Work Text:
At the age of fifteen, Fella realizes that the ways in which the world works sometimes don’t go according to her plans.
Exhibit A: despite her excellent scores during the second year of elementary school, she was not nominated as the Best Student simply because one teacher didn’t like the way she talked.
Exhibit B: she had secretly snooped on her parents saying “I love you”s, kissing and quietly dancing in their shared kitchen when they thought that she was fast asleep, and yet that still didn’t stop them from divorcing each other.
The thing is, Fella believes that no matter how accurate her calculation, or how meticulous the plan, there will always be an outlier; an unwanted exception.
Don’t get her wrong, though. Fella prides herself on her resilience and obstinate qualities. She always has contingency plans up in her sleeves even before there is a possibility of error coming into the big picture. Some people call her obsessive, others call her thickheaded, but to be frankly honest, you can’t win a game without at least a little bit being crazy about the whole ordeal. Exhibit A: playing poker. Exhibit B: winning a business pitch, and the fact that Fella, several years after college, already holding the operations of several companies she built from the ground up proves just how expert she is in playing her cards.
(Ucup called it nepotism, Fella said fuck you.)
Which is why, the very first time Fella realized that she has fallen in love with a woman, and that woman being none other than Sarah—yes, that Sarah. The Brute. Her former heist-colleague. Piko Subiakto’s ex. The woman who used to witness Fella when she was embarrassingly retching her guts out in their base camp’s toilet after a night of drinking—she had an entire breakdown involving two vomit sessions, one life-threatening fever, and a huge what the fuck neon board sign in her mind, brought to you by the little bits of sanity left in her.
Another fact about Fella: she is cunning, clever, akin to a fox, at times, but she’s never dishonest. She won’t lie to your face unless it’s truly necessary to do so. But during those early weeks of staying awake until late at night, a particular pair of strong thighs and biceps haunting her even in her dreams, she would rather die than to open her mouth and let anyone but her and her miserable eyebags know this truth.
Her loser moment aside, to put it simply, if we’re talking about poker, you might perceive Fella’s life as the entire deck, and Sarah is the card she did not expect to draw in the middle of the match.
“Is something wrong, Miss?,” Mas Gito asks from the front seat. It’s Monday noon, the busiest day of the week, and Jakarta roadway is practically a hellhole that she refuses even to watch from the dark-tinted glass of her car. Fella doesn’t realize that she’s been smiling ear to ear, which is something that probably looks concerning in front of the older man.
“Nothing,” Fella curtly answered, biting the insides of her mouth. “By the way, can you take me to Sarah’s instead? I don’t think I’m coming home tonight.”
“Roger, Miss.”
At the age of twenty five, Fella, for the first time in her life, lets herself be taken by the whims and absurdity of life, of feelings, of the things she doesn’t have any control over despite the zeroes in her bank account, despite the long titles and achievements behind her back.
As the red light turns into green and she can feel the car running again, she can’t help but sigh and lean back on the car seat, texting a quick I’m on my way, don’t sleep without me to a contact she had deliberately label “Girlfriend” because she’s just a loser that way, and quietly admitting that in the grand scheme of things—and things being life, card games, and sometimes the way she reacts under the touch of a particular woman—she is merely a Knave played under the whims of her Queen.