milliways_bar | (no subject)

(ooc: tags because Svava! adn yeah, but also slowtime and morning answwers...)

There is a Hank McCoy, hoplding a guitar coming in from the cold outside. He played, he sang, he cried. Now, he is drinking nearby.

He lifts his glass in salute to her from his place.

Svava manages a faint smile, and lifts her own glass in return.

His voice is quiet when he speaks.

"You knew them well.?"

"Some of them, yes." Softly. "Susan and Alain, well."

He nods.

"I am afraid I did not. I saw their works and intereacted with them barely at all, but It wasnt hard to see them and know they were good people."

He smiles to himself for a moment, taking a sip of his drink.

"How did you meet them?"

He asks it softly as well.

"Here, of course." She smiles faintly. "I don't know their world, never been there. But... Susan, probably just around here, in the bar. I can't recall how, exactly."

Svava downs a good portion of her drink.

"Alain? In a fight, here. Some monsters tried to come in the door, from a place on of their friends was trapped in. We held them back until we could shut the door. Him, me, and many others."

Hank nods, listening.

"Sounds like an interesting way to meet someone."

He smiles into his cup.

"I am glad they will be missed, though not glad for those who will miss them. They seemed to brin a certain light into this place. And they deserve..."

He grasps for a term to say.

"...they deserve to be remembered.".

He finishes it lamely, and spreads his hands as if looking to them for answers. One small one comes to him as his glance catches on the guitar and he idly touches one string of it, hearing the deep sound.

"They will be." Svava nods slowly, looking down at her glass.

"By everyone here. We'll see to it- they left a lot of people behind here." Quietly.

He nods, and sighs a little.

"No matter where one goes, trhere will always be people leaving. Something I have found all my life. "

he shakes his ehad, then.

"What are you drinking, tonight?"

"That's the way of things, no matter what world or what time you're in." She shrugs a bit, then eyes her drink.

"Rum. Jack and Arithon introduced me to it."

"Ah, yes. A friend of mine, Remy, drinks it ocassionally. I prefer vodka, at least I do when it's my own brand."

He chuckles.

"Other than that, I believe I stick to coffee."

"Hot chocolate." Svava nods, with a bit of a wry smile. "Just that... well. Tonight."

She shrugs.

"For all this is a bar, very few people are usually drunk."

he nods, smiling slightly.

"True. It is more tavern, than Bar. Where I come from, Taverns have evolved into places where people gather to be together after work, to let off steam and only rarely get drunk. There are still regular bars for that, but there are a rising number of taverns."

He smiles, thinking of Harry's. He spent many a hour there in his youth.

He glances around.

"Seems like this is more a place to find yourself than lose yourself. Most days anyway."

"True, specially considering the children and families here." Svava nods. "People tend to be on much better behaviour overall."

She shrugs a bit, and gets a refill on her rum.

"... Not tonight."

He nods. He has been in similar places before. It is Svava's place and choice to drink and not his to interfere.

"Indeed. Some nights are for remembering others and for forgetting all else."

He turns slightly from the Bar, and places his claw picks carefully on his fingers. Then he lifts the guitar and plays quietly. It is an old melody and he doesnt sing or his voice would just ruin the song, but the music is quiet and somber and yet old and beautiful as he plays.

She does not drink that much. Just... well, this night calls for it. For once, at least.

Svava nods, and rests her head on one hand to listen to Hank play.

Archie is there of course, he'll always be there with her, but he is sitting there silent, shaken.

There are a couple of glasses of rum. Ultimately, you can blame her choice in drinks on Capt. Jack.

Rum in hand, and leaning against Archie.

His arms are around her, warm, there, but his mind is somewhere else, and he is oddly stiff, unmoving as she presses against him.

For a few minutes, she does not notice. Its perhaps as she is halfway down her second glass that Svava glances to him.

He hasn't touched his own. He's simply staring at it, as if it hold the answers to the questions he doesn't know how to ask, the fears he can't put names to.

Biting her lip, Svava reaches up to gently touch his face and pull him to look at her.

He is hesitant to look her in the eyes, and when he finally does, the blue is stormy, confused, and suspiciously bright.

He shakes his head and looks away again.

A quiet sigh, and she leans back against him again.

Second glass finished.

And he continues staring, because if he opens his mouth, the only sound that will come out will be either a sob or a scream, and he doesn't want to do that. Not here, not now. This is neither the time nor the place for a breakdown, so he sits stiffly with his arm around her, staring at his glass.

Svava starts on one more glass--

Before the tears finally start. Or are finally let go- they had been there for a while. The rum is pushed away, and she hides her face in her hands.

She weeps, and it rouses him into motion finally. She is in pain, and he must comfort her. Having something to concentrate on besides his own turmoil allows him to push it aside, ignore it. It is not gone, far from it, but forced back so that he may hold her in his arms and stroke her hair and murmur soft comforting noises with his lips pressed against her temple.

A sob, and she wraps her arms around Archie, holding him tightly. There is not much to even try to say, so the sobs are silent, shaking her.

He holds her close and shuts his eyes tightly against the prickling there. He barely knew them, true, but what he did know of them he honored. They were good people, and they deserve their rest, but that doesn't mean that there isn't an emptyness where they had been. The place seems a tiny bit colder, and for all the people that are still here, there are four that will never return.

Never return. That is what is finally hitting Svava. Only at Milliways has she had to start dealing with the concept of 'never again', and this was known, planned--

And they are still gone. To someplace wonderful, and peaceful, and she knows its good--

It is still goodbye forever.

And perhaps this is also part of what Archie's not really ready to deal with. He's dead. He's known that almost since the moment he walked throught the door to this place. He's almost gotten used to that fact, and now this. Now people are leaving. Leaving to theur eternal rest, leaving of their own accord. And part of Archie, the part that is so very tired, finds that appealing. And it absolutely terrifies him.

It is not a choice he's ready or willing to deal with at the moment. Maybe he never will be.

Svava knows that he will not leave her. With the very core of her being, she knows that. So there is some small comfort in this-

And woe as well. There are better places than Milliways, and he deserves that. Better places, while she has no other home but here, now.

Home is in her arms, her eyes, and at the end of everything, very simply, it is all he ever needs. All he ever wanted. A thousand years without her at least, and at the end all he wanted was a kiss. A hundred thousand, and that is all he would need. But it frightens him all the same that someday he might be asked to make a choice.

If there ever was that choice asked of him...

She would go with him.

But right now, she holds Archie tight, and weeps for the friends with 'never again'.

And so he holds her tight. Clings to her, really. Because she is solid and here and now, not some distant, imagined possibility of a future. She is now and she needs him, and so he holds her. He will do so for as long as she needs him to.