Leven Verey

Appearance:

An athletically built male standing at the height of 5’11, with a neutral olive complexion paired with softer, equally neutral undertones. Leven possesses neatly combed, shorter caramel brown hair. His eyes are a lavishly rich shade of brown, framed by long, thickly black lashes. Leven isn’t delicate in appearance, but he certainly holds a chiseled and attractive front. Casual attire seems to suit him best, and is vastly favored by the male, but he can certainly pull off a variety of formal garbs with unparalleled grace.

Personality:

Head Strong || Ambitious || Determined || Just || Moral || Honest || Understanding || Patient || Careful With Trust || Calculated || Realistic || Overthinker || Non-judgmental || Fiercely Protective || Adaptive || Gallant || Stoic || Observant || Cautious || Serious (A little too serious sometimes) || Thoughtful || Empathetic || Helpful || Communicative || Forgiving || Only Lies to Protect Others || Emotionally Reserved || Demonstrates Great Self-Control || Witty

Heloise “Hela” Barille

Appearance:

Miss Hela is a model of frigid beauty; with her sylphlike graceful physique, shoulder length and subtly wavy champagne blonde hair, and steely gray eyes. While her height of a mere 5’7 may not be intimidating on the surface level, her sharp features and piercing glares are sure to strike at the very least a sense of hesitancy in those in her presence. Heloise’s skin is a soft, milky white; fair and smooth in appearance, though not quite capable of holding much of a warmer complexion even after long periods of exposure to the sun.

Personality:

Fiery || Bold || Insincere || Vengeful || Rebellious || Malicious || Obsessive || Paranoid || Perverse || Demanding || Seductress || Blunt || Teasing || Cold || Shallow || Petty || Materialistic || Impatient || Irascible || Free Spirit || Playful || Guarded || Fearful of Love

“How did you find clothing so fast?” Camille’s eyes held a certain suspicion that felt unique to her brother’s antics. She crossed her arms, holding a tapestry they’d stolen around her lithe frame to hide the outfit she was still wearing. Though strapless tops and dress pants were considered tremendously fashionable in the era the siblings had been living in, they had once again been thrown against their will through the folds of time and had ended up somewhere back in the medieval era. Despite her lack of interest in discarding the clothing she was wearing, Camille knew that she needed to make a change in order to remain discreet and fit into the crowd here–wherever here was.

“Well, Camille, my darling sister, if you had been lucky enough to get these genes,” he gestured to himself, a lopsided and wildly arrogant grin clinging to his handsome features, “it’d actually be easy for you to seduce a man. Besides, you remember what it was like in our time. Even easier to spot the town gays than in the future when they’re wearing dresses.”

“I have absolutely nothing to say about that other than the fact that I’m extremely disappointed in you for so many reasons.” Shivering a bit into the blanket, she added, “and this is something I never thought I’d have to ask you–also for so many reasons–but would you mind seducing a woman to find clothing for me too?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”
“I hoped I’d never have to.”

An alarmingly short while later, Jacques returned with a habit in hand.

“Jacques Alexandre and so on, this is so unethical!”

“It couldn’t have been that bad if you’re not going to the trouble of saying my full name.”

“You’re Catholic, for God’s sake!”

“I am a huge fan of what the Church is doing,” he winked, that boyish grin ever-present. “Now more than ever.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose with her fingers, Camille shook her head and sighed deeply. “I cannot believe we’re related. Truly.”

Later that afternoon, Camille and Jacques wandered upon a small village outside of the castle. Camille had somehow convinced her brother to think rationally for once and to work with her to determine roughly what time period they were in before they took on the castle. It seemed oddly familiar in a way that made Camille uneasy about approaching the gates of their home without getting more information. Despite their quest, the siblings found the village nearly empty other than a few individuals going about their business, seemingly those sent out by the crown.

“What do you think happened here?”

“Plague? Famine? God only knows, Camille. You remember how it was living like this, don’t you?”

Before they could wander any further, a guard approached them, weapon in hand. “State your names.”

“I’m Estienne and this is my cousin Cateline. We’ve come to see the king.”

“What’ve you come to see him for?”

“A business proposal.”

The guard scoffed. “The king doesn’t do business proposals with commoners.”

“We’re not commoners, we’ve come all this way by sea. We’re royalty.”

…

“Now what’ve we got here?” The king had a malevolent air to him that Camille could not place and Jacques seemed to miss completely. He was already buried in lies and seemed too busy trying to handle those to manage the scene before him.

“My name is Estienne, this is my cousin Cateline. I’ve come with a…business proposition, of sorts.”

“Oh? Go on, or I’ll kill you!” The man erupted with unhinged laughter, making Camille extremely uneasy. He didn’t seem trustworthy, and times were not the same now as they had been in the 21st century. They were certainly not safe in this situation, and there was virtually no way out.

“Be smart,” she muttered under her breath to him, only to be interrupted.

“I have brought my cousin to propose a marriage.”

“Is she not dressed as a nun?”

“Well, yes, she is. Her cloister burned to the ground.”

“And you could not find her a new one?”

“Not where we’re from, no. Not at the moment.”

“Well, bring her here. Let’s have a look at her.”

Pushing her up to the king’s throne, Jacques stood back and observed his sister. It appeared she was holding her breath, eyes fearful as the older man touched her harshly and without empathy. “She’s rather old, isn’t she. Can she even bear children?”

“Coming from you? Amusing.” Jacques got a look from the guard, but had said this quietly enough that it seemed to slip the king’s notice. More loudly, he added, “yes, I’m most certain she’ll bear children for many years more."

“And what are you asking in exchange for this girl?”

“A permanent place in your court, Sire.”

“I’ll consider it.” Turning to one of the guards in the room, the king said, “take the girl to Aalis and Melisende. See what they can do to her before this evening.” To another, he said, “and take this man to the guest quarters.” To Jacques directly, he said, “I will have more questions for you at dinner tonight. Until then, you may do as you wish, as long as whatever you decide to do evades my presence.”

“Very well,” he nodded gently. Turning to Camille, who appeared frightened and bewildered at the same time, he added, “I’ll see you this evening, Ca…teline.”

This was bad. Catastrophic consequences were surely impending… the mere thought earning Leven to anxiously grind his teeth while his fingers raged against the various keyboards he was moving to and fro between. He’s always careful; always. It’s what made the man so reliable. Certainly trustworthy enough to have inherited his own studio apartment sized office with various monitors and well-advanced technologies filling the space. And a desk; an oak relic hardly blending in against the greyscale advancements surrounding the sole piece of rustic furniture. Call Leven a simplistic man, but he enjoyed the sight of one mere, ordinarily appearing object in his possession. Not that the desk was important, especially not now.

“Shit.” He cursed under his breath, brown orbs frantically flicking between the screens displaying various sequences of data reports from the most recent time jump of the high profile siblings. Leven also liked to think he had been trusted to oversee the majority of this particular case involving the Lavigne siblings due to his steadfast reliability. Regardless of his stature within the administration, he doubted they would be all too pleased with such a monumental -for lack of better words- fuck-up. Although from what Levy could make out, none of his calculations should have impacted the passage the siblings made through the timeline- it was a straight shot. By all means it looked like an anomaly that had rippled into the process Leven had executed several times without prior fail. It wasn’t his fault- would that be enough to spare him from the administration’s disappointment?

Beyond his fear of the administration’s reaction- the man was riddled with concern for the individuals trusted to his care… that he lost in time. Well, not quite lost, he knew where they were on the timeline. He just didn’t understand how they managed to get there. The brunette thrusted a hand into his neatly combed hair, further raking it back in a heavy manner as he drew in a breath to steady his wild nerves. He could fix this… probably. Hopefully. At the very least he could survey whether this event had an ill effect on the timeline or the siblings. Levy was an intelligent analytical specialist, or so others saw him to be. In truth Leven only tried to keep his head down, triumph in his tasks, and maintain his good standing through good work. How exactly that revered him to be a model figure to his peers was beneath Leven’s humbler understanding though; he was only doing his best.

Flinging himself from his chair in a brisk jog out of his own space, Leven fixed his determined steps towards the sector known to house small devices for the field agents. Upon reaching the security coded doors to the larger space beyond the closed threshold, Leven entered the code into the door before it opened and he continued his journey inside. In all honesty, the technology behind how the smaller devices of time travel operated were something not even Levy could break down and figure out- or perhaps it was a magic not intended for anyone to understand. That seemed plausible. Equipping his wrist with the item he was already readying to transport him to the time period of his desire, the door opened again to reveal a single curiously expressed figure.

“The hell are you doing?” An all too familiar feminine coo resonated in the room, Levy refusing to meet the gaze of the woman.

“None of your business.” He replied calmly, feigning an amiable tone for the sake of not provoking Heloise.

“Right, what you do is above my paygrade, and all of that bullshit,” she fired off with an irritated flick of her wrist as she spoke, growing perturbed at Leven’s lack of attention to her presence. As she stepped up to the male, he further strained his focus on the watch-like device on his wrist, so the woman took no hesitation in swiftly stomping on his foot as hard as possible- satisfied with the grunt he made in response with his eyes finally meeting hers in a drowned rage. “Is it really so hard to meet my eyes? It’s not like I’m the snitch here.” She threw in his face, resentment curdling her otherwise perfect smile.

“Your behavior was reckless, I had no choice but to report you- you were under my supervision, I was concerned, I followed policy. I’m not apologizing for that. Besides, that was a long time ago.” He stated firmly, presenting with a front that showed she hadn’t hurt him, despite the throb in his right foot now. Stepping away from the woman as he began to unzip the charcoal gray jacket that was uniform grade, it unveiled the short sleeve black T-shirt that clung rather snugly to his figure- though even that article of clothing was discarded as he thumbed through a rack of clothing organized by time period. It was of no surprise that Hela made a gagging noise, turning away as if his undressing figure was the most atrocious sight her delicate eyes could ever gaze upon.

“Are you going into the field?” She asked, turning after he had fully switched clothes, though the way he averted his gaze at this particular question drew a smirk at her lips. “You are… I don’t recall you ever being dispatched before though. What’s changed? Or is the high and mighty Levy breaking a rule?” She taunted, baiting Leven into defending his actions with that predictable modesty of his.

“Technically I have the clearance to go into the field whenever I deem it an appropriate response to a special situation- I’ll have enough explaining to do when I get back, I’m in no mood to explain myself to you of all people, Hela.”

“You don’t have a plan.” Hela observed just from the way he was anxiously shifting and mumbling his words, and while it was a rare look worn by someone as calculating as Levy, Hela was delighted to see her former mentor squirming.

“Yes and no. I’ll figure it out more as I go.” Leven shrugged off with a confidence he certainly did not possess.

“Going into the field with no plan is a very dangerous game, Levy… a game I don’t think you’re tough enough to play.” She mused with faux concern, the malice in her eyes expressing that much.

Hela was right on the front of having no plan being a rather dangerous thing, but all Leven really had to do was get into the time period and conduct an analysis of whether there was a disruption in the timeline- more specifically in the time period Camille and Jacques Lavigne resided currently. If this was a simple anomaly, then there was no cause for concern, and perhaps the administration wouldn’t bat an eyelash at the occurrence. But if there was an authentic disruption within this time period that was affecting the timeline in any way… that posed quite a problem. Leven had never actually come face to face with the heads of the administration, and he prayed he was never unfortunate enough to be summoned or sought out by them. All the more reason to investigate for himself, to assure himself that all was well with his own eyes- and that perhaps if he had the opportunity to lay eyes on the siblings, they were safe as well. That was, after all, a greater aspect to his assignment; ensuring their safety. “I’ll be back shortly.” Leven stated as his statement of self-pardoning to Hela, stepping back before rotating the top of the watch to activate its transportation function- and within seconds he was gone. Leaving Heloise to further her own solo agenda at the expense of Leven's office being stupidly unattended.

The rest of the morning faded quickly into the late afternoon, then into the evening. Feeling slightly frustrated and quite a bit resentful, the young woman had wasted away her day being accosted by ladies’ maids with fine combs and the makeup of the time. It felt so much worse to be here after experiencing the modernism of the 21st century, though this was partially due to the fact that she was here now under a different status with different people that didn’t give her so much wiggle room as she had previously had. As the princess of the castle, Camille had known she had little value outside of being a pawn in her father’s business operations, but she’d also had ladies that allowed her to do the things she desired when and as she desired to do them. If she so desired to brush her own hair or experiment with makeup, she was allowed to. If she wanted to waste the day away reading books that she had snuck into the castle, she did. If she wanted to spend her day in the kitchens or with the laundresses learning to speak their native tongues, she could. As a guest in her own home, she knew she was being monitored closely and that any move she made would be assessed with skepticism. It came with the territory of being a woman, and it was only escalated by Jacques’ horrible explanation as to her backstory.

Just as Camille was starting to lose all hope for the evening, it began to rain. Rain had always been one of her favorite things, and there was nothing she wished more than to go out in it. She wanted to go out and find a place far away from everything to be with the sky as it cried, screamed, and moaned. There was something cathartic about knowing that even nature was burdened with the weight of unbearably heavy emotion, and that sometimes, like her, it just needed to scream. Like the sky, most wanted her to be bright and warm for the majority of the time, and she felt broken under the weight of that expectation. Though many of the women around her were moaning about what that might mean for the evening, Camille felt herself smiling internally for the first time since she’d been uprooted from everything she knew for the first time in a decade. Maybe she could do things her own way, just as the sky had.

As the rain began to pour, flooding everything in the vicinity just in time for the ball to begin, Camille excused herself from the hustle and bustle of castle life and slipped out into the courtyard. Having planted and grown all of the flowers herself, Camille knew quite well that it was easy to disappear into the castle garden for as long as one pleased. She wasn’t planning on abandoning the idea of the ball altogether, but having some time to herself seemed nice enough. She hadn’t been alone with her thoughts or had the time to contemplate anything since they’d been thrown through the passages of time hours prior. She needed that time to think and to be in nature if she were ever going to survive the circus that was a formal event in medieval times.

As she walked across an open pathway towards the side of the castle that had the least number of windows, Camille heard a voice. “You know, in local folklore, they say that this garden was created by some type of fae. Apparently some of the plant specimens shouldn’t exist here, and there’s no good reason for why they’re here.”

Turning back from her position beside some vibrant camellias, Camille fixed her gaze on a figure who was standing under a balcony that was preventing him from getting wet. His hair was rather short for an individual from this time, and it was neatly combed other than what had clearly been disheveled by the effects of however he’d attempted to escape the storm. His way of speaking was also extremely strange, not to mention that he was openly speaking English in a French court. This was not to mention the richness of his olive skin tone, which she’d never seen exist in these parts, and especially not at this time. He appeared to her a fair bit more Spanish or Portuguese than French.

“Perhaps it is the mystery of something that contributes to its beauty, and not the other way around.” She stopped to study his features once more, barely able to identify the color of his eyes from the steam that rose up from the pavement. Her gown clung to her lithe frame and dripped puddles of water that were indistinguishable from the rest of the heavy rain. It wasn’t loud enough that Camille felt the need to scream to be heard, but she had certainly raised her voice. It only made her lilting accent more distinguishable as that of a French speaker’s, though her English was quite modern. She’d learned ancient dialects of English too, primarily from her cousin Edward, but she chose to match his. Clearly he’d been thrown through time the same way they had, and it was likely that he had information she desired. Yet, she had a very mysterious way of speaking that rarely got straight to the point, and often missed it entirely.

Unlike her, the young man seemed hellbent on getting answers about the garden, which he was not so discreetly implying she had knowledge about or had responsibility in creating. Though he was right, Camille preferred the chase, and would not give up the information so easily. “I’ve heard from some of the people in the castle that this garden has been dead for fifteen years, more or less. And today, they bloomed all at once. Science doesn’t explain that.”

Gesturing to his location, desperately avoiding the drops of rain that clung to her like a second skin, the brunette posed another mysteriously vague question to him without acknowledging anything he’d said or hadn’t. “Why stand out in the rain if you fear the storm?”