but you don't dare cry (open)

[stauncherhearted]

[Forward-dated to February 27th]

---

They said she fell down the stairs, that she'd hit her head on one of the steps and been knocked out. It was the explanation the hospital had been given, and for the most part, her injuries were consistent. Fresh bruises and scrapes, ice on the steps, and a broken wrist. Even with drugs in her system, Nancy knew better than to argue and explain that, no, she hadn't fallen down the stairs, but a thousand-year-old fae had gotten more than angry with her.

The nurses would have checked her into psychiatric, and she had no intentions of going there.

The truth was far more unbelievable then the lie that the boys' had come up with when they brought her to Accident and Emergency. They'd left her, and Nancy didn't blame them, because like her, most of them didn't legally exist, and what kid wants to stick around in A&E while waiting for her to wake-up? They could have gotten in trouble for bringing her, if she wasn't so sure that it had been Fagin himself to order her into A&E. He was always protecting his investments, even when he was landing a blow across the back of her head.

After all, how dare she reject his protection? He was an old man who loved her dearly, and he'd told her that. He loved her, cared for her like a father (no father would ever do the things you did to me!- come now, Nancy, my dear, that's no way to talk!) and would do anything for her. Anything, including violence.

He always claimed her cared, and god damn if she didn't believe him most of the time. Fagin was, as she'd told Norrell, all she had. He'd raised her, but he'd taken her from her mother in order to do that. But he was still the man who raised her. There was a level of loyalty there that she could't remove, no matter what. Maybe some day, but that day wasn't today. Or even next week. Hell, maybe it would never come.

By the time Nancy's awake, they've got her wrist in a cast, and already bandaged up some of the worst of her injuries, stitching up the gash in her skull from where she'd 'hit a step'. They'd done blood work, noticing the high levels of alcohol, which certainly explained falling down a whole flight of stairs, and the low-levels of iron, low red blood cell count. Anemic, they'd called her, and immediately got her on various medications and IVs.

By the time anyone from outside of Fagin's gang knows she's in the hospital, he's already visited, apologized ad-nauseam. But she has to know that she can't just throw out his care like that, because it's not how it works. She's still his. But if she'd rather have a new lord take care of her… I can protect you, Nancy. You don't know Eames like I do, my dear, he's up to no good, power-hungry and he'll kill you when you're no longer of use to him. I didn't want to hurt you, but you see, my dear? He wasn't there for you. But who took you to the hospital, hmm? as if they hadn't been at each other's throats just hours before. As if she hadn't lunged at him, and he hadn't thrown her across the room with the wave of his hand.

As if he hadn't threatened to kill her, to prove how little Eames could do to protect her. Besides, I'm your father, Nancy my dear, he'd said, stroking her hair out of her eyes with a gnarled hand and a surprisingly gentle touch. that's something no magic, no fae, can touch. Everyone knows who you are, that you're my girl. If you don't want my protection, then you don't have it. But remember that, when he's run out of use for you, my dear. But don't forget your father, your old friend Fagin. The boys, think of them, my dear. You'll be back, I know you will. Once you learn, of course, of course, that no protection means no help. Get well soon, Nance. He'd pressed his wrinkled lips to her forehead and left her without another word. He was up to something, but with the drugs in her system, she could hardly think of what it was.

All she could really think of, when she laid her head back on the sterile, white pillow, was that February needed to be over, and that March couldn't possibly be any worse.

Comments

[falsify]

Eames arrives not long after Fagin - news travels fast when you know the right people - and Nancy can probably hear the scuffle from her room. A lot of banging, some harsh words and a nurse shouting at them (mostly Eames) to break it up. Normally Eames wouldn't be quite so volatile, but over the last few months his temper has been pretty much constantly on the edge of boiling over. And honestly? Smacking Fagin in the face feels a lot better than Eames thought it would. He should've done it sooner.

After a moment to straighten his clothes up and let Fagin know he'll be by later to talk, Eames comes into the room. He pulls a chair over to sit by her bed and frowns as he tries to assess the damage. The old man's always been possessive of things that are his - truth be told it's a flaw the two of them have in common, though Eames likes to pretend he's above these issues of their kind - it would've been foolish not to see this kind of thing coming. Though he refrains from telling Nancy he warned her Fagin would be mad.

Instead, he brushes a lock of hair behind her ear and presses a thumb to her chin, touch gentle as he tries to direct her gaze up to his. "How bad is it?" He asks, voice soft but serious all the same.

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy can hear the nurse down the hall. that, and Fagin playing the role of old man, saying how it was wrong to hit him. Nancy blocked it out, closing a swollen eye against it until she heard the door to her room open. She could tell it was Eames, even without the ability to sense magic.

so she doesn't say anything or even open her eyes until she can feel him next to her. Then she opens her green eyes, both smeared with the remnants of her makeup, one swollen half-shut. he's going to tell her he told her so. or revoke his protection, she fears. But when he speaks, touches her, it's with the same gentleness that Fagin had used minutes before.

She swallows.

"'m fine," she lies. "Got some stitches, broke my wrist. they found an old fractured rib." from the last fae to attack her. "and they're trying to get my red blood cells up." she wasn't going to tell him that she fell. not right away. if he asked, sure, but that was useless. he knew what had happened- the fight in the hall had been enough.

so the best option was to not talk about herself. "how'd you hear so fast? or is that part of the protection? you just know?"

[falsify]

"Part of the deal," he says gently, and he moves his hand to cup her face. Thumb brushing her cheek lightly, and his eyes spend a long while reading her face. She's not fine, they both lnow it, but they both know she'll recover too. She's not strong, but she's hardy. It's a trait Eames appreciates.

He cants his head at her, expression thoughtful. Nancy still has her loyalties and he's not about to try and cut those ties, but he's not happy about this in the least.

"What did he do?" Eames tries instead. He's gonna beat the shit out of that weasley old man one way or another - even if he didn't care about Nancy, this kind of thing can't be allowed to slide. But Eames would rather know what exactly he's getting so pissed about first.

[stauncherhearted]

This is the most gentle he's ever been with her. granted, they didn't touch much, but it came off as strange. still, at the soft touch she leans into his hand, looking at him. she had to look pathetic to him- makeup halfway down her face, pale and bruising, wrist all bandaged up. not to mention the stitches at the back of her scalp.

she looked really cute. really cute.

still, with each touch, as his thumb crosses a bruise or two, she whimpers softly. cute and pathetic.

when he speaks again, she is, through no otherworldly powers, compelled to answer. "he got mad," she said as if she could downplay it. He'd gotten word of it and that was all he had needed. he'd had it confirmed and brought it up. From there the conversation had escalated until she found herself here.

"He's furious just like you said. I knew it, but..." but he was here. Fagin had put her here in the first place. "He'll come around. Nothing I can't handle." it was her nature to downplay anything like this. so here she was. "Official diagnosis is I fell down his stairs." and took a fire poker to the back of the head.

[falsify]

"He'll come around," Eames echoes, confirming her statement. Funny how when he says it, it sounds a little more like a statement of purpose than a gentle confirmation. Probably nothing worth thinking about though.

Sighing, Eames takes his hand away and leans back in his chair. This is a messy situation, and he hates mess. It clutters up his life with other people's shit and it's just so inconvenient. Well, oh well. He'll text Arthur, tell him Nancy's here (and to bring flowers,) since they're friends or whatever he'll likely want to know. "Need anything?" He asks, voice settled back to soft, easy tones, "food, maybe?"

[baisant]

Jean-Claude probably isn't the person that she most would like to find sitting at her bedside at a time like this. They hardly know each other, beyond the rather unpleasant exchange, watching her friend die in her living room and then rise once more as a creature of the undead. At his hand. Though at least he hadn't killed her in the first place. Small blessings. But he's willing to bet that she's probably not a fan at this point, regardless.

Still. Nancy is one of Kenzi's best friends, and Kenzi is his, and thus Nancy is -- to some extent at least. And he needs to know just what sort of mess she has fallen into. Because 'fallen down the stairs' she most certainly has not.

"How do you feel?" he asks, settling himself in something of a pose, as he is wont to do, even in such a place as this.

[stauncherhearted]

No. No, he's not the first person, or the last person Nancy wants to see right now. Why he's here, that's a mystery. They weren't friends. She didn't even like him. He'd turned Kenzi. She'd asked, but... but he'd put her in a place she'd never wanted to be, never asked for. She knew enough about vampires to know that Jean-Claude was part of her life now.

Well. He was never getting any of her blood.

Her brow furrows as she looks at him. How does she feel? "I slipped on a patch of ice and fell down a flight of stairs," she says coolly. "Right now I don't feel much of anything except pain killers." If hospitals weren't public property, and therefore, a place vampires could freely go, she'd kick him out in an instant.

[baisant]

They're not friends, no. But Kenzi is, and Kenzi is his progeny, and therefore he's responsible for her and her own. He had understood what he'd been getting into when he'd turned her, even if he hadn't really understood what sort of situation he was dropping himself in the middle of.

He tilts his head at her and the lie that she's feeding him. Because he knows it's a lie. He can see right through it. Don't think he can't, when he's been on the same end of similar events more often than he'd care to admit. Belle Morte was a cruel master, and it's only because they are no longer in the same country that he no longer feels her pull.

"That flight of stairs packed a pretty mean punch," he says, clearly not believing the lie for a second, but if she's going to play it like that it's her priority.

[stauncherhearted]

So jean-Claude knows. Fine. Nancy knows he knows. And he has to know that she knows that he knows.

"Gravity has always had it out for me," she says, pressing her lips together. She's honestly sure that even the nurses bought the stairs, given the black-eye. She didn't want him here, didn't understand why he felt that he needed to be here. The idea that she belonged to anybody was just-

Well. Fagin certainly seemed to believe he belonged to her.

[occultdisciple]

He doesn't need permission in a public building like that. It's something he knows all too well, but he still knocks on the open door, dressed in a business suit that suggests a bit more of a Victorian fashion sense than most people wear. Still, it's nothing terribly remarkable.

"May I come in?" he asks quietly, offering a bit of a smile.

How he knows... Well. A man has to have his secrets, especially a vampire. But he has connections, and there are a very limited amount of people who he keeps a few sources on specifically. Nancy happens to be one of them. And, well, he's been around long enough to know that when a girl who technically doesn't exist falls down some stairs, that's usually not the entirety of the truth.

[stauncherhearted]

She knows that voice. Nancy looks up from the stale magazine they'd brought her to read out of the one non-swollen eye. Mostly, it was just giving her headaches. "Lord Coward?" There's a lightness to her voice when she sees him stepping around the corner.

Nancy shuts the magazine and gestures to the chair next to her bed. "What're you doing here?" She wouldn't imagine he's here just to visit her. "And how did you find me?"

[occultdisciple]

"One of the night nurses is an Islington member," he offers with a small smile. He walks into the room and approaches, first glancing around.

Then, he approaches the bed and pulls out a small vial. "I don't know if you want it, but I brought you something to help the injuries along."

[stauncherhearted]

"Ah." That explains everything. Tell him that his favorite whore was in from a suspicious fall. She'd believe it.

Nancy follows his movements to see the vial. "What... What is it?" Before she made any decisions. Glamours could only go so far when it came to looking healthy.

[kleptofaeniac]

Kenzi has to wait until after dark to come see her, and only knows about this because one of Fagin's boys bothered to text her since he knew she and Nancy were like sisters. Kenzi has to wonder how long it would have taken for her to find out that Nancy was hurt like this without him. Maybe until Nancy was back at her apartment? Until she could walk around without looking like she was in pain?

"Hey honey."

Kenzi brought flowers; violets to be exact. It's not exactly a flower known for healing physical injuries but her mother used to make poultices from it for cuts and bruises. Granted, they weren't as serious as Nancy's were.

[stauncherhearted]

Nancy was half-asleep when Kenzi made her way in with the bouquet of violets. Shifting, Nancy sat upright, broken wrist laid across her lap as she offered a small smile at Kenzi.

"Guess everyone knows I'm in here. Who told you?" Her money was on Charley.

Her smile was pathetic as she took in her best friend. "You didn't sneak any gin in those flowers, did you?" She could use a drink, medications be damned. She won't mention that she wouldn't have told Kenzi, Kenzi or anyone really. She didn't need people worrying over her.

Still, she reached out her other arm for a soft hug. "Hey, thanks for coming."

[kleptofaeniac]

"Chuck's got a thing for skinny girls, apparently."

The smile Kenzi returned was equally sad. They were certainly a pair weren't they? At least Nancy was still there for her. At least she was there for Nancy still. Kenzi would have gladly traded anything to still be here.

Kenzi went in quickly for the hug, making sure to stop herself from breathing in as she did just in case she lost it being so close to someone's neck like this.

She'd like to think her self-control was pretty good for a newborn but she'd eaten before coming just to be safe.

"Don't be silly. Someone has to sneak you contraband."

Kenzi reaches into her purse for a flask of gin. It's habit at this point in her life, to always have some alcohol on her. And she thought it'd be nice to let Nancy have some of her favorite.

"Hide it under your mattress. They won't find it there."

She'd been in and out of hospitals when she was still living with her folks.

[stauncherhearted]

"Apparently." Nancy had always been far more curvy than skinny.

Nancy returned the hug, turning her head away slightly so that Kenzi wouldn't get hungry. It was a small relief they'd already taken down her blood bag. Sorry, Kenzi. No afternoon snacks for you. Or evening snacks. Whatever snack time it was.

"Oh my gosh, you didn't!" She reaches for the gin, and smiles, uncapping it and taking a nice long drink. "Oh thank god. Even Eames wouldn't bring me any." Because fae could be super unreasonable, and she wasn't going to ask Fagin to bring her some. He'd poison it at this point. Tamper with it so she was stuck with him.

"Don't need to tell me twice. Seriously, Kenz, you're a saint." Capping the gin, she reached back with her good hand and sandwiched it between the headboard and the mattress. She'd rather be drunk than high any day of the week.

"How've you been holding up?" She needed to, now that she thought about it, speak with Lord Coward again. He'd gone through the same thing Kenzi did, going from witch to vampire, and she thought that maybe he'd have a thing or two to say on the subject.

[specifiercity]

Arthur arrives later the same day that Eames texts him. He has a small bouquet of colourful flowers in his hand, which he sets on the table by her bed with a sigh. He's a practical man who doesn't understand the point of flowers, but it's a sentimental thing and it's for her, not for him. Something to look at and to focus on after he leaves, perhaps. For now, he stands behind the chair at her bedside, working his jaw; he's never been good at making people feel better, being reassuring, all of that stuff.

"Hey," is what he settles for.

[stauncherhearted]

"Arthur." No mystery there as to how he knew, and Nancy regards him with warm eyes. "Hey to you, too." She gestures with her broken wrist for him to sit rather than stand awkwardly behind the chair that Eames had pulled up.

"You brought flowers- you shouldn't have." She will, however, believe that it was all Arthur's idea to bring her flowers. "Thank you." He'll want to talk about what happened, and so she braces herself for the conversation.

[specifiercity]

"It seemed right," he says awkwardly of the flowers. He sighs again when he pulls the chair back to sit down in it, lacing his fingers together in his lap and frowning at her injuries.

"Is there anything I can get you?" he asks. He's prone to action, not comfortable with sitting and talking.

[stauncherhearted]

"Gin." Obviously, the first thing she always wanted was alcohol. But she casts a glance at the IVs. "I couldn't get Eames to bring me any. He went with tea instead." Lord Coward had brought her blood. Blood she'd turned down for any bunch of reasons. But no one yet had brought her gin.

Nancy shifts on the bed. "Thank you for coming. You really didn't have to, you know. I honestly never expected anyone to show up." But Fagin had been there when she'd woken, and Eames shortly thereafter.

[acrookedchild]

Abigail doesn't get there as soon as she'd like. There's a lot that needs doing, so, even when she heard about Nancy from Kenzi, she hadn't gotten to go right away. Still, she's intent on making up for that. Even though she doesn't mean for any of the hallway conversation to carry into the room.

"She's a friend of mine, Doctor. I insist. Bill that address."

"Miss Widdowson--"

She breezes past him, ignoring whatever he was about to say, to knock on the open door before stepping in and promptly closing it on him. Then, she turns to give Nancy a bit of a smile. Something almost careful.

"Hey. How're they treating you?"

[stauncherhearted]

She could make out slivers of the conversation, unaware that it was Abby speaking until it's too late to go back and she's coming into the hospital room and shutting the door behind her with all the grace of the Duchess of Cambridge. Seriously, she carried herself like a politician more than a twenty-year-old.

"Hey," she responds with a wave of her unbroken wrist. The other lay limply across her lap in a small brace. One eye is mostly swollen shut, her lip split. Honestly, she looks like absolute hell. At least she got her makeup off. "They're keeping me for a few days- concussion, anemia." She shakes her head.

"Some stairs tried to kill me."

[acrookedchild]

"Y'know, I'm supposed to be the ticking time bomb with little things like stairs," she says. It's easy to joke about the curse when someone else's spirits need lifting, and she sits on the edge of the bed.

The primness falls away a little.

"Gimme a call when you get out, yeah? We'll raid my grandfather's liquor reserves. Got some good stuff."

[stauncherhearted]

"Yeah, well, I apparently attract trouble. Maybe we should stop hanging out." She offers her a smile that only looks grotesque and physically hurts.

But that doesn't stop her from smiling brighter at the idea suggested. "Perfect! It's a plan. Too bad Fagin doesn't have any liquor stashed away or I'd bring that." It was all drunk up quite quickly, given most of them were budding alcoholics and addicts.