How Girls Work (...we think) {Henry}

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The screen was showing a television program. Remy had actually wanted to shift it over to Food Network, because he was pretty sure the Butter Woman's show was about to come on, and he wanted to learn another delicious dessert. However, he'd been outvoted by some of the other students sitting there, watching the community television set. Remy didn't have enough money on his own to buy such a thing, Barinthus didn't believe in TV, and he hadn't even seen the other roommate yet, so he was stuck watching whatever was on screen.

It didn't make a lot of sense to him.

There was a guy, actually, there were two guys, and they were both rather smoldering. Remy thought they were vampires or something, but the show was mostly glossing over that. Plus, they didn't look like the bloodthirsty creatures of the night that Remy had grown accustomed to associating with the word "vampire." They did glower a lot, and they seemed to like the shadows. They also seemed to really, really like this one girl. A lot. There was something about fighting and spending time with her and all kinds of things that just made absolutely no sense to Remy.

Without any other option, he leaned over to the guy sitting closest to him. Remy wasn't sure if the guy was actually watching the show (it seemed to be mostly girls, and one guy who looked about as glower-y as the guys on the show), but Remy figured any help would be appreciated about now.

"Do you know what's going on?" he asked, pointing at the screen. 'With the girl and the, uh, vampires and stuff?"

Oh, how he wished the Butter Lady would come on. She was a lot less confusing.

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He knew it was a bad idea, of course. Even as he drank the sixth beer Henry had been aware of the stupidity of his actions. Yet somehow he didn't manage to pull his way out of the party until 2 in the morning, well after he had managed to lose back all the money he'd won in his earlier games of poker. In the morning, naturally, he woke up with a massive hangover and the desire to do nothing but lay on a couch somewhere and hate the world.

So that was what he had done. He'd dragged himself out of the apartment where Tulio and Chel were being...Tulio and Chel...and gone down to the lounge to lie in front of the television. It was always easy to hate things on television.

The others in the room were making it even easier, since they had chosen something absolutely over the top and overdramatic and what were they even doing did that make sense? He was just about to fall asleep and try to get over his headache when the guy next to him started asking questions.

"What?" Henry asked, somewhat blearily, looking over at the reedy kid sitting next to him. "What do you mean? They're busy, you know, doing soap stuff. Like in every other fantasy story, where they pretend there's a plot in order to satisfy viewers."

He lazily waved his hand at the TV screen. "Whatever. It's stupid, and they know love doesn't really work like that."

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The boy seemed a little out of it, and Remy tried to smile reassuringly, not wanting Henry to feel put out or put upon or anything like that. It did seem as though Remy had disrupted something though, which struck the ex-rat as rather odd, considering how very little he seemed to care for what was going on.

"Err, what?" asked Remy. He blinked his eyes, which had gone almost unnaturally large, and looked at the screen again. A pretend plot; soaps; okay, that made sense. Remy had heard about it before, and he was pretty sure he'd seen them advertised during some of the cooking shows back in his version of Paris.

"So," he said, pointing, "this is what girls are looking for with romance? You said love doesn't really work like that though, right?"

Remy had heard of love and such, had even seen it happen a time or two back when he was a rat. People seemed to get all googly eyed for one another, staring longingly and doing generally stupid things. Which, now that he stopped to think about it, was pretty much what the people on screen were doing.

"So, why do they want to watch it?" asked Remy. "If it's all unreal and stuff. That just seems a little... weird to me, really."

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Henry groaned slightly. The guy was going to keep talking? Well, it wasn't worth moving to get away, so he might as well respond.

"Well no, do you know anyone who actually looks like that?" He waved his hand at the screen. "And other than some of my relatives who believe too much in tradition, no one actually acts like that anymore. So really the whole show is dumb, because it makes people think this is...is...something..." The words were failing him, so he did the best he could. "real. It's not real."

Sure, others acted all stupid and romancy and maybe they got more dates, but it couldn't be real. Nobody actually acted like that unless they were putting on a show. Well, maybe girls. But girls were weird.

Whaddya know, this guy thought so, too. "Well yeah, but girls are weird. Nobody really understands them. Not even girls." He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his eyes. He was not ready for this much hard thinking. "I don't know, I think they maybe just hate us. And want us to look like idiots, and have to live up to ridiculous standards just to get close to them."

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Had Remy ever seen anyone who looked like that? "Well, yeah, lots. Like that guy, and that guy, and that girl, and, well, I think that's a guy. You know my roommate's blue? Really, we're living in a world like that, aren't we?" he pointed toward the screen.

In fact, Remy couldn't quite figure out where all the cynicism was coming from. Maybe it was because he used to be a rat, but had been magically transformed into a human boy thanks to a portal he'd found in a sewer, but Remy just couldn't help but think that they were quite literally living in a world like that. Still, a lot of what Henry said there made a crazy kind of sense.

"Okay, so girls don't even understand themselves," said Remy. "That makes sense. But what about girls that weren't always girls? Are they, like, the same as girls that were always girls, or is that different? I mean, if I want a burger, but I make something that didn't used to be a cow, but it's still a burger, does it still count as a burger?"

Yes, that food analogy made sense.
It totally did.
Totally.
Shut up.

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Henry rolled his eyes as he looked over at this idiot next to him. "Gods don't count, you know," he said with a frown. "I'm saying, like, your average person. Like you. Do you look like that? Or even me? Some people have super beauty or something, whatever. They don't count."

He nodded as the guy seemed to understand part of the conversation. Girls were confusing, but that was a given. The next part of the conversation, though, was making no sense at all.

Henry furrowed his brow and tried to watch the guy's lips, as though it would help the words to make more sense. "Like...girls who were...babies? I don't understand. What would a girl have been before they were a girl? That's kind of, like, something you're born with." Right?

And then the burger thing. What? "Why are you talking about food? Don't do that. Girls are not food. Girls make food, but they aren't food. You don't eat them. Usually." All this talk about food, though, was making him feel less than comfortable.

"Can we please change the topic now? I don't really want to be talking about burgers and stuff."

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Okay, so the bit about super beauty made sense. Remy was fairly certain that his roommate counted as having super beauty, what with the eerily flawless skin and all. His eyes flicked to the screen, where he guessed there were more people like that. his eyes again returned to Charming, considering. Were the two of them handsome? that seemed like a weird question to ask, but Remy was tempted anyway.

Thankfully, there were more pressing questions to ask. Well, more like bits of information that desperately needed some form of clarification:

"I mean girls that used to be something else," said Remy, waving a hand. "Like, say, hypothetically speaking, a girl who used to be a fish. Totally hypothetical and all, but would she be like a girl who was always a girl?"

See, that made perfect sense and didn't seem like crazy talk at all. Now all Remy needed was for the dead floating chef to show up. Thankfully, there were some things that we can avoid from time to time.

"Wait," said Remy, holding up a hand. "I cook food; I'm not a girl; at least, I think I'm not,' he glanced down, "these things are hard to figure out sometimes. But Chef Gusteau says that anyone can cook. Heck, I used to be a rat, and I cooked then!"

Ha! There was logic that couldn't be beaten.

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Henry frowned. "I don't remember biology very well," he said slowly, "but I think that fish are still just boys and girls. And other animals. They're just not human. But what do you mean, she used to be a fish? Is this one of those weird things about this school?" Of course it would be. What kind of a place was this, anyway? "It's still true though, you know. A girl fish is still a girl, and always was. And girls are always the same. I bet even girl fish are the same."

Then again, what did he know? He had no idea what various animals are like; this was all based on hypothesis and the desire for the talking to stop quickly so he could just kind of go back to his half-sleep.

"You're not sure if you're not a girl?" Henry raised an eyebrow. "Well, are you are aren't you? I'm a guy. I was born a guy, always have been a guy, always will be a guy. It seems pretty simple to me." And, for Henry, it was. "All right, so you can cook. That's weird, but it doesn't make you a girl. That's like, something you're born. Not whatever you like to do."

Then the rest of that conversation caught up with him, and Henry had to sit up in the couch to verify the facts. "Wait, you...you used to be a rat? As in, like, you were an animal, and then you cam here and you, what, got turned into a guy? I mean, a person?"

At least they were only talking about cooking in general terms now. That was okay. So long away as they stayed away from words like "burger" or "grease" or anything else directly relating to food.

"So who are you, then? Like, is it some sort of animal story? Do you remember? Are all the other people you used to know animals?" Henry couldn't remember having met an animal-turned-human before. The curiosity he had about how that worked was almost enough to make him ignore his headache. After a few minutes, though, he was forced to rub his closed eyes.

"Hey, I need to get some water. I've got this pounding headache, and it's really been bothering me. I just have to get up for a minute." He heaved his way up off the couch. The people on screen were doing something...well, it made Henry feel odd to watch. He wasn't sure that sort of thing was supposed to be available to mainstream audiences.

Really, it just gave such unfair expectations.

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Oh boy, was there a lot there to consider. Remy was busy thinking about whether it mattered whether you were a boy fish or a girl fish, but before he could really think of a good response to that, Henry moved on to Remy's own biology.

"The magic does screwy things!" Remy managed to interject, waving his hands. "I mean, I used to be a rat, now I'm a human male, and I know a girl who used to be a fish, and another girl who I'm pretty sure is still eighty percent dog, so these things are a little fluid, apparently."

Remy finished his flailing then, lowering his hands. Henry was moving on, asking more questions, and these didn't seem to have nearly as easy answers. "Story? I just used to be a rat. I've got no idea what you're talking about..."

Tales? Stories? Just what was Henry going on about now? Remy used to be a rat in Paris, one that believed he could cook and had just started to do so. There was no story there, right? If there was, Remy hadn't heard of it. No book titled The Rat That Could Cook or anything.

Before Remy could really start prying and figuring things out, Henry was up and heading for water. The ex-rat scrambled off his seat, crying out various "heys" and "hold up," as he did.

"What are you talking about with all that tale stuff? Do you know something I don't?"

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"Well, maybe the whole species thing is fluid," Henry said, "But how would your gender change? That's like...like...I don't know. It just doesn't make sense."

The whole rat thing was a little weird. Not that Henry didn't believe it, really, since he'd heard of all sorts of weird things since he came here. And even if the guy was a little dense, he wasn't dumb or insane or anything, and he seemed really confident in the fact that he used to be a rat. So that much was probably safe to bet on being true, in its own way.

There was no real response to his questions, so Henry assumed he might just not know. After all, it had taken Henry himself some time to figure out that he was from a story in particular instead of just being from generic fairy tale land. That much hadn't been hard to hit on from the beginning.

Henry gulped some water from the fountain and stood up, wiping his mouth on his arm. "Well, so, we got here from different places, right? Well...okay, so it sounds a little weird, but this is the way they taught it to me when I was coming through. People here kind of know about what goes on there, because of something wibbly...I don't know, I didn't understand it totally. But anyway, whatever you do in your real world ends up in this like, experiment world, and they kind of write about it and stuff. But then they try to write your endings for you, and that's where it gets screwed up."

The water was making him feel much better. The dryness was gone from his mouth and his head was even starting to clear a bit. Henry leaned against the wall and looked over at the guy who had followed him.

"So I was just wondering what your world was like. Is it all animals over there, or are there people that you talk to, or what? I mean, in my world it's all people and maybe a few enchanted animals or something, but even then it's mostly people in disguise."

Figuring it would be a lot easier to explain his world in a different way, Henry extended his hand. "I'm Henry, by the way. Prince Henry Charming. The real one. Even if I don't have any intention of actually marrying a princess anytime soon." Surely this guy knew the Charmings, right? Everyone knew the Charmings. Or at least had heard of them. Most famous royal family ever? Check.

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"Is there something about this school that does? Make sense, I mean. Because if there is, I totally haven't found it yet," argued Remy. He smiled triumphantly, even basking a little in his triumph before following Henry yet again. The prince was getting some water at the fountain, so Remy waited patiently while he did his thing. Semi-patiently, actually: there was a good deal of the shifting of the feet and nearly jittery dancing.

Then, Henry outlined what he knew. Apparently a lot of people who went to school here had been written about somewhere? And now they were doing stuff here, which meant that their stories changed or something? Remy wasn't quite sure what all that meant, and he cocked his head, trying to digest it all. It did explain some things, like Barinthus, mostly, and maybe Sugar Plum Fairy, a little bit. Wait, those were both fairies...

"My world's normal," said Remy, speaking slowly. "I mean, there are people, and there are animals, and the two don't mix. I didn't talk to humans then or anything. Humans were, uh, the enemy, really. At least, that's what my dad always said," Remy shrugged. He didn't have enough experience before actually becoming a human himself. Gusteau seemed alright though, even if most of Remy's contact with him was from a television program or a spectral image formed out of his imagination.

Sure, Remy's world was perfectly normal.

Then Henry introduced himself. Remy nodded, extending his hand to take Henry's. "I'm Remy. Just, uh, Remy. And I'm sorry, but I've never actually heard of the Charmings before, except, you know, as an adjective. Did they come up with the word because of your name?"

Because that was obvious.

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"Fair point." Henry gave a small smile and continued down the hall. Really, this whole school was weird as...as...it was really weird.

From the way this guy was dancing it looked like he needed to pee, but Henry figured he could always excuse himself if that was true. Instead he looked mostly nervous, so the young prince decided to let it be.

"Ha, normal," Henry said quietly, then waited for the guy to continue. He remembered how much of a shock it had been when he'd first heard it, so it was no surprise it needed a bit to process. "Okay, so your world was a lot like this one. That's cool. So this is mostly normal for you, except that now you're a human. See, for me, my world is still normal. And this is kind of weird. I keep expecting weird creatures to pop up and give me a mission. Even if I'm not a third son."

To say Henry was surprised was an understatement. "You've...never heard of the Charmings?" he asked, looking at the rat slightly suspiciously while still shaking hands. "Not at all? Well, you're the first I've met, then. Congratulations."

He laughed. "Maybe. That might explain why Dad's so big on chivalry and all that. Gotta live up to it and all. What do you think, will 'Remy' ever become a word they use? Like, 'wow, you're so remy...'" Henry mused about it for a moment. "Nah, I don't see it sticking."

He rubbed his eyes with the heel of a hand and then took another drink of water. "Man, I gotta find some bread or something. Or maybe some soup...do you know what they're serving in the cafeteria today?"

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Again, Remy had a lot to process, and he tried to take in it all. Henry seemed like the kind of person who lived in his own world, really, and it seemed like most of that world revolved around problems related to Henry. At least what Henry said made sense: this world and Remy's did have a lot in common. Except there was a lot more magic and weirdness in this world, when there hadn't been in Remy's. The ex-rat thought about pointing this out, but figured that it really didn't matter much in the scheme of things.

The thing that really got Remy's eyes rolling was Henry's shock at the name thing. "You really can't expect everyone to know you just because your name is a popular adjective or something," said Remy. Was there something here he just wasn't getting? Probably, though Remy only waited a moment, trying to figure out what he should do about that.

Fortunately for him, the conversation moved on to something he felt a lot more comfortable discussing. In fact, the turn of the conversation had moved onto the one subject upon which Remy could talk quite eloquently and at length. He was already prattling off items before he even realized it:

"The usual standard American cheeseburger with optional side bars; French Fries that come from a frozen bag; prepacked salad made yesterday; lasagna that's actually put together on site and tastes pretty decent: the sauce comes from a can, but it's decent enough, but their meat could use a touch more Italian seasoning. Uh, there's the standard drink stands available, and of course there's the standard side option of Yogurt as well, but I doubt you're getting that, since, you know, you're not a girl and all. I think that they've got some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on pre-sliced, factory processed bread, which is about as good as it sounds. Oh, and the pizza: it's pepperoni and cheese," Remy paused, tilted his head, and took a sniff, considering. "Maybe corn? Something smells a little corny to me."

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"That's not why it's popular," Henry muttered. Remy was acting like it was no big deal. "How many other people get recognized just for their name?" It was a startling number, actually, with all the gods marching around...but this guy wasn't a god. He was a rat. How did he get off acting high and mighty?

As Remy started listing off the food, Henry winced. Most of that sounded incredibly greasy and made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. Protein, sure, maybe. But the rest of that...He wanted to tell Remy to stop, but the guy was on a roll and he couldn't get a word in edgewise. After a little while, though, he just sort of tuned out.

"Do they have any soup?" he said at the end, having not listened to half the list. "Or, you know, maybe just cereal?"

About two seconds later some of what Remy had said caught up to him. "Wait, did you just say...smells corny? As in you didn't just happen to read off the menu list for today and insert your own personal statements about the quality of the food today, you actually are, like, smelling all of that? From all the way over here?!"

He was standing there, his mouth gaping open, trying to figure out who this guy was. Did he have some kind of nose superpower? That would be...well, weird, but also a little awesome. Except for when there was a bad smell, that would suck, but other than that...awesome!

"How does that work? Is it because you were a rat? Did you get to keep your rat, like, superpowers and stuff? Are there other things you can do? Do you have a tail?" He was a little vague on the whole thing, so naturally he still had a lot of questions to ask.

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"They usually have a soup. It's often congealed and about sixty percent cheese, but it's usually edible," Remy said, adding another shrug. He knew he could make better soup; he had. He also knew there was no possible way that he could make as much food as necessary for all these people in a relatively short period of time. He left that to the professionals. By professionals, he of course means the lunch ladies who shove precooked food into an oven. Really though, they could do better.

But instead of mulling over food, which Remy would have preferred, Henry latched onto something else, latched on with such ferocity and energy that Remy nearly jerked back. It reminded him very much of his father's reaction to finding out about Remy's "gift."

"No, no, that's just me," said Remy, forcing a nervous smile. "My dad thought it was a great talent to have too: made me the colony's poison checker. That was about as much fun as it sounds."

Remy swallowed, shifting again, and trying to force that smile. The nose thing always made him slightly edgy, and he was seriously thinking about redirecting the conversation back onto food; his safe zone.

"You've probably got powers and stuff too, right? I mean, with that name, you've gotta have all kinds of neat gifts and stuff."