abluestocking (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
abluestocking) wrote2011-03-06 10:35 pm
abluestocking) wrote2011-03-06 10:35 pm
FIC: In Another Life, Part Three
Title: In Another Life (Part Three)
Ship(s): Yvette Cooper/Ed Balls; Yvette Cooper/Ed Miliband; surprise major pairings; many other minor pairings hinted or implied
Word Count: 8,969 in this part, 28,484 overall
Rating: NC-17, for strong language, sexual situations, and violent peril
Warnings: Explicit sex (both homosexual and heterosexual), pretend dub-con.
Summary: In parallel realities, three Yvettes try to stay sane and solve a mystery.
Author's Note: Title is, of course, borrowed from Vienna Teng's lovely song of the same name.
Disclaimer: This is a creative work of fiction, composed of fictional characters inspired by the public personas of living people. No injury or disrespect is intended to the persons named. It is true that real-person fiction is of dubious legality - if you are one of the persons named within, or know one of them, please bear in mind that stories such as this are written for entertainment value only, in full knowledge that they are not based in truth, and that ultimately they are a labor of love; also, if you are one of these people, stop reading immediately and go run the country.
If you missed them, here are Part One and Part Two.
--
universe two
Yvette stepped into the Chamber and saw a tableau she would never forget, as long as she lived.
Lindsay, standing in front of the Speaker’s Chair, face thunderous. A smattering of MPs around the Chamber, faces lit up with surprise, some on their feet. Eric Pickles, at the despatch box, his mouth dropped open with shock.
Peter Bone, that boring old Tory, standing in front of the Table, hand on the Mace, his cadaverous head thrown back, smiling.
And John, halfway down the Labour front bench, his feet planted and hands raised. “Take your hand off my Mace,” he said, and his voice echoed around the Chamber, though he had not shouted.
Bone laughed.
John raised his hands slightly higher, and blasted him.
Bone flew backward, dumped unceremoniously on the floor in the middle of the main aisle.
Someone screamed. Dennis Skinner yelled, “About time!” Some young Tory backbencher asked her neighbour, in a carrying voice, “How did he do that?”
But Yvette knew that it was not over, even as she let out a sigh of relief to see that not all of John’s powers had disappeared.
Bone got to his feet, slowly and deliberately. “That was unwise, Bercow,” he said, and his voice, too, echoed uncannily. “Your powers fade. You can feel it. Step aside or be crushed.”
John stepped in front of the Mace and raised his hands, in what Yvette instinctively recognised as a defensive position.
“I name Mr. Peter Bone,” Lindsay called, starting the process to suspend Bone from the House.
Bone raised a hand and shot magic at him, ripping a hole in the Speaker’s Chair, a few inches to the right of Lindsay’s head.
Pandemonium in the Chamber. Yvette, standing in the doorway to the Speaker’s Corridor, stepped quickly to one side to avoid being trampled by Pickles and the rest of the front bench. Backbenchers were crawling on the floor, trying to stay out of Bone’s line of sight, scurrying like rats to the main doors. She could hear screams and the rush of footsteps from the galleries.
As Communities and Local Government Questions were never very popular, the emptying of the Chamber seemed to take very little time at all. Even Lindsay had bolted. The two adversaries stood in the main aisle of a deserted Chamber, frozen in their face-off, and Yvette watched them, her heart in her throat. She didn’t know how she could help John – the knife he had given her was so small, and she’d never get close enough to Bone to use it without being blasted – she only knew that this was her place, that she had to do anything she could.
“Your beloved backbenchers have left you to die, Bercow,” Bone said, his face twisted into a sneer. “Together, they might have overpowered me, but they cared more for their own precious lives. Now you will be destroyed.”
Yes, keep talking, Yvette thought desperately. Monologue. It’s what you do best. Wear down the minutes, waste the time of vulnerability, until the Mace awakens again and John kills you dead.
“Do your worst, Bone,” John said, holding his defensive position.
Bone laughed. “So pitifully brave, and even your pet fairy has deserted you. Very well.” The magic poured from his hands, and met the magic which John seemed to be using as a sort of shield; it sparked and lit, brilliant colours washing over the Chamber, turning everything into a shimmering kaleidoscope.
Yvette watched, fascinated, every atom in her willing John’s shield to hold.
She was so fixated on the scene before her that she didn’t realise that someone had come up behind her until she felt a hand on her arm. She whirled.
“Philip!” Her voice was hushed, so as not to attract attention, but there was genuine gladness in it. “Oh God, Philip, help me figure out some way to help him.”
“I’m already helping him,” Philip said, and pinned her arms. She stared at him in shock for a moment, as he grinned, showing his teeth, no longer the greasy, flirtatious Tory of that morning, but a dangerous predator, hard and cold.
He laughed in her face, then. “Surprise, sweetheart.” He raised his voice. “I have the parallel whore, Peter!”
Yvette closed her eyes, forcing down dread, shame, and nausea. How could she have been so blind?
--
universe three
Yvette patted Gove’s head, where it lay pillowed on her breast. “I’m afraid I’ve scratched up your back rather badly,” she said, informative instead of apologetic.
“Never mind,” Gove said, stifled, his lips on her skin making her shiver.
She smiled. He sounded absolutely knackered. “I suppose you can always magic them healed.”
“I could,” Gove said, raising his head with a great effort and pressing a kiss to her nipple.
“But?” Yvette asked, combing her fingers through his hair.
He smiled, a more attractive, languid version of his usual ridiculous grin. “But I think I’ll just put a glamour on them. I wouldn’t mind keeping a souvenir of this particular engagement.”
God, she nearly felt fond of him. This would never do. “Up, Gove. Vital business of state to attend to.”
Groaning, he got to his feet, stretching like a cat before remembering his manners and reaching a hand down to help her up. (She spurned it and hopped to her feet unassisted.) “I thought you were ignoring vital business of state on principle.”
“I am,” Yvette told him. “That’s called an excuse to leave.”
Gove actually laughed at that. Laughing made him look even more ridiculous than usual, but she didn’t seem to mind. Alarming. “I actually thought...”
“What?” she said, pushing the now-cold cup of tea into his hands. “Take that out with you, it’s disgusting.”
“I thought,” and he actually sounded a little shy, “we could talk the Speaker into letting me attempt to establish contact with your universe.”
Yvette stopped in the middle of pulling her top back on. “I thought that was too risky for you?”
Gove shrugged. “It’s a little risky, but what’s life without a fillip of risk? He only said that he wouldn’t force me, not that he would prevent me from volunteering.” He grinned, snaggle-teeth oddly endearing. “I also estimate my own abilities at a slightly higher level than John does.”
Yvette supposed that if she was a nice person, she would have turned down his offer. After all, she’d just slept with him, she ought to care if he risked himself for her, however small he might think the risk to be. But she was a politician, and a damned good one too, an attribute which rarely co-existed with being a nice person. “Find it by tonight and I’ll blow you before I go.”
--
universe one
For a moment, the tableau was frozen, as Yvette’s newly-beating heart thumped loudly in her chest. Then Ed exploded. “What the hell are you talking about, Gove? You’ve finally gone barmy, that’s what you’ve done, not that you weren’t always halfway there.” He aimed a punch, which Gove blocked clumsily.
“Stop! Stop,” Yvette said. “Ed, please stop.”
She’d come out from behind her desk, taking a few faltering steps toward Gove. Now she met his eyes. “If you’re toying with me,” she said, quietly, “I won’t let Ed thrash you. I’ll fucking end you myself.”
Despite his habitually defiant expression, Gove looked suitably impressed. “I’m not toying with you,” he said. “You...I can’t describe it in layman terms, but you – glow, somehow.” He looked frustrated. “The magic around you is ever so slightly out of phase. I’ve been watching you yesterday and today, and it’s stayed the same the entire time. The questions were merely to confirm.”
“Magic,” Yvette said.
“Magic,” Ed snorted, but mercifully fell silent when Yvette directed a pleading look his way.
Gove nodded. “I’m the apprentice wizard for the House of Commons. I’ve never actually seen someone from a parallel universe before, but I have read all the theoretical literature, and I have written an essay of my own on the possible manifestations of parallel shift.”
“Parallel universes?” She seized on it like a drowning woman. “So you meant what you said? My world still exists? I can go back to it?”
“Yes,” Gove said. “We just have to find it. There are an incredibly large number, you see,” he added, apologetically.
“What are you saying?” Ed asked, looking bewildered and belligerent.
Yvette took a deep breath. “I’m not your Yvette,” she told him, and felt the burden on her shoulders lighten, just saying it at last. “I’m a Yvette from another world. It’s like...” She searched for an analogy. “Like Kirk and Spock in the mirror universe?”
Gove nodded in reply to her appeal. “Yes, very like that.”
She thought for a moment that Ed still hadn’t understood. Then he tightened his hands on Gove’s lapels. “Where’s Yvette?” he growled, pushing his face into Gove’s, eyes on fire.
Gove leaned back. “Probably in the universe this Yvette left,” he said. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
Ed’s eyes narrowed further, and he looked ready to throw another punch. Yvette put a hand on his arm. “Ed, let’s just forget about thrashing him for now and make him switch us back.”
Ed looked at her like a stranger, and Yvette felt an inexplicable sense of loss for the man who’d held her and soothed her through her pain, even though he hadn’t known why she was upset.
Then his eyes softened a little, reluctantly. He turned back to Gove and shook him, not at all gently. “You hear that? Switch them back. Now. Before I rearrange your ugly face for you.”
“I can’t,” Gove protested, a little strangled. “Only my master can,” he added hastily, when Ed’s brows snapped together menacingly.
“Well, let’s go find him, then,” Ed said, as if talking to a very small child, shaking him vigorously once more before letting him go.
Yvette floated the entire way to what turned out to be the Speaker’s Office. She was going home.
--
universe two
Yvette saw John’s shoulders slump slightly, as he realised what Philip’s yell had meant. Still struggling against Philip’s grip, she called out, “Never mind me! Get him!”
A heavy, invisible hand came across her mouth. “That’s quite enough of that,” Philip said, politely. “Do be still. We’re going to watch my master destroy the Speaker, and then, sweetheart, he and I will be the rulers of this kingdom.”
Yvette blinked back angry tears, continuing to struggle. She wasn’t going to let him win this easily. She couldn’t let him win this easily.
“Calm down,” Philip said, as if he were talking to a child. “We won’t hurt you...much. We’re just not going to let you go back home, that’s all. A parallel human of our very own to explore and investigate – you’re worth too much to let slip away, aren’t you, love?” He tightened his hold. “So gullible. Would you have let me fuck you, I wonder, to keep the game up?”
Yvette wished she had stilettos on, to stomp on his feet; she wished she could open her mouth, because she would have bit; she wished she could somehow get a hand free and go for her knife. He made her skin crawl.
A wave of panic swept over her, like the claustrophobia she suffered from in crowded train carriages, and she felt an overwhelming longing for her family, for Ed, for her children. What had she been thinking? Why had she ever thought she could make a difference in this fight? She was one woman, and there was fucking magic here. If John somehow managed to defeat both Bone and Philip, she would almost surely be killed along the way. And if Bone and Philip were triumphant...her brain refused to supply the images.
Either way, her chances of going home again were nearly non-existent. She flinched away from the thought, taking refuge in the pain and discomfort of her current reality. At least this hurt was immediate and sharp, not the aching bone-deep loss of the other.
“Watch,” Philip said, and she looked up, furious tears pricking her eyes.
Bone and John were locked in combat. A rainbow show of lights ranged over the Chamber, picking up the long empty benches. No help from them. Not that she blamed those who had fled – it took a certain type of reckless bravery (or a certain type of reckless stupidity, in her own case) to volunteer for possible annihilation. Heroes, as war had always shown, usually ended up dead.
John’s face was as white as if colour had never been invented, grotesque in the mocking play of the magic, rainbows patterning his skin as feverishly loud as any of his ties. Bone’s was punctuated by silent laughter, his mouth stretched wide, the mania in his gaze a tangible presence.
The magic crackled overhead, wrestling with itself, thunderous and threatening. It smelled like burning, like ash, like cannon fire; like power, like majesty, like strength and determination and courage. She felt the edges of it reach out toward her skin, curious and questing, fierce and suspicious. Magic was not tame; she almost thought she could have spoken to it somehow, if only she had known the right words.
Bone hurled another bolt of magic at John, the colour of profanity, the smell of crushed velvet, the sound of blackish-brown sludge. “Stand aside, Bercow,” he spat.
For a moment, Yvette felt almost hopeful – Bone’s voice had been more tired than in the beginning.
“Never,” John said simply, and Yvette’s hope plummeted away again, for he sounded as if the magic was consuming him from the inside out. His hands trembled as he raised them higher.
In that moment, a movement at the main door of the House caught Yvette’s eye, and her heart leaped. Could it perhaps be Chris, coming to John’s aid?
But no, it was only Claire, peeking around the corner. Yvette heard Philip’s indrawn breath, and knew that he’d seen her too.
“Ah, your pretty little adviser,” he hissed in her ear. “Let’s take care of her, shall we?”
Yvette felt his grip on her ribs slacken slightly, as he presumably made to raise a hand toward Claire. She seized her chance and went into instantaneous motion, slamming her body backward as hard as she could, pushing off from her heels and fully committing herself. If they went down, they went down - he’d cushion her.
They didn’t go down. Philip staggered, but kept them upright – whether by magic or not, Yvette couldn’t tell. By the time he regained his balance, however, and righted the both of them, Claire had made her escape.
“You’ll pay for that one, whore,” Philip said, tightening his grasp around her painfully. “Not that it’ll make any difference,” he said, and the reassurance sounded like it was more for his benefit than hers. “Even if she goes for help, no one’s going to brave two magicians. Have any of those cowardly backbenchers returned to save the day? Even with your precious Speaker to protect them, they don’t dare risk their lives.” His voice took on a mock-concerned tone. “And I’m sorry, dear, but I rather think the Speaker himself won’t be around much longer.”
Yvette, struggling to breathe in his grip, knew that he was right. John was visibly faltering now, even to her non-magical eyes. His magical shield was cracking, falling back, pushing doggedly forward, and falling back again. The burning smell was stronger, pushing into her nostrils and making her want to retch. Overhead, the rainbow patterns were dimming; it was a diseased rainbow now, a rainbow slowly dying.
And then it all went out.
John’s shield collapsed. He stood defenceless for one long moment.
There was an expectant hush, a tangible waiting. Yvette blinked in the sudden dim, as the normal lights substituted once more for the solar brightness of the magic.
The moment hung in the air – and then John’s eyes rolled back in his head, his body going limp. He dropped, quickly, quietly. One moment he had been standing, determined and forbidding, defending the Mace, and the next moment he was a crumpled heap on the floor, the black Speaker’s Robe making him look like a bit of dirty washing.
Bone laughed, throwing back his head and letting his glee surge through him. He sent his magic crackling through the room in triumph - black and brown and evil magic, a poisoned rainbow, making Yvette’s hair stand on end.
He stalked forward, taking his time, and prodded John’s body with his toe. “The Wizard is destroyed,” he said, in a hushed, malevolent whisper, then shouted it. “The Wizard is destroyed!”
He reached for the Mace.
From the angle Philip was holding her, Yvette had a clear view of Bone’s face, of the greedy lust in his eyes as he neared the consummation of all his plans. So she saw the moment when that lust changed into angry shock, a split second before he was blasted backwards once again, flying down the aisle.
Chris emerged from behind the Speaker’s Chair, striding in front of the Labour bench and planting himself in front of the Mace, in front of John’s limp body. He was panting, his hair was sticking up on one side and plastered down with sweat on the other, and his eyes were bloodshot. Yvette had never seen a more beautiful sight.
“Get up and fight, you bastard,” Chris said, and set his feet.
--
universe three
Yvette swung her feet restlessly. She’d insisted on staying in the Speaker’s Office while Gove helped John look for her universe, but she hadn’t expected it to be this ...boring. She’d thought there would at least be flashing lights or mesmerising magic.
Instead, all that seemed to be happening was ten minutes of migraine-inducing spells followed by two minutes of a telemarketing call. After the fourth repeat, she was beginning to get horrifically bored. Yvette didn’t like being bored.
“Any progress?” she asked, trying not to sound impatient.
Gove, rubbing his temples, shot her an exasperated look. “Not since the last time you inquired, no. This last universe was certainly not yours.”
“Why?” she asked, scenting a story.
“I’d rather not say,” he said, looking slightly nauseous.
Behind him, John laughed, tired but amused. He was still whiter than Yvette liked to see, but his energy seemed to have picked up a bit now that Gove was helping to shoulder the burden of the spells. “Ann Widdecombe was Speaker, and she wasn’t particularly pleased to hear from me.”
“Oh God,” she said. “I didn’t even know that was a possibility.”
Gove snorted. “Keep that in mind next time you’re thrown into a parallel. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unknown to have other Speakers.” He winced, and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“How are you bearing up?” John asked, putting a hand on his arm. “You can stop at any time.” It had taken a bit of work to persuade John to let Gove help, and even now Gove was only doing the easier spells. Yvette found Gove’s irritation at this to be quite amusing.
“I’m fine,” Gove said shortly.
Yvette watched them swing back into it, John’s movements practiced and calm, Gove’s awkward and jerky. She felt herself getting drowsy, as John’s calm, assured voice repeated the spells, with Gove’s sharp, clipped tones ringing above. Sleeping in the same bed with a very handsy cuddler had done her sleep quality no favours last night. Pulling her feet up underneath her, Yvette curled into a ball, resting her head on the armrest, and drifted off.
It was the stillness which woke her, the sudden cessation of magic and sound. She blinked, trying to orient herself. John and Gove were standing very still, looking down at something she couldn’t see.
“Well, fuck,” John said.
--
universe one
Gove’s expression was rather like that of her best friend’s terrier when it caught a rat and brought it back to deposit triumphantly at the feet of its mistress.
Said mistress was a short man in a Speaker’s robe, looking none too pleased at having been yanked from the Chair in the middle of a debate.
Gove was yapping, again like a terrier. “I am aware that there has never been a confirmed case in this universe, sir, but if you will look closely at Ms. Cooper, you will see the phase-shift in action. In addition, I have questioned her, and there is no doubt that she is under the impression that she does indeed hail from another universe. Her memories are similar to events in this world, but vary in important particulars.”
John held up a hand, and Gove halted, with a slightly indignant look. “Yvette?”
“It started yesterday morning,” Yvette confirmed.
“Is there any reason that an evil magician might wish to shift you out of your universe temporarily?”
Yvette shrugged. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as magic until Gove told me. If there are evil magicians in my world, I certainly don’t know anything about them, and neither does Ed, he would have told me. And he’s Leader.”
“Ah,” John said. “In most universes, the Speaker does not choose to reveal the existence of magic to anyone other than his chosen apprentice. Revelation only happens in worlds where evil magic has impinged on the lives of the non-magical, and then only to select individuals.”
“So it’s a good thing that I don’t know about it?”
“The likelihood of rampant magical misconduct is lower,” John agreed, “although your ignorance of it does not rule it out entirely.”
“Look, this is all wonderful,” Ed said, crossing his arms. “Can we focus on explaining it all later, and get my wife back now?”
Gove, who had pulled a cauldron out of somewhere and begun singing to it under his breath, snorted and rolled his eyes.
John looked unruffled. “We will certainly begin the process immediately. I should warn the both of you, however, that even in the best of cases, with experienced practitioners, the process can take up to four days. As neither I nor my apprentice has such experience, our search may take some time. If you would like to return home, we will inform you of any new developments.”
Three things happened at once.
“Not fucking likely,” Ed started, looking particularly belligerent.
“How long do you think...” Yvette began, her lip starting to tremble despite her best efforts to hold it steady.
“Master, I think you should look at this,” Gove said, from his position over his cauldron. He pointed at something in it, but warned Ed off with his eyes when Ed made as if to go look. “It’s...that one has just gone black. It’s like it’s dropped off the map.”
John’s eyebrows shot up.
Yvette didn’t think that was a good sign.
--
universe two
Yvette felt Philip tense against her back. “Shall I kill the bitch, Master?” he called. “Together we can take him down.”
A moment of sinking terror, helpless in Philip’s grasp, and then – “No,” Bone said, getting to his feet with a snarl. “She will be useful to us. Keep her muzzled. I hardly need help to dispose of one prancing queer, and a half-trained one at that.” He raised his hands once more, his face a rictus of disdain. “Your master fell, Bryant, and so will you. Flee now, or be destroyed.”
“You need new lines,” Chris said, conversationally, although he was still breathing hard, his eyes wild. “I do realise that you’re an evil villain mastermind, but that doesn’t mean that you have to try to imitate Tolkien. It’s a new century, Bone, get with the times.”
Bone snarled again, and hurled magic at him. Chris threw magic up against it, and the battle was joined once more.
Yvette could hardly bear to watch any longer, the tears blurring her eyes. John’s body was so very still, crumpled behind Chris’s legs; she didn’t know if he was still alive, or if he would be able to recover even if he was. The Mace sat on the Table above him, listless and dark. Wake up, she thought at it, desperately. Hasn’t it been long enough? Wake up!
Behind her, Philip fidgeted. Yvette could sense his unease. The battle in front of them seemed less predetermined than John and Bone’s had – Chris’s magic was clumsy, and his technique seemed to leave something to be desired, but he was stronger than John had been. With all of his powers available to him, instead of some of them being trapped in a quiescent Mace, Chris was slowly, ever so slowly, pushing Bone backward.
If only he can hold out until the Mace wakes up, Yvette thought desperately. It’ll still be two against one – Philip will surely dispose of me then – but who knows how strong the Mace is? Bone and Philip have never tried to attack before, they’ve carefully waited until they didn’t have to deal with it. Maybe, just maybe, he can actually pull this off. (And you’ll almost certainly be dead, a little voice told her, but she pushed it aside.)
Philip seemed to be having the same thoughts. He fidgeted again, and Yvette felt the magic holding her mouth shut fizz and fray at the edges, reflecting his worry and distraction.
She watched the scene in front of her, soaked the rainbow brilliance of the magic deep into every pore. If she was about to be dispatched by an evil magician – and on the Tory front bench, no less – she was going to go out with her eyes open, unafraid.
“How very like a Tory, to abuse a defenceless woman.” The voice behind them was quiet and slow, the cadences measured for dramatic effect.
Yvette found herself suddenly released, and then she was falling, staggering forward and banging her shoulder on the Table on the way down. From her ungainly sprawl on the floor, tears springing into her eyes from the pain in her shoulder, she looked up at Philip and the newcomer, her breath catching with almost hysterical relief.
“Mandelson,” Philip spat. “How did you get here? We disabled the cameras, brought down the electronics system, and blocked all the exits.”
Peter’s eyes were cold. “Next time you decide to stage a coup, and you wish to prevent help from arriving, you might try blocking the magical cameras as well as the non-magical ones.”
“Magical cameras?” Philip’s sneer faltered. “You mean, you...?”
“I like to have a personal view of the Chamber at times,” Peter said, smiling, slow and menacing. “And yes, I know something of magic, as a modicum of attention during the past fourteen years might have told you. Use your mind, Davies, if you possess one.” He raised his hands, his undone sleeves falling back from his slim wrists. “Defend yourself.”
Yvette could see Philip swallow. “I have a hostage,” he said. “Touch me, and I’ll kill her.”
“Ah,” Peter said, sounding pleased. “I think you will find that you do not.”
Philip looked down, hand reaching to seize her again, and found himself faced with a slender, but lethal, knife.
“Try it,” Yvette said.
Philip glanced between her and Peter, eyes dark, then sprang up and over the Tory front bench, away from the knife. “Come and fight, Mandy,” he said. “You know something of magic, hah! You’re weak and untrained. Come and be destroyed.”
Now he was just stealing lines from his master, Yvette thought, rubbing at her injured shoulder, keeping her knife warily in front of her. Peter stalked up the steps, taking his time.
“It’s you who will be destroyed,” Peter said, and raised his hands.
--
universe three
Yvette was at their side in an instant, still rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “What is it? What’s happened?” she demanded.
Gove looked bewildered. “It flickered out. We reached out a communications line toward that universe, and instead of connecting, the universe just flickered out.”
“What does that mean?”
John was frowning. “Nothing good, I’m afraid. Magical communication calls on the magical networks of the kingdom. If those are compromised...”
Yvette had a sinking feeling. “The Mace. God, the Mace.”
“What about it?” John asked, looking as if he did not particularly want to hear the answer.
“I haven’t told you about why I was shifted,” Yvette said. She explained the situation as quickly and as clearly as she could. “If the Mace is dormant, would that cause its magical communication point to disappear like that?”
“I have never seen it happen,” John said slowly. “But in theory, yes.”
Gove had been quiet, too quiet. “Master,” he said, and flicked his eyes over at Yvette. If she hadn’t known that he was a Tory and, well, Gove, she would have thought he looked concerned. “If your counterpart is defeated, and the evil magicians break the Mace’s power while it lies dormant...”
Yvette could finish the thought, even if he had trailed off in consideration of her. “I.” She swallowed. “I might never get home.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” John said soothingly. “It’s only been a few minutes. No doubt the Mace will reawaken at any moment, and we will be able to contact them to see if this truly is your universe.” He put a hand on her arm, squeezing comfortingly.
Gove hesitated, then reached over and made an attempt to pat her shoulder.
Yvette wrenched herself away from them and, hardly knowing what she was doing, began to pace. Her children. Her children. She hadn’t worried about them too much before – Tom would take care of them, and it was hardly the first time she’d been in parallel. Now, however – now that she knew she might never see them again, she felt as if her heart might burst out of her chest at any moment.
It seems I do have a weakness after all, she thought distantly, and began to laugh. All these years, everyone saying that I have no weaknesses, that I’m made of steel, that I have bigger balls than anyone else in the Labour Party (including Balls) – all these years, and they were wrong. They were wrong.
She sobbed with the strength of her laughter, ringing out eerily across the room.
A hand on her shoulder, firmly turning her around. “Yvette,” Gove said, and he looked worried. A Tory, looking worried, what a riot. Ruin the education system, make war on the poor, cut until Britain bleeds, and nary a care in the world; but let one woman get a little upset...She laughed into his face, lacing it with the contempt she felt.
Gove slapped her, hard.
The shock of it rocked her back, and then she was falling, puppet strings cut.
Gove caught her.
--
universe one
“Have you ever seen that before, Master?” Gove asked.
Bercow shook his head. “No, I haven’t, although I haven’t used this projection very often before. In the general way of things, it has no practical use.”
They bent over it again.
Ed and Yvette exchanged a mutual look of frustration, momentarily in perfect sympathy, before remembering their situation and looking away again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Yvette offered, after a minute.
Ed winced. “Just...let’s not talk about it. Let’s just get you both back.”
They lapsed into an awkward silence again.
“What is that?” Yvette could hear the curiousity and excitement in Gove’s voice, and her heart thudded.
“It looks like a communication line, but all communications to that world would be unable to go through, given the state of its network,” John said, frowning in concentration.
Gove looked up, eyes flashing. “Could it be an attempted communication line?”
There was a moment of silence, as all present took in what that might mean. Then – “Get the equipment,” John said, springing into action, “before they pull the line back.”
In her excitement, Yvette grabbed Ed’s hand, hardly aware of what she was doing. A moment later, she flushed and tried to pull her hand back, but Ed tightened his grasp.
Hand in hand, they watched the Speaker and his apprentice attempt to right their worlds.
--
universe two
Yvette, crouched in front of the Tory front bench, tore her gaze away from the two duels raging around her to look despairingly at the Mace, still quiet and dark on the Table. At least it was even odds now, she thought, but then her side was made up of a half-trained apprentice and an untrained rogue.
Peter and Philip seemed to be evenly matched. They paced the back benches slowly, faces deep in concentration, red and black magic crackling in the air between them. Yvette was thankful to be well out of it; she was finally beginning to be able to catch her breath again, from where Philip had squeezed it out of her. Why Peter had magical cameras in the Chamber, she didn’t know or care. If he managed to bring Philip down, she would take back every bad thing she had ever said about him.
Chris, on the other hand, was slowly being pushed back again. For a few hopeful minutes, it had looked as if he was winning, but Bone’s superior experience, technique, and stamina was beginning to tell. Yvette could see the clumsiness and weariness in Chris’s feints and blocks, even as the set lines of his face revealed nothing but stubborn determination.
John, meanwhile, still lay motionless. Yvette thought about crawling to him, seeing if there was anything she could do, but she would not only be in the line of fire, she might be a liability to Chris. Pull through, John, she thought fiercely at him, pull through.
Overhead, the Chamber looked as if it were lit with a million sunsets. Chris’s sharp rainbow mingled with Bone’s black sludge, while Peter’s stalwart red beat back Philip’s barbed bluish-black. Amidst the maelstrom, the steady green of the benches seemed otherworldly.
Images flew by her eyes as she watched the combatants, constantly on alert for anything she might be able to do to help, unmagical though she was. They revolved in front of her eyes, dizzying in the flashing lights.
Images -
Peter, calm and ruthless, face as carefully composed as if this were a diplomatic meeting, or a particularly difficult interview.
Philip, dwarfing Peter in size, yet retreating before him, face frozen in a savage scowl.
Chris, so near and yet so far, his chest heaving as if he’d just run a marathon, his face red and flushed, his shield beginning to falter.
Bone, laughing, his mania shading into triumph, slipping a bolt of magic under Chris’s defences in a single quick move.
“No!” Yvette cried out, as Chris staggered backward, rocked by the force of the hit. His hand went out to the Table to catch himself, and Yvette watched horrorstruck as he grimaced, leaning heavily on the Table for support.
Bone, still cackling, aimed his hands for a final attack. Chris blocked, but weakly, so weakly, his face contorted in pain.
Bone moved in for the kill.
“OI! Look here, you fucking cunt!” It was a voice she knew so very well, ringing out over the Chamber in aggrieved, stentorian tones.
In the act of raising his hand to finish Chris, Bone faltered, swinging around to face his new attacker. He must have been aware, however superficially, of Peter’s arrival, and Yvette could see the question flit across his face: was this another self-trained magician, who might attack him from behind?
But no magic was involved. Through the main doors poured a stream of MPs, her Ed in the lead, along with Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas, David Laws, Michael Gove – and Claire. Behind them jostled more MPs, from every party. (Yvette even thought she saw Nick Clegg.)
Their faces were set and determined. Some were brandishing makeshift weapons – Ed had a table leg, Gove an old sword which he must have liberated from somewhere, Caroline a broom. No security personnel with guns, and Yvette felt blindingly indignant for a moment, until she looked up at the magic and realised that guns might very well go wrong somehow, in this electrically charged world of rainbows and thunder.
Before her, Bone smiled, hollow and frightening, and raised his hands to blast them.
Yvette had seen the power of that magic, when he had nearly blasted Lindsay, and she thought that he had only been issuing a warning then. However brave this ragtag army was, it was wholly unprotected - would they really be able to reach Bone before he obliterated them from the face of the planet?
Without knowing quite how it happened, Yvette found herself on her feet, screaming something incoherent. She had to do something, anything, to buy them a few precious seconds. No matter that she was unmagical, no matter that she didn’t even belong in this world, some things just had to be fought for. They might not have been her friends and colleagues, but they were some Yvette’s friends and colleagues, and she didn’t think she could bear to see Ed killed, even in a parallel.
In that instant, her numb hand remembered what it was holding. Without another thought, she brought it up and hurled the knife at Bone.
Unlike Ed, she’d never played darts. But something in that Chamber – perhaps it was the magic, perhaps it was Providence, perhaps it was simply blind luck – aimed that knife. It flew straight and true, slashing merrily across Bone’s cheekbone, leaving a bright red line in its wake. Yvette felt like Clara in the Nutcracker.
Bone whirled in shock, and the ball of magic in his hands, milliseconds away from being launched at the ragtag MP army, flew out of his grasp and hurtled toward Yvette instead.
Ah, she thought.
The last thing she saw before everything went dark was Chris, springing forward with what looked like the last of his strength, the suddenly resplendent Mace raised high above his head.
--
universe three
Yvette hated herself, hated the wrenching sobs she was currently burying in Gove’s formerly pristine shirt front, hated his arms awkwardly encircling her, hated the silence with which he held her, hated the hand gently stroking her hair. This was not her. She didn’t do this. When Ed Miliband had cried during the bad old days, she had cheered him up with a few sarcastic words, then gone to eviscerate the perpetrator. When she had found herself in her first parallel, she had taken a few deep breaths and gone to find John, who she’d always thought was a wizard. When she’d fallen prey to ME, she had quizzed the doctors, then made a vow to get her life back within the year.
She hadn’t cried, any of those times. She didn’t cry. She was strong, and she had learned long ago to refuse to allow fear or despair any purchase in her life. Give the other bastards an inch of vulnerability, and they would take a mile.
But now, as she cracked and burned, seething in her own humiliation as she did so, she wondered whether she had been completely honest with herself all this time. Could she ever wholly eliminate weakness from her life? Perhaps strength was not just the absence of fear, but the acceptance of the presence of fear, and the refusal to let that fear defeat her.
She pulled back in the circle of Gove’s arms, looked up at him. “I will find a way,” she snapped at him, the edge of tears making her voice rough. “So help me God, I will find a way.”
His face held no pity for her. “You will,” he agreed.
“Michael.” John’s voice was sharp.
“In a minute,” Gove said.
“Now. Incoming.”
Yvette wasn’t sure what that meant, but Gove’s eyes went wide, and he released her in a sudden flurry of movement, springing to John’s side. He set his hands over John’s, and together they whispered spells into the cauldron.
“I am Speaker John Bercow. To whom am I speaking?” John asked, his voice eerily stilted and forced, as if the space between worlds was a physical barrier it had to force its way through.
Yvette listened, but could hear nothing.
A long listening silence, and then Gove’s rubber face spasmed. He looked over at Yvette, face manic, and she found herself barely able to breathe.
“Affirmative,” John said. “And is Ms. Cooper Leader in your world?” Another minute of silence, and then, “Stand by.”
They seemed to break the connection, and Yvette could contain herself no longer. “Is it my world? Are you putting me back?”
“There’s good news and bad news,” John said, gently. “That world has the Yvette to this one.”
Yvette read the rest in his face. “But it’s not mine. The dark world is mine. It’s a three-world snarl.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to transfer me to another world that’s not mine, so that the Yvette to this world gets home a little more quickly.”
John winced. “In a perfect situation, I would prefer to do a three-pronged transfer. In this situation, however, and I am afraid I must be blunt, there is no guarantee that the connection to your world may ever be restored. While we wait, it is cruel to keep the Yvette of this world separated from it, when there is no need to do so.”
“Fine,” she said, numbly. “Do what you have...”
She was interrupted by a sudden whoop from Gove, who had stayed at the cauldron while John explained. A whoop – there really was no other word for it.
When she looked in his direction, eyebrows raised, he grinned, broad and shameless. “It’s back! It’s back. The forces of good must have won the day. You owe me a blowjob, Yvette Cooper.”
“There are things I do not need to know,” John said, burying his face in his hands.
--
universe one
“You’re going home,” John said, a broad smile on his face.
Yvette shut her eyes. It was too much, too many ups and downs in too rapid a succession. Fizzy, overwhelming joy threatened to mix with leftover sinking dread and to create an explosive situation somewhere in her stomach. She concentrated on breathing, on letting go of the fear and loneliness that had been her constant companions for the past two days, on accepting the fact that soon she would be home. Home.
An arm went around her waist, drawing her into an embrace. Yvette opened her eyes, and Ed smiled down at her, his face lit with the same joy she felt running through her own veins.
She smiled back at him, and found herself spun into a dance around the Speaker’s Office, with John laughing in the background, and even Gove cracking a reluctant smile as they whirled past him.
She was going home.
--
universe two
Yvette drifted, caught in the darkness.
“How is she?”
“No change. She should wake up soon.”
“I brought you lunch.”
“No need, my dear boy.”
“Chris told me that you need to eat to replenish your magical reserves.”
“You are going to hold that over me from now on, aren’t you?”
“Most likely. Did your cameras capture the battle?”
“You want to watch Bercow nearly getting himself killed?”
“I want to watch you taking down evil. Untrained. Without your cufflinks.”
The darkness engulfed her again.
universe three
Even before Yvette opened her eyes, she could hear Ed.
“I came as soon as I got your message, Mr. Speaker...Yvette! What’s happened?”
Yvette heard him rushing across the room, heard him sliding to his knees beside the sofa on which she lay.
“Is there a doctor coming? What happened?”
Yvette blinked her eyes open, and Ed’s face – Ed’s face - swum into focus, concerned and awkward and so, so Ed. “Hi, darling,” she said.
“Are you all right?” he asked, pressing her hand to his lips. “Did you fall?”
She smiled at him, trying to put a little of what she felt into her smile. “I had a bit of an adventure. I’ll tell you about it later. Just – kiss me now?”
He leant down. She kept her eyes open.
--
universe one
“Hello everyone,” Yvette said. “Welcome the world traveller.”
“This is just temporary?” Ed Balls asked John nervously. He didn’t seem to have taken her sardonic tone well. “We’re still going to get my wife back?”
Yvette snorted. “You’d better. I’m not sure we’d get along for very long.”
Ed looked like he agreed with her.
Despite her prickliness, Yvette was actually in a good mood. The knowledge that her world had been successfully defended had been an incredible relief. Of course, the fact that she was going to have to wait for a few hours, while her world’s magicians regained enough strength to make the transfer – Chris had been exhausted and strangely laconic about the details, when they’d finally reached him, something about injuries – was annoying, but understandable. She could manage a few more hours, even if they had gone ahead and switched her to a new world in the meantime.
All right, so she had had a minor explosion over having to wait. She still didn’t see why John and Gove couldn’t just shift all three of them around by themselves, as the evil magicians had. But John had made some good arguments, which had calmed her down somewhat. Gove had calmed her down the rest of the way by peremptorily announcing that John was doing all the preparations for the transfer by himself, and then “sending her off in style” in a side room.
Now, still tingling in the aftermath of that particular, ahem, event, Yvette was only moderately impatient, not murderous. She blinked, and tuned back in to the conversation.
“...should be only a matter of time,” John was saying.
“Until then we’re stuck with each other,” Yvette told Ed. “I’ll try not to eviscerate you out of sheer boredom.”
“What did you say you did in your world again?” Ed asked, watching her as if she was a particularly unpredictable snake, or a Tory.
She grinned at him, showing her teeth. “I’m Leader. You?”
“Shadow Chancellor,” he said. “You’re...different than my Yvette.”
Yvette laughed. “Well, if it helps, you’re different from the Ed in my world. He would not be happy to find himself married to me, you can be sure of that.”
“Who’s he married to, then?” Ed asked, looking as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Yvette smirked at him. She didn’t wish him ill, but it was quite funny, the way he was so flustered and off-balance, when he was usually such a bulldog. “Oh, nobody.” She let that sink in, let him start to relax. “But if I successfully badger the coalition into passing marriage equality, I think Miliband’s going to propose at conference.”
Ed’s reaction was priceless, just as she’d hoped. “What?” he spluttered.
Yvette pursed her lips. “I agree, it’s a bit...dramatic...but what can I say, Miliband’s a romantic.”
“I’m not gay,” Ed said, controlling his voice with what looked like a vast effort. “Gove, stop laughing, you tosser. Not there’s anything wrong with being gay, but I’m not.”
“Well, mine is,” Yvette told him. “Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
He still didn’t look convinced.
She grinned at him again. “I’m sure your Yvette will be able to confirm it when she gets back.”
Excitement and misgiving warred on his face.
Yvette swung her legs over the side of the sofa. “Is there anything fucking interesting in this world?”
“You’re staying in my office,” John said, bluntly but not unkindly.
“I’ll get take-away,” Gove offered.
--
universe two
Yvette blinked. Surely she was still unconscious, and this was some sort of fevered dream. If one had dreams when one was unconscious. She wasn’t really sure if one did.
Blinking, however, failed to change the picture. Peter Mandelson was still sitting by her bedside, getting thoroughly snogged by George Osborne.
She cleared her throat, and they broke apart. Osborne grinned at her – grinned! Osborne! – and then leaned back down to steal another quick kiss. “I’ll see you later,” he told Peter, “and I’ll know if you don’t finish your lunch.”
He left the room, and Yvette aimed a pointed look at Peter, who was looking entirely too satisfied with himself. “Let me guess, in this world you’re committed life partners with a Tory?”
Peter smiled. “Is it any more unlikely than evil magicians and parallel shifts?”
“I suppose not,” she conceded. “Still, Osborne?”
“We muddle along,” he said.
Yvette looked around her. She was lying on the sofa in John’s office. “To move on from your love life, Peter, which I’m sure is fascinating, how exactly am I not dead? And where is everyone?”
“John is in the hospital,” Peter said, “getting his fluids replenished. The magical damage will take a little longer to heal, but Chris has dragooned me to assist in the interim. Thus my presence here.”
“And Chris?”
“Chris is talking to detectives about recent events, making preparations for the formal reinvestment of the Mace by King Charles, and attempting to avoid the press.”
“The press? It got out, then?”
“You could hardly expect it to do otherwise – there were thirty MPs in the chamber when Bone made his move, and nearly as many in the ‘avenging army’, as Nick Robinson is calling it. The initial suggestion of calling it a terrorist attack never had a possibility of gaining traction.” Peter smiled, looking quite pleased with himself. “Also, the footage from my cameras may have mysteriously made it to the BBC.”
“Why did you have cameras in the Chamber? It’s hardly legal.”
Peter grimaced. “Chris has advised me of that fact, at great length and volume. I had no nefarious goals, however.”
“Do I want to know?” Yvette asked, thinking back to Osborne’s strange faces during PMQs.
Peter smiled. “Magic has many uses.”
“Ew. Back to me,” Yvette said. “Why am I not dead? Stop distracting me from that.”
“I never did my magical-apprentice catechism,” Peter said, stretching like a cat, “but Chris tells me that it must be something called parallel phase. Apparently you are a foreign object in this world – you’re nearly identical to our Yvette, but not entirely. The difference between a twin and a clone, perhaps. The magic knocked you unconscious with the force of the impact, but it could not disintegrate you into atoms as it was meant to, because it did not speak the exact same magical language as your body.” He shrugged. “Granted, Chris might be making all of this up.”
Yvette moved her arms and legs. They seemed to work. Her breastbone was a little sore, but she could live with that. “There won’t be any long-term side effects?”
“Chris doesn’t think so,” Peter said.
“Anything else I should know?”
“Your world has been located. Now that you’re awake, you’ll be going home.”
Yvette had to remind herself to breathe. “Really?”
“Really and truly,” Peter said, smiling at her.
--
After that, it all happened very quickly. One moment, she was saying her goodbyes – giving a battered-but-triumphant Chris a fierce hug, congratulating Ed and Ed (apparently the high drama and romance of the ‘avenging army’ had provoked a proposal, once Bone had been successfully blasted into oblivion and Philip taken into custody), and talking to a weak-but-alive John over the telephone.
The next, she was blinking her eyes open, and the first thing she saw was Ed.
She smiled at him.
He went to his knees next to the sofa, and gathered her to him, and hid his face on her breast; she held him, and pretended not to notice the minute shaking of his shoulders.
Behind him, John drew Gove away.
Whatever might come – and Yvette was acutely aware that she still had to confess her transgression with the two Ed’s – this moment was theirs. She shut her eyes and held him closer.
She had come home.
--
universe three
“So that wasn’t you after all,” Ed said, laughing.
“I can’t believe she did that,” Yvette said. “I’m going to have to pretend that was me?”
“It was a good idea, though,” Ed said, and she could see the spark in his eyes. She loved that spark. Despite the headaches this was going to cause, she couldn’t help loving the Yvette who had reignited it. “Don’t you think?” She could see the diffidence begin to war within him again.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Let’s do it together.”
Ed’s eyes lit up again as he began to explain. She smiled and held him closer.
Behind them, Gove left the room, shutting the door quietly.
She had come home.
--
universe two
Yvette opened her eyes.
Chris, Ed, and Ed looked back at her.
“Fill me in,” she said, and swung her legs over the side of the sofa.
Later, she would pick the children up from Tom’s, and watch them while they slept. Later, she would watch the footage from Peter’s cameras, and fight back the impotence and fury she felt, not having been a part of it. Later, she would deal with her new, changed world, with the press and the publicity and the messiness of Philip’s trial.
For now, she looked around at the people she loved, and took her first deep breath in two days.
She had come home.
finis
-----------------
A/N: Feedback is much loved! <3 If you'd rather leave comments at the meme, here is the thread.
Ship(s): Yvette Cooper/Ed Balls; Yvette Cooper/Ed Miliband; surprise major pairings; many other minor pairings hinted or implied
Word Count: 8,969 in this part, 28,484 overall
Rating: NC-17, for strong language, sexual situations, and violent peril
Warnings: Explicit sex (both homosexual and heterosexual), pretend dub-con.
Summary: In parallel realities, three Yvettes try to stay sane and solve a mystery.
Author's Note: Title is, of course, borrowed from Vienna Teng's lovely song of the same name.
Disclaimer: This is a creative work of fiction, composed of fictional characters inspired by the public personas of living people. No injury or disrespect is intended to the persons named. It is true that real-person fiction is of dubious legality - if you are one of the persons named within, or know one of them, please bear in mind that stories such as this are written for entertainment value only, in full knowledge that they are not based in truth, and that ultimately they are a labor of love; also, if you are one of these people, stop reading immediately and go run the country.
If you missed them, here are Part One and Part Two.
--
universe two
Yvette stepped into the Chamber and saw a tableau she would never forget, as long as she lived.
Lindsay, standing in front of the Speaker’s Chair, face thunderous. A smattering of MPs around the Chamber, faces lit up with surprise, some on their feet. Eric Pickles, at the despatch box, his mouth dropped open with shock.
Peter Bone, that boring old Tory, standing in front of the Table, hand on the Mace, his cadaverous head thrown back, smiling.
And John, halfway down the Labour front bench, his feet planted and hands raised. “Take your hand off my Mace,” he said, and his voice echoed around the Chamber, though he had not shouted.
Bone laughed.
John raised his hands slightly higher, and blasted him.
Bone flew backward, dumped unceremoniously on the floor in the middle of the main aisle.
Someone screamed. Dennis Skinner yelled, “About time!” Some young Tory backbencher asked her neighbour, in a carrying voice, “How did he do that?”
But Yvette knew that it was not over, even as she let out a sigh of relief to see that not all of John’s powers had disappeared.
Bone got to his feet, slowly and deliberately. “That was unwise, Bercow,” he said, and his voice, too, echoed uncannily. “Your powers fade. You can feel it. Step aside or be crushed.”
John stepped in front of the Mace and raised his hands, in what Yvette instinctively recognised as a defensive position.
“I name Mr. Peter Bone,” Lindsay called, starting the process to suspend Bone from the House.
Bone raised a hand and shot magic at him, ripping a hole in the Speaker’s Chair, a few inches to the right of Lindsay’s head.
Pandemonium in the Chamber. Yvette, standing in the doorway to the Speaker’s Corridor, stepped quickly to one side to avoid being trampled by Pickles and the rest of the front bench. Backbenchers were crawling on the floor, trying to stay out of Bone’s line of sight, scurrying like rats to the main doors. She could hear screams and the rush of footsteps from the galleries.
As Communities and Local Government Questions were never very popular, the emptying of the Chamber seemed to take very little time at all. Even Lindsay had bolted. The two adversaries stood in the main aisle of a deserted Chamber, frozen in their face-off, and Yvette watched them, her heart in her throat. She didn’t know how she could help John – the knife he had given her was so small, and she’d never get close enough to Bone to use it without being blasted – she only knew that this was her place, that she had to do anything she could.
“Your beloved backbenchers have left you to die, Bercow,” Bone said, his face twisted into a sneer. “Together, they might have overpowered me, but they cared more for their own precious lives. Now you will be destroyed.”
Yes, keep talking, Yvette thought desperately. Monologue. It’s what you do best. Wear down the minutes, waste the time of vulnerability, until the Mace awakens again and John kills you dead.
“Do your worst, Bone,” John said, holding his defensive position.
Bone laughed. “So pitifully brave, and even your pet fairy has deserted you. Very well.” The magic poured from his hands, and met the magic which John seemed to be using as a sort of shield; it sparked and lit, brilliant colours washing over the Chamber, turning everything into a shimmering kaleidoscope.
Yvette watched, fascinated, every atom in her willing John’s shield to hold.
She was so fixated on the scene before her that she didn’t realise that someone had come up behind her until she felt a hand on her arm. She whirled.
“Philip!” Her voice was hushed, so as not to attract attention, but there was genuine gladness in it. “Oh God, Philip, help me figure out some way to help him.”
“I’m already helping him,” Philip said, and pinned her arms. She stared at him in shock for a moment, as he grinned, showing his teeth, no longer the greasy, flirtatious Tory of that morning, but a dangerous predator, hard and cold.
He laughed in her face, then. “Surprise, sweetheart.” He raised his voice. “I have the parallel whore, Peter!”
Yvette closed her eyes, forcing down dread, shame, and nausea. How could she have been so blind?
--
universe three
Yvette patted Gove’s head, where it lay pillowed on her breast. “I’m afraid I’ve scratched up your back rather badly,” she said, informative instead of apologetic.
“Never mind,” Gove said, stifled, his lips on her skin making her shiver.
She smiled. He sounded absolutely knackered. “I suppose you can always magic them healed.”
“I could,” Gove said, raising his head with a great effort and pressing a kiss to her nipple.
“But?” Yvette asked, combing her fingers through his hair.
He smiled, a more attractive, languid version of his usual ridiculous grin. “But I think I’ll just put a glamour on them. I wouldn’t mind keeping a souvenir of this particular engagement.”
God, she nearly felt fond of him. This would never do. “Up, Gove. Vital business of state to attend to.”
Groaning, he got to his feet, stretching like a cat before remembering his manners and reaching a hand down to help her up. (She spurned it and hopped to her feet unassisted.) “I thought you were ignoring vital business of state on principle.”
“I am,” Yvette told him. “That’s called an excuse to leave.”
Gove actually laughed at that. Laughing made him look even more ridiculous than usual, but she didn’t seem to mind. Alarming. “I actually thought...”
“What?” she said, pushing the now-cold cup of tea into his hands. “Take that out with you, it’s disgusting.”
“I thought,” and he actually sounded a little shy, “we could talk the Speaker into letting me attempt to establish contact with your universe.”
Yvette stopped in the middle of pulling her top back on. “I thought that was too risky for you?”
Gove shrugged. “It’s a little risky, but what’s life without a fillip of risk? He only said that he wouldn’t force me, not that he would prevent me from volunteering.” He grinned, snaggle-teeth oddly endearing. “I also estimate my own abilities at a slightly higher level than John does.”
Yvette supposed that if she was a nice person, she would have turned down his offer. After all, she’d just slept with him, she ought to care if he risked himself for her, however small he might think the risk to be. But she was a politician, and a damned good one too, an attribute which rarely co-existed with being a nice person. “Find it by tonight and I’ll blow you before I go.”
--
universe one
For a moment, the tableau was frozen, as Yvette’s newly-beating heart thumped loudly in her chest. Then Ed exploded. “What the hell are you talking about, Gove? You’ve finally gone barmy, that’s what you’ve done, not that you weren’t always halfway there.” He aimed a punch, which Gove blocked clumsily.
“Stop! Stop,” Yvette said. “Ed, please stop.”
She’d come out from behind her desk, taking a few faltering steps toward Gove. Now she met his eyes. “If you’re toying with me,” she said, quietly, “I won’t let Ed thrash you. I’ll fucking end you myself.”
Despite his habitually defiant expression, Gove looked suitably impressed. “I’m not toying with you,” he said. “You...I can’t describe it in layman terms, but you – glow, somehow.” He looked frustrated. “The magic around you is ever so slightly out of phase. I’ve been watching you yesterday and today, and it’s stayed the same the entire time. The questions were merely to confirm.”
“Magic,” Yvette said.
“Magic,” Ed snorted, but mercifully fell silent when Yvette directed a pleading look his way.
Gove nodded. “I’m the apprentice wizard for the House of Commons. I’ve never actually seen someone from a parallel universe before, but I have read all the theoretical literature, and I have written an essay of my own on the possible manifestations of parallel shift.”
“Parallel universes?” She seized on it like a drowning woman. “So you meant what you said? My world still exists? I can go back to it?”
“Yes,” Gove said. “We just have to find it. There are an incredibly large number, you see,” he added, apologetically.
“What are you saying?” Ed asked, looking bewildered and belligerent.
Yvette took a deep breath. “I’m not your Yvette,” she told him, and felt the burden on her shoulders lighten, just saying it at last. “I’m a Yvette from another world. It’s like...” She searched for an analogy. “Like Kirk and Spock in the mirror universe?”
Gove nodded in reply to her appeal. “Yes, very like that.”
She thought for a moment that Ed still hadn’t understood. Then he tightened his hands on Gove’s lapels. “Where’s Yvette?” he growled, pushing his face into Gove’s, eyes on fire.
Gove leaned back. “Probably in the universe this Yvette left,” he said. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
Ed’s eyes narrowed further, and he looked ready to throw another punch. Yvette put a hand on his arm. “Ed, let’s just forget about thrashing him for now and make him switch us back.”
Ed looked at her like a stranger, and Yvette felt an inexplicable sense of loss for the man who’d held her and soothed her through her pain, even though he hadn’t known why she was upset.
Then his eyes softened a little, reluctantly. He turned back to Gove and shook him, not at all gently. “You hear that? Switch them back. Now. Before I rearrange your ugly face for you.”
“I can’t,” Gove protested, a little strangled. “Only my master can,” he added hastily, when Ed’s brows snapped together menacingly.
“Well, let’s go find him, then,” Ed said, as if talking to a very small child, shaking him vigorously once more before letting him go.
Yvette floated the entire way to what turned out to be the Speaker’s Office. She was going home.
--
universe two
Yvette saw John’s shoulders slump slightly, as he realised what Philip’s yell had meant. Still struggling against Philip’s grip, she called out, “Never mind me! Get him!”
A heavy, invisible hand came across her mouth. “That’s quite enough of that,” Philip said, politely. “Do be still. We’re going to watch my master destroy the Speaker, and then, sweetheart, he and I will be the rulers of this kingdom.”
Yvette blinked back angry tears, continuing to struggle. She wasn’t going to let him win this easily. She couldn’t let him win this easily.
“Calm down,” Philip said, as if he were talking to a child. “We won’t hurt you...much. We’re just not going to let you go back home, that’s all. A parallel human of our very own to explore and investigate – you’re worth too much to let slip away, aren’t you, love?” He tightened his hold. “So gullible. Would you have let me fuck you, I wonder, to keep the game up?”
Yvette wished she had stilettos on, to stomp on his feet; she wished she could open her mouth, because she would have bit; she wished she could somehow get a hand free and go for her knife. He made her skin crawl.
A wave of panic swept over her, like the claustrophobia she suffered from in crowded train carriages, and she felt an overwhelming longing for her family, for Ed, for her children. What had she been thinking? Why had she ever thought she could make a difference in this fight? She was one woman, and there was fucking magic here. If John somehow managed to defeat both Bone and Philip, she would almost surely be killed along the way. And if Bone and Philip were triumphant...her brain refused to supply the images.
Either way, her chances of going home again were nearly non-existent. She flinched away from the thought, taking refuge in the pain and discomfort of her current reality. At least this hurt was immediate and sharp, not the aching bone-deep loss of the other.
“Watch,” Philip said, and she looked up, furious tears pricking her eyes.
Bone and John were locked in combat. A rainbow show of lights ranged over the Chamber, picking up the long empty benches. No help from them. Not that she blamed those who had fled – it took a certain type of reckless bravery (or a certain type of reckless stupidity, in her own case) to volunteer for possible annihilation. Heroes, as war had always shown, usually ended up dead.
John’s face was as white as if colour had never been invented, grotesque in the mocking play of the magic, rainbows patterning his skin as feverishly loud as any of his ties. Bone’s was punctuated by silent laughter, his mouth stretched wide, the mania in his gaze a tangible presence.
The magic crackled overhead, wrestling with itself, thunderous and threatening. It smelled like burning, like ash, like cannon fire; like power, like majesty, like strength and determination and courage. She felt the edges of it reach out toward her skin, curious and questing, fierce and suspicious. Magic was not tame; she almost thought she could have spoken to it somehow, if only she had known the right words.
Bone hurled another bolt of magic at John, the colour of profanity, the smell of crushed velvet, the sound of blackish-brown sludge. “Stand aside, Bercow,” he spat.
For a moment, Yvette felt almost hopeful – Bone’s voice had been more tired than in the beginning.
“Never,” John said simply, and Yvette’s hope plummeted away again, for he sounded as if the magic was consuming him from the inside out. His hands trembled as he raised them higher.
In that moment, a movement at the main door of the House caught Yvette’s eye, and her heart leaped. Could it perhaps be Chris, coming to John’s aid?
But no, it was only Claire, peeking around the corner. Yvette heard Philip’s indrawn breath, and knew that he’d seen her too.
“Ah, your pretty little adviser,” he hissed in her ear. “Let’s take care of her, shall we?”
Yvette felt his grip on her ribs slacken slightly, as he presumably made to raise a hand toward Claire. She seized her chance and went into instantaneous motion, slamming her body backward as hard as she could, pushing off from her heels and fully committing herself. If they went down, they went down - he’d cushion her.
They didn’t go down. Philip staggered, but kept them upright – whether by magic or not, Yvette couldn’t tell. By the time he regained his balance, however, and righted the both of them, Claire had made her escape.
“You’ll pay for that one, whore,” Philip said, tightening his grasp around her painfully. “Not that it’ll make any difference,” he said, and the reassurance sounded like it was more for his benefit than hers. “Even if she goes for help, no one’s going to brave two magicians. Have any of those cowardly backbenchers returned to save the day? Even with your precious Speaker to protect them, they don’t dare risk their lives.” His voice took on a mock-concerned tone. “And I’m sorry, dear, but I rather think the Speaker himself won’t be around much longer.”
Yvette, struggling to breathe in his grip, knew that he was right. John was visibly faltering now, even to her non-magical eyes. His magical shield was cracking, falling back, pushing doggedly forward, and falling back again. The burning smell was stronger, pushing into her nostrils and making her want to retch. Overhead, the rainbow patterns were dimming; it was a diseased rainbow now, a rainbow slowly dying.
And then it all went out.
John’s shield collapsed. He stood defenceless for one long moment.
There was an expectant hush, a tangible waiting. Yvette blinked in the sudden dim, as the normal lights substituted once more for the solar brightness of the magic.
The moment hung in the air – and then John’s eyes rolled back in his head, his body going limp. He dropped, quickly, quietly. One moment he had been standing, determined and forbidding, defending the Mace, and the next moment he was a crumpled heap on the floor, the black Speaker’s Robe making him look like a bit of dirty washing.
Bone laughed, throwing back his head and letting his glee surge through him. He sent his magic crackling through the room in triumph - black and brown and evil magic, a poisoned rainbow, making Yvette’s hair stand on end.
He stalked forward, taking his time, and prodded John’s body with his toe. “The Wizard is destroyed,” he said, in a hushed, malevolent whisper, then shouted it. “The Wizard is destroyed!”
He reached for the Mace.
From the angle Philip was holding her, Yvette had a clear view of Bone’s face, of the greedy lust in his eyes as he neared the consummation of all his plans. So she saw the moment when that lust changed into angry shock, a split second before he was blasted backwards once again, flying down the aisle.
Chris emerged from behind the Speaker’s Chair, striding in front of the Labour bench and planting himself in front of the Mace, in front of John’s limp body. He was panting, his hair was sticking up on one side and plastered down with sweat on the other, and his eyes were bloodshot. Yvette had never seen a more beautiful sight.
“Get up and fight, you bastard,” Chris said, and set his feet.
--
universe three
Yvette swung her feet restlessly. She’d insisted on staying in the Speaker’s Office while Gove helped John look for her universe, but she hadn’t expected it to be this ...boring. She’d thought there would at least be flashing lights or mesmerising magic.
Instead, all that seemed to be happening was ten minutes of migraine-inducing spells followed by two minutes of a telemarketing call. After the fourth repeat, she was beginning to get horrifically bored. Yvette didn’t like being bored.
“Any progress?” she asked, trying not to sound impatient.
Gove, rubbing his temples, shot her an exasperated look. “Not since the last time you inquired, no. This last universe was certainly not yours.”
“Why?” she asked, scenting a story.
“I’d rather not say,” he said, looking slightly nauseous.
Behind him, John laughed, tired but amused. He was still whiter than Yvette liked to see, but his energy seemed to have picked up a bit now that Gove was helping to shoulder the burden of the spells. “Ann Widdecombe was Speaker, and she wasn’t particularly pleased to hear from me.”
“Oh God,” she said. “I didn’t even know that was a possibility.”
Gove snorted. “Keep that in mind next time you’re thrown into a parallel. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s not unknown to have other Speakers.” He winced, and massaged the bridge of his nose.
“How are you bearing up?” John asked, putting a hand on his arm. “You can stop at any time.” It had taken a bit of work to persuade John to let Gove help, and even now Gove was only doing the easier spells. Yvette found Gove’s irritation at this to be quite amusing.
“I’m fine,” Gove said shortly.
Yvette watched them swing back into it, John’s movements practiced and calm, Gove’s awkward and jerky. She felt herself getting drowsy, as John’s calm, assured voice repeated the spells, with Gove’s sharp, clipped tones ringing above. Sleeping in the same bed with a very handsy cuddler had done her sleep quality no favours last night. Pulling her feet up underneath her, Yvette curled into a ball, resting her head on the armrest, and drifted off.
It was the stillness which woke her, the sudden cessation of magic and sound. She blinked, trying to orient herself. John and Gove were standing very still, looking down at something she couldn’t see.
“Well, fuck,” John said.
--
universe one
Gove’s expression was rather like that of her best friend’s terrier when it caught a rat and brought it back to deposit triumphantly at the feet of its mistress.
Said mistress was a short man in a Speaker’s robe, looking none too pleased at having been yanked from the Chair in the middle of a debate.
Gove was yapping, again like a terrier. “I am aware that there has never been a confirmed case in this universe, sir, but if you will look closely at Ms. Cooper, you will see the phase-shift in action. In addition, I have questioned her, and there is no doubt that she is under the impression that she does indeed hail from another universe. Her memories are similar to events in this world, but vary in important particulars.”
John held up a hand, and Gove halted, with a slightly indignant look. “Yvette?”
“It started yesterday morning,” Yvette confirmed.
“Is there any reason that an evil magician might wish to shift you out of your universe temporarily?”
Yvette shrugged. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as magic until Gove told me. If there are evil magicians in my world, I certainly don’t know anything about them, and neither does Ed, he would have told me. And he’s Leader.”
“Ah,” John said. “In most universes, the Speaker does not choose to reveal the existence of magic to anyone other than his chosen apprentice. Revelation only happens in worlds where evil magic has impinged on the lives of the non-magical, and then only to select individuals.”
“So it’s a good thing that I don’t know about it?”
“The likelihood of rampant magical misconduct is lower,” John agreed, “although your ignorance of it does not rule it out entirely.”
“Look, this is all wonderful,” Ed said, crossing his arms. “Can we focus on explaining it all later, and get my wife back now?”
Gove, who had pulled a cauldron out of somewhere and begun singing to it under his breath, snorted and rolled his eyes.
John looked unruffled. “We will certainly begin the process immediately. I should warn the both of you, however, that even in the best of cases, with experienced practitioners, the process can take up to four days. As neither I nor my apprentice has such experience, our search may take some time. If you would like to return home, we will inform you of any new developments.”
Three things happened at once.
“Not fucking likely,” Ed started, looking particularly belligerent.
“How long do you think...” Yvette began, her lip starting to tremble despite her best efforts to hold it steady.
“Master, I think you should look at this,” Gove said, from his position over his cauldron. He pointed at something in it, but warned Ed off with his eyes when Ed made as if to go look. “It’s...that one has just gone black. It’s like it’s dropped off the map.”
John’s eyebrows shot up.
Yvette didn’t think that was a good sign.
--
universe two
Yvette felt Philip tense against her back. “Shall I kill the bitch, Master?” he called. “Together we can take him down.”
A moment of sinking terror, helpless in Philip’s grasp, and then – “No,” Bone said, getting to his feet with a snarl. “She will be useful to us. Keep her muzzled. I hardly need help to dispose of one prancing queer, and a half-trained one at that.” He raised his hands once more, his face a rictus of disdain. “Your master fell, Bryant, and so will you. Flee now, or be destroyed.”
“You need new lines,” Chris said, conversationally, although he was still breathing hard, his eyes wild. “I do realise that you’re an evil villain mastermind, but that doesn’t mean that you have to try to imitate Tolkien. It’s a new century, Bone, get with the times.”
Bone snarled again, and hurled magic at him. Chris threw magic up against it, and the battle was joined once more.
Yvette could hardly bear to watch any longer, the tears blurring her eyes. John’s body was so very still, crumpled behind Chris’s legs; she didn’t know if he was still alive, or if he would be able to recover even if he was. The Mace sat on the Table above him, listless and dark. Wake up, she thought at it, desperately. Hasn’t it been long enough? Wake up!
Behind her, Philip fidgeted. Yvette could sense his unease. The battle in front of them seemed less predetermined than John and Bone’s had – Chris’s magic was clumsy, and his technique seemed to leave something to be desired, but he was stronger than John had been. With all of his powers available to him, instead of some of them being trapped in a quiescent Mace, Chris was slowly, ever so slowly, pushing Bone backward.
If only he can hold out until the Mace wakes up, Yvette thought desperately. It’ll still be two against one – Philip will surely dispose of me then – but who knows how strong the Mace is? Bone and Philip have never tried to attack before, they’ve carefully waited until they didn’t have to deal with it. Maybe, just maybe, he can actually pull this off. (And you’ll almost certainly be dead, a little voice told her, but she pushed it aside.)
Philip seemed to be having the same thoughts. He fidgeted again, and Yvette felt the magic holding her mouth shut fizz and fray at the edges, reflecting his worry and distraction.
She watched the scene in front of her, soaked the rainbow brilliance of the magic deep into every pore. If she was about to be dispatched by an evil magician – and on the Tory front bench, no less – she was going to go out with her eyes open, unafraid.
“How very like a Tory, to abuse a defenceless woman.” The voice behind them was quiet and slow, the cadences measured for dramatic effect.
Yvette found herself suddenly released, and then she was falling, staggering forward and banging her shoulder on the Table on the way down. From her ungainly sprawl on the floor, tears springing into her eyes from the pain in her shoulder, she looked up at Philip and the newcomer, her breath catching with almost hysterical relief.
“Mandelson,” Philip spat. “How did you get here? We disabled the cameras, brought down the electronics system, and blocked all the exits.”
Peter’s eyes were cold. “Next time you decide to stage a coup, and you wish to prevent help from arriving, you might try blocking the magical cameras as well as the non-magical ones.”
“Magical cameras?” Philip’s sneer faltered. “You mean, you...?”
“I like to have a personal view of the Chamber at times,” Peter said, smiling, slow and menacing. “And yes, I know something of magic, as a modicum of attention during the past fourteen years might have told you. Use your mind, Davies, if you possess one.” He raised his hands, his undone sleeves falling back from his slim wrists. “Defend yourself.”
Yvette could see Philip swallow. “I have a hostage,” he said. “Touch me, and I’ll kill her.”
“Ah,” Peter said, sounding pleased. “I think you will find that you do not.”
Philip looked down, hand reaching to seize her again, and found himself faced with a slender, but lethal, knife.
“Try it,” Yvette said.
Philip glanced between her and Peter, eyes dark, then sprang up and over the Tory front bench, away from the knife. “Come and fight, Mandy,” he said. “You know something of magic, hah! You’re weak and untrained. Come and be destroyed.”
Now he was just stealing lines from his master, Yvette thought, rubbing at her injured shoulder, keeping her knife warily in front of her. Peter stalked up the steps, taking his time.
“It’s you who will be destroyed,” Peter said, and raised his hands.
--
universe three
Yvette was at their side in an instant, still rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “What is it? What’s happened?” she demanded.
Gove looked bewildered. “It flickered out. We reached out a communications line toward that universe, and instead of connecting, the universe just flickered out.”
“What does that mean?”
John was frowning. “Nothing good, I’m afraid. Magical communication calls on the magical networks of the kingdom. If those are compromised...”
Yvette had a sinking feeling. “The Mace. God, the Mace.”
“What about it?” John asked, looking as if he did not particularly want to hear the answer.
“I haven’t told you about why I was shifted,” Yvette said. She explained the situation as quickly and as clearly as she could. “If the Mace is dormant, would that cause its magical communication point to disappear like that?”
“I have never seen it happen,” John said slowly. “But in theory, yes.”
Gove had been quiet, too quiet. “Master,” he said, and flicked his eyes over at Yvette. If she hadn’t known that he was a Tory and, well, Gove, she would have thought he looked concerned. “If your counterpart is defeated, and the evil magicians break the Mace’s power while it lies dormant...”
Yvette could finish the thought, even if he had trailed off in consideration of her. “I.” She swallowed. “I might never get home.”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” John said soothingly. “It’s only been a few minutes. No doubt the Mace will reawaken at any moment, and we will be able to contact them to see if this truly is your universe.” He put a hand on her arm, squeezing comfortingly.
Gove hesitated, then reached over and made an attempt to pat her shoulder.
Yvette wrenched herself away from them and, hardly knowing what she was doing, began to pace. Her children. Her children. She hadn’t worried about them too much before – Tom would take care of them, and it was hardly the first time she’d been in parallel. Now, however – now that she knew she might never see them again, she felt as if her heart might burst out of her chest at any moment.
It seems I do have a weakness after all, she thought distantly, and began to laugh. All these years, everyone saying that I have no weaknesses, that I’m made of steel, that I have bigger balls than anyone else in the Labour Party (including Balls) – all these years, and they were wrong. They were wrong.
She sobbed with the strength of her laughter, ringing out eerily across the room.
A hand on her shoulder, firmly turning her around. “Yvette,” Gove said, and he looked worried. A Tory, looking worried, what a riot. Ruin the education system, make war on the poor, cut until Britain bleeds, and nary a care in the world; but let one woman get a little upset...She laughed into his face, lacing it with the contempt she felt.
Gove slapped her, hard.
The shock of it rocked her back, and then she was falling, puppet strings cut.
Gove caught her.
--
universe one
“Have you ever seen that before, Master?” Gove asked.
Bercow shook his head. “No, I haven’t, although I haven’t used this projection very often before. In the general way of things, it has no practical use.”
They bent over it again.
Ed and Yvette exchanged a mutual look of frustration, momentarily in perfect sympathy, before remembering their situation and looking away again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Yvette offered, after a minute.
Ed winced. “Just...let’s not talk about it. Let’s just get you both back.”
They lapsed into an awkward silence again.
“What is that?” Yvette could hear the curiousity and excitement in Gove’s voice, and her heart thudded.
“It looks like a communication line, but all communications to that world would be unable to go through, given the state of its network,” John said, frowning in concentration.
Gove looked up, eyes flashing. “Could it be an attempted communication line?”
There was a moment of silence, as all present took in what that might mean. Then – “Get the equipment,” John said, springing into action, “before they pull the line back.”
In her excitement, Yvette grabbed Ed’s hand, hardly aware of what she was doing. A moment later, she flushed and tried to pull her hand back, but Ed tightened his grasp.
Hand in hand, they watched the Speaker and his apprentice attempt to right their worlds.
--
universe two
Yvette, crouched in front of the Tory front bench, tore her gaze away from the two duels raging around her to look despairingly at the Mace, still quiet and dark on the Table. At least it was even odds now, she thought, but then her side was made up of a half-trained apprentice and an untrained rogue.
Peter and Philip seemed to be evenly matched. They paced the back benches slowly, faces deep in concentration, red and black magic crackling in the air between them. Yvette was thankful to be well out of it; she was finally beginning to be able to catch her breath again, from where Philip had squeezed it out of her. Why Peter had magical cameras in the Chamber, she didn’t know or care. If he managed to bring Philip down, she would take back every bad thing she had ever said about him.
Chris, on the other hand, was slowly being pushed back again. For a few hopeful minutes, it had looked as if he was winning, but Bone’s superior experience, technique, and stamina was beginning to tell. Yvette could see the clumsiness and weariness in Chris’s feints and blocks, even as the set lines of his face revealed nothing but stubborn determination.
John, meanwhile, still lay motionless. Yvette thought about crawling to him, seeing if there was anything she could do, but she would not only be in the line of fire, she might be a liability to Chris. Pull through, John, she thought fiercely at him, pull through.
Overhead, the Chamber looked as if it were lit with a million sunsets. Chris’s sharp rainbow mingled with Bone’s black sludge, while Peter’s stalwart red beat back Philip’s barbed bluish-black. Amidst the maelstrom, the steady green of the benches seemed otherworldly.
Images flew by her eyes as she watched the combatants, constantly on alert for anything she might be able to do to help, unmagical though she was. They revolved in front of her eyes, dizzying in the flashing lights.
Images -
Peter, calm and ruthless, face as carefully composed as if this were a diplomatic meeting, or a particularly difficult interview.
Philip, dwarfing Peter in size, yet retreating before him, face frozen in a savage scowl.
Chris, so near and yet so far, his chest heaving as if he’d just run a marathon, his face red and flushed, his shield beginning to falter.
Bone, laughing, his mania shading into triumph, slipping a bolt of magic under Chris’s defences in a single quick move.
“No!” Yvette cried out, as Chris staggered backward, rocked by the force of the hit. His hand went out to the Table to catch himself, and Yvette watched horrorstruck as he grimaced, leaning heavily on the Table for support.
Bone, still cackling, aimed his hands for a final attack. Chris blocked, but weakly, so weakly, his face contorted in pain.
Bone moved in for the kill.
“OI! Look here, you fucking cunt!” It was a voice she knew so very well, ringing out over the Chamber in aggrieved, stentorian tones.
In the act of raising his hand to finish Chris, Bone faltered, swinging around to face his new attacker. He must have been aware, however superficially, of Peter’s arrival, and Yvette could see the question flit across his face: was this another self-trained magician, who might attack him from behind?
But no magic was involved. Through the main doors poured a stream of MPs, her Ed in the lead, along with Ed Miliband, Caroline Lucas, David Laws, Michael Gove – and Claire. Behind them jostled more MPs, from every party. (Yvette even thought she saw Nick Clegg.)
Their faces were set and determined. Some were brandishing makeshift weapons – Ed had a table leg, Gove an old sword which he must have liberated from somewhere, Caroline a broom. No security personnel with guns, and Yvette felt blindingly indignant for a moment, until she looked up at the magic and realised that guns might very well go wrong somehow, in this electrically charged world of rainbows and thunder.
Before her, Bone smiled, hollow and frightening, and raised his hands to blast them.
Yvette had seen the power of that magic, when he had nearly blasted Lindsay, and she thought that he had only been issuing a warning then. However brave this ragtag army was, it was wholly unprotected - would they really be able to reach Bone before he obliterated them from the face of the planet?
Without knowing quite how it happened, Yvette found herself on her feet, screaming something incoherent. She had to do something, anything, to buy them a few precious seconds. No matter that she was unmagical, no matter that she didn’t even belong in this world, some things just had to be fought for. They might not have been her friends and colleagues, but they were some Yvette’s friends and colleagues, and she didn’t think she could bear to see Ed killed, even in a parallel.
In that instant, her numb hand remembered what it was holding. Without another thought, she brought it up and hurled the knife at Bone.
Unlike Ed, she’d never played darts. But something in that Chamber – perhaps it was the magic, perhaps it was Providence, perhaps it was simply blind luck – aimed that knife. It flew straight and true, slashing merrily across Bone’s cheekbone, leaving a bright red line in its wake. Yvette felt like Clara in the Nutcracker.
Bone whirled in shock, and the ball of magic in his hands, milliseconds away from being launched at the ragtag MP army, flew out of his grasp and hurtled toward Yvette instead.
Ah, she thought.
The last thing she saw before everything went dark was Chris, springing forward with what looked like the last of his strength, the suddenly resplendent Mace raised high above his head.
--
universe three
Yvette hated herself, hated the wrenching sobs she was currently burying in Gove’s formerly pristine shirt front, hated his arms awkwardly encircling her, hated the silence with which he held her, hated the hand gently stroking her hair. This was not her. She didn’t do this. When Ed Miliband had cried during the bad old days, she had cheered him up with a few sarcastic words, then gone to eviscerate the perpetrator. When she had found herself in her first parallel, she had taken a few deep breaths and gone to find John, who she’d always thought was a wizard. When she’d fallen prey to ME, she had quizzed the doctors, then made a vow to get her life back within the year.
She hadn’t cried, any of those times. She didn’t cry. She was strong, and she had learned long ago to refuse to allow fear or despair any purchase in her life. Give the other bastards an inch of vulnerability, and they would take a mile.
But now, as she cracked and burned, seething in her own humiliation as she did so, she wondered whether she had been completely honest with herself all this time. Could she ever wholly eliminate weakness from her life? Perhaps strength was not just the absence of fear, but the acceptance of the presence of fear, and the refusal to let that fear defeat her.
She pulled back in the circle of Gove’s arms, looked up at him. “I will find a way,” she snapped at him, the edge of tears making her voice rough. “So help me God, I will find a way.”
His face held no pity for her. “You will,” he agreed.
“Michael.” John’s voice was sharp.
“In a minute,” Gove said.
“Now. Incoming.”
Yvette wasn’t sure what that meant, but Gove’s eyes went wide, and he released her in a sudden flurry of movement, springing to John’s side. He set his hands over John’s, and together they whispered spells into the cauldron.
“I am Speaker John Bercow. To whom am I speaking?” John asked, his voice eerily stilted and forced, as if the space between worlds was a physical barrier it had to force its way through.
Yvette listened, but could hear nothing.
A long listening silence, and then Gove’s rubber face spasmed. He looked over at Yvette, face manic, and she found herself barely able to breathe.
“Affirmative,” John said. “And is Ms. Cooper Leader in your world?” Another minute of silence, and then, “Stand by.”
They seemed to break the connection, and Yvette could contain herself no longer. “Is it my world? Are you putting me back?”
“There’s good news and bad news,” John said, gently. “That world has the Yvette to this one.”
Yvette read the rest in his face. “But it’s not mine. The dark world is mine. It’s a three-world snarl.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to transfer me to another world that’s not mine, so that the Yvette to this world gets home a little more quickly.”
John winced. “In a perfect situation, I would prefer to do a three-pronged transfer. In this situation, however, and I am afraid I must be blunt, there is no guarantee that the connection to your world may ever be restored. While we wait, it is cruel to keep the Yvette of this world separated from it, when there is no need to do so.”
“Fine,” she said, numbly. “Do what you have...”
She was interrupted by a sudden whoop from Gove, who had stayed at the cauldron while John explained. A whoop – there really was no other word for it.
When she looked in his direction, eyebrows raised, he grinned, broad and shameless. “It’s back! It’s back. The forces of good must have won the day. You owe me a blowjob, Yvette Cooper.”
“There are things I do not need to know,” John said, burying his face in his hands.
--
universe one
“You’re going home,” John said, a broad smile on his face.
Yvette shut her eyes. It was too much, too many ups and downs in too rapid a succession. Fizzy, overwhelming joy threatened to mix with leftover sinking dread and to create an explosive situation somewhere in her stomach. She concentrated on breathing, on letting go of the fear and loneliness that had been her constant companions for the past two days, on accepting the fact that soon she would be home. Home.
An arm went around her waist, drawing her into an embrace. Yvette opened her eyes, and Ed smiled down at her, his face lit with the same joy she felt running through her own veins.
She smiled back at him, and found herself spun into a dance around the Speaker’s Office, with John laughing in the background, and even Gove cracking a reluctant smile as they whirled past him.
She was going home.
--
universe two
Yvette drifted, caught in the darkness.
“How is she?”
“No change. She should wake up soon.”
“I brought you lunch.”
“No need, my dear boy.”
“Chris told me that you need to eat to replenish your magical reserves.”
“You are going to hold that over me from now on, aren’t you?”
“Most likely. Did your cameras capture the battle?”
“You want to watch Bercow nearly getting himself killed?”
“I want to watch you taking down evil. Untrained. Without your cufflinks.”
The darkness engulfed her again.
universe three
Even before Yvette opened her eyes, she could hear Ed.
“I came as soon as I got your message, Mr. Speaker...Yvette! What’s happened?”
Yvette heard him rushing across the room, heard him sliding to his knees beside the sofa on which she lay.
“Is there a doctor coming? What happened?”
Yvette blinked her eyes open, and Ed’s face – Ed’s face - swum into focus, concerned and awkward and so, so Ed. “Hi, darling,” she said.
“Are you all right?” he asked, pressing her hand to his lips. “Did you fall?”
She smiled at him, trying to put a little of what she felt into her smile. “I had a bit of an adventure. I’ll tell you about it later. Just – kiss me now?”
He leant down. She kept her eyes open.
--
universe one
“Hello everyone,” Yvette said. “Welcome the world traveller.”
“This is just temporary?” Ed Balls asked John nervously. He didn’t seem to have taken her sardonic tone well. “We’re still going to get my wife back?”
Yvette snorted. “You’d better. I’m not sure we’d get along for very long.”
Ed looked like he agreed with her.
Despite her prickliness, Yvette was actually in a good mood. The knowledge that her world had been successfully defended had been an incredible relief. Of course, the fact that she was going to have to wait for a few hours, while her world’s magicians regained enough strength to make the transfer – Chris had been exhausted and strangely laconic about the details, when they’d finally reached him, something about injuries – was annoying, but understandable. She could manage a few more hours, even if they had gone ahead and switched her to a new world in the meantime.
All right, so she had had a minor explosion over having to wait. She still didn’t see why John and Gove couldn’t just shift all three of them around by themselves, as the evil magicians had. But John had made some good arguments, which had calmed her down somewhat. Gove had calmed her down the rest of the way by peremptorily announcing that John was doing all the preparations for the transfer by himself, and then “sending her off in style” in a side room.
Now, still tingling in the aftermath of that particular, ahem, event, Yvette was only moderately impatient, not murderous. She blinked, and tuned back in to the conversation.
“...should be only a matter of time,” John was saying.
“Until then we’re stuck with each other,” Yvette told Ed. “I’ll try not to eviscerate you out of sheer boredom.”
“What did you say you did in your world again?” Ed asked, watching her as if she was a particularly unpredictable snake, or a Tory.
She grinned at him, showing her teeth. “I’m Leader. You?”
“Shadow Chancellor,” he said. “You’re...different than my Yvette.”
Yvette laughed. “Well, if it helps, you’re different from the Ed in my world. He would not be happy to find himself married to me, you can be sure of that.”
“Who’s he married to, then?” Ed asked, looking as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Yvette smirked at him. She didn’t wish him ill, but it was quite funny, the way he was so flustered and off-balance, when he was usually such a bulldog. “Oh, nobody.” She let that sink in, let him start to relax. “But if I successfully badger the coalition into passing marriage equality, I think Miliband’s going to propose at conference.”
Ed’s reaction was priceless, just as she’d hoped. “What?” he spluttered.
Yvette pursed her lips. “I agree, it’s a bit...dramatic...but what can I say, Miliband’s a romantic.”
“I’m not gay,” Ed said, controlling his voice with what looked like a vast effort. “Gove, stop laughing, you tosser. Not there’s anything wrong with being gay, but I’m not.”
“Well, mine is,” Yvette told him. “Beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
He still didn’t look convinced.
She grinned at him again. “I’m sure your Yvette will be able to confirm it when she gets back.”
Excitement and misgiving warred on his face.
Yvette swung her legs over the side of the sofa. “Is there anything fucking interesting in this world?”
“You’re staying in my office,” John said, bluntly but not unkindly.
“I’ll get take-away,” Gove offered.
--
universe two
Yvette blinked. Surely she was still unconscious, and this was some sort of fevered dream. If one had dreams when one was unconscious. She wasn’t really sure if one did.
Blinking, however, failed to change the picture. Peter Mandelson was still sitting by her bedside, getting thoroughly snogged by George Osborne.
She cleared her throat, and they broke apart. Osborne grinned at her – grinned! Osborne! – and then leaned back down to steal another quick kiss. “I’ll see you later,” he told Peter, “and I’ll know if you don’t finish your lunch.”
He left the room, and Yvette aimed a pointed look at Peter, who was looking entirely too satisfied with himself. “Let me guess, in this world you’re committed life partners with a Tory?”
Peter smiled. “Is it any more unlikely than evil magicians and parallel shifts?”
“I suppose not,” she conceded. “Still, Osborne?”
“We muddle along,” he said.
Yvette looked around her. She was lying on the sofa in John’s office. “To move on from your love life, Peter, which I’m sure is fascinating, how exactly am I not dead? And where is everyone?”
“John is in the hospital,” Peter said, “getting his fluids replenished. The magical damage will take a little longer to heal, but Chris has dragooned me to assist in the interim. Thus my presence here.”
“And Chris?”
“Chris is talking to detectives about recent events, making preparations for the formal reinvestment of the Mace by King Charles, and attempting to avoid the press.”
“The press? It got out, then?”
“You could hardly expect it to do otherwise – there were thirty MPs in the chamber when Bone made his move, and nearly as many in the ‘avenging army’, as Nick Robinson is calling it. The initial suggestion of calling it a terrorist attack never had a possibility of gaining traction.” Peter smiled, looking quite pleased with himself. “Also, the footage from my cameras may have mysteriously made it to the BBC.”
“Why did you have cameras in the Chamber? It’s hardly legal.”
Peter grimaced. “Chris has advised me of that fact, at great length and volume. I had no nefarious goals, however.”
“Do I want to know?” Yvette asked, thinking back to Osborne’s strange faces during PMQs.
Peter smiled. “Magic has many uses.”
“Ew. Back to me,” Yvette said. “Why am I not dead? Stop distracting me from that.”
“I never did my magical-apprentice catechism,” Peter said, stretching like a cat, “but Chris tells me that it must be something called parallel phase. Apparently you are a foreign object in this world – you’re nearly identical to our Yvette, but not entirely. The difference between a twin and a clone, perhaps. The magic knocked you unconscious with the force of the impact, but it could not disintegrate you into atoms as it was meant to, because it did not speak the exact same magical language as your body.” He shrugged. “Granted, Chris might be making all of this up.”
Yvette moved her arms and legs. They seemed to work. Her breastbone was a little sore, but she could live with that. “There won’t be any long-term side effects?”
“Chris doesn’t think so,” Peter said.
“Anything else I should know?”
“Your world has been located. Now that you’re awake, you’ll be going home.”
Yvette had to remind herself to breathe. “Really?”
“Really and truly,” Peter said, smiling at her.
--
After that, it all happened very quickly. One moment, she was saying her goodbyes – giving a battered-but-triumphant Chris a fierce hug, congratulating Ed and Ed (apparently the high drama and romance of the ‘avenging army’ had provoked a proposal, once Bone had been successfully blasted into oblivion and Philip taken into custody), and talking to a weak-but-alive John over the telephone.
The next, she was blinking her eyes open, and the first thing she saw was Ed.
She smiled at him.
He went to his knees next to the sofa, and gathered her to him, and hid his face on her breast; she held him, and pretended not to notice the minute shaking of his shoulders.
Behind him, John drew Gove away.
Whatever might come – and Yvette was acutely aware that she still had to confess her transgression with the two Ed’s – this moment was theirs. She shut her eyes and held him closer.
She had come home.
--
universe three
“So that wasn’t you after all,” Ed said, laughing.
“I can’t believe she did that,” Yvette said. “I’m going to have to pretend that was me?”
“It was a good idea, though,” Ed said, and she could see the spark in his eyes. She loved that spark. Despite the headaches this was going to cause, she couldn’t help loving the Yvette who had reignited it. “Don’t you think?” She could see the diffidence begin to war within him again.
“Tell me about it,” she said. “Let’s do it together.”
Ed’s eyes lit up again as he began to explain. She smiled and held him closer.
Behind them, Gove left the room, shutting the door quietly.
She had come home.
--
universe two
Yvette opened her eyes.
Chris, Ed, and Ed looked back at her.
“Fill me in,” she said, and swung her legs over the side of the sofa.
Later, she would pick the children up from Tom’s, and watch them while they slept. Later, she would watch the footage from Peter’s cameras, and fight back the impotence and fury she felt, not having been a part of it. Later, she would deal with her new, changed world, with the press and the publicity and the messiness of Philip’s trial.
For now, she looked around at the people she loved, and took her first deep breath in two days.
She had come home.
finis
-----------------
A/N: Feedback is much loved! <3 If you'd rather leave comments at the meme, here is the thread.
no subject
I really loved the ride in this. Although I liked each universe, I really liked how our "real one" felt... real. I can't really explain why or put it into words, though. For a time I was wondering if you were going to write our universe the true way it is (i.e. Bercow's not actually a wizard) and how she would get back. Still satisfying the way you chose it.
De-anoning to say (I don't know if you remember me) I am the USA anon from the meme who was reading this and who really only reads Clameron. If you need any more help, I was trying to guess the political implications of Coalition in each universe. So as a Coalition fan, if you do experiment again in this universe, the "Cameron wakes up in a relationship with Clegg and tries to get back to our univ" is fine by me. :D
I am also the same USA anon who inadvertently started a Cameron succession srs bzness thread in light of your other fic where he dies. I am still trying to get over that and the number of times I checked the BBC.
Hopefully I have proven that I am great admirer of your work- going back to Charity. I have so much respect for it--I'm not sure how I'd react if you'd ever discover/review my fic on the meme...I think I'd pass out!
And not sure if I need to do this on the other thread but...are you interested in being mutual LJ friends? I think we share some interests plus I would love for your fics to show up in my f-list in case LJ inbox fails to work but the F-list still does. No offense if you don't wish to be friends, though.
no subject
I really loved the ride in this. Although I liked each universe, I really liked how our "real one" felt... real. I can't really explain why or put it into words, though.
Thank you so much!
For a time I was wondering if you were going to write our universe the true way it is (i.e. Bercow's not actually a wizard) and how she would get back.
I thought about it! But eventually I felt it balanced better the other way. :)
De-anoning to say (I don't know if you remember me) I am the USA anon from the meme who was reading this and who really only reads Clameron. If you need any more help, I was trying to guess the political implications of Coalition in each universe.
I remember you!!! I didn't know that both of those anons were the same person, but I remember both occasions. :D
So as a Coalition fan, if you do experiment again in this universe, the "Cameron wakes up in a relationship with Clegg and tries to get back to our univ" is fine by me. :D
I can totally see myself writing this. No promises as to timing - I'm bad at getting side-tracked - but I think I can safely promise you at least a ficlet eventually. :)
I am also the same USA anon who inadvertently started a Cameron succession srs bzness thread in light of your other fic where he dies. I am still trying to get over that and the number of times I checked the BBC.
I remember this too! It's neat, knowing that this was all you. :)
Hopefully I have proven that I am great admirer of your work- going back to Charity. I have so much respect for it--I'm not sure how I'd react if you'd ever discover/review my fic on the meme...I think I'd pass out!
Awww, this is so sweet! If you want to give me links, I'll read and review your fics! I try to review everything I read, I just tend to read patchily. But I'm always excited to read new things. :)
are you interested in being mutual LJ friends?
Of course! Friending you now. :) <33
no subject
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was a good thing to de-anon there, but since it's just for Comments, figured it would be OK. Glad you remember me - although after you start a 20 comment srs bsness line, you'd kinda hard to forget!
I am actually serious about being flattered if you read/review mine. Maybe I shouldn't chance the heart attack in my 30's LOL. But if you'd like to read it, you can actually find it on the now-opened Friends Only side of my journal. You can also find it on Prompt Post 4 but I'd rather not give the link out as that would be a de-anon and for my fic on the meme, though, I'm still going anon.