Warnings: complete lack of beta and proofreading of any kind, and Adetta actually acting like a fucntional-ish adult.

The song of the day is Vienna Teng - Lullaby For A Stormy Night

 

[Regalis: in search of Peace and Quiet!]

•chapter one•

Girl gets a stepbrother. Girl goes to the garden. Girl experiences a thunderstorm.

•••

Elijah is a miserable little thing. Shorter than her, with sunken cheeks and haunted eyes—definitely long ways from the determined but kind youth he was in the game. He must have eaten very little in the past week, and Adetta, at least partly, understood why.

She doesn’t say anything as her father introduced him to the servants and her mother, because she rarely spoke unprompted. She wonders if it counted as selective muteness already. Elijah doesn’t seem too keen on speaking either, very much trying not to cry. His eyes are glossy.

Adetta narrows her eyes, thinking. She tries to remember what his hobbies were—each capture target had listed three most favorite things for them to do on their wiki pages, and she read them all, of course, out of sheer boredom if anything else. Now, however, she is straining to remember. If she isn’t wrong, Elijah likes to bake, flower-pressing and scrapbooking. Not really anything she could use without seeming creepy-

She’d just take him into the gardens. That should work. It was summer—with abundance of summer storms and summer flowers and the annoying sun.

With that in mind, she walks over to Elijah who was making himself look smaller under everyone’s pitying gazes. They must be annoying. The boy flinches with her approach, looking at her face, but she doesn’t blame him—her default face switches between completely emotionless, creepy doll and a lazy ‘I’m-so-done-with-everything’ grimace. Right now, it was the creepy doll. It kept maids at bay.

“Want to go to the garden with me?” she asks and, with a little delay, he nods timidly, taking her extended hand. Adetta didn’t quite remember how Adelia’s first interaction with Elijah was supposed to go, but she is pretty sure there was a tantrum involved. The villainess made sure to show him that he was not wanted, but for Adetta, that would prove rather counterproductive. She wanted an amicable relationship with Elijah, maybe even a friendly one—anything that would lead him to thinking twice about murdering it, or lead him away from the idea completely.

Dragging him out to pick flowers, hand in hand and maybe a bit too solemn, is as good a start as any. Baby steps, one at a time, and she would have an amicable relationship with him before she knew. Probably.

“Be careful in the sun!” Penelope calls as Adetta drags Elijah away and out, but otherwise lets them go alone. Adetta never really needed supervision, and her father probably understood what she was trying to do.

♦►☼◄♦

The Bellvilles were filthy rich. Like, the-king-sometimes-borrows-money-from-us rich, and Adetta has lived in this reality for almost eight years now, and it’s something she’s used to, something normal, and yet it still startles her at times, when she forgets herself and is, once more, Mary, 27, frugal and living in her small flat all by herself. And then she goes somewhere, sees something that’s pretty much an ostentatious display of wealth—like the lush, ridiculous, sprawling gardens surrounding the mansion for example—and her mind king of resets, and she remembers that this is her normal now.

Walking through the gardens, beautiful and well-kept and full of flowers, like those she remembers from the past-memory-dreams that also make her Mary, those were rare, and nobody really owned them, and one had to pay to visit most of the time. These were hers to wander around as she pleased, surrounded by dahlias and marigolds and daisies and many, many other flowers she didn’t know names of. The sunflowers, taller than her, taller than her father even and the whimsical plumerias.

She kind of expected fairies to jump out of the bushes, since this world had magic and all.

“We have a lot of flowers,” she says eventually, breaking the silence and maybe startling Elijah a bit. But he was enjoying the scenery. “I can’t even name most of them. Do you like flowers?”

“Yes,” he says timidly. “My mother really loved them, too. It- It reminds me of her.”

“That’s good,” she tells him, crouching down to pick a slower that looks like a pink pom-pom on a green stick. She doesn’t know its name. “I don’t even know what these are, just that they look nice in flower crowns.”

“These are alliums, I think,” Elijah supplies, and somehow, finally, some shred of light returns to his eyes. It’s small, but it’s significand for the now, and Adetta will take it.

“Alliums, huh,” she says and turns towards the boy. She then holds the pom-pom flower by the very bottom of its stem, and boinks the flower on his nose. He startles.

Just in case someone thought she wasn’t eccentric enough. She was wavering between the creepy horror doll and the worry-free hippie in disposition, sometimes.

“There are a lot of sad memories with you now,” she tells Elijah seriously. “Let’s go and make some happier ones.”

“How?” he asks, and his eyes gloss over.

“We can go make flower-crowns, and you can teach me their names. And before that, we can sit on a bench, and you can cry into my shoulder for an hour. You look like you could use a good cry.”

“But I’m a boy, boys don’t cry-“

“Bullshit,” Adetta says, crude and common and not at all anything an archduke’s daughter should even know, let alone say, and Elijah startles again. He’s very much like a rabbit to her. “If you’re sad, you’re supposed to cry it out. It won’t make all the sad go away, but it will help. You know, like you have to let the puss and infected blood out of the wound for it to start healing? That’s what crying is. If you don’t cry, it will only fester and get worse.”

Elijah looks at her as if she suddenly told him that up is down and down is up and that there were aliens about, but then his face crumbles and so does his composure, and suddenly he’s throwing himself at her and wailing, a pitiful, prolonged, heart-wrenching soul-

He sounds exactly like a boy who lost his parents a week ago.

Adetta wraps her arms around him as they slide and sit on the pavement between the flowers, and she doesn’t care about the dress—she never did before and she certainly won’t now, too busy gently rocking her cousin/relative/brother/whatever Elijah was supposed to be, and whispering soft reassurances that it’s okay to cry, that he should let it all out, that she’s here for him-

That she means it surprises even her.

It’s a start of… Something, definitely. She hopes it’s something good.

(This scene happened once or a countless times already, in a future that will never be where a young man who was once a boy who lost his parents cried his heart out before the brave heroine, who kept whispering soft reassurances into his ear. It took a lot of effort and trust, because the young man was too afraid to open up. He was no longer the young boy who desperately yearned for someone, anyone to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay.)

♦►☼◄♦

After all is said and done, and the left sleeve of Adetta’s dress is soaked with tears, it’s as if a huge weight was lifted from Elijah’s shoulders, almost physically. He stands a little taller, spine a little straighter, and the light in his eyes is nowhere near as lively as it perhaps should be, but it’s no longer non-existent. The boy now also sports a tiny, kind-of-sad, kind-of-happy smile.

“Better?” Adetta asks. She won’t ask if he’s okay, because he obviously isn’t, but he looks a bit more like a functioning human person now, at least. It’s progress.

“I- I think so,” Elijah answers, kind-of uncertain but also kind-of sure.

“Do you want to go get something to drink?” she asks. It’s hot outside, over thirty Celsius probably, and they are tiny children and should keep hydrated, and he just finished crying. He nods, wiping his face with the gem of his shirt, and lets Adetta grab his wrist and drag him back towards the house.

A young lady of her standing shouldn’t even know where the kitchen was, probably. That was what maids said, anyway, commenting one of her many peculiarities. But Adetta not only knew where kitchen was, she was also aware of the locations of most utensils and was perfectly capable of making some simple sandwiches and grabbing the juice. Yes, she needed to climb over the counters and tables to reach things, and support herself with wind magic, but it was easy enough.

Elijah looked at her as if she just showed him how to transmute dirt into gold, despite the fact that all she did was made a sandwich for them. Little noble boy marveling at how a little noble girl could even begin to be proficient with things that are actually useful at life. It made her oddly smug, despite the fact that it was something that twenty-seven-year-old Mary would throw together when she had maybe ten minutes left to leave and it really, really wasn’t anything special. But for a little boy who knew nothing about the real world it probably was.

They go out then, sneaking out and giggling like children, paper-wrapped sandwiches in hand, avoiding the housekeep. It’s Adetta’s idea, and it’s stupid, but for a moment Elijah looked like an actual child having fun. They ran back out to the gardens, picked a whole armful of flowers, and then Adetta taught him how to make flower crowns for whole half a day. By the end of the day, they had enough flower crowns for most of the household, and the gardener probably hated them, regardless of the fact that most of the flowers they used were the wild and untended, from the outskirts.

Adetta made a game out of it later—Elijah would carry the crowns, and she would try to throw them, with help of her magic, so that they would land on people’s heads. Elijah laughed every time she startled someone, but soon enough, everyone they came across had a flower crown on and Elijah looked almost happy.

So of course all of Adetta’s efforts go crashing down in flames when the night falls.

♦►☼◄♦

She is startled awake when a lightning strikes somewhere uncomfortably close, painting her room an eerie, blue light just as she opens her eyes, shaken back into the world of consciousness by a deafening thunderclap. It is widely known that Adetta is a reserved, quiet child, wildly uncomfortable with loud sounds and crowds. Especially unexpected loud noises.

Therefore, Adetta obviously hated storms. Now, don’t get her wrong, she actually enjoys the pitter-patter of the raindrops and the howling wind—it’s just the lightning, which comes too sudden and too unexpected for her to cover her ears—that she hates with the same burning passion as she hates someone talking too loud next to her or, worse, screaming. But she can’t tell the storm to shut the hell up, now can she?

The lightning strikes again, and the thunderclap follows nearly instantly, signifying just how uncomfortably close it struck, and Adetta whines, failing to cover her ears in time. She can feel a migraine starting. She doesn’t remember ever reading about Adelia having this problem of sound sensitivity, but she remembers that as Mary, she had the very same issue. It went away with age to the point even living in the noisy, bright, crowded city wasn’t that big of a problem, but right now, she hated everything-

Another lightning, another thunder, and she growled, fighting an urge to throw something. It wouldn’t do her any good anyway, and she didn’t have many throwable things in her room anyway—well, she did have a lot of generally throwable things, but nothing she would actually want to fling anywhere, maybe save the porcelain vase on her nightstand to see it shatter against the wall. Her room in general was small for a member of the house, but that was her choice. As someone adamant on keeping her room tidy by herself, she limited the space to half of the usual, and further made it smaller with drawers and bookshelves. It helped her now, a relative safe bubble that a room twice or thrice the size would not provide.

Rosaria was safe and tucked away in their parents room, because she was still a baby. Adetta could deal with it on her own. Everything was fine-

Another lightning. Another thunderclap.

Adetta’s eyes widened, and she sprung from her bed, bare feet thudding onto the carpeted floor before the sheets even settled, and she bolted out of the door, heart pounding blood through her ears.

She forgot, gods, she forgot, why did she forget-?!

Third door down the southern corridor, third door down the southern corridor, the children guestroom, quick-

The hallways were dark, laden with shadows and sounds of wind howling inside that would scare any child, and Adetta didn’t care. She found the door, big and oaken and painted to shine like all the others. She knocked, not banging but not rapping on the wood either, even if she knew that she probably wasn’t heard.

“Elijah, it’s me, Adelia. I’m coming in!” she said, and just after she did, another lightning, and another barely-belated thunderclap. There was a muffled shriek from inside the room, but she still heard it. It was a gut-wrenching sound, so she pushed the door open and entered the room. It was dark and big, in the southern wing with a whole balcony on its own. The raindrops were hitting the glass, and the wind kept rattling the panes.

The bed was messed up, but empty.

“Elijah?” she calls. “Elijah, it’s okay, I’m here, you can come out now!” she said, softly but loud enough to cut above the rain. No answer, just quiet sobs from somewhere within the room.

“Elijah?” she tries again, looking around. It was dark, the only light would be provided by a lightning, but Adetta honestly wished the one form a while ago was the last one, hopefully for the whole storm. She started looking around, focusing on the sobs to get closer to the source. She found him eventually, huddled in the corner farthest from the window, lodged between a drawer and a wall and curled into a ball, tiny body wracked with sobs.

“Elijah?” she says, much softer than before, and he raised his head to look at her. Even in the dark she could see how red his eyes were. “Can you come here? It will be fine, I promise, just- Just come to me, okay?”

He sniffed, nodding gently, and started to move slowly-

Another lightning, another thunderclap. Elijah shrieked in pure, primal terror and collided with Adetta, clinging to her as if she were a lifeline. She only brought her arms up and held him, kneeling on the floor like that for the second time that day.

“Mother, father…” Elijah whines into her shoulder, as she rubbed circles on his back, humming softly. She couldn’t really do much other than be there for him at the moment, with the severe thunderstorm serving as nothing but a reminder of a week ago, when his parents died during and due to a weather much the same.

“Come on,” she says, before another lightning can surprise them. “Let’s go to my room—it’s in the eastern wing, and it’s smaller. It’s better there, okay?”

“Don’t let go,” Elijah whines, tightening his grip. Adetta huffs.

“Okay- Okay. Uh- How to get you- Okay, listen, I need you to wrap your legs around me.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll carry you, so wrap your legs around me. Okay?”

“O-okay. Okay.”

He does just that, and Adetta manages to stand up from her kneeling position with the help of her wind magic, carrying a boy only barely shorter and lighter than her through the dark. Another lightning surprise them just after she managed to gently kick the door to Elijah’s guestroom closed, and it sends them both into a wall. Elijah, because it’s lightning, and Adetta, because of Elijah and the sound both. She just clenches her teeth, gets her bearings together and moves, pushed forward mostly by stubborn determination. Elijah is heavy for her eight-year-old body, and he’s shaking and prone to jumps exactly when and because of what makes her the weakest in the situation.

The situation is really not ideal, but she makes it, somehow, the door to her room still open after she hurried out. She closes it after she’s back inside, and heads to bed, sitting Elijah on the matters.

“You have to let me go for a moment, okay?” she tells him. “So that we can both get on the bed.”

He shivers, only pressing himself more to her. Adetta takes a breath, rubbing soothing circles on his back.

“It’ alright, I’m right here. I just need to get on the bed, too, okay? It’ll just take few seconds, I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

“You aren’t?” he asks, voice tiny and wet with tears. “Like mother- a-and father-“

“No, Eli,” she hums softly. “I’m not going anywhere. Not now, not ever. But I’d like to be on the bed.”

“O-okay. I- Okay,” he sniffs, and it takes him a while, but he manages to make himself let go and scoot so that Adetta can climb up. The bed is big, easily able to fit three adults comfortably, so two small children sink in the mattresses and pillows. Adetta moves them both to the head of the bed, so that they can lay on the pillows, and she can pull the comforter over them both, and Elijah latches right back onto her the second they’re under covers. He’s still shaking like a leaf, but now she can at least manoeuvre them so that they’re both comfortable.

“I hate storms, too,” she says conversationally. “They’re loud and sudden.”

Elijah doesn’t answer, too busy muffling his sobs with the sleeve of her nightgown, but he listens, she knows that much. She moves, kissing the top of his head and brings her free hand to thread through his hair. It’s very soft, and smells kind-of like the sea. She starts humming softly, and then, quietly, she sings to him a lullaby she once memorized.

(Mary never had anyone sing her to sleep. Adetta didn’t need anyone to sing her to sleep.

Elijah was scared and shivering by her side.)

Little child, be not afraid
Though rain pounds harshly against the glass
Like an unwanted stranger, there is no danger
I am here tonight

Little child, be not afraid
Though thunder explodes and lightning flash
Illuminates your tear-stained face
I am here tonight

And someday you'll know
That nature is so
The same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
On forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you'll see
In the morning

She sang, and kept singing, and Elijah’s sobs slowly lessened, and then subsided. When the next lightning came, he startled and hugged her tighter, but held much better than before.

For you know, once even I was a
Little child, and I was afraid
But a gentle someone always came
To dry all my tears, trade sweet sleep for fears
And to give a kiss goodnight

Well now I am grown
And these years have shown
That rain's a part of how life goes
But it's dark and it's late
So I'll hold you and wait
'Til your frightened eyes do close

And I hope that you'll know
That nature is so
The same rain that draws you near me
Falls on rivers and land
On forests and sand
Makes the beautiful world that you'll see
In the morning

Everything's fine in the morning
The rain'll be gone in the morning
But I'll still be here in the morning

The storm subsides eventually, the lightning, the wind, the rain, and the two children fall asleep in the quiet comfort of refreshed summer world, close together and safe.

It’s like a beginning.