Black Rose: The "F" Word 1-3
These are three of a set of 25 drabble prompts I will be eventually filling with my Black Rose, Acacia, her sister Roses and her pet Blue Rose, Will (who objects, often and loudly, to the term "pet").
1. Faith:
“It can’t be done.”
“Cass, have a little faith, would you?” Walter entreated, his hands extended between them, but still inches from touching her own crossed arms.
“I’m supposed to have faith in this crackpot idea of yours? You can’t just retire from MI6 and start up a crime-fighting agency of your own, Walter. This isn’t the New Avengers; it’s real life. You’d be on every terrorist watchlist in the nation in 24 hours.” Cassia stared him down, her green eyes wild with shock as she silently willed him to see sense.
“Wouldn’t it be incredible, though?” he pressed, with all the boyish exuberance she had first fallen in love with. “Just think - you would have no obligation to anyone but the people you were helping. No government agendas or big-name company interference. You would be a business, with some kind of front that kept your other business afloat and you could work on individual short-term contracts.”
Cassia sighed, uncrossing her arms and settling a hand on each hip. “Obligations provide accountability, Walter, and any group designed to protect the public needs to be held accountable for their actions. People get hurt as collateral damage in these operations and there needs to be some kind of neutral third-party to say when they’ve gone too far.”
“We can work on that as we iron out plans,” Walter bubbled on excitedly. “You see why I need your help? You think of things that never would have occurred to me. Something this big needs to be a group project.”
“In that case,” she responded, “won’t we need more people. Like a board of directors?”
He looked at her seriously for a long moment before a slow, serendipitous smile curled across his face. “Honey, if you and I are in this together, we don’t need another soul.”
2. Faithless:
“Walter, what are you doing?” The pain in Cassia’s thigh was making it difficult to concentrate on her husband’s increasingly blurry outline through the fine veil of rain that had begun to fall.
“I’m moving forward Cass,” he replied, his voice high and tight, as though he was struggling to force the words through his throat. “This is progress; it’s making my dreams a reality.”
“This isn’t our dream,” Cassia protested, feeling panic wrap her in a suffocating embrace through the fire spreading down her leg. “This isn’t it at all. The Emperors hurt people Walt, they don’t protect them. How is this what you want?”
“They are helping people, Cass, they just go about it a different way,” Walter began, his tone normalizing slightly and becoming soft and patronizing, as though he were trying to coax a wild animal into a cage.
“By blowing up buildings?” Cassia interrupted him viciously, still aware enough to be surprised by how raw and offended her voice sounded, thrown like a weapon across the dead air between them.
Walter froze, cringing away from her in recognition of a truth he would never admit aloud and Cassia recognized that he had won the battle before it even began, by refusing to entertain the idea that their dream could exist independent of outside influences. Walter had given up on the fantasy upon which their imagined future had been built and now that he had found a potential avenue to the same ends, nothing she said would dissuade him.
Cassia withdrew, curling quietly into herself in the mud, pressing a trembling hand to the bullet wound in her thigh as ruby drops of blood slowly coalesced, like scarlet dewdrops on the denim of her pants. She could feel Walter’s eyes on her as his confusion and hurt hovered in the air between them, but his sudden and unexpected betrayal left her awash in agony, drifting farther and farther away from the muddy parking lot, towards somewhere recent in her memory, a warm, dry recollection where her husband still wanted what was best for them and she still felt that together was where they belonged.
She came back to her shivering, sopping self to find him calling her name, peering at her through the haze with concerned, wary eyes. “Cassia,” he repeated, “are you coming?”
“Coming where?” she asked, him befuddled and feeling her grip on attentive thinking slipping bit by bit.
“With me,” he told her impatiently, adopting the air of someone who had repeated himself one time to many. “To the Empire.”
“Of course not!” she cried, dismayed and furious that he would think such an idea might appeal to her.
His expression vacillated for a brief moment between stunned and infuriated, before settling into the determined scowl she knew so well.
“If you won’t come with me,” he threatened, staring her down, “I’ll take you there unwilling or not.”
Cassia had no more opened his mouth to tell him where, exactly, he could shove that stunning idea, than a voice behind her rang out, cool and self-assured amid the tempestuous emotions flying between her and Walter, “Try it and you’ll lose at least one hand.”
Cassia whipped her head around, feeling the icy lash of her dripping hair as it slapped against her cheek. Just behind her left shoulder stood Grier, immaculate and alien in her navy pea coat and dark pinstriped slacks, standing beneath a grey umbrella with a gun trained on Walter and a stony glint in her stunningly teal eyes.
Walter reached for his own firearm before a single, well-place bullet from Grier’s knocked his holster from his waist and threw it into the mud somewhere distantly behind him. “I will say this only once,” she told him icily, “get out and never come back.”
Walter met her gaze for all of a moment before turning his sad, dark eyes to Cassia again in the closest approximation of an apology he would ever give to her. He nodded once and turned crisply on his heel , walking away and into the mist until her faded entirely from her view.
Cassia lay and in the mud, feeling her body sink deeper into the waterlogged ground and staring up at the stars as her vision blended them into bands of light across the sky. After a moment or two of careful contemplation, a very pale, very concerned face bobbed into her line of vision.
“You okay?” Grier asked, her brows knit together above her incandescent eyes.
Cassia elected not to answer, instead mulling over the beginnings of a wonderful, crazy, pain-induced plan that had begun to form in the farthest reaches of her brain as Grier attempted to maneuver her into some form of sitting position to better access her injured leg.
“Grier,” Cassia asked muzzily, “will you be on my board of directors?
3. Fate:
“Now, the way I see it, you have two options,” the woman told him from far above his head, grinding the heel of her fashionable boot into his solar plexus and forcing him even farther back into the ground. “You can give up this little farce of a gang and come and work for me personally, or I can kill you dead right here. End of discussion.”
Will swallowed hard, feeling his Adam’s apple bump uncomfortably against the long barrel of the gun she held, cocked and ready, in the crook of her arm. He had roundly underestimated her, this beautiful woman who had expressed so much interest in his covert work. He had allowed himself to forget his purpose and duty in her caramel skin and lively, green eyes and indulge in teenage fantasy for the first time in years. And then, as soon as they made it in the hideout door, explosions began to shake the frame of the entire building and his pretty senorita pulled out that massive gun. Will knew he was a goner. He knew he should fall down and grovel at her feet, beg for mercy. But his inconveniently smart mouth had other ideas.
He meant to grovel, really he did. It’s just that, “Cake please,” happened to be what actually came out of his mouth.
He did enjoy the flicker of surprise that arched across her face, but the truly evil smirk that replaced it made his blood run cold.
“Sorry, we’re all out of cake,” she told him, utterly deadpan, “we didn’t expect such a rush.”
Will opened and closed his mouth several times with no result before the prompting of a gun along his collarbone forced out a high pitched and strained, “Well, then, I’ll have the chicken please!”
To his surprise and immense relief, she moved the gun a safer distance away, tilted her head back slightly and laughed. She chuckled for several long seconds before turning her head slightly to the left and calling, in a voice still chocked with mirth, “Walter, Walter come quickly, I’ve found a lovely lad. Can we keep him, please?”
And so it came to be that Cassia and Walter Fox adopted William Winter into their household and immediately began preparing him to become the jack-of-all-trades and destroyer of worlds he is today.
1. Faith:
“It can’t be done.”
“Cass, have a little faith, would you?” Walter entreated, his hands extended between them, but still inches from touching her own crossed arms.
“I’m supposed to have faith in this crackpot idea of yours? You can’t just retire from MI6 and start up a crime-fighting agency of your own, Walter. This isn’t the New Avengers; it’s real life. You’d be on every terrorist watchlist in the nation in 24 hours.” Cassia stared him down, her green eyes wild with shock as she silently willed him to see sense.
“Wouldn’t it be incredible, though?” he pressed, with all the boyish exuberance she had first fallen in love with. “Just think - you would have no obligation to anyone but the people you were helping. No government agendas or big-name company interference. You would be a business, with some kind of front that kept your other business afloat and you could work on individual short-term contracts.”
Cassia sighed, uncrossing her arms and settling a hand on each hip. “Obligations provide accountability, Walter, and any group designed to protect the public needs to be held accountable for their actions. People get hurt as collateral damage in these operations and there needs to be some kind of neutral third-party to say when they’ve gone too far.”
“We can work on that as we iron out plans,” Walter bubbled on excitedly. “You see why I need your help? You think of things that never would have occurred to me. Something this big needs to be a group project.”
“In that case,” she responded, “won’t we need more people. Like a board of directors?”
He looked at her seriously for a long moment before a slow, serendipitous smile curled across his face. “Honey, if you and I are in this together, we don’t need another soul.”
2. Faithless:
“Walter, what are you doing?” The pain in Cassia’s thigh was making it difficult to concentrate on her husband’s increasingly blurry outline through the fine veil of rain that had begun to fall.
“I’m moving forward Cass,” he replied, his voice high and tight, as though he was struggling to force the words through his throat. “This is progress; it’s making my dreams a reality.”
“This isn’t our dream,” Cassia protested, feeling panic wrap her in a suffocating embrace through the fire spreading down her leg. “This isn’t it at all. The Emperors hurt people Walt, they don’t protect them. How is this what you want?”
“They are helping people, Cass, they just go about it a different way,” Walter began, his tone normalizing slightly and becoming soft and patronizing, as though he were trying to coax a wild animal into a cage.
“By blowing up buildings?” Cassia interrupted him viciously, still aware enough to be surprised by how raw and offended her voice sounded, thrown like a weapon across the dead air between them.
Walter froze, cringing away from her in recognition of a truth he would never admit aloud and Cassia recognized that he had won the battle before it even began, by refusing to entertain the idea that their dream could exist independent of outside influences. Walter had given up on the fantasy upon which their imagined future had been built and now that he had found a potential avenue to the same ends, nothing she said would dissuade him.
Cassia withdrew, curling quietly into herself in the mud, pressing a trembling hand to the bullet wound in her thigh as ruby drops of blood slowly coalesced, like scarlet dewdrops on the denim of her pants. She could feel Walter’s eyes on her as his confusion and hurt hovered in the air between them, but his sudden and unexpected betrayal left her awash in agony, drifting farther and farther away from the muddy parking lot, towards somewhere recent in her memory, a warm, dry recollection where her husband still wanted what was best for them and she still felt that together was where they belonged.
She came back to her shivering, sopping self to find him calling her name, peering at her through the haze with concerned, wary eyes. “Cassia,” he repeated, “are you coming?”
“Coming where?” she asked, him befuddled and feeling her grip on attentive thinking slipping bit by bit.
“With me,” he told her impatiently, adopting the air of someone who had repeated himself one time to many. “To the Empire.”
“Of course not!” she cried, dismayed and furious that he would think such an idea might appeal to her.
His expression vacillated for a brief moment between stunned and infuriated, before settling into the determined scowl she knew so well.
“If you won’t come with me,” he threatened, staring her down, “I’ll take you there unwilling or not.”
Cassia had no more opened his mouth to tell him where, exactly, he could shove that stunning idea, than a voice behind her rang out, cool and self-assured amid the tempestuous emotions flying between her and Walter, “Try it and you’ll lose at least one hand.”
Cassia whipped her head around, feeling the icy lash of her dripping hair as it slapped against her cheek. Just behind her left shoulder stood Grier, immaculate and alien in her navy pea coat and dark pinstriped slacks, standing beneath a grey umbrella with a gun trained on Walter and a stony glint in her stunningly teal eyes.
Walter reached for his own firearm before a single, well-place bullet from Grier’s knocked his holster from his waist and threw it into the mud somewhere distantly behind him. “I will say this only once,” she told him icily, “get out and never come back.”
Walter met her gaze for all of a moment before turning his sad, dark eyes to Cassia again in the closest approximation of an apology he would ever give to her. He nodded once and turned crisply on his heel , walking away and into the mist until her faded entirely from her view.
Cassia lay and in the mud, feeling her body sink deeper into the waterlogged ground and staring up at the stars as her vision blended them into bands of light across the sky. After a moment or two of careful contemplation, a very pale, very concerned face bobbed into her line of vision.
“You okay?” Grier asked, her brows knit together above her incandescent eyes.
Cassia elected not to answer, instead mulling over the beginnings of a wonderful, crazy, pain-induced plan that had begun to form in the farthest reaches of her brain as Grier attempted to maneuver her into some form of sitting position to better access her injured leg.
“Grier,” Cassia asked muzzily, “will you be on my board of directors?
3. Fate:
“Now, the way I see it, you have two options,” the woman told him from far above his head, grinding the heel of her fashionable boot into his solar plexus and forcing him even farther back into the ground. “You can give up this little farce of a gang and come and work for me personally, or I can kill you dead right here. End of discussion.”
Will swallowed hard, feeling his Adam’s apple bump uncomfortably against the long barrel of the gun she held, cocked and ready, in the crook of her arm. He had roundly underestimated her, this beautiful woman who had expressed so much interest in his covert work. He had allowed himself to forget his purpose and duty in her caramel skin and lively, green eyes and indulge in teenage fantasy for the first time in years. And then, as soon as they made it in the hideout door, explosions began to shake the frame of the entire building and his pretty senorita pulled out that massive gun. Will knew he was a goner. He knew he should fall down and grovel at her feet, beg for mercy. But his inconveniently smart mouth had other ideas.
He meant to grovel, really he did. It’s just that, “Cake please,” happened to be what actually came out of his mouth.
He did enjoy the flicker of surprise that arched across her face, but the truly evil smirk that replaced it made his blood run cold.
“Sorry, we’re all out of cake,” she told him, utterly deadpan, “we didn’t expect such a rush.”
Will opened and closed his mouth several times with no result before the prompting of a gun along his collarbone forced out a high pitched and strained, “Well, then, I’ll have the chicken please!”
To his surprise and immense relief, she moved the gun a safer distance away, tilted her head back slightly and laughed. She chuckled for several long seconds before turning her head slightly to the left and calling, in a voice still chocked with mirth, “Walter, Walter come quickly, I’ve found a lovely lad. Can we keep him, please?”
And so it came to be that Cassia and Walter Fox adopted William Winter into their household and immediately began preparing him to become the jack-of-all-trades and destroyer of worlds he is today.