fandomhighdorms | 3rd Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

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3rd Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

Anders had spent most of the last 36 hours researching every possibility he could think of to get to LA and try to save Kathy, and kept coming up empty. There were no portals, no magic, no nothing he could see working. And with the island off floating in space, it wasn't even as though taking the cauhseway to the mainland and trying to hitchhike across the continent was an option.

His mind was too exhausted to spend any more time turning over those possibilities, so he went to the common room and turned on the television. It was on the cooking channel; chefs were competing to make a main course using hard-boiled eggs, mango chutney, lobster and something green. His stomach growled at the spectacle, and he abstractly wondered how long it had been since he ate properly.

He'd fix that. Eventually.

[OOC: Open CR, open post. Anders' last open post on the island until July, not that he knows that yet.]

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Rey had come in search of food, and so before she even got to the kitchen the TV had caught her eye. "What's this?"

"Cooking show," Anders said, gesturing at the screen as if rapt. "They have to cook fast with strange ingredients. That fellow with the beard's trying to make risotto in ten minutes and the judges are worried."

Not that he knew what risotto was, beyond something to do with rice, but the judges' concern made it clear cooking it fast was a bad thing.

"They have shows for that?" she asked, tilting her head as she watched. "I don't even recognize what they're doing."

"Neither do I," Anders admitted. "I can follow parts of it but then they start talking about foams and I'm lost again."

He scratched along his jaw. "I'm not much of a cook."

"I never learned at all." Though she'd also had zero real opportunity. "Though! I have made very good friends with the microwave."

"The microwave is amazing," Anders said, with the enthusiasm of one for whom they were a relatively recent discovery. "Have you ever made popcorn in one?"

She was really too excited about this. "Yes! The sound is oddly satisfying. Is that normal?"

"No, it's a good sound," Anders nodded. "I like the smell, too. And the way it gets your fingers greasy when you open the bag."

He had never known how many feelings he had about microwave popcorn before this very moment.

"I need to make popcorn now," Rey decided, because there was no other way for this to end. "Do you want some?"

"That would be fantastic," Anders said sincerely. "The show was already making me hungry. "

"Well, I definitely cannot do that," she said, pointing vaguely towards the TV as she made her way to the kitchen. "Popcorn is the next best thing."

"I could order a pizza if you want more than popcorn," Anders called toward the kitchen. "Pizza and popcorn's got to be better than whatever they're making."

She didn't even have to think about it. "Yes. Perfect. That sounds amazing."

And as the microwave door closed and it started heating up, she called, "I'm absolutely not picky, either."

Food was food and you ate it.

"That makes two of us," said Anders, who was also largely in camp food-is-food. He pulled out his phone and ordered a large pepperoni pie, finishing just as the pops from the microwave began to die down.

"I'm Anders, by the way," he told Rey. "In case you want to be formally introduced before sharing your popcorn."

"Rey," she said with a smile, waiting for the last few pops so she could open the door. "I'd have shared regardless, though. You seem trustworthy enough."

"I'm absolutely trustworthy," Anders nodded, and went to the fridge for some soda. "About sharing food, anyhow."

"You realize I have to ask you what you're not trustworthy about," Rey pointed out, pulling the bag out to shake it and get it all buttered up correctly. She may be new, but she'd learned how to do this right. "Assuming I can trust you to tell me, anyway."

Anders laughed. It was good to have a silly conversation with somebody new.

"I do magic," he said, shooting a grin over his shoulder. "I figure that makes me a little tricky by default."

The concept of magic wasn't really new to her anymore, but it was still novel. "What kind of magic?"

"Healing and fighting, mostly," Anders answered. "Not the kind where you're pulling things out of hats."

He glanced the girl over. "What about you, any powers?"

"No," she said, opening a cabinet to get a bowl. "We don't have anything like that where I come from. Just stories."

"That's still a little weird to me," Anders ventured. "But it seems like there are more places like your world than like mine."

Alluka, and a stuffed elephant that she was clutching tightly, peered into the common room. Anders hadn't been in his room, and that had worried her a bit, given everything, so she'd been wandering about, looking--

"That's Anders," she said to her elephant. Her elephant nodded seriously. "He's really nice. He's one of my brothers."

And the only one who wasn't one by blood!

"That's me," Anders said, with an attempt at a smile that only looked funny if you realized it barely touched his eyes. "Hi, Alluka and Ser Elephant."

"See?" Alluka said to her elephant, before taking a moment to look around the room once more (just in case there was something unexpected in it) and then making her way over to Anders, her arms out-stretched for a hug. "Anders, hi!"

She looks at him with big eyes. "You weren't in your room."

She'd worried. Kathy had no room now. What if Anders lost his?

"I wasn't," Anders agreed, easily returning the hugs. Hugs were good this week. "I just wanted to get a little air. You were looking for me?"

She loved hugs all the time, but they were even nicer lately for some reason.

"Not, not for anything important," Alluka admitted. "I just.. was looking."

"It doesn't have to be anything important," Anders shrugged. "It's been a rough few weeks. It's good to say hi."

Another person might've asked if he was okay, but Alluka wasn't that person. He seemed okay, though a bit muted--his smile had been different than usual--and that meant he was fine, as far as she could tell.

"Do you say hi to a lot of people?" she wondered. "I don't think I do."

Unless they counted her toys, and then she said hi to more people than most of the school.

"Not as many as I used to," Anders admitted, saddened by the realization. "A lot of people have left for one reason or another, and I haven't been trying to make new friends."

"Friends are fun though," Alluka said, looking at her elephant. "So it's probably better to have them, right?"

"Much better," Anders confirmed. "I get lonely when I don't have people to talk to. It's not good for me."

... Yeah, Alluka knew how that went, and she didn't even know how well she knew how that went.

"It's a good thing I found you then," she decided. "So you can talk to me, at least a little."

Anders didn't usually think of Alluka as the kind of person who needed to hear about his troubles, but she wasn't wrong. She would at least understand the stuff everyone knew, he thought.

And maybe he just needed to talk.

"I can," he said. "It's a little sad, though. I'm thinking a lot about how much I miss Kathy."

"Dante says she's dead," Alluka said, since that... seemed like a thing to say. "I, I think maybe he's right, but Mabel and I are still figuring out how to put an extra bed in our room, in case he's wrong, since Ringo took Kathy's things."

Was that comforting or not? Alluka wasn't sure.

"So, so maybe he'll be wrong? That'd be more fun, wouldn't it?"

Alluka wasn't opposed to death, but having Kathy be around would be more fun.

"I think he's right," Anders said, hesitantly. (He might have told Alluka alone that he was trying to get Kathy back, but he wasn't so blind to consequences to say it in Nanika's hearing.) "But keeping a bed for her for now is a nice thought, anyhow."

He squinted at the girl and her elephant. "Ringo told me she was putting the things in storage to keep them safe."

Alluka looked back at him, all big eyed and earnest. (Her elephant looked at the floor; it was sleepy.)

"But, but she was taking them out of Kathy's room."

To Alluka, that explained everything about why she thought (still thought) that Ringo was wrong.

"Where else would they have been?"

Anders was sure he was missing something obvious, here.

She looked at him reproachfully. "In Kathy's room, because it's hers."

Alluka frowned a bit. "Papa said that rooms don't stay peoples' when they graduate or leave but, but I think until Kathy makes that decision it should still be her room."

All Alluka had ever had was a room full of toys. She took the taking away of rooms very seriously.

"But she's dead," Anders pointed out. "That makes it a bit hard for her to tell us her decision, doesn't it?"

He sighed. He didn't follow the room bit, but he thought he got Alluka's larger point. "I understand why you feel that way, though. It felt to me like Ringo packed up awfully fast. But I suppose she wanted to be helpful, and better she take care of things than someone who didn't care about Kathy."

"Even if she's dead," Alluka said mutinously, "Kathy promised to come back. So, so Ringo should have left her stuff along. Kathy never broke a promise to me."

So that meant she had to come back! In theory, anyway.

Alluka wasn't super certain it was possible, but there was no body. No body meant there was still the chance of maybe it happening.

"Sometimes people break promises without meaning to," Anders said. "If Kathy could come back, she would. But I don't know if she can."

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, hearing Kathy's voice from his dream inside his head again. The thought of her alone and scared discomfited him still. He hoped he'd find a way to help.

"Would seeing where Ringo put Kathy's things help, or do they need to be in her room?"

Alluka considered that, all of that, and proceeded to ignore the first bit. Everyone kept talking about her not being able to keep promises, but Kathy had never not kept a promise to Alluka.

So Alluka was going to do her best to believe.

Even though Kathy was dead.

The fact that those two things were contradictory didn't sway Alluka from believing in both of them simultaneously.

"Toys and things are important," Alluka said, "but rooms are more important. I want Kathy to still have a room. Ringo said she'd always have room in our hearts but that's not the right kind of room."

Anders wrinkled his nose; he wouldn't have been particularly satisfied with that answer from Ringo, either. He could tell it was meant well, but it was a touch soppy for his tastes.

"It isn't," he agreed, and twisted his ponytail in thought.

"All right, but people can get new rooms, can't they? You had your room at home, and now you have your room here." As he spoke, he hoped that she'd worked out by now that she wasn't still in her room at home. "If Kathy comes back she'll get a new room, or she'll stay with one of her friends."

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3rd Floor Common Room, Wednesday Afternoon

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