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1
"Here," Jeanne says, in an almost-clipped tone, brandishing a neatly-wrapped box toward Bayonetta.
"Oh? Jeanne, surely your memory isn't failing you in your old age. My birthday isn't until next month, you know," Bayonetta says.
Jeanne tilts her head. "I'm well aware, Cereza. Though I thought I could trust your memory to recall the significance of today's date."
Bayonetta's brow furrows slightly as she tries to rack her brain for what could have happened in November that was so important for Jeanne to deem a celebration necessary. Of course, she recovered most of her memories after the spectacle on Isla del Sol, but perhaps there were still some missing here and there...?
An autumn dusk finds Cereza alone with Cheshire, wandering along a dirt path winding through the Umbra grounds outside of the city.
"That's where all the strongest witches live," Cereza explains to Cheshire, pointing to the monolith of the witch statue overlooking the Crescent Valley. "Mummy says that the big witch protects them. Ooh!" Suddenly distracted, she excitedly runs to a bush of bright red flowers off the side of the path. "Mummy told me about these too! She said it's called a hib—hob—hibusc..." Cereza stops dead in her tracks as she finds herself face-to-face with a girl who must be her same age despite her stark-white hair, in a long red nightgown with matching slippers and arms wrapped securely around an equally well-dressed stuffed cat.
"I haven't seen you on the grounds before," the stranger says, almost accusingly. "Who are you?"
Cereza blinks. "Ah! Of course I remember the date." She adjusts her glasses. "I just couldn't be sure if you had. What with six hundred years of memories in there, surely you can't keep them all straight in your head."
Jeanne laughs, not unkindly, and deposits the gift box in Cereza's lap. "I'm not sure I'll be able to forget anything involving you any time soon."
Cereza busies herself with unwrapping the box in lieu of a response, but finds herself truly speechless when she opens the box to find none other than Cheshire staring back at her with his mismatched eyes. "This—"
"Well, you did ask for a stuffed animal all those years ago," Jeanne says, satisfied at Cereza's reaction. "I thought I'd see fit that I'd finally make good on that promise. Surely you haven't also forgotten one of your oldest friends."
If Cereza didn't know her better, she would almost call the expression that Jeanne wore coy. She exhales. "You truly never cease to surprise me, Jeanne."
"I do try my best," Jeanne says smugly, though not without the remnants of a slight blush and a genuine, affectionate smile on her face. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a few papers left to grade." She turns and starts to make her way back to her desk.
"Jeanne," Cereza calls, almost haltingly, to her retreating form. "You know I'll have no choice but to make you pay for this later."
Jeanne turns back, and now her half-smile is unmistakable in the fading late-noon sun. "I'll be looking forward to it."
2
When Jeanne hears the rising voices down the hall in the general vicinity of Cereza's quarters, she knows it can only be trouble. Again.
An irritated growl rises in her throat as she leaps forward into a lynx, following the source of the noise and confirming her suspicions: a fellow teenage witch-in-training has Cereza cornered, brandishing her newly-minted pistols and speaking in increasingly rising tones. Cereza, for her part, stands as defiantly as ever as she responds in kind as best she can, though Jeanne doesn't miss the tension in her shoulders and the unease in her concealed eyes.
She shifts out of her lynx form and rises to her feet, closing the short distance between her and the other two witches with purposeful clicks of her heels that echo off the stone walls.
"Do we have a problem here?"
The other witch seemed to be too preoccupied with trying to show Cereza exactly how her new guns worked to notice Jeanne's arrival. She stiffens and slowly turns to face Jeanne. With her hood pulled down and nothing covering her face, Jeanne immediately recognizes her as one of the higher-ranking witch apprentices — one of the few who enjoyed loudly and opening questioning Jeanne's ability as the heir, at that.
"The outcast started it!" The witch blurts out once she's regained her senses, pointing an accusatory barrel behind her in Cereza's direction.
Jeanne narrows her eyes at Cereza, whose smirk is just visible behind her cowl. Somehow, she doesn't doubt it. "Is that so?"
"She implied that she could best me in combat. The little outcast who can't even throw a punch" —Cereza's expression grows just a touch more sardonic— "really thinks that she could even hold a candle to an elite Umbra apprentice." She sniffs haughtily, flourishing her pistols. "I was just trying to make sure she knew her place."
Jeanne has to suppress an exasperated sigh; she's not sure if she's more irritated by the self-important rant or by Cereza for knowingly picking yet another fight with one of the more dangerous witches their age. She settles for closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. "And you really decided it necessary to bother with such filth?" She can't help inwardly cringing and mentally apologizing to Cereza. "You call yourself an elite apprentice, and yet you found no worthier opponent than the miserable little outcast?"
"I—well..." The other witch sputters. From the look on her face, she was clearly expecting Jeanne, as one of the few among their peers to outrank her, to offer some sort of support, if not condonation.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jeanne sees Cereza shift slightly and notes the tension slowly easing out of her posture. Encouraged, she continues: "Would you really like to explain in front of the Umbran Council why you deem it fit to christen your armament by making a show of threatening the lowest of the low?"
The other witch's expression takes on a more panicked tinge. "I—that is—if that's the case, then..."
Jeanne raises an eyebrow, setting her face in a well-practiced unamused expression.
"I mean. I would be honored to... properly break in my new guns with an equal... and—and who better than the heir herself?" The apprentice forces out a shaky, nervous laugh, but flourishes her pistols all the same.
Jeanne spares a glance toward Cereza, who, for her part, stays silent, but looks like she might be on the verge of laughter. Both of them are well aware that Cereza would make a much more capable sparring partner in any event.
She crosses her arms and fixes the other witch with the hardest stare she can muster. "Go on about your business and I may have the good grace to see to it that this is swept under the rug." She waits for the other witch to call her bluff; there's not a chance in Inferno that the Council would go out of their way to take any measure to protect the outcast, out of any witch. She can only hope that her authority among her peers as the heiress and her most powerful glare will be enough.
"R-right then..." The other witch mumbles, hanging her head and pulling up her hood. With one last vindictive glance toward Cereza, she steps away, gracefully morphs into a black-and-gold leopard, and breaks into a sprint down the hall.
Jeanne sustains her glare at the witch's retreating form until it vanishes from sight around a corner and the unmistakable sound of a vase toppling to the floor rings out in a distant corridor. Cereza lets out a snicker and Jeanne can't quite repress a smirk of her own.
Finally, she drops her shoulders and turns to Cereza with a weary sigh. "What is this, the fifth time this month?"
"Only the fourth, actually," Cereza says. "But if you want me to make it five..." Her eyes glitter impishly from behind her mask.
"Cereza," Jeanne says in a warning tone. "You know I can't always be here to protect you, especially given how little we see each other now. What happens the next time someone gets at you alone?"
"I'm perfectly capable of holding my own, Jeanne," Cereza replies, somewhat tersely. "Besides, unlike you, I do have a sense of self-preservation." She sniffs. "And it's not my fault that some talentless, blithering fool of a witch-in-training happened to insult our fine heir's ability within earshot of me."
...Ah. So that's what all this is about.
Jeanne relents, unable to suppress a surge of fondness despite her irritation at Cereza's antics. "Oh, so I don't supposed you had anything to do with the rigged explosive spell in the east classroom that almost caused three witches to go bald last week."
Cereza puts on her best doe eyes. "Of course not. You think the lowest among us would be capable of such a devious scheme? The miserable little outcast? I can't even throw a proper punch."
Jeanne winces. "Cereza... you know I must keep a certain amount of distance to avoid suspicion. I'd hope that you of all people know how I really feel about the outcast."
"Oh? And how is it that you feel about her, exactly?" Cereza pulls Jeanne closer, sliding one arm around Jeanne's waist. That tone of voice is all too familiar to her by now.
Jeanne looks away, though not without a smile. "I do have to sincerely apologize, Cereza."
"Well, if you really want to make it up to me..." Cereza starts, wrapping her other arm around Jeanne's neck and bringing their faces inches apart, "You could be doing something more useful with your mouth than apologizing."
Jeanne doesn't need any more invitation.
3
"No, no, no," comes a mumble from the other side of the bed so quiet that Cereza almost doesn't catch it at first. "That's a common misconception, thanks in no small part to the proliferation of inaccuracy in popular period dramas. It's actually... actually..."
Cereza puts her latest trashy romance find on the nightstand and shifts closer to Jeanne. "Oh, tell me more, professor."
"Actually..."
"Go on."
Jeanne falls silent, still fast asleep. Cereza has grown used to her sleep-lecturing by now; she can't say she doesn't enjoy it, as she usually ends up learning some interesting historical tidbits from the centuries of her life that she missed out on. Tonight, Jeanne seems to be fielding dream-student questions.
"I have a question, professor," She tells Jeanne, careful to keep her voice quiet enough as not to wake her.
"...Tens of thousands murdered, yes. The exact date has never been properly recorded, but it's estimated to have started in the mid-fifteenth century. One of humanity's... greatest atrocities..."
Cereza feels her stomach drop.
"Tortured, beaten, burned, drowned..."
"Jeanne?"
"The hunts were—" Jeanne quiets again, then rolls toward Cereza, still seemingly asleep, though not for much longer. Her eyes open to slits, disturbed by the light from the table lamp, and she affixes Cereza with as displeased a look as she can muster in her half-waken state.
"It's late," Jeanne grumbles.
"Yes, but unlike a certain someone, I don't have school tomorrow morning," Cereza says.
Jeanne rolls the other way with a huff and buries herself underneath the blankets once more in response.
Cereza manages to make it through most of the next chapter before the rustling next to her starts up again.
"Cereza—!"
"Jeanne," Cereza says firmly, pulling the covers back and taking hold of Jeanne's shoulder. "You're dreaming again."
"Cereza, please," Jeanne whispers breathlessly, desperately, eyes still screwed shut. "I'm sorry... I had to protect our... my... You're my..."
Cereza grabs Jeanne by both shoulders and shakes her thoroughly, but Jeanne's only response is to flail harder.
"My precious left—"
Cereza interrupts Jeanne's sleep talk with a solid kiss on the mouth.
Jeanne immediately wakes up in response.
"Cereza? What's going on?" Immediately on high alert, she pushes Cereza away and reaches for a knife that isn't at her hip while attempting to survey their bedroom. She resists when Cereza tries to pull her in until she confirms that there doesn't seem to be an active threat.
"It was a nightmare," Cereza says, uncharacteristically soft, combing her fingers through Jeanne's hair as she cautiously relents to Cereza's embrace.
"I know that. I'm fine," Jeanne grouses in response, though she leans further into Cereza's touch. "Lamp," she adds as she buries her face in Cereza's shoulder. "Too damn bright."
Cereza laughs softly. "I thought you were supposed to be quite the aficionado when it came to lamps."
Cereza waits until Jeanne's breathing has steadied out again to switch the lamp off and pull the covers over both of them. Jeanne makes a sound, but only wraps her arms tighter around Cereza.
"Thank you," Cereza murmurs into Jeanne's hair, once she's sure Jeanne is asleep.
4
It's almost sunrise when Jeanne hears a quiet knock at her chambers and the door slowly creaking open.
She looks up from her textbook with bleary eyes, blinking a few times before managing to focus on the figure in front of her. Cereza pulls her cowl off and closes the door behind her as Jeanne closes her textbook with a smile that turns into a yawn she can't quite suppress.
"Tired already?"
Jeanne rubs her eyes, too exhausted even to grace Cereza with a customary witty response. "Long day."
Cereza pulls the textbook out from under Jeanne and sets it aside. "I'm surprised you haven't memorized this one by now," she says.
Jeanne squints. "I just started that one last week."
"My point stands," Cereza says. "You're so committed to your studies that I have to fight textbooks for your attention. No time for the finer things in life." She tries her best to swoon dramatically onto Jeanne's desk, clearly tortured by Jeanne's rigorous study habits.
"I suppose," Jeanne mumbles, taking the opportunity to lay her head in Cereza's lap.
A moment passes, and Cereza is almost certain Jeanne has fallen asleep, if her steady, deep breaths are anything to go by.
"Come now, Jeanne," she starts, fingernails gently scraping Jeanne's scalp, "Don't you think it's a bit undignified for the heir of the throne to fall asleep at her desk? We can't have our most honorable leader ruling the glorious clan with a crick in her neck."
Jeanne grunts in response. "I wasn't sleeping."
"Of course you weren't." Cereza stands and pulls Jeanne up with her, meaning to pull them both toward the bed in the corner. Jeanne, seemingly awake enough, resists. She leans forward, bringing her hand to rest on the intricate frame of Cereza's mask. Instinctively, Cereza flinches, but doesn't pull away. After a moment, she relaxes and allows Jeanne to pull it off and set it aside on the desk.
"I can count the number of times on one hand that I've seen you bare-faced since we started formal training," Jeanne says, running her thumb along the sharp curve of Cereza's cheekbone.
"I could say the same to you," Cereza replies, eyes closing in response to Jeanne's touch. "When was the last time you let your hair down since you grew it out? Figuratively and literally?"
Jeanne sighs. "I'm the heir apparent to the Umbra throne. The entire clan will rest on my shoulders. I can't afford to..." she suppresses a yawn. "To—"
"—To get such little sleep that you're constantly exhausted!" Cereza says. She reaches for the netting of Jeanne's buns and carefully unhooks it, then undoes her braids to release Jeanne's hair in a silver waterfall. She adds, half under her breath, "Though anyone would be better than that wretch. Come on."
"The sun hasn't even come up yet," Jeanne says, barely a protest, as she lets Cereza pull her into bed. She readily nestles herself against Cereza, face buried against the side of her neck and arm wrapped securely around her waist, a position that's become second nature to her at this point,
"Stay with me," she mumbles into Cereza's skin, eyes already drifting closed. It's not so much a demand as it is a plea, as unreasonable as she knows it is.
"Of course," comes the response along with a gentle kiss into Jeanne's hair, fondness laced into Cereza's words.
Jeanne knows that it's an empty promise. Cereza won't—can't—be there when she wakes up, as it would mean a death sentence if someone discovered them together.
But she tries to stay awake as long as she can in Cereza's arms, in the one place where she can shed the responsibilities and expectations of the Umbra heir and just be Jeanne.
For now, it's enough.
5
Cereza's not sure when Jeanne decided to start letting her hair grow, but she definitely takes notice when one day she's suddenly able to grab a handful of silver at the back of Jeanne's scalp.
"This is new," she remarks, tugging Jeanne's head back in emphasis. "Has someone been falling behind on upkeep?"
Jeanne's gray eyes meet Cereza's own as she responds with, "Hm? You don't like it?"
Cereza scoffs, mocking offense. "I said no such thing," she says, with another gentle squeeze at Jeanne's hair.
"Well," Jeanne says, "I just thought a little change might be nice. It's been this short for a few decades already."
"And you're taking the long way around? All your infinite wisdom in the Umbran magical arts and you don't make use of it to change the length of your hair?"
Jeanne snorts. "And how do you think the students would react to me showing up to class one day with my hair quadrupled in length? It's already growing so fast that all of the girls are after me about me what product I use."
Cereza raises her eyebrow. "And what would they ask if they found out that your secret involves sleeping in your makeup every night?"
Jeanne frowns. "Not every night. Especially not since you started your habit of terrorizing me to take it off as soon as I come home."
"You should be thanking me for that!" Cereza says, feigning offense. "I'm the only thing standing between you and premature wrinkles."
"Of course," Jeanne says. "Over five hundred years and you're the entire reason why I don't have a trace of crow's feet yet."
"Exactly," Cereza says. "And speaking of, it has been about that long since I've seen your hair even remotely long enough to pull on! I have to say, that's something I'll certainly be looking forward to."
It's just a few weeks later when Cereza comes home and pulls off her nun's habit, flipping her newly-shortened hair.
"So It seems I'm not the only one who wanted a change of pace."
"Well, I can't let you be the only one having all the fun around here!" Cereza responds. "And it has been five hundred years, after all."
She saunters over to where Jeanne stands—whose hair has almost reached her calves—and slides her arms around her shoulders. "So, what do you think?"
"It suits you," she says, and pulls Cereza in for a kiss.