Villainess, Retry!

(V2) Red Pill 7: Standoffs, Tamperings

Written on 7/7/21. Camp NaNoWRiMo, July 2021 edition.
Lady Janet Fleming (picture reference).

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Villainess 2: DeeDee's Curiosity Shop

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Red Pill 7: Standoffs, Tamperings

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Janet listened to the voices in the darkness for a time, still reeling from her dream, but on opening her eyes, she awoke to a cacophony of words flooding through the curtained surroundings of an infirmary bed. She listened for a moment and recognized the voices at the door, where her maids Susan and Marin were saying that Prince Blaise can't see Janet right now, but Prince Blaise kept insisting that he at least come in to see her before leaving. Janet sat up and stretched her arms, yawning, then removed the sheets and swung her legs over the bedside as her maids kept insisting the Prince leave her be for today.

So Janet got up and pulled the curtains aside, revealing all the other beds in the infirmary empty except for hers.

"Ah, see?" Prince Blaise said, looking past Susan and Marin. "Let me speak to her."

But Susan said, "Your Highness—"

"Sue, Marin," Janet said, "just let him in."

"But, my Lady," Susan said, "you're in no condition to—"

"There's no helping it. I'm already up," she said and sat back on the bedside. "Just let him in."

Susan gave out a long sigh, and Marin was pouting, but they let Prince Blaise through the doorway and followed him to Janet's bed near a curtained window. They stood guard by the curtain, eyeing him with their hands fisted at their sides, and Janet saw their glares. And right before their sightless eyes, Janet's clones manifested in the infirmary on either side of Susan and Marin, all of them surrounding Janet's bed with scowls etched onto their faces and glares of hellfire aimed at the Prince's back.

The Prince dragged a seat over and sat in it, so that he faced Janet just below her eye level on the bed and sat there looking at her for a time. To Janet, his face seemed ashen in appearance and his amber eyes somewhat lackluster, but that could have been a trick of the light flooding through the curtained window behind her.

"What is it, your Highness?" Janet said.

"Are you all right?" he said.

"I guess so," she said, then looked back over her shoulder at the light streaming through the window behind her, the sun glaring through a corner of the curtains on the window pane, before turning back to him.

"It's almost four o'clock," he said. "Are you sure you're feeling all right, Lady Fleming?"

"If me in an infirmary is 'all right' to you," she said, "then I guess I am."

"That's not what I meant," he said.

"Then what is it?"

"I meant that you scared us this morning: me, Lord Woodberry, Miss Edgeworth, and the rest of the class," he said. "You're not planning on harming yourself, are you?"

"I'm upset, your Highness," she said, "but I'm not that desperate for your attention."

"Then when you said, 'I'm already dead to you,'" he said, "does that mean you took something beforehand?"

"No," she said. "I was just—"

"Or were you just playing me?" he said.

Janet gaped at his assertion, mostly because it was true that she was trying to guilt-trip him at the time, but not to the extent of fainting in the hallway, which she couldn't have foreseen, let alone think of offing herself. So she stood up from the bedside again and glared at him, saying, "My God, what kind of woman do you think I am?"