InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Great...you always look great."

Ellie swooped carelessly around the training pitch on her broom watching the players in action. This morning was probably one of the few times, she didn’t yearn to be in the thick of it with them. She was still exhausted in this blurry world of hers, complicated further by Allie’s injury. And now Falmouth. Again. She couldn’t help but passingly imagine she was cursed.

As the team started a new scrimmage set, she landed carefully touching back to the ground. “Good to see Pepper settling into the mix.” She looked over at Bart. Ellie still wasn’t sure what to make of their dynamic, but sometimes, just sometimes maybe no news was good news. Although if her conversation with Cav was a marker, that probably wasn’t true. “How’s the view from down here?”

"Looking pretty good." Bart had put his omnioculars aside so he could talk to Ellie for a bit. "Pepper's not Joy and he'll have to learn her tricks to keep up with Buchanan and Scrimmy, but he'll fill the roster slot and bring some depth to the line. You're the one who's been up there. What do you think? And how's Maddock doing?" Bart had spent part of last night at the Kenmare-Falmouth match, which had still been going on this morning according to the wireless, but Ellie looked like she was a lot more fagged out than he was.

“He is an excellent addition to the roster.” He wasn’t Joy, but no one else would be, she was just glad to see he was working well with the other chasers. There could be benefits from chaos and the unexpected, Ellie would continue to exploit those as she had done all season. “I think we’ll have a solid set going into post-season, I am thinking about asking McCormack to help out getting him up to speed. If you can get passed her, you can get passed anyone.”

Between everything happening with Maddock and the team, the pink movement or their showing at the match yesterday hadn’t landed yet. But then again Cav told her to focus on the team and leave the rest to him. So, she was.

“Allie is doing better. He is up, walking around. Took the the dog for a walk the other day.” Some of the fear and stress was starting to wane a little. Ellie still didn’t know how coaches dealt with their players getting injured, she had even less clue on how to deal with her husband being in the same position. “He was fucking lucky, and I really thought the worst when I saw it. But hopefully we’ll be soon back to our normal routines.”

"It'll take a while. Kirsten and I were lucky. None of our injuries were that kind of ugly. It's still bad enough to see your wife sent off to Mungo's, especially if you're meant to have your mind on the pitch. But if the healers think he's going to make it, I'm sure Maddock'll be back in the broom saddle soon enough."

Bart patted the bench to tell Ellie to sit down; he knew better than to tell her to do it before she fell down. "I like the idea of putting Pepper with McCormack. She didn't believe me when I told her she was a leader on this team. Got to put my money where my mouth is."

Ellie was … neutral toward the words of support. Right now, she was at Pride training grounds and she wanted to focus on that. She glanced to the pitch, watching McCormack for a few moments. “It’s a good idea, I’m not sure how on board she will be with it.”

Shaking her head she looked over to Bart. Ellie loved Meaghan, she was a good friend of many years. But she was seeing her in a different light these days. “She does her job well, never any doubt, but there’s a reason why I didn’t consider promoting her to captain once we lost MacDonald.”

Bart nodded his agreement and understanding. He'd never considered putting Meaghan in as Captain either. "She's a leader, by virtue of longevity and force of personality. She's not ready to be the leader. I don't know that she ever will. But this is the kind of thing I'd trust her with: helping situate another player in the comfort zone. Also it's a good test of some other things that are about to hit us in the face."

There was no argument from her. Maybe a point for further reflection later because she and Meaghan weren’t all that different. “What am I missing on the horizon, Bart?” There was a couple of things she could think of to be concerned about, but what did he see?

"Not technically our problem yet, but about to become our problem. Monte Cameron snapped and beat the shit out of Marcus Flint after the Cannons match with Wigtown. Because Flint called him the m-word. On the upside, Portree is no longer the team with the biggest PR problem with Muggleborns, especially not now that we've got Keke and Pepper. On the downside, there's a lot of Pink-slash-Uplift-slash-Muggleborn organising around this bloc and the teams are taking stands. We've got a little longer to decide what to do because we play at the end, but we're going to have to say something," Bart explained. "I can handle it if you want me to, but I don't want to do anything without talking to you about it first," he added.

Ellie nodded. She would not outwardly be proud of Monte for beating the shit of someone who deserved it. That was probably frowned upon. “We had a meeting back in December when it first came out. My stance was as long as they keep doing their jobs well? They could fly naked for all I care.” It was a joke at the time. But there was an official memo. No one was banning it.

“But you think it’s more than that now?” Ellie wasn’t the most up to date with whatever color movement was ongoing. The color showed up more at matches, but she lived in a rather insular world. Not to mention had been … distracted since December.

"I think it's always been bigger than quidditch. But I think we need to get ahead of it, specifically, both because of what happened here at Portree with Monte and Isla and because we do have people who feel it strongly here bow. If Pepper was there yesterday, I didn't see him, but I'm pretty sure I saw Keke sitting with them on the Kestrels side of things.

"I'm sure," Bart added slowly, thinking out each phrase before he said it, "that there'll be some arguments if we talk about Monte and the Uplift response this bloc, and where Portree stands. Meaghan's not going to like it because of Uncle Hamish." Whom Bart thought was a blowhard and made no secret of it. "But it's important that we look like we know what we're doing. Do you want me to talk to Gwen and Graham and say something to the team? That we know that Uplift is encouraging players to wear pink and we support their right to do so?"

Maybe it was good then if this was coming this block, when she already wanted to rest Meaghan, give Ainsley a chance. Ellie would much rather Meaghan be mad for being benched than force her to wear pink. “Probably should go through Cav first, and then Gwen before going up to ownership. Might come out better to the players if we’re all on the same narrative.”

She also didn’t really have much contact with the muggleborn community. Sure Davina married a muggle, and Maddock was mad about muggle sports. But she had spent most of the war on the Reserve with the dragons. “But if it’s about equality, I also think maybe we ought to be sure we’re doing it for the right honest reasons. Yeah?”

Bart nodded. "Yeah, Cav, of course, but I don't think he'll need the kind of smoothing that Gwen and Graham will. And I can't speak for why anybody else is doing it, but I know why I want to do it, and that's enough for me." He found himself looking back up at the flyers executing their practice moves and not at Ellie.

"What happened to Monte Cameron fucked me up. I felt like I should have stood up more. Still do. But even if I didn't then, I can now, so I will. It may not take as much bravery to do it now, but it's still the right thing."

“Aye.” Ellie nodded. She had her own reservations and thoughts about what happened. She cut her quid teeth at Falmouth. While she might have been Pride through and through, she did have a distinct Falmouth style and what Flint did? That was not on.

“The other side of it is the lineup for Caerphilly.” Ellie sighed. “I said I wanted to give our reserves more pitch time. I meant that. Except that for this block means playing Ainsley for McCormack, but also wanting to get Amir in for Okeke.” She looked at him, not saying that what she thought, but she really hated feeling like her hand was going to be forced on this one. It might not be the best optics sitting one of their muggleborns.

"I like letting Meaghan sit this one out. It solves the problem of her whinging about Uncle Hamish if everyone else is wearing pink. But I can see the problem with Keke and Amir. He needs the time on the pitch and before the pressure of the Neep. How about if we try to come up with something special for Keke to do instead? Talk to her, see what she thinks?" His brow furrowed as he thought about it. "I'm pretty sure I saw her at the Kestrels match all pinked out. So she'll have an opinion."

Ellie nodded. That seemed … reasonable. Maybe Bart did have value after all. “I really don’t want to set us up for another Cameron issue.” Or any issues she at all. She trying hard to walk the line here! The world just kept making that difficult. “Can you float the idea to the rest of admin today? See if anything gets formalized over the weekend. Then tentatively plan to meet with Okeke and Amir on Monday before setting any lineups.”

That also sounded reasonable. Maybe Ellie was learning too. “Does that sound like a good place to start?”

"Sounds like a great plan. Let's do it."

Bart put up his fist for a fist-bump. Ellie bumped her fist against his, giving an appropriate dragon roar in response. They could do this.