Tales of the Ice Harpy from Glacia

Between the flower sale and rehearsal, Karla barely had enough time to grab her mail before catching the portal to Warren's dorm for Valentine's Day plans with Wesley at the ballet. Upon arrival, there was the traditional 'God/Mother Night, I missed you' greeting which took up some time, but eventually, they settled in for a relaxing evening in, with Warren working on a paper for class, and Karla memorizing her lines for Frank.

Eventually, however, she remembered that she'd shoved her mail into her coat pocket and pulled it out to go through. Junk, junk, bills, invoices for 'Dite's, letter from Grezande...and a letter from Worthington Labs. Just looking at the envelope made Karla's heart pound and throat dry. She...honestly hadn't expected a return letter. At least, not quite so quickly. For her to have gotten a reply from him this soon, Warren, Jr must has responded the same day he had gotten her missive.

The letter was short, only three sentences long. And now that it was here, she was going to have to talk to Warren about it. She'd been hoping for a little more time to figure out exactly how to broach the subject to him, that she'd contacted his father about a business arrangement on behalf of Glacia, but it looked that time wasn't something she had anymore of.

"Warren?" she asked, trying not to sound tentative. "You have a minute?"

While Warren searched his father's office--and had politely told her that no, he really didn't need help--Karla prowled about his old bedroom, looking and poking and examining at this part of Warren's life she'd never expected to see. This had been his room since he was old enough to have one of his own, and she could see layers of his life here, like fossils frozen in layers of sediment. On the shelf, a battered old car, bright red and sleek, looking like it once saw a lot of use. Her fingers traced wobbly letters carved into the wooden desk in the corner: Warren Kenneth Worthington III. Thick accounting texts lined the back of the desk, like stodgy tutors in a row, but when she moved a few, a yellowed and forgotten comic book fell out from where it had been shoved behind them.

The room itself felt old and unused, for all that Warren had only been gone for a matter of months in this dimension. No, not unused--abandoned. Its occupant had gone, but other than a business like cleaning to keep it from getting musty, nothing had been touched. But that vital spark, that something that kept a room feeling lived in and dynamic, that had left when Warren had and their brief sojourn here wasn't enough to bring that back. Even his psychic scent had nearly been eradicated, covered and erased by the harsh scent of chemicals and cleaners. The sheets smelled like fake flowers and the kind of fresh air only found in bottles, but when she pressed her face into the comforter, she could catch the faintest hint of the male who'd slept beneath it for so long.

She wandered around this space, poking at books and touching forgotten knick-knacks, looking at bare walls and cold surroundings. The picture she was drawing from it was a lonely one, not that this came as any surprise, and a rather hollow one as well. The room was empty, devoid of anything that suggested Warren had a personality of his own. There were objects here, things that announced, 'Yes, a person lives here or once did,' but nothing that said who that person was.

Karla thought of her own room, back at the dorms; pictures of friends stuck on the corkboard on her door, her frog tank on the dresser, her comforter with New Gotham's skyline silhouetted across it, herbs in clusters hanging from the walls, clothes discarded on the floor or kicked under her bed, trashy romance novels lying dog-eared next to her bed, or half-hidden under a pillow...Her room probably didn't paint the most flattering picture of who she was, but it did give plenty of insight into her personality. This room? Was almost as sterile as the cleaning products that had been so recently used in it.

It saddened her, to see what his room had been like. To see just how cut off from everything he really had been. ( Read more... )

[Played with the wonderful not_a_parakeet. Who I miss dreadfully. This entire plot was to introduce the character of BUDDY BEAR. Trufax]