A Dorm Room at Voorhees Hall, Columbia University, New York, Sunday

[sampippy]

Xanthippe was officially Stressed Out.

It was all over an essay, which wasn't even due until next Friday, but it was important and she had to get it perfect, because what if she didn't? What if she didn't, and she flunked out of the class, and she flunked right out of college, and her father would disown her and her mother would disown her and then she would have to move in with Kimmy and deal with that whole freak show and she would lose all status and purpose in life and probably, like, end up becoming BFFs with Kimmy's extra-weirdo landlady and getting matching tattoos in a crack den and --

Anyway, yeah, she was currently doing what any self-respecting college student would do in her situation: screaming into a pillow.

Thank Christ her roommates weren't home right now.

[ooc: NFB but open for texts/calls/surprise visits!]

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[vrajna_kralis]

"Why are you so devoted to this one path?" he asked her. "Why do you feel like you have no options?"

[sampippy]

"Because this is what people do," she replied.

It was sort of a whine, especially towards the end.

[vrajna_kralis]

"Which people?" Hyacinthe asked, raising an eyebrow. "And if they're all as unhappy as you are, why do you wish to be like them? Especially when you have options."

[sampippy]

"Like every Voorhees since we got run out of the Netherlands, and probably even before that." Yeah that was a whine, too. "I mean, my name is on this building, that's how much history there is.

For the record, she still thought it was some amazingly offensive bullshit that she'd been put in this dorm in the first place.

[vrajna_kralis]

"At which point do you get to be happy?" Hyacinthe asked, briefly trying to remember where the Netherlands was. "When do you get to be Xan. When do you get to start living your life to be you and not to be some person whose name is on a building?"

[sampippy]

"... Probably when I'm like forty and, like, running Time Magazine?"

But probably not.

She was deflating a little.

[vrajna_kralis]

"And this is what I do not understand," Hya said simply. "You're brilliant. You're beautiful. You could do anything you wished." He tucked her hair back behind her ear, looking at her earnestly. "So then why do you limit yourself to what you think others wish of you?"

[sampippy]

"Because I'm not brilliant." And now she was trying to shift off his lap and onto the couch next to him, where she'd be able to pull her knees up to her chest and be the self-conscious mess her heart clearly yearned to be. "Like, not as much as I wish I was." Because she was setting the bar too high for herself, probably. "Like, what I've already written of my paper sounds like it was done by a five-year-old with like, cognitive disabilities or something."

Not true. But she felt like it was.

"And I'm not even pretty enough to just get by on that, either."

[vrajna_kralis]

"Do you see me as a five year old with cognitive disabilities?" Hyacinthe asked, leaning casually against the couch.

[sampippy]

Xanthippe thunked her head against her knees. There, now she was a ball. A ball of stress and despair and a dawning existential crisis.

"No, but you're not in college, trying to impress a professor who's old as rocks, either."

[vrajna_kralis]

Hya leaned forward, picked her up bodily, and put her back in his lap. "Technically," he said, lips twitching, "I'm far, far older than they, at least if you count by date of natality." His arms were warm around her. He wasn't demanding she sit up and look at him, just gently holding her, and offering her his support.

[sampippy]

Unfortunately, Xanthippe didn't actually let him.

"What are you -- no." There was a big ol' squirm and everything, to avoid being moved. "And this isn't a joke, Hya."

The upside? She was comfortable enough with him to actually react negatively. The Xan of old would've felt it necessary to try and stay his good graces by any means necessary.

[vrajna_kralis]

Once she started squirming, he let go. "No, it isn't," he agreed. "And 'tis not that I'm not taking it seriously. I apologize; my levity was amiss. I wanted you to uncurl a bit, not to dismiss your concerns."

But she just looked so - twisted up and uncomfortable.

[sampippy]

Funnily enough, she also felt both of those things! Except there was really nothing funny about it.

As they'd just discussed.

Her arms were wrapped tight around her bent legs. "Sorry," she mumbled, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

[vrajna_kralis]

"You needn't apologize," he assured her. "I am just - I worry for you." Hya ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. "I do not want you miserable, chasing a dream that isn't yours. But it's not my place to tell you want to do, either."

[sampippy]

"I don't even have any dreams."

That was a lot more subdued than before. Kind of dry, too. And resigned.

Actually a lot resigned.

Her arms relaxed a little, but her forehead stayed pressed to her knees. "You know I didn't even wanna come to this school at first? I wanted to go to school in California."

[vrajna_kralis]

"But you came because you felt you had to?" Hyacinthe guessed. "Because it was expected?"

He chuckled and looked away. "I am afraid to tell you my dreams," he admitted. "They are so...mundane, I suppose. Nothing."

[sampippy]

"Legacy."

So yes, because it was expected, because if you were a Voorhees, you went to Columbia, end of discussion.

She turned her head, just a little bit, until she could peek at him through the dark strands of her hair that were still mostly obscuring her face.

She sounded a little softer. "Tell me anyway?"

[vrajna_kralis]

Hyacinthe gave another uncomfortable laugh and ran his hand through his hair. What seemed so natural to share with Ada in her trailer with her family's carnival seemed ridiculous here, in a dorm room bigger than the apartment he grew up in, with Xanthippe's family name on the building.

"I want to own my own tavern and livery service," he said quietly. "And an apartment building nearby that I could rent to other Tsingani as they travel through the City of Elua. My mother and I would live on the top floor and she'd never have to wash another rich man's laundry or tell the dromonde for gold again."

A humble dream. So small. And, until he'd come to Fandom, it had been everything.

[sampippy]

You know, for all that it annoyed Xanthippe that it had taken until her very last day of high school for them to actually meet in any significant kind of way... Maybe it was for the best. Because maybe if they'd met much earlier, he would've written her off as a a spoiled rich girl.

And he would've been right to, because that was about the extent of what she'd been.

But Xanthippe at 19 kind of marvelled at him seeming so uncomfortable sharing a dream that... just seemed to make sense? It wasn't even that small, really: it involved owning a business and buildings, which was the language of her people, really.

She frowned a little, as she brushed some of the hair away from her face. "That's not nothing."

[vrajna_kralis]

"Oh but 'tis," Hyacinthe said with another laugh, this one slightly bitter. "It won't make me rich, it has no import, it does not shake the world, nor interfere in the lives of kings and cabinet. 'Tis not even the life of the Night Court, who only service the highest and wealthiest of the land. It's a small, humble dream, but 'tis mine. I wish to provide for me and mine, not change the world."

[sampippy]

Well, Xanthippe could counter at least one those things.

"I'm rich," she said, dryly.

So that didn't really mean much in terms of happiness, at least.

[vrajna_kralis]

Hyacinthe looked at her a long moment and then said, "Please understand, where I come from this is no insult - it's actually rather an honor - but you remind me of nothing so much as a Night Court Servant of Naamah, struggling to make her marque."

[sampippy]

Xanthippe spent a long moment looking right back at him, her face still half obscured by her hair, but not enough for it not to be obvious that she was struggling to parse that.

She knew most of those words separately!

Then she gave up. "Yeah, no, I'm really good at like, feeling insulted, but like I have no idea what you just said to me."

[vrajna_kralis]

NOW SHE KNEW HOW IT FELT, HUH.

Hyacinthe rubbed the back of his neck. "I suppose the most relevant information is that a Servant of Naamah is one who has sworn themself to the worship of Naamah, by doing as she once did and lying with strangers for coin. 'Tis a sacred calling and the Night Court serves only the most wealthy and powerful in the land. I am led to believe that those who are not from Terre D'Ange do not see it so, however, which is why I bade you not to take it amiss."