Guava and Trail Mix
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Before A Fall
Rating: G
Challenge: Guava #3: so nice of you to join us, Trail Mix #16: closet
Toppings/Extras: none
Wordcount: 1,203
Summary: When someone really wants to believe something, it makes it easier to lie.
Notes: The abduction of Edward Ashdown. Takes place directly after Mirror Image. BTS!
The room was silent, and dominated by a large four-poster bed with ghostly lace curtains cascading from the top to drape over the floor. A massive vanity table stood puffed up in one corner, its three mirrors reflecting starry light that trickled in through a balcony door opposite to the foot of the bed. There was a screen in one corner, and two more doors leading away from the room: one close to the one they had just entered through, the other on the other side of the room. The white ceiling was as frosted as a wedding-cake, decorated with plaster frills and trimmings all around.
Pulling out a small olde-worldey pistol, Robyn opened the butt and pressed a small control there that certainly would not have been there on a true seventeenth century weapon. She pushed the setting into one that was called tranquillise, although she had been told not to tranquillise the target unless necessary.
She crossed the room to the bed, remembering a time when she would have killed to have the princess-like four-poster before her. The lace curtains were luminous in the darkness, silvery light seeming to sing along the delicate folds. Feeling oddly guilty for doing so, she twitched the curtain aside.
Her guilt drained away when she found herself staring down the soulless barrel of a gun.
“It’s fortunate I’m a light sleeper,” came an airy, preening tone from within the belly of the bed. The figure that they now recognized as Ashdown-except looking a little more ruffled in his bedclothes-wriggled forwards and knelt on the edge of his bed, his pistol still pointing between Robyn’s eyes. And this one was real. “You would not believe how many people try to assassinate me. Who are you and what are you doing here?” He suddenly squinted through the darkness. “Egad, what creatures are you?”
“We’re human,” Robyn said, flicking her goggles onto her forehead as Ashdown clambered out of the bed, still pointing his pistol at her. She dangled her own weapon from one finger, the other hand raised. “We’re not here to assassinate you...”
“A likely story,” Ashdown sniffed. His accent! It was so posh it sounded as though he was talking around a mouthful of ball bearings, and solid gold ball bearings at that. He seemed to think the same about them. “What a funny accent you have! Foreigners, eh? Who sent you? Was it him?”
“I don’t think so,” Robyn said, and hesitated, wondering how to play this. She didn’t want to have to tranquillise him. Suddenly, at the edge of her hearing, a slight snuffle emanated from somewhere behind their target. “Is there someone else in there?” she demanded.
“Only my wife,” Ashdown said dispassionately. “Sleeping faithfully through her husband’s assassination. As one does.” At this, he sighed somewhat.
Suddenly, the doors of the great wardrobe burst open, and out stepped a tall, narrow-eyed man with chestnut coloured hair and a square, craggy face. He did not look at all pleased, and one of his hands was inside of a long beige trench-coat that he was wearing over a workman’s shirt and dark brown breeches. Even the steely Robyn Walshe had jumped somewhat at his unexpected entrance; Taisy and Bradley had both spun around, pointing their guns at him.
He glanced at the barrels in his face unflinchingly. Perhaps he could have tried to fight them, but at that time it seemed pointless.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said instead, and then nodded to both Taisy and Robyn. “Ladies.”
“Who’s that?” Robyn demanded.
“Prowse, I’m guessing from the fact I very nearly shot him,” Bradley said, breathing out quickly. He eased his finger away from the trigger.
“My, you have been doing your research,” Ashdown said. He glanced over his shoulder at his wife. “See? She didn’t even stir. Maybe I should get a physician in.” Robyn had no idea who he was talking to.
“Would you like me to kill them, sir?” Mr Prowse asked easily. He had very dark eyes that glinted like the backs of beetles, and he could not be called handsome. In fact, what he could be called, really, was... weathered, with faded scars on his face and neck. Black leather gloves covered his hands and he had a badger-like streak of silver near the front of his hairline: the greying seemed premature as he looked in his mid-thirties to Robyn.
“We are not here to harm you,” Robyn said, carefully. “We have a... business proposition.”
“Oh, yes, of course, one of those business propositions that means you have to break into my home in the middle of the night and threaten me with a pistol. One of those business propositions...”
“We couldn’t come in the day,” Robyn said, turning slightly pink. “It’s complicated. Look, I’m putting the... pistol away, all right?”
She did so.
“Now, explain away,” Ashdown said brightly. “Mr Prowse, please, do be ready.”
“One man against four?” Bradley asked.
“Two men and two women against one Mr Prowse,” Ashdown said smugly. “Those are odds in my favour, believe me.”
“This is going to sound mad,” Robyn began, wishing Bradley would shut his mouth, “But we’re from the future-over a thousand years, actually.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s true. We have this machine that travels through time...”
“Everything travels through time, but only at a fixed speed and direction,” Ashdown said. Prowse had brought a lantern into the room, which made seeing a lot easier-Robyn noticed that the wardrobe was a fake, actually leading into another room. Sneaky sod, she thought-Why didn’t our future selves warn us about that?
“Alright, smart-arse, but this goes in different speeds and directions,” Taisy snorted. Robyn wished that her teammates would stop quipping. This man was important, and apparently dangerous, although the only danger she could see at the moment was of being irritated to the brink of insanity. She couldn’t imagine him actually pulling the trigger.
And then a brilliant idea shot down the electricity-fuelled passages of her brain and lit up her eyes bright. She even found herself smiling.
“It’s true,” she began, trying to tug the delicious smile away from her lips, “And you are... I mean, Lord Ashdown! The most famous man in history! It’s an honour to meet you, if nothing else... isn’t it? Team?”
“Oh, right, yeah,” Bradley said unconvincingly.
“Can I have your autograph?” Taisy added.
Victor said nothing, which was usual for him.
Ashdown was looking a little suspicious, but began adjusting his nightshirt airily.
“Well...”
By then, Robyn had worked out his weakest point.
“You wiped out piracy. It made you famous, sir.”
“Did it?” Ashdown whispered, no longer able to hide the gleam in his eyes.
In his doorway, Prowse rolled his eyes. Ashdown, however, took no notice: he looked like a child who had just seen undeniable proof of Father Christmas’ existence. Robyn Walshe had noticed over her time in the trade that people generally were very willing to believe what they wanted to hear. She felt a little sorry for him-for the mess she was about to drag him into. She didn’t realise that it was the whole of the future that should be worried.