Alternate Realities

Prompt: Thomaven, Touching

Nothing in life came without effort and the larger the effort the better the reward. Someone should have put the Latin equivalent on the Merandus coat of arms for as often as they reminded each other of the fact. At the end of a war, sometimes very far in the future, there would be the biggest pay-off. They would rule the entire country and then they could take the continent. They could rule the world. But first, the plan had to be unfurled and the pawns put in place.

She'd trained her entire life for this. She'd first practiced on her uncles pet mice making them dance and squirm on command. She'd pushed them through mazes to the delight of her father and the cringing of her mother. Then she'd been given a servant to control and command. Her father had a skin healer take her voice for three weeks and cripple her hands. Her only tool to get food, water, to be bathed and cared for was the servant girl and her mind. She'd starved for days before she forced the girl from the hallway to her room.

At the time, it was more accurate to describe her gift as that of a megaphone. She blared through the frontal lobes and through memories until one after another, the poor girls went mad. But the third girl, she finally got the hang of it. She could make her warble like a nightingale and jump like a deer. She could order her to cut off her own fingers and burn her arms. When she was so scared and torn, she ordered her death. It was a final exam of sorts. Dispose of the playthings once their use had run out just like all the other ratty dolls. Eventually, she worked her way to other silvers, her own mother, her father, he uncles, and her brother. Eventually, she was the finest Whisper in a hundred years and she was unleashed at Whitehall Palace.

She didn't enjoy dispatching Coriane, but she craved that prize. Tiberius, the crown, the path to the Marandus house seated at the top of the world. She would have taken him with her, but the grief wouldn't clear. She even tried to pluck it from him, but his mind clung like a steal trap to Coriane. The best she could do was force her way to the front at the Queenstrial and the suffer his repetative inner monologues about his beloved and their perfect child. There was little room for the product of her union in his heart.

When she dug, she found his affection for Maven and refused to give it the same measure as his for Cal. He loved them differently and that was enough to condemn him. Maven, to her, was three times the promise of Cal, and she molded him where he couldn't stretch into the shoes he followed.

Diving into a mind so early had been a sin before she tiptoed into her child's mind and took command of his body. Once she'd crossed the threshold, she justified the daily dances she played in his mind. It was for him. For them. For the future and their right to rule. And besides, better her than someone else. She trusted no one else with Maven's mind.

For a time, she only peeked. She let him grow and develop without her manning the controls. She let Tiberius send him to the front, even agreed that he needed to be toughened and the last of his innocence wrung away because there was a war brewing. She needed him strong and aware. She needed him engaged and fighting. She needed him to come back the man she knew he could be - ruthless, cunning, driven to succeed.

How unfortunate to find that he came back sullen and withdrawn, guarding his thoughts from her like he'd rarely done. He didn't even come to diner and he spent far too much time with Cal for her liking. She even heard the lie in his mind when he excused himself from his uneaten diner. The plan was on the cusp of being executed and her primary pawn wasn't in position.

Before she turned the handle on his door, she was in his mind blurring the sounds in his ears. She cooed simple melodies that always soothed him as a child and not even a hitch hit his breathing. She pulled the chair close to him, settling down on the cushion and leaning back to admire him. He hand the Calore good-looks and her family's stark bone structure. He looked like an angel asleep and dreaming in moonlight. Allowing herself a moment, she wished there was another way. That he could be spared. But she needed him more than she needed anyone else. She closed her eyes and needled into his mind.

The barracks. She'd toured them once, and of course he'd just been there so they naturally played the backdrop to his dreams. The barracks were cold and he supplied a subtle heat for the others. They came closer to him and while the words were muffled, he conversed and felt happy. She could feel the sense of free-joy. The childlike innocence of the moment centered on one boy more so than the others.

A boy to her, a man to Maven. A broad boy with a little more around the center than the others. He was fresh faced and red-blooded. He smiled big with a thick bottom lip and a pimpled-scared face. Maven called his eyes soft and like the brown silk of the Autumn feast's draperies. And the smell of him was organic: soils and almond oil. Warm. The felling was warm, safe, comfort, and.... and... love.

Elara sat back and looked at Maven, watched his teeth pinch his bottom lip and his fingers curl around the blankets. Her son had fallen in love, with a red. She almost gagged. She closed her eyes and tried to relax, but his dancing was too active to let her slump.

He and this boy had turned round and round in a hallway with a handful of other boys and a few girls with a little music box playing at their feet. He'd been spun, held, and his feet made to fall backwards in surprise. All with the same dough-centered boy. She sighed. They weren't even discrete. Hands in hair. The boy's hair had been tight curls that sprang back and bounced after Maven had scraped his scalp. She flinched at the kiss, focused on the arms that wrapped them together in the hallway.

She pulled Maven away. But he snapped back like one of the curls, resisting every insistence to leave. If it weren't for the joy, she'd have erased it from his mind in that very moment. But stealing a memory so complete and complex needed a plan or he'd launch himself out of the window with madness. Better to see the rest of it, all of it, to understand where she had to clip and pick to separate this love from his mind.

Her cheeks pinked when their clothes fell away and warm hands met the sore, cold skin of shoulders.

Elara stood, backing out as she backed away. Another night. Another time. It was enough to know she'd have to see more. But she could not see him in that way not all in one night.