talentsgirl | Appointment's Post

Richard? He'd - just been on a mission, hadn't he? Her thoughts tumbled over themselves, so that she barely did more than smooth down her hair before she opened the door, concern prominent on her features. "Hi! Is everything okay?"

...she may recollect the potential impact of her general attire in a moment. She may even care a moment after that.

His chin lifted and he tried for a smile and perhaps it was better for everyone involved that that smile mostly...failed. Derailed by the sight of some strange stretchy fabric'd trousers and -- good Lord, could that even count as a shirt?

Awkwardly, he cleared his throat.

"Ma'am," he stammered. "Miss. Uh, Molly."

He stared at a space above her head -- blinking as though to either banish the visual's memory or perhaps recall it once again. Either or. He couldn't really decide. "I only wanted to come apologize, lass. And to..."

He held out the wild-grown orchids and didn't dare watch her face for her reaction.

...he'd brought her flowers. A very natural bit of flowers too, looking as though it'd been plucked from something growing, the stunning color of them proclaiming that they were not natural forest-flowers.

Molly smiled with girlish delight, purely pleased at the present. "They're beautiful."

She reached forward to take them, mindful of the way he was staring just over her head. "Thank you, although I'm not sure what you have to apologize for, I'll take the flowers all the same."

"I saw them and thought of your wings." A beat. "Wing. Couldn't find a blue one to go with it."

A hard swallow as his flower-offering hand dropped to his side. He might have been standing before the Duke of Wellington for all his rigidity. Or perhaps King George himself. "And I fear I must apologize for what happened a few weeks ago."

Edited 2012-04-21 15:18 (UTC)

Ugh, the wings. She was still going to have to do something about that. But first she decided to have a bit of mercy on him, not imagining apologizing something that he found easy to do, and not willing to turn it aside as though it meant nothing.

"Well, you don't have to do it on my doorstep. Come on in."

And she moved towards the small counter which served as a make-shift kitchen, heading towards the pitcher of water she had there. On her way, she casually picked up a matching zippered sweatshirt. She set the orchids on the table before shrugging it on, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and not just a point of... consideration and mild awkwardness as she remembered the differences in time.

He suppressed his limp to something subtler. On a good day, Sharpe walked with a slight awkwardness in one of his legs -- but the battling he and Sparrow had run into on the mission had left him with a few things from which to heal.

The Major closed the door behind him and turned back to glance at that...new item of clothing. Zippers, incidentally, fascinated him.

"I certainly never intended to steal your friend from you, Molly. And I could tan the hides of the bast-- of those who made it happen."

He was fortunate that her back was turned for his entrance, so she did not have the chance to observe his gait - fortunate as well, perhaps, that he won't have had the opportunity to more closely inspect the process as Molly zippered up the shirt halfway. But then she turned to him, blue eyes wide and sincere. "I never blamed you for it. I was - angry about it, but I knew it wasn't your fault."

"Even still -- it should never have happened. Though, he made a fine rifleman. From what I remember."

A quirk of a pained smile. "I'm not surprised."

Harry was good a lot of things. An orphan, even in that time, a unit such as Sharpe's with a man he could respect must have given him a place of belonging - a place he no longer had. Without knowledge of his magic, or that dreadful responsibility, he'd still been an opponent to be feared - and perhaps one who had been more content.

But Molly did not choose to share these thoughts; Harry's business was his own. Instead she turned to try to find a vase or a vase-like substitute in her still sparse apartment. "Tell me which will be better - if I accept your apology, even though I don't think you need to offer it - or if I insist you take it back?"

"The worse would be if you did not forgive me at all. And so I feel I'm already ahead of the battle. But if you insist, I'll leave it only as it is and and we need not think on it a moment longer."

"Done, then." Well. That was easier than she'd thought.

...okay, in lieu of an actual vase, she was apparently stuck with the big plastic water bottle she'd grabbed to keep her company on runs.

"I'll have to go into town and get a vase," she said, turning around with the water bottle and a pair of scissors.

She's just kept the provided furnishings spotless in the meantime, though she couldn't help adding a splash of color in a throw blanket here or a couple of cushions, bright against the white. She hadn't wanted to claim this place yet, hadn't wanted to make it hers... but she was beginning to accept that inevitability.

"I haven't done much decorating yet."

"...The place looks lovely," he assured her. It was better than his own. He didn't know what to do with all the space or all the furniture.

"I do like the, uh..." Sharpe grappled and wrestled and fought for some compliment on her interior design -- not sure what to say. It was all so far above his head. "The colours. You chose excellently."

Was that good enough?

...oh good Lord, this poor man. "Thank you."

She snipped the stems of the flowers and plopped them into water bottle.

"So what was the mission like?"

"A success, I hope. Myself and Captain Sparrow retrieved many a, uhm, refreshed soul. We conducted ourselves about on a strange, noisome thing. Like a roofless, metal carriage. All coloured green."

A military jeep, really. But he was struggling to explain it.

Her brow furrowed with concentration. "A 'refreshed soul?' What do you mean?"

...

"Did you just say Captain Sparrow?"

With distaste on his tongue: "Those who've died, lass. Or so he said. Come back from the beyond."

He didn't like that thought. It showed. And so he moved gladly on to another explanation: "A sailor, of sorts. Calls himself a pirate but I've only seen him drink and fight. And he does well at both."

Captain Jack Sparrow.

...well. Harry had said he'd had a drink with him.

This place...

"I guess it takes more than drinking and fighting well to be a pirate?"

...those who have died.

"So I assume. But I haven't witnessed the man on his ship or on any ship, for that matter."

Sharpe watched the orchid; not her. "He made for fair company."

"Well, that's good." She ran a hand up the side of her head, smoothing a few fly-away strands. She wasn't sure how to come back to the subject of dead-who-aren't-really-dead without asking very specific questions, and... she wasn't sure she wanted to do that either.

"Sorry, where are my manners? Do you want to sit down? Have something to drink?"

"...Tea?" He coaxed the word out of his throat. Gently.

And nodded. "Aye, I'll sit. Where would, err..."

A crossroads. How could he sit if she would still be up, tea-making?

"Come on," she said, picking up her water bottle full of flowers. "We'll go into the kitchen."

The orchids can keep them company.

"You take point, Ensign Carpenter," he joked -- thick-voiced -- and hoped to clear the air heavy with thoughts of revivification and refused apologies.

And again, that word provides her with an image of a red Star Trek uniform, and she laughed good-naturedly. "Oh, I'm an Ensign, am I?"

She walked to the door, reaching for and opening it for the both of them. "I guess I've been called worse."

"Careful, lass. Or I'll knock you down to Sergeant for impudence."

That...wasn't how commissions worked. But he threatened it regardless -- raising his eyebrows when she grabbed the door before him.

He stepped through.

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