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“Ahem…. Nyahahaaaah!!” Fitzroy punctuated his exclamation with an awkward shake of his fist, his body turned towards the horizon. After a moment’s pause, he glanced back at the young woman seated across from him. “How about that? Was that anything?”
Rainer chewed her lip, shifting in her chair while avoiding the eyes of her peer. “Weeellll….”
“Come on now, tell me what you think.” Fitzroy dropped his fist in favor of folding his hands beneath his chin eagerly. “But I want you to know that I can accept zero criticism right now.”
Rainer stalled by taking a long sip of her tea , before settling him with a somewhat regretful smile. “It wasn’t particularly… villainous, you know? But there’s room for improvement!”
The disgraced knight slumped his shoulders, falling back onto the grass with a sigh. “Oh, darn it all to heck.”
“Hey, I mean, it was loud-“
“Please, don’t patronize me, my lady.”
“I’m not!....Much. ”
Fitzroy whined loudly, flopping over onto his stomach to bury his face in the grass. This petulant motion allowed Rainer to hide the fond smile that she wasn’t sure she wanted the knight to see just yet.
The necromancer had had mixed feelings when Fitzroy told her he had been bumped up to villain status, as she had somewhat-unofficially-claimed the precocious freshman as her own, future sidekick. But she was nothing if not adaptable, and as they sat there on the lawn, in the temperate spring weather, practicing their evil cackles over afternoon tea and elderflower macarons, she was eager to see what an equal partnership between the two might look like. It certainly seemed like it could be something most enjoyable.
Although, she wasn’t sure how equal it would end up being if Fitzroy didn’t get better at acting the part.
She floated over to the boy and nudged him with the toe of her shoe, prompting him to look up with all the dignified air of a grumpy kitten.
“Here,” she poked him again for emphasis, “allow me to demonstrate.” She cleared her throat and pushed her shoulders back as Fitzroy sat up, dutifully watching her every move.
Taking a deep breath, Rainer let out a sinister, delighted cackle, letting her usual soprano trail all the way down her vocal range. She finished with her creepiest, sparkling grin and a quick flip of her tumbling golden hair, drawing attention to the squirrel skeleton perched eerily upon her shoulder.
She felt a rush of satisfaction at the notable shiver running down Fitzroy’s spine, as he looked at her with equal parts apprehension and awe. He was now sitting criss-cross on the courtyard lawn by their picnic basket, no doubt getting awful grass stains on his trousers, but for once, he didn’t seem to care.
“My goodness, that-“ he coughed, glancing nervously at the chattering skeleton that she now pet affectionately, mirroring his own spectral crab perched upon his shoulder. “-that is most unsettling, Rainer.”
She beamed, fully breaking character now. “Why thank you, Fitz!”
“I mean, the dramatics, the performance of it all, its just…” he looked a bit dreamy now, and she found herself flushing a bit under his admiring eye. “You’re really quite excellent at that. How are you so good at this?”
She shrugged, sending the squirrel scurrying back into her chair with an easy flick of her wrist. “Lots of practice, I suppose. After all, I’ve wanted to do this ever since I was a kid. It just sorta runs in the family, I guess.”
Fitzroy furrowed his eyebrows. “You mean, your penchant for dramatics, or the whole - necromancy – thing?” He grimaced noticeably at the thought.
Rainer smiled, taking just a liiiitttlle bit of satisfaction in how adorably uncomfortable the boy was about her profession, despite now being a villain himself. “Both, I suppose.”
Fitzroy blanched. “Well, that’s… concerning.” He fussed with his hair nervously, seeming to want to hold himself back from putting his foot in his mouth, which was progress for him, at least.
Another shrug, and Rainer was back to rummaging in the compartments of her chair. “I know most people don’t care for it, but it’s a very misunderstood field. A lot of people misuse this kinda power, but I don’t really want to cause too much trouble. I just want to have some fun with it. ” She found what she was looking for, and pulled out the familiar set of bones that she animated with a twirl of her finger. Fitzroy’s face lit up as his favorite raccoon sprung to life in her lap, and Rainer gave him another hopeful smile. “I guess I just want to say that, just cause I’m a bad guy, doesn’t mean I’m a bad guy.”
Fitzroy hummed thoughtfully, eyes still following the clever little hands of the raccoon to make sure it didn’t pickpocket him (again). “Well, I still can’t say I approve, but then I do trust you. And, therefore, I suppose I could keep a more open mind to this sort of thing. Marginally.” He pinched his fingers together as if to demonstrate how marginally. Upon his shoulder, Snippers did the same.
Despite the casual way in which he said them, the knight’s words gave her pause. “You trust me?” she asked, softly.
He blinked, flushing slightly as if only realizing now the gravity of what he had said. “Um, well, you see, I- there isn’t reason not to….okay that’s not true…it’s just that you, um, you’ve been so nice, and we-“
“Fitz.” He stopped stammering, and sheepishly glanced up at her, wearing a strange look upon her face. “Thank you. That’s very sweet.”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t, I mean that is to say, you’re very welcome, and uh you are-or have been-quite the same. Is that weird to say? Oh look, it’s the ground.” The flustered knight suddenly got up and dusted off his trousers frantically, looking everywhere except at Rainer’s eyes. “If you’ll pardon my rudeness, I simply must be going, I have to go-um-go and do a thing, do…do work! Work, yes, work on this ummm, I must work on thiisss…”
“Excuse?” She blinked at him innocently, which would’ve fooled no one, except maybe the beet-red knight before her. But even he got the joke when she broke out giggling once again, simply unable to help herself.
He huffed, straightening his lapels in apparent indignation at her effortless teasing. “Well, I never,” he snapped, turning with a dramatic flip of his coattails to march back up towards the dorms, which only set her off into another fit of giggles. His exit was made less harsh, however, when he paused and turned back to mumble sheepishly:
“Shall I see you at dinner, my lady? I believe it’s Taco Tuesday.”
She was still breathless from laughing, and would likely need to go rest her aching joints before dinner, but she gave him a thumbs-up regardless. “Fuck yeah, it is.”
He nodded, and then squinted at her narrowly. “Now, it does just feel like you’re showing off, with all of your…your glamorous cussing, and cursing, and whatnot.”
“Fuck yeah, I am. Villainy lesson number 1!” She winked, and Fitz rolled his eyes before turning to once again stomp away towards the dorms.
“Hate to see him go…” she sighed to her raccoon, shamelessly enjoying the view from behind as he left. Fitz really was in great shape, and hey, there was no harm in a little window shopping.
Alas, despite what would’ve normally been an excellent distraction for her, she found herself ruminating on two significantly softer parts of their conversation.
Firstly, that Fitz hadn’t corrected her terms of address for him, which made her happy.
And secondly, as glad as she was to have his trust, she didn’t like the thought of him trusting so freely. Something was clearly up with that ‘Goodcastle’ business, and anyone could very easily take advantage of Fitzroy and his considerable powers. Hell, that’s why she had wanted him as her sidekick in the first place.
“That beautiful idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing, does he, boys?” She murmured quietly to her pets, various skeletons that curled around her affectionately as they listened to her musings. It was another villainous habit that she had picked up (for The Drama, of course), but she tried to tone it down around Fitzroy so as not to scare him off too soon. Sighing, she telepathically instructed her chair to take her back to her own dorm, to both rest and formulate a plan for keeping her dear friend close.
“We’ll simply have to keep an eye on him.”
Glancing across the courtyard, she craned her neck to sneak one last selfish peek at the retreating form of Fitzroy Maplecourt, biting her lip ever so slightly as she grinned. “Not like it’ll be hard, though.”