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When Lee wakes up, it's to screaming. For a second, he's really, really thankful it's not his scream, and then he isn't, because– right. He has a guest. Then everything lights up in belated panic, because why is she screaming?
It's still late at night. The segmented display of a random clock he rushes by helpfully informs him in blinding red that it's pushing three in the morning, and the stairs he rockets down aren't very wide, and he is mere centimeters from missing a step and eating shit when Linnie calls up from downstairs.
"I'm fine," she croaks, sounding not at all like the annoying shithead girl he had on his porch just fifteen hours ago. "Bad dream, it's– fine."
There is, for a moment, traitorous pity in his heart. And then there's another, more in-character thought, to spit what could you possibly have nightmares about. But he doesn't act on either of these. He just– stops, where he is.
"Okay," he calls, awkwardly. "Just… get, water, or something."
"Uh-huh."
Lee just about strangles himself to stop from doing more, from walking down the rest of the way and offering– what, he's gone insane– a hug. It's terrifying. He doesn't know her. He turns and heads back up the stairs and tries not to slip and knock out a tooth, and when he gets into bed he actually manages to fall back asleep.
"Holy shit, you're still here."
She can't be comfortable on a leather couch with her neck held up like that, by the two stacked throw pillows she's commandeered. But she's young. "Yup," Linnie confirms, drawling out the vowels.
"You're not a hallucination."
She's even wearing the same stupid graphic makeup, in fact, she probably never took it off. She doesn't even have a blanket, what the hell is wrong with him? She shakes her head, says nope with all the innocuity of talking about the mail.
"Cool," says Lee, scratching through his hair and letting his hands drop to his sides. "I need a drink."
The days pass like that. Lee learns that Linnie talks just like him, but doesn't at all think like him. Not even starting to tackle all her wild suicide-bomber ideas about starving the Speaker and saving both his world and hers, which is– lunacy, Lee decides, choking on his words, pure lunacy– she's different about the domestic shit too, like she's his roommate. Offering for her to make herself at home might've been opening Pandora's box, because she does.
"You should buy sourdough," she says, airily. "And avocados."
They orbit around each-other at lunch, mostly because Linnie takes forever in the kitchen and Lee is much more impatient than he remembers himself being. "You eat avocado toast? On sourdough?"
"Yes," she snips, "And kosher salt."
Maddening. And they're basically the same height, so Lee really has to stretch to reach the right cabinet to get the plates that she's blocking with her big head. "Do you– know what decade it is?"
Linnie tilts her head so far backwards that she can make eye contact with him through her brows. Her hair pushes into his chest. "There is nothing wrong with eating shit some hipsters in California found out was good ten years ago." Then, play-fight, she adds: "Grandpa."
It's just infuriating. She's like a teen sister he never wanted. The homely bickering is so easy it feels wrong, and the gut feeling comes back– that she is right, that he should trust her.
He places his plate right on her forehead. She doesn't budge. Annoying.
She wakes up earlier than he does, which is terrible in hindsight, what he could've been. But as he trods downstairs, he can smell coffee in the air, and he relaxes, and walks like a zombie over to the counter just to find– absolutely no coffee.
Linnie sips from her mug.
"Did you… drink, all of the coffee."
She looks up like she's done absolutely nothing at all. Like a fucking alien, she asks: "Did you… want some of the coffee?"
He doesn't know what the nightmare even was until he's thrashing to wake up from it, kicking and screaming and clawing back to the waking world with a pit in his chest, a sinkhole so large it could swallow his organs and leave nothing left. And when he wakes up, it's dark, and quiet, and his back is on a mattress but that could mean anything, the Family could've put in a mattress, tried something different, and he– can't, he can't, he can't go back there again– and the door swings open and the prey animal his body has become flinches away and– then…
And then there are arms, wrapping around him. And they don't hurt. And he's grateful for them, like some sort of Stockholm victim, so he wraps his arms around a waist and lets arms settle on his shoulders, trace shapes onto the skin of his back.
"Breathe," Linnie tells him. And he does. And his eyes adjust to the low light, and he realizes that he's still in his cabin, and he kicked away all his blankets, and Linnie is here breathing with him. He feels, suddenly, self-conscious. Like he shouldn't need this. Shouldn't want this.
"I'm okay," he croaks.
But Linnie just laughs. "I don't believe you," she says, softly. "And I didn't know you slept with no shirt on."
He's stuck between trying not to sob into her shoulder and snarking right back, so it turns out really lame when he says, pathetically: "It's normal."
"Right."
"It's normal f'r men, Linnie."
"Okay."
He swallows. "Why did you–"
"–It's what I'd want to happen," she answers, "If I had a bad dream."
Despite himself, Lee holds on tighter.
Mainstream pop music and the hedgehog's dilemma and Linnie bickering about human perseverance and how to pronounce Fanta and it's like something is alive, again, shitty arguments, diner food, sometimes. Like Mo's alive, and he's strong-arming Lee into listening to Bad Religion, telling him about how the lead singer has a PhD, that it isn't just music that yells at you. And sometimes, he just looks at her, at Linnie, and sees himself, and he has to look away. It's something he shouldn't have.
She stops him, once, in the middle of another one of his grand tirades about how her plan is never going to work, and isn't a plan at all, more-so a naive delusion she could kill herself on. She's in the middle of cooking– boiling water, cutting up herbs, when she sets down her knife and tells him: "You're further along than I am."
He blinks.
She takes that as a need to elaborate. "You've– experienced more, okay? There's more that's been done to you."
"I don't see how–"
"–Don't you think," she cuts him off. "That this is clouding your judgement, a little bit?"
She graciously allows him to answer, this time. But he waits a few moments, anyways. "I think it's perfectly reasonable that my experience is clouding my judgement. I know what happens to us, don't I?"
"And don't you think we can change it?"
"No!"
"Why not?"
God, she's insufferable. "Because– because–"
"Because why?" He watches her fidget, place her hands on top of her head and futz with her hair, like he always does. "Don't tell me this is some stupid defeatist I can't make the world better because it wasn't good for me shit like the Boomers constantly pedal–"
"–Because I don't know how!" He explodes. "I am always blindsided by whatever the world throws at me, Linnie, always! Even if there is a way to fix it, how are we so sure that something else won't just knock it back into place? How are we so sure that the tragedy of the Carriers can be rewritten like that? Do you know how much I've lost?" Betraying himself; "Do you know what I've done?"
And Linnie– looks at him. Really looks. Makes direct eye contact, biting down on her lip, trying to stop her face from scrunching up even more, from looking like the little kid Lee always casts her as.
"What's the last thing that happened to you," Lee asks.
It's Linnie's turn to hesitate. But she swallows and schools her face. "I met with my Lee. Like your Linnie, the– crazy one. And he gave me back my knife and told me about other worlds, a lot of… shit I didn't catch. But I figured out the Nexus, how to– get through to be here. How to fix my world."
And all at once, everything goes very still. Because Lee knows what happens, after that. He comes home to the worst thing a human could possibly see. Blood and bodies and shapes, loose ropes and claw marks dug into the concrete.
An open door.
Fuck. She's so young.
"You didn't deserve what happened to you," Linnie says, small. "But there's a chance you can stop it. Stop what happens to me, or... or, something."
"I can't," chokes Lee. "I want to, I really do, but–"
"But what?"
She stares at him. He can't stare back– he just can't, not when he knows what's coming for her. He can't even articulate it. Haltingly, he pushes off the counter and turns, heading for the stairs, escaping this conversation entirely.
"Where are you– going?"
"Enjoy your pasta," he wheezes. Then he's just gone.