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[visual]/[location: the new found out] stranger than fiction

Fitz had come to accept the fact that Annie was gone. He was still working on wrapping his brain around the fact that this made him a business owner.

Responsibility and Fitz were things which did not get along, usually. He was the sidekick, the backup, the absolute last resort, the "I suppose he'll do in a pinch" guy, nothing more and nothing less. Not that he'd ever admit as much because that would be painfully uncool.

Unfortunately for him this was a very special day, and "cool" had very much left the building.

"What the hell am I supposed to do with a pub?" he asked his tablet (and, of course, the viewing public). "I'm not cut out to run this place."

ooc: Truth glitch get!

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Gump tilts his head, ears twitching slightly with interest (and those ears are not nearly small enough to entirely fit the tiny screen format). "Why ever would you not be suited? Surely there must be some merit in you, to get the privilege in the first place."

The direct question was a brilliant idea, because Fitz had taken one look at Gump and Words had sprung to mind such as "My, what big ears you have", but the need to honestly answer the question supressed his need to wisecrack. For now.

"My merit was in chatting up a pretty girl who happened to own a pub, and since she's not here anymore I think I need to keep the place going to honor her memory," he replied, then blinked because he hadn't meant to say that. The floodgates had opened, however. "Meanwhile I'm an irresponsible lout with no business experience and a tendency to make a right mess of everything I touch. So you see my problem."

Good. The last thing I need around here is competition.

[a gasp] Sorry! Sorry, I...I have no clue why I said that. Just - oh, never mind.

Don't fret about it, mate, I'll be sunk before you know it.

[Paaaause.] I didn't mean to say that either. It's true enough, though.

Well, you never know. Fifteen years ago I'd never heard of the concept of currency, and now I'm the kind of American small business owner those political types are always talking about.

How very bourgeoisie of you. [Stop it, Fitz.] So I take it you're living the dream, then?

Bourgeoisie? [Lorne never went to elementary school, much less college. Forgive him for not having read Marx.] That's some fancy-shmancy way of insulting me, is it?

[firmly] I am living the dream. Caritas, good music, and good friends are all I've ever wanted.

"You could leave it to the Extras and see what they do with it. 'Owning' doesn't necessarily have to mean 'running', does it?" Mohinder points out. This is a rather curious development. "How did you get a pub in the first place?"

"...you can do that?" Fitz asked, baffled, then considered the music shop he mooched around in and the fact that it was staffed completely by Extras. "Oh. Right. This is why I try to make friends with people who are smarter than me."

And with that revelation out of the way: "I took it over from Annie. She's vanished, like the Doctor and the Master did."

"I wasn't certain of it, but considering how many shops seem completely Extra-run, I thought it was a pretty good possibility." He smiled about the 'making smarter friends' remark.

Of course, his face falls as he hear how Fitz got the place. "I'm sorry to hear that. It's terribly unfair, the way this place randomly pulls people away like that."

She knows little enough of Fitz, but...

"It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, you've traveled with the Doctor -- you're more than up to the challenge."

"Yeah, but that's all helping him out," Fitz remarked. "I mena, sure, saving planets is trickier than showing rowdy punters the door, but I've never done much that amounted to anything on my own."

Self-confidence is clearly for other people.

"He'd be simply awful at running a pub, though. He might save the world twice before breakfast, but couldn't necessarily be trusted make a cup of tea without adult supervision..."

She's smiling a little as she says it -- there's not exactly any ill-will here, but it's true enough.

"I'm sure you can do it, Fitz."

"The same thing I'm supposed to do with a gods-damned tavern, I expect." Nazca sounds tired and raw in a way she almost never does. She's also genuinely frustrated. "Hells if I know."

"Sounds like we're in the same boat," Fitz said with no small amount of sympathy. "I can tend a bar just fine, but I've got no aspirations toward running anything. You?"

"Running it wouldn't be the problem, if there was a proper economy. Instead, it's like they're children, playing at how money is supposed to work. And I've never tended a bar in my life, but this is a minor detail, I feel."

Well, that's concerning. Nazca is never, ever this forthcoming, and she notices.

It had taken Drusilla a long time to leave the safety of the forest. The hollow trees had become silent sanctuaries. She could curl up in the safe, dark spaces inside and pretend to be a little animal, with no troubles apart from roots and leaves. Even the moon couldn't touch her.

But the voices ... oh, the voices. They wouldn't stop. On and on in her head, like the Master's drumbeat. In the end, that’s why she started to walk. She couldn’t get away from the guilt, but she could find someone to absolve it.

She moved differently, now, stepping tentatively across threshold and into the pub. (She didn’t need an invite for a such a public place, but she had manners now. Manners she’d forgotten how to use.) She was as graceful as ever, but the serpentine quality that her movements had once had – a viper waiting to strike – had been replaced by a sort of meekness.

“Why not?”

Fitz tensed at Drusilla's voice, but turned to face her nonetheless. He folded his arms and raised his chin, but all bravado vanished when he spoke.

"Because I'm a loser and I always have been," he said, then frowned. "No, I mean that...that...I--" Any attempt at dissembling from the initial statement was met with a twitch, an inability to speak.

Oh, dear heart! Did he really believe that? She reached out a hand to touch his cheek - as she'd comforted Spike or the Slayer or Morgana in a hundred different lifetimes - but dropped it back to her side before touching him. He wouldn't like that.

"You were strong enough to fight the Master." Not physically, no, but inside. Where it counted. "You were strong enough to travel through the stars with a Lord of Time."

It was clear that Drusilla was, in a vague and disjointed manner, attempting to help.

Forgive Fitz for finding her attempts to be...disconcerting, to say the least. He stepped back at her approach but didn't run. She couldn't hurt him, all she could do was be incredibly creepy. Sort of like Compassion, in a way.

"That was just survival," he said with a shrug. "'Not dying' is easy, muddling through society's expectations is the tricky bit."

"Society changes," said Drusilla, with the dismissive air of someone who had lived through one century and intended to live through a good many more. She'd seen styles slip in and out of fashion and manners meander as people tried to work out what was right and wrong. They'd never make a solid decision. "Life is always the same."

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