onlythebranch | (no subject)

First thing Mad Sweeney finds himself wondering is how she's not freezing her tits off in a getup like the one she's wearing.

It's late. Not many people are out and about this late, but Sweeney doesn't follow any particular schedule and he's been drinking heavily tonight, wanting to keep the bad luck at bay just a little with more than a few shots of whiskey, if it can be managed. Seems that it can be, at least for the moment, and he's on his way home with a cigarette tucked between his lips when he hears the cries for help.

Used to be he'd ignore shit like that. Or maybe that's not right. Used to be he'd care, but be unable to do a damn thing, bound by the laws and rules of what he is. Intervention was only his game when offerings were involved and most of the time, as the Fair Folk were lost to the land of legend, they weren't. But as beliefs have shifted, so have the rules, and for a long time now, at least a hundred years, he's been able to do more or less whatever the hell he wants.

Most of what he's wanted in the past is to be left alone. Now he's no longer sure, so at the sound of the cry, he turns in that direction only to find he might not be needed, because a woman in clown makeup and thigh-high socks has gotten there first and Mad Sweeney is mostly under the impression she's helping. There's another woman, smaller than the clown, and a group of three men and he knows the odds of that fight are still pretty fucking shitty, but he also knows not many women roam the streets at night wearing greasepaint and coming to the aid of others.

Chances are she's not just a woman.

Still, he saunters over, cigarette trailing smoke in the air behind him, the tip glowing in the dark. He moves through the shadows like he had over the rolling fields of Ireland, something only half believed when glimpsed on a starless night, though there's much less romance left in this man than the one who'd taken Essie's offerings and guided her life like a gust of wind.

Maybe he's not needed, but he's seven bloody feet tall and when he walks through the mist rolling off the ocean and comes into focus under the light of a streetlamp, all three of the men turn in his direction.

"Evenin', lads," he says, reaching up to take his cigarette from his mouth. Then he grins at the clown, a fair pinch of madness in that smile. She looks as fucking crazy as he feels some days and he likes her immediately. "Miss."

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Mad Sweeney nods and is quiet for a moment as he takes his cigarette case out of his pocket. When he opens it, he offers it to her first, though he doesn't know if she smokes. It's not that he's polite or that his manners are particularly good, but when he likes a person he can be his own version of kind.

And he likes her. She's fucking weird.

"I find anyone who's lookin', I'll send 'em your way," he says. He doesn't offer himself. She can't help him or fix him or whatever the hell it is someone would want to do with a man like him.

"Thanks," Harley says, "I'm good." She doesn't really smoke these days; when she was younger, it seemed like the cool thing to do, but these days, it feels like it just slows her down. If he does, though, she doesn't mind. "And thanks for that, too. I appreciate it."

She'd ask if he needs to see anyone, but there are a few things about that. First off, she's pretty sure everyone needs to see someone. It's just a fact of life that they could all do with someone to listen to them. Second, she doubts he's interested; most people aren't. And third, she likes him too much to be his therapist. It'd be better if he found someone else.

"So what do you do? Or do you just go around beatin' people up at night and that's your job?"

As he lights the cigarette, his big shoulders rise and fall in response to her question. The way she says it makes it sound like vigilantism, which definitely isn't his area of interest and not something he wants to make himself a name for doing. If he starts up with something like that, everyone will know before long. A seven foot ginger who's drunk more often than not is going to get noticed.

"Don't do much," he admits. "Haven't had a real job in a long damn time."

What he'd done for Wednesday couldn't be considered a job, really. He hadn't been getting paid. Hadn't needed to get paid, doesn't need to get paid now. Wednesday had sent him to start a bloody war and he doesn't want to think on that. It's a good night, he's enjoying himself, and Wednesday can go fuck himself.

"Don't really need to work, though," he adds and he lifts his hand and rubs his thumb against his fingers, producing a gold coin.

"Oh, neat," Harley says, wide-eyed. "Guess that leprechaun magic comes in handy, huh?" That's gotta be what it is, some kind of leprechaun thing or, at least, magic. She's used to magic. Her earliest experiences with it weren't always good, but that isn't the fault of magic itself. It is, like all things, about who's wielding it and what for.

And maybe, sometimes, about who's asking them to use it.

But snapping up gold coins isn't anything dangerous, even if Sweeney himself easily could be. He could probably snap Mistah J clean in two if he had a mind to.

"Kept me in whiskey and cigarettes for this long," he agrees, then flicks the coin in the air. It doesn't come back down again. So many people in Darrow either write it off as an actual coin trick, like he's carrying coins up his sleeves and doing all this shit just to mess with them, but Harley barely even reacts. Like magic is just another fucking thing that comes with life.

He loves it. The lack of belief is what's been killing him back in America and Darrow has given him a healthy dose of belief, but he still appreciates when someone sees what he can do with his coins and doesn't eve blink.

"Seems t'be I'm outta luck these days, but the coins keep comin' and I suppose that's worth something."

"Worth enough for whiskey and cigarettes at least," Harley says. She has a vague memory, though, of leprechauns being supposed to be lucky, and she wonders if that's what he means or if it's just the usual out of luck most people seem to be. Heaven knows she feels that way at times. She went from being happily, madly in love to stuck here, not one single Nazi to fight, not a leaf of Pam in sight.

"Is it just being here that's unlucky?" she asks. "'cause this place is pretty weird sometimes. Not very lucky."

"Nah, it's more of losing my lucky coin that's got me right fucked," he answers and the coin finally comes down again. He catches it and flips it in his fingers to show her the back, the representation of the sun. "A long time ago someone made a mistake and gave me a bit of the sun. The kind of thing a pissant bastard like me should never be able t'lay his hands on, but there it is."

He flips the coin toward her then, because this isn't his coin. It's one of many. None of them the right one.

"But I made a mistake, too, and I gave it away and now the woman who has it won't give it back," he says. "So she has all my luck and I have jack shit."

Edited 2018-06-13 02:37 (UTC)

Harley catches the coin easily, flipping it gently between her fingers to see the sun. When he says someone gave him a bit of it, she can only imagine he means exactly what he says. Well, with the things she's seen and fought, it maybe wouldn't be the strangest for someone to get a little piece of the sun. She rubs her thumb over the design.

"I guess that's not something someone gives up easy," she says, even though her general opinion is that, if it's his, it oughta go back to him. People don't play like that, though. "Is she in Darrow? Maybe we could do a little, uh, convincing."

"No," he says, then laughs. "And even if she were, love, we couldn't. She's dead. And she's fuckin' strong."

He's not sure what sort of magic the coin has imbued her with, what powers it's given her, but she can kick his ass without even trying. It had pissed him off at first and he thinks maybe it still does, but at the same time he thinks it's impressive. She can do things he's never seen anyone do, not even the gods, and it gives him a little bit of pride to think maybe it's his coin that's done the trick.

Not that the coin was his right off.

"It's a complicated story," he says. "But it's the coin that brought her back."

"That's... a lot of luck," Harley says, surprised. She's seen some strange things in her time, but she knows better than to mess with death. It never works out the way people want it to. Death does something to a person, twists them up in new ways, on top of whatever twisting life had done.

"Or maybe not. Bad luck, maybe. I guess it depends."