fandomhighdorms | 2nd Floor Common Room, Sunday Morning

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2nd Floor Common Room, Sunday Morning

Ada had seen some of the small children running around yesterday, so today she pulled herself out of bed to dust off a long-neglected skill: cooking for hordes of people. It was a skill she couldn't afford to let get rusty, since everyone in the carnival had to take their turns in the kitchen. And Ada, given her dietary restrictions, was almost always assigned breakfast.

Which is why she had quite the impressive set-up going in the common room. Someone had gone out and gotten all the ingredients for pancakes, and was cooking up a storm at the stove. There was a big bowl of fresh fruit out on the counter, plenty of juice and milk in the fridge, coffee for the 'adults', and lots of disposable plates and cups so that no one was gonna have to do dishes.

Breakfast was served, and all were welcome.

[OOC: Open post is open!]

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So Janie might've been part-Dante and part-Ada, but Dante was beginning to be convinced she was also part-monkey or something. She'd clambered up on his shoulders sometime shortly before they left the room that morning, and she was still there, holding on.

Dante, himself, was still debating the merits of letting Ada know she was here at all - he'd been right on 'shit that would freak Ada out' before, and he wasn't looking forward to being right again.

But he smelled food. Heading down to a common room full of food wouldn't be a problem, right? "Definitely pancakes," he told Janie as he walked away from the stairs.

"I like pancakes," she said, resting her chin on top of Dante's head like she rode here all the time. "Big ones, bigger than 'm head. I can eat a lot of them!"

Because she was totally a Daddy's Girl in many things, and how much food she could pack away was one of them.

Ada looked at people coming in, and grinned. Aw, Dante had a moppet, and she was cute!

"Hey, Dante," she said, flipping over a pancake. "Who's your friend?"

Dante came to a sudden stop and froze for... all of at least three seconds. For his standards of 'blowing stuff off', that was pretty bad.

"So, this is Janie," he said conversationally, "And she can... eat all of your pancakes."

Janie, for her part, had gone still as a deer in headlights, eyes wide as she gripped Dante's shoulders.

It was one thing to know her Mama was here. It was another thing to see her Mama walking around, cooking, and have her Mama not know who she was (even if Janie knew she wasn't her Mama yet, and couldn't know her).

That was... weird. Both of 'em. But Dante's brain was probably exhausted from being a temporary parent, so Ada smiled and pointed at the pile of plates. "Well h'llo, Janie-girl," she said. "Help yourself, an' don't let Dante hog all th' food."

Dante pried Janie off of his shoulders with difficulty, setting her down gently on the floor. "Uh, Ades," he said, looking every bit like he was suppressing the wince he was most definitely not suppressing. "Can we talk?"

Edited 2016-04-17 14:52 (UTC)

The moment her feet touched the floor, it was like someone flipped a switch in Janie. She hurtled toward Ada, flinging her arms around her Mama's waist and burying her face in Ada's stomach.

There may have been a muffled 'I hate you' in there, but it was hard to tell, encased as it was by ten-year-old girl clinging to her walking mother desperately.

Ada looked at Dante, down at Janie, and back to Dante with a growing expression of shock and understanding on her face. She'd heard about these weekends, but never expected it to happen to her.

"Oh," was all she said, putting a hand on Janie's head. "Oh."

This was...unexpected. As Ada had no plans to have biological children. Ever.

Neither had Dante, so... yeah.

"Yeah," he agreed helplessly. "She showed up yesterday morning. And she's... definitely yours."

Half-mermaid. What the fuck.

"... and mine."

They were using Serious Voices and probably had Serious Faces and Janie hated that and didn't want to see. She was just gonna hang on to her Mama, until all the Serious stopped and they could have pancakes.

"Janie-love," Ada said gently, softly stroking the girl's hair. "Did you think I'd forgotten your name?"

There was the barest of nods against her stomach, and Ada flinched like she'd been slapped. "I promise, I didn't forget, I just didn't know it yet," she promised. "An' I ain't gonna forget while you're here. Now, can you work the pancakes for me?"

She looked back up at Dante. "I think I gotta talk to your Daddy for a moment."

Yeah, that. Dante shot Janie an absent smile, and then puttered over towards a corner of the common room, close to the hallway.

Janie peeled herself off Ada, nodding and reaching for the spatula and the pancake batter. "Okay but 'm adding chocolate chips," she warned. "An' sprinkles."

"Only if'n you have a piece of fruit to go with it," Ada countered automatically, before following Dante.

She leaned back against the wall, shutting her eyes. "Definitely mine, huh?"

"She's got glitter and I think some scales," Dante said, shrugging. It was a little uncomfortable. "Keeps hiding her arm, too, don't know why."

He was watching Ada pretty closely. "Says you're a mermaid."

Well, at least he'd ripped that band-aid off for her and Ada wasn't going to need to try and figure out how to bring this up?

"Probably because I am," she said, and Ada was proud of how even her voice stayed. "How old is she? Ten? Eleven?"

Yeah, well. Dante had never had much time or energy for subtlety. About anything.

"Ten, I think?" he said. He wasn't frowning at her, so much as... looking like he felt a little out of his depth, and he'd been hiding it for a while now. "She's a good kid."

Definitely out of his depth.

"You all right?"

Ada's laugh was slightly bitter. "Just found out 'm the process of hurtin' some little girl the same way my mama left me," she said, pushing her hair back from her face. "So not really."

She looked back over towards Janie. "You all right?"

The answer to that was predictable. "I'm fine," Dante said. He looked towards Janie, too, though at least partly so he didn't have to look Ada in the eye over that one. "This happened to you, too?"

Okay, he knew she had trouble with family. Just not all of the details, apparently.

"Sorta," she sighed, sitting down on the floor. "Marti, my mama, was adopted. The family she grew up with found her on a beach, wrapped in kelp, not a week into the world." Ada slanted a glance at Dante. "You met some a' them."

"Don't get me wrong, Marti's still around. She ran to the carnival when she was pregnant with me, and when the Millers adopt you, you're family forever. They take care of you, no matter what. Who her people were before, and before that, didn't matter. She performs as the Alabama Mermaid three times a day with the carnival. But she ain't exactly my mama no more."

"I was eleven. She was needing to sleep in a bathtub filled with salt water at night to ease how bad her legs were hurting. They'd just... give out. Send her tumbling into the dust of the midway and she'd laugh it off like it was nothing. Her bones were gone, she was upright by sheer force of will."

"But mermaids... we submerge, we forget. The water washes away anything unpleasant or painful. At first. Then it takes everything. Her head slipped off her pillow and I woke up to my mama under the water." Ada shrugged. "I thought she was dead an' screamed my head off. Turns out she was just asleep, she could breathe under all that water, but she didn't know who I was any more."

"After that, we moved her to her tank. She's more comfortable there, an' she likes having the space to swim." Ada's face was expressionless. "It's as far away from my trailer as we can manage. Marti doesn't like being disturbed by me, even on the days she doesn't know who I am."

"Oh," Dante said. Quietly.

Not even a 'that's fucked up' covered this.

What else was he going to say? 'I'm sorry, Ades?' What the fuck would that serve?

She didn't want sorry, Ada hated people feeling sorry for her, so it was a good thing Dante didn't believe in stupid empty platitudes that didn't fix shit.

"Yeah," she said, picking at the carpet. "I used to think that if my daddy was human, maybe it wasn't gonna happen to me. Maybe I could have a life. I stayed out of the water, didn't eat meat, all to keep my scales from spreading. But 'm gonna lose my legs, lose my mind, an' everything about me that's Ada Miller is gonna get washed away by the time 'm thirty-five an' leave behind some mermaid girl that ain't me."

Ada licked her lips and then looked at Dante. "'S why I didn't tell anyone. I'd been told forever that I couldn't trust anyone not a Miller and I just wanted friends, I didn't want to be a freak, or anyone to feel sorry for me. I just... wanted to be Ada for a bit."

"Then when I wasn't scared no more, I didn't know how to say it. 'M sorry I didn't tell you m'self. I am."

"You don't have to be sorry," Dante said. He raised his shoulders expressively. "We all have our shit."

He was looking at Janie again.

"I'm not gonna get old enough to have a kid like that," he said, after a long moment. "So I get it."

"So, what, she's our chance to play pretend for the weekend?" Ada asked. "This stupid island..."

Neither of them deserved to be teased with something they thought they couldn't have.

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NFB for a bit plz

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Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz

Re: NFB for a bit plz