this city's killing me
Who: John, inevitably Bellatrix, perhaps you?
Where: Paris!
When: All weekend!
Warnings: Language, I'll edit for anything else.
Notes: I want all of your love, revenge, and CR. Anything and everybody, new/planned/unplanned/existing. Tag in anywhere! I'm fine with multiple threads + instances and multichar threads, and any format. If you'd like to ( Read more... )
Comments 122
Well. This is fucked up.
John is tense, though he tries not to let it show; instead he stays quieter than usual and moves without looking around too much, as if the scenery is somehow offensive. It's not, it's just - well, he was already struggling with the goddamn CES. He's not supposed to see this. He's not supposed to have the opportunity for this while his comrades and his family struggle and bleed and die back home in that hell. He thinks, bitterly, that he'd have preferred a stop-over in a poorly-maintained holding area - and then winces slightly at that thought. When did he become this cold?
It helps to have something to do - a distraction is a distraction, even if the end goal is better integration to the thing that's throwing him for a loop and a half. He looks over at his inmate in all her gothic fantasy glory, and he can't even laugh. His own attire isn't any better suited.
"You don't happen to know anything about Paris, do you?" Because John sure as fuck doesn't.
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In French, presumably.
Despite the fact that she's rather comfortable in her gothic fantasy look, she's not oblivious to the fact that she needs to blend in while they're here. It's a rule of the wizarding world, after all. Even if it is one she doesn't agree with. "I could've transfigured us some clothing." If she had her magic. Provided the charm would even hold outside of the Barge. She doesn't profess to understand how its apparently counter-charms and anti-magic works. "I suppose we have to do this the old fashioned way." Bugger.
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"I haven't, no." But he's read about Bellatrix's brother-in-law in her file, and thus he knows he'll be speaking to him at some point eventually.
"We're equally fucked," he tells her - seeing as he's wearing stripped down combat gear (his nicest shirt is still... well, look at him). "Let's go get this settled. I think they gave me unlimited funds, so, whatever you're interested in." He shrugs.
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How is it that Lucius manages to meld Muggle and wizard fashions so effortlessly? The bastard.
"Then I think we should make it a point to test some of the local cuisine. And the wine. Unless you had other plans in mind?"
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If John ends up there sometime during the day, there will be footsteps following him in the dark - metal-heeled boots, a little like the ones heard in the barge hallways at night.
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The ossuary on a weekend is, of course, fairly busy with tourists, but that does little to diminish the eerie feeling of it, particularly in the darker corridors.
It's a shame the impact of artfully-timed creeping horrors is quite lost on John, whose fear threshold is so high it might as well not exist, flitted off somewhere to join his equally misplaced sense of self-preservation. The noises on the barge never rattled him, and neither does this. When he fully notices it, he waits until there's little else to distract him, and then just... turns around.
Yes?
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"Thought I recognized you. Any idea what this is?"
His eyes flick to anyone that walks by and follows them until he's fairly sure they're not going to turn around. The living are so ...loud. And damp. The tunnels don't stop as far as he's seen and eventually if he tries he can get out of the lights and start... whatever he's going to do. Something latent in his blood is tugging at the bones in the walls, or maybe it's the other way around.
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It's nice, he thinks, that the energy everyone's getting out means that no matter where he is in this metropolis, there's always someone familiar to bump into. It's a good break in the weirdness.
"You look right at home," he observes, coming over to her table.
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She hasn't seen anyone else she knows, hasn't asked to or really wanted to, but there's - yes, his back's to her but that has to be John - someone she knows will be all right here, and she does want to see someone. She catches up to him on the sidewalk and looks up with pretended surprise when she's close enough for him to see her. ]
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It's not the crowds that make John standoffish, it's the noise - happy, chatting, unconcerned people; it doesn't feel like reality, and in a significantly more disparate way than even the barge. (The barge is terrible. Home is terrible. Paris is delightful. It's tripping him up.)
Still, he notices promptly when someone is moving near him with purpose, and looks up - his surprise is a bit more genuine, if mild. She didn't strike him as someone over-eager to be social, either. "Lua."
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She doesn't know John well, but she likes him enough to get to know him better. Without plans for him, this time, when she stops and smiles like he's just who she wanted to meet on this street. "You liking this?"
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