fandomhigh | Library [8.4]

Crisis was averted, everyone was back in the land of the waking, which meant life was (slowly) returning to normal around the school.

Anemone had ventured out to the library to ~~handwavily~~ research once or twice, but had usually ended up retreating to the safety of her room. The sleepers reminded her far too much of her own disorder; the moments when the Sickness would pull her mind away from her body, leaving an empty husk unable to respond to the most basic prompts while her soul was a reality away.

It wouldn't happen here, it couldn't. The Coralians hadn't come to this Earth yet, with the exception of her, and this sleeping sickness had been born of magic and not from the planet itself.

Which didn't make her feel any better about hiding away, but she'd been unable to cope with the blank faces and still bodies down at Town Hall, and the fear that maybe, maybe, she'd been the one to infect everyone with the Despair. That maybe her presence here was enough to wake the planet, and was jumpstarting her own timeline.

Anemone had never been so happy to be wrong.

And now people were awake. There were classes. And there were plenty of books to be shelved, and tidied, and a Special Collections to feed as a reward for not trying to eat anyone over the weekend.

The Fandom High Library was open, and the library aide was bustling about, riding on the book carts and cleaning up the mess left-behind by the researchers while Gulliver supervised.

Yup, everything was totally back to normal.

[OCD freeeeeeeeeeee as the wind!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[np!]

Which pretty much ended Dinah's worries about this Anemone being dangerous to her, even if she was dangerous in general. Because if she could appreciate the good things like that, there was no way she was just going to randomly go off.

"You're from the future-- I think you told me that? Ages and ages from now?" Dinah tilted her head. "And your sister and her guy are off on their honeymoon. And got rescued from a black hole." She considered. "Maybe that Anemone lost her sister." She shook her head. "Guess it doesn't matter. She's gone now, anyway. They all died."

Anemone randomly went off on a regular basis, she was just more prone to channeling the it through art or pranks than violence.

"Oh, that wouldn't be it. I've always been a little 'off', and I don't even like Eureka that much," she sniffed, nose in the air. "She's a goody-two-shoes, and everyone likes her. And every time I've tried to kill her, she gets off from luck, not skill."

Mostly messing with Dinah, but still crazy, yes.

Okay, Dinah didn't know whether to believe that or not, or what to say to it if she did. Or even if she didn't. This place totally messed with all her basic assumptions. Or sanity. Whichever.

So that got a 'what the heck, Anemone?' look, and a question of, "Is she still speaking to you?"

"She's off kissing Renton somewhere, she's not talking to anyone," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "Quit looking so constipated, Dinah."

"For the record: I'm unbalanced, maladjusted, occasionally violent, and carefully medicated, which I am rather sure this other-me was not. Which? I'm pretty sure puts me one up on the rest of the student body, 'cause you're all just as violent and nuts as I am. You just repress it and pretend it's not there."

"If you weren't, you'd be in a straight-jacket and bundled off to the nearest looney bin after a week here. The sane do not survive Fandom."

Dinah kind of had her mouth open by the end of this speech, because wow, she sounded like the other Anemone. Medication probably made it more comprehensible and less random, though.

She closed it with a snap, wanted to immediately deny she was repressed, or in denial about being nuts, then ended up in a logic loop where she wondered if she was, then decided she didn't really care if she was.

"Maaaybe." Which was as much as she could admit into the barrage of opinion and overwhelming confidence there. She studied Anemone. "And you're okay with all that. Really." She blinked. "Hunh."

"You go to fight club, don't give me 'maybe,'" she said dryly. "There's nothing wrong with enjoying violence, or being good at it."

"And not that it's any of your business -- " and it wasn't, really. Why Dinah was making a big deal about her crazy in another reality was beyond her. " -- but yes, I am. Like I said, we like being me. Would you rather I wallow in emo or self-pity?"

"That seems kinda counter-productive for my mental well-being, doesn't it?"

This is where, everything else aside, Dinah occasionally feels despair at just not being smart enough for talking to other students about stuff like this. Because it's not the crazy of other-Anemone, it's the similarity to this-Anemone, who believes everyone is violent and nuts here, and repressing it, and is utterly confident in that, and while that's not all wrong, it's not all right, and... didn't they have this argument when they were trying to kill each other? Yeah. Disturbing.

"No, wallowing, bad." That much, she can answer. "And, well. Sorry if I offended you there. I just don't know what to say." She bit her lip. "I can't agree. But I'm wrong a lot. So. Maybe."

Aw, she was confused! They were cute when they got flustered and concerned!

"I'm not human," she said gently, fixing Dinah with her alien red-on-purple eyes. "I had to learn emotion; it doesn't come built-in with us, and I don't share your same sense of right or wrong. Coralians simply don't see the world that way." Just ask the three or four unfortunate teachers that had to suffer through an ethics class with Anemone.

"I have always done what I thought was right at the time. I won't pretend shame for that, and I don't feel bad about it, because I was doing what needed to be done. Yeah, I was used and manipulated -- which was wrong blah blah blah -- but I thought I was following my heart." The smile Anemone gave her was bright and genuine. "And there's never any reason to regret that, as long as you do something with everything you have."

"Oh. Ohhh." She should've remembered that, the other Anemone had said as much, but, well. There'd been a lot to process. Maybe she'd expected more bitterness too, because of the other world one. Dinah's expression eased a bit into thoughtful, instead of disturbed and confused, and she sighed, listening to Anemone. She chewed her lip and nodded slowly. "No. No, you're right that would be kind of... pointless, to be upset with yourself about doing something that you felt good about at the time." The sense of right and wrong being different she was almost used to now, after various chats with Ino, and Merlin, but the emotion was different. "You guys don't have emotions?" She tried to wrap her mind about that, curiosity uppermost. "Do you just, mostly feel kind of okay or blah all the time, or is it... okay, I don't know what the other option would be there." No feelings. No feelings? That would be Dinah's bzuh? face.

"Okay. Um, see, we aren't born like humans, either, and that's part of it. Eureka and Sakuya were... hatched, for lack of a better term," Anemone said, trying to find the words for the metaphysics of it all. Where was Dr. Bear when she needed him? "They were fully-formed girls, with an approximate physical age of fourteen-years-old, unearthed from the alien lifeform known as the Scub Coral."

"I say approximate age, because initially, we don't get any older. At least on the outside," she continued. "They were sent to learn; blank slates for humanity to write a message to the Coralians upon, since they couldn't communicate directly. We don't start maturing physically or mentally until we've bonded with a human, and Sakuya spent forty years in a fourteen-year-old body because the religious zealots who found her were too scared to talk to her."

"That's how we learn. Imprinting. We have to learn through the humans around us before we start experiencing emotions for ourselves, or get the right understanding to comprehend them."

"So, you guys were kind of created to be living bridges," Dinah said slowly. Two different species, so yeah, there'd be stuff she'd never get there, really. "And blank means blank. Got it." She nodded, sure she was still missing parts of it, but getting the general gist of how Anemone and her sisters acquired emotions and absorbed moralities. "Ohh. Okay. You'd each have different experiences, so, different emotions or takes on morality and... right." And none of it learned the way humans learn it, but just soaked up and then processed later. Dinah blinked. "Wild. It makes my head hurt, that's so different. It's like ninety degrees from how we-- evolve? Yeah." She smiled suddenly. "Do we must make your head hurt too, sometimes? Just because of the way we think, never mind what we're thinking about?"

Library [8.4]

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