Olive
Back in Black
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2014
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A note from the author:
I never thought that I'd actually get to this point, and in fact I'm still not there all the way yet, but after nearly four years of development, several abandonments, and five total rewrites, I just felt like today was the day to finally commit to publishing this story, less I lose my nerve and decide to wait another year.
I will only provide the note that, while I wrote this story explicitly so that no prior viewing of the Kalos Saga of the anime was necessary, you may nevertheless find it useful to know that this story is set amidst the backdrop of the Pokémon Showcase circuit.
Thus ladies and gentlemen, I present to the Writers' Workshop and to the world...
***
I never thought that I'd actually get to this point, and in fact I'm still not there all the way yet, but after nearly four years of development, several abandonments, and five total rewrites, I just felt like today was the day to finally commit to publishing this story, less I lose my nerve and decide to wait another year.
I will only provide the note that, while I wrote this story explicitly so that no prior viewing of the Kalos Saga of the anime was necessary, you may nevertheless find it useful to know that this story is set amidst the backdrop of the Pokémon Showcase circuit.
Thus ladies and gentlemen, I present to the Writers' Workshop and to the world...
***
Exile
The long, white limousine swerved quietly down a deserted road through the Kalosian countryside, passed through a set of golden gates, and then deposited me without a further word on the cobblestone driveway of Argon Castle.
With an unreciprocated “Thank you” to the driver, I left the confines of the lavish vehicle and walked up the massive stone steps that lead to the mansion's polished entrance.
Colossal marble pillars lined the façade, and a gold-trimmed door made of some exotic wood separated the interior of the castle from the outside world.
I lifted the heavy golden knocker and let it clang against the huge door. I winced as it broke the dead silence of the immense estate. It was as if the whole place were a painting.
Every blade of grass was cut to the centimeter. All the bushes were perfectly shaped into Pokémon, looking more like chiseled statues than plants. There wasn’t an actual Pokémon in sight though, not even a flying-type chirping off in the distance somewhere. Even the fountains seemed to be muted, I noticed as I wandered down the porch.
Apparently the limousine had pulled noiselessly away to some unforeseen garage while my back had been turned. For some reason the thought of having to ride all the way back to Anistar in that silent vehicle with the silent driver didn’t hold much appeal.
“Excuse me miss?” a stiff voice came from behind. I gasped in surprise.
I turned to see a middle-aged man in a perfectly fitted black tuxedo. He had a thin, pointed mustache and seemed as immaculate as the rest of the estate.
“You scared me. I didn’t even hear you open the door,” I said with a tinge of humor.
“My apologies,” he said dryly.
I internally scolded myself for not having come up with a better opener.
“I’m Erika Young,” I said, hoping that by steering the conversation towards business I could avoid any more conversational blunders. “The Queen sent me a letter saying that she wanted to see me.”
“Ah yes. Miss Young. I should have figured it was you. We seldom get visitors here,” the butler turned and held the door open, gesturing inside. “Do come in. Her Majesty has been expecting you.”
“Thanks,” I nodded to the man as I passed inside.
Much like the outside, the interior was the definition of perfection.
Everything was white, golden, or some shade of dark wood. Crystal chandeliers hung from the lofty ceilings, and painting, statues, and other rich-person things rested around the grand foyer.
“Her Majesty’s personal butler will be with you momentarily to escort you to your host,” the butler said from behind me.
I turned to acknowledge, but he had already silently left the room.
The foyer was still. I almost felt out of place being the only living, breathing thing in what felt like the whole mansion. There were no seats in the room, and I felt uncomfortable at the thought of wandering around looking for somewhere to sit while I waited.
A long, warmly lit corridor on the opposite end of the room caught my eye. It was positioned almost like a cave, right under the two opposing sets of steps that made up the grand staircase leading to the mansion’s second level.
My heels clinked loudly, or at least louder than everything else, against the marble floor. A quick glance down revealed huge tiles polished to the point where I could clearly see myself looking back up.
I smiled at the sight of my reflection. The dress Wyatt had picked out for this meeting looked amazing. He had been adamant that I not disappoint.
The hall that had caught my eye, was shorter than it had seemed. Nor was it really a hall, but a gallery. A warm glow emanated from a few soft bulbs overhead. The floor was covered with a thick emerald carpet. The walls were a paned with a dark wood, and sparkled with golden frames of dozens of paintings and photographs.
For a moment I thought that these were the family and friends of Queen Amelia. Then it dawned on me that all the pictures were women, and that they were all dated.
My eyes scanned across the framed portraits that lined both sides of the halls. There must have been over thirty.
The first, and most prominent, I recognized.
It was a painted portrait of Martha Chapman, the founder of Pokémon Showcases. On a small gold plaque beneath the portrait was the simple inscription, Our Glorious Mother, along with the dates of her life.
Across the hall was a grainy, black and white photograph of a stern-looking woman. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties and she wore an antique, frilly dress. It almost looked like it could have been from the same tailor that made my first Showcase dress.
The woman clutched a bouquet of flowers, and a sylveon sat rigidly at her side. On her head rested the article that identified her. She wore a small, silver tiara. The same one that Amelia had been wearing. The only thing that the women in all these photographs had in common.
The inscription beneath her portrait read, Queen Ruth O’Conner I.
This was the hall of the Kalos Queens.
I walked slowly down the halls, watching as sixty years of history trailed beside me, watching as the photographs gradually improved in quality, eventually being livened with color. The women in the photos gradually got younger the farther I went. Their dresses looking less archaic. The frowns the early queens wore in their portraits eventually being replaced with gleaming smiles.
Queen Condoleezza Gordon XXVI.
Queen Emily de Gaul XXVII.
Queen Amelia Heath XXVIII.
I stopped at her picture. It was the final one, the rest of the hall was empty.
She looked beautiful: her smile perfectly radiant, her long lavender hair hung over her shoulders. Her trademark silver gown looked brand new.
A glance down at polished metal plaque reminded me that she had only been queen for two years. Unlike the other women in the hall, some of whom had defended their title for five or six years.
“It’s humbling isn’t it?”
I flinched at the sudden intrusion into my thoughts.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” a kind-faced man, perhaps in his early fifties, wearing the same immaculate suit as the previous butler apologized. “I sometimes forget that not everyone’s as accustomed to the silence as we are.”
“It never occurred to me that there were so many Kalos Queens,” I said after a moment.
He nodded solemnly.
“I’ve had the pleasure of serving nearly half of them,” he said wistfully. “Some remarkable women let me tell you. I come down here sometimes myself. You can almost feel their presence in here.”
The room did kind of feel like a church. The air felt heavy. Not claustrophobic-heavy. Heavy in some other sort of way. Maybe that’s what drew me over here in the first place.
“Enough of that though,” the man said softly. “Queen Heath is ready to see you now. Come. Come.”
I followed him out of the hall, then nearly ran into him when he stopped abruptly.
“Just one word of advice,” he turned and said slowly, almost uncomfortably. “The young lady you see on television, the young lady in that picture over there.”
He paused, as his gaze slid past me to Amelia’s portrait at the far side of the hall. I nodded, wondering if that’s what he was waiting for.
“Just… tread softly,” he said finally with a soft nod.
Without a further word he led me silently out of the hall, up the grand staircase, and into the interior of the mansion.
Halls stemmed off from all sides, all of them sporting the same untouched look. The thick, white carpets appeared un-treaded. The doors were all closed. Everything was bathed in the same shade of white light, emanating from the dustless chandeliers.
Save for the butler and myself, I could have sworn the whole building was empty.
It almost felt like a museum or an art gallery. As if the whole building was just a scene, meant to be looked at, but never touched.
The butler finally stopped in a hall that looked just as uniform as the dozens of others, in front of a plain, white door that looked just as unsuspecting as all of the rest.
His gloved hand knocked twice on the door, before he said softly, “Miss Young is here to see you, Your Highness. May she enter?”
He tilted his head, seeming to listen intently to the silence.
“She’s ready,” he said with a nod. Then, as he reached for the polished knob, he added with a whisper, his expression appearing sad, almost fatherly, “Please, be gentle.”
Did he not think I knew how to properly interact with people?
I kept that notion to myself and instead just cast him a curious look as I crossed the threshold into the room. He silently shut the door behind me.
I stopped for a moment waiting for my eyes to adjust. They did, and the room revealed itself to be only mildly dim. A sickly glow of light filtered in around the curtains that covered the window. It was a small room, smaller than what I expected the Kalos Queen to be living in. It vaguely reminded me of a small hotel suit.
There was an unmade bed, a handful of small tables with magazines and other publications scattered on them, and two chairs positioned across from each other over by that sole, heavily curtained window. A tiny glow of sunlight slipped in from around the edges.
One of those chairs had what appeared to be a pile of blankets resting on it. Then the blankets moved, stood up, and turned towards me.
“Sorry about the dark,” a soft, delicate voice spoke. “It helps with my headaches.”
The figure flicked on a small desk lamp, and a sickly yellow glow replaced the blacks and grays of the room.
“So you’re Erika Young, the Princess of Kalos,” Amelia Heath said, casually dropping the over-glorified title the Performance community had become fond of referring to me by.
Hearing the Queen call me that didn't make it sound any less presumptuous. Wyatt said it was good publicity, but to me it just sounded like none of them realized just how tenuous every victory I won really was. Being a princess meant kicking back and inheriting your title. Princesses didn't have to wake up every morning thinking of all the ways they could blow it and leave everyone around them -
I refocused back on the Queen and silently took her in as she seemed to be doing to me.
It was weird to see her not wearing her sleek Showcase dress. Instead she wore a pair of long light-blue shorts and a pink t-shirt. Her hair was combed, but frazzled as though she had just gotten out of bed.
Her skin seemed a couple shades lighter than it normally looked. She was also shorter. Amelia had always looked like she was nearly a quarter of a meter taller than me, almost as tall as Monica, but without her heels she could almost look me in the eye.
Maybe weirdest of all, was the fact that her radiant smile was substituted by a sort of tired, blank stare. She was only twenty-one, but her face could have passed for much older than that.
I thought back to the frowning women in the photos, who had been queens in the early days of Showcases.
I let none of that show on my face as she continued to silently stare at me. I breathed slowly, trying not to break the stillness of the whole scene. Perhaps this was a test, waiting to see if I’m good enough to be in her company.
She’s judging me.
“Interesting,” Amelia finally said. As she went to one of the tables, where crystal glasses had been set out. “Do you drink? No? I didn’t think so. I'm not allowed to have alcohol in here anyway. Lemonade? Here.”
I accepted the pink liquid silently, save for the clinking of ice in the glass, and took an obligatory sip.
“Thank you,” I said in my most polite voice, mustering a half-smile.
“Please, take a seat,” she pointed to one of the two chairs by the window. “Sorry about the mess. I normally don’t get company.”
I sat down stiffly. It was hard to get comfortable. The room was such a stark contrast to the rest of the palace. It felt like it was her home. I had always felt uncomfortable intruding in the personal space of other people.
“Did you see last night’s Courmarine Showcase?” she asked distractedly as she sat down, with her own glass of lemonade.
“No. Normally I only read about them in the news the next day.”
“Too busy to watch TV. I’ve been there,” she said with a faint nod. She took a sip from her glass. “You’re probably on your way to the Tier-Four in Snowbelle.”
“Right,” I said, perking up a bit at the thought of getting to talk about my performance with the incumbent queen. “It’s the last Tier-Four before the Master Class, and I have this whole routine planned out with…”
“Stop,” she said sternly.
I gave her a confused look. “Sorry.”
“No. No,” she said apologetically. “It’s just... I don’t like to hear about Showcases that way.”
She must have picked up on my confusion, because she took a deep breath and continued talking.
“Look. Performances are a special thing. When I watch them on the television, or watch my old Showcases, or when I have to attend one in person, it needs to be spontaneous. It’s not something that I like to hear about beforehand, how it's all so rehearsed. It ruins the illusion.”
I thought it was odd that the Kalos Queen – whose schedule consisted, when she was still active, of eight hours of rehearsal a day – would suggest that she didn’t like to hear about the planning that went into a Performance.
“Okay,” I obliged lamely, then remembered what Wyatt had taught me about being a proactive conversant so I added, “I’m just happy to have been invited to be in your presence, Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I mean… sorry, but you could just call me Miss Heath, or Amelia. Call me that.”
“Sure,” I kept my voice perfectly polite.
“Thanks. I don’t get to have normal conversations with people very often,” she said, in a voice that almost sounded… desperate?
There was something off about her. Maybe this was just who she really was off camera. Regardless, I had the growing desire to wish her good bye and leave the whole castle behind. The whole scene was beginning to remind me just the least bit too much of my home back in Sunyshore with my parents. Dark and constricting and always watching.
There was something too familiar about her.
“So you from Sinnoh, right?” Amelia asked after a long span of silence. “How do you like Kalos?”
“It’s fine. The weather’s very pleasant.”
I felt a tremor run through me as the conversation seemed as though it was descending into small talk. I began wracking my brain for all the conversational tips Wyatt had drilled into me.
“You’re not enjoying this,” she said suddenly, matter-of-factly.
I was quiet for a moment, while a tried to come up with a clever response. Apparently it took longer than it should have. I scolded myself.
“I didn’t invite you here just because I miss friendly conversation,” she said. “There was a purpose. Everything I do has to have a purpose.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“You’re eighteen, right? Well, when I was nineteen and on the eve of winning my fourth key, I got a letter from Queen de Gaul. She wanted to see me personally at Argon Castle. Imagine,” she stood up and began pacing. It almost sounded like she was talking to herself, “the Kalos Queen herself wanted to speak with me, some random Performer. So I got all gussied up, just like you, but you know what she wanted to tell me? It was the same thing that every Kalos Queen feels obliged to tell the girl who looks like she’s going to be replaced by. She told me I should quit performing and never look back.”
She collapsed onto her bed as though that exposition had exhausted her and fell silent again, her gaze, which was fixed on the dark ceiling, turning even more distant.
“You know I had a life once. I wanted to be an architect. This was just a hobby. Something I did after school, for fun. I had parents, friends. I had a boyfriend named Jeremy. We broke up though. I think. I had a life, but I ended up being good at this. And when you’re good at something you want to keep being good, and the people around you tell you that you want to be the best, and pretty soon that’s all you hear. That’s why what de Gaul told me was so surreal. It’s also why I ignored her.” She laughed. “And now I’m here.”
She sat up and turned to look at me.
“You see Erika, the people who are best suited to become Kalos Queen for some reason end up being the worst at actually being Kalos Queen. I can see it when I look at you, Erika. You and I, we're like a delayed image of the same person. I can see it, what I read about you in the papers, the company you keep, the way you talk during you interviews, the way you carry yourself on stage. The way you smile. Always smiling…”
I had a growing sense of unease. Perhaps about what she was implying about me, maybe because she was starting to scare me. Mostly though because she seemed to be mocking my public appearances. I spent hours preparing for those. Who was she to…?
“I know what you’re thinking,” she almost whispered. “You’re coming up with all the reasons why you're not me. You’re wondering –”
“Why am I here Amelia?”
“You know exactly why you’re here!” she rose from her bed and grabbed my shoulders, nearly knocking my chair over “I brought you here to see the future. You’re future! This job will kill you Erika. The same way it’s killing me, and the same way it ends up killing just about every poor sap who ends up with that damned tiara.”
Her voice dropped to barely a whisper.
“This job takes people who are already broken, locks them away from all the people who care about them, and leaves you all alone to stew in your own mind. My parents still send me letters,” she grabbed a handful of envelopes off of the table next to her. “I don’t ever respond though. It want to talk to them, but it’s like they speak a foreign language now. People talk to me all the time. Everyone wants to talk to me, but it’s like they’re speaking to me from underwater. You want to be everyone’s friend, but you can’t, because when you’re Kalos Queen, that’s all you get to be!”
She fell silent as she collapsed onto her bed again, her breathing heavy, like she had just finished running a race. I slowly processed everything she had just said.
My mind turned back to my life in Sunyshore for just a moment, to the life I was living now, or at least though I was living. Then I stopped it and forced myself to grasp what she was really saying.
“You don’t think I’m good enough?” I said, not even bothering to hide the contempt in my voice.
She didn’t think I could handle it. She thought I was weak. Just like everyone else. My parents and Doctor Revington and Emma and that one Nurse Joy in Shalour. And now Amelia Heath too. They just want to see me fail. To see me go back to being the lame, insignificant person I was back in Sunyshore, because they all knew that if I succeeded they would be the insignificant ones, living in my shadow.
“You want me to quit,” I smirked. “You know that I’ll be a better Kalos Queen than you ever were.”
“I’m not trying to get you to do anything Erika,” she responded softly, her tone flat, defeated. “I only wanted you to know what it is like to be me. What it will be like to be you.”
“You’re wrong,” I said softly, “I’m not the same person I was when I started this journey. I’m not the same scared, confused little girl who wants to jump off a building over a misspoken word. This,” I gestured at the dim room, at the young woman lying resigned on the bed, “is not who I am anymore.”
I got up to leave. I stopped at the door though, and cast one glance back at the frail girl lying on her bed, looking just as thin and pale as the sheets. So much different from the young woman who appeared so vibrant in public. It was almost like this was her without her mask on.
You’d never guess that Queen Amelia Heath, surrounded by all the fans and servants a human being could want, lived in an exile of her own creation. You’d never guess what went on in her head, just below the surface.
There was one question that came to mind. I shouldn’t have cared, but I did just enough to want to know, just enough to ask, “What happened to you?”
She responded after only a second, as though she already had an answer.
“I happened to me.”
The long, white limousine swerved quietly down a deserted road through the Kalosian countryside, passed through a set of golden gates, and then deposited me without a further word on the cobblestone driveway of Argon Castle.
With an unreciprocated “Thank you” to the driver, I left the confines of the lavish vehicle and walked up the massive stone steps that lead to the mansion's polished entrance.
Colossal marble pillars lined the façade, and a gold-trimmed door made of some exotic wood separated the interior of the castle from the outside world.
I lifted the heavy golden knocker and let it clang against the huge door. I winced as it broke the dead silence of the immense estate. It was as if the whole place were a painting.
Every blade of grass was cut to the centimeter. All the bushes were perfectly shaped into Pokémon, looking more like chiseled statues than plants. There wasn’t an actual Pokémon in sight though, not even a flying-type chirping off in the distance somewhere. Even the fountains seemed to be muted, I noticed as I wandered down the porch.
Apparently the limousine had pulled noiselessly away to some unforeseen garage while my back had been turned. For some reason the thought of having to ride all the way back to Anistar in that silent vehicle with the silent driver didn’t hold much appeal.
“Excuse me miss?” a stiff voice came from behind. I gasped in surprise.
I turned to see a middle-aged man in a perfectly fitted black tuxedo. He had a thin, pointed mustache and seemed as immaculate as the rest of the estate.
“You scared me. I didn’t even hear you open the door,” I said with a tinge of humor.
“My apologies,” he said dryly.
I internally scolded myself for not having come up with a better opener.
“I’m Erika Young,” I said, hoping that by steering the conversation towards business I could avoid any more conversational blunders. “The Queen sent me a letter saying that she wanted to see me.”
“Ah yes. Miss Young. I should have figured it was you. We seldom get visitors here,” the butler turned and held the door open, gesturing inside. “Do come in. Her Majesty has been expecting you.”
“Thanks,” I nodded to the man as I passed inside.
Much like the outside, the interior was the definition of perfection.
Everything was white, golden, or some shade of dark wood. Crystal chandeliers hung from the lofty ceilings, and painting, statues, and other rich-person things rested around the grand foyer.
“Her Majesty’s personal butler will be with you momentarily to escort you to your host,” the butler said from behind me.
I turned to acknowledge, but he had already silently left the room.
The foyer was still. I almost felt out of place being the only living, breathing thing in what felt like the whole mansion. There were no seats in the room, and I felt uncomfortable at the thought of wandering around looking for somewhere to sit while I waited.
A long, warmly lit corridor on the opposite end of the room caught my eye. It was positioned almost like a cave, right under the two opposing sets of steps that made up the grand staircase leading to the mansion’s second level.
My heels clinked loudly, or at least louder than everything else, against the marble floor. A quick glance down revealed huge tiles polished to the point where I could clearly see myself looking back up.
I smiled at the sight of my reflection. The dress Wyatt had picked out for this meeting looked amazing. He had been adamant that I not disappoint.
The hall that had caught my eye, was shorter than it had seemed. Nor was it really a hall, but a gallery. A warm glow emanated from a few soft bulbs overhead. The floor was covered with a thick emerald carpet. The walls were a paned with a dark wood, and sparkled with golden frames of dozens of paintings and photographs.
For a moment I thought that these were the family and friends of Queen Amelia. Then it dawned on me that all the pictures were women, and that they were all dated.
My eyes scanned across the framed portraits that lined both sides of the halls. There must have been over thirty.
The first, and most prominent, I recognized.
It was a painted portrait of Martha Chapman, the founder of Pokémon Showcases. On a small gold plaque beneath the portrait was the simple inscription, Our Glorious Mother, along with the dates of her life.
Across the hall was a grainy, black and white photograph of a stern-looking woman. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties and she wore an antique, frilly dress. It almost looked like it could have been from the same tailor that made my first Showcase dress.
The woman clutched a bouquet of flowers, and a sylveon sat rigidly at her side. On her head rested the article that identified her. She wore a small, silver tiara. The same one that Amelia had been wearing. The only thing that the women in all these photographs had in common.
The inscription beneath her portrait read, Queen Ruth O’Conner I.
This was the hall of the Kalos Queens.
I walked slowly down the halls, watching as sixty years of history trailed beside me, watching as the photographs gradually improved in quality, eventually being livened with color. The women in the photos gradually got younger the farther I went. Their dresses looking less archaic. The frowns the early queens wore in their portraits eventually being replaced with gleaming smiles.
Queen Condoleezza Gordon XXVI.
Queen Emily de Gaul XXVII.
Queen Amelia Heath XXVIII.
I stopped at her picture. It was the final one, the rest of the hall was empty.
She looked beautiful: her smile perfectly radiant, her long lavender hair hung over her shoulders. Her trademark silver gown looked brand new.
A glance down at polished metal plaque reminded me that she had only been queen for two years. Unlike the other women in the hall, some of whom had defended their title for five or six years.
“It’s humbling isn’t it?”
I flinched at the sudden intrusion into my thoughts.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” a kind-faced man, perhaps in his early fifties, wearing the same immaculate suit as the previous butler apologized. “I sometimes forget that not everyone’s as accustomed to the silence as we are.”
“It never occurred to me that there were so many Kalos Queens,” I said after a moment.
He nodded solemnly.
“I’ve had the pleasure of serving nearly half of them,” he said wistfully. “Some remarkable women let me tell you. I come down here sometimes myself. You can almost feel their presence in here.”
The room did kind of feel like a church. The air felt heavy. Not claustrophobic-heavy. Heavy in some other sort of way. Maybe that’s what drew me over here in the first place.
“Enough of that though,” the man said softly. “Queen Heath is ready to see you now. Come. Come.”
I followed him out of the hall, then nearly ran into him when he stopped abruptly.
“Just one word of advice,” he turned and said slowly, almost uncomfortably. “The young lady you see on television, the young lady in that picture over there.”
He paused, as his gaze slid past me to Amelia’s portrait at the far side of the hall. I nodded, wondering if that’s what he was waiting for.
“Just… tread softly,” he said finally with a soft nod.
Without a further word he led me silently out of the hall, up the grand staircase, and into the interior of the mansion.
Halls stemmed off from all sides, all of them sporting the same untouched look. The thick, white carpets appeared un-treaded. The doors were all closed. Everything was bathed in the same shade of white light, emanating from the dustless chandeliers.
Save for the butler and myself, I could have sworn the whole building was empty.
It almost felt like a museum or an art gallery. As if the whole building was just a scene, meant to be looked at, but never touched.
The butler finally stopped in a hall that looked just as uniform as the dozens of others, in front of a plain, white door that looked just as unsuspecting as all of the rest.
His gloved hand knocked twice on the door, before he said softly, “Miss Young is here to see you, Your Highness. May she enter?”
He tilted his head, seeming to listen intently to the silence.
“She’s ready,” he said with a nod. Then, as he reached for the polished knob, he added with a whisper, his expression appearing sad, almost fatherly, “Please, be gentle.”
Did he not think I knew how to properly interact with people?
I kept that notion to myself and instead just cast him a curious look as I crossed the threshold into the room. He silently shut the door behind me.
I stopped for a moment waiting for my eyes to adjust. They did, and the room revealed itself to be only mildly dim. A sickly glow of light filtered in around the curtains that covered the window. It was a small room, smaller than what I expected the Kalos Queen to be living in. It vaguely reminded me of a small hotel suit.
There was an unmade bed, a handful of small tables with magazines and other publications scattered on them, and two chairs positioned across from each other over by that sole, heavily curtained window. A tiny glow of sunlight slipped in from around the edges.
One of those chairs had what appeared to be a pile of blankets resting on it. Then the blankets moved, stood up, and turned towards me.
“Sorry about the dark,” a soft, delicate voice spoke. “It helps with my headaches.”
The figure flicked on a small desk lamp, and a sickly yellow glow replaced the blacks and grays of the room.
“So you’re Erika Young, the Princess of Kalos,” Amelia Heath said, casually dropping the over-glorified title the Performance community had become fond of referring to me by.
Hearing the Queen call me that didn't make it sound any less presumptuous. Wyatt said it was good publicity, but to me it just sounded like none of them realized just how tenuous every victory I won really was. Being a princess meant kicking back and inheriting your title. Princesses didn't have to wake up every morning thinking of all the ways they could blow it and leave everyone around them -
I refocused back on the Queen and silently took her in as she seemed to be doing to me.
It was weird to see her not wearing her sleek Showcase dress. Instead she wore a pair of long light-blue shorts and a pink t-shirt. Her hair was combed, but frazzled as though she had just gotten out of bed.
Her skin seemed a couple shades lighter than it normally looked. She was also shorter. Amelia had always looked like she was nearly a quarter of a meter taller than me, almost as tall as Monica, but without her heels she could almost look me in the eye.
Maybe weirdest of all, was the fact that her radiant smile was substituted by a sort of tired, blank stare. She was only twenty-one, but her face could have passed for much older than that.
I thought back to the frowning women in the photos, who had been queens in the early days of Showcases.
I let none of that show on my face as she continued to silently stare at me. I breathed slowly, trying not to break the stillness of the whole scene. Perhaps this was a test, waiting to see if I’m good enough to be in her company.
She’s judging me.
“Interesting,” Amelia finally said. As she went to one of the tables, where crystal glasses had been set out. “Do you drink? No? I didn’t think so. I'm not allowed to have alcohol in here anyway. Lemonade? Here.”
I accepted the pink liquid silently, save for the clinking of ice in the glass, and took an obligatory sip.
“Thank you,” I said in my most polite voice, mustering a half-smile.
“Please, take a seat,” she pointed to one of the two chairs by the window. “Sorry about the mess. I normally don’t get company.”
I sat down stiffly. It was hard to get comfortable. The room was such a stark contrast to the rest of the palace. It felt like it was her home. I had always felt uncomfortable intruding in the personal space of other people.
“Did you see last night’s Courmarine Showcase?” she asked distractedly as she sat down, with her own glass of lemonade.
“No. Normally I only read about them in the news the next day.”
“Too busy to watch TV. I’ve been there,” she said with a faint nod. She took a sip from her glass. “You’re probably on your way to the Tier-Four in Snowbelle.”
“Right,” I said, perking up a bit at the thought of getting to talk about my performance with the incumbent queen. “It’s the last Tier-Four before the Master Class, and I have this whole routine planned out with…”
“Stop,” she said sternly.
I gave her a confused look. “Sorry.”
“No. No,” she said apologetically. “It’s just... I don’t like to hear about Showcases that way.”
She must have picked up on my confusion, because she took a deep breath and continued talking.
“Look. Performances are a special thing. When I watch them on the television, or watch my old Showcases, or when I have to attend one in person, it needs to be spontaneous. It’s not something that I like to hear about beforehand, how it's all so rehearsed. It ruins the illusion.”
I thought it was odd that the Kalos Queen – whose schedule consisted, when she was still active, of eight hours of rehearsal a day – would suggest that she didn’t like to hear about the planning that went into a Performance.
“Okay,” I obliged lamely, then remembered what Wyatt had taught me about being a proactive conversant so I added, “I’m just happy to have been invited to be in your presence, Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “I mean… sorry, but you could just call me Miss Heath, or Amelia. Call me that.”
“Sure,” I kept my voice perfectly polite.
“Thanks. I don’t get to have normal conversations with people very often,” she said, in a voice that almost sounded… desperate?
There was something off about her. Maybe this was just who she really was off camera. Regardless, I had the growing desire to wish her good bye and leave the whole castle behind. The whole scene was beginning to remind me just the least bit too much of my home back in Sunyshore with my parents. Dark and constricting and always watching.
There was something too familiar about her.
“So you from Sinnoh, right?” Amelia asked after a long span of silence. “How do you like Kalos?”
“It’s fine. The weather’s very pleasant.”
I felt a tremor run through me as the conversation seemed as though it was descending into small talk. I began wracking my brain for all the conversational tips Wyatt had drilled into me.
“You’re not enjoying this,” she said suddenly, matter-of-factly.
I was quiet for a moment, while a tried to come up with a clever response. Apparently it took longer than it should have. I scolded myself.
“I didn’t invite you here just because I miss friendly conversation,” she said. “There was a purpose. Everything I do has to have a purpose.”
I looked at her quizzically.
“You’re eighteen, right? Well, when I was nineteen and on the eve of winning my fourth key, I got a letter from Queen de Gaul. She wanted to see me personally at Argon Castle. Imagine,” she stood up and began pacing. It almost sounded like she was talking to herself, “the Kalos Queen herself wanted to speak with me, some random Performer. So I got all gussied up, just like you, but you know what she wanted to tell me? It was the same thing that every Kalos Queen feels obliged to tell the girl who looks like she’s going to be replaced by. She told me I should quit performing and never look back.”
She collapsed onto her bed as though that exposition had exhausted her and fell silent again, her gaze, which was fixed on the dark ceiling, turning even more distant.
“You know I had a life once. I wanted to be an architect. This was just a hobby. Something I did after school, for fun. I had parents, friends. I had a boyfriend named Jeremy. We broke up though. I think. I had a life, but I ended up being good at this. And when you’re good at something you want to keep being good, and the people around you tell you that you want to be the best, and pretty soon that’s all you hear. That’s why what de Gaul told me was so surreal. It’s also why I ignored her.” She laughed. “And now I’m here.”
She sat up and turned to look at me.
“You see Erika, the people who are best suited to become Kalos Queen for some reason end up being the worst at actually being Kalos Queen. I can see it when I look at you, Erika. You and I, we're like a delayed image of the same person. I can see it, what I read about you in the papers, the company you keep, the way you talk during you interviews, the way you carry yourself on stage. The way you smile. Always smiling…”
I had a growing sense of unease. Perhaps about what she was implying about me, maybe because she was starting to scare me. Mostly though because she seemed to be mocking my public appearances. I spent hours preparing for those. Who was she to…?
“I know what you’re thinking,” she almost whispered. “You’re coming up with all the reasons why you're not me. You’re wondering –”
“Why am I here Amelia?”
“You know exactly why you’re here!” she rose from her bed and grabbed my shoulders, nearly knocking my chair over “I brought you here to see the future. You’re future! This job will kill you Erika. The same way it’s killing me, and the same way it ends up killing just about every poor sap who ends up with that damned tiara.”
Her voice dropped to barely a whisper.
“This job takes people who are already broken, locks them away from all the people who care about them, and leaves you all alone to stew in your own mind. My parents still send me letters,” she grabbed a handful of envelopes off of the table next to her. “I don’t ever respond though. It want to talk to them, but it’s like they speak a foreign language now. People talk to me all the time. Everyone wants to talk to me, but it’s like they’re speaking to me from underwater. You want to be everyone’s friend, but you can’t, because when you’re Kalos Queen, that’s all you get to be!”
She fell silent as she collapsed onto her bed again, her breathing heavy, like she had just finished running a race. I slowly processed everything she had just said.
My mind turned back to my life in Sunyshore for just a moment, to the life I was living now, or at least though I was living. Then I stopped it and forced myself to grasp what she was really saying.
“You don’t think I’m good enough?” I said, not even bothering to hide the contempt in my voice.
She didn’t think I could handle it. She thought I was weak. Just like everyone else. My parents and Doctor Revington and Emma and that one Nurse Joy in Shalour. And now Amelia Heath too. They just want to see me fail. To see me go back to being the lame, insignificant person I was back in Sunyshore, because they all knew that if I succeeded they would be the insignificant ones, living in my shadow.
“You want me to quit,” I smirked. “You know that I’ll be a better Kalos Queen than you ever were.”
“I’m not trying to get you to do anything Erika,” she responded softly, her tone flat, defeated. “I only wanted you to know what it is like to be me. What it will be like to be you.”
“You’re wrong,” I said softly, “I’m not the same person I was when I started this journey. I’m not the same scared, confused little girl who wants to jump off a building over a misspoken word. This,” I gestured at the dim room, at the young woman lying resigned on the bed, “is not who I am anymore.”
I got up to leave. I stopped at the door though, and cast one glance back at the frail girl lying on her bed, looking just as thin and pale as the sheets. So much different from the young woman who appeared so vibrant in public. It was almost like this was her without her mask on.
You’d never guess that Queen Amelia Heath, surrounded by all the fans and servants a human being could want, lived in an exile of her own creation. You’d never guess what went on in her head, just below the surface.
There was one question that came to mind. I shouldn’t have cared, but I did just enough to want to know, just enough to ask, “What happened to you?”
She responded after only a second, as though she already had an answer.
“I happened to me.”
Table of Contents
Prologue
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