(Untitled)

[hey_high_five]

What up, my loyal Barnabitos. I know you have been lost in the wilderness of lame without my regular guidance, but it's been long days of nothing on our real-life Gilligan's island. Ginger's not even here in the slinky red sequined dress that led to the sexual awakening of thousands of pubescent boys and lipstick lesbians

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[goingtodorking]

"That lady's supposed to be wearing clothes."

Karen knows that the lady in the magazine is supposed to be wearing clothes because Mrs Shoot told her so. She leans her chin on the man's bed, her eyebrows drawn together. She's in the clinic looking for Rollie, but he isn't there.

She gives a heartfelt little sigh.

"Why hasn't she got any clothes on?"

[hey_high_five]

"She..." Barney glanced between Miss February and the little moppet who had tottered out of nowhere. What to say to satisfy her curiosity but not scar her for life, at least enough so it doesn't get traced back to him?

"She didn't go away to college for her boyfriend's sake and failed out of nursing school three months after Billie Bob Boyfriend got caught in the back of his sedan with her older sister. So she's banking on her only valuable asset. That's why she's not wearing any clothes."

[goingtodorking]

Karen doesn't understand any of that, which deepens her frown. She gives a dramatic little sigh. Grown-ups almost never give her a clear answer.

"...She should be wearing clothes," she points out obstinately.

[hey_high_five]

"If ever I meet her, I'll tell her you said that," he promised even though, a Hustler star 17 years after her prime? Yikes, talk about a trainwreck.

He closed the magazine up and set it down in the corner of teh bed so she didn't her without clothes on again in the cover.

"So what's up, you just come here to hang with the Barnacle?"

[goingtodorking]

This is just too confusing and Karen huffs another sigh that lifts her fair hair from her forehead.

"Is that your name?"

People around here have funny names. Karen's pretty sure that Shadow isn't a real name either.

And she isn't hanging. She's standing on her feet on the floor.

[hey_high_five]

"My name's Barney," he told her matter-of-factly and was starting to wonder where her parents were. Didn't they have, like, dinosaurs around her that could eat unattended children? Parenting had to be such a drag.

"If you want, though, you could call me Mr. Awesome."

[goingtodorking]

Karen thinks about that for a moment.

"I think..." she says slowly. "I'll call you Barney. And my name's Karen."

[hey_high_five]

"Sounds good to me," he said and gave her a nod.

Eventually, he'd find someone to call him Mr. Awesome. Well. There had been that professional contortionist whom he'd told his name was Awe Someh, a traditional Krygistani name. But she'd been French Canadian, so she didn't really count.

"So what's going on, Karen? You got some injuries that need doctoring?"

[goingtodorking]

"No."

Karen leans on the bed so that she can swing her feet a little. She's left her shoes somewhere.

"Rollie's a doctor, but I don't think he's here."

[hey_high_five]

"Do you...want a chair or something?" He hazarded a guess, just because he didn't want her climbing up to snuggle or have story time or whatever it is four-year-old girls do all day. "Robin's is over there. Which doctor is Rollie?"

[goingtodorking]

It would be nice to sit down, and Karen goes over to the chair and sits down, swinging her bare feet.

"He's got little hair. And he's always grumpy. Like this."

Karen does her best impression of Rollie's face.

[hey_high_five]

"Yeah, thing about that chair was when Robin sat in it, he could see her head and shoulders with just a bit of cleavage thrown in to make it interesting. When this kid sat in it, all he saw was the top of her tiny head.

"Oh, the bald dude." He was pretty grumpy, but not as bad as Cox or the one with the limp. Which, for the record, Robin is way way out of Cox's league. For one thing, he was old. For another thing, he had hair like a clown.

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. "Yeah, I've seen him around, you got his face down pat."

[goingtodorking]

Easily distracted, Karen's humming to herself and kicking her feet when Barney talks to her.

"He's not here, is he? I'm supposed to be having a bath but if he's not here, I can...um...say that Shadow or Ainsley watched me and I've already had a...um...bath."

[hey_high_five]

"You're in that aversion to soap phase, huh? Gross." She did look pretty grimy, but then, all kids were supposed to be like that. Barney didn't have a clue how Lily did it every day with their tiny, dirty hands all over everything.

Still, he appreciates a good subverting of authority, as long as the authority wasn't his. "If that's going to work, you're going to have to get your hair wet and put on different clothes, so it's convincing."

[goingtodorking]

"I'm not gross! I don't smell bad." Karen pauses and sniffs herself as quietly as she can. She can't smell herself at all!

Her eyes narrow while she thinks it through.

"I could pour a glass of water over my head," she offers.

[hey_high_five]

"You can never actually smell yourself," he informed her, though it wasn't exactly like he was going to sniff her and tell. She'd probably smell like old peanut-butter and...dirt or innocence or whatever.

He raised one of his shoulders in a shrug. "Make sure you get your whole head, if you do." Then Barney paused and looked at her again, consideringly. "You're a devious little creature, aren't you?"