You Again {Kaden}

[DR. EDITH ALLINGHAM]

Edie had to admit it: she had one horrible kind of sweet tooth when the mood struck her.

Such a mood often struck on the day after she'd had some encounter with drugs - not that it was really safe to do any more than smoke these days, what with her job as a teacher. Children were so young and impressionable, or something like that. Edie had received excellent marks in any health course she was assigned to take, but that didn't mean she had ever been capable of caring much for her body. Her physical form was a trite manifestation of millenia of evolution, culminating into this bipedal sack of flesh that she was supposed to "pretty up" and make attractive for the opposite sex.

Well, bullshit. She needed her body so that she could work, but she didn't care about it. So long as it was still functioning, she and her marvelous brain could do everything they wanted. That was all the more use it was to her: a vehicle.

And if a little cocaine would make the vehicle run faster, she didn't see why that had to be so...illegal.

But that was beside the point. The point was not that Edie had toyed with illegal drugs in the past, seeing as this particular excursion was not provoked by drug use the previous evening. What was the point, you ask?

Cupcakes. Plain and simple.

As she walked into the bakery, her eccentric high-heeled boots clacking on the floor, she immediately began to notice everything, as she always did. There was a smudge of lipstick still on the lapel of one of the cashier's, probably belonging to the manager; Edie determined this by quickly matching the shade of lipstick on the white employee polo to the color plastered on the manager's lips. In addition, they were giving each other exceptionally awkward looks, suggesting it was something they had not done before and probably would not be doing again. A drunken outing, perhaps? Yes, yes, the cashier was stepping aside to shake a few aspirin out into his palm. That had to be it.

She spotted a woman with a stroller as she waltzed up to the counter. The woman was young, maybe mid-twenties, and the infant was perhaps a year. Slump of her shoulders suggested she was not here on a happy trip to the baker's, and her build indicated that this child was more than likely not her first. Her hair had a coarse look to it and the roots were an unnatural mousy brown, therefore the startling white of her locks was undoubtedly a result of repeated bleaching. The way she moved when she headed up to the cash register suggested that she had been letting someone do nasty things to her body last night, as did the bruise visible on her neck, and, judging by the leftover make-up decorating her cheeks more than her eyes, it probably wasn't her husband. Either she was cheating, or she was a single mother. What a pathetic creature.

Interesting, though. Where had she kept the baby, and why was she getting something from the bakery? Make-up gift, perhaps? Something for the other child? There had to be at least one...

Unusually lost in thought with this scraggly woman's life, Edie was unaware of the fact that she was walking right into someone, and didn't come into her senses until she bumped against him. Starting back into reality, she kept her eyes on the bleach-blonde woman with the baby as she spoke.

"Sorry," she said curtly as way of apologizing, the kind of short reply that would probably annoy the person she just bumped into. That didn't register with Edie. She didn't care.

However, when she glanced at the young man she had bumped into, when her eyes lit on his face, she did care.

She cared very, very much.

Caden?!

ooc: Outfit for an unwanted confrontation!

[KADEN ALLINGHAM-HEMSWORTH]

Five feet, ten inches tall. Hair styled at approximately ten-thirty anti-meridiem, though the stylist was rather nervous, and a bit flustered by the final layer. Being observed for an examination, most likely.

Kaden chewed quietly on his lower lip, a habit he’d always had when thinking about things. Rather detestable, really. After all, dependence on any bodily function for an achievement of the mind was something Kaden had always believed in avoiding. But neither his instincts nor his teeth had ever been beings of belief, tragically. And so the lip was chewed, slowly but surely, as his eyes roamed the bustling room.

He returned his gaze to the man he’d been staring at earlier, a looming figure sporting a black leather jacket and tophat, tipped disinterestedly to the side. The clothes seemed clean, devoid of hairs and such; perhaps uncharacteristic of a recent haircut-ee, he remarked to himself. But there was something else that stood out about the jacket and the trousers.. The color, perhaps, the certain radiance that struck his pupils more than its surrounding compatriots. Purchased new clothing after the haircut, before--Kaden’s passive gaze flicked to a beige stub peeking hesitantly from the man’s breast pocket, thrust at an angle and slightly crumpled, as if deposited in a hurry—rushing to Grand Central Station to purchase a train ticket.

A date? No; a golden band around his ring finger caught the glint of the light above as he fiddled for his credit card. A doctor’s appointment, perhaps?

The man’s brow furrowed with concern as he rifled through a modest collection of bills in a ratty wallet. No. A job interview. Would explain the new clothing as well.

Curious.

Having finished his breakfast roll, Kaden pushed himself up from the table. He felt the aches in his bones as they knocked against each other, like creaking hinges in an old, stubborn door. But as with all involuntary sensations he swallowed them hard, trudging forward into the line before the counter and zeroing in on his next victim: the woman standing before him, rifling through a tray of breadsticks.

Quite well fed, certainly. Oh…” His gaze shifted sharply to the wriggling bundle swaddled in a stroller at her side. Or a mother of… Too few wrinkles etched into her face for a mother of three. But certainly more than one. Mother of two. Just came from an unpleasant encounter, and…a bruise on her neck. Something physical. A mugging? No, he could see the faint imprints of dollar bills and coins pressed into the pocket of her tight jeans. A significant other, then. Yes, indeed, he spotted a conglomerate of makeup clustered on her left cheek, highlighting, in his mind, a severe lack of aesthetic enhancement in regard to beautification. Yes, concealment. Cheating, then? Meeting a suitor, of sorts? But why bring the child? Perhaps the man—

Kaden felt a violent jolt sending his body toppling to the ground, arms shooting forward to catch himself in an instinctive convulsion. He felt the cold marble on his palms, like rough, ice-caked mud on the first day of the winter thaw in Sleaford. It stung. But everything stung, at some point in Kaden’s life. He’d never been a stranger to pain.

"Sorry."

Stifling a groan, Kaden hoisted himself onto two elbows. He felt the rage boiling within his chest, but he shoved it downwards, quickly modeling his face back to its usual apathetic mask. ”Not a…”

That face. Something about that face. Something about the calculating expression, the intensive stare that seemed to bore into him…something seemed very…

Edith. Edith Allingham.

Jesus Christ.

Emotions crashed through his brain, but as he had millions of times in his life, Kaden clenched his teeth until they were compressed into miniscule, unrecognizable forms. ”Not…not a problem.” He tried his hardest to keep the trembling from his voice.

He wasn’t sure if anything in his life since leaving England had ever been less of a problem.

”Erm…and good morning.” Perhaps she didn’t recognize him. Best not to mention it, in that case.

ooc:OUTFIT OF AN AWKWARD CONFRONTATION

[DR. EDITH ALLINGHAM]

When Edie had left England, she had felt assured that she would be leaving her family behind -- all of it -- permanently. She didn't want to be associated with them any longer, her broken mother, her irritating half-brother, any of her distant relatives she had seen in passing during family outings or during her family's frequent travelling. This had comforted her, the concept of this distance, of being able to remove herself from everything with which she was familiar.

And this encounter, this literal collision that could not possibly be more awkward, more unsettling, had ruined that sense of peace, that fragile but reassuring feeling of singularity.

Caden.

Caden.

Caden.

Why was he here?!

She'd knocked him onto the floor, shit, shit, he was so frail all the time, couldn't even take her tiny form stumbling into him. He was probably quite upset with her. But he wouldn't show that, of course. He never showed emotion, even anger or irritation. They were quite similar, in that respect; the most emotion one ever got out of Edie was usually a smile and a twinkle in her eye when something excited her.

She was so frozen with shock at his sudden reappearance in her life that she all but forgot to help him up until he was struggling up to his elbows.

"Here, um."

She wouldn't do this for anyone else. She wouldn't even do this for Caden if it wasn't so fantastically jarring that he was here at all. As it was, she offered her hand to him, staring at his face with a muted expression of shock.

"Good...morning," she forced out, less out of politeness and more out of needing something to say in response. Did he recognize her? No. No, he had to recognize her, she could see the way he clenched his teeth as he always did when he was holding back. He wouldn't be trying so hard, wouldn't have said 'good morning' to a stranger who had just knocked him to the floor, if he didn't recognize her.

She'd always had mixed feelings towards her brother, ever since the day he came into her life when she was six years old. But whatever positive feelings she had toward him, whatever sisterly fondness and trust had built up privately behind her thick stone walls, she had mashed it down and crammed it so far back in her mind that it would be impossible for anyone to recognize -- including herself.

Clearing her throat, she offered her hand to him to help him up. "...Caden," she said after a moment, an affirmation that she did, in fact, know him. "It's been a while, hasn't it."

[KADEN ALLINGHAM-HEMSWORTH]

Oh Dear lord.

The last time he’d seen his dreadful half-sister had been thousands of miles across an open ocean, in a land where the birth of rich babies garnered undue excitement (in Kaden’s humble opinion), where tea and boy bands were heavily-exported delicacies. He’d left her and the life she’d represented behind to the greatest of his ability. He’d taken great care to fashion a barrier between himself and his half-sister and that detestable mother of hers, a barrier of distance and consonants and cultures and wealth and everything in between.

So how, in God’s name, had she found her way back into his life?

He took her hand, trying and failing not to glare maliciously. My my, but she hadn’t changed a bit. He moved through his mental checklist, nodding slightly as he recalled each familiar trait. Yes, there was that smoothly un-emotional face, there was that expression of calculation, as if she were preparing to face him in a particularly strategic game of cards, there was that slightly tousled look, the slightly offbeat, but not over-eccentric sense of fashion, there were those vivid, engaged eyes, as if prepared to swallow every single detail possible. This was Edith Allingham, alright. There was no mistaking it. His half-sister was once again a part of his life, even if for just this morning.

But…why?

America was Kaden’s new identity, Kaden’s new life. This city was one he’d chosen for himself, to transform his life back into one over which he could exert some small semblance of his own control.

”Erm, hello.”

Caden. Jesus, he could hear the “C” in her pronunciation. He didn’t know why, he didn’t know how, but something about the way she said it felt much more British than he was comfortable with. He was an American now, a New Yorker, and his name began with a “K”, legally, and in all other respects .He supposed that the way to finish off this interaction with the least amount of inconvenience to both involved parties was to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Right then. On with it.

”Erm, yes. Yes, indeed, it has. May I…ask how I’ve come to have the pleasure of your proximity? Er, what I mean is…” Oh, he was so rubbish at making small talk that wasn’t over a card game. “What on Earth brings you to New York, dear sister?”