milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Everyone's seen a ruined man, a hopeless man, walk into a bar.

They probably have never seen one walking in and standing so taut with pent-up...
something, that he looked as if he'd tear the head off of someone with the slightest provocation. Not that Vimes would do such a thing, but it was certainly what he looked like tonight. Deep, dark circles were under Vimes' eyes, and he was chewing fitfully on his cigar.

He barely noticed when he walked into Milliways--or rather he did, but he had so much else on his mind that he merely accepted it in an instant and walked up to the bar, sat down, and ordered some water.

He would not go home to sing to his son tonight. He had not in the last few weeks. He would not until he found the one responsible for his man's death and stopped him--really stopped him--at last.

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"Cuthbert Allgood. And no, you don't look like a man who's been experiencing terribly pleasant nights. My sympathies."

"I lost one of my men, a few weeks ago," Vimes said simply. "And I can't find the man who did it, even though I know who he is."

Cuthbert nods solemnly. "Aye, I know how that feels. I came here from the aftermath of a war. Saw a lot of good men die, and we did our best to avenge their deaths, but, well..." he trails off, waving a hand. "Say sorry, sai Vimes."

"S'not a war. I'm Commander of the City Watch," Vimes answered. "He was off-duty. He didn't have to die--the man who did it did it to get to me."

"Ah." Even harder, then. Cuthbert falls silent for a moment before speaking again. "Good man? Er, the one who died, I mean, not the one who killed him."

"Didn't even know him well. New recruit from Bönk," Vimes said. That made it worse somehow.

"...Ah." Bert nods again. "Towards the end of our fight, those of us who were left got to know each other pretty well, but in the war proper, I was in command of men for the first time. Hardly knew any of them, but...I remember how it felt when they died."

He takes a sip of his coffee, then adds, "'Course, that was still in war."

Vimes looked him up and down. "Why was there a war?" he asked.

Cuthbert stares down into his coffee, swirling it around in the cup slightly. "Well, it was a revolution, actually. Home got pretty well destroyed, even though we did our best to defend it."

Vime didn't nod or make any sound.

He understood revolutions.

And lilacs and the importance of a hard-boiled egg.

"Was it worth it?" he asked.

Cuthbert is silent for a moment, thinking of the fall of Gilead and the years of desperate skirmishes that followed--and then nods.

"Aye. We were charged with keeping the light of civilization, and we did it right up to the end, even after we knew the fight was lost."

"Sounds like it it was a fight with fighting," Vimes said simply. That was something he could get behind, a basic fight of good versus evil, simple, black and white. Humans beings were so much more complicated.

Another nod. "If I had the chance to go back and avoid it...to, I don't know, travel somewhere the fighting wouldn't have reached...I wouldn't. Even if I knew beforehand how it would end."

"How did it end?" Vimes asked.

Cuthbert hesitates for a moment. He doesn't know how much of a regular Vimes is, or if he knows that a lot of patrons are dead. But then, Vimes seems like a man who could handle a shock well.

"We died. All but one of us."

He handled shock well indeed.

"And then you came here?" he asked.

Bert nods. "A lot of folk, do, it seems. It's not such a bad place to be, after what living conditions were the last few years of my life."

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