#{: changing rules as i go; arabella threads }

[aslcved]

"He did so," Arabella confirmed, nodding solemnly, pleased at the disbelief he had shown. "How would one take that as a no offense, I ask you? Excusez-moi, Monsieur, very offended, totally taking it personal." She laughed fondly though. "My late Samuel, he was my sparring partner, you could say."

"But of course, I am nothing if not resilient." She took a sip of her drink, raised her glass slightly as if to congratulate herself. "I just kept pestering him, ha! Until he finally agreed to one date, I suppose just to get me off his back. And then when the day came, I did not show up to our date."

She noticed Sam's expression, and quickly amended, "Oh no no, not to get back at him or anything. It just so happened that my cat died that very day, and I could not come to the date because I couldn't stop crying."

There was a brief pause as the waiter came to their table to clear off the finished plates, and Arabella took a moment to order desserts for them both, also a suggestion for Sam, "I heard their Arabica is one of the best sourced, if you'd like coffee?"

"Unlike me, he was not petty.”

Sam tittered at the notion. He tried to imagine his Aunt, younger and still full of spirit, approaching the forever calm and collected Hallahan boy still smiling despite his patched-up face. Yeah, Samuel did seem like the sort didn’t he?

When Aunt Arabella leaned forward, Sam leaned in as well as if hearing a newfound secret. And then, at the revelation, Sam’s mouth hung open, slack-jawed. “He. Did. NOT!” he exclaimed, bewildered at the very thought! “Did he really say that?? Uncle Samuel??” Any strength he had to contain his laughter went out the bistro window, and he almost choked on his sandwich.

Finally after gaining some composure, Sam had to agree. “Well then that just begs the question; how did you ever change his mind??”

[cupcakemolotov]

Victoria plots and schemes, and her plans all work so that in any scenario, she wins. The House survives. She's such a wonderful nuanced character. And isn't it interesting we've yet to see her interact with the Baylors as a whole, her interactions with her granddaughters have all been one-on-one, and Nevada and Catalina have seen different facets of her character. The impressions they drew aren't wrong but they're not entirely all right either.

I agree with this. We have only seen a very small part of Victoria, and through very different lenses. I am so very interested to see what they decide to do with her!

The thing about first person, is everyone is an unreliable narrator. I think the grandpa in the scene is Linus, because he's the only older male character we've been introduced to. But I don't think he necessarily is their grandpa. I think grandpa was just a catch-all term to convey - "huh, older male with a weird relationship to the Baylors and Victoria, makes sense he would be a blood relative". Whether or not Arabella believes he is their biological grandfather is another matter too.

So the twin and I had a pretty big debate about Linus = Grandpa and it COULD be. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all, with the tiny hints that they keep giving us about Linus and Victoria, and we already know that Arabella is cheeky. And neither he nor Victoria would want Catalina to know that they are working that closely together, as I am certain they are both putting her through the ringer as a bunch of tests. Its a dangerous game they are playing with Catalina, because they could very easily alienate her completely. So if Linus is the Granpa, that means they are very definitely giving her the Good Cop/Bad Cop Treament (and honestly, I still don’t trust Linus at all.)  Or this could be the entry point for another character. They are really good at pulling threads I sometimes don’t see coming (I did not expect Xavier the little shit to be the villain in book 3,  but I am delighted she is going to get to kick the shit out of him. Seriously. He has no idea what she is and I fucking love that).

"Is Victoria the main bad guy in the end? I don’t think so. I think she is a dangerous, dangerous  knife the Baylor family has to contend with until she dies, and for her emotional scares are learning opportunities that will make her house stronger." 100% agree with this. She's teaching Catalina how to prepare for every situation and how to come out on top. And look how well Catalina is doing, already prepared to use Aunt Gisela as the sacrificial chess piece if it comes down to it.

But as outlined in EB, Catalina hasn't crossed the stage where she would preemptively eliminate possible threats. She's monitoring and making plans that she can live with. Not right now, but maybe one day Catalina can live with killing her aunt (or other threats that arise) if it means her family is safe. I don't think that change in mindset will necessarily even occur as a result of something tragic happening, just the natural progress of being Head of the House and a Prime.

Look at Catalina examining the scene the way she had been trained to do so and disregarding it because that isn’t who she is in that moment. I was actually so happy they put that scene in, because it showed us the backbone of Catalina in ways we don’t otherwise see. Here, they said, is what Grandma Tremaine has trained her to do, how she has taught her to eliminate threats (see also: how Augustine expected Nevada to eliminate him previously “I’m only alive because you haven’t learned to eliminate threats”) and here is Catalina rejecting that. Yes, she can become her grandmother’s creature, she can be that kind of ruthless, but she doesn’t want to do so she is making the harder decisions not to be.

I think those three rules of her dad’s come into very interesting play when you think about it. He too had suffered through Victoria’s terribleness, and those are the three things he decided here most important above all. Stay Bought. Don’t Break the Law. Be able to look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day. I don’t know if these rules were deliberately put down to counter everything that Victoria had tried to teach him,  but they are the backbone of his kid’s  lives, and they have been the rope that has kept them all from sinking beneath the weight of the House Rules I think. And I actually really love it, that in some way Victoria’s son continues to thwart her plans from the grave by simply being a good, kind man who understood on so many levels the awful that came from a house. And he had to know what his kids were, so he did the only thing he could do. He gave them a moral foundation to stand on.

[aslcved]

To say this was unexpected, was such an understatement. Sonyada followed Arabella's movement out the door, mouth slightly open, and it was a split second before she snapped back to the moment. To the handsome stranger sitting across from her. And in horror realized how he might have perceived the situation.

"Oh my god, I hope you did not think.. I swear I was not in on this," she gestured vaguely, " whatever this is. I was.." Her words collide with his. "No," she replied, "Oh dear, no idea whatsoever. She asked me to come here, said she had just received an urgent order and needed my help sorting it out.. I wouldn't.." She gave a rather breathless laugh. "I would never just crashed into some random people's event, or the likes."

"Ada," she nodded, trying to smile casually, "It's nice to meet you then, Alex, but really, I know you were not expecting me here, so.." Her eyes darted toward the entrance, "I probably should just go? I'm sure you have other plans.."

aslcved​:

⊱.｡*ﾟ+.*.｡⋅. ───────

Sonyada smiled at the stranger’s invitation, albeit hesitantly. “That’s really kind of you, but I wouldn’t want to int–”

“Oh, no no no, ma cherie!” Arabella grinned, cutting her mid-sentence. “If anything, I should be the one apologizing, aren’t I?” She stood up quickly, ushering the young woman to take her place. “Ada, this is Raphael, my nephew–ah, sort of–I’m too young to be his actual aunt, don’t you think? Raph, this is Sonyada–Ada, she works with me in the shop.” The shop in which Arabella was the owner, more of a high-end boutique, which made Sonyada her employee, but she didn’t try to correct her, merely smiling politely at the man.

“Well, yesss, I am truly, deeply sorry, Raphael. Work just.. does that, sometimes.” Arabella waved her hand about, adding a sigh for good measure. “Fear not, however, I at least will not leave you lonesome for the night.” She snatched her purse, blew him a kiss, then quickly turned on her heels. “Dinner’s on me. Have fun, you two!” And just like that, she disappeared out the front door.

─────── .⋅ﾟ+..｡*ﾟ+ .⊰

Alex was well-used to Arabella’s often frantic rhytms, but even so, this sudden reaction of hers took him by surprise. He all but stared at her, the girl-Ada- clearly as thunderstruck as the thief himself was as she was all but pushed into the redhead’s seat across from him.

Arabella, true to type, did not linger, moving like the whirlwind she was, racing out the front door before either of them could utter so much as a question.

The thief shook his head with a chuckle, giving the girl across from him a smile as well. “I hope you’ve been working with her long enough to be used to that sort of thing,” he sighed amusedly, the drinks and appetizers Arabelle had ordered a few minutes ago arriving as if on cue. “Any idea what that was even about?” he asked. He was getting an inkling-having known Arabella for the biggest part of his life-but he wasn’t quite ready to put his suspicions into words. “Ada, was it?” he asked instead, instinctively reacting to put the girl at her ease. “Please go with Alex; no one but my mother and Bella ever use Raphael,” he laughed.

[aslcved]

"Now don't you laugh! I was young.. er, cut me some slack!" But Arabella was chuckling herself. It was not hard for Arabella, being her extra friendly-self, to form connections with people, but she was grateful especially for this with Sam. Thankful that he did not judge her for leaving all those years ago, when the grief was too hard to bear. Thankful that he only welcomed her now, no questions asked, at least not yet.

Her smile was soft as she continued, answering his prompts. "No, I do not think he was getting back at me. Unlike me, he was not petty."

"I was straightforward, no games, I went to him and asked him out on a date.. Well, on the pretense of payback of his helping me, et cetera et cetera.. He replied that he was not doing all that to win brownie points with me. And get this.." She leaned forward, eyes big in disbelief, as though what she was about to say happened just yesterday, instead of almost two decades ago. "He said to me, 'I'm flattered but I don't think we would be a good fit, no offense.' Word for word. Can you believe that?" She scoffed but laughed after, "Jokes on him, right, darling? 'Cause of course, how wrong had he been?"

It was such a fascinating, strange, bittersweet feeling; Sam hearing all of this about an uncle he never had the chance to know. He could remember only a few things about him like how his hair and eyes were brown, just like his mother’s. His voice and smile were gentle and kind, but his face was fuzzy when Sam tried recalling what he looked like. He always needed to look at the photos to get the perfect image of a smug-looking Samuel Hallahan.

To hear that Aunt Arabella was smitten so suddenly after such a turn of events, Sam chuckled. But then to hear how his uncle was playing hard to get, Sam stifled his laughter by cupping a hand over his mouth. It was just not something he expected but he couldn’t wait for his aunt to elaborate.

"No way!” he exclaimed. “Was he tryin’ to get back at you? But like… What did you do after finding out? What did he say??”

[aslcved]

"Oh.. super awkward would suggest that we interacted albeit slightly." Arabella chuckled. "The thing is, I barely saw Samuel the next day. I remembered him at the back of the cafe, talking to our boss briefly, then leaving, but of course I was very much still in the 'to-hell-with-him' frame of mind, I did not try to find out why he took a leave that day." She leaned her chin on her palm, smiling still. "Now the day after that, Samuel was back at his shift.. with a major bruise on his jaw. That definitely piqued my interest, like, was he absent yesterday because he was in a fight? Did someone finally manage to get a violent reaction out of him? Should I try to take a page out of this stranger's book?

"So, I did some digging and discovered that he was in a feud with none other than the jerk customer who was harassing me. That he was locking up the shop the other day, and found the guy hanging around, presumably to try another encounter with me, and Samuel confronted him.

"As if that was not sweet enough, Samuel proceeded to persuade the manager to keep me in morning shifts for the next few weeks, with himself covering on the hours that lacked man power because of the alterations. All of these, without alerting me one bit."

Arabella ran her fingers through her hair and beamed, a tad bashfully, the gesture making her look years younger. "Oh my, when I found out.. to say I was smitten was an understatement." She followed the words, rather in discordant, with a roll of her eyes. "Of course, your uncle had to play hard to get at first."

“Hahah, well, I think it’d be a lil’ difficult since yer flyin’ on Friday but ah’m sure Mrs. Shadestone wouldn’t mind the next time ye come ‘round,” added Sam. “You’ll 'ave plenty of time then!”

When Aunt Arabella continued her tale, she had Sam’s undivided attention. When she mentioned her temper, Sam couldn’t help but chuckle. It seemed like Granda’s side of the family were very chill in comparison. People always said his mother was soft-spoken and gentle and so was his Gran, though he couldn’t remember them both so he had to take their word for it. Granda was known to raise his voice when the occasion called for it but that might’ve been due to his time in with the police and his hearing. But Uncle Samuel was on another level entirely.

“Oh! Granda said that uncle had the patience of a monk!” he said as soon as he remembered it. He laughed, “So I suppose it was true!”

From some old photos Sam once saw, he could picture it. A younger, fiery Arabella, her cheeks burning and her hair both flustered and fabulous, exhausting herself in argument against a calm, ever-smiling Samuel. He could imagine how frustrating it must’ve been in her shoes. He wondered what went on in his uncle’s mind, and what was it that made them turn from foes to friends.

“Obviously not,” Sam chuckled in response. “Was work the next day super awkward??”