self_inflictedexhile | nysm / tvd } { if you will, please move in closer

nysm / tvd } { if you will, please move in closer

In another lifetime, Dylan Rhodes never existed. In another lifetime, he didn't need to, because Lionel Shrike never drown in the Hudson River, Dylan Rhodes stayed Jacob Shrike, and his life went in a very different direction.

At age fifteen, his father started teaching him the tricks of the trade: sleight of hand, how to build a rig, how to do a little bit of actual magic, despite the fact that probably wasn't something he should be sharing, just yet. Shortly after that, Jacob met a young Alma Dray, tagging along with her grandfather, a friend of his father's, stopping by to check up on him. They grew up together, life continued on, and Jacob eventually went to college for Theatre Design and Stagecraft. At twenty-two, just after graduation, Jacob was chosen to join the Eye, his test to help the LVPD clear the name of another magician, despite all the evidence in the world making him seem guilty as sin. There, Jacob met Michael Fuller, his partner a lifetime away, and the two became friends as they managed, despite all odds, to pull off what had been asked of Jacob by the Eye. He continued on into a career as a stage magician in the Eye, eventually married Alma, and continued to occasionally work with Fuller as a consultant, when time allowed.

Over the course of the next few decades, Jacob and Alma tried to have children and failed, and eventually adopted one Jack Wilder, age 10. Using Eye resources, he helped Merritt McKinney get a good lawyer and clear his name after his brother screwed him over. He followed the rising stars that were J. Daniel Atlas and Henley Reeves, and when they decided to call it quits, pulled the both of them back together, forcing Daniel to give Henley a more active role in the show. And eventually, yes, he called the four of them together, not for revenge but something similar, to get them into the Eye. And somewhere along the way, Jacob and Alma tried for children again, and this time managed, giving Jack a brother, Lio, Lionel, named after his grandfather.

Basically, this is the best possible timeline.

And now, it's just after dinner, Jacob off to his nightly rehearsal at 5Pointz, that his space, now, like his father before him. He takes a detour tonight, though, to grab a cup of coffee, beforehand, a little bit of magic pulled around him, to make himself not completely invisible, but at least a little less noticeable. Normally, he doesn't mind showing off or signing autographs, when a fan approaches, and fans do often approach, his notoriety somewhere up there with Penn and Teller, Seigfried and Roy, but -- not tonight. He's not feeling it tonight, a little tired for whatever reason, hence the coffee, so magic it is. And now he's sitting at a table, idly people-watching as he leans into his cup. Have at him, if you can still see him (or, maybe, in certain party's cases, sense him) despite his best efforts.

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"Finch, I'll be fine. I trust him."

"No offense." That's more for Dylan than Josie. "But those words coming from you can be a little sus. And you know that."

Josie takes a deep breath, because she knows that it's a mix of Finch being protective of Josie and also werewolf instincts that can live a little too close to the surface. She reaches over and places her hands on Finch's shoulders.

"This is my chance to see if I can find an end to this curse once and for all. Just ... trust me on this? Please."

Finch takes a deep breath and looks away, and then back at Dylan. "If you disappear and don't come back, I'm telling Hope and letting her go nuclear all over this."

Josie nods. "I'm sure Lizzie will help. But I'll be fine."

Dylan looks between the two of them, letting them have their moment. When Finch returns her attentions to him, he nods, too, seriously, before looking away. Message received. Lucky for him, nothing's going to happen to Josie.

"We good?"

"We're good," Josie speaks up, before Finch can try and twist the issue further. Finch takes a deep breath, then nods, and turns to head towards the back of the apartment.

"Good luck."

"Thanks," Josie nods, before turning back to Dylan. "Okay. Let's do this."

Dylan catches Finch's eye one last time, offering her a serious nod, and then he's turning, too, to head back the way he came. "Alright, c'mmon."

Once they've made it back to street level, he leads the way in silence, heading back towards where the majority of the restaurants around are around here. When he reaches the first of them, he slips into the alley that leads to its back door, and once he's sure they won't be interrupted by cooks or waitstaff coming out for a smoke, reaches for it, the feel of magic pooling around him. He directs it towards the door, and when he pulls it open, what Josie sees is at odds with what she should see. There is no restaurant kitchen waiting for them, but what appears to be the lobby of a library, sunlight out of synch with the light here pouring down into it from above.

Dylan glances back at her, all but smirking, and then steps in. "Close the door behind you, huh?"

She stands behind him, eyes wide, looking at the shimmering repository of knowledge. As she adjusts to the sight, convinces herself it's real, she can't help but smile in response.

"I love magic."

It's a complicated, sometimes dangerous relationship, but she fought so hard to find her wonder with magic again, and she's certainly not going to lose it now. She jogs ahead to catch up, closing the door behind her as she continues to look around.

"That'd make two of us," Dylan promises, heading for the front desk and the man waiting for them behind it. He nods a greeting to him, as they get within earshot. "Andrew."

"Jacob," he answers, flashing him a brief smile before looking past him, to Josie. "And this is Miss Saltzman, yes?"

"Yeah." Dylan steps out of the way, to gesture between them. "Josie Saltzman, Andrew Kent."

"Nice to meet you." She offers a wave in return as she makes her way closer. "And thank you, for letting me do this."

Not that she knows if it was his decision, but someone is probably listening. She knows that this isn't access she's going to have forever, but she wants to be as respectful as possible, and not make it seem as though she's trying to cut any corners.

"Do I need to fill out any paperwork or ... get a visitor's pass or something?"

He hums, flashing her a smile -- one that takes on a quietly amused note, almost in spite of himself. He doesn't mean to be not-quite-laughing at her; he appreciates the respect, even if, no, letting her come here wasn't his decision, or at least not entirely. The question still strikes him as silly, however, considering all the magic around them.

"I think you've already done everything you need to," he tells her, once he's sobered. He glances briefly to Dylan, before, "I imagine Mister Shrike has told you you have three days?"

Dylan, for his part, nods, and Andrew mirrors him before continuing, "I've pulled a few things that might serve as a starting point and left them in one of the reading rooms for you. Otherwise, I can help you find anything else you might need -- or the Archive, itself, can."

Eye's library, as it turns out, is just shy of sentient for all the magic holding it together.

Look, she just wants to double check. You never know with this prestigious magical places. They have their rituals and Josie just wants to make sure she doesn't do anything to screw it up.

"Good to know. Thank you, for your help."

And she'll let him lead the way to the reading room in question.

Andrew does, in fact, move to lead the way, rounding the counter to head down a nearby hallway. It's not long before he stops again outside another door, and pulling it open, he steps back to gesture them inside. "I'll be just at the desk, if you need me."

Nodding, Dylan leads the way in, and once Josie has followed, Andrew lets the door close behind them. Only then does Dylan turn his attentions to the stack of books Andrew pulled for them. "So, besides the obvious, what am I looking for, here?"

He doubts they're going to find a book that just says 'How to Stop the Gemini Coven Merge.'

Yeah, she has a feeling that book is probably not around either. But she does have a few ideas of where to start.

"Does the Eye keep a record of curses? Or coven histories? Maybe if we can pinpoint when the Gemini twins started merging, we can see what might have happened in the history at the time."

"Curses, no," Dylan answers, shaking his head, "not unless they're on one of our own. Coven histories, though ... "

They might have better luck there and Dylan immediately looks to the books Andrew has pulled for them, half-expecting that to be there, at least. It would have been relevant, after all, even if he hadn't had the same thought about lining up scraps of history to solve their puzzle.

"There's probably something in here," he finishes, as he starts to comb through them in earnest.

Josie nods as she starts takes on another section of the pile, starting to sort through books on her own. There's a lot of history to go through, a lot of covens. The Geminis had their own name, but they tended to like to fly under a radar. At one point, they disappeared off the map to protect themselves.

Slowly, books move from one stack to the other, with some left out open in front of her with vague mentions to names she recognizes. Hours pass, but when Dylan is flipping through a book of family trees, she stops when she recognizes the name at the top:

"Does that say Parker?"

Dylan pauses, too, just shy of turning the page, and glances back to her. He looks immediately back to the top of the tree, squinting at the writing, before he holds the book out to her for confirmation.

"I think so, yeah."

But she can decide whether or not to get her hopes up.

She only knows so much of her family tree. It's what happens when all your maternal family is dead. But she does know some names and she let's her finger roll all the way to the bottom before she stops.

"Josette, Malachai, Lucas, Olivia - yeah, this is it." All of them dead now, but part of her history all the same. "Josette was my mom." Then she pushes back drawing her finger up to the one above them. "Joshua was the last leader of the Gemini Coven - the last one that counts anyway. "He won the Merge against his brother, Jonathan. And then if we keep tracing back..."

No matter how many children there are, there's always a pair of twins, and one of them ends somewhere around their twenty-first birthday.

"There's always a set of twins," Dylan finishes. He doesn't bother mentioning the obvious -- that one of them always dies young. He glances between Josie, the book and back again, instead. "So, where's this clusterfuck actually start?"

"Gemini Coven. Kind of what they're famous for." Twins, that is.

She lets her finger drag up the family tree, back generations and generations until she hits the first generation that appeared in America. The one right before it has twins as well, but both twins had families and lives. One if them didn't suddenly die at twenty-two.

"Here. So something happened between leaving Europe and coming to America. Something happened with Helene and Tobias Parker that for some reason they started the Merge."

Dylan studies the book for another several seconds, before, "Okay, so, now we just gotta find out what was going on in the world, at that point."

Both locally to where the Parkers came from and went to, and on a broader scale. He, like her, thinks that might be the best shot they have.

She nods, drumming her fingers against the book. "The Gemini are kind of known for keeping themselves hidden, but I'm not sure if that came before or after the merge started. If they started hiding because someone came for them, or if they always liked to stay under the radar."

Which might make a difference in terms of what kind of information they find.

"Guess we start by trying to find mentions of them, then," Dylan decides. "I mean, if something happened, they'll be there and then they won't. If they always liked to stay under the radar, I feel like we'll have a harder time finding them, period."

Either way, it'll inform how they go about this.

"Okay. So ... do you guys have archives categorized by year? Maybe we can start with when Helene and Tobias were born and go from there?"

It's a long shot that they'd come up, but it's worth a shot.

"We can do that, yeah."

Honestly, the archives can be categorized in just about any way imaginable, as if they were being kept entirely digitally rather than in a mix of mediums. It's one of the perks of this place being what it is, controlled by who it is. There's a magic here that makes the place almost sentient.

"Look for anything crazy that turns up, year by year?"

"Start in 1665 and work your way back."

She pauses, because that's a very specific year, but given the years they were born, it doesn't take much to do the math. Magic may be nebulous and unexplainable at times, but there are always patterns. And twenty-two is such a specific age for it to not have a reason.

"They would have been twenty-two. The merge always happens when you're twenty-two."

"Alright." Dylan glances towards the door. "C'mmon, let's go poke around in the stacks, and see what we can find." And see what's waiting for them, when they get back to this room here. Like he didn't say, the archive is just shy of sentient. It'll help where it can.

Josie nods, before disappearing into the stacks and starting to page through the histories. She grabs a few records that seem to be around the right time period before making her way back.

"Curses are so funny, you know? I mean, most spells end with the death of the person who cast it. Even compulsion wears off when you kill the vampire. Most curses end with the death of the person who was cursed."

She places her books down, next to whatever the library provides.

"But then there are just ... the big daddy curses like this one, or the werewolf curse that just ... they hold on and they don't let go. How much power do you have to have to curse an entire bloodline."

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