milliways_bar | Entrance

Entry tags:

Entrance - reprise

((First there was this. Spoilers for ep 25.))

Hughes doesn't register the door swinging open, nor closing once he's through. He barely registers hitting the ground through nerves that are already nearly overloaded. The first thing he registers is the sound, the low murmer of voices interspersed with laughter that denotes a public arena. And then the rafters above him, where there should be a night sky, as much as one can ever see the sky in Central.

Or nothing at all.

He is still for a moment, trying to put together a puzzle for which he lacks several of the pieces, and then he raises his hand, studying it as though he half expects to see something utterly alien. It isn't, and this is almost more puzzling than if it had been.

He gives himself a mental shake, and pushes himself to his feet. Slowly, because he still hurts, traces of phantom pain firing along his nerves from a wound that is no longer there, that has no trace of having ever been there. He touches his chest to confirm this, pats at his uniform, pristine but for the slight disarray caused by having fallen onto the floor of what is apparently a bar.

A bar?

He adjusts his glasses and looks around himself. Still a bar, and not one that seems at all familiar, not even in the hazy manner of recollections of a youthful pub crawl that had gone just slightly too long.

"Where...?"

((New mun. Thus Hughes is starting over.))

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Roy hasn't been in the Bar for very long when compared with most, and in his experience most people walk through the door, not fall.

Additionally, when he sees people that he knows, he's used to them being alive. Of course, he realises that the assumption is an unfair one. For all he knows, Maes is indeed still in the realm of the living. His insignia mark him as a lieutenant colonel, however, meaning that if he is still alive...

Well, that's something that Roy really doesn't want to reflect on, because keeping his mouth shut would be entirely too difficult.

He doesn't go over, because from his sitting position he can tell that his legs would be completely useless. What he does do is sit there with an expression on his face like a stunned goldfish.

'... Maes?'

It might be loud enough to hear, he really doesn't know.

Perhaps it is, though it could perhaps be coincidence that his gaze falls on Roy just as he speaks. And, not knowing the nature of this place, Maes' first thought is, No. Oh, no. They couldn't have gotten you, too.

And it shows, the look of sick horror dawning on his face perhaps answering well enough the question of whether or not he is still alive.

"Roy? You're not...tell me you're not..."

And then he notes the changes, differences in his friend's appearance that he should have picked up on immediately. Would have, had this meeting occurred under any other circumstances. And he is not sure whether they are cause for hope or despair.

Roy's entire frame seems to sag visibly, with relief that he's not going to have to keep the man's fate from him, but also with sadness. After all, as wonderful as it is to see his best friend again, he's never quite gotten over the man's death, and seeing him brings back all sorts of unpleasant memories.

'No, I'm not. But you are.' It's not meant to be a cruel statement, but Roy does figure that it's best to confirm the suspicions that Maes no doubt has, rather than let the man wonder.

And finally, he manages to stand up, with some assistance to the table, and walk over to his friend.

'Come sit down,' he says quietly. Hughes' shock is obviously quite profound, and it'll probably be easier for him to take things when he's not having to try to stay upright, as well.

Some of the tension goes out of Maes' frame, replaced almost immediately by a different sort. His eyes flash shut against a pain that is wholly separate from the fading sense-memory of death, and far deeper.

"I know." He hardly recognizes his own voice, hoarse and torn. He swallows once, and continues, just slightly more normally, "I'm sorry."

Because he had failed. Failed Roy. Failed his family. Failed himself.

But he steels himself, and opens his eyes. And seizes Roy in a sudden, rough hug, because while Maes is dead his friend is not, and he is more grateful for this than he could ever find the words to express.

The hug catches Roy completely off guard, but in this situation he doesn't mind. Attempting to comfort people isn't a concept that Roy's familiar with and so he has to operate by instinct instead of any tried and proven theory or course of action, something that usually rubs him the wrong way. This isn't a usual situation, however. Instinct tells Roy to return the hug and rub Maes' back, and so he does.

'Hey, it's okay.' He tries to keep his voice soothing. 'It's not your fault.' And then, because he knows that Maes likely won't believe him, he repeats himself. And he'll keep repeating himself as many times as is necessary to get the point across.

'It's not your fault, Maes.'

He doesn't believe it, of course, not yet. He can't help but think there was something he missed, something he did wrong. If he had put the pieces together sooner, if he hadn't gone to confront Juliet Douglas when he did, if he had played his cards closer to his chest, or had shared his suspicions sooner. If, if, if.

There is something like a laugh, or a sob, sick and abrupt.

"I'm just glad you're alive. I thought..." He trails off. It's obvious what he'd thought, of course.

"If you're not dead, how is it that we're both here?"

Is this real? Or is this what I get, instead of my life flashing before my eyes?

Roy leads Maes back to his booth and invites the man to sit down.

'This is Milliways,' he explains, feeling guilty even as he does so. The man has enough he has to be coping with at the moment, and does not need the shock of what his afterlife is going to be like on top of it all. But at the same time, the topic is unavoidable.

'Milliways is a bar. At the... at the End of the Universe.' He winces as he says it. 'Living people come here a lot. But it would seem that the dead may have some sort of afterlife here.'

He does sit. It is either that or fall over in a moment, the shock and physical strain combining to make him more than a little shaky.

His eyebrows rise sharply at Roy's explanation. "You do realize that sounds insane, don't you?"

Of course, he had just been murdered, by something that had changed from a flawed copy of Lt. Ross to an exact double of his wife. And despite having been murdered, he is sitting in a bar speaking with his best friend, who appears rather different than he had the last time they'd been face to face. So the thought that this is all taking place at the end of the Universe seems rather less insane than he might have found it at this time the day before.

It shows.

'Yeah, I know.' Roy gives a strained smile. 'I thought that I'd perhaps gone completely mad when I first came here. But for all it's apparent insanity, it's the truth. It's all right, though. Riza thought I'd lost my mind when she first showed up here and I had to explain it to her, too.'

All things considered, Maes seems to be taking things rather well. Of course, Roy acknowledges that the shock over the his sudden death and his subsequent arrival in a place that breaks all definitions of the world normal, may be dampening Maes' normal reactions.

'Want something to drink? You look like you need it.'

It is. Maes is not entirely numb to the bizarre, but the filters that would normally be in place have shut down, albeit temporarily.

He removes his glasses, scrubbing one hand across his eyes. "So Lt. Hawkeye is here as well?" The question is obvious in his voice - is she alive, or had she fallen too?

While he is not entirely sure this place is real, it seems close enough that he will treat it as though it is until evidence to the contrary surfaces.

"I think I do, yes."

'Yes, she is. Rather frequently, too, so I imagine that you'll see her around eventually.' The question is not lost on Roy. 'Don't worry. She's alive, and from... from after.' After what, doesn't need to be said. 'Ed and Al are here, too, and a few others. I'm from later than any of them.'

He can talk about things with Maes that he can't with the others, and Roy finds that to be a relief.

'What do you want? I'm buying. You can get anything here, really.'

And he does mean anything. He had ale that foamed green, a few weeks ago.

"Scotch, neat." He isn't quite feeling adventurous enough to flippantly order the strongest drink the bar had, as he might elsewhere were he feeling quite this wrong. Doubts concerning his sanity or no, he has the feeling it would be a Bad Idea, fully deserving of capital letters.

"Wait, what do you mean, from later?"

Maes wouldn't want the strongest drink in the place, anyway. Roy's adventurous, but he's staying well away from Atlantean. Something that gets gods drunk? No thanks. ~~Roy is forced to accept the existence of gods here, and only can because they're not from his world.~~

There's no waitrat in sight, so Roy does something that he hates doing. He orders directly from Bar, the glass appearing on the table and the numbers next to his name on the tab board reflecting the order. He pushes the glass over to his friend.

'Later. In time.' Roy frowns. 'We're all from different points. Ed, Al, Riza, and I believe Russell Tringham are all from shortly after...'

He pauses. 'Shortly after the formation of the first new government, which I will explain presently. The homonculus Lust is here as well, but she is from a point before she'd first met Fullmetal. I'm thirty-one now, and living about a year and a half after the first government was formed. A lot of stuff's happened since then.'

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