Braiding, Weaving, Reflecting (Graceling Realm)

[starfishstar]

Fandom: Graceling Realm series by Kristin Cashore

Summary: Sometimes it’s easier for Bitterblue to see herself when she has Katsa as her mirror.

Characters: Bitterblue, Katsa, Helda

Notes: A Yuletide gift for dvske. Thank you to wonderful beta morbane, who made this story so much better.


Read on AO3, or here below:

“Ugh, I give up,” Bitterblue said.

She dropped the comb on her dressing table and frowned down at it. Then she frowned at her reflection in the mirror as well, and at her frazzled hair that was refusing today to fold neatly into braids.

“Give it to me,” Katsa offered, striding across the room to Bitterblue. “I’ll do your hair.”

Bitterblue turned in her seat to stare at her. Helda, who was on the other side of the bedroom, smoothing out minute creases in one of Bitterblue’s gowns, turned to cast an arch glance at Katsa as well. “Those are novel words to hear from your mouth, My Lady. If you don’t mind doing hair, why is it that you cut off all of your own?”

“I don’t mind doing Bitterblue’s hair,” Katsa clarified, swooping in to snatch up the comb. She gave Bitterblue’s shoulder a squeeze as she leaned in. “I have very definite opinions, however, about being forced to bother with my own.”

“That much has always been clear,” Helda tutted, gathering up the gown and taking it away to hang up in the next room.

Katsa grinned, catching Bitterblue’s eye in the mirror. Katsa had recently come back from exploring yet another uncharted tunnel between Monsea and the Dells, and the jacket she wore now still smelled faintly of damp and of stone.

“Sometimes I could swear you say that sort of thing just for how it annoys Helda,” Bitterblue told Katsa’s reflection.

“Well, someone has to, don’t they?” Katsa retorted. “Otherwise, who’ll keep Helda on her toes?”

“I can hear you, My Lady!” Helda called from the next room.

Bitterblue couldn’t help smiling, too. “Helda, we both adore you,” she called back. “Katsa especially. She knows she would be a wild animal if it weren’t for you.”

From the other room, Helda made a distinctive sort of hmmph noise.

“Hey!” Katsa complained. She tugged on a lock of Bitterblue’s hair, although not particularly hard. Then she squared herself up to the back of Bitterblue’s head and brandished the comb. “What will it be, then, Lady Queen? Two braids?”

“Do you even know how to braid hair?” Bitterblue asked, honestly curious.

“Of course I do. It’s not all that different from making rope.”

With these not entirely encouraging words, Katsa turned her attention to running the comb through the length of Bitterblue’s hair, pausing when it caught on any snarls and carefully pulling the strands free. She was certainly more patient with Bitterblue’s hair than she ever was with her own. Bitterblue had more than once watched Katsa yank a brush through her own hair with a degree of force that made Bitterblue’s scalp ache in sympathy.

Beyond her rooms, Bitterblue could hear the morning life of the castle unfolding around them. There was the voice of Rienn, her chief seamstress, chatting with one of her staff as she passed through the nearest corridor. There was the cheerful clatter of the kitchens, which sometimes rose to Bitterblue’s window when the breeze was right. Bitterblue wished she felt as peaceful as her castle at the moment. Yesterday had been a long day of arduous but necessary meetings with several of the new Ministries she’d created. Bitterblue still sometimes felt as if she were trying to go in every direction at once.

“Now, mind that the Lady Queen isn’t bald by the time I get back,” Helda admonished, as she passed back through the bedroom with another gown in her arms, presumably bearing it off to some other part of the castle to repair or otherwise perfect it.

“There’s a thought!” Katsa declared. “No hair at all. What do you think, Bitterblue, would it suit me?”

They could still hear Helda tutting and tsking over this scandalous idea even after she was out the door and down the hall.

The truth, of course, was that everything suited Katsa. She looked beautifully dramatic whether she was covered in mud with a murderous blade in each hand, or at a fancy banquet stuffed into a gown and scowling about it.

These days, Bitterblue could at least fake the easy confidence that came so naturally to Katsa, but it hadn’t ever come naturally to Bitterblue. Perhaps it never would.

Feeling a bit woeful at that thought, she wondered aloud, “Have you always been so sure of yourself, Katsa?”

Katsa’s hands paused and she leaned in around Bitterblue’s shoulder to peer at her. “Sure of myself? What do you mean?”

Bitterblue’s hands fluttered helplessly. Was it ever really possible to explain Katsa to Katsa? Katsa, who’d saved her from a mountain lion. Katsa, who always knew precisely what she did and didn’t want. If Katsa didn’t already know that’s what she was like, how could Bitterblue or anyone describe it to her?

“You never let anyone tell you what to do,” Bitterblue said, although that was a wholly inadequate description. Bitterblue had had to work so hard to teach herself to think for herself, to ask questions, to push back against the destructive, well-meaning lies of her advisors. Katsa gave the impression of simply having been born with those abilities.

“I used to,” Katsa said darkly. She divided Bitterblue’s hair into two parts, then began separating out the strands on the left for a braid. “I let my uncle use me as his tool for years. You know that, Bitterblue.”

Bitterblue did know that, but her mind had always rebelled at any attempt to imagine it. The Katsa she’d met—the Katsa who had pulled a shivering ten-year-old Bitterblue out of a cold, wet log in Leck’s forest and taught her to trust again—had already been a fully formed marvel.

“But you broke free,” Bitterblue pointed out.

“And so did you.” For a moment, Katsa’s hand rested warmly against Bitterblue’s temple. Then her deft fingers returned to interweaving strands of hair. She did know how to braid, it turned out.

“It’s odd,” Bitterblue said, holding herself still so as not to interfere with Katsa’s work. But her eyes followed Katsa in the mirror, watching her quick movements and capable hands. “I think my dream last night was about being back there, hiding inside the log.”

Katsa nodded, in the mirror. That was a beautiful thing about shared history; a few words were enough for Katsa to know exactly what Bitterblue meant.

“For a while I was still having dreams about—about Thiel,” Bitterblue went on. Only as she said it did she realize how long it had been, maybe months, since she’d last had that particular nightmare: about being small and terrified and alone atop a bridge in the howling wind and snow, nothing but empty dark water below her. “But now I seem to be dreaming even older things. About my mother. And about you and Po rescuing me. Do you think some part of us is always a child, no matter what else has happened since then? Some part is still small and scared and cowering in the dark?”

Katsa completed the braid on the left side and reached to the dressing table for a bit of ribbon to tie it off, then her hands moved to take up the other half of Bitterblue’s hair. Her eyes, as Bitterblue watched her in the mirror, were thoughtful.

“I suppose so,” Katsa said, sounding as though she were thinking it through even as she spoke. “It’s certainly not like I ever forget that I used to be at the mercy of a cruel king. And that I thought I had to do his bidding, because I’d never seen an example of any other way things could be. But that’s not something I have to think about much, these days. So I don’t.”

“How nice if it were that easy for everyone,” Bitterblue grumbled.

“No,” said Katsa, contrite, “no, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s not that I’ve put it out of my mind and now I’ll never have to think about it again. It’s just that there are so many more parts to me now. If that young and afraid Katsa does show up, there are all these other Katsas around to reassure her. As you have many other Bitterblues, I’m certain.” She poked Bitterblue’s shoulder affectionately, then returned both hands to her work.

Bitterblue considered that, as Katsa finished braiding the right side of her hair, and she immediately felt the truth of it. Yes, some part of Bitterblue was still a child fleeing from a murderous king; perhaps that would always be true. Perhaps one day she would be as old as Lady Fire, and as content in her life, yet still occasionally find herself disconcerted by a dream in which she was once again a shivering child alone in the forest.

But one thing she’d learned, as she’d fought to rebuild a broken and contradictory kingdom, was that she herself was also many things. She was the Bitterblue who was learning to be a queen in deed, not only in name. She was the Bitterblue who knew that she would always manage, somehow, as long as her friends were beside her. She was the Bitterblue who kept surprising herself as she grew into the role of big sister to Hava, much as Katsa had grown to be a sister to Bitterblue.

And, yes, she was also the Bitterblue who sometimes curled in her bed at night, feeling tiny in the face of all there still was to do. She was all of these things; she was so many things.

Katsa tied off the second braid with ribbon, then nodded in satisfaction at their shared reflection in the mirror. Bitterblue twisted around and hugged her, throwing her arms around Katsa’s middle, since that was all she could reach from her seat.

“What’s this for?” Katsa asked, though her arms came around Bitterblue without hesitation, tight and warm.

“I’m awfully lucky to have you, Katsa,” Bitterblue said, her voice muffled against Katsa’s side. “You’re terribly wise, really, for all you try to hide it.”

Katsa laughed. “I’m not sure whether I’m wise, but I know I’m lucky to have you, too, Bitterblue.” She squeezed Bitterblue harder and kissed the top of her head, then released her. “You’re quite wise yourself, and you’ve taught me a lot. About being a leader who cares about her people. And about being a friend.”

Bitterblue looked up and met Katsa’s eyes in the mirror. Wise. What a strange word to think in relation to herself. But it was true that she cared, and that she was learning how to lead. And she was a good friend, that was true, too.

Katsa tugged at the end of one braid, then the other. “Do you want me to pin these up, like you usually do? Or leave them down?”

“Leave them down,” Bitterblue decided. There’d been a time, not so long ago, when she’d worried about things like that: whether wearing her hair in long braids would make her look too childish, not queenly enough for anyone to listen to. These days, she worried about that less. And anyway, the pins always made her head ache so.

“Now, come on,” Katsa said, slapping her hands against her thighs. She had her head cocked toward the window and seemed to be calculating the angle of the sun. “Po and Skye ought to be back from their trip by now. Shall we run down to the stables and see if they’ve arrived yet?”

“Oh, yes!” Bitterblue said, jumping up from her seat.

Katsa grabbed her hand and they did indeed run—down the corridors and stairs of Bitterblue’s castle, past rooms and courtyards full of people going about their morning, past the guards and bakers and seamstresses and swordsmiths who made up the rich tapestry that was Monsea—until they burst together out into the bright, fresh air.

.