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The first time Ange sees the inside of a palace, it’s like her dreams have coalesced into something impossibly and wonderfully tangible. She runs her small, grubby hands along the walls as she trails Charlotte, just to remind herself the place is really there as she goes. It’s better than she dreamed. Maze-like, airy, and enormous. Warm, with roaring fires in every grate and no worrying about where to find wood or kindling. She doesn’t even need to wear her threadbare, overlarge coat inside. Food is absolutely endless. Charlotte watches her devour everything she puts in front of her, eyes wide and curious.
The second time Ange sees the inside of a palace, she barely recognizes it.
The old palace has burned. This one is a smaller one, nestled farther west in the city, not that it’s small by any means. It has the same opulence to it, the same plush carpets in the halls, the same impossibly high ceilings. But the beauty of the place has twisted into something sinister for Ange as guards carry her down the hallway, seemingly deaf to her hysterics. They deposit her in what must be Charlotte’s room here, murmuring words that are supposed to be soothing but turn poisonous to her. She tries to run. Run out of the palace because even the five minutes she’s spent here is treasonous and dangerous. Run because Charlotte’s huddled form is still back at the other palace, strewn amongst rubble, and Ange is the only one who knows it. She’ll die if Ange doesn’t leave. She may be dead already. But they’re faster. They lock her in, tell her it’s for her own good, and leave her there to cry alone, hurrying off to secure this new stronghold.
As she sits in a room that should be lush and luxurious to her and feels like a cell instead, there’s a dark chasm that Charlotte’s absence has made. It weighs on her, this horror that Ange doesn’t know if she’s even alive. The sinking realization that, even if she is, the chance that she’ll stay alive in the cold and hungry world Ange comes from is slim.
Ange cries and wonders if any of it was ever truly beautiful or if it was just because Charlotte was there to explain the unending intricacies of this world. Or maybe it was just Charlotte’s presence in itself that made it lovely. Her curiousness, her giggle, the little bit of sadness in her eyes and her small hand laced with Ange’s as they ran, breathless, down endless hallways.
The fires aren’t pleasantly warm anymore. They burn too hot and make her sweat. She never thought there would be a day that she wouldn’t have an appetite. She can eat anytime she likes, whatever she likes, but she can’t will herself to stomach more than the bare minimum. Even what little is required to keep her alive has a way of making its way back up.
How disappointing it is, she thinks, that she got what she wanted and that it rings so hollow now. She used to dream of fantastical situations that would put her somewhere beautiful where the cruel ache of snow and the burn of hunger can’t reach her. Now, that pretty dream has been replaced with food that won’t stay in her stomach no matter how hard she tries and with a sweltering heat that suffocates.
She should have known. A truly worry-free life is something one can only be born into.
Survival here will never be as beautiful as she thought. But Ange has always carried with her a brutally thorough understanding that survival for her will never be pretty. Survival is a frantic compulsion, a drive that’s more than a little insane that won’t leave her. At least that makes her uniquely suited to something like this, this day-to-day drudgery that little Charlotte seemed so ill-equipped for. She always had a distance to her, a listlessness that Ange could never understand. Life on the streets doesn’t lend itself to listlessness. Her troubles were always of a flurried and chaotic sort, no time to rest, no time to think. Time only for hurried action.
Ange has always wanted to know how to read and write. Charlotte taught her a few letters, but she doesn’t know how to string them together to make words. During her first lesson, all she can think is how keenly she wants to run out of the room when her tutor asks her what’s gotten into her and why she refuses to read today. She tries mightily to get her to read aloud to her. Ange doesn’t know what else to do but memorize the red cover of this book in hopes she can find it later. She memorizes the words her tutor repeats too, hoping that maybe she’ll understand what the letters are supposed to sound like together in time. She doesn’t understand in time for the lesson to end, but she’s lucky enough that they dismiss it today.
“She won’t do a thing. Overcome with grief, I think,” her teacher shakes her head, grim. Mrs. Crawford, the woman that is tasked with caring for her, nods.
“Yes, of course, she is. Poor dear.”
Pity saved her for a day. But it’s a terribly short-lived thing and Charlotte knows they won’t pity her for long. It’ll sour, turning warmth into derision, smiles into a cold clench of the jaw and averted eyes. Pity fed her when she was small enough to still garner it. Afterward, she had to abandon it in favor of the quickness of her own feet and how many tricks she could learn to get into the purses of wealthy men without being seen.
There are new things to steal here, but these are old tricks.
Ange knows how to lie flat on the floor to watch the shadows of passing feet in the line of space between the door and the floor. She used to do the same thing when her guardian decided she hadn’t worked enough to eat that day. She knows how to sneak down the hall once she’s learned the patrol pattern and slip into to the library to steal the book her teacher works from like she used to steal food from the kitchen. She remembers that if you’re unlucky and someone passes you, eyes don’t adjust well in the dark if you just stay still. Sometimes, if your luck takes a turn for the better, they’ll pass right by you and never notice. The browns and grays she used to wear blended into filthy, soot-stained streets. The white she wears now would have meant the gallows for her trying to pick pockets on the street, but here in airy, white-washed walls, it’s its own camouflage.
She remembers the few sentences her tutor read to her in frustration to try and encourage her to read before giving up on her. She mouths them over and over to try and parse out the similarities and differences, trying to match the letters to the sounds, trying to parcel out why this one sounds a certain way in one word and a different way in another. She traces the shapes of them over and over with her pen.
She studies these letters and their sounds for so long they start to shift in the moonlight she studies from, a familiar sight that looks more foreign the longer it’s examined. When the letters start to warp, she remembers Charlotte cheerily pointing them out to her, their small hands touching each of them together in turn. Memories of Charlotte don’t make the swimming letters any clearer, but they do make the bitter work of understanding them a little lighter. Her patient voice explaining that Ange starts with the letter ‘a’. Trying to teach her to spell her name. Memories of the instant that a letter started to look familiar and she couldn’t remember when it had ever looked strange to her.
She barely sleeps in the week off they give her between lessons, only for an hour or so each night. Ange always sleeps just as the sky’s deep blue turns to a cold grey so she won’t sleep too long. Once the sun is visible, she has to study again.
She gets past the first sentence during her next lesson. It’s halting and stilted, but enough. The bruise-like circles under her eyes either go unnoticed by her tutor and Mrs. Crawford or they’re uncaring now, only two weeks after the people who were supposed to be her parents died.
Pity always sours eventually.
There are new tricks to learn, too. As soon as Ange starts to understand one task, the bar is raised and there’s another one in its place.
“Charlotte, darling,” they approach her with that tight smile that’s supposed to disarm her but raises the hair on the back of her neck instead. “We think it’s time for you to start back with your music lessons.”
Ange has tried to play the piano before, with Charlotte. She was never good, but she remembers the tune and the way Charlotte’s hands knew where to go as if by magic.
She learns that the ring of a piano key is too piercing in the still silence of the night and that the staff will chastise her for trying to play past curfew. They’ll burst into the room to yank her away from the keys, tell her it's bedtime, and let her know that she mustn’t be caught out of bed again. She remembers one of the older girls who lived with her on the other side of the wall. She worked in a factory that made pianos. Ange asked her once how they worked, what made them make music, and she told her that they’re made with strings.
She opens the lid and finds that the girl was right. There are rows and rows of taught strings there. She learns that draping a heavy blanket across piano strings, and another on top of the closed lid, dampens sound enough for her to practice in the cavernous place that is her room now.
She remembers the little song Charlotte played on the tiny practice piano in her old room. Charlotte tried to teach her to play it properly, but Ange forgot where to put her hands almost as soon as she explained it. She pretended to play along, giggling, often without pressing the keys. Sometimes Charlotte noticed and showed her again, pushing her to try to play. Sometimes she didn’t and Ange was grateful to hear the song without her clumsiness marring it. The song was too delicate and too pretty. It wouldn’t have done to disturb it.
Now she has to try and resurrect it. She goes by the sheet music that’s there, a copy of the same little practice book Charlotte clearly used whenever she was here. Her writing is still there. So are the same notes she used to read with an ease that seemed impossible to Ange. She remembers this song on the heavy and still nights that she’s awake, battling a fatigue so torturous that sometimes she wishes they would find out just so she wouldn't have to do it any longer.
She learns it by ear, pressing each key in turn until she finds the right one. It becomes a lifeline to her, this tangible memory of her, the only one she has. This knowledge that she traces the same patterns across the keys that Charlotte did is a small comfort in an ocean of troubles. She learns how to press them fluidly, familiarizing herself with the texture of smooth ivory. How to play them so softly the sound is more whisper than anything else, and how to play them with a strength that bounds across the room when the blankets are taken away.
Ange fights sleep and plays if only so she might see her again if she’s out there. She plays so that she might be able to accomplish the flurried ambitions Charlotte confessed to her with a trembling voice and hands clasped around hers in the moments just before she lost her. Her frantic hope that one day this city could be something different.
Only princesses can topple walls. If she’s to see her again, she’ll have to become one.
So Ange plays the same line, again and again, perfecting it so that it sounds as smooth and delicate as Charlotte’s rendition. She learns what notes correspond to each key, memorizing them and praying her facade is seamless enough that maybe one day she might have the power to break down this horrible wall that’s fractured this city and kidnapped her and taken little Charlotte from her. She spends her nights playing strange and familiar notes on the piano, reading until her fatigued eyes make the words wriggle in the flicker of candlelight, dancing alone. All for the hope that one day she might have power enough that other little girls like her will know neither the biting cruelty of hunger nor the suffocating heat of pretending to be something you’re not. All for the hope that one day she might find Charlotte again if she lived.
Even after she moves on to play other, more intricate songs, she always comes back to this one.
Ange has always wanted to know what it would be like to have a family. She never knew her parents. Even now, she doesn’t know the people who were Charlotte’s parents, though she goes through facades of grief for them every day.
Here there are ways to remember lost family, palaces and museums filled with their centuries-old portraits, large enough to fill entire rooms. There are books of discussion about their lineage in which academics argue about their conflicts and wars and the importance of blood. She doesn’t know the people who are supposed to be her late parents, but she knows their faces. They’re everywhere, immortalized and beautiful and never forgotten the way Ange’s parents were. Photographs and paintings are for those who can afford to remember.
The only person who’s absent here is Charlotte. It isn’t lost on Ange how cruel it is that the one person she wants to remember isn’t in these vast galleries. She wishes she could come in here and see her face immortalized too and remember that she existed once. The muted smile she always wore when they were together. The blue eyes that looked so much like her own except with a little gray mixed in.
How cruel that she’s gotten everything she always wanted as a child and doesn’t want it now. She wonders if it’s normal that the fantasies of childhood fall apart or if it’s just her. Either way, all she knows is that she would give it all up just to see her again. How horrible that every last piece of finery she has isn’t enough to bring her back even if it’s the only thing she’s wanted since the day she lost her.
She can’t tell whether to be glad or sick the day she realizes she responds automatically to her new name now, no split-second delay, no foreign feeling in the set of it in someone else’s mouth. Her old name fades for her, sounds less like it fits every day. Charlotte is the one that’s familiar now. It’s even the one she thinks of when she thinks of herself.
Other things fade too, old habits replaced with new knowledge. What it’s like to flatten herself against walls and steal with bated breath into rooms she’s not allowed in starts to slip from her grasp. She knows a different kind of stealth now, one that allows her to slip into places in plain sight. Her quickness has been traded for agility of the mind and tongue, wide and forlorn eyes that inspired pity traded for charming and understated smiles that inspire respect.
There are times of uncertainty still. Times she scares the horse she’s riding on and nearly topples off, perched precariously sidesaddle, terrified of injuries to both her person and reputation. Moments she misjudges how charming a certain turn of phrase will be. Times her waltz falters for a moment and it takes her longer than it should to find the rhythm again. Days where the panic and looming threat of the gallows if anyone ever finds out overtakes her. She still can’t keep down food sometimes.
These are fewer and fewer with passing years, though. Charlotte is her own cruelest critic and slip-ups are punished with back-breaking work and even less sleep than the few hours she normally gives herself.
She gives up on ever seeing the real Charlotte again. As she ages and understands more about her place in a world she was never meant to belong in, the more she understands that toppling the wall that splits this city will mean her death. Her chances of taking the throne without deception are slim. The chances that her actions will be interpreted as anything less than treasonous if she does indeed attempt to break the barrier between the Kingdom and Commonwealth are even slimmer.
She still dreams of her sometimes, though, as if her heart is still holding on to something that her mind has long since given up. She dreams of their giggling, in matching outfits, playing tricks on Mrs. Crawford. It’s one of her only bright memories, something she clings to on nights that sleep won’t come, like the little song she knows by heart now. Sometimes she even dreams of what she might look like now if she lived.
Dreams of her have a melancholy sweetness to them, elation at the idea that she might’ve survived and that she might see her again and a heavy shame that there are probably hollows in her cheeks like the ones she used to have. Those are gone now. So are the calluses on her hands. They’ve faded into silken softness and the scars across them have turned white and aren’t replaced with any new ones.
She’s at a ball of all places when it happens. Charlotte always imagined that, if she saw her again, it would be in more dire circumstances. In a pile of rubble like the day they were torn from each other. As a witness in the crowd that will flock to her execution that grows more and more likely by the day.
Instead, she walks up to her in the middle of a formal function she certainly hasn’t been invited to and introduces herself as Ange. They come back to her, this name she didn’t know she missed until she heard it again and this girl whose eyes have never left her.
She needn’t have confirmed who she was with the note she gave her after spilling her drink down the front of Charlotte’s dress. It wouldn’t matter how long they were apart and how much age changed them. She would know her always.
The only thing that Charlotte anticipated correctly in her dreams of finding her is this mix of sweetness and bitterness. The elation of seeing her again is cut when it’s clear that the sweet, albeit bumbling, personality she carried at the ball is a farce. Charlotte suspected it was, but its clinical replacement is harrowing. This is both the same girl she’s wanted to see again for a decade and a stranger she doesn’t recognize. There is softness in her still like Charlotte remembers, but it’s difficult to see, buried thoroughly by a bitterness and rigidity that she knows were necessary for her to survive. It’s been a long time since Charlotte went without food or slept on snowy streets, but she knows well that the scar it leaves never disappears.
This impossible happiness that she’s found her is cut again, deeply, the first time Charlotte watches her take aim and lodge a bullet into a man with no hesitation. She’s never learned to shoot, but she knows the kinds of cruelty that teach arts like these. Numbing cold, burning hunger, all-consuming fear. Averted eyes that either can’t help or refuse to. Charlotte can’t keep anything down that night, knowing that the things she would never have wished on her worst enemy are the things she brought upon one of the only people she’s ever cared for.
But there are times she still sees her as she once was, particularly the day Ange brings her to the rooftop of the school and tells her she wants her to leave with her.
It’s the exact kind of thing she used to imagine when they were small. Charlotte has always thought she had a vivid and beautiful imagination. She used to listen to her stories and thoughts with rapt attention, marveling at how could see such possibility in things.
It’s such a pretty sentiment. Running away somewhere warm, beyond the reaches of this empire that has too much blood on its hands. Laughing with her the way they did when they were young, unaware of any looming threat. Escaping this city that stole their lives from them and never deserved it.
She’s so happy to see a playful and hopeful light in her eyes like the one she remembers. It’s a relief to see that this is indeed her, this is the same girl under all of the angles, harsh words, and harsher actions.
If she were still a child, she would run to Casablanca with her with no question. She wants so badly to entertain it, to believe that a pretty idea is enough. But there’s a memory of Ange’s hands curled around a revolver in a way that’s too practiced and it won’t leave Charlotte.
She’s learned once that a worry-free life isn’t possible for her. It won’t do to make the same mistake again. Things that seem too beautiful to be true always fall apart in the end.
She can’t leave and give up the only chance she has at making sure another girl like her never has to suffer the way they both have. What an insult it would be to everyone who’s ever suffered like her to leave when she knows intimately well how little this place cares about people like her. How horrible she would be to abandon this place having witnessed how casually it casts aside lives. She would be despicable to leave when she may be the only person in a century with real power who cares enough to do anything with it.
Even barring that, how can she leave when she couldn’t even save the girl standing here in front of her?
Ange accepts and tells her she’ll stay here and help her take the throne, but there’s a note of fragility in her eyes when she says it, no matter how hard she squares her shoulders.
As horrible as Charlotte feels for insisting on staying, it’s a strange and welcome feeling to have help. She’s been largely alone for the entire decade since she lost Ange. She had Beatrice for a few years, but even her friendship with her had a distance to it that she couldn’t fill. She couldn’t tell her that her perfectionism was treason in disguise and implicate them both.
Charlotte never thought she’d have an entire team of people not only willing but eager to help her lie, cheat, and steal her way to power. Even shy little Beatrice, who’s never so much as cheated on a test, dives head-first into a danger she doesn’t even understand.
And then there’s Ange, who so clearly wants to run with her and never look back. Instead, she stays here in the jaws of a city she could’ve escaped long ago to help her.
Funny, that Charlotte has always frantically wondered how she’d be able to usurp the throne with so many obstacles and that it’s, ultimately, the real princess helping her steal her rightful title for herself. She thinks that should make her feel better, that the real princess has no problems giving her title over to her. But Charlotte has also learned that the way things should be and the way they are have a strange way of opposing one another.
If anything, Ange’s presence makes Charlotte nervous, not that she shows it. She’s learned well how to smother any fears that aren’t convenient or pertinent, how to cast aside uncertainty and doubt.
She can ignore most of it, but she can’t ignore the way that Ange insists on calling her “Princess.” The word has always sent a hot tension up her spine, a desert dryness to her mouth. Heavy knowledge that she isn’t what people think she is, that her performance could have disastrous consequences for her and for anyone like her.
Princess has always bothered her, but hearing it come from Ange’s mouth stings more sharply than if she outright slapped her. Watching her look at her with critical eyes, eyes that look like the Queen’s for whom Charlotte’s been playing granddaughter for a decade. Watching her delicately tuck a strand of hair behind her ear that’s the exact shade of the Duke of Normandy’s, the same man who’s been watching them, hawk-like and calculating.
It all compounds to remind Charlotte that she may fool everyone else, but she can’t fool the real Princess.
After days of this, Charlotte decides to ask her, in a quiet moment they have together by themselves. They’re changing into each other’s clothes, getting ready to play one another to spy on Lord O’Reilly. Charlotte would ordinarily be excited to be able to leave the palace and contribute, but Ange’s calling her Princess has dampened it.
“Why do you call me Princess?” she asks, not bothering to conceal the trace of hurt in her voice. Ange sees through her already. There’s no point in maintaining the farce around her.
“That’s the custom on the Black Lizard Planet.”
This is something she never dealt with in her dreams of seeing her again. Things were always happy in those dreams, if not a little bittersweet. Dreams didn’t prepare her for these moments of outright bitterness. The pain of having to watch the kind, albeit sad, girl she knew lie to her through her teeth. What it would be like to hear the girl she’s been pretending to be use the title she had to take on in her place as a weapon.
Charlotte never loses her temper anymore. She’s been training for a decade to take even outright threats to her life in stride. But there’s something about this girl that breaks down her composure so thoroughly it’s as if none of the training she’s undergone ever happened at all.
“Give me a real answer!” she snaps.
The question rings in the space the way a lone piano note pierced the silence the first night she tried to practice alone in her room. It’s a sound that shouldn’t have been there, too loud and too desperate, and she regrets it as soon as it escapes. It’s everything she’s tried to stop being and stop doing since she arrived on this side of the wall. The messiness of it, of this moment, will do nothing to convince her that she’s a proper princess.
Ange starts and looks away from her. She ducks her head instead, examining the carpet underneath their shoes.
“Don’t worry. I don’t mean it sarcastically.”
“Then why?” Charlotte asks her, voice little more than a low waver, embarrassed by her outburst and hurt at the implication.
“It’s simply out of respect.”
Charlotte smiles wanly as Ange avoids looking at her.
“Respect?” she repeats and something about the tone makes Ange start.
“You still think I’m being sarcastic,” she tells her, muted and surprised.
“Hearing you call me a title that’s rightfully yours and telling me it’s out of respect rings a little hollow, yes.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not trying to tease you. I mean it sincerely,” she sighs and looks at her. The way Ange looks at her now is usually a far cry from the way she did as a child. Quick and avoidant, never more than a few seconds before her eyes are elsewhere, darting around the space as if waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But now she looks at her, really looks at her, for the first time since Charlotte told her she wouldn’t run away with her. Many things have changed about Ange, least of all her name. But the mournful note in her gray-blue eyes hasn’t left, Charlotte finds. The way they share this stolen moment from a world that didn’t want to give it to them hasn’t changed either. Two girls who shouldn’t have known each other and found each other anyway. A lost sadness in one set of eyes, a flurried panic in the other, and the way they try to understand. They way they love that someone tries to understand, even if she ultimately fails, in a world that otherwise has dismissed them.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte tells her, with none of the falsehood her apologies and assurances would usually have. This isn’t a reflex of politeness. It’s quiet and vulnerable and true. “I shouldn’t have assumed you were criticizing me. It’s difficult.”
She doesn’t explain what’s difficult. The years of having to read the subtlest hints of danger in every word and every look sent her way. Never having slept through the night once in her life. Constant threats looming in every corner of every room. Side-cast glances that could be innocuous or could be deadly. Ange already understands.
“I know,” she answers, near-silent as she fastens the buttons on Charlotte’s shirt that she wears now. They go about changing into one another’s clothes for another moment and say nothing.
“I don’t know if you realize why I was outside in that corner of the grounds the day I met you,” she tells her as she pins stray hairs up so that they won’t show under the wig she has to wear. Her voice is such a low and measured murmur that it's almost lost to Charlotte.
Charlotte shakes her head.
“No. I assumed you were just playing.”
“Exactly. Everyone did.”
She places the wig on her head, the rustle of it the only sound in the room.
“The well in that corner of the grounds was abandoned. No one ever paid any attention to it. It was perfect,” she continues, adjusting the pieces around her face, rearranging them so that they look natural. It’s in moments like these that Charlotte feels the most out of place. Moments that they look as they should have if they had never met one another. There is something understatedly regal about her that Charlotte could never hope to replicate.
“Perfect for what?”
“I...wanted to disappear,” she sighs, a near-whisper as if she isn’t sure she should tell her.
“Disappear?”
“Permanently. I was about to when I saw you.”
The admission is heavy. It hangs in the air around them and the silence that follows is deafening.
“I just mean I know what it’s like. I’ve always wanted to apologize for what I put you through,” she continues, satisfied that her appearance is convincing, but there’s a weight in the set of her shoulders as she stands that’s always there when she plays the part of the Princess.
Charlotte places her own wig. She’s the real commoner, but the illusion when she tries to play one now is a little bit lost. Her face is just a touch too round, her hands too clean, the scars across them too faded to look as if she hasn’t grown up in excess. She tries not to notice how Ange’s collarbones stick out just a little more than hers do when she wears that dress.
“I could apologize too,” she reminds her.
“No,” Ange answers, short and dismissive. “It was my idea to switch places. Anything I suffered after was my fault.”
Charlotte wants to tell her it’s not true, but she knows her well enough to know she won’t listen.
“I’m glad you didn’t disappear,” she tells her instead, voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “Before I met you. And after, too. I know the life I led before wasn’t any easier than this one. I doubt it did anything to help you.”
“I would never have disappeared after leaving you here in this place,” she shakes her head, vehement and determined in a way that seems just off of anger. “I wouldn’t have been able to get to you and try to sort out some of the mess I made.”
“That’s not why I’m glad you stayed. Your life has value beyond the mere ways it can be used as a means to an end,” Charlotte tells her, soft, and hopes she knows it.
Ange doesn’t answer and laces Charlotte’s shoes onto her feet.
“Please don’t worry,” she continues. “I don’t think I would ever have done my title justice the way that you have. I had every advantage possible and I still couldn’t do it. You made something out of it with obstacles much greater than my own.”
“I wouldn’t say they were greater. Just different.”
Ange stands, fully transformed into the princess and walks to the door. Charlotte thinks she means to leave the conversation here, but something gives her pause just as she touches the door.
“Still. I think you’re much more deserving of it than I ever had any hope to be.”
“Ah, but you forget who inspired me to try to make something of it at all. I had to have a real princess show me what it meant to have the title first. You’re the one who gave me the idea to try to change all of this mess-” she answers, but when she turns, she finds she’s been speaking to an empty room. Ange has already left.
They do this for days, this trading of personalities and personas and Charlotte practices even harder during these days. It’s easy to lose track of the carefully-constructed farce she’s built seeing Ange play the part she was always meant to play day in and day out.
At the end of the week, their efforts pay off and the stakeouts end. But there’s an uneasiness to the way they look at each other. The weight of seeing one another as they should have been and as they are now, in turns, continues to press on them.
Charlotte wonders in these moments if she’ll ever get her back the way she was when they were young or if those days ended the moment she was ripped from her in the first place. She wonders if she’s doomed to miss her always, even when she’s here in front of her.
One night it becomes so much to bear that she can’t take it any longer. So Charlotte does what she always does on nights that she misses the real Charlotte so badly she can barely breathe. She plays the little song she tried to teach her that she ultimately had to teach herself. It’s become one of her only comforts. At least the independence that comes with age means she has a practice room at the school to use instead of having to frantically muffle the piano in her room and pray they don’t catch her.
She always starts and ends with the little song, but she plays other things in between. Charlotte never allows herself more than a few minutes for leisure.
She starts practicing the piece she’s just finished at a grand recital and notices Ange out of the corner of her eye. She isn’t sure how long she’s been there. She might’ve just come in or she might’ve been there the entire time. She’s deathly quiet now, a far cry from the accident-prone and shy girl she was when Charlotte met her. Charlotte suspects she wants her to know she’s there. She could easily keep herself hidden if she wanted to remain unseen.
Charlotte finishes and Ange claps politely.
“It's beautiful every time I hear it,” she tells her with that soft smile that Charlotte loves and doesn't see nearly often enough.
“You taught me how to play, Charlotte,” she smiles back and they both grin wider at being able to use their real names for just a moment. They’re precious and delicate, these little breaks in a decade-long act.
“You surpassed my skill ages ago,” she answers with a hint of regret in the set of her mouth.
This gentleness is so rare these days, normally concealed by a tough exterior that hurts to watch with a depth she can’t quite describe. What’s even rarer is this moment of sadness and regret about part of a life she wanted to disappear from, this admission that there’s a part of it she missed, however small.
“I was desperate, that's all. I had no knowledge, no refinement, nothing. I was empty,” she tells her. She isn’t sure if it’s to make her feel better about being out of practice or if it’s because these are things she hasn’t been able to tell anyone in the decade she’s played the princess. How lonely it’s been. How she’s felt empty having to compare herself as she is to how she should be. How it takes things from a person to have to look so closely at all the things she doesn’t have and all the ways she isn’t good enough yet. How she’s felt empty without her.
“No.”
The strength of Ange’s protests stop Charlotte in her tracks.
“When I finally found you, I said we should run away together. But you said you would change the country. Just as I once wished to do. You are a real Princess now,” she tells her with a quiet and sweet finality that overwhelms her.
She’s told her this before, in so many words, but something about the moment makes tears prick at the corners of Charlotte’s eyes. Maybe it’s the fact that they’re alone with a piano and it looks too much like the days they used to spend together. Maybe it’s the fact that they’ve been playing one another back and forth for a week and the bitterness of that work is behind them, the relief heady and difficult to contain. Maybe it’s that Charlotte didn’t really believe her before, hasn’t been able to believe she’s good enough for her title for a second since she took it on.
“Thank you. That means so much, coming from you,” is all she can tell her. She has to stop before she dissolves into outright tears. She doesn’t want to cry and disturb the first moment that’s felt right between them since she found her again.
Ange shifts under the compliment as if there’s something more she wants to tell her. Charlotte waits, patient and quiet until she speaks again.
“And I'm sorry. For forcing that role on you.”
Why Ange still thinks she has anything to apologize for, Charlotte doesn’t know. What she does know is that she’s wanted to play with her again every day since they were separated. She doesn’t know how many more opportunities they’ll have to play together. War has taught her that opportunities like this disappear as quickly as they come and that second chances are fleeting and few. She may never get another one and she isn’t going to let this one slip through their fingers.
“It’s been so long...let’s do one together!” she tells her, refusing to let Ange keep apologizing for something she’s never held against her. Ange fidgets, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“I’m not good enough.”
“The first time you played with me, I was a beginner. Do you remember what you said?”
Ange smiles, though her nervousness doesn’t disappear.
“I’ve never had so much fun playing the piano before.”
They settle together on the bench and Charlotte pulls out the worn copy of the little song she’s played at least twice a day for ten years. Ange gasps near-silently when she recognizes it. There’s even some of her shaky, child-like handwriting on it from before they met.
Charlotte has been worrying that she’ll never truly find her again. Not the real her, anyway. But as they place their hands next to each other and start playing, she realizes she has indeed found her again right here and right now just the way they found one another the first time, settling in to play the piano with her. They even glance sideways at each other and giggle like they used to, a little flush in their cheeks. Her playing is indeed a little clumsy now. Sometimes the notes miss one another or clash, discordant, and Charlotte has never loved the song more than she does right now.
The final notes hum in the space between them and they let them, letting the sound fade into the moment of quiet content. They don’t move for a few minutes, loathe to disturb the silence after a piece of music that really matters ends. Even the way they breathe is soft and hesitant, careful not to disturb the moment with even a rustle of skirts.
Charlotte is the first to break it.
“I missed playing with you.”
“Mm. Me too.”
“When I used to practice at night, I’d imagine I was playing with you again. It made it easier.”
Ange nods and swallows as if it’s difficult for her to hear. She doesn't seem to be able to answer any other way.
“I’m sorry too,” Charlotte whispers.
“For what?” Ange asks, startled, with raised eyebrows and soft concern in the set of her mouth. Charlotte is glad for this moment she gets to spend with her, watching more and more of the girl she remembers appear as she lets her guard down. Even her voice has a gentleness and a lilt to it when she’s with her that no one else hears.
“I’m sorry that you’ve had to play the princess so much this week. I know it bothers you.”
Ange traces the outline of one of the keys, the rustle of her skirt amplified by the acoustics of the room and the otherwise silence in it. This time she doesn’t protest.
“Yes,” she answers and leans into Charlotte’s side where they sit on the piano bench. “Does playing the pickpocket bother you?” she asks, barely audible even though her lips are so close to her ear.
“Hm. Sometimes.”
She nods and plays idly with the hem of Charlotte’s sleeve. She used to do that when they were little. Charlotte’s only just remembered. She marvels at how even treasured memories lose their focus, little details slipping through the cracks as time goes on.
“Which part is your favorite?” Charlotte asks after a long silence.
“What do you mean?”
“The princess or the pickpocket? Which one is better for you?”
Ange reaches up and traces the edge of the sheet of music where it rests beyond the keys.
“Neither,” she decides eventually. “You?”
Before finding her again, Charlotte would’ve answered the princess. She’s been agonizing over her performance of the role for so long, clinging to it with such strength that she doesn’t think she’d be able to let it go if she tried. But now, tracing the calluses on Ange’s hands that look like the ones she used to have, she’s not so sure. Choosing between two kinds of suffering is really no choice at all, is it?
“Also neither. You should know, though, that it was you that taught me that.”
“Taught you what?”
“That no country with this amount of suffering on both sides should be allowed to continue unchecked. We’re a testament to that. ”
“True, although I think you overstate my importance in the matter,” she deflects.
“I don’t. I actually think you’re just as much princess as I am, even now. Not that I’ll ever get you to agree with me, you’re too stubborn.”
Ange smiles and laughs softly at the little jab and Charlotte grins back. It’s rare to see a smile from her anymore, let alone laughter. When the room goes quiet again, Charlotte continues.
“I just think you’ve been laboring under the delusion that you had it easier in all of this. You should know that I don’t think that’s true, nor have I ever resented you for any of it,” Charlotte tells her.
Ange doesn’t answer but she sighs in a way that has tinges of relief in it. She leans closer and rests her head on Charlotte’s shoulder, this time trading the hem of her sleeve for her hands. She runs her fingers along them. Turns them over and traces the lines on her palm. Holds them between her own.
“You should also know I’d do it again. For you,” Charlotte tells her.
Ange nods and her eyes shine in a way that looks like tears are about to spill over. Charlotte would ask her if she’s alright, but she’ll lie and answer yes even if it isn’t true. She wordlessly offers her a handkerchief instead and Ange takes it and turns away to dab at her eyes with the corner where her real name is embroidered. She turns back after she’s satisfied that Charlotte won’t be able to see her cry.
“So would I,” she answers, voice thick with tears she pretends aren’t falling.
“And anyway, there are moments I’m actually glad for the way things turned out.”
Ange quirks an eyebrow, skeptical, but there’s a smile that twitches at the corners of her mouth.
“Glad? For what?”
“For this,” she gestures between them. A quiet room, the warm weight of her leaning against her, and the smell of fragrant wood from the piano. “There are times I wish we’d been able to switch back before revolution broke out. But then I don’t know if we would be here together right now. Maybe it’s absurd to suffer for one good moment.”
“Maybe it is absurd,” Ange shrugs and sighs. “But I think maybe it isn’t. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t the whole point. The thing that makes it worth it.”
“Hm,” Charlotte smiles. “I think you’re onto something there, Princess.”
Ange starts at the use of her real title that’s more of an endearment than a formality in Charlotte’s mouth and then giggles. The sound transports Charlotte and she sits with her, suspended in this blissful moment that isn’t quite past and isn’t quite present, laughing together with her and forgetting titles and walls for just a moment, the echoes of their voices in a vaulted room dream-like, ethereal, and sweetly right.