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BY THE QUEEN

A PROCLAMATION

All loyal subjects of her Imperial Majesty are hereby notified by royal proclamation that in regard to her Royal Highness Edith Francis Elizabeth Chastity Claire Kaspbrak’s engagement. 

It is upon this day decreed that a quest be instituted throughout the length and breadth of our domain. The sole and express purpose of said quest is as follows: that every single eligible suitor or suitress in our beloved Kingdom shall be interviewed to discover the one who can accurately provide their proper name and which such personal item was left with her Royal Highness upon the night of the final ball. 

Such persons will be acclaimed the subject of this search and the one and only true love of her Royal Highness, our virtuous Princess. And said Royal Highness will humbly request the hand of said persons in marriage.  

---

His Royal Majesty King Frank Edward Kaspbrak wasn’t supposed to have a daughter. Eddie knows that much for certain. He was supposed to have a strong, brave, everything-he-was son, to carry on the crown and the title and the glory of the kingdom.

He’d had an Edith.

There were laws in place for that exact situation; have a second child and pray it was a son or assign a successor outside of the bloodline kind of laws. His Royal Majesty King Frank Edward Kaspbrak just thought that was bullshit so he’d fought and clawed his way through all the avenues he needed to until it changed.

Her mother has always told the story as a complicated sort of guilt trip; look at everything your father sacrificed for you to be so incredibly disobedient. Listen to your mother, Edith, don’t disappoint your father who struggled so much for you. You know, it might have been what killed him.

But... Eddie had never thought about how much bravery that must have taken. To love someone so much and believe in something so strongly, you went against everything and everyone telling you you were making a mistake to do it anyway.

She wonders, as she power walks down the hall as quickly as is possible, while still keeping her gait reasonably princess-y, to escape the world’s most obnoxious royal advisor, if this is what he’d had in mind.

“Your Highness, please-- your mother is insistent on your presence--”

She resists the urge to plug her ears, despite being fully capable of filling in the rest of his sentence even if she had. ‘Your mother is insistent on your presence on the fifth meeting of the morning where we will discuss all the same things we did at the past five today and the past fifteen yesterday and nothing is going to change whether you are there or not because that's not the point.’

(Well, certainly he wasn’t going to say that, exactly. Her mother and her staff were very, very well versed in rewording sentences to make what they had to say seem worthwhile. Luckily, especially recently, Eddie is also very, very well versed in parsing through their bullshit.)

She turns a corner, sharply, trying her very best to lose him. Her mother’s advising team is really better at just… agreeing with things than anything else, which hopefully includes walking. 

She doesn’t look back, but she can still hear his frantic footsteps. Darn it.

It’s not like she really has much of a plan here, past absolutely not going to another meeting because if she does she thinks she might actually spontaneously combust. At first she’d intended to just sneak back into her room, but one of her mother’s (of course) most persistent ladies in waiting has been stationed at the door since last night, armed with a hair brush and more pins that Eddie thinks she’d be able to count.

She ‘needs to look more presentable, Edith’ but if Eddie’s being entirely goddamn honest she’s incredibly tired of looking presentable, Edith. It’s just another excuse to have her pinned down for well over an hour so she can be talked at and down to and about without anyone actually bothering to listen to her. 

(She shoves a loose strand of hair out of her face, even though she knows it’s just going to fall back in front again right away. She considers, not for the first time this week, just cutting all of it off.)

She knows why they’re doing it, Sonia Kaspbrak has never liked not holding the cards and Eddie had known, sort of, what she was getting herself into when she had told the whole entire kingdom she wasn’t marrying Myran.

She just hadn’t been entirely aware of the full extent.  

If there's anything Sonia Kaspbrak is good at it’s making her daughter a spectacle, and all her wordy, pretentious, complicated official announcements to the people and a hundred and one meetings and carefully curated rules and restrictions and parameters are exactly that. One big, Sonia Kaspbrak, exhausting spectacle carefully curated to intimidate Eddie into quitting before she starts.

Eddie refuses. Obviously. But, god, if she isn’t so tired.

“Your Highness!” The advisor's hand wraps hard around her upper arm from behind (one of his rings catches on loose lock of her hair that's been stuck to the back of her sleeve and pulls –- (she wants to just cut it off) (his hand and her hair). In a frantic he’s-not-supposed-to-do-that moment of panic, she opens her mouth to call for Bill. 

She’s got the pitch required to send a Bill Denbrough running to her rescue pretty much perfected from years of awkward dinner parties and unnerving social events, all whiny and panicky and unquestionably young sounding. It’s different, though, from the way she sounds young with her mom, because Sonia Kaspbrak lives in this frustrating, unbreakable bubble where Eddie is still six years old, and Bill, unquestionably, doesn’t, so she finds she doesn’t mind it quite as much.

If Bill hears Eddie sounding scared and young she’s gonna freak out in precisely the way Eddie needs her to right now. 

It’s just that Bill isn’t here right now to hear her. For reasons Eddie is well aware of even if she hates them. She knows Bill’s been ordered to be stationed inside of the boardroom right now, waiting for her with the rest of her mother’s team, like a lame hostage-bargaining-chip, instead of where she’s supposed to be which is near Eddie so Eddie doesn’t get murdered.

(Sometimes she gets the feeling her mother is significantly more interested in making sure she’s winning than she is in making sure Eddie is actually safe, regardless of what she says.)

She realizes all this just a second too late, though, so the scream cuts off as a pathetic bird-squeak ‘BI--’.  

Either way, though, the advisor lets out his own startled bird-squawk, and let's go, “Apologies, your highness, many, many apologies, but if you’d just-”  

“No, thank you.”  

She does feel a little bit bad, as she evades his hand again, about outright abandoning Bill like this. The only thing that’s made any of these meetings bearable was their mutual this-is-the-stupidest-thing-I’ve-ever-heard eye contact behind backs and over heads. 

Maybe, she considers doubtfully, as she gives in to fully sprint down another hall, if she ends up staying away long enough they’ll give into logic and send Bill to be the one to find her. Then they can just hide together.

It’s a good idea, deeply unlikely, but good enough she keeps going. Head down, too fast until she can’t hear panicky ‘Your highness!’s anymore. Which felt more like a success before she lifted her head up and realized that she has absolutely no clue where the hell she is.

(And, god, isn’t that depressing? She’s been trapped in one building her entire life, she’s never goddamned been allowed to leave it, and she’s lost.)

“Hey! Eddie!” A little voice hisses, right next to her ear, and for a moment she thinks she’s imagining it. There's enough people in her head who aren’t herself telling her what to do and what not to do and what to think, it’s not exactly inconceivable. She just can’t place it, not right away, but that's probably because she’s so upset.

But then it happens again. 

“PSSSST-- Eddie! C’mere!”

And alright, that’s a voice she knows, and it’s not a voice that's ever wormed its way into her head without her permission before.

“Hi, Georgie.”

He swoops around in front of her from, presumably, nowhere at all. Beaming all crooked and delighted, like his afternoon has just gotten infinitely more interesting and he knows it, “Hello! You seem lost.”

And, okay, yes, she certainly is, but she’s not sure that’s something she really feels like admitting to a thirteen year old, even one as friendly and endearingly weird as Georgie.

Luckily, she doesn’t need to figure out how to word it in a way that makes her sound the least pathetic, because he just grabs her hand without asking and proceeds to all but yank her arm out of its socket as he drags her down the hallway.

She thinks she manages to ask, at least sort of, where on earth he’s taking her, but all she gets is a severely bubbly nonanswer as he leads her (far too fast, she’s not sure how he can walk this fast, his legs are, at least for the time being, at least two inches shorter than hers, how is he getting from location to location with such frantic velocity) around corners and through tiny, clearly not often used hallways and down winding entrances hidden behind tapestries that really don’t really seem like they should exist.  

Honestly, if anything, it’s making her feel both better and horribly worse about not knowing where she was before.

They end up (how exactly, she’s not entirely sure) inside a cozy little apartment block, a tiny kitchenette, attached to a combined sleeping-sitting area, with a big window looking out on the west side lawns where the knights do their training (and Eddie is very seldom allowed). It’s lovely, honestly, bright colors and shelves and shelves of books and… a level of personality Eddie hadn’t been entirely aware living spaces could have.

It’s also entirely unfamiliar. 

“Georgie–- bud. Where are we?”

She kind of doesn’t want to ask, it’s safe here, and quiet. No mothers or advisors or guards who definitely are not Bill Denbrough, but she’s been to Bill and Georgie’s apartment and this isn’t it. She doesn’t want to just camp out in some random palace employee’s home while they’re working. It seems rude, even if she is the princess.

Actually, her being the princess might make it extra rude. 

“Mike’s place,” He says, offhandedly, which both makes a lot of sense and doesn’t.

“And why… are we at Mike’s place?” 

“She watches me when Bill has a long shift sometimes,” He says ‘watches’ the way Eddie thinks someone might say ‘murders’. The most pre-teen-y complaining Eddie thinks she’s ever heard from him. 

“She’s not doing a great job of that is she?” She snorts, settling down into one of the kitchen table chairs and trying to gather her even messier post-Georgie-dragging hair back into a ponytail without much success.

“Yeah, because she trusts me, unlike some people,” He whines, and Eddie desperately wants to tease him about it, but she’s not really sure how to go about it.

He takes her long, stilted silence in stride, shuffling over to the stove top and slamming a long metal spoon against the sides of a pot had been sitting unattended (for who knows how long, she thinks in her own voice, even if the thought doesn’t seem to belong to her), clang clang clang, “Hot chocolate?”

He ladles some into a mug, spilling half of it down the sides, and slides it in front of her before she can figure out how to politely turn him down.

The cup isn’t even warm when she presses an experimental finger against the sides, and her stomach turns a little at the concept of air borne pathogens and spoiled milk and the consequences of breaking her allotted-four-grams-of-natural-sugars-per-day rule. She takes a sip anyway. It’s ice cold but also not as unpleasant as she’d expected.

Georgie sits down across from her with his own spilling-down-the-sides mug, smirking, “Honestly, I think she just likes the excuse to come over after her shift and talk to Mike.”

Eddie snorts the cold hot chocolate through her nose, “Jesus. Yeah, that tracks.”

“You’ve seen it too?”

“Obviously, yes.”

He giggles, clearly delighted to have someone to gossip about his big sister with, which really makes Eddie unsure of if she should be. She grins back regardless, “Do you know where Mike is?”

He slurps loudly from his mug, “I dunno, library, probably.

"Oh," She tries not to show her disappointment. She’d have loved to talk any of her past twenty minutes of more or less unprecedented breaking-of-rules-slash-decision-making over with someone capable of giving her some sort of insight to where she’s supposed to go from here. No offense to Georgie but she thinks her even-more-of-a-grown-up, very well read, hired-by-her-mother tutor would have a slightly more… helpful take on everything.

Georgie leans right into her space, all conspiratorially, like he can hear her thoughts; which is unnerving, “Why are you still here though?

She blinks, “What?”

“Why are you still here? I’ve been wanting to ask for days but Bill said I couldn’t and Mike even agreed.”  

“What do you… mean why am I still here?” She’s not quite sure where on earth this is going and it’s uncomfortable, not being able to tell if she should redirect the conversation or not.

“You were gonna leave! It was gonna be so exciting and cool but it’s been days and you just keep being boring.”

Ah. Okay. She should have redirected the conversation. She takes another sip from her mug so she doesn’t need to answer right away. It’s not as okay-ish the second time, gritty between her teeth and even colder.

“It’s not… quite that easy, Georgie.” She settles on, with strained diplomacy, “There are a lot of complications with--”

“Boring!” He interrupts, singing. (It’s so Richie-ish it makes something in Eddie’s chest ache.)

And... she could probably press on, explain it in quicker terms or find a somehow more interesting way to go through the complicated, mind numbing, bureaucratic nightmare she’s made for herself. But instead she says, “Yeah, it is.”

Because he’s right.

“Good, so we agree,” He beams so brightly Eddie can see his back molars, “Now go tell Bill to let me come.”

“What?”

“When you leave to find Richie. Tell Bill I should get to come with you guys. I’ve already packed and ev-er-y-thing.”

“I-- We can’t… just go, Georgie,” She tries, aware she’s starting to sound exactly like the kind of people she hates: condescending and overly gentle and isn’t-it-so-cute-I-know-more-than-you.

“Why not, though?”

She makes a pointed effort to even her voice out, like she’s talking to Bill or Mike, it’s easier to do in her head than it actually comes out, “My mother--”

“Mike says you get to make the call though. Your mom is just being a jerk.”

And damn, he has a good point again. She doesn’t think she should be allowed to have this many good points; she certainly didn’t at his age, “Yes, but--”

“My friends told me that Richie is waiting, anyways, so hurry up.”

Oh. Oh.  

“Your friends?” 

(She knows what that means, but also she has no clue how or why the fae would possibly know her or what she’s doing or Richie. That’s terrifying.)

He nods. And then a thought ricochets against her skull, like one one of her mother’s prize stallions she’s not allowed within forty feet of. They know Richie.

“Can they tell me where she is?”

His too-close-nose crinkles up against the rim of his mug, “Who?”

“Richie.”

“I know, I was just teasing,” He beams, “ But, also, nope.”

“Why not?”

“That’s not very sporting.”

“Georgie!” She whines, and she’s entirely self aware that she sounds like a child, and even more aware that it’s significantly more pathetic when she’s aiming it at an actual child, but Georgie doesn’t seem to mind. In fact he seems kind of thrilled about it.

“No, but, like, they’re not supposed to. It’d ruin it.”

“Ruin what?”

“The story.”

He says it like it’s supposed to mean something, and she guesses that it might, to the fae but to her it’s just frustrating. This isn’t a story .

(At least… not yet. If Richie does agree to marry her royal weddings tend to become some sort of legend. Even the most boring ones get twisted into an arranged marriage turned to true love bullshit lie, and this one is… admittedly interesting. She’s already heard the mummerings of songs and stories and stained glass depictions, and Eddie hasn’t even started looking for her yet.)

This is her life and she’s spent far too long just doing what other people want, she’s not interested in giving into the fae when she’s just stopped giving into her mother. 

“So get goin’!”  

“Fine,” It comes out short.

Suddenly, Eddie’s mad. Mad at her mother, at herself, at fairies that may or may not exist at the edge of the forest line, and Eddie Kaspbrak is good at anger, even if she doesn’t know it because she’s had very few opportunities where it was allowed. 

Georgie startles, spilling chocolate down the front of his shirt, “Wait, really?”

“Yeah. Why not?” And, well, she can think of a million reasons why not, and if she ever came up short she’s sure her mother would be more than happy to do it for her, but she’s tired of that. She just wants this to happen.

For the first time, she’s full of head-clear-hyper-focused- petulant anger and it’s aimed in the right direction, “Go tell Bill we’re leaving in the morning. Early.”

(And maybe, just maybe, a little bit, when Eddie Kaspbrak is angry she does impulsive, stupid shit. And maybe, just maybe, a little bit, most of the stupid shit Eddie Kaspbrak does impulsively is usually the right call.)

She takes another swig from her cup, because it feels like the right thing to do. All decisive and final. It’s disgusting.

Georgie’s grin goes too-wide, “Really?!”

“Yes.” 

“Oh, great! Eddie!” He hops to his feet, beaming and bouncing and clearly excited. Somewhere next to the anger she lets herself be a little excited too.

She leans her head all the way down against the back of her chair and lets herself picture what she’s just set into motion; Georgie (fucking Georgie) slamming his way into a meeting full of her mother’s finest and Bill and declaring that Eddie’s decided they’re leaving in the morning. No official meeting, no declaration, no planning session. Just… they’re going.

It’s going to be chaos. Her mother’s going to lose it and for maybe the first time in her life she’s thrilled at the prospect.

Her hair falls in her face when she picks her head back up and Richie’s voice, more than welcome, whispers in the back of her head: Hey, wanna know what would be really, really funny--

She grins without meaning to, whipping her head (and stupid dumb ridiculous hair) around to where Georgie is already halfway out the door, “Wait!”

“Ugh, noooo--” He whines before she can explain.

“No! No, we’re still doing this--”

He rolls his eyes in a way that feels so much like Bill it throws Eddie’s brain off balance, “Sure.” 

“Shut up,” And then, before she can overthink it, before any more voices in her head can chime in when really the only two she’s interested in are Richie’s and her own, “Want to help me cut off all my hair first?”

“Woah,” His eyes go saucer-wide, “I’m gonna do such a bad job, though.”

“Exactly.”

(Well, actually she thinks ‘Jesus Christ, yes he will, I should ask anyone else, maybe Mike’ but she’s proud of the way ‘Exactly’ makes her feel. All cool and rebellious and still probably going to have Mike fix it before she goes into the world for the first time.)

It takes longer than she expects; to not find scissors, and to find a knife instead, and to then decide using a knife is actually a really bad idea and look harder for scissors.

And, then, once they find them it’s a lot more difficult than she thought it would be too, holding her hair out straight while Georgie tries to hack through probably too thick locks of her hip-length, stupid, pretty little delicate good princess hair over and over and over again. God, her mother is going to hate this. 

(Good.)

In fact, it takes just long enough that she has just enough time to start panicking about how bad of an idea this is when Georgie taps the top of her head, probably harder than he means to, with the handle end of the scissors, and declares her ‘All finished!’

Her head feels impossibly light.

“Wanna see?”

“I don’t know, do I?” She teases, weakly. Air sick and suddenly so nervous over what on Earth she just did. Every time she’s thought about cutting all her hair off in the past week it’s felt… not exactly like a joke, but also impossible. Like one of those pipe dreams that you think to feel good about life but know you’re never going to actually do.

“Yeah! You look weird. Good-weird, though,” Georgie reassures, not helping even a little bit.

“Alright. Yeah. Okay.”

Eddie’s always been told, not directly, but through fake-smiled and rank-climbing-desperation pleas for her mother’s favor, that she looks so much like the queen. That she’s a lovely girl just like her mother. She’s never quite bought it, though she isn’t sure why. They’ve both got brown hair and round faces and she’s her mom of course they look the same.

She gets it now. Why it always felt like a lie when someone told her mom, ‘she’s just a little version of you’.

Because the Eddie in the mirror, hair short and smiling, looks exactly like her dad.

His Royal Majesty King Frank Edward Kaspbrak, who wasn’t supposed to have a daughter, who was supposed to have a strong, brave, everything-he-was son, to carry on the crown and the title and the glory of the kingdom.

Who had an Edith.

And for the first time she thinks, maybe, he’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d changed the law for her. 

“Georgie?”

“Hmm?”

“You can go get Bill now.”

He beams so hard it almost looks painful, “On it!”

And she beams right fucking back.

---

Richie Tozier’s favorite place on the entire planet has always been Stan Uris’ bedroom.

(A fact that has been uncontested since her parents’ death and probably-murder-death, until roughly two weeks ago, after meeting, kissing, and entirely derailing the future stability of the kingdom of Derry’s monarchy. 

Which she’d fucked up really, really bad and therefore Stan’s bedroom keeps it’s first place spot. Congratulations.)

It’s private and safe and has Stan in it, which is, generally speaking, really the only selling point it needs.  However, because Richie’s life is some big, stupid, cosmic joke, the only way to get to Stan’s room is by living through her own literal, personal hell.

(Richie would personally love to know exactly who or what she’d pissed off this badly in a past life–- either to apologize or beat the shit out of them. Probably the latter. Depends on what she did, though.)

A ‘trip into town’ isn’t just a ‘trip into town’ with her stepfamily; it’s breakfast served at six so they can leave at seven, which means two hours less time to finish her morning chores, which means she’s not fucking sleeping. 

It’s a two hour cart ride, stuck rattling around in the back next to a road-sick Connor and either a bored Henry or a bored stepfather. (Both of which are bad, because bored doesn’t mean bored either. It means irritability about not being the one driving, to angry about everything, to violent. Not that anyone’s surprised.)

And then two hours and a new bruise later they’re finally in town and there's just eight to nine hours left of public humiliation to get through. Huzzah.

She slumps back against the wall of the Cobbler’s shop they’ve been in for the past too-many-minutes, trying to block out the sound of her Stepfather’s increasingly less than reasonable haggling. If she goes slightly cross eyed she’s close enough to make out some of the flyers pinned into the support beam next to her, which, she decides, is entertaining enough. At least better than staring at her blurry Stepfather’s very loud back or out the blurry, kind-of-hurts-her-eyes bright window.

Some of them are a little too worn or the text is a little too small for her to make out, and some of them are just very much too wordy and complicated for her to figure out, even if she could see it, but a couple have big lettering or bright illustrations, and, y’never know, maybe one day she’ll need to know that the hat shop next door is having a sale three weeks ago to celebrate the royal family’s first ever commoners welcome ball.  

It’s honestly just a lot of that: Sale, shoe thing, another sale, a festival that’s coming up soon, and then Edith fucking Kaspbrak.

Goddamnit.

She probably should have expected it. No, honestly, realistically, she definitely should have expected it. Even if she hadn’t been able to really see them to check, the bright, cream and golden flyers had been plastered around town. Hell, they’d been plastered around her home. Everyone of every kingdom in the fucking world, it felt like, was losing their fucking minds over her Royal Highness Edith fucking Kaspbrak’s newest decree.

The ‘All loyal subjects of her something Majesty are hereby notified by royal proclamation that in regard to her Royal Highness Edith Francis Elizabeth Chastity Claire Kaspbrak’s engagement. Blah Blah Blah Blah.’ decree.

The decree that was about fucking Richie.

It was about fucking Richie and she didn’t even understand half the words that were used in it. The whole thing is so insanely ridiculous it’s almost funny. So funny. Hilariously fucking funny. When Connor had come crashing through the middle of breakfast to tell everyone about it she’d had to excuse herself to go throw up in the kitchen sink. 

(It had been so fucking weird. It almost felt, for the first time, like he was telling something directly to her. She refuses to think about it too hard.)

“Stand up straight, Rachel,” Her stepfather snaps, over his shoulder, the be a fucking lady going unsaid because they’re in public. She shakes herself out of her Eddie fucking Kaspbrak fog and closes her eyes so he doesn’t see her roll them, before she pushes herself off. His ‘being in public’ decency only goes so far and Richie’s not willing to risk it.

That’s probably the worst part of the whole going into town thing, she thinks (still fuzzy in the way things are when she thinks about Eddie fucking Kaspbrak) as she adjusts her hold on one of the packages pinned under her arm so doesn’t fall; no sleep she’s used to, getting beat up because her family doesn’t have anything better to do is a daily occurrence, but at least at home no one is watching.

As a kid the embarrassment of the whole thing had made her fight back. 'N o, strangers, don’t worry, I’m not some pathetic, servile, piece of shit, I promise! I won’t do as I’m told! See!' But she’d learnt pretty fucking fast that the only thing more humiliating than people seeing you obediently following orders like a fucking dog with your head down is people seeing you get the shit kicked out of you before having to just do it anyway.

Part of her, the part thats desperately self deprecating and also incredibly fucking funny, thank you very much, wonders what people would think if they knew pathetic, servile, piece of shit Richie was the person they were all losing their collective minds over. She thinks a couple of people might actually die if they found out, both from shock and overwhelming disappointment. 

Good thing, she thinks, much less funny but just as self deprecating, they’ll never have to find out.

Her Stepfather shoves the box into Richie’s off kilter stack once he’s managed a low enough price, smarmy with pride, and fucking, thank god, it doesn’t fall. Even though she doesn’t want to be, she’s glad he won. If he’d paid more than he wanted to, or worse, left angry and empty handed (not that he had anything in his fucking hands anyway, Richie’s got that goddamn covered) he’d be in the kind of bad mood that never reads well for her.

As obnoxious as it is, he’s self satisfied enough to be happy, and it’s only when he’s self satisfied enough to be happy that then, then, then finally he’s willing to declare them done for the day. 

Thank fuck.

The inn he prefers, cheap enough with a big ass tavern in the basement, is on the other side of the goddamned world, because of course it fucking is, but Richie never can find it within herself to mind. Not when she’s finally allowed to load everything back into the stable where they’ve got their cart and horses registered, finally Henry goes off to terrorize the rest of civilized society with his friends, finally Connor leaves to do whatever the fuck is that Connor does, finally her stepfather settles in to get rip roaringly drunk all night, and finally she’s free to sneak off to Stan’s as long as she’s back in the cart by morning.

(Or they will leave her. Having to maneuver the much-longer-than-two-hours-by-foot walk home even once through snow without a jacket taught her that fucking quick.)

Luckily for Stan, village wide golden child and freak-weirdo all mixed up into one, (and even more luckily for Richie, if she’s being fucking honest), Stan Uris is absolutely fucking worth it. 

She technically doesn’t need to climb into her bedroom window, her father is almost always at work or asleep by the time she drops by, but there was one time, very early on, that he wasn’t and he’d tossed her a handful of coins before slamming the door in her face when she was too preoccupied with trying not to cry to move. It’d been humiliating enough that she’d never tried again. 

Climbing through windows was more fun anyways.

Usually she’ll throw a couple pebbles, whisper-quote the single Shakespeare scene she knows (because of Stan), make a big ol’ show out of it, but today has sucked more than usual, just like everything has recently. So, this time she gets to spot Stan before Stan spots her, knees crushing down the song-bird-friendly flowers in her window box.

She’s sitting on her bed, face pinched unhappily and folded over her curled up knees as she stabs a needle aggressively in and out of a cross stitch hoop, which isn’t promising. Stan only cross stitches when she's pissed off.

Richie knocks on the window enough times to be annoying. (The two of them had never discussed many boundaries, but they hadn’t really needed to, they just get each other, like, how Richie gets that angry, cross stitching Stan would do better with a warning than Richie launching herself through the window, and, how Stan keeps said window unlocked for her, just in case.)

Her whole face lights up, not even pretending to be pissed off as she scrambles across her bed to let her in, which is at best unexpected and at worst con-fucking-cerning, “Thank Christ, you are officially the only person I can stand in the entire country.” 

Stan shuffles back just enough to make room, locking the window behind her before shoving her face into Richie's shoulder. She leans warm and heavy against her side and Richie bends into it, reciprocally burying her face just above the twist of curls gathered at the back of Stan’s head, taking one solitary moment to breathe in too-strong-tea and too-fancy-soap.

Great. Cool. Okay. She can be okay now.

“So, how did the whole not-going-to-the-balls thing go down?” She asks, mostly because she’s curious about the life and goings on of her very best friend.

(... but also because she’d had the realization at some point on the two hour trip over that she was going to need to tell Stan about Eddie. And she thinks maybe the last thing in the world she wants to do right now is tell Stan Uris , infamous anti-authoritarian and hater of all things to do with the current monarchy, about Eddie. So, she's procrastinating.

She’s going to eventually, that's how best friends work, she simply just doesn’t want to at all.)

(Okay, maybe she does a little.)

(A lot.)

(Fuck off.)

Stan just groans hard into her shoulder.

She hadn’t gone to the ball. She was about as interested in finding a husband as she was with loud, crowded parties thrown to ‘help the rich and elite feel egalitarian while doing nothing of substance to help keep the poor of their country from starving to death’; which is to say, not at all. Her father hadn’t really agreed, but unfortunately his daughter was just as stubborn as him when she really, really set her mind to it. And cried to Richie about it. A lot.

“Woah. That good?” 

“Four, Richie. She held four balls.”

“I know,” She pets the top of her head, suddenly looking forward to telling her that it was technically her fault even less.

“My father’s completely lost it. He’s started bringing me home suitors.”

“Gross.”

“Immensely,” She grouses before pushing herself up and off the bed, apparently having gotten the whining sufficiently out of her system. Stan’s efficient like that, “You hungry?” 

She pushes herself up and leaves before Richie can answer.

Richie snorts as she flops backwards, stretching her legs out so her toes press against the footboard of the bed. It’s the closest she thinks she’ll probably get to ‘decompression’ for the next three-ish months until the next ‘trip into town’, and she needs it more than ever. She closes her eyes.

Stan comes back quickly, pointedly stepping louder than normal. (Which is appreciated but unnecessary. Being startled because Stan’s got the natural walking pattern of a ghost is fucking hilarious.)

“Sit up before you soup all over my bed, menace.”

She opens one eye, poking out her bottom lip, “Feed me?”

“You wish.”

“I do, I do wish,” But she slides off the bed anyway.

Stan settles next to her on the floor, knees pressed against each other, and Stan politely ignores how pathetically fast Richie inhales her family’s leftovers. (Richie’s made it more than clear that she could make fun of her for it but Stan’s got this stupid idea that ‘mocking your best friend because her awful family starves her is a dick move, Richie.’)

“I love you,” She informs her through a mouthful of bread instead of saying thank you.

“Liar. If you actually loved me you would put on some pants and pretend to be the interested son of some Lord to my father so you could court me.”

“I think I’m way too poor to buy pants that are convincing enough.”

“Excuses.”

“Also I think you are just slightly out of my league.” (Apparently that sort of thing doesn’t bother you, though, does it, Rachel?)

Stan snorts, “That’s true.” 

“So, I take it you weren’t up here cross stitching a love token for your future groom-to-be?”

She rolls her eyes so hard that Richie can see it clearly, pushing around her bed above her head without looking up and tossing the hoop at her, “Yeah, you caught me.”

“Oh, wow, the alternating colors is a nice touch,” She laughs, holding it up to her nose so she can make out each and every Stan-Uris-Angry-Perfect FUCK YOU stitched into neatly penciled out squares on the canvas. 

“Thank you.”

“You do know you are not getting this back, right?”

“I figured,” Stan grins and she grins right back.

“So,  hear about her royal highness's wife-hunt?” She asks, without thinking about it, like she’s not aware of exactly what and why and how and who said wife-hunt entails. She does not know where she’s going with this, and, honestly, she’s not looking forward to figuring it out.

“You think it’s a girl?” Stan asks, leaning her head back onto the bed, “The village is pretty split because the flyer doesn’t specify.”

“Well, you know, if it was… a man don’t you think they would… just say that?”

“True,” She nods, and then shrugs, “Well, whoever they are, I feel awful for them.”

“Why?”

“Just-- imagine, saying no to marrying this narcissistic, ruling class asshole and they decide, instead of respecting that, to just… they make a spectacle of hunting you down.”

‘Hey, come on I love a spectacle!’ Richie thinks very hard and then does not fucking say even a little.

“How do you know they said no?” She asks, instead. Stan just scoffs.

“Yeah, Rich, I’m sure the person who evidently didn’t tell the princess their real name and ran away before they could discuss marriage was really into the idea, actually.”

“Fuck off,” She’s teasing, but something close-to-an-edge slips in anyway. It’s not Eddie’s fault that Richie’s a fucking coward, she hadn’t done anything wrong.

Stan squints at her, like she’s just realized something is off here, before pressing on anyway, “Either way the whole spectacle is a complete waste of funds. If they even allocated half   of that money to helping the actual people of the kingdom–- but no, the princess needs to hold a marriage parade.”

Richie hadn’t considered that. God, she sucks on so many extra levels than she’d already thought, “So, do you think the… person should come forward? Even if they… had a good reason to not want to marry her?”

“Any reason is a good reason to not want to marry into the gilded narcissism pit that is the Kaspbrak family,” Stan snorts, and it’s moments like this Richie almost is glad Stan is a girl, because if her thoughts and opinions weren’t entirely disregarded by the township she probably would have gone and gotten herself killed for heading a rebellion by now. 

“You know… I actually met the princess,” She says, and it comes out strained and quiet in her attempt to stamp out all the defensiveness on Eddie’s behalf that's trying to claw its way out of her mouth by force. 

“Oh?” Intense Stan is gone in a second, slipped back into the soft-eyed, analytical Stan that, in all honesty, is going to be so much harder to hide the ‘being the princess’ mystery suitor’ thing from. She’s worried now. Shit.

“Yeah.”

“How… was she?” Soft-eyed-analytical-I’m-your-best-friend-and-I-love-and-care-for-you Stan asks, which actually means ‘So you went? How was it? Do I need to hate your stepfamily even more than I already do?’

(To which the answers are an easy: yes, messy, and always.)

But all of those come with a far more complicated explanation Stan is definitely going to insist on, so she says, “Your dress got ruined.” 

Which answers none of the questions at all, which is precisely the plan.

Stan’s face goes all stormy, even stormier than it does when she’s bitching about the Queen, which is, you know, flattering, “I’m going to kill them.”

“Well, if the dress meant that much to you, Staniel, I was not the one to lend it to.”

“Fuck off, I didn’t expect it back. Are you okay?”

Which Richie also knows really means ‘How badly did they hurt you for it?’

“Mmm… inconclusive.”

“Terrible answer. Horrible,” Stan says, entirely unamused, and Richie half smiles at it but all she’s really thinking is how well Stan and Eddie would get along. This sucks.

“The princess was actually really nice,” She tries, which is a shitty distraction because it’s still talking about fucking Eddie.

“Sure.”

“Yeah, sure. She was,” Richie insists, even though she probably shouldn’t, even though she should probably drop it if she doesn’t want to get into it.

She rolls her eyes, “For presumably point-five-seconds.” 

“Fuck off,” She means for it to be a joke, but it doesn’t come out quite right.

Stan reaches out to grab Richie’s face, squishing her cheeks with the heels of her hands, pointedly goofy, “Oh no, she got you too.”

“What?”

“I’ve read about this, but I didn’t think it was real until now,” She takes a deep, incredibly fake-serious break, “She infected you with royalist brain worms.”

“She did not!” Richie giggles, trying to swat her hands away. She keeps them firmly squashed in, practically against her molars.

“She did, Rich, I can see them.”

“Liar!”

Her whole faux-serious face finally cracks into a smile, “I’m so sorry to break it to you, but she definitely wormed you.”

Richie cackles, “No, she just proposed to me,” Shit. Shit, shit, shit, “Shit.”

“What?” Stan half-laughs, but her press on Richie’s cheeks lets up, so they’re just sitting there, “Thats-- this is still just a fun little joke we’re doing right?”

“Mmm,” Richie says back.

“Right?”

“Mmm.”

Her face drops, “You weren’t joking.”

“No?”

“What?” Stan’s whole voice goes flat, less of a question and more of a expand and fucking explain right now; if Richie hasn’t long since known that Samantha Uris was a safe safe safe person she’d almost be scared.

“I-- I think I fell… in love.”

“You fell in love?” Stan manages, like she can’t comprehend the sentence Richie’s just dumped in front of her. Richie doesn’t blame her, she can’t necessarily comprehend it either, “With the princess?”

“With the princess.”

“Mhm,” Stan blinks. And then blinks again. And then blinks a third time. 

“I know. Sorry.”

“Don’t–- How do you… possibly get yourself into these situations?” She asks helplessly.

“I really don’t think it’s fair to say I get myself into these situations, situations are thrust upon me.” 

“That makes it worse.” 

“My apologies.”

“Good god, and you just let me-- you just let me sit here and insult her like an asshole?”

“You do that every time I come over!”

“You weren’t possibly betrothed to her then!”

“See, I didn’t really think that would change anything.” 

Stan just groans, slumping her head onto Richie’s shoulder, with a sort of unprepared befuddlement she doesn’t think she’s ever seen in Stan before.

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t.”

“... sorry.”

She snorts, shoulder jolting against her arm, “I really wish I trusted your judgment of character less. Because this seems like a terrible idea.”

“Since when the fuck do you trust my judgement of character.”

“Since fucking always, asshole. You just didn’t know that many people before so it’s never come up.”

“Flattering. I’m swooning, Staniel.”

“No you aren’t. That’s reserved for the fucking ruling class, jesus christ–-” She buries her face into her hands, and Richie haltingly deigns to pat her comfortingly on the back.

“Sorry?”

“And speaking of–-” She pushes her off, sitting up all at once, “Why the fuck aren’t you currently engaged to the princess then, dumbass?”

“I thought you said that no one should marry into the Kaspbrak narcissism club?” 

“Well that was before it was you! You’re allowed to marry into the royal family if you're using the system to your advantage.”

“I’m not gonna just--”

“You literally must--”

“I can’t do that to Eddie, Stan.”

A wounded cat-esque whine bursts its way out of her mouth so fast even Stan looks surprised, “Eddie?”

“Yes?”

“Jesus–-” She rolls her eyes so far back into her head they go entirely white, which is a special level of Stan Uris you-are-an-idiot frustration she hasn’t seen in a while, “Okay, fine, start from the beginning.”

“What?” 

“Start from the beginning,” She grumbles, hoisting herself up onto her bed from the floor and patting the place on the blanket next to her, “Tell me everything so I can tell you why you're being stupid. Because you are way too smart to actually be this stupid.”

And she could argue with her on that, about how she’s not being stupid or how blaming this on Richie isn’t fair, especially when she’d been bitching about the royal family just a second ago, but she knows Stan too well to have ever really expected this to go any differently. 

So she says, “I am not fucking smart.”

And Stan rolls her eyes.

And then she tells her everything.

(She always gets up at the same time in the morning.

More specifically, the pre-morning, before the sun is up and well before anyone in her not-actually-family gets up so she has time to get shit done. Her brain's been trained to click on right ahead of dawn since she was eleven. It happens when she’s at Stan’s too, her fucked up little head doesn’t acclimate enough to know it’s safe enough to sleep-in here.

But it’s okay, they’ve got a whole system where Stan says goodbye before they both fall asleep because she knows Richie’ll sneak out before she’s really up, and then she'll sort of grumble-mumble it again when Richie half-jostles her awake in the morning climbing out the window.

She waits, head leaning against the window pane and knees pressed to her chest until the sky goes orange-hazy with the start of a sunrise, like she usually does, settled comfortably in the safety of Stan’s bedroom for as long as humanly possible.

Finally, like she usually does, she gives in, slams her head off the window as tragically melodramatic as possible, and twists open the window lock.

Stan’s hand snaps out to stop her before she can actually get out. Which is definitively not what she usually does.  Richie’s stomach twists up.

“Don’t go,” She whispers, hand staying around her wrist in a gentle-Stan way that she knows she could break away from if she tried. She doesn’t, not yet.

“I gotta.” 

She does, her stepfather is going to be up soon, if he hasn’t drunk himself unconscious until the afternoon the way he sometimes does. Either way if she doesn’t want to walk home she shouldn’t risk it.

“No, no you don’t,” Stan’s eyes are wider than Richie’s accustomed to seeing them, more frantic, “Wait here for Eddie. She’s going to come to town before she goes all the way out to you.” 

And I don’t want you to get hurt before she can get you, goes unsaid. It didn’t need to, Richie heard it loud and clear.

“I can’t, your dad–-”

“Won’t care! And if he does I’ll tell him to fuck off--” 

Which is precisely why she can’t. Richie’s not ruining Stan’s life. It’s a promise she’d made herself when she was twelve and she’s not intending on breaking it. Just like she won’t be ruining Eddie’s life by saying yes.

“I can’t, Stan.”

“Please?” She begs, soft and sad and desperate. Richie hates it.

She shakes Stan’s hand off her wrist, “I’m sorry.”

Her face crumples, for just a second, “Okay.”

She’s halfway out of the window when Stan stops her again, wrapping her arms around her waist and crushing her into a hug, sleep-slurred voice slipping all wet and teary, “I’ll tell her where you are. When she comes.”

Against her better judgment she lets herself melt into it, for just a second, “Thanks, Stanny.”

“So don’t be fucking stupid, again, okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” She jokes, or tries, but it falls flat.

“You deserve to be happy, Richie,” Stan insists, like it’s a fact, like it’s something she read in a book somewhere that can’t be argued.

“I’ll–- I’ll do my best.”

Stan’s arms tighten around her middle before she lets her go.

It is one of those times where her stepfather has drunk himself into the early afternoon. She almost wishes it hadn’t been, because at least then she wouldn’t have so much time to think about how much she’s going to let Stan down.)

---

They’re not even a day into the actual, physical (oh my god) search when it becomes very, very clear that someone has leaked across the kingdom that whatever the princess was looking for had something to do with glass.

No one knows who found out and spread it around; or really when. Bill’s very weakly searching into the guard staff to see if one of them overheard anything and let it slip, but everyone is very aware that it’s almost certainly Sonia Kaspbrak’s doing. Eddie thinks, honestly, Bill’s just trying to make her feel better about it.

She doesn’t know if something got lost in translation, if whoever her mother sent out as messenger was told glasses and just heard glass, or if there is some ulterior motive to keeping things vague, but, regardless, it evolves through the grapevine (the way, as she’s just been very recently informed, these sort of things always do) and soon glass becomes glass slippers.

Eddie really can’t comprehend how; glass shoes do not sound remotely feasible, let alone comfortable and safe, god, so incredibly unsafe, but, according to Mike, villagers (ontop of, apparently, Georgie's fae) like their stories.  She can’t exactly blame them: mystery suitor no one was able to catch a glimpse of because they don’t know who they are leaves a lot of room for fantastical speculation.

Fantastical speculation or not, however, leads to the very real consequence of many people answering their doors without shoes.  

Eddie thinks it’s supposed to be subtle, in an oh-look-at-me-forgetting-my-shoes-again kind of way, or maybe it’s simply an attempt to speed run a proposal, but all it does is guarantee that she's about to waste her time. (And scream hard into Bill’s shoulder in the carriage on the way out.)

After the second house she just sort of started to walk out of at the sight of bare feet, good lord, but she was quickly informed that actually, regardless of status, she couldn’t really do that. Apparently, Eddie, it’s a really bad look for a future queen to leave her subjects in tears, so she has to wait now until they ramble their made up story about losing their shoe that cleverly navigates its way around dropping their name until they are absolutely forced to.

It would be sort of funny if it wasn’t keeping her away from Richie for longer and people didn’t keep answering their doors with their feet out.

(Mike and Bill very much so find it funny. But Mike and Bill also suck and she hates them forever.)

The girl she’s sitting across from now, though, has two solidly laced brown boots set firmly on the floor, just peeking out from under her skirts. 

It’s so refreshing Eddie could cry. 

(Might cry.) 

(God, she hopes not, that would be humiliating.)

The girl is also glaring her down, which is refreshing too but in a deeply unnerving way that's not helping on the crying front. She doesn’t know how to operate under the conditions of a villager who seems outwardly resentful about seeing her. It hasn’t happened before and if Eddie’s being entirely honest she’s really stressed out about it.

“Tea?” 

“Pardon?” She splutters, tripping a little over her vowels.

“Do you want tea? My mother makes it when she’s nervous so you are getting it regardless,” She raises an eyebrow when Eddie just blinks at her, “I’ll get the tea before she can come in.”

She’d been offered refreshments at most of the houses she’d been in; it’s something she’s come to expect, it’s routine, it’s always the same, like clearly scrubbed clean entryways and finest china and too deep bows. 

This… isn’t that.

The tea Samantha Uris sets in front of her smells like blueberries and lemon and she doesn’t offer Eddie anything to go in it. It feels like a challenge, and for some reason her approval feels important so Eddie maintains eye contact and quickly takes a careful sip, which only gets her a raised eyebrow and a burnt tongue.

“Richie.” 

She chokes, watery purple spilling across the knees of her newly tailored skirt. 

(Which is a little disappointing, she likes this skirt a lot; it’s one of Bill’s old, traveling ones. Simple and shorter and comfortable. Her mother had been too busy throwing a fit over her hair to notice it when she left.)

“What?”

“Her name is Richie,” Samatha smirks, but it’s smaller, words soft; she’s trying to keep this quiet, and if all of Eddie’s blood hadn’t rushed immediately to her ears she would have appreciated it, “She forgot her glasses.”

“You aren’t…. but you aren’t her,” She manages, but it sounds pathetic and whispery even to her.  Samantha snorts.

“No. I’m not. And I don’t want to marry you either.” 

“You aren’t-- how do you know,  then?”

“I know her,” She tilts her head and leans forward, “I’m her best friend, you’re Eddie, Richie’s given me the rundown.”

“You’re Stan,” Eddie processes as she says it, sounding far more reverant than she probably should princess-rules-wise, but she can’t help it. This is someone from Richie’s life, someone who knows her and where to find her.

(A nervous part of her, the one that sounds like her mother, whines that maybe Stan is about to tell her that Richie wants nothing to do with her and to call off the search–- luckily, recently she’s sort of stopped listening to her mother’s input.)

“Observant.”

“She tried to get you a job,” She says without thinking, and Stan’s eyebrows shoot up. 

To Eddie’s surprise, the clearly well practiced, icy reservedness she’d been functioning under for the course of their meeting melts into a soft, surprised thing that she focuses into her teacup.

“She would,” Her whole expression has shifted fond, “How’d she do?”

“What?”

“On getting me a job,” She smirks, like she’s said something funny, “In the palace.”

“Oh. Um--”  

Here's the thing: she remembers what Richie had said. Obviously. She remembers everything Richie said to a probably embarrassing level. It’s just that this memory is particularly clear and not particularly flattering; the joke and her bad attempt at suppressing the auto-panic that bubbled up in her the second it was said and Richie’s frantic reassurance that she had been ‘just kidding’. 

If she’d been thinking at all, she never would have brought it up, but since that moment has very much passed, she tries to think of a way to word exactly what Richie had said without upsetting the first actual lead she’s gotten in days, “Well, she said you’d either be a good advisor or… kill… me in a coup.”

It goes silent for a second, and Eddie is deeply, horribly worried she’s messed this up irrevocably, she knew she was going to-- before Stan throws her head back and cackles.

“Jesus christ, of course she did.”

Bill pushes herself off the wall, but Eddie can tell from the way she’s got her hand not quite on her sword hilt and is half-laughing herself she’s not actually planning on having to do much of anything, “I’m h-h-hoping you're laughing because that’s such an ab-absurd suggestion?”

 “Of course,” She composes herself with a startling sort of immediacy, dead serious, “I’d never.”

Eddie doesn’t really believe her. She’s baffled on why she’s not that worried about it.

“She said if advising didn’t work we could stick you in the aviary,” She offers, hoping it’ll keep Stan almost-smiling, “Which I would, but I don’t think we have one.”

Stan and Bill stare her down with disorienting synchronicity.

“Yes, w-w-we do,” Bill says.

“You absolutely do,” Stan says at the same time, maybe even faster.

“We do?”

“Good god,” Stan rolls her eyes, hard, and then, “You’re looking in the wrong place, by the way.”

“What?”

“Richie lives out in the country. If you keep looking in villages first you’ll never find her.”

Eddie’s brain wakes up like someone’s set off a firework inside her skull.

“I’ve never visited so I can’t give you directions but she lives at the Bower’s estate,” Her tone twists at the end, and she bites the rim of her teacup when she takes another sip, “It should be listed on a registry somewhere in your big fancy palace.”

Eddie looks back at Bill, trying her best not to look too desperate, probably failing, and Bill nods back, a promise that she’s keeping track of where they need to go next and the game plan of how to get there (it’s not that Eddie won’t commit it to memory immediately, she’s just going to get nervous she’s misremembering and Bill backing her up will help).

“If you are… ‘best friends’,” Bill pipes in, slow and carefully guarded, amusement once again barred back by her need to keep Eddie safe, “W-why haven’t you visited?”

Stan’s face drops into something far more serious. Abruptly, disconcertingly serious. Whatever levity was left in the room dwindles off awkwardly as she clears her throat, “I need you to know that you aren’t going to walk into something pretty. Just a warning.”

“What do you mean?” Eddie thinks she does a very good job keeping her voice level for someone whose heart is suddenly lodged so far up their throat they can’t breathe, but Stan’s expression softens a little bit, so she might look more pathetic than she planned.

“It’s not really my business to get into, honestly, but you just need to be prepared for it. I don’t know if she told you anything, but her stepfamily… isn’t the nicest. They don’t know I exist and that’s why I’ve never visited, and if they don’t want her to have a friend from the village, I get the feeling she won’t be allowed to see you.”  

“What does that mean?” Eddie’s chest feels tight, “What does they’re not the nicest mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

Her stare is pointed. Eddie doesn’t meet it.

“Look, I don’t give a shit why you're looking for her, or what your plan is, well, no, okay, I do. I don’t like you very much and if you hurt her nothings going to stop me from committing actual treason,” She looks over at Bill like a challenge and Bill (thinking in terms of how readily she’d protect Eddie even if it wasn’t her job title, though, Eddie would never think in those terms herself) just nods for her to go on.

“Just promise me you’ll get her out of there. If you change your mind about all this or something once you see her you're a dick but… she’ll get over it. Just get her the fuck out of there.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Eddie swears, slamming her teacup onto the table too hard to punctuate it.

“Just promise me.”

“Don’t worry, nothing could stop me.”

“Eddie. Dramatics,” Bill props herself away from the wall and comes up behind her, flicking the back of her head resolutely, and Eddie, for all the world, feels a little like Georgie Denbrough, “She promises.”

“I do,” Eddie confirms, sincerely. She’s more distracted than she’d like to be: she wants to get going, she wants to get moving, she wants to get to Richie.  

“It was nice meeting you, then, your Majesty,” Stan says, setting her own teacup down.

“Highness, actually. For now.”

“Oh, I know,” She sticks her hand out for a handshake, startling and unexpected and entirely wildly welcome. Eddie shakes back as firmly as she can.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Stan rolls her eyes, and then quietly, under her breath like she’s telling Eddie a secret, “She’s going to like your hair an embarrassing amount.”

And god, Eddie has never been more excited to keep a promise in her entire life.

---

Connor is standing in the doorway of her workroom.

Which weird on several levels, none of them ever come back here unless it’s to drag her somewhere, which usually doesn’t fall under Connor’s purview, and anyways, he’d been keeping mostly out of sight since the last ball. 

(Her stepfather had been more than a fucking nightmare, angry and anxious trying to figure out what the right answers were supposed to be and raging at everyone’s every move.

Henry hadn’t worked hard enough at the balls they attended, Connor never did anything right, and Richie always had another chore to do or thing to polish to floor to scrub because somehow he wanted to keep everything perfect looking for when the royal family eventually dropped by at all fucking times.

Richie couldn’t blame him for hiding, even Henry was doing his best to play keep away.) 

He’s backlit by the watery lighting of the back hallway, gripping the doorframe in one hand and something, too badly illuminated and blurry for her to really make out, in the other. He slams hard on the frame when she doesn’t acknowledge him immediately. 

“Jesus,” She startles, voice coming out more defensive than she expects it to, “What do you want?”

“It’s you. Isn’t it?”

For a small, shaky moment she realizes she’s almost scared.

Connor has never been able to reach the level of intimidation his father or brother had, but something about the way his voice is pitched, low and demandingly curious, has her fucking scared somehow, and she doesn’t like it. 

“What?” 

“It’s you,” He bites, and then takes three steps in the room, calculated for the first time Richie has known him. She hates being with any of her stepfamily in dimly lit places, it doubles the disadvantage of not being able to see them, makes everything feel a hundred times more dangerous when she can’t even make out the blurry lines of their next move.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Connor?” 

He shoves well crumpled paper, torn crookedly halfway down the middle into her hands instead of answering, fully disregarding the armful of needing-to-be-mended-right-fucking-now-Rachel-what-will-the-Princess-think-if-she-sees-us-in-torn-fucking-socks clothing that she needs to awkwardly tuck into the crooks of her elbows and against her chest to get an actual hold of it.

It's one of the flyers. 

It feels stupid that her first though as she takes it in is that she’d really been hoping she wouldn’t need to wash the mending. It was always so much more tedious trying to clean something around stitches that were fresh and somewhat sloppy because Richie had never quite gotten the hang of it or cared enough to try, but at the sight of the flyer sent all of it unceremoniously onto the floor, and said floor is extraordinarily dusty because she’s the only one who goes in there. She is pretty certain even more laundry will be in her future and that sucks.

If getting fucking murdered isn’t in her future first.

“I-- I don’t know what you're talking about,” She doesn’t shrink back and she’s infinitely proud of herself for it, but it still doesn’t come across particularly convincing.

Connor looks down at the clothes by her feet, and if she could see it clearer she’s sure it would have been some pointed ‘gotcha’ moment; she would feel bad about ruining his dramatics if she wasn’t so scared (and so subsequently pissed about being scared). 

“It’s you,” He’s not asking a question, he knows, how the fuck does he know.

“Don’t be stupid, Connor, how could this be me, I didn’t even go.” 

“No… no you did, I don’t know where you got the things or how you got there but you did! At the dessert table, when I bumped into the Princess, I watched her when she ran away and I thought the woman who she went outside with looked familiar and now I know why, because it was you.”

“You’re crazy,” She goes to hand back the flyer, hoping he won’t notice how her hand is shaking, but he doesn’t take it. 

She wishes, again and again and again, her brain stuck on a loop, that the lighting down here wasn’t so fucking garbage, because, then, at least, she probably would have been able to see how tightly Connor was clenching his hands up.

Honestly, though, even if she had been able to see it, she probably still wouldn’t have expected the fist that flew into her face. Not being able to see it clearly wasn’t what sent her toppling to the floor, “I know it. You can’t fucking deny it, I know its true!”  

She could keep denying it, she could pick herself and the clothes off the ground and lash out until Connor gives up on it, she could scream right back, she could be the fucking submissive little servant his family wants, she could do whatever it takes to get the fuck out of this situation and get this idea out of his head.

But Connor has never actually hit her before, not of his own accord at least, and, as much as it pisses her off, she can’t exactly be scared of someone who kind of slaps her around to keep his brother from beating the shit out of him. He’s fucking scary now though, yelling and shaking, standing over her and clothes she’s supposed to be mending and her newly bloodied nose.

“You really are so much fuckin’ smarter than your family gives you credit for,” She manages and squawks out a laugh, still sharp and still dangerous.

“I know,” He offers her a hand, and doesn’t let go once she’s off the ground. She wants to puke. Let go. Let her go, let this go, just let go, let go, let go.

“Please… please don’t tell," It significantly closer to groveling than she likes to be, and significantly closer than she’s ever gotten to it for harmless Connor the fucking coward.

“Oh, I’m not telling them,” Something about his tone does nothing to reassure her she’s safe.

He finally releases her hand, and she relaxes so fully her whole body crumples in on itself a little, which just makes it easier for him when he shoves her farther back into the room. She cracks her head on the side of her little table full of sewing supplies on her way to the floor, and while she’s distracted trying to resteady herself, he slams the door shut, locking it with a distinctive, damning clank.

“What… what the fuck?” She scrambles across the room, yanking on the handle even though she heard it lock, even though she knows having any semblance of hope that things might work out when her step family is involved and attempting to fuck her over is so insanely stupid.

“Let me out!”

“Fuck you!”

“Please, you can’t fucking tell them! They’ll kill me!”

“Oh, I wasn’t lying when I said I’m not telling them. They don’t deserve to know shit!”

“Then let me out! I’m-- I'm technically your sister, you could tell people you’re related to royalty or get whatever benefits come with that or some shit I don’t care! Let me go and I promise I won’t tell anyone you did anything wrong!” He laughs, low and barely audible, less dangerous than before but way too cocky for Richie to hear it and not want to kill him.

“Oh, I’m not telling anyone anything.”

“God, you’re such a fucking coward!” 

He slams his fist against the door, and she hates how hard it makes her flinch.

“Oh, think about it, Rachel, if I tell my family Henry will get to be the one to marry your princess, and I’ll still be stuck with them. If I let you get your goddamn happily ever after I’m next in line for your job. I don’t get any fucking respect around here, they won’t hesitate to dump all your shit onto me!”

The bad part is she knows he’s right. He’s entirely, utterly correct. The second Richie’s out of the picture her stepfamily isn’t going to magically become independent or decent people, they’re just going to find another person to do everything for them; and because they don’t want to pay someone or be nice enough that a hired servant wouldn’t just quit, everything would fall to Connor. He would be just as helpless as she was to stop them.

She almost feels bad for him. Almost being the key word, because the biggest difference between her basically enslavement and Connor’s impending one was that her stepfamily had taken advantage of her when she was grieving and alone and eleven. Connor was a full adult who was just to much of a fucking pussy to get out of here and be independant. 

But she knows there's no convincing him of that, he’s too selfish to consider how he’s fucking her over and he’s too technically correct to be persuaded that he had any other options.

“Connor--” She tries anyway.

“It’s sir! Look! You do it too! I’m the only one you don’t call sir, no one gives me any fucking respect but they’ll need to once I get out of here.”

“You’re insane! Come on, you can’t just leave me in here! Your father is gonna fucking notice!”

“He’ll be too busy waiting for her visit, and by the time he does notice I’ll be gone.”

“No, you won’t! Connor, she’s going to know its not you, she’s not stupid.”

“What she knows and what the flyer says are very different things. And whether I’m getting out of here or not, you certainly aren’t going anywhere.”

“It’s not going to work!” She tries, a pathetic last ditch effort, pitched so quietly from how hard she's trying to keep herself from crying that she’s not sure he can hear her.

“It could,” He says after a long moment, the off kilter bravado he’d been mimicking from his father and brother for the past couple minutes slipping into something younger than it should, and she wonders if it’s just a ploy to make her feel bad for him. It doesn’t work. He’s a year older than she is and he can learn to grow the fuck up and not deal with things like a fucking idiot, “It could work! The flyer just said I need to answer her questions, not that I had to actually be you, and if that doesn’t work… if that doesn’t work she’ll want to know what else I know! She’ll take me with her to look and I can go from there!”

He sounds like he’s convincing himself more than her, which, honestly, is probably smart because she’s certainly not fucking convinced.

“Remember that thing I said about you being smarter than people give you credit for?”

“Yeah?” He says, too proud of himself.

“I take it back.” 

He’s quiet for a second, before slamming a fist into the door, directly next to her head, “You don’t know what you're talking about.”

“No, you don’t,” she's desperate, something viscous inside her that feels far too much like the trapped animal she’s too close to being right now slashing out sloppily, hoping to hit something important. She catches sight of the flyer crumbled on the floor near her feet, and something vaguely like hope throbs in her temples, “You don’t know the answers! You… you don’t even have any ground to stand on!”

Connor laughs, cold and ill-fitting (though, now that she’s thinking about it, she isn’t certain she’s ever heard his laugh before), and the hope dies, melting into a much less nuanced headache.

“You talk to your imaginary friends too loud when you think we’re all asleep, Richie.”

She can hear, muffled and quick, through the door and all the blood in her body pulsing through her ears, as his boot-steps clack down the stone of the hallway.

Well, fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.