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Who: Bethany Hawke and Sam Winchester
Where: Sam's room, then probably -- in Sam's room?
When: A day before the Aether leak!
Rating: PG-13 at highest.
Summary: Bethany fulfills a promise to a new friend.
The Story: It's been a month, now.

A month of sitting in her room and staring at her hands, wondering if there's anything different beneath her skin. Reanimated corpses didn't look alive -- she knew that much from when they'd found her mother. Whatever strangeness this was, it wasn't that.

It's the flower that she carefully hung from her roof to dry, safe and away from tiny paws, that reminds her that she promised Sam that she would see him. She still doesn't really know how to work the devices aside from the video function.

She heaves a deep sigh, makes sure both the pets have food, and heads to where Sam is listed as staying.

I should've called first, she thinks as she lifts her hand to knock.

Too late now, though. Too late for a lot of things.

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It's been a month, now, and Sam hasn't forgotten. Everyone's trip down into the Deep Roads had been over for a while and had come and gone with varying degrees of tragedy. He'd personally been spared another death, maybe even by Bethany Hawke's intervention, which prompted him to leave the thank you after it was all over. He hadn't mentioned the Communicator 101 offer because he assumed, if she even remembered that piece herself, that she'd shoot him a message when she was ready. Dying, particularly if it's your first time kicking the bucket, isn't easy. It isn't simple and it isn't painless. Her death had seemed like a poisoning and transformation both and he hadn't envied the end she'd undoubtedly met.

He isn't expecting her when there's a knock at the door, and when he opens it, he's surprised.

"Hey," Sam begins slowly, and once he isn't surprised anymore, he's a little wary. She seems at least a little woebegone about something and it isn't hard to guess what. The hunter shifts in the doorway, considering his words carefully.

"... You alright?" he asks in a low voice, frowning.

Sam had been one of the few people to see her as she had been before her death -- only Cullen had seen her worse-off, and he'd at least seen people exposed to the taint before.

The surprise has her stumbling to offer her apologies for interrupting him, but by that time he's asking her a question and it seems rude not to answer it. She opens her mouth to speak and then closes it, letting out a puff of air through her nose.

"I don't know," she admits, one hand flexing at her side. "I didn't think that everyone here had been lying about the deaths, of course, but where I'm from ... reanimation is never a good thing. Even the first time, there's always a cost." She swallows thickly, pushing down the memories of her mother's body, possessed by that desire demon, and suppresses a shudder.

"So I've been trying to figure out whether I'm any -- different, I suppose."

Sam listens, still frowning, still standing aside. He'll verbally invite her in eventually, but he doesn't want to make her decide before she gets out why she's here in case she changes her mind. It's an uncomfortable topic, after all, and he's not exactly a close friend.

"It's not a good thing where I'm from, either." He's a hypocrite, he knows it, but most of the resurrections had been against his will. "I get it, I do."

There's a pause, and then finally he asks: "D'you want to come in and talk about it?"

About her experience, maybe. About the potential for a cost (which, thankfully, he doesn't think exists in Wonderland). About how she may have changed.

"You don't have to; I'm fine standing here," Sam begins, shifting his weight. "I don't mind just standing here, if you'd rather, or... going somewhere else."

While she isn't exactly used to men she barely knows inviting her into their quarters, she knows that this place adapts to its inhabitants and that their rooms need not just be a bed and nothing else. If he's offering to speak with her, she at least believes that's really his intention -- and truthfully, speaking to someone not from her world about her worries will probably help, won't it?

She hesitates a moment, taking a glance over her shoulder -- the pets are at home, of course, and she was never sure how long she could leave those two together -- before nodding.

"I'd like to come in, if I haven't interrupted you. I realized I hadn't come by to speak with you yet and I wanted to assure you I was -- intact, if nothing else."

"It's fine," Sam is quick to say, shaking his head. "I just meant you could, if you wanted to talk. We could stand here, or go somewhere else, or... this could be it. Ball's in your court."

She seems a little edgy at the moment, which he understands. Dying and then coming back to life aren't exactly a fun time.

"You're not interrupting anything," he assures her. "And... you seem pretty intact to me."

It's not exactly a joke, but he offers a faint smile for her anyway.

"Appearances can be deceiving, but I'm sure you know that already." She suspects as much based on the smile, at least. Edgy or not, she shouldn't be rude to someone who's offered to help her.

She tries to return the smile and mostly succeeds, nodding toward the inside of his room. "Here is as good a place as any." The only other place she thinks of right away to go is the chapel, and that isn't exactly a place for casual conversation. She purses her lips, thinking of what would be most polite.

"I'm glad you got yourself out of the Deep Roads in good health. It's been quite the rough few months, since I got here." Part of her wants to ask if it's always like this, but she isn't sure she wants to know the real answer.

Sam steps aside as she seems to decide, allowing her in. There's one chair and the bed and a lot of books. There are also two dogs, small and forever-puppies, who clamor for the attention of the stranger.

"That's Leo and Minnie," he states, indicating either of the two in turn. "About your 'few months,' though... yeah. I get it. That's the usual selection of crap, though. You get to deal with all different kinds of hells in this place."

He glances at her, then adds, quickly:

"It isn't all bad. The people are are good. Some of the events aren't nightmares, either. You just have to anticipate anything happening."

She's eager to bend down and pick up the two puppies, one in each arm, and manages a slightly tight laugh when he mentions that she should just be ready for anything happening.

"You know, I think I'm slightly more used to that than some of the other people who come here. My older brother, Garrett, seems to attract the unexpected." Perhaps more accurately it was her family line that attracted the unexpected, given what her father had gone through with the Wardens.

To his other words, though, she merely nods. "Nothing is ever all bad. It's just sometimes harder to look on the bright side of things, I suppose." She shifts to let the puppies settle in her arms and sighs. It was too long being the eternal optimist, maybe.

"...at least the closet can give me any sort of dresses I fancy, though I half expect them to one day try to wear me."

Leo squirms in her arms, trying to escape so he can run around and be wild, but Minnie seems content enough, looking up at Bethany as if asking 'what next?'

"I know people like that," Sam chuckles. His whole family seems to do that, really. "It's good you're, uh... more used to it, though. Some people come here from actually-normal lives and are... understandably thrown for a loop."

To say the least. People who come from experiences without magic and this kind of insanity are in for a trip.

"It can be," he admits lightly, "but things could always be worse. And... yeah, the closets are a bonus. Except when they decide to stop working."

When they need them most, like in a zombie apocalypse scenario.

"Normal -- I'm not sure we know the meaning of the word any more." Considering she'd come to this place on the heels of a bombing she could never have imagined happening -- yeah.

As Leo doesn't want to be held at the moment, she lets him settle back down and scratches Minnie under the chin with her now-free hand. She nods firmly.

"There don't seem to be a shortage of people here who rely more on technology than magic. I must say that it's been an adjustment, honestly." Technology was usually reserved only for when magic didn't work.

"So you had neither a normal nor magic-free life before coming here, then?"

Leo resumes running circles around her feet, now again acting as if he wants to be attended to. If not held, then petted. Minnie tries to lick Bethany's hand almost politely and patiently as she continues to be held.

"You came from a magical world, right." She'd said as much and more when they'd been in the Deep Roads, and Bethany herself could use magic. "Uh... no, neither of those. My world is 'normal' and 'magic-free' to most people, though. They just don't know that all the other stuff is there."

Until it's killed them or their lived ones, that is.

"So, we kind of have both. Tech and magic." Not that they personally use a lot of 'magic;' he doesn't consider hunter techniques and tricks to be that, not in the traditional ways of thinking about it.

"I think we'd benefit much more from that, but I don't know that the Chantry would allow something like that to get out of their control." She thinks about the qunari, though, and their black powder. "Although they might not be able to hold that position forever."

She frowns. "So much of all worlds, especially my own, keeps so many secrets. It's no wonder nothing ever gets done until things reach a boiling point and..." she glances to the side, "...things become violent. I shouldn't be surprised that this place is the same."

"The Chantry?" There's a pause. "Let me guess... like a church? Your, uh... faith?"

Sounds like organized religion. He'd been a big believer in Christianity until he'd spent the amount of time he'd spent in Hell.

"Even with all its quirks, Wonderland's a lot like everywhere else," Sam agrees, glancing around at the room created for him by Wonderland's magic. "It's got a bunch of people who are all different and there's everything from parties to tragedy. We may not have seen it all before, but... like I said, I don't think its patterns are that far off from what we're all used to, if you boil it down."

"The biggest religion in Thedas -- the land where I'm from," she confirms with a nod.

She knows it's silly to expect them all to band together and fight without there being any conflict between any of them, but it's just something she hoped would happen.

"A whole new world with all the same problems as usual. It makes you wonder whether you'd ever be able to escape them without changing the basic nature of man -- and some other species too, from the way things seem here." She pauses.

"And it makes me wonder whether Thedas would eventually come up with such ... devices." She draws her phone from the pouch in the front of her robes.

"'Basic nature' is basic for a reason," Sam says, offering a shrug. "It's how people, including a lot of non-humans, are... wherever you're from. Sometimes it gives you some common ground to go on in situations like this, but it can make for trouble. Basic nature means people will fall back on the same instincts and vices a lot of the time."

Old habits die hard and all that, though sometimes they're more dangerous to others, and to themselves, than just 'habits.'

"It might," he concedes, raising his eyebrows. "If your world doesn't have that stuff now, it doesn't mean you never will. Someone might invent it in your time, even."

You never know, right?

"I should be happy that it gives me something where I'll know the outcome."

As for the statement about phones -- she laughs.

"I don't think it would be in my time, unless it was aided by magic in some way." She may or may not have asked the closet for a few copies of her phone so that she could take them apart. She hasn't gotten to the putting them back together bit just yet.

"They're very much more complex than anything I've ever seen at home. We don't even have electricity, yet."

Someone's been reading science books in her spare time.

"Electricity opens some pretty big doors," Sam says, smiling easily. "If you do develop it, you'll see. A lot of other things come after."

Many of them are frivolous, but as lot are necessity. Electricity for heat, for cooking, for light and utility.

"At least you can explore the theory here and see it in action." He glances to a nearby light bulb, nodding distantly. "Even if you don't remember it when you're back, it's still interesting to look into it now."

That's how he feels about magic, about the supernatural within Wonderland that they don't have access to in his world.

She nods eagerly.

"Of course. I don't think any knowledge can ever really be wasted, or ever really forgotten." She purses her lips, then, "Much like this place can hurt and torture us, it can't really take us fully away from the worlds that we came from."

It seems as if Sam is a kindred spirit, at least when it comes to the pursuit of knowledge.

In other words, they're both total nerds.

"No, but it does take away the knowledge we get here," Sam reminds her, frowning. "Completely, as far as I can tell."

Trying to find a way to retain those memories was one of his long-term goals, though there hasn't been much progress on that front.

"Which, I am reminded, is why I'm here today." Aside from talking about the whole 'dying' thing.

The knowledge that she was hoping to gain from him about the device. She draws her phone out of her pocket.

"If you're still willing to help me, of course."

"Oh - Yeah, 'course." He'd nearly forgotten about that, if only because the mage had died soon after the conversation and... well, that's a pretty distracting thing. Sam smiles hastily, pulling out his own device, glancing between the two.

"Alright, so... is there anything specific you want to know about, or how to do, first? Or should I just do a general run-through kind of thing?"

While she's gotten down the basics, she's sure that it would still be helpful to have an explanation. She turns her device in her hands.

"I'd love a basic overview of what this thing is exactly supposed to do. I know what people use it for, of course, but that's rarely an object's only intended purpose."

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