Angus MacDougal has no pets. (madangus) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2009-11-04 11:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | angus macdougal, lydia townsley |
RP Log: Angus and Lydia
Characters: Angus MacDougal and Lydia Townsley
Setting: Caer Dubh, late on Halloween Night (BACKDATED)
Summary: After seeing to the family, Angus takes a break to sit with Lydia a bit.
Warnings: Just mentions of the Halloween violence.
Lydia was pacing. Lydia Townsley never paced, but there she was... pacing. She was still wearing the dress that was part of her costume, but her hair was down. It probably still would have been up, but ever few steps she needed something to run her fingers through. She also kept looking at her bed. Every time something new popped up on the page she literally ran the few steps, but then felt like she was going to vomit when it wasn't something directed at her from one of her loved ones.
She had gotten out right away - right away. They had been sitting near the entrance and she knew the moment that Angus told her to leave that it wasn't time to ask questions. It wasn't one of those times where she sighed heavily and stamped her foot, trying to make someone take her seriously. No, this was not good, it was about to get worse, and a translator had no place being there.
Swallowing once, Lydia stopped her pacing and finally kicked off her heels. She was in her bedroom, just because she didn't feel quite comfortable waiting with Angus's family. While she had been staying at the castle for a few weeks now and she had met them, she just needed to be alone. She wasn't just waiting for Angus, after all. If something happened to Sturgis, she was going to have to kill him and then explain it to Lacey and -
No. Lydia closed her eyes and breathed in a deep breath. It would be okay. Everything was going to be all right. The mantra repeated over and over in her head as she pulled herself into the bed, the journal at her side as she hugged her knees to her chest and waited.
Angus found her in much the same state when he finished helping with the process of getting people lined up to go to St. Mungo's. He couldn't do the kind of healing that witches and wizards could with magic, but he could assess people in triage and determine who was first in line to get taken care of right away or die, and he was adept at stopping bleeding and treating wounds Muggle-style until someone with magic could get to them. Thus, he was a little later getting back to the castle than the others.
Upon arrival, he first made sure there were hugs for Gwendolyn, because she was the one who would need them most. Madog got a clap on the shoulder, because that was how men did things. Angus picked up his journal just to get himself checked in with the Order and to see that most of the people he needed to know about were all right. Then, he made his excuses to go check on Lydia.
"Ye're okay?" he asked, obviously concerned. He knew she had gotten out, he knew she had made it to the castle - but that wasn't quite enough, not when it came to her. Somewhere along the way he had come to care a lot about this woman, and despite respecting her ability to take care of herself, he needed to know that she was really and truly all right.
Lydia's head jerked up, her gaze having been locked on her journal and willing something to be said to her from someone. Actually literally hearing from Angus wasn't what she had been expecting, so it made her blink in surprise for a few seconds before she jumped to her feet. Her journal fell to the ground next to the bed and she was hurrying to meet him at the doorway and throw her arms around him.
It might have been dramatic and it might have been overboard, but Lydia didn't care. "Oh, thank God," she murmured, her arms tight. It was at that moment that she realized that she didn't just care about Angus, but she cared about him and she had been worried out of her damn mind.
Angus didn't think it was overly dramatic in the least. There wasn't anything all night that had felt as good as Lydia hugging him like this. It had been a bloody miserable evening, and it was nice to have a little reminder that there was some good in the world besides just the grandchildren.
"Good to see ye too," he murmured back, and held her just as tightly in return. "I was worried 'bout ye."
Lydia swallowed hard once, her eyes squeezed tight as she took in a deep breath. Then, she pulled away from Angus in an attempt to look him over. She knew that any injuries that he sustained would probably be fine - especially if he was standing there in front of her - and that any mothering that she was about to do was a waste of time. But she had to leave the fight and she'd been no help and this, at least, made her feel useful.
"Are you all right?" she asked quietly, her gaze drifting across his body as she blinked a bit faster than normal to keep her eyes dry. "You didn't get hurt, did you?"
"Nothin' I couldn' walk away from," he assured her, his voice just as quiet. Angus leaned down to lay a soft kiss at her temple, and then just left his head resting against hers. The gesture was quiet and comfortable, without a trace of his usual dramatics. On a night like this, he just needed to know she was there, solid and warm and unharmed.
"Good, good," Lydia replied, almost idly although she didn't back away from him. She let her eyes close and finally those tears that had been just sitting there in the corners of her eyes spilled over silently. Lydia Townsley wasn't the sort of woman that cried over a broken nail, but sometimes it was the only way she could think of to respond to situations. Right now she was physically exhausted from a running away from an attack and emotionally exhausted from letting her worry multiply and then nearly knocked off her feet from the relief that Angus was right here. It was either laugh or cry and Lydia didn't know if she could laugh without passing out.
Angus felt the little drops of water begin to soak through his shirt, but he didn't acknowledge them aloud. He didn't think Lydia would thank him for it. Instead, he slipped his fingers gently into her hair, cool and light as they combed slowly through.
"Most o' the family's converged in the downstairs parlor, an' Morgan's taken Nick to get him sorted out," Angus said quietly. "'s why it too me so long to come up. I'll need to go an' check on 'em all again in a bit, but for m'self I wanted to spend a li'l time up here."
"Yeah," Lydia murmured, breathing in a deep breath. "I just - I needed to be alone, I think. For a bit. Otherwise I'd've stayed down by them before," she explained in a murmur, even though she realized that it probably wasn't necessary.
After a moment, she pulled away just a bit, her hands coming up to cup his cheek and push through his hair. "God, I was worried," she murmured, releasing a long sigh. Then, her lips curled up just the tiniest bit and she teased, "Don't do that to me again, you hear?"
"Yeah, I hear ye," Angus replied, smiling slightly back at her. He knew very well that he'd probably be scaring the hell out of her at least two or three times more, but he figured she probably knew him well enough to know that anyway. It wasn't as if she didn't know who she was dating. He'd never needed a secret vigilante organization to find trouble for him.
Angus was also quite confident in his ability to survive huge amounts of trouble mostly intact, though. If neither Longshanks, Napoleon, the Kaiser, or Hitler had succeeded in killing him off, this Voldemort character certainly wasn't going to. So Angus just tipped his head down to kiss the top of Lydia's and went on. "Wanna let's sit a bit? 's been a long night."
"Yeah," Lydia agreed with a nod, pulling herself away from him but letting her hand drop to wrap around Angus's wrist. It was silly, but she wanted to have that little bit of a connection, at least for right now. It comforted her, even if it was just a few feet across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. There was nothing wrong with that, she reasoned.
Angus certainly didn't object. Physical comfort was the most basic kind, and it worked for him. Over the course of his life he'd seen more men die than had been in that ballroom, total, but he'd never reached a point where death didn't affect him. If he ever did, Angus thought maybe it would be time to consider whether carrying on was a good idea anymore.
He sat down beside her, and his arm went around her shoulders. "The Auror who was killed," he said quietly. "He an' Dorcas were close. 's gonna be hard for her."
Lydia didn't need to know details given in confidence, but since she was living in the castle and so was Dorcas, Angus thought she ought to be aware that the situation was a delicate one. Besides which, Lydia was the sort who would grab the girl and put her to work as her sous chef to keep her mind off things despite just barely knowing her, if she knew there was trouble. She'd probably be more help than Angus could be himself.
"Oh no... That poor thing," Lydia replied, her eyes wide and sympathetic even without Dorcas in the room. She didn't know what "close" meant - good friends? perhaps more? - but she did know that it didn't particularly matter. Losing someone that you were close to, no matter the extent of the relationship, wasn't something that could be taken lightly. And he was right, of course. Lydia's mind was already churning as she thought of the different ways she could keep her busy.
"Yeah," Angus quietly agreed. "I'll keep 'er occupied as I can. Figure it might be a good time to teach 'er to ride, after the funeral passes an' all. It's always once the furor an' business's gone that a loss is the hardest."
He spoke from experience. In 713 years (714 in December), Angus MacDougal had lived through a lot of losses of people very dear to him. Wives had passed, and children, and friends, and he knew all too well the silence that followed when the body was in the ground and the visitors all went home. He thought it would be good for Dorcas to be in the castle; someone was always here, and he could always come up with something to do in the evening hours - and during the daylight, she had her job, and Morgan and Lydia. He couldn't do much for her, but he reckoned he could at least keep her hands and mind occupied.
"Yeah," Lydia nodded, sinking into Angus's side. She hadn't had to deal with any massive permanent loss like that since when her grandmother died in her late 20s. They had been close and that was when she first started baking whenever things got too murky in her mind to keep things straight. "I've got a whole stack of recipes that I'm more than happy to try out that I can get her to help me out with."
"Ye're a good woman, Lydia," Angus replied, smiling slightly. She had reacted exactly as he thought she might, which was nice to know. It was reassuring when people were honest enough to be who you expected them to be. Honesty was a rare trait, at least as much as genuine human decency and concern for others.
Angus kissed the top of her head again, and stayed turned a bit toward her even afterward. His arm went across her, his hand resting on her hip because it was just too lousy a day to not stay as close as he could. The wizarding world had lost a lot in a single evening...but they were still alive, and there was something to be said for that.
"You're a good man," Lydia countered, her arms looping around him as she dispelled a long sigh. Her head tilted up and she stole a gentle kiss before backing away just a hair. He was a good man, she decided, absolutely and completely. She knew full well that there were some - her ex-husband included - that might not agree, but they were damn idiots.
They were good together, too, Angus thought. With as many years as he had, the vampire was perfectly comfortable with taking everything slowly, but that didn't make him any less certain that Lydia Townsley was a good choice. Mad ex-husband or not, she was a fine woman, beautiful and interesting and kind, and he counted himself lucky that she was willing to put up with his crap. Angus had gotten good at spotting a relationship with actual potential over the years, and this one most certainly qualified as such.
"I try," he replied, nudging her cheek with his nose. "Ye mind stayin' like this a bit? I'll probably decide I've got to shag ye senseless later, but for right now I'm thinkin' just sittin' here's good."
"Mmhm. I'd like that," Lydia murmured, turning a bit to the side and letting her leg hitch up over his own lap in an attempt to get just a bit closer. She had no issue with just sitting and being quiet and enjoying one another's presence. They were okay. While she might have still been a bit shaken up and she could have used a stiff drink, he was there and everything was all right for now. It might not stay that way for long, but that was reason enough to hang onto it while they could.