Room 324, Tuesday Afternoon

[wwiii]

Okay. Things. There were things happening, and Warren needed to... to do something about them. Frat had been skipped last week because of the holiday, and this week, after losing his entire world, he just hadn't had it in him to coordinate anything resembling fun and games. He'd meant to go to the library to help research over the weekend, and that hadn't happened, and he couldn't really remember the last time he'd eaten, though he was vaguely aware of stumbling off to raid common room fridges at least a couple of times in there.

It was stupid. He hadn't so much as thought about going home in the past two years, and now that it was gone...

He needed to be doing things, but he had no idea where to start. So he just kind of cuddled Thor and stared at the ceiling.

When had moping in his room alone with a bunny become the status quo, anyhow?

[Open post, closed door, IDEK. Someone smack him or something.]

Comments

[glacial_queen]

No, Warren! Karla was supposed to be making you feel better, not struggling not to cry all over your chest!

"I--I was on the phone with her--said goodbye to her and Helena and Barbara and Alfred--" She was losing the struggle with tears. Losing it so badly. "She made me hang up--before it got all the way to the top--"

And now Karla was biting her lip to keep from just bawling.

[wwiii]

Too bad, Karla. Warren was here to be cried on, and you were stuck for it, now.

"She... wasn't alone, then," he offered, as if that made it better, somehow. "She had her family, and she got to say goodbye."

Which wasn't much of a comfort. But it was something.

[glacial_queen]

"She wasn't supposed to!" Karla cried out, grief changing to anger in a heartbeat. "She wasn't supposed to even be there! She was supposed to be on the island where it's safe! She promised that I wouldn't have to write her name down, she promised!"

[wwiii]

Warren flinched at the outburst, but didn't recoil, just... wrapping his arms around her a little more tightly.

He wasn't about to let go now.

"Why did she wait?"

There had to be a reason. You didn't just see the end of the world coming and then decide to stick around until the last minute for kicks.

[glacial_queen]

"She wouldn't leave until Portalocity had tickets enough for everyone," Karla admitted, drooping once again. Anger couldn't hold up against logic. "She wasn't going to leave without Alfred and her sisters. And, I think, she felt guilty about leaving everyone else behind, too. She was--is--a crimefighter in New Gotham. Maybe she felt...like, a responsibility..."

That's why Leda had gone home, after all. To be with her people that couldn't get away.

[wwiii]

"I wish I'd known," Warren murmured, quietly. "Maybe I could have talked to Portalocity. Tried to... to..."

The wind left his sails pretty quickly with that one. There wasn't going to be much in the way of bribing them for extra tickets from him. His money had gone with the rest of his world. He didn't miss it, exactly, but it wasn't helping him much with that whole 'completely useless' feeling that he was drowning in.

"... Something."

[glacial_queen]

"It wasn't a matter of money," Karla told him, guessing where his thoughts had gone. "Helena's rich. She inherited her dad's company. You've never been to the manor, have you?"

He'd had an invite this year for Thanksgiving, but...Yeah.

"It's huge. And beautiful." And past tense. Karla switched topics slightly. "If it were simply cash, Helena could have handled it. Mother Night, I could have."

[wwiii]

"It's how Bobby managed to get back to pack his things and say goodbye," Warren explained, softly. "His Warren, I mean. He just threw money at them until they stopped arguing and booked him the damn portals."

Which was... not entirely on topic, either. But, hey. At least one Warren out there had been good at not sucking.

"It's taking everyone."

[glacial_queen]

"One's a lot easier to swing than nine," Karla said. "Or even four or five."

Had she told him that Jono's Warren was gone? She couldn't remember. And now she was too tired to even bring it up. Why repeat a litany of the missing? It changed nothing. "And Bobby left before everything went extra-crazy."

[wwiii]

"I guess," Warren murmured. "But Kennedy dropped off the grid way before then."

... Which somehow made him more of a failure because he hadn't thrown money he didn't have at someone who had chosen to linger behind in the first place, yes.

[glacial_queen]

"And how is any of that something you could have stopped?" Karla asked, not seeing the connection.

[wwiii]

Because there probably wasn't one!

"I'm not trying hard enough."

Maybe there was one in his brain, if you squinted?

"I just don't know what to do."

[glacial_queen]

"Warren, yesterday I spent my shift smashing snow globes into the walls at 'Dite's," Karla said softly. "Or selling them to others so they could smash. I've been running myself ragged trying to take every note and color code it and organize it and make sense of it. But it's not getting me anywhere."

That was the long and short of it. Nothing she did mattered. Nothing she did got them any closer to finding a way to fix it.

"No one knows what to do. So if you're going to blame yourself, give me some of that, too."

[wwiii]

No, Karla. It was Warren's blame and he wasn't gonna share.

"But I'm doing nothing," he protested. "I'm just sitting here and and and I'm crying and hurting and worrying and I'm useless."

Which had been a worry of his before people started to vanish.

[glacial_queen]

"Warren, your world is gone."

Because, you know, maybe he needed the reminder. "If you weren't sitting here crying and worrying, I'd wonder what was wrong with you! But it doesn't matter--you could be crying and worrying or you could be frantically researching and you know what? You'd have an equal effect! Nothing anyone is doing is working!"

Only Karla would turn to complete nihilism in an effort to make someone feel better. In her defense, however, she wasn't at her best.

[wwiii]

"So, what, I'm just supposed to give up and wait for it to come to us because nobody's had any luck yet?!"

... From whimpering to yelling in ten seconds flat. That was probably a record for Warren.

Really, yelling at all was probably a record for Warren.

"I can't... I can't think right now but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be doing something! What good am I if all I'm doing is nothing at all!?"

[glacial_queen]

"You want to do something?" Karla snapped, temper always coming more easily to her than grief. "Then do it! Get up and do it! Stop wasting time castigating yourself for not doing something and use that time and effort to figure out what you can be doing!"

She poked him in the ribs, not at all the gentle nudge from earlier. "But whatever you're doing, stop blaming yourself for things you couldn't have fixed! Dinah is not your fault! Bobby is not your fault! Kennedy is not your fault! Your father is not your fault! So stop trying to make it that way if you want to be useful!"

Nice, Karla. Real nice.

[wwiii]

This was going to end well.

"So what can I fix? You just said yourself, there wasn't even a point!" Warren was pulling back now, re-claiming his wing and his arms so that Thor wouldn't get caught in the crossfire if there was more not-so-gentle poking. "I went to class yesterday, and it was about first aid. Excellent! Great! If whatever this is that ate a whole damn world shows up, I can bleed on it or offer it a band-aid. I'm sure that'll do a lot of good, too!"

[glacial_queen]

"Make up your damn mind!" Karla demanded, setting Thor back down on the bed. He didn't need to see Mommy and Daddy fighting. "Either there is nothing we can do and so we it's okay to just sit here and mope, or there is something we can do, in which case one of the things you can do is help me figure out what! But stop arguing for one side and then the other with me! I am out of ideas right now, okay? I'm sorry! But I don't know what to tell you! I am tapped out."

[wwiii]

Warren drew in a sharp breath at that, rearing back, wings spreading until one thumped against the wall.

And then he sagged forward, staring down at his feet.

"I just... want to sit here and hurt," he said, quietly, not able to look up. "I wait to sit here and hurt and worry and hate myself for never making peace with my dad and I want to miss everyone and feel small and stupid and scared and completely useless. And I can't do that. There's nothing I can do. Not if it's taken out entire worlds. But I can't do that."

And then he was bracing himself for more yelling.

[glacial_queen]

How about some slumping instead, from Karla's spot on the blanket? Could he handle that instead?

"Not being able to handle some kind of world-eating entity doesn't make you useless, Warren. It's stumping all of us. You're not--not holding anyone back or weighing anyone down. We're all in this together. We all feel small and stupid and scared and useless. I'm hurt and worried and hating myself because I couldn't protect Dinah or Leda or even convince them to stay on the island."

She paused for breath, trying to figure out where she was going with all that. "What do you want from me?" she asked, miserable. "Tell me what to say and I'll say it."

[wwiii]

"If I knew what it was I needed to hear right now, I would have said it myself," Warren murmured, and then sighed, wrapping his wings around himself and closing his eyes. "I'm sorry about your friends, Karla. And I'm sorry I can't just shrug this off and keep going like everyone else around here seems to be able to do, and I'm sorry I'm just some stupid kid. Like I'm just sitting here waiting for someone to give me something to do even if it's a dead-end because at least I'm not sitting here telling myself that I was an idiot for ever thinking I could grow the hell up and help anyone at all."

Which, if she managed to parse all of that, he didn't figure she'd be all that thrilled about.

[glacial_queen]

"You--you think we're shrugging this off?" Karla repeated, jaw falling open and tears springing to her eyes. "That you're the only one who feels this way? The only thing that's stopping you from marching to the library and sitting down in front of a stack of books is because no one has told you to yet?"

She laughed, but it was a bitter, choked noise. "Then by all means, Warren, let me be the first. Go to the library. Talk to the librarian. Find a book or four that haven't been pawed over already and start reading. If you're feeling ambitious, take notes! Unless that would be too much like shrugging it off."

Her knuckles turned white in her lap as she clenched her hands together, biting back the nasty, hurtful things that still leapt too easily to her tongue.

[wwiii]

"That's not..."

Not what he'd meant, entirely?

But it was exactly what he'd said, wasn't it?

OhGod he was just making everything worse, sitting here and acting like some spoiled rich kid whose biggest trouble growing up was that he'd never been allowed to stretch and saying all the wrong things, acting like the end of the world was somehow his fault but everyone else should make it better for him because he was too sad to be of any good to anyone. So what if he lost his entire world? He'd never been all that invested in it anyway, but there were other people who had lost just as much if not more, and they were still trying.

He just wanted whatever it was that they had, that kept them going, and he was blowing this spectacularly and now he'd hurt Karla and...

"I'm sorry," he murmured, tired and small and trying and failing to keep from hiding behind his wings. "I know this isn't just hitting me. I know. And there are people out there doing everything they can, you're doing everything you can and... And I'm just..." Deep breath. "I'm making this worse. I shouldn't even be talking right now. I'll be quiet."

[glacial_queen]

"What?!"

Now Karla was jumping to her feet and it was a good thing she'd already moved Thor because he would have spilled over if he'd remained in her lap. "You can't do that!" She marched over the maybe three paces away he'd moved and thumped him hard on one of his struts. It wouldn't even be enough to bruise someone without a Healing factor, but it was the only thing she could think to do to show her displeasure with him cowering.

"No! You can't do that! You promised not to do that!" Folding her arms over her chest, Karla spat, "After I got back from Jack's world you promised--promised!--that you wouldn't do that! You wouldn't just hide away and bite back what you were thinking and feeling so you wouldn't make waves. You want to fight with me? Yell at me? Fine, then do it! You don't want to do any of those things? Then figure out a way to find us a way back to not fighting any more, but you can't just shut down on me! You can't wash your hands of responsibility and remain quiet when that's not going to fix anything! You. Promised!"

She glared up at him, angry eyes at odds with her trembling chin, but didn't back down.

"Or is that one more thing that I'm supposed to figure out by myself, too?"

Quiet. Bitter. Damning.