milliways_bar | (no subject)

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(OOC: Following this bit of Canonpuncture and breakage ...)

Clarice is hunched up in a chair by the fire, still wearing her sundress. She has not changed clothes. She has not slept. She reads her copy of "Silence of the Lambs" with a kind of desperate attention, but every so often she has to set it down.

[Summary: Clarice is broken, broken, broken. Meg and Angua give her practical advice, she confesses some things to Barry, she ~~therapizes~~ talks to Ron about Harry and being fictional, the Opera Ghost serenades her creepily, and Aziraphael is at a loss for advice.]

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"Never," Angua admits. "But I'd hate it to. I have some pretty dark secrets I wouldn't want airing. Especially not to the criminals of the city. It would make my job almost impossible."

"That's how I feel," Clarice replies with more energy than she's displayed thus far in the conversation. "I have ... I guess you could call him a patient-- and there are people I want to help. Now I don't know if I can do that."

As long as it doesn't mean he's shooting at you with silver bolts.

"Help them how? And why can't you?"

"There are a few people," Clarice says, gesturing vaguely. "A man who's had some kind of breakdown. A boy whose friend is harassed. A ... man who has violent episodes. And I feel like if I got myself into this, who am I to try and help anybody? What are my qualifications?"

Angua frowns.

"You didn't get yourself into anything. Some sick sort of wizard wrote a book about your feelings. That doesn't make your qualification any less. You're still you."

Clarice sighs.

"It gets a little more complicated than that," she says. "I knew that he knew something. I could have stopped going to him, and I should have ... but I thought I knew how to handle it. I was stupid."

Angua frowns, having completely lost the thread of the conversation.

"Going to him?"

"He's in jail here," Clarice explains. "I was hired to talk to him ... try and integrate him back into the bar community."

"Oh," Angua pauses. Integrating people back into the community is something Carrot's introduced to Ankh-Morpork, but not for dangerous psychopaths.

"You think someone like that can be integrated?"

"Here he can," Clarice says, "because of the unique capabilities of so many of the patrons. Back in my world? I'd say not."

"Unique capabilities in what way?" Angua's still fairly new to the bar.

"Magic spells. Special powers. We even ... well, we've even got an angel in the bar. And, from what I hear, the devil." Clarice shrugs. "With them around, one cannibal is not so daunting."

Angua nods. She knows special powers, she has them herself. She also knows that she's weak compared to other patrons.

"Well, if you put it like that, I suppose there's a point."

Clarice nods, frowning.

"So I went. And I talked to him. He told me things ... I was very irresponsible with the knowledge I had," she says.

"Irresponsible? How?"

"Because he told me something that he couldn't possibly have known," she says. "And I was scared, sure-- it was impossible that he could know it. But I didn't stop going and I didn't tell anyone." She smiles humorlessly. "How smart was that?"

Angua frowns.

"Sounds like..." and she stops as realisation hits. "Oh. Is that in the book?"

"What he told me?" Clarice asks. She frowns. "Yes. I ... I flipped through the whole thing until I found it. Page 363."

"I meant," Angua pauses.

"The reason you kept going back. That sounds distinctly familiar behaviour to me."

"It was my job," Clarice says. "I do my job, if that's what you mean."

"So you're not smart because it's your job?"

"That wasn't the same thing," Clarice says, irritated. She calms down quickly, however. "At the time, I was just so worried that they didn't trust me-- Security, I mean-- that when I shoud have come to them with information, I didn't. I wanted to show that I could handle it myself. And that just made me less trustworthy."

Angua nods.

"OK, Yes, that was stupid. But it's also understandable. You want so hard to show you're capable fo cracking a case on your own, that you don't ask for help where you'd need it."

"The problem's that you just can't do that with him," Clarice says. "I was warned before I even met him not to let him in my head-- and then I did."

She sighs. "Thanks for listening. This isn't going to get easy anytime soon."

"No problem," Angua smiles a little. It's a relief to talk about something that isn't Carcer. "Good luck with it all."

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no-more-chianti.livejournal.com - 2005-05-08 12:56 (UTC) - Expand

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