Elizabeth (
tearmeanewone) wrote in
undergrounds2016-04-27 12:12 pm
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Entry tags:
[Open] Baby's Got Blue Eyes
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.
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.
A
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...
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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He pours out some hot water for her tea and begins to fuss with the tin of scones in turn.
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D
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.
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"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.
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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?"
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"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.
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"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."
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"You're better off staying out of Paris, anyway," he says, with the quirk of a smile. "Too many French." Says the Frenchman.
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d;
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...)
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"...I was trying to get a hold of somebody and it's telling me they've disconnected their phone."
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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?"
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B
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."
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"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?"
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Anyway. He lofts an eyebrow and gives the pineapple another look, "bread knife would take care of it if you've got one."
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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."
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