Approx. 1000 hours


"... so I'm thinking crêpes," he continued conversationally, letting them into the flat, "unless you'd prefer savoury?"

It was a Monday and both his flatmates were at work, or something close to work, so they had the place to themselves at least. If you didn't count the the cat or the birds or the spider that lived in the open kitchen.

He had asked Natalie over to cook for her - something he promised when they parted at the weekend. All her favourite foods, the dishes and desserts he often made when they were rooming together in New York.

A pretext, really, for catching up after their brief reunion[1] in Craeky Hob.

Virgil went straight through the living area to deposit his shopping in the kitchen. He had run into Nemo on his way back from the grocers.

He chatted all the while, keeping his tone light. "Have you had your coffee yet? Or could I put on some tea?"
 
Dante came creeping out of his bedroom - cautious at first, until she recognised Natalie and quickly trotted up to her to say hello. Well, to swan about her feet.

1.	20th April - Bite your tongue, Swallow your tears

Natalie dropped easily into a squat in her heeled boots just beyond the flatmates' mat to greet Dante. She bumped her head against her waiting hands, the both of them exchanging firmness and familiarity. Natalie loved how each cat was her own little person, with different relationships with everyone they met.

"Crepes and coffee sounds great," she replied to Virgil in the kitchen. She'd had some earlier and would be happy to have some more - Virgil took such care in making it, she'd eat really anything he offered her. She'd been spoiled living with him in New York, even if the domesticity wasn't the best thing for their friendship. But that could have also been the stress of their jobs there. They were better here, she thought as she stood up and shed her things at the door.

She joined Virgil in the kitchen, padding over in her Starry Night socks. If you didn't know what had happened in the last two weeks to these two troubadours, you'd see no clues in their countenance about what great mountains and valleys carving their way through their landscapes, changing their stories, elevating and dividing, reshaping. Natalie had related the entire tale to Dido, animated, with rises and falls, and impersonations. Her anguish over seeing Virgil de-limbed was vivid and well-told, and she exuded particular disdain for Thomas Daylight.

She'd called her mother, too, because it was the right thing. The telephone was down in the lobby of her building, tucked away in the wall with an accordion door you could close yourself into. Natalie had been so angry about the life-long lie, and cried because she couldn't sink into her mom's soft lap and smell. Vague wishes to see each other soon were exchanged. Cassandra Morrow didn't ask for forgiveness, but Natalie acquiesced to hear the 'whys'. Now that she'd met Thomas Daylight, she understood why Cassie hadn't wanted him.

But Natalie and Virgil had yet to reunite properly. He'd featured in her dreams each night in ways he never had before. It felt like something had changed in the fear they'd be taken from one another. In the kitchen, she found him at the pantry cupboard and reached for his recently completed hand again, interrupting him with total familiarity, and rolling back his sleeve.

"Have you tried playing yet? Your violin?" she asked. A musician's question for another musician. Her own instrument was in its shapely case by the door with her other things.

He let her take his hand, casually, whilst using his other to finish picking out a few things from the pantry. A little wandless magic. It never seemed like showing off when Natalie was here.

"I managed a couple of ditties." Virgil turned to her with a twitch of the lips - he was still wearing his sunglasses and she was all amber tones. "Everything in working order."

The first time was after his talk[1] with Yavin, and he had played to calm himself. Then he had gone to parents' house to play in the music room there, all Sunday afternoon, instead of going to see Robin or Athena like he had planned.

He interlaced his fingers with hers and brought her knuckles to his lips. "I wrote you something to sing, we can play it later. If you like."

There was something, a tension between them, pleasant but inscrutable nonetheless. Virgil wanted to hug her again - not like they had at the cemetery. He wanted to hug her until there wasn't even air between them.

Instead he let go of her hand to remove his glasses and scarf, so that she came to him in full colours.

"Floor picnic?" he hung the scarf around her neck. "Put on a record."

Virgil tried not to think about what Yav wanted him to do in regards to Natalie. It hung about the periphery of his intentions - the kind of thing that would change their friendship, and he wasn't certain about that. But maybe their friendship was already changed.

It felt different.

1.	21st April - Ready to Suffer and Ready to Hope

Virgil's arm was the same as it had been a few days before, barely changed at all, no sign of injury or pain. He had the same callouses on his fingertips she did, the same neat short fingernails they needed for the music they both liked to make. The stack of gold bracelets was the only poetic reference to the cuff the goblins had put on there to keep all his guts from falling out.

It would have been better if they'd both had a scar to show for it. They could mark their adventures like notches in a tree, otherwise how would people know what marvelous things they'd suffered through? Natalie's patched cleft lip showed more character than Virgil's perfect wrist. Her mind would have stayed here a long time but Virgil snapped her out of it with forward progress towards a meal. Better he do so than a growling stomach.

She took full ownership of the scarf and agreed wordlessly. She'd been in charge of his turntable before at a party a long time ago, right here in this house, but she knew he had better records in his room. She crept off towards Virgil's door and Dante hurried ahead of her, hoping she'd open her a window.

Virgil's room was lush and sophisticated to Natalie, with fuzzy rugs, lots of sun, and a big mirror on feet, the kind you could flip and spin. His clothes and smell were everywhere. She noted little fragments of him and the other people he'd been with, but she didn't look very long. She knelt down and started going through the records, smiling when she found the odd whale song. She didn't take too long because choosing wasn't as good as listening.

Out in the living room, she set the music on. Edith Piaf, a French woman with a sad voice trying to sound happy, but the beat was lively like bombs were falling far away and nothing could be done about it. Natalie sat on the floor against the couch and let her head fall back on the cushion.

"Did you tell your parents?" she asked.

Edgar and Angela, as Virgil called them, seemed to both love and ignore him. She wondered what they would possibly think about all this.

He lit up as he got a start on their late breakfast. Wand in hand and cigarette dangling off his mouth, Virgil fell into the unthinking task - a bowl of batter whisked itself, a moka pot burbled to life. The familiar workings of these charms soothed him.

Edith Piaf's voice warbled into his consciousness, and he glanced over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Natalie settling down.

"No," he answered with a shrug and turned to plate their crêpes. "Not really. They know I was involved in some goblin business or other, I got to Kreeva through a goblin who does prop work at Stardust."

It was neither here nor there, what his parents knew. He put out his smoke.

By now Virgil had been keeping so many dangerous secrets that it hardly seemed worth the trouble, even if Creaky Hob didn't fall under his Unspeakable's oath. Why worry them?

"What about you?" he gestured with his wand, a delicate flick of the wrist, and followed their floating plates to the living area. "Did you manage to catch your mum up on everything?"

As lightly as it was asked, V could not forget Cassandra's reaction[1] to her daughter's predicament. It had irked him at the time. It still did.

He dropped to the floor, handing Nemo a mug and casually untucking a lock of her hair from the scarf.

1.	14th April -Mother's Words Made Scavenging Birds

Natalie was content to sit, wait, and listen. The sound of Virgil's cookery cut gently through the music, and Natalie zoned out and into it. She was preoccupied in the waiting, thinking of Thomas Daylight, how she'd felt in the cell, how she'd cried all messy. She took a breath when Virgil came over, like she was waking up.

Virgil touched her hair and she took the cup. They had always been so familiar with each other, hand in hand, draping themselves over each other. Natalie had always felt the affection was completely platonic, the two of them acting defiantly like strange little siblings each orphaned in different ways. She swallowed a lump in her throat and Virgil's question brought acid.

"She acted angry, like that thing: oh, so help me, if you get yourself killed you'll be in so much trouble. She's convinced she had a vision and that this was why she wanted me to stay after Christmas. That she was right all along. She thinks you're a bad influence."

Natalie looked at the coffee in her hands. "She was defensive about him. Like," her lip curled, "like, she knew she was supposed to be remorseful, but she still had to be right. She's so fucking insecure. She had to struggle so much, and work so hard, and how dare anyone blame her for doing what she had to do. Selfish. I'm so sick of it."

She laughed one, hard. "It's so fucked up! She could have said something at Christmas. I distinctly remember talking about my dad. It literally came up. I know it. I'm done with her. I'm just done."[1]

Natalie set the coffee down  and folded her hands in her lap with finality.

1.	24 Dec 2017 - Ghost of Christmas Past

He smiled a little at Natalie's account of her mother's upset, not unfamiliar to being told off for getting himself into risky situations. But him? A bad influence?

Virgil squeezed a lemon wedge over their respective crêpes as he listened - it was his habit to keep busy when there was anger in the air - and he tried to stifle the defensiveness he felt. Perhaps he was a bad influence. He never actively led Natalie down dangerous roads but he never dissuaded her either. Who was he to do that anyway?

They were partners in crime, playing music somewhere off the beaten path.

"If you say you are, you are," he rolled up his crêpe and picked it up. "You were trying to help a friend by helping Anka. Doesn't seem right to be told off for that, does it?"

A mouthful of sugar and lemon juice and browned butter. He swallowed. "I ought to say, she probably did have a vision. Your mum has a scrying bath. I'm not sure if her warning you would have changed anything, though. Every vision I've had has come to fruition despite my best intentions."

Alec Carter's death[1] still stung, six years on.

Not wanting to linger on that note, he leaned in slightly, studying her expression. Virgil weighed the risk of bringing up a name Natalie most certainly didn't like, adding to her ire.

"You know, Neems, Yavin thinks you're the bad influence," he decided it was too funny not to mention. "Troublemaker."

1.	6th Jan 2012 - A Little Blurry, Or Maybe it's My Eyes

Natalie picked at the crepe. It looked good, she was just distracted. After her rant, which was from the lower gut, she was still existing there, low and heavy. Virgil's energy felt to Natalie like it was coming from someplace higher. Her eyes narrowed a moment, an expression of unsaid skepticism that he was actually feeling as good as he seemed. He'd had a hard go of it; he was allowed to feel grim. He'd already done more to protect her than she was comfortable with. Being grateful was unpleasant.

She caught him looking at her and she tilted her head a little, amused: what secret did he have for her?

Yavin. Natalie dropped her smile and poked the crepe with her fork.

"Yeah, well, what does he know about anything you don't tell him?" she asked with a touch of provocation. They'd had it out about Yavin before. Natalie found him creepy and a little scary and she was so wary of old men who latched on to young people with such hooks. Yavin in the Carstairs house, she remembered, like he belonged there.

What, indeed, did Yavin Morgenthau know about her? She didn't want him thinking about her at all.

He leaned back against the coffee table, a very slight smile still pulling at his lips.

Natalie's reaction to Yavin being brought up was expected but he could never begrudge her that - and in fact, he understood it better now than he had when she first criticised the older wizard.

"You'd be surprised..." Virgil replied cryptically and finished his crêpe in another bite. "He found out about my hand, anyway. I was trying to keep it from him."

That resembled the truth, or the bones of it.

The longer he worked on Mysteries the easier it became to pick out the things he could share with other people. Virgil didn't love the position Yavin was putting him in right now, though.

"Apparently it's bad form not to show up at work for a week without notice," he lapped the sugar off his fingers, distractedly. "Maybe your mum is right. I am a bad influence. "

The smile reached his eyes, fond. "An utter cad and a truant."

Natalie affected a deft golden age Transatlantic accent and mumbled out, "awful, terrible, just an awful man."

Virgil wasn't defensive about Yavin, which was good. But Natalie was protective of him in return.

"But, like, what did he say," she asked, affecting her normal voice again and at last digging into the breakfast. Virgil's job for the government was strange and arcane and shady and secretive, but it was a straight gig with working hours and attendance taken. Natalie had done that twice ever and found it so ill-fitting, she'd slept in her car. She preferred what she had now. She worked when she wanted, for whomever she wanted. There was no Yavin looming around.

Natalie sensed Virgil wanted to talk about Yavin, and well, her curiosity was getting the better of her. She wondered what she would, as Virgil had put it, be surprised about. Maybe it was just a figure of speech, but how had he explained his missing hand, she wondered. Had he erased her from the tale like they'd erased Greenie?

He took up his coffee in both hands, wrapping his fingers around the mug as if to warm them. In truth he half expected Natalie to move away from the subject and return to that of her mother.

But he couldn't very well try to play it off again, when he was the one who brought Yavin up.

"Nothing I didn't expect." Virgil tapped a varnished fingernail against the rim of his drink. "He said I ought to have come to him for help, and I shouldn't have stayed off Mysteries to protect you."

That was what their talk had boiled down to, wasn't it? Even with all their talk of the cause.

He put down the coffee without drinking it and looked away from Natalie, incidentally towards the record player. Edith Piaf was singing about Paris - rolling her Rs softly, falling into melodies.

"You're going to ask protect me from what? and I'm going to say I can't tell you, because of my oath." V didn't bother hiding the sudden, biting bitterness in his voice. "So let me ask you a question that has an answer we can discuss."

This wasn't exactly what Yavin asked him to do but that didn't matter anymore. He wasn't going to pretend.

Virgil shifted his gaze back to Nemo, serious. "Are you going to keep in touch with your... with Thomas Daylight? At all?"

The oath.

They'd spoken about it only a few times, the namesake of the 'Unspeakable', that brutal binding magical penalty for sharing state secrets. The penalty came without investigation or pity. Natalie had wondered at the time that Virgil must have been tricked, it sounded so absurd to her that anyone should voluntarily submit. They so rarely talked about the content of Virgil's work that Natalie almost never thought of it. So why were they talking about it now? 

Natalie held Virgil's eye contact for a moment, hard, then looked away as the answer to her suspicion formed in her mind. He'd laid it out like three tarot cards in a spread.

Yavin knew what they'd been up to. Turn.

Virgil wished to protect Natalie from Mysteries. Turn.

Would Natalie be speaking to Thomas Daylight again? Turn.

Natalie had learned from her mother some of the rest of the story, and that Thomas Daylight was very important in the government. Daylight hadn't dared ask anything of Natalie when he was leaving, but she still had his card. She'd made no actions upon it. It was still in the pocket of the coat of the change of clothes that Virgil had brought her for court. Daylight had gone back to the US for all she knew, and Natalie was happy to try and forget about him.

When she did look up at Virgil, she found him watching and waiting. Was he asking because if he didn't, the oath would act and cut out his tongue right here over crepes? Was he asking to warn her of Yavin's interest? She felt watched.

She shook her head. "No," she said quietly. "You can tell Yavin 'no'."

He could see the gears turning in her head. Virgil didn't need to look inside, it was all in her eyes.

They never spoke about his work and for that reason, Natalie was one of few close friends who did not know what exactly he was capable of doing. In regards to this, Yavin was right. It simply never mattered to them before. He was happy for it not to matter.

"Yavin doesn't ask..." V snorted softly and touched the fringed edge of the scarf around Nemo's neck. "Not his style. If it were up to him, this would be a very different conversation."

What Yav wanted him to do was not complicated. In fact, it was much easier than the business with Cassie Collins because he already had Natalie's trust.

Encourage her to talk to her 'father'. Become a confidant in this. And, not being protected by Occlumency of any sort, simply search for what was useful in her head.

Her lovely head. Virgil tugged at the scarf a little and met her gaze, smiling despite the seriousness in his eyes.

"I'm asking," he clarified in a quiet voice. "If I knew something truly awful about Daylight, would you want to know? Are you certain you're happy to forget all about him?"

Natalie was aware of Virgil's continued casual touch, but she felt so prickly because of Yavin. Yavin Yavin Yavin! Yavin and Daylight and Daylight and Yavin. Virgil was hypnotized by these two egocentric, using and abusing, powerful men. Natalie didn't understand why Virgil wouldn't discard their importance as easily as she could. She didn't understand why he ran towards authority. She worried now he ran towards it because he wanted it for himself.

She set her plate aside and leaned in close so her elbows rested on her knees. Virgil's smile threatened to make her feel patronized.

"What are you doing, Virgil?" she asked a little sadly. "Do you want to tell me something awful? Is there a terrible secret trying to turn the knob? But you just need my absolution first?"

Natalie dared imagine it for the first time in his presence: leaning forward and kissing him. She bit her lip. He'd only ever been with boys, that she knew of. But she was different, she thought. They were different. Better. Closer. He was her best friend and she defied anyone claim more than that.

If it were anyone else...

If it were anyone else, he would have had a sharp retort on the tip of his tongue. He would tell them to stop acting as if though they knew him or his motivations, to quit this tawdry sentimentalism. If it were anyone else asking besides Nemo.

Virgil's smile withered and he scrutinised her countenance with a furrow in his brow.

She was clever. The news about CAWW would be public in a matter of months, likely, and clever Natalie Morrow might figure out why he was asking all these questions today.

He leaned over his crossed legs and lifted his hand, gently placing the pad of his finger against the cupid's bow of her lips. The flat was very quiet around them.

"I want to keep you out of all this." Virgil lowered his voice. "The dog wants to return to his master and tell him he tried his utmost. It's useless, I'll say, and he won't send another dog because I'm his best."

Or at the very least, he couldn't see Yavin dedicating further resources to this. What could any of them hope for Natalie to get out of Daylight? It was ridiculous.

V drew his touch away from her mouth, and ran his fingers through the fringe of Natalie's blonde hair. It was softer than his own, which had a stubborn streak.

"But you aren't wrong," he admitted. "I believe this secret is yours to know. I feel like... like you have a right to decide whether or not you want any part of it. That isn't a decision anyone else can make."

She wasn't a child, to be protected from truths . And if she ended up washing her hands of it, Virgil could see it to fruition.

Could pluck it right out of her head.