undergrounds | & you could run so fast & fade away- sept. open post

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& you could run so fast & fade away- sept. open post

September 6, late night: open

It was a text that had done it in the end. A text from one of the other Shadow girls to all of them- Abigail had been arrested by the Guardians. Geap Manor was in flames. and they were coming for the rest of them.

Nancy didn't waste time. She tossed whatever she could into an enchanted bag- unsure if she'd ever be able to return to her apartment. Anything of value, be it sentimental or monetary was grabbed, but she knew her time was limited. While her flat was in Colin Coward's name, rather than her own, she knew they'd be on to her.

With Juliet at her side, she snuck down her fire escape, a spell muffling her footsteps. She dressed as unassumingly as she could- jeans, a hoodie and trainers. Without makeup on she could have been anyone. Hood up, she crept through the side streets. She had to get out of Enfield as soon as she could, had to find some place to hide. And she knew exactly where that was. The trick was getting there.

September 7, early morning: closed to Cooper

It was nearly morning, by the time Nancy found herself at her destination, right outside Cooper's door. She knocks, rather than barges in, rapping her fist three times against the door as quick as she can. A moment later and she's looking over her shoulder, wondering if perhaps she'd been followed.

No, she couldn't have been. She'd gone the long way, taking unnecessary detours, getting on and off of the tube at the same station. She'd kept her face covered, away from the CCTVs as best she could, staying in the dark. Nancy couldn't have been followed.

Juliet paced back and fourth behind her, having followed her the whole way. Standing in front of Cooper's door, Nancy knows she's nearly safe, but the adrenaline coursing through her veins won't let her stop, won't let her think about anything other than getting safe. What's just happened hasn't sunk in yet. But given time, it will.

September. 12, afternoon: Closed to Eames

Nancy keeps looking at the door of Eames' new flat, her back straight. There's a puppy in front of her, and she's eagerly petting him, but her heart isn't quite in it. "I can't believe you got a dog," she tells Eames, looking away from the door for a moment. "What a sweetheart, aren't you, Boxer?"

A dog, a new house, a new title. It was funny, in a way: as Nancy's world crashed down around her, Eames' star seemed to be rising in his court. Good- she liked seeing him happy.

Mid September: open

For the rest of the month, Nancy is keeping to the shadows. She's cautious, hardly daring to go out at night, even though she knows now, in Islington territory, she's safe. Redbright won't be able to find her, or if she does, she can't do anything about it. So she hopes, though it's been made clear that traditional rules are quickly being thrown out the window.

When she does go out, it's to work, and even that's taken a turn for the worse. Since Harris had ascended to power, work had been drying up, and what had happened at Harris' party had certainly sent a message, as Cesare had said. Worse, still was her apartment in Enfield was a place she couldn't yet return to- a place to work. As such, most nights she's in bars and back alleys, if she didn't have appointments set.

She keeps to herself, though, eyes carefully glued to the door of any building she's in, quick to glance over her shoulder.

[ooc: toss a post in if you'd like, or grab me at

sheakespeare!]

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The kennel was great for rehabilitation, but since being out in a new home in a new area, the dog seems to be getting braver by day. Where just a fortnight ago he would've spent the whole time Nancy was here at Eames' feet, watching her with uncertainty, he's now happily soaking up the attention. Even going so far as to bring her a toy when she arrived as his own brand of friendship-- Something Eames taught him, to make new people in the house a little less scary.

(Happy is a very strong word for how Eames feels, but he hides it a lot better than some.)

"He's lovely," Eames says absently, watching Nancy as she pets the dog. One doesn't have to be a keen reader of body language to see she's not okay, nor is it a hard guess as to why. Eames has never liked Abigail, but he knows how close and dear she was to Nancy. He's not exactly one for feelings, but Eames at least knows one thing that helps. "I'll make you some tea."

With a liberal helping of whiskey, of course. He knows his girl.

"Thank you," she tells him, and reaches past Boxer to grab the toy he'd brought her earlier. Not exactly caring how she looks, she slides on to the floor along side him, giving him the lop-sided bunny he'd brought her earlier. Oh yeah, the toy is back.

"How long have you had him, exactly?" She doesn't want to talk about Midnight, or anything of the sort. It's too raw, too bitter for her to offer any real insight of her own on to it. She'll just talk about something else.

"Few weeks," Eames answers absently before he vanishes into the kitchen. Plus some months visiting the kennel while Boxer was in Dog Therapy. He won't be able to hear her while he's in there, but that's fine because Boxer is here to soak up all her attention. Wagging his tail eagerly while he tugs on the toy-- not hard enough to wrench it out of her grip, but it's clear he wants to play.

"Alright, Boxer," she says, and starts to pull the toy back against her. Tug-o-war it was. She's happy to play with him until the point at which Eames returns.

By then, she's gotten the toy and tossed it for him to fetch and bring back to her a few times. Dogs, she's decided, are exhausting. Juliet is self-entertaining almost all the time.

Boxer dutifully runs to get the toy and bring it back a few times, but he can tell she's not really feeling it. He drops the toy in front of her and tilts his head, tail wagging low and curious for a moment or two before he comes right up to her and presses his forehead against her shoulder. She's not at face-licking levels of friendship yet, only Eames gets that, but general doggy hugs are good.

Eames also comes back in with two mugs of tea — his un-whiskeyed and hers liberally so — and sets them both down on the coffee table, before electing to join her on the floor with the dog. It's not like this is new anyway, but nobody is allowed to know about floor cuddles with Boxer.

Nancy doesn't know it yet, but she wants nothing more than to know about floor cuddles with Boxer.

The dog's motions get a smile from her, and she drops her head to lean against him. She knew animals could sense human emotions, but she'd wanted to think she was different.

Nancy was not any different at all, actually.

"Thanks," she says, reaching for the mug. She takes a sip carefully, then looks up at him. "You put in whiskey."

Cesare hasn't spoken to Nancy since their talk in his office. He hasn't requested her services, nor reached out in anyway. He's allowed her to wander about the hotel as she pleases but otherwise, to be honest, he's been ghosting on her. He still hasn't quite forgiven her for her and her boyfriend's actions.

So he isn't exactly planning on seeing her tonight. In fact, he hadn't really been planning on seeing anyone drinkable who he'd let live. With Raymond Harris in charge and his rules, or rather lack of them, in effect, Cesare and his pals have been using the opportunity for a drinking spree. They're a rowdy bunch, drunk on blood and booze, all expensively dressed and swaggering. They're the type of group you avoid at night if you have any sense.

Cesare himself doesn't look quite as much of a mess as the others, the large bloodstains hidden by the darkness of his shirt and only a splash of red visible on the skin of his neck. But being the best of a bad bunch does not exactly make you good.

He spots Nancy in the shadows and makes his way up to her, telling the others to stay back for now. (Not her, everyone. Calm down. Not yet. Take a cold shower, Victor.) He looks her up and down and smiles.

"I didn't buy you that."

Nancy wasn't planning on seeing Cesare, either. She'd done her part of it all- she'd reached out to him and apologized on both her and Cooper's behalf. She assumed everything was taken care of, and when he wanted to see her, he'd see her. But the longer it went on, the more disappointed she tried not to be.

And because she wasn't planning on seeing him, she hadn't exactly dressed to run into him. Her look tonight was far more common than he would have been used to, to put it politely.

In the dark light, she doesn't notice the blood on his shirt or on his neck, instead caught off-guard by his arrival seemingly out of nowhere (vampires.) "I- no, you didn't." Some terribly made short skirt and bra that pushed her already ample chest sky high.

She looked like the whore Cesare probably thought she was.

"Hi." If he wanted something, he'd tell her.

Nancy looks different. Really different. Cesare tries to remember what she looked like when he first met her, whether she was dressed more appropriately or he morphed her into that later. But his memory is hazy. He's drunker than he would like to be. Far drunker than he likes to be when he's with her. He likes to retain his control and he knows that when he's in this state he starts to lose it. But that is a thought that you have before you drink too much, not after, and Cesare's brain is too addled for him to take a step back and leave Nancy alone. Instead he takes a step forward, leaning against the brick wall beside him.

"Turn around, would you?" He wants to see her properly, and so he simply asks her to show him, not paying her but acting like he is.

Nancy can't recall ever seeing Cesare drunk before, but she can recognize it, the way he moves. It's worrying- but not enough to get her to leave, either.

Any other night, and she'd like to think she'd tell him no, that she wouldn't turn around. If he were any other person, she'd tell him to go fuck himself. But this was tonight, and this was Cesare and before Nancy even realized what she was doing, she was turning in a small, slow circle for him.

"Well?"

Cesare doesn't even think about what it means for Nancy, that perhaps it might seem inappropriate. Instead he just watches, looking her over her and her attire before smiling and shrugging.

"I confess: I'm no fashion expert. Is this a new thing?" He wants to know if this is what happens when you don't have one of your main clients for a month or if this is simply her off-duty (or is it more on-duty?) look.

"You look cold."

"I'm warm enough." She's got magic to keep her from freezing to death. It really helped in the winter months. Still, she crossed her arms over her chest as though she were cold.

"No, it's not," she says, shifting from one high-heeled foot to the other. "Can't always go to balls and parties on the arm of some well-to-do gent. And you can't exactly work the streets in an evening gown."

She feels like maybe there's too much eyeliner on.

Nancy's words surprise him a little. He'd spent so much time with her while she was perfectly crafted and put together that he hadn't really expected her to still be a whore. Well, not quite a whore. He always knew she was one of those (his bank account reminded him of that), but he tended to consider her as something higher ranked. A call girl at least, or a courtesan like his mother had been. He did not anticipate Nancy being a streetwalker.

He bristles slightly, trying to figure out how to deal with this new information. Perhaps this is interesting. Perhaps this is exciting. It's certainly different from what Cesare is used to.

"Where do you go when someone pays you for your services?"

Cooper had gone to bed only a couple of hours before and he awoke slowly to the sound of someone knocking over and over again on his door. He put a pillow over his head, but whoever was out there wasn't going away. Sighing, he got up, grumbling to himself in Gaelic all the while. He padded to the door in a pair of sweatpants, barefoot and without even bothering to put on a shirt over his skinny teenage body.

Nancy was standing there with her cat wrapping around her ankles. She looked scared and young, so terribly young to Cooper's old eyes. Something had gone wrong. He would have thought it work-related, but she was dressed all wrong to have been out soliciting clients. He immediately opened up his door wide and ushered her in. "Sweet-pea! Jesus, what happened?"

It's unsettling for both parties, meeting like this. She can't recall the way she first met Cesare, either- perhaps dressed a bit better if she was working the Angelo, or at a party. Perhaps that's what made her relationship with Cooper so different from the beginning- she hadn't met him while she was working. Cesare, she certainly had.

And now she was here, on the street, and he was looking at her like she was a piece of meat.

Good thing she was used to it.

"Depends-" lord why was she telling him this? She wasn't supposed to lie to him- that was why. "around the corner. Find a hotel. Their place." Undoubtedly he knew about Enfield and what had become of Midnight, she didn't have to elaborate to say she had no place to bring them anymore.

Perhaps it was something in the air, as fall crept into their world, maybe it was Cesare's mates in the background watching, or the danger she was in as an associate of Abigail Widdowson, but she found herself glancing over her shoulder again, staying in the lamplight.

It's taking him too long to answer the door, so she knocks again- again, waiting for some sort of sign that he was home. If he didn't answer the door soon, she wasn't above picking his locks and crawling into his bed without warning. She needed to feel his arms around her, a warm blanket.

He looks so tired when he opens the door, but Nancy doesn't say anything until she's inside, and it's then that she flings her arms around Cooper, holding on to him with all the strength her tiny body has.

"Abby-- they got her. Geap- Enfield-" how did she explain, where did she start? "Midnight's-- we're done." The moment the word leaves her lips, her shoulders are shaking as she heaves a tremendous sob into Cooper's neck. They were done. They couldn't come back from this, she couldn't take that power. She'd failed her best friends, both of them.

And she had a knapsack filled with all her worldly belongings to prove it.

Boxer is a very sensitive dog, rottweilers in general, but he's a smart little man. It's part of why Eames took such a shine to him. He stays put for a moment or two and then sits on the floor next to Nancy, a big enough thing that his head still comes up to her shoulder like this.

"Of course I did." Eames says, watching the two of them getting along like this. Were he a little less born in the middle ages and a little more human, he might have some concerns about how much Nancy drinks. As it is, he doesn't really see an issue with it. "Seems like you could use it."

With Boxer on one side,, Nancy felt warm. Maybe it was the tea loaded with whiskey, though. You never knew.

With one hand she scratched at Boxer's cheek.

"I could, yeah." Another sip. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Cesare's eyebrows raise a little at around the corner. Wow, ok. So Nancy is that kind of girl. He clicks his tongue, a habit that he's never exhibited in front of her before, and steps closer.

"And how much do you charge for..." he looks behind him at the vampires who are waiting for him to finish his chat. One of them waves, though not in the warmest of manners. "...six?" Cesare suspects that's a pretty good deal. After all, that's probably a night's work for what? An hour?

Truth be told, Nancy is right to be nervous. Cesare's offer is undoubtedly lethal. He doesn't intend to kill her, at least he doesn't think so, but in this state he definitely lacks the ability to protect her from the others. It's a really bad idea, though one that Cesare happily suggests nonetheless. So come on, Nancy. Let six drunk, murderous vampires drink from you. What's the worst that could happen?

Cooper pets her hair slowly, trying to make sense of what her fractured words mean. He's always known there was a threat to Midnight from the other witches, ever since Abby, Kenzi, and Nancy had formed their coven together. It was one of the things that had drawn him to their cause, the element of danger that was ever present. But he never thought it would come to something like this. If Nancy was here, that can mean only one thing: Midnight has fallen.

"Abby? Is she dead?" He's been friends with the young witch nearly as long as he had with Nancy and he can feel a cold pit of anxious worry settling into his stomach. He doesn't want to push Nancy, but he has to know how bad things have gotten. He'll be getting no more sleep tonight.

She's never felt more like a child in front of Cesare than she does now, when he clicks his tongue. He doesn't approve- that much is clear. Most of her vampires like to see her dressed up. Most of her humans don't give a shit. And Fagin... He'd wanted whatever made money. She keeps her eyes trained on Cesare as he steps forward.

Immediately, she can smell the alcohol and blood coming off of him in waves. In the lamplight she can see the blood on his neck and she knows- even before he asked, that she cannot go with him tonight.

"No." She tells him. Six vampires was too many, they'd drain her completely of blood, and she doubted they'd stop when they'd had enough. If they're just as drunk as he is, there's nothing to stop them. "That's too many. No."

Nancy shakes her head, clinging to Cooper. "No- arrested." Arrested, and Geap Manor was in flames, and she wouldn't have been surprised if Sylvia had been the one to light the match.

Juliet pushes past the couple and starts sniffing around the new environment.

"I don't know the details- I just got a text from Larkin." Another one of the girls in their coven. "Cooper-" she won't let go of him, she can't. Instead, she looks at the door through tears to make sure it's locked.

"They're looking for others." For her, undoubtedly.

Cesare sighs, visibly disappointed, though not entirely deterred. Instead he just smiles at her again, moving in even closer so that he's got her pinned between him and the lamppost. It's not a physical, violent pinning (she could easily walk away if she pleased), but a social one where Cesare would find it pretty rude if she left. When he speaks, it's quieter, more private. After all, he's close enough now that he doesn't need to speak up.

"Are you too proud or something?"

He leans in to speak against her ear.

"They're good guys. Don't you trust me?" Of course good is all a matter of perspective. They've never done him personally wrong, but humans and witches and, oh god, fae? Sometimes they aren't the kindest or the most considerate to those their consider to be delicacies.

Damn straight she was proud! Most days, her pride was all she had going for her. Tonight was one such night, but that wasn't the reason she turned him down. So she didn't comment on it.

Her back was straight as he stepped in, and she was already wondering how much damage she could do if she found herself in trouble. best to avoid it all together, she reasoned, so she stayed put.

"It's not you I don't trust," she said, looking up at him. "I don't know them- or how much you've all had to drink already." A breeze blew by, stinging her bare legs and playing with her short skirt.

"Six feeding from me is enough to kill me."

"It's nothing," Eames takes a quiet sip of his tea, frowning as he looks Nancy over again, contemplating asking if she wants to talk about it. But neither of them really want that. He sighs instead, over the rim of his mug, "you can stay if you want to lay low for a while."

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& you could run so fast & fade away- sept. open post

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Mid September

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