
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/533142.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      F/F
  Fandom:
      Tithe_Series_-_Holly_Black
  Relationship:
      Kaye_Fierch/Changeling_Kaye_Fierch
  Character:
      Kaye_Fierch
  Additional Tags:
      Marijuana, Twins
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-10-09 Words: 4634
****** What Belongs to You ******
by RubydeBrazier
Summary
     Kaye never expected to meet her other self, and she certainly didn't
     expect to sleep with her.
Notes
     These characters do not belong to me. I make no profit off of this
     fic and my only intention is praise and/or parody of the original.
What Belongs to You
 
For a long time, Kaye stood leaning against the wall in the sunlight, smoking a
clove and watching herself wipe out. It was two in the afternoon and the
boardwalk was beginning to fill with the first truants and locals on their day
off. Kaye could smell the grease off the cakes in Steele’s fudge store mixing
with the salt smell of the ocean and occasional whiff of clandestine marijuana,
impossible to localize. Roving gangs of obnoxious blond girls in ghetto couture
passed by, trying to look like they weren’t desperate for the attention of the
bands of jocks swaggering around in ivy-league t-shirts. Kaye could feel the
roller coasters down at Wonderland Pier twisting emptily in the air, even from
this distance. Of course, it had taken a while for her to become that sensitive
to such things.
That she was insensitive to metal was the second of the differences Kaye had
noticed when she first saw herself. The first was that she was a Raver.
Somehow, Kaye had thought she would have been Goth no matter what decade she
had grown up in, but apparently not. This girl had her face, its slightly
slanted eyes and yellow-blond hair, but the hair was a great deal shorter and
had been pulled into two high tufted ponytails held in place with transparent
blue plastic dice on rubber bands and was tipped with blue at the ends where it
had been dyed and grown out. She was wearing pink and gray Kikwear pants,
exaggeratedly wide and covered in toggles and velcro, with an inside-out neon
green tank top.
Her belly button was pierced. In fact, she seemed pierced almost everywhere.
There were three metal bars through her left eyebrow and a thick metal hoop
through her right. A small metal dot showed at the center of her labrum, just
below what looked exactly like Kaye’s own lower lip and her ears were a mass of
asymmetrical barbells and hoops. Where her small breasts stretched the thin
fabric of her top Kaye could make out the round shapes of two other piercings,
like shadow nipples. Around her neck were half a dozen charms on multicolored
leather cords and several of the rings on her slender fingers looked like
wrought iron. She had tattoos as well, at least three that Kaye could see- a
garland of delicately colored bluebells around her left arm, a Japanese
character at the nape of her neck and the runic symbol for protection over her
left breast, where the low neckline of the tank top ended in frayed thin
straps. Her skateboard was blue, with several Roxy stickers on the bottom and a
badly worn reflective top.
“Kaye! Check this out!” called one of her friends from several benches away.
The girl who was Kaye obediently turned her raver head to watch her friend’s
moves, her own skateboard tucked up idly under one heel.
The Kaye who was not Kaye smoked her cigarette against the wall and scuffed her
knee-high Doc Maartens together, her long blond hair hiding the similarity
between their faces and tangling in the collar of the black leather jacket she
wore in spite of the heat.
She supposed she should have expected something like this to happen eventually.
After all, the Seelie Court did sometimes tire of their stolen ones, even one
as pretty as Kaye had been as a human child. Or perhaps they had simply needed
to travel elsewhere in some haste, and some of the taken had become the left
behind. The Seelie tended to treat human children in the way that very rich
humans treated their pets and would have grieved only a little while if they
had lost one. Only until they found another one, just as pretty, and they told
themselves that the children they took had better lives with the Fairie than
human parents could have given them. They had everything they could ever want,
except to grow up.
Kaye thought of her mother, who should have been this girl’s mother, and felt
guilty despite knowing that there was nothing she could have done. She
remembered the afternoon she had spent with the High Court, in the apple
orchards, and felt a rising fury in her for the girl that she was not. So much
had happened in the years since they had met at the shore. Her mother had the
success of her band and a strong indie following, and she had Roiben. Well, as
much as anybody could ever have Roiben.
Kaye wondered if the real Kaye had any foster parents. She wondered where the
human Kaye lived, what she ate, where she went to school, what she was into,
and most of all, she wondered why she felt the need to torture herself like
this. This was the third time in as many days that Kaye had come here, to the
shore, to wait for her human self to appear, and stand and watch as the girl
tried to perfect her Olie.
She already knew that she shouldn’t try to talk to her. What would she say,
anyway?
“Hello, I’m that fucking fairy child who got everything you should have had,
including a mother. Want to go for some coffee?”
#
Kaye walked slowly down the boardwalk toward the club. She liked to wait until
about midnight, when QXT’s had been open for several hours and the few patrons
who had wandered in wearing white miniskirts and big hair had enough Long
Island Ice Tea in them to decide that they could dance to the music even if it
didn’t suck. The usuals were all there. There was the DJ in his alcove, blond
spiky hair bobbing softly as he bent over his gear in happy concentration.
Every so often he would look up to watch the girl Kaye knew was his girlfriend
twirling around to Dead Can Dance in her black dress or chatting excitedly to
her friends. Kaye bought a Bloody Kiss, just to look like she was drinking
something, requested one of her mother’s songs, and leaned against the wall to
listen and watch.
This was the only club she knew that really played music she liked, so Kaye was
willing to come to QXT’s despite the inevitable come-ons from guys who had seen
her come in alone. She waited for the song to play. It was always gratifying to
hear her mom’s music in a club. Also, since it made her sick to her stomach to
fly into the city to CBGB or Irving Plaza to hear her play, requesting songs at
QXT’s was one way to feel closer to her. So was living in her grandmother’s
house, even if mom was too busy to visit very often these days.
Kaye supposed that was a good thing, as the human changeling had apparently
been found and sent to some foster home just a few miles from where she lived,
in the house that girl should have grown up in, and Kaye didn’t know how her
mom would react to seeing the human her. It occurred to her suddenly that she
was still thinking of the girl, even in the club. Kaye drank her Bloody Kiss
after all and watched the boys punch the air to her mother’s lyrics. After a
few hours, the sugar in the drink made her hyperactive and the room became very
warm. She could hear the sound of the waves from the shore outside in the
pauses of the music and snippets of conversation seemed to float past her. The
boasted exploits of the crowd around the pool tables in the other room, the
DJ’s girlfriend discussing her lipstick choices and the music all blended
together into one crushing pressure of noise. Perhaps, she decided, it would be
a good idea to leave before the lights came back on.
Kaye left the club, the night air slipping down the back of her jacket and
unsticking her wings from the sweaty skin of her back. There was no one around
but an old bum, asleep in a bundle of rags on the sand. The moon was up, high
and tiny in the sea light. She had stayed longer than she intended to. She
walked around the corner of the building, fumbling in her jacket for a
cigarette, and was broadsided across the temples with a metal lunchbox.
The lunchbox sprang open as it hit and an array of sparkly lip-gloss and loose
change went skidding across the pavement. Kaye watched it fall and then felt
someone on top of her and was suddenly on the ground, on her side, staring at a
tube of glitter hair gel two inches from her face.
“All right, Psycho! You’re one of them. Who are you, why are following me and
why do you look like me!”
Kaye turned her head and was looking up into her own face, a gray hoodie pulled
over the blond and blue hair and a broken Digimon lunchbox raised high over her
head. The changeling. She had maneuvered until she was sitting on top of Kaye
with her knees against Kaye’s shoulders so that Kaye couldn’t get up. Kaye’s
face burned where the lunchbox had hit it and she could see a smear of blood,
wet and reflective in the streetlight, on the side of the brightly colored
metal box. The girl looked scared. Kaye laid her head against the pavement,
holding out her hands protectively over her face.
“I’m you,” she said softly, “I’m the one they traded for you.”
The girl bit her lower lip and Kaye could see tears starting to swim in her
eyes.
“Please,” Kaye said, “put that down, and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you
everything.”
 
Kaye looked around the room. It was messy, but not depressing. There were
strands of pastel-colored Chinese lanterns, like party decorations, faintly
glowing at the tops of the walls. The small window had no curtains, but there
was a partly rolled-up Sailor Moon wall scroll over the view of the brick wall
of the next building. The mattress on the floor was covered in Hello Kitty
sheets and there were magazines scattered around the floor- TeenPeople, YM and
a British girl’s zine called “More”, all of which seemed to have been ripped
apart and cannibalized for wallpaper.
The walls were an odd mix of sex and innocence. Kaye saw a foldout glossy
fashion shoot of Elijah Wood tacked up next to a picture of a cute penguin.
Photos of her friends had been interspersed with these and some more mundane
things like a provisional driver’s license application form with phone numbers
written on it in crayon, so that the result was part pop culture fanart and
part personal diary. An iMac laptop in blue and white lay on the floor next to
the bed, recharging, and there was a blown glass pipe and a small plastic bag
of weed on the floor next to the computer.
The human Kaye sat down on the bed, clearing away some of the magazines, picked
up the pipe and repacked it gently, and drew a small silver lighter from her
pocket. Kaye sat down on the bed next to her, taking the proffered pipe and
obediently breathing in the caustic fragrant smoke before passing it back to
the other girl.
“Dee doesn’t mind,” the human Kaye said. “There are always kids coming through
here when they need a place to crash. Some stay and some go. The rules are no
violence and no hard drugs, but they look the other way with weed as long as
you aren’t an idiot. Dee and Harry own the place now and they took me in when I
was declared an emancipated minor, helped me get my GED.”
“That’s cool,” said Kaye, leaning back on the bed. She was thinking of asking
about the foster homes, about why her doppelganger had chosen to emancipate
herself, but thought better of it. It was enough that she was here, in her
room, and the girl was not afraid of her. Kaye had told her the story on the
walk back to the house, and she had listened with an almost creepily detached
trepidation, as if she did not know what to believe.
There was a long silence.
“I saw you once, didn’t I?” the human Kaye asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
Kaye sighed. “I thought you would be happier with the High Court. I mean, what
was there for you to come back to, really? It had been so long, and you were
still just a kid.”
She could feel the warmth of the girl next to her on the mattress, smell her
strawberry scented shampoo, her laundry detergent and the human fragrance of
her body which was salty with an unplaceable underlying sweetness, cloying but
not at all like a flower. Sitting next to her, Kaye felt like she had no scent
at all. The girl made a noise that was halfway between a cough and a chuckle.
“Asshole,” she whispered.
#
“Why so many of these?” Kaye asked, gently stroking the edge of the belly
button ring. They had finished off the rest of the bag of weed and were lying
on their backs on the mattress, listening to mp3s on random. At the moment it
was playing Such Great Heights by The Postal Service.
“They protect me,” she replied, closing her eyes. “From you, I guess. I used to
have bad dreams about fairies coming into my room at night. I have a lot of
superstitious rituals to protect myself, like bells and special plants and the
tattoos, and this. I read in a book called The Field Guide, actually it was a
book for children, that fairies didn’t go near iron. They seem to have been
wrong about that, but I loved that book when I was younger.”
“They were right,” said Kaye. “It hurts to touch it. They wouldn’t take you
now, anyway. You’re too old.”
The girl across from her opened her eyes and Kaye was staring into her own
eyes, inches away from her face, and was unable to comprehend their expression.
She could feel the girl’s breath and watch her chest rise and fall, mesmerized
by the similarities and differences between them. She felt like she was
looking, not at herself, but at a more real version of herself. This smooth
skin was the real Kaye’s actual skin. This blond hair was her real hair. Those
were her eyes, the look of which Kaye had stolen from her. She could only ever
look like this. Everything that had been stolen from her she now appeared to
still possess and everything Kaye had ever possessed, including Kaye’s own
identity, really belonged to her. Kaye felt a deep ache in her heart, full of
longing and regret, but she couldn’t say exactly for what. She felt like she
wanted to comfort the stolen child, to hold her, but within Kaye’s sympathy
there was a grasping insistence, as if she wanted to crawl inside the
changeling’s skin and possess again what she had lost when she gained the
knowledge of what she really was.
In that moment the changeling bent closer and gently brought her lips to brush
against Kaye’s lips. Something clicked deep in Kaye and she pulled the
changeling closer, opening her mouth, needing to become the other girl, to be
herself again, to be forgiven, to become whole. They kissed passionately and
Kaye pulled up the changeling’s shirt to cup small round breasts which were
like her own except for the steel rings which felt unpleasantly cold and left
her fingertips oddly numb as if they had been scalded. The changeling put her
hands in Kaye’s long blond tangled hair and held her head as they kissed, as if
they were each discovering how it felt to kiss lips identical to their own,
like kissing yourself in the mirror and having your own image kiss you back.
Kaye kicked off her boots and stripped out of her black jeans, dropping the
leather jacket and the black v-neck on the floor next the bed. She allowed the
other girl to watch her strip and then embraced her about the waist, pressing
her face into the soft skin of the changeling’s belly as the girl slid out of
her clothes. They were warm and smooth, even more alike in nudity than they
were when dressed, the yellow glow of the bedside lamp casting the spaces
between their superimposed bodies into deeper shadow.
Kaye shut her eyes as the changeling ran her hands over Kaye’s unpierced body,
kissing her neck and breasts, stroking her thighs and running one hand
experimentally over the sparse blond pubic hair. Their hands wandered slowly
over each other’s bodies as they lay side by side on the bed, kissing and
touching. Kaye felt the room start to spin and lay on her back, trying to take
deep breaths. The changeling’s rings were like ice next to her skin and each
kiss that followed where the hands had touched was warmer by contrast. The
changeling slid one thigh high up between Kaye’s legs and with the pressure and
motion of their embrace Kaye felt herself losing control quickly, feeling dizzy
and disoriented and looking up into her own real eyes.
The rocking motion became more urgent and Kaye felt the girl’s weight shift on
top of her as she moved from pressing her leg against Kaye to straddling her.
Kaye put her arms around her, letting the other girl use her body as a fulcrum,
arching into the contact. The changeling’s body grew feverishly warm and a pink
flush spread across her collarbone and over the arches of her high cheekbones.
She took longer than Kaye and was more physical, arching her back and biting
her lower lip as she held her breath in Kaye’s arms. Finally she slid down next
to Kaye and rested her head on Kaye’s chest, breathing quietly. Kaye kissed the
top of the changeling’s head and listened to the computer shuffle through
trance and britpop as the girl slept.
#
“I’m sorry,” said Kaye, stroking the changeling’s cheek, when she realized that
the girl was awake again.
“For what?”
“For pretending to be you.”
“That’s not your fault,” the girl admitted. “You thought you were me.”
“I know, but I feel like I owe you something. Like I should give you something
or do something for you.” Kaye exhaled slowly. “To make you happy.”
The girl raised herself on one elbow and peered down at Kaye incredulously.
“You mean like a wish?”
“We. Don’t. Grant. Wishes.”
The changeling scooted up on both elbows, rocked back onto her heels, sat on
Kaye’s chest and bounced. “Grant me a wish!”
“Get off of me!”
“Grant me a wish, Be-otch!” She bounced until the mattress didn’t give any
further and Kaye was getting crushed. “No! Grant me THREE WISHES!”
“Okay, just get off me,” Kaye begged. Her head was spinning and the girl’s
weight on her chest was making it hard to breathe.
“HA!” She leaped off the bed and placed her fists on her naked hips
triumphantly.
“You have to ask for them now. You can’t save them up.”
“Give me a million dollars!”
“Do I look like I have a million dollars?” Kaye asked.
She paused. “Make me fly!” she demanded.
“Done,” said Kaye.
The girl’s mouth fell open. For a moment she looked like a very little kid,
wide eyed with amazement and joy, and then she became more serious. She looked
at Kaye out of the corner of her eye.
“Take me to see my mother,” she said. It was not a request.
Kaye sighed. “Done,” she said softly.
She looked back at Kaye and there was a strange emotion in her eyes, then she
grinned again. “When do I get my pixie dust?” she chirped.
“Pixie dust?” asked Kaye sarcastically.
“To FLY with!” she spread her arms wide and spun enthusiastically in a circle
on one bare foot.
“You have to make your third wish. I said you can’t save them up. You have to
make it now.”
“I want my pixie dust, it’s gonna be so lush,” she sang, dancing in place.
“There is no such thing. There are, however, wings. I have wings.”
“You have wings?” she looked Kaye over. “Oh, of course. I don’t know what you
really look like.”
Kaye saw her chance. “You want to know what I really look like?”
“Of course I do.”
“Done.”
“That wasn’t going to be my last wish!”
“Well, it is now.”
Kaye had thought that ruse would elicit anger, but the changeling girl laughed
instead and lay back down on the bed, breathing heavily from the spinning.
“You aren’t like the others,” she said drowsily. “They were always so humor-
impaired. You’re more like a person.”
Kaye looked away. The room was slightly less dark than before and the brick
wall out the little window looked gray instead of blue. It wasn’t much to go by
but Kaye knew a New Jersey dawn when she saw one. She wondered if what the girl
had just said was what she truly looked like to a human who knew her- like a
person, but not really a person. She wondered what Cornelius would say. The
image of Cornelius saying “You fucked yourself? I need a drink” came to mind
and Kaye smiled. When she looked back at the bed the girl was still lying
there, staring at the ceiling. She looked over at Kaye.
“You can crash here if you want,” she said.
“No, thanks,” said Kaye. “I have to feed my cat.”
 
#
Kaye watched the girl walk towards her across the sand, the twilight making her
steps unsure and afraid, and remembered how brave the changeling had to be to
be doing this, how brave the girl was to have done any of this.
“Hey, Kaye!” she called and waved. It felt strange to be calling someone else
Kaye, but the human Kaye looked up immediately and waved back. She was wearing
a green and pink plaid miniskirt with ripped pink fishnets and silver platform
boots, a tank top that said “skateboarding is not a crime” and Hello Kitty arm
warmers.
So much for blending in with the night sky, Kaye thought, looking down at her
long black dress and the oversize black net shawl that draped over her head and
hung on either side of her shoulders.
“So,” the girl said, looking around nervously, “my mother’s going to meet us
here?”
“No.” Kaye laughed. “We are going to see her.”
“Why did we meet here, then?” the girl looked at Kaye out of the corner of one
eye, half turned in defense.
Kaye ran one hand over her head as if she were untying an invisible string that
was knotted around her. The glamour fell away in one fluid shimmer and Kaye
watched the girl’s eyes go wide. “We are going to fly there.”
Kaye stood on the sand, her green skin almost blending in with the gray
darkness behind her, with her black dress swaying lightly in the night wind and
the partly translucent open wings shimmering softly, delicately as an insects,
as they tested the air. The girl crept towards her slowly until she was close
enough to reach up and run one hand down Kaye’s face. “You don’t look like them
either,” she said finally.
“I’m a different type,” said Kaye, abruptly self-conscious. “Are you sure you
are going to be warm enough? It’s about a half hour from here.”
“I’m okay.” The girl nodded.
“Put your arms around my neck, grab your opposite wrists and hold on tight.”
“Are you serious?” she said, grinning.
Kaye held out her arms. The body that leaned into her was warm and smelled
sweetly of hairspray and rose incense. She put her arms around the girl’s
waist, pulling her close. There was a low humming noise, like a loud vibration.
The air around them seemed to shake in time with the hum, faster and faster,
until they lifted off the ground. The girl gasped and wrapped her legs around
Kaye’s hips to avoid falling.
“It’s okay,” whispered Kaye, “I won’t drop you. I’m stronger than I look.”
They flew out over the sea, the shoreline of Jersey disappearing into the
darkness behind them. It was colder over the water but the girl’s fear seemed
to fade as the trip progressed and by the time they passed over the giant
freighters gliding slowly past in the shipping lanes the lights of Manhattan
were visible, a floating glowing castle in the distance, rapidly approaching.
Even having taken anti-nausea medication, Kaye still felt the disorientation
and weakness of being in the city as they flew over Wall Street, past the
gilded angel with the trumpet and across Canal towards the club.
“I guess it’s true that no one looks up in this town,” the changeling said.
“Well, a large portion of this island’s population isn’t completely human
anyway,” said Kaye wryly.
They landed next to a dumpster behind a bar where Kaye replaced her glamour and
they walked about half a block until they were standing in front of CBGB. Kaye
said hello to the bouncer, who raised his eyebrows when he saw her companion.
“Thought you weren’t coming. Who is this?”
“My adopted identical twin,” said Kaye.
“No shit! She got ID?”
“She’s not drinking.”
He motioned them inside. They stepped through the door and Kaye watched as the
girl took a quick look around at the patrons, scanning the crowd with a nervous
expression.
“So, when do we see my mother?”
Kaye gestured at the stage. The lead singer, a blond woman with high
cheekbones, leaned way out over the cluster of fans who were pressed against
the stage and danced as she sang. “You’re looking at her.”
The human Kaye opened her mouth in shock and turned to stare at the stage.
“The lead singer of Stepping Razor is my mother?”
Kaye smiled. The girl continued to stare, disbelief mixing with delight on her
face as she scanned the face of the older woman, noticing for the first time
how the lines of her mouth, her coloring and the shape of her body were the
same as the woman on stage.
“When I was in grade school,” she said softly, never taking her eyes off the
stage, “I used to pretend that I had real parents out there who were searching
for me. Nobody believed my story, of course. They said I was delusional,
possibly from the trauma of being abandoned by delinquent, interracial parents.
In time I believed it too, that I had imagined the whole thing. It wasn’t until
I was in middle school and still had all these incredibly realistic memories
that I started to secretly believe again. You are actually only one of, like,
three people I’ve ever told, but that whole time I never believed once that I
had been abandoned. I always thought I had a mother and I used to fantasize
about her, how she would be so cool and all of the cool things that she would
do. And now it’s real.” She watched the stage as if looking at the woman
singing there solidified her somehow, as if looking away might make her
disappear. “Thank you, Kaye.” There was a hesitation in her voice that made it
sound as if calling another person by her name was awkward for her too.
“You’re welcome,” said Kaye, taking her hand. “Just let me know,” she added
with a smile, “when you feel ready to dance.”
The End
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