April 19th, 1891 - 3 AM - The Voyager

She left the hospital and she went home almost like she was in a daze, and then the rest of Sunday was committed to meandering through the tasks of being a person, eating dinner with her father and Nemo and talking about Dionisia's condition. She took Yorick for a walk around the block. She changed into her nightgown and extinguished the magical ball of light she hung in her room at night. She lay in the darkness and hoped that sleep would just take her, for once, because she was exhausted, today, after everything, and because she was allegedly going to work the next day.

She wouldn't be so lucky.

Zelda sat in the dark and held her knees to her chest. She left her room to find Yorick and let the dachsund in, even though normally Yorick wasn't allowed in her bed. She laid with one arm slung over her dog and tried to breathe deeply because she didn't even know how to begin to process any of this — Dionisia hospitalized and Alfred hadn't told her and the stress of the past week — and still she couldn't sleep. She rehearsed fights in her head, with Alfred and with her siblings and even with some of her coworkers. She mentally picked her way through over-complicated magic. She didn't fall asleep. Yorick was asleep, and breathing deeply.

Finally she got up and grabbed her wand and walked into the garden, closing the back door behind her. Zelda sat on the grass and tangled her fingers in it. She considered. It was too late to find a sleeping potion, but there had to be hard liquor in the house somewhere, and she drank it so rarely but maybe it would help her sleep a little. She wished Xena hadn't left. She wished she had — gone to Ari's, or something, so she could stay there overnight. She wished she'd heard from Alfred.

Alfred was in England, now; Portsmouth. She would have bet money that he was staying on the Voyager, too, and she had (of course) been in the cabin before. She could apparate there — not in one shot, because that would be the whole length of Britain, but certainly in two shots.

She hadn't even really decided to go through with it before she tightened her grip on her wand and apparated into one of the hidden apparition points above the Ministry. Her heart thumped in her chest; she pictured Alfred's office and Portsmouth and apparated again with another crack!, landing unsteadily and indecisive behind his desk before she could even figure out what her plan was.

Should she announce herself? He had to have heard her; or, he had to have heard something, apparition wasn't quiet.

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AMAZING set by MJ

The Voyager was in shambles. He'd kept the details of it in his letter to the Minister brief both because he was sure Minister Ross didn't care about the intricacies of shipbuilding and because he wanted to put on a brave face about it in case they were called upon to go back out again, because if it was necessary she could have sailed again in a few days. Really, though, she was a sorry sight. Aside from the damage to the mainsail and pieces of the mast she'd lost half the rail on the port side and had warped boards and pockmark holes all along the length of her. She'd taken on a fair bit of water before they'd stopped up the leaks, and had only made it to port as steadily as she had through the help of magic. He ought to have taken ammunition with him when he'd left London. There had been no indication that he would need it, for a rescue mission, but Alfred had learned that lesson well; he wasn't likely to set sail defenseless anytime soon.

After taking most of the day to just make a thorough inventory of the damage, Alfred had spent the dinner hour and several hours after talking with the harbormaster and the liaison from the Ministry, planning out the most necessary repairs and prioritizing things in order to make her as seaworthy and as maneuverable as possible, as quickly as possible. He still didn't know exactly when he might need to set sail again, or what his task might be if he did — searching for survivors again, or hunting down a sea monster? — but he was determined to be ready whenever the word came. By the time they'd finished he'd been exhausted, both from today and from this entire voyage, and he'd fallen asleep quickly and soundly.

Not so soundly that the noise didn't wake him, though. He couldn't tell exactly what it was, but with his ship wrecked around him his mind immediately leapt to the worst conclusions — something was breaking, the mast was cracking, they were taking on water again — and he was out of his bed and staggering into his office almost before he'd opened his eyes. He was halfway to the door and reaching for his overcoat (he was only wearing underwear but he was hardly going to stop and dress when his ship might be in danger) when he realized something had moved behind his desk. Nothing and no one ought to be in his office while he was sleeping, unless someone was waking him with a report, but — no, that couldn't be right, because they were in port and no one was standing a watch now, and he'd locked his door accordingly. With a startled and confused noise, Alfred threw the nearest object at the shadowy figure of the stranger. Since it happened to only be his hat, it was unlikely to prove much use in terms of self-defense, but of course he hadn't thought to grab his wand.

  

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

She was right, because there was Alfred, stumbling into the office in his underwear. Zelda flushed, although really, what had she expected? She wasn't exactly fully dressed either, and she hadn't told him to expect her. (The answer, of course, was that she hadn't been thinking at all — or, she had thought through the process of apparition very clearly and had executed on it, but had not actually touched on why or what next at all.)

So she hadn't expected Alfred to be mostly naked, and she also hadn't expected him to throw a hat at her. Zelda darted backwards a few inches, more startled at the sudden motion than anything, and made a startled squeaking noise. The hat hit her arm and slid to the floor.

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   Rowan Yaxley

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AMAZING set by MJ

His brain was still somewhere between asleep and panicked at the possibility of further damage to his ship, and at any rate was not fully functional just yet. Alfred had grabbed another object to throw — something heavier, this time, though he hadn't even stopped to see what it was — but stopped when he heard the noise the intruder made. That certainly didn't sound like the sort of sound that would come from someone with malicious intent, and it sounded — maybe a little familiar, though he couldn't catch up to why it might have sounded that way just yet. Still, it was enough to keep him from throwing a book in that direction (which had been the next thing he'd picked up; a bound volume of quick reference nautical charts for common ports of the Atlantic).

"What the hell?" he managed, torn between the impulse to cross the room to try and squint and determine who it was who'd broken into his cabin and the vague notion that maybe he ought to take a step back and put his coat on even if he wasn't going outside, just so he wasn't quite so naked.

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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

"Sorry sorry sorry," Zelda let out; it was weird that she was here and she knew it, but once the thought had popped into her head in the garden it had seemed like the only real option. She hadn't even thought through that she was more or less breaking into Alfred's room in the middle of the night, because she had not thought through anything except getting here via apparition - and now she was here and he was startled and there looked to be another object in his hand.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred blinked at the shadowy space behind his desk. His eyes still hadn't adjusted enough for him to really see her, but as soon as she'd spoken he recognized her voice. "Zelda?" he asked, tone implying that he didn't quite believe it. Partly he didn't, because it made no sense at all that Zelda would be here in the middle of the night without any warning whatsoever. Maybe he was dreaming? He had just been asleep.

"How did you — why —?" he started, but was unable to actually finish either question.

  

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

Zelda took a step forwards, more because she wanted to be in a position where she could most comfortably shift her weight back and forth than anything else. And he was asking how and why and she knew the answer to the former but not the latter, because maybe she was angry with him or maybe she was just sad or maybe she just couldn't sleep.

"I apparated," she admitted, "Not, um — not in one go. London and then — well, I apparated, is the point."

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AMAZING set by MJ

She'd apparated. That was the noise that had woken him up, then, which meant nothing on the Voyager was in imminent danger. His shoulders relaxed a little and he let go of the book, though he hadn't realized he'd even still been holding it.

"Oh," he said, and maybe he would have thought of something else to say except he was already crossing the room towards her. He could see her better now and he could make out that her blond hair was down and he registered just that level of detail and nothing else before he wrapped his arms around her tightly. He hadn't really decided whether he was dreaming or not, yet, but she had a plausible enough method for how she'd gotten here — and if she'd really apparated here in the middle of the night he assumed she already knew about the Voyager and Dionisia and the attack from two nights ago and everything else, which meant he didn't need to say any of it — he could just hold her.

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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

She still hadn't decided if she was here to fight or if she was here to be sad or some combination of the two, but Alfred's arms were around her and Zelda pressed her face into his chest because she'd missed him, for the past week and with her not sleeping, but she had especially missed him today. And he could have died and the last time they talked they had fought on this same ship, and she was just so relieved.

"I saw Dionisia," she said, in a muffled nervous rush, thinking about the bandages on her head and the bruise down her face, "Ari told me and I went to the hospital and we saw her together."

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred moved one hand up to the back of her head as she leaned in to his chest. He felt a wave of guilt at the mention of Dionisia, because he'd thought to check in on her at some point since she'd been moved to the hospital but had never followed through on it. There was so much to be done with the Voyager that the opportunity had never presented itself, but he felt as though he should have gone to see her. He felt a little responsible for the state that she was in, despite knowing that it was unlikely anything he had done had caused her to be injured on Friday night.

"She's awake now?" he asked, the anxiety clear in his voice — hopefully the guilt less so.

  

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

"Yeah," Zelda said, still nervous, because Dio had woken up but what if she was never really better? What if Zelda had spent the last week being jealous that Dionisia was here and she wasn't, and — and now Dio might be broken forever because of it? She placed her hands on Alfred's sides but kept them still.

"I wish you'd told me," she said, and it was not accusatory — her tone was, if anything, blank — but she did, she wished he'd told her before she'd heard from Ari. She wished she'd heard from him at all in the last week, that their last conversation hadn't been such a disaster — that she was feeling something more clear than what she was, which was some mixture of annoyed and sad and manic that had her doing things like apparating across Britain on a whim.

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred frowned at her words — didn't know what to make of her tone, or lack of tone. "I wanted to," he said, though he wasn't really sure whether or not that was true. The thought had crossed his mind, at any rate, in the two days since Dionisia had fallen unconscious. He knew they were friends, and he knew Zelda would have wanted to know. He'd thought about writing to Ari, too, and that had been a much stronger impulse, but both had ultimately been quashed by the fact that he wasn't out to sea in his capacity as Alfred, the hapless man trying and sometimes failing to court Zelda. He was out to sea as Captain Darrow, and he had a job to do; sending a report to the Minister and following whatever directions he received came far above any inkling he had to try and ease things for any of the Fisks.

"The Minister wanted it quiet until we reached port," he explained, which was true, though did not entirely encompass why he hadn't written — because even if Minister Ross had given him free reign to say whatever he wanted to whomever he wanted, he still might not have written to Zelda. He hadn't written to her once before the monster attacked his ship, after all.

  

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

He’d wanted to, but Ross wanted things quiet, which — Zelda could understand, she could get it, she knew all about disasters but it felt different when you were on the other side of one. And she wasn’t supposed to be on the side that waited for news and got it only when the powers that be decided everyone was ready to know the truth — she was supposed to be one of the people trying to prevent a disaster in the first place. And Alfred hadn’t let her.

She pulled her head back, just so that she could look up at him — she was trying to figure him out again, and a part of her wished that she’d tried to come at a time when his cabin would have actual light in it, or when she would have less of a bone-deep need for someone to hold her.

”He didn’t bar you from writing the whole time,” she said quietly, and she was sure that Alfred would let go of her if they started actually fighting, which — really really sucked, given everything. It made her want to be quiet, too, but now that they were picking at this little scab it was hard for her to cut herself off. ”And you still didn’t.”

Konstantin had been here, and Delight and Dionisia and Alfred himself, and just — nothing.

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   J. Alfred Darrow

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AMAZING set by MJ

Alfred took a breath and met her eyes as she looked up at him. He shouldn't have lied to her (or almost lied, or half-lied) a moment ago, because she'd found him out right away and now they were going to have to talk about it. If not talk about it, he would at least have to acknowledge it, because she'd brought it up.

"No," he admitted, tone almost wistful. "I didn't." He didn't know what else to say about it, but he knew she was going to want more than that. What would she expect him to say? What would satisfy her? He didn't want to think up a lie and expend the effort to make it sound convincing, so instead he put forth something that was true, if not really all. He shifted his weight but kept his arms around her, and when he spoke again his tone was weary. "I was busy."

  

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

"Busy?" Zelda said, in the same slow dangerous tone she'd used on the ship the last time she'd seen him, when she'd said Do you, now. He probably had been busy — he had certainly been busy — but if he'd managed to write to Ross and write to Ari then he could have sent her something. There had clearly not been a shortage of owls on board.

And she didn't want to yell, maybe she wanted to listen, but — it was like he had gone to sea and forgotten about her because she wasn't on the adventure. And maybe that was what Ros had meant, when she said all those things about being a sea widow last month. (Would he have done this to Jo?)

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AMAZING set by MJ

She was angry, he could tell, but her tone didn't spur him towards an apology. He didn't want to talk about this at all, or try to explain it, and he certainly hadn't asked to have this conversation in the middle of the night in his underwear. Rather than opening the door to dive farther into it, then, he was more inclined to brush it off. Surely she hadn't come all the way here in the middle of the night just for this? (Though if she had, would it have been so different from when he'd apparated into her garden after midnight for the express purpose of fighting with her, so that they could get it over with and make up afterwards?)

"Busy," he repeated, letting his arms loosen around her and fall lightly to her hips so that he was still holding her but no longer embracing her. "I rescued a hundred survivors from the shipwreck and I sailed through half the Atlantic and I fought off a sea monster," he pointed out dryly. "So perhaps you could cut me a little slack where correspondence is concerned."

Besides, he would have written if they hadn't fought before he'd left. He had four unfinished letters to her in the top drawer of his desk, a few feet away from them. In two he'd gotten no further than her name before he'd recalled her tone the last time they'd spoken. The other two had gotten roughly a sentence in before he’d started to imagine how, if at all, she might respond. He wasn't sure unfinished letters would help his case at the moment, though, and he still didn't really want to be talking about this, so he didn't mention those.

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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