miss charlotte wells; meteor of the hour (queenofpretend) wrote in helladjacent, @ 2017-05-22 11:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | !jumps: victorian london, character: charlotte wells, character: claire novak |
Who: Claire and Charlotte
What: Searching for the fate of Lucy Wells
When: Mid-Week
Where: Streets of London
Warnings: Claire's mouth
Status: Complete
After speaking with Negan, Charlotte knew the basics about what the device could do. She knew it could be used to send letters and public notices to the others in the hotel, that she could read over past notices and respond in kind. But the device was still so alien that she squinted and struggled over it, trying to remember how to do the most basic navigation.
Where did she get to the part to post a message again? How did she post it? Charlotte knew what she wanted-- someone willing to help her find out about her sister’s life. This might be the closest Charlotte Wells ever got to home, her best chance to say good-bye and get closure.
“I hate this,” she spat, glaring at the device as though she could intimidate it into doing what she wanted. Her voice might have once been sultry, but was roughed up around the edges into something harsh.
Claire wasn’t surprised to hear another voice just before crossing the marble threshold from lobby to lounge, but one that was talking to themselves wouldn’t have been her first guess. No judgement, though- she sure as hell liked to drop a few creative swears at herself when frustrated, or pissed; that’s definitely the tone she heard, too.
The face, the teenager didn’t recognize. If it weren’t for the fact that the woman was holding- or recently holding one of the hotel PDA’s, she might’ve thought she was a stray that wandered in from the street.
“Uh- hey,” Claire in her supposedly casual dress announced her presence so she didn’t startle the possible-native. Maybe she was from outside, and had been roped into signing the book like the rest of them. “You… new here?”
Charlotte looked up. Given how she styled her hair and comfortably wore her dress, it was no wonder she looked local. In a way she was, it was just the wrong time period. She judged Claire quickly. The way she wore her hair down, her posture, her manner of speech, how uncomfortable she looked in her dress; she thought she was likely more similar to Molly.
Charlotte frowned, steeling herself. “Yes. Last week at … Disney.” She’d been asleep the week after, which explained why she hadn’t been seen. Charlotte squinted down at her device again.
That was telling; she was yet another one that managed to sleep through last week’s bloodbath, and now was looking at her PDA like it just insulted her family. Claire approached the woman, albeit not without at least a small amount of curious caution, born out of old and new experience. She was still a little gun-shy.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” the blond asked, somewhat helpfully. “Seems like half the people that show up here’ve never seen a smartphone before.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Charlotte said with a frown. “Negan just showed me how this bloody thing works and now I can’t find where to write a notice.” She scowled, mostly at herself, relaxing just slightly when she didn’t get a hint of amusement from Claire. Charlotte was very aware that for the most part, her charms were really only useful when it came to men. Against the cruelty of other women, she had no real defense besides a sharp tongue.
“Yeah, well- I wouldn’t trust Negan’s attention span, either,” Claire drawled a bit flatly, uncomfortably working her dress so she could actually sit next to the new woman. The corset especially felt bulky and unnecessary, and required many small tugs and pulls to get it not to pinch. Once she was vaguely comfortable, she lifted her brows at the lady, offering a helpful hand. “Lemme show you. It gets easier as you go.”
Charlotte, once again, handed off her PDA. She wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to do, leaning in gracefully, as though she were part of her dress. “Thank you,” she said. Not just for showing her how to post, but Charlotte decided not to clarify she was equally grateful for Claire’s lack of judgement.
“No problem-” Claire said it by reflex, though that didn’t mean the statement wasn’t true. This wasn’t exactly a hassle for her, considering sometimes she felt the PDA (being the only alternative to her phone from back home) was practically part of her extended anatomy anyway. She angled it toward Charlotte so she could see what she was doing- then second-guessed herself and handed it back before producing her own device from a thankfully well placed pocket among the skirt ruffles. She showed the basics; turning it on and off, scrolling through the posts, making a post herself, the difference between text and voice options, as well as privacy, the ‘Guest’ list, and everything else.
Claire happened to notice the woman’s picture on the PDA, just like the rest of them had when it took a snap whenever they first opened it.
“Your name is Charlotte?” she asked, then made an ‘acceptable’ face. “Pretty. Mine’s Claire.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Claire.” Usually the only other women Charlotte got along with were other harlots, though she wasn’t yet ready to make any sort of assumption about Claire. “I lived here, in London, over a hundred years ago. I just wanted to find out what happened to my sister, Lucy. She’s a few years younger than you.”
That grabbed Claire’s attention. Once again, she looked directly at Charlotte with raised eyebrows and curiosity marked in her eyes. A hundred years ago? Well… that explained the accent. And the lack of physical discomfort in what felt like a straight jacket without arms.
“Oh- well…” Her brows furrowed slightly, thoughtfully going through what options Charlotte would have if they lived in her time, then trying to pair them to what little she knew about 1800’s England. There weren’t many connections being made. “What’ve you tried?”
“Not much. The streets and the buildings are familiar but enough has changed-- I tried going to my ma’s bawd on Greek Street but they’re not there anymore, nor any sign of Mrs. Quigley’s either. The streets are quieter than they were. I don’t think I’ll find out anything that way.” The word bawd sounded like board with her accent.
Claire understood most of that; she could work with the rest, hopefully.
“So… I was born about a hundred years after this- and in another hemisphere, so my go-to knowledge about this part of the world isn’t great, but…” She was warning Charlotte, at least giving full disclosure. “-would your sister, or you, or any family have ...records? Like, for a census, or taxes, businesses…”
“Business?” Charlotte smirked. No, that was not the sort of thing one openly kept records of. “There might be other records, a death certificate maybe, but I’m not sure where they would be kept or if they’d let us muck through it all.”
Claire didn’t look particularly discouraged, in fact she shrugged lightly, deciding this was at least something that would occupy her time (and brain) for a good while. She’d also get out of the hotel, and help someone out in the process.
“There’re ways around that,” she said, assuming a lot, but she had the drive for it. “Is there a library? Preferably one run or maintained near where you used to live.”
“Not back then. Maybe now there is. Not sure if they’ll let us in without an escort but we could try.” Charlotte gave Claire a look over. “We’ll have to do something with your hair though. It’s pretty, but you can’t wear it down like that here.”
Claire gave her an amicable, but skeptical look.
“Not that I don’t believe you, but why not?” Apparently the dress code included hair-piling as well. The teenager half-shrugged. “But if it’ll help, go crazy.”
“Only little ones can get away with wearing their hair down like that. Come on. I’ll help you. My room is on the eighth floor. If your room is a little closer, I suggest we go there. Maybe we can do something about that dress, as well? You look ready to leap out your skin.”
Charlotte wasn’t wrong about Claire wanting some reprieve from her restrictive clothing; she was pining for her jeans and flannel even before she attempted to put any of these stupid things on.
“Aside from just not wearing this friggen’ thing all together--” As she lead the two of them back to her room, Claire tugged on her corset at least three times, and stepped on the ruffles of her dress twice.
“It won’t move or rub on you so much if we lace it a bit tighter,” Charlotte offered. “Dress might settle a bit more naturally as well.” She pulled up the front of her skirt daintily to avoid stepping on her down dress. The shoes were a little more uncomfortable due to the narrower heel, but they were also more supportive as a boot. Charlotte felt less likely to break her own ankle.
Claire had started out by holding the skirt the way Charlotte did, but over the course of talking and walking and thinking in general, it kept slipping out of her mind. She grumbled, fisting a handful of the fabric as they ascended the landing to her floor.
“That seems… counter productive,” she commented, unlocking the door to her and Castiel’s room. Who knew where the angel had gotten off to; she imagined him- her- floating around London with an open umbrella.
“It’s just the fashion,” Charlotte said. “Come on, I’ll start with your hair first, and if you aren’t sick of me, we’ll take another look at that dress. It suits you.”
Charlotte wasn’t teasing Claire’s hair, and was trying to be gentle, but whatever she was doing with the brush wasn’t pleasant. Once she had her hair fluffed a bit, she started piecing it out. “You could do a lot with this hair, you know.” She was trying to make pleasant conversation, working a minimally and painlessly as she could which still was going to take twenty to thirty minutes.
Claire sat dutifully at the vanity while Charlotte did her thing, trying her best not to wince or grimace every time a nerve got pulled out with the rest. She’d had worse when her mother’s friends liked to play with her hair when she was little, then again when she got into the occasional microbraid- plus, this was for a purpose.
“I guess?” she replied with a slightly tight chuckle. “The fashion where I come from is a lot more… ‘bed head chic’.”
Charlotte smiled, “You’ll have to show me how the women do it in your time.” Once she’d finished, she looked it over and was pleased with it. It was simple, but she didn’t want to test Claire’s patience right off the bat, not when she was helping her.
“You want me to help with the dress, or do you want go out? You’ll get used to it, but not if you keep trying to adjust it constantly.”
Claire actually liked the… whatever it was that her hair had been shaped into, and made a face that showed it. She was patting it and pulling little parts to her liking, but left most of it where Charlotte pinned it all, then let her eyes flick up to the reflection of the other woman in the mirror.
“You’re not wrong,” she sighed, relenting. She stood up from the chair and held her arms open. “You’re the expert.”
Charlotte went over to Claire, inspected the dress and then started to undo it. It seemed whoever had laced it up originally had been trying to be kind and allowing Claire ample breathing room. Charlotte adjusted a few things, trying not to get too personal or handsy, but was matter of fact about the whole thing.The difficulty was there was no bedpost to hang on to.
“Okay, lean your hands against the wall there and bend forward a bit.” Once Claire was in place, Charlotte said, “Okay, breathe in…”
And once she saw the rise in Claire’s shoulders, Charlotte took just a few inches off Claire’s waistline with deft and practiced pulling of the laces. It wasn’t too tight by Charlotte’s estimation. They could have certainly gone tighter, but maybe not until Claire grew accustomed to this first.
“You alright?” she asked.
Claire was shy by any stretch of the word, but she also wasn't particularly used to being so physically 'adjusted’- save for that asshole at the youth center when she was sixteen, and it earned him a hard right hook for the effort.
This wasn't bad, though- just weird. Especially when she was basically told to 'assume the position’.
“Usually I ask for a Starbucks first,” Claire huffed, but didn't have time to joke further, since the second her breath was in, she felt her ribs scream in protest.
“HOLYY shh..”. She couldn't even get the words out. There wasn't enough room for her diaphragm to properly curse. She huffed a few more times, trying to adjust. “This … yeah, I'm fine. Still breathing though. Kinda feel like I'm not supposed to be doing that.”
“No, they still let us women breathe, just not too much. You wouldn’t to with this air, though. Probably a bit stuffy compared to what you’re used to.” Charlotte grinned. “Alright, we’ll get your dress back on. Should all stay in place and make things a bit more manageable.”
Charlotte helped Claire get back into place. “Just keep breathing and we’ll take the stairs slow.”
“Sure,” Claire put her hand flat on her now very small waist, then where her belly was supposed to be. “Piece of cake… which reminds me. You don't eat in these torture devices, do you?”
“Bit dramatic?” Charlotte said. “I could have laced you twice as tight. You can eat, but it is more comfortable unlaced. You want a torture device you can try on my wig next week.”
“I'm nineteen. Being dramatic is my job.” Claire was still breathing a little tightly, but she was adjusting. “I'll pass. I feel like inviting actual torture devices out loud is a bad idea here.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes slightly, but did not bring up the concept of a teenager, which still seemed strangely frivolous. Perhaps what bothered her about it most was that she’d never been one, her own childhood cut off uncomfortably short. They each used the bannister, not walking side by side down the stairs, but using one hand for balance and the other on their dresses to keep from tipping. It was safer that way. It was not until they were finally on ground level that Charlotte linked arms with Claire-- safety in numbers, though mostly was concerned for Claire’s safety. She’d been walking the streets of London alone for sometime.
“Come on, then. Let’s find the library.”
-------
It became more and more obvious to Claire that Charlotte was much more acclimated to their surroundings than she was, even if it was a century ahead of her time; Claire was impressed, but kept it to herself for now, concentrating more on following the older woman’s lead on things like gestures, stride, and general ‘attitude’ when strolling through the dirty city. The biggest problem, she realized very quickly, was her accent. It seemed to be a dead giveaway and attracted far more attention than Claire wanted to deal with. Charlotte, however, blended in perfectly.
She’d concocted the plan not long after their first vaguely unpleasant encounter with a local, which ended with Charlotte helpfully pulling Claire past a small group of unsavory young men with more soot on their faces than skin, almost too fast for her feet to keep up. Charlotte would do all or most of their necessary talking- Claire would just quietly instruct the things they needed to find out in order to get where they wanted.
But it turned out Charlotte didn’t need that much instruction at all.
It took a little improvisation, but convincing what looked like a local member of law enforcement that they were sisters trying to find their father who had gone in search for the proper documents to construct a new property on site of an existing building had lead them to a plain, but stately looking municipal building next door to a grand church.
Once they were inside, Charlotte was not ladylike or careful in her search. “Look for Lucy Wells, or Margaret Wells-- that's my mother.”
Of course opening the search up to Margaret Wells meant finding all kinds of court documents and arrests for solicitation, running a brothel, accusing another bawd, a Mrs. Quiggly of kidnapping charges. If Claire widdened her net, she might even find the arrest records for Charlotte Wells and one Daniel Marney for the murder of one Lord George Howard-- a capital offense, though there were no records of a trial or what happened to them afterward.
Claire kept most of her personal judgement as clinical as possible; God knew she had her own personal record, as all hunters eventually do. She was just too young to have padded it with the Big raps- kidnapping, grand larceny, murder, the usual. That didn’t mean she wasn’t curious; she decided she’d ask a few specific questions at a more opportune time.
For right now, she flipped through old, dusty records with fading ink by annoyingly low lantern light and decided they had well enough exhausted their search.
“Seeing a few things, but nothing about Lucy,” Claire quietly told Charlotte, closing the large file she’d just put back together.
“Ma always went out of her way to protect Lucy,” Charlotte muttered. She nearly disguised the bitterness out of her voice. “No news is good news, I suppose. At least the best a harlot can hope for.” Part of her hoped that meant Lucy lived some quiet uneventful life, had a nice keeper and passed quietly. Part of her knew Lucy could have just of easily died young from French Pox like Mary Cooper.
Her eyes regarded Claire carefully. “Thank you, for helping me.” That was genuine.
The word ‘harlot’ stood out to Claire but only because the context Charlotte attached to it seemed somewhat significant. She wasn’t one hundred percent positive she was getting all the context, but a vague understanding seemed to be enough. Either way, Claire sent her a small, disappointed smirk.
“Sorry I couldn’t actually find anything,” she offered, also genuine. “But like you said- no news is probably good news.”
“Shall we go back to the hotel or would you like to walk around London a bit more?” she asked. Whatever it was Claire wanted, they would walk together and Charlotte would be her guide.
Claire’s initial idea was to get back to the hotel- then she realized what a reflex that thought had become. It was knee-jerk, and the fact that she realized it somehow felt disturbing. She exhaled through her nose, her lips pressed together in thought; what did she actually want to do?
“...does this place have coffee?” she finally asked, turning a small, hopeful grin up at the other woman.
“I’m sure we can scrounge up something,” Charlotte grinned back. There wasn’t that large of an age difference between them, maybe five to eight, but Charlotte couldn’t help but see some of her sister Lucy in her. Not in attitude or pose, but perhaps because she was younger and they both had the same light golden hair, bright eyes and beautiful complexion.
They walked closely together. Charlotte went to the streets she was familiar with, noticing the changes, looking for familiarity. She settled instead, for a small pub where they could get some food that did, in fact, serve coffee during the day as well as tea.
Claire wasn’t thrilled with the fact that sugar and cream wasn’t readily available, or that the coffee she ordered and paid for came in a cup that was barely bigger than her hand. Maybe the next place the hotel jumped would have a goddamn Starbucks.
She sat across from Charlotte at a small wooden table that faced the largest window in the place, a force of habit of the young hunter who wanted to be able to see as much as possible, and be close to the exit. She found herself adjusting in her seat more than once, the corset no longer slipping or crooked thanks to Charlotte’s help, but now she was wondering if she could get Dean to pop her back later.
“How you managed to live in this thing day in and day out is seriously beyond me,” the girl said, sipping the very strong coffee, once again adjusting her posture.
Charlotte shrugged, “I find it strange how you don’t. You’ll have to show me how women dress where you’re from. I forget the word Negan used to describe it.”
It wasn’t rich food. Charlotte ate simply. The hotel had plenty of food but this was more of an opportunity to socialize with someone who wasn’t simply getting something from her in return. Charlotte was still trying to figure it out, why Claire was willing to treat her with such kindness. In her limited world view, that just wasn’t something people did.
“To be fair, some still do- Wear corsets, I mean,” Claire muttered with half a shrug. “Gothy chicks, Renn Faire people…” She thought a second. “Opera singers.” She was running out of examples. Claire moved on. “I guess the point is we can wear whatever the hell we want- ‘cept maybe in Oklahoma.”
“Well, I recognized Opera,” Charlotte said. For some reason she still assumed the men were castrated to keep their voices high, while the women were old whores. Picturing Opera as anything besides a farce about love was difficult for her to imagine. “What do women wear in Oklahoma?” she asked, genuinely curious.
Claire’s eyes flicked up to Charlotte’s face, smiling into one cheek like the question had been a joke, but she realized quickly that it wasn’t. She cleared her throat with a small laugh and made a face, bringing her coffee to her lips.
“Mostly a combination of ‘I Heart Jesus’ shirts and mumus,” she answered, then sipped. “Nothin’ I’d wear, that’s for sure.”
Charlotte didn’t know what Clarie was talking about. It was clear from the questioning look in her eyes but she smiled and tried to play along anyway. Claire’s remarks weren’t ill intentioned, and Charlotte did her best to remain a part of the conversation.
“And what do you wear?” she said, changing the direction of the conversation. “I want to hear all about what the clothing is like where you’re from.”
Charlotte and Claire had a remarkably almost ordinary afternoon.