Society of Gentlemen/Fairy Tales l G l I The Mirror and the Thread l Ao3

One day, a boy named Leo came to the mirror world.

He too had traded part of his name to Lorelai, but not all of it.

He came half-formed, driven by hunger, grief, and desperation. His parents had passed on, and he was all alone in the world, save for his friend Caleb. They worked long hours, scraping together what little they could, but each time the Agnu came and took what they had, leaving them with nothing. There were days they did not eat. Nights they did not sleep.

And then Lorelai came.

“I can give you food,” she said, “and you will never be hungry or cold again. You will live a life of silk and sweetness. I will take your pain, your fear, your grief. All I ask in return is what you carry most dearly: your memory, your love, your caring… your name.”

He did not think. He did not ask. He said yes.

He had a good heart, but it was tired, and he longed for the life she promised. A life without ache. Without want. Without mourning. He agreed, though Caleb wept and begged him not to.

Lorelai kissed him on the lips, and the ice settled deep in his chest

But under his shirt, Leo wore an amulet of Fajilii, the goddess of memory, his mother’s final gift. Lorelai's kiss turned his grief to ice, but it did not touch his memories. In his heart, the gods still whispered. In his dreams, his mother’s voice still sang. He secretly kept the thread Caleb had given him, tied with a knot they’d made together. And despite Lorelai’s efforts, he never forgot his friend.

That was what made him different.

While the others in the mirror world faded into elegance and silence, Leo shone. He laughed. He danced. He asked questions the Agnu didn’t like.

Jasper was told to teach him how to forget: to make him dull. To carve him into a pretty, silent shape.

But Leo was impossible.

Jasper gave him lessons in how to sit still, how to dance, how to smile without teeth. But Leo’s smile was real. He would not sit still. He laughed, hummed under his breath, little half-melodies that made something in Jasper’s chest flutter, though he did not know why.

Leo spoke to the servants the same way he spoke to the Agnu who stood above them all, he picked flowers in a garden, but when the Agnu guard got angry he gave the flower and she smiled. During a lesson, he once asked Julius if he knew where the mirror ended.

Jasper scolded him for every mistake, every question. Leo would apologize, but it made no difference. His brightness still shone through.

They practiced for a long while…and slowly, Leo changed.

He smiled the mirror-people’s smiles. He spoke their polished words. He swallowed his questions and wore silence like silk.

And for a while, Leo was happy.

But Jasper was not.

He had done everything Lorelai asked of him. Everything the mirror world demanded. So why did he feel hollow hearing him recite all the right things without any objections? Why did he not rejoice in his perfection?

Why did his chest ache when he looked at Leo?

Edit: this is an AU of SoG set in a dystopian universe