Charlotte

I was humming a happy tune when I got to my bedroom - mostly because I thought it would make me seem more nonchalant - or maybe less chalant would be a better way to put it? It sounded a bit less formal to me, which was a good thing as far as I was concerned, but I honestly wasn’t that sure if it was even a word? Something to ask Mikaela about later, maybe. Either way, being nonchalant was only part of the reason, since I was also honestly just really happy to be home.

I mean, yeah, it was only for a short visit - and, okay, I hadn’t really been gone for all that long to begin with, but still! I’d spent my entire life in the tower! It was weird being out of it. Not bad weird, or anything, though - just… weird. So, of course it felt nice to be back home again where everyone knew exactly who I was and I didn’t have to bother playing pretend.

…I mean, I guess I had played pretend pretty frequently up until this point, actually, what with all the secretive trips I’d taken to the lower floors while in disguise. It was nice to play pretend, sometimes, though! It let me be something other than a princess, for a while - which, in turn, helped me have a better understanding of what the average person went through. 

…Okay, maybe that was mostly just an excuse I’d made up to get Mikaela to join in when we were younger, and then to keep her off my back after she’d stopped going and started being all strict and responsible, but it was also true! There was a reason I was having an easier time adapting to life outside the tower than Mikaela, and it was that I was the only one of us who actually had recent experience in putting the princess title away and pretending to be just like everyone else.

Unfortunately I had to chide myself for getting a bit off topic there, considering I’d not only stopped my humming but also had spent the last half a minute or so just blankly staring at the door while thinking all that through - and I still hadn’t even wrapped around back to the original point, which was that having to pretend I was someone else was way more troublesome than just doing it because I wanted to! Though… again, I was getting off topic!

Kinda? I mean, the thing I was here for was actually more or less directly related to not only that need to play pretend outside, but also all the times I’d played pretend for entertainment in the tower - which meant that I hadn’t even gotten off topic at all when you really thought about it - but still! None of these thoughts were doing anything to progress my actual goal, which would require me to stop staring dumbly at the door and actually open it!

So yeah. I opened the door. I walked inside. I searched around a bit, doing my best not to get distracted by another technically-on-topic tangent, and eventually ended up pulling up and digging through the memories I’d made the last time I’d snuck out for fun - just a few weeks back - so that I could finally, at long last, come to the conclusion that I had hidden the super secret thing I was after in the one place that I knew nobody would dare to look! 

Under my bed! Which is also where I kept the majority of my Earth-porn. Not that I’d ever really spent much time reading it? I mean, even if I could get over the fact that I’d initially gotten said porn as an unintentional gift from Granny Liz, who used to have a really bad habit of manifesting all her Earth-stuff within identical looking boxes she couldn’t be bothered to label, there was also the fact that it was… Well… Honestly kinda boring?

Like, yeah, it was nice to look at pictures of pretty women wearing sexy outfits - or even nothing at all, in some cases - but also they were all human women! 

…Not that human women were bad or anything? Like, yeah, the two thousand year war had been a pretty big damper on human-demon relationships, and yes, a lot of demons honestly kinda hated humans as a result, but my Mom had originally been human! As had Mama, I guess? Maybe? If you counted past lives where you had a completely different personality and sense of identity? Though that was kinda getting off topic again, wasn’t it? I mean, the important thing here was that I was not particularly prejudiced against humans, and even kinda liked looking at them sometimes! Even if it was kinda simultaneously awkward and sexually affirming to see beautiful women who had the same basic body type as me - something I’d only ever seen in people who were directly related to me! But also, it was just… kinda boring?

I mean, all my life I’d been surrounded by people with horns, wings, tails, feathers, fur and so much more! Even us Demon Queens could at least summon wings! Sexy looking wings that human women most definitely lacked. Which, to be clear, did not make them any less attractive to me! But… I mean… who wouldn’t find it boring to look at a bunch of different models who were all the same species? How many pairs of tits could a single girl look at without… Okay, o, I never got bored of tits specifically, but I did kinda wanna break things up a bit by looking at some cute wings now and again!

Ugh… I was getting off topic again, wasn’t I? Letting my thoughts wander in a thousand directions, all while I sat on the floor with a white box in my lid. And even worse? This time I hadn’t even touched upon my original point, which was that my parents had long since been given leave to ignore the underside of my bed during their cleaning duties after one of the maids finally gathered up the courage to tell Dam that one of her daughters had ‘disturbing imagery’ hidden away beneath it. And while I was pretty sure the occasional maid did still clean under there - seeing as how it was suspiciously free of dust down there, despite me never doing any dusting! - it wasn’t as if the average person would be able to understand why I had a random pebble sitting inside a small white box.

I mean, it didn’t exactly scream Holy Artifact. The holy magic I’d inscribed in it wasn’t even visible to mortals, plus you had to actually have holy magic of your own if you wanted to power the thing, and even then it wouldn’t actually do anything if you didn’t know you were supposed to put the pebble under your tongue! Most of the time I hadn’t even try to hide it, just dumping it in a random drawer somewhere. Hell, I usually couldn’t even be bothered to put it in its box! I only did that last time because I was afraid it would be annoying to find if I let it roll around under the bed, and I’d only hidden it under said bed because… Well, honestly, the last time I went down to the lower floors, things had ended up going kinda badly, and I honestly just hadn’t even wanted to even look at that stupid artifact for a while, thanks to all those bad memories, and as such had put it somewhere even I rarely looked before purposefully burying my memory of the whole thing so that it wouldn’t pop into my brain without reason…

Which was, I guess, maybe part of why I was still staring at the stupid pebble turned cognition blocker, which was meant to keep anyone from realizing that Princess Charlotte Satanne, and Char, a random ass rich girl who looked a lot like said princess, were actually the same person.

Retrieving my memories of hiding the dumb thing had primed all the attached memories, and actually looking at the stupid thing had caused that whole night to come rushing back to the surface. And now, if I wanted to actively repress them again - instead of just letting them fade over time due to a lack of thinking about them - I’d have to actually confront them. Which didn’t necessarily mean reliving the whole damn thing in my head again, but I would be forced to actively focus on the memories I wanted to push away which would, in turn, require me to think about all that had happened for the… I don’t know, maybe five seconds it would take to forget what exactly I’d just been focusing on burying? Which… you know, wasn’t the worst fate in the world or anything, but considering I’d initially pushed aside those memories for a reason I really didn’t want to have to confront them all over again!

Not that I was likely to have much of a choice in the matter. The memories had already been recalled. I’d already remembered everything that I’d been trying so hard to forget. But as long as I kept going on mental tangents and refused to actually process what it was that I’d recalled, I could at least avoid all the nasty emotions that came with them. The guilt, and shame, and anger and fear and loss and… so many other things that I was already feeling if I was being fully honest with myself, but which would only grow worse if I stopped distracting myself for even a moment, and worse than that if I actively started thinking about the events that had caused them.

I still had to do it, though. I mean, what other option was there? I couldn’t just ignore them. Who knew how long it would take for them to fade if I let them stay near the surface and pop intrusive thoughts into my brain without any warning? It was better to just face them for a moment - to cry, and grieve, and wail, and maybe even get a little bit mad, before finally blinking a few times as I realized that I had absolutely no idea why the hell I was crying in the first place.

That was the smart thing to do. Maybe not the responsible thing - that would probably involve actually thinking things through a bit and maybe even actively processing and confronting the pain like a normal not-divine person would - but… well, everyone knew I wasn’t the responsible sister. That was Mikaela’s turf. I was the one who goofed on, and had fun, and laid in bed idly thinking through potential futures for myself that I’d probably never actually find the drive to follow through on. The one who didn’t plan to take on an entire kingdom worth of responsibility despite having immortal parents who would be more than happy to deal with all that stuff, if it meant that we could live a normal life. The one who had long ago taught everyone around her to rely on her sister for her the big, important stuff, leaving myself with the freedom to goof off and do as I pleased.

…Well, everyone except Mama, I guess. Not that Dam or Mom would ever say anything along those lines aloud. Hell, they probably wouldn’t even let themselves think it - especially not Mom. But that didn’t change the fact that when the stakes were at their highest and something truly needed to be done now both Dam and Mom pretty much always ended up going to Mikaela.

Mama was the only one too stupid to learn. When she asked Mikaela for things, it wasn’t because she thought they were especially important, but because Mikaela was the only one of us who’d let herself be found. Because I, at least, was smart enough to know that it was better for her to ask the daughter that would never dare to disappoint her over the one who’d maybe put in the effort, but quite likely fail to do even that. Especially seeing as how Mama wouldn’t even blame me for it - not when it was so much easier to blame herself for putting me on the spot in the first place.

I guess that made me the ‘smart’ one. Which meant it was time to do the smart thing, and stop procrastinating. Time to stop distracting myself, and face down those memories long enough to push them away to figure out a later time.

I mean, I basically had eternity to get around to it, right? So-

“There you are,” a familiar voice drawled, sending a chill down my spine. “You know, I’d heard you were back, but I didn’t really expect to find you here. I didn’t think you’d have the courage to risk seeing me again… But I guess I was wrong about you, once again. For the better this time, at least.”

~~~

Author's Notes

...You know, when I first started writing this chapter, I only had vague plans for what would be in it. I knew what item Charlotte would be fetching, and I'd decided on how I wanted to end it - with a newly thought up character who I'd barely bothered to detail, as of yet.

I did not expect things to go this way. I did not expect to be having the feels I'm having right now. But hey, at least it reminded me why I love writing about this family, and this world, oh so much, so maybe I'll actually write the next chapter sooner rather than later?

We'll see, I guess... Next up is probably going to be another chapter of MOV, though, either way. Since i really don't wanna risk losing more steam on it...

So, until next time everyone!

Enjoy the feels!