milliways_bar | (no subject)

There's a familiar face at a table in the corner.

Who has just glanced up at the door, and appears to be finding his book rather less than riveting now.

John's face gets fixed, for a moment -- mouth draws tighter, eyes set some -- and then relaxes.

A little.

He nods to Will, awkwardly.

Bran approaches slowly. The tautness of his face and body is mostly concealed by his dark glasses and large black sweater.

"Noswaith dda, Will, John."

Will returns the nod, face relaxing into what isn't quite a smile, but is still more relaxed and reassuring.

Will, after all, has some experience with this kind of awkwardness, and with keeping his feelings hidden behind calm normality.

Then, glancing over with the faintest of smiles, "Hullo, Bran."

"Bran. Will." A smile -- but not a comfortable one; he's got an eye on the stairs.

Will she be down tonight?

He doesn't know if he wants to see her, or if he doesn't.

Bran watches John watch the staircase.

His hands clench on the curve of his harp.

"We haven't talked much, lately," Bran says. He is addressing John, but he casts a quick beseeching look at Will over his sunglasses.

Will is accustomed to silent signals, and he can read that one quite clearly. He doesn't know.

Oh, won't this be fun.

"It is good to see you," he says to John. The ruefulness in that qualifies the statement. Despite the circumstances, he is not saying, or maybe whether or not you think the same just now.

When Merriman had first entered the bar and seen John Rowlands, Will and Bran standing together in an awkward little group, he had very nearly stopped dead in his tracks...and a very tired look comes into his eyes.

Even so, this cannot be avoided forever.

And so he schools his expression into calm neutrality, and with the prospect of new levels of awkwardness quite clear on the horizon, he makes his way over to where the three are standing.

This is not the way to put him at ease.

Any pleasantness that he bore because of the presence of Bran and Will drains from his face. It's replaced by wariness.

A lot of wariness.

"Hello, Merlion."

Bran curses himself. This is not the way John should hear the news. Bran should have told him weeks ago, in some private moment, perhaps after a harp lesson. The bar is far too public of a place, and Merriman and Will are, well, a thousand years old, and know always how everything fits in the long pattern.

Too late, now.

Well, the awkwardness levels just rose dramatically.

Even so, even after coming to Milliways for this long, Will is rarely not glad to see Merriman, and so his eyes warm for a moment in a small and rather rueful smile.

"Hullo, Merriman."

'Will. Bran Davies.' Nods to both of them, before he looks to John. 'Noswaith dda, John Rowlands. Sut dach chi?'

"I suppose a lot of that will depend on how this evening progresses." A small, tight smile; he looks back at the stairs again. "And with you?"

'Well enough, truly,' he replies, keeping his voice quiet and level.

The direction of John's gaze is not lost on him, and so he adds:

'She is no longer here. Not in the bar, or anywhere in this place.'

Bran lets a breath out slowly. There is worse news to come, he knows.

He stiffens, and his gaze goes for a moment to Bran.

Then, to Merriman -- and it is somehow strange to him that his voice should sound so normal -- "Where?"

Will's face is sober and neutral.

There is no way to have made this easy, or kind. He still wishes there were.

For now, he is silent, watching.

'We...do not know.'

It's like chewing glass to say it, in a way.

'The Dark came rising here, this past Twelfth Night. The White Rider' -- he won't call her Blodwen, not to John's face -- 'attempted to escape this place of exile, with a young girl held hostage to ensure her safe running.'

That choice of words, at least, was deliberate.

'And in an unexpected turn of events, the Dark's power was broken at its height. And when Will and I regained enough of our senses to see what had happened to the White Rider, we found that she had gone. Vanished, and the power of the Dark gone as well. Not necessarily an escape, but...as I said, we do not know for certain where she is, or what happened to her when the Dark's power was broken.'

A young girl held hostage. For --

(safe running)

-- safe running.

John's face tightens again.

When Merriman is through, he says -- still quietly -- "An unexpected turn of events."

Bran removes his sunglasses and blinks quickly in the comparative brightness of the bar.

"I was not there," he says to John, "but I knew. I should have told you."

Will wants to say something. To help, somehow.

But he has nothing to say -- Bran is right, and Will can add little to the story that Merriman has not said, except what should not be told yet -- and so his eyes flick from one person to the next, and he says nothing.

'Unexpected, yes,' Merriman says. 'Not of the Light's doing, I should say to clarify myself. The Light barred her escape, but an outside force broke the Dark's power. Far stranger things have happened here.'

There's the briefest flicker of irony in his last statement.

'And so all that Will or I or anyone here can tell you is that she is gone. We do not know where she has gone, or if she will return, or if she can return. For if we knew, there would be no point in keeping it from you.'

"I should like to know," and there's a flicker of something close to frustration, "how the thing fell out."

His wife. Among other things. His wife.

He's not looking at Bran.

There's a brief moment of silence.

Quietly, "The White Rider had her power gathered, in ice and storm, and was being held back."

"And then a house fell from the sky." There is no hint of joking in face or voice. "I do not know what power sent it here then, but it did, and its falling broke through her spells. And the power of that breaking cast her..." A tiny shrug, one-shouldered. "Elsewhere."

A house.

He's looking at Merriman. His voice is tight.

"A house? Was that entirely necessary?"

Merriman's gaze and voice are entirely flat. 'Do you honestly think that of any of countless possible means and methods of orchestrating the Dark's defeat, I would have deliberately selected a house?'

A beat.

'It was as much of a surprise to Will and I as it was to everyone there. To say that it was an "unexpected turn of events" is understating the fact. But even if we do not understand how or why, it does not change what happened.'

And though he would not say it aloud, the unspoken addition to the end of that remark is And I for one would not have it be otherwise.

It's the Old One's tone that is the most insulting. And John knows that it will do no good at all to protest. To fight. To say she was my wife -- and that brings its own pain, for he'd been fooled all those years.

His throat works for a moment.

And then he turns, and opens the front door, and goes through.

The ensuing click is quite loud, all told.

Bran slips his dark glasses onto his face, lifts his harp, and turns blankly towards the door. Instead of moving towards it, he stands by his chair, his posture oddly slumped.

Will exhales, and his shoulders drop fractionally with it.

Low, after a long moment, "There was no way to make that easy, I think."

More sadly, "I wish there were."

He does.

Still turned away from Will and Merriman, Bran says clearly, "It could have been easier. It would have been if I had told him what I knew, when I knew it."

Will would like to be able to say Bran is wrong.

Instead, another sigh.

"Maybe. Or maybe not."

He shoves his hair back from his forehead, ignoring the fact that it flops right back.

Bran breathes out a puff of air. "I can't talk about this now. Goodnight, Merlion, Will." Bran looks neither to his right nor his left as he walks out of Milliways.

Merriman speaks, quietly and a little wearily, into the silence that follows the closing of the door.

'He knows, now. Even if there might have been an easier way to hear of it, he knows. And all that remains is for him to come to terms with it somehow.'

Because he has to.

They all have to.

Will nods.

Not much else to say.

They both understand this. And how little they can do about any of it, for now.