pity party

Once upon a time they would’ve called it a witch hunt. It wouldn’t have mattered that the woman was the wronged party – usually with a man’s hands guiding it all – only that she had stepped out of the bounds of how women should behave (in their tiny minds). If her step-mother’s people had caught up to her Jo imagined she would’ve faced the same sort of wrath. A girl daring to steal the gift of the Great Khan himself, to pronounce herself a trader – theft, that’s all it was. Theft and lustful behaviour. Because turning down the hand of one of her step-mother’s elderly toadies made her a … no, she was the furthest thing from one and so was Roxxi. Times were supposed to have change, thoughts like that squashed, but they were flourishing on the campus in a way that had turned her stomach.

Ignoring the whoops of the students in the hallway every time she had to venture between her classroom and her office – her hours there suspended for the moment to avoid any further uncomfortable situations – she had tried to block out what had happened. Demands for students to put their phones and laptops away during class had been met with a barrage of complaints, but that was her sacred ground and she got to control it any way she saw fit. Paper and pens, full concentration. Still her inbox had to be cleared every hour. The torrent had slowed down with the official email sent from the Dean’s office, but it wasn’t gone yet. That, Jo imagined, as she passed by Roxxi’s closed office door, was one of the reasons she wasn’t back on campus yet. It would take a woman of incredible strength to walk back after all that had happened, but if there was anybody that had that inner steel, it was Professor Braschi.

Her keys clacked down in the bowl just inside her apartment door. Shoes kicked off, her jacket hung up. Magnus would close up the shop in an hour or two, perhaps he’d find her waiting outside the door, a surprise. A not so altruistic visit considering she wanted to feel his arms around her – a man who would never dream of doing to her what had been done to Roxxi. A man of rules and manners, a good man. The sort Roxxi deserved.

She was halfway towards the kitchen when her phone buzzed in her hand. Maybe Magnus, anticipating as always. The smile that started to tug at the corners of her mouth as she flipped it over her grip and saw Roxxi’s name on the screen. Her apology – honestly, what use would it have been? – started to tumble out before she caught the plea in Roxxi’s voice. ”I’m on my way,” she promised. No question of it. Just as she had when Magnus had come here, looking like his heart had been torn from his chest when Lincoln had gone missing, she went without question.

The knots tightened and released in her stomach as she drove across town, the bottle of wine that would perhaps have been popped open over dinner with Magnus beside her on the passenger seat. Eyes full of the storm clouds of worry rose, looking for the light in Roxxi’s apartment as she stepped out of her car. It was on, but that gave no indication as to the state she was going to find Roxxi in when she pushed open the door.

She never usually bothered knocking, but Jo did this time, just a light rap of her knuckles against the door as she opened it. Roxxi had to have heard it, the summons coming from deeper into the apartment. There was the faint scent of food in the air, but Jo bypassed it, trailing towards Roxxi’s bedroom. Her smile was small, tight, in response to the sadness in Roxxi’s as she paused in her bedroom doorway. Jo leaned against the frame, the bottle dangling from her fingertips. ”Still trying to feed me up, huh?” she asked lightly. ”Thanks, but I’m might be doing that to you now.” Shaking her head lightly to brush off the idea of glasses too, Jo padded into the room, the bottle in hand – thankfully twist caps had become a thing and she didn’t have to fight with a cork.

Jo padded in, setting the bottle down on the nightstand before she kicked off her boots again. She abandoned them at the foot of the bed and slipped onto it next to Roxxi, her hand automatically finding Roxxi’s arm to squeeze lightly. She didn’t have to ask for the details, just slipped into an explanation that already had the tears welling in her eyes. Jo’s widened faintly. Had the video been the brother’s fault? She let out a puff of breath, reaching for the bottle of wine that Roxxi certainly deserved. ”You didn’t, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It was before, and I’m guessing it was nothing like what you have with Chase now.” Dio indeed. She couldn’t even imagine having to say the words aloud to Magnus, couldn’t imagine having done half of that, but she was literally from another time.

Shifting, Jo shuffled closer, offering her arms to Roxxi. It didn’t matter what she had happened, how others had reacted, she had done nothing wrong. ”Not all of us. Come here,” she said lightly, brushing Roxxi’s cheeks the way she had done her sons when they were small. ”That sounds serious, and I know that if he wants a family with you, then he can handle hearing it all. He loves you? If he does, that means he can handle whatever has happened.” She didn’t need to ask if Roxxi loved him, that much she could hear in every sob that rolled through her. Jo blew out a dismissive sound, pressing her cheek to the top of Roxxi’s head for a moment. ”After all of that you deserve a Roxxi pity party and as long as you want to have one, I’m right here. If you want a distraction in the form of hearing that I slept with him … I’m happy to give that too. Not … not that sort of slept with … but, on his birthday. It was sweet. I … I feel a little like I’m that sixteen year old again. Did I tell you that it could have been either one of them then?” Both had flirted, but Kaegan was the one who had captured her heart first … Kaegan was the one she had lost, that they had both lost.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1102

Cambulac might have been enlightened in many ways – at least until the khan had decided to close its gates and throw out anybody who didn’t have Mongol blood in their veins – but in the fundamental ones it had been too confining for a teenaged girl. The road had shown her a world far wider than the one her step-mother had tried to seal her into. Out there she didn’t have to feel ashamed of having a confidant in a boy, one she had no intentions of marrying. Without brothers and sisters of her own Jo had turned Ananda into that confidant. Not someone to bind her into a marriage, or to try and force her into loving him in a way that she’d realised later she never would, but someone to hear what was bound tightly in her heart.

Jo’s lips curved faintly, out of Roxxi’s view – smiles were not what she needed now – at the memory of how she had rushed to the home the two of them had shared then to tell him of Kaegan and Magnus, the games they had played for her affection, the way her heart had started to warm at the sight of them. It would be months before she would admit the same to Kaegan. No matter how long her marriage had played out, how close she had become with Magnus through that connection with her husband, nobody had taken Ananda’s place that way. Centuries later she’d wished he’d come walking through the door of her apartment so she could tell him of Magnus’ appearance here, of the way that her heart – thought long cold – had started to warm for him. In that way Roxxi had taken his place, worming those details out of her along with a bashful smile in her office. She had been a shoulder to lean on and now she would be the same. A wise head on ancient shoulders.

Roxxi might still have been working her way towards the admission she had whispered to Ananda one cold morning in the stables – ’I think I love him’ – but her feelings towards Chase had grown to the point where she could practically see the whole torn through her now. The fabric of feelings still unspoken torn, peppered, it seemed, with other tiny rips, waiting to open up and devastate her. ”You couldn’t know you were stumbling into a mine field with either one of them,” she reassured Roxxi, her hand coming up to her shoulder. ”If his brother doing it maliciously?” Jo doubted it, Roxxi hadn’t spoken of it like it was blackmail, just his brother wanted to clear the air that had to be choking everybody involved. ”If he loves you he’ll forgive you. He won’t give up on you. You said yourself that you didn’t think you’d see him again.” Only fate had a way of throwing people back into your path, giving you a second chance.

Perhaps for Roxxi it would be her third or fourth, maybe her tenth. It felt like a lie on her tongue, because a single lie had broken relationships before, tearing apart marriages, leaving your husband to go to his own grave believing you were already cold in yours thousands of miles away. Jo rested her cheek atop Roxxi’s head as she sobbed against her, her hand sliding to her back to sooth her with slow circles. ”Two other men is not half the town,” Jo reassured her. ”I don’t know anything of him apart from what you’ve told me, but he doesn’t seem the sort of man to condemn you for what happened before you were together. The things we want don’t vanish that way.” They held on, burrowing into your heart until you felt hollowed out with them. She’d felt those tears open up in her own heart the night Philippa had turned her, some never mending.

Magnus’ fingers, so deft on the hand of a sword were now mending some of those rips. A slow, neat repair she barely felt, the same way she didn’t feel Roxxi’s tears sinking in her shirt while she was distracted by Roxxi’s shriek. The heat rose in her face again, mildly compared to the way she’d once been able to blush. ”I made him dinner, by the time we were done it was late and he didn’t want me driving home. He would’ve slept on the couch, but it didn’t feel right to kick him out of his bed.” It had felt right waking up with Magnus’ arm around her though, her head on his chest like Roxxi’s was on hers now.

Jo stroked her hand slowly over the dark tangle of Roxxi’s hair, her lips curling faintly at the memory. Thorns worked their way through those rents in her heart as she brought Kaegan into the conversation, stinging for a moment, but there was nothing she could do to change the past, to ease the regrets she’d had when she’d ridden away from the castle. ”It’s OK,” Jo whispered, frowning faintly before she settled back with Roxxi, her hand patting her back lightly. ”You’re not wrong. If I hadn’t lost Kaegan, if we both hadn’t lost him, I would never have been here … able to sample both, as you put it.” The only lucky thing had been that Philippa had been taken before she’d been able to make Magnus suffer for what had felt like an eternity. A small blessing in the centre of a well of pain.

The heat was rushing back as she dipped her head. The pit of her stomach twisting as she smiled wryly. Old people liked to wait. She hadn’t with Kaegan … not until after they’d exchanged vows. Now more often than not it wasn’t that way, being able to express your love physically wasn’t some sign that were a … loose woman. There was no shame in it. ”Since we were teenagers. He never would…” What was between them was nothing like the way Philippa had used him. It was sweet and tender and both of them were caught in the slow current of it. Jo shook her head, her heart still aching at the thought. ”I don’t know if either of us would be ready for that. Actually sleepin with him though … I’m sure it won’t be long. We’re both a little old fashioned.” From another time entirely.

The laugh worked its way through Jo’s words, her elbow bumping Roxxi lightly. ”You’ll have us married by the end of the week at that rate. I don’t know about great love yet, but … I’ve been lucky to have the chance of a second. I never thought I would see Magnus again.” Fate had done some heavy lifting, as it would for Roxxi, whether she believed it in or not. Jo brought her hand up to tip Roxxi’s chin up. ”You have fucked nothing up. Other people are trying to do it for you and … since I’m ready to call Chase your great love, I’m gonna demand pride of place as your Maid of Honour when you head down the aisle towards him. How was he afterwards?” She hated swinging the conversation back around to the noxious elephant in the room, but if she didn’t leap frog Roxxi’s question about how old she was, there were lies she was going to have to start telling.

Tagged: ROXANNE BRASCHI * Word Count: 1253