fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

With all the rain that had blown through earlier in the week, the school administration had been worried that welcome picnic day would be wet and gloomy. Thankfully, it was sunny, warm, and beautiful outside, and everything had been set up just in time for the shuttle of new folks to arrive. There was a buffet table of food and drinks waiting, along with the list of Big and Little Siblings, the list of roommates, and more name tags than they'd probably need for three picnics.

Also, there wasn't a single flower out on the lawn after last weekend. Just saying.

With everything in place, it looked like it was time for the first summer term to begin!

[OCD up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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But that sounded downright boring! "How are Karla and the others doing? My week has been dreadfully dull, I'm afraid."

If you didn't count killing and cooking people and visiting his best friend in the mental asylum he'd caused him to be put into. Hannibal didn't.

Fun times for Hannibal!

//They're doing well enough. She had company already, so I mostly kept out of the way, honestly. Spent more time in the woods meditating than I did really being social. Needed it, honestly. I've been... doing a lot of trying not to think, lately.//

"About the past few months?" Hannibal asked. "Did it help?" After it only took how many mentors, a psychiatrist, and a therapist to suggest he try it?

//About the past few years. About a lot of things,// Jono admitted. //The past few months were icing on a rather unpalatable cake, mostly. And it... didn't hurt, I don't think. Mulling things over, I mean. Trying to take my own damn advice after spending a semester talking to my students about coping with change.//

"Clearly you need better cake," Hannibal offered with a smile. "And I should hope that it was good advice?"

//Well, I haven't heard of any having horrible meltdowns since the semester's end,// Jono replied, shrugging. //A lot of it was coping strategies and how there wasn't any shame in asking for help - yes I am well aware that makes me a hypocrite - and... more than a little of the semester was just... students talking amongst themselves, sorting out what was eating at them.//

"I meant for yourself," Hannibal amended. "And you're only a hypocrite if you don't try to change it."

//I suppose that's true enough.// Jono shoved his hands into his coat pockets and shrugged. //I wound up at the group therapy session at the clinic on Monday. Out of... curiosity, I suppose. To see if it had any appeal for me. I'm not usually the sort to look for therapy in general, never mind sit and share with the group, but it's interesting to see how many people are coming from a similar place, at least. And it wasn't all that different from what we were doing in class.//

"I spoke with Sam after the session," Hannibal acknowledged. "Call it professional curiosity. He seems likable and well-balanced."

Not that Hannibal was forgiving Jono yet for not talking to him instead. "I am surprised you went, although I suppose a group session is different from sitting down and being psychoanalyzed."

//I don't do psychoanalysis well,// Jono noted, shrugging his shoulders, //though I'm not ruling that out, either. Group sessions are... less about me, is the thing. I need it to not be about me just yet.//

"Too much in your life has been all about you," Hannibal noted. Then he shook his head. "Most people would have problems with the world not thinking of them enough."

//Most people haven't had to learn that keeping your head down is the only way to keep it in one piece quite the same way I have, either,// Jonothon replied. //Though I suppose it's only a matter of time before I run off and pretend to be some sort of hero all over again.//

"Is it?" Hannibal looked at Jono a bit askance and waved at the picnic. "You don't see enough excitement here, then?"

//Hannibal, mate,// Jono replied, //here is where I go to get away from the excitement. From the war and the hate and the guilt. Back home, or, hell, even Kaeleer, I feel... obligated, I suppose, to get involved. As though I have a responsibility to be there and to fight wherever I'm needed.//

He shrugged.

//I was a teacher, back there. And I would fight for any one of my students, just as I would for the ones I've got here. Only, people aren't actively trying to exterminate my students here on a regular basis.//

"So it's for that sense of obligation you would return?" Hannibal shook his head. "I don't know those other students, or what else there might call you back, but I would think this is another time to heed your own advice. If you know it isn't healthy to go, then don't go."

Jono was silent for a moment, and then he added, //I've got friends, there. Teammates, practically family. We fought side-by-side. We lost people, buried people. Christ, I love them, you know? Lee and Angelo. Angel and Barry and the handful of people who live long enough to walk away every time a team breaks apart. I've been through hell with them. It doesn't feel right to just leave them behind and not look back.//

"You can visit and not 'pretend to be some sort of hero'," Hannibal pointed out. "Not risking your life and health isn't abandonment. Do you think they would tell you otherwise?"

Jono just raised an eyebrow.

//Last time I visited was for Christmas.// He waved a hand at his face. //That ended wonderfully for me. Going back there... it's never just a visit. There's always, always something. Some new government plot to destroy or enslave everyone with an x-gene, some all-powerful arsehole who can re-write reality with a few words or a stray thought. Registration. The Legacy virus. Weapon X. Always, always something.//

Hannibal grimaced. "Maybe your friends could visit you here," he suggested. It honestly didn't sound like Jono's home world was a healthy place for anyone. "You must forgive me if I seem selfish; as I said, I don't know them. I only see a friend who is being hurt, and am concerned for him."

//They do visit, sometimes,// Jono replied, bunching up at the shoulders a little. //They'll probably have to keep it up, anyway. Karla's not likely to be terribly thrilled about me skipping off there again either, given my track record, and I've signed a contract, with her.//

Which he was going to actually properly observe at some point, honest.

Karla was totally on Hannibal's side in this, Jono. There was a reason for that.

"Will you pardon me if I say I'm rather glad?" Hannibal asked with an apologetic smile.

//Considering all of the pieces I'm prone to coming back in, I'll not only pardon you, but admit that I absolutely understand why. Karla is still learning about things that happened to me back in my academy days that I haven't gotten around to telling anybody about in any sort of detail.//

Like a run-in with another, less pleasant version of Dracula, for example. Or that time Jono obliterated his entire body in order to get rid of D'Spayre.

"I feel professionally bound to tell you that speaking of traumatic events can help," Hannibal offered with a wry chuckle.

One of these days, he was going to find out about that body-obliterating, Jono, and he was going to smack you silly, sit you down, and glare at you until you re-made your jaw. (That was totally a valid psychological tactic, right?)

Unless he ever found out about the names of your villains; in that case, he'd be face-palming too hard.

Absolutely valid. When it came to Jono, sometimes smacking and glaring was the only thing that ever got him to do anything.

//I know it is. I'm just bloody terrible at it. Not interested in the yelling-at I generally get before the worrying starts, and what people worry about the most tend not to be the things that are actually eating me up inside regardless. They get hung up on 'shot six times, point blank, in the chest,' and miss the important bits.//

... Jono.

"To be fair, for most people that is a fairly important bit," Hannibal pointed out wryly. Most people had chests, after all.

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