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Who: Lucius Malfoy, Sr. and Severus Snape Beta
What: An Old Men moment, probably
Where: A pub.
When: I will fill this in later.
Notes: None.
Warnings: None. Yet.

Life has been tossing strange curveballs in Severus Snape's direction. That he considers recent events to be curveballs and not the situation as a whole (that is, being abducted to Baedal) is very telling. Then again, he has had a long time to accept that he's dead in his own world, so his tolerance for the weird and unusual may be slightly higher than it once was. Still. First Charity Burbage appears, and though he has deftly managed to avoid talking to her, he's supremely aware that it's a reckoning he'll eventually have to face. Then, he is abruptly removed from the city and given a year's worth of memories from the Barge in the span of three days - something which has put him decidedly out of step with Martha.

Something which he hopes will remain out of step; there are memories he doesn't want her to have.

And then Lily. Every now and again, he reaches for his CiD to contact her, but he isn't sure what he would say. 'I'm here.' He finds he's not sure he wants her to know or just how the conversation would progress from there. He doesn't think he wants her to know simply for the sake of knowing. 'You're safe.' Untrue. Besides, what would Martha say? And the longer he waits, the more he realizes that, as pursuits go, contacting Lily would be better left to his doppelganger. He's closer to her age; it won't be as jarring for her. Though he spent nearly two decades wishing for her, hoping he could see her again, the glimpse he had of her in the CiD leaves him feeling rather removed from the situation.

And rather old.

If he's fair with time and includes those years on the Barge, he's forty-one. Everyone - Narcissa, her husband, Rosier, Nymphadora - seems to be so much younger. Severus is an anomaly. An aberration in the timeline. He's beginning to understand just how Lucius feels; their conversation in his shop starts to take on a new light. His inability to find a common point in time with the others from his world is incredibly alienating.

Which is also something of a curveball, because Severus has never cared before about feeling alienated. But, of course, it was never quite like this.

In the end, he doesn't contact Lily. As the days go by, he finds himself wanting some connection to home, however. He can't contact Rodolphus. Rodolphus is (was) complicated and profoundly simple in a way that goes well beyond annoying Severus. Burbage will ask questions, and he doesn't want to answer them. So it's Lucius he contacts, because whether Lucius hates him for his betrayal or has forgiven him thanks to the protection he gave Draco, they're of the same place and time, and on occasion, that's worth more than friendship. His message contains nothing more than an address and time; he doesn't fully expect Lucius to put in an appearance, but he goes and waits just the same.

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Perhaps Severus is allowed to laugh, or affect amusement however he may. The look Lucius deals his way is sharp, as if searching for it, and he allows for his own halved if unhidden smirk, slightly dour but nevertheless there. It is what it is, and what it is is ridiculous. He dismisses Severus again, tipping attention back to his drink.

"You've an impressive imagination," is just as droll, reaching to collect the bottle to top up his own glass in careless splashes that never actually go beyond the glass's rim.

Set back down, closer to Severus if he wants it, before he takes up the glass again. "I suppose I ought be grateful that that's the only trace of fatherhood I've had to affect since being here." He doesn't sound like he is, but he doesn't sound like he isn't; it's almost an objective observation, stepping neatly around the sentiment of the matter, played for dry humour.

If nothing else, the time Severus spent aboard the Barge made him particularly superstitious. He doesn't say he's bored for fear that a flood - or, in Baedal, something nastier - might occur, and he never makes a statement remotely resembling the one Lucius just has.

Because inevitably, hoping aloud to keep someone away only results in drawing them in. Sirius Black, for example.

He refrains from comment, however. He doesn't know what it is Lucius might want; perhaps he misses Draco. Perhaps he, like Severus and Martha, might view Baedal as a city with some (some) potential for a life. Or perhaps he wants to keep his family as far from here as possible. 'Some potential' does not a suburban paradise make. Instead, he decides to redirect the conversation back to Narcissa Black. "There is little harm in telling you now that she purchased sleeping potions."

That gains a slightly unimpressed sound from Lucius, as if he can't even imagine what on earth any witch or wizard from his era below the age of twenty-two could have restless nights about. Never mind the horrors that Baedal provides, of course, although he couldn't say in certainty that Narcissa Black never ventured into the fog. But that seems too reckless, for her. He would know.

Not to be callous, or anything, because Lucius Malfoy would never, but an eyebrow lifts a little cynically. "Well. No doubt she will be better rested wherever she's returned to, for a time."

There's a mild twitch in Severus's expression which might be him biting back a second flash of amusement. He's not certain whether Lucius means 'for a time' because she's well on her way to being a married woman (unlikely), because Draco will come (more likely), or because the first war is lying in wait like a trap for her (that's probably it).

But the very idea that Lucius would ever resort to such crude humour as the first idea sets him not-quite-laughing again.

It's becoming clear to Severus that he is at that point for a person when frustration is so overwhelming, laughter is the only recourse. Helpless laughter, followed by irrational anger if emotions aren't curbed.

He refreshes his wine from the bottle between them, his jaw tightly clenched. When he does speak, when he has regained enough of his sense of emotional control, a few seconds have passed. Enough to nearly become an awkward silence. "I should hope she wasn't venturing into the fog. Not that I find the endeavor itself deserving of disapproval, but Narcissa at eighteen never struck me as the sort one might wish to take on an expedition to Muggle London, much less into the dangers surrounding the city. Narcissa at thirty, perhaps."

Awkward silences and Severus Snape; more likely than you think. Lucius often, these days, let's them ride on by rather than find some elegant way to fill them, content to drink, lazily observe their most unlikely surroundings, deftly avoid his own train of thoughts. He does not look for humour, this time; the First War is not remembered fondly and is, indeed, the centre of his reference.

It and the events that followed do tend to keep one up at night, after all. He flicks a glance up at Severus at mention of the imprisoning fog, something somewhat calculating in an attempt to read the other man's expression, before he pays attention only to his glass again.

"I very much doubt she did," he agrees, neutrally.

If the calculating look Lucius sends his way is what Severus might interpret it to be - that is, a look similar to those searching glances he himself gives others in an attempt to determine what they know - it's needless.

Whether Severus knows or not about Lucius's forays into the fog, he doesn't care. He has spent enough of his life paying careful scrutiny to just what one Lucius Malfoy may or may not be up to. He's not going to do it here. He wants, in some small way, to get along with his old...

Comrade. Question mark. Friend. Question mark.

'Drinking partner' will suffice for now.

"It then begs the question: what was causing her sleepless nights? The obvious postulations of homesickness aside. Surely Baedal itself is hardly worse in nature than home."

Severus, of course, may have somewhat skewed perceptions of 'acceptable places for habitation' after three years on the Barge and, before that, twenty years of warfare.

"She had two sisters I believe she was still relatively fond of at that point," Lucius says, content to go down this passage of conversation whether or not he, in turn, cares about scrutiny that may or may not come about. "Financial security, perhaps a pet, I don't entirely recall. If not the deprivation of a life she once knew and relied upon, then the thoughts inspired by what is given in exchange. Employment, imprisonment. Rent."

Because naturally, an ordinary life would be something Lucius cites as giving someone sleepless nights. It certainly hadn't been his favourite. "Or she was seeking attention," is a bit heartless, Lucius, but he's raised a teenager and she is close enough. He tosses back another sip of wine.

"Perhaps," he replies noncommittally. Truth be told, he doesn't like unanswered questions, and curiosity had been niggling at him when she first came to him, but with time it seemed less important. Now, he's simply using the incident as an excuse to avoid discussing other matters. For example, how Lucius looks on his betrayal of the Dark Lord.

He certainly wasn't thrilled on the Barge, but the mileage varied. This Lucius is fully in step.

Too, there is the issue of Martha that he has so deftly avoided discussing with - well, anyone save Narcissa and his doppelganger, and even those conversations were a result of a motivating factor in the form of Bellatrix Lestrange.

Whatever the case, he can't immediately think of anything further to say because Severus is not adept at small talk and broader conversation is impossible until he knows where he stands. Even with an enemy, he has found, he can have a fuller and more pleasant conversation than he can manage here. Old memories can't be drawn upon without possibly hitting the wall created by his own faithlessness, and new experiences seem to be out of bounds for them both.

So he remains silent, waiting to see if Lucius will pick up the thread of the conversation and direct them to a topic he deems suitable for an evening of drinking.

Lucius could choose to care more about the mystery of Narcissa Black and why she required the potion known to create a sleep likened for death, but it's just so much easier to let things go. As he tends to do. A lifetime of delicately monitoring his own spiderweb of social connection and the delicate temperaments of his peers has been retired from, relaxed, and they can all do what they like as far as he is concerned, whether it's thrive, suffer, or marry Muggle women.

Threads of conversation can be much the same, but in this case, he doesn't mind talking. A few months ago, he probably would have rivaled Severus in being an anti-social git and steadily drained the bottle without a word if he'd been allowed.

"I do not find it a greatly dramatic difference," he says, after a comfortable moment has slid by, not really looking at Severus, save for a flick of a glance back towards him. "Feelings of age and difference, between Britain and Baedal. That is my luxury of not dying. I suppose the charm has worn off for you-- years, you mentioned."

Lucius may have no such troubles, but three years aboard the Barge has given Severus a number of odd perspectives; he has known Sirius Black as a new Azkaban inmate, Grindelwald as an old man, Neville in his late twenties. He should be accustomed to this oddness, but he isn't. If anything, he relied upon the knowledge that those aboard the Barge were not living their years out, but rather were removed from their timelines. His memories would remain intact.

The more he considers it, the more complex it becomes to him. The more he fidgets in his own way: a twitch of his right index finger, tapping on the tabletop in a nervous pattern.

"Three," he says at last, tossing the word out rather carelessly, as though it means nothing to him. Three years of memory, but not of life. He's still thirty-eight (or thirty-nine, perhaps), for all intents and purposes. How very unnerving. Perhaps he isn't following Lucius's commentary as closely as he ought to be - No, certainly isn't. He's just. Musing at this point. "I see little difference between Baedal and the places I've been. Or Britain as I knew it. I would quite willingly remain here, for all its...lack of convention."

There's a slightly rueful smirk, nearly a grimace for all that it's pained. "I have nothing to which I might return, after all - and Martha here. I suppose an aberration or two - a doppelganger here, Narcissa Black there - should hardly cause me concern."

"Perhaps."

This is neutral conversational punctuation, considering pressing the point and topic but remaining quiet for the length of time it takes to consider Severus, and then his wine before sipping from it. "I had every intention to leave the country," he adds, almost flippantly. "Narcissa, naturally, insisted we remain. To see things through, is how she put it. There are few forces in the known world that can make that woman do anything she has decided she will not do."

And so, he remained in Britain, is what a tip of his wine glass is meant to indicate. He honestly doesn't know if Snape cares what became of him, after the war. Everyone seems inclined to go off inference and assumption, or just. Apathy. He isn't sure where his former(?) friend stands, but damn it all, he invited Lucius to drink and talk, and he shall do these things.

For some reason, admitting weakness (because to Lucius, anything that might show what he truly thinks and feels is that) in front of Snape the Younger is more difficult. The age disparity, perhaps. Their particular arrangement. "Including," he adds, "whatever force pulled me here."

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