milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Today has not been a very good day, but eight has never been one of Sun's lucky numbers. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

She does not know if she likes these caves. They are dark and she misses the stars overhead and the sound of the waves lapping against the shore. But Jin is her husband and for now, she does as he asks. For now, she owes him that much. Nightgown in hand, she steps through the rock opening and does a double-take, and then another: where is this place?

With the nightgown clutched protectively to her chest she steps forward, brows furrowed, eyes darting back and forth. There is no comfort in the location or in the sudden profusion of company.

"Jin-Soo? [Help me.]"

But Jin is not here, and he cannot help her. Her hand goes to the top button of her sweater; she makes sure it's fastened.

"[Excuse me... where are we? What is this place?]"

[작은 꼬리표: Hercules]

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Sam offers her a small smile.

"That isn't exactly what I meant. Milliways means different things to different people, that's all."

He offers her his arm, this time. "Come on. Let's get you your drink."

"Thank you."

This time, she graciously accepts and lets him lead her to the bar. It might be the last time she lets anybody lead her anywhere: she's tired of that. But the situation is so strange and so unexpected: there is nothing in her past to prepare her for a thing like this.

"You are so calm about this. How?" For her part, she is overcome by a feeling of unreality: this cannot be happening. Maybe she hit her head on a rock in the cave and is having a dream. Or maybe she's dreamed the whole airplane crash and is still in Sydney with Jin, fast asleep in their hotel. Or better still, she is back in Seoul and they haven't left for their trip yet.

Yes, she likes that last option the best.

Because this isn't real, is it? She feels like she's floating half her height above the ground as Sam guides her to the bar. The only thing she has that ties her to everything she knows is the nightgown tucked under her arm.

"This is... the end of something infinite. And it serves drinks."

"I've been coming here for a very long time. Two and a half years or so. You don't get used to it, exactly, but you learn to roll with the chaos."

He pats the bar's smooth, gleaming surface.

"Not an it, a she. This is Bar. She's ... sentient," a brief switch into Korean to ensure understanding, then back to English, "And she's very nice, so long as you treat her well. She can provide almost anything you can ask for."

"[Sentient. The bar has a consciousness. Now you are joking.]" She wishes she could say that this reminds her of anything she knows, but it does not. The whole thing is wrong.

"When I wake up I will write down my dream. In Korean. And show it to my husband, and he will laugh and remind me not to eat raw sea urchin so late at night again." For now, she will play along with whatever charade this is, and runs her hand over the gleaming wooden surface.

"I will have champagne." If this is a dream, she might as well have what she likes. And if it is not a dream, she might as well drink as much as she can.

Sam looks mischievous. "But you'll be telling him all this after having drunk champagne. Bar? Nothing outrageously expensive, please."

And lo, it appears.

"And I'll have another pint of my usual."

Presto!

He's smiling as he pats her. "Thanks."

The size of the diamond on her finger might indicate that she would, in fact, prefer the outrageously expensive champagne but at the moment she is grateful for any help at all she can get.

"If I am drinking champagne and not just dreaming it."

Or dreaming a man who looks like Sam, who is so friendly without good reason. It's been her experience that people most often don't just do things for free. They do them because it is to their benefit.

And then... champagne and a pint of his usual -- whatever it might be -- simply appear. That's when she no longer thinks she's dreaming: she knows she is.

"Ha... anyo. That did not just appear. From nowhere."

Sam's been Bound with no wages for a year. Sun can get over it.

"Well, presumably it came from somewhere, but Bar's always been pretty reticent about where she gets her supplies from."

He eyes his tab on the board.

"...Bar, did that just leap as far as I think it did?"

A note appears. A simple written 'yes' should not look that smug.

Another note, this one with an admonition against being a miser.

"You're bloody lucky your food's so good, you know that?"

This time, there is no note. Bar merely radiates smugness.

Edited 2008-09-17 23:08 (UTC)

Wait.

"You did not have to buy me this." Now there is debt, and she doesn't like to have debt. It's never done anything but get her into trouble, and she doesn't wish to be in trouble here already.

Except... Sam might just be crazy, because he's talking to a bar.

"I told you, I thought it was a dream. Take it back if it is too much. Please. I don't need champagne."

He probably is crazy. But if he is, it's in ways that have nothing to do with talking to a bar.

"Nah, go on." Equably, "She'll only sulk at me. And when I can leave I'm not exactly short of money."

Money which is not entirely honestly come by, so sharing it is probably fair enough.

Edited 2008-09-17 23:31 (UTC)

It's with great trepidation that she takes a sip only to discover that dream champagne is as good as if not better than real champagne.

Maybe this is no dream. He did say something about two and a half years.

"I do not want to be here for two and a half years." Even if -- as unbelievable as it sounds -- time does not pass "outside" when she is here, she will still have two and a half years of different experience. How can she possibly go back to anything after that much time?

Right now, nothing makes sense. Not Sam, not the bar he talks to, not the window she refuses to look at, not the wall without a door where one should be, not the champagne in her glass, and not the nagging feeling that this is either wrong or a game of some kind.

That last one is something she's felt with increasing frequency the past week.

Sam sips his beer.

"You probably won't be. I've been coming here for two and a half years, but I've only been Bound - unable to leave - for a year. And very few people have been Bound that long. Mostly it's to the tune of a week or so, maybe a few months."

A year is too long. A few months are too long. Even a week is too long.

"Sam." Again, she says his name as if it's the only thing she has to keep her from simply disappearing. And because it's the only familiar thing she has here, she lapses back into Korean. "[You speak of this place so casually but I cannot. I cannot be stuck here. My husband needs me. Is there nothing I can do to be allowed to leave?]"

Desperate times breed desperate measures and she has to wonder: for someone who was ready to leave her husband just over a week ago, why does she want to get back to him so badly now?

"[Please tell me there is a way.]"

He shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, Sun. There's no way to force the door to reappear."

He's tried.

What follows is a look so desperate and so sad that she can feel it from the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes. Tears well up in her eyes, and she blinks them back as well as she can but one escapes regardless, rolling down her cheek.

It leaves her speechless.

Augh. Don't cry, pretty Korean lady!

Flailing from the friendly neighbourhood Lucifer.

"Please don't cry?" Hopefully. "It's not so very bad here, I promise. It'll be all right."

Magic - Sam's, this time - makes a bright blue handkerchief appear from thin air; Sam offers it to her.

Drinks appearing out of thin air were bad enough, but now handkerchiefs? There is no sense to this place and she longs for the sanctity of normal life -- even unhappy normal life -- back in Seoul. At least there things were predictable. At least there, she knew that if he stepped outside she wasn't going to end up at the end of the universe.

She's not a stupid person: Sun knows what she must do to survive: she must fight. But in order to fight she needs to understand her surroundings and this makes no sense. No sense at all.

Skeptically, she accepts the handkerchief and dabs at the corners of her eyes where they sting.

"[How can you promise something like that. How can you say it will be all right. I have nothing here: no family, no friends, no Jin, no money. I'm sitting at a bar drinking champagne with a stranger but only because I thought it was a joke. How does one take care of herself when she has nothing?]"

The question is perfectly valid, especially from someone who has never had to make ends meet before.

"You fight. And you deal."

Rapid, calm Korean. "You don't need money, at least not right away. The place runs a tab, and they very rarely get called in. There are worse places to wind up in alone."

Sam knows this because he's been in them.

"[I am frightened.]"

That is the truth. "So I incur a debt to stay here while my husband and the others starve on an island, and I cannot return to give them hope or comfort or bring them food. It seems... unfair."

It also seems inevitable.

"I'm sorry. My problems are not your problems. You've been very kind." Folding the handkerchief into a neat if tear-stained square, she hands it back to him. "I don't mean to take up more of your time."

There's something in her expression that says don't go, but she tries to mask it. He's right: she fights, and she deals. And she always has and always will, and just because this is a strange and new place, there is no reason to curl into a ball and die.

"It isn't fair. But when your door does reappear, there is no reason you can't take food out with you."

Sam shakes his head. "Keep it." Fleeting, bright grin. "I can always get more."

She laughs at his suggestion. "And explain food how. [Ah, Jin-Soo, look! A hot meal waiting in an abandoned cave on an uninhabited island! With condiments and napkins! Don't ask, just eat.]"

It feels so much better to laugh than to cry. If there is nothing else she can do, she would rather try to be happy.

And then she looks down at the handkerchief in her hand. "Where did this come from? One minute it was here. I did not see you take it out of a pocket."

"There's always a way." Sam laughs too, a little.

"More magic, I'm afraid. Mine, this time."

"Ah, you have magic? You can do magic?"

She has seen magicians at work before: it's fun to watch. "What other tricks can you do?" The question is barely out when her eyes widen. "Sam. Sam. When you are not bound -- when you can leave this place and return -- are you able to bring others with you?"

"I can do anything." Laughing. "Well, not quite. But I'm very good."

Sam sips his drink, looking at her with impish black eyes.

"I've never tried. But I think others have."

Someone who can do anything must be a very powerful person indeed.

"You can do almost anything, and yet you have never tried to bring someone here with you? Yet you have a girlfriend... is she not at home?"

Oh, she has made so many assumptions in her life, and so many wrong ones. By now, she ought to know better than that. But this is still new, and it is difficult.

"No. Medusa visits here, too - that's how we met. I... don't have too many close friends outside the bar."

Grin.

"And yes, that Medusa."