A girl in the world barking up the wrong tree, a creature conditioned to employ matrimony

[motherspider.livejournal.com]

*Let it never be said that Esmerelda Rosier does not know how to throw a wedding. With a month to arrange everything, she swept her schedule clean, let the business languish, and began placing orders almost as soon as Evan and his bride-to-be left the estate. Her wandwork is not quite as deft as it once was, but she refuses to see a healer, and she doesn’t need wandwork to tell the florist that the roses were to be red, true red, not this flaccid pink, and to send a Howler to the baker demanding why the red velvet cake tasted like sweetened ashes, and to harangue the seamstress why the bride had not been even scheduled for her third fitting of the white dress Esmerelda had negotiated her into, as clearly the first two fittings had failed to demonstrate to her that everything needed to be taken in at the waist. Whatever the guests of this affair might think or gossip about, they’ll get no bump in Amrita’s abdomen to prove it.

She can hear Evan pacing outside the dressing room, and has to go out to tell him--repeatedly--that he cannot see her before she walks down the aisle and he should go kill the squirrels outside or something, anything to get him out of the way so she can personally finish buttoning the thousand and one buttons that go up the back of the dress. But the last time she lectures him on this, he catches a glimpse of the bride in the mirror over her shoulder anyway and grins.

“You’re beautiful,” he says over Esmerelda’s shoulder.

“Out, it’s bad luck,” the bride orders, and then, and only then, does he obey.

When she finally takes her seat in the very front of the chapel, Esmerelda’s chin is high but she clutches Dearborn’s hand fiercely. The ceremony begins, and it’s finally all out of her hands.

The door to the chapel opens and the light is blinding even though the forecast predicted rain over the reception, and there she is, shimmering like a vision, painted with the charmed designs of her culture on her hands, wearing enough skirts and petticoats and undergarments that Esmerelda had to resist the urge to catalogue them individually in a spreadsheet. Everyone turns to watch the bride proceed but Esmerelda’s gaze sweeps the crowd and then, finally, lands where she knew it would: on Evan.

He is standing there, hands held before him, frozen in the process of being wrung. His knuckles are white. There’s a tiny bit of hair sticking up at the back of his head, the part she always charmed firmly down when he was as boy, and suddenly her vision goes blurry. She looks up and blinks once, twice, pulls out the bright red handkerchief out of her bright red handbag sitting on her bright red skirts. It is acceptable to cry, she supposes, but she doesn’t want to. Not for this, the thing he manipulated her into doing, this ruinous match. But the look on his face--

When Evan was five, she took him to the hall that holds the Rosier family tree. She pointed to herself and Dearborn on the tree, how other families intertwined, and how he, someday, would marry someone who also had a tree like this one and have children, and when he did, the tapestry would grow further up because it had been enchanted very long ago to do so. All this was his, and he belonged to it as much as it belonged to him. He gave the whole thing a wide, encompassing look, finally resting his little palm next to his own name as if to cover a hole, and then turned to her and asked, “Why isn’t she here already?”

And Esmerelda smiled, and told him that she would come along in due course, that he might meet her on his own or they might introduce her to him, but what was most important was the fact that she would become family, and that he should care for her as well as he cared for her or Dearborn. That is what made her worth putting up on the tree.

Looking at him now, watching this woman come up the aisle, there is so much of that boy in him that, for the first time in all of this, Esmerelda is willing to allow that perhaps it will not all end in calamity. Perhaps they will grow old and happy together as she and Dearborn have, and the grandchildren birthed from surrogates will still be grandchildren. Perhaps they will love each other until they both rot.

The ceremony is beautiful, and Amrita is radiant, and they don’t have eyes for anyone but each other, and when they kiss at the very end, it is a brazen, full kiss, and when he finally pulls away, his mouth is smudged with her lipstick. He ducks his head to murmur something into her ear as the audience rises to its feet, and she laughs and runs her thumb over his bottom lip to try to rub off the lipstick, and they leave the church together, arm in arm, so boldly and arrogantly in love that even Walburga can barely muster a scandalized little sigh.*

Comments

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

*Bellatrix loves weddings. Not what one might expect, considering her own less-than-fairytale marriage, her naked contempt for her husband and most men; in truth there are probably expensive cauldrons that are more romantic than she is. Still, something about the ceremonial pomp of everything, the white dress, the promising to love-and-honor. . . she may have no patience for finer feelings but duty to family and noble tradition resonate with her, deeply. It was that, more than any particular liking for any of the individuals involved, that had her sniffling through the ceremony, weeping, even, and that sentimentality lingered long enough for her to take a turn around the dance floor with Rodolphus after only minimal coaxing.

But now he's off making nice with the Higgses and she knows herself better than to even try, so she's strolling the reception with champagne flute firmly in hand, her tears long since wiped away, looking for someone to bother. And that someone appears, in the green-robed guise of someone on the bride's side, and she quickens her pace. Her walk doesn't betray her intoxication in the slightest--tipsy and in high heels is practically her default state--but her crooked smile does, as she plunks down next to Jyoti.*

Lovely wedding.

I assume you're with the bride.

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

*Parvati has chosen this moment to squirm out of Jyoti's arms and onto the ground. She toddles over to the new woman, giggling wildly at her new freedom.

Juggling a bored, hungry, and fretful Padma, Jyoti looks the woman over. Her comment doesn't particularly reek of racism, and neither does her demeanor. And after all, there are only seven total brown people present.*

Yes. And you are with the groom?

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

Cousin. I'm Bellatrix--

*But then the little thing closes the distance and is clutching at her skirts and her smile becomes plastic, brittle. The twin urges to kick it away and to pick it up and caress it are strong, so compelling and utterly at odds with one another that she only sits there, stiffly. The little girl takes fistfuls of black silk and mouths them and Bellatrix only watches as if it's happening to someone else's robes, slack-faced and unmoving as a marble statue.*

Er.

They're lovely.

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

Parvati.

*It's a sharp but calm warning - Parvati may be the bolder twin, but she listens better than Padma. She stops gumming the skirt, but doesn't let go of Bellatrix.

There's an assumption that people on polar ends of the money spectrum are raised in a house without love - that the extremely poor cannot afford it and that the indulgently rich cannot give it. For the Patils, Jyoti believes it is true, and it is not a stretch for her to imagine that this Bellatrix has not had much love in her home life.

She decides against pulling Parvati back to her, to allow Bellatrix (who is clearly not a mother) a chance to experience something maternal. Besides, Padma is fussing and taking up all her energy.*

Sorry, they're teething. You can hold her, if you like.

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

I'm-

All right.

*And before Bellatrix even rightly knows how this has happened from coming over here to bother this woman, she's leaning over to hoist the little girl up into her arms. She's done it before, after all, with Draco and others, so it's not that alien to her. And she has had quite a bit of champagne, and even laid her head on Roddy's shoulder, if only briefly--and the girl's face is pleasing, and she has a nice clean-baby sort of smell about her, none of that dreadful curry masala nonsense or whatever it is. Bella's grin widens, her voice draws out into a coo, and she touches a manicured fingertip to Parvati's little nose.*

--and aren't you just a pwecious little thing?

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

*Jyoti smiles. Bellatrix isn't so bad at playing maternal.*

Her name is Parvati, this is Padma.

*She turns her other daughter around to face Bellatrix. She looks as though she might burst into tears at any moment - something Jyoti is praying against, because wiping the thick lines of kohl around her eyes would take ages.*

And I'm Jyoti.

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*Evan may have been in love with Bellatrix seven years ago, but he's got no illusions about what she is. And, as little as he cares for the entire rude Patil clan, Evan sights Bellatrix picking up the baby and all he can think of is the things he knows she's done--in fact, things he's watched her do--to children that size, and a bizarre paternal instinct rears its head. He hustles over as fast as he decorously can and arrives just as Jyoti introduces himself, a brittle smile pasted to his face.*

Bellatrix, I see you're meeting my new nieces--

[fatalfrenzy.livejournal.com]

--oh thank God--

Evan! Jagrati and I were just-- here you are, darling--

*The charm of the little painted child has evaporated almost instantly, and it's immediately and with obvious relief that she shoves the thing off on the bride, who's arrived only moments after Evan in a swirl of ivory skirts--and how precious, that they'd gone with white after all.*

--just having a chat. You look well.

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

*Jyoti practically jumps up at Evan's arrival, but Padma stops her. Instead she can only smile up at her new in-law, fixing it as she listens to Bellatrix butcher her name. But when Amrita comes, Jyoti quickly sorts Padma out and stands.

Of the people in the conversation, Bellatrix is probably the only one unaware of what Amrita is, and as she flippantly hands off Jyoti's daughter to a werewolf, Jyoti's stomach plummets. She believes that Amrita isn't dangerous now, but she knows Rajiv will not be comfortable with her holding her daughter. And her promise to bite everyone in the family thunders through her.

But this is her wedding, and they can worry about that later. Rearranging Padma, she calms herself and opens up again.*

If I may, this wedding is beautiful, congratulations.

[cellarandmoon.livejournal.com]

I--

*And after all that--all that sturm and drang and shame and worry over the thing--the baby is thrust unceremoniously into her arms, and Amrita takes one shallow, gasping, corseted breath and looks completely stricken for a moment. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out, and as she looks into the face that's laughed at her from a little photo for months, there's a marked resemblance between them: the makeup on each is in imminent danger.

She speaks to Jyoti, but doesn't quite meet her eyes.*

Parvati?

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

*Her reaction completely endears Amrita to Jyoti, for all Rajiv's recent talk about her cruel grin and exploiting India. Jyoti crosses over to her, thinking their her children too, and she wants them to know their aunt.*

Yes, and this is Padma.

*Padma's fussing has stopped now. Not because her hunger has disappeared, but because of all the attention - both the girls thrive on it. She isn't quite smiling, but she has one finger in her mouth, clearly trying to be cute for the new people.

Jyoti holds her out.*

Would you like -

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

I can take her.

*Evan takes the baby carefully from Jyoti, his brittle smile gone soft as he watches his new wife hold the other.*

Hello there. Aren't you just sweet enough to eat?

[bhaiji.livejournal.com]

*Rajiv has no idea what he is going to do or say until he is directly in front of Rosier, his hand holding his wand inside his pocket.*

Give me my daughter, Rosier.

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

*Isn't that an interesting turnabout? Evan had come over to defend the children against Bellatrix's mishandling and now Rajiv is here and all tense, look at his jaw twitching, and is he really holding his wand in his pocket? How rude. As if Evan would spill blood at his own wedding. As if Evan would attack his adorable new nieces. Ridiculous.*

Which one of us, Rajiv? There are two Rosiers here just now.

[bhaiji.livejournal.com]

*At the moment, Rajiv could care less about Amrita - Rajiv had prepared himself for this day, when Jyoti would probably let her hold his girls, even if he disagrees.*

You. Evan Cygnus Rosier.

*He recites the name from that gaudy invitation to this opulent production, his lip curling.*

[dapperdeath.livejournal.com]

She seems to be happy enough.

*And she is, making little tired smacking motions with her mouth, but it won't do to make a scene at his own wedding, no matter how much he would like to put this man in his proper place. He carefully transfers the child to her fathers waiting arms, but he has to step closer to Rajiv to do it, and what he says next is said quietly--out of Bella's earshot, at least, if not Amrita's.*

There you are. No need to be rude about it.

[bhaiji.livejournal.com]

*There's no obvious injury to Padma, and once Rajiv is certain of that, he hands her to Jyoti.

He turns to Amrita now.*

I need to talk to you.

[cellarandmoon.livejournal.com]

All right.

*She's passing off Parvati now, too, almost too rapidly, and she's wearing a smile that's spread too thin to cover the guilt and dismay at that entire exchange, at Rajiv's reaction. But it's mostly guilt, and it's that more than anything else that keeps her eyes lowered, that has her obeying her brother instead of snapping at him. She allows him to lead her away and it's only once they're at a polite distance that she shoots him a pointed, wounded look.*

And what was that about.

[bhaiji.livejournal.com]

*Suddenly it feels like the world is stuck in two moments - the night that Rajiv could not save his sister and the night when he ran away from her. He doesn't want to make her sad, to hurt her again - but this madachudh could do so much worse.*

Amrita, he's dangerous. He's a goonda.

[cellarandmoon.livejournal.com]

Don't be vulgar.

I wish you wouldn't insist on making a scene. It was going very well.

*The words are clipped enough, but there's hurt in her eyes, and she makes a swift gesture with her red-tipped fingers as if to encompass them and the entire reception, the extensive grounds, the many guests.*

All of it.

[bhaiji.livejournal.com]

*"Don't be vulgar."

The words echo in his head, forcing him to pick them apart. What sort of reaction is that? Who could say that? Why would anyone say that to an accusation about their loved one being dangerous?

...unless she already knows.*

You know?

*Rajiv takes a step backward. The pomp and circumstance mean nothing to him, he'll never move in this circle again - all he can think is that his sister knows what she is marrying and only cares about how it looks.*

You already know? Amrita...

[cellarandmoon.livejournal.com]

*But then she understands what he's getting at and her face hardens as guilt turns into something else. So it must be that, then, the business with the Cabinets. That is what has him so aghast. She almost laughs.*

And I'm glad he did. You know what they think of me, what they say. Someone's defending my honor.

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

*Now juggling two babies and a husband who is quietly seething, Jyoti has no idea what to do. Rajiv had clearly talked to his parents, but she has no idea what was said - other than Rosier took a knife to them.

Feeling unsettled in the knowledge that she let her daughter be cuddled by someone who could do that to the elderly, Jyoti makes some excuse and moves away from Evan and Bellatrix.

She watches Rajiv and Amrita walking away, then looks over to the Patils. After all this time, she believes she can finally meet them. It's as though she's been standing in a door for years, and only now can she take the first step in - but what would she say?

Well, nothing better than the obvious...*

Namashkar.

[pricklypatils.livejournal.com]

*Well, there it is, inevitable and somehow worse than anything else that's happened here today. Each of them returns the gesture, Baldev scarcely moving his hands, and a long silence falls between them. As ever, it's Aarshati who breaks it.*

You must be Jyoti.

*Not that either of them shared the nastier prejudices and superstitions of what they very urbanely thought of as 'the provincials'; no, this goes deeper than that, worse by far than anything their daughter has done. The woman in front of them represents the rejection of them by their only son. It was the way of things: who, after all, had known him better than his parents? Who else could be trusted with finding him a bride? She and the children are living reminders of the choice he made to set aside loyalty to the family, to society, to the way of the world--and choose instead loyalty only to his own selfishness.

And now Aarshati can't help searching her face and form, blatantly, but with more bewilderment then anything else: what about her was so perfect, so irresistible, that it was worth turning his back on everything they'd raised him to respect? Worth living without family, as no one should live?

But she is only reasonably pretty, only smiling, neither a temptress nor a goddess nor a grinning demon. The children are unobjectionable. There is nothing to say, no words to smooth any of this into something acceptable, so Aarshati, inevitably, reaches for a polite inanity and a complete lie.*

It's so nice to meet you.

[camphorflame.livejournal.com]

*Jyoti has not been so acutely aware of her caste since her first Bodleian functions with the British Wizard Brahmin. There's really nothing she can do or say about it, she's accepted her rank will always be lower with other desi. Armed with the thick skin that twenty-nine years of living in a Scheduled Caste gave her, she continues.*

And you, sasur, saas.

*Lowering the girls to the ground so that they cling to her sari skirt, Jyoti tries a soft smile.*

This is Padma, and this is Parvati.