Work Text:
Every child on the Maw whispers about the Lady. Some say she’s a ghost, a wraith that haunts the halls and whisks children away. They warn to stay behind bars, like a good child, lest she find you. Some say she is the sovereign of the ship; that its mechanical heart beats through her, and all its wicked machinations endure because of her. All say to avoid her, or else.
You must have heard a dozen rumors. A dozen cautionary tales. None of them prepare you for meeting her - although not for the reason one might suspect.
It’s an accident that you even do. A nightmare, snaking and insidious, has you jerking awake in the middle of the night. When you sit up, panting, the terror is reluctant to slide away and vanish. Instead it lingers in you, tapping an unsettling beat beneath your skin. You try to listen to the breathing of all the other children in the room to calm yourself. Look, they’re sleeping.You should, too.
But it doesn’t work. The ship sways back and forth, back and forth. That rhythm is all you know, but this once, this night, it nauseates you. Makes you think, I didn’t always live here, did I… I don’t belong here, do I…?
The uncertainty is dizzying and frightening. It comes with vague half-memories that you’re almost certain don’t belong to you; faces you don’t recognize, food you’ve never seen before in your life.
“Stop, stop,” you mutter, rubbing your temples. Your feet hit the floor; instantly, your toes curl from the cold. Brr. Anything to get away from the strange thoughts and the fear clinging to you. In a haze, you pass all the looming beds, one after another in a clinical row, as well as all the other children sleeping. Your footsteps are quiet.
Away. You just want away, for a little, before you return and pretend like these nightmares don’t keep coming back.
The hallway you stumble into is enormous and slanted. It sways, with everything else. Still you go on, one foot in front of the other, only partially aware of your surroundings. A wave of nausea strikes; your hand presses to the wall as you gather yourself. The wall is cold, and damp. On the other side is thousands of pounds of ocean water. With your eyes squeezed closed, and the seconds tick by, the malaise gradually abates.
Like the vestiges of a terrible dream fading away, its presence trickles into nothing.
You’re aware again. Clear-minded. Groggily, you raise your head, and realize two things.
One: you have no idea where you are.
Two: you’re not alone.
Her presence snatches your breath away. She looms above you, a tower of fabric upon which is perched an ivory white mask, emotionless and cold. Pitch black eye holes bore down upon you.
Everything in your body turns to ice. The Lady. You know instantly, even though you have no real way of knowing. At least no way that could be explained. It’s her. Fear permeates through every inch of you, as all the rumors bloom in your mind. All the terrible things she’s reportedly done.
This is it. This is the end of your life.
Only… it’s not.
You stare up at her, trembling, and she stares back down at you, so still that you wonder if she’s alive at all.
“You aren’t where you’re supposed to be,” she says at last. It’s not stern; her voice is beautiful, and painfully melancholic. Maybe it could be stern, under the right conditions, but it’s not right now. Her intimidating aura is tempered by weariness.
Somehow you know right-away, with the same certainly that you knew she is the Lady, that you’re not in trouble. More than that: she won’t harm you in any way. Her mind is faraway.
“I had a nightmare,” you dare utter, as if she could be interested in something so trivial when she, as an adult in such a powerful position, might care about one single child’s woes.
Her head jerks ever-so-slightly: the first break in her statuesque facade. Then, after a heartbeat of surprised hesitation, “As did I, little one.”
Your fear is quickly evaporating. You haven’t smiled in a long time, but now a small one comes easily. “Maybe you can try humming a song. Sometimes I do that, to help the other children sleep.”
She doesn’t reply; you cringe, fearing that you’ve upset her in some way. There’s no way to read her expression, not with it hidden beneath the mask.
“You’re younger than the others,” she murmurs so softly you barely catch it, “and yet you take care of them.” A soft, humorless laugh, though it isn’t mean-spirited. She leans down, and her shadow falls over you. It is dark, and you’re alone with her, and nobody would question her choice if she should choose to snap your neck and end her annoyance.
“You should go back to bed,” she says instead, with an edge that tells of the danger clinging to her.
You take a step back, heart thudding. You catch a sliver of her eye beneath the mask as it widens; as if she’s unaware of the effect of her presence, or maybe for a moment had forgotten it. Then she too, takes an uneasy step backwards. “Now, go. Before the Janitor catches you.”
Under her bidding, you scrambled back to the nursery. When you clamber back in bed, and tuck your cold toes under the covers, you reflect that you saw kindness in her eyes.
All the children have ideas about who or what the Lady is. You’re beginning to think they’re all a little right, and a lot wrong. You wonder who she really is.