Dust

It's challenge fic, technically, but I'm not good with deadlines, so this is for the Freedom: Peace challenge. Just your usual dystopic oneshot. The "freedom from" thing is blatantly stolen from Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

Dust (PG | Betty, Father Jupe, Polly | Angst)

This is the future, thinks Betty. The future is an open door, dust dancing in the early morning light; the future is a black-booted man bringing a woodcut of the new Duke, to replace the obsolete ones of the late Duchess. It must take them months to get everywhere in the country.

The old picture in its wooden frame comes down, and with it comes another swirl of stirred-up dust. There seems to be a lot of it these days, thinks Betty, who wipes off every surface in the inn's guestrooms every morning. It seems almost alive, the dust, stirred up once and not quite settled again.

Or maybe she just notices it more these days.

-

Community, says Father Jupe at the dinner table, in an unsolicited justification of his unwelcome but regular presence, is about coming together and appreciating each other, and Nuggan.

With gods and vampires, death can be tricky like that.

The Father's preachings at the tables are but a continuation of his preachings at the sermon earlier today. "Freedom," he says now. "Are we not free from hunger?" He points towards the bread, which he, as a cleric, doesn't pay for. He points towards the bowl of apples, the Sunday meat, the jug of milk. Certainly, thinks Betty. Certainly. If you put it like that. She lifts a hand to hide her yawn.

"And are we not," says Father Jupe, " finally free from the forces that threatened our country from the outside?" This gets a bit of a nodded response. After all, there are three veterans at the table, two if you don't count Betty, and it's safer to disassociate herself from all that these days.

"Are we not," Jupe continues, "free from those who sought to bring down the country from the inside? Are we not free from the monstrous regiment of women, the army infiltrators, the fraud who stole the throne from its rightful heir? Are we not free?"

He's lucky that Betty is holding an infant, not a vase or a rock or nothing. She continues staring at her plate. As a woman, she's free to appear slightly stupid at all times.

A girl from the recently re-built Working School stands by the table, ready to refill their glasses with berry wine. They send a different one each week. Betty tries not to stare at them, but of course she can't help it, she has to look for familiar features in their well-scrubbed faces. But the truth is, she cannot tell these girls apart at all. They look bleak, and they don't talk much, and in any case Betty doesn't think they are letting Magda and Tilda and Alice out ever again.

After the meal, she leaves her youngest with Paul. It's been almost two years now, and Betty makes a mental note about maybe consulting Paul about a third child soon. Motherhood has kept her safe so far. Free from being bothered by armed forces, one could say if one were inclined towards bitterness. She will have to think about it.

-

Betty gathers some bread and a glass of milk on a tablet, peels an apple and cuts it into slices, and then makes her way upstairs. She finds Polly in her room, as usual, sitting upright in her bed, a book in her thin hands that she is just now closing, not without putting in an old envelope to mark the page. It's always the same page.

Betty prays, quite intensely, that they won't ever change their mind about not arresting Polly again, if only to shut up that nagging little voice inside her that prays they will. Polly sighs, and coughs, small desperate coughs that hint at tuberculosis, or good acting. In either case, it's kept her safe so far. She doesn't even turn her head, and Betty closes the door behind her.

-

[This is what Betty's dreams look like: she dreams that Polly has a plan, a plan to achieve them the freedom of choice. She hears doors snapping shut at night and she knows that Polly practices silent swordfighting outside in the barns; and she knows that Polly uses up all those candlesticks to read books in the dark, to broaden her tactical knowledge so she can take over the country. Or else she is writing letters, to Maladict who didn't come back with her when she was released and clearly must be somewhere else.

Betty sees these things very clear, and she won't admit to getting impatient. They're biding their time, Polly and Maladict. They will end this madness. They must see this. If even Betty finds this unbearable, who fits into her role like a hand into a glove - and she snaps awake.]

-

It's early morning again, and Betty gives the floorboards a sweep. Their creaking warns her, before Polly in her white nightdress, her hair let loose down her back, passes her without a word, and brings the dust to life again. It swirls in peculiar ways, flees the early morning light as Polly steps through it and into the kitchen to make a silent cup of coffee. The way she drinks, it looks like a prayer.

It's these early mornings that Polly talks, sometimes, and she never turns around. "Funny," she says today, "how the dust gets everywhere." Betty nods.

But maybe they just notice it more these days.