April 9th, Shortly before Dawn — The Voyager, docked in the Thames

Alfred hadn't slept since getting the Minister's letter last night, but he wasn't feeling even a little tired. The adrenaline would carry him through at least another twelve hours or so, he figured. There was too much to be done to be tired. The Voyager was ready to sail at a moment's notice but if they were going to be underway for any length of time they would need provisions, which had to be onloaded through the night. Hopefully the Ministry was paying for all of this (Alfred had assumed they would be, anyway); for the moment his credit could cover it. He had a good reputation amongst the docks and the surrounding parts of London, and even if he hadn't, there was something about banging on doors in the middle of the night and demanding things be loaded immediately that made people believe you meant business. He hadn't had any trouble finding all of the things he needed, and he had enough sailors in his usual crew to get underway with only a few additions. Hopefully the ones he didn't know were solid seamen, because he didn't have time to vet them before setting sail. Time was of the essence.

He'd been told to expect some complement of healers and Ministry officials to arrive before they departed, but other than ensuring he had enough berthing space to house them (which actually was a consideration because no one had told him whether there would be women onboard, which meant he might need double the space as he would have if they were all men, to keep them respectably separate) he hadn't concerned himself with them much. They would arrive on time, or he'd leave them behind. His only concern was the ship and the crew, and preparations were coming along as well as they could be on such short notice.

He was on the quarterdeck and shouting orders to two men aloft in the rigging when he noticed that people were coming aboard. Glancing down, he saw a familiar figure, and he couldn't help but grin.

"Zelda!" he called, taking the ladderwell down to the midships area too quickly and jumping the last three feet of it instead of taking the time to climb down. He was maybe smiling a bit too wide, given that this was a rescue effort, but he couldn't help it. He liked feeling useful, he liked feeling busy, he liked having exciting work to do, and of course he liked seeing Zelda. "Come to see me off?" he asked, tone chipper.

  

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

The owl had come late last night, a general missive sent out to anyone who was vaguely connected to the field of rescuing people, from the Office of the Minister. Zelda had decided she would go even before she saw that The Voyager was involved — she was an unmarried woman with no small children and a large amount of magical skill, of course she was going to go. She wasn't sure how she felt about The Voyager being involved, actually — not that she didn't want to spend time with Alfred, just that she was worried that if she was here people were going to treat her as Alfred's girl rather than as the professional she actually was.

She hadn't gotten much sleep, which wasn't unusual for — too busy rattling around trying to get ready (not that she was bringing much), and too energized about the work to be done once they were off. She knew people on the boat, she thought — she knew a lot of young women, so odds were high, but she was fairly confident she knew specific people who had gone on it, too.

Zelda got to The Voyager a little bit before dawn; she had an easier time picking it out than some of the other Ministry staffers, because she'd been on the boat before. She'd saved this boat, actually; the deck underneath her felt familiar. Hello, friend Zelda thought, with a wry little smile to herself. Would it be weird if she went to say hello to the curse? She'd personified it a bit, by the end — and they'd become friends, sooner or later.

Alfred's voice startled her out of her reverie. Despite her conviction that she was going to have to be professional, Zelda grinned at him. "Not quite," she said, putting her hands in the pockets of her coat, "I'm here to work on the catastrophe for the Ministry, actually."

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Her answer caught him off guard. It was a good thing that he'd already gotten down to the solid deck, because if he was on the ladderwell when she'd said it he might have actually swayed and maybe even tripped, but with both feet planted on the wood beneath he was able to take it without any physical manifestation of how unexpected it had been. He let out a little huff of breath that approximated a laugh, but wasn't, quite. His brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed a bit, not as though he were angry but rather as though she had just tried to tell him a joke and he didn't understand the premise and was having difficulty working out the punchline.

"No, you're not," he said simply.

  

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

Zelda frowned up at him. "What?" she said, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. She would have thought that he was just confused about what Ministry officials were coming, but — there was something about his laugh, and she didn't know how to parse it.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Oh, she was serious about this. He could tell by the look on her face that she wasn't joking at all, which meant this conversation wasn't going to be nearly as pleasant as he had expected it to be when he'd seen her coming up the brow.

"You're not coming," he said plainly, as though he were conveying an immutable fact of the universe to her that had nothing whatsoever to do with him. His mouth settled into a faint frown, still not angry but hinting at something like discomfort that he had to be saying this at all. "Sorry if you were misinformed."

  

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

"I'm not misinformed," Zelda said, a flat note of irritation coming into her tone, "There's a catastrophe. That's my job." She didn't know what this was about, but she was hesitant to pick an actual fight on the semi-public deck of The Voyager. Maybe they'd have time to fight later, once the ship was underway, because Zelda was going.

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   Minty Scrimgeour [Sofia]

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AMAZING set by MJ

"It's not a magical catastrophe," he countered. She was going to be stubborn, because that was how she was, but he wasn't planning to cede so much as an inch on this. "It's a shipwreck. That's my job. And this is my ship."

Surely no one knew she was here? He could not imagine that her father had agreed to this, or that the Minister had (at least, that Roslyn had; he didn't know whether the Minister cared or not). If they had put together a list of people who were meant to be coming, no one in their right mind would have put Zelda on it. She must have just heard about it and decided this for herself, which meant that whenever he talked her down from it, her family was going to be on his side — for once.

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

Zelda squinted at him as if she was trying to figure him out, which she was, because she couldn't fathom this. Alfred had never been stubborn about her work before.

"Is this some thing about women on boats?" she said after a beat, "Because I'm sure I'm not the only one." Delight was coming, Zelda was certain that she would have responded to the call with the same urgency — and that was discounting healers, so many of whom were women.

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   Minty Scrimgeour [Sofia]

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred's cheeks tinged slightly red, because it had occurred to him briefly that he might be able to use that as an excuse (not the superstition itself, but rather the lack of available berthing; he could have said I've nowhere to put you and maybe the implication that if she came she would have to stay in his cabin with him, in that cabin, would have been enough to have shocked her away from the idea). She'd already blocked that off, though, so no use lying to her about it.

"It's got nothing to do with that," he said, shaking his head. She was right; there were probably loads of women coming along, and while Alfred didn't love the idea (for the aforementioned berthing hassle it represented and the distraction it might be to his crew) he wasn't going to stop them.

"And she's a ship, not a boat," he continued with a flush of irritation — and yes, that was petty, and he wouldn't have corrected her if she'd said it in any other context, but there was a difference and the Voyager was not a boat.

  

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

Zelda flushed at the correction. "Then I don't get it," she said. In the interest of not sounding irritated in the semi-public the Voyager represented, she brought out her Very Professional Ministry Employee tone, the one she used when she was annoyed or upset and did not want to sound it.

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AMAZING set by MJ

I don't need you to get it, Alfred thought with a little surge of irritation at her tone, which he'd heard before but was not one she typically used on him. I just need you to listen. Zelda was stubborn, though, and evidently she wasn't going to just take an unqualified no as an answer, so he was going to have to say something to convince her to leave. Probably something besides the truth, because he wasn't even sure how to explain it if he'd wanted to, and there was no part of him that wanted to.

"This is dangerous," he said, because it was the only thing he could think to throw out into the space between them. Even as he said it, though, he knew it wouldn't be enough to dissuade her and it might only make things worse, if she got the impression he was trying to imply she couldn't handle herself in a dangerous situation.

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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

Uh, yeah, Zelda thought, That's sort of the point, isn't it? Since that was far too much to verbalize here &mdash or perhaps in general — she said, "I'm well aware of that, Alfred."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred frowned at her and exhaled loudly through his nose. He felt a little stuck. He wasn't going to let her come, but he didn't know what he could say to get her to back down on it. He didn't want to try and push this narrative he'd started about it being dangerous, because he couldn't carry it much further without saying something he didn't mean, about her capabilities or her capacity for handling crises. He knew she was good at all of that. He'd seen her in action, and he knew how devoted she was to her work. He knew she could do this, and if it had been anyone else's ship he wouldn't have tried to stop her.

But it was his ship, and he had to think of something to say. "Does your father know you're here?" he asked, which was an unfair question but the only strategy that occurred to him at the moment. And, just in case the answer was yes and Brannon Fisk apparently had more qualms about letting the two of them sit together in a parlor than he did about sending her out to sea for an indefinite period of time to do dangerous work for the Ministry, he added, "With me?"

  

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

Zelda frowned. "Yes," she'd said because Brannon did know she was going out for a Ministry emergency, although she had not burdened him with any of the details when they encountered one another in the dining room before she came here. Where Brannon was concerned, Zelda tended to operate on an 'ask forgiveness, not permission' schema — with the exception of there being an emergency that would have her out at weird hours, which she had told him. He could find out the details of the excursion when she was gone, and hopefully he would be over it when she was back having saved lives and not gotten pregnant, or anything.

Unfortunately, she did not have much of a poker face — she bit her lip at Alfred's second question. "He doesn't know it's with you, but I'll deal with that later," she added, as a hurried afterthought.

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AMAZING set by MJ

The way she bit her lip meant she was wavering, or at least that was how he was going to take it. Good. They were almost done with this, then, and he could get his attention back to more pressing matters.

"You won't have to deal with it at all," he said stiffly. "You're not going."

  

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

Zelda narrowed her eyes at him again. "There's a crisis. I know what I'm doing," she said, "I don't understand what the problem is here." What, was she just supposed to not go and sit around twiddling her thumbs waiting for Alfred and Delight to get back to England? That was ridiculous; the entire point of working in Magical Accidents & Catastrophes was to avoid ever having to feel like that again.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ