p. crumb has strong feelings re: mandatory pudding (godofnofun) wrote in dissentwo, @ 2013-04-01 19:54:00 |
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It wasn’t as if it had come as any surprise. Daryl had been missing for months, and it wasn’t as if it would have been the first time he’d gone underground, but when he did, there were always instructions left to his friends, he always found some way to keep in touch with the Prophet, to keep himself at the helm. After he’d been missing for a couple of weeks, the Prophet had officially designated a temporary editor for the Comment section. With tonight’s news, Pollo supposed, they’d make the designation permanent. A fullblood. Goodbye to the last shred of decency the paper had left, to the last editor with the courage to stand up to the purist elite, to a Malfoy government. At the very least, he hadn’t had to wait to find out in the morning’s paper; one of his friends in the DMLE had owled him the news early in the evening. He hadn’t slept since. He rarely slept much when he didn’t have a shift at the DMLE the next day. He’d spent the night thinking, poring over old letters from Daryl, of cut-out articles and editorials the man had published in his time, wondering about Elinor Leach, whether she regretted casting Daryl out to the wolves after Leslie’s murder. He thought, briefly, of his own parents, of his argument with his father, after the funeral, how he’d drifted apart from the rest of the family after that, even though they hadn’t asked him to, even though some of them had tried to draw him back. A good thing they hadn’t succeeded, considering what had happened to his father. He still had little pangs of terror, on his bad days, wondering how long it would be before he got news of one of his cousins being murdered, one of his Muggle relatives, how long it would be before they broke the wards on his home, before one of them turned up at a rally and threw a curse before he could get a shield up. The attack at King’s Cross, Mary Macdonald still unable to see, hadn’t helped matters, but that was just another thing he’d pushed to the back of his mind as much as he could; he’d visited her, he would visit her again, and for the moment there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to help her or Daryl, so why waste time worrying over it? Pollo knew he was probably going to die. A part of him knew that it was practically a statistical certainty that he would die soon. It made the idea of quitting the DMLE more and more appealing — he’d have to find something else to make rent, within a few months, if he survived that long, but to spend his last weeks making the most of them... He didn’t welcome the idea of death, but he wasn’t as afraid of it as he probably should have been, as many of his friends were. A mouthy halfblood champion of the people, with the arrogance to rail against the Malfoy government while working under it. It was a miracle he hadn’t been fired already. It was a miracle he hadn’t been killed already. He remained stoic, his face the usual grim mask of determination and tightly reined anger he wore when something bad had happened, but needless to say, when he went in to the extensively warded office he and some of the others had been using to organize for the last few months (they moved regularly, for everyone’s safety), he was not in a good mood. That extensively warded office already had already been occupied for a few hours prior to Pollo arriving. Richard had stumbled in earlier that afternoon to rest up a bit before his evening, only to have passed out on one of the corner tables, a nearly empty bottle of brandy toppled over near his feet. He would no doubt frown over the wasted alcohol when he awoke, but there was another bottle (or two) he kept stashed in one of the drawers, so all was not lost. He groggily woke up when he thought he heard the sound of someone else entering. He could have been wrong. It could have been a dream, though Richard couldn’t really recall the last time he dreamed. It could have been months, maybe years. They all kind of faded together, so there was no point in trying to pinpoint it down. He stood up, his face still marked up from the fabric of his sleeves, and he walked (and only stumbled a little more than was usual) over to where he thought he had heard the noise originate. Attempting to blink the sleep from his eyes and focus, he ran a hand through his hair and leaned against one of the tables. Of course it would be Pollo. Who else would come here at a time like this (other than Richard, but for completely different reasons). He cleared his throat to make his presence known, still not awake enough to really string together enough words to create a coherent sentence. Some more brandy would probably help that, he figured. He would have to grab that soon. Pollo was rarely caught off guard, and the noises of the drunk waking and attempting to regain basic coordination — not to mention a lingering scent of brandy — had been registered, their obvious source immediately jumped to. Richard had a habit of turning up at the worst possible times; were Pollo a little more generous in his estimation of the man, or a believer in divination, he might have suspected Richard had some latent ability to time his arrival to coincide precisely with the moments Pollo least wanted to deal with him. He glanced Richard’s way when he cleared his throat, but only for the briefest of moments, returning his full attention to the pamphlets he planned to copy immediately after. “I don’t suppose you were doing anything productive,” he said curtly. “If you must know,” Richard said, his voice still thick with sleep and intoxication, though his tired face produced a magnificent grin. “I have been very productive in my pursuits these past hours. I work very hard to get so little done.” “You’re pathetic.” It wasn’t the first time Pollo had said the words — doubtless, it wouldn’t be the last — and a careful observer might have been able to note that there was little heat in the words, as there had sometimes been, nor did they come out as tired as they now and then had before. His enunciation was sharp, precise, his tone just a little resentful. “You make a mockery of this place.” “I make a mockery of everything,” he said with a laugh, making his way to different tables, opening several drawers, having forgotten which one he had his his bottles. “But particularly this place, I suppose. You make it too easy. It basically mocks itself.” It was extremely fortunate that all Pollo knew was Richard was going through drawers he was surely not going to do any good with, and not what he was looking for. He looked at Richard for a long moment, lip lifted slightly in distaste, before shaking his head, beginning to make duplicates of the pamphlet as he muttered, “Pots, kettles...” “Pans, skillets, what of it?” Richard sang, finally finding his stash, and leaning back against the table, bringing the bottle up to his lips, watching Pollo carefully. “If you want to talk about a lack of productivity, we should discuss you wasting your time with pamphlets no one will ever read.” The fresh scent of alcohol in the room barely registered — Richard did, after all, carry the scent in abundance, as a rule — but at his words, Pollo looked to the drunk again, eyes briefly widening before they narrowed into the steely glare he reserved for his most furious arguments. He threw the pamphlets down onto the table, wand still out from making duplicates, clutched in white-knuckled fingers as he stormed over to Richard, glaring into the other man’s eyes. He wanted to shatter the bottle while it was still in Richard’s hands. He wanted to throw it against the wall. He wanted to scream at the man, rage at him, curse this entire sodding building to the ground. Inches away from his former schoolmate and, it seemed, permanent nuisance, he spoke in a low tone, the anger making his syllables shake. “You are the absolute embodiment of everything that is wrong with this country. The world. For every evil man there are dozens of complacent asses like you. You follow me around like an animal already half-dead just to nip at my bloody heels. Having decided there is no good in the world, you’ve dedicated your life to destroying any good that you find.” He had a sudden urge, ignored, to spit at the other man’s feet. “You have the power to make a difference and you’ve decided to make all the difference you can for the worst. You’re disgusting.” As he registered Pollo’s words, it was difficult to hide the sting of them, though he quickly covered it up with a grin, something he had done countless times in the past, and would probably do countless times to come. He had heard variations of this lecture before, and not just from Pollo, though when it came this harshly, it was difficult to not just walk out. “I am,” he agreed, knowing that it would annoy Pollo more than any other reaction out of him ever could. Taking another swig from his bottle before settling it down, he stood up straighter, though still with a slight sway, and looked his angry colleague right in the eyes. “Here you are again, being unproductive. If I already know these things, you reciting them again is only wasting time.” As soon as the bottle was set down, Pollo’s wand flashed in its direction, the glass shattering in a spray away from them, the alcohol with it. He returned his arm to his side immediately after, still staring Richard in the eyes as he replied, his voice less cutting than before but no less angry. “You don’t need to be,” he hissed. “We both know you’re intelligent. You could be making a difference but instead you come and try to disrupt the people who are willing to put their lives on the line to save others. You’re far worse than the common cynic, Richard.” Richard’s body tensed as the bottle shattered, it’s contents spilling to the ground, more wasted. He would deal with that later, however. Soon, but not now. Instead, he scoffed and stepped away from the broken glass on the floor. “So you think I should put my own life on the line for your cause? You are as naive as you are uptight.” “I think you should either learn to live up to your potential or leave.” He nodded at the shattered glass, lip curling again. “Have you saturated your brain so completely that you forgot minors come here? What if they’d found your stash?” Ignoring his first suggestion, Richard let out a good, hearty laugh. “I can guarantee you that those minors have stashes of their own, mate.” Pollo glared at Richard a moment longer before stepping back, waving his wand at the remains of the bottle, quick charms in succession getting rid of the glass, the liquid, and the lingering smell (though as for the scent of brandy still on Richard’s breath, suffusing his person, Pollo had no energy). He turned away from the other man, returning to his pamphlets, continuing to duplicate them, his movements rather sharper and more forceful than would typically be viewed as normal for a simple duplication charm. “If you want to drink,” he said quietly, most of the heat gone from his voice though the fierceness remained, “drink to Daryl Hammond. They found his body. You might as well dedicate your self-destruction to someone worthwhile.” The grin on his face instantly fell as the news of Daryl Hammond registered. He had met the man, of course, and he was quite sure Daryl, like so many others, wasn’t his biggest fan. The fact still remained that Richard was not dim enough to not realize the impact his death would have on the man in front of him. And though Richard was an ass, a drunk, and a cynic, he was still human. “Oh,” he said more softly. He wasn’t sure what else to offer, worried saying any more would probably just offend Pollo, and though that was normally his aim, it was not right now. “Yes,” Pollo said, hardly angry anymore. For all that he was an easily annoyed and wildly temperamental man — and though he could be cruel — he rarely used up his anger where it wasn’t deserved. He didn’t have to look at Richard to know the shit-eating grin was gone. “He was fortunate, in a sense, to have lost everyone already. No more holes left to leave in that family.” “Christ, must you be so cynical?” At that, Pollo couldn’t help but let out one humourless, breathy laugh, setting his hands on the table, wand still loosely held by a few fingers as he let his head hang down for a moment before he straightened, resuming his movements. The smile that appeared so briefly was nowhere to be found when he replied. “I’m being serious. Daryl was living with a noose around his neck for too long. I think he would have been glad that most of the people who would mourn him most were already lost. You have to find something good in this sort of thing.” Or, at least, Pollo did. “You okay?” Richard asked, not exactly sure if it was appropriate to ask, given that he had just been reamed out only moments before. Fuck, he was too sober to handle his conversation, but he didn’t want to risk the life of that second bottle hidden. “My friend’s dead,” Pollo replied, as close as he’d come to admitting how not okay he was for the moment. He was not in the habit of acknowledging his weaknesses at any but the most dire times; that Richard was one of the only people who’d ever seen him in that state made no difference to him then (though it was likely that if it had been someone else there, Pollo would have been making speeches, planning aloud how they would use the tragedy to their advantage, to make the Death Eaters rue the day they ever thought to take a good man down, rather than stating this grim fact baldly). He took the copies he’d made so far, stacking them neatly, binding them with a string summoned from a nearby drawer, his back still to the other man. “He is,” Richard stated calmly, as he pulled out his wand (which had been taped up and patched so many times, that it was a damn miracle that the thing still worked) and made his way over to the table Pollo was working at, taking a pamphlet himself to start duplicating without bringing any attention to the fact that for once, he was contributing. He didn’t want Pollo to start getting ideas, after all. “Sucks.” Pollo noted what Richard was doing and, all too familiar with how he usually responded to any acknowledgment Pollo made of him acting like a decent person (like the person Pollo knew he was damn well capable of being), refrained from comment. “It does.” A pause, and then. “Did you like him?” It was always difficult to tell, with Richard, who he genuinely disliked and who he just seemed to enjoy aggravating. “He was another dime a dozen activist,” Richard responded with no real conviction for once. He may have been a cynic through and through, but he was still respectful in most circumstances, this being one of them. “But those dime a dozen are still worth more than us disgusting drunks, it’s true.” Pollo glanced at Richard, just for a moment, before returning his attention to the pamphlets. “It doesn’t need to be that way,” he pointed out. Richard sighed and rolled his eyes, knowing exactly where this conversation was heading. It always did. Richard was beyond repair and way beyond salvation, and the fact that Pollo could not see this yet baffled him. “And yet, it is. What a sorry soul I am. Now, tell me more about Daryl.” “No,” Pollo said. “You’ve been to the meetings. You knew him well enough.” Better, too, not to dwell on the haunted look in the man’s eyes, in the decided lack of hope that had been there ever since his daughter was cut down. “You’re not so sorry a soul,” he noted, resisting the urge to nod at the pamphlets Richard was copying. In a selfish attempt to try and shift the conversation away from the depressing route it was sure to take if he continued to speak of Daryl Hammond, Richard decided to just focus on one particular pamphlet in front of him, though he couldn’t recite a single word that was written. “But of course I am, and I am at peace with it. You should be, too, at this point.” “I will never be at peace with your complacency, when I know everything you could be.” “Then that is your burden and not mine,”he stated simply, not wanting to go further into the topic which they had discussed dozens of times before. “If you’re so unburdened, why do you come here time and time again?” Pollo demanded, the hint of a smirk he wore marred by his fatigue. “In vino veritas, you stubborn arse.” “I come for the snacks,” Richard stated with a serious face, or at least he thought he was being serious. He wasn’t sober enough to put enough effort into it, to be honest. Pollo looked at him for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to push the subject further, before returning his attention to the pamphlets, tying a second group into a neat stack. “No you don’t.” “You ask me why I come, I give an answer, and you reject it,” Richard said with a laugh, finding more humor in it than was probably there. “But you’re right. The snacks are shite. Who do I talk to about that?” “You learn to cook and bring the snacks yourself,” Pollo suggested, grinning slightly at the absurdity of it all. “Or I’ll just go find another group with better snacks,” he jokingly threatened. “We both know I won’t be learning to cook anytime soon.” “You could join Promise,” Pollo said dryly, the grin already starting to fade. “You already know several of the members, I’ve heard the food is excellent, and you seem to enjoy rubbing elbows with murderers.” “Yes, but their liquor is weak,” was all he offered in response. “You could do with weaker liquor.” “But then I would have to drink more, and that makes me have to piss more,” he said, looking over to Pollo and smirking. “Then I would interrupt your little meetings more often, having to get up and wiz every ten seconds.” Pollo glared half-heartedly at his friend for a moment, shaking his head as he returned his attention to the work at hand. “Joke all you want. There’s a Malfoy in the Minister’s office and the DMLE’s shown all the strength and resourcefulness of a crippled puffskein. Our little meetings are one of the only things standing between the people of this country and utter hopelessness.” With that, Richard let out a full-bellied laugh. “Only you could take a conversation about snacks and pissing, and turn it into one of your justice for the people lectures. You are a piece of work, Apollo.” Pollo shot Richard another look. “I’m not in the mood for jokes today. We’ve lost too many people this year.” What Pollo worried about was that these latest blows might be another sign that, for all their work and their passion (and... Richard’s showing up to meetings to make fun of their work and passion), they were losing. That they were going to lose. But he wasn’t about to let that particular thought take seed, and he certainly wasn’t going to voice it to Richard, who would no doubt delight in having finally been around to see Pollo’s convictions start to crack. Pollo wasn’t about to give the drunk the satisfaction. “Daryl dead means one fewer person left willing to take a stand against the tyrants trying to take this country as their own. He won’t be easily replaced.” “You could always just Imperius the masses.” “How perfectly Slytherin of you. Is that how you keep convincing people to sell liquor to you even when you’re stumbling over your own feet?” “That, or I offer to suck their cocks,” Richard joked with a grin. “Works nine out of ten times.” Pollo shot Richard a look that was at once utterly exasperated and... a little surprised, before the flash of uncertainty melted away to be replaced by his usual grim mask of annoyance. Now wasn’t the time to wonder whether or not Richard was being serious; he couldn’t waste his energy trying to save his schoolmate, not today. Daryl deserved better than Pollo letting Richard rile him up. Then again, he did have a tendency of getting quite a lot more done when he was riled up. “Don’t be an arse.” “Perhaps I would be less of an arse if someone didn’t blow up my bottle.” “I wouldn’t have to blow up the bottle if you weren’t such an arse,” Pollo said, some of the more arch anger leaving his voice for a pettier annoyance. He sounded petty. He sounded small. The realization only annoyed him more. “You need to go get help, Richard. Your body’s only going to take so much.” Especially if he was sucking cock to get his drinks, not that Pollo was about to say that particular gem of crudeness aloud. “The only help I need, is getting home every now and then,” Richard responded, holding one of the pamphlets in front of him, thumbing through it. “There are too many words. You should put more pictures. Or make this into a comic book. More people might care.” On another, better day, Pollo might have recognized that Richard was, in fact, providing a valid suggestion that, if taken into consideration, could help the cause. As a matter of fact, others had brought up how text-heavy Pollo’s pamphlets were, and he’d been meaning to remedy it. On a better day, Pollo might have asked Richard if he was sodding volunteering, since the realization that the talent he’d shown in Hogwarts was now given exclusively to purist bastards was a bitter pill in his mouth that Pollo never quite managed to swallow down or spit out. These thoughts flitted through his mind, briefly, but it was the first statement he chose to respond to. “Do you even let yourself be aware of the effects of long-term alcoholism on the body and the mind or have you reached such a point of delusion and dependence that you manage to make your thoughts dance around the subject as you’re sucking poison down?” “No, Mummy, please tell me more,” Richard said, tossing the pamphlet to the floor, then hopping up to sit on the table –a feat which was more difficult than he originally thought, as his intoxicated arse almost toppled over the edge. Once he stabilized, he crossed his legs and stared at Pollo. “Alcohol is bad for me?” “Just don’t come running to me when you find out you’ve taken to shitting yourself because your body’s finally given up and started to shut down,” Pollo muttered, walking away from Richard towards a desk, straightening the supplies on top of it automatically. “Mate, when my body starts shutting down and I start shitting myself, I don’t think I’ll be running anywhere.” Just as Pollo had come to accept that his death would most likely brought on by his fight for his Cause, Richard had long ago accepted that his would by his bottle. There wasn’t much Pollo could say to such blatant acknowledgement of the unavoidable pitfalls of Richard’s habit, and he kept his focus on the surface of the desk before him, though anyone watching close enough could have read volumes in the tightness of his shoulders and the way he grit his teeth at Richard’s response. “You should find something worth dying for, if you’re looking to die.” All this talk of death had dried his throat out, and whether Pollo liked it or not, Richard was ready for another drink. He didn’t feel right, still felt tension in his body. His brandy would fix that, so with a flick of his wand and a whispered spell, it came right to him. Bottle now in hand, he looked down at it and frowned, wondering whether he would need to place protective charms on all of his bottles from here on out. It seemed like too much effort. Bringing the mouth of the bottle to his lips, he hungrily chugged down a few healthy gulps, immediately feeling better than he had since the death of his last bottle. He took one last chug before brought the bottle down, though keeping it clutched closely to him, in case Pollo were to try and separate the two again. “And how do you know I haven’t?” When he saw another bottle — had Richard shrunk a distillery to carry around in his pocket, for convenience? — Pollo very nearly fell under the sudden tide of anger that surged at the sight. It was easy to see in the look on his face that he would have absolutely no qualms about sending the second bottle to the same fate as the first. Richard’s question, however, distracted him from his urge to cast Richard the hell out of the office (hell, out of his life). “Because you’re still here acting like a child, making sure I have to watch while you waste your life?” he suggested. “My role in life is making people like you look even better in comparison,” Richard said, again taking a drink. “It wouldn’t do the world any good for everybody to be so driven, you know? There would be more Apollo Crumbs, sure, but there would also be more Voldemorts and Hitlers, and let’s be honest, I’m no Jesus.” Pollo considered Richard for a long moment, some of his anger subsiding, before he shook his head, lips pursed. “You’re no Voldemort, either.” “You have too much faith in a drunk,” Richard pointed out, doing his best to hide the sadness in his smile. “Foolish boy.” “If you were anything like him I would never speak to you,” Pollo parried. “Or do you have so little faith in my powers of observation?” “I have no faith in anything,” Richard lied. Perhaps the only thing he did have faith in was standing in the room with him, interrogating him and his life decisions. “We both know that’s not true,” Pollo said, though he had no idea of the extent to which it was untrue. He crossed his arms, studying the other man. “Your foolishness is showing again,” Richard pointed out, making eye contact with Pollo and not breaking it as be brought his brandy back to his lips. “A man who didn’t care wouldn’t need to drink so much.” “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust words of wisdom about drinking from a man who never drinks,” Richard chided, raising a brow. “It’s like a blind man telling me that my shirt clashes with my jacket. Stick to what you know, Pollo, and I will stick to what I do.” Pollo resisted the urge to flinch at the mention of blindness, shaking his head slightly. “I don’t drink because I’ve found more productive things to do. It doesn’t mean I don’t understand the impulse.” He uncrossed his arms, beginning to walk the perimeter of the room, straightening things here and there as he spoke. “If you were truly apathetic you’d be making the most of your situation. You’d smile for the purists you paint and kiss their arses with everything you had to endear yourself. You’d get Krispin MacDougal to fawn over your portraits and drag you to every party Gaius Selwyn throws. You’d let your cynic’s assessment of the war lead you to pick the pessimist’s side.” Here, his smile was slightly bitter, as he flashed it Richard’s way. “You’re a fullblood. You could. Instead, you spend your spare time here, waiting around whether it’s to see us succeed or to watch us die and be reassured that you were right all along.” He returned to where Richard was, leaning against a table opposite the one Richard sat on, arms crossed again. He wore a slight, sharp smile when he began to speak, but it faded as he went on — “You’re not apathetic. You’re afraid. And you’ve let your fear make a miserable man out of you. That’s why you drink. Not because there’s nothing better to do. Don’t do me the disservice of pretending you drink out of boredom.” His mind already being fogged by the brandy, Pollo’s little tirade had finally stimulated Richard enough to give more than just a sharp joke or snide comment in response. Pushing himself down and off the table, brandy his clutched desperately in his hand, he took a step toward Pollo, eyes narrowed. “You know nothing, Apollo Crumb,” he snapped back, his eyes more bloodshot and his movements less coordinated than before. “You may know everything about history and civil rights and a person’s liberties, but don’t try to convince me that you understand a thing about anyone’s personal life. You serve the people, never just a person. I would be shocked to learn that you ever feel anything other than anger and disdain. You know nothing of why I do what I do, and you’ll go to your early grave ignorant of it.” Pollo was used to Richard being unpleasant, but he was entirely unused to saying Richard say much of anything like he really meant it, let alone so vehemently. It was difficult not to get distracted by his obviously heightened level of inebriation as the other man came at him, but he did his best to focus on Richard’s words, and how he said them. It was obvious he’d struck a nerve but, now that he’d done it, Pollo was largely at a loss for how to repair the damage. Much as it grated to admit it, Richard was right: Pollo really never had been good at dealing with individual human beings. “I feel plenty more than anger and disdain,” he said quietly, his eyes wide as he looked at the other man. “I wouldn’t get angry if it didn’t pain me to see what’s unjust in the world. It’s unjust that you do this to yourself, Richard. It’s unjust that you’re content to waste away and make so little of your life when you have so much to give. That’s why I get angry. You can hardly fault me for disdaining the drink that’s addled my friend’s mind.” “None of this is the drink’s fault, it is mine,” Richard spat back, his anger still clearly evident as he lifted up the bottle in front of Pollo. “You can destroy this bottle and dozens over, but guess what? The bottles don’t just walk back over to me. I get them. I want them. So don’t misplace your disdain, and just hate me, and not some inanimate object.” Pollo grimaced when Richard brandished the bottle in his face, his distaste evident, but he kept his eyes on Richard’s as best he could, even as his brows drew together and Pollo began to suspect that he was in far over his head (at least today, at least as tired as he was). “I don’t hate you,” he said carefully, though if Richard had asked him why he might have been hard-pressed to explain it; Richard had several good qualities, but he’d grown better and better, over the years, at making sure they rarely saw the light of day. “And I wish you wouldn’t. I’ve lost enough people.” Richard said nothing for a while, and instead just eyed Pollo and took another drink, before breaking eye contact and turning away. He couldn’t pinpoint how he felt, whether it was anger or sadness or guilt, but whatever it was, he didn’t want to feel it anymore. As he walked by one of the tables with the pamphlets stacked, he shot out his hand to knock them all off. “Yeah, well, you fucking should.” At this — the intensity of some moments before replaced by Richard, well, acting much more like Richard, albeit far less cheerily immature than usual — Pollo rolled his eyes, his wand immediately righting the pamphlets. “‘Should’ is a tricky word,” he muttered, going back to the desk, to find a quill (to have something to do). “Clearly,” Richard muttered right back, still annoyed, though with the intense, heated moments behind him, he began to feel a dull pang of regret for them. He believed every word he said, but he always did his best to not let it show. Jokes and sarcastic comments were one thing, but this left him more vulnerable, a state which Richard was not comfortable with in the least. He turned around, stumbling slightly as he tried to straighten himself out to address Pollo. “If you don’t want me to come here, just say the word, and I won’t come back.” For the life of him, Pollo couldn’t have said why the statement stung him; if he’d thought on it, he would have assumed it had to do with his pride, and his adoption of Richard as one of his many causes. He would have been a little bit right, but mostly wrong. He kept looking Richard in the eye for a long moment after the other man’s words prompted him to look up from the desk, quill poised between the fingers of one hand as the other hand’s fingers gently cradled the feather, and when he spoke, his voice was level. “You commiserated with me over the death of a friend, helped with the pamphlets, and got rid of the lingering smell of those sandwiches from last week. Why wouldn’t I want you here?” “I don’t know,” he shrugged, leaning back against the desk to keep from swaying. “I suppose I just always mistake you for someone with common sense.” Pollo pressed his lips in a small smile, though it was a tired one. “Who’s the fool now?” “Forever me,” Richard admit, believing so with all his rough, cynical heart. “Forever both of us, perhaps.” “Perhaps,” he agreed, glancing down at his bottle, then back up at Pollo. There was nothing left for him to say, and the room felt smaller and more cramped to the point where breathing was becoming more difficult. He needed to leave the room, the building, the situation. He considered calling it a night and going home, but it would only cause him to dwell and think, and Richard wanted no part of that. So he would go to a few of his regular pubs, and hopefully end up waking up in his apartment tomorrow, though he had a feeling that this would not be one of those time. Without saying another word, Richard turned around and walked out the door, leaving Pollo to his plans to save the world, while he went out to try and forget his. Other people might have been a little stung at the lack of a goodbye before Richard made his exit, but other people were not in the habit of regularly forsaking sleep for the sake of Doing All The Things. There was a part of Pollo that was a little annoyed at the way Richard skulked off but, on the whole, he assumed it was for the best. Richard was already far too drunk, and if he hadn’t left, Pollo would likely have kicked him out within another fifteen minutes at most. He would go off to god knew where to spend the money purist England had given him on his own slow death, and if not tomorrow morning then some morning in the next week or two, Pollo would come home to find the other man asleep on his doorstep, smelling like a particularly unkempt gutter. That was usually what happened after a particularly tense conversation between them, anyway. In the meantime, Daryl was still dead, and Pollo was not about to let his death go by wasted. There was the memorial service to plan. A rally in his honour. Letters to every editor in the Daily Prophet, to Daryl’s other supporters. There were posters to be made. There was strategy to consider. He could wonder about the drunk and his rare moment of vulnerability some other time. For now, there was work to be done. |