closed RP (the Macaulay twins and Susan)
Dec. 11th, 2007 12:34 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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"I don't want to go out."
"It was your idea."
"Well, I changed my mind. I don't feel well."
"Which is it, Milly? You changed your mind, or you don't feel well?" Charles didn't bother to affect real annoyance. Her obstinacy was almost endearing, at present; he could afford to like it, because it was a good sign. It showed she wasn't happy. It was very much in Charles's interest that Camilla be unhappy at present. So he let a fond familiarity suffuse the words instead.
"I changed my mind because I don't feel well."
"Fine, we'll go without you. Susan will miss you though."
Camilla sighed. "I think you'll have plenty of fun without me." Was that a little jealousy in her voice? Oh, Charles hoped so. He very much hoped so.
He whistled all the way back to Ravenclaw dorm, until he got to the hallway where Susan's room was, and there he exchanged the spring in his step for a more somber tread.
"Hello?" He knocked at her door. "It's me, Charles. Camilla says she can't make it. She's not feeling well. We might as well stay in."
(( Eventual warning for unemotional non-cesty smut. It's not gratuitous for our purposes, as there are plot reasons for it, but if you don't care for that sort of thing, don't read this. ))
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Date: 2007-12-11 05:56 am (UTC)She hadn't been ready to go, anyway; somehow, tidy though her room was, she'd managed to lose a boot. She'd looked everywhere, and had finally come to the conclusion that some house-elf smart enough to get past her wards had snuck in and stolen it. The other one was in her hand, and she eyed it a moment before tossing it back in the closet. "We can have tea here, at least--gods know I've got enough of everything." A dozen cannisters of tea leaves ranged along a bookshelf, next to the kettle, teapot, and assorted other crockery. "Go ahead and sit down, and I'll deal with the water." She nodded to the fat armchair near the desk, disappearing into the bathroom for a moment to fill the kettle at the sink. When she returned, she set it atop a small converted Bunsen burner, turning the flame up high. Who needed warming spells when there were such fascinating little gadgets?
"I just hope the rest of us won't catch it, whatever it is," she said, sitting cross-legged on the bed. "I don't know that I necessarily trust the hospital wing."
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Date: 2007-12-11 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 06:15 am (UTC)"...Ah," she said, somehow managing a straight face. "Right. Well...what's the phrase? More power to her, I suppose, though it's a bit more information than I needed."
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Date: 2007-12-11 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 06:35 am (UTC)"What makes you say that?" she asked. "That marriage isn't agreeing with Camilla?" Once again, her relative inability to read most people kept her from being any kind of accurate judge--and Camilla was difficult for almost anyone to fathom, so Susan was at an even worse disadvantage.
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Date: 2007-12-11 06:59 pm (UTC)It just so happened Susan's particular misreading had touched a raw nerve with him. He wasn't upset with her for it, and he could pass off his reaction as normal reluctance to consider the more intimate details of his sibling's love life. "Not a big deal," he said. "I kind of wish you were right," and that was a bald-faced lie right there, but Charles was good at lying. "I mean, not that I'd want to know about it, but at least I'd know she was happy. I don't think she's really ill today if you want to know my honest opinion. I think she's just depressed and she doesn't want us to see it."
His gaze wandered to the flickering Bunsen burner, the vagaries of the irregular bright flame. "I don't even know where Henry is. Library probably. He doesn't give a damn about her, you know. Never has. He has this idea of her, and he thinks he cares about that, but he's never known who Camilla really is or what she really needs. And now the honeymoon's over and all that, she's settling into the reality of it. Haven't you noticed?"
It was true, he thought, to his deep satisfaction. Camilla had come home from Greece in alarmingly good spirits, and she'd stayed that way for a little while -- only to become progressively distracted and irritable over the past week or two. Charles knew very well that this change had precious little, if anything, to do with Henry, and everything to do with what Charles himself was doing, but of course he wasn't about to share that viewpoint with Susan, not when Susan was so integral to what he was trying to bring about.
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Date: 2007-12-11 07:53 pm (UTC)"I'd noticed, yes," she said. "Why do you say it's Henry's fault, though?" From what she'd seen--everything she'd heard in talking to both of them, all that had gone on after the hoboness, etc.--Henry and Camilla were unusually devoted to one another. They, along with Shaun and Liz, were what Susan considered one of the few bastions of hope for romantic relationships. She wondered why Charles, who obviously knew both of them much better than she could, would think such a thing--what he could have seen that would bring him to such a conclusion.
The kettle began to sing, and she got up to take it off the burner and fill the pot. "Pick your poison," she said, nodding at the cannisters on the shelf. "If you don't see anything you want, I can send a house-elf for more."
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Date: 2007-12-11 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 09:23 pm (UTC)Naturally, his words only piqued her curiosity yet further--something he had to have known would happen, though of course she herself did not know he'd want to. "No, tell me." Susan might not be any good at giving moral support, but if one of her friends needed it, she at least wanted to know about it. Camilla had helped her through so very much, and Susan didn't want to drop the ball if the favor needed returning.
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Date: 2007-12-11 09:54 pm (UTC)"Doesn't matter what I say anyway," he said quietly. "Same as when we were in college. Camilla's never been one to admit when she's made a mistake, even if she knows it herself."
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Date: 2007-12-11 10:11 pm (UTC)Speaking of 'before', though... "What happened at college, if you don't mind my asking?"
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Date: 2007-12-11 11:17 pm (UTC)He didn't like Susan's question, at first. He'd meant to create a sort of general impression, a general idea that over the course of Camilla's relationship with Henry she'd been bent on her own destruction. The way Susan asked, it sounded like she expected to hear about some specific incident. Charles could think of a few specific incidents he'd very much like to avoid zeroing in on. Bunny's death, for one. Henry's death, for another.
Then it struck him by happy chance -- Charles ever the opportunist -- that he did have a specific incident he could tell her about, after all. One he could color very neatly, if he were careful. It was almost like talking to the cops back in the day, except Charles didn't have to be nearly so nervous and Susan was making him tea instead of coffee.
"I don't like to say," he hedged (deliberately). "It's not a story that paints me in a very good light, I'm afraid. You know of course I used to drink rather a lot, and I don't anymore. Well, there was a point, back at Hampden, where I was drinking much more than was good for me and I wasn't taking care of myself. At all. And Camilla wasn't exactly taking care of me, either. We shared an apartment to save money, but around that time she wasn't exactly around much, can't blame her really." That last was a lie. He blamed her with an adamant ferocity. "So anyway I wound up really sick, with pneumonia and God knows what else, and I might have died if Richard hadn't hauled me to the hospital. Well, when I came out of there, all Camilla's stuff was gone. I mean all of it. She'd moved out and no one would tell me where she was. That in itself hurt me enormously. I can't really even express how much. But it gets worse."
He ran a hand back through his hair -- the same gesture as Camilla was wont to use when distraught or distracted.
"No one could tell me where she was because they didn't know either. Henry had gone and moved her out, and that was all anyone knew. In fact it was only by accident anyone even knew Henry was involved in the moving -- this other guy we sort of knew had dropped by our apartment while Henry was packing up Camilla's things, and he happened to mention it to Richard. So if anything had happened, no one would have known where to find her. They wanted to bring her to visit me in hospital but they didn't know where she was. There was no change of address filed, no forwarding address, because she hadn't actually gotten a new place to live. Turns out Henry had moved her into a hotel. He was keeping her there like --" Like a kept woman in a Victorian novel, Charles almost said, but restrained himself. "Like a fairytale princess in a tower. When our friends found out what hotel it was, they still didn't know what room she was in. What kind of person even does that? What kind of person is okay with that? Goes along with it?"
He had allowed his upset and hurt and anger to show. They were genuine emotions.
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Date: 2007-12-11 11:40 pm (UTC)Susan knew that Henry was decidedly unusual, and often quite prickly, but she didn't really have a problem with that because she was largely that way herself. She also knew that that was where their similarities ended, but good grief, she couldn't imagine doing such a thing--doing it, or having it done. True, Camilla was very different than her, but she still couldn't fathom how anyone could go along with anything like that.
"He moved her out, and didn't tell any of you where, or why?" But really, it didn't take much stretching of her imagination to believe--again, post-hoboness, he and Stephen had actually gone out and shot one another, and from what she understood it had been Henry's idea (though to this day she thought they were both fools for doing it, especially the way they did. If you were going to duel someone, do it righ--use something sharp and pointy, dammit.) She knew he was protective of Camilla, but it wasn't hard to make the leap from 'protective' to 'jealous'. "I really hate to say it, but I could see him doing something like that. What I can't understand is why on earth Camilla would agree to it." The Camilla she knew didn't seem like the type who'd be content to be shut up like, as Charles put it, a princess in a tower, but then Camilla had been much younger then. As young as Henry currently was, having been dead all the intervening years, and while it was easy to forget his age, very occasionally he'd do or say something that reminded her that, in some ways at least, he was little more than a boy.
She poured out the tea, considering as she added cream and sugar to her cup. Gods, if someone had tried that with her, no matter what the reason.... Her next words were laced with an irony of which she was wholly unaware, but which Charles would not be. "Honestly, I would have shot anyone who tried to do that to me."
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Date: 2007-12-12 12:06 am (UTC)Ignoring the tea, he shook his head sadly at Susan's remarks. "He must have convinced her somehow that she wanted to. Camilla doesn't do things she doesn't want to do. The trick is getting her to see things your way, and I guess Henry can be pretty persuasive. He's got this air of authority, and honestly I think he gets off on it -- on the way she'll soak up anything he says. He can just drone on about whatever he's been reading like he was the announcer on a National Geographic special and Camilla all but takes notes, I swear. I don't know if you have cults where you're from, but it's a lot like that. Like seeing someone you love join a cult. Only I think even with all that said, I could deal with it better if I was sure she's happy."
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Date: 2007-12-12 03:47 am (UTC)"They lived together for months before this," she mused, stirring her tea. "Why would she be unhappy now, so suddenly?"
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Date: 2007-12-12 04:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-12 05:01 am (UTC)She thought back--she'd still been Death, while everyone had been in the village, and while her memories were perfectly clear, she had to stop and re-assess them from a more human standpoint. "Neither one of them wanted her to be married to that Richard," she said. "That was patently obvious. I never did find out the history there, but there's obviously some bad blood. And Richard really does have terrible taste," she added, thinking back to the ring that was so ugly that even she had found it tacky.
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Date: 2007-12-12 05:31 am (UTC)Charles used to consider Richard a good guy, a friend, up until the afternoon at Francis's country house when he'd overheard Richard talking to Henry about his, Charles's, whereabouts. After that, all bets were off. Charles had been hurt and disappointed -- disillusioned, as far as he was concerned.
"Plus, what happened right away? I don't think she'd been in that tent a day before Henry showed up."
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Date: 2007-12-12 05:55 am (UTC)"I had always assumed he was being protective," she said aloud. "I mean, it's the sort of thing that would drive me up the wall, but clearly Camilla didn't mind." She paused. "Or didn't seem to, at least. I know he can be extremely jealous, but I've only ever really heard of it harming anyone once. He and I had a fairly massive falling-out around then, too." There were a few bits of that she could actually relay, even if the whole of the thing would never, ever be spoken of. To anyone. Ever. And especially not to Camilla's brother, of all people. "Can I assume that's not the first time something like that has happened? That he's gone off and hurt someone over some jealous suspicion, validated or not?"
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Date: 2007-12-12 07:45 pm (UTC)"Well, you know the guy. You don't really need to ask me -- you can tell for yourself. Of course he's going to do whatever it takes to keep Camilla to himself. But he doesn't give a damn about anything else in the world, even about her herself really -- like I said, he doesn't really know her." Not the way I do. "So it's a surprise to hear you had a falling-out with him, a massive one as you called it. Unless you were trying to get him to take the SATs or something. That's a college entrance exam," he explained, realizing too late that Susan wouldn't get the joke due to cultural unfamiliarity. "He says he's got an 'aesthetic objection' to them."
He sipped his tea, then abruptly set down the cup and scowled.
"He didn't hurt you, did he? Can I ask what happened?"
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Date: 2007-12-12 08:15 pm (UTC)She shook herself out of her reverie. "No, he didn't hurt me," she said. "He shot a dear friend of mine, who at the time was rather more than a friend. Granted, he got shot in turn; it was some stupid form of a duel, I think, and Stephen was hardly blameless himself. I could have shot both of them, especially because I only found out about it because Camilla sent me an owl before she packed off to London."
A pause, thoughtful. "And Henry followed her. Somehow they made it up, while they were there, but it was a long while before Henry and I managed to be on civil terms again." And that had really only been because the immortal part of her had taken over for a while, and thus she was nothing like the Susan Henry had known, and she viewed Henry quite differently herself. No mention had ever been made of the incident by either of them since--it was the sort of thing best left alone, and there had been no further cause for animosity.
Granted, what she couldn't tell Charles was that Henry had had every reason to be furious. It certainly shouldn't have gone to the stupid lengths it had, but it wasn't as though his anger was completely irrational or baseless. Susan had wished for quite a while afterward that Henry had given her the chance to enter that duel, too, simply so she could have shot him herself. She'd been terribly irritated with Stephen, too, at the time, for he hadn't told her about it, either. What she still didn't know was that Henry had wanted her in on it as well, and Stephen had talked him out of the idea. Had she known that, she would have been infuriated, but Stephen had been wise enough to simply tell her that any duel including her would be grossly unfair, thanks to what she was. Letting her think it was for Henry's protection, rather than her own, had been by far the smartest thing Stephen could have done. "And the really stupid thing was that they went off-grounds to do it. Stephen has almost frightening accurate aim, and I gather Henry does not, but it still could have bloody killed one of them."
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Date: 2007-12-12 09:17 pm (UTC)"This," he said thickly, "is a story no one ever told me. Camilla never told me. I could have been with her."
God, what a chance he'd missed.
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Date: 2007-12-12 09:49 pm (UTC)She watched Charles with not a little concern. Unfortunately, Susan really didn't know what to say in this sort of situation, so she said the only thing she could think of. "She didn't really tell anyone. I think the only reason she even told me was because Stephen was involved, too." She really did suck at the whole gentility/comfort thing, but she meant it well. "Anyway, it's long over. Or I thought it was, anyway. I really don't know what to think, now." This new information troubled her--so much had gone into bringing about Camilla and Henry's wedding, so much from so many people, and to hear it wasn't the successful thing they'd all expected it to be was...worrisome.
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Date: 2007-12-12 11:03 pm (UTC)He took a deep labored breath. "Oh, Milly. Camilla Corinne Macaulay, what the hell have you been smoking." Another deep breath and another, like some kind of relaxation exercise -- like Charles was counting backward in his head, very slowly, to calm himself. When he finally did turn back to Susan, he was actually smiling -- a pained, rueful smile.
"Now you see why I worry about her? Because she goes and does things like that. And then marries the guy on top of it."
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Date: 2007-12-12 11:23 pm (UTC)"If you're missing anything, I am, too," Susan said. "I'm pretty sure that's all that happened, but given the fact that the only one who told me anything was Camilla, I can't say for sure. I don't know why she didn't tell you, but then I don't understand half the things she does." She really was much worse than Henry, on that score.
She watched Charles--watched him try to get a lid on what had to be a fairly large dose of anger. At least that she could understand. "Sometimes," she said, "and believe me, I speak from experience on this--sometimes people can just have very, very poor judgement." The entire mess had been the result of poor (or, in places, completely lacking) judgement, that had just snowballed into something monstrous. "Sometimes we do very stupid things, and only come to regret them when it's too late," she added quietly--she spoke from multiple experiences on that one, but it could just as easily be interpreted as being applied solely to Camilla and Henry.
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