Alexander Pierce-Beales
March 18, 2020 9:51 PM
Family is a sore subject. [tag Nathaniel] by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Months had gone by since Alexander's world turned upside down, and he was beginning to get over the motion sickness of it all. There wasn't much to do at Sonora other than classes, but that was just as well for him because there hadn't been anything at all to do at the orphanage. At Sonora, there were at least halfway decent people, a few clubs, and some cool stuff to look at. It was far far better than anything he'd experienced before, and that meant it was time to accept that this could be his real life now. This could be home, inasmuch as anywhere fit that term.He'd been in the library studying for basically everything - he really should spend more time focusing on homework and less time people watching or drawing, but the latter two were so much more interesting - when he'd begun to wonder about all the books around him. There were hundreds, if not thousands, and they seemed to span every era of written history, judging by the state of their covers. Alexander wasn't a big reader, but he had gone to the library in town or at school sometimes for comic books and graphic novels, and those were okay. He wasn't sure whether he'd find such a thing here - it sort of surprised him that he hadn't thought to look yet - but he did wonder whether he'd find another thing.
The library he'd been to in town had had an entire section of books dedicated to war records, marriage records, death records, work histories . . . it was a section marked "Genealogy" and it had taken Alexander a long time before he was willing to step into those aisles. The books smelled old and dusty, like the names they hid in their pages. As it turned out, "Mason" was a pretty common last name, with deep historical roots that made it almost impossible to tell which people were ancestors of his. He had left disappointed, not having found anything conclusive. However, he had thought it was odd that he'd been born - to his knowledge - at Harborview Medical Center and yet there were no records of him being born there. Sure, the library didn't just keep stacks of birth certificates for living people laying around, but he'd gone from there to the hospital itself. They hadn't been able to find him either.
He asked the staff at the orphanage and they didn't have any records for him at all. They were one of the few places that still allowed anonymous "baby dumpings" as Alexander thought of them, and he sort of hated them for it. At the same time, it was probably good that he could be given up anonymously rather than just left somewhere random. The orphanage couldn't even say for sure that his name was Alexander Mason, except that that's what a small card in his bassinet had read when he'd been left there. It had been done by hand but long since lost; if Alexander had ever had anything from his parents, he didn't anymore. Just him and Barnabus against the world. Except maybe it didn't have to be.
Alexandra was the first person to be kind to him, but Nathaniel Mordue was the second. The prefect with sad, tired eyes and a drawn expression had taken the time to be nice to a first year Teppenpaw, and that meant he must be a good person. Certainly he'd offered Alexander more than most people in his whole life had. Alexander promptly tucked his books and Barnabus back into his bookbag and left the library, heading for the Teppenpaw Common Room. He wasn't exactly sure where to find a prefect on a Sunday afternoon, but he supposed the Common Room was as good a place as any to start.
The walk back felt drawn out. Every step was another opportunity to decide to go back, or else to go forward but not with the same purpose. He didn't have to do this. Except he did, because he had always had to do this. If there was any chance, however small, that this strange world would know something about him that his own world did not, then he had to try. Although maybe this strange world was his world now. That was a scary thought.
The Common Room was as comfortable as ever and Alexander was glad that it wasn't full. He thought about depositing his items in his room, but then he'd feel awkward sitting in the Common Room with nothing to do. There was a big comfy seat open, and a second nearby enough to have conversation between the two without having to shout and without feeling like he'd have to whisper. He'd made a beeline for it and established the space as his own territory by sitting in one chair and putting his bag in the other. He moved Barnabus out of the way and reached back inside his bag, pulling a book out at random. Charms. Sure, why not? He planned to work on homework - ugh - until Nathaniel arrived. Luckily, he didn't have to wait long. He'd tucked Barnabus back into his bag, which was just as well for a conversation like this, and had just found his place in the Charms textbook when he caught sight of the prefect.
"Hey," he said softly, if not urgently. He snapped shut his book and leaned out of his chair to help catch Nathaniel's attention. "Could I . . . do you have a minute? Could I talk to you about something?" He felt fidgety but this was no time for nerves. Also it would be way more awkward to back out now. He leaned over and moved his bag out of the other seat, a clear sign that he wanted Nathaniel to sit own, and then sat with a guarded expression, waiting to see what the older boy would do, and hoping desperately he wouldn't just turn around and walk back out the way he'd come in.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Family is a sore subject. [tag Nathaniel]
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Nathaniel Mordue
March 19, 2020 3:27 PM
That's an understatement. by Nathaniel Mordue
Sunday, for Nathaniel, was generally a homework sort of day: finishing any assignments he had been too listless or even, occasionally, actually occupied to do during the week, and going over assignments he had already completed, fretting over whether they were good enough or rewriting lists because he didn't like the way they looked in the handwriting instead of doing anything to actually reduce the amount of work piling up, patiently biding its time until it was large enough to violently impose its existence on his consciousness and send him into a meltdown.On the bright side, these meltdowns usually gave him a rush of energy, and then he actually got things done. On the cloudy side, he did those things in a rush, while feeling decidedly wrung out - not exactly a state to yield perfect results when it was combined with working until two in the morning to get as caught up as possible. Then, naturally, the morning came, and he was actually sleep deprived on top of the now-routine fogginess that stuck to him like a soaked woolen cloak most days, which meant he worked even more slowly, which let things pile up further....
He kept this to himself. It was not anyone else's problem, and he didn't want to worry Sylvia or seem weaker than he probably already did in front of Jeremy. He drank coffee at all hours and refused to let himself stop until he got it all done, and so far, he'd had nothing worse than a lot of stomachaches from it, which he could deal with. Would deal with. It was fine.
Just a little longer, he thought wearily as he shuffled through the entrance dance, the grim prospect of shutting himself back up to work before him. Just a little longer, and then he would be done with CATS...though summer had its own problems, but he could get through that, too, as long as he didn't think too much about it and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. It was going to be fine. He was fine.
"Hey."
He looked at the first year, wondering for a moment if he was in fact the person being addressed - he had the idea that most of his housemates disliked him, or else knew him as that guy who had a nervous breakdown last year. He recognized this one, though - it was the boy from the feast. Alexander; easy to remember, as that was his uncle's name, too. Protector of Mankind, he thought it meant; he hoped that this Alexander did a better job of that when he had a family than Alexander Mordue ever had....
"Ah - of course," he said, remembering he was a prefect. He shuffled over to where the younger Teppenpaw was sitting. "How can I help you?" he asked politely.
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Nathaniel Mordue
That's an understatement.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
March 19, 2020 4:46 PM
Understated is my middle name. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Growing up, there had been an older boy Alexander had known in Seattle. His name was Michael, and he was in and out of homes for years. Eventually, he just aged out of the system. Alexander distinctly remembered sitting on Michael's bed as the older boy packed his few belongings and forced a smile to hide his sad eyes. He'd been loved and let go of so many times that goodbyes shouldn't have been so hard for him anymore, but usually he wasn't the one initiating them. Alexander had never been able to forget the look in Michael's eye and it had been a big reason he had decided to work so hard at being a nicer person himself. If people who had lost everything - or never had anything in the first place - could be kind, then Alexander certainly should be able to.Nathaniel reminded Alexander of Michael. It wasn't that they really looked alike, but they had the same look in their eyes. Or at least, that's what Alexander thought. He didn't know Nathaniel well enough to make such assumptions. Perhaps it said more about him than the prefect that tired eyes and bags born of sleep deprivation said "suffering" to Alexander, where they might have only said "exams" to anyone else.
Alexander blinked and looked down at his hands, still clutching his Charms book. He was in Arizona, not Washington, and he was with Nathaniel, not Michael. He probably wouldn't ever be with Michael again and there was no use bringing all those memories back just now. When he looked up again, his inside walls were back up and he was ready to focus on the present.
"At the feast . . . we talked about finding people. And . . . ". Alexander thought of all the things he'd need to say to explain everything. Except he never told anyone everything, so he did a quick mental inventory and sorted the need-to-knows from the may-need-to-knows from the doesn't-need-to-knows. "I wondered if there are genealogy records kept here. Or if there are magic hospitals I can write to if I have a question about . . . stuff. I don't know who my parents are, but I thought maybe they were magic, too." He said the last with such practiced nonchalance that it almost sounded like it didn't hurt. "I don't know where to begin and I wondered if you might be able to help me?"
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Understated is my middle name.
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Nathaniel Mordue
March 19, 2020 8:53 PM
I'm sure there'd be a story behind a name like that.... by Nathaniel Mordue
I don't know who my parents are.Nathaniel tried not to stare in surprise. How...how did one not know who their parents were, or had been? It was possible to not have parents, or to wish someone was not one of one's parents, but just to...not know? How did he have a name, if he didn't have parents?
He thought about his life. What would it have been like, he wondered, not to have known who his parents were? He had spent almost his entire life - at the very least, since he was nine years old - being very careful to avoid any behavior that he thought might at all resemble his father's. He had worked hard to please his mother even before that, for as long as he could remember, because he had known she was often ill and unhappy and he had wanted to help her. Without those forces...how would he have ever decided things? How could he have avoided all the pitfalls and traps he was heir to, genetically?
"I...uh." Nathaniel cleared his throat. "I suppose I could - help you figure out which magical hospital is closest to where you live," he said. "And you could try contacting them. I...there are genealogies, for some of our older families - older magical families - but I'm not sure how useful they would be to you without knowing where to start," he said. Then, in a spasm of emotion he regretted even before he finished the sentence, "I know exactly what my father's name was, but that hasn't helped much with figuring out where he is now."
He grimaced, running a hand over his face. "Never mind - the hospital idea, that's probably easier to work with than trying to figure out things from the genealogy books." Why, after all, would someone from a good family - good enough to make the books - not know exactly who they were? Families who ended up in the genealogies were not known for losing track of members, at least not so young that he'd have no recollection of his family. They could disown their children no older than he was now, but why would anyone repudiate an infant? At least unless its mother had got it outside of her marriage, but then, such a child would not be part of the family - but then - what would he do if -
No, that wasn't something he was going to think about. Not least because he had a responsibility here. "Which state are you from?" he asked.
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Nathaniel Mordue
I'm sure there'd be a story behind a name like that....
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
March 25, 2020 4:04 PM
Wouldn't I love to know it. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
The wizarding world only kept genealogies for people who mattered, and without even knowing who he was, Alexander knew he didn't matter enough to be in any of them. He tried not to let that hurt, but it did. A lot. So he tried not to let it show. Nathaniel seemed to be having a similar struggle about something to do with his father, and Alexander relaxed a little bit. Alexander was wholly an outcast in two worlds, but at least he wasn't the only one who couldn't have what he wanted. He was sad for Nathaniel, but also felt a little better about himself. Even with a magic stick in his pocket, a wizard had limits.Nathaniel's choice of words was interesting to Alexander, and he wasn't sure whether he meant that he supposed he could help but didn't really want to, or he supposed that finding a hospital might be helpful. That wasn't something Alexander knew enough about to guess at; these sorts of social interactions were foreign to him in any world.
As it turned to more solid, practical questions, the conversation stumped Alexander again. He could answer the question Nathaniel was posing, but he wasn't actually sure how accurate his answer would be. "I live in Washington. They said I was born at Harborview, in Seattle, but I don't actually know how they would have known that." He didn't have a birth certificate and the hospital didn't seem to have any record of him. So who was to say he was even born in Washington at all, let alone Seattle? "I was dropped off at a group home in Seattle. A card was left that had 'Alexander Mason' on it, so they think it was my name, but I don't know."
Alexander's head drooped and he tried to ignore the tears that came to his eyes, and certainly not to let them come out. "It's probably hopeless, huh?" he mumbled, not able to make eye contact again. He didn't want to see Nathaniel give up hope, too. Not like he had. Not like everyone always had.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Wouldn't I love to know it.
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Nathaniel Mordue
March 25, 2020 8:54 PM
I can see why. by Nathaniel Mordue
Nathaniel tended to assume that whatever family troubles other people had were most likely small potatoes compared to his. Most of them, he assumed, had fathers. Most of them were not breaking their own moral codes by acknowledging - however privately - the continued existence of their mothers. Most of them didn't feel they were constantly failing their brothers no matter what they did....For most of them, this was probably all true. For this kid, however, it was not. It was very, very much not. Nathaniel knew he looked astonished by the time Alexander was done with his recital of the sorry facts of his life.
"Great Merlin," he muttered. "That's appalling. It ought to be criminal. For someone to just - you don't just do something like that." Nathaniel was not entirely sure what a group home was, but in context, it sounded like his parents had completely abandoned him. The fact his name had been divined from a card made it sound like he'd been literally left on a doorstep, not even rejected in a formal manner. An infant, on a doorstep. One thing, perhaps, if one sometimes had to make sacrifices - but one did it as properly as possible. And not to someone who had been so utterly incapable of taking care of himself as to not know his own name for sure. Nathaniel had thought his father was a worthless specimen for abandoning him when he was nine - already more than old enough to know who and what he was, what was important, what was right and what was wrong. This was a whole different level.
"Ah - sorry. Seattle, huh. I'm from Oregon," he added, desperate to change the subject slightly as he realized the boy looked despondent. Not that one of them being from Washington and the other from Oregon meant much. They might as well have been from different planets, no matter how close together their home states were. All they really had in common was weather and whatever traits got someone put into Teppenpaw. "There aren't that many of us around there - there might be two hospitals for our kind in the northwest altogether. I can check. You can write to administrators, explain your situation and ask if there were any boys born there in the year you were born - if you know what time of year - who were unaccounted for, I suppose? I can write you a cover letter if you like, see if the name Mordue still carries any weight." He doubted that this plan would produce any results more and more the longer he talked about it, but perhaps the idea would cheer the kid up a bit. In that same spirit, he added, "whatever the result, and for whatever it's worth - you're probably worth ten of the whole lot of them put together." He resisted the urge to tug on his collar. "I don't like people who abandon their responsibilities," he explained. "And especially not people who don't value their families, if they're worth valuing." Which did lead to treacherous thoughts, but he was an expert at suppressing those now.
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Nathaniel Mordue
I can see why.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
March 27, 2020 3:19 PM
It's rough. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Nathaniel was angry on his behalf, and that was pretty cool. Alexander couldn't really think of anyone else who had ever done that before. The prefect was already held in high esteem but went up considerably just then and Alexander actually managed to find that he had some modicum of hope after all. Maybe it was irrational but at least it wasn't unfounded; his family had done something awful."Thanks," Alexander said quietly, putting as much gratitude as he could into that one word. "I don't know for sure that they abandoned me. They could've died or something." Again, he said it with perfect nonchalance. It hurt to think about, but it was also almost easier than thinking they'd just left him. Plus, it wasn't as if he hadn't spent the last eleven plus years thinking about possible scenarios.
Alexander gaped when Nathaniel offered to write a letter for him. He wasn't sure what kind of world this was where the last name of a teenager would bear enough weight to pull some strings but he wouldn't have to figure it out by trial and error if people were going to be this nice. "Thank you," he stammered. "That means so much to me."
The last word Nathaniel uttered made Alexander almost want to retreat again. If his parents weren't dead, then either they had done something awful and abandoned their valuable little baby, or they had not done anything awful because Alexander wasn't valuable. It was a possibility he had considered many times before but had ultimately chocked up to fear. All babies were valuable, regardless of any objective measure, right? But maybe that wasn't the case . . .
"How do you know if someone's worth valuing?" he murmured, searching Nathaniel's eyes in earnest. Please, whatever deities were listening, let there be something like reassurance there.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
It's rough.
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Nathaniel Mordue
March 27, 2020 8:04 PM
At least you don't know for sure you'd hate at least one of your parents? by Nathaniel Mordue
If Alexander had picked up a hammer and slammed it into Nathaniel's chest, he could not have issued much more of a blow than he did with a simple question. He blinked, taken aback, and felt his good sense trying to point his thoughts down a path he very much did not want to look down....When he had been nine years old, the world had been very simple. His father had been a villain, and his mother had been a wronged saint. He had clung to that idea for years - but then last year had happened. Last year, when he had been forced to see his mother in a new light. Last year, when everyone he had ever loved except - technically, by default, assuming his father was still alive - Dad had betrayed him, one after another after another. His mother had betrayed him with Elphwick, his uncle had betrayed him by trying to force him to make impossible decisions, Jeremy had betrayed him by being willing to walk away without so much as a backward glance, Sylvia had betrayed him by saying that even her love was, in the end, conditional....
That last one had hurt the most, he thought. His mother had done something that horrified him, but she had not indicated that she would only continue to love him if he condoned her behavior. She knew perfectly well that he could not and would not condone her behavior, but she had never so much as suggested the possibility that she might utterly reject him because of that. Sylvia, though, had. Sylvia had given him an ultimatum. Maybe she would have kept it - maybe she wouldn't have. He didn't know. But she had asked, and that had been the worst thing of all, because before she had said that, he had assumed she and his mother were both people whose feelings for him were as reliable as his own feelings toward them.
The look in his green eyes was not reassuring. The look in his eyes, before he squeezed them shut for a moment, was one of equal parts fear and despair. Then, however, he shoved his feelings down again, though he still looked slightly more drawn than usual.
"What they do," he managed. "What they do once they're old enough to hold accountable for their actions." He began to recover some of his equilibrium as, with a conscious effort, he pushed away the details of his family life. "You take care of your family, when you can. Take care of the people who can't take care of themselves. Keep your word. Be strong. Be honorable. That's important. That's the difference between being a man and not," he added, with a touch of heat at the end. "Wherever you came from - whatever your parents did or didn't do - that's something you decide, for yourself. Does that make sense?"
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Nathaniel Mordue
At least you don't know for sure you'd hate at least one of your parents?
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