Work Text:
I. A Crow at the Window
Jenny is halfway through packing yet another box when a pecking sound against her bedroom window breaks her concentration. She sighs as she sets down the plate she’s been wrapping and moves towards the noise. She’d be lying if she said she isn’t at least a little glad for the interruption. Sorting through thirty odd years of life and choosing what to keep and what to get rid of has proven to be a daunting sort of task. Especially now that the kids are no longer in Port Townsend; Crystal was very eager to get her life back in order, the boys just about ready to return to their cases—and Jenny isn’t thinking about the fourth kid that should be with them, finding a place in the world, happy and alive.
There is a black crow sitting on the ledge just outside her window. Its feathers are puffed to stand the chill, and the beak it’s pecking the window with is dusted white with fine snow. Jenny opens the window with a smile she can’t quite control. This isn’t the first time this particular crow has come to visit in the past few weeks. Jenny has come to expect his presence every few days, though he’s not constant enough for her to accurately predict when he’ll show up. She knows his name is Monty, and that he was once Esther’s familiar, because the third or fourth time he showed up Charles and Edwin were helping her move some furniture around. Charles’ rant about betrayal and magic and pain was impressive, but Jenny couldn’t give more than a general impression if asked about what he said. She could, however, talk about the dejected look on Monty’s face as Charles growled at him, or about the way his feathers seemed to deflate around him, leaving him looking sad and pathetic, on the other side of the window while the boys stormed out through the mirror.
Jenny hasn’t been able to make herself shoo the crow away. She gets a strange sense of kinship, watching him, alone and longing in a town that suddenly feels too big and too empty, expected to pick up the pieces of the only life he ever knew with no one to show him how. Esther was a bitch, prickly and mean like a fairy tale villain. Few things have made more sense in Jenny’s life than finding out Esther was an evil witch, kidnapping little girls to keep her youth. Really, if anyone in town could get up to something like that, it would have been Esther, no competition. She imagines that someone who acted like Esther did in public couldn’t have been much more pleasant in private, and who knows how many years Monty had to endure her company. Jenny remembers what it was like, cowering under the sheer anger of her father’s words, under his temper and his cruelty, until one day he was suddenly dead. He left her with the house and the shop and no idea of how to go on from there, running on leftover adrenaline and not much more. She thinks she sees some of that, reflected in Monty’s sad little eyes, though that may well just be her projecting old traumas.
Monty flaps his wings happily when she opens the window for him, and jumps inside with a soft caw. Jenny shakes her head and steps back to continue her packing. Monty flies up onto the kitchen counter and puffs his feathers until he looks like a fluffy ball. She chuckles and gets back to work. In a little while, once the current box is done, she will take a break, make herself a sandwich and fish some leftovers for Monty to peck on. She no longer has the meat, her shop still sitting in tatters a few floors below them, but the crow doesn’t seem to mind, or at least hasn’t complained about it yet. They will eat together and then Jenny will get back to work while Monty perches around until the weather grows too cold for her to keep the window open, and she will think of nothing but the remaining tasks for the day and the comfort of Monty’s quiet company by her side.
II. A Cat in an Alleyway
“Jenny Green,” calls a deep voice from the far end of the supposedly empty alley.
The voice startles her badly enough that she almost drops a bag full of debris on her foot. When she looks up, she sees no one but a lone cat, sitting regally on the dumpster lid, with perfectly arranged fur, as if meticulously groomed for hours, and an elegant tail resting on top of carefully settled front paws. The cat blinks when their gazes meet, and something in those eyes makes Jenny’s mind recoil. They seem too aware, too knowing, and a part of her dislikes them instinctively—the most primal part, the one that still refuses the existence of ghosts and witches and magic. And talking cats, apparently, because it’s becoming increasingly evident that it was the cat who called her name.
“Cat got your tongue?” the cat asks, mouth twisting in a gesture that would surely be a smirk if a cat’s face could bend like that. When Jenny just breathes through the realisation that a cat is talking to her. The cat groans and jumps off the dumpster, shifting in midair into a man with hair just as perfectly slicked back as the fur on his cat form was. His shoes make a wet sound against the slush of half melted snow. “Tough crowd today, huh?”
Jenny rolls her eyes, finally managing to get her mind under control once more. She’s seen the man before, she thinks, though she can’t quite place him. His voice is familiar, at the very least, in a distant sort of way. Maybe she’s heard him speak, never to her directly, but the sound is in her thoughts, nonetheless, as a far off memory that smells like sea salt and canned fish.
“Can I help you?” she asks, eyeing the man wearily from the spot where she’s still standing. The man scoffs, sauntering towards her with the same grace and poise a cat would have.
“I believe you might be the one in need of help,” he tells her, waving a careless hand towards the trash bag she’s still clutching tightly in her hands.
Jenny has half a mind to tell him to get lost. A strange man in an alleyway who knows her name and is interested in what she’s currently doing sounds like the perfect setup for a murder attempt, and she’s frankly had enough of that for a lifetime. There’s something in the man’s eyes, though, now that he’s close enough for her to detail them; a slight glint that makes her think of a cat abandoned in the middle of a rainstorm, a longing for a comfort that is now long gone. It reminds her of Monty, waiting at her window for the past to change—it reminds her of herself, marking off the days before her trip on a glittery calendar she stole from a room that will forever feel too empty.
“There are more plastic bags inside,” she tells him, almost without conscious input.
The man’s mouth twists into a self satisfied smile, and he marches in the direction of the shop without another word. Jenny sighs and finally throws her bag in the dumpster. In a moment, she will go back inside and laugh at the sight of the man wrinkling his nose at the mess and the work. He will help, regardless, and together clean up will go much faster. The afternoon will slip by her in between terrible gossip and hard work, and by the end of it she will realize her mind has stopped worrying about what has happened or what is yet to pass. She will treasure that, more that she will care to admit, and nothing will shatter that for her, not even the man introducing himself as the Cat King right before disappearing down the street.
III. A Walrus at the Seashore
Jenny’s whole life fits inside eleven medium sized boxes, three large ones, two suitcases and a backpack. That’s all the space that she occupies in the world, and she can’t help feeling a little grim about it. True, she’s let go of a lot of things, big things that she couldn’t transport easily and didn’t want to burden Charles’ magic bag with, and old things that remind her of her life before her father’s death, but the fact remains. The day she closes the last of the boxes coincides with the day she signs the shop and the house over to its new owners, and the combination of both events makes her fingers curl up and her shoulders tense. She decides it’s best to take a break before she calls the moving service to start taking her stuff away. It’ll be better like this, better to just breathe before returning to that house that is legally no longer hers, barren and echoing without any of her things left around.
She finds herself at the seashore by the lighthouse without quite meaning to. It’s been a while since she last came this way. Running a butcher shop on her own is busy work, and what little free time she used to get from it was usually spent unwinding at home. This afternoon, she’s evidently not the only one who’s picked this specific spot to take a breather. It makes sense, she supposes, with the warm spring afternoon they’ve had.
“Little Jenny Green,” Tragic Mick calls out to her, smiling from the high rock he’s sitting on. “Not so little anymore.”
He looks much the same as he used to look when Jenny was a little girl, hiding after school at his shop so she wouldn’t have to spend so much time at home. She stopped doing it the day her father found her there and went into a rage, and never really dared to go inside the shop again, even after he died, the safety of the place completely ruined. She’s seen Tragic Mick a handful of times since that day, but she’s always remembered that, for a time, he meant protection in a way that very few things ever have.
“Time passes,” she says, feeling old and jaded all of a sudden.
Tragic Mick hums his ascent and pats the rock next to him. Jenny, with nothing better to do, accepts the offer. They sit side by side in silence for a long time, until the sun begins to set and Monty flies down to land on her shoulder. Tragic Mick smiles and fishes out a saltine for the crow, who takes it happily.
“The town will be better now, without Esther around,” Tragic Mick says. Monty stops eating for only a moment before nodding his head. “I was sad to hear it came at the cost of young Niko’s life. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It’s been hard,” Jenny says without really meaning to, and feels her throat begin to close almost immediately. She’s spent the past few months trying not to think about Niko, about her death and the empty space she left behind, that she doesn’t know how to deal with the ball of grief that has formed inside of her, other than by shoving it deeper. “Actually, I’d prefer to talk about almost anything else.”
Monty finishes his saltine and makes a soft cooing noise, nuzzling against her cheek in an attempt to comfort her. She leans against the touch more than she would like to admit and lets her fingers graze his feathers in thank you. Tragic Mick makes an understanding sound and sets his gaze on the sea below them.
“Did I ever tell you, I was once a walrus?”
He had, she thinks, back when she used to hide in his shop. She never thought it was anything other than an adult playing make-believe to entertain her. She thinks, now, that maybe he really did mean it when he talked of his time as a creature of the sea. Jenny will pass the evening like this, listening to his story, to the rush of the waves and to the crow’s gentle cooing. She will let the time slip around them before she forces herself to get back to the too empty house, and she will let the words of fantastic stories drown out the pain of thoughts she has been doing her very best to avoid. It will be, all in all, something close to the evening of relaxation she was looking for when she set off earlier.
IV. A Menagerie at the Dock
Jenny locks the door to what used to be her home with a sigh. The backpack on her shoulders feels like it could drag her down, burdened by the weight of the last of her belongings. Her hand is tight on the handle of her suitcase as she sets the key down on the spot she and the new owners agreed upon. She’s trying very hard not to think about anything; not the lingering fear or the uncertainty or the persistent sensation that she’s leaving a part of herself behind with the house.
The Cat King steps out from the shadows as she begins walking. He’s been coming by every once in a while to help with clean up and the last few details. Jenny would be lying if she said she wasn’t thankful for the extra hands—or paws, sometimes, depending on his mood. When she reaches him, the Cat King offers her his elbow with a shallow bow that makes her smile.
“Are you ready to go, then?” he asks.
“As ready as I can be,” she tells him and loops their arms together.
They walk like that, arm in arm and followed by an army of cats. The Cat King keeps up a steady monologue about the latest town gossip, and Jenny listens more to the sound of his voice than to his words. She hopes he won’t mind. Her thoughts are too scattered to pay proper attention, busy as they are circling around the fact that she’s never actually left Port Townsend. It’s hard not to feel like she’s throwing her life down the drain with this trip, even if there’s really not much left of her life here for her to rescue.
At the dock, Tragic Mick is waiting for them, Monty perched on his shoulder. He smiles when he sees them, opening his arms wide. Jenny has never been one for physical contact, really, but she accepts the hug, the comfort, gladly.
“Don’t be nervous,” Tragic Mick whispers in her ear. “The sea is calm. It will be kind to you.”
Monty flaps his wings when she steps back, and though it feels like it comes from nowhere, she gets the feeling he’s telling her the flight to London will be good, too. Jenny doesn’t think they can promise her that, but she appreciates the gesture nonetheless.
Aboard the ferry, a man in uniform calls for the passengers to board. The Cat King offers her his arm once more and escorts her up, followed closely by Tragic Mick and Monty.
“Be safe, Little Jenny Green,” Tragic Mick says, wrapping his arms around her once more.
He holds out a soapstone bird when they separate, and Jenny takes it carefully. It feels heavy in her hands, not just because of the material. Heavy with something that might just be magic. Monty caws and flies to her shoulder, pecking carefully at her hair and nuzzling against her cheek. She pets his back, coos her goodbyes against his head. The Cat King rolls his eyes and calls for Monty.
“Time to go,” he says with a lazy, almost uninterested wave. Jenny still catches a gleam of care in his eye, though she doesn’t call him out on it. He is very much like a cat sometimes.
She stands by the railing and watches as the three of them leave the ferry and stand back on the dock, surrounded by cats.
Jenny will remain by the railing until the dock disappears from view. She will wave at the three friends that came to say goodbye, and will try not to mourn her old life too much. She will see, just for a second, the gleam of white hair on the dock, and will think it nothing more than a product of her nerves and the late hour. She will leave Port Townsend, knowing she has friends back home, and memories worth treasuring. And perhaps, she will not be quite as scared as she was some weeks before.