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The first thing she recalls seeing is a smile, wan and grim and without humour on a face too small and childish to hold such a look for long. But hold it her object of intrigue did, and like the grasp of a dying king to his crown Katarina Claes never let it go. Smiles were dark and empty things from then on, they meant so very little in the grand scheme of things, but Mary Hunt did not care.
Those smiles, they were beautiful. They were expressions beneath the expressionless. Emotions beneath the emotionless. The heart hidden by stoicism.
They were absolutely beautiful. Mary Hunt would do anything to see those grim, dark, empty smiles.
She’d never felt like a person. Not really. She’d always been some shade of someone else; of her dear Alan, of whom had about five braincells bouncing about, but was nonetheless entirely devoted to survival and wellbeing. He stood with the rigors of battle and the lust for blood, whereas Mary Hid behind his painted fists with sweet, snide words and sharp claws and venomous beauty. Even as a child she was a thorny rose too damaging – afraid – to allow to anyone near.
Then, one day, she was invited, alongside her husband-to-be Alan, to a simple tea party to the Claes House. Introductions were given by the parents, and the personal maid of the young girl Katarina Claes led the way to their fated meeting.
They stepped through dark and empty hallways, a grim atmosphere permeating the entirety of the home. the Claes Duchess had taken to alcoholism, and the Duke was a man prone to bouts of near-insanity. Yet the maids had taken excellent care of the House and the butlers did their best to ensure perfection in everything they did. All for the Young Lady Claes they had heard so much about.
She could not understand why, at the time, these servants both loved and worried over the Young lady Claes, but Mary was wrapped up in thoughts and painted-on smiles and words to whisper in future ears.
Then they met the Young Lady Claes, and even if she truly was only nine years old, she radiated the energy of an old veteran of war. So old, and so tired, and so very weary. She had removed herself entirely from the poise of other nobles, instead slouching in her chair with nary a care in the world, empty blue eyes flickering their direction and lingering on Mary – or so she would fervently believe until her dying breath, that she’d managed to make the apathetic Katarina Claes see her with just her presence alone.
The maid, Anne if she recalls, stepped forward and kneeled to her Lady, taking both hands and gathering the clearly distracted attention of Katarina. “My Lady, do you not wish to see them?”
Mary couldn’t get a word out, and Alan was too busy staring at Katarina to care, but her maid had received a whispered answer nonetheless.
The maid nodded, and Mary gave the Lady Claes an empty smile she reserved for simpering idiots not worth her time, thoroughly expecting to have charmed her into submission.
The empty smile she received in return spoke volumes of just how in trouble she truly was of Katarina Claes’ charms.
“Beautiful,” she’d uttered, rosy cheeks reddening further at Alan’s queer look.
Katarina lifted an uncaring eyebrow in response, and seemed to brush off the comment as easily as water from a duck’s back.
Katarina had no idea what she’d done that day, and Mary wouldn’t for a very long time either.
Katarina’s lifted eyebrow, a clear sign she’d heard Mary’s comment, sent shockwaves through the body of Mary Hunt, the unattainable, highly thorny rose.
For a second, she felt noticed. No one had paid much attention to her beyond flattering comments that rolled with the emptiness of long years of practice. Simpering fools and moronic toadies and hanger-ons that refused to see that she could have watched them die and never blinked. She cared so very little for them but – oh. Oh. Oh! That eyebrow!
She’d been seen!
Mary had never felt so noticed by anyone. They paid attention to Alan, to her parents, to her lineage even. But never her.
She’d been heard.
She’d been seen.
And that, to Mary, for the slightest of seconds, made her feel every bit the soft and delicate rose people thought she truly was. She’d been stripped of her thorns and laid bare, and the pallour of her skin had reddened considerably.
Because Mary Hunt, for the first time in her life, had been seen. She had been noticed.
She had, for the slightest of seconds, felt like a real person.
She had, for the slightest of seconds, felt beautiful.
And Mary Hunt would never let this go. Katarina Claes had claimed her entirety with the lift of an eyebrow and a grim, empty, beautiful smile.
Mary had always been a sucker for beautiful things, after all.