Fandoms #12, #13, #14
Title: Waiting Rooms
Fandom: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Summary: Klaus' thoughts about clinics and doctors.
Notes: Quite short.
Klaus didn't like clinics very much. He remembered when he had been four, and his mother had taken him to a dentist to remove a nasty cyst growing under one of his baby teeth. He remembered the white sterile waiting room, and the grim posters on the wall trying to make the place look less menacing, and failing miserably as the corners peeled from the walls.
And he remembered the time he got his first pair of glasses, and a man with a crooked nose took him into another white room full of contraptions and machinery, dimmed the lights, and all Klaus could remember was the smell of his breath.
He wasn't so sure about Dr. Orwell, although she did seem a pleasant and professional woman, but he knew very little about her, despite having been made to come here already this week. He dimly remembered the building being narrow and crooked, and the waiting room carpet, but everything else was... it wasn't even fuzzy. It was absent. And Klaus prided himself in remembering things.
It was odd sitting in the elevated chair in the sterile room, full of crooked trinkets and an optician in black boots, and wondering whether he was even going to remember this room when his glasses were fixed.
He didn't. And when he came to in the lumbermill, he understood why.
Title: The View From Here
Fandom: Perplex City
Summary: Fleming and Sylvia meet in a park shortly after the final denouement.
Notes: If you know this fandom, I'll kiss you.
Azad Park was rarely busy in February, and today was no exception; the football pitches to the north were deserted, presumably because the teenagers had opted to stay somewhere warm for once, or maybe to watch the new quiz show that had started. Or perhaps they were in their homes, discussing the return of the Cube. That was really all anybody talked about right now.
A man was staring out over the water, wondering whether drowning in water was anything like drowning in memories. They both choked their victim, came closer and closer the more he resisted, and would eventually defeat him, forcing him down deeper and deeper into its murky depths.
Fleming Heath wasn't planning to drown himself, of course. But it was an interesting analogy. He felt Anna would have approved.
He heard footsteps approaching him, but he didn't need to look to know who she was; there were few people who would brave the coldness, least of all those who would come this close to him of their own free will; he found he seemed to radiate an aura of misery that caused people to steer clear of him unconsciously. This woman seemed immune to it, because she had once been the same.
"Fleming," she said his name as a gentle but direct way of reintroducing herself.
"Sylvia... hello," he gave her a small, stiff smile, and she took a step closer, "I'm happy you could come."
She returned his smile, before looking over the water, with her companion. They just stood there, side by side, not speaking for some time. The clouds were swishing in the sky above them, making the park feel colder and warmer intermittently. Finallly, Sylvia spoke:
"I grew up around here, you know."
Fleming turned to look at her, though she was still gazing over the water. "I was born in a house about four blocks south from here... the house got knocked down years ago, though. I used to come to this park when I was a little girl, and play with my friends. Sometimes I would come to this bridge, and look out over the water, like what we're doing now."
Fleming stil didn't speak. Sylvia let the thought hang for a minute before continuing her reminiscence.
"Pietro and I used to come here whenever we visited my parents. We used to stand in this very spot and watch the river flow beneath us. He had an Earth poem about it, but I can't remember how it goes right now," she sighed, and shook her head, absorbing the rushing sound of the water. "He always used to say life was like a river. Fast, exciting, dangerous, powerful... and always a path from something modest to something great. Something bigger. But now when I look at a river, I just think that we're all drops of water rushing to the end, bumping off a selection of others nearby, and once we've passed a point, we're gone for ever."
Any other person wouldn't have dared say something as bleak as this to a man whose wife had been killed by a friend, but Sylvia was in a similar position, and her honesty was a form of therapy to him. He just needed to hear what she said, because there were few in the city who had been through what he had, and even fewer in the same position, destroyed by the same conspiracy.
"Don't you miss him?" He finally croaked.
"...Yes, of course I do," she finally turned to face Fleming, whose face just looked lined and tired. "And I always will... but I won't look at things through rose-tinted glasses. He would want me to grieve, but he would also want me to keep living."
"I don't think I'm there yet," Fleming admitted. He scuffed his foot on the floor. "Really, I... I feel I've adjusted for the sake of my children, but... it's just small things that remind me of her."
"I know the feeling... I couldn't read the Sentinel for weeks after it happened."
"Little Eve is starting to speak," Fleming sighed. "She's got her 'da-da-da's down, but Anna never got to hear the 'ma-ma-ma's. She would have loved it."
"Every now and then I hear a song on the radio," Sylvia laughed, "and I can't help think... Pietro would have loved that. There's a new one out by the Ooze, and it's..."
Sylvia stopped herself when she saw the look on Fleming's face, and knew she had made a huge faux-pas. She forgot about that band's drummer... and how close he had been to Fleming's wife."
"Have you spoken to anyone from the Academy recently?" she said.
"No... well, Sente Kiteway of course. He spoke to me after they found.... they found her killer, and he met with me. He seemed embarrassed about having a mole on the CRT the entire time... never mind how his family got tied into it."
"A public relations visit, then?" Sylvia laughed. "Yeah, that's just like Sente. But I suppose everyone's getting closure now, right?"
Fleming shook his head. "Tell that to my kids. They knew the man who killed their mother. He was a family friend... how can I explain that to them?"
Sylvia sighed. "Everyone's celebrating closure, but things don't end here."
"Not even close," Fleming scoffed. He smiled a cynical grin to himself, as he realised he hadn't spoken with anybody like this in a long, long time. "Sente also invited me to the party on the 22nd. Select guestlist, apparently."
"Are you thinking of going?"
"I don't know..." Fleming mumbled, readjusting his glasses. "I... I still swing between wanting to be alone and needing to be with people, but... it would be nice to do something like this. Anna's collagues will be there, anyway. But I don't know how I'll feel."
"Perhaps you should go anyway," she suggested. "It will be good for you. And if it gets too much, you can always leave."
He leaned on the bridge and looked over the water once more. "I suppose you're right. And I'm quite fond of their canapés."
Sylvia Salk laughed. "Well, I hope you enjoy it. Give my regards to Sente."
Fleming raised an eyebrow. "You're not going?"
"Haven't been invited," she said with a shrug. "Stands to sense; my husband had dealings with the conspirators, not me. I'm yesterday's news."
Fleming Heath winced, and faced Sylvia.
"Would you like to come as my Plus-one?"
"I... er, what?"
"It's only going to go to waste, anyway. Besides, I've got about three babysitters on my key; the kids will be taken care of. Besides... I quite like your company. It's good to have someone there who understands. You know? Properly understands."
Sylvia went silent, but her cheeks were flushed in happiness. "Yes, I'll gladly come... but I need to get myself a new dress, too!"
Fleming laughed. "Yes, my suit could do with a run through the dry-cleaners."
"Could I ask for one thing, though?" Sylvia suggested.
"Sure?"
"That we meet up again before that date," she said in a businesslike fashion. "I think it would be good to meet up for coffee, and I rather prefer doing things like this face-to-face instead of over my key."
Fleming considered the woman, whose husband--unlike Anna, who vanished one morning on her way to work and was discovered stabbed to death beneath the city a few days later--had lapsed into a poison-induced coma, for his wife to sit by his side for days as he deteriorated, only to perish after showing some signs of improvment. Fleming remembered hearing through Anna he had discovered something important within the files of a top-ranking banker (she was murdered shortly after, as well; Fleming remembered the chill when he saw the newspaper headings, and Anna casually pointing at it and saying "that was her"). He remembered hearing through his late wife, too, that Pietro Salk's wife was a changed woman, she was weak and wan and crushed, and he couldn't help but imagine how horrible it must be to be in her position, and he hoped Anna would never be put in the same position.
A foolish thought. He should have been careful what he was wishing for.
But now he saw Sylvia Salk stood in front of him, mainly recovered and perhaps thirteen months more a widow than he was a widower, it somehow gave him hope for himself. And through himself, his children, and what was better than hope?
"Yes," he smiled. "Yes, I'll meet with you again."
In the skies above, a cloud shifted, and weak sunlight slipped through.
Title: The Master Of Secrets
Fandom: Series of Unfortunate Events / Perplex City
Summary: A pair of girls come together through chance and coincidence.
Notes: Both have protagonists called Violet. That makes it fair game. Also contains some spoilers about the end of PXC.
Earlywine's Council were now much better stations to identify breaches of reality. Now they knew what to look out for, they could identify travel between Earth and Perplex City, which was fine, because it never happened, and ever since closing the link, the Centre for Reality Research clearly had a budget that needed spending, as well as plenty of staff who needed jobs.
So when the monitors went haywire, the technical staff all choked on their collective cappuchinos, and spent hours trying to pinpoint the source of the disturbance (of course, this was after spending a few minutes being amazed it wasn't another drill).
They found the source of the disturbance, near South Mazy Road, which was unusuaul, as there was a high chance a surveillance camera would have picked up the distrubance in the area. If V had chosen to return to Perplex City from his hiding in Earth, he surely wouldn't have picked somewhere in the heart of the city.
When they uncovered camera information, they saw it wasn't V at all. It was a teenage girl in a grim dress, holding some sort of broken contraption. And as they watched the playback, they watched dumbfounded as a familiar face suddenly appeared, and guided the child away.
***
Violet Kiteway just happened to be shopping in the vicinity of South Mazy Road at the time, though when she heard the commotion outside, she wondered if it was an accident, or maybe someone found a really good bargain. When she became aware of the tingling hairs on the back of her hand, she remembered vividly how it was to be squeezed through one reality into another, which was something she could do without recalling in the middle of a underwear shop, thank you very much. It was bad enough squeezing into some of those tight-cut jeans, let alone to be reminded of a chapter of her life she very much wanted to put behind her.
Then she wondered if it was coincidence she happened to be so near, or if this was the Cube being mysterious again. Mysterious being a euphemism for 'downright irritating', of course.
She found a confused-looking girl nearby, holding a strange contraption made of batteries, wire coil, a tennis ball wrapped in foil, and a fishing line. Or that was what it looked like anyway; in truth, it could have been anything. Nonetheless, the gadget was giving off a disgusting burning smell, and the girl looked confused and lost.
When she found out the girl's name was also Violet, she really, really regretted ever having taken initiative.
***
Violet Baudelaire had uncovered a bizarre blueprint in the home of the newest carer for her and her siblings. Being naturally proficient at inventing (proficient here meaning 'nosy and busy-handed'), she hunted round for the materials she needed (she wanted to be as accurate to the blueprints as she could, or she would just be making a model), and got to work over two days. Thankfully her minder would never notice her newest project, or would just put it down as another one of those orphan quirks.
When she put the whole thing together, Violet examined her handiwork over and over again. She had learned to be cautious about playing with unusual objects, because sometimes they burned people, or they squashed people, or they projected them into a wormhole to a parallel world and break halfway through doing so, which was what this particular invention happened to do.
She was aware of the attention she was receiving, and at once wondered if anyone around her would be able to help. And through the slowly-growing crowds, she saw a black-haired woman in her late twenties approach, and somehow Violet knew she could trust this lady.
***
"Where are you taking me?" Violet Baudelaire asked the other Violet.
"There's really only one thing I know of in this world which can get you home," Violet Kiteway replied to the other Violet. "I visited Earth once, too."
"Really?"
"By accident more than design," she confessed. "I'm taking you to the bane of my existence, but I'm hoping it will be of some use to you."
"It?"
"Long story."
The woman was smart enough to know the authorities were probably looking for the source of the disturbance, and were probably going to suspect the individual might travel to look for the Receda Cube (though the suspect was barely fifteen, and very polite; she wasn't going to cause a problem). That meant security was probably going to be increased at the Museum. Typical, frankly.
"I can't believe this isn't Earth," the girl said. "It looks so familiar... and the people all look the same, too. You're not... aliens or anything like that. You're as human as I am."
"Yeah, we work hard, play hard, and then play some more if we did the work well enough," the woman admitted. "Ever played poker?"
"Not seriously, no," the girl said. "I've played around with cards though, of course."
"Hmm, our cultures are quite similar. It really got the anthropologists scratching their heads. I've kinda been relying on card games recently since I got... well, persuaded to stop going to work."
"Oh," the girl went quiet. "Where did you work, if you don't mind my asking?"
"It was at the Academy library," Violet said. "I was one of the librarians."
"Oh, my little brother loves reading," the other Violet replied. "I always think he would make a wonderful librarian, being surrounded by books."
The woman smiled. "Yeah, it's not too bad. Quite quiet. But then we had some people... well, there were some murders, and things got ugly. Not going to lie to you."
The girl straightened the hem of her coat. "I understand. We've had murders close to home, too. Our parents were killed in a fire some time ago."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Violet said, and was surprised to hear she genuinely felt the pang that went with the phrase. Apparently it had ceased to be a stock response to misery. "I lost my mother when I was little, too."
The two of them approached the Museum. The Police didn't seem to be there yet, so presumably the Reality Research team were as incompetant as Violet remembered them to be. "So what made you try to invent something as crazy as that?"
"I found the blueprints in my guardian's study," the girl said. "I wondered if it was possible, that's all."
"That was a bit reckless, wasn't it?"
"Isn't taking an underground organisation on headlong also a bit reckless?"
"Fair point," the woman laughed, before hushing herself in the museum. "Just make sure you don't ever try to do that."
"Already have," the younger Violet admitted with a smirk that was somewhere between amusement and pride. "We've been through some tough times... but I think there's always a light at the end of the tunnel."
"Never a truer word spoken, Vi. It's sometimes that light's further away than we might like. But it's always there, and it's always waiting for us."
The girl smiled, and the librarian perked up. "Speaking of light... we're here."
She hadn't seen the Cube in many months. One encounter was really enough for the eldest Kiteway daughter, and really, she just wanted the girl to get home. And the Receda Cube was smart. In fact, it was the smartest cube she had ever known. Which wasn't really saying much, because most of the cubes she knew ended up in cups of tea.
The metallic object was humming on its plinth, and Violet was sure the security would be here any minute, so she urged the other Violet to get on and touch it. Before the girl left, she gave the woman an awkward-but warm and sincere-hug.
There wasn't even a surge of energy this time. The girl touched the artefact, and was gone.
Violet held her breath until she spotted the Cube was still on its plinth, completely unmoved. She laughed with relief, and turned herself in to the local police authorities before they came to kick her door down again.
Fandom: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Summary: Klaus' thoughts about clinics and doctors.
Notes: Quite short.
Klaus didn't like clinics very much. He remembered when he had been four, and his mother had taken him to a dentist to remove a nasty cyst growing under one of his baby teeth. He remembered the white sterile waiting room, and the grim posters on the wall trying to make the place look less menacing, and failing miserably as the corners peeled from the walls.
And he remembered the time he got his first pair of glasses, and a man with a crooked nose took him into another white room full of contraptions and machinery, dimmed the lights, and all Klaus could remember was the smell of his breath.
He wasn't so sure about Dr. Orwell, although she did seem a pleasant and professional woman, but he knew very little about her, despite having been made to come here already this week. He dimly remembered the building being narrow and crooked, and the waiting room carpet, but everything else was... it wasn't even fuzzy. It was absent. And Klaus prided himself in remembering things.
It was odd sitting in the elevated chair in the sterile room, full of crooked trinkets and an optician in black boots, and wondering whether he was even going to remember this room when his glasses were fixed.
He didn't. And when he came to in the lumbermill, he understood why.
Title: The View From Here
Fandom: Perplex City
Summary: Fleming and Sylvia meet in a park shortly after the final denouement.
Notes: If you know this fandom, I'll kiss you.
Azad Park was rarely busy in February, and today was no exception; the football pitches to the north were deserted, presumably because the teenagers had opted to stay somewhere warm for once, or maybe to watch the new quiz show that had started. Or perhaps they were in their homes, discussing the return of the Cube. That was really all anybody talked about right now.
A man was staring out over the water, wondering whether drowning in water was anything like drowning in memories. They both choked their victim, came closer and closer the more he resisted, and would eventually defeat him, forcing him down deeper and deeper into its murky depths.
Fleming Heath wasn't planning to drown himself, of course. But it was an interesting analogy. He felt Anna would have approved.
He heard footsteps approaching him, but he didn't need to look to know who she was; there were few people who would brave the coldness, least of all those who would come this close to him of their own free will; he found he seemed to radiate an aura of misery that caused people to steer clear of him unconsciously. This woman seemed immune to it, because she had once been the same.
"Fleming," she said his name as a gentle but direct way of reintroducing herself.
"Sylvia... hello," he gave her a small, stiff smile, and she took a step closer, "I'm happy you could come."
She returned his smile, before looking over the water, with her companion. They just stood there, side by side, not speaking for some time. The clouds were swishing in the sky above them, making the park feel colder and warmer intermittently. Finallly, Sylvia spoke:
"I grew up around here, you know."
Fleming turned to look at her, though she was still gazing over the water. "I was born in a house about four blocks south from here... the house got knocked down years ago, though. I used to come to this park when I was a little girl, and play with my friends. Sometimes I would come to this bridge, and look out over the water, like what we're doing now."
Fleming stil didn't speak. Sylvia let the thought hang for a minute before continuing her reminiscence.
"Pietro and I used to come here whenever we visited my parents. We used to stand in this very spot and watch the river flow beneath us. He had an Earth poem about it, but I can't remember how it goes right now," she sighed, and shook her head, absorbing the rushing sound of the water. "He always used to say life was like a river. Fast, exciting, dangerous, powerful... and always a path from something modest to something great. Something bigger. But now when I look at a river, I just think that we're all drops of water rushing to the end, bumping off a selection of others nearby, and once we've passed a point, we're gone for ever."
Any other person wouldn't have dared say something as bleak as this to a man whose wife had been killed by a friend, but Sylvia was in a similar position, and her honesty was a form of therapy to him. He just needed to hear what she said, because there were few in the city who had been through what he had, and even fewer in the same position, destroyed by the same conspiracy.
"Don't you miss him?" He finally croaked.
"...Yes, of course I do," she finally turned to face Fleming, whose face just looked lined and tired. "And I always will... but I won't look at things through rose-tinted glasses. He would want me to grieve, but he would also want me to keep living."
"I don't think I'm there yet," Fleming admitted. He scuffed his foot on the floor. "Really, I... I feel I've adjusted for the sake of my children, but... it's just small things that remind me of her."
"I know the feeling... I couldn't read the Sentinel for weeks after it happened."
"Little Eve is starting to speak," Fleming sighed. "She's got her 'da-da-da's down, but Anna never got to hear the 'ma-ma-ma's. She would have loved it."
"Every now and then I hear a song on the radio," Sylvia laughed, "and I can't help think... Pietro would have loved that. There's a new one out by the Ooze, and it's..."
Sylvia stopped herself when she saw the look on Fleming's face, and knew she had made a huge faux-pas. She forgot about that band's drummer... and how close he had been to Fleming's wife."
"Have you spoken to anyone from the Academy recently?" she said.
"No... well, Sente Kiteway of course. He spoke to me after they found.... they found her killer, and he met with me. He seemed embarrassed about having a mole on the CRT the entire time... never mind how his family got tied into it."
"A public relations visit, then?" Sylvia laughed. "Yeah, that's just like Sente. But I suppose everyone's getting closure now, right?"
Fleming shook his head. "Tell that to my kids. They knew the man who killed their mother. He was a family friend... how can I explain that to them?"
Sylvia sighed. "Everyone's celebrating closure, but things don't end here."
"Not even close," Fleming scoffed. He smiled a cynical grin to himself, as he realised he hadn't spoken with anybody like this in a long, long time. "Sente also invited me to the party on the 22nd. Select guestlist, apparently."
"Are you thinking of going?"
"I don't know..." Fleming mumbled, readjusting his glasses. "I... I still swing between wanting to be alone and needing to be with people, but... it would be nice to do something like this. Anna's collagues will be there, anyway. But I don't know how I'll feel."
"Perhaps you should go anyway," she suggested. "It will be good for you. And if it gets too much, you can always leave."
He leaned on the bridge and looked over the water once more. "I suppose you're right. And I'm quite fond of their canapés."
Sylvia Salk laughed. "Well, I hope you enjoy it. Give my regards to Sente."
Fleming raised an eyebrow. "You're not going?"
"Haven't been invited," she said with a shrug. "Stands to sense; my husband had dealings with the conspirators, not me. I'm yesterday's news."
Fleming Heath winced, and faced Sylvia.
"Would you like to come as my Plus-one?"
"I... er, what?"
"It's only going to go to waste, anyway. Besides, I've got about three babysitters on my key; the kids will be taken care of. Besides... I quite like your company. It's good to have someone there who understands. You know? Properly understands."
Sylvia went silent, but her cheeks were flushed in happiness. "Yes, I'll gladly come... but I need to get myself a new dress, too!"
Fleming laughed. "Yes, my suit could do with a run through the dry-cleaners."
"Could I ask for one thing, though?" Sylvia suggested.
"Sure?"
"That we meet up again before that date," she said in a businesslike fashion. "I think it would be good to meet up for coffee, and I rather prefer doing things like this face-to-face instead of over my key."
Fleming considered the woman, whose husband--unlike Anna, who vanished one morning on her way to work and was discovered stabbed to death beneath the city a few days later--had lapsed into a poison-induced coma, for his wife to sit by his side for days as he deteriorated, only to perish after showing some signs of improvment. Fleming remembered hearing through Anna he had discovered something important within the files of a top-ranking banker (she was murdered shortly after, as well; Fleming remembered the chill when he saw the newspaper headings, and Anna casually pointing at it and saying "that was her"). He remembered hearing through his late wife, too, that Pietro Salk's wife was a changed woman, she was weak and wan and crushed, and he couldn't help but imagine how horrible it must be to be in her position, and he hoped Anna would never be put in the same position.
A foolish thought. He should have been careful what he was wishing for.
But now he saw Sylvia Salk stood in front of him, mainly recovered and perhaps thirteen months more a widow than he was a widower, it somehow gave him hope for himself. And through himself, his children, and what was better than hope?
"Yes," he smiled. "Yes, I'll meet with you again."
In the skies above, a cloud shifted, and weak sunlight slipped through.
Title: The Master Of Secrets
Fandom: Series of Unfortunate Events / Perplex City
Summary: A pair of girls come together through chance and coincidence.
Notes: Both have protagonists called Violet. That makes it fair game. Also contains some spoilers about the end of PXC.
Earlywine's Council were now much better stations to identify breaches of reality. Now they knew what to look out for, they could identify travel between Earth and Perplex City, which was fine, because it never happened, and ever since closing the link, the Centre for Reality Research clearly had a budget that needed spending, as well as plenty of staff who needed jobs.
So when the monitors went haywire, the technical staff all choked on their collective cappuchinos, and spent hours trying to pinpoint the source of the disturbance (of course, this was after spending a few minutes being amazed it wasn't another drill).
They found the source of the disturbance, near South Mazy Road, which was unusuaul, as there was a high chance a surveillance camera would have picked up the distrubance in the area. If V had chosen to return to Perplex City from his hiding in Earth, he surely wouldn't have picked somewhere in the heart of the city.
When they uncovered camera information, they saw it wasn't V at all. It was a teenage girl in a grim dress, holding some sort of broken contraption. And as they watched the playback, they watched dumbfounded as a familiar face suddenly appeared, and guided the child away.
***
Violet Kiteway just happened to be shopping in the vicinity of South Mazy Road at the time, though when she heard the commotion outside, she wondered if it was an accident, or maybe someone found a really good bargain. When she became aware of the tingling hairs on the back of her hand, she remembered vividly how it was to be squeezed through one reality into another, which was something she could do without recalling in the middle of a underwear shop, thank you very much. It was bad enough squeezing into some of those tight-cut jeans, let alone to be reminded of a chapter of her life she very much wanted to put behind her.
Then she wondered if it was coincidence she happened to be so near, or if this was the Cube being mysterious again. Mysterious being a euphemism for 'downright irritating', of course.
She found a confused-looking girl nearby, holding a strange contraption made of batteries, wire coil, a tennis ball wrapped in foil, and a fishing line. Or that was what it looked like anyway; in truth, it could have been anything. Nonetheless, the gadget was giving off a disgusting burning smell, and the girl looked confused and lost.
When she found out the girl's name was also Violet, she really, really regretted ever having taken initiative.
***
Violet Baudelaire had uncovered a bizarre blueprint in the home of the newest carer for her and her siblings. Being naturally proficient at inventing (proficient here meaning 'nosy and busy-handed'), she hunted round for the materials she needed (she wanted to be as accurate to the blueprints as she could, or she would just be making a model), and got to work over two days. Thankfully her minder would never notice her newest project, or would just put it down as another one of those orphan quirks.
When she put the whole thing together, Violet examined her handiwork over and over again. She had learned to be cautious about playing with unusual objects, because sometimes they burned people, or they squashed people, or they projected them into a wormhole to a parallel world and break halfway through doing so, which was what this particular invention happened to do.
She was aware of the attention she was receiving, and at once wondered if anyone around her would be able to help. And through the slowly-growing crowds, she saw a black-haired woman in her late twenties approach, and somehow Violet knew she could trust this lady.
***
"Where are you taking me?" Violet Baudelaire asked the other Violet.
"There's really only one thing I know of in this world which can get you home," Violet Kiteway replied to the other Violet. "I visited Earth once, too."
"Really?"
"By accident more than design," she confessed. "I'm taking you to the bane of my existence, but I'm hoping it will be of some use to you."
"It?"
"Long story."
The woman was smart enough to know the authorities were probably looking for the source of the disturbance, and were probably going to suspect the individual might travel to look for the Receda Cube (though the suspect was barely fifteen, and very polite; she wasn't going to cause a problem). That meant security was probably going to be increased at the Museum. Typical, frankly.
"I can't believe this isn't Earth," the girl said. "It looks so familiar... and the people all look the same, too. You're not... aliens or anything like that. You're as human as I am."
"Yeah, we work hard, play hard, and then play some more if we did the work well enough," the woman admitted. "Ever played poker?"
"Not seriously, no," the girl said. "I've played around with cards though, of course."
"Hmm, our cultures are quite similar. It really got the anthropologists scratching their heads. I've kinda been relying on card games recently since I got... well, persuaded to stop going to work."
"Oh," the girl went quiet. "Where did you work, if you don't mind my asking?"
"It was at the Academy library," Violet said. "I was one of the librarians."
"Oh, my little brother loves reading," the other Violet replied. "I always think he would make a wonderful librarian, being surrounded by books."
The woman smiled. "Yeah, it's not too bad. Quite quiet. But then we had some people... well, there were some murders, and things got ugly. Not going to lie to you."
The girl straightened the hem of her coat. "I understand. We've had murders close to home, too. Our parents were killed in a fire some time ago."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," Violet said, and was surprised to hear she genuinely felt the pang that went with the phrase. Apparently it had ceased to be a stock response to misery. "I lost my mother when I was little, too."
The two of them approached the Museum. The Police didn't seem to be there yet, so presumably the Reality Research team were as incompetant as Violet remembered them to be. "So what made you try to invent something as crazy as that?"
"I found the blueprints in my guardian's study," the girl said. "I wondered if it was possible, that's all."
"That was a bit reckless, wasn't it?"
"Isn't taking an underground organisation on headlong also a bit reckless?"
"Fair point," the woman laughed, before hushing herself in the museum. "Just make sure you don't ever try to do that."
"Already have," the younger Violet admitted with a smirk that was somewhere between amusement and pride. "We've been through some tough times... but I think there's always a light at the end of the tunnel."
"Never a truer word spoken, Vi. It's sometimes that light's further away than we might like. But it's always there, and it's always waiting for us."
The girl smiled, and the librarian perked up. "Speaking of light... we're here."
She hadn't seen the Cube in many months. One encounter was really enough for the eldest Kiteway daughter, and really, she just wanted the girl to get home. And the Receda Cube was smart. In fact, it was the smartest cube she had ever known. Which wasn't really saying much, because most of the cubes she knew ended up in cups of tea.
The metallic object was humming on its plinth, and Violet was sure the security would be here any minute, so she urged the other Violet to get on and touch it. Before the girl left, she gave the woman an awkward-but warm and sincere-hug.
There wasn't even a surge of energy this time. The girl touched the artefact, and was gone.
Violet held her breath until she spotted the Cube was still on its plinth, completely unmoved. She laughed with relief, and turned herself in to the local police authorities before they came to kick her door down again.