Oxford Street Tube Station, London, Wednesday Afternoon

[bitten_notshy]

It was considerate of Portalocity to put the main port to and from London in a dimly lit alcove of a crowded underground station; no one was looking at anyone else, and, even if they were, there'd probably been stranger things to remark upon that morning than two (to all appearances) young men stepping out of a glowing blue doorway to nowhere. Certainly Jack was not going to break his stride to remark on how unusual it was.

He did, though, pause when they were out of the station. "Guidebook first, I think," he ventured. "Seeing as it's been some time since I was here."

[OOC: For Mitchell, unless someone else is in London today.]

Comments

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

Jack's own bag of crisps -- not bad, though real food was better -- had been stashed in his coat pocket respectfully as they approached the memorial.

"Some of the country names are different," he noted. "But no. They don't."

His general impression of history -- in all worlds -- was that it was a succession of inevitable wars. The American revolution he suspected he'd see in his own immediate future, if he went back to that timeline, was just one more example.

He'd stay quiet for a moment.

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[chosehumanity]

There was a silence, Mitchell with his hands in his pockets, utterly silent. He'd left saluting well behind a long while ago, but with the monument in sight, it deserved recognition.

Finally, he did speak up again.

"It was built in 1919," he said. "The end of the Great War." Perhaps some irony, then.

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

"The Glorious Dead," Jack read, still quietly and doing, again, math in his head.

1914. He'd be -- 32? Old to enlist, but too young not to.

"They built it fast."

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[chosehumanity]

"Nothing like dead youths to light a fire under their collective arses," he snorted. "You know, back then, everyone thought it was going to be this massive, glorious thing, and those of us who didn't make it back were going to have heroic deaths in service. But it was brutal. Down in the mud and the dirt and the cold, waiting for the order to capture another inch of terrain..."

And here he thought his classes got the lot of this out of his system.

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

No, it rather clearly wasn't out of Mitchell's system, but that was all right. There were some things people never got over.

"Where were you?"

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[chosehumanity]

"France," he said, with a slight inclination of his head. "Lulluch. Then the Somme Valley. That's where the vampires found us. Just... strolling around the battlefield as they pleased, taking up with the dying or the ones that weren't going to be missed."

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

The word Jack muttered under his breath was in no way flattering. Looked at a certain way, that could be seen as generous -- the gift of instant death or eternal life, and all.

Jack was not entirely inclined to look at it that way.

"But they gave you a choice?"

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[chosehumanity]

"If you want to call it that," Mitchell said, shrugging a shoulder. He turned away from the monument, back into the direction of the metro station they'd come in on. "Herrick would either take me, or kill all of my men. I suppose that's options."

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

"For the literal meaning of the word, yes." Jack's face had gone grim, and he was following Mitchell back to the subway.

I'm sorry was, in his opinion, a stupid thing to say.

"You were noble." Sebastien had done it for a girl.

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[chosehumanity]

"You did what you could," he said. There was no outward discomfort at the sentiment, but Herrick talking about all of his fellow soldiers out dying on hospital beds while he looked like this forever-- yeah.

He'd been young.

He scraped his throat. "So what's next? Got any major plans to make London more unsafe?"

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

"Next, I think ... beer," Jack decided, leaving the uncomfortable topic where it was. "Then home before that phone of yours blows up. I think I can manage not to traumatize the city for at least that long."

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[chosehumanity]

"Beer and crisps," Mitchell said, approvingly. "I think we'll get you back to being a Brit yet. Or at least a teenage drunk."

Re: Next Morning, Whitehall

[bitten_notshy]

"Synonyms, as far as I could ever tell," Jack shrugged, having given up (except in a tiny, annoyed mental aside) on making people remember he wasn't British in anything but accent and name. He smiled for the first time since we got to the monument. "I think we have a plan."