#para 2.0

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Strangers in a Bar || Penelope and Timothy

Snow billowed through London in winding icy sheets amidst low howls and moans from the wind that seemed to sweep the city into an eerie quiet and cool the cup of tea in Penelope’s hands before she’d had a proper sip. At least she had managed to eat most of her meal before it too had become cold and untouchable. Her eyes squinted against the frosty glaze over the window. A large shadow of a man was leaving the building across the street. Finally.

She waited for him to walk a few meters past the door of the teashop she had ensconced herself in before stepping out to follow. He was larger in person. Well built, or so his winter coat made him seem, he carried himself well and with purpose, even if he was merely walking to a restaurant for lunch. Penelope looked up at the sign as she came in behind him. Not a bad place. For being by all accounts a bachelor and a workaholic, Timothy Fellows thought well enough of himself to eat decently on his lunch break.

Penelope walked straight to the bar counter and sweetly asked for a vodka tonic while she removed her gloves and made herself comfortable. To her surprise, no sooner did she relax in her chair than did Mr. Fellows take a seat at the bar as well. This, she thought with a self-satisfied smile, was too good to pass up. Penelope took a careful sip of her drink and waved for the bartender to come by her again. What sort of scotch did they have here, and could she buy a glass of one of their finer labels for that handsome gentleman across the way? No, good Lord, not that one, the tall gentleman, yes, him. She would be ever so grateful if he would take the drink to him, of course, and wasn’t he so very kind to be so helpful.

When the bartender had gone away again to prepare Mr. Fellows’ drink, Penelope allowed herself a moment’s respite. Any minute now that nice chap would serve the scotch and say that it was compliments of the lady. Any minute now Timothy Fellows or some other person whose acquaintance she had made a careful point of making would spot her and she would want to be in top form. But for now the handsome politician was sat across the way in his own little world and she could spend a few more moments in hers.

What did he worry about, she wondered. Did he try to guess at his opponent’s movements? Did he think of Buffy? Of the other girls? Perhaps he had a family tucked safe in a home somewhere he wanted to get to as well. He had at least, at one point, had parents. Were they supportive of him? Did they worry that this bridging of worlds would get their son killed? If he was the good humble knight he seemed, Penelope thought, those worries might be well-founded. Nothing that good pure lasted long on the hellmouth. It was either corrupted or devoured sooner or later. Always.

Timothy Fellows looked up. The bartender was pointing her way. Knowing her time had come, Penelope smiled a small charming smile and tilted her head, giving the man some variation of an inviting expression. Forwardness was not her forte, but gentle prodding, an nonthreatening encouragement—that she could do. “Hello there,” she called softly. “Fancy some company?”

[mor-beck-more-problems]

I Must Also Feel It || Charlotte and Penelope

Penelope had thought that stepping out into the night air would calm her nerves and soothe her lungs to gentler, easier breathing. The cold stung her red-rimmed eyes and numbed her mouth so that it drooped in a placid gape, but nothing more. No shelter, no relief, nearly no hope. If she had a pound note for every time someone had insisted she let someone else do some brave and necessary deed, Penelope felt that she could have built her fortune up from scratch. Her stomach sickened at the thought. She did not know which virtue or vice was the main culprit of this unconquerable urge to be there in front of those cameras, to be in the holding cell, to stand before the mob, to...actually do some true, genuine good with the tricks she'd cultivated over the years. Was that it? Was she desperate to reconcile some pitiful gap in her conscience and nothing more? Penelope shook her head and quietly asked Simon to drive faster.

No, she would not believe that. It was right. She was still striving towards goodness and honour in spite of what her earlier attempts had won her and stepping forward was simply the right thing to do. Charlotte and Maggie were brilliant women. They were charming, clever, friendly, deft and full of deep feeling. They could make themselves be endeared with ease and could weather storms of criticism. But when it came time to answer for deeds, and it would someday, they should not be the ones under fire for a decision Penelope had made. They shouldn't be blamed for Angelus' survival (for the innocents he made families bury, innocents who were just as dear and valuable as any other life in their acquaintance no matter what his acolytes might tell themselves), for the past of their predecessors, for the girls who would not come back, for the people they hid. They had helped, debated, and agreed or disagreed with her, but she had bid the decisive action. She, therefore, should be the one answering for herself most. Not Tess. Not any of them. And yet Tess was in some god-forsaken holding cell, and she was still in the little glass box she'd let herself be shut up in.

The car pulled up to Charlotte's drive. An urge to weep stuck itself hard in her throat, shaking her deeply. There was an ache in her heart that no drink could fill and no touch could permanently soothe. With no more movement in the car and no more thoughts she dared entertain about this horrible matter left, Penelope felt it throb in her chest with an anguishing vengeance. Charlotte feels like this too, she thought. Charlotte has lost two girls and she's always afraid her last will run from her. Charlotte has seen her hopes dashed all over the television. All she wanted was to care for her girls and do something good. And I've lost so many hopes and girls. All of them once. All my pretty ones.

At her own cruel reference, Penelope stiffened and sniffled. "Go straight back to the house. I will get a cab home and return before breakfast."

Simon nodded solemnly and drove off.

Penelope walked swiftly to Charlotte's door. She knocked softly, careful not to wake Irene if she was sleeping inside. Her fingertips lingered on the door sadly while she waited. "I almost thought you wouldn't answer," she murmured when it opened. There was only the basest, most perfunctory and transparent lines of pretense on her face. They were thinner than a veil, and worn only to give Charlotte some prudence and dignity if she so wished it. It was a friendly gesture meant to get a sense of her place, a courtesy she would no doubt understand intuitively. They were still in many ways kindred spirits through their games and their losses, and there had never been a more painful or frightening time for it.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Smiling in the Dark || Maggie and Penelope

Guests spilled out of he house on Robin Grove in a steady tide early that Christmas Night. On another year, in another world, Penelope would have perhaps been sadder to see them go. She missed them now, of course, but with an unbecoming desperation. Gen was out with Simon, Elaine had retired to her room early, and silence reigned with a heavy fist.

Would Gen be happier tomorrow? Would Peyton? Estela? And where were they now, these precious girls she had proven to be no comfort to? How lonely did they feel, and how heavy was this burden she couldn't lighten for them? And Freya--God in Heaven, would Freya be recognisable when she came back to them? Would she even want them? They had no way of knowing, truly, with any certainty, knowing, what they ought to do for her when she was restored to them. Though Heaven knew if she would be. Penelope dared not entertain any other notion (for, supposing she would not and they perished, Freya's soul would be at peace with the angels and Penelope's would be far, far away where it could not reach her) but that did not mean that any certainty of their existence was truly in place. She laughed bitterly to herself and curled against the couch a little closer. What a marvellous existence their girl was fighting for. What a Christmas she was missing out on! Penelope laughed again, her chuckle rumbling low in her throat, stinging her tongue and bringing back the taste of the cognac she'd downed. It served as a fine distraction from the urge to cry that was building behind her eyes and the building tremble in her bones.

Penelope clenched her teeth together. Maggie was coming downstairs, or she said she was. 'Settled then. I love you. I'll be down in a moment.' And a moment far too soon, with her luck. She didn't feel steady, or happy. The damned smile she'd kept in place all day was worn to rags and impossible to keep up at this hour. You foolish woman, she chided, can't even feign happiness for someone else's sake. Isn't artifice supposed to be your one great vice? And not even for Maggie, for your own---and it was your own idea to drag her out too, you should have thought of that or let her be... Penelope sighed and dragged her fingers through her hair. There was that footstep she'd grown so used to, and then that shadow, that strange, warming sense she felt when they were near each other.

Penelope straightened her jumper and rose from her seat with a new, sudden burst of resolve. Her Marianne would not be saddled with the sorry task of coddling this evening. Given the hell the rest of the Williams brood had resolved to give her, it seemed far more appropriate for someone else to be the one with the sturdy, comforting shoulder. It was Christmas Day and they had to get Karla's thank you's over the phone and stand as far apart from Gertie and her family as the church would physically allow. And then with Freya, with everything else...Maggie more than due for some tidings of comfort and joy. Penelope blinked away the last of the moisture from her eyes and turned to face Maggie."Quite ready then, are we, darling? Snow's still falling, at last glance. Should be lovely, shouldn't it, my dear?"

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Ego Te Requiro || Penelope and Peyton

Penelope had missed Peyton. As she sat in the living room with a fresh sheet of translation work from Gertie (labeled with exhaustive, frustrated care, as always) Penelope thought about the peculiarities of the word and how it squirmed around the meaning from one language to another. In French, the literal mechanics made the phrase resemble something more like something was missing from you. As if they were part of you, like an invisible limb or some vital organ conveniently left out of anatomy sketches. To miss Peyton, to miss anybody she had felt lost or separated from, was to be without hands or a valve in her heart she had not known was so important. Penelope scribbled out her translation of the passage, her tongue trilling the words in a whisper as she went. She was waxing poetic over trifles. It was unbecoming, and unnecessary. What did it matter that Peyton was coming? What did it matter that her heart had skipped a beat when the girl asked to be invited by? What was the use in imagining an improbable vision? It was no just cause for distraction.

Penelope frowned over her work. Far too imprecise. Language was hardly a precise practice at all times, but this was hardly high philosophy or the deepest, messiest contents of the soul. She put her work aside and went prowling through her shelves for her Portuguese dictionary. Her eyes glared at the spines before her, scrutinising and unyielding to the point of farce. All in the name of distraction.

It would not be admitted beyond a guilty scowl in her lip, but in spite of her good sense Penelope was teeming with hope. Or, the seed that would have become hope if she had let herself nurture it. Peyton was coming to the house. She had asked explicitly (always straightforward, always one step away from abandoning her plan) with no pretence that they would be forced to abide by for even the smallest of moments. She wanted to see her, and, for the first time, that was enough. Finally enough. Was it a point of exasperation that brought the girl to this? A budding enthusiasm? No matter, no matter at all.

Penelope plucked the dictionary from the shelf and held it to her heart. Things would be different when she arrived. Their talk had always had a peculiar character to it. Their language was sided with two meanings, a safe, simple ground and an undercurrent that more implied than examined. Sometimes Peyton would throw them into the deep end, but it was rare and almost always tempered with some misdirection. And today--there would be little to no hope of anything like that today, surely. With the distance that had been wedged between them, it would be a wonder if they managed to unburden themselves at all. But, another time, perhaps--? And in any case, the reassurance of shared company was not a gift to be dismissed. Smiles and looks had their own ways of communicating, and the lightest of affectionate gestures ought to carry some weight after so much time apart...

Penelope did her best to finish the translation before the doorbell rang, but she was still addled in spite of herself and in all her searching she still could not be satisfied with her translation, not enough to send it back to Gertie, at least. She jumped as the chime of the bell echoed through the house, nearly dropping her pencil. Elaine came up the servant's stairs in the kitchen, ready to attend to her post, but Penelope shooed her back to her novels and her knitting. "It's Peyton, darling. I'll get it myself." She stashed her Portuguese work in one of the smaller cupboards glided to the door, anxiously eager under the veneer of her gentle, unassuming expression. She smiled as she opened the door and wasted no time in beckoning the girl inside. "It's wonderful to see you, Peyton. Do come in, you'll catch a chill waiting out there."

The door shut behind them and Penelope leaned against the frame with a sigh, slipping into the relaxed air she made a careful habit of adopting with Peyton. "Can I get you anything, perhaps?" she asked.  

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Not Today || Buffy and Penelope

Few things were as peculiar to Penelope as her joyous relief upon Buffy's return and near immediate appointment to her office. London had frozen and crumbled into even greater disarray  in her absence and along with it, their lives. Wesley had all but shrugged it off with his sturdy survivor's confidence, but Penelope still feared that when the dust finally settled all they would have left to comfort them in the aftermath would be ashes and shadows. And what would she tell Buffy after she confirmed all of the gossip and tales her friends had thrust upon her? Would Buffy even want to hear it if the learned about Angelus, Irene, or Wesley? And yet in spite of all this, Penelope could not help but feel comfort at the notion of seeing Buffy.

She had wanted to tell the girl that for her, there would always be time without the drudgery of Elaine typing and penciling and rearranging coming into play. And for such matters as ending Sabine, restoring her people and loved ones back to the world they cherished? Even Maggie, even Peyton would have understood if she departed abruptly to join Buffy's company. But in the astonishment of the moment, she had said none of these things, and only performed the drudgery herself so as not to think or hope or fret too long in the interm.  

The rest of her morning filled itself on its own accord as if by fate. Training with Peyton, lunch with Estela, seeing Maggie, seeing the rest of her people. They did not need to be reminded that they were not to wander alone, that their lives were at stake. In less than a year since returning to their field, they'd lost dozens of their friends, their colleagues. In this New Age she had dragged them into, their deeds and efforts had made them targets of evil. They were a better, prouder people, and as a result their graves could have lined the whole front of the building. They did not need to be told that their grief served some purpose, that their senseless extinction was somehow fated, or glorious. She knew as well as they did, if not better, that there was no glory in grief. Instead, as she stood amongst them in the waning tide of their desks and books and bleary, tired faces, Penelope told them, "If I had a pound for every time some one said or thought that we were useless, that we were old and blind and stupid, that we're no better than what's come before us, we'd never have to worry for funding ever again. Our work is never easy. Not even in times of peace."

They looked at her, anxious, ready to get back to their books and their worries. Misery was easy to fall in love with at a time like this, and she was dragging them away from the warmth of its bed.

"But it is when night gathers that we are needed most, that we have to stand the strongest. We are the first and sharpest defence against it. And so long as we stand, so long as we can still stare back in its face and say that this is not the day we fall back and give up, we stand a chance. There will be hope. And there are dozens of families, dozens of children hidden in this night that need our hope. There are memories and ambitions, our own living friends and families, our brave, brilliant girls that are counting on us on all odds, in all things, to search and fight beside them with our last breath and the last settling of the dust. We have a new lead, ladies and gentlemen.  That dust is settling soon. This isn't the day we settle down with our drinks and congratulate our fellows with a job well done, but this is not the day we lose. Not today." As she spoke, a little of the life left in her body seemed to leave it and deflate her, gifted to them in a strange, desperate impulse. She had not rested well in days, and as she raised her chin at the austere angle that was now so common and familiar to them, she seemed years older. "I want reports of your progress on my desk before you go home. Carry on." She nodded at them, her fists clenched to force herself to remain standing upright, and went back to her office.

When she had climbed the last of the stairs and turned the corner, she spotted a familiar silhouette in the waiting area. Buffy. Elaine looked up at her brightly as she came in and nodded at the young woman.

"Buffy!" Penelope said. "I'm so sorry to have not been here when you arrived, my dear. Do come inside. We'll make ourselves comfortable and we can discuss your matters over some tea, or coffee, perhaps?" She brightened a little, and offered the young woman her hand.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

The Shadow on the Moon at Night || Maggie and Penelope

Penelope curled her hands around a warm mug of tea. Earl Grey, two sugars. In recent days, she had felt more conservative, more wary and prone to self-denial, but to have a bout worry ruin a perfectly good cup of tea was madness. People died, kingdoms crumbled, but a cup of tea was still impeccably, reliably, perfect. She inhaled the rich scent as it warmed her face, gentler than a caress.

It had been another long day, and more trying than she must have realised at the moment for Maggie to have still been there when she left the office. Penelope had invited her over without hesitation. She still felt her mind throbbing and reeling from their last little spat in her home. Rather than mull it over in the library alone, she sought to pacify any lingering suspicions in the older woman's mind and perhaps use her company as balm for her own agitations. A storm was coming, it always was. Tides worked both ways, and in spite of Death rather literally at their doorstep, they were coming along a bit better than one might expect. This only caused Penelope to be more fearful of when the other shoe would drop. But for now, she and Maggie were curled up in large, ample chairs in her bedroom, tea in their hands and sweets hot from the oven on a plate between them. The heat was on to fight against the October chill and light cast long, comically dramatic shadows all across the floor. They must have looked like overgrown girls acting out the shell of a sleepover. Shadows and tired eyes, sweets and sweet-scented blankets spread around them and what suddenly seemed to be an abundance of pillows. But in truth, it was all a bit more plain than that. She was exhausted, and mundane as it seemed, she desired comfort. Maggie.

Smiling sheepishly at this thought, Penelope looked over towards her friend to see how she was doing. "You alright, there?" she asked. Of course she was, or would be. On the rare, astonishing occasion that Mad Maggie Wells was other than alright, her distress always seemed to be well within sight. She had walls like everyone else, not a maximum security fortress. Her feelings were lit up and neatly labeled in as many colourful varieties as one could imagine. And yet Penelope did sometimes feel the need to ask for certainty's sake. Maggie was as bright as she was mad, but she was still human. She had her shadows and her sorrows. Often Penelope would wonder if they were more numerous than she dared give the woman credit for. It uneased her, not in the way that one feels towards those they would rather see as more or less than human, but the way in which one wishes that their loved ones didn't exist in such a vulnerable  sorrow-prone sphere when they were away from one's company. She felt protective of the older woman. And if her attentions deflected conversations well away from herself, then that was simply icing on the proverbial cake.   

"May I ask you something?" She bent down to scrape off a layer of cream from one of the pastries with her finger while her eyes stayed on Maggie, brow arched with curiosity. "That dreadful week we talked about earlier. When all our nightmares ran rampant and no one slept a wink--what did you dream about?" She sucked the cream off her finger and picked up her tea again. "You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine," Penelope added. Her voice was serious in spite of the casual air of her words. After the event had passed, she'd made a point to not breathe a word about it to anyone.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Through the Dark || Penelope and Wesley

No one Penelope loved was buried near her at Highgate. Her Father was squeezed into a crevice of a space next to older generations. They had wanted to put him somewhere else, closer to the family home in the countryside, but she had been so inconsolable and unseemly (“distasteful,” her mother had said, “especially at her age.”) that Evelyn had seen no alternative but to make room for her late husband somewhere. For her part, the Lady Evelyn had requested that she be placed alongside the other Crawleys more than three kilometres away from the Fairfaxes. Erin was in Lambeth, it would have been selfish to put her anywhere else. There was nothing left to bury of her friends, her colleagues. And her girls, all of her sweet dead girls were laid to rest near their proper homes with their proper families. There was a space for them in the mausoleum too, a sentiment, but the only things that slept beyond the marble facings were shadows.

It was only right, Penelope had told herself. It was only fitting that she honour them somehow. She owed them that. No, she owed them more. But now with the sun flickering in and out behind clouds and scraping against treetops, she didn’t feel so sure.

The pool was almost finished. Perhaps that was it. The sunroom attached to it had been one thing, but the sound of water, the glare of new lighting—perhaps she wasn’t as peaceful as she sometimes pretended. The air grew more haunted the closer they came, not less. Penelope’s imagination threw Susan’s shadow on the wall and scattered her silhouette across the water. The ghost of her laughter hung from the rafters and sometimes, as she surveyed the day’s work, she thought she saw those dim, lifeless eyes shining in the dark, frozen in disappointment.

Her hand caressed the empty marble bloc. In loving memory, it said. God help me, they wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t been so loved or well-remembered by me. I brought them here and this is where it got them. I did everything I could, and this is what we won. The thoughts soured her mind and prickled the hair on her skin. That’s not right, she reminded herself. That was wrong, it was different, it had to be, it meant something that she tried, there had to be a way…

Penelope sat down on the bench, her hands limp and useless at her sides. She wanted to say she was sorry, but who in God’s name would she start with first? Her parents? Susan? Gen? The list of her shortcomings was long enough to build Mount Purgatory, and there were still says ahead of her, more hours and years even. It never ended, she thought. They tried, they suffered, they did their best. Often, they failed. “But not always,” she found herself murmuring, shrill and breathless. Sometimes the sun shined. Summer came again; it always did.

Penelope’s hand reached out for the empty grave again, her nails catching and fumbling against the letters. I miss you all, she wanted to say.

She turned back towards the door. Dusk was just beginning to sweep across the sky. Shades of blue crawled over one another, slithering into place for the night. Penelope turned back, frowning. She didn’t want to go. They were all here, even if they weren’t close. All the shadows she loved best, her girls, her Father…

Footsteps echoed in the tomb. Penelope raised her eyes, familiar with Wesley’s silhouette. There were living people she loved well enough to recognise too. She bent her head a little and smiled weakly.

“I can’t recall if you’re early or late,” she said. “But I suppose I’m glad in either case. Will you sit with me?” Her hand patted the space beside her. It had been waiting for him all along.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

What Memories I Own || Illyria and Penelope

Penelope Fairfax missed Illyria. It had been a small admission at first. She hadn't known that the godking would return, hadn't dared fathom a circumstance in which Fred's existence was anything less than permanent. How could she? To favour the life of some ancient treacherous other over a human girl, especially one that Wesley cared for and loved, and might have, if not for Heaven smiling on their time, preferred. Her life had been ripped away from her so unfairly, wasn't she the one who deserved the fountain of warm-welcomes, flowers and endless forms of adulation instead of the creature that made her feel a stranger in her own life? And yet Penelope missed the creature. To her surprise, she even missed her more than she feared the girl. And Fred, in spite of Wesley's fidelity, frightened her a great deal. Thinking of her sent Penelope into a cold, silent terror, the kind which filled men and children when they first began to think of the expanse of all that they did not know. It did not send her into restless fits, no fidgeting, tossing, and turning. She did not cower. But the fear would leak into her eyes if she contemplated for too long. Consequently, she was very careful to mind her thoughts elsewhere. As she balanced the small pot of flowers in her hand (calla lilies, again), Penelope had to admit that at this moment Illyria made for an excellent elsewhere.

Where had she gone? She seemed to have no memory of having ever been absent, so that surely out-ruled any suspicions of her being in pain. But was she simply paused in motion, or did her will work its way through the way Fred's had? If there had been any conscious suspicion with evidence to support it, she would have heard, surely. But then that mention of the plants and the green song--Penelope sighed--it could have been anything. Just because she had wanted or hoped that Illyria was still in the world didn't mean it was so.

London was finally beginning to cool from summer's reign. When one woke up, the streets were drowned in cold fog, like sweat from a fever. Nothing sweltered or melted anymore. Instead the grass bristled and the earth shook, sighed, and shrugged. Life became laborious in the autumn, Penelope had found. Everyone seemed to have one foot in summer fields and another in winter drifts. End of semester exams, holidays, the peculiar apprehension of anticipating a new year, and all else that was felt but could not be named in the future lurked under dunes of ice. Autumn was for waiting, for allergies and rushing through everything that stood between one milestone and the next. And worst of all would be the warm fronts. Those rare, inexplicable days or hours in which one could forget that everything was dying around them and feel enough warmth on their skin to imagine June all over again. A breeze picked up as one hour faded into another and Penelope realised that today was, indeed, one of those days.

She let herself in the house as she was wont to do and set the calla lilies on the table nearest to the yard. She was perfectly prepared to tend them herself, especially in any future absences from Illyria, but if anyone in the household should feel the urge to take charge of the poor things, there could not be a more convenient spot for them to do so.

The foot steps in the hall gave her pause. She had been expected, after all, but she hadn't entirely wished to catch Illyria off guard. A shock of blue caught her eye. "Good day, Illyria," she said, inclining her head respectfully. "I have looked forward to seeing you. I thought we might go for a stroll or visit Pancakes, if it pleases you to do so." Penelope's smile glinted.