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Date: April 17th, 2001
Status: Private, Shadow and Mr. Nancy
Setting: Some town about an hour away from Lower Tadfield
Summary: Shadow meets up with an old friend.


Shadow took the first bus out of Lower Tadfield that morning and stayed on it until they pulled into a town that looked big enough to get thoroughly lost in and promptly did just that.

He didn’t bother with the names of streets or even with finding out what town he was in. He just walked, up and down narrow streets bustling with cars and pedestrians and sometimes dogs, people watching. He liked people watching; liked to study their dress and the way they walked, to see if they were in pairs or groups or alone, and he would make up stories about them in his head, imagining each person’s ordinary little life, with work and school and home, and bills and groceries and family and all the other little things that made up a normal person’s day.

And then he imagined that each one of them was a god, or an angel, or a devil, or a witch, and that he was the only lone human strolling among them, awkward and out of place.

When he got hungry he bought a couple pasties from a stand. He stopped to give a coin to a female mime who gave him a kiss on the cheek for it, and had a lengthy conversation with a couple of construction workers on their lunch break, and met a family from Indiana who were there visiting a cousin during the two children’s spring vacation.

He purposefully avoided going into any of the clothing stores he passed on his wanderings; like all true American males, Shadow hated shopping, and only did it when it was absolutely necessary, and sometimes not even then. But finally a little shop with a wooden sign caught his eye, and he went in and asked the girl at the counter if they had any trousers in his size, and she said yes and flirted with him as she helped him pick out some different pairs and some shirts too. Of course, he didn’t really need any shirts, but she insisted that they were a very good make and just the right color for him, and Shadow wasn’t sure how to say no to eyes that green.

In the end Shadow left the shop with two pairs of jeans and a pair of slacks, two t-shirts, and Liz’s phone number. “Call me,” she had said, scribbling it on the back of his receipt. “Even if it’s just to talk; your accent’s gorgeous.”

Shadow was hungry again, and decided to seek out a pub next and get dinner and a few beers. He hadn’t gone far, however, when he stumbled across a brightly-lit bar full of people and advertising karaoke in the window. He stopped, looking in at the slightly grimy but nevertheless strangely inviting interior.

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Shadow couldn't have been standing there more than ten seconds when a gloved hand appeared on his shoulder, and he was pushed inside the establishment without so much as a warning of any kind (the hand was not particularly strong, but it was insistent). There was a laugh behind him as he was steered toward the bar.

Then a voice he was bound to recognize, however far away from home it might have been. "First round's on me, Shadow-boy," it said.

One day away from the Manor and he had already run into trouble more than he could handle; shopping was one thing, drunken karaoke quite another.

[classic-palm.livejournal.com]

Shadow started to say "What the fuck?" then changed his mind and started to say "You're kidding me." And then he changed his mind again and just said;

"Mr. Nancy," and stood there grinning like an idiot with his arms full of shopping bags.

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"No, it's that other son-of-a-bitch looks just like him," the old man said with a roll of his eyes. "You gone senile on me already? Stop smilin' like you can't remember what day it is an' get in here."

Through the haze of smoke that served as air flow in the bar, the old man eyed Shadow's laden arms with something that could have been amusement. Or not. "That how you stay strong? Toting shopping bags? Start talking, boy, I don't even know what you're doing here."

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"Oh," Shadow says to that, still smiling. "Nice to meet you then. I'm Shadow."

He put the shopping bags down and shoved them with his toe so the were mostly out of the way against the base of the bar. "I think it might have been back when I went shopping with Laura."

Shadow didn't even know what he was doing here.

"I'm living in the Antichrist's hotel," he said. "I was traveling, but I ran out of money so I stopped and got a job. What are you doing here?"

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

"Ain't you smart," the old man shot back, muttering to the bartender a moment later and holding up two fingers.

"Well, well, well," he drawled when he heard 'Antichrist's hotel'. Like it was one of those things you got to watch out for, that phase kids go through, all joining up. Christians were so funny that way, all pretending to congregate without having a tribe, a real community to support you.

"Visiting the ex-wife," he said in response to Shadow's fair question. "She was in a fix, needed some extra time, so I gave it to her. Should be well on her way to New Zealand by now, crazy woman." Maybe he looked a little wistful, but under bar lights the happiness came through easier.

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Shadow nodded.

"I think I only understand about a tenth of what goes on in there," he said. "But I guess I've gotten used to that."

He was surprised for a moment to hear that Mr. Nancy had an ex-wife, but then he remembered the trunk at the old god's house that he'd said his son had given him. He wondered if she was human or not.

"Glad to hear she's doing better," he says, although there was some part of him that thought maybe this wasn't the right thing to say.

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

"Don't sell yourself short," Mr. Nancy scolded, thumping Shadow on the chest with the back of his hand. "You got lots to offer a place like that. You stopped a war, boy. That kid over there could probably really use someone with a head like yours." Nevermind that the old man had a tendency toward teasing the All-father's pup, there was a time for truths, and this was one of them.

As for whether or not his ex-wife was human, Shadow didn't have to go much farther than his own family to figure that one, did he? He and Wednesday had been smart; gods marrying goddesses just led to a shitstorm of trouble. Ask Zeus.

"She is doin' better," Mr. Nancy said with a grin. "She'll do better for a while, then she'll stop. Gotta do that some time; she's an old, old lady now. Tell you, when I married her she was just a girl, tiny thing too." He shrugged. "'Course, I was a sight younger back then too."

[classic-palm.livejournal.com]

"Some things last longer than others, I guess," Shadow said, and it was at this point the bartender set their drinks down on the bar. Shadow picked up the straight up whiskey sour Mr. Nancy had ordered him and took a long swig. It was fairly strong.

"I bet New Zealand's amazing."