Chapter 6 - Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die

Toni Stark: Woman of Letters

To Toni's utter surprise, life at MIT became eerily normal.

Every morning she would drag herself out of bed, blearily throw on the cleanest sweater she had before hauling her bricks of books to class. To her delight, Rhodey was in three of her classes, and started saving her a seat beside him at each lecture. Sometimes, Rhodey would even push an oversized coffee under her nose to wake her up.

All in all, it was...nice.

For the first time in her life, Toni finally felt like she'd understood what it meant to have a friend.

After the night at the Halloween party, for some reason, Rhodey had decided that he and Toni were going to be friends. Toni had to hide her surprise when Rhodey sat down beside her in class the next day, complaining about the upcoming class assignment they had to do.

"...I mean, he's already assigned that huge lab only a week before, and he knows that everyone starts last minute. I'm telling you, that man assigned that to us on purpose to make us sweat. Hey, are you listening? You alright?"

Toni shook her head as she stared at Rhodey wide eyed. "..yeah. Are you sure you're sitting in the right spot?"

Rhodey frowned as he looked at the empty spot. "Oh sorry, was there someone else sitting here?"

Toni fidgeted as she shook her head. "No! I mean no, there's no one sitting there. I'm just-"

Toni slumped as she mumbled the rest of her sentence. Rhodey had to lean in to hear, "- no one usually wants to sit with me."

Rhodey frowned narrowing his eyes before blinking slowly. Toni swallowed as she turned back to her notebook. It didn't need to be said out loud; everyone tried to avoid the young genius as much as possible. No one was interested in hanging out with the fifteen year old kid.

"Well that's too bad for them," Rhodey declared, setting his backpack down on the ground beside him. "And great for me, since I'm claiming the seat next to you for the rest of the class, so you better save me a seat every time you get here first."

For the rest of the class, Toni had a wide smile stretched across her face.

"Hey Stark! Over here!"

Toni flinched as she heard her name being called across the hallway. She gripped her hand tightly across her shoulder strap, steeling herself before she turned around.

The red-headed girl in the cheerleader costume from Halloween waved at her as she jogged over. She looked much different now, sporting a Star Wars t-shirt and jeans. Huffing a little as she stopped in front of Toni.

"I just wanted to say, thank you. For, well-" The girl glanced up and down the hallways to make sure no one was listening before whispering. "you know"

Toni relaxed a fraction, re-adjusting her bag. "I'm glad you're alright." Toni frowned as she looked behind the girl. "And what about-"

"Willow's fine as well." The redhead chirped as she re-adjusted the glasses on her face. "I'm Charlie by the way, and you're Toni right?"

Toni blinked, nodding slowly. "How did you know?"

"Oh, I ran into your other friend, Rhodes I think his name was?" Charlie supplied, "I looked up your schedule and it said you had class here in a few-"

Toni stared, eyes narrowing at the implication. "...so you hacked it? It isn't public information."

Charlie smiled awkwardly before laughing. "Oh shit, I knew you were smart, but i didn't realize how smart! I'm a computer science major and I know a lot about getting into encrypted places, so I thought it was faster to find you this way. Okay...now I understand how creepy that sounds. I'm sorry for being creepy. Willow tells me I have to work on that, I promise I wasn't trying to hurt you or anything. Ohgod now you're gonna think I'm a stalker because that's what a stalker would say-"

Toni held up a hand as she bit back a laugh. "I get it Charlie, breathe."

Charlie took a large breath than covered her mouth with her hands. "Okay shutting up now."

Toni grinned. "It's fine. I'm glad both of you are alright."

Toni glanced again down the hallway. Classes were starting soon and she could see that more people were starting to rush to get to their classes on time. She pulled Charlie a little closer. "What did you want to ask?"

Charlie got the message and lowered her voice. "To thank you mostly. And to let you know that we didn't tell anyone what we saw. Because we figured it was smarter not to go around telling everyone about it right?"

Toni let out a sigh of relief. Toni couldn't stop looking over her shoulder for an entire week, just waiting for the cops to burst into her dorm room. "Right. People are probably safer not knowing."

Charlie nodded. "Cool, cool. Also, I know your friend Rhodes said you don't want money or a reward or anything, but I owe you one. So if you ever need a way to get some information that might be hard to get, say on the internet somewhere, let me know. I'm your girl."

Toni smiled. "Thanks Charlie, I might take you up on that sometime."

"Sweet!" answered Charlie brightly, She looked over Toni's shoulder in alarm. "Um- you might want to get to your class soon. I think it started five minutes ago."

"Wait, so werewolves and skinwalkers are different?"

Toni lifted her chin from her arms, eyes blinking away the chemistry formulas staring back at her from the textbook in front of her. Sitting up from her sprawl on the floor, Toni lifted her arms above her head as she stretched. "They're similar, but skinwalkers can change into their animal form anytime they want, not just during the full moon like werewolves. They typically also shift into canines instead of wolf-human hybrids that werewolves tend to."

Rhodey frowned at the thick tome, flipping through the thick pages. The leather bound journal had been "Huh. While I'm impressed that you've somehow managed to memorize so much of this word by word, I'm more amazed that you can remember that but not when our next chemistry midterm is."

Toni scowled, chucking an empty energy drink can at his head. 'Hey, it's not my fault that our TA talks like he's narrating a nature documentary. I mean, it's nice that his voice is so calm and soothing. The better question is, how do you not fall asleep while he lectures?"

Rhodey snorted, flipping rapidly again through the pages. "Maybe there's something in here that can explain how to bore people to sleep- hey!"

Rhodey ducked as a pillow sailed across the room. Toni laughed as Rhodey flailed and punched the pillow out of the way. "He's not that boring, the labs he preps are actually pretty interesting. It's not his fault that he has that slowww deeeep voooiceee."

"Never do that again," Rhodey deadpanned, "That was awful."

Rhodey stood up, grabbing his open chemistry textbook on the desk and shoving it into his backpack. He handed Maria's leatherbound journal back to Toni. 'Come on, let's go grab some dinner before my brain explodes. We can quiz each other more when we get back."

Toni snorted, packing the journal alongside her textbook, notebooks and pens into her bag."Fine, but if we're going to actually be productive, we're grabbing coffee on the way back."

A tall figure watched as both Toni and Rhodey bickered their way towards the dining hall. Waiting until they turned the corner, the figure slipped into the dorms. Casually strolling down the empty hallway.

After checking that no one was looking, the figure pulled a duplicate key out of their pocket as they unlocked the dorm. Stepping over the empty cans of Redbull and over the pillows strewn onto the floor, the man quickly scanned the room.

After searching through a few drawers, the man carefully shut them again. Nodding to himself, he pulled a small slip of paper from his pocket. The black ink shimmered in the light as he kneeled to peel back the welcome mat.

He paused, eyes narrowing at the barely visible protection sigils drawn into the ground.

Carefully sliding the paper in his hand, the black ink shimmered a bright gold as it disappeared, the paper now completely blank. Grabbing the paper, the man carefully re-adjusted the welcome mat before leaving the room and turning the light off behind him.

A/N: Oops, I honestly didn't realize it's been this long since I last updated, I'm sorry it's been so long! Other stories and ideas got in the way, and after tossing out three drafts of this chapter, I thought it was best to take a break. With more of the outline in better working form, I don't anticipate the next chapter taking as long. Hopefully this one isn't too rusty - let me know what you think!

Also, as a general notice - I won't be uploading any new stories to this account moving forward. I will definitely still continue to update all the stories I've already started over here (including this one) until they are finished, but I won't be uploading brand new stories. Feedback on here in general has dwindled to almost non-existent, so I've been migrating over to ao3 under the same username, so check me out over there for a bunch of new content and collaborations!

Thank you for reading, and thanks to everyone who sent me lovely reviews and comments on past chapters, your comments and reviews always make my day better!