Saturday Night's All Right For Fighting

Because it is quite clear that I cannot drabble to save my pitiful life, I figured I might as well use this blog to toss up neglected posts that I was, for some reason, particularly fond of. Until I can get the hang of drabbling, that is. This one was from a thread in a Bleach role play. It never got finished, and I had just begun to look forward to the outcome, too.

_____________________________________________________

'Well,' she thought to herself in words bare, stripped of all their usual decorum, for her manners served no purpose in her head. 'That’s our night ruined.'

Her first genuine evening out after her release from the infirmary; now that her ribs were once again whole, and her brain no longer lurched lethargically in the throes of a concussion, and it had been running - to her mind - fairly well. She had relished her company both for his entertainment, and the opportunity he had given her to combine manners and cheek into a handful of glances and words which, whilst greatly appreciated, remained unrequited. She had even enjoyed the fragment of an introduction he managed to belt out before trouble descended upon them once more. A single, solitary drink with minimal disturbance may have sufficed, but no, it was not to be. A single, solitary sip from out of her tankard was all she could extract, and even that one taste had been experienced after disruption, what she now knew to be an ill omen. Hikaru may have missed the halls of the eleventh division and their casual violence, but Fianna most certainly did not.

Whilst her jaw lay paralyzed in an omnipresent smile, the upper half of her face despaired, wide eyed as swords were hastily drawn and fingers were promptly broken for their troubles; And once the chaos began to spread through the bar not unlike an airborne disease, and her eyes grew weary of observing the senseless show of violence laid before them, she would lean across the counter and tip her eyes down to project an apology at the barkeeper - who had wisely taken shelter behind the impenetrable bar - over the commotion.

"I’m really very so-” she would begin to inform him; not in a bellow, but in her usual gentle tone – only far louder, projected like an actor’s own upon a stage. But before the all-important word, the one all apologies revolved around, could be spoken, a tankard thrown blindly into the air arced towards the bar and descended upon the officer whilst she stood distracted. The sudden impact kissed the side of her pearly white skull, yet - disappointed with its landing - the tankard rolled over her head and tumbled into the barkeep’s lap with a meek ‘thunk’.

The man, gingerly picking the makeshift projectile up in his clammy hand to survey its sorry state, was just as surprised that the tankard housed a deep-set dent in its side as he was to observe, as not a single muscle of the woman’s alabaster face bothered responding to the blow – all it had managed to do was impede her apology – which she once again resumed after examining the very same mug from her position, balanced over the bar. “... sorry for all this. The bones of your customers can, and will, heal... but I can’t say the same for your furniture.” and it was on that note that coincidence led a stool on a short journey through the air ending in a scream which, if it was to be believed, informed the whole bar that one of its legs had landed in someone’s eye.

It was with another apology that the officer bid farewell to the barkeep and returned to her upright position, all smiles, her affinity for sarcasm cloaked almost entirely by a perfected, demure tone; and Fianna may have said a little more – not much, but a touch more- if not for Hikaru, because before the first syllable could leave his mouth entirely, her attention had latched onto it like a limpet to a rock. Not because she possessed an unhealthy obsession that orbited around her companion, but because she had been waiting for him to utter one verb in a series of words since the advent of the ruckus. ‘Fix’. Her head craned down, an unseen half-bow, half-glance to her medic and her friend.

Those smiling eyes of hers surveyed the madness every wounded party had been carelessly swept into, unfazed by the tides of muscle, the shouts, the occasional flying chair and the even rarer flying table. Impervious, undaunted, Fianna’s smile tipped itself down to her favourite redhead, the absolute centre of her attention.

“Let’s get a path cleared for you, then.”