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[takingthechance]

There's a rather subdued Sam in the Bar tonight - she's tucked up to the Bar with a pint of ale, drawing idle patterns on the napkin the drink came on.

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[hot_water]

"Well, well, well," Tahno says, strutting over to her and looping his legs around a bar stool. "What's a gorgeous gal like yourself doing in a bar like this?"

[takingthechance]

"Oh no." Sam sounds horribly resigned and a bit dismayed. "Not again."

[hot_water]

Tahno blinks at her, sitting up a bit straighter. "Again?" he says, and then eases into a smile. "You get hit on a lot, I take it?"

[takingthechance]

"Look, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but honestly there is only so much I can reasonably be expected to take." She huffs at him.

[hot_water]

"Awright," Tahno says, a little surprised. Normally women leap on him. "Let me just sit and have a drink here, then"--and a firewhisky pops up, courtesy of Bar--"and maybe we'll start over a little later."

[takingthechance]

"A little later?" She asks, sounding a bit persecuted. "Must you?"

[hot_water]

"Nah, I don't have to," Tahno says, sipping his whiskey. He looks her over with a practiced eye. "I just wanna know what's got you so down."

[takingthechance]

"Oh, it's nothing." She shakes her head, retreating behind her pint glass. "Nothing terribly important."

Between being rumbled and pinched by the lecherous Graham and her father calling her home, it's been an absolutely horrid few days.

[hot_water]

"Really?" Tahno says, rolling the word across his tongue. He bends his remaining whiskey up, winding the liquid languidly around his fingers. "Seems like something awful from the outside."

[takingthechance]

"How ever are you doing that?" She demands, completely derailing any talk about depressed WTC drivers.

[hot_water]

"Oh, no, you haven't seen it before, either?" Tahno asks, chuckling. "Well, it's not magic - it's bending."

He creates a globe out of the water, floating in his palm, and then shapes that into a frozen turtleduck, which he offers to her. "Some people from my world can do it, but not everyone, and not everyone as good as I can," he croons. "I'm a waterbender."

[takingthechance]

She declines to take it, though she does study it curiously.

"It must be terribly useful, for fighting fires and such."

[hot_water]

"Fighting fires?" Tahno repeats, deep and rich. He presses his palm down on the air, melting the little whiskey animal and sending the resulting liquid on a slow, lazy arc from fingertip to fingertip.

"I guess," he says, rolling his shoulder in a graceful shrug. "Waterbendin' is good for a lotta different things. Fightin' fires, fightin' people, healing--shoot, some of the best bartenders around are waterbenders."

[i_am_your_host]

Some time after the above encounter between the driver and the waterbender, the Master of Ceremonies sidles up to the bar.

"Gin, bitte," he asks before receiving, and picking up his glass, he steps over to where Sam is sitting and holds out his hand.

"Come with me, darling. Take your drink."

Yes, hello and all that.

[takingthechance]

"I really don't think I'll be very good company, Emcee..." She protests, or warns, or something... but she does take his hand.

And brings her drink. It's good ale, and it's been a horrid few days, and she feels she's earned it.

[i_am_your_host]

"Oh, that's quite all right," he replies breezily. "I'll be enough good company for the both of us."

He leads her through the bar, toward the back door, and outside onto the porch. It's a beautiful clear night, the stars and galaxies in full view, the air crisp and cool. Guiding her to the porch steps, he invites her to sit down.

"If you're going to be staring into space, darling, I would rather have you staring at the actual thing."

[takingthechance]

It is... entirely strange. She used to star-gaze, see them shining down early in the morning or late at night, make up new constellations (somewhere her parents couldn't hear her - her mother thought it too fanciable, her father thought it disrespectful and silly). But she hasn't since the threat of war started, and certainly not since the bombing began. Somehow the knowledge that there could be a plane between you and the stars just takes all the fun out of it.

"They really are quite beautiful." She agrees after a long moment of enjoying the view.

[i_am_your_host]

During the silence, the Emcee lights up a cigarette, then leans back on his elbows on the step behind him to enjoy the view of the stars as well.

"They are, aren't they?" he agrees. "I've started coming out here to get away from things. Distractions, irritations, annoyances. Somehow even the biggest distraction, the fact that we are at the end of the universe, does not even register anymore."

[takingthechance]

"How very philosophical." She teases, her grin lopsided and wry and nudged along with the warm glow of the ale. "How have you been? It's been months since I last saw you."

[i_am_your_host]

"Philosophical? And this is only my third glass of gin today," he chuckles.

"And has it been months? My sense of the passage of time has been slightly warped, I believe. But I've been just fine. Even if it has been that long, you really have not missed much."

He's not lying. He's just not talking about it.

"What of yourself, darling?" he then asks, tipping his head back and exhaling a plume of cigarette smoke skyward. "Why so glum when I found you?"

[takingthechance]

"Months for me - it was June last time I saw you, now it's almost September." She explains helpfully.

She sips her ale - it gives her time to organize her thoughts.

"I'm not sure which is worse, really, though saying any of it is bad is sort of horrid in itself since there's so many other things going on and it doesn't matter much in the big picture but it matters to me so..."

Turns out she can babble just as well about things that make her upset as she can about things she enjoys. Go figure.

[i_am_your_host]

He lets her babble. For some people it's cathartic, and besides, he likes hearing someone else's voice besides his own for a change.

When she pauses to take a breath, or perhaps gather more thoughts for babbling, he says, "Well, if it matters to you, darling, then it matters, period. Of course there is always a big picture, but that doesn't mean that the details aren't important as well."

[takingthechance]

She considers that, with the aid of her drink.




"I'm to go to Lyminster tomorrow. My father has decided I need to come home."

[i_am_your_host]

He turns his head and blinks up at her, his brow slightly furrowed.

"Why?"

[takingthechance]

"Well, I'm not doing much for the war effort, directly, which is why he gave permission for me to volunteer in the first place, though police work is important he just doesn't see it that way. And he's spent a bit too much time talking to someone from the Ministry of Health and Safety."

...

Her situation was probably not helped one tiny bit by her incredibly ill-timed joke about robins and Wrens. Or about being Pregnant Without Permission ... Her father hadn't been amused.