Writing: Flashes of Maeve

    I excel at scraping in at almost the last moment. Here's to hoping the habit does not become a lifetime trend.

    (Tell me if the Arial font works or if the Trebuchet is preferred. My writing is all done in Arial and I just realized that Blogger has it as a font option.)

    As the title might suggest, this is just going to be a short, blips post for Maeve Copeland/D'Araignes, from my side project Artifice. Right now, it's hard to recall if I've ever posted something of her before, though I likely have. She's one of the easier characters to write (it's all the angst in her story, probably) so I only have 16k words in my "maeve-samuele extra" document. 

    There are time skips. Unstated, but still present. And a small author's note, for giggles. The line of events aren't difficult to follow, with the selection of scrawls chosen for this post. But, all the same, drop me a line if something's unclear.


    Samuele was relieved when the councilman and his wife moved on. He appreciated the loyalty of his people, but it didn’t mean he enjoyed conversing with all of them at length. Especially Councilman Blake, who believed if he argued his points long enough, he would make a difference on a decision that had been made months past.
     It made his head pound.
     Left in peace for a few moments, he drained part of the bubbling liquor in his glass, savoring the tart sweetness of the champagne. As had been happened more and more frequently of late, his gaze meandered over the crowd, searching for a familiar figure.
    Yvonne had dressed Maeve in a swath of ocean-toned colors that made her stand out even in this large gathering of dignitaries and government figures. Dark hair tucked up behind her ear on one side, the rest left to hang in a wave of curls.
    The effect had been both enchanting and enticing in a way that still threw him off balance. 
    Spotting his wife across the room, Samuele watched as she nodded her farewell to a man he recognized to be a prominent lawyer—one of those who’d been invited out of necessity. If he’d had any say in the matter, Samuele would’ve left him off the guest list for the sole fact that he was known to be something of a rake. 
    Maeve moved away before anyone else could claim her attention. The champagne flute in her hand looked untouched from this distance and the crystals sewn into the fringes of her dress sparkled with her every moment. 
    She drifted to the bay windows lining the ball room, all closed tight for security, but still affording a generous view of the gardens outside. There was a near imperceptible slump to her shoulders before she realized that her posture had slipped and corrected herself.
    For a moment, Samuele wanted to go to Maeve and tell her that they could leave for home. He wanted to see that faint relief in her sapphire bright eyes and be able to tuck her hand into the crook of his arm and walk with her out to the car. To be able to get out of his tie and help her escape the confines of her dress and spend the remainder of the evening in bed with Maeve reading beside him.
    Even as the thoughts formed in his mind, he knew they couldn’t just leave. They had duties, a commitment to be here. Attempting to dismiss the thoughts from his mind, Lord D’Araignes returned to conversing with his guests, counting down the minutes of the following hour and a half until they could bow out.

//

    Samuele accessed his personal email, agitated but taking his seat anyways. Yvonne’s words had left a hollow pit in his gut that told him he would need the support of his chair.
    She—I received an email, my lord. Just now. Automated. She wanted me to tell you to check your email. Or—or someone else wanted her to tell you that.
    The reminder that she might have been taken, to be used against him, the most effective of threats—no one had stood in his way as he’d made tracks for his office.
    There was no need to ask himself why she might’ve sent word to her assistant about the communique. She knew how he was, that the last place he would be in these hours would be at his desk.
    But here he was, at her behest, and there was her name—Maeve, my Maeve—at the top of his inbox on an untitled email.
    He didn’t question the link within, didn’t stop to think what might be inside, just clicked on through and waited for the video to buffer.
    Maeve’s face blinked into existence on the computer screen. Samuele paused it to reach for the sound, glad he’d thought to close his office door before attending to this task. The last thing he wanted now was to be interrupted.
    The room behind her was unfamiliar until she shifted position and he could see that it was one of the studies buried deep within the palace. 
    It didn’t make sense. None of this made sense, and the ruler had to force down the near panic strangling him.
    She wasn’t being held hostage, she’d made this video herself, in secret, in their home. To send to him.
    “Samuele—Lord D’Araignes—I don’t know how I should address you, now.” Her blue eyes were watery even from the start, flickering away from the camera to check her surroundings. The video had been taken on her phone, or one gotten for this specific purpose.
    Her ragged breath came through the speakers for his monitor. 
    “There is no way to begin apologizing for what you’re about to know, my Lord. I should be gone almost a day, by now. I know that you’re ripping apart the country, looking for me.”  
    She paused.
    “Don’t look. You won’t find me.”
    “I was not kidnapped nor was I coerced. I left of my own free will, Sam—Lord D’Araignes.” Maeve bit her lip, glancing elsewhere again.
    Samuele forced his clenching fists to relax, but was unable to help the unnatural tightness of his frame, the tension building in him. The pit in his gut had deepened beyond imagination. Not you, Maeve. Please. 
    “Your minister of defense will have told you about a man named Iago. A powerful shadow that no one has been able to find. Iago made me into Maeve Copeland five years ago, Samuele. Iago pulled the strings so that I would be one of the candidates for you to marry. I’ve been one of his assets for the entirety of my adult life. Of my own will.” Her sapphire bright gaze was broken in a way he’d never witnessed before.
    Samuele recognized the shock in himself, in the way that what she was explaining wasn’t sinking in. Yet.
    On the video, Maeve stopped to collect herself in a way he was familiar with. That quiet pause while she gathered her thoughts. How much had she been able to cover up with that seemingly insignificant habit?
    “Samuele, you won’t believe a word I say from here on out, when you process all of this, but I have to say it anyways. I—love you. I love you, and I’m not supposed to. Iago knows and he will try kill you for it.
    “I will not let him. There’s—there’s someone who should help me. Even if not, I left to find Iago and end him. This is the most I can do to make this up to you. You’re going to make yourself believe that everything between us was a lie. I know you will.
    “But you have to know, Samuele. You have to know that it was an act at first, that I dreamed about what Iago would do to you, but not anymore. Not in a very long time. Iago did not order me to take that bullet for you. I was the one who told you that I loved you that morning at the beach house. Me. Maeve. Not Iago.”
    He remembered that morning in aching clarity. The fear making his heart pound, expecting the worst, that she couldn’t handle his world, that she was leaving him. Only for the tears to fill her eyes as she told him she loved him.
    It hadn’t made sense then, why she had trembled in his arms as she’d whispered the words to him. Why her laugh when he didn’t turn her away had been on the verge of a sob.
    Now it did. Both their lives were forfeit because of it. 
    Maeve in the recording looked at her watch, drawing in a breath through parted lips that had been against his more times than he could count. Quirked in a quiet smile. Pressed together in annoyance. 
    Lying with every breath.
    “I have to meet you for dinner soon. Riza and Yvonne will be wondering where I am.” Her sapphire bright gaze returned to the camera, to him, weary, resolved, resigned. “You’re going to be angry with me, Samuele, and I deserve it. But don’t take it out on anyone else. Don’t hate yourself for loving me.”
    There were seconds left. Samuele didn’t want it to end, didn’t want this to be real, to be true. Not her, not her, not her. All his life, he’d been taught to be wary of newcomers in his life, of those who might be out to deceive him. He could tell friend from foe within hours.
     And she had deceived them all.
    “This is goodbye, Samuele. ...My Samuele. I wish you knew how much there is I want to tell you. But there isn’t time and it won’t make a difference soon anyways. Just know this—I will do everything in my power to save your life and end Iago’s. My loyalty and devotion is yours, even if it kills me. And I love you.”
    There was a space, a breath, a heartbeat of time where she was looking right at him, unguarded and open in a way he had only seen a handful of times.
    The video went black and Maeve was gone.
    
    When the anger and the betrayal overwhelmed, when the disbelief and heartbreak warred for dominance, Samuele D’Araignes had only one thing about his wife that he knew with certainty. 
    She was his.
    (Later, that would be all that mattered.)

//

(a.n. IT'S SO ANGSTY AND CLICHED I LOVE IT and i am so sorry)

//

    Maeve retook her seat in the battered leather chair, pulling her legs up to lean them against the armrest. Her eyes had returned to their vivid shade of blue, hair curling around her shoulders. It was shorter than before, but Riza had to fight through the emotion of seeing her Lady as she remembered her.
    And judging by the way Yvonne clasped her hands together until her knuckles turned white, the eddies of feeling were of similar strength for her as well.
    The silence held steady for what felt to Riza a lifetime.
    Maeve was the first to break it, first with a quiet breath, then, “What did you hear? About what happened.”
    Riza bit her lip. The D’Araignes family had attempted to keep it quiet. Sudden background problems brought to light that required the Lady’s absence for some time had been the cover story. But then the list had come in, forcing corrupt members of the government into the light, with Maeve Copeland among their number.
    Who had leaked it was still a mystery, but the media storm had raged for months. The royal family had closed ranks and refused to speak to the press about anything pertaining Maeve’s involvement in the matter.
    Yvonne gathered herself first. “There was uproar. The list you sent got into the hands of the media. You were the frontrunner of the government conspiracy. The only thing that tempered it was when news came in of other countries receiving similar lists.”
    A pained smile crossed the former Lady’s lips. “I had a feeling. I—was removed from the goings on of the world for a while and when I came back.” She shrugged. “The fallout held little appeal. It’s good, though. The people deserved to know the truth.”
     “And are you going to come back now?” The former fashion coordinator voiced what Riza was thinking, no inflection in her tone, just simple inquiry.
     Even three years later, even after the betrayal, it was still hard to break through that barrier of ruler and subordinate that had existed between them for an almost equal length of time. The many things she wished to say, had longed to say for so long, she couldn’t.

//

    In the end, the decision was taken from her hands.
    It was late, dark, when she walked home after a private, late evening lesson. Her thoughts were invested in both her work and what Yvonne had challenged her with the prior evening, scarce allowing her to take stock of her surroundings.
    She glanced back and forth before stepping into the road to cross to the mini mart, but the car’s headlights were off and the noise from a nearby nightclub covered up the churning of its motor.
    There was only a moment between noticing the vehicle veering towards her and the impact, during which she was able to process the relief that she hadn’t revealed her presence. That Samuele would not have to lose her all over again, in so much more of a horrific way.
    The crunch was sickening, the weightlessness disorienting, the landing the final blow.
    Maeve slipped away before the pain could register.

    The beeping was what woke her again. That steady, sharp beep... beep... beep indicating her heart still beat in her chest, still kept her alive.
    There was no tube down her throat, which was a relief. Her mouth was dry, her body numb. She had enough experience to know that wasn’t a good sign—there was no telling how much morphine was in her system right now, keeping the pain at bay.
    Letting that sift through her hazy thoughts, Maeve turned her attention to what she remembered. Her smiling student, still recuperating from a sprained ankle but longing to dance. Going home. The sound of her bones grinding together. Then black. And nothing.
    Careful to take shallow breaths, she let her eyes open a slit, relieved that the overhead lights were off. Her head was listed to the left, towards the entrance to the room. There was no familiar thickness on her eye—her contacts had been removed. No sunshine painted the sterile walls, which told her it was either late or very, very early.
    Her attention drifted. The curtain pulled across the window in the closed door. The silence. Then took in the state of her body, realizing her left leg was elevated in a swing, that her knee was bandaged and in a brace, immobilizing it.
    Maeve did not need a doctor to tell her that the damage was severe enough that she would never return to working at the dance studio—if she ever walked without support again.
    There was no agony or devastation over this realization, just a mild pang in her chest. She’d had so much ripped away from her during her life that this just went onto that list. Dancing had been rewarding, but not a true passion. She would just move to the next cover screen after she got out of the hospital.
     Drawing in a breath—and wincing when her body seemed to grind in protest, although she felt none of the pain of it—Maeve’s gaze continued on from her injuries, to the rest of the room. There was no light peeping around the heavy curtains, confirming her conclusion of it being night hours. 
    Then she caught a glimpse of black pants from her peripherals. And followed them up to a white, wrinkled button-up shirt. And then up to his face. 
    The morphine kept her from overreacting, from jerking, or even gasping. Her senses were too dulled for that, her mind too sluggish. Maeve wasn’t surprised, though. It wasn’t hard to draw the lines, to connect Yvonne to this.
    She let out a long, slow sigh, letting her head settle in his direction. 
    Samuele hadn’t changed much. Three years, and all he had to show for it was a shorter haircut and a few more lines creasing his face. The dark circles beneath his eyes told her he’d slept badly for the last several days, which was probably why he was able to sleep like the dead in a hospital chair with his head leaning back against the wall.


    And because I'm so nice and generous and totally not awful at writing and posting that writing, here's a short Jaz/Renner AU that I did.... in space.


    He was one of the only commanders on the protection force for one of the most prominent planets in the system with a spotless record and she was the best smuggler and scammer this side of the Icarian Belt, neither facts which mattered all that much currently. 
    “I cannot believe that I am stuck in jail for a week with you,” Jasmine groaned, cursing her luck and for thinking she could get away with skirting in Xitar’s space lanes without prior authorization. 
    The only bright side of the ordeal was that she’d dropped off her illicit cargo before her infraction, and would only be in the slammer seven days, instead of the far heftier sentence that was attached to contraband trafficking.
    Her silent companion, Renner Mason, did not voice his agreement with her statement, instead contemplating the apoplectic fit that his superior in the force and his father would have when they realized he’d put a mark on his whitewashed career chasing a mere smuggler. Though the spark to her direct gaze and the knowing curve of her smirk at times made him think maybe she was worth the smear in his record to spend a week in her company, waiting for her to slip up about herself. 
    The woman let out a long, drawn out sigh, turning her head  to eye the man across the cell from her with a critical eye. After a moment, O’Haire remarked in a dead serious tone, “You’re a lot hotter than your cousin made you out to be.”
    Ren closed his eyes and searched for the hard-earned patience that he’d cultivated for most of his life. Forget any opportunities the occasion might present. 

    This was going to be a week from hell.


    They make me giggle. A lot. 

    So that's about it that's worth anyone's while. Moving across the United States and driving 5,400+ miles really takes it out of me.

    As a general announcement, I have no NaNoWriMo plans this years, unless I come down with scarlet fever in the next twenty four hours and have delusions of grandeur, in which case, someone stop me. There's more important stuff to be done this month then putting 50k towards an unknown project, which, as my cousin said today, "that's impossible". Or something to that effect. It is a lot of words.

    But, I might have something new out eventually; a couple of posts of pictures from our roadtrip. Did anyone know that Montana is a freaking beautiful state? Yeah. Also, I got some shots of the Air Force Academy Chapel while we were visiting that I'm going to share.

    And... that's about it. For the moment. Life's crazy. The usual. Shoutout to anyone who actually read all of this and is still even reading this blog. You're amazing.

    Thanks, peeps.

    Ad astra per aspera.
    To the stars, through difficulty.