fandomhigh | Library, Monday (January 25)

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Library, Monday (January 25)

If the Monday library aide had come in this morning sporting a wary look and holding a mop from one of the supply closets like it was her staff, just in case, well . . . if that was in any way silly, it was too early for anyone else to notice. Right?

Coffee was first on the agenda when Gabrielle got in; after the weekend, she suspected it might be needed. By her, if no one else. Once a caffeine supply was secure and the usual morning tasks accomplished, she stowed the mop beneath the collections desk and took a seat, but not before taking a single piece of air-pillow packaging from the supply cupboard. Said piece of packing was tucked carefully out of sight, but on hand just in case.

Hey. It'd been a busy weekend. The caffeine might not tide her over forever. For the time being, she'd settle for working on her latest scroll, frowning in something more than just concentration as she dashed ink onto parchment. It was hard to describe a chariot racing duel without having witnessed it, particularly when you only had the word of one taciturn warrior on which to base your reconstruction of events -- though it was the events leading up to it that really caused the frown.

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Oh, so you think you can handle it on your own? Well, fine, then.

Edited 2010-01-25 13:31 (UTC)

Or not? Gabrielle won't say "I told you so."

Much.

Edited 2010-01-25 13:31 (UTC)

Eventually, Henry emerged from the stacks holding two shredded hunks of paper that used to be a book on Roman fresco and looking as if his heart was broken. It wasn't the only lost book he'd seen. "Do you know if the green things were in here?"

He assumed so. If they weren't, he'd have to have a serious talk with Jono and Griff.

. . . the Warrior Princess's chariot was ruined, but not all was lost . . .

Gabrielle looked up at the sound of Henry's voice and set her quill aside, her own expression aggrieved at the sight of the ruined book. She'd seen some of the destruction on her own trip through the stacks earlier this morning, but she'd been distracted.

"I wouldn't be surprised," she said, all genuine sympathy. "They were everywhere else. In the dorms, all over town."

Cheerfully destructive and not terribly literate creatures either, evidently. They might have been much shorter and less inclined to wear armor, but they'd had a lot in common with the average warlord's thug that way. Although with maybe a tiny edge in the hygiene department.

"It's bad, isn't it?"

"It's bad," he echoed, still sounding like he'd lost family. "I need to figure out how to do the insurance paperwork and hope the school's policy covers invasions."

It had to, didn't it? It was like being in a flood plain and not covering water damage if it didn't, or like being in ancient Greece and not covering warlord's thugs.

"It looks like somebody was trying to clean up, but some of the shelves got pretty torn apart, and there's slime damage to a couple titles. I have to figure out if you can even clean that." A pause as he realized the books were not, necessarily, the only priority here. "Did you make it through okay?"

. . . Gabrielle's ancient Greece didn't have insurance policies. Given everything else it did seem to have, that might be surprising. Well. Give Salmoneus some time; he'd probably come up with the idea, somewhere between local-village-hero merchandising and beauty pageants. Either way, the mention of paperwork and policies left her blinking a bit in confusion.

"I'm fine," she was quick to assure Henry. "A little scratched up, but nothing serious. You're all right, too?" She'd have asked if he hadn't, first.

"The invasions seem to happen fairly regularly," she added after a moment, wanting to at least try and be helpful on that score. Which, considering the state of the library, might not have been all that reassuring.

"I ran into a little trouble Saturday but got away before it got too bad." And here 'got away' was code for 'vanished into thin air,' but never mind that, let's move along.

Henry pressed his hands into the desk a bit in thought. "There are some memos in my office about old invasions. We even got flooded once, about five years back."

And there had been a giant snake and zombie soup! Which had not been recorded, or Henry would be putting serious thought into running away screaming.

"I think I just thought people were overdramatic when they told me about how weird things could get." Yes, after he was attacked by books. Henry learned slow when he wanted to.

"Around here, it's hard to know where fact ends and creative license begins." Gabrielle, with a quick smile to communicate that she was glad he was all right, was just fine with moving along. It was, most likely, all for the best that she hadn't heard about the giant snake either; she might have gone off into an out-loud rhapsody about the library as a modern version of Minos's labyrinth, or something equally grandiose.

She was a little stuck on the 'flooded' bit. "What are the odds, do you think, that we could toss pebbles over our shoulders and they would turn into new books, like Deucalion and Pyrrha?"

That had been long before her time, thank you.

"I would say low," Henry mused, considering it seriously, "but that it is not totally out of the question, considering where we are. Do you have pebbles at hand, or do you think we could swap out paperclips?"

Edited 2010-01-25 16:56 (UTC)

"It wouldn't hurt to try, would it?" Gabrielle certainly wouldn't rule it out. "At the worst, we'll just have to pick them up later. "

She glanced at the ruined book he was holding, then back into the stacks. "Could you use some help?"

"If you want," Henry said, leaning over to pick some paperclips out of the tub. "We need someone to watch the front end, too, so if you want to do that I can play janitor."

"I'm pretty sure they're all gone, but . . ." Gabrielle wasn't about to bet the whole bag of dinars on that. Plus there were actual library patrons who might need assistance. "I can take care of the area closer to the door?" she suggested.

"That sounds about right," Henry concurred. He hadn't seen anything on his pass through the stacks, but he didn't want Gabrielle to get cornered far from the entrance, either. "If you find any damaged books, set them on that shelf and I'll .... try to figure out what to do with them later."

Whatever it was, it was likely to involve a lot of sighing.

And a lot of wibble-facing on Gabrielle's part, at least. The prospect of widespread book damage didn't sit much better with her.

"I can handle this area. You might want to take something with you, just in case," she suggested, and reached down to grab the mop from beneath the desk and hold it out to him.

Henry grasped the mop by the end and swished it through the air experimentally. "This would smash the heck out of them," he decided. "Thanks for thinking of me. You got something up here that'll work?"

"Of course I would, and it works well for that," Gabrielle assured him. Okay, she hadn't tried the mop itself, but on general principle it would do fine. She rummaged through one of the desk drawers and produced a long wooden ruler. "I can improvise. And I promise there will be no throwing books at them."

Good gods, no. No.

"If it's you or a book, I pick you," Henry said -- though if it was a rare book, it might be a harder choice. "Do what you need to do. I'm going to go mop up or kill things, whichever comes first."

he was armed for either.

That was something she expected to hear from Xena, and even if the context was completely different, it occasionally still surprised Gabrielle to hear it from anyone else -- surprised her enough that the closest thing to her old smile crept onto her face for the first time since she'd gotten back from her trip home.

"Good luck," she replied. "I'll do what I can out here."

For that guy who's in charge of the place, when he pings in.

If Henry got in later than usual, it was because he'd been unavoidably detained.

In South Carolina. For three rainy days in 1972. Sleeping in a barn with about 50 cats, scrounging crops to eat and hiding when the farmer came out to explore mysterious noises.

Time travel sucked.

He was grateful to get yanked back to Fandom and find the green fangy things gone. Showered and wearing clean clothes, he was trying to convince himself Cindy hadn't seen him vanish in plain sight as he got to the library and went back to his office.

He'd look for any damage in a moment.

Okay, so, Jono had scrubbed and tidied and done his damnedest to get scorch-marks off of the shelves yesterday during his shift, but there was only so much that he and Didi could possibly get done in one day, and...

Well, he was looking perhaps a touch guilty as he dragged himself toward Henry's office, hoping that he'd be there. And he knocked. And he attempted to sink a little further into his turtleneck sweater.

As you do.

Henry was bent over his desk, frowning at a book of portraits of 19th-century Russian aristocrats

There were scales all through the few pages that remained.

He finally glanced up. "Come in, Jono."

And here Jono had been secretly hoping that Henry had been struck mysteriously and inexplicably deaf, so that he could make a bolt for the door and say that he'd at least made the attempt.

Blast.

//Right, then.// He stepped into the office, looking over his shoulder at the state of the library and wincing. //Just stopped by to see if I ought to be coming in to finish cleanin' that up. It's not as bad as it was,// which must have conjured glorious mental images, //but I couldn't get to it all yesterday before th'need to sleep hit.//

"I could tell somebody was trying to fix things up," Henry said. He didn't sound upset at all; aides could not be blamed for acts of gods or gremlins. However, his face was still sorrowful whenever he glanced at a damaged book.

"Are you all right And, out of sheer idle curiosity, could you please tell me what happened??"

He was hoping for more detail than 'there was a fight.'

Here was were Jono found himself seriously contemplating how well 'and then I sent a column of flaming death down that aisle' would go over. Not for long, really. Even dead on his feet, he had some basic grasp on common sense.

//There were more of them than there were of me, Mr. DeTamble,// he replied, instead. //And they play dirty. I'm not even going to get into what one was doing to Nancy Drew while I attempted to get its friends out of here.//

"Christ, that makes me think he was molesting a book."

Occasionally Henry failed at remembering he was talking to high school students.

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking about all of this. "So you did your best," he said. "And you cleaned up. That's really all I can ask for. Don't worry too much. Insurance should cover most of the damage, I think."

//Gremlin insurance,// Jono replied, and it was almost a scoff, if you were paying any particular sort of attention to his tone. //This place is bloody insane.//

Well spotted, Jonothon.

//I hope there isn't too much that can't be salvaged. I tried to set aside what seemed as though it more or less survived, but there were a few that... well. I swept them up.//

In ash form, generally. And he'd done his damnedest to do away with most of the scorched material. There wasn't much he could do about the shelves themselves, that way. Maybe a paint job...

"I'm going to try to convince them it was a natural disaster," Henry said. "Or ... whatever the policy will actually pay for." He still hadn't had a chance to track down the paperwork and read through it.

He spun in his chair, both from restlessness and to get a better look at Jono. "I don't suppose you know which books got reduced to ash....?"

Oh, there it was. That chill running up his spine that Jono had been waiting for pretty much all weekend, dealing with the gremlins, had decided to up and visit now.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, all too awkwardly, and then shrugged his shoulders, shoving his hands into his pockets and directing his attention mostly toward the floor.

//Didn't get a good look at most of them. Anything that's missing from the mystery section, I believe.//

Jono didn't look like anything special to Henry. Like a nervous kid with a turtleneck jerked over his mouth. Whatever other strangeness there was about they boy, it had melted away in the last few weeks.

"At least that narrows down what I have to cross-check against the catalogue," he said. "Thanks -- for that and for coming in."

//Not a problem,// Jono replied, edging back toward the door a little. //Is there anything else I can do to help out around here?//

Henry shook his head. "It looks like you worked really hard yesterday," he said, then hesitantly added, "Sorry for not showing up. I didn't think the school would be open."

Which was true and neatly sidestepped the question of where he had been.

//Considering what was runnin' amok in here yesterday, it's possibly for th'best that yer weren't here,// Jono replied, shrugging his shoulders a little. If nothing else, the gesture served to make him stop crouching into himself so much. //Too many of us probably would've encouraged th'little buggers.//

Also, there was the whole being on fire... thing. But.

"We would have been the brunch buffet?" Henry suggested. "It's not how I want to go out. I'm glad you could take care of yourself, anyhow."

//Around here, yer can't throw a rock into th'street without hitting someone who can hold their own during an onslaught of little biting things,// Jono pointed out, shrugging again.

Nice and dismissive. See, he was just as fine as anyone else around here would have been.

//No need to worry about me, mate. I do my best to remain as unappetizing as possible.//

"And I'm sure that regularly saves your life," Henry said, raising his eyebrows in mild vexation. "I, however, am exceedingly tasty, and would rather not become a snack food. And I'm not exactly used to fighting off little biting things."

Jono only wished he could say that the gremlins had been the first time something had attempted to eat him, in his lifetime.

//Clearly, yer need pointier boots.//

Henry shook his head. "That would make me look mod. I'm an old punk. Mods are our natural enemies."

Practicality, schmacticality.

//Oh, come now, plenty of punks and goths love a good pair of winklepickers, mate,// Jono replied, shrugging and stuffing his hands into his pockets. //Yer practically a cousin, that way.//

A beat.

//I make them look better, though.//

"That's why I let you keep your job," Henry said agreeably. "I said, 'that is a man with superior taste in footwear.'"

A pause. "Kids are still calling themselves goth?"

Jono shrugged a little, at that.

//So far as I can tell, emo and scene are th'big things, now,// Jono replied. //Though yer don't see much of that here. It's mostly in th'magazines, from th'look of it. Me, I'm fifteen years out of my league, mate. Back in '95, I was practically textbook goth.//

He still was. When he wasn't wearing this stupid turtleneck.

"'Scene,'" Henry echoed with a little snort in his voice. "Yeah, that one makes sense. I feel like it's all just retreads of stuff Iggy Pop did better in 1977, anyhow, only with the danger stripped out."

... Henry, your generational bias is showing.

"I'm practically 40," he added. "I'm just old."

//If we're just talkin' subculture, yer not that old compared to me, I suppose, if yer do the math,// Jono offered. //I'm 18, but from 1995. If I hadn't skipped a decade and a half, I'd be 33, today. We're bloody near from th'same era. So long as yer weren't one of those people who had a little too much faith in hair bands.//

Jono was also one of those people who liked to pretend that the 80s never existed, so far as fashion was concerned.

"I'm seven years off," Henry offered as he did some mental math. "You're ... christ, you were born in the middle of punk? I feel geriatric."

"And," he added, "I ignore pretty much all rock from between 1981 and 1992 unless it's Violent Femmes. It's better for my sanity."

//Yes. Please, do ignore it all,// Jono agreed, rolling his eyes skyward. //From there, grunge actually found its footing, and th'world heaved a collective sigh of relief as Nirvana and Pearl Jam proved that yer don't need to backcomb to be able to make music.//

"... Jono, I think I just decided that Sundays are loud music days in the library until and unless a patron complains."

Henry was full of brilliant ideas when he was trying to repress.

//... Have I ever mentioned that I love this job?//

For a guy who hated everything ever, it was remarkable how easy Jonothon was to please, wasn't it?

"You have not, but I'm happy to hear it," Henry said, and waved genially at Jono. "Go. Have fun. I will thrill myself by cataloguing more damaged books."

I have never done that thing with the air pillow packaging at work. Ever.

Really.

. . . what?

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Library, Monday (January 25)

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