#oc: diana kettering

[duelistkingdom]

cross your thoughtless heart

Summary: diana discovers she's more like her father than she cares to admit while underneath the mansion he's given her in death.

Rating: T

Ships: Diana Kettering/Ophelia Copperfield

Author’s note: prompt of “bones” for @sapphic-september. since this is my own original work & i've been sort of hidden by force by tumblr, consider reblogging if you like it! as a reminder, these scenes are noncanonical, and are simply test scenes for character voice & to see what works. i'm open to constructive critique (that is not trying to change the soul of the work) on these original pieces.

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The skulls lined the walls of the basement, and Diana wished she could say that she felt something about it. Instead, it was a feeling of relief that washed over her. She wasn't crazy - there was something wrong with this house. They were history, embedded into the walls as decor. Diana reached out to touch the skulls, and was shocked that they felt like rock. "They were dipped in concrete before being mounted onto the wall," Ophelia explained, and she was quieter than normal.

As if noise could raise the dead, Diana thought absently, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. A chunk of the wall was missing, and Diana motioned to it. "What happened here?"

"Your father was having it demolished," she said. "Said he'd always hated this room, and that it felt like the skulls were judging him for his existence. I think he just didn't like to confront where his family came from... where my family came from too. He liked to think he wouldn't have been like them."

Diana snorted. A man who ran away from his family in exchange for the promise of wealth certainly would've fit perfectly with the men who did this. It seemed like she finally found the reason she always felt uncomfortable in this house - like she was being watched. She shook off that thought. She was determined to not be her father. He was a coward, and he was scared of the history that laid underneath the house. "Like the slave shacks he had demolished then," Diana remarked, thinking of all the things about this house that her father clearly liked to avoid. Then again... was she any different from her father here? The house creaked, and Diana ignored it. If it was slightly too cold in her room, she turned up the heater. Ignoring the house's quirks and history was all she knew how to do. "I... suppose I would've done the same."

Ophelia was staring at her, and Diana felt like her stare was piercing through her, cutting her to the bone. Often times, it felt like Ophelia was trying to figure something out about her and Diana didn't like that. She liked her secrets, and she liked to keep them to herself. Sharing did not come natural to her. All her life, she was expected to own her mistakes and achievements. She'd never had a chance to learn how to share. Growing up, no one said anything. Uncle Sterling avoided talking about her father, and she was lucky if her ma was coherent for a full day. When her ma was coherent, she was angry and bitter about her father's death. Her ma treated the universe as if it had conspired against her to steal her husband from her. If she knew the truth, it would destroy her. So instead of telling her ma the truth, she lied through her teeth about how she was on a work retreat and will visit when she can.

"Are you ever going to tell your ma the truth about where you are?"

It was one sentence, and Diana felt like a precision hit happened to her. She looked up at the wall of skulls again, and imagined her own embedded into the concrete. She wondered what went through the mind of the person who first installed this wall, and her stomach lurched. Did the person who did this even view the people whose skulls he mounted as human? "One day," she said softly. "I've told Uncle Sterling where I was..." She imagined the skulls with the flesh on them, and she felt dizzy. "This wall has to go. The skulls should be buried with the rest of their bodies. Do we know where they are?"

Ophelia paused for a moment before shaking her head. "We don't know where the rest of their bodies are, no," she said softly. "We can bury them where we know their families might've been buried, but that's the best we can do."

"Then have that done," Diana said as she turned to head to the stairs. "I don't wanna see those skulls here again."

[duelistkingdom]

good girls do bad things too

Summary: the more she explored the house, the more she felt like the monster would swallow her whole. even with someone guiding her, it felt overwhelming.

Rating: T

Ships: Diana Kettering/Ophelia Copperfield

Author’s note: this scene isn't going to be in vespula - none of the scenes featured for @sapphic-september will be. consider them "non canon" character explorations - test pieces to see what works. effectively, these are being written with the intention that they will NOT show up their respective books. any pieces that DO make it in is because they wound up working. anyway this prompt is "attic"

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Diana had never lived in a house like this. There were so many rooms, most of which had furniture covered by white cloth and cobwebs. At one point, she could imagine the reasoning behind these rooms considering the age and location. This was not a house built with the idea that someone like her would own it. Someone like her would live in it, but she was not intended to have the freedom she had. It was a somber thought, and she did her best to suppress it as she wandered these halls. The portraits glared down at her, as if they disapproved of her very existence. Ophelia knew the house better than she did, as if she’d spent her whole life here.

“Are you paying attention?” Ophelia turned back to her, arching her brow at her. Diana wondered very briefly if Ophelia manicured her own brows or if she paid someone to make them look like that. “Your grandmother is attempting to claim your father was not of sound mind when he wrote that will. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Diana shrugged. She didn’t know her father, but she couldn’t attest to his sound mind. After all, what kind of man faked his death to leave his wife with a baby? Sometimes it felt better to think that perhaps that he wasn’t of sound mind when he left. She could understand why her grandmother would feel better to think he wasn’t of sound mind when he bequeathed everything to Diana. “I don’t think anyone wants to believe that my father was a man of sound mind,” she admitted. “I still can’t even say I knew the man. I have seen photos and yearbooks, but who he was…”

Ophelia folded her arms across her chest, and Diana wondered why her father chose to trust all his secrets in his estate lawyer. Why did Ophelia get to know her father and she didn’t? Sometimes she was jealous of her for that, and other times she couldn’t tell what she felt about it. “Let’s go to the attic,” Ophelia said, turning and leading the way. “There’s something that I’ve been meaning to show you up there.”

There had been so many things about this house that Diana had seen, and yet it seemed to spin on forever. It felt like a labyrinth at times and other times it felt like the belly of a beast that had swallowed her whole. In both feelings, Diana felt like she had little control over which room she ended up in. She had no idea how Jane and Ophelia were so comfortable and at ease in this monster beyond the sneaking suspicion that rich white people just simply had a different sense of fear from people like her. Diana frequently found herself wondering if she would have inherited the same ease had Jane been her mother and not her stepmother. Would she be the same person if she had? Would she feel the same attraction to Ophelia she felt now if she’d been born into this world rather than an interloper?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. All she knew was that as Ophelia led her up to the head of the beast, she felt safe and secure in a way she didn’t when she was on her own in this home. It was something that Diana would never admit to so long as she lived, but her heart had been stolen and now Ophelia held it beating in her hands. She had power and influence over her, and she’d never been the same again for it.

The ladder up to the attic creaked under her boots, and she was curious how Ophelia had learned to climb a ladder in high heels. Did she have any other shoes behind heels that would make Diana fall flat on her face if she tried to walk in them? It didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it was a reminder of the ocean between the two of them. No one had taught Diana how to walk in heels, but Ophelia knew it instinctively.

She popped up into a surprisingly clean space - as if it had been recently used. Everything was packed up into boxes, neatly labeled with her father’s name on it. Either Jane or her grandmother must have done it before she got here. “What are in the boxes?”

“Video games, mostly,” Ophelia replied, leading her to a window. “Your father had this place renovated so it’d have electricity. He mainly used this space to enjoy his Atari. He’d recently purchased the Nintendo 64 and was excited to try it before he passed. Jane thought he was wasting his time, and disliked it. It’s no wonder she packed this place up so fast. But you… you’re so much like your father.”

Diana wasn't sure if she should be offended by that. The only defining trait she had for her father was a man who leaves. Was she like that? Was Diana the type of woman who would leave a happy family if it meant she could get hers? With a pang, she realized that she had done exactly that. She'd left her ma for fortune and a fancy house, just like her father did. "I should clean up the rooms," she said softly, staring up at that stained glass window that faced out to the main road. It was one of the few windows that wasn't caked in dust in the house - as if her father had personally taken care of this window. "I think that I should try to move my mother and uncle here. It's a decent-sized house, and well. I'm sure ma would like her room."

"I'll have it taken care of, Diana," Ophelia said with a light smile, as if she knew something that Diana didn't. "I'm glad you're staying."

She took Diana's hand in hers, and her heart skipped a beat. For a moment, she wondered what would happen if she went for the risky play. Diana dropped her hand first. She was like her father: a coward.

[duelistkingdom]

diana is literally Just Some Homosexual Haunted By The Ghost of Her Father btw. if you even care.

[duelistkingdom]

used the black centered picrew to make diana kettering

[duelistkingdom]

dirty banana for the OC living most rent free in your head rn

rn it's four of them rotating out, but diana kettering and violet foxglove take up the most space in terms of being what it'd take to make them break and also in terms of what they're looking for. like it's usually a nice little gossip fest with them. ophelia copperfield and karma carter show up, throw shit on the floor and make the plot about them then ask if i'm going to fix that. which is a little cunt of them, actually.

edit to actually answer the ask because i'm very stupid and didn't answer the ask

violet foxglove is bubblegum bitch by marina (or possibly dear reader by taylor swift). diana kettering is smells like teen spirit by nirvana. karma carter is pop princess by the click five with a little bit of lucky by britney spears. ophelia copperfield is celebrity skin by hole.

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