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Making friends was hard. Amaravati had spent the last several days coming to the Library, only to find that her favorite Librarian was missing. Eventually, though, word spread around that he was in the hospital. To hear the whispers, Anthony had been attacked. What had surprised Amara, however, was that it hadn't been the Library at fault, here. The shock had hit her all at once when she'd been in the kitchen, slaving over what she had decided would be a very nice meal. A nice homemade Indian meal, in point of fact. Tony probably didn't know what he was missing, after all! That would teach him to avoid her.

Clearly she had to show him. But when the news came to her, the phone trembled in her hand. So, he'd been hurt. Really hurt. It had nothing to do with her, and it meant that her newest friend had been in danger's way, and possibly at death's door... and... and... she wasn't handling it all that well. Well, she was. Except that now her little basket of food was a big basket, complete with three different curry dishes (lamb, chicken, and fish, to start with), fresh naan, and various little dishes here and there. There was even an entire tupperware of kheer, the rice pudding that she so adored.

... She hoped that he wasn't a vegetarian. That would be incredibly inconvenient! But already she had moved on to dessert, and she had something in particular in mind. Thirty minutes later, the cupcakes were in their own tin, in the basket, and she was headed out the door. Her ankle her a little, but she didn't much care. ... And maybe she wasn't as presentable as usual, but really! Who could be blamed for being a bit of a mess after such a whirlwind of cooking? She drove her sports car all the way to the hospital, and then parked in somewhat of a rush.

"Where can I find Anthony Darrow?" she asked the receptionist, who directed her to the recovery ward. The woman in question had been on the verge of giving her a different answer-- ICU?-- before she'd made the correction. For one moment Amara had worried that Tony wouldn't be able to receive visitors. At least, not visitors bearing heavy baskets full of goodies. She sped off (as well as she could with a faint limp), heading toward the recovery ward to find her friend. When she finally found him, she blinked, and went very still for a moment.

"Tony, you look like %*#@," she said, standing stock still.

"I brought you..." What meal was it now? Amaravati took a quick look at her cell phone, and came to a swift decision. "Dinner. I brought you dinner." She smiled back at him, reassured by the way that he was still able to play even when banged up. "You look like you got mauled by a wild book shelf. Shall I guess that this didn't happen in the Library?" She sat down beside him, not asking if it was okay, and drew the dishes out of the basket, laying them out for him on a tray (she'd actually been able to fit the tray in the basket when she'd been packing everything). "Here's some curry, and... well, fixings. The naan is good. I tried a bit of it."

She'd made it, after all, which meant that it was good. Her mother had spent so many hours teaching her how to make her own curry, and everything else that she was so proud of. "There's dessert in here as well, but you can't have it until you're done." Reaching into the basket, she gathered up the tea pot (her own, of course), and poured two cups of tea. "I don't know what they want you to be eating, and I'm not sure I really care. Here, try this. It's cooled down a little, so you should be able to drink it right away."

It was very good tea. It had to be, to live up to Amaravati's standards. Fussing over him as though he were her patient and not just her friend, she rooted through the basket to find some utensils, and arranged those for him, too. "Really, Tony, you had me worried. I went to the Library, and you weren't anywhere to be found. Carol was an absolute wreck, poor thing. I do feel for her." So much so, in fact, that Amara hadn't taunted the woman. She didn't much like her most of the time, but she could understand being worried over a man she'd been romantically involved with. ... Sort of.

"It looks like you've been really kicking back, here." And she wasn't going to tell him that she had a book tucked away in her purse, no she wasn't. Giving him a rather stern (for her) look, she sized him up. Hmm. Well, he could have been in worse shape, but he needed to learn to be careful! Or maybe it was just that she had been worried to death, and here he had been, playing video games. She didn't even know how to play video games and-- that was not the point. The point was... ah well. No sense in being incensed now.

Amaravati shrugged at Anthony, dismissing his concerns rather casually. "You're my friend, Tony. Besides, I like to cook. I've been cooking since I was a little girl, so really, it wasn't any trouble. My folks would never let me hear the end of it if I stopped practicing, so I may as well keep my hand in like this." Making a pleasant meal for a man who had been in a hospital bed for more than three days had seemed like a good plan. "And anyway, I know what hospital food tastes like," she said ruefully. Sometimes the salad bars at hospitals were particularly nice, but she couldn't say that she much cared for any of the other selections.

"You make a good test subject. We'll see if my cooking is as good as it's cracked out to be." Still somewhat frustrated because he seemed so... casual about the state of affairs, she glanced down at him. "So I take it that you used to be trouble, eh? Well, I'll bet you've learned your lesson." More than learned it, in point of fact. Except, suddenly she wasn't so sure that he had learned anything. Ah well. She picked up her own cup of tea, and sipped it, looking faintly contemplative.

It seemed as though he was well enough to joke about his own recovery and injuries, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it had seemed. "... Coma, huh?" Yes, she remembered hearing about that. Pensively, she set the cup back in the saucer. "I'll bet you have all kinds of friends coming to visit you." He was a nice man, and therefore he obviously had to have a ton of them. "And I could have brought you flowers, but I think you'll appreciate the food a great deal more." Glancing toward the screen, she tried to decide what exactly he was playing, since it wasn't immediately obvious.

She grinned a little, suddenly, and looked back at him. "Oh, and I made some of this to 'punish' you for leaving me to Carol's tender mercies, by the way. I figure that if you like the food, you'll be less inclined to up and vanish on me." That was the plan, anyway. Whether it would actually work, she didn't know. But her unending trials with Carol had been somewhat odd these past few days. She wondered what the woman would do if she broke down and applied at the Library to do some volunteer work or something. Something to enjoy the lovely wooden shelves, and whatnot. ... And well, she rather liked the idea of reading to children. Did they have something there for that?

"A young lady must be poised, proper, and above all polished." Amaravati quoted, rolling her eyes a little. "There's all of this etiquette, and everything, but what it really comes down to is skills. Cooking is a big one in my family. My father thought I needed to learn it to become a high society lady in Destiny City, and my mother thought I needed to learn it because that was what a good Indian girl does. So, here I am... the product of two very different worlds, and the end result is that I can cook. Don't ask me to cook anything like pot roast, though. You would undoubtedly be disappointed with the results." There was no way around that. "... And, well, anything else except traditional Indian dishes and desserts in general. I'm pretty good at those."

Speaking of which, when he finished that curry, there were about a dozen or so fresh cupcakes for him. ... Which, she told herself, he would share. He had to, of course. There were quite a few of them. Never mind the other dozen at home. Those were for her family, of course. "I'm not sure why you're surprised, but I'm glad that you're enjoying being punished," she said with a wisp of a smile tugging at her lips. Brat. He really was, wasn't he? A sweet, kind man, but not one who could keep from making jokes here and there.

The best kind, in her opinion. Especially for a friend. Taking out a little plate of her own, she picked at it, sipping her tea between bites every now and again. Finally, she set the fork down, and looked him over once more. "Do you think that you're feeling well enough for a story?" she asked, the grin back in place. A story for him, not for her, of course. It would be so silly to make him read something, or come up with something. No, she had other plans in mind. And besides, she'd missed this.

Preening a little bit under all of his complimentary talk, Amaravati reached into the basket and took out first the tupperware full of kheer, and then the tin of cupcakes. "All right. Why don't you have some dessert while I read to you?" She settled down more comfortably, moving the basket aside, and setting the tea cups down on the table nearby. From the basket she withdrew her prize: a storybook full of some of her very favorite tales. "My mother used to read this to me when I was young," she said, flashing him a little grin. "It always made me feel better, so I hope that it will bring you some solace."

It was a book of original fairy tales, and quite possibly the only volume that her mother had owned that was not in Hindi. Opening the book, she turned to the first page, and began to recite it almost form memory. "In a little village at the edge of the woods, there lived a young girl whose one wish was to travel the heavens with the stars, and see everything from where they shone. She watched the dance of constellations across the sky every night, and she wondered. It was said that the stars would come down from the sky for one night every year, and one night alone."

She told of how the girl had ran away from her village to go find the hidden vale in which the great dance for one evening touched down, nibbling on a cupcake every now and again. Finally, she came to the point where the stars appeared. "When the stars fell to the earth, they held a masquerade ball, so that no one would discover their true selves. But the girl had been waiting in the vale for days upon days, and when the day of the ball arrived, she was ready."

It was surprisingly entertaining to read him the story, and she made a point of using a dramatic reading voice, so that at least she wouldn't get bored-- who knew if he would fall asleep anyway? "The girl wished, wished so hard until she could wish no harder, and when she opened her eyes, her peasant clothing had been transformed into the finest of silk, spun from the webs of the most ancient spider in the land, or so they say. She held in her hands a mask that was in the shape of an owl's face, for only an owl flies at night, and she wanted to be among the great heavenly bodies."

Now for her favorite part! "The stars gave way to let her dance among them, and none of them knew her for what she was. They were so taken with her grace and the lightness of her feet that when the ball came to a close, they drew her into their midst, and took her up with them into the sky. When the stars are out, and the moon rises, you can see her among them as they make their way in the great eternal dance across the night's sky." It was... well, cheesy, and corny, but it had been a beautiful story when she was little, and she loved it still.

Amaravati closed the book, and sat there with a little smile on her face. There was something about the situation that was very comfortable, very homey. Maybe it was because she had brought him homemade food, and read him a book... or because he had, once again, fallen asleep. She didn't think she'd ever forget the way that that had worked in the elevator, and if she ever caught him overworking himself, she thought she might use the trick again. It was quite possibly the most adorable thing ever.

Such a pair they made; he, a late thirties Librarian, and she a high school student. And here they were, roles comfortably reversed. She reached over, and smoothed a bit of hair away from his face, her expression entirely gentle. "You should go to sleep, Tony. You're obviously very tired, and I can't blame you after what has happened. I can leave the cupcakes here, if you like? If you want me to leave so that you can get some rest?"

She hated waking him, hated the necessity of speaking up, but she didn't know whether he wanted her to remain or not. Poor man. It was difficult to imagine why anyone would want to attack someone like Tony, assuming that was what had happened. ... And yet... hadn't she done many things like that before? Did she know what her targets were like, or did she just go after them for the star seeds in their chests?

Obviously, she needed to think long and hard about this. At the end of the day, she still needed to meet her quota, but was there a way to target people who were particularly bad? Maybe if she went after murderers and rapists, and the like... maybe then she would be doing society doubly the favor. They needed the Negaverse to protect them from the Senshi, who caused so much damage everywhere. They did. But she could do one better.

"Uh huh. I'm sure you can stay awake a bit longer, sleepyhead," Amaravati teased. "It's really all right. I can come and visit you tomorrow, if you need rest. But I'll stay for now, if you can stay awake. Somehow, I don't imagine you'd like me to watch you sleep." Not that she wouldn't enjoy that. It was such a... homey thing, really. Comfortable and warm, and so much reminiscent of childhood memories. Tony didn't have anyone to watch him sleep, did he? That struck her as somehow sad. "Someone needs to make sure you eat well, since the hospital one," she chided, hands on her hips.

And she had plenty of hip for them to rest on. Carefully, she set the cupcake back in its tin so that he could finish it later. Poor, dear man. She was going to think that a lot, she decided. It was impossible not to. "Are you sure you'd like me to stay?" she asked, fingering the spine of her book. It was tempting to read to him again, but if she did he really would fall asleep, and then she would either have to leave or make good on her word.

Anthony Darrow probably wasn't used to that kind of thing at all. Didn't he have any family, any family anywhere? She didn't like the idea of him alone in the recovery ward, no sir. Taking up her cup again, she drank the tea to keep herself occupied while she thought it all over. Things were... complicated. She was beginning to come to grips with the idea that the reason there were so many accidents in Destiny City was because of the Negaverse. Only, in general, she tended to think that they were reasoned out crimes.

Here lay evidence against her claims, and she didn't quite know what to do about it. Really, she didn't feel any urge to question her superiors. Maybe that had come with having her starseed corrupted, or maybe the brainwashing that she had received (which she still would not admit to, even in her own mind), but either way, despite the evidence before her eyes she did not believe it. She did not believe that what they did was without just cause, and on some level... she enjoyed it. But she enjoyed this too, and it was soft, and gentle, and human.

"Oh silly... of course I want to stay," Amara said, and patted Tony's hand. "Why don't you lie back, and I'll read you another story, okay?" There was something about the Librarian that just charmed Amaravati. She couldn't help but adore him, and while she was not sure in what way that she did, she did. He was a sweet man, and she really, really was short on sweet lately. She'd been smiling a lot more of late, with that sweetness to look forward to. Having him here in the hospital bed was only heart warming because of how he responded.

Otherwise, well... otherwise. Had he still been in a coma when she'd arrived, she might well have reacted badly. There was not a lot of stability in her life lately, and perhaps that was why she continued to seek the Librarian out. "Tony... just be careful for me, okay?" she said suddenly, glancing over at him. With the world shifting beneath her feet, something had to say consistent. Something had to be steady, because if it wasn't steady, she might fall. There would be no one to catch her.

She didn't need saving! But this, this she needed. This softness, this peace. This little corner of quiet. "All right. I'm going to start now." Setting the cup aside again, she opened the book, and flipped through the pages until she came to the next story. "In the far north, at the edge of a vast ocean, there lived a man who spun diamonds out of ice crystals," she began, falling easily into the cadence that she liked to use when reading stories.

One day she would sit in his Library and tell stories to children, she decided. On that day, she would make sure that he was around so that he would hear them too. And when the children stayed awake, and Tony fell asleep, she'd have to hide her smile. Just for him. No one needed to know that it was the readings that put Anthony Darrow to sleep. She settled herself carefully, making herself comfortable as she continued to tell him of the marvelous adventures that lay within the book.