Cross Country

[slowspeedster]

Truth be told, if anyone had told him back home he'd be teaching people how to run, he would have laughed in their faces, but he had to admit his class seemed to be going well. The idea had started when Cissie asked for help surviving her Cardio class, but actually teaching was something he never thought he'd enjoy, let alone be good at. Now here

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[lucked]

Admittedly, Claire had to wonder if she wouldn't have been better served taking a few more physical education classes than she'd signed up for. The longer she stayed on the island, the more it seemed that there was occasions where endurance mattered, where it was the difference between involving oneself with the miraculous world outside or holing herself up in her hut, with Mr. Muggles as her sole company. But as she watched idly from a distance, from where she was laid out on the grass with a few textbooks, she contented herself with knowing that she was working out the basics first, in Natalia's self-defense classes.

The rest could come later.

She picked up her belongings and made her way over to the group when she noticed Cissie breaking away from the crowd, all smiles as she managed to catch the last of Cissie's words.

"Well, considering who's teaching it..." she teased, tilting her head and deliberately letting her gaze linger.

[arrownomore]

"That has totally nothing to do with it," Cissie protested, wiping some sweat away from her eyes. Okay, so it maybe had a tiny, tiny part to do with it but that wasn't the point. Even if the class had been taught by someone else like Lex Luthor, she would still love the class itself. She thought so, at least, and that should be all that mattered.

"It's seriously a good class, though. And really, who better to teach it than Bart?"

[lucked]

"Biased, totally biased," Claire laughed, shaking her head, tapping a finger against her chin as she hefted her books higher in her arms, balancing the weight on her hip. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I definitely have a total respect for cross-country and think that it's something that should definitely be offered as a class, but c'mon, like you wouldn't feel differently if it was someone else making you run all that distance in the span of less than two hours?"

Pursing her lips, Claire glanced briefly towards the Compound. "Do you want to grab dinner or something? Or is food right after so much running a bad idea?" she asked. "I've got a class at 7:30, but I'm free until then."

[arrownomore]

Cissie wrinkled her nose at Claire, unwilling to concede her point. "I'm not so sure. If it was taught well, it wouldn't matter who's doing the teaching."

"But anyway, I could definitely eat," she said, her stomach rumbling on cue. "I kind of need to anyway, so my muscles don't get too stiff later. I mean, they're already pretty mad at me but if I eat, it won't get worse. You want to eat now or would it be okay if I take like ten minutes to take a shower and find less sweaty clothes?"

[lucked]

"Whatever you say," replied Claire in a sing-song voice, not entirely convinced by Cissie's claim, but knowing that it wasn't anything worth debating too much (especially since she had no way of proving just how much or how little Bart's presence did actually affect her- after all, they'd been friends far longer than they'd been dating, as far as she was aware). "It'd totally make a difference if I had a boyfriend who was teaching a class of mine, but I'll just leave it at that."

Wrapping both arms around her books again, Claire tilted her head, starting on the way to the Compound. "I'd definitely be fine waiting ten minutes," she reassured. "I've got some homework due tomorrow that I still haven't finished yet, anyway, and I'm usually pretty tired after my last class, so squeezing an extra ten minutes of reading while I'm still relatively awake seems like a good idea anyway."

[arrownomore]

Cissie was half tempted to be totally mature and stick her tongue out at Claire but she had to give her credit - she could see where Claire was coming from. She and Bart had been friends forever and a day though and she would swear to her dying breath that made all the difference.

"Perfect!" she added cheerfully. "Let me just say goodbye to Bart and then we can go to the compound, I'll take my shower and we can meet in the rec room or something?"

[lucked]

"Go, go," Claire encouraged, voice sing-song as she fought the temptation to skip right on ahead, but settled for a mischievous grin, and a gaze that didn't quite tear herself away from Cissie as the other blonde began to break away and towards her boyfriend. "It's not like I'll be sitting over here, peeking and watching the two of you completely lose it over one another. Nope. Not me."

Laughing to herself, Claire tossed her ponytail over a shoulder. "Just don't take too long, okay? Time economy, totally an important concept during the school year."

[arrownomore]

It was a really terrible joke but Cissie couldn't help herself. She winked at Claire and said before she headed over Bart's direction, "I'll be back in a flash!"

A hug and a kiss delivered to Bart later, she was back at Claire's side. One of the many nice things about dating him was that he was pretty relaxed about this. She had heard horror stories from some of the girls at her school and it was reassuring to know that Bart was nothing like the other guys - not that had ever been in doubt, really.

"What are you taking again?" she asked Claire as they started walking up to the Compound. "I know you told me but I'm blanking right now. Maybe I went a little overboard on the Phys Ed stuff this semester."

[lucked]

Making a face, Claire groaned. "Augh, that was awful," she called after Cissie, even though she laughed regardless, still ever the first to laugh at a joke, no matter how obvious or lame. Sometimes, it was the simplest of puns that ended up being the most fun, just because that it was the kind of humor that one couldn't hold back on. It was either clever, or it was ridiculous (occasionally, even both), and so Claire was able to appreciate the joke for what it was, sighing as she shook her head, lips quirked in a grin.

Once Cissie returned, Claire tilted her head back and forth, raising a few books in demonstration. "Um... stuff I'm taking includes biology, chemistry, jazz, self defense, math, all the marine biology stuff," she rattled off, one by one. "Basically, the math and sciences are because my, er, my friend Peter, he teaches a lot of math and science, and I kind of don't want to fall behind on that in front of him. Jazz is just to let go, self defense is obviously a practical choice. What about you?"

[arrownomore]

The "my, er, my friend Peter" thing was definitely a little suspicious but Cissie let it go. For now. The teasing had to be saved up for a special occasion, after all. It was what friends did.

"That's kind of cool," she said. "Me, I'm taking the running class, obviously, plus ballet, ballroom dance and the cardio class. No book classes this time though I probably should have. Maybe next semester. I don't know, I just like all the active stuff better than actual classes. They make more sense."

[lucked]

"Oh no, totally agreed," Claire nodded her head, her lips pressing together in a faint smile. "The active stuff definitely makes more sense than the abstract math and figures and tiny little microscopic processes that we can't even really see do. I mean, I like to think that I have a pretty active imagination, but sometimes school definitely has the tendency to bend it all out of shape, until I find myself totally doubting everything I do."

She shrugged. "But at the same time, that's... kind of the point of school, right? Getting us to learn things, even those that wouldn't naturally come to us. At least, that's what I try to tell myself whenever I'm awake late through the night with a bunch of homework on my desk."

[arrownomore]

"I have to admit, it was a lot easier at boarding school," Cissie said. "I mean, I was kind of there for pretty much all the time and it wasn't really like I could skip classes or anything without people noticing. Bart was fast enough to get away with it, at least and Kon - well, Kon got detention a lot, that's all I'm saying."

If she had the discipline to master archery, she knew she could find it in her to take a balanced load of classes but the problem was actually making herself do it. She would, though. Next semester. Really.

[lucked]

"Why does that not surprise me?" Claire laughed, shaking her head at the thought of Kon skipping off without warning, going off to chase after whatever whim he wanted, probably off exploring with all of his friends. "But yeah, ick, boarding school. That's something I'm glad that my parents never sent me to- no offense or anything, and if you really enjoyed it, then maybe my idea of boarding school is totally off and you should tell me. But the idea of people watching that closely over you all of the time, living pretty much at school? That would drive me pretty crazy."

She tilted her head in concession. "If I went now, anyway. I guess if you start anything early enough, you get used to it."

[arrownomore]

"To be fair, it's not like he could really explain why he was late," Cissie said loyally. "But yeah, we used to sit around and make bets on what he got in trouble for while we waited for him to show up."

As they continued their walk, she was quiet for a few moments as she tried to figure out how to explain the whole boarding school thing to Claire. It wasn't that she minded telling, it was just that the whole thing was a little embarrassing with a dash of crazy to boot.

"It was for lot of other people, I think but, um. Well, it was kind of different for me. Do you want the long story or the short one?"

[lucked]

"We've got time," Claire replied quietly, having held her tongue for the duration of time that Cissie had fallen silent, knowing that an absence of words was usually just leading to something more, something greater, deeper, or even just harder to swallow. The last thing that she wanted to do was rush Cissie into declaring any of it if she didn't feel comfortable; Claire's desire to know more about people and their worlds didn't stretch so far as to demand that from everyone.

"And, I mean... Kon's shown me the comics that were written about your guys' lives before, so if I ever really needed to know the long story, I know where to look. I just. Wouldn't, you know. I'd want to hear that from you guys."

[arrownomore]

Cissie nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear as she tried to figure out the best place to begin. "See, the thing is that my mom kind of wanted to be a super hero. She read about Green Arrow and since she was pretty good at archery, she made a costume and started calling herself Arrowette. The problem was that she was bad - like really bad. Then she got carpal tunnel and then put the end to the whole thing. So she married my dad and they had me and everything was okay until he ate some bad shell fish and died