Who: Elena Alvarez & Emma Carstairs What: matchup Where: school When: lunchtime Warnings: nope Status: complete gdoc
It felt so anticlimactic to go to school after all that pod people stuff. While Emma, not being a fire user, hadn’t done much in helping free people, she’d provided support where she could. It was a kind of excitement she could do without in Madison: she wasn’t much use when it didn’t involve hacking down Downworlders.
Though sometimes the Mean Girls in high school could be just as deadly.
Emma sighed as she closed her locker door. Another class. She couldn’t wait til she was done with Mundane school. Or any school, really. She wasn’t meant to sit behind a desk; she was meant to be out in the world, hacking down Downworlders. Or something.
Lost in a miasma of drudgery, she turned around - and nearly ran into someone. “Whoa!” Her books came up like a shield.
***
Being a senior was exciting, even though Elena knew that she’d eventually have to go through this again when she went home. They had some good plans for the GSA this year and as much as she missed Layla, she was determined to make the most of things. She did have a decent amount of friends, both in school and out, and between classes, work, and the club, there was plenty to keep her busy.
“Oops, sorry,” she said, skidding to a stop when the girl in front of her turned around and almost ran into her. “I didn’t realize how close I was.”
***
“No, totally me.” Emma was quick to take credit for her successes, but she was also more than willing to take responsibility for near-misses. Nearly knocking down a fellow student by accident counted as a near-miss. (Nearly knocking them down on purpose, however…)
She took a closer look at the dark-haired girl. “Hey, are we in English together? Third row?”
***
“Oh, yeah, that’s me,” Elena said, recognizing the blonde immediately. “I’m Elena. Sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk.”
She was pretty sure that this girl was another refugee and they usually stuck pretty close together. “You’re newer, right? Were you here for school last year?” If she was, Elena didn’t think they had any classes together.
***
“Eh.” Emma stuck out her hand, palm down, and wavered it. “I came just before Christmas and tried to ignore the fact that I was in school.”
She then transitioned her gesture to offer her hand. “Emma. How long’ve you been here?”
***
Elena needed to take a moment to think about that. “A year and a half, I guess,” she said. “I got here last spring.” She’d gone to prom, where she met Layla for the first time. “So I did my whole junior year here.”
The beginning of this year had been a bit chaotic with Rosa and Alex and Layla all leaving, so it didn’t surprise her too much that she’d missed meeting Emma until now. “Nice to meet you, finally,” she said. “I actually have lunch this period. Do you?”
***
“Yeah, hang on a sec.” Emma turned to bang her locker door closed before turning back. “Wanna sit together?”
Julian was off doing some sort of extra-credit thing, and as much as she enjoyed the company of the cheerleaders she’d befriended last year, she didn’t like being pigeon-holed as a cheerleader, so she ate by herself or with others as much as she ate with them.
***
It wasn’t like Elena didn’t have other friends, even though Layla was gone, but they all didn’t have the same lunch period and she was glad to sit with Emma and get to know her better. “Sure, that’d be great,” she said.
She waited for Emma to finish what she was doing at her locker and then headed towards the cafeteria. “Are you a senior this year too?”
***
“Yeah, thank the Angel.” Emma tipped her head back to stretch her neck. “I’m not used to spending this much time at a desk.”
But as she got closer to graduating from this mundane school, she was thinking more about what she would do afterwards if she was still here. Probably get a job, to help out Alec. Julian would probably want her to go to college, but she couldn’t fathom willingly doing more schoolwork.
“You ever think about what you’re going to do after high school if you’re still here by then?”
***
That was something Elena thought about a lot and still hadn’t come up with an answer to. “Part of me wants to go to college, like I would at home,” she said. “But another part of me thinks it would be pointless.” There was little chance that she would remember anything she learned here once she returned home. However, if she didn’t go to school, what would she do? It wasn’t like learning could really be a waste of time.
“I’m glad I still have time to decide.”
***
“Me too,” Emma said. She set a brisk pace, moving around the flow of student bodies with grace and agility. “I’m going to probably end up working, but I know my parabatai’s going to be all, ‘But you’ll have more opportunities if you go to college, blah blah blah.’”
There was fondness in her mockery, though. While she made fun of Julian’s love of schoolwork, it was one of the things that made him so uniquely Julian.
***
Elena had no idea what a parabatai was, but the fondness in Emma’s tone reminded her of how she spoke about Alex. She wondered what her brother would make of this whole place and kind of wished that he would show up. “Do you have a job now?” she asked. “I started working part time at the arcade and I really enjoy it.”
Of course, she was a giant gamer nerd, so it suited her well.
***
Emma shook her head. “Between schoolwork, training, cheerleading and my general lack of anything resembling time management, I’m pretty full up.”
She did feel guilty sometimes about eating all of Alec’s food without contributing any herself. She knew Madison paid him a stipend because she and Julian were still minors, just like the Conclave paid Heads of Institutes to clothe and feed the people under their responsibility, but she knew how hard Alec worked. It was another reason why she was leaning towards getting a job when she was done school. If they had to support a starving student, better it be Julian - who actually liked being a student - than her.
She snapped her fingers. “You work at the arcade? I might’ve seen you there. I go sometimes.”
***
“Yeah, I love it there,” Elena said. “Tim’s great.” So were her coworkers. And she enjoyed playing games during downtime.
She could understand being busy though. With schoolwork, her job, and the GSA, she had plenty on her plate as well. “I’ll probably cut back my hours during the school year,” she said. “So that I can focus on my classes and organizing things for the GSA. Did you come to our dance last spring?”
***
“I went to a dance?” Emma tried to remember which one it was. She hadn’t wanted to go at first but Isabelle Lightwood had talked her into it, and the look on Julian’s face when he’d seen her in her dress had made it all worth it.
She tried to think back of what she knew of the GSA. She’d seen it mentioned on the network, and Elena’s posts on it, but she hadn’t paid much attention to it.
“No, it was the prom I went to,” she finally said. “I think I was sleeping or something, I didn’t even know there was a GSA dance. How’d it go?”
***
“It went well. Lots of people came and supported the group.” It made Elena happy to know that she didn’t have to hide that part of her identity here. She was fairly open at home, too, but it had taken a lot of work to get to that point.
She had also gone to prom and smiled at the memory. “Prom was great too.”
***
“How big’s the….community here?” Emma knew there was an acronym for it, but she hadn’t been around Mundanes long enough to know it well, and she didn’t want to sound stupid by messing it up. She, too, thought it was cool that people could be open about it here. But when a community had demons and vampires and even Death, gay people were the least weird group.
***
That was a good question and Elena wasn’t entirely sure she knew the answer. “You know? I’m not sure,” she admitted. “We don’t ask anyone’s orientation to be part of the group. And there are a lot of people who aren’t in school who are also supportive, some of whom fall under the LGBT umbrella and some who don’t.”
***
LGBT. Emma tried to remember it, although she didn’t have any confidence that she’d do any better at that than remembering other acronyms, like ADP or RNA or WTF. At least she was really good at nodding and looking like she totally knew what she was doing.
“Where I come from, being anything but a strict heterosexual Shadowhunter is frowned upon,” she said. “So it’s nice that there’s support for people here.”
She thought of Alec and how awesome he was, and how stupid the Council was for thinking his worth had anything to do with who he was attracted to.
***
Elena frowned, trying to remember where she’d heard that term before. “Oh, you know Alec?” she asked after a moment. “I’m friends with his boyfriend, Ian.” She didn’t really know Alec well, but had met him in passing.
She wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard that his sexuality was an issue back home though and was sad to hear it now.
***
Emma nodded. “He’s our guardian, me and Julian’s. We’re from the same world, so it made sense.”
Not that he’d been under any obligation to take them in. Emma was just glad he had, because living with anyone other than a Shadowhunter would’ve been a bit awkward. Some Mundanes apparently didn’t like people swinging swords in the house.
They’d reached the cafeteria by now, and Emma grinned at the short line. “Sweet, we beat the rush. C’mon.”