ISABELLA MERCER
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Prologue
"You know I love you, don't you?"
The man lying languidly on the bed next to her lowered the book he'd been reading and raised an eyebrow in question. The couple had never been ones for outward, spoken displays of affections; more fond of action that words. The sporadic, quiet question would have been well received in most relationships - perhaps even expected - but this was quite the exception.
"Isabella."
Isabella sighed as she turned and saw that his grey eyes were boring into her; silent yet questioning, accusing. She turned away and pinched the bridge of her nose, wrinkling her forehead in quiet frustration.
"What's going on?" He asked, his tone cool and clipped, as though he knew he wouldn't like the answer.
The two had been, morally, at loggerheads since they began their relationship. Although they were in the same house, perhaps the most important of their values disagreed. War was coming, and the two lovers desperately disagreed upon which side of the war they should stand. For the longest time, the topic had been avoided, brushed under the carpet and forgotten about. They could at least pretend that it wasn't happening; that the battle wasn't coming and that they could live in the imaginary state of peace they'd conjured for themselves. But the suspension of reality was quickly becoming an impossibility, and they both knew it.
"I can't stand with you." Replied Isabella, simply and yet with an underlying tone of anguish, as though she had to force the words from her throat. She raised her head to meet his eyes again, and saw a rather uncommon flash of emotion. Care? Love? Sadness? Anger? She couldn't quite tell. Maybe it was all of those emotions squashed into one fleeting glance.
He wanted to ask why, but he already knew. He wanted to beg with her to stay with him, but both his pride and the realisation that she was very unlikely to change her mind, made him refrain.
"I know."
"I know." Isabella repeated softly, as though she were wishing he hadn't said those words. As though he'd been able to magically conjure a solution for their heartfelt dilemma. "And you wont-"
"No." He replied, equally as softly, yet firm. He'd never been so unsure of himself, and that was clear in his voice. "He'd find me. I'm already in too deep-"
"I know."
He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them, mildly surprised to find his sly, stone-hearted companion eyeing himself with watery eyes, as though trying to commit his image to memory. It was moments like this, moments where they both realised that they cared for each other more deeply than they'd ever thought they'd be able to care for another, that the situation became most tragic.
"I love you." He said surely, and Isabella's eyes flashed as the words she'd never heard - knew, but never heard - escaped from his perfectly sculpted mouth. He hated the spoken word; he felt it meant nothing in comparison to action, but he was equally uncertain as to whether he would have the opportunity to ever say the words again. "And I'm sorry."
"Don't be." She replied, swallowing thickly to attempt to remove the emotion held in her throat. "Just- can you-"
Isabella paused; a million and one possibilities flooding through her mind of the things that could happen, would happen, and would never happen. She swallowed again.
"Just don't die. Please."
He exhaled heavily, and said nothing. He was cunning and sly, mean and aristocratic; it was probably common knowledge that he wasn't the most honest of men, but in all the time he had known her, he had never lied to Isabella. Neither of them had spoken the words out loud, but as soon as the conversation had started, he knew that this was probably the last time they would be together.
Instead, he took the book from his lap and placed it on the table next to the bed, before turning back to her and opening his arms only slightly.
"Come."
Isabella slid across the bed and into his embrace, his arms wrapping around her torso and hers around his neck. They were silent for a moment, just looking at one another - appreciating the feel of each other's warmth and the comfort they provided each other - before their lips touched. They kissed slowly, tentatively at first, before it progressed to fevered desperation. Isabella's hands grasped his hair tightly, almost painfully, as though he were going to evaporate into thin air, and he gripped her hips in a similar way. As they parted for air, he immediately moved his mouth to her neck, and Isabella felt her heart stop as he kissed her racing pulse. She quickly found herself with just enough breath in her lungs to speak his name - the name of her anchor, her lover, and then man that was soon to be nothing but a distant memory.
"Lucius..."
Friday 1 May 2015
Tuesday 28 January 2014
Friday 6 December 2013
NAME: Ellie (Vivirelie) Lirtav
RACE: Breton
GENDER: Female
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Relatively short for a Breton at 5"3, Ellie is undoubtedly petite - genetics meaning that no matter how strong she is in actuality, it will never be reflected in physical appearance. Apart from her build, Ellie doesn't show very many signs of her ancestry - hair a rich blonde (a far cry from her mother's brunette), eyes a honey brown (while her mother's are a striking blue) and slim hips and shoulders, where her mother is broader. The only similarity, in fact, between the two - is their oddly prominently pointed ears. The Lirtav line has been known, in High Rock, to be one of the strongest carriers of Aldmeri genes amongst the Bretons.
RELIGION: (Religion-specific deity) A traditional Bretony Pantheon belief, particularly fond of Phynaster, Zenithar and Stendarr.
POLITICAL ALLEGIANCE: Neither. Ellie strives to change the Stormcloaks so that their motives and actions are complimentary to how she believes they can move forwards.
PROFESSION: Guard.
BACKGROUND: Ellie grew up in High Rock - her family of nobles well known amongst the people. She became quickly irate with the Imperial forces; promising their endless support and delivering next to nothing - allowing her family to be destroyed for treason they hadn't committed while she slept. Having shed blood to save her own life, she fled to Skyrim for safety. She opted to change how she was referred in order to prevent being tracked, only giving those who asked 'Ellie' to refer to her as - which caused some suspicion amongst those she met and stopped Ellie from making any firm friends.
Soon after, she was found warding off ice wraiths and was invited to join the Stormcloak Army under the control of Ulfric Stormcloak. Although she didn't agree with his motives, Ellie felt that defending one's own people was a valiant cause, and happily opted to help the Nords in hopes of her own safety. She eventually hoped to change the objectives, so that the Stormcloaks could, in turn, free each province of Tamriel of the darkness that had befallen from being part of an empire, but with the loss of the Stormcloaks, her dreams were reduced to rubble. She lives now, sour, and under continual watch of the Imperials, as a simple guard - watching no more interesting things than the occasional stolen sweet roll.
PERSONALITY: She lies bitter in the face of defeat, and disappointed in the lack of willing to change from humanity. Ellie believes strongly that the Imperial army simply wanted to win because it was 'another victory' and feels that the other provinces (including her home) have been robbed of a chance of liberation as their own land. Despite her snappy exterior, Ellie is surprisingly wise - she takes a long time to mull over even the smallest of decisions, considering every possible outcome before she will commit to a cause. For this reason, she refuses to believe that she is wrong about anything - and if she is, she'll find a reason to make people think she's right. As kind as her intentions are, other people often find it difficult to trust her - as Ellie reveals very little about her past in order to keep her from being slaughtered by the High Elves in Skyrim where she stands. For this reason, Ellie also finds it difficult to trust others and remains both wary and vigilant at all times.
STANDING STONE: (Mage/Warrior/Thief) Warrior.
STAR SIGN: The Serpent. (Ellie's always hated the fact that she's been born under this sign, and wishes she had something more useful.)
MAJOR ATTRIBUTES: Destruction, conjuration, restoration, light-armour and archery.
COMBAT STYLE: Often opts for bow and arrow at long range and a bound sword in close range - as although destruction is her biggest asset, Ellie has a constant wariness about who could be watching for any sign of her whereabouts.
PERSONALITY: She lies bitter in the face of defeat, and disappointed in the lack of willing to change from humanity. Ellie believes strongly that the Imperial army simply wanted to win because it was 'another victory' and feels that the other provinces (including her home) have been robbed of a chance of liberation as their own land. Despite her snappy exterior, Ellie is surprisingly wise - she takes a long time to mull over even the smallest of decisions, considering every possible outcome before she will commit to a cause. For this reason, she refuses to believe that she is wrong about anything - and if she is, she'll find a reason to make people think she's right. As kind as her intentions are, other people often find it difficult to trust her - as Ellie reveals very little about her past in order to keep her from being slaughtered by the High Elves in Skyrim where she stands. For this reason, Ellie also finds it difficult to trust others and remains both wary and vigilant at all times.
STANDING STONE: (Mage/Warrior/Thief) Warrior.
STAR SIGN: The Serpent. (Ellie's always hated the fact that she's been born under this sign, and wishes she had something more useful.)
MAJOR ATTRIBUTES: Destruction, conjuration, restoration, light-armour and archery.
COMBAT STYLE: Often opts for bow and arrow at long range and a bound sword in close range - as although destruction is her biggest asset, Ellie has a constant wariness about who could be watching for any sign of her whereabouts.
Monday 11 November 2013
Xavier: Hey
Fleur looked at the computer with a smile on her face. Since all of her friends had gone to university, she'd been feeling pretty lonely - despite the fact that she lived in one of the largest cities in England. While all of her friends had known exactly what they'd wanted to study, Fleur was stuck in a rut; confused between which of her options was the best. She'd never been the best of decision makers.
Fleur: Hey!
Fleur: How's uni?
Xavier: Okay, I guess
Fleur furrowed her brows a little. Out of all of the people she knew, she had thought that Xavier would flourish at uni. He'd loved creative subjects - particularly music - in school, and the school they'd attended had been so focused on Performing Arts that everything else had been overlooked. What was the point in putting on a fantastic production of 'Beauty and the Beast' if most of your students would fail their other subjects? It was needless to say that Fleur and Xavier had both avoided the artsy riff-raff, and that was one of the reasons they'd found themselves being such good friends.
Xavier: I mean the course is great
Xavier: But money's an issue
Xavier: So is my attendance
Fleur: Your attendance is easy enough to fix though, right?
She bit her lip. Fleur knew that money had always been an issue for Xavier and his family - in fact his mother had argued with him many times about Xavier spending money on 'frivolous' things, and she always felt guilty. Although her dad did remind her a little of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob, money was never an issue for their family.
Fleur: Money just sucks.
Xavier: Yeah, I guess
Xavier: I seem to spend all of my time doing absolutely nothing
Fleur: What, no friends?
Her grin morphed into a frown as Xavier replied.
Xavier: Not really.
Xavier: I'm so worried about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life that going out just seems pointless
Fleur frowned. She really did understand, more than he knew. Fleur had been taking anti-anxiety medication for quite a long time, constantly absorbed by the need to worry about things to the extent that she hadn't been able to cope. Her stomach had been constantly tense- meaning that she'd found it difficult to eat, her hands had been constantly shaky, her head pained with constant headaches. Things were much better now - occasionally she'd get a little depressed (as she always had), but even that wasn't as bad as it had been.
Fleur: It's so stupid, isn't it?
Fleur: People fought for our freedoms back in the olden days
Fleur: But now we have the chance to make the wrong choices
Fleur: I wish everything was just laid out - it'd be so much less stressful
Xavier: yeah, the olden days were better
Xavier: it'd just be like, yo yeah it's time to get a job and find a wife and then you're good
Xavier: Now it's like 'make decisions' 'no wait you made the wrong ones'
Grinning, Fleur typed back.
Fleur: I think we need a time machine mate
Fleur: Maybe I'll build one
Xavier: Hahahaha, please do
Xavier: If you do, swing by and pick me up?
Fleur: Count on it!
Turning her head, Fleur saw the time - 2:36am - lit up in bold green letters on her clock. She frowned, her parents were coming back from their short trip to London the next day, and if she slept in until noon they probably wouldn't be too pleased.
Fleur: I've gotta go - so should you! Sleep!!
Xavier: Ahah, we'll see
Xavier: Goodnight!
Fleur: Night!
Closing the Facebook tab and turning off her monitor, Fleur span her desk chair around and stood up sluggishly, rubbing her eyes and immediately cursing at the black that had rubbed off onto her skin. Make-up was fantastic, until it got to such a late time that you forgot you were wearing it.
She changed into a plaid button up night-shirt and jumped into bed, relishing in the warmth of her duvet as she closed her eyes. Winter sucked, but getting into bed in December was definitely something Fleur would always cherish. Before she knew it, blackness was upon her as her breathing slowed and her mind finally relaxed.
---
Bang.
Fleur groaned and rolled out of bed, not daring to look at her hair - almost certain that it would be stuck at a number of odd angles - before ambling blearily down the stairs to where the banging on her front door was coming from. For a moment she looked the front door with confusion - she was sure that it was white, but it seemed to be made of wood now. Did it get replaced while she was hiding away from her parents? She wasn't sure, but she didn't have any time to think about it as the banging resounded through the house again.
Fleur ripped open the door with a slight frown on her face, shivering as the cold air hit her legs. She presumed that she'd just need to take a package or something from the smiling post-man who always came to her house in the morning, but instead there seemed to be a man standing there as though he were straight out of a period drama.
His shirt was slightly muddy and looked to be made of a horribly scratchy cotton, his trousers similar, but instead of cream they were a dark green khaki colour. His face was horribly thin and sallow, eyes practically bugging out of his head as hand shakily offered her what seemed to be a newspaper.
"Uh-" She lifted her hand and took it from him, a little disorientated as the man refused to move his gaze away from her legs. "Thank you?"
His eyes shot up to Fleur's face and he looked at her as though she were some sort of an alien. His mouth opened and closed a few times as though he were a fish, before he eventually just turned around and sort of scurried away from the doorway.
Weird. Fleur thought, closing the door and walking back into the house. The paper promptly fell from her hands as her eyes registered what was actually in front of her.
"What the actual fuck?"
Beams that definitely weren't there before stemmed from the ceiling, all of her furniture replaced with lower grade cotton or wooden materials. The fourty-inch television in her lounge had disappeared along with everything plastic, and the house was a horrible cold temperature - which Fleur quickly realised was due to the absence of radiators. Moving quickly along to the kitchen, her eyes widened and her mouth snapped open.
"Is that an aga?!"
"Fleur?!"
Spinning around, a shirtless Xavier stood looking just as confused as she was. His usually meticulously styled, auburn 'scene' hair was all over the place, hazel eyes telling her just how clueless he was.
"Xavier?!" Fleur replied in kind, walking over to him and viewing him speculatively.
As though it were planned, both of them poked each other in the arm simultaneously and inhaled quickly in surprise.
"It's not a dream." Xavier spoke in a hushed voice as though he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Are we being punked?"
"How would they have managed this?" Said Fleur, the brain of the scientist she'd been in High School kicking into immediate action, "It's impossible - I mean, you were in Northampton! And this is--"
Fleur paused, walking away from Xavier and over to the kitchen window to where she tore the curtains apart and looked out into the world.
Her face paled, shoulders stiffening as she saw that maybe - just maybe - this was a little bit more than a prank.
"Xave-" She whispered, "I think I unconsciously built a time-machine."
Xavier's chest pressed against her back as his head peaked over Fleur's shoulder into the outside world.
"Fucking hell." He said in a somewhat awed tone, taking in the fields of corn - people scraping at it with tools Fleur had never seen before, horses and carriages, sales people dressed in rags littering the streets and small shops lining a cobbled high-street. Women all dressed reservedly, their plain dresses brushing the floor as they walked and men all strolled along in clothes similar to those the paper-man had been wearing. Now that she thought about it, maybe that would explain the strange reaction he'd had to her legs - but if his reaction was genuine, that meant that she'd genuinely travelled back in time.
Fleur gasped, suddenly pushing past Xavier and back into the hallway she'd entered the kitchen from. She picked up the paper that she'd thrown aside in shock, unfolding it and swallowing the huge lump that had formed in her throat as she read the date at the top of the document.
"It's impossible, I just-"
"Fleur?" Said Xavier again, standing in the doorway with a surprisingly calm expression on her face as he viewed her as though she were a time-bomb. Out of the two, Fleur had always been the more dramatic - Xavier often taking things in a rather 'pinch-of-salt' way that confused the hell of of Fleur, even on a good day.
"Xavier-" She replied, somewhat guiltily, as though this was her fault. "I'm sorry - I don't even understand why this happened and now you've been dragged into it with me and I don't even know what 'this' is-"
"Fleur." He said more resolutely as he walked over to her, placing his large nimble hands on her shoulders as he looked down to her from where he stood about a foot taller than she. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" Fleur repeated, somewhat shocked that he would even ask. She lifted the paper and pointed to the date - not even bothering to show him the actual text of the first article, which surprising wasn't about something as futile as who Katie Price had married now, or how the auditions for the next Star Wars movie were going. "What's wrong is that somehow, we've managed to travel to 1853 in our sleep!"
"Oh." Xavier replied, taking the newspaper from her gingerly, reading the words with careful precision. "Well, shit."
---
An hour later, the two of them were both collapsed on a cracked leather sofa in their lounge, listening to the crackling of a roaring fire. They'd continued to explore the house, finding that, surely enough, all of their technology and plumbing had been ripped away from their fingers. Fleur had almost cried when she'd
found out that she'd have to go to the bathroom in a tiny shed like building that sat at the bottom of their garden.
She'd also found out that her clothes had been replaced with horrible looking, assuredly uncomfortable dresses, although she was at least relieved to find out that her underwear had been left the way it was; and Xavier's had been replaced with nasty cotton ensembles that he definitely wouldn't look forward to wearing.
Both people now sat in shock, the fire at least keeping them warm as the shock of the whole situation hit home. Neither person had bothered to get changed and both remained silent as the sounds of the outside life continued to remind them of the fact that life was definitely going to be different from now on, at least until they managed to find out how and why they'd been taken over two-hundred years into the past.
"Right." Xavier spoke up, seemingly as at-peace with their circumstances as one could be, "I guess we'd better go and get changed into the crap the universe change our clothes with, and then go and see what's what."
Fleur nodded her head slowly in agreement, not nearly as calm as Xavier now was. She stood woodenly, Xavier wrapping an arm around her shoulders and anchoring her to some sort of safety as they stumbled up the stairs towards their rooms, her face blank and frozen in that expression. Xavier stopped Fleur outside of her room, placing his hands on her shoulders and looking between her eyes quickly, as though he'd be able to see inside of her soul.
"We'll be okay, yeah, Fleur?" He said assuredly, lips stretching into a grin, the snake-bites that she'd always hated were oddly reassuring, reminding her that this was the best friend who had always been by her side - maybe, just maybe, she was going to be okay. "We have each other - we'll be fine."
She nodded quickly, wrapping her arms around his torso and hugging him tightly before he could see the redness that quickly surrounded her eyes. More than anything, the shock had shaken her - and she was more relieved than she'd ever let on at the fact that she had her best friend by her side. Fleur wasn't sure how - or if she would have - been able to cope without him.
"Yeah." She whispered at she broke away from him, exhaling heavily before forcing a smile onto her face before walking into her room, "See you in a minute - dressed fantastically, I'm sure."
"Oh, ha ha!" Xavier replied sarcastically as Fleur closed the door in his face.
---
Fleur had been relieved to find that both her anxiety medication, toiletries and her make-up had been in her wardrobe - in quite large supply, in fact. Practically a life-time supply. Apparently the universe could be kind, and did realise that there wasn't just going to be a Boots or Superdrug on the local high-street that she could nip into in order to grab the essentials. Her make-up wasn't essential and she knew it, but it did help to belay her anxiety. It was almost like a mask - only her immediate family, Xavier, and those who had been to high-school with her before she'd turned seventeen had ever seen her without it, and she was pleased that it could stay that way.
She'd managed to tame her dark brown hair so that it fell into it's natural beachy waves and wing some eye-liner across her eyelids by the time Xavier had gotten bored, rapping on her doorway and asking when she'd be done. Fleur opened the door and stepped out, having to restrain laughter at the sight before her.
Supposedly, Xavier had also been supplied with toiletries as he now smelt quite strongly of the aftershave she'd bought for him for his birthday - the stubble on his chin removed before it had time to grow into the scraggly beard she teased him about. Although Xavier had donned the villager clothing that had been in his wardrobe, he'd definitely 'Xavified' it. The sleeves on his billowy shirt had been rolled up to reveal the tattoos he'd had done on the insides of his wrists when he'd turned eighteen, the trousers sat quite low on his waist with his shirt tucked into them so that his slim waist was still defined. The snake-bites on his lower lip stood out- glinting 'modern' in the darkness that was 1853, and his hair was still the mess that she associated with only him.
Xavier seemed to be viewing her with equal amusement, eyes glancing over the horrible cotton dress- that would have at least been comfortable had it not been for the built in corset that made her waist look like a real waist. Her dark hair was slung over her shoulders carelessly and her face carefully made-up as it usually was.
Where Xavier's attention seemed to fall most of all, it seemed, was her breasts however- which were pushed up by the ever-uncomfortable corset that she was made to wear. Fleur had been pretty well known for being interested in 'geek' culture - video games, books and cult films were the bulk of her shelves in the modern day, and so it wasn't uncommon at all for Fleur to be wearing only baggy t-shirts with logos and characters adorning the front; swallowing her figure whole. Xavier had already known that her legs were probably some of the best he'd ever seen - Fleur's obsession with Lacrosse, and yearly trips to Florida made sure of that - but he had no idea that she actually had boobs.
Huh.
"Eyes, up here."
Fleur watched Xavier raise his face to look at her eyes, wolfish grin sprawled across his lips.
"Sorry." He said, although he blatantly wasn't. "It's just weird to see you dressed like a woman!"
Fleur rolled her eyes, sweeping past him - pleased that her shoes had been kept the same. She guessed that if they couldn't be seen, it didn't matter whether or not anyone else had them. Fleur always found herself sporting platform heels - in a multitude of different colours and materials - because the vast majority of her friends were over six foot tall while she stood at a measly five feet and two inches. They put her up closer to a more acceptable five-seven mark, and it was worth the pain in her ankles. Her converse had been taken out of her wardrobe and replaced with shoes that looked more like potato-sack slippers than shoes, so heels were definitely preferable that day.
Xavier's long legs didn't have much trouble in catching up with her and before she could chicken out and change her mind, Fleur had opened the door and stepped out into the busy streets of... Wherever it was that they were.
One of the first things that Fleur noticed was that the air was surprisingly clean. It didn't smell particularly nice, namely of horse poop and dirt, but she couldn't deny that the absence of pollution definitely wasn't a bad thing. She seemed to remember that the industrial revolution would hit pretty soon if it was 1853, and coal burning would become pretty common place. It would be a shame, and part of her wished that she could tell them not to do it. Fleur had, however, seen enough episodes of Doctor Who to know that it wouldn't have been a very good idea, and that she'd probably just be burned or drowned for being a witch. Staying silent about their apparent time-travel was probably the best way to go about things.
Xavier offered her the crook of his arm so that Fleur wasn't torn away from him into the bustling crowds and she took it gratefully. The two of them walked relatively slowly, noting quickly the presence of american accents - which meant that they were probably in America now, making the situation even less likely to be a trick. Fleur's heart sank into her stomach and she gripped Xavier's arm a little tighter with her hand. Xavier's other arm lifted, his hand tapping hers gently in consolation before he stilled suddenly in his movements, neither of them moving as they stared over - having following the other civillian's glances - into the direction of a slight commotion. A small figure- a child, was being berated by a taller and far older person. Fleur's stomach clenched, her eye-brows sinking a little as she frowned at the sight, and the taller figure was the last straw for her. Fleur took her hand from Xavier's arm, picked up her skirts and began running - suddenly thankful that she'd always been gracious enough to be able to run in heels - towards the scene, regardless of Xavier's calling of her name behind her, or his quickened footsteps as he followed her.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Fleur shouted, ignoring the curious glances of the public following her hurried steps across the path with their eyes, "Stop!"
The person - a man probably in his late fourties, Fleur presumed by the grey of his hair and beard, turned sharply towards her, hand still raised. His green eyes glinted dangerously, but Fleur remained strong in her persuit, face stony and posture straight and assured.
"This is none of your business, my lady and should you wish to avoid harm, I would return to from where you came." He replied, his voice cold and harsh. Fleur had to resist flinching at his threat - rights for women were definitely far from perfect, apparently.
"If you should wish to avoid harm," She replied, not backing down in the slightest, "I'd back away from the child."
"The child's a thief!" He shouted suddenly, almost indignantly, and Fleur's eyes quickly flashed down to the small boy, his hair held back in a small cap and his face frightened as a small apple dangled from his fingertips.
"I don't care!" Fleur shouted back, her mind set from the view of the gaunt child's face. If an apple was all he wanted, an apple he would get- even if it was the last thing she would do. Allowing a child to die of malnutrition was not something she endorsed. "He's still just a-"
Fleur was cut off, her eyes widening as the man's hand came down hard against her face. Her head snapped to the side with the force of the slap - her own teeth colliding with her lip caused it to break and she tasted blood in her mouth within the second of it happening.
Lifting her head back to face him, the man opposite Fleur looked shocked by her lack of retreat. The fire in her eyes told to man that she was nothing if not more determined now - and he definitely didn't expect the retaliatory clenched fist to his jaw.
Nor did the crowd, by the collective gasp that seemed to line the streets.
The man recovered from the hit after a few seconds, face red from a mixture of both anger and embarrassment. He went to retaliate again, but Fleur's martial arts lessons apparently finally paid off.
She took the man's arm in her grasp, flipping him over - his body finding the floor with a resounding bang. Fleur quickly placed one of her heels on his chest, stopping him from moving up from the ground just as Xavier had managed to push through the crowd to meet her.
He looked at the floor amusedly, the blood running down Fleur's jaw seemingly unimportant to him. It wasn't that Xavier didn't care- it was simply that he knew she'd be fine; she was a woman, after all. She'd won- so the hit to the jaw would definitely be worth it in her eyes.
"Couldn't stay out of trouble for five minutes, could you?" Said Xavier, and Fleur lifted her gaze to meet his, sheepishly.
"He was about to beat a kid over an apple!" Fleur replied, scoffing. "An apple!"
Xavier's attention drifted over to the scrawny boy who was practically shivering in fright. Fleur couldn't figure out whether he was truly frightened of Xavier - whose tattoos, piercings and incredible height, alongside a foreign accent, could be quite intimidating- or whether he was just petrified by the whole situation. Probably a combination of the two.
Xavier dug into his pocket and withdrew a single dollar, dropping it onto the face of the fallen man with a grin still lining his face.
"A dollar's gotta be enough for an apple, right?" He said, looking back up to Fleur who simply shrugged. By the expression on the man's face - shocked to say the least - it definitely was.
"Why would you pay so much for just a boy?" The man spluttered and Fleur's heel pressed into his chest a little more at his question.
"She'd do it for anyone, mate." Xavier replied, before Fleur could tear into the man again. Fleur huffed, stepping away from the man and walking purposefully towards the boy - who still looked terrified. She was amazed that he hadn't tried to run yet- she couldn't deny that if she was him, she definitely would have already been running.
"You okay?" Fleur asked, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "What's your name?"
"J-Jonathan, ma'am." The boy replied shakily, his voice hoarse. Fleur's jaw clenched at the feel of his bony shoulder beneath her fingertips; it was almost unbelievable that poverty like this ever existed in America - although maybe it still did. Maybe she'd just never seen it.
Life wasn't fair.
"Well, Jonathan," She said, crouching down so that she was at the boy's level. Fleur tapped the apple that dangled from his uncertain fingertips, shaking slightly with the tremors of his hands. "This is yours now, okay? We bought it for you. And here-"
Fleur took ten dollars from the small bag that she'd been carrying and handed it to the boy - his eyes widening impossibly as he reluctantly took the note that was forced into his fingertips.
Inflation, right. Fleur suddenly remembered, boy, I'm rich!
"This means you won't need to take without asking for a while, right?"
The boy nodded frantically, looking at her with an expression that read only shock. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, before he eventually managed to swallow heavily and speak.
"Thank you." Said Jonathan, eyes watery with emotion. "Thank ya' so much."
Fleur said nothing else, simply opting to stand up and ruffle the boy's hair before striding back over to Xavier with a cheeky smile on her face.
"See?" She laughed softly, placing her hand back into the arm Xavier offered to her. "There's no trouble!"
"Sure." Said Xavier, smiling down at her, "Now let's go and get you cleaned up."
---
Fleur looked at the computer with a smile on her face. Since all of her friends had gone to university, she'd been feeling pretty lonely - despite the fact that she lived in one of the largest cities in England. While all of her friends had known exactly what they'd wanted to study, Fleur was stuck in a rut; confused between which of her options was the best. She'd never been the best of decision makers.
Fleur: Hey!
Fleur: How's uni?
Xavier: Okay, I guess
Fleur furrowed her brows a little. Out of all of the people she knew, she had thought that Xavier would flourish at uni. He'd loved creative subjects - particularly music - in school, and the school they'd attended had been so focused on Performing Arts that everything else had been overlooked. What was the point in putting on a fantastic production of 'Beauty and the Beast' if most of your students would fail their other subjects? It was needless to say that Fleur and Xavier had both avoided the artsy riff-raff, and that was one of the reasons they'd found themselves being such good friends.
Xavier: I mean the course is great
Xavier: But money's an issue
Xavier: So is my attendance
Fleur: Your attendance is easy enough to fix though, right?
She bit her lip. Fleur knew that money had always been an issue for Xavier and his family - in fact his mother had argued with him many times about Xavier spending money on 'frivolous' things, and she always felt guilty. Although her dad did remind her a little of Mr. Krabs from Spongebob, money was never an issue for their family.
Fleur: Money just sucks.
Xavier: Yeah, I guess
Xavier: I seem to spend all of my time doing absolutely nothing
Fleur: What, no friends?
Her grin morphed into a frown as Xavier replied.
Xavier: Not really.
Xavier: I'm so worried about what I'm going to do with the rest of my life that going out just seems pointless
Fleur frowned. She really did understand, more than he knew. Fleur had been taking anti-anxiety medication for quite a long time, constantly absorbed by the need to worry about things to the extent that she hadn't been able to cope. Her stomach had been constantly tense- meaning that she'd found it difficult to eat, her hands had been constantly shaky, her head pained with constant headaches. Things were much better now - occasionally she'd get a little depressed (as she always had), but even that wasn't as bad as it had been.
Fleur: It's so stupid, isn't it?
Fleur: People fought for our freedoms back in the olden days
Fleur: But now we have the chance to make the wrong choices
Fleur: I wish everything was just laid out - it'd be so much less stressful
Xavier: yeah, the olden days were better
Xavier: it'd just be like, yo yeah it's time to get a job and find a wife and then you're good
Xavier: Now it's like 'make decisions' 'no wait you made the wrong ones'
Grinning, Fleur typed back.
Fleur: I think we need a time machine mate
Fleur: Maybe I'll build one
Xavier: Hahahaha, please do
Xavier: If you do, swing by and pick me up?
Fleur: Count on it!
Turning her head, Fleur saw the time - 2:36am - lit up in bold green letters on her clock. She frowned, her parents were coming back from their short trip to London the next day, and if she slept in until noon they probably wouldn't be too pleased.
Fleur: I've gotta go - so should you! Sleep!!
Xavier: Ahah, we'll see
Xavier: Goodnight!
Fleur: Night!
Closing the Facebook tab and turning off her monitor, Fleur span her desk chair around and stood up sluggishly, rubbing her eyes and immediately cursing at the black that had rubbed off onto her skin. Make-up was fantastic, until it got to such a late time that you forgot you were wearing it.
She changed into a plaid button up night-shirt and jumped into bed, relishing in the warmth of her duvet as she closed her eyes. Winter sucked, but getting into bed in December was definitely something Fleur would always cherish. Before she knew it, blackness was upon her as her breathing slowed and her mind finally relaxed.
---
Bang.
Fleur groaned and rolled out of bed, not daring to look at her hair - almost certain that it would be stuck at a number of odd angles - before ambling blearily down the stairs to where the banging on her front door was coming from. For a moment she looked the front door with confusion - she was sure that it was white, but it seemed to be made of wood now. Did it get replaced while she was hiding away from her parents? She wasn't sure, but she didn't have any time to think about it as the banging resounded through the house again.
Fleur ripped open the door with a slight frown on her face, shivering as the cold air hit her legs. She presumed that she'd just need to take a package or something from the smiling post-man who always came to her house in the morning, but instead there seemed to be a man standing there as though he were straight out of a period drama.
His shirt was slightly muddy and looked to be made of a horribly scratchy cotton, his trousers similar, but instead of cream they were a dark green khaki colour. His face was horribly thin and sallow, eyes practically bugging out of his head as hand shakily offered her what seemed to be a newspaper.
"Uh-" She lifted her hand and took it from him, a little disorientated as the man refused to move his gaze away from her legs. "Thank you?"
His eyes shot up to Fleur's face and he looked at her as though she were some sort of an alien. His mouth opened and closed a few times as though he were a fish, before he eventually just turned around and sort of scurried away from the doorway.
Weird. Fleur thought, closing the door and walking back into the house. The paper promptly fell from her hands as her eyes registered what was actually in front of her.
"What the actual fuck?"
Beams that definitely weren't there before stemmed from the ceiling, all of her furniture replaced with lower grade cotton or wooden materials. The fourty-inch television in her lounge had disappeared along with everything plastic, and the house was a horrible cold temperature - which Fleur quickly realised was due to the absence of radiators. Moving quickly along to the kitchen, her eyes widened and her mouth snapped open.
"Is that an aga?!"
"Fleur?!"
Spinning around, a shirtless Xavier stood looking just as confused as she was. His usually meticulously styled, auburn 'scene' hair was all over the place, hazel eyes telling her just how clueless he was.
"Xavier?!" Fleur replied in kind, walking over to him and viewing him speculatively.
As though it were planned, both of them poked each other in the arm simultaneously and inhaled quickly in surprise.
"It's not a dream." Xavier spoke in a hushed voice as though he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Are we being punked?"
"How would they have managed this?" Said Fleur, the brain of the scientist she'd been in High School kicking into immediate action, "It's impossible - I mean, you were in Northampton! And this is--"
Fleur paused, walking away from Xavier and over to the kitchen window to where she tore the curtains apart and looked out into the world.
Her face paled, shoulders stiffening as she saw that maybe - just maybe - this was a little bit more than a prank.
"Xave-" She whispered, "I think I unconsciously built a time-machine."
Xavier's chest pressed against her back as his head peaked over Fleur's shoulder into the outside world.
"Fucking hell." He said in a somewhat awed tone, taking in the fields of corn - people scraping at it with tools Fleur had never seen before, horses and carriages, sales people dressed in rags littering the streets and small shops lining a cobbled high-street. Women all dressed reservedly, their plain dresses brushing the floor as they walked and men all strolled along in clothes similar to those the paper-man had been wearing. Now that she thought about it, maybe that would explain the strange reaction he'd had to her legs - but if his reaction was genuine, that meant that she'd genuinely travelled back in time.
Fleur gasped, suddenly pushing past Xavier and back into the hallway she'd entered the kitchen from. She picked up the paper that she'd thrown aside in shock, unfolding it and swallowing the huge lump that had formed in her throat as she read the date at the top of the document.
"It's impossible, I just-"
"Fleur?" Said Xavier again, standing in the doorway with a surprisingly calm expression on her face as he viewed her as though she were a time-bomb. Out of the two, Fleur had always been the more dramatic - Xavier often taking things in a rather 'pinch-of-salt' way that confused the hell of of Fleur, even on a good day.
"Xavier-" She replied, somewhat guiltily, as though this was her fault. "I'm sorry - I don't even understand why this happened and now you've been dragged into it with me and I don't even know what 'this' is-"
"Fleur." He said more resolutely as he walked over to her, placing his large nimble hands on her shoulders as he looked down to her from where he stood about a foot taller than she. "What's wrong?"
"What's wrong?" Fleur repeated, somewhat shocked that he would even ask. She lifted the paper and pointed to the date - not even bothering to show him the actual text of the first article, which surprising wasn't about something as futile as who Katie Price had married now, or how the auditions for the next Star Wars movie were going. "What's wrong is that somehow, we've managed to travel to 1853 in our sleep!"
"Oh." Xavier replied, taking the newspaper from her gingerly, reading the words with careful precision. "Well, shit."
---
An hour later, the two of them were both collapsed on a cracked leather sofa in their lounge, listening to the crackling of a roaring fire. They'd continued to explore the house, finding that, surely enough, all of their technology and plumbing had been ripped away from their fingers. Fleur had almost cried when she'd
found out that she'd have to go to the bathroom in a tiny shed like building that sat at the bottom of their garden.
She'd also found out that her clothes had been replaced with horrible looking, assuredly uncomfortable dresses, although she was at least relieved to find out that her underwear had been left the way it was; and Xavier's had been replaced with nasty cotton ensembles that he definitely wouldn't look forward to wearing.
Both people now sat in shock, the fire at least keeping them warm as the shock of the whole situation hit home. Neither person had bothered to get changed and both remained silent as the sounds of the outside life continued to remind them of the fact that life was definitely going to be different from now on, at least until they managed to find out how and why they'd been taken over two-hundred years into the past.
"Right." Xavier spoke up, seemingly as at-peace with their circumstances as one could be, "I guess we'd better go and get changed into the crap the universe change our clothes with, and then go and see what's what."
Fleur nodded her head slowly in agreement, not nearly as calm as Xavier now was. She stood woodenly, Xavier wrapping an arm around her shoulders and anchoring her to some sort of safety as they stumbled up the stairs towards their rooms, her face blank and frozen in that expression. Xavier stopped Fleur outside of her room, placing his hands on her shoulders and looking between her eyes quickly, as though he'd be able to see inside of her soul.
"We'll be okay, yeah, Fleur?" He said assuredly, lips stretching into a grin, the snake-bites that she'd always hated were oddly reassuring, reminding her that this was the best friend who had always been by her side - maybe, just maybe, she was going to be okay. "We have each other - we'll be fine."
She nodded quickly, wrapping her arms around his torso and hugging him tightly before he could see the redness that quickly surrounded her eyes. More than anything, the shock had shaken her - and she was more relieved than she'd ever let on at the fact that she had her best friend by her side. Fleur wasn't sure how - or if she would have - been able to cope without him.
"Yeah." She whispered at she broke away from him, exhaling heavily before forcing a smile onto her face before walking into her room, "See you in a minute - dressed fantastically, I'm sure."
"Oh, ha ha!" Xavier replied sarcastically as Fleur closed the door in his face.
---
Fleur had been relieved to find that both her anxiety medication, toiletries and her make-up had been in her wardrobe - in quite large supply, in fact. Practically a life-time supply. Apparently the universe could be kind, and did realise that there wasn't just going to be a Boots or Superdrug on the local high-street that she could nip into in order to grab the essentials. Her make-up wasn't essential and she knew it, but it did help to belay her anxiety. It was almost like a mask - only her immediate family, Xavier, and those who had been to high-school with her before she'd turned seventeen had ever seen her without it, and she was pleased that it could stay that way.
She'd managed to tame her dark brown hair so that it fell into it's natural beachy waves and wing some eye-liner across her eyelids by the time Xavier had gotten bored, rapping on her doorway and asking when she'd be done. Fleur opened the door and stepped out, having to restrain laughter at the sight before her.
Supposedly, Xavier had also been supplied with toiletries as he now smelt quite strongly of the aftershave she'd bought for him for his birthday - the stubble on his chin removed before it had time to grow into the scraggly beard she teased him about. Although Xavier had donned the villager clothing that had been in his wardrobe, he'd definitely 'Xavified' it. The sleeves on his billowy shirt had been rolled up to reveal the tattoos he'd had done on the insides of his wrists when he'd turned eighteen, the trousers sat quite low on his waist with his shirt tucked into them so that his slim waist was still defined. The snake-bites on his lower lip stood out- glinting 'modern' in the darkness that was 1853, and his hair was still the mess that she associated with only him.
Xavier seemed to be viewing her with equal amusement, eyes glancing over the horrible cotton dress- that would have at least been comfortable had it not been for the built in corset that made her waist look like a real waist. Her dark hair was slung over her shoulders carelessly and her face carefully made-up as it usually was.
Where Xavier's attention seemed to fall most of all, it seemed, was her breasts however- which were pushed up by the ever-uncomfortable corset that she was made to wear. Fleur had been pretty well known for being interested in 'geek' culture - video games, books and cult films were the bulk of her shelves in the modern day, and so it wasn't uncommon at all for Fleur to be wearing only baggy t-shirts with logos and characters adorning the front; swallowing her figure whole. Xavier had already known that her legs were probably some of the best he'd ever seen - Fleur's obsession with Lacrosse, and yearly trips to Florida made sure of that - but he had no idea that she actually had boobs.
Huh.
"Eyes, up here."
Fleur watched Xavier raise his face to look at her eyes, wolfish grin sprawled across his lips.
"Sorry." He said, although he blatantly wasn't. "It's just weird to see you dressed like a woman!"
Fleur rolled her eyes, sweeping past him - pleased that her shoes had been kept the same. She guessed that if they couldn't be seen, it didn't matter whether or not anyone else had them. Fleur always found herself sporting platform heels - in a multitude of different colours and materials - because the vast majority of her friends were over six foot tall while she stood at a measly five feet and two inches. They put her up closer to a more acceptable five-seven mark, and it was worth the pain in her ankles. Her converse had been taken out of her wardrobe and replaced with shoes that looked more like potato-sack slippers than shoes, so heels were definitely preferable that day.
Xavier's long legs didn't have much trouble in catching up with her and before she could chicken out and change her mind, Fleur had opened the door and stepped out into the busy streets of... Wherever it was that they were.
One of the first things that Fleur noticed was that the air was surprisingly clean. It didn't smell particularly nice, namely of horse poop and dirt, but she couldn't deny that the absence of pollution definitely wasn't a bad thing. She seemed to remember that the industrial revolution would hit pretty soon if it was 1853, and coal burning would become pretty common place. It would be a shame, and part of her wished that she could tell them not to do it. Fleur had, however, seen enough episodes of Doctor Who to know that it wouldn't have been a very good idea, and that she'd probably just be burned or drowned for being a witch. Staying silent about their apparent time-travel was probably the best way to go about things.
Xavier offered her the crook of his arm so that Fleur wasn't torn away from him into the bustling crowds and she took it gratefully. The two of them walked relatively slowly, noting quickly the presence of american accents - which meant that they were probably in America now, making the situation even less likely to be a trick. Fleur's heart sank into her stomach and she gripped Xavier's arm a little tighter with her hand. Xavier's other arm lifted, his hand tapping hers gently in consolation before he stilled suddenly in his movements, neither of them moving as they stared over - having following the other civillian's glances - into the direction of a slight commotion. A small figure- a child, was being berated by a taller and far older person. Fleur's stomach clenched, her eye-brows sinking a little as she frowned at the sight, and the taller figure was the last straw for her. Fleur took her hand from Xavier's arm, picked up her skirts and began running - suddenly thankful that she'd always been gracious enough to be able to run in heels - towards the scene, regardless of Xavier's calling of her name behind her, or his quickened footsteps as he followed her.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Fleur shouted, ignoring the curious glances of the public following her hurried steps across the path with their eyes, "Stop!"
The person - a man probably in his late fourties, Fleur presumed by the grey of his hair and beard, turned sharply towards her, hand still raised. His green eyes glinted dangerously, but Fleur remained strong in her persuit, face stony and posture straight and assured.
"This is none of your business, my lady and should you wish to avoid harm, I would return to from where you came." He replied, his voice cold and harsh. Fleur had to resist flinching at his threat - rights for women were definitely far from perfect, apparently.
"If you should wish to avoid harm," She replied, not backing down in the slightest, "I'd back away from the child."
"The child's a thief!" He shouted suddenly, almost indignantly, and Fleur's eyes quickly flashed down to the small boy, his hair held back in a small cap and his face frightened as a small apple dangled from his fingertips.
"I don't care!" Fleur shouted back, her mind set from the view of the gaunt child's face. If an apple was all he wanted, an apple he would get- even if it was the last thing she would do. Allowing a child to die of malnutrition was not something she endorsed. "He's still just a-"
Fleur was cut off, her eyes widening as the man's hand came down hard against her face. Her head snapped to the side with the force of the slap - her own teeth colliding with her lip caused it to break and she tasted blood in her mouth within the second of it happening.
Lifting her head back to face him, the man opposite Fleur looked shocked by her lack of retreat. The fire in her eyes told to man that she was nothing if not more determined now - and he definitely didn't expect the retaliatory clenched fist to his jaw.
Nor did the crowd, by the collective gasp that seemed to line the streets.
The man recovered from the hit after a few seconds, face red from a mixture of both anger and embarrassment. He went to retaliate again, but Fleur's martial arts lessons apparently finally paid off.
She took the man's arm in her grasp, flipping him over - his body finding the floor with a resounding bang. Fleur quickly placed one of her heels on his chest, stopping him from moving up from the ground just as Xavier had managed to push through the crowd to meet her.
He looked at the floor amusedly, the blood running down Fleur's jaw seemingly unimportant to him. It wasn't that Xavier didn't care- it was simply that he knew she'd be fine; she was a woman, after all. She'd won- so the hit to the jaw would definitely be worth it in her eyes.
"Couldn't stay out of trouble for five minutes, could you?" Said Xavier, and Fleur lifted her gaze to meet his, sheepishly.
"He was about to beat a kid over an apple!" Fleur replied, scoffing. "An apple!"
Xavier's attention drifted over to the scrawny boy who was practically shivering in fright. Fleur couldn't figure out whether he was truly frightened of Xavier - whose tattoos, piercings and incredible height, alongside a foreign accent, could be quite intimidating- or whether he was just petrified by the whole situation. Probably a combination of the two.
Xavier dug into his pocket and withdrew a single dollar, dropping it onto the face of the fallen man with a grin still lining his face.
"A dollar's gotta be enough for an apple, right?" He said, looking back up to Fleur who simply shrugged. By the expression on the man's face - shocked to say the least - it definitely was.
"Why would you pay so much for just a boy?" The man spluttered and Fleur's heel pressed into his chest a little more at his question.
"She'd do it for anyone, mate." Xavier replied, before Fleur could tear into the man again. Fleur huffed, stepping away from the man and walking purposefully towards the boy - who still looked terrified. She was amazed that he hadn't tried to run yet- she couldn't deny that if she was him, she definitely would have already been running.
"You okay?" Fleur asked, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "What's your name?"
"J-Jonathan, ma'am." The boy replied shakily, his voice hoarse. Fleur's jaw clenched at the feel of his bony shoulder beneath her fingertips; it was almost unbelievable that poverty like this ever existed in America - although maybe it still did. Maybe she'd just never seen it.
Life wasn't fair.
"Well, Jonathan," She said, crouching down so that she was at the boy's level. Fleur tapped the apple that dangled from his uncertain fingertips, shaking slightly with the tremors of his hands. "This is yours now, okay? We bought it for you. And here-"
Fleur took ten dollars from the small bag that she'd been carrying and handed it to the boy - his eyes widening impossibly as he reluctantly took the note that was forced into his fingertips.
Inflation, right. Fleur suddenly remembered, boy, I'm rich!
"This means you won't need to take without asking for a while, right?"
The boy nodded frantically, looking at her with an expression that read only shock. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, before he eventually managed to swallow heavily and speak.
"Thank you." Said Jonathan, eyes watery with emotion. "Thank ya' so much."
Fleur said nothing else, simply opting to stand up and ruffle the boy's hair before striding back over to Xavier with a cheeky smile on her face.
"See?" She laughed softly, placing her hand back into the arm Xavier offered to her. "There's no trouble!"
"Sure." Said Xavier, smiling down at her, "Now let's go and get you cleaned up."
---
Friday 1 November 2013
"I've got this feeling on a summer's day when you were gone-"
"Oh no, god no." A half asleep voice murmured, a hand reaching out from the soft sea of duvet in search of an alarm on the side table next to the bed.
"I crashed my car into a bridge and watched it, let it burn. I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs-"
"Please, please, plea-"
A thump sounded throughout the room, and a sound that almost replicated that of a remote control car sounded throughout the room. Piper shot up, her hair falling messily around her pale face and her eyes widened impossibly.
"I crashed my car into the bridge. I DON'T CARE!"
"No-o!" Piper wailed, her hands rushing to her ears as she forced herself to stand up regardless of the fact that she was beginning to feel slightly dizzy from sitting up too quickly in her bed at the horror of hearing the little robotic alarm clock on wheels that would torture her relentlessly into getting out of bed.
Quickly, her dark brown eyes scanned the span of the floor, and to her dismay, there was no teasing expression in sight. The stupid little alarm clock, that Piper had thought was a fantastic idea at the time, had an increasingly annoying habit of hiding in dark spaces so that you absolutely had to get up to look for it. If she hadn't been so incredibly annoyed at the fact that she actually now had to look for it, Piper probably would have been far more impressed by the technology hidden behind the cheeky face of her moving clock.
Two minutes later, ears almost bleeding from the infuriating sound that was Icona Pop, Piper was on her hands and knees, arm reaching desperately under her bed for the little blue clock that was hiding in the far corner of the room. Being only five feet and two inches tall had it's disadvantages, sure, but Piper had never expected the retrieval of her alarm clock to fall into that category.
"Is this a bad time, or...?"
Piper raised her head in surprise and cursed as it came into contact with the underside of her bed before shuffling out and turning to face her younger brother, who was looking at her with an expression that told her that he was trying not to laugh.
Unfortunately, he wasn't succeeding.
"No." She scowled, huffing impatiently. "My cheeky little shit of an alarm clock decided to dive bomb under the bed."
"You what!?" Her brother seemingly couldn't hold back lung busting laughter any longer, and Piper's scowl widened with embarrassment.
"Connor, do me a favour? Shut up, yeah?"
Connor shook his head, surfer-long dirty blonde hair falling into his face as he continued to soundlessly laugh. After a few minutes, his shoulders stopped shaking quite so much, and he let out a cheerful sigh of relief.
"Oh man, that's great, really." He paused for a moment, wiping a fake tear away from his eye, "But seriously, go get changed in the bathroom - I'll dig out your stupidly loud clock. Why do you even like this song?"
"I don't!" Said Piper defensively, being thankful to her past-self for deciding what she was going to wear the night before, "It's a nostalgia thing- you wouldn't understand!"
"You wouldn't understand." Connor mimicked and Piper rolled her eyes, walking out of the room with her middle finger stuck up in his general direction.
Locking herself in the bathroom, Piper changed into a pair of dark jeans and a 'zombie killing tank top' before grabbing her black doc martens and slipping them on over a pair of socks. Her socks, of course, were the novelty kind - her best friend back in England had taught her that if you were going for a smart, or edgy ensemble, you should always have a contradicting piece of clothing- albeit an invisible one. Piper held that rule quite closely- her pink and white rabbit socks attested to that.
She peered into the mirror and looked at her hair forlornly. Clean? Yes. Messy? Oh yes, so very messy. She sighed heavily, looking at the mess that was beyond a hairbrush's repair and reached for the hairspray with resignation. The grunge, high volume hairstyle that she'd relied on all the way through High School back home was apparently going to keep it's reign. So much for the 'reinvention' she'd planned.
Hair as done as it was going to be, Piper moved onto the make-up she wore everyday; powder to make her translucently pale skin look as flawless as she could make it, warm gold eye-shadow and a heavy line of winged liner across the top of her eyelid, giving her eyes an almost cat-like shape.
Piper stepped away from the mirror, and instead of being irritated with the familiarity (as she had been with her hair), she felt surprisingly reassured by the fact that she looked the same as ever. Everything seemed like it had been changing around her, without her having a choice in the matter, and it was surprisingly reassuring that she, at least, could remain a constant.
"Piper!" Her brother bashed helpfully against the bathroom door with his fist. "We gotta go! It's half seven!"
Ripping the door open, Piper grinned when her brother almost fell through the doorway with the amount of weight that he'd been placing it.
"Oh yay!" She said mock-cheerfully, stepping past Connor and beginning her inevitable trip to hell. "An extra year of High School!"
The road to school was a surprisingly long one - about a half an hour journey, but Piper guessed that living in Florida must have it's disadvantages. With Ray-ban sunglasses resting on the bridge of her nose and the air conditioning turned up to full blast in her black vintage Mustang, she began to regret her decision to wear jeans. It was November - the weather wasn't supposed to be warm, and yet the temperature probably rivalled with the max temperature in July for England. She turned the volume of the music in her car to full volume, opening the windows in order to compete with the idiots that were blasting the 'Ting Tings' out of their disgustingly pink car and grinned.
Her car was her pride and joy, and had come with her all the way from England. Her window being rolled down allowed her to surprise the drivers in other cars, her steering wheel obviously on the other side to that which was expected.
As one of her louder rock songs faded off, Piper heard jeering coming from the pink-mobile sat next to her at a set of particularly annoying set of lights. Turning her head to the side a little, Piper saw aslutty, or should say 'busty' looking dark haired girl in the drivers seat, swearing at her through a window.
Piper raised her hands in mock surrender, turning back to her phone - the source of the music - with a small smile.
"You're not seriously going to listen to that bitch, are you?" Connor asked, looking particularly disappointed with the silence that had befallen their car.
"Of course not!" Piper's grin widened, "If I did that, my name wouldn't be 'Piper Adams' would it?"
"Fuck yeah!" Connor raised his fist in victory, eyes widening as he recognised the song that Piper hovered over.
"Too hardcore?" She asked, looking at Connor with a spark in her almost-black eyes. He simply chuckled in reply.
"Nope."
With that, Piper pressed the name of the song nonchalantly with a finger and swivelled her attentions back to the irate looking girl - and her suddenly present friends - in the barbie-buggy.
"Don't wanna be an American Idiot."
Piper's finger tapped against the steering wheel, lips forming the words in a nonchalant manner while her brother thrashed his head around to the beat of the music, restraining himself from sticking his head out of the window and shouting the words at oncoming traffic.
Lights turning green, Piper's mustang lurched forwards onto the wonderfully empty and large roads that screamed 'AMERICA', a healthy portion of self-satisfaction in tow.
---
"Oh shit."
Piper's teeth caught her lip in a hold as she saw the pink-beast of a car in the car-park as she reached the new school that would be the bane of her life for the inevitable future. The driver must have been in Year 12, if not in Year 13, which meant that she'd already made an enemy.
"It's 'ight." Said Connor, and Piper turned to face him disbelievingly. He simply shrugged. "It's not like you would have wanted to be friends with people like that anyway."
Pipers lips stretched into a smile and she lifted a delicate hand to mess up the birds nest of hair that sat on top of her brother's head.
"True."
She turned to leave, but stopped as her brother spoke again.
"Thanks Piper."
Piper blinked in surprise at her brother's surprisingly serious tone as she turned back around, eyebrow raised in surprise.
"For being here, y'know? I mean, you didn't have to drop out of university for me, but you did, and now you have to go back to school for a year and... Yeah. Just... Thanks."
Smiling at her brother's blurted confession, Piper's heart clenched. It was a difficult decision, dropping out of university after only two weeks of being there in favour of coming back to High School in America to learn for and pass the SATs. At the end of the day, though, Connor was the most important thing in Piper's life, and she'd do exactly the same thing again if she had to. If it meant that she'd be a little older than most of the students in this stupid school, then so be it - pride was not more important than family; even though her parents were barely ever around, they'd managed to enforce that philosophy into both of the Adams children.
"Any-time buddy." She said, punching his shoulder lightly, "Now, let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
---
There was a general flaw in novels and movies, Piper thought, that whenever a new student arrives at a new school, everyone stops to stare.
Of course, that never happened at the school Piper had attended previously. In fact, one of the people in her group of friends - his name was Peter, to be precise - had blended in so very smoothly that no-one had noticed that he had existed. If the head of year hadn't directed him towards her group of friends, it was very likely that Peter could have made it all the way through school as a wall-flower.
Unfortunately, with the supposed gossip queens of the pink-palace, (Piper couldn't yet decide what her favourite term for the monstrosity of a car was), along with her stunning model of a motor vehicle with a British number plate, it seemed that Piper had been able to attract quite a bit of curious attention without even stepping out of the car.
So when she and her brother eventually managed to step foot outside of the cool haven that was her Mustang, the whispers began.
Although her brother was quite a lot taller than her - being sixteen and quite close to sixteen, Piper felt an insane urge to protect him. She managed to restrain himself, knowing full well that her brother was a good lad, albeit a little eccentric, and would find it very easy to make friends. After all, the gossip group hadn't necessarily associated him with the attack against their heritage.
Throwing her backpack over her shoulder and locking her car, Piper shot an 'are-you-good-from-here' look at her brother. He smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up in response, so Piper simply nodded, thrusting her hands into her jeans pockets and began a swift exit from the car-park inquisition.
Almost home and away, Piper's path was blocked by someone obviously taller than her - a shadow falling onto her face told her that much. Raising her head from the ground, Piper's solemn expression converted itself into a grin - black hair and an angry expression told her that this was the operator of the fushia fuck-mobile.
"Are you like, stupid or something?"
The nasal high pitched american drawl that befell Piper's ears almost made her keel over in laughter from the outset. With a bite to the lip, Piper was somehow able to restrain herself from becoming even more of a target and to her somewhat relief, theslut girl continued before she could answer.
"What nothing to say? Are you like, foreign? Why would you put on a shit song bashing Americans if you're like, American?"
Piper noted that she may be hearing quite a lot of the word 'like' over the next few months, although she hoped to high heaven that she was wrong.
"Yes." Piper replied, coolly. "I am foreign. But I think you'll find that the really 'shit' music is the rubbish that you were blasting out your disgusting car in the middle of the highway. I like to think that my Greenday influence saved a few ear-drums."
Lie. Piper grinned internally. She knew that all she'd probably done was irritate a few Americans.
"Oh my god, you're like, hilarious." The girl said, in a horrific attempt of a sarcastic tone. "Putting on a posh accent to sound better than the populars, like, O.M.G what a retard!"
"I think you'll find that I'm not trying to impress anyone." Said Piper, amazed that someone could be both so foul and vain as the girl before her. "This, shockingly enough, is how actual English people speak."
"You're, like, British?"
Piper sighed, resisting the urge to massage her temple with her fingers.
"Yeah. Well done, Captain Obvious."
Sidestepping out of the way of the obviously incredibly stupid girl standing in front of her, Piper finally managed to find her way into school. Piper couldn't help but wonder if they were all that stupid; too dumb to even know when they'd been burned, or when someone was clearly from another country other than America.
"Talk about close minded." Piper muttered as she opened the door to the office.
---
About half an hour later, Piper had received one of the most boring introductions from reception that she'd ever had, been giving a whole truck-full of confusing documents and had been sent on her merry way to her inevitable doom. Piper had, of course, played into that doom wholeheartedly, finding herself hopelessly lost in the now empty corridors of the school. The bell had gone ten minutes earlier, and Piper, not having had a bell in school ever, had thought it was a fire alarm and was surprised when the receptionist lady had just kept talking - as though Piper were listening to every word she was saying. Yeah, right.
Finally finding the room 'J1', whatever that was supposed to mean, Piper knocked lightly before swinging the door open to find a lab.
'Wait,' Piper though, practically jumping for joy, 'not just any lab- a Chemistry lab!'
"Ah, a latecomer." A slightly older than middle-aged man approached her, large hooked nose instantly reminding her of Professor Snape from the Harry Potter series. Oh how much Piper wished she could have been in a fantasy novel instead. "Miss Adams, I presume?"
"Yes, sir." Said Piper, relieved that she'd remembered to take off her sunglasses before sitting down to talk to the receptionist lady. After all, this man looked like he was going to take no prisoners.
"Your record is... A particularly interesting one." He continued and Piper's eyes widened in surprise.
Uh oh.
"Says here you've already graduated High School, is that right?"
"Yes Sir," Piper repeated, feeling incredibly awkward, and more and more aware of the stares of her fellow classmates, although she refused to look at them. "In July this year."
"Registered here for regular classes... SAT prep, correct?"
"Yes, Sir."
"So tell me, then, Miss Adams." The teacher, Piper remembered that she'd seen him written down on her paper as 'Mr. Roberts', said, "Why didn't you pass the SATs the first time? Enlighten your fellows."
Piper quickly realised that Mr. Roberts was not a nice man. Whether trying to show her up for being late, or just because he was bored, she wasn't entirely sure, but Mr. Roberts was definitely nothing of what her favourite Chemistry professor of all time (Mr. Smith) had been.
"I didn't take the SATs before." Said Piper, cutting off Mr. Roberts before he could lead the rest of her classmates to believe any other foul lies about her. "I'm from England- just moved, in fact. I took A-Levels, passed them, and was in my first year of university when my parents decided to abandon ship and move here. They wouldn't let my brother stay with me, so I moved with him because I'm an amazing older sister. Is that enough information for you?"
Mr. Roberts looked uncomfortable, face red with the lack of ability to find any holes or discrepancies in her truthful story. Piper smirked, pleased that she'd been able to throw off the first two people to sink their teeth into her, and realised, in the same moment- with a rather sinking feeling - that the irritating receptionist lady was the only one out of the three people she'd met who had been kind to her.
God damn it.
"What, may I ask, were you studying?" Said Mr. Roberts, and as Piper raised her head to face him again, she realised that he had grit his teeth, clearly hoping that she was going to say something like 'Drama' or 'Art'.
"Chemistry." She smirked, watching as the man practically had steam coming out of his ears at the realisation that Piper might, in fact, know some things better than he did.
"Take a seat, Miss Adams." Mr. Roberts spat out, shortly, "Before I change my mind."
"Yes, sir." Said Piper, smirk still on her face as she found an empty seat and dumped herself into it.
Maybe this will be more fun than I thought.
"Oh no, god no." A half asleep voice murmured, a hand reaching out from the soft sea of duvet in search of an alarm on the side table next to the bed.
"I crashed my car into a bridge and watched it, let it burn. I threw your shit into a bag and pushed it down the stairs-"
"Please, please, plea-"
A thump sounded throughout the room, and a sound that almost replicated that of a remote control car sounded throughout the room. Piper shot up, her hair falling messily around her pale face and her eyes widened impossibly.
"I crashed my car into the bridge. I DON'T CARE!"
"No-o!" Piper wailed, her hands rushing to her ears as she forced herself to stand up regardless of the fact that she was beginning to feel slightly dizzy from sitting up too quickly in her bed at the horror of hearing the little robotic alarm clock on wheels that would torture her relentlessly into getting out of bed.
Quickly, her dark brown eyes scanned the span of the floor, and to her dismay, there was no teasing expression in sight. The stupid little alarm clock, that Piper had thought was a fantastic idea at the time, had an increasingly annoying habit of hiding in dark spaces so that you absolutely had to get up to look for it. If she hadn't been so incredibly annoyed at the fact that she actually now had to look for it, Piper probably would have been far more impressed by the technology hidden behind the cheeky face of her moving clock.
Two minutes later, ears almost bleeding from the infuriating sound that was Icona Pop, Piper was on her hands and knees, arm reaching desperately under her bed for the little blue clock that was hiding in the far corner of the room. Being only five feet and two inches tall had it's disadvantages, sure, but Piper had never expected the retrieval of her alarm clock to fall into that category.
"Is this a bad time, or...?"
Piper raised her head in surprise and cursed as it came into contact with the underside of her bed before shuffling out and turning to face her younger brother, who was looking at her with an expression that told her that he was trying not to laugh.
Unfortunately, he wasn't succeeding.
"No." She scowled, huffing impatiently. "My cheeky little shit of an alarm clock decided to dive bomb under the bed."
"You what!?" Her brother seemingly couldn't hold back lung busting laughter any longer, and Piper's scowl widened with embarrassment.
"Connor, do me a favour? Shut up, yeah?"
Connor shook his head, surfer-long dirty blonde hair falling into his face as he continued to soundlessly laugh. After a few minutes, his shoulders stopped shaking quite so much, and he let out a cheerful sigh of relief.
"Oh man, that's great, really." He paused for a moment, wiping a fake tear away from his eye, "But seriously, go get changed in the bathroom - I'll dig out your stupidly loud clock. Why do you even like this song?"
"I don't!" Said Piper defensively, being thankful to her past-self for deciding what she was going to wear the night before, "It's a nostalgia thing- you wouldn't understand!"
"You wouldn't understand." Connor mimicked and Piper rolled her eyes, walking out of the room with her middle finger stuck up in his general direction.
Locking herself in the bathroom, Piper changed into a pair of dark jeans and a 'zombie killing tank top' before grabbing her black doc martens and slipping them on over a pair of socks. Her socks, of course, were the novelty kind - her best friend back in England had taught her that if you were going for a smart, or edgy ensemble, you should always have a contradicting piece of clothing- albeit an invisible one. Piper held that rule quite closely- her pink and white rabbit socks attested to that.
She peered into the mirror and looked at her hair forlornly. Clean? Yes. Messy? Oh yes, so very messy. She sighed heavily, looking at the mess that was beyond a hairbrush's repair and reached for the hairspray with resignation. The grunge, high volume hairstyle that she'd relied on all the way through High School back home was apparently going to keep it's reign. So much for the 'reinvention' she'd planned.
Hair as done as it was going to be, Piper moved onto the make-up she wore everyday; powder to make her translucently pale skin look as flawless as she could make it, warm gold eye-shadow and a heavy line of winged liner across the top of her eyelid, giving her eyes an almost cat-like shape.
Piper stepped away from the mirror, and instead of being irritated with the familiarity (as she had been with her hair), she felt surprisingly reassured by the fact that she looked the same as ever. Everything seemed like it had been changing around her, without her having a choice in the matter, and it was surprisingly reassuring that she, at least, could remain a constant.
"Piper!" Her brother bashed helpfully against the bathroom door with his fist. "We gotta go! It's half seven!"
Ripping the door open, Piper grinned when her brother almost fell through the doorway with the amount of weight that he'd been placing it.
"Oh yay!" She said mock-cheerfully, stepping past Connor and beginning her inevitable trip to hell. "An extra year of High School!"
The road to school was a surprisingly long one - about a half an hour journey, but Piper guessed that living in Florida must have it's disadvantages. With Ray-ban sunglasses resting on the bridge of her nose and the air conditioning turned up to full blast in her black vintage Mustang, she began to regret her decision to wear jeans. It was November - the weather wasn't supposed to be warm, and yet the temperature probably rivalled with the max temperature in July for England. She turned the volume of the music in her car to full volume, opening the windows in order to compete with the idiots that were blasting the 'Ting Tings' out of their disgustingly pink car and grinned.
Her car was her pride and joy, and had come with her all the way from England. Her window being rolled down allowed her to surprise the drivers in other cars, her steering wheel obviously on the other side to that which was expected.
As one of her louder rock songs faded off, Piper heard jeering coming from the pink-mobile sat next to her at a set of particularly annoying set of lights. Turning her head to the side a little, Piper saw a
Piper raised her hands in mock surrender, turning back to her phone - the source of the music - with a small smile.
"You're not seriously going to listen to that bitch, are you?" Connor asked, looking particularly disappointed with the silence that had befallen their car.
"Of course not!" Piper's grin widened, "If I did that, my name wouldn't be 'Piper Adams' would it?"
"Fuck yeah!" Connor raised his fist in victory, eyes widening as he recognised the song that Piper hovered over.
"Too hardcore?" She asked, looking at Connor with a spark in her almost-black eyes. He simply chuckled in reply.
"Nope."
With that, Piper pressed the name of the song nonchalantly with a finger and swivelled her attentions back to the irate looking girl - and her suddenly present friends - in the barbie-buggy.
"Don't wanna be an American Idiot."
Piper's finger tapped against the steering wheel, lips forming the words in a nonchalant manner while her brother thrashed his head around to the beat of the music, restraining himself from sticking his head out of the window and shouting the words at oncoming traffic.
Lights turning green, Piper's mustang lurched forwards onto the wonderfully empty and large roads that screamed 'AMERICA', a healthy portion of self-satisfaction in tow.
---
"Oh shit."
Piper's teeth caught her lip in a hold as she saw the pink-beast of a car in the car-park as she reached the new school that would be the bane of her life for the inevitable future. The driver must have been in Year 12, if not in Year 13, which meant that she'd already made an enemy.
"It's 'ight." Said Connor, and Piper turned to face him disbelievingly. He simply shrugged. "It's not like you would have wanted to be friends with people like that anyway."
Pipers lips stretched into a smile and she lifted a delicate hand to mess up the birds nest of hair that sat on top of her brother's head.
"True."
She turned to leave, but stopped as her brother spoke again.
"Thanks Piper."
Piper blinked in surprise at her brother's surprisingly serious tone as she turned back around, eyebrow raised in surprise.
"For being here, y'know? I mean, you didn't have to drop out of university for me, but you did, and now you have to go back to school for a year and... Yeah. Just... Thanks."
Smiling at her brother's blurted confession, Piper's heart clenched. It was a difficult decision, dropping out of university after only two weeks of being there in favour of coming back to High School in America to learn for and pass the SATs. At the end of the day, though, Connor was the most important thing in Piper's life, and she'd do exactly the same thing again if she had to. If it meant that she'd be a little older than most of the students in this stupid school, then so be it - pride was not more important than family; even though her parents were barely ever around, they'd managed to enforce that philosophy into both of the Adams children.
"Any-time buddy." She said, punching his shoulder lightly, "Now, let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
---
There was a general flaw in novels and movies, Piper thought, that whenever a new student arrives at a new school, everyone stops to stare.
Of course, that never happened at the school Piper had attended previously. In fact, one of the people in her group of friends - his name was Peter, to be precise - had blended in so very smoothly that no-one had noticed that he had existed. If the head of year hadn't directed him towards her group of friends, it was very likely that Peter could have made it all the way through school as a wall-flower.
Unfortunately, with the supposed gossip queens of the pink-palace, (Piper couldn't yet decide what her favourite term for the monstrosity of a car was), along with her stunning model of a motor vehicle with a British number plate, it seemed that Piper had been able to attract quite a bit of curious attention without even stepping out of the car.
So when she and her brother eventually managed to step foot outside of the cool haven that was her Mustang, the whispers began.
Although her brother was quite a lot taller than her - being sixteen and quite close to sixteen, Piper felt an insane urge to protect him. She managed to restrain himself, knowing full well that her brother was a good lad, albeit a little eccentric, and would find it very easy to make friends. After all, the gossip group hadn't necessarily associated him with the attack against their heritage.
Throwing her backpack over her shoulder and locking her car, Piper shot an 'are-you-good-from-here' look at her brother. He smiled at her and gave her a thumbs up in response, so Piper simply nodded, thrusting her hands into her jeans pockets and began a swift exit from the car-park inquisition.
Almost home and away, Piper's path was blocked by someone obviously taller than her - a shadow falling onto her face told her that much. Raising her head from the ground, Piper's solemn expression converted itself into a grin - black hair and an angry expression told her that this was the operator of the fushia fuck-mobile.
"Are you like, stupid or something?"
The nasal high pitched american drawl that befell Piper's ears almost made her keel over in laughter from the outset. With a bite to the lip, Piper was somehow able to restrain herself from becoming even more of a target and to her somewhat relief, the
"What nothing to say? Are you like, foreign? Why would you put on a shit song bashing Americans if you're like, American?"
Piper noted that she may be hearing quite a lot of the word 'like' over the next few months, although she hoped to high heaven that she was wrong.
"Yes." Piper replied, coolly. "I am foreign. But I think you'll find that the really 'shit' music is the rubbish that you were blasting out your disgusting car in the middle of the highway. I like to think that my Greenday influence saved a few ear-drums."
Lie. Piper grinned internally. She knew that all she'd probably done was irritate a few Americans.
"Oh my god, you're like, hilarious." The girl said, in a horrific attempt of a sarcastic tone. "Putting on a posh accent to sound better than the populars, like, O.M.G what a retard!"
"I think you'll find that I'm not trying to impress anyone." Said Piper, amazed that someone could be both so foul and vain as the girl before her. "This, shockingly enough, is how actual English people speak."
"You're, like, British?"
Piper sighed, resisting the urge to massage her temple with her fingers.
"Yeah. Well done, Captain Obvious."
Sidestepping out of the way of the obviously incredibly stupid girl standing in front of her, Piper finally managed to find her way into school. Piper couldn't help but wonder if they were all that stupid; too dumb to even know when they'd been burned, or when someone was clearly from another country other than America.
"Talk about close minded." Piper muttered as she opened the door to the office.
---
About half an hour later, Piper had received one of the most boring introductions from reception that she'd ever had, been giving a whole truck-full of confusing documents and had been sent on her merry way to her inevitable doom. Piper had, of course, played into that doom wholeheartedly, finding herself hopelessly lost in the now empty corridors of the school. The bell had gone ten minutes earlier, and Piper, not having had a bell in school ever, had thought it was a fire alarm and was surprised when the receptionist lady had just kept talking - as though Piper were listening to every word she was saying. Yeah, right.
Finally finding the room 'J1', whatever that was supposed to mean, Piper knocked lightly before swinging the door open to find a lab.
'Wait,' Piper though, practically jumping for joy, 'not just any lab- a Chemistry lab!'
"Ah, a latecomer." A slightly older than middle-aged man approached her, large hooked nose instantly reminding her of Professor Snape from the Harry Potter series. Oh how much Piper wished she could have been in a fantasy novel instead. "Miss Adams, I presume?"
"Yes, sir." Said Piper, relieved that she'd remembered to take off her sunglasses before sitting down to talk to the receptionist lady. After all, this man looked like he was going to take no prisoners.
"Your record is... A particularly interesting one." He continued and Piper's eyes widened in surprise.
Uh oh.
"Says here you've already graduated High School, is that right?"
"Yes Sir," Piper repeated, feeling incredibly awkward, and more and more aware of the stares of her fellow classmates, although she refused to look at them. "In July this year."
"Registered here for regular classes... SAT prep, correct?"
"Yes, Sir."
"So tell me, then, Miss Adams." The teacher, Piper remembered that she'd seen him written down on her paper as 'Mr. Roberts', said, "Why didn't you pass the SATs the first time? Enlighten your fellows."
Piper quickly realised that Mr. Roberts was not a nice man. Whether trying to show her up for being late, or just because he was bored, she wasn't entirely sure, but Mr. Roberts was definitely nothing of what her favourite Chemistry professor of all time (Mr. Smith) had been.
"I didn't take the SATs before." Said Piper, cutting off Mr. Roberts before he could lead the rest of her classmates to believe any other foul lies about her. "I'm from England- just moved, in fact. I took A-Levels, passed them, and was in my first year of university when my parents decided to abandon ship and move here. They wouldn't let my brother stay with me, so I moved with him because I'm an amazing older sister. Is that enough information for you?"
Mr. Roberts looked uncomfortable, face red with the lack of ability to find any holes or discrepancies in her truthful story. Piper smirked, pleased that she'd been able to throw off the first two people to sink their teeth into her, and realised, in the same moment- with a rather sinking feeling - that the irritating receptionist lady was the only one out of the three people she'd met who had been kind to her.
God damn it.
"What, may I ask, were you studying?" Said Mr. Roberts, and as Piper raised her head to face him again, she realised that he had grit his teeth, clearly hoping that she was going to say something like 'Drama' or 'Art'.
"Chemistry." She smirked, watching as the man practically had steam coming out of his ears at the realisation that Piper might, in fact, know some things better than he did.
"Take a seat, Miss Adams." Mr. Roberts spat out, shortly, "Before I change my mind."
"Yes, sir." Said Piper, smirk still on her face as she found an empty seat and dumped herself into it.
Maybe this will be more fun than I thought.
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