[Open] Baby's Got Blue Eyes

[tearmeanewone]

Who: Elizabeth DeWitt & You
What: Canceling a vacation sucks. It's worse when you're Elizabeth.
When: Late April
Where: Various
Warnings: None so far!

Yes, she probably should have expected that this was how it would pan out. Namely, that it wouldn't pan out at all.

Illya had at least called to say he was going away and that she could go to Paris with somebody else, but halfway through the explanation Elizabeth had just hung up. She'd talked to him about how she felt used, how much it hurt, and here she was again. The provider of wolfsbane, promised a trip to Paris and then... he left before it was safe to go. Convenient, it felt so convenient to her, and typical. When hadn't this happened with her? Did she have any friends, really?

[A - Circle Daybreak]

Work is an obvious distraction. Elizabeth has been feeling her abilities getting stronger as of late, and so she spends almost all of her free time from classes at the Circle studying and working with her mentors there. When she's not reading, she's practicing, and her feelings are once again seeping into her magic. It's like she's in Columbia again, and her tenuous control is, again, slipping.

She's carefully laying frost over the surface of delicate flowers one afternoon, and it looks as though she's doing a passable job until her phone buzzes in her bag. For a moment she imagines it's someone needing another free favor, and her anger spikes. The ice instantly thickens and spikes, and Elizabeth shouts in teeth-clenched frustration. She discards the attempt with the rest of the melting, twisted ice-sculptures with flowers inside, and pulls over another one to start over.


[B - Groceries]

Usually Elizabeth likes cooking, and her weekly haul consists mostly of vegetables and meat and rice or pasta to make something healthy and delicious for the week. Cooking sounds like too much effort now. Apparently this week, she's going to be consuming frozen pizza, two bags of chips, garlic bread, ice cream, canned soup, and a large package of beef jerky. She's trying to decide if she wants to pay the exorbitant price of a pineapple, holding it up and scrutinizing the fruit intensely.

She has no idea what makes a good pineapple, she realizes.


[C - Westminster Library]

She doesn't want to read anything, either. Nothing sounds good.

There's plenty of recent fiction on the shelf, and she scans the spines waiting for something to jump out at her. It all sounds like garbage, though. Pointless garbage. Three-hundred pages of fictional people and their problems while Elizabeth's life is actually dangerous and difficult.

She shoulders her bag and walks out of the shelving without picking out anything.


[D - Westminster Park]

Elizabeth sits there with her phone on her usual park bench, staring intently at the screen. It's got a message written on it, but she knows she's angry and she's texting angry. Part of her says she's allowed to be angry, the other says to just delete the message and move on. Nothing good will come of being angry.

She hits send anyway.

I wanted to go with you. I thought of you as my friend.

There's a pause.

900000278: Delivery has failed.

She locks the phone and tilts her head back over the back of the bench. That felt like her last way out of feeling so low, and now... she's missed her chance.

Comments

A

[hurtfew]

"Miss DeWitt!"

Norrell's voice is quiet, as it ever is, even when raised -- this the best attempt at 'raised' he has and it is still not very loud. He's walking in short but very quick strides toward her, bundles of papers in his arms that are sure to be related to the election and his own campaign. Several times he has spoken to her about it already, yet for some reason she has been ever so busy! Lucky he found her now.

"Miss DeWitt, I --good lord."

He frowns at the mess of ice in spikes and then at Elizabeth. Well, perhaps not the best time...

[tearmeanewone]

"I've almost got it," she snaps back, holding out the next poor floral victim. "It's-- really distracting in here, but I'll get it this time."

She can do one thing, just one thing, correctly before Norrell makes her copy more flyers or show him how to use Photoshop again or go out trying to find something to stick a flyer on that doesn't look completely sacrilegious.

[hurtfew]

As if he would ask her how to use Photoshop! No, no -- he will make her use Photoshop while he instructs her on what he wants and why that is wrong. He will not touch it himself.

"Perhaps," he begins, "you should take a break. If you overwork yourself you may well only make things worse! I have some good tea we can have, and there are some nice scones we can share."

And a stack of envelopes that need stuffing.

[tearmeanewone]

She can hope that someday he'll try to do it himself if she does it enough for him.

That day will probably never come.

The suggestion that she take a break is probably a sound one, given she's wrecked almost half a bouquet trying to work on her control, but she knows what all of that paper means and what he's trying to do by luring her with promises of tea and scones. That's just what he does, offer something nice so that somebody else can't say no when the unpleasant part starts--

She looks back at her hand and the most recent flower now looks like a particularly ugly sea urchin on a stick made of solid ice. Elizabeth puts it down in frustration and then drops her head into her hands with another growl.

"Alright! Alright, fine--" she says, piling the errors into the bag the flowers came in. "Fine, fine, not like I'm making any progress here."

Might as well help Norrell make his own progress, right? Because that's all she's good for, helping other people.

[hurtfew]

Excellent! He brightens and waves at follow, quickly pads back through. Large areas of the main hall are already devoted to campaign tasks. People tasked with phoning others, counting and organising fliers, letters, and a few tasked with... investigating rival campaigns.

He pushes through and makes his way through the labyrinth hallway into his office, a peculiar speciality spell of his that means the short walk seems more like a confusing winding path far longer than it is. Once inside he dumps down the stack of folders and begins fussing with the tea, heating some water for them and opening a large wooden box full of several types of tea.

"This china set was a gift from Miss Redbright!" he tells her. "I was much surprised myself when she gave it to me, but it has served me well. It is enchanted to detect poison, you see."

Which is always a concern for someone as paranoid as Gilbert Norrell.

[tearmeanewone]

"Mm," she hums, clearly not in the mood to gush about what an honor it must have been to receive a tea set from Sylvia Redbright that could assuage every anxiety he must have. Instead, Elizabeth pulls over the folders, to start on whatever Norrell is having her do this time. Clearly they should just cut right to the chase, yes? The tea is just the carrot in this situation.

[hurtfew]

"Oh --" Norrell says, turning and regarding her with hesitance. He's a little thrown by her simply going directly into his folders without asking or being prompted, but too awkward in the face of her apparent bad mood to properly protest. "That can wait," he offers somewhat uncertainly. The folders themselves contain letters of appeal, fliers and small leaflets variously. One seems to be largely information on a few locations and some menu and drinks prices. Norrell is of course planning a dinner to coax people.

He pours out some hot water for her tea and begins to fuss with the tin of scones in turn.

D

[baisant]

Jean-Claude watches her with her phone, and though he does not quite understand what she is doing with it -- such modernities are lost on him -- he still understands the expression on her face. And while company may or may not be welcome, perhaps a distraction may be what she needs. Besides, he cannot say that he is not curious as to what might have made her so upset.

He strolls towards her, trying his best not to be too obtrusive, to feel out the scene, although he knows he will be intruding, interrupting. And he does so anyway. "My apologies," he says, his voice soft and low, and unmistakably French as he steps around the back of the bench to peer into her face, upside-down as it appears at the moment. "I cannot help but have noticed your displeasure..." She had practically draped herself over the thing, after all. No one makes such a move when they are feeling happy, for certain.

[tearmeanewone]

Yes, this is exactly how the universe would choose to laugh at her-- send a Frenchman so she can feel even worse about the entire situation. She doesn't want to be rude and tell him to get lost so she can sulk by herself, but it is her first impulse. One she has to struggle to tamp down.

"Say, that's a neat trick," she says, not moving from her position and arching an eyebrow at him. "Must take a lot of practice to notice this kind of displeasure."

Well... she tried.

"...sorry. My manners went somewhere with my good mood, and they didn't even leave a note to tell me when they'd be back," she jokes, though her voice doesn't have any mirth to it as she sits up and turns around to face him properly. Her neck was starting to get a kink in it anyway.

[baisant]

Jean-Claude shrugs slightly, a movement that could mean anything or nothing at all. She is upset, but she went on to apologize almost immediately after snapping at him, which shows that she doesn't really have a temper, something is just clearly bothering her.

Something that left without leaving so much as a note, apparently. Or someone, more precisely. Jean-Claude has never been one to be unnecessarily delicate about a matter, and so it is that he does not pad his words, as he leans forward against the back of the bench and asks plainly, "A friend, or a lover?"

[tearmeanewone]

Elizabeth actually snorts a short laugh at the idea of her dating Illya. Or him dating anybody for that matter.

"I'm sure this bench has seen plenty of heartbroken girls, I am not one of them." At least, heartbroken over a lover. She's heartbroken in a different way. "...I considered us friends, but... I did him a favor, he said he'd go on a trip with me and then he left town. And apparently disconnected his phone," she says, shrugging and holding up her phone to indicate.

[baisant]

"Ah," Jean-Claude replies, moving around the bench to join her on it. Not that he really knows anything about what the phone part means -- he's really not all that good with technology (though he tries to stay up, he's usually a few decades behind the times no matter what he does).

"It is never easy to discover that we have been led on by someone we care for," he responds. "Though there are worse things he could have done than disappeared in such a way. Certainly worse betrayals."

[tearmeanewone]

"...probably," Elizabeth admits, and then smirks. "He could've killed me after taking me to Paris. Instead he just canceled and disappeared." This is obviously some kind of inside joke she had with this person, because she seems more amused by the suggestion than seriously concerned.

[baisant]

Jean-Claude inclines his head slightly. It's very true, he could have done everything she had said and more. He doesn't really understand what the joke is, but he's not all that concerned about it. Besides, he has his own sense of humor, for that matter.

"You're better off staying out of Paris, anyway," he says, with the quirk of a smile. "Too many French." Says the Frenchman.

d;

[spionin]

Illya had mentioned it, when she'd pushed him to tell her what had happened during the time she'd been assigned in Dubai, that he'd met someone who had agreed to make him wolfsbane... he'd even mentioned the trip, off-hand and unreadable as ever.

She'd forgotten about it, of course, between the phone call that sent Illya on his way again (and, consequently) left Gaby by herself in London, and the flurry of activity that was her workplace, now with the elections forthcoming.

But a trip to the shops takes her through the park, past the girl on the bench -- Gaby pauses, looking at her, the way the girl stares so intently at her phone... though whatever is in it isn't making her happy.

"What has your phone done, to offend you so?" she knows the old Gaby would walk past, not engage -- but a teacher is someone who wants to help those who might need it, and that is her persona, now. (And in the afternoon light, her eyes flash green-gold, catlike; you know what they say of cats and curiosity...)

[tearmeanewone]

Elizabeth looks up and attempts a smile, though it's really just a line, no curve at all. "You know, the usual, refuses to tell me what I want to hear. Bothers me with everything I couldn't care less about." While in Columbia, of course, Elizabeth had no phone. It was a bit of a learning curve when it came to figuring hers out, but she'd done it-- and a few months later between Daybreak and classes and internet mailing lists and online shopping and her flatmates, it seemed like it went off every five seconds.

"...I was trying to get a hold of somebody and it's telling me they've disconnected their phone."

[spionin]

"How rude of it," she responds conversationally. She's never had that problem with phones -- in a job like hers, friends are never made for long term, and aside from calls that relate to the work she does in her cover, the only times her real phone rings is when Waverly needs to give her new instructions.

The girl's quiet admission makes her pause for a second, expression shifting into something more sympathetic. She knows the feeling.

"I'm sorry. There is no other way to reach them?"

[tearmeanewone]

"Not that he gave me, no. He didn't really seem the type to have email or--" she snorts a little laugh. "Facebook or something like that. And even so, I'd just chew him out for making me look like an idiot, I guess. It might be a good thing for him that all I have is a bogus phone number."

B

[falsify]

It's pure coincidence that sees Eames here at the same time as Elizabeth, and he has a basket of his own to that fact. His food is... Well, it's not pizza and assorted junk, but he's not here to judge. He's here to pick out the best looking lemons, when he happens to look up the aisle and see Elizabeth struggling with a pineapple.

Eames allows himself a moment to be amused by the sight before he wanders over to pick one that looks healthier than the one she's holding and gives the stem a quick smell before he offers it out to her. "You'll want this one. Unless you like your fruit sour."

[tearmeanewone]

Elizabeth looks up from her fruit conundrum when Eames approaches, looking mildly surprised to see him. It's a dull and tired-looking expression, but she's still in there somewhere so she can smile once he helps her with her pineapple problem.

"Not this week. Thank you," she says, taking it from him and putting it in her basket. "Do you know anything about how to cut this up, too?"

[falsify]

"Lop off the top and bottom, and slice off the skin." He looks at the pineapple in the basket and then back to Elizabeth's face with a vaguely disinterested expression, like he's given these instructions a thousand times before. (He has not.) "It's a lot simpler than you might think."

[tearmeanewone]

"...huh. That does seem simple. The skin just seemed thick enough to consider peeling, but it also looks like a good way to take the skin off your own hands." She looks around at the aisles. "I think I need a bigger knife. Are you just here for..." she peers into his basket. "Lemons?"

[falsify]

"Lemons were just the first stop," he says absently. They're a useful thing to have around after all; good for a salad, a drink, on some fried cod. Delicious.

Anyway. He lofts an eyebrow and gives the pineapple another look, "bread knife would take care of it if you've got one."

[tearmeanewone]

"Eames, I live in a dormitory. I'm lucky if I find a clean spoon, let alone something to cook with," she says with an amused smile, heading towards an aisle that she thinks has all the cookware type things. "What else are you here for, then?"

[falsify]

He very nearly shudders at that. Eames values his personal space too much to even consider sharing a flat, let alone halls with a bunch of young adults who don't know how to clean up after themselves or put things away.

It sounds like literal hell.

"I'm still debating on dinner for tomorrow," and he glances at the shelves as they walk, "thought I'd wander around and hope inspiration strikes."