underlondon_npc | Outside of Muses: Camden Market, Christmas 2032

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Outside of Muses: Camden Market, Christmas 2032

At first glance, the busy street Nix ushers Reid out to looks like something out of a Charles Dickens book, although slightly more sanitised than that. The street is narrow and jammed with stalls selling a massive variety of food, clothing, small animals, tools, odd-looking electronics and virtually anything (and everything) else. Few people in the street look particularly well-off - or particularly clean - although there's a wild variation in outfits, ages, genders and races. There are even horses and carts, although the occasional electric flicker betrays the fact that the horses, at least, are some kind of hologram, and in the sky are pigeons, and odd flying shapes that look as if they might be some kind of motorcycle or quadbike. Far off, and high up, an odd-looking machine like a train or perhaps a tram whirrs and rattles along elevated rails into the distance as it snakes through the tallest buildings.

The overall impression is that of noise and ragged colour and smoky late-afternoon air, all highlighted by the rather incongruous-looking strands of fairylights and the lightly falling snow. London smells odd: not entirely unpleasant, but smoky and damp, with an odd note of petrol and oils, maybe even gunpowder, behind the smells of dozens of cultures' worth of cooking food.

Nix turns to Reid with a laughing, red-lipped grin, gesturing with her furled umbrella. The door she's holding open for him is now that of a pub, the George Cross, with people laughing, shouting and drinking behind them as they had been in Milliways, but unlike Milliways it's far pokier, darker and overheated: it's no surprise that she preferred to drink at the end of the universe, when the opportunity presented itself.

"Welcome to London!"

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She beams at him, and the little girl cuddles into her shoulder.

"The pair of you are going to ruin my rep," she mock-grumbles. "If Ely doesn't break my arm first, anyway. I'm s'posed to be the hardest girl in London, damnit."

Woe, woe is her. Woe, and thrice woe.

"That doesn't mean you can't like kids," he points out.

She chuckles. "You say that, but. Still, won't get my own, so what the hell."

They're about at the river now, and her eyes alight on a group standing on the bridge watching the people skating. On the banks, various enterprising people have set up stalls selling hot drinks, mulled wine and various accoutrements for skating; the smell of spices and sugar hangs fatly in the air. The little group on the bridge are noticeable not because any one is visibly much like the other, but they are somehow slightly apart from the rest of the crowd: they hold themselves a little differently, and their eyes are wary and alert even as they talk and laugh.

Spike barks a greeting to the collie-cross and the Staffordshire with them, sprinting forwards as the humans look around.

Nix hangs back long enough to offer Reid another reassuring smile. "My lot're all right, don't worry. Most of these know about the bar, too."

Blink.

"Really? Have they ever been there, or is it just you?"

"Most of this lot've been, yeah." She laughs. "We borrowed some of the patrons for a job, a bit back."

A job that consisted of stealing diamonds out of the British Museum. Ahem.

"Y'okay to go say hi?"

Being introduced to a group of strangers is a bit daunting, after all. Especially when you're turning up on their friend's arm.

"...I. I can try," he says. Yeah, it's a bit intimidating.

"They’re nicer than I am." Nix hesitates for a second, then gives him a very brief peck on the cheek. "You'll be fine."

Famous last words, it's true, but he probably will be.

The over-riding impression given by the group on the bridge is ‘young and scruffy’ – the oldest are in their early thirties, but most of the seven or eight adults are in their twenties or late teens. None are dressed alike, though there’s a definite trend towards well-used army boots and battered fur-lined coats hiding – or not hiding – a motley assortment of weaponry. Most are chatting as they watch the skaters, but one or two seem to be on informal sentry duty, even here. The first to notice Nix and Reid is one of the older ones, a tall white woman with an eyepatch and curly dark hair, as her good eye fastens on the sleepy girl on Nix’s hip and she goes sprinting to meet them.

"Elodie!"

"Found her in the metal market a couple’a minutes ago, thanks to Spike," Nix explains, gratefully handing the dozing little girl into the woman's open arms. "Go to mam, Ely. Was she gone long, Meda?"

Whatever the woman replies is drowned out, however, as a very tall, very young, very pretty black girl with a sweet face and a thick mane of waist-length dreadlocks detaches herself from the group to meet them. "Nix!" she demands, "Who's the stranger?"

Nix grins as she fends the younger girl off with her free arm. "This is Spencer, Firefly. He’s from the bar. Bright Spark, this is my kid sister, Threnody."

To his credit, Threnody doesn't get him to blink any more than he already is.

"Ah, hi, nice to meet you." He meets a lot of people - some of them quite strange - in his line of work, but the people Nix has been introducing him to... really take the cake.

"Pleased to meetcha!" Threnody grins at him engagingly over Nix's shoulder, her piercings (silver hoops all around the edges of her ears like her sister's, a blue stud in her eyebrow, a pink stud in her nose, and a ring through her lower lip) glittering in the dying light as she moves. "She kept you out of trouble?"

"It'd be a first if she has," remarks Ely's mother quietly, still holding her daughter close. "I'm Meda, Spencer. You'll have t' forgive me not shaking hands."

"That's all right, I understand," he replies. "...Ah... we've managed to stay out of trouble so far? But I understand that these things are by no means guaranteed."

"These days the Peelers stay out of here if they've got any sense, but s'never a hundred percent," agrees the next to meet them: a wiry young man with a West Wales accent, cigarette in one hand, who’s wearing a short leather jacket and no gloves despite the cold. He's a couple of years older and an inch or two shorter than Nix, heavily scarred and tattooed, and he eyes Reid warily from under a mop of sandy hair. "Spencer, yeah? I’m Gryff – Nix’s best friend.”

When he offers a handshake, it’s clear his ring finger is missing.

"We've been hunting all over for that kid," he says, nodding at Elodie. "Which reminds me - the Abbess's still out lookin'. Jack, bring her in?"

"On it," answers a tawny-haired woman who might be a hunter in her belted long leather coat and riding boots, her rifle strapped across her back; she whistles to the three dogs and trots off with them into the alleys.

"A pleasure," Reid replies, shaking Gryff's hand without hesitation, though the missing finger does get another blink.

"Yeah, you too."

"I noticed you sent one of the ones that've never been to the bar," Nix says; she's quieter now, less eager to show off while they're surrounded, and though she's not defensive she did take care to put herself more or less between Reid and her group.

Gryff grins at her, and it's an attractive grin, though he doesn't use it often. "Well, yeah. There's just Carmody, now, and I think they're distracted for the time being."

Nix nods, looking over at the rest of the group, most of whom have stayed on the bridge for the time being, although there are plenty of curious looks directed Reid and Nix's way. As far as the adults go, there’s a short, shrewd-eyed plump girl, a black rose perched at a rakish angle on her blonde-and-pink dreadlocks; a slim, coffee-skinnned man in his late twenties with black curls and a tired face; a short blonde pixie of a girl with lively eyes, whose array of knives on her belt suggest she’s probably the Eden Nix was shopping for earlier; a tall, androgynous twenty-five-year-old with spiky dark hair, high-heeled boots and a perpetually wary look; and a dark, slightly older man in a faded blue keffiyeh with a gentle face and a soldier’s bearing.

Besides Elodie there are three other children with them, presently busy sliding on the ice: a shy-looking twelve-year-old boy in dungarees, his dark hair in neat cornrows, a sturdy, sharp-eyed ten-year-old boy with a shock of white-blonde hair, and a cheeky-faced seven-year-old girl, well muffled up, sporting blonde bunches and distinctive red wellington boots.

"Almost all here," Nix comments, and Gryff and Threnody nod. "Just Jack, the Abbess and Romilly left." She glances at Reid. "We'll be headin' back when they turn up. Should be able to find a door for you along the way, though."

Reid nods.

"It's been nice visiting," he says. "Very interesting, too; it does make me wonder, just how things will turn out back home, you know?"

"Yeah." Nix's expression clouds over: she's wondering if her birth parents are still alive in Reid's universe, or if they even exist at all. Gryff takes a long drag on his cigarette, shaking her shoulder lightly.

"Smile, Baldy. Lookin' like a hen left out in the rain's my job."

That makes her grin and poke her tongue out. "Cheeky bastard."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Gryff rolls his eyes at her, smirking at Reid. "She's so mean to me."

"You're both as bad as the other," Threnody declares. "Hey, did you two hear about Eden's run-in with the Ripper?"

"How could we?" demands Nix. "We only just got here. What happened?"

"Let Eden tell it, Threnody," Meda interrupts. "She'll play hell if she doesn't. Reckon you can cope with a bit more of our mob, Spencer? I don't think I've seen that girl on her own once since I've met her."

"...The Ripper?" he can't help but asking.

Nix nods. "We get them every so often - must be the bloody smog or somethin'. Some twerp decides 'e's Jack the Ripper back t'life or some such bollocks, and well... you get the idea. But if he's run into Eden then this is going to be interesting."

He nods; he gets it.

"Yeah... Uh, how thorough is the, ah... imitation?" he asks. "I mean, do they try to copy every detail of his MO, or do they tend to have their own unique psychoses?"

Gryff shrugs, neatly flicking his spent cigarette into the snow. "Depends on the idiot. There's been, what, three now?"

"Four if you count the one I sorted out over in Brixton two years back," says Nix. "Though that might've just been your average rapist in a daft get-up. Once he pulled the knife, I didn't let 'im give me chance to find out."

"This one's been keeping it pretty close to the classic model, far as I heard." Meda glances at her daughter, now sleeping soundly in her arms, then at Reid. "Want me to call Eden over?"

"Sure..." he says, almost absently. "Four? Really? I'd think it would get... old."

They would be far less likely to get caught if they didn't imitate the Ripper; of course, it could be that they were trying to get caught, trying for notoriety, more than anything else, and that would change the profile he had already started automatically building, too.

"They don't," says the woman grimly, "Not if we can help it."

Threnody is oblivious to Reid's thoughts, but Gryff, older and paying more attention, raises his eyebrows silently at Nix and gets a tiny nod and a warning shake of the head in return.

Meda whistles, meanwhile, and the set of notes must be a code because the blonde, knife-carrying teenage girl leaves the larger group to trot across to them accompanied by the keffiyeh-wearing man she'd been talking with.

"You rang?" Eden asks. As soon as she speaks, she's unmistakably Irish: a jaunty, lean seventeen- or eighteen-year-old of an inch or two over five feet tall, wearing a short parka, calf-high riding boots and an air of invincibility despite her height. She gives Reid a bright-eyed, flirty look as soon as she reaches them, unabashedly looking him up and down. "Oh, hello." Her smile is frankly wicked. "You're gonna have to introduce y'friend to everyone, Nix, before Celia gets so curious she goes bang."

"Uh, hi, I'm Dr. Spencer Reid," he says, offering his hand to shake. There's a slight hesitation as he remembers to omit the SSA part; it's kind of hard, with the way that his mind is working right now.

It is, however, definitely for the best that he remembers with this little group.

"Pleased to meetcha." Eden smiles up at him, eyes dancing as she shakes his hand. "Eden Bright. D'you always give y'name all formal?"

"Eden," the older man says warningly, "Play nice." He offers Reid a sleepy-eyed, slightly apologetic smile and a little wave, but no handshake. "I'm Ariel - Ariel Mohammed. I take it you're from Milliways?"

"Well... Depending on how you define 'from,' that could be an accurate statement," he replies. "Pleased to meet you both."

Ariel smiles again. "Ah, a pedant. I may have to rethink telling Eden to play nice."

The blonde girl shoves him playfully. "I am so bullied," she tells Reid sorrowfully. "You should take pity on me."

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