Who: Daniel Webster What: Daniel settles in. Where: Alice's London When: Back then, you know. Which is technically now, there. Warnings/Rating: No warnings. Tame.
Daniel didn't really want to survive in this new place, this old, filthy London. Surviving was for people with will and brains, not washed up authors that preferred to end it painlessly and quietly somewhere that people would give him the peace to do so. He couldn't think of a more ridiculous place to be than London, Victorian London judging from the hats and aprons walking by, an antique country in which his current living situation with Lin would get them both thrown in prison and his accent was as foreign as Chinese.
Two things decided Daniel on trying: Lin being lost and the white cat in the storage room with him.
"Trying" was hard. Daniel had to stay sober to think, and he had to watch how much he swigged from the bottle he extracted from one of his piles of hotel-provided belongings. He had to dig out a black oversized blazer and black shoes, try to find black slacks that were cut close to the leg and a white shirt that wasn't too much like a tuxedo front. He had to scuff up the shoes and find a vest to turn inside out so he could approximate the appearance of a middle-class gentleman with bad taste in hemlines. He had to find one of the various containers of gold and jewels Henry had squirreled away in various books and vases, then find a way to distribute them so he wouldn't be immediately clubbed to death the minute he walked out.
Then he had to close his eyes and think about the best way to secure his house. (He knew there was one. There was a key, an iron thing... keys meant houses. Probably outside and upstairs, the storage room was in a cellar.) Daniel went through his memory and he thought everything through, taxing his mind for something like functionality.
He wasn't going to get help here as an American from the future. He'd have to do bizarre and rich, and to hide his accent he was probably going to have to be loud about it. Italian was the best bet. He had to keep the cat with him, which would be even stranger. He was going to need a valet, because he'd read enough to know that rich men did nothing for themselves. He wouldn't have to go out long, and he could hire someone soon, someone who wasn't necessarily well-trained, but who could find others. Daniel was thinking about finding a tailor. A tailor would react well to money, recognize potential, and probably know servants by the bulk.
If he was going to protect himself and the house long enough to get Lin there safe, then he needed to be rich and attended, rather than rich and vulnerable. So. Be Italian. Buy help. Find the house. Get into costume. Protect the storage room.
If only he didn't hate going outside so much. He'd liked traveling before, rambled over all of Europe. He missed Italy's green water and Germany's beer halls. He didn't remember the sky being quite that big back then, didn't remember the world being so disgusted with him. Daniel picked up the cat, curled the helpless deaf ball of fluff into his chest. He could do this. Broken English. Careful with the coin. Be strange, but be certain about it.
Be Italian. Buy help. Secure the house. Get into costume. Protect the storage room.
He repeated it in his head as he slid out of the room and out onto the pavement, cringing under the stares. Be Italian. Buy help. Secure the house. Get into costume. Protect the storage room.