undergrounds | [Open] I'm Not the Same Kid From Your Memory

Entry tags:

[Open] I'm Not the Same Kid From Your Memory

Date: Catch-all for February
What: A crisis of conscience. But what can someone as separated from politics like her do?

How humiliating.

Elizabeth had known from the start that she wasn't fit to be Maiden, and yet she'd let Norrell and Sylvia talk her into being paraded around as a possibility, not thinking about what would happen when she-- surprise surprise!-- wasn't. Landing in the water after being harassed hadn't been so great either, and Norrell's reaction (or really, lack thereof) spoke volumes. He probably would have preferred that she'd drowned quietly, wouldn't he?

She's been staying away from the circle, embarrassed and feeling betrayal she probably had no business feeling. And used, that was the worst feeling of all. They'd used her. Just like in Virginia.

But what was she supposed to do? These were the people who were supposed to protect her, and instead they're parading her around like a show pony with a big 'KILL ME' sign around her neck. Leaving would be suicide, and who else would teach her how to use her power? Not Circle Midnight, obviously. So she had to, somehow, make her own situation tenable.

[A - Early February]

But how? She didn't know anyone, she intentionally stayed out of things if she could help it, unless it involved keeping people alive. February is still freezing by her standards, but the only way to get her mind quiet is to run. So she starts jogging at the park near her dorm-- she's pretty fast on her own, even when she's dressed for the cold weather. As she runs, she goes back and forth in her head. How fast, realistically, would she be crushed if she actually stood up to Norrell?

[B - Mid February, for Illya]

As much as she thought about it, she could really only speculate about the outcomes. She needs someone who will be painfully blunt with her, and fortunately she actually knows someone like that. Who she just happens to have a certain potion for-- at least something good came from assisting Norrell at Croydon again. Elizabeth sends Illya a text and waits at the deli they'd last met at, mostly staring out the window and waiting instead of drinking her coffee.

[C - Late February]

It's really the only option available to her, she thinks as she downs another shot. Elizabeth is young and inexperienced, but she isn't dumb. Norrell assured her assistance at first because she thought the same kind of loyalty would be extended to her, and the second time he'd bought her fair and square. But the incident on the boat is decidedly unforgivable. He's a jackass is what he is. What kind of leader just watched his student struggle to not drown?

Not again. She'd be damned if she let herself be moved around a board like a chess piece by Gilbert Norrell again.

...Not that she is one-hundred percent sure of what she's going to do or how she's going to go about it, but that's something for a night that's not the one she's decided to quietly rebel against her mentor. Right now, she's enjoying some drinking and dancing away from her roommate. Just remembering what it's like to live free for a night.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...Oh." Yeah, she's so used to people looking at her like she was left at the altar because she wasn't given a political position she was totally under qualified for. The slimy asshole factor is definitely new, but not unwelcome. In fact, she tries to hold it in, but she eventually cracks and sniggers.

"He's the slimiest slime to ever slime its way across the park to stop me in the middle of my jog-- and that includes the fae who flipped my skirt," she says, pointing at Eames with the shotglass she's playing with. This is funny, so she laughs again.

Well, it's an apt comparison. One that makes Eames laugh into his drink. "You're not wrong," he says with a smile. "He's all that and more, I'd say."

"He's worse than a harasser, he stands around and lets it happen to the women he's mentoring," she points out with her shotglass again, and she can only keep smiling because he's laughing with her. "In addition to, you know, justifying kicking people out of their homes. Like you."

Oh, don't remind him about all that. Thank goodness he owns the flat at least. Something to rent out and make a little extra money. Eames sighs, shaking his head in dismay at everything wrong with Norrell.

"How'd you end up shackled to such an awful man in the first place?"

It's almost as though the question is a physical entity, and it washes over her and wipes away her smile and her amused demeanor. Whatever shackled her to Norrell is, without her having to say anything, emotionally heavy for her.

"...If you buy me a drink I can sip, I'll tell you," she offers with an attempt at a smile-- it's just a twitch of the corners of her mouth. "It's not a secret, but I'll need the drink."

Eames nods in understanding and gestures the bartender over, ordering a gin and tonic for the lady-- she seems like a gin kind of person. When it comes, he pays and slides the drink toward her with a gentle expression. He'll not push her to speak before she's ready or tell him more than she wants.

"Ah, perfect," she smiles, pulling the drink over happily and stirring it a little with the lime wedge. After she takes a little sip, she mentally prepares herself for a moment.

"I'm glad you're sitting down for this, because believe it or not I wasn't born here," she says with a grin. "I was born in New York, in the US. My mother was a witch, my father was a drunk and a gambler. After a while, my mother had enough of it and left him, with me.

"She'd heard of a Circle in Virginia led by a man named Zachary Comstock, known for its openness and assistance for those looking to 'start over'. So she went to him, was immediately accepted into the Circle and his personal coven, and months later realized it was a dark magic cult full of extreme racism and bigotry. But, at that point, she was too far in to just leave without Comstock noticing-- and he had his eye on me. He was completely sterile, he couldn't have children of his own, but he wanted a successor. Given my mother was a witch, he guessed, correctly, that I would be too. And I could be raised by him, taught what he wanted me to be.

"My mother tried to escape, but she was betrayed," by a fae, but she's leaving that part out for now. "Comstock found her, killed her, and took me in as his own. I was barely eighteen months old, I'd never remember what happened.

"I started setting things on fire when I was two. Comstock's coven was afraid, but he reassured them by putting me in complete isolation. It worked in his favor anyway, I wouldn't be exposed to ideas he didn't want me to think if I never had access to anything aside from what he gave me. But no one was allowed to teach me how to control my magic, I experimented on my own but I could never figure everything out. I read everything I was given, but I never figured out why I could do what I do until... until my real father, Booker, came for me last year."

So if he's doing the math, that meant Elizabeth was in isolation for about eighteen years before anybody did something for her. "He helped me escape. I realized I was a witch, and that I was being raised to lead people who were horrible, awful people, and I categorically refused to take up Comstock's legacy. He and his followers chased me, obviously, tried to kill Booker... why do you think I'm so good at being a field healer? He attracted spells like a divining rod," she says with a fond snort.

"...While we were trying to escape the village, a group of people Comstock's Circle had enslaved rose up against them, formed a witch-hunting clan around their leader, Daisy Fitzroy. Booker and I were caught in the middle of the fighting. ...I ended up having to kill Daisy. When she started threatening to kill the Circle's children."

That requires a sip of the drink. She'd never killed anyone before that moment.

"Booker ended up killing Comstock too." After he'd recaptured Elizabeth and tortured her for six months-- but he doesn't need to know that, it's not relevant to the thrust of the story. "So there I was, blamed for the death of a clan leader and a coven leader, hundreds of followers, all of them looking right at me. An untrained, lone witch with no one to stand with except her magic-less father.

"Of course I immediately left the country. Booker had a contact inside Circle Daybreak, he promised I would be protected and I could hide in the sea of supernatural that exists in the city, and the rest..." she waves a hand at her shot glasses and gin and tonic. "Is history."

"And Norrell saw a vulnerable witch in need of tutelage," Eames surmises, having listened carefully to everything she told him. Amazingly it's not the most outlandish tale he's heard, but it's pretty high on the list. Top five, certainly.

"I suppose he did. And I saw someone who loved books, I loved books, it seemed like it would be fine.

"...until I realized I was expected to help him show off his influence to the rest of the damn city," she sighs, drinking again. "But again, more or less still not well-trained, and no one to stand with at all now. I rely on the Daybreak Umbrella to keep the clan and the coven from finding me. I can't just spit in Norrell's face and walk away."

"He hasn't taught you anything at all?" Eames asks, openly a little surprised by that. But then, should he be? Norrell's lack of respect for other witches is a well known and documented fact.

"Oh he's taught me plenty. Lectured plenty. But I lit a whole candle on fire the other day because this has me so upset," she sighs and shrugs. "I'm at least better at healing and lockpicking, despite the limited practical education. And I can do some potions, too, actually. But spells?" She puts her chin in both her hands, vastly depressed. "I feel so behind."

Eames considers this for a moment or two, leaning on the bar with a thoughtful look on his face. "Perhaps you should look elsewhere for tutelage." How is a witch going to learn to use their power without any practical training? Telling someone how to use a car is a far cry from actually driving one, after all.

Elizabeth raises her eyebrows in mock-scandal and shakes her head.

Then she smirks and nods her head.

"Oh, but he can't know--" Elizabeth says, reaching out to put her hand on Eames' elbow if only because she's apparently a physical drunk. She looks worried like Eames is going to walk up onto Norrell's doorstep and tell him her nefarious plot to find a tutor. "Otherwise he'll give me the boot for sure. He thinks I love reading annotations he's made about magical theories, I have to keep it that way."

Eames laughs and pats her hand, "can't know what?" He asks, pretending that this entire conversation hadn't just happened. And then he smirks over the rim of his glass as he takes a sip of his drink, expression just a little devious. "oh, that you can't stand him and his teaching is insufficient? Goodness no."

"Yes, that," she presses, giggling into her own drink. Maybe it was an incredibly bad idea to get this personal with someone who wasn't a fan of Daybreak, but Elizabeth imagines she can guess, even drunk, who he'd pick given a choice between her and Norrell. That made her... safer? Maybe?

"If you tell him, and I get thrown out and killed, I swear I will haunt you until you die. Which I hear is a very, very, very long time."

"I hear ghosts are quite the delicacy," Eames raises his eyebrows and gives her a knowing nod, as if telling her 'your move'. He's never taken a soul himself, never had any interest in it, but some fae make it their entire life.

No need to lead her down that dark road, however. Eames gestures broadly with the hand holding his drink and shrugs, "but. You have my word, I won't tell Norrell how little you care for him."

Elizabeth makes a little shocked and outraged noise, though it's a little hindered by the laugh that follows it. Daring to fly in the face of the fae lord, she leans in and narrows her eyes.

"I'd taste like old paper and spite all the way down, you can count on that," she threatens-- jokingly, of course.

"I didn't think I needed you word-- unless you think I'm worse than a slimy asshole, in which case maybe I do," she says, sipping at her drink again.

He likes this girl, Eames decides. She has an edge to her that he hadn't seen the last couple of times they met.

"Most people find it reassuring," Eames says with an airy gesture, as though imparting great knowledge, "surely Norrell's ranted at great length about the dangers of my kind?"

The last couple of times they'd met, Elizabeth hadn't been on her way to shitfaced. But in truth, she's starting to feel a little freer in general. Less restricted by her nerves and what she's 'supposed' to feel about her circle.

"Oh, he can't shut up about it," Elizabeth nearly puts her forehead onto the glass laughing. It's a sad, miserable kind of laugh though. "I got my skirt flipped by a fae, and I still don't think anybody can trust even your solemnest word, but who cares what people do as long as they're not... hurting anybody or flipping anybody's skirt?

"Yes, I think that fae who contract with people and then go back on it are awful, terrible fae-- but..." She stops and looks a little lost for a moment before she finishes. "...but maybe if people trust that they're going to get an unlimited favor of limitless power, they're the saps."

Eames laughs again, "think you're too clever to be tricked into a deal then?

There's no intent there, just idle curiosity. He's not too interested in tricking her into some shitty deal when she could turn out to be much more useful in the long term.

Elizabeth turns the question over in her head, and fidgets with her glass turning it around and around clockwise.

"I don't think I'm too clever for anything," she concludes, her voice lilting just a little from how much she's had to drink. After a moment she smirks at him like she has a secret. "But I like to think I'm incredibly sensitive to something like that."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Open] I'm Not the Same Kid From Your Memory

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject