milliways_bar | first entrance

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urquhart

first entrance

When the door opens, a shadow walks into the bar.

He lifts his head when he realizes that he's not where he was intending to be. The look that crosses his scarred face isn't a very pleased one, to say the least.

His clothes are an obvious indication of the time he's stepped in from (a dirty, bloodied Civil War uniform with Confederate insignia identifying him as a First Lieutenant of the Cavalry) and the twin holstered pistols on his gunbelt should tell people that he's not to be messed with.

Dark eyes survey the room from beneath the brim of his hat, and his grip on the (bloodstained?) burlap sack in his left hand tightens a fraction.

"Hrm."

This may be problematic.

Tinytag with a big scar: Jonah Hex

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That... really doesn't help.

At all, actually.

If anything, her eyes just opened just that little bit wider, and she got just a little bit paler.

Because now he's noticed her, and that can't be good, right? At this very moment she doesn't give a fig about women's rights and an equal working environment - she could use a few armed bastards from CID.

Or. You know. Anyone?

"Um."

He does look pretty threatening -- holding a bloodstained burlap sack that looks like it's got a large cannonball stuffed inside, the twin pistols holstered at his hip and the tomahawk slipped into a loop beside them -- not to mention the scar is a distraction in itself.

Hex steps out of the doorway when someone bustles through behind him.

Stepping closer to the woman and her teacup.

Shaz is actually really against this train of events. Personally, she believes that it should have ended with 'and no men with giant scars and guns and axes and bags that drip blood came into the bar, and Shaz was able to finish reading these files'. That would have worked well, for her.

She would lodge a protest... if she were the type to lodge protests.

As it is she stumbles to her feet (backwards, nearly tripping over the chair as she does so) and is clearly torn between running for her life and... well. Not.

Because she's the police. And part of CID (however small a part).

And they don't run.

(Actually, sometimes they do, but only when the Guv isn't around. Or if the other guy is going to do something stupid like blow himself up.)

Her stumbling catches his attention even more (he was already looking away from her, trying to find a familiar face in the crowd of absolute chaos that he's suddenly found himself deposited in) and he glances back at her.

He's used to this. The scar sends them running, and if it's not the scar, it's the cold stare in his eyes or the guns at his hips.

"Look," he says. "Really, I ain't gonna do nothin'."

He glances around the bar again.

"I'm just tryin' to figure out what the hell's goin' on."

Talking, actually, makes it easier to not run. Because he isn't actually screaming and ranting and threatening to do horrible things to babies, which puts him above some of the nutjobs that get brought in on Saturday nights after a football match.

"It is a pub." She offers, not sounding terribly brave but certainly earning bravery points for standing her ground. "At the end of the universe."

She's still not too sure about that last one, but the Guv and Chris and DI Drake all told her it was... so it must be. Even though she isn't quite clear on what that's supposed to mean.

He closes his eyes and covers them with a hand, rubbing at his eyelids. The motion tips his hat back just a bit, revealing a line of dirt and sweat that's baked onto his skin.

"A pub at the end of the universe," he repeats. "You sayin' we're...in space?"

He's got to be hallucinating.

She notices, because she really is quite good at noticing things, but she's not quite up to mentioning the possibility of a nice hot soak to someone who looks like an axe murderer. So, possibly wisely, she keeps her mouth shut on that topic.

"There are an awful lot of stars out that window, over there." She says instead, because if he doesn't like it, maybe he can take it out on the window, not on her.

To his credit, Jonah does not lose his grip on the sack when the full assault of the Window strikes him (he feels the rush of death and rebirth slam into him like a thousand pounds of dynamite crushing his lungs and stealing all the air from the room) but it does take him a moment or two before he can find his voice again.

Slowly, he walks over to a nearby chair and drops into it.

The bag goes on the table with a dull, wet thud.

"That ain't natural," he mutters, head still down and eyes half-closed. He's trying to block it out, but it's very difficult to keep the screams quiet.

She turns a very interesting shade of green at the thud, but even then, she feels a bit badly for the axe murderer. She wasn't trying to be mean, and he seems to feel about windows full of exploding stars the same way she feels about bloody bags that make wet thuds when dropped.

"It doesn't do much," She says, sounding oddly apologetic and not really understanding it herself, "It shows the exact same thing every day."

"It's just...loud, s'all."

The idea that it never stops isn't all that promising, either, but he doesn't let that show.

After he regains the ability to fully reopen his eyes, he looks at her once again.

"Forgive me for bein' short," he adds. "Name's Jonah."

She considers telling him that being short is just fine, and he should consider making his stay here very short as well, because it isn't a great place for a holiday if you are an axe murderer... but she decides that probably won't help her out at all.

He thinks windows are loud, after all. He's liable to think anything.

"I'm Shaz. Sharon Granger. WPC." That is, officially, the most awkward she's been introducing herself, but in her defense, people usually don't have bags dripping blood as accessories.

"It's a pleasure, ma'am. I'm sure."

There is a healthy hint of sarcasm in his voice -- because he can tell she's uncomfortable. He doesn't blame her, really. Women tend to stare at him regardless of what he's carrying in his hand. The idea that a member of the delicate sex would feel ill when he's just walked in carrying a man's head wrapped in a bloody sack isn't very far-fetched.

(He was married, once. He knows these things.)

"I was lookin' for a different establishment," he adds needlessly. Obviously this is not where he intended to be.

A waitrat approaches, spots the blood on the floor (and table), and begins to 'yell'.

Now, for the record, Shaz was not best pleased to find out that food was being served by rats around here, when she first came into the bar. In fact, she continued to not be pleased about it for months. But the rats really are very hard workers, and they remember the patrons who come here - after a couple visits they would fetch her tea, just the way she likes it.

...

Not even Chris gets it exactly right.

(Tea in the strainer (loose, not bagged, you heathen) and left in the pot for five minutes, with just a splash of milk)

So when one of those rats starts squeaking irately at the axe murderer, she looks even more frightened. The rat is going to be skinned before her very eyes!

So she does the logical thing.

She swoops in to save the rat before it can commit a little rat suicide. Three steps and she's got the rat by the scruff (oh hell that is blood) and she's pulling it away (that axe looks really sharp) as fast as she can (really, really sharp) out of immediate axe-chopping range.

The woman manages to get the rat before Hex can draw his tomahawk -- his hand rests on the top of the metal head, but he doesn't pull it free.

His eyes narrow, slightly.

And then he leans over, grabbing the dropped (hastily abandoned) tea towel that was being carried by the rat just moments earlier. The bladed weapon then comes free of the holster, and he brandishes it for a brief second--

"Dead rats walkin' round."

--before he turns his attention to wiping the few remaining smears of blood off the iron. He doesn't want the weapon to rust, you see.

Her lips thin as she shoos the little rat on its way.

"Well, if you weren't being so inconsiderate as to mess up the floors, perhaps he wouldn't have yelled at you." She retorts hotly.

And about two seconds before she decides that is a supremely stupid thing to say to someone who messed up the floors with blood from a dripping bag.

Um.

"You don't have to threaten them, is all."

"...it ain't like I was makin' an effort to be threatenin'."

A few moments later, with the tomahawk clean (as well as a mental note made on the subject of it needing sharpening) and towel discarded, he turns his full attention back to the woman.

"Because I ain't in the mood for trouble this evening."

He really just wanted to turn in the bag and get some cash in return.

And a drink.

"You said they were dead." She retorts again, but not hotly - this is more of a 'oh hell why did I say anything' sort of way, because she's realizing she should have taken the rat and her files and run, to hell with CID pride.

"Said it 'cause it's true."

(He's got his head turned away from the window, still trying to block out the sounds of a desperate and dying universe. He's used to the screams but these ones are just persistent and it's starting to set him on edge.)

"We'll just say that's one of those things I can just tell 'bout most people."

"... They're walking around. And breathing. And serving people. I don't think dead rats can do that." Says a very skeptical Shaz.

"Sir." She adds, belatedly, eying the axe and the axe murderer and now they're so conveniently close to one another.

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first entrance

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