![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2026-03-08-for-collating-data/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | Natalyah makes a special delivery to Hana, and passes along several pieces of information for collating data in case that's useful. 5k~ words. Romance Plot. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
As early as she possibly can make it out to the Ebek House in Elwynn, Natalyah arrives at it — which in this case means around ten in the morning of the 8th. Even after she shifts from her travel worgen form to her human one, the sweat and dirt from the road remains as evidence where she ran the entire way. Dressed in a long sleeved dark gray sweater and a well worn pair of dark jeans knotted off at her left leg, the brown road lends a tinge of orange that does almost have a butterfly dust sort of appearance, if someone's willing to squint and pretend. She also has a friend with her — the little worgen Back Pack backpack, carrying her precious cargo slash contraband, depending on how someone sees possessions.
Natalyah rises up in a levitate to glide the rest of the way to the door, panting heavily, some pieces of her hair sticking to her flushed cheeks, and knocks demandingly on the front door.
The man who opens the door could easily be mistaken for Joelle, if not for the neatly kept beard and mustache, and the streaks of grey in his dark hair. Johann is dressed in a tight blue sleeveless top and cloth pants and a pair of brown leather bracers, the muscles of his arms and shoulders on full display. He regards Natalyah with an unreadable expression, his cloudy brown eyes fixed on her face as he waits for her to state her business.
Natalyah blinks, almost eye to eye with the taller man by virtue of floating several feet off the ground. "Well, you're either Elle in a terrible disguise and I just stumbled into a whole new conspiracy, or you must be his father," Natalyah remarks, thrusting out a hand for a handshake. "Natalyah Kensington-Whit, published lepidopterist, Scientist of the Light, cursed worgen, and a friend of Hana and Elle's."
Johann takes her hand in a firm grip, his gaze visibly warming. “Fray spoke of you,” he says, releasing her to step aside. “You came for Hana?”
Natalyah floats eerily inside, sweeping the house with a glance, turning in the air to regard Johann. "I came to visit her, yes. I have something for her."
Johann leads her down the hallway and into the living room, pausing once there to offer her a seat on one of the couches or chairs. “Would you like a drink?” he asks. “We have water, juice, tea… or something stronger."
Natalyah considers that for a beat longer he might expect from the otherwise quick responding woman. "What does Hana like to drink that's stronger?" she asks. "I'll take whatever that is. Double, if you please."
“Hana doesn’t drink,” Johann says, with all the confidence of a man who has never seen it happen.
It is at that moment that Hana emerges from her room, glancing between Johann and Natalyah in surprise. She is wearing a brown off-the-shoulder top with leggings a shade darker, and a pair of pastel blue slippers that do not match the brown aesthetic at all.
“Oh,” Hana says. “I wasn’t expecting — I can handle things from here Uncle Hann. The stronger drink is rum, Natalyah, and I’ve never had any myself, but if you’d like some I can go get it.”
Natalyah's face has already done some of the thing — that she looks very much like she's thinking, Hana definitely drinks sometimes, and she glances obviously from Johann to Hana. "Right. Of course. No, thank you, then. I'll take some tea, please," Natalyah says in a gear shift that isn't subtle, but she's shifting it. "I need to talk with you, Hana. You have some time, I hope?"
“I have nothing scheduled until this evening,” Hana says, almost deliberately avoiding Johann’s gaze. “We can talk in my room?”
Johann glances between Hana and Natalyah, but if he has any thoughts he does not voice them and his face is harder to read than even Joelle’s. “I will prepare the tea,” he says, turning to make for the kitchen.
“Bring milk and sugar please,” Hana calls after him.
Natalyah looks over her shoulder at Johann for a moment, and then back at Hana, floating closer to Hana. "You don't drink, apparently," Natalyah says tartly with an arched brow. "If I'd known that it's supposed to be never, I'd not have mentioned anything. I thought I might sneak you in something under the guise of ‘for a guest,’ but not if you supposedly don't touch the stuff." She swings around her Back Pack worgen. "I have something for you. You can rest assured — it doesn't rhyme with Smadlands Snorbon."
“It’s another reason I couldn’t go home that night,” Hana says apologetically. “If I’d gone home like that they’d have known something was up and I’d have to tell them something. Which I don’t want to do. They know absolutely nothing about anything and I’d prefer to keep it that way. So on that note.”
Hana turns and starts towards her room. “Aunt Miralynn is home too, but she’s with her students so we shouldn’t see her.”
The interior of Hana’s room is still a haven of pastel, though her lavender sheets have been replaced with light teal, a near match for her slippers. Her harp case is set out in front of her closet, all ready to receive the instrument; her plans for the day likely involved some late morning busking. Her desk is a mess, pens and pencils scattered across its surface along with a dwindling supply of stationery and scrap paper.
Hana takes a seat on her bed, then gestures to the two chairs and the spot on the bed beside her. “You can sit wherever you want,” she says.
Natalyah, probably for Natalyah Defiant reasons, glides over and chooses to plop down on the bed with Hana, as if daring the mattress to protest, as she tests the mattress' springiness with a hand, and flops the worgen Back Pack down on it. "'Nothing about anything.' That's probably making a lot of things complicated. Should I wait to show you then until tea arrives, so you don't have to pretend suddenly?"
Hana shakes her head. “You’ll hear hear him coming, right? I’m pretty good at this by now. And Uncle Hann says more with his face than his words, usually. Anyway, this is my issue, there’s no need for them to spare it any thought.”
Natalyah narrows her eyes, but she has a proud tilt to her chin. "I will hear him coming," she confirms. "Assuming he moves more than his words or face, because otherwise he'll just be teleporting straight to the door." She reaches into the bag, and triumphantly pulls out several sheets of paper. "I've brought back what's rightfully yours."
These are not just any papers. Though, they might seem familiar to Hana, for a number of reasons. They are the same papers that Finley had out on the coffee table when he asked for her to write out her song for him, scored for music ahead of time. Hana wrote out the song on papers very much like these.
Except not these. It isn't her style of notes of music; it's in Finley's more cautious, less experienced hand. It isn't called Finley, either. No, Finley has written the title as "Broom Sweeps Brown Leaf," but credited to Hana Levesworth, the writing boldened, almost proudly of her ownership of it, in a subtle way. This is likely the only reason that Natalyah was able to retrieve it, since there would be only one song by Hana in Julissa's repertoire, after all.
But most telling of all that this is not the one Hana wrote out in the sitting room of the Fallon Townhouse, nor even an exact copy of it, is that every single lower Finley note has been left off.
"Ta daaa," Natalyah says, watching Hana's face expectantly.
Hana takes the sheets and reads through them, tracing a finger over the notes until… her brow furrows. She starts again. Then again. Checks the rest of the pages. The backs of them.
A soft shuffling gait starts towards them, the sound of slippers on the wooden floor.
“I don’t understand,” Hana finally says. “This is —”
"Your uncle coming towards the door," Natalyah says. Which is probably a warning and not an actual description of the sheets of music. She's frowning in concert with Hana though, looking from her to the music and back.
Hana pulls on a smile as Johann taps on the door, setting the sheets of music beside her on the bed before rising to open the door and accept the tray of tea. “Thank you, Uncle Hann. I’ll clean up when we’re done,” she assures him, though he didn’t ask.
He studies her for a moment in silence, then nods and takes his leave.
Hana pushes the door closed with her shoulder and moves to her desk, balancing the tray expertly as she brushes away pens and pencils to make room for it.
“He’s at least a little concerned,” she says, setting the tray down heavily enough to rattle the teacups. “Which means he’ll be watching me for a bit. But that’s fine. I won’t slip up.”
Natalyah, no stranger to rattling teas herself in emphasis, doesn't judge, but she's definitely also watching Hana. "It's not as though I haven't lived like that before, so I know how uncomfortable it is. I mean I never told my parents anything I didn't absolutely have to. But, they didn't care either," she says, a defensive note only partially hiding a note of old, worn out pain. But she puts a hand on the music, brows drawn down, not in a storm but in confusion. "Was it the wrong song or something? Because I looked through pretty much every single drawer, and there was only one by Hana Levesworth, and I mean, it doesn't say 'Finley,' or whatever, but it mentions a broom, like your broom gift, so it has to be it. Don't tell me now that you wrote more than one song and I just got the wrong one."
Hana sighs and turns back to Natalyah. “No, that’s the one,” she says. “Or… it is, but not quite. It’s missing the important part. The part that makes it his. My first thought was that maybe he didn’t actually like that part, so he didn’t give it to her, but… he asked me for it. And I wrote it down, but it’s not… this isn’t… Do you think Lady Julissa didn’t like it? Maybe she asked him to… to…”
It’s clear from the flash of pain in her eyes that Hana doesn’t believe her own words. “Well,” she says, forcing a smile again. “Whatever happened, the notes aren’t here, but I’m honestly relieved she doesn’t have any part of the song anymore. At least for now. He could always give it to her again, since he probably has the original copy.”
For some reason, Hana’s eyes travel to a place on her wall where a painting of a broom sweeping a leaf hangs. The smile fades a little.
Natalyah follows Hana's look. "Oh, is that the — of course it must be." She glares at it in lieu of the artist. "I don't know what that means about the music, really, but I can tell you that Julissa didn't care about it as a thing. It was just shoved into one of the drawers, not out or anything. But, more than that. I went to her party last night, and he wasn't there." A brief gust of a thought sweeps over her face. "I mean, I guess I'm not surprised because — well, I mean that he wasn't expected to be there. I talked with her, and I mentioned him, and they're not a Thing. She's shot well past him already, and he's not courting her, never was. I don't know if that makes this worse, really. He just seems like he's that type of man, to me."
“It is worse,” Hana says, turning back to pour the tea. “Of course it’s worse. At least if he actually liked her, I could make some sort of sense of it. Say that Lady Julissa is more to his taste, whatever that is. But the guesses this leaves me with… they’re all bad.”
"Probably. Although — " Natalyah hesitates, uncharacteristically, and then blows out an exasperated and frustrated breath audibly, although it might not be immediately clear what has provoked the feelings. "Do you still care about him? I mean, is he still important to you, truly, right now at least? I need to know."
Hana’s hand brushes absently over a blank sheet of stationery. “Yes,” she says without hesitation.
"Then I need to tell you something," Natalyah decides. "And I'm not supposed to. I mean, really not supposed to, by order of the Guard, and I may hate that they put the order on me, but I don't want to get Lathrik in trouble, so I'm trying to do it. Except that I know that if this was about Lathrik, and someone — you or anyone — knew what I knew and kept it from me, I'd be beyond upset.
"So, I need to tell you something about Boutille, and what happened the other night. It's not good. But," she hastens on to add, "he is alive, at least the last I saw."
Hana turns sharply to Natalyah. “What? Alive? The Guard? I don’t…” She frowns. “Please explain.”
Natalyah turns both her hands up. "I will. That's sort of my whole point," she says, that defensive streak as if Hana accused her of holding back information (she did not). "Two nights ago, Isla came to my door, very upset. It was already dark, and she wasn't supposed to be there, but she was worried because Boutille was missing. He doesn't live at the main house with her anymore, or much of the rest of the House, apparently. There was a bit about a book that Isla wanted that was out, and a missed deadline that he told her he would send it, and he didn't. She came to scold him, but he wasn't back at the townhouse like he was meant to be. So, she got me, because I could find him."
Natalyah's mouth twists a bit, and she deliberately softens the sharpness in her voice. "I did. He'd been out painting, not too far outside the city walls, by the river. Some woman attacked him, for reasons I have no idea about, and it…didn't go well. He got her, but she got him. I'm sorry, Hana. He died." Natalyah's already shaking her head, trying to forestall a reaction to the words. "But, I had Isla with me, and she was able to resurrect him. He's alive, like I said."
Hana slowly sinks into the chair at her desk, a trembling hand reaching to cover her mouth as though she can hide the horror that resides there. “He… he’s alive,” she repeats, the note of a near desperate plea heightening her voice. “But… when you found him…”
Natalyah gets up, floating across the room to pull Hana into an impulsive hug. "I'm sorry. I really don't know what happened. It was dark and I had some difficulty concentrating on the details. There was a lot of blood. It… it's hard to think when there's that much blood around me," she admits, with a shameful curve to her, but she continues. "He said he didn't know why she attacked him. I healed him up, and I'm pretty sure he was completely healed. You can't really tell sometimes with men, but I don't think he'll scar or anything. He went and got the Guard, and I got Isla back to the townhouse and waited there with her until he arrived.
"Then I went home, and two of the Guard were waiting for me at the house. One was important, some Captain or something. They said that it was a House matter, that it was an ongoing investigation that required delicate whateverness, and then they made it clear that I was to tell no one about it. Not anyone. Never discuss it, never mention it again. Which, obviously, I'm breaking right now, but like I said. If it had been Lathrik there, I wouldn't care about the rules. I'd want to know."
Hana clings to her in silence for a very, very long time, the tea all but forgotten. “Someone murdered him,” she finally whispers after minutes of nothing. “Right? That’s murder, even if he kills her back? Wait, how did he kill her back? No, more importantly… how did he seem? At the townhouse, after… everything?”
"It's still murder, yes. Pretty sure the law's clear on self-defense there. I don't know how he killed her, Hana, I really — " Natalyah makes an exasperated sound, her hug going tighter as she hunches. "I wasn't looking at the scene like a detective. As a matter of fact, I didn't even see the other body until he mentioned her, that's how not thinking I was." Or, perhaps there was another reason her mind kept sliding away from the other body, but Natalyah wouldn't know.
"As for him, he was — I don't know. Polite? Annoyingly polite? Aszera said he's weirdly formal when you're not his sister, and that was dead on. He was all proper courtier gallantry as soon as he realized I was there. All 'Thank you for your assistance, Miss Kensington-Whit, House Esprit Fallon is grateful for your exceptional teaching, Miss Kensington-Whit, can I arrange a carriage for you, Miss Kensington-Whit,' because how could you possibly be able to walk home in the dark as a lady. He didn't actually say that last part, but it was obviously implied."
Well. Obviously to Natalyah, anyway. Finley might not have meant it that way.
“Annoyingly polite,” Hana repeats, her voice tipping into anger. “Hasn’t anyone ever told him that’s not how you act after a life-and-death situation? That’d be like me strangling a man with my bare hands while smiling and asking him if he’s having a good day. I hope he’s at least been more open with Isla. Even just a little, to reassure her. Being left in the dark about something like this is a horrible feeling, and she…”
Hana’s voice breaks a little, cracking under the weight of unshed tears. “She, at least, deserves to know something. That it won’t happen again. That he won’t just… disappear someday and no one knows why.”
"She was certainly demanding answers when I last left them. But, I don't know if she really got them," Natalyah says, aiming for a reassuring squeeze. It's possibly just a very tight squeeze. "It's one of the things she mentions a lot about him, how he never really tells her anything. That he's always in her business, always demanding to know what she's doing and where she'll be, and telling her what to do, but he doesn't talk to her about the same. He never has, apparently, and it's been even worse since he moved up in the world. The b — ogre." Nice catch.
Natalyah loosens her grip slightly in order to draw back enough to stare Hana in the face, her velvet brown eyes intense in conviction. "But, listen, Hana, he's a ward of the Fallons. He's not all alone or going to disappear without them throwing everything at it if he does. Siamus isn't like that, at least. He'd get out his notebook and us over at Apex, and we'd hunt Boutille down." She probably meant track him down.
Maybe.
“Like you did the other day,” Hana says, and some bitter note in her voice does not sound reassured at all. Probably because they found him dead.
"Well, yes. Isla noticed, because she's paying attention, and he's connected to the House," Natalyah retorts. "And so she saved him. Again. As a matter of fact, it's not the first time he's died, and she's resurrected him. He was one of the people who died when Deathwing came through the city." Begrudgingly, she adds, "He was protecting Isla, and he was crushed by a rock. She survived, he didn't, and afterwards she manifested the Light for the first time bringing him back. Isla would never just accept him suddenly not being around."
Hana’s shoulders droop in what looks like exhaustion. “Light, this is… a lot,” she says. “I think I’m going to need a replacement at work today.” She glances at her dwindling supply of stationery, then forces a tired smile. “Guess I’ll be making some house calls. Thank you, Natalyah, for telling me what happened even though you were told not to. I’ll figure out what to do with the information after I clear my head a bit.”
Natalyah's expression is caught in a three way war with apologetic chagrin, defiant pride, and genuine worry, which makes it a difficult read, or as Lathrik might call it, a typical Natalyah expression.
"I really am sorry. I may not like him, but I know that it's hard when someone you care about is hurt, and you can't do anything about it. I have Isla for a lesson later this week, and while I can't say anything to her about what happened, because I have to be a good example and all that, I can make sure he's still all right, or tell you if he isn't," Natalyah offers, and something else visibly occurs to her. "On information though, there's one thing I noticed that I'm not sure if it means anything. But maybe you should know it, for collating data."
“Whatever updates you can give me, I would appreciate it,” Hana says, still hiding behind that weak smile. “Even the small things that may seem like nothing.”
"It really probably isn't anything, but it was something I noticed and it struck me as sort of odd," Natalyah says. "And at this point after working with Apex, sometimes it's the odd things that end up mattering, and only make sense to someone with the rest of the data set, so." She sighs, and pulls back from Hana, hovering above the ground eerily. "After Boutille was revived, but before he really knew I was there, and he was still sort of coming to and everything, Isla was hugging him, and his arm moved like a jolt. I thought maybe in pain at first, but it wasn't like that. He reached for someone on his belt." She demonstrates, grabbing at her belt loop with a quick, frantic grasp. "Like the way you do when you think you might have lost something."
"And then he relaxed as soon as he had it, and so I looked at what it was when he moved his hand away." Because now she isn't just nosy, she's Professionally Nosy. "I recognized it, at least the concept. It was one of Xueye's charms, you know, like she had at Paws for Pumpkin. And it was dark and there was blood all over it, but I'm pretty sure it was brown, with a little white rabbit wearing a cape.
"I heard him say, 'glycerin,' quietly, like to himself, after he confirmed it was there. Glycerin is what you use to get dried blood out of silk, which is only something you'd think about it if you were going to clean it, rather than replace it after it was ruined like that," she explains. "And I might have thought maybe he's just cheap or something, but it was the only thing he checked. His suit was all cut up and ruined, and his paints were all messed up around, and he didn't seem to care at all or check on them as if he was worried about the cost. And when he got back to the townhouse, he'd tucked the charm away, but hadn't taken it off. I saw the string still there. It seemed odd, because it sounds like the one you said you gave him."
The flash of pain returns to Hana’s eyes, and her carefully held smile trembles. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Okay. Natalyah, can I ask you a favor? It’s nothing you have to do, but I’d like to use your name.”
"As long as it isn't for anything that would perpetuate misinformation about butterflies or moths, you can borrow it," Natalyah says decidedly. She has only one (1) line. Everything else? There's a reason why she had a reputation in Society for being somewhat scandalous. "What's it for? If you're about to purchase a large amount of alcohol in my name, then I could always come along and give them another name."
Hana shakes her head. “Health potions,” she says. “I’ve seen them come in an injectable form, which might be a faster way to use them in… in any potential combat situation, just in case something happens again. I want to get some to Finley, but I’m not supposed to know about anything. But you do, even if you aren’t allowed to talk about it. I could buy some, drop them off at his door. You won’t have to do anything, and I won’t write a letter, it’ll just say ‘from Natalyah.’”
Natalyah's expression grows stormy, but she sighs with a gust. "Fine. He might be a bit surprised by it, or wary, given that I didn't exactly hide how I feel about him in any way. But, maybe he'll take it as a comment on how I don't think he can look after himself, which is true." She points a finger accusingly at no one there in the room. Presumably at Finley, wherever he is.
"If he's going to go around inspiring women to murder him, the least he could do is learn how to defend himself. Or simply not be a cad. Either one. So, yes. I approve," Natalyah decides. "Don't go to the Ironforge Clinic run by Niris Ference, Estel Herald, and Ismene Hazan though if you're going to put it all in my name. They know me there, because of Lathrik's potions. They'd know you're lying."
“Thanks for the warning,” Hana says, turning back to her desk to grab a sheet of stationery. “My plan is to write to one of Elle’s…”
The tea tray is still taking up most of her desk space. “Oh, there’s tea.” She places a hand on the side of one of the cups. “It’s… still a little warm. Unfortunately it’s not hot anymore. I could… make a new pot?”
Hana’s smile is apologetic now.
Natalyah waves a hand dismissively. "Oh, please. It's not like I was dying to drink tea, it's just what you do when you visit people," the former noblewoman says. "I'll toss in some milk and sugar, and we can pretend it's iced tea. I've done far worse while working on scientific journals and forgetting I had tea out. Nothing is even growing in the cup yet."
Hana’s eyes widen a little. “Growing…? Uhh, yes! Right! Nothing’s growing in the cup. Here, I’ll hold the tray and you can fix it to your taste.” Hana lifts the tray from the desk to hold it between them. “I really should invest in a tea table, but I don’t usually host in my bedroom.”
Natalyah's brows raise, and she swiftly pours in milk and a lot of sugar into the tea, before swiping it up off the tray as she says, "Are you planning on changing that, going forward? Because you know, it is a viable strategy for some people to move on. Hosting people in your bedroom, I mean."
Hana considers the question seriously. “I’m not like Elle, who can love everyone he meets,” she says. “And I’m not like Ren, who seeks it out for fun. I want it to mean something, and right now, I’m far from ready for that. Especially after everything I just learned.”
She sighs, sets the tray down, and returns to her spot on the bed. “I won’t say that I’ll never move on. That’s just not realistic. I’m a smart, independent woman, and I’ve managed fine on my own. But… I want to know him. More than I’ve ever wanted to know someone before. I still… have hope, I guess.”
Natalyah sips at her tea with an old habitual mannerism that she hardly seems aware of, staring hard at Hana. "I can't say I approve, because I don't," she says bluntly with that honesty of her opinion of hers. "I think you deserve a lot better." Sip. "But. If it's what you actually want, then I'll help you, however I can. Aszera and I proved yesterday that our combined reputations can get us into at least some of the parties that go on around here, which he'd be attending. I'm sure we could get you in with us, and you could meet him on your terms where he'd have to talk to you or risk a scandal, and we'd be there to back you up. Aszera's on your side, not his. Or we could always spy on him with Apex."
“No spying,” Hana says, shaking her head. “I know there’s a reason he’s distanced himself from me. A reason he hasn’t said, at least not directly. If I’m going to get that information, I want it to come from him. Anything else is meaningless. Which means the in-person approach is the way to go. I just have to… prepare.”
Natalyah nods. "Then, whether that preparation is shopping or sharpening knives, all you have to do is say when. And then we'll hunt him down."
Again, she probably means track him down.
Maybe.