Room 210; Late Friday Morning /Afternoon [01/10].

[white_oleander]

Leave it to Fandom to hand Astrid a welcome back like that. She'd spent most of her time since Tuesday just trying to sleep it off, too tired to even care about the oleanders on the wall watching over her, mostly just hoping that the next time she woke up, she'd be back in California, back in 1993...no, it would be 1994, now...back in her small room in a Hollywood bungalow, or even in the low bottom bunk of a rickety bunkbed in the Mac, watching the shadows of pine trees dance across the wall.

No such luck. Still Fandom, still oleanders, nothing but that stark heavy reality of her current situation.

But she'd gotten that morning, she'd gone to class, she swung by the store to pick up a few things, and she was ready to do something, especially about those oleanders on the wall. It meant a lot to her, that Sabine had actually left them there, but they had to go. She didn't want to think about them, or what they represented, or how, potent as their poison was, Ingrid didn't even need them to cast her deadly spells anymore. They had to go.

So she'd cracked open the windows and the door, pulled back her bed, threw down the tarps, and opened up the large bucket of black paint. And armed with a small paintbrush, she got to work, painting over the oleanders one by one, a single petal at a time, filling them in until they were nothing but formless, shadowless, bold black asteriks across the wall. One by one, one at a time, slowly erasing all the loving shadow and color she'd painted into them before she left. And then? Once they were all filled in? She'd go back and start painting in the spaces in between, until the entire wall was nothing but a blank, empty, fathomless black space, waiting until she figured out what should be there instead, or maybe if it should just remain that way for now.


[[ some work-related SP likely, but door and post are open! I just miss her so much XD ]]

Comments

[seriesofbaddecisions]

Sabine has actually been surprised Astrid had left them up this long, just because she would have probably wanted something new there. But when she came back to the room, all the black was maybe a little... worrying?

"Hi there."

[white_oleander]

Astrid had been mostly finished with the last petal on one of the oleanders when Sabine came in, so she finished it up...not quickly, taking her time with it, like it was more about the motion of the brush than anything else, and that motion needed to be careful and deliberate...before she stepped back as if to look over the work, and then turned her head.

"Hey."

And then she wanted to apologize for what she was doing, but it was more out of impulse than any actual remorse or bad feelings.

"I figured you wouldn't mind something different..."

She never had, Astrid, why would she start now?

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Not at all," Sabine said. Honestly, it'd been a little strange to have that side be the same thing for so long, but she also never would have changed it herself. "I knew you'd change it up at some point. What's it going to be?"

[white_oleander]

"I don't know yet," Astrid admitted, honestly, after a moment of looking back again at the slowly building collection of matte black flowers, though, in that moment, she was suddenly thinking tall, thin silhouettes of pine trees. But that felt too much like being stuck in a forest again, like that first summer...

She shrugged, setting her paintbrush down for a moment, figuring this was as good a time as any for a break. "I'm sure it'll come to me."

All she knew so far was that it just couldn't be this.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Do you want help at all?" she asked, not bothered either way.

[white_oleander]

Astrid frowned for a moment, as if she didn't know how to answer. She knew what she wanted (to be left alone, mostly), but her immediate response was to say 'sure,' because she was so used to agreeing to things just because it seemed like what the other person...or what Claire, specifically...would have wanted to hear.

But she didn't need to do that anymore. And it hadn't done any good, anyway.

"No," she eventually said, slowly, "it's okay. It's kind of...relaxing for me right now..."

[seriesofbaddecisions]

If Sabine knew that reasoning, she'd actually be really proud of her.

"Okay," she said. "So, how're you doing?"

Besides methodically painting the wall black.

[white_oleander]

Astrid shrugged a little, and she thought about leaving it there, since that was about as much as she felt like saying, but...she knew Sabine was just trying to help, and, underneath everything else, she actually did find it a little bit...comforting.

"I'm okay," she said, and it felt honest...enough. It was all pretty subjective, anyway. "Had shop class today," which, if it turned out to be stuff like what they did today, she was going to actually like a lot, "but my other classes are on Monday, so..."

She'd missed them. For obvious reasons.

"What about you? How's your semester shaping up?"

Just...normal conversations. Like nothing ever happened, like it was before. Or at least the attempt to make it seem that way.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I'll know more next week." The bulk of hers had gotten missed for some reason this week. "I have one that's about making hats for birds?"

Was that normal conversation?

[white_oleander]

For this place, it definitely was.

"Hats for birds?" Astrid asked, managing to find a small smile at that. "Will you get to make them tiny little helmets?"

Please make them tiny little helmets, Sabine.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"It might depend on the bird. I don't know what we're getting porgs ever week," Sabine explained. "But an owl of course would need a Nite Owl helmet..."

Sabine looked cool, but she was not immune to being a giant dork.

[white_oleander]

"Of course," Astrid agreed, without even knowing what Sabine meant by that, but it made enough sense. "Is that a special species or design or faction or something where you're from?"

Whicj was space, a small voice reminded her. She was back to where people were from space.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"They're an elite unit of Mandalorians." Who had previously participated in some terrorist acts, but Sabine's family had a... complicated history there. "My helmet is from them. It might look better on me than on a bird..."

[white_oleander]

"Probably," Astrid agreed again. "Although, if you're making them, they're going to look good either way."

And, with that, she felt a big, heavy sort of awkwardness creep into her, like she just didn't know how to interact in these situations anymore. It had been just her and Claire, with the occasional Ron, the occasional art class, thrown in for so long. She didn't really talk to anyone at Fairfax. She definitely didn't talk to anyone at the Mac. Everything she'd gained while she was here, it felt like she'd lost. And everything she'd gained while back home...was definitely gone.

So she didn't know what else to do but pick up the paintbrush again, dip it in the paint, and get started on the next flower.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

In a way, Sabine was glad there weren't followup questions to that.

"Is there anything you're looking forward to doing, now that you're back? Anywhere you want to go?" she asked. And that was because she figured Astrid probably wasn't up for talking after the weekend, as opposed to the narrated reasons.

[white_oleander]

The only place Astrid really wanted to go was back home, but she didn't even have one of those anymore. But, after she'd painted in another flower, she thought of a few good things that might serve as an answer.

"The pool," she decided, maybe a little wistfully. "I'll probably go down there this weekend. And I was thinking I might see about getting my job at the flower shop back."

She had...mixed feelings, about being among so many flowers and potential poisons again, but, when it came right down to it, she'd really missed the way they would sometimes sing.

"Anything...new that I should check out?" she ventured. "How are some of the new people?"

She'd already seen so many unfamiliar faces, but she wasn't sure how many of them were there to stay or were with the new students that came in with her this semester and were lucky enough to get out while they still could.

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"I haven't seen any of the new people around since Tuesday," Sabine said, and she wasn't entirely sure she could blame them, even if it wasn't the school's fault. "Some of the people from fall seem okay, though. I haven't gotten to know them that well, but I'll see them around at Monday breakfasts."

It'd been a weird semester for her.

[white_oleander]

Well, that at least would help Astrid feel a little less bad about maybe not exactly rushing to meet some of the people who'd come in during the fall and the summer. Not that she would have felt bad, anyway, but it still helped a little to think that.

"Monday breakfasts?" she asked, wondering just how much of her first few weeks would be trying to work through the fog of her memory of the last year and trying to figure out what she should remember, if there'd been things she'd just forgotten about entirely because they just didn't matter anymore, it was in the ephemeral past...

[seriesofbaddecisions]

"Oh, right. I think that was in the monster letter," Sabine said, getting up to go to her desk. "Wayne makes breakfast every Monday morning. If he's not there, someone else- usually Nina- does. It's become a thing."