Olive knows Rose has (ex_thorns985) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-01-21 13:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: tales, rose red, snow white |
Who: Snow and Rose
What: A visit
Where: Fabletown
When: Just before the Beast kicks Rose out
Warnings/Rating: Nope
Snow White was in her office, which would have surprised virtually no one. Though she left Olive a key and was expecting Rose, she refused to let a little thing like a social life get in the way of her work. And since she had no idea when her sister was coming, she didn’t bother trying to work with a schedule. When Rose showed up then she’d set aside some time to... talk. Maybe even lunch. She still wasn’t sure what her sister was expecting or wanting so she was going to play it by ear. With her navy dress and heels, grey coat hanging off her door, they could go anywhere, really. Well, anywhere worth going to.
It was... interesting that Rose was coming. Though Snow sometimes entertained the idea that she would, she had long stopped wanting or even expecting it to happen. Much like her thoughts regarding returning to the Homelands. Now that the options were there, she had no idea what to really do with them.
The sound of footsteps made her look up from her stack of paperwork. Though she kept busy in her office, the usual foot traffic had decreased some, and the approach made her slow her pen on her paper, waiting for the knock.
Rose had taken longer getting to Snow's door than intended. The hotel door had opened to Snow's building, and it was a short walk to the door at the end of the hall, but the building itself made Rose stop and stare, all copper hair and wide blue eyes. She touched the walls in wonder, the smoothness of the surfaces foreign to her, and she walked around the empty receptionist's desk and stared at the screensaver on the computer screen for minutes. It was only movement down the hall, a rustling of papers, that got her moving, though she intended to come back and examine the wonders of the machine on the desk.
The hall was narrow, and this was nothing like Draco's world or the Beast's castle. Rose ran her fingers along both walls as she approached the door at the end, and she touched the strange knob before looking for a knocker. There was no knocker, of course, and she smacked the wood with the flat of her palm, waiting to be ushered inside.
Rose was a white dress (her best one) with roses on the hem and the edge of the long, draping sleeves. Her copper hair fell to her waist, and freckles dotted her nose. She wore no makeup, and she had her hair pulled back in interlaced red ribbon. She looked as if she'd lost her way from a Renaissance Faire somewhere, but she was unaware of it. She'd encountered no one along the way, and Draco's world had been so near her own when it came to dress. Again, she hit the door. "Snow? Are in there?"
“Come in, Rose,” Snow called out, though already she was just starting to set her papers down. As she strode toward her door she smoothed down the fabric of her dress, tugging the sleeves and fussing with her hair. She quickly was seeing now, as much as she hated to admit it, how nervous she was about this.
When she swung open the door to reveal her sister there was a quick moment of happy surprise, a tiny smile gracing her features. Her arms lifted slightly, her stance changing, almost moving forward to embrace her but stopping herself very quickly. She simply wasn’t used to those friendly greetings anymore. Blue eyes swept over Rose in her white dress and the smile widened, just a fraction, at how everyone must have reacted. Snow had been getting used to it, what with her visits to the Homelands, but the others might have forgotten what they all used to call the height of fashion. “Has Blue seen you? Or Bigby?”
Rose hadn't seen her sister since that encounter in the Beast's hall, and she stared a little blatantly. Snow had always been the beautiful one, and that hadn't changed with time, even if she looked older than Rose did. Rose didn't know why that was, but she guessed it might have something to do with staying in the Homelands, and with whatever had caused her story and Snow's to diverge along the line. But copper-youth and fearlessness were no match for true beauty and Snow was, as always, a true beauty.
It took a few seconds, but Rose eventually looked away, and she blew past Snow in a swirl of white and dusk. She stopped in front of Snow's desk, and she looked down at all the papers there, and then at the machine that mirrored the one in the outer room. "How did you learn to use all these things?" she asked curiously, turning to look at her sister again. "No. I haven't seen anyone but you. There was no one sitting outside." And with that, she circled Snow's desk and poked at the keyboard curiously with one finger.
Snow remained oblivious to Rose’s thoughts and staring, not caring for her looks too much. Not when living amongst other princesses and maidens also deemed the fairest. Before the moment had lasted too long her sister was running about, touching everything. How quickly the novelty of having her there was starting to fade.
“Practice,” Snow said simply, watching her sister prod at everything and hovering behind her almost stopping her but somehow managing to reign herself back in at the last moment. “They’re probably out for lunch then. Did you want to get—Hey…” Snow couldn’t help her hands shooting forward, ready to swat Rose’s fingers from making a mess of the things she had on her computer. She couldn’t quite remember what she had up, some emails, some shopping, but that didn’t matter. Her office was her space. And Rose was blowing through it like a hurricane. “Did you want a tour? Of the building? Of the city?” Anywhere but her digital office space.
Rose wasn't reading anything carefully. Her eyes were just scanning the screen, curiosity alight on her face. "What does this do?" she asked, jabbing a fingertip at the computer screen, and then looking up at Snow, expecting an answer. Even when they'd been young, Snow always had the answers. She was the dervish that goaded Snow on, and Snow was the voice of intelligence and reason.
Luckily, Snow's question distracted Rose from the screen and its wonders and she turned to look at her sister. "I want-" She paused. What did she want? She wasn't expecting Snow to agree to see her, really, and so she hadn't planned for anything beyond her initial desires when she asked for the key. "I want to see everything, including where you live," she finally said, eager and oh, so young. "And I want clothes. Mundane ones, but not like yours. Like what I'm supposed to wear. And maybe a haircut, but not as short as it's supposed to be," she added quickly, tugging forward one of her waist-length locks of copper. She didn't consider money, because she didn't know how things worked here, but she knew Snow would. Because, again, Snow knew everything.
“It keeps information,” Snow replied flippantly, a quick wave of her pale hand toward her monitor. “Calendars. Emails. There’s the internet, that’s always fun.” Before she could get too far she sighed, remembering that those things weren’t in Rose’s world and would probably take a lot more time to explain than she had patience for. “I can show you later. Show—” Well, at least now her twin was asking for more reasonable things. Mostly.
“Not like—What’s wrong with the way I dress?” She glanced down at herself with a frown, taking in her simple (but nice) and conservative (but nice!) dress. When she looked back up at her sister the amusement had completely fled, a cool frown gracing her features as she surveyed her hair. “Your hair is fine. You don’t need to cut it. What do you mean supposed? You’re fine.” A beat. “Well, we should get you something other than faire gear but that aside, we don’t need to get you anything.” Shopping was not one of the options Snow had listed, after all.
Rose wanted to ask what the internet was, but she was appeased by Snow's offer to show her later. She was, after all, trying to have a good visit. She had been trying with Snow, even if it didn't come across the majority of the time. She had a hard time remembering the days when they'd fit together like two halves of a whole, when all they did now was fight, but she wanted those days back, even if she couldn't remember how it had worked. Even if she didn't understand her sister at all now.
But Rose understood enough not to come right out and tell Snow that her clothes were dowdy and boring, even though they were. "They just aren't me," she said of Snow's clothes, and she didn't like that frown on her twin's face. She knew that frown from when they were girls. That frown meant Snow was going to be difficult about things. "I want to cut it!" she insisted, her own pout following the outburst. But she was pretty sure "faire gear" was something that described what she was wearing, which meant Snow was conceding on the point about new clothing, which made her pout turn into a bright smile. "Oh, and I want to learn the bad words too. How to use them."
Well, Snow couldn’t deny that. Though twins, Rose and she had so many differences, from their personalities to their hair and a sense of style could easily be added to that list. “It’s chilly outside,” was her curt reply but she her mind was already turning over with what Rose might like. And just like that she shook her head, not liking even the notion of running around with her sister dressed in torn jeans and ratty shirts. There had to be some compromise and she was determined to find it.
She did balk further at the idea of teaching Rose bad words, pulling back with a shocked expression before frowning once more. “You do realize this is me, we’re talking about.” Cursing was something Snow liked to think herself above, never mind that it came easily under her breath after every citizen’s complaint in her office or when Bigby was being particularly unhelpful. “Come on. My apartment’s upstairs. We can at least get you into some pants.” See? Compromise.
Nudging her sister aside with her hip, she quickly typed out an email to Blue, Lunch with Rose. Call if needed. and made a quick mental note to send him another when her sister wasn’t looking over her shoulder, just in case she needed rescue. She led them out of her office, waving toward Bigby’s office and giving her a quick tour of the offices before steering them toward the elevator. “Did you tell anyone you were coming by? Anything else we need to look at or get besides clothes?”
Rose gave Snow a look about it being cold out. Cold or not, she was pretty sure this was what Snow wore all.the.time. She didn't realize Snow was running possible wardrobe purchases through her mind, but it wouldn't matter anyway. Rose wanted to shop. The entire idea of shopping appealed to her in so many ways, and she was counting on still being able to cajole and pout her twin into agreeing on things.
She rolled her eyes at Snow's reaction to the cursing. "But it's normal here," she said of swearing. If the tomes Blue had gotten to her were any indication, bad language was very, very normal in Snow's world. But the promise of something upstairs called an apartment was interesting enough to make Rose quit insisting about the swear words. She was guessing it was where Snow lived, if there were pants there. Maybe it was a merchant, but she doubted a merchant lived above this place of work. "Are they cute?" she asked of the pants, instead, already moving toward the door when Snow nudged her aside.
Rose went to the door without any additional coaxing, eager, though she was curious about what Snow was doing. "Are you writing to someone?" she asked, and then she looked down at her dress. "Just the clothes, and the haircut, and I want to see everything," she reiterated, not wanting Snow to leave any of it out. "I'll stay the full day," she added with that stubborn determination of their youth. She was there, and she was going to use every single last minute she had.
“So what if it’s normal?” So what if Rose wasn’t the picture of a lady back in the Homelands. It wouldn’t hurt to try to get some good manners into her now that they were in a different environment. Try was all she could do, really. “And the pants are cu...” She trailed off as she did a mental inventory once more on what pants she did have. It was rare that she was in anything but her work clothes but she had some jeans. “Cute. They’re cute.” As long as Rose wasn’t really aware of the alternatives.
“I’m telling Blue we’re going out to lunch. He’ll be thrilled.” It was somewhat of an understatement. Though everyone was used to it, that didn’t stop anyone every once in a while from chastising her for not going out more. The elevator came and took them upstairs and while lost in thought she did occasional spare her twin a glance to see how she was taking in all these modern surroundings. “Okay, some new clothes. A trim,” no full cut, if Snow had any say. “Maybe we’ll do the tourist thing. They’re mostly Mundies, though.” She paused as she started to open her door, recalling that her sister wasn’t used to dealing with the Mundane world. “As in they’re like the Las Vegas people. They also think we’re just stories. So no talk of castles or curses or talking beasts. Not in serious conversation.”
"I'm supposed to be here, so I want to see what it feels like to be what I'm supposed to be," Rose explained. She didn't know where or when the story had gotten all mixed up, but it had. What she did know is that she hadn't been erased in the books Blue had sent for her. In Justine's books, she didn't exist. But she did here. She was supposed to be here. That was important to her, existing. "The Beast has the same girl in our story as he did in Justine's," she said, poking and prodding for information. She'd only skimmed ahead, but she knew that much, at least. She didn't know, yet, that Snow was supposed to marry a wolf and have furry children, but she had spoken to Bigby on the journals once, with no real understanding of who he was.
"Is Blue coming?" Rose asked a second later, eager to meet the benefactor that actually thought she could grow up to be someone decent. Admittedly, decent sounded fairly boring, but maybe it didn't have to be. Regardless, it was a new game, something to play at, and she was looking forward to it.
Rose was already out the hall by then, ready for the cute clothes Snow had promised and not disagreeing with anything her sister said. She figured she should be agreeable for as long as she could be, lest Snow send her away.
Supposed to be. Snow rolled her eyes at that. She had given up the notion about how things were supposed to be, right after her Happily Ever After soured and then the Adversary was stomping all over her land of happy endings. She didn’t care what someone deemed her story to be – it was never right anyway – and it galled her that Rose still did. “Who cares about Beast’s story or Justine’s story? Make your own damn story.” She hadn’t seemed to notice her curse and rounded a corner to her bedroom to find Rose a change of clothes.
“Do you want me to invite him?” Blue was her safeguard should anything go wrong but so far she and Rose were doing fine. She liked to think that boded well for their trip through New York. And if not there was always Bigby to save them in a pinch, but how much trouble could three Fables get into?
Hm. Best not to dwell on that.
“Try this on?” Snow called over her shoulder as she pressed a pair of blue jeans to her hips. Her and Rose were still a similar enough fit that it would work and she tossed it onto her bed. “Probably need a shirt too,” she mused aloud to herself as she looked for something for Rose to wear. Of course it would be something she didn’t wear often, preferring work attire almost all of the time, and she rifled through her drawers and tossing prospective colorful (and not often worn) t-shirts over her shoulder for inspection. “What I’m saying is now is the time to do your own thing. Whatever we were supposed to be doing or ending up has already happened or never will. There’s nothing wrong with finding your own place in the world.”
It was the cursing that made Rose's expression brighten. "Maybe I will make my own damn story," she said, much more emphasis than was strictly necessary on the swear word. As for inviting Blue, Rose felt absolutely sure she would meet him eventually, and that didn't need to be right now, unless Snow felt more comfortable with him there. "Do you think we can keep from damn killing each other without Blue with us?" she asked, because they had killed each other at that party, after all.
Rose was standing in the middle of Snow's room, looking around with wide-eyed curiosity, by the time Snow held those pristine blue jeans to her own hips. "You live here?" she asked, because she had grown accustomed to the huge decay of the Beast's castle. The hut in the woods they'd grown up had been small, but it had felt personal and hewn in a way this place didn't. And the merchant's house had been comfortable. She was touching things here and there, picking up machine-made items from flat surfaces. Nothing here felt like home, and she wondered how Snow did it, how she lived here. "Damn."
But then there were the jeans to worry about, and she took them from Snow's fingers after divesting herself of dress and shift and camel-soft shoes and stockings. She slipped them on over bare skin, and then she frowned down at them. "These are boring, Snow," she whined, and it was definitely whining, even as she covered her chest with one arm and waited on a shirt. "You don't trust me to find my own place in the world," she pointed out. "Neither does the Beast."
By the second damn Snow realized her mistake and only managed a sheepish expression for a moment before the frown slid back into place. Of course Rose would take the first inch she gave her and run a mile with it. “As long as I keep you away from the knives, I don’t think we’ll need Blue.” She hadn’t killed her sister since that night so clearly she wasn’t the problem here. Still, she had him on speed dial, just in case.
“Yes, this is my apartment.” Normally she would have been a bit more dismissive but this was her sister and a slight note of pride crept into her voice. Having a Woodlands apartment wasn’t anything to sneeze at in the first place, and having something of her own, after so long sharing with a husband or captors or queens or sisters, was still something to be proud of. “It’s… You’ll get used to all of this,” she said almost gently. Snow had adjusted (never mind the centuries it had taken or watching the progression of modern machinery) and she was sure her twin could too. Eventually. Should she try hard enough to.
“They’re jeans,” Snow sighed, the exasperation not even masked anymore. “They fit. They’re clean. The shirt’s more important but the jeans are fine.” End. Of. Story. Speaking of which she threw a flimsy pink monstrosity – a gift from Cindy that she had never worn since it was hardly her style and the woman had known it – into Rose’s waiting arms. “These will do. And a jacket.” She reached into her closet and handed over something warm enough for the weather.
“I trust you more than the Beast does. There, at least. Here you’d need some help. But there? There you can manage. Mother did. You can too.” Snow hadn’t subscribed to the notion of a weaker sex since before her marriage. after she took her own destiny into her vengeful bloodied hands she didn’t have much patience for women who did thought they couldn’t do something on their own. If Rose wanted to have a life for herself in the homelands, she could. Perhaps it wasn’t the norm but it could be done. “I wouldn’t be pushing you to leave the castle if I didn’t think you could hack it otherwise.”
Rose saw the whole not killing since thing as a result of not actually being around Snow since then, but no matter. If Snow thought they wouldn't end up dead, then Rose was willing to give her sister the benefit of the doubt. After all, she'd never actually wanted to kill Snow; she'd only wanted her to be as miserable as she had been without her in the woods. And she was still angry and hurt, but it wasn't the killing type of ache. She'd never wanted her sister dead, strange inn parties notwithstanding.
"Apartment," Rose repeated, catching the strange word on her tongue and repeating. "My Olive doesn't live in one of these. She lives in a room," she explained, realizing that maybe not everyone lived like her Olive did. The woman she'd had before hadn't let Rose see anything at all, and so Olive was her only point of comparison, and this place was very different. "It's like a small house," she said curiously as she looked out the window in just the jeans and no top. "Built atop something else, but not like the baker in the village or the bookseller." She thought it was enchanting, and she turned happily back to her sister. "I want to see more," she insisted, even as she caught the horrible pink thing in her hands. The tunic was terrible, but she supposed it would have to do until she managed to find some things that were more her, and she slipped it on and frowned down at it, even after she'd slipped the strange, short cloak on.
Rose considered the castle, considered the possibility of being elsewhere, but she shook her head a moment later and slipped her arm through her sister's and tugged on her. "It's not so bad, Snow. Someone sent me a spell, and it made the garden come to life again. Oh, and you need to come so you can see Quasimodo. He's pretty now, and Faust says I spelled him, but I can't tell. I don't think Faust would lie to me, though." she said, stupidly naive and trusting. "And if you let me keep your key, I can come here and see you whenever I want, without the Beast even knowing I'm not there for a few hours." Rose was the queen of having her cake and eating it too, and this seemed a perfect solution to her.
Snow wrinkled her nose at the notion of this Olive’s room. “Your Olive needs to get a better job.” While she would say she missed the castles she lived in, and she had come from some truly simple beginnings, she did like her apartment and anything other than it was something to be frowned upon. “There are places like the villages we know. Homes not atop each other. But we’re in the heart of the city and space is premium. Otherwise there’s the Farm. Where all the animals and non-Mundy looking fables are.” Though Snow didn’t exactly turn her nose up at the Farm like some, it wasn’t ever her place. Hers was there in the heart of Fabletown. Chained to her desk, sure, but still.
She was pulled once more from her thoughts once Rose started mentioning their dear brother Faust and the man she had spoke of before. “From the attic?” That was the part she focused on, not the pretty, though her eyes narrowed when more spell talk happened. “Who sent you a spell? You do know better than to use spells from strangers, right? Right? Well, it didn’t seem that way. She waved her hand dismissively before helping Rose put on a jacket. “You might as well keep the key. I have another. But that’s it for getting one from me. What you tell the Beast and your friends is your business. As long as you stick with the Fabletown rules you shouldn’t have any problem.” As for seeing her that was less important, for Snow viewed this excursion away from her work as a one or two time occurrence. At least with Blue there and familiarity with the city, Snow didn’t think she would hold Rose’s hand much longer.
"My Olive doesn't really work," Rose explained, though she didn't actually understand what Olive did, not beyond knowing she shouldn't talk about it very much. And, anyway, she was more interested in the things Snow was explaining about the towns. "The Farm?" she asked curiously, wondering if it was a real farm, but what Snow said next left her frowning. "Wait, they're sent there because they look different?" she asked. Months ago, she probably wouldn't have minded that at all, but now it sounded wrong to her somehow, and her frown said as much.
"I don't know who sent the spell, but Faust said it didn't look evil," Rose explained about the spell that had been tucked into her stocking. "Faust says whoever gave it to me must want something, but no one's asked for anything yet. I think I'll have the Beast try to find out who it was, since that'll be like a warning," she explained, completely unworried about it all, despite the fact that maybe she should be very worried indeed. "Quasimodo hates me," she added. "You'd probably like him. He's serious and dull," she explained, as if these were two extremely serious crimes against humanity.
Rose barely let Snow finish helping her with the unimpressive jacket before she turned with a bright smile on her face. "You're giving me a key? Really? So I can visit whenever I want?" It was an unexpected freedom, and she didn't bother trying to hide that fact. Maybe she'd even tell the Beast about it. He wouldn't mind it, surely? But Snow's next words made her frown again. "Fabletown rules? What rules?" she asked.
She needed to read more pages in Blue's colorful books, obviously.