OBSTA PRINCIPIIS.

“I have the most animating confidence that the present noble struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for America." Independent & private RP for John Hancock, American Statesman. Established 2015 & Revamped 2021.

[ofcongress]

“I have always, from my earliest youth, rejoiced in the felicity of my fellow-men; and have ever considered it as the indispensable able duty of every member of society to promote, as far as in him lies, the prosperity of every individual, but more especially of the community to which he belongs.”- John Hancock’s Boston Massacre Oration

Private and mutuals-only roleplay for John Hancock (1737-1793), influenced by History Channel’s Sons of Liberty miniseries. Interactions predominantly set in John’s immortal verse(s). Established 2015 & revamped 2021. 21+. Affiliated with @corruptaxpoliticus Status: Hiatus

CARRD // MEMES

[oakleafgreen]

[gulfsouthgothic]

He watches John chew it over like it's a new bit of information that holds less weight than he expected. Brendan expected he would have figured it out one way or another at this point.

It takes all his power to fix his face into something like neutrality as he listens to him speak. Sure, he knew John was sheltered, but he was hardly prepared for just how little exposure he had even to Lucy herself. That wall he built up between him and whatever it was that laid down that curse it was nearly perfect, except Lucy. He wanted to laugh about that. That's as much of a shock as anything. He doesn't know if he's heard of anyone but short stays really dodging that temper.

"Your memories of her. I don't expect it'd have much use for the rest of them." Brendan heard the pause but, with what little progress they made, didn't pry. It felt like some kind of victory, however small.

"Yeah. Like I said, magic will do it too." He shrugged at the questions, couldn't remember the last time either had been relevant or even asked. "You know? I have no idea. Probably somewhere across the pond, back when there were actually tribes. You'll forget too after a while, after it all becomes useless information. Where you're from, when you were born, who you first loved, the first place you went to school or had a good memory. Eventually, they'll be so far back you can't reach them most of the time. It'll just become," he wiggled his fingers, "mist."

[ofcongress]

Magic. Hard to believe anyone would ever use the word magic in reference to him. He's simply a reverend's son who became much more and found himself in some odd predicament because of it. He's not magic, but his circumstances are.

No wonder Brendan could care less about helping Lucida. He's so damn old that people come and go in his life like the ebb and flow of the tides. He probably figures the problem of her spirit will go away in the blink of an eye and he'll be left with only the notion of what she once was.

Lucy? Oh, I met one of those once. Not sure where, but I'm sure it'll come to me...

He laughs bitterly, shaking his head at the notion of forgetting any of it at all. Maybe that's part of his curse - He's too stubborn to forget any of it. Why in the world would he want to forget the sound of his daughter's laugh or the feeling of trepidation when signing one's name whilst knowing a very real outcome was death or the last breath of a friend gone to soon or... His throat tightens as the more recent memories emerge. A love, no matter how difficult, is worth remembering. "I'm not one to forget, Brendan. I won't allow myself to." He heaves a long sigh.

"But good for you for being able to leave it all behind. I can imagine that's freeing in a way. Though I'd argue that there are likely tendrils of your history so interwoven into your being that unearthing your past is far easier than you'd imagine. I could help with that if you ever wanted me to. I do have access to most top secret files, you know."

[gulfsouthgothic]

He would say no offense, but he probably means at least a little so he doesn't. "Yeah, well you've got a curse, don't know if anyone told you that. If you wanted to stay dead it would be hard doing but we could find someone to lift it. probably" John's not the only one he's seen with something like this, but at the end of the day most of them were not going to go giving up eternal life with less strings attached than a vampire. Hell, he even knew one that put it on themselves. "Problem is it has access to your memories, it's living on those, it's recreating the idea of her. If you look close enough you'll see the gaps in how it acts. You ever notice it almost never gets mad? Look, she had some patience at the end but push enough buttons and she was going to go off. Even when it showed up I barely saw more than a frown and I plucked at every nerve I could. You ever see it try to hit anyone? I bet not. But I know Lucy's got a body count higher than you'd believe and I haven't even seen a clenched fist.

But, back to what you're asking -- ask something only she would know? Well what do we know that truly only she would know. That's just another memory. Try all you want, but I don't see it getting far.

I don't like it but it's harmless enough, I just don't want to deal with it."

Brendan laughs sharply at the observation. "Young? You know I may have even a few years on you for different reasons. It's the magic that keeps me going longer. There's more than you expect lurking around, just know if you ever meet another you should be on your guard. Out of all of us I'm probably the least inclined to murder as a solution."

[ofcongress]

No, no one's ever told him definitively that he's cursed, but he came to that determination on his own long ago. It's not a bad curse. Or, well, depending on the day it's a not a bad curse. Most of the time he's left thinking that he's too old for this shit, but he's come to learn that feeling is universal, immortality aside. But does he want to stay dead? Absentmindedly he brushes his thumb across his ring finger, still expecting there to be a wedding band there to fiddle with. Ah, well, whether he wants to be dead or alive depends on the day, doesn't it?

"My memories of her or my memories in general?" Hopefully the former. There would be far too much for any entity to unpack if it were the latter. Hell, he doesn't want access to his own memories half of the time. "Though I can't say I ever saw her mad or overtly violent. I can't say I made any attempt to piss her off. Neither when she was alive or when she..." He makes a vague motion with his hands. "Showed up on my doorstep."

As much as he'd love to win this argument, it's rather difficult to do without Lucida in the room with them, isn't it? Brendan can say all he wants about what her spirit can and cannot do and John won't believe him. Not unless he can test it himself. There must be a way to shut off access to one's memories and see if Lucy still remembers. It shouldn't be as impossibly difficult as Brendan makes it sound.

"For different reasons?" John's brow furrows and his jaw hangs open just as long as it takes him to realize he doesn't want to act outwardly surprised at anything the man says. No wins for him. Especially since he's old enough to know how to be hospitable and yet not even an offer of a beer? That would be the bare minimum and Christ does John want something to drink to get him through this conversation. "I'm not sure if you were trying to scare me with that one, but I can't say that the thought of being murdered puts me on edge. It's happened enough times that it's mundane. May I ask when you were born? And where?"

[ghoulishundertakings]

"No, I'm her predecessor and unwilling messenger boy in this one." He raises a brow at the admission though; it all started to make more sense by the second. John, clearly, doesn't know what she was up to or had done or maybe even could do. He doesn't know that she was slowly picking apart the fundamentals of magic, scratching at it like peeling paint to see the underneath and the putting her fist through that too. Doesn't know what she did in those graveyards, what she put in her closets, what she could do to him if she had the drive and a baseball bat.

He can't remember the last time he talked to someone so blissfully unaware of the world they both inhabited, even if John was adamant about remaining on the outside of it, peering in as it suited.

"Holy water, invocations, but the problem is whatever it is isn't any of those. I don't really know what it is. Think of what you see as a ghost if you want, it's whatever is left over, but it's not her." He sighs, and rubs his temple, eyes closing in frustration. "It is a fictitious identity, that's the point! It's drawing power from you, from me even to keep that up. But make no mistake, Lucy is not somewhat deceased, she's dead. I know that, I saw that."

[ofcongress]

"Yes, well, I was pretty certain I was dead too." He drops his gaze, growing quiet as the whirlwind of conflicting thoughts and emotions swirl. Above all else he's tired. Tired of the arguments. Why must there always be an argument? Why must everything always be so difficult? Some part of him does hope that whatever gruesome spirit had visited him was some sort of falsity. That it's wandering around being a nuisance all while Lucy is at rest.

But isn't that the whole point? That those you love are worth fighting for, even in death? Isn't what why he's still here?

"If you don't know what it is and it's not responding to the usual mechanisms, then have you considered that it may be Lucy? Not the Lucy she was before whatever it is that you saw. Is there any way you could catch it in a lie? Ask it something only she would know?" He's not sure what sort of power she may be drawing from him. He considers himself rather powerless, that bone-deep exhaustion not anything abnormal. "It's worth a try, isn't it?"

"You seem a little young to be her predecessor..." He leaves it at that, knowing he himself doesn't particularly enjoy the being prodded on the subject of age.

@gulfsouthgothic

[ghoulishundertakings]

There it is. He can hear the pieces all fitting together.

"What does it matter what I think? You've made it perfectly clear it doesn't make an impression on what you think. Why waste my breath about it? I'm not here to convince you of anything"

Brendan leans back, looking closely at the man in front of him. "I think you're not all that convinced either. Take your pick on that one...I'm not doing every test in the book to figure it out, but you should know by now that taking an identity is not really all that hard for a lot people, Mr. Henchman." He made sure to enunciate the last name slowly, so John didn't miss his point.

[ofcongress]

"Because you're her stand-in, aren't you? I assumed you'd know more about the world she operates in than I do. I merely dabble in the world of the abnormal. As little as possible, I might add." That doesn't mean John will simply accept Brendan at his word, though. Clearly there's something else going on between him and Lucida that he's unlikely to infer from this conversation.

"But what tests have you done so far?" he asks, his voice both eager and urgent. "Or what do the tests you're unwilling to perform entail? Because I'd be more than happy to implement them if it means I'm helping my friend." There was no missing that enunciation. John simply smiles, though the warmness doesn't quite reach the steely blue of his eyes. "I'm having trouble following your logic here, Brendan. Would you care to explain the correlation between taking a fictitious identity out of necessity and, what, imitating a very real, yet somewhat deceased person?"

[ofcongress]

[ghoulishundertakings]

She nods, testing another step past the door and closer to really being inside the home. "Yeah, not in Louisiana..." she paused, chewing over if that was really the right way to describe it. Maybe it is because their meetings were shorter, more sporadic despite how close they grew. Over time, over the country, no one spot had a solid hold for her. It is just him and his memory, and the version of her he knew. Which, if she looks in the mirror, may be younger than she expects. She feels very wide eyed, if not naive.

"Yes, it's hard to get out to places where I don't have a lot of people who remember."

There's a sharpness in her laugh that comes unbidden. "I'm not alive," she holds her hand up as if to prove her point. What she is she can't say these days either, but alive certainly doesn't fit the bill.

"Well, the same way anyone dead hears you. I think it's a little like a prayer for angels or gods. It filters through and finds the right spot more or less." Lucy can nearly see the thoughts flit behind his eyes as he tries to filter through everything he's has said to her. It's the same face Mal had when they met at her not-grave.

"It's good to see you too, by the way. I don't think I said that yet, right?"

[ofcongress]

"Certainly not in Louisiana. It's far colder here and there aren't any gators." It's his attempt at a joke, of course. He's trying his very best to normalize this very abnormal situation. Maybe if he shifts his focus, maybe if he pays a little less attention, she will appear to be more... whole.

"That makes sense..." He trails off and gives her a smile that is more of a grimace than anything else. Up until recently, he's spent more than half the year across the pond. It's no wonder she hasn't visited earlier. London was surely more difficult of a feat than Boston.

John neither wants to look at her hand nor accept confirmation of the fact that he's been in denial about for years. "I didn't realize the dead were paying that much attention to me. Perhaps I should be quieter..." His eyes widen at the realization that the statement carried an insult to her. "I mean everyone else. All the other spirits with any interest in getting to me."

Is it really good to see him? He thinks that if the tables were turned, he might feel a little jealous. He's died countless times in this long life of his, yet she dies once and this is the result? Not some perpetually perfect imposter, parading around with all of the other mortals like he fits in. "If you did, I may not have picked it up. Seeing as my jaw was on the floor."

"May I ask how it happened? You don't need to tell me if it's too difficult."

[ofcongress]

[ghoulishundertakings]

He shuts the door behind them, tamping down on a response. They’re at his place now and if they get into it, it’ll be him footing the bills so, for the sake of his pocketbook and his sure to come headache, he’s giving himself space not to take every piece of bait.

“I did.” There’s a feeling he can’t mark in that response. He can’t tell if it’s horror or not. He certainly hopes it is, that’s what anyone with sense would feel, but Lucy wasn’t known for having a lot of sense and from his experience with her friends he can’t say any of them do either.

“Yeah, that’s what happens when something is trying to go against pretty much every rule in the book — it’s hard,” he scoffs, bitter as black coffee. “Look, as soon as I know what this is I’ll be able to answer that better. However, I’m a strong believer that past actions can indicate how current ones will go, so you’ll forgive me— or don’t, I don’t care — if I’m skeptical. What exactly is your goal in coming here?”

[ofcongress]

John focuses most of his attention on how Brendan has decided to decorate, gaze flitting between his knickknacks to his furniture to what sort of books he has on his shelves. Of course none of this could possibly be done in a non-judgemental manner. This is John, after all.

"Seeing Lucida arrive brought back memories of when she died." He trails a finger across Brendan's table and is surprised to find it's not coated with a layer of dust. "Specifically meeting you and how much of a prick you were - are, sorry."

He fixes his blue eyes on him and smiles as he offers himself a seat at the dining table. "Are you not convinced it's her? Who else could it possibly be?"

[ofcongress]

@ghoulishundertakings from here

"It's good to see you too, Brendan," he responds with a grin, wiping his Louboutin oxfords on the mat before stepping inside. "I'd be flattered to think you chose Boston because of me, but I know better."

John has been avoiding ghosts at all costs for a very long time. On one hand he doesn't want to give himself away, on another he doesn't want to go through the emotions of recognizing some long-lost friend perpetually trying to drink a beer at the Green Dragon. He'd much rather pretend to be normal.

"I did." His voice is little more than a whisper. "She found me, actually. Seemed to be difficult for her, but she did." John's not interested in another fight and he does a very good job at not rolling his eyes at Brendan's dickish comment. "You don't think I'm going to be civil about this?"

[stopstopstopit]

Ulbrickson & Bolles matching+mirroring+in sync

[ofcongress]

someone: hey John why aren’t you considered the first President of the US?

John, growing progressively more irritated: you know that a good question. it’s likely because I was the first President under the Declaration of Independence, but Washington was the first President under the Constitution. could also be because people were obsessed with Washington because he was taller and had great thighs. read any book on Washington and the historian will obsess about his great thighs, which I don’t think should be the focus at all. let’s talk about how he was a bit of a dick and had bad teeth, instead. I also say bit of a dick sarcastically because… you know. meanwhile I have all of my teeth so…

[ofcongress]

updated the pinned post - gonna go on a lil hiatus

[beggars-opera]

I don’t know if it was part of his obsessive need for accurate detail or if he just hated the man and wanted petty vengeance but I appreciate that John Singleton Copley spent hours flawlessly painting John Hancock’s 5 o’clock shadow not once, but twice

[beggars-opera]

Proof:

Hancock paid actual money for these

[generic-lab-assistant]

The rest of the founding cats are done plus King George cat cauee I couldn’t not make that

[gunmetalgrey]

“I don’t make friends. Much better at alienating people.”

She usually prides herself on being able to make people uncomfortable. It can change the subject, flip the situation, force people to leave. Half of her life has been spent working in the subtleties like this. But something tells her this is t going to be an easy awkward out of a conversation- John has had time on his side. He has questions that have burned a whole into his brain and it’s going to be a lot of work to avoid giving straight answers he could use to get himself into trouble.

“What if I’m not? You’re making a lot of assumptions based on very little information.”

The latter. Absolutely the latter.

“I was a soldier. Leading has never been my thing.”

Maybe once. Back in the forces she had a team who it would have been nice to try that step with. The problem had always been her own self preservation, it’s hard to play for a team when you know it could end up with a bullet buried in your skin. At least those people had been worth taking one.

“No- I’m not fucking around here. Not with this.”

Would he take a flat out no? Would he just let it go?

“I know what would happen to Myc. He’s got family, he’s got you. Worst of all he’s got no fucking idea how cruel it’s possible to be to another human being.”

Mycroft took so many risks because as much as he seemed to assure himself he knew the consequences, how could he? How could you possibly imagine the depths of depravity, the pain of being living and dead at the same time? Ignorance was bliss. God, she prayed for ignorance.

“Look at me. Do I look like someone who scares easy?”

She pauses, giving him a chance to really look. Truly. To see something maybe the reforged steel hasn’t hidden, that he might see some honest fear in her body. Because there is only one thing left on earth that can make her feel it.

“There are no hypotheticals. This isn’t a conversation.”

[ofcongress]

"I can't relate," he says with a hint of a smile. "I make friends everywhere I go, hence why you're my friend."

John isn't an easy one to make uncomfortable, unless one knows the particular buttons to push. He counts himself lucky that so very few even know where to begin to discover said buttons.

"I could be. Or I could be a very old man who has been around people his entire life and developed a habit of watching what they do." He folds his hands in his lap and lets out a breath. "I work in government, so everyone around me has a big personality. You do too, though I'm not sure you see it."

His gaze falls to his hands when she begins to speak about Mycroft. She's right and he knows it. In fact, it's painful to think about how very right she is. How self-assured Mycroft is and how Moriarty would potentially try to burn his world down around him if he ever stepped too far out of line. He thinks about what they have together and the future they want to build and that with every good that comes from their relationship comes another opportunity for insurmountable pain. All because he got wrapped up in something too big for him to understand when he was in college. Now there was no going back and John, despite how much of a big game he talked, could not save him from it. Oh how he would give anything to save him from it.

John's looking at her now, his own eyes suddenly looking rather old and pained. He sees her and he sees someone who does not scare easily at all. Yet she's terrified of James Moriarty.

"Very well. Let's only hope your employer gets what's coming to him sooner than later."