Baker and Jones Ch. 11

Cordelia thinks for a moment, gathering her words. "I'd rather leave that be."

"Please," Annette nudges gently. "I need to know." She'd spent so many nights the last two months wondering and wondering.

"I don't know, I suppose I wanted to make your choice easier," the detective shakes her head.

"My choice?"

"You clearly loved her, I could see that at dinner. I figured she would steal away your contract. I didn't want you to feel conflicted."

"She didn't offer it," Annette says quietly. "I asked her to."

"I see."

"It's why she left."

Cordelia takes a long breath, almost relief. "I'm surprised to hear that. I'm... I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Annette reassures her. "I've also spoken a great deal about her with the others. I... I feel differently about things with her now."

Cordelia nods, turning to look at Annette as well. "I still don't regret doing the same to her."

"I'd like to hear why."

She turns away, gazing back up at the sky. She tucks her arms behind her head, and after a few moments says, "Temptation doesn't create evil within a person. It doesn't corrupt them. It simply provides the occasion for someone to seize upon the latent evil inside and bring it forth. Tragedy can do the same."

Annette doesn't follow, but allows Cordelia to continue.

"When I sent her away, convinced of my own potential to gain access to the insurmountable favor of my family... Samantha didn't go quietly into the night." Cordelia takes a breath and exhales, "There's a reason my lesbianism is a poorly kept secret."

Annette sits up quickly. "She exposed you to punish you?"

"All the goodwill I was earning, all the friendships I was cultivating, even the political courtship I was leading on... it all evaporated," she raises an open palm and clenches it into a hard fist to accent her point. "Suddenly, I wasn't just a bastard, I was a deviant. It was actually her exposition of me that placed Samantha into the view of the then Captain Deveroux."

"The tragedy of heartbreak gave her the moment to reveal her own malicious nature," Annette summarizes, "previously hidden below."

"And it made me realize I couldn't care less about the people I wanted to impress," Cordelia sighs. "They were all waiting for a reason to toss me aside, and were glad to have their excuse. I don't regret coming to learn this."

Annette looks back up at the sky, feeling a mixture of pity for Cordelia and renewed displeasure with Samantha. But then, she thinks about her time at 167th Mill Street and timidly says, "I think... I think you were like that for me."

"Tragedy?" Cordelia scoffs.

"Instigating," she clarifies. "You saw something in me that I didn't see before. You brought it out in me."

Cordelia lets out a quick puff of laughter. "You argued with me a great deal about it at the time. You despised some of the requests I made of you." She sighs and allows her breath to blow out into the night sky for a long while. When she speaks again, her voice is gentle and melancholy. "I wish you'd stay."

"I can't-,"

"I know that you can't. I wish it nonetheless." She rolls over onto her side to face Annette. "Why did it take you so long to visit?"

"I needed to see the person I could become," she answers, then looks away. "And... I was afraid."

"Of me? You have nothing to-,"

"Afraid of what I would think of you now."

Cordelia lays back. "Not of what I might think of you?"

Annette shakes her head.

"Well... what do you think of me now?"

Annette is quiet, unsure of how to reply. In many ways, it felt like she was still deciding, unable to reconcile the realities of her time as a servant and her time as a Mallet. They felt so deeply in contrast with each other. She spends so much time these days railing against the collar system and comforting former servants... and yet she also knew that her time with Cordelia had fundamentally altered her in a way that she was proud of.

"I'm wretched in your eyes now, aren't I?" Cordelia mutters.

"I don't-,"

"It's fine," the detective grumbles. "You don't need to say it. I've endured enough conversations regarding a conclusion about my poor character. Spare me, please."

The detective slowly begins to stand up, and Annette quickly declares, "I don't think you're wretched, Cordelia. Sit down." She waits until she obeys, then says, "I think you're lonely."

"Who isn't?" She snorts.

"Fair enough," Annette dismisses. "But, for most people, owning a contract seems to be the temptation that reveals the beast within them. But it didn't with you. You weren't evil with me. A little harsh, perhaps, and sometimes judgemental, but never evil. You should see what some of the other owners are like."

Cordelia sighs. "Being the one good apple in a rotten bunch isn't much consolation."

Annette sits up, folding her hands in front of her face. "What I'm... listen... when I say that I feel differently about my time here, what I mean is this: I loved it. I felt so guilty about it, but I did."

"And what do you think of it now?"

"That is what I-," Annette stops herself, feeling her thoughts all scrambled inside of her mind. "It took me two months to visit because I needed to know that I wasn't being naive. I-I was worried that maybe I had tricked myself into thinking it was fine but that it really wasn't; that maybe I only said we were friends because I feared you would remove me if I said no."

Cordelia sits up and stares at her, a frightful look of concern glimmering in her eyes. "I didn't realize that was the nature of our dynamic-,"

"It's just the reality of things," Annette presses on. "And the point is this: it isn't simply that you weren't wretched with me - it's that you were good, in your own strange, backwards way."

The detective puffs, "I don't see how my way is strange-,"

"It is," the former servant asserts. "But it's also good. You saw things in me that no one has ever seen in me before. You recognized parts of myself that I had never recognized."

Cordelia looks away and smiles gratefully. "They were quite obvious."

"But it's like you said before. You see things that other people glare past," she runs her hands through her hair, finally feeling her thoughts settle. "You say people never see Cordelia underneath all of their expectations and judgment. But where everyone else looked at me and saw a disrespectful, irreverent, twice-born girl, you saw Annette."

Cordelia purses her lips, and seems moved by Annette's words. She quietly replies, "I always thought you simply tolerated my home."

Annette smiles, and the two of them sit in the revelation that things were going to be fine between them. It was as though the dam had finally been opened, or the gate lifted, or whatever was blocking their normal dynamic had finally been removed. Suddenly, it was just Cordelia and Annette once again, and she sits in the comfort of its familiarity.

"You're the only other person I've met who feels the feeling," Cordelia admits after some time. "I've always felt so alone with it. So burdened by the isolation of its necessity."

"Thank you for teaching me what it was."

Cordelia grins. "Thank you for not thinking I'm crazy."

"Just eccentric, perhaps."

"Synonymous," the detective rebuts, laying back down against the roof.

"Then let's just say 'strangely compelling.'"

"That will suffice."

Annette takes a long breath of the cool night air as the storm settles around them. She remains seated while Cordelia lays down, and she allows her eyes to wander over the lights of the city around them. She feels lighter, having come to some resolution.

"I... I wasn't sure if tonight would be the last time I visited you or not," she tells Cordelia after a while.

"And?"

"You asked me once whether I would remain if you released me from my contract," she recalls.

"You declined to answer then," Cordelia replies. "Do you have an answer now?"

"My contract was for six years. I feel that perhaps I owe you at least that much in friendship."

"So you will come back," Cordelia pips happily.

"As often as I am able."

The detective closes her eyes and lets out a tense breath, relaxing into the material of the roof. "You have no idea how much that means to me."

"I'll try not to let the interval between visits remain fixed for two months."

Her eyes pull open, and she looks over at Annette with an idea at hand. "A concession, perhaps?"

"Okay."

"Is there some place that I could write to you at?"

Annette thinks for a moment. "They might worry about the post giving away our location."

Cordelia grins knowingly. "Perhaps this is an opportune time for me to inform you that Harold was once a messenger pigeon."

Annette shakes her head in disbelief, but smiles graciously. "Then Harold may write to me at Elenore's Gallery."

Her eyebrow raises. "You're living at the Gallery?"

"No. But they'll know how to bring it to me."

"Excellent."

Annette takes a final look out across the city, nodding with the resolution that she would be able to see this view again sometime.

"Must you depart so soon?"

"Unfortunately, yes," she sighs.

"Very well."

Annette sits up, shifting a little closer to the detective. She feels a prickle of inertia and something important push forward, the sort of inclination she would have repressed a half-year ago but now found was less terrifying because of the person she had become.

"Cordelia?"

"Yes?"

Annette leans over her and softly presses her lips into hers. She lays her body down, inhaling the scent of pine soap that Cordelia so deeply loved. Her eyes close, and for a long moment she simply savors the kiss, not really knowing where the impulse came from but knowing that it had felt necessary. The detective accepts her touch, pushing her mouth back into Annette's with a confusion that soon after fades into a gentle enthusiasm. It's a kiss of gratitude, of comfort, of a history between them that defied any attempt Annette had to express it.

She pulls away to see Cordelia smiling, her face a little red. Annette grins and gently whispers, "Thank you for teaching me to be Annette."

And without another word, Annette carefully slips away into the attic, descending down the ladder and wondering how she could have come to be so different of a person in so little time.