multiversallogs | from the palace to the riverside

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from the palace to the riverside

Who: Lucius Malfoy (Sr) and Severus Snape α
What: Creepers will creep.
Where: Somewhere in Badside.
When: Now. Sundown.

Rain clings to steel and shakes off in earnest by the time heavy footsteps are coming down the zigzagged fire-escape-turned-main entranceway.

The sky has deigned not to open up its downpour for the moment, but the smell of water and ozone hangs in the cooling air and the sky remains angrily clouded. Lucius' coat is damp from earlier in the day, a black garment of too fine a make for this end of town, almost snagging on the grimy stairs as he descends, shoes finding asphalt, as does the end of his cane. He arrived with nothing and leaves with nothing, thus making whatever business he had inside the red-brick apartment complex somewhat mysterious, but wherever he is going to next, he is clearly in no rush.

He walks. Eventually, there will be somewhere interesting he can slither into. A bar. A bookstore. A quiet restaurant. A brothel. (No.)

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It is strange, being known by this handful of young things as 'the future'. For Lucius, it is the dreary and painful past, the bleak present, and for Merlin's sake, he's barely mid-40, this isn't old by modern, Western standards; he isn't an end game. But this is more suitable to find aggravating in the Other Malfoys than Severus Snape.

For him, it truly is.

"Shouldn't we," he inquires, although his tone doesn't deign to make it a question. Asking Severus to explain that, in the open, is a kind of conversational stupidity Lucius prides himself in avoiding. "You've a venue in mind?"

He steps closer still, non-threatening, and there's something in his eyes - his face, like a not-quite-flinch - as he looks at Lucius. Maybe he, too, is looking for more familiarity than he's finding.

(It's clear that Severus is, at least chronologically, the matched set with the other Malfoy couple, but he just can't.)

He extends a hand.

"We can't walk there."

Of course.

Old paranoia-- or relatively new paranoia, it is a matter of perspective, truly-- rustles up at what appears to be a reasonably harmless offer of conversation. Should Severus wish him ill, and perhaps he does, all things considered, then Lucius could well be playing into whatever it may be.

And yet, he changes cane from one hand to the next, and extends the one freed to grip secure around Severus' wrist. Not so long ago, he wandered into eldritch fog too with a bunch of mouthy strangers and ink monsters. For money.

He can handle following one Severus Snape in the name of curiousity.

He doesn't waste time, and the second Lucius has a grip on his wrist, Severus apparates them.

They re-appear in what appears to be a basement, but what could also just be a loft flat, except that it's impossible to tell with the windows blacked out like that. Whatever it is, it's tidy and tasteful and already crammed full of books - it could pass as his professor's quarters at Hogwarts, if a bit less refined. There's a sitting area near a stove, even, and...

No doors.

Hm.

(It is also, if Lucius feels like noticing, warded as fuck. No wonder no one can get in with Severus personally teleporting them.)

He notices. Lucius has been occupying his more boring hours with breaking his younger counterpart's wards, and their invisible, oppressive presence tunes into whatever wizarding sixth sense that you develop after a certain age. Lucius withdraws clasp and turns his back on the other man to better take in new surroundings, picking up on details that are as expected as the organisation of the apocethary, and others that are not.

The lack of doors sits somewhere in between these two extremes.

"Charming," he comments.

"I decided I didn't want to be bothered."

Yes, well. That much is obvious, Severus.

He makes a slight motion as if he's inviting him to sit down, but sometimes it's difficult to tell with him; hospitality is not his strong point. His quarters (spacious, even if it is mostly one large room, sectioned off neatly) have clearly been designed to suit him, but there's more than one chair, at least.

"I suppose I should apologize for my age."

Ha is not a thing Lucius says, but there is a huff of something that resembles it. "You will be the first," he states, moving then towards the seats, and how they expect to be occupied by more than one person. It's one of those snide thoughts that never make it to expression or verbalisation, but get filed away for later use. He sits without resting his cane on anything, never setting it down far from him, nor letting it even leave his hand.

Which isn't personal - he does much the same in the townhouse he's been resigned to calling home. Even over tea. "I've no apologies for mine."

"I should hope not."

There's no offense in his voice - none of that usual kicked-dog, grudging acceptance of the little bribes and put-downs that Severus should be used to; he's not combative, either. He just is.

"Would you believe me if I said it's good to see you?"

Finally, he sits.

"Yes."

Lucius is being a bit dry when he says that, as if this doubled, some, as commentary on the nature of Baedal and the company it keeps. "I had hoped, when I left my name with your assistant," and the emphasis, as per usual, is italicised disdain, "that something would come of it, if only for the variation. How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to be surprised at the number of us falling from the sky."

'Us', not them or you. Despite the fact that he's kept to himself so viciously, he has no illusions of true segregation. Severus knows what he is. What they all are. (Dead, dying.)

"Have you said anything?" About him. Is the obvious implication.

The obvious implication is, indeed, picked up on, and Lucius allows only a second for Severus to worry about it before he shakes his head simply. "Tempting though it had been to inquire, I wanted to see what you made of my message first. Given choice," and not stupid error, ignorance of the network and the presence Death Eaters had already made here, "I might have kept to myself as well. For a time."

He's relaxed a little. A fraction. There is a disconnect somewhere, here, and it is not age, but not enough of one for Lucius to recoil or reject conversation that is otherwise comfortable.

"They've carved their place in Baedal quite neatly, haven't they."

If there's any visible relief, it's slim; Severus isn't inclined to be terribly emotive unless he's furious, and he's far from it now. (Paranoid, yes, but that's the default state of things.) He's made a bit more easy by that, anyway - while he might not hate seeing Narcissa, or even her husband, of his contemporary age, and it isn't as if he ever hated Rosier, there's just... too much, already, welled up in his life like dried blood waiting to crackle back open. He must stay apart still.

It helps that he can tell Lucius isn't lying.

(Because he can tell when anyone isn't lying.)

"As you say." They. He knows where this man stands, at least. "I'm not inclined to it." Under some bizarre Muggle woman's thumb, leashed along with her pet monsters.

Edited 2011-11-08 05:11 (UTC)

"To their credit," because for all that Lucius has a special resentment for them being what they are and his own being what he is, they are Malfoys, "I suspect it is simply an adaptation. There was a time when I had to pander to a government full of officials besotted with the very agendas I opposed, but one retains their status or one hears nothing, acts on nothing."

He is careful, mid-sentence, not to speak specifically of Muggles. Severus' agency was a point of contention, in the end, with some saying one thing and others saying quite differently, but as far as Lucius was concerned, the other man was simply dead and he delved no further. Now, one wonders.

But there is time to figure it out. "However. That is simply one way." And he's very tired.

The way Severus reacts to Lucius' remarks concerning his extensive duplicity is... interesting. Halfway between watching a science project and trying to puzzle something more personal out. Severus doesn't wear human interest well, and for a moment it's plain that he's considering something - whatever it is, he doesn't speak of it.

"I have my own research to attend to," he tells him. "Unpleasantly, it's what landed me here." C'est la vie. "It needs funded, obviously, so I work." He tilts his head. "I hear you went into the fog."

'I hear' is a very curious way of phrasing 'I've viciously stalked all of you to the fullest extent of my long distance capabilities', for the record.

'I hear' gets a raised eyebrow, but considering what was mentioned earlier, about Lucius' taking time to leave the boundaries of Hellsing, it seems a little late to complain about the complete lack of rumours that Severus is working from. Lucius' fingers lace together across silver snake head, breaking eye contact to crawl study over the room as he responds.

"And here I am, quite whole and unharmed. Yes, I went into the fog. You've a mind to scavenge for spare change too, have you?" Well. Spare change by Malfoy standards.

Just because he doesn't appear to use the cohort network doesn't mean he isn't fully capable of observing what goes on over it, Lucius.

And here Severus falters a bit, looking (and feeling) much more like one might expect him to at his age.

"-No, I went, some weeks ago, but just to look at it." ... Yeah that sounds awesomely safe, okay. "When you knew me in school, after you'd graduated and I hadn't, near when I was first marked-"

Subject veer, then- "Did you know anything of what I was doing in between terms?"

And Lucius goes picking down memory lane, head at a contemplative cant as he tries to figure out anything particularly remarkable about this time, for Severus, or what he did between school terms. All the same, he follows the direction of subject veer - he doesn't have much remarkable to say about ink monsters and teasets.

"Studying for the next year, I wouldn't wonder. No, nothing stands out to me."

Ahahaha.

(Severus does not actually laugh.)

A smile, slightly forced and seeming to imply Oh Merlin if only you knew- well, at least he has the good graces to seem somewhat incredulous at himself.

"Different universes, then." Because not even Severus in all his disdain for the world at large would imagine Lucius to be that unobservant. "Which we could spend the next several hours discussing and getting a headache over, if that interests you."

Well let Lucius think about that for j--

"No thank you."

It wasn't overly interesting, or painless, when discussed with LeMat, so why should it be now? "I've been introduced to the concept." And maybe that, the question of Harry Potter, is a thing Lucius knows and Severus does not, but who can tell? It is set aside, for now. "Rather, I wouldn't mind getting to the heart of it, which I presume lies in what you did when you weren't at school." Inexplicably.

Edited 2011-11-08 12:08 (UTC)

This is his surprised face. (Spoilers: he's not surprised.)

"I thought that I was very clever," and it's a little funny to hear him, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, looking back on his absurd youth, "and developed a few practices mostly out of boredom that accidentally became profitable when aimed at certain populations."

Severus isn't ashamed of what he did, specifically or generally; it was the seventies and everyone used, at least. He's just not sure how to explain it without using broader Muggle terms. It takes him a moment.

"Modified sensory enhancement potions, reconfigured chemically, out of liquid form; magical narcotics aren't so rare here on their own, but good ones are. Apparently it sold, and extremely well.

I've not the temperament to deal with the distributor."

Sitting back as Severus elaborates, it's clear that for a little while during this explanation, Lucius really has no idea what he's talking about, pallid eyes clear of much except scrutiny and puzzlement. But when one starts on about magical narcotics, it's a little difficult to miss the point no matter who is saying it.

His eyebrows go up, and he hesitates, before commenting;

"How very enterprising of you."

Which is code for that's awful and hilarious, but mostly due to knowing the Snape he knows, making this thing both different and yet strangely credible in a very off-beat, morbid way that would otherwise never happen. The injoke is clear in the comma of expression next to his mouth, the beginnings of smirk, but that's where it remains. "You sold to Muggles?"

It is awful and hilarious, even with this Severus; the reactions from certain people who found out as it was happening were priceless - he'd never set out to be some kind of sixteen year old wizard cartel king, it was just a few holidays gone in a very bizarre direction. Eventually he got bored of it and that was that, there'd been a war on and even the perverse entertainment of it was utterly uninteresting in comparison.

"...Well, and Barty."

Well, at least that's possibly a source of amusement in any universe, and this time, Lucius does allow non-smirk to get to a half state of being, the smallest sound of mirth at the back of his throat.

The present presents itself again, consideration paid in a look away from Severus as he winds himself back towards the implication about how Severus has not the temperament to deal with the distributor and fill in the blank.

Rather than ask outright, the glance back silently demands more information.

It's the little things.

Severus is vaguely comforted by the notion that Lucius finds that funny - both because it means that their worlds are not so different as to be wholly alien, and because it means Lucius hasn't been so strangled by the war as to leave him dead inside. (The latter is a concept Severus has difficulty articulating to himself; as if he knows anything about the psychological aspect, there. But it's re-assuring to hear him pretend not to laugh all the same.)

Down to business, then.

"Negotiations - politics, the bureaucracy that exists even in the underground - is not anything that I am equipped to navigate. When someone argues with me I want to give them detention or kill them, I don't know what any of these people trying to negotiate with me expect."

A beat. "It's fairly lucrative; I don't care to engage someone I don't... know."

It's not a favor - not him giving one, nor asking for one. But he does need help, and the twin pressures of not caring to explain himself to an outsider and knowing the clock was ticking on needing to out himself to this man at the very least have led him here.

"I understand."

Which feels weird. That Lucius should understand. Not that dealings with the Ministry were ever particularly wholesome, from strategic donations of galleons through to threatening the right families to achieve an end, but those were politicians. He folds one leg over the other. "You caught me on my way back to Sobek Croix from a meeting. Two gentlemen-- fences, interested in the purchase of fog items-- in an apartment I'm quite sure wasn't theirs. I've a notion it went well enough.

"I've been trying at this." Already, he means. Talking to the natives, or the not-so-natives who've been here a trifle longer than himself. "And I would prefer to work, additionally, with a commodity of higher value," and he tips cane in a subtle lean to indicate the conversation at hand.

Time is money, and all, and more money means a little more time before things are terrible again.

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