undergrounds | Five Years Later...

Five Years Later...

A lot can change in five years. Students who were at Redbright have now started their careers. People have moved out, moved in, started a new life together or apart. Some move on from the city while others return to it. But while the lives of its residents continue to grow and change, London remains as it has ever been: a focal point for magical power.

A tentative peace
The last five years have not been without conflict, both internal and external. The vampires have played with the politics of in-fighting and backstabbing. The werewolves have overthrown their leader and chosen a new alpha. The witches have suffered one scandal after another. And the fae have quietly engineered a small change here, a personal revenge there, until finally with Redbright and Hillingdon acting as neutral parties a peace agreement was reached between Circle Daybreak, the Islington Nest and the East End Pack. Their territories are still beholden to the same rules (e.g. vampires are still forbidden to enter East End territory and vice versa) but they are no longer in open conflict. Small steps, perhaps, but positive ones.

A delicate balance
The year is 2022. The balance of power in the city is now evenly split between the East End Pack, Islington Nest and Circle Daybreak, thanks largely to the rise of the werewolves and the new President Laura Roslin who simultaneously holds the post of Werewolf Representative.

Samantha Okeke lost her position as Witch Representative following allegations of corruption, and has been replaced by Diphylleia "Dee" Absin, a much more co-operative member of the Night Council. While Samantha has retained her title of Mother of Witches, there are rumours that she lost her powers during a confrontation with a powerful fae. Circle Daybreak firmly denies all such speculation.

The connections between the Redbright Institute and the Hillingdon Clan have grown stronger since the former is now perceived to be a more neutral force rather than tied to the Night Council, although Hillingdon certainly still has the less clean-cut image of the two.

Meanwhile, the Seelie and Unseelie Court have largely withdrawn from public life in the mortal realm except in isolated corners, though they claim the right to go where they please throughout the city. Consequently, there are no barriers preventing travel between the realms, which seems for now to be an acceptable compromise.

And after all, politics is the art of compromise.

Looking ahead
All in all, the vampire and fae presence in the city has reduced as the vampires move around and the fae decide that if they're invited it can't be that great a party anyway. The number of witches has recovered thanks to an amnesty allowing those who were once members of Circle Midnight to return (though the faction itself has not reappeared).

The biggest change that has been noticed first by staff at the Redbright Institute however is the increasing number of meta humans, in particular young meta humans, being discovered in the city. Often these are humans with no knowledge of the supernatural developing their powers for the first time. The reason why has yet to be discovered...

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He does hate her. Nancy is sure of it.

"It's okay," she whispers, "You can hate me. God knows I deserve it." She doesn't expect them to pay attention to her.

“Nancy, he literally can’t lie, so if he did hate you he wouldn’t have been able to say he doesn’t,” Arthur says, gesturing at her abruptly. He’s a solutions man and Nancy’s warped perspective isn’t going to get them anywhere. “We’re only upset because we care. We don’t want to see you like this.”

"I know," she says, because she hasn't spent her entire life around fae or anything. "Take it as permission, then. You both are allowed to hate me- throw me in the street if you want. It's what I deserve, showing up here like this." She gestures at herself.

"I'm sorry, I don't want anyone to be upset- that's why-" why she'd withdrawn from everyone. "-I should never have come tonight."

Arthur shrugs and shakes his head, glancing toward the kitchen. He’s so damn tired. “Maybe not, but you’re here now.”

"you don't have to sit up with me, Arthur. If you're too tired..." She didn't want to burden them anymore than she already did.

"There's not really anything that can comfort me now anyway." Nothing but Bill.

Arthur’s too tired to put on a compassionate face right now and he’s impatient with this whole narrative. If that makes him kind of a jackass, well, he’s a perfect match for Eames.

“I think both of us just want you to be safe and we know you’re not right now but you won’t let us help you. You need to start seeing at some point that you’re in more danger the longer you keep things the way they are.”

Nancy's brow furrows. "no- I'm not- look, I'm happy with him. I love him, and he loves me. Everyone sees the surface and assumes they know the whole story- He needs me, Eames. He was a bloody wreck when they locked him up. When I met him outside... His entire being changed. He looked at me and I knew everything was going to be okay. he loves me, Arthur. He's got my name tattooed above his damn heart- and I'm the only person he's got anymore. The only person that can control him. He listens to me, even when he's his wolf." She takes a sip of coffee, slowly coming down some.

"I won't leave him. And he won't leave me. Thick as thieves, right? And things are better now- before he got arrested, when we were together then... Things are better now. They really are." She looks at him with shining eyes, the love she has for Bill clear on her face.

"I love him. He loves me. we're meant for each other. being with him... everything feels right, Arthur."

Arthur just shakes his head the whole time Nancy speaks. “Well he obviously doesn’t listen to you when you tell him to stop hitting you,” he says coldly, sitting back and sighing.After a moment he tries again with a gentler tone. “It doesn’t matter how much you love each other if something like this can happen and you’re left with nowhere to go because he made you cut ties with all of your friends. I’m sure he does love you but if he can’t stop himself from doing this to you then you’re not safe. He could kill you.”

Nancy's quiet when Arthur speaks, letting his words wash over her. she immediately wants to tell him he's wrong and bill would never do that to her! But she doesn't. She looks down at the cup in her hands, and after a while finally speaks, looking up at him with clear, bright eyes that don't fit the situation at all.

"At least when I die, it'll be by his hand."

Arthur responds with a cold, hard stare. “How do you think saying shit like that makes us feel? You could have a happy, safe, long life and you’re throwing it away for a piece of shit.”

He shakes his head and stands up, taking his coffee with him. “I’m going to bed.”

"no! don't!" She reaches her hand for him. If Arthur left then she was alone, doubting that Eames would ever reappear.

"I'm sorry- I don't want to make you feel bad but it's my truth. I shouldn't even be alive right now, with my life. This is how it's always been for me." She swallows. "Please stay?" He won't. she doesn't expect him to.

He shakes his head and goes toward the kitchen instead, looking for Eames and then a hug in that order. He's too exhausted to process all of this the right way and he needs more coffee and just a little bit of comfort so he can settle down and think. The only thing he really knows right now is that he can't sit there and listen to Nancy talk about how she should be dead already.

Eames has a dog in his arms so he can't readily hug Arthur, and a drink in his hand, attempting to somehow get these things back into the living room. He gestures for Arthur to back up as he walks through and looks between the both of them with a frown.

"This is for you," he says, wiggling the mug a little in Nancy's direction, voice level and matter-of-fact despite the absurdity of him right now, "should heal up the worst of it. Do something for the pain."

Nancy greedily takes the mug, and takes a heavy drink. It'll help with the mental anguish at least. She's driven Arthur away now, and it's shocking that Eames has even brought her another drink.

"Thank you," she says breathlessly. "I'm so sorry, Eames. I really really am." There's a note of desperation in her voice- forgive her. let her let Boxer. then forget you ever knew her and everyone would be happy again

It's not a nice-tasting drink. Eames hasn't done anything to hide the bitterness of the herbs, to compensate for the smell of dirt, but it'll do what he said. Soon enough she shouldn't have much more than some bruises and a little swelling to show for her fight with Bill. Part of him thinks he should've left her to suffer, a much larger part of him can't stand to watch her in pain.

"Well there's something I haven't heard before." Not that apologies make it better, but the thing of it is Nancy doesn't seem to understand just how deeply she hurt him. Eames doesn't let people in often, and this is a pretty decent example of why.

She'd been hoping for alcohol. But a potion is just as good, just as bitter. Nancy pulls her towel closer in.

"I mean it. I shouldn't have come here tonight." She hugs herself tightly, looking over at Eames and Boxer. "I woke you up. I wasn't thinking I was just here." She won't be back, she's sure of it now.

"I'm sorry I upset Arthur, too... I didn't even know you two were together..." He'd told her a few weeks back but it was still strange to see it.

He shakes his head; it's not what he meant, but he's not going to get into it. In the morning she's going to go back to Bill and go on pretending he and Arthur are people she's never even heard of, leaving a raw, reopened wound behind her.

"It was... Complicated. For quite some time," he replies absently, looking behind him at the direction Arthur left, "not that it matters, really. Not like you were ever going to be a part of our lives, was it?"

if his words are supposed to hurt, they do. Nancy flinches, but it doesn't stop her from muttering into the potion: "no... I thought at first I could... l"

She swallows. "can... can I pet Boxer? I miss him." she's so hesitant, a scolded child unaware of how much she is hurting everyone around her. How is she to know?

Really. Really really.

Eames honestly looks offended by the question, and he shakes his head with an expression that says how ludicrous he thinks the request is, even when Boxer looks up at her when he hears his name.

"You don't get it, do you? You chose this. You pushed me out of your life, not the other way around. You don't get to come to my home and hug me and pet my dog and whatever the fuck else after that. There was every opportunity for things to be different, and you chose not to see them."

Truthfully, Boxer will probably come to her during the night or in the morning anyway. At some point after Eames has gone to bed. But he's not about to reunite the two of them. He leaves the room, going to set Boxer down in his crate and go to bed and not sleep a wink at all.

The world rushes in and disappears around her all at the same time. She could feel her head pounding with every beat of her heart as she sat there, her hands shaking. Blindly, she sets the potion down, and the world rushes back in.

She's in Eames' living room again, and, she realizes, completely alone. Between her broken phone and the broken friendships that lay upstairs, she had no one. Dodger, sure, but... A deep, jagged sob tears itself from between her broken ribs as she curls up in on herself. It hurts, to cry like this, to lay like this, but each ragged breath comes anyway.

"I'm so sorry," she sobs over and over again, muffled against the pillows. She doesn't want them to hear her cry. She can spare them that.

They didn't understand, of course. No one did, and no one would. They wouldn't feel that same, deep magnetic feeling she felt toward Bill. How when he smiled at her and said he loved her and held her in his arms and kissed her forehead, everything in the world was going to be okay. Those moments made it all worth it. They had to. Nancy only had to look around her to see what she'd given up.

She'd known it, of course. But she'd still made the choice to return to Bill. And she would tomorrow and the next day and the next. He needed her. And she needed him.

True enough, sometime in the middle of the night, after Nancy'd nearly cried herself to sleep, Boxer pads over. Not caring about the rules, she allows him up on the couch with her. By the time morning comes, the two of them are curled up next to each other.

Arthur sleeps, but it's restless, and if Eames is awake through the night he will see that Arthur has an uncomfortable frown on his face. It wasn't going to be great just by virtue of being woken up at such an ungodly hour but when he finally wakes up again in the proper morning he feels just as unhappy and useless as he did at 3am. Taking pity on Eames, he offers to get up to make the coffee, wordlessly taking on the responsibility of checking whether Nancy's decided to leave or not, and to at least do the preliminaries of 'dealing with it' if she hasn't. So he throws on a shirt and some sweatpants and heads downstairs, frowning at the headache he can feel settling into his skull.

When he sees Nancy on the couch, he pauses, knowing he has to figure out the right way to approach this. He could tell her to leave before Eames gets out of bed to spare him whatever pain he has coming to him, but he thinks he should check on whether Eames would want that first. He seemed pretty angry about the idea of her leaving before they woke up, but part of Arthur thinks it would just be better to kick her out and pretend none of this ever happened. That would be pretty heartless, though, and he's not that much of an ass, so he just sighs and shakes his head. He tells Boxer to get down from the couch softly, in a chastising tone because Boxer knows he's not supposed to be up there, and then heads through to the kitchen with the rottweiler in tow.

He's a good dog who listens to his second dad well, even if it's mostly motivated by the idea that he'll probably get food if he does. And indeed after the coffee is set to brew Arthur goes about getting Boxer breakfast just to keep himself busy.

Honestly he'd have preferred it if she just left before they got up, but it wasn't entirely likely she'd manage to wake up early enough given how late it was and the state she was in.

Eames follows Arthur downstairs after a few minutes (and a pair of trousers,) because he needs coffee too much to wait in bed for it. He's been too stressed out and angry to manage even a little bit of sleep, and he likely won't manage it until much later today either. At some point his body with probably wrest control from his emotions and force him to get some rest.

Whether or not she's awake, he doesn't cast a glance Nancy's way once he notices her, just walks straight through to the kitchen. He's just going to sit by the window and demand Arthur come and sit with him and hope that Nancy just slips out while they're both in here.

Arthur acquiesces, but only after he's taken care of Boxer and poured both of them a mug of coffee. It's clear he's exhausted from the slope of his shoulders as he makes his way over, practically melting onto the bench as he settles in at Eames' side, leaning back with a sigh and putting his free hand on Eames' knee.

"You sleep at all?"

"No." Eames shakes his head and puts an arm around Arthur, sighing and turning his head to tiredly nose into Arthur's hair. "Probably won't until this evening."

Arthur nods and sighs, holding his coffee up to take a sip and trying to just relax and enjoy Eames' presence beside him. It's stressful when he's so worried about what's going to happen when Nancy wakes up but he will put in a valiant effort.

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