Open Post: Hooked On A Feeling

[rememberettersberg]

What hobbies have you got? Susan had asked him, and he had to admit to not being sure. At school and for some time after, he played rugby. More recently, he only watched it on the television Peter had set up in the tech cave. Here at the mansion, he has books and research and the beginnings of mentoring, but it occurs to Nightingale that he has been building himself a facsimile of work and very little else. He's survived that way for half a century and been perfectly all right (though others may disagree with that assessment) but here, in this hinterland between realities, he is feeling a growing itch for... whimsy, perhaps.

At this moment, propping up the bar with a pint of bitter and a crochet hook, no one would dare accuse him of being whimsical. Nightingale is scowling fiercely at the hook, the yarn, his pint, and the book sitting open beside it. Company would be more than welcome.

Comments

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale affects a tone of spooky solemnity, eyes twinkling. "She appears to glide instead of walk, she hisses instead of speaking, her teeth are too many and too sharp." He laughs. "I'm given to understand that she resembles a certain character trope from horror films - a silent, pale, ghostly girl with long black hair. Peter, my apprentice, is fond of her but startled by her sudden presence in a room at least three times a week."

[ravkanwitch]

She laughs a little bit. "Fine. Have it your way. I think we'll just need to figure out where to set up a stage."

[timebethine]

"And tell me more of Peter," Laertes urges. "How long has he been your apprentice? Is he diligent and careful with your arts?"

[rememberettersberg]

"That sounds dire indeed." It's the scope of it that's terrifying. Nightingale has dealt with creatures of similar aims, but nothing quite so encompassing. "And where do you return to this tale?"

[wickedwit]

Claudius can't be blamed for having a slight shiver at Nightingale speaking with conviction, can he? It's a brief break, from being absorbed in thinking through possible schemes and ways to spin this in the right direction. For now, he looks Nightingale over and appreciates. "I'm glad we're of a mind on this," he says, after a moment. "And I think we were making promising connections, when last we spoke. We still should speak to Aziraphale, and see whether you were right about Enjolras and Grantaire. Any information is valuable, since information is my currency here -- and, hopefully, it brings us closer to understanding why we're all in this mansion."

[rememberettersberg]

"I've heard rumours of a cafe being set up. Would that be large enough? Obviously we'd need the approval of the founders, but I think a certain charming young woman of my acquaintance could manage that."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale laughs again, bright and unfettered. "Diligent and careful are words I imagine Peter to be utterly unfamiliar with. He's impulsive, cheeky, easily distracted, and apt to set things on fire." Fondness permeates every word. "He's also as smart as a whip and has tremendous potential as a practitioner. We've been working together for almost a year and a half."

[timebethine]

"I understand better now why you've had such patience with me," Laertes laughs. "How did you find each other? Was he another young man barging into your home and demanding to be taught silversmithing and magic?"

[rememberettersberg]

"Yes, you're quite right. There's no point in worrying about this woman until we can ascertain whether she has any kind of jurisdiction over us." Nightingale pauses thoughtfully. "She might even be from fiction herself. Many of our fellow residents seem to have hopped between stories, with varying states of self-awareness."

[involuntaryturncoat]

"Over the next century or so, society slipped into decline, with an increasing number of people, including many highly regarded ones, publicly pledging themselves to the Dark One. It eventually plunged into war, the first the world had known in an Age. Ten years of that until, with the the forces of Shadow creeping towards victory, roughly a hundred male Aes Sedai, led by Lews Therin Telamon, known as the Dragon, launched a desperate gambit to attempt to reseal the bore. It did work, sealing away not only him but thirteen of his most powerful followers who happened to be meeting at the time."

He pauses in thought, as he was not in fact personally present for the rest. "There was, however, a reprisal. As the Dark One was being sealed away, he reached back through the power they were using and tainted saidin. The surviving members of the men involved in the strike were driven mad immediately. The rest of the male Aes Sedai would inexorably follow over the next few hundred years. Imagine madmen with phenomenal power running rampant worldwide. Cities were leveled, mountains created and destroyed, the landscape itself would change until it was unrecognizable. That time is now known as the Breaking of the World."

He shrugs. "Since then, Aes Sedai, now by necessity all women, have hunted down men who can wield saidin and severed them from the Source, to prevent the same from happening again."

[wickedwit]

"That's what I asked her, and even she acknowledged it might be possible." He shakes his head. "And you know I didn't acknowledge it nearly as quickly, when you suggested I was from a fiction. I suppose that's the benefit of being from a world with jurisfiction agents and travel between books. Do you think the rules of her world might not apply to us?"

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale snorts. "He was a young police trainee sent to guard a crime scene. He took a witness statement from someone who turned out to be a ghost and hared off on his own unofficial investigation. Dragged another trainee along with him for the ride." His face darkens momentarily at that, but he moves on without further comment. "I caught wind of it quickly and got him recruited into the Special Assessment Unit, which is the Met's impressive euphemism for the Folly these days. The entire case was riddled with the uncanny and Peter turned out to have a knack for sensing magic... and using it too."

[ravkanwitch]

“I’m not sure if I’d say that Enjolras - the one setting the cafe up - is charmed by me,” Nina says, a little wryly (he seems more annoyed than anything - but a fun annoyed; Nina can work with that). “I can ask him, though. That’s a great idea! It certainly seems like a large enough space.”

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale takes some time to process this, considering the entirety of the tale as he gets up to fetch them both a drink. "I can't begin to imagine what it's like to be a part of such utterly world-shaking events," he says. "You said you missed much of the intervening time between then and your present - were you one of the men sealed away?"

[involuntaryturncoat]

"Men and women both, but yes, I was. We woke to a world... very unlike the one that we fell asleep in, in many ways."

[timebethine]

"It's clear you have a great interest in his career," says Laertes. He guesses from the context that police means a constabulary. "Is he a personal friend, as well as a colleague and an apprentice?"

[rememberettersberg]

"Unless we originate from her world, I don't see that we're any of her business," Nightingale replies. The temporal implications of all this are starting to give him a headache. "And unless she's hiding some involvement with the mansion, how could she be sure that we were? I think we simply need to keep her on side and see what she does. Perhaps she does have the key to moving between our own homes and here."

[rememberettersberg]

"He's not the easiest person to read," Nightingale agrees. "Let's hope that he's amenable then. I'd hope he'd be glad to see it getting some use."

[rememberettersberg]

"How long were you locked away?" Nightingale sets a glass of beer down for each of them. "And how did you come to escape?"

[rememberettersberg]

"I'd like to think so," Nightingale says. "He's much younger than I and we've lived incredibly different lives, but we get along well enough. He's brought life back into the Folly."

[timebethine]

"If you return, will you seek out other apprentices?" Laertes asks, a little more quietly. "Forgive my rudeness, but at times you seem ... very lonely."

[wickedwit]

"Shen Qingqiu also described himself as visiting a world of fiction," Claudius says, musing aloud. "It changed how I saw our roles in relation to our destinies -- preordained things like Galahad claiming the Holy Grail¹. But I don't believe it was merely poetic distancing on his part. Luo Binghe's world truly was a fictional story to him." Claudius rather hopes the course of this investigation doesn't lead to Claudius finding more ways to sympathize with Luo Binghe. But he can't remember, from his laudanum-addled confessions to Nightingale, whether he ended up telling Nightingale the full blood parasites story. Sighing, he moves past that thought. "Shen Qingqiu's someone else we could talk to. I can imagine him very matter-of-factly saying he's been keeping track of how many book canons are represented here for months. And he might know more about ..." Claudius waves a hand. "Interfictional forces and jurisdictions, if those exist."

¹ Which just sounds like a literary metaphor when you're not literally dating Galahad from before he claimed the Holy Grail.

[ravkanwitch]

"Thank you for suggesting the idea," Nina says, quite earnestly, out of the blue. "I know you immediately wanted to retract the suggestion... but I think it'll be fun for everyone. We need some light-heartedness around here."

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale's first instinct is to protest, suffused with a quiet sort of shame at being so perceived, but then the question hits him, forcing the breath out of his lungs. "I had a second apprentice," he admits. "A colleague of Peter's, the one who went along with his initial investigation. Lesley was... horribly injured in the line of duty, unable to continue working with the police. Peter had demonstrated the process of lux for her - completely without permission, of course - and she turned out to be an incredibly swift learner. Just before I came here, we discovered that she had betrayed us, allying herself with a dangerous dark practitioner."

[rememberettersberg]

"He does seem the most likely person to have heard of them." Nightingale makes a little face of displeasure. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about your play more gently upon our first meeting. These recent developments have shown me how unpleasant it is to confront such a possibility." He's thinking about Peter's Harry Potter jokes and his own I'm not a fictional character refrain in response to them. If anyone's the Harry Potter of their story, it's Peter, he decides. Perhaps he should read the damned things while he's here.