A/N: So, wow, thanks a lot for all the support and the incredibly kind words! You had me smiling the whole day;) And thanks, Julianabr for all the warm and fuzzy feelings;) Thanks also to all those silent readers, who gave me words of support, you're amazing!
So this one is a short, but important one, therefore I upload it seperately, the next one is much longer, I promise;)
Chapter 10: Coffee Days - Monday
Monday
"So tell me now... where was my fault, in loving you with my whole heart?"
White Blank Page, Mumford and Sons
When Lizzie finally found Anne after receiving the most cryptic text in the history of cryptic text messages, the amber girl was sitting Indian style on the small stone wall in the backyard of the social sciences building, her eyes glued to the knitting needles and balls of wool in her lap. The scarce sunlight, creeping up behind the curtain of hazy clouds, shone directly in her face, illuminating some reddish strands in her dark, spiky hair, making her look like she was on fire.
Throwing her frog green bag with the red felt roses on the free space next to Anne and placing her cup of coffee on the other side, Lizzie climbed up the small wall and, with her head in Anne's lap, sank down on the hard sand stones with a sigh.
A mischievous smile tugging at her lips, she balanced her cup on the hard curve of her ribcage, blinking into the blinding sun behind her overly large sun glasses with the green Smileys on yellow background.
"Hi", she sighed, smiling blissfully while the sun induced endorphins surged through her veins, basking her body in this drug-like state of warmth and contentment, supported by the high amount of caffeine, that made up sixty percent of her blood picture at the moment.
Anne didn't show any kind of reaction and slightly confused, Lizzie squinted her eyes to get a better look at her friend. There was a crease in Anne's brow, her lips tightly pressed together and even though the amber eyes tried to avoid Lizzie's green ones, they always scurried back to the group of girls, Lizzie greeted earlier – She could hear their laughs faintly in the wind.
The sound made Anne flinch, she blinked before she started knitting even faster and she cursed when the yarn got tangled up between her fingers.
Lizzie frowned. Anne didn't curse. Never. She'd tested that for sure, by provoking and angering her early in their acquaintance, stealing her books and balls of wool and hiding them under mattresses or in the dishwasher, but Anne never did more than simply arching an eyebrow and looking at her with an amused expression on her face, asking her to please tell her next time, when she wanted to play hide-and-seek in her apartment.
That this group of girls should upset her so much, was so completely out of character for the ambergirl that a sudden uneasiness in the pit of her stomach caught hold of Lizzie, danced up her fingers and spine and she lifted her sun glasses and her head in one motion, trying to get a better look at whoever it was, that seemed to unsettle Anne so.
Three girls were standing at the other end of the yard, laughing and gesticulating wildly, bags and coats hanging over their shoulders, an air of excitement surrounding them.
"It's just Lou and Hetty with the new girl", Lizzie stated and nodded towards the three girls. One of them had long, strawberry-blonde locks, cascading down her back, creating a wonderful contrast to the forest green dress, she wore. She was the one making all the wild gesticulations, while the other, blonde one with the short hair and the blue coat watched her with bright eyes, eagerly adding something or other, when she could get a word in.
The attention of both girls was directed at the third girl. She was slim, with shoulder-length, jet-black hair, falling sleek and shiny down onto her collarbones. Her eyebrows, like a pair of raven's wings, bestowed a certain kind of expressiveness on her face and she had a long, straight nose over a small mouth, contorted into a light smile, when the antics of the redhead became even more agitated.
The girl wore a white blouse and black, skinny jeans and her eyes were hard and unrelenting, always focused on Anne, when Lou and Hetty didn't demand her attention. The raven-haired girl frowned when she noticed Lizzie's scrutiny and abruptly turned her attention back to her companions.
Snorting Lizzie fell back and her brown locks, lighting up in various shades of gold, poured over Anne's legs and her knitting like a damn waterfall. The ambergirl saved her work without looking up from the intruding strands of hair.
"What's your problem with Mus' daughters?", Lizzie asked, angling one leg to get herself into a better position. Her washed out, black jeans showed a lot of cuts and holes, one of them directly over her knee and the skin beneath it caught the sunlight in an ankle, that made it light up golden, too.
"I've got no problem with Mus' daughters", Anne replied mechanically without looking up, her eyes scurrying back to the group for some fleeting seconds. She bit her lip painfully hard and resumed her knitting.
Lizzie peered at her, but the ambergirl refused to meet her eyes. Moving her head to the side, she noticed something crinkly under all the layers of hair.
"Take one", Anne said, when Lizzie pulled out a bagful of gummy bears from under her head and shrank back when she was promptly faced with a steaming cup of coffee right under her nose.
"Drink", the girl behind the huge sun glasses prompted, waving the cup with her favourite coffee-mix a bit so that the scent would hit her nose. Anne frowned, but took a sip.
"Hazelnut", she commented and shook her head slightly in confusion. "But I still don't understand..."
Lizzie simply laughed, taking the cup back and chewing on a handful of gummy bears before she cast a look at the dark-haired girl, whose posture had become even more rigid.
"You did that on purpose!", Anne cried out, her golden eyes wide open. She curled her hands into fists around her knitting, her gaze travelling back towards the group like a fucking magnet.
Lizzie simply grinned, a red gummy bear caught between her teeth and placed her cup of coffee on the Hardrock-Café-emblem on her loose black shirt.
"Why?", Anne asked soundlessly, her eyes cast down onto her knitting – socks, Lizzie suspected, judging by the looks of the red and blue curled stocking in her lap.
She didn't say anything, simply drumming rhythms on the rim of her plastic cup, softly humming a melody, that lost itself in the wind, when the gate squeaked and the girls' laughs drifted away.
"...and can you kneel before the king", she murmured. "...and say I'm clean... I'm clean..."
"Please, Lizzie, not that song", Anne pleaded her quietly, her voice strained and choked and if the blinding sun hadn't been there, Lizzie would've sworn she saw tears in the ambergirl's eyes.
But that wasn't possible.
"It's her, right?", Lizzie asked softly and with a tentative smile, which quickly turned into one of sympathy.
"It's her", Anne whispered, her eyes still glued to her knitting, even though her hands had stopped moving. They were trembling.
"But the name..." Lizzie frowned. "I mean, she's a pretty girly... girl..."
"Her father was a marine."
"And I wondered, why the hell you always called her by her last name...", Lizzie muttered and shook her head.
"It's not her last name." Still no eye-contact, the usually sparkling gold of her eyes was no more than a pale, subdued brown.
"It's not her last name?", Lizzie exclaimed. "What, did you guys made that name up for a private joke of some kind?"
"Her mother named her after her father. They weren't married and when he died, she wanted to honour his memory by giving his name to their daughter in a way." Anne shook her head and bit her lip – Lizzie figured that it had to be bleeding right now, judging from the way she maltreated it.
"In my opinion using names as a reminder of someone is utterly stupid", Lizzie remarked, drumming along on the rim of her cup.
"Oh really?"
"It usually ends with the poor child being named Elisabetta Florentine Isolde Margarete plus some additional last names and titles. If parents are so adamant about getting their child bullied at school, they couldn't have done a better job at it."
"You survived."
"Barely", Lizzie spat, decapitating another set of innocent gummy bears, green ones this time. "I mean, what kind of scatterbrained idiots give their child the name "Elizabeth"? You can't even grant them a teeny tiny bit of creativity for it, like you can do with the poor soul called Apple Blossom or something like that-" She paused for a moment before shaking her head, deciding that her tirade about parents naming their children after groceries would take her too far away from the actual topic. "I'm pretty sure they named me after the queen and that's just pathetic."
"Are you sure, there's no Elizabeth among your ancestors? It's a pretty common name in English history."
"Oh, goodness, please not!", Lizzie pleaded. "Because then, not only would I have to grant my parents creativity and effort by finding a name for the accidental girl in their crib, but I would have to accept the fact that they named me after some spoiled brat, that spent her days trimming bonnets and dancing at fancy balls, not to mention she probably married her Prince Charming and lived with him and a bunch of little Charmings fucking happily ever after."
She saw how Anne rolled her eyes. "And you've got no prejudices at all, right?"
"What, me?" Lizzie grinned. "No, I'm just a complicated fuck up."
"Cynical?"
"Partly." She waved with her right hand and smiled mischievously. "If I'm in the mood."
Anne laughed, the first happy sound from her that day and her eyes lit up. "If you're in the mood?", she repeated. "Don't tell me that's the same mood you're in when-"
"No, because then I generally talk very little", Lizzie grinned. Anne placed her knitting aside and tugged at the red silk ribbon tied around Lizzie's hair.
"You didn't complain about your middle name yet", the ambergirl teased her with a tentative smile.
"Don't get me started", Lizzie warned her and adjusted her sun glasses. "Thank goodness, I managed to get hold of my records in third grade. No idea, what my parents were thinking giving me that name."
"I like the idea", Anne said softly and Lizzie craned her neck to get a better look at her. "Names as a connection to the past, lines finely spun between the generations... Family..." She sighed.
"Who are you named after?", Lizzie asked and blinked against the sunlight.
"After my aunt."
"The dead or the crazy one?"
"The dead one." Anne sighed again. "Sometimes I think, my mother wouldn't be so filled with bitterness if my aunt was still alive."
"Your mother is downright insane."
"She's lonely."
"She wants you to marry your cousin."
"She suffers from hallucinations", Anne deadpanned, making Lizzie smile softly.
"So you decided to keep your aunt's name but not your mother's last name?", she asked. Anne nodded.
"But why the name "Elliot"?"
"Do you know "Jane Eyre"?" Lizzie nodded slowly. "That's the name the Rivers-Family gives her after Jane fled from Rochester. I thought it would fit."
"It does", Lizzie said quietly. "I like it. Anne Elliot. Sounds good... like a statement."
"A statement", Anne repeated the words quietly, her voice full of longing. "Yeah, that's a way to say it."
"Or hypocrite", Lizzie interjected and raised both eyebrows.
"You enjoy calling people liars way too much", Anne reprimanded her. "Someone could conclude you're talking about your own life, my dear."
"Hey, you're the one telling me not to run away from myself and at the same time you're changing your name to distance yourself from your lunatic of a mother! If that's not running, then I'm fucking delusional."
Anne shook her head. "I stopped running a long time ago, darling. The name is mine, mine alone. I named myself, the person I fought to become for so long. It's like a tattoo but not on my skin."
Lizzie was silent for a few heartbeats. "Still afraid of needles?"
"In comparison to you, everybody seems like a coward when it comes to ink and needles."
The girl with the sun glasses smiled impishly. "That's true."
Anne breathed in deeply and turned her face upwards to the sun, making her resemblance to a teeny tiny pixie buddha even more striking.
"On days like these I wish I could still run away", she mumbled. Lizzie's eyebrows twitched.
"Yeah", she said slowly with a pout on her lips. "If this is what happens when you stop flying then I have no desire to ever stop doing so."
"You mean, when your past comes back to haunt you?" Anne blinked. "Perhaps it just means that you're finally ready to face what scares you at night."
"I don't want to face it", Lizzie said stubbornly and thrust her chin forwards. "I'm perfectly happy with hiding under my blanket." Anne sighed.
"What?", Lizzie cried out. "It's a pretty blanket. With flowers and dots and a decapitated barbie on it."
Anne chuckled and rolled her eyes. "I don't want to face it, too", she said quietly. "But when Hetty and Lou start hanging out with her, there's nothing I can do about it."
Lizzie noticed how her fingers started twitching at her words.
"So that's what you want to try?", she asked while Anne stroke about the light golden shimmering strands. "Be polite and make peace?"
"I sincerely doubt it will be that easy", Anne replied with a barely audible, though decidedly bitter laugh. "I pretty much ripped out her heart and threw it on a bonfire all those years ago, you know?"
"She pretty much did the same when she left you", Lizzie argued, but Anne simply shook her head and didn't elaborate.
"You know, if you never told me about her, I never would have guessed that you-"
"Like girls?" She laughed and shook her head again. "I don't."
"But Went-"
"She's an exception.", Anne interrupted her as if she couldn't bear hearing her name. "My exception. Both were silent before Anne continued.
"It wasn't...It was never..." She sighed. "She's the only girl I ever..." She stopped herself again. "God, that sounds so cliché, so trivial...As if it was just some crush, but...it wasn't..." She growled in frustration. "Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that she was everything, the only girl, the only... human being, I ever loved..." Her voice lost itself in the wind, chasing around the red and golden leaves like it was a fucking circus and they did the show to amuse the two girls on the wall. "It wasn't important, what she looked like, what kind of gender she had..All these outward attributes didn't make a fucking difference to me, couldn't, didn't... I would have loved her too, had she been a guy... Hell, I mean, I dated guys before and it would have so much easier for the both of us, but... It was always her and nothing I did could ever changer that, no matter how hard I tried." She laughed quietly. "So don't worry about me ever falling for you."
"As if I ever feared that", Lizzie snorted. "It takes two in my opinion to start something. Having boobs doesn't mean I'm some kind of prey, you know."
"Your head is in my lap", Anne remarked with a raised eyebrow. "And you're emotionally damaged."
"And you're talking about your long lost love." Lizzie rolled her eyes and adjusted her sun glasses.
"Who you tried to make jealous by the way."
"She'll benefit from it", Lizzie replied and poked her in the side. "Don't worry."
"You're sure about that?", Anne asked doubtfully. "I don't want to hurt her even more.
Lizzie looked at . "You still love her, don't you , Anne Elliot?"
Anne blinked and looked down at her, the gold of her eyes burning and it was like watching someone suffering in their own, personal hell with no way to get out.
"I never stopped."
A/N: So how was that? Give me your opinions, on names and crazy relations and Anne's confession... By the way, Lady C will probably be based on real life, so please beware, I got some fucked up people in my family...
Did you get the cross-over? Next chapter, Lizzie will have a pretty little run-in with one black-haired girl... She's a loyal one, I give you that;)
Reviews appreciated!