April 16th, 1891 — Lytton home

The wreck was a blur in Camilla’s mind, as well as most of the aftermath of it. Ultimately, she had been found by the rescue parties and taken to Portugal, where she had spent a day with her brother and their friends from the trip. She had received medical help and then given access to some fireplace so she could Floo home.

Once there, she had been rushed to her room. From behind the scenes, her mother had instructed the staff to prepare everything for her. She’d showed up slightly but ended up breaking down when Camilla asked where Marcus was. She received no definite answer, but a sinking feeling was set in her stomach. Camilla herself was ill after having spent such a long time in the cold - did Marcus have a heavier case of pneumonia? Had he lost a limb? Was he...?

Some kind of calming potion that had sneaked its way into her tea had taken her out for some hours. When she woke up, she saw her best friend in the room.

“Jules!” Camilla said with the most liveliness someone suffering from the aftermath of a shipwreck could muster.

@'Juliana Binns'

  

Juliana had come as soon as she'd been notified that the Lyttons were back, though she hadn't been allowed in right away. It wasn't until Camilla was more stable and Marcus was — no longer in need of stabilizing — that they'd allowed her up to visit her friend. She hadn't known what to do when Camilla was still asleep, but felt useless just sitting, so she'd made a pot of tea and prepared a tray just the same way she did for the customers who visited the House of Lytton. It was sitting by Camilla's bedside table when she finally stirred.

"Camilla," Juliana said at once. She had expected to be very disaffected about this — she had wanted to be, because she thought that would make it easier on Camilla — but she could feel her lower lip trembling already. Not trusting herself to say anything else at the moment, she instead moved to wrap her arms around Camilla in the bed, squeezing her tightly.

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   Camilla Lytton

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Camilla was usually the more emotionally expressive of the two, so Jules’ hug, combined with her mother’s reaction earlier, gave Camilla an ominous feeling.

“I’m so glad to see you!” She said, her eyes beginning to sting. “I thought I was going to die!” She had tried to push away the memories from the shipwreck and the hours that had followed it. If there was a ways to remove them from memory completely, she'd do it.

  

"I'm so glad you didn't," Juliana said immediately, with feeling. The words themselves might not have been very significant — most people would be glad to hear that most other people had not died — but her tone conveyed all of the pent up worry and anxiety from the past week, and her relief at finally being able to see and touch and talk with Camilla again. "But really you couldn't have, you know, because what would I have done with the House of Lytton? You can never leave me in charge there again, Camilla, and I mean it." She was talking too much now, but it was easier to talk about the House of Lytton than to talk about something else. This was really just the same thing she'd been doing to get through the last week — making herself too-busy with the House of Lytton so that she didn't have any time left to sit with her feelings.

"I tried to keep things moving but we've had to reschedule everyone except the fittings," she explained. "And we've gotten to the point where we really can't continue without a designer, and how would I have even gone about hiring another one if I'd wanted to? You know I have no eye for any of it," she said, shaking her head as she pulled back from the hug long enough to wipe some stray tears from the corners of her eyes. "So if you ever do plan to go off and die you need to deputize someone other than me to carry on your legacy, I hope you understand, because I've been quite hopeless about it since you've been away."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

At first, Camilla laughed a bit at Jules’ words, lovingly amused by her friend’s lively manner of admitting her inability to run a fashion house. She could imagine that it must have been hard for her friend to head Lytton for the entirety of it. While her level head was needed for the more logistical aspect of the business, Camilla and especially Marcus were the heart and soul of it.

It was then that it struck to Camilla that her brother wasn’t mentioned at all. She felt as though a heavy rock had dropped on her chest, where her heart was. Her limbs grew numb and filled with tension at the same time, a sense of dread overcoming it. Maybe she was reading into things, maybe it was just her anxious state perceiving everything as bad news.

Her face blanched, she said: “Oh, my darling, something bad has happened, hasn’t it?” she asked faintly, not daring to voice her fears.

  

The look on Camilla's face made it obvious that no one had told her yet, and Juliana felt a surge of panic. She could not be the appropriate person to break the news, but she didn't know how she was supposed to lie to Camilla about it, either.

"To the fashion house? No, no. Don't worry about that," she said, trying to keep her tone light and deflect. She couldn't lie about it, but maybe if she could just find a way to not answer, she could postpone the subject until someone else realized Camilla was awake and came to handle matters more expertly than Juliana could. As soon as the words left her mouth, though, she knew it wouldn't work. It felt too obvious of a dodge; the words were thin and hollow.

She shifted uncomfortably at the edge of the bed. "Oh, Camilla," she said after a moment, shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

This was it. Jules wouldn’t have been this avoidant if everything was alright with her brother. If he was alive. Even if he’d made it without a limb, she would have said something about it. Her difficulty offering an answer showed that the worst had happened.

Camilla made a noise that was hard to describe, but which would have made any human capable of empathy feel uncomfortable. It was a cry of grief, one that died somewhere in her throat because her lungs, worn as they were, couldn’t reach the full capacity of the sound.

She was normally very expressive with her emotions, but she couldn’t at this moment. It didn’t feel right to Marcus’ memory. Furthermore, she had always been expressive when it came to happy emotions, or crying after a play with a sad ending. She hadn’t experienced loss since her father’s death and, while that was sad, they had never had the sort of relationship she had with Marcus.

“Oh that is so absurd,” Camilla finally said and wiped her tears away frantically. “It’s so absurd that he would die this way!”

  

Juliana didn't know what to say to that, because she agreed. That either of the Lyttons — who had always been so vibrant, so colorful, at times even ridiculous — could go off and die in the middle of their lives was so far-fetched on its own that Juliana hadn't even believed it when she'd first heard. The fact that he'd died of an illness — the sort of thing that happened to Muggles — was even less believable. It was stupid because he'd been alive three days ago; he had survived the shipwreck. It might have made some degree of sense if he had been taken down by a calamity, something that had rocked the entire wizarding world. For him to make it through and then pass away in his bed after he was home and supposed to be safe was preposterous.

"I know," she agreed, feeling tears well behind her own eyes at the sight of Camilla struggling through her own grief. Juliana hadn't wanted to cry, but she didn't know how much longer she could manage if Camilla was carrying on like this — it was as though her tears were contagious. "It isn't fair. It isn't fair at all."

  

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

It was the destiny of some bright stars to die young sometimes, but it was still hard to believe her brother was dead. It was unfair and cruel. He had been born with so much talent and kindness and brilliance in him, only to die in his thirties due to a shipwreck.

She simply cried for a bit, unable to find the right words to say. Part of her felt guilty for being alive when her brother wasn’t. There were times when she felt pangs of jealousy at the admiration her brother had received. She had never been as recognised as him. At times she had even felt like she was a mediocre designer who had had the luck to be next to the bright star. She now though that. The lesser Lytton had perished. What was she supposed to do without her brother to guide her and protect her?

“Oh Jules,” Camilla said in a shaky voice. “What am I supposed to do with him gone?”

  

The question surprised her. It was the sort of thing people said rhetorically all the time, and Camilla might have meant it like that. She might have really been saying however shall I carry on without him? Maybe because Juliana was an inherently practical person, however, she didn't interpret the question so vaguely.

"Well," she asked after a pause. "What do you want to do?"

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Camilla was very happy and content with her life up until that point in her life. She enjoyed freedoms other unmarried women didn’t have. She had a lucrative job she enjoyed. But that was all thanks to her brother's protection. She was allowed to get away with things because Marcus Lytton was her brother.

“I want things to be like they used to,” Camilla cried. “I can’t live without Marcus! Mother will force me to marry someone and become a housewife, surely!”

  

"No, she won't," Juliana said immediately and firmly. Juliana had been through the debutante game herself, getting dragged along from one event to another until her mother had given up on her; if she could get through it without being forced into a marriage she had no desire to participate in, she was sure Camilla could do the same. Camilla had a career and a reputation, after all. Jules did, too, but not one that anyone else knew about. As far as her parents were concerned she just had a pet project, a little hobby she enjoyed wiling away her evening hours with. If she could fend off marriage with such an ostensibly thin pretense, she was sure Camilla could do the same.

"You'll be in mourning this whole season," she pointed out. She didn't know if that was actually true, because the specifics of mourning attire had never been necessary for her to learn — her family was lucky to never have lost an immediate member, but it was easy for her to suppose that the loss of Marcus Lytton would echo through the better part of a year, at least. "So it's not as though she could ask you to think of it right away. And by next year the House of Lytton will be doing so well she'll never think to suggest it," Jules said confidently. She knew nothing of fashion, cared nothing for fashion — but if Camilla needed the House of Lytton to be successful, Juliana could devote her whole being to make that happen.

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   Camilla Lytton

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

“It won’t... it can’t! I can do it on my own!” Camilla sobbed. She only got to design clothes because her brother was successful first. She owed everything to him. He was the heart and soul of the business, it was him who the majority of customers seeked.

  

Juliana frowned and reached out to take Camilla's hands in hers. "You're not on your own, darling. I'm here." She knew she could never replace Marcus, and that in the creative sense everything would change moving forward, but whatever Juliana could offer by way of support, she was more than willing to. She didn't know anything about fashion, really, so she couldn't contribute to designs, but she could make everything else run smoother so that Camilla could focus on what she was really passionate about. Jules was determined when she set her mind to something; if Camilla didn't want to marry and she wanted to keep designing, Jules would find a way to make that happen.

"You just make beautiful things," she said, leaning in to kiss Camilla's cheek. "And I'll handle all the rest."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Her friend’s kind words and more so her gesture had sent Camilla to another round of sobs, though now she felt a wholesome sort of feeling for having such a good friend. She took Jules’ hand in hers and squeezed it slightly.

“Thank you, darling, I-” she didn’t know how to finish her sentence. “Can you sit with me and hug me?” She asked then. She had always been a touchy sort of person and all she wanted now was to be comforted like a child.

  

Camilla's words tugged at her insides. "Of course," she agreed, then climbed into the bed next to her friend and wrapped her up in her arms. Jules would hold her for hours, if that was what Camilla wanted; she was going to be whatever Camilla needed her to be, for as long as she needed her.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules