Lower Class

by horizon

The Argument

Across the street from the university offices, after the police cruiser had driven away, a young human woman walked up to Brittle Horn — nondescript, of average height, with pale skin and shoulder-length auburn hair and a round face caked in heavy layers of makeup. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder of her puffy jacket, and fell into step with Brittle as the changeling began to trot down the sidewalk.

Brittle stared straight ahead as she moved, her face impassive. "Dark Wing."

"How'd it go?" the woman asked.

"We need to talk, is how it went," Brittle said, voice tight. "Meet me at the Bicentennial."

The Bicentennial's midday crowd was unusually light. It was, in fact, deserted aside from two humans at a corner table out of view from the street. One was a tall and lanky young man with broad glasses and a bush of curly brown hair. The other was a middle-aged woman whose stringy blond hair framed a long, uneven face caked in heavy layers of makeup. The bartender brought them two pints of mead and an ice pack, double-checked that the sign on the front door read "Closed", and retreated into the back room.

The woman closed both hands around her pint, making no move to pick it up, tapping fingernails against the glass. "We might as well rip off the elytra. How bad was it, Brittle?"

He picked his pint up and took a long drink before answering. "Short version? There was zero chance this was ever going to end in anything other than me being banned from GHU for life."

"Ah, Tartarus." Dark Wing's face stretched into a grimace, and then her cheek twitched through the heavy layers of concealer, and her expression curled into a wince of pain. She picked up the ice pack and gingerly pressed it to her face. "I really do owe you one, then. And Tank-Top?"

"They appear to sincerely know nothing."

"Shit," Dark Wing said. "I guess no news is good news, there, but what a disaster."

"It could have been worse. They came within a hair of realizing that Ibanez was attending your classes—"

"Dragon shit."

"But fortunately, when I froze up, they came to the wrong conclusion." Brittle sighed and sipped his drink. "They'll probably realize their mistake once they start properly investigating. Get out ahead of it. Tell them you noticed me shadowing you, and you found it weird and creepy."

"Ugh." Dark frowned. "But yes, I can do that."

"Good. After what I went through, you need to follow up carefully. I almost walked out of the room in hoofcuffs." Brittle took another sip. "But I got Bergmann to back down on the solicitation angle—"

"Because that never happened," Dark Wing quickly said.

Brittle paused, then frowned. "Pull the other leg, Dark. Your Catalyst side hustle has been paying your rent and tuition."

Dark scowled past the ice pack. Brittle stared at her levelly.

"No sex happened," Dark Wing finally said. "This is what actual principle looks like. No feeding from clients—"

"And not a penny from anyone that you didn't fairly earn," Brittle Horn interrupted. "Yes, yes. We've all had your self-righteous lecture memorized for a while. Except you took Harvey's escort job before you knew he was gay, and you jacked up your prices because you sure expected it to turn out different."

Dark's uncovered cheek reddened. "Think what you want," she said. "What I said in the bathroom, when I was filling you in before you took my place, is the way it actually happened. I drew my lines, he didn't cross them."

"I certainly hope so. Because otherwise I lied right to a police detective's face about something the humans insist on calling a crime, and they've got the witness with the truth in custody."

"Harvey doesn't matter." Dark took a sip of her mead, her composure rebuilding. "It's my—well, your—word against his, and the testimony of a man so driven by vengeance that he tried to kill me in public is basically self-discrediting." She set down the glass. "But you helped me when it mattered, and I really do appreciate that, and so I need you to understand: I didn't break any laws with Harvey."

Brittle took a large gulp of mead and tapped the base of his pint glass against the table. "That's a very precisely crafted denial."

"What else did you expect from an unredeemed changeling?" Dark said, staring at him with her expression once again stony.

Brittle stared at her in silence for several seconds. Finally, he took another gulp of mead, sighed, and set the glass down. "Irrefutable logic. If we wanted to be anything other than unrepentant bastards, we'd have turned rainbow. Speaking of which, we never discussed my price for pretending to be Catalyst and taking the fall for you."

Dark Wing stiffened. She turned her face toward the bar, hiding behind the ice pack.

"I give you a favor back of equivalent size," she said, voice tight. "Then we walk out of here square and I go back to campus to keep earning my degree. That's how this works."

"Oh, is it?" Brittle tilted his head. "Really."

"What are you saying? I'm not in the mood for games."

"Could have fooled me." Brittle leaned forward, his voice hardening. "But fine. That's how it works with the hive. You've made very clear you have Actual Principles which mean you want nothing to do with our way of doing things."

Dark Wing turned back to him, frowning. "I know how you feel about my principles. But keep in mind that they're the only things keeping me from walking out on you and pulling a Chrysalis."

Brittle frowned back. "Don't pretend you've got a monopoly on ethics. Principles are the only thing keeping any of us from ditching the hive, going lone-queen, and deciding we don't care about what lines we cross." He finished his drink. "My own principles are why I'm charging you the hive rate. One simple favor. Graduate from GHU."

Dark's frown deepened into a scowl. "Bullshit, it's a simple favor. We're not friends, and neither of us believes in charity, so there's no way you're asking for something you know I'm already going to do."

"I guess we're both liars then." Brittle stared straight into her eyes. "Tell me the truth and I'll tell you the catch."

Dark Wing silently locked eyes with him—and then was the first to break the stare. Her face twisted up, and she looked away while she took a long drink.

"Damn it," she said. "Fine. My actual plan was to do the bare minimum to square up with you and then vanish out of state. I do pay my debts, but this is way too much heat." Dark Wing pushed her half-full glass off to the side, face bitter. "That said, it's tempting to accept. It would be heartbreaking to start from scratch at another school when I've made so much progress toward a degree. But I know you're not merely asking me to stay, because there's nothing in that for you."

"You're wrong," Brittle said, "but thank you for being honest, at least. So here's the deal. You finish this degree. And the hive pays for it."

Dark Wing leapt to her feet, slamming her palms down hard on the table. "Fuck you."

"Sit down, I'm not done."

"You're asking me to betray everything I stand for, and there's more?!"

"An explanation. Sit."

"You're out of your mind," Dark said, but she sat.

"First of all," Brittle said, "do you understand what I had to pull off to take suspicion off you? I had an off-duty police detective grilling me. There was no sane reason for me to be on campus. You were a known unredeemed changeling with known access, and known to have been refusing financial aid. It should have been impossible to make them think you had nothing to do with it."

"I'm beginning to regret making that request."

"It was the smartest thing you did today. You were panicking after the attack. Better to melt down with someone who will treat you fairly than with a cop."

"Fairly," Dark Wing said, her voice acid. "Sure."

Brittle Horn slowly shook his head. "Dark. I get that you're on tilt, but stop and think. What do I get out of this?"

"Are you really going to make me re-explain fundamental hive principles? Accepting your ongoing donations means you own me. I'm the crab climbing out of the bucket and you get to pull me back down."

"If this was about spite, I'd have laughed in your face when you begged for my help. If this was about owning you, I'd be gloating in your face now. Try again."

"You're too smart to gloat. You…" Dark Wing's protest trailed off, and she lifted the ice pack back to her cheek. "This is wasting both of our times. Tell me."

Brittle Horn nodded. "So, I shouldn't have been able to convince them your hooves were clean—"

"Brittle."

"I'm going somewhere with this." He leaned forward. "By all rights, I shouldn't have been able to get you anything but a head start. But you are a master storyteller. You built yourself such a sterling reputation that there were cracks of doubt for me to exploit."

"Brittle. Is this turning into a lecture about the power of stories?"

"It… wasn't going to be. I didn't think you were that far gone."

"I've never said stories aren't powerful. What I hate is the hive's mythologizing of it, and the hypocrisy it creates." Dark made a broad gesture with a hand. "Facts are the mere clay of the world, stories are its lifeblood, yadda, yadda. Sure, storytelling is useful, but we've turned it into this idea that because we can be anything, because we're constantly redefining ourselves, we're inherently superior at the only skill that actually matters. It's ideological heroin, and the hive's content to cower in the corner and shoot it up. If we're so superior then we should be out here showing them what we can do."

"You do get it then." Brittle pointed. "That, right there. I am helping you because you are correct."

Dark Wing frowned. "I still can't get from there to why you think the gross humiliation of relying on your money is in any way 'helping'."

"Because you did it, Dark. You set out to redefine changeling-possible and it happened. I know that, to you, success looks like having more money than the princesses, but you have objectively already succeeded. Before I even opened my mouth in that room, you had a school administrator and a cop both desperate to give Dark Wing the benefit of the doubt."

After a moment of hesitation, Dark Wing shook her head. "That means nothing. I just pressed the model-minority lever. It was grub's play to convince them I was 'one of the good ones'."

"That requires having good ones," Brittle said. "That's you. You're the first. You wanted to know what I get out of this favor? Keeping that idea alive. Being able to walk down the street and have people wonder if I'm one of the bad changelings, rather than know."

"Very touching," Dark Wing said caustically, "but that still doesn't make this a fair trade. I'm not going to throw away everything I stand for in order to give you a chance you should be seizing for yourself."

"Then do it to keep your own dream alive," Brittle said. "You don't really think you can run far enough for a fresh start, do you? There's still going to be a full investigation, and if Dark Wing vanishes now, you're basically admitting complicity. And then suddenly she's proof that unredeemed changelings aren't better than that, actually. Poisoning that well hurts you even more than it hurts us."

Dark let out a tight breath. "Okay. I can fix that by staying, but that's still not an argument to take your money."

"You're stupid enough to keep your business running under the microscope of an active investigation?"

"I didn't say that," Dark said sullenly.

Brittle tilted his head. "Okay. Back to the success of your story, then. It was powerful enough to give me an opening—but that opening was to play the villain who resented that you did everything I was trying to do, but better. Everything except for the one thing that would have given you a motive. So my deep dark secret became Catalyst, and your deep dark secret became that you didn't need to be Catalyst because the hive was already funding you."

"Ffff." Dark Wing bit back an expletive, and cradled her head in her hands. "Bastard. Asshole. I knew it. You set me up."

"Your own reputation did. Do you know they actually chewed me out for not being able to overcome my pride like Dark Wing did by taking hive money?" Brittle Horn chuckled. "I nearly laughed and blew the entire cover-up apart."

Her mouth curled into a snarl. "There's nothing funny about this."

Brittle studied her face for several seconds. "Then don't laugh," he said. "But listen."

He slid sideways from his chair, and sank to one knee.

Dark's eyes widened, and her expression twisted from anger into shock.

"Do you want me to grovel?" Brittle said. "Is that what it will take to get us what we both need?"

"No," Dark said, her composure recovering. "This is transparent manipulation, a token gesture of humiliation to placate me as you bring me under your complete control. You're the hive's best gaslighter, Brittle—that's the entire reason I begged for your help. But I know you too well to fall for it."

"You have a real talent for burning olive branches, did you know that?" Brittle, rolling his eyes, slid back onto his chair. "Think this through. Your entire objection is that, by the hive's standards, we are dealing you the ultimate insult, and yet the entire point of your going to school is that the hive's standards are garbage and should be disregarded. The point of bowing to you like you're a queen is to show you I agree with that second part."

"See what I mean? You're folding the truth like paper."

"Dark, I'm just trying to remind you of something you already know. The hive is sick, feebly gasping for breath, suffocating in a miasma of contradictions. We're a hollow and bitter people, rejecting friendship while clinging to each other for survival, and proclaiming with one united voice our pride in our new individuality. You're the only one who has been brave enough to call bullshit on it."

Dark's eyes darted around the empty bar. "Even if I believe that's your angle here, that's not how the others are going to see it."

"Not all of them, no," Brittle said, "but I'm far from the only one. There's a lot of drones sick of watching their back with everyling, all the time. The drones who directly stand to benefit from your failure of principle will mock you, yes. But you show the rest of us an alternative"—he suddenly stood, placing both hands on the table and leaning over her, lowering his voice to murmur in her ear—"and you will break the hive right in fucking half."

Dark Wing sat in silence for several seconds, Brittle still looming over her. Then she reached over to her drink, tilting her head back and draining the glass dry.

"Hm," she grunted, dabbing at her lips with a napkin. "Hm."

Comments

[Bandy]

...and you will break the hive right in fucking half."

stuck the landing

[A.P.O.N.I.]

"You have a real talent for burning olive branches, did you know that?"

That's good. I'd like to use that sometime.

[Sunny]

12078693
Agreed. This is definitely sticking the landing in a way the original was still stumbling.

[Lurks-no-More]

Oh, nice! Didn't quite expect any of this!