Unworthy [Rated M for dark themes]
This was written for the aiw_big_bang Week Five: Big Bang Writing Prompt: Flashback
Title: Unworthy
Author: Manniness (I almost don't want to admit to this one, actually.)
Character(s): Mirana of Marmoreal, Iracebeth of Crims
Fandom: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Rating: M
Warnings: Desecration of the dead and other dark stuff
Summary: Mirana remembers the moment when it became Too Late to save her sister.
Notes: I can't say this Belongs with my Big Bang entry, >The Champion’s Hatter, as Iracebeth and her fate is never mentioned but it helps explain Mirana’s fear of making the wrong decision, her quandary of Action vs. Inaction. (Sorry - this will make more sense after you read The Champion’s Hatter. Although I feel this little ficlet stands on its own well enough.) And, thanks to wanderamaranth, this little bunny sunk his teeth in and Would Not Let Go.
Disclaimer: Alice in Wonderland and its characters, storyline, setting, and other concepts are the property of Walt Disney Studios, Tim Burton, and Lewis Carroll. No copyright infringement is intended and no compensation was given to the author for creating this work.
*~*~*~*
Mirana is simply Mirana. Here. Now. She is not a queen. No, not here. Here, with these implements in her hands, she is not even a fully grown woman. She takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent of freshly tilled earth and midnight and the coming mist and rain. She listens to the sound of eternal peace, of rest and redemption. She closes her eyes and...
"Please, Racie! This is interesting! And far more useful than that Dominion nonsense you're studying."
Across the table, her older sister listlessly flicked her perfectly manicured nails against the various jars and flasks and pots that make up every alchemist's apprentice's table. Including Mirana's.
She gave a disdainful sniff at a pot of Wishful Thinking and drawled, "Useful is it? I highly doubt that anything you could brew would expose the truth, reveal a betrayer, or conquer an enemy like a decent threat of beheading can!"
"Beheading..." Mirana echoed, her hand pressing against her stomach as if the mild pressure might stop it from rolling. She swallowed back her disgust and disquiet with audible effort.
Iracebeth glanced up through her painted brows - Why had their parents allowed her to start wearing rogue and kohl so soon? Why, Racie just turned sixteen last month! Surely, she was still too young for such things! - and smiled That smile. The smile that Mirana had grown increasingly wary of. Probably because something very... unpleasant almost always followed that particular smile.
"You can get anything you want with a good threat of beheading," Iracebeth lectured in an off-handed tone. "You needn't actually behead them, of course. It's just a threat."
"But... suppose the... victim was of a... martyr-ish bent and didn't mind... the, er..."
"Oh," Iracebeth replied, looking quite irked. "Well, in that case I suppose you would have to follow through. Otherwise what would everyone think? They'd say you'd gone soft. And then they'd never confess another secret, another guilty pleasure, another sin." She huffed, "Still. It would be his own fault for being so unreasonable!"
"Racie... please." Dear jars of jubilance and flasks of foresight, what was the Mock Turtle teaching her sister? "Change your subject of study. Should not the healing arts be just as worthy - if not more so! - as Dominion-ing?"
Her older sister snorted. "You're so naive, Miwana. Dominion is necessary. Why even you and your beloved, gentle potion makers practice it." Her sister tapped a small, pale, soft hand on the top of a sealed container of buttered fingers. "Where do you suppose these came from? Do you think they fell out of the sky? Or perhaps they were grown on trees? No, I suppose you thought some altruistic volunteers gave them up. Just for you to play with."
"They were not... forcibly obtained," she replied but even she could hear the hollowness of her own tone. After all, how did she know these fingers had been taken from the already dead? Was she not just like her sister, parroting empty words from her teacher?
Iracebeth threw back her head and laughed. The sound of it bounced from buttress to buttress, making Mirana's head pound and her heart race and her fists clench. Until it was Too Much.
"Stop, you horrid creature! You are not WORTHY of the healing arts. Why, I wouldn't stoop to using your skinny, pathetic, TINY fingers for potion ingredients if they were the last set in all of Underland!"
Mirana's shout reverberated for a moment - a very long moment - before her sister planted her hands on the table and leaned toward her with a menacing glower. "I am unworthy, little sister?"
Shivering from reaction, Mirana could think of nothing to say.
"We shall see, Miwana. Yes, one day we will see just who is unworthy!"
And with that, the potions lesson that Mirana had begged and pleaded and cajoled her older sister into entertaining had been undeniably canceled. Mirana had stood - shell-shocked - and had watched her sister sweep from the room.
That had been the last time Mirana had been in a room alone with Iracebeth. She had dithered over whether or not to warn the king and queen, but - in the end - she had not.
And that is Mirana's lesson, her crime, her sin.
"Racie, why couldn't we moderate each other?" she asks the night, the swirling clouds, the blowing wind, the misting rain. No, she and her sister had never brought out the best in each other. But now... now...
"Perhaps that can change."
Mirana takes a deep breath and, opening her eyes, steps down into the deep hole, crouches in the small wooden cradle that now houses her sister's body. Gently, she collects one of those still pale, still petite, still perfect hands.
"I was wrong, Racie," she whispers. "I was wrong about you not being worthy. I'm sorry."
And because this is the only way she knows how to mend the past, because even the most powerful draughts in all the known world are not capable of turning back time, Mirana gently cradles her sister's hand and...
Raindrops splatter on the shimmering steel blade: tiny, misty, wind-guided droplets and large, warm, salty ones. Mirana blinks her eyes and sets to work.
*~*~*~*
Notes: Oh, wow. OK, that was... dark. And I probably didn't handle it very well: the natural competitiveness of sisters which is at odds with their undeniable draw toward one another; stubbornness; betrayal; tragic regret; the lengths people will go to for forgiveness and absolution... Yeah, I'm pretty sure that stuff just... bombed.