And what a night it had been... The patrons tonight made Lanister work for his pay, what constantly ordering and asking for their drinks, growing rowdy after only a few several and forcing him to kick them out only for the process to start all over again. By the end of it all, the tainted blood had kicked out each and every person that had entered his fine establishment with steel-tipped boot and it had drained his energy more than any other night... Half-heartedly, the brown-haired, red eyed man began wiping down his bar, cleaning up all the alcoholic and crumby residue that was left ever so generously by tonight's paying customers, his other hand running though his hair as he contemplated how he would EVER make it through tomorrow. Of course, it was long after this thought that he started laughing, amused by how easily he had grown accustomed to his lifestyle of freedom and relative comfort. Here he was, with a job he liked, a wonderful wife, two beautiful children, and he was complaining...? Only a few decades ago, he would've given anything just to have another scrap of food, let alone a break off work! He'd have to work on what he took for granted... Make that a personal goal...
Suddenly, Lanister's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening, the little bell above ringing to signal it's swinging ajar.
"Sorry. We're closed." He projected across the bar, not looking up from his current target of effort... gods bless him if he ever got these stains off the marble... heh... Maybe when he did, Boss would put him in for a promotion... When he didn't hear the door open and close again, the exasperated bartender finally looked up, his sanguine eyes immediately flipping up to the door.
"I said we're clo-" He stopped suddenly, surprised by what he saw on the ground before him, a little girl covered in so much grime, one might've thought she had been enveloped by the street itself... Her dark green hair was a mess, tangled and matted with more grime and her clothes only mere rags... On her neck, an iron clasp with a chain dangling behind, cut off at the end as if she had only recently escaped slavery... And she struggled to sit up, her little, wasted body hardly able to support her own weight anymore.
It was as if Lanister's heart had stopped in his chest for a split second as he processed what had just fallen into his bar. In that split second, memories of Lanister's own slavery flashed through his head, his times before living on the street, surviving of garbage and rats... His time during when his blood was drained from his body and he was mistreated at every opportunity... What lay there before him seemed to be a physical manifestation of his sheer helplessness from those times, a blast from the past made manifest...
Another split second later and he was at the little girl's side, leaping over the bar he was supposed to be cleaning and kneeling down by her side, to check the dirty little girl for wounds from her tumble in. Most people would turn their backs on someone like this, someone who nobody would miss, someone everyone would appreciate disappearing... But Lanister knew what it was like to be one of those "untouchables..." one of those "undesirables..." He WAS one for most of his life... No one should feel that pain for a SECOND more than they had too...
"Hey." Lanister greeted, smiling reassuringly, a damp cloth from his time at the bar in one hand, raising it to her arms and legs to wipe the mud and crusted dirt off and away from her bruised and scratched skin. "Are you okay...?" Whether or not she answered, the brown-haired bar-tender would gently push the door to the bar closed all the way with his foot, all the while tending to this girl. "Are you hungry...? Thirsty...?" These were all questions he wished he was ever asked back in his times as a wretch on the streets... No one ever said anything... Just either looked through him or past... He was not those people... He wouldn't be...
