fandomhighdorms | The Roof, Monday Afternoon/Evening

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The Roof, Monday Afternoon/Evening

The roof was the traditional place for brooding, and so, after the walls of her room had finally gotten stifling, that was where Karla had fled. As much as she hated to admit it, the weather was a bit of a draw as well; she wanted to rail and curse and demand gray skies and rainy days to match her mood, but she couldn't deny how nice the sun felt. It couldn't really lift her spirits, but they might have been slightly lighter after she'd been sitting out for awhile.

[Open like a roof, though warning for emo. It's likely that information about Raven will come out in conversation, so please let me know early on if this is not okay.]

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After Karla's message (http://swordsandsoccer.livejournal.com/531.html?thread=24595#t24595), Dolf had had enough reason to be concerned-- and, as a consequence, to hurry up to the roof after pulling on a proper pair of pants (shorts didn't seem appropriate roof-wear). He arrived with a frown on his face and his hands shoved down his pockets.

"Karla?"

Karla turned away from her contemplation of the edge of the roof. No, nothing crazy like that, just gazing out over the island. The view helped her not think, which was very nice right then.

"Dolf," she replied. "I--thanks for coming up. I don't really know the proper etiquette for this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure that giving this kind of news over the phone isn't the best way of handling it."

"What happened?" Ten thousand causes for panic ran through Dolf's brain all at once - never say he wasn't talented at knowing just how many things could go horribly wrong.

He kept walking until he got to her, but he didn't sit down yet, looking down at her and waiting for the answer.

"Raven--" Karla stopped and swallowed. Hard. "Raven's not coming back to school. Ever. We...she...she's dead, Dolf. Over the weekend."

Karla tilted her face up, trying to blink back more tears.

"Oh."

Dolf's face crumpled, though a small cynical part of him that had been born somewhere in the Alps pointed out that it could have been much worse. He did sit down now, mostly to find some stability. "Oh."

Karla was still standing, sniffling, above him, trying to figure out how to explain what had happened in a way Dolf wouldn't find too far-fetched for belief.

"Her father--he's evil. Raven spent her whole life trying to stay away from him. But in the end he got her and used her and--and--she died so that he could be stopped."

Eliding over a whole lot of details in there, but it was true at the heart and that's all Karla really cared about.

"At least that's not a bad reason to die," Dolf said, a little numb, now. People you knew dying on you didn't exactly get any easier with experience, though it did get-- different.

He stared at the wall in front of him for a few moments, and then he looked back up at Karla. His eyes were a little wet. "And you were there?" he asked.

She nodding, dropping her eyes to her feet. "Me. Tara. Her boyfriend. Several others. Professor Skywalker and Professor Max. We--we were trying to get her back." And instead, had become the instruments of her death.

The tears started flowing in earnest. "You don't understand what he did to her. He made her like him. We just wanted to get our friend back."

Dolf didn't even have to think about reaching up for her hand right then, looking to give what comfort he could. He had a flash of memory of Carolus, of the moment he realised his friend's life couldn't be saved, and... and he got that.

He really got that. "You lost," he said. It wasn't an accusation; if anything, it was the opposite. "You shouldn't have to be telling us all this now."

Karla clung to his hand gratefully. "It's not fair to make someone else do it, either," she said. "And I let her down. This much, at least, I owe her."

He gave her a tiny pull, just enough to let her know she could sit down, if she wanted. "Sometimes we just lose," he said, quietly. "If I was you, I'd be in a room now, under the covers, if I could."

It was a little like saying 'I appreciate it'.

"That's pretty much where I've been since Saturday night," Karla said quietly. "I finally came out because I thought I might go mad, just staring at the walls and my blankets all day. I was hoping that classes might give me something else to focus on. And maybe the sunshine would make me feel better."

Zero for two there, but it was a good attempt.

"Tara and I were trying to figure out what to do about Reserves this week," she added tentatively. "During class. Do you have any ideas?"

Dolf swallowed, fixing his eyes on the sky. They were still a little wet, some tear marks on his cheeks, but he wiped those away quickly. "Something nice," he said, quietly. "About food, and being family to each other. Raven liked that, right?"

Karla nodded; that was a much better idea than canceling Reserves. "She did. And I think she'd like that. About making a family with the people that you find. That's wonderful, Dolf."

"It's the first rule of keeping going when things get bad," he said, shrugging a little. He didn't feel like the praise was warranted. "You get to know who the people who care for you are, so you can work together. Make things less violent everywhere."

He didn't have to accept it, but that wasn't going to stop Karla from offering. "I think it might be nice for everyone to focus on their friends right now," she said. "Especially once word gets out to more people."

"It will," Dolf agreed. Then he fell silent for a little while, as he thought back to the battles he'd lost himself even when he'd promised himself he wouldn't. Depressing thoughts, and now he wondered if--

No. "You're spending time with your friends, too," he prompted. "You can always find me if you need me."

Focus on the battles you could win. There was a strategy.

"I'd like for us to become better friends," Karla said quietly. "I feel like we're always flitting off somewhere, leaving you to just go on without a word, or worse, coming back battered and bruised and letting you pick up the slack. It isn't fair."

Karla wasn't sure she and Dolf would ever become great friends, but they could at least stop taking him for granted. "You're steady," she said. "I appreciate that. Most days, I feel anything but."

"I'm not steady, either," Dolf had to point out, giving her a fleeting, reassuring smile. "But things are not as bad here as they were when I came from. We get up, we keep walking."

Well, in this time, that was mostly metaphorical. "Sometimes you keep fighting and winning and then you lose once, and it looks like the end of the world."

"They're not as bad as home for me, either," Karla said, "I think that almost makes it worse. Fandom's almost become...a respite. A place where nothing permanently bad happens. Things get bad, but we all make it through. And then, something like this happens and catches me off-guard. Death isn't supposed to happen here. It's my safe space. I came here to get away from all of that."

"Home was always safe," Dolf said, glancing up at the sky. "But even back home people died. That doesn't stop happening because of where you are. Not that I don't understand. I had to learn that too. Especially after my friend Carolus died."

"This is the first time someone's died here since I've arrived," Karla said thoughtfully. "You'd think it wasn't true, not with all of the horrible things that can happen, like being invaded and the island getting sucked away into alternate dimensions and giant toothy lizards and whatnot. Especially with three-quarters of the people here having hero complexes. But people don't. Few people even get badly injured."

More than anything else, that last gave credence to Ender's whimsy theory. Even when there wasn't violence, people had a tendency to do stupid things and gets hurt.

Dolf knew that was something he should feel good about. Grateful, at least. He'd seen so many people die.

What he said, though, was, "That's weird. And a little dangerous."

He was a boy scout, but he wasn't a fourteen-year-old school boy anymore.

"Makes you complacent," Karla said, glumly. "Makes you forget what real life is like. That the good people don't always win and come out unscathed."

"And that sometimes people die for dumb reasons," Dolf said. "Because someone else isn't there on time, or something stupid goes wrong, or because there are too many other people hurting too."

Or because you spoke up when you shouldn't have, but he really wasn't planning to go into his own guilt issues when she was so upset.

(no subject)

glacial_queen - 2011-01-20 19:30 (UTC) - Expand

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