Revisiting the Past [RP for neidr_melltith]

[broadsword_babe]

Quinn sat at a table in the Court Restaurant overlooking the Great Court. The British Museum was a building alive with people, and with history. She'd spent nearly the entire day there, wandering from exhibit hall to exhibit hall, leaving the Roman rooms for last. She was really trying to get over her anger towards the fallen empire, but a two-thousand-year-old grudge wasn't going to go away overnight. And yet here she was, sitting at a cafe in a museum in the heart of an outpost she'd once razed to the ground waiting for a Roman. If that wasn't progress she wasn't sure what was.

She'd first heard Mark's name when they'd both been nominated for an award, something about a couple no one wanted to see together. That suited her just fine. She wasn't interested in him in the slightest. Besides, she was pretty sure the bloke was married anyway, and she wasn't one to go poaching on another's preserves. But then, about a week and a half ago, she hadn't been able to resist giving her opinion on a rather interesting hat he owned. Poor bloke actually liked the bloody thing. God bless the woman who could put up with that. Later, she'd remarked in a post of her own about trying to revise her opinions of Romans, and Mark had replied. Granted his arguments that Rome wasn't the only violent government in existence were ones she'd heard before, but when he mentioned Druids, he'd gotten her attention.

"Can I get you anything, miss?" a perfectly polished waiter asked in clipped Queen's English.

"Thank ye, no," Quinn replied in her adopted Scottish accent. "Jes waitin' on someone s'all."

"We do require that you order something while you're in the cafe," the waiter replied.

"Alrigh' fine," she said on a sigh. "Glass o'water wi' lemon."

"Sparkling or still?" the waiter asked.

Quinn gave him an even look. "Still's fine wi'me."

"Very good, miss," he replied and left.

"Bloody sassenach," she grumbled under her breath.

Quinn couldn't help fidgeting with the torc she wore around her neck. She'd worn it into battle against the Romans, and it seemed fitting she wear it now. She glanced at her watch just as the waiter set a glass of water down on the table. She had just taken a sip when movement in the Great Court caught her eye.

A dark-haired man practically marched with a single-minded purpose across the stone floor. The way he carried himself practically screamed soldier from the set of his shoulders to the even pace of his walk. This was a man who had probably spent years on the march, if not centuries. She sighed and took another sip of water. She may not like Romans as a general rule, but that didn't mean she couldn't be civil to the bloke.

Comments

[broadsword-babe.livejournal.com]

She nodded thoughtfully. She didn't have to tell him how rare, and special, it was to find someone like that.

"I cannae promise a cure or anythin'," she answered slowly. "Th'best I can hope for is findin' out what exactly went inta th'curse itself. Maybe knowin' that'll help figure out how t'reverse it."

Quinn toyed absently with her bottom lip as another thought occurred to her, and it wasn't a pleasant one.

"Sayin' there is a cure," she started. "There's no way t'know if time'll catch up with ye right then and there, or whether ye'll age like ye were supposed to t'begin with."

[neidr-melltith.livejournal.com]

He was quiet for some time, considering what Quinn had said. The effects of breaking the curse were something he and Alexa had discussed, and he had made her a promise.

"No, there's probably no way to now. Whatever the cure might be, I'm not going to take it until Alexa is on her deathbed. After all, what's a few more decades?" There was a slight catch in his voice, a desire to end it upon discovery, but he would keep his promise. "I'll either die with her, or if it means living out the rest of my life, I'll just kill myself."

[broadsword-babe.livejournal.com]

She couldn't quite meet his eyes. The pain in his voice was bad enough. She couldn't imagine going so far as to kill herself over someone, but then again, wasn't that what she'd done when Charles had died? She'd probably ODed a half-dozen times in those seven years. But that never brought her godson back from the dead.

"Mark, cure or no cure, I'm responsible for what happened t'ye," Quinn said softly, her eyes bright with regret. "I promise I'll do whatever I can to help ye. If nothing's found, I'll help ye end it, if that's what ye want."

[neidr-melltith.livejournal.com]

Mark was directly honest. "Yes, you are." Then he sighed, noticing the regret in her eyes. "But it's not like I can do much about it now." It was probably as close as he would come to forgiving her. Really, when he thought about it, her command to the druids was much like Henry II's misplaced words that got Becket killed. It was amusing, in a not funny way, that his fate had likewise been determined by an order being open to interpretation.

"If you mean taking my head, I don't know if that will work. I'm not like you." He held up his index and middle finger of his right hand in the manner of the 'V' sign, the British equivalent of 'flipping the bird'. "I was captured at Crécy and the French hacked these off. It was the most agonizing few weeks of my life as they grew back."

[broadsword-babe.livejournal.com]

A corner of Quinn's mouth quirked in a wry half-smile. Most modern folk probably didn't realize the actual genesis of that particular gesture. "Longbowman, were you?"

She tilted her head and thought about what he said. The visual of his body continuing to wander the ages without a head seemed morbidly humourous, but she didn't think he'd appreciate the idea.

"Still," she replied, clearing her throat. "Stands t'reason that a body cannae live without th'brain, but that's another thing I'll ask about. Providin' there's no other cure."

[neidr-melltith.livejournal.com]

He nodded, knowing that she would have got his reference. There wasn't too many around that would. "Yeah, for a while. I've been almost every type of soldier you can imagine...except for pilot. That I'll happily leave to those who enjoy fucking around off the ground." No, he was not a particularly happy flyer, even when necessary.

"Well, look at it this way. If you weren't certain that losing your head would kill you, and that if it didn't work you went through all that pain, or whatever it would be, for nothing, how would it affect you? Me...I think I'd end up insane, in the truest sense of the word."

[broadsword-babe.livejournal.com]

Quinn was silent for a long moment after that. The truth was, she wasn't quite sure what to say. There really wasn't much she could say. The curse was so old that even Merlin might not know how to undo it, but she didn't want to say anything like that to Mark, nor did she want to offer any false hope.

She looked out over the throng of people walking to and fro across the Great Court. Probably none of them were aware that she and Mark even existed, much less that they were older than anyone could imagine. Those mortals would all pretty much go on leading their lives with their families to eventually die of a heart attack or a car crash or whatever. Meanwhile, she, Mark and the others like them, would continue to live through the ages and watch their mortal friends come and go like the tide.

"Y'know, being Immortal sucks," she said to no one in particular.

[neidr-melltith.livejournal.com]

The server had brought Mark another beer, and as Quinn was people-watching, he drank deeply from the glass. He was about halfway done when she spoke, and he gave a short, bitter laugh, even if her comment was not really meant for him. "I'll drink to that!"

He followed her gaze and watched the milling people himself for a few moments. "And so many of them think that immortality would be so wonderful. If only they knew."

[broadsword-babe.livejournal.com]

"If only..." Quinn echoed absently.

She wondered how many others like them had gone mad over the years. Losing loved ones. Being doomed to eternal solitude and loneliness. Quinn felt vaguely jealous of him, at that moment. His wife, whoever she was, knew him for what he was, and loved him anyway. That was something she seriously doubted she'd ever find.

"Mark, I truly wish I had more t'give ye than th'name of an old curse and a promise t'do what I can t'find out more. But I need t'be getting back to Orkney, and I'll see what I can find from there."