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Cafeteria | Afternoon | Thursday | November 25

It was Thanksgiving Day. It was time for parades, football and food. Currently, Alex was leaning against one of the walls in the kitchen, watching the catering company set up for dinner. There was a shitload of food and his stomach growled just watching.

It was good to be president. He got to delegate everything.

When one of the caterers stepped forward and thrust a plastic wrapped garment bag in his hand, Alex frowned.

"What?"

"Outfits for the dinner," the caterer said. "The contract states that we make and you serve the food. No fulfillment of the contract, no food."

Confused, Alex unzipped the bag and peeked inside. The costume was not cool at all.

"Are you serious?" Alex asked, glaring. "No way!"

"No costumes," the caterer said, already signaling his workers to get ready to package the food up, "no food."

Alex continued glaring at the caterer and the costume. He hated his life.

[OCD is up and this is posted early for SP, of course!]

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"So it's not as if I'm making a big deal of you leaving more turkey for me- I mean, the rest of us...but really, there's more than enough for everyone." Whatever wariness Zatanna might feel towards Raven would be currently shadowed by healthy amounts of concern and confusion regarding the other girl's plate. And its lack of turkey.

"Or you are...you know, a vegan?"

"I do not eat the flesh of animals," Raven said, looking up at the other girl. She still felt unsettled around Zatanna even though she'd accepted she wasn't the same as the Zatanna who had cast her out when she'd come to the Justice League for help, but she tried not to let the tension show on her face.

"None of Azarath will eat meat," she further clarified. "It goes against the respect for life that they have."

"But", and Zatanna knew it was a moot point to try to explain already. "It's already dead. And- well..." Here she was going to zone out a little, since she had considered not eating animals in the past. Heck, she had tried, but the easier lifestyle of Fandom had made that way too difficult.

"Forget about it." She shook her head. "Nine out of ten conversations about eating habits end up in arguments, that I know. Is Azarath a plane accessible from Earth? I mean, do they share uses and cultures? Like Thanksgiving? You don't look too confused about it."

"Someone had to take that animal's life," Raven pointed out quietly.

"Azarath lies between the dimensional planes," she went on to explain. "It can only be found if you know where it is. And while many of its people originally came from Earth hundreds of years ago, they do not follow the customs of their former home. But I have been in Fandom for over a year now, and I learned of Thanksgiving last year."

"Point. Any more thought about that part of the process and I'll attack your tofurkey, so be warned." She still had time to amend her ways. But not in Thanksgiving.

Perhaps it shouldn't be all that strange that Zatanna reacted with familiarity to the concept of 'somewhere between planes'. "That's usually the best way to keep a place hidden. Shadowcrest works just like that." A beat. "That would be my house." Which was invariably empty and cold since nobody was there at the moment- "Wait a minute. You have been learning about human civilization from just over a year?" Had this been mentioned before? It had, right? Maybe not with the same words, but the general idea, if anything.

Raven nodded, poking at a potato with her fork. "I lived in Azarath all my life until May of last year," she said. "That is when I came to Fandom...after the Justice League cast me out." At the urging of Zatanna's other self went unspoken. "I had studied human history and culture in Azarath, but I had never experienced it until then."

"Because I told them to." Knowing when to shut up was one of those things Zatanna wasn't all that good at. Rather than making a mess because of that as she would have, Zatanna just sighed. It was already an old subject to her, and she hadn't even lived through it. She urged herself to eat something in order to do anything instead of staring in silence. "It must have been...overwhelming. Azarath doesn't sound like a place terribly in touch with the current human ways."

"No, and quite purposely so," Raven said, feeling a pang of loss for her old home. But Fandom was her home now. "They left Earth for a reason -- to remove themselves from the violence and greed and anger and hate that consume so many people here. Azarath is an emotionless place, so overwhelming...yes, it was. Very much so."

"Emotionless?" Zatanna shot her an 'are you serious?!' sort of look for a moment. "You already got the whole 'emotions are what make us humans' speech, I assume?" Now she was trying to imagine things from Raven's perspective...but it was impossible, she couldn't imagine a world without emotion. "You aren't emotionless now, at least." Even if she had seen mostly negative emotions, though.

"When Azarath was created, its people cast away their negative emotions in the name of peace," Raven said. "But in suppressing them, they also made positive emotions fade. Azarath is peace and serenity, but no love or hate, no passion or anger, no sadness or joy. And it is in that way I was raised."

She paused to take a sip of water before continuing. "I was resolved to still follow that path when I arrived here, for I had been warned strong emotions were dangerous to me. But I have since learned to embrace them."

"You can't fight what you don't know. Being devoid of emotions...it just makes you more vulnerable to them in the long run. Or at least I think like that." That didn't mean she was against a peaceful culture, but a numb culture? That smelled all kinds of wrong.

"When you say dangerous...you mean that your powers react to your emotions, right?" She remembered their first meeting, and how Raven's rage had made her seem like a lot more of a threat then she looked like now.

"I think that was the flaw in Azar's plan," Raven said with a sad smile. She had to wonder what Azar would think of her now, if she knew her student was experiencing emotions. "And...yes, they do," she said. "I am attempting to learn to keep myself calm in such situations."

Did she say was? Zatanna didn't ask, well aware that she already knew more than she wanted about her future.

"Look, just...don't go repressing yourself or avoiding touchy subjects for the sake of keeping your cool. You'll just end exploding, and that would be way, way worse."

Raven shook her head. "I cannot allow myself to become angry," she said. "That is far too dangerous to those around me. I wish to experience good emotions, but I must control my anger and fear."

"I...suppose so." She felt like she should try to give more advice, but Zatanna wasn't an expert on the subject, and any more and she would be making up stuff. So she stood. Oh yes, running away worked just as fine. "Just take care, alright? And you and Karla aren't the only ones good at healing. Just saying."

"Do you have some skill in that area as well?" Raven asked curiously. It was always handy in Fandom to have more healers around.

"Hm? Yep. That's one of the things dad wanted me to control the best. I can't say I'm the best at that but, I have the healing skills." She didn't consider herself a healer -it drained her a lot- but when your magic allows you to do pretty much what you want...

"If someone needs help, then helping is the least I can do. So before you go overexerting yourself, let me know."

"Thank you, I will bear that in mind," Raven said. "While I have few limitations on what I may heal, there have been times when there are too many injured to handle at once, and your magics would be useful if Fandom were ever invaded again."

She thought briefly, very briefly, of asking if Zatanna could do something about the pain in her side and her neck, but no, if she couldn't bring herself to tell Karla, she couldn't tell Zatanna that she was still hurting from a healing. Then they'd all be like Max and try to forbid her to use her gifts, and she could never stand for that.

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Cafeteria | Afternoon | Thursday | November 25

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