Chapter 126
Previously: The Rose of Whitby – Chapter 125
Back out in the room with everybody else, she cuddles up to him to finish with unpacking the rest of her gifts. She already got Papa’s collection of Slavic fairy tales, translated into French, and she could have bounced. Some new ones she’s not read before! And she is definitely going to put on the fancy dress Daddy brought her from the continent, she’s going to feel all pretty and a little bit silly and she should play dress-up with it, especially because Quincy got her such a huge sun-hat, just what she needs to keep the silly sun out of her poor dhampir eyes.
Lucy’s gift makes her wonder if her mother snooped a bit, but it’s probably just because her papa could tell her. So she enjoys the art supplies, maybe she can start learning to put colour to her drawings so that she can better represent all her night friends?
There are two more gifts left… wait, from Arthur and one from tăticu and his wife… she didn’t get one from Gregory? Is this part of him punishing her for Radu? Then again, he always gives her gifts when they’re fighting, she has so many silly pieces of jewellery that she’ll never wear… Although, she can’t remember when the last one of those happened. Before Quincy? Probably before Quincy, and that makes sense. So she just shoves it away and instead concentrates on the family around her.
Arthur got her a book about the Yorkshire Moors! Oh oh oh, they have to go and find… now she started leafing through the pages, all eager about seeing what night friends there might be to discover, but John taps her on the arm so she can show Arthur what she got so excited about. Lifting the book up, she beams at him and chirps a loud thank you!
Right, she has one more gift and she can’t just dive into the book and forget everybody and everything else, so she waits to make sure Arthur doesn’t think she doesn’t like it after he gave her a smile back for her thanks and takes the last package.
When she takes the wrapping off, her nose twitches, ooh, that smells nice! It smells only nicer once she opens the wooden box, fans out a few trays with little compartments. There are so many small things here! It reminds her of the geology set her papa gave her when she was little. With a giggle, she realises that now it was her tăticu giving her something similar, but she has no idea what the little labels say so she has to carry it over and ask directly.
When she learns that is it a bouquet for a knight she chirps, oh, so the whole point is to have lots of nice things to sniff? This is the best! Um, no, not better than everybody else’s gifts, but still totally the best, they all are the best. So she starts making her round to hug everybody thank you for making her happy!
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Arthur is so glad Darcy liked the book! He shows her the saddle Dr Seward got him when she comes by, and… he was thinking, maybe they can go and find some of the things and places the book talks about? He can take Hannibal and Darcy could go as a wolf, maybe, there aren’t supposed to be a lot of people on the moors, he thinks…
She giggles and tells him she immediately thought the same! But before they can go, she has one more gift that she didn’t put in the pile and just so he knows, Quincy might get loud. “Be ready to hold your ears shut if he squeals as much as I hope he will.”
Now Arthur is really curious, and nods his agreement, gives her another smile- that she also thought about exploring with him due to the book makes him feel all warm and happy inside.
~~~~
Walking over to where Quincy, in best her Sang du Coeur fashion, has immediately tried on the heavily embroidered white shirt his parents got him together with Lucy parading her tiara around and them doing over the top noble gestures at each other, Darcy isn’t entirely sure how to best tell him, but she wants everybody around.
She so wants this to be a happy surprise and relief for all of them, and Quincy should be allowed to celebrate, show off to them. She thinks he likes showing off to others, so she dares pull her mother back and builds herself up in front of Quincy, who, at first, laughs and thinks she wants in on the game, but then he notices how serious she looks.
~~~~
“Cycy, goodness, I’d be worried I forgot your gift with that serious look on you if I couldn’t see it sitting over there. What did I do now? Do I deserve the public humiliation?” Chuckling and giving her a wink, he tries to take her hands to calm her down, but she won’t let him. Instead, she pulls something from behind her back. And there he was wondering where her gift was, that her parents didn’t get him anything is no surprise, they were a bit tight on time, but she seemed to be really on a roll with this whole Christmas game. Still, he starts feeling a bit apprehensive when she still looks so all-important at holding the envelope out to him.
When he looks down on it he knows he sounded anything but dignified in his exclamation but that’s a high nobility seal! If he’s not mistaken that would be Prince James. What the hell did she do? His hands start to tremble as he carefully opens it, that’s what he’s supposed to do, right, what would he do with an unopened, very fancy letter? Still, uh, he hasn’t ever held something so potentially powerful, and it makes him swallow a few times and be extra careful not to so much as crease the paper as he unfolds it.
The colour drains out of his face as he begins to read, then he stumbles back, luckily hits a chair and falls into it heavily before he stutters at her: “A pardon? You got me a pardon for my criminal record?”
~~~~
Darcy nods, hands folded in front of her, so hopeful that’s good overwhelmed, not scared or something else she’s smelling on him. “I had one favour I could pull and I thought you needed it the most.”
~~~~
His hands still trembling, Quincy tries but can’t stifle a sob, first tries to hide his face but without even thinking, his fingers are on the scar under his hair, the thing he hides, the physical marker of this criminal record and Darcy… his Cycy, his queen of the night just made it the only marker thereof. She… she gave him a future, no longer being just one more little offense away from exile or prison.
It takes him a bit before he can manage to carefully put the letter down, but then he throws himself at Darcy and to hell with seeming weak, he lifts her up and kisses her through sobbing and tears and everything before crushing her into himself. He has a future, a life, a real noble to protect him from this grey world!
~~~~
Well, Quincy isn’t squealing, Arthur thinks with a smile, but in the best way. He didn’t know Quincy had a criminal record, but, on the other hand, he isn’t terribly surprised. Sure, Quincy isn’t from his part of town, but what with being a molly… Well, Arthur knows about how following the rules and laws is a lot easier when you have stuff and aren’t struggling to survive.
Actually, he thinks, his father was good for something there- if the Shiver hadn’t attacked that night, Prince James wouldn’t have owed Darcy that favour. There’s some kind of weird justice in it.
Everyone has pretty much finished unwrapping their presents, and Arthur goes to make his own rounds to thank everyone while Quincy keeps hugging Darcy and takes a bit to calm down. Well, enough to put Darcy down. Arthur gets to thank him for the holster before Quincy sweeps them all a dramatic bow, wishes them all a good night, and struts out, still giggling. Or maybe cackling? Either way, it’s obvious even to Arthur how much of a relief Darcy’s gift is to him.
He talks to Dr Seward and Art and learns that the saddle is Hungarian, where they are renowned for their riding skill and cavalry. Arthur doesn’t think he quite manages to express how much it means to him, but he certainly can’t wait to try it out the next day. Especially since Dr Seward says he did have it made to fit Hannibal’s back- apparently, he secretly took a cast and mailed it off to the saddler. He admits to Art that he can’t read the book yet, and of course Art agrees to teach him Romanian so that he can.
Then Lucy arrives to collect her men, as she says with a wink, because they have presents to try out. Arthur certainly doesn’t want to know any details about those, and moves on to apologize to Mrs Harker and Vlad that he didn’t get them anything- it was all pretty short notice, after all, and, well, he didn’t know them that well until just now…
Mr Basarab- Vlad- assures him that they understand, and then apologizes but says he couldn’t help overhearing about the Romanian lessons, and that he also offers his services, since it is, after all, his mother tongue.
Arthur hesitates for a moment- Art and Vlad don’t get along too well, after all, would it be disloyal to Art to accept? But that’s not very sensible, is it? He can learn from more than one person, and as Vlad says, he’s a native speaker, so really, a good person to learn from. So Arthur nods his acceptance and thanks him, and takes the seat Vlad offers, and gets his first lesson in Romanian. Simple things, like ‘I’ and ‘you’ and such, and finally gets to find out what all the ‘cu’s are about- it means ‘with’, so it makes sense that he’s seen a bunch of them.
Romanian is kind of weird, he finds- yes, sometimes it’s really similar to Latin, there are plenty of words he can guess at. But there’s all these ‘tch’ and ‘sh’ and ‘ts’ sounds in it that aren’t anything like Latin, and some words are completely different. It’s because of the influence of nearby Slavic languages, Vlad explains.
Also, Arthur’s never learned a foreign language before. Well, he supposes Latin, but he can’t remember learning it. He can’t even remember whether he learned Latin or English first.
While he learns to wrap his tongue around various simple greetings and sentences, Darcy comes over to say good night, too, with more hugs for everyone, and leaves with John.
That leaves Arthur alone with Vlad and Mrs Harker and Lucy Jr, and that should be weirder than it is. Mrs Harker is teaching Lucy Jr more maths- or playing with her, Arthur thinks that might be the same thing to Lucy Jr, and he’s talking to Vlad and learning Romanian. Which, he supposes, is also kind of like playing for him- it’s fun, anyway.
He only gathers his presents to bring them to his own room when Mrs Harker and Vlad (…are they ‘the Basarabs’ now, collectively, he wonders?) take their leave to put Lucy Jr to bed a good hour later. He’ll bring the saddle to the stables in the morning, and he happily finds spots for his new book on the bookshelves. The only thing he isn’t sure what to do with is that pistol Gregory gave him. For now, he puts the case into the corner of a shelf, and then spends the evening with the logic puzzle book, and Katharina, when she scratches at his window to be let in.
Like his birthday, this was the best Christmas ever.
Well. He’d like to spend more time with everyone, he finds. Of course they want to be with their spouses and lovers and all, or alone in Quincy’s case, he gets that. But he’s still looking forward to tomorrow, when it’s still Christmas, and he gets to see everyone again.
~~~~
Quincy isn’t gloating. Oh, he will, the Divine deserves to be hollered at tonight, but no, one big emotion at a time, and he first has to let his relief flow through his tears. Knees up to his chin on the highest point of the roof, hands in his hair, for once not shying away from the scar he’s endlessly hiding on his forehead.
That bloody scar, both for marring his perfect face, but so much more for being the marker of the day his life both started and ended. It’s a brilliant counter piece, really, to everything that happened with Cycy. The reverse of the cycle, and he can live with that poetic revenge on the Divine. This is his counter piece, the reverse of the leitmotif the world forced on him four years ago.
He still remembers even what the man wore who gifted him the world in a kiss that finally made everything make sense. He can’t remember or, more likely, never got his name. That’s how it goes when you can’t trust anyone and never know who might sell you out to get away themselves if the coppers get them. As they did that day… the very first day he ever found his way to a molly house. The very first day he came to life, found his life, was gifted his life, the world ripped it away from him with a stone that hurt no less than the jeering crowd of onlookers when the police shoved those of them who weren’t noble into locked carts and drove them off to the brink.
Not that he can remember much of that, all he remembers is the blood running into his eyes and the way walking had been so hard all of a sudden, how his vision was blurry from more than the blood. He knows Harker bailed him out, but Harker couldn’t do anything against the criminal record, and as soon as Quincy could stand again he had tried to beat the molly out of him… He probably didn’t even care that that was the last day Quincy slept at his father’s house. He still occasionally bailed him out when Quincy ended up in the brink again, but really, that was all that life was. The streets, a warm bed when he could charm his way into one, and the theatre, once he finally managed to get in there.
Quincy knows that some of his tears are resentment as much as relief. Because as much as he tried to still be a light in this grey world, always a smile and a hug for everybody, it hurt and he knew it was sickness or prison that would see him to an early grave. There was no real life for him.
Or at least not until he died.
The thought makes him laugh and a hand goes to his lips. Oh Cycy, you brilliant angel of darkness!
Where that day four years ago had brought him from heaven to hell, Cycy threw him right into the Styx to make him invulnerable, and then flew him to the Elysian Fields in triumph.
And now he’s in the right mood to gloat at the Divine!
This is the best roof yet that he gets to sashay across, and the best rant at the Divine. Quincy very much feels on top of the world up here, his pardon safely stashed in his room, and with the knowledge that Cycy would go to such lengths for him. Oh, he’ll polish her household up for her. With that large of an investment in him, he’ll pay her back hard! He’ll figure out what can be done to solve this marriage disaster.
Ugh, he didn’t mean to start right now with it, but, of course, speak of the devil.
For once not even in cat form, no, human version and… Oh please, don’t tell him Cobb is delivering a gift now? Is it past midnight? Is he some kind of stout believer in tradition and disapproves of his wife having handed gifts out on the 24th already?
In either case, fine, fine, he supposes he can accept one gift from his patron for Christmas without too many implications. And he had made sure to get a gift for Cobb, too. So nobody can say this is more than an exchange. Plus, frankly, he thinks Cobb needs that ‘Guide for the Theatre Patron’ to at least pretend that this entire patronage is about anything else than him having a thing for his actor protégé.
The smile falls off his face when he sees that no, it’s not just a fancy suit (to not call it pretentious), there’s a deed, to the Whitby Theatre, and Cobb tells him with a wide grin that now he is affiliated with the local theatre so he doesn’t have to leave!
All the elation he had about his new-found life, his freedom, his hope for a future, come crashing down in heavy chains. He can’t breathe.
He can’t breathe! He can’t even try to protest that he couldn’t possibly accept a gift like this. Spin any words to convince Cobb to take it back, but his throat is tight, his knees wobbling under that grin.
That grin that is eating at him like a horde of rats on a dying man in an alley, he’s seen it and he can’t move any more than he envisions that poor soul could. His body is cold and stiff and there are little pinpricks all over him, little sharp bites as he feels his knees give out under him.
That grin is still on him and he can’t look away. Can’t break away, can’t feel anything but that persistent becoming-less.
Being eaten alive, helpless, so helpless, unable to save himself, lost to that nothing behind Cobb’s grin, those hungry eyes on him that block out even his view of the Divine above… but he knows it is laughing at him as it once again wins.
His hopes and future bleeding away with each of the little bits of himself that he can faintly see vanish away into Cobb’s bottomless dark eyes.
~~~~
Finally. Finally it can partake deeply of this food, too. It worked, better than it expected, even. Sometimes, the food is unpredictable, but not this time.
It can feel itself ringing deep down with those sweet streams of helplessness. Yes, this is what it needs, to hold on to this world, to existence.
It is so wrong here. Its facets do not grow in proper alignment. There is always hunger, fading, break-down. No balance, no stability. Maybe if it feeds enough, grows enough, becomes powerful enough, it can mend itself.
At the very least, it can exist here, keep existing. Sate itself.