Fights Like The Devil, Dressed As A Man

One morning, Edward awoke from a drunken stupor, blinking in the morning light, only to find Caroline already dressed for the day ahead.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said, then turned and left the room.

---

One night Edward sat in the Livid Brews. ( He'd like to say he was not his usual self, but the sad fact of the matter was that he was. )

[[ nfi, nfb, taken from the Black Flag novelization. tw for alcoholism. ]]

What a scandal it had been: Caroline Scott marrying beneath her would have been cause for gossip enough. That she had spurned Matthew Hague in the process constituted quite a stir, and some time after, Edward wondered if that scandal might ultimately have worked in their favour, because while he steeld himself for retribution, for over a month, he saw nothing of Wilson, heard nothing of Matthew Hague.

In the end, the threat to their marriage came not from outside — not from the Cobleighs, Emmett Scott, Matthew Hague or Wilson. It came from the inside. It came from Edward.

The problem was that he kept returning to his meeting with Dylan Wallace and his promises of riches in the West Indies. He wanted to go and return to Caroline a rich man. He had begun to see it as his only chance of making a success of himself. His only chance of being worthy of her. For, of course, yes, there was the immediate glory, or perhaps stature, of having made Caroline Scott his wife, taking her from beneath the nose of Matthew Hague, but that was soon followed by a kind of... stagnation.

Emmett Scott delivered his cutting blow at the wedding. They should have been grateful, Edward supposed, that he and Caroline’s mother had deigned to attend. But Edward was not at all grateful and he would have preferred it if the pair of them had stayed away. He hated to see his father, cap in hand, bowing and scraping to Emmett Scott, hardly a nobleman after all, just a merchant, separated from them, not by any aristocratic leanings but by money alone.

For Caroline, though, he was glad they came. It wasn’t as if they approved of the marriage, far from it; but at the very least, they weren’t prepared to lose their daughter over it.

Edward overheard her mother — “We just want you to be happy, Caroline” — and knew that she was speaking for herself alone. In the eyes of Emmett Scott he saw no such desire. He saw the look of a man who had been denied his chance to clamber so much higher up the social ladder, a man whose dreams of great influence had been dashed. He came to the wedding under sufferance, or perhaps for the pleasure of delivering his pronouncement in the churchyard after the vows were made.

Emmett Scott had black hair brushed forward, dark, sunken cheeks and a mouth pinched permanently into a shape like a cat’s anus. His face, in fact, wore the permanent expression of a man biting deep into the flesh of a lemon.

Except for this one occasion, when his lips pressed into a thin smile and he said, “There will be no dowry.”

His wife, Caroline’s mother, closed her eyes tightly as though it was a moment she’d dreaded, had hoped might not happen. Words had been exchanged, Edward could guess, and the last of them had belonged to Emmett Scott.

So Edward and Caroline moved into an outhouse on his father’s farm, the day after the wedding. They had appointed it as best they could, but it was still, at the end of the day, an outhouse: packed mud and sticks for the walls, their roof thatch badly in need of repair.

Caroline had been used to a brick-built town house with the life of Bristol all around, servants to boot, her washing, her cooking, every whim attended to. Here she was not rich. She was poor and her husband was poor. With no prospects.

It ate at Edward.

And it kept eating.

[[ nfi, adapted from the Assassin's Creed IV novelization. ]]

"Matthew is going to ask me to marry him tomorrow morning."

Those were the words that made Edward's heart stop.

He was determined not to lose her. Because of his love for her, because he could think of nothing but her, because when they were together he savoured every moment; every word, every gesture that Caroline made was like nectar to him, everything about her, every curve and contour, her scent, her laugh, her refined manners, her intelligence. It was like no infatuation he had ever had-- no other girl, not his long-lasting obsession with Isabelle... even his courtship of Cosette had been easy. It had not burned like this, had not pierced so deeply.

All of this ran through Edward's mind as he made a terrifyingly rash decision: he dropped to one knee and took her hand, because what she was telling him, perhaps it wasn’t an invitation but a farewell, and if it was, well at least his humiliation would not be known far and wide, confined to the birds in the trees and the cows that stood in the fields watching them with sleepy eyes and chewing ruminatively.

“Caroline, will you marry me?” he said.

Edward held his breath. During their courtship, every meeting they’d had, every stolen kiss they’d shared, he’d been haunted by a feeling of not believing his luck. It was as though a great joke was being played on him — he half expected Tom Cobleigh to come leaping out of the shadows snorting with laughter. And if not that — if not some vengeful, practical joke at his expense — then perhaps he was merely a diversion for Caroline, a final fling, before she applied herself to her true calling, her duty. Surely she would say no.

“Ah, Edward,” she smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

In most romances, that would be the end of it, wouldn't it?

But that wasn't Edward's life.

[[ taken and adapted from the ACIV novelization. tbc! ]]

Fandom had, for some time, put ideas of ambition and future in Edward's head, like perhaps he really was intended for more. After the events of the past few weeks, however, he had began to wonder — perhaps his life was here, in the beer suds, around the sloppy grins of easy women with hardly any teeth and even fewer morals, and by the time of his thirtieth summer hauling wool to Bristol market he'd be numbed to it; he'd have forgotten whatever hopes he had of one day seeing the world on his own strength and by his own choices.

( But one sunny afternoon, things began to turn around. )

[[ taken and adapted from the Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag novelization. NFB due to distance! ]]

Edward woke up to the sound of screaming.

In a rush he dragged his breeches on and hopped out of the room with his shirt unbuttoned, still pulling his boots on over bare feet. He knew that scream. It was his mother. Moments later her screams had died down to a sob, replaced by his father’s cursing. The soft cursing of a man who had been proved correct.

After Edward's fight at the Auld Shillelagh he had returned inside the tavern in order to do something about his cuts and bruises. To numb the pain, so to speak. What better way of doing that than with a drink or two? Thus, when he’d eventually arrived home he’d been in a bit of a state. By which he meant “state,” as in a man who looked as though he’d been in the wars — which he had, with bruises to his face and his neck, and his clothes ragged and torn. But also “state,” as in a man who had had far too much to drink.

( The Silence of the Lambs, 18th century edition. )

[[ nfb, nfi, taken and adapted from the novelization of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. mentions of animal cruelty and death under the cut. ]]

Edward's mother Linette had been pleased as anything to see him alive again, and while his father Bernard's reaction had been rather more muted, the first few weeks after his return had been bliss. Everyone in Hatherton, the nearby town - a bit closer than Bristol, though not by much - had been chattering about it, and many congratulations had been heard at the farm. But such relief could not last long, especially not in lambing season. There was work to be done.

Once, Edward may have felt a deep longing for next month, when shearing season began - his time to shine. Now even the chance to ply his trade as a salesman felt lesser, next to the memories he had of Fandom Island. Not that he had a great deal of time to think about it. Life during lambing season was harsh. He'd find himself in the barns by sun-up, sore head and all, needing to see if any ewes had lambed during the night.

It was the case again this morning, and Edward led the ewe and her child across the way to one of the smaller pens. His father was already waiting there, guiding the ewe into the lambing jug. There, the most mind-numbing part of Edward's work took over: cleaning feeders, filling them up again, changing the hay and the water.

Only one thing had changed. His mother was no longer the only one of them who had any letters. Every now and again, Edward would get a break, picking up their ledger and dutifully writing down the details of the recent births in small terms, so his mother could understand it. There was one small joy about it all, which was watching his parents go about the work together. He'd never seen another two people so in love who had such little need to make a display of the fact. It was good for the soul.

But by the time evening rolled about, Edward was grateful to get out of it. The work numbed his mind, and after two years of schooling, it left him with a greater pit in his innards than he'd ever imagined he'd have.

He missed Cosette, as well, but he had no way to contact her. Sometimes he'd take a moment to settle and work on a letter, but never for long. Other things awaited: to be specific, the tavern. It was his only distraction, and after the day's work, he was more than pleased to be heading down the path into town again.

Jaysus, but he missed Fandom Island.

[[ establishy. some of the above taken from the novelization of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. ]]

All right. 'Twas the end of the semester, and Edward would not be signing up for further classes from here on in. But as he had no interest in leaving the island - at least not until he had something lined up in the modern world, if they returned to it - and he wanted to earn a rather grander wage, he was browsing the class list regardless. Surely one of these teachers would still need an assistant?

Professor Lecter had seemed agreeable when he attended the man's classes, though he knew precious little about music. Or... hm. Professor Parker? Did she have another class this semester? Whatever she came up with had to be perfect...

Aye, the summer would shape up to be just fine.

[[ ed's last post on fandom for a while, though he has no idea. open! ]]

"Gnghghghghhhh," Edward said intelligibly, to the sun.

"Nrghghglkjgk," he added, a minute later. The sun continued to behave irrationally regardless.

"Mghghk," he sighed. The sun made a point of jabbing him repeatedly in the eyeballs.

He yanked the blankets over his head. It seemed like a sound compromise.

[[ ... can be open, yes. don't drink pan-galactic gargle blasters, children! ]]

Edward couldn't rightly say he'd thought he'd regret putting up the frills for Christmas, but he was swiftly turning back on that opinion. He'd caught the image of old, hungry holidays past spent bent over in a church pew several times yesterday. And while those memories had become a thing of the past, today brought whole new other surprises.

Some weren't so bad - bloody hell, in some he seemed to be living in the lap of luxury. In others, he saw himself walking about in strange clothes, blue and white, with a hood; like something a dandy would wear, except somehow more dangerous. There were redheads and raven-haired beauties and a large black fellow with scars on his face in others.

But the one that troubled him was this one: himself, bent over, rotting away in what looked like the worst bloody prison cell the devil himself had shat out.

He held it in his hand as he sat upon his bed, studying it. Perhaps there was some secret to it, or some meaning. Whatever it was, it left him unsettled.

[[ open! ]]

"No, but I'm tellin' you," Edward said. "This tavern's something else."

It would have to be something else, if simply for the fact he'd been leading poor Anders and Nathan through some unfortunately-smelling tunnels for the past ten minutes or so.

"Best ale I've tasted here so far, it'll put some hair on your chests, which God knows you badly need."

This was going to go... well.

[[ for anders and nathan! ]]