A Mountie without a wolf walks into a bar.... Who: (former) Inspector Meg Thatcher and Nate Ford What: Meeting. In a bar. Where: A bar. When: Some time shortly after this. Warnings: Beyond language? Doubtful.
A bar. Meg Thatcher sighed briefly to herself as she enters. No matter what the venue, she found there was an underlying sameness to all bars: a certain reek of desperation, a certain frisson of loneliness, and of course a distressing tendency for things better left unidentified to go squelch under one's shoe. No Diefenbaker to accompany her on this occasion, but he belonged in Chicago as long as Ben was there.
Besides, she had been handling herself alone in a bar since before she'd had cadet tabs on her shoulders. After fifteen years on the Force, she had decided that the most terrifying thing in them tended to be American beer.
Briefly, she pondered the literal enactment of the traditional Canadian joke regarding American beer, then gave her head a decisive shake and made her way over to where Nate Ford was ... oh, dear. Yes. Drinking again, and not for the first time, she suspected. "Hello," she said neutrally.