milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Adam has finally decided to come out of his room, figuring that staying up there as a form of social protest against being Bound is...just not working.

So now he's sitting at the bar with a soda, a slice of pizza and a copy of Alastair Reynolds' Chasm City.

Bother at will. Especially if you're a schizophrenic harpist. Because that would just make Adam's day.

Really.

~~No it wouldn't.~~

[OOC: Mun going for dinner and movie. Back later tonight.]

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Asmodean is sitting, almost curled up in a booth rather near Adam. His eyes dart around the room.

He seems very nervous and distracted. He mutters to himself on occasion.

Alerted by the muttering, Adam looks around.

Ohhhhhh fuck. Oh, fuckfuckfuck.

This guy is scary enough when he doesn't appear outwardly unhinged. Now, Adam fully expects to be attacked at any moment.

Where's Chloe? Chloe? Oh my god, somebody help...

Asmodean doesn't look like he's trying to intimidate someone.

He looks frightened.

He puts a hand up to his mouth, and mutters a little more audibly.

"Stop talking to me."

"I--I'm not. I didn't say anything to you. I'm not doing anything, okay?" He tries to keep his voice level and rational, like he would when trying to calm a dangerous, unstable terrorist. Not that he's ever done that.

He isn't armed...he doesn't have any pencils this time...

Asmodean shook his head. He glanced away suspiciously.

"Not you. Them, the hard ones, the bad ones, the dead ones."

He's afraid of the dead people here?

"Nobody's trying to hurt you," he says cautiously. "The...the dead people here aren't...evil, or anything..."

He shook his head.

"The dead ones are some of the worst, Aginor and Balthamel, dead at the World's Eye. Lost friends. Living are bad too, Demandred, and Semirhage. She likes to hear them scream."

He shuddered slightly.

"Elan Morin's dead, but he's here. Heart of the Dark, Soul of the Shadow. He poisoned people, they say. The Bauers and such. Nearly killed me, now he has Lady Shelley."

Batshit. Completely, utterly, totally batshit.

"Wait--" He pauses, not trying to make sense of that, but--

"What about the Bauers?"

He giggled as he curled up slightly.

"Toys, that is what they are to him. He's the Betrayer of Hope. The Bauers and the others, all of us, we are toys to him."

He glanced away.

"They say he was behind whomever poisoned Jack... He breaks minds, you know. Twists them, he comes in dreams."

Adam edges away a little bit, having no idea how much of this to take literally--if any--or whether he's going to be attacked at any point. That giggling is unbelievably unnerving.

"I--maybe he's not really here," he says, trying to sound reassuring. Maybe you're just hallucinating. Because you're CRAZY.

"And he can't hurt you here, can he? You're safe."

He has no idea what he's talking about.

He laughed rather happily.

"Of course, he can... He nearly killed me a month back, broke both my legs... Still have scars."

He shook his head.

"Mind, he damaged my memories... Nearly killed a little girl, a little girl I love... Nearly killed Lady Chris Chappelle for fun. Lord Jack nearly killed her."

Ohhhhh jesus.

"I--but why can't someone do something about it?" He shakes his head, bemused.

He's getting the vague impression that this sounds like a problem a little beyond what Security would be dealing with.

"The little girl...is she okay now?"

He hopes she is, or that'll have been a really stupid question to ask.

His brow furrowed.

"Suppose so... Still here, not as close as we once were..."

A pause. He glanced away slightly.

"I miss her."

"I--I'm sorry?"

He's not scared anymore. Just feeling rather out of his depth.

He shook his head.

"No matter... She is all right. She is happier this way."

He isn't.

"I would not want anything else."

"Who is she?" he asks quietly. He doesn't know what to say to all this, but he feels drawn in for some reason.

His brow furrows slightly. His voice worried slightly.

"Nita Callahan... It should not have been like this... She deserved better."

He doesn't know the name.

"You...said she's happy now, though?"

He thinks he should try to get out of this conversation, as he has no idea what he's talking about. He can't really try to be reassuring if he doesn't know the situation.

He nodded calmly.

"Yes, she is, and I could not ask for anything else."

"Yeah."

Adam gets up from the table, feeling...very strange.

And no longer terrified that Asmodean is going to stab him with a pencil at any moment.

"I'm going to go...I hope you feel better." And he does mean that.

He nods, still glancing around slightly suspiciously.

"I will be fine... Perhaps, not well-rested, but well enough."

How about a dead boss?

Ryan notices Adam at the bar and nods. "Hey, Adam. Didn't know you were here."

Adam jumps.

He knows there are dead people here, but he's never actually met one. Ohhh, creepy.

"Hi, Mr. Chappelle," he says, a little shakily. "Yeah, I've...I don't come down to the Bar much."

Ryan just nods and smiles a bit. He's forgotten how people he knew tended to act when they met him again.

At least he has an idea of when Adam was here from.

"Ryan's fine. So how long have you been here?"

"Um..." He thinks. "A while, actually. A few weeks. It's hard to keep track."

Ryan nods.

"Yeah, that's one of the things that makes Milliways difficult to get used to."

"I guess as long as I'm not actually missing months of work or anything, I'm...kind of okay with not being able to leave."

He glances guiltily up at Ryan, not sure if that's quite what one wants to be saying to one's boss.

Like Ryan cares anymore.

"This makes as decent a vacation spot as any. One of the few good things about it is time doesn't seem to move outside."

"Yeah, that's what Tony said. I've been trying to figure out how that works, but it doesn't make any sense, so I just gave up." He shrugs.

"I guess it's pretty cool. I mean, there are talking cars here!"

*Has no anti-dancing banana icon*

Woe.

"Yeah, not much about this place makes sense."

"It is cool, though. I wanted to go find KARR again and ask him some more stuff." Adam has cheered up considerably.

"Chloe said something about there being fictional characters here, too? Like the Harry Potter characters? Is that true, or was Chloe just being weird?"

"I wouldn't know the Harry Potter characters unless they told me... But I know that Star Wars characters are here. I went on a mission with a woman who's apparently Luke Skywalker's wife. And my daughter met another one of them I never heard of... Maze Windu?"

Ryan's knowledge of pop culture stalled around 1992.

Ryan, you have just made Adam's entire life.

"This. Is. So. Cool."

Um. Dignity. Right.

"Do any of them know there are books and movies about them? I mean, that would be incredibly weird for them, wouldn't it?"

He grins a little that.

"Yeah, I think so. The Star Wars people know. I don't know about the others. It varies."

"Well, if I didn't like this place before, I definitely do now." He grins.

"Like I said, it has it's perks."

"Yeah." He gets up, and tucks his book under his arm. "I'm going to go look around. Nice talking to you, Mr. Chappelle."

He's probably going to keep forgetting to call him 'Ryan.'

"You too, Adam."

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