evillurks | Informal visit (For Metody)

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Current Location: Rettigue Apt., Manhattan, NY

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Informal visit (For Metody)

The Shadow is hard at work coordinating things from the Rettigue apartment, today. The break from hunting out Khan's activities in his alternate's world is merely an opportunity to chase criminals in his own. Unavailable to gather forces for multiple raids and without the time to head up those operations himself, he's stuck compiling information and passing it to legal authorities through very careful channels. It's a lot of paperwork, and very tedious, but it gives him a physical rest he needs from his other activities.

When Metody arrives, he's in the most worn spot in the whole place; the center of the black plush sofa, bent over the coffee table. He regards his visitor over the rims of his reading glasses. "You've looked better. Coffee or tea?" The paperwork is shuffled neatly into a folder, out of sight.

The apartment is spacious and spartan, with sleek dark furniture. There's a grouping of the sofa and a few black armchairs around a black metal coffee table, all arranged on a vast Oriental rug. A bookshelf built into the wall opposite the sofa holds a television set that is archaic by Metody's standards, fewer books than one might expect, a sleek stereo system, and in spots of honour a card bearing Chinese calligraphy by Myra and the wrappings and knife Metody sent for Christmas. A floor to ceiling window dominates another wall, but the drapes are only open a crack. Apart from the kitchen doorway and a hall, there's little else to be seen in this room. It has quite a bit of open, empty space and the feel of somewhere that is only sporadically lived in.

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"The important criminals are the thinking ones, but I usually have to go through a lot of witless thugs before I get to the top of things." He shrugs and breathes in the steam from his coffee.

Metody's description of the legal approach on his world leaves The Shadow frowning. Certainly much of what he does would be illegal under their laws, and possibly he himself would be considered a criminal in the same sense that Metody is. It gives one a different perspective when they're rendered a criminal simply by existing. "It may not be the wisest tactic to outright render anything unknown illegal. I get the general idea, though."

"We're well past the ages when you could push back the boundaries of science with a good chemistry set - and really, there has never been a time when vast discoveries could be made by the unfunded. Discovery has always been made by men with full bellies."

He looks down, mildly surprised to find a mug of coffee in his hand. With cream in it to boot. Metody sips, sighing a little.

"At least - scientific discovery. And the less damaging kinds of magic. The dangerous stuff, all you need is one person and a lot of crazy."

When Metody finishes that mug, it will likely even be refilled. The Shadow is a firm believer in coffee. His schedule tends to demand it.

"Unfunded men who are determined enough to make trouble usually find a way to fund themselves. It's amazing what some people will set aside a basic moral code for." He watches Metody and notes his distracted state, but the conversation is an interesting one. "You're not a vigilante, yet you seem to have a fair amount of insight about the job..."

"People can always make trouble..." he muttered, staring down into his coffee. He swirled the mug and watched it wash around and around and around.

Metody shrugs. Probably, he should not voice the opinion that one criminal was a lot like another.

"Vigilantes - I mean, the kind like you. You've got a secret life, don't you? There's your job, and then there's the public face, and maybe somewhere in the middle, if there's a bit of space, there's you, maybe . That's not entirely different from the situation I'm in, back home. I've got my secret life, too."

He grimaces a little and takes a sip of his coffee.

"And always will." He agrees without rancour, still studying Metody absently. The young man looks as though he's not quite all there, at the moment.

At the description of vigilantes and their split identities, he rubs his chin thoughtfully. "That's true in most cases I'm familiar with. I don't. I am my work. I've never held with carrying on some second life, beyond using an alias to carry out the daily necessities. That's all James Rettigue is, although I've had to forge documentation to bring him into existence." When he introduces himself as The Shadow, he means it.

"That sounds...kind of nice." But he frowns at the coffee, worried without any true focus. "Not worrying about a second life. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to not talk to my loved ones than lie to them all the time. It seems....sort of a protracted cruelty."

He drained the last of his coffee, then frowned at the empty mug.

"I guess sooner or later it won't - I'm sorry, I'm being maudlin. It irritates me, having to pretend."

"Then why do you?" This comes from a man who turned his back on everyone he knew at the age of nineteen. He hasn't looked back since.

The Shadow tosses back the last of his coffee in a gulp, and rises from his seat with a quiet creak of one knee. It is not arthritis, but there remains a certain worn-down aspect to his joints, and long cold nights have been aggravating things. "More coffee?" He holds out a hand for the mug. "I don't mind. Myra's accused me of that more than once."

"I love my family. They're....good people. They're what made me who I am. Giving them up, I think it's going to rip me in two. It's going to be like giving up myself. Or my humanity, really." He hands over the mug. Metody rarely turns down coffee.

"I have trouble imagining you being maudlin."

He takes the mug, looking thoughtful. "Hm. I guess I was lucky there." Whatever family he left behind, he left them for a reason.

The Shadow speaks over his shoulder as he goes to refill both mugs, checking the pot first to make sure it's still hot. "She doesn't like it when I bring up preparations for when I'm gone. It's nothing new, I've been aware since I started this work that I could always be taken out by a bullet tomorrow, and I'm not getting any younger... I never even expected to last this long." His tone is not maudlin, even if the subject matter itself is unsettling.

"That's just.....prudent. Wise. The future always looms up, and it's best to face it before it crashes over you." He closes his eyes, hunching over a little with a sigh.

"I've prepared for it, too. Wish I had a better idea. Not preparing doesn't delay it or hold it back. Just makes things harder for everyone who trails you."

"Exactly. I don't think she sees it that way." He presses the refilled mug back into Metody's hands, and the milk and sugar remains within reach on the coffee table.

"Has she accused you of being morbid too, or have you not made mention of that in front of her?" He studies the young man's expressive pose as he sinks back into his seat, but any sympathy is mild in that impassive face.

He smiles and straightens, then takes the coffee. This time, he is a little less shy about taking sugar.

"Not that I recall. I don't really talk about it much; people get uncomfortable. Mortality isn't really a good conversational topic, most of the time. Which is....it's silly. All flesh dies. Everything living dies."

There is plenty of sugar to be had. Apart from the coffee, most of the food items in The Shadow's apartment show little use. He tends to only have on hand items which keep well, and the slightly questionable milk is an answer to why that's the case.

"I'm not good at conversation. She should know that." Even as he makes this claim, he frowns mildly, recalling that her experiences with his alternate in the role of Cranston may have led her to believe otherwise.

"You are very easy to talk to."

He frowns, carefully tilting a glimmeringly thin trail of sugar into the coffee. Sometimes it seemed like everything The Shadow said was wrong.

He gives a vague grunt, settling against the arm of the couch once more. "That's your end of the conversation, not mine. I know how to listen, yes. It's the speaking my own mind that never goes easily." The keen eyes are studying Metody as he tries to interpret that frown.

"In theory, listening is the bulk of conversation. But I think not turning away from things is the more important part. What's the use of a conversation if you never talk about anything"

He studies the thin stream of crystals as if it might hold some kind of portent, tilting the bag back so that it narrowed to a thread-like glimmer and then nothing at all.

"Information gathering." The Shadow has taken part in many conversations wherein he said very little, and found them useful nonetheless. A certain Commissioner Weston used to be quite good for those.

His gaze briefly follows the thin stream of sugar, but he can find nothing there to warrant such excessive interest. "How much longer do you think it will take you to recover from..." He waves a thin hand, ring flashing. It's obvious Metody is still not quite himself.

It sparkled.

"A few days and a little makeup will cover the last traces of it. A little rest and some honest work, and I'll be good as new. I've never been the most physical of people, anyway."

Sugar often does, but so rarely is one in a frame of mind to simply sit and stare at it.

"I don't care how healthy you look, I just want to be sure you're in a coherent state of mind if you're sending me reports." If that was intended to show his sympathy for Metody's current condition, it could have been better phrased.

The Shadow takes a swallow of coffee and frowns as the words echo in his ears. "What I meant is you're not precisely an agent, and if you don't feel up to it, you need to let me know."

Metody is often in the frame of mind for detailed observation of pretty things. A degree of social acuity prevents him from indulging, usually. People always thought it was strange.

He added some milk with a serious frown, watching the clouds curl.

"I'm fine if I'm around people. On my own, my mind wanders. Or I hallucinate." He frowned again. "Or I miskeyed my PIN."

The Shadow primarily finds this behavior strange because he has not seen much of it from Metody before. "Hm. Those all sound slightly dangerous. I could always send you off to visit Ichi. I've got him holed up in an apartment here, for now."

"It was kind of neat!" Briefly, he is enthusiastic. "It was like - whatsisface, the one who had hell as a vast metropolis with a darkening sky forever swept by vast demons who arrive and depart on errands too alien and intricate for mere humans t- Blake! Blakian. Ish. But foggy and they were more like locomotives rendered in flesh and whispering lights. Which is not to imply they were demonic."

He pauses.

"Ichi?"

The Shadow gives him a long, unreadable look. There is quite a bit going on behind that gaze, but he seems disinclined to give anything of it away. His angular features might as well be carved of very weathered, cracked marble.

"The Japanese man you called a woman, and gave sake with a snake in it." He's aware Metody met him again later, when The Shadow himself was under the weather and in a particularly self-flagellating mood, but he'd rather not allude to that later evening. Having Ichi drape him in towels was embarrassing.

Metody stares right back with remarkable focus, brightly interested and not even slightly joking.

"...I didn't call him a woman. I asked if he was, after I was made uncertain by the conversation. And no one told me that sake doesn't normally come with snakes in."

The sudden attention receives the hint of a smile. "Well he took it that way. Sometimes it does... the more expensive sake can have all kinds of things in it..." Sometimes it's best not to ask how The Shadow acquires such knowledge. There is very little he is above eating or drinking, should the situation call for it.

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