milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

Ray meant to go home to sleep last night, for various reasons, but when Egon saw how pale and wobbly Ray was, he essentially pushed Ray right back into Milliways. It's not a good time of year to expect a full night's sleep and Ray's not recovered enough from the battle yet to make that worthwhile. Soon, but not just yet.

So the short version is that he comes down from upstairs instead of in from the front door. He's back to the cargoes- his leg's not hurting him any more- but the black T-shirt is still the loose, easy-fitting one, as his shoulder's a little cranky yet. Doesn't stop him from getting a decent bowl of oatmeal and a cup of hot chocolate that smells like it wants to leap out of the mug and set someone on fire, though.

Now to find somewhere to eat breakfast. There's a nice table over there. That'll do.

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Ray thinks for a bit.

"Yeah, that all pretty much grows out of the demon battle," he decides at last. "Master Qui-Gon said that the Jedi trial usually involves sending an apprentice into a combat situation against nearly impossible odds. If they survive without going completely bugnuts Dark Side, they pass. I'm pretty sure there are other aspects, too, but I'm not going to argue with a Jedi Master about whether I qualify or not... Anyway, now the battle's over, I have time to learn to use explosives properly. Which I seem to recall was my primary argument against asking for them in the first place."

He smiles beatifically and sips his hot chocolate.

Ace grins.
"Well, if you're gonna be so attached t'your fingers as all that..." It's teasing, but she lets up pretty quick. "Congrats, Ray. Y'goin'ta go 'round in a robe an' hand-wave us all into submission now?"

Okay, so maybe the teasing isn't over yet.

"I can live without a finger or two," Ray says. "I'm not a hobbit, but I can manage without a few fingers. It's the legs and arms I wanna keep." He bends over and rolls up his right trouser leg. Something with a very large dental arcade bit him in such a manner as to leave a double row of tooth scars; the outer is relatively even and was once many quite deep wounds, but the inner is the marks of snaggled, crooked, generally horrible teeth. "And no. I've got the robes and I'll wear them at some point, but I haven't got any Force sensibility now, any more than I did when I started. I'm as head-blind as a cantaloupe."

Ace whistles, bending down to get a better look at the damage.
"Something seriously wanted you for dinner, Ray." She eyes the bite marks, and extrapolates roughly what the size of the creature that owned them must have been.

"..."

She fishes a Yorkie bar out of her coat pocket and quietly hands it over. He's earned it.

Ray accepts the chocolate and starts breaking it into manageable pieces. "There were six of them," he adds. "Although the one that got my shoulder didn't have quite so many teeth, so it just tried to rip that off. That's not as impressive a scar, but it's not bad either. And there was the one that spat venom. That was no fun at all."

He pops part of the chocolate into his mouth.

"I don't know how many of them there ultimately were, but I got a lot of the ones from that portal before it closed. And we won, so that's good too."

"That's brilliant, actually. An' without losin' any of ours, t'boot. Can't beat that." Ace comes from the universe of hopeless fights. She's perfectly willing to take a victory like Ray describes.

Ray nods. "Some of Michael Guerin's people from Antar died, but that was the extent of it, I think. Given that we were up against a demon army, like in the thousands or tens thereof, I'd say that's not too bad in terms of numbers- not that it doesn't suck for poor Michael, but you know what I mean." He rolls his trouser leg back down. "It could've been a lot worse."

"I'd say so, yes." Worse, in so many different ways. But she's not going there willingly.

"So what are y'doin' with yourself, now that y've got some time off?"

"Uh..." Ray thinks. "Enforced idleness is drivingme buggy, so I'm planning out a possible hockey rink, working up the rosters for Australian Indoor-Rules Quidditch, greeting newcomers, and trying not to fret about people I haven't seen in a long time. Which doesn't always work as well as it should so it's usually back to the sports as soon as that starts."

"Yeah, the bar does make for a horrid place t'meet up with people sometimes. What's... Austrialian Indoor Rules Quidditch?" She pronounces the name carefully, mostly because she's fairly sure she heard it wrong.

"Two teams, two balls- one red, one yellow," says Ray. "The balls are the kind that flash when they hit something solid. The game is played in a dark room. You get one point if you hit someone on the other team with your team's ball, two points if you hit them with their own. The game ends at fifty points or when someone opens the door and demands to know what the hell is going on."

He's had a lot of time to work on this.

Ace laughs, clearly liking this idea.
"Count me in, Ray. An' if we get kicked out here, I'm sure the TARDIS can put up something suitable." Poor TARDIS. She's so put-upon.

"Fantastic," Ray says. "Snow signed up the kids for it. About the only thing I"m going to add to the basic rules is that the game pauses for getting unconscious or injured players out of the room, you can't bring anyone else in if you have to pull someone out of the game for injury, and no use of magic spells or telekinetic powers on the ball or the other players. You wanna do that, go play actual Quidditch with the actual wizards."

"Sounds good t'me. S'like laser tag, with more of bent for grenades." And. Well.

One mad Britsh bomber, right here. It sounds like the best game ever to her.

Ray grins. "Yeah. We'll have to see how it goes. I've never actually played it with more than two people, so we may wind up having to just play to twenty points or something..."

And then the smile fades, and the stuff that started gnawing at him last night in the wee small hours of the morning slides smoothly into the speech queue.

"Ace? Have you- just by chance, or in passing or something, or anything- have you seen or heard from Romana lately? Like in the past, I dunno, month and a half?"

Ace frowns, thinking back over the last few times she's been in her own 'verse.

"No, but it's a big 'verse. Why, haven't you gotten any word at all?"

Ray shakes his head. "Nothing," he says quietly, eyes on his drink. "Nothing at all. I left her a note before I went to the war, but I don't know if she ever got it or not. I thought maybe she'd been there when I came back and collapsed, but there wasn't anything concrete, and it's not like her not to leave a note. I'm starting to wonder if she's decided that I was a mistake after all, and she just doesn't know how to put it across."

He's, uh, he's just going to be swallowing about half of what's left in that mug about now, okay? Yeah.

Ace winces, quietly cursing under her breath. She was afraid of something like this happening.

"Well. Um. How much do y'know about Gallifreyan physiology?" And history, oh let's not forget history. Ace resists the urge to facepalm at that thought.

"Enough to hope that all that's happened is that she's regenerated and forgotten me entirely," Ray says. "I could live with that. I won't be happy, but at least she'll be alive and out there somewhere and her new self."

He was up pretty late last night thinking this one through.

She bites her lip. She doesn't want to tell him, but honestly, he'll find out sooner or later.

"Well. Um. There's another option." No, this doesn't sound like a good option.

At all.

"If it's that she regenerated and the rearrangement that comes with the process is what made her decide she'd obviously been insane to carry on the way she did-"

More chocolate.

"-I've already considered that."

"Um. Well yes, that's happened. But..." She frowns. Why can't she just convince him that yes, she must have regenerated and forgotten him, and let him get on with it believing that she's happy somewhere?

Because she never could lie to someone like that. Hell.

Ray would lift a single eyebrow if he were physically capable.

"I have a very good imagination, Ace," he says quietly. "If you don't finish that sentence I'm going to start finishing it for you, and it probably won't end well for what little mental stability a guy who spends his waking hours chasing ghosts and taking ichor samples can be said to have."

Shitshitshit. She shouldn't have ever gone down this road.

"You have t'promise me, Ray. If Romana comes back, ever, to this bar, you Will Not Say a Word about this. Any of it." For once, she's absolutely serious.

Ray looks at Ace for a while.

"That would be Bad, wouldn't it," he says at last; and if Ace has seen his movie, she'll know what it means to say Bad with a capital B. "All right. I promise."