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stari-hun · 2 months ago

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No Storm: Time Traveler AU

Isokania (and their horrible no good bad college situationship that forces them both to become separate people)

In my first Ramble, I mentioned how Kakania and Isolde grew up together in a boarding school. Both of their parents are historians, but the Dittarsdorfs have an actual connection to nobility and are still technically noble. Just like the original story, they met through Theopil during the time he was free to introduce the two, and just like the original story, they became instant best friends. Inevitably they were sent to the same catholic school boarding school together. The two of them were very isolated to one another too, as Kakania would struggle to make friends from her quick reputation as a troublemaker, and Isolde held no interest in others outside of Kakania. Since Isolde and her were already close, Kakania didn’t even notice the way she lacked other friends or human interaction. Later after they graduated, Kakania had already heard of the concepts of mental health resources from others, and decided to become a psychiatrist. From there, Kakania heard about Laplace’s education programs, and as an arcanist who would already have ties to the Foundation in the future, she decided to go to them. Isolde, who wanted to stay with Kakania, convinced Mr Dittarsdorf to send her as well for a degree in fine arts when Kakania got a scholarship. (After her first semester, Isolde was also given a full-ride scholarship for her talent).

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Kakania began to struggle in college after seeing the community in Laplace between students and the staff. (Laplace has a separate building for college and the actual research center.) Kakania would struggle because she was friends with Isolde and only Isolde for years, and Isolde never held Kakania to the expectations of a healthy friendship. Isolde had been in love with Kakania since they first locked eyes, so she never held her to the same expectation of care or consideration that Isolde would show her. Isolde saw everything Kakania did under rose tinted glasses to the point that she didn’t care about her being pushy or careless with her. Meanwhile Kakania didn’t even know what area of the campus Isolde took classes in until she had offered to meet her so Kakania could do a mock therapy session for class. Kakania would remember people's birthdays, but she'd never ask about their hobbies or their experiences in life until it was something she was personally interested in. If Isolde got a cat, Kakania wouldn't know until she went into Isolde’s part of the house because she was doing an interview for her psych class. Despite living together, their friendship also matched the way it did when they were kids at opposite ends of the neighborhood.

Kakania began to struggle more and more socially when people would cut her off from seemingly nowhere according to her. Meanwhile Isolde formed a small group of friends with Tooth Fairy, Jiu, and Windsong before she met Tooth Fairy’s juniors from the SPDM’s Guidance Program: Medicine Pocket and Mesmer Jr. Isolde would always keep a level of distance between them which Tooth Fairy would notice.

✰.

In their second year, Kakania and Isolde began to get closer than ever because of Kakania’s isolation in her program. No person in her classes or even program would consider Kakania a friend, and the inability to keep a friend began to wear on her. She was able to get through her first year while burying her head into her coursework, but by the start of the second it became too much. It all accumulated into the midterm of their first semester when Isolde suggested they celebrate passing midterms together with a platonic date night in their living room. After ordering takeout using Kakania’s accounts so Mr Dittarsdorf wouldn’t catch Isolde having junk foods, they end up making out. Isolde, who had known she was a lesbian since she was a child, was having her dream relationship with the girl she loved since they met at 15. Meanwhile Kakania, upon her first kiss being a woman, had to reevaluate her entire sexuality and outlook on life, or if she even loved Isolde. By the time the break between semesters was about to start, Kakania realized she didn’t love Isolde and decided to break it off before things got too serious. Naturally, Isolde melts down because unlike Kakania thought, she had loved her, and for a while she had resolved herself to simply be friends with Kakania until she could “fix” her. But after their kiss and dating for months before the semester ended, Isolde realized she couldn’t stay friends anymore.

✰.

Kakania ended up moving into the student dorms while Isolde stayed with Tooth Fairy for a few weeks while ignoring everything from her phone. Her ignoring calls got to the point that Theopil visited her after class one day because she hadn’t contact anyone since the breakup. (He left only after giving her a gift box she later opened to see full of pounds for when she couldn’t use her credit card without Mr Dittarsdorf finding out). Isolde being forced to actually open up to others after showing up at Tooth Fairy’s apartment the evening of the breakup because she couldn’t go home to Kakania. Even though she’s still in a daze during her time at school, she has the talent to match her grades without trying. Isolde starts to form an outer circle of friends, and Tooth Fairy reassured her that people can be safe while helping her not just switch dependencies from Kakania to her. She starts becoming better friends with Jiu and Windsong, and even Mesmer Jr and Medicine Pocket now that she’s not masking over enjoyment whenever they meet.

✰.

Kakania starts to feel the absence of Isolde in her life even more as she’s left alone. Now that she’s thinking about Isolde actively, she realizes all the unhealthy things she did with her while Kakania didn’t notice. She starts to reflect on the way that she was also dependent on Isolde as her rock to reassure her that her actions were right. Without her, and the way things were going in her social life, Kakania was at a total loss of how to move forward.

Kakania started the new semester in a daze, but can’t keep up with schoolwork just off of groundbreaking talent. Eventually, her counselor meets with her to tell her how she’s in danger of losing her scholarship and it manages to snap her out of it just enough to go to a tutoring club. With her delusions of grandeur shattered, she meets Blonney, Horropedia, and An-An Lee. Three film majors with two as double majors for mechanical engineering and cultural studies. Kakania, who is quick to make friends but never keeps them, makes fast friends with the study group. But with Blonney, she started getting actual feedback about her treatment of others. Kakania is a lot of things, but she sees the way Blonney is never mean to anyone who hasn’t deserved it. So when Blonney starts checking her for the careless way she treats people, she has no choice but to listen. Even worse, Kakania starts to realize how little she knew about Isolde, despite the decade they knew one another, or the fact the entire campus thought they were the ideal couple during their 2 months of dating.

✰.

After their last semester starts, Kakania wants to see Isolde but realizes she didn’t know where her main classes would be. The only class she does know the location of was a prerequisite from a year ago. As Kakania starts spiraling farther, she realizes how much she didn't know about Isolde. But Tooth Fairy and Jiu are like Medicine Pocket, once they’ve made a friend they know need extra security, they’re a guard dog. Medicine Pocket is the type to bite on sight to harass someone to go away, but Tooth’s disappointment is like a knife to those who upset her. So to someone like Kakania who brushes off aggressive people as without sense meets their match with someone like Tooth Fairy. Kakania can brush off someone like Medicine Pocket even if they have good points purely off of being aggressive out of the gate, but for Tooth Fairy she can’t help but deflate while trying to ask about Isolde’s schedule to meet her. Tooth Fairy barely holding back a fist when she tells Kakania that she needs to reevaluate how good a friend she even was to Isolde because people like Kakania need to heal on their own through feedback from others, but people like Isolde need community support to assure her she isn’t alone in her struggle.

✰.

By the time they graduated, Kakania went back up to full honors, but she knew that while she was smart she had to get there from her own efforts instead of believing she was a genius. One of Kakania’s teacher gives her a recommendation letter for a counselor position in the SPDM, and she accepts. Meanwhile, Isolde was cutting off the Dittarsdorf name. After she opened up to others, one of the first things Windsong recommended was to change her home address to Tooth Fairy’s long before diplomas were sent out.

✰.

Kakania spends the next 5 years working as a counselor for the SPDM and learning how to work with the mental health of teens. While working together with Tooth Fairy for long enough to gain a friendly understanding with, she doesn’t learn about Isolde’s whereabouts even though she knows Blonney and Horropedia are friends with Tooth. Most of the time she gets to know Isolde is ok, and very rarely she’ll learn a tidbit about what she’s doing. When she sees of the Dittarsdorfs’ death in the newspapers, Kakania considers going, but she decides against it because Isolde had never reached out to her to reconnect. Luckily for her, Kakania stayed back just in time to receive a job offer from a famous institute for the research of mental health.

Isolde was busy with her music and career as a singer. During her time in school she found she enjoyed jazz over opera, so she’d work gigs around town with both, and after Windsong showed her how she started uploading songs online too.

Then Isolde received news of her father and mother’s death and the date for the funeral alongside it. After talking with her friends she decided to go if only to see Theopil again. She arrived a month before the funeral began to help and sort her business with the house. The month went by quickly as the funeral proceeded with Theopil alongside a few close family friends (Mr Karl barred from entering). Theopil was driving her to the train station home before the crash happened, and Isolde had another funeral to plan. As the last person with the Dittarsdorf name along with being in an accident, Isolde was forced to stay even longer, and with the legal rights to the house she stayed in her childhood home. After Theopil’s funeral ended Isolde still stayed in the house to figure out what to do with it, and before she knew it a year had passed. By then she had sold everything in the house that wasn’t of sentimental value or furniture before turning it over to the city as a historical museum following the Dittarsdorf line. Despite her hiatus from singing in person consistently, Isolde got an invitation to the US to become a singer in a well-respected jazz club, so she decided to begin her story of tomorrow in the States.

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Over the next decade, Kakania worked her way up the corporate ladder in the research institute in the same way Isolde worked her way up to be a household name. While working at the research institute, as people try to get to know her, Kakania begins to have gender and sexuality crisis number two when they try to set her up with other people. Kakania never knew about Isolde’s shift into jazz because she couldn’t bear listening to her songs after realizing how much she had hurt her alongside how she realized she had loved her all this time. By the time she had turned 32, Kakania decided to focus more on children's mental health so that someone like Isolde would never go without help again. She especially focused on getting rid of the stigma that therapy meant there was a problem in order to have more children of affluent families sent to therapy. Before she knew it, Kakania was 35 and considered one of the top therapists in Europe for teens. Then she was invited to a national summit for her expertise in New York planned for right after her 36th birthday.

✰.

When she arrived for the week long convention, Kakania couldn't help but feel homesick. Despite not going home to Vienna for years, there was a difference between being a day’s trip away and being an entire ocean away. After hearing about the chance to find different cultures she could find in New York, she asked around if anyone had heard of a place to get Viennese food. From there she found out about a certain jazz bar nearby that had a live band during dinners, food from all over Austria, and a live singer on weekends who was supposedly the reason many people stayed in the hotel in the first place. The first time Kakania goes she ends up crying the first time she has dinner there after her conference panels from a mix of stress building up and homesickness. Kakania begins to eat there every day for the entire week the summit lasts, even ordering lunch from the bar when she has the chance between meetings. She even decided to stay later in the US, and catch a Saturday morning flight instead of pushing herself by leaving the second the convention ended. As she was enjoying dinner the lights went off as the stage crew announced the jazz club’s performer would be coming on shortly, and as Kakania readied herself to see her first performance in America, she saw someone she never stopped thinking about for the first time in years.

✰.

Fun Facts about them in the story:

Kakania got through the first year and a half of college through her good memory, but she learned in her last semester while struggling that it only works when she’s tuned in. If she doesn’t pay attention to someone’s words, her good memory with them means nothing.

Tooth is in college in order to get another certification, her degree only took 2 years because she was only a part time student in order to continue working at the SPDM.

The entire Dittarsdorf family showed up to Isolde’s graduation, but Evangeline praised her as Trista in front of Windsong and Vila, and Mr Dittarsdorf quickly left early to escort Evangeline out. Theopil stayed for an hour meeting her friends before handing her another chunk of cash “just in case.”

Isolde spent 2 months out of the year she spent back home transcribing Trista and Theopil’s lullaby into music sheets and online recordings of it so they could be played in the house even though they had passed.

Kakania’s therapist scolds her frequently for ignoring her own signs of stress, and the way she pushes herself too far to help others.

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