fandomhighdorms | 4th Floor Common Room, Wednesday

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4th Floor Common Room, Wednesday

Uma had been sent flowers. Yeah, she'd gotten them hours ago, but she still didn't know why she'd gotten them. Or what to do with them. This was the first time she'd seen real flowers, never mind had any of her own.

Flowers needed...water, right? Yeah, that sounded good. She was just going to bang around the common room, looking for a cup or something big enough to hold her...stripey, purple flowers (what kind of flowers were they? Not-roses was the only guess she had) and hope that they didn't die while she looked for something appropriate to put them in.

How fast did flowers die, exactly? Why didn't school teach this kind of stuff?!

[Open! I have no work today!]

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"My knee-jerk is to want to be horrified by that," Norman admitted after a brief pause, "except I know plenty of people who acted like they were celebrating that holiday every single day of the year."

So he really didn't have a leg to stand on, there.

Thanks, Alvin.

"We didn't really celebrate love or friendship," Uma said. "That kind of thing is for the good guys. At best, you get loyalty from a decent crew. That's better than either."

Because she had so much experience with love and friendship.

"I never really gave much value to love or friendship myself," Norman noted. "But sometimes, you can be surprised. I don't think friendship is just a good guy thing. But I think maybe you can find yourself in a situation where you decide you're better off without, without ever really giving it a chance."

He bit his lip for a few seconds.

"In the right situation, a friend can really surprise you. Can be every bit as loyal as a decent crew. Even if you never asked them to be."

Uma thought for a minute, picturing Harry and his stupid hook and Gil's doofy, ridiculous smile. She was hit by a feeling of--something, suddenly missing those two idiots very much and for a moment, her whole face softened.

But only for a moment

"Yeah well, the one time I tried, she turned on me," she said, harsher than she might have been if it hadn't been for that weird little pang in her heart the moment before. "And then she turned on the whole Isle, getting out and leaving the rest of us there to rot once she got hers. Some friendship."

Norman didn't let the harshness in Uma's voice deter him. He just nodded a little.

He understood the feeling, maybe. Maybe not to the same degree... but...

"It sounds like she wasn't really a friend, after all," he offered. "That... that happens, sometimes, too. You don't really know the value of a friend until you see what they do when they have to make a choice between who they say they care about, and themselves."

"That's why I'm open about being just for myself," Uma said, folding her arms over her chest.

Beat.

"...And my crew, but they're different." Loyalty went both ways, after all.

Norman reached up a hand to kind of run through his hair... which immediately flopped back up into place again. Sigh.

"Different how?" He paused for a second, and then decided to add, "I've never had a crew before. I'm not entirely sure what they're about."

"Back home, I'm a captain. I have a ship and a crew." The ship couldn't do anything more than float around the isle, but it was a ship. "They do what I say and in exchange, I...protect 'em. Provide for 'em. They know they got a place to go when they don't wanna go home. They know I'll get 'em food if they haven't eaten in awhile. We went to get this--treasure thing--" her hand briefly touched the seashell necklace at her throat then hastily dropped again. "--and there were booby-traps. I was the last one to leave the cave, makin' sure the rest of them got out okay. A crew--you gotta depend on one another to survive. So loyalty earns loyalty."

That might have been the most Norman had ever heard her say at once.

Norman listened carefully to that, and then he nodded, careful to not look at the necklace she had reached for. She clearly didn't want attention drawn to it.

"When the people from my hometown wanted to kill me," he ventured, "they were running at me with torches and actual pitchforks, and I was just standing there with a burning building behind me and no way out."

He shrugged a little.

"I didn't have a crew, but I had my sister, and a friend."

And his friend's brother, who mostly just wasn't going to let Neil get murdered by a mob. And, of all people, Alvin. Who probably just wanted an excuse to grab Courtney's butt.

"What they did, running up and stopping an entire crowd, one that could have killed us all without hesitating, that sounds kind of the same. That's what friendship is supposed to be, I think. Loyalty. And if it isn't that, maybe the person you thought was a friend was really just a creep and a liar all along."

"Well, that's true," Uma snorted. "She's a villain. We're all villains. We're all taught from the drawer that friendship is for the weak."

"But friendship done right can make people strong," Norman replied. "Like your crew. I would be dead right now if it wasn't for my friend. And that was at a time when I didn't even really want friends. I figured it was easier without them."

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4th Floor Common Room, Wednesday

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