My apologies to anyone expecting to pick this up and get a quick fix. To understand what's going on you'll need to start quite a long way back! This is the finale to the story (at present) and I decided it couldn't be split so it's a lot longer than the other instalments. I hope it's worthy of your time.
For clarification, voices in single quotes and italics are internal dialogue. Voices in double quotes and italics are spoken aloud by avatars - most of the time. It's a bit of a struggle with the limited formatting options to accurately represent who is speaking and how. If I were to rewrite this, I'd try to use other identifiers to make it clearer.
As ever, any resemblance to persons living or dead is co-incidental. Constructive criticism is very welcome.
Recap
In "The Girl With Pink Hair: Pt 6" our heroes are still in hiding despite gaining some allies. Jess telephones her mother to try to re-establish contact with potentially sympathetic members of the Folk. She tells her mother of the creation of the Trinity and receives a baffling assurance that everything will be fine!
While Jess is doing this, Alan is on other business and Elena is hunting for cheap clothes. She evades a kidnap attempt and discovers that their friends from back home have tracked them down. She sends them away, fearing that they will be at risk if they stay with the Trinity.
Alan is not so lucky and is taken hostage to act as bait for Elena. Jess asks her magpies to find him, and the pair subsequently set off to rescue him. He is the captive of a team of Americans flown in to detain and/or eliminate the Trinity. However, they haven't reckoned on the Trinity's capabilities and some of the estate toughs arrive to complicate matters. In escaping, Elena performs two miracles, cementing her reputation as the Queen.
Later that evening, she has another eldritch dream and meets Leviathan, another avatar but this time entirely her own creation. Unhappily, she concludes that the only way she can only find out if her companions' affections are genuine is to abandon the situation and fracture the narrative entirely.
***
Fracture
Chalk Farm 4pm 6
th
June
Walking away from the apartment was the hardest thing Elena had ever had to do. The bond called and begged and pleaded and going against it was wrong on so many levels that Elena stumbled into town in a kind of psychic agony. She had steeled herself for a terrible fracture, an emotional sundering that would leave her bereaved, but it didn't happen. Instead, their bond stretched and grew thin but did not break. Instead, it
pulled
, making her footsteps leaden and her thoughts broken.
She managed to maintain enough control to buy a train ticket to London. Expecting the service to go to Liverpool Street, she was thoroughly unsettled when, after forty numb and uncomfortable minutes in a carriage without functioning air con, it disgorged her into Fenchurch Street station. The place was completely unfamiliar, and Elena stood for a few moments blinking at her surroundings before following the general drift of people heading down the platform for the exit.
She was similarly disconcerted to find there was no Underground connection and once outside in the small and airless plaza she looked around trying to get her bearings. The sun blazed down and not far away, the Gherkin towered over its surroundings. She stared at the light sparking off the metal and glass obelisk. Judging by the position of the sun, the enormous tower was north of her, which meant that the river couldn't be far away in the opposite direction. Elena had a vague memory that Tower Hill Tube station must be nearby, although she would have been hard put to say why.
A short walk brought her out by the Tower of London, which must have been the reason for remembering the location. Reassured to discover that she was still functioning at some basic level of competency, she bought a ticket to Chalk Farm at the Tube station and perched on the standing seat at the end of the carriage for the two stops to Moorgate, where she changed to the Northern Line to her destination.
Once out of the station and on to the street, she used her phone to find a smallish, non-chain, estate agent. Checking her reflection in the shop windows she decided she was reasonably respectable and summoned enough courage to push open the door. A young woman, late twenties perhaps, conservatively dressed in sleeveless blouse and skirt with a shawl draped around her shoulders, rose to greet her.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm looking for two apartments for a short let, possibly only a month."
The woman's eyebrows rose. "Two?"
"Yes, one for me and one ... for a friend."
There was a short pause as the other considered this statement. "Are you sure you wouldn't be better off using something like AirBnb?"
"No, I need ...
anonymity
." Elena wrapped her arms around herself.
The estate agent considered Elena with intelligent brown eyes and drummed her fingers on the countertop. "Am I right in thinking that one would be, say, more
public
than the other?"
Elena nodded. "I'd use my credit card for that one."
The strangeness of this request did not appear to faze the professional, and perhaps some of the Queen's authority lingered, though Her Majesty had been silent since Elena left the safe house. After a moment or two, she came to a decision and reached for a file. Thumbing through it she pulled out a sheet of paper. She thumbed a bit more and produced a second.
"What about these? One's in Bloomsbury. It's a bit shabby but it's cheap for the area. The other is a block that still in the late stages of refurbishment. Technically it's not yet ready for rent and it's not on our website. Half the lets are empty but it's secure."
She put her head on one side, wondering if her assessment of the needs of the woman in front of her were correct. "How do you want to pay? Is money an issue?"
On the appearance of the money clip, her eyes widened. "Like that is it?" At Elena's brief nod the agent smiled. "I'm Julia, I'll get you sorted and drive you round."
Elena's shoulders slumped, she swayed on her feet and Julia hurriedly directed her to a chair and fetched her a cup of water.
***
The apartment was ideal. The entrance came out on to a cool and shady gated courtyard. There were three locked doors to pass through before the apartment proper. Had she but known it, it was in an area reasonably equidistant from the closest fiefdoms of the sixteen Families that counted London as a base. It may have been her new abilities starting to act to protect her - or it may have been blind luck. In any case it was fortuitous in preventing anyone from tracking her down too quickly or worse, laying claim.
Julia gave her the keys and a card with her professional details and her personal number scribbled on it. "Anything you need, let me know."
She smiled at Elena's bright eyes and let herself out, leaving Elena alone in the cold white silence of the apartment. Sitting on the small sofa and staring out at the houses opposite as the light faded, she was still blank in her head. Eventually she got up and went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed and sobbed until sleep came.
***
Temporary bolt-hole 7
th
- 8
th
June
Over the next couple of days, she sortied into the outernet to gather the essentials and try and root herself in the ordinary. And every so often, she would allow herself to think about Jess and Alan and their bond would quiver gently. She knew that wherever they were, they would know that she was thinking of them and sometimes there was an answering pulse, a tentative reaching out, a
'how are you? Are you alright?'
And behind that, the bulwark of their love. This was generally the cue for her to bury her face in her hands and try to blot out her aching loneliness. There was no great fracture it was true, instead it was a void in the very centre of her, a creeping dread that she might never be whole again.
***
Temporary bolt-hole 3pm 9
th
June
Although she had gone to some trouble to conceal her whereabouts, Elena was a novice in the arts of skulduggery. She was savvy enough to know that her subterfuge wouldn't last long. Unfortunately, she was also largely in the dark about the capabilities of the Folk and was unaware that, to her two lovers, she was a pole to which they always pointed.
Sometimes Jess and Alan's light touch surveillance was rather more than that. A loose grouping of disaffected members of the Families carried out the first assassination attempt within a week and Alan grudgingly conceded that it was quite well planned and executed given their relative inexperience.
Around the same time as the two matrons of the Families were taking their tea and Eccles cakes, the Sword made short work of the operatives, despite some grumbling at having to promise not to kill anyone without good cause. After the last one had been safely corralled and delivered to the vacant house they'd used as an impromptu jail, Jess dropped off a key with a disconcerted Centrist administrator who couldn't understand how she'd managed to gain access to her office without being detained.
"Make sure this reaches the right people," Jess said, as she turned to go.
The baffled officer looked at the key and discovered that there was a label attached that listed an address. A little after that, several Families discovered that their daughters had not been model citizens.
***
Swiss Cottage Underground station 11am 11
th
June
A day or two after that, Elena failed to register a scuffle behind her on the Underground platform at Swiss Cottage as she waited for the train into Bond Street. She was used to being jostled during peak times and thought nothing of the fuss. Her fellow passengers looked up from their phones to register a middle-aged woman being escorted away by two other women in uniform.
The Queen, however, was not unaware of what had been about to be attempted. If she had had physical form, one might have seen her mouth twist, and her brows draw down. This was becoming a nuisance.
As Elena sought the anonymity and white noise of crowds, the Queen received some intelligence from her spymaster. His host had speculated on the existence of a back channel of communication between the avatars and he was both right and wrong. It is in the nature of a story that anything is possible as long as it is consistent with the narrative. The Queen now knew certain things that the Shadow knew, although how that came about is anyone's guess. Answers on a postcard, please.
The Queen was resolved to send an unequivocal message and Elena was too fragile to act. Therefore, She was going to do something that She had promised not to do. Well, not quite
promised
exactly.
'What is your intention?'
rumbled Leviathan.
Metaphysically, the Queen jumped.
'Must you do that?'
She exclaimed peevishly. She glared at him, and he returned her gaze urbanely. She gathered Herself with an effort. She would be unable to act unless he stood aside.
'Our adversaries are clearly not getting the message. I need to impress upon them that we will brook no interference.'
He considered Her for a few moments in his irritatingly calm manner and then he grunted.
