I've seen your flag on the marble arch

[tryingitall]

Balthazar, when seen around the Nexus, is usually obnoxiously upbeat and cheerful. Downright perky, even. He's a gregarious angel, a little mouthy, but quick to joke and slow to judge. His reward for being peculiar by his kind's standards has been spectacular: the love of his life, a built-in family, and a number of like-minded friends, some angelic and some not. If he just stayed in the Nexus and ignored his own world forever, he'd easily be content with what he has.

The multiverse isn't that simple, though. He's still in contact with his home and at least one of his brothers, and there's still a war going on there. As much as he wishes he could stay on the sidelines of it completely, he knows, rationally, that that isn't a possibility. Not forever.

Right now, he's seated at a cafe table with the dregs of a bottle of Glenmorangie, which he is classlessly swigging straight out of the bottle. There's a bag from a pet store beside him, but in his lap there's a notebook, and he's scribbling in it, with a fine sepia pen. No one save another angel is likely to be able to read his notes; they're in Enochian.

"I have too many questions to ask, I think," he says, adding a flourish to one of the sigils on his page. "What would you do if your family was divided, violently, and at war? How can you reassure a brother with the weight of the world on his shoulders? Why does history repeat itself?"

He takes another gulp of Scotch. "At what point does remaining a neutral party in a war become just...irresponsibly letting shit happen to the innocent?"

"There are dozens of people I could ask for help, but what exactly would I ask them to help me with?" Pause. "Well, that one's rhetorical, I suppose."

"Would someone like to bring me another bottle of liquor? This one's almost out."

Comments

[tryingitall]

Were Balthazar questioned, he would admit to being a drunk with an occasional angel habit. He's lucky that his Grace burns off alcohol at a high rate--or maybe he's not, because that makes it very expensive to get drunk on human-made liquor. But at least he cannot, as far as he knows, take any permanent harm from his habits.

As far as he knows.

He smiles at Thor, recognizing him and immediately welcoming, but damn the god is a lot the worse for wear than the last time he saw him. "It's been a while. Sit with me, won't you?"

Oof. He grimaces sympathetically, knowing very little about Thor's family situation, but well-versed enough, and empathetic enough, to recognize there are real parallels here. "I never actually knew my Father. Just got information passed down from my oldest siblings, and apparently they were mistaken about almost all of it."

[pirateangelbaby]

He doesn't need to ask twice. Thor sets the jug down on the table between them with a heavy thud and pulls out a chair, its legs screeching a little at being dragged across the pavement.

Thor runs a hand through his hair, fumbling the worst of it out of his face, and nods towards the jug in a silent offer to share. "Did he lie to them too?"

[tryingitall]

You don't have to ask him twice, Thor. Balthazar picks up the jug and sniffs the contents before taking a swig. It's definitely stronger than what he was nursing, before, and when he sets the jug back down he gives that pleased grimace some people do when drinking strong stuff.

"I owe you for that," he tells him. But Thor's mental state has him concerned now--either he's a very melancholy drunk or he's just a very sad Thor who's getting drunk to cope with that.

"I can't be sure," he says. "Someone definitely lied to someone along the way. Whether it was our Father, or Michael, or someone or something else. Which is a large part of the problem now."

"I've got two very charismatic brothers arguing over the fate of the planet, and I'm caught in the middle, is the long and short of it."

[pirateangelbaby]

It's good that the jug is large enough to share, even though it'll mean he runs out faster. Thor tugs it a little closer to take another swig of his own, before returning it to the no-man's-land of the table between them, well within reach of either of them. Family shit like this can be too awful to cope with sober, and far be it from him to stand in the way of someone else drowning their sorrows.

He waves off the declaration of debt and listens, though some of the nuance is clearly being left out. "None of you's in charge by yourself, I take it. You stuck in the middle 'cuz both of them have good arguments, or bad ones?"