sixthiterationlogs | they found me there in the sands, bones of ribbon in my hands.

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they found me there in the sands, bones of ribbon in my hands.

WHO: Stella Gibson
WHERE: 6I - the inn
WHEN: September 24th
OPEN TO: Kate Kelly
WARNINGS: Discussion of sexual harassment

A couple of months or so after breaking her arm in the earthquake, Stella thinks it's high time she sat and talked to Kate Kelly.

She hasn't been avoiding the issue, honestly — in fact, she'd meant to thank her for helping her get to the hospital as soon as she could. But with the earthquake and its aftermath, and then the number of people that had fallen ill in the epidemic after that... well, suffice it to say she'd been distracted and occupied. Now, though, they've room to breathe, at least until the next crisis the observers see fit to throw at their little village.

Stella comes in after lunch, when most people have finished eating and gone their separate ways. The post-meal cleanup seems mostly done, but Kate is still there in the kitchen, dealing with the last of the dishes. This is probably as good a time as any other.

"Miss Kelly," she says, polite, and soft so as to try to avoid startling her. She doesn't exactly smile, but she's trying as best she can to appear nonthreatening. There is a particular skill Stella has developed, a talent for being intimidating despite her height — or rather, her lack thereof — but she's learnt the opposite, too, a quiet, unimposing, self-contained calm. If she makes a point of seeming at ease, perhaps Kate will follow suit.

"Do you need any help?" she asks, nodding to the pile of plates and pots and pans. She wasn't brought up so privileged as to balk at hand-washing a few dishes — and she does try to help people here when she's able, because not contributing would be counterproductive at best.

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"Miss Gibson."

She's all quiet politeness in return, too busy and too aware of them being in public to muster much bite. Not that Miss Gibson has done anything other than have her profession to warrant a bite, even Kate can admit that.

(She can admit it because she's been watching the other woman, very carefully.)

"I wouldn't say no. If you could get to scrubbin' that pan? It got left on the heat a bit too long."

Miss Gibson's arms will be fresh, not already tired from the hours that goes into feeding the village.

Then, almost despite herself, she finds herself asking, "How's your arm set?"

Stella can safely say she's tackled considerably worse things than a little burnt-on food. She rolls up the sleeves of her cotton blouse and sets to work with the soap and water and a dishcloth.

At the question, she glances down at her left arm, flexing her fingers out and back in unconsciously. "Very well, considering the circumstances," she says. "I don't envy Doctor Crusher her job, but she's very good at what she does."

And Stella is not the easiest of patients, to say the least, for all that she's unused to being told what to do and hates feeling vulnerable. There's a pause of some length while Stella lets her words hang in the air, attacking a particularly difficult spot on the bottom of the pan she's trying to wash.

Then, "I meant to thank you for your help. Weeks ago, actually." It's both an actual thanks for the help and an apology for having possibly appeared ungrateful. They've all been a bit caught up in things, she thinks Kate's aware of that as much as she is, but — she doesn't want Kate to think she didn't notice, or didn't care.

They're not friends. Kate could very well have let someone else come to Stella's rescue, but that she chose not to says a great deal about her, and Stella appreciates it even if they're still wary of one another.

"Doctorin' seems to be a hard thing," Kate comments, as if they are normal folk with a normal, friendly acquaintance having a conversation. "'Least, the ones who really care. Get some up in the bush sometimes, who go about offerin' help just because they got the knowledge. Don't ask for anythin' in return 'cept maybe a meal. They're rare," she adds. "A lot just stay in town where there's more money. But, some try to help everyone."

She isn't sure where Dr Crusher fits in: lots of the townie doctors are nice enough in person, after all. But it's something to say.

Then she glances over at Miss Gibson before ducking her head, focusing on a piece of stubbornly dried stew. "It's been busy, the past few weeks," is what she says. "I got sick, too." No need to mention that she went wandering around the hotel in a delirium, trying to find baby Alice, until Benedict had scooped her up. That had been... terrifying, being that out of it.

"But you don't need to thank me, Miss Gibson. I'd have been a right mean wretch to leave you out there all injured." There's no defensiveness in her voice, just simple truth. Kate Kelly can be petty and cruel when she wants, same as any other sinner, but she tries. She does.

There's a pause, and then a brief flicker of a smile. "Well," Stella says, "I'm glad you didn't."

Kate's not a cruel person, she doesn't think. She's not met anyone here she'd put in that category. But they've all got their flaws and failings, human beings every one of them, and she wonders if Kate thought about not helping, about leaving her be. The same way Stella thought for a half-second about letting Paul Spector bleed to death in the woods in the minutes after the shooting. Of course, Stella hadn't been dying, but the principle is the same: petty cruelty for the sake of indulging a selfish personal feeling.

Stella hopes she's better than that herself. She's glad Kate seems to be, mostly.

"I hope you don't think I wouldn't have done the same, if that were you," she says after another long pause, carefully choosing her words, her tone soft and even. It's not just that the two of them haven't got on well; Stella knows about Kate's low opinion of police officers, an opinion that might not even be unjustified. Perhaps she's finally trying, after all this time, to get Kate to trust her a little.

She's not entirely sure why she's bothering, except that Kate is a young woman and possibly a little vulnerable underneath the tough competence. And Stella's always had a little more concern than usual for vulnerable young women.

That gets Kate to look up, almost sharply. For a moment, she just looks at Miss Gibson intently. Then, carefully, her full mouth tilts a little to the side. "I don't think that," she says at last, voice baffled but politely so. "As I said, it'd be a right mean wretch, and that doesn't describe you. Not that you've shown."

She doesn't think that Miss Gibson is the kind of person to watch and laugh in the sanctity of her mind at the misfortunes of others. Maybe she'd walk on by if in a crowd, but with no one around?

No, Kate doesn't get that impression of her. Most people, in Kate's experience of small community, would help. Maybe they'd be cruel about it, maybe they'd cop a feel, maybe they'd ask her in for some tea and a sit-down, but they wouldn't leave her in the dirt.

It's different in cities, though, she reminds herself.

Kate isn't wrong. People can afford to be distant in large cities like London, to look the other way when someone needs help, reassuring themselves that someone else will take care of the problem. In the village, though, everyone helps everyone else out of necessity. Selfishness doesn't carry one far in a small community like this; you either pitch in or you're ostracized. And of course, if you're Stella — or Kate, or any number of other people here — and you have a conscience, you help because it's the right thing to do.

"I don't think it would describe most people here," she says. Certainly there are people in the village she's not fond of, but very few she thinks would be cold enough not to help someone who's injured. "Although what people show and who they are can be two different things."

It's an idle statement from a woman who's naturally suspicious and believes most people have ulterior motives of some kind, even if they're not necessarily ill-intentioned ones. Stella doesn't really think Kate needs to be told people have a tendency not to be precisely what they seem.

She's almost got the pan clean, and as she reaches for the water to rinse loosened bits of food off the bottom, she switches the topic deftly. "I'm not sure I ever asked when you're from."

The where, she thinks, is obvious — the Australian accent is clear enough — but she's not yet pinned down the when, outside of an overall sense of Kate being from before her time.

"Well, if saints were common, there'd be no need to revere them so," Kate says, looking back at her work. "There's a good enough community here, though. Not the kind which encourages vice." It could have been otherwise, Kate knows. But it's not. Luck and hard work and, maybe, God smiling down on them even here in this strange, unnatural place.

"The year 1883, accordin' to the Christian calendar," she answers then, reaching for another bowl to clean. "Original from Victoria, one of the Australian colonies, though I was kidnapped from Adelaide in South Australia. Which means," and here for a moment she's bright, sparkling, entertained, "that I am from quite a different century from anyone else here. The confusing past, where we had manners."

It could be a statement of teasing, of deliberate ridiculousness - after all, all times and places have their manners. But there's the faintest bite underneath her words, a frustration that still hasn't left her over how different her manners are from so, so many here. How out of place she can feel in her darkest moments. Quite apart from the man's obvious decency and kindness (and not to mention his good looks and strength), that Kate has been so drawn to Benedict has as much to do with how the title 'Miss' never faltered in his mouth. There'd been no need to defend her boundaries with him, for he already understood the lines not to be crossed.

Edited 2017-09-28 10:52 (UTC)

There's a brief hesitation as Stella takes that in. She'd been caught off guard by Peggy being just post-World War II; the Victorian era, the British Empire, is another circumstance altogether. Kate's quip about manners, though delivered with levity, carries with it a specific sensibility from that period in history when the rules of proper behavior were much more strict — or perhaps just different.

What Kate thinks of as politeness comes across as stiff at best, to Stella, and archaic at worst — but then again, she's never been one for being exactly proper, for all that she was brought up well. There are a number of other problems, too, with the societal expectations of Kate's era, especially as regards the treatment of women; but Stella knows how to pick her battles, and this isn't the time.

She isn't good at small talk, but Kate seems in a decent mood now and if this helps, Stella will keep on with it if she can. "I doubt those of us from the future have entirely bad manners," she suggests, "even if we are too familiar and don't wear enough clothing." A flicker of dry humor, matched to the tone of Kate's comment. Stella can make a joke once in a while, as impossible as that might seem to someone who doesn't know her.

More seriously, she continues, "I can't imagine living in that time — not any more than you could probably imagine living in mine." It's thoughtful, reflective.

Kate is quiet for a moment. Not still, not silent, for she's still working with all the absent-minded efficiency of someone who has done this kind of work with her hands all her life. Which she is, abruptly, aware of, and then she pauses for a moment.

"I can't imagine your time," she says finally, glancing up at Miss Gibson. "I daresay you at least know somethin' of mine, got images in your head about how we lived and how we dressed, but.

I can't picture this 'future' you and others come from. So many of you, you don't seem as if you're used to havin' servants, but all your hands are soft. Or, they were. Like you're not used to this kind of life."

Stella decides she had probably better not mention to Kate that she was brought up in Kensington and her parents had a housekeeper when she was a child; in any case, she's always been independent, and got used to doing things for herself, especially after her father died and her mother... well, 'grew distant' is a polite way to describe it — 'drank herself half to death' is less polite, but more accurate. So the concept of pulling her own weight is not a new one, and something that's pretty much become the way she lives her life — but it's still not anything resembling hard labor. Stella's never had to grow her own food, or take care of livestock, or hand-wash or sew her clothes. Not until this place.

"I don't think it's a life many of us have had to live until now," she says, careful with her words again. "That isn't to say that there aren't people who make a living doing manual labor, but in many parts of the world, it's commonplace not to need to grow one's own food, or to hunt or raise livestock in order to survive." She finishes scrubbing the pan, puts it aside to dry and reaches for another dish. "In some cases we've invented machines to do work that used to be done by hand."

Stella's matter-of-fact, not like she's trying to impress Kate or make a value judgment of any sort; this is simply how it is for her, and for a lot of people in developed countries in the twenty-first century. Certainly not all, she's aware; in that sense, perhaps not a lot has changed from Kate's time. The rich are still rich, and the poor are still poor, and the gap between is still there.

"Even in the city, there's still-" Kate begins, and then cuts herself off to think through Miss Gibson's words. She's trying not to sound too much like an ignorant colonial girl, but at the same time...

She wants to understand. She doesn't think she'll ever stop feeling out of place, but she wants to understand.

"Even... cleanin' the floors? And dishes? Or, or cookin' with an oven?" Sewing, she could understand, she supposes that the sewing machines in the future are more automaton than machine, capable of doing it all. But the rest still makes her pause.

"What do you do with all that free time, then? Must be an awful lot of plays to go see."

She... no, she can imagine what she would do with the time not having to do those things would free up. But the idea of not having to pay for it still strikes her as somehow very unreal.

Edited 2017-09-30 23:38 (UTC)

"Usually the machines still need people to operate them," says Stella. Usually. Maybe that won't be the case for much longer, at the rate things have been going at home. One corner of her mouth pulls upward, very slightly. "You've still got to put the dishes into the machine that washes them for you, and take them out and put them away when they're done."

That last question, though, takes her a bit off guard. Stella is not exceptionally good at using her free time, after all. Perhaps a drink at a bar or pub with coworkers after work once in a while, and of course she swims every day before work, but even when she's not physically present at the police station she's often working, or doing something work-adjacent. Her list of friends is short by design, and she doesn't often reach out to ask people to do things with her. What this all means is that Stella Gibson is not really the best person to talk about having fun.

What she can do is describe what other people like to do with their free time. "If you like the theatre," she says, nodding slightly in agreement. There is, of course, a different sort of theatre than the one Kate's talking about, too, but Stella isn't sure she's up for trying to describe how films work just yet. "A lot of people enjoy playing a sport, or participating in a hobby, or going out to dance or drink with friends, or spending time with family."

She probably even sounds a little bit like these are things she doesn't do. Stella's hobbies are reading and swimming and, every so often, a little amateur photography, but... usually, she simply doesn't have the time.

Doesn't allow herself the time, is perhaps the more accurate statement.

"So people are still... people," Kate says, slowly. That's somehow reassuring, that people still go off to seek enjoyment in ways that she can understand. It's probably all in a very, very different form to what she knows, but visiting family, friends, playing games, that all she knows.

"Kinda stupid comment, innit? But things can sound that strange. Machines doin' everythin'." Including, she's sure, putting people out of work. It's the way of things, too. "There's still... work, right? Different kinds of jobs for people who would've been doin' all that other stuff?"

People like her, she doesn't say. Maybe, she doesn't need to.

"I don't think it's stupid," Stella says, shaking her head a little for emphasis. "You'd no idea what might have changed between your time and mine." A brief pause while she calculates in her head. "Nearly a hundred and thirty years between us, after all."

She's washing plates as she talks, easily multitasking. "There are fewer of those sorts of jobs than there used to be," she concedes, taking Kate's meaning without needing to ask. Some human workers have been replaced by machines that can do the work more efficiently — machines that don't need to be paid, machines that don't succumb to exhaustion or illness. "But we still need people to grow crops and manage livestock and fix roads and build houses, of course." Among a lot of other things — the difficult jobs not everyone wants to do.

A hundred and thirty years is a very, very long time. It's numbers Kate's increasingly used to hearing tossed around, in this place, but it's still strange. Still... unnerving. But for all she's wary of Miss Gibson, she can't see any mockery in her, so she nods, a little, in thanks.

"Well, as long as everything hasn't changed," she says, and then stops herself from chatting away more. There's jokes about horses, questions about if there are still any around, but horses are linked with home, and home is now - horribly - stained with blood and fear and the police.

Miss Gibson's being... oh, Kate wouldn't say kind, but friendly-like. Still, there are things Kate wants to work out, and you don't always work them out by being chatty and friendly.

"Still police too, but lettin' women up in the ranks?"

And there it is. Stella hasn't exactly been waiting for Kate to mention her occupation, but all the same she knew it was bound to come up sooner or later. She focuses a little more, pays a bit more attention.

"Mm. We've been in the Metropolitan Police since the early 1900s, though there have only been women in senior ranks in the past few decades. It's still largely a boys' club, in any case. I don't think that's always served us very well."

It's a very straightforward statement from Stella, who even at home has never been shy about comparing the police to a patriarchal paramilitary. Even now, over seventy-five percent of police officers are men, and that cultivates a certain sort of environment on the force, a male-oriented culture that's almost impossible to escape no matter how many laws are passed to ban gender-based discrimination.

She is starting to run out of things to clean: her fingers track through the water, trying to find something, anything, to scrub and focus on. Oh, there are so many things she wants to say.

"How does it work, then? Y'tried to handle Miss Karen's murder, that because she was killed or because she's of the fairer sex? And that's what they get lady detectives to do?"

There. A spoon. She grabs it, glances at Miss Gibson and looks back down again.

"Do you work with the men? Chaperone them? Or their- Or if they're talkin' to any women? Cops back home, they wouldn't want a lady around. Might have to mind their manners, then."

Stella hears the word chaperone and manages, but only just, not to laugh, turning her head slightly instead to disguise her slow, edged smile. Honestly, some of the men she's worked with in the past could use a chaperone; it might force them to have a little tact and forethought.

"We have the same responsibilities," she says, "but, yes — often it's female officers who are asked to handle cases primarily involving women and children." Some of these cases, the sexual assault and domestic violence cases especially — Stella's seen a male colleague or two handle those with grace, but only rarely. The simple fact of the matter is that men often don't know how to approach female victims.

She sets aside the last of the plates, pausing for a moment to rinse her hands. "As for Karen, I'd have done the same were she a man." She would have — but at the time, the Spector case and the memory of three murdered women and two nearly murdered ones had been very close to her, emotionally. She still remembers her first thought on hearing the news having been not again. It is always a little different for Stella when murder victims are women.

Stella lets that sit for a moment, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. "Mind their manners in what sense?" she asks, eventually, looking over at Kate. She thinks she already knows the answer to this one, or part of it, but she wants to hear it from the other woman.

Women and children. It makes sense, as far as it goes, and it'd been what Kate had asked. Yet it's all stirring up her bubbling fury, because she wouldn't have fallen under that. Her sisters, her little brother, no, none of it. It was Ned and Dan that were the targets.

It's what makes her pause herself, her hands dripping the side of the sink as she pauses, thinks. She'd had to learn control, or something of it, and it's a logical enough question. She'd raised the issue herself but childishly, she's angry that Miss Gibson is asking her to speak plainly instead of just bitterly sniping.

"Mind what they say. Children shouldn't hear such language."

She'd spent so long trying to protect Grace, keep the babies safe. So long. She'd put up with it as long as they left her younger siblings alone.

"And keep their hands to themselves. It's. It's not right, nor is it fair, what they. What they thought was acceptable because no one worth a spot in the witness stand was watchin'."

Still, even now, she's trying to keep her voice level, her temper compressed into low tones instead of exploding out in a shout.

And Stella is very still, for a few moments, because there are a lot of things keep their hands to themselves could mean but, in the context of an encounter between a man and a woman, often means the sort of completely inappropriate physical contact that men still sometimes think they can get away with even in Stella's time.

She tries not to infer any more than that, not without hearing more of the story. What she does do, noticing the water dripping from Kate's hands down the side of the sink, is hold the slightly damp kitchen towel out to her, somewhere between practicality and a peace offering.

"Could you tell me what happened?" she asks, quietly. It's not a demand; the could you is a way out, and as always Kate is well within her rights to tell Stella to fuck off. There's no defensiveness in her demeanor, no restrained effort to make excuses; she's calm, attempting to listen without, as yet, passing any judgment. Whether Kate takes it as such, of course, is up to her.

Edited (i'm more tired than i thought i guess wow) 2017-11-11 04:58 (UTC)

Could. It's a question, a way to suggest a refusal; it's also been used as a trap, a polite way of framing an order. But Miss Gibson has no power here, no power over Kate. Kate feeds people. She's fed them for over a year. She's kept the peace more often than not, she's worked hard. She has standing, and standing means protection.

She wants to tell Miss Gibson to go to hell. She wants to tell Miss Gibson everything, make her see what her precious police do to women and children with no one to protect them, make her...

Kate doesn't know what else, not really. She just knows that the words and feelings and memories are bubbling up in her, harsh and acidic.

After a long moment, she takes the towel and dries her hands with brisk efficiency. "Would you believe me, Detective Superintendent? A pretty girl from a no good family, wouldn't you side with all those good constables over me?"

Stella has been a police officer for, honestly, a long time. She knows what happens when certain sorts of men manage to get onto the force. Casual misogyny, discrimination, harassment. Belief that arrest is proof of guilt. Covering for fellow officers who commit criminal offenses in the course of their duties because choosing to speak up makes you unpopular at best and an untrustworthy tattler at worst. Thinking it's okay to fit someone up for a crime because you think they're guilty, or because you don't like the color of their skin, or because you simply don't like them, personally. Fuck, look at Rob Breedlove and James Olsen, who'd thought it would be a good idea to get caught up in prostitution and drugs trafficking.

"Miss Kelly, I don't know anything about your family," says Stella, in that same even tone, with that same even demeanor. "But I do know a little about you, and what I've seen from you gives me no reason to believe you're untrustworthy."

Stella's naturally suspicious, a reflex by now. She's been assessing Kate, the same way she's assessed everyone else here. There's a gut feeling, usually, when something seems off — the way she'd had a gut feeling she couldn't shake about Spector. It's possible, in fact probable, that Kate or her family has some criminal history — but Stella knows not all crimes are equal, and she certainly wouldn't think to accuse anyone of anything without some sort of solid proof.

It wouldn't matter here, anyway. Stella might be a superintendent back home, but here, she's perfectly well aware her rank doesn't mean anything.

"In an ideal world, every police officer would be a morally and ethically sound human being — but the truth is, not all officers are good people, no matter how much we might try to ferret them out." Sometimes, she thinks they don't always try hard enough.

Stella pauses, to take a breath and allow that to sink in, then adds, without looking away from Kate, her voice firm and completely serious: "Any officer who thinks it's all right to put his hands on a woman without her consent — he ought never to have been allowed on the force in the first place."

Kate's hazel eyes are too bright as she stares at Miss Gibson, too bright and too dark all at once. She has a full, pretty mouth, and now it's trembling, twisting as she tries to keep it still and silent.

"Not here," she says. Her voice is heavy, and very quiet. There's a bucket of scraps to be fed to the chickens and rabbits outside, and this bucket she picks up and walks out the kitchen door. She's not sure why, entirely, she's doing this. She can talk here without being spied on, she doesn't need to mask conversation with chores. But it's habit, a defence she associates with the frustration and silence she's battling with.

Once outside, her chickens cluck around her and it's reassuring. Comforting.

"Constable Fitzpatrick was the first. Hauled me onto his lap, in front of me ma, Dan. In front of Gracie, and the babies. Said if I kissed him, he wouldn't arrest me brothers. I."

She's angry. She's still angry and hurt and frightened, like it'd just happened and she'd realised what she'd just done.

"I punched him. It turned into a fight, Ma and Dan came to me aid. But. He was a friend of Ned's. We knew him. And he was drunk, and I'd never let him on.

Ma and Dan sent him off. But he's a constable, see, so when he said that they'd tried to kill him, that all kinds of others were there. And all his superiors believed him. Or it suited 'em to. So Ma was in goal, and me big brothers were on the run. Because I punched Constable bloody Fitzpatrick."

Kate looks close to tears with a sudden swell of emotion, and Stella realizes suddenly she's touched on something incredibly personal. She holds her silence this time, and when Kate asks her to follow her outside she trails behind, rolling down her sleeves from where she'd had them pushed up to her elbows as the cool air strikes her — not cold, yet, but she thinks it must be autumn, or nearly so.

She's quiet, listening without interrupting, and what she hears, with all other considerations pushed aside, is a story about a drunk man sexually harassing a woman and then getting angry when she rejected his advances more violently than he anticipated. It puts her in mind of Jim Burns, coming to her hotel room after her botched evening with Reed Smith, reeking of whisky and angry over... God, Stella can barely remember now, some shit about Aaron Monroe, it's been long enough and what had come after had eclipsed that particular conversation. He'd practically begged her to sleep with him so he didn't have to think about work, she'd said no — more than once, clearly — and when he'd actually physically grabbed her, she'd bloodied his nose.

Stella had been lucky enough to have it stop there, Jim's sorry attempts to apologize to her and somehow still make everything about him the next day notwithstanding. From what she's hearing, Kate wasn't so lucky — and that's enough to make Stella's jaw tighten, make her cross her arms as if to hold in a reaction.

"To me, it sounds as if you were defending yourself," she says. Would a court see it that way? Stella isn't totally sure, but... there's no court here, no jury, just Stella and her gut feelings. "What reason would he have had for wanting to arrest your brothers?"

She suspects there wouldn't be much reason needed for this sort of man, honestly. A man who tries to fabricate an attempted murder charge whole cloth, with every expectation he'll be believed, that no one will ask questions or bother with trivialities like evidence and correct procedures — a man like that wouldn't care.

"I was."

She's firm on that, and it gives her back some sense of control. She swallows back a threatening sob, presses her mouth together. She's sure on that. She was protecting herself, her person and her honour. A kiss in exchange for no arrest warrant, but where would have it lead? Would he have asked her to fuck him next? Years of the looks he'd given her, and Kate knows. Without even thinking it, she'd know what the future would have held, and so her fist had swung.

Then Kate ducks her head a little, almost seeming amused for a moment. "I can't actually remember what it was all about. Somethin' 'bout cattle theft. Which Fitzpatrick was in up to his greedy little eyeballs. As were half the police in Victoria. The others were in the pocket of all the rich vultures posin' as gentlemen, so either way, let's take down the Kellys. But Fitzpatrick, he didn't show us a warrant. And he was by himself, no, he just made it up. We were tryin' to get him to calm and maybe sober up, we were givin' him dinner and that's how he repays us."

The slight amusement has long since vanished.

But they didn't arrest Dan or Ned. They ran, they had to. So the cops arrested me brother-in-law, a neighbour... me ma. Took her away along with baby Alice, 'cause she was only three days old. I defended myself, and they arrested Ma. So I was.

Alone. I had to, I had to look after everyone else. I wasn't even fifteen, Detective Gibson. Does it matter what my brothers might or might not have done?"

Edited 2017-11-12 05:00 (UTC)

In another situation, Stella might have pointed out that just because someone else stole something and didn't get arrested for it doesn't make it all right — but not now, and in any case, Kate is right. It doesn't matter. What matters is that an officer of the law made sexual advances on a fourteen-year-old and it's enough to elicit that same sick twist in her stomach Stella feels every time she hears anything of the kind. She only wishes it was the first time she'd heard a story like this, but the problem is that she knows there are police officers — not a majority, not even close, but enough, one is enough — who use their position of authority to coerce women into giving them sexual favors. Sometimes things like that are almost enough to make her want to quit, except for the fact that she can't.

"No," she says, quiet but emphatic. The expression on her face doesn't change much, but the look in her eyes is striking, somewhere between compassion and anger. "No one deserves that sort of treatment, and anyone who thinks as much is an idiot."

It's still so easy, even in Stella's time, to blame the victim. To say, this was your fault, you deserved it, if you hadn't made him angry this wouldn't have happened. To assign responsibility anywhere but the person whose fault it really was in the first place.

It's not a laugh, bitter or otherwise, but a huff of breath, a mere suggestion. "An idiot. Well, there's-" Except no, she can't continue. She can't, she say something pithy, not even with that look in Miss Gibson's eyes. That compassionate anger, that complete lack of contempt, and the very act of speaking about this is all undoing her.

All Kate can do is keep talking, try to keep talking, because it's all bubbled up and she feels like she's drowning.

"It. I. It got worse, later. I didn't dare fight back, didn't even tell anyone 'cept for Maggie. Me big sister. I knew she wouldn't do anythin' stupid. My brothers were on the run, with, with two mates of theirs. I had to keep us goin'. I was the oldest in the house, Maggie had her own babies and her own farm, with her fella in gaol along with our ma. And. I, I shouldn't."

There's nowhere to sit except for the steps to the kitchen, or the ground, and so Kate remains standing, her shoulders hunched slightly and her chin tilted down. If it wasn't for the boning in her corset, she might well have curled in on herself further.

"There was a shooting, out in the bush. Cause they were wanted for attempted-murder of a constable, right? And. Self-defence, but police died. And I didn't want anyone else gettin' hurt, so I never, I never said what happened when my ma's house was searched.

They'd come in, up turn everything upside down. Smash things. Lookin' for, I dunno. Maybe nothin'. They'd scare the babies, Ellen and Johnny. That was durin' the day. At night when, when they'd come, it was. Worse. They dragged me outta bed, and while I was standin' there in a shift they'd put a gun to me head, and. They wanted to see if the boys were hidin' there. As if they would, with us always been watched an' we only had two rooms. But I had to go to the back room and check. So if, if my brothers reacted badly, I'd be in the way.

The constables, they. Some of them, they'd put their hands on me. And, I. I couldn't do anythin'. Gracie's two years younger than me, I couldn't let them do anythin', to, um. And Fitzpatrick started everythin' 'cause I took a swing and defended meself, and I couldn't tell anyone because if Ned heard, he'd just. He'd kill them. So'd Dan, though we'd talk him into not tellin' Ned 'bout Fitzpatrick, and Joe woulda... So I just. I stood there and I. Waited for them to go away. It didn't. It didn't get worse than that, I guess they were still too scared of Ned to go much further. And I. They took ma, they took Maggie's husband. They kept arrestin' people in town. All I had to put up with was that, and. I.

I just. I didn't want anyone else gettin' hurt because of me."

Kate hadn't meant to cry. She'd meant to throw the words at the good Detective Superintendent, see if the woman flinched. She'd meant to gouge the words out of her soul to see if it'd ease the pain and humiliation. Instead, she's standing there, holding a bucket of plant scraps in one hand while she presses her other to her mouth. Her shoulders are shaking with the effort not to be loud, but there's no mistaking that Kate Kelly is standing there and crying.

The anger keeps building as Stella listens to this recitation, furious but utterly futile because there's nothing she can do with it. These aren't her officers, this isn't her police force and it's not even her time period; the urge to find the man in charge of these people and give him a piece of her mind, vocally and at length, is useless, leaving the feeling to flutter frustrated in her chest like a trapped bird.

And then Kate's crying, right out there in front of her, and that's a different pain altogether because if there is something Stella Gibson really hates, in her gut, it's watching a woman cry over something men did to her. If they were in a police interview room and Kate had burst into tears while giving a statement, the only thing Stella would have been allowed to do, within the bounds of professionalism, would have been to give her a tissue and a glass of water and the time to recompose herself. But this isn't that, and Stella can't stand here and watch her weep and not do something.

She reaches over and puts her hand on Kate's upper arm. Just for a few seconds, and it's important not to be any longer than that so she doesn't give the appearance of manipulation, of wanting a certain reaction out of her. It's brief and gentle, a touch that doesn't demand or ask for anything — she is just a woman, reassuring another woman that she isn't alone.

"Of course you didn't. And it isn't your fault." She wants to emphasize that, to make that as clear as she can. "Men like that, they'd have found some other excuse if they could. You did what you felt you had to to protect yourself and your family. What they chose to do in response is not in any way your responsibility."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

they found me there in the sands, bones of ribbon in my hands.

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