Post by Kris11 on Aug 1, 2013 8:51:19 GMT 10
Title: Splash of Colour
Rating: G
Prompt: Colour (1)
Character/Couple/Theme: Okha
Series: Finding Wings
Summary: There is a splash of colour as Okha learns three important lessons about being herself.
Notes: I am very nervous about this fic, because Okha is a trans-gendered character, and this story is focussing very much on that aspect of her life. I think feeling out of place in yourself, and finding a way to understand and be comfortable with and loving yourself is a very human thing, but that there is a line between empathy and appropriation (or misrepresentation), and I don't really want to walk or cross it. So. If I were posting this elsewhere, I would have found a beta to sound-board with, but I trust you all to message or comment with honest opinions, and to know that my intentions are for the best: I love Okha, and want to give her some fic.
Enjoy, review, and write more MPP prompts! <3 (Also, omg run-on sentences: I haven't written anything in a long, long time; help)There’s a splash of colour on Okha’s lip, red that drips down onto her chin as she looks at the boys who just split her lip. She makes them angry in a way she just can’t understand; she doesn’t do anything to them. She understands that she not normal, that other children don’t feel this way, trapped in a body that just feels wrong, but she doesn’t draw attention to the wrongwrongwrong feeling she has by trying to be something she is not, so she just doesn’t understand why these boys who feel like boys feel so... threatened.
She looks away from her tormentors, taunts and insults flying in the air between them, unheard and unacknowledged, and she sees her cousins and brother standing apart, the lot of them looking awkwardly away from the confrontation and doing nothing. They had been walking home from temple when the other boys had begun to push Okha around, and they had done nothing but stand aside. They outnumbered Okha’s bullies, and two of her cousins are older, bigger. They could send the bullies on their way, but they avert their eyes, instead. They aren’t afraid; they are ashamed.
It hits her like a thunderclap: for the first time, Okha realizes that it doesn’t matter that she wears the same clothes as they do, and tries to play kickball in the street, and never touches her mother’s perfumes and coloured paints like she longs to. No matter how much she tries to appease them, they will never understand, not because they can’t, not because she can not be understood. They are standing there, looking away, too embarrassed to defend her, and they don’t understand her because they don’t want to.
It should make her bitter, it should break her heart, it should make her angry or sad or lost, but instead she feels a weight lift off her shoulders, because fine. She doesn’t want them to love her because she figures out how to pretend to feel like the boy her body was tricked into being born as. She wants them to love her, yes, she does, but there are lines in the sand and she is standing on one now and, no, she won’t cross, and no, she is not ashamed, and no, they are not worth her not getting anything she wants, they. are. not.
She wipes her lip, smearing the red on her lips in a single swipe and leaving it there, like (war)paint.
She leans back onto one hip and smiles, because she’s done hiding, and she’s not holding back; she going to make these boys run home crying, just you watch.
There is a splash of colour on the table, where Okha spilt her paint, a spreading stain that makes her curse.
There is a polite cough behind her, and she jumps and blushes. Tokuyaka is standing in the doorway, her tiny slippered feet making no noise as she approached Okha’s table. She is one of the women here in Yamini Islands that Okha approached to teach her what she wanted to know. They would have been the lowest class of women, back in Carthak, but here they were among the most educated, and had the ears of some of the most powerful men in the country. Okha spent the first three weeks in a state of awe, and – to be completely honest – it hasn’t really abated.
Tokuyaka kneels across the table from Okha, watching as Okha mops up the spilt paint. She had gotten frustrated with her painting. Again. She is trying to learn what the women here have to teach her, but while she loves the music and dance, while she can learn the blade dances and adores the makeup and dresses, she can’t get everything. She feels a little rush of shame when a voice inside her whispers that she doesn’t want to learn this, she hates this stupid paint brush and the inks and trying to make a picture look like something more like a forest glade (it really does not).
After watching Okha for a few minutes, Tokuyaka asks, “why do you want to learn to paint? Because women learn it, here?” Okha nods. “Is it the same with the dance, with make-up and singing? Do you learn it only to prove something? Or do you learn those things – and learn them well – because you love them?”
“I...” Okha pauses. “I do love those things. I should love this, too.”
“ Okha.” Tokuyaka leans forward. “You are a woman because the Goddess gave you a woman’s heart. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone.”
Okha starts at the words, feeling them sink into her lungs like a deep breath. She had learned on that dusty road in Carthak, years ago, that she didn’t have to pretend to be something she was not to appease boys who didn’t understand, but she hadn’t realized that she didn’t need to prove anything to other women, either. She can just be, and that is enough.
“Oh, thank the Goddess," Okha breathes. "I never want to see one of these stupid little brushes again,” she says quietly, and the other woman laughs and laughs.
There is a splash of colour on her cheeks and Okha is blushing. Okha is blushing like a maiden over a boy. A very pretty boy, but honestly, she has a reputation to maintain.
Okha smiles and flicks her eyes to the side and keeps the conversation light, firmly away from serious inquiry into her life because, well... because it’s complicated. Okha watches the boys and girls who come and listen to her sing and think about how easy it is for most of them, to know the rules of the game and have them apply to each other almost universally.
Okha’s game is different. They are playing hopscotch and she is playing chess, where every piece moves in a different way, and some only move once except for when they can move twice, and one can do nothing but is the only piece that actually matters, and what (she had never really gotten the hang of it, obviously).
Okha would prefer to play hopscotch, but the Trickster gave her another path, and so she, instead, learns the rules of the game and is careful. Because most other girls can blush over pretty boys or girls - because the rules of hopscotch are simple, even if you miss the stone every once in a while - but Okha hasn’t even figured out all the rules of her game yet, herself, and staring at that game board and all those pieces, well... its daunting, isn't it?
Except Okha has never in her life backed down from a challenge, and who says she has to play by the rules, anyway?
Because Nestor smiles like he’s besotted no matter what she’s wearing; looking at her, not at her clothes or hair or make-up and she thinks that maybe someone else understands that she is changeable and contradictory and unusual, but she is steady underneath all that, just... her. And maybe it doesn’t have to be complicated, after all.
(He blushes when she kisses him, a splash of colour on his cheeks, but he definitely kisses her back.)
Poor Okha, but I'm glad she derives strength from the moment.
Maybe once we'd have seen it during Smackdown!