Wanda and Adrienne

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

At a secret midnight clothing raid, Adrienne reads a family heirloom of Wanda's.

Adrienne supposed it wasn't actually breaking in when you owned the building, but going in to the office at night for the sole purpose of taking things out of the Closet always gave her slight nerves. Being slightly intoxicated wasn't really helping with her paranoia, either. But trying on the clothes when there were no employees around was fun. Especially with someone who appreciated the clothes and shoes as much as she did.


"Ooooo! Wanda! Look!" she called out, waving a pair of shoes at the other woman. "New Spigas! Yummy!"


Wanda, on the other hand, had looked right at home with going into a locked building in the dark; she was now shimmying - carefully - into a gorgeous red dress as she turned to look in Adrienne's direction. "Those are new," she mused. "I haven't seen anything quite like them yet."


She finally got the dress turned around the right way and zipped up, turning this way and that to admire herself in the mirror. "How can you stand to even leave here?"


Adrienne shrugged. "You can live here if you want," she offered. "The penthouse is empty now that Steven's ghost is gone back to hell." But it was lonely after all the employees went home. "Ooo, that looks amazing on you!" She bounced over to Wanda and tugged at the neckline of the dress, then fluffed at Wanda's hair. "Wanna come work for me? I'll let you live here for free."


At that, Wanda laughed and slowly spun to see how the dress would handle. "And before you knew it, I would either have completely gone insane with all the clothes or completely broke because I would have bought everything here." She smirked over her shoulder at her friend. "I already spend far too much of my paycheck on "unnecessary" things, as my brother never fails to point out whenever he visits."


"Honey, you don't have to buy them," she simpered, "when you're a model, they give them to you for free! All this stuff is free!" As Wanda spun the gold locket around her neck caught Adrienne's eye. She went back over and fluffed Wanda's hair again. "Shiny! Present from a boyfriend? Family heirloom from your uptight brother who won't let you have fun with your paycheque?"


"Half right on the second bit, though not from Pietro," she replied, dutifully letting Adrienne play with her hair. It was hard to do much with anyway, so whatever she did with it Wanda could live with. "It belonged to my mami - my grandmother - when she was alive. It and my grandfather's pocket watch were the only things they had left after they managed to survive the German camps."
She didn't wear it out often but she'd been thinking nostalgically of her grandparents, gone for a few years now, and had picked it out of her jewelry box.


Adrienne moved her hand away from the locket, attempting to be as casual as possible. "That's... special," she said after a moment, then gave Wanda a wry smile as she realized that sounded rude. "Sorry, it's just... when you have the power of reading the history of things that were in death camps, and your control is crappy, you get skittish. Were you close?"


She waved a hand in the air to indicate she hadn't taken offense. "We were, yes," Wanda replied, slipping out of the shoes she'd been trying on with the dress and reaching for another pair. "Most Rom families and groups are, actually. But they were quite the driving force once my mother returned, husbandless, and had us. Raising children in our families always tends to be "takes a village" kind of thing but they were especially attentive."


Wanda laughed. "Strict, of course, but loving and, oh but we tried their patience over the years."


Echoing the laugh, Adrienne handed Wanda a third pair of shoes for when she was finished with the second pair she was trying on. Her own laugh was hollow since she had no familiarity with the sort of childhood or family bonds Wanda was describing, but she hoped Wanda wouldn't hold that against her. "It sounds as if there are a lot of rich memories in that locket," she smiled. It was the perfect example of the type of object she usually avoided due to her powers.


Which made it the perfect specimen for testing her control.


"Actually, Wanda, do you think I could touch it again?"


Caught in the act of trying to put on shoes, Wanda wobbled slightly as she struggled to regain her balance. It wasn't a question she'd been expecting but, on the other hand, the things that she sought to keep hidden wouldn't be found in the history of the necklace.


"Of course," she replied, straightening and reaching for the back of her neck. It was a simple clasp that held the lock in place and it didn't take long before she was lowering it into Adrienne's waiting hand.


"I've been trying to work on my control," she explained as the locket fell into her hand and she rooted around in her bag with the other for a wipe. She didn't want Wanda to think she was just intending to pry into her past. "I'm trying to touch something and have the ability to turn my powers on when I want to read something, not just read everything I touch automatically. I've been hoping that if I use peoples' personal items, things I feel guilty about reading or don't want to read, it'll work subconsciously as more of an incentive to turn my powers off."


Taking a deep breath, she focused her concentration inwardly, working towards her meditative state, and transferred the locket to her other hand.


Strong hands reached down to scoop up a squirming six year old girl, holding her fast on a hip. The face of the older woman has the look of someone who has aged not only because of time but also through experiences that still haunt. There were enough similarities in the two faces that stared at each other to mark that they were related.


"~Exactly why, granddaughter, did you feel the need to do what you did?~"


Around them in the busy camp, one or two people stopped and tried not to laugh. The matriarch of the Rom family was stern and one of their youngest had to answer without interference.


A young Wanda suddenly burst into tears and reached up to grasp at the now shorn head of hair. "~I hate it!~" she wailed, burying her face in her grandmother's neck, the cold chain of the locket digging into her cheek.


Trying not to laugh, her grandmother patted the former curls, her touch tender despite her stern words. "~Your hair is wild, my little one, but tameable. Much, I believe, like you. No need to cut it off the way you did.~" She softened and tucked Wanda closer to her side as she headed for her trailer. "~Come, let me see what I can do to fix the mess you made...~"

~

Wanda lowered her knees slightly so she could easily slip her arm around her grandmother and both women wondered outloud for a moment how the other had gotten so tall or so short. "~Are you going to stand there or are you going to help me to a chair?~" her grandmother asked and, with a laugh, the younger did as her elder asked.


Once settled, dark eyes took in the academic gown, looking at how the rough, callused hands and dark brown complexion that marked her as one of the Rom went with the cap and gown. "~It suits you,~" she said, looking surprised.


Wanda ducked her head with a smile. "~It took a while to make the two halves of myself fit,~" she admitted and a hand just as callused as her own patted her arm.


"~We are Rom, we are always fighting to belong to two worlds at the same time. Be proud, be strong. Always.~"

~

The locket was cradled loosely in her hand as Wanda stood stiffly, dressed in white and red, next to the grave site. "~She was breaking with tradition by giving you that,~" her mother said, sharp from grief.


Her fingers clenched around the locket. "~There will be no coming of marimé with this gift,~" Wanda argued softly. "~It was given before her death, of free will. We have buried her with her other possessions and destroyed the rest. It is enough to appease everyone.~"


"~Too Western for my tastes.~"


At that, Wanda laughed. "~I walk in two worlds, mother, I look to appease both.~"


"Sorry," Adrienne said guiltily as she returned to the present, though she had to fight to keep the smile off her face when she realized that the locket was still in her hand. Apparently wanting to keep herself from seeing any more of Wanda's grief at her grandmother's funeral had given her enough resolve to turn the reading off.


She shifted the locket quickly to the other hand, however, so that she wouldn't slip back into it. "I didn't do as well as I'd intended," she admitted. "Can I ask what marimé is?"


That caused Wanda to look over with a frown, wondering exactly what her friend had seen within the visions of the past. She sat down on a nearby chair so she could slip off the shoes and tried to formulate an answer that someone not of the tradition would understand.


“We are set apart from gaje, non Romany, on many levels,” Wanda said slowly. “Distrust on both sides is only part of it and some of our very culture has been built up over the centuries to shore it up. Marimé can be very complex – in essence, it means to be unclean. To become unclean either through interaction with gaje, breaking of taboo spiritual or otherwise. Breaking with what we consider your true self, I suppose. It is a form of punishment because if you are labeled with it, either for a short time or for life, you are excluded and exiled.”


Noticing the frown, Adrienne felt a little more guilty. "I saw you at your grandmother's gravesite, with your mother," she explained. "As well as your graduation day, and you as a child after cutting your own hair."


"You might have been exiled because your grandmother gave you the locket?" She asked incredulously. "I don't understand. Is it some kind of taboo to accept a gift?"


Wanda almost laughed – she’d forgotten about the time she’d cut off most of her hair after Pietro had mocked her for the thick mane. And, overall, there were worse memories for Adrienne to have seen, even with the funeral. “No, it is perfectly acceptable to receive a gift, which is how my grandmother got around the funeral rites. When one of us die, we bury them with their favored possessions and we either destroy the rest or sell it to nonRomany. It is considered bad luck to keep them after their owner has passed.”


"Really? Wow." Adrienne flipped through one of the racks of dresses absently. "It doesn't seem as if your luck's been all that bad," she added with a shrug. "You didn't put faith in the bad luck superstition of your people, obviously?" The question of faith had been on her mind since reading Kurt's rosary.


"It depends on how you view it. Some would say I have led a charmed life - I have friends, family, more money than I ever thought I would." Fingers tugged on her dress as she gave Adrienne a smile. "I have also been possessed, nearly killed and hunted for a variety of reasons. I have faced enough of what's out there to appreciate that not all legends are dead and forgotten. I am, at heart, a pragmatist."


The psychometrist thought this over and nodded. "It seems like pragmatist is a very sensible thing to be. And don't forget fashion maven," she grinned.


Wanda laughed at that and wriggled her feet in Adrienne's direction. "I was only an apprentice before I met you," she teased in return. "Now under your tutelage can I claim fashion maven."