darker_london | The Visitor (Peter, Aunty Virginia)

People knocking at his door was not necessarily an uncommon thing. Though usually if it was someone he know, they tended to walk right in. The knock Peter heard when he was inches away from relaxing in his comfy chair with tea and his latest Latin text on angels, was incredibly polite, and Peter was convinced it was either Spectre or Johan. Only they knocked like that. Most of the people he knew sounded like elephants stampeding when they knocked.

Peter pulled open the door to a rather charming looking older woman and he smiled as pleasantly as was possible when feeling the way he felt. There was something familiar about her, but not overly so. "May I help you?" He asked, noting that she had such kind eyes. They were clear and blue, and while the rest of her features were somewhat dulled with age, they pierced him with a youthfulness he didn't even have.

"Oh my goodness, if you're little Peter, I'll have a heart attack right here!" She exclaimed.

"Uhm...please...don't...?" Peter raised his eyebrows at her, wondering what to do now. If he did tell her he was Peter and she did have a heart attack he was going to be the one to clean it up. "But I am Peter." And then he readied himself to catch her if need be.

"Oh my goodness, you're so tall! Last I saw you, you were about seven years old!"

Peter smiled then and he nodded. "Getting taller does tend to happen between seven and thirty-eight. If you're lucky. I'm sorry, I...I don't remember. You'll have to forgive me-"

"Pish posh, you're forgiven. I'm Virginia! I was Louise's best friend all through school. We stayed close until I moved to France with my husband. You were about seven then. We still wrote back and forth like we always had, but I lost track of her after a few years. I'm back now. Jasper's gone, God rest his soul. And I wanted to look up Louise to see how she was getting along. I actually didn't expect you to be here, Peter. Are you visiting her?"

"No, I...I live here." Peter bit his lip and then he led the woman into the house. He remembered her now. She was his mother's friend and he had called her Aunty Virginia. Peter showed her into the living room and then he sat beside her, wishing he had better news. "I'm sorry, but-"

"She's gone too, isn't she?" Virgina sighed. "I should have known."

"It was a long time ago." Peter said as if that helped anything. Either way, Virginia had just learned her old friend's fate. Though the pain was old for him, it was new for her. And it wasn't as if Peter could explain that his mother's spirit was now palling around with a young girl in her twenties.

"That brute of a husband didn't kill her, did he?" Virginia hissed and Peter looked shocked.

"What? No! No, he didn't...I mean, he wouldn't.." Then Peter realised he was defending his father and he promptly stopped. "It wasn't him. My sister, Margaret...she was diagnosed with leukemia and she died. Mum couldn't really take the pain of it..."

It was Virginia's turn to look shocked. "Little Margaret!? Louise said she recovered! I thought she'd have your father working for her by now!"

Peter smiled quietly at that. Had Margaret lived, he had absolutely no doubt in his mind that she would have owned a law firm and had Klaus working for her. Margaret didn't take no for an answer and she always got what she wanted. "I'm sure she would have. Virginia, my mother was...after Margaret died, she was very ill. She didn't know that Margaret was dead. She didn't tell you a lie necessarily. She told you what she thought was the truth."

"Oh, Louise, you poor darling." Virginia uttered and then she opened her handbag. "Might as well give you these then." She said softly, and she handed him a pile of letters. "I thought we could talk about them. Laugh over old times. This is what happens when you leave things too late, Peter, you hear me. Opportunities pass you by."

Peter, who now had cancer for the second time in his life, did know. But it never hurt to be told again. "I hear you, Virginia. These are all letters she sent you?" He asked, turning them over and over in his hands. "Wow."

"They're not all happy. But they're all Louise. Some are from before you were born when I was travelling and some are from after I moved. She talks about you a lot. She was so proud of you."

Thanks to Lavannah, Peter knew this too, but he smiled gratefully. "Thank you for telling me. Would you like some tea, Aunty Virginia?"

"I'd love some, Peter. We should take it outside, you look like you could use some colour."

Peter bit his lip again. There really was a lot to tell her...