Of all the lockers in all the world (Eddie)

[Genevieve]

Genevieve had a small piece of paper in her hand with a number on, and as she made her way down one of the many labyrinthine corridors in the school, she was checking the numbers on each locker to find the one that matched her paper.  There seemed to be hundreds of the things in the place, and she felt like she'd been searching for hers with absolutely zero luck.

She was considering giving up and just carrying all her things around all day, when she finally struck gold.  Now to get in to the thing...  she began to turn the dial, trying to match up to the passcode she'd been told in the office.

It...  wasn't working.  She tried the code again and pulled on the locker's small handle, but it stayed stubbornly shut, merely rattling slightly.  Well, this was frustrating.  She checked the locker number again, worried she had picked the wrong locker and was trying to break into someone else's.

It took a lot to rile Genevieve up.  She was a very calm and collected person, it took a lot to get her temper up - but this inanimate object was definitely managing it.  She took a calming breath, and tried the locker again.

Nothing.

"Oh, come on!"  She raised her voice through gritted teeth, grabbing the locker handle and rattling it in frustration.

[Eddie Locksley]

Eddie often had trouble finding his locker. Sometimes he suspected they kept moving it, but mostly he could admit that he just had a terrible sense of direction and the school was difficult to navigate sometimes, he even occasionally got lost on the way to class. It was a particularly awkward day today, so the corridors had mostly cleared by the time he turned the corner onto, finally, the right stretch of hallway that contained his locker, only to see a familiar figure rattling a locker that may or may not have been his.

"Uh, I think that's..." he started to say, approaching the locker, before fishing a scrap of paper from his pocket. It was much crumpled and obviously well-used, but otherwise appeared to be very similar to the paper she had in hand. He checked it, glancing between it and the locker a couple of times to be certain before putting the paper away again "That's my locker." he finally said.

He gave her a friendly smile, since he didn't want her to think he was angry, and tried desperately to remember her name. He recognised most of the kids from Camelot, Gwyn and he had visited plenty of times and most of them were very close, but he was also terrible with names and spent most of his time with Gaston, so he didn't always keep up with everybody. The girl was definitely one of Gaston's sisters, and he didn't think he'd seen her at school before. He was pretty sure her name started with G, most of them did so it was a safe bet.

[Genevieve]

Turning at the sound of a voice, Genevieve's cheeks flushed when she saw who was speaking. "Oh... I... erm..." There wasn't much that flustered Genevieve, but this particular situation happened to be one that would turn her into a gibbering mess. She looked at the paper in her hand, at his, and then up at the locker, and realised with a flush of embarrassment that she was one locker wrong - hers was the one next to it. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her as she looked up at Eddie with a small smile on her face.

"I'm so sorry - I wasn't trying to break in, I promise." He gave an embarrassed laugh. "You can try and break into mine to make things even if you like?"

She felt a jolt in her stomach when he smiled at her. "I'm Genevieve," She smiled, offering him her hand. "We've met a couple of times before - you're friends with my brother Gaston, but you probably don't remember me." She said, starting to relax now the embarrassment was beginning to pass. She moved aside and began to try the code in the correct locker, managing to open it on the first try. "You're Eddie, right?"

[Eddie Locksley]

"That's okay," he said cheerfully, the one advantage to being as accident prone as Eddie was that he tended to be very understanding of other people's mistakes, after all, most of the time he'd made them himself, or done worse. There was no sense in getting angry at someone for making a simple error - he just wished more people remembered that around him.

"Genevieve! That's it!" he repeated, before realising he'd spoken out loud and looking immediately embarrassed "Sorry. I didn't forget your name. I mean, well, I did, but it's not you, I mean I forget everybody's name, all the time."

"I do remember you!" he protested "I'm just really bad at names, I promise, sometimes I even forget my own name. Really, it's true, one time a new teacher was taking the register and she called for Edward and somebody else had to tell me she meant me! Everybod just calls me Eddie. So, um, yes, in answer to your question, I am Eddie, though technically it's Edward, after my granddad, and that's not really important, sorry I'm not very good at talking to...anyone." he at least managed to save himself from admitting it was girls specifically that tended to make him blunder. Although it wasn't entirely untrue, he said plenty of stupid things in front of boys too.

[Genevieve]

She smiled and blushed again as Eddie insisted that he remembered her. "It's ok, I'm not exactly one of the better-known children from Camelot." She said with a shrug as she placed her things in her locker.

She listened to him ramble with a smile on her face. She had always liked Eddie from afar, and Gaston Jr had nothing but good things to say about him, and she'd always wanted an excuse to talk to him but she'd just been too shy. That wasn't like her - she normally wasn't shy about talking to people she didn't know, she enjoyed talking to new people and although she wasn't anything like her sister Lorelei, she didn't have any problems interacting with people. Except Eddie. She normally stayed out of the way when Eddie came to visit, too shy and embarrassed to talk to him, and by the time she'd plucked up the courage it always seemed to be the end of the trip.

But now, here they were - lockers next to each leaving her with no excuses not to talk to him. "Hi, Eddie." She held out her hand to shake his when he finally stopped talking. "And I think you're doing a great job at talking so far." She smiled shyly at him.

[Eddie Locksley]

"There are a lot of you," he grinned a little bit "But I promise I do remember you!"
He realised he was just standing there grinning at her and quickly turned to his locker, taking three tries to get the combination right and get into it, searching through the mess of books, comics and sweet wrappers inside.

He reached out to shake her hand with a beaming smile, shaking it perhaps a touch too enthusiastically "You really think so? I mean I know I'm talking a lot but people usually say that's a bad thing, especially when I do it, I get told to shut up a lot. Especially by my big brother, I've only known him for like a month and I think he's already told me to shut up more than anyone else I've ever met."

[Genevieve]

He began to ramble again, and Genevieve was dimly aware that she was grinning like a loon at him. But she couldn’t help it - in some ways she reminded him of Jesse, but the things Eddie talked about were so much less... weird than Jesse that she found it utterly endearing and just wanted to listen to him all day.

“I don’t think anyone should ever be told to shut up,” she said with a small shrug, “people would miss so many fascinating things if people shut up when they were told to! Take my brother Jesse - he talks utter nonsense most of the time, and people are always telling him to shut up, but then they miss all the wonderful, creative ideas he has. I make a point never to tell anyone to shut up, so you can always talk to me as much as you like.” She smiled, surprising herself at her own boldness.

“I heard from my brother that your older brother had been found. What is he like? Is it wonderful having a brother after all these years?” Genevieve adored all of her brothers, and couldn’t imagine her life without them. The thought that someone else might not have the same experience hadn’t really entered her mind..

[Eddie Locksley]

"I can?" he beamed at her "You might regret that," he admitted, smile fading a little and expression self-deprecating, but he brightened up quickly afterwards. Genevieve was so sweet to say something like that! "But it's really nice of you. You're really nice. There's a lot of really nice girls at this school, I met this one girl, I never found out her name but she was really sweet like you as well. Girls at home never want to listen to anything I have to say."

When she asked about his brother his face fell into a scowl immediately, and he shook his head firmly,
"It is not." he said grumpily "He's so annoying. He's all arrogant and... cool. Like he's really good looking and he's the oldest son and he's really good at fighting and riding and all the stuff that dad likes, and mum's just really glad to have him back, so he just turned up and took everything away and he's so mean!"

[Genevieve]

She smiled back at him, shaking her head. "I don't think so. Talking is good for the soul, and throw in a cup of tea and it's like the best medicine for anything. And I make a really good cup of tea - my mum wouldn't have let me leave Camelot without that particular life skill." She sympathised with his comment about girls at home, frowned slightly, closing her locker and hugging a book to her chest. "You can't know many nice girls back at home then."

She looked surprised as he began to talk about his brother. "Oh, I'm so sorry, that sounds horrible!" She couldn't imagine feeling that way about her brothers. Sure, Mordred was mean and grumpy and good at everything, but she wasn't related to him, so she didn't let him bother her. And he had absolutely no interest in her either - she just knew her mother wasn't his biggest fan.

"I suppose I can understand your mum being pleased though?" She ventured carefully. "It can't have been easy for her, losing her baby like that. She must have been so glad to have you and Gwyn to love all this time, and now I suppose she wants to show your brother than she loved him all this time too?" She hoped she wouldn't upset Eddie with her thoughts, but Genevieve had always been able to empathise, and she hoped she might be able to help.

[Eddie Locksley]

"Oh, I don't know any girls at all back home," Eddie admitted "They all think I'm clumsy and stupid. They're right, I am, but it's not fair that they don't want to talk to me because of that, I mean I'm pretty nice, at least I try to be!" he sighed "But they just want somebody who can be charming and shoot arrows, especially when they hear who my father is, and then I'm just a big disappointment."

"I guess so," he admitted "I mean, I know so, mum's really happy to have him back, and dad, they're really excited about it, which is nice and everything and I'm happy for them, but Richard's just so... so mean, and it's so unfair, it's not like we ever did anything to him, we even wanted to come back to school so he could spend more time with just them, but they decided he should come here too!"

[Genevieve]

“You’re not stupid.” Genevieve said firmly, frowning at him skightly. She hated to hear anyone call themselves stupid, and think so little of themselves, and it saddened her to hear Eddie say it in such a throwaway way, like he truly believed it. She reached out and squeezed his arm gently. “Don’t say that about yourself, please. And if that’s all girls want back at home then they are shallow and not worth your time!” She gave him a small smile. “I’m nothing like my dad either, which I think is a disappointment to him too. I feel a little sad for him - four children and none of them the great warrior or hunter he is. The closest he has is Jenny, but although she is as good at hunting at him, she has no interest in it.” She shrugged. “Must be hard to be a parent, I guess.”

She was surprised when Eddie told her his parents had sent his brother here too. “I’m surprised they didn’t want to spend some quality time with him!” She commented. “After missing him growing up... I wonder why he’s so mean to you.” She mused aloud. “I mean, if I found out I had a long lost brother or sister, I’d be thrilled and I’d probably be so nice to them they’d get sick of me!”

[Eddie Locksley]

Eddie gave her a smile bag, wide and brilliant and overjoyed, if a little dorky looking.
"Thank you, that's one of the nicest things anybody's ever said to me," he told her seriously, and even though it was similar to the kind of thing Gaston told him a lot, for some reason it meant more coming from her. Maybe it was because she was a girl herself, and that made it even more reassuring somehow.

"Well your dad's...well he's not very nice to you lot all the time is he? I know Gaston's really disappointed in him for not being good at that stuff, which is really unfair because, like, Gaston's ace at lightsabre battles and video games and Star Wars trivia and cosplay, and I think parents should be able to appreciate the things their kids are good at, right? Even if it's not what they wanted? Like imagine if somebody turned out to be really good at a sport that didn't even exist back home, like ice- ice hockey. Just because you didn't know about it before doesn't mean it's not really cool that somebody's good at it." yea he was definitely still talking about Gaston jr, definitely.

"I think they just really wanted him to get along with us," he said with a sigh "And of course you would! Because you're really lovely! Nobody could ever get sick of you."

[Genevieve]

As much as she didn't want to admit it, Eddie was right about her dad. Genevieve had always defended him, justified his behaviour - he had had a lot of disappointment in his life; not being able to marry her mum, moving to Camelot, having to see his arch-enemy Lancelot all the time, and then having four children - two of them girls which weren't much use to him, and the two boys... well they weren't exactly what he'd pictured when he thought of having strapping sons. She could see why he was a little bitter.

"Dad is... complicated." Genevieve said diplomatically. "And if you catch him on a good day, he's the sweetest Dad you could ask for." She smiled. "You're right though, parents and siblings and friends and, well, everyone who cares about you really, they should be proud of you for being good at whatever it is you're good at. Especially if it's something you enjoy." She thought for a minute. "I don't know what that would be, for me. Making tea, I guess." She smiled again. "I make an excellent cup of tea."

She felt herself blushing again at Eddie's words. "Oh I don't know, I think my sister Jenny gets pretty sick of me. We're not very alike - a bit like you and your brother, I suppose."

[Eddie Locksley]

"Oh, I bet you're good at a lot of things," Eddie said loyally "though making tea is a good skill, my mum likes tea a lot, I'm really terrible at making it but I love it when mum does, I think your mum taught her how..." it was certainly something they drank a lot of whenever the queen came to visit Marian and Robin. Well, until the kids were sent to bed, then he was pretty sure they skipped the tea in favour of wine, but in the day it was definitely tea.

"Jenny's not like any of you! I don't know how she's Gaston's twin, they're just so different, it's hard to tell they're even related sometimes, don't you think? If she does get sick of you, and I bet she doesn't, well...she's....she's just wrong. Like when she calls Gaston a loser, because he isn't, he's really cool."

[Genevieve]

"My mum taught me too, it's an essential skill if you're going out into the world as a Summer." She said with a small laugh. "But other than that..." She shrugged. "I don't stand out like my brothers and sisters. Tristian is the heir, Gaston is the cool geeky one, Jenny has the looks and the fashion, Jesse's the quirky one, and Lorelei is, well... Lorelei. I'm just me. The quiet one who spent all her time in the library and drank too much tea."

It wasn't that she minded this, she had never been one for running around outside, playing with wooden swords or learning to shoot, or ride. She could do those things, her father had insisted she learn, but she'd always been much happier tucked away in the corner of the library, reading books on history, literature, science, politics, diplomacy, and whatever else she could get her hands on. She'd long ago accepted that, and as long as her mother approved of what she did, she was happy.

She couldn't help but laugh as Eddie talked about her sister. "Jenny is... different. She's the most like Dad, I guess. But she can be mean to Gaston - she's obviously wrong, Gaston is awesome. I think he knows more about Star Wars than Arthur - and I don't think anyone even thought that was possible."