Jessica Joyce has come a long way, baby.

3149 miles if you're picky about that sort of thing. Give or take a few.

Officially she still doesn't exist. William, her little Canadian anchor, is floating about on the system without any registered parents. So Jessica doesn't take chances. Paperwork takes a long time to come through, and even if she could get a permanent job it would be poorly paid and have no benefits. There would be nobody at home to look after William. Sometimes to pay the rent she’ll take on other people’s children as well as her own. For these, she's given cash under the table. She has $100 of her brother's money stashed away for emergencies in a coffee tin in the crack behind the medicine cabinet. It used to be more but William needed vaccinations.

Staying honest when you're barely managing to stay above the poverty line isn't easy, but Jessica fears being deported more than she fears not having enough to eat. Bayfield is to her as Paris is to the beatniks. Having lived here for about two years she can't imagine going back to the boring, bullying, dreary and derelict part of Scotland she grew up in.

She doesn't like to draw attention to herself just in case. That can be hard when you’ve got a precocious toddler who has the power to bend the laws of physics with his mind. Genetics are funny like that and William’s got most of his from his daddy. (Of course, from a scientific standpoint it was a joint effort. Suffice to say he’s got his mother's eyes, his uncle's hair and his father's ability to make small objects appear out of nowhere.)

A walk round the mall is a nice way to pass the time when the weather's bad. Tam's offered a few times to take Jessie and William on his motorcycle with him but Jessica sticks to the bus – her brother doesn’t have a sidecar.

Jessica's dressed in Goodwill's finest, which today is a hooded sweatshirt with tight capri pants and the trainers she’s had since she moved from London. Window shopping is still fun when you can't afford to enter the shops but that's not why she's here today. Tatters said he would meet them at the mall after work had finished. He's good with William, who is currently sitting in his pram and babbling "daddy here see daddy dadada" in a transatlantic accent whilst his mother covets a dress in the window of Lord and Taylor's.

Good day? Bad day?

It's Thursday, anyway, and Tatters has just gotten off work. It's been a long exhausting day, just like every day. That's what happens when you sleep as infrequently as he does. And you get pale and smudgy so that your eyes are sharpened by the dark circles under them and your freckles stand out sharp on your skin.

This afternoon Tatters is playing the part of responsible ex and loving parent. Or vice versa. He's not whoring it up and he's not being a club brat. His hair is normally coloured for once, a vague red brown that could be classified as auburn. It's yanked back in a messy ponytail. He's actually wearing normal clothes, ish. Ripped jeans, beat up courd jacket, clunky old boots with faded toes and thick heels. Not even any make up, although he could surely do with a little concealer under his eyes.

Unlike his as-it-were family, Tatters walked to the mall. It's not all that far from the shady coffee shop where he's currently employed. The mall, which once upon a time was the scene of his and Jessie's less than comfortable reunion. Today their meeting will be less unexpected. He just has to find them.

That takes him a bit, but he doesn't mind. It's nice and warm in the mall, which is a change from the rest of the city. Even with a steady job he seems to have trouble with the whole paying-the-bills thing, and his flat is usually freezing.

Anyway, there is Jessie, window-shopping. Tatters spots her from a few yards off, and his eyebrows pull together in a worried frown. She doesn't look dressed for the weather. Capris? Doesn't she know you can freeze to death in Ontario?

He rearranges his face into an appropriately joyful grin before he goes up behind her and pokes her in the shoulder. "Heya Jess."

He's not sure if it's gonna be a good day or a bad day but he figures he's about to find out.

"Dad!" William shrieks a moment or two before the shoulder poke. Jessie ignores him because he's been babbling for the past twenty minutes or so, but the shriek is the latest in a long line of coincidences; there are moments when Jessie thinks William catches onto things just a little too soon.

Right now, though, she's smiling. "Hello pet," she tells Tatters, and leans in to hug him briefly with one arm. The other is still on the pushchair. "How was work?"

Their meetings are frequent enough for William to have a male influence in his life, but they don't spend enough time together to stop Jessie asking silly questions like that. At least he's dressed properly (or as properly as Tatters gets). Jessica doesn't really notice the cold and thinks anyone who does is a soft southern nancy. The capri pants are stretched snugly over her hips and thighs; it's not that she has no sense of fashion, only that it's quite different to that espoused by most of the middle class college kids who live around Bayfield.

Tatters gives his babymama a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He smells of weed and coffee but at least he looks happy to see her. "Work was fine," he says, already bored with the topic. "How you doing?"

He leans down over the pram containing his child. "Hiya Will," he says. He's more or less adjusted to the idea that he's got a son. Although he still thinks that the poor kid is fucked, given the genes and the influence. Tatters is all about excepting people as they are but he figures it would be easier if William grew up sober, straight and... well, y'know... normal.

Being middle-class would probably help too.

"Oh, I brought you some chocolate," he says, remembering. He straightens and retrieves the bar from his pocket. It's still a little chilly from being outside. It's one of those endangered species kinds with the cute animal picture on the front, in a flavour she likes.

Minor theft from his employers in not below Tatters.

"Aye, not too bad," she replies, and smiles wanly. "You're looking a wee bit tired though. Too many late nights?"

William leans up to pull on his dad's hair and is frustrated to find it's in a ponytail, thwarting his attempts. Tatters is probably right about how fucked the kid is. His mum thinks denim jackets are classy, his uncle is living in a Vinnie Jones movie and his father is a petty thief.

"Thanks," Jessie says, taking the milk and white panda chocolate and slipping it into her bag to make sure her son doesn't see it. She shivers when she takes it. This morning it seemed like tights underneath her capris would be enough to protect her from the winter. Feeling the chilly chocolate is a reminder of what she has to step out into.

"Where d'ye fancy going?"

Tatters shrugs, unwilling to admit that he's a total whore and all he ever fucking does is party. With money that should be Jessie and William's. "Yeah, probably," he says, vaguely.

He has to squat down again to oblige William's desire to mess around with his hair. "Don't worry brat," he tells the baby, consolingly. "Yours will be this long one of these days." He tugs the bauble out and snaps it around his wrist, letting his hair fall down in a mass of tangles. It's so knotted up that he's not even worried about what William might do to it.

"I dunno, somewhere inside? It's fucking cold out there."

William will also be growing up with a foul vocabulary because despite having the best intentions in the world, Tatter's obscenities are more or less subconcious and he can't seem to not swear.

Jessie has a cabinet in her head that's full of things she thinks she knows but will never admit to. The source of Tam's money, the police record on her father, the potential downside to magical powers and Tatters' late night adventures have all been filed away here.

William shrieks with delight and grabs a fistful of knots. "Play gentle, Billy," his mum admonishes. The kid is going to grow up thinking brat is an affectionate nickname and all mothers sound like they're trying to knock out one of their own teeth.

"Aye, inside," Jessie agrees. Usually it would be to go get coffee. By this time Tatters is probably sick of coffee and neither of them have any money for it. "Want to go watch teenagers be dramatic in the food court?"

Tatters has a very similar cabinet. It saves him from having to acknowledge that he has a problem with substance abuse, a dead end life, that he sucks at relationships, that he's a crap father, that he got some underage girl pregnant, that's he's fucking broke...

Yeah, it's all in the cabinet.

"Oww, fuck."

And again with the swearing, but seriously. It hurt! He tries to persuade William to play gentle by distracting the child. Tatter's hair ripples, shimmers, the strand in William's hand progressing rapidly through the colours of the rainbow. Tatters feels guilty. He is of the opinion that magic and small children are a bad combination.

"Yeah, all right."

The food court is almost as romantic as some of the places they used to hang out back when they were together.

The hair thing? Not a great idea. When William sees something pretty, he wants to keep it. When Jessie sees something that pretty, something that's too pretty to be seen out in public, she pulls a particular face best described as a shocked scowl and affectionately hisses "Tatters Illsey, what do you think you're doing".

"C'mon then." She does some difficult maneuvering to turn the buggy around and head in the right general direction. The food court will never be able to match their time spent by the River Clyde, with its beautiful grey water and banks of shopping trolleys.

Tatters raises his hands in that typical gesture of innocence. It's not convincing, not in the slightest. His hair freezes at lime green. "Magic," he drawls, sounding bored and American and sulky. "I'm a magician, remember?" He wonders how she knows his last name, he doesn't remember ever telling her it. Perhaps she saw his passport or something once.

The food court has nothing on the bonnie Clyde. There is also distinctly less sex, less drugs, and much more... William.

There's less magic too (in both senses of the word). In Glasgow Tatters was a glamorous stranger and Jessie was too shy to object to being teased about her ouija board stumblings. Now he's the man in the food court with the funny hair and Jessie's making spells around her house to keep immigration away.

"When was the last time you went busking?" Jessie asks chattily. "Josephine was askin' the other day why she doesn't see you any more on her way home from school." Tatters isn't creepy. Well, he might be, but not for this. Josephine's bus goes past the mall and Jessie babysits her little sisters sometimes during the day.

Well, everyone has to grow up sometime... Although Jessie and William have been doing a much better job of it than Tatters. Nothing seems able to foist responsibility on him.

Honestly, the last time he went busking... He has to stop and think about this. "Christmas Market I think," he admits. "It's fucking cold out, if you didn't notice." People who are from Virginia tend to not appreciate Bayfield's glorious winters. "It kind of dissuades people from the whole standing around watching eijits faffing around with hats and rabbits thing."

And it won't be spring for another million years so he's stuck cooped up in the coffee shop with the muffins and Americanos.

Josephine is a sweet kid, though, and he kinda misses her. He can relate to her much better than he can with his own kid, who is honestly just too small. "Aww, tell her hi next time you see her."

"Aye, noted," Jessie admits. Around winter time she starts dressing in layers. None of her clothes are warm but when she wears them all at once she manages to avoid freezing to death. On the other hand, William is dressed up like a penguin; his coat is so thick that if he fell down during toddling he'd just spring right back up again.

"Will do," she sings, "did ye know she's got a Saturday job t'now? She's working at one of the coffee shops or other, seems like it's the cool thing to do." She smiles and punches Tatters on the arm. "Hey, do you have any experience applying for residency?"

"You're not properly dressed for it either," Tatters points out, disapprovingly. "Have you not got a proper coat?" His tone is all concern and it's not even feigned. He might be irresponsible but he does have a heart. But at least his little boy - his little Canadian boy - is bundled up properly.

"Wow. I hope she's not trying to use me as a role model," Tatters says. "She must be pretty big by now, don't you have to be fourteen or sixteen or something to work?" He hasn't really been keeping track of how old the girl was.

"Hmm, experience? No. I'm illegal." He makes a face. "And I was in the UK on a student visa or something. But I'm under the impression that you need a form. Given that you've got Will it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. Well, bureaucratic as hell but they're not about to throw you out."

Jessie shakes her head, causing her frizzy hair to go flying. "People don' throw out their coats in the winter." It's a definite disadvantage to shopping at thrift stores. People who have been stocking up their winter wardrobes have donated the summer ones, so Goodwill is full of bikinis and miniskirts, and Glasgow winters are tutorial mode compared with Ontario ones. At least the mall is heated.

"Ah've got forms," she says, biting her bottom lip. A few too many forms for the easily confused. "But since you're," she lowers her voice, "illegal, an' ah'm illegal, they said Billy might be too. He doesn't have any Canadian grandparents. What if they do decide we're both no' meant to be here and throw us out?" She stares at Tatters with serious green eyes.

Tatters sighs and makes a mental note to find money, or a coat, or something. He refuses to let Jessie freeze. He will whore himself out if necessary.

"I have a visa, for what it's worth." There are a lot of irregularities in his paperwork and the whole story is littered with oops-I-might-have-fucked-an-immigrations-officer moments. "But worst comes to worst, we go somewhere else. It's a pretty big continent. Parts of it are even less cold than here." He makes a face like Bayfield sucks and maybe it does but G-d knows he loves it here.

Jessie is too well insulated to ever properly freeze. Layers are thermodynamically sound and her flat has a good heating system. There's no need for Tatters to start whoring himself out just yet. Far better to see how Tam's connections work out. So far, they're bringing in a regular income for Jessie and Billy.

She chuckles weakly. If she was going to leave Bayfield she might as well leave Canada entirely. It's not the continent keeping her, it's the community of innish and support system of unnish that make her feel at home. "Less cold, maybe, but you'll never convince me there's a bit of Canada that's warm."

There's at the food court now. Jessie parks the buggy and starts to unstrap William.

"The Island's warm," Tatters points out, reasonably. He slouches down at one of the tables sporadically arranged around the food court. "But I was thinking more like, y'know, America." America, that place down there. The place with gun-toting radicals, weird money and Gawge Doubleyah, as most of Tatter's Canadians friends will tell you. Tatters himself has more moderate views towards the country of his birth.

"Come here Will sweetie," he says, wheedlingly. William is not particularly prone to following instructions.

"Do you guys want some lunch? Or tea or dinner or whatever this meal is."

Lunch is his case. He had a brownie for breakfast. And before you make any comments, it was a perfectly innocent brownie, with nothing in it but walnuts.

Presumably it had chocolate and eggs and things in it as well.

Jessie's geography has never been great and she's always been a bit scatter-brained. Sometimes she forgets that Canada and America are part of the same continent.

This is a woman who gets confused by the concept of Alaska.

"Ah've never been to America before," Jessie comments while wrestling William out of his jacket. "Aren't you from Virginia or somewhere like that?" When she first met him, Tatters was sporting a dashing English accent. William - in as far as he has any accent at all - might have a little bit of that, too. Although he's not good at doing what anyone tells him, his daddy gets a special place in the ranks, and William lunges at him with sticky fingers and squeals.

"Aye, if you've got the money for it. Billy had half an apple before he came out so he might not be that hungry, but ah'm in the mood for Thai." So it's lucky the food court has a chain store type Thai place.

"No? Hey you..." He pulls William up into his lap, accepting the risk to his hair and anything else that the kid can get a hold of. "It's all right. Well, parts of it are. I'm from Charlottesville, I guess." He was born there anyway, and he lived there for a long time. He just feels majorly disassociated these days. It's not exactly home.

His accent is fairly unreliable. It's supposed to be American, in a warm twangy way but it tends to wander across the Atlantic in the direction of Yorkshire. It could probably be best described as Transatlantic, and doubtless William will grow up with a similar hybrid. At least until he gets teased at school and starts faking an Ontario accent.

Tatters ideas of 'having money' are a little unconventional, but if you bear with him it usaully works out. And there aren't all that many people who work in food courts and have Sight or anything interesting like that.

"Yeah, sure. Come on Will, we're gonna go for a walk, Mama wants Thai." He manages to stand up without dropping William, although this is more due to William clinging on than to any real effort on Tatter's part.

Tatters doesn't talk about his background much. Tam thinks this is because his past is full of intrigue and uncertainty. From what she's heard, Jessie suspects it's that Tatters is bored of his background. The man's attention span rivals Will's.

"See you soon, Billyboy," Jessie says, and blows her kid a kiss. He's too caught up in the fact he's with his - "daaaad!" - to notice.

Intrigue is too strong a word for Tatter's past, but uncertainty is definitely present. Then again, that would also be a good word for his present.

He and William are back five or so minutes later. Tatters is doing a complicated balancing act with the baby, several of those Chinese take-out boxes of Thai food, and two cokes. He manages to set everyone but Will down on the table. He got chicken pad thai because that's what Jessie likes, and rice and sweet and sour pork.

"You want some rice, Will?"

Tatters was not the person who decided naming the kid William Taz Joyce was an okay thing to do. And he is very much not behind calling him Billy. He usaully just sticks to Will, or brat.

"Um... yes!" William Taz Joyce would say yes to anything Tatters put in front of him. There's definitely an element of hero worship in how Tatters' son views him, and it helps that he's got the best tricks.

"Watch it," Jessie warns, "if you start playin' rough wi'him now, he's going to puke all over you." It's happened a couple of times already and more than a couple with Jessie, who even after having to change clothes twice in one day believes that rough is the only way to play.

Jessie breaks her chopsticks and starts tucking in to the chicken pad thai. After the first mouthful she rolls her eyes with happiness. "Mm, this is so damn good," damn being the worst word she'll say around William, although she slips up after stubbing her toe, "what did you get?"

Tatters opens the carton of rice and uses his chopsticks to put some on a paper napkin for William. He's a smart kid but not quite up to negotiating chopsticks, much preferring the use of his fingers.

"There you go brat."

He grins at Jessie. "I'll bear that in mind." He's not so much with the roughousing, mostly because he's terrified he will accidentally break the kid. Will's getting pretty big but he still seems awfully small and fragile to Tatters.

"It's, uh, sweet and sour pork. Wanna try some?" He catches a piece of it between his chopsticks and reaches it across the table to Jessie. "Here, it's good."

Fingers are pretty great like that.

"Thanks," Jessie says, and bites it off Tatters' chopsticks. A curl drops down and gets coated in whatever sticky sauce is covering the pork. "Aw, shit." She puts a hand over her mouth (as if she can reverse swearing in front of the kid), frowns and tries to clean it off with a napkin. "And I just washed it this morning... Tats, can ye do anythin' about this?"

She's not a fan of magic in public but Tatters seems to manage it without anyone noticing.

Tatters' primary function is too look pretty, but sometimes he can come in useful. And not just as a sperm donor either. He leans across the table, pushing her hair back and doing his best to look like he's just being affectionate. Somewhere in the process, the sauce goes away. It's not going to be a permanent solution but it'll do for now.

He flashes Jessie a smile that says "you're not complaining now, are you?" and that is purely sarky.

Jessie flashes Tatters a look that says 'yes, OK. Although I am not usually a fan of magic in public, I acknowledge that it can sometimes come in useful. Don't start assuming you can get away with making rainbows in the air just because I asked you to clean my hair'.

It's a very complicated look.

What she says is: "thanks". Then: "what did you use for that? It smells like violets." She's suspicious of magic that isn't laid out in a book, and all of Tatters' magic comes under that heading.

"Oops."

Tatter's magic is pretty much never used for anything except show, so it's inherently theatrical. There's no real reason for the smell of violets, except that it's more impressive. "It's..." Tatters frowns. The magic is ingrained in his head, done instinctively, and it's hard for him to pin it down.
"Mostly misdirection, I think. A some violets." He wrinkles his nose thoughtfully. "It's something Japanese, it has a name like... munasaki or something."

A girl taught it to him once and he can't remember the name or her face but he remembers that the smell clung to her and that she drank cheap scotch out of the bottle and chewed tobacco.

If the coffee work and the magical busking ever dry up, Tatters has a promising career as a beautician. This isn't the only pampering spell he knows and they have an irritating tendency to come out perfectly. Jessie's magic is grounded in objects and things and so to the outside observer looks as magical as a bar of soap. Sure, she could make things smell like violets by summoning the essence of the odour through six different dimensions, but she finds it a lot easier to just add violet oil.

"Well, it smells nice." Jessie shoots him a smile. That's three today. He's not doing badly. "And, err, talkin' of things that are magical..." Talking of things that are magical, she tilts her head and raises her eyebrows towards William. It is not the sort of head tilt and eyebrow raise that says that because he is a baby his very existance is magical. No. It is the other sort.

That isn't actually a bad idea. Perhaps Tatters will become one of those people who has their life turned around by being reinvented by a beautician. Or perhaps not. But it wouldn't be a bad addition to his income.

He catches Jessie's glance and makes a face. Everyone in William's immediate family has been a bit worried about that, pretty much since her was born. There's a lot of magical talent banging around (and mostly not being put to good use) in the family. Tatters doesn't know a lot about genetics, but he knows there was a pretty good chance that Will would end up with a shitload of magical talent.

"Yeah...?"

The word is drawn out in a way that says, "I don't really want to know this, but I know you're going to tell me anyway so get out with it."

She's always got to be the bad guy. Or if not the bad guy, at least the sensible guy. Sometimes she feigns that it's tiring but people who know her know that it's what she thrives on. The ying to her personality's yang, she wouldn't get to play mother hen to various dissidents if she didn't also have to remind them of the real world every now and again.

"Aw, c'mon," Jessie wheedles out back at Tatters. "You must've noticed. Today he was screetchin' yer name a full minute before you crept up on me."

At the moment William is expressing his magical inclinations by intently banging an empty Pepsi cup on the table.

"Was he?" Tatters says. He maintains a state of blithe oblivion to the world around him that may or may not be induced by drugs. "Well, maybe he just has a good sense of timing." Deny, deny, deny. If you ignore something long enough, it just goes away. In theory.

Which is essentially why Jessie gets to the be the realistic one, the grounded one, and the only one who is ever going to be at all in control of any situation.

Magic is what Tatters has got by on most of his life, but he tends to think it's way more trouble than it's worth. But at least William will be loved, even if he does turn out to be a pyro or something. Tatters and Jessie are a pretty accepting set of parents for a kid to have, even if they have their shortcomings.

William will be a teenager one day and there will be nothing for him to rebel against. The comedic trope would turn him out to be an accountant or something similar, but Jessica will be proud of him even then. There's no way for the poor mite's rebellion to succeed.

Jessie purses her lips and says: "hmm". Tatters is going to be difficult about this. "Or mebbe he's inherited a wee bit from his da than just his bonny eyes."

Damn straight Tatters is gonna be difficult about this. Difficult is easier for him. William's eyes are indeed the same colour of grey, but Tatters thinks they're a little harder, a little more focused. But that might just be because William hopefully hasn't inhaled that much marijuana. Yet.

"He does look like he might turn out to be a bit of a red head doesn't he?" Tatters remarks, glancing over at William. William is innocently stuffing his face with rice and somehow managing to get it all over his face and in the aforementioned hair.