"Discordia" (The Devil Wears Prada Fanfiction)

Pairing: Miranda / Andrea
Rating: M
Words: 2,398
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters have been borrowed without permission but without any purpose or intent of commercial gain.  The same applies to the lyrics of the song "Left In The dark Again" by Barbra Streisand (1984)

Standing in front of the large mirror of their bathroom suite, Miranda leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

She was exhausted.

The week had felt long and arduous, a constant battle with the varied shortcomings of those around her; the myopic stance of the art department, the vulgar suggestions to reduce her budget, Irv’s revolting grin that proves to the world –every day- that wealth alone is never enough to make a man, a gentleman.

And Andrea.

She allowed her head to slump forward slowly as her lips pursed in sadness or anger or both; she could not say which. 

She should have known things would eventually come to this.  She knew better, having learned her lessons well.  Life was like that she thought, brutal, implacable, cruel but efficient, potent.  It cuts you, it shreds you, it grinds you to powder but it makes sure you learn and by God, you learn. 

She should have never allowed Andrea to happen; this life she’d been living for the last five years...it should have never been lived.

Shaking her head she finally opened her eyes and the halogen lights on the edge of the ceiling suddenly seemed too bright, glaring at her as if they rejoiced in her anguish.  She watched her reflection and sighed; the last Botox injection was wearing off...the chemical peel was simply not cutting it anymore...the stubborn double chin rendering that last liposuction, futile.

Time was unstoppable.

She opened her robe and looked at her nude body underneath.  Her breasts, while still perky and plump were starting to sag from the top of her chest despite all the long hours of pilates and yoga.  Her nipples oddly, no longer exhibited that healthy pinkish hue of the past but instead, they too had turned against her and their colour was now more a coral than a pink.  Her eyes lingered now on her stomach and while there was very little fat, there was also less muscle underneath her increasingly brittle skin.  She pinched a bit of it between her index and thumb and tightened her lips at the sensation feeling the tissue no longer as elastic and pliant as before. 

God dammit.

Reluctantly, her eyes focused on her mound first and her sex immediately after, as she parted her legs slightly.  Perhaps the only part of her aging body that had not completely betrayed her yet because the top of the thighs, those...she did not even want to look at those.  While menopause had finally settled in some three years prior, her pubic hair had not followed the genetic guidelines she had inherited from her mother and luckily still remained black, for the most part.  Trimmed and partially waxed, her sex looked very much like it always had and thankfully, despite the many horrific warnings from her doctor and all women magazines in existence, it still performed to expectations, responding very quickly and lavishly to the ministrations her wife provided.

The ministrations she had hoped to offer and receive, tonight.

“Andrea...” whispered Miranda.

Smirking with contempt, she closed her robe tying the knot around her waist.  Diversion over, she checked her Tiffany watch and her pulse raced at the sight; 1:30 am. 

Andrea said she’d be home by 7 pm.

Not inclined to drama and hype, Miranda had remained focused on dinner and the children, pegging the tardiness first on traffic, then on work and later on some probable and unusual turn of events regarding the latest story Andrea was working on.  However though by 11 pm, she was finding it very difficult -if not impossible- to justify her own reasons for defying...well, reason.  She had called Andrea’s cell phone no less than twenty times leaving at least ten messages.  She had even gone to the extent of calling her wife’s closest friends –risking a potential major gossip leak- receiving the same answer every time; no one knew where she was.  It was then, in a sudden impulse driven by fear, that she called the police to inquire about any traffic accidents, muggings, carjackings or assaults that could help her understand why the woman she adored was not sleeping peacefully next to her in their bed.

Thanking the fates for the information she did not get, she called the paper for the eleventh time and finally found a kind soul who at least informed her that Mrs. Andrea Priestley had left the building at around 8 pm. 

Unfortunately, the kind young man had known nothing else.

“Please Andrea...” implored Miranda, under her breath.

She turned around away from the mirror and flipped off the mocking halogen lamps as she left the bathroom suite.  Padding slowly Miranda walked by their enormous walk-in closet and smiled at the tiny night lamp that gently spread its soft light around; Andy had plugged it there because she hated the utter darkness of the closet at night.  Recalling such pedestrian moment Miranda inhaled sharply, what she would give at this minute to go back in time.  Sighing, she disrobed and slipped into her Burberry cotton sleep shirt; no point waiting up any more.

Minutes later the feared Dragon Lady sat on their ample bed wishing she was someone else.   Silver locks of soft hair splattered on the edge of the headboard, fingernails raked through an achy scalp and a muffled moan was heard through the stillness of the night.

“Andrea...”

She should have known better.  It was there, plainly written in bond papers that bore the watermark of her attorneys’ firm; two sets of divorce papers.  Not just one but two.  Whatever gave her the absurd idea that this time her life would turned out different...better? Stubbornly, stupidly, obtusely she beguiled herself one more time and now, when there was no backdoor to escape through, she had no other choice but to accept the consequences of her foolishness.  And the signs of decay that always seem to find her and brand her soul had finally started to appear in the last few months.

Forsaken life of mine, she thought.

The first indication had been so subtle and so beautifully crafted that she had almost missed it. It had taken place as they were leaving the Metropolitan Opera House after attending the premiere of Mozart’s ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’, a few months back.  As Miranda cordially chatted with Vanity Fair’s Dee Dee Myers about Barack Obama’s apparent softness and how unexpected his impact could be for the country, she felt the air shift and entities move about.

Eris had tossed the freaking apple.

Miranda saw her approaching and remembered Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus;

‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships and

burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Apparently, it was.

A strikingly tall, dark haired and green eyed woman stood in front of them and smiled at Andrea for no apparent reason.  Hoping her gut instinct was simply off Miranda turned to look behind them, hoping the nymph had been smiling at someone else...knowing full well, she hadn’t.  Andrea indeed, had been the sole origin and destiny of the endearing gesture. 

The attack had started.

The first wave came seconds after when Andrea, in a bout of nervous laughter, dropped her tiny purse to the floor.  The second blow came mere moments later when the woman, clad in a black Armani tux that covered a perfect body, immediately leaned down to pick it up. In one swift motion, long black curls cascaded seductively, green eyes focused, lips curled up again in a tender grin and long digits offered the pearly purse, lingering a moment too long on Andrea’s hand.

Miranda felt the stab directly in her solar plexus as if she had been physically torn open at her core.  She pressed her fingertips on Andrea’s small back, whispered a quick goodbye to the writer she’d been conversing with and turning to the Nereid, she muttered firmly but very courteously, “Thank you for assisting my wife...”

She then, gently pushed Andrea to leave. 

Once at home, probably responding to a primitive urge to conquer her terror at the impending war that loomed in their horizon, Miranda pounded on her wife like a feral cat, disrobing her in minutes, kissing her with force and fury and drawing their desperate orgasms with potent thrusts that made them both moan, agonizingly.

But Miranda knew it was all but a bluff; Troy would be lost at the end.

She finally heard the door clicked open and the knob being turned slowly and gently.  Shoes were discarded at the entrance but neatly placed underneath the coat hanger where Rosa would pick them up in the morning.  She heard the door of the cloak closet being opened and Andrea’s coat being put away.  Miranda could also hear the pouncing of her heart in her temples.

She looked at her watch, quarter to three in the morning.  Outrageous.

In nanoseconds the temperance, the poise and the countenance she had maintained for the last 7 hours or so, went flying out the window.  Her breathing became shallow and fast, almost a pant.  Her hands clenched as if ready to strike.  Iris darkened and pupils dilated.  Like a leopard perched on a tree ready to pounce on the unsuspecting victim, Miranda waited in the dark.  She wanted to hit, smack, destroy, tear, and bite.  She wanted to punish her wife for taking away her peace, her sense of belonging, her fleeting happiness.  She wanted to flog her, club her, knock her about so the girl would stop whatever or whoever she was doing and would return to love her the way she used to before. 

Miranda’s thoughts crashed against one another; the questions she agonized to ask.  ‘...Where did she touch you? How did it feel? Why did you let it begin..?’

She heard her voice scream inside her head.

‘What did she whisper and what did it mean and when do you think it will end..? How long did it last? Do you think it will stop? Did you get to try anything...new?’

She heard herself sobbed.  This could not be happening. Andrea could not be cheating on her with that woman.  Power, skill...those she could understand...but mere shallow beauty? God damned you Aphrodite!

“Please God...please...” Miranda’s hissed unable now, to stop the immense ache that suffocated her chest.

‘How good was she, honestly? Where did you go? And who made the very first move? Who made the very first move? Who Andrea, made the very...first...move..?’

The door cracked open letting a thin column of light inside the darkness of their bedroom.  Andrea snaked in turning around catlike to quietly turn the door knob as silently as possible. 

As Andrea rotated her body again to walk towards the closet to change, Miranda flicked the night table’s lamp on and a soft light orange glow, lit up the room.  Miranda’s face –awash with a myriad of emotions- looked congested and aged.  Long gone were the laughter lines and the crow’s feet being replaced now with saggy bags and a dejected rictus that Andrea could not recognize.

Blue eyes searched her wife’s face and after a minute or so, everything stopped.  Like flashes, hundreds of images gulped like repressed water against flood gates.  All of them, memories of this life that Andrea had forced her to live, pushed her to believe in.  Like a spell from which she did not want to escape, these reflections showed her this morning’s breakfast eggs and their wedding night and their second trip to Paris and the birth of their first son, Daniel.  These facsimiles showed her again the image of Andrea smiling at her from the other side of the street, made her feel those lips against her own and rushed a wave of excitement through her body. 

But mostly these memories felt like nails puncturing her body, piercing her soul, tearing her spirit.  They trapped her, pegged her, and fastened her to the bed she was sitting on, to the room she found herself in, to the woman looking at her, to the life they lead.

“Miranda let me explain...”

A bony, pale hand took flight and stopped midair.  “Please Andrea...don’t...”

“But...”

Blue eyes disappeared under heavy lids.  Silver locks swayed by the rhythm of a shaking head.

“Please, don’t...-she paused, painfully, gravely-...I’ve been waiting... waiting for you here in our home, with our children for the last seven hours, Andrea.   You swore you’d be with me at 7 o’clock and now it’s quarter of three so I guess that...whatever you got on...whoever it was...I guess you could not get it from me...”

“Miranda please...”

“I said no, Andrea –her broken voice raised a bit more-...not tonight...”

The older woman extended her right arm and pulled the covers gently on her wife’s side of the bed.    “I know that you love me Andrea...so just change...I want you undressed...”

Tears finally found a way out of the Indigo irises, tears that had been pooling for hours.  Andrea, who was never able to bear the sight of Miranda suffering and who perhaps had started to succumb to guilt, moaned loudly and openly, started to cry.

Andrea’s tears almost broke Miranda’s resolution but remembering the ultimate fate of all those Gods and deities who hubristically gloated like she had done for so many years she sighed despondently and continued.

“...there are so many things I want to know...who, when, where...but now please...I just need some love, so turn off the lights and I’ll be left in the dark again...”

Andrea opened her blouse quickly, unhooked her bra, pulled her trousers down and slid her panties off.  Miranda watched her, pulled her own sleep shirt off letting her breasts spill free.  Like before, she extended her arm and pulled the covers a bit further, nodded and waited for her wife to climb into bed.

Andrea sneaked under the covers, turned off the lamp, leaned towards Miranda, grabbed her gently by her hips and in one swift motion, shoved her underneath her own body.  “I love you Miranda, I’m sorry...” whispered the younger woman before pressing her lips on her lover’s mouth.

And Miranda opened her lips allowing in silence not only her wife’s ministrations but the most fundamental truth she had ever known...

She loved Andrea.  She loved her wife.  And no matter what, she would never leave her.

“...Oh Paris, you fool...I ended being no better than you...”

FIN.