kore_logs | Off to the bar

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Off to the bar

Who: Dilandau Albatou, Ellen Harville
Where: The bar
When: Evening of 93
Why: Foreign measurements are hard to grasp. Thankfully, Ellen has the tools

Normally, Dilandau would never have entertained the idea of swapping blood with a vampire. It sounded like a messy, nauseous and dangerous proposition. However, given the conditions they were living in, he felt far too vulnerable to remain too injured to even hunt for nearly another Moon. Better to take a risk at getting better than to endure the certainty of a slow healing.

However, Mina had asked for the payment in pints. He'd seen pint glasses in the bar, so knew it was a volume measurement, but he had only the faintest grasp on how large they actually were. This was one of the things he hated about living among all these otherworldly demons, their insistence on using senseless measurements for length and weight and time (seriously, feet? Or worse, minutes? Miets were a far easier to estimate than that stupid unit).

He'd talked her into considering taking her payment in instalments, at least until he knew for sure how much he was meant to provide, It seemed smart to him to know exactly what he was giving. True smartness would have been asking if that was the full price of her offer, but he was too intent on being healed.

And that was why he made a beeline for the bar as soon as he headed through the doors, intent on 'borrowing' a few glasses.

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Ellen hears the door open and doesn't immediately hear the bitching about being trapped in a devil's trap. Not the bitch then. She eases out of the back stockroom, because she's still not sure of everyone in this place.

She leans against the wall, letting the kid root through things that he has no reason to be rooting through.

"What the hell are you doing?" She asks. At least she isn't putting the gun to the back of his head, as she had Sam all those years ago. Ellen straightens up.

Her hands are dusted with chalk from more sigils. There's a smear of soot on her cheek from working on the still earlier. The crucifix is hanging around her neck. She raises her eyebrows at the kid that had been in control during the whole failed escape.

He pauses in trying to decide which glass he likes better and shoots her a look for greeting him like that. It's nothing more than a brief look of irritation, as he remembers her napalm with fondness.

"Taking a glass to measure with." He straightens and places them on the bar top along with a half-pint glass, then takes a better look at the matching marks on her and the surroundings

"What the hell are you doing? The place looked better without the decorations."

"What are you trying to measure and why are you dirtying my glasses to do it?" She's taken proprietary ownership of the bar. It's open to everyone, but she dislikes having the glasses messed with. Especially since she's the only one that does the dishes. (Jo helps, but Ellen likes the soothing motion of it.)

She glances down at her hands. "Protection sigils. I don't want that demon bitch in my bar." Ellen steps out of back room and closes the door behind her. Going to the sink, she washes off the chalk. "I'm marking them out before I try to find some paint and salt."

Ellen leans against the bar, looking at the glasses. "There are easier ways to measure."

"Yours?" His tone goes goes colder at that territorial claim. "Are you working for our captors now? These are whoever wants to use them."

That ends with a glare.

"And I wash up after myself. I'm not some swine."

As useful as she can be, he's not about to let her attempt to claim some sort of dominance over him simply sue to being in a public area.

The mention of the sigils snaps his attention right away from giving her dirty looks. Protection! His eyes dart around, noting the configuration. He quickly realises it's too complicated to remember, especially with the sigils. As soon as he gets his glasses home he'll have to come straight back with pen and paper.

"Which demon bitch? All of them?"

She isn't impressed with his glare. She's an old soldier who worked as a bartender for old soldiers. How about he cool it a notch. She gathers the glasses and puts them in the sink. They'll have to be washed. "When I can walk into your home and paw through your clean dishes, we'll talk about who owns what." Boy. She doesn't say it, but it's definitely there.

Ellen's eyebrows go up further. She crosses her arms over her chest. "There's only one here." She knows because Dean wouldn't keep that from her, neither would Raphael or Castiel. They'd have let her know. That means only Meg is here.

"Most of this will keep her trapped until I can get rid of her. I don't want her anywhere near my bar." Ellen realizes she's claiming it, even though it's a public space, but it's where her and Jo are living.

He lets her take the glasses and then picks out some more while she's dropping those ones in the sink. She can keep taking them, but that sink isn't going to fit them all in and he'll dirty them all if he has to. He tucks them in the crook of his arm and gives her a challenging stare.

"Do we have to book an appointment to come to your bar, or can we still walk in? Have you got a little list of the drinks we're allowed to take?" He's feeling pretty indignant about this now, as he'd at least had the comfort of knowing that he could come and drink the dregs of a wine bottle at 3am if he wanted to.

"If you're trying to claim the last of the stock as well you're going to have a riot."

"Considering you're the first offended, I doubt the rest care too much. Especially since I'm running the still." And apparently, the only one who knows how to. Jo knows some, but not everything.

Ellen just watches him. "Now, what are you doing here?" She doesn't really care what he thinks. Especially since she's got stock set back and has been rationing it a bit. Most haven't complained - not where she can hear them - and she's not about to change herself just to make someone else comfortable. She's too damned old for that.

"Like I said, I need a glass so I'll know how much a pint is, and I'm going to do the measuring in my own home." His indignation fades slightly at the mention of the still. She's making new stock?

"Are you making vino, or something else?" His eyes suddenly widen and he ducks under the bar, reaching for what was formally a jumbled place of odds and ends and is now a tidy area completely devoid of hidden bottles of decent red wine.

"Where is it?" It sounds calm on the surface, but he's ready to hunt and destroy whoever might have taken the last of barely palatable alcohol.

Her eyebrows crawl upward. "Deal with a vampire?" Why else would anyone want pints specifically? She dislikes it.

"Dandelion wine is planned as soon as the flowers rear their heads in better numbers." She shrugs. "Until then, it's just the still. Need more material to work with."

She presses her lips together and frowns at him. She's going to end up at his house rearranging everything so that he learns not to come into her bar and do that. Her hand drifts to where her knife is. The kid's got a temper - she's seen it and she's got no death wish.

"What?"

All other questions and concerns takes second precedence to solving this crime.

"The bottle of red vin- wine that was behind here. Where. Is. It?"

He's been nursing that bottle for over a week, trying to stretch out the pleasure for as long as possible, pale imitation that it is. He stands, notes where her hand has drifted, and hovers his own hand over the hilt of his sword.

She snorts and leans back against the doorway. She can get to her gun and fire it before he can hit her with that sword. Ellen just shakes her head. "I put the wine where it belongs." She cleaned up the bar and this boy is whining about a single bottle? Christ, she thought Dean would give her troubles about everything.

Or hell, angel issues.

Nope, it's a whiny silver-haired kid who made a deal with a vampire.

... It's not too late for her to become an alcoholic.

"You want anything more specific, you're going to have to tell me which bottle of red it was."

Jeture, this woman is irritating. How could she not remember where she'd put what she meddled with?

"The zinfadel." He mispronounced the foreign word, having never heard it spoken. "The one with a third of the bottle left, which was down there, where I put it over a Moon ago, where no one else was touching it except me."

There are a lot of bottles around here. She can't remember every single one. Plus, Jo had put some away. She shakes her head and jerks her chin, so he can follow her.

Stepping into the back, she pulls a curtain, hiding their sleeping area, before he can step in. She pulls open a door that doubles as another shelf, and gestures at the racks. "Here's where all the bottles are. Reds to the left, whites to the right."

He abandons his glasses and stalks past her, turning so that he's not got his back to her. He keeps her in the corner of his sight as he checks the bottles, only breaking contact when he spots the bottle he's after.

He grabs it and sloshes it, grinning with relief when he realises that nothing's missing. He tucks it under his arm and backs out of the enclosed space, back to where he was before.

"Are you going to meddle around and move it if I put it back there?" He points to his hiding spot.

Ellen snorts. "No bottles beneath the bar." Unless they're her personal stock, but she's not going to tell him that. She will, however, be anal about where alcohol is kept.

She heads over to a corner and moves a few other bottles, these empty. They're going to hold the dandelion wine, once it's made.

"Put it here. I'll leave it alone." She nods to the spot. "There's better wine back there, why that one?"

He finally moves his hand away from his swordhilt as he takes her offer and places it where she shows. There's no thanks, though his expression softens out of his glare.

"Because I don't want wine, I want vino. This is the sweetest wine I found, though it's nothing like how vino ought to be. It's meant to be stronger and sweeter, richer on the tongue."

Frankly, he's glad she's got a place he can reserve his bottle. Drinking it without anyone around would mean the only thing he'd focus on would be on how far it falls short of what he's used to back home.

"How did you know I was fetching the glasses for vampire?"

She frowns. She might be able to make a brandy that's sweet, but really, sweet alcohol isn't her forte. Most of the people she knows or knew drink beer and whiskey. Sweet's for the froufrous.

Ellen snorts. "Pint glasses. She's got to get her feed from somewhere. You're injured. Doesn't take a genius to put it all together." She taps her wrist. "And, if you experiment a little, you can see other people replying to things. She said she could heal you. Sounds like a deal to me."

She normally isn't one to judge, but she's not sure this is a good idea.

"You don't approve." It's obvious enough, from the way she's acting. He leans against the bar.

"Have you got a better way I can get healed quickly?" It's not a challenging question, but a probing one. She's been useful so far. Perhaps she'll be useful again.

"Vampire. I'm a hunter. I've killed my fair share." She walks back through to the main part of the bar. She turns on the water and starts cleaning glasses.

"You can ask the feather brigade, but they'll probably say no." She hadn't expected Raphael to heal Jo. But he had. "Other than that, nope. But then I don't mind healing naturally."

That doesn't surprise him. She comes across as a veteran sergeant (most sergeants, of course, would know not to get on the wrong side of the rising star Albatou, no matter how long they'd been serving when he was just still a twinkle in his father's eye. It's one of the many things that make Kore a hell hole)

"You might not mind, but I'm sick of being useless. I want to hunt my own meals for a change."

He scowls at the humiliation of being dependant on others for a moment before turning to the new piece of information.

"Who are the feather brigade?"

She snorts. The glasses are set to dry on a towel near the sink. She's swift and efficient in her movements. This is something she's done hundreds of times before.

"The angels. Raphael, Cas, and their group." She's still a little bit bitter about that dream with Raphael.

She finishes up the glasses, grabbing another towel and drying them off. "And it's better to heal naturally than to owe your soul, or other things, to someone who'd probably eat you alive, literally." Ellen doesn't believe everything is evil, but vampires aren't exactly high on her list of trustworthy allies.

"Them?!" He jerks, as if expecting a lightning bolt to crash through the ceiling at the mere mention of Raphael's name.

"They let you speak that way about them?"

That's actually the most surprising part. His encounters with the angels have left him with the impression they barely tolerate humanity. Either Ellen's ignorant, arrogant, or favoured somehow.

The least perturbing answer is that she's not offensive enough to warrant their attention, so her little slips don't matter. Still, it's not wise to attract their attention.

"No, I don't want gods involved any more in my affairs. But tell me how you kill a vampire, just in case she attempts to renege on her end of the bargain."

Ellen leans back against the bar and crosses her arms over her chest. "They sure as hell can't stop me. What are they going to do? Send me to hell?" She shrugs. "Kill me? Won't be the first time." She is dead back home and she knows it. "Cas is family, anyway. The rest can deal with it."

She likes Balthazar, but he's not family.

"Chop her head off." Ellen is blunt and to the point. "Dead man's blood is poison to the ones where I'm from, but we don't have any of that around. Best just to decapitate them and be done with it." She knows how to kill all sorts of supernatural beings.

"That's it?" That answer relaxes him; he was afraid he'd have to get the chalk out and draw seals similar to the ones covering her bar. "I'll bring my sword. She wouldn't be the first person I've decapitated by far."

He gives her a very sour look for her blasé approach to the angels.

"Your family member's the reason I have to get help in the first place. Interfering, bastard god."

Ellen stiffens. "Cas is many things, but he's family, so watch your mouth, boy." She cautions him. There are times when she doesn't agree with him; others when she wants to yell at him about everything that happened. But family is family, warts and all. He'd stood with them against Lucifer - an archangel and that counted for something.

Plus, he stuck by the boys when she was gone. She'd defend Cas.

"Thing you gotta know about the angels is you can mouth off, but don't stand in their way unless you're willing to take the blows." Something she knows about intimately. "You don't want hurt, then get the hell out of the way."

The cautioning only results in a bristling glare at the fact she dares look down upon him. It's been years since he's had to establish that he deserves respect for his talents despite his age.

"I'm not a boy, old woman, and if you want to keep a conversation polite you won't call me that again. And if you don't want your family insulted, keep then in rein."

He'd been avoiding thinking about the angels or interacting with them. They weren't the only thing in this situation making him helpless by a long shot, but their immediacy and power angers him with how little he can fight against it.

"So we're supposed to kowtow when they decide they want to have their own way?" He mutters. The fact that he would have to Castiel, if he'd not been in front of an audience and it he not had Balthazar's tentative support, is galling for his pride. "You wouldn't see Jeture trapped somewhere like this."

"Boy, you're younger than my daughter." Ellen shakes her head. "Meaning I'm old enough to be your mother, and then some." She really doesn't want to think about it, but respect your elders boy.

She laughs at his telling her to keep them in line. "I may know a lot of things about angels, demons and the things that go bump in the night, but I didn't survive this long by ordering around people I had no right to." And anyone who stepped into her bar obeyed her rules or found themselves facing her .357.

She shrugs. "There are ways to trap an angel."

So that's the way she wants to play it? He makes a mental note to exchange 'Ellen' for 'old woman' completely until he found a better name for her.

But once again, she found a way to completely throw him off guard. That's information he needs immediately and he makes not effort to hide his eagerness.

"How?!"

She raises her eyebrows at him. Then, she looks at the chalk designs around her bar, before looking back at him. "There are ways. None here, unfortunately." She would gladly keep Raphael away from her - despite what he did for Jo.

Ellen sighs. "If you want to keep them away from you, don't get in their way. I made that mistake and got dead." She knows it. Her and Jo. That explosion hadn't just killed the hellhounds.

"Other than that, there's nothing here that will keep them away. Not as far as I know." She knows some sigils, but not well enough to reproduce them, and here she's not going to do it. That just would add fuel to the fire, and it isn't worth it. "And if the folks holding us captive have it? They better hope it never runs out. Angels don't take kindly to being trapped."

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Off to the bar

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