LIGHT THE MATCH

[diogenesis]

Who: Mycroft Holmes and ~*you*~
What: An attempt to learn about the City in the most casual way possible.
Where: The Library of Blessed St. Brian
When: Veerdi, Kavadry 3rd
Notes: This is an open post! I have certain things I want to accomplish here, planting certain seeds and so forth, but anyone should feel free to come and poke the antisocial bear.
Warnings: Spoilers for Sherlock S2E3: The Reichenbach Fall.

It has been a long three days.

When Mycroft had first appeared in the small, tiled waiting room at the Inn, his first theory had been that he was dying. Perhaps I'm already dead, he'd thought.

Even now, having had hours of solitude to think it all over, he can't rule it out—there is no absolute way to disprove the existence of an afterlife—but his memories of the moments before he'd arrived here are so clear, and he feels certain he wasn't ill or in the process of being attacked. Surely, there would have been a moment just before unconsciousness, even the smallest moment, that would have allowed him to notice a twinge of pain, a blur of movement, the feeling of disorientation, the sound of a gun going off.

But all he knows is that he blinked, and he was elsewhere.

His chair from the Diogenes Club had taken the journey with him, making the fiasco even more mysterious. Mycroft hadn't even been near the club at the time; he'd been in 10 Downing Street. He can't deny the fact that having something familiar nearby has helped, in a small way, to soothe the burn of such a sudden transition, but in the end it is a single sandbag in the face of a hurricane. Not only has Mycroft been torn away from decades of work in a job only he could do, but his brother, Sherlock, is relying on him for resources and protection more than ever after being forced to fake his own death by the late James Moriarty. Mycroft's level of worry is unspeakable. None of his usual centering techniques have helped to focus his mind. He's beginning to fray at the edges.

This is why, despite the fact that it seems dangerous to go outside what with the City's residents capable of breaking the laws of physics and performing magic (not to mention the place being some version of a police state), Mycroft is at the University's library today. Three days trapped in his own mind was too long (felt the warning signs start to creep in, too much like Sherlock, can't afford that now, have to be alert now). The order of the day is fresh air and fresh knowledge. He needs to learn more about this place, whether it's all in his mind or not.

After all, if he is in a coma, he could be here for quite a long time.

Comments

[rhinemaid]

The thing about research is that there's always more of it to do-- Remy helps her, but mostly they work on sign language and a safe place to test the things she knows she can do, he doesn't know any more about her species than she does and she has to go further afield. The titles that Severus had initially given her were a place to start, but she's still reading and searching and cross-referencing; there's so much to wade through, and it's hard to tell at first what's going to be of any value and what's some human idiot expounding on a topic he knows nothing about.

Which is the problem she strikes now, sifting through some of the titles that she'd made a note of during her last lunch with the professor - there'd been a little bit of overlap in his work, just enough to point her in a new direction if not be of any particular help. The specific problem is that, unsurprisingly, most of what she really needs is written in German and an English-to-German dictionary and occasional queries posed in Erik's direction just don't always cut it. She doesn't mind slogging through painstaking efforts to translate a language she barely speaks, it's just that it's irritating to go to all that time and trouble and discover, a week later, that none of it is any good.

She couldn't be a Russian faery or an Italian one, oh no. It would be far too fucking easy for her heritage to come detailed in a language that she can actually read.

There's another person in this area of the library, and it seems reasonable to assume that he might have more familiarity with the languages supplied than she does. Ilde thinks about it, briefly, but it's easier to ask for help when it doesn't involve irritating things like 'feelings' and she's never suffered from anything like shyness - reserve is different - so she leaves her coat draped across her seat to save it and steps over to his table, carrying her current frustration under her arm.

"Excuse me," very polite, very neat; received pronunciation, mostly, no regional markers barring a faint hint of Italy underneath that well-trained manner of speech. "Do you read German at all?"

[diogenesis]

At this point in the day, Mycroft is taking a break from a more focused method of fact-finding and is wandering around the library on his own, observing the way the place is organized and the type of material that is kept here. Much of what he's found has turned out to be somewhat familiar, but there's also plenty that is completely foreign.

There are books in the non-fiction section that a week ago he'd have thought must surely be misplaced, books written on subjects he's never heard of (and that almost seems more improbable), and languages he doesn't recognize. Some things are printed using materials he can't identify. Some of the books do things like levitate (he nonchalantly tries to catch one, but it keeps floating away). Oddly enough, the strangeness in here doesn't bother Mycroft as much as it does outside—he's been able to relax as the day has gone on. In the library, it feels like he finally has something new to learn, instead of like all his old knowledge is being rendered useless.

The general malaise still lingers, but it's not quite as thick in the air.

Mycroft is eyeing a shelf of what seems to be non-fiction literature on supernatural beings when a young woman tries for his attention. She's small (approx. 160 cm), and slight as well. Her hair is dark, her eyes are blue. Age: 18-20. European origin (Italy likely); upper-class British English accent (possibly achieved through tutoring). Accomplished musician (string instruments: cello, harp, violin). Economically comfortable (expensive, clean boutique clothing). A glance up and over to a nearby table shows an instrument case (cello confirmed; a quality piece) and a table full of books from the section they're standing in (some of which are in German), as well as what is obviously the young woman's purse and coat.

She obviously needs a translator. Mycroft takes a moment to consider it.

She looks somehow more real than anything I've ever seen./The topics of the books may be intriguing./Do I really want to spend time reading aloud to an adolescent?/Ah... from that angle... she almost looks like—

"I'm fluent, in fact," he says smoothly, raising one eyebrow just slightly in question.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde brightens, sliding down into the seat beside him (she tucks her feet together, ankles crossed, behind one leg of it) and setting the book down in front of them both - dark green, leatherbound, with an embossed title that references a study of human and fae interaction in central Europe.

"I only really need you to help me with the introduction, so I can get an idea of the content," she disclaims, to start off-- "I've been trying to translate on my own mostly so I get better at it," because she's exactly enough of a nerd to think that sounds like as important and good a use of her time as actually getting the information that she needs, "but I don't want to waste it on a book I'm not going to have any use for when I'm done."

It seems eminently sensible to her when she says it out loud (which is comforting; things don't always, and it's frustrating), and she feels obliged to assure him that she has no intention of monopolizing his entire library experience with painstakingly going through this entire text for her.

[diogenesis]

Mycroft finds himself taking a seat as well, almost before he realizes he's chosen to do so. That bothers him—he's always very conscious of his decisions—but he figures it must be fatigue, as he's slept rather poorly since he's been in Baedal.

It's reassuring that the young lady only needs assistance with a small part of the book, since Mycroft had been concerned about spending too much of his time at this task. Her explanation is rational and she is polite. A far cry from the other youth who had pestered him earlier. This isn't something she could have asked of a librarian, after all.

He smoothes a few small creases out of his suit and leans his umbrella against the table, telling himself this is a perfectly rational and not-at-all hypocritical decision.

"Faeries," he says contemplatively, touching the book's cover with long, thin fingers. Mother used to tell him stories about faeries when he was very, very young. Once Sherlock was born, she was too distracted to tell stories anymore, so Mycroft told him. (Later tests done by the pair of them had seemed to conclusively prove that faeries were either make-believe or very good at hiding.)

[rhinemaid]

"My ancestry," she says, by way of explanation and accompanied by a fleeting smile best described as 'disarming'; he seems human (she can't be absolutely sure-- mutants and similar ilk defy her senses by not being magic, and they don't all have visual tells), which means there's a perceptible edge of anxiety to it, and maybe that's why she smiles just the way she does. Don't be alarmed, don't look at her like she's something wrong, just smile back and read the fucking book--

She doesn't want to be anybody's teaching moment about interspecies interaction. That moment of unease is something that hurts in ways she doesn't have the language to explain or argue against in any kind of nuanced way; it just makes her tired and angry and part of her is just afraid of finding that she doesn't have the energy to be angry any more.

[diogenesis]

"Ah," Mycroft says after a pause. For a moment, he does have a touch of the amazed about him, and something in his expression says his mind has gone elsewhere, but he comes back and clamps down on it quickly enough thanks to (what is now purely instinctual) etiquette.

"I apologize," he offers, after a second hesitation. His eyes wander down to the book again, studying its texture and color intently. "I was lost in the past for a moment."

Mycroft then looks back at the young woman in front of him, mask upon mask firmly back in place as he turns to the introduction. "Shall we press on, then, Miss...?"

[rhinemaid]

She hesitates - visibly, more visibly than she'd probably like if she were thinking about it, but it takes so much energy and she can only concentrate on so many parts of herself at once when she's so tired all the time, still - but it's...enough, she decides. It's all right. A hint of skittishness lingers, in understated contrast to the way she presented herself in arrival, but she supplies, “Ilde Decima,” obligingly and while 'Miss Decima' isn't really accurate, she's accustomed to the assumption and doesn't much mind it any more.

“And yes. Thank you for this.”

Authorial bias is relatively clear from the first, but it could be worse; while they seem a bit more fanciful than properly grounded in their subject, the tone is admiration and interest in the potential achievements of species in tandem.

(All things considered, it's a view-point Ilde could do with hearing, now and then.)

[diogenesis]

Once Mycroft finishes reading the introduction, he considers it for a moment. Personally, if he were researching his own heritage, he'd find this text a bit too subjective as a starting point, but he doesn't know what type of material Ilde has gone through before now, and she might be looking for this kind of writing specifically. He'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

"It's not quite neutral, but is this the kind of thing you're looking for?" he asks.

[rhinemaid]

“Not really,” she says, studying the words - her gaze shifts, picking out the ones she knows the meaning of, going back over his translations in her head, trying to pick out the new, unfamiliar words from it. The grammar structure trips her up and her frown deepens, but it's barely there in the first place; she's still shaking herself out of the lull she had to try so hard not to slip into while he was reading to her.

Her split focus had been clear-- she'd been torn between watching his mouth for the words and looking back down at the page for the corresponding German text (but she can only look at one at a time and she'd nearly missed whole sentences letting herself try to flick back and forth), and the murmur of his voice, indistinct but having the soothing steadiness of recitation, had been a third distraction entirely, something that made her want to close her eyes and rest, a little. She hasn't been read to since she was a child.

She isn't a child any more, she reminds herself.

“Thank you, though,” after a beat, as if she's just now remembered that he's sitting beside her and deserves continued acknowledgement. It's not that she doesn't realize it's a bit awkward, the way she sometimes disappears in her own head, after all.

[diogenesis]

Mycroft, having noticed Ilde's partial deafness from their first verbal exchange, had chosen to continue speaking verbally due to Ilde's proficiency at lip-reading and the assumption that she could hear him in some capacity (her study of music would seem to attest to that). Additionally, she wouldn't ask someone she didn't know to translate a book aloud if she wouldn't be able to understand them. However, it seems she's having more trouble than she anticipated, intent as she is upon trying to watch Mycroft's words and learn the German at the same time.

It's not a sure thing, but Mycroft may have a solution.

"Do you speak BSL?" he asks in British Sign Language. "Or ASL?" This in American.

[rhinemaid]

Almost in spite of herself, Ilde's unhappy little moue - she'd have liked not to have been wasting his time and hers, with that book - dissipates, replaced by something subtler and warmer and pleased. It is, admittedly, not that difficult to make this happen - though it's fainter than her displeasure was, like disappointment is just more familiar. Everything she does, regardless, comes with a sharp edge.

“ASL,” she confirms, with careful gestures; she's less confident with this than she is lip-reading, less practised, but evidently somebody's quick study. (Remy LeBeau, who has been so good to her.) “I know a little. I'm still learning.”

[diogenesis]

Mycroft's expression warms slightly in return, satisfied to have taken a step in the right direction. He's still not sure why he finds himself feeling more invested in Ilde's mood than he does in those of most strangers (read: not at all). From where he's sitting, any physical familiarity she may have to someone Mycroft knows or knew can no longer be seen, and he can't place who he'd been about to connect her to earlier. Also odd, since things rarely slip his mind. It has truly been a long three days.

Her demeanor remains eerily familiar, though, and it's both unnerving and calming. Furthermore, the more he looks at her, the more he wants to look harder—her colors are so rich, her textures seem to leap out at him. Even the movement of her hair draws his eyes as though it means something. All the while Mycroft's been sitting here with her, he's grown tense continually reminding himself not to stare.

He endeavors to put that all aside for the moment.

“It's a very useful language for anyone to know, I think,” he signs, keeping his motions clear and slowing them down a bit (but not enough to make things patronizing). “I thought it might be easier this way if you could focus more on reading the German on the page while you watch the signs for the English in your peripheral vision, but if you are still learning ASL, this probably won't be ideal.”