Help!

[thegreatdanton]

"Please, you have to help me!" Angier cries, desperation in his voice.

"He's taken my little girl. Please, anyone, her name is Lydia, she looks like my child, she's just a little girl... Borden, Alfred Borden is the man's name." The man has always been a performer, but this is no act

Comments

[likegoinghome]

"Rupert, Rupert, what's going on?"

Her voice is tinted with nervousness as she approaches. "Lydia is here? She's not at the estates? Or with Mister Cutter? She's here, at the Mansion?"

"Mister Borden has her?" And now she'll become all trembly and worried-like. "He wouldn't, he would stoop so low? He's taken my little girl?"

[thegreatdanton]

The magician nods. "She is. I was speaking with her, and I went to go find you and left her alone for only a moment."

"When I came back, he was holding her. I couldn't catch them, he disappeared... He looked right at me... He has no intention of returning her, not any time soon. We have to find her, Julia..."

[likegoinghome]

"He took her? She's just a girl, she has no place in this! What would he want with her! Why would he take Lydia?"

And she's frantic. "Yes, yes, we need to find her. Quickly."

[thegreatdanton]

Ah... that's the hard part to explain. "I... I made a deal with him as Lord Caldlow to take his daughter when he was supposed to be killed, so she wouldn't go to the workhouse. No doubt he's striking back..."

[likegoinghome]

And she'll sigh and rub her forehead, pacing. "Rupert, this has to stop. Please? When we get her back can we please just...let it stop? If Lydia is here and she's affected too...She shouldn't have to be in this!"

[thegreatdanton]

The man shakes his head. "No. It can't stop. Not after this, he will pay for kidnapping my daughter..."

[watchclosely]

"And you called me an unfit parent."

Borden looks amused, more than anything. Although it's that kind of amusement that has a glass-knife edge.

[thegreatdanton]

Ooooooh, this is a mistake.

Angier's eyes light up and he wheels around to face the man, violently. "Where the bloody hell have you take my daughter, Borden?!"

[watchclosely]

He would laugh, but even he knows better than that. He has more self control than that. Barely.

"She's safe. Safe as my daughter would have been, had you left her alone."

Someone's still holding a grudge, much as he accuses Angier of doing so.

[thegreatdanton]

"Your daughter was perfectly safe. And when I took her, you were on death row to be hanged! I am here, my wife is here, we are the both of us in a situation to care for her. Now give her back!"

The man, naturally, is fuming.

[watchclosely]

Up until perhaps this point Borden had been wondering just exactly what he'd intended to do with Lydia Angier. The memory of what Angier had done to him, though, of jail and the threat of the hangman, infuriates him.

"Safe?" he snaps. "Safe with a man who cared more about his vengeance than his wife, his lover, or his children? And the only reason I was sentenced to die was because you set me up for your murder which you bloody well arranged. You were the one who tried to make my daughter an orphan, and I should trust you with the care of any child? After everything you've done?"

The frightening part about this whole tirade is that as angry as the words are and as much as his eyes clearly want to stab the other man through the heart, his face is actually quite calm.

"The girl is safe. She's with Fallon. The man you buried alive." Oh yes, he still remembered that. And he was still very, very pissed off about it.

[thegreatdanton]

"You have no right to say what happens to my child!" Angier bellows. "She is not yours to trust me with, she is MINE. She is my blood, my beautiful little girl, and you've taken her from me!"

The magician is very, very, very close to beating the man over the head with the cane at his side. "Bring my daughter back, Borden. I swear to God you will regret this to no ends."

[watchclosely]

"And now you know what it feels like," Borden says, quietly. Calmly. "Except you're not behind bars in jail. Although maybe you should be."

"Anyway, I can't bring her back, I don't have her with me, and Fallon's taken her off for the day. Don't worry, she'll be perfectly safe. He's probably taken her to the museums or something like that."

[thegreatdanton]

Angier raises his cane to the man, threateningly. "Give her back! She is my daughter Borden! You killed me to get your daughter back, do not think I would hesitate in returning the favor to get mine, yet again."

"I love her, no matter what you bloody think. The man who caused his wife's suicide has no right to tell me I am an unfit father! I made a bloody mistake, I corrected that mistake, you have no right WHATSOEVER to withhold my child from me!"

[watchclosely]

There's a flicker of confusion over his face when he says that, quickly hidden. Killed Angier? He would have remembered doing that, although the explanation is perhaps more simple than it would be for most people. He's more than a little pleased that it happened, though, especially when he dreamed about doing so for so long.

Besides, it matters little when Angier brings that up. The scowl that twists his mouth is vicious, as self-hating as much as it is furious at Angier.

"Whatever my failures as a husband, I always put my Jess first. I did my bloody well best to make sure she had a loving mother and father, and everything she could have needed."

And his voice is snide and casual in the next instant. "Besides, while you're standing here yelling at me, Fallon is off watching the girls play at skip rope or whatever it is they're doing. What exactly do you think yelling at me is going to accomplish? Even I can't..." Voila. A red rubber ball. "Produce them out of thin air."

[thegreatdanton]

Good. Let the man feel guilty. Angier had done aweful things to his family, yes, but he had not driven his wife to death.

"Oh, ha. I know what went on in your household, Borden. The pair of you fought constantly in front of your daughter, you denied your child her mother! The woman ought to have taken her daughter and gotten the hell out, but no."

Angier rolls his eyes. "As if I could bloody find them! You're going to tell me where they are and give my daughter back! This is between the two of us, not Lydia. Not Jess or Julia or Olivia."

"Think of Julia, if you refuse to give her back to me! She's worried sick, she's done NOTHING to either of us. She trusted you, and you kidnapped our daughter!"