thatsamilkshake | Room 505, Friday Evening

Cookies: check. Milk: also check. Not a conversation for Mountain Dew, nope. There was a handful of Pixie Stix, though.

Dinah knocked, her hands full, and called, "I come bringing food and drink and telekinesis to open the door if I gotta."

"You don't gotta," Francine answered, coming over to let her in. "Hey."

"Hey," Dinah greeted her back, holding up the milk and the big tin of cookies as she walked in. "We have foods, and drinks. If you have glasses, we're set." She checked around, wondering if Katina was off somewhere, but assuming she was. "So, how're you recovering from the last couple days?" she asked, opening the carton.

Francine had cups, plastic ones in a stack on the shelf by her bed. She was just going for them when Dinah asked the question, and she stopped for a moment with her back turned and gave a half-choked little laugh. "If Recovering From the Last Couple Days was a class, I'd be re-taking it next semester."

She brought the cups over to the bed and took a seat, indicating a spot for Dinah to do the same.

Dinah sat down next to her and poured the milk, then flipped the lid off the cookie tin. "I think we can eat all of them without getting dinner. For serious." She kicked off her shoes, and pulled her legs up under her. "So the last time we talked, it was in class, and you were dealing with being a guy about as well as anyone, really. Which, hey, not great, but not running away or crying, right?" She took a cookie, dunked it in her milk, then stuffed half of it in her mouth. "Mmmmph."

Francine nodded. "Yeah, it wasn't the guy thing. Or... well, it was, eventually, but only because I walked in on Katchoo with her shirt off." Because that would make sense to Dinah, considering she didn't know half the stuff leading up to why that was the start of World War Three.

Dinah heard that, and blinked, mouthful of cookie, eyebrows going up, then down, then one staying up. Too much vague there, and she shook her head, then swallowed. "Ummm... and that set it off, 'cause... why?" Was this about the stuff that had happened before, waaaay back in May?

Ahahahaha, wasn't everything?

"Because she---" Francine frowned and drummed her fingers on the outside of her cup. "Okay, I need to re-wind, I think. How much do you know about what happened when Arthur and Merlin and I went to Firekeeper's world?"

Dinah was friends with all of them; Francine couldn't be sure how much the others had already filled her in on.

"You were all sick, I think? Merlin's eyes changed, and Blind Seer's fur fell out, poor guy. And you came back looking like you had mono. Magic illness. Firekeeper said that there was a hunt, and Merlin fought someone and won. Oh! And her friend Truth got her mind back." She frowned, thinking. "Merlin said it was magic, Arthur didn't say anything, much." Dinah gave Francine a worried look. "So this goes back to that?"

"Sort of." Or, you know, it went back to seventh grade, if you spun it out far enough. "The disease, the plague-thing, attacked anybody with magic. Or... talents that are kind of magical, I guess." She wondered if it would have gone after Dinah, and didn't really like the thought that probably, yeah. "It gave us... dreams, or hallucinations, visions, something like that, where we had to choose between letting it burn away the magic part, or dying, or try to hold on to it and getting changed somehow."

Dinah stared, disturbed, immediately getting the implication at least as it applied to Merlin. "You all survived, and Merlin ended up with hawk-eyes. Which I think looks great, but... Wait. All of you?" Her eyebrows went up, studying Francine, and that white streak in her hair from that shock with the vampires, and wondering. "What happened to you? Are you okay now?"

"Not all of us. Arthur was okay, and Firekeeper... didn't seem to get sick. I don't know. I was out for a lot of it."

Francine tugged down the neckline of her tank top enough to scandalize a medieval boy, but probably not Dinah, and pointed to the flower-shaped scar. "That's what I got."

"Owwww," Dinah said, raising her fingers to trace the air over the scar. "That's... different. Kind of pretty, but." She shook her head, her expression confused, then looked back at Francine's face. "You've got magic too? And does that hurt? It looks like an actual burn."

"It did at the time. It's healed up now." Francine let the material go and reached up to touch her hair. "I have this. That thing where I dreamed about Griffin Silver getting punched out before it happened? Not so much a coincidence as I thought."

"Holy crap." Dinah blinked, thinking of that, watching Francine. "So you are psychic? Not just a little bit?" She frowned, then said, "Are you okay with that? Because I know it's not the easiest thing ever." From her own long experience. Both with how other people dealt, and how hard it was to deal with on its own. Then she paused, tilting her head and putting it together. "You wanted to keep it, that's why you're marked."

"Just a little bit's probably still true. I don't see stuff all the time, or anything." Francine shrugged, then nodded. "But yeah. I guess so. My mom will probably flip out if she ever finds out - she's the most..... normal, two kids and a dog and a split-level ranch person ever."

Wincing, Dinah said more quietly, "I'm sorry for that. But-- is it weird that I'm glad you decided to keep it?" She bit her lip. "Not just because you're like me, but..." That was a little bit of it. It was nice. "Because I don't want you to lose something that's yours." She wished Francine's mom could see it that way. And how great was normal, anyway?

"That's what Katchoo said. Um. Not real Katchoo. But she was there when I was sick. So was my mom. Like they were being the little angel and devil on my shoulders or something, trying to get me to choose."

"So you were dreaming this, while you were sick, and the magic wanted you to choose? And you listened to Katchoo instead of your mom." She quirked a smile sideways at Francine. "And Merlin chose his magic too, and Blind Seer must've done something kind of the same... I'm glad you guys all got through it okay. I wish I could've helped." Dinah nodded. "So that's where, whatever the not-dealing is, that started?" She held out a chocolate chip cookie. "Have sugar for getting through it."

Francine blinked at it, then had to laugh, if a bit too hard. "I should've brought extra cookies to give out when people woke up. Here! Reward for surviving!" You know, if she'd had any helpful visions that they were going to get stuck in another world and almost die. "...I'm not sure Derian would've thought it was funny."

"What happened to him? He's Firekeeper's friend, right? I think she said he was kind of like a little brother." Dinah gave Francine a worried look at that laugh, and said, "That scary, hunh?"

"Little brother?" Though Francine could imagine Firekeeper thinking of him that way. "He's built like Arthur with a couple more inches on him ~~not dirty~~." Francine's smile faded a bit when she added, "He had some kind of talent with horses, being able to calm them down and know when they're healthy, things like that. It's even stronger now - he can almost talk to them - but the plague changed his face and made him look like one too. He didn't deal real well."

"I would guess not." Dinah thought of Cal, finding out he was a guy at fourteen, and how long it took him to deal. "Is he going to be able to go home? I know magic's not outlawed, but it's not totally a comfortable thing there."

"I don't know," Francine admitted. "When we left, they were trying to put some kind of government together for the place, so he wouldn't have been going anyplace right away, but... yeah, I don't know. So... it could've been way worse for me. I'm okay with what I got." The implication that it wasn't Derian she was talking about anymore lay heavy on that I'm.

Imagining Merlin not-okay with this was kind of ridiculous; he'd had to make the same choice too. "Who's not okay? Arthur? I thought he was dealing okay with magic stuff, these days..."

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