milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Lilly comes downstairs with a pad of paper and heads to the bar, where she receives a note with the coffee she ordered and the plate of healthy snacks she didn't. She reads it, once, and says several swear words in several different languages before picking up her coffee, snacks, and notepad and retreating to a back booth.

She'll be keeping an eye out for Sheila while she works on tomorrow's edition of the Say True... the first one she's editing by herself.

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Susan watches from the couch as Lilly settles down at the booth.

After a moment, she gets up and approaches.

"Wei, Lilly."

Lilly looks up and half-smiles at her.

"Wei, Susan. Want to join me? Bar gave me a bunch of food, I'll never eat it all."

"All right," she says quietly, sitting down. Susan hasn't been eating much lately either, say true -- likely for the same reason.

"How do'ee fare?"

It's far from an idle question.

"Okay," Lilly says, and it's not exactly true but it's also not exactly a lie.

"How about you?"

"I'm well enough." A beat, and she picks idly at a paradox. "Have'ee seen Andrew?"

This is also not an idle question.

Lilly nods, suddenly tense.

"Yeah, every day since... since I told him Meg was dead."

She looks down at her coffee.

"We're going to Paris tonight. To... to talk to Meg's mother."

Susan reaches across the table to take Lilly's hand.

"Do'ee want company, when ye go?"

Lilly smiles a little and shakes her head.

"Thanks, Susan, but I think it'll be okay. We don't want to... overwhelm her, you know?"

Especially not when news this bad is coming along with people from the bar that Madame Giry has never been particularly fond of.

"I kennit, aye." Softly, very softly.

Susan is remembering Fran Lengyll and the others who came to tell her and Aunt Cord about her da's

(murder)

accident, and how the little house had seemed to choke her as she heard.

A pause. "If ye talk to him before I do, then, as seems mayhap likely... would'ee tell him-- tell him I'd see him?"

"Sure," Lilly says, looking more closely at her.

"Is... oh god, has something else happened?"

She shakes her head hastily.

"It's naught what ye may be thinking, Lilly-- it's naught bad, I promise thee."

"I -- I talked to her da', and-- and I thought Andrew would want to hear, do'ee ken?"

Lilly freezes.

"You talked to Desire? Is... is-"

She breaks off.

"Meg's there, right? Dancing?"

not here please say she's not here please say she didn't hear me crying didn't stay please please please

Her hand tightens on Lilly's in a measure of comfort.

"She's there. She's-- she's dancing, say true." A soft breath, and then she confesses,

"I-- I saw her. Desire showed me, in --"

(the glass the moon was pink)

"-- in a seeing-stone, shaped like a heart."

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Gil is carrying a book, and looking for a quiet place to read, when he spots her. Studying can wait. (Besides, if he really meant to study, he'd stay in his room, right?)

"Good evening, Lilly," he says.

Lilly glances up.

"Hey, Gil. How's it going?"

"I think it's going as well as can be expected. I saw your paper, I'm so terribly sorry to hear about your friend. If there's anything I can do, please tell me."

"Thanks," Lilly says, glancing down at her papers.

"It's cool of you, but... nothing to do, really."

Just getting used to her being gone now.

He shrugs. "Even if you just wanted to talk. About Meg, or anything else."

Gil smiles a small smile at her. He has a pretty nice smile.

It is nice. It even gets a small smile in return, briefly.

"I'm... I'm writing about her for the paper. I think that'll be um. Enough."

Maybe even more than enough.

"Probably," he agrees. "I'll look for your next issue."

A double meaning in that perhaps, talking to a person from Neptune, but Gilbert doesn't mean for there to be one.

Easy to overlook even if he had meant it.

"It comes out tomorrow," Lilly says. "We're doing a weekly. I think tomorrow we're going to start selling subscriptions, too."

"Really?" asks Gil. "It must be doing very well, then. A useful thing to have, a newspaper."

Gil is not as good at small talk as Anne is. But he's trying.

"It is, yeah."

Lilly smiles a little.

"Also it's the only one in the bar, so that helps."

He smiles. "I cannot imagine anyone being brave enough to start a paper to rival one run by you, Lilly," he says. It's meant as a compliment. He hasn't known her long, but he's figured that much out.