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The Perk, Friday Afternoon

Ah, emotional baggage day. That had taken Jack back - though it'd been satisfying to see that his own amount of baggage had gone down significantly. Score one for therapy.

After class, he made his now-habitual trip to the Perk while he waited for his portal to arrive. With a large black coffee in hand, he picked a spot by the window and sat down.

Sucks that it's raining, the barista had said. They'd wanted to put some seats outside.

"Outdoor seating," Jack muttered to himself. "Sitting in the sun. Space. Just one cloud away from turning into a TV trope."

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"To shake your fist at?" Liliana teased. Look, she didn't know that TV tropes and memes weren't the same thing.

Jack snorted. "No, to look like an image from the epilogue of a sappy Lifetime movie," he said.

"I have no idea what that is," Liliana said, helping herself to the chair on the other side of Jack's table. "Though I'll admit, 'sappy' isn't really a word that comes to mind when I think of you."

"It's a TV channel that's dedicated almost entirely to cliché stories that are either supposed to scare you into behaving or make you say 'd'awwwwwwww' as two conventionally attractive people make eyes at each other and/or coddle their kids and/or find a new leash on life," Jack said, sipping her drink. "At least, that's the gist I got from seeing all of three of them in my life."

Liliana grimaced. "That sounds dreadful," she declared. "I'm having trouble deciding which is worse, spending several hours being moralized at, or watching blandly attractive people find themselves again. With their precocious children."

The horrors.

"There are definitely better genres of terrible TV to be found on Earth," Jack agreed. "Trust me. I've seen most of them."

"I don't watch much," Liliana admitted. "We don't have one in the house."

Not in a 'I'm too good for TV' kind of way, but in a 'my paramour is blind and I'm from a different time' kind of way. Though they did sometimes pull up pageants or various red carpet events on a phone, just so Liliana could describe the ensembles to Ignis and they could have fun judging people. The Met Gala was an important event at the Creepy Not-So-Abandoned Mansion.

"What is your preferred genre of terrible TV?" she asked. "Which I can only assume is like reading the absolute trashiest novels as far as entertainment value goes?"

...They should get together and watch docudramedies, like Tiger King and Fyre Festival.

"Kinda, but it turns your brain to slop even worse," Jack said cheerfully. "Hm. I got really into home improvement shows for a while. You know, experts show up to help some really entitled idiots find the right place to buy and then fix it up real nice, or just fix everything about the existing place. And the actual homeowners never know what they're getting into."

He sipped his coffee. "You don't want to go for the full realtor shows unless you really want to feel like killing someone," he said. "Those people are vapid. Uh, there's also the subgenre of documentaries that's just all about digging into something really trashy that happened to other people. And food shows. I used to have a roommate who'd drag me into-- well, never mind. But modeling isn't really my style. Bored rich married ladies making everyone's lives miserable, also not so much..."

They were going to discover Tool Academy and have the time of their lives.

"If I wanted to watch bored, married, and wealthy women make people's lives miserable, I certainly don't need to have a television to do so," Liliana scoffed. "They make themselves well-known regardless."

"Yeah, I didn't think it was your style," Jack said, amused. "Though you'd definitely liven up a season if they cast you in one."

He'd tune in for that.

"How's the new semester treating you, anyway?" he added. "Nothing says 'migraine' like teaching ethics at this school."

"Is 'married' a firm requirement to be cast?" Liliana asked, raising a brow. "Not that I'm overfond of allowing other people's rules to interfere with what I wish to do or where I wish to go, mind."

Especially since it would make for amazing TV. And any crimes she'd likely commit during a season would truly be victimless.

She laughed slightly at his question. "I'm thinking of starting to carry a flask with me," she said. "For now I certainly need to doctor my coffee a bit. People are very upset when I do not allow them to play hero."

"I think sometimes they let you get away with a 'partnered'." Jack let out a faint huff over his coffee. Took a moment to linger in the warmth of it.

"And yeah, they get like that," he said. "At least no one's stormed out yet. Stark did that over the trolley problem when I took a crack at it."

"Well, it would be their loss if they didn't," Liliana declared, since obviously she'd be the best gift to Rich Housewives of Ravnica since the advent of electricity.

"He stormed out?" she repeated, though she didn't sound particularly shocked by the revelation, either. "Do tell, darling."

"It was a while ago." Jack sipped his coffee. "He came up to me insisting the scenario made no sense and why weren't there brakes he could hit, blah blah. When I said no, he turned up the angry puppy dog eyes, got into this whole thing about how life was bad enough and we should have nicer thought exercises, then got upset with me for calling out his stupid attempt at loophole abuse."

Jack made no attempts to be as graceful in correcting students as Liliana could be. "Eventually he got it in his head that I was calling him an idiot, he told me to go fuck myself and stormed out."

For all that Liliana glorified in her uncaring selfishness, she held the role of teacher to a very specific standard, thanks in no smart to the role Strixhaven had played to her. Honestly, Ender would have had a field day with it.

"Stark and I have already wrangled in class," Liliana said with a wry smile. "He disapproves of necromancy and some of the terminology, and told me so, and I informed him how little I cared about his opinions. But I did expect this to be a sticking point for a number of students, which was why I made sure to say so in the very first class. I'm running out of ways to explain why it's a rule, however. It seems a very obvious caveat."

Jack shrugged. "The necromancy is a little creepy, so I get it," he said. "But my golden rule is, don't reanimate my corpse - it keeps coming back too much as it is - and we're good."

She didn't give him quite the impending threat vibes some people on this island still did.

"Not that you care," he added. "Anyway, it'd be nice if people just stuck to the class material."

Sure, mr. Bellow-at-Anakin-from-the-Cheap-Seats.

She only threatened with good reasons and, honestly, there was very little on the island that affected her enough to warrant it.

"Concerning myself with other people's approval is not a pastime I care to indulge in overmuch, it's true," she said with a slight smile. "I bet that sticks in the craws of angels far more than the necromancy itself. "But, darling, question for you: if you're well and truly dead, why should I be fussed about whether or not we're 'good' when it comes to the disposition of your corpse?"

He could tell it was a legitimate question, not a veiled threat or any kind of posturing.

"Well, I could make a plea for moral and ethical concerns here, but let's be real, you're not going to give a shit," Jack said, "Practically speaking, though. I'm a Force user. I'm perfectly capable of haunting you from the grave for as long as I want, and at all the inconvenient times I want to. I'll even throw in constant, unbearable Jedi-speak."

She grinned at him. "Darling, you're threatening a necromancer with the possibility of haunting. That's like threatening a baker with a very angry batch of sourdough."

Honestly, now she was a little interested. She did enjoy contests of mastery. Who would win, a necromancer or a Jedi? Could they follow her about the Multiverse? Could she summon a Force-ghost the way she could other things? What fascinating ideas!

A pity none of the Jedi on the island would give her one to experiment with. So rude.

But didn't they say there were bad Force users...? Hmm...

"A Force haunting," Jack reminded her. "Pretty sure that nixes whatever you've got going on. But hey, if you want to put your sex life at risk, go right ahead."

"An interesting hypothesis," Liliana said, before waving the idea away with a smile. "Though one I doubt we'll end up testing."

More was the pity.

"I appreciate that," Jack said lightly. "I've seen enough Force life-and-death bullshit for a lifetime."

He set his coffee down. "Though speaking of life, how's yours been?" he said. "I know I duck and ran five seconds after we met the first time. Which wasn't personal, by the way."

"You wouldn't have been the first even if it were," Liliana said, lips curling. "Though if it weren't me, then why?"

She absolutely didn't mind the possibility of sending someone fleeing just minutes after meeting.

"And, you know..." She waved a hand. "Generally fine. It's relatively rare that circumstances force me to do anything but what I wish. My manor in Innistrad needs to be rebuilt, but everything there is in such shambles that it will be awhile before I can get much done there anyway."

"Because being a Jedi finally got close to killing me for once, so I decided to let everyone at home believe it'd succeeded," Jack said. "At first making sure as few people as possible knew I was alive seemed like the best way to handle it, but..."

He waved a hand. "I'm bad at staying away, I guess," he said. "What happened to your manor?"

"A fairly ridiculous story if you want to know the whole thing, but long story short, the plane its on was attacked by a world-devouring monstrosity whose mere presence caused organic matter to twist and corrupt," Liliana explained with a very put upon sigh. "My zombie servants were killed by my maddened ex-lover, then my manor was invaded and torn apart by twisted werewolves, and then the Abyss knows what else happened to it in the day or so from when I left it and we defeated Emrakul, but it was in absolute shambles when I woke up there again."

You know. The uzhe.

"Ah," Jack said. "Just a normal day on the job of being you, huh?"

"Oh, I assure you, darling, that while vampires and werewolves are a part of normal life on Innistrad, especially in the winter, plane-devouring entities are less so. Engaging in a spot of do-gooding..." She grimaced. "Also not particularly my style."

"Be careful it doesn't become a habit," Jack said dryly. "It does that." Beat. "Both of those."

"Both the plane-devouring and the do-goodering?" Liliana asked. "You've a lot of experience with the former, then?"

She wasn't going to mention that she'd agreed to join Jace's do-goodering group. No reason to get into it, especially when she was just doing it to gain the benefits of her very own Gatewatch in her personal endeavors.

"Unfortunately," Jack muttered. "At least I've finally stopped having nightmares, so... that's a win."

"Just to check, darling, the name 'Emrakul' and 'Eldrazi' mean nothing to you, correct...?"

Look, she had to check.

"Beyond that one sounds vaguely like 'Rakghoul'? No," Jack said, shaking his head. "Just like I imagine 'Darth Sion' and 'Darth Nihilus' mean nothing to you."

"Correct," Liliana drawled. "I don't know whether that's a comfort or not. Not that I'm all that interested in sharing entities that can eat entire planes of existence, but minimizing the sheer number of them that exist seems like a wise idea."

"To be fair, Nihilus was the only one who could actually eat entire anything like that," Jack said thoughtfully. "Sion's thing was more keeping himself alive with the sheer force of his own spite and suffering."

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The Perk, Friday Afternoon

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