Call If You Need Me - Printable Version

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Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - March 12, 2018

I was just a boy striking matches upon your heart
I couldn't get no sparks
Preparations for the expedition were well underway, and Alfred was busy with things nearly every day. He was starting to dream about the work that still needed to be done before they set sail, which was his sign that perhaps he needed to take a break. He'd been making occasional forays out into society for fundraising purposes, but that was still work, and honestly, it was much harder work for Alfred with his complete lack of social grace than working on the ship. The street fair that he'd heard about, however, seemed like a place without any sort of pressure to perform a certain way, where he could actually just enjoy himself, and he had come to do just that.

The first thing he'd done upon arrival was buy himself a drink, followed by some hot food. The comment he'd given the reporter back in September when he'd been en route to England for the first time about missing good food and English ale was not entirely an exaggeration. Of course, he had mostly said that because he was too private a person to want to advertise the things he was really looking forward to in a newspaper. It just seemed such a crass conveyance for genuine emotion. And now that he'd been back for months without any sign of Lily, it seemed he'd made the right choice — she was probably married by now (or dead, like his mother and sister) and putting something about her in the paper would only have been embarrassing all around.

That being said, he did rather enjoy food and ale. The ship had little to offer in the way of hot food, generally speaking, and nothing but the cheapest and lowest quality alcohol. He was already on his third drink and pleasantly buzzed (having lost his sailor's tolerance for alcohol after so long teetotaling whilst abroad) when he saw a familiar face — one he wasn't expecting, and one which brought him up entirely short.

"Li—" he started, but caught himself; she had made no attempt to get in touch with him over the past few months, which surely meant he'd lost the right to call her by her first name, didn't it? "Er, Miss — or is it Mrs. —?" he stumbled. He'd told himself that he couldn't possibly resent her marrying, when he had been declared dead for years, but the actual idea of it (and having to force the idea out of his mouth) still brought a flush to his cheek.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 9, 2018

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 9, 2018

"Oh," he said, obviously shocked when she corrected him. Miss.

Oh, was all he could think. Was it possible that she had held out hope for him the same way that he had been thinking of her the entire time he'd been abroad? Of course he had hoped for as much, but the chances of it seemed slim, and if she really did still care for him and she was still unmarried, then why wouldn't she have written?

"I know," he said, cheeks flushing. "I thought — I supposed when they said we were all gone you would have —" (he was not being very articulate). "You're not married," he stated, as if he needed to actually say the words before he could believe them.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 9, 2018

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 9, 2018

"Oh," Alfred said again, because he had no idea what else to say. Was this good? It was what he'd hoped for the entire time he'd been away, but there was no guarantee that she was single still because she had waited for him. There would have been no doubt in his mind about that had they been having this conversation in September, but the months of silence had sewn seeds of doubt that had begun to take deep root. It wasn't as though she hadn't heard, which he had suspected for the first month of his return. She'd admitted as much already when she'd started out the conversation with definitely not dead, then. His being alive and in England was not coming as a surprise to her here and now.

Even if she did still feel that way, what were they meant to do now? Marry? When he had proposed to her so many years ago he had had grand notions of what his life would be like after the expedition. He was meant to be famous, and well-off, laden with riches from abroad and exotic new knowledge. Instead, he had returned penniless, or near enough to it. Everything he'd earned or raised from sponsors in the meantime had been poured into the expedition, which didn't exactly put him in a good place to be supporting a wife. He didn't even have a house, he was living in his cabin on the god damned boat.

The boat that was leaving in a month. Merlin, he was leaving in a month. Even if she did want to pick up where they'd left off, what was he supposed to do in a month?

"When I didn't hear from you or see you, I thought — well, I thought you must be avoiding me," he admitted, with a slight flush.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 9, 2018

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 9, 2018

"No!" he said at once — too quickly? Perhaps. The accusation was just so entirely foreign to him, and he could honestly say that the idea had never once crossed his mind before. Now that she said it, though, he could clearly see where she would get the idea. How many stories existed out there of men who had left for one reason or another and come back feeling like entirely different people, and now strangers to their wives, children, or siblings? Alfred could understand that time and distance changed a person. His time in the wilderness had certainly changed him — and, come to think of it, he did feel like a stranger to his one remaining sibling. He'd been content to put that burden on Evander, because the two had never been close, but what if it was him? If his mother or sister had been alive when he returned, would he have been able to connect with them? Was there any guarantee, after everything he'd been through, that he and Lily would still have anything at all in common?

"I didn't — I thought you'd found someone else," he said, feeling like he was repeating himself and too flustered now to know whether he was or not. "And — and I wouldn't have blamed you if you had. I mean, I knew I couldn't blame you. And I didn't want to... upend your whole life, if you were... happy," he finished rather lamely.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 9, 2018

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 9, 2018

He wasn't sure what affected him more, the telltale sign of emotion in her voice or the actual words she was saying. The idea of her grieving him was heartbreaking, and something he had no experience with — he had been away for the deaths of both his mother and sister, but he hadn't known what was happening until after his return. He had never even suspected that harm might have befallen those he cared about, and while he had struggled with the notion that he might never see them again — which was, in a way, like grieving — what she was talking about was decidedly different. That sort of emotion was so much more real than anything he'd gone through while he was abroad, and although of course he hadn't planned things this way, he immediately felt like a pile of human garbage for having subjected her to it.

"Lily, I'm so sorry," he said emphatically. The words were sincere, but he knew they would not be enough. What could he possibly say that could make up for anything, at this point? "I wish I could undo all that. But —"

He stopped, suddenly aware that he had no idea how he had intended to finish that sentence. But what? Everything he could possibly say at this point was inadequate, and he wasn't sure what she wanted to hear, much less what he wanted to say. But I'm here now, perhaps? But was he? He was setting sail again in less than a month, and given their history, he doubted she would be very supportive of another open-ended expedition.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 10, 2018

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 12, 2018

Although he wouldn't have been so bold as to say it, he knew that what Lily had said was true — and that it was rather insightful for her to have realized it. He wasn't even sure if that was something he had known about himself at the time, or even in the intervening years. It hadn't really been until his eventual return to England, when he'd started to feel restless, that he'd started to come to terms with that particular facet of his personality. Had that really been something that she had gathered from the letters they'd exchanged so long ago? Merlin, she'd still been in Hogwarts at the time. How had she known him better than he'd known himself?

He was quiet for a long time. He could have apologized again, but it wouldn't have meant anything; they both knew that he wasn't sorry to have gone, and there wasn't anything he could have done to have avoided the shipwreck that had seen him lost for so long. Eventually, he confessed quietly, "I'm set to leave again next month."

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 13, 2018

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 14, 2018

His stomach flipped uncomfortably at the look of surprise and alarm on her face. He felt like a pile of human trash once again, even though, again, it wasn't as though he had planned this. Alfred might have planned the expedition, but he'd done so under the assumption that Lily had long since moved on — it wasn't as though he'd been trying to run off and abandon her again without any sort of closure, though that was what he was doing, it seemed.

"To the North Sea. To try and find the isle of Avalon," he said, speaking quickly and with a shy, almost apologetic tone. "Well. We're to start by recharting St. George's Channel and then work our way North past the Hebrides and then across to the North Sea, until we find something." At least everything he intended to sail through was relatively local, this time. They would be within theoretical reach of a portkey the entire journey, though no one in their right mind would trust the positioning data from a week-old letter on a ship enough to schedule a portkey to reach them. Still, that ought to be at least mildly encouraging. What sort of terrifying disasters could possibly befall him in the waters only a week's distance from his home shores?

"We'll only be gone three months," he added hopefully, as if this would make up for the fact of his being about to leave in the first place. Of course, the last time he'd set out he'd only intended to be gone a year.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 14, 2018

Lily followed along as best she could though some of what J was saying was a little over her head. She was keen enough to know that his words meant that he was sailing closer to home this time. "That's better than a year at least. Will it extend if you can't find anything in three months?" Lily couldn't help being slightly envious. Since he was a man, he could run off and go on grand adventures while she was stuck here, being increasingly bored with life.

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RE: Call If You Need Me - J. Alfred Darrow - April 14, 2018

It was a bit of an irritation to Alfred that everyone always asked that, though in Lily's case it might have been coming from a different place and with a different intention behind the question than his average conversation partner. Given what he'd learned so far in their conversation, she might be speaking from concern, whereas most were asking skeptically. Not that he could really fault anyone for being skeptical, given that he was setting out to find an island that hadn't been visited since the middle ages, if it had ever been visited at all. There was some doubt as to whether it really existed at all, and even more doubt as to whether anyone could really just set sail and stumble upon it, if it had been hidden for so long. Besides, given the fact that the Sycorax had crashed before discovering anything new whatsoever, the cynicism was perhaps well-merited. Still, he couldn't help but feel as though these sorts of questions reflected on him, and on his perceived abilities as a sailor and first-time Captain, and so these lines of inquiry never failed to make him feel rather defensive.

"If — if we're not finished yet," he said, avoiding the phrase if we don't find anything because he refused to believe that they could go off on an expedition and find nothing. "Then we might go out again. But we'll need to pull back into London for repairs and resupplying, at any rate," he continued, offering this last as a conciliatory gesture; he would, at least, not be gone indefinitely, unless, of course, they wrecked somewhere.

After a quick pause, he added rather brightly, "Oh! And we're taking plenty of owls along, this time."

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RE: Call If You Need Me - Lily Huddleston - April 14, 2018

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