(Untitled)

[asadmagnifique]

Who: Don Draper and Joan Harris and You
What: Arrival
When: Day 39
Where: Town Square

Comments

[couldbebatman]

"Why would someone shoot a commercial here?" was what Don wanted to know. He looked around, eyes narrowed, as he took a long drag on his own cigarette. It was too like too many towns he knew, dusty and empty and everything he'd left behind him. That Joan was here was inexplicable, but he could think of a lot of people he'd rather be stranded with less. Most of them, in fact.

He thought about the tape, tucked in his inner jacket pocket. It was a little like those hypothetical thought experiments Kinsey was always trying to get people interested in. What if you trapped Don Draper in a B-grade replica of his old life and threw Joan Harris in for good measure? The only obvious answer was the sort of thing that happened in those cinemas near Times Square that Don didn't need to go to. Joan didn't belong in a place like this--she looked out of place. Don didn't want to belong in a place like this.

"No birds," he said suddenly, just noticing.

[asadmagnifique]

"I don't know, Don, but it's... got an aura of not quite being real." Her voice was carefully neutral, but her eyes were calculating. Joan had pushed any and all thoughts of places like this from her mind a long time ago, as soon as she could have she headed off to the big city and forgot about home and the doctor and everything else that had stayed outside of her cheap suitcase. This was something that was more than a little like Joan's own personal version of hell, especially with the concept that she might be fictional

[couldbebatman]

Don felt irritation rising within him, along with the need for a drink. No, he wanted a drink, that was all. Who wouldn't? He didn't like this at all, and part of him didn't want to understand it. Was it Sunday? Or was this place abandoned?

"I don't know anyone who would go through this much trouble to play a prank," he said, flicking his cigarette away. "So I'm willing to be a figment of your imagination if it means you're just dreaming all of this."

It would beat being fictional, though he was fairly certain no one would make him up, and no one could invent Joan.

[asadmagnifique]

Joan met Don's eyes with a rather amused and feline smirk when he mentioned that he was willing to be a figment of her imagination and dreaming all of this.

"I don't think my imagination is quite that good, Don, but thank you." There was a bit of a knowing look, because well.. Don's imagination tended to be rather legendary. "It's far more likely that you've dreamed me up." Because well... why wouldn't he dream her up?

That said, Joan dropped her cigarette onto the ground and paused to look in the window of the clothing shop. There was rather an abysmal look on her face when she saw the selection. "Oh you have got to be kidding me..." But then there was a large shape and movement within the store, and Joan gasped in shock.

[couldbebatman]

The look that passed between them was like the careful pact they maintained, their own reputations unspoken but each knowing what the other knew they knew. Don didn't dip into the steno pool, and Joan hadn't flaunted her affair with Roger. But there was as much respect there as Don was in the habit of giving any woman.

And there was no doubting that any man would be lucky to have Joan Harris show up in his dreams, real or not.

"I know New York is ahead of the curve, but--" Her gasp cut him off, and he peered through the window. "Stay here," he said, expecting her to obey and even putting out one hand as if to keep her there as he headed for the door.

[asadmagnifique]

When he told her to stay there, Joan quickly put her hand on his arm. "Don, don't." There was a trace of fear in her tone, and she looked to him and then looked back to the window. This was a different terror than the sort that a person faced in the city when one needed to worry about being mugged. This was something primal and as soon as Joan met Don's eyes again, there was a loud shrieking noise from inside the room, and something threw itself at the window.

[couldbebatman]

Don leapt back, as much to protect Joan as in response to the shrieking thing pounding against the window. His instinct was no inconsiderable part of that, however little he wanted to admit it. The sound was unearthly, chilling the blood. He had his hand on Joan's shoulders, positioning himself between her and the storefront, looking back at his over his shoulder.

"We should get out of here," he said, keeping his voice low, controlled. "Doesn't matter how small a town it is, there's a highway somewhere. We can hitch a ride to someplace with a bus station."

[asadmagnifique]

When Don leapt forward to protect her, Joan looked over his shoulder, and she as shocked and frightened by the way that the sound curled around her stomach and settled there like a brick of ice. She nodded when he said that they should get out of here.

For a moment, Joan didn't say anything, and then she took a step forward and looked to the street sign. There was something very familiar about it, and she couldn't think what. Her eyes closed for a moment, and she remembered when she had been had been reading the scripts for product placement. There'd been a few things mixed in with the soap operas and one of them had been the script for an episode of The Twilight Zone. Her voice is very soft and distant and concerned. "Don, I think I know where we are."

[couldbebatman]

Don, hand on her elbow, was trying to hurry her down the street. He glanced back over his shoulder at the store, and then up at the sign that had caught Joan's attention. He looked down at her, puzzled. He'd rarely seen her so serious, so subdued.

"We're in the Midwest," he said, while his tone said 'middle of nowhere.'

[asadmagnifique]

"No, Don." Joan looked very composed in that moment, because there was rarely a moment when she didn't look composed, but she could feel something rolling in her stomach as she gestured to the sign once more.

"I know this place. We're in the television show The Twilight Zone. I don't know how or why, but we are. Look at this place. Where are all the people?"

[couldbebatman]

Don looked up at the sign, then back to Joan with no lessening of his perplexity. He was sure Joan wasn't from the city--no one ever was--but surely she hadn't avoided all the all-American towns that never quite made it back from the thirties?

And then it hit him. He was too familiar with this place, but the timing wasn't right. But what she was saying... His kids had watched it before, and he'd been there, paying no attention whatsoever.

"That science fiction thing?" he said. "Joan," and now his tone was deceptively patient, "I don't think you're hearing yourself."

[asadmagnifique]

Joan knew how Don Draper worked, and she met his expression head on, glad that it gave her something to focus on rather than the sinking sensation that perhaps she actually might be fictional. The idea of being fictional was something that made a little bit of sense to her, at least due to everything that had happened in the past few months.

"Because being taken from my apartment in the middle of the night and ending up here without a memory of how it happened and having a man tell us we're fictional and having a tape sounds so much more sane, Don." Calm tones but with an underlying anger.

"I mean look at this place!"

[couldbebatman]

Don raised a hand in exasperation, though his tone was firm, not loud.

"Being abducted and lied to and manipulated makes more sense than the idea we're characters on a television show," he maintained. "For one thing, unless the show is about one or both of our entire lives, including the time we learned we were on a television show, it doesn't make a lot of sense that we've got memories. If we were on this show, we'd be going about our business and not noticing the empty town or the fact we're not supposed to be here. I mean, why now?"

He sighed, calming himself.

"I don't suppose it matters, one way or the other. We've still got to figure a way out."

[asadmagnifique]

"Unless it's a plot point in the show." Joan countered him carefully, and she paused to pull out a cigarette and light it quickly. This place was quite possibly too overwhelming for her for the moment. After a drag, and attempting to calm down a bit, she looked at Don again.

"I think we can walk for miles and not find a way to a bus station. Besides, don't all towns have bus stations? This place should have one; it's rather large not too." Joan started to look around again, and a flutter of white curtain caught her eye. There was a doctor's office with a window broken out, and she quickly moved towards it. When she looked inside, there was blood there.

"Oh my god, Don..."

[couldbebatman]

She was right, of course, about the bus station, but Don still wouldn't allow something as stupid as "we're in a television show" any purchase. It was easier to assume there was something really wrong with the town and with someone's sense of humor than to assume they were fictional. Or trapped someplace fictional. Don knew from not being himself. This wasn't the same thing.

He followed Joan, a hand on her shoulder as if to keep her back. From what, he didn't know. There didn't seem to be anyone in there, but he was growing more and more unsettled.

"All right," he said. "We're finding someone and getting out of here. Come on." There had to be someone else in this town. It didn't make any sense for them to be the only ones there. But Don wasn't going to take Joan into any building with blood or hulking dark shapes within.