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Blue Skies Cont.
Topic Started: Jun 15 2011, 04:16:14 AM (387 Views)
Elliott Fix
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*Kara; s:c | w:p
part 1

...right onto his front stoop. It was the middle of the night; he was banking on the hope that anyone who might have seen him just thought he came out the door. His eyes quickly found Portia and he balked. "Why are there children with you?!" he hissed at her, his voice barely managing to stay at a loud whisper. This was not good. This was very not good. He whipped around, unlocked the door and shoved it open. He practically flew down the steps and scooped Maia into his arms. "Get inside!" he commanded, pushing Portia forward by her shoulder.
Edited by Elliott Fix, Jun 15 2011, 04:17:49 AM.
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Portia Wardwell
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Kelci; s:t | w:d
She looked at him seriously, "Because they're David's children." Portia hurried up the stairs as quickly as she could given her current attire. "How safe have you made it here, Elliott?" she questioned. Maia had attached herself to him instantly, resting her head on his shoulder and gripping a handful of his t-shirt. "Because we can't afford even one more slip-up, I need to know that nothing I tell you here will be overheard."
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Elliott Fix
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*Kara; s:c | w:p
"I know they're David's!" he bit back at her. He didn't ask who they belonged to. He asked why they were here. He shifted Maia completely to his left arm and shut the door behind them with his newly freed right hand and locked the deadbolt. He huffed and kept pushing her up the stairs to his living room with his right hand. "It's perfectly safe here," he told her on his way up. His voice stayed low but was no longer a whisper; his tone slightly offended.

He rounded on her to face her as soon as the were both up the stairs, his hand falling from her back and going instead to Maia's hair; running his fingers over it in a way he hoped was comforting. "I don't know what 'we' you're referring you, but you had better be certain that whatever you've brought down on yourself you're not bringing down on me right now, too."
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Portia Wardwell
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"If you haven't noticed Elliott, I'm being very careful to keep you completely out of the details," she shot back. She would never have chosen to get involved on her own. She hadn't really chosen, actually, because when given the chance to keep her brother safe, even when she thought what he was doing for Colin Beckett was completely stupid, she wasn't going to just say no. That would be the same as turning him in.

"David's been hurt. He was taken to St Mungos before I could get there. And it's ... it's really bad." She shifted Chloe to her other hip again, her arms were tired from holding her all night. She met his eyes, "And it would be fine, and probably the healers can fix him, except he can't be at St Mungos. Because they keep records of their patients. Do you understand? I need to go clean up."
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Elliott Fix
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"Yes. Fine. Go," he answered her shortly, leaning in to take Chloe with his right arm. He started towards his bedroom with a little girl on each hip. "Call me when you're finished. I'll let you back in," he told her flatly. He was not happy with the situation, but he couldn't really say no to two little girls.
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Portia Wardwell
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"Wait," she stepped towards him, "It's not exactly that simple." She sighed, "I don't want to ... to say too much. I don't want to get you too involved. Ara is gone. David is in hospital. I'm ... well it can't look like I know anything. It's not going to be a few hours. It might be a few days." She bit her lip, "I would never, never ask this of you if I had any other option, Elliott. But please ... I can't take care of them and keep them safe at the same time."
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Elliott Fix
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And now he was angry. Really angry. He kept walking to his room. He put the girls down on the bed, took out his wand, and put them to sleep. He charmed the sides to keep them from rolling off the bed. Then he went back out to Portia.

"What exactly is the reason why they can't be with Rutherford or Hewett or your father? Shouldn't family be the best place for them? I'm a very busy man, Portia. I have responsibilities at three very separate organizations. I cannot drop everything for three days to watch the children of a criminal I met twice. I can offer you tonight. That's all," he told her through gritted teeth. He didn't understand how she thought leaving someone else's children with him for SEVERAL DAYS was keeping him uninvolved.
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Portia Wardwell
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She had to blink back tears as she admitted, "They won't have anything to do with them. It's been this way for a while. They could tolerate David's less than legal activities, but now that it's not about money, they don't understand. They think he's being needlessly rebellious. I tried them first. I owled, they didn't respond. I went and knocked, but my father wouldn't answer the door. They don't realize how serious it is, what they're doing. To them, it's a slap on the wrist to encourage David to come back to their side. But it's so much worse than that."

Portia pressed the heel of her left hand against her forehead, "You're the only person I know who has any level of tolerance. There's not ... there's no one else I can ask."
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Elliott Fix
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"Then you understand that their lives are more important than their father's poor decisions. You can try and help him if that's what you want to do. But if you're not back here by morning, I will call my mother to watch them instead and I can almost guarantee she will call the muggle social services. She's a child psychiatrist. She's on very familiar terms with them. Do you understand?" he returned her earlier question.
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Portia Wardwell
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She laughed without humor, "Ironically, it was their father's first good decision that got them here." Shaking her head, she conceded, "I don't have time to argue, but these girls are all that I have right now. I'm doing everything I can to put their lives back together. Leaving them for two or three days is worth it if it means things will be back to normal for them." She looked at him, "The old Elliott would have seen that. But you've changed."
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Elliott Fix
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"Yes, I have. It's called My Girlfriend is Pregnant with Someone Else's Baby Syndrome and it makes everyone else's problems seem insignificant. Especially psychotic ex-girlfriends with law breaking older brothers. I don't see how you need days to pull someone out of St. Mungo's. I don't see why David's life if more important than theirs. One for the price of two seems like a pretty raw deal. It seems to me like they'd be better off without him." He was supremely angry with her for putting him in this position. He was angry with her for trying to make him feel guilty.

"You know what, though? I'm sure Briar's still awake. She's her own boss. She makes her own time. Why don't you call her and see if she can take the next three days off for a girl who never gave her the time of day," he suggested, holding out his phone to Portia. Briar might actually do it. She was kind of a people pleaser and super hormonal right now. Her maternal instincts were basically attacking Kryptonite; the closest thing she had to a baby. Briar had told Elliott not to get involved and he didn't want to. But there was a possibility her mind would change now that there were kids involved.
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Portia Wardwell
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She stared at the phone for a second, then back at Elliott, then back at the phone. Portia now had more than one reason to dislike Briar Donahue, having just found out that she was evidently not only dating her ex-boyfriend, but also probably making him the happiest man alive, regardless of the fact that it wasn't actually his kid she was having. He was probably just stupid enough to fool himself into thinking it wouldn't matter. Either that or he was trying, not for the first time, to be the Good Guy. She had plenty to say about this, but it would unfortunately have to wait. Everything except, "Fuck's sake, Elliott. I don't know why you have to be such a bloody martyr for everyone else and then just turn your back on me when I really need you."

With that, she snatched his phone, scrolled through the contacts to find Briar's name, and pressed the call button. "It's like you never cared about me at all," she added while she waited for the other woman to pick up.
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Elliott Fix
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*Kara; s:c | w:p
Elliott was angry before. He was past that now. Now there was cold hard rage. "No, this is exactly what it was like when I cared about you. You misconstrue everything and take these giant leaps of logic that make no fucking sense. If I had turned my back on you I wouldn't have even picked up the fucking phone. I let you in my home. I offered you my time. And that wasn't enough, so I'm letting you call my six months pregnant girlfriend in the middle of the goddamn night!" he seethed.

"This is why we didn't work out, Portia, because you can't comprehend reality. Once the world filters through your twisted mind all you see is ugliness."
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Briar Fix
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Kelci; muggle
She just stared at him for a second, listening to the phone ring and feeling pleasantly empty. Except maybe she felt relief. Because his rant had certainly dispelled any delusions she might have had that he would ever come around. She had been emotionally devastated for months after, probably even before, the break up, and now she didn't have to keep holding on to the idea of Together. "Why we didn't work out, Elliott, is because I was never the one you saw yourself ending up with. And I think that's for the best. Because at least now, I'm going into marriage not even hoping to be happy. If it had been you, I'd always be trying to figure out what I was missing and it would always be that you weren't just going to wake up one morning and find that I'd turned into Briar while you were sleeping."

She turned her back to him so he wouldn't see that her eyes were filling with tears.

Briar was just coming out of the bathroom -which she hadn't even realized she needed to use until she was woken up- when her phone rang. "Is she okay?" she asked, slightly more alert now that she'd had her eyes open for a few minutes. She was genuinely concerned, but only because she was generally genuinely concerned about anyone who called with an emergency in the middle of the night (having only calls from her disaster-prone twin and her crime-fighting ex-boyfriend to go off of).

She swallowed hard because her throat was dry from wanting so badly to yell at Elliott and because she was trying pretty hard not to choke on her pride. "Briar?"

Briar frowned, set her phone down, and hoisted herself into bed before picking it up again, sounding confused, "Portia? Are you alright?"

"Honestly, no. No I am not. My favourite brother could very possibly die at any minute and I can't find his wife and I'm not there with him and what's worse is I can't be there. Not until I can find someone to watch his girls for a few days." She paused, "They ...they can't see him like this, they're too young."

Briar was silent for a moment, then responded, "Wait, was that you asking me to babysit your nieces?"

"I'm not pretending to like you-"

"How charming."

"Or apologizing for trying to keep Elliott away from you-"

"Whose side are you on?"

"What?"

"Your brother didn't probably get hurt this badly walking home from the office, am I right?"

"...no, he didn't."

"Right, so. Whose side are you all on."

"I can't tell you that, he-"

"Portia. In order for me to feel good about taking a very big responsibility off your shoulders and giving you the ability to go ...save your brother, or whatever it is your plan is, I need to know your saving him isn't going to ultimately help the side that would rather I not know that there were even sides to be on."

"Honestly, I'm not sure I followed tha-"

"Portia. I am very pregnant and very tired. Now just please humour me. Whose. Side." She wasn't sure why this was such an important question, she knew she would help either way, but somehow she felt like the answer was critical.

She sighed softly and responded, "Colin Beckett."

Briar knew enough now, about the way things worked in Elliott's world, about who was who and who did what, that even if she didn't know Colin, she'd know Colin. "Give Elliott the phone."

Portia turned and held the phone out to him, looking down at the floor instead of meeting his eyes.
Edited by Briar Fix, Jun 17 2011, 07:15:00 AM.
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Elliott Fix
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He rolled his eyes at her little rant about them not working because she wasn't Briar. He'd never once thought that while they were together, and he probably never would have. His brain did not work that way. Now that he was with Briar he certainly felt like it should have been her all along. But as they say, hindsight is twenty/twenty. He hadn't broken up with Portia to be with Briar. He and Portia broke up because they drove each other quite absolutely bloody mad.

He could hear mostly everything Briar was saying to Portia; it helped that she was repeating herself. Elliott hadn't even thought to ask. He didn't think it was related to the bigger picture at all. David Wardwell sold illegal potions. That much he knew. Or deduced, anyway. That he was anti-secrecy was entirely new information and completely unexpected.

He was about to explode at Portia but she handed him the stupid phone first and he couldn't just ignore it because he wanted Briar to still like him after this. Deep breath. He brought the phone to his ear. His words came out quickly. "You're a genius for asking. Clearly you're the only one in this situation with any brain at all. This changes everything. I'll be back soon," he promised, then hung up.

"God fucking dammit, Portia! You should have said so right off! Here I was going on like David was out selling his bloody hallucinogens! Christ, we couldn't understand each other when we liked each other, why did I expect anything different now?"

He heaved a frustrated sigh. "You're quite literally insane, you know that, right? Colin Beckett and that whole anti-secrecy movement have an entire network of people working together. Let me say it again: together. That means not alone. That means you going alone is the absolute stupidest thing you could have done right now. Really, it is. They've got people at St. Mungo's. Hell, I can think of at least three Beckett's off the top of my head that are Healers. You stay here with the girls. I'll call Colin. It'll all get sorted. And then I'm going back to my girlfriend and sleeping the rest of the night and pretending my life is normal," he finished with another sigh. He actually felt a little relieved this time. He hit Colin's name in his phone and waited for him to pick up. Portia was so incredibly lucky that this had happened now. If it had been two weeks ago there would have been nothing else he could do.
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Portia Wardwell
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"Don't!" she grabbed the phone from him and ended the call, she hoped, before Colin's phone rang at all. "If David wanted Colin, he would have called Colin." She pinched the bridge of her nose, "I know that I'm asking a lot of you. And of Briar. Please. I'll go home to Cairo and never bother you again, but right now I need you. As humiliating as that is, I do."
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Elliott Fix
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"Wait wait wait!" he took his phone back. "David called you? As in, he's conscious and speaking?! What the fuck, Portia?! He's fine! He can sign himself out! This whole thing is completely ridiculous!" He fisted his free hand in his hair. "Ugh!" He couldn't remember the last time he was this frustrated. Probably it was with her.
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Portia Wardwell
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She went to run her fingers through her hair, then remembered it was up and stopped, resting the heel of her hand on her forehead. Closing her eyes briefly, she exhaled deeply before sidestepping around Elliott and going to his bedroom without another word. Because of course David was fine; now that she'd had it pointed out to her, that was pretty obvious. And if she'd taken two seconds to slow down and assess the situation -before- embarrassing herself by calling her ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night, she probably would have realized that sooner. If she hadn't been so mortified, she would have been furious with her brother. Portia came back out carrying a still fast asleep Chloe and holding the hand of a bewildered Maia. "Please let Briar know I'm sorry for waking her up," she requested simply on her way to the door. She stopped and turned back to him, "Happy birthday. By the way." And with that, she was gone.
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