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

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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.

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."

"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."

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.

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."

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."

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."

"So I remind you of a hooker."

At least they'd translated that much for her! And she didn't look offended, so, win.

She did continue to look confused, though. "Now explain how that's a good thing." A beat. "Like, not for your world 'cause I think I get that now. But, like, for what you said. Before."

Hyacinthe's mouth twisted; he didn't like most of the words they used for Naamah's Servants in this world. Even if they did it for coin, not for the glory of one of Elua's Companions, he was still conditioned to see the calling as something sacred.

"Servants who belong to Houses have a marque; 'tis the amount they are indebted to their House. All funds from their assignations goes to their House, but gifts they are given from their patrons, those may go to their marques, which are limned on their backs an inch at a time." His fingers trailed up her spine. "Once they have earned their marques, they are free. They may leave their House, or they may continue to stay, trading a percentage of their assignations to the House and keeping the rest. You, cherie, seem to feel you have a marque that you owe your family. I just don't know when you will be able to pay it off and finally be free."

Okay, that made... honestly a depressing amount of sense. It resonated. She sighed, and it wasn't to mask the shiver his fingers against her spine caused.

"Maybe once I've graduated and am making enough money that it won't matter if I'm cut off or not," she offered. Her tone was on the somber side, and her voice was quiet.

"What will you be doing after you graduate?" Hya asked. "Something you want to do? Or the job they expect you to get, whatever it is. You said you had no dreams of your own, Xan, so where will you go, besides where your familial expectations guide you?"

"Probably something in media?"

That shouldn't have been a question, probably. But she hadn't really spent much time thinking about it.

Yeah. That was maybe the problem.

"It would be one thing if you were working this hard on your way to something, love," Hya said. "Here, though, it seems as if you're miserable and unhappy and the only thing you will show for it is the chance to do it again somewhere else."

Finally, Xanthippe picked her head back up. Even if it was only to shake it.

"It really shows that you haven't ever met my parents."

"I have not." Hyacinthe frowned. "Were they at graduation?"

"... No."

Said with the tone of someone who didn't necessarily mind that they hadn't been, but who knew that it looked bad.

(Also, she minded.)

"Dad was... I think in Switzerland. And like three fifths of the quintuplets were sick, so Mom didn't come either."

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