one by one my strings they tangled into knots

[admiral_adama]

Sometimes those familiar with Xanadu and the agora can spot a newcomer simply by virtue of the fact that they've obviously just emerged from the wrong door. For example, right now. The weathered older man wearing a dusty set of fatigues looks like an extremely unlikely customer for the antique and curio shop out of which he just stepped. Those

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[halfbreedblade]

Anya recognizes a curseword when she hears one, by tone if not meaning. She's done enough traveling (and enough of those trips involved causing profanity).

"So. Turned up and can't find the exit, huh?"

[admiral_adama]

Bill's gaze snaps upward at the sound of her voice. Taking a moment for rapid assessment, he notes the young woman's attitude, expression, how she carries herself. Something about her reminds him of someone he once knew...

"That sums it up pretty well," he replies at last. "Is there an exit?"

[halfbreedblade]

"Several. The trick is finding the one that takes you where you want to go." A wry smile touches her expression. "Took me three godsdamn days. But I did find one eventually."

[admiral_adama]

He relaxes subtly at her words, one corner of his mouth quirking up in answer to her smile. "Good to know."

A bare second's consideration and he stands to offer a hand. "Bill Adama. If there's anything else you can tell me about this place, I'd appreciate it."

[inherowntime]

Agora. She's been avoiding this place for the last little while and the white bandage wrapped around her wrist is the reason why. Well, the need for said bandage. Cotton and gauze and a bit of medical tape are obscuring a nasty flesh wound from where someone (something?) bit her the last time Núria Laporta ventured into the amphitheater. She was here now simply to see if her sweater was still there to be reclaimed.

As she scans the area and doesn't see the sickly and terrifying man that bit her, she relaxes a bit. Safe. No sign of her sweater as yet, though. Picking her way through the rows of seats, she wonders if someone might have picked it up off the ground and sat it somewhere less dirty.

Then she sees him. Thank God. Thank Mary and Jesus and all the saints. Felip is here and everything will be alright. It's only his face in profile that she sees but that's enough. He'll be just as confused, she's sure, but he's her rock. He'll find out what's going on and how to get home. "Felip! Mi amor

[admiral_adama]

Her words make no sense, but her voice has his head turning in her direction as soon as he works through the boundless initial shock of she's dead, I buried her, she can't be here--

Or can she?

When he looks at her, the shock redoubles. Not only is she alive and here, she's healthy, red hair full and vibrant, cheeks flushed with a glow that he hadn't seen for long months before her death. He rises to his feet without noticing, all his attention on the woman in front of him.

"Laura." Alive. Healthy. With him. Frak everything else, nothing else matters now. "I can't believe--this is impossible."

[inherowntime]

She rushes over when he stands and then she stops suddenly, eyes wide and ever so puzzled. Laura? And the accent and the English, why would he address her in English? As she looks up at him, Núria gasps softly and shakes her head. His eyes are blue, not brown. "Felip?"

She doubts this now even if his face...he looks so like her husband, the man she's loved since she was barely more than a girl but the little differences--this isn't her Felip but then who is he and how can he look so much like him? "Perdoni. No."

Shaking her head, she crosses her self and tries again, in English, "I'm sorry. I thought I knew you."

[admiral_adama]

"I--" He wants to deny the dawning realization, to snap stop screwing around with that accent, Madam President, but he's looking into deep brown eyes with no sign of contacts and he can't. And her accent, and the ever-so-slightly different way she moves and stands ... the truth bears down inexorably. She is not Laura any more than he is--Felip? He swallows, hard.

Only the public venue and old reflexes of decorum kept him from pulling her to him when she first approached. A good thing, apparently, no matter how hollow he feels right now. "I apologize as well, ma'am," he replies at last, his voice even raspier than usual. Tightening throats will do that. "You look very much like someone I know--knew."

[forceoftime]

Not far away, there's a sharp-eyed young woman of indeterminate ethnicity (most people guess white, but they'd only be half-right), with curly red-brown hair and a leather jacket tossed on over her jeans and blouse. She's looking equally unsettled by the change in locale, but rather than staying still, she's stalking the streets in high-heeled boots, obscuring the agitation with a sense of even purposefulness - it's not that she doesn't know where she is, it's just that usually she doesn't turn up here on accident.

The stranger's voice interrupts her, though, and she pauses, rueful. The swear isn't the word she'd choose, but she can comprehend its meaning by the tone employed; she glances over at the man, looking him over. Military, going by his age, probably high-ranking. Steady. Not inclined to panic.

"You said it," Francesca exhales.

[admiral_adama]

Again he turns his head toward a new voice, again the quiet assessment. What his conclusions might be aren't easily read in that craggy face, but he does smile slightly. He's well used to assertive women of various stripes, after all.

"Did I?" he rumbles. "Are you an unexpected guest here too?" His eyes, so oddly blue in his bronzed face, scan the crowd. "Is everyone?"

[lalo_inmortal]

Lalo happened to be sitting not too far from the human, watching him with some interest. His reactions were somewhat telling as the werewolf studied him and then...the simple utterance had Lalo biting back a laugh. A giggle, really. This WADAMA was an amusing man so far.

"I have never heard that one before." True enough, though he could guess the meaning easily enough. "You don't like this place."

It wasn't a question but the sum of Lalo's observations.

[admiral_adama]

Bill didn't find his predicament all that amusing, but he could see how someone else might. So his glance at the young man was keen, but not irritated. (Young. Man. Well, werewolves were well outside even his considerable range of experience.)

"I'm sure it's lovely." And the dry irony in his voice could be cut with a knife, really. "And it'll be lovelier when I figure out how I wound up here and how to get back."

[lalo_inmortal]

Lalo shrugs, after being mauled by a werewolf and spending nearly a century adjusting to the changes it wrought, Xanadu's not such a terrible thing to deal with. Usually. "It's different for different people. Be careful if you are trying doors at random, you could end up somewhere you don't want to be."

Or somewhen but he isn't going to think about his lone misadventure in that vein.

"Where are you from?" He has an odd smell to him, Lalo can't place it.

[admiral_adama]

"Thanks for the advice." He means it. Any place with a force that can just pluck him from his own place should obviously be explored with caution, and he'll take all the hints he can get. That he will explore this place, he does not question.

Answering the other man's question, now, that's harder. But he doesn't know enough about where he is to be sure of coming up with a plausible lie, so the truth. "Originally? I come from a planet called Caprica. But I came here from a planet named Earth." A planet he'd dubbed Earth shortly after his people's arrival.

[dugdowndeep]

It's the fatigues that draw Jack's attention. His own, though accompanied by a sidearm strapped to his leg, are similarly lacking in accoutrements; even the flag has been torn from the shoulder and not replaced. (It was Gath's and he wouldn't wear it, but he has no country to replace it with anymore, does he?) The stranger's aren't any uniform he recognizes, but any indication of military presence is enough to make him approach with caution.

He softens a little at the expletive, though. That translates clearly enough, and considering how this place tends to operate, he can guess at the cause.

"I'd say you get used to it, but I'm not sure that's actually very comforting." 'It' being Xanadu, apparently, which he gestures vaguely to convey.

[admiral_adama]

Bill also notes the unfamiliar fatigues first, then his eyes snap to the sidearm. Oddly enough he relaxes just a touch at the sight. He even comes close to smiling, which might tell you something about how much of his life has been spent around military people.

Also dangerous people in general.

"I've been getting mixed reviews." His tone is affable enough, as is the hand he offers. "Bill Adama. Not that this place doesn't have its charms, but I'd rather get back to where I belong before I have a chance to get used to it."

[dugdowndeep]

"Jack Benjamin." He has a politician's handshake, but there's a soldier's solidness to it, too. The gestures seems to dispel more of his wariness.

"That's usually just a question of finding the right door - which isn't always the one that got you here, unfortunately." He gives an apologetic head-tilt, assuming Bill has already tried that door. "There are other ways, though. Where is it you're trying to get back to?"

[admiral_adama]

Bill hesitates before answering, not out of any mistrust of the younger man, but more because he's not sure he can give him an answer that means much of anything. "I can tell you that the planet is called Earth--" He himself had named it after their original destination, in fact. "--and that I came through the back door of a cabin I built on one of the larger continents. But I don't think I can give you any more precise of a location without a map."