houseofcards_rp | [ota] beware, be canny and careful

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[ota] beware, be canny and careful

She doesn't regret it in the slightest. What's to regret?

Eileen is fully capable of making her own decisions. She's allowed to decide to leave Kevin behind and go visit the Spade dungeon. And someone--she's not certain who--is also fully capable of infinitely childishly telling Kevin exactly where he or she saw his theoretical charge slipping off to while he was turned around. And Kevin is not just capable but essentially required to tell her mother things like where her daughter was this past weekend.

Which means Eileen Eicheln has, for the first time in her life, seen her mother actually angry. It also means, for the first time in her life and very likely one of the first times in history, the Ace of Clubs is grounded.

Mr Kahl is allowed to bring work and keep her up to date with her studies. A student from Mr DeWitt's class is allowed to spend a bit of time letting her know what's she's missed. The King and Jack are certainly permitted to speak to their Ace at their convenience.

But everyone else? Is getting Kevin's most sympathetic smile and a firm shake of his head. "Seems house arrest is catching."

[ooc; Except probably anyone with half a reason can talk to the moodiest tween about how she done wrong. Kevin is secretly easy. Or just come shoot the shit with Kevin, I guess? o/]

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"And you can tell that haggard old witch to lick my saggy- Eileen! Afternoon." Kevin, you shouldn't open the door until Caleb's done speaking when there are underaged persons on the other side. You should know this by now.

"Hope I'm not intruding. One would have thought you'd assaulted the Queen of Spades to be locked up in your room like this."

Small and limited is the scope of Kevin's revenge, but a satisfying revenge it is.

And one Eileen isn't actually likely to have noticed, despite the slight hullabaloo on the other side of her door. Caleb's voice takes a moment to actually penetrate her thoughts, get her blinking up from the spot she'd been staring into the window.

"...the Queen of Hearts might be the more appropriate metaphor." So all humour is not lost, clearly. Nor is all semblance of manners as she starts to unfold from her seat, move to take some of the books off his hands. "Preemptive measure, I assume."

"I don't think the Hearts would have made quite the same fuss about it to be honest. And you did go to the Spades, did you not?" They weren't the best company to keep but the Clubs had some good Spade turncoats among them. They weren't all serial killers and rapists.

"Were you planning on killing someone?"

Most, in fact, were not. Eileen knew nearly for certain that her favourite Spade was, in fact, a fairly normal and only moderately homicidal person.

She's got said Spades' knife of a smile, even. No wonder everyone wants her to stop seeing Julien.

"Not for another two years. Is this from the new tower?"

"You sound just like your father," Caleb voiced out softly with a small, fond smile. He doesn't know how Argine talks about him with Eileen - or maybe she doesn't at all - but Caleb isn't afraid to bring him up as and when he came to mind. It seemed far healthier than not talking about him, as if he'd never existed.

"Thought you might like something worthwhile to do while you're confined in your gilded cage. Unless you'd rather Kevin entertain you with trivial telepathic conversations."

Edgar is a few photos, some half-recalled memories and the look people who knew him get in their eyes when she turns her face to the right angle to look suddenly like her biological father. The mention now gets her pausing slightly, glancing up with a draw of her brow absolutely reckoning back to Edgar's own expression of confused concentration.

"This is much better, Mr Caleb. Thank you." Space is cleared on her desk for the dictionaries, the old book. It could be sufficient, and yet... "Did-- my father--"

No. Not important questions.

He placed the books down gently onto her table and didn't reply to her until the laptop bag was placed on one of the vacant chairs and he was sitting down next to their Ace.

"Did your father what?" He rested his hands on his knees and looked at Eileen with as warm of a smile as he could manage.

It's okay to talk about the dead.

As often, she stays upright despite others sitting, leaning against the desk with her attention quietly scanning over what he's brought. She's not often of a height with adults, after all; it feels easier to take little moments like this and feel more of a sort.

"...did he challenge right away?"

Andrew had been the one to really tell her about her biological father, now and again. Argine didn't speak much about him once she'd married Andrew. Rachel barely mentioned him except in the vague and general.

Curiosity's already going to have her pouring over old books to translate. Why not brood over people she never got to meet while she's locked up in here?

Every time he comes to see her, she's grown up that much taller, become that much more mature. Every time he comes to see her he's reminded of Rachel before Liz died, and how much he has lost with Rachel. There were lives he had ruined beyond his own, and there was all that time which he will never get back.

"He was eager, your father. Skipped up the ranks like a flat stone jumping on water." Eager and young and rash, and never lived long enough to grow old and see how silly it all had been all those years ago. Deserving of much more than an untimely death and a girl asking an old Club who'd been alive for far too long about him nine years later.

But such were the hands dealt to them. They could only make do with what they had, and not ask for anything more.

"You can't really compare though. You're much brighter and more mature than he was at your age."

The bob of her head is brief, fingers moving to begin carefully moving at the ziplock and examining the book he's brought as she listens. It's in keeping with the vague sense she has of him. Her smile, slight and tired, comes more from her mother as she examines the cover.

It takes a moment to come to the realization she has more questions--about Edgar, rather than the book Caleb's brought her to examine.

"He's... always smiling in photos. Was he... really so happy?"

No old books in some mysterious tower could tell her anything she would want to know about her father. Whatever she could want to know about him, she had limited time to ask. Those who knew Edgar were not getting any younger.

"Not always." But Caleb's never met someone who was really always as happy as they looked just before they were about to get their photograph taken, and he didn't think Eileen would ever meet anyone like that either.

"But I think he had quite a few moments." And that's what happiness was, really. Just moments here and there that go as quickly as they come. That's what photographs can capture.

"You have moments too, don't you?"

It's usually something she can agree to. Today, locked away for the remainder of the week, she can only pull a bit of a face.

"In a general sense. D'you?"

If everyone did, he did too, right?

It's alright. She won't be bored to death for the rest of the week. By this time tomorrow he'll have talked Kevin into submission. If Argine was going to protest, she'd hear it from Caleb too. He was far past the age of dignified old respectable Caustello and well into fistshaking 'back in my day, we had to wait for radios to warm up before they could play anything' territory.

"From time to time." He's not like the Eichelns though. Neither of the Caustellos were, actually.

"I've made a lot of mistakes though." And it was too late for the Caustellos. For Eileen, however. She was far too young to be asking these questions.

"Some of them don't make any difference, and... others just make those moments a lot harder to come by."

And here, at length, it cycles back to her why this line of questioning makes sense here, now, while she's locked away in her room to contemplate what she's done wrong. Her lips press together firmly for a moment.

"How..."

Argine is so disappointed. Elisha is crushingly disappointed. Her breath catches half a second before she can properly speak without her voice quavering.

"How many of those... larger mistakes did you make when you were my age?"

"None. And you haven't made any either." He sighed softly and took her hand in his, giving it a light squeeze.

"We all want what's best for you. Sometimes that means we say and do unreasonable things that you'll resent us for. But you'll come to realise later that we just don't want you to do the same stupid things that we've already done." This is coming from a man who'd been blind and foolish and mad; a man who allowed a Spade to destroy his daughter.

And Edgar can't be here now to stop a Spade from destroying his daughter, so it's up to those who were still here to help him do what was right.

"At the end of the day it's not about friends or Deck politics or any of that. We just love you and - very selfishly, I might add - want to do what we can while we still can to see that things work out for you."

It's nothing she doesn't know intellectually. There's still something settling about having someone else say it, take her hand and really mean everything he was saying on the emotional level she was struggling to process.

There aren't more tears to cry. She's spent them all in the procession of disappointment visiting her room. So instead, there's simply silence, exhaustion, a quiet moment of clinging tight to the older Club's hand before she forces herself to nod.

"...if you say so."

There's no disappointment here. Just an old man resisting the urge to give his not-granddaughter a hug, reassure her that this would all blow over soon enough before someone else started up another diplomatic incident, and say and do all the things he was never able to with his own little girl when she needed him to.

"Your jailer will be kicking me out soon. Do you... want to talk about dad some more, or take a look at that old journal?"

She knows what she wants to answer. She also knows, since she's meant to be being a better Ace, what she should answer.

"...can... we talk about Edgar again soon?"

Easier to let go if she didn't refer to him as her father.

"Sure. Any time you want. You know where to find me."

Just try to come in the mornings. He's less likely to have drunk as much as he would have if she popped by in the evening.

But she probably already knew that.

She does. Children are good at this sort of thing, however completely unconsciously.

"Thank you, Mr Caleb."

"I'll leave these with you." She had the original text, dictionaries and internet access. Plenty of things to occupy herself with for the next day or two.

"Be careful with the book, alright? It's falling apart as it is." He patted her on the back lightly before making his way out the door, though he must have started growling at Kevin again the moment he stood in the doorway.

See. Growling does work.

"Promise I'll be careful."

And she will. It's good to have work to focus on, good to be able to throw herself into something deep and quiet and really useful for a bit, get her mind off of the reason she's stuck in one spot.

And Kevin? Kevin will flinch like he's meant to.

Definitely not getting paid enough for this shit.

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[ota] beware, be canny and careful

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