The First Age

Natalie Northbrook-Grey

Granddaughter of DVII's Patron, Edward Northbrook, and daughter to well-known philanthropist Eleanor Northbrook-Grey. Natalie's upbringing was one of privilege and splendour, the benefits of a private education and the obscene luxury afforded by living in the heart of London. Her earliest memories of childhood blur with activity, of caressed hair and kissed foreheads; an endless string of goodbyes framed by the soft glow of nostalgia. Her parents were often absent, but she has clear memories of their familial togetherness back then. The bonds that tied them might stretch the vastness of the globe, but they were unbreakable.

A staunch champion and benefactor of the Red Cross, her mother travelled often, leaving her three little girls to the care of extravagant wealth and the secure legacy of the Northbrook name. Their eccentric father, billionaire Alistair Grey, never tried to fill the gaping hole her absence left; he was distant, preoccupied, and always working. Natalie loved him anyway. She remembers stretching out in the plush carpet of his office with a picture book, or huddled by his feet under the desk while he worked. Though stern and unsmiling, he never questioned her silent company, and her sisters were usually too afraid of his piercing stare and clipped words to dare follow. Occasionally, when he noticed she was there, he would speak. Often she would just listen to the rumble of his voice, whether he spoke to her or to others via the network. Sometimes she fell asleep there.

She was always her father's daughter.

As she grew older, Natalie's sense of independence flourished. Though hardly shy she at least gave the impression of being reserved; unlike her siblings, she was uninterested in the limelight afforded by their family's name and standing within the CCD. Her face began to slip from public Northbrook photographs, and sometimes articles forgot her name. Since she was both studious and sensible, it was never an issue, if perhaps something her mother did not favour. Natalie was was content to spend time alone, and had plenty of preoccupations to fill it. Eleanor Northbrook insisted on the highest calibre of education for her children; Natalie and her sisters had learned French almost alongside English, and later Russian. Music centred her foremost hobby, in particular the piano. She read voraciously, studied hard, and occasionally stole away from their private mansion to taste the life of anonymity.

At seventeen, the balance of her world shifted. It never returned back to kilter.

Her mother had left for a charity gala in memorial of the Tower Bridge disaster, a function she had unsuccessfully cajoled Natalie into attending. Her father's study, which she still sometimes visited, was locked. He was out also. It was not unusual in the expansive lay of rooms and floors for the comings and goings of her family to pass like ghosts. Shadows chased open doorways, and in the echoing vastness of the huge house Natalie retreated to the piano. Annotated sheet music spread in an arc on the wood floor, untouched from the last time she had been in here. The curtains were flung wide, which in the daylight streamed in a flood of light. Now drizzle flecked the windows, and the sky was striated with red and purple.

At the majestic height of La Campanella, the room's acoustics flattened and a wall-light flashed an incoming call connected to her Wallet. It was full dark, the piano's ivory keys aglow in slanted moonlight as her fingers drifted from their placement. The cadence of the last chord hung like a vibration in the air.

"Yes?"


"Where are you? Are you home?" Her mother's voice. The words were calm, but something tight clipped their edges. The tick of the metronome counted the silence before Natalie answered. "Yeah."
Then. "What's happened?"


"Your father--" There was a hint of question, a breath of uncertainty, but it righted itself. "Stay there, Natalie. Don't answer the door. I'll be home soon."

The call disconnected.

She padded on bare feet back through the house, and on whim she tried her father's door again to see if he were home. The lock clicked open at the loose grip of her hand, and she toed the door. It gaped to pitch black before a bloom of soft lighting responded to her presence. It felt cold. Not like the sanctuary of her youth. And he wasn't in here; the room was not so large she could not see that at a glance. The door had been locked.

Natalie felt the trespass of crossing the threshold, but ignored the thud of her heart. The desk was scattered with paper - paper. She cast her eye over a set of freshly printed financial documents, then fanned them aside to pluck something underneath. She'd barely begun reading when the paper in her hand wisped with smoke, then began to curl under the lick of an orange flame. She dropped it reflexively, as a whoomf from behind blazed heat against her back. She spun, knocked backwards into the desk. Smoke pooled thick, and quickly, coiling like barbs in her lungs. The office burned. Vaguely, she heard thuds slamming against the door, but they echoed watery. She felt strangely euphoric as her eyes seared and filled up with red and black, and nothing.

She woke up in hospital, hooked up to oxygen. Her chest scorched every breath of air in, and scratched it out painfully. One painful breath after the other. She had no burns. None. But the nurses' soothing voices exalting her fortune as they tinkered with her monitors swam blurrily beneath the slick of fever. One blink, her mother was there. Another, gone. Angry voices raged outside the door. Silence muffled her ears. Sunlight streamed in long golden beams, but when it brushed her skin she screamed. Tried to. The coughing spewed out her insides and the world started beeping.

When she was finally allowed home, it was to a new house.

----*----

Her father was arrested in the summer of 2040, though it was eighteen months before the case finally saw a court hearing. The media was rife with rumours. The word terrorist stamped headlines alongside blurry photographs of her father, his security detail fanned out in frozen fury, outstretched arms thrusting away cameras and urging her father to shield his face. In every single shot, he refused to hide. Pale eyes sought the lens and glared it down. His lips were a thin pressed him. They called him proud. They called him a traitor. They called him monster.

Someone set filters on the newsfeed into their new residence - her mother, perhaps, or her grandfather. She saw the other stories anyway. The ones about the blaze that had taken half their old house, and scoured every inch of evidence with it. Conspiracy theorists painted devilry from the ashes, darkening the honourable Northbrook name with the smoke of Grey. In the articles, Natalie's own expressionlessly calm features stared back from the court stands; that same haughty stare, diamond hard as her father's. The journalists saw a father's daughter. A few bayed for blood. But she was a minor in the eyes of the law, and Edward Northbrook fielded the disaster with his daughter at his side. Together they coaxed the angelic from Natalie's icy façade, sculpted the doting and naive daughter from the emotionless accomplice. She was a Northbrook, like her sisters. Not a Grey.

They did no such thing for Alistair.

He was charged with embezzlement, accused of facilitating funds to anti-CCD terrorist groups in America. No defence passed his tight-lipped mouth. No explanation. Afterwards her family lay fractured, and Natalie's loyalties spun. Father became a black word, which only curled it tighter into the fist of her heart. They imprisoned Alistair in DI, a world away from London; at the very soul of the empire he had betrayed. His memory was a blighted mark, and though she remembered the way her parents fingers had used to absently touch in the brief memories she had of them together, her mother now refused to speak his name.

Edward Northbrook's status rocked in the wake of Alistair's betrayal, and scandal nipped at the heels of the Northbrook-Greys. Eleanor gathered her family protectively close, rallying them to a united front, but the bonds which had once felt unshakable seemed suddenly loose to Natalie. How quickly one of them could be cast free, forgotten. Exiled. Though her grandfather held on to his power and, eventually, equilibrium of a sort returned, Natalie drifted away.

At nineteen she abandoned home, shunning the golden education her mother had laid out for a beautiful and secure future. Her grandfather frowned upon this new rebelliousness, but ultimately advised Eleanor to let her go. She would come back, he said, when this silliness had run its course. After all, she was still a Northbrook. Indeed, loyalty never has sent her too far from the family she cannot forgive - though in what way they have even betrayed her she can't begin to define. It feels like the cinch of razors in her chest when she thinks on it, so she doesn't.

She used her mother's connections to push as much distance as she could between herself and London, which ultimately sent her to aid work overseas. Her mother, humanitarian so she purported to be, was both furious and fearful, but there was precious little she could do about it. She was the most diligent and high profile of the Red Cross's supporters; she could hardly deny her daughter's pledge to working on the ground. If Natalie had intended it as calculated punishment for her mother's lack of emotion concerning her husband, it certainly cut to the bone.

----*----

Pale blonde hair, light green-blue eyes. Fair skin, average tall and of petite frame. She has the grace and poise afforded by her privileged upbringing, and her accent is enunciated and crisp, advertising clearly where she is from. The intensity of her pale stare is sometimes mistaken for haughtiness, though Natalie is not usually concerned by what others think. She's independent minded and cool of demeanour. Having grown up under media glare, she's learnt how to keep her emotions close. Little ruffles her - or appears to anyway.

She values honesty and can be pretty blunt herself, but upholds a tradition of manners. Passion cores her cold exterior; when her temper flares, it is white hot. Recompense is often calculated (and more likely to be on behalf of others). She's perceptive of those around her, if her interests in looking out for them are usually veiled in apathy.

Quick minded, a deep thinker, and a keen musician. Though partial to dry humour, she's not usually unkind. She has the smirk of a cynic, and many would believe it of her; she guards her privacy, and trusts grudgingly - though once given she can overlook almost any fault. Any but the sting of rejection, and the knife of betrayal.

Her presence ghosts in and out of the media, but she refuses to speak for herself - and has never spoken of her father. She is only really known as the wayward middle daughter of Eleanor Northbrook, haunted by the lingering accusations placed after the fire. It is speculated that her work overseas is exile, either self-inflicted out of guilt or imposed by her family. Despite the efforts of the Northbrooks at the time of trial, the whisper of her involvement - or at the least her knowledge of - Alistair Grey's transgressions has never truly died. She is the chink in the Northbrook's fastidious reputation.

---

Past Lives, 3rd Age: Nythadri Vanditera

• <li style="display:none">
  
• Collecting on a Wager
  
  
  
• The Hunt
  
  
  
• The gift &amp; the pledge
  
  
  
• Loose Ends
  
  
  
• War Games
  
  
  

---

RP History

• <li style="display:none">
  
• Coup D'etat (Azubuike NPC, Ekene NPC, Jay, Jacques, various NPCs)
  
  
  
• The Dust Settles (Jacques, Jay, Ekene NPC)
  
  
  
• Understandings (Jacques, Jay, Ekene NPC)
  
  
  
• The Road to Masiaka (Jacques, Jay, Azuibuike NPC, Jared, various other NPCs)
  
  
  
• Operation Rien N'Empêche (No interaction)
  
  
  
• The Search (Jay, Jared, Ekene &amp; other NPCs)
  
  
  
• Full Circle (Alone/Olabisi)
  
  
  
• The Long Road Forward (Jay, Jared, Jacques)
  
  
  
• A Quiet Arrival
  
  
  
• A Night to Forget (Aria, NPCs)
  
  
  
• Experiments (NPC Alistair Pavlo)
  
  
  
• Spilled Drinks (Jay, Jared, Soren, Nox, Dorian, Emily)
  
  
  
• Through the Storm (alone)
  
  
  
• A Day to Remember (Ascendancy, Evelyn)
  
  
  
• Caesura
  
  
  Edited by Natalie Grey, Feb 21 2018, 07:30 AM.
  
  

2040

She didn't like the new house; its modern white walls and vast open spaces were soulless, lacking either memory or history. Summer sun filtered through the many windows, spinning dust-motes over the unpacked boxes set atop furniture. Natalie wandered barefoot across the white varnished floor as her mother spoke with the art dealer, discussing the prospects for bringing inspiration to the house, to make a home of blank bricks and mortar.

A home without her father.

The lawyers argued over a court date. Alistair was not allowed to see his family, and though she was assured every time she asked that he was kept comfortably, in the brief media snapshots she had caught of him, tension froze his stern face to defiance. Natalie's lungs still burned from the aftermath of the fire, though she'd been discharged from hospital for over a week now, and her body still felt frail, like the flames had scoured more than her father's office. It was the first time she'd harnessed the strength to make it down the stairs.

Her piano stood against one wall. Her fingers tested the ivory keys, coaxing a few discordant notes across the conversation that drifted in and out of her attention. It still needed tuning after the move, but she'd not managed to gather the motivation to do so yet. The escape felt hollow while her family lay broken; they should be fighting to clear her father's name, not decorating a new house, hiding behind the glamour of their illustrious name. It keened something sharp in her chest. Her hands slammed down hard. The dissonance jarred.

She never noticed the voices had stopped.

The sense of someone standing behind her lifted her head. He was tall, light-haired, with a mournfully contemplative cast to his features. "Miss Grey."
His accent had a foreign cadence, Scandinavian perhaps, and he scrutinised her with what seemed an academic interest, as though she were one of the pieces he had in mind to barter. Shadows impressed the pale pallor of her face, the tightness of passing fever; she was hardly a work of art.

He produced a folded dossier from a pocket in his suit jacket, selected some papers from within, and laid them gently on the piano keys where the pressure of her hands finally eased. Paper. "Burn it afterwards."
A faint smile curved the edges of his lips. The fire was no secret, if its presence in the news had been vastly overshadowed by her father's betrayal, but something in his words prickled unease as he turned his back to continue examining the walls. "Ah, Ms. Northbrook."


Who are you? Her eyes narrowed, confused, but she didn't get the chance to speak. She pushed the papers in with her sheet music, gathered the pile and walked out without a single word as her mother returned with two cups of tea.

--*--

The simple beauty of Bach's Prelude No.1 drifted to the desolation of Beethoven's Sonata No.14, to the decadence of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, to the innocence of Mozart's Sonata No.16, and endless on. The music shivered against her skin unnoticed. The door to her room was shut, though her siblings knew better than to disturb her when she'd cocooned herself from the world and her mother would at least offer a pretense of formal privacy by knocking. Natalie sat with her legs drawn up at the top of the bed. Her head was bowed, pale blonde hair strewn over her shoulders, a faint frown pinching her brow. Her mother's art dealer had left her with a notion of secrecy, but the papers were spread about her carelessly.

No cohesion joined them; he'd given her a mess, and she couldn't fathom why. He was a stranger, but suspicion burned warily in her chest. He'd called her Grey. Odd medical reports surrounded her. Articles on unexplained arson, impossible feats of healing, and various other phenomena scattered across the globe. In isolation it meant nothing; a cursory scan of the internet might find any of those stories, and a thousand more besides. It was only when she reached the personal accounts that a cool feeling began settling in her gut. Light. Joy. Power. It was upon reading the last section that she finally let the papers scatter. Natalie hugged her legs, rested her chin on her knees, pale gaze unfocused.

She couldn't burn them even if she wanted to.

But she could feel something inside, something changed, the faintest light that stirred with will. Perhaps the fever hadn't yet gone. She closed her eyes, buried her face, frowning.

Interim: 2040-2

She attended every court date.

Her eyes bore holes into her father, waiting for his acknowledgement, but he never looked at her. Not once. It was torture by the end, sitting painfully still on the wooden bench, blanking every twist in her gut from marring her expression as she watched the prosecution tear him apart. Keeping her mouth shut was an exercise in control. Her hands, resting so demurely in her lap, dug the crescent impression of her nails into her palm, dividing the urge to speak with pain.

The Sickness had stopped. Her presence was a statement of life as much as an oath of loyalty; she had survived, was still surviving, and she had not abandoned him. Her tenacity endured even after it became apparent he would not spare her a glance. As a child she had never demanded his attention, had found comfort just in the unremarked simplicity of silent company. But now it hurt.

Still, she stayed.

Until the sentence passed, and she lost him.

The flash of lights reverberated in her skull as she left the building, her name shrill and imploring on the tongues of strangers, like talons in her flesh, desperate for the blood and tears to frame a story. An insistently brazen stare might have served her armour another day, but this time she ignored them entirely, grateful for the suits that cleared her path. The hollowness in her stomach left her feeling disconnected; there had never been any question of the outcome, but the finality of it. She closed her eyes briefly as they reached the car, though when she slipped in her face held its frozen mask.

She swallowed the poison on her tongue when her gaze met her mother's, repressing the vitriol of blame. Her face was pinched, disapproval writ in every line; they had argued every morning until it had become clear that no amount of forbidding would stop Natalie from attending court, but she'd never supported the decision. Not that they'd ever truly spoken about it; even Alistair's name was denied entry to the Northbrook stronghold, his memory banished, the lingering of his presence an affront. Eventually it was Natalie who looked away, unwilling to listen to anything the woman had to say. She pressed her head into the soft leather, and stared out the darkened windows the whole way home.

That same night she applied for a visitation order.

Alistair refused her.

2042

Most of the time she could feel it there, hovering like a sun pressing up against the horizon, but she couldn't touch it.

She'd always envisioned her father's aid; had convinced herself that he had been responsible for the papers the art dealer had pressed into her hands. Answers waited behind that pale gaze, a trail she had believed he intended to lead her to him. But in the brittle dust of rejection the scenario frayed at the edges, burned as quickly and violently as his office had, robbing her of comfort. Natalie felt adrift. Her mother welcomed her back into the fold - demanded it of her, an obligation of her blood - but home felt a distant concept. Needing something to fight, something to blame, she pushed away.

She'd been escaping into the city at night unescorted for years, and either her parents had been unaware of it or were content to turn a blind and indulgent eye. Natalie never really got in trouble, never brought a media spotlight on her own head, and it seemed the only required prerequisite to her freedom, left unspoken. Her mother spent so much time focused outward, nursing the woes of a cruel world, that she probably never noticed the activities of her children unless she heard of them through the newsfeeds. And her father. She was beginning to suspect he simply didn't care. Perhaps he never had.

Natalie had always enjoyed the anonymity of city, the discovery of friends who did not know where she rested her head or the revered (and rich) legacy of her name. As much as she loved her family, she valued disassociation from them too; the chains of expectation shook free, the weight of constant scrutiny lifted. It was usually enough to root herself. Tonight, though, it offered little solace. Tonight, recklessness hummed in her blood instead, casting shadows over the forced path of her golden future, hooking the need to run under her skin. Run before it was too late.

She was too proud to cry. Alcohol soothed her entrance to oblivion, a self-aware stupidity; at least until common sense eroded to numbness, and then she felt very little of anything. She didn't usually drink this quantity, at least not on her own, but she chased the senselessness with blind determination now. And. Fuck. It. All.

Eventually someone joined her at the bar, a midscale place awash with florescent lighting and brightly coloured patrons. She didn't know it - was not seeking the comfort of familiarity, and in fact was not entirely sure of where in the city she had wandered. Natalie blinked at the face of her new company, then turned away. Her jaw clenched, the fingers nursing her drink tightening.

Anger clouded her stoic boundaries, filled her control with frustration. She teetered on the edge of a reaction, considered sliding from the stool and walking out, except that she wasn't so sure her limbs would comply given the way her head swam. She wanted a little peace and emptiness, not to wander London's cold dark streets at this hour. And she was here first. Inconsiderate bastard.

He leaned forward, lacing his hands across the bar, his skin tinged blue by the under-lighting. A tattoo inked his forearm, his shirt rolled to the elbow, but the detail blurred when she looked at it, and then she was distracted by the foreign cadence of his voice calling for drinks, its lilt tickling her ears. The music here had a thumping bass she did not like, repetitive, like caged walls. She was angry about her father. Injured by his dismissal. But it ran deeper than that. The disillusionment. Too many cracks had distorted her perceptions, and now her life was like that drumming bass-line. Repetitive. Confining. Intolerable.

Her soul was restless.

And she was really drunk.

"I don't want your pity,"
she told him, but she took his drink when it slid across the bar, and swallowed it unidentified, burning all the way to the pit of her stomach.

He had the gall to laugh. "I'm not selling pity."


Usually her wit would have sparked a defiant retort; she could spin words with best of them, her sense of humour razor-edged despite her angelic colouring. But right now there was nothing. Hollowness greeted his joke, her silence heavy enough to be something tangible. Her foggy thoughts leaned back into memory, scrutinising that day in the new house all those months ago, when he had slipped her the dossier of folded papers. "He sent you, right? I'm not wrong about that."
Natalie didn't look at him when she spoke, concerned the vulnerabilities would show through her ice-clear gaze. She almost cursed the words as they fell off her tongue to hang in the air like proof of weakness. But she wanted him to answer all the same.

"Last time. Not this time. It doesn't work like that."


What doesn't work like that? Memories dulled like heavy smoke, and she felt sluggish and confused, and most of all suddenly sad. Unsure if she'd drunk too much or not enough, she pinched the bridge of her nose. "I don't even know what your name is."


"You can call me Alvis,"
he said, after a beat. He remained leaning on the bar, not sitting, hands still clasped patiently. He was tall - broad in a lean way, she remembered. Though she hadn't looked up at him, she could feel him leaned in, the shadow of him close, staring down at her, unpicking the sparse emotions to cross her face. So if her father hadn't sent him why was he here? The mystery of their association dropped a discordant depression in her chest, and as desperate as she was for answers, she just didn't want them from a stranger. She downed the rest of her own glass, flicked the emptiness away with her hand.

"You know what? I don't want to talk about it, Alvis. So what do you want?"
She looked at him properly then, owning the irritation of his company with the fierceness of her own scrutiny. Inoffensive brown eyes stared back in a face cut sharp, the angles of his cheek bones diamond hard, like his whole self was slightly too thin for the tallness of his frame. Nothing menacing emanated from him, though nothing particularly sensitive either.

"Just curious, Miss Grey."


Her expression folded in. For some reason the pain reared sharp, reasserting the loss, running remembrance through all the hair-line fractures in her perfect Northbrook family. The frustration, the uncertainty, the way fear inched its way in when she really allowed herself to think about it. She was different. Different in a way that pushed her out of the circle of ordinary life, shuddering her world in a way she was unwilling for now to face. And maybe that was what was really bothering her.

Her head swirled. She slipped down from the stool, expression flat, and left the bar. Alvis didn't stop her.

The tube carriage was mostly empty, its few occupants washed in a sallow light that pulled grotesquely at their features. Youths with hoods pulled low over their brows congregated around one of the poles, muttering in sharp dialect amongst themselves. A man in a suit sat facing inwards, cradling his head in his hands, while further down a handful of drunken revellers in tiny skirts and spiked heels giggled. Near Natalie, a homeless person was dozing, arms wrapped tight around a rucksack containing their worldly possessions.

Her vision burred as they hit a tunnel, robbing even that amount of paltry sight. Nausea rolled up in her stomach and she squeezed her eyes shut tight against the dizziness. The alcohol tasted stale on her tongue, and her thoughts twisted dully, the agony springing tears to the corner of her eyes. The need to escape tightened its grip, pushed her into recklessness that at the time possessed a perverse kind of logic. Escape where, though? She craved the isolation, suffocated by the bonds of family, and yet the same feeling cast her adrift. She felt abandoned.

The neighbourhood she stepped out into was grim. A concrete block of flats blotted out the moon, street lights pooling sick puddles of light in the blanket of dark. Laughter sprung from shadows, the primal howl of drunk kids, the screech of a domestic argument echoing behind closed doors. She stumbled her way through the estate, arms wrapped tight against the chill. Her skin prickled with the watch of unseen eyes, real or imagined, as she stepped up to buzz the intercom.

"Aaron? It’s me."


A crackle of silence answered. She pressed her head into the back of her hand, splayed flat against the wall. Defeated.

Then:

"Natalie?"
The surprise was evident in his voice. She was just relieved he was still awake at such an hour.

*

The flat was small, its entirety able to fit within any number of bathrooms in the sprawling estates her family owned. And it was crammed claustrophobically with junk. Books, trinkets, ornaments, pictures. An ashtray balanced on the arm of a sofa, stubbed with a dozen shrivelled roll-ups, a vacant shadow in place of the chair's usual occupant. A desk lamp lit one dreary corner, the table piled with old-fashioned books and a clunky laptop. The stench of smoke and the remnants of whatever they'd had for dinner heaved her stomach. Aaron caught her elbow on the way in, stared concernedly into the wet betrayal in her eyes.

"Geeze, Natalie, how much have you had to drink?"
His arm enveloped her shoulders in reply to her abject silence, lips pressed into her hair and catching her forehead so that for a moment, even in the fugue of drunkenness, she knew a sliver of peace. "Did you get the fucking tube? Because I told you not to do that."
His voice was soft, whispered, as he guided her though to the kitchen. Natalie sank into the chair he pulled out for her, watching blearily as he poked his head back into the living room then carefully pulled the door closed. Her head pounded. Yes she had been stupid. Yes it had been on purpose. Regret mixed with the toxic acid in her stomach, and yes some awful part of her wished she hadn't made it here in one piece.

"I'm sorry."
To the voice in her head? To Aaron?

He chuckled. Clinking cups, spooning coffee. "Now I know you're drunk."


She watched him pour it, steam rolling from the dark liquid. The kitchen was quaint, jammed with pots and utensils, dishes stacked on the draining board. Once the mundaneness had soothed her, in some small way made her feel a part of a world she otherwise felt like she viewed through a sheet of glass. She had expected to feel better just being here, only that barrier was ten feet thick now. She wanted to tell him - about the light, about Alvis's papers and how very afraid she was. Spill up every ill facet of her nature, every secret, every abnormality, and hope that he'd still pick up the pieces and accept her for what she was. He would, wouldn't he? He was a good man. That was what good men did.

But then what?

She could see he was tired; his eyes squinted to the task, blinking back fatigue. Judging by the lamp and piles of work in the other room, she also knew he hadn't been sleeping. Pockets of quiet time were precious to him, even when they must be claimed in the dead hours of the night. Too often the case. Soft shadows crescented beneath his eyes. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, his skin dusted with constellations of freckles. His lips smiled faintly, absently.

He made her heart ache.

The sense of a mistake began to take shape, though she willed it not to. Natalie blinked, looked away.

She was different, frighteningly and inexplicably different, and the walls of her world could no longer contain her. Money ran like water, a deluge of luxury that burned the oxygen from her lungs. She could no longer swim in the meaninglessness of the Northbrook name, not when her family eroded in chunks and her father left when she needed him most. Maybe the only time she had ever needed him. His rejection to her visitation order stung all over again. Pressing her hands over her face seemed a better alternative to crying in front of Aaron, even though she knew he would offer comfort not ridicule.

He pushed the mug in front of her, plopped himself down in the chair opposite. The silence was thumping loud in her head, and the coffee fumes made her want to wretch. The kitchen felt oppressive. How to phrase it? How to tell him?

"Aaron..."


He breathed in tight. "I saw. I saw, on the news, Natalie. About your dad."


They'd never spoken about this before: who she was. It had been part of Aaron's appeal, his quiet and nonjudgmental acceptance. He'd been her sanctuary throughout the trial. Now with that one comment, the bubble around them burst, and the impact shuddered through her alcohol-soaked mind. Her thoughts hadn't been on her father, and it took a moment for the confusion to bleed to despair. Her father was gone. She loved him and he was gone, and it wasn't a secret she wanted to share, not even with Aaron.

"And I'm just saying, if you need to talk. I'm here. You know that I'm here."


She pushed back her chair. "I should go. I need to go."

Stumbling drunk in the dark. Desperate to escape. And go where? Electric lights washed the shadows, concrete arching over her head, a couple of hooded youths kicking a ball against the wall. Aaron followed. Damn him and his unwanted kindness and the secrets she couldn't tell him. She was so afraid of losing him, yet she was losing him anyway. If he'd offered a hand maybe she'd have taken it, gripped it like a lifeline. Or maybe she'd have just dragged him down with her. She'd never trusted enough to try.

He was calling her name. Slightly irritated. A touch afraid. How many times had he warned her about his neighbourhood? He tried to stay out of it; hadn't always, and maybe it was that touch of darkness that had called her to begin with. These days he was clawing his way through university in a bid to slash the roots clinging to his ankles. Supporting his alcoholic father as he did it. Gang life behind him. Bright future ahead.

She paused. Pressed her palms to her face. Raked her fingers back through her hair.

And suddenly became aware of shouting behind her.

She spun. The shadows congregated, jostling and yelling, Aaron at their centre. His brows daggered low over his eyes, jaw locked tight. He wasn't looking at her now. The image seared, but the danger reached her slowly. Like a dream. A flash of metal caught her peripheral, and something overwhelmed her from within, burst through her skin in ferocious instinct.

The twist of limbs.

The snap of bone.

By the time she was on the ground beside them, blood slicked her palms. She scrambled to find a pulse at Aaron's neck. One of the boys had had a knife, now shattered like glass on the asphalt. She pressed on the gushing wound, wordlessly distraught, fighting to find the wallet in her pocket. Not looking at the other bodies. Not thinking about them. You did this.

Some time later, sirens wailed in the distance.

~*~
The next morning passed amid the beeping of machinery and stink of antiseptic. Hospitals unsettled her, but she lingered by Aaron's bedside, watching his pale face, the rise and fall of his chest. His face was badly bruised. Thick bandages across his abdomen hid the rows of stitches from view. Why had she left last night? What had she meant to achieve?

He had no family to visit. They'd tried calling his dad, but the phone just rang and rang and rang.

Some hours later he woke up groggy. But when he saw her his eyes widened. The monitoring equipment began ringing wildly. A nurse led her gently out.

~*~
On the afternoon he woke properly he refused to see her. She sat outside on a bench, hands pressed between her knees, hair ruffled by the breeze. The rejection stung keenly; that he turned away the very moment she needed him the most. I'm here, he'd said. You know I'm here. But all love had boundaries. Limits. She, of all people, ought to know that.

Did he blame her? Did he fear her?

She'd hurt those boys protecting him.

She clamped the sorrow down; didn't allow herself to feel any of it, and yet still she sat here. In case he changed his mind. In case she was wrong. Her pale gaze found the glass walls of the hospital, like she could pinpoint exactly the only heartbeat within that mattered.

The hardest betrayal came when the stranger joined her on the bench and began an idle conversation. Her cool indifference did little to deter him; he lit a cigarette, curled grey smoke in the air about their heads. When the questions began to probe, Natalie knew there was little innocent in the meeting. The journalist knew who she was. Aaron had talked. The pain spiked. On purpose. By accident. It didn't matter. She got up abruptly and walked away.

The Northbrooks rallied as they always did, with their ivory walls to shut the world out. Her mother sewed up the loose ends. A settlement for silence, and the whispers went away before they ever really started.

Adapting was difficult. The betrayal cut so deep she found herself ignoring the wound, like it would somehow make the pain more bearable. If her father's imprisonment had crushed her, this made her listless.

She missed falling asleep in his flat. The pinch of his frown while he poured over textbooks. Rolling his eyes when his father hollered from the living room. She missed the taste of him, and the way his lips smiled around their kiss. How his freckled arm strung over her stomach while he slept, his breath tickling her ear. Staring at the stains on his ceiling and talking about nothing while rain pattered the windows. Tracing the lines of his tattoos. Teasing his past but never sharing hers.

Over the months that followed she was brutal with those memories. Tore them up to bleed their lies. With Aaron she had had intimacy without real trust. So much had been unspoken. And perhaps that had been the problem.

It didn't help her heal.

Now she was restless with nowhere to run, the confines of her family unbearably tight. Sometimes she lingered over her Wallet, fingers hovering, so close to calling him. Yearning to know why. But she never did. Doubtful she could forgive him. Too spiteful to try, else too afraid to confront the consequences of what she'd done. He's gone. In the end she deleted his number altogether. Kept the cut clean. Just couldn't find a way to close it.

*
The chandeliers glittered like stars. Glasses clinked amidst the soft murmur of conversation. The tablecloth immaculate. Silver cutlery. It all blurred for Natalie, softened by the sweet bubbles of champagne. Too many glasses. Not enough. She didn't relish these charity functions. Usually refused. But her mother was a guest of honour and she'd let herself be swept up in that tide, too tired to argue. All my girls together! Eleanor had sounded fit to burst with pride, and all Natalie could think of was the barbs of their broken family. Incomplete.

Beside her her sisters chattered excitedly. Alice was only thirteen, and the champagne made her giggle as it tickled her nose. Her cheeks flushed, blonde hair swept up from her face, eyes twinkling as Isobel confiscated the fluted glass from her hand. Was Aaron right to fear her? She could feel the light like a heartbeat, just beyond reach; but as beautiful as it had felt it had decimated those boys. The destruction appalled her, that lack of control. But the seduction ghosted in the back of her mind still.

Her mother leaned beside her, gently tucked a pale curl behind her ear. Her perfume was sweet. "At least attempt a smile, dearest."


But she couldn't.

The evening hazed on through to speeches. The audience clapped politely as Samantha Brown, Red Cross veteran, ascended to the podium. A tall woman; one who marched like a general to war despite the finery swishing about her ankles. Natalie couldn't bring herself to smile, but she could at least attempt a modicum of interest. Something to focus on. She drained another glass, the fog whooshing thicker now, while on the stage above Samantha spoke about her time in Nigeria. A women's college. And a mercenary group who had come to their aid. The telling was a little brash; a few jokes at tardiness twittered laughter from those around her. But the passion was stark as a spike in the head. Despite herself, something in the words resonated. It was the only time all evening she paid attention.

Some time afterwards Natalie stood, steadying herself on the white-clothed table, silk whispering at her feet. Excused herself.

The bathroom was quiet, echoing the click of her heels against the marble. Her limbs were swimming warm and fuzzy, the alcohol burning up in her veins, softening her with dizziness. Her mother's looks had drawn from content to concerned at the table. Natalie was digging herself a hole, and adding her mother's disapproval to her list of problems was stupidity, but she couldn't quite stop the downward spiral. She bent to splash cold water on her face, watched the droplets fall down her nose. Even in the mirror her pale stare looked worn. Make-up painted a mask. What's the point? She was drifting, she could feel it; not sure she could even find the shoreline any longer. Her hands braced on the sink. Squeezed. Wishing it would break.

Beside her another woman switched the faucet and briskly soaped her hands. Natalie's eyes flicked up, but only because she recognised the face. Samantha Brown's lips pursed as she examined her own face in the mirror. Then their eyes met in the reflection. The other woman's expression twitched, one brow rising.

"God, you look like I feel. It's a necessary evil, of course -- all this --- and play the game we must. But I can't bloody wait to get back to the real work. All the pomp is a little ridiculous, don't you think?"


She blinked. Samantha was gone. How long had she been standing here? The words repeated. The idea circling in her mind. A release. An escape.

Jasiri Shelter, undisclosed location in Tanzania
Late 2042

Green and yellow wooden gates marked the entrance, painted cheerful with patterns of flowers and leaves around the words kuwa jasiri* . They were hitched to a chain-link fence that surrounded the compound, but the last thing it resembled was a prison. The main building, a single story in the distance, burned like the sun amongst the trees. Natalie's head pounded. The dry heat, else the dire lack of alcohol in her veins since the departure lounge at Heathrow. She'd slept most of the flight, the guilt of the blazing argument she'd had with her mother locked somewhere deep. She didn't want to think of home. She didn't want to think of family. She didn't want to think.

The dirt eddied dust beneath her boots as she entered like a penitent. Samantha Brown's words echoed something like a mantra through her throbbing skull; the advice she needed to convince herself she wasn't simply running as far and as fast as her legs would take her. But dwelling on that twisted keys in locks she'd rather keep tight shut; fuck, but they were locks she'd rather forget she had keys for at all. She needed the change; the restlessness in her soul craved it more than the bonds of family. She'd seen first hand how easily those ties could be snapped; holding on seemed suicidal.

The building sprawled, breaking into sun-drenched courtyards alight with the patter of busy feet. She could hear children somewhere, laughing and playing. Someone singing, too, and for a moment the cadence of that squeezed a note in her chest that longed for the solace of ivory keys. She shifted the rucksack on her back, rejecting the memory.

A woman met her at the main door. She was dressed in the shade of a clear ocean, a bright white wrap about her head, and her dark eyes absorbed Natalie critically. Both brows rose a question she did not ask, but the slight purse of her lips did not make her look best pleased. Natalie knocked the ice from her bones, feeling every tired line of her body, and offered a smile and an open palm to shake. "Hujambo. You must be Amidah? I'm sorry, my Swahili leaves some to be desired. My name is Natalie Grey, I'm with the Cross."


"Speak little English here. Learn quickly, eh? Welcome, welcome."
Amidah's grip was warm and strong; she did not shake Natalie's hand, but clasped it tight in both of hers, squeezing warmly even if she appeared to find her new volunteer wanting.

The refuge was well established, a haven for women and their children fled from domestic abuse, violence, and poverty. The building itself had been produced sustainably, sky-lights relieving the reliance on air-con, bamboo and other local materials used in its construction and maintenance. She learned they did a lot of it themselves, teaching and learning the skills as they went. The shelter offered safety and education and empowerment, an oasis in a vast desert, but still one that suffered from a sore lack of funding.

Though Natalie was sure the touch of her mother's networks stretched even here, she had put little thought into her placement beyond expediency. It was humble living. She'd never considered herself overly materialistic, but her life had nonetheless been one of exquisite privilege. Jasiri scrubbed away the bias, and while the knowledge might not have done much to stitch together her own bloody wounds, her perspective of them certainly spun a new context. They no longer seemed so fatal.

She worked doggedly in those early weeks; there was something to be said for going to bed too exhausted to contemplate the bottom of a bottle. The memories burned up as surely as the papers in her father's office, and she let them scatter like ashes. Could almost convince herself she was normal.

Until it began to happen again.

The first time the light swelled in her chest it caught the slam of her heart against her ribs. But when it fanned out it only sank like droplets of water into the woman's skin; she didn't even seem to notice. It rippled, spread, until Natalie began to understand things she ought have no way of knowing. Of injuries beneath her surface. Terrible ones.

Her eyes widened, and her hand jerked away.

This new affinity unfurled over the next few months, reacting like the sudden emergence of sun behind clouds, and just as unpredictable. It was a violation, and an unfair one, even if she never shared the truths uncovered with anyone else. But she couldn't stop it either. Not even when it spiralled beyond knowing and into affecting, when the light worked to loosen the worst of tired muscles or ease the sting of old injuries.

A kinder sin than the threads that left three broken boys in a London underpass, but still.

---
* be brave

2042, Christmas Eve

It was easy to forget the time of year when the sun burned so hot and bright during daylight hours. Her mother begged her to come home for Christmas, but it seemed a pointless endeavour. It was not the first without their father, but it was the first knowing the finality of his fate. Usually they spent the season tucked in the old house in Switzerland, but last year the trend had broken; they'd stayed, miserable and dysfunctional in London, and by the time dusk fell Natalie had escaped to Aaron's council estate. His dad had thrown him out and they'd spent the evening on park swings, sharing a bottle of JD he had swiped from his father's stash before the door slammed in his face.

Even that memory had barbs now. Home seemed a drifting concept, and she couldn't face the facade of perky Christmas meals and family traditions while they worked around Alistair's absence like a missing tooth. So she stayed.

The compound was quiet this evening, the dirt still baking from the sun's touch, humidity sticking clothes to skin. Restlessness wound her on a path through the gardens, lamenting the lack of distraction. Though it was probably a good thing she couldn't lay her hands on a bottle. Natalie wasn't a prisoner -- none of the women here were -- but the nearest city was miles away, and she only had her boots.

Most of the other women were cloistered in a service for the season; even here she could hear the drift of music and singing, but -- much to Amidah's raised brow -- she had declined the invitation. It should have secured peace, but as it turned out she was not the only one out here. A figure sat tucked under the acacia. 

Imani was one of the newer girls; not much younger than Natalie, a year or two perhaps; still more girl than woman, and far too young for the ghosts in her eyes and the weight on her shoulders. She sat on a bench, legs tucked up under her chin, eyes staring at shadows. Dirt caked the fingers grasped around her knees. Plant corpses scattered like patches of shadow, pungent in scent.

Perhaps Amidah knew the truth of it, but Imani had spoken her story to no one here.

Natalie paused.

The girl was drowning, whether she choose to admit it or not, and Natalie knew what that felt like. It tugged at her, though there was nothing she could say or do to help. The gift had already unravelled some of Imani's terrible secrets, but even if it had not by now Natalie had begun to recognise the signs. Her cynic's heart could not comfort the brutality, not even as a kindness. She would not speak lies, even to tell a girl everything would be alright. Though neither was she inclined to walk away.

Her grasp of the language had begun to improve, though the others still snickered good-naturedly at her stiff pronunciations. She understood most of the day-today conversations at least, and could generally make herself understood. But even if she'd wanted to offer a listening ear, it was likely beyond her grasp to untangle the nuances of pain.

Imani's gaze narrowed as Natalie approached, toeing the limp leaves and dirt-strewn roots across her path. She did not look up, even when Natalie held out her hand. "Come on." The girl said something Natalie could not translate, though the scathing tone was perhaps enough of an interpretation, but Natalie's palm remained steadfast, the tangible offer of escape. Perhaps for them both. "I know where Amidah keeps the car keys."

Ask forgiveness not permission. 

The Jasiri compound was in the middle of nowhere, which offered long stretches of empty road. Imani hesitated at the car door, her face pinched by a frown as Natalie ducked into the driver's seat. Was it reckless? Yes. Without question. But when she leaned over to click the door open with a devilish smirk, Imani slipped herself in, wrapping the belt across her waist.

Natalie drove with heedless speed, rattling their insides with every bump and divot until the smoother highway. They had a while until dusk would steal the light; street lamps were sparse, and certainly wouldn't guide them the whole way home if she did not keep an eye on the time. Getting stranded was not a good idea. To be honest, neither was being out alone after dark at all. But she didn't plan to be.

Silence reigned for a while; just the stuttering purr of the engine and a whistling wind streaming across the bonnet. The distraction of driving always brought an emptiness to Natalie's mind. Following Alistair's arrest, Eleanor had moved the girls to Aubagne until the furore died down. After her recovery Natalie had joined them, at least until the trial began, but the beautiful countryside of southern France felt more like a prison than an escape (though it was infinitely preferable to the new house in London at the time).

So she drove. Just drove. And tried to forget.

It had helped. For a while, anyway.

Words would do nothing for Imani, and Natalie hoped to share solace in the escape. Even for an hour. It was probably more of a selfish pursuit than the Red Cross badge on her shirt suggested; god knew the restless itch never ceased its siren call. She was always looking for something she'd never quite managed to find. But her soul was quiet now, soothed by the momentum and the still mind it bought.

Imani said something then; it took a moment for Natalie to unravel the words, but when she did she laughed. "I drive like a man?"

"Like the road belongs to you." 

"Why shouldn't it?"

She could see from the corner of her eye that the girl gripped her seat-belt tight, though Natalie didn't think it was fear. Her lips were pressed thin, the slit of her eyes suggesting how foolish she found the retort. But it didn't matter if Imani liked her; that wasn't why they were here, and if Natalie was apt to slice off little pieces of her soul and offer them out in solidarity it was rarely in pursuit of friendship. Aspersion suited her better anyway.

"Something bad happened to my family a few years back. When it got too much, I coped in two ways. One of them was driving. Just driving. Moving forward, even without a destination."

"And the other?" 

"The other, Imani, I do not recommend."

The girl did not ask; maybe she understood the devils to be found in the bottom of bottles, or maybe she just didn't care. After a moment she sighed like a decision had been made, and turned her eyes out to the scenery beyond. "Amidah says you're just as broken as us, you know. But in different ways. She says it's why you're really here."

"Oh does she." She smirked, though it was an amusement darkened by something morbid. Natalie didn't speak of home often, and certainly not of the reasons she had left the Custody. In a few brief words Imani already knew more than anyone else at the shelter, Amidah included. Unless her mother's influences crossed an ocean. It wasn't impossible. "I can't claim to have suffered even half the horrors I've seen since I've been here, Imani. It really doesn't compare, believe me."

Imani made a noise in her throat but did not respond. Silence shrouded again, but the tension was creeping out with the miles eaten up by their pace. Eventually she let out a breath. "My sister died bringing her third child into this world. We have no family, Natalie. Her husband was gracious to take in his wife's younger sisters. But marriage is a transaction. I imagine he felt short-changed."

Natalie's eyes blinked off the road, but only barely. She did not interrupt.

"I couldn't. I just." A pause. "She's still there. Saida. My sister."

Natalie's hands tightened, the evenness of her reaction tightly reigned. Ice spread out from her chest; not at the words, exactly, but the way they were spoken. The small, insidious implication. Imani never broke her gaze from the window. "And she's... in danger?"

"She's twelve. And he's a man, not a monster. But she won't be a little girl forever." There was an edge of defensiveness to her words. But something quiet lodged in her throat too. "Amidah says she'll do what she can, but he needs someone to care for his children. He won't let her go."

The final words came out a whisper that struck like an anvil.

"I should go back."

Natalie's expression fell grim, jaw tight. A promise unfurled silent in her chest. "No. You shouldn't."