milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Sam inna bar. He's got his dinner, but is currently ignoring it in favour of another very complicated game of cats-cradle with magic.

He certainly isn't preoccupied, and certainly isn't worried about a certain friend of his, or more accurately what said friend's reactions will be to an unfortunate incident the other day.

Someone really ought to tell him his food's getting cold.

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"They say you're supposed to eat it." Gren nods over from where he's sitting. "Food, that is."

It's just a concept and it doesn't mean it's one that needs to be observed, though.

Sam doesn't look up. "Strange human concept. I don't believe in it."

He does grin, however.

"Humans are weird."

He can't help but let out a small laugh. "So, are you one? A human, that is?" It never hurts to ask, especially around this place. "I am. Or was."

"Not technically. Immortal, but I usually pass for human." He quirks a brow. "Was?"

Immortal? That's something to think about.

"Well, I guess I still am. I'm kind of dead, so I don't know what other people would call me now. And it really doesn't matter."

Not until the next stage of being or not being or whatever it is. "I think we're all a little bit immortal, though, just by virtue of being or having been."

Sam thinks about this. "You make a good point."

He reaches for his drink, then realises he's still got his hands entangled in the magic and bursts out laughing. "And some of us never, ever learn."

Gren watches as immortal fingers fumble; it makes him laugh, too.

"I'm Gren." Names, he figures, are always a decent place to start.

"Sam Linnfer. Pleased to meet you."

Magic unravels itself smoothly from his fingers, allowing him to reach for his drink. "That's better."

"Hi, Sam." He glances over, taking the man's face in for the first time. He's a hard one to quantify by looks alone.

"Not trying to be trite or anything, but what's an immortal doing in a place like this?" He really does wonder: is it a vacation or some sort of prison sentence?

Sam laughs. "Not much eating, as you've probably noticed."

He thinks about this. "Same thing most people are: eating, drinking, causing chaos, finding friends, possibly losing them, and making enemies." Beat. "And occasionally getting burnt to a crisp by a dragon and winding up in the infirmary, although I really hope that's just me. If you're asking how I came to be here, though: Bar dragged me in, the first time, same as it does most. I mostly choose when to come back, though."

There's a moment of silence as Gren ponders it all, wondering if this place is immortal like the man sitting there professes to be.

"Mind if I ask you a kind of a pointed question?" He's not sure what etiquette demands with immortals: he's never met one before.

He grins. "Feel free. I don't guarantee that I'll answer, of course, but that's the trouble with asking questions."

He's a friendly immortal, honest.

Well, that is the trouble with asking questions, but at least he's got clearance to do the asking.

Here goes.

"Do you ever get bored with it? Being immortal, I mean, knowing that you won't or can't die? Because I always looked at living as a finite thing, at least till I got here." Now, of course, he's not so sure about that.

He considers. "Not really. There's always something new to see or do, somewhere. The Dark and Middle Ages I disliked- very messy, very dirty, very..." He gropes for the word. "Brutal, that about describes it. But since then I've been fairly well amused, or at least busy."

Beat. "Might be helped by the fact that I can die, and a fair few people have tried very hard to accomplish it."

Are you a good witch, or a bad witch? No, that would be a lesson in How to Piss Off an Immortal, 101: he can't ask it.

As it usually happens, one question spawns a hundred more. "Doesn't immortality rule out death, though? Or maybe that's just an antiquated notion from my place and time." The idea that one could be immortal but immortally dead is a little bit chilling, to say the least.

Sam shakes his head. "No. I won't die of disease or natural causes, and most weapons can only slow me down by sending me into a healing coma for a few days. But I can be killed, if you know how to do it."

"Good thing I'm not trying to figure out how." With a relaxed shrug, Gren just smiles: he's not really about trying to kill anyone... not any more. Now that he's dead, or at least no longer alive in the traditional sense, revenge doesn't have quite as much meaning as it used to.

He really doesn't want to see Vicious walk through the front door, and he's pretty sure he's not the only one.

"So... you're immortal, you might know: what is this place?" He's always figured that it was some sort of a waystation, something in between life and death, or maybe in between heaven and hell although he's not so sure about the concept of God or heaven, and he's always kind of thought that if there is a hell, it's life because that can dish up some exquisite kinds of torture most people couldn't think up in their worst nightmares.

Of course, this Sam Linnfer man might not know. Immortal doesn't necessarily equal wise.

Or mature, but that's another matter.

"Plenty have tried, none have succeeded, so I don't recommend it."

Sam laughs. "I have no idea. It's not Heaven and it's not Hell, at any rate not my version of them. I get the impression, though, that it's better just accepted for what it is: Milliways. A bar."

"I've spent a lot of my life in bars. I'm not a lush or anything and I don't even drink a lot; I'm just a sax player. I guess I figured it was some kind of fitting poetic justice for me to end up in one again after I died."

Reaching for his teacup, he swirls its contents around before taking a sip.

"And look. Now neither of us are eating our food."

It's kind of amusing.

He grins again. "And I got drunk for the first time ever in this place, so."

"...Fasting loves company? Or something."

"Something, sure."

He's always pretty much just loved company in general, with the exception of the past few months where he's spent way too much time in the futile pursuit of trying to understand what it means to be dead.

Chancing a more studious glance over at the man at the next table, he notices how dark his eyes are. They almost radiate something, but he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about it right now.

He does think, though, that he should spend more time downstairs while he can.

Sam's eyes are very old. Sam's eyes see right through you. Sam's eyes are almost unmeetable.

He nibbles a sandwich experimentally. "Been here long, then?"

It isn't like he's really kept track of time. "It feels like a long time; I don't know. Months and months. First before I died, just a few times, and then after, and I was here for good. I think I came here because a friend of mine was here and she needed me... but I'm not sure. That sounds too noble when I stop to think about it."

Besides, Sam didn't even ask that question, but he's always been in the habit of giving more than he gets.

"Being too noble leads to all sorts of problems. In my case, generally it leads to me being shot," Sam says with a chuckle. "Been here much longer than I have, then. I've been here for about two months, I think."

"But you can come and go. That's different. Let me ask what you do when you're out there." What kinds of things do immortals do to amuse themselves? That's one question he can't ask, because he hesitates to lump all immortals into one category: it's senseless. Kind of like saying all men like women or all people with blue eyes have blond hair.

Some things, after all, defy classification. Even the concepts of death, life, and mortality.