Chapter 23 -- Homecoming
Cecilia Sanchez and Maria Elena Rodriguez-Torres quietly stared out through the van's windows as the line of lights in the distance marking the edge of Danube City grew brighter. Within a few minutes individual buildings came into view; then suddenly the vehicle passed the first houses lining the city's edge. The van turned onto a street of nicer residences and passed a yellow sign that marked the edge of the Danube City collar-zone. A few meters beyond was the house where Vladim Dukov had lived before he was Prime Minister, and where his son Vladik now lived with his wife and two sons.
The van turned from the side street onto a tree-lined boulevard leading towards the city center, but then veered to the northeast to go towards the University District. Soon the part of the city most familiar to Cecilia and Maria Elena came into view, a section of houses built around 1910 that were almost completely hidden by large trees. A short distance beyond lay the university, but the van's driver was not taking them that far.
During the entire trip neither Maria Elena nor Cecilia felt inclined to talk. Now that she had some rest, Cecilia was awake enough to feel the painful sores covering her feet and to fret about what would happen when Victor and her nephew Pedro saw her naked and collared. As for Maria Elena, the momentary happiness she felt upon leaving the Royal Residence had faded back into emotional numbness and a fatigue that was deeper than anything she had ever experienced. She was dead tired from not having slept, but also she was still in shock from the events that had torn at her over the past week.
Finally the van pulled to a stop in front of Merchant Victor Dukov's house. Victor quietly stepped outside, with Jason and Pedro shyly following. The side door of the van opened and the two women got out. The moment had come for Maria Elena to return to her lover's arms and for Cecilia to begin her radically changed life. For a moment the two women stood quietly, simply staring at their loved ones but unable to speak. Everyone was very uncomfortable, not just because of the experiences that Maria Elena and Cecilia had just endured, but also because no one was used to seeing Victor and Cecilia naked and wearing Temple collars. Pedro, especially, seemed not to know what to make of seeing his authoritative aunt wearing nothing but a collar and a subdued expression.
It was Jason who broke the silence. He stepped forward to take Cecilia in his arms. Victor followed suit and embraced Maria Elena. At first she couldn't react. She wanted to feel joy at being back in Victor's arms, but couldn't feel anything at all. She hated herself for her lack of emotion, but then the numbness lifted and she started crying. She hugged Victor hard as her old personality asserted itself through the trauma of the past week. She realized it would take time, but eventually she would indeed recover.
The cops in the van drove off and everyone went inside. Jason had a practical issue to deal with, the condition of Cecilia's feet. He helped her upstairs, unwrapped her bandages, and put more disinfectant on her sores. He told her that if she stayed off her feet she would be much better the next day, and that calluses that would protect her would start forming within a few days. His own feet were covered with thick calluses, from spending four years living without footwear whenever weather permitted.
Cecilia summarized what had happened at the Royal Residence, focusing on that awful moment the Royal Guard pulled open the cellar door and she saw Maria Elena as she was being beaten and raped. Then she related the day's other events, right up to the moment she and Maria Elena passed the corpses of the two treasonous Lords and headed out to the van.
There was a lot missing from Cecilia's narrative, because she had no information concerning what had become of Grand Duchess Anyia. She had overheard one of the servants mentioning that she had been beaten by her mother, but had not seen the punishment herself and did not know if it was true. She had no clue what had happened to the Grand Duke. To that Jason responded:
"Well, you'll be in court tomorrow and I'd imagine Kim will fill you in."
Jason ran Cecilia a bath and carried her to the tub so she wouldn't have to get on her feet. Being carried made Cecilia feel like an invalid, but Jason was insistent. She had to stay off her feet until the next morning so they could heal.
A few minutes later Jason lifted Cecilia out of the bathtub and set her on a towel on her bed. As he carried her, Cecilia's feelings about him changed somewhat. She now was helpless and dependent upon him. Not only was she feeling weak in his strong arms, but also she realized that during her time she was collared he would be in charge of what was going on in her life. He knew what she needed to do about her feet, just like he knew how she would have to make the transition to properly performing Public Penance. It was the collar that would make her dependent upon him. Anytime in the past, she would not have found submitting to his direction acceptable, but at that moment she realized that she didn't mind.
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Victor had his own set of psychological issues to contend with as he held his traumatized lover in his arms. He felt horribly guilty that she had suffered so much at the hands of his own niece, the daughter of his brother. Of course the reason why that had happened was because of a very unique set of legal circumstances that had just been terminated, but at the moment that was not any consolation. The fact that he had spent the week totally helpless, fretting about her situation but unable to do anything to assist her, wore on his conscience. He was ashamed of his own helplessness.
Finally Maria Elena calmed down enough that Victor was able to take her inside. In the living room he saw the full extent to which she had been abused. Her body was covered with bruises and welts. Her bottom had taken the brunt of the abuse and was covered with painful welts and dark bruises. Beyond her backside the welts thinned out somewhat, but no part of her body: not her legs, nor her back, nor her arms, nor her breasts, had been spared from the continuous whippings of the Lord who had tormented her. Victor was enraged by what had happened, but for him there would be no revenge, because the Lord who had abused her was dead.
As soon as Jason had taken Cecilia out of the bathroom, Victor ran a bath for Maria Elena. She was dead tired, but grateful for the opportunity to get cleaned up and simply relax. For a long time she had no desire to get out of the tub; she just wanted the hot water to relax her sore body and clean away the psychological filth of her time at the Royal Residence. She was desperately hungry, which Victor sensed. He brought her a snack of bread and fruit, which she devoured while still sitting in the tub.
Once she finished eating Victor contemplated Maria Elena's dirty hair, which was still dishonorably loose. Looking at his lover's loose hair was a bizarre experience for him, because it had been many years since had he seen the unbraided hair of a woman he loved. When he was still in high school his future wife had her hair unbraided, but the day she graduated and formally became a woman her hair was properly done up, as was the hair of every other woman in the graduating class. He thought back to the moment he saw her at the graduation ceremony, no longer a high school girl but an adult...a woman who had made the transition to honorable citizen...and the woman he knew he was destined to marry. Since that ceremony he had never seen her hair loosened, because his wife was a proper Danubian who strongly believed in protocol.
Throughout his life, Victor's prejudices about braided hair had been typical for any Danubian man. The only women he had seen with unbraided hair were foreigners, who had all kinds of weird customs not practiced in the Duchy. A lot had changed since he graduated from high school, especially the influx of huge numbers of foreign tourists walking around Danube City with their hair flowing loose in the wind. Loose hair now was a common sight, but still it set tourists apart from everyone else. Dishonorable... totally dishonorable... those foreigners.
And yet...seeing Maria Elena's thick black hair loose around her wet shoulders gave Victor a strange idea. He was tempted to touch it...something he would not have dreamt of doing with his deceased wife. Maria Elena was a foreigner herself, so she really did not understand what a huge taboo it was in Danubian culture for a man to see a woman's loose hair, let alone touch it. He cautiously reached out and felt a loose strand.
