A Chance Re-meeting She gritted her teeth and walked back into the house. The family house. It had not been her home for a very long time, and she tried to minimise the visits she made here.
Luckily, the reason she was having to visit was because father had had to go away on business, leaving Mama to deal with a workman who was due to start patching up a fluctuation in their unplottable charms. The small island, or rather large rock, off the coast of Maine was supposed to be both unobservable and, to avoid shipwrecks, unapproachable but apparently it had been sighted on a number of occasions recently. Most people passed this off as an error on the part of those reporting, but it had been felt it wouldn’t hurt to get the experts in to have a look. Coastal erosion could, over time, play havoc with such charms, given that it altered the very land they were cast on.
Father had, of course, arranged everything - found the company, interrogated them, agreed a price. All Mother had to do was permit the person to be on the property, but she found the thought of workmen stressful and thus had invited her daughter over for company, and to help monitor the non-theft of their silverware. As if it wasn’t all heavily protected by complex spells. As if the house elf wouldn’t be trailing him at all times anyway. Still, it would be nice to see Mother, and to enjoy the house without her father’s oppressive presence. The times when she visited without him being there, and could focus on her memories with her mother and sisters, were rather pleasant.
Mother greeted her with a kiss, and was laying out some tea things, chattering away about the work that needed doing, and how the house elf would deal with their visitor, and show him down to the cliffs-
“The cliffs?” she repeated, “On the northern end?”
“Yes darling, why?”
“I’ve seen the house elves navigate those. They just apparate themselves down to tiny little landing spots the size of a pin. I don’t know if they know how to show a person down.”
Her mother was less concerned with this issue, quite sure it would be just fine and that there was no need for a respectable girl like her daughter to go running off down cliffs with a workman. However, said daughter was quite insistent and, as the house elf would still be along to chaperone, her mother agreed it was probably the lesser harm than ending up with a dead body on their hands.
Thus, when the large doorbell on the stately home was rung, it was indeed a house elf who opened it to the workman, but they would not remain alone for long.
“Good morning. Patchy is to take you down to where you will be working,” the elf informed him. “But apparently, people goes a different way, so mistress’ daughter will come too. Wait,” he informed the workman, holding out an imperious finger that sent a ripple through the air, suggestive of the fact that disobeying the order would prove impossible. With a pop he disappeared into the front room, reappearing a second later, with an elegantly dressed blonde lady behind him. She had squared her shoulders before leaving the drawing room, quite determined that she wasn’t going to be intimidated by a common workman, even if talking to strangers was fairly high on her list of most hated activities. She was supposed to rank above him, and to command him with cool authority, as she would when she had a household of her own to run. She ought to get practising, she supposed. After all, they were traits in which she was still completely lacking, and the clock was ticking on that front.
“Good morn- oh,” her greeting ended abruptly as she caught sight of the person standing at the door. Her face, which had been flat and tight - the closest approach to cool and commanding that she could manage - broke for a moment into solid surprise, but nonetheless a rather pleased-looking kind, “Clark? Clark Dill?” Araceli asked.
“Araceli?” Clark returned, smiling in greeting, and appearing significantly less shocked than she was by their reunion. Clark, after all, was carrying a clipboard with the name Arbon emblazoned across the top of the work order clipped to it. The sticker on the corner indicated it was a private pureblood residence he’d be visiting, so he’d kind of wondered if he might run into someone he knew today. “How’ve you been? It’s good to see you again.”
The sticker flashed, in a way the could easily be mistaken for a bit of sunlight catching on its reflective surface, a subtle warning that he wasn’t following the script and management was concerned he might be jeopardizing customer satisfaction. It was his first time out in the field on his own, so he was still being closely evaluated.
“I mean,” he hurried to correct himself, “yes, Miss Arbon, I am Clark Dill, master of charms with Chameleon Charm Services.” He tapped his company badge on his blue uniform robes, and realized suddenly - prompted by the company of another Sonoran that he hadn’t seen since Sonora (John and Sammy were far enough removed from that setting that they hadn’t triggered any flashbacks when he wore his work clothes around them) - that the size and position of the badge held remarkable similarities to the prefect badge he’d once worn. “I understand your family is having trouble with your Unplottable charms? I am here to help.” He gave Areceli his best smile, which was much warmer and more personable than it would have been with any other member of the Arbon family.
It wasn’t really a surprise that Clark recognised and remembered her. They had, after all, been classmates in the same small school. Some of the time, anyway. Still it made Araceli feel pleased when he greeted her, and asked after her- and then, before she could answer, his manner suddenly changed. Of course. He was here for work. And she well understood the need to stick to the required script. She did not perhaps think it was quite so literal and mandated, but she certainly had her set ways of getting through social situations. She preferred the first Clark, but at least he was still smiling, really smiling.
“Yes,” she answered, “We had a preliminary survey which identified the problem as being at the Northern end- but I suppose you’ve read that already,” she faltered, her own script not quite as set as his, “And the area’s a little inaccessible, so I wanted to show…” she swallowed the end of her sentence, gesturing to the expanse of land away to their right. She was quite sure she didn’t seem the least bit commanding right now, but was reassured by the presence of someone she knew. And that he was here to help. Her abiding memory of Clark was him saving her from the lethifolds in their Defence Against the Dark Arts Class. The thought of him swooping in yet again to solve her problems was rather appealing. It certainly suited the way she thought of him, anyway.
“Am I allowed to answer your question, and to talk to you now?” she checked, as she led the way out of the house towards the gates.
Clark smiled reassuringly at her. “I’m not allowed to probe into a client’s personal life, but if you start the conversation, I don’t think I’ll get in trouble for continuing it, as long as I am respectful and polite, Miss Arbon.” He gave her another smile, one that was almost teasing, to show that while his formality was enforced, he still thought of her fondly. He stole a quick glance at the sticker to see if management had a different opinion, but it did not flash. Probably because the evaluator could not see his face, but could only hear his voice.
“Well…” Araceli stalled, feeling like after that build up the answer was going to be somewhat anticlimactic, “I’m fine,” she answered, her head bowed, staring at the ground, wondering why she felt so self-conscious. She was sure Clark Dill did not expect her to be living a life full of adventure. And what she had said was even bland enough that, some days, it was true. She ran through the various aspects of her life wondering which, if any, he would find interesting.
“I’m glad you’re fine,” Clark smiled encouragingly. “Fine is way better than the alternative of not fine. I’m fine, too,” he offered.
"It definitely is," she agreed with a slightly giddy smile. Fineness was mandatory. If you weren't fine, they locked you up and threw away the key. She felt a strange impulse to say this to Clark, just as a joke, but she swallowed it down. She was also conscious of what he’d said about getting in trouble. “Are… They somehow keeping an eye on you?” she asked, hoping that didn’t sound as paranoid as she suspected it might but it would be one thing to talk to Clark, another to a whole audience.
He waggled a hand in a yes and no sort of gesture. “I’m still new at this, so they’re evaluating how I do. I just graduated in May as a Charms Master, and then I didn’t get hired here until partway through September. They can’t hear you,” he promised, guessing at the cause of her worry, “And they can only hear me when I’m holding the clipboard,” he held it up so there was no confusion about what clipboard he meant. “I don’t need to hold onto it the whole time I’m here, but especially for arrival and after the job, they want to make sure I can be polite and professional and provide the client with all the information I’m supposed to give to you. When I get back, I’ll have a meeting with my supervisor to go over what I did right and what I can do better next time. It’s part of the training process; nothing to worry about.”
"That sounds horrible," she offered sympathetically, relieved that they couldn't hear her. She resolved not to ask Clark anything too personal until the clipboard was out of his hands. "I can't imagine having to sit there listening to someone pick me apart. I hate those sorts of situations."
Clark nodded, understanding that some people would have trouble with that. “It’s good practice for me,” he told her. “I’m planning to go back for my doctorate eventually, and I’ve heard dissertation defenses can get brutal if you have the wrong people on them. But I’m not too worried about the follow-up meeting for this. They don’t get too picky. They’re just ensuring a high professional quality for their customers.” He gave a grin and a nod to Araceli to acknowledge that she was one of that number. “That standard of quality is probably why your family picked us over our competitors to do your charms work. Whoops!” he ‘accidentally’ dropped the clipboard. “And I don’t mind the extra critiques if it means I get to catch up with you again, Araceli. It really is good to see you again. What are you doing these days, if you don’t mind me asking?”
He picked up the clipboard from the ground. “A bit rocky along here, isn’t it? Sorry about that.” It was rocky, of course, the whole island was basically a giant rock with varying degrees of weathering having been done to it over the centuries, but that hadn’t been why he dropped the clipboard. He could see further ahead where the coastal spray met a sharp decline that he might have some genuine trouble keeping his feet under him, but there was no harm in letting his supervisor think he’d reached that point already. He really didn’t think Araceli would put in a formal complaint about his behavior, after all.
Clark was pleased to see her! It shouldn’t have mattered. Araceli wasn’t supposed to care what someone like Clark Dill thought of her. But watching him drop his clipboard and bluff little excuses so he could tell her something personal… It felt like he meant it. He had to mean it, because he wasn’t being forced to say these things in order to be polite. In fact, he was having to go out of his way to be able to say them. He also didn’t think she was pathetic for not wanting to speak to a room full of people. He was acting like that was within the spectrum of normal and reasonable.
She was about to reply when she became conscious of a pair of eyes, surveying them skeptically. Patchy was more loyal to her mother than her father, which made him less terrible than he might have been, but she was acutely aware that Clark wasn’t the only one being monitored.
“The workman ought to be working,” Patchy stated, “Mistress said.” Araceli wouldn’t report him, Clark thought ruefully, but whoever the elf reported to might. He’d almost forgotten the elf was there, which he blamed entirely on Sonora which had enough of the prairie variety that he’d stopped noticing when they were nearby.
“Yes, of course - we’re just walking.”
“Patchy can take you. To the top of your path, then you can take him down,” the elf pointed out. “Mistress doesn’t like it when the workmen dawdle.”
“Of course. Just to the end of the path by the lightning struck stump then,” she requested, holding out her hand to the elf, and indicated Clark should do the same. With a crack, they disappeared, reappearing near the edge of the island.
“Patchy, Mr. Dill will need his hands as he’s climbing down. Kindly take his clipboard and wait for us on the ledge,” she requested, trying on her best air of the commanding lady. It fit her very ill and she sounded doubtful of being obeyed, but the elf disappeared with another whipcrack. Even Clark followed the suggestion of handing over the clipboard, but not before saying, “Thank you, Patchy, I’ll take it back at the bottom of the escarpment,” though truthfully the remark was more for his supervisor’s benefit than Patchy.
“Sorry… I forgot about getting him to aparate us over here, or even taking brooms… I didn’t think about you working, I just… I always walked along here. You might be able to get Patchy to bring you up and down - there’s a bay at the bottom that’s quite a good landing spot, but you might need to be working up and down the rocks. You can fly too, of course, but if the wind’s coming in from the North it can push you back against the cliffs. So, it’s useful to know the way,” she stated, sounding more certain than before as she explained the lay of the land which she knew so thoroughly. “It’s nice to see you too,” she added, smiling over her shoulder as she began to pick the familiar route down towards the bay, which was still out of sight, “I didn’t think that would ever happen again,” she stated softly. They had been in different years, after all, so even if there was a school reunion, there would be no cause for them to see each other. Duncan had been in the year above Clark too, she thought, absently twisting the pearl and diamond ring on her left hand, so even if she went with him… “I house sit,” she answered his earlier question, “For the nouveau riche. Proper-ish people but the kind that don’t have house elves. People who want an eye kept on their place while they’re away. Maybe it’s a little silly,” she admitted. Here was Clark, earning all kinds of degrees, working complex magic. And she was playing house.
“I don’t think it’s silly,” Clark promised. Boring maybe, but not silly, though he supposed she could bring her own intellectual stimulation. He was actually a little surprised and impressed she had a job at all. He’d been under the impression that most girls of her status didn’t. “What do you do to pass the time while you watch the house? Read? Write? Knit? Teach yourself interesting things?”
“I do a few things,” Araceli answered. Clark was kind not to think her silly. She was quite sure some people did. She scrambled over the next couple of rocks as she thought how to phrase her answer. “I learn where I am,” she stated after a moment, “I mean, I know where I am, obviously. But… I try to identify the trees in the gardens. I watch for birds that I wouldn’t see at home. I work out what the house is made of, and try to identify if it fits any particular architecture style. And I go through their libraries. I try to work out who they are. I try to find one book I think I wouldn’t find in anyone else’s house, or a little section dedicated to some niche interest or other. One time, I spent a whole two weeks learning about hexes of the civil war, and then the next week I was making sugarcraft flowers. It’s-” she hesitated, about to dismiss it as silly again but Clark had already told her it wasn’t. “It’s fun. I get to pretend to be all these different people,” she stated, stifling a giggle at the thought. She knew how ridiculous, or perhaps how appropriate, that was after all the time she’d spent forced away from being herself. But that was a private joke. “And then when I’m at horribly stuffy parties, I just… go through the dates of battles or all the steps in making the perfect sugar rose in my head instead of listening to what people are saying. Not to be rude to them. But sometimes it’s just… easier.”
“Wow, that is interesting,” Clark said, sounding just a little bit surprised by that development. “That’s neat; I’m glad your having fun with it and learning new things.”
“Anyway,” she shrugged, deciding that was enough about her odd little life. “What else is happening for you? How’s you and Lena?”
He grimaced slightly, and guessed he probably should have seen that question coming, but he hadn’t been dating Lena for so long now he’d just about forgotten that had been his status the last time Araceli knew him. “Well, I’m good, and Lena’s good from what I can tell by owl, but me and Lena as a couple did not survive much past Sonora. Just . . . distance and diverging life goals, I guess.” There were any number of reasons that could be blamed for why a half-blood lower middle class American wizard and a wealthy pureblood Welsh witch wouldn’t work out in the long run, even before Clark’s alienness came into play.
“Honestly, I did a better job of staying in contact with John Umland and Sammy Meeks.” The later would likely come as a surprise since Clark hadn’t actually ever spent any time with Sammy when they went to the same school, given that she was a year younger than even John and Araceli and she was not exactly into Science. He’d really only gotten to know her starting in his third year of college, through her proximity to John. He still wasn’t entirely sure why she had latched onto John. He was pretty sure John didn’t either. “We all live in the same town now.”
“I’m sorry,” Araceli said, looking genuinely stricken when Clark stated that he and Lena weren’t together any more. The things he said, she supposed, sounded reasonable. In her world, people just didn’t break up. You took your time and thought about it, she supposed, before getting involved. Maybe Lena and Clark had not done that. She knew that relationships outside of society were substantially less committed, and that was one of the many reasons that it wasn’t advisable to try them. She worried she had misstepped by asking but Clark seemed relatively fine with it. “You’re… okay?” she half stated, half questioned.
“Yeah, it was a tough decision early on, but it was years ago now. I’ve dated since, but nothing serious, and we both understood that from the get go. I’m just not ready to settle down with a family yet.” He wasn’t sure he ever could be, but it was a good excuse for now. “This is just a temporary job, to get some money in the bank for books and food,” as a former Aladren, that was the very clear order or importance, “then I’ll go back to being a poor college student and that’s no way to support a wife and potentially kids. I know, because that’s what my dad did. But without the wife and just the one kid.” Clark looked away from his hand and footholds just long enough to cut a sidelong glance at Araceli to see how she handled that divulgence.
Araceli listened at first with interest to the things that had been happening in Clark’s life. It was strange and different, but the things he was saying made logical sense. He liked books and studying. He was poor. He was choosing to get money and spend it on books and studying. It was very different to the resources that were available to her - and the opportunities. The thing that caught her off guard was the mention of the family. She did a very clear double take at the lack of a mother in Clark’s life. Normally, in her world, that meant someone had died. Occasionally “died” but… Clark didn’t seem upset, and she didn’t know whether to express sympathy for his situation or not. She turned, though not before her face clearly told him that he’d just told her that two and two only made three, and scrambled a little further along whilst she tried to think of the appropriate reaction to that. She didn’t know. Sometimes, when she didn’t know what to say, she still felt her throat getting all tight, like even if she found the words she wasn’t going to be able to get them out. She didn’t want to shut down and stop talking, so she just reversed the conversation sharply back to the last point where it had made sense.
“Books are nice,” she managed, her voice squeaking slightly, “That’s… that’s a good plan. It must be nice to choose not to have children if you don’t want them. Or, not for a while, anyway,” she stated, her hand twisting the ring on her finger again.
She seemed surprised and baffled, but not disdainful, and it wasn’t a subject he liked discussing much anyway - he preferred to let most people just assume his family was as normal (or abnormal) as anyone else’s - so he was quite happy to let the subject change, particularly as they would soon be reaching where Patchy was waiting for them. Araceli knowing - Araceli who he liked and had schooled with for six years even if they hadn’t ever been exactly close and whom seemed constitutionally unlikely to tell tales - was one thing. His bosses and an Arbon household elf who already seemed not to like him much knowing those kinds of details about his life were quite another. “Books are good,” he agreed readily, because that was the easy answer to what she’d said. The rest was a bit harder and required a fair amount more delicacy. “Are you not ready for kids yet, either?”
"Well... I'm not married yet," Araceli pointed out. Perhaps some people didn't see that as a barrier, but Clark had to know her well enough to know that was an impossibility as far as she was concerned. "I..." she trailed off, wondering whether she had found an ally or not. Clark had talked about the financial side. He was just being practical. He had talked about having kids once he had a more settled situation, which made perfect sense. None of those were reasonable excuses for her. There was no reasonable excuse, that was the trouble. She was suddenly aware that she had strayed down a very dangerous path here. You were not supposed to give people power over you. People knowing things, knowing your flaws was power. She needed to find words, the perfect words, to make Clark think she was perfectly normal. But that was, in a nutshell, precisely the thing she had always been bad at. "I'm sure it will all feel very different when I am," she mumbled, everything except the words themselves - her tone, the jolted staccato with which she delivered her message, the way she turned to address the ground instead of Clark - betraying the fact that she did not believe that in the slightest.
Clark glanced at her hand again, pretty sure he had seen her fiddling with a ring there earlier, and there was one. Now attuned to the greater subtleties since she mentioned her lack of a husband, he did see it was not paired with a wedding band, so she was either engaged or just liked wearing rings to make people think she was spoken for. He wasn’t one to judge. Maybe he could try that trick himself, except that was maybe just a little too blatant of a lie for him. It was probably entirely unfair to her, but Clark much prefered to have Sammy do his lying for him.
He kind of didn’t think Araceli was up to that kind of deception either, though admittedly, he really didn’t know her all that well. And he kind of thought - again, his knowledge was mostly by hearsay - that would be an even harder thing to pull off in pureblood circles than among his own class of folk. So probably actually engaged. And pretty clearly not ready for kids.
Clark had never really given a whole lot of thought to the actually of having kids other than being upset that the option was closed to him. But it wasn’t completely. Dad had a kid that he’d played no part in creating. There were other options besides having an alien abductee drop off her half alien spawn on your doorstep (or thinking that was what happened) to obtaining an adoptive child. Clark could do that. He was already older than dad had been when he took on that responsibility, and in far better financial straits, too.
Unlike Zack Dill, Clark did have family he was willing to turn to for assistance. Dad wasn’t outrageously wealthy or anything, but he was comfortably middle class now, making a top tier salary as a NASA scientist and still spending like he was on a graduate student’s meager stipend.
If Clark really wanted a kid, he could have a kid.
He didn’t want a kid.
Not yet anyway, and it wasn’t just because he was still planning to go back to school and his social life was still more than a little bit in flux as he transitioned from being a Canadian college student to an American skilled tradesman.
“Have you and your fiancé talked about it?” he asked, with a nod toward the ring. “Some couples like to wait a few years before kids, to better enjoy their marriage together before adding an infant to the mix. Babies are a lot of work, from what I’ve heard.”
Had they talked about it? That sort of depended what you meant by that… Araceli was quite good at letting other people talk, and agreeing with what they said. It wasn’t like they’d planned when or what to call them, but she was operating under the assumption that she would be expected to have children at some point. That was largely the point of her. To produce good, healthy, wholesome children. And that was where she was trapped. She had seen Duncan as her ticket out of here. He was a nice person too. Better than she had expected or deserved. But she’d so grateful for all of that, she hadn’t thought about the strings that came attached. Maybe she’d have been better off being some dreadful, shameful bluestocking, living on her sisters’ goodwill. Except she was too afraid to end up relying on her father and her brother’s instead… She couldn’t let Duncan know any of the things that were wrong with her in case he didn’t want to marry her any more, but it felt like diving head first into a brand new set of problems to start that kind of life. The one she wasn’t equipped for.
“A little,” she answered Clark’s question, her voice airy and translucent to match the nothingness of her answer. “Anyway, here we are,” she added, as they scrambled down the last bit. One cliff edge, safely navigated.