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kinkfestTitle: Gingerbread Houses
Author/Artist:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ceylmallyn
Rating: PG
Words: 2226
Prompt: Alessa/Claudia: schoolgirl crush - She sometimes wondered what it would be like to kiss her dear "sister."
Warnings: Schoolgirl crush, like it says on the tin. AUish only in that they're aged up a bit from the ages suggested at in-game-- Alessa is 13-14ish, Claudia 12 or so. Everything else is basically the same as game canon. Some vague references to child abuse/neglect.
Notes: Ahaha, getting my claims in late again. *headdesk* Sorry about that!
The table in this corner of the cafeteria was seldom used-- not because there was anything inherently wrong with it, but because any student ushered towards it, for any reason, would complain and refuse at all costs to sit at any table that Alessa had occupied. Reasons ranged from younger students' belief in unspecified "cooties," to older students' insistences that there was a hex on both table and chair, and that anyone who dared to sit in it would experience mysterious accidents soon afterwards, or be stricken with a mysterious disease. All of them knew someone who knew someone (who knew someone) it had happened to-- when Billy Stratfield lost his leg in a bizarre accident, it was just a week after a teacher made him sit at the Alessa table, don't you remember? To sit there was risking death, or maybe something worse than death-- if you spent too much time with her, some of the older students said, she'd send demons after you, to drag your soul down to hell.
So why Claudia Wolf was immune to this range of curses, no one was able to explain. Except that, just maybe, she was a demon too-- Alessa's familiar, some people said, who turned into a bat and spied on people at night. Eventually, no one would sit near her or talk to her either, and there were tacks on her seat, dead frog guts from the science class dissection in her backpack, a garter snake in her desk once. (The fact that, on seeing it, she had calmly picked it up and taken it to the window and put it outside, explaining flatly to screaming students that it wasn't venomous, hadn't weighed in her favour either.)
Somehow, it didn't deter her. It never had.
Sometimes Alessa felt like crying when she saw what Claudia endured for her sake, even though tears never came easily for her. Somewhere deep inside, she still cared when she overheard people talking about "the witch," could still hurt, but she'd learned to make herself numb-- not to ignore it, but just to not care, at least for a while.
Claudia used to cry over it, she knew-- used to cry so easily, to cry whenever she couldn't understand something she was reading, every time she lost at a game. And whenever she could get away with it, Alessa had taken the younger girl in her arms, held her until she stopped crying, promised to kiss the pain away-- because Claudia should never have to cry, she felt, sweet beautiful Claudia, who had the chance at a normal life that Alessa never would. If she'd been vengeful, perhaps, one day, she'd have tried to see if she really could summon demons or think people dead, punish everyone and everything that had ever made Claudia sad.
But she wasn't, no-- it was what her mother wanted, for her to hate the world with all her heart; and for that reason alone, she'd never, ever be that way. Never give in to that shadow.
Alessa never ate during lunch period-- never felt like eating, was never hungry. The dry peanut butter sandwich, stale cookies and brown-spotted apple in her bag were hardly an incentive for hunger-- only a reminder that, as long as she wouldn't become the thing her mother wanted her to be, she was a barely tolerated guest in her own house; fed only because she was potentially useful alive, but useless dead. They were the taste of boredom, of the dullness of being locked in her room with the shades drawn for hours upon hours, while she contemplated whether to draw or to read Alice in Wonderland for the hundredth time or make up a game with the Tarot cards that lay in a dog-eared pile on her desk. Or imagine that Claudia was with her. Which she did, lately, often.
Maybe too often.
"Alessa! Sorry I was late." And suddenly the world was brighter-- the air was lighter and softer and not so dank and musty, the dim light shining in from the cloudy afternoon was warmer, and there was a new lightness in her heart. The thoughts of her room faded like mist in sunlight.
"It's all right. You always have a good reason for it." Alessa smiled through the gloom of the cafeteria, though her smile, she was sure, could never brighten Claudia's day in the same way.
"I stayed after history class to ask a few questions." Claudia pulled the other chair out and flopped herself into it, putting two thick books on the table carefully, a carton of milk balanced on top of them.
"Did Mr. Branwell tell you to stop asking questions and just answer the ones you were given, again?" Alessa sighed softly; most of the teachers were kinder to her and to Claudia than the children were, more given to pity than to hate, but could do little to stop the whispers and rumours and the cruel pranks. Some of Claudia's teachers, in particular, though, were vexed by her brightness-- she learned too much, too fast, and wanted to know things they weren't prepared to answer. The math teachers could deal with it simply by giving her extra work, but her history and English teachers of this year, in particular, were anywhere from annoyed to distraught at the idea of taking time out to answer a twelve-year-old's moral questions.
"No, but he recommended some books to me-- books that he said were all about things like I asked about, like faith and suffering and free will." Claudia pulled a notebook from out of the book pile, and stuffed it into her backpack. There were bloody scabs all around her fingernails again, Alessa noted with a bit of sadness-- she'd managed to stop biting her nails for a while, back at the beginning of the school year.
It wasn't Claudia's fault, Alessa knew-- she was far too familiar with the pain that drove her "sister," the feeling of wanting to crawl out of her own skin when she could never be good enough, the wish for a little bit of physical pain to take away emotional pain. And she knew, though Claudia had never said-- she'd never had to say it, not to her-- that it was worst when her father was being cruel to her at home; the days when she walked into school with her head down, her hair dishevelled, wearing long sleeves and pants to hide bruises.
It was one thing for her own mother to hurt her, Alessa sometimes thought-- she'd been marked different from birth. She was born to be hated by the world, fated to suffer, and holding that certainty in her heart was sometimes the only thing that sustained her through lonely days and nights. But Claudia-- she was wholesome and pure, untainted, brilliant and beautiful. (Beautiful, especially, when she brushed her hair and smiled.) There was nothing in her that deserved it-- not the pain from her father, not the pain from the other students.
Sometimes she told Claudia that she'd isolate herself, never speak to her again, if it would get the other children to back off and leave her alone. And Claudia had refused, steadfastly-- swore that if she could, she'd take all of Alessa's burdens onto herself.
She felt both heavy and light at the same time, somehow, when she thought about that.
"Did you forget lunch again, Claudia?" Alessa peered over the table, waggling her finger at the younger girl. "You know you shouldn't do that. You'll get nutritional deficiencies-- you should know all about those already, don't you?"
"I told you." Claudia brushed hair out of her eyes; Alessa was glad to see it was neatly combed today, held back from her pale forehead by a hairband. "I'm like Sherlock Holmes-- my brain works better when my stomach is empty. When it's full, all of my energies go into my digestive system instead of my thoughts."
"Claudia." Alessa was giggling, despite herself. "You really need to eat something."
"But it's true. I just can't think when I'm too full."
"Then don't eat too much, silly Claudia. Just enough so that you don't pass out in class, like you did that time."
Alessa reached into her lunchbag reluctantly-- it wasn't as though what her mother packed for her could be considered nourishing, exactly, and it wasn't what she wanted to give Claudia. She wanted to give her feasts, banquets, piles of cakes and candies-- there was nothing she could give that could ever be enough-- but it was something.
"Did you know that some theologians believed starvation brings your spirit closer to God?" Claudia had opened the milk carton, and was sipping out of it thoughtfully, her arms propped on the stack of books. "When you have worldly luxuries, you only think about the world, but if you give those up, you begin thinking more about the spirit."
"Maybe it worked that way for them." Alessa thought of nights left alone in her room without dinner, of tearing up bits of paper to eat, just so her stomach would stop hurting with hunger. Then again, the urge to focus on spiritual things and not worldly ones was the shadow always hanging over her head-- she'd throw her spirit away if she could; she had no use for it. "But you need to grow up first, grow up healthy, so you can go to a place where you're free to think about those things all the time."
She lowered the plastic bag of cookies onto the table between herself and Claudia. It was pathetic, really, trying to hand these awful, cheap cookies to Claudia, as if they were any kind of nourishment-- but she would have felt worse giving her the sandwich or the apple, both of which looked even more unappetizing. Sweet Claudia deserved sweet things-- sugared crumbs and chocolate, even if they were dry and stale.
"Here, have these to go with your milk. This way, you can make it through gym class."
Both of them knew they were no good to eat-- Claudia knew as well as Alessa did to expect little from her mother's lunches-- but that was what was so wonderful about her: she could pretend they were, could love them just because they were her "big sister's" present. Alessa watched her pale pink lips, her shining white teeth biting into a cookie; her tongue darting out to catch the crumbs when it began to fall apart at her first bite.
(It was strange, really-- even though she was the younger of the two, Claudia's body was already starting to look different, softer, with more curves. Alessa's was a child's body still-- refusing stubbornly to change, refusing because she knew that those changes would bring her one step closer to what her mother wanted, deeper into the darkness.)
Claudia pulled one of the books out of her pile and propped it open, flipping through the first few pages. She often read during lunch periods, whether or not she had anything to eat-- Alessa was used to it; she didn't, couldn't demand that Claudia put the books aside and talk to her. It was enough just to be with her. It was enough to watch her, watch the light glinting off her hair, her bright eyes, everything about her so enthusiastic and deserving of so much more than she'd ever gotten.
She leaned back in her chair and watched.
There was a dab of chocolate on Claudia's lips-- it stood out darkly against the paleness, but she kept eating, heedless of it, not bothering to lick it away. Strands of hair fell in front of her eyes; she shrugged them away. What would it feel like, Alessa wondered, to brush Claudia's hair away from her face, to run her fingers through it? It would be soft, and silky, and smell nice-- it would always smell like Claudia, and that would always be a good smell, whether she'd washed it recently or not.
She imagined letting the strands of hair slip between her fingers, and then-- oh, she shouldn't-- she thought about taking Claudia's face in between her hands-- why was she thinking about this?-- and kissing the chocolate off of her lips. Imagined her lips tasting better and sweeter than the cheap, stale chocolate.
Claudia didn't look up from her book, and Alessa was relieved-- realized she was blushing, and afraid that Claudia had sensed her thought somehow. What in the world would she think? If the younger girl had any sense in her, she thought, she'd pull away-- never allow herself to be kissed by Alessa, no matter what other affections existed between them. Their kisses as children had been innocent, done in ignorance of the things adults thought and the things their bodies felt when they kissed. Her imagined kiss had none of that innocence in it. Not less because it wasn't the first time she'd imagined it.
Princesses got kisses from princes and from knights; never from witches. Claudia was worthy of being a princess-- would be one, if the world were fair.
Only it wasn't-- but witches, at least, could dream. In the darkest nights, in the loneliest hours, she knew that fact as closely as she knew the coldness of fog.
Author/Artist:
ceylmallynRating: PG
Words: 2226
Prompt: Alessa/Claudia: schoolgirl crush - She sometimes wondered what it would be like to kiss her dear "sister."
Warnings: Schoolgirl crush, like it says on the tin. AUish only in that they're aged up a bit from the ages suggested at in-game-- Alessa is 13-14ish, Claudia 12 or so. Everything else is basically the same as game canon. Some vague references to child abuse/neglect.
Notes: Ahaha, getting my claims in late again. *headdesk* Sorry about that!
The table in this corner of the cafeteria was seldom used-- not because there was anything inherently wrong with it, but because any student ushered towards it, for any reason, would complain and refuse at all costs to sit at any table that Alessa had occupied. Reasons ranged from younger students' belief in unspecified "cooties," to older students' insistences that there was a hex on both table and chair, and that anyone who dared to sit in it would experience mysterious accidents soon afterwards, or be stricken with a mysterious disease. All of them knew someone who knew someone (who knew someone) it had happened to-- when Billy Stratfield lost his leg in a bizarre accident, it was just a week after a teacher made him sit at the Alessa table, don't you remember? To sit there was risking death, or maybe something worse than death-- if you spent too much time with her, some of the older students said, she'd send demons after you, to drag your soul down to hell.
So why Claudia Wolf was immune to this range of curses, no one was able to explain. Except that, just maybe, she was a demon too-- Alessa's familiar, some people said, who turned into a bat and spied on people at night. Eventually, no one would sit near her or talk to her either, and there were tacks on her seat, dead frog guts from the science class dissection in her backpack, a garter snake in her desk once. (The fact that, on seeing it, she had calmly picked it up and taken it to the window and put it outside, explaining flatly to screaming students that it wasn't venomous, hadn't weighed in her favour either.)
Somehow, it didn't deter her. It never had.
Sometimes Alessa felt like crying when she saw what Claudia endured for her sake, even though tears never came easily for her. Somewhere deep inside, she still cared when she overheard people talking about "the witch," could still hurt, but she'd learned to make herself numb-- not to ignore it, but just to not care, at least for a while.
Claudia used to cry over it, she knew-- used to cry so easily, to cry whenever she couldn't understand something she was reading, every time she lost at a game. And whenever she could get away with it, Alessa had taken the younger girl in her arms, held her until she stopped crying, promised to kiss the pain away-- because Claudia should never have to cry, she felt, sweet beautiful Claudia, who had the chance at a normal life that Alessa never would. If she'd been vengeful, perhaps, one day, she'd have tried to see if she really could summon demons or think people dead, punish everyone and everything that had ever made Claudia sad.
But she wasn't, no-- it was what her mother wanted, for her to hate the world with all her heart; and for that reason alone, she'd never, ever be that way. Never give in to that shadow.
Alessa never ate during lunch period-- never felt like eating, was never hungry. The dry peanut butter sandwich, stale cookies and brown-spotted apple in her bag were hardly an incentive for hunger-- only a reminder that, as long as she wouldn't become the thing her mother wanted her to be, she was a barely tolerated guest in her own house; fed only because she was potentially useful alive, but useless dead. They were the taste of boredom, of the dullness of being locked in her room with the shades drawn for hours upon hours, while she contemplated whether to draw or to read Alice in Wonderland for the hundredth time or make up a game with the Tarot cards that lay in a dog-eared pile on her desk. Or imagine that Claudia was with her. Which she did, lately, often.
Maybe too often.
"Alessa! Sorry I was late." And suddenly the world was brighter-- the air was lighter and softer and not so dank and musty, the dim light shining in from the cloudy afternoon was warmer, and there was a new lightness in her heart. The thoughts of her room faded like mist in sunlight.
"It's all right. You always have a good reason for it." Alessa smiled through the gloom of the cafeteria, though her smile, she was sure, could never brighten Claudia's day in the same way.
"I stayed after history class to ask a few questions." Claudia pulled the other chair out and flopped herself into it, putting two thick books on the table carefully, a carton of milk balanced on top of them.
"Did Mr. Branwell tell you to stop asking questions and just answer the ones you were given, again?" Alessa sighed softly; most of the teachers were kinder to her and to Claudia than the children were, more given to pity than to hate, but could do little to stop the whispers and rumours and the cruel pranks. Some of Claudia's teachers, in particular, though, were vexed by her brightness-- she learned too much, too fast, and wanted to know things they weren't prepared to answer. The math teachers could deal with it simply by giving her extra work, but her history and English teachers of this year, in particular, were anywhere from annoyed to distraught at the idea of taking time out to answer a twelve-year-old's moral questions.
"No, but he recommended some books to me-- books that he said were all about things like I asked about, like faith and suffering and free will." Claudia pulled a notebook from out of the book pile, and stuffed it into her backpack. There were bloody scabs all around her fingernails again, Alessa noted with a bit of sadness-- she'd managed to stop biting her nails for a while, back at the beginning of the school year.
It wasn't Claudia's fault, Alessa knew-- she was far too familiar with the pain that drove her "sister," the feeling of wanting to crawl out of her own skin when she could never be good enough, the wish for a little bit of physical pain to take away emotional pain. And she knew, though Claudia had never said-- she'd never had to say it, not to her-- that it was worst when her father was being cruel to her at home; the days when she walked into school with her head down, her hair dishevelled, wearing long sleeves and pants to hide bruises.
It was one thing for her own mother to hurt her, Alessa sometimes thought-- she'd been marked different from birth. She was born to be hated by the world, fated to suffer, and holding that certainty in her heart was sometimes the only thing that sustained her through lonely days and nights. But Claudia-- she was wholesome and pure, untainted, brilliant and beautiful. (Beautiful, especially, when she brushed her hair and smiled.) There was nothing in her that deserved it-- not the pain from her father, not the pain from the other students.
Sometimes she told Claudia that she'd isolate herself, never speak to her again, if it would get the other children to back off and leave her alone. And Claudia had refused, steadfastly-- swore that if she could, she'd take all of Alessa's burdens onto herself.
She felt both heavy and light at the same time, somehow, when she thought about that.
"Did you forget lunch again, Claudia?" Alessa peered over the table, waggling her finger at the younger girl. "You know you shouldn't do that. You'll get nutritional deficiencies-- you should know all about those already, don't you?"
"I told you." Claudia brushed hair out of her eyes; Alessa was glad to see it was neatly combed today, held back from her pale forehead by a hairband. "I'm like Sherlock Holmes-- my brain works better when my stomach is empty. When it's full, all of my energies go into my digestive system instead of my thoughts."
"Claudia." Alessa was giggling, despite herself. "You really need to eat something."
"But it's true. I just can't think when I'm too full."
"Then don't eat too much, silly Claudia. Just enough so that you don't pass out in class, like you did that time."
Alessa reached into her lunchbag reluctantly-- it wasn't as though what her mother packed for her could be considered nourishing, exactly, and it wasn't what she wanted to give Claudia. She wanted to give her feasts, banquets, piles of cakes and candies-- there was nothing she could give that could ever be enough-- but it was something.
"Did you know that some theologians believed starvation brings your spirit closer to God?" Claudia had opened the milk carton, and was sipping out of it thoughtfully, her arms propped on the stack of books. "When you have worldly luxuries, you only think about the world, but if you give those up, you begin thinking more about the spirit."
"Maybe it worked that way for them." Alessa thought of nights left alone in her room without dinner, of tearing up bits of paper to eat, just so her stomach would stop hurting with hunger. Then again, the urge to focus on spiritual things and not worldly ones was the shadow always hanging over her head-- she'd throw her spirit away if she could; she had no use for it. "But you need to grow up first, grow up healthy, so you can go to a place where you're free to think about those things all the time."
She lowered the plastic bag of cookies onto the table between herself and Claudia. It was pathetic, really, trying to hand these awful, cheap cookies to Claudia, as if they were any kind of nourishment-- but she would have felt worse giving her the sandwich or the apple, both of which looked even more unappetizing. Sweet Claudia deserved sweet things-- sugared crumbs and chocolate, even if they were dry and stale.
"Here, have these to go with your milk. This way, you can make it through gym class."
Both of them knew they were no good to eat-- Claudia knew as well as Alessa did to expect little from her mother's lunches-- but that was what was so wonderful about her: she could pretend they were, could love them just because they were her "big sister's" present. Alessa watched her pale pink lips, her shining white teeth biting into a cookie; her tongue darting out to catch the crumbs when it began to fall apart at her first bite.
(It was strange, really-- even though she was the younger of the two, Claudia's body was already starting to look different, softer, with more curves. Alessa's was a child's body still-- refusing stubbornly to change, refusing because she knew that those changes would bring her one step closer to what her mother wanted, deeper into the darkness.)
Claudia pulled one of the books out of her pile and propped it open, flipping through the first few pages. She often read during lunch periods, whether or not she had anything to eat-- Alessa was used to it; she didn't, couldn't demand that Claudia put the books aside and talk to her. It was enough just to be with her. It was enough to watch her, watch the light glinting off her hair, her bright eyes, everything about her so enthusiastic and deserving of so much more than she'd ever gotten.
She leaned back in her chair and watched.
There was a dab of chocolate on Claudia's lips-- it stood out darkly against the paleness, but she kept eating, heedless of it, not bothering to lick it away. Strands of hair fell in front of her eyes; she shrugged them away. What would it feel like, Alessa wondered, to brush Claudia's hair away from her face, to run her fingers through it? It would be soft, and silky, and smell nice-- it would always smell like Claudia, and that would always be a good smell, whether she'd washed it recently or not.
She imagined letting the strands of hair slip between her fingers, and then-- oh, she shouldn't-- she thought about taking Claudia's face in between her hands-- why was she thinking about this?-- and kissing the chocolate off of her lips. Imagined her lips tasting better and sweeter than the cheap, stale chocolate.
Claudia didn't look up from her book, and Alessa was relieved-- realized she was blushing, and afraid that Claudia had sensed her thought somehow. What in the world would she think? If the younger girl had any sense in her, she thought, she'd pull away-- never allow herself to be kissed by Alessa, no matter what other affections existed between them. Their kisses as children had been innocent, done in ignorance of the things adults thought and the things their bodies felt when they kissed. Her imagined kiss had none of that innocence in it. Not less because it wasn't the first time she'd imagined it.
Princesses got kisses from princes and from knights; never from witches. Claudia was worthy of being a princess-- would be one, if the world were fair.
Only it wasn't-- but witches, at least, could dream. In the darkest nights, in the loneliest hours, she knew that fact as closely as she knew the coldness of fog.
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