something sweet and almost kind

Ali winced at Bella’s description. He was always so worked up in the corruption of the casino that the atrocities that occurred in the smaller and more modest establishments of Fabletown often went by forgotten. He downed most of his beer at that thought. “Does anyone legitimate ever even stay at the Castle?” he asked, not quite sure if he wanted to know the answer to his question or not.

He furrowed his brows as his eyes skimmed the screen of her phone, catching the words ‘murder’ and ‘blood’. “Sounds delightful,” he deadpanned, “Is it any good?” he asked, his eyes finally returning to his friend’s, “It’s been a long while since I’ve read a good book, or any book for that matter,” he admitted. 

He laughed, although he wasn’t entirely sure why he had. After all, he supposed his friend would be in a great deal of trouble if she were caught. Al shrugged, “You’re only in trouble if you get caught. I mean, if worst comes to worst you’ll just be out of a shitty little job that you hate anyway.” Of course they both knew that it most likely wouldn’t be that simple if push came to shove, unfortunately in their lives things were never that easy.

She shrugged, lips still wrapped around the straw of her drink, cheeks hollowing out as she sucked it down. “Who is there? No one ever leaves Fabletown, and no one ever just... visits. Everyone who’s here already has a place to live. Tremaine knew what she was doing when she bought the hotel, and it wasn’t ever meant to be anything legitimate.” Of that, she’s sure. In all her time in Fabletown, she’s scoured for a new face, someone unfamiliar, someone who could tell of adventures in the outside world. But they only got dropped from one trap right back into another. Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out. Just a shrine to a legacy of wicked witches and false happy endings. A memory that should maybe just be forgotten. 

Maybe Scarlet is at peace and the rest of them are the ones still suffering.

“It’s decent.” she mumbled, vaguely snapping back to the conversation at hand, realizing she’d started staring off into space. “It’s not a fairy tale.” That pulled a smile from her, even just a small one. Then she reached over and gave her companion a light shove, smile growing. “Easy for you to say. It’s not your job.” Belle laughed and carefully adjusted her drink again, reaching for the straw once more. “Besides. Supposing I did have it in me to call in sick for a night, what would you have in mind?”

It used to be a standing date; the Maldinis and the Beauforts -- Ella and Charming, too, even farther back, though no one really talks about that anymore -- Tiana taking a break from the kitchen to come sit down over a drink and discuss married life, smiles slung around the table, sunlight shining off bright teeth and bursting from full bellies. 

It was nice while it lasted. The best weekend of the month. 

Tiana and Naveen were the only ones that made it, though. So now it’s just a girls’ brunch. It’s still nice, but there are moments when the ghost of what used to be glimmer through the cracks in the pauses and the silences. 

As Belle sits alone at the table, now is one of those moments. She can picture the other five bodies who should be sitting there with her. It feels like a great loss; no one has died, but two marriages have, and the decay lives in her chest, rotting away like the carcass of a great beast.

It’s only out of the corner of her eye that she spots Tiana coming over to meet her. “Ella can’t make it,” she says, and offers up a tight smile to match the sad news, “So you’re just stuck with me today.”

“He sure would. Thank you, next.”

And just like clockwork, one of his hands fell to gently rest upon one of her ankles a second after her feet hand landed upon his lap. The familiarity of their motions was so easy that Al didn’t give it a second thought. He let a thumb gently begin to trace circles as he continue to down his beer. What could he say, beer was hard to come by in Agrabah. He was only making up for lost time. 

Al laughed aloud at that. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realised that wanting to strangle people with your bare hands is such a common occurrence for you,” Al said with a chuckle. He glanced at her phone, “You were totally reading just now, weren’t you? I’m not even surprised.“ Ali glanced at one of the large and overly obnoxious cuckoo clocks, of which there were many,  mounted on the wall behind the bar. “Don’t you have work, like, now?” he asked, glancing at her apparent second drink of the night, “Not that I don’t drink on the job all the time, so I’m not judging or anything. More attempting to get you to reconsider going in tonight.”

Belle laughed and reached for her own drink at that comment, trying to wrangle the straw of it into her mouth without squeezing the plastic bag and sending the contents spraying all over her face, and phone, and the table.

You can only make that mistake so many times before you begin to learn from it.

“You should meet some of the people who come into the Castle. Trust me, you’d want to rip some beating hearts out of chests after, like, a week. Drunk assholes who don’t listen when I say they can’t just pick any room, Johns who are being dicks to the dancers at Wonderland -- just dragging these poor girls down the sidewalk and through the lobby like they’re Barbie dolls, I swear -- not to mention Lady Tremaine and her high, regal, pompous self. I really don’t know how Ella put up with her for so long.” She took a long sip from her punch bag, emptying it nearly all the way, cheeks hollowing out as far as they would go as she slurped the liquor through her striped paper straw. “Wait, yes I do. She’s Ella and she could never be mad at anyone in her life!” At this, Belle laughed again and set her phone down on the table, then took a second thought and unlocked it before sliding it over to Ali so he could see what she had been so intently reading: You Don't Own Me by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke.

“I’m supposed to be there in five, I guess, aren’t I?” she sighed, craning her neck to look at the clock as well, “How dead d’you think I’d be if I played hooky?”

date: october 19th location: the bookshop availability: closed to @hernnosa !!

She considers it a fundamental conundrum to be here now, but necessity and morality are oft at odds here. Monsters liken to monsters, some more obvious than others, and it is the duty of the monster to protect the shadows they inhabit - as well as the other specters that live within them. As she stands before the window of the bookshop, hands full to the brim with posters bearing Red’s blurry visage, gaze trained upon the lithe figure within - dark hair, wanderlusting eyes; just as she’d been described, and perhaps more - she wonders if perhaps it would be beneficial to the shadows to turn away. She thinks of Cain, as she almost always does. She worries, she wonders; monsters liken to monsters. Phantom pain still hurts, even if it does not belong to the wielder. 

A breath. A woman is missing, so discomfort has no place here. Empathy abounds, a heavy wave of black water washing upon her. Of course, she knows, she has no place to feel here. She has no reason to hesitate. But her fellow monster hurts, and so her own monster groans. But a woman is missing - and empathy abounds when it matters. 

The bell above the door tinkles, marking her entrance. Sally’s mismatched fingers, all colors in her nightstand, tighten upon the posters. She knows that the woman before her is not bad - but she must defend her monster, though Cain will never know that she has been here. Lost love is a cavernous void; her own throbs like a jagged edge. She swallows.

Not a single employee in sight; they come out of the woodwork until now. Entirely typical.

“Uh –” Sally clears her throat, “Are they closed? I was hoping to hang some posters.”

Belle's eyes flit over to the dark woman standing in front of a darker window, gazing out into the night as though peering into a black mirror, trying to jump in and pinch the future out with bony fingers. Scrying, is what Mei calls that type of magic. To look into a glass darkly and listen as it tells you what lies ahead. 

But mirrors never tell you the truth. They only tell you what you want to hear, or, for those who aren’t as fortunate, your worst, most paranoid nightmares come to life.

Watching the other for a moment, Belle wonders what she sees when she looks into the glass. Her future, or just her fears?

“Search me.” She shrugs. “I thought John was supposed to be working, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Pinocchio dragged him off doing God knows what. Happens every once a week or so. I don’t know why they haven’t just up and fired the kid already.”

She’s just had a cigarette not fifteen minutes ago, lighting up as she passed her old apartment, the one Cain now inhabited in what she selfishly hoped was a lonely state, but something about Sally always makes her so uneasy. As though she's so uncomfortable in her own skin that it just oozes out of her and clings to everyone else in the room until even they can't bear their own hides anymore, and everyone is scratching and searching for some escape.

The feeling aches for some relief, screaming for someone to help ease the never ending sorrow Sally must carry around in her bones to make her feel this way. If only Belle knew how.

"What are the posters of?" she asks finally, after another uncomfortable beat, though by now she's wandered over to the nearest shelf and bent over in half to peer at some books near the floor there.

WHEN: October 13, 11:43 pm WHERE: Morrigan’s aparment rooftop party WHO: open.

“I just want to thank you all for coming,” Morrigan says, perched precariously on the ledge of the roof. Technically, no one is supposed to be up here– It’s unsafe, or some other such nonsense. But as the years have gone by, Morrigan has begun to miss revelry under the moon, and more and more of her more raucous parties found themselves upstairs. 

Hell, she’d had patio furniture installed. It wasn’t like someone was actually going to tell her no.

“You know the rules, of course,” Morrigan continues, “No blood shed, no politics, no prudes. I may not have the powers I once enforced these rules with, but, believe me, I mean them as much as I ever did.” 

“And, please.” She smiles, beatific. “Don’t be afraid of the food. I assure you– I can’t afford another mouth to feed.” 

As laughter ripples through the guests, Morrigan hops down from her improvised dias and onto solid concrete once again. It’s then that she catches the arm of someone she’d noticed during her little speech, and presses herself into their side. “Hello, darling,” she says, hooking her chin over their elbow. “I didn’t expect to see you here tonight.” 

Belle turns with a start -- mouth a perfect, wide, rosy little o of surprise -- when she feels someone catch her arm and gently turn her. A sharp intake of breath, and chestnut tresses toss over her shoulder, searching out the source of the disruption in her movement towards the punch bowl.

“Morrigan!” Of course. It is her party after all. “I just... heard about it around, you know, after so many of them, and I needed something to do tonight. And wanted an excuse to wear something nice for a change, I suppose. You wear leather and jeans and fishnets for so long, a girl does start to miss a ballgown. Or an evening gown, at least.” Cain always bought her the most lovely things. In the Homeworld, especially, but here as well. Madame had managed to save two gowns from the castle during the Exodus, but... Belle hadn’t the heart or the suitcase space to take them with her when she had left Cain. They’re still in her closet in his apartment. Or, more likely, he’s sold them by now. But she still has all the Mundie dresses he’s bought for her, at least.

“This is nice, up here like this. I feel close to the stars. It feels like I could just... jump. And fly away and never come back. It’s freeing. I don’t know why I haven’t come to one of these sooner.”

“Ah, thank you,” he said, his words rushing out of him nearly as quickly as his energy was. He was mainly just happy to be off his feet. He sighed happily as he fell into the empty seat, not realising that the sound had exited his mouth before it was too late. 

In all honesty, he was glad it was Belle who he’d stumbled across. The woman was amongst the few stable friendships that he’d built here. From the very beginning there was something so soothingly familiar about her that reminded him of home and always set him at ease. Here was a woman that didn’t judge his current or past self, she took him as he was at face value and that was exactly what he needed tonight. 

He aimed a lopsided grin at her as he settled in and raised his glass to his mouth. “There has got to be a good story behind that, please do tell, I could use an interesting story and I would make a great accomplice if it comes to it.” 

She smiled gently as she watched him settle into the seat, stealing the chance to settle her feet onto his lap the moment he hit the chair even somewhat comfortably. Sitting so closely with someone like that, so... casually vulnerable, it was a luxury that she found herself so often without these days. It was moments like these that she found herself never ceasing to appreciate the warm comfort of the friends she had made in the glowing grime of Fabletown, amongst the muck and the smoke and the lights. Even in such a place, there was hope and there was love. Even in such circumstances, in such a life. 

And then he spoke again, and it snapped her from her deeply misplaced thoughts; a sports bar wasn’t built for emotion or for philosophy. And neither, she noted to herself with just a touch of humor, was Gaston most days. 

“The phone or the drink?” she asked, smile still quirking at her lips, angling her phone screen towards him somewhat and holding it up, gesturing with it as she mentioned it, “Or just the general sitting by myself? I’m two of these in, so you’ll have to be a little more specific.”

“Can I marry Sally and Tiana? They’re both so absolutely lovely. I don’t think I can pick. I don’t think Scout likes me very much though, so kill her, I guess? Since I’ve probably used up my hypothetical fuck in becoming a polygamist.”

“Marry Ali. Love that kid. No question about that one. I actually ... hate? Holden and Cessair both? Can I, like, praying mantis that shit and fuck Holden and then kill him after? Is that an option here? Because something just tells me he’s really packing.”

“Marry Ella! She’s such an angel, and we spend enough time together already that I’m sure moving in together would be no sweat. Um? Fuck Arabelle, I think. Yeah, no, definitely. She’s gorgeous, have you seen her? She has such nice lips, I can never tell if I want to steal them or if I just want to... make out with her... yeah. Anyway. I suppose that leaves Ivy but I don’t really want to kill her? Maybe if you sat me in a room and threw her politics at me for long enough I could be motivated, though.”

“Oh. Oh, uh. Well, I already was married to Cain, and we, uh. We – we all know how that one ended. And Gaston’s considerably less awful lately but I’m really not quite to be Madame Gaston yet, so not his little wife either. So I suppose… that leaves me to marry Rosie, but I’m not – we’re not – fuck. Rosie, I guess, yeah. Or just staying single, that works too. Kiss Gaston. And Cain. I’m not really in the business of killing anyone. I’ll leave that to certain other people around here.”