Fics Prompted by the Playlist Meme (#1-5)
Prompt: Rachel: 17, Not a single one.
Song: Hard to Say Goodbye- Dreamgirls OST
She has not a single regret. (she doesn't let herself have them)
Looking back she never remembers exactly when she realized that she didn't feel home on the Clubs grounds anymore. It could have been when her mother had died (was murdered) in a violent challenge that was still rare in the Suit then. It could have been when she earned a place in the Suit's rumor mill after hiding herself away from the rest of the world for months after her mother's death, perfecting each and every skill she at that young age knew with a single-minded devotion that frightened the older (sedentary, she thought) members of the Clubs Court who couldn't understand the power that grief could give to ambition. Or perhaps it was when her father kindly suggested (demanded) that she stop spending so much time with Andrew, her cousin (best friend, brother) because Uncle Robert had gone funny since her dearly departed mother had passed.
(that was a lie, her father just couldn't stand the presence of the man who reminded him so much of his lost wife and didn't want his only daughter in her mother's brother's vicinity either.
not that it mattered. uncle robert stopped looking her in the eyes the day her mother died and didn't start again until the minute before he did.)
She thinks that maybe it could have been later, when she was older (more disillusioned) and realized, really realized, that there were other Courts beyond the one she was born in and (unlike her own court) they wanted her, wanted her loyalty and ambition and skill with surprising fervor. The Spades were particularly insistent. (and she would have gone to them, were it not for the memory of her mother bleeding out on the floor prompting her to vow that she would never, never stab somebody in the back the way she'd been and that was all the spades were about, really, backstabbing and blood.)
It could have been when she told Edgar about the Diamonds and they'd had a conversation (screaming match) that had ended up with them breaking up. (and it kills her to know that the last words they said to each other that weren't spoken out of obligation were ones of hate, they used to love each other so.) It could have been when she and Argine had their own falling out over her decision. (and even though they managed to get to being okay with each other after that she knows it's never going to be the way it was, and that hurts.)
But it doesn't (does) matter now, when the Clubs Castle as home ended for her. She's got another home now, another Suit she's sworn fealty to. (she's queen now and that means no turning back and anyways she's happy where she is, isn't she?)
She's become even more successful than even she dreamed she could (wanted to) be and she's going to make her Suit shine because they are the Diamonds and she is their Queen and that is what they are meant to do.
And she has not a single regret. (no, not a single. just several.)
~*~
Prompt: Rachel @ Eileen: "When I was your age," 11
Song: Never Grow Up- Taylor Swift
Eileen's sixteen and frustrated because she can't get that one archery trick Julien showed her exactly perfect and Rachel is watching her fume and can't help but think of the little girl she used to carry around the Castle on her hip. Once she gave Eileen a fake bow and arrow set, with arrows that would stick to things, and Andrew had actually stopped by to share a laugh and escape being an unwitting target of his adopted daughter's attempts at archery.
"She's just like you sometimes, you know?" he said, with that sparkle in his eye that had showed up so rarely since their childhood and her leaving and Edgar's death, "Wants to be absolutely perfect at everything she tries."
"She's just like all of us," she replied, and as if to prove her right Eileen had showed up at the doorway, looking for a moment exactly like Argine in her youth, just with Edgar's smile and Andrew's twinkling eyes.
Any answer he could have given was put aside as the little girl attempted to jump-tackle them both and persuade them to come watch, she knew how to get a bullseye.
Naturally, even she couldn't learn that fast, so they all ended up with a fake arrow stuck to them at some point in the afternoon and she remembers that she didn't think she had laughed that much since she was a child.
Eileen was the heart and soul not only of her Suit, not only of her family, but also of the Deck and she brought life and smiles to all until the night someone had decided to take both father figures from her life out and only one had returned.
Rachel had watched the girl's smiles dim and her laughter become a little less genuine and she couldn't think of a time when she felt more helpless.
So as she watches her niece practice the shot again, her fighting spirit tries one more time to have her niece remember her youth, "Calm down, little one. When I was your age, I was nowhere near as serious about things, especially something that I knew I would master in time."
Eileen just looks back at her, "You weren't an Ace when you were my age, Auntie."
And she's a blunt as a club, as sharp as spade, as cold as a diamond and has so little heart left that Rachel grieves.
~*~
Prompt: Edgar/Rachel, an inch is a most precious thing, 8
Song: I'm Not Who I Was- Brandon Heath
One year, they somehow find themselves alone at the Diamonds Winter Festival. For once, they don't try to avoid each other, instead standing quietly and gazing at the stars as though they are years in the past and together once more.
At one point, Edgar bumps elbows with her with a seeming carelessness and asks, "Was it worth it?"
They are both Sevens and it has been a peaceful year in the Deck. Rachel has won the regard of the Queen and found her joy in her service. They are not secretly angry at each other in this moment. It is good.
"Most days," she replies, before countering with a question of her own, "Are you happy?"
And he smiles the way he used to smile at her when he didn't think she was watching and she knows-- knows-- that what they've been saying about him and Argine are true. Surprisingly, it doesn't sting, and she can't help but think of that old saying about loving things and letting them go and wonders if the fact that they don't need each other anymore was a sign of their love's strength or its weakness.
Then he replies, "Most days" with a teasing grin that had always been for her and she has her answer.
And unlike before, this time when they part ways, neither of them need nor want to look back.
~*~
Prompt: Rachel, to bow or to break, 37
Song: King of the World- Songs for a New World OSTWhen she was an Ace, she never yielded to anyone but her Queen. Everyone else was met with a diamond-hard determination that seemed to exhibit that she should have always been a part of the Suit. She used the ambition she had fostered to gain the position to continuously make herself better, and all who knew she was being sent after them feared her. It was a life that pleased her.
Then she became Queen and supposedly there was no one to yield to. Those who believed as much, she soon realized, were being fooled. As an Ace, you answered to almost no one. As a Queen, you answered to everyone. She had to yield, or be seen as tyrannical, face an end like Medea.
So she was forced to soften, forced to become less-diamond hard, forced to bow mentally while she bowed to no one physically. Sometimes she thought it would be easier to just let herself shatter, leave someone else to pick up the pieces of the Suit. But then she sees the faces of the younger ones looking at her with awe and the wondering eyes of those with rank, and she knows she needs to carry on.
The duty of a Queen was to know when to bow and how not to break, and she had always made sure she did her duty.
~*~
Prompt: Rachel @ Eileen, 12, you look just like him
Song: Bloodline of the Kings- Jonathan Grew (Born of Hope OST)One day, between the losses that marked both their lives, Rachel takes Eileen down to the park in town she'd spent so much time in in her youth. Her niece runs around the area gleefully, occasionally tugging on Rachel's hand or sleeve and begging her to tell her stories about her childhood.
Rachel smiles faintly and agrees, pointing out one area or another of the park and sharing anecdotes like "That tree is the one Andrew fell out of and broke his arm" or "Your mother used to always pick these bushes when we played hide-and-seek."
Then, in a rare moment of nostalgia, she takes her niece to the lake in the center of the park. When they reach it she lets go of Eileen's hand, sits next on the shore with a pensive smile on her face, and says, "This was your father's favorite place."
Eileen settles in next to her and peers at the water as though she's trying to look into the past. The Diamond Queen lets her face hover next to her niece's and the two of them are reflected in the lake's surface.
For a moment, they are just quiet, staring at the images of themselves that stare back at them. Then, a genuine smile alights on Rachel's lips and as she slings an arm companionably around Eileen's shoulder she says,"You look just like him, you know."
And instead of the usual haunted smile that's touched her lips at the mention of her father since his death, Eileen's smile is, for once, just as genuine as Rachel's own.