[center][h1][color=686F91]Harry Walsh[/color][/h1]
[img]http://66.media.tumblr.com/5d3d4f58ec9cc7bdb4fc49543968b215/tumblr_npcfo0Bq131qfds7zo7_250.gif[/img][img]http://66.media.tumblr.com/8a06d11ffbade54443bf1d7b6e9241e7/tumblr_npcfo0Bq131qfds7zo4_250.gif[/img]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaVE4WVlsDQ]Memories[/url][/center][hr][center][b][color=686F91]Location:[/color][/b] Home -> Alf Leyla Salah at Opera Square[/center][hr]

[i][b][color=686F91]“None of us would ever be the same after what we had endured. To some degree that is true, of course, of all human experience. But something in me died in those long years. Perhaps it was a childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places, who do not have to endure war's savagery, will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.”[/color][/b][/i] Leaning back from his typewriter, Harry sat in silence for some time. Writing about the war had never been an easy thing to do, there was always so much to remember, such an intense series of events, as if centuries of one's life had passed in the span of three years. 

It always came as images first, first the good, playing soccer with the Ottomans on Christmas day, stealing cigars from the Officer's bunker to share with the lads, decent memories. Then came with the bad, pictures of the dead, the wounded, the scared and the broken. These lingered longer and there was never quite a way to force them from his mind, and as they stewed then came the feeling. His ears began to ring as he felt the sharp stabbing at his shoulder. The shortness of breath, his neck tightening and the smell of mustard. They were never confined to dreams alone, such a reality where Harry only remembered such horrors in his sleep would have been a luxury to the man, but such a luxury was never to be.

He recalled along with each feeling the instance in which it had been his own, the stabbing feeling in his arm when he was first struck, fallen back off his horse into the warm sands below, stained red with his own and the blood of others, never to be truly washed clean of its desecration at the hands of man. In that moment Harry was convinced he had reached his end, as the fury of war raged around him he allowed himself a moment of peace to come to terms with what he believed his inevitable death, the release from the madness which had engulfed his life. There are things men can do to one another that are sobering to the soul. It is one thing to reconcile these things with god, but another to square it with yourself.

Reaching up to his shoulder, Harry ran his fingers over the jagged scar which still remained, the mark which would forever be with him as a reminder, the only one visible to others, while a thousand more lay hidden, deep inside. He let his gaze drift to the window, it was later than he had anticipated. That was something about wandering in one's own mind, it was easy to forget and ignore the real world around you, especially when that world and the one in your mind had once been one and the same. Pushing himself up to his feet, Harry left his work as it was, still unfinished, still with so much more to be written, as he moved to the door, reaching up to take his jacket and place it on as he moved out.

After the walk to the Alf Leyla Salah, moving inside washed all memories from Harry's mind, all phantom pain, all dreaded and miserable pictures which lingered, forced away by the sound of music and the joyful flow of dance, conversation and drink. Aziza was already in her dance, toward the end, Harry usually arrived sooner, but writing had taken a toll that day greater than usual. He blamed it on the lack of sleep. He watched the dance idly from a corner, encapsulated with the image of her, the sound of the music flowing through him as he allowed a soft smile to split his lips, finally fitting in to the moment of peace. 

As her dance ended, and Harry watched Aziza make her way out and to the bar, he smiled, moving over himself as he pulled out a stool beside her, taking a seat and ordering two glasses of whisky. Both were for him, though in the instance she assumed and took one for herself, he would not particularly care. [b][color=686F91]"You really must show me that dance some time."[/color][/b] He smirked. Harry generally started their conversations with a joke, perhaps it was an ice breaker of sorts, perhaps it was to remind himself of the normality of the situation, of the safety. Either way, the reasoning remained a mystery as his eyes focused onto her, a smile softly resting over his lips.

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[center][h1][color=FFE2AA]William Drake[/color][/h1]
[img]http://49.media.tumblr.com/ff46ab5f5f3b663db052ad5d797359c6/tumblr_o23ey3NKbE1qdhps7o3_500.gif[/img][/center]
[hr][center][b][color=FFE2AA]Location:[/color][/b] Egyptian Museum[/center][hr]

A morning of excitement was often met with an evening of boredom in William's life, at least, that had been the case recently since he'd started making his brief expeditions around Cairo's outskirts. He'd set off early that morning for a tomb he'd overheard an archaeologist at the museum mention discovering late into his digs the evening before, and William had hoped to get there before the team showed up to snatch up something good. Well, snatch up something he had. It wasn't anything particularly fancy, certainly nothing like what he'd been dreaming of recent,  but the small, jeweled scarab was enough to sate the man.

Nevermind the fact that his expedition into the relatively unstable tomb had caused part of it to collapse spectacularly, likely creating considerably more work for the poor archaeologist who actually had uncovered the site. But Drake hadn't known him, and this was a victory in his book, one of many on the path to finding more and more ancient treasures of the Egyptians. Fiddling with the scarab in his hand, Drake moved into the Museum. He felt he never usually did fit in with many of the others there, so many well-dressed, scrubbed up historians and archaeologists, many posh and intellectual. With his casual, sand-dirtied clothes and shoulder holsters, he looked like quite the Rogue. 

As he wandered through the museum, William halted and jumped immediately back behind a wall as he turned a corner. He'd spotted [i]her[/i], the dreaded woman who had been assigned as his liaison at the museum, and in his mind essentially his 'baby-sitter'. He peered back around the corner, stifling an amused snicker as she walked right into the piece of pottery and almost sent it crashing to the floor. He stuck where he was, watching the exchange quietly and from a reasonable distance until she and the curator moved off. Part of William urged him to ignore her completely, to get some work done on his own before he was forced to deal with the girl. But another found a considerably greater desire to mess with her.

Making his way after her as quietly as possible, he didn't seem to particularly care about where she was going, focusing on keeping his presence as unknown as possible as he came up behind her. Once close enough, he reached out, snatching the book from her hand and taking a few steps up ahead of her as he opened it up. [b][color=FFE2AA]"Now what book is your head stuck in this time..?"[/color][/b] He'd ask rhetorically, a smug smirk on his face as he'd flip through the pages, not particularly interested in the content itself, more reveling in the childlike enjoyment of snatching her book.