Chapter Text
They gather in the theatre every week, and they speak like any other group of friends. (Are they friends? Would they be friends outside the Palace?
Well, some of them would.)
For a group based around talking, the Heiress spoke very little. In fact, she seemed not to say anything at all. It wasn’t a matter of muteness, as Sire had time and time again explained (“Oh yeah, she can talk, I think she just hates you.”) but it was strange nonetheless. Then again, there wasn’t much that wasn’t just a little bit odd about the girl, and the boy she came along with.
Sire had stepped out for a moment, to use the bathroom they suspected, and the tiny Heiress had been left to her own devices. She lay, stomach to floor, a coloring book before her, an orange crayon held in one grubby fist; both supplied by the Mother Superior.
“What’ve you got there, kiddo?” the Bodyguard asked, speaking in the tone he reserved for his own children.
The Heiress stared up at him from behind a few strands of dirty hair. She turned her drawing around to reveal an incomprehensible mess of Crayola on the front cover’s blank interior.
“It’s beautiful,” the man continued, “can you tell me what it is?”
“I don’t think she’s going to say anything,” the Emperor told him.
The Emperor was right, of course, and the little girl did not say anything to the Bodyguard, only made a gesture with the middle finger of her spare hand and went back to her scribbling.
“Don’t start,” the Bodyguard grumbled, while his young friend stifled a laugh.
“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” the Champion’s guardian interjected, “kid’s like that with everyone.”
Sister Snowdrop shook her head. “I’d say you got off easy - last week I told her I thought she had pretty hair, and she kicked me in the shins.”
From her place on the floor the Heiress giggled, and a few of the older group members shared a look.
“Oh come on, guys.” The Countess now. “I thought I was supposed to be the paranoid one. She’s just a little kid, it can’t be that hard to talk to her.”
The Heiress tore the cover from her book and began to rip it into small brightly colored pieces. The Countess’s smile faltered.
“It’s fine."
The Heiress started to stuff the torn up paper into her mouth.
“Not fine.”
The Bodyguard crossed the space between him and the child and knelt on the ground beside her, trying to keep the scraps from entering her tiny maw. “Hey, stop that!” he admonished her.
The Heiress blinked up at the man, her expression blank for just a moment, and then-
“Ow! She just bit me!”
“Yeah, she kinda does that,” Herne said from across the room, where he and the Bard were setting up a game of checkers. “Never have kids.”
“Little late for that…” the Bodyguard mumbled. “Most kids aren’t this difficult.”
“I am!” the Champion piped up happily. “The cop that visits Ralph says my siblings and I are ‘practically feral’!”
The room turned to stare at her guardian, all of them silently begging the same question.
“Uh… there’s a good explanation, I swear… um… Oh! Hey, look at the time, I’ve gotta go… disinfect the… cat… yeah…”
“We don’t have a-”
“Now now, kid, it won’t do to keep Fluffles waiting.”
The Champion rolled her eyes as her guardian backed awkwardly into the corridor, hitting his head on the door frame as he did so. “Moron.”
The Heiress had begun to color again but, rather than scribble across the pages of her mutilated coloring book, she had turned her focus on the floor; streaks of waxy orange had amassed on the cold blue tile.
The Bodyguard reached for her tiny arm. “Hey, don’t do that either!”
“Does anyone know where her brother is?” Lady Reynard asked. “Maybe he can calm her down.”
The Swan of Hope, currently caught up in a game of Go Fish with the Cook, looked up from her hand. “You know, I’m not sure actually. He’s been gone a little long for it to be a bathroom break.”
“It’s not like she listens to him ei-OW!” the Emperor cried out. “Why me?”
The child snickered, snatching her crayon back out of the Bodyguard’s hand and scampering just out of his reach.
“I don’t know how Sire manages that girl,” Snowdrop sighed. “I thought my family was messed up.”
“Well I think it’s cute.” The Page’s voice came from behind them, sending them all jumping. “She reminds me of myself when I was young…”
“That is literally the least reassuring thing that anyone could have said about this,” Herne grumbled, now well into his and the Bard’s game and losing miserably.
“Oh, she’s harmless. Wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
“The Emperor might disagree with that.”
“I think I’m bleeding!”
The Page waved his hand dismissively. “It’s fiiiine. You guys are probably just boring. I bet you just talked to her about dumb things like politics and tax fraud. Kids don’t like tax fraud! I bet she just wants to talk to somebody fun.”
“Who talks to kids about… You know what, never mind. Never mind.” The Bodyguard shook his head.
Sister Snowdrop smiled wryly at the wild-eyed man. “Well if it’s so easy, why don’t you try and talk to her?”
The Countess paled. “Uh… that doesn’t sound like such a-”
“That’s a great idea!” The Page’s face lit up. “I have lots of fun things to talk about!”
“Oh sweet Jesus,” Snowdrop whispered, “what have I done?”
“Shouldn’t we stop him?” the Countess asked.
“They deserve each other,” the Emperor griped, holding his injured hand. “I’d better not get tetanus from this.”
“You do realize you usually get tetanus from rusty nails, not bites, right?” the Gunman asked.
“Are you telling me that kid doesn’t eat rusty nails for breakfast?”
“Fair point.”
When at long last Sire returned to the room, he found a cluster of horrified adults waiting by the door. The Heiress was nowhere in sight.
“Okay,” Sister Snowdrop began, “I am so sorry.”
“I tried to stop him…” The Countess grimaced.
Sire blinked in confusion. “Uh… okay? Where’s my sister?”
The two women glanced at one another, and then Snowdrop opened her mouth to speak. “Well-”
“NUKA!” the Heiress hollered has from across the room, not bothering to use her brother’s false name. “Come meet my new friend! He’s killed people, just like Father!”
“And there she is…” Sire grunted, shuffling in the direction of his sister’s voice.
The redheaded woman put her forehead against her palm. “This is worse than that time my boyfriend stole from the petting zoo.”
“You know, I always wondered where the reindeer came from.”
“He was really drunk, okay?”
Across the room they could hear twin sets of maniacal laughter, one of them high-pitched and the other even higher, as the Page and the Heiress scribbled on the floor with the broken pieces of what was once a single orange crayon.
At the meeting’s end, the man smirked at the group before making his usual mad dash for the exit. “I told you it would be easy,” he said with a shark-like grin.
“I’m a delight,” the Heiress informed them, giving a sharp-toothed smile of her own.
This time, when the Page ran through the parking lot, he was pulling another along after him. “Wheezy! Wheezy, look what I found! Can we keep her? Pleeeease?”
Sire ran after them. “Wait! You can’t just take her with you! Give her back!”
The Bodyguard watched them go. “I feel like we should be… concerned about this.”
Snowdrop turned to face him. “I am.”