gwendolyn vane. (gwrach) wrote in disorderic, @ 2018-04-16 17:31:00 |
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Being confined to one house all day, every day was already starting to drive Cai crazy, and it had barely been more than a week. Gwen, he was sure, would be struggling with it even more and while she’d talked about disguises to allow her to still go out in public, he still didn’t think that was a safe enough option. Not when the DMLE had already almost caught her. He temporarily disguised himself, only long enough to pick up some food and, after apparating to various places nowhere near each other, join Gwen at her hideout to distract them both from the situation they were stuck in. “I brought Thai and a pack of cards,” he informed her, once she had confirmed it was him and had let him in. “How are you coping?” Pulling a face at the question, Gwen led the way to the kitchen, glancing back over her shoulder so Cai could get the full effect of her expression. “I mean, I’m fine,” she said, opening a cupboard, “but I hate it. I feel like the walls here are pressing in on me. Like, I’ve started to name them and all. That one right by your shoulder is Anne Marie.” Plates and cutlery were deposited onto the table. “How’s it going with you?” Cai only shrugged in response, reaching for one of the takeout containers to scoop the food onto his plate. He couldn’t really complain, he still had company in Grace and Lee, he hadn’t been attacked, or taken from his home and drowned. “It’s not ideal,” he answered as he took a seat, “But I haven’t taken to naming the walls yet. Anne Marie seems like the type of wall who never gives you any personal space.” Gwen shook her head. “She’s alway just right there, asking me what I’m going to do next. Like, gosh, leave me be and I’ll come up with something you know?” She was laughing as she said it, scooping her food out and taking a large bite. She slumped into her seat and said, “God that’s good. Thanks, Cai.” Twirling some of the noodles around her fork, she said, “I’m not really going that mad yet.” “Yet,” Cai repeated with a laugh. “I’m glad you’re hanging on to your sanity so far though,” he added, full fork hovering just above his plate. “Is it just the conversations with walls or are you finding other ways to keep busy?” “Well,” Gwen said, almost slyly, drawing the l’s out so much they may have well been their own word. She grinned at Cai, an expression that was very familiar to both of them — she knew that it was the same smile she’d used to flash him just before she filled him in on a plan he probably wasn’t going to like. “Actually, I’ve been researching something. I — well, I found dad’s old calendar and I think there’s something there. About, you know. What he might have been doing that day.” Cai was suddenly very interested in his food, pushing it around his plate with intense concentration. He missed their dad, of course, but had always tried his hardest to move on from what had happened. To not let it overshadow his life or have it guide his decisions. It was a large part of the reason he’d dropped out of Auror training and into Hit Wizard training instead, not wanting to spend his life obsessing over Dark Wizards. But Gwen had taken the opposite approach, following in his journalistic footsteps. “But what’s knowing what he was doing going to achieve, Gwen?” he asked eventually, risking a glance from his food to her. “It’s not going to bring him back. We can’t change his plans by knowing them.” Gwen had known, somewhere, that Cai didn’t feel the same way she did. She’d known, which was the reason she’d kept the calendar to herself, the reason she hadn’t told him immediately what she thought. What she could possibly fine. Their dad’s death had been a horrible nightmare that haunted their family for months, years. She knew Cai wanted to leave it alone. She knew that she was never, really, going to be able to. “I know,” she said, softly, looking straight at him. “I don’t want him back. I mean, I’m not trying to bring him back. I just have to know. It’s still always going to have happened but I can’t handle having all these questions for the next five decades of my life.” “I still don’t see how knowing is going to help,” Cai replied, mashing up his poor noodles as he talked. There were Death Eaters roaming around the streets, if Gwen wanted to focus her investigative energy on something, that seemed like a better option to him. Accruing evidence on them could actually achieve something, when the war was over. If the war ever ended. He opened his mouth to say that, then changed his mind. He didn’t need to be giving Gwen ideas that could be dangerous to her. “What happened to him is always going to be awful, even if we know who did it or why they did it,” he said instead. “We both know that no matter what he was doing that day, dad didn’t deserve to be killed. That’s never going to change.” “But I want to know who did it,” Gwen said, shrugging for a moment, before she stopped herself. She straightened her spine. “They keep killing people who I care about and I want to know who did every single one of them and why. It can’t be a pattern I just let them get away with.” Cai sighed, realising arguing over this would get him nowhere. He’d learned a long time ago that trying to change Gwen’s mind about anything was an almost impossible, futile task. So, even though he still had a lot of reservations over the whole thing he asked “Have you found any answers yet?” “Not an answer,” Gwen said, the corner of her mouth pulling upwards just slightly. She popped some of the noodles into her mouth and then said, “There’s a meeting for the day he died and I think it’s Evelyn Mulciber.” The words were easier to say than she thought they would be. They’d sat in her chest, on her tongue, ever since she’d worked it out. It had been days, but it felt like years, years and years with that information stirring in her. Evelyn Mulciber, who she’d talked to, who might have killed Hestia’s family, who had probably either been involved in or known about Bryon’s murder. Evelyn Mulciber, who could have killed their dad and left him sitting on a bench in some grotesque fashion. It had felt like a heavy weight, but the words were out before she knew it. She watched Cai carefully. “Evelyn Mulciber,” Cai repeated slowly, a mix of anger and panic rising in his chest. His hand gripped the fork with such increased pressure that even his short fingernails were digging into his skin. Not knowing had felt better than this. “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” Gwen’s pressed her lips together, tightly, a part of her wishing she could take it back when she looked at Cai. “I’m sorry, Cai. I just — I’ll check it out some more but I’m pretty sure that’s who he was meeting.” ‘Check it out some more’ was hardly reassuring when it meant investigating a Death Eater. Who had probably murdered their father. “Just, be careful Gwen,” he said, already having given up on trying to change her mind. “Knowing the truth isn’t worth ending up like him.” “Please,” Gwen scoffed, using her fork to point at him. “No Death Eater’s getting rid of me” She started to sing with, “I’m gonna live forever.” Cai laughed, his grip on his fork loosening as Gwen broke the tension with her singing, even if there was still an uneasy feeling in his stomach. He worried too much, he knew that. It’d be fine. “I suppose if you can survive the man down the street, who you were convinced was a murderer, you can survive anything.” “Exactly,” Gwen said, her smile more genuine now. Cai had loosened up slightly, looked less like his shoulders were level with his ears. It loosened something in her own chest. “I’m gonna find out the real truth and we’ll put this all to rest. And then I think we should team up to find out if the man down the street from here is a murderer or at least maybe a bank robber? He is minted, Cai, and he looks really creepy.” “Sounds like a case for the Gwen and Chelsea detective agency,” Cai replied, relaxing in his seat and finally popping his portion of slightly destroyed noodles into his mouth. “But if it all goes wrong and it turns out he really is a murderer, or willing to murder to protect his bank robber identity, I’ll still come rescue you both.” “You’re my hero,” Gwen said, as seriously as she could around a mouthful of noodles. She shoved at Cai’s leg with her foot and smiled down at her dinner. Cai was always so constant: it was a relief to finally share what had been bothering her with him. She wasn’t sure she could tell him how much she appreciated it, entirely, so instead she said, “Bonnie Tyler probably wrote her song about you.” “Even if she didn’t, that’s definitely what I’m going to start telling people now,” Cai chuckled, relieved the conversation about their father’s murder was over. “It’s just a shame she’s already married. She didn’t hold out long enough.” |