quicktoanger | Fourth Casefile: Damage Control. [Voice/Written/Action]

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Fourth Casefile: Damage Control. [Voice/Written/Action]

[Voice]

I paused, staring at the journal, not sure what to say for a moment.

What the hell do you say?

"Right. Sorry ab-"

Let's try this again without the accent, Harry.

"Right. Sorry about last week. If I was... off, or confused anybody, or offended anyone, or whatever."

I paused again.

"I lost the jacket, Richard, but did you at least get to keep the rifle?"

I sat for a moment longer, then chuckled.

"Least the hand didn't stay shot. Alright, I think that's it."

I shut off the feed and set to work on a filter. I suck at those, for the record, but this kind of needed to be said and was private, so...

Hell's bells, those things are more trouble than they're worth.

[Written- Locked to Molly Carpenter, filter at 2% 5% 6% 9% 9% 13 ~~16%~~ 20%]

Kid. Molly. I'm sorry about last week. Really, really sorry.
~~I never meant to~~
~~It was like I~~
Forget it. Look. Let me make it up to you somehow?

[Action]

That done, I tucked my journal in my pocket and went into town. I felt a pressing need to talk to people, which, let me tell you, never happens to me. Ever. Plus, there were a couple awkward conversations I wanted to have.

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[One of the few people Harry might need to speak to is spending the afternoon enjoying her lunch in Seventh Heaven, a stack of letters and sketches spread out in front of her. Notes, thoughts, diagrams, memories from a life that's not really hers, not any longer.]

Oh, Hell's bells.

I didn't remember conversing with an Adele last week prior to my meeting with her, because I guess in that memory, we hadn't spoken at all. Which was a weird thought, but there you go.

Now, of course, it was easy to put together Adele, the woman I spoke to on my first day, with Adele, the "bloody witch"- or, as I could more accurately figure out with my modern memories properly restored, the Jedi Knight- who I'd met last week.

... Who was apparently in love with a Jedi called Ben. Obi-Wan Kenobi?

Holy hell, this was weird.

No less so because I remember that even without her using the Force on me, I'd been utterly smitten with her. It was really kind of embarrassing, especially when I'd just come in for a doughnut. Maybe if I just... walked past, and she didn't spot me?

If only I had my duster, it plus my longer hair might make me less recognizable from the back. But no, my duster was probably back at my place. The place I'd neglected last week. That, or Jack still had it.

...

[That...that was a tall man. Adele noted his appearance in her peripheral vision before the sheer height of him made her turn to look properly. In her memory, altered or otherwise, there was but one in the village that looked anything even remotely like him.

Harry Blackstone. Onyx. The man she'd called lovely and kissed in the clinic. A man that had held her hand so her emphatic self could manage to sleep.

Well...she's done worse. And better. But other than mild surprise and connection the height with a name- Dresden, she's fairly unperturbed. If he wanted to talk, he'd talk. If he didn't, he wouldn't. Not everyone was as amused and ambivalent to the events of the previous week as she was.]

She recognized me.

Dammit. Dammit dammit. She didn't say anything. Maybe she wasn't planning to. But she definitely recognized me.

I'm a wizard, and I'm a private investigator. You get to know things. You develop a certain insight.

... Yet she said nothing. Awkward? Embarrassed like me? I couldn't believe that. She'd been far too outgoing, that last week, far too confident. She didn't seem like she'd be embarrassed, she seemed like she'd be amused at worst.

So what if she wants to see what I'll do? What if she takes my disinterest as some sort of personal slight?

... Or, what if I just am not sure whether I want to talk to her and I'm projecting and aw, screw it.

I slid into the seat opposite her.

"... You told me on the journals you were French."

[She could almost hear the cogs in Harry's head grind as he stood, awkward and hesitant, not far from her table. She does the man the kindness of looking down once it gets to be it's worst so he can either move on if he wanted or say something. She honestly expects him to move on, and is somewhat surprised when he does not. Adele looks up from her sketches and scribbled notes, smoothing them out of the way once Harry joins her.]

Last I checked, that is still the case, Monsieur Dresden.

"Wasn't the case last week, as I recall."

I shrugged.

"I'm gonna assume you got hit by whatever I got hit by. My first proper Shift since I got her, I guess. Big step to becoming a proper veteran of Luceti."

I hesitated, considering what to say next.

"... Obi-Wan Kenobi, huh?"

... Do-over?

...

[She opens her mouth to say something. Pauses. Shakes her head. Huffs a soft laugh.]

And to think, I assumed you were the most awkward man I had conversed with when you still had the Cockney accent... [She smirks, amused.]'Lovely'.

"Yeah, by the way, I want to apologize for that. I was sort of pathetic."

Seriously, I thought the military was supposed to make you manly.

Apparently I found you terribly endearing. Which...isn't the case, now. Shy and stuttering is not my type, Monsieur Dresden.

"Still, though. I can now add being hit on by a Jedi to my bragging rights list. Even if you were only a Shift-induced Jedi wannabe."

Well, that was uncharacteristic of me. I typically don't treat ladies with that brand of snark, except Murph and the Grasshopper.

And vampires. For totally different reasons.

I dunno, I guess I figured she'd find it amusing.

And I can add 'seduced a wizard with my witchy ways' to my list of benchmarks for odd behavior.

[As Harry expected, she chuckles. Props her chin on her hand and sips her coffee, brow faintly quirked. It was still there, the lingering amusement and faint attraction. Well...]

I think I might have liked you better with the short hair.

"Oh, trust me, the hair isn't a fashion statement, I'm just really bad about making time for haircuts."

Seduced, hell. I was jealous of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

... There are sentences that should never be thought by my brain. "I was jealous of Obi-Wan Kenobi" was on that list. My brain was not prepared to handle the thought that my brain was currently handling that thought.

"And I wasn't a wizard at the time, I was just a quiet guy with a gun."

And there's not a single salon in the entire village. Pity.

[She files a few of the letters off to one side, blinking at a bit of writing. 'Apologize to Harry. He was somewhat smitten with you. me. Us.'

Apparently her alternate self wasn't aware that Harry had been shifted as well. Odd.]

One that enjoyed Milton and Haiku, if memory serves.

"... Yeah, I'm already starting to lose that. And I hate Haikus. They're pretentious as hell."

... Wait. Haiku, not haikus. Ah, who gives a damn?

Another pity. You were quite eloquent in your defense of them, and in your appreciation of Milton's work. But from what I have come to understand even with the Shift we were inherently similar to how we would normally be; which begs the question. What of you remained the same?

[Normally? Not this curious, and not this up front. But Levarre was still flickering in the back of her mind, and while she manages to phrase it in a more polite way than her alternate self would have, she does ask.]

"A reader. Solitary. Content with little by way of fortune. Kind of stupid with women. Both in the 'don't know how to talk to them' and 'have a bad tendency to do stupid things if I think they're in trouble' senses of the word."

I shrugged. "Also not much for casual sex."

I think that particular aspect of her personality stemmed from her empathy. Self medicating, in a very strange way.

[Which is something Adele still does, to an extent. Or did. She thinks she might be able to manage without the odd trip to Good Spirits now.]

"Well, hell, it worked. I was seriously considering changing my stance there."

Err. He. "He. He was."

Not me. That guy was somebody else.

It made the entire thing much less disturbing if I just thought of it as another guy running around instead of me for a week.

... Okay, it was actually more disturbing, but less upsetting, I suppose.

Apparently she has that effect on men. Your Harry Blackstone would not have been the first; nor, if the multiverse theory wherein those timelines are entirely legitimate in some strange shade of reality is correct, would he have been the last.

[Her but not her; her face, her thoughts, her hands, and yet an entirely different life, mind, and body. For one her closet was full of clothing that was too loose in the chest. Odd thing, that. For another; she didn't need attention, contact, affection anywhere near as much as Levarre.

But, it was past. She could not change what had happened, only chose how she copes with it. This time? No one was hurt, not to her knowledge. So why should she worry?]

"Multiverse theory. Jesus, Rifleman Blackstone really exists in some alternate reality. That's kind of horrifying."

As is the idea of one Force Adept Levarre wandering the core worlds, or living next door to Luke Skywalker as he grows.

"Wait. Y- err, she lived with Obi-Wan?"

Well, hell, what was she complaining about last week, then?

No. Obi-Wan lived in isolation a great distance from where Luke grew up. Levarre lived next door, apparently. Kept an eye on him.

...

She promised his mother she would.

Well, that made a little more sense.

"I knew that. I sort of figured neighbors was relative. I'm a bit of a Star Wars fan."

Which was kind of like Keith Moon saying he was a bit of a party animal.

When you say 'a bit'. Do you mean 'just slightly' or 'I do not wish to frighten this woman by'...what is the term? Ah. Yes. 'fanboying all over the Jedi in the village?'

Fourth Casefile: Damage Control. [Voice/Written/Action]

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