Marie and Illyana, Backdated to April 25th

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Marie follows through on her promise to wake Illyana with terrified children. At 3am.



Illyana woke with a start, tangled in her covers and disoriented, to the sound of pounding.

On her door. At – what did the clock say?

Three in the freaking morning? One hand found a lightswitch and confirmed this unhappy truth. The knocking didn't stop. Annoyed, she extracted herself from her sheets and stood, managing to trip over a box before finding her way to the door. Flinging the door open, she stared at the RA on the other side, nerves frayed. "What is it?"

Marie smiled cheerfully at Ilyana, gesturing at the two children clinging to her legs. "Remember when Ah promised to wake you up when Ah got woken up with demon nightmares?" Truth be told, she'd been awake when the girls had knocked anyways, but Illyana needed to learn that what she said mattered. "Ah gave ya a free pass on my first wake up last week, but you get to help me out this time."

Illyana rubbed one eye, staring at Marie like she was a particularly hard to understand alien. "Oh, my god, you're not kidding," she said flatly, because it was three AM and it needed to be said. She sighed, apparently recognizing her defeat for what it was, and reached over to the hook above her desk, finding a zip-up sweatshirt to pull over her t-shirt. "What exactly is this going to entail?"

"Bedtime stories. Happy ones. That and Ah promised them we'd stand guard for an hour and make sure no demons were coming." Marie turned and headed in the direction of the pair's suite, knowing Illyana would follow.

"I don't know any bedtime stories," Illyana informed the RA, following along unwillingly. Pushing her hair behind her ears, she let that hang in the air for a moment before adding, "Well, not any that would help, anyway."

"Then tonight you will learn some. Ones that don't involve the D words. Ah'm thinking we go for Cinderella. Sound at all familiar?" At the blank stare from Illyana, Marie sighed and shook her head. "You're so lucky Ah'm not teaching you anything or you'd find yourself reading a bunch of fairy tales. You'd actually probably enjoy the originals." Opening the door to the girls' suite, Marie ushered them in the direction of their room.

Sleepy petulance crossed Illyana's face. "I just know that if it involves singing animals, that's where I draw the line, because I find that substantially more frightening than the, uh, D word," she said, following Marie into the suite. "How comforting can it be? It's creepy," she muttered, half under her breath, not quite loud enough for it to register to the younger girls.

"Just for you, we'll cut out the singing animals." As the two little girls climbed sleepily back into their beds, Marie reached over and carefully tucked one in, gesturing to Illyana to do the same to the other. "Ok, we're going to tell you the tale of a beautiful girl named Cinderella."

The story was long, and involved weird magic and an extremely uncomfortable-sounding glass slipper kind of thing that Illyana was pretty sure the RA had just made up to mess with her. Sitting next to her charge, who was falling asleep bit by bit, she leaned on one hand, thoroughly awake now. "And now we, uh. Stand guard?" she asked dubiously – but quietly, with a glance at the half-awake kid on the bed across from her.

Marie nodded, reaching over to tuck a loose strand of hair behind the ear of the mostly asleep girl on the bed next to her. Once she and Illyana had made it into the hall, she closed the door quietly behind them. "That wasn't so bad, now was it?" And hopefully will make you think twice before shouting demon for no reason.

Illyana sighed, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her sweatshirt. "Yeah, it was great. That whole pumpkin thing was very creative."

Marie nodded, leaning against the wall in the hall. "So how have things been going for you?" she asked, switching gears completely. It wasn't that she expected Illyana to be any more honest than when she'd tried to check in on her throughout the past year, but it was something she still needed to do and ask, just in case.

"Oh, well. In the last few weeks I've lost control of my hell dimension, committed several sins against the basic concept of intelligence – I trust you've been filled in on those, anyway – and nearly been killed at least three times, which, while not my lifetime record, is still not what one would consider ideal." She slid her gaze to the brunette, a hint of the earlier petulance hovering somewhere near her mouth. "Also, I have been forced to learn things in the middle of the night. So, basically, I'm great."

Marie's noted the look on Illyana's face and the definite sarcastic tone, arching an eyebrow in response. "And it probably won't be the last time most of that happens. Well, hopefully it is the last time of losing a hell dimension since Ah'm kinda hoping you don't have another one of those to lose." Softening both her face and her tone, Marie continued. "And all that matters is that you learn something from those things - to hopefully reach out the next time you're facin' a hurdle that big."

"Yeah, well. Next time I have a demon crisis, I'll let everyone know. Because then we can all be ineffective together, and maybe have a group hug thing. But I definitely won't where the children can see it. See? Look at all the learning I'm doing." She lifted her shoulders, half-defensively.

"Yeah," Marie said, smiling sadly at the blonde. Could we have helped? Or were you lost the instant you were snatched? "It's never easy hearing other people critique your choices after the fact - hindsight is always twenty/twenty. Ah know you were just doing what you thought was best." The Southern girl looked away, wrapping her arms around herself. "Another fifteen minutes and Ah think we'll have pulled our guard duty."

"Fantastic." Illyana tried not to sound too flat, because it was way too much effort at this hour, though she avoided looking at Marie – a good tactic when one actually wanted to avoid someone else's feelings. "And yeah. Although apparently there's this thing called appropriate foresight. Which I did not use. So."

"So," Marie echoed. "Probably doesn't help that Ah'm guessing Ah'm like the thirtieth person to talk with you about this stuff. My doors always open, like Ah told you before. But Ah know Ah'm probably not the one you want to talk to - but that offer stands, whether you're at the school or not."

If Illyana didn't quite roll her eyes, it was only because it was so early in the morning that it was still nighttime, and she was too tired to dig for an attitude. "Thanks," she said, in the same tone as before, again walking the line between neutrality and vague rudeness. "I'll keep that in mind."