Thursday Night: Room 407, 308, and Hades' Office: Closing the Hole (Preplayed, No Interaction)

[the_merriest]

The conversation with Lucifer made her head hurt. Everything was spinny and dizzy and wrong. Reality was breaking down. The walls were breaking down. She wasn't any closer to restoring Tidus ... maybe she would never be.

And Rikku still couldn't get to Luke's Diner. So she gave up. She went back to the dorms, climbing the stairs to the fourth floor a bit hopefully. Jude didn't seem the type to lock his door ...

... And he hadn't. Good. She'd wait for him here. She knew she was supposed to be at a meeting for the paper but maybe Rory wouldn't mind. And she was so tired and scared that maybe she didn't care if Rory did mind. And Jude's room was so reassuring, what with not having a big gaping hole in reality.

Five minutes later, Rikku was sprawled out on top of Jude's bed, fast asleep.



Jude's first thought upon returning to his room Thursday after work and finding his uber-cute and totally awesome girlfriend asleep in his bed should not have been 'Deadpool is going to kill me'.

The second one was 'Sweet, Rikku's here. And looks really cute when she's asleep.'

So he padded over to the bed and sat down next to her, carefully brushing the hair off her face and tucking it behind her ear. Really cute.



Still mostly asleep, Rikku nuzzled a bit against his hand. "Hey," she mumbled with a smile. "You're here. 'Swaiting for you."

There was something bad she had to tell him about but that made her feel all scared again so she didn't want to think about it. Mmmm, sleep.



Gulp. That sounded like . . . okay, dude, don't think about that. He shifted to lay down next to her, his hand resting very neutrally on her side, his other hand still playing with her hair. "Hey. What's up?" he asked quietly, a smile on his face.



"Don' wanna talk about it. Wanna sleep." She made a face and snuggled in closer against him. "I like your room. 'Snice."

She was not waking up if she could help it.



"Okay," Jude said easily, kissing the top of her head. A nap might be nice. Naps always were.



Rikku smiled. Mmmmm, snuggly Jude. Man, was she tired.

"Can't sleep in my room," she explained conversationally. "'Cause I broke it."



Jude blinked. ". . . you broke your room?"



Rikku squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them a few times. Dang it. Waking up now. "Um ... maybe?"

She took a deep breath. "I kinda ... did something kinda ... not ... okay, you're not gonna yell at me, right?"

Because if anybody started yelling she was going to climb right under her bed and not come out again.

... Maybe not her bed.



"No?" Jude said uncertainly, not sure why he would be yelling at her for breaking her room.



"I thought ..." Rikku sat up slowly, disentangling herself from Jude's arms. "I thought I could help her. Yunie. She's not okay any more. She used to be so strong and I think she just ..."

She closed her eyes. "I broke something. Something big. And I don't know how to fix it."



Jude sat up as well, starting to get really worried about her now. "What did you break?" he asked slowly, his hand running down her arm.



Rikku swallowed, hard. "I ... I don't know exactly. I think ..."

She had to force the words out, slowly. "I was trying to open a portal. To move something from one dimension to another. And now there's a ..."

Deep breath. "A hole. I ripped a hole in some kinda dimensional wall-thing. And it's over my bed and I don't know how to make it go away."



Jude rubbed at his eyes. Okay. Hole in the fabric of reality over his girlfriend's bed. He can totally deal with that.

"Oh."



Rikku squeezed her eyes shut, and then dared a look over at him. "Sorry?"

"I can't, uh. Tell anyone, is the thing. I mean, not you, I mean like tell someone. 'Cause ... okay, I need your help, is the thing, because ..."

She had a feeling this wasn't going to go over well. "I need to fix the hole so I can do it again. I mean, do it right."



"You're going to do it again?"



"I have to," she said quietly. "It didn't work."



Jude's hand moved to her back. "Why? What are you trying to do?" He was trying desperately to understand.



Rikku took a shaky breath, but her voice didn't waver. "Bring someone back."



This didn't sound good.

"From where, Rikku?"



"I don't know, exactly. He's ... he's not dead. He didn't die. He just stopped existing. Faded out, right there in front of us. But ... he had to go somewhere, right?" She looks over at him hopefully.



"Bra . . ." Jude lifted one shoulder, trying to smile at her. "There are just some things you can't fix."



Rikku shook her head, somewhere between panicked and angry. "You don't know that! He's not dead! He wasn't supposed to die! We did it wrong! We said we were going to save the world right this time and we didn't!"



Jude pulled back for a moment before reaching out to touch her again. "Rikku . . . look, sometimes things just don't work out perfectly."



Rikku winced, pulling slightly away from him and shaking her head. "I knew you wouldn't understand," she said softly.



"I'm trying," Jude said, just as quiet, his hands falling uselessly into his lap.



There was a long pause. "It's Yunie," she said finally. "My cousin Yuna. I was her sworn Guardian. Protect her, even if it meant my life, so she could get to Zanarkand. That was the pilgrimage."

She swallowed. "She was ... supposed to die. In Zanarkand. We found another way. We saved her. But ... it meant he went away, instead. What we did destroyed his world and him along with it. He didn't even tell us. He knew, and didn't say anything."

"So now ..." Rikku shook her head. "Her family's dead. He's gone, and he's the only one that kept her going near the end of it. I'm here, because I'm horrible and selfish, and she's wasting away. I don't think she knows how to live any more. She's .... she's not trying. And I thought ... I can't just ..."

She put her head in her hands, shaking slightly. No more crying, dammit.



Jude couldn't even begin to understand how she was feeling, and he knew it.

He cautiously touched her back, wanting to offer what little comfort he could.



Rikku leaned back slightly into the touch. A moment later she turned and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face into his shirt.

"Help me," she said quietly. "Please."



"Okay," Jude said, knowing he was walking into it blind. But he had his loyalties, and they were firmly with her. "Okay, I'll help."



Rikku sat up suddenly, letting out a quick sob of relief. "R-really?"

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, quickly. "Th-thank you. I can't ... I've been so scared, and ..."

She leaned her forehead against his for a moment before jumping up abruptly. "Come on. I'll ... I'll show you. Maybe we can ... think of something. R-right?"





Hermione comes back to the room, going straight to put her bag down on her bed and get settled in the room, which means sitting down at her desk to study. When she turns, though, she spots the pillow... over the wall. Okay...

Not to say too much about Rikku's decorating, but she moves closer to just see whether it is, in fact, a pillow, and she's a little surprised to see that it's been stapled. Or a lot surprised, really. She mutters something about damaging school property and starts trying to undo the staple with her fingers.

When she gets the first staple undone, though, she can see something underneath it. Frowning, she works the second staple out, and yes, that's definitely a hole. With that, she's able to grab the pillow and pull it off completely.

And then there's facepalming.



Rikku was still shaking a bit when she opened the room to 308, but much less than before. Judes were calming like that. "A-and I think maybe that's why everything's been a bit ..."

She stopped short when she saw her roommate. "Oh! H-hermione?" And then she noticed what her roommate was staring at, and ...

Oh, crap.



Hermione turns toward her, gesturing at the hole like that says it all. But she does have to add a "What is that?" in there. Just in case there's confusion.



Rikku swallowed hard. "It's ... it's, uh. I, uh. It's just a little ... tear? Thing? I'm ... I didn't mean to. H-honest."



"A... tear," Hermione repeats. "Just to be absolutely certain... a tear in what, exactly?"



Rikku closed her eyes, shaking a bit. "I don't know. I-I think it's in the dimensional walls kind of ... thing. I w-was ... I tried to m-m-move something, and I ended up somewhere and then I blew it up to get back here and when I g-got back, it was like that."



Jude was blinking.

". . . whoa."

Yep, still blinking.

A lot.



Hermione's blinking, too, for a minute. "You... You ripped a tear in a dimensional wall," she says slowly. "And stapled a pillow over it."



Rikku flinched. "That was ... that ... Cr-Crookshanks. H-he was trying to ... get at it, and ... I didn't want him to ... get hurt."

Okay, she also didn't want her roommate to notice it, but one thing at a time.



She's trying really hard to come up with something eloquent to say, but the only thing that manages to come out that isn't shfshfskd is, "How? I mean, is it something we can reverse?"



Rikku sat down on the edge of her bed gingerly. "I don't know. I need to ... I haven't ..."

She looked up at her roommate. "I have to finish this, first. What I need to do."



"Finish what?" she asks, and points to the wall. "Hole in this dimension," she reminds her.



Rikku nodded. "I ... I know. It's ... I have to fix something. Right a wrong."

Her voice gets quieter. "Bring someone back."



Hermione points to the wall again. "Hole in this dimension!" she repeats.



"I don't care!" Rikku stood up suddenly and began waving her arms around. "She needs him! We did it wrong! He's not supposed to be gone but we saved the world and it turned his world back into nothingness and he faded out right there in her arms and she's not okay! He's not dead, he's not supposed to be dead, he exists out there somewhere, I just have to find him! I'm ... I'm supposed to protect her! Don't you understand that?!"



"If you're doing something that rips tears in the fabric of reality, maybe you shouldn't try doing it again!" Hermione argues. "Maybe next time a pillow won't cover it!"



"She was willing to die! She has nothing left! Her parents are dead, just like everybody else in Spira! Just like my mother! And Lulu's family! And Wakka's! And the Ronsos, because the Guado took care of most of them, just like they took out the Al Bhed! All this for a world that can't even let her sit on Besaid in peace!"

She flailed a bit. "'Here, Yuna, make decisions for us! Yevon's gone so we need someone else to think for us!' Maybe the world owes her something! I owe her! I promised! I said I'd guard her with my life, and I'm here!"

Rikku covered her eyes, shaking harder. "You wouldn't understand. None of you understand. None of you."



Shaking Rikku meant Jude's arm was around her in an instant. "Okay girl-dudes, chill. Yellin' at each other isn't going to fix the hole in the world, okay?"

He looked at Hermione and then back at Rikku, pulling her closer. "We're trying to understand, Rikku. Really."



"You c-c-can't," she said, choking back a sob. "Your friends aren't dead. Your families aren't dead. You ... you can't."

Rikku was shaking harder, but she let him pull her close. Somehow Jude being warm-and-comforting-and-Jude was making the lump in her throat bigger. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't.



"I know," Jude said quietly. "I know and I'm sorry." He wrapped both arms tightly around her. He didn't know how to help her. This was totally out of his league.



Rikku let out a whimpery noise. "You s-said you'd help, you ... I can't just g-give up, she needs me, I can't ... I can't do this, I ... I c-can't ..."

She held a hand over her mouth but couldn't keep the sobs in this time. And after a few moments, she buried her face in Jude's shirt and stopped trying.



Hermione's got the feeling she's intruding now, with the bonus of there still being a tear in the fabric of reality on the wall. "I'm going to see if I can find someone to fix this," she says, thinking with a grimace that she might know a couple people. "I'll be back."



Jude nodded at her. "Yeah, I'd go, but . . ." Crying Rikku in his arms trumped just about everything else at the moment.

He cradled Rikku close as she cried, hoping Hermione would be able to find someone to fix this.





Hermione's quick to get to the Vice Principal's office, because the knowledge that there is a hole in reality in your room will do that for you. She knocks on the office door and hopes Hades doesn't ask her about the socks she supposedly owes him.



"Can't a god get a little alone time around here?" Hades yelled at the door. There was a moment of silence, then the door swung open with Hades standing there in all his freakishly tall glory. "What?"



He's not too scary, with his flaming head and all. "Sir, I was hoping you could help. There's been a..." There's really no good word for it. "An incident."



"Call the Principal or the Dean. I don't do incidents."



"What if the incident includes ripping a little hole in reality?" she tries, eincing even as she says it.



"...what?"



"My roommate seems to have broken reality a bit, sir," Hermione says. "I was wondering if you could help fix it."



"I hate you all. Just so we're clear on that." He stepped out of the office, ushering Hermione aside, and slammed the door behind him. Broken reality? Zeus would notice that. He gestured for her to go first since she knew where they were going. "And you still owe me socks!"



"Yes, thank you," she says.

Hermione leads the way, not saying that she could certainly give him the socks she was working on, but they're not really supposed to be socks.





Hades' mood became worse and worse. By the time they reached 308 (and hey, he'd never been up here before, it smelled weird), he was not the happiest god in the world.

"I should have guessed you'd be involved," he sneered at Malibu Stacy.



Rikku flinched when he said that, straightening up and trying to wipe at her eyes. Still crying. Like an idiot.

"I'm ... I'm s-sorry," was all she managed.



"Kid, some things are worth crying over. Tearing a hole in reality ain't one of them."



Rikku swallowed hard and tried to nod. "My ... my friends are dead," she said quickly. It seemed like it answered his question.



"Seriously? That's what you're crying about? Death's no day at the park, but it's not the end of the world. Don't you people have a concept of the afterlife? Hello? Living, breathing god right here in front of you. And it's definitely not irreversible."



"I miss them," she said angrily. "And I don't believe in the whole god thing anyway and that's what I was trying to do, reverse it, and instead this happened!" She flailed a bit towards the hole.



"Well wisen up, princess. Gods exist whether you believe in us or not. Most of the time we don't care about you and your little mortal problems, but when you go and make a monumental mess of things by trying to get the dead back without going through proper channels, it's a little hard to ignore. There are reasons why you precocious little punks don't have the power to bend reality and that's because people like you can't help but mess it up." He stopped his ranting and smoothed back his hair, which promptly went back to its original place. His voice was much calmer now. "If you wanted your friends back, all you had to do was ask."



Rikku flinched through most of his diatribe, but folded her arms and kept her thoughts to herself. Until ...

"... Ask? Really? I ... he ... would you? You mean, you would? You ... please? Anything, I'd ... p-please."



"Anything?"



Jude decided that as someone with at least a little stake on Rikku's heart, if not soul, he should put his two cents in.

"Uh, bra? Please don't sell your soul. It never ends well."



Rikku looked up at Jude curiously, then over at Hades. "You were ... going to ask for my soul?"

That one she'd have to consider.



Hades thought about it, ignoring Jude altogether, because ignoring had always worked so well for him in the past. "That was at the top of my shopping list, but there are alternatives. Labor, for example. I help you out, you help me out. Run some errands, do a few deeds, wham, bam, you're free and your friends are back. And it'd be all there in writing. Written contract, signed by you, signed by me."



"Read all the fine print," Jude said. "But I wouldn't do it. Totally always a catch."



"No catch," Hades sneered at Jude. "Everything's all there in writing. I'll write the contract myself. Won't even have to pay up right away. You can enjoy your friends being back by your side. Maybe boy wonder here's jealous of your attention being dragged away from him."



Rikku shook her head - not bothering to dignify the last bit with a response - and looked back and forth between Jude and Hades. If Hades really could get Tidus back ... but he seemed sure it was a bad idea, and she was just so tired, ... maybe she didn't have to decide this tonight.

She swallowed hard. "The, uh. The hole. Can you fix it? Please?"



Hades backed off physically, knowing that the seed was planted, but it'd take some time to grow. If she wanted it badly enough, if she was desperate enough to warp reality to get her friends back, then she might be desperate enough to do a deal.

He shrugged. "Sure." He didn't move.



"It's in the wall," Hermione says helpfully. Maybe she should have gone to Zoe.



"Thanks." He didn't mean it. He looked at them all. "Turn away. I don't do audiences."



Rikku oblingingly turned around. Still wondering what he meant by labor and why Jude seemed so against it.



When everyone was sufficiently not facing him, Hades examined the tear in reality. A moment later, it was gone.

"You can turn around now." He headed to the door, pausing to look down at Rikku. "Don't do it again."

He continued to the door and out into the hallway, knowing that one day her curiosity and guilt would get the better of her.

He'd be waiting.

[OOC: preplayed with dude_its_jude, smartestone, and ismyhairout, all of whom rock my socks. No interaction possible. OOC comments welcomed and loved. Reality is now fixed.]