Absit Omen RPG
Role-Play Boards => London => Muggle London => Topic started by: Genevieve García-Gamp on September 01, 2018, 11:27:00 AM
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“Genevieve!” Agatha Pendragon was holding her front door open, looking suitably surprised as she held a long cigarette holder up to her lips. She was dressed for a party. All sleek vintage dress and overly made up face. She looked like she’d stepped out of an issue of Week Weekly and then aged 40 years. From her position on the doorstep, Gen was quite certain she was looking down her nose at her. She could feel bright, judging eyes raking over her face but Gen resisted the urge to cover the quickly colouring black eye and bruise on her cheek. “We did suggest on the invitation a dress code…”
“I’m not staying, Agatha.” Gen had rarely hidden the fact that she wasn’t a fan of Barnabas Cuffe’s wife. She was snooty and had very little gage for what conversation was suitable to share and engage in and what topics to avoid. “Is he here?”
“We’re entertaining.”
“Here I was thinking you dressed up like that for him.” Gen immediately regretted the comment when Agatha’s snooty look turned into a somewhat smug, knowing smile. So, so wrong. They were 30 years her senior! She frowned and glanced past Cuffe’s perfectly put together actress wife towards the hallway. “This won’t take long.” she’d forgotten about the party. Gen had really not been thinking about her social schedule for a few weeks, too caught up with the mess with Leo. And now, she’d finally, possibly found answers that she needed to share with Cuffe immediately.
Agatha opened her mouth to give, what Gen assumed, would be a negative response. So, Gen surprised even herself by pushing past and into the house.
“Stop! Genevieve!” Agatha yelled from the door. But Gen was already down the corridor and into the large kitchen where Cuffe stood with a group of wizards.
“I need to speak to you.”
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"Merlin hex me, is that Queen G?" Basil Rathbone[1] asked looking past Barnabas Cuffe's shoulder.
Barnabas turned to match Mrs. Rathbone's blinking stare. He coughed at the sight that greeted him. It was indeed Genevieve Garcia-Gamp, known professionally and prodigiously as Queen G, and from the look on Agatha's[2] face. It was a look that told him there'd be hell to pay later.
"Genevieve," he said, plastering on a smile. "Genevieve, do you know Basil Rathbone? Basil here, she's the voice of - you know what, I think you need a drink. Basil, my love, excuse use for a moment."
As Genevieve neared, Cuffe had clocked onto more and more details. She was dressed well, as always, but her shoes were scuffed. Her make-up was impeccable, but, Merlin's wand, she had horrible bruising on her face! And she smelled of cold rains. Something was very wrong, something far more dire than a neglected RSVP.
He made a discreet gesture to Agatha that she carry on without him, as he steered Genevieve to an empty sitting room. It was a large house, too large for only two people who were rarely even home.
"Stars and garters, Genevieve, are you quite alright?" he said and turned his head, not shy about trying to get a better look at her face. His eyes widened suddenly - had Balfour Spectre had another go?
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Cuffe was about to introduce her to Madam Basil Rathbone and Gen prepared herself to politely decline and insist they move somewhere far more private. Fortunately, however, the Daily Prophet Editor and (dare she say) friend figured out pretty quickly that now wasn’t the time to play ‘I know more celebrities than you’. Between his years in the business and his wife’s own career, he would always win at that game. Not that it mattered tonight.
“No.” That was a short answer to his question. She was as far from ‘alright’ as it was possible to be right now. Her world had been flipped on its head and she was spinning with no safe place to land. It really said something about her personal relationships when the person she turned to right now was the one who’d fired her 7 years ago.
She glanced around the large sitting room. Where was that drink he’d suggested? Or an ice pack, her head was banging painfully.
“That psyhco faked evidence about Leo. Just admitted it to me before pretending I attacked her. I would have been arrested, too, if it wasn’t off the records.” Gen was speaking too fast to really be clear, blurting it all out. “He’s innocent, Barney. He was a %*^@ing scapegoat for the Ministry. We need to get him out.”
“Merlin’s balls! I turned my back on him and he was framed!” Her hands were shaking with nerves. She was still wearing the wedding ring she’d slipped on for the visit.
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Genevieve started talking and she was using far more pronouns than there antecedents. It was as if she was just picking up a previous conversation.
"This is about Leo!" he said, catching on after a spell. He quickly moved to slide the door closed, then fetched a decanter, glasses, and ice bucket from the side board. He sat down and began undoing his cuffs and rolling up his sleeves.
"You're burying the lede, Genevieve," he said as he poured two brandies. He kept his sharp grey eyes on the young media mogul, the one who not weeks ago was in his office conspiring to keep her murderous lying monster of a husband incarcerated where he belonged. Now? She had come through a storm, and seemed convinced he'd been innocent all along.
"Please, sit. Start from the beginning. What happened to your face?"
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There was so much pent up energy in Genevieve that contributed to the strange mix with the exhaustion of the day, that she didn’t want to sit. She wanted to scream and throw things and go back there and actually attack Kingstreet. Not that she would, Gen hadn’t attacked anyone in her life. A verbal dressing down or an exposé in the media were very different to a hexing or something more serious.
“That’s not the beginning.” Why the concern for her face? Leo was innocent. He’d been used and all sorts of lies had been said about him and it was tearing her apart at this very moment. A black eye and a bruised cheek was nothing compared to that.
“I went to see her, Theodora Kingstreet.” The witch forced herself to slow down but still hadn’t sat down. She never could when she was worked up. “You know she can’t even have quill and parchment in the same room as her? I have no notes! Nothing! My quick quotes quill didn’t even record her telling me how she arranged facts.” What proof did she have that any of the conversation had even happened?
“I’m in the same place as I was before but worse because I know what I’ve done to contribute to this!” It was clear that Gen wasn’t currently capable of thinking linearly, too many thoughts were rushing through her mind at the same time and she was starting to panic. “What does ‘arranging facts’ mean to you, Barney?” She didn’t let him answer immediately, her train of thought not ending. “That’s what she said. I could be certain about the facts. ‘I arranged them myself.’”
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CLANK
Barnabas dropped the heavy glass stopper onto the silver tray. He loosened his cravat with a shaky hand.
"K-Kingstreet?"
The wizened, shrewd old newspaper mage was doing his best to follow Genevieve's frantic ramblings. Did Genevieve say she'd been to see Theodora Kingstreet? She'd actually spoken to her? And something Kingstreet had said was enough to convince Genevieve that Leo Gamp was strung up.
He groped for the stopper which clattered as it evaded him between the glasses. He finally grabbed it up and shoved it into the decanter.
"Sh-shut up!" he hissed, holding a shaky finger to his lips than out in the air between them. She was pacing. They were going to be overheard.
"You ... bloody fool. You are a f-fool of the most superlative reckoning, I don't know how you've done it, but in the order of magnitude of thousands, you are a fool."
Cuffe's voice was shaking. With fear? Rage?
"You went to Azkaban. You spoke to her, you showed your face, you let her tell you things, and you came here. What possessed you!?"
He snapped the last demand.
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This was not the expected response. But, perhaps, it should have been given her old boss’ unpredictable personality. Instead of being a voice of sensibility and reasoning, the eager wizard he’d been when she’d first come to him with the problem, he resorted to calling her a fool and started talking to her as if she were crazy.
Gen was stood staring at him, her arms crossed defensively over her chest, and her brows furrowing deeply to reveal wrinkles that were usually hidden by potions and clever makeup.
“The same as what would possess anyone; the need to know the truth!” Her voice was low, quiet, but her own frustration was crystal clear in her tone. Cuffe was acting like he was mentally unstable himself. Of course, he was usually idiosyncratic and unorthodox, but why so on guard? Why was her own experience affecting him so much?
“What the hell is your problem, Cuffe? Did you not hear me? She arranged the facts. She framed my husband!” Where was her drink? And some ice. Her face was aching painfully, a vivid reminder of her day’s activities. “I came here for help and advice, Barney, not to be called a fool when this whole mess has destroyed my family!”
But the pain in her face was causing her eyes to water and Gen shook her head. She didn’t know any damned healing spells or anything to just ice it. She may as well have been a muggle.
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Cuffe, with effort, calmed himself after seeing that he'd been too unkind to Genevieve. Who was she to him? Once, he'd been here benefactor, her captain. Years later, they'd found an edgy balance as rivals. And now? There was no affection, they rarely saw eye-to-eye; and yet here they stood at the thin end of a wand. Here he was, concerned for her.
From his breast pocket, Cuffe withdrew a berry-colored handkerchief. He wrapped up a dozen ice cubes, tied it up and offered it to Genevieve.
"I'm sorry, dear." He said, with a wincing apology. They weren't in his office. She was not here in her capacity as Editrix of the Witch Weekly and he was not her host as the Editor of the Daily Prophet. They were ... allies.
"But please, lower your voice. I haven't told Agatha -," he shrugged in hem-haw, then waved his fingers.
"This is not for publication. Be that as it may, I am not at all fine with your having come here. Not after seeing her. You should have spoken to me first. So I could prepare you. And then stop you."
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Was she being loud? Had she shouted or just spoken with too much force? Since when did Cuffe have an issue with verbal outbursts? Gen bit her tongue and steadied her breathing as she took the ice and raised it to her cheek and eye.
“Stop me?” There as an incredulousness to her tone. How on earth did the old crust bucket plan to ever have stopped her? Contacting Azkaban himself and warning them of her impending arrival and blackmail? Did he not realise how serious this was? Of course, it didn’t affect him, so why bother? Quieter now, so as to not further agitate him, Gen continued, “Why would you want to stop me, Barney?”
Clearly, Genevieve was starting to calm, despite there evidently being some nervous energy affecting her. The ice was pressed against her face and she dropped down onto one of the sofas.
“And I was invited Barney. To show off to all of your wife’s friends, no doubt.” Goodness Gen didn’t like Agatha. But then, she didn’t actually like Cuffe. Respecting someone didn’t mean that you needed to like them.
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Oh, she was impossible. Perfectly impossible. He drank deeply from his own glass of brandy. The cocktails had already been flowing at the get-together, but Genevieve was on his last, raggedy nerve. Upon further reflection, it would astonish him to note the colorful array of feelings from fondness to terror that Genevieve Garcia-Gamp had managed to inspire in him.
"Merlin, save us, we can litigate the finer points of RSVP some other time, perhaps when my life is at its natural end and I wish for death to come swiftly and sweetly, but for the sake of all that's sane in this world, why?," he hissed, pleading.
"Everything that witch says, Gen? Genevieve? It's a lie. Trying to make sense of Kingstreet? Now? It's like trying to do divination with dog shit constellations in the park! There's nothing there but foul, fly-riddled, rubbish. You can't trust her. And now you can't trust yourself. She's in your head."
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He wasn’t listening. He was so consumed with his own ridiculous fascination with Kingstreet that he wasn’t listening to what she’d had to say. It was deeply frustrating.
“She isn’t in my head!” The Witch Weekly Editor hissed back, her eyes tearing. Was it the bang to her head, the shock of the day or just pure emotion? “Just listen!” She wanted to scream, but instead she took a gulp of her own newly acquired drink.
“Why else would she have said it?” She wanted to hard to believe it was true, that Leo was innocent. “He’s been rotting in that prison for 13 years, what if she set him up? What if the evidence was planted? Faked? She’s a lunatic!” Gen’s mind was spinning and now a few tears had fallen.
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Just listen. At the command, he again resolved to make himself calmer. His immediate reaction to the name 'Kingstreet' spoken in his home was to pack his bags and try for Reykjavík, but what's done was done. Gen was always going to do what she wanted, and he realized now that even if she had consulted him, he wouldn't have been able to deter her.
The Queen G, she needed the truth. She'd looked for it in the absolute worst place, but here they were.
"I'm sorry." He never apologized. He was going to use them all up if he wasn't careful.
"Start over. What did ... she say? You've asked yourself all those questions before and moved on with your life. Why are they haunting you again? What did she do?"
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“How can you really move on from that?” Roughly, Gen wiped her cheeks free of tears and once more lifted the ice to the quickly formed bruise. There was too much going on at once, too many thoughts and feelings rushing chaotically through her mind to stop her from thinking clearly. It was as if a 3-year-old Dante had taken a quill and ink and made as many whirring lines as possible with the ink. Only they’d filled her brain rather than crisp clean parchment.
“You just imagine your Agatha.” As instructed, Gen was speaking with a lowered voice, but her emotion was dripping from her voice. “You imagine she is arrested one day and it turns out she’s a murderer. Not only that, but she’s been at it for years. Murder, torture, anything else the Ministry fancy accusing her of.”
“Could you ever really move on from that and accept it? Truly? Without ever questioning it if doubt resurfaced?” No one understood. No one would ever understand. The law said Leo was a monster. She’d was married to the monster. End of story.
“‘The facts speak for themselves,’ she said, ‘I arranged them myself.’” What else could it mean? “I tried to get more out of her but she threw herself off her chair and started screaming for help. She made it look like I’d attacked her. But with what? I’d hardly smuggled my wand in down my knickers, had I? Guard burst in and sent me flying into the wall. He actually thought that’s I’d gone for her!”
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Leave it to an editor to inspect his every word and critique it in real time! Was it a defense mechanism? It caused the most suffering look on Barnabas's face. He was most certainly not going to play the pointless game of putting himself in Gen's fashion forward footwear. He wanted to know what had happened.
How do you tell someone in the throes of a maelstrom that you just ... didn't ... care? Alright, he thought, that sounded awful. But he was sane (marginally so) only because he was able to turn the empathy off. Else the daily flood of horrible news would be enough to consume. So whatever Genevieve was feeling, Cuffe had no time for. Callous, sure. Practical? Mightily. That didn't mean he wasn't concerned.
'Blast it, Cuffe. Look sympathetic,' he coached himself. And Genevieve mercifully got back to the point.
His eyes widened. It was worse than he'd imagined! He'd been picturing smuggled whispers through a locked door, not an unobserved face-to-face meeting. He held up his hands.
"My dear, she's very clearly gone the rest of the way mad. And even before - I was in the court room both when she was first convicted and then when she was released - every word she says, it can't be believed at face value. Everything is a manipulation. Y-you should forget the whole thing. Obliviate yourself if you have to. She wanted to hurt you. And has she has."
Cuffe drank again, shakily, and his gaze went to a thousand meters. Kingstreet was capable of anything. If she wanted harm, she'd have it, and in the most cold-hearted, personal way.
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It was with a sickening realisation that Gen came to be aware that she had deeply misjudged Barnabas Cuffe. She’d actually thought he might help, that he cared for the truth. But instead, he clearly had some unresolved issues with the lunatic witch and he wasn’t willing to see past it. He was narrow minded and clearly too vexed by the situation to see clearly. She was disrupting his party. Someone might hear her.
“I’ve been hurting since my husband was thrown into Azkaban.” Gen said simply, dabbing her eyes with the handkerchief and standing up. She placed her barely touched brandy on the side table and refused to make eye contact with her former boss.
Making a steady pace to the door past him, Gen handed him the ice and shrugged, still not looking up. “You should forget the whole thing. Enjoy your party.” There really was no point in pressing her point. He wouldn’t listen. No one would listen. The world thought that Leo Gamp was a killer and a Death Eater and the only person who knew any different was his wife who’d written a book all about finding out that he was a killer and a Death Eater. She’d hammered the nail in Leo’s cold damp North Sea coffin and she was clearly going to have to live with that.
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"Wait!" he said a little louder than he might have wanted to. Cuffe's next works were spoken as he chased after Genevieve. He caught her hand, but let go almost as quickly. He spoke in a whisper, his eyes worried.
"Where are you going? What are you going to do? Bleeding mercy, Genevieve, I -"
She could leave if she wanted to, and he might have liked to forget about all this, but their fates were tied in this. That, and he didn't want to see her killed, or worse.
"Please, don't go. I'm trying to tell you, whatever you think happened up there, whether your husband is innocent or not, that because... " he paused and tried to speak slowly for his own benefit. He ran a hand through his wild white hair.
"Because you have been to see Theodora Kingstreet, your life could be in danger. And should the worst be true and he's been wrongly convicted, you'll do no good to anyone dead."
-
Unfamiliar fingers grabbed her hand and Genevieve was quick to spin around, her gaze now angry. A moment ago, he’d clearly not wanted to help. No one could hear them, she needed to forget it all. So why was he now grabbing her and telling her to wait? what did it seriously matter to him where she chose to go now and what she chose to do?
“Have you gone all the way to mad?” Was this a joke now? Did he intend to torture her for disrupting his nice sophisticated party with his nice actress wife and fake friends? Why had she even thought to come here? Who else did she have to seek help from? Kurby was probably at the end of his tether with her and Gen didn’t really want to destroy the relationship she’d somewhat forced him into with her. She didn’t have any real friends. It was lonely being Queen G.
“Dead? I went to see her locked up in Azkaban, Cuffe. All magical chains and forbidden from even being in the same room as a quill and parchment. She’s mentally unstable but she doesn’t have a hope in hell of killing me.” Gen shook her head, hand landing on the doorknob. “You’ve lost it if you think that old bat can do anything to me.”
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Barnabas just stared at her, his expressive face frozen and aghast. He began to realize there really was no way to explain what Kingstreet was capable of; she was beyond fathoming. Her depravity and imagination were uniquely harrowing, and to convince Genevieve, he'd have to tell her what Kingstreet had done to him, and that was simply not possible.
Genevieve was brave. Too brave. She was going to get herself killed. She was going to get him killed.
He held up his hands again, trying to emphasize he wasn't her enemy on this.
"Alright, then I've lost it. You're right, I'm a drafty old man. Just, humor an old codger and be careful."
Maybe Genevieve was right, maybe the Ministry of Magic had truly found a way to lock Kingstreet up properly. But he was still spooked, loathe to have Genevieve running off into the night.
"Will you stay for awhile? We can t-try to make sense of this bloody &$@'ing nightmare?"
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Anger, stress, tiredness and frustration were all getting too much for Gen. First Cuffe thought she was insane for going to Azkaban, he wanted to silence her. Now, he was telling her how she was no longer safe and that she needed to stay here to discuss how to handle it. Painfully confused, the witch lifted her hand off the doorstep and frowned at him. Her eyes were glistening with frustrated tears.
“Why? You’ve just said it yourself, Cuffe, I’m a fool.” A fool for what, Gen still didn’t know. Had she been a fool all those years ago for believing the lies of aurors and lawers? Was she a fool now for believing Kingstreet now? She wanted desperately to have someone to talk it through with, but Cuffe may not have been the person for that.
“It’s my ^*&@ing nightmare, not yours.”
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"Bloody, shambling hell, witch!" Cuffe raised his voice louder than he'd want at this moment.
"Do you want my -" he bit back another shouting oath, "do you want my help or don't you? What ...! What ..."
To be frank, Genevieve's tears was unsettling to Barnabas. Whatever their relationships past or present, there was something comforting about Genevieve Garcia-Gamp's eternal unbreakableness, her unassailable bulwark of confidence. To see her a bit crumbly, well, it made the ground unsteady.
"What is wrong with you?" he finally managed to beg with curled pleading fingers
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“What is wrong with me?!” Genevieve was incredulous, staring at Cuffe as if he’d just grown a second nose and horns. “Have you taken a hex to the head, Barney?” As if that would get him to help her any more than before! Too many thoughts were swimming through her mind, but now the overwhelming one was that she’d come to the wrong place for help. It was depressing to think this was about the only place she could come, however. Kurby didn’t want to hear any more of the saga, especially that she now believed Leo may have been innocent. No one wanted to hear constantly of the murderous husband of the woman you were sleeping with.
“12 years ago, my husband was arrested and sent to Azkaban for being a Death Eater. He was my husband who I’d known since I was 15 years old! There were absolutely no signs that he had ever been that person to do those terrible things. He wasn’t an angel but he was a good person. Now, there is a chance that he was innocent, Barney! But I believe he did those things! I kept our son from him and I wrote such horrible things in my book.” Gen closed her eyes, trying to breathe through the emotion. Her head hurt, but not as much as her heart was hurting.
“If this is true, Barney, if Leo is innocent, I not only abandoned my husband, but I stopped my son from ever knowing his father.”
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"I read the interview," Cuffe seethed, referring to the orchestrated story where Gen gave Thursby a manipulative tell-all.
He knew her sorry story, he knew it thrice over. It was a terrible tragedy. It was a tangle of lies and betrayals and may very well go through to the highest rungs of government and now had reached the most depraved minds in the shallowest grave.
The old wizard shrugged, sighed, and deflated watching Genevieve and the intensity of her sorrow. He remembered that first day back in his office where they'd hatched a plan to keep Enid Jingleberry at bay, to keep the public opinion on Genevieve's side should the worst happen. What piece was Cuffe missing?
He rested one hand on his hip, and ran the other through his wild white hair. He paced away, unsure exactly of what to say next. He eventually took a stance leaning against his desk.
"Are you an honest person, Genevieve? At least, are you honest with yourself?"
-
“I read the interview,” Cuffe told Genevieve plainly and the Witch Weekly Editor found herself wanting to scream in his face about why he’d asked her what was wrong with her. Wasn’t it glaringly obvious what was wrong? She was freaking out and he was *#^*ing useless!
His question; that stumped her. Gen stared at Cuffe for a moment, her eyebrows furrowed and brow creased as she thought over his words. Right now, she wasn’t going anywhere and her eye was still hurting so she snatched up the ice once more and put it against the quickly forming bruise.
“You know I am, Barney. I’ve made a career out of being too honest.” Some people called it a blatant disregard for privacy, Gen called it an ability to sniff out hippogriff shit and only write the truth. In her time as Editor, Witch Weekly had built a reputation for no holds barred exposés and wittily written articles which handed the messy truth on a platter to its readers.
“The only lie I’ve ever told about any of this is that I believe he did any of those things he stood trial for. He could be nasty, Barney, but he wanted to save people, not kill them.”
-
Cuffe watched as Genevieve moved about the room, no less distress but at least a little less likely to rake his eyes out, at least to his estimation. He prepared himself to offer the only advice he had left, but the door handle began to slowly turn. Cuffe rose from his leaning to catch whoever had wandered away from the dinner party. But instead of a wayward guest it was his stately wife, the perfectly aged Agatha Pendragon.
"Agatha, I'm sorry but -"
"Oh don't worry, Barnabas, we can all hear you," she purred. She slipped her slight frame through the door, her vintage, velvet 1920s dinner coat hugging her in the move desirable silhouette from that era. Her wrists full of braclets quietly jangled.
"But I did you two the favor of a muffling charm. Oh. Darling." Agatha seemed to take notice of Genevieve for the first time, even though she knew perfectly well the state of her from when they'd met at the door. She glided over closer and laid the absolute gentlest hand on her shoulder, her face a look of pity.
With a blink, she turned her glare to Cuffe.
"Barnabas, what in heaven and earth have you said to her? Genevieve, has he been a blunt instrument? You can't let him do that."
The old wizard massaged his aching temple. This was all he needed. If Agatha found out about Theodora Kingstreet - and she may have already from eavesdropping - this did not bode well for domestic peace. But what if ... there was no love lost between his wife and his, well, whatever she was, Genevieve. What if Agatha could deign not to be so condescending she might be able to help.
-
Daddy Cuffe, for the first time ever, seemed to have nothing to say immediately. That was when the door opened and in walked Mommy Cuffe, informing them that everything had been heard and she’d put a muffling charm on the door. Gen was past the point of caring what people did and didn’t know about any of this. Her personal life had been laid bare for all to see too many times to remember; people loved to hear about the catastrophes of other’s lives. So did it really matter what their friends had heard? Perhaps Gen could be the party piece and prance around singing about her sorry tale?
Gen’s gaze snapped immediately to the hand. Why had Momma Cuffe AKA Barney’s stick up the arse vintage wife just placed a hand on her shoulder? Why was Barney’s stick up the arse vintage wife pretending she cared? Was this because she was in front of her dear husband? Did he know how unwilling she’d been to give Gen access to their home and to him?
“I need a blunt instrument, Agatha.” Gen frowned and then flinched when it hurt. “Wow. Now I feel like I’m 16 again telling Mamá and Papá that I was dropping out of Hogwarts for a boy. There’s Daddy all angry and not sure what to say and Mommy a little clueless about what’s going on.”
-
Agatha was on the prowl. Barnabas needed a drink. There was little to be done when his dear wife involved herself. What had she heard that had made her coo over Genevieve and put on this little domestic show? More brandy in his glass, more brandy down the hatch.
"What I was trying to say, Genevieve," Barnabas interjected, "is that a witch or wizard may only control their own process. The outcome, whatever it might be, will be what it will be. You'll twist your own head off trying."
Agatha had gone silent but steady at Genevieve's side, her heavily lidded eyes in calm regard of her husband's testimony. For all his ambition and savvy duplicity, for all his pushing and shoving and eccentricity, he was a good man trying to do good.
Barnabas caught her staring. She arched an eyebrow indicating that he should carry on by all means, dear.
"You did your best. You were honest. What more could you have possibly done?"
He sat down again.
"He's a stopped clock," Agatha said. "Right, now and again."
-
Cuffe’s wife was in the room and the old goat started to talk in riddles. Agatha just stared him out, causing Cuffe to continue. But his words didn’t make the witch feel any better. She, too, dropped back down, collapsing into an armchair as if all of the life had been zapped from her. She closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. The nightmare had begun a month previous and it only continued to get worse, more detailed, more complicated.
“He isn’t right, though, Agatha.” Gen finally said after a few minutes slumped in the chair with her eyes closed. She looked up at the witch whom she’d never really liked at all. “I could have done everything differently but I didn’t.” She took a long swig of her drink, feeling a new desperation to drown herself in alcohol. “What would you do? If Barney was arrested? They tell you he’s a murderer. The entire world tells you he’s a murderer. Talk us through it, Agatha. Pretend it’s one of your shows, if you like.”
-
Agatha's heavily-lidded control wavered only a flicker as Genevieve went on the attack. Barnabas's own reaction was less subtle.
"Foul play and you know it," he scoffed. "You know absolutely bloody well what I'm trying to tell you."
"Gently, Barnabas, she's clearly traumatized..." Agatha said steadily, although something about her tone was disingenuous. Barnabas waved his wife off interrupting, then laid his hand in his wild white hair.
"No, no no, Agatha wife of mine, she knows what she's doing. Exactly what she's doing. She asks for help, help's provided - at some cost, you know - , and then, suddenly I'm a horrible man and how dare I, and how could I possibly understand!? It's &$@^ing exhausting!"
Agatha arranged her robes. Barnabas was off and cooking.
"Do you really want to know what she'd do, Genevieve? If something was about to be revealed about me that would ruin us? If the lies were all queued up and ready to come tumbling down in an avalanche of excrement and shame? What would the Mrs do? Hm? What did you do, Agatha, wife of mine?"
The old witch rolled her eyes.
"Really? We're doing this now?"
Barnabas was on her feet, yelling in equal parts at both witches.
"She sent the children to visit her mother in Húsavík, deposited the antiques in Gringotts, burned our home to the ground, and paid the fecking extortion demand! Because that's what you do! You do what you must to survive!"
Agatha stood abruptly. "I can't believe you. I can't believe you've just told her this."
Barnabas rounded on Genevieve and hissed at her.
"Because you don't toy around with Theodora Kingstreet."
-
The baiting meant for Agatha had clearly caught the wrong fish. Barnabas Cuffe, more like a shark than a mere placid fish, suddenly went for her, angry and frustrated. Gen had clearly flicked a switch in him and she was no longer willing to play by her rules of engagement. But she needed the harsh shark like Cuffe. If Gen had wanted mollycoddling, she’d never have dreamed of turning up at this doorstep tonight.
Daddy Cuffe was off.
In any other situation, Gen would have had a glass of wine in hand and settled in to enjoy the show. But this was aimed at her and tonight she was an emotional wreck. Cuffe and his annoying wife were scared of Kingstreet even now when she was living in a cell on a rock in the middle of the North Sea. She wasn’t dangerous anymore.
“But why, Barney?” Gen shouted back, deeply exasperated. “You keep saying this but what can she actually do? I’m not scared of some psychotic nut job quill pusher who’s behind bars! She’s already had my husband locked up for life for something I truly still can’t believe he did.” Tears were once more rushing back and Gen was starting to lose her control over her emotions. “She can do her worst now and it will still never be as bad as the knowledge that I turned my back on him and let him rot in there for 13 years!”
Sat alone in the armchair, Gen began to sob, great racking sobs as tears flooded down, her hand over her mouth and nose. It wasn’t fear that caused her tears, it was an overwhelming guilt and a crushing sadness over what she’d lost and given up.
-
Barnabas spun away in a tumultuous effort to contain his anger and frustration, but immediately whirled back for another go. Genevieve now believed Leo Gamp, her murderous, vindictive, threatening, violent - ! She believed he was innocent? That he'd been framed! She-!
But before the irate editor could shout another word, he was stop-stayed by a single raised finger from Agatha who looked suddenly shocked. She stared at Genevieve wide-eyed.
"You... you've had contact with ..."
Agatha had clearly not heard as much as she claimed she had. She'd been stunned that her husband would bring up Kingstreet's name in their home, revealing to the editor of the Witch Weekly that they'd had dealings, but she didn't have time to process why. Her silencing finger held up to her husband began to shake.
"Kingstreet? How? Why? What has she done, Genevieve?" Agatha drew back and furrowed her brow, her own anger creeping in. "Why have you come here?"
Barnabas defied the silence and interjected in a bizarre attempt to defend Genevieve.
"She couldn't have known."
-
"You... you've had contact with ..." Agatha asked, making it known that she wasn’t as in the known as she’d made it seem. Gen wiped her eyes with her jumper sleeve, looking up. Why the hell was Cuffe’s wife getting angry now? At a loss, and overwhelmed with her own guilt and emotion, Gen’s eyes danced between the pair, red and tired.
“What could I not have known?” They were going around in painful circles and neither wix seemed willing to expand in a coherent manner. “Why in Godric’s bollocks are you scared of her? Why would you burn your house down?” She waved her hand at Agatha, shaking her head. “You’re talking in damned riddles!”
-
Agatha got to her feet in a snap, an attempt to compose herself. She looked down on Genevieve.
"I think you should go."
She then looked over the Barnabas as to assign him the task of making sure the job was done. Soon she was at the twin handles of the double doors.
"Agatha!" Barnabas protested. She looked at her husband over her shoulder.
"I trusted you. You told me this was over." With that, she left. Even before the door closed, the remaining despondents could hear her melodic Wireless voice ringing and singing apologies and greetings to the guests, as if nothing had happened at all.
Barnabas was left standing deflated in front of a tear-streaked Genevieve.
"Well, &@$#."
-
Dumbfounded, Gen stared at the double doors even after Agatha Pendragon had departed with such drama. No wonder the witch was on the wireless as an actress. It wasn’t, clearly, the time to be commenting to Cuffe about his ridiculous wife. The old fart knew her feelings about his spouse, just as Agatha had made her feelings of Genevieve more than clear over the years. They were not friends and they never would be. But did that now make Cuffe someone that she could no longer rely upon?
The Daily Prophet editor cursed and the Witch Weekly editor closed her eyes for a moment, taking in a deep breath.
Being sat here was doing her no good. The circles and riddles and Cuffe’s refusal to be generous with the truth was only sending her further over the edge to a loss of sanity. Gen pushed herself up from the chair and frowned at her former boss and mentor, heaving a sigh.
“When you’re ready to tell me why I have just &%*@d up, you know where I am. She admitted that she arranged the evidence, Barney. I can’t leave him in there to rot.” Slowly, like a woman weight down by the world, Genevieve headed to the double doors that Agatha had just departed from.
-
"Wait."
It wasn't the first (or second) time the old man had implored the younger witch to stay. Who could blame her for trying to leave, though? Not a minute seemed to pass in this house that didn't bring with it messages that Genevieve was unwelcome. Cuffe felt terrible. He felt worried, shocked, off-his-foot, and terrible.
"You don't have to go. You..."
He wrung his hands.
"Kingstreet has ways. I don't understand it, but even locked up in Azkaban, she's dangerous. There's no way to know if what she says is true. If you ask me, I'd wager she doesn't even believe objective truth exists. But that's not the point. The point is ... "
The point that he'd missed over and over tonight.
"Leo. Whatever happens with your husband, the truth will come out and you, eh, won't be left out in the cold. In it to the end. Dear Merlin."
A bit shocked he'd said it, he found a glass and drank from it.
-
Once again Cuffe asked her to stop. Gen paused with her hand on the doorstop for possibly the third time that evening. She turned to him, looking decidedly dejected. Gen may have presented herself as an overly chaotic witch with a flair for the dramatic, but she had never been out to break up a marriage. She knew too well how that felt. Getting in the middle of Cuffe and his wife was well beyond her intentions in coming here.
Words spilling from Cuffe’s mouth did have Gen frozen as she stared across the room at him. The old bastard who loved to yell and throw things at his staff actually had a heart. Gen had no clue how she’d managed to find his soft spot, but to tell her that she wasn’t alone? Well, it meant more than she could explain.
“Thank you, Barney.” She muttered, looking past him towards the window. “I’ve got some investigating to do.” As if anticipating his response, Gen put a hand up. “I’ll be careful. Tell you wife not to get her knickers in a twist. I’ll leave you to it.” With that, pulled the door open and left the room. Partygooers milled around the ground floor and stared in surprise as Queen G, reentered the kitchen, her face red from streaked tears.
Despite the inner turmoil, Gen waved her hands about, gesturing angrily.
“Party’s too good for a Queen, he says! Shouldn’t have invited me should you, you old bastard?!” she stuck a middle finger up at Cuffe through the open door, turned and stalked confidently through the entrance hall. A flick of her wand and the front door burst off its hinges to allow for her exit. “See ya Daddy!”
Well, one must keep up appearances, even when in distress.
-
And things were back to normal. A strained, struggling attempt at the acerbic combative normal that existed between Genevieve Garcia-Gamp and Barnabas Cuffe. It was a jarring transition, but somehow comforting. Although Genevieve calling him 'Daddy' was becoming a disturbing new motif...
He laid his palm to his face and braced himself to return to his evening.
Fin