all_inclusive | Entries tagged with zz: porthos du vallon

Any entries earlier than this were pre-reboot.

It's been awhile since Dawn has been in the hotel. She's been home, living her life, growing up. She's had two birthdays since she was last here. She's fought a few big bad's and helped save the world at least two more times. That's the thing with apocalypses in her world, they always come in the plural rather than the singular. One ends and another begins. And you can never quite see them coming until you're smack dab in the middle of one. Sometimes evil is stealthy like that.

Thwarting the destruction of the world is what got her lost in an alternate dimension in the first place. Then, as she used her key power to punch her way between worlds, she unlocked the door to the hotel and can't seem to step back out of it.

Of course, her first order of business is to check for Buffy. Some things never change. Her attachment to her sister is one of those things. No matter how old she is, no matter how many years of college she completes, she'll always be Buffy's little sister. She's accepted that. She's grown to love that. Which is why she's sad to find that Buffy isn't here anymore. She remembers her time here from before. Buffy had been here then. Now Dawn's alone.

After a quick shower and change of clothes in the room that she used to share with her sister, she makes her way downstairs to the cafe to grab some food (she's starving, okay?) and then to the library where she used to work beforehand because books make almost all things better. Maybe she can get her job back. She does get her job back. Then she checks out a book.

She makes her way out into the gardens and sits in the grass. She opens her book and gets lost in another world.

Occasionally, one might find her concentrating very, very hard, trying to get her key power to work, trying to see a thinning of the veils between dimensions and punch her way through it. There are no portals here, not that she can see, not like what she could see in the other hell-ish dimensions. She's as stuck as anyone.

Yeah, reading is good.

praiseandglory

When Porthos stepped into their tent and found himself in a strange, yet familiar hallway, he knew exactly where he was. On either side of the hallway were doors - to rooms, suites, and many more strange places beside. The noises of the camp were gone, but the smell remained, on him, of gunpowder and blood, soot and grime. His usually elegant clothes had seen better days, his now longer hair was tied back and mostly hidden under a kerchief that might have once been white. His pistol was empty and he needed to clean his sword - Treville's sword.

The battlefield was now miles and years away, for all that it was also, somehow, right on the other side of a door. And, in his current mood, that made his blood boil as surely as Spanish insults.

"Not again!" he yelled, and punched the nearest wall with a gloved hand. He winced at the pain, but there was a dent in the wall now, and that felt slightly better.

concierge

The annual Nexus New Year's Eve gala began at 8 in the evening. Too grand to be contained by the lobby or dining hall, the gardens at the front of the hotel were employed, with long strings of white lights forming a twinkling canopy from the front doors all the way to the hedge maze. The weather was temperate and calm, and the night perfectly clear.

Drinks were served at various bars set up throughout the gardens and lobby, with champagne cocktails being the specialty of the night. Wheeling through the crowd was a bartender with golden cart providing warm drinks on the go: Tom and Jerrys, rum punch, negus, and Irish coffee.

Crisply-dressed wait staff wove through the collected guests with an abundance of hors d'oeuvres for all different tastes. The Bistro remained open with a limited selection of items for those who were wanting something more substantial.

Above the front doors was hung a large, gold-rimmed clock counting down the last hours, minutes, and seconds of the current year.

averygoodshot

June 17 | the Nexus

Upon finding the Queen and the Dauphin no longer in the Nexus, Aramis resorts to drink and maudlin romanticism. Good thing his friends come to the rescue.

In progress/no warnings

thesouthernpansy

Angels didn't need to sleep, as Heaven was ever-vigilant. Of course, Aziraphale could sleep if he wanted, but usually he didn't. He liked reading more, so there was at least the appeal of reading in bed that would call to him; sometimes he would dress as if he were about to go to sleep, and then spend two days reading a book series whilst propped up among the pillows.

Not in this hotel - not yet, anyway, even though the bed looked quite comfortable. He was far more distracted by other things. It was the middle of the night and he sat at the bar, a half-drunk Fiji at his elbow, and in his hands he was holding the phone the rather colourful receptionist had given him the other day.

For a moment Aziraphale had thought the woman was handing him a very sleek-looking explosive device, because if there was one thing he knew about phones it was that they didn't look like that. But no, it was definitely a phone. It had numbers on it. Purportedly, it could call people; but it also did a whole host of other things. Send electronic messages. Play music. Take pictures, even. In his first hour of using it, he managed to accomplish absolutely nothing, except accidentally turn the ringer off (and it took him even longer to figure out how to turn it back on).

He was getting the hang of it now, though, he supposed. But the phone's habit of correcting his words when he was playing around with the keyboard was enough to sorely try his very angelic patience. Regardless he hoped he survived the Apocalypse, because now he was really looking forward to leaving the twentieth century behind him.

armedagainstlove

Athos doesn't even realize what's happened, at first.

Ever since Milady had arrived insisting that Athos had been on his way to meet her, ever since he had returned back to Paris and discovered Aramis' treason with the Queen and the result of such a coupling, ever since Rochefort's rearrival on the scene caused him to slouch back to the Nexus, he has been drinking like he hasn't since right after his wife's supposed death. It is in this state that he'd fumbled through a well-known door that he'd thought harmless to him.

Intoxicated with the red wine, he does not notice the shift of gravity in his body, nor the length of his hair different, swept up by the hat. All Athos knows is that he has drank two bottles and is eager for a third, lest he fall into the eager pit of grief and the other complicated affections that lie in wait for him, all coaxed on by the woman whose locket he no longer wears.

When he arrives at the bar for his usual, he's met with confusion. The bartender states that she hasn't been around enough to have a usual. Athos smacks his palm against the counter, his rage brought forward with the incense of it all. "Wine," he snaps, calming himself before his demands grow angrier and more frustrated. "Just bring me wine," he mutters, voice hoarse from the drink.

He slumps into his seat and peers down for the first time, unsteadily taking account of how his clothes now seem to sag and slump on him. Sighing with the inevitable realisation, he lifts an elegant long-fingered hand to the bartender. "Make that two," he adds, before allowing his forehead to collapse against that waiting hand.

How could he have thought this would pass him by forever?

He grasps both bottles of wine greedily when they arrive, eager to trudge back to his room and escape the prying eyes of the public.

at_your_side

Intoxicated. Yes, that was- that was the word she was looking for. Intoxicated was just the very thing she could use to describe herself...or her state...the state of herself?

While the details of it had become increasingly fuzzy with each of the delightful, oh so colorful cocktails the bartender sat in front of her (how many had she had again?), Constance was fairly certain the day had begun well enough. There had been a bath, a bath! One with an endless supply of hot water piped right into her room so she might lie in her tub with the dawn light filtering in through the glass of her colored windows and wiggle her toes in easy contentedness.

But then there- ah! There had been the issue of dressing. Or, rather, not of dressing but of what to dress herself in when her only...dress, yes, had been worn already for the day before. She could have made do with it if she had had to, had even pulled it on while not pulling too much of a face, but had been all too grateful upon meeting the lovely Ruby in the hallway not far from her door.

Never had she seen a woman who wore so little out in public. It had left her gaping in the second before she had recovered herself, to see so much skin on display with not so much a flicker of concern in the other woman's expression as she had smiled and introduced herself. Somehow - now here the details were particularly fuzzy at that moment - they had gotten onto the subject of Constance's singular dress and somehow further the conversation had become one of the other woman, still a stranger, but so earnestly friendly, had volunteered her help.

All of which led to her sitting there at the bar of the Smoking Room, wearing pants of all things while Ruby slid a drink in front of her. She was certain there had been sense behind the action, and no, she did not feel the least bit overexposed with the buttoned shirt she wore beneath her corset or the coat she wore that hung down to her knees (she tried not to giggle at the thought of needing to cover her bum, but was only partially successful). What was even more certain was that these - those little cocktails, they were delicious.

averygoodshot

April 8 | Aramis's room

Aramis comes clean to Porthos. It may or may not go well.

none/PG

praiseandglory

Porthos tended to leave the act of attempting to drown one's feelings in wine to Athos, who had made such an art of it. But once in a while, especially when there was no one to fight, he didn't think twice about indulging. Today was definitely one of these days, with the news Aramis had just broken to him, and the conflicted feelings warring in his chest.

He ordered a bottle of wine, paid for it with some of the gold he had earned on Phryne's pirate ship, then commandeered a table at the back of the Smoking Room, intending to drink until things eased inside his lungs. The man who usually looked open to anything was staring vacantly at his table as he drank, and thought, a dark look on his features. If only Aramis had heard him, but he suspected that he had not, and that the final, inevitable separation would be all the more cruel for the time they might have here.

He had forgotten his hat in his friend's room, he realised distantly. He would go and retrieve it after he finished this bottle of wine. The hat wasn't going anywhere.

havecourageandbekind

You must return home by the last stroke of midnight because the magic will be gone - and everything will return to what it was.

Cinderella has never run so fast and so far in her life. She knows she has to get out of the palace before Kit (the prince, she corrects herself) finds out that all of this is a farce. She's even less than a simple country girl, she's a servant, and her dress is rags and her servants are animals. Her coach is a pumpkin. There's no way he can see all of that, he'd never understand.

Her mother had told her that there were some who would never understand the magic in the world around them and Cinderella has found that to be true. Her stepmother and stepsisters, for example, would never consider Gus and her other mice friends to be just as individual and precious as they are. Cinderella is certain they see them as vermin; though, really, they have more warmth and kindness in their tiny bodies than her stepfamily has all together.

Still, she cannot fault them. It is their nature and they are not likely to change. All she can do is show them kindness and love and hope that they can recognize it for what it is; they are, after all, everything she has left in the world. Them, and the house, and she promised to love the house for her mother and father. She'll always keep that promise.

Her heart is in her throat as it seems like the prince and his men are going to catch up to her and one of her glass slippers slides off her feet, tumbling down the palace steps. She does not dare go back for it - if she halts even for a moment, she won't have enough time to get home before all of the magic fades away. She doesn't know if it's instant or if it takes a little while and Cinderella is not entirely sure she wants to find out until she's clear and away and can cherish the memory on her own all alone. This is not something she wants to share with family. This is something she wants just for herself, one of the few things she's ever wanted to keep secret and safe.

She makes her way down to the end of the road where her carriage is and tugs open the door, sliding inside just as her footmen start growing tails and turning a peculiar shade of green. It's best if they begin this madcap run now before the carriage loses its wheels.

Except...the coach is gone. Gone are the luxurious seats and they haven't been replaced by pumpkin pulp, as she'd expect. Instead, she's settled on a fairly plump couch upholstered in velvet and surrounded by people coming and going. Their manner of dress is strange and as her beautiful blue confection of a gown melts away into soft and tattered pink, Cinderella isn't sure why this place hasn't faded away too. Why is she not back in her attic, surrounded by mice? Where is the screeching of her stepmother and stepsisters? The ringing of the bells?

She hears only one bell, too high and too tinny to be the servant's bell and Cinderella lifts her head to see that there's a wide desk and someone standing behind it. Perhaps he has answers. She makes her way toward him but stumbles, still only wearing the one shoe, and finds herself sprawled on the carpeted floor.

There's a pair of shoes in front of her and it's the shoes she addresses, rather than the person's face.

"Could I trouble you to help me up? I seem to have lost a shoe and it's made me clumsy."

somanyopinions

15 March 2015 | The Nexus Hotel

Her Majesty the Queen of France arrives at the Nexus in the midst of dire straits. Fortunately, there are some Musketeers on hand to help.

Ongoing | Spoilers for S2

the_dawnster

This nineteen year old is pacing through the hallways, stopping at each door on every floor whether it's a personal room or a room to another world. She knocks on the door and if someone answers she'll explain her dilemma. If no one answers, she'll be peeking inside whatever rooms are unlocked. If a room is one that leads to another world, she'll step inside and call out the name of the person she's looking for before going to try the next door.

One by one the people from her world had been disappearing. Dawn could cope with it as long as she had her sister her. But now that Buffy had been missing for a few days, now that Dawn literally could not find her anywhere, well... her usual vibrant nature was drastically muted. She felt very alone and she was not okay.

She's practically vibrating with energy, barely able to keep herself from completely and entirely freaking out and shutting down. If she could find the door that leads to her own world she would go through it and never come back. But even that has proven difficult.

Sadly, being left behind is not a new occurrence for her. It happened all the time at home. Between everyone having their lives to live and occasionally saving the world, sometimes she got lost in the shuffle. There was a difference though, between being left behind at home where she knew all the people and all the rules and being left behind here where things were still so uncertain. Dawn, sadly, didn't do being alone very well.

It's later, after she's exhausted every door and every room and spoken to too many people to name in her search for her sister than she winds up sitting on the floor in the hallway outside Harvey's door like a stray cat who's suddenly hanging around for no reason at all. Without her sister here, he's the one she's closest to. He's her friend. Of course she'll gravitate toward him.

temperamentalsteel

Twice now, he had acted only with the King's safety in mind. Twice he had tried to be the man of honor that Musketeers were supposed to be. Twice all he had earned was censure from his Majesty.

How could the King have believed that d'Artagnan would ever have done him harm? In taking the pistol, in playing Marmion's game, they should have known it was a blatant play for time, yet the King had only raged and admonished him. It was just as before, when they had obeyed their King's whims to go to the tavern because no loyal Musketeer would have gone out of turn to criticize his wishes, even in the name of safety. Then, again, because he had spoken out on behalf of his honor and on keeping his word.

Now, d'Artagnan had not been allowed to even defend himself, to say that he had panicked for fear of Constance's life and desperation to stall Marmion.

Instead, the King had let Rochefort take the glory in the same fickle breath that he had condemned d'Artagnan and turned his back on Milady. Though there was no love lost between them, he knew she'd had the nerve to risk her life and get help.

As they walked up to the doorway, the sliver of bright light almost blinded him. When his vision cleared, he saw a smooth, modern doorway and perhaps it made him a coward, but he was relieved to walk into the lobby of the Nexus. In its quiet, clean tranquility, d'Artagnan was ever more aware of the blood and dirt on his face.

phrynefisher

How it was that the wind, salt-sharp and quick as a whip as it swept around her did not tear the hat, broad-brimmed and worn, from her head, only philosophers and quantum physicists might be able to say.

Perhaps the rumors of her being a witch were true after all. Certainly she had never done anything to hush up the whispers of exactly that when she had heard them. (She had, in fact, laughed hard enough to nearly upset her glass when she'd first overheard someone informing their friend that the captain of the Thetis was some kind of sea witch). Rumors abounded around any woman who walked in the world of men, she had expected nothing less. Whether she was witch, fallen noblewoman, madwoman or whore, every man had his favorite story to tell of the woman who would dare to captain a pirate ship.

Phryne turned her head from the warmth of the sun to smile at her crew. "The wind is with us!" she called from her perch, standing as she was high up among the topmast sails. She took little note of the precariousness of her position, leaning far out from the safety of the solid wooden braces, kept safe only by the hand she kept wrapped around a rope nearby. "Prepare yourselves, we shall be on them by sunset!"

The Thetis was crewed by a mixture of sailors and strays, a strange combination of men and (shockingly) several women who came from all corners of the world. They were known for nothing more than for their captain's love of hunting slavers as they attempted to return to Europe newly heavy with profit, of the chaos they wreaked in taverns they frequented and the promise that all would share equally in the spoils they tore from merchants' hands before the goods could be traded for new stocks of slaves. What the crew made of their captain was up to each on their own, but were to Phryne more family than those she'd known by blood.

She all but danced down the rigging and masts until she stood on deck once more, eyes returning to the shape on the far horizon as she spoke to the figure nearest her, "Copper and cloth, you think?" Her lips curved, gaze turning to the one she spoke to, "Or might we hope for rum enough to refill our stock?"

praiseandglory

Porthos was nothing if not stubborn, and he refused to let this transformation keep him down. With no specific deadline to look forward to, he felt that he had no choice but to train, until he regained, even in this body, at least a modicum of skill at what he usually did best: fighting. It didn't help that the breeches he'd secured for himself in this form were a lot tighter than anything he was used to, but he was learning to move about in them well enough.

Much more troubling by far was the weight of his broadsword. The Schiavona was much too heavy for his current strength, but it was all he had to practice, and so he found himself outside in the gardens, going through the basic motions of swordfighting as if he were only getting to know it, hoping that repetition would help. But in this body, not only was his sword too heavy, but his balance was off, and even his very style was wrong for someone who could no longer fight like a force of nature.

Fifteen minutes into his exercises already found his oversized shirt sticking to his back with sweat, and after stumbling through yet another move that should've been easy, he pulled off the kerchief he wore over his hair and threw it aside in a show of temper, planting his sword down in the soft damp soil and looking about as frustrated with himself as a not-a-lady Musketeer could get.

Which was, apparently, a lot.

averygoodshot

"Just ... give me a moment," Aramis says over his shoulder. He is tired, his body aches, he still has glass in his hair, he is sure, and a cut on the back of his head that needs cleaning. His leg hurts and even the scratches on his face need tending. But he needs a moment. Just ... a moment to himself, to collect himself.

( spoilers for Musketeers 2.06 )

So he opens the door, his hat under his arm, and steps ... into someplace else entirely, some place he's never seen before. Into a huge elaborate anteroom (lobby), even more grand than most rooms at the Louvre. What is this place? He turns and the door he had come through is gone. So, he turns back around, wary, pushing his hat onto his head (wincing some at the sting) but all the better to be ready, a hand on his sword, the other holding his pistol. Had he fallen again? Hit his head? Is this all a dream? If so, he would like his dreams to be a little more ... well, intimate, actually, not populated by people dressed entirely differently and looking at him like he is the stranger in a strange place. "Beg pardon," he asks (unless the one approaching is a Musketeer), "... where am I?"

concierge

A large sign placed prominently in the Nexus lobby reads:

The Nexus Hotel
proudly presents the
MARDI GRAS MASQUERADE BALL

Event Location
Nexus Dining Hall
8 PM - 2 AM

Masquerade dress recommended, but not required for all guests

The Dining Hall's central table and chairs had been removed to create a dance floor wide enough to accommodate fanciful masquerade costumes. On one end had been placed a long bar providing free drinks, and on the other a small chamber orchestra providing the music for dancing. The entire room was bedecked in gold bunting and twinkling candlelight, and masks were available for those guests who hadn't brought their own.

afeastofstarlight

Tauriel was getting used to this place. It was so unlike what she was accustomed to – nothing bad, but simply more obstacles to overcome, new things to learn. It was not that difficult, once she got used to it, though showers were certainly a rather interesting invention to experiment with.

She had been trying to find some way to divert herself. She was a warrior, but there was nothing here to really allow her to utilize her skills, not without stepping through one of those other doors – which, for the moment, she refrained from. There were many beautiful rooms in the hotel, though, which did not require travelling to another world, and she had explored them as she searched for a useful diversion.

It came to her, suddenly, when she was in the Smoking Room. There was a stage for performances which, while empty of performers, still had a multitude of instruments. There was more in storage, as well, from what she could gather. Asking around, one of the employees let her take a look.

That was how she ended up with the harp. She had no intention in performing for anyone, not when she wasn't all that good, but they'd allowed her to borrow it to practice. She settled in a sunny part of the garden near the rotunda, untouched by frost but with a kiss of chill in the air, placing the harp in her lap. It was true she was more used to plucking the string of a bow than an instrument, but elves – even the elves of Mirkwood – were an artistic and musical race, and she certainly knew how to play from when she was a child and had not yet found her calling as a hunter. She was adequate, but simply not a born musician. Still, after a pause in which she considered, she began to carefully pluck the strings. It was a slightly different instrument than what she was used to, but the sound was similar.

Finally, getting the hang of it, she began pulling out the opening notes of a slow, soft ballad. Not sad, just calming. It was nice. She felt a small ball of tension between her shoulders loosen. While her playing was somewhat stilted for an elf as she stirred awake those memories, they were perhaps pleasing to the ear of the younger races.

armedagainstlove

At times, Athos does wonder whether this odd inn has a sense of malice in its humour or whether it simply can see into his heart to know precisely how to strike him. There have been blessings in Porthos and d'Artagnan's presence to reassure him that he has not gone mad, but there is the continued presence of the doors. If it is not bright lights or screaming children, it is giving d'Artagnan false memories or it is wreaking havoc on him and has for hours.

If he didn't know better, he'd say that this suits him terribly. He'd met a woman in a similar situation to Athos' current predicament, but she seemed to have endured them longer.

This morning, Athos had awoken from his brief respite from home (needing the time after nearly causing a coup in France given a new heir, found) and upon leaving his room to have breakfast, something had changed. It had been as if the ice covering his heart had infected all other parts of him, sending a strange frisson of fear through him. And, more worryingly, since that moment, everything he's touched has turned to ice.

Currently, staring at red wine that's frozen over, he's beginning to see the trouble.

Anne might laugh at him, if she could see him now. That coy, sharp, steady laughter that he had found charming once, but now saw it for what it was -- vindictive and cutting. She might say that it's about time his body caught up with his cold heart, able to put his wife to death so easily, but it had been unavoidable. How could Athos have done anything else? Perhaps this is his punishment, then.

"Sangdieu," he spits out a frustrated curse when he reaches for a grape and freezes that over, too. Chewing it stubbornly, he abandons his table in a hurry and hopes that no one has seen the fuss he's made, for Athos needs to find himself somewhere warm to counteract the continuous ice his hands seem keen to produce.

All Inclusive

Reboot Marker

OPEN | did you fall from a shooting star ; one without a permanent scar

Not again

Gathering: New Year's Eve Gala

Upon the realization of loss

no subject

Grief is the price we pay for love

Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

no subject

"People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim."

no subject

A Queen's Debut

open

[spoilers for Muskteers 2x06]

Give the girl a shot of whiskey/Set the pirate lady free

Stubborn problems always require a shift in paradigm.

We were born to be fighters ...

Gathering: Masquerade Ball

feet as light as linden-leaves, or music welling underground in hidden hollows quavering

the icy heart

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