tampered | Log; Ongoing

Log; Ongoing

When; Friday, October 17th
Rating; PG
Characters; Harry Dresden

dresden4hire and Karrin Murphy

chicagosbst
Summary; Harry meets with his bff from his world. Murphy has the misfortune of being that bff.
Log; Harry was glad that Murphy was in the City, in a twisted sort of selfish way. The two of them had been through a lot of scary things together and as far as Harry was concerned the City was like a vacation. If anyone deserved a vacation, it was Murphy. Harry just had to put up with all sorts of monsters and magical creatures. Murphy had to deal with all of that and Harry. Of course, now she was just getting a vacation from the monsters. Still, it was better than no vacation at all.

So if the first person she wanted to spend time with when she got to the City was Kincaid, that was understandable. Besides, he had to crack a smile at the idea of Murphy and Kincaid playing mom and dad to Ivy.

Which was why he offered to buy her a beer and a meal at one of the local bars to just hang out and talk. There was a lot to discuss in the City, from his engagement to the local law enforcement to how monsters were handled and Harry had the experience to know what sort of things she would want and need to know. That and he just plain missed his best friend.

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Karrin's feelings regarding seeing Harry and being in the City were decidedly more mixed. It had been -- she couldn't help counting -- seventeen hours since she had left him in her world, a few more since she had left Kincaid and Ivy. She had read the Guide he sent her backwards and forwards, almost memorizing every word; she understood that those who left the City were returned to their worlds at the moment they were taken, with no memories of what happened. Theoretically, all the temporal mumbo jumbo made a decent amount of sense to her.

But she still couldn't help feeling that these weren't the real Jared and Harry; they weren't hers. Jared had been here a month; Harry longer still. Those were huge chunks of their lives that she knew nothing about, lived in a world she was a stranger to. In an odd way, she felt left behind.

None of that showed on her face as she entered the bar; her emotions, always kept behind a lock and key, were doubly guarded against these people who were-and-weren't her friends.

Harry held up a hand to wave Karrin over to where he was sitting, standing up when she neared until she sat down. He did it partly to be a gentleman and partly because being that sort of gentleman was the sort of thing that pissed Murphy off. Harry was a good friend like that.

"It's good to see you, Murph," he said, a broad grin on his face that he didn't even bother trying to hide. "Of all the extradimensional cities in all the multiple realities I'm glad you got pulled into mine."

Some things never changed. Karrin grumbled something about "male chauvenist..." as she sat across from him, resisting a childish urge to kick him in the shins. He was disgustingly tall; she could just say his legs got in the way.

"Me too, Dresden," she said, acting like the adult she was. "Not sure what I'd do with my time without you around to cause trouble."

Harry just gave Murphy the biggest smile he could manage as he sat down across from her. It was weird how comfortable he felt with her even in the strange situation like this. Or maybe it wasn't all that weird, considering all they had been through up until now.

"Probably have to take up knitting," he suggested. "I could get you a rocking chair and everything."

Karrin snorted. A friend in college had tried to get her to take up knitting -- said it was great stress relief. She could still remember how awkward the needles felt in her hands, the tension that built up in her body after every stitch. After about ten minutes, she had tossed the needles aside and gone to the gym to work through some katas. After that, she stuck with martial arts for stress relief.

"Think I'll pass on that," she said.

And with that, the pleasantries were over. Karrin leaned forward, resting her arms on the table in a way that would have driven her grandmother crazy. "So. What do I need to know?"

"Well, first and foremost, you might see people here who are fictional characters in our world," Harry said, leaning forward. "It's bad form to let them know they're from fiction in our world. I've been told that there's even a book and tv series about my life. I think you're the plucky sidekick in it."

Harry tried to look nonchalant and buffed his knuckles on his jacket before turning his attention back to Murphy.

"You've probably noticed that all sorts of things that are not human walking around in the City plain as day," he continued. "Not being human is pretty normal and accepted here."

"What?" Karrin didn't like the idea of there being a book and t.v. series with her in it, much less people knowing about it. They either knew way more about her life than they had any right to, or they thought they did. Either way, it didn't seem pleasant. She shook her head. Nothing she could do about it. Instead, she lightly kicked Dresden's leg. "I'm nobody's plucky sidekick, smartass."

She leaned back as he got into the supernatural discussion. "So no needing to lie to the higher ups about who did what," she said. "Must be nice." She gave him a quick grin. "You still the only wizard in the phonebook?"

Harry grunted at the kick but refused to give her the satisfaction of grimacing. To be honest he hadn't been entirely sure that she was tall enough to kick him while sitting at the booth. That would teach him to assume something like that.

"Actually no," he replied. "There are quite a few. Tony, a good friend of mine and a wizard, just recently left here. There are a decent handful of us here though."

"Must be nice." Not being mistrusted by every wizard around you, she left unsaid. He had never talked much about his relationships with other wizards, but she knew it wasn't very good, and that hurt him more than he cared to admit.

"So how's the system here work?" she asked. "Are these deities micro-managers or distant sadists?"

"It's very nice," Harry confessed. "Not that some of the curses aren't bad but compared to home? This is a vacation. No one looks at me like I'm crazy because I'm a wizard, I don't have to constantly watch my back, I have a finacee... I love it back home but I'm not about to not make the most of my time here."

Harry knew that was a lot to take in but he had lived here for over a year total now and he had gotten a life and it was hard to hide that fact.

"They're a bit of both," Harry said with a shrug. He had never gotten all that close with the deities. That just seemed like asking for it as far as he was concerned.

"They don't seem to particularly like their job except for Sabine."

Under normal circumstances, Karrin would have continued questioning him about the deities, the legal system, law enforcement. But one phrase stuck out, almost making her choke on her water.

"You have a fiancee?"

She and Dresden had a bond. Could have been romance, but they'd agreed to keep it friendship. She had her...whatever it was, with Jared, and seventeen hours and fifteen minutes ago, Dresden was going to give it a shot with Luccio. But even with other people, that bond had been strong. They had been two people, used to being alone. Maybe even cursed to spend their entire lives that way.

But this Dresden had found someone to share his life with. Karrin felt...something. She didn't care to know what it was.

"Who the hell'd want to be tied down to you?" she asked, grinning and hoping it came across as the joke it was supposed to be.

Harry smirked a bit at Murphy's reaction. He knew that it wasn't so much shock at the idea that anyone could want to be with Dresden but rather the fact that he had a fiancee that she didn't know about. Friends didn't get better or closer than Murphy and it felt weird to Harry that Murphy didn't really know Ana.

"Everyone makes mistakes when they're young, Murphy," Harry explained. "She's young and I'm the mistake. You know how those Ottoman Sultana's are."

Karrin openly gaped at him. "A sultana? You landed a fucking sultana." The conversation had quickly gone from the strange to the freakishly bizarre.

She eyed him warily. "That doesn't make you a sultan, does it?"

Harry amused grin abruptly faded from his face when Murphy asked him if that would make him a sultan. Would it? Considering there was no kingdom here, he doubted it.

"Absolutely," he told Murphy. "In public you'd have to call my 'your highness' otherwise our honor guard might try and kill you."

"Fat chance, Dresden," Karrin said immediately. "I've read the guidebook. Even if you had an honor guard and they somehow managed to kill me, I can't actually die here."

She took another sip of her water. "So how long have you and your sultana been together?"

Harry expression suddenly turned hard at her mentioning of not being able to die. While that was usually the case, it wasn't always so. Not something all of the residents were aware of.

"Don't start talking like that," Harry said, his voice suddenly serious. "Don't even start thinking it. I've worked with the Police Force to catch a guy that liquefied people and put them in boxes. Those people didn't come back to life. And if you do die here, you can't go back home. If you can't go back home I'm going to spread rumors about you that you ran off to become a cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys."

Harry of course wisely refrained from telling her about his own death in the City. It wasn't really pertinent information, right?

That had been an unexpected landmine. Karrin couldn't keep a slightly shocked expression off her face -- she hadn't expected him to take her little joke so seriously.

She shook off the surprise and decided to leave the issue where it was. She didn't feel like pressing the issue and finding out whether his reaction was just from the things he'd seen or something more personal.

"So you still work with the police, huh?" she asked. "How's that working out for you?"

"I've actually decided to apply for the Force itself," Harry admitted, a decision he had only recently come to.

"I don't like not having access to some of the information about the investigations they're working on," he added, giving her a smile. "I don't have quite the inside edge here that I did back home."

"Harry Dresden, officer of the law?" Karrin quirked an eyebrow. "So for once in your life, you'll actually have to follow rules and regulations." She grinned wickedly. "I'm gonna have to see this."

"Hey now," Harry said, looking slightly offended. "I am an officer of the law back home as well. It's just the wizard law that I officiate. And I don't follow their rules or regulations all the time either."

Of course, a lot of the law he didn't even necessarily believe in. At least not the part that got teenagers killed for things they didn't even know was wrong to do in the first place.

Karrin snorted a little derisively. She didn't care for the wizard laws, or the White Council that enforced them. They were tyrants, operating in secrecy and with little regard for others.

"How does applying for the force here work?" she asked. "I'm assuming I'm going to need a job." She felt a little uncomfortable asking this, like it was a betrayal of the oath she took to Chicago. And perhaps a betrayal to this place, too -- how could she make a promise when she had no idea if or when she'd be whisked back to her own world and her own people?

But she needed something to live on, whether or not she continued staying with Kincaid and Ivy, and in the whole of her life, she had never imagined ever being anything other than a police officer.

"Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye is the head of the Police Force," he said. "Generally you post to her telling her you'd like to join. You need two references and then you take some sort of proficiency exam."

Harry wished that he could have offered her more insight into what the trial would consist of but as of yet he hadn't taken it. He was fairly confident that whatever it consisted of he couldn't handle it.

"Maybe we could be partners. Of course, since I'd have joined a short while before you I'd be the senior partner," he added, leaning back and looking very pleased. "Yes sir, senior partner..."

"Two references?" Karrin frowned. "Isn't that a little hard? What if you arrive here and nobody knows you?" Karrin, of course, didn't have that problem -- Harry and Jared could be her references. Still, it seemed like a flaw in the system.

She rolled her eyes as he went on about being senior partner. "Right," she said caustically. "Please remember that I can and have and will kick your ass from here to Tuesday if you piss me off, senior partner or not."

"Then you have to go out and get known," he said with a bit of a shrug. "It's not as hard as you would think. There's a lot of opportunity to do good here. Not that it's as bad as home, but stuff happens and people need to be helped."

Harry remembered his first few months in the City, it had consisted of a lot of running around helping people. Fortunately things had calmed down a bit since then.

"You remind me to put that on your letter of reference," Harry said. "Which, may or may not earn you points, I'm not sure."

Karrin still wasn't sure what people did for food and money in the meantime, but shrugged it off. People obviously got by somehow, or Harry would seem a lot more upset about it.

"Once they've met you, Dresden, I'm sure it'll work in my favor," she said with a grin. "I don't think I've met anyone yet who hasn't wanted to kick you around the block at least once."

"Hey, I'm not that bad," Harry said. "The only people that don't like me are mobsters. And the Red court. Also the White Court, the Black Court, the Winter Court, the Summer Court, necromancers, most of the White Council, hexenwolves, lycanthropes, Outsiders, the Denarius, people who walk by me using cell phones, people who own buildings I go into... but other than that, everyone loves me."

Karrin stared at him, biting back a laugh. How he managed to say that with a straight face, she'd never know.

"Yeah, you're a real popular guy," she said at length.

"I think it's my sense of humor," he said, taking a sip of his ale. "No one really gets my jokes."

"Right." Karrin rolled her eyes. "And it has nothing to do with your supernatural ability to destroy everything around you. Pun fully intended."

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Log; Ongoing

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