Chapter Text
The atmosphere of the small house Lauren calls home- called home- is thick, somber. It bears the weight of a stormy day stuffy with condensation yet still cold in a way that won’t let the chill leave your bones. She doesn't have many possessions after she was forced to flee Night Vale, leaving everything in her old home back in the original Desert Bluffs behind. She never bought that much more, either. Most goods in Desert Bluffs Too were made from what could be found in the otherworld, whether naturally, or tossed over the walls of the dog park. It didn’t allow much room for that materialism she used to hold. Now, here she was, once again with so little, and once again having to leave her town behind.
Except this time, there wasn’t anywhere for her to go. When she fled through that Old Oak Door and into the Desert Otherworld, she didn’t expect to stumble upon the re-establishment of her little home town, but she did. It was just luck. This time, she would stumble back out of the Otherworld and Desert Bluffs would not be waiting for her.
She thought about how relieved she felt when she first saw the odd, rickety buildings come into view after years of wandering the desert, dehydrated, starving. Finally, finally she could rest and eat. Most importantly, she wouldn’t be alone anymore. Then she finds out that it’s her town? Of course it’s not the same- nothing would be the same without Strex- and not everyone was there, but it was her town nonetheless.
Outside of Desert Bluffs Too, there was the rest of the endless desert. It held nothing for her, and she could never live in the shadow of the place she loved. Outside of that, there was Night Vale. It held nothing for her, either. Not after their… poor relations and conflicting ideologies. Then, outside of Night Vale? She didn’t know. She was scared to find out. In her childhood, or what she could remember of it, she never left the Bluffs, but she had always wondered about the world outside it.
“Your father and his friends want to extend the company out far,” her mother had once told her, “They want the whole world to be friends in our town.” At this, her mother brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Maybe one day you will get to see the world and our to-be friends. Will you make them happy, Lauren?”
She didn’t know. She thought she was making Night Vale happy, but years to contemplate their rebellion had begun to make her think otherwise. Then she had made Desert Bluffs happy, at least for a little. At least she thought. What did “happy” mean, anyway? Productive? Smiling? That was what she was taught it meant to be happy.
“Will you make them happy?”
She lets out a deep sigh and tosses the last thing she has to pack- a silk scarf- into the bag on the couch. One of the scarf’s ends dangles over the bag’s rim, but she doesn’t care enough to fix it. Even with the furniture still in place and objects deemed not important enough to take scattered across the living and neighboring dining room, the house feels empty. It takes more to fill a place than just things, she supposes. She grabs the four bags she’s filled, two in each hand, and looks around one final time.
The couch is a faded yellow, frills of fabric hanging off a trim below the cushions and trailing onto the ground. Grandma Josephine said one of her demons had found it after some Night Vale citizen threw it away in the dog park, and that it reminded her of her. Two decorative pillows engraved with daisies sit on its corners. Josephine made those for her to go with it. The rug in the middle of the living room floor has a geometric triangle pattern of yellows and oranges. She can’t remember her name, but a sweet girl gave it to her at a church potluck, congratulating her on her position as mayor. The dining room table was the first thing she had fashioned herself in the town. It’s slightly crooked, one leg chipped- she’s always been better working with electronics and materials of the flesh- but she was proud of it, nonetheless.
The house is an abandoned photo album. A record of a promising life started, but never finished.
Finally, she turns towards the front door. She starts forward, before immediately stopping in her tracks. Rather than her new, brightly painted front door, in her door frame is a door that’s brown, but bleached from age, and stained thick with grime. The resolve in her posture falls. It seems even the town itself is desperate for her to be gone.
With an unsteady hand, she reaches forward and grips the dusty doorknob. The bags on her arm are the only thing that keeps her from letting the sweat loosen her hold until she lets go. She stays holding on, but she doesn’t turn it. Not yet. Her eye sockets have begun to itch, and the corner of her mouth to twitch. She squeezes her eyes shut in an attempt to ground herself. “Goodbye, Desert Bluffs,” she thinks.
And, for the last time, Lauren leaves her home in Desert Bluffs Too.
It’s still day when she steps through the Old Oak Door into the town of Night Vale. Thank Smile. She wasn’t ready to see night again just yet. A quick glance at her surroundings tells her that the door didn’t spit her out outside the dog park, but she didn’t know where it did. The buildings here are taller than the ones she remembers of Night Vale. More modern, too. In fact, they don’t seem like Night Vale architecture at all. Some of the windows are tastefully shattered, and some have window boxes filled with brilliant yellow plastic flowers. There are colorful awnings overhead of sleek minimalist doors, geometric designs on the fences. It must be a newer part of the town. Funny, it reminds her of…
The original Desert Bluffs. She had stepped into the original Desert Bluffs.
She spins, glancing frantically around until she sees it: the tallest skyscraper, bearing a tall antenna tower on top. The former radio station. The former headquarters of StrexCorp. Her bags slip from her arms, but she doesn’t process that. They removed the logo. For some reason, that’s what hits her like a truck. She collapses to her knees, staring up at the long-unblinking radio light. She has had years to come to terms with the liquidation of Strex, but that was when she couldn’t look back. It’s different actually seeing the business district barren of its former glory. It’s different seeing billboards stripped and signs painted over. It’s especially different seeing everything completely abandoned.
She had just lost it all over again.
Part of her feels like tearing at her eye sockets, forcing blood out as a substitute for the tears she could no longer cry and screaming until her lungs gave out. Another part of her feels like curling up on the sand-strewn road and never moving again. Instead, she does neither. Standing up, she brushes off her skirt and grabs her bags. Then, she marches to the former headquarters of her company.
The doors slide open with ease, the glass where she presses her hand is as sharp as ever. Fresh blood drips on the tile for the first time in far too long. The inside appears as if they had tried to clean it, but barely a dent was made in the dense layers of the dried blood coating the floor. She steps in, greeted by the familiar scent of iron accompanied by the newly acquired scent of dust. By the time the doors slam shut behind her, she’s made up her mind. She’ll live here- at least for now. If the Old Oak Door left her here, it must be where she belongs.
Like clockwork, she follows the path- ingrained into her mind from years upon years of repetition- to her office. With every step she is inundated with memories. She smiles at them, but not from nostalgia. They twist her gut and fill her with something nauseating, like swamp water in her lungs. Twenty years by herself in a never-ending desert taught her this sensation well. The overwhelming and agonizing feeling of loneliness.
When she reaches it, her office hasn’t changed. Why would it? Clearly, Night Vale had done nothing more than a feeble attempt at sanitizing Desert Bluffs before throwing it by the wayside like it was nothing. She drops her bags beside the desk and practically throws herself into her chair, which squeaks in complaint about use after years of neglect. There’s a few minutes where she just sits, doing nothing but taking everything in. It was all so much, yet it was all so little. Then she slumps forward on her desk, eyes shut and arms crossed as a makeshift pillow. She drifts to sleep, feeling every bit abandoned as the building she sat in.
When Lauren stirs awake, she’s confused at first. Her eyes open to almost complete darkness, aside from two small red and orange lights. Since when was Desert Bluffs Too able to get this dark? Why was she asleep at- then it all comes rushing back to her. She groans and puts her head back down, not ready to deal with her situation again just yet. Maybe she never will be. For the first time in her life, she has absolutely no plan, and that scares her.
There’s a noise, she realizes. Close, she thinks, but soft. Whatever state of mind she’s in, it’s too much for her to actually comprehend what she’s hearing. She decides to just ignore it, go back to sleep, when the room’s lights suddenly flick on. She jolts up, a hand reaching to her garter for her knife in an instinctual fight response, then, then…
“Miss Mallard?” A very familiar voice- one so close to normal, but just a touch too digital- asks.
Standing in front of the door with his fingers still hovering near the light switch is Daniel. He has more metal parts than when Lauren had last seen him. His hair is longer, curled naturally rather than into infinity rolls, and instead of a suit he wore slacks and a NVCR polo.
“Daniel?” Lauren stares at him in a mix of confusion, shock, and relief. She goes to say something more, ask him how he’s still alive, maybe. What happened to him. But she can’t manage. Her throat feels as if it has closed and all that can squirm its way out is a strangled sob.
“Miss Mallard- Lauren-” Daniel approaches her, flinching slightly as she lets out another choked noise. He cautiously, tenderly, places a hand on her arm. The metal is cool against her clammy skin. “-Don’t cry.”
“You’re alive?”
“Indeed, I am. The main scientist, Carlos, repaired me. I was repurposed to work for the Night Vale radio station.”
Lauren grabs his hand from her arm to hold it. As she takes deep breaths trying to calm herself, he rubs small circles against her with his thumb. It takes a bit for her to regain composition.
“How… how did you know I was here? In Night Vale. In Old Desert Bluffs.” she asks.
Daniel smiles slightly, “I noticed your tracker chip reactivate, presumably once you left the Otherworld.”
“And you came to find me?” she rubs the back of her neck where she knows a chip had been inserted when she was very young.
“Of course-” his voice lowers as it gets softer, tinted with a touch of… something Lauren can’t place- “You are my first priority.”
“I’m not your boss anymore, Daniel.”
“No, you’re not.”
They both fall into silence, unsure of what to say next. There’s been so much time between the last they saw each other, so much change. So much that was left unsaid.
“Do you have a place to stay?” Daniel asks, finally breaking their silence.
“Not unless you count here. Do… you?”
“It just so happens I do. Would you care to stay?”
Lauren looks around her office one last time before nodding. She knew it would not make her happy to stay here.
“If you’re offering.”
“Let me drive you home, then.”
Daniel keeps her hand in his as she stands and they each grab two of her bags. They don’t speak again, not while in this building. Anything that needed to be said would when they were free of the loss of the past. As they leave, Lauren stops- just for a moment- to gaze up at the night sky that she has not seen in so long. Mostly void, partially stars, and in the distance, over maintown Night Vale, mysterious lights pass overhead.