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What Belongs to You	By : Rubella Category: S through Z > Tithe Views: 2980 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not Tithe, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-What Belongs to You
- 1
Disclaimer: All characters property of Holly Black.

Author's notes: Thanks to Holly Black for creating this extremely cool new world. Thanks to Cassie, Josh, Clio and Eric for betaing. Thanks to Val for the extraordinarily beautiful fanart for this story, archived here:

http://ohshush.com/fandom/images/changeling-cg.jpg
http://ohshush.com/fandom/images/changeling.jpg

and also for the recipe for a Bloody Kiss.

What Belongs to You

For a long time, Kaye stood leaning against the wall in the sunlight, smoking a clove and watching herself wipe out. It was two in the afternoon and the boardwalk was beginning to fill with the first truants and locals on their day off. Kaye could smell the grease off the el cel cakes in Steele’s fudge store mixing with the salt smell of the ocean and occasional whiff of clandestine marijuana, impossible to localize. Roving gangs of obnoxious blond girls in ghetto couture passed by, trying to look like they weren’t desperate for the attention of the bands of jocks swaggering around in ivy-league t-shirts. Kaye could feel the roller coasters down at Wonderland Pier twisting emptily in the air, even from this distance. Of course, it had taken a while for her to become that sensitive to such things.
That she was insensitive to metal was the second of the differences Kaye had noticed when she first saw herself. The first was that she was a Raver. Somehow, Kaye had thought she would have been Goth no matter what decade she had grown up in, but apparently not. This girl had her face, its slightly slanted eyes and yellow-blond hair, but the hair was a great deal shorter and had been pulled into two high tufted ponytails held in place with transparent blue plastic dice on rubber bands and was tipped with blue at the ends where it had been dyed and grown out. She was wearing pink and gray Kikwear pants, exaggeratedly wide and covered in toggles and velcro, with an inside-out neon green tank top.
Her belly button was pierced. In fact, she seemed pierced almost everywhere. There were three metal bars through her left eyebrow and a thick metal hoop through her right. A small metal dot showed at the center of her labrum, just below what looked exactly like Kaye’s own lower lip and her ears were a mass of asymmetrical barbells and hoops. Where her small breasts stretched the thin fabric of her top Kaye could make out the round shapes of two other piercings, like shadow nipples. Around her neck were half a dozen charms on multicolored leather cords and several of the rings on her slender fingers looked like wrought iron. She had tattoos as well, at least three that Kaye could see- a garland of delicately colored bluebells around leftleft arm, a Japanese character at the nape of her neck and the runic symbol for protection over her left breast, where the low neckline of the tank top ended in frayed thin straps. Her skateboard was blue, with several Roxy stickers on the bottom and a badly worn reflective top.
“Kaye! Check this out!” called one of her friends from several benches away. The girl who was Kaye obediently turned her raver head to watch her friend’s moves, her own skateboard tucked up idly under one heel.
The Kaye who was not Kaye smoked her cigarette against the wall and scuffed her knee-high Doc Maartens together, her long blond hair hiding the similarity between their faces and tangling in the collar of the black leather jacket she wore in spite of the heat. She supposed she should have expected something like this to happen eventually. After all, the Seelie Court did sometimes tire of their stolen ones, even one as pretty as Kaye had been as a human child. Or perhaps they had simply needed to travel elsewhere in some haste, and some of the taken had become the left behind. The Seelie tended to treat human children in the way that very rich humans treated their pets and would have grieved only a little while if they had lost one. Only until they found another one, just as pretty, and they told themselves that the children they took had better lives with the Fairie than human parents could have given them. They had everything they could ever want, except to grow up.
Kaye thought of her mother, who should have been this girl’s mother, and felt guilty despite knowing that there was nothing she could have done. She remembered the afternoon she had spent with the High Court, in the apple orchards, and felt a rising fury in her for the girl that she was not. So much had happened in the years since they had met at the shore. Her mother had the success of her band and a strong indie following, and she had Roiben. Well, as much as anybody could ever have Roiben.
Kaye wondered if the real Kaye had any foster parents. She wondered where the human Kaye lived, what she ate, where she went to school, what she was into, and most of all, she wondered why she felt the need to torture herself like this. This was the third time in as many days that Kaye had come here, to the shore, to wait for her human self to appear, and stand and watch as the girled ted to perfect her Olie.
She already knew that she shouldn’t try to talk to her. What would she say, anyway?
“Hello, I’m that fucking fairy child who got everything you should have had, including a mother. Want to go for some coffee?”

Kaye walked slowly down the boardwalk toward the club. She liked to wait until about midnight, when Red’s had been open for several hours and the few patrons who had wandered in wearing white miniskirts and big hair had enough Long Island Ice Tea in them to decide that they could dance to the music even if it didn’t suck. The usuals were all there. There was the DJ in his alcove, blond spiky hair bobbing softly as he bent over his gear in happy concentration. Every so often he would look up to watch the girl Kaye knew was his girlfriend twirling around to Dead Can Dance in her black dress or chatting excitedly to her friends. Kaye bought a Bloody Kiss, just to look like she was drinking something, requested one of her mother’s songs, and leaned against the wall to listen and watch.
This was the only club she knew that really played music she liked, so Kaye was willing to come to Red’s despite the inevitablunkeunken come-ons from guys who had seen her come in al Sh She waited for the song to play. It was always gratifying to hear her mom’s music in a club. Also, since it made her sick to her stomach to fly into the city to CBGB or Irving Plaza to hear her play, requesting songs at Red’s was one way to feel closer to her. So was living in her grandmother’s house, even if mom was too busy to visit very often these days.
Kaye supposed that was a good thing, as the human changeling had apparently been found and sent to some foster home just a few miles from where she lived, in the house that girl should have grown up in, and Kaye didn’t know how her mom would react to seeing the human her. It occurred to her suddenly that she was still thinking of the girl, even in the club. Kaye drank her Bloody Kiss after all and watched the boys punch the air to her mother’s lyrics. After a few hours, the sugar in the drink made her hyperactive and the room became very warm. She could hear the sound of the waves from the shore outside in the pauses of the music and snippets of conversation seemed to float past her. The boasted exploits of the crowd around the pool tables in the other room, the DJ’s girlfriend discussing her lipstick choices and the music all blended together into one crushing pressure of noise. Perhaps, she decided, it would be a good idea to leave before the lights came back on.
Kaye left the club, the night air slipping down the back of her jacket and unsticking her wings from the sweaty skin of her back. There was no one around but an old bum, asleep in a bundle of rags on the sand. The moon was up, high and tiny in the sea light. She had stayed longer than she intended to. She walked around the corner of the building, fumbling in her jacket for a cigarette, and was broad-sided across the temples with a metal lunchbox.
The lunchbox sprang open as it hit and an array of sparkly lip gloss and loose change went skidding across the pavement. Kaye watched it fall and then felt someone on top of her and was suddenly on the ground, on her side, staring at a tube of glitter hair gel two inches from her face.
“All right, Psycho! You’re one of them. Who are you, why are following me and why do you look like me!”
Kaye turned her head and was looking up into her own face, a gray hoodie pulled over the blond and blue hair and a broken Digimon lunchbox raised high over her head. The changeling. She had maneuvered until she was sitting on top of Kaye with her knees against Kaye’s shoulders so that Kaye couldn’t get up. Kaye’s face burned where the lunchbox had hit it and she could see a smear of blood, wet and reflective in the streetlight, on the side of the brightly colored metal box. The girl looked scared. Kaye laid her head against the pavement, holding out her hands protectively over her face.
“I’m you,” she said softly, “I’m the one they traded for you.”
The girl bit her lower lip and Kaye could see tears starting to swim in her eyes.
“Please,” Kaye said, “put that down, and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything.”

Kaye looked around the room. It was messy, but not depressing. There were strands of pastel-colored Chinese lanterns, like party decorations, faintly glowing at the tops of the walls. The small window had no curtains, but there was a partly rolled-up Sailor Moon wall scroll over the view of the brick wall of the next building. The mattress on the floor was covered in Hello Kitty sheets and there were magazines scattered around the floor- TeenPeople, YM and a British girl’s zine called “More”, all of which seemed to have been ripped apart and cannibalized for wallpaper.
The walls were an odd mix of sex and innocence. Kaye saw a fold-out glossy fashion shoot of Elijah Wood tacked up next to a picture of a cute penguin. Photos of her friends had been interspersed with these and some more mundane things like a provisional driver’s license application form with phone numbers written on it in crayon, so that the result was part pop culture fanart and part personal diary.
An iMac laptop in blue and white lay on the floor next to the bed, recharging, and there was a blown glass pipe and a small plastic bag of weed on the floor next to the computer.
The human Kaye sat down on the bed, clearing away some of the magazines, picked up the pipe and repacked it gently, and drew small silver lighter from her pocket. Kaye sat down on the bed next to her, taking the proffered pipe and obediently breathing in the caustic fragrant smoke before passing it back to the other girl.
“Dee doesn’t mind,” the human Kaye said. “There are always kids coming through here when they need a place to crash. Some stay and some go. The rules are no violence and no hard drugs, but they look ttherther way with weed as long as you aren’t an idiot. Dee and Harry own the place now and they took me in when I was declared an emancipated minor, helped me get my GED.”
“That’s cool,” said Kaye, leaning back on the bed. She was thinking of asking about the foster homes, about why her doppelganger had chosen to emancipate herself, but thought better of it. It was enough that she was here, in her room, and the girl was not afraid of her. Kaye had told her the story on the walk back to the house, and she had listened with an almost creepily detached trepidation, as if she did not know what to believe.
There was a long silence.
“I saw you once, didn’t I?” the human Kaye asked quietly.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you take me with you?”
Kaye sighed. “I thought you would be happier with the High Court. I mean, what was there for you to come back to, really? It had been so long, and you were still just a kid.”
She could feel the warmth of the girl next to her on the mattress, smell her strawberry scented shampoo, her laundry detergent and the human fragrance of her body which was salty with an unplaceable underlying sweetness, cloying but not at all like a flower. Sitting next to her, Kaye felt like she had no scent at all. The girl made a noise which was halfway between a cough and a chuckle.
“Asshole,” she whispered.

“Why so many of these?” Kaye asked, gently stroking the edge of the belly button ring. They had finished off the rest of the bag of weed and were lying on their backs on the mattress, listening to mp3s on random. At the moment it was playing Such Great Heights by The Postal Service.
“They protect me,” she replied, closing her eyes. “From you, I guess. I used to have bad dreams about fairies coming into my room at night. I have a lot of superstitious rituals to protect myself, like bells and special plants and the tattoos, and this. I read in a book called The Field Guide, actually it was a book for children, that fairies didn’t go near iron. They seem to have been wrong about that, but I loved that book when I was younger.”
“They were right,” said Kaye. “It hurts to touch it. They wouldn’t take you now, anyway. You’re too old.”
The girl across from her opened her eyes and Kaye was staring into her own eyes, inches away from her face, and was unable to comprehend their expression. She could feel the girl’s breath and watch her chest rise and fall, mesmerized by the similarities and differences between them. She felt like she was looking, not at herself, but at a more real version of herself. This smooth skin was the real Kaye’s actual skin. This blond hair was her real hair. Those were her eyes, the look of which Kaye had stolen from her. She could only ever look like this. Everything that had been stolen from her she now appeared to still possess and everything Kaye had ever possessed, including Kaye’s own identity, really belonged to her. Kaye felt a deep ache in her heart, full of longing and regret, but she couldn’t say exactly for what. She felt like she wanted to comfort the stolen child, to hold her, but within Kaye’s sympathy there was a grasping insistence, as if she wanted to crawl inside the changeling’s skin and possess again what she had lost when she gained the knowledge of what she really was.
In that moment the changeling bent closer and gently brought her lips to brush against Kaye’s lips. Something clicked deep in Kaye and she pulled the changeling closer, opening her mouth, needing to become the other girl, to be herself again, to be forgiven, to become whole. They kissed passionately and Kaye pulled up the changeling’s shirt to cup small round breasts which were like her own except for the steel rings which felt unpleasantly cold and left her fingertips oddly numb as if they had been scalded. The changeling put her hands in Kaye’s long blond tangled hair and held her head as they kissed, as if they were each discovering how it felt to kiss lips identical to their own, like kissing yourself in the mirror and having your own image kiss you back.
Kaye kicked off her boots and stripped out of her black jeans, dropping the leather jacket and the black v-neck on the floor next the bed. She allowed the other girl to watch her strip and then embraced her about the waist, pressing her face into the soft skin of the changeling’s belly as the girl slid out of her clothes. They were warm and smooth, even more alike in nudity than they were when dressed, the yellow glow of the bedside lamp casting the spaces between their superimposed bodies into deeper shadow.
Kaye shut her eyes as the changeling ran her hands over Kaye’s unpierced body, kissing her neck and breasts, stroking her thighs and running one hand experimentally over the sparse blond pubic hair. Their hands wandered slowly over each other’s bodies as they lay side by side on the bed, kissing and touching. Kaye felt the room start to spin and lay on her back, trying to take deep breaths. The changeling’s rings were like ice next to her skin and each kiss that followed where the hands had touched was warmer by contrast. The changeling slid one thigh high up between Kaye’s legs and with the pressure and le mle motion of their embrace Kaye felt herself losing control quickly, feeling dizzy and disoriented and looking up into her own real eyes.
The rocking motion became more urgent and Kaye felt the girl’s weight shift on top of her as she moved from pressing her leg against Kaye to straddling her. Kaye put her arms around her, letting the other girl use her body as a fulcrum, arching into the contact. The changeling’s body grew feverishly warm and a pink flush spread across her collarbone and over the arches of her high cheekbones. She took longer than Kaye and was more physical, arching her back and biting her lower lip as she held her breath in Kaye’s arms. Finally she slid down next to Kaye and rested her head on Kaye’s chest, breathing quietly. Kaye kissed the top of the changeling’s head and listened to the computer shuffle through trance and britpop as the girl slept.

“I’m sorry,” said Kaye, stroking the changeling’s cheek, when she realized that the girl was awake again.
“For what?”
“For pretending to be you.”
“That’s not your fault,” the girl admitted. “You thought you were me.”
“I know, but I feel like I owe you something. Like I should give you something or do something for you.” Kaye exhaled slowly. “To make you happy.”
The girl raised herself on one elbow and peered down at Kaye incredulously. “You mean like a wish?”
“We. Don’t. Grant. Wishes.”
The changeling scooted up on both elbows, rocked back onto her heels, sat on Kaye’s chest and bounced. “Grant me a wish!”
“Get off of me!”
“Grant me a wish, Be-otch!” She bounced until the mattress didn’t give any further and Kaye was getting crushed. “No! Grant me THREE WISHES!”
“Okay, just get off me,” Kaye begged. Her head was spinning and the girl’s weight on her chest was making it hard to breathe.
“HA!” She leaped off the bed and placed her fists on her naked hips triumphantly.
“You have to ask for them now. You can’t save them up.”
“Give me a million dollars!”
“Do I look like I have a million dollars?” Kaye asked.
She paused. “Make me fly!” she demanded.
“Done,” said Kaye.
The girl’s mouth fell open. For a moment she looked like a very little kid, wide eyed with amazement and joy, and then she became more serious. She looked at Kaye out of the corner of her eye.
“Take me to see my mother,” she said. It was not a request.
Kaye sighed. “Done,” she said softly.
She looked back at Kaye and there was a strange emotion in her eyes, then she grinned again. “When do I get my pixie dust?” she chirped.
“Pixie dust?” asked Kaye sarcastically.
“To FLY with!” she spread her arms wide and spun enthusiastically in a circle on one bare foot.
“You have to make your third wish. I said you can’t save them up. You have to make it now.”
“I want my pixie dust, it’s gonna be so lush,” she sang, dancing in place.
“There is no such thing. There are, however, wings. I have wings.”
“You have wings?” she looked Kaye over. “Oh, of course. I don’t know what you really look like.”
Kaye saw her chance. “You want to know what I really look like?”
“Of course I do.”
“Done.”
“That wasn’t going to be my last wish!”
“Well, it is now.”
Kaye had thought that ruse would elicit anger, but the changeling girl laughed instead and lay back down on the bed, breathing heavily from the spinning.
“You aren’t like the others,” she said drowsily. “They were always so humor-impaired. You’re more like a person.”
Kaye looked away. The room was slightly less dark than before and the brick wall out the little window looked gray instead of blue. It wasn’t much to go by but Kaye knew a New Jersey dawn when she saw one. She wondered if what the girl had just said was what she truly looked like to a human who knew her- like a person, but not really a person. She wondered what Cornelius would say. The image of Cornelius saying “You fucked yourself ? I need a drink” came to mind and Kaye smiled. When she looked back at the bed the girl was still lying there, staring at the ceiling. She looked over at Kaye.
“You can crash here if you want,” she said.
“No, thanks,” said Kaye. “I have to feed my cat.”

Kaye watched the girl walk towards her across the sand, the twilight making her steps unsure and afraid, and remembered how brave the changeling had to be to be doing this, how brave the girl was to have done any of this.
“Hey, Kaye!” she called and waved. It felt strange to be calling someone else Kaye, but the human Kaye looked up immediately and waved back. She was wearing a green and pink plaid miniskirt with ripped pink fishnets and silver platform boots, a tank top that said “skateboarding is not a crime” and Hello Kitty arm warmers.
So much for blending in with the night sky, Kaye thought, looking down at her long black dress and the oversize black net shawl which draped over her head and hung on either side of her shoulders.
“So,” the girl said, looking around nervously, “my mother’s going to meet us here?”
“No.” Kaye laughed. “We are going to see her.”
“Why did we meet here, then?” the girl looked at Kaye out of the corner of one eye, half turned in defense.
Kaye ran one hand over her head as if she were untying an invisible string that was knotted around her. The glamour fell away in one fluid shimmer and Kaye watched the girl’s eyes go wide. “We are going to fly there.”
Kaye stood on the sand, her green skin almost blending in with the gray darkness behind her, with her black dress swaying lightly in the night wind and the partly translucent open wings shimmering softly, delicately as an insects, as they tested the air. The girl crept towards her slowly until she was close enough to reach up and run one hand down Kaye’s face. “You don’t look like them either,” she said finally.
“I’m a different type,” said Kaye, abruptly self conscious. “Are you sure you are going to be warm enough? It’s about a half hour from here.”
“I’m okay.” The girl nodded.
“Put your arms around my neck, grab your opposite wrists and hold on tight.”
“Are you serious?” she said, grinning.
Kaye held out her arms. The body that leaned into her was warm and smelled sweetly of hairspray and rose incense. She put her arms around the girl’s waist, pulling her close. There was a low humming noise, like a loud vibration. The air around them seemed to shake in time with the hum, faster and faster, until they lifted off the ground. The girl gasped and wrapped her legs around Kaye’s hips to avoid falling.
“It’s okay,” whispered Kaye, “I won’t drop you. I’m stronger than I look.”
They flew out over the sea, the shoreline of Jersey disappearing into the darkness behind them. It was colder over the water but the girl’s fear seemed to fade as the trip progressed and by the time they passed over the giant freighters gliding slowly past in the shipping lanes the lights of Manhattan were visible, a floating glowing castle in the distance, rapidly approaching.
Even having taken anti-nausea medication, Kaye still felt the disorientation and weakness of being in the city as they flew over Wall Street, past the gilded angel with the trumpet and across Canal towards the club.
“I guess it’s true that no one looks up in this town,” the changeling said.
“Well, a large portion of this island’s population isn’t completely human anyway,” said Kaye wryly.
They landed next to a dumpster behind a bar where Kaye replaced her glamour and they walked about half a block until they were standing in front of CBGB. Kaye said hello to the bouncer, who raised his eyebrows when he saw her companion.
“Thought you weren’t coming. Who is this?”
“My adopted identical twin,” said Kaye.
“No shit! She got ID?”
“She’s not drinking.”
He motioned them inside. They stepped through the door and Kaye watched as the girl took a quick look around at the patrons, scanning the crowd with a nervous expression.
“So, when do we see my mother?”
Kaye gestured at the stage. The lead singer, a blond woman with high cheekbones, leaned way out over the cluster of fans who were pressed against the stage and danced as she sang. “You’re looking at her.”
The human Kaye opened her mouth in shock and turned to stare at the stage.
“The lead singer of Stepping Razor is my mother?”
Kaye smiled. The girl continued to stare, disbelief mixing with delight on her face as she scanned the face of the older woman, noticing for the first time how the lines of her mouth, her coloring and the shape of her body were the same as the woman on stage.
“When I was in grade school,” she said softly, never taking her eyes off the stage, “I used to pretend that I had real parents out there who were searching for me. Nobody believed my story, of course. They said I was delusional, possibly from the trauma of being abandoned by delinquent, interracial parents. In time I believed it too, that I had imagined the whole thing. It wasn’t until I was in middle school and still had all these incredibly realistic memories that I started to secretly believe again. You are actually only one of, like, three people I’ve ever told, but that whole time I never believed once that I had been abandoned. I always thought I had a mother and I used to fantasize about her, how she would be so cool and all of the cool things that she would do. And now it’s real.” She watched the stage as if looking at the woman singing there solidified her somehow, as if looking away might make her disappear. “Thank you, Kaye.” There was a hesitation in her voice that made it sound as if calling another person by her name was awkward for her too.
“You’re welcome,” said Kaye, taking her hand. “Just let me know,” she added with a smile, “when you feel ready to dance.”

The End
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What Belongs to You