Something Different || Declan and Penelope
Penelope was increasingly worried about Declan. He seemed to bring that out in her, as well as Francis, but it was more than that. He wasn’t well. Beyond the restlessness, there were the things he had mentioned to her about having seen and the bewildering horror of it all. There were the things he missed. His parents. Penelope gave a mournful sigh at that recollection. She had never even considered a world without her father at Declan’s age, until it was the one she had to live in. He didn’t fight like the rest of them. He spent his time making business investments and getting Jack to bring the twins round, who lovingly called him ‘gramps’ for want of any other. He was more figure than man and he wore age like an honored mantle. Even when his hair turned white, part of her still thought that she would never have to bury him. He was unshakable to her, perhaps as all good parents seemed to their children. But in the end, it hadn’t taken much at all.
It had been different with her mother. She had seen it in her dreams. It had been a long, bitter mourning. Even more so for all the things she would never have than for all the things she had lost. Mother had been...so mysterious and so frightening. How curious, to yearn for someone who put the fear of god in you, to want to run towards and cower from them at the same time. Penelope liked to think she preserved the parts that were most important. She carried Crawley words with her, grafted them onto herself as her family had tried to graft their ferocity onto their line.
How am I doing still? Penelope asked silently. As if her choice of bearing tea to a distressed Scribe instead of beheading vampires until dawn wasn’t an indication enough. She had never understood what it was to be a real Crawley, even as a girl, even when her mother was trying to explain it to her.
And now I can barely keep my grip on being a real Fairfax.
Being adaptive and flexible in a situation was all good and well until it came up against the fundamentals. There was a point, surely, when you were no longer recognizable as what you were supposed to be.
But she was getting wrapped up in these uncertainties prematurely. There was Declan. Declan mattered. He wasn’t coping well. It was better to see to him first. It wasn’t as though thinking round and round was bringing her any closer to the answers she hoped to find by staying in this place.
She made it through the front doors of Scribe Headquarters with minimal trouble enough and asked for Declan’s location. Of course, no matter what the enterprise, he was stooped over a desk. It was the scribe way, even with the brightest and most energetic of their ilk. Penelope knocked on the doorframe to announce herself. “There you are,” she said gently. “Ready for that little reprieve? You look as though you could use it just now.”
