( one. ) voice • scientia potestas est [ id: nightingale ]

[ettersberg]

[ thomas nightingale does, in fact, know how to use a smartphone. he's owned one for quite a while before the end of the world; google maps in particular has always struck him as rather useful. the knowledge of how to operate such a device comes in handy now as well, though he's not entirely sure yet why he's bothering.

(the answer is peter; peter would want to know and nightingale would hate not to have any answers at all by the time his apprentice wakes up. because peter will wake up, surely. eventually.)

so there is no fumbling, no pauses when the device clicks on except deliberate ones, and a smooth, very british and posh-sounding voice inquiring: ]

It seems magic is not out of the ordinary, here. Someone has already inquired about those who believe in or practice magic, but I'd be interested to hear how magic was regulated, if at all, in your worlds. That, and whether there were particular ill-effects to it.

[ here, there is one of the aforementioned deliberate pauses. ] I'd also appreciate hearing of your experiences with employment.

Thank you.

Comments

[godwins]

I didn't— I didn't see 'em do it, understand. This was back in '42, a couple ticks north of Munich. The place was mostly deserted when I got there. [ He'd caught one of their wizard whatchamacallits trying to flee the scene, but the guy didn't talk much. ]

It was—  [ he's making himself remember, and shuddering ] four, no, five bodies, arranged just so, hung up around something creepy they'd written in blood. The crows were picking at it, by the time I got there. I didn't understand none of it. Like I said, outta my pay grade. You call the Invaders for that.

[ He knows a bit more than that: that they were trying to summon something, and they thought Atlantean blood would do it. And that they'd chased the Red Skull to Antarctica after that, and he'd killed a frost giant. But all of that's classified. ]

Why do you want to know?

[ettersberg]

I was trying to discern if your experiences align with my own.

[ but — ] I doubt we're from the same world, though there seem to be ample similiarities. We were aware enough of the movement of German wizards. Most of their action took place near Ettersberg, not Munich.

[ perhaps if he wasn't feeling quite so numb still from this most recent loss, he'd flinch away from speaking about ettersberg at all. ] Who're the Invaders, then?

[godwins]

[ Bucky nods, not that Nightingale can see it. That was a workable explanation, he'll trust it for now. ]

I think they moved all over. [ They did chase them to Antarctica, after all. Ettersberg doesn't mean anything in particular to him— news the liberation of Buchenwald hadn't gotten back to him yet. ]

The Invaders are a group put together by FDR and Churchill, to deal with the whack-o science experiments the Nazis keep churning out. Stuff like the Super-Axis.

[ A pause. ]

But no one's heard of them here. [ Not even the other Captain America. ]

[ettersberg]

[ in nightingale's world, the german wizards did most of their experiments at ettersberg. which is why that was where british wizards attacked, trying to secure the protocols of those experiments, trying to end them. nightingale hadn't wanted to engage on foot, but his proposal to simply bomb the place had been overruled.

he doesn't know how things would have turned out if they'd listened. maybe he wouldn't have ended up the only sanctioned wizard left in the uk. maybe. (no point in dwelling on that now, is there?) ]

I can't say that I have, either.

[godwins]

Well, there you go. If you were from my world, you would've heard of them. On account of the newsreels, at least.

[ettersberg]

That settles that particular question, at least.

[ a beat. ]

Have you been here for long, Mr — ?

[godwins]

Pvt. James Barnes, U.S. Army. [ That answers a couple questions, he figures. ]

I guess it's been a few months now.

[ettersberg]

Thomas Nightingale. A pleasure.

[ he skips the titles and ranks. what would he use? he hasn't been a captain in the british army in a long time. he isn't detective chief inspector anymore because the metropolitan police no longer exists. ] What do you do, here?

[godwins]

I'm with the guard. [ Bucky's never been anything but in the Army. The U.S. got into the war when he was sixteen, and now he's twenty— the whole of his debatably adult life, being one thing. He'd thought about what he'd do, after, but it was always fuzzy, hard to picture, and now… Well, now was now. ]

You were in the war? [ He knows it's long past for almost everybody. ]

[ettersberg]

I was thinking of joining the guard as well. How do you find it?

[ the war was long past for nightingale, too, but that doesn't mean he didn't fight in it. he's older than he looks, these days. there's a moment's hesitation, some measure of old pain in his tone: ] I fought at Ettersberg.

[godwins]

Better than sittin' around all day. Pay's mediocre, but I'm used to it.

[ The next thing Nightingale says takes him back to that day, chasing those Nazi voodoo priests across Europe and further. The crows had gotten to the bodies by the time Bucky showed up, everything just so but absolutely wrong. He hadn't known what to say then, either. ]

Sorry. [ Which is what he'd said to Namor, whose people it was who got wrung up to the posts. It had sounded stupid to him then, too. ]

I got a friend who always knows what to say, to everybody. Me, I just… [ His voice trails off. ]

[ettersberg]

A glowing recommendation.

[ said not without humour. ]

It's quite all right. I imagine it was longer ago for me than it was for you. [ though for the longest time, he couldn't even mention the word ettersberg without flinching away from the memories, the loss, everything that followed it. ]

[godwins]

Yeah? What gave it away? [ He's being sarcastic. ]

[ettersberg]

You sound not unlike many of the soldiers I met in Germany.

[ there's humour in those words, but it's not the kind that's truly amused or warm. the war is an open wound still, even so many decades after the fact. ]

[godwins]

Well, I was stationed in London most of the war. [ That's a gesture to Nightingale sounding like a stuffy Brit. ]

Funny how so much can be the same over different worlds. We didn't have wizards, though. [ By we he means both 'the Invaders' and also, more generally, 'the Allies'— though he could be wrong about that last one, he supposes, he knows they didn't tell him everything. ]

[ettersberg]

You may have, and simply not known of them. The odds of the Germans having practitioners and there being none in England are rather low, I'd say. In any world.

[godwins]

Sure. I mean, Baron Blood was a Brit, originally. And… I met an American, once, who could cast all kinds of spells. [ Most of his other magical WW2 adventures were mindwiped. ] But organized? Like the Red Skull's goons? I dunno.

[ettersberg]

In my world, British practitioners were organised in the Folly. [ back before the war, when there had been british practitioners still. more than just one, that is. ]

[godwins]

[ He nods; invisible, of course. ] Never heard of it. Is that classified?

[ettersberg]

Not specifically. It simply isn't talked about outside of particular circles.

[godwins]

Wizard circles, you mean.

[ettersberg]

And the higher echelons of government.

[godwins]

Above my pay grade, is what you're saying. I've been pretty important, though. [ Spoken like a true twenty year old. ]

I've met Churchill. Did your world have a Churchill?

[ettersberg]

Most likely. [ important or not, no private of the us army would have been told as a matter of courtesy. if it became necessary due to circumstances, perhaps, but not otherwise. ]

It did, though I've not met him personally.

[godwins]

Funny guy. Good handshake.