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]

[ grace had possessed fine diningware such as this. but they'd barely had a chance to use it between all the scandal and then her death. he touched the edge of his thumb against the second glass's rim and nodded. ]

Thank the Lord I have a large enough table for all this madness.

[fleurdesel]

If you didn't that would be stop number three.

[Said with all due seriousness as she begins to wrap up four of each of these glasses for him. Though it does bring to mind one thing-]

You have enough chairs, yes?

[greenjacketed]

I have four. But until now, I've kept two at the table. One in my room -- [ for a man needs a chair to rest his foot on when he pulls on his boots! ] and the last in one of the spares. I suppose I'll have to work at moving the whole lot...

[ for it turns out that richard sharpe is also changing addresses. ]

[fleurdesel]

[Silverware's just one shelf below the glasses, and this is the simplest bit. Sturdy, metal, and not bent or rusted. She doesn't bother asking if it's something he'd find suitable- if it's simple it will be suitable enough. Anything more is fussing. This is wrapped and set with the rest, some of the items added to her bag as it is, and some set in a box for Sharpe to carry.]

Good. I don't know that we've the arms for anything else.

[greenjacketed]

...I can take the bag too, eh.

[ this argued as he reaches for the box. ]

[fleurdesel]

If you must, I won't stop you.

[She's even so polite as to offer the bag proper if he feels it truly necessary.]

[greenjacketed]

[ he grips the bag and hugs the box and gives her a curt nod. ] I must. You're doing enough as it is, Adele.

[ and now he takes the lead -- expecting her to follow behind as he heads for the door. ]

[fleurdesel]

...it's not every day a Frenchwoman has leave to teach an Englishman to cook.

[She offers a faint smile and falls in step behind without further comment or question.]

[greenjacketed]

...I know how to cook the food I catch -- [ he argues. really, just for the sake of it. ] Just not how to make it fancy-like. It's not as though I eat my game raw.

[fleurdesel]

Do you season what you catch? [It's an easy argument. Almost comfortable, even.]

[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.