House of Cards RP

(Fitzgerald-Berthier Wedding)

It's been a long road from asking to wedding, Sophie thinks as she watches the stylist add the last touches to her hair. Adrien had wanted the wedding close to Sophie's birthday, but then Silas had talked about stepping down and there was the very real chance Cadogan might have been asked to fill his shoes. They'd decided to postpone. Then there'd been Lotty - and another postponing. She looks at the ceiling and wills tears away. The last thing her sister would have wanted was to ruin an excuse for a perfectly good party.

And so here they are, with Sophie looking like an Edwardian lady in Claire Pettibone and her bridesmaids like iced petit fours in sage and peach respectively. Other than the butterflies performing an aerial show in her stomach, she's surprisingly free of nerves. Nothing has felt so right to her as loving Adrien. The wedding is just one more step in that, a chance to tell the world how she feels. She's even stopped worrying about tripping down the aisle.

Not that Cadogan, who she'd asked to escort her down the aisle, would ever allow that to happen. No, she arrives safe in one piece before he leaves her side to take up his place as Adrien's Best Man. He looked handsome in his morning suit, though not so handsome as the groom. She gives Adrien a blinding smile, one that's returned to her full-force. He's been like a kid at a candy store ever since they'd begun planning. Utterly sweet, she thinks, and, well... surprising. She feels stupidly gooey inside (like one of those ridiculous romance heroines) just knowing he wants this as much as she does. Not that he'll hear that from her, at least not without prying. A woman needs to have some secrets.

All in all, she thinks later as she and Adrien leave the chapel as newly married couple, everyone and everything looks lovely. The chapel has never smelled so sweet as it has today with the profusion of peonies, roses and hyacinths. Sitara has never looked so adorable as she does in her sage flower girl dress. Adrien can't have been more charming and handsome.

A day made of superlatives, with an equally astounding evening ahead of them. She brushes a soft kiss along her--her husband's!--cheek. Never has anyone been so lucky.

The world gets small. That's the worst part.

The period of probation is good, really. Being away from work, sitting in the solitude of house arrest, makes the loss of interest in the rest of the world less damaging. Lets him work his way around to a normal sleep schedule again; get through the sharper periods of nightmares and into the dull sort of sleep he lives with generally. Gives him time to work on the shakiness in his hands and the way he jumps at tiny noises, to refocus on what's immediately before him rather than letting his mind skitter everywhere.

But the world gets small. The world stays small even when, with a firm slap on the wrist, he's let back into his office. The future sits on the end of his desk, barely extending to the end of the week.

He barely notices he's gone out to the gardens. Barely realizes he's bummed an actual cigarette off one of the kitchen Threes and settled in for a proper smoke.

Fifteen months was a good run. And the world is so small. And yes, the smoke entering his lungs spikes the pain of each breath at first, but the nicotine hit--real, proper, after all these months--is more than worth it, in a world that surely isn't going to last more than through the rounding of the next few days.

He'll drop the cigarette if approached, of course. He'll even pretend it was on purpose, and not the shock of tension at the sudden sound of another human being.

( yeah, we're going down )

It's burning a hole in his pocket. Literally. He's afraid it's going to burn a hole and just fall out one day, and what a waste of money that'd be.

And what a waste of the most perfect ring, the one he's sure will look perfect on Sophie's finger, and it's not like he's spent hours looking at it in the morning light that comes through his window (except he totally has).

Today is the day. Today has to be the day, for the mere fact that he can't wait any longer. But it's Adrien Fitzgerald, Adrien 'I Have Never Committed In My Life' Fitzgerald, and to be honest, he isn't sure how to go about this sort of task.

And so, he's asked Sophie out to dinner. Just the two of them. Getting down on one knee before dessert is suitably romantic, right?

Adrien is always bouncy, playful, flamboyant. He's nearly always got a smile on his face, and he's continuously teasing and poking at others to get them to smile too. Shame? He doesn't understand the concept.

Today, though, he's even more so. There seems to be no special reason for it - the sun isn't shining any brighter and the sky isn't any more blue. But Adrien can't stop grinning to himself today, in a vaguely "I know something you don't know!" manner.

If anyone asks why, he'll reply enigmatically, "shopping."

Cadogan loves working. He really, genuinely does. Something to do, something to struggle against, something to give him viable purpose in the world, in society, in the structure he needs to keep himself sharp and focused and reasonably well-maintained.

But people keep telling him to take breaks. People keep asking him to delegate, to free up some time, to go outside for longer than it takes to run from point A to point B. It comes to a head at his mother's kitchen table on a Saturday night, when his full name is whipped in a stream of rapid, angry Welsh because no son of Roisin Fiona Thomas is going to be working like that on the Lord's day, God help her.

So Sunday... is a day off. There aren't any projects that can't actually wait until Monday, nothing currently on tap that requires his attention and not the attention of a Nine or Ten for the next 24 hours. It means actually making it properly to church.

And, to avoid the tempting siren call of files he knows Thyme is sleeping on in his room, it involves setting himself up on a corner of the Green to take advantage of the warm weather. It'll be 'try to convince Adrien to play rugby' season before they know it, after all.

Time to see what these fancy smoke-free lungs can do.

Remember, Alexandrie Berthier used to say, you simply must make time for yourself. The fine spring day finds Sophie settled at a table overlooking the green taking her arrière-grand-mère's* advice to heart. She closes her eyes a moment and enjoys the sun warming her cheeks before pushing aside cup and teapot so she can admire her handiwork. That buttery yellow yarn she'd been saving knits rather nice, even if she does say so herself.

She picks up her needles and swiftly casts on stitches for the second tiny baby bootie, all the while humming a lullaby under her breath.


[*great grandmother]

( To join this man and this woman together )

Within the last several weeks, a lot had happened. People who were careful to keep their King in the loop were reporting the return of the last King of Spades, and monitoring his activities so that the Diamond Face Cards could be prepared for further upset.

Silas was less concerned with that than with the failings within his own Suit. He'd started to notice the strain between Säde and Avery even more, recently, and things weren't too much better between her and Cadogan. It was absolutely unacceptable.

But before he could talk to his Queen about it, he needed full information from his Ace and his Jack. There was enough unrest already as a direct result of Säde's uncontrolled actions, for which she had not yet truly answered.

All in due time.

He needed to talk to others, first.

These days, things happen. The question is: how fast does gossip travel around Diamond Castle? And, honestly, does it count as gossip if the subject of said news is airing it loudly to the public as well? Because Adrien isn't wasting any time in letting people know that he's challenging up.

That's right. Ermenegilde Pascal Adrien Fitzgerald is challenging up to Seven. "About time I climbed up the ladder, don't you think?" he'll ask as Sitara giggles from behind him.

The Diamond High Cards have been working around the clock to accommodate people moving into the castle. Most people know not to take their grievances to Säde; they remember too clearly when she was Ace. The King or the Ace or even now the Jack is a better bet for a kinder ear. Not by much, they'll find eventually, but the perception is there.

As such, this means that while disputes and fights have been reported to Säde, she's never witnessed them, only their aftermath. And while there are those who have thought to seek some form of reparation with the Queen, they suddenly change their minds in the face of her asking quite coolly what they could possibly mean to disturb her for.

All in all, it doesn't predispose her to be any more kind when she finally comes across someone taking out their aggrieved frustrations on another. The aggressor is harshly dealt with (and might end up 'falling' into the wall once or twice) and the victim carefully taken to his family.

Just one in a string of many. It's not something that particularly calms her.

Maybe a walk will.

[ooc: Catch her as she goes out of the castle or in Town.]

Of course this is the time he isn't overlooked for Jack. Of course it sets him off-kilter and sends him to church before his mother's rooms before his old office to start consolidating and moving his life.

And of course while he's reorienting himself to actually do This Entire Job rather than the bits and pieces and halves he's done for the last few years, everything goes to complete and utter shit.

The armory has to be closed to stop things blatantly being disappeared. The Tens and Nines have to be rearranged all over again to get the right balance of people between the Castles and people verifying the drastically strange messages come back from the edges of the Deck. The simple shifting in, closing down, even as the world around them folds out, is demanding a good deal more attention than 'people moving' feels it should have a right to have.

And that means a few things for the new Jack of Diamonds.

It means he's going to spend the morning in his new office, his life still in boxes and documents littered everywhere in incredibly fragile order. It means he's going to spend the afternoon distinctly out of his office, meeting with people who are used to reporting to him and those who aren't as information doesn't change except to get less coherent. And in the evening, after letting his mother bring him something to eat, he's going to go to Mackinnon's to drink literally all the whiskey Ben will let him get his hands on before someone drags him home so he can get up the next day and do it all over again.

No promises he won't be somehow even more curt with anyone who has to deal with him today.

 Sophie learned her lesson during the Arcana incursion. She'd spent far too much time buried in old tomes. On more than one occasion, she'd had to be carried to bed. So now, she paces herself. She gets the same amount done as she searches in vain for mentions of past magical failures--at least they have jumping off points--but she makes time to take the occasional break and clear her head.

That  still doesn't explain why the 8 of Diamonds is seen outside scrambling up trees.

Curiouser and curioser.

They're not moving until closer to the wedding, and most of this, Zoe thinks, will be given away or put into storage. Her shoes are already being separated into keep and discard piles, some of her clothes, too. Books are going into boxes, and she's tagging the furniture to either be moved from her quarters to the new, shared suite...or into storage. The small set of rooms she'd gotten last year as a new Four of Spades will be cleaned out and reallocated to another Spade.

Which is fine, really. The space is well-decorated (it's not like she could really redecorate Victor's rooms, after all), but she's never really lived there, so it's always had the feel of a showroom. She likes her couch better than Victor's, but that's not a battle even worth starting, so his horrible plaid couch will travel up one floor. She's taking her bed, though, no discussion. It'll be moved up there today, since it's not like she's been sleeping in it.

Not yet, though. Right now, Zoe's sitting on the floor surrounded by boxes with the door wide open. Some of them are taped up, some of them are still open, and she's working through the things to pack and things to give away.

She's going to need to go into storage and get another bookcase, it seems. And possibly a filing cabinet.

If asked, Ben intended to say it was for the children. Which it was, but it was also for him - since somehow the Deck had lasted so many years without some enterprising Scotsman building a golf course. Admittedly, his mini golf course, composed mostly of obstacles that he'd collected from various Diamond storage rooms and barns, was definitely not St. Andrews. But it worked for now.

And you wouldn't want to disappoint the children, would you? It's getting too cold for them to play outside for long hours.

To say she had never left the Deck before would be an utter lie. To say that she had never been away for longer periods of time may be a little closer to the truth, but it's still not enough to explain the feeling this particular return home brings.

But she had promised herself she'd come back, and while she'd initially thought that it would be when she could finally properly step back onto her native soil, she'd found herself missing her home far too much. And really, there was nothing more that they'd planned to do Outside that couldn't be done in their own hospitals-- she may even work through things faster, in fact, now that she was among the people who were her real support group. So, without sending word to anyone back on the Deck and with the aid of some of the former Deckians in the hospital, she got herself sorted and made her way back to the land of her birth.

Now, looking up at the old familiar stones from her chair, she smiles a soft and lasting smile.

Happy December, Deck. Rachel Caustello's come home.

Adrien Fitzgerald is usually seen dressed in only the latest styles. Whether it's jeans, slacks, dress shirts, shoes, he always looks good. Presentable. Not so much the case right now. 

Sitara Fitzgerald doesn't like dresses. Adrien Ftizgerald likes them very much. So Adrien buys them anyway, and in revenge, today, Adrien gets to have umpteen butterfly clips in his hair as he goes about his day. Right now? He's in Town, sitting outside a colorful storefront as Sitara goes inside, oohing at all the legos and trains. He's taking the opportunity to catch up on work - helping Sophie restore the library requires a lot more effort than he thought it would have, but it's important to her. 

She had been told, quietly and privately, to keep an eye out for activity on a few specific accounts. None of them had had any activity yet, which she reported to Katya daily. They were David's accounts, and after her conversation with Amy the day before - it had somehow managed to be more like a conversation than their usual confrontations - Zoe was fairly sure that the rumor was right, and the King of Spades wasn't coming back.

It was strange to think of the Deck without David there, she thought. He'd been King of the Spades for her entire life.

Still, despite the disturbing nature of that thought, it was other thoughts that had Zoe sitting alone and chewing the inside of her lip. She really should have seen this...idea coming. She and her Town family had been a bit more distant since the break with Charlotte, but the Spades had cleared their path to Town after last month's storm a little faster than the Hearts had, and she'd managed to check on her grandmama before her cousins or her uncle Lucien got there. That led, naturally, to Jessica Huntly inviting Zoe to her bungalow for lunch a little more often than she had been in recent months. It had really only been a matter of time before Jessica came up with the idea of a family dinner - sans Charlotte, thankfully. Naturally, Zoe would go, and she'd bring that handsome young man of hers.

And that was the kicker, really. It wasn't that she doubted Victor would be perfectly charming; the start of their relationship should be enough proof for anyone who questioned whether Victor Fox could be extremely charming when he put his mind to it. It was just...well, Hadyn had mentioned that Elisha hadn't been terribly thrilled about command appearances with the Bernards. Beyond that, taking him to the family home?

The only question was which cousin would be a brat and ask Victor when the wedding was. Zoe's money was on Dillon.

It was a good year, actually. Remembrance Day actually fell on Sunday, which meant the silence felt a little deeper, a little more like it reached over the entire nation. It left the soul actually feeling a good deal lighter, to lift one's head at 11:02 and smile at an old friend across from you.

So, as ever, Cadogan's back from his weekend away in a good mood, if a quietly contemplative one. And, as ever, if you want cookies, he's got boxes and boxes from his mother. Mrs Thomas has also sent a few little gifts along--he doesn't tell her much, but some names can't help coming up, like certain little girls and the people who have clearly been forcing him to keep eating--but everyone who happens to even walk past the Ten today?

Getting a cookie.

Seriously. He'll die if he even remotely attempts to eat the number she's shipped back with him. Take a box.

There's a change in the air, and everyone knows what that means:

Winter is coming Shopping Must Happen!

Eden's been out picking up new clothes, accessories, and shoes for the colder seasons. Maybe you've run into her earlier in the day, browsing the racks at one of the boutiques in Town. Maybe you find her later on, trying on some super-sweet heels in the shoe store. Right now, she's sitting outside a café in Town, relaxing over a hot cup of tea and plate of delicious treats. The fruits of her day's efforts are in bundles around her feet, brightly-colored bags and boxes evidence of a morning well-spent. Feel free to join her; with Eden, it's always the more, the merrier!