March 17th, 1888 — Celtic Street Fair

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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

It had been a trying couple of months for Lily. Since J's return (as she called him in her diary repeatedly in her youth and thus in her general narrative) she had been semi-waiting for him to approach her (he was the man after all and Lily was somewhat of a traditionalist in that sense) and she was left uncertain of what to do next when he didn't. She had moved on, she had told herself, so she had almost aggressively posted Lonely Hearts ads in Witch Weekly. Lily was aware that her ad was basically describing him but that was besides the point. Surely there was another man out there that could be what she was looking for? J. Darrow was hardly the only man in the world with an adventurous spirit.

A Celtic fair had sounded interesting and Lily liked learning about interesting things so she had decided to attend it. Lily had not been expecting to run into J though. The fact that she had not expected it was clear in her features. "It's still Miss," Lily said, uncertain how to feel now that she was presented with the solid evidence that yes, her long lost fiance was in fact alive. Even so, she reached out and sort of poked him. Yep, solid body and not a ghost. "Definitely not dead, then. They said you were before." She hated being socially awkward but yet it was happening. How unlike her!

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The following 1 user Likes Lily Huddleston's post:1 user Likes Lily Huddleston's post
   J. Alfred Darrow

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"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.

The following 1 user Likes J. Alfred Darrow's post:1 user Likes J. Alfred Darrow's post
   Lily Huddleston

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lily blushed a little at his shock, wondering what he was thinking. It wasn't like she hadn't tried to change that but that hardly seemed the sort of thing to say to him. She doubted that he would want to know that she had begun turning to Lonely Hearts to try and jump start some sort of romance.

"No, I'm not," Lily confirmed when he said that she wasn't married. "I suppose no one else wants a young lady that falls off boats." Her words were an attempt at humor but there was a definite pang in the chest that came with them as she recalled when she had first met him. Had that really been so long ago? Standing here in front of him it felt both ages ago and like it was just yesterday all at the same time.

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"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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lily uncharacteristically had nothing that she could think of to say. She never had been good at dealing with deeply emotional things unless they were on paper which a majority of their relationship had consisted of since she had been in school. And then he'd gone off on his expedition and had never come back. Lily had never realized before just how deeply that her pain over that had gone or how it had later effected other areas of her life. This was very inconvenient.

Lily took in a breath as he finally said what she had been figuring he would eventually say. "I was waiting for you. How would I be able to find you?" True, she could have sent him an owl to find out but she had been being woefully stubborn. "When you hadn't reached out to me, I figured you were glad to be freed from your promise to me."

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"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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lily was not a woman that drank alcohol publicly with men or any of those unladylike things but she was sorely tempted to steal his ale from him and down it. If ever there was a cause to get drunk, this had to be it. What did they do now? What did she do?

"Well, I hadn't. I thought - I thought you were dead," Lily stated, unable to help a bit of emotion from coloring her words. "I thought you were dead and I couldn't really tell anyone why I was grieving a man I supposedly knew very little!" She'd been alone with her grief without a clue of how to handle such strong emotions. She'd been a teenager. It had been rather a lot at the time and it was startling to herself to realize she had never fully gotten over it.

  

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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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

He was sorry. He was sincere, Lily could easily tell. "You wouldn't be you if you hadn't gone," she finally said since one of the many scenarios she had played in her head had been 'what if he had not gone at all'. It was what had made her attached to him in the first place, after all. That adventurous spirit full of dreams. "I just wish you'd have come back instead of being stranded out there." She couldn't imagine what sorts of terrible things he had gone through.

  

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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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lily stood there, feeling a little awkward as she waited for J to say something - anything - else. When he finally did speak again, Lily's mouth fell open a little in surprise. Then again, was she really surprised? She didn't think so. "Oh." was all she could say at first, her words mildly strangled as she tamped down on the million questions and worries that she wanted to voice. "Where to this time?"

  

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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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

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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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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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Lily has suspected that he would just head out again but it was a relief to hear that they would be pulling back into London. Not that she had doubted they would - the men would probably mutiny or something if they were left to starve. Some of her more pressing worries were put to bed with his answer on top of the fact that they would be exploring a little closer to home than last time.

Lily couldn't help an actual laugh when J said that they would be taking plenty of owls along this time. "That's good to hear. You'll be able to be in touch with us on the mainland," Lily said brightly, even more relieved. She had no idea where she stood with him, how he might feel about her now or if he felt anything still - she didn't even fully know how she felt but she definitely greatly cared about whether or not he was alive. And now that he was no longer dead as she had believed, she would quite prefer he stay alive.

"I missed your letters. Missed you." She had kept hers. All tied together with a ribbon and kept in a hat box. She had tucked them away when he had been declared dead, the memories a bit too painful for her to know how to deal with at the young age that she had been.

  

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