March 4, 1891 — Alfred's Flat, London

After his surprisingly encouraging talk with Ari Fisk, Alfred had set to work. He made his own schedule as a ship captain, so it was easy to push everything aside to make the right arrangements. He'd talked to Herbert Fudge, who had tentatively approved the idea. He'd strode down the dock at the Sanditon and made mental notes about what could be improved, and he was going to pitch it to Fudge again next week, this time with a tour of the sailboats so he could point out exactly what he meant. He'd gotten Mrs. Fudge to show him one of the houses on the terrace, too, maybe not exactly the place he'd be living with Zelda but the same sort of set-up. She'd pointed out the amenities of the accommodation, first in the same superficial and over-bright tone she might use when selling them to a potential guest, then, as he walked through the space and settled into the idea of it, in a softer, more personal way. If you're living here long term, you could make whatever changes you like to make it feel more like home. That sort of comment was gently welcoming, and he felt himself relaxing into the notion. He'd told Ari Fisk that he would have been happy anywhere if Zelda was there, and he believed it, but now he was actually starting to be able to picture himself living at the Sanditon, and working there. He could do it. Those boats could be his boats, not in legal fact but in that sense of ownership that he had felt with the Voyager even before he'd had the deed to her in his hands. He could live there, and he could be happy there.

And just as this thought had occurred to him, Mrs. Fudge had opened up a door and said, this room could be a nursery.

It caught him off guard. He hadn't explicitly stated his reasons for wanting to switch to a more stationary career part of the year, or upgrading his living situation from a flat to a small house, but he supposed the Fudges must have guessed. It wouldn't have surprised anyone, really — he had been 'courting' Zelda for eight months, which was already too long — so he should have been expecting it, but he wasn't.

The next day he'd spent two hours trying to draft a letter to Brannon Fisk, asking permission to come speak to him. Everything he said sounded wrong — too formal or too informal, giving up too much or being intentionally obscure, emitting too much confidence or too much self-deprecation. He didn't even know if her father would agree to talk to him, while he still had a feasible excuse to be too busy (Zelda's sister marrying that month), and it wasn't the right time to talk to him anyway. This wasn't the plan he'd told Ari — he was supposed to wait until the Fudges had agreed, and he had everything lined up. A flawless plan, with predetermined answers to all of Brannon's questions. He needed to wait, but after that meeting with Mrs. Fudge he had too much restless energy to just wait. He needed to do something that felt productive, so he went to the docks and set his hands on half a dozen wooden crates that had been discarded. Back at home, he started packing. He took his things down off the bookcases and lined them up in the boxes. He started making notes about things he'd need to buy, to make the cottage into a fully furnished home before he approached her father (unlikely as it seemed that Brannon Fisk would demand proof of his adequate living arrangements, he had not discounted the possibility entirely and was going to be prepared to offer the man a tour if requested). He was starting to gently remove the maps and charts that lined the living room walls, being careful not to tear the paper at the pin holes and rolling them delicately before he placed them on the sofa, when the floo lit up green.

He hadn't been expecting anyone, and when Jo Smith walked in she caught him standing on the arm of a chair to reach the top of one of the maps, with an assortment of tacks held between his teeth. "Hey," he managed, voice muffled by the tacks.

Jupiter Smith

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   Zelda Darrow

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

The situation with Zach was not great, to put it mildly. It felt almost as though they were dancing on a tight rope just waiting to see which way they would fall. Jo knew Alfred was right, that she would end things sooner or later, but she hadn't wanted him to be right. She still didn't want him to be right, she merely wished that the situation were different. That Zach would see the life of a nomad as an appealing one. That he would be willing to establish a shop anywhere. That his reputation wouldn't be so heavily considered and they could throw caution to the wind. Anything, really. Anything to make her feel as though she wasn't crawling out of her skin with all the compromise she felt she was making.

She stopped going over to his flat as often. The place that felt more like home than her own did now felt unsafe, as though she were navigating a tomb riddled with hidden curses. One misstep and the entire building would collapse upon her. Perhaps it would be easier this way. Perhaps she would just slow her visits to him until they became nonexistent, until the pair of them forgot they were supposed to be together at all.

However, slowing her visits to Zach's meant she had to be home more, which was also not great. Although Tiffany Smith was a kind mother, she was also a meddling one who didn't understand why Jo would rather stay locked in her bedroom than converse with her bizarre siblings. Even Saturn was weird now that they fought last year. Everything was disjointed and off, and Jo felt as though she could claw her skin off with how uncomfortable she felt.

A particularly difficult morning led to the decision early afternoon to go to Alfred's. Even if he wasn't home she hoped he wouldn't mind her raiding his alcohol and hiding on his sofa with a book. If he did ... well, she could always pay him back for the alcohol.

Only, when she arrived in her puff of green smoke, Alfred was there and he was packing. Jo froze a foot from the fireplace already regretting her decision to come at all. Alfred hadn't understood her the last time she tried to express her feelings towards Zach, and now he was leaving and he hadn't even thought to mention it to her.

And he was taking down the bloody fucking star maps which were undoubtedly her favorite part of his flat.

"What ... what are you doing?"

  

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beautiful set by mj

Alfred blinked at her, not sure what she'd meant by the question. He thought what he was doing was fairly obvious. There were clues all over the room: the missing things from the shelves, the boxes, the small pile of rolled charts on the sofa, the tacks between his teeth. She wasn't stupid, so she didn't mean what. Probably she meant why, which wasn't the sort of conversation he wanted to have while continuing to stick tacks in his mouth.

He climbed down from the arm of the chair and spit the tacks into his hand, then slipped them into his pocket without really thinking about it, where they would probably lie forgotten until he tried to take his pants off that evening and scratched the hell out of his leg. "Packing," he said, to answer her superficial question, then he pushed his hair back off his forehead to buy him a minute to consider how to answer the real question.

"I'm going to the Sanditon," he announced, hoping this was softer than whatever she'd assumed. Not far; still only a floo trip away. He wasn't leaving the country, or anything, and even if he was she would have understood — so why did she look so stricken by this?

"Well, tentatively, anyway," he added, a little sheepishly. "It's not really official yet."

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

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

She didn't move even as he climbed down from the chair. There was nowhere left to go now, she realized with a twisted pang to her heart. Alfred was leaving to the Sanditon presumably in preparations for whatever the next step with Zelda was. And it wasn't as though they could just chat and drink together when he was an engaged or married man. There was a line, a rather sharp one at that, drawn in the sand. Regardless of what Alfred thought it was always going to boil down to a choice, and it was never her he would choose.

"What isn't official? Your new house?" A pit of dread formed in her stomach and her every sense screamed at her to flee. To not have this conversation with him. To not open herself up to him anymore. It was a foolish decision to open herself up at all, just as it was a ridiculous decision to fall in love with a bloody bookshop owner.

She glanced back towards the floo and wondered briefly if she just ought to leave. It wasn't as though Alfred could follow her back home, and she could ignore whatever confused letters he sent. Jo took a small step backwards, likely unnoticeable unless he was watching her intently.

  

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beautiful set by mj

She didn't seem to be put at ease by the idea that it was only the Sanditon, and not Peru, or anything. Alfred reached up and tugged at the back of his hair, pulling one strand taut and then letting it back bounce towards the nape of his neck.

"Yeah, it's, uhm —" he said, not sure why he was feeling awkward about this except that she was clearly so inexplicably awkward about it and he hadn't figured out why yet. "— contingent on the job." He didn't explain what he meant, not because he was trying to be evasive but because it honestly didn't occur to him, focused as he was on trying to figure out what was going on with her. Something had brought her to his flat unannounced, and it wasn't his summer plans.

"Do you want a drink?" he offered, with a vague gesture towards the kitchen.

  

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

A job. Meaning he wasn't going to be sailing like he currently was. Jo might've rolled her eyes if she wasn't so taken aback by the suddenness of this all. Alfred and she weren't as similar as she thought if he was willing to give up his passion for a life stuck on the beach. Jo never should've expected him to understand.

"No, I'm fine." she answered, her voice clipped and more distant than she'd ever been with him. Another step back towards the fireplace and she would be standing within the chimney's confines. Fuck, where did he keep his floo powder again? Or had he already packed that too? "What job?"

  

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Alfred almost didn't want to tell her, because he was far more interested on whatever was on her mind, but if he didn't answer she'd think he was being cagey, which he wasn't.

She felt so far away. It was weird that she hadn't come in any farther, wasn't it? She was the one to floo in, so she must have had something on her mind when she arrived. Did she have something she wanted to say from the edge of the fireplace and then make some sort of quick escape? That was patently ridiculous — they'd patched things up, between the two of them, the last time she'd been over. Or so he thought, anyway; she wasn't acting as though she was comfortable speaking her mind at the moment.

"Sailing lessons," he said. He crossed the room and perched on the arm of the chair closer to the fireplace, so at least she didn't feel so far away — though she still had that tension like she was a bird about to fly away from a predator. "And upkeep on the boats, that sort of thing. Just during the summer season. I'll still take contracts on the Voyager for the winter." He may have been talking about the Sanditon, but he was watching her, trying to determine what was going on in her mind.

"Did something happen?" he asked, chewing his lower lip with a frown.

  

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

Sailing lessons was so ... mediocre, so boring. Love was worth a great many things, she supposed, but not turning his back on his passion. Not leaving his crew without work for six months of the year. Not leaving her without a safe harbor when things became tricky.

Like now.

"You're going to give sailing lessons." Jo repeated, her disbelief evident. "To who? Airheaded debutantes? Bored socialites? That's worth it to you?" It really wasn't any of her business and if she wasn't so caught up in her own nonsense she wouldn't have been so hostile, but really. Uprooting his entire life was just ridiculous, especially when he was still perfectly capable of continuing as was.

She frowned and tried to locate the bowl of floo powder, no longer caring if she was being discreet or not. Answering his question was a nonstarter, for how could she when she knew all he'd do was berate her her choices.

  

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beautiful set by mj

Alfred bit his tongue and didn't respond right away. The short answer was yes, it was worth it to him. He couldn't think of anything he wouldn't give up, at least temporarily, if it meant he got to be with Zelda. Honestly, he was starting to warm up to the idea (even if she was right about the airheaded debutantes and bored socialites), but even if he hadn't been, he would have done it anyway. He loved Zelda, and she loved him, and she wasn't the one asking him to give up going out to sea half the year. Once they were actually together, he had faith that the two of them could overcome any obstacle — and he was willing to do whatever it took to get them together, so that they had the chance to try. Because if you loved someone, it was always worth trying, no matter how hard it was at first.

But he didn't really expect Jo to understand that. She talked about this man who wanted to marry her as though she loved him, but when Jo said love she didn't really mean the same thing as Alfred did. She didn't mean doing things that were difficult, or compromising. She didn't even mean she was willing to talk about compromising, based on what she'd said in their last conversation. And a part of him understood that, because he'd been twenty-two before. He'd thought that real love didn't ever require you to change, or to make sacrifices — he'd even gotten engaged under those assumptions. It wasn't that Jo was being unreasonable, or stupid. She was just too young to understand that was what love was; it was giving things up and not even feeling as though it was a compromise or a sacrifice, because it was worth it in the end.

He didn't end up answering her question at all, because when he bit his tongue and watched her a minute he finally realized what she was doing. She was looking for the floo powder. That feeling he'd gotten, as though she were a bird about to flit away, wasn't just a weird feeling; she was actually trying to flee.

"Jo, stop," he said, reaching out to grab the jar of floo powder from the edge of the mantle and holding it in his lap (she was clearly scattered; it was in the same spot it always was). "What are you doing?" he demanded, though this was not meant to encompass her search for the floo powder — that part of what she'd been doing was rather obvious — but rather all of this. The sudden arrival, the assault of questions, the frantic look in her eye.

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   Cassius Lestrange, Jupiter Smith

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

"I clearly interrupted your plans," Jo replied coldly, her annoyance over him removing her opportunity for an easy escape obvious. Rather than face him and have to confront the reasons that led her to his flat she focused elsewhere — on the threadbare carpet, on the stack of packed crates, on the fucking expanse of wall where most of the maps were once displayed. She hadn't known when she was last here to enjoy them for the final time, or had she? Jo knew that day that he was going to choose. That the time would come and their friendship would have to draw to a natural end. This was that, wasn't it?

Unable to flee through the floo as intended, she remained awkwardly fixed half in the chimney and half out. Her skirt would be covered in soot and dust by the time she actually managed to leave. "Don't do this, Alfred." Jo warned. "Just give me the floo powder and we'll just continue on with our lives."

She wasn't above walking out through the front door, but didn't believe he would allow her to get that far before magically sealing her in. What a ridiculous mistake this had turned out to be.

  

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beautiful set by mj

Her response caught him off guard. It was less the words she used and more the open hostility behind them. Had she come here looking for a fight? That didn't make any sense, given how their last interaction had gone, but nothing else made sense, either. She'd shut down almost immediately when she came in, and he couldn't think of what could have set her off like that if she hadn't already been spiraling before she'd flooed in.

"I — the hell's that supposed to mean?" he asked, hugging the floo powder a little closer to him as though he expected her to make a dive for it. It would have been a stretch to say these were plans; he'd just had too much restless energy to sit around without doing anything for much longer, but he was sure the disorganized way he was going about it gave away just how spontaneous the decision had been (the decision to start packing, anyway — the rest wasn't spontaneous at all). He was beginning to suspect, however, that this wasn't really about him, or even about them. It just didn't make sense, for Jo to be this upset this quickly over something this minor. Something else had to be going on, though she obviously didn't want to tell him.

"Don't do what?" he asked, shaking his head. "You stop doing — this," he said, gesturing towards her with one hand while still holding the floo powder with his other. "Whatever this is."

  

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

Obviously, Alfred wasn't about to allow her an easy escape through the floo. Luckily, Jo knew the streets of London like the back of her hand and would have no trouble walking home so long as she made it out of his flat. The question now was how to make it to the front door before he could lock her in, though that was assuming he had his wand on his person at all.

"It means coming here was a mistake." She answered with a huff, taking her first step from the floo. The front door wasn't terribly far, but running to it would make her seem crazy. And she wasn't crazy, just irritated and misguided. Nothing fit right anymore, or maybe it was just her who didn't. Maybe the pair that died in the Egyptian blast were better for it.

"I thought I could talk to you. Obviously, I was wrong and you're not going to be understanding or accepting." She rubbed her temple and frowned at him. "May I please just have the bloody floo powder?"

  

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beautiful set by mj

Yeah, this definitely wasn't about him. Nothing she was saying made sense. She hadn't even tried to talk to him, so she hadn't given him much of a chance to be understanding or accepting. He still didn't even know what she needed someone to be understanding or accepting about, but it was something that had upset her a good deal, that was obvious. He wasn't sure what to do next. He wanted her to talk to him, but she had this — wall of frantic energy that he wasn't sure how to break through. She wasn't listening to him right now, he didn't think. Or she was, but only superficially; listening to respond, not to actually hear.

He put the floo powder on the chair (too quickly; he'd let it fall and spilled a third of it on the seat, but he wasn't paying enough attention to care) and rose, gently grabbing her wrists. "Hey," he said, trying to force her to make eye contact with him. Hey, come down. I'm here, you're here, we're here. "Try me."

  

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

It was on instinct alone that she pulled her arms from his grasp, her injured hand nearly slamming into the mantle as she did so. Physical touch was a tether, a means of ensaring so that she couldn't try to flee again. However, his earnest reaction softed her enough to not grab the discarded floo powder and break for it. He might've been willing to give up everything for love, but maybe he would understand.

(Unlikely, but he seemed willing to try at least.)

Jo looked at him for only a brief second before looking back towards the blank wall. God damn him for taking them down, for being so ready and accepting of change. For wanting to change. Jo was so angry because she was so bloody envious of him she could scream. How did he manage to stiffle his impulses, to suffer through the ridiculousness of society without feeling as though he were impersonating someone else? Jo had always thought them to be so similar, like he was one of the only souls on this continent who might understand her as herself, and now he felt as foreign as the rest of the world.

"I love him." Jo explained uselessly. "And I mean that. I would move mountains for him and do anything he needed. But ..." This was where she was going to lose Alfred, because if she loved him as she claimed to then there wouldn't be a but. She would just be happy to be Jupiter Binns and none of the rest would matter. The rest did matter, though, and she might as well be friendless, too. "But I don't want to. I'm not ready to."

  

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beautiful set by mj

She pulled her hands away from his, and Alfred thought he'd lost her. He expected her to push him aside to get to the floo powder, or head for the door. She didn't, though; she stayed, which was surprising. Then she spoke, which was even more surprising. What she said wasn't, though, not particularly. He'd known there had to be something that had gotten her this upset, and it made sense that it had to do with her man. And it made sense, too, that she'd reacted so strongly when she flooed in and saw him packing. It wasn't about him at all; it was about her and the bloke with the bookstore, and that sentiment: I'm not ready to. She didn't have to specify to what — they both knew everything that encompassed without putting it into words.

"I know," he said, voice soft and full of empathy. He did know — he'd been there, he'd lived it. He'd made promises to Lily Huddleston and then gone off on what was expected to be a multi-year voyage in spite of them, because despite what he'd thought, he hadn't been ready then, either. He'd wanted the thrill of adventure and the wind and the sea more than he'd wanted to be with her. Maybe Lily hadn't been the right girl, but it was more likely that he hadn't been the right boy. He'd been a different person, before the Sycorax — he hadn't really been capable of falling in love, actual love, until he'd returned and met Zelda.

"It's alright," he said softly. "You don't have to be ready."

  

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

"No, it isn't alright." Jo protested, because, really, she did love Zach. If any small detail of their circumstances were to change she could feasibly find a way to make it work, but as it stood it was just too much compromise. Loving him meant foregoing everything she loved about the world, and she wasn't ready to make such a strong commitment.

Turning from him fully, Jo moved further into the room. Her hair was a mess from the constant messing of it that day. She didn't used to be this full of anxiety, this pent up and perched on the edge waiting to flee. "It isn't okay because I'm going to hurt him. Because I have hurt him." She didn't often think of the baby she lost in the explosion, but when she did it was with such relief to not have been forced to make a decision either way on it. That in itself was a betrayal of their relationship, much as it irked her to admit it.

"I think I need to leave." She added lastly, quietly. Not leave his flat, but the country. Not that Alfred was likely to understand the difference.

  

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beautiful set by mj