milliways_bar | (no subject)

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April inna bar, looking rather pleased with herself.

She's got a couple of full notebooks sitting next to her and is transferring the contents (her novel) onto the laptop in her lap.

She's been at this for a while - she'd welcome a distraction.

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Why thank you, good sir. Such a gentleman.

She nods. "Yeah. He's really great, a real sweetheart." she smiles happily, because seeing Mark tends to be the high point of her day, when she sees him.

"It's good you've got him here, then. Might make the place a bit easier to get used to."

April laughs. "Oh, god, I'm plenty used to Milliways. Been here... nearly a year and a half, I think."

"I think that's longer than me, even." He grins. "Haven't seen you about much."

She shrugs and tugs on her hair a little, a nervous habit she's picked up while she's been here. "Yeah, well... I was being anti-social. And writing. But I was mostly writing as an excuse to be anti-social." She looks down at her oh-so-interesting fingernails. "Roger left. Didn't say goodbye. Not that I blame him, he'd been stuck here longer than me at the time, but..." But now her chance at a second chance had been lost.

"Roger...?" he prompts gently, now she's finished saying his name.

"He's my... was my boyfriend." She corrects herself. "Before I died. And I sortof... got a second chance. Almost. But then he left, and he... he isn't coming back." The last bit of that is soft, and vaguely sad, although she's starting to move on.

Sharpe thinks, though he'll never say it, that that might have been the best thing for both of them.

"You're sure of that? This place has a way of ruining people's plans, sometimes..."

April smiles a little, a sad smile. "Even if he did come back... he's with someone. Mark's told me. They're happy, and... and I'm happy for them. For him."

And she is. Because while she'd never admit to it out loud, she always thought that Roger could've done better than messed-up overemotional her.

"It wouldn't have been the same, anyway", he says quietly. "With him able to go back, and not take you with him..."

He might be thinking of Teresa.

She nods. "It was okay when he was Bound... but if he'd come back again, it... it would've hurt too much."

Not that it doesn't hurt this way, but... still.

"Better this way, maybe", he offers, contradicting what his mun said just a few tags ago.

She smiles crookedly. "Probably is."

He glances around.

"This place doesn't make a bad afterlife, so I'm told."

"No," April agrees. "At least, it most likely beats the alternative."

"One of the alternatives, any road."

"Any road?" April asks curiously.

"Anyway", he clarifies, smiling.

"'Any road'. I like it, it's... different." she smiles a little.

"So, Mr. Richard Sharpe, what do you do?"

"I'm a farmer", he tells her truthfully. "But before that, I were a soldier."

"Oh, a farm?" April brightens up. While she'd loved New York more than anyplace else, her favorite place within the city had been Central Park - the closest thing she could get to to the country-side vacations of her childhood. "It must be nice... I mean, hard work and all, but..." she shakes her head.

"Sorry, I'm babbling again. Um... where are you from?"

"Yorkshire, by birth. Living in Normandy now, with the family."

"Oh, you've got kids, then?" April brightens. "How old?"

"One, so far. He's not two yet. Th'other's due this winter."

April smiles and traces circles on the tabletop with her fingernail. Oh, to be a mother, to have a family... "Well, I wish you and your wife the best of luck raising them." she says with, it must be admitted, a bit of a jealous smile.