(no subject)

[mister-vimes.livejournal.com]

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.

Comments

[mister-vimes.livejournal.com]

"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.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

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."

[mister-vimes.livejournal.com]

"How did it end?" Vimes asked.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

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."

[mister-vimes.livejournal.com]

He handled shock well indeed.

"And then you came here?" he asked.

[key-youth-bert.livejournal.com]

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."