Work Text:
With so many ways to perceive the reality around her and fairly judge every aspect of its beauty and ugliness, Lady Justice often found her eyesight not only redundant, but actively detrimental. And so she preferred to tune it out, keeping a blindfold over her eyes for a good measure. But the lights on this stage were so bright and piercing that even those eyes, barely functioning after centuries and millennia of no light reaching them, couldn’t avoid being struck by the force. And it hurt. Lady Justice was a being that dwelled in the soft, hushed half-light of a courtroom, so right at this moment, on this accursed stage, she was way out of her depth. Definitely in more ways than one.
There was cotton in her ears from sudden altitude change - a ridiculous, human sensation uncharacteristic of her immortal body. She wondered if that meant anything in her current situation - of course being in the heart of her enemy’s domain would deprive her of her power, that much she was aware of, now more painfully so than ever, but how deep the effects were and how far her bitter (and very, very petty) rival would go to bring even more humiliation upon her… Well, that was up to her to find out. That bedazzled crook already went far enough to put her in a literal cage - small and square like one of those dice she loved so much, thankfully not as short. This would have been mortifying were she of weaker mental constitution, but she was mostly just ashamed of herself for ending up in this predicament in the first place - at her age, with her experience! The situation was unprecedented, unthinkable, unexpected, and therefore admittedly distressing. With all the possible implications, all possible interpretations and all the domino effect this would cause, a cage was the least of Lady Justice’s concern.
Well. Actually, the cage was pretty embarrassing, on top of everything. Ah, what an absolute mess.
Through the thick shroud of concerns encircling her mind and through the persistent static in her ears, a regrettably familiar voice finally made its way to her already inflamed brain like the world's most annoying power drill.
“My dears and darlings, welcome once again to Dicey Dungeons!” Lady Luck, the host of this farce that she tried to pass as a respectable game show, and, coincidentally, the very source of Lady Justice’s woes, announced with a tone so smug and self-congratulatory it could melt the steel beams supporting the light fixtures above. Loud, clear and engaging, the voice of a professional entertainer, now more than ever this was the last sound she wanted to hear. Lady Justice tightened the grip on the handle of her scale shaped cane, the symbol of her place in the world as well as her trusty assistive device that helped her not lose ground and maintain balance. Right now, she really needed to feel grounded. She also really needed to keep herself from groaning out loud.
“Tonight,” the host hummed melodically, barely able to contain the giddiness in her voice, “we are joined by a very special guest. While she’s not someone any of you would have ever expected to see here, many of you are familiar with her. Some of you may have even appealed to her on multiple occasions, only to be met with the bone-crushing silence of your own ever approaching doom. Well, ask and you shall receive! Let’s welcome to the stage the world’s most insufferable pedant and hypocrite, the person whose dull inner world can only be outmatched by her dull fashion sense, the one and the only…”
With a deafening pop, the brightest spotlight cascaded down upon Lady Justice, bouncing aggressively off the bars of her cage, making her even more aware of its existence than she was before.
“Lady Justice!”
The audience exploded into an eerie, almost unison roar, radiating a whole spectrum of overwhelming emotions, from bloodlust to genuine excitement to cautious confusion to anguished cries of despair. Lady Justice didn’t want to think about how many people she must have let down by just being there in such a pathetic state. For their sake she had to keep her cool. She would dwell on it later, when it was more productive.
Even in this chaotic sea of scattered feelings, she could feel her rival’s predatory smirk flicker across the vastness of the stage.
“...Or should I say “Lady Just Dice”? Hm, Justitia?”
The pushed down groan could no longer be held back.
“Atrocious,” Lady Justice snapped, her curt, courtroom-steeled voice cold and sharp like a pointed icicle. “Ridiculous. I can’t believe you would say something like this live on television without a hint of embarrassment.”
Ringing laughter, like thousands of those very same pointed icicles, was the response.
“Funny you should mention embarrassment, my dear,” Lady Luck cooed. Familiar words in a familiar tone, once there’d been a time she even meant them. Or maybe there had never been such a time, after all, dating to gods is not what it is to mortals. It’s all about alliances and power exchange, with an added benefit of having someone by your side to share the dull ache of immortality with. As a party with less influence who benefitted the most from that exchange, Lady Justice had lost much more in the fallout of that alliance inevitably shattering than she ever wanted to admit.
She sighed and knocked on the bars of her little prison with her gilded cane.
“There was no need for this, Fortuna. Even if it’s only to spite me. You know well that there is nowhere I can go and nothing I can do to you while I’m here. Was having me right where you want me not enough?”
“Of course not, my beloved! You’re a trespasser, therefore you get the trespasser treatment. I think this is only fair.” The word in her mouth felt like a dagger dripping with poison.
Lady Justice huffed.
"Trespassing. Sure. Since when is sector X533 your territory?"
"Ever since the owner of the land in that sector joined me as a minion, obviously!" Lady Luck laughed out with almost childlike glee. She must have been holding on to this gotcha for a while now. "Maybe you should keep up with the land status updates before choosing to insult me to my face."
Lady Justice frowned.
“Fortuna, I am unfortunately familiar with the structure of your contracts. This is not how it works.”
Lady Luck grinned.
“Well, it is now. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, trying to turn my show into one of your insipid little court dramas.”
Lady Justice rubbed the bridge of her nose in what she hoped would come off as mild exasperation.
"So correct me if I'm wrong: because I made a tepid remark about your positively garish sense of aesthetic, you found - no, invented a technicality that would allow you to trap me in your dungeons for eternity. How petty, even for you.”
"Technicality is something you deal in, is it not, my dear? I thought you would appreciate the tribute. Are you really going to try and dispute the irreversible instead? On my stage? In my cage? How typical of you.”
Lady Justice slowly turned her head towards the audience and gritted her teeth, knowing full well what her next words were about to unleash.
“There’s still time to reverse this, unless you’re willing to sabotage the natural order itself for the sake of having the last word in your eternal spat with me. Which, I guess, is not beneath you, but I do hope you are smarter than this.”
She could practically feel her rival’s face-splitting grin growing even wider with every nerve of her skin.
“Justitia! I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Are you trying to… bargain with me?”
Sigh.
“Think what you will. I am simply trying to warn you. You don’t know what you’re messing with. What you’re doing and what you’re about to do will have consequences beyond your control. I have no choice but to go with whatever you decide, so I need you to consider if this is really worth it before you potentially doom us all to satisfy your sore ego."
Lady Luck's already monstrous smile shifted into something bone-chillingly feral.
"Oh, my love, this is very much worth it," she chuckled, her voice low and sinister like an echo in a collapsed arctic cavern. One moment, one flicker of light on a camera, and she was back to her charming, upbeat host self. "But do not despair, because you do, in fact, have one final choice".
She procured a small stack of bright laminated cards out of one of her bottomless (and somehow completely invisible) pockets, and began flipping through them, humming musingly.
"Now, let's see… You have arrived here as a trespasser, so there are three ways this can go for you. One!” Her voice was now booming as she was motioning towards the audience, riling them up. “I send you to the timeout dungeon for eternity, just as you are, in this cage, with no prospect of acquittal and only discarded broken props to keep you company, forever.”
Some of the audience cheered, though Lady Justice wasn’t sure what exactly there was to cheer about - it’s not like they would even see her there, unless her spiteful, misfortune-hungry ex decided to set up the world’s most boring livestream, which, knowing her, was a real possibility.
“Two!” the host continued in a sparkling, playful tone. “You join me as a part of my wonderful, ever expanding team of minions. Now, this may seem like a downgrade from your previous employment status as a keeper of divine order and an arbiter of justice, but worry not, your duties will be just as useless and futile, you won’t even notice the difference! Besides, I treat my minions well. Isn’t that right, my darlings?”
The reaction was mixed, but very loud and enthusiastic.
“And three…” Lady Luck smirked, her whole being radiating barely concealed bloodthirsty excitement, like that of a cat ready to pounce. “We make a deal. You join my show as a contestant. And if you win, you’re not only free to go back to your sad little life in your dusty little courtroom, you will have an opportunity to wreak upon me whatever retribution you see fit. I think that's a pretty good deal, all things considered, and if I were you I would take it. But of course the final choice is up to you. I wouldn't mind option one, personally."
The audience tensed up, transfixed, expecting the final decision. Lady Justice scoffed with enough disdain to cut through the bars of her cage.
"Seriously, Fortuna? You're going to try this with me? Have you not insulted me enough? Ah, what am I saying, of course not. Still, I see no point in continuing this farce. I will not win your game. You will never let me. So you might as well just skip to the part where I'm trapped for eternity in this ultimate manifestation of atrocious taste.”
Lady Luck’s shrill metallic laughter reverberated through the studio, like a subtle reminder of how improbably massive this place was.
“Oh, is somebody afraid of a little bit of challenge, hm? Obviously you’re not going to win, not with that attitude at least,” she chuckled coquettishly. “Come on, there is no need to put on airs. You’re trying to act all rational and level-headed about it, as you always do, and yet, deep within the bottomless void that is your mind… wasn’t that the flicker of hope just now?”
Lady Justice didn’t want to admit it even to herself, but it was.
With her mind’s eye she reached out to the audience, particularly the first row, where an eclectic group of small cube-shaped creatures was seated. The contestants. Those who hadn’t yet lost hope of their efforts being fairly rewarded, those who needed her the most, those she failed the most. They were looking at her cautiously, too baffled by this situation, too unsure to try and assess it. There was a lot of disparity in the mood across the row, but there was also a silent understanding between them that there was no favorable outcome to this, not for them, not for her. It was a lose-lose scenario. She was already here, it was too late, it didn’t matter what she was to choose. And yet…
What chance did she have of actually winning this famously rigged game and actually reaping the fruits of this doomed agreement? Zero. She knew the odds, she knew what and who she was up against. But what right did she have to give up without even trying, while the people in the very same situation she was about to wave away as hopeless were watching her? What right did she have to deprive them of that hope, no matter how foolish and unsubstantiated?
Zero.
Lady Justice straightened up and turned her head towards her vicious and ever so annoyingly vainglorious rival.
“Very well,” voice as unwavering as a primordial mountain. “If this is the only language you understand, then this is how we shall talk. I accept your challenge. Do your worst.”
“As you wish, darling,” Lady Luck purred, raising her silk-gloved hand high up in the air.
Snap.
Pungent purple smoke filled Lady Justice’s lungs, locking up her throat, severing whatever last word, whatever last breath she still had in there. The bars of her cage were melting away, and so was the world, and the ground beneath her, and even herself. She grabbed tighter onto her cane, the one thing that was somehow still intact, the symbol of her power, the symbol of her place in this world. She held onto it with all her strength, digging it as deep as she could into the shifting floor.
A moment later, the apparition was gone. She stood on the stage, surrounded by the overbearing light of the fixtures and the thunderous roar of the audience, no longer caged, still holding onto her cane. The cane felt shorter somehow. She felt shorter.
Lady Justice sighed.
“Preposterous. Is this really how you entertain yourself? How utterly childish.”
Lady Luck snorted. Then squealed. Then broke into a laugh so inhumanly sonorous it sent quakes across the entire studio. She was laughing for what felt like forever. There was no other sound, no other emotion. Everything was swept away by that forceful, world-splitting laugh. Everything except Lady Justice. She stood perfectly still, perfectly balanced in this raging sea of deranged cackling, probing the audience, trying to piece together how she looked like now.
Of course she was a dice. That was how it worked here, there was no way around it. As arbitrary as everything else in this place, this was the unchanging rule: should you accept your role as a contestant, you also agree to have your body transformed into a dice. She didn’t quite get it either, even after many centuries of knowing this strange capricious woman.
Her new dice self was muted grayish indigo, still wearing her blindfold, still leaning onto her gilded cane, but now, for some reason, enveloped in a deep blue embroidered cape, something she wasn’t wearing at the moment of transformation, but something she recognized. It was indeed her cape, an old thing she hadn't worn in ages. But that cape was wrapped around both of their shoulders as she and Fortuna entered their ill-fated alliance, and that same cape was dead weight on her back as that alliance fell apart. What a curious touch. Was it mockery? Sentimentality? Assertion of dominance? Or maybe just a completely arbitrary design choice? That too was something she would have to dwell on later. Right now all she could say was that she looked
Strangely unaffected
Majestic
Bigger than us somehow?
Tiny
Disturbing
Pathetic
Heartbreaking I can’t watch I can’t stand this-
Lady Justice snapped out of the haze. It wasn’t like her to get so carried away when analyzing other people’s perceptions, but this had been a long day, and she was exhausted, and also she was just turned into a walking dice by her evil ex, and she would be lying if she said that wasn’t affecting her.
She sighed once again and looked up, way up, where the evil ex in question was still lost in her laughing fit.
“Are you done? I think you can stop now. You’re holding up your own show and scaring your minions.”
Lady Luck wheezed.
“Oh mercy, oh mercy! This is just too much! If I knew how delightful this would be, I would do it much sooner!” She wiped a tear with her glove and bent over, her face now on the same level with the dice. “My dear, how are you liking your new look? I worked hard on it, just for you!”
Lady Justice raised an edge of her cape with her cane.
“I can tell.”
Lady Luck pouted.
“Is that all you have to say?”
“What else do I have to say?” Lady Justice shrugged. “There’s no more room for empty words. You’ve won. I’m here, powerless, completely at your mercy, playing your silly games for your entertainment. If this was what you wanted, then you got it. But this is not the end. I will not let you continue making a mockery of the world’s very foundation. I will show you that I don’t need my power to see to it that justice prevails. Doesn’t matter how much time it’ll take me. You know how patient I can be. And if you truly want to break me, if you truly want to bring me to my knees, you will have to try harder than this.”
With a low hum, the entrance door to the first floor of the dungeon slid open behind her, soft light of the artificial sun illuminating Lady Luck’s signature smirk.
“Oh, I will, my dear. I will.”
Lady Justice stepped into the light, trying to not make it apparent how much the sudden change of balance was throwing her off. The harsh spotlight of the studio, the crowd, the smirk, the overwhelming scarlet, the ringing laugh - all of it faded away, finally letting her take a full breath. The air was damp and slightly musty, but it was something.
She had to be careful, and she had to be unyielding. She didn’t have much time. Fortuna’s threat wasn’t an empty one.
But neither was hers.