[July 1] [Mirrormask] Steady Hands

[bane-6.livejournal.com]

Title: Steady Hands
Day/Theme: 1: _____ is the sign of a stable mind
Series: Mirrormask
Character/Pairing: Helena/Valentine
Rating: G






“You know what they say about juggling with a mask on?” Valentine said it casually, but he’d been quiet so long that Helena had started to wonder what was wrong.

“No.” She caught the small hoops she was tossing and waited. Ever since he had joined her parents’ circus she hadn’t been sure of how much he remembered of the Kingdoms. There were times when she wondered if he had been the same Valentine she had met there after all. “What do they say?”

“That juggling is best when you’re not thinking about it, when your mind is somewhere else,” he said. He was looking at her now, not at the clubs he was tossing in a siteswap. “That as soon as you start thinking about it, you start dropping things.”

“And?” she nudged a little when he paused again.

“With costumes and masks you become someone else.” He nodded at the rack of outfits along the side of the practice area. “So you should be able to juggle better with masks. Your mind would always be somewhere else because you wouldn’t be you. Right?”

Helena gave that some thought. She remembered the ‘not me’ feeling of being hypnotized into being the Dark Princess. Weighed down with elaborate black dresses, face painted into its own mask of regal blankness, she had not been herself at all. She had been able to juggle then, but it hadn’t been because she hadn’t been thinking. She had been thinking as hard as she had been able under the layers. The muscle memory or whatever it was that had let her juggle had brought other memories to the surface.

“I don’t think so,“ she finally said. “I think it reminds your mind of what you already know and brings it back out.”

“So it’s our minds we’re flinging around this way.” He furrowed his brow in a mock seriousness and she had to chuckle.

“Explains a lot, don’t you think?”