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Regarding her coach, Charlotte knew very little, and despite her family's insistence on getting to know the woman, Charlotte preferred to keep things as they were. The floor ritual was her only focus, she couldn't care less about what the crusty old hag that screamed at her all day was up to. Though, after being demeaned all day, every day, Charlotte had come to wish she knew more things about her coach, anything at all really - a cheating husband, a bad habit, a controversy during her own floor ritualist days - anything that she could bring up during their screaming matches that could get her coach to shut it with the insults and names.
Useless girl. It was her favorite thing to call her, the one she used above the rest, but Charlotte was anything but, she knew that to be true, otherwise Coach Raven wouldn’t have bothered training her. The Clown of The Floor. That would be Anna, who despite being older and training for longer than Charlotte, still tripped over her legs and made a fool of the sport. A waste of talent. That meant her first insult was a lie. How useless of a girl could she be if, on her next breath, Coach Raven declared her to have at least some talent?
Ultimately, Charlotte chose to not listen to her demented ramblings. Whatever coach Raven could offer her was in regards to her Floor Ritualist career and nothing else. Charlotte knew of her worth, she knew she was destined for greatness, it was a fact as clear as the knowledge that the sun would rise again every morning, and everyone knew that, even Coach Raven, who despite staring at the brightest star of the cosmos shine on the floor every day, liked to pretend like they lived in a perpetual night. Whatever the sixty-something-year-old senior citizen had to say about a fourteen-year-old girl was her opinion and nothing more.
At home, her mother had a habit of claiming Charlotte as hers and hers alone. My Charlotte is what she called her. Rarely had she heard her mum refer to her with just her name, though it caused her to pale and sweat and panic whenever she did. She called her Charlotte when she broke the neighbor's window playing with her arcanum skill, and then only Charlotte again when she did the exact same thing a month later. She called her Charlotte, just Charlotte, when she heard her tell Bartley to fuck off after the annoying blonde kept pestering her to go ride a horse with her, and then just Charlotte again when her school sent a letter regarding her less-than-stellar marks. She called her my Charlotte even when coach Raven ranted about her failures, my Charlotte when she scored last place in a competition, and my Charlotte when she took her to eat cheesecake even though she didn’t do as good as she could have, as good as she should have.
For Grandma, she was just dear , as was everyone else to the woman, but she said it with a special type of love when it came to Charlotte, a quality not given to the rest of the people she called by that same name. It sounded pitiful enough that Charlotte was forced to indulge in whatever it was her grandma wanted, otherwise, guilt would eat her alive if she declined to at least try the creamy mashed potatoes she’d made just for her dear , even if she did drown in guilt after she ate it and performed poorly on the floor. She was grandma’s dear , whatever the other old hag in her life said about her didn’t matter.
Dad and Grandpa weren’t around much, and admittedly neither was she, but whenever they did cross paths, they called her Charlie . They would drag her from her room, whether she was busy training or not, and make her hold their tools for them whenever they started a new project. Charlotte doubted she’d ever need to know how to properly oil anything or how to fix machinery, but her dad and grandpa insisted Charlie learn how to, just in case. In case of what, they never told her, and she came to hate oiling the hinges of the doors as much as she came to hate being called Charlie .
My Charlotte is going to Australia , mum told whoever would listen and even to those who couldn’t, like the neighbor whose window Charlotte had broken a few months prior, who despite all her deafness still nodded along with her mum’s ramblings. Dear, be sure to bring me some sand from the red land , Grandma refused to go with Charlotte, and she knew Grandma was too old to withstand the trip, but she’d see her dear on the paper, Charlotte comforted them both with the thought. Dad and Grandpa didn’t say much, she wasn’t sure they even heard her when she told them the news that she was competing in the Uluru games, they were trying to fix the creaking noise the front gates made when opened, and they’d somehow managed to rope her into holding their tools before Charlotte had even had the time to repeat herself. Yes, Charlie, we heard you, now go fetch the screwdriver and some beer, they both said simultaneously and continued quietly talking amongst themselves, not too proud or worried or much of anything at all. She then pretended not to hear them shout her name, Charlie , as she performed, proud and competitive; now she was too busy to care about whatever they had to say.
Charlotte O’Hagen won gold. Mum’s Charlotte, who was almost convinced to be fine with being mediocre didn’t win, Charlotte O’hagen who cared about nothing but perfection did. Grandma’s Dear who was constantly held back by indulging in things she could not have, did not win, Charlotte O’Hagen who sacrificed blood, sweat, tears, and vomit did. Charlie, who stained her pure white leotard with oil and rust didn’t win, Charlotte O’Hagen, who gave up everything to win did so. As surely as the sun would rise in the morning, Charlotte was destined to shine for the rest of time, high above the rest of her peers, in every corner of the world, Charlotte O’Hagen and Charlotte O’Hagen alone was the sun itself.
“Miss Willow? Miss Willoooow?”
It was tempting, so very tempting, to use her arcane skills on the little ankle biter and throw her out of her property - maybe a good smack against the front gate would stop the shrieking sound it made, both of them. But Tooth fairy was gone, and if Willow did end up hurting the child - Accidentally as she often did or on purpose like she often found herself wanting to, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to fix things on her own, not without the other woman’s guidance. Her lubricant was running low, but it was not yet time for Flutterpage to deliver her snails, and she’d just given the child a book about arcanum creatures to hopefully keep her busy for the rest of the week, and usually, that was enough to guarantee a few days of peace and quiet for Willow - exactly the qualities she needed at this very moment, now busy packing her bags for Australia for the second time in her life. What the hell did the child want?
“What?” She meant to sound firm, but the second she opened just a crack of the door, Flutterpage had somehow managed to slip past it, and past Willow herself, and the witch had offered her no further venom-filled words. Instead, she stared at the child, waiting though not with much patience, for her to speak. She had the book with her, bookmarked with a funny little origami bird, much the same as the ones she left behind every time she came inside Willow’s home.
“Miss Willow, Miss Willow, how old are you?” Flutterpage asked, opening the book and letting the origami piece fall out without a worry. Willow would have picked it up and put it in with the rest above the fireplace, but the pain in her leg was killing her. The child’s mind was truly a mystery, but Willow had never been one to care about puzzles or riddles, and she certainly was not about to start trying to solve them now, thus she decided to simply get it over with.
“Twenty-five. Now go away, lass, I have things to do.” With what she hoped was only a slight push towards the door and not a shove strong enough to actually hurt the child, Willow tried to gently end the interaction. She did not care about why Flutterpage had asked, she did not want to know, she was not even slightly curious, all she wanted to was to wallow in her memories and misery for a few days until she had to get on the ship.
“Did you know him?” The child’s innocent blue eyes were still visible even when she held the book above her face, standing on her tiptoes to present the page to Willow. Those eyes, naive and a little sad, were the only thing preventing Willow from throwing something at her - a kettle, or perhaps her wand, and with that big forehead of hers, it wouldn’t take a winged key archer to hit a bullseye.
“A one thousand-year-old, long-extinct bird? I just might have.” The child’s eyes doubled in size, and before Flutterpage could open her mouth to ask her any questions and keep delaying Willow from completing her task, the woman spoke once more. “What kind of question even is that, eh? Of course I didn’t know the damn bird.”
“Oh… but aren’t hags supposed to be really old?” The child wondered aloud, and while Willow had never once cared about being called the ‘fog hag’, being called a hag alone, and by Flutterpage of all people, felt strangely insulting. “Well, I guess you’re not really a hag, Freddy said they’re ugly and wrinkly, but I think you’re very pretty, and Miss White Swan says so too.”
“Huh, Is that so?” Miss White Swan? Bartley had hit her head falling off her damn horse so many times, she could hardly see what was in front of her, but Willow didn’t tell the child that. A decade of rotting inside her house had not been kind to her, Willow knew that, and still somehow Caroline insisted on being delusional. Why, just so she could contradict Willow? Just to mock her?
“Yes, You don’t look like a hag at all! How come everyone calls you that? Why don’t they just call you Miss Willow? Or Fog Lady instead of Hag? Or just Charlotte like Miss Caroline does? Can I call you Charlotte sometimes? Can I- Ouch!”
“Out with you, I’m busy!” With a shove and a resounding slam, the door now awarded Willow the privacy needed to frown at the child’s words. Charlotte… Caroline was a lost cause, Willow knew there was no getting through to her, and when she wanted something she did not give up until she got it. Typical rich girl behavior, though Willow could also admire her determination. Grit was one of the only things Bartley had going for her, one of the few qualities that Willow looked up to when it came to her, despite how delusional it made her at times, what with thinking she’d somehow win anything but silver in the Uluru games. Willow was Willow no matter how badly Caroline wanted to believe her old rival was still the same, and she was not going to waste her time arguing with Bartley, it would be giving her what she wanted. “It’s Willow, and if you want to step foot inside my home again then it will be that what you call me, hear me lass?!”
“Yes, Miss Willow, Fog Lady, Ma’am! I’m sorry!” Willow didn’t hear anything else coming from her after, though she did faintly hear the shriek of the front gate open and close again.
“Huh, I did not take you for the mechanic type, Charlotte.”
Willow did not need to look up to see who it was, that annoyingly soothing and calm voice had been engraved in her subconscious since childhood, but she did look up anyway, if just so that her facial expression could speak for itself on how stupid Bartley's statement was. She wasn’t wearing her prosthetic today, kneeling for such a long time with it on would end up causing her more pain than the fixing of the gate was worth, but she still wanted to get it over with before going to Australia. Caroline curiously eyed her leg, or where her leg had once been at least, and Willow couldn’t help but feel oddly naked without it on, flesh or metal.
“Still, I would assume repairing your prosthesis is quite a different task than fixing your gate.”
“Yes, you’d assume,” Why Caroline had decided to bother her today was beyond her, Willow had assumed they wouldn’t meet again until Australia, and that was still five days away. Willow did not want to be bothered now, though having the ankle biter around didn’t sound too horrible today, she’d be able to hold Willow’s tools for her while she worked, and she was sure Flutterpage wouldn’t complain half as much about the task as Willow had done when she was her age. Maybe she’d even let the girl have a sip of alcohol like her dad did all those years back, if just to see the child’s reaction. “Don’t you have anything better to do but bother me, Bartley?”
“No, I really don’t. And I don’t annoy you, not as much as you claim I do, anyway. You would have thrown me out if I did, and look at us, having a perfectly placid conversation.” Willow arched her brow, ready to argue that no, this was not a placid conversation, she didn’t even think it was possible to have something akin to that when it came to the two of them - bickering constantly and about everything was simply how they communicated, and though she’d never tell her that, Willow wouldn’t have it any other way… it was, comforting, strangely so. “May I help?”
“You? Really? You?” Being obsessed with horses was one thing, Willow did not get it nor did she want to get it, just like she didn’t want to get on Bartley’s horse all those years ago. If Caroline wanted to be covered in horseshit that was on her, it almost made sense in a way Willow couldn’t comprehend, rich people had weird hobbies; wanting to fix a rusting, rotting gate that didn’t even need fixing as much as it needed to be completely replaced was another thing. Willow doubted Caroline had ever even held a hammer in her hands before, she had servants for every single aspect of her life that could be even mildly tedious, she had no reason to know how to do anything for herself. “Why? You don’t strike me as the sort to want to get your hands dirty with something like this.”
“I want to, there is no other reason. Quite the hypocrite, aren’t you, Charlie, didn’t you just-”
“What the hell did you just call me?”
Bartley opened her mouth, then closed it again, then once again she attempted to speak and if Willow hadn’t been so bewildered by the nickname, she would have mocked her resemblance to a fish. Willow wasn’t even angry, and that surprised even her, she was just confused. It’d been years since she’d been called that - the only ones who did were her dad and grandpa, and they’d both stopped after the accident… She thinks they stopped, but now hearing the nickname again made her go back to the depths of her memories and Willow wasn’t sure they’d ever stopped, she just wasn’t around anymore. She couldn’t run around to fetch their tools, she had no reason to be around them anymore, no reason to hear them call her Charlie.
“Charlie? Well, your name is Charlotte, it’s not like the nickname should be this surprising.” Bartley explained, she seemed confused by Willow’s confusion. “You may call me Carol if you’d like.”
“Nobody calls you that, Bartley. You are lucky I even allow you to call me Charlotte, do not test your luck calling me anything but my name.”
“Aw, but Charlie sounds so cute.” She could feel her left eye begin to twitch, not from anger but from pure exasperation that this woman was not listening to her. She shouldn’t be surprised, Bartley often did whatever she wanted, and it would take more than just words of annoyance for her to stop. “Though, it doesn’t suit you very well nowadays. You were a very cute child, befitting being called Charlie, but you are not very cute now, no - beautiful, yes, but not cute. Charlotte suits you more, though-”
“Though nothing, It’s Charlotte and that’s the end of it, or better yet, why don’t you just call me Willow like the rest, eh?” She understood, though she didn’t necessarily agree, why Bartley kept referring to her by the old name. She wasn’t too bothered by it, which was once again a surprise to her, but she decided not to give it much thought, just like how she decided to ignore how Bartley had called her beautiful - she was delusional, stuck in the past, that was all there was to it.
“Willow… no, I don’t think I will. Charlotte is a perfectly fine name. Elegant, and admirable, befitting your graceful self. Though it is your surname which I find some trouble with. I believe-”
“Yes, you believe a lot. My surname is perfectly fine as is, and I don’t suppose you were planning to tell me yours is above mine, just because you’ve got a few ships?”
“Perhaps if you stopped interrupting my every sentence, you’d know exactly what I think. I detest being interrupted, and normally I’d leave-”
“Well? What’s taking you so long, eh, Bartley? Nobody is-”
“God, woman, you are insufferable. Charlotte Bartley, that, to me, sounds much better than any other name combination, wouldn’t you agree, Charlie?”
Willow frowned at what she registered must have been an insult, because what else could it have been? Especially given Bartley’s giggles, how she called Willow by that nickname despite having just said she wouldn’t.
“Get out, if you’ve come here to mock me, then congratulations, you’ve done it, now leave.” That seemed to do it, it immediately shut her up and Bartley was looking at her like she was speaking another language, or perhaps sprouted a second head. It made Willow feel uncomfortable, as if she was missing something but she wasn’t sure what it was, as if her professor had called on her and she wasn’t sure what to say; this would cost her marks, and she would dread going home where she was just Charlotte, not mum’s Charlotte, and dreading going to train, where she was just a useless, good for nothing girl. All because of stupid Bartley, and this time it really hadn’t been her fault.
“Are you stu- fine, I’ll go. Have fun with your fence, Charlie. I’ll pick you up for the port in five days.” And with that, Bartley was gone. Willow tried very hard to look as tired and angry as she always did, she pretended she didn’t care, but she could not help but feel confused. What the hell had that conversation been about? Clearly, the two were engaged in different conversations, despite talking to each other as if they’d been on the same page. Bartley couldn’t outwit her, and she was too nice to say anything that could genuinely hurt Willow, but if she hadn’t meant it as an insult, then what was she talking about.
“You will do no such thing, and stop calling me that!”
Caroline did not respond, she could still hear her, she hadn’t walked too far away, but she chose to say nothing, as if her silence was a punishment and not a recompense. Willow was left in a state of confusion, and although she would not admit it, guilt. Bartley had been up to no good, of that much Willow was certain, there was no more to it than that, she told herself just so she could stop thinking about it, and finish oiling the fence. What a strange woman.
It took her long, an embarrassingly long time even, for the meaning of Caroline’s words to register in her brain. She couldn’t even claim there was a secret, second meaning to the things she said that Willow had reasonably missed - Bartley could not have been any more clear, Willow was just stupid, it seemed. It was humiliating, there was no other way to describe it, like tripping in front of the judges, but perhaps even more so. At least, Caroline seemed to have forgotten the interaction, as she did not bring up what turned out to be not that bizarre of a conversation again. How long had she been doing it, for how long had Caroline been flirting with her while she remained oblivious? Willow would have asked her if it wasn’t for the fact that a very naked Caroline was cuddled right next to her, and despite having laid together just a few hours prior, Willow felt too embarrassed to look at her.
What was she, twelve? This was ridiculous. Determined, she looked down towards her… lover? Was she her lover now? Willow looked down towards Bartley and continued to stare at her while the other woman appeared to sleep. Coming to Australia for the second time was both a surprise and at the same time, not surprising at all - she was the sun, Willow reminded herself, she would rise again, she was meant to shine above everything. Still, Willow would not pretend not to be at least a little shocked that despite everything, she was here once more. If she was the rising sun, what of Bartley? Coach Raven thought of the night as eternal, belittling the sun that stood next to her in favor of Bartley - she must be the moon then, the light during Willow’s absence. Not as bright as the sun, certainly not, but she held her own allure, she must have, because Willow found herself unable to look away.
“I would have thought, after what happened a few hours ago, you’d be too exhausted to think as deeply as you are now, Charlotte.” Caroline looked up with doe-like eyes, they stared at Willow like they always had, so full of adoration, as if staring at the very thing Willow claimed herself to be. “What is it?”
“So many assumptions, I’m not tired at all, Bartley.” Willow lied as easily as she breathed. Caroline kept caressing her abdomen, so slowly and gently that it almost seemed like she wasn’t moving at all, and instead, the rocking of the ship was the one directing her hand; when she touched right under her left breast, Willow took a sharp intake of breath, breathless and restless all of a sudden. “I was thinking of you.”
“Oh, Really? What of? About how wonderful my ‘performance’ was? Or perhaps about our real match on the floor? Try not to think about winning silver too much-”
“As if.”
“I’m joking, Charlie, but really, try not to think about the floor too much, not right now at least.” There it was again, Willow sighed and Caroline used the opportunity to trace the lines of her ribs, too pronounced for comfort, but Caroline had made no comment of it thus far. Charlotte was fine, Caroline made it sound bearable, but Charlie was different - hadn’t she told Willow that the nickname didn’t suit her anymore? Why did she insist, regardless of all the reason and logic she herself had created?
“Don’t call me that,” Willow took hold of Caroline’s hand, and almost immediately found herself missing their warmth and the slight ticklish feeling that both soothed and prevented her from falling asleep. She must have sounded serious enough because Caroline nodded against the crook of her neck.
“We’ll see, my love, we’ll see.”
“Huh? What did you call me just now?”
“My love?” Caroline looked up, the look of confusion mirroring Willow’s own. “Do you have a problem with that one, too? I could call you something else If you’d prefer.”
“No, I just-”
“My heart, love of my life, the apple of my eye, sweetie, darling, honey, sunshine, pumpk-”
“Enough, the first one was fine, no need to continue,” Willow mumbled, it had become hard to think, harder than it had been just a moment before. Sleeping together meant nothing, or at least it didn’t have to mean anything, but Caroline clearly thought it did, she would not have referred to Willow like that if nothing had changed between them, if they were still just Charlotte and Bartley. The idea of a relationship was not something Willow had ever thought about, she’d been too busy training as a child and later as a teen to care about kissing and courting, not to mention her dedication to the sport had cost her all her friends. After the accident, Willow had become a recluse, hiding in her room and interacting with no other soul - ten years later, Bartley was still there, as she’d always been even though everyone else had abandoned her, even when Willow had told her to fuck off every time she saw her. “What do you want?”
“What do I want? Hmm… Well, my love is a bit long, I prefer one-word endearments, like darling, or dear.”
Was it even worth it to ask? Caroline was there, had always been there, and will always be, as sure as the sun would rise again in the morning, the moon would always illuminate the night sky. After ten years of constant nighttime, Caroline seemed more than content to simply watch the sun rise once more, to occupy the same sky, and now, to eclipse and become one. This woman had cost Willow her fair share of embarrassment, and she was not planning on becoming her laughing stock once more - and despite what her brain wanted her to believe, Willow knew that Caroline Bartley was not cruel at all, but she would surely laugh at her if she saw Willow stumble over her words trying to ask the woman who had patiently waited for her for a decade if she actually wanted her.
“Bartley works just fine, I think.” Willow finally said.
“I disagree. But, I have many things to call you, sweetheart, maybe you’d pick up one that you’d like for me.”
“Absolutely not, and don’t you dare, Bartley, Charlotte is already a stretch, I don’t want anyone hearing you call me anything but my name.”
“Oh, but in private it’s fine, right, my strawberry cheesecake?”
How she wished she could tell Caroline to fuck off once again, like she’d done when they were younger even on the downside that her mother would be angry at her. Because Australia would come and go, and they’d eventually return to London, where Flutterpage was waiting for her to return. Bartley would be a bad influence on her, the girl’s fear-based respect for Willow was already waning, and if she heard Caroline refer to her like this, the ankle-biter would surely follow in the white swan’s footsteps. What would it even be? Knowing the lass, it would be something far more ridiculous than Willow would be able to conjure in her mind. But it couldn’t be that bad, right? She was the fog hag, and even if her reputation had improved after she’d gotten rid of the fog, nobody would ever believe that a woman such as her, haunted and mysterious, was called names like these by the dumb white swan or the buzzie that for some reason stuck around.
“Do not let me hear you say a word of this to anyone, Bar- Carol, did you hear me?”
Caroline smiled against her neck, and in a moment she’d somehow managed to entangle herself all around Willow’s tall frame, like a panda trying to climb up a tree. “We’ll see, pumpkin pie, though you might want to check on Liberti, the name Charlie was not my idea - though, I guess you were right when you called me a plagiarist.”
There was no greater blessing for the child than the sea that separated the two of them as of now. Willow would have thrown her out the window like she’d done many times before, only now the wind had nowhere to lead her but to shark-infested waters below. When and why had she lost all her respect for Willow? Bartley was as bad an influence on Flutterpage as the child was on the dumb blonde she found herself involved with. But Charlie wasn’t too bad, it was certainly better than all the other names Willow had imagined being called by the child, once she heard of Caroline being ridiculous. The occasional slip would be fine, Willow decided, so as long as she was Miss Willow above all else.
“That’s fine, and also you are.”
“Oh, so she can call you Charlie but I can’t? My Charlotte, my love-”
“Just go to sleep, Caroline, you were right, you exhausted me, and I will be hearing no more of this for the rest of the night.”
Just to make her point go across, Willow closed her eyes, initially she had no intention of actually falling asleep, much less when so much had happened in so little time and so few words, so many things she needed to reflect on. But Caroline laying on top of her, now once again caressing her stomach, made the task of staying awake more than difficult. It was the moon’s time to shine, and Willow allowed her the chance, but come morning, Caroline would come to regret this, Willow would try her best to make it so, at least.
“Good night, my love,” Caroline said against her neck, and she more so felt than heard Willow’s response, quiet and almost shy.
“Go to sleep, Bartley, dear.”