Warnings for Ch 2: Mentions of Giriko / implied sexual harassment, angsting, brothel scene, non-OSHA compliant workspaces, anti-sex worker comments from random passersby, mentions of serial killers... wow this is getting dark, I'm sorry. Enjoy!
Maka's old neighborhood of Marylebone wasn't far from the train station, but once she'd gotten there, an old neighbor told her that her father had moved last year and was now residing in the considerably poorer district of Bethnel Green.
Her good spirits, heightened by the Evans brothers on the train, sank again at this news. Even if she didn't know his new address, she had a feeling she knew exactly where to find him and ask. She was only glad she hadn't sold her coat yet, because it was going to be a cold walk on foot.
A long walk later saw Maka at the entrance to a brothel, her second home during childhood, and her father's favorite place in the world.
"Makaaaaaaaaaaa!" Came a riotous mewl from the resident Madame at Chupacabra's, Miss Blair Katz. The purple-haired beauty rushed for the younger woman, wrapping her in a hug that was eighty percent bosom and twenty percent suffocation. As Maka tried to find oxygen in the pillows of Blair's improbably large breasts, Blair rubbed her cheek on the top of Maka's head and sighed happily.
"We've missed you so much, Kitten!"
Maka felt tears welling in her eyes; and she'd been so good! Up until now, she hadn't shed a single tear, not even when Gerrick Smith had begun to spend too much time gazing hungrily at her, not even when Medice Smith had screamed at her, sent her packing, cast her out into a cold world with nowhere to go. She'd been strong on the whole train ride to London. But now, in Blair's embrace, she felt herself beginning to fall apart.
Was it the semblance of safety, of family and comfort and permanence that had her feeling so emotional? That must be it. And Maka hated herself for it, for being so soft and so silly. Nice as Blair was, Blair wasn't her mother. Maka had no home, and the only family she currently had was upstairs, his lusty carousing loud enough for all the street to hear.
So there was no reason for tears. She gently pulled away from Blair's embrace and asked to see her Papa.
"Of course! Blair will get the key, and then we will go upstairs to find your Papa!" The Madame snapped elegantly manicured fingers at one of the younger women, who scurried off. This was a familiar system to Maka, devised to give patrons warning when their families came to collect them. She had been too young to have memories of them doing this to her mama, but Maka could imagine the way her mama's eyes had probably cooled, hardened, as she waited time and time again for the most recent Madame to get the key, for Spirit to pull his pants up, stumble down the stairs, and come up with some half-arsed story for why he was here, again.
When the girl finally returned (after warning Spirit, no doubt), Maka joined Blair as she began to ascend the rickety staircase to the upper floors. She didn't need to follow Blair– she knew her way around.
After her mama had left, this brothel and surrounding shops had become the closest thing she had to a home… Spirit often left her here while he went out to work. She'd carried change between Chupacabra's and the shops on the block and played with the street sweepers and other working children of the neighborhood. But best of all, two doors down from the brothel, there had been a bookseller. He used to let her come over and spend her days reading, in exchange for tidying the shop and running messages to the building manager. She'd read as much as she could, for she was ambitious. Eventually, she'd been hired on as a maid in the Smith household, but she had bigger plans than that. She'd saved every penny of her earnings for subscriptions to digests and literary journals. The Englishwoman, Suffrage Atelier, British Freewomen, Common Cause…
They had reached the corridor at the top of the first staircase, and Maka could hear various clients and workers in the rooms around them. She was relieved when the room they stopped at appeared to be silent. Blair raised a hand and rapped at the door.
"Maka darling, to what do I owe the pleasure?"
The object of her musings came tripping to the door, wrapped only in a stained bedsheet and looking utterly confused.
"Papa, it's your fault for not asking her name… And I'm sure she'd rather be referred to as a 'who' than a 'what'."
He still appeared confused, but then a goofy grin spread across his face as he looked behind her.
"Blaiiiiiiiirrrrrrr! Have you come for another round? Insatiable, aren't you?" He let out a horrible noise, like a tiger growling, and clawed at the air. Blair giggled.
Maka nearly gagged. "Papa! How much have you had to drink?"
His eyes struggled to focus on her for a moment. "Jus' a s-sm… Jus' a smidge, m'dear," he finally hiccupped.
She turned around to face Blair. "I can't take him out like this," she hissed. "We'd never make it home!"
Blair gave her an odd look for a moment, then shrugged. "Blair needs to go back downstairs…" She inched further and further away and finally turned and ran down the stairs.
Unsure what to make of Blair's strange behavior, Maka turned to her father instead. "Papa, do you remember where you live? I need someplace to stay tonight."
"A man never forgets where he lives my dear– and I will always live wherever my heart, my heart…." he trailed off uncertainly. Maka rolled her eyes.
"Where do you live, Papa? Please just tell me so I can leave."
"Nooooooo! Don't leave Papa! Papa loves you and Mama the mooooooost!"
The words were like a slap to her face.
"You're disgusting. How dare you say you love her– how dare you say you love me? After all you've done?"
"Papa loves you, Maka– I love you– Makaaaaaaaaaaaahaaahahaa," he began to sob her name, collapsing in a drunken pile on the filthy bed he had previously occupied.
Maka crossed the room and shook him by the shoulders. "Where do you bloody live!?"
Spirit sobered for a moment, his blue eyes clearing and a rather shrewd, sorrowful look breaking through before they clouded over again. "Maka, I'm so sorry…."
"Where do you live, you miserable lech?"
"Papa lives here now," he choked.
She froze. "What."
"Hahaa, they let me stay here as long as I keep the customers from getting too– getting too rudey. No– rowdy. Rowdy!"
"What happened to our old house in Marylebone? You didn't sell it for a new one here in Bethnel Green? Did you lose our house?" Maka nearly screamed.
Spirit opened his hands and giggled helplessly.
Maka balled her hands into fists at her sides and counted down from one hundred. She was going to injure her father if she didn't walk away, right now. She'd sleep in the street, she'd hail a cab and find some place hidden to lay her coat and rest for a couple hours– she would be damned if she stayed here, in this room, with her father, tonight.
She was walking to the door to leave when she heard several loud noises coming through the open window. She crossed the room to look out.
A trio of young men had assembled and were smashing bottles against the bricks of the brothel entrance. "Go away! We're closed!" Blair yelled.
"Don't care! Come out and give us what we want!" Screamed one of the boys. His friends whooped and one of them threw a bottle at Blair's head. She ducked and closed the shutters. Maka did the same.
Apparently she wasn't going out there alone tonight after all.
She looked over to see if her father was sobering up, if perhaps she could use him as some sort of human shield to get her past these terrible boys, but he was laying across the mattress, snoring happily and utterly oblivious to her agony.
It was going to be a long night indeed.
Greeting the dawn from the damp alley behind Chupacabra's was not an experience which put Maka in a pleasant mood. She'd barely left the purple clutches of the brothel before she felt her exhaustion catching up to her.
Maka slid down the side of the alcove to sit in a rather cramped bundle on the dirty stoop of a public house. Her thin frame was wracked with sobs, and she could feel herself coming apart. After so long keeping things in, her anguish was making itself loudly known. She hadn't slept a wink, refusing to sit on the filthy bed or the even filthier floor of her father's room, and had settled for pacing around the entire night, worrying about her future.
It was cold in the shadows, so she drew her knees to her chest, feeling the bones in her corset creak and groan with her movement. Her body was willowy enough that she could usually forgo such shaping undergarments in favor of a much simpler (and infinitely more comfortable) chemise, so she guessed she might as well try to sell her corset, too. She had nice enough hair, almost long enough for a wig. What else did she have to sell before she committed herself to sweating in a garment factory or living at the poorhouse?
She allowed herself a few minutes to have a good cry, drawing out her mama's handkerchief and pressing it sloppily against her mouth to muffle her sobs.
Eventually, it was the handkerchief which gave her a purpose and a sense of calm– how must her mother have felt, striking out alone, divorced, and without title or land? Surely, if her mother was capable of rising to the occasion with grace and virtue, Maka was too. She was not her father– at the age of twenty, she'd barely allowed any man to kiss the top of her hand, let alone anywhere else.
Sitting and crying, hiding in a shadowy alcove, this was the sort of business she could count on her father to conduct– and it was most unbecoming of a lady of the twentieth century, indeed! She was a woman of vast intellectual means, of endless imagination and of extensive knowledge– she'd wager she had read more across various fields than many scholars– and there was worth in that. Even if most of British society could not see the worth, she could, and it was this knowledge which allowed her to stand up again and face the day.
There were women in jail merely for speaking out against unfair laws which prevented females from voting and holding office. She'd kept up, faithfully, with the travails of the movement's leaders– as they endured hunger strikes, force-feeding, continued imprisonment, and public ridicule– and if they could do it, by God, so could she! In solidarity with the downtrodden, she would not be trampled by these adversities. How could she claim to be a supporter, how could she ever look one of these women in the eye, someday, if she allowed herself to be stopped by lack of gainful employment and the loss of her childhood home? The very thought was laughable.
She bolstered her confidence with such thoughts, even as she knew her eyes were puffy and swollen, her hair a disheveled mess, and her stomach woefully empty.
She would face the worst that London had to throw at her– and surely she could bear whatever was to come.
After her cry, creeping out from under the shadow of the brothel and out onto the open street felt like waking from a nightmare. The smells and sounds and sights of her childhood, of her life before she had left to work in the Smith household, healed some of her wounds. Hansom cabs raced by, laundry women stood outside and flirted with dustmen. Boys selling newspapers drifted past, and Maka followed her nose to the nearest cafe for breakfast.
She settled in with a croissant and some tea and opened the newspaper which a previous customer had left on the table. Even though part of the paper was missing, she was so eager to read something she thought she might have been grateful for even a religious pamphlet at this point.
The classified adverts for employment were rather depressing– factory work, all of it. Maka knew that these jobs were really poorly disguised indentured servitude. Workers in factories sweated from dawn til dusk and barely saw enough earnings to pay for a single meal. And the factories were dangerous– especially for women. She thought of Mr. Smith and shivered.
Her eyes traveled to the editorial section, scanning an article about last week's parade for women's suffrage and the recent antics of the National Unions for Women's Suffrage Societies. Unfortunately, the cartoonist had drawn a rather unflattering portrait of suffragist leader Emmeline Pankhurst leading women into trampling a man into the dirt beneath their heels. The columnist was of the opinion that for one to be a feminist, one must be unmarried, unhappy, and unattractive.
Maka snorted and finished her tea. There was a reason she'd never subscribed to this paper. She stood and tossed it in the nearest bin.
Having found nothing of value in the paper, she resolved to return to Chupacabra's and ask Blair if there was cleaning or some such work to be done (heaven knew the place needed it), so she could buy something to eat before looking for another job and place to stay.
But as she approached, there seemed to be some kind of disturbance on the block. A number of passersby, neighbors, and shopkeepers were pressing against a circle of constables, who were surrounding Chupacabra's. Maka fought her way through the crowd, picking up snippets of gossip as she elbowed and stomped.
"Sonsen Jay, or so I've heard–"
"–utter nonsense, he only kills rich women!"
"Yes, hiding in the brothel, wonder if they'll arrest the whores too?–"
Good Lord, if London's most wanted and mysterious serial murderer– a man known only as Sonsen Jay– had been harbored at Chupacabra's, she shuddered to think of what might've happened to alert the authorities to his presence. She only hoped no one had been hurt.
When she finally fought her way to the front of the throng, she was astonished by what she saw– her father was being escorted by a bevy of policemen, howling for a lawyer.
Loath as she was to admit to caring for a man like her Papa, he was still her father, and he was all she had left in the world. Once the shock wore off and the crowd dispersed, Maka tried desperately to think of how she could save him from a terrible fate.
What did she know about Sonsen Jay? His modus operandi was to kill wealthy, elderly widows, and vanish without a trace. Witnesses to the crime all said the same thing– he appeared with a bag over his head. She didn't know how he had come to have his name, but she knew that his physical description was close enough to match her father's. The public was demanding a stop to the killings, and police were desperate for a lead. The press would likely sensationalize the arrest and dig up whatever they could in order to pin the blame on the suspect.
Her Papa would need a lawyer, and a good one.
Maka's hand tightened around the note in her pocket, the one given to her by Soul Eaton as she left the train.
Could she trust this Kid Mortis? She didn't know, but right now, he was her only hope.