Sam had seen Ivanhoe knock over the books and he'd shifted into the room, folding his leather jacket over the chair as he helped to fix all the books before taking Ivanhoe into his arms. "Hey," he whispers to the cat. "None of that."
Annie hadn't noticed Sam come in until he was beside her, and she glanced at him over her shoulder, sliding another book back onto the shelf. "Thinks it's got a sense of humour," she informed him, "The shelf, I mean." Though, really, she supposed Ivanhoe did too, but she pulled herself to her feet and smiled. "Thanks, for the help."
Sam glances up from his place, crouched over to the ground. "Don't mention it," he promises, stroking Ivanhoe's fur before letting him go and re-shelving the books, taking a look at the titles. He cocks a brow up at Annie.
"I didn't ask for them," Annie half-laughed, though still far from pleased with the shelf's selections. "Getting a bit fed up, really. It's been at it since I came in." She sighed and bent over again, to pick up a few of the film cannisters and put them back where they belonged.
Sacharissa knelt down, automatically reaching to help Annie with the books, pushing her bag back onto her hip and out of her way. "Looks like you're not having much luck, Miss Cartwright," she said, smiling sweetly. Glancing at the books, she skimmed the titles. "Time travel, hm?"
The sudden presence nearly startled her - it did startled Ivanhoe, who'd been preoccupied climbing over a mound of slanted books, and went crawling off in the other direction - but when she saw it was Sacharissa who was beside her, she smiled in return, and nodded. "It's all it'll give me," she explained, her tone bright, though she was far from pleased with the whole situation. "So, if that's what it looks like, you're right."
"It isn't something I would've much thought about before," Sacharissa mused, putting the last one on the shelf. "But things are different here." In Ankh-Morpork, if someone had been talking about time travel, you had two options: they were crazy or they were from the University.1 Respectable young ladies didn't concern themselves much with that kind of thing; besides, it belonged more in the rags that made up other papers than in the Times. "What were you looking for?"
1These were very nearly the same thing, but one was considerably more dangerous than the other. Crazy people were a lot less likely to actually go somewhen.
"It sort of found its way to me, back home," Annie said absently, trailing her fingers across the spines of the replaced books. There was no other way to explain it, really, Sam's being thrown into her life, with all his talk of comas and madness and going back in time. "I can't say I was really looking for anything specific. Not those, though." The Time Traveller's Wife, whatever it was, exactly, wasn't something she'd need to put herself through, not with all she'd had to deal with.
Jim steps quietly, almost tentatively into the rec room, the same way he treats the rest of the compound. He's pleased to find it mostly empty, and the music playing is something good, even if he doesn't recognize it.
Even better is Annie, though she seems to be more interested in the bookshelf than anything else. He walks over, eyeing the cat carefully. Jim's never really been a pet kind of person, but he can tolerate them well enough as long as they leave him alone.
He picks up a few books by Annie's feet before straightening and handing them to her. He's almost smiling, even if the sunburn across his nose and cheeks still hurts like a bitch. "Hey."
"Hey," Annie said brightly in return, a smile widening across her face despite her frustration with the shelf as she took the books he held out to her and replaced them on the shelf. "Thanks for that. The bookshelf doesn't seem to want to be nice, today." It was time, she supposed; it'd been generous enough with volume after volume of psych textbooks it had given her to re-study before she'd started taking on patients here. Some strange sort of karma, maybe, with a bad sense of humour.
Jim gives Annie an amused look, and he picks up another book off the floor. This time, he reads the front before handing it back to her. "The Philosophy of Time Travel," he recites, and gives Annie a look. "I guess it is being a bit of a bastard."
"They're all the same," Annie said, trying to joke, and she shelved the book before bending down to pick up two more with similar titles to demonstrate. "Bastard might be a bit of an understatement, really." Though nothing would ever compare with the other people she'd worked with back home in that department.
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"Research?"
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1These were very nearly the same thing, but one was considerably more dangerous than the other. Crazy people were a lot less likely to actually go somewhen.
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Even better is Annie, though she seems to be more interested in the bookshelf than anything else. He walks over, eyeing the cat carefully. Jim's never really been a pet kind of person, but he can tolerate them well enough as long as they leave him alone.
He picks up a few books by Annie's feet before straightening and handing them to her. He's almost smiling, even if the sunburn across his nose and cheeks still hurts like a bitch. "Hey."
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