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[assassin_daddy]

Jᴀᴄᴏʙ Fʀʏᴇ "I'm no criminal. I just do as I please."

 

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[handleyourshit]

"They could," she allows. "Mint takes over fucking everything. It's just not a priority when you can grow just a bit more squash or potatoes instead of a half plot of basil, feed everyone two extra days instead of seasoning a few pots of stew."

And Alexandria makes a lot of stew.

"You had a cook?" She glances up from finishing her second helping, from giving herself more of the chicken. She is, though, slowing down. "Who is Jayadeep?"

[assassin_daddy]

He doesn't know too much about growing things, not really, but he does know that about mint. "That's why you have it in a pot, I think," He says, but really it doesn't matter, what is far more important is feeding people for longer, not adding mint to things.

"My father was a widower, he had two small children, a day job and assassin work. I don't think, even if he'd known how to cook, he would have had time." He explains, but in truth they had been middle class anyway, having a cook and a maid wasn't unusual. "And Jayadeep was an assassin in London, he helped us when we first arrived there. And now he's my brother-in-law."

[handleyourshit]

"Yeah, well, we didn't know that did we?" she chuckles. Maggie might have, honestly, but she'd had enough else on her plate at the time and now they're stuck with an entire hillside of mint.

There are worse things, especially with the smell.

"Oh," she says, sobering, when she's reminded that indeed, Jacob never got to know his mother at all. Everyone she knows has lost a lot of people, lost most everyone they know in turn, but there's still a bit of sorrow in her for that. "So Henry and Jayadeep are the same person?"

[assassin_daddy]

"At least its useful for more than just cooking." Jacob offers. It's good for teeth and as a soap, from what he remembers. Or something you put in soap.

He picks at some more of the paneer, finishing that mouthful before he nods.

"It's a little... complicated. But my father had a hand in training Jayadeep too, before we were born. When he brought Jayadeep to England, he decided to call him Henry instead. Henry Green." Jacob's scowl says exactly what he thinks of that. "Then again, his enemies didn't associate an Indian man with that name, so it helped keep him safe for a long time."

[handleyourshit]

"I'm from America," Rosita reminds him, smiling wryly back. "I'm familiar with the concept." Ellis Island did its fair share of changing names to something more anglicized.

She's sopping up sauce with her bread again, but it's not the ravenous push she'd started with - it's more, now that she's unwilling to be wasteful and she takes her time.

"My mother was an immigrant though. I'm glad you aren't adding to the problems we tend to have just existing somewhere we're trying to make a living."

[assassin_daddy]

"I've lived through them deciding black people could be people." He says, understanding what she means, although Ellis Island happened after his time. His present time, anyway. As it is in 1888, there are still people from everywhere flooding into America in the hopes of a better life. He doesn't know how many of them find it.

The food is good, a wonderful way to bond. He wishes more people would be open to experiencing other cultures and accepting people, food seems to be a great way to do that to him.

"London is a big hub of people, from everywhere, at the moment. Freed people from America, the Irish, Indians, Germans, Arabs. It's better for having those people, I wish we were better at being more accepting."

He pauses again, because there is something new in her home that had caught his attention, and to be more accepting, he supposes he has to understand what things are. So he looks back to the coffee table, the flowers, the candle, the offering, and he decides to just ask the question.

"That looks like an altar?" He asks, although the skulls are a little strange for someone from a protestant background. "What is it for?"

[handleyourshit]

"Unfortunately they were still working on that in my time, albeit less obvious." And not just black people, but Rosita listens to that list of people and decides he probably hasn't encountered many latinos. She's not bothered, as long as he keeps not being an ass.

They're not the ominous kind of skulls that tend to be pervasive around this time of year for most people; the brightly colored paper isn't the only difference, but the patterns she drew on when she couldn't cut them out finely enough are pretty rather than gruesome, and their grinning mouths are smiling, welcoming rather than leering. She didn't make it for anyone but herself so it hadn't occurred to her to say anything, but she glances over when he mentions it - and she smiles.

"It is," she confirms. "We call it an ofrenda. It's for Día de Muertos - the day of the dead." Rosita doesn't have an accent as far as Americans are concerned, except when she says her name or drops into Spanish, and then she speaks quickly and fluidly before it vanishes again.

"I haven't done anything for it in years. I'm trying to give this place a bit more of a chance though, and it seemed like a good place to start."

[assassin_daddy]

"It's not as easy as you'd hope it might be." He agrees, although it clearly hurts to admit it. He knows that people can be good, they can be bad, but for the most part they're both, or neither. And that makes making the world better so much harder.

But he's happy to turn his attention to what she's saying, rather than things he can do nothing about while in Duplicity. Hell, he can only chip away at it at home, but that's something at least. Back to the here and now, however-

"An ofrenda for the Día de Muertos." He repeats, trying to make sure he gets the pronunciation right. He hasn't spoken any Spanish for years, and he's not as good at it as French or German, but perhaps she won't be offended if he tries to pick it up again with her. "I've not heard of the Day of the Dead. What's it about?"

He can guess, but frankly, he'd rather not and actually let her tell him about her traditions. They are hers, after all, and she doesn't seem like the sort that would appreciate him just making assumptions all over the place.

[handleyourshit]

On the contrary, her smile reaches up into her eyes for just a moment when he mimics the words she used, and she says them again - more slowly this time - so he can hear them properly before she answers. So he can have a prayer of working them out.

"My mother taught me. She moved up to Texas from Mexico, where it's a much bigger holiday than Halloween. She said it was about family, and coming together," she explains, setting her fork down so she can get up from the table and cross the short distance to the display.

"It's the one night a year the world of the dead and the living are close enough to touch, and those you've lost can come be with you again. The four elements are here - salt from the earth, the skull banners flutter in the air, water in the glass, fire in the candle - flowers to honor those who have died. Normally there are pictures, too, but - I don't have any." She presses her lips together, reaching to straighten one of the marigolds in its place. "Different people put up different offerings to give the spirits strength for the journey. The candle guides them home and lights their way back again so they aren't trapped. The gifts can be tailored to your loved ones - a favorite sweet, or an instrument, or a piece of jewelry."

She's chosen a shot of the whiskey for hers. She figures if Abraham did go through the trouble of making the journey all the way here, he'd like that better than water.

"I don't know how much I believe in it, but it's... nice. And Mama believed."

[assassin_daddy]

He's glad of her repeating them, it gives him a better chance to get them right after all, and he turns in his seat as she goes to stand, watching her approach the ofrenda but not doing so himself. It seems such a personal thing for her something that means something not just as a connection to her mother, but as a connection to those she's lost. He doesn't know of Abraham yet, but he can see something in the care she takes over the flowers that it's important.

"We don't have Halloween." He says quietly, trying to think of what they do instead in Britian. They don't really have a special date, per se. "Or anything like this. Or maybe some areas do. We... my family aren't religious."

He does feel that maybe he should do something. He should try to do something for Jack. What Or how, he doesn't know. He's not sure he should try to disturb his spirit either, but...

"What happens if you don't have the candle, or something for them?"

[handleyourshit]

"It's not always religious," she answers, and when she looks up from where she's knelt to be able to reach it better and sees him watching but coming no closer, she tips her head in invitation. Yes, it's personal. It's also meant to be shared, and the people she has to share it with is extremely limited.

"I mean obviously it is for a lot of people, but it doesn't have to be. It isn't for me." She doesn't have the luxury of right or wrong, heaven or hell, sin or virtue. She just does the best she can and tries to stay alive. "It's just... nice, to think of them again, and think that maybe they're thinking of me too."

The little tea light is almost out, and Rosita has a new one sitting nearby ready to light. It makes the whiskey shine beside it.

"They can still come, if everyone wants it badly enough. They're still who they were in life: it's easier for some, harder for others. We ease the way because we love them. When we can't, they understand because they love us." It's a bit of a rationalization, but she says it anyway, and hopes it's true.

[assassin_daddy]

Jacob sees the gesture and gets up, using a paper napkin to clean his hands of any crumbs before approaching. She says it isn't religious, but it does seem sacred, and he knows those are two separate things.

He kneels with her, between the sofa and the coffee table, still watching as she changes over the candle.

"It is. Good to remember them, I mean. And hope they are happy." Healthier than they were. What sort of man would Jack be, if he hadn't been so ill? If the madness hadn't consumed him? Happy. Wild, a bit like Jacob had been, charming too. Probably in trouble every other minute.

He finds that there's gathering tears in his eye, and he doesn't trust himself to speak again before he wipes the moisture away.

[handleyourshit]

Rosita has absolutely no idea what happens to people after they die; she has never pretended that she did, and before she came to Duplicity she was ever more certain that it was nothing. This place, of course, blows it all entirely out of the water but she hasn't been able to work that in yet, so she ignores it for the time being.

She feels the heaviness beside her before she actually consciously registers that he's wiping tears away, but she knows what to do with that. She sits, and she makes space, and she acknowledges that no matter how many people she's lost she does not know what he's feeling right now by not saying a single word about it.

When his grief has risen to the point he might make some kind of noise, sniff or cough or something else, she starts talking in a low, steady voice.

"When I was a girl, Mama had what felt like entire photo albums of our ancestors, and we'd build our ofrenda together, and she'd tell me stories as she set out each picture. Some of them were stories that had been told to her by my abuelos, her parents, and to them by theirs. Some of them were her own. It let us keep our family close, which is really the point even if you don't believe in the dead being able to find their way back in any real way." She wishes she'd had more patience for it, then, but children rarely do, and then her mother's picture was added to the display.

"I've lost... so many people. It's hard to think about them all so I usually don't. I just keep going because if I let myself miss them, I think I'd lay down and die too. It's the same for most people back home. But I still think about those stories Mama told, and... I think maybe there's space for it, now. Here. If we want there to be."

[assassin_daddy]

He's glad of the distraction. He wasn't so caught up in his own thoughts that he'd forgotten about her there, and Victorian sensibilities mean that he needs to get a handle on himself, calm down, stiff upper lip and all of that nonsense. Her words are enough to pull him back from memories of his son, and he takes a deep breath and turns his attention to her.

He doesn't know anything about his own family, not really. He knows what his father was like. He knows a little about his mother from what his grandmother would tell them when they were small. But other than that, he doesn't know anything. They don't have photographs. There was only one sketch of his mother, but he doesn't know what happened to that when his grandmother passed. All he knows, really, is that they were assassins. That's how they lived, that's how they died. He always wanted something else, something normal, but maybe he can have that through the stories she remembers. And maybe it will help both of them.

"I would love to hear them," He says, voice soft and a little unsteady before he fully gets a grip, "If you want to tell them."

[handleyourshit]

It would be easy to say that she doesn't - and true, too. She's spent a lot of time learning to never linger, never wallow, but to keep going. Don't ever look back. Don't yearn for what no longer is and never can be again.

She looks sidelong at him though, searches his face a moment, and thinks maybe she can make an exception this once.

"I'll try," she says, "But this holiday isn't about just one person. It's about the living, too. About the people we still have beside us." Just say it, Ro, she chides herself, and so: "Will you trade me? We can work through it together. Remember and honor together."

[assassin_daddy]

Not looking back and not lingering in the past is one thing, but shoving it out of mind entirely? He doesn't know if that works either. Who they are and where they came from is something important to most families, and it seems it certainly was for hers. To forget everything they did, all the things they achieved? That doesn't sit right with him.

He nods, when she speaks to him, taking another deep and calming breath to try and control himself, get a grip on himself.

"I... I think that sounds like a good idea." He says, and looks from her to the ofrenda. "Is there a set way to do it? A way to tell stories, or something like that?"

[handleyourshit]

She thinks maybe in some families there were, but as for hers? She shakes her head: "No. It's whatever you want to share, whatever's important enough to you to remember. Mama used to take each picture from its place on the wall one by one, and as she arranged them on the ofrenda, she'd tell me the story that went with it."

Which is not the story she'd like to tell about Reyna Espinosa, but she thinks her mother would approve that it's her legacy now anyway. They don't have pictures. Even if Rosita had had time to grab them out of her apartment in Dallas, she would have lost them a dozen times along the way from Texas to Alexandria, where she again has walls to hang portraits on - or here, if she had a mind to do so.

She presses her lips together a moment, wiping her palms down her thighs where she's knelt as she thinks, sifting through the years to find the thread to start.

"My favorite was tío Humberto. He had his mule with him, Guapo, his back piled high with packs and his tongue hanging out around the bit, like this." As a child she'd mimic the animal's face with her own, and her mother would do the same, and they'd laugh. Rosita sticks her tongue out now and smiles a moment after. "They worked for the miller in the town, carrying goods to customers and carrying back whatever was traded for them. There were chickens running between Guapo's hooves, and Humberto was trying to look serious but there was always mischief behind his eyes."

[assassin_daddy]

Pictures are nice, they put faces to names and stories, but they aren't the be all and end all. The important act is the repeating of the stories, the memory, the sharing of it, or so he thinks. Those are what keep people alive in the hearts of those that come after.

They've not known each other long, hardly any time at all, and the times he's met Rosita they've talked seriously, and she's been sometimes a little reserved. So he's not expecting her to stick out her tongue like that, a wonderful impression of a mule, and he can't help but laugh as she smiles. That is clearly all part of the story.

"I can't help but think Guapo and Humberto were a well-matched pair. All the donkeys I've ever known have had mischief in mind."

He's not sure if there is more to her story, but he thinks he has something he can tell her, something in a similar vein.

"My grandmother- we called her Nani, because she was Welsh- she had this little cottage on a hillside in the middle of nowhere. The hills around were covered in scrub, heather and thorn bushes, and you couldn't grow anything. But she had this little garden at the back, with flowers and vegetables and whatnot, and she'd spend every sunny moment out there, messing around with something, weeding something else, or talking to her bees."

[handleyourshit]

"Donkeys are assholes," Rosita agrees, chuckling. She hadn't known any then. She's known one now and the two of them learned to avoid one another, but she still loves the memory of Guapo who died two generations before she was born.

"Did you spend a lot of time with your Nani?" she asks, because his at least is an active memory, while hers is a hand me down in this particular case.

[assassin_daddy]

"That's what I said," He laughs, "But maybe that one was better behaved than most. Do you have any more stories like that?"

He nods, in reply to her question. "She raised us. Until we were six, and my father got back from India." He's not so hurt by it any more, but the fact Ethan didn't come back immediately after his wife died, never came back for his children... it had made him hate the man for a long time.

"So we played in that garden, helped her in it. Not very well, because we were too small to be much use." He says, and he smiles a little more. "She used to get me to help her plant Daffs. Daffodils. And in summer we'd all cwtch up in the evening under the apple tree, and she'd tell us stories."

[handleyourshit]

Every family, she thinks, should have had a grandparent that tells stories in the evenings. It makes her smile go a bit sad to think that most families - stitched together in a world overrun by the dead - won't have grandparents at all.

"If I can find a daffodil, I'll add it," she promises. An apple if she can't, she decides.

"We had five Marias hanging on our walls," she continues, to answer his question. "Abuelita Maria Consuela had the best garden though. She grew dahlias in every color of the rainbow and enough nopales to feed the entire village, which she did. She married abuelito Rodrigo when they were fifteen, in the little church in the town square, and then again thirty years later with Maria Conseula's dahlias in a carpet down the steps."

[assassin_daddy]

They might not have grandparents who share blood, but they may well have those who love them just as much, who don't care about who caried those children as long as they can do right by them in whatever way they can.

"Thank you." He says, and he means it. He's not seen any daffodils here but spring in Duplicity normally means you have to be careful of fertility drugs. And nothing grows in the Down anyway.

"She married him twice?" He asks, not sure if he's got the wrong end of the stick there or if it's someone else with the same name, as she said there were five Marias.

[handleyourshit]

"Yes," she nods, smiling. "They didn't get to choose it when they were young, but later they did. A repeating of vows."

He'd never seen her goofy like she was a moment ago over Guapo; now, there's a peculiar, soft note of warmth in her voice for two people who lived their entire lives together and only loved each other more as they went. It blends away into her tone a moment later, a drop of white paint into water: not gone, but no longer discernible.

"Abuelito Rodrigo was the mayor of their town for a month when he was twenty. He was voted in by a show of hands in the cantina across from the church, and quit rather than admit that he couldn't read. No one remembers why any of that worked, but it was probably a prank from his best friends, Joaquin and Lito."

[assassin_daddy]

"That sounds wonderful." He says, echoing her smile. It really does sound like dream, even if they didn't get a say originally, growing to love each other, being happy enough to proclaim their vows again? Even though he never knew those people, he is happy for them. Happy that their love is something that is remembered and passed down, and that Rosita has knowledge of it now.

"I suppose not being able to read might be a hindrance." He admits, although he's living in a time where so many people can't. He's sure there are good men and women who could run their village without a need for literacy. "Sounds like a good man though, giving it a go for that amount of time."

He wonders if he got the other pair back for their prank.

"My parents met when they were training. My mum hadn't ever been to a big city before, and my father showed her around. She went from not knowing it at all to knowing it the best out of their group in the year they were there. Before they were all disbanded, took him to the places he'd missed on their original tour, just to show off. But she made up all the historical stories she told him. He caught on pretty quickly, but I think he'd fallen for her by then. That was how my Nani told it, anyway."

He pauses, wondering not for the first time how much like his mother he was, and how much like his father.

[handleyourshit]

Grandmother to parents meeting - Rosita doesn't talk about the past much, but she recognizes circling when she hears it, knows how sometimes it takes easing into something to be able to talk about it. It's still so strange to her just hearing someone talk about being an assassin - casually mentioning training into it, not just themselves but generations before them doing the same - but she can deal with strange.

She smiles. "Did you have any aunts or uncles? Or was it just him, just her?"