multiversallogs | yea, I will take the gloomward road

Who: Logan and Nuala Ní Balor
What: A clean break.
Where: Nuala's office, Sobek Croix.
When: After this.

He's here ahead of her, waiting.

As ever, Logan's presence off-balances the more finely tuned harmonies of most given rooms. He'd never smoke in her office (for all that he has lit up at least a couple of times in, say, Cerebro, but he never had to called Chuck your highness), but it along with earthier scents of roughish living and whiskey drinking cling to him always. He wears leather and flannel and denim, the mud of the Sobek Croix forest clinging in dried flakes on boots worn to scuff.

Callused hands rough back and forth as he lazily rubs his palms together, seated opposite where Nuala would be sitting, regarding the creepy arm in the display case without particular puzzlement. He's been here many times before, sometimes behind her, or where he is now, or outside the door.

He isn't feeling much of anything, except for tense, alert to the point of paranoid, but that's normal. Animal.

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Coming into her office, Nuala doesn't pause. Her highness would be very poor at her chosen profession indeed if she didn't know already who's sitting in her office, and she's made a decision about how to handle this. She sits opposite, where he expects her to, and rests her clasped hands in her lap, severe in black and- patient, mainly. Expectant.

“Logan,” she says, not quite a greeting, not without kindness. “Tell me.”

(-only as much as you need to.)

His posture straightens as she enters, but sinks back into laziness, a heavy slouch back into the chair seat, furniture always creaking dangerous beneath him like it could come apart at any moment. He closes a fist in a hand as she settles, watchful, and clears his throat when it's his turn to speak.

"Uh."

Good start. A hand buries inside his jacket, extracting a folded piece of paper, on which he's bothered to write names and numbers down. "These're-- some guys who'd say yes to something like this. I know 'em, I mean, they're rough around the edges, but." Well. He places the list down. "Some things've come up. Some people that need me more than you do, right now."

Her scrutiny is tellingly incurious; she doesn't need to ask him why it is that he's leaving her service, and she has no intention of doing so because she trusts him, because she knows the answer, and because she'd like to have something like plausible deniability if she's ever asked, later, about the man who once worked for her. She accepts the list he's written and takes a moment to examine it as she considers how she wants to respond.

“Do good work, Logan,” she says, after a slight pause. “I understand the necessity.”

Logan waits pretty patiently as she gathers her thoughts. He's in no rush. He didn't hate this job. It was kind of surreal but she's a nice lady and the pay was pretty good, certainly better than some of the gigs he wound up with back home. "So do you," he says, on that first thing, nodding to her. "What you're doing in this city."

He's not a words guy. She knows that, at least, so he isn't trying too hard.

“To the best of my ability.” And within the constraints of her position; there are things that she cannot do, actions that she cannot take, opinions that she cannot be seen to hold. Few people will ever hear her express herself with true honesty, any more, and there are times that she regrets her brother can no longer be one of them.

The rest of the time she's grateful to have even one.

“As I will continue to aid you, if I can.”

To the best of her ability and within the limited constraints of her position.

He does one of his small, somewhat suppressed smiles that come off kind of crooked, his attention dropping down on loosely folded hands. "I'll remember that." Logan would like to offer it back, and say she can call on him if she needs someone of his specifications, but he isn't even planning to have a working CiD number for the next while.

And offering empty offers and promises doesn't work so well for him.

Maybe later.

"It's a small town," he says anyway, now easing to his feet, but he's not going to walk away until given leave. "Sure we'll run into each other eventually." Because Nuala is known for her scandalous divebar appearances.

“Have a care,” she says, her smile small and kind and its own form of farewell, “and I may see that we do.”

But for now--

“Send in my assistant, on your way. I must address the gap you've left in my service.”

At least she isn't making him argue about two weeks notice.

Logan kind of lifts a hand in lazy salute, two fingers to his temple and then to her. A half-burned down cigar is taken from a pocket and set between teeth, talked around when he executes her final request of him on his way out, "hey, princess wants you," and just like that, Hellsing is deprived of at least one chain-smoking leather-wearing asshole.

Now he's going to go punch some uniforms.

yea, I will take the gloomward road

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