A Voice of Reason {Doc}

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It would take a skilled onlooker to know precisely what Gandalf was doing. The unskilled onlooker would assume that Gandalf was packing for a trip of some kind. This was, on the surface, quite true. For there was a bag and Gandalf was placing objects into the bag. He was also pausing to study those various objects, weighing them considerably before either adding them or placing them back upon the shelf from which he retrieved them. A more skilled onlooker would realize that Gandalf was, in fact, planning one of those trips.

This was a man who'd purposefully rode to a country with uneasy politics simply to study something. He'd borrowed a horse from a deranged king, rode it several hundred miles, fought off dark liches, and generally did whatever it took. And that was in the first chronicle of the triad that seemed to show his greatest work. Now, it was quite clear that the wizard was, in fact, planning something.

Gandalf paused, looking about the room with that look of consideration again. He reached into his pocket, pulling out the phone. It transformed into a staff. With this, Gandalf again circled the room, this time tapping objects and listening to the ringing that came from each. He'd gone partway around the room when he heard what was likely a cough or a few words. He would then turn, blink at the visitor and nod.

"Right, we were due to head out for drinks tonight, weren't we? I'm afraid I might have to cancel..."

[neon1]

Doc had let himself in after knocking for a bit, and had stood with his thick brows slightly raised for a decent handful of minutes. His eyes tracked Gandalf's movements thoughtfully, but finally it was probably time to drag his friend's attention to his presence. He cleared his throat; when a dwarf did that, the sound had been liked to rubbing two handfuls of gravel together.

It did the trick.

"You do look a bit preoccupied," the doctor said, waving away the news that the wizard wanted a rain check. He'd gathered that. "From the looks of it, I'd say you were about to run off with a bunch of hobbits again," his voice dry, Doc sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He felt tired, he had no doubt he looked pretty ragged too. The students were getting scared, and even without that, Charming was back and was asking questions about Snow that he didn't have answers to... because she hadn't talked to him either.

Oh, and the army at the gates.

And now this. "Planning on a midnight quest?" Doc asked, glancing pointedly at the bag. "Did I interrupt your preparations for a one man reconnaissance mission?" While he was aiming for dry, maybe a little witty, the former jewel inspector thought personally he just sounded, well, a bit clinical. He cracked a smile, tried for a joke. "Someone lose the one tiffany bracelet now?"

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"No Hobbits here, unfortunately," said Gandalf, favoring Doc with a quick smile. "Just one dwarf and that elf, mores the pity."

Gandalf considered his bag again. He knew he had to do this; someone did, at any rate, and he wasn't sure he was quite willing to sacrifice students. They'd already sent Arthur, that Viking girl, and the Charming boy into the jaws of the beast. Well, sent was perhaps too strong of a word: the trio had taken the mission upon themselves. Didn't change the outcome.

"I need to study the outlying fields of the enemy camp," explained Gandalf. He took a deep breath, looking back to Doc. "Though I have thought of suggesting that the defenders gather and present ourselves to our opponents. It would be much better if we had more information than what the children were able to gather.'

Gandalf paused, sighed, rubbed his face, and looked around his room. "I don't suppose you see a scrying glass of some kind? Legolas took it upon himself to redecorate my office, and I still haven't found everything. why the elf can't just stick to playing with his hair is beyond me.

[neon1]

Doc managed a grin at that one; he'd heard Legolas was around though had yet to run into the elf himself. No matter the elf's past friendships; dwarves and elves were not exactly natural friends. Still, he couldn't help but feel a little twinge of pride at being, maybe inadvertendly, compared to Gimli, son of Gloin. Foolish, maybe. A bit of a throw back to the axes and the mines.

The smile left quickly as Gandalf mentioned the students. That was... that was regretable, that they had felt the need to take that upon themselves. It could have been a disaster. It had not been, but the risks...

"You've taken that upon yourself, have you?" Doc asked dryly, then glanced around the room. "I liked the speeches, by the way." he smiled, remembering the courtyard. He'd stayed at the back, watching from a perch on a foot stool, next to one of the new magic teachers who'd stood ramrod straight the whole time before muttering something about 'men, always about who wears the crown' and going off to help the medics.

Glancing at the wizard with raised eyebrows, Doc made a show of patting down his pockets. "Must have left it in my other pants," he said slowly, then shook his head. "I'm a dwarf, Greybeard. We're not magically inclined." Now he was worried; it wasn't like Gandalf to be even a little absent minded. "If we're not going to get a drink, then you can at least sit down at talk to me for a little," the doctor suggested, taking his own cue and climbing into a chair.

He paused, and looked down for a moment. No point in beating around the bush; wasn't a chance to ease into it like there might have been at a bar. No, best to just voice how he felt. that was what he was always suggesting others do, at any rate. He took a breath and looked up, his face lined with fatigue.

"Maybe it's the dwarf in me talking, or maybe it's the psychiatrist, but I do feel I need to voice my concern about the fact that the staff seem to have placed the collective responsibility of this whole mess on the shoulders of an eighteen year old boy."

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"Thank--" began the distracted wizard before turning to look at the dwarf. Gandalf's eyes narrowed for a moment, and he raised a hand, a finger pointed toward the dwarf. "You're being dry aren't you?"

With that, the wizard pulled himself away from his preparations, facing his friend and comrade full on. This happened to coincide quite nicely with Doc's own suggestion that Gandalf do precisely this, so things went through fairly well. Gandalf found he couldn't quite find a perch, as he'd managed to cover much of the available seating with various charts and piles of items that he figured he might need. The wizard settled for leaning against a table.

"My apologies," he said, waving a hand. "It's one of those circumstances where there's a lot to do and not a whole lot of time to do it. I have things that only I can do, and I'd rather make sure they get done before things get... worse."

Specifically Gandalf was thinking of the orb that Eve had possessed and how she'd tricked him into fueling it. True, he'd entered that trap willingly enough, but that was hardly what was haunting his mind and memories. The lanky wizard folded his arms around his chest and gave Doc a level gaze.

"this would be your patent concern over the students falling into their roles rather than rising up to meet them?" he asked. He gestured, almost dismissively. "The young man has been raised to lead since birth. He's in his twenties, by the way, so you can call him a man. Furthermore, he has a group of knights that have also been training for years. This is simply a matter of helping Arthur reach his destiny, and, well," Gandalf gestured again, "he has the boy wizard to help, not to mention the aforementioned knights."

What Gandalf left unspoken was what most knew about the Arthurian court and its heroes: they fell apart. Already Gandalf had his suspicions: there was something in the way Sir Levain reacted to Arthur that didn't quite sit well with him. Plus several of those knights seemed to be a bundle of problems themselves: from Gawain's philandering to Brianna's (if you could count her) gender identification issues. Still, Gandalf had faith.

"Not everyone ends up as in Snow's position, you know," he said, nodding. "Speaking of: I've heard that her prince has arrived..."