diatu | To be fair, not the worst day he's ever had

Who: Crowley and any unsuspecting bystanders
What: Arrival post, and subsequent settling in
Where: Somewhere on the Walk/later in the Great Hall
When: Sometime in early November
Warnings: Initially grumpy, frazzled occult being. Absolutely no knowledge of actual cars.

Temporarily out of gas
Crowley is going to struggle to find a metaphor for this later. The best he can come up with is if your talking unicorn suddenly changed into a blank-eyed goat. But the shabby version of a goat everyone knows, from some film you never got around to seeing. That's his general feeling about the car he's sitting in right now.

And also he's pretty sure he's got an idea of how the universe works, certainly of how the world works because he was there when they built the blessed thing. But now the feel's all off, so he's like a cat with mittens on.

And also, people are staring, when they're not leaning out of horse-drawn wagons and yelling for him to move. And not just sort of assuming they see something else and working their way around him. So there's that.

He snaps his fingers, and oh, that's what it feels like if they cut the miracle power. He always wondered. "Shit." Maybe he can still lean into it. He rolls the window down and snaps again, louder, at some unsuspecting bystander. "Hey, yeah. Yes, you - I'm going to need some directions."

Hey boy, where did you go?
After some more swearing and a crash course or two, Crowley's now a new arrival in the Great Hall. He's wearing sunglasses indoors, and he's nursing a mug of something strong-tasting and hopefully alcoholic. (No one knew what he was talking about when he asked if they had Isle of Skye, so he decided on a glass of whatever would "take the edge off a long day.")

He's notably not eating, though he is taking notes in between pulls from the mug. Anyone who sneaks a peek will see a mix of English words and a squiggly language they likely won't be able to read. Crowley is not an organized scholar, but in between his attempts to throw together a class schedule, there are some spur-of-the-moment questions and notes.

Notable bits include 'Different planet? Is space the same?', and a list titled 'Clever Enough to Exorcise Me Here' with every name crossed off.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I do not know when I was made exactly, but Roxas used to count the days. And i counted the days between when Axel showed up and when he did, for him. I think it has been about the same amount of time?" Maybe?

"I... did not aim at anything, what did I miss?" she asked, so confused. "Look after? You feel my recon needs to be double checked?" she was a little hurt and a little offended. Okay, maybe she had been slacking off a little here, but it wasn't like anyone was giving her missions!

"No, I-" Crowley groans theatrically. At this point he'll have to at least make sure the poor girl gets home, and maybe the people she's mentioning will at least have an idea of what's going on in this place.

He indicates himself with one hand, extending the other to shake. "Anthony Crowley. What's your name, and where are you staying?"

She looked at the offered hand, confused. Wait, no, she's seen this here. She thinks. She's supposed to... hold his hand? A little odd with him still in the car, but alright. She closed her glove around his. "I am Nu....." right. Her name. Odd, she hadn't introduced herself as Number Fourteen since Axel showed up. Odd that she almost did now. "Xion. I am called Xion. Staying? At the moment here, because we are speaking. Why?"

Crowley shakes her hand awkwardly, and then he does open the gullwing door of the DeLorean and emerges. It was getting too hot in there anyway. He doesn't know where to park the thing, but that's someone else's problem at the moment. At least, that's always how it worked for him before.

He notes the slip of the tongue, the way he does notice little things like this when he pays attention. Not that he has the faintest idea of what it means. "Xion," he repeats. "So, er, where do you live? With these friends of yours?"

"Live? Do I count as alive now?" She asked, curious. She really isn't trying to make this difficult intentionally.

Crowley frowns at that, unconsciously tensing. When he finds whoever this girl stays with, he's going to do something not nice.

"Why wouldn't you be? What's different about you, that makes you not alive?"

She was so used to everyone here knowing her by now. Or at least the ones who spoke to her. "I was created. I think most people who are alive were... born?" That she was still a little unsure about. "I was made to be a Nobody like Axel and Roxas. But Axel thinks that maybe I did have a small amount of a heart back then, that maybe I was a little alive then. But I'm not sure. But even if I did then... I wasn't alive. I was still a Nobody. I'm not sure what I am now. They are all somehow from after I died and all remember me again, which shouldn't have been possible. The spell that unmade me removed all memories of me. But when they were able remember me. Well, Roxas did before he got here. Axel remembered me once he saw me here. I thought that I had failed when I arrived, because I still..." she considered. "I am not sure what word to use, since I didn't used to exist, and I'm not sure if I do now, really. But if I do actually have a heart now..." she put her hands over her chest. "Is that all it takes to be alive? And does being alive mean I exist? Or is there more to it?" She really had so many questions, and she couldn't always understand the answers, so she kept asking different people, because she could now, and because they all answered differently, and sometimes that helped her to understand. Like with that dancing thing awhile back. She still did not understand why anyone wanted to go to a dance, or if it was a place word or an action word since it seemed to be both, but she did know that it wasn't mandatory and it wasn't a fight. So she was learning!

Crowley takes a step closer, more confused than ever, but stubborn to a fault. "I was made. So were people, where I'm from, a long time ago. Most were born, yeah, but they had to start somewhere."

"How do you know if you exist, or if you've got a heart? Just because someone tells you so? You're thinking, feeling, wanting things - right?"

"That's why I don't know. We were all told we didn't, and we know that for most Nobodies, they really didn't have hearts, because that is how most Nobodies are made. When a Heartless steals a Heart and the person is too strong to just vanish, they become a Nobody. And the really strong ones are Nobodies that can talk and think. Axel got his heart back. He says... He says Saïx did too. Roxas says that also. Roxas's heart was... His Somebody is Sora. Sora used to be here for a while, but no one has seen him since before Roxas arrived." Which was concerning. "He vanished." She didn't want to vanish, she didn't want Roxas or Axel to vanish. She wanted the three of them to stay together forever. Even if that forever was here.

"I think. And I want," she sort of agreed. "But I still do not know how to tell if I feel." She looked at her gloves, as if the answer might be there.

"Above my pay grade," Crowley admits with a shrug, before thinking better of it and clarifying: "I mean, er, feelings are complicated, and this Heart thing sounds - er." Like one of the weirder fringe cults he's run into, and he's been around a long time. She's probably better off without whoever they are, not that he's volunteering for guardianship.

"Thinking and feeling are big stuff even for people who know for sure that they're alive. You don't sound any different from a live person, to me, just...like someone who doesn't know very much yet."

Like in a Garden, a long time ago, and doesn't that wake up some old instincts.

"So really, don't see why you have to ask other people if you're alive at all. If you want to be alive, you're alive. Who's it hurting? And if someone tries to make you disappear, you run like Hell."

"These people, Axel and them, are they young like you? What did they do to get their hearts back?"

"How do you know that you're alive?" she asked, curious. "I don't know if I have to know for most things, but if a heartless gets me and I'm alive, my heart can be found and I can be saved. But if I'm a Nobody and don't have a heart and a heartless gets me, I'm just gone, I think. I don't know if I would go back into Sora or just vanish though," she said pensively. Something to think about." But at his telling her what to do if someone tried to end her, she shook her head.

"Anyone that would try and make me disappear might try to do the same to Axel or Roxas. I have to stop him before he can hurt my friends." Yes, she did seem to have someone specific in mind.

"Oh Axel is much older than I am. I think Roxas is..." she considered. "If you just count his time as a Nobody, I think he was a week older than me when I was returned to Sora back home. I don't know how long he existed after that. If you count his time as a Somebody... I don't know. He might be as old as Axel, maybe? It's hard to tell. I don't really understand how people change as they get older. I've pretty much always just looked like this."

To be fair, not the worst day he's ever had

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