milliways_bar: In the hallway outside room 496.

[cavemen_win]

[after this thread and Illyria's subsequent return to Milliways.]It's late - late enough that she should be sleeping. Wesley'd insisted that she get some sleep after the lights came back on, after the most immediate evidence of the threat had passed for another night. She would have argued, but they'd come to some understanding and she didn't

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[perfectblue]

She could have opened the door before Fred even knocked, could have anticipated her questions and had answers ready before Fred even asked them. Such was the nature of being from a shared timeline. This was all the past, to her. The past in progress, and such concepts didn't bother her. Time didn't exist.

Not until it cracked apart.

Time would crack this place apart, if that wizard they'd brought back didn't provide answers. She'd have beat them out of him herself if someone else hadn't gotten to him first. Now there was only waiting, waiting to see if their journey to retrieve the man had been a waste of time.

She wasn't a patient creature, and she had even less patience for the presumptions Fred was making before she even opened the door. One of which was I bet she's not even in there.

Illyria took some small amount of pleasure in proving her wrong.

[cavemen_win]

Fred startles slightly when the door opens. She hadn't heard footsteps. She was good at hearing footsteps, having listened in the dark for all those years. And she hadn't heard any, which meant either that Illyria had been waiting by the door or had done that time-slowy thing or had just been too quiet for her to hear.

They were all creepy options, which is why Fred's next two words come out accusatory rather than merely observant.

"You're here."

[perfectblue]

Illyria doesn't miss the accusation, couldn't even if she'd tried. A sharp flare of anger is held in check - she doesn't have time for this.

"It is my room."

Her words are neutral enough, but they have a sharp edge to them.

"You thought I would be elsewhere."

[cavemen_win]

"Well... yeah," Fred replies, confused.

"Why aren't you? No offense -- well, okay, maybe a little offense -- but why are you here? I mean, why don't you just go back to our world, or I guess any world, now that you can. If you're not going to fight this thing, why are you here?"