I'm real smart! And I know my eddykit too!"
"You don't know what that means do you," Annette sighed, rubbing her forehead as she stood up again.
"Nope!" Taylor responded cheerfully, grinning as she stood in place for a few more seconds before rushing back into the living room to pick up her dictionary. "I'm gonna find out!"
"That girl," Danny muttered, shaking his head with a slight grin, only to yelp as Annette smacked him on the shoulder. "Ow!"
"You were supposed to help me out with that!" Annette grumbled, frowning at her idiot husband as she stared off to where Taylor was sitting on the couch and reading through the sections of her dictionary, horribly mispronouncing several words as she attempted to read them. "Now she's stuck on being a maid! A maid!"
"... Well I mean, if nothing else, she'll probably get tired of it real soon, just like when she wanted to be a pirate. Or that time when she wanted to be a farmer," Danny shrugged, not at all concerned about Taylor's latest obsession. The girl was six years old, after all, and had gone through a myriad of interests for less than a month at a time in the past year alone. "How much trouble could it possibly be?"
"Yeah, I guess, but I dunno, something about this one feels… well, she doesn't usually get so obsessed so quickly," Annette muttered, frowning before shaking her head with a rush of breath. "No, you're probably right. She'll probably forget about it within the month. I wonder what her next thing will be?"
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Maid in Discovery 1.2
Taylor did not forget about it within a month. No, in fact, the unfortunate complication in that was Emma Barnes, who, being reminded of the fact that she was of technically eligible status to have a maid by Victorian standards, and of the myriad stories set in the Victorian era that Taylor had dutifully recalled to her during their frequent play dates, was all too enamored with the idea for either girl to let it go.
And thus, it was with a slightly pained grimace and more laughter from Alan Barnes than they'd have liked that Annette managed to find a worn and quite well used instructional guide on Victorian servants' etiquette (translated to the modern vernacular sometime in the late 70s by some professor or another that Annette may have quite possibly cited in a paper once upon a time) and Danny managed to shell out enough money to pay for that, and several more books on life as a Victorian maid. The Hebert family had made a day of it, actually, having driven around to some of the local bookstores both in and around the Brockton Bay area- mostly in Boston, seeing as Brockton's supply of old bookstores was a bit thin outside of the local college library and Boston was barely an hour's drive away from Brockton if one took the longer highway instead of the one that went through the heart of downtown.
And so, Taylor and Emma began their studies- neither of them seemed to take it too seriously at the moment, given that they were both six years old and barely out of kindergarten. In between sessions of Taylor reading through the etiquette guides (which she devoured in full even though they were basically dry, bland textbooks and most of them were extremely complicated to the point of Taylor needing both a dictionary and Annette's help to parse the dense text) was extremely important bouts of playtime and all the adventures that two children could get up to in the backyard of the Barnes' relatively upscale home- sandbox, garden, kiddie pool, mini playground and all. Occasionally, Taylor would do her best to imitate the ladies seen in her books, trying to keep out of sight and out of mind in the way that servants were supposed to be, keeping her posture correct and even sometimes doing her best to help out with the laundry and cleaning- though Zoe Barnes was quick to put a stop to that considering Taylor's unfortunate habit of not only tracking dust and dirt into the house whenever she ran in from the Barnes' backyard sandbox, but also getting her grubby hands all over Zoe's nice clean laundry.
"Make sure you dust yourself off before coming in," Zoe had said multiple times over the last few years, but much like Taylor's previous life goals, it didn't ever take for longer than it took for Taylor to become distracted by something else and immediately run off to go do that instead.
Emma, at the least, played the part of a refined young lady of the house much more easily than Taylor given that most of that involved basic manners, keeping good posture, and not doing an excess of work around the house. Of course, their practice for Taylor's eventual maid status was often interrupted, since it mostly ended up with Emma getting bored of Taylor's self-enforced silence within an hour of her starting and ending up with the redheaded girl cajoling Taylor into yet another bout of playing with dolls and building misshapen lego structures and all the other things that Emma had in her room.
Taylor, for her part, performed admirably even with the constant interruptions- whenever she was home and Emma was unable to drag her from her practicing, she could be heard repeating several varying mantras as she did her utmost best to do any number of ridiculous things in her pursuit of perfect etiquette.
"I am a maid, I am a maid, I am a maid," she said to herself, doing her utmost best to balance a small stack of books on her head as she stood in her room. Unfortunately, Taylor was, at heart, a bouncing ball of energy and motion whose thoughts ran at a mile a minute. Within seconds of standing still, she was already fidgeting and twitching slightly, the tiny motions compounding over and over until the books upon her head came crashing to the floor yet again.
"Bah!" Taylor grimaced, flouncing over to her bed and sitting down with a heavy huff of breath, crossing her arms and pouting at the now fallen books with every inch of petulance her small frame could muster. "Why can't I get it right? I'm doing everything I'm supposed to!"
She huffed again, glaring at the fallen books for a few more seconds before mustering up the focus to try again- now thoroughly invested in her success. "Okay! This time for sure! I'm gonna balance these on my head if it's the last thing I do!"
With a grin that was half manic and half determined, she shoved the books onto her head again, taking extra care this time to make sure they stayed more or less put before lowering her hands and folding them in front of her just like she'd seen the maids in her books do, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.
In. Out. In. Out.
Breathe. Relax.
The books she'd read- which didn't really have anything to do with being a maid, but had more in common with self help books and gymnastics lessons than anything else- had said that the key to balancing an object was the proper posture: chin parallel to the floor, relax, slow, measured movements, etc etc. And she was trying, really! But she had so much energy that she just kept fidgeting and fidgeting until everything came crashing down again!
Taylor sort of supposed that trying to be all elegant in her motions wasn't technically part of her duties as a (future (in training) (maybe)) Lady's Maid, but practice made perfect, and she'd read somewhere that making things look smooth and natural came from long practice and that being efficient was how working class people kept their jobs (which might have been a lie since all the construction worker people that her dad knew tended to stretch out the building as long as possible so they could get paid more?) so naturally she decided that she wanted to move all elegant and pretty so that when she did end up being Emma's Maid, she would be a really cool and smart and pretty maid and not an awkward just starting maid.
In. Out. In. Out.
Breathe. Relax.
And sure, she would technically be an awkward just starting maid if the Barnes' actually did decide to hire her as a maid maid instead of just Emma's friend who stays over a bunch, but it was the principle of the thing! It wasn't like she couldn't get a head start on her maid training- which she was now, so yeah! All she had to do was make sure she could keep something balanced on her head at all times, and that would totally make her movements more elegant.
Right?
Or at least, that was the line of thought. Taylor wasn't entirely sure that it would work given how much she kept failing within the last few hours of trying to balance three or four books on her head, and her neck was kind of starting to get tired, but she kept her eyes closed and kept trying to keep them balanced all the same.
In. Out. In. Out.
Breathe. Relax.
And start moving.
One step. Two. One step. Two.
She kept her eyes closed, keeping her head straight, her shoulders relaxed, and let her feet take her where they would. She'd been around her room enough times that muscle memory could guide her, or at least she thought it would, and-
"Ow!"
Promptly stubbed her toe against the leg of her bed frame, immediately flinching back with a startled yelp and making the books tumble to the ground once again- thank goodness she'd chosen hardcover books and had the foresight to scotch tape the covers closed so the pages wouldn't get all torn up and bent from how much she'd dropped them. Though, the covers were starting to get a little dinged up- getting dropped so much wasn't good for books even if they were falling on nice soft carpet.
Taylor sighed and bent over to pick up the books again, biting her lip and struggling to keep her calm as she did so. She'd done it! Just by keeping her mind off of how still she had to stand she'd managed to go nearly a whole five full steps before she dropped her books! Which meant that if she did it with her eyes open next time, it was sure to work!
...
Taylor paused for a moment as she stood up again, books held securely in her arms and half raised over her head as she stared out the window. Her head tilted slowly as her brow furrowed, frowning oddly as she tried to parse what she thought she'd just seen.
"... Huh… funny…" she muttered to herself, cheeks puffing out as she kept a watch of the birds sitting in the tree outside of her home, scratching her head with her free hand before shrugging.
She must have just been seeing things- after all, there was no way that bird had just been frozen in midair for a half second before it landed. Maybe the stress of trying so hard to keep books on her head was getting to her.
Or maybe…
"Moooom! I'm hungry!" Taylor immediately shouted, rushing out of her room and down the stairs towards the kitchen. Yeah, a snack sounded good right about now. That'd keep her mind and body nice and fresh while she worked on her etiquette and balance some more.
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Maid in Discovery 1.3
"Knives!" Emma had suggested one day, grinning maniacally as she held up one of the teen-demographic fantasy stories that she'd borrowed from the library and her parents hadn't been quite paying attention enough to make her return. "We should learn how to throw knives!"
"... Isn't that dangerous? Mom got real mad the last time I tried to cut veggies on my own," Taylor asked immediately, blinking slowly as Emma made all sorts of strange karate noises before picking up a rock from the sandbox the two of them had been systematically burying Barbie's evil cousin Mandy so she wouldn't become an evil zombie and chucking said rock halfway across the yard with a mighty kiai that would have most definitely sounded quite impressive if it hadn't come from the mouth of a six and a half year old girl.
Several months of etiquette books, some DVD etiquette lessons, and long, long hours of practice had served their purpose quite well, in Taylor's case- while the now six and a half year old (almost) first grader was no less brilliant nor full of energy, she now kept it hidden under a cool, demure mask of politeness and propriety… for the most part. She could keep a straight face if no one was talking to her, but she still had a habit of running her mouth with as many words as she could pack into a sentence the moment anyone decided to ask her anything.
So it was a bit of a work in progress, but she was six and a half. She could be excused for a few slip ups.
"Yeah but it'd be so cool! Like, this book is all about super cool ninjas and they can throw knives super good and it's all whoosh whoosh!" Emma gesticulated, miming the actions of throwing knives- which mostly ended up just made her look ridiculous, but Taylor thought it was a pretty good impression anyway. "See!?"
She held up the book again, turning to one of the few illustrations present in the dense words, which depicted a woman clad in something that seemed very difficult to wear throwing a bunch of strange knives that looked more like darts than they did the kitchen knives Taylor's mom had. "Don't you think it'd be cool?"
"Well…." Taylor paused and considered her words, chewing her lip thoughtfully as she mulled the idea over in her head. "I think it'd be pretty cool, but I don't think mom and dad would let me, and I don't think your mom n' dad would let you do it either, and I think that it'd be pretty hard to actually get knives like that… I guess we could try with the knives from the kitchen, but… hmmm…"
"Hmm?" Emma tilted her head curiously, watching as Taylor mulled her words over for a few moments. "What'cha thinkin' bout?"
"Well, I was thinking that if we're really careful, and we have the right books for it, we can probably do it on our own!" Taylor grinned, eyes sparking with half of a plan as she stood up and dusted the sand from her skirt- she used to like having pants on more, but proper ladies wore skirts, and maids had to wear their uniforms as long as they were working, so skirts it was. Even if, technically speaking, she wasn't being super proper with her knee length blue skirt, but it was summer and it wasn't the Victorian era anymore so a little bit of a lapse in propriety was alright- quickly pacing around the length of the sandbox as she held her chin in her hand and tried her best to imitate her favorite detective cartoons. "I'm sure the library'll have what we want, and I think we can steal some butter knives without mom and dad noticing…"
"Butter knives? But those aren't even pointy!" Emma protested, crossing her arms and pouting petulantly as she sat down onto one of the many upturned colorful plastic buckets surrounding the sandbox. "Mom n' dad don't let me touch the pointy knives, and Ann only has really lame tiny knives in her room."
"Ann has knives?" Taylor raised an eyebrow, blinking twice at the new information being revealed. "Why does Ann have tiny knives?"
"She says its for her cosplay stuff, whatever that means," Emma answered, leaning her chin in her hand and shrugging. "She likes making costumes of all the stuff she watches, but she never lets me help, and she doesn't even let me see what she watches either…"
"She's a teenager right? Mom says teenagers are always like that," Taylor nodded sagely, crossing her arms and closing her eyes with an air of someone who was extremely sure of their correctness.
"Mhmm… she's getting kinda mean now, actually… middle school must be rough," Emma shrugged, then turned back to Taylor with a quiet huff. "Enough of that! How're we gonna get a bunch of knives to throw?"
Taylor just grinned, snickering almost evilly as she began to plan.
Three weeks later, said plan came to fruition. It had taken a few library trips down to one of the few public libraries still open in Brockton (which was probably going to go downhill since Marquis' territory was getting eaten up by the new gangs), a few pilfered knives from the utensils drawer that Annette didn't really open much, Emma stealing a few of her own knives from her home's attic (why the Barnes' had a bunch of really old knives in their attic was beyond Taylor, but she knew her grandparents liked collecting things and apparently so did her parents, so it wasn't super surprising that there was a spare set of knives just lying around), and a few uninterrupted hours where both of their parents were off doing something else and Ann was the only one "watching" them, but eventually the stars aligned just right and the two of them could finally get to knife throwing.
Well, Taylor would start practicing her knife throwing, because she thought it was a cool skill that was at least tangentially related to being a maid- or at least, her idea of a maid, which was straying further and further from the ideal Victorian maid the longer she spent reading about maids with modern books, and more towards the super cool ninja battle maids that she'd gotten a peek at once in one of Anne's weird backwards comic books (why those maid were wearing such short skirts, though, was a bit of a mystery to Taylor, but they were still cool even if they were wearing a lot of what her mom sometimes called no-no clothes). Emma, on the other hand, had sort of lost her enthusiasm for the idea after it had taken nearly a month of work just to get things together. She, while Taylor was setting up a sheet of cardboard up in the Barnes' backyard and collecting her knives, was much more focused on reading the kids' fashion magazine- apparently she'd gotten really into fashion in the last week or so, which made a lot of sense given that she always wanted to be the most important person in any room she was in and fashion was apparently good for that.
Or so Taylor thought, at least.
She didn't really know, she was just reading over the notes she'd copied from the books she and Emma had found in the library and working out how to actually throw the knives she and Emma had pilfered. Apparently she was supposed to use specially made throwing knives, but that wasn't going to work so she'd just have to make do with what she had.
Now… how was she going to throw a knife like they did in those comics…?
"Hiya!" Taylor immediately let out a loud kiai and chucked the knife with something resembling the motion she'd written down, sending the knife tumbling through the air at a frankly unimpressive speed, whereupon it thunked weakly into the cardboard sheet she'd leaned against one of the trees in the yard and promptly fell to the ground. "Aww… it didn't work."
She paused, stared at the knives she had arrayed around her, and picked up the sharpest, shiniest looking one.
"I'm gonna try again!"
And try she did. Again and again and again and again and-
"I did it!"
Taylor squealed in excitement as she jumped around, clapping her hands and drawing Emma's attention to the single knife now embedded blade first into the cardboard target, the sheet now sporting many dents and nicks from being repeatedly pelted by a single antique knife for the better part of a half hour. She wasn't entirely sure how she'd managed to get it to fly in a straight line so well, nor was she entirely sure about why something in her chest felt kind of fuzzy, but on that last throw, when she'd tried desperately to get the knife to fly in a straight line like those cool ninja comics Ann had in her room, something had just clicked in her mind, and that was enough to make her hand move and the knife jet across the short distance and slam through the cardboard almost like a bullet.
Taylor didn't pay much mind to it, though, since that was almost the exact moment that both her and Emma's parents returned from grocery shopping and finally found the two of them surrounded by knives.
Whoops.
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Maid in Discovery 1.4
In the week leading up to the beginning of first grade, at the end of August and into the beginning of September, Taylor found herself cleaning out the attic with her mother- apparently, according to her mother, times were a little tough and they needed to sell off some of their old, useless stuff just so they could make it through the end of the year. Taylor kind of understood- she'd read all about how things were for the Victorian working class, and since her dad always went off to work for longer and longer every time it came close to the later half of the year, she was kind of used to it. It was still the first time they'd had to sell off the stuff in the attic though, which was a new experience that Taylor wasn't entirely sure she liked. At least Emma and her parents were gonna be coming over to help out with the yard sale though, same with Uncle Kurt and Aunt Lacey and some of dad's Dockworker friends.
Now that Taylor thought about it, she and Emma must have been ignoring a lot of their friends from kindergarten over the summer.
Well, they didn't know each other all that well, so… Taylor shrugged idly as she dug through the boxes and helped her mother sort out the things they could afford to sell from the things that they wanted to keep- some family heirlooms, part of Annette's collection of books, a few old dresses, that sort of thing. One thing gave her pause though, as she sorted through the boxes of assorted things that were generously labeled as "grandparents' stuff"- a silver pocketwatch on a chain, the back inscribed with some kind of odd mess of lines and circles that seemed quite like those she'd seen in some of the illustrations of the fantasy books she'd seen in the bookstores.
"Mom, what's this?" she asked, holding up said watch, not so much asking for confirmation that it was a watch but more asking about why it was in the box in the first place… or something like that.
"Oh, that was my great great grandmother's watch," Annette answered idly, looking over at Taylor with a sudden blip of interest. "I'm not entirely sure why she had that inscription on the back, but she did live in the later Victorian era. People were really into magic and psychics and stuff like that back then. Maybe she thought it'd protect her? Either way, I actually got it from grandma, so maybe she'd know more about it."
"Really?" Taylor asked, gasping a bit as she looked down at the watch with renewed interest before looking back up at her mother with a pleading gaze, "Can we go visit her? I wanna know more about how things were back then!"
"So you can be a better maid for Emma?" Annette asked dryly, smiling a bit as she raised a hand and ruffled Taylor's hair. "A lot of things have changed since then y'know, I don't think you need to know that much about then, and I don't think a lot of great great grandma's diaries are still around anyway. Besides, she lived in America at the time- and you're studying up on more English traditions."
"Oh… but can we still visit anyway?" Taylor asked, slightly crestfallen at the realization that her family probably didn't have any experience at all with the job she wanted to have. Still, she did really wanna go see Grandma Carol and Grandpa Mike again- she didn't really remember the last time she saw the two since her mom said she'd only been about three when it happened and they lived off in the middle of Oregon, but she did know that they really liked her, or at least that's what her mom said. Grandpa James and Grandma Mary were cool too, but she saw them every winter for Christmas, so it wasn't really as special as when she got to see her mom's side grandparents.
"Sure, honey, when we have the money to," Annette nodded, breathing out quietly in something that wasn't really a sigh but was a bit heavier than a normal exhale. "Now c'mon, you can keep that if you really want it, but we gotta get the rest of this box sorted. You still doing okay?"
"Mm!" Taylor nodded resolutely, grinning once again as she tucked the watch into one of the hidden pockets of her skirt- her mom had been teaching her how to sew recently, and one of the things they did first was put a bunch of sneaky pockets all over all her skirts, including her favorite (a nice, dark blue skirt with a big white patch on the front that looked like an apron but technically wasn't since it was still a part of the skirt). With a determined cheer, she resumed helping her mother carry stuff down out of the attic and onto the front yard- thankfully, the weather was still warm this time of year, though the nights were starting to get chilly.
Idly, Taylor wondered exactly what first grade would be like, and how she'd keep up with all her lessons and practice when she had to be in class all day, and with homework and all that other nasty stuff her mom had said came with actual grade school.
She shook her head- there wasn't much point worrying about it anyway no matter how scary it was. She'd had homework in Kindergarten after all, but then again, that wasn't exactly difficult. First grade was a whole different thing, in an entirely different section of the school building, and she wasn't sure if she was at all prepared for it.
Besides, there were other things to think about at the moment- Emma was there on the front yard, as were some of the other dockworkers' kids around their age. Not too many, of course, since there were only four of them who came to help out, but the two girls (sisters, apparently) were fun to hang out with, even if they thought Taylor was kinda weird for wanting to be a maid.
Still, they came around to it eventually, or at least they stopped saying it was weird to Taylor's face after the first twenty minutes of hanging out, and they played dolls just fine (Taylor may not have technically owned many dolls, but with how many Emma left over in her room, she might as well have owned them too) and at the end of the day, they seemed all too happy to say that they wanted to play again sometime soon.
Emma didn't seem quite as enthused with the prospect of hanging out with more people, since she seemed to prize Taylor's attention more than anyone else's, and seemed quite jealous of the attention she spared the other two girls (whose names, incidentally, had been Charlotte and Harley- fraternal twins, apparently) up until the point that they started talking to Emma about dresses and favorite colors, at which point Emma acted basically the part of the perfect young socialite (not that Taylor really understood what the word meant, but she knew it had to be someone who liked being around other people, or something like that).
All in all, a pretty good day.
A shame that she had to go back to school, really. She would have preferred to study on her own, but alas, mom and dad wouldn't let her just stay home and do maid study all day.
Darn.
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Maid in Discovery 1.5
The years of schooling seemed to pass by in an utter blur of banality, in which Taylor found herself advancing in her studies quite rapidly- both in terms of academics, and in terms of her preparations for becoming a maid. As much as she was teased, as much as teachers tried to dissuade her, Taylor's path had been set from that fateful day she'd found that book in the attic, and she would not falter, not once, not ever, from the path she'd chosen for herself.
Emma, meanwhile, seemed to grow out of the little jealous bubble she'd had that encompassed only her and Taylor for the better part of their lives up until then, blooming out into a friendly, gregarious girl who seemed to be able to make friends on a whim- none of them being especially close at first, but given that one was bound to make actual friends with someone if they had to spend several hours a day all but locked in the same room as thirty other people, well, some of them were bound to stick around. Charlotte was one- as a fellow dockworker's daughter, she and Taylor had seen each other more than once in the intervening years between first and fifth grade, and were quite well used to each others' presence. They weren't extremely close, but she, Emma, and Taylor all got along fine enough that they didn't make a fuss whenever they had to see each other.
There were a few others as well, curious young girls who seemed quite confused at Taylor's seemingly low wishes for her own career path- not that she expected them to really get it, but being a maid was her one and only choice. Sure, she'd choose a different path if she had to, but as long as she could, as long as she could manage, she'd remain with Emma as her loyal and steadfast maid in waiting, no matter what obstacles got in her way- like alphabetically assigned seating charts and the inevitable separation of being assigned to different teachers between grades.
Oh well.
She did what she could, and while she couldn't actively act out being Emma's maid in class most of the time, she could at least do her best during lunchtime and recess and breaks, and after school of course.
Her skills had honed themselves quite well in the intervening years- one of the PE teachers in fourth grade had once told her she looked like she took ballet classes, but really it was just the several years of constantly practicing balance and elegant movements (she wasn't… entirely sure how she moved like that now, but apparently a lot of her classmates thought she looked really cool and elegant when she moved, which was always a plus)- and her knife throwing (practiced in secret) had gotten only more and more accurate and ranged as she gained both strength and skill. She still wasn't entirely sure how she managed to get knives to fly off in straight lines rather than the twirling motions that actual knife throwing was supposed to look like, but if it worked it worked and she wasn't going to question it.
Taylor had also learned to do some rudimentary cooking in the intervening years too, as well as cleaning and household chores- not just the things that her mom said were traditional maid work (like laundry, sewing, dusting, cleaning, sweeping, cooking, serving) but things like repairing leaks (which she'd helped her dad with after a bad storm in the spring of third grade), fixing roof tiles (from the same storm), replacing car tires (she'd helped out another dockworker on "bring your child to work day" down at the Union), and many other things that were, generally considered "Men's" work. Not that her mother agreed with it, but Annette did have to admit that she'd rather leave replacing lightbulbs and fixing rotting steps to Danny, but that was mostly out of convenience and lack of desire to climb the rickety old ladder they kept in the garage.
At the same time that she was honing her skills in all sorts of maidly duties, she'd also begun dressing the part too- not the full Victorian uniform, but an ensemble that Emma called super cute, that being a white short sleeved blouse with fake ruffles around the shoulders, a short, navy blue overall dress that went down to her knees and puffed out slightly thanks to the two layers of white ruffles underneath the skirt, and a simple white waist apron. She also sometimes also wore a frilly maid headband, but not at school because the teachers always said not to wear hats and technically it was a hat and for some reason the teachers always said it was distracting.
She didn't really understand how, but she went along with it anyway. They let her keep the apron, though, so she didn't much mind either way.
By the time both Taylor and Emma had hit eleven, they were firmly into sixth grade- well, Emma had hit eleven right before the start of the school year, and Taylor's birthday was in December but who's counting- and Taylor was making plans to move into the Barnes' home part-time in order to formally be Emma's maid. She wouldn't really need to be paid technically (nor was she legally allowed to, according to both her parents and Emma's), but if she got her allowance through the Barnes' rather than through her mom and dad, then that was fine. Sorta. Right?
Either way, while her parents still didn't think it was a perfect idea, the fact that Emma and Taylor's friendship and Taylor's obsession had lasted so long made them accept that she'd mostly be staying with the Barnes' at some point- though, given that Taylor's house was only really a twenty minute drive from Emma's, it wasn't like they couldn't come over whenever they wanted so in Taylor's mind it was a perfect solution to whatever troubles that her parents may have had. And besides, she was eleven, she was a big girl by now, perfectly capable of making her own decisions. If she wanted to live with Emma five days of the week year round (except for holidays and special occasions) then what was the problem with it?
Still, that day seemed to be far off into the future- Neither her mother nor her father seemed like they wanted to let her actually be a maid until she was in highschool at the very least, and the Barnes' seemed to agree on that. Taylor… well, she wouldn't have agreed when she was seven, but now that she was in middle school, she did have to admit that both sets of parents had a point, what with the legal lowest limit for employing a minor being fourteen (and even then, pretty much only for nonprofit purposes).
Taylor couldn't wait, though, much as her parents wished her to. She already spent most of her time at Emma's place anyway, every single hour that she could- she slept over most days, spent her afternoons there after school, and stayed up until nearly her bedtime in the evenings when her parents would finally arrive to take her home. Emma sometimes liked to tease her and say that she was basically working for free, given the fact that most of Taylor's spare time whenever she wasn't studying, doing homework, or helping Emma do her homework these days was spent idly wandering the Barnes' household and doing whatever chores were available. Taylor didn't pay it any mind though, she wasn't doing it for money in the first place.
Some small part of her sometimes wondered what was she doing it for, then, but she always knew it was for Emma. At first, just because she wanted to be with her friend forever in the way that children always wanted to cling to the things they loved, but as time passed, it had started to become something protective, something a bit more… not quite jealous, but in Taylor's mind, the world (or at least, Brockton Bay) was a harsh and cruel place, perfectly fine with crushing a girl's dreams. So, in order to keep Emma's dreams safe, to keep her friend happy, she'd stay with her forever.
No matter rain or shine, nor wind or cold. She'd be there for Emma.
Always.
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Oct 6, 2021
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The CyberQueen
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Oct 7, 2021
#52
Maid in Training 2.1
April eleventh, 2008 was a day that started off like any other. Taylor woke up early in the morning at the crack of dawn, yawned, stretched, rolled out of bed, and immediately began doing a set of light stretches to wake herself up. After five minutes of her morning routine, she rolled her shoulders, looked into the mirror mounted upon her closet door, and frowned at the ever growing collection of sparse, white hairs speckling through her mostly black mane of curls. After examining herself for a few seconds, she shrugged, grabbed her outfit for the day from the closet (which, these days, was more or less only full of variations of the same maid-derived outfit), draped her clothes over the back of her desk chair, and quietly went downstairs in her pajamas for her morning practice.
As she crept down the stairs, she smoothly stepped around every creaky board and made no noise whatsoever as she opened the door to the backyard. The backyard had changed much in the last few years, with Taylor having had the help of her parents in rearranging parts of it into a knife throwing practice area that had numerous wooden boards salvaged from her childhood sandbox mounted in varying positions around the length of the yard, with pieces of what used to be a miniature playground set thoroughly pockmarked with knife holes mounted to different positions. With a quiet sigh of focus, Taylor withdrew a set of knives from the cubby set next to the backdoor of the house, stepping out into the morning chill before standing centered in the yard, right inside of a tiny, meter wide circle made out of a hula hoop staked into the grass. As she closed her eyes, the knives flew from her hands in clusters- the batch of old, antique knives had numbered nearly a hundred when her parents had pulled it out of a junkyard sale for less than thirty dollars, and she used each one of them with great care and gusto as she peppered the boards and chunks of plastic, hearing the thunking blades biting deep into wood until she finally ran dry.
Taylor frowned a bit as she picked up the knives- clearly, her blind practice needed some work if she was having so much trouble hitting stationary targets that she could hit easily with her eyes open.
But alas, that would have to wait for another day.
With smooth, practiced motions, Taylor swiftly collected her knives once again, gave them a cursory sharpening, returned them to their proper place by the door, and strode back up the stairs for her morning shower. After a brisk fifteen minutes, Taylor returned to her room, toweling the last of the dampness from her hair and getting dressed with quick, easy motions. As soon as she set down her towel and grabbed her brush, the clock struck seven am. Exactly on time. Just like always.
Her hair was brushed within five minutes, and she made her way down to the kitchen to get started on breakfast. Her mother had already left the house by then- seven thirty am classes waited for no one, and the drive down to Brockton Bay Community College was a pain even at six thirty in the morning. Her father, meanwhile, wouldn't need to get to his office at the Dockworker's Union building until at least nine, which meant he had plenty of time to eat.
Taylor quickly prepared breakfast with the ease of long practice- she'd only started cooking in the last year, but she had been a quick study where breakfast foods were concerned, and made an easy batch of scrambled eggs, bacon, and some sliced oranges for herself and her father. Her father stumbled down the stairs a few minutes later, still clad in a bathrobe and pajama pants with his hair mussed from sleep. They made idle conversation, talking about their plans for the day, how Emma was doing, how the Union was doing, happily talking about nothing until the clock struck seven forty five. Taylor then washed her plate, grabbed her coat and backpack from where she had placed them by the door the night before, slipped on her boots, and ran out the door with a quick goodbye yelled over her shoulder.
The bus ride was the same as always- a bunch of tired kids crammed together, chattering and speaking about much of nothing or desperately trying to catch some extra fifteen minutes of sleep on the way to class. Taylor simply sat quietly, playing with the chain of the pocket watch she kept in her skirt pocket, running her thumb over the back surface and feeling the symbols etched into the back.
As the bus pulled up to the school's parking lot, she brightened and descended, meeting up with Emma on the front steps and falling into her usual place standing exactly one step back and one step to the left, allowing Emma to speak about her morning and the various bits and things she was excited about- today was the date of her first modeling gig for one of the local teen oriented magazines- apparently she would be modeling some summer fashions and already had a whole line of outfits picked out. Taylor had known about it beforehand of course, since Emma had only been talking about it for the past three weeks with ever increasing enthusiasm.
Sadly, their time together was short, as they had to split up for classes- while Taylor did her level best to stay with Emma as much as possible at all hours, she wasn't quite capable of defeating the school system's methods for randomly assigning children to different teachers.
Seven and a half brutally boring hours later, punctuated only by a far too short lunch break that she spent mostly doing pre-preparations for Emma's photoshoot- brushing Emma's hair to a silky shine, making sure she brushed her teeth and flossed after eating, reassuring Emma that she wouldn't totally screw up and that as long as she did what the director said, she'd be fine, etc etc- it was finally time to leave school. Taylor, of course, joined Emma in Alan's car, sitting demurely in the back seat while Emma took the passenger seat. With ease of practice, she withdrew a small sealed lunchbox from one of her other skirt pockets (apparently it was called a bento box, but she mostly just used it for afterschool snacks) and opened it, sharing the slices of cheese and fruit within with Emma on the drive over to the studio.
The actual photoshoot was rather boring, all things considered. Taylor simply yawned behind one hand, standing off to the side and more or less staring off into space as Emma was posed and prodded by the photographer, sitting on various props with various backdrops as a few makeup artists occasionally touched up Emma's makeup to fit the shifting backdrops. There was a tasteful array of tanktops, shorts, dresses, skirts, jeans, and other summer clothes displayed. Alan had vetoed the swimwear for the most part, though the more demure pieces were allowed, if grudgingly.
Taylor didn't much like that photographer, now that she thought about it, but she couldn't do much about it at the moment, so she held her tongue.
Eventually, it all wrapped up- it had taken long enough that Taylor had plenty of time to do her homework in the intervening hours, and slipped more than enough notes into Emma's own homework folder that the other girl would be able to handle her homework just fine.
With a faintly growling stomach, the two girls parted ways- it was late now, and despite how much Taylor wished to sleep over, it was a Friday, and it was one of the days where she agreed to eat dinner at home with her parents instead of at the Barnes' house.
Her mother picked her up, driving along in the slightly battered sedan that her mother's parents had gotten for her a long, long time ago. As they drove home, they spoke easily and readily about how their days went, the interior of the car filled with light rock music from the radio and the sounds of the road and traffic. About halfway from the studio to home, Taylor picked up her mother's phone, answering it as it rang.
She spoke with her father over the phone, smiling gently as she recounted her day and reported that the two of them would be home for dinner soon.
The screeching of brakes and the loud blare of a semi truck horn drowned out the response.
Taylor screamed.
Everything went black.
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Oct 7, 2021
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The CyberQueen
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Oct 8, 2021
#74
Maid in Training 2.2
Annette Rose Hebert
1969-2008
She taught something precious to each of us.
Taylor stared in dull incomprehension at the sight before her, eyes flat and lifeless as she tried to formulate a word, a thought, a sound, anything. She shuddered mutely, fingers twitching against nothing. She swallowed thickly, her throat dry and parched to the point where all that could come out was a sickly, weak rasp.
The wheelchair beneath her creaked as she shifted her weight, wincing a bit as she pulled on the stitches that dotted half of her upper body, the casts on her right arm and leg tugging against what felt like raw skin. She took a deep breath and tried to think of something, anything.
It had been almost two months now, ever since she'd woken from her medically induced coma, ever since she'd found out about the news, ever since she'd been let out of the ICU, ever since she'd regained enough mobility to move around, ever since she'd come home to a house that was cold and all but empty, her once vibrant and loving father reduced to a broken shell of a man.
And her?
She was barely a person anymore. All she could feel was the gnawing pit of emptiness in her chest, that left chills running down her spine as her extremities grew numb from cold.
"Taylor?" Emma spoke softly, just loud enough to catch her attention. "... We… we don't have to be here, if you don't want…. W-we can go home…"
Home.
She thought back to her home, the creaky old building that she had lived in for her entire life. The first time she had stepped foot inside, when she could no longer hear the presence of her mother, when she couldn't feel her touch in every inch of the home, filling it with life and light… It was torturous. The house had felt cold, distant, even though her father was still there- he had all but drowned in his own despair, leaving everything to gather dust as he did his best to work himself to death.
She couldn't stay home anymore. She couldn't…. Couldn't live there anymore.
Not without the constant feeling of loss, not without constantly trying to call out to a mother who was by now long gone, unable to reach back ever again.
Taylor shook her head, hissing quietly as the sudden jerking stretched out the stitches again, wincing and gritting her teeth as she adjusted her glasses. Long, white hair fell down around her face like a halo- a permanent reminder of the day her mother died, and the so-called "miracle" that had left her barely clinging to life in the aftermath. According to the nurses who'd treated her after she woke up, she'd been saved somehow when the truck hit the car she'd been in.
They'd said that instead of taking fatal damage when the out of control semi-truck pushed their sedan into the traffic lights on the opposite side of the intersection, she'd somehow managed to… not. They'd found her on top of the crumpled roof of the car- still lacerated from flying glass, still with two broken ribs, still with organ damage and a shattered right arm and leg, but far more intact than she would have been given how the car had been all but folded around both the traffic light and the semi on the other side. By the time she'd woken up, the hair that the nurses had cut to remove some of the glass in her head had grown back, then the rest had swiftly turned white to follow. They said she was lucky, that if her injuries had been any worse she'd have been crippled for life.
Her mother wasn't so lucky.
They'd said that she wouldn't have had time to feel pain. That it had been instant.
Taylor didn't care what they said, trying to find some measure of silver lining in the unenviable task of telling a girl her mother had died in the same accident she survived. She just wanted her mom back.
She wanted her mom's lasagna, to hear her mom sing when she was cleaning, to settle in her lap at the end of a long day, to read over papers with her that she couldn't understand, to cook with her, to smile and play and hold her hands and-
Well.
Now all she could do was stare at a plot of dirt with a rock at the head.
She hadn't even made it to the funeral, she'd still been in the ICU, recovering from having a shard of glass as long as her finger nearly stabbed into one of her kidneys.
She swallowed thickly again, trying not to dwell on the roiling pit of emotions that threatened to drown her in a pit of despair so deep she would never crawl out again.
Taylor blinked slowly, clutching onto the pocket watch that had appeared in her hand- her mother's pocket watch, given to her years ago and lovingly cared for since. Her mother's pocket watch, now stopped forever at the exact time of the accident, the delicate gears within knocked out of alignment and the casing dented and battered.
"... Take your time," Emma whispered, gently closing Taylor's fingers around the watch and sighing. "It's okay. You've… you've been through a lot lately. And… I know…"
Emma sighed, watching the turmoil of emotions play out on her oldest, closest friend's face, swallowing her own emotions down as she kneeled down on the concrete path that made up the space between graves, holding Taylor's hands in her own as she struggled to find the right words.
Taylor remained silent, almost unseeing as she stared down past Emma, eyes still locked unerringly on the words etched upon her mother's headstone. She pursed her lips, clutching her free hand tight around Emma's own.
"... I don't… I can't know what you're going through right now," Emma started, her voice shuddering as she looked up at Taylor, thin tracks of tears now flowing from her eyes. "But I know how you feel. Your mom was like an aunt to me, a-and it's hard to imagine life without her at all. It still… I know it still feels like she's going to come pick us up at any moment, that it feels like she should still be here… I miss her too, Taylor… and… and I know I'm not… not that smart…. Or very good at dealing with emotions… but… I know how you feel. And… you should take as long as you need to. To… to come to terms with all of this. To work through it all. And… I know that you've been taking care of me since we were kids, since you started wanting to be my maid… but this time…"
Emma paused, taking a deep shuddering breath as she stood up, half bent over as she brought Taylor into a gentle, warm hug, bracing Taylor's head on her shoulder as she began to cry in earnest. "... this time let me take care of you."
And on an overcast Sunday afternoon in the middle of June, in the middle of the Brockton Bay General Cemetery…
Taylor broke down and cried.
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Oct 8, 2021
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The CyberQueen
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Oct 9, 2021
#115
Maid in Training 2.3
Middle school was a blur.
Life in general was a blur to Taylor these days, but school was even moreso. Her grades had slipped slightly, when she had been grieving, and those long months she'd spent buried beneath the covers in Emma's room, limbs slowly healing until she was back to normal again physically had left her precious little time for her usual activities.
She pressed her emotions down, gritting her teeth and moving forward with an inexorable drive to forget, to pretend as though she couldn't feel the sharp, painful loss of her mother gnawing away at her chest every time she thought about it.
Her father… her father was doing better these days, but he still fell through life with a stumbling, desolate malaise that sapped the energy from his movements and left him sluggish at best and inconsolable at worst.
She didn't go home much, if at all these days.
Taylor would have felt bad about it had her father not told her that, if being away from home made her happier, that if Emma helped her more than he could, then she should do what helped her the most.
And, in a way, he was right.
Taylor desperately did want to help her father of course, but she had no idea how- none of the maid training she'd done in the past few years had ever prepared her for the world shaking loss of her mother, and the subsequent near loss of her father to both work and alcohol alike.
Sometimes the only reason Taylor thought her father got out of bed in the mornings was because he knew that Kurt and Lacey would get on his case and physically drag him to work if he didn't get up on time.
She would know; Emma did much the same on her worse days. She'd had to spend much of her time in between seventh and eighth grade with Emma, after all, and even though she'd managed to complete her exams at the end of the year just barely in time to move up, there had still been some remedial work that she'd needed to do and the casts on her limbs had made writing difficult- and even if she had trained herself to be ambidextrous sometime in between fifth and sixth grade, it wasn't like she was capable of writing with her left hand anywhere near as elegantly or for as long as with her right.
Emma had spent much of her time in the summer helping her, there, and it almost burned how she had spent so much time leaning on Emma's shoulder if not for the fact that, at her mother's gravestone, so long ago, she'd promised herself, and promised Emma that she would let her friend help her.
To keep her from overburdening herself even in her half crippled state. To cry and ask for help whenever she was overwhelmed, no matter how much it burned to be unable to stand on her own.
Still, even with the casts and the crutches, Taylor had eventually proved herself more than capable of moving around and handling her daily activities even after only a few months. Sure, it still hurt a bit when she breathed, and sure she wished that she could heal herself faster, but she grit her teeth and kept moving anyway.
She'd spent far too long trying to recover, and her skills had begun to suffer as a result. So she practiced, even with her limbs recovering, she did her best to continue working, extending the breadth of her maid skills not only in terms of physical abilities, but in the more menial theory as well.
Which household cleaners went with what stains, books on sewing and weaving, etiquette books that she'd long since read until they were dog eared and smudged. If she couldn't do something physically, then she'd commit to helping as much as she could. Cooking, cleaning, repairing Emma's clothes when the other girl inevitably tore a new hole in her pants from tripping over her own feet trying to do the moves she learned in gymnastics class in jeans instead of a leotard, etc etc.
And, in a fit of boredom one day since Emma and Taylor shared a laptop and the wifi was much better at the Barnes' house than it ever was at the Hebert household, Taylor began a mild side hobby, one that she only really kept up when Emma was doing something else and wasn't using the laptop.
Capewatching.
Or more specifically, browsing through local and semi-local parahuman news- which gangs were prominent at what time, which capes had been sighted where, who was new to the Wards, who had moved on to the Protectorate, etc etc.
She kept up a decent PHO presence in that time as well, sometimes offering a comment or two on well thought out posts, or adding in a tidbit of information if she could find something that someone else had missed. Nothing serious, nowhere near enough to garner a reputation like some of the more prolific or terrible posters, but still.
It was a fun diversion from her normal duties and worries, and it was something easy she could do that wouldn't overly strain her healing body.
It was something easy she could do which would take her mind off of the keen loss she still felt sometimes, even when there was nothing nearby that could remind her of her mother.
Loss was never easy to deal with, the school counselor had said. Even the happiest and most successful people could still feel the crushing and deep pit of pain that came with losing a loved one- to know that no matter what they did they would never come back home, never hug them again, never do the things they loved. All Taylor could do was move on, the counselor had said. Move on, and in her own way, moving on day by day, trying to live each day to the fullest, the pain would ease on its own.
Certainly it would come back, it would never die out fully of course, but… Well.
Taylor was doing better than she had been before. And by the time the spring of 2009 rolled around, she was doing… well.
She wouldn't have said good, not by any means, but… she was doing better. Little by little, better in steps and starts. She took joy in the little things and the big things, tried to keep moving forward day by day.
It still hurt, and she knew it would always hurt, but… she visited her mother's grave every few weeks, when she could stomach it. Every time it got a little easier, a little less crushing.
Sometimes she could hold back from tearing up. Sometimes she could even smile.
Little by little, day by day, better one step at a time. Time ticked on, and so would she.
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Oct 9, 2021
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The CyberQueen
She/Her
Oct 10, 2021
#153
Maid in Training 2.4
"Hey Taylor?" Emma asked idly, poking through her lunch as she checked her after school schedule on her phone, swiping through her calendar and humming quietly as she double checked when her latest fashion shoot would be. "Are you gonna come with me today to the shoot or do you wanna go home first?"
Taylor blinked slowly from where she was sitting ever so slightly behind and to the right of Emma, the two of them enjoying a surprisingly clear and warm day near the end of May, right on the tail end of the semester. She mulled the words over in her mind, idly stretching her right hand and fighting the urge to pull out one of the myriad of hidden knives in her skirt as a fidgeting tool. With only a moment's delay, she spoke her response, "I have never once left your side in the past year, milady, why would today be any different?"
"... You know, I told you that calling me milady was weird two years ago," Emma sighed, rubbing her forehead as she leveled a long suffering glare at Taylor, who simply smiled serenely in response. After a bare moment, Emma rolled her eyes and let out a tiny huff of laughter before continuing on, scooping the last of her pasta salad into her mouth and swallowing so Taylor wouldn't get on her case about talking with her mouth full again. "Aaanyway, I just thought I'd be polite n' ask, since you're still not used to standing around for hours at a time anymore even now that your casts are off."
Taylor just made the slightest of shrugs, her movements slow and measured with only the slightest of trembles in her right arm as she reached up with a handkerchief and wiped Emma's mouth before reaching into her own lunchbox and swapping out Emma's now mostly empty tupperware for a smaller tupperware container full of assorted fruits, as well as switching out her dirty plastic fork for a clean one.
"I will manage," Taylor spoke easily, packing away the tupperware and folding the fork into a paper napkin for later disposal. "Just as I have every other time."
"The last time we were at a shoot together, you had to leave and sit in Dad's car after barely a half hour because your leg almost gave out," Emma retorted, rolling her eyes at Taylor's bravado. Honestly, just because Taylor wanted to be the perfect ideal of a modernized Victorian era maid, didn't mean that she would actually end up being one- nor did it mean she should push herself so hard even when she was still feeling the effects of the accident that had nearly crippled her, physically and emotionally.
Emma would never say it out loud, but she missed those halcyon days back when she and Taylor were both in their single digit ages, and their playdates were filled with the sounds of Taylor chattering away about every story she could get her hands on. Nowadays, the white haired girl was… well, not sullen or silent, but, well.
It just wasn't the same.
Parts of it was just that Taylor took her vow of not speaking unless spoken to way too seriously for someone who wasn't even formally employed as a maid- that, Emma knew all too well, but sometimes, when Taylor thought she wasn't watching, or when the stresses of the day were just a little too much, or on those unfortunate weeks where Taylor and her dad visited Auntie Annette's grave, Taylor's usual mysterious silence would lapse into something… rougher. Harsh. Closed off, lest a wave of negativity pour forth in an all consuming flood.
Emma did her best to be there for Taylor, but honestly it was… hard. She did her best, but sometimes it wasn't enough, and even though Taylor was smiling and seemed pretty happy now… Emma still worried.
"-mma? We're going to be late for class," Taylor's voice cut into her thoughts and shook Emma from her reverie. "You still haven't finished your fruit- should I save it for later?"
"Huh? Oh- I was… lost in thought. Gimme a sec," Emma responded, noting down the time on her phone with an awkward flush. She idly brushed Taylor's hand from her shoulder and finished her fruit salad, swallowing thickly right as the warning bell for the end of their lunch period rang.
Emma stood as Taylor cleaned up, brushing stray grass and dirt from her jeans and taking a good, long look at the schoolyard around them. Suddenly struck with a strange feeling of ennui, she frowned and let out a huff of breath, shoving her phone into her pocket as she headed towards the school building to fetch her books for her next class.
"... It's kinda weird that in a few weeks, we'll probably never see this place again," she murmured, not really expecting Taylor to answer- the other girl didn't have the same afternoon classes as her, and her locker was quite a bit further down the hall than Emma's, so she usually made a quick detour first before they went their separate ways.
"... It will be strange, yes, but I do not think it will be unwelcome," Taylor responded idly, patting Emma's shoulder with one hand before starting to turn away, heading to her own locker after walking Emma to her own. "High school will be fun, I think."
"Or hell," Emma deadpanned, sighing quietly as she watched Taylor turn and leave.
As she retrieved her books and headed to her next class, she shook her head, driving the heavy thoughts from her mind- worrying about things was Taylor's job (or, so the taller girl said), and all she had to do was get through the day, do her photoshoot, and then go home with Taylor and do her homework, and then she and Taylor could watch cheesy romcoms and terrible B-movies until they had to go to bed.
Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.
Still, that meant that she had to not only get through fifth period algebra, but also sixth period social studies, and then wait for her mom to drive her to the photoshoot place with Taylor, and then- well.
All the other stuff she had to do, plus all that ridiculous stuff that Taylor did as "maid" practice (most of which Emma was pretty sure was just Taylor trying to look cool to make up for the fact that she dressed entirely in what was basically just toned down maid cosplay these days) that took up like, two or three hours every night.
How the fuck Taylor found time to practice knife throwing, sewing, flute playing, self defense, and then also help Emma's mom cook dinner, dust most of the house, do her homework, watch a movie with Emma, and then go to bed at 11 pm sharp so she could wake up at six in the morning really did not compute to Emma.
Then again, Taylor was kind of nuts like that, so Emma just thanked her lucky stars that Taylor still spent most of her time at Emma's side even with that kind of workload.
The girl was honestly a lifesaver- god knows what would have happened to her GPA if Taylor wasn't constantly looking over her shoulder.
Emma smiled softly as she doodled in the margins of her notebook, only mostly paying attention to the teacher as he droned on and on about functions or something.
She couldn't wait for the day to end.
748
Jsyrin
Oct 10, 2021
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Jsyrin
Jsyrin
The CyberQueen
She/Her
Oct 11, 2021
#196
Maid in Training 2.5
July twenty sixth, 2009 was a day that started off like any other. Taylor woke up early in the morning at the crack of dawn, yawned, stretched, rolled out of her bed in what used to be the Barnes' guest room but was now more or less entirely hers, and immediately began doing a set of light stretches to wake herself up. After five minutes of her morning routine, she rolled her shoulders, looked into the mirror mounted upon her closet door, and teased her shining white curls of hair into something a bit more presentable- a short braid in the back, with two braided strands framing her face and tied off with a pair of green hair ties. After examining herself and frowning at the slightly faded scars on her torso for a few seconds, she shrugged, grabbed her outfit for the day from the closet (a durable, custom made maid uniform that she had put together herself, with some fashion advice from Emma), draped her clothes over the back of her desk chair, and quietly went downstairs in her nightshirt and shorts for her morning practice.
As she crept down the stairs, she smoothly avoided the few creaky steps on the carpeted stairs and made no noise whatsoever as she opened the door to the backyard. The Barnes' backyard had changed much since Taylor all but moved into the house, with Taylor having torn apart most of her ad hoc knife training range and turned it into a more compact area that almost resembled a shooting range, mixed with a few mats set out for her self defense practice (she was still self taught on that front, but she seemed to pick up the movements quite easily, in her estimation at least). With a quiet sigh of focus, Taylor withdrew one of her myriad sets of knives from the chest fixed to the side of the throwing range, ignoring the slight chill that still crept into the morning air even in the middle of summer and closing her eyes as she focused. As she closed her eyes, the freshly sharpened knives flew from her hands in clusters- the batch of knives she was currently using had been more or less hand made over the past year, with Emma's father having helped her make some simple, bare bones knives using the angle grinder and belt sander in the garage, as well as bunch of spare scrap steel that her own father had managed to pull from some junkyard or another, handles wrapped in lengths of cheap paracord superglued and melted into place. Despite their shoddy construction, they flew from her hands in the same bullet straight lines as all her other knives did, and Taylor simply allowed them to go where they would, hearing the thunking blades biting deep into wooden targets until she finally ran dry of the nearly three hundred knives stored within the chest.
Taylor smiled in self satisfaction as she picked up the knives- clearly, her blind practice was finally back up to snuff given that every single knife had struck well within the bullseye rings on each target. Now, if she had moving targets… well, she supposed that would have been even better practice for her knife throwing skills.
But alas, that would have to wait for another day. Maybe if her father found some motors...
With smooth, practiced motions, Taylor swiftly collected her knives once again, gave them a cursory sharpening, returned them to their proper places in her ridiculously filled knife chest, and strode back up the stairs for her morning shower. After a brisk fifteen minutes, Taylor returned to her room, toweling the last of the dampness from her hair and getting dressed with quick, easy motions. As soon as she set down her towel and grabbed her brush, the clock struck seven am. Exactly on time. Just like always.
Her hair was brushed within five minutes, and she made her way down to the kitchen to get started on breakfast. None of Emma's family was quite up just yet, as much as Taylor would have liked them to be just so she could have someone to talk to instead of cooking alone in the Barnes' kitchen. But alas, Emma never got up until at least ten o' clock during the summer (unless Taylor bodily pulled her out of bed), and neither Alan nor Zoe had to be at work until nine- and their commutes were never very long anyway. None of that mattered, though, since today was Sunday. And the less said about Anne's sleeping habits the better.
College sure was rough, if it left Anne sleeping in until one in the afternoon even during the summer.
Taylor quickly prepared breakfast with the ease of long practice- the Barnes' kitchen may have had a different layout than her own home and both a higher quality and quantity of ingredients, but she had been more or less living there for nearly a year now all the same. With the ease of long practice, and the help of Zoe Barnes' collection of recipe books, she quickly mixed up a worthy breakfast for the day- a stack of blueberry pancakes with raspberry jam and maple syrup, hashbrowns and sausage patties, ham and cheese omelets, along with orange juice and coffee for everyone. The extra ingredients that the Barnes' could afford sure made making more interesting breakfasts easier, Taylor thought- she'd have never used half the spices that Zoe stocked the kitchen with before she started cooking at the Barnes household. As she set out the plates, she tilted her head ever so slightly- as soon as the wall clock struck eight thirty, she heard Zoe Barnes slide out of bed and into the shower. Alan seemed to wake up a bit later than his wife on weekends, but Taylor didn't much care what the two adults did except where it directly involved her.
As soon as she heard the two adults of the house start to come down the stairs, she set out four places at the kitchen table- she'd already eaten whilst waiting, of course- and took the assorted foods from where they had been keeping warm in the oven, plating them up in an artfully decorative manner before slipping out of the kitchen and taking a slightly circuitous route through the living room such that she could move back upstairs without the older Barnes' seeing her.
She wasn't avoiding them, technically, but the duty of a servant was to be neither seen nor heard by the masters of the house, and it was good practice for her stealth skills anyway, which was always a plus.
There was also maybe the fact that sometimes Zoe and Alan would look at her with this heartbreakingly awful glance, as if they were trying to make her remember that- well.
She pushed those thoughts down and instead of dwelling on the things in her past, she slipped silently up the stairs and into Emma's room. Before waking Emma, Taylor did a quick sweep around the room- tidying up a bit of laundry that she removed for later washing, making sure some of the old toys that Emma still played with were correctly put into their proper place, and that her desk was neatened up a bit from the mess that Emma seemed to always leave it in, even in the middle of summer vacation.
Part of it was probably just that Emma liked eating snacks at her desk. Another was that Emma would always leave random books strewn about if she got bored of reading. And another part was just that Emma couldn't manage power cables worth shit and somehow always managed to mess up Taylor's nice, neat system and wouldn't let Taylor just ziptie the damn cables to the table leg to keep them out of the way.
Taylor just shrugged, put the books in their proper place, swept the crumbs into the trash can, and, with a bit of a glance around to make sure that Emma's room was tidy enough, summarily delivered a series of rapid taps to Emma's face to wake her up.
"Wake up. Wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wake u-" Taylor deadpanned, keeping a perfectly flat, dead expression on her face as Emma flailed about to escape the assault on her cheek.
"Guh- pht ack!" Emma immediately began flailing after only a few slaps, turning and shielding herself from Taylor's constant slapping and rolling out of bed with a terrible case of bedhead and a heavy, drowsy glare. "Alright alright! I'm up already! Jeez!"
"Breakfast is on the table," Taylor explained casually, answering the unspoken question of why in god's name Emma had been woken before noon in the middle of summer vacation. She smiled ever so slightly as Emma stumbled out of bed, swiftly sweeping around behind the other girl as Emma got dressed (technically speaking, Victorian maids were supposed to help their ladies get dressed but Emma refused to stoop to that level- especially since clothes were so easy to put on these days) and made Emma's bed with quick, sweeping motions and a gentle fluffing of all six pillows perched precariously upon the full sized mattress.
As Emma finally staggered herself out of her room and down the stairs, Taylor finished re-setting all of Emma's myriad stuffed animals into their proper places with a deft hand, fighting off a quick moment of disassociation as she fell into step behind Emma (when had Emma gotten so far down the hall, and how did Taylor not remember walking out the door or closing it behind her as she followed behind?) and finally stood to the side behind her friend (Lady, technically, but neither Alan nor Zoe had formally hired her yet and wouldn't until she was fifteen, which she kind of hated but since her father had agreed, she couldn't fight that decision) and waited for the Barnes' to finish breakfast.
There was idle conversation for the better part of an hour- none of which Taylor involved herself with except when asked directly (a Maid would not speak unless spoken to, as the rule went)- after which she swiftly set the dirtied dishes into the sink and set about washing up, while Zoe went off for her weekly yoga session/ zumba workout at the nearby women's gym, Alan sat back in the living room with the day's newspaper (when had Taylor found the time to retrieve the morning mail and set it on Alan's reading chair?) and Emma headed upstairs to actually get herself more presentable for the day- taking a shower now that she'd had her fill of breakfast.
Taylor privately thought it would have been better to go down to breakfast in pajamas than get dressed and then shower, but Emma did as she did, and Taylor wouldn't stop her.
After some muddling around and general waiting and playing (Emma putting up a valiant effort against Taylor in a few rounds of chess, Taylor flailing pathetically against Emma's mad skillz in Kung Fu Barbie Rainbow Fighter 4: Tournament of Doom), Alan finally got up and called the two of them downstairs around noon- since Zoe was going to stay out with her mom-friends for most of the day, Alan would take Taylor and Emma out for lunch and some shopping at the mall before stopping by Taylor's house so she could visit her father.
The two girls piled into Alan's car with bright smiles, Emma chattering on about how she'd read all about the best styles for August and how she wanted to try and see how she looked in goth fashion, while Taylor simply smiled serenely and nodded along to Emma's words (she'd begun embroidering at some point during the ride, already halfway through a beautiful design of sparkling rainbow gems without realising yet again- she could have sworn she'd left her embroidering supplies in the sitting room…) as the car pulled through the crowded afternoon streets towards the sort of middling area between the north-side suburbs and the downtown area proper.
Taylor paused as she looked up, frowning ever so slightly as Alan cursed lightly, turning onto a sidestreet as the afternoon traffic jammed up even worse than normal -there'd been some reports about a cape fight near one of the bigger malls involving New Wave's newest (youngest?) member on PHO, so Taylor supposed it made sense the streets were a bit backed up- especially if it had spilled out into the surrounding area.
A prickling wrongness overtook Taylor's senses as Alan turned into a side street that was more like a wide-ish alleyway between two shops. Distantly, she thought she heard the sound of a horn- of a ringing cellphone, of a ticking clock.
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
Tick
There was a dumpster blocking the end of the alley.
Tock
Tock
Tock
Tock
Tock
There were ABB gang tags all over the walls.
Tick
Tock
Tick
Tock
Tick
There were people surrounding the car, beating at the windows, pulling at the doors, breaking through the glass, pulling them out of the car, pulling pulling pulling, grabbing and tearing and yelling- screaming, screaming- Emma! There was blood staining the shattered glass, scratches and cuts from the shards falling everywhere.
Emma!
Emma!
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock-
Taylor saw the glint of a knife.
A shadowed figure on a rooftop.
Emma, screaming in fear as everything seemed to shatter all at once and-
Click.
The world froze.
Last edited: Oct 11, 2021
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Jsyrin
Oct 11, 2021
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