Chapter Four - Annette
"Of course, my daughter. Will I see you for tea next week?"
"Indeed," Annette confirms. "Though, it is possible there may be a disruption in the following week. Miss Jones may be accepting a case in Kereland in the near future."
"Indeed?" Sister Pullwater grows quiet.
"Something the matter?"
"Inform me if you do take the case," she requests, her face stern and focused. "I may have some things to discuss with you."
- - -
Annette had walked into Sister Pullwater's office on many occasions, plenty of them for less-than-positive reasons. As a child at the orphanage, particularly a child prone to pushing the lines of what she could get away with, Annette had received more than her fair share of punishment from the Sister.
But, recalling their final meeting before Annette sailed off to Kereland with Cordelia is an unusual array of feelings for her to parse through. On the one hand, she was nervous as she always was around Pullwater, particularly in that setting where she, as a girl, had so often been corrected for her errors. On the other, things with Pullwater had reached an uneasy-but-pleasing truce, and the Sister was insistent that the news she carried was good.
And it was sitting at that desk, just a pair of weeks ago, that Sister Pullwater had told Annette that she had a cousin.
An actual, living cousin.
In the time since, Annette is still sorting through the contradictory and confusing assortment of emotions that have emerged with her.
At first? At first she felt nothing; a sort of empty, hollow, incomprehensible nothing. How long had she wished nothing more than for a family of her own? How many nights had she slept in that orphanage dreaming of what they would look like, what they would act like, what they sounded like? She'd come up with names for them, even. Her mother - she decided her mother's name was Candice, for it sounded sweet and kind. Her father was Paul: a strong name, but a gentle sort of strength.
The tears from the news came later. She remembers curling up into a ball on Cordelia's roof, sobbing into her arms and wishing it hadn't been true that she was an orphan. She'd never known why, never been told the reason why her life had to be set upon such a lonely, awful poverty of love. Sister Pullwater never had the answers to it, but in her kinder moments Annette remembers the nun wrapping her up into the billowing sleeves of her habit and letting Annette stain them with tears and snot.
Then there was the anger, brittle and acrid. The sight of families on promenade down the street would set her off, ranting to Cordelia about the injustice of it all. She'd just come to peace about the fact she had no family, and was feeling settled in the comforts of the family she'd been crafting herself as an adult.
The news of her cousin wrenched it all open once more.
Pullwater says the letter arrived a couple months prior, and that she wasn't sure what to do about it. For a time, she feared it would only cause Annette more pain to know there was family for her out there this whole time, unknown to them all. But, when Annette told her that she was going to Kereland with Cordelia, the nun knew she was owed the truth.
Cillian MacFerron. 1287 8th Street, Allenway.
The letter itself doesn't say much, just that he remembered having a cousin sent away to Emril after losing parents, and was trying to locate them. Apparently he'd sent the letter to quite a few orphanages, only knowing the general region of Emril to search and the birth name of the cousin.
Annette wasn't using that name anymore, and Cillian would undoubtedly not know that his cousin was twice-born, either. She briefly marvels at the surprise that'll ensue for them all.
Cordelia had been delighted to hear this and deliberately planned their trip to go see him. They were to work on the case in Fieldston for as long as needed, then head up north to Allenway afterwards and meet him before heading back to Bellchester.
And now, as Annette peruses through cuts of cured meats in this butcher shop on an island that was supposed to be her home, she can't help but think about hunger.
Of course, there was The Hunger, the famine which had devastated Kereland with the failure of the potato crop forty years prior.
But then there is the hunger within herself - a sort of desperate yearning for life which compels her like she could never have believed. Cordelia, in all of her confusing and delightful strangeness, had unknowingly plucked Annette out from the frustrating stagnation of survival and given her the push towards
living
, towards the seizing of life for one's self with a necessary greed for it.
And Annette feels greedy for it. And hungry.
It's an unsettling, gnawing pain that comes from being twice-born, she suspects. The knowledge that it is her femininity that both liberates and shackles her. Womanhood sustains her, gives the stability of self and joy in being that makes life survivable in the first place; and yet, it is womanhood that deprives her of life in public. The constant scowls at her short-cut hair, the disdain she is treated with when she opts for trousers instead of skirts, the existence between fetish and desire.
Without it, she will die. With it, she is in chains.
She would never have been happy growing into masculinity. She knows this as a fact more clearly than even the knowledge that the sky is blue. It's axiomatic. It's self-evident. But it exists, on occasion, as a taunting villain in the back of her mind:
All the freedom you could have ever wanted, yet, you would never have lived peacefully enough within yourself to enjoy it.
A prison either way.
And once more, Cordelia arrives like a paragon in Annette's mind. A woman unshackleable. Unconquerable. A woman so committed to her freedom she will fistfight any man who dares strip her of it - and she will win.
How could Annette not love her, envy her, and desire her more than anything she's ever witnessed?
She feels another little prickle at Cordelia running off to investigate on her lonesome. Annette knows that there's different roles in the investigation - the same had been true in taking down the Winchester Conspiracy and the scattered array of minor cases in between. They can't
both
be the detective. And Cordelia's gifts come with something of a curse - she will often forget to eat, forget to bathe, forget to do any of the basic tasks of life. For a woman so brilliant, she's surprisingly inept at managing her own needs.
Annette is stabilizing. Cordelia needs her.
She touches a hand to the collar around her neck as she makes another selection, watching the burly butcher pull it off the rack and wrap it up. He's a weary man, a breath past middle age, and kindly introduced himself as Elias MacArthur, stating that he was glad to see a new face in town.
The collar, like womanhood, has likewise come to be a source of tense debate within herself. It was, as terrible as it is to admit, her salvation. Becoming a servant saved her from the streets, and by the insane fortune of Cordelia picking her contract, it gave her a life better than she thought she deserved. Very few who entered collar service could say that.
When she'd run away, removing it to join the Mallets months ago, it almost felt like giving up that life with Cordelia. She'd needed to do it, to set out on her own, but she can't deny the feeling of relief that came from Cordelia putting it back on her. She tugs her fingers along the signet band bearing Cordelia's family crest as well, tucked upon the ring finger of her right hand so that no one would confuse it for betrothal. But Annette knows it's something more.
When the collar was removed again, Annette felt an equal with Cordelia. Partners in life and in business - it felt like the culmination of everything she wanted to be. The three months afterwards were bliss - domestic and exciting and freeing.
But on the news of going to Kereland... Annette found herself scared. Maybe the person she had become only existed in the relative safety of Bellchester - familiar and homely. Maybe across the sea, it would be safer to not be thought of as Cordelia's equal. One woman at odds with the patriarchy of their society was difficult enough for most to swallow. Two? Two would certainly arouse suspicion.
She'd offered to Cordelia to do it, just as she'd offered to let her go off and investigate the Abbot so that Annette might shore up their supplies. It isn't fair of her to also feel a bit resentful for her lot.
It isn't.
But as she makes her final selection, staying behind to tend to her detective's physical needs rather than the excitement of the case, Annette feels a quiet resentment fester like a cyst. She shoves it away quickly and decides that it isn't a fair feeling. She offered. She can hardly blame Cordelia for accepting the offer. She was making herself unassuming to any watching eyes of the case, someone who could be invisible and uncover things - while Cordelia presents their bold, outward investigation.
Partners
,
still
. She takes a breath and shoves the worries aside, best as she can.
Someone taps her on her shoulder, pulling her out of the reflective fog which has consumed her.
"Annie!" Susie's voice sounds out, arm wrapping around into a friendly side-hug. She steps back as Annette shakes out of her rumination, holding her own shopping bag in arm. Then, her face grows serious and she utters, leaning her face in curiously, "Oh, this is quite awkward, we've left home wearing the same necklace."
She pokes a finger against the leather band on Annette's neck, causing her to smirk and reply, "You'll have to go home and change - I was here first."
"We'll just have to accept the awkwardness and press on," Susie decides. She marches up to the counter and makes a few selections for herself, greeting Elias warmly as Annette also finishes up her purchase. "Fortunate I've run into you," she says, "I was going to invite you to tea later, 'till I remembered I still need to do the washing up, so I was going to invite you to drink tea while I wash."
Annette feels her now heavier bag tug against her arm. "I really ought to get these back."
"I can carry 'em with you and lessen the burden," Susie offers, gesturing to her comparatively fewer bags.
