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

[wickedwit]

"Nightingale! Just the man I hoped to find," Claudius says, in that walk-and-talk tone he usually reserves for sharing developments with Crowley. He sidles up to the bar, and launches straight to the point. "Circumstances have shifted since last we spoke, and we may need to convene and strategize our next steps -- before or after speaking to Aziraphale. Are you busy now? What are you working on?" he asks with new curiosity, noticing the crochet hook and yarn. "Are you and Laertes exchanging pasttimes now?" Has Claudius ever seen Laertes crochet? No. Does it seem like something Laertes might pick up? Yes, absolutely.

[rememberettersberg]

"I had the idiotic idea to pick up a hobby," Nightingale says sourly. "It won't happen again." He perks up a little as he processes the rest of Claudius' speech, gaining a focused kind of stillness in anticipation of learning more. "What do you mean? What circumstances?"

[wickedwit]

"Oh, good, I have more work for you, so you needn't worry about having any more time for hobbies," Claudius says, a quick and idle joke before returning to business. "We have a new arrival. Aornis¹, a jurisfiction agent from London. It's worth asking, since you do solve magical crimes in London -- are you familiar with any jurisfiction agents, or is this something outside your experience? According to her, they enter books and fix infractions in literature, in what sounds like a material manner. She could describe what the inside of a book looked like, and how fictional characters behave."

¹ Ping!

[rememberettersberg]

"A jurisfiction agent?" Nightingale repeats, eyebrows hitting his hairline. "Certainly a new one on me. Then again, so were the jazz vampires." He shakes his head, frowning. "What kind of infractions does she fix? Does she know why we're here? Is she part of it?"

[wickedwit]

Tell me the story about the jazz vampires is something to save for another day. Instead he goes right to answering Nightingale's questions, counting them off on his fingers. "As I understand it, infractions are narrative in nature -- divergences from, and inconsistencies with, the original plot. The kind that might be produced, for example, by the villain of Hamlet absconding after the inciting incident of the play. She doesn't know why we're here, but she does know of a crime where characters were abducted from their books and placed inside another. She suspected the mansion was a book at first, because of how orderly it is, without visible imperfections. I don't know whether she's a part of it -- she claimed to be as trapped here as we are, with one or two potential routes of escape she needs to investigate further. I asked her to involve Tress, because Tress wants to escape, and ... can I be honest with you, Nightingale?" It's more of a nervous tic than a sincere question, so he continues. "Whether we're from books or worlds or other histories of the same world, I do not wish to return to where I came from. I hoped to to travel to other worlds and histories, which now I'm discovering may be a literary crime."

[rememberettersberg]

This is a truly bewildering array of information. How on earth could such plot inconsistencies occur? Are all books alive in their own pocket universes? Before he can meander too far into this fresh existential crisis, Nightingale refocuses on the man in front of him. "Did she seem sincere to you? If she is as trapped as we are, then I doubt her organisation is aware of anything we're doing." He pauses, considering. "What could the penalty be for committing such a crime?"

[wickedwit]

“I don’t want to find out,” Claudius says with a sigh. “That’s why lied to her, and told her I’d come from the end of my play rather than the beginning, limiting the scope of my infractions. And —“ It does occur to him finally that Nightingale is a lawman, but he does focus on magical crimes. Besides, it’s not like this is blackmail or bribery. This is a reasonable deal. “I agreed to provide her with information if she prioritizes severe infractions, and doesn’t involve anyone from her organization.” Oh, that still sounds bad said aloud.

[rememberettersberg]

"That seems reasonable enough," says Nightingale. "Though if she's in the same boat as us, I'd prefer she not focus on any infractions at all. It all sounds rather draconian, telling people they're deviating from some preordained path."

[wickedwit]

"There, you see, I agree with you," Claudius says. He knew he could count on Nightingale to be reasonable and not come at this with cop energy¹. "That's why I wished to convene and strategize. It all depends on whether she can get out, or get out quickly -- if she can't, I can sway her to our way of thinking with time. But I'd like to stay ahead of her, if you understand me."

¹Claudius, we can see your internal monologue.

[rememberettersberg]

"Indeed. I have no interest in seeing anyone forced back to a world they'd rather leave behind, but neither do I wish for anyone to be stuck here without cause." Nightingale is very aware that this is all a little shady, but it itches at him, the way they've been brought to the mansion without consent and may now, if Aornis is intent on carrying out her duties, be equally powerless to avoid leaving.

[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]

"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."

[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]

"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."

[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.

[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.

[wickedwit]

Claudius laughs at the memory of that first meeting. "If thou dost need me to be gentle with thee, thou needst only ask -- in all things," he says, taking the slimmest chance to flirt. More serious, though still affecting a lighter tone, he says, "But if thou art questioning what this means for thy free will, or the reality of thy world ... thou shouldst know that I had a poorer notion of my free will in Denmark, when I believed my decisions were secrets between myself and God and not the subject of stageplays. However many shocks or surprises this place presents me with, I've not yet given up on it." Even if he has to rework his entire cosmology again to make sense of it.

[rememberettersberg]

Nightingale rolls his eyes good-naturedly at the flirting. "I suppose it makes no difference in the end. As surreal as the past few months have been, it certainly feels real enough to me. Let's find Aziraphale, see what he has to say about Les Miserables."

[wickedwit]

“Let’s,” Claudius agrees. He pushes himself away from the bar with a new-honed purpose. “We’ll have a look at the library first. I believe he nests there for much of his time.” Like a baby chick, which Aziraphale sometimes resembles. Something about fluffy blonde hair and ruffled feathers.

[az_fell]

Well, Aziraphale has never even so much as pretended not to be predictable. One develops habits after millennia on Earth. Crowley likes that, he thinks -- that ninety-nine point nine nine nine repeating percent of the time, he knows where to find Aziraphale.

Anyway. Yes, Aziraphale's in the library, in what he has personally deemed its comfiest (and, crucially, also its coziest) armchair. He's paging, with a skeptical look on his face, through a rather flimsy volume that has Practical Exercises for Young Magicians, by Amelia Popper stamped into its spine.

[rememberettersberg]

"Aziraphale, how have you been?" Nightingale begins, automatically bound to politeness. He regards the title of the book with some interest. "Is this another accident of conjuration or something you meant to be reading?"

[wickedwit]

Naturally, Claudius prefers to start polite, and gives his own mannerly bow from where he stands at Nightingale's side. He tries not to smile too much at Aziraphale nestled in his comfy (and, crucially, cozy) armchair.

[az_fell]

"Mr. Nightingale," says Aziraphale, and then, with a bit more suspicion, "and Claudius. Firstly: believe it or not, I actually found this in the stacks here. You're welcome to borrow it. Secondly: to what do I owe the pleasure?"

[rememberettersberg]

"We've been developing some theories about how we all came to be here." Nightingale pulls up a chair and sits beside him. "And your difficulties in producing works featuring any of the residents came up in conversation." Here he hesitates, unsure how to explain adequately, but braces himself and forges on ahead. "We were hoping you might try to whip up a copy of Les Miserables to test a thought I had."

[wickedwit]

"It will take only a moment of your time," Claudius promises, leaning against the other side of Aziraphale's chair¹. "And it's quite a promising theory. I'm sure you're as curious as anyone else about this particular mystery."

¹ Because he'd never sit when he can lean.