Work Text:
You are standing in a tunnel, waiting for the train. You are sitting at the end of a cliff with your legs dangling off. You are shouting ‘fire’ in a theatre and watching everyone shoot you dirty looks as the whole place sets aflame.
It’s all potential energy, says your probably soon-to-be in-law Dr. Ryland Grace, (Good, you see it too, they’re so oblivious), the thing that could happen, that could be tipped over, make it all go crazy again. You take a deep breath and try to keep your cool as you do some casual paperwork. Doctors say you have DID, they say that you had trauma as a kid and as a result split into three. You know better. But you’re still on a hair trigger. That’s the word. You’re in politics, being two faced is practically a requirement, but you know you’re the neutral party.
Careful, black and white thinking is a slippery slope.
You have purple eyes-you don’t recall having purple eyes before, but perhaps you can figure out something something Alexandria’s Genesis-Damien grumbles at you that whoever put you here must be someone who has either just combined the colors with no ulterior motives or, crazier still, knew Tumblr. Betting money on this was pointless, of course.
You have a teddy bear with purple eyes to match that your ‘mother’ bought for you, (awww, cute, it matches. No, goddamn it, get that thing away from me!) who is a normal, if dry and sarcastic, woman. Not who you remember any of your mothers to be. You suppose you might keep her. Even if she wasn’t actually real. She seemed real.
Keep her? That’s an odd way of putting it.
Well, we were always fairly possessive.
“Excuse me, Damien, sir?,” says your secretary. They don’t know you were the equivalent of plural to wherever this place is even though that isn’t actually what you are. Damien is his name. (Yes, and I need to take this before you embarrass yourself) “We have a meeting.”
You puff out your chest and stand up, shaking off like a wet dog.
“A meeting?,” you said. “All right.”
See? Like…that. You dumbass. I know you’re just getting your yayas out but jeez.
Yes, and you have your POV in second person present tense, which could be improved.
——-
“We don’t have time to play mayor,” said Damien, “I never thought I’d regain the role, anyway. But I feel a responsibility to, before you ask, Celine.”
But maybe we could figure something out!
Yeah! Isn’t there something missing?
“Missing, hmm. What would that be? No one asked me before doing this, and I have a pesky gap as to what happened before to deal with. Reminds me of you a bit, Celine, when we went to that cabin.”
“Oh, that was a while ago, Damien. I was trying to protect you”
“I know. And I also know that people will look at me weirdly if I talk to you too long. Speaking of weird, Wilford has been strangely silent. It seems whoever was in charge of making this new Earth put me somewhere purposefully further from him. And made it so that I would be so busy I couldn’t leave the building to check on, well, anything, because someone would always pull me back before I could use my-wait.”
You video call every week.
“I don’t have his stupid number. Besides, I haven’t found more than five at once in the same place, either..”
“Sir. Your meeting about the water supply is happening in the conference room right now.”
“Is Janus Sanders there?”
“What-“
“Janus Sanders. Is he there.”
“Yeah, he’s representing the side advocating for clean water, why?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Well, you can do that outside of work. If it’s not a work related topic, keep it to personal hours.”
“Arghhh.”
What really was keeping him from leaving? Propriety or something? Perhaps that he could pretend nothing had happened and let it all wash away?
…Yeah, we should really look into that. You don’t give up easily. That’s a blessing and a curse.
Yeah, that’s why we’re visiting The Snake. Dude, keep up!
——-
The coffee shop was oddly casual, wood paneling and contrasting pastel murals on the walls. The air smelled of Febreze and cheap candles, and the chairs were a casual yard-quality wicker rather than something cold and bitter, covered in small knit blankets. The fireplace would have been on fire if it was winter. There was a small bookshelf on level two, past the stairs, with a ladder to scale the walls for more out-of-reach titles.
Celine stretched herself around the edge of the chair sipping a tall glass of hibiscus tea. It wasn’t hydrating enough after a long day, but she’d take what she could get. She’d had just enough time to add a glasses chain to Damien’s regular glasses and a slight neutral gloss to her lips from the back of a small compartment in Damien’s knapsack. Yin had one too. She carefully braided and pinned back the hair in her face with a clip colored like a moon and its matching star that she got from a street fair or festival that she doesn’t really remember going to.
(I got it for you!) ‘You’ got it for her, then.
Thanks, Yin.
The man who approached the table smiled and held a hand out.
He wore a yellow polo with a pocket square embroidered with a snake tucked into the pocket and long dark wash jeans. His birthmark, enough to cover one heterochromic eye, the golden yellow one, was covered by a small pair of wire rimmed glasses, and his bleached hair was slicked back and twirled into a facsimile of a curl on his forehead.
She cautiously took the hand.
“It seems we’re for the same cause,” he said, as he as he drank from a bottle of something that appeared to be some form of Pinot Grigio.
“They have alcohol here?”
“Yes, didn’t you see the sign?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Our front. The sign. Oh, and the wine rack next to that bookshelf. Honestly, I thought you’d be all for it. Long day, right?”
Alcohol, hmmm.
Shut it, Damien, you have drunk plenty over the years. And it’s not like Janus is going to do anything.
If you say that, I’m sure it’s true.
Stop being so sarcastic. We can’t assume anything.
Exactly. We can’t assume anything. I’ve heard this exact situation is his MO. He thrives on distraction especially, especially if he knows someone is familiar with his games.
She scanned the room.
“I need a drink.”
“Yeah, I can tell.”
Paying for a glass of wine, showing her ID, and once again settling across from Janus Sanders, Celine frowned.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
Janus laughed.
“Figured you did. Otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting here.”
She took a long sip of wine.
“I suppose I have a reason. Yes of course I have one. If you have to ask…”
She cleared her throat.
“No, no, I have a feeling you know what.”
Continue. I think he’s going to tell us something.
He adjusted the collar of his polo nervously.
“I do. Settle down. I made a…judgment call. She said she had talked many people into making it. You should’ve seen how it was before. Unliveable. I needed to keep…well, it was Thomas at the time. I needed him safe. You get it, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“I do. I really do. But you know just as much as I do that things like this never stay put.”
Janus took a long swig of wine, then straightened his glasses.
He’s clearing his throat. He’s gotta give us somethin.’
“Looking for someone?”
Celine blinked. Janus kept a straight face as he continued, but there was something under it.
“We all are. Looking for someone, I mean. I know someone who is who knows where. Seems happy, from what I can find of him, but he’s halfway across the country. I don’t know how malicious it actually is-she seemed reasonable when I met her. Like to think I’m a good judge of character.
Might just be random chance, a roll of the dice. Some dream scenario, maybe, like someone just…really wanting to go to somewhere remote and never getting to. Having a normal life, getting a normal job, living something they desperately don’t want to be a lie. But it still hurts. And those of us who can see through the cracks, even those who wanted, needed, the safety and security. Well, they’re too scared to accept it.”
I can’t- no, there has to be something more. Give me.
——-
Damien swallowed.
“Yeah. But I need to. He’s one of the last remnants of us, besides…”
My sister…the DA…
He swallowed, then looked Janus straight in the eye. Janus flinched.
“…Myself. You understand.”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“I had to make up with him. Better to have someone to talk to. I felt that we could talk to each other with what little we still had left. Who knows where he ended up and what forces are still at foot trying to-“
“I can feel your spiraling from here. It’s ok. I will help you. But be prepared if he doesn’t want to leave.”
He said this with a definitive tone but one that said that it was personal.
——
“Okayyyyy, but do you know anything else?”
You take a sip of the hibiscus tea and blink, reorienting.
Friendly reminder, Yin, you’re a bit of a crazy person at the best of times. Don’t mess this up.
“…yeah, that’s-yeah, I said I was going to help you and I don’t break promises these days.”
There is something more to how he says it, as if it means something greater than what he says.
“If I say I’m going to help, best believe me. I know, I know, my reputation is kind of spotty at the best of times, but heaven help me if I don’t explain more of what I can.
It was a dice roll, but there was purpose to it-I too saw malevolence around every corner. Hard not to; I grew up from the age of Thomas’ manifestation of us, stuck in a room with two people who always thought the worst of things.
But it was a rock and a hard place. I don’t trust easy, I really don’t, I hated the choice I had to make, but she made it sound so easy.
And now, Logan is-Logan is-“
You have the urge to stand next to Janus now. You take it.
“He’s doing fine, right?”
Janus nodded.
“Yeah. More than. I never knew what it would be like to-to have a taste of my own medicine. But now I have it; now I have no time to think. Is there a purpose to it I am not seeing? Or is it just random like I’ve convinced myself to be the truth?
There’s something wrong. Really wrong. And I think I’ve been subsumed by mob mentality because, honestly, it’s not that bad.
But at least I have Logan’s phone number, at least I can call him. He doesn’t remember much of any of the old timeline-and to have something as powerful as to overtake your very being like that, well, no matter how good they claim they are it’s not a choice that she should have made.
I know who she favors, if it matters.”
Get him to say more. Now’s your chance. Do it do it. Y’know what, I’ll do it for you.
———
“Yes, it very much matters. That’s a lead.”
Janus shakes his head.
“They don’t live around here. We’d have to take leave. I’ve already taken a fair bit of mine, but I think we go by euro standards because even though I’ve taken three days to go to Disney World with my family last month, I still have a good number more to spare.”
“We have leave? We can go on vacation together?”
“What, you didn’t know that?”
She thought about it for a second.
“Of course I-don’t. Of course I don’t.”
“Well, let’s do it, then.”
——-
Then who recommended Wilford and Ken for therapy?
“If Wilford wants to better himself, I say he does it.”
The man straightened back his hair, which seemed to be blowing with a nonexistent wind.
“I have had to come to terms that this is a new reality, one where he has never killed anyone.”
“Killing?,” said Ai, suddenly very interested. Her schoolgirl outfit was being blown by the nonexistent wind too, a ring of friendly flowers appearing above her head.
“I know some of you still think it’s fine to do that, and, were it not for what guardrails were installed, would have rampaged the plane already. But at least let people change if they want to.”
“I get it, brah,” said Bart, making a peace sign with one of his hands. “Peace is like, so cool, brah.”
———-
“This is on a need-to-know basis.”
They were in a closed off room that Court had assured was free of bugs and cameras, and Colt figured that his brother was feeling a bit overprotective but didn’t correct it.
“What, that they love each other, and you’re worried for them?”
“Yeah. That. I love Ken almost as much as my daughter.”
Maybe he thought he had a responsibility to Ken as his cousin. Colt understood this-he remembered when he met Ken thinking similarly.
“Well, good that you finally admitted that she is your daughter.”
“Yeah yeah. Ketch asked me to really think about what if meant to care for someone, brought up how you care for Jody-“
“Yeah, because I’m making up for lost time, damnit. Wait a sec, Ketch got you to-Ketch, really?”
Daniel Ketch and his sister Barb Ketch (not Barbie Handler, the one who knew Ken) had an odd relationship with Colt, Court, and Ryland.
There were rumors of a refrigerator-salesman-common-relative, or an estrangement, or something, but they were definitely related to the Gentry-Grace’s and their story was equally as rough from what he’d heard of it.
Dan had a friend who used to do stunt work so Colt knew him that way now, but he was doing who knows what as a real job in the moment- he hadn’t kept that in contact with the man about how he spent his time. He had a feeling Colt Knew What.
“I’d’ve thought you’d confide in Driver, or Holland, or something, not Ketch.”
He paused for a second before continuing.
“Yeah. The rest of the conversation seemed like something he’d understand. It wasn’t just about Claire. But he seemed like he had something important to get done, so I didn’t keep him long. I sent him my new burner number. Let’s continue. I did some…tracking.”
“Of course you did.”
“Had to rely so much on my connections to track him. His paper trail was-odd. That was…worrying. But eventually I got what I needed. He won’t be a threat. If he’s working on himself, that’s more than enough. But I would keep a closer eye on Tom Ryder. And that new guy he’s cozying up to, Mark Barrett.”
“Why is that?”
Colt kept a neutral expression as he signaled to leave the room.
“If I’m right, you’ll know why.”
“Ominous as ever.”
“Oh, also, have you had any contact with Ryland recently?”
Colt nodded, ready for some more casual conversation.
“Yeah, they got a cat.”
“Simon and Grace?”
“Who else?”
Court looks like he was going to say something, then went to pour a coffee in the kitchen. After doing so he sat down to drink it.
“Good for them.”
——
Dark and Janus Sanders walk into a bar. And not the cafe kind either.
“It’s called The Birdhouse,” said Janus. “It’s supposed to be boho.”
“I guess,” you say, scanning the room. You counted at least one valuable art piece on the wall. Recently added, it seemed. The frames were fresh.
“Wonder if they’d miss anything if I-“
Janus nods.
“They would.”
“Ah c’mon, you didn’t even know what I was going to say!”
Janus shakes his head and takes a long breath, reorienting. He seems to do that a lot. Then again, you’d be a hypocrite if you chastise him for it.
“Look, that doesn’t matter very much right now, we got a ticket, we got all the way from DC to Michigan, and we’re going to meet up with some people. You asked. I provided. Say ‘thank you, Janus.’”
Ok, this is stupid. But it will help the mission, so you do it anyway.
“Thank you, Janus.”
He purses his lips.
“My contact, Daniel Ketch, has gotten us both a meetup time to talk with someone. Luckily, she’s back to settle affairs otherwise we’d still be on the flight to California, and we’d be hopeless to do much else today. Damien, meet Lex Foster.”
“Sup,” says Lex Foster. “So, Dan said you wanted to talk to me?”
—-