#saying adaire instead of adelaide

[twinewool]

Hella’s conversation with Adelaide from SiH 21 - one of my favourite Ali moments ever.

[hadestigers]

ali please just say gay rights Please

[hushedgalaxy]

The Incorrect Sea

Hella/Adelaide  (Rated T)

(Spoilers for Spring in Hieron 02)

This is the first fanfiction I’ve ever written, but that boat scene blew me away- and I had to write something.  

Hella was not adjusting to her time in Aubade, feeling at loose ends without a foe to fight or a sword on her hip.  What she needed was a day on the sea to distract herself from her thoughts.  Instead she finds Adelaide, there to infuriate her, with her ridiculous outfit and her imperial smirks

Hella needed something to quell this nervous energy.  As it was, she spent too much time in Decarte’s distracting Adaire from her customers.  She would stand in a corner and try and stock shelves or to help out.  But then a customer would get too close or seem suspicious and Hella would glare at them. 

It took all her restraint to not bite snarkily at a customer asking where in the store they might find a bushel of apples.  She wished, inanely, that she had her sword back.   Or she’d stock the shelves and chip the porcelain.  Or she’d curl ribbons with scissors for Adaire’s ornate window dressings and get more and more agitated when the ribbon refused to cooperate. And there Adaire would be to gently guide her to the next task for her to get angry at.

Hella is finally guided to behind a counter and instructed to wrap various purchases in butcher paper.  She would fold paper over purchases and find herself ripping the paper forcefully.  

Hella took a breath, and focused in on the task, determined to be helpful.  Over the course of a couple hours, she settles into the repetitive movement, creasing here and folding there.  She can focus on this.

She suspected she had been more of an inconvenience than a help.

She missed being able to take action.  In Hieron, she was able to accomplish things.  She could protect Hadrian or Adaire.  She was able to face down armies.  Out there she was The Fighter.  In Aubade, she didn’t know what she was.

Adaire had settled quickly into the local economy, establishing a bustling place of commerce, a familiar face to many citizens of Aubade.  Hadrian seemed to find purpose here, serving at the church with Fester Finley.  Even Lem was busy hassling Samothes and reading everything he could get his hands on in the library.

And Hella had nothing.

   The people are generous in Aubade.  Hella had picked up this boat from an old man who used to go fishing on sunny afternoons for far cheaper than she ever would have been able to in Ordenna.  He said to her that she, young and capable, would have it better use for it than him, that in his old age he simply wanted to relax in the comforts that Aubade provided him.

This, she thought, was just the thing she needed to steady herself.   

Sailing was something she was good at.  She had done it practically since she had begun to walk.  It was a much a part of her as fighting, as protecting Hadrian, as much as anything.

Hella just needed to sail around the island, see that there wasn’t anything coming to catch her unawares. She needed to reassure herself that Hadrian and Adaire and Lem were safe from the Heat and the Dark here.  She just needed to lose herself to the sea.

She quickly realized the sea was wrong here.  It was small things, the taste of salt on her lips, the ways the currents moved under the waves, the horizon, the winds.  It was all just slightly off, in a way that reminded her, no matter what, that this was not Hieron, and this was not her seas.

   One afternoon, after bidding a busy Adaire farewell, Hella set out to her boat.  She could feel the nervous energy building up in her.  Her shoulders were tense, wound tightly as if ready to snap. 

The sun was high, and Hella held her hand over her brow as she looked out to the docks where her boat floated lazily in the water.  It’s as she approached that she made out a figure reclining, watching her while lying in wait on her boat.  Alarmed she picked up the pace.  Who was this intruder?  Her fingers itched for her blade.  Instead she balled her fists in preparation.

But then, getting closer, she suddenly recognized the figure.  Despite herself and her better judgement, Hella’s fists loosen.  In a ridiculous mockery of sailing gear, a tight corset and flowing skirt with the insignias and cut of an admiral’s uniform, her dark eyes peered up at Hella from beneath a large captain’s hat.

Adelaide Tristè. 

Adelaide smirked, cockily, triumphant.  She bit into an apple and spit the seeds off the side of the boat with a deliberate casualness.  As if she regularly waited in Hella’s boat to torture her. Hella tried not to notice how good Adelaide looked in the sun.  Her brown skin in the sunlight, looking so grounded compared to the untouchable, imperial façade she adopted sitting on a throne.

Adelaide stood to greet her.  “Ah, going out on the waves again Hella,” she called out.

“Wh- what are you doing here?” Hella asked, flushing.  Trying for anger.

“I dunno I just wanted to go on a boat ride,” Adelaide said.

“Yeah but this isn’t like for fun or for whatever your dressed for.”   She looked ridiculous, Hella told herself.

“Wh- It’s not for fun? What’s it for?  Or are you working?”  The tone was mocking.

Hella could feel Adelaide’s smirking, teasing, attention on her bad as she turned toward the rope tying the boat to the pier. Adelaide would have her fun making imperious statements at Hella, and then she’d be on her way.  Hella refused to let this intrusion delay her.

“I’m just… keeping an eye on things” Hella said, trying, but failing to not feel self-conscious. 

“You’re keep—" Adelaide laughs “Guard duty, it’s very important.”

Hella suddenly felt awkward.  Embarrassed, and then angry.  Adelaide just showed up here, and felt she could judge her?

“Do you need something?” she pointedly asks.

“I’d like to go on a boat ride.”

“Yeah but this is my boat.”

“And I’d like to go on a boat ride with you.”

“Yeah but there’s other boats.” Hella’s fists began to curl again.  Why wasn’t she leaving?

“But you’re not on those” Adelaide said, lowly.  Her eyes were half lidded as she looked up towards Hella’s own pair of eyes.

Hella felt the wind knocked out of her with that, and she wasn’t sure how to respond.  “What the fuck,” she said under her breath.

Adelaide started speaking again suddenly, in a rush.  “Let’s go, show me how important it is that you guard this… noble land.”

Hella fumed.  Adelaide was so presumptuous and pompous.  Hella always felt a bit unsteady around Adelaide.  Like whatever she might do might be amusing to Adelaide, but ultimately ineffective.  She growled under her breath and turned and started getting the boat ready to sail.

God, she wished she could wrap her hands around her throat. And then she felt immediate guilt, and shame.  No, she didn’t wish that.  Never again.

“Just sit over there and just stay quiet for once in your life,” Hella said brusquely.  She began to raise the sail.

Adelaide flopped down, sitting on the edge of the boat’s railing, and smiled, not saying a word.  If she leaned over her fingertips could brush against the surf.  From this new angle the captain’s hat was silhouetted against the sun, a halo of gold light framing her, reminiscent of Adelaide’s former crown.  

Hella set sail.

Hella navigated through the marina, and the other boats.  A smiling figure of a citizen of Aubade waves from their own vessel.  She made herself out from the reefs, into the truly open water.  Adelaide all the while looking on.  Out of the folds of her dress, Adelaide produced a bottle of champagne, and even more nonsensically, a thin glass champagne flute.  Silently, she poured herself a glass and daintily took a sip.

Adelaide, then, tossed the bottle toward her.  Hella instinctively whipped her hand out and caught it.  Then Adelaide produced another apple and rolled it across the deck to Hella.

Hella took a swig.  It was refreshing, and cool. She let the apple roll until it hit her foot.  Adelaide looks at her triumphant about something, and basking in it.

“How long have you been here?  How is this still cold?”

Adelaide smirked, twinkle in her eye as she purposefully did not respond.  She smiled as if to ask for permission to speak.  Hella felt a jolt of heat at that, that she was listening to her, however pettily.

“Okay sure, then don’t, fine”.  Hella bent down and grabbed the apple at her feet.  She chomped down on the fruit, angrily.

For about twenty minutes they sailed in silence.  Adelaide observing and sipping on her champagne, and Hella on hers.  Hella tried to focus on the sailing and the feel of the rope in her hands as she adjusted the sail to catch the wind. But, the sea was still wrong, the feeling in her guts still too tight.  Hella instead found her attention wandering, again, back to her passenger.

Adelaide, noticing her glance, nodded to her and took another sip of her champagne.  The sting of the salt water air and the taste of alcohol on her lips reminded her so suddenly of Calhoun.  Looking in this moment, the family resemblance is uncanny.  The shape of their nose, the crease in their eye lids, and their smiles were all so similar.  Adelaide, queen of the dead, held the face of a ghost in her features.

Adelaide interrupted her thoughts, leaning forward considering something in Hella’s face.  “It’s so strange to see you without the sword,” Adelaide mused.  She bit into the apple to punctuate the statement. “I’m just saying, it’s iconic.”

Hella glanced at her own, half eaten apple.  “I’ve been thinking of getting a new one, but it just doesn’t seem... appropriate,” she admitted.

“I’ve been thinking about that with a crown, so I understand,” Adelaide responded.

Hella was thrown.  “What is wrong wi- what?” 

“I, eh I’m not- what am I?  Y’know?  If I walked around here with a crown on people would look at me funny.” 

“Yeah,” Hella said emphatically.  Of course they would.

“And you walked around here with a big sword I’m saying it’s the same thing.”  Hella was well aware how people looked at her when heavily armed.  It was the lack of those looks that threw her off these days.

“Well swords serve a different purpose than a crown.”

“Sometimes.”

Hella scoffed at that, under her breath she muttered “God, you’re so fucking.”  Then louder, “I— This isn’t— this isn’t another one of those situations for you.”

“Another one of which situations, Hella?” Adelaide leaned back at this, her head inclined back and making steady eye contact with Hella.

“One of those where you do this, and talk to people like that, and then, you end up on top.”  Hella can once again feel herself getting agitated.

“Mmm, I think you assume too much about what I want” Adelaide tossed back the rest of champagne in her glass at this point.  Hella wanted so badly to push Adelaide against the mast of the ship, to grind their lips together and put that theory to the test.  But this wasn’t the time for that.

“You wanna walk around with a crown,” Hella redirected.

“I’m saying it’s strange not to have one. I’m saying it’s strange to, for once, look around and not feel like I need to be on top,” Adelaide retorted. 

Hella grumbled at that then sighs. “It just—” she started.

“I thought about it.  Overturning the status quo and turning that castle into mine,” Adelaide continued like this is just a normal thing one talks about.

 “I spoke with those Ordennans you sent in here.  Thinking perhaps we could…” Adelaide took a breath, “cause some trouble together.  They were game at first but… bit by bit.  The old man just wanted to be out fishing. And even the witch hunter...” Adelaide sighed, “There’s nothing like meeting a god to convince you there’s no such thing as witches sighs.” 

Oh yeah, the Ordennans.  It was so easy for Hella to forget sometimes that this sword was populated with people that she had killed.  For a moment, she wished she had had the foresight to have used the blade on Calhoun.  Then he would have still been alive in here.

“I haven’t even spoken to them, ugh.”

“Don’t bother, they’re not that interesting” Adelaide said imperiously.

“Well its weird.  I thought I’d be here and like, it would be a problem, but like there’s enough people that it isn’t.”  Hella could feel herself rambling, admitting to anxieties she had trouble admitting even to Adaire.

“The Second Trial of Hella Varal.”

“Fuck off”

Adelaide smirked at her and took a bite of her apple.  Her straight teeth pierced the green flesh of the apple.  Hella could feel her face heat as she found herself suddenly busy working the ropes in her hand.  She looks anywhere but toward Adelaide but can still feel her hot smirk upon her. 

“What’s your plan?” Adelaide asked.

“I mean, we can leave. We’ll be able to leave” Hella said as if to reassure herself “and until then, I dunno. The friends I have here seem happy, or trying.  It just seems wrong not to try.  If—"

“If?”

Hella sighed.

“The way things are going, Hella, I don’t know what will be left by the time we leave here.”

“Yeah but that’s not like, but that’s not like we’re not supposed to be here.”  Hella found herself laughing at the absurdity of it all, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Adelaide was a queen.  What was she doing sitting on a small sail boat trading barbs with a killer from Ordenna?

“You brought me here.”

“Yeah but that’s like—"

“I was the one who was trying to keep you.”

“Don’t, ugh, god.”  Adelaide just didn’t know when to quit, did she?  Every second she was here, she found another spot to prod at.  Hella constantly felt off her game around Adelaide, as if she was playing into some game for Adelaide’s amusement. 

“Anyways,” Adelaide continued, undeterred, “There’s not a place anyone’s supposed to be, there’s just where you are.  Isn’t that the mistake I made? That I thought I knew where people should be? The only place, the only person I know where they should be is me.  And it’s in this boat,” Adelaide grinned at that, childlike happiness, a teasingly lilt to her voice.  She took a bite of her apple then threw the core into the ocean.

Hella was pathetically grateful for her incensing presence.  With Adelaide around, Hella found herself noticing the incorrect waves less.  She wasn’t constantly aware of the lack of a sword on her hip.  She wasn’t sitting with impotent frustration that she was stuck in here, while the world fought the Heat and the Dark without her.  Instead she was firmly grounded by each infuriatingly annoying comment Adelaide made.

“I mean no, it’s not like that. You can be at the wrong place at the wrong time.  But also—I just—” Hella laughed, “There’s a particular skillset.”

“You’re speaking to a queen. I know,” Adelaide retorted, reclining against the wood grain of the boat.

She still carries herself like an empress, Hella thought.  Even on a tiny used-to-be fishing boat, off the coast of a lonely island inside of a sword, Adelaide sat regally like everything she looks at will bow to her will eventually.  Hella attempted to her attention back to the waves. 

“I thought I might learn some new things,” Adelaide continued, “I’d be a fantastic actress. That’s right- a god of the stage.”  Hella believed it.

“Well you know, you should get a hobby, ‘cause this isn’t? Gonna continue?”  Hella meant to sound firm, but it comes out as a question.  “And you seem pretty bored when I saw the sword.”

Adelaide chuckled.  “I am incredibly bored. You’re entertaining though.”  The last bit came out sincere.

Hella realized that Adelaide was entertaining as well.  Her shoulders felt looser and her stance surer than it was when she came out to the boat an hour ago.  She considered the apple in her hand, green.  The juice making her hands sticky.  Hella turned, properly to Adelaide, making proper eye contact for once, and resting against the railing on the other side of the boat. 

Hella bit into the apple.