undergrounds | Hard knocks

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Hard knocks

It's official. She's failed out of uni. Lydia Bennet, the thick sister of the bunch. The useless one. The disappointment.

Well, her mum won't be disappointed, once Lydia tells her about Cesare. She will quite understand that Lydia spent the time she should have been studying for her exams in Cesare's hotel making him happy. When Lydia tells her. Right now, Lydia doesn't dare: her mum is the biggest gossip and it will take two minutes for word of her and Cesare will be everywhere.

Lydia heads for her favourite haunt, a cosy Starbucks close by. She fancies an extra large double shotted caramel macchiato. What she actually gets is a small tea. Because she's broke. She's failed and she's broke.

Why is life so hard?

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Nancy wasn't even going to stop at the Starbucks. That was, until, she walks past the window and does a double take. Lydia, sitting at a table by herself looking absolutely awful. Something was wrong- probably with Cesare. Gods damn it, she'd told him to tread lightly-!

Setting her lips together firmly, Nancy nearly storms into the Starbucks and plops down in front of Lydia. "What did the bastard do to you? I'll stake him myself for you next time I'm at the Night Council building." So, next time she stops in to see Cooper, most likely.

Lydia looks up in startled amazement. Lost in self-pity, she hadn't even seen Nancy until the girl was raging at her. For a minute, she panics that Nancy found out she had been trying to flirt with Cooper, but she has enough sense to keep her mouth shut.

"What are you talking about Nancy? What bastard?"

"Cesare!" She tells her immediately. "Unless there's another bloke you've been dating that's got you looking so bloody forlorn."

"What? No!" She reaches across to take Nancy's hand, talking earnestly.
"No, Nancy. Cesare's -" she sighs dreamily. "He's wonderful. No, it's - well - I failed uni. And now... well, I don't know what I'm going to do."

Nancy exhales. "good. tell me the second he does anything. He and I are friends, but I won't stand for him hurting you." Friends. former lovers. It had been a work relationship, at least.

now on to more pressing matters: "you did? Shit- I'm so sorry! is there anything we can do? I've never been to uni so I've got no clue on my own."

"He's not going to do anything. He loves me." Lydia grins that ridiculously dreamy smile again. She imagines her relationship with Cesare as quite perfect: no one or anything will stop them being together in the long run.

She sighs dramatically though. "No... I just don't know what I'm going to do. If I tell my dad, he'll make me leave London, but if I don't tell him, I haven't got anywhere to live or anything. I don't think Cesare can even let me live there: you know he doesn't want anyone to know about us, don't you?"

Oh. Oh sweetie. Nancy wants to take Lydia in her arms and tell her that Cesare does not love her, and that it may seem that way, but that's because he knows how to treat women that he does like. But it's nothing more than that.

"He owns a bloody hotel, he could probably get you a room." The Anglo was a very discrete sort of place. "Or maybe give you money for a flat. Men do that for their mistresses all the time. In the meanwhile, then, look for a job."

"A mistress? I am not his mistress." Lydia replies hotly. Eurgh, that sounds so awful, like he's just using her for sex and fobbing her off with shoes. For a second or so, her expression becomes one of puzzlement as she looks down at her ridiculously high, impractical Laboutin pumps. Cesare had got them for her, of course, and he seemed to love her wearing them with nothing but the pretty lingere he encouraged her to wear. Is she a mistress?

But... no. Their connection is deep. She shakes her head.

"I can't stay at a hotel forever, or in his apartment. I don't even know where that is! Cesare says there'd be too much publicity."
Sge sighs dramatically again. "A job? Ew! Where would I even work?"

She looks at Nancy thoughtfully though. Does she tell her that Dodger has told her about blood donations? Does she tell Nancy that she knows that Nancy's done it too?
Somehow, she can imagine Nancy flying into a temper again, so for now, she keeps quiet.

Huh. Wonder why it sounded like that. Funny thing is, Cesare bought her Louboutin and fancy lingerie, too.

Deciding that she was not going to reveal where Cesare lived, Nancy just nods. "Right- sorry. Girlfriend. Anyway- maybe someplace simple to start? Get a job at a shop, maybe in a cafe? Something that you like doing well enough- I think you'd be great as a shop girl, you've always got great style." She means it, truthfully. Even if she had turned her nose up at Nancy's trashy clothing.

"Then again, I never thought I'd work in a garage."

"A shop girl?" THE Lydia Bennet work in a shop? She's always so rude to the assistants too., treating them as if they can't afford the very shops they work in.

"I suppose you're right. Mummy always said she'd die if I had to get a job like a commoner. But maybe she won't mind too much. If Cesare proposes, I won't have to work."

She looks slightly astonished. "You work in a garage? But you're a woman! Women don't work with cars."

"...yes." Wow, Lydia Bennet is terrible.

But honestly, her mother sounds worse. Nancy presses her lips together, dreading the day Lydia's family comes to visit. "Nothing wrong with jobs at all." and Cesare would never propose, so this way when everything went to hell, Lydia still had something going for her.

She blinks. "No- my boss is a woman. But I don't work with the cars- I'm in logistics."

Lydia doesn't even know what logistics means. She also doesn't want to look stupid though, so she just shrugs.

"God, my life is so over. Daddy's gonna kill me when he finds out about uni. He said it was a waste letting me go. He said I had no brains, and I suppose he's right. Lizzie and Mary are the clever ones. I was always just to find a rich man and marry him. God! What a mess! And now I have to work in a shop!"

She's going for the high end ones: Harvey Nick's or Harrods, maybe at a minimum.

"And that dreadful cat has been chasing me round London telling me to stop seeing Ces. As if it's any of that old hag's business anyway, what we do in private. What's she gonna do? Confiscate my spell book? Kick me out? Ha! As if!"

Nancy didn't know either until she got the job.

"Your life is not over- look at you." She gestures at the pretty one in front of her. "I've had plenty of siblings that are more clever or stronger or better at what they do," she explains, "but that doesn't matter. Just keep going."

It's rather insulting, to be honest, that Lydia seems to think a real job is something awful. Nancy loved her job, loved making money, having bills in her name, taxes deducted from her paycheck. Okay, maybe not that last part, but still.

Of course, all of this takes a back-seat when Lydia mentions the cat. "Cat? White, little red bell?" She asks. She doesn't know the cat's name, but she's met the cat a few times. The cat is rude and she doesn't like him.

She's not going to mention that she's had things confiscated by the Night Council before, or that one of her best friends was quite literally banned from London. Not a good time.

Lydia nods. "Yeah. I call him Fleaball, but I think he's called Maggot or something. Why you'd tell people you were called Maggot is beyond me anyway. Eurgh, and all it does is yak Samantha's business - like she's gonna appreciate it anyway." She frowns. "They've got naked pictures of me, Nancy. They're trying to stop me seeing Ces. But I love him, you know? And I know he loves me."

"He's Samantha's?" Well. Shit. "He's been following me. Shit, that's how he knew about Cooper." That, and they'd been publicly dating for over a year now. It's worrying, still, that he knew, he'd seen her picking pockets. Fuck.

She blinks. "I'm- what?" Cesare probably has naked pictures of Nancy, too. Except she charged him for those and it didn't seem fair to demand he delete them. No, Lydia was so young and- "Let me get this right: Samantha's got her cat telling you to break up with Cesare?"

She wasn't even going to touch Lydia saying Cesare loved her. Sorry, but she knows Cesare a little better than that.

"He knows everything. You and Cooper, me and Cesare. It will be you two he comes after next. He was going on about me telling witch secretsto Ces. As if I know any. Samantha won't want you with Cooper either, just in case."

She pauses for breath. Her cheeks flush and her voice squeaks as she asks,

"Can the Fae lie?" She really doesn't want to believe Cesare has cheated on her.

Of course the cat knew about her and Cooper. She'd gotten that much figured out. Still, Nancy frowns deeply.

"She and Sylvia both don't." At least Sylvia wasn't a problem anymore.

Oh. Shit. Can they lie? Nancy swallows. "...no. But they have clever ways of stating things, so they can technically get around it."

"Why do they care who we date?" Lydia shakes her head. "Neither of us are in their silly covens. It's not like we're dating werewolves and painting graffiti all over London or something. I think it's just another way for Samantha to try to control us."

She sits back ostentatiously, nodding wisely, to let her conspiracy theory settle.

The news about the fae though, dampens her mood. "Maybe Mogget was lying then? Maybe Samantha doesn't know? That bratty cat is a nightmare. You know what? I might just ask Cesare to turn me into a vampire and fuck it all. I don't want to be in Circle Daybreak if they're gonna spy on me all the time."

Nancy heaves a long sigh and takes a sip of her coffee. Apparently it's going to be story time now. As much as she can, anyway, without revealing important backstory details that Lydia is still unaware of.

"When Cooper was first elected- I was already living with him. Sylvia had a... special interest in me, I guess you could say. Having been a close friend with the Maiden of Witches, and a Midnight member. After Midnight fell, a friend of mine helped me clear my name with the Night Council- Sylvia tried to keep me from getting pardoned, but they did, in the end. She was mad I never mentioned my boyfriend's name. I really don't think she likes that a girl like me could find herself on the arm of the Vampire Representative." Yet Sylvia could be kind to her, sometimes.

"Samantha's the same. Because we're with important people, and we're... not. I don't know, it's stupid. Keep loving who you love, no matter what anyone else says. They're not in your head, they don't see the relationship like you do." No one ever had understood her relationship with Bill. Now they didn't understand it with Cooper.

"No- don't ask. Please- that'd be the second friend I've had turned in as many years and I don't think I could deal with it. Besides- you have to die to turn." Kenzi had died on her couch.

Wait... what? That's a lot of information to receive all at once. Nancy's been kicked out of Circle Daybreak? No wonder she wouldn't form a coven with Lydia.

"Wait." Lydia puts down her mug. "They were charging you because you were in a different faction? That they destroyed?" She frowns. "But that's... that's stupid. That's ridiculous. That's..."

She picks up her rapidly cooling tea again, just for something to do whilst she thinks this through.
"A girl like you? Because you're poor? But that's what we all have to do - marry up. I mean, like, you've done pretty good, I'm not going to lie. But God, if I could do that, my mother would be over the moon with me."

She sets the mug down again without drinking any. "I hate cold tea... and I hate all of this. Can't we just say screw them? Can't we - OH! Oh, Nancy!" She suddenly sits up very straight. "I have got a BRILLIANT idea! We'll make our own Circle. Screw them. We'll do it ourselves. You can be the Maiden of Witches, and I'll help. I'll even study. Oh my gosh, can we?"

Nancy had never even been part of Daybreak to begin with. That was part of the problem.

She shrugs. "A bit, yeah. They came into Enfield in the middle of the night, captured Abby, burned her home to the ground..." And she'd run off to Cooper's home, because it was the only place she could think of going, someplace safe where he happily took her into his arms and made sure she was okay.

"Yeah. Poor." She scuffs the toes of her shoes on the floor of the coffee shop. Poor, former prostitute, petty criminal. The works.

At Lydia's declaration of hating cold tea, Nancy smiles at her and reaches a hand over to touch the ceramic of the mug. A moment later, and the tea begins to steam once more. "There's one problem fixed. But- Oh! Lydia... Lydia, I can't. There's still a Maiden, we're friends, I can't really... I can't do something like that again. And I can't do anything that'd hurt Cooper's career. It means so much to him." And so it meant the world to her, too.

"Shall I tell you a secret?" Lydia drops her voice and leans forward to whisper to Nancy.
"We're poor too. That's why Mother wants me to marry well - to save the family name." She chuckles. "Good job it's only Bennet, right?" It's supposed to cheer Nancy up a bit - Lydia hopes she's managed it! "Don't be sad, Nancy. You've got your life now, right? Who cares where you came from! I wish I had your life."
She grins when Nancy warms her tea. "See! Even the tea!"

She listens carefully to Nancy's story, trying to work it all out in her head. "So Abby - she's the Maiden, right? Is she still alive? Or has Samantha... you know?" she draws a line over her throat. "Or this Sylvia woman?"

"It wouldn't hurt his career anyway - Cesare's in charge and he won't let anything happen to Cooper. Come on, Nance! We'd really be sticking our fingers up at them all. We'll show them who the silly witches are!"

Nancy presses her lips together. Oh, Lydia. She has no idea what it is to be poor, if her university flat had been any indication. That had been paradise compared to what she'd grown up with. Still, she forces a smile.

"Yeah, I wish I could forget that easy- gods no, you do not want my life. Trust me, you got the better end of the deal here. Plus, you've got a mum what clearly loves you." She never knew her mum. And as for the man who fancied himself her father? Ugh.

"She's still alive. Exiled- even Sylvia wouldn't kill her."

The very idea of Cesare not letting anything happen to Cooper gets Nancy to laugh. "No- I can't. I really really can't- besides, Cooper and Cesare really do not get along that well, and I'm a good part of that reason. I'd rather not stir the cauldron, if you know what I mean." So no covens. No rebellions. Nothing. Just a normal, average life.

"I get it." Lydia's visibly disappointed. "I'm just... I'm just fed up, I guess. I just think it's all so stupid - fighting over vampires and wolves and witches. Like, ew. Half of London is a dump anyway. Who even cares? And I am fed up of people spying on me and thinking Cesare is just using me to spy on them. I'm not stupid, you know? I think I'd notice if he kept asking me for witchy secrets."

She heaves a dramatic sigh. "I don't want a fricking cat telling me what to do."

Nancy shrugs a bit. "You'd be surprised what people can tell you over a drink or two," she says admittedly. She'd heard quite a fair bit from some of her old clients.

Also, it's not like Lydia knows any witchy secrets, so she'd be a really shit mark. She was a kid with no real position or power, and Cesare would know that. He'd been in the political game for hundreds of years.

"So don't do what he says. Look, talk to Cesare, if you think what the cat's got anything near truth."

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Hard knocks

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omg I didn't see this

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