The Psycho's Game [GxG]

e l e v e n

Years ago,

A woman sat by a large window, soft sunlight bathing the room in golden. Winter has been blanketing all the warmth, but she knew that the shivers that ran through her body wasn't the weather's fault alone.

"All this effort, and for what?"

The question asked was in a whisper, something thst sounded like the soft rustle of leaves. The lady heard it, because there was no other way it ever went, but decided to keep her attention on the many reports sprawled in front of her. Her hands were already stained with blue and red ink from the pens she interchangeably used, the reports thoroughly underlined and comments added on the margins.

The ones present in the room knew that more than half the files boasted of success, that there was going to be a celebration as soon as the news reaches to the family patriarch. But the ambience of the room stayed gloom.

"Most of the test subjects are behaving according to my thesis," the lady says, "the neural and behavioral patterns we've got is almost accurate. And it'd take just a couple of months to get it absolutely right..."

The other presence didn't say anything.

"I'll do all these, each and every damn thing, and then some man will marry me and all I ever worked for will be his. I'm just so —"

The pen was thrown across the room, the nib breaking on colliding with a wall. The twenty-two year old glared at the ink seeping into her Persian rug, but her wrath was paralyzing. She did not make a move to stop the ruin, nor did the other presence.

The wind whispered again.

"Saher."

Saher Shaurya kept seething. Everything that should have been hers will now be someone else's, and the impending doom kept making her blood boil. The experiments, the empire, the lineage that was supposed to be a gift to her because of her blood, everything.

"And then I'll have to contribute on my part, create a fucking baby or two in case spares are required, and then be done with. All because of these double X chromosomes in me, for fuck's sake."

When the wind spoke again, it was a deep sigh.

"If anyone trusts your negotiating skills more than the entire mafia, it's yourself," the voice chides. "Your narcissism doesn't leave room for your doubt."

"And your point is?"

"You're already plotting something, and you want it to be validated somehow."

"Validated?" A scoff. "By whom? You?"

"No, you. You want your gambit to sound right to yourself, so it'd sound right to that father of yours."

●●●

"There are just some finishing touches left," the man in front of Gracyn rattles off. "We have already taken Miss Rowther's approval on the guest list and added a few names. I have it with me right now if you'd like to take a look."

Without saying anything, Gracyn vaguely gestures for the tablet in the man's hand. Her eyes scan the names swiftly, eyes stopping ones they reach the name she was trying to find. Yashika did include her, Gracyn thinks as her lips curl up in amusement, and with absolutely no complaints?

"Any changes, ma'am?"

Gracyn gives the tablet back and lets her eyes roam around the large auditorium. The articles to be auctioned are kept all around the spacious room inside well lit vitrines, information placates placed in front of each one of them. The room can hold upto eight hundred people, but the list has the name of three hundred that will come into this very room tommorow. Hence, a lot of room for people to move around and greed over anything they want in the room.

"There's a vitrine with a Mughal era necklace, gold with embedded sapphires," Gracyn says, thinking of the way Ruhi Salerno was delicately touching the show case the necklace is in. "Change the lighting inside it to golden."

●●●

"Gracyn. Gracyn."

The office door opens and closes, a voice announcing the arrival of it's owner. Gracyn doesn't look up, but she's sure Shiv notices the way her fingers tighten around the pen she's holding.

"Is that what you're these days?"

When Shiv sits in one of the chairs, Gracyn drops the pen and raises her chin to look eye to eye with her sibling. His soft gray eyes look cold to stare at, the green hues absent due to the absence of sunlight.

"Sounds about right."

Shiv hums, gaze focused on the wall behind Gracyn. He leans back on the chair, fingers drumming on the plastic arms.

"Yashika calls you that," he starts again. Gracyn somehow knows where this is heading, but she doesn't stop him. "So is it a mandatory thing now? To call you whatever you are at the moment."

"It's not, and you know that."

"Do I, now? That's a piece of information that reached me? You didn't withhold it like you do with every other goddamn thing, Gray?"

"Don't call me that," Gracyn says, and it comes out like an order and a plea. "You know you don't have to call me that."

"C'mon, Miss Shaurya. What if I've forgotten your name after four whole years of not seeing you?"

"Shiv–"

"Four fucking years, you know? Damn, should have been in contact with you. Could have been in contact with you if you would have just let me."

Gracyn stays silent.

"But, well, there are other important things for you to find and exploit, after all." Shiv pulls out a file he has been hiding under the table and slides it across the table. Gracyn has seen it nearly a million times, the information inside it printed into her brain. Shiv opens it, and a recent photograph of a certain someone is the first thing that is visible.

"Baba is right. You have found the Blue Flower."

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

A/N

What are your thoughts on (adding?) supernatural elements in the story, you lovely people?

Also, there's a flower called blue star that's blue in the summer and golden in autumn. Just a little fun fact :)