Title: Rise Above
Fandom: Adventure World
Rating: T
Word Count: 758
Notes: this was a hard challenge to think of something for, and then about two days before the end I thought of two separate things I could do. This was the one, which was more useful for me at the moment. Maybe I'll do up the other for the next amnesty round, if that's allowed!
Summary: How do you show yourself who you are, when someone else wants you to be something you're not?

Rise Above

After a fairly pleasant afternoon spent with his mother and son, Vedran found coming home to his semi-furnished apartment with half his things still packed up depressing. Fortunately, he'd also returned with a few more things, including a wardrobe that a couple of bugbears he'd hired off the street for the purpose were muscling into a corner of the bedroom for him. There were a few other bits as well, but other than the rug his mother insisted on passing on to him, it was mostly stuff he could handle himself. Hopefully, getting more of his things put away properly would help him feel settled - like this was a place he might eventually belong.

He paid off his impromptu porters and returned to his bedroom, intending to start on filling the new wardrobe from the trunks of clothing he'd brought. Much of it really ought to be hung up to prevent wrinkles and inappropriate creasing. After flipping everything open and performing a quick triage assessment, he started with the few formal robes. Next would be the suits and jackets, and if there was still room, trousers and then shirts. His adventuring clothes could stay in the trunks, as they all got covered by his armour anyway.

In the center of the second trunk, along with some of his shirts and lying atop one of the fur trimmed velvet coats he was sure he'd said he didn't need or want, lay a familiar wooden box. There was no mistaking it - it was plain, much plainer than either he or Jacinthe would have bought if they'd ever intended it to be seen. It had been their private secret, though, and he knew it contained everything required to transform him from man to beast. His stomach twisted itself in to knots as he picked it up, hearing the clinking of the metal on the collar, imperfectly muffled by the fur accoutrements laid out alongside it. It was locked, and after frantic searching through the rest of the trunk, he was assured that the key had not been included. He wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse.

The box was everything he'd told her he couldn't be. He hadn't thought about what she might do with it, but certainly he'd hoped never to see it or its contents again. Had she packed his things? Or simply passed it to the servants with other instructions? What had she been thinking? That was easy to answer - she wanted him to remember what he was. No matter how many times he told himself it wasn't true, there was still a part that believed she was right, and he was nothing more than an animal. In some weak moments he still thought he could be happy with that, but right then he just felt ill.

There was no way to get rid of it safely, without risk of someone finding it. Even if they never knew who it belonged to, the thought was too humiliating. Leaving it in the trunk felt too exposed, and hiding it under the bed too personal. How could he sleep knowing it was there? He didn't want to risk putting it in another room, in case it might ever be discovered by guests, so in the end he wound up shoving up out of sight on the very top shelf of the wardrobe. If given half a chance, he would burn it, but that would do for now. Vedran left the velvet jacket in the trunk - that was safe enough, easy to explain if someone happened to find it there. He didn't feel like unpacking anything else, and shut the wardrobe doors, shutting it in; shutting himself out. If that wasn't who he was, then who was he?

Life before his marriage seemed very distant even after only two years. He had been happier then with who he was, and if there were things he was sure were well behind him now, there was some continuity as well. What parts of that happier man could he still salvage in his present? How could he become that? He was a bard, and though he was not the type to perform in musical halls, he was still a musician. It was not something he'd had or made much time for recently, not with everything else that had been going on, but tonight it might be what he needed to remember that he could be something more: some wine, his lute, and a performance just for himself.