Alessa Lark's Dirty Little Secret [Flashback; Solo]

[Victor Lark]

”My cage has many rooms, damask and dark.
Nothing there sings, not even my lark.
Larks never will, you know, when they’re captive;
teach me to be more adaptive...”
– Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd

Winter 24, 497

Alessa’s son was nowhere to be found. He had taken to hiding whenever she wanted him, and today was no different—except that it was his birthday. Nonetheless, she had planned a party for him. She was already greeting guests as the servants scrambled to find him. Some even went out into the bitter outdoors to look in the streets.

But he had found the cleverest spot of them all. Atop the roof of the Lark family townhouse, beside the warm chimney, sat the defiant black-haired boy. The thin layer of Winter's snow pierced mercilessly into his thick coat, but his dark eyes shone happily against the grey air as they stared out over the city. That day, he turned six years old. He could hear his mother’s cordial laughs echo faintly as the door opened and closed far below, but he knew how distraught she must have been. Peering precariously to the warm shadow of the door on the ground, he was glad to think of her worried, for him.

Once the sporadic shine of the indoors no longer opened into the darkening evening, Victor decided to retire from his hiding place. He had left the window open to his mother’s bedroom, and there was still a black line in the snow where he had scrambled up. He followed it carefully down to the valley between homes, then turned around and gripped the slippery ledge. His tiny feet had to reach to find the decorative wooden awning that had hoisted him up in the first place, but once he was on it, there was an easy leap to the window ledge. He tumbled through the threshold and landed clumsily onto the hard wood floor on the other side.

The bird in the corner of the room fluttered noisily in its cage, but only the shish of its wings against the metal made a sound. It did not sing; it never sang. Victor bent his neck awkwardly to look up at it. The bird was just a brown one at first glance, but its cheery yellow face was striped with distinctive black bars. Her pet always made him curious, perhaps because it was so high up and unreachable, hanging there from the ceiling. That, and it always seemed to stare at him, straight and unrelenting. Now, as his silent glare reached up for it, the creature turned its head with a newfound calm.

Victor stripped his coat from his arms and climbed onto the bed, swinging his legs idly, waiting for the thing to move again. When it did not, he pulled his lips together and tried to whistle a birdsong. A single airy note, like wind through a narrow alley, departed from his untrained mouth. Undeterred, he only gasped and tried again, and again and again. The bird would be able to tell if he was doing it right, he figured.

It hopped forward once, and the child held his breath. Its head bobbed as if it were asking him to continue, but he was already six! He knew better than to believe in the intelligence of animals. Then it jumped again, close to the edge of the cage, and began to pick at the wiring of its door. Whistles long forgotten, the boy furrowed his brow. He tried to understand.

After a few more seconds, filled with the persistent clinking of disturbed metal, he realized: it wanted out!

[Victor Lark]

Suddenly he leapt from the bed, startling the bird into another flapping fury. That wide, plan-making grin had spread across his young face. His eyes moved candidly around the room, searching for an opportunity. The cage hung from a low beam below a high ceiling, but otherwise there was nothing near it. A grown-up could easily have unlatched the simple hook while standing, but Victor was too small to even hope to reach it. The wardrobe opposite, however, stood high enough to the beam that even he could climb onto it from there. The problem was getting to the top of that.

Giggling, he trudged across the room and grabbed the chair to his mother’s vanity. He dragged it, squealing against the floor, towards the wardrobe and climbed onto it. His wet shoes carved two stains into the cushion, but he did not notice. He only had eyes for up. The next height could only be reached by jumping, and it took a few tries to attach his fingers to the edge. It took all the strength he had to pull himself up. The chair clattered loudly against the floor, too light to withstand the leverage it gave.

The bird continued with its racket. Was it worried? It couldn’t be.

Victor looked up from where he stood, indifferent to the view below. His arms were tired, but he needed them again for this one last step. It was not as high as the last, but still it required some effort. He lifted his arms and, as he pulled upward with them, swung a leg up as well. But he had misjudged his balance and the thickness of the beam. His hand slipped and he fell the short distance to the top of the wardrobe again. The ornate box shuddered and swayed with the shock of the collision, gripped tight by the boy’s petrified fingers. The bird’s futile flight became even more frenzied. The cage rocked heavily.

Slowly he stood again, not quite as frightened as he should have been, though no hint of a smile yet lingered in his expression. He ascended again with the same tactic, mixed with a bit of caution and care, and this time succeeded. All that was left was to crawl over the length of the narrow slab to the frantic pet at its end.

He could not tell if it was him or the beam that shook as he traversed the great expanse, but he did notice that the shaking stopped when he reached his destination. He positioned himself so that he sat on the beam like he’d sat on the bed, legs hanging with new confidence. He had a horrible, dangerous idea: he leaned backward into the air.

For a second, his heart raced in free fall. Then his heels locked against the edge of the wood and he was hanging upside down. He did not know how he would get up or down from that position, but that was not important at that moment. As blood rushed to his head, Victor groped for the thin little bars, which still swung with the bird’s terrific activity. As it neared his grasp, he took hold. He was surprised it did not scream. He turned the cage on its chain until he found the door and its lock, then the rod slipped from the latch as smoothly as water through the streets.

In the same moment, a familiar stomping of heels began to echo in the hall behind the closed door, full of affected anger. Alessa’s tired voice called out his name.

[Victor Lark]

The next few moments were a blur of movement and chaos, everything at once. Startled, he lost his grip on the beam. His body fell into thin air, but his fingers reflexively clutched the wire of the cage. It swung once, back and forth, and then the chain snapped from the weight. Victor had fallen from short heights before, but it did not hurt any less to collide with the ground.

There was no time to lose. As the bird escaped from confinement, he hastily limped to the wardrobe and crawled inside. For the first time in his life, he heard it cry out a short, bittersweet melody. Then he turned around and closed the closet doors.

Victor held his breath as his mother came running into the room, throwing the door. There had been a great clamor in the descent and she was more than surprised. He could see her through the crack between the doors, her long hair combed in a straight line to her waist. That hair was the one feature he would remember her by, like a shining black river in his dreams.

She gasped. There was a brilliant flash of golden light. The boy had to rub his eyes to recover from even the small sliver that poured into his hiding place. When he opened them again, he saw a man that had not been there before. He rose to standing and almost deliberately stepped into the boy’s narrow line of sight. Victor was old enough to recognize that the man's nudity was abnormal and inappropriate, but the man himself did not seem preoccupied with it. He was old, haggard and pale, and he boasted a long dark beard with thin silver lines in it. His eyes looked... familiar.

“Victor!” screamed Alessa, stepping back with a single loud knock on the floor. Victor's heart skipped a beat. She had not even looked in his direction! How did she know he was here! But her gaze never turned to him; it remained locked on the peculiar man before her. “What are you doing!” she asked him.

[Victor Lark]

“You can’t... do this.” He stumbled over his words like he did not know how to speak. Still, there was an innate tune in them, like those of a beggar-artist.

“Victor...” She whispered, her anger suddenly dissolved into an emotion her boy did not recognize. The man paced, restless. Her head turned with him as she moved to the window and out of sight. It scraped lightly against the pane as she pulled it closed and then the curtains rustled heavily together. The room became too quiet, too warm. Though he could no longer see her, the other Victor sometimes danced in and out of his view.

“I can’t stand it. I can’t live in that cage. Let me out. Let me—”

“But – Victor...”

He glanced toward the wardrobe, his eyes penetrating the wood and enveloping the hidden child, who did not understand. As quickly as he glanced there, he looked away again. Though he was glad for it, Victor wondered why the grown-up did not tell on him. “Let me see him,” the man said, his voice low. He paused before he spoke again, sad hesitance wrought in his wrinkled brow. “Or at least let me go.”

“No.” She replied. The sudden conviction did not compliment her tone. The juvenile mind in the shadows would never recognize the pain and guilt in her voice, only the way it seemed frayed at the edges unlike it had ever been before. “I cannot.”

“Six years, Alessa. I don’t have as much time as you do.”

“But he will remember. And he will tell...” Her voice cracked. “If not now, then eventually. You donnot know what they can do to you. To me. My reputation.”

He huffed, almost cross, but composed himself. “They don’t have to know.”

“They will. If they donnot simply suspect it, they will notice.” She became desperate. “You— you’ll age. And then they’ll take you away.”

He did not reply. Quick steps, soundless in grace, removed him from the boy’s line of view. Then there was silence. It lasted too long, so Victor ventured to push the door open another hair and peer through. He saw the man holding his mother’s head beneath her hair, their lips locked heatedly. Her face shone wet in the dim light of the flickering bedside lamp.

“If you love me—” he began.

“Please. Stay here. I cannot live without you.”

He laughed. “You sound like the Kelvic, and I the human. Would you stay here, so I can live in the world?”

Offended, she shoved herself from his embrace and turned away. Startled by the sudden movement, the child withdrew from the front of the cupboard as fast as he could. He did not see Alessa peer intently at the displacement of the doors, but his senior did. Her heels pounded against the floor and his toes strode close behind.

[Victor Lark]

The next thing he saw was his mother’s face, twisted between previous passions and current curiosities. He expected her to grab him and interrogate him. She never abused him physically, but she was good at intimidating him when she wanted. He would eventually become immune to her vicious words, but for now he scrambled against the hanging clothes behind him, ready for the onslaught.

She did not yell at him. She did not even speak. Her brow changed its angle and her angry eyes melted. She covered them with her hand, gasping, then turned briskly away. As she clacked towards the bed, the man leaned down and offered his hand. Victor did not trust him, staring blanklyat the invitation. Still, the smile between the beard was too kind to resist for long. A few moments later, the boy cautiously reached out and was gently helped into the open room. He picked at his nails nervously, uncomfortable with the exposure.

“I cannot believe this,” Alessa muttered, holding her head, “How did you get out? And how did he get in?”

The man paused before he replied, looking down at Victor’s black scalp as the child stared intently at the floor. He rested a hand on that small, low shoulder. “The boy is smart. He let me out. You should have seen him climb!”

“Climb?” She repeated. That time, her son recognized the tone of her voice. She spoke like that when she was angry, but wanted to seem calm. Her nostrils flared and her fingers stiffened. If it were any other circumstance, he could defend himself with wide and shining eyes, wooing her with patheticism. But now he had this stranger to protect him, who seemed to know them both, so his gaze remained locked on the floorboards. He noticed that his coat was tucked under the bed, and the chair sat beside the vanity again. Only that mysterious man could have done it. Mother would have screamed if she saw the cushion.

“Well yes, my love,” came the undaunted reply, “Over the beam there. He has a good sense of balance, just like—”

“Stop it.” She interrupted tersely, glaring at the distance, full of conflicted thought. He obeyed with silence. Young Victor was still pulling at the skin around his fingernails. “Stop it!” She repeated, and he did.

The boy’s solemn face could not see that the man beside him still smiled, gazing at her with unsullied love in his eyes. She frowned at that irritating cheerfulness and stood, then she picked up the birdcage and righted it on the table. The little door oscillated on its hinge with a low creak. Her heavy strides closed the distance between them and presently the sound of her hand against her lover’s face soaked loudly into the thick air.

He vocalized his surprise and his hand moved from Victor’s shoulder to cradle his cheek where the ring had cut his skin. The boy had jumped at the abruptness of it all, and finally he looked up at his namesake. The smile was gone. Alessa’s voice cracked again as she pointed lividly at the white wires of his captivity. “I – will – have – none of this! Return to where you belong, bird, or I’ll... or I’ll...”

“What, Alessa? What will you do? Never let me out? Never let me sing, or breathe the fresh air?” He looked down at Victor and crouched. His big hand felt soft as it brushed the too-long bangs from over his eyes and met them sadly with his own. “Never let me see my son again?”

[Victor Lark]

Their matching eyes stared for a long moment. Victor felt as if his father could see into his soul, see all of his secrets and his hiding places and his disobediences, but the boy himself could see nothing except maybe a tinge of happiness in his upturned brow. As brief as it was, that memory was the only one he would ever keep of that man, and his mother would attempt to erase it for the rest of his childhood.

For now, she could only watch that which she had tried to avoid for so long, and the weight of it pushed her to her knees. Her hands rose to her face and she sobbed without constraint or poise or concern. Her shoulders heaved unnaturally and her body shivered uncontrollably. Alarm showed in the whites of the boy’s eyes. He thought she was going to be sick, or worse. But he did not know what to do about it, only trusted that the day could be saved by the man who called him son. And Victor Senior, smooth as always, moved between the two faces of his family with the same old grace. He stood beside her and yet over her, eerily powerful even in vulnerable nakedness. He reached out to her and with the knuckle of his finger took her chin, moved her gaze upward. The paint on her eyes was strewn in dark lines down her face. She frowned at him, jerking with uneven breaths through her nose.

“I love you,” he said, his face dry. Before she could reply, he began to shine again. Victor did not think it was as bright as the last time; he did not cover his eyes. The bird that remained fluttered to his cage and perched contentedly on the little white bar he had clutched for so many years before. After a chime that seemed like twenty, Alessa stood clumsily and closed the little door. With a heavy sniff she walked to the mirror, where she began to wipe away the blemishes and beautify herself again.

“Mama?” Victor Junior said meekly, his vocal chords clogged with their previous silence.

“Not now, darling. Mama has to fix her make up.”

He was young, and he was only just beginning to learn that others felt emotions outside of his own. His father had made his mother stop crying by doing what she wanted. If he wished to take after him, what little he knew of him, he would have to try and figure out what she wanted. He said, “Mama, do I have to go to the party?”

She paused, and when she spoke again there was a light satisfaction in her voice. “Yes, dear. Straighten your shirt.”

[Victor Lark]

When she was done, she knelt beside her boy without looking once at the bird. Her thumbs pushed harshly against his cheek as she tried to wipe the smudges from his skin. She smoothed his sleeves and took his hand, then led him out of the room. Victor turned to glance at the bird, which looked back at him with that familiar determination, and then the door came between them. He would never see his father’s human face again, and he would never once embrace him.

“Do you love him, mama?” he asked her as he stumbled quickly to keep up at her side. He thought he knew what love was, but he did not. But his father had said it, so he figured it was important.

“Yes.” She replied shortly. The thump of her heels filled the silent hall in a short pause, but she continued before he could ask another question, “Sometimes we have to trick the ones we love, so they can do what’s best for them. Do you understand?”

He nodded, lying. Who had she tricked? Was she not sad? Victor never had been very good at telling lies from truth, though he was good at blending them in his own words. No other words or questions came to his mouth as they reached the end of the hall. Her feet could move faster than his as they descended down the stairs, and it was all he could do not to trip as she pulled his hand briskly behind her. Frustration tickled at the back of his mind at her persistence. This was one of the few and precious moments in which he chose to mind her, and still she acted distant and impatient. Soon enough, the door to the greatroom loomed before them, but Alessa did not open it right away. She patted the skin beneath her eyes and exhaled deeply. Her son mimicked her, unsure of what to do.

“You smile,” she answered his unspoken question. Her grip was tight and cold on his tiny hand. “You smile, even if you don’t mean it. Because it makes people happy.” She meant compliant.

And then the shining red and green decorations burst into view, and the loud murmur of many voices flooded into his ears, and he smiled. He ate and played and opened many presents. He spoke politely to his mother’s friends and he jumped to the floor when she told him to stop climbing. He smiled, and he forgot.

[Verilian]

Victor Lark +2 Stealth +2 Climbing +2 Acrobatics +2 Observation +1 Whistling +1 Subterfuge +1 Acting You Question My Logic? : Okay, so I really couldn't give you much in social skills for this. Manipulation was for realizing that doing what your mother wanted would make her happy and doing it. Acting was for pretending like nothing had happened at the end of the thread. Lores: Hiding from Mommy, Whistling to Birds, Turning Six, Freeing the Lark, Lark's Song, Witnessing Secret Conversations, A Memory of Father, Allessa Lark's Dirty Little Secret, Forgetting the Truth Notes: Beautiful... I really can't say anything more than that.