Oh every night, and every day

He was stalling, standing around holding a drink he couldn’t even enjoy, and by god, didn’t he know it. It made him antsy, knowing Eleonor had actually believed he could turn himself around back in the day and he...hadn’t. Not to any real degree, which was precisely how he had ended up with a bullet to the chest. This was precisely why no one should believe in him, they were better off and he was better off, but ah! Shit. Now she’d seen him and he was truly fucked. Why when it would have been convenient couldn’t he manage to fade from sight, but when it was inconvenient he did it without thinking? Just his luck. Ele was a straightforward sort of woman then, he assumed that hadn’t changed, so like when he spoke to her Fae coworker, he was going to have to put in effort to curtail himself. Less ass kissing, more band-aid ripping and oh no. Now she was walking his way. Shite. “Buenas noches, Ele. You look lovely, like a...shit. You’re not over here for me to compliment you. It’s true, you do look lovely, but you’re over here because I went missing and now I’m here.” Lachlan said, more uncomfortable than he could remember being in many a year. That was the hell of it, when he knew someone and they actually knew him? Absolutely lost the verve and eloquence he could pull out of his arse otherwise. “Suppose missing is a bit generous, but I was quite the piece of shit back then. Might still be, haven’t checked. But I was killed, I didn’t run. And I’m sorry that I was enough of a flake to make you think otherwise.”

Julia had been having a pretty busy morning already, so much so that it felt like she’d already completed a full day of work. She had to deal with the work she was doing remotely, directing her boutique in Mexico City, but now she was lucky enough to have some work to do here for the locals. Word had gotten around that she was a fashion designer, and with the gala quickly coming up, the fae had been designing and tailoring plenty of outfits for some Letheans. A good cup of coffee and a small break was in order, so Julia ventured into the picturesque neighborhood around her house in search of a little coffee shop she’d already spotted a few times. With a large latte in hand and a vanilla scone for something extra to treat herself, the fae walked into the park and sat down on a bench to enjoy her coffee and scone. Peace and quiet were impossible to obtain in this town it seemed, or she’d just gone ahead to become some sort of magnet for misfortune and being scared shitless by every single individual of peculiar nature that inhabited this town. Just a sip in and a man suddenly spoke and materialized there on the goddamn bench! “¡Puta madre!” she screamed as she sprang up, spilling some of the coffee on the ground. “Where the hell did you come from!? You scared the hell out of me!”.

Perhaps it was old fashioned of him, archaic even, to feel far more guilty to have startled a woman than someone of his own gender. Especially when she’d been what, minding her own business? Drinking coffee, now all run into the gutter. Shite. And here he was with not a penny to his name. The Spanish caught his ear as he was half walking, half floating away from the bench with his hands raised. You knew Spanish once, he thought to himself as he tried to gather his wits. Enough not to get decked at a party, maybe enough to apologize. That was nice, wasn’t it? Apologizing in the tongue she’d cussed at him in. “Um...Lo siento mucho señorita? That’s right, isn’t it?” He said, well aware that the combination of a Scot trying to speak Spanish from memory might have made the whole thing unintelligible. Ah well. At the very least he could look apologetic, give her a wan smile and keep his hand over the hole in his chest. “Not so good at staying solid since I’ve come back from the dead. Apparently you’ve still got to sleep as a shade, which is utter shit, but here we are.” A notebook she had sat on the bench had slid through the rails of it and Lachlan felt guilty enough to pick it up for her. Surprisingly he could, and he gently sat it on the bench an arm’s length away should she not want to get too close to a ghost. “Are you alright, lass? Not too startled? I’d buy you more coffee, but I haven’t a penny. You an artist, walking about with that notebook?”

Finch Gilroy had seen some crazy things across all his years. Tended to happen when you strayed from the path really, some with truly unfortunate luck had it happen to them even if they did stay on the straight and narrow. Even so, Lethe seemed to be filled to the brim with the truly odd happenings. So much so that he really should stop being surprised when something new darkened his path (so desperately did he cling to his perceived new straight and narrow, thinner and thinner by the day; walking a tightrope). So what? He finds a bloody man(?) upon a bench late at night. What was new. There were vampires here after all, maybe he was one? When not in animal form, Gilroy was as human as they came. Briefcase in hand and bag of takeout in the other, and all. He should really just continue on his way. Pretend he hadn’t seen anything. He was very good at pretending. Still, his own legs betray him as they carry him forward to…just make sure really, honestly. The man didn’t move. Didn’t budge. 

Not a peep. 

It’s too goddamn late for this bullshit.

He stares a moment longer before heaving a sigh that does little to lighten his exhaustion. Reaching out with his briefcase, he nudges him with one corner and honestly what did he expect?

When the other exploded into action, he danced back out of arm’s reach to watch the display and swallow back his own yell of alarm. Only just managing not to drop his dinner in the fray. The anger that rolled off the other was practically a physical force by this point and in that moment, Gilroy truly wished that he had simply minded his own business. With an incredulous expression, he shifts his bag of takeout to hold in hand with his briefcase–bit awkward– to jab a finger at the man in a reflection of the vitriol the other spit at him “Mind your tongue,” it’s Finch, not Gilroy, that spits this and he hates that in this moment–this one pathetic, maddening moment, that the other has made him slip but he clams up quickly; standing straight and shaking his head “Were you to come across a bloody man upon a bench…could you truly say you’d ignore him?”

Even if…well.

He’d gone through the bench after all. 

Gil can feel embarrassment colour his features as this thought registers but he’s quick to cover it up with something of an awkward cough and returns to juggle his takeout again “Pardon me for interrupting your slumber on this park bench,Sir; how about you try picking a better place to sleep next time so no rube stumbles upon you to awaken you out of concern.”

“Mate, I’ve seen things worse than a bloodied man on a bench and kept walking. More than once.” Arguably true, but that was more out of self preservation than anything else. Clearly this man either didn’t have any, decided selflessness was a better idea, or was just plain stupid. Lachlan wasn’t sure which yet, but he didn’t like the tone of voice used or his face. There was a kind of recklessness with death, he was finding. You’d gone through what was considered the worst scenario and come out the other end, so he found that there were bursts of wildness to such a state. What would they do to him, after all? Nothing he’d yet been informed of could do anything worse than what had happened to him already. He floated back from the bench, face set in a combative expression, and clapped his hands to his chest in faux alarm. “Oh, so you own the bench then, do you? The plaque here says...” He squinted at it, then back at the man. “Dedicated to the memory of Myrtle Halloway. You don’t look like much of a Myrtle and you aren’t dead either, at least not my kind. Promise you, if I had somewhere worth sleeping aside from this, I’d be there.” Partially true, but what did he owe this man? Nothing at all. Possibly less than nothing, he hadn’t decided. He wasn’t much after coming back, not to look at or any of the other idioms that applied, but he could still bullshit for a stranger. That skill was so old he didn’t remember learning it, likely on long ago alleys in Edinburgh. “Who’re you then? The Bench Police? King of Persia? I’d dearly love to know what gives you authority here.”

Terry pours himself a drink he goddamn earned after a long day. It took them two weeks to repair the bar, and Terrance’s has returned to its dingy, gritty glory– he was very specific on how they fix the bar. “It’s a repair not renovation” he told the contractor when they suggested rewiring and changing the flooring– But not everything in life can be fixed, and you can’t un- happen what has already happened. Terry is disappointed, and no amount of repair can change that. When Lachlan in, Terry doesn’t register the familiar face for a second or two. He grimaces as he realizes the lack of life in Lachlan’s… body? Figure? Shade. That was the word they used. He is still perturbed by what happened in the New Year’s. He has been trying to ignore the fact that the dead can come back knocking at your door. Or rather, the fact that he has not been visited by the shadows of his past. “…you never were the paragon of manners, kid.” He mutters before downing the whiskey in one gulp. “So you’re dead? I thought you were just fucked right off without saying goodbye and went gallivanting. This is a hell of an entrance, I’ll give you that.” He sighs, slamming down the glass on the bar. Despite his overall irritated look, his creased features relent. “Alright, I’ll bite. What did you get yourself into this time?” 

“Wasn’t I? Mate, you grow up in the gutters in Scotland and get back to me on how your manners turn out.” Lachlan retorted, frowning deeply at the fact that not a single person who had known him before had thought it odd that he vanished all those years before. Had he been that bad? No, he shouldn’t ask himself that question. Not much point when you know the answer. “If by gallivanting you mean shot in the chest point blank by one of my contacts, then aye. Went gallivanting. Got stuck in some sort of spiritual gulag, so all those bloody pastors who used to give me food as a kid? Absolutely wrong.” He was stalling, he realized that the longer he spoke, but admitting you needed help wasn’t his strong suit on a good day. And admitting it to Terry? It was the closest thing he could imagine to telling your father you crashed his vintage car. “Ah. So here’s the thing: they sold me house, the one on Hawthorn? And that’s upsetting, but the real bite in the arse is that I uh...” I’m an idiot, that’s what he should say, but that was far too much responsibility for Lachlan to stomach whilst talking to someone he admired. “Never put much stock in banks. So all my money, all my valuables, they’re buried in the yard. I can’t stay solid long enough to dig them up, but I’ve no money if I don’t. Wondered if you knew someone who’d help, for a cut of the money.”

Noah ended up spending the better part of the night double-checking and reorganizing the security details of the gala. He was completely fine with continuing his day from there, since he doesn’t need to sleep anyway, but Sergeant Caldwell basically kicked him out of the station, (”we can’t pay your overtime anymore,” she said.) On his way back to the apartment to get changed so that he can return to investigating the witch hunters in town, he notices a man sleeping on a bench… Wait, is that blood? He rushes up to the man, trying to check the pulse. “Sir, are you–” he stops himself as the man jumps, sinks into the bench as if it was not there. He takes a few steps back as the man continues to flail. Noah immediately can tell that this man is a shade since he received briefings on them. “My apologies, sir, but your… attire had me worried” he gestures at the blood on the suit, “and technically you can’t sleep out here as per the town ordinance… In my understanding, the town has offered temporary lodging to all shades. Might I ask why were you sleeping on a bench?”

Oh of course, of course this would be the time a copper would roll up spouting ordinances and being more polite than the kind he remembered dodging in the past. Better looking too, but my god, the cut of that jacket! Atrocious. Lachlan blinked rapidly, trying to clear his head, only to feel himself yanked forward by a force not his own. He didn’t even have time to look surprised before he was thrust into eyes not his own, a mind shunted aside and he remembered...the bitter taste of poison on his tongue, mingled with the thought that it was enough, it had to be enough to save her. She was who mattered in the family anyway, he had known that all his life. Not him, who was always second best unless he did something that protected her. Numbness and anger, coiled like an Ouroboros of self loathing that lingered even after the poison did its work, his body dredged up from death and push away yet again. A life unremarked upon, real to him in that moment as his own and with how fraught his emotional state was these days, each hit the mark dead on till he was reaching out with the policeman’s hand for the top of the bench. “If I’d have known this was the load of shite I’d had to look forward to, I think I’d have asked to stay dead. Jaysus, what did you do? Some of us weren’t lucky enough to keep our bodies, mister...” A voice says ‘Noah’ dimly, but another says ‘Noor’, as if it was a lesser identity of the two. “Well, if you won’t decide I’m going with Noor. All the bloody people I could get sucked into and I had to pick a policeman, ‘course I did. Nevermind the fact I’ve a rap sheet longer than a library, that’s just my luck these days.” He sighed, a foreign sound from another mouth. “Why would you drink the fuckin’ poison willingly? Shit, at least I got shot without knowing what I was in for. Dunno if it’s better, but it’s...something.”

They’d offered him a room in the inn upon his ‘official’ discovery. Well, it was implied that he was to stay there and not make a fuss about things, to be a nice complacent little shade because the species itself scared the bejesus out of most people. Lachlan was pissed enough that even death didn’t free him of having to sleep and he certainly wasn’t going to sleep there, around strangers. So he snuck out, claimed he was going to take a walk to settle himself, and then refused to go back. He had lived on the streets since before he could remember, how hard could it be? Not too hard, he found, provided people left him alone. Lachlan realized that yes, he was a man walking about still in a bloodied suit who had issues staying solid, but he couldn’t quite understand why this bothered the inhabitants of Lethe so badly. He had given up trying to apply logic to it in the wee hours of the morning, only to be startled awake what seemed like a second later by some idiot. He flailed, trying to take a swing at the stranger, and then that sent him sinking INTO the bench, of all things. It took a moment of cussing to get to his feet again, by which point he was well and truly pissed. “Is it fecking necessary to prod at me? I’m not knackered, I’m not melted, just a man trying to get some shut eye here and there. What d’you want?”

What he needed was money, that was the ticket to fixing a fair number of his problems since being dragged back into the living world. He had money, you see, but he had money stored in plastic totes that he had buried in the yard of a home that had been long since sold. One that he had discovered you couldn’t really sneak into when you were only sometimes solid, and you certainly couldn’t manage to dig in that state. The last remaining drinker paled at the sight of Lachlan entering the bar, then skittered outside before...well, Lachlan wasn’t sure. Being a shade wasn’t contagious, but by god did the people in town think it was. Terry had always seemed like the town god to Lachlan in some ways. If your god was a grouchy, extremely well informed Fae who looked like he could kill you as quick as serve you a drink. So Terry, he reasoned, might know just where he could find someone to help him recover his money. “D’you know Terry, not once in the years I spent my evenings here did I buy you a drink? Absolutely rude of me. Fuckin’ unacceptable.” Lachlan said conversationally, sliding onto a barstool with a grin that he hoped said something like ‘don’t call the Ghostbusters on me’. “I’d say something right pithy about how reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, but you lot seem to have thought that I ran off instead.” Lachlan paused, then sighed as he looked up at the Fae behind the bar. “I’m in a right bind, Terry.”

I. BASIC

FULL NAME: Lachlan Evander Murray (birth name unknown) NICKNAME(S): none DATE OF BIRTH: April 1st, 1733 NATIONALITY: Scottish OCCUPATION: Former spy / information broker RELIGION: None GENDER IDENTITY: Cisgender ORIENTATION: Panromantic pansexual ETHNICITY: Scottish SPECIES: Shade (formerly lamia)

II. APPEARANCE

FACE CLAIM: Ewan McGregor HEIGHT: 5′10″ WEIGHT: 165 lbs HAIR COLOR: Light brown EYE COLOR: Blue DOMINANT HAND: Right SCARS: Many on his hands, arms, and legs from living in the streets TATTOOS: None PIERCINGS: None

III. BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN: Edinburgh, Scotland CURRENT RESIDENCE: Lethe, Washington, USA FINANCIAL STATUS: ???, currently without money or worldly possessions EDUCATION LEVEL: No degrees, educated by himself and through apprenticeships with various people over the years.

IV. RELATIONSHIPS

FATHER: ??? MOTHER: ??? SIBLINGS: ??? FAMILY: ??? PET(S): None, too much responsibility prior to death and too hard now.

V. PERSONALITY

MYERS-BRIGGS: ESFP-T ENNEATYPE: Type 4, the Individualist MORAL ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Neutral TEMPERAMENT: Melancholic HOGWARTS HOUSE: Slytherin ELEMENT: Fire SIN: Envy VIRTUE: Charity SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English, Scots Gaelic, French, a smattering of Spanish, Arabic, Hebrew and Greek

VI. FAVORITES

Date: 5/1/2021 Location: Well Of A Time Antiques Time: 10AM

@johannakoning​

“Oi! No, I’m not done with you. You’ve not listened to a bloody word I’ve said, and furthermore...” Lachlan called after this Greer person, who seemed to think that he was worth no more attention than a fly buzzing around the room. Another retort had just come to mind, one that unfortunately was far better than the first, but ah, then the bells on the door tinkled, revealing a lovely young woman. One who was promptly told by Greer to ‘deal with’ Lachlan, and in a flash the other man was gone. Twat. Ah but the woman herself didn’t deserve his ire, did she? His sympathy if anything, given she was clearly his employee and must have had to put up with this arsehole day after day. “Is he always such a twat about things he doesn’t want to deal with? No, don’t answer that. Wouldn’t want you getting in trouble on my behalf.” Lachlan smiled at her warmly, then gave a deep bow, though he was never sure from moment to moment if he would be solid enough to pass for living. “Lachlan Murray, at your service. Your estimable uh...well, whatever he is, he’s bought the house I lived in before I died. Which is unfortunate, since circumstances have changed and I uh...I’m sorry, I’m being the twat now, aren’t I? You’ve clearly got more interesting things to do than listen to me natter.”

Date: 4/26/2021 Location: Lethe’s City Hall, lower levels Time: 3AM

@lilysundara​

His first thought had been of home, a thought strong and pure enough that the longing sent him off through the ether to...his office? His old office, surely. It had been years of...well, some kind, some amount since this office was his, but perhaps they had built a sort of shrine to him. A nice thought to hold him until he slammed into existence, hitting the new carpet like a sack of potatoes. His vision went a tad wobbly then and he looked up only to find a very beautiful, horrified woman screaming at...well, him. “Oi! You’ll wake the whole bloody town shrieking like that! Cut it out, won’t you? I come in peace, don’t be carrying on so.” He said, pulling himself to his feet just in time for some rent a cop type to bust through the door, stun gun at the ready. Oh, that was rich. A vase was thrown, flying through his head, and only that made the man stop advancing on Lachlan and the shrieker both. “Just lost my way, is all. You try navigating after you’ve spent years stuck in a cosmic vacuum cleaner.” Lachlan, who was having a hell of a time staying corporeal at the moment, turned to the woman with a pale imitation of what had once been a winning smile. “Dear lady, can’t we just talk things through? Without the gorilla holding a bug zapper? I think that thing’d hurt him more than me.”