Work Text:
“You’re very angry.” That is one of the first things Alex tells Claire when she arrives at Jody’s.
Claire looks up from her dinner—Jody ordered pizza, but made them put the slices on proper plates. “Fuck you!” She bites out, then she gets up, the chair scraping on the hardboard and toppling over, hitting the floor with a dull thud. On her way out, Claire doesn’t register Jody calling after her. She spends her first night in Sioux Falls finding a tattoo parlour, then buying vodka with her fake id and wandering around, staring at the basil leaves on her wrist, the skin around the thin lines irritated and red.
When she returns to Jody’s at six in the morning, the bottle of vodka long empty, she expects to be thrown out for her earlier behaviour. But Jody only makes her a hot chocolate and tells her to answer her texts the next time. Claire asks her not to order pizza anymore, the memory of standing in her old kitchen with her dad, laying vegetables on pizza dough and sprinkling basil leaves over everything won’t leave her mind.
Jody doesn’t ask why. She just nods.
“Why are we watching this?” Claire asks as she sits down on the couch uninvited.
Alex rolls here eyes. “It was on. And I’ve never seen this one.”
“You’ve never seen Sleeping Beauty?” Claire asks, unbelieving.
Alex rolls her eyes again. “Just shut up, or leave.”
They watch the movie in silence. They haven’t been living together for long, and they know nothing about each other. There’s also an uncomfortable undercurrent of dislike flowing between them, and so watching Sleeping Beauty again does not feel like the first time Claire has seen the movie. Sometime during the film, she realises that she doesn’t really remember when she saw it first, nor when she saw it last. She doesn’t remember actively watching it, she just knows that she’s seen it. She doesn’t know if it was with her mom, her dad, the both of them? With her friends? Friends whose names she can’t remember.
By the end of the movie, Claire is crying. Alex doesn’t comment on it.
The tattoo parlour is right where she remembers it was a few week ago. Sometimes she still thinks it was a dream, getting her first tattoo, but when she lets her fingers travel over the soft lines on the inside of her right wrist, the ink slightly elevated, she knows it was real.
Her second tattoo takes longer, multiple sessions, and without a fail, when she gets to her room afterwards she cries for at least ten minutes.
The harsh lines on her calf forming a rigid castle remind her of a time when all she worried about was if she could be a princess for Halloween.
Castiel keeps sending Claire texts, asking how she’s doing, always accompanied with a bee emoji, and Claire keeps ignoring them. She’s sitting in her room under the blankets, staring at the sword that killed her mother. It’s light in her grip, the metal cold and impersonal. This is her sword now. Her phone lights up, the bee emoji smiling at her. She throws it across the room.
This is the first time Claire looks for a hunt. She has a sword. She should do something with it. Kill some evil, so that the stains of her mother’s blood are washed off it. She doesn’t find anything.
Every night, Claire leaves Jody’s house to find monsters. Every night, all the monsters she finds smile at her through honeybee emojis. She goes to the forest and screams. She goes to the tattoo parlour and lets the nice artist who's done all her other tattoos paint the sword on the back of her left arm. It doesn’t make her feel any better until it does.
Claire stares at the castle on her calf and thinks of times when she wanted to be a princess. Then she stares at the sword on her arm and thinks of how she wants to be a warrior now. Then she keeps thinking.
Her mother called her princess all the time. The memory of her mother’s voice saying that word is dull and dark, something about it making Claire’s insides want to crawl out, making her stomach twist and knot. She is still angry with her mother. Angry at her for dying, angry at her for leaving her child all alone. Amelia Novak was all that Claire had, and she just left.
That’s not the reason why being called princess makes her feel that way, but she refuses to think too much about it.
Claire picks up her phone and texts Castiel back. She gets a tattoo of a crown over the tip of the sword the next day.
“Can you cut my hair?” Claire asks, and Alex looks up from where she’s studying for her finals.
“Does it have to be now?” Alex shakes her folder, making the paper rustle like wings. Claire hates the sound.
“Can you just do it? It won’t take long.” Claire goes to the bathroom without waiting for an answer. Alex follows anyway.
She works quickly and quietly, safe for the occasional “tilt your head” and “is this length okay?”. When she’s done, Claire looks into the mirror, hair now in a mullet, and almost cries.
“You’re good at this.” Claire says, and Alex shrugs. She opens the door to leave, but Claire catches her wrist and stops her. “I don’t think I’m a girl.”
Alex looks at Claire, at the new hair, the way she has tears in her eyes.
“Okay.” She says and hugs Claire. They don’t do that often, so Claire clings and revels in it. A week later, Claire gets a new tattoo. Scissors on the back of their neck.
Claire forgives. On their father's birthday, they look at the basil leaves and they forgive him for saying yes to an angel. On their mother's birthday, they look at the castle and forgive her for leaving them. Those two days are the only ones that there are no new messages and honeybee emojis from Cas. Jody doesn't ask why Claire doesn't talk and makes them hot chocolate. Afterwards, on a random day, Claire gets a tattoo of a house. It's not a specific house, and Claire is unsure if it's supposed to be their old or their new home.
“I’m a canvas.”
“You’re what?”
“A canvas.” Claire hands the joint back to Alex, who takes a deep drag. The two of them are lounging in the hammock in their garden, getting high and watching the stars.
“Hmm.” Alex closes her eyes. “Why are you a canvas?”
Claire thinks for a moment while drawing lines between stars. “See this?” They show Alex their wrist, where the basil leaves are resting within their skin. “A canvas.”
“For tattoos?” Alex ask.
“For everything.” Claire replies. They are a canvas. They can paint on princesses and warriors. They can paint on memories. They can paint on themself if they ever figure out who that is.
“I’m a canvas. I can be whoever I want to be.” Their newest tattoo, a honeybee, rests above their heart.