milliways_bar | (no subject)

A rather pale and shaken Lesgle comes up to the bar; when he sees Shephard his face warms considerably. "...Brandy, neat?"

"Can do," says Shephard, and reaches for the appropriate glass before hunting down a bottle. "How're you holdin' up?"

"Oh, well, you know. I had thought that friends being shot in cafés had lost all novelty for me, but I may not be so world-weary as all that." He could use that drink.

Shephard pauses- that is, he pauses in the process of opening the brandy. His right hand just keeps on working. "Somebody got shot?" he says. "Shit. What fuckin' happened? You mean here, or someone come in from France with a sucking chest wound?"

"Someone seems to have shot Dr. Lecter? In the bar? I was outside and didn't see it myself; by the time I got here everything was being neatly tidied away. So as not to disturb the customers, I imagine."

((...of course this conversation is happening after this one, which is, uh, still happening, so uh.))

"Oh, him," says Shephard. "Met him a time or two, ain't seen him in a while. He was gonna buy some headcrab meat off me, only my CIC asked me not to talk to him a while back, so I ain't seen him since." He turns his attention back to the brandy and getting it into the glass. "They patch him up?"

"Yes, he's in the infirmary. Astonishing what the doctors can do." He scratches his beard, giving Shephard a considering look. Oh, him is an interesting reaction to hearing a man's been shot. "How many shootings would you say a resident can expect here, in a year?"

"Can't say I recall hearin' anybody else got shot in... fuck, I dunno. You want me to include that shit with the zombies, or just regular patrons? Most folks who git violent hereabouts ain't doin' it with guns. Fists, mostly."

"Oh, do by all means include that shit with the zombies." He shakes his head at the snappishness in his own voice. "I'm sorry, Shephard; I've no cause to be short-tempered. This is an odd place to live. So your--CIC--suggested not talking to Dr. Lecter? Is that usual?"

"Naw, it's fine," says Shephard with a wave of one hand. He pushes the glass of brandy across the Bar. "Fella came in some time back and the door didn't close proper behind him. Bar got a whole fuckin' horde of animated corpses lookin' to tear the patrons limb from limb. That was... fuck. I dunno. Might be about a year ago. And about a year before that there was all that shit with the Bar tryin' to go to pieces, demons'n shit like that tryin' to eat the place, you name it. Lot of folks got hurt but I don't recollect hearin' 'bout much in the way of deaths. Might've been one patron got killed when the zombies turned up, I wasn't there for that one."

He rubs at his nose. "Far as the no-talk thing goes, I don't git that kind of thing much. Dr. Lecter's a special exception on account of him bein' on the murderous side when he ain't at the Bar. My commander-in-chief doesn't want me sayin' or doin' somethin' that might piss him off'n put our little contingent on the wrong end of a particularly unpleasant plan."

"Wonderful, murderous animate corpses. Presumably less philosophical than Frankenstein's monster." He drinks off the brandy in one go and slides the glass back towards Shephard, looking rather steadier. "But. As to murderous doctors, that's news. I've killed men and so have most of my friends. I take it your officer means something more particular than that."

Edited 2014-09-10 16:04 (UTC)

"Don't recollect hearin' Frankenstein's monster ever tried to bite a man's face off," says Shephard. "Naw, these fuckers weren't nowhere near as civilized as him. Just 'grr, argh, braaaains' kinda thing."

Or maybe not the brains part, but as he said, he wasn't here for that.

Shephard moves to refill the glass. "Killin' men in combat's one thing," he says. "I've done that myself. Part of the job. This is more the kind of thing that happens in peacetime'n gits you hauled up in front of a judge and jury and a shitload of lawyers."

"I never did read the novel," he says absently. "My friend Prouvaire told me it's sublime. And one picks up a certain amount at parties."

Experience tells him that Lecter is an odd but genial creature, intelligent, and excellent company. Experience also tells him that Shephard is an entirely different kind of odd-but-genial creature, intelligent and excellent company. Experience is only of limited value. He studies Shephard's face. "That's not the sort of thing to say lightly."

"No, sir, it is not," says Shephard soberly. "I'm not gonna lie to you, I can't prove anything myself. All I have is the word of my commander-in-chief. I trust her very nearly absolutely. But you've got no reason to trust a woman you've never met, so if I were you, and I wanted things clarified, I'd ask the Security folks here who saw what went down, and then I'd go and talk to the person who did the shooting, whoever that was. Once you have that information, you can feel free to come back to me and see how it lines up with what I've been told."

There are not many people who've heard Shephard speak quite so clearly and cleanly. He only does it when he wants to be absolutely certain that he's being understood.

Edited 2014-09-10 17:26 (UTC)

He listens attentively, and nods once when Shephard's done. "Yes, I see. I've heard enough police accounts of events I've witnessed to have no great opinion of their reliability--but that's a question for another day. You're right, of course; I'll have to ask them."

Oh, hell. Lesgle makes an extremely rueful face. "I am sorry for bringing that into your happy hour. It's a hell of a place to live, this."

"Ain't no big thing," says Shephard, waving one hand. "Man tends bar, he's gonna git shit dumped in his lap, same as a priest sitting down in one of them little bitty boxes."

(They use little bitty boxes in Catholic churches, right? Shephard's a Methodist, but he's seen plenty of movies with Catholic churches in them.)

"Need a refill or anything, long as I'm at it?"

"I have never turned down a refill in my life." He hunts up a smile for Shephard and wears it until it's genuine. "I have to say, tending bar is one of my great pleasures here. But I'm just as glad not to have been on duty today."

"You got enough shit on your mind, sounds like," says Shephard, and refills the glass. "Man can't do the position justice if he's distracted. Reckon that's why she passes the napkin around, 'stead of droppin' it on the same fuckers every time."

Bossuet raises his glass. "To the Bar's good judgment, then. May she execute it most reliably."

Shephard grabs a glass and fills it from a nearby bottle with vaguely Chinese looking characters on it. "To her good judgment," he says. "I c'n live with that."

(After a certain amount of wheezing, mind, since the bottle contains one of Bumi's recommended beverages. But still.)

Joly manages to come downstairs, having dropped off all the equipment except a couple of those wonderfully self-filling pens and a pad of paper, just in time time to see the effects of the mystery bottle. He grins. "Ooh-- I'll have some of that, please."

He notices the arm--the writing arm-- a moment later. "You must be Shephard!" He does a quick bit of mental shuffling and holds out his left hand to shake Shephard's left. His right arm he puts over Bossuet's shoulders. "--I'm Joly, I haven't been here long. Lesgle's talked about you and your rather exciting meetings."

He turns his head to Lesgle, still smiling but with a more serious tone now. "What's the news?"
Which means about the shooting and everything, but- Vague, just in case. Years of practice have made Stealth Gossip effectively a reflex, especially about stories that start "someone I know has been shot in a café".

(( Hello, Jane said it'd be all right to join this conversation and she's been after me to meet you for Online Ages, so *waves*!))

Edited 2014-09-11 19:29 (UTC)

"Sure thing, mister," says Shephard, and reaches out to shake the offered hand. "Pleased t'meet you. I'd ask if he's been takin' my name in vain, but I reckon he's just been tellin' the truth regardless. Gimme a second and I"ll git you some of that sorghum lightning, mm'kay?"

(( Oh, definitely it's okay! The more the merrier. ))

Edited 2014-09-11 19:31 (UTC)

((yaaay! I'll wait for Jane to tag back in; Joly is gonna nerd out so hard at you, though. XD.))

"Why, I am an honest fellow, am I not? --No news, exactly; only inexactly." He'll fill Joly in later. "I'll try some of that as well, if I may? Let's all be brave."

"Sure 'nough," says Shephard, and reaches up for the appropriate glasses. "Now, this here liquor ain't from Earth, I got to tell you that in advance. Buddy of mine that I met here by the name of Bumi's a long-time sailor in a world that ain't got a name so far as I know. I been teachin' him to read English, 'n he's been teachin' me some of his language, and how not to fuck up bein' captain of my own ship back home. This's a favorite of his, but they're damn hard drinkers in the United Forces Navy. Fair warning."

"He has only said that you are a man he has spoken to, from Earth's future. Or at least an earth's future, and that you were good company." Joly's not at all sure how that works; it's another thing he's wanting to study, but there will, evidently, be time for that. "He did not mention your title, or the extent of your ambidexterity. I have known some men who could write a bit while distracted, but none who could do it while tending bar. A truly excellent skill."

He follows Shephard's approach to drinking the new liquor. It IS strong, and has a very unfamiliar taste. He coughs a little too,then laughs. "Very nice. I look forward to acquiring a taste for it."

((augh, I had no notification of updates on this thread at all, Dreamwidth, whyyy?!? Sorry for vanishing! ))

((S'ok! DW can be weird at times, it's all good.))

Shephard's expression turns wry. "I got to be honest, I ain't proper ambidextrous," he says. "This here's cheatin', after a fashion. The fella who made the hand for me wasn't a man of Earth. Friend of mine from Milliways took me to her world a little bit after I lost the original, and we went lookin' for someone to make me a new one. She got me to a master smith of some folks called the Daea. They, uh... they ain't human. They look mighty like us, but they ain't. He told me he'd do me a new hand iffen I could do him a particular favor, and the hand he made had a whole bunch of properties that weren't what you'd call natural, exactly. Fact is, long as I ain't tryin' to do nothin' in particular with my right hand, it'll pick up the nearest thing it c'n write with, and then it'll start writing on whatever it c'n find. About the only way I'm ambidextrous is that I c'n actually use my left hand to mix drinks'n fire a gun'n shit like that, since I had to learn to do it in between losin' my right hand'n having the new one made."

"...Why writing, in particular? It's an excellent habit, commendable, but why and what does it want to write?"

"Well," says Shephard, "that part's where shit gets more than just a little unscientific."

He is, after all, talking to a medical student, and he still remembers the look on Ms. Vance's face when he told her about the whole process of getting the hand.

"The fella who built the hand for me told me two things when he was gettin' ready to fasten it on. It don't come off, by the way, it's fused on- anyways, he told me I had 'seer blood' in me, first. Didn't pay a whole lot of attention to that, on account of ancestry not meanin' a whole hell of a lot where I come from. Could be I had a great-great-great-great grandma back in Sweden or some shit who made her living telling fortunes. That don't mean a goddamn thing. The other thing he said was I carried the names of my brothers'n sisters who were gone, on account of me bein' the first and the last."

"Now, I used to be one of five kids, and these days there's only three of us and Momma alive, but that ain't what he meant. That 'first and last' shit was him talkin' about the Marine Corps. I dunno what they said in the Corps in your day, but in mine, they told us pretty fuckin' strongly that when you joined the Marines you were joinin' a brotherhood and there weren't nothin' could separate you from the Corps but treason, not even death. When my world got invaded, the invading forces overran every single fuckin' one of Earth's defenses, and any kind of military resistance left alive when the world surrendered got rounded up and... well, it ain't pleasant. I reckon you can figure out what happens to captured fighting men under a conqueror who don't give a shit about decency or honor or human rights. Me, I'd been more or less locked out of the world for a good twenty years at that point. Some kind of suspended animation bullshit, like, I dunno... fuck, some kind of fairy tale or Rip Van Winkle or somethin'. All's I know is I got locked up and knocked out after a battle in the year two thousand and one, and the next fuckin' time I opened my eyes it was twenty years later and there weren't no Marines left alive but me, 'cept for maybe a few who'd been discharged for medical reasons'n couldn't've fought in the first place."

He nods towards the hand. "Turns out that what this thing writes when I ain't payin' attention is the life stories of all those dead men and women. I'm the only way those names'n those stories'll ever git out into the world. Like I said, it ain't what you'd call scientific, but... that's what I got."

Joly's a medical student, yes, but a medical student from 1832 who spent most of his time dealing with explanations like "imbalances in the humors" even before he woke up dead in an afterlife with fancy drinks and talking horses. He's hardly going to insist he knows all science is capable of. Whatever reaction Shephard's expecting, what he's getting is fascination and growing sympathy.

Shephard doesn't seem the tragic sort, but still. "That's quite a mission to carry. I wouldn't know exactly the oaths of our military. But I understand a little. About needing to remember." It makes him think of Jehan, and Bahorel, and all the men who stood with them for those last days, who haven't caught up to them, who are...where?, instead . "You are very patient about it."

"I do my best," says Shephard. "And I'll tell you what, it's a fuck of a lot easier'n how I learned patience growin' up. Puttin' up with my hand writing other folks' life stories ain't half as tough as sittin' in a tree stand thirty feet up waitin' for a buck to wander by."

Besides, after that one Halloween in Milliways... well, writing stuff down's a hell of a lot easier than hearing it told to you. He'll manage.