co-advisers [remy]

Alicia was currently in the overloridian's office, typing up some documents on the Braille typewriter. Hadley (it felt so weird to call an overloridian by his first name, but he'd insisted) wasn't great at Braille yet. He knew the alphabet but not the contractions, and read painfully slow. However, he had so many papers that needed to be translated that she figured if she started now, she might be done by the time he was fluent.

She'd heard that the old adviser, Remy Monroe, had returned, at that the two of them would be working together. That was fine with Alicia. It could be nice to share some of the workload, and have someone more experienced in, er, advising, to help her out with stuff. She still had no idea how she'd even gotten this job. She didn't really have any political experience. In fact, she'd come to ask for a job as an assistant, not an adviser.

Well, she certainly wasn't complaining. She got to live in the mansion and work a much more prestigious position than what she'd expected. All in all, things were going pretty well.

Remy walked into the bathroom that was attached to Hadley's bedroom, yawning. She couldn't believe it was almost noon! She wasn't used to waking up so late at the estate, even though noon was actually her new wake-up, usually. She ran a hand through her hair and wondered when it would switch back to normal. Speaking of her hair...

Remy turned to the mirror that was hanging up over the sink. She wrinkled her nose. Her hair was a mess. She was wearing a pair of Hadley's shorts and one of his white shirts because all of her clothes were still at her little apartment. Gods, she looked awful. She patted down her hair and used some water to make it stay flat. She didn't have make-up or anything to brush her teeth with or anything. After she got some coffee she'd go back to her apartment and get the most important things.

Hadley, this morning, had woken her with a kiss and told her he had some sort of meeting to go to. She only vaguely remembered him leaving the room because she'd been so tired. She thought of it with a smile, though. None of this felt real, still. Like any minutes she'd really wake up, back on her uncomfortable little bed in her plain little bedroom. But if she was dreaming, she was going to make the most of it.

After making herself look as presentable as she could in boy's clothing (it was a little more acceptable since it was her boyfriend's things, and because she'd used them as pajamas) she slipped out of his suite and into the estate. First, coffee. Then she'd visit Hadley in his office.

She swung by the kitchen, happy to see that Paul was elsewhere, grabbed a mug, and then sauntered back out into the living room. She sipped the coffee as she walked, looking around. Everything was so much the same. It was so weird looking around, and yet it made her feel happier than she'd felt in weeks. As she looked around her eyes stopped on a sweater that was draped over one of the chairs. She walked over to it, taking another sip of her coffee. It was purple. A girl's sweater. She picked it up. It was actually really cute--probably something Remy would have bought for herself.

She took it with her as she walked towards his office. Maybe it was Solange's. "Hey, Hadley," Remy said, swinging open the door. She smiled, expecting to see him. Except it wasn't Hadley at all, sitting at his desk. It was some girl.

"Who are you?" Remy asked.

Alicia looked up from her work when someone suddenly walked into the office looking for Hadley. It was a girl around her own age, looking like she had just woken up not too long ago. She must live here, or at least have spent the night, but Alicia didn't think she'd ever seen her before...Oh! She had to be Remy, the old adviser who had recently come back.

"Hi," she greeted, smiling. "I'm Alicia Kinamore, the new adviser. Are you Remy?"

She'd heard a little bit about Remy, mostly from the other estate staff. Apparently her and Hadley had dated? And now they were back together? That was nice.

The smile had slipped off Remy's face when she'd realized Hadley wasn't the one at his desk. It didn't come back. Alicia Kinamore, new adviser. Remy remembered back to yesterday, when Hadley had mentioned something about a new adviser--she'd brushed it off, not wanting to think about it. But now here she was, looking the new adviser in the face.

"Yes," Remy responded, her voice changing into her business tone. She walked over to Alicia and held out her hand, a polite smiling forming on her face. "Remy Monroe. It's nice to meet you, Alicia," she said, even though it wasn't. It was a good thing Remy had a lot of practice with fake niceties. She scanned Alicia's face, noticing the blonde hair and green eyes. Her eyes, she decided, were too close together.

"Nice to meet you too," Alicia replied, taking Remy's hand. She was blissfully oblivious to Remy's internal thoughts about her eyes being too close together. "I've heard a lot about you! I'm excited to work together."

"Oh--were you looking for Hadley?" she asked, remembering what Remy had said when she first walked in. "He went to get lunch with the guy he was meeting with, but that was a while ago so I bet he'll be back soonish. I'm just trying to get some of this done in the meantime." She gestured to her pile of papers.

Work together. Those words made Remy grit her teeth. "Me too!" she said, smiling even though it was painful.

Papergirl wrote:"Oh--were you looking for Hadley? He went to get lunch with the guy he was meeting with, but that was a while ago so I bet he'll be back soonish. I'm just trying to get some of this done in the meantime.

"Hadley?" Remy asked, surprised to hear Alicia use his name so offhandedly. Like they were friends or something. Most clio called him Ov. Sterling. Remy liked it that way. Vex didn't bother to point out the fact that she actually encouraged most clio to call him Hadley because she wanted Hadley to see them as clio instead of pawns. She looked down at the papers. Some trade agreement with Adhbhar. Remy used to take care of the negotiations between Earalas and Adhbhar. Despite the fact that she'd hated every minute interacting with Arizona, for some reason she was still highly irritated looking at the papers.

"Oh, right. Lunch." She waved a hand, pretending like she had known all along where he would be but had simply forgotten. That was another thing she didn't like. Alicia knowing where he was, but Remy not.

Although Remy was being perfectly nice, Alicia noticed that her speech seemed a little...forced. Like her niceness maybe wasn't all that genuine. Erm. Awkward. "Haha, yeah," Alicia said, laughing a little awkwardly. "Sooo, um. I bet Hadley is happy to have you back, huh?"

He was definitely glad to have her back. That much was for sure. "Of course he is," Remy said, slightly offended by the question, now that she thought about it. What was that even supposed to mean? As irritated as she was, though, she did feel slightly better. She reminded herself that he'd been the one to come to seek her out.

"How are you liking it here?" she asked.

"Oh, I like it a lot!" Alicia replied, which was true. "It's definitely not what I expected at all. It's always...interesting, that's for sure."

She had come here expecting to get a job as an assistant, for starters. And Hadley was a lot more, er, informal than she had expected an overloridian to be. But hey, it was good money, and she enjoyed the work, and she got along with everyone pretty well.

"Interesting is one way of putting it," Remy said with a small smile. "What are you working on, there?" she asked, glancing again at the papers on Hadley's desk. It seemed like Alicia was typing something up, the trade agreement papers laying next to the typewriter.

"Hm? Oh, nothing much, just translating some documents to Braille," Alicia answered, gesturing at all the papers stacked around her. It was tedious work. One page of print could end up as several pages of Braille, even with all the contractions. "It's going to take for-ev-er to get it all done, so I figured I'd start now."

"You know Braille?" Remy asked, her interest suddenly piqued. It made her stomach clench a little. She'd been working at Braille but was failing pretty miserably; besides the alphabet she was hopelessly lost. Her fingers just couldnt pick up the tiny bumps like they needed to. She suddenly felt inferior to this woman she had only just met. She didnt like it.

"Yeah. My mom was blind, so I pretty much grew up learning it along with print," Alicia explained, not noticing Remy's sudden discomfort. Her mom had taught her how to read in Braille as a child growing up, and took her to the local library to learn how to read regular print from the librarians who were kind enough to teach her free of charge. She had never really thought it was a skill that would come in handy for a job, it was just something she happened to know. Like a second-language.

"Huh. Well it's nice that you were able to use that to land a job," Remy said, still feeling oddly uneasy. She looked around the room. It was still weird that Alicia was working in Hadley's office, whether she was working on Braille or not.

"Haha yeah, for once I actually feel sort of lucky," Alicia replied. "I thought maybe I could get a job as like an assistant or a tutor or something, but here I am as an adviser." She didn't really understand Hadley's hiring process, but she wasn't complaining.

"Very lucky," Remy agreed. She'd had the same feeling years ago. Except that time Hadley had made a proper decision and this time he hadn't.

"Well, it was nice meeting you," Remy said, though it hadn't been. "You should probably get back to finish those papers." She smiled politely. She hated her straight blonde hair and green eyes.

Alicia sighed a fake-dramatic sigh and laughed. "Yeah, I guess I should, huh?" she agreed, turning back to her work. "It was nice meeting you too, Remy!" And she meant it. Other than a little bit of awkwardness, Remy had seemed perfectly nice to her. She was excited to be working together with her soon.