Let me know if you mind (not that I’m likely to replace it, but you may complain as you like), but I am re-gifting for you an outline I made up already.
It’s hard to know which moment to begin this story. Is it with the clever and *hungry* young woman - let us designate her, for this moment, as “Kate” - torn between the idea of a lover almost freed and the smooth, unfamiliar telephone voice promising her everything, *everything*, in exchange for one last job?
Or the blue eyed boy practising slight of hand tricks in an empty room? Is this your card, your coin, your wallet. He’s never going to be a magician, but it’s good training for quick, nimble fingers, and the razzle dazzle’s the most important lesson of all.
But no, too early. Choose another beginning. A blue eyed man in another room, his fingers wrapped around an empty wine bottle like they once slid over his lover’s thigh. If someone called out “Neal,” he would answer, but no one does. This room is empty too. Everything, suddenly, is empty. There are footsteps in the doorway, but he knows them. They are not hers.
An FBI agent named Peter, young and clever and hungry himself, tracking - but no, that’s the wrong verb - admiring the career of a con man who specialized in art forgery. The agent will catch the con man, but not for some time yet. In this moment, he’s describing the chase to his wife, her hip leaning against the kitchen doorframe, a cup of gourmet tea in her hands. Her name is Elizabeth, and she’s listening more intently than she does to his other cases, asking carefully leading questions. Is Peter having fun with this case? Does he think the quarry is unusually talented? Has he gotten close enough to see colour of the con man’s eyes?
No, not personally, not yet. But he shows Elizabeth a photo: they are bluer even than hers. The name under the photo is “Nicholas Holden,” but for our purposes, Neal suits him better. There’s a brown haired woman standing at his shoulder, her head turned away. Elizabeth does not ask about her.
Or, this, years earlier, Elizabeth holding a sign proclaiming her love of Italian food towards the FBI’s camera. She knows Peter is watching behind it; she has trained herself to be aware of being followed, but in the relevant case she is barely a suspect. Peter had been coming up with excuses to ask her questions, and Elizabeth had realized she enjoyed answering them. The last time she’d met him, she hadn’t thought he was so charming.
If we asked Peter in this moment, he would claim never to have met her before his current case. We may believe who we like.
Kate is taking notes in a cryptic scrawl of her own design. The voice on the phone is smooth but the reception is poor, and there’s a lag when she asks questions. She’s asking one now. It’s regarding compensation.
For some seconds, the phone transmits static and a faint repeating whine. Then a laugh, broken by compression. Yes, there will be money, the chance for as much money as Kate might want, though the caller suspects that will prove to be a smaller amount than Kate assumes. But more than that, she’ll finally see if the stories are true.
What stories, Kate demands. Of course. There are so many stories in this world. But what stories does Kate care about? What stories consume her curiosity when she doesn’t have another puzzle to distract her? The Curses of Catherine the Great.
The phone call breaks off; it’s a bad connection, or her contact has a flair for dramatic. Kate has no return number, but the caller has found her through 3 discarded cell phones and a temporary email address. It bothers her that she can’t figure out the trick of it. Her notes trail off into a blue inked line that spills off the page, carrying no information except the evidence of her surprise.
The door to Peter’s home has just opened, and Neal’s breath hitches very briefly in his throat. Neal is out of his radius, and he thinks correctly that he has a convincing enough excuse that Peter will forgive him the transgression. But when Peter’s wife opens the door for him, it falls from his mind. He notices the shade of her eyes and the texture of her hair, the shading of cheekbones smoothed under his fingers in hundreds of sketches. It’s only years of practise that keeps his face from slackening in surprise.
But it can’t be Kate. Kate is so much younger. And after all, he’s still reeling from her disappearance - his first impressions, trained or not, shouldn’t be trusted. Elizabeth smiles at him like she’s been waiting a long time to see him. He smiles back with his most favourable “trust me, I’m harmless” smile, but Elizabeth’s expression sharpens, like it’s a joke she’s heard before.
Perhaps Peter has told her.
“No secrets,” Peter says. He is pawing through the Neal Caffrey files once again, has been hunched for hours over the kitchen table. He’s weeks away from finally catching and arresting Neal, and while Peter does not know this the way we do, he can feel the difference in the chase. But in this moment he’s not worried about the con man. There’s a photograph sitting slightly to the side of his file. It’s new: Neal Caffrey and a distracted Kate, frowning in the camera’s general direction. Elizabeth wants to laugh at her dismayed expression. It’s hard to believe anyone could look so young. “That was the deal,” Peter says. “No secrets between us.”
“Of course,” says Elizabeth. It’s a rule she was slow to grow into, but she finds that, with Peter at least, honesty has its own solid charm. “Anything you ask me, I’ll answer.” Peter fingers his paperwork, mouth narrowing in contemplation. But Peter has, for all his astuteness, a strong faith in an understandable universe, and the words he needs to say rebel on his tongue. Finally he says, “What’s the question I should be asking.” Elizabeth grins.
Peter is pressing his mouth hard against Neal’s shoulder, and Neal’s head is rolling back. These things are cause and effect. “I still can’t believe you want this,” Neal says, to Peter, or to himself, or to the universe at large.
Elizabeth is working Neal’s pants from his waist, but she pauses to say, “He’s been chasing you for a very long time. What did you think would happen when he caught you?”
Neal starts to say something, gasps as Peter works down to his nipple, tries again. “What about you?”
And Elizabeth grins, in this moment where there is much to grin about. “I didn’t have to chase you. I knew where you’d be.”
It’s hard to choose a moment when every moment trips on itself, its own beginning and its own ending. Let us return to Kate, still clever and still young, as she slips out from the estate of a very rich man. He is rich enough to buy good security, but the woman on the other end of the phone had very good information. Kate escapes, unpersued into the night, Catherine the Great’s music box in a bag under her arm. The promise of it is intoxicating.
As soon as she gets the chance to duck into an empty building, Kate takes the box out and opens it. This is not part of the plan outlined for her, but Kate can’t stand the thought of giving the music box away without first sating her curiosity (nor would the smooth voiced woman who hired her be surprised at this betrayal).
To a soundtrack of tin music, Kate finds two envelopes hidden in a secret compartment. One of the envelopes has her name written on it. Not “Kate”. A name she hasn’t heard in many years. There’s a strange looking key and half a dozen pages folded inside, but the first page she glances at has only a cryptic promise written on it: You will find your way back. The other envelope holds materials for a false identity, unfamiliar names with her description and picture. However, the driver’s licence is an old style, and the credit cards are out of date. Apparently someone stole the box, hid the envelopes inside it, returned it, and then hired her to steal it again. It’s an overly convoluted method of delivery. (It’s the sort of mystery Kate lives for.)
The key is of the same ornate design as the music box; Kate searches for the place it fits. And then...
There are stories of many Curses. Many Gifts.
The name on the envelope was written in her own handwriting. In a cryptic scrawl no one else on the planet could read. (Not even the lover she had been waiting for, his freedom almost, almost, almost in reach.) The music box unwinds itself, its clockwork melody hollow in the empty room.
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Date: 2011-03-08 10:40 am (UTC)It’s hard to know which moment to begin this story. Is it with the clever and *hungry* young woman - let us designate her, for this moment, as “Kate” - torn between the idea of a lover almost freed and the smooth, unfamiliar telephone voice promising her everything, *everything*, in exchange for one last job?
Or the blue eyed boy practising slight of hand tricks in an empty room? Is this your card, your coin, your wallet. He’s never going to be a magician, but it’s good training for quick, nimble fingers, and the razzle dazzle’s the most important lesson of all.
But no, too early. Choose another beginning. A blue eyed man in another room, his fingers wrapped around an empty wine bottle like they once slid over his lover’s thigh. If someone called out “Neal,” he would answer, but no one does. This room is empty too. Everything, suddenly, is empty. There are footsteps in the doorway, but he knows them. They are not hers.
An FBI agent named Peter, young and clever and hungry himself, tracking - but no, that’s the wrong verb - admiring the career of a con man who specialized in art forgery. The agent will catch the con man, but not for some time yet. In this moment, he’s describing the chase to his wife, her hip leaning against the kitchen doorframe, a cup of gourmet tea in her hands. Her name is Elizabeth, and she’s listening more intently than she does to his other cases, asking carefully leading questions. Is Peter having fun with this case? Does he think the quarry is unusually talented? Has he gotten close enough to see colour of the con man’s eyes?
No, not personally, not yet. But he shows Elizabeth a photo: they are bluer even than hers. The name under the photo is “Nicholas Holden,” but for our purposes, Neal suits him better. There’s a brown haired woman standing at his shoulder, her head turned away. Elizabeth does not ask about her.
Or, this, years earlier, Elizabeth holding a sign proclaiming her love of Italian food towards the FBI’s camera. She knows Peter is watching behind it; she has trained herself to be aware of being followed, but in the relevant case she is barely a suspect. Peter had been coming up with excuses to ask her questions, and Elizabeth had realized she enjoyed answering them. The last time she’d met him, she hadn’t thought he was so charming.
If we asked Peter in this moment, he would claim never to have met her before his current case. We may believe who we like.
Kate is taking notes in a cryptic scrawl of her own design. The voice on the phone is smooth but the reception is poor, and there’s a lag when she asks questions. She’s asking one now. It’s regarding compensation.
For some seconds, the phone transmits static and a faint repeating whine. Then a laugh, broken by compression. Yes, there will be money, the chance for as much money as Kate might want, though the caller suspects that will prove to be a smaller amount than Kate assumes. But more than that, she’ll finally see if the stories are true.
What stories, Kate demands. Of course. There are so many stories in this world. But what stories does Kate care about? What stories consume her curiosity when she doesn’t have another puzzle to distract her? The Curses of Catherine the Great.
The phone call breaks off; it’s a bad connection, or her contact has a flair for dramatic. Kate has no return number, but the caller has found her through 3 discarded cell phones and a temporary email address. It bothers her that she can’t figure out the trick of it. Her notes trail off into a blue inked line that spills off the page, carrying no information except the evidence of her surprise.
The door to Peter’s home has just opened, and Neal’s breath hitches very briefly in his throat. Neal is out of his radius, and he thinks correctly that he has a convincing enough excuse that Peter will forgive him the transgression. But when Peter’s wife opens the door for him, it falls from his mind. He notices the shade of her eyes and the texture of her hair, the shading of cheekbones smoothed under his fingers in hundreds of sketches. It’s only years of practise that keeps his face from slackening in surprise.
But it can’t be Kate. Kate is so much younger. And after all, he’s still reeling from her disappearance - his first impressions, trained or not, shouldn’t be trusted. Elizabeth smiles at him like she’s been waiting a long time to see him. He smiles back with his most favourable “trust me, I’m harmless” smile, but Elizabeth’s expression sharpens, like it’s a joke she’s heard before.
Perhaps Peter has told her.
“No secrets,” Peter says. He is pawing through the Neal Caffrey files once again, has been hunched for hours over the kitchen table. He’s weeks away from finally catching and arresting Neal, and while Peter does not know this the way we do, he can feel the difference in the chase. But in this moment he’s not worried about the con man. There’s a photograph sitting slightly to the side of his file. It’s new: Neal Caffrey and a distracted Kate, frowning in the camera’s general direction. Elizabeth wants to laugh at her dismayed expression. It’s hard to believe anyone could look so young. “That was the deal,” Peter says. “No secrets between us.”
“Of course,” says Elizabeth. It’s a rule she was slow to grow into, but she finds that, with Peter at least, honesty has its own solid charm. “Anything you ask me, I’ll answer.” Peter fingers his paperwork, mouth narrowing in contemplation. But Peter has, for all his astuteness, a strong faith in an understandable universe, and the words he needs to say rebel on his tongue. Finally he says, “What’s the question I should be asking.” Elizabeth grins.
Peter is pressing his mouth hard against Neal’s shoulder, and Neal’s head is rolling back. These things are cause and effect. “I still can’t believe you want this,” Neal says, to Peter, or to himself, or to the universe at large.
Elizabeth is working Neal’s pants from his waist, but she pauses to say, “He’s been chasing you for a very long time. What did you think would happen when he caught you?”
Neal starts to say something, gasps as Peter works down to his nipple, tries again. “What about you?”
And Elizabeth grins, in this moment where there is much to grin about. “I didn’t have to chase you. I knew where you’d be.”
It’s hard to choose a moment when every moment trips on itself, its own beginning and its own ending. Let us return to Kate, still clever and still young, as she slips out from the estate of a very rich man. He is rich enough to buy good security, but the woman on the other end of the phone had very good information. Kate escapes, unpersued into the night, Catherine the Great’s music box in a bag under her arm. The promise of it is intoxicating.
As soon as she gets the chance to duck into an empty building, Kate takes the box out and opens it. This is not part of the plan outlined for her, but Kate can’t stand the thought of giving the music box away without first sating her curiosity (nor would the smooth voiced woman who hired her be surprised at this betrayal).
To a soundtrack of tin music, Kate finds two envelopes hidden in a secret compartment. One of the envelopes has her name written on it. Not “Kate”. A name she hasn’t heard in many years. There’s a strange looking key and half a dozen pages folded inside, but the first page she glances at has only a cryptic promise written on it: You will find your way back. The other envelope holds materials for a false identity, unfamiliar names with her description and picture. However, the driver’s licence is an old style, and the credit cards are out of date. Apparently someone stole the box, hid the envelopes inside it, returned it, and then hired her to steal it again. It’s an overly convoluted method of delivery. (It’s the sort of mystery Kate lives for.)
The key is of the same ornate design as the music box; Kate searches for the place it fits. And then...
There are stories of many Curses. Many Gifts.
The name on the envelope was written in her own handwriting. In a cryptic scrawl no one else on the planet could read. (Not even the lover she had been waiting for, his freedom almost, almost, almost in reach.) The music box unwinds itself, its clockwork melody hollow in the empty room.
Of course she turns the key.