ACE
Ace realizes that she won’t get far without talking to strangers. She doesn’t really care that they’re strangers… she cares that the social convention is to talk at all. The creature can’t stand talking to them. Talking to anyone in general. When she doesn’t answer her mother the first time she asks a question, when she simply stares up at the creature with a blank look on her face, she gets reprimanded… usually sternly, but only verbally. Mom just didn’t like it when she didn’t talk. The clockwork orange hadn’t fallen far from the tree… she couldn’t lash out at her own family. She could, however, stare at them and just not. It didn’t matter. Mom had said something about more siblings. Soon, Ace wouldn’t have to care at all.
And that’s what helped, sorta. She was able to see the man as he approached, and Ace simply stared at him with her mildly haunting eyes. They were a bit severe, their color downright bizarre. It wasn’t the first thing about their family to be fucking weird. Ace was weird. She’d always been weird, and maybe that was the best defense mechanism against the outside world. Maybe that’s why they all stayed away from her. Maybe that was why she’d been able to be by the riverside and play by her own for all this time. That would make sense. Yes, Ace was used to being alone.
So when he approaches, she sits and stares at him. It doesn’t make a difference to her, she can sit and stare all day. Maybe it would help to interact or something, but it doesn’t bother her to be like this. It’s only when he smiles at her does she back off a step. He was gentle, but bizarre. It’s a long, uncomfortable silence after he downright finishes speaking that Ace finally answers. The words are slightly brash, but roll off her tongue like it isn’t a big deal. “Funny. You don’t remind me all of my brother.” Her tone of voice says that funny was used for irony, though nothing was ironic at all. Such is why she didn’t open her mouth. Ace doesn’t like to speak, nothing comes out right.
She’s a child. It comes out with confidence, so it must at least sound right. Nothing has to be right if it sounds right. “No one hurts a gypsy.” And that was right. They wouldn’t hurt her. They couldn’t hurt her… dad would have their heads, or at least she thought. She could hope. Ace could try to place faith in parents she didn’t really know, and that didn’t care to know her. That could be a thing that happened. The clockwork orange could pretend.
alice x kusaka
to call each vagabond by name |