milliways_bar | (no subject)

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When Doc enters the bar tonight, it's from a hotel room in Montgomery. He's carrying a bag over his shoulder, and isn't surprised to see that Milliways has decided to show up. After a quick trip to his apartment in the staff wing to change his clothes and shower, he makes a trip out to the stables to check on things.

Once he's satisfied with the state of the stock (and taken note of some new arrivals), he ends up at a table near the bar with a drink and a dinner 'menu'.

Contemplating the specials, he sips at the bourbon (straight, tonight) and looks around the bar for familiar faces while he decides what to order.

[No new threads please - busy workweek means slowtimes. He'll be back!]

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"Animals do not like Others. We... are wrong, for lack of a better word." Cats tend to be the worst, as they exist on all levels and tend to be very wary of anything else that can do that same trick.

"To them, you're wrong." Doc shakes his head. "But to me, you ain't. You're just a different type, s'all."

She laughs, resisting quite visibly the urge to muss his hair again.

"A very different type, cowboy. They have a point, you know."

"If I had a feeling you were gonna eat me, I'd likely have the same point," he says.

A 'cheep cheep' from his left side signals the rat's return with their drinks. He plucks the vodka and the bourbon off the tray, passing her glass over to her.

"Spasiba." She takes the glass and then a hefty dose of it in one smooth motion. Keeping busy with her birdman makes good little tigers thirsty.
"Some Others do eat humans. And I do not exactly let them go... unmolested, entirely."

He sobers at that admission, pausing the movement of his glass towards his mouth.

"Is it common, Others eatin' humans?"

"Oh, not... eat. No. Not me. That is the vampyres, and the werewolves. Sometimes some of the other Dark ones. They are more prone to... dining." She seems almost baffled by that leap, once again having it rather firmly pointed out that she's not in her own world anymore.

"Well, as a member of the non-Other population...I thank you for your vigilance in the matter," he says, raising his glass in a 'toast' before he knocks back half of it.

She kindly waits for him to swallow before slipping in and out of the Gloom for a brief moment - just long enough that she almost flickers, long enough to reach around and smack Doc upside the head whilst in the Gloom.

Katya cheats. Heavily.

"You are being ridiculous."

His nerves are delicate, especially when he's hit with a wave of cold that cuts straight to the bone, followed by getting hit upside the head.

"Hey-" he growls, narrowing his eyes. "It ain't ridiculous. I've seen what some'a those crazy fucks can do to a man and it ain't somethin' I'd like t'go through again, all right?"

She stills, unnaturally, one hand curled around her glass of vodka.

"Again?"

Looking down, he nods, the motion slight.

"Couple'a years ago...I got...used, guess y'could say. Possessed. Somethin' got in my head and it...tried t'take over. Made me do some things I ain't proud of, I almost hurt folk I care deeply for. I spent some time locked up down'n the cells, 'cause I knew I wouldn't hurt nobody there. Had t'try and fight it off the whole time...finally it came down t'someone rippin' it outta me, basically...don't remember all of it, t'be honest. I blacked out 'cause it all got t'be too much. I woke up back here and it was gone."

"You... do know I could as easily play the oppressor, as well as the rescuing hero?" She asks, cautiously. Just in case he thinks she's never done anything similar. Just in case he thinks she can't. She doesn't want the issue to be pressed somewhere that a bad reaction would actually be dangerous.

"I know," he says, glancing up at her. "Trust me, m'well aware of the risk."

And he is careful because of it. If she truly wanted to, she could have him made a puppet for her to play with in an instant and he'd likely never even know what hit him - and he knows that, which is why his nerves bite at the edges of his mind now and again when they have these conversations.

But he trusts her. And Olga.

(He was willing to let Olga use his energy to try and save Katya's life, knowing what it might entail.)

She eyes him.

Quite a lot, really.

That sounds vaguely mad, and this is coming from someone who lived, for decades, in close proximity to someone who was regularly a bear, and she considered that normal.

"... and?"

Lifting his glass:

"I see it this way," he says. "If you wanted t'ride around in my head like I was some puppet in a travelin' show, there wouldn't be a thing in all the hells on earth that I could do t'keep you from it, right? So I gotta accept that fact, and trust in the fact that I know how t'make smart decisions, and do my best not t'git myself into situations where I'm gonna be in trouble. I can't do anythin' more than that...and so's I gotta just watch my back and keep my head on straight."

"........"

With a strangled sound that sounds something like despairing disbelief she thumps her forehead on the table.

And people think she is the crazy one.

"...would you rather I not buy y'dinner and drinks and just cut off all contact?"

Because he's a little confused right now.

She is going to write a manual. For all the humans she actually cares about, and she's going to stand over every single one of them until they read it, and understand it.

There may possibly be quizzes.

With an inarticulate growl she stands and stalks over to the bar. She returns shortly, a small medallion of some saint-or-other (she asked Bar for something appropriate, and took what was given) on a sturdy chain dangling between her fingers.

Cautiously - and curiously - he glances at the medallion.

"I'm guessin' that'll help."

"It will, if you let me charge it." She replies tersely, retaking her seat. "Olya would be better, but also, scarier."

Hey, honest Other is honest - none of them are particularly reassuring to humans when being Other, and Olya is Other on a much grander scale than Katya will ever be able to manage.

"What do you need to do to charge it?"

"Something of you." The medallion flashes as it catches the lights, twirling on its chain between her fingers. "It is your choice, of course."

He considers this for a moment.

"Are you talkin' like, a bit of hair or a little bit of blood, or are we talkin' you goin' in and snippin' off a piece'a my soul or somethin'."

"I cannot touch your soul." She assures him, smothering the grin that threatens to take over her face. "That is beyond us all, unless you were to become Other."

Hers, on the other hand, has been in peril since she was seven.