toasty_fresh (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} toasty_fresh) wrote,@ 2008-07-19 09:43:00 |
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| Entry tags: | chrestomanci, chris/con, christopher, conrad, fanfic, fanfic100, millie, miranda |
Far From the Home I Love (2/2)
I'm really sorry about how late this is. I told to-be-brutally-frank-with-you.blogspot.c
Title: Far From the Home I Love (2/2)
Fandom: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci
Pairing: Chris/Con
Prompt: 044: Circle
Word Count: 1,697
Rating: PG-13 (for Conrad's potty mouth)
Summary: It's the day before Christopher and Conrad's anniversary, and not only does Christopher not have a present, Conrad is not there to recieve it (or not recieve it, as the case may be).
Author's Notes: Chapter 1
At 3 o’clock exactly Conrad Chant shook hands with Mr. Prendergast, nodded to the conductor of inter-world transit in Ludwich, stepped into the middle of the magic circle that had been painted on the floor, and waited to be whisked back to the foyer of Chrestomanci Castle.
And for a long time, nothing happened.
And for a long time, nothing happened.
After five minutes of nothing, Conrad turned to the conductor and said, “I don’t think it’s working.”
The conductor looked back at him and didn’t answer. After a moment of uneasy staring, Conrad realized that the conductor was no longer wearing his smart uniform, but a rather shabby suit. And then Conrad realized that he was no longer standing in the royal transport room in Ludwich, but in what looked like an empty Underground station.
“Bloody hell,” the not-conductor breathed. “Where’d you come from, mister?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Conrad.
-
Well, Conrad, sitting in Hyde Park an hour later, thought dryly, at least I made it to Series 12.
After asking the not-conductor (who seemed to be convinced that Conrad was related to someone named “Harry Potter”) where exactly he was, Conrad had ventured out of the underground station and into the streets. As cars whizzed by and people shouted into cell phones, Conrad had accepted the facts. He was in London, England, Series 12, World B.
Conrad leaned back in his park bench and sighed. Of all places to be stranded, he would be stranded in the one without magic. It was just his (terminally bad) luck. He had tried calling Chrestomanci Castle by bewitching a callbox, but he was horrible at machinery magics and had given up after the first try failed miserably. He wasn’t sure what else to do.
He could, he supposed, summon Christopher with the Chrestomanci spell, but he found himself loath to do so. For one thing, he was not about to stand in the middle of a public place and shout gibberish. It would be embarrassing and, more importantly, probably get him arrested. For another thing, the last time he tried summoning Christopher, he accidentally did it while Christopher was bathing.
That had been a little awkward.
Apart from summoning Christopher and getting someone from the castle to come pick him up, however, Conrad had very few other options. His transportation magic was extremely weak, and he couldn’t trust it on its own. He could try drawing a transportation circle to augment his power, but he doubted he would be able to finish it without help. And what sort of person was going to help a random stranger dressed in funny clothes make chalk drawings in the middle of a park?
For a moment, Conrad considered enlisting the help of the homeless people wandering around, but quickly dismissed the thought. He hadn’t yet sunk that low.
-
Conrad had, however, sunk low enough to employ children. And it did count as employment, because he paid each one of the little horrors £5 for their trouble. Conrad felt like an idiot, crawling around on the ground for half an hour with a bunch of six- and seven-year-olds, but it was worth it, he told himself, it the end.
The circle ended up being all different colors (there wasn’t enough white chalk to go around) and a bit squiggly in some places, but Conrad supposed it would do. He sent the children away with pound notes fisted in their grubby little hands, stood in the center of the circle, and prayed.
-
By six o’clock, Conrad’s circles had sent him to 12D, 12I, and 12G, and he was now sitting on a street corner in 12C, chatting with an Indian boy about how much they hated the French.
“When I got married,” Conrad said, finishing off a bowl of curry and rice he had bought from a street vendor, “my mother-in-law had me go to this French tailor to get my suit.” He frowned at the memory. “It was awful. He had this tiny little mustache and he sneered at me the entire time.”
“French people, they’re always looking down their noses,” the Indian boy, Ajit, said. “Always acting so superior, even to one another.” He shook his head. “You can’t be happy like that.”
“No, indeed,” Conrad said. He put his empty bowl on the curb next to him and sighed. “And you can’t be happy having such tiny little mustaches, either, I shouldn’t think.”
Ajit nodded philosophically before standing up. “Treacle tart?” he asked, pointing to another vendor across the street. Conrad made a face.
“After curry?” he asked. “No thanks.”
Ajit shrugged and jogged over to the vendor. Conrad watched him as he bought a tart and levitated it as he searched for change in his baggy pants. Conrad had meant to give up, to stop asking people to help him draw magic circles and live in New Bombay in 12C for the rest of his life, but Ajit looked seriously talented. More talented than the child labor from 12B, in any case.
And besides, Conrad said to himself, thinking suddenly of Christopher and feeling a well of pain rise in his chest, I don’t really like treacle tart and curry that much, anyway.
“Hey, Ajit,” Conrad called, standing up. Ajit looked up and walked back across the street, munching on his tart.
“Change your mind?” he asked. Conrad grinned and shook his head.
“Do you know anything about transportation circles?”
-
Chrestomanci Castle had been in a panic for officially forty-four minutes.
Those forty-four minutes were not entirely accurate, however, as they didn’t count the ten minutes spent panicking before anyone had even thought of making it official, nor did they count the five minutes of silent panic that had preceded the running-around-the-castle-like-a-headles
“I’m telling you, my dear, he’s fine,” Miranda told Millie serenely, as Millie dialed for the 173rd time. “Conrad can take care of himself.”
“Hello, is this Faye Marley? It is? My name is Millie, and I’m a friend of Conrad Tesdinic-Chant’s. Have you seen him recently? Not since . . . I understand. Thank you. Goodbye.” Millie hung up quickly and flipped through her address book. “Well, I’m glad you’re not worried, Miranda,” she said bitingly as she began dialing again, “but while I have no doubt that Conrad can take care of himself, I care more about having him come home alive than in pieces.” Her words were sarcastic, but she choked on a sob as she began her 174th phone conversation. “Hello? Your Highness? You don’t know me, but . . .”
Miranda rolled her eyes and turned away from Millie. She was firmly convinced that if Conrad was in any kind of real danger, he would do the sensible thing and summon his husband. The fact that he hadn’t summoned Christopher meant that nothing was wrong. She mentioned this to Janet, who had stopped dashing around to grab a cookie.
“I guess,” said Janet doubtfully, eyeing Christopher’s prostrate body. “But what if Conrad can’t summon him? What if he’s lying in a ditch somewhere, unable to move or call for help?”
Millie gave another sob and hung up the receiver. Miranda glared disapprovingly at Janet. She was about to chide the girl for being overly morbid and unnecessarily macabre, when something—someone—fell from somewhere near the ceiling and crashed right through the tea table in front of where Miranda was sitting.
Millie dropped the receiver. Christopher jolted out of his trance. Janet choked on her cookie. Miranda added a little more cream to her teacup and leaned over the groaning body amidst splintered wood and broken china.
“Hello, Conrad,” she said.
-
“Are you sure you’re all right, my dear?” Christopher asked as Conrad, who had been carried from the debris and declared to have no major injuries, rubbed ointment on a cut on his forehead in the large sitting room.
“Of course he’s all right,” Miranda said, pouring tea for Conrad. “If you had only listened to me, you would have known that. When will you learn that Mama is always right?”
“He’s not all right, Mother, he smashed into a tea table,” Christopher said through gritted teeth. “It’s a miracle he wasn’t impaled or something.”
“I’m terribly sorry about that teapot, Christopher,” Conrad said. “I could have sworn I was positioned towards the foyer . . .”
“You can break as many teapots as you like, Con, just as long as the next time you decide to run off to some distant land, you summon me when you get stuck.” Christopher sighed and sat on the couch next to Conrad. “Honestly, what were you thinking?”
Conrad shrugged. “I thought you might be bathing.”
Millie, who had collapsed in the chair opposite them, laughed. “Actually, Christopher, it’s probably a good thing he didn’t summon you,” she said. Christopher looked at her quizzically. “Otherwise, you know, we might not have gotten our shopping done . . .”
“Oh,” Christopher said, suddenly understanding what she meant. “Ohh. You’re right.” He smirked at Conrad. “Wait until you see what I got you, Con,” he said, forgetting his previous worry and putting an arm around Conrad and kissing his cheek. “It’s smashing. You’ll just die.”
Millie giggled. “It really is fabulous,” she said. “You’ll absolutely love it.”
“What?” Miranda said, leaning forward. “What is it? What did you get him?”
Christopher opened his mouth to respond to her, but Conrad cut in. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What are you all talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb, Conrad,” Millie said. Conrad stared at her. “Your anniversary present. Christopher actually got you something this time, can you believe it?”
“Our . . . anniversary?” Conrad, about to drink out of his teacup, stopped dead. “Oh my god,” he said. “I completely forgot.”
