spncentral | Trapped in the past?

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Trapped in the past?

Claudia didn't know exactly how it had happened, but the guy she'd been trying to snag an artifact from had caught her instead. She remembered being dragged through some kind of portal, and a conversation with some very strangely-dressed individuals that would have scared even some of the toughs she'd known in her time on the streets. It had been hours before she really understood what had happened, to get even a slight grip on the foreign words and sights around her. Somehow, she'd been sent back in time, when exactly she wasn't certain, and given over to these scoundrels to do with as they pleased. It wasn't until she saw the city that she even knew where she was. Nobody could mistake Rome, even this ancient shining city.

Her wrists tied together and into a string with the other unfortunates, the only real indignities she'd been spared were being stripped of her possessions and raped. From the little she could catch, they thought she would being them quite a small fortune as a wonder. Maybe even one of the senators would find her worth having, and it wouldn't do to damage the goods unnecessarily. Still, she had quite a few bruises and a blackening eye from the casual 'encouragements' she'd received. A halting attempt at what she knew of Latin and Greek had only resulted in snickering laughter and an incomprehensible reprimand with a threatening knife at her mouth. Apparently their definition of 'damaged goods' didn't include the ability to speak.

Now, she was turned over to the slave auction, and there, nothing could have prepared her for the indignities. Her clothes, much the worse for wear after all the travel were unceremoniously stripped off her in front of the noisy crowd as one man gave a long-winded description of her, enthusiasm clear even through the language barrier. She struggled against the touches of interested parties, only her bonds keeping her from being able to strike back.

She'd yanked away from yet another impertinent squeeze when she finally saw a familiar face. It made her gasp, her thoughts latching onto the name that went with it in what might have been a prayer of salvation, but she had to get his attention. And if he was the one from this time, she couldn't just call him by name. Not his real name. Still, she knew one of those he'd used in the millenia he'd been hanging around pretending not to be an archangel.

"Loki! Help me!" The words were in modern english, and that was probably a mistake, but she was too distracted to try for something more appropriate to the era just now. She had to get his attention, maybe get the eager shoppers to give her some space. She had to get out of here.

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"I didn't expect anything valuable. I can do a bracelet or a cuff," Claudia said. She wondered what would happen if she tried to get some simple coloring materials like liver of sulfur or various nitrates. But that could come later. Even vinegar or ammonia might be new to them, and not something that was impossible. She even remembered reading of an interesting process for staining metal that basically used sawdust and urine.

"I won't disappoint you, I hope."

Best not to get too fancy right off the bat. This is about showing a basic level of competence, not to wow with complicated materials and methods.

"It would be nice," he says turning to start heading out. "Let's get you something a little more substantial to make it easier for you to focus on your work. You can eat as we go. He has a shop that's partly exposed to the outdoors when it's open, so there's plenty of air movement to make working with hot things less miserable."

"Thanks, boss," Claudia said, smiling just a little again. She'd have to think, wishing she had access to more contemporary works on the arts, but that had never been a big thing. The trades were secret, after all, so committing things to paper only meant competition.

She followed him through the streets, wondering just what the day would bring, and if she dared broach the subject of protective leathers of some variety. Still, she could do basic shaping and grinding without much, it was only the heat-treating that bore a slight risk, really. Without power tools, there was less chance of hot metal shavings flying off as one worked.

With a start, she realized she was actually looking forward to this demonstration of skill. "It might be worth your while to set up some kind of a contest, you know. Wagers on how badly I'll fail..."

"Oh yeah that really shows confidence in your skill," he says drily. "I'm pretty sure the only people who'll be paying attention are me, him, any regular customers he may have that want to see the new worker and what sort of goodies to expect from you, and maybe a street brat or two who have nothing better to do."

He would like to not tempt fate. Just have things go well as he keeps seeing what there was to see. Maybe do some checking around for whoever left her here.

"Pity. And I wasn't saying you'd bet against me. I know I'm awesome," she said, grinning wider. "You just have to trust me."

She'd been the one to not only improve upon one of Tesla's designs, but get it into a smaller package. But that was a couple thousand years from now, give or take. "I'll just have to use science."

"Hopefully better science than what's available these days," he says before frowning as a thought occurs to him. "I'm going to need to either teach you crap about stuff like Rome's currency myself or have someone else do it, aren't I?"

Considering it was probably a little much to expect someone to know the ins and outs of things like that when the currency involved is a thousand years or so before their time.

"Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic," Claudia teased, but that might be a good thing. Rome did have a thing for soothsayers and the like.

"Consider my position, master. I think some things might be inappropriate, right? I know how to barter and how to read people well enough to pick up when I'm letting myself be cheated. I once had to find two yearling heifers to trade for a particular walking stick that had found its way into Africa. Highway robbery, but it was the fastest way to get it back into storage."

"If slaves are going to be handling money crap for their masters, they need to be able to do math and understand the money system. At the very least," Gabriel points out before ending the conversation to buy a loaf of bread, tearing off a piece to hand to Claudia while the rest went in his bag.

Claudia took the bread, eating as they walked.

"I'll pick it up quick enough, I bet," she commented between mouthfuls. "I'm good at learning on the fly. That and bottling up lightning in interesting ways."

"Doesn't the language barrier make it a little difficult?" he asks with raised eyebrows. He makes mental notes of the surrounding buildings once again. It might be worth it to move locations to be a little closer, if Claudia gets the job. He had no intention of walking back and forth with her every day.

"It's just that Latin's mostly a dead language when I'm from. Other than some religious elements, really. The pronunciation is throwing me a curve, but I can read a fair bit," Claudia admitted. "We just both agreed it was a little too stodgy when I convinced the future you to shove some languages in my head. My memory's a little foggy, but we may have been rating them based on drinking songs."

"Yeah, sounds like me," he says with a shake of his head. "How many did you go for and which ones?"

May as well know. They might actually be ones currently in use. Albeit in other parts of the world. Probably.

"Greek, a few forms of Egyptian, and would you believe I was a little too drunk to remember everything?" Claudia said, flushing a little. "Granted, so were you at the time. Totally Pete's fault."

She would worry about Pete, but finding artifacts that make people drunk is not necessarily a bad thing. Even if he is a recovering alcoholic. "It'd be funny, except..."

Except everything was different here, and she didn't really have much of a choice on anything.

"Except you now get to have very good reason to know them?" he supplies. He can ask about this 'Pete' later.

Then they're arriving and he's raising a finger in a 'one moment' gesture as he talks to the owner of the shop, letting him know that yes, Claudia was the one and that he's been told she's used to tools that may be a little different than his so she'll probably need a moment to familiarize herself with them.

Then she's being beckoned over to the part of the shop the work was done and Gabriel shoos her in that direction. "You're getting a few minutes to see what you're working with. He'll give you some bronze to work when it looks like you're ready."

Claudia nods, and begins poking around the shop, even as she keeps an eye on the shopkeeper and his apprentices. Even with the language barrier, it isn't too hard to follow along. And then she gets caught up in the rhythm of the work, the feel of the metal, heating and annealing, hardening and softening, bending and getting it set into shape. The bracelet she forms is more of a cuff, an organic form reminiscent of twining vines or rippling water, an s-curve bent around so that it almost seems to meet yet can adjust to fit.

The sample takes a good hour just to rough out, but by then, the owner is content to let her keep working and see just what techniques she brought to bear. Claudia only wished she had more materials, or could layer and pin for color changes. It wasn't the alloy she was used to working, either, but finally, she heated and quenched the metal a final time, hardening it to the finished form and presented it to both men.

Gabriel keeps his look at it fairly quick before passing it over, since he's not the one who has the final decision. "Looks good to me. And to him, I think," he says, talking to her as the bracelet's inspected. "The tools give you any problems?"

The bracelet is now being shown to one of the apprentices to serve as a teaching moment, giving Gabriel and Claudia a couple of minutes to talk.

"Lucky for both of us, metalworking isn't a trade that changes much over the centuries. Other than finding ways so your apprentices don't spend years on a bellows or assisting in hammering," she said, smirking just a little. "It's a bit limiting, but that can be good."

"Just try not to get too much of an ego," he admonishes as the shop owner comes back and it's time for Gabriel to work out exact terms with a quick "Take a break" for Claudia.

It takes roughly twenty minutes for them to get details hammered out with things written down in wax to be committed to paper to make things official once they were sure there weren't going to be any changes. Then there's a quick bit of working things out for the rest of the day, given that she wasn't there for the entire time she would otherwise have been working.

Things settled, Gabriel heads over to Claudia, taking the bread out of his bag and ripping what was left of the loaf in half, wrapping the half for her in cloth and handing it over. "This is your lunch for later. Today's schedule is going to be different than the rest of the days, since you're getting a later start but after today, most of the hard work of the kind done at the forge will be in the morning while the easier stuff is in the afternoon. Adding the finer details to whatever you've made, cleaning up some of the mess, whatever. Got it?"

"I'd ask for a language lesson, but I don't think I could work with the headache," Claudia said, accepting the food. "I'm not that big-headed. I've got a lot to learn that's finesse with the tools at hand. Not to mention trying not to introduce techniques centuries ahead of time."

She could make a mess of things if she wasn't careful, and being trapped here, especially as a slave, was not high on her list. "If only you had a way to leave a timed message for yourself."

"He's aware that teaching you the bits you don't know is one of the things he or his apprentices will be doing," Gabriel assures her. "So, you don't want to leave something to confuse people a couple thousand years from now? Spoilsport."

Oh well. Probably for the best, really. "I think someone might notice a rock with Enochian all over it or whatever."

"Can't exactly tuck it in the Ark of the Covenant for later, either," Claudia said, chuckling. "My first thought was one of your little brothers, but you don't talk to any of them."

She understood that, and why. One feathery git figuring out who Gabriel really was and the whole thing would be over. "I can try to leave a clue or three, but that is incredibly hard to manage without knowing ahead of time something's going to survive."

It would only work if it ended up in the Warehouse, really, and that was one place Gabe couldn't go. And she didn't know where they were in this century. "You don't happen to know a group of shadowy folks who like to meddle in mystical artifacts using the eye of Ra as a symbol, do you?"

"Considering it's buttoned up upstairs, no," he agrees. "And nope. That going to be some poking around I need to do sometime later then?"

Actually he's not going to bother waiting for an answer. "I should go get some stuff done and let you get to work. I'll come get you when he's ready to close up so everybody can go home for the night."

"Not sure how much good poking around would do. You didn't even know they existed until I told you. And you can't even get close enough to knock on the front door in my day, with all the warding. Considering what might react, we both agree it's a good thing," Claudia said, then gave a pretense of diffidence.

"I'll see you 'round, then."

"I also didn't know to look for them," he points out. "We can talk about this later. We both have work to do."

Ugh, work. He didn't come to Rome to work. If he wanted to work, he would have stayed home Upstairs.

He disappears for most of the day, and while there was some entertaining himself, he also did things like move them to another inn, since it was fairly clear she wouldn't cause him problems at this point. And at least this way, she can sleep in a proper bed, even if there'll be mussing of the pallet at the foot of the bed to make it look like she slept there instead. It's not like Gabriel needs the bed so may as well.

He finally reappears when the shadows are getting long, food and decent wine in his satchel. "So. How did things go?" Meant for the owner of the shop, really.

Claudia looks that weird kind of hyper yet worn out that comes after a good day of work in a creative venue. It had been a long time since she could just do stuff because it felt good or she wanted to do it. Still, she just shrugged a little and gathered the cloth that had held her lunch and waited for Gabriel to finish chatting up her new boss for the time being.

Learning about the jewelry business in ancient Rome was not going to be mastered in a day, and she knew she could spend years here and barely scratch the surface. It would definitely keep her busy until they found a way home and give her owner an income and reason to stick around. At least, she hoped it would.

Also, the more she thought about it, the more likely it was that the Empire would be home to the Warehouse's current version. That or somewhere like China or India. It had to be somewhere with literacy and cultural dominance, and one never knew where the strongest draw would be. It would be a lot of work and maybe travel to find the right way home.

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