Chapter 11Dangerously Blonde(s)15 February 2022Yeah. She definitely had a few drinks too many st night.

  Ace wakes up at a time she only deduced was ungodly through the sight of sunlight sneaking past a pair of curtains. A westerly wind blows rain against the window, causing a soft but satisfying tap-tap-tap of rain to emanate from behind the curtains. A sound which would be calming if she didn’t have a horrible migraine.

  The damn pce is, much to Ace’s chagrin, starting to feel like home. And much like home, she can take slow, measured steps towards the bathroom with only the smallest possible amount of mental energy devoted to her path, her entire focus stuck on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Not even such a situation would save her from the fact no one here lets her wallow in her suffering, despite her very much wanting to, as someone spots her and comes running over.

  “Alice!” Amy calls out, taking her into her arms and pulling her into a tight embrace. “I see you’ve decided to wake up?”

  “Regrettably.” Ace tries to ignore the fact that Amy’s excitement is definitely not helping her migraine right now.

  “I’m gd you did.” Amy takes Ace’s hand and slowly but surely walks her to one of the couches in the common area. “I have way too much food. I made some things, assuming people would wake up around, like, 12 o’clock, but you’re the first one to wake up and it’s two.”

  “Oh.” Ace says, putting all her energy into a simple sound.

  “You look like a mess, dear.” Amy frowns quite expressively, and Ace would wonder how the girl could be this awake if she didn’t see a can of energy drink on the table. “How much wine did you have st night?”

  “Two.”

  “Two bottles?”

  “Uh, no. Gsses.”

  “Oh.” Amy tries to hide the fact that she is, indeed, very amused by this.

  “Look—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Ay.” She puts a hand on Ace’s shoulder, looking her in the eyes. “I’ll grab you a little something, it should help.”

  Amy quickly runs off, leaving Ace alone in an eerily silent room and groggily looking out of the window. A dark grey carpet of rain clouds hang ominously above the wooded valleys below the manor.

  She watches the rain pour down and longs for a world which she decided to leave: longs for a world in which they would just allow her to suffer without wanting to fix it for her through whatever miracle cure they’ve cooked up now.

  Ace feels a hand on her shoulder, and turns around to see Amber behind her with a rge knife in her hand, smiling down at her and causing her to recoil.

  “Huh?” The blonde seems confused for a moment, then ughs and shakes her head. “Oh, this thing.” She waves the knife around a little. “Amy asked me if I could slice the baguette for her. She thought I could probably do it better than her.”

  Ace, still in a minor state of shock, simply nods.

  “Amy is a little too afraid of cutting herself with it, and crushes the bread as a result, squeamish despite the fact that a silly little thing like this could barely cut through human flesh.” She runs her fingers along the bde. “Too thick, for one, and way too dull as well. It’s more like a saw bde, and that’s just not good for slicing, you know?”

  “Huh?”

  “If you want to get really hurt from a bde, you’d want to slice, or pierce. Not saw. I personally wouldn’t use it myself.” Amber shakes her head. “Maybe for a baguette.”

  “Use it?” Ace asks, reduced to the absolute basics of communication through the combined facts of a woman holding a knife right next to her and the migraine that is yet to dissipate.

  “You know, the usual.” Amber mimes a repeated stabbing motion that comes way too close to hitting Ace for comfort. “A little hobby of mine.”

  Ace, to signal her discomfort, shifts a little away from Amber. Where the fuck is Amy when she needs her?

  “You don’t like my hobby?” Amber frowns and whines a little.

  “Stabbing people?” Ace asks, still unsure whether it’s an extremely unfunny joke or a simirly unfunny truth.

  “I wasn’t going to stab you, silly.” The stress that she pces on the ‘you’ only further unnerves Ace. “You’re like a sister to me, Alice.”

  “C-could you please put the knife away?” Ace begs. She wonders whether this was some kind of test set up by Amy to see whether Ace would be a little more generous when confronted with really unfunny jokes.

  Or, perhaps more likely, Amy fell for a girl who shares an at times very expressive sense of humour, who then decided to carry that through with Ace out of a sense of boredom, cruelty, or genuinely thinking she is funny. She’s trying to be as patient with it as she can be: if only because she isn’t sure whether this girl could actually end up stabbing her if she made a scene.

  “Yes, yes.” Amber rolls her eyes, putting the knife on the table. “I will be a good little girl and not scare the newbies, like Auntie wants me to.”

  “Auntie? You mean Ms. Lambert?” Ace asks, knowing Elle has some family who visits from time to time.

  “Aunt Bea. You’d hate her, I think. She—” Amber is interrupted by Amy returning with a gss of what looks like freshly-made juice and some painkillers.

  “What about Aunt Bea?” Ace’s saviour asks.

  “That your dear Alice here would hate her.”

  “Oh.” Amy thinks for a second. Ace gets a moment to look at her, and is quite embarrassed to only now notice she’s wearing a hoodie, skirt and programmer socks today, somehow looking good in clothes she’s almost certainly wearing as some kind of joke. “I’m not sure. She might get used to her.”

  Before Ace can respond to ask who this Aunt Bea is, Amy puts painkillers in her hand and tells her to swallow them, with help from the juice if need be.

  Something in her tone of voice seems to imply that she thinks it’s quite silly Ace managed to get this hungover after yesterday.

  “You should have something to eat.” Amy then says, taking Ace’s hand and pulling her up to her feet. “It’d be good for you, darling. Helps with the hangover.”

  She looks at her friend, and then at her friend’s date, who is currently quite distracted by her phone, and frowns. Yes, she’s hungry, but Amy is clearly having a much better time with Amber than Ace could ever offer her. Amber is expressive, bubbly, and seemingly easily amused: Ace is none of those things. “I think I want to go back to bed.”

  “You’re not hungry?” Amy looks at her disappointed. “I made this food just for you! I also got Amber here to help me with it. And you really ought to eat more, dear,” She pulls Ace towards the table so she can take a closer look at it. “At least take something with you!”

  If Amy wanted her to feel guilty about not joining her for a meal, she certainly got what she wanted: the girl is hard to deny when she isn’t tired, and impossible to deny when she’s dragging her hungover self along to all corners of the building.

  “Aym—”

  “No, no. I insist.” She says, picking up a few things from the whole Sunday lunch she’d prepared and putting them on a pte. “Have a few things and I’ll stop bothering you about it.”

  “I—”

  “Look,” Amy pulls on the uniform Ace couldn’t be bothered to get out of st night and ended up sleeping in. “It’s way baggier than it used to be. You’ve lost, like, at least half a stone: you need to eat, young woman, and I will not let you neglect your physical needs.”

  “Please?” Ace begs, and Amy frowns some more at her. She hates it when Amy gets serious.

  There’s no winning against some people. In the end, Ace reluctantly sits down for a meal, just for Amy to smile triumphantly and tell her all about the things she got up to st night, refusing to leave out any details, no matter how much she probably should be leaving them out of her recollection.

  18 February 2022It’s concerning how Ace’s morning routine seems to be getting longer each and every week. Where she would, in the past, get away with a quick shower and maybe some female deodorant — insisting to people in his life that male deodorant stinks like hell, which has the benefit of both being true and working as a useful defence against accusations of queerness — now, her routine has ballooned to using fancy shampoos, conditioners and soaps that she struggles to understand but people insist are quite nice, actually, taking care of her already quite lengthy hair and making sure she’s putting on all sorts of things on her face to make sure she looks pretty. Or so they say.

  Ace insists it’s so she’s capable of looking pretty, if her body wasn’t so horribly him, upon which Amy or Kelynen would correctively frown at her until she admits that no, she shouldn’t be saying those things. Kelynen insists that she knows better, and should try to believe that which she knows. Amy, on the other hand, just tells her that suffering isn’t some kind of virtue and that such Ace should not wallow in her dysphoria as an uncomfortable, but stable, status quo.

  She’s putting more effort into her presentation today, as she’s been told Ms. Lambert will be joining the girls today: it means they need to be at their best, as she does end up paying for the whole exercise, and from Ace’s inexperienced eyes it’s clear that she’s paying a lot. Whilst the first years get cheaper uniforms and hand-me-downs to handle their changing bodies, the fourth years and sponsors have had theirs tailored. The material is quite comfy.

  It also means that she feels more insecure than ever sharing a space with beautiful, fully-fledged women whilst Ace is still struggling to figure out how to be a girl in the most basic ways possible. At least she could be a convincing, if mediocre, boy.

  Eira enters the hallway alongside Ms. Lambert. She looks tall next to the aristocrat, and it seems that isn’t an issue: Ms. Lambert looks up at her and follows her story with genuine interest. The two almost walk past Ace, who tries to look busy like the sponsors had told her to.

  Almost.

  “Oh!” Ms. Lambert stops next to her and watches her fail to clean a window for a second. “Alice, is it not?”

  “Um.” Ace turns around to face her. “Yes. Ac— Alice Howells, ma’am.” It takes her longer than it should have, but she tries to save herself with a curtsey.

  Ms. Lambert looks at the maid in front of her, eyes her up and down, then smiles. “You’ve come along so much since the st time I saw you, Alice.”

  “Thank you.” Ace can’t help but blush and look away. “Ma’am.”

  “Excuse me.” Eira says. “I’ll have to make some final preparations. I’m sure Alice here could help Elle get settled in, could she not?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Eira, content that the aristocrat is someone else’s problem now, gracefully makes her way down the hallway.

  Ms. Lambert is unable to abstain from throwing the woman some longing looks as she does so. She’s silent for a moment. Ace is unsure what she should be doing in this situation — she’s alone with her aristocratic boss, who is paying for her transition — but averts this mild panic turning into major panic by deciding to improvise.

  “Um. Your coat, ma’am?”

  The woman nods, and it takes Ace a second to realise that she would have to help remove the coat — at least, if she’s remembering old films involving aristocrats correctly, and that is hard to do in a high-stress environment — and takes her bag at the same time.

  “Thank you very much, Alice.” Ms. Lambert says, with an edge to her voice Ace cannot quite pce.

  “Follow me, ma’am.”

  She leads Ms. Lambert through some of the maze-like hallways of the manor to finally find the room she’s pretty sure the woman uses for most of her stays — it’s the grandest bedroom in the whole of the building, and the only one that the first years are categorically not allowed to clean.

  It is at this point that she realises she’s brought the woman’s coat and bag with her to the bedroom, rather than depositing them somewhere more proper. It doesn’t seem like she minds, though, rather more focused on looking at Ace. Her gaze is only making Ace feel more unable of reaching her standards than ever.

  “You’re allowed to speak, Alice.” She eventually says. “I prefer it, really. Whenever I visited others, I always hated it when the staff would not speak unless spoken to.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Ace answers, completely unsure what to say. “How… How was your trip?”

  “It was lovely. Snowdonia really is one of the most lovely parts of Wales, is it not? Have they taken you hiking yet?” Ms. Lambert takes her bag, makes her way over to a desk, and starts unpacking some of her things.

  “It’s been too cold and wet.”

  “That’s a shame. Have you at least been enjoying the accommodations here, then?” She asks, almost seeming genuinely interested in Ace’s life.

  “They’re really good.” Ace lies the best she can: the pce has been growing on her, yes, but a much rger part of her wishes she could go back to boymoding out in Leeds. She’d have a room to herself, for one, and roommates she’d get along with better even if they’re starting to understand each other more. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “It’s really no trouble.” Ms. Lambert takes a few steps towards Ace. “I am always happy to see young women come into their own. It’s one of the most beautiful things in the world.”

  “I can imagine so, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Elle.” She takes Ace’s hand and softly leads her closer to the bed, sitting down on the side of it herself whilst Ace idles just next to it.

  “Yes, ma— Elle.”

  “You’re a very polite one, aren’t you?” Elle smiles, and looks at Ace again. “Feel free to sit down, Alice.”

  “Um, on the bed?” She asks, for crification.

  “If you wish to.” Elle struggles to hide the fact that she is blushing, and it’s only after that Ace realises the implication: stupid, stupid Ace.

  She sits down on the bed, trying to keep some distance between her and Ms. Lambert still.

  “I can see why Amy wanted you included in the programme.” Ms. Lambert says, after a long moment of silence. “You’re a very shy thing. Silent. Eager to please.” Elle stands up and creates some distance between them. “I’m sorry. I really ought to remove myself from this situation.”

  “Did I do something wrong?” Ace asks, suddenly quite confused about the sudden shift.

  “It’s not you, the issue is me. Your behaviour is letting some bad tendencies of mine surface. Destructive instincts that I really shouldn’t follow.” Ms. Lambert says, quite unhelpfully.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll try not to in the future.”

  “I see I’ll have to be quite blunt: You’re too easy for me to take advantage of, if I wanted to.”

  Ace isn’t sure how to respond to a statement like that.

  “I do not want to do that, not again. And it’s my problem to deal with.” She helps Ace onto her feet. “Your inclusion in this programme came with certain expectations regarding service, but it also gives me certain responsibilities.” She helps Ace onto her feet. “My responsibility to you is to allow you to develop into a confident woman capable of standing up for herself before I do anything.”

  Elle walks Ace to the door, wishes her goodbye, and closes it before she can utter another apology.

  After finding her way back to her room, she sits down on the floor next to her bed, rests her head in her hands, and cries without even knowing why she’s crying.

  Inadorable