It took a few months to finally release this but I'm finally finished with the second chapter of Dark Scribe and ready to get to work on this series in earnest now that A Night to Remember is almost done! In any case, though this chapter is a little slower than the first one, I had a great deal of fun laying out more of the hopeless backdrop of gritty New York City... as well as getting to write a kick-ass Amy that won't be a submissive little pod-person wife to nobody, ya hear? Because really, who didn't like Amy more when she actually had a personality as a young kid, before having all her roughest and most interesting edges shorn off so she could enter a bland marriage with Laurie? ;)
In any case, I hope you continue to enjoy the Strangest Crossover of All Time. And please review if you read this part! Reviews really motivate me to keep working on this series, which can sometimes get very annoying to plot indeed.
Also, much love to Ed and Elisabeth for helping me with this part. You two are my twin angels of plotting.
Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 2
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight
Series: Dark Scribe Begins
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.
Three days went by far, far faster than Jo was comfortable admitting. Looking back, Jo had to admit that she had spent much of the time between the moment she had foolishly accepted the assignment to interview Laurie and the moment she was ready to be taken to a venue to see him again by shirking from her duties as much as she possibly could. She had sent the past few days in a haze, annoying the printers by misspelling her posts, puzzling her fellow reporters with her unprecedented eagerness to hand over her assignments, and even confusing the gangsters she'd ran into the other night by barely seeming to care about the fluids they'd splashed around them so earnestly. In the end, Jo hadn't even managed to gin up the courage to take herself to the dress-makers and make herself presentable for such a high society function, forcing her long-suffering sister to once again take the reigns and smooth over the situation.
"Honestly, Jo," Amy was now grumbling, pulling on a few stray coils of dark hair that was refused to be tamed. "What on earth do you put in these fine locks to make them as stubborn as the rest of you? Actual ink? Elbow grease?"
"Oh don't be ridiculous," Jo muttered from the seat she was wilting in, silently counting down the hours-- only one left to go!-- until Fred would show up at her door, make sad eyes at her sister, and then escort her to a party, only to watch with alarm as his lead reporter deflated quickly. "I only got a little bit of blood in it from last night. It isn't my fault those gang-fights are getting more vicious all time, and the fluid went all flying. Anyway, I washed it all out just this morning so I'm not sure why you're complaining. More than anything, in this case, I think I'm the injured party."
Amy's adorable and only slightly flattened nose wrinkled as she thought of it, her hands flying from Jo's head as though she were a vampire and her sister had morphed into the true cross suddenly. "Believe me, I need no further details. Though I still can't understand why you wouldn't even let me at it until I begged you to-- I can't have any sister of mine going to a place like that with her hair all untidy! In fact, I can't believe you didn't even pick up that new dress of yours. Fred was going to have the paper pay and everything. Even if you didn't want it, Laura and I could have used it. It would have fit her nicely."
That was true enough. Amy's closest friend, and their current room-mate, probably would have appreciated the gift of a brand new dress very sincerely. Laura-- who also, disconcertingly enough, answered to Laurie-- wasn't quite as attuned to style and fashion as the woman she occasionally called her better half in some inside joke Jo couldn't quite discern. Regardless, Laura did seem enjoy the occasional pretty treat and with her statuesque figure, dazzling auburn hair and limpid green eyes, she would have set whatever dress Jo could have gotten to far greater effect than Jo herself could possibly see.
To be honest, Jo sometimes had to wonder how not one but two such entrancingly pretty and charming women could remain single in a city crawling with so many eligible bachelors. But that was only sometimes and right now, with Amy's brilliant cerulean eyes gazing sardonically at her through the medium of their vanity mirror, Jo's thoughts were consumed by another topic entirely.
Which was why Jo now found herself smiling sheepishly and trying to send the proverbial gossip hound off a very juicy scent. "Would you believe it plum slipped my helpless little mind completely?"
"About as much as I believe that sooner or later you'll give up being Nelly Bly's understudy to be a happy little house-wife," Amy returned sternly. "You've got a mind like a steel-trap, Jo. Things don't simply slip by it quite so easily."
Sometimes, Jo honestly did regret her decision to live with someone who knew her so well. Not that she didn't enjoy Amy's company-- after all, ever since Amy had come back from Europe and decided to live the bohemian life with her disgrace of an older sister, they'd got along smashingly. But sometimes her sister's watchful eyes could be keener than Jo wanted to admit, hypocritical though the sentiment was...
Instead of admitting to that, however, Jo tried a winsome smile and attempted to deflect by playing on her sister's well-known vanity. "Oh, don't be silly, Amy dear! Are you describing my mind or your own?"
"Both," Amy answered serenely, and then compounded her word by twisting one of Jo's curls 'round her finger and tugging until Jo yelped in defeat. "I assume it comes from being family. And you're not going to slither out of this trap so easily, Jo. Something is bothering you, isn't it? You know you're going to have to confess eventually."
That was true enough, especially if Amy retained her iron grip on her hair. But stubborn to the last, Jo contented herself with simply hunching down in her chair and muttering something about dropping Amy far too often on her head as a child-- which might have been the only thing that could explain how she'd gotten so infuriating as an adult at sensing emotional train-wrecks in the making.
Unfortunately for Jo, Amy's hearing was at least as keen as her eye-sight-- and at least as sharp as the fingers that dug into Jo's curls once more until Jo yelped once more before quieting down in defeat. "I'm sure," Amy said, eyes gleaming with an unholy light, "that dear Mr. Vaughn would wait for you if I told him that we needed some more time to set those oh-so-stubborn hairs of yours to right. Hours, if we needed to. Hours to bond together as sisters. Only you, my Jo. Only you and me."
Jo had to subside at the warning embedded there, if only to keep her scalp from committing hari-kiri. Still, the look she shot back at Amy was half-admiring and half-alarmed. "I swear, Amy, you must have been part of the Spanish Inquisition in another life. All right, all right, if you promise not to leave me bald, I swear I'll tell you everything!"
Amy simply smiled primly at that, as though she had been doing something more along the lines of showing a prospective buyer her art than torturing her sister into compliance through the most devious, if gentle-womanly, of means. "Really? Why Jo, how kind of you to say so. I knew you'd speak sense eventually."
Her victim, sister, and earnest supporter had to smile up at her, if only wryly. "Amy, are you quite sure you'll never tire of your art and become a reporter in my field? I bet you could have half the mob-bosses of the city wrapped around your finger and teach the other half to be good through the application of a few interrogation techniques."
"No thank you," Amy returned briskly. "I've seen what it does to the coiffure and I want no part of such misdeeds. And don't think mere flattery will stop me from getting the answers I desire. After all..."
And oh, never had the mere act of someone toying with Jo's curls proved so threatening!
"Your hair looks so lovely tonight," Amy murmured, eyes sharp on her sister's. "It'd be such a shame were I to accidentally unpin a few curls and have to start all over. Such a long, painful shame indeed."
Jo had to smile, even through her impending wince. When Amy wanted to be, she could be damn near frightening. She personally knew of at least one mad doctor in Arkham who probably would have sold his left leg to do to his criminal patients what Amy did to her so easily.
"I'll sing like a canary," Jo promised at last, and tilted back her head to look her sister directly in the face. "Only be good! And let me have a minute to collect my thoughts presently."
Which was Amy's cue, apparently, to give her a nudge and let Jo muddle into the mess of her own mind for a minute, a perilous task even in the best of days and one not rendered any easier by what a mess she had made of past and future presently. Looking at Amy herself helped a little-- especially since the lovely flower-maiden in the mirror before her served as such a good grounding to the present Jo was in now... as well as such a good warning against the past that Jo was tempted to revisit all too easily. After all, when Jo gazed at the calm and cunning maiden beside her now, it was hard to believe that only a few years ago-- eight to be exact-- when all this this trouble had began, Amy herself had only been a gawky adolescent on the verge of becoming a woman, a girl who was still unsure of her true calling in life, of the path toward stubborn immortality through the medium of art that she now devoted herself to so fully.
But then... had Jo really been any more formed at that point, eight years ago? She'd been a little older than Amy, of course, but just as tentative about what she wanted in her own future, although she had hid it with her bluster about moving to New York and being a literary spinster that would be happy living on ink-blot clouds and delicate artistic fancies. She'd been frightened but brash, unsure but unwilling to admit it, only knowing that the world must go her way or she herself must go far away, so blind to what went on around her that she had assumed that she always knew what was best,
(a hand flattening against her uncertain skin)
that she could make decisions not merely for herself but for all the others around her, sure she knew what to do not merely with her own life but with those of others, afraid but unwilling to accept and thus master her fear, playing with fire like an idiot child convinced she would not and could not burn--
(promise you'll stay with me)
How many reparations did she still have to make for those long lost days?
(if you leave me, then i don't know what i'll do)
How many promises had she since failed to keep?
"Jo?" someone softly said beside her ear, laying a gentle hand on her brow. "Jo, dear, what's bothering you so here?"
Not knowing quite where to begin, she decided finally on the truth, although even for her it illuminated nothing.
"It's Laurie," Jo said at last, the words spilling almost carelessly from her mouth, as though words alone could stem the memories now seeming to filter out of her skin, as though enough to bleed her dry quickly. "I was told that-- I mean, it hasn't even been a week but-- Fred just came out and said--"
For a second, Jo was sure she had hallucinated a blush on Amy's face, before her sister's usual maidenly reserve asserted itself, along with her usual tart sweetness. "And my Laurie would be a concern of yours and Fred's why, precisely?"
If Jo hadn't known Amy better, she would have sworn a flicker of fear animated her brilliant sky-blue eyes currently.
Badly startled, Jo had a to pause. "You've-- you've already met with Laurie already? When? Where? Was--" And oh God, she felt like such an arrogant fool for asking but--
"Was," Jo finally managed, her heart in her throat, "anything said about me?"
Amy continued to look worried for a second, even through the calm coming down upon her lovely face like snow-fall during early spring. "I can hardly avoid meeting Laurie, Jo. We do live with her, after all. And if Fred happened to mention seeing us on Millbourn street with her holding my hand for a moment, I can quite assure you--"
Jo stared herself for a moment, taking in Amy's cool explanation with wide eyes before she abruptly cut her sister of with a sharp, oddly relieved laugh. "Amy, I'm not talking about your best friend Laurie! I'm taking about my best friend Laurie! Or... well, the best friend named Laurie that I used to have anyway."
The reminder of that was enough to make Jo shade into melancholy and cause her sister to look down at her with a frown, as though deeply worried.
"After all, I'm not sure how good a friend I was considering what I-- I both did to him and let him do after the last time we saw each other. As he'll probably remind me once he sees me at the party Fred's dragging me to this evening. Lord knows I probably wouldn't be all lovely and forgiving if I resurfaced back in society after God only knows how many years away doing God only knows what abroad--"
Quick-thinking as ever, Amy pulled another curl loose and tugged sharply, making Jo yelp and then shake her fist at her sister once more-- though even Jo had to admit that Amy probably did what she did now out of love.
It was an impression confirmed by Amy's prim face in response to her sister's ramblings, with the youngest March looking just as stern as Marmee March had been in her finest hours. "Jo, you're falling to pieces once again and you know how much I despise that. It always makes an untidy mess when you run wild and let's not get into that. Take a deep breath and explain it all logically. I know you're capable of that. You're Josephine March, after all. You don't do hysterics at the drop of a hat."
For a minute, Jo's mouth wobbled a bit, in a way she never would have allowed it if she wasn't with family and with someone who loved her, with someone who wouldn't bat at an eyelash while seeing weakness from her, with someone who could watch her break for no reason they could fully fathom while still placing their warm hands on her shoulders. In the cold cityscape that lay outside them, Josephine March, reporter at large, might well be everything and more that her youngest sister had describe. But for now, she was merely Jo and if her heart was breaking a little as it beat beneath her breast, she was with someone who would not take advantage of the fact in any way possible.
She felt so grateful she could tear up, and it was only the certain knowledge that Amy was absolutely right that kept Jo from being an absolute fool.
"Sorry, dear," she said instead, and did not add on the silent thank you, though from the way Amy smiled, Jo thought she already knew. "I'm being quite a mess now for the silliest reason possible, aren't I? I promise, I'll do better now."
"I hope so," Amy said, and though her tone was stern, the hands she wound around her sister's shoulders were very gentle. "I never like it when you cry; you look like a fire hydrant going off. It's so absurdly messy." And then, with a delicacy that seemed strange for stern, firm, morally upright Amy, she paused for a moment before continuing. "Does the thought of seeing Laurie-- your Laurie, I mean-- really and truly bother you?"
Placing her hands on her sister's to steady herself, Jo managed a small and not-entirely-false smile. "He's not my Laurie anymore. He probably never was, to tell the truth. And by now, I'm sure he never will be again. I mean-- not that I was expecting him to be or-- thinking that he'd come back all this way just to pursue--"
"No," Amy interrupted calmly, squeezing her sister's shoulders, "I'm sure you're not. So what are you afraid of, if not the idea of him coming back to chase you? You can't honestly think that after all this time, he came back to New York just to-- God only knows-- take some mad revenge on you if he truly did feel ill-used."
Jo had to genuinely smile at the thought. "I can honestly tell you that whatever I feared, it wasn't that. Although who knows? Maybe I should."
Amy sighed, clearly thinking her sister was once again evading the question. "Oh Jo..."
"I really don't," Jo replied earnestly. "Even if he now hated me--" (a very grim but real possibility) "--he wouldn't need to do anything, given the entourage of idiots and lunatics that are after me everyday anyhow. To be honest, Amy... I really don't know what I'm afraid of. And that's what's always scared me the most. I've always hated not knowing what's going on and with him, here for no reason I can understand... well, I feel it more and more and it scares me all the deeper. I don't know exactly why Laurie even left us in the first place, after all. I mean, I have my theories and my ideas but I don't know why for sure. And if I don't know why he left or why he came back to America-- and even more, to New York-- I can't even tell you what I'm afraid will happen when we finally meet each other once more. I was--"
It shamed Jo to admit it more than a little but she forced herself onwards, Amy's worried eyes gazing on her.
"I was looking for him for a very long time. Longer even then you knew before. I was looking for him in both the States and in Europe and Fred... well, you know how he is, you practically married him, and you know he's got a lot of reach there and he was happy to help me look. But for eight years, we saw neither hide nor hair or heard much more than the vaguest rumors about Laurie turning up in the strangest places possible. And after seven years of searching and seeing nothing of him in any continent we could find..."
Another thing that made her lungs burn at the thought of seeing him again. Another small, petty slight to the friendship that they had once shared. Another reason for him to reject her when they met again, to denounce her as a false friend, to let her know that she was nothing but a mocking witch who had allowed him to descend to God only knew what foul depths.
Only Amy was now stroking her hair so gently, so slowly, heedless of the dark curls tumbling and coming loose with the tender motions, as though she had suddenly become the older sister and Jo was the younger one she needed to soothe back into gentleness.
For a minute, Jo thought of her Beth and knew that family was family, no matter what guise it held her in.
"Jo," her sister was now saying softly, "you mustn't blame yourself for conclusion we all thought was likely. We all thought Laurie was lost and gone, years before you did. How can you blame yourself for believing so, especially when you tried far harder than any of the rest of us in trying to track him down after he fled?"
She had to laugh at that, even if came out queer and hollow and all too well. "Well," she replied, "I can and apparently I am. It turns out that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. Fred told me he's apparently been here for a bit already, 'tearing up high society.' And it's been nearly a decade and now he's back in the very city, living it up where his grandfather was--"
Amy's fingers tightened like tiny knives on her shoulders and Jo immediately felt sorry for bringing up the topic once more, dredging up all the memories of the horror had once been. Of course her sister wouldn't want to hear. And it wasn't even that Amy wasn't brave or kind or empathetic or unable to face the ugliness of the world. She'd come so far from the finnicky girl that Jo had once known and fought against so often that she occasionally seemed like a different person altogether.
It was simply that it was... horrible, even for someone as battle-hardened as Jo, to remember how the late Mr. Laurence had met his cruel and undeserved end, that was all. Horrible, even for someone who strode out into the world every night, knowing that she'd see something inevitably ugly in the streets of a city that seemed to descend more into chaos more and more, as thought it were on a collision course to hell.
His poor little hat with its slick black band, Jo remembered, the recollection almost cruel in how perfectly it came to her. The crown of it filled with brains and blood. The brim splattered even further.
Finally, her voice soft and hushed, Amy ventured into words once more. "Are you sure-- are you very, very sure-- he didn't come back to New York for you, dear?"
The question was enough to make Jo start with surprise, although she had asked herself that one-- and only one-- time before she had quite literally slammed herself back to sanity. "Yes, of course! I-- I might not know him perfectly anymore but I know how he left! Why would he even do such a thing?"
Somehow, Amy actually managed to smirk a little, although it was not quite at full strength. "Well, the half-decade or so that he chased you shamelessly around in Connecticut might have given me a bit of a hint."
Despite herself, Jo blushed, even as she fought Amy on the point earnestly. "Well, you're imagining things! He wasn't chasing me about, for God's sake. We were friends and he... occasionally needed female company." When that failed to banish Amy's sly smile-- and in fact, made it widen even more-- Jo just huffed and turned away. "And if he did want to come back for me, he should have come back before I lost whatever I had of looks to old age!"
Affecting surprise, Amy rocked back on her heels. "You had looks enough to lose something in the first place?"
Jo found herself caught up in a surprised laugh at that, even as she leaned back to rap Amy's smartly enough to make the ice-maiden pout, as though they have transformed into children romping around with their beloved next-door neighbor once more. "Wait 'til I tell Marmee what you just said-- or better yet, Meg! She'll set Daisy and Demi on you until you repent of your wicked misdeeds."
Amy emitted something that might have been a snort in a less exquisite woman. "Then they may cling to me as long as the like because I choose to keep all my wickedness and carry on with my present course."
And then, more seriously, pressing her hands to Jo's shoulders once more, Amy said: "So tell me.. what's the use of you going to pieces over our old neighbor, dear? He may well be back after eight long years and Lord only knows why but perhaps he's only here because his family money ran out and there was no other place left to make his fortune. Or maybe he experienced severe head trauma and migrated back to a native city. Who knows? Who even cares? It looks as though you've got enough on your plate with male admirers who like to smash out kitchen windows and Fred working your writing fingers to the bone to worry about old friends making a nuisances of themselves. So why worry about meeting Laurie so? You've got no reason to feel guilty over him, after all. So go on with your life and unless he approaches you himself, simply let him be. Events will eventually follow the least dramatic course."
Wise words, Jo knew very well. Wise words indeed. And if she hadn't expressly been told to keep tabs on Laurie by Fred himself-- or know exactly how she had let the man down before-- she might have had the will to heed them despite the ache she felt at knowing Laurie was alive once more and knowing she would have to hold herself aloft.
Amy meant well, she always did. And her advice was always precisely as good as she could make it. And if Jo hadn't been such a bloody coward, she would have turned to her wisest sister now and told her precisely why she had reason to fear meeting Laurie again. Would have told her at least one of the theories she held for why Laurie had left and it had been so much her fault. Would have told her at least one of the reasons she had been-- been horribly unhappy in a way she shouldn't have to know Laurie was in her city just then.
But in the end, Jo was a coward-- a moral coward. A coward who didn't dare look into the eyes of her well-meaning sister and let her know that her version of brave, warm, wonderful-if-not-quite-womanly Jo needed to have more than a few thorns placed in. A coward-- and even more, just as much an actress as Jo had wanted to be as a young girl befriending and trying to impress a handsome young man she had met one courtly evening, as she had ducked into an alcove to escape a dance. Just enough a coward and just enough an actress to muster up a grateful smile good enough to fool Amy's keen blue eyes and leave her believing she really had soothed her older sister's mind once more.
She almost had, Jo thought, even as Amy gave her a prim little smile that conveyed her belief that all was right in their world again thanks to a good, solid scolding. And for now, it would have to be enough.
Through the haze of her still-jangling nerves, Jo mustered up a sincere smile and leaned against her companion's warm frame. "What would I ever do without you, Amy? Who else has ever had such a fine sister?"
Amy sniffed a bit, wordlessly conveying that flattering meant to her not a whit, even as she flushed at the acknowledgment. "I shan't even reply to the last question. And to be quite honest about the first? You'd probably end up dead in a ditch somewhere. With terrible hair as well, just to compound the tragedy."
Smiling more sincerely, Jo beamed as she looked up. "And I'm safe from such a fate as long as you're about, I imagine?"
"Absolutely," Amy replied, as resolute as ever. "I refuse to let something so untidy occur when I'm here. Now..." And now she leaned over, watching with relish as Jo paled more than she would have had she faced a hundred Lauries all throwing accusations at her-- "Let's see what we can do about the rest of you. After all, if you're about to meet an old friend and would-be-- tup, tup, don't interrupt me, dear-- suitor, you may as well make an impression when he finally comes around."
Jo looked up at the controlled calm on her sister's lovely face and swallowed. Suddenly, she had a feeling a night that would have been uncomfortable even at the best of times was about to get even more unseemly...
Which was how, one hour later, Jo found herself sitting inside Fred's carriage looking-- as Amy had cheerfully chirped whilst ignoring her past suitor's earnest gaze-- like a cross between a missionary and a man-eater.
"Ahm," he said, staring bewildered at her after he'd stopped gazing wistfully after her sister and helped her into the night's ride while trying not to look down into her... business. "Miss March, you rather look... look..."
"Don't start," she muttered, and tried to hunch to hide her harrowingly deep cleavage in the shadows of the carriage interior. "And don't look at me as though I were a scarlet woman either. This is all my sister's fault!" Somewhere along the line, Amy had lost the deep prudishness that had once marked most of her interactions with the world, and it was now clear that her kin was paying for it in spades.
She should have known beyond that visage of golden innocence lurked a great and deadly evil. Should have prepared for it, even. After all, Amy did have a habit of trying to rearrange the lives of others to suit her artistic sensibilities. And for all her talk about Jo needing to be nonchalant and unconcerned about her ex-best-friend springing back to life, she certainly had seemed quite excited about doing her older sister up enough to make a splash in a certain high society gathering...
"Amy's fault?" Fred was saying, sounding a little insultingly dubious. "It's, ah, a little hard to believe that she might, erm..."
"It's a long story," Jo said, stormily enough to make him stop short, though a slight blush was rising on his cheeks. (And Jo very much hoped it was merely out of the mention of Amy!) "And can't we talk about something else besides my appearance? The impending drug war? That god-awful doctor at Arkham? The old woman on 21st and Lex that swore she saw some sort of dark knight come to her rescue, or whatever she was raving?"
"We could," Fred said, and his lips quirked up in what might have been a smile in a less severely British man. "I have to admit, though, that I am a little... interested in learning how that manner of dressed managed to end up wrapped in such a, er, unique way about you presently."
Jo glared at her employer through a haze of feathery ruffles and absurd ringlets, knowing full well that if they hadn't become such good chums over the last few years, one or the both of them would probably end up employed and/or maimed after this carriage ride was over. "Sir, I would have you know that you are currently in the presence of a lady! One that's mostly kept her virtue at that, despite the dangers you've subjected her to constantly!"
"Oh, of course," Fred murmured, although his eyes crinkled suspiciously at the thought. Darkly, Jo wondered once more why on earth Amy had turned down his hand in marriage so many years ago. It was clear that if they had, they could have spent quite a lot of time happily engaged in tormenting her together, rather than separately. "Although from what I recall, the dangers I 'subjected' you to were ones that you seemed rather indignant to be deprived of at the time."
Jo merely hunched back into the shadows and tried to look stern, although she knew full well he was merely speaking the truth. "That was before I realized that high society balls were included in the bargain. You know I'm no good at these things, Fred. I come off looking like a shaved ape in front of grand company."
Fred tried to ward off a smile again, although Jo wasn't fooled in the least. "I'm sure you exaggerate," he said kindly, making Jo wonder what on earth might have been clouding his memory of the last few times he had made an attempt to escort her into high society. "And besides," he added, as though it were in any way a comfort, "Laurie shall be there at this party! Shan't you be pleased to see him after all these years and after so much effort in looking for him? I'm certainly looking forward to clapping his hand once more and telling him he gave us a merry chase and a good scare. And of course you knew him much better than I did, which makes you a natural for garnering an interview." Mistily, Fred looked up at the ceiling of the bouncing carriage that took them closer and closer to what Jo dreaded most. "Oh, think of the sales that might come from that! I tell you, Jo, we'd make bank presently."
Once again, Jo wondered dolefully why the fates seemed to hate her so, to entrust her with companions who seemed intent on thrusting her at a man who probably wouldn't spit on her now were she set on fire. Still, for Fred's sake, she plastered on a smile that she hoped would look natural in the shadows. "Oh-- absolutely! Although," (and here she couldn't keep a note of hope out of her voice) "Who even knows if he'll recognize me in my current disguise? I look like a nun that ran off to be a whore and only changed her clothes half-way."
Somehow, Fred managed to do exactly as Amy did by emitting something that might have been a snort in a lesser man. "I think you underestimate yourself once again, Jo! Colorful though that comparison may be, it underrates you severely. I think you actually look quite..."
Was that a blush on Fred's face? Jo shrank back into the shadows with morbid embarrassment at the compliment he was forcing forward.
"Quite lovely this evening," Fred said gallantly.
"That's an adjective more suited to you and you know," Jo said dryly. And indeed it was. In his slender dark suit and with his tousled blond hair barely brushing his ears, Fred looked as handsome as ever, almost an exact match in fairness of features to the flower-maiden who had been tormenting Jo so well earlier in the evening. Once again, Jo wondered why on earth they hadn't come forward to have a passel of very beautiful, golden-blond, stoic children who likely wouldn't change expression were they set on fire. "And really, don't try and ply me with compliments about my appearance, of all things! Not when..." And here Jo allowed herself to lean forward and give Fred a saucy smile, making his own lips turn up in response. "You can ply me with far better things."
"Such as?" Fred asked, leaning forward a little, keen green eyes the equal of Jo's own in the low light.
"Such as information on what the Mayor hopes to get out of this evening," Jo said calmly, and leaned forward to learn something of consequence for what was coming.
The rest of the short carriage ride went on in much the same way, with Jo and Fred discussing who the principal players of the evening were and what their coming together might mean. The Mayor, after all, was a man who sat upon his public seat more because the devil the voters knew seemed slightly preferable to one they hadn't met before, and was known to be helplessly corrupt by even the greenest gumshoe in the city. Jo had long thought that he was probably on the take of the most corrupt mobs out there and hearing Fred list off several probable guest at the part didn't exactly ease her suspicions. Wealthy businessmen, after all, were a fixture in society but having Salvatore Maroni, of all people, as a guest of honor was quite the to-do. After all, the man's intermediary organizations had been implicated in some of the worse bursts of violence down in Hell's Kitchen, as well as the burgeoning drug trade...
Not that, Jo knew, there was anything to connect the man himself to any of that sort of business. Which allowed a man whose hands were stained by proxy in the deaths of dozens, if not hundreds, to swan about near the Mayor of New York in one of the grandest occasions of the years as though butter would not melt in his mouth.
Jo's bones ached with the very injustice of it all, honestly.
"With Maroni might come who knows who else to this affair," Fred was warning her now, even as they could hear their carriage ride coming to an end, and glimpse the lights of the upcoming party. "And despite your passion for justice, Jo, I'd very much like you not to paint a target on your back for the time being. So please, if you could simply decide to talk to Laurie and very few others tonight..."
"I'll be very, very good," Jo sweetly promised, though Fred only accepted as much dubiously.
"I hope you are," he murmured, "because it seems as though we're finally at the moment of reckoning. Please don't 'famous last words' me!"
"Lead on, good sir," she said and grinned wholly unwholesomely. "I shall be nothing more than your follower for the evening."
Author's Note: Next chapter... both the hero and the (a?) villain of the story step into play, with Jo in the middle between them! But she certainly isn't about to take a passive approach to conflict resolution...
Also, a question for my readers. Do you like this Amy? Do you want to see more of her or would you rather I shunt her out of the main story? I had fun writing her because I always felt as though she would have been an awesome character in canon if only she didn't decide to marry a man who's probably still in love with her sister and give up having a cool, bohemian life to have a rich man's pretty, boring babies and be the perfect Victorian housewife-- a transformation that really took away the most fascinating parts of her personality in favor of bland perfection. So I tried to write her as being just as awesome, petty, shallow, perfectionist, flawed and yet ultimately loyal and loving as I always wanted her to be. Did it work? Would you like to see more of Amy ultimately?
And as always, please review if you've enjoyed this story and would like to read more. It always helps my poor, wandering attention span keep on writing. ;)