likesthecoat | log for Near: Cardiff

"Yes."

He's quiet a moment. "I mean, I deal with aliens every day. That's my job. And sometimes they're so lost . . . I can't imagine what it's like, looking at a different sky, but the notion of it is just terrifying."

[ooc: Hee. I figured as much.]

Hmm. Near ponders this. He's never actually met an alien, although a Shinigami probably qualifies. They do have their own world, after all.

"I don't think I'd mind, so long as I knew a bit about where I was going beforehand. If Lorne is there, and Sheppard, it can't be that bad. I remember talking about the place with Lorne before I knew where it was, and he kept saying how special it was and how he felt about leaving. I mean... I don't think I'd want to go somewhere if I didn't know anything about it, but... I wouldn't mind seeing where they are."

"Yeah," Ianto murmurs. "He's made it sound so beautiful."

He sighs. "We're still explorers when it comes to outer space. There's so much we don't know."

Near nods, glancing over.

"Of course-- we don't even know our own planet properly, after all. I just mean... I wouldn't want to randomly hop in a ship bound for somewhere utterly unknown. I'd be quite uncomfortable with that. But if it was somewhere people I knew and trusted had been, and I had a safe way home... I couldn't imagine not going." He smiles a little. "The curiosity would plague me too badly."

Ianto pulls the car into a car park and shuts off the engine, and sits still for a moment. "No, it'd just be foolish to hop a ship when you don't know where it's going.

"Look, the only way I can really explain it is you're afraid of monkeys, I'm afraid of space travel. It's not rational, it's not logical, it's just how I feel.

"Anyway, we're here."

"I think everyone has got at least one major phobia hidden away," he agrees quietly. Near actually can explain his monkey phobia, but it is, in some ways, even more embarrassing than if he couldn't, so he doesn't want to explain and make the mood uncomfortable. Or... more uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry," he adds, after a second's pause. "I didn't mean to press you about it."

"It's all right." Ianto smiles at him tightly and gets out of the car.

Knowing what's out there doesn't make him want to see the rest of it.

[ooc: Dozing off. Will be back tomorrow.]

A very touchy subject, then, which Near can kind of appreciate. He would have little desire to visit the Shinigami realm, probably, but... Hm, well, where Lorne was seemed different... He'd never thought much about alien life before talking to some of the people online, but now that he had, his curiosity was piqued, for certain.

He steps out of the car and follows along for a minute, trying to think of something to say.

"I think my curiosity gets the better of me sometimes," he says eventually. "It's gotten me into trouble before..."

"It has that tendency," Ianto says quietly, and then adds, "I know I have to get over this if I ever want to visit Lorne."

Near nods.

"If that's even possible. I don't know if... visiting... is a viable option. It's still a military base, after all, and highly secret. I don't imagine they get a lot of visitors."

[ACK, SORRY! I had a lot of threads going on for a while and this totally slipped my mind. My bad, sorry.]

"No, they don't." He pauses to give his name to the maitre d', and they're taken to their table.

He goes on once they're (relatively) alone again, "Martha seems to think she can take me to him."

Near sits down and bravely fights the urge to lift one leg onto the chair with him. It's easier than usual; apparently the driving lessons have multiple benefits. He makes a point to tell Matt about it later.

"She probably could," he says. "But that doesn't mean that she should. I mean... Not without an invitation, or at least some sort of agreement first. Aside from the personal implications, it could go very badly for Lorne if he were to have a visitor show up on-base without clearance. I know she and Sheppard are... close, though, so maybe that would stand in your favour..."

"Yes, I know." He sips his water. "One of the many reasons I haven't let her.

"I've met the man she travels with. Briefly. I don't care for him."

Hm, that's interesting, Near thinks. He hadn't known that.

"The Doctor, isn't it? Well, I don't suppose you'd have much chance of avoiding him if it's his... ship." That probably isn't quite the right term, but Near figures it will do in the circumstances. "Have you mentioned that to her?" he asks, curious to know how Martha would have taken that. She did seem quite fond of him, after all...

"Yes. The Doctor." He sighs. "She knows. She knows I don't trust him and she knows I don't think she's safe with him, but she tells me I'm wrong. So." He smiles tightly. "Shall we order? The porterhouse is supposed to be very good here."

"I will go with your recommendation, then," he says. "...Well, anything but fish," he adds, just to make the point.

He lets the other subject drop; Near knows virtually nothing of the Doctor, and little of Martha, really, but from the little he does know, he can't imagine that the man would let her get hurt...

Still, there's no point in saying anything, especially considering the fact that Ianto is obviously better-informed, and would be unlikely to take an irrational dislike to anyone. For Martha's sake, though, Near hopes he's wrong.

"Right," Ianto says, smiling for real this time. "No fish.

"So how are things at Whammy's?"

This makes Near smile, too.

"They're good, actually," he says. "It's progressing well. I thought we'd meet more opposition for the changes, but... Well, I'm L now, for one thing, and for another... I think they knew a change was needed, really. The percentage of failures was... quite high," he says quietly, thinking of Mello. And A. And BB... Not to mention all the others who disappeared into anonymous mediocrity upon leaving the Wammys House. "But I don't think there are any potential dangers in the current crop, and I'm going to personally oversee the selection of new children, so hopefully that will make a difference," he says, fiddling with the lip of his wine glass.

It had better, he added silently.

"You're L? What does that mean?"

Near sighs. "...It means a lot of things. L is... Well," Near pauses, trying to sort the information into the best manner possible. "L was my predecessor." He smiles a little. "The world's foremost detective, until he was murdered by Kira. Of course, the general public doesn't actually know that, and the people who do know that the original L is dead also know that I was trained in the same environment --sort of-- so... they're quite happy to let me hold the title," he explains.

He takes a sip of water, and continues:

"I'm not doing things the same way he did, though. L was... L was first. He was raised independently of other children, and I don't think he realized how bad things were for those of us who were being trained to succeed him. It was... very intense, and very competitive. The first child tipped to succeed him killed himself at fifteen. The second became a serial killer, and L ended up having to go after him. And then there was Mello and myself, and they weren't sure which of us L would choose, but he died before he had the chance. They offered us the position jointly, but Mello declined and ended up in the, ah... criminal underground," he says, with a bit of a sniff. Eighteen months later and that still pisses him off. Wonders will never cease.

"...So clearly, this business of spending your entire childhood being trained for a job that only one person can hold is a bit... counter-productive," he says with a shrug. "It's not good for the children, and it's not good for "L". So... While I'm still the 'world's foremost detective', I don't plan on working alone, as he did. But I still command the respect of various governments and agencies, especially after catching Kira," he adds. "So really, when I said I wanted things changed, they didn't have much choice but to go along with me."

He grins at this. Narcissistic, but he's terribly proud of it, really.

Ianto frowns as he listens, but nods when Near is done. "Training children to be crime fighters always strikes me as something out of a comic book," he remarks, "but it could just be the resemblance I see to X-Men talking.

"And you're hardly mutants fighting supervillans. Just . . . ordinary blokes. Who fight supervillans."

"Actually, I was just the one supervillain," he corrects, with a small smile. "I think from here on in, it will be mostly drug cartels and human trafficking rings. At least, I hope so... I really don't want to have to deal with anything like the Kira mess again. That took six years, all things told."

"Six years . . . blimey.

"Still, drug cartels and human trafficking rings are nothing to laugh at. Dangerous work all around." He toys with his glass. He's still got healing cuts from his last dealings with Weevils.

[No problemo, sorry that too a while to write. Sleep good!]

log for Near: Cardiff

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