GhoulNumberSix

"She was taught to be silent, But silence was never the same as loyalty."

A fanmade trailer for The Wife’s Tale, my Handmaid’s Tale fanfiction, now on Wattpad! Read it on Wattpad: @GhoulNumberSix 🖤 Fanmade / non-commercial / not affiliated with the original series Music : AURYN by Brand X Music

"Before the Wall," she said, "you spoke to me."

"I have spoken to you many times, Mrs. Harrington."

"You told me I had a lovely family. You told me to take care of it."

Fred leaned back slightly against the couch. The motion pulled at his injury. For half a second, pain crossed his face before he turned it into thoughtfulness.

"... Did I?"

"You know you did."

"I remember expressing concern. It seems concern has become a suspicious thing between friends."

"Good wives are not friends with men or Commanders."

He laughed very softly:

"Your husband allows you interesting observations."

"My husband does not allow my thoughts, Commander. He only hears the ones I choose to speak."

The silence that followed was small, but alive.

Fred looked at her differently then. Not cruedly, as he was too disciplined for that, or liked to believe he was. But something in him sharpened, pleased by resistance because resistance gave domination a surface to press against.

Madeleine had seen men grow bored before compliant women and interested before women they could break more slowly. Fred Waterford had that look now: not desire alone, though desire was there, disguised in courtesy; rather the appetite of a man who believed a woman's intelligence was another room in which he might one day be invited to stand.

"Women like you are rare, Mrs. Harrington."

"Pregnant women?"

"Composed women."

"That is a generous mistake."

"I do not think so."

Madeleine felt the trap in the compliment. To accept it would be vanity, and rejecting it would be confession. So, she said nothing.

Fred smiled again.

"You want me to tell you what I meant."

"Yes."

"How direct."

"I have had enough of indirect kindness."

"Was it kindness you thought I offered?"

"I hoped it was."

"Hope can be dangerous."

"So can ambiguity."

He seemed to enjoy that. He looked down at his bound hand, flexed his fingers once as far as the dressing allowed, then returned his attention to her.

"Mrs. Harrington, when one lives near power, one must learn that families are delicate structures. More delicate than the houses that hold them. A husband's reputation... A wife's conduct... A child's innocence. Any one of these can become a door if left unguarded."

Madeleine's throat tightened. She did her best not to let it show.

"That sounds like a warning."

"Does it?"

"It sounds like several."

Fred tilted his head.

"You ask for clarity, then dislike the shape of it?"

"I dislike being made to guess which part of my life you are threatening." "

The Wife's Tale - Chapter 19. Lechery

Somewhere beyond the estate walls, the city continued to wake. Cars crossed distant streets. People hurried to work. Shops opened their doors. Yet from inside the Harrington residence, the outside world felt impossibly far away.

Madeleine sat beside the window in a cream-colored armchair, a basket of pale blue yarn resting at her feet. The knitting needles moved steadily between her fingers, their soft clicking becoming part of the background rhythm of the house. She no longer needed to look at her work. Years of practice had transformed the movements into instinct. The stitches formed themselves almost automatically beneath her hands while her thoughts wandered elsewhere.

There had been a time when she would have hated this.

The younger version of herself would have found the activity unbearably slow. She had once measured her days in articles completed, interviews conducted, deadlines met. She had thrived on movement, conversation, and urgency. The idea of spending an entire morning seated in the same chair, patiently creating something one stitch at a time, would have sounded like a punishment.

Now she scarcely questioned it.

The realization bothered her sometimes.

Not because she disliked knitting. In truth, she found it strangely calming. What unsettled her was how naturally the habit had entered her life. How easily entire pieces of her former self seemed capable of disappearing without her noticing. Some mornings she wondered whether adaptation was simply another word for surrender."

The Wife's Tale, chapter 8. The Bell

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