Chapter Text
Avery hates blood. Any time she sees it, it's enough to make her throw up. Another thing she hates is death; it scares her every time she comes close. Why did she become a schismatic civilian, you ask? Well, she doesn’t know that either.
Well, actually, she does know that. It's to overthrow the queen of the Amethyst Empire. Valerie Vang, a leader who can't handle going outside for more than a few minutes without someone to carry her, or make her own breakfast, or let alone blink without someone to move her eyelids for her. Incompetence personified, in Avery’s opinion, even if the points stated were a heavy exaggeration. Not once, throughout all of the newspapers she picks up, gossips throughout the streets, or even encounters with the queen, has she seen or heard of her helping her employees with their work, or giving them much praise for it.
Additionally, she pays significantly more than the necessary amount to compensate for those helpers, and their pay is still at minimum wage, if not less. This normally isn’t that bad, but seriously, the castle doesn’t need as many servants as it does. Its army is already giant, there are maids everywhere, yet they’re still hiring. It's good that the queen is expanding the empire, but it's getting really overcrowded. She guesses that's why people are flocking to the castle for a home.
Now, even though she found the facts to back this up, Avery didn’t come to this conclusion alone; in fact, it was a group of dim wits that she called her friends that planted this idea into her brain and watered it until it sprouted, though not budding just yet.
Andrew, Ilessia, and Elijah, the 3 most ignorant people she has the unfortunate burden to know - or really the only friends she has- have somehow convinced her to risk being thrown on a guillotine to get a new ruler that isn't even necessary. Though she's never heard of executions in the empire with the current queen, she's also never heard of people rebelling against the queen, and look where she is now.
If Avery was being honest, the queen isn’t as horrible as these carolers of misfortune are painting her out to be. They describe her character with harsh strokes and few layers beneath, while she would like to think of her as sharp and precise, if not noticeably smudged in some areas, with coats and coats of personality and thoughts hiding beneath her glare. Avery enjoys her rulership, actually, even if she can't do anything for herself and taxes much more than needed -seriously, it's a problem-. But she has nothing better to do - she has everything better to do-, and who doesn’t like wreaking a little havoc while getting paid for it? Needs the money anyway, with how the taxes have shot up recently.
Empathy is not a trait to have when you're a rebel. Avery can't seem to get this through her head as the words, simple as can be, go in one ear and trickle out the other, leaving a hint of guilt for forgetting them in her brain, which is dampened by the reminder. She has to spread propaganda with vandalism, sabotage guards, pull her weapons out at someone who dares to try something, and risk her life if she were a part of this little group, in which she is, but she still feels bad for the queen and citizens that she herself is harming. Why? No clue. Her mind is all over the place, and she can't get a solid opinion on her occupation and what it's leading to.
She could be doing something better with her time, and yet she continues with something that was supposed to be a side hobby for when she was a teen who was mad at the world.
So as she sits in the meadow listening to Elijah blabber on and on about “The queen is a quack!” and how to dethrone her, as he bosses them all around as always, she daydreams about what she could be doing with her life instead of this.
She could be a tailor selling intricate clothes at the marketplace; she's pretty good at sewing. She could be training her archery skills since her aim is of the 3 blind mice. She could be painting; the ones that she made are gorgeous, and she’d like more decor. She could be doing her odd jobs as always; she wonders if Mrs. Grey needs help with her garden. She could be- “Ave, have you listened to a word I've said?”
Elijah stops his exaggerated pacing to point at her, stilling her thoughts to focus on what she's wrapped herself into. His blonde curls glow in the sun along with his skin as pale as a vampire, and his green eyes try to look as menacing as they can.
“Well, it's quite hard to follow along, you stutter and trip over your shoelaces every sentence.” While not flawless, the statement worked in the moment, and adding a chuckle at the end really strengthened it.
“Rude!”
“Am I lying?”
“She's not wrong, you know. You desperately need to get checked for a speech impediment,” Andrew chimes in, head resting in his hand, cross-legged with his elbow on his knee, a slight smirk on his face.
Andrew is a dark skinned man with long locks that go down below his neck. He tends to wear mostly black, no matter how sunny it is that day. His deep brown eyes look a bit lighter, paired with the midday sun behind them.
“Also, tie your shoelaces, and I'm not talking about the bunny ears going up and over; you're leading an uprising for the better of the people, and you can be taken down by an elementary school prank,” Ilessia adds, looking at her nails and back at him, trying and failing to keep a straight face.
Ilessia is a tan woman with long black hair that goes slightly above her waist. Though her fashion has variety, she mostly wears rich red. She makes the joke that the color has more royal empowerment than the whole kingdom. Her hazel eyes drift over to Elijah as he starts to speak again.
“That's not the pOint-” Elijah quickly cuts himself off as his voice cracks, as the rest of the group erupts with laughter. They’re practically holding back their breakfast as they clutch their stomachs, wheezing, inhaling air -or at least trying to- when Elijah shuts them up, “Excuse you all, we have business to attend to.” He clears his throat loudly and exaggeratedly, “As I was saying before you weren’t listening to my extremely important speech of the truth.”
Avery rolls her eyes as he continues. But as Elijah makes his next statement, his bravado runs out, and he now looks like a puppy awaiting punishment. Almost looks like he's scared. Huh.
“S-since no one is joining our cause, we are going to take matters into our own hands, and we need everyone's help in this group to do so. If one person doesn’t cooperate, this will all rain fire on our heads, and we might never see day again.” Well, if he didn’t have her attention when he called her out, he most definitely has everyone's now.
“I-i assume you all say yes?” Everyone nods, though Andrew and Avery look reluctant to do so, and when they do, it's more questioning, but Elijah can’t take a hint, so he continues. “Great, now uh, Ave, why I wanted your attention was because of this… You are good at drawing, yes?”
While she knows the answer to her question is yes, she hesitates because nothing involving life or death has to do with a pencil on paper, as far as she can recall. Yet she still nods. “Ok, great, now would you say you are sneaky?”
Oh, what a wonderful question to ask after he just said that they have a 50/50 chance of waking up the next morning. Avery gives him top marks. But she still nods,
“ Even better, ok, so you live near the castle, right? And if you live near the castle, you must know an entrance, right?”
Avery is so lost right now that she could have a map and still need directions. She's had quite enough of the mystery.
“Where exactly is this going, Elijah?”
“Could you maybe perchance, oh I don’t know…”
She's about to smack this guy into next year. “Get on with it?” She said, not so patiently waiting for a response.
“Could you break into the castle and map it out?”
Well, speaking of maps…wait, what?
“Dude, that's it? I’ve done that like a million times!” Which is true, she's had her fair share of being in the castle, the mapping part, however, is something she's concerned about, but not to the point where he has to hesitate this much. The audacity!
“I'm sorry you’ve been inside the castle? How are you still alive, and isn't that place like never open?” Ilessia says, looking bewildered as can be, straightening her back, snapping her head back towards Avery. “Yeah, it's usually open for daytime hours if people want to apply for jobs, since the castle always needs more guards and maids for some reason. It gives good pay without having to do much, so a lot of people come there. At night it's more tricky because guards are perched around, but it's where I get most of my intel from actual-”
“You’ve been there at night!?” Ilessia sounds like she's about to have a mental episode, fully turning towards Avery at this point, while Andrew and Elijah are just standing in shock. Their words are either stuck in their throat or being yelled out by Izca. Avery really doesn’t get what the big deal is. She also doesn’t know how they haven’t figured this out already. Seriously, where did they think she got the information? From Chatting cherry down by the well? Sources are more reliable when they’re firsthand.
“Ok, so I’ll be taking that as a yes…” Elijah manages to get out. “Could you do it tonight while staying alive, maybe not?” he says as he hands her the paper and pencil that came out of the satchel he carried, which is normally filled with his apothecary herbs or whatever he needs that day. Avery agreed, ignoring the ‘maybe not’, following him blindly as they all usually do, and the meeting ended.
But before she made her way back home to prepare herself for the night, Elijah, looking as tense yet serious as Avery had ever seen him, slipped a note into her pocket and mouthed “open it when you're there.” He walks away with a sense of urgency, the type that subconsciously happens while thinking, after he gave her an awkward smile.
“And again, don’t die, please!” he said before running towards the walls of the empire, as they were on the outskirts of it currently.
Maybe following orders without question isn't a good habit, which is great because it's not something Avery is quite good at. After a couple of moments of hesitation, she turns around and, picking up her pace, walks over to Elijah before he can disappear into the lilacs and foliage of the outskirts where they decided to meet today.
“Elijah!” She finally caught up to him, and by the looks of it, he didn’t expect her to come looking for him since he let out a yelp. Surprising after hearing what he said earlier and the boldness he portrayed before he introduced the conflict. Avery wonders if he ever thinks before he talks, even if he's lost in his thoughts at the moment.
“Dude, you’re not going to tell us that we have a chance to die and not explain?” He also looks shocked that she would question his very questionable statement. Leader of the revolution, everybody!
“W-well, I don't have a plan just yet, but I know how I want it to end..!”
God, give her strength.
“Are you kidding me-”
“You want me to die a most likely gruesome death, and you don't even have it planned, nor do you have a way to get us out? Just so you know, if you’ve already signed all of us in something that put a hit out on us, ask someone to put poppies on my grave.” Andrew came out of nowhere with this input. Maybe he heard the conversation from a couple of steps ago because neither of the 2 were speaking quietly, or maybe it's because they're in an open field and going the same way. Or he had the same revelation. He managed to make Elijah shriek slightly more than Avery did, but with the state he’s in, that's not much of a feat.
Just in case, Avery looks around to avoid another scare from Ilessia, but she seems to be eagerly making her way home, most likely to see her dog. She might seem carefree and ditzy, but she's quite smart and responsible for those she loves. When she needs to be, of course. She doesn't care about much, unless it's for a good time or prevents her from having one. Avery is quite jealous of her ability to not care, actually. As stated before, empathy isn’t great to show, and Ilessia has perfected that skill.
“Listen, listen-!” Elijah begins to explain, but quickly gets cut off. “All we do is listen, we're rebels, not dolls with swords that do whatever you want.”
Andrew makes a good point. Just because Elijah is their friend, he doesn't get to always boss them around and keep plans to himself until it's later than need be or too late. Avery has a scar on her upper arm to prove that after the team was led by Elijah, and he didn’t tell them that the plan was to fight the guards as an act of discontent. Thanks to Ilessia, they got out of there without their face being known to anyone and without having to hurt anyone. That wound Avery took to make that plan work took a while to heal, though. And it was nasty to look at.
“Fine, I’ll tell you, I just didn't want to burden you guys. We are going to get a map of the castle. Uhh, right uh figure out where the queen's room is, and dethrone her for good!” Elijah sounded like he was making this up on the spot, which he most likely was. He wore a tight, wavering smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes, and broke when he stuttered or tripped over his sentence. Still, the group let him go off, being satisfied enough with that answer, and went back onto their paths to their homes. But still, Avery wasn’t pleased with that response. She lets her mind wander again.
She wondered on her way home what Elijah meant when he said, “dethrone her for good,” and why he looked so scared for her after being so hyper and jumpy just moments ago at the start. What exactly were they going to do once they had a map? What were they going to do when they had a guaranteed plan -or one that wasn’t partially withheld from them again-? Too many questions for too long into the future, she’ll work it out when she gets there, though she knows she’ll plan ahead and try to figure it out before she's supposed to. That's just how she works, unfortunately. A puzzle has to be solved, but you need the pieces to put together first.
When she got home, she slipped the note out of her pocket and hung her maroon jacket on the hook near her door. She walked through the doorway, past the kitchen, into her bedroom, where she plopped down on her bed, trying to adjust her eyesight. After being outside all day doing odd errands and going to that unnecessary meet-up, her head was spinning. Well, at least she has something to do now. Later though. It's always later. A later that decides the ones that come after it.
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Her alarm blares, shooting through her head like a bullet, putting her dreams to a halt as she's forced to wake up. She doesn’t remember putting that alarm on her clock, but whatever, it got her awake. As the world comes to her more at once than coaxing her into the day, -well, rather night- what also comes to her besides the groan she didn’t realize she made, is the reason she got up. The note on her nightstand. She sighed and got up and about from her bed to get ready.
At the bathroom mirror, she detangles and braids her chocolate-colored hair into two braids that fall down her back, reaching to her hips. Her hair is a hassle to deal with, but it's worth it. It looks very nice. Water splashes against her tan skin to try and get her awake , since it's crucial she does.
She took off her pajamas and switched them out for a black sweater, black sweatpants that went a little too past her ankles, and a cloak with an oversized hood. It's all she had that looked incognito enough, and, though black doesn’t match her much, it does look pretty nice if she does say so herself. She sits back on her bed for a moment and takes the note off the nightstand to slip into her pocket.
She slips on some boots that make her a couple of inches taller -her favorite boots, actually, since she needs the height- and makes her way a couple of blocks away to the castle, the yellowish light from the street lamps guiding her way down the gravel path. When it was in sight, she avoided the entrance, obviously. Who would go through the front door?
Instead, she goes around back where the roses bloom -which grow all around the castle, but there's a specific spot she's looking for. Unaware of the hole in the wall, the people who run the castle have yet to fill it, and Avery is praying they don’t, since it's the best way in and out with secrecy. The bush provides coverage, and with how much of it there is, it's hard to see them rustle. Even if the thorns sting, it’s quite a good entrance that she's proud of finding.
She finds the unintended entryway with an indent in the brick wall she made a while back, when she first found it out, which was before this was her job. She’s also partially memorized it because of how often she goes. Before you call her a freak, the scenery in that place is beautiful, so you can't blame her. Avoiding the topic that she may or may not be slightly stalkerish, she makes her way into the bush. When you first go in, the thorns pierce your skin a bit, but the roses end once you go further back in the shrubbery.
She makes her way through the wall and checks if the coast is clear, just in case, which it normally is because the wall splits into an abandoned garden. Its beauty is radiant if you don't count the weeds, but Avery likes to say to herself that it gives it more character. After pulling out a couple of thorns that caught on her hood, she pulls out the mapping materials and starts going throughout the castle, avoiding guards as she goes along. While she isn’t able to get the details of it down to a point, it's good enough considering the circumstances she's under.
After going through floor after floor, hallway after hallway, her mind is blanking out as she traverses this labyrinth. It's definitely been awhile since she's been here. She wishes she took more time to look through the place when she still lived there.
She runs through one place, and it turns into another she hasn’t seen. This is genuinely absurd; no one needs this many rooms. She runs and runs and prays that her pencil doesn't break, her lines are smooth, and most importantly, she doesn’t get caught. Thankfully, most of the guards are situated outside, since they’re confident enough that the security is way too high for any of that to happen. They seem to be mistaken because, out of their sight, is a shadowy figure dashing between the maze that they call a living space.
There are rarely any guards that Avery finds, and most of them are sleeping on the job. Honestly, she’d be sleeping too; heck, she's barely staying vigilant with her life on the line. Is it on the line? She doesn't really care about laws anymore.
After she manages to get out of the maid's living quarters and go up another flight of stairs, she finds herself running down the guard's corridor. Though she should really be more careful, she's sick of this heist. She’s been in this building and circled it about 50 times, and yet there are so many places left unexplored. The map is probably nonsensical with how much she's had to write and guess what the rooms are for.
Her boots make a clicking sound every step she takes, and she's surprised that not one of the guards has at least peeked out their door to see the commotion.
After she makes her way out of the guard's hall, she's met with yet another flight of stairs. She sighs and makes her way up. She couldn’t care less about sneaking around at this point, so she makes no attempts to silence her steps. At the top, unlike the previous hallways, seemingly endless, there's one door with a gold rim on the door frame.
Avery looks at it with a perplexed expression. There has to be something important in that room, and yet, there are no guards in sight. Even in storage, there were one or two, and in this, there's none. Disregarding the fact that she is 100% going to get into irreparable trouble when she enters that room, or at least tries, she cautiously makes her way to the door, gaining complete conciseness once more.
She hesitates when she finds her hand on the doorknob, but curiosity gets the better of her, and she twists the handle and opens the door. The door doesn’t make a single creak as she stares in awe at what she's found.
The queen's room.
She freezes at the sight. Breathtaking isn’t a word strong enough to describe it, but her brain is filled with awe, so she can’t think of another adjective. She looks at the canopy bed for a while, a mesh purple curtain clipped to the structure of it, dressed in gems and sequins. Her duvet is a light purple.
Well, we can guess what her favorite color is, very obviously; it's basically the whole room.
The walls are off white, appearing gray in the moonlight from the window, and covered in black shelves containing gemstones and trinkets. Most are unrecognizable to Avery, but she knows a couple; she sees a rose quartz on one, a bigger-than-average sapphire on another, and atop her bed stands the symbol of the empire: an amethyst. It shines more than the rest, almost on purpose.
She drags her eyes away from the jewels and over to the floor, which is a pale grayish oak with a white carpet with accents of purple and gold, giving it a royal design.
A glance to her left, and she’ll see an arched window opening into a balcony. A glance to her right, she’ll see a vanity, and sitting on it is the queen brushing her silky midnight hair, as smooth as she portrays herself to be in front of her people. Her fair skin starkly contrasts against the black nightgown she adorns, making her as pretty as the night sky, a star shining brighter than the rest. A beautiful room, and person, if she does say so herself-
Wait a minute… The queen?
Petrified, Avery watches as the queen brings a comb through her hair, brushing it until it's completely detangled, and moves on to the next section, seemingly unaware of the presence of the girl standing in the doorway.
What is she meant to do in this situation? Book it out the door? That's pretty good, but her footsteps might give her away; she was lucky getting away with it before she entered the room. Jump out the window? No way that's happening. Why would she even think that?
As her mind gets flooded with thoughts, an arrow whips through the window towards the unassuming queen. Time seems to slow and quicken all at once, unsure of its own tempo. Avery's instincts override her logic and thinking, and as she pulls her bow over her shoulder along with an arrow from her quiver, in the blink of an eye, the assassination attempt is disarmed by the opposing side. She blinks at her own actions for a bit before looking to her side.
The queen, witnessing the catastrophe that went on behind her, looks between the wall where Avery’s arrow is now embedded into, and her balcony, which came out what might have been her way into the afterlife. Before she can look any further, Avery pulls up her hood and lowers her head. Could pretending like a guard get her out of this? One way to find out.
The queen’s eyes flicker to the doorway, and from what Avery can see, her eyes turn back to the window, at her again, and soften a bit.
“Thank you.” She says as she stands up and gives Avery a slight curtsy, and, with caution, walks towards her. Avery gives a slight nod towards her way, trying desperately not to reveal herself and be polite at the same time.
“Are you a guard? You’re not in uniform. And where did you get a bow this late in the night? Wait, more importantly, are you alright? What's going on?” She makes more steps towards her, and her eyes go from gratitude to worry.
No response. She can’t think of one. She knows nothing of how guards refer to her, what weapons they have, and what excuses are believable.
“Hello?” The queen is directly in front of her at this point, and she reaches her hand over to Avery’s chin and tilts it up. She still has her face covered, it now flushing into a slight red, but not for long with how this conversation is going.
Her first thought is to run, but that would raise suspicion. Her hand grabs tightly at the map in her hands as she tries to keep calm.
The rustling of the paper grabs the queen's attention and her face is overcome with realization. “Might I see that? I already know you’re an intruder, so just drop it, answer questions, and it’ll all be alright.” As she says this, her hand grabs the bow that keeps Avery's hood on.
All she needed to hear was that, and she bolts out the door, leaving her hood in the queen's hands, deciding to be sad about its disappearance later. Not anything to be staying for anymore. Actually, she has more than enough reasons to leave.
As she reaches the end of the hall, which leads to the steps down to the guard rooms, she can faintly hear, “If you're an intruder, why did you save me?”
That's the golden question at the moment. Why did Avery save her? Maybe she didn’t want to see the blood spewing out of her head and be blamed for it.
She's going to roll with that idea since she can’t turn her head towards the queen without her face being shown, so she continues to run, trying to evade the capture that was bound to happen.
She practically flies down the stairs with how many steps she's missing at a time; the only thing proving there was running involved was the echo of her boots against the stone. She sprints down the corridor at the end of the stairs when she hears footsteps behind her.
Though it's not many -it's not even plural- the person to whom those treads belong is more important than anyone in the empire. The queen herself.
At this discovery, Avery’s heart starts beating more than it did before to the point she's worried she’ll drop dead. Her mind is running as much of a marathon as she is. Why aren’t guards chasing after her? Why is it the person who thought they were going to get killed by the very person they're chasing after? She tries to answer these questions as there might not be a later time.
When she reaches the outside, she realizes how much she's underestimated her ruler, as she's still chasing after her.
As she goes through the courtyards and training centers, that's where the guards start following her. She runs and runs as arrows fly by her head. So they’re going for the kill, huh? If any of them have seen her face, which she's guessing -hoping- they probably haven’t, her face will be plastered over the papers with a nice bounty under the words “wanted, dead or alive”.
As the hole in the wall enters her sight, she hears the queen order, “Don’t kill her!” and as that sentence finishes, an arrow enters her shoulder, and she knocks her head on the brick wall, and gets knocked out. Her last feeling is fear, wondering if she’ll pass on to a better place in a worse way.
Death, her biggest fear.