Once Upon a Time
Evening inspection and the time when Clara was supposed to go home had come and gone, but since Jen had yet to express any kind of interest in leaving—meaning the trainees got their first improv lessons, particularly dinner changes—they were both still here. Clara, having no more assigned duties to attend to and not technically allowed to do anything too useful to training at this hour, figured that if Jen wanted them to leave, she would leave, and if Ezri wanted her to leave, she would kick them out, and that neither of those things were happening. And the trainees had a way of seeking her out since she still seemed available and not tasked with anything else, and she indulged them. It was better than sticking close to Jen and Ezri and figuring out how to act when she was in too public of an area with Ezri to drop the protocol and too private of an area with Jen to reasonably pick it up.
So she was upstairs, trying to console Abigail's stress over what constituted the best option for a theoretical wine pairing within the top options Vivino gave her. When Abigail had some kind of decision matrix in place that made sense, Clara wandered. She'd lived here, once—still playing pretend, but also, not really. That was a strange thought.
In a spare bedroom that had become a bit of a training area, Lalia sat on the floor in front of a bookshelf, examining extra reading options. Lalia looked up curiously when she approached; her eyes lingered on her in polite acknowledgement, then flitted away shyly. She had a way of saying a lot while speaking nothing at all.
Feeling like she had to say something now, Clara asked, "Anything look good?"
"I think so." She had a giant homemaking manual in her lap. Not to be confused with the one Ezri already used as a textbook. But she frowned thoughtfully. "Are you staying here tonight?"
"I don't know."
Lalia hummed.
"Why?"
"I was just wondering." Something between a period and an ellipsis on the end. She bit her lip.
"Hmm?"
"If you do stay, where would you all sleep?"
A decent question. The answer depended on details. She had a feeling this was less about the logistic and more probing at, Sowhat's the deal here? "Well," she said, "usually if—" she paused for a second—Jen, Ms. Ezri, hmm—God, this was a mess "—my Owner stays here, she sleeps with Ms. Ezri, in her bed. Like, just to sleep."
She wasn't entirely sure that got the picture across, but Lalia nodded like it did.
"I don't sleep over as much, but—it depends. Probably on the floor at the foot of her bed. Maybe wherever's set up for guests. I don't really sleep in her bed. If we both spend the night—which, it doesn't happen a lot—either Mistress goes in the bed and I go on the floor, or we both sleep in a guest room if there's a double bed set up." Ezri changed her mind on the guest versus trainee versus spare room arrangement a lot.
Lalia considered this, obviously burning with questions she was refraining from asking. Yet, having questions of her own, and with nowhere better to be, Clara decided she'd play this game. She sat on the floor with her. It felt slightly better—she was a bit of a sadist, not a Switch in power exchange. The trainees looking to her as an authority was odd. She wasn't at Ezri's level, and it wasn't like she rejected all authority in all areas of her life, but. It was another part of the role to play pretend at. "What else do you want to know?"
Lalia flushed. "Sorry."
"No, it's okay. You... have a right to relevant information." She tried to channel what Ezri would say here. It sounded stupid coming out of her own mouth, though. She was sure Lalia had done the FetLife stalking, seen the version that presented—Ezri quietly single, her and Jen implicitly monogamous—and memorized Ezri's description of Clara's role here, including the word temporary and mentioning she had an Owner who was not Ezri, and now wanted... the rest. Because there was obviously the rest. So, how to give more disclosure without contradicting anyone. Sometimes you had to give before you could receive—things like answers.
"I'm not sure it's my business," said Lalia.
"You want to know if Ms. Ezri's actually single." That felt more natural.
Lalia turned a brighter shade of red.
"The answer is basically yes."
Lalia stammered. "I—well... but..."
"Do you want the full story?"
Lalia nodded eagerly.
"Once upon a time," said Clara, channeling Ezri once again, "Ms. Ezri ran entry training alone. I was one of the trainees. Long story short, we accidentally kind of fell in love, and she kept me. For a while. We got to the end of our consideration contract, and neither of us could stand making each other miserable enough to stay."
"Why did you make each other miserable?" Lalia interjected, then cut herself off. But Clara nodded at her. "I mean... you seem... like you love each other."
"We do. And we did. But." She was deciding exactly how honest to be. Personally, she'd be transparent here, but this was still Ezri's show, and Lalia was still a trainee, and saying I don't actually use almost any of thistraining felt wrong, but maybe that was obvious, and nothing had ever really been her decision at all. "We're not compatible. I don't normally do high protocol, or the high end service stuff. She wanted that. I'm a masochist. Not like, just in scenes, but in how my whole dynamic runs. She didn't want that."
Lalia pondered that, seeming to see how it didn't interfere with love, but was an irreconcilable difference, and not terribly shocked. "And then?"
She gave her the short version of the wild week—meeting Jen, getting married, collared, sold. Jen and Ezri bonded. And her and Ezri— "And since then, we've been basically best friends, with the occasional sprinkle of sex or beatings because like, being single is hard. And then she wanted my help with this, which is temporary."
Lalia considered.
"Do I get to ask questions now?" Clara asked, keeping the tone playful.
"Of course." They were still unable to escape the fact Clara was in charge here.
Well, she couldn't really ask what is your deep dark secret that I need to protect Ezri from, so. "You're interested," she said, which wasn't a question.
"I mean..."
She wasn't going to get the word yes out of her, was she? She kept her mouth shut, trying not to speak too rashly. She had a vague recollection of the fact that if Jen was uncharacteristically quiet, it was usually for trying to utilize the typical urge to fill the silence to get answers out of people. But that wasn't what she was doing here, and in any case, Lalia was either too clever or too deferential to jump on the quiet. So she asked her first real question: "Why?"
Lalia traced the title on the book. "I like it here," she said carefully. "I like the way things work. And it seems... kind of rare, in the grand scheme of things? I don't really want to leave. So I guess... compatibility?"
Well, if that didn't feel a little like being stabbed, nothing did. Maybe jealousy was at play here. But unless Lalia was suddenly the best actress on the face of the planet, she didn't mean it like that, cringing a little.
"And like, other things in common," she continued. "And... how much she puts into people. Not like, what she's put into me, but that she'd do that for anyone, you know?" Her tone said I know I'm not special, which made Clara like her better at the moment, even if that was probably just sad. "I know it's unlikely that I can just be a slave. So I went with probably teaching. Because I did want to help people. But sometimes I feel like I'm not... brave enough to? I'll never feel like I have the authority to really help someone grow. And I'm not... I don't know. Maybe I'm not patient enough to really put in the work myself. But she's different. And she makes me feel... safe. Like I could accomplish more with her, if I could enable her work and... have her guidance on mine?"
You want to be me. That felt a little like being stabbed, too. Which was ironic, really. She didn't want this fucking job or particularly to live in this house or really to be Ezri's or, just, any of it. But Lalia did. She wanted Ezri to tell her what to do to help her and exactly how and when and where to do it, to grant her just enough authority to be useful to others, reserving enough to take the ultimate responsibility and make sure she kept being useful. She wanted to serve The Cause and read Ezri's favorite books and worship the ground she walked on and make her fucking happy. And she'd yet to uncover any reason why Lalia shouldn't get what she wanted, why she needed to protect Ezri from that.
There was absolutely no reason for this to hurt as much as it did. "Right," she said, standing.
Lalia looked startled by the tone, the abrupt move towards exiting. "I'm sorry if—"
"Don't be sorry," Clara snapped. "Clearly there's nothing wrong with you." Brilliant. She turned, and was half a step through the doorway, when she ran smack into someone. Ezri. Who steadied her instinctively, but did not look especially pleased with her.
She wanted to ask, How much of her little speech did you hear? But it didn't really matter. Ezri would hear it before they signed a consideration contract and she'd hear it while they refined the Ownership contract and she'd hear it in vows at their collaring ceremony and on their wedding day and she'd hear the story on her death bed and she'd know it every single day of her fucking life. It didn't matter.
Ezri looked at Lalia, who looked like she might cry, and told her gently that it was okay and she'd come back and talk to her in a minute, because she was like, a nice, sane person, and Lalia managed, "Yes, ma'am," because she was like, not an idiot, and Clara went with Ezri largely willingly, though Ezri's hand at her back reminded her to stay put. They came to the door to the dungeon, which Ezri closed quietly behind them, letting go of her.
Generally, she found being pulled into the one soundproofed room in Ezri's house to be bad news. It was Ezri's way of saying, I'm not going to be particularly proud of what I'm about to say next.
It was best not to forget that Ezri was as skilled at using her words to hurt as she was at using them for anything else.
Jen, angry, used largely the same words, louder, punctuated by throwing things and slamming doors.
But Ezri chose hers better.
And that scared her more than any whip either of them could ever wield.
Ezri looked her up and down like a cause for this sudden bout of stupidity might be visible. Then asked, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" very softly.
Tears, silent, flowed for the first time since this had begun while she was awake. She was going to cry, and there was no deluding herself about that eventuality, so better to surrender to it now. She said nothing, simultaneously holding back a million more wrong things to say, knowing that she'd only get maximum one word out before it became sobbing, and words feeling fuzzy the way they did when she'd fucked up really badly.
"Clara," said Ezri, prompting, frustrated, but, immediately, softer, "Clara." She held her while the silent tears turned to sobs anyway. She still couldn't explain it. It was guilt, mostly, at the moment. For snapping at Lalia, for demanding personal answers from her, for being so suspicious, for not being the one able to give Ezri the happy lifetime she now saw in front of her, and because she was just so worn down. Finally, she managed to mumble apologies for all of it, and the amount of tears and snot and whatever she was getting on Ezri's shirt, while Ezri rubbed her back and sighed.
They stayed like that a while.
For everything about Ezri that was predictable to her now, she still had this way of being kind to her when she least expected it.