Maybe all we are is fools with hearts that tried too hard
And maybe that's just fine as long as you're here in my arms

March 13th, 1890 — Alfred's Flat, London
J. Alfred Darrow

Alfred's letter had come at a bit of a shock, both because of the revelation and the nature of his request. He was cursed and wanted her company as a distraction. Which, she supposed, was fine, but hadn't they established where they stood? Jo liked Alfred, wanted to listen to his stories until he had no more to share, but she didn't — couldn't want anything more than that. There was a history between Alfred and Zelda, one Jo might never be privy to but was certain of given Zelda's attitude, and she refused to lose either friend by getting involved with him further. Drinking partners was okay, friends were even better, but they had to stop there. They had to.

Or so Jo kept telling herself.

If he wasn't potentially dying Jo might have begged off, found some appropriate excuse until he caught the hint (if only to prevent herself from causing Zelda harm). However, not even she was heartless enough to deny a dying man's wish. Not when that man was as good a man as Alfred. As such, Jo swiftly removed whatever customers from the shop and floo'd home to gather some things. His letter suggested she'd be staying overnight at the least, and she very much doubted he had spare women's clothes lying about.

With her small handbag slung over her shoulder, Jo arrived in Alfred's flat. Hopefully, her quick transfigurations would hold out. Such magic had never been her forte. "Alfred?" Jo called out once she didn't immediately see him. Fuck, had he already died?! Not even the full hour had passed since receiving his letter. It couldn't have happened that fast, could it?!

  

Alfred had taken care of anything that could be described as business immediately after having returned from the Ministry. That bit was easy, because he could focus on the other aspects of this mess and ignore, for the moment, his own predicament. He was writing the crew because they were, most likely, safe, but needed to be screened all the same. He was writing the captains of the other ships because he had news about the Voyager, which was, at least until further notice, fucked. He was writing the port authority to tell them the Ministry was, for the time being, there to stay. None of it related to his own impending death, so while he still had letters to write, he could pretend it wasn't happening.

Then he'd gotten through that stack of business and been left with the impossible task of trying to figure out how to get his personal life sorted out and ordered before he died. He needed to tell Evander, probably, because Evander would be the one who would have to organize a funeral, or something. Trying to start a letter to Evander about this, however, proved an impossible task, and it was after he'd started and stopped three times that he finally gave up and wrote to Jo Smith instead.

Since then, he hadn't done anything productive. He'd paced through the flat and thought about going out for food, even though he wasn't hungry. He'd written letters he didn't want to send. He'd opened up all the windows and listened to the rain when it started up shortly after, but made no move to close them. He usually didn't mind the rain (and living in London, it was hardly a surprise when it came), but today he couldn't help but wonder if the sun would shine on him again before he died. Had he seen his last cloudless sky, without even realizing it?

He was in his room, watching the rain, when he heard her call out. He smiled immediately, glad of the promise of company. "Here!" he responded, moving towards the front room. "Not dead quite yet."

That was, maybe, too morbid a joke for the circumstances; he wondered if she would mind. He shouldn't have asked her here, and he knew that — it was selfish to want someone else here, to want to push some of this weight off onto someone else so that he didn't have to carry it all himself. Or maybe that wasn't selfish, just human — but she was the wrong person to have here, and he knew that, too. The trouble was that since he'd driven a wedge between him and Zelda, he couldn't just ask her to drop everything and come over and comfort him. Miss Smith was the only person he thought he could write to who he was certain would come, even if he'd only met her last month.

And she had come, so he supposed he hadn't been wrong about that.

"Thanks for coming," he said as he rounded the corner of the front room. "I, ah — well, I could use the company."

  

---

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

A breath of relief left her as she heard his voice. Not dead yet, then, which was always a plus. Jo had been cursed more times than she could count, though most were broken in the matter of minutes. The ones that hadn't left a series of scars on her arms and chest that were generally covered by the sleeves of her dress. None of the curses she'd experienced though were labeled as fatal. Whether it was Holsten or another on site cursebreaker they never left her to her devices and die.

"It's no problem." She shrugged with a smile. Jo dropped the clutch onto a nearby table (again quietly hoping her clothes didn't suddenly begin bursting out) and moved further into the room. "I wouldn't want to be alone either, if it were me." Jo had hardly allowed Saturn out of her sight when the worst curse was wrecking havoc. Having to bear the burden of her own mortality alone like he would have proven too much.

"What would help the most right now?" She asked tentatively. Did he want to talk about it? Avoid it? Be distracted? Jo didn't know him well enough yet to simply fall into action.

  

Alfred felt the space between his shoulders relax a bit as she responded. He hadn't been conscious of worrying about it before this moment, but it was a relief to hear that she understood. It made him feel a little less guilty about asking her over. As far as what he needed... he wasn't sure he knew how to answer that question, exactly, but he did know that there was something he needed to say before they got too far into the evening. He honestly had no idea how tonight was going to go, based on their previous interactions, but there was a fair chance that one or both of them would end up in a compromising situation, and he definitely didn't want to put off the most difficult conversation he intended to have tonight until that point.

"Well, uh, first," he said, beckoning her to follow as he turned to head down the hall towards his room. Once there, he went and retrieved two letters from the desk in the corner, which he'd written, folded, and sealed while waiting for her to arrive.

"I don't know much about this curse, and I don't know... how I'll die, if it comes to that," he explained, hesitating slightly. He didn't want to talk about this, of course — not talking about it was sort of the whole point of having her here in the first place — but he had to get this out of the way. "But I should have at least a few minutes of warning first. So — I want you to promise that if I ask you to leave, you will. Right away," he continued. The last thing he wanted was to subject her to something awful. She was doing him a favor by being here, and all he expected was her company — not for her to play witness to his traumatic death, if it came to that.

"And..." he added, turning his attention to the two letters in his hands very hesitantly, "If it comes to that — if you could mail these, after you leave..."

  

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

For the first time since receiving his earlier letter Jo froze as though she'd been stunned. Her gut was screaming for her to flee, to avoid the heartache and trauma his death would cast upon her. She didn't love him (hell, Jo barely even knew him) but she had quickly grown to enjoy their friendship. A letter from him brightened her whole day, and he was going to die. And he wanted her to mail his farewell letters. Jo generally avoided feelings such as these like the plague, for the ache of knowing made his eventual death all the worse.

(Distantly, Jo wondered what the fuck Zelda was doing insisting she could handle this curse on her own whilst informing Alfred he could die. A bitter, fierce anger developed in the pit of her stomach as she thought it. Zelda, who's fucking stubborn streak had failed her before, would rather Alfred die than accept help. Despite whatever history they shared Alfred didn't deserve to die. Death was fucking permanent and Zelda was playing with curses as though she knew anything about the bloody world.)

When she finally made a move, it was to take the letters from his hands and wrap her arms tight around him. Such an emotional display was rare for her, but Jo could hardly help herself. It seemed so disgustingly unfair that they'd only just met a month ago. They were supposed to be planning a bloody expedition (or so she determined selfishly), not mourning life.

Jo released him after a moment and glanced down towards the letters. "I'll mail them, don't worry." She said as steadily as she could manage. "And ... and I'll leave, if you tell me to. But know I'm not afraid of the curse, if that's what you're thinking. You don't have to ... " die alone was left unsaid. "You don't have to worry for me."

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   Ophelia Devine

The embrace caught him entirely off guard, and for a split second he merely stood, unsure what to do, when she wrapped her arms around him. The emotions that had been roiling just below the surface for the past several hours quickly overcame any concerns he might have had about holding her, though. Alfred relaxed into her, wrapping his arms around her waist. It was nice to just exist for a moment, and not feel as though he had to do or say anything. There was something about her that allowed for moments like this — something he wasn't sure he'd found with anyone else he'd met in England, or at least not as easily and quickly. The pressure to perform, or to be a certain version of himself, just sort of melted away.

He was glad she was here. It was selfish of him to ask her to be here, to force her to share this burden — both the mental burden of knowing what could happen and the potential emotional burden of being here when it started, whatever that looked like — but he needed something like this.

"Thanks," he said as she broke away — both for her agreement to his terms but more for everything else that she'd done already. "Now that that's out of the way," he said, shaking his head slightly as though he could just shake such thoughts out of his mind, "We can talk about something else. Anything else. How have you been?"

  

---

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

How was she? Alive. Uncursed. No potential of death in the immediate future. Jo was fine. She had the unfortunate pleasure of discovering her best friend had been lying to her for three years, but even that felt trivial in comparison. Besides, Jo could hardly talk about Holsten without mentioning the physical aspect to their relationship, and she didn't want Alfred to know about it. Not when Jo was wholly uncertain of what there was between them.

"I'm okay. Mars is still needing my help in the shop, which I hate but I can hardly say no to a grieving pregnant widow. Earth had this whole spiel about me not disappearing, as though I ever had. All mediocre family crap, mostly." She rambled as she sat on the edge of his bed. Having worked all day sitting was decidedly nice.

She fiddled with the seam of her dress as she pondered what to talk about, when suddenly it struck her. "Oh! I have tattoos now too. Not that I could tell you their meanings or anything, but they're there all the same. And a dog. I also have a dog."

  

Turning the conversation towards something mundane, something normal, was a welcome relief from the path his thoughts had been taking all morning. "I know all about that sort of thing," he said sympathetically, moving his pillow to one side so that he could sit on the other corner of his bed without sitting right next to her. He wasn't thinking, this time around, about propriety or expectations or anything — particularly considering that during their last meeting he'd spent the majority of the time shirtless — but it was easier to see her and talk to her when they weren't brushing right up against one another. While he talked, he pulled his shoes off and moved to sit cross-legged on the bed, with his back up against the headboard.

"My brother doesn't understand a thing. I think he was actually offended when I started sailing again, after I came home from the Sycorax. Not sure what else he expected me to do," Alfred said with a shrug and a bemused sort of grin. Not that he and Evander had ever seen eye to eye, even before he'd disappeared into the wilderness for years and been declared dead and everything — but that hadn't really helped.

Alfred was quite distracted from family matters by what she said next, though, and he turned his attention to her with sudden interest. "You got tattoos?"

Where had she found a tattooist in England? Alfred knew of several that sailors used but he wasn't sure any of them catered to women, and they certainly weren't in the types of places respectable young ladies would be likely to be seen spending time. And — had she decided to get them after seeing his? He blushed slightly, thinking that he had been a bad influence on her — silly as that seemed, given that she was hardly a blushing flower and had been making plenty of decisions in the short time that he'd known her that would be considered, in terms of proper English society, questionable at best. But, still, the fact remained: she hadn't had tattoos a month ago, and now she apparently did.

  

---

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

"It's frustrating when they don't understand." She commented with a sigh. Mother wasn't thrilled with her career, but Jo had always been an adventurer. To cease exploring now would be a fate even worse than Alfred's. Death would surely be a better outcome than being trapped. "My parents were even more irate when I convinced Saturn to travel with me. Not that it took effort, mind you, he has the itch to travel such as I."

She turned to face him on the bed, her knees bent besides her. The vines were there when she woke up as though that was where they'd always been. Jo had only the foggiest memory of the process and an even foggier memory of the stories themselves. Each curl of the vine was punctuated with the outline of a flower. They were beautiful, for sure, Jo only wished she understood the meaning behind them.

"Yeah. Not recently, I don't think anyway. They weren't sore or anything." The pain had been one of her worst fears when considering a tattoo. Waking up to the healed vines was shocking. "The Florida Man nonsense made them appear. I woke up that morning with them."

  

Her explanation was only confusing him, right up until the last line. Oh. He'd had a strange experience as a result of the timeline changes that came out of that disturbance, so he could understand a little of what it must have been like to wake up with a strange new situation. At least she knew which version of her experience was the 'real' one — Alfred himself wasn't quite sure, still. Having tattoos suddenly appear was a bit different than a relationship changing in some slight but significant ways, however — much more tangible.

He supposed it was something of a relief that she hadn't rushed out and gotten tattoos right after their last meeting, but a part of him was a little disappointed, too. He didn't know why. When he tried to think about it — about how the fact that she had tattoos now and had, in this new version of reality, always had them, for the duration of their relationship — he just ended up a bit confused. He wasn't a time expert, that was for sure. Rather than trying to think through how this might have changed their last interactions — and what it might mean that he had no concrete memories of a changed version having taken place — he pushed such thoughts aside and moved on.

"Where are they?" he asked. He wanted to say can I see them, but depending on her answer he might not want to pressure her into showing him.

  

---

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

A soft blush bloomed on her cheeks at the question. Most of the vines were easily visible once her dress was off, but some dipped beneath her corset and around her breasts. Mercifully, whatever version of herself had decided on these tattoos had considered the cut of dresses she was required to wear in England. That would've been a nightmare of an explanation to her parents had she not.

Jo reached behind her to start loosening the laces of her dress. It seemed only fair to show Alfred her tattoos after he so generously explained all his for her. "They start on my arms and wind down as low as my navel." She explained casually. If there were any on her back she was unaware of them as of yet. "They're vines, which is funny considering my hatred of herbology in school."

Once the laces were undone enough, Jo shrugged her arms out of the sleeves. "I like them well enough, though."

  

Given her readiness to undress, if he wanted her to, the last time she'd been here, Alfred supposed he shouldn't have been surprised by her response. Still, when he realized what she was doing — that he didn't even have to ask before she started undoing the laces of her dress — his cheeks colored and his mouth went a little dry. The ease he inexplicably felt around her and her own non-traditional approach to this sort of thing meant that it would be easy — very easy — to get himself into trouble with her. They were already sitting on his bed. They wouldn't even have to move.

Was it really trouble, though, at this point? He'd been clear with her the last time she'd visited about setting realistic expectations. She knew what she was getting into. She knew that he might very well be dying, so it wasn't as though she would be pinning any sort of hopes or plans on him. A part of him thought that it would still be unfair to her, even if they had talked through it quite explicitly — that no one could be that intimate with someone else and spend the night and then have the other person die the next morning and not be traumatized, and that he was, by even considering this, potentially setting her up to be traumatized, no matter how unaffected she claimed she would be.

A small part of him thought it would be unfair to someone else, too — someone who had held both of his hands that morning while he'd received the news. But that wasn't something he could entertain at the moment. Just thinking about the lost opportunities with her — the things he couldn't do, the things he'd never get to tell her or show her — hurt too much to dwell on. And sure, they hadn't had a future before, and everything had been broken and useless before he'd learned he was going to die — but now it was so much more real, that it would never happen, and if he made it to Tuesday he was going to have to spend all day with her knowing that it would never happen, and — and —

And he couldn't think about that, right now. It was easier to wall off that whole section of his heart and pretend that none of those thoughts and memories existed, rather than trying to face it and grapple with it. Because nothing, really, had changed. They hadn't had a future before he'd gotten this news, and they didn't have less of a future now — and he owed her nothing — and she didn't care what he did — and she wouldn't know, anyway.

"Ironic," he muttered in response to her herbology comment, then watched as the sleeves slid off her shoulders. He wasn't going to stop her from undressing, and if she moved a little closer to show off her tattoos, he wasn't going to protest.

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   Jupiter Smith, Zelda Darrow

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

Jo hadn't shown her tattoos off to anyone as of yet. And while she hadn't expected much in the way of feelings from him, she had thought he would be excited to see them. A smile, maybe, or teasing comment. His mood, though, caused her to instantly regret the decision to undress. Was it because he was effectively dying? Or something else?

Was it Zelda?

She remained where she sat on the edge of the bed, dress puddled in her lap feeling more exposed than ever before. "Sorry." She mumbled. Again, Jo felt as though she read the situation with him all wrong. "I should've asked if you wanted to see them before uh — yeah. Sorry."

  

Her expression had changed, and Alfred was certain it was his fault and not some spontaneous, uncharacteristic burst of shame. He shook his head, trying to clear the air. He hadn't invited her over so that he could infect her with his moodiness, after all. He'd been looking for a distraction, and she was certainly providing him with that. He needed to leave all of these morose thoughts behind and just — just what? He wasn't sure.

"No, I do want to see them," he insisted, straightening up a bit. "I'm sorry. It's just — you know. Everything," he explained vaguely, shifting to a slightly more comfortable sitting position on the bed. "Of course I want to see them. You could... show me all of them, if you want to," he added, glancing at the spot where one of the vine tattoos disappeared into the top of her corset. She'd said they went all the way down to her naval. He didn't want to pressure her into anything, of course, but — well, if he'd been looking for a distraction, he really couldn't have asked for a better one.

"You don't remember getting them? Even in that — you know, that sort of half-remembering way?" he asked, as he let his eyes wander over what were visible of her tattoos from here.

  

---

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

It was because he was confronting his mortality, then, which made her feel a bit better about exposing herself. He hadn't wanted to be alone, that was what his letter said. She had little experience in the realm of emotional attachment (save for the select two), but she was intimately familiar with finding distractions in other people. If anything, she was the reigning queen.

However, the issue of Zelda's involvement remained. Jo knew nothing for sure, for all she knew she was imagining things. But, Jo couldn't quite shake the way Zelda exclaimed 'Darrow?' There was something there, and it was enough to give Jo pause.

For a minute.

If something was shared between Zelda and he, why wasn't she here? Why had Alfred written her and not Zelda? Surely, if he had a better option than some random woman he'd known for just over a month he would've chosen it. Jo knew if the situation were reversed Alfred wouldn't have been her top choice for company. She was attracted to him, sure, and she deeply enjoyed spending time with him, but he wasn't the first and last person she thought of. Not even close. If Zelda mattered that much to him, he would've chosen her.

"Vaguely. I remember hating as the ones on my ribs were put in place." It was the brightest of her foggy memories, and even that was more of a physical memory than a mental one. Jo shifted towards him on the bed and moved her hair to the side so he would better be able to see the vine swirling around her shoulder and into her corset. The topmost petals of one of her favorite flowers could be seen peeking out from the right angle. "I wish I knew why I decided to get them. It's so strange not knowing."

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   J. Alfred Darrow

Alfred didn't have a wide range of experience with tattoos over ribcages, since the ones on his chest stopped at about his second rib, at the lowest, but he could remember the sensation that she must have been referring to. It wasn't as though it was dramatically more painful than the rest, but the proximity of the bones meant that his nerves kept getting pinched between the needle and his insides, making him have to strain not to flinch.

He raised one hand and lightly touched the tip of his finger to the trail of vines on her shoulder. He thought as he did it that he should stop and ask, or at least pause for some sort of nonverbal acknowledgement that it was alright for him to touch, but... the way she'd turned to give him a better view and the way she'd moved her hair was invitation enough, wasn't it? She'd traced through all of his tattoos the last time she'd been here, after all. She had to expect this, when she'd started undressing.

"Maybe just because they're pretty," he suggested, with a soft smile. He let his fingertip move lightly towards the flower petals. "I mean, granted, I don't know what your body looked like before," he joked, "But... these are nice."

  

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