SHARPE'S MEAL ⚔ WRITTEN | ACTION

[greenjacketed]

[ after the public relations disaster of his last broadcast, sharpe has since kept his journal under a sort of imprisonment: tied shut with leather straps and stuffed in a cloth sack, that sack being knotted as well. but today he gingerly picks it from its incarceration and flicks through its pages until he settles upon one he likes. and then sharpe picks up his pencil.

he writes three messages. as ever, his handwriting is scrawlish, ill-practised, and riddled with errors. none are filtered, although only the first is intended for community consumption:]

LUCETI -- I need to speak with someone who can cook a des--deecdecent meal. [ ugh this is borderline humiliating someone shoot him and put him out of his misery. ] Frogs need not apply, beecuz I don't want the lot to taste like cheese and garlik.

KATNISS -- I'm coming by before 12. We have our wager to settle.

MISS FAITH LONG -- might a man call on you this afternoon?

-- R. SHARPE

[ OTHERWISE the man can be found staring disconsolately at grocery items. some of these things have never before been seen by eyes such as his. in fact, some of these things look barely edible. sharpe's been in luceti for a year, but he just about never goes to the grocery shop -- not when he has katniss looking after him with her stew. not when he can still shoot his own game. but today brings his boots squarely inside this devil's shop. as he browses, he mutters: ] Bloody hell...

[ LATER, sharpe has taken up a sentry position at the bar in good spirits. he's drinking watered down brandy because he can't afford to get drunk tonight. he's on the lookout for a certain fire-haired giant of a man. ganondorf. for it occurs to sharpe that he doesn't know where he lives, only that he's often seen at the bar. so he waits. ]

Comments

[greenjacketed]

Unintentionally. [ he smiles, beating a path for his building. ] With gunpowder.

[fleurdesel]

Perhaps it'll spare you illness in the future much as it did your compatriot.

[greenjacketed]

Perhaps. I don't much get ill, anyway. Lucky, me.

[fleurdesel]

That is quite fortunate.

[She huffs a soft laugh, glad for the day's distraction.]

[greenjacketed]

[ he turns them down a path. ]

Except -- [ he allows ] -- the month I first got here, eh? Frightfully inconvenient, that.

[ but of course a man would get sick as a dog upon suddenly finding himself in a village full of...others. different worlds and different times. and different illnesses his immune system had never met before. not that sharpe understood this science. ]

[fleurdesel]

I'm somewhat surprised that does not happen more often. With so many people from so many different worlds and time periods and the illnesses they carry. I'm surprised no one's caught something they've no resistance for and died of it as of yet. We've all been remarkably fortunate in that respect.

[greenjacketed]

We have? [ he asks, not pretending to comprehend. ] Do you think those Malnosso bastards have anything to do with it?

[fleurdesel]

Most likely. A test enclosure full of dead test subjects is hardly informative when it comes to collecting data.

[greenjacketed]

...That's a damned ugly thought, isn't it?

[fleurdesel]

Ugly, yes, but no less true for it. I'm sorry if the thought disturbs you and for phrasing it so bluntly, but that is what we are, and what this place is.

[greenjacketed]

Disturbed? [ a dry laugh. for yes, he is disturbed, but he must brush it off: ] Dunno how keen your history is, but I breached both Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz -- [ it's easier, these days, to accept his present as everyone else's past. tales recounted in books and plays. ] I'm not sure an imagined pit of plague victims quite compares.

[fleurdesel]

Death from battle wounds are one thing. Contemplating death from illness something else entirely. No one is more horrifying than the other, both are equally morbid and-

[She shakes her head. Cuts herself off.]

Hardly appropriate conversation to have before cooking dinner.

[greenjacketed]

Aye. You're likely right.

[ he hadn't quite been talking about the battle wounds, but he lacks the language -- or perhaps the inclination -- to explain instead the horrors of being alive in the wake of a breached siege. the bluish guts strung about the rocks. hundreds of corpses in ditches. and some men cowering under little fortresses of bodies, praying the defender's guns wouldn't find them.

and then there was the hell unleashed on the city itself once the attackers broke in, keen to slake their fury and exact revenge upon a force that had cut down so many of their brothers in arms. and once that hell reached beyond the soldiers and touched the civilians...

sharpe had seen things in badajoz that he could not put to words. babies slaughtered before their mothers' eyes; naked women kept captive in pew-rows in a grand cathedral; stumbling, swearing, drunken men who were off to commit crimes they should be hanged for. he does not doubt that, and he would have hanged them himself in badajoz had he not been busy finding teresa. ]

After you -- [ he signals that she should enter the apartment building before him. ]

[fleurdesel]

Thank you.

[She ducked inside ahead of him, walking down the hall to his apartment and waiting by the door like a good little lady. Once and awhile, obedience wasn't beyond her.]

[greenjacketed]

...Y'welcome. [ he invites her once again into the empty apartment, still sparse but for the french imperial eagle, the baker rifle, and now a sad little assortment of whittled, wooden animals perched on the same shelf that usually held his two tin plates and the tea container. ]

Grab a chair, if you like. Give your feet a rest.

[fleurdesel]

[She takes the invitation for what it is and sets her bag down next to the door, settling in one of the chairs.]

...it's quite cozy. Your flat.

[Spartan, yes, but. Comfortable enough.]

[greenjacketed]

It's decent. Besides, it won't be mine for much longer.

[ he plucks at his sword belt, freeing his waist of the weight and letting it lean casually next to his rifle. ]

[fleurdesel]

You are moving?

[To where, she wonders. Doesn't ask just yet, but she wonders all the same. Who would Sharpe find to be palatable company or care enough to share quarters with in the village?]

[greenjacketed]

Maybe. I hope. [ he has to ask katniss, first. he just hasn't come up with the right...moment. ] Into one of them great proper houses, for once.

[fleurdesel]

The Major with a proper house- it'd make entertaining a bit easier, there'd be more room for it, at least.

[greenjacketed]

...Haven't settled into a house in years, Adele. And even then, years ago, it weren't for long. But I can't say I enjoy these great boxes of rooms.

[fleurdesel]

Apartments aren't precisely meant to be enjoyed. They're more something to be endured until one is able to afford a proper house. Here, at least, the ability to afford a home is not part of the question.

[greenjacketed]

It's been a year. Still, I forget that money ain't an obstacle. Doesn't seem right.

[ as a previously poor man -- or at least one who pointedly ignored the ten thousand pounds he only very recently banked -- the loss of an economy is perhaps what has hit him hardest. for the rich, the world is as good as moneyless for all the difficulty prices don't present. but for the poor, a monneyless town is downright eerie. ]

[fleurdesel]

Wings on your back, Major. Money not being an object is odd. I'd think there was a great deal more here to make you decide it isn't right, especially after a year.

[greenjacketed]

Christ, Adele -- [ he leans against the wall, eschewing chairdom for the time being. ] Can't a man complain about one thing without having you upbraid him for not complaining about everything else, as well?