Thursday Afternoon [Room 227]

[bridge_carson]

Bridge was sprawled on his bed, notebook open to a page of schematics, and a multitude of assorted parts scattered on the bedspread around him.

The door was propped open with a box containing the parts of a disassembled television set.

[ooc: door is openinated. but not opinionated, like i first typed. it's just a door after all.]

Comments

[soldtoarmenians]

"They're in code!"

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Doughnut code?"

[soldtoarmenians]

"Yup. The glazed ones mean, 'I'm hungry' and the sprinkles mean...'I'm hungry.'" Xander scratches his head. "Ok, so I'm still working out some of the kinks."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Hmm, yeah. I can see that," Bridge grins. "You know, you could sit down. There's space," he waves at a spot on the bed next to him. "Or, alternatively, chairs."

[soldtoarmenians]

"Oh, is that what those things are." Xander sits down on the bed.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"So," Bridge says with pretty much... no segue at all. "Willow came by today."

[soldtoarmenians]

"She did? I meant to talk to you about the whole..." Xander revives a vague hand gesture not seen since the golden days of... Tuesday night. "weirdness thing."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge nods. "She said she wouldn't actually dissect me, and dropped off her laptop," he says. "Also mentioned something about secrets. Which I'm going to take a wild guess and say it ties in to the weirdness thing?"

[soldtoarmenians]

"...you...were under the impression she would?" Xander blinks. Because the last thing he heard re: Willow was 'thinks I'm a demon.' No sharp and/or pointy objects were mentioned.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"She... may have mentioned it to Conner and I may have taken it literally and I may have freaked out a little and jumped to conclusions?" Bridge admits sheepishly.

[soldtoarmenians]

"Willow's not big with the hurting of ... anything that has a face, really." Xander shakes his head, then makes a face of his own. "She might make exceptions for frogs, but even there I think it's just that she talks a good game. She can't have changed that much in--"

He glances toward the open door, gets up, closes it, and comes to sit back down. "Well, that's where the weird comes in."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"What d'you mean?" Bridge asks.

[soldtoarmenians]

"Well, she's your age instead of my age, which is weird enough, but hey, compared to a Buffy who hasn't even met me yet and a Buffy's sister from a timeline where Buffy even has a sister, which she doesn't where I come from, a Willow who didn't remember Junior and Senior year would be...refreshingly normal."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"You said 'would be'," points out Bridge.

[soldtoarmenians]

"Yeah, that'd be where I mentioned she was being strange, before. Because she does. She kept saying stuff like dating Cordy obviously turned me gay, which didn't happen -- the dating, not the turning gay which didn't happen at all -- til ... well, Willow didn't find out about it until January of Junior year. And there's stuff from even later like her being a vampire and..." He fidgets. "Why Cordy and me broke up."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

Bridge may have frowned slightly at that last bit. "So, okay, she's saying she's younger than she actually is?"

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander nods. "Yeah, pretty much. I finally tracked her down in her room and called her on it." He coughs. "There may've been some preying on her phobias involved."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Phobias?" Bridge blinks, and remembers the mention of frogs. "You brought Jeremiah with you?" he guessed.

[soldtoarmenians]

"He was very well-behaved!" Xander assures him.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"That was very devious of you." Bridge remarks.

[soldtoarmenians]

"That's a fancy-talk word for sneaky, right?" Xander smiles, then looks more serious. "So... long and short of it is, she had a really crappy thing happen to her, she did a spell to try to make herself feel better, and accidentally ended up younger. And here. Which she doesn't want anybody to know." He blinks. "The spell part and the younger part; the here part's pretty hard to ignore."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"Gotcha," Bridge nods. "Not a word to anyone, I swear."

[soldtoarmenians]

Xander nods as well. "I told her you could keep secrets. Plus the part where you already knew something weird was up anyway, so..."

He looks thoughtful. "Hopefully the other Sunnydale people won't catch on. Buffy doesn't know us and Dawn's from a really funky timeline, but Giles and Ms. Calendar and Cordy all know the stuff that Willow shouldn't know but does." Xander shakes his head. "She and Rory could get together and compare spreadsheets, probably."

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

"That all sounds... really confusing." Bridge confesses. "At least the only other person from Newtech City is also actually from the same reality I come from."

[soldtoarmenians]

"You're telling me. I kind of want everybody to do the nametag thing except instead of names, it's which universe they come from." Xander shakes his head, then looks curiously at Bridge. "So I'm guessing you didn't know Z back home, since she didn't know who you were when I first met her."