onlythebranch | (no subject)

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greta

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Someone's been leaving him offerings.

At first he'd thought it to be the boy, Gabriel, the one he'd met during his first week and when he'd felt the call of it, when he'd walked the path that pulled him on and on, he'd been surprised to find the flat of an unfamiliar woman at the other end. But the bread had been for him sure enough and he'd taken it, turning it over in his hands with a bit of wonder before leaving once again, trying to work out who the woman is and why she's leaving him anything at all. It's been a great many years since anyone has left him an offering and though she's not asked for anything in particular, though he's without his own luck at the moment and thus can only give little bits here and there, he does what he can to return the offering back to her.

One evening at the market, several women ahead of her come up empty handed when looking for a few perfect apples, but she has no trouble at all finding what she wants in the bin. A few days later there's a bicycle and it's not nearly enough to have hurt her badly, but had she stepped out of the apartment building only a moment earlier, she'd have surely been hit. Though she's pretty enough and she's sure to have plenty of attention, there are a few more kind and genuine compliments from men and women alike that week.

It isn't much, it isn't like the turns of good luck he was able to give Essie, but if he can only get his coin back, he knows he'll be able to do more.

For now, he takes the offering with only a small amount of guilt and he mostly ignores the part of him asking why.

His luck, though, no matter what he manages to give to her, is utter shit. In any other situation, he'd be able to avoid her, to continue to just allow himself to take what she gives and to give something in return. He'd not be discovered, he'd never be seen, but he's heading in the direction of her flat one afternoon, smoking as he walks, and suddenly there she is, right in his path, walking a great, fluffy dog that looks as if it belongs in a sheep pen instead of on the end of a leash.

And the damn thing makes a beeline straight for him.

"Fuck," he breathes, taking another drag from his cigarette. Of course.

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Dogs are like children as far as Sweeney can tell. Stupid and mostly harmless and for some fucking reason they seem to like him, which he's never minded much, because they're generally incapable of being true assholes. And at least this one's not named Lucky like the little rat that had taken to him in the park not long after his arrival and he's dancing his fingers across the top of her nose before she's ordered to step back.

Ordered by the woman who's been leaving things for him. She's not Irish, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything, because Essie had brought him to the Americas all those years ago, after all, so it only makes sense someone else had brought something quite like him to England, to Scotland, to fucking Mexico for all he knows. Maybe they were born of Ireland, but Mad Sweeney knows better than most that the leprechauns didn't stay there.

He knows, too, that it's best to keep his distance. Essie MacGowan had been a mistake and if he'd kept his distance from her, maybe he wouldn't be here now, stuck in this pisshole of a city after having the living hell beaten out of him by a woman whose tenacity and ability to irritate the shit out of him had reminded him of Essie in the first place. Distance, even when it comes to those leaving offerings, is for the best. He gets his belief -- which feels so fucking glorious after all this time -- and they get their luck and that's that. It's best not to talk to them, not get involved with their lives any more than he has to, but here he fucking is again, walking straight into her path.

And he could just keep his mouth shut, but he's never been good at that.

"S'fine," he says, taking another drag of his cigarette and blowing the smoke away. He's an asshole, but he's not a complete asshole. She doesn't need his fucking smoke in her face, especially since she's the only person in this bloody city leaving anything at all for him. Sweeney has missed it so desperately, has missed the feeling of belief that he's not about to risk it just because he likes to smoke.

"So why the bread?"

His accent is a surprise, one that reminds her a little of home. It wasn't one she heard often around the Village, but she doesn't think she's ever heard it here. He also doesn't seem quite as annoyed by Sadie as she'd originally thought, though being a prior owner might explain the automatic, absent way he'd responded to her nosing at him. But if he really was her last master, she'd expect a stronger reaction from the dog. Sadie's at least willing to sit back politely, even if she's still looking up at Greta as if she's been denied greeting Sam, or Demelza, or some other established friend.

Greta's searching for something to say, some probably needless reassurance that the dog didn't mean any harm, when he asks her about 'the bread.' "Er." He speaks as if she ought to know what he's talking about, and she fumbles through her memories for an explanation. But all she can come up with is her work at the Gardens, which seems rather self-explanatory. And it's not as if she's ever seen this fellow on the property. She shakes her head in vaguely apologetic bewilderment, too thrown by the question to notice Sadie inching forward nose at him again. "I'm sorry... what?"

She doesn't expect it to work.

As soon as she looks at him like that, apologetic and confused, he knows she hadn't really expected it to have done anything. Maybe it's a long standing habit and she's new to Darrow, having brought her belief -- and her own leprechaun, for all he knows -- with her or maybe she'd heard tell of him by this point, but whatever the case, she hadn't truly expected a bloody leprechaun to show up outside of her home and take the offerings she's been leaving.

And she hadn't expected her luck to change. Which means it probably hasn't much and just goes to prove that he's not doing enough for her. Can't do enough for her. Not when his own luck is still so piss-poor. He doesn't deserve the offering when he can't give her what's meant to be given and it pisses him off all over again that Laura wouldn't give the bloody coin back to him. She's meddling with centuries of what's supposed to be.

"The bread, darlin'," he answers as he finishes the cigarette and then steps away to crush it out on the lip of a rubbish bin. The rest he flicks inside with the rest of the garbage and looks at her again. "The bread you've been leavin' out for me."

Something about his expression gives her the strong (if somewhat inexplicable) conviction that she's disappointed him, somehow. It doesn't make any sense, she's never even seen him before. That he might have mistaken her for Sara doesn't even cross her mind; they look alike, but they're hardly interchangeable. Why can't she shake the feeling that she ought to know him?

Then he answers her, and, well, yes. That explains it.

"Oh--oh," she says, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. "So you're the... you're him." She probably sounds foolish; she definitely looks it. It's just that 'leprechaun' doesn't conjure up images of tall, strapping men who might wrestle bears in their spare time. God, if it did, everyone would be leaving out offerings, just so they could sleep at night. Her own proffered morsels seem laughably feeble in retrospect. It would take an entire loaf to make an impression.

Is that why he's questioning her? Because it wasn't enough?

"It's just--we did it back home," she stammers, tripping over her own words in an effort to explain herself. "Lots of people did, just to be on the safe side. We had a Witch next door who Cursed my husband's entire family over some stolen beans, so when there's someone you can keep happy with just a bit of bread and milk, well, it seemed like a good investment, I suppose.

"And then I heard you were here, and I thought--well, I don't suppose most of the people in Darrow would think to put out anything, so..." she hitches her shoulders in a hapless shrug. It would be foolish to admit that she was mostly just hoping to avoid upsetting him, especially in a city full of likelier targets: people too ignorant of how such things work to even think of making an offering in the first place. But that's just it: the Nice List is an awfully conspicuous place to be if you're the only person on it. Of course she drew his attention, even if her only intent was to appease him into not actively making her life difficult. It's been difficult enough as it is.

Though it hasn't been all bad, especially most recently, and she lifts her head in dawning realization. "Wait, is--are you the reason everyone's been so nice to me?" She hasn't asked for anything, she would never have presumed to, and she can't quite believe the scraps she's offered have actually earned her any favors.

It makes him laugh, the way she seems so surprised to have found it's actually worked to her advantage, flimsy as it may be at this point, and Sweeney wonders where to even begin in telling her what it means to him. How is a man supposed to sum up hundreds of years of being ignored, of slipping into legend and then memory and then turning into a fucking cereal box mascot? How does one describe how it feels to have the core of their very existence begin to die away, leaving what's left behind dull and brittle and waiting for the day when the luck no longer matters, because not a single fucking soul alive believes he could be possible?

"No one in Darrow thinks to leave me anything," he says, though that's not exactly true. Hild has left him things here and there and it's helped, but Hild has done so because she knows him. He tries to return it to her as best he can, to the both of them. If he had his fucking coin it would be different, they'd both know what was happening, they'd both feel it, because such luck wouldn't be otherwise feasible. But he doesn't. And so what they get is only a shadow of what he could have once given them.

"You didn't ask for anything," he says with a shrug, big shoulders rising and falling slowly. When faced with someone like Shadow or Laura or even when faced with a god, Mad Sweeney knows what to do. He knows how to piss them off, how to keep up those barriers he's worked so hard at building over the years, he can be the hard, abrasive thing the new world had turned him into, but he doesn't know how to be with people like this. People who believe. Not anymore. He used to, but it's been so long that now he feels like it's floundering. Failing where he would have one excelled. Essie had believed in him and he'd loved her for it, but he can't love anyone now, not like that.

So he only shrugs again. "I did what I could."

No one is more confirmation than revelation, but she still winces, both in sympathy and general embarrassment. She doesn't regret her offerings, but it's clear that she hadn't really thought this through. Not beyond the simple habit of it, and definitely not beyond what she'd expect from her world's fae creatures. Admittedly, that had never been much. You avoided the bad, and maybe -- maybe -- if you had the sort of luck that no one needs to gift you, you might earn a favor. Or maybe there wasn't a brownie or a hob or a leprechaun to be found in the whole of the Village, and the offerings were for nothing. When you know that Witches and Curses are real, there are chances you just don't take.

"No," she says with a slow, wondering shake of her head. "I hadn't even thought to." Even if she had, even now, she doesn't know if she'd ever have the nerve. It all comes a little too close to wishing. And that's setting aside the fact that leprechauns, at least in her world, have a reputation for trickery. She'd have to sit down and draft something until it was ironclad, leaving no room for deliberate misinterpretations, before she'd dare to put it before any of the fair folk.

Maybe he's a different sort of leprechaun. He's helped her -- in ways that might be small, or subtle enough to miss outright, but that are also mercifully inoffensive -- without her even needing to ask. She's not sure quite how to interpret 'I did what I could,' if it means he paid back her little offerings in kind, or if his abilities in Darrow are limited. Nor is she certain which interpretation she prefers, if she's being wholly honest.

She shakes her head again, remembering her manners, though her brow furrows as she tries to cross-reference them with scraps of lore she was told as a child. "Thank you." Is it safe to offer thanks? She thinks so. It's just debts you want to avoid. Cupping her own cheek in her hand, half hiding a sheepish smile, she adds, "It... maybe it didn't seem like much, but it has been nice." July was an improvement over June, but it's still been difficult. A more dramatic display of good fortune would have been overwhelming, and suspect in the way of Darrow's other oddities. She doubts she would have enjoyed it.

"Good," he says and he hates himself for the little lurch in his chest at the sight of that half-hidden smile. This is what belief does to him and he both craves it and hates it all at once, the way it can make him mistakenly feel as if he belongs somewhere, when to the person leaving the offering, he's just a creature of luck and often duplicity, something of legend, the sort of man who doesn't truly exist and if he does, he's perhaps not a man at all. It doesn't do to get involved in the lives of those who leave him offerings, but it's impossible not to. He's tied up in them as soon as they start, bound to them in a way he knows they don't understand.

But without it, he's still not a man. Without it, he isn't much of anything at all.

"Hopefully it keeps you out of range of my bad luck," he says, because while he's been content enough to watch his shit luck take its toll on people who behave like assholes, he'd hate for it to extend to her now. The only problem there is that he doesn't know if he has much control over it at the moment. Not without his coin. "It's been for shit lately, my luck. Gave my fuckin' lucky coin away to an asshole who handed it off to his dead wife and she ain't giving it back any time soon. It's best for most folks to keep out of my orbit these days."

He smiles a little and shrugs again. "But seems it's not impossible for me to give some good luck to others even so."

It never would have occurred to her that leprechauns might have their own luck, separate from the sort they dole out. And if it had, she never would have presumed it could be bad. Her comprehension judders at 'my bad luck,' but it stalls entirely at 'dead wife.' Something twists inside her. That's probably what she's known as now, in the Village: his Dead Wife. She wonders if the leprechauns in her world have lucky coins that raise the dead, and if her husband would search out her makeshift grave to gift her such a thing.

He probably wouldn't. She should probably be relieved by that.

Sadie nudges her hand, and Greta blinks, giving her an absent, reassuring pat. She's been good for that sort of thing, drawing Greta out of her own head before she can wander too far down any of the darker paths therein. Satisfied that her mistress is back in the moment, Sadie sits down beside her and leans her warm, furry bulk against her leg.

"That's... oddly straightforward," she finally replies. "A lucky coin." Who gave it to him? "Darrow might return it to you. It gives people things they've lost, sometimes. Things from home." Not necessarily good things, of course. From what she's seen, it mostly seems to delight in giving people ghastly reminders of some horror they barely escaped. But she also can't imagine a leprechaun would have much in the way of worldly possessions. Maybe his lucky coin is the only thing he's missing.

"I'm sorry about your own luck, though." She pauses before continuing with more caution, not wanting to bound herself up in any bargains she can't -- or won't want to -- keep. "Would... would more bread help?" The sheepish smile makes a return appearance. "I imagined you were quite a bit smaller when I set it out."

Nothing will help short of Laura Moon appearing here and digging the coin out of her chest to give to him, but he doesn't want to say that and disappoint her. He also doesn't want her to be giving more than she can afford, so he only shakes his head at her question. More bread won't fix anything and even the smallest morsel, in the right situation, is still an offering. It's not as if he needs it to sustain himself physically, anyway, which is one of the many ways in which having a hoard of gold at his fingertips comes in handy. If nothing else, at least Mad Sweeney will never go hungry.

"Most folk do," he says when she tells him she imagined he was smaller. It hadn't always been that way, Essie hadn't been surprised by the size of him when he'd finally come to take her hand and lead her back home, but at some point the idea of him had become much smaller than it used to be in nearly every way that matters. "Little men in green tights, hopping around their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Fucking General Mills. But it's not the size of the offering that matters, just the intention."

This isn't the way things are supposed to work, but time has changed most things, so Sweeney doesn't step closer and he doesn't offer his hand, wanting to be more careful with her than he is with most, but he does find himself saying, "I'm Mad Sweeney."

Green tights? Greta has to hastily hide an incredulous smile behind her hand, and transmute a giggle into a cough. That hardly matches up with her mental image of what a leprechaun ought to look like. Small, yes, but not capering about like a child.

But if leprechauns exist in other worlds, she supposes the way people picture them must vary wildly. And if you are a leprechaun, you'd be acutely aware of just how people get it wrong.

His reassurance isn't entirely satisfying. She was putting out the bread with the thought that he'd eat it, and a mere mouthful feels like a feeble offering. Nor are baked goods scarce, with her, and she's already thinking about how easy it would be to bring home an extra biscuit or tart or whatever else she might have churned out in bulk for the children at the Gardens. The intention might be what matters most, and her bread is of a higher quality than what anyone might get from the store. But if he's been displaced in Darrow and beset by terrible luck -- and if he's still found it in him to make her own life a bit better -- she can at least bother to put out something nice.

Greta blinks at the name, surprised that he's offered it. Names are things to be careful with, at least in the stories she's been told. 'Mad Sweeney' could be a pseudonym, but then again, what else would a leprechaun be called? It's not as if she's familiar with fae naming conventions in different worlds.

More to the point, what is he going to do with her name that would justify withholding it? He already knows where she lives. He's been doing little favors for her, and Sadie likes him. So Greta follows his lead, keeping a polite distance, and resting her hand on Sadie's head instead of holding it out. "Greta Baker. And Sadie, but you already knew that." She arches an eyebrow as a thought occurs to her. "Have you been saying hello to her or something, when you stop by? She isn't normally interested in strangers." Sadie gets back to her feet and steps forward to resume sniffing at him; this time, Greta doesn't bother trying to hold her back.

Greta Baker.

Maybe she'll not turn out to be anything at all like Essie, but he hoards the names of believers more carefully than he does his gold, keeping them close as a reminder that it hasn't always been this way, that there was a time when people knew what he was and what he could do. Darrow, for all the things he's come to hate about it, has given something back to him that he hasn't seen the like of in a very, very long time. He ought to be in Wisconsin, but if this is the place he needs to be instead, he supposes it isn't all bad.

It's been a long time since he's had any sort of offering, after all.

"I might've paid my respects to her a time or two," he admits, holding his fingers out again for the dog to sniff. "Dogs tend to be in possession of a kindness most folks have missed out on." And so he tends to like them better. Wednesday's wolves are an exception to that rule, but then, most of what Wednesday is and does turns out to be an exception to any rule Sweeney can come up with. The man has made him hate birds, of all things, which he has to imagine is quite the task, given the years he spent stuck as one. If that hadn't made him hate birds, it's impressive that it's Wednesdays ravens that have done it instead.

Sadie's tail wags harder, and she gives his hands a nudge with her snout, a not-so-subtle request for pets.

"They do," Greta agrees, watching her ridiculous, fluffy dog with a fond smile. "I haven't had her for very long, but she's made a world of difference."

It belatedly occurs to her how that might be misconstrued, and she hastens to add, "Not that--no one's been giving me any trouble or anything." If she's going to have a seven-foot, muscle-bound, chronically unlucky leprechaun named Mad Sweeney inclined to do favors for her, she doesn't want him getting the idea that he might better her life by making someone else's worse. Not least of all because she can guess who might get the brunt of it, if it was all brought to light, and Jesse doesn't deserve that. "I just... had a difficult June, is all." Her smile is rueful, and she hitches her shoulders in a hapless shrug. "I might've noticed your efforts sooner if the bar hadn't been set so low." Getting back to normal had been such a chore that slightly-better-than-normal hardly registered. Or if it did, she hadn't trusted her readings.

Not that she expects a leprechaun's sympathy for her inescapably mortal problems. Her offerings don't entitle her to that. She flaps a hand, dismissive and embarrassed. "Doesn't matter."

For a moment he wonders if it's his bad luck worming into her life after all, but then she specifies it was June that'd been difficult and he allows himself to relax. In June -- Darrow's June, anyway, it'd been April back in Kentucky -- he hadn't been here and so he might be responsible for the shitty luck of others since his arrival, but whatever happened to her in June isn't his doing.

He strokes the dog's nose, then the soft fur of her ears and wishes there was something more he could do, some way to make his exchange more obvious, but the situation is what it is. At this point he's mostly just lucky he's not dead.

"This place does like to fuck with folks, don't it?" he asks, knowing she isn't the first and she won't be the last. He's stuck here, too, after all, and people have given him a well rounded explanation as to what he can expect and that is, more or less, that he probably won't be able to expect anything. That everything will be unpredictable and probably a pain in the ass.

"It really does," she says, with feeling. Granted, at least in this particular case, her troubles are not Darrow's fault. Darrow didn't knock her off that cliff, and it didn't force Jesse to tell her the story of it all. That was on her. The worst Darrow has done is give her the opportunity to find it all out, by bringing her here in the first place. And though she's seen too much of Darrow's cruelties to entrust it with her gratitude, but she's not going to complain about being alive.

"There were flying monkeys at New Years," she continues. "And these awful little toys that came to life just this past spring." Now that both incidences are safely in the past, it's easy to talk of them with something almost like fondness, as if it was a spot of awful weather they'd all soldiered through. But she definitely wouldn't fancy a repeat performance. If his own luck really is in shambles, maybe she shouldn't suggest that he was lucky to have missed it all, even if it's true. He could have fared poorly. She supposes she might have had an easier time of things, but a bit of extra luck doesn't seem like a fair trade if he's having a miserable time. "I'm sure you'll see your own share of the madness if you're here more than a few months."

Flying monkeys don't seem that terribly strange to him, but then, he's seen a good deal of things most people haven't. What is strange is to think of them in a place like this, out where just any random person can see them. Gods and people like him, they did the right thing, they hid themselves from just about everyone, but this place seems to flaunt its magic, like it doesn't give a damn who sees or what they think.

It's dangerous. But then, just being around him right now is dangerous, too, and he's still standing here talking to her. If he was smart, he'd just walk the fuck away to keep her safe.

"And no one pops the fuck up and claims responsibility for any of it?" he asks. "No tricksters anywhere?" It seems a little ridiculous for Loki, but Mad Sweeney wouldn't really put it past the bastard, not if he got some real good belief out of it somehow.

Greta shakes her head, giving Sadie an absent pat. "No." Magic tends to come in different forms, in her experience. Even back home, living next door to a Witch, there were things you couldn't pin on anyone in particular. The most ostentatious displays tended to not be any one person's doing.

"Everyone speaks of it as if it's just the city," she says with a flap of her hand. "Though it does feel as if someone ought to be behind it. It's always sort of... pointed." Deliberate. Maybe it's just because Darrow's fits don't occur with as much frequency, but it's hard to believe that it's some natural, impersonal thing, like a change in the weather or a shift in the seasons. It's far easier to imagine someone watching the chaos and enjoying themselves immensely.

"A trickster'll usually take credit. Fuckers can't help themselves, they like the attention. A god, though... well, I guess you never know with them, do you?" This isn't the sort of thing he would figure Wednesday for, but the gods are so fucked and so varied that he knows it's possible he's just seeing something he's never seen before.

And it does seem to him as if a city being responsible wouldn't be so pointed, like she's said. There has to be someone behind it, but the thing is, Sweeney doesn't really care enough to make the effort of finding out.

"Everyone talks like that because they-" He's cut off, though, by a car suddenly jumping the curb and Sweeney curses under his breath, knowing he doesn't have time to move, and the damn thing clips his hip first with the edge of the fender, then with the side mirror and he goes spinning away, coming down hard on his knees as the car goes on to slam into the side of a nearby building. It hurts, but all Sweeney can think is that he was right to keep his distance from Greta.

"A god?" Greta repeats, eyebrows creeping up in disbelief. She believes easily in magic and leprechauns, but gods were always a harder sell, back home. Probably because magic lived right next door, and everyone at least knew someone who had seen a hob or upset a fairy tree and suffered the consequences. A distant, inscrutable sort of sky fairy who didn't actually do much was far less concerning. The Village Priest had tried to drum up interest, poor man, but it was no mean feat to convince people that they ought to worry about what this sky fairy would think of them after they were dead, as opposed to the less obscure fae creatures that were capable of altering their lives at any moment.

Mad Sweeney is speaking of them as if they're unquestionably real, though, and she's about to ask if he actually knows any when a car seems to come out of nowhere. It leaps the curb, strikes him a glancing blow, and then crashes to a halt against a building. Greta nearly jumps out of her skin, and comes close to falling over from both the shock and from the sudden pull against her arm as Sadie attempts to flee.

She gets the dog under control, first, then hurries over to Mad Sweeney's side. "Are you all right?" she asks, laying a hand on his shoulder (which is still only a little lower than her own, despite him having his legs knocked out from under him). If her touch is cautious, it's more because she's worried about hurting him than because she's considering the relative wisdom of presuming to touch a leprechaun in the first place. She looks over at the crumpled vehicle, sees the driver dazedly pull themselves out, and then shifts her focus back to Mad Sweeney. "Can you stand?"

Does he need a hospital? She wouldn't have thought leprechauns could be injured, at least not in so straightforward and unmagical a manner. But he seems more like a man up close, his shoulder solid enough beneath her hand, and he looks pained. She shifts instinctively, ready to offer support if he needs it. "Here, let me help."

It's not the first car that's struck him and, given his current state, he has a feeling it won't be the last. Sweeney takes a moment, assesses the damage, then stiffens when he feels Greta's hand on his shoulder. Folks don't touch him, not often, not unless they're wanting to go a round or two, but it's more than that.

"Ought to keep your distance, lass," he says in a rough voice, pushing himself to his feet. There's pain, but it'll fade, it always does. And in the meantime, he sure as fuck doesn't want to be responsible for something bad happening to her or her sweet mutt.

"This is that shit luck I mentioned," he continues, taking stock of everything as he stands. His knees hurt where they hit the ground and his hip is going to bruise, but everything else feels more or less as it usually does. A drink or two will numb the pain and he'll be able to fall asleep tonight and feel better in the morning, so long as no one gets it into their head that they ought to challenge to big guy in the bar, as often happens. "I'd hate for you to get caught up in the wake."

She can feel him tense beneath her hand, and she draws it back. It's not a flinch, she doesn't think she's hurt him, but it's possible she's crossed some sort of boundary she shouldn't. That's what she takes it for at first, anyway -- a human presuming to lay a hand on a leprechaun, what was she thinking -- but then he explains things.

"You call that bad luck?" she squawks in indignation. 'Bad luck' is getting caught in traffic or spilling something on yourself. Someone excessively stoic might use it to downplay a larger tragedy, but everyone else would know it was nonsense. There are things bad luck doesn't cover, and she'd say that getting hit by a car qualifies.

Beneath the indignation, though, she appreciates that he's trying to protect her. She's rolled her eyes through more misguided attempts before, but if this is what bad luck means to him, she can't blame him for wanting to spare others. "I don't suppose my good luck makes much of a wake for you to get caught in," she says, her tone gentler. If it were that simple, he could improve his own luck without her proximity, probably.

"This is my bad luck," he says, pressing one hand against a nearby building. "The last good samaritan who stopped to give me a ride ended up with a fuckin' metal rod through his skull when the truck in front of us swerved. The bitch with my coin went through a windshield and had half her dead skin torn off. Things like that don't happen to me or around me. Ever. I don't get hit by cars, I don't stub my fuckin' toe, I don't accidentally walk into people. Life goes the way I want it to."

Or it had, until he'd given away that fucking coin.

"This," he says, waving his hand toward the car. "Is bad fucking luck."

Maybe it won't make sense to someone who's never experienced good luck the way he has. People have always looked at Mad Sweeney and assumed him to be a man down on his luck, but he's happy enough, living like he does. Drinking and fighting and sleeping and fucking. That's the life he wants and his endless good luck has allowed him to have it.

Greta winces. Maybe she shouldn't have suggested that the city might return his coin to him. Not because it isn't technically possible, but because it's too big a hope to just be throwing around. Darrow might bring her family, too, but she can't let herself dwell on the idea, let alone bank on it. Hard as it's been to cope with their loss, waiting would have been worse. Waiting was worse.

She considers taking a healthy step back, as well. That might be the wisest move. But she's still reeling a little from the accident, and indignant on his behalf. Nor has she ever been in the habit of abandoning people just because they're saddled with something unpleasant that might land on her by association (though she'll admit that car accidents are more horrifying than being barren).

"It's all a bit much," she says, frowning up at him. "What, is it making up for lost time?" Will it all even out, someday? That's what she would ask, if she couldn't already guess at the answer.

It's no less than what he deserves, given what he's done in his life, the things he's run from, but he'd barely been able to get into that with Laura and while he thinks Greta would likely be a bit more than that cunt, it's still not something he wants to discuss. In fact, he'd like to forget everything he's done to get here completely, but that's not possible.

Everything has a price, after all. Right now he's paying what he owes.

"If I knew how it worked, love, I'd tell you straight off," he says, wincing a little. "But alls I know is what I feel t'be true and this is my truth. My luck is shit and the chances of my dying before I get back that bloody coin are pretty high, I'd say."

"Wh-- dying?" she repeats. Maybe she shouldn't sound so skeptical all of three seconds after seeing him get hit by a bloody car, but he's still a leprechaun. All the stories she heard of the fair folk taught her that you might anger them, or best them, or find a way to live with them. But death is reserved for mortal creatures. "I... I didn't think you could."

Which must sound foolish, and unhelpful, and she winces again and flaps her hands at the car. "At least not in such a... a straightforward, human sort of way." Maybe there were rituals involving full moons and iron or somesuch; she wouldn't know, but she might be willing to buy it. 'Leprechaun Dies After Falling Into Traffic' seems too absurd to be possible.

"Everything dies eventually," he says, which is true, although he knows what she's getting at and what he's saying isn't exactly fair. If he had his coin, it wouldn't be possible, not in the same way it is now. With his coin, he'd have to do something bloody stupid, like sacrifice himself on Wednesday's battlefield or Christ only knows what else.

Like this, though, he's vulnerable. No coin means the rules change and he's still working out how. With his fucking luck, he'll probably just end up drinking himself to death.

"It shouldn't happen this way," he says. "But who the fuck knows how things work now. Everything's fuckin' changed and maybe it's just this city. Maybe this place just kills magical things."

She wants to argue against that. It's a knee-jerk response, because as miserable as his luck might be, there's more than a touch of melodrama in the idea that Darrow kills magical things. Magic isn't as overt, here; that much is true. People might take it in stride, but they don't take it for granted. If every hint of magic in the city disappeared tomorrow, a good chunk of the populace would probably breathe a quiet sigh of relief and continue on as if nothing had changed.

But there is magic. She arrived in a magical Wood; the first person she met was a werewolf; her employers are both magicians. She's friends with a unicorn, a fact that still astonishes her (though the way Darrow's forced Amalthea into a human shape speaks more to Sweeney's conclusion than Greta wants to admit).

"You're hardly the only magical thing here," she points out, anyway. "There's an entire magical Wood out there, and it seems to be doing all right for itself." Not that she spends much time in Cabeswater these days, but she thinks she would have heard if anything bad had happened to it.

But whatever Cabeswater might do for Amalthea, she's not sure it can give Sweeney what he's missing. Greta sighs, wrapping her arms around herself. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asks him.

He hadn't thought he was, but it feels different here. There are no gods, he's sure of that, but the magic here doesn't feel like any he's ever known before. It feels muted somehow, from everything except the city itself, and he wonders what that means or if it means anything at all. Maybe he's just crazy. It sure as hell wouldn't be the first time, after all, and it'd feel like a nice return to the norm.

"And how many of 'em are at full power?" he asks, not knowing if she'll have an answer for that. It doesn't really matter if she does, because he can feel it. Things don't exist here in Darrow like they did wherever they've come from. He's proof enough of that.

At her question, he shakes his head, testing his hip again before he decides it's probably fine. Well enough, anyway, that he'll be able to get by and get himself drunk enough to forget the pain. "No, love, there's nothing," he says, then smiles faintly. "Unless you know of a place to find a lucky charm."

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