fandomhighdorms | The Pool, Sunday Morning

Sometimes, the wanderlust struck at the strangest moments. Perhaps Adah could place the blame slightly on Igor's missing experimentation, but another morning of sitting in her room, reading her books, commiserating over the laundry list of basics classes she didn't want or need to take at college seemed positively stiffling. Whatever it was that had escaped the mad lump scientist's clutches was unlikely to have made it as far as the dorms, perhaps, but Adah wasn't feeling like exploring much with the current weather and location conditions. Certainly no exploring the wilderness here as she had other places; ice and limps were terrible combinations. And she knew her last venture into the basement had not revealed labyrinthine tunnels and passages like she had hoped, but she had hoped that perhaps, at this hour, the pool she knew to be there would be empty, and perhaps the lights on the chlorinated water against the subterranean walls would be relaxing, like waterlogged catacombs of her favorite lore.

But the pool wasn't empty, although it had retained the quiet mood she had imagined. There was a boy, bouyant with spread limbs on the slightly bobbing water's surface, like driftwood, like flotsam. Draobrevo nam. Or yob, in this case; he couldn't be a day over fifteen unless he suffered from some decreased aging disease, the kind of which she'd read about numerous times. Adah's head tilted slightly, and she watched from the doorway. His chest was moving, although slight, so she knew he wasn't dead. Just floating, suspended in the water and just...being.

He had felt them watching him before: the boy at the picnic had watched him for several minutes before he'd spoken. Now, it was happening again. The noise the other made as they came in nearly knocked him out of his thoughts, but he wouldn't let them. Let them watch me, he thought again, rebelliously, let them watch me and I'll do nothing.

It didn't last. It was new, here, and unexplored, and he'd heard something a little off about the other's movements. Curiosity made him pry his eyes open as he continued to bob gently on the surface.

What was it that the people here said? He recalled the slang, this time. "Hi."

He hadn't responded at first; it was unlikely that it was because he hadn't noticed her. Adah lacked a certain grace just as she lacked the majority of the feeling in her right side, so one would have had to been mentally an idiot to not notice her half the time, although she was quiet when she wanted to be, and this was one of those cases. Still, it was the little things that clued her into the fact that he had in fact noticed her and was choosing to ignore her watchful eyes. The slightest, barest tensing of muscles, a natural response, probably unconscious, a defensiveness of sorts. Slight, but noticeable to someone who knew what to look for and could notice the way the slight change rippled the water, though just barely.

But then he gave in, opening his eyes. Addressing her. Adah shook her head lightly, held up a hand. Please, no. Don't let her interrupt. She was content in being just a mere, silent observer if he was content in being observed. But perhaps that was why he'd addressed her, because he wasn't. Most people weren't.

Patience had always been a virtue, if not in the way whoever had coined the phrase had intended. She hadn't reacted with words; she hadn't been startled, and so he'd take both gesture and silence as his answer. If she had a reason to be here, she'd make it known with time. He could wait. Their patience always ran out quicker than his did.

But he was going to take the moment to observe and categorize on his own-- most noticably, there was a certain odd weight to her. Like her body had been damaged, half of it refusing to work along with the rest of it. The movements, the silence--

Ender had a feeling she wouldn't say anything at all. And so his eyes shut again, and he imagined being in the Battle Room, except it wasn't a Battle Room, it was just him, and there were no gates, no suits, and he couldn't fall anywhere at all.

Once the boy's eyes closed again, Adah allowed a slight grin. Most people minded; he, apparently, didn't, but in an odd way. Acknowledge, and then continue with what he was doing before, and what was that? Probably retreating into his head. Something about the weightlessness of water (she felt a slight stiffening in her spine, a shudder racing up it and attempting to straighten her out for a brief moment before she settled back into her usual slump) that helped maintain his thoughtful sphere. A rare specimen, so far, if he truly didn't mind her just observing. Not yet at least. Perhaps he thought she'd get bored and leave him alone.

She might. Not for a while, though, and, knowing this, Adah pushed away from the support of the doorframe and limped further into the room. Her slow, dragging movements led her to the closest chair, and she very carefully sat herself down, perched on the edge of it like a bird on a limp. Hand settled in her lap. Still watching quietly and carefully.

Dog and cats would twitch and shift in their sleep as they dreamed. Sometimes humans did the same.

It still wasn't the same, but it was enough to pretend. Valentine had pulled him from the water back in Greensboro, but Valentine would not come for him now. No promises, no threats, no shared memories twisted to make him bend to anyone's will. He was alone.

Without Valentine. But then no one would come for him. He supposed he would have to be content in that, alone in his Battle Room with only a silent, crippled girl for company. His face shifted with the force of the frown. A single movement of his foot sent a trickle of water splashing back down into the pool.

He clung stubbornly to his illusion, but he could already feel it slipping away from him. He wanted those thoughts to leave him alone.

Cassandra wasn't a huge fan of swimming, though it wasn't bad. It was, after all, a physical activity.

What she was a fan of was quiet, and stillness though, so she found herself in the area near the pool on a surprisingly regular basis. Today, however, it was not as empty as it generally was.

At least it was still and quiet. She paused in the doorway, pulling her shirt more tightly around herself as she tried to decide whether to just come back another time. But that would mean she had put on the bathing suit for nothing, and she didn't like that idea.

The pool hadn't been as quiet and empty as he'd thought before-- but sharing his space wasn't new to Ender, and so he acknowledged the newcomer with the opening of his eyes. He wondered if the people would continue to watch him. He wondered why they did: to analyse, to plot, or just because they didn't have anything better to do.

He wondered if he was up for caring about it. At least no one had recognized him, so far.

Dogs and cats, always chasing tails or mice or foxes that they could never catch, in their dreams. The same with humans. Adah's head tilted at the crease of a frown; her eyes shifted to follow the arc of the splash, interrupted by a shift of toes and feet and bones inside and muscles connected to it. They balanced, in a way, the frown and the arc.

Something was bothering the boy. Adah realized that she should have figured that out well before the frown. He was...fourteen, was her guess, but there was something about him that made it difficult. There was a certain carriage to his frame, and an odd build of his frame in general, that made the usual assumptions confused. Fourteen was good enough, though. Fourteen and at a new school, a boarding school, no less, without parents and relatively lax rules, which most kids would find exciting. Most kids would seize the chance to milk it for all it was worth until they grew bored or got in trouble. This kid, though, had awaken earlier than he needed to, gone down to a pool (did he know it was there or was it an accidental discovery, like when she first located it?), and had chosen to do nothing more than float around in it, close his eyes, and escape to some imaginary world inside his head.

She should have figured this out before the frown, but she didn't. The frown reminded her, though, and now Adah was frowning a little herself. This kid was different; really different. And that intrigued her, as if she'd been staring at the school as a cluster of microbes through a microscope, watched as they all responded to a stimulus in the exact, predicted, medically researched fashion, except one. One that drifted off to the side, exhibited no reaction besides its attempted isolation, and that was the one you extracted carefully, isolated more, and kept a closer eye on.

After another moment to study him Cassandra decided that she could use the pool without being too disturbed. For now, at least, it was occupied by people who were quiet and still. They wouldn't intrude upon her if she needed her space.

She hoped.

Still, it was people, so she decided it would be more comfortable to keep her shirt on as she slipped into the water.

Snakes; that was it. Snakes. The snakes that had found him at the end of the world. And like itty bitty snakes, they invaded, a cluster of snakes at the bottom of his Battle Room, leering up at him. Kiss them or kill them, whatever Ender might have wanted, he couldn't reach them. He remained, drifting, with nowhere to push off and nowhere to go.

His eyes flickered open, fixing their stare at the ceiling up above. He was being watched, and he would not show this. The weak, jaded tiredness that had swirled around his mind for the past three years was to be left bottled and corked, and his watcher wouldn't get any of it. It was his.

It was his, and he had to do something with it. His weight in the water didn't shift with the knowledge. But after three years, he knew that Valentine had been right: that men and women weren't made to drift on lakes all of their lives. He wondered if a raft would cut it, this time, and the irrational urge bubbled up in him to ask the girl.

He let the urge drift as easily as his body. Pointless.

He wasn't going to pass comment. She seemed cautious, almost wary-- Ender supposed he could reach out to her, verbally, and try to put her at ease. But that didn't seem like it would matter, and it was a public pool; the lack of conversation was more soothing than it should have been, most likely. But after yesterday, he was already worn out about it.

His eyes flicked away from her, and he returned to studying the ceiling. Quietly.

The boy in the pool seemed to find peace in simply lying there, but Cassandra had always needed physical exertion to relax. She pushed herself forward and begin stroking from one end of the pool to the other. While her movements were naturally graceful, in this case they ended up looking almost awkward. She'd only ever been an indifferent swimmer, and the shirt wasn't really a good choice for freedom of movement.

It was also a bit harder to swim properly when one was spending energy and effort keeping an eye on the pool's other occupant.

Her movements were making ripples; it disturbed the illusion of empty space he'd managed to conjure up in his mind. He was still being watched, and he felt those eyes on the side of his head, like the slightest touch of a burn he hadn't known he'd done up.

"I'm not going to do anything," he said.

The different ones were always much more interesting to watch, anyway, even if their differentness turned out to be nothing special, no great discovery of curing illness or destroying other little microbes in a dish. Cure or destroy or just be. Her head tilted a little as the boy's eyes opened, slowly, as if waking from a dream, but still distinctly remained in a realm that didn't include her, just himself, the water, the ceiling of the room where even quiet seemed to echo through the chlorine scented air. She grinned a little again. Persistent in his isolation, as well, or just stubborn, waiting for her to get bored and leave so...so he could what? Continue drifting, but this time without having to think about ignoring any distraction? Or perhaps he had succeeded and in his little world, she had ceased to exist, which was alright by her. It was when you didn't exist that you could make the best observations.

Cassandra stopped swimming, letting her feet sink down to the bottom of the pool (good thing she was in the shallow end). She turned to watch him, eyes sharp.

"I know," she eventually answered. "Old habit."

'Old habit' said a lot, and some detached part of his mind wondered why it had become a habit. Had she spent a lot of her life in danger? She watched like she had. As if she were waiting for the next blow to come.

He supposed he should be kind. He could understand what it was like. "Don't worry about it," Ender said, "I'll keep out of your hair."

Her hand reached up to brush through her wet hair and she blinked in a moment of confusion. Then she remembered it was just an expression, and offered a nod.

She was about to go back to swimming, but paused. "I'm interrupting you." It wasn't a question.

He supposed that she was, but it really didn't matter all that much. "It's a free pool," Ender said, cutting through the water with a little wave of one of his arms.

Careful not to take too much of her attention away from the boy (it was when you allowed distractions that you ended up missing things, like lions crouching in wait to pounce), Adah glanced over toward the Prophetess as she came near the pool area, giving her a slight nod. Of acknowledgment. Of greeting, even, perhaps, though she wasn't sure if she was feeling social enough for that this morning.

Now, then, he managed to achieve stillness again. The whirling of his thoughts settled a little, even if he knew it was just for now-- it would come back, in dreams, thoughts, hurtling him back to a great deal of things he didn't want to think about but had to.

He thought about rafts instead, about letting his hands do the work, any work at all. Let her read this from my movements. I will learn to make things.

Adah's thoughtful frown deepened a little, and she leaned forward in her observations, as he went back to stillness. Stillness, she had to admit, was something. Stillness was impressive. To her, at least, it was, and perhaps that was why she was still sitting there, still watching, still thinking on a boy just floating in the water, and would continue to do so for the rest of the morning. She didn't have to be anywhere until the evening, had no obligations, and eventually his skin would start to wrinkle and prune from the water, unless there was even more to him than she could observe, but she was observing quite a lot already.

Cassandra frowned slightly, shaking her head. "I can come back another time." When she wouldn't be interrupting.

Cassandra paused where she stood. The pool was occupied, and she could wait. She offered Adah an ambiguous nod in return, shifting so that she could split her attention between the quiet girl and the quiet boy.

Though Cassandra would never consciously consider it, if she was going to share a room with two people then these two were at least peaceful. A boy she didn't know, and a girl she barely did, and neither of whom seemed to demand that the situation change.

Ender could let it go-- it wasn't as if it concerned him one way or another. "It's a free pool," he repeated, "Don't let me chase you out." He didn't want anyone to wait on his wishes. Not like this; maybe not in any other way ever again. He didn't know yet: maybe never would.

But she could stay.

Standing quietly in the water Cassandra considered what the boy said. She also considered, and gave a bit more weight to, what he didn't say.

Eventually she nodded slowly. "You don't want me to leave for you."

Of course. He should have known they would be perceptive here. Why else would IF have sent him? Not to drift around in pools; not to build rafts. To get him out of the way, that had been one thing.

But the island had already been more than it seemed, and now this girl was paying attention to him as clear as his to her. It should probably be troubling, but he was tired of fighting it. "No," he said, "Stay, if you want."

The Prophetess' slight shifting at the door had Adah's attention stolen away for a moment, head tilting as she considered Cassandra a moment longer, at the risk of missing any noticeable changes in the boy (the darker side of her mind, which she supposed was the side of her mind that was actually active, imagined these changes to be ones of stopped breath, lost buoyancy, slipping soundlessly under the water, all because he was no longer observed and Adah's attention had slipped). She hadn't seen the other girl in a while, which wasn't surprising, just something she thought of. She was quiet like Adah with the additional grace of a body that didn't give you away, and she took a moment longer to consider her, although she wasn't sure what it was she was considering, before her eyes drifted back toward the pool.

Cassandra's own attention on Adah increased to match the other girl's regard for her. For a single moment it was as if the boy in the pool wasn't there. But it was just a moment, as Cassandra considered Adah considering her.

Adah was something of a mystery to Cassandra. The broken (the only word Cassandra felt fit) side of her made her hard to read. She was quiet in so many ways, and that was both intriguing and frustrating at once. There was something... compelling about Adah's quiet, private way of holding herself, but Cassandra didn't know how to approach her.

For just a moment she let her entire attention focus on the odd girl before shifting back to acknowledge the boy in the pool.

She nodded, very slowly. "I understand."

And that exchange... changed something between them. Cassandra wasn't sure why, but the shirt, which she had used as a sort of shield, didn't seem necessary anymore. She peeled it off and tossed it on the side of the pool before resuming her slow swim.

His own attention shifted back to the ceiling. It was a slow tilting of his head that did it, sending little rings of tremors through the water as he quietly nodded, sighed, and let his thoughts claim him again.

They could live in the pool together-- and the phrasing of that thought in his mind made him smile a little at how ridiculous it was. Spending the rest of his life as a prune in a pool.

It'd be a waste. But it'd be funny, in some vast way.

Like ships passing in the night.

Thgin eht ni gnissap.

Adah's eyes dropped from the pool for a moment as she considered that she could tell that the Prophetess was returning the cool, silent observation. Whether to take it as an invitation or for just what it was. Exchanged and balanced and equal, passing in the night.

She took the latter.

With the shirt discarded Cassandra is able to move with a bit more ease, but her attention is still locked on the boy. Old habit, she had said, but an old habit she had no intention or reason to break. It had kept her alive enough times, and the truth was that the watching was a part of her.

Passing in the night. Cassandra could live with that.

The Pool, Sunday Morning

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