Chapter Text
The Throne of Perrault sat alone in the museum made from the former Darmancourt Castle, aside from a hand painted portrait of the Last Queen, Eleanor the Second, hanging over it. Thick barriers of rope and waist-high plastic kept the public from resting on or touching it. After all, this was one of the few castle artifacts that survived the fall.
Pale pink stone was charred and chipped on the edges, though the core of it was stable and it was cleaned of accumulated dust daily. The upholstery had to be remade, of course; seat and tail well both. Some of the jewels embedded in it had been stolen in the wake of the fall, but others stayed and still others were replaced to look as accurate as possible alone side the precious metal trim.
Most visitors to the museum would sit on one of the chairs facing the throne. Modelled after old church pews with elegant carvings, they offered a chance to reflect on the awful history of this planet and just how much was lost. Sometimes docents or even a curator would give speeches standing in front of the barred off throne, telling about the life and times of all Perrault's kings and queens.
Inevitably however, the topic would turn to the child-queen who had led them through war and lost through no fault of her own. Voices would go quiet, eyes would turn down, and the older among them would even have stories to share of the before times.
The child-queen in question, now forty years older and a hell of a lot more jaded, was not interested in all that. Cloaked in grey, she hardly stood out from the crowd save for her height and the cane beside her. Anyone looking would have just seen another tired old soul, but not one who wanted to sit on those godawful pews. Even all these years later, she could feel the pain in her buttocks, and with the way she ached now that was not an appealing proposition.
No. She took one look at the story hour on crappy benches and decided that to rest her weary bones, she was going to sit on her chair. Her throne. What were those barriers going to stop her? She'd broken out of Cole's prisons and slipped into restricted areas far more secure than these.
"Excuse me!" came the voice of the docent, a short mousefolk woman with a close-cropped afro and a professional tan vest. "You can't go back there."
Cinders fixed her with a yellow-eyed stare, her lips thin. "Can't I? It's my chair and the damn thing's more ergonomic than those godawful pews."
"Your chair?" the docent said, reaching for her walkie-talkie. "Ma'am, if you could just—"
Whatever. Cinders would sort this out after she had the chance to rest after walking for hours on end. Never mind the docent or the rapidly approaching security team or even the dozen or so museum patrons on the edge of action or inaction, she needed to sit. Casually, she hopped the barriers and collapsed right onto her throne. Her cane rested against the arm, just like her father's once had.
"Ma'am," came a deeper voice, a gatorfolk individual wearing a security badge, "I need you to—"
"Be quiet," Cinders snapped, pinching her nose. "I need a moment to think!"
"Ma'am—"
The madwoman on the four-decades empty throne pulled down the hood of her cloak and for just a moment, uncountable ghosts filled the throne room. All knelt to her, the queen of the dead and damned, the lost and forgotten. Everyone gasped. Some saw long-lost faces. Others started weeping.
Cinders was the most comfortable she'd been in a long damn while. Although the upholstery was new, it still hugged her body like it used to. Her lupine tail draped in the tail-well in a way that wouldn't fuck up the rest of her spine. Stars, she should put this in her ship.
Murmurs began to ripple across the crowd. Was it really— But the Queen was dead— Was this an imposter? No. The portrait above was impossibly accurate, compiled from a thousand scavenged photographs of Her Majesty before the galaxy-wide war. Some were from the six months she spent married to the galaxy's biggest war criminal. Others were scrounged up from before the Fall. All experts agreed it was one of the most precise recreations of Her Majesty's visage.
There were differences between it and the woman below, of course. Mostly age; the shimmer in her hair had dulled and greyed, her autumn brown hands were calloused and worn, and decades of hard living had imprinted both a bitterness and a manic whimsy to her face. But the eyes were the same piercing yellow, the smile quirked the same, and her lupine ears peeked out of her braided bun were missing the same pieces as in the portrait. She was even still crowned, though not with the rose-gold crown that symbolized the unity of the Seven Great Nations. Instead, a pair of golden antlers just like her father's adorned her.
"I really don't see what the big deal is," Cinders said mildly to the rapidly growing crowd of the living while the dead faded once more. "I know the throne is stable. Were you worried about me farting in it? If so, honey, that ship sailed decades ago."
The docent from before choked on whatever her words were going to be. Luckily for her, another woman (a sister, maybe? they looked similar enough) put a hand on the docent's shoulder and stepped forwards.
"Y-your Majesty," began the woman, her eyes wide but her face still putting on a professional smile, "Forgive our concern. It's not every day the Last Queen comes back to life and it's usually a reenactor..."
Cinders smiled back, now more at ease than she had been in a long, long time. "I have my secrets. It's been… forty years since I've been back home? And last time anyone heard of me, I'd supposedly died at my own damn wedding. You know how it goes. I was wondering what had happened to my castle, and I must say, this is a sight better than letting Belin or my stepmother live here."
The second woman puffed up her chest with pride. "Thank you! I and my staff have spent a lot of time restoring the castle and recovering the historical record." She paused. "Forgive me, I don't know if my manners are correct…"
"That's all right, …?"
"Director Ahn Mae, and this is my sister Jacin." The docent from before smiled awkwardly at her sister's introduction.
Cinders nodded. "You're fine. I have literally spent the last forty years of my life living in some of the worst places a human can. I do not care about formality anymore, and anyone pretending to be me who does is doing a horrid job at it. Also, you people accepted me at my word surprisingly quickly. May I ask why?"
Director Ahn Mae opened her mouth to speak, but someone from the crowd shouted out, "Only the queen has the power to bring ghosts back!"
Huh. Did… could people see her ghosts? The eight billion souls that made up pieces of her own dessicated husk? She blinked for a long moment. "Uh…"
"You did it for some people in Little Perrault?" Director Ahn Mae prompted gently. "It was at—"
"OH! Right! That party!" Cinders laughed, warm and rich, and everyone laughed with her. "I hadn't meant to show poor Lucy her departed family. They were very belligerent, you know, very insistant on seeing her again. I didn't even realize I could do that until they showed up, fires and all. You know the ghosts show their deaths on their faces?"
"…that would explain some things about the interview," Jacin muttered to herself. Her hand tippy-tippy tapped against her thigh, her voice tight. "Your Majesty, would you care to join us for our program?"
Oh. Hm. Cinders had just interrupted a museum program, hadn't she? Whoops. She'd just wanted a place to sit down and her old throne was far more comfortable. "Ah, please, just call me Cinders. And… actually, after I rest for a little while I was going to figure out what to do for lunch."
She really didn't have any money left... she'd used most of it bribing the New Constantinople police who'd caught her in their orbit when she'd figured out Rose was there. Other than what little she had in her ship (somewhere far across the city) she'd mostly figured she was going to have to steal.
Thankfully her knight in shining armor arrived in the form of the museum director. "Please, Your- Cinders. Would you join me? There's a nice little traditional place that grows their own pre-Fall garden that's just to die for."
"I'd prefer not to die for it, actually," Cinders said wryly. She grabbed her cane and slowly rose to her feet. "But yes. I think I'd like that very much Ahn Mae."