TELL ME SOMETHING TRUE [SKYE]

Skye sort of hated group assignments. There was really no way to feel good about a group assignment, because one of two things happened: one, the group bailed and she got annoyed because she wound up with all or most of the work, or two, she was the slacker and she immediately felt bad for not doing enough. Both were pretty plausible and she hated them both with kind of equal fervour. This project... this was okay, though. Well, the project itself was kind of stupid with how massive and annoying it was, but the group (well, partners really, as it was just a group of two) seemed pretty decent, or at least good enough to earn them an okay mark. Skye sort of hated school, but she was going to make her way through the rest of these damned four years (technically eight if she counted the high school years here as well) even if it killed her. It was too late to back out now, and anyways her pride wouldn't have allowed her to. Now that she'd started and, actually, come close to being three quarters done, she was kind of itching to get out. A part of her was very comfortable at the Academy, though, even in classes.

The assignment was due in a few weeks yet, but considering its enormity Skye wasn't actually willing to go ahead and skive any of that work off. That was definitely not a good start, and while Skye was no particular keener when it came to schoolwork (a procrastinator, if anything) she did have to admit that the amount of work this assignment would take was scaring her into doing it early on. She did have other things to do, of course she did, but she pushed those off to the side in order to go ahead and take notes for this. Her partner was William Bargov... urgh. He was a fun guy, really -- she liked him enough, thought he was actually pretty decent even if not entirely intelligent. Unfortunately this was for class, and a certain amount of intelligence was necessary. Skye was kind of praying beyond hope that he would be able to pull through -- he wasn't a total idiot, she was sure. Well, whatever the case, she wasn't going to be doing this entire thing by herself, so when it came time for food -- about halfway through lunchtime, actually, but at least there was still a bit of time -- she got up, deciding to head for the Mess Hall. She'd been tending to avoid staying for too long lately, what with all the somewhat unnecessary fighting that seemed to have been going on in the past weeks or so, but she was hungry, damn it. Plus, it was definitely one of the most likely places for William to be.

She grabbed what was left of the food after most everyone else had already gotten here (luckily even a castleful of high school and college students couldn't eat through that much) and then quickly scanned the room. Sure enough, William wasn't too far away, looking off to... something, or maybe he'd just zoned out. Probably the latter. She decided to head over anyway; it didn't seem that too many of her friends were here otherwise either way. Fine by her -- it would only be good encouragement for her to hopefully make some headway on dividing up this work, if nothing else. "Hey, can I sit here?" she asked, but she sat anyway without waiting for an answer, seeing as he seemed preoccupied stuffing his face and there didn't seem to be anyone else taking up these seats. "You alright? Why the anger?" The look on his face -- a pretty hilarious one, actually, with his violent chewing and eyebrows knit together -- hadn't gone missed. Unsure of whether or not it was actually something serious, she kept her face neutral.

(hey, sorry for the wait! ;A; i'm kind of busy lately but i'll try to get posts up when i can. ♥ also sorry if this is kind of weird and rambly. my posts will hopefully be better.)

He looked kind of embarrassed, and she vaguely wondered whether or not it had been a good idea to come over here at this precise moment. Really, though, it had been now or never -- she wasn't about to follow him around the rest of the day chasing him down trying to talk about some project that she thought was stupid anyway. She supposed there was always dinner, though... Considering the fact that she'd already taken a seat, however, it was probably too late to just up and walk away. He seemed in a good enough mood other than that, anyway, as the first thing he said was something about the caf tacos. "Right?" she said in agreement, sliding forward a little in her chair so that she could eat properly. She was pretty hungry too, actually, and damn a taco sounded good, but she figured that tearing into her food without even really saying much else was kind of gross and rude considering she'd just walked over more or less unannounced. Oops. Ah, well. It was too late now.

"That's cool," was all she said in response to this "stuff" he was thinking about. If he didn't want to tell her, then he didn't have to. They weren't what she would consider "good friends", anyway, though she mostly had no problems with him (and was pretty sure that this lack-of-dislike was mutual). Even if he they were, she wasn't the type to poke around in her friends' lives, anyway, mainly because she didn't much appreciate other people trying to shove their noses into hers. That said, she didn't have anything in particular to hide most of the time, but even so, she was a closed-off person by nature, whether or not she was going to let everyone know that. Whatever was going on for William today, it was hopefully all okay, though she didn't say this aloud. He was an alright guy, probably not the kind of guy that deserved a whole lot of misfortune. She didn't think so, anyway. "Actually, yeah. You're not busy, are you?" By busy, she really meant busy doing anything other than eating, but hopefully that meaning would carry over. She supposed it wasn't really important either way; he didn't seem busy.

She reached for her bag, which she'd dropped next to her when she'd taken a seat, and took from it the textbook for the one class they shared, placing it on the table in between them. It was kind of a massive textbook, the kind that she hated getting on the first day and lugging to and from class, let alone reading. She did most of her homework, though, even if she did procrastinate a little bit, and there were sticky notes stuck throughout between various pages. She flipped to one of the marked pages easily (page three hundred and ninety-four, the Harry Potter fan in her was pleased to report, but she didn't say anything about it). It was the first of the assigned chapters for their assignment together. "Was just thinking about this stupid project," she said, waving a hand at the page. "I figure we could split up taking the actual notes?" She noticed that he was eying his food far more than he was the book, though, and so added, "Oh -- yeah, go ahead and eat if you want." She hoped she was correctly interpreting those hungry eyes he was making at the one taco left, anyway. She reached for her food, too. Homework could wait.

(go ahead and say what class they're in if you want to. |D i don't care which one~)

She quirked a brow at the word "consuming" but said nothing. He could use whatever words he liked... but she didn't exactly expect huge words from William, of all people. That said, he was already more intelligent than a vast majority of the people she knew just for knowing the word consuming and being able to use it appropriately in a sentence. People were kind of stupid these days -- Skye was no genius, didn't expect anyone else to be unless they literally had IQs of 200 or something like that, but sometimes people did make her wonder. Maybe she just needed to get away from a place where most of the people around were teenagers, though. "Well, it is lunchtime," she said instead, not really trying to be funny or sassy, just stating a fact. She didn't often talk just to fill silence.

Though his reaction was just a little bit funny, she had to admit at least to herself that she sympathized completely. This project was bullshit, and only made worse by the fact that of course it wasn't even a culminating task, but much of the time they spent working on each it would coincide with the time they should have been spending on the actual final assignment. Then there were exams to deal with, exams and other classes. Skye wasn't excitedly in the least for November, buti t was coming on fast. "Tell me about it," she agreed, remaining outwardly passive but inside actually pretty annoyed about the whole thing in general. Apparently, though, the outrage of the class at large hadn't been enough to stop their professor. At his question, or suggestion rather, she flipped through the book until she reached the end of the chapter. It went on for quite a while."Sixty-one. So you can take the first thirty and I'll take the rest." It was just an extra page, and the last one was shorter than the rest anyway from what she'd seen just flipping through. "Yeah... That sounds good. Thank god for photocopying." She'd probably break both her own hands somehow before she decided to hand-copy a whole extra set of notes after already doing her own half.

His comment was a little weird-sounding to her, because although some of the things were pretty horrific, it wasn't the type of thing that would normally bother many people other in the "this was horribly and incredibly wrong" way. That wasn't the way it sounded. "Some of the stuff can be pretty awful, yeah," she said anyway, nodding. It wasn't a lie, obviously. History tended to be bloody, and it also tended to be what many people considered the most interesting things that had happened out of all the things people had done. There was a reason wars stuck out as such important markers in people's minds, after all. It was all good and fine to talk about the life of a peasant in the Middle Ages, but they weren't the ones doing the really heroic, violent, potentially very gory stuff. The fact that Will didn't seem to have too strong of a stomach for this kind of thing, though, was almost kind of cute in a way -- a departure from the brutish strength and unchecked temper of most Fires, even Will himself included. "Later this week sounds good," she agreed. She quickly thought over her schedule for the week -- apart from homework, she wasn't all that busy, at least not with anything that couldn't be put off for another time. She had no obligations to other people for the week, anyway. "How's... Friday?"

(orz she's extremely distant and hard to please, i apologize. |D)

Had they been in high school still, Skye was pretty sure that Will would have been the exact kind of person she'd have hung out with. Of course, there was little point to saying that -- they had gone to high school together, and hadn't been particularly close. It was a bit weird the way those things happened, though, and it might have been due to small one-year difference in age, or maybe something else entirely. Not having really known the guy, she couldn't recall much of what he was like back then, anyway, just that he was a year younger than she was. "Friday then," she confirmed, making a mental note of this and reminding herself to write this down later, or else she was likely to forget. That'd probably just be very bad news if she missed the meeting -- they still had weeks left, but considering the sheer amount of work that would have to be put into this whole thing, she still felt kind of pressed for time. Procrastinate though she did, this wasn't a feeling she enjoyed at all.

He sounded confident enough, in that way that guys (and girls) tended to be when they were trying to win someone over in whatever way. Skye wasn't actually very easily impressed, to be honest, and when she was it wasn't usually just by confidence. She had confidence in spades. So did a number of her friends. If she went around impressed by that alone, she'd be a pretty naive person, and Skye would far rather be distant than naive, sad though it may seem to others. All of that said... she wasn't going to reject a gentlemanly offer. "Sure, that's cool." Her only class on Fridays was in the evening, so a meeting at one would be fine. Sandwiches were cool, too. Food was cool in general, and it was nice to have a partner for an assignment who actually wanted to do the work... or at least, if he didn't want to, he seemed willing enough. Nobody set up deadlines for themselves so confidently and then didn't come through, either, so this was good news for Skye. "How very gentlemanly," she acknowledged, tone almost hinting at a joke, but she wasn't sure he'd caught it. It was apparently always difficult to tell with Skye -- the people who could read her were actually pretty few and far between. Most of them had to have known her for a whlie, too.

She watched him as he glanced through the chapter. It was kind of an obnoxiously huge chapter, even for such an enormous book. Will was easily read, too -- certainly easier to read than Skye herself was, in any case, and probably easier to read than the damned textbook, too. He didn't seem particularly happy about what they'd been assigned to do; it was a sentiment she shared. Death and destruction were definitely understandable things to focus on in history, but there were a number of groups with topics far lighter and easier to discuss than Rwanda. That said, it was a topic that she figured they had to do a good job on, not the kind of thing to brush off and do a half-assed job of. "Because the idea is to learn from history," she said, for some reason feeling she should add some insight into it, even though it was probably nothing new that he'd never heard before. "And there's much more reason to learn from mistakes and awful things in the past than it is to relish in successes -- because there's always a way to fuck up success, that's easy. It takes effort to avoid failure." It was probably more than she'd said this whole conversation, and she wasn't even sure where the total word vomit had come from, but then again Skye sometimes did have to go with her instincts. Her face softened, though -- just a little -- as she looked at him and recalled the look on his face as he'd spotted some of the more gruesome bits of what they had to do. "But... are you okay?"