not_every_mage | Room 322, Tuesday Afternoon

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.]

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Kathy frowned at the first mention of his staff, head tilted in brief confusion that cleared up as he explained. "You did? Did you like it? Have you had a chance to use it yet?"

"Yes, and no," Anders said. "It's gorgeous, but opening it made me miss you even worse than I always do."

He ran a thumb over the back of her hand.

"Only you would buy a birthday present two months early."

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?"

"I found it and had to get it immediately," Kathy said, letting her hair fall in front of her face as if that could hide her grin. "I'd rather get you a gift two months early than two months late, anyway."

Her grin faltered a bit at that. "I'm glad I did," she said in a hoarse whisper. "I know it hurts for you to look at it right now, but I'm glad you have something."

"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?

"I know," Dante said, with a soft snort. "A big pile of pretty bullshit."

He let out a sigh. "What'd she write you?"

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

Anders winced, trying to pull up the memory.

"All I remember is that she said she loved me," he finally said softly. "More bullshit, isn't it? Considering."

It was relieving to be talking to Dante about this, he realized. With anyone else he would have felt obligated to at least weakly defend Kathy's choice to put her duty at home over lovers, happiness, even her own life. With Dante there was no need.

"Right," Anders said, twisting some grass between his fingers briskly, as if that might help. "I don't suppose dying made you wise enough to know when it'll stop hurting."

"Well, she meant it," Dante said, "But that didn't fucking matter in the end, did it?"

Getting pissed at Kathy on his own behalf had gotten increasingly harder over the months. Doing so on Anders', not so much. "It's why I threw the note out," he said, as quietly as Anders had. "She had a lot of pretty words, but none of that means shit when she wasn't willing to back 'em up."

And Anders hadn't been angry until he opened the staff and had a reminder of both Kathy's thoughtfulness and her utter stupidity lying across his lap.

"No," he said. "What she said didn't matter. All I care about is that she's not here. It's easier some days, but --"

But today wasn't some days.

Dante sighed, and hugged him closer. "Yeah," he said. "I know."

He was good at burying shit. He had to be. That was why he never let the but come out until he was drunk on his own late at night and he could let a torrent of whatever loose on a dead phone's voicemail that no one would ever listen to anyway.

"You wanna talk more about it?"

"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.

"I guess it depends on how much you loved me," Kathy said, giving him a sad smile. "And how fast you're trying to forget me. There's probably a formula involved, but I don't know what it is."

Anders smiled, shook his head. "I don't know what else to say," he admitted. "I just -- miss her. And I'm angry. And we just have to get past it, don't we? All the powers we have, and nothing we can do about this."

"Powered but powerless," Dante said. Thoughtfully. And-- a little halting, as he tried to keep talking. Doing so to another human being who was listening wasn't something he really knew how to do, and he knew it'd been showing already. "It's... not like that was new to either of us, even before."

It'd just been their own seperate little tragedies, instead of the one they shared.

"Keeping going right past it's... not hard for me," he said. "I get reminded about her all the time, but... Stopping and thinking about it is harder. You know?"

"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?"

"Me either," Anders admitted. "If it helps, I loved you a lot."

"I love you, too," Kathy said, deliberately using the present tense. "So much. We had years to it to grow between us. The kind of love that was so intense it hurt a little when I was alive, even. Did you ever feel that? Loving me so much it made your heart feel overfull?"

"I know," Anders said. "I think about her every time I order takeout, or play on the internet, or see a picture of ~~meta~~ Iron Man. Sometimes it's nice, but sometimes --"

He shrugged, also halting. "Sometimes I wish I hadn't known her so well. Especially since it's different for her to be gone completely than it is for Nathan or Karl to be alive but not with me, you know?"

Anders laughed. "Fishing for a compliment?"

The answer was yes.

Dante was silent for a second. Two. Three. Maybe longer, he didn't know. "I do and I don't," he said finally. "I didn't have friends like you guys before I came here. Before that, if people gave a shit at all, they were there, and then one day they just-- weren't."

A beat.

"Here wasn't supposed to be like that."

Kathy slung her legs over his and cuddled closer. "Not at all," she said airily. "Just making sure we were on the same page."

She rested her head on his chest, content to just listen to his heartbeat for awhile. She had one, here, but it was as fake as the rest of her. His was soothing. "Can I admit something terrible and selfish to you?"

"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."

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

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Room 322, Tuesday Afternoon

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