Loneliness is the human condition.

The last thing Astrid could handle right now was the welcome picnic. The last thing she needed were the turning heads, the double takes, the curious questions...She didn't have time or the make-up to try and cover up her black eye before she got here, either, although it was really turning more yellow and purple than black, so that wouldn't help, showing up after, what, half a year? Without warning and bruises on her face, somehow even taller than before, even more awkward, but in much nicer clothes.

Or, even worse, none of those, a complete lack of recognition or a domino effect of afterthoughts, she looks familiar, doesn't she, oh, wait, isn't that...what's her name, which woudl be an odd sort of comfort, but nothing she was prepared to handle right now. So she was doing everything she could do avoid it, which meant going to the offices for her room assignment. She knew it would be posted, of course, but she just couldn't...

...and when they told her, she thought there must have been some mistake. "Are you sure?" she asked, because 210 was the room she'd been in last time. Surely, they didn't just hold her spot, wouldn't they have given it to someone else? Or maybe it was empty now, and they just figured, why not? Would Sabine still be there? Would she want Astrid back? Probably not. She'd probably enjoyed having a room to herself this whole time, she could already feel the resentment seeping out the moment she realized that the solitude she thougth was secured was now ruined. God, she hoped Sabine wasn't still there.

...but she was. It was plain to see that much when Astrid climbed the stairs and went down the hall and opened that all-too-familiar door with the faint smudges of fingerprinted paint from their hands. It was clear that Sabine was definitely still there, but those worries fled Astrid the moment she turned toward what used to be...and was again...and apparently always had been her side of the room.

The oleanders.

The oleanders were still there, on the wall, from the last time she'd painted it, right before she left. Oleanders, for Ingrid, because she'd wanted her back, she'd called her back home, and the flood of emotion that hit Astrid just then was strong enough that she cried out, then quickly covered her mouth, the plastic bags in her hand swinging, as she stared, the image becoming blurry with the tears stinging her eyes.

She'd left it. She hadn't touched it. And they were oleanders.

Astrid dropped her bags, her suitcase, sniffed, pushed the heels of her hands into the eyes to push back the tears, and then clutched onto the heat of anger now rising in her stomach. They couldn't stay. They couldn't, not the oleander, not for her, how could she sleep in that bed tonight with those oleanders there? She almost went into a long familiar auto-pilot setting, hurring to the bed, reaching under to pull it out from the wall, and then she'd go over to where she was positive all the tarps and the white paint and the brushes were located, she'd wipe the whole thing away, she'd paint something else, or she'd just leave it, a big blank wall, like her life right now, like her soul, like everything.

But she'd only moved the bed an inch before she stopped again, staring at a small little package on her bed. A present, wrapped in marbled paper like the paper she'd made for Claire's Christmas presents, and something else clutched her chest. Had that been there before, a second ago, when she first came in? She didn't think so. Where would it have come from, anyway? Who would it be from? No one knew she was here; she didn't even know she'd be here until just that morning! It didn't make sense.

Curiousity, though, pulled at her, and she dropped the corner of the bed and straightened up, frowning at the present for a moment before stepping closer. Picking it up. Feeling the smooth paper and the rough, neatly tied ribbon. Giving it a small shake, to see if what was inside would rattle.

A part of her knew she should leave it. She shouldn't touch it. She should probably throw it out the window and never think of it again. But that part was overruled by something that felt almost like a foreign influence invading her, that was moving her hand for her, almost, as she slowly started to pull the ribbon away, opening the box, leaning in to peer inside.

And that's when she felt the pull, that seemed to take her breath away so she couldn't even scream before it took her, a hand, that looked like porcelain, dressed up in the frills and bright colors of a clown or a doll, or...something, barely even giving her time to think that here she hadn't even been back for an hour, and already...already....this.

[[ Establishy! But open for the roommate if she wants in on the Case of the Disappearing Roommate that Wasn't Even There ]]