nancy. (
stauncherhearted) wrote in
undergrounds2016-09-05 04:42 pm
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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!]
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
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(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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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Mid September
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."
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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.
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"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.
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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?"
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"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."
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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?"
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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"Gimme a minute here." He pulls out his cell phone and is already dialing the number of another vampire in the nest. "Thom? It's Cooper. I need you t'check around my flat. Make sure there's no one hanging about, particularly witches. You find anyone, deal with 'em straightaway. What? No, nothin' t'report right now. There may be trouble later."
Second thing is to try and calm her down. "Was it just Abby that was arrested? Or was most of the coven?"
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mid-september
Well, and he feels a little relief that she's still alive. She looks shaken. How could she not be? She didn't have the benefit of being turned into a werewolf with extremely coincidental timing to give her a safehaven.
"You're -- are you doing alright?"
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And if she isn't mistaken, he wasn't a werewolf before. That was new- she could sense it about it. One of the benefits of being a witch, she supposed, was knowing immediately what sort you were with.
"Yeah?" She raises an eyebrow, lowering her proverbial haunches. "I'm alright." She planned to keep it that way. This guy was little more than a stranger to her. What was she going to tell him? Her entire life story? Hardly.
"I'm sorry- I can't remember your name."
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"Connor," he offers, helpfully, "it's, uh, I was in Midnight?" It's a question because it always felt like a question, because it never felt like he'd ever really fit in. He didn't understand their struggles, didn't understand what it was like to be able to do magic no one wanted you to. He'd only known through Soeki.
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"That's not exactly something you can say out-loud anymore," she tells him quietly. "I remember you, now- law student." If that helped at all.
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"Yeah, I'm pretty aware of the circumstances," Connor's quieter. For her sake. "That's why I asked if you were alright."
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LATE SEPTEMBER; AFTER MABON
He's thought of something he can do, if only he can sell it to Nancy. Selling it will be the hard part. He doesn't doubt he can do it -- he is confident in his own ability to persuade the Night Council. In Nancy's ability to play at contrite and sad. Getting past her fear will be the trick of it.
So he goes looking for her. Nancy, he knows, should be staying out of West London. Which leaves Eat London, and his best bet he thinks is fae territory. It's a considerable area, but casually asking around gets him somewhere. He may be sweet faced and wide eyed but Lancelot knows what he's looking for. He's looking for somewhere a girls hanging up trying to pick up business, and that eventually leads him to The Three Cripples. Nancy won't, exactly, benefit from the attention of either police or the Night Council so Lancelot comes dressed as inconspicuously as he can. Rough, old clothes -- faded jeans and a leather jacket over a dark v-neck. He doesn't take long to spot her, waits until she's alone before approaching her.
"Hey," he begins softly, and digs a hand out of his pocket to offer to her. "Got a minute?"
He jerks an eyebrow meaningfully, trying to look like he's leading her away casually while projecting please at the same time.
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He wants her to trust him. She wants to trust him. But she doesn't trust much of anyone, anymore.
"Sure-" she says after a moment, looking around the old pub. She can play it off like he's hiring her, taking his hand in hers. Her hand is small and soft, nails painted a dark wine color. She follows him, and waits until they're a safe distance away from people before she speaks again: "What's wrong? am I in trouble?"
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If she'll let him. If she'll trust him.
"The Night Council offer pardons this month. It would wipe the slate clean of any crime they've ever accused you of, no matter how serious. Nobody can overturn it. All you need is someone to plead your case."
Which, as he assumes she can guess, he would offer to do.
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But he speaks about the Night Council and she shakes her head. The risk is too great- if she isn't pardoned then she's right there and they'll exile her. Kill her, even, she doesn't doubt. Sylvia wasn't exactly her biggest fan, and she hadn't been the kindest to her ever, either. They'd been at odds over Abby. And now...
"I can't- they'll exile me in an instant, you know it."
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Surely that is worth something? Even the idea that she could walk in London with her head held high, without fear of arrest?
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