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Olympia absolutely hated what her mother had done to her hair.
They’d had their semi-bi-monthly mommy-daughter date, or whatever her mother wanted to call it. It was usually disastrous and ended within an hour or two of Olympia having to stand the way her mother acted. Despite her ability to smile through most things, Olympia had no patience for her mother. She knew what she was made for; knew that there was no world in which she didn’t belong to the Ministry of Adventuring; knew that her mother was to blame for this in its entirety. And yet she was carted around by her guardians without any regard for how she felt about any of it. She was obligated, she was told, so she just had to grow up and stop fighting for herself. She fought for the government—for the good of the world, not for herself.
On this particular day, Catalina had insisted that Olympia simply needed to do something with her hair—those locs were a pure disaster! No, no daughter of hers was going to be anything less than sparklingly perfect, and that included her hair. Even if she didn’t get much maintenance from the folks back home, Catalina would not be seen with so dreadful looking a daughter as Olympia anymore. Olympia was getting worn down, so being seen in public with Catalina was going to become a more common occurrence (heavily obscured and parametered so that they’d draw as little attention as possible, of course). So, Olympia had been taken to a salon and made to endure the torture of having her hair combed and pulled out for long enough that she felt tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
Like all things, though, Olympia just had to grin and bear it. She stared at herself in the mirror, watching her hair go from securely locced to frizzy and all over the place. Then, she was guided to a chair by a basin, rested her neck in the crook of the thing, and felt her scalp being hosed down with water hot enough to make her grimace. The hands in her hair belonged to a stranger; kind and smiling, but still unfamiliar. The fingertips, at first cold with shampoo, scrubbed at her scalp and pulled at little knots left in her hair. She was hosed down again, then had some sticky sludge put in her hair. She was sat up, feeling more like a wet cat than a pretty girl, and waited. Apparently, they had to leave this stuff in for a while.
While she waited, Catalina paid her no mind. Instead chatting away with the stylist or on the phone, her voice as grating as ever. Olympia chose to lose herself in her thoughts, casting her mind to her family back home. Aislin was going to give her so much shit for this—but hopefully he’d be at least a little bit sympathetic to her plight. Maybe she’d even get to have some braids put in after this was over, and maybe she’d get to put some jewelry in them too. Who would have the time or patience to do such a thing, she didn’t know, but she figured that she could learn if nobody else was willing. She’d had to teach herself most things about being normal, why shouldn’t she have to teach herself how to do this as well?
This train of thought was cut off by an alarm on the stylist’s crystal, signaling that it was time to get this stuff out of her hair. She’d called it conditioner, but it didn’t feel like anything she’d seen anyone else using. Once the stuff was out of her hair, she was carted back to her original seat and sat through the din of the hair dryer in her ears and more pulling from some comb the stylist had attached to the dryer. Once all was said and done, her hair was poofy and straight and she hated it. Olympia turned her head side to side, trying to find a way to enjoy what the hell had been done to her hair, but came up empty.
The stylist began to set up a flat iron and pulled a fine comb from a drawer—when another alarm went off, this time from Catalina’s crystal. She sneered and rolled her eyes, telling Olympia that they’d have to finish this tomorrow, she had somewhere to be. Olympia knew this to be code for time’s up, you have to go home. The stylist was very understanding and offered to set up a follow-up appointment, but was brushed off by Catalina. Olympia followed, hunched behind her mother, insecurity beginning to set in. She didn’t like change, and this was not the experience to change her mind.
Once she’d been dropped off and halfheartedly hugged by her mother, Olympia holed up in her room. Her room had always been the same—designated as hers the second she was born. The furniture went from crib to twin bed. She’d likely outgrow the bed in a year or two, but as long as it technically fit her, it wasn’t going to change.
The room was almost entirely blank, save for the precious few pictures adorning the walls. Her sheets, blanket, and pillow were all white, but over the years she’d been rewarded with some small things to decorate her room. She had some small paintings (likely from thrift stores, but Olympia didn’t need to know that), and little pieces of paper that she and Aislin had been allowed to draw on when they were small. They were just scraps, but they had pride of place above her bed. Aislin’s paper had a crude drawing of himself and Olympia fighting—but with smiles on their faces. Olympia’s was simply a heart, shaded in with random lines of color.
The dresser was the same cheap wooden thing the room had always had, its white paint chipping at the edges. It had held her onesies, her baby shoes, and now held variations on the same outfit she wore every day. All different colors and different patterns, but always the same. Blue jeans, a button-down shirt, and a vest. When she was younger, it was denim overalls, but she’d since settled on jeans and a vest. It was a comforting ritual, picking out her clothes. Some days, if she felt like it, she’d try and pick out the worst color combination she could. She hardly ever saw anyone who wasn’t Brandi or Aislin or one of the rotating cast of trainers, so who cared what she wore?
Aislin knocked on the door. He had this annoying but sort of sweet habit of dropping by Olympia’s room—always with Brandi accompanying him, of course—after she’d had to spend the day with her mom. He hadn’t seen her since she left that morning, so they assumed that it had probably gone badly. He was prepared for a barrage of Olympia’s bitching about her mom, all while he gently suggested that she should be grateful for her glimpses of the outside. When she answered the door, Aislin’s gasp was not at all subtle; they immediately launched into questions about where she’d been and what in the nine hells had happened to her hair.
“Gods above, Aislin, I know it’s bad,” Olympia said, exasperated.
“Not bad, just…different!” Aislin beamed.
“Yeah, yeah, liar,” Olympia said, frowning and rolling her eyes. “My, uh, my mom made me do it. It looks like shit.” She cast a quick glance over to Brandi, making sure she thought the curse was appropriately placed. Brandi made no move to correct or admonish her, just raised an eyebrow that said sure, why not.
“It’s a blank slate; maybe you can do your hair a different way now!” Aislin said excitedly. “Ooh, maybe I can braid it—Quiet’s been teaching me, you know.”
Olympia’s expression softened a bit at the idea of having her hair secure again. “I…yeah, why not,” she said. Anything would be better than having this mess in her face for the rest of forever. She wasn’t terribly fond of having more people stick their hands in her hair today, but Aislin was probably the one she hated the idea of least.
[Aislin was relentless in his pursuit of family, of connection. This was not lost on Olympia; even if she had to put on the mask of someone who didn’t care for anything but strength, she was not her mother. She was human too, at least partly, and she cherished Aislin’s tireless attempts at making the two of them best friends forever. Honestly, they probably were, or as close as they could get to it, but Olympia had always seen it more like they were brother and sister. They weren’t twins, far from it, and they were such different people that Olympia often wondered how it was they managed to get along, but they made it work. Aislin had his head on straight and could keep his cool long enough to see past Olympia’s resentment and bitterness at the situation she was in. Aislin was the closest thing she had to a real family, and there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to keep him safe. That was her purpose, not the bullshit they’d always been trying to sell to the rest of them about being strong and famous and shit.]
“Let me get Quiet, she’ll know what to do,” Aislin said. They were halfway out the door before they’d finished their sentence.
“Just—” Olympia started.
Aislin stopped, turned, and cocked his head.
“Quiet’s nice and all…I just don’t really want her touching my hair,” Olympia said rather bashfully. She liked Quiet just fine, she really did, but she wasn’t keen on having Quiet braid her hair.
Aislin nodded. “Sure thing, I’ll just get a quick refresher.” They gave a thumbs up and hurried off to bother Quiet.
Brandi shook her head and sighed quietly. She motioned to a passing trainer to head after Aislin before turning back to Olympia. “For what it’s worth, it’s not actually that bad,” she said, pointing at her hair.
“Sure,” Olympia said. “Thanks.” She didn’t want to seem ungrateful for the compliment, lest tomorrow’s training turned out to be longer than she’d initially thought.
Brandi nodded and walked off in the direction Aislin had gone, and Olympia was alone for a moment more. She left her door ajar and sat on the bed, staring up at the drawings on the wall. When Aislin returned, he was making a braiding motion with his hands and muttering to himself. Brandi followed behind him and leant against the doorframe. She didn’t prefer them being in a bedroom together, since it meant they had to be watched directly by an adult. Guidelines be damned, she needed a cigarette more than these two needed to be watched while having their little slumber party.
“I’m ready,” he said. “I’ve got this, I’ve definitely got this.” He said it more to himself than to Olympia.
Olympia turned herself toward Aislin. “You sure about that?” she asked.
“For sure,” Aislin said. He did sound confident, so Olympia tried to feel confident as well.
[That’s why they were going to be leader. He made others feel confident; made them feel safe. Olympia thought she should be able to do that too, but she wasn’t like Aislin. She was brute force where he was a kind soul. Even if Aislin was just as fucked up as she was, if not more, they were still better. Something in him—maybe it was his magic—made him so good at talking to people. Olympia wished she was a little bit more like him.]
“Alright, let’s do this,” Olympia said. “But if it turns out shit, I’m telling Brandi to make your training hell tomorrow.”
Aislin just laughed, sure in the knowledge that Olympia wouldn’t do that. There was a degree of trust between them that only forms when you’ve known someone since before they learned how to walk.
Olympia moved from her bed to the floor—Brandi didn’t let them even sit on beds together—and Aislin sat in front of her. He made a square with his fingers and squinted his eyes, trying to visualize how he was going to do this. They didn’t have any of the proper tools, but Aislin did have a comb that he’d stashed in his pocket. More out of habit than anything else, he showed Olympia his otherwise empty hands before sitting up on his knees and gently parting some of her hair.
Olympia took a deep breath and tried to relax. Aislin was probably the only gentle person she knew, so she had to trust that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.
Aislin, in trying to be gentle, was quite slow in his attempt at separating and parting Olympia’s hair. He took his time in making sure that his strands were equal and the lines he’d made were as even as he could make them before he began. Right strand over middle, left over right, rinse and repeat. He wasn’t very fast, but he did pretty well, he thought.
Right over middle, left over right, right over middle, left over right, over and over until the braid was done. It took far longer than it might have if she’d just let Quiet do it, but Olympia didn’t mind. She began to relax when the sensations became predictable and chatted away with Aislin about her horrible day.
“God, and do you know she wanted me to wear a skirt? Only reason I didn’t have to is because she didn’t realize we don’t get to have razors and stuff here so my legs have hair on them. Like, who gives a shit! Even if I did wanna wear a skirt, why would that be the reason I can’t?” Olympia ranted.
Aislin just shook their head and listened, concentrating on the task at hand. Occasionally, he’d throw in a can’t believe she’d say that or a she did not! for good measure.
“Then, she takes me to this weird salon and this lady is all up in my fuckin’ hair, combing out my locs, and I just want to cry. Like, this hurts! Why am I not killing the shit out of this lady?! She does that shit for gods only know how long, and then she washes my hair—but worst of all, the actual worst part, was the fact that she just left this conditioning stuff in my hair for, like, twenty minutes. I’m just sitting there with my wet ass hair, having to listen to my mom’s voice and trying not to freak the fuck out.” Olympia gesticulates wildly as her emotions get the better of her, and Aislin has to put a hand on her shoulder to get her to sit still.
“I promise, you want even braids more than you want to gesture about how much you hate your mom,” Aislin said, slightly teasing.
Olympia sneered slightly, but did sit still. “I don’t know what else she was planning to do, but after she dried my hair she took out a flat iron. Sweet gods, I was so scared she was going to make my hair like my mom’s. What does she call it? A silk press, I think. It’s shiny and whatever but it’s so not me, I think I’d actually die,” she continued.
Still nodding along and listening, Aislin gently worked his way through Olympia’s hair until she had a full head of braids. Right over middle, left over right; it would become muscle memory someday. He didn’t have a way of keeping the braids secure, but Brandi had promised to get them some rubber bands if they wanted to keep this up. Hells, if it kept them quiet for a couple hours, she didn’t care what they did.
Once he was done, Aislin had Olympia cover her eyes and stood her up so that she could look in the mirror.
“Alright, alright,” Aislin said. “One, two, three!”
Olympia removed her hands from her eyes and inspected her new braids. They were frizzy at the ends because there was nothing keeping them in place, but she didn’t care. She pushed them back into a ponytail and held it there, smiling all the time. She nodded approvingly and pulled a hairtie from her wrist, tying her hair up into a loose ponytail.
“Do you like them?” Aislin asked.
“I love them,” Olympia said. “You have to do this again—oh my gods! Maybe we can get Brandi to get some cuffs and jewelry for these like I had with my locs!” Olympia was buzzing with excitement at the idea of still being able to decorate her hair.
“I don’t see why not. If you had them before, you should be able to have them now,” Aislin smiled.
Olympia kept looking in the mirror. The braids weren’t perfect by any means, but they were perfect for her. She hoped that Aislin would keep doing these for her, or at least teach her how to do them herself.
“Come on, let’s show the others,” Aislin said as he started toward the bathroom’s entrance.
“Yeah,” Olympia said. She stopped for a moment, remembering that she hadn’t thanked Aislin. “Hey,” she said.
Aislin nodded his head to indicate he was listening, but kept his pace.
“Thank you,” Olympia said.
“No problem,” Aislin replied. “It was fun, and maybe Quiet will stop telling me I’m doing it all wrong if we show her these bad boys.”
Olympia jogged to catch up to Aislin and followed him to the common room, where only Brandi stood. She nodded and pushed herself off from the beam she was leaning against.
“You two finally done?” Brandi said in her I need a cigarette, so please be done voice.
Olympia shrugged to Aislin. “Wait until dinner?” she whispered.
Aislin nodded to Olympia. “Yeah, we’re done,” he said to Brandi.
“Praise be,” Brandi said. “Go on to your rooms, you know the rules.”
They did, and they obeyed. Olympia thanked Aislin again and let him give her a side hug before they parted ways.
Olympia spent much of her evening looking at and playing with her new braids. She could get used to this.