A/N
Friday again. Hallo to all.
More notes are at the end of this chapter, to say I backed out of uploading this chapter over four times today would be the truth lol
Feel free to ignore the notes, as I do go on a bit with my rambles.
It's been one of those weeks. Thank you again for reading. I do hope you enjoy.
/
They slept for many hours, well into late afternoon, before a knock sounded at the door and Erin rose groggily to answer it. An old wrinkled woman stood in the doorway, holding a tray of what appeared to be some sort of chunky broth in crude earthenware bowls, along with hunks of bread and butter, and some kind of fruit cake. A small pot of tea and cups were haphazardly stacked to one side. She pushed the tray into Erin's hands without any ceremony or eye contact, before hurrying away.
"Who is it?" Alice asked, her voice nervous.
"Just some food." Erin turned back into the room, closing the door with her foot.
"Oh, I'm famished." Alice rose from the bed, tucking her dishevelled hair behind her ears.
Erin placed the tray down on a small table nearby and the wafts of hot food made both of their stomachs let out a grumble of approval and impatience. They both giggled like school girls before setting upon the meal. Everything tasted so amazingly good, although Erin knew it wasn't, the meat was chewy and salty, the potatoes far too powdery, and the carrots a little soggy. But it was hot and filling and tasty, the bread and butter just added to the enjoyment.
Erin poured out the black tea, the familiar aroma bringing back memories of Ada, Ada loved her tea, English breakfast to be exact. Ada had always held the strong and unshakable belief that a good cup of tea could mend the weariest heart and the biggest problem.
In that moment Erin could believe it. They sipped at their cups in high enjoyment, nibbling at the sweet, decadent, heavy fruit cake that must have been for high ranking officers only.
"There," Erin said, feeling fully satisfied, "we did have tea and cake."
"Très bon!" Alice said, and smiled, that girlish giggle bubbling from her, and for the first time Erin really understood just how young she was. In Erin's time Alice would still be in High School, perhaps not even in her senior year yet. She tried to remember how she had felt at that age, but got a whirl of memories of petty fights, silly drama and high emotions.
To Erin's mind, Alice hadn't even begun to live, to discover who she was, what she wanted. This place, it wasn't a place for her. Erin wanted to save her so very badly.
They sat in comfortable silence, the clock on a nearby chest of drawers ticking out a gentle sound as the seconds passed. Erin hadn't really taken note of Alice's new clothing before, they had been too exhausted to do anything but sleep. Now she couldn't help but feel slightly puzzled by the young woman's choices.
Unlike Cora's change of clothing, there was nothing practical about the bodice, in fact it looked blatantly old fashioned, like it had been part of a fine dress from an older woman's youth, kept out of sentimentality. The heavy discoloured cream silk glistened in the candle light, highlighting the dense thick brocade embroidery which swirled across the fabric in botanical and floral patterns. The bodice was stiff and heavily boned, silk covered buttons running up the middle, and delicate lace stitched either side. The sleeves ended with frilled flounces, Alice's own chemise peeked out from the arms, a little too short to add anything more than a flash of white. The neckline was low, meant for showing off an ample bosom, but her shift came up far too high, giving the overall look a mis-matched, messy feel. It was at least a size too big and sat on Alice's frame awkwardly.
The skirt however was of plain homespun linen.
When Erin had first met Alice in her pink riding habit, although torn and dirty, the look was all clean stylish lines and fashionable practicality. Now, she looked like a young child playing dress up with her grandmother's old clothes, pretending to be a princess while the world around her burned.
Having seen the trunk load of clothing with her own eyes, Erin knew there had been a few other choices Alice could have made, but she had made this one.
It cemented in her own mind that she had to act, to keep her apart from Uncas, for at least a little while. Choices and rash decisions made in all this heightened mess were sure to lead to nothing but tragedy.
"I notice, you sometimes draw?" Alice's question disrupted Erin's thoughts with a jolt.
"Yes, or well, I used to."
"I loved to paint in England. The countryside is so lush and green and ordered, each field like a patchwork quilt. Here it is very wild." Alice glanced down, smoothing the silk of her sleeves with a careful hand. "Can I see your work?"
Erin's eyes flew to the young woman before her, a flare of panic blooming within her chest. "I haven't really shown anyone my work for years. It's not very good."
"Papa always said art is judged by the beholder not the artist."
Erin didn't really feel like she could argue and, trying to push away a hot flush within her cheeks, she reached into her pocket and drew forth the pad and, with an uncertain hand, held it out.
Alice grinned, taking it without hesitation, and began greedily leafing through the pages. Erin had always hated showing her friends her work, friends had to be kind, but you could usually read upon their faces if they truly liked something or not. Alice gave out a light chuckle, her beautiful expressive hazel eyes coming to study Erin's face for a moment in high amusement, as if seeing something she had not noticed before.
"You drew me and Cora and, oh, look, Duncan too!" She laughed, finding the picture of Major Heywood highly amusing.
Erin felt her taut nerves loosen.
"And even..." Alice paused upon a page, her fingers dipping onto the paper, "all of us," she said, the smile fading a little. Erin tilted her head, trying to see any glimpse of what Alice was looking at, but Alice moved the pad, making it impossible. If she had to guess... perhaps it could have been Erin's portrait of a certain Mohican warrior...
Alice seemed to gain her senses back and glanced up at Erin, a nervous smile again upon her lips. "These are very good."
"That's sweet of you to say. I'm a little rusty."
Alice flicked back through the pages. "She has such a lovely dress." She turned the pad, showing Erin a sketch she had done from memory of Ada.
"Yes, that's my friend."
"Is she here in the colonies?" She seemed to think better of the question, not giving Erin time to answer. "No, I suppose not, you've only just arrived after all. Boston has a lively cercle social, it is so very unlike here. Outside the cities, there is only wild land and war." Alice sighed, handing Erin back the pad. "Perhaps when we are away from here, you could draw my portrait? I fear you only know me looking ghastly."
"You never look ghastly Alice."
Alice smiled, a very sweet and gentle gratitude within her eyes.
"Still, Cora seems to thrive here. Like she belongs somehow. I wish I was more like her."
"Cora has a strong will you can see easily, even when she's being the perfect lady," Erin said, with a grin, remembering all the admiration she'd held for the fiery Munro sister in her youth.
Alice stifled a laugh. "You noticed it too? Some of the situations she put us in in London created quite un silence gênant." Alice seemed to have a habit of dropping random French words into casual conversation. "But she always seemed to smooth over any disapproving old hens. I don't think I could do that, be so strong in the face of judgment. My cousin, Eugenie, thinks Cora's will is too strong and she is too proud."
"You don't agree with your cousin then?" Erin said, with a small wan smile.
Alice shook her head just a little. "I just sat there and let her say those things. Cora would never let anyone say such things to me, to be so... so... rude! She would always save me from any unpleasant situation. It's who she is."
Erin felt another unpleasant jolt at the knowledge that Cora would not be able to save her younger sister in the end. Her heart tugged in distress.
"I want to, to defend those I... care about too."
Erin's stomach dropped, picturing Uncas, was that who Alice was picturing too? Is that what had spurred this conversation into being?
She had to act, nip it in the bud while it was still just a flicker.
"Cousin Eugenie is quite the favori in Boston," Alice said, changing the subject. "She has never quite forgiven Papa for not allowing us a trip to Paris to learn French. Eugenie thought it would expand our options for marriage." Alice giggled like the whole scenario was absurd. "As if Papa would ever approve of any French man." She laughed lightly, but seemed to notice Erin's sudden change in mood.
"Erin, what is it?" Alice's concerned tone drew Erin from her thoughts. "You look upset, has something happened?"
'No,' Erin thought. 'But I may be about to break your heart.'
"It's sensitive to ask, I know... but, I... well..." Erin floundered, knowing she had no more time, it was now or never. "What do you think about Mr... Uncas, Alice?" She didn't know if he even had a last name but the question seemed to demand the formality Alice was used to.
"He seems quite gallant." Her cheeks pinkened. "He, Mr Poe, and their father, took us here without any need for payment. They are like the knights I used to read about in old stories."
Erin studied her face for a long moment. The fear still flitted within Alice's eyes, no matter her words before, Erin didn't think she really believed this was a safe haven protected over by her father, somewhere she knew this was much bigger than all of them. She was like a beautiful china cup full of tiny hairline cracks.
Soon she would witness a massacre and the death of her father, and this last vestige of hope would shatter in her, if the novel was to be believed, and all would be lost. She would never recover, never given the chance to, anyway, as her body would be smashed against unyielding rocks.
Erin felt her eyes sting and fought back, she had to do this, she had to save her, no matter the cost, or what she had to say or do, and no matter how gross it made her feel.
Her mind protested dimly that she was not really in the right state to be doing this, she was tired and stressed and hadn't thought any of this through properly, but she had no more time! She reached about and settled upon things Alice had told her in confidence, her fears of this place, the stories she'd heard.
Erin felt sick.
"You don't agree?"
Erin's distaste must have been clear upon her face.
"I don't," Erin said softly, "I don't think he is gallant." She turned away, loathing each word. "I think he is a... savage." She chanted 'sorry' over and over, hoping the prayer would somehow reach Alice.
"He has not acted like a savage." Alice's tone was dismissive. "Not really... I mean, he is not like the men back in London, it is true, but he seems like a gentleman in his own way."
"And you believe that makes him a good man?"
"I... I don't know," Alice said, she was unsure now.
"It doesn't. My father told me about men like him." Erin bit out every syllable. "They are dangerous Alice, you should stay far away."
"What did your father say? Why is he dangerous?"
"They do terrible things." She felt like a fish on land, gasping for something, anything. "You've heard the stories too, you told me."
"Yes, but surely not those men. Mr. Poe, is after all like us, so they cannot be like... those awful savages."
"You don't know him, you don't know what any of them are capable of, what they might do! I've heard worse than the stories you were told. These men do things you can't even dream of."
Erin grasped for the worst things her mind could imagine, that would dissuade all notions of romance for now, Alice could discover what a liar she was later, when they were all safe. She could hate her and cast her out and it wouldn't matter. They wouldn't be dead!
"Like what? I don't think you know anything about them Erin." Alice's nostrils flared in teenage distemper. Her tone was so condescending that it raised Erin's hackles. In that moment she understood, Alice saw Erin as beneath her in station, and it was galling, to be judged and dismissed by a girl several years younger than she, who had seen so little of the world.
"They have no manners, none of them are gentleman, they kill and hunt and are beastly!" Erin sounded ridiculous to her own ears.
"Erin." Alice laughed, but it was a strained sound. She was hitting a nerve, perhaps a trepidation Alice had been harbouring, she just needed to push a little more. "Don't you think you are being a little silly... even I know that they can't live like us." She was being dismissive and impudent and Erin could not allow it!
Erin was older!
'Only by a few years!" Her mind piped up the information.
She was wiser!
"Hmm, looks like the opposite." It was a taunt.
Shut up!
'You are still treating this like it's a game.' Her mind warned, and Erin pushed it forcefully back. No, that wasn't true, she was taking it seriously, she was trying to help!
She knew their story!
She knew everything!
She was from the freaking future! Yet here Alice was, talking down to her, the person trying to save them all! The slight sting of the situation made her flustered and angry and intent on putting an end to this. Her mind reached and pushed forward a thought that passed through her lips before she could fully register it.
"They eat babies!" A pin could have dropped in that room and it would have rung out as clear as a bell.
"What?" Alice's shocked voice cracked into the silence like a whip.
Erin felt her whole body wanting to contort in the amount of sheer cringe she had just dumped all over herself.
'Dear Lord, Erin, you are a damn menace!' Her mind flared in chagrin.
"Well, so I... heard." It was a limp rebuttal.
"Surely, if you heard it, it's just another silly story like the one you told about the dog?" That talking down dismissive attitude again, but there was perhaps a fear there, a fear that it could be true.
"Oh no." Well, she was apparently committing to the lie now. "That story was real too." The hole was getting deeper and Erin was gleefully covering herself in dirt.
"But you said it was..."
"I didn't want to scare you before. It is as true as I am, standing here before you." God, this was turning into a disaster. "That mad man was also a savage!" Well it was done now, she couldn't make it any worse.
'Idiot, idiot, idiioott!' her mind chanted like a nursery rhyme.
At any other moment this would have played out like a farcical skit, a comedy, but in the moment there was nothing funny about any of it. She was a damn idiot!
Alice looked distraught. "Why do you say such cruel things about a man that has done nothing but protect us Erin?"
"I'm trying to help you," Erin said weakly. "You must stay away."
"Aren't you my friend?"
"I am trying to be!"
'Great job at that!' Her mind was smugly cruel.
"Then why are you trying to scare me! I am already frightened by every breath I take here! I don't understand you."
"I'm trying to save you Alice." Erin's eyes were wide, she knew she'd lost the fight the moment she said something so ridiculously foolish. Her whole stupid plan had been a conceited illusion.
Alice's eyes were a little teary and her face was flushed with anger. "You are very cruel and crude Miss Cooper!" She gave a small stomp of her foot with her words. "I misjudged you. I think you should leave." She pointed towards the door, behind the tantrum, laid plain was the hurt of betrayal.
Erin bowed her head, shame brimming from her every fibre. She obeyed and quickly left the room.
As she walked the quiet corridors she rebutted herself, what a stupid thing to say, her stupid exhausted brain was evidently not good in a crisis, and her arrogance was apparently very wide reaching.
She'd grown too cocky in her ability to think of lies that made sense, but when it came down to it, her skills lacked subtlety and grace and any kind of coherence. She was making everything worse.
She hit out at the wall in frustration and yelped as her injured arm reproached her with a well deserved throb of pain.
/
A/N
Hello any readers out there that are still with me.
I know this may be a turning point for some (maybe not, I may be looking into it all far too deeply!) I think, some will have some sympathy (and humour) with Erin and just be enjoying the ride, or you will thoroughly hate her by now and think this story is trash, that's okay. Re-reading this for upload made me hover between the two (It's been A Week! lol)
When I began to write this I wanted to completely subvert my own (very ardent) ideas of the A&U relationship and that meant trying to look at it from an outside perspective. I wanted Erin to be (in a way) my own fandom mind at it's most stubborn, in an extreme situation, and for those 'facts' I so think I know, to perhaps have less weight in THIS AU reality, not that there is no truth but just not as much as Erin would like. I ran with a lot of things I don't necessarily believe as a fan and made everything very ambiguous. As I said before, Erin is an unreliable narrator precisely because she thinks she knows everything. I hope any of that actually makes sense and this is coming across in the story. I became quite unsure as to if I was doing any of this well, hence the overly long explanation now. I want Erin to be exasperating but not so annoying that reading the story makes it unbearable, so I hope I have (and can) walked that thin line.
I like to think I would, however, not act like Erin in a similar situation :))) but I'm not a 21 year old who has been a recluse for a whole year immersing myself in a fandom. One thing I have learned is people often do the strangest and weirdest things when in stressful situations. I chalk that up to Erin's flapping behaviour now :)) Personally I love the silly drama so I'm feeding my own soap opera demon too lol
All I can say is, this story may get very silly or serious, or all of the above. If you've liked it all so far, I would be very glad to have you along for the ride.
Finally a wee note on Alice's clothing. I actually got this idea of it being a contrast to Cora's own choice of clothing from an article I read many, many years ago. It mentioned how Alice looked just like a princess and I thought it was a very interesting take. I do love exploring other fans own opinions on how they see things even if my own views differ. I originally thought (and perhaps still do, I never have firm opinions unless it's certain canon) that choice of clothing was limited inside the fort and both women made do with whatever they found. Anyway, I can understand where the article writer was coming from, the bodice is not wholly practical and I decided to run with that thread a little.
An interesting titbit about the costume, (I love movie and period costumes but I'm not an expert in the slightest, just a fan. I have tried hard to track down anything about any of the LOTM costumes for many years) the bodice that Alice wears is actually from a gown used in the movie Dangerous Liaisons in 1988. Poor thing, looks like it was most mistreated while being stored! I assume Alice is wearing either a homespun skirt or just petticoats. I went with homespun because my historical costume loving mind would not allow Alice to run around in her underwear even if that is the case lol Cora also appears to be wearing her striped petticoats as skirts (which, visually, is striking!) and a very non historical corset tie waistcoat thing and long sleeved blouse which I can't say I've seen much of in this period. Maybe it's actually a man's shirt? It looks almost too billowy and poet-esque though. Who knows, I won't bog everyone down with my long winded amateur costume analysis. I assume Cora's look was a decision made for visual style as I think, with all the women at the fort, there would be a few more options of spare clothing than to wear petticoats and men's shirts, but I fully admit, it looks fabulous. Perhaps, for that reason, Alice's too big, fancy silk bodice was also chosen for a visual look too? Again who knows. I always hope one day we'll get a interview with the people behind the costuming or even better a commentary on the next edition Mann plugs out. Day dreaming :))
Of course if anyone has any insight (interviews etc) from the movie costumes and costumer, I am very much all ears. I'm always pleasantly surprised by what I have missed.
