Fic: Labour of Love, G, Vastra/Jenny.
Vastra’s domestic life resisted any endeavour for order. On Jenny’s first morning the pantry shelves were almost bare, a few anonymous faded bottles at home in a lining of dust. There were no bowls, too many knives, and a silver-plated teapot with a dent in it, which Madame used for watering the plants. Jenny presented it to a metalsmith in her afternoon off, and spent three hours polishing the new surface to a hardened gleam.
From the moment of restoration, those shelves never changed their arrangement; carefully tidied and swept every day, a life-sized diorama of propriety.
One item was removed at sunrise. Jenny fetched milk in cups and kindled the hesitant stove, moving with an unconscious regularity born of long practice. She could let her thoughts wander whilst her hands stayed the course, listening to foreign lives as they were roused in the world beyond. But her mind always broke from them during the day; they provided harmony, not escape. She had no need of fantasy.
During the winter outside was muted, its voices clouded over like the sky. Vastra refreshed cup after cup with boiling water, cradling each between her hands. They talked of places beneath the ground and consigned to memory, cocooning time's passage in recollection.
Best of all were clear spring mornings. They sunned themselves at the bedroom window- Madame Vastra curled over like a question mark, Jenny delineating her in the close black uniform. Every one of Vastra’s scales was smooth and hard as a beach pebble, those along the ridged spine peppered grey. Jenny would try to count them, as a child might the stars, but they shifted and fell with every breath. No two poses were the same.
Her mistress’s shoulders grew warm to the touch, while the teapot cooled on the sill.