Double Trouble (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oohforeshadowing) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wondrousplace2023-03-22 07:25 pm
oohforeshadowing) wrote in wondrousplace2023-03-22 07:25 pm
olden times for Tommy
The great country pile isn't their speed, really.
Double had their lovely house in London, bought and paid for by their adoptive father - a High Fae of some high regard, who'd been fretting about their lands and accounts falling into strangers' hands when he passed on. It was a heartrending story, of course, and Double was...well, positively delighted to be anything the old man wanted them to be. For the right price.
Shapeshifters have long since had a bad reputation for sliding into the upper echelons this way. They hadn't been in penury to begin with, by any means, but 'lovely house in London' money and 'vast estates with mining wealth and hundreds of rate-paying tenants' money is not the same by some order of magnitude.
The old man died peacefully in his bed, well over a century old, and left the manor house and everything that went with it to their sole heir. Who is going to sell it all, eventually, but it feels tasteless not to even let their 'father's' body grow cold.
They move in after the last of their furniture has been transported, and lets the housekeeper give them the tour. They cut quite the figure: long blond hair pinned up in curls, a jacket and blouse tailored tightly to a corseted waist, the snug high-waisted breeches favoured by most males. Their tail is the most exposed part of them and the woman they're following keeps eyeing it like she's not sure if it's obscene or not.
"...show you the stables, your grace," she says, as she walks ahead to the outbuildings.
"Ah. I suppose we ought."
Double had their lovely house in London, bought and paid for by their adoptive father - a High Fae of some high regard, who'd been fretting about their lands and accounts falling into strangers' hands when he passed on. It was a heartrending story, of course, and Double was...well, positively delighted to be anything the old man wanted them to be. For the right price.
Shapeshifters have long since had a bad reputation for sliding into the upper echelons this way. They hadn't been in penury to begin with, by any means, but 'lovely house in London' money and 'vast estates with mining wealth and hundreds of rate-paying tenants' money is not the same by some order of magnitude.
The old man died peacefully in his bed, well over a century old, and left the manor house and everything that went with it to their sole heir. Who is going to sell it all, eventually, but it feels tasteless not to even let their 'father's' body grow cold.
They move in after the last of their furniture has been transported, and lets the housekeeper give them the tour. They cut quite the figure: long blond hair pinned up in curls, a jacket and blouse tailored tightly to a corseted waist, the snug high-waisted breeches favoured by most males. Their tail is the most exposed part of them and the woman they're following keeps eyeing it like she's not sure if it's obscene or not.
"...show you the stables, your grace," she says, as she walks ahead to the outbuildings.
"Ah. I suppose we ought."
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"Darling, of course. In the longer term, I planned for us to be here for two months, and it's been a week. I can go back to the apartment if I'm getting underfoot, but...of course we can stay."
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"Stay here, if you can. If you like."
If you can bear to, he means - and he means he wants them to stay.
"The longer you're here, the more I feel like I'm not in a dream."
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"Then I will."
They were not, they now realise, joking about being happy to sleep on a bare floor if that was what they needed.
"Do you think your family realise...? I wouldn't doubt your aunt knows, she seems very sharp."
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"I'm sure she does," he agrees, picking up his cup with his free hand, since he's still holding theirs.
"If she didn't have an inkling I doubt you would have been able to come in." Which reminds him:
"How did you find me?"
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"Ah, well. That would be this."
They remove the thin, tarnished silver ring they're wearing.
"You might not remember our host at the apartment, but she's got enough of the Old Realms in her blood to use a little magic. She cast a weave of finding for me. That got me as far as the neighbourhood, and from there it was good old-fashioned bribery."
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He looks at it, then back up at them. Of course they already more than proved their loyalty to him by killing his tormentors, but somehow this search and rescue mission makes it feel even more special.
"And they just accepted a Realmer as their savior in their hour of need?"
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"After some negotiation, we agreed to gather our arms and intelligence and meet back here in order to go at the task together," Double says. "I promptly ignored that and went alone, which I'm sure has irked them somewhat, but I'm not at all sorry."
Who knows, in retrospect, how many years might have been added to Tommy's sentence by the mere act of waiting overnight.
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"You got me back, which is all that matters. And you're likely the very first Realmer to stay in a Shelby household, which is a dubious honor."
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They smile slightly. It fades.
"...You've talked in the past about...pamphlets, and meetings, and the like. Organisation against the dominance of the Realmers."
No explicit question yet, but a pause. They're arranging their thoughts.
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He raises his cup to his mouth again and raises an eloquent eyebrow. Yes?
He can take a guess to where this is going, but he'd rather they explicitly say it themself.
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Which they do, eventually.
"How do you think they feel about filthy lower-caste collaborators betraying their own kind?"
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"I think they feel very highly about people like that," he says, putting his cup down and taking their hand on both of his, now.
"Not everyone would receive you with open arms, mind. But those who see sense will. Those who know what power and knowledge you'd bring."
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Double nods, gratefully squeezing Tommy's hand.
"If these last few months have suggested anything to me, it's that I want to have more in common with people like you and your family than I do with my late cousins. These last few days have only made it clearer."
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"Your life will become much, much harder than it is now," he does have to tell them. "Not that there is no hardship in your life, but no neighbor will work with you. They'll try to boycot products you sell."
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"They aren't fond of me anyway," they say lightly. "And if what I'm mostly going to be selling is coal, there's no market for that among the Realmsfolk."
They sip their tea.
"I can manage some hardship, I think. It'll be easier than lying on my back earning Papa's favour."
A belated and rather blunt admission of what exactly it took to get into his good graces.
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He clenches his jaw and squeezes their hand tightly. It doesn't make him want to look away from them in shock - he's not shocked that it happened, though he's surprised that they're telling him now.
"If you're serious about this, then you'll be able to put what you gained to very good use. It wasn't for nothing."
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"....It's worth it already," they admit, very quietly, and without looking at him. It's easily the most sentimental thing they've ever said, and they feel embarrassed by saying it, but not enough to try taking it back.
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"I've brought a lot of trouble to your door, Double. I realize you've got free will, but I've - I don't think I'm going to make it easy for you in the future, either."
Even though he feels himself warming and relaxing when he hears them say all of this. They've got to know who they're saying this to.
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"Oh, I've had easy," they say, waving a hand. "I've done some things I didn't care for and turned a blind eye to others, so that things would be even easier in the long run. But I think I'm ready for life to be more challenging, now."
Strange, the new perspective that murder gives a person.
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He twitches a smile at them, the first since they found him in the hotel.
"You look like you want to fight."
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They twitch a smile back.
"...I do." As if they're just now realising it. "You know, I was never very interested in fairness. Might has made right for as long as I can remember. But there's just something grotesque about all this. I can't look directly at it and then just look away."
Not again, not any more.
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"I don't know how long I'll be like this. If you're serious I know it's going to be challenging to be..."
This is very hard to say - can he say it? He takes a breath.
"To be someone close in my life. But I like the idea of at least fighting together. Using this to get others to fight."
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They nod solemnly.
"...Do you want to remember it all? What you've been put through?"
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"Right now I'm still only halfway sure that this is real," he admits, a little sheepishly. "I'm treating it like it is, because it doesn't change a thing if it turns out to be fake. Apart from the heartbreak it would cause me."
He picks his cup back up. "Either way, it would feel like a betrayal to want to forget it. Does that make sense?"
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"...I understand your reasoning," they say, delicately. "I don't think I would make the same choice in your shoes, but it's your choice to make. Just - darling..."
It's their turn to take his hand in both of theirs.
"I can't have you getting lost in the dream. Thinking that it's alright to take risks with your own safety, because this might still be the compulsion. You must take care of yourself."
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