Week #9 - Wedding
Hello all, I am new. :) Hopefully I'm doing everything right. Please let me know if I'm not!
Title: Royal Wedding
Rating: PG for adult situations
Characters: Princess Diana
Fandom: none (well, unless Princess Diana has a fandom, which she might, I don't know)
Warnings: discussion of bulimia, may trigger
Word Count: 1033
When she went to vomit, which was happening more and more often, she would think of the wedding, the days and weeks and long eternal weepy months that led up to it, the wedding she always wanted, the man she always wanted, still, the thought of it now made it much easier to throw up. She used her hands carefully, knowing that her teeth could scrape up against her knuckles, could expose her filthy secret, show her as less than perfect, and that would never do, not for him. Not for any of them.
She had nearly called it off. She’d been in love with the idea of love with the Prince since she was a teenager. Shy and flighty she would watch as he walked with her sister, his posh accent and proper British laugh making her stomach turn over, her hands shake with want. She hated her sister, she loved her sister, she wanted him and hated herself for the wanting, because he was her sister’s, for a time.
But it wasn’t her sister that he ended up wanting, it was her. And after a few well chaperoned dates, and a quick checking out of her past and bloodline, she was deemed to be a proper choice for him, and finally, suddenly, she felt Good Enough. She never had before, despite her breeding and family name.
One day, he puts his arm around her waist, to smile for the press photos of their new and beautiful love and he whispers in her ear, “you’re getting a bit thick, don’t you think?” and she smiles for the cameras but something breaks off inside of her and rattles around, something important, and that night she decides she will show him thick. There is no getting out of the engagement now, how would he feel if she got bigger and bigger and bigger? Isn’t that love, she wondered, unconditional? That was the love she wanted, the love she bargained for, the one she waited for. She always knew something was coming, she did not expect to be chided for her thickness, she had always been tall and slim and lovely, if shy.
The thickness, though, the thickness took over. First she ate and ate, and grew just a bit thicker, five pounds perhaps. There were public tears, and the interview, where when asked if he loved her, he said “yes, whatever love means” and she knew then it was all a horrible mistake, but it was made and could not now be undone and so this is when she taught herself how to eat until she thought she might burst, and then stick fingers down until they touched the back of the throat and the horrible vomit and then the smug satisfaction that she could be better, if only she was better, he would love her like she wanted. If only she wasn’t so thick, so mouthy, so stubborn, he would love her.
When she spoke of calling it off, before the wedding, her sister said it was too late. “Your face is already on the tea towels” was how she said it, and so there it was. It wasn’t just a wedding, it was the wedding. It was the one that everyone wanted to see. She married not just a man, and not just his family, but an entire empire and all that meant, these things she understood vaguely, and no one bothered to teach her exactly what was expected.
There were a hundred hands upon her, straightening the dress, fixing her hair and makeup and all of it, arraigning the veil, she stepped into shoes, she would ride in a glass carriage pulled by white horses and coachmen and it was just like Cinderella except for the true love part. But she thought perhaps this was what it would take, this wedding, and she would smile and wave and then he would be her husband and he would love her forever and take care of her and protect her and do all those things she imagined husbands would do.
He did the one thing that was required of him, and she did as well, which was produce an heir, and she figured that now, maybe, since she had his child, the desired first born male, he would change, he would love her, he would give her what she needed. She had a feeling that he loved someone else, but she pretended that she did not, and once the baby came, she went back to the kitchens in the basement where everyone knew her and didn’t tell that she ate and ate and ate. She would check on her son and then go to the bathroom, faucets turned all the way up and think of the wedding and “till death do us part” and thought that would be a long time from now and it would make her vomit, without a finger or toothbrush near her mouth, knuckles remaining perfect. Then she would carefully brush her teeth in the way she had been taught, three minutes exactly. She would splash water on her face and worry about puffiness. She would dry her tears, and then she would sit and wait for him. Sometimes he came to her but not very often.
And each day then became the same, until all that consumed her was the wedding and the unpleasant flip of the stomach, not one that felt like love, but one that felt like she had swallowed poison, food as poison, she had to get it out, get it out, get it out. She examined her body carefully, noting each flaw, pretending in her head that it was her that was the problem and not him, telling herself that if only she lost that next five pounds she would be good enough, that she would turn his head again, that he would love her.
She knew she was desperate and clingy. She knew that she caused trouble for him with his family. She knew that she was hysterical and imperfect and horribly, horribly human and these things just would not do. But her trap was sprung, and her foot was dying there, half-chewed.