milliways_bar | (no subject)

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A young Jim Moriarty enters the bar looking thoughtful today. He's dressed like a student, carrying a bookbag and with (fake) glasses on his nose. He takes a coffee from Bar and goes to sit by the Observation Window, but he doesn't look out of it. He empties the bag of its contents, and sits there looking at that instead.

It's money. A thick stack of fifty pound notes, easily making the tens of thousands. Jim...doesn't look happy about it, or dismissive, or much of anything really. Faintly quizzical, perhaps. After a while he draws his knees up to his chest and puts his chin on them, still watching the pile like it might stand up and do something interesting.

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"No. Oh, no. No."

The horror.

"Conner and his super friends lost their mentor and guess who had the biggest place for them to stay at?"

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, but all right.’

Other people, blah blah.

‘Why don’t you just kick them out if you don’t like it?’

Oh.

"Conner's my brother, sort of nephew person? And he's in with a group of super kids we've found over the years."

Which should explain everything.

"I can't kick them out. They have nowhere else to go."

‘Do I want to know how he’s your brother and nephew at the same time? But I suppose you are from Louisiana.’

It was right there to be said, so he said it. And her final remark gets exactly what she might expect, which is another shrug and an expression that clearly says, so?

"It's Lex's fault."

That really should explain everything.

"I can't throw them out. The last thing I need is seven teenagers with super powers running amok on my planet."

Jim thinks he would really rather like to meet Lex. His older self has had the same thought more than once.

‘How do you know they’d run amok? It might make them grow up.’

"Most of them have a history of doing it. It's usually been how we've found them."

She sighs softly.

"They had a mentor who was helping them grow up as a team, but he's dead now."

‘Did they kill him?’

Maybe he’d like to meet these kids too. He’s the last person who’s going to suggest teenagers shouldn’t be allow to run free.

"No!"

These are the good kind of teenagers, not like her group of bad teenagers who met unfortunate ends.

"He was old. His heart gave out."

‘Then find them another one, if it means that much to you.’

They can’t be that hard to find, can they?

"Yes, because are just so many legendary heroes willing to train and parent seven strange children walking around."

Jay had been hard enough to convince.

‘Then they’re not really legendary heroes, are they?’

Jim waves a hand, dismissive.

‘Mentors are overrated anyway. They’ll be fine.’

"Most of them are dead or still being heroes."

She shakes her head.

"None of them have ever had stability in their lives."

‘Also overrated.’

Stability is fucking boring.

‘Do they even want it?’

"I'm not keeping them prisoner."

For once.

"They can leave whenever they want."

'Well then, hurray for caring adoptive parents, you can feel good about yourself and still enjoy having your house to yourself when they're gone.'

He is still on 'other people, blah blah' in his head.

'What are you planning to do with your few days of luxurious solitude?'

"I haven't decided yet. Probably just get some work done."

Yes, she's still as exciting as ever.

Jim looks at her like she's mental. Because she is.

'What a complete and utter waste of time. Most things are, but that especially so. What's the point of even being happy they're gone?'

"And what would you suggest I do?"

'Literally anything else?'

He's being a bitch because he is a bitch, but none of this is said in a nasty tone.

'Go water skiing. Pick up a stranger in an airport bar. Read a book. Invent something. Anything you wouldn't normally do when there are other people around.'

She snorts softly at the idea of hanging around an airport bar, but she gets what he means.

"I do still have to work. Just because they're on holiday doesn't mean I am, too."

'I've never met anyone who needed a holiday more than you.'

Jim considers life a holiday and doesn't actually take them himself - but he considers everyone else 'normal', and that's what normal people do.

She shrugs.

"Duty calls. I can't ignore that."

'You really can.'

She really, really can.

'What's so important you have to have no life?'

She really, really won't.

"Saving the world. I think I've mentioned this before."