Challenge Name and Number: #04, Picture Challenge
Story Title: Legacy
Word Count: 2243
Warnings (if applicable): None
Pairings (if applicable): Nick x Juliette
Summary: It's strange how often things went missing, how doors would lock on their own, how all of the furniture in the living room moved about a foot to the right on its own, how the noises made him feel like there was something in the house with them.
Author's Note: This is a total AU, although it's been heavily inspired by canon. The quote at the beginning is from Grimm's The Three Sons of Fortune. This is the unedited, longer version of the grimm-challenge entry. I hope you enjoy!
"I am already aged, said he, my death is nigh, and I have wished to provide for you before my end, money I have not, and what I now give you seems of little worth, but all depends on your making a sensible use of it."
Legacy
"So, things are getting serious between you and Juliette, right?" Hank leans forward, resting an elbow on Nick's desk. Casework is light for the moment, and when they run out of things to talk about their conversation inevitably turns to their personal lives.
"She wants us to move in together. Buy a house." It is finances, and not desire, that prevents him from moving forward; already Juliette is spending more and more time at his house, and he would love nothing more than to have a place they could uniformly call theirs.
"Why not? Do it." Hank grins in that way that makes Nick feel so young. "You've got a good thing, Nick."
He knows. "Actually, a relative of mine died not too long ago. My aunt. I didn't even know she had been sick." It was a shock when he found out, and still hard to believe. "She kept a house in Portland…it's her legacy to me. Pretty old, by the looks of it—it might just be easier to sell it than try to fix it up."
More and more often he has wondered why, if Aunt Marie had kept a house in the city, she had never visited or contacted him, all these years. The closest thing he had to family, dead, and now all he has to cling to are a few of her letters, included in her will, well-wishes for his life and instructions for maintaining the house. He doesn't know whether to hope that Juliette would love the house or hate it.
"Sounds simple enough to me," Hank says. "That's perfect, isn't it?"
::
Juliette loves the house. She loves the character of it, the yellow paint on the outside, the big tree growing by the side of the house, covering half the yard in its shade.
And he loves her, so they move in. Furniture, and boxes, and piles of things in the spare bedroom waiting for a proper home elsewhere, and Nick tucks away one of the letters his Aunt had left him in the tiny drawer of his foyer table.
"—This house is your legacy, and I leave it to you with all expectation that it remain in our family. Home is a very important thing, you know, and I hope you take care of it like you take care of everything in your life. There was a lot I meant to tell you before I died, and while it is a regret of mine, I am glad you grew up free of the burdens I carried for most of my life—"
He blames his trouble sleeping on the new arrangements—the bed faces a different wall, and the street lamps outside are brighter than the ones on his old street—and over morning coffee, Juliette shares his concerns.
"You know, at first I thought it was our neighbor, playing music at such a strange hour." There's an edge in the way she says it, referring to the neighbor they've never met. The street has more than a few houses, clearly occupied, yet no one has come by to welcome them or introduce themselves. "Glad to know I'm not alone. I'm sure we'll get used to it, though. Are you going to put up the paintings today?"
He's already laid them out on the floor, artwork of Juliette's collection in black frames with white mats, just waiting to be hung up. He's lost the bag of nails, and spends fifteen minutes searching every room on the main floor, scours every kitchen drawer, and finally gives up when he realizes the hammer's missing, too.
Juliette gives him a look and tells him they can just measure and mark the walls until they can get replacements, stepping and hopping around the paintings to make her way through the room.
It would be difficult to lose the measuring tape with it safe in his pocket. He measures the wall, using a laser level to mark the places where he wants the paintings centered. He's scribbling over a set of printed-out blueprints as he goes, but he doesn't notice the discrepancy until later, after he's gone to the hardware store and has hung the last painting on the wall, perfectly centered.
The wall measurement, when combined with that of the foyer and the kitchen to his right, has a total combined length of forty-four-point-six feet.
The house exterior, however, only shows a forty-one length measurement.
He spends the rest of the day measuring things, marking them down in pencil on the blueprint margins, time flying away from him—he blames this on their lack of a clock, not on his near-obsessive need to understand whether the error lies in his own measurements or the house itself, and even after all his efforts he still cannot account for those missing three feet. He could understand if it was reversed—but it is physically impossible for the inside of a space to be larger than its outside. Impossible. It literally does not add up.
Doubting his pencil and paper, he would test the math on a calculator, but for the life of him he cannot seem to find it anywhere.
::
Juliette gets a call one morning to go in early to her clinic to treat an emergency patient, and Nick tries to salvage what little sleep he can, but still ends up getting up early, moving drowsily across the room—he doesn't stub his toe on the dresser, this time—and when he reaches for the door, it will not open.
He tries again. It is locked—why would a bedroom door be able to lock from the outside? No, that is not it, he discovers, but there is something sticking the door to its doorframe, and even with all his strength he cannot pull it loose.
This presents an obvious problem, the least of which involves getting to work. He tries the door again, and when it still will not budge he heads to the window, lifting it and peering outside.
It would not be far to fall from the second story, but the tree beside the window has good, tall branches—tall enough to climb, if he could just get out to them. He retreats inside, dressing and gathering everything he might need in the chance getting back would require climbing back inside, and slides out of the window to the ledge below, one leg and then the other.
He's halfway down the tree when a voice calls out to him.
"Hey, neighbor." It's the man from next door, halfway leaning out his first-floor kitchen window, a cup of coffee in one hand. Nick nearly loses his footing, twisting around to awkwardly take the last few branches down, dropping with as much grace and dignity as he can muster.
"Isn't that your house?" his neighbor calls out, pointing with his free hand.
"Yeah." The sheepishness is inevitable. "Bedroom door wouldn't open, so I had to climb out."
"Ah." He takes it in stride, as if it's something that happens to everyone all the time. "Name's Monroe, by the way. It's nice to finally make your acquaintance."
"Nick. Nick Burkhardt." He remembers that this is the neighbor who likes to play music late at night. "So…you like classical music, right?"
"You can hear that?" Now it is his turn to feel sheepish. "Sorry about that, I'll try to tone it down in the future. It's not a recording, by the way. It's live. Cello."
His surprise is genuine. "That's impressive."
"Well, don't let me keep you. Hope everything goes well with your door." Monroe pauses. "I think there's a guy down the street who's a handyman, if you need a little professional help."
"Thanks." He gives an awkward wave, which Monroe returns, as he heads back towards his front door, locating the spare key and heading inside to gather his things; at this pace, he'll be just in time for work.
::
He notices the sounds, next—odd, twisting things, just out of earshot. It's the house settling, Juliette claims, even when every silence during dinner is filled with a distant creaking or shuffling of floorboards and walls, draperies blowing from a draft without a source.
The cello music starts up earlier than normal; the sun is still out, but it won't be for long.
He notices that the noises disappear altogether while Monroe plays. It's something melancholy, and clear as a bell. The tune of it sticks in his head long after the music stops.
::
Reading more of Marie's letters hardly helps him. There are stories of people she knew and legends she wanted to pass on, histories of their ancestors interspersed with news clippings of obituaries and drawings done in her own hand. The manila envelopes filled with her letters and papers are the one things he can always find in the house.
There's the story in faded newsprint of three children drowned by their mother and another of a old millinery shop, bulldozed to make way for a shopping mall. A dozen more blend together before his eyes, until he comes to a thank-you letter sent in on stationary with a New York address.
"—I cannot begin to express my gratitude for your invaluable help. For the first time I feel like things are at peace, and I can only hope that she can move on under your care. Such a young soul, that poor girl—"
He can't read any more, the slanted cursive hard enough to decipher when he didn't feel like he was reading some sensational work of fiction. One of the last objects in this particular folder is a sheet of music, something complicated enough that he realizes after studying it for a minute that he's holding it upside-down. It gives him an idea, something to latch on to with confidence as he folds the papers back up and replaces them in their envelope.
::
"I'd like to ask you a question." Nick feels bad for practically inviting himself over, but not bad enough to worry too much about it.
"Sure. Uh, make yourself at home." Monroe holds the door open for him, and Nick breezes in, heading for the kitchen; he smells a pot of coffee brewing, and when Monroe offers Nick asks him which cupboard has mugs.
"I assume you had a different question in mind," Monroe jokes, settling into one of the other chairs around his breakfast table.
"Yeah. See, my Aunt owned that house before me. I wanted to know…how often was she here? Did you ever see her?"
"Hmm." He doesn't comment on the question itself, and for that Nick is grateful. "I'm sorry for your loss. She actually wasn't here all that often—I assumed this was her secondary home." He shrugs. "She was hardly here for more than a day or two at a time. She would ask me to play the cello for her in her home—lovely home, by the way, great woodwork. I'm sure you know that. Where was I? Oh, right—I couldn't say no to her, and it wasn't any trouble."
"Did you ever…notice any weird noises coming from the house?"
"Sure. Sometimes I would think she would be home, but there wouldn't be a car in the driveway or any lights on. Not that I really paid it much attention. Is there a problem?"
He feels weird even suggesting it. "I think my house is haunted."
Over a second mug of coffee, he spills everything—how often things went missing, how doors would lock on their own, how all of the furniture in the living room moved about a foot to the right on its own, how the noises made him feel like there was something in the house with them. "It only stops when you play the cello. Only then. Would you—if it's not too much trouble—play another concert in my house?"
He doesn't tell Monroe how he shouted and pleaded one afternoon when Juliette was out running errands, straightening the crooked paintings and replacing the flickering light-bulbs, appealing to whatever spirits were behind it all to stop. He'd give them anything, anything they wanted, if they would leave him alone. Space, they could have—there was a whole unused bedroom on the second floor. Random knickknacks, they had plenty.
The fogged-up mirror in the bathroom had been painted all over with musical notes for an answer, and that had given him his idea.
"You know what, I've heard stranger things." Monroe stands, and takes Nick's empty mug to the sink. "Sure. Tomorrow? Get those ghosts on their best behavior."
::
As he enters their house, Monroe hands Juliette a gift-wrapped box. "Consider it a housewarming present," he says. It is a clock, something rustic with dark woodwork; it matches the room perfectly.
They treat him to dinner and in return Monroe plays his cello, coaxing Bach and Dotzauer from the strings. "This one was your Aunt's favorite," he says, before he plays his last piece.
For the first time, the house is still.
For the first time, it begins to feel like home.
Notes:
1) I imagined their house as a combination of the Darlington + Florette floorplans at houseplans. co.
2) Look out for a Halloween Special tomorrow! :)
~Jess (My Misguided Fairytale)