Third Floor Common Room; Monday Morning [05/10].

[howareyanow]

If anything particularly different was going on outside right now, Wayne didn't know about it yet and he'd mostly convinced himself that he didn't care, because it was probably weird and he was just better off going about his day as normally as he could.

And that included the traditional Monday morning breakfast. This would be his third week in a row; he felt that made it an official tradition, and he had no intention of fucking with tradition. Since Vette missed it last week, crepes were back on the menu, with all the fixins, as well as the eggs and sausage and bacon and all that other good stuff as one might expect out of a nice breakfast like this.

Sure, there'd been that brunch yesterday and all, but who ever really got sick of breakfast food in the morning, anyway? Not anyone Wayne would likeleh want to know, that was for sure.

[[ he is a creature of habit, through and through. Open! Breakfast is seeerved! ]]

Comments

[chirpchirpchirp]

"If it stayed empty, it'd be empty," Vette replied simply. "And that'd suck. I'd be off somewhere... I don't know, eating people or something right now, like some kind of super cute rakghoul, and that'd be that."

She shrugged a little, looking down at her toes.

"And that happens, sometimes, you know? I keep thinking about all the what-ifs, too. What if I didn't get better? Would I ever get home? Would I ever care again? But I have to take it on good faith that Prompto is kicking his own butt over this. That he learned his lesson. That there were people who knew how to undo it, and that they did. That's... kind of amazing, you know? That people cared enough to actually set it right."

Even if it was probably more for the sake of other people than for her. She could be grateful she'd been cured by association.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina wanted to protest that it shouldn't have happened in the first place, but Vette was right, too, in that it was amazing that it had been fixed.

"If you'd stayed that way," Nina said, in Ryl, "I'd have lost the only person who I've ever considered family."

And that wasn't something she could just get over very easily.

[chirpchirpchirp]

The Ryl caught Vette off-guard for a second, made her heart thump in her throat and she couldn't form words around it for a moment.

And then she was shifting around, setting her plate to the side, and reaching to pull Nina into a hug.

"You would've found a way to bring me back. If nobody else had, it would've been you."

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina buried herself in that hug and while she shook and her eyes went damp, she flat out refused to cry.

"I would have," she agreed, the words muffled. "I would find you no matter what."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Then there you go," Vette murmured. "No losing me, see? Family... doesn't just lose family so easily...."

Wow, that phrase was... kind of loaded.

But her own losses were never for lack of trying.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina snaked her arms around Vette and hugged her tightly, having a brief and furious debate with herself, about that.

But her horrible, nauseating fear of losing Vette made her understand, better, how Vette must feel about her family being missing.

She took a breath.

"I figured out how to get to your world," Nina said softly, giving up the secret she'd been hiding for months. "I don't know if I can get you there. But I can get there."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"You..."

Vette forgot, in that moment, how to breathe. Wasn't entirely certain she'd heard Nina right. Maybe Nina's Ryl wasn't as good as she thought, after all? Maybe...

Maybe...

"How?" She paused a moment and added, tentatively, "Why didn't you tell me?"

[bookbeltof_love]

There were a lot of questions in there and a lot of answers that Nina wasn't sure how to articulate.

Some of them were better answers than others.

"I wanted to know I could get you home, before I said I could go there," Nina said slowly. "And I wanted to... to see if I could find your family, for you, because I'm good at that sort of thing and I wanted to be useful to you..."

And maybe if she was useful enough, Vette wouldn't just disappear home and forget about her.

"Getting there is complicated," she added. "They really, really don't want people coming and going from there."

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette processed that in silence for a minute.

And then, carefully, she just asked, "Did they say why?"

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina shook her head, curls flying around her face.

"No one would say," she said, then had to amend that with, "but I was more focused on getting there and getting you there than in finding out the why..."

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette frowned a tiny bit.

"So... if we found out the why... maybe... we could do something about it?"

Nina!

[bookbeltof_love]

What?!

"It's a possibility!"

It wasn't that she hadn't thought about it before, either, but...

"I just figured it would be easier to get there and beg forgiveness later. It's easier to do that than ask permission..."

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette sighed, and then reached up a hand and knocked lightly on Nina's forehead with one knuckle.

"Silly. If there's a reason they're keeping me out, I want to know. Maybe I can grab Sidon and he can help with whatever it is, too. Get our muscle in there, you know?"

To confuse the gnomes with being huge and polite to a fault.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina giggled, despite herself, one hand reaching up to touch her forehead.

"It worked for me! I got through!"

And she had, was the thing. Nina's methods had worked as far as she'd gone!

"But Sidon would definitely confuse them..."

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Well, get me through, then!" Vette stuck out her tongue. "I wanna go home, get a change of clothes and like a lifetime supply of lekku wax."

It was basic hygiene, dammit.

[bookbeltof_love]

Nina stuck her tongue right back out at Vette. Nyah, Vette!

"Like, I could get the wax for you at this point," she noted.

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette scrunched up her nose a little.

"No way. I'd have to at least send you to Taunt to get her to help you shop for it. And then... I mean, you'd be hanging out with Taunt, and I wouldn't and that's not even a little bit fair."

[bookbeltof_love]

"I'd still like you better," Nina said, nudging Vette a little. "But point taken, we'll just figure out how to get you back home then."

[chirpchirpchirp]

Vette smiled and swayed a tiny bit at that.

"The gang would love you," she decided, switching back to Basic. English. Whatever. "I mean, you're not a Twi'lek, but you're a friend of mine, they wouldn't even hold that against you."

She grinned, mostly teasing.

[bookbeltof_love]

"I told you, in my next life, I'll do my best to not be human!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" she said, taking her cue from Vette and reverting to English. "With a promise like that, how could they hold anything against me????????????"

[chirpchirpchirp]

"They basically can't! But also, you'll be with me, and they happen to think I'm pretty okay, so that'll help."

Vette, honey, they adored you. Like a bippy kid sister.

[bookbeltof_love]

"They love you," Nina said, despite not knowing any of them. "And, like, I'll make sure they love me. So it'll all work out!!!!!!!!"

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Sounds like we've got game plans, then," Vette mused, smiling. "Save Prompto's face from Prompto," and make sure he lived a happy life, dammit. "Figure out why the heck the gnomes don't want people doing travel to my reality right now. Get you to meet the gang... I wonder if the guys would like to, too..."

She was picturing Sidon on Nar Shaddaa.

... She was going to need a moment to just kind of mentally short out.

[bookbeltof_love]

"I mean, like, they'd feel hurt if we left them out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina considered Vette's list.

"I don't know about, like, saving Prompto's face from himself, but I'm looking into the... other stuff????????? I asked one of his boys back home how to go about getting access to their libraries, so now I can do all the research we might think of."

Ignis had been very nice about it, actually! Very, very wordy and slightly frightening about it, but nice.

[chirpchirpchirp]

"Oooo," Vette said, going a little wide-eyed. "I want in on that."

... Mostly just because.

"I'm picturing his gang meeting my gang, and then two entire realities just kind of exploding, now," she noted.