Here's the next installment! Wow writing in active fandoms is different than I'm used to! Lol. Thank you to all the lovely reviews and guest reviews, it cheered my day entirely!
Let me know how you're enjoying it or what you'd like to see. I have a mental map of where this series is going but really write this at my leisure/have designed an OC manufactured specifically to irritate and charm the canon characters in equal measure, so I can take any chapter anywhere we want to go. Let me know what you think and what you want!
It happened when they were united in task and time, they came to realize. Mending clothes, baking a cake, pouring out tea; any activity could be interrupted by a visitor from a century over set on the same activity.
Not that either woman minded all that much. Hallie had taken to wearing "real clothing" as she called it—jeans and t-shirts, her hair still usually in a knot above her head—around her grandparents' cottage instead of the loungewear she normally crafted in in case Elsie appeared, and Elsie found herself working more slowly in the hopes of seeing the lass with her strange, almost masculine attire and her brash, devil-may-care attitude.
Before long they set a schedule: dinner at 7:00 on Mondays, afternoon tea at 3:00 on Wednesdays, and a nightcap on Thursdays. It wasn't frictionless—Charles found Hallie loud, vulgar, and decidedly unladylike—but in no time, the visits became highlights of both Elsie's and Hallie's days.
Mrs. Carson scrubbed at the pot in front of her, reflected on the latest puzzle piece Hallie had divulged. "My grandpa's grandparents left him their old house in their will," Hallie said, picking at the store-bought scone on her plate. "Then after he died my grandma kept it when she moved to America instead of selling, thank god."
"So a cottage is fashionable in 2020?" Elsie teased, still adjusting to the idea of the 21st Century. The girl had divulged her studies to Elsie, her love of historical clothing, only days before.
"Screw fashionable, it's gorgeous," Hallie declared, taking a sip from her mug of tea. Charles scoffed at this without guilt, considering his restraint when the lass arrived with a mug rather than a proper teacup.
"Don't antagonize," Elsie chided, and Hallie looked ashamed enough even though the rebuke had little bite to it.
"Do you know your grandfather's name?" Charles asked after the silence had turned to awkwardness. "We may know the family, Downton village is quite small."
"Oh cool yeah! He was Jack, um I mean I guess John Bates," she replied casually.
The sugar spoon in Elsie's hand clattered to the table. "My apologies," she muttered, recovering from her surprise. Charles cleared his throat.
"Do you know him or his parents?" Hallie asked.
"We do, in fact," Charles murmured, almost dazed. His eyes met Elsie's in silent conversation.
"What's going on?" Hallie interrupted, her eyes darting from Elsie to Charles and back again.
Clearing her throat, Elsie said, "I believe we may be the grandparents who left him this house" with surprising evenness in her tone.
She was shaken from her recollections, however, when the girl appeared at her sink, scrubbing at a bowl with cords attached to her ears. Hallie did not seem to see or notice Elsie as she sang and danced over the sink, hips swaying while she screamed out what sounded like "the earl had to die!"
"Hallie!" Elsie called out, hoping to shake her from the racket, but her cries went unnoticed until Hallie's hips bumped hers.
"Oh!" she cried, nearly dropping the dish in her hand, "sorry Gran, didn't see you there." How quickly she took to the endearment, Elsie's thoughts intruded. Hallie pulled the cords from her head and draped them over her shoulder while she dried her hands.
"What on earth were you screaming about!" Elsie's chastised in a thicker-than-usual brogue, but Hallie simply shook her head and smiled. "It's a song. I listen to music while I do the dishes most of the time."
"It seems a funny song for washing, about killing an earl."
At this Hallie laughed, "Oh no, not an earl. His name is Earl. It's a song about a real bastard—"
"Hallie," Elsie threatened at the curse.
"Well he is! —named Earl. He—wait, idea. Tea?"
Elsie rolled her eyes with a low huff, but nonetheless dried her hands and put the kettle on. Hallie filled hers as well—an electric one, she had explained before—and flipped the switch. It heated fast, and Elsie had to admit to herself that she'd probably like one could she have her own when Hallie's odd little kettle began to beep before her own whistled from the stove. Hallie poured her water over a bag of a fruity-smelling tea that only barely resembled the Earl Grey Elsie was making herself.
"Okay," Hallie began as the two women crossed into sitting room. She sat her mug on the table and reached into the back pocket of her trousers before taking her seat. "So, can you see what's in my hand? It'll, like, sort of look like a black cigarette case?"
Elsie nodded skeptically, and Hallie continued. "So this is...well, it does a lot of things but right now it's going to be sort of like a radio. I'm gonna try to play you the song, okay?" She turned the object to face her, revealing that the underside of it had a bright, floral design to it. After a few taps of her thumb, a loud, percussive sound and shrill guitar filled the room.
Elsie's face scrunched instinctively at the racket. "That's very loud!" she nearly shouted.
"Oh! Sorry!" Hallie quieted the sound coming from the device, but Elsie continued to find it generally unpleasant. "Just listen to the words," the younger woman commanded. Elsie set her ears carefully to the unfamiliar sounds
Maryann and Wanda were the best of friends
All through their high school days
"High school?" Elsie asked. Hallie rushed to provide context: "Secondary school, you're there from 14 to 18."
Both members of the 4H Club—"Don't worry about this bit, not important for us," Hallie interjected
After graduation Maryann went out
Looking for a bright new world
Wanda looked all around this town and all she found was Earl
Well it wasn't two weeks after she got married that Wanda started getting abused
"Oh my," Elsie muttered despite herself. The song continued on:
She put on dark glasses and long-sleeved blouses and makeup to cover a bruise
Well she finally got the nerve to file for divorce
She let the law take it from there
But Earl walked right through that restraining order and put her in intensive care
"Hospital," Hallie explained gently.
"My..."
Right away Maryann flew... the song descended into gibberish for Elsie, but she picked the lyrics back up with:
And it didn't take them long to decide
That Earl had to die!
The music erupted into a loud cacophony, and Elsie wrinkled her nose again.
Goodbyyyye Earl!—
With a few taps of her thumb, Hallie stopped the music. "Cool, right?"
"It's...aggressive," Elsie repeated noncommittally.
"Well yes. Oh by the way, they get away with it, so that's good."
"You're quite cavalier sometimes, lass." Hallie's cheeks warmed affectionately at the pet name.
"C'mon, Gran," the younger woman teased, "You're telling me if a man hurt your best friend and you two could stop him, you wouldn't try?"
"As a matter of fact, I am—" Elsie retorted, but she was interrupted by the call of
"She would," Charles's voice thundered from across the room, though he was speaking gently for his baritone. Both women startled at the sound and turned toward him, watching him enter with teacup and saucer in hand. Hallie recovered first, turning back to her great-great-grandmother of sorts and quirking an eyebrow.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carson," Elsie called out, but her husband continued.
"When A—" Elsie shook her head before her husband could say the name, "—one of our maids was attacked at Downton, your grandmother here confronted the man who did it on her own, and didn't tell anyone for quite some time."
Elsie swallowed thickly. She'd told her husband about that incident mere months before, and the fear, the concern in his face when she recounted her little discussion with Mr. Green flashed before her eyes. "Els, you could've been—"
"But I wasn't. And besides," she'd picked mindlessly at her thumbnail, cast her eyes downwards almost subconsciously, "I can survive that, as well you know."
There it was. The topic she'd studiously avoided since their wedding, and for most of the 30 years prior. Not that Charles hadn't tried. But for all her talk about stitching up his old wounds, this wound she refused to touch.
"Elsie..." she shook her head, but he wrapped his arms around her regardless. His lips brushed the top of her head...
"Whoa Gran, badass!" Hallie's loud approval—and foul language—shook her from her memories.
"I confronted him, I didn't murder him," Elsie said with an eye roll.
"And if you'd had help from someone? Me or Beryl?" Charles asked, adding softly, "or Anna?"
"Stay away from her," Mrs. Hughes warned in a low voice. Perhaps this Englishman couldn't read the fury in her softness, didn't know she saw only red when she looked at him, that if he moved any nearer her she was likely to attack. That she'd gritted her teeth through far worse than anything he could do to her.
"Anna and I, we—"
"Do not say another word. You will keep to yourself for the rest of your visit, if you value your life."
A clatter from the kitchen reminded Mrs. Hughes that they were far from alone.
"Mark my words, if you've any sense," she threatened one last time, before turning to exit. She held her breath, waiting for the lunge, the grasp of her wrist or shoulder, but it never came. Mr. Green stood still, shocked, and she left the boot room as alone as she'd entered it.
Elsie inhaled deeply, let out a long breath. "Perhaps that would have been different," she admitted. "Although I maintain we'd never have killed him!"
"Probably not," Charles agreed, "but I think the Scottish Dragon could've roughed him up with a bit of support. And," he turned to Hallie, "I'm not so sure you could actually harm someone, for all your talk."
She shrugged noncommittally. "I've fought a few men for hurting my best friend way less than in the song."
"You never did!" Elsie exclaimed. Charles arched his eyebrows in skepticism; no matter the similarities in their faces, Hallie was shorter and a bit slighter than his wife, who he thought so tiny, had ever been.
Hallie smiled wanly. "Nina is sweet and pretty. We go to bars and guys won't leave her alone, won't listen when she says no to a dance or a drink and she can't get herself out of those situations because she's too nice. Lucky for her, I'm not pretty or sweet."
Charles opened his mouth to object when Hallie's strange little black object let out a shrill ring, breaking her focus and the spell that kept them suspended in time. She vanished before their eyes, leaving the older couple in a maudlin silence.
