Krishan Shashidhar (desi_laddie) wrote in whatprice, @ 2009-10-19 15:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | charlie weasley, krishnan shashidhar |
The beginnings of a peace treaty?
Who: Charlie and Shashi
What: TBD
When: Evening, week of 12 October, 2009
Where: En route from St Pancras to Shashi's flat
Warnings: Language, but that's all.
Status: Log
Charlie had taken a couple of days of surveillance to establish Shashi's daily routine as best he could. Having no idea of what, exactly, Penny had said to Shashi--and not being inclined to ask, which if he were honest with himself wasn't a sterling example of Gryffindor bravery--keeping watch on the MI7 agent seemed the best way to establish when Charlie could grab him.
Grab him and do what, was the question. If the story Harry had told him was true, Shashi was as much a victim as anyone: he'd lost a sister to the last war. Having lost Fred to the Death Eaters, Charlie could relate. On the other hand, Shashi was working for the people who had killed his father and Ron, so there was that to be considered.
George liked to ask if they could act like heroes now and again. Maybe this was going to be one of the moments Charlie could figure out exactly what that meant, he mused from his rooftop perch near Shashi's flat. If his observations held true, Shashi ought to be along any minute now, and then he'd figure it all out.
Shashi emerged from the Tube station and made his way down the sidewalk, head bent over his mobile as he tapped out a text message to his brother Omar. The family was planning a big get-together for Shashi's grandmother's birthday, and the level of interfamily tension was starting to creep steadily upward. Which was about the last thing he needed at this point, damn it. So he was preoccupied as he made his way up to the building, and not paying anywhere near his usual amount of attention to his surroundings.
Juggling his messenger bag, mobile, and keys at the building's front door, he fumbled the keys and dropped them. "Shit."
The buildings were a little tall for Charlie to just jump down onto Shashi's head, although Charlie was considering it for a moment there. Instead he summoned the keys with a quick Accio, which he hoped Shashi wouldn't catch, and jumped down to the gable over the door, which was far enough to make Charlie's old bones and joints ache. That gave him a good point for jumping off to take the younger man down. It was probably a dumb way to go about it, but on the other hand, stunning the hell out of him was what you did to established enemies, and he wasn't quite sure he wanted to treat Shashi as one of those just yet.
For a crucial few seconds as his keys disappeared, Shashi stared blankly in shock. The hell? Then he heard something overhead and instinctively dropped to a crouch, looking up.
Public fucking Enemy Number One himself. His arm went into motion almost before he consciously commanded it, sending the messenger bag flying at Charlie's head.
Charlie's own reflexes kicked into overdrive. The Blasting Curse destroyed the bag and its contents before he'd had a chance to think, and he was moving again, dropping onto Shashi before Shashi had a chance to pull his gun, or equally troublesome, his phone. If they were going to fight it out, the less magic and bullets they used, the better. And if he landed on the lad hard enough to knock him out, well, that was what Apparating to the Calf was for. At least he'd have some leeway if he fucked up the Apparation; he wouldn't land on some woman doing her shopping.
Well, there went Shashi's Filofax. With a traceur's grace he rolled sideways to dodge the descending Charlie and got to his feet facing the other man, hands up in defensive posture. This would happen, he thought grimly, while he was on probation for having lost his sidearm the last time this bastard was involved. No gun. And his knife was upstairs in his flat. Shit.
Rolling to his feet, Charlie pointed his wand at Shashi, taking enough of a step backward to be out of arm or leg length. "You'll notice I'm not blowing your head off here. Sorry about your bag, but I'm a bit jumpy with you lot, just like you are with me. Can we talk or do I have to knock you out?"
"Rather not be knocked out, thanks," Shashi replied. Not that he trusted Charlie any further than he could have thrown him; he was still assessing escape routes and what it would take to disarm his opponent. "What d'you want?"
"Just to talk, that's all." Charlie let the tip of his wand drop slightly so that it wasn't aimed at Shashi's head. It was a slight peacemaking gesture, and one of confidence: he was sure he could disarm the younger man even with that disadvantage. "If I wanted something else, I'd've done it already. Here or in York."
"Your lot haven't been all that inclined to talk before," Shashi said. A pause, then he snorted. "Right, fair enough, neither have mine. So what's changed?"
"For me?" Charlie shrugged slightly, a twitchy gesture. "Nothing. I didn't do anything to you in York and I didn't do anything to you now. How many people died when the clock went?"
"None," Shashi admitted, "but I've had better conversation-openers."
"Yeah, well, I'm pointing out that my intention's never been to kill a bunch of people, so maybe you'll worry a bit less about me trying to kill you, right? I've learnt how to make war. Making peace is a bit harder, I think. And besides--" and here Charlie broke out in a surprisingly sunny smile "--you're not a dragon, so it's not like I'm sure how to talk to you."
There was a brief pause, and suddenly Shashi snickered. "Right. I reckon I'm not sure how to talk to you either, 'cause my standing orders are to arrest your arse. I'll be honest; not sure why I'm not right now."
"Because maybe I'm not the only one who'd rather talk than kill people." Charlie said it matter-of-factly, but he was mildly hopeful on this point. There had better be Muggles who felt that way. And if this fellow, whose own sister would have been on Charlie's side of the war if she'd lived, wasn't one of them, they were royally fucked. "Even in your lot. What would you do with me if you did arrest me, just out of curiosity?"
"Take you to headquarters," Shashi said matter-of-factly. "There's people want to have a word with you. And then some, if I'm honest." He grimaced slightly. "I'll give you that—you're right, you aren't the only one who'd rather talk. Can't say as I hold with some of my coworkers' methods. They think they've got no choice."
"No choice? No choice about which part?" Charlie was more confused than indignant about Shashi's answer.
"They think you're not to be reasoned with," Shashi said. He shifted his weight, uncomfortable. "Look, from where we're standing, your folk don't seem the friendliest, aye? I mean, you have kids fighting in your wars, for god's sake."
Charlie shook his head. "I didn't choose that, I didn't particularly approve of it--though it's not like my opinion was asked for--and it's not something I do." He thought about his niece and nephews who'd been on Freya's Chariot, and what would have happened to them if he'd lost. "But I guess that explains why your lot started off by attacking a school. Did they ever tell you what they did with those kids?"
Shashi's mouth opened, then closed again. He flushed. "No. No, they didn't. I've not got the clearance for it and you learn not to ask."
The words I bet were on the tip of Charlie's tongue. He managed not to let them out. There were plenty of things he didn't tell people, but generally they didn't involve what he was doing to kids. "I've got a pretty firm guess, but I didn't expect you to confirm it. Or be able to." It took him a moment to decide to add, "Harry mentioned your sister. She was in my year at school, but I didn't know her very well. What I do know is that if I were in your boss's shoes, I'd never tell you the details either."
At the mention of his sister, a look of anger crossed Shashi's face before he could control it. "That what you came to tell me, then?" he asked. "Blowing the whistle on my boss?" Who probably totally deserves it, said a voice in the back of his head, but he was too upset at Visala getting brought up to care.
There was another shake of that red head. "You already knew that. Maybe I was more curious about what could make a man whose sister got killed by Death Eaters work with the sort of blokes who share their way of thinking from the other side."
"Death Eaters?" Shashi was briefly confused before Harry and Somerset's words came back to him. "That got something to do with that ... that warlord?"
It took Charlie a moment to figure out how Voldemort could be called a warlord. "I wouldn't call him that, but I guess you could. He was what we call a Dark wizard, and the Death Eaters were his--army? And they hated people like your sister because they weren't born to families with magic. I reckon they were scared of them." He gave Shashi a significant look. "Because they thought Muggles--nonmagical people--were likely to try and kill them. Or some of them, it was just because they nasty old bigots and set in their ways."
Shashi folded his arms and looked at Charlie thoughtfully. "Story I heard was that it was over people who weren't ... magical enough. Or something like that." He shook his head. "From where we been standing, all it looks like is people are getting killed by a disruptive force on our own soil. People are a bit touchy about that sort of thing in these parts. And it's all red and black ants -- the difference between the two doesn't make much difference, it's all ants." He paused. "Sorry. About the ant metaphor."
Animal metaphors rarely offended Charlie; wizards were animals too, even if they didn't like to think of things that way. "No offence, but aren't you an ant too? Just a different kind? I lost a brother in the last war and another and my dad in this one. To me it doesn't matter that Fred died from a Death Eater hex and Ron died from a bullet. Dead's dead, just the same." He raised the hand with the wand so it wasn't pointed at Shashi at all, but upwards. "I'm not afraid," he said. "You're dangerous, but so am I." Someone was going to curse him for a stupid fucking Gryffindor afterwards, but he let the wand slip back into its sheath inside his jacket.
"Well then." Shashi tilted his head slightly and the corner of his mouth went up in a little smile. "I reckon we got some common ground now." Still smiling, his eyes narrowed a little bit, curious. "Was it Potter put you on to me, then? That I might not be as trigger-happy as some of the others on the field team?"
"That, yeah, and some other things." Penny wasn't on the agenda, nor was Charlie about to confess that part of his curiosity undoubtedly had to do with her. "And like I said, I did go to school with your sister. I know some people who came from nonmagical families, but I get the feeling some of them had unusual family lives." He thought of Hermione and her mum, and shrugged. "I didn't know what happened to her. I went abroad to work with dragons and I only got letters from some of my closest friends. I knew a lot of people died in the war, that war, but not who all of them were."
Shashi looked down at the ground. "We still don't really know what happened to her," he said quietly. "No one ever told us. Just that she'd been killed. She—she hadn't been getting along with us for a while, before that," he finished, unable to think of anything else to say. Poor Visala. Alienated from her family, and ... what? Hunted in the new world she'd tried to live in?
"A lot of people were like that during the war. The Death Eaters believed, well, does it really matter which ugly thing they believed? We had one war to get rid of them, and another when He Who Must Not Be Named--" a phrase that Charlie said so fast that it was clearly a single word to him "--came back and they started up again. But she probably kept away from you to protect you, to keep them from coming after you."
"She kept away 'cause Mum called her a demon," Shashi said. The statement sounded as if it had been drained of all emotion years ago, probably because it had. "Among other things." He shook his head. "I dunno—maybe you're right. I was too young, anyway. Didn't understand. Still don't, probably." He looked up at Charlie again. "That's why I joined up when they recruited me. Thought I could find out what happened. Make sense of it. Course, I think I'm about twenty times as confused as when I started, now."
There was a bit of a wince at that word, demon. "If there were any records, I'm sorry to say they were probably in the Ministry, and they're gone now." If Katie Bell was for real, and Charlie was more inclined to think she was now, oddly enough, it was something like that for her. "I don't reckon there are any answers for any of us." He paused for a moment, and then blurted out the question that was hovering at the back of his mind. "Without knowing, though, how do we stop it? I mean, short of slaughter, which I don't reckon any of us want."
Shashi took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "Aye. No, I ... I'd rather not see any more of that. I can't say as my hands are entirely clean, but ..." He shook his head. "It's not what I thought it was, none of this. Something needs to change. Or we're all gonna die. Figuratively if not literally."
"More likely literally," Charlie agreed, "at least in my case. I don't know what I can do to change things, though, other than what I'm already doing."
Shashi chuckled, mostly humourlessly. "Too bad you picked the person in my organisation who's the most reasonable and the least senior."
"The reasonable part's more important, I reckon. At least to start with. Not believing whatever it is they tell people like you. My brother says we're supposed to be terrorists and all, but I don't even know what he means by that, not really. I mean, what it means beyond the word, other than that it's really bad, sort of like being a Death Eater is to our people. Sort of like a bogey man you scare little kids with, only it's for real and the adults are scared too. I think we're going to have to break the Secrecy laws to solve it, but it's not my decision alone." Charlie stopped there, realising Shashi probably hadn't even followed him that far, and blinked, owlishly.
Shashi blinked too. "I ... think I got about half of that?" he said apologetically. "I mean ... what, you're talking about going public, or something?" An awful thought crossed his mind. "The fuckin' military's gonna eat you lot alive," he said. "Not ... I mean, they're going to want to weaponise you, aye?" Which led to another awful thought, and his mouth dropped open. "Is ... is that what they're doing to the kids?"
"That's what I'm afraid of," Charlie said, nodding. "One thing, anyway. Because someone got them into the school and it wasn't Harry, I'm sure of that much. They've got a wizard or a witch, another one, cooperating with them. And that would make sense of why your project is secret, wouldn't it?"
"Fuck." Shashi paced half a step one way, then the other, not turning his back on Charlie. "Fuck." He was silent for a long moment, thinking: he had no good reason to trust Charlie, did he? Could he really believe anything the man was saying? And yet ... it made a terrible sort of sense. The whole operation, it wasn't simply about control or regulation; it was about use. When he finally turned back to Charlie, his expression was tired, almost making him look older. "I must have not wanted to know," he said.
Charlie had seen that expression before on the faces of Ministry workers confronted with the evidence of what Thicknesse and Umbridge and the rest of them had been up to. "You never want to think your own government would do that kind of thing." His voice was not without sympathy. "The other thing I thought about was someone trying to use the Floo to get into your Minister's office from the Ministry. But I've been told that makes no sense. But it's something bad, or they wouldn't be hiding it from the rest of your people, would they?"
"It ..." Shashi trailed off. After a moment, he said, "I studied history and politics at uni. Did a lot of reading on international law too. Things had gone differently, I might have ended up in an NGO or something. Maybe I'd have been better off." He snorted. "No, that's selfish. It's just ... I never thought I'd be working for that kind of secret police." He thought a moment, then, "I know someone. Says she works with whistleblowers and that sort of thing. Maybe ..."
Was that Penny? It probably was. "I won't lie and say I wouldn't think that was brilliant. But I didn't come here thinking of that." Well, not that Charlie hadn't been thinking of Penny on some level, he reckoned. For sure it hadn't been to steer Shashi toward her. "I just wanted to talk. To see if I could. If we could." He was getting itchy: that sense he'd been in one place for too long. That someone was going to find him, even though he was pretty sure now that the kid--and he was a kid, even if, like so many of his brothers' peers, he'd grown up too fast--wasn't going to turn him in.
"Looks like we managed it," Shashi said with a wry smile. "You're not gonna wipe my memory or anything, are you?" It was mostly a joke; at this point Shashi was fairly certain that Charlie wouldn't do such a thing, but there was just the tinest fraction of genuine concern. "Bit of a prisoner's dilemma, aye?"
"Somebody's got to make a move to trust. I reckon that's me." Charlie held up his wand hand again, showing that it was empty. "I'm not going to Obliviate you."
Shashi extended his own hand, for Charlie to shake if he wanted. "And I'm not going to drag you in," he replied. "I reckon it's better for all of us if I don't."
Charlie extended his own hand and clasped Shashi's. His grip was firm and his hand was callused in some pattern that Shashi didn't immediately recognise. What he gave Shashi was not so much a handshake as a sort of a laddish grip-and-squeeze that seemed to serve a similar purpose. "I reckon so too. Oh, and your keys. You'll be wanting those."
Shashi took the keys with a chuckle. "Thanks, yeah. Sort of need them." He paused, then said, "Look ... say I need to get in touch with you, aye? What d'you recommend for that?"
"It's not like I carry a mobile," Charlie confessed. He sorted through his contacts, trying to consider who was the likeliest to be able to get hold of him. The truth was that it was Percy or Penny, but Charlie was loath to turn Penny over if she hadn't turned herself over to him, and if Shashi were compromised, he couldn't afford to lose either of them. "I'll need to think on that, if it's to be fast. But we can arrange a drop--a place to leave messages--that we can check at least. Somewhere you go regularly enough that it won't be odd if you're seen there."
"There's a comics shop," Shashi said. "Forbidden Planet. You know it? I'm there at least every other week."
"I don't know it," Charlie replied, honestly, "but I can figure it out. What should I ask for?"
Shashi thought a minute. "Go to the section of trade paperbacks and graphic novels -- the comics collections, I mean. There's a shelf that's got a gap behind it, right behind where they put the anthologies, aye? We can leave messages there. They don't move many of those books."
Charlie's last dealings with comics had been when an ickle Ronnikins had tried to show him Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. He doubted that was going to be on display at this Forbidden Planet place, but he'd figure it out. A Muggle comics shop would be no more difficult to navigate than the Muggle Tube had been, once he got used to it. He repeated Shashi's instructions, to be sure. "In the graphic novels section, behind the anthologies, look for the shelf with the gap behind it."
"You got it." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Take care, aye? And ... well, hopefully next time you hear from me, we'll be one step closer to the bad shite not happening anymore."
"Let's hope." Charlie was careful to keep his own hands in view, still. The street was mostly deserted, but he didn't want to chance drawing his wand to Apparate just now. He could duck into an alley and make that happen a few blocks from here. "I'm going to be on my way, and I'll check the drop in a few days. Good luck, mate."
"You too." Shashi leaned against the doorframe and waited until Charlie had gone before turning to go inside.
He dropped his keys again. It was a moment before he realised it was because his hands were shaking.