Author's Note: Set the Boardwalk Empire AU RP (aka "Team Albany") in which I've been throwing ideas around. Featuring a very AU Kazutaka Muraki and a startled Nucky Thompson. Warning: Contains period specific racial slurs.
One of the girls had turned up with an inconvenient condition, and that meant calling in Dr. Mudgett to cure it. The guy made Nucky nervous, but he did the job well, some new technique the guy had brought down from New York, an injection of something or other: he didn't ask questions, as long as it kept the girl working. And the girls liked the guy's bedside manner -- and, it seemed, his manner in bed, left them as satisfied as they left him. Win-win situation all around. Still, he could barely stand to have the guy hang around: for starters, Mudgett overtopped him by several inches, to say nothing of his pallid complexion and hair, though he had the eyes of a Chink. Spoke good English, with a limey accent. And that eyepatch, Gawd, could the guy get one of those glass eyes? Made him look like a goddamned pirate, except for the grey suits he wore.
"Dare I ask why people call you by that diminutive?"
"People been callin' me that since I was a kid: old habits die hard. Why? Yah don't like it?"
"If it pleases you to be called by it, then by all means," Mudgett replied. "I've always been fond of the name Enoch, though. It's the name of an Old Testament patriarch, after all."
"Guy with a boat load'a animals, right?"
"That was his grandson, Noah."
"Flunked Sunday catechism class. Didn't hold me back. Enlighten me?"
"I was about to say, the Old Testament you know tells only half the story: the Book of Genesis speaks of Enoch walking with the All Mighty and, but there was more. The Church fathers cut a whole book that elaborated on why he had that privilege, the now-apocryphal Book of Enoch.
"He walked with God to mediate between the All Mighty and some of His angels."
"Angels, eh? What, didn't like how their harps were tuned?"
Mudgett smirked, his slitty, slanting eyes narrowing even more. "It was a bit more than that: they, the Watcher Angels, disagreed with the All Mighty and how He had organized Heaven, and so they chose to walk away from Heaven, to take on human forms and to walk the Earth among the emerging human race, to enjoy the pleasures that the physical world could afford. And... to enjoy the company that the humans gladly and willingly offered them, giving them companionship, intimacy, love... dare I say, the love of family life, by giving them children. Enoch, the beloved of the All Mighty, had been sent to chastise them, and while he followed the letter of the Lord's orders, he chose, instead, to speak up on their behalf, to defend their choice, their pleasures."
"So... what? Yer comparin' me to some Old Testament guy that walked with angels?"
"I'm comparing you to a man who defended the choices of those who turned their backs on austerity, on passive submission and meaningless rules," Mudgett replied. His good eye gazed deep into Thompson's, something inscrutable and yet intense. The room did not even feel the same, as if the light had dimmed, but the shadows did not seem to touch Mudgett's face. Not that it glowed, but somehow, it seemed that the light had redirected to him. Even the air felt odd, warmer and heavier, with an odd scent like incense.
"What the fuck--?"
The spell broke, Mudgett lifting his chin, his good eye blinking, the intensity vanishing, his usual calm returning. The light returned to normal.
"What? Are you some kind of Svengali puttin' a hoo-doo on me?"
"No, merely someone who understands the doings of men and of angels," Mudgett replied, with something that on anyone else would be innocence, but looked out of place on him. "I showed you a glimpse behind the curtain, but perhaps you aren't ready for it."
"The hell I'm not. Look, you're good with the girls: they like you. Maybe it's... whatever you just showed me, maybe it's what you do for 'em. Just... don't pull that on me again. Got it?"
"I understand. You're a man who's raised a curtain of your own, one you raise only at your choosing. I only wished to let you know you're not alone and... there are deeper things that a curtain can hide."
"Well, just keep the curtains drawn, will yah?"
Mudgett raised one hand, delicate fingers spread. "You have my word, it