milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Parker rolls his shoulders and scans the room. He's wearing long sleeves and smells faintly of hospital. He's hurt. He's here.

He wonders if it's a theme.

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Parker blinks. "Yeah," he waves a hand. "I know that you didn't exactly get out of England on happy memories, but you miss anyone?"

"From England? No, no. I don't suppose so. The only person that I would miss from Europe at all, oddly enough, is here. Nick Knight."

A smile and a pause. "However ... Feisal and Ali, from Arabia .. will be missed. I doubt they would be happy to see me now."

"The peace thing," Parker says, but it's a slight question.

"It would make anyone resent me, I should think, to have me promise them things that I could not force the British to give them."

A pause. "It was hard enough to allow my trust in at first. Evidently, such things shouldn't have happened at all."

"You don't think that anyone should trust you?" Parker's fingers drum on his knee, once.

"Not on such important things. I'd hate to see it turn out badly again." He sighs, taking a long drag of his cigarette.

"Trusting me on a regular day is a sound bet indeed, however." He's fiercly loyal to people he cares about. Right now there are about three of these people.

"Ah, but, Lawrence, the important times are when it matters," Parker says. It's a little hard, the look in his eyes. Because, what's the use of trusting someone for drinks, if you can't trust them to turn up when the shooting is heavy and the timing is right?

And his own is just as hard, just as sharp.

"I am aware of such things, Parker. And had I any ability to change the peace, I would have done it. I do not make plans to break promises to people that I protect."

He's continually appealing for Feisal and the Arabs to Britain. Some day they will listen, he hopes...even if he doesn't know that it will be sooner than he thinks. Lawrence is a person who can be trusted to death.

Parker looks at him hard, nearly like he's looking for something. "We're always trying to keep those promises," Parker says. "Life never works like we plan. Ever."

"Then you work harder, Parker."

He keeps his gaze on the other man - steady, because he's not lying - because he has risked life and limb for what he believed in and the people he loved and would do it again a thousand times over.

"Do you?" Parker asks. "Or do you give up and crawl into a hole?"

He's watching, now, and seeing something that makes him nod.

"I do not give up, Parker."

He's not given up now. He simply realized that the war was over and that more fighting was not what he wanted.

"You moved to France," Parker says.

"The Peace conference was in France." He counters, frowning.

"I stayed for the entire year trying to negotiate. I have a definite conference with the Prime Minister in January."

He'll be asked to reevaluate the treaty with the Arabs. But he doesn't know that yet.

"And when the conference is over?" Parker asks. "What will you do?"

"It will be fixed."

He's being firm on this because otherwise he doesn't plan to leave.

"And then perhaps I shall go Home." Back to Arabia, to help.

Parker nods, and it's hard to tell if he believes of if he's just being nice.

Lawrence doesn't much care, because he knows.

He smiles. "Would you like something to eat?"

"Sure," Parker says. And they ate and drank and talked and were quiet and it was good.

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