(Untitled)
Characters: Stoneface/Sam Vimes (stonyfaced) and Elsa/Angua (fourplusnipples
Date/Time: February 7/Early afternoon
Location: The park
Rating: G
Summary: After identifying the sketch of the badge on Elsa's entry as one he had seen in one of his memories, Stoneface agrees to meet her.
( Finding good cut text is the hardest part of starting a log. )
Date/Time: February 7/Early afternoon
Location: The park
Rating: G
Summary: After identifying the sketch of the badge on Elsa's entry as one he had seen in one of his memories, Stoneface agrees to meet her.
( Finding good cut text is the hardest part of starting a log. )
When he had arrived, Stoneface thought himself unlucky to be greeted with that man who appeared to have a horrific fascination with glitter, but once he met the rest of the greeters while he was a Guard, he soon discovered that he had been lucky.
"Did he give you any trouble?" He asked, darkly. "I can go have a chat with him."
It was more of an excuse than anything else. One of Stoneface's many talents was yelling at people, and the faulty greeter was one of his favorite recipients.
He nodded approvingly at the de-aging comment, though. "Looks like the place has give you some time to acclimatize, then. This isn't the strangest thing that's happened. It's not even the first time."
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Well, it wasn't technically true; more like she had give him a look at a sharp something and he'd decided on his own that harassing her further would be a bad career move. But as reasonable a person as Stoneface seemed in the, oh, minute or so since she'd met him in person, she wasn't going to trust him or anyone else with the knowledge of her other form. It wasn't that she thought they'd run her out of the sphere with giant torches...but she didn't know they wouldn't.
Maybe she should go have a talk with the tentacle monster Bastet had mentioned, and see how it coped.
"It doesn't take long to get used to the place when you can't remember living anywhere else," she said. "Except for my dream...are they really meant to be bits of our past? I did see one person there. He handed me the badge I drew."
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"Some people have troubles getting used to life here because they can't remember," he said, "but you've certainly got a point there. And yes, your dreams are supposedly bits of your past. Didn't Charger tell--no, never mind, of course he didn't. Depending on what you got, it may make sense in time." He shrugged. "It's where most people here get their names from."
Ah, and there it was, what he really wanted to talk about. The badge. Even if it wasn't his, the badge was important, and it was obvious that Elsa felt very much the same way. If you asked him exactly why the badge was important, Stoneface wouldn't be able to say. It was shield shaped, that was important. It protected them from... something.
Whatever that something was. He knew he wanted his lads to carry badges at some point. It distinguished them from the rest, made 'em coppers. It made it so that there was always the duty, always something watching you, making you think twice. People may ask who watches the watchmen, but Stoneface knew they had to watch themselves. Always.
He frowned in thought, an expression that looked mildly distinguished on his regular face, but mildly comical on the one he currently possessive. "I know for a fact that if we're thinking of the same one, it's a copper's badge. It's part of the uniform: badge, helmet, breastplate, boots. Sound familiar?"
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"I picked my name because it was a decent one. It just came to mind." She shrugged and glanced around at the few others who'd braved the winter air to walk through the park, wondering where their names had come from.
For that matter, where had Stoneface's name come from? Perhaps his usual guise was closer to the moniker. Right now, his baby-smooth skin looked anything but stony.
Her heart beat just a little faster when he described the exact garb that the man in her dream had worn. This was the first time she'd gotten any real confirmation that they could be from the same place--after all, he could have just pretended to recognize the badge. "That's right." She nodded. "The man in my dream--he was dressed just like that. Tall, redheaded, built up to here and out to here." She gestured to indicate the approximate dimensions. Whoever he was hadn't been a hulk, but he wasn't someone you'd want to fight.
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But how would she know? She was new, and Stoneface never spoke of any of his memories or dreams. Not to anybody. It wasn't that any of them carried any real secrets with them, but saying them aloud made them feel less real than they felt in the confines of his head. Only the apprehension that came with voicing his memories for the first time made him realize how little anybody knew about him. Even after Ghost had seen his memory on the fourth floor, they had never spoken of it again. And that was how he liked it. He valued his privacy.
It was unreal, really. "I know him. He's not here," he said quickly, heart racing, "but I've seen him in a memory. Not for long, but he was in uniform. So was I."
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Until now, she hadn't given a lot of thought as to who the man was. She wasn't brushing it off, but adjusting to a whole new place to live when you couldn't remember the last took work, no matter what she'd just said to Stoneface. Elsa could prioritize, and figuring out the answers to questions when she had nothing to work with didn't land on the top of the list. But now it jumped up a few slots.
"D'you mind sharing what you remembered?" she asked. "In my dream, he was attacked by someone--a man I was chasing. He got shot at, but his Protective saved his life, whatever it was. If I dreamed of him, and you remembered him..."
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And he didn't, for once. If there was any loose thread leading to his past, he'd have to grip onto it with both hands, yank and try not to mind if the tapestry got unwound in the end. It was one of the elementary rules of being a copper. You had to be prepared to break things down in order to build them up again.
"I don't know much. I only got a glimpse of him."
He had picked apart that memory piece by piece, and that man was included in it. He wasn't sure why the lad stuck out apart from the rest of the crowd. That was, he wasn't sure until he noticed how when he was in the picture, everything else seemed to become background; somebody who looked like that was a trifle hard to miss. The shiny breastplate said officer, but the deference said sergeant. The confidence about him, misplaced or no, spelled out officer, but the small smile said... well, Stoneface didn't know what.
"I doubt I've got much more than you, though. I'm fairly sure he worked beneath me, and I was a sergeant, at least." He had the stripes to prove it, in that one memory. "He was pushing me into a mail carriage. They're faster than the regular ones. That's all."
Stoneface wondered what the Protective was. He didn't know why, but for some reason, he doubted it referred to his helmet.
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Unfortunately, that wasn't much. Maybe it was because she hadn't recovered a memory of her own yet and had no experience with what significance could be gleaned from one, or maybe it was just that their memories were like a net--made more of space than substance, and quite a lot could fall through the holes.
Well, no one ever handed out a puzzle with all the pieces arranged neatly in place. They'd have to work with what they had. "If you were both coppers, and I had a badge, it's not too hard to work out what the connection is," she pointed out. "Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that about myself--" mainly because someone who could turn into a wolf might not always get the welcome rug "--but it doesn't sound impossible."
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"No," he admitted, "it isn't a far stretch. See how you react to different things, though--sometimes you end up surprising yourself. Once a copper, always a copper. You don't stop after the badge goes off, that's what I always say."
He didn't always say it, but he thought it, which was close enough. It made sense. After all, if he wasn't in the Guard or the Watch, he didn't know what else he'd do. He didn't know how to do anything else besides poke around and make people angry.
Stoneface wondered if she knew about the Watch in Edensphere yet. Probably not. They weren't well established enough to arouse any conversation besides controversial ones. "A watch is being implemented right now. We haven't got any laws, and even fewer punishments, but... it's coming along." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I'm the Commander. We're not hiring until everything is established, but once we do, look into it unless you've found something else that suits you more."
But if you were an honest-to-gods copper, Stoneface thought, you won't. Once you've been one, nothing else will do. It's more than a second skin, it's a... an identity. Not the healthiest life, or the safest one, or hell, the happiest one, but once you're in, you're in. And when it comes down to it, I wouldn't have it any other way. I just wonder why you were a copper, Elsa, with your ash-blonde hair and your thoughtful gaze. Normal people don't become coppers. So what's wrong with you? You could be insecure like Sky, rigid like Handmaiden, or maybe you're just a really suspicious bastard like me.
Well, he supposed, he'd find out in time.
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"It's a pleasure to meet you, Commander." She gave him a sharp nod. "I might do that. I take it your force is an all-human one?" There was the briefest pause. "Dyad mentioned he's never seen a dwarf or troll around here, and it seemed strange to me that he hasn't. So I thought I'd ask.
Other races beyond human were something that she couldn't remember but knew all the same. She couldn't explain it, but in a way, she was grateful for it--after all, if they truly remembered nothing, would they have had to learn to speak all over again? To walk, and dress themselves? No, thank you. Annoying as this amnesia was, Elsa would take it a hundred times over being an infant again, not that she was likely to have remembered that the first time around.
But she could remember, and if she didn't know herself, she knew she liked the idea of being a copper--again, apparently. It was good that he wasn't offering her a job on the spot out of consideration for a shared past; that'd make him a naive fool, and she preferred to work for a sensible man. It would give her some time to sort things out herself, too, and learn a little more about how Edensphere might feel about werewolves.
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Not that he did that very often in the first place. In fact, the first time he mentioned the game, all he got in return were puzzled stares.
"Just Stoneface will be fine," he corrected with a slightly more vulnerable smile than he had as an adult. "You're not one of my lads quite yet."
The mention of trolls and dwarfs certainly caught his attention, though. "I haven't even heard them mentioned here," he said. "One person I mentioned them too actually claimed that they didn't exist."
"But non-humans certainly exist here--and in the Watch, although you wouldn't be able to tell by looking at 'em. The non-humans here, are... how do I put this... human looking. You don't know otherwise until they're up in the air with great sodding wings on their back. I sure as hell can't tell." This was said a trifle sourly.
Stoneface didn't approve of non-humans mucking about with no fangs or fur to even hint at their species. With dwarfs, it was, oh, he's short, he's got a beard, he's wearing chain mail, he's a dwarf and yes, he can run at you screaming wildly and chop your knees off. Or oh, he's a troll, it doesn't matter if you're wearing armor, because he can probably take off your head with a giant stony fist. It was when you couldn't tell that it got mucky, when people strolled into a bar fight when one of them suddenly sprouted claws.
"So yes, there are more non-humans than you'd think, and in my Watch. It's not something I advertise, though." Not because they'd be punished for it, because Gods knew somebody like Wolverine could chop the buggers in half at a moment notice. No, it was because it was wise to have an ace up your sleeve, like a woman he could lift you five meters into the air with a gesture or a man who could call up a shield at a moment's notice.
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"I mentioned them in passing to that other new bloke-Dyad, I think," she said, crossing her arms in thought. "I didn't mean anything special about it; it was just obvious to me that they should exist somewhere. It still is." She shrugged.
This side of memory loss was an odd one. What they all recalled seemed to run more specific than 'this is how I walk, this is how I talk, this is how I button a damn shirt.' If dwarves and trolls weren't a constant from place to place, her knowledge of them had to come specifically from home-and yet she couldn't recall a thing about it except what had appeared in her dream.
She knew that trolls were big, stony bastards who were great or terrible to have in a bar fight-it depended what side you were on. And she knew that it didn't matter that dwarves couldn't punch you in the face since they could kick the hell out of your shin. But she did not know why she knew.
"That's good to hear," she said once he'd finished. "Maybe I'll spot something I recognize after all." Maybe I'll be that something. If she ended up on the Watch, she didn't mind Stoneface knowing what she could do-it was only fair, and she wasn't ashamed. But for now, something inside her said to be cautious.
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He squeaked Nobby's ball idly underneath one foot, and kicked it for the mongrel to chase. "Let me know."
With that, he returned his attentions back to the dog that... appeared to be sniffing its own arse.
Ah, well. They couldn't all be smart.
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