Chapter Text
✷ i. HAIR ✷
Jester changed her body to be the way she wanted. Mostly when she was younger, she says, and her mother found someone to help, to pay a lot of coin to make it happen.
She’s been a girl since always (since before that) and a woman when she got old enough. Never anything else. She always, like, totally knew, she says.
So she understands when Caduceus asks about it, feeling shyer than usual, halfway hiding behind the doorframe as they peer into her room.
She finishes combing through her hair and looks right at them, asking: “Oh? What’s up?”
Caduceus steps further into the room, and can’t help but rub their thumb over the smooth palm stone in the bottom of their dressing-gown pocket.
“Well,” they begin, with a deep breath, “I just... I thought it was interesting, what you were talking about earlier. About being a girl.”
Jester smiles, setting down her comb. “Oh ya, you looked like you were thinking very hard, like, the whole time.”
Caduceus frowns, wondering what they’d been doing. “I did?”
Jester nods.
Caduceus makes an acknowledging noise, and they’re not sure where to go from there. They’re not even particularly sure what they want to say, or ask. But there was a connection there, at some point, in their mind, and they’re not sure what to make of it. It was just… something.
Jester is smiling, still, looking a bit like she might know what they’re thinking, or something they don’t. She gets up from her vanity and gestures at the stool.
“Want me to do your hair?” she asks.
Caduceus nods, after a moment. “Yeah,” they say. “Alright.”
They cross the room, sitting very carefully on the seat that’s just a little low down for them.
(Despite their care their joints click-clunk as they sit.)
(And it’s more than a little low. They hug their arms loosely round their knees.)
“Anything in particular?” Jester asks as she starts to run her fingers through Caduceus’ hair, pulling it over their shoulders to drape down their back. “Like, one long braid... Or, hmm, a braid crown? that would be so cute.”
At first Caduceus imagines themself with a crown, gold and dented like its been outside for a long, long time, getting old and rusty. Or a flowery ivy crown, twisted together. But that’s not what Jester means, she means braids wrapped around their head, like Clarabelle sometimes. Or like Jester herself a while back. (She did look very pretty.)
(Caduceus wouldn’t mind looking pretty.)
“Uhm....Braid crown,” they say, after a moment.
“Okay! Okay, okay,” Jester replies with a grin. “I think you’re going to look like a faerie princess, like from a storybook.”
Caduceus meets sleepy eyes with their flickering, candlelit reflection, and looks away again, to their hands, their picked at nails. “That sounds nice.”
Jester presses a quick kiss to the top of their head and gets to work, combing through knots, careful with their fine, pale hair as she smooths it. She goes steady and slow, the rhythmic brushing of her comb through untangling hair drooping Caduceus’ head, until it’s flowing like a willow curtain down their back. She gets to braiding, then, separating it all into twos, and then threes to weave it together again.
“Sooo,” Jester begins, reaching around Caduceus’ shoulder for a hair pin, “what did you find interesting about earlier — If it’s okay — Like, when I was talking about stuff.”
It takes Caduceus a moment, looking quizzically at jester’s softly smiling reflection, before they realise what she means.
“Oh. Oh, just... just that you figured out who you were — are — and did something about it.”
“Ya,” Jester laughs, “I guess that is pretty cool — Here, turn around to face me, so it can be a surprise.”
Caduceus does as they’re told, shuffling around to face Jester, back to the mirror.
“How did you know?” they ask before thinking, nearly face-to-face.
Jester hums and takes her time to wrap one braid around Caduceus’ head, to pin it into place above the opposite temple. She’s thinking, holding the second braid, thumb running over the split-ends.
“I guess I was pretty little,” she says. “Like, really small. So I don’t remember super well. Just that it felt right... You know?”
Caduceus nods, remembering themself as a child, mostly dressed in Calliope’s too-big hand-me-downs. Jester steadies their head with soft-strong hands, pinning the second braid in the same way as the first. She looks it over, admiring her work, before pulling wispy strands from Caduceus’ hairline and behind their ears loose, to frame their face.
She steps back and gasps, hand to her plum-blushed cheek as she grins.
“You look so pretty, Caduceus,” she says.
Caduceus twists round on the too-small stool and meets eyes with themself in the mirror and— Oh.
“Wow,” they whisper.
The someone staring back looks almost elegant, in a somewhat scraggly way — all long swan neck and rosy braids. They do sort of look like a faerie princess, only missing some leaves or pine-needles here and there.
Caduceus just laughs.
“You like it?” Jester asks, wrapping her arms over Caduceus’ shoulders and across their sternum.
“Yeah,” is all they manage at first.
“Yeah?”
“It’s...” (It’s beautiful.) “It’s really nice.”
“Aw, good,” Jester says. She presses another kiss to Caduceus’ cheek, with an extra mwah sound. “Any more questions?”
(Yes, maybe…)
(They’ll think of some.)
“I don’t think so. Not right now.”
“Cool.”
Caduceus gets up from the stool and stretches, shoulders clunking.
“Goodnight, Miss Jester,” they say.
“Goodnight, Caduceus,” Jester replies, with a funny little dance. “See you in! the! morning!”
✷
Caduceus lies in bed, beneath a heavy quilt, and traces the weaved pattern of the braids that circle their head. They run a finger back and forth, back and forth, until they’re tired and both hands are rubbing the velvet fur of their ear-ends. As usual, it sends them right to sleep.
✷
By the morning the braid-crown is coming undone, wispy hairs slipped out and haloing Caduceus’ head when they peer into their own small mirror. They keep it though, tucking the bigger loosened sections back into place. They turn their head side to side, watching their reflection, just looking, thinking vaguely.
Something about feeling pretty.
Something about transformation.