two princes. [tag; dennis]

“Hello,” she repeated, returning the smile halfheartedly; there wasn’t any genuine feeling behind it. Edith nodded, lowering her wand a touch but keeping her grip tight, watching as the girl took the seat she had pointed to. “Yeah, your cable’s out.” She nodded along as she kept listening, waiting for her to either talk herself out or change the topic to the events she had seen that evening; those were the usual outcomes. “Friends.” Edith almost laughed. “Right.” Having a series to look forward to must have been a nice feeling. Edith shrugged, still not yet getting to the point. It was going to be an easy obliviation, she figured, but the longer she stayed out in the field the less time she would need to be in the office.

“It’s Chandler,” Edith continued with another nod. She might not have been a religious watcher of the show, but she had seen enough to remember some names -- and Foxglove wouldn’t be remembering this conversation, anyway. She set a hard line with her mouth, her gaze following the other girl’s down to the wand in her hand. “It’s sonic.” That got a laugh, sometimes.

She crossed the room to take a seat next to Foxglove, but she left plenty of space in between them. “Foxy, sure.” Edith smiled again; she hated when they offered up details like this, bits of information to make it more obvious that they had lives outside of their brush with magic. “No, your dad’s asleep,” and he would be for another few hours. “There’s nothing to sign. It’s all free, some sort of problem on our end, y’know?” There were other excuses that required less conversation, and of course there was the approach that some of her coworkers employed: swoop in, wands ablazing, obliviating everyone whether they needed it or not. It simplified the paperwork, they said. Edith blinked the idea away.

Edith looked away from the girl -- she looked so much younger up close -- and to the table she had left the list of offenses on. She shrugged. “You’re exactly who I want, Foxglove,” she said quietly, turning back to her. “You were just about to tell me what you were doing tonight, remember? You left home after supper and then what?” She made the assumption pretty confidently; the house and the general vibe from it suggested the family ate meals together whether they wanted to or not.

She needed her version of things, even if she already knew the things she needed to delete from her mind. But Edith liked getting the muggle’s side of things; she tried to do things with a bit more finesse; she didn’t want to delete whole chunks of time. She blinked again, longer and slower this time, before blinking a few times in quick succession to get the sleep and the alcohol out of her head.

NPC; Foxglove Sharpe

"You're kidding?" Foxglove replied, astonished. Chandler? Really? "Wow," she whispered, her eyes wide with a shake of her head. "And the whole thing with Monica? Yikes," she winced before she let out a long and low whistle before shaking her head again. Men were rats. Even the fictional ones but she couldn't help but snort at her next comment. "Funny," she told her, giving her the finger guns. A sonic screwdriver, indeed.

Oh, it was all included in the cover. "Cool," Foxy said casually as she rubbed at her eyes, accidentally smearing her mascara in the process. Foxglove felt a bit strange. It was sort of like being on one of those fairground fun houses when the floor shakes and started to move. Foxy wasn't herself and she felt tired but then again, it was past midnight. Maybe she was getting a cold.

"Aw," the redhead replied with a smile as she was told she was the person indeed. Her night? Of course. "Well, I went to the cinema with some friends. Nosferatu. Are you a fan of German cinema?" She asked the woman sweetly as she wiggled on the sofa, folding her legs beneath her like a cat as she settled down. "That scene where he's climbing the staircase?" She heaved a melodramatic shudder. "Iconic. I love it." Then what?

She found herself smiling coyly. "I met a boy," she answered before she paused. "Well, I'd already met him before. He came into the café I work at with someone else. He was cute, too," Foxy mused as she scratched her chin. "Anyway," she continued. "He said he'd call me. He didn't," Foxy added with a playful eye roll which clearly said; men, am I right? "But I get why. I think they were dating each other but something happened. Anyway," she blurted out, waving her hand in the air. "He must have been in the same showing as me and we met outside."

Biting her lip, Foxglove found herself reluctant to spill her guts about her evening. In a weird sort of way, she wanted it to be her little secret. She was selfish like that, sometimes. The TV Woman didn't need to know about the addictive thrill Dennis gave her or the fascinating way that he put his own personal safety last. She didn't need to know she thought he looked beautiful bathed in the neon city lights or how his touch was so gentle. She didn't need to know that his brother has passed away, that his parents didn't get him, that he felt lost and confused and alone. In an odd way, it was almost like if she told her everything, it would somehow dull the sparkle of the night.  They were her memories after all.

Sadness crept in at the edges as Foxy blinked in the gloom. "We walked, we talked. He wanted to know a lot about me," she commented. "Which was fine, I like chatting but he didn't really say that much about himself. Only that he was in a forest fire once." She blew at her hair. "We sat down and watched the city and the lights. I told him that my parents don't understand me and that I don't think I want to go to uni. He showed me his tattoo. He can pick locks, too." That was impressive.

Uncertainty advanced quickly. She remembered all the little bits about him. Like how his eyes had flecks of gold in them or that he had dimples or that his coat was really warm. And that he'd broken into a building and they'd sprinted up flights of stairs to get to the top to see the skyline. And that he'd sat just a little too close to the ledge to be considered safe.

"He walked me home. We took the Tube. We kissed." Here, Foxy blushed as a dippy little grin appeared on her face. "It was --" she paused again and gave a wistful sigh. "Really nice. Fantastic, actually. I don't think he was from around here." She scratched her nose. "He seemed sad, too, you know? Like he'd been through a lot and didn't really fit in. My type, though," she remarked casually. "A tortured soul." Foxglove gave a heavy sigh that shook her body before she leaned forward a little, finding the woman to be trustworthy. "I think I'm in love."

Edith angled herself towards Foxy, nodding along as if she really had been telling her about her evening all along. She blinked slowly, eyes shut tight, blinking the sleep away again; she reopened them and refocused on the girl next to her. The cinema with friends -- she surely hoped the friends weren’t involved in this, because she had zero information on any of them, and even less desire to take the initiative to find it herself -- was easy enough to take care of. And Nosferatu? It was funny how things like that -- films with magical elements -- were acceptable for her, but the magic magic wasn’t. Huh. But she hadn’t mentioned Dennis yet, anyway, so Edith didn’t need to intervene with new memories quite yet.

She offered Foxy a lopsided smile. “Nah, the Germans don’t really do it for me.” Really, though, she could talk about that film for ages, especially the scene that Foxy was talking about; as much as Edith would love to stop this interaction at this little chat, have no other motive for being here, she still had to do her job. She closed one eye before rubbing it quickly, her fingers knocking her glasses slightly askew.

I met a boy. Ah, there it was. Edith nodded, turning up her skills of attentiveness. She’d leave in the good bits, take out the magic bits, everything would be good as new. Job well done, life well lived, yadda yadda. She nodded along as Foxy continued talking, offering a sympathetic tsk at the lack of the promised phone call. This wasn’t an issue Edith had ever had, of course, but it also wouldn’t do to tell her it was a silly thing to get upset about. “Anyway,” she repeated, with another tired, crooked smile, happy to be moving past the little dating-history lesson she was being subjected to.

Edith leaned in, if only to encourage Foxy to continue; she did, and Edith continued nodding. She frowned at ‘forest fire’ and wondered briefly what that was all about before deciding it might be best to exclude that detail from Foxy’s future. And she wasn’t kidding -- she liked chatting. It was a lot about herself, and not a lot about Dennis, nor a lot about magic; nothing about magic, in fact. Picking locks seemed to line up with magic, at least a little bit. Christ, this was getting more complicated.

He had walked her home, and Edith found herself very grateful that he hadn’t been invited in; she wondered if that meant the date had gone poorly, not going inside, but then Foxy finished her thought: they kissed. Edith frowned, not particularly caring to hear these details. But her confundus charm was perfect, as ever, as Foxy kept on about how lovely it was.

He seemed sad, too, you know? She knew. Jesus, she knew. Like he’d been through a lot was a bit of an understatement, but Edith didn’t interject anymore than nodding. She leaned forward, mirroring the girl, smiling sadly at her next words: in love. Edith straightened up and frowned, trying to process everything, figure out the best course of action here. Geez, it was all so… romantically tragic. Saccharine sweet. Kids being kids, right? This is what normal teens got up to.

But Dennis was technically of age -- according to the paperwork -- so there she was, having to figure out how best to hollow out the girl’s memories, to leave her with only the normal things. Those things were the sort of details she wouldn’t be putting in the paperwork; paperwork was used in hearings, and no one needed to know all of this. There was one other detail she’d be leaving out, one glaring detail that was situated around the girl’s neck. Foxy hadn’t mentioned the necklace, but Edith could hardly believe she had forgotten about it. Or was Dennis actually that distracting?

Whatever the reason, Edith didn’t need to know. She just needed the necklace, would go put it back, would fix all of that, would make sure muggle law enforcement wouldn’t need to be involved. She was mildly surprised she hadn’t been assigned a magical law enforcement partner for this; that only made it more obvious that the necklace hadn’t come to the attention of anyone at the ministry. She smirked at that, that the magical might have been too good for detection.

“What about that, Foxy?” She pointed at the necklace, with a another tired smile. “It looks heavy.”

NPC; Foxglove Sharpe

"Oh," Foxy replied gently, her hand automatically coming up to rest against her throat. The necklace. It wasn't that she'd forgotten it was there, it was simply because she'd been preoccupied. Instantly, she tensed up. The woman seemed nice enough but not nice enough.

At first, the cold of the amethysts had shocked her skin but by now, it felt almost comfortable. It didn't suit her, of course. It was too ostentatious, it was basically a huge load of precious jewels hanging down but she felt fiercely protective of it. Dennis had urged her to pick a necklace and she had. He'd gotten it for her. A memento, he'd said. Not that she needed it. He was filling up her entire head as it stood already.

It was exciting; he was exciting. Foxy's deep brown eyes looked at the woman's brighter ones with a gentle frown. She looked half asleep and her glasses were wonky, it was almost like she didn't even want to be there.

The adrenaline had tickled away now and it settled in the pit of her stomach, cold and heavy and realisation dawned. When the sun rose, there would be a gaping hole in the shop window. What about CCTV? Fingerprints? Witnesses? Her hold tightened on the necklace, her slim index finger stroking the large purple stone that rested flat against her sternum, over and over, like a calming mantra. It seemed like fun some time before. He fastened the clip on the necklace and he'd kissed her. There were photos of her wearing it, together in the photobooth, tucked safely into her bag. She'd be damned if this woman was getting those.

Foxy had broken the law lots of times; she'd trespassed, stolen a few little things from the beauty counter at the department stores, smashed a window, incited a fight but she'd never lifted anything as beautiful and expensive as this. Sitting on the sofa across from a stranger who seemed really interested in her new bit of kit, she chastised herself for not hiding it. In fact, she shouldn't have accepted it at all.

"It's not really," Foxglove told the brunette honestly as she shrugged casually before touching the chain. "I think it's probably just silver plated," she added. "I like gemstones." Again, not a lie. "I have expensive tastes. Cubic zirconia looks really good, don't you think?" She asked lightly as she stroked one of the decidedly real diamonds.

Was she involved in a theft? She hadn't actually broken in. She'd selected a necklace at Dennis' insistence but she hadn't actually pulled the trigger. He'd made her wait, in the dark, with her eyes closed. The image of him in a prison cell turned her stomach and the colour drained from her face as her stomach lurched. He was too young for prison, too good, too kind. As though she felt compelled to do so, Foxglove unfastened the necklace, kind of as if her body was somehow rejecting it. It still felt heavy in her hands, the diamonds glittering in the dim light. 

She felt sick and she felt sad. Foxglove had a bad case of teenage indestructibility; she was too young for anything bad to happen to her. Maybe Dennis had been the same way. He seemed too carefree, almost as if he had no regard for his own safety. Foxy sat cross-legged in the gloom as she held on to the necklace before flicking her eyes up to the woman sitting closer still. "You're not here to fix the TV, are you?" She asked quietly, her dark eyes flicking across the woman's face. She looked tired and drained, too pale, like she was stuck in an office with bad lighting that was going to give her wrinkles. Instinctively, she backed up a little on the sofa as she made to shuffle away from her.

“Really good,” Edith agreed, expressionless now. Even Edith could see that it wasn’t cubic zirconia, and the most expensive piece of jewelry she owned was the watch -- whose cardboard ‘leather’ band was held together by tape and magic -- she had borrowed from her father. She closed her eyes in a prolonged blink; Foxy’s fingers were still on the necklace when she opened them again. The girl was complicating things - for Edith, for herself -- and the Obliviator was getting tired of trying nicely. Things could have been easy. She glanced down at her wand for a brief second; maybe that confundus charm hadn’t been her best.

Ah, well. She’d worry about that later, after all the paperwork.

Edith looked up again as Foxy unfastened the necklace and she held out her hand to take it from her, happy that things were shifting back to the ‘easy’ end of the spectrum. But Foxy spoke again and Edith didn’t retrieve her hand. She glanced from her face to the necklace and back again, her thoughts turning over quickly as she changed course yet again. She was already looking at having to piece through Foxy’s memories and extracting only the magical bits and they weren’t obvious bits so she was already looking at some extra time spent and if her confundus charm wasn’t great than how were her parents still asleep upstairs because that one was a much trickier charm and now the necklace and --

She didn’t bother answering the question. Edith had been holding her wand in her lap throughout their brief conversation, and she didn’t have to readjust before casting her next charm. “Obliviate.” It was a short and sweet word for a long and dirty spell; she normally did nothing more than think the word but this particular moment seemed too critical. All along she had been planning to leave parts of the evening, let her have her happy moments because if this girl with no cares in the world couldn’t be happy, then who could? But the threat of a less-than-easy obliviation was enough to drive that consideration from her mind. She didn’t have the details she needed to do anything else, didn’t have the energy to try. Lack of sleep and an over abundance of alcohol made it hard to cut away around the edges.

The latter half of Nosferatu -- and everything after that -- was gone in a couple blinks. The girl’s face had gone blank, her grip on the necklace slack. Edith picked it up with a barely audible, “Thanks.” The metal had warmed in her hands and it was even heavier than she had thought. She slipped it into the pocket of her hoodie and scooted just a touch closer. “You came home after the movies and fell asleep on the sofa.” She wasn’t expecting a response and she continued: “Bought your mum flowers on your way home.” They might not have ‘understood’ Foxy, but they were probably trying at least.

Edith had bought herself a few minutes into the future with the obliviation, she figured. She shifted and made a small handful of daisies appear in a rough looking vase, centered on the table next to them. They looked a little sad, she  supposed, but she could worry about that later. She needed to figure out this necklace situation now, though.

Standing up, Edith pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose with her free hand as she stepped around Foxy. Her parents would wake up eventually, Foxy would be back to normal -- as normal as possible minus a night of being in love, apparently -- in ten minutes. Her discarded boots and bag caught her eye as she reached for the doorknob, and she stooped down to rummage through the bag’s contents for a minute, thankful for the reminder to do the other half of her job. Foxy wasn’t organized at all, but it didn’t take too much effort to find a couple of photos -- Foxy wearing the necklace -- that she didn’t look at for longer than necessary. Proof for the paperwork, or something.

She sniffed and stood up again, looking at the girl one last time before stepping out and taking the long and slow way back -- walking and bussing -- to the office to hopefully buy herself some time on figuring out the bits that weren’t technically any part of her job.

NPC; Foxglove Sharpe

Everything shifted.

It was a bit like being on a ferry in high winds; disorientating. Foxy's stomach lurched as the room tilted on its axis as her body went slack. Something shoved her backwards, maybe her own body weight, as she was flat on her back on the sofa. It was like her limbs were suddenly filled with lead but it felt nice. It was like she was in that strange limbo when she was just about to fall asleep, hovering between waking and slumber, calm and soft and inviting.

The necklace was removed from her fingers without any resistance as Edith moved around her living room.  Foxglove didn't respond but she was dimly aware of a voice telling her what to do. Something about falling asleep? Flowers? That sounded about right. Foxy always fell asleep on the sofa. It drove her mother mad.

The gentle click of the front door closing seemed to stir her back into action. "Urgh," she groaned as she righted herself, her slim fingers rubbing her eyes and smearing the mascara as she did so. The daisies were nice and she wanted to do something nice for her mum. Her parents weren't that bad. She stared at the flowers, some of the blooms broken and the petals a little bashed but it was the best she could do.

Guilt settled around her shoulders, damp and heavy like a wet blanket as she heaved a shiver involuntarily. Her mum wasn't a bad mother, it was her who was a bad daughter. The clock in the hallway ticked on steadily, slow and easy as she scratched the back of her neck. She looked down at her hands, her black nail polish chipped as her full lips formed a gentle, thoughtful frown. Her skin smelled like popcorn and cigarette smoke and a vague whiff of something she didn't know. Like aftershave. She must have given one of her friends a hug before she left.

Absently, she rubbed her collarbone as it itched slightly before she blinked the thoughts away. She felt…uncomfortable but mainly sleepy. Foxy tiptoed to the living room door and opened it, wincing as the floorboards underfoot creaked in protest. She placed one foot on the first stair before she froze and stepped backwards onto the hard flooring. She looked up the staircase and sighed heavily. "Sorry," she mumbled quietly to her sleeping parents before backtracking into the living room and closing the door behind her, blocking out the light.

Tiredness crept into Foxglove's bones as she felt her shoulders sag. She let out a soft yawn before sliding down the sofa, grabbing a plump cushion as she went and fashioned it into a pillow. Outside, a car trundled by, its yellow light illuminating the room briefly before it disappeared. Foxglove curled herself up on the couch and as soon as her head hit the cushion, she was out like a light.


done!