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Samantha Okeke lost her position as Witch Representative following allegations of corruption, and has been replaced by Diphylleia "Dee" Absin, a much more co-operative member of the Night Council.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Meanwhile, the Seelie and Unseelie Court have largely withdrawn from public life in the mortal realm except in isolated corners, though they claim the right to go where they please throughout the city.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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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.

Speak of the devil- or devil's daughter in this case- and he shall arrive. When Boxer left, Nancy started to stir from her fitful sleep. Then smell of coffee is what really did it, when she tossed off her blanket and began to enter the kitchen as quietly as she could.

She didn't want to bother them, but she couldn't just leave like she had suggested she do. So Nancy hovered awkwardly in the doorway, waiting for some sort of cue as what to do next.

After the shit he gave her, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that Nancy hadn't tried to just slip out quietly, but it is. Eames glances up from where he's managed to get his head resting on Arthur's shoulder and frowns at her in the doorway.

"Yeah?" He raises an eyebrow and sits up to look at her, "what do you want?"

Arthur sighs and puts his hand on Eames' knee again, giving him a look to remind him that he doesn't hate her and he shouldn't act like he does. He may hate what she's doing and what's happening - they both do - but it isn't entirely helpful to be an asshole.

Still, he looks up at Nancy waiting for the answer.

She swallows. Yeah that welcome was deserved.

"I... was going to ask you two the same... I can make a fry up? in thanks?" They were going to scoff at the very idea, Nancy knew. But doing favors was how she knew to pay people back. To thank them.

Eames frowns, lips tight, because his instant response would be 'no thanks' and 'get out,' but he manages to stop himself, if only not to have to deal with his neighbours seeing a woman leave his home in tears in broad daylight.

He's got nothing to say to that that isn't along those lines though, so he looks at Arthur a little expectantly to see if he has any thoughts on this.

Arthur lets out a big sigh and looks up at Nancy with a tired expression.

"You don't need to do that," he says.

"I know. I want to. I want to do something." She swallows and wrings her hands.

"Look- I shouldn't have come to you two last night. It was uncalled for, rude and... I never meant to hurt either of you. Let me do something- anything to try to make it better. I know I can't- but I have to offer. Next time- if there's a next time- I won't come here. I'll go somewhere else so I never bother you again." There would be a next time, everyone in the room knew it.

"I appreciate everything you two have ever done for me. I want you both to know that. I- I love you both so much and-" She takes a shaking breath, blinking back more tears. "I'm sorry. Christ I'm so sorry..."

Edited 2017-10-20 16:32 (UTC)

Well there's something Eames has no idea how to process. An apology-- a real one, for everything, it isn't something he ever expected to hear from her. He wants to tell her she can come here whenever she needs, but he doesn't want to be back here a month from now, Nancy beaten and bloody and sobbing, knowing she's just going to go right back to him the next day.

He's quiet for a long few moments, trying to decide what best to say or do, and eventually extracts himself from Arthur to get up without a word. Surely nobody could fault him if he left the room, but he doesn't, goes to a cupboard instead.

"Here," he says softly, handing her some kitchen paper. It's not as good as tissues, but he's not feeling quite that generous either.

Arthur sighs again, watching this happen carefully. He knows both of them are just too tired to be that angry and they need to get something sorted out before Nancy leaves. This can't become a ritual; it's too stressful.

"I think we both want to be here for you," he says, looking up at Eames for confirmation.

Nancy is sure Eames is gone, but to her surprise, he remains. She accepts the paper, dabbing at her tears. At least her face is no longer bruised. "Thank you," she whispers again.

Nancy nods. "He hates Eames. Doesn't trust the fae." Made sense, considering Fagin. "I don't know what to do."

In a less serious situation, he'd make a joke about how he wouldn't trust himself either, but as it is he has to fight himself not to roll his eyes as if that's the biggest problem with all this.

"What if I cursed him?" Eames suggests it flippantly, mostly because the idea's only just ocurred to him as he goes to sit back next to Arthur, "made it so he couldn't hit you. Maybe then you two could talk your shit out."

She'll say no, he already knows..

Arthur thinks about all the guns he still owns and about how he could just kill Bill or permanently incapacitate him but he doesn't say any of that out loud because that would just upset her. He also doesn't say that he doesn't believe someone like that can be reasoned with, so the curse would have to be permanent, but maybe if she tried to talk things out with him in a situation where he couldn't hit her she'd actually see what a sad coward he is.

He keeps quiet because he has a lot of these feelings that he can't say out loud, opting for sipping his coffee and settling back in at Eames' side instead.

Nancy balks at Eames' suggestion. "what! no- he'd be livid!" It isn't that she likes the violence. She hates it. But Bill would be so mad if he thought she'd enchanted him. "He'd blame me, of course. Trust me, I'd love to talk things out with him, I really would. But he'll think it's me." He had other ways to get his anger out other than with his fists.

Of course, if they wanted to do something about him on their own and leave her completely in the dark, it's not like she could say no.

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