They left Ezri’s in silence. The drive was spent in silence. Clara felt like there had never been this much pure silence between them. Apologies formed and tangled and faded away and formed again in her mind, but she had forgotten how to form letters, let alone words, aloud.
They seemed to be home rather abruptly, the cue of the familiar set of turns lost to the haze. In the driveway. In the living room. On her knees, still trying to form words when Jen slapped her and all of the letters scattered again. The pain barely cut through the fog; but she remembered how to whimper, at least.
“Get back here.”
She’d gone reeling into a slightly defensive posture when struck, twisted away. Not far, but pain had never been an excuse for evasion. She found her initial position again on autopilot.
“I told you to go with Lalia and Tamora.”
“Yes, Mistress." That, at least, came easily when prompted, if the words were barely audible.
“And why didn’t you stay there?”
“I—I thought you were hurt, or—”
Jen hit her again. She whimpered and recovered her position again. She wasn’t sure where the words had come from.
“I don’t care what you thought. There was no situation where I would’ve taken back that order. Do you understand that?” On the edge of shouting.
“Yes, Mistress.” She curled in on herself a little. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you understand that then?”
Confessional, “Yes, Mistress.”
“God, I don’t know what to do with you.” She sighed and paced. “I should beat the hell out of you; shouldn’t I?”
“Yes, Mistress.” Still barely audible. “You should.” She’d fucked up. She did understand that. There were limits to what looked like lenience, distant lines never to be crossed. And she’d crossed them, and regardless of how rarely it happened, she’d pay for it.
“I don’t get it. You’re not stupid, Clara. Despite what you seem so desperate to prove, you’re not stupid. Stay is a simple order. People teach it to their dogs. So what happened? Did you just panic? Or did you get to think for a second?”
“… Both.”
“So, this is the second time I’ve ordered you to stay put for your own safety and you’ve disobeyed."
“Yes, Mistress.” She felt stupid despite the words, though the tone said she was meant to.
“Do you not understand why I want you safe? Is that it?”
“I’m sorry—”
“I didn’t ask if you were sorry.”
“Yes; I understand.”
“No; you don’t,” Jen decided for her, done asking for her opinion. “If you had… the slightest idea—if you could begin to fathom what the thought of you in danger does to me—you wouldn’t do things like this.”
“I can fathom it,” came out before she could stop it. “That’s why I ran back for you.” It didn’t come out angry. Soft, pleading.
“Okay,” Jen relented with a sigh. Paused and thought. Paced. Stopped, and said, “You’re right. You can fathom it. But it’s not up to you which one of us gets to feel that. It’s not up to you which one of us is in danger. It’s not up to you what you do about it. And it’s sure as hell not up to you to pick and choose which orders you’ll obey.”
Clara’s eyes were on the floor. She had nothing to say to that.
“What’s rule number one?”
“Obey.” A simplification, but all that was needed.
“What’s rule number two?”
“Protect the property.” The only exception, the rule above it—she wasn’t to protect herself from her Owner. Many others made it rule number one.
“Do you know why those got one and two? Not three, not four?”
She lowered her head farther. She knew, but had no succinct explanation for that.
“Because those are the foundation that everything else is built on. You’re mine and you’re of no use to me dead. It’s that simple. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“And in case you couldn’t grasp that, let’s go over some logistics, shall we? You jump into a fight and get hurt. Who has to take you to the ER?”
“You, Mistress.”
“And who has to make the medical decisions?”
“You, Mistress.”
“And who has to pay the medical bills?”
“You, Mistress.”
“And who has to take care of you while you recover?”
“You, Mistress.”
“So who has to teach you better?”
Even softer. “You, Mistress.” They could only talk through the offense for so long. The final question was what Jen intended to do about it. As thoughts started to form in Clara’s head again, she knew that one of two things was going to happen: Jen was going to punish her or she wasn’t. If she did… she’d deserve it. Every minute, every lash, whatever she chose to inflict upon her. She’d thank her for it in the end. Everything about this scenario reminded her strongly of the last time the question had been posed, and the answer had been yes. And if she didn’t… she’d thank her for the mercy. It didn’t matter, in a way.
The silence was very loud. Waiting.
It did matter, in a way.
“If I don’t enforce the few rules I have, there's no point to them,” Jen said finally. “I don’t like to do this, and last time, I told you that I wouldn’t do it again for anything less important. I don’t find this less important. Do you?”
“No.” And she didn’t. She couldn’t look at her.
Yes—but how?
Jen paced and thought again. Her first instinct, of course, had been pain. But, of course, that was what she’d done last time. And now there was a second time. Which told her that hadn’t done it.
She had always looked down on the idea of having a discipline system because it simply gave credence to the idea that disobedience was expected. A natural part of the dynamic. Yes, slaves were human—but she didn’t punish for little, human errors. The sort of things that simply had to come up from time to time. She expected obedience, not perfection. She forgave accidents and forgetfulness and even occasional laziness, helpless emotional outbursts, miscalculated actions with obedient intentions. They had no firm rules or expectations or schedules except for those sacred, reasonable five. She’d confirmed that Clara had known she was disobeying and intended to—not just simply overcome by emotion. She hadn’t had long to ponder it, but it had not been an unstoppable instinct, an accident, an outburst.
She didn't jump on small things with anything other than clear, firm, verbal chastisement. That was enough—a little tug at the guilt, a quick yank on the invisible leash. But she'd found the line where it had to be more than that: danger.
She wouldn't let Clara take that uncontrolled natural consequence willingly—and so she kept her out of the actual danger, or tried—and if Clara didn't cooperate, she'd give her something that hurt, but was safe. Hurt, not harm.
When punishment came up with them, it was unexpected. She’d been shocked the night that Clara had ran off and she’d been shocked today. Years had passed in between. And it was dangerous. She was not going to act like this was something that just happened now and then. She’d taken steps to ensure Clara’s memory of it happening at all was compromised, lies Ezri admonishingly called gaslighting and what Jen called Ezri’s far more beloved word, training. Not all of it was operant conditioning.
A system, to her, was the expectation from the beginning that the punishment was ineffective and would have to be used more than once. Personally, she liked lessons to be learned the first time. And if not, the method had to be changed.
Many people saw punishment mostly as about expiating guilt, hence the preference for the physical and cathartic. But personally, she just wanted to see a change in the behavior. And ultimately, fear of punishment was a poor motivator. She knew that first hand. It bred no loyalty, did just the opposite. And if the punishment was to cleanse the real motivator—the guilt—then she saw it as detrimental.
The first time this had come up, she hadn't thought through it that much. It had never come up before, with Clara, and with anyone else, they'd quickly proven unworthy of that much thought. So she'd gone for pain, instinctively. Still, she didn't regret it entirely—it got the walls down for the guilt inducing lecture to sink in, at least.
She wanted to avoid catharsis this time, though. Go for something didactic.
Figuring out what was a little harder.
Finally, she stopped pacing. “This is what’s going to happen.”
She outlined the rules of the next twenty-four hours.
Submission was a privilege like any other, and it could be taken away like any other.
Clara would ask no permissions, receive no orders, follow no rules, provide no service, use no titles, bottom for no play, and show no physical deference. For one day, they would act as if there was no power dynamic between them.
Understanding dawned as horror. Obedience—submission, deference—if without much ceremony, was indeed their foundation. This felt horribly like having far more than the rug pulled out from under her.
She had failed to obey and now had to earn the chance to try again, with time.
It was, Don’t like obeying rules? Now there are no rules. How do you like that?
It had never really occurred to her that this could happen. Yes, she knew submission was a privilege. She had no rights with Jen; she had only privileges, including submission. But it was also that foundation.
Pain, she’d been ready for. Any other important privilege revoked, she’d been ready for. She’d accepted it would be awful and then it would be done. But this had never crossed her mind. She felt sick, still trying to wrap her head around everything this covered.
Still, when Jen asked, “Understood?” she said:
“Yes, Mistress,” then bit her lip, hesitated, not sure exactly when it began. She was still kneeling on the floor.
“Stay there.” Jen left. Clara waited. It wasn’t long. Dread seeped in before she even fully processed what Jen was holding when she returned. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting. Whip, maybe. Starting with a beating, anyway. But there would be no whip or blood or bruises this time. A punishment clean and internal.
It was a key.
She felt suddenly numb, in the way she had felt numb while they were still at Ezri’s, as Jen unlocked her collar. A waiting numb. She hadn’t been without it for much longer than going through any security with picky metal detectors since it had first been put on. So it had always been a matter of waiting just a few minutes. Brief, uncomfortable limbo.
“I don’t like this,” Jen said as she straightened, holding the collar. “But.” She didn’t finish the sentence, looking about as miserable as Clara felt. It wouldn’t be a pleasant day for her, either. But you deserve it. But you have to learn. But it’s only for a day. Clara made up a hundred more ways to finish it. Her fingers traced where the collar had been subconsciously. She felt wrong, physically, without it. You wore something twenty-four hours a day, for enough years, it felt wrong quickly when it was off. Like cutting your hair short. Like you were forgetting something. Like one of those anxiety dreams where you weren’t wearing pants.
It was, technically, the second collar; they had decided to replace it once every three years, due to wear and tear. But this one, and the next one, likely, was and would be basically identical to the first. The lock had simply been moved between them. There hadn’t been much adjusting to wearing the second.
So, nearing six years of the familiar sensation of wearing it.
“Time begins now,” Jen said, and with that, left.
Clara just wanted to cry. Now, of course, they pretended for a day that nothing was wrong, on top of everything else. She should probably stand up.
Upstairs, Jen examined the collar. It felt wrong to just put it down and try to forget about it. She could lock it in the drawer where the key and the first one lived, and some other items. She could place it somewhere Clara would see it. But she looked at it first. Soon enough it would be time to replace it—and it did show signs of that. She had the materials for it already. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was made to look fairly tame, not too eye catching to those who wouldn’t appreciate what it was.
The two of them knew very well what it was without any flashiness.
She sighed, cleaned and conditioned it while it was there, placed the lock and key in the drawer, and then left the collar itself on Clara’s nightstand. She was just being cruel, now. But she didn’t want to do this a third time.
Clara successfully avoided her entirely for the first three hours. It was 5:30 before Jen thought, Okay, this is stupid, and decided to stop letting her avoid her. A quick scan of the house brought no results. She wondered, for a second, if Clara might’ve left without her noticing. There was no rule on notifying her now, after all. Really, she should’ve considered that Clara could simply evade her for the duration of the time with that fact. It was kind of a bold move, and if that seemed to be the case, she might intervene, but—
No, she was still sharing her location, and her phone, at least, was still in the house somewhere, and she wouldn’t go far without it.
So, she checked Clara's office closet. The most frequent hiding spot of hers in distress, which she shared with half the cats. It wasn’t really a great hiding spot but a security place. The corner of it she always curled up in stored the variety of blankets she rotated through having out in the room; it was a soft, nesty, dark, and quiet place to think.
She cowered into the disheveled pile of blankets when Jen opened the sliding door. The Marquis de Whiskerton hissed at her from on top of them, always protective of Clara and his own spot in the closet. Clara just whimpered.
Sometimes Jen swore she had seven cats in total.
Obviously, Clara was taking this so very well. Not that she could blame her.
She was about to say, “Up,” when she remembered, no orders. Fuck, how did vanilla couples talk? How did she talk to anyone else? How did you stay egalitarian with someone cowering in a closet?
She sighed. Clara just peered up at her from under her bangs. To her credit, she didn’t have much room to move without Jen stepping back. Which she didn’t. She sat next to her on the floor, just outside the closet. And, like with the cats, let Clara come to her. She curled up in her lap hesitantly.
Jen let her. She... imagined romantic partners as equals could do that. She had never really given egalitarian relationships much of a shot. Observed few of them. She’d known from the moment she’d realized it was an option—before she really began dating—that her only chance at any kind of successful relationship would be with a slave. It had just taken a lot more years to find the right one.
Neither of them was really meant for anything else.
Hence, why they still had a very long twenty-one hours ahead of them.
Even without any other reassurance, Clara relaxed in her arms a little. Nuzzled into her. The blanket pile was nice, but this had always felt like one of the safest spots in the world. Only a slight shift in it would be better.
Jen pet her hair. “I know, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” She’d have to be careful, of the line between a lover’s reassurance and an Owner’s praise, not to mention cutting any possessiveness. The endearment was its own I know—sweetheart was only used when Clara was upset, sick or hurt or simply past her limits. Or about to be. But it wasn’t good girl and it wasn’t mine.
Speaking of possessiveness—the Marquis de Whiskerton found an inch of space between them to curl up in. Of course.
“So,” Jen said, when Clara seemed as calm as she was going to get, “dinner.”
Usually, Clara made dinner—or somehow handled it, if they were ordering or going out or ending up at Ezri’s. However, that seemed to toe that service line. They didn’t really have a service dynamic so much as a division of necessary household chores that happened to be 100/0. Jen didn’t care how they got done as long as they got done on some reasonable schedule. There were no food safety checks and no table setting charts and no laundry sorting rules and no specific way trash bags had to be tucked around the bin. Clara’s leftover Pinterest Mom tendencies from the kids were just a bonus.
“Dinner,” Clara echoed, not sure what was safe to say to that.
Jen considered options. Like hell she was going to try to cook and make an idiot of herself in the middle of this. Setting off every smoke alarm in the house wasn’t going to help anything. Nor could she really allow Clara to do it. Nor was she going to let Clara starve herself out of guilt. So, she’d order something. “I’ll order something,” she said. That sounded very decisive. “I mean.” Fuck, this was a wreck. Rephrasing it as a question was just weirdly pointed. Different question, then. “Where do you think?”
Clara just kind of mumbled into her shoulder, “I’m not very hungry,” then thought better of it, tried to cooperate, and offered an option.
“Sure.” She wasn’t enthused about it, but it was probably best to just agree to the first idea. “Usual?” She could pretend she wasn’t just ordering for her.
“Sure.”
Dinner was quiet, when the food arrived. It wasn’t like there were rules around it, usually; Clara didn’t need permission to sit at the table or such; but, it was strange when Jen got up to get her own refill, and strange when the meal wasn’t used as an opportunity for Jen to give orders for some miscellaneous task to be done in the next day or two, and strange when they made twice as much eye contact and talked half as much. They touched and even kissed, but there was no hair pulling and no deep scratches torn down Clara's back and no swatting at her playfully and no gripping her by a collar that wasn’t there or fingers wrapped around her throat, and it was terribly wrong.
Cleanup was simple and mutual and anything beyond clearing the table—a few dishes, mostly—was left untouched. It felt stupid to not finish it, but whatever they called it normally, it felt too close to that service line. So Clara didn’t touch it. Jen didn’t do it herself. She had gone to leave when Clara called after her, “Mis—Jen?”
Addressing Jen by name always felt reminiscent of being a petulant teenager experimenting with calling their parents by first name to see if it annoyed them. Physically uncomfortable. Clara did it only in vanilla company, and even then, rarely. She referred to her by name, usually—excepting protocol events and certain moods—but that was different. Even in the most informal situation, if she wanted her attention, or an address in a sentence—it had always been Mistress, like it was her name. She didn’t know why. She hadn’t thought much of it until now.
Many said titles were earned—on both sides. In the vanilla world, and in the network if not the general scene, ma’am and sir weren’t much to blink at. But calling someone Master or Mistress was often different. It was something Clara was willing to do immediately. A privilege Jen had granted her immediately, as she had been in the habit of doing with partners at the time. It had never really bothered her if someone—new or slow or with good intention seeing how she reacted to ma’am—used it unbidden. The longer she had Clara, the more it did. She had—perhaps retroactively—earned it. No one else had. It was Clara who taught her that such a thing could be earned, instead of just granted, by doing it. A form of reward or status for her respectful deference and unquestioning obedience, complete submission and whole hearted devotion. Then it felt wrong to grant it to someone who offered any less. It became Clara’s alone, and she was equally possessive of it.
“Yes?”
Clara had suddenly lost her nerve. Well, she supposed it was the opposite of nerve that had her address Jen by name today, but it threw her off, nonetheless. The, “Do you want to watch a movie?” came out very quiet.
To be fair, they frequently spent evenings together. Even if they were at home, they watched TV or played a game or talked or played or simply stayed near each other while Clara doodled or scrolled through her phone and Jen worked on her computer or braided a whip. During the day, they were more frequently found on opposite ends of the house—or Clara at the community center—but from dinner to bedtime, unless it really got late, they tended to be together. If they went out, they had their friends and events and the dungeon and dinner and movies and errands. Plenty of simple routines.
“Sure,” said Jen. “Your pick.” Because honestly, nothing Clara could choose would make a difference tonight. She did not want to pretend to have some sort of mutual decision making process and she probably shouldn’t decide herself.
So they sat on the couch and Clara fumbled through using the remote to find something on Netflix, because she wasn’t usually the one to do it, but picked something from their list quickly because it really didn’t matter, and it wasn’t that she was incapable of decisions. Opening credits came on. She didn’t shift to the floor and she didn’t curl up with her head in Jen’s lap, but did give her a look that helplessly asked, Where do you want me to be?
Jen tried to ignore her. She’d figure it out. Clara settled for holding her hand and leaning on her shoulder a little, and half the cats worked their way somewhere in between. The Marquis de Whiskerton, on Clara’s lap, hissed at Jen again. Dr. Fluffypants Fuzztail settled over Jen’s arm as if she’d never need it. Professor Bananas dutifully pretended it was a coincidence he was in the same room as them.
The movie was fine and it didn’t matter. It never really did. It was always an excuse to cuddle without needing much conversation, though usually differently than this, maybe with Clara on her leash and curled up on a blanket at Jen’s feet, or with Clara’s hands tied behind her back while Jen offered popcorn out of her hand, or with Clara finally whispering, “Please?” as if there was someone there to overhear them, unable to ignore Jen’s hand under her waistband any longer.
Tonight, she was half asleep against her when the movie ended. Jen couldn’t blame her. It had been a long fucking day. To think that getting slashed in the fight had been the low point for only a few seconds. She might have felt the pain in her arm better if her head wasn’t pounding. She’d been reeling from adrenaline and pain as she and Ezri managed to retreat from the situation, and then almost ran smack into Clara two steps back down the front path. She remembered feeling… confusion. In some mental model of the world she’d built in her head, it was impossible for Clara to be there. It surprised both of them, in a way.
She went to get ready for bed shortly after the movie. It was early, but maybe it was better, if evasive, to sleep a little more tonight. She didn’t try to sleep the moment she got in bed, though. A last update from Ezri said, All quiet. Thanks for everything. I love you both.
It was in a group chat, the three of them—one of several group chats that held some combination of them and Lalia. The autopilot but thoroughly meant response that came to mind was, We love you, too. Casually speaking for the both of them. And while Ezri wasn’t a part of this, she hesitated to say it. So she sent a heart emoji that wasn’t out of place as a response, either, and let it be.
Clara did the same a moment later, and came into the room shortly after, looking a little lost, like she’d retreated to the daze she’d been in earlier. Dissociation. In many people, something that occurred tied to anxiety or depression or sensory overload or traumatic memories. In Clara, a purposefully built response to certain lines of thought or actions. Despite the initial failings of that conditioning today, Jen felt a little proud to see the effects, though in a way it was also jarring.
The right kind of subspace was close enough to a hypnotic trance to make the mind suggestible. At that point, it was a matter of planting triggers. It sounded like any other scene, really. “You like it when I call you my property, don’t you? Makes you feel all floaty and submissive? Like you do now?” Work it into such scenes again and again. Then, that trigger—in this case, property under the right circumstances—could be used to induce that described feeling later—the dissociative trance of subspace; it wouldn’t be quite as strong, but still hard to fight. Then, when hypothetical disobedience came up—a joke or an example or whatever it may be—subtly use trigger, property, induce reaction, dissociation. Rinse and repeat until that topic of disobedience went to that dissociative reaction without even needing that triggering property in the middle.
It could also be done with sheer association. On the other end of a spectrum from property, there was sweetheart—indeed the endearment Jen used only when Clara was distressed. That part wasn’t a secret, a rather observable habit. But if Jen used it when Clara wasn’t in distress, it gave Clara an instant sense of unease. The but nothing's wrong… or is there? It was a thisshouldbother you cue. A reprimand taken too lightly. An idea Jen didn’t like. Of course, it sounded merely like she had misread Clara’s initial emotions.
Humans were easier than computers, some days.
Now, Clara’s breath hitched when she noticed the collar on her nightstand, but she dutifully tried to ignore it, settled into bed shortly.
Lights got shut, sheets nestled into. Dr. Fluffypants Fuzztail against Jen’s back. Lord von Whiskeridoo and General Furrington near the foot of the bed. Marquis de Whiskerton under Clara’s arm. A somewhat early night. Clara, uncharacteristically, was curled up facing away from her on the far side of the bed.
Jen shifted over to her, curled up around her. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Reluctant.
“I love you, you know that?” An arm settling around her waist.
Shaky sigh. “I know. I love you, too.”
“Okay.”
Clara’s hand settling over hers.
Jen hoping that she could see that she was doing this out of nothing but love. “If you had… the slightest idea—if you could begin to fathom what the thought of you in danger does to me—you wouldn’t do things like this.”
There had always been safety in obedience.
Of course, Clara had seen a loophole—a form of emotional safety. “I can fathom it. That’s why I ran back for you.” Protecting herself from exactly that feeling. But there was another factor. If she had stayed where told, and something terrible had happened, it wouldn’t have been her fault. She would have been following orders. If something happened to Clara, Jen had no one to blame but herself.
Sleep evaded them both.
Jen gave up and got out of bed shortly after four, which wasn’t so unusual. Clara managed to toss and turn until shortly after ten, which wasn’t so unusual, either.
2:30, Clara told herself as she forced herself out of the bed, motivated to leave the warm pile of linens and cats only by the thought of coffee. She just had to make it to 2:30.
That seemed a lot more feasible alone. Honestly, this whole thing would’ve been more feasible if she’d just been locked in the empty play room without human contact for twenty-four hours. Fuck, even if she’d been left there bound in some stress position, it would’ve been easier.
It sounded drastic. But this was agony. It was any bad social situation stretched into a full day. It was making every instinct wrong. It was feeling alone with someone else right in front of her, thrown back in her face again and again. It was the one stress position she couldn’t hold. It had taken away her chances to prove herself, to make it up to her, to do anything but wait. Yes, she’d screwed up. And now she had no way to promise she wouldn’t do it again, no way to apologize, to say she’d been wrong, to fix it, to beg forgiveness. And they had to be there looking at each other and not saying it anyway.
In a way, there had been no roles adopted at the moment they signed their contract. It was just a formality of saying what they had been since the moment they met. What they had both been their whole lives. Meeting had been a relief for both of them. Oh. Finally. The magnetic pull between them was the result of finding where they were supposed to be.
Now, Clara narrowly avoided tumbling down the stairs with the General following her out of bed and winding around her ankles. The chubby tortoiseshell did not succeed at creating a fall risk today, just getting a fair amount of fur on her pajama pants.
Coffee. She didn’t think much about breakfast either way. She just felt sick. There were plenty of mornings she didn't eat right away. But normally, sometime in her slow morning routine of drinking coffee, checking her phone, getting dressed, making the bed—today, neglected altogether—Jen would ask if she’d eaten, if there was no evidence of it, and if she said no, Jen would chide her to eat, and she would sigh and then do it. Today she wouldn’t have even sighed, if Jen would just tell her to do it.
But Jen said nothing of it today when she came to refill her own coffee, which she also didn’t hand off to Clara. She gave her a look that implied it, probably subconsciously, and even with her just being in the room, doing what pleased her was too powerful an instinct no matter what else she felt, especially now, when that look was all the chance she was going to get. So, she stuck bread in the toaster. Jen tried to not look pleased with her via not looking at her, which was kind of worse than actual disapproval. Still, she hadn’t come here for Clara. She offered only a light kiss on her way out.
Clara did not manage to eat much of the toast, but managed to not throw up what she did.
11 AM. Dressed, considered going for a walk, the most avoidant behavior she dared. Halfway through her usual pause in front of the door, reaching for her phone, she realized that the rule of notifying Jen when she left was not in place. She stared at the lock screen on her phone as if it had answers. Did that mean she was required to not tell her? The rules were not to be obeyed today, but did that mean that when circumstance arose, they had to be broken? Would it be so abnormal to let a vanilla partner know one’s whereabouts? If Jen left unexpectedly, she usually told Clara, anyway. Maybe not for just a walk, if Jen went on walks.
It felt like a very simple yes or no question to figure out what to do here, and she felt like she shouldn’t have been thinking about it this long and getting only mental tangles instead of answers, so she gave up on the walk notion. There was a kind of staticy hum around the words in her head that usually told her she’d run into the mental wall of what some called internal enslavement and some called brainwashing, and today she took it to mean it was best to stay put.
Upstairs, Jen was very tired of effectively not having a slave for the day. Well, more like half the day in terms of waking hours—her waking hours; for Clara it was even less. It felt like being in a very familiar room in which every object had been shifted three inches to the left. Nothing was quite right, but it kind of looked like it should be.
Clara was here and awake and they interacted and there was no dispute going on—what passed for disputes, with them—and it all looked quite right and felt quite wrong. Even in Clara’s absence, she felt the effects.
For starters, beverages did not refill themselves and dishes did not disappear. Anticipatory service was kind of like magic sometimes, and usually Clara would grab things and return them refilled whenever she was nearby, unless Jen found real reason to go downstairs herself. Her normal definition of an inconvenience if Clara was home and awake was having to actually summon her, of course usually yelling slave more than Clara.
Secondly, she had no idea what Furrington was wailing at her about. Mrow. Mroww. Mroowww. On repeat. “The fuck do you want?” she asked him finally.
Mrow.
“Well, aren’t you helpful.” She tried throwing more food into the almost but not entirely empty bowl, and this seemed to please him enough he shut up. Why he thought this was her problem, she didn’t know, except that he was probably used to the bowl just being full, and today, Clara wouldn’t refill that, either, and he wanted it to be someone’s problem. “Yeah, we’re all having a long day,” she told him as he flopped onto the ground exactly where she was about to step, and she moved around him.
“He tried to kill me on the stairs today,” Clara said, making her jump.
“Just today?”
“Well, every day.” Today, though, there wasn’t quite enough humor in her tone.
Back to her office. Noon. Work. One. Pretending to work. Finding Clara out of habit because she was bored, but unable to do any of the things she wanted. Approaching two. She should figure out what she planned to do at the ending of this, exactly. Two twenty-five. She’d never been very good at planning, and the pending sense of relief was flooding her thoughts. Still, she tried to collect some of them, and Clara’s collar and lock, which she set on her desk.
Two-thirty on the dot.
Clara came to her looking something like nervous.
“Come here.” She turned her chair away from her desk, gestured to the floor.
Clara knelt in front of her. They both just breathed for a moment. Relief. Orders and obedience; Clara kneeling with her eyes lowered.
Last time, pain had said, I hurt you when you disobey. To take away submission altogether was the reminder, You want to obey. You want to submit. You want to behave. You want to be a good girl and please me and make me proud. You want your rules, you want your boundaries, you want your orders, you want to be useful. You want to be owned.
Jen draped the collar back around Clara’s neck and slipped the lock through the d-ring on both sides, pressed it closed. “All mine,” she said, fingers still wrapped around the collar.
“All yours.” Clara rested her head in Jen’s lap. “Thank you, Mistress,” she whispered, for nothing in particular.
“Of course.” Petting her hair with her other hand.
Yesterday, Clara had reflected that curled up in Jen’s arms had felt like one of the safest spots in the world. But this—on her knees, Jen’s fingers around her collar—this was what she’d needed. The safest place in the world.
This was where they both belonged.