Unbirthday fic for Jadesfire2808!
This was supposed to be a birthday fic for jadesfire2808, but Gustav sort of put a crimp in those plans. Just call it an unbirthday present. :D
Title: Perspective Shifts (or, It's All In How You Look At It)
Characters/Rating: Jack, various Nac Mac Feegle (borrowed from Terry Pratchett). G.
Wordcount: 3162
Warnings: None.
Summary: An immortal and lots of tiny blue men walk into a bar...
Notes: This is an unbirthday fic for jadesfire2808 (and as such, is not entirely serious...say hi to anyone you recognize along the way!) It's set very loosely in her A Few Quiet Drinks universe, in a bar where the Torchwood and Discworld characters occasionally cross paths. Many thanks to donutsweeper and rustydog for the beta help!
Any characters you recognize obviously belong to someone else, not me. Any lines that you particularly like were probably borrowed from Terry Pratchett. The idea of what happens to heroes is from C.S. Lewis.
Jack had been in the office trying to catch up on paperwork, working late because Ianto had requested a meeting with him on the budget. The numbers, and the requisitions and the funding and the complicated bookkeeping that was required to keep Torchwood from coming to the attention of the ratepayers, had done their usual work and given Jack a pounding headache, until he'd just nodded and signed everything that Ianto handed him.
So when he smelled that certain tang in the air--almost like snow, almost like tin--he welcomed the distraction. He'd grabbed his coat and walked out into the streets randomly, carefully not looking where he was going, until he turned a corner and spotted the sign.
Now he sat at a table in a dim corner and looked around with interest. He'd met some real characters here before. It looked fairly quiet tonight, though. Over in one corner a man in an old-fashioned hat and a truly ridiculous scarf was completely failing to impress a blond girl, who was rolling her eyes at him. At another table two men in some sort of military uniforms were arguing loudly. Well, one of them was arguing loudly.
"I told you those weren't the coordinates, but no, you had to go and--"
The other man ran a hand through dark spiky hair and sighed. "Rodney..."
"Does this look right to you? No. What does this look like to you?" the other man demanded.
The spiky-haired one looked around. "It looks like a bar to me. Now shut up and finish your drink. Then we'll find out where we are and go from there."
Jack grinned as his own drink arrived, and he sipped at it. Nothing really unusual tonight, it looked like, if you didn't count the tiny blue man standing on the counter yelling for the barman.
"A wee big bottle o' your finest ship liniment!"
Jack blinked and looked again. The man was still there. No more than six inches high, with bright red hair, it was difficult to tell whether the blue was his natural color or just his tattoos overlapping. He was wearing--Jack squinted--yes, it was a kilt.
"And what about the rest of you?" the barman said to the room at large.
There was a blur, and suddenly tiny blue men were...everywhere. Under every table, behind every glass. All red-haired, all wearing kilts, all looking expectantly at the barman.
"Aye, they'll hae the same," the one in front of Jack said.
The barman busied himself pouring--normal-sized mugs, Jack was interested to note--and the little man in front of Jack turned to look up at him. "What're ye staring at?"
Jack raised his hands. "Nothing. I've just never seen any--whatever you are--before. And I've seen a lot of things."
"Aye, weel, we're even, then. I've nivver been in your world before." The little man produced several gold coins from somewhere and handed them to the barman, then turned to grin up at him. "I'm Rob Anybody, the chief of the clan. We hae come to this world on a quest!" He nodded to an even tinier man--closer to a boy, really--that stood beside him. "This is Awf'lly Wee Billy Bigchin. He's oor gonnagle."
"Your what?"
"Gonnagle," Awf'lly Wee Billy spoke up. "'Tis what the bigjobs call a bard, perhaps."
The bar was getting louder and louder as the little men were served their giant mugs of...whatever the "ship liniment" was. Rob himself had an enormous tankard in front of him that he had to tilt forward and stick his whole head into. None of the men were having any difficulty with their drinks, Jack saw, although several of them were getting increasingly combative.
"We remember the stories, and pass the songs on for the clan," Billy continued.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack introduced himself. He grinned. "I know a whole lot of stories and songs, but I don't think you'd call me a bard."
Something shattered over in a corner, and Rob put down his tankard long enough to shake his head. "Ach, that's done it. We'll be here for a while noo."
Jack looked around. Fights had broken out everywhere--not among the regular-sized inhabitants of the bar, who were mostly watching calmly, moving away when danger threatened--but among the blue men. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for the fights, and no pattern. As Jack watched, one little man was punched right in the face, staggered back several inches, and ended up in the middle of a different group, where he began kicking back enthusiastically. No one in either group seemed to notice, or care.
"That's Mad Hamish," Billy said from beside him, as if it were some sort of excuse. There was a slight pause. "Not that the rest of them are verra different," he admitted.
A dog was sprawled out lazily in front of one of the tables. As the second group brawled past, he stretched out a paw and patted lightly at the little men.
Mad Hamish paused in front of the dog and glared up at him. "Whut're ye lookin' at, ye big beastie? I'll gie ye such a kickin'!"
The dog bared his teeth at the tiny man and growled low in his throat. Jack winced.
There was a blur, and the dog was yelping and backing away before Jack could blink. "Take that, ye daft doggie!" Mad Hamish said with satisfaction, and leaped back into the fray.
One of the men at the table leaned over and looked at the dog, then at the other man. "He bit the dog, Benny." The dog whined. "Yeah, yeah, wolf, whatever. That blue thing, he bit your wolf."
The other man shook his head. "It'll be a lesson for him." He looked at the dog--wolf?--sternly. "I've told you before, it's unwise to threaten the Nac Mac Feegle. Perhaps now you'll pay attention to me."
The wolf whined again and sank down on the floor, paws over his nose.
Jack looked down at Billy. "Nac Mac Feegle?"
"Aye, 'tis who we are," Billy said proudly. "Some call us Pictsies. Some call us fairies, although they dinnae say it very loudly. Some just say Person or Persons Unknown, Believed to Be Armed."
Jack laughed. "I've been listed that way a time or two myself."
"Do ye know what the word is for a group of Nac Mac Feegles? Like a coven of witches or a flight of dragons? Riot."
"A riot of Nac Mac Feegle," Jack mused. He looked around. "That seems to cover it, all right." The barman didn't seem to be perturbed, though, so Jack shrugged and turned back to Billy. "Tell me more about this quest you're on."
"'Tis a grand story!" Rob put in. "There was a mighty wizard, ye ken,and he stole oor gold through stealth and trickery. So we swore a mighty oath ne'er to rest 'til we hunted him doon an' wreaked vengeance on him and all his clan!"
"And this is you not resting, is it?" Jack nodded at the commotion all around them.
"Aye, weel." Rob shrugged. "We cannae fight a wizard wi'out proper preparation. He'll no' be any the less wicked when we're done here."
"I understand," Jack said with a straight face, and Rob dived back into the tankard.
Jack looked up, his attention caught by a harassed-looking man at a table near the bar. "That's it, I'm leaving." The man was standing up and heading towards the door. "I thought we had a deal. No more drugs in my food."
The man he'd been sitting with grabbed a cane that was resting against the wall and levered himself upwards, following surprisingly quickly. "Fascinating. Paranoia in addition to hallucinations. Are you seeing anything unusual, other than the Smurf mob?"
"It's not paranoia when you really are out to--wait a minute." The man stopped abruptly and turned. "How do you know it's Smurfs? Are you seeing them too?"
The man with the cane cocked his head at him. "It doesn't matter what I'm seeing. We already know I'm on drugs. What concerns me is your denial of--"
But the other man had turned away again, shaking his head in exasperation and heading for the door. Jack knew the feeling.
"So what is it that ye're captain of?" Billy inquired.
Jack took a drink reflectively. "It's...a very long story. The division, the...people...that I worked with--they don't even exist anymore." He thought about that. "They don't exist yet," he corrected himself.
Billy's eyes brightened. "Ye're Captain of a ghost army! Aye, that would make a fine story indeed!"
Jack laughed. "You could put it that way. Nowadays I just mostly do a lot of paperwork." He thought back to the day he'd had, and grimaced. "Reports. Budgets. Requisitions." Billy's face fell, and Jack felt compelled to tell him more than he'd intended. "Some days it gets interesting, though. Aliens attack, and spaceships come through the rift, and then we have to go out and fight the monsters and save the world."
"Ye're a hero!" Billy beamed at him. "I knew it. Ye had the look about you." Before Jack could dispute that, Billy was going on. "I dinna ken what these 'aliens' are, but we're lookin' for monsters too."
Jack frowned. "I thought you were looking for the wizard who stole your gold."
"Weel, you see..." Billy hesitated. "The story that Rob Anybody told, it was a good story. But it wasnae quite the right story."
"No wizard?" Jack suggested.
"Och, aye, there was a wizard. And he took some of the gold. Not all, ye ken. He said he dinnae need but a very little."
"You talked to him?"
"Rob did. An' the kelda--oor queen." Billy glanced at him. "Mostly the kelda."
Jack nodded. "So, she agreed that the wizard could have the gold, but Rob didn't want him to?"
"Och, nay!" Billy sounded horrified. "Rob wouldnae argue with the kelda. And we dinna really need the gold, ye ken. It's the principle of the thing."
Rob pulled his head out of the tankard. "Yon toad says it's no' the principle, it's the interest."
"Aye, weel, that may be right enough," Billy conceded. "And what the Nac Mac Feegles are mostly interested in, is fightin'."
Jack listened with interest as Billy told his version of the tale. In return for their gold, the wizard had promised to lead them to a new world. He'd told them that there were fearsome monsters in that world, and that they'd be able to fight creatures beyond their wildest imagination. "A win-win situation, is what he called it."
Jack frowned. "What's the point of Rob's story, then?"
Billy leaned in confidentially. "Och, weel, ye canna let just anyone know that we'll trade oor gold for a bit o' adventure. Spoils the reputation, ye ken. Besides, Rob thinks his version is more exciting."
"So how did you get to this world?"
"Oh, we just followed the wizard. The Nac Mac Feegle can go anywhere," Billy said with pride. "We can get into or out of anywhere ye can name, and plenty of places ye can't."
"Except pubs," Rob put in. "We hae a wee bit o' difficulty getting oot of pubs."
Jack looked over where a knot of Feegles had tangled up under a table. "I can see where you might."
Rob had reached the bottom of his second tankard. Letting out a huge belch, he backed away from it regretfully and took a look around the room. "It's nice to see the lads enjoyin' themselves."
Jack followed his gaze. The man in the odd hat, who Jack had noticed earlier, was watching bemusedly as one of the Feegles used the dangling end of his scarf to swing from one table to another.
"Och, 'tis Not-As-Wee-As--" Rob stopped. "Nay, 'tis Quite-Wee-Angus, is it not, Awf'lly Wee Billy?"
Billy nodded.
"I havenae got used to it yet," Rob confided. "He used to be called Not-As-Wee-As-Quite-Wee-Angus-But-Not-As-Big-As-Medium-Angus Angus, but then Quite-Wee-Angus-That-Was got sent back to the Land o' the Living."
"Sent back where?" Jack asked.
"It's the last world we were in," Rob explained. "When we die there, we get sent here. If we were good, ye ken."
Jack looked around at the bar. "You...you think this world is heaven?"
"Well, oor world," Rob corrected. He glanced around also. "Looks tae me like your world is jus' as good, though!"
Jack decided not to argue with them on that point. "So when you die here, you go back to that place?"
"We canna really die here, no' if we're deid already," Rob pointed out. "We jus'...leave oor bodies here." He grimaced. "'Tis a dull world on the other side."
"You remember it?" Jack asked, intrigued. He never remembered anything.
Rob shook his head. "Nay. But it stands to reason! Wi' all the drinkin' and fightin' and runnin' aboot that we gets tae do here, we must hae been verra good in the last world. An' bein' good is verra dull."
Jack grinned at him. "Now there's a point of view I've never considered."
Rob's attention was caught by one of his men. "Big Yan! Ye canna tak' these bigjobs pris'ner! We're supposed to be fighting monsters, ye ken?"
He disappeared in a flurry of blue and plaid, and Jack looked down at Billy.
"So this is heaven." He shook his head. "I'd imagined something a little...different. Better."
Billy looked at him in puzzlement. "We hae oor clan, and we hae food an' drink an' enemies to fight. How could it be better?"
Jack found himself smiling. "Well, there is that," he conceded. "There's no shortage of enemies, that's for sure. I just...I'd never thought of my life as a reward, before."
Billy brightened. "Och, did ye have a Last World, too?"
"I...don't remember," Jack said slowly. "If I did, I don't think I'm allowed back there."
Billy was regarding him oddly. "I dinna ken your meanin'."
Jack sighed. He wasn't used to discussing this with strangers. But nothing that happened in this bar surprised him any more, not really.
"Most humans...they die here and then--that's it." He shrugged. "We don't know what happens next. Nothing, most of us think. We just stop. But me...when I die, I come back. Here, I mean, and right away."
"So maybe there is a Last World for bigjobs, and they keep sendin' you back."
Jack grimaced. "Over and over and over." The small man was quiet, and Jack glanced down at him. "What do you think about that?"
"Weel," Billy said reflectively. "I cannae say for certain. But I think...I think ye must have done something verra, verra good there."
That was about the last thing he'd expected. His eyebrows rose in surprise. "Really. How d'you figure that?"
"'Tis how we're allowed here," Billy explained. "An' ye're not just allowed here. Ye're practic'lly required here. Ye must hae been quite a hero somewhere."
"You think that it's a reward." Jack's mind was whirling. The belief system of a tiny blue man shouldn't mean anything to him, he knew. But it would be a kind of comfort to think that what had been done to him wasn't a punishment.
"Weel." Billy's eyes were fixed on him, and they were almost sympathetic. "In a way, aye. In another way...hae ye not noticed, in all the stories, wha' happens to the hero?"
"He lives happily ever after?"
"No' so much in the real stories, nay. He may live, and he may be happy, but he disnae get to stop bein' a hero. In fact, mostly the more he does, the more he's asked tae do."
That, at least, sounded familiar. "But when does it stop?" Jack asked in frustration.
Billy tipped his head to one side. "Och, the stories dinna say that. There's always need of a hero, and nivver enough heroes to go around."
"And why me?" Jack demanded.
"Because ye can. And because ye will."
"I don't exactly have a choice," he muttered.
"There's always a choice," Billy said quietly. "Ye make it every time ye get up to fight again, 'stead of walkin' away."
Jack sighed and raised his glass to Billy, his expression rueful. "Can I buy you another round? We heroes have to stick together."
Suddenly Rob Anybody and several of the other Feegles were there, tugging on Billy. "We hae one! Ye must come and see!"
"You have what?" Jack asked.
Rob turned and looked up at Jack. "One o' the monsters that the wizard sent us to catch! The lads found one outside!"
Blue and plaid flashed all over the bar as the whole gaggle of Feegles swarmed out the door. Jack put his mug down and followed.
Whatever he'd expected to be tied up in the alley behind the bar, it wasn't this. Jack looked into the eyes of a Weevil who was watching the little blue men with something akin to terror. Jack felt unexpected sympathy with it.
He looked for Rob, who was congratulating the leader of the group that had caught the Weevil. "Rob. What are you going to do with this...monster, now that you've got it?"
Rob scratched his head. "Weel...the wizard said not to hurt them any more than we must. He wants them brought to his tower."
"Right," Jack muttered. "The fairies bringing the monsters to the wizard's tower." He looked around, at the normal night scenes of Cardiff. Out here, it was much harder to believe anything that he'd seen inside the bar. "Where exactly are you going to find a wizard's tower here?"
"Near water," Rob said cheerfully. "He said 'twas a tall silver tower, with water surroundin' it and water pourin' over it, yet not floodin' it. Aye, that's magic indeed! It shouldnae be hard to find."
Jack stood frozen to the spot as what looked like hundreds of Feegles ran under the bound Weevil. In a moment it had risen a few inches off the ground, as if it were levitating, and in another moment it was heading down the street at a rapid pace.
Only one still stood by Jack in the empty street. "Farewell, Captain," Billy said solemnly. He reached up, and Jack bent to take the gold coin that Billy handed him. "Something for you to remember us by, for the stories you've given me. Our paths may cross again, one day. If not...I'll make songs about the hero who always rises to fight again."
Jack finally found his voice. "Don't make those songs just yet, Billy," he said grimly, and took off at a run after the Feegles. Billy followed, keeping up easily. "You may have to add another verse. One where the hero kills the wizard absolutely dead." He fumbled around in his pocket as he ran, finding his earpiece and hooking it on, dialing the number. "Ianto! During that budget meeting, when you were talking about alternative sources of funding." He glared at the gold coin. "Define 'alternative'."
Title: Perspective Shifts (or, It's All In How You Look At It)
Characters/Rating: Jack, various Nac Mac Feegle (borrowed from Terry Pratchett). G.
Wordcount: 3162
Warnings: None.
Summary: An immortal and lots of tiny blue men walk into a bar...
Notes: This is an unbirthday fic for jadesfire2808 (and as such, is not entirely serious...say hi to anyone you recognize along the way!) It's set very loosely in her A Few Quiet Drinks universe, in a bar where the Torchwood and Discworld characters occasionally cross paths. Many thanks to donutsweeper and rustydog for the beta help!
Any characters you recognize obviously belong to someone else, not me. Any lines that you particularly like were probably borrowed from Terry Pratchett. The idea of what happens to heroes is from C.S. Lewis.
Jack had been in the office trying to catch up on paperwork, working late because Ianto had requested a meeting with him on the budget. The numbers, and the requisitions and the funding and the complicated bookkeeping that was required to keep Torchwood from coming to the attention of the ratepayers, had done their usual work and given Jack a pounding headache, until he'd just nodded and signed everything that Ianto handed him.
So when he smelled that certain tang in the air--almost like snow, almost like tin--he welcomed the distraction. He'd grabbed his coat and walked out into the streets randomly, carefully not looking where he was going, until he turned a corner and spotted the sign.
Now he sat at a table in a dim corner and looked around with interest. He'd met some real characters here before. It looked fairly quiet tonight, though. Over in one corner a man in an old-fashioned hat and a truly ridiculous scarf was completely failing to impress a blond girl, who was rolling her eyes at him. At another table two men in some sort of military uniforms were arguing loudly. Well, one of them was arguing loudly.
"I told you those weren't the coordinates, but no, you had to go and--"
The other man ran a hand through dark spiky hair and sighed. "Rodney..."
"Does this look right to you? No. What does this look like to you?" the other man demanded.
The spiky-haired one looked around. "It looks like a bar to me. Now shut up and finish your drink. Then we'll find out where we are and go from there."
Jack grinned as his own drink arrived, and he sipped at it. Nothing really unusual tonight, it looked like, if you didn't count the tiny blue man standing on the counter yelling for the barman.
"A wee big bottle o' your finest ship liniment!"
Jack blinked and looked again. The man was still there. No more than six inches high, with bright red hair, it was difficult to tell whether the blue was his natural color or just his tattoos overlapping. He was wearing--Jack squinted--yes, it was a kilt.
"And what about the rest of you?" the barman said to the room at large.
There was a blur, and suddenly tiny blue men were...everywhere. Under every table, behind every glass. All red-haired, all wearing kilts, all looking expectantly at the barman.
"Aye, they'll hae the same," the one in front of Jack said.
The barman busied himself pouring--normal-sized mugs, Jack was interested to note--and the little man in front of Jack turned to look up at him. "What're ye staring at?"
Jack raised his hands. "Nothing. I've just never seen any--whatever you are--before. And I've seen a lot of things."
"Aye, weel, we're even, then. I've nivver been in your world before." The little man produced several gold coins from somewhere and handed them to the barman, then turned to grin up at him. "I'm Rob Anybody, the chief of the clan. We hae come to this world on a quest!" He nodded to an even tinier man--closer to a boy, really--that stood beside him. "This is Awf'lly Wee Billy Bigchin. He's oor gonnagle."
"Your what?"
"Gonnagle," Awf'lly Wee Billy spoke up. "'Tis what the bigjobs call a bard, perhaps."
The bar was getting louder and louder as the little men were served their giant mugs of...whatever the "ship liniment" was. Rob himself had an enormous tankard in front of him that he had to tilt forward and stick his whole head into. None of the men were having any difficulty with their drinks, Jack saw, although several of them were getting increasingly combative.
"We remember the stories, and pass the songs on for the clan," Billy continued.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack introduced himself. He grinned. "I know a whole lot of stories and songs, but I don't think you'd call me a bard."
Something shattered over in a corner, and Rob put down his tankard long enough to shake his head. "Ach, that's done it. We'll be here for a while noo."
Jack looked around. Fights had broken out everywhere--not among the regular-sized inhabitants of the bar, who were mostly watching calmly, moving away when danger threatened--but among the blue men. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason for the fights, and no pattern. As Jack watched, one little man was punched right in the face, staggered back several inches, and ended up in the middle of a different group, where he began kicking back enthusiastically. No one in either group seemed to notice, or care.
"That's Mad Hamish," Billy said from beside him, as if it were some sort of excuse. There was a slight pause. "Not that the rest of them are verra different," he admitted.
A dog was sprawled out lazily in front of one of the tables. As the second group brawled past, he stretched out a paw and patted lightly at the little men.
Mad Hamish paused in front of the dog and glared up at him. "Whut're ye lookin' at, ye big beastie? I'll gie ye such a kickin'!"
The dog bared his teeth at the tiny man and growled low in his throat. Jack winced.
There was a blur, and the dog was yelping and backing away before Jack could blink. "Take that, ye daft doggie!" Mad Hamish said with satisfaction, and leaped back into the fray.
One of the men at the table leaned over and looked at the dog, then at the other man. "He bit the dog, Benny." The dog whined. "Yeah, yeah, wolf, whatever. That blue thing, he bit your wolf."
The other man shook his head. "It'll be a lesson for him." He looked at the dog--wolf?--sternly. "I've told you before, it's unwise to threaten the Nac Mac Feegle. Perhaps now you'll pay attention to me."
The wolf whined again and sank down on the floor, paws over his nose.
Jack looked down at Billy. "Nac Mac Feegle?"
"Aye, 'tis who we are," Billy said proudly. "Some call us Pictsies. Some call us fairies, although they dinnae say it very loudly. Some just say Person or Persons Unknown, Believed to Be Armed."
Jack laughed. "I've been listed that way a time or two myself."
"Do ye know what the word is for a group of Nac Mac Feegles? Like a coven of witches or a flight of dragons? Riot."
"A riot of Nac Mac Feegle," Jack mused. He looked around. "That seems to cover it, all right." The barman didn't seem to be perturbed, though, so Jack shrugged and turned back to Billy. "Tell me more about this quest you're on."
"'Tis a grand story!" Rob put in. "There was a mighty wizard, ye ken,and he stole oor gold through stealth and trickery. So we swore a mighty oath ne'er to rest 'til we hunted him doon an' wreaked vengeance on him and all his clan!"
"And this is you not resting, is it?" Jack nodded at the commotion all around them.
"Aye, weel." Rob shrugged. "We cannae fight a wizard wi'out proper preparation. He'll no' be any the less wicked when we're done here."
"I understand," Jack said with a straight face, and Rob dived back into the tankard.
Jack looked up, his attention caught by a harassed-looking man at a table near the bar. "That's it, I'm leaving." The man was standing up and heading towards the door. "I thought we had a deal. No more drugs in my food."
The man he'd been sitting with grabbed a cane that was resting against the wall and levered himself upwards, following surprisingly quickly. "Fascinating. Paranoia in addition to hallucinations. Are you seeing anything unusual, other than the Smurf mob?"
"It's not paranoia when you really are out to--wait a minute." The man stopped abruptly and turned. "How do you know it's Smurfs? Are you seeing them too?"
The man with the cane cocked his head at him. "It doesn't matter what I'm seeing. We already know I'm on drugs. What concerns me is your denial of--"
But the other man had turned away again, shaking his head in exasperation and heading for the door. Jack knew the feeling.
"So what is it that ye're captain of?" Billy inquired.
Jack took a drink reflectively. "It's...a very long story. The division, the...people...that I worked with--they don't even exist anymore." He thought about that. "They don't exist yet," he corrected himself.
Billy's eyes brightened. "Ye're Captain of a ghost army! Aye, that would make a fine story indeed!"
Jack laughed. "You could put it that way. Nowadays I just mostly do a lot of paperwork." He thought back to the day he'd had, and grimaced. "Reports. Budgets. Requisitions." Billy's face fell, and Jack felt compelled to tell him more than he'd intended. "Some days it gets interesting, though. Aliens attack, and spaceships come through the rift, and then we have to go out and fight the monsters and save the world."
"Ye're a hero!" Billy beamed at him. "I knew it. Ye had the look about you." Before Jack could dispute that, Billy was going on. "I dinna ken what these 'aliens' are, but we're lookin' for monsters too."
Jack frowned. "I thought you were looking for the wizard who stole your gold."
"Weel, you see..." Billy hesitated. "The story that Rob Anybody told, it was a good story. But it wasnae quite the right story."
"No wizard?" Jack suggested.
"Och, aye, there was a wizard. And he took some of the gold. Not all, ye ken. He said he dinnae need but a very little."
"You talked to him?"
"Rob did. An' the kelda--oor queen." Billy glanced at him. "Mostly the kelda."
Jack nodded. "So, she agreed that the wizard could have the gold, but Rob didn't want him to?"
"Och, nay!" Billy sounded horrified. "Rob wouldnae argue with the kelda. And we dinna really need the gold, ye ken. It's the principle of the thing."
Rob pulled his head out of the tankard. "Yon toad says it's no' the principle, it's the interest."
"Aye, weel, that may be right enough," Billy conceded. "And what the Nac Mac Feegles are mostly interested in, is fightin'."
Jack listened with interest as Billy told his version of the tale. In return for their gold, the wizard had promised to lead them to a new world. He'd told them that there were fearsome monsters in that world, and that they'd be able to fight creatures beyond their wildest imagination. "A win-win situation, is what he called it."
Jack frowned. "What's the point of Rob's story, then?"
Billy leaned in confidentially. "Och, weel, ye canna let just anyone know that we'll trade oor gold for a bit o' adventure. Spoils the reputation, ye ken. Besides, Rob thinks his version is more exciting."
"So how did you get to this world?"
"Oh, we just followed the wizard. The Nac Mac Feegle can go anywhere," Billy said with pride. "We can get into or out of anywhere ye can name, and plenty of places ye can't."
"Except pubs," Rob put in. "We hae a wee bit o' difficulty getting oot of pubs."
Jack looked over where a knot of Feegles had tangled up under a table. "I can see where you might."
Rob had reached the bottom of his second tankard. Letting out a huge belch, he backed away from it regretfully and took a look around the room. "It's nice to see the lads enjoyin' themselves."
Jack followed his gaze. The man in the odd hat, who Jack had noticed earlier, was watching bemusedly as one of the Feegles used the dangling end of his scarf to swing from one table to another.
"Och, 'tis Not-As-Wee-As--" Rob stopped. "Nay, 'tis Quite-Wee-Angus, is it not, Awf'lly Wee Billy?"
Billy nodded.
"I havenae got used to it yet," Rob confided. "He used to be called Not-As-Wee-As-Quite-Wee-Angus-But-Not-As-Big-As-Medium-Angus Angus, but then Quite-Wee-Angus-That-Was got sent back to the Land o' the Living."
"Sent back where?" Jack asked.
"It's the last world we were in," Rob explained. "When we die there, we get sent here. If we were good, ye ken."
Jack looked around at the bar. "You...you think this world is heaven?"
"Well, oor world," Rob corrected. He glanced around also. "Looks tae me like your world is jus' as good, though!"
Jack decided not to argue with them on that point. "So when you die here, you go back to that place?"
"We canna really die here, no' if we're deid already," Rob pointed out. "We jus'...leave oor bodies here." He grimaced. "'Tis a dull world on the other side."
"You remember it?" Jack asked, intrigued. He never remembered anything.
Rob shook his head. "Nay. But it stands to reason! Wi' all the drinkin' and fightin' and runnin' aboot that we gets tae do here, we must hae been verra good in the last world. An' bein' good is verra dull."
Jack grinned at him. "Now there's a point of view I've never considered."
Rob's attention was caught by one of his men. "Big Yan! Ye canna tak' these bigjobs pris'ner! We're supposed to be fighting monsters, ye ken?"
He disappeared in a flurry of blue and plaid, and Jack looked down at Billy.
"So this is heaven." He shook his head. "I'd imagined something a little...different. Better."
Billy looked at him in puzzlement. "We hae oor clan, and we hae food an' drink an' enemies to fight. How could it be better?"
Jack found himself smiling. "Well, there is that," he conceded. "There's no shortage of enemies, that's for sure. I just...I'd never thought of my life as a reward, before."
Billy brightened. "Och, did ye have a Last World, too?"
"I...don't remember," Jack said slowly. "If I did, I don't think I'm allowed back there."
Billy was regarding him oddly. "I dinna ken your meanin'."
Jack sighed. He wasn't used to discussing this with strangers. But nothing that happened in this bar surprised him any more, not really.
"Most humans...they die here and then--that's it." He shrugged. "We don't know what happens next. Nothing, most of us think. We just stop. But me...when I die, I come back. Here, I mean, and right away."
"So maybe there is a Last World for bigjobs, and they keep sendin' you back."
Jack grimaced. "Over and over and over." The small man was quiet, and Jack glanced down at him. "What do you think about that?"
"Weel," Billy said reflectively. "I cannae say for certain. But I think...I think ye must have done something verra, verra good there."
That was about the last thing he'd expected. His eyebrows rose in surprise. "Really. How d'you figure that?"
"'Tis how we're allowed here," Billy explained. "An' ye're not just allowed here. Ye're practic'lly required here. Ye must hae been quite a hero somewhere."
"You think that it's a reward." Jack's mind was whirling. The belief system of a tiny blue man shouldn't mean anything to him, he knew. But it would be a kind of comfort to think that what had been done to him wasn't a punishment.
"Weel." Billy's eyes were fixed on him, and they were almost sympathetic. "In a way, aye. In another way...hae ye not noticed, in all the stories, wha' happens to the hero?"
"He lives happily ever after?"
"No' so much in the real stories, nay. He may live, and he may be happy, but he disnae get to stop bein' a hero. In fact, mostly the more he does, the more he's asked tae do."
That, at least, sounded familiar. "But when does it stop?" Jack asked in frustration.
Billy tipped his head to one side. "Och, the stories dinna say that. There's always need of a hero, and nivver enough heroes to go around."
"And why me?" Jack demanded.
"Because ye can. And because ye will."
"I don't exactly have a choice," he muttered.
"There's always a choice," Billy said quietly. "Ye make it every time ye get up to fight again, 'stead of walkin' away."
Jack sighed and raised his glass to Billy, his expression rueful. "Can I buy you another round? We heroes have to stick together."
Suddenly Rob Anybody and several of the other Feegles were there, tugging on Billy. "We hae one! Ye must come and see!"
"You have what?" Jack asked.
Rob turned and looked up at Jack. "One o' the monsters that the wizard sent us to catch! The lads found one outside!"
Blue and plaid flashed all over the bar as the whole gaggle of Feegles swarmed out the door. Jack put his mug down and followed.
Whatever he'd expected to be tied up in the alley behind the bar, it wasn't this. Jack looked into the eyes of a Weevil who was watching the little blue men with something akin to terror. Jack felt unexpected sympathy with it.
He looked for Rob, who was congratulating the leader of the group that had caught the Weevil. "Rob. What are you going to do with this...monster, now that you've got it?"
Rob scratched his head. "Weel...the wizard said not to hurt them any more than we must. He wants them brought to his tower."
"Right," Jack muttered. "The fairies bringing the monsters to the wizard's tower." He looked around, at the normal night scenes of Cardiff. Out here, it was much harder to believe anything that he'd seen inside the bar. "Where exactly are you going to find a wizard's tower here?"
"Near water," Rob said cheerfully. "He said 'twas a tall silver tower, with water surroundin' it and water pourin' over it, yet not floodin' it. Aye, that's magic indeed! It shouldnae be hard to find."
Jack stood frozen to the spot as what looked like hundreds of Feegles ran under the bound Weevil. In a moment it had risen a few inches off the ground, as if it were levitating, and in another moment it was heading down the street at a rapid pace.
Only one still stood by Jack in the empty street. "Farewell, Captain," Billy said solemnly. He reached up, and Jack bent to take the gold coin that Billy handed him. "Something for you to remember us by, for the stories you've given me. Our paths may cross again, one day. If not...I'll make songs about the hero who always rises to fight again."
Jack finally found his voice. "Don't make those songs just yet, Billy," he said grimly, and took off at a run after the Feegles. Billy followed, keeping up easily. "You may have to add another verse. One where the hero kills the wizard absolutely dead." He fumbled around in his pocket as he ran, finding his earpiece and hooking it on, dialing the number. "Ianto! During that budget meeting, when you were talking about alternative sources of funding." He glared at the gold coin. "Define 'alternative'."