Leena Silton // Lyra Silvertongue (thelittleliar) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-03-07 12:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, lyra silvertongue, sam winchester |
Who: Sam Winchester & Lyra Silvertongue
What: run-in at the library
When: Thursday afternoon
Where: at the library!
Warnings: None? Lyra doesn't kick anyone, so it's pretty low-key.
Status: COMPLETE, BITCHES. READ THIS SHIT.
It wasn't really necessary for Sam to go into the library to return his books, but he'd decided to pick up a few other source material books while he was at it. If there was anything he'd learned from the appearance of the good-girl-Lucifer angel, it was that he really ought to be keeping better tabs on everyone. Bennet and Sage were keeping track of arrivals and departures and source materials, but that information only helped with the bigger picture. He needed more detailed information to work with if he was going to make sure that everyone who came through was safe and always would be safe-- because, as they'd figured out from Dean, they had the capability to become their future selves (in a way) without leaving and returning.
Besides, Wesley worked here, and he liked stopping in every once in a while to check in with him. He hadn't told any of the hunters from Buffy about the angel, nor did he plan on getting them involved in everything, but it was nice to have other hunters around to train with and to call in for back-up if necessary. Having an abundance of hunters and other fighting types relative to potentially dangerous types was really quite a nice change.
He dropped the books in the bin at the front desk and turned to head for the fiction section, stopping to browse the dvds that were kept closer to the desk. Some source material (including his own) was in that format, after all. He had been there for a few minutes but hadn't found anything in particular that might come in handy before he was distracted by a voice that sounded annoyed or angry, rising to a volume that was not quite acceptable by library standards. Glancing up, he spotted a young girl at the desk, and was about to go back to what he was doing when he suddenly became aware of her accent. The word en't was particularly easy to distinguish; there was only one person around here that talked like that. Lyra Silvertongue, the protagonist from the series he'd just returned, and Xaphania's angelic charge.
Curious, he moved towards the desk, wanting to overhear what the girl was getting angry about.
***
Lyra had been trying to be patient. It was a new thing she was working on, not demanding things, but politely explaining herself. Sometimes it didn't go according to plan. Today's plan had been relatively simple. Her philosophy teacher, Finrod (unless she calls him something else, I'll edit after talking to Sammii), was filling her head of wonderful tales, and she liked the spirited discussions they had. She'd been looking to get some books on the subject (and had a feeling Dame Susan would be happy), but the librarian wasn't cooperating with Lyra.
First, she'd been directed to the YA section when she asked for Philosophy; when she went back and said she was looking for actual books on it, not just stories on it, the Librarian (whom Lyra had named Enoch, for it was the vilest name she could think of) had asked her how old she was, and if she had a library card. Lyra had deftly deflected the question about how old she really was, and instead inquired about the card. Enoch had decided to get even more vile and was refusing to let her fill out the forms for one.
"As I've explained," Enoch the Librarian was saying, "you cannot have a library card and take books home unless a parent signs the forms."
"And I said, I 'ent got them," Lyra countered, feeling herself get angry. She'd tried saying how she was her own warden, but Enoch wasn't buying it and was holding firm on no card for her.
"You don't have them," Enoch said, and that was when Lyra's voice rose to Not Library Standards.
"I said that already, you keep repeating me, 'en not sayin' anything helpful about how I'm supposed to get a card if I 'ent got parents." Even Pan was angry, glaring at Enoch from the hood of Lyra's coat, though he was invisible to Enoch's eyes.
Enoch the Librarian glared back, "I'm correcting you, since you cannot seem to speak proper English; a skill, perhaps, your parents forgot to teach you?"
Lyra took a step back and opened her mouth, prepared to give him some sound advice on English and her life.
***
Sam grasped the situation quickly enough, and immediately saw the benefit of stepping in. For one thing, he had started on that project with Veronica to help refugees that were struggling here-- to support them and protect them-- and for another, he was personally interested in talking to Lyra. Not because he needed to get any information out of her, particularly, since he already had more information than she probably had, but because her world had caught his attention, and he’d found himself rather liking her-- even identifying with her, in some respects-- as he’d read her story. For that matter, he thought this particular librarian was being a dick to refuse a curious child a library card, and that wasn’t something he was just going to sit back and let happen.
He stepped out from behind the bookcase and approached the desk, giving the librarian a polite smile. “I think what she’s asking,” he interjected smoothly, “Is whether someone else can sign for her, in place of her parents. A guardian, or even a friend who would be willing to take some responsibility for her.”
He glanced at Lyra briefly, guessing that she could probably see the conspiratorial light in his eyes, or that even if she couldn’t, she would be smart enough to go along with the ruse anyway. Before she could make up an alias for him, though (since unfortunately, aliases didn’t really work for him here), he added, “Like me, for example. I’m her friend Sam.”
***
Lyra had never seen this man before in her life, and had no idea why he'd want to help her with a library card, but she wanted one, and had already decided to let him help her. "You'll owe him a favour," Pan hissed as a reminder to her, but she'd already well made up her mind, and took a step towards Sam, grabbing his hand.
"Yeah," she said to Enoch the Librarian. Before she could get in a dig, Enoch was muttering something about papers, and asking Sam to fill out a form. Two minutes later, while Pan was still muttering in her ear ("Lyra, this is how we get into trouble!"), she was signing the back of her own library card.
"Thank you," she ever so politely thanked Enoch, because she did have manners, thank you very much. After he left, shaking his head, Lyra turned to Sam, "And thank you, sir, for doing that. I promise I won't lose a book, or cause you any trouble, I take good care of my books 'en everything."
***
Sam was surprised when she took his hand, but that signaled that she was going along with it, so he wasn't bothered. He filled out the form and slid it back across the desk to the librarian, taking an irrational amount of pleasure in getting one over on him. Not that he'd done anything to him, but someone that couldn't handle being nice to a child that wanted a book should not be working in a library, so far as he was concerned.
"You're welcome," he said, giving her a slight grin. "Don't worry about it-- and you definitely don't have to call me sir. Just Sam. I figured if you wanted a card that badly, you're not likely to be irresponsible with it. Plus, I just don't like seeing people like that get their way."
He tilted his head to look down at her. "It's Lyra, isn't it?" he asked, just to confirm. He was fairly sure, based on the way she spoke and behaved, but she didn't look like the girl that portrayed her in the movies; no real surprise there, if she was from the books. He'd already noticed that happening to a few people. He rather wished it had happened to him. "I've read your books. That's a weird thing to say, I know, but I figure it's weirder if I pretend like I haven't. Anyway, you could go and see my source material too, if you wanted to be even. I'm on a tv show."
***
Lyra held her card and looked at him carefully; Pan was upset and hiding at the bottom of her hood, sulking over the fact that he'd been right, and now she owed a favour to someone who knew everything about her. Sam didn't seem so strange, and he'd recognised her, but she still felt the overwhelming urge to lie to him about not being Lyra. It wouldn't do her well in the long term, so she slumped her shoulders in resignation.
"I'm Lyra," she said, confirming, but that was all. She didn't want to go look at his 'source material' to know everything about him, that felt like cheating. Oh, but the alethiometer wasn't? she could hear Pan saying, and she scrunched her nose and frowned. That had been different, and now she was having a fake conversation with Pan, in her head, because he was going to sulk and not speak to her.
"I need to go find books," she added, looking around the library. She'd grown up at an extended library - the whole of Jordan College was like a library, but this place, with all their knowledge books in one place, one building, unnerved her slightly. If this were Jordan, or even St. Sophia's, she'd just go to the Philosophy building and look at their library for what she wanted. She wanted Kant, because he had absurd ideas about how to rationalise the existence of God, and Lyra wanted to pick them apart. Then there was some guy named Pascal and he had some wager about God that Lyra was interested in looking at. Finally, she wanted a very specific book that compared Buddha to Jesus, and claimed they were the same person - or was it that Jesus had been a Buddhist? Either way, she knew of Christianity, but if Buddhism was a religion like Christianity, with a Magisterium-like body, it would be good to know. (Lyra felt she didn't need to say how relieved she was that the Pope of the Catholic Church had died - it was clearly a sign of the crumbling of this-world's Magisterium-like body).
***
"Sorry," Sam said, immediately. He knew exactly how weird it was. He hadn't wanted to be weird about it, but he felt even creepier pretending not to know. It was also harder for the fact that he had known she was a real person when he'd read it, and done it anyway. He hadn't been looking for information on her, but had sort of ended up with it as a consequence.
He raised his hands, spreading them in a peaceful gesture. "I really didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. If you want to go off and get your books, go for it."
He noticed, suddenly, that she was by herself, without her daemon. It would have been something he'd noticed earlier, probably, if he'd ever seen her with it rather than simply having read about it. He wondered if the tesseract left daemons behind, or combined them into one person. Seeing as how that was not a line of questioning she would find welcome, obviously, he didn't even consider asking.
***
The gesture that Sam made was the same gesture that the witch Serafina Pekkela made when she offered to lay down her weapon, in an offering of peace, though Sam had no weapon. The action reassured her that he at least meant no ill-will towards her, or that his favour that she owed him would be ill-intended either. Pan seemed to agree, he at least stirred in her hood, but he was still too cross to even come out and speak with her. Besides, Sam's reasons for signing for her card - to make Enoch the Librarian not get his way - amused her. She generally liked people like that.
She nodded towards the desk, "Signing for why you did reminds me of Roger, but only a little."
It was her peace offering to him, her gesture of no ill-will intended on her end either. If Pan wanted to disagree with it, he could come out and say so himself.
***
She seemed to relax a little bit when he apologized, so Sam felt himself relax a little bit as well. He smiled, and shrugged. "Someone who doesn't want to help people read shouldn't be working in a library," he said. "He deserves to get fired. Not letting him get his way was the least I could do, really."
He lowered his hands. He had read the books very quickly, and honestly hadn't paid much attention to Roger in the book, though he remembered that the boy had been Lyra's friend, that awful things had happened to him, and that she'd gone to the world of the dead to find him. Upon remembering that, he felt rather flattered, if that was even the right word. She hadn't complimented him, exactly, but having a connection drawn between him and someone that she would go to hell for-- even if they didn't call it hell in her world-- was a loud and clear gesture of goodwill.
"What sort of books were you looking for?" he asked curiously. "Unlike that asshole, I actually like helping people find things to read."
***
Lyra grinned; she liked Sam. "He's terrible. All the librarians I know at Jordan are nice sorts who only don't like it when I get crumbs in their books; they seem to like me reading just fine." It was horrible, Lyra felt, to tell someone not to read.
"Philosophy, 'en don't laugh. I know you read what those books said about me 'en the Magisterium 'en God 'en stuff, but I still like talking about it. I have to." Besides, it was fun to talk to Professor Finrod about philosophy, since they shared so many similar elements. But still different. "What are you reading? Why'd you read my source material?" she asked Sam curiously. Was he reading the 'source material' on other people?
***
"I wouldn't laugh," Sam said, shaking his head. "Philosophy isn't something I've spent a lot of time on myself, but I have read a lot about God and various kinds of religion. It's pretty relevant to my life back home, too-- it's the kind of stuff I need to know, usually, but I still like reading it most of the time."
Her other questions were a bit harder to answer. She had been perceptive enough to realize that he'd read her source material after arriving here, or maybe she simply hadn't met anyone who'd said that before; he could have tried to play it off as something he'd read back home before he realized she was real, but decided against it. His instincts were telling him not to lie to her, because she was an expert liar herself and would probably see through it-- and, he realized somewhat belatedly, even if she didn't see through it right now she would be able to find out the truth and realize it later, if she had that truth-telling instrument with her.
"Research, actually," he said. "Not on you, but on the angel that showed up from your world. And I'm here to do more research, on the lore of beings from all the different worlds. I was sort of a Scholar on angels and demons-- among other things-- back in my world, except that I had to fight them, which I don't think is in the job description of a Scholar. But here there are kinds of vampires and werewolves and shifters and angels that are all different from what I've seen, and mostly good, but I still want to know about them. So that I know how to fight them if I have to, if they turn out not to be good."
***
"I think most of them are egotistical little arses who think that by writing about God they can become a version of him," Lyra said as she shrugged her shoulders. "They're all too pumped up 'en full of themselves to stop and consider that how they see God 'ent how everyone else does, 'en what's true for one person 'ent true for another, 'en the truth is too big for any of us." She'd met the Authority, and she didn't even have all the answers herself.
The comment about Xaphana made her stop in her tracks. "Xaphania's a good angel, 'en don't you hurt her, cos I'll come hurt you if you hurt her, 'en I mean it. You read my book, you know I 'ent kidding." That got Pan out of her hood, whispering urgently in her ear, "Careful, Lyra!" not that Lyra needed to be told. He might not want to to hurt her, but hurting Xaphania was an entirely different thing. "You read it, the book about my world, you know she's good, so don't hurt her. She wouldn't hurt you any, not unless you worked for the Catholic Church or one of its subsidiaries, 'en even then, you'd have to want to hurt me, or try to stop Dust 'fore she hurt you."
***
"Playing God isn't a very good idea," Sam agreed, thinking of how Cas had done it, or would do it, in his future. Honestly, he wasn't sure that God was anything to be aspired to-- assuming the show was to be believed, his God had turned his angelic children on each other in a war just for the sake of testing his and Dean's mettle. What was the purpose of all that bloodshed? But that was also the God that had created the leviathan to begin with, so Sam supposed that that plan was something of a step up from the first. And then there was the angel that had posed as God in her world, the Authority. "That kind of ego can cause much worse damage than just writing a book, though."
He raised his hands again, in the same gesture. "She told me when we first met that she was like Lucifer," he said. "Well, she tried to tell me that she was him, but that she wasn't like him. Because Lucifer, in my world, is evil. He's one of the most evil beings I've ever seen, and he would hurt me, if he were here. But I wasn't ever going to hurt her, except to defend myself or someone else. I don't hurt anyone that doesn't deserve it." He gave a wry laugh. "And I definitely don't work for the Church."
***
"Yea, lots worse damage," Lyra agreed. The Authority had decided to be God, and then the Metatron had decided to try to get everyone to worship him, and Lyra didn't know why people couldn't just accept that they didn't know how the world worked. For Lyra, making up stories about it had been half the fun. Sometimes the scholars would tell her various stories of how the Earth was formed. She liked the ones from around the world, like the one from Nippon and the silver sword forming the perfect islands of Nippon, or the battling gods of Cathay. Not that Lyra had ever given serious thought to religion until the Retiring Room at Jordan College, but that was already a lifetime ago.
Lyra wrinkled her nose, looking confused. "I don't know Lucifer," she said. "I know Xaphania doesn't want to hurt anybody, 'en that's why she was helping out Lord Asriel. Lord Asriel 'ent as nice as her though, he didn't mind the casualties he caused." He could have asked how to travel through a natural window, instead of ripping one open. "But Xaphania," she continued, "she 'ent going to hurt you unless you try to take choice away from people 'en make 'em think Dust is a sin."
***
"I'm not going to take away choice from people," Sam reassured her. "Having the freedom to choose is important. And I'm really not the take over the world dictator type, or the type to worry about sins. Except… being evil and killing people, I think that's pretty bad. I try to stop that from happening, that's all."
He shrugged. "Angels in your world are different than mine. I was probably too quick to judge your angel based on the ones I knew, but it was better to be safe than sorry. I understand her a little better now." And it was interesting to know that Lyra was quick to spring to Xaphania's defense. Not entirely surprising, though it showed more of a bond there than he'd expected from reading the books alone. Source material didn't show everything, of course, he knew that from experience. "I’m fine with angels that actually have some respect for humanity. There’s only one in my world that is really like that, but it’s good that there are more in yours."
***
"I just did all that, well, sorta," Lyra said. He had read about it, hadn't he? It was weird, knowing someone had read the story of her life and knew everything about her. It meant she couldn't lie, not that she'd lie to Sam, she was getting better about lying, just when it was necessary, really. "'En stories, those are important too. The Republic of Heaven." And a little patch of Earth where your soul finally found its peace. Roger had drifted to the wind, so incredibly happy, and Lyra was glad that was her last memory of him, it was better than the last memory of the mountain, and it being her fault that he was dead, even if he had forgiven her. One day she'd learn to forgive herself fully for it, and for the other actions of the war. It hadn't been her fault, she knew that, but it still felt like it was her fault. Like she should have done something more.
Lyra was quick to loyalty. Once she decided you had hers, you had it fiercely and deeply. Such was how Lyra felt about Xaphania. "Well, good," Lyra said, determinedly. That was that, he wasn't going to hurt Xaphania, and that was all she cared about. And he wasn't going to hurt her either, or Pan. There was one question she had, a fierce want to know about Lee Scoresby's final moments, but she didn't ask it. He'd died protecting them, and he'd helped at the end with the Spectres. She wanted to know what they'd done to his body, did they torture him? Did they even take him alive? Had he killed many of them? It felt like a dishonour to his memory not to know. But she didn't ask. She wanted to look at her Philosophy books, and talk to Sam some more, and not get sad about a war that couldn't possibly have been her fault, no matter how much it felt like it sometimes.
***
"Yeah," Sam said, with a slight smile. "That's something we have in common." He'd identified with that in the war described in her books, though the one in his world had been pretty different. "Stories are important, but maybe not as much in your world as mine. We have a different afterlife than you do."
He wasn't sure what the afterlife was like here in their current reality. It was something he'd considered, especially since he'd wondered whether Cas was capable of getting back to their heaven. To Sam's knowledge, the angel hadn't tried. Whether he would get there himself if he happened to die in this reality was something else he'd wondered, though he really had no intention of testing that.
Having established that they weren't at odds with each other-- for now, anyway-- he offered, "Don't let me keep you from getting what you came for. Do you want any help finding your books?"
***
Lyra wrinkled her nose at the thought of there being a different afterlife. She was certain, though she did not voice it, that his afterlife was just a cover and at the end of that, he'd go to the boatman and have to make his way through to the window to become Dust again. It wasn't worth arguing about, not now at any rate.
She smiled politely at him, "No, thank you, I think I can manage on my own, I grew up at Jordan 'en the filing here 'ent that much different, but you have a good day 'en maybe I'll see you around."
Then she was off to the philosophy section, which she suspected was going to be largely greco-roman, and she very much prefered broadview. She might, if Enoch weren't so terrible, check out Lord of the Rings as well, and read up on the Elves. That felt a little like cheating, but Sam had just done it for her, hadn't he?