Room 322, Tuesday Afternoon

[not_every_mage]

If Anders was being honest, he'd have to admit that the tall box from Kathy that Ringo had given him some months before had fallen completely out of his mind.

It had started with good intentions: He'd dragged the parcel back to his room and stuck it in the closet so he could save it for his actual birthday and feel like Kathy was there, just for a moment. And then there had been the madness of trying to summon a demon, and the dull terror of the Circle, and by the time he was home again his birthday was some weeks past and the tall package entirely forgotten in a back corner of his closet. The fact thinking about Kathy hurt and he avoided it when he could had only added to his amnesia.

It might have stayed there forever, if Lachlan hadn't managed to hit one of his toy mice deep into the closet. Anders went digging through a mess of discarded paper to find it, and ended up bumping into the box. The tall, slender package wobbled worryingly for a moment before he was able to catch it.

And then there was nothing to do but open it. Lachlan's mouse was forgotten as he pried the paper off and found --

A damned fine staff. The kind he'd never expect to afford on his own. He could feel its power singing to him as he held it in his lap. Some part of him couldn't wait to get to a space where he could test it safely.

The rest of him mainly wanted to cry.

"Dammit, Kathy," he muttered. "Just ... damn it."

[OOC: Cracked door, open post.]

Comments

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante had taken off to go talk to Roscoe about Ada's birthday - and then lingered for a while to just talk shit, because that was kinda how he functioned.

He nudged the door open with his foot when he got back, a merry greeting already ready to get tossed at his roommate-- and then he stopped in his tracks. "...Anders?"

[not_every_mage]

"Mmmm," Anders said, barely glancing up. "I found Kathy's birthday present."

Hence the giant stick across his lap. And hence his gutted expression.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Kathy got you a sti--"

No, not a stick. A staff. Like the one Anders always used to throw spells around. A staff. From Kathy.

"Fuck," Dante said, and shut the door behind him.

[not_every_mage]

"Fuck," Anders agreed, running a distracted hand through his hair. "My birthday was in June. Who buys birthday presents two months early?"

This may have been the least important detail. But it was what Anders could handle.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Kathy," Dante sighed. "Fucking overachiever."

He weaved around the far end of the staff so he could sit down on Anders' bed, not too close but not far, either.

"She wrote me a note. I threw it out."

And then Ringo had salvaged it, but he wasn't thinking about that right now.

[not_every_mage]

"I had a note too," Anders told him, waving a hand vaguely to his dresser. "It's ... somewhere."

It was tucked in with t-shirts from her that he hadn't been able to wear.

"I have to hand it to her," he added. "If she was trying to break our hearts, she did a smashing job at it."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Fuck her," Dante said.

It didn't have the dedicated vehemence to it the statement had held at the start of the summer.

"Just--" Something. You'd think that, with Dante having an actual at-least-25%-of-it experience of what Anders was probably feeling, he'd know better what to say about it. "...Fuck her," he settled on. "What're you gonna do with it?"

[not_every_mage]

"Use it, I suppose," Anders said, as if it were the first time he'd considered the issue. "It's nice. Too nice to keep in a corner somewhere."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Right. Makes sense." It did. And in that capacity, it'd been a stupid fucking question.

Dante scooted a few inches closer and felt like a fucking seven-year-old doing it. He had his own hurts about Kathy, but he just-- dealt with it when he was drunk and he had his phone in hand and he could leave stupid voicemails and not make it public.

Watching Anders hurt with it hurt, and he wasn't sure how to fix it.

[spin_kick_snap]

And later, once an emotionally-exhausted Anders had fallen asleep, the Fade was waiting for him. And someone in the Fade, as well.

"Hi," Kathy said, her uniform still a dazzling white in the muted colors of the Fade. "Been awhile, huh?"

[not_every_mage]

"It has," Anders said, squinting at her. In the confusion of his dream, he remembered that he was mad at her but couldn't think of why. "You're here? I thought I left you in Denerim."

[spin_kick_snap]

"The Fade is everywhere," Kathy reminded, holding out a hand for him. "It took me awhile to find you in it, though. And then awhile more for you to find me. It's complicated and I don't know enough about it to explain better."

[not_every_mage]

"It's everywhere," Anders agreed. "But that doesn't mean everything in it is everywhere."

He took the hand, looking at it curiously. "Is that all you were doing? Looking for me?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"What else do I have to do?" Kathy asked, shrugging, her fingers curling around his. "I wander around, I look for you, sometimes things go fuzzy and I feel like I've lost time...but who can say for real? Or what is real? I can't." Her eyes gleamed in the low light. "Maybe I'm only here when you want me to be."

[not_every_mage]

"No," Anders said immediately. "If that were it, I'd have you here all the time. I'd never wake up."

It hardly mattered, though. She was there with him now.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Come sit," she said, tugging him down next to her as she went to sit on a soft patch of grass that hadn't been there a moment ago. "You're still too far away. We only have so much time and I want to be close to you for all of it. I miss you. Holding you, touching you, talking to you. Everything. I miss it all."

[not_every_mage]

Anders followed her to sit on the grass squinting at the sky above them that shouldn't have been there, either.

"I found your staff," he remembered suddenly. "The birthday present. That one."

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo wasn't swinging by the room in particular. Or even going anywhere, really. Just, you know, wandering. But when she spotted a cracked door, she figured she'd stick her head in and say hi.

"Hi!" she chirped, widening the crack enough to stick her head in and look around.

[not_every_mage]

Anders gave her a wan smile, setting the staff to the side of the bed. "Hi, yourself," he said. "I finally opened Kathy's birthday present. You found it when you were cleaning her room, remember?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Oh." Ringo's smile sort of matched his. Lots of memories there. "Yeah. I remember."

"Um, happy birthday, I hope?" She didn't actually know when it was, but if he'd just opened the present, it had to have been recent, right?

[not_every_mage]

"It was a while ago, but thank you," Anders told her vaguely. "I forgot I had this. You know, with being away and everything."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Yeah." Ringo was quiet for a second, then looked up at Anders. Her expression mixed trepidation and hope. "It's a good present to remember you have?" Because reminders of Kathy still all seemed to have a warm nostalgic side, and a spiky-sharp stab of loss mixed together.

[not_every_mage]

"It'll come in handy next time something attacks, that's for sure," Anders agreed, tone going a tiny bit warmer. "Although I need to test it before that happens. But ... tomorrow."

He was still too sad to do it tonight.

He gave Ringo a closer look. "She didn't leave you anything, did she?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Tomorrow," Ringo agreed with a slow, understanding nod.

Then his question caused her lip to twitch slightly, and she shook her head. It still kind of hurt, too. Not that she didn't have things to remember Kathy by, but no, well, nothing final. Nothing from the end.

But Ringo was trying to be grown up about it, and not let it get to her. Or at least pretend that it didn't. "No. I didn't have a birthday or anything coming up, so there wasn't really any reason."

[not_every_mage]

"Well, that's unfair," Anders groused."Sorry."