Work Text:
She raises a pair of scissors to her head.
She doesn’t know who she is.
They don’t know where to go, where to turn, how to think, how to act, who to turn to, what they can do.
And it sucks, it really, truly does.
A part of her wants to wear a dress once more, return to her mother, apologise for everything she’s said. Tell her that everything is ok, and that she’s calmed right down now. Wear gorgeous dresses, marry a man with a lot of money, then kill him when she gets bored. She wouldn’t mind that.
Except they would. They’d hate it.
It would be so comfortable though, so familiar, something fun. Gorgeously playful, almost unreal. They know this. They know how to do this. They’d knows how to pull a fringe across her face, a wig over her head, heavy dresses, constricting corsets, posh smiles, and gorgeously stupid charms that adhere to almost no logical reasoning. They would have a place there.
But, then again, there’s expectations.
They want to be a boy, in the way that her brothers are. In the way that they gain love simply for being themselves, are never expected to conform in order to be beautiful for their mother. He knows their mother would hate the very idea of this. This, a new standard to live unto, is daunting, scary, dangerous, even. But the idea of being a boy. Having the risk, the fear, the aggression. The way that people would care about a boy. The way that people wouldn’t look for a perfect house, a perfect man, or hundreds of tiny purebred children to prove his worth.
But they don’t really want to be a boy.
They want people to think they’re a boy, see them on the street and nod, as if they know. They see him, and go, that’s a man, that is.
But they’re not one, not really.
And that’s ok, because they don’t want to be.
(They do, they do.)
She wants to be a girl without being a girl, the dresses without the expectations, without the ‘she’ and the ‘her’.
He wants to be born a boy and not a girl.
They want anything other than what they have.
He cuts down.
On the 26th November, 1667, 16 years after being birthed, Israel Hands is born.
But before…
Not even they know.