fic: the world you know is somewhere else... (Alex and Amber and Lexie)
Title: The world you know is somewhere else...
Characters/Pairing: Alex and Amber and Lexie, but mostly just Amber
Word Count: 1900
Rating: R for language and implied violence
Summary: This is an immediate continuation of Leave tonight or live and die this way... and you really do need to read that first for this to make one iota of sense. The reunion continues, but not necessarily as planned.
Author's Note: A massive 'thank you' to rorylie . She knows why! Title and cut text from "The Gap" by Birds of Tokyo.
Turns out the chest she smacked her face into belongs to his girlfriend, friend who is a girl, someone he fucks, no strings attached.
She hasn't quite figured out which one it is just yet.
Or how she feels about it.
She's blonde. And she has straight, white teeth and she refuses to see it as anything other than a coincidence.
She stammers out some words. Or at least some sounds. She's not entirely convinced how phonetically correct they are. His arm, the one that's not wrapped around his ribs, is still thrown loosely over her shoulder. The claustrophobia is suffocating.
And confusing.
She'd longed for this moment. And now it's here.
And everything about it feels backwards and inside out and upside down.
They're strangers. DNA and a shared last name have never felt so meaningless.
Not in the grand scheme of things.
- - -
Dinner is half a strawberry milkshake from the cafeteria and a rain soaked cigarette bummed from some dude in a high visibility jacket and candy print rain boots. The bandage stuck haphazardly to the side of his head seems to be the least of his problems.
But he offers her a light.
And he doesn't ask questions that she can't find the answers for. And as she exhales into the endless wet she tries to remember what the fuck it was that she'd been hoping to achieve by coming here.
Tries to reconcile it with what she's achieved so far.
Which is nothing.
- - -
She remembers her mother telling people all about him in the days after he left. Dana, the check out girl that he used to date years ago, when she still had braces on her teeth and bangs that fell to her lashes. Old Mr. Sampson on the bench outside the library with his belt of packing string and perpetual stench of urine and death. People she'd never met before, people that they passed idly in the street.
And she never knew which story would be the oracle of the day.
The one where she kicked him out because he was an ungrateful little bastard who had no respect for his family.
The one where he'd gone to college to become an astronaut. That he was going to fly to the moon someday, would wave at them as he slipped out of one atmosphere and into another. Weightless and free.
The one where he'd run away and no-one had seen or heard from in him in weeks. Where he was probably dead in the gutter like his father and it was one less mouth for her to have to feed so good riddance.
The one where...
So many the one wheres that the truth got lost in the middle. Tied up and tangled in threads and spindles.
Knotted loosely around her fingers and fraying fast.
- - -
She slinks back in the general direction of his room, one hand trailing against the wall again. Left this time instead of right. As though the alteration might make some kind of tangible difference.
He’s asleep when she gets there. Eyes closed, lips parted, some type of tube device wrapped under his nose. The perky blonde curled in a chair by his side, her fingers laced through her brother's like some kind of proof that she’s supposed to be there. Like the chair has been placed in that spot just for her.
Like she’s family.
The sight ices the blood in her veins.
- - -
She guesses she should leave. Just get back in her car and point it east and forget the whole thing ever happened.
But she’s outta gas. And money. And she’s already pawned the only piece of her past that ever meant anything to her anyway and now she’s too empty to even move, let alone run.
Run away.
Run fast.
No matter what her instincts are screaming.
“Get out, get out, get out while you still can…”
She slides down the wall ‘til her backside meets her damp heels. Waits for her legs to fade slowly to numb so they’ll finally match how her insides seem to feel. Blinks a look at her watch and attempts the sloppy calculations that will give her an idea of what’s going on at home.
Home.
Wonders with a jolt where that even is anymore.
And math never really was her strong suit.
- - -
She’s half asleep when she’s pulled to her feet. Pins and needles and cool hands around her wrists. The room has faded to dull and she blinks, guesses night has well and truly closed in on them.
Heavy and haunting.
She’s pushed into the back of a car, too tired and too lost to protest her apparent abduction. Somewhere in a very primal part of her brain a voice is screaming blue murder, fingernails down a chalk board, but it’s too deep to transform into actual sound and so she stays silent, buckles her seat belt like the good girl she’s never quite managed to be and concentrates on keeping her eyelids stretched to open for one more minute…
One more minute, one more minute…
- - -
They drink tequila, she notes. This mismatched group of humans her brother seems to call his friends. They drink tequila and lots of it.
Most of the time they don't even bother with the limes.
That they fill her shot glass to overflowing without question tells her more than any amount of forced conversation ever could.
And she always was well versed in the art of effective self medicating.
Wonders, absently, if it's maybe a genetic thing...
- - -
They let her stay for a week before the questions start. Before the sideways looks and the whispered conversations that they think she’s oblivious to ramp up in frequency. Before judgments are made by people that don't know the first damn thing about her.
She fights with him then.
Beside his bed in the hospital. Where tubes disappear under covers and into holes between his ribs. Where a perky blonde sits vigil, watches her through lowered lashes like she knows things that are none of her freaking business anyway.
Bitch.
And she says all the things that she swore to herself she’d never give voice to. Hateful accusations delivered with a venom she'd not known before. Throws her fists around and stamps her feet like the five years old girl she thinks she’ll always be when it comes to her big brother and the way she remembers him.
She regrets it immediately. Begins a rapid recant of her words that is stumbling and desperate and little more than a sob that gets stuck somewhere high in the back of her throat. And he's staring at her like maybe she was the one with the gun all along.
And she remembers then. In that heady moment between hiccuping gasps.
She remembers the true The one where....
Realises without doubt that the trigger had been pulled on him long before this most recent bullet slashed a path through the place where his heart should beat.
- - -
She came in from playing once. Making mud pies in the flower bed out back.
As idyllic as that sounds.
And there was screaming. But there was always screaming and so it didn't feel like anything new or different or out of place.
But there was blood on his face.
And her mother was crouched in a corner holding the kitchen broom over her head in some macabre tableau of self defense that would have been funny but...
But there was blood on his face.
And she reached for him. Pushed chubby, childish fingers into the slick and pulled back when he didn't so much as flinch. Pressed her fingertips together and rubbed. Her brother's red blood. Smeared to pale pink under her nails.
A stain that she never quite managed to wash away.
Not like mud pies that dissolve and disappear down drains.
And the difference was, this time, the screams were her own.
- - -
She makes it as far as the elevator. Polished metal doors painted with the smudged fingerprints of strangers. They remain steadfastly pressed together, a karmic fuck you. She pushes her fingers into her mouth. An attempt to muffle screams that escape and evade nonetheless.
Foot steps sound behind her. The sloppy slap of rubber against floor tile that comes to a squeaky halt somewhere in the space behind her back. Where most things of consequence seem to happen these days.
And she thinks she can almost predict how the next five minutes of her life will pan out.
- - -
She's herded down stairs and along hallways to a bathroom in a part of the hospital that she doesn't quite recognise. Is plied with paper towels that have been soaked to dripping and torn and ends up with mascara smudged to her chin.
The perky blonde looks as perfect as ever.
She slams her eyes shut to erase the image.
Hears a voice echo in the back of her head instead. A looping monotone that could be her own but isn't. Because fathers get drunk and mean. And they slap people around and treat you like you're nothing, and mothers bail right when you need them most, and siblings are never what you build them up to be. Disney fairy tales of white knights on horseback and cinderella princesses dancing in impossibly fragile slippers.
And as much as she wants to scream into her perky blonde face with the straight, white teeth, just shut the hell up, she twists herself into the words instead and lets them catch her before her head slams into the concrete slab it feels like she's spent the last ten years plummeting towards.
- - -
She did a project once. In ninth grade. A rudimentary family tree for a science class on genealogy. Spent three weeks crafting a completely fictional picture perfect structure of a mother and a father. Of brothers and sisters who lived together and functioned in some kind of dream-like harmony.
She got ninety three percent and a constant stare of pitiful concern that followed her around for the days and weeks the followed.
She'd fooled no-one but herself.
- - -
They sit. Side by side.
Silent.
Shoulders pressed together in some jagged gesture of shared experience and solidarity. She hates it even as she leans her weight more completely into it.
Whispers then. Whispers that she's sorry. That she's sorry for screaming. For ruining everything.
For even coming here in the first place.
Landing on their doorstep like some after school special in need of an intervention. Filled with big ideas full of nothing but hot air and steam.
Whispers more forcefully that she'll be leaving now. Undoing what she's done in the way that all Karevs undo their mistakes. At a run that doesn't allow for turning back.
For looking over shoulders at the people left behind.
Faded and fading into the distant horizon.
But she can't actually see through the stinging saltwater blur. Not even the tips of her toes. And she isn't sure she quite has the energy required to run just yet.
Not now.
Maybe tomorrow.
So can she please stay.
“Please? Just one more night?”
Characters/Pairing: Alex and Amber and Lexie, but mostly just Amber
Word Count: 1900
Rating: R for language and implied violence
Summary: This is an immediate continuation of Leave tonight or live and die this way... and you really do need to read that first for this to make one iota of sense. The reunion continues, but not necessarily as planned.
Author's Note: A massive 'thank you' to rorylie . She knows why! Title and cut text from "The Gap" by Birds of Tokyo.
Turns out the chest she smacked her face into belongs to his girlfriend, friend who is a girl, someone he fucks, no strings attached.
She hasn't quite figured out which one it is just yet.
Or how she feels about it.
She's blonde. And she has straight, white teeth and she refuses to see it as anything other than a coincidence.
She stammers out some words. Or at least some sounds. She's not entirely convinced how phonetically correct they are. His arm, the one that's not wrapped around his ribs, is still thrown loosely over her shoulder. The claustrophobia is suffocating.
And confusing.
She'd longed for this moment. And now it's here.
And everything about it feels backwards and inside out and upside down.
They're strangers. DNA and a shared last name have never felt so meaningless.
Not in the grand scheme of things.
- - -
Dinner is half a strawberry milkshake from the cafeteria and a rain soaked cigarette bummed from some dude in a high visibility jacket and candy print rain boots. The bandage stuck haphazardly to the side of his head seems to be the least of his problems.
But he offers her a light.
And he doesn't ask questions that she can't find the answers for. And as she exhales into the endless wet she tries to remember what the fuck it was that she'd been hoping to achieve by coming here.
Tries to reconcile it with what she's achieved so far.
Which is nothing.
- - -
She remembers her mother telling people all about him in the days after he left. Dana, the check out girl that he used to date years ago, when she still had braces on her teeth and bangs that fell to her lashes. Old Mr. Sampson on the bench outside the library with his belt of packing string and perpetual stench of urine and death. People she'd never met before, people that they passed idly in the street.
And she never knew which story would be the oracle of the day.
The one where she kicked him out because he was an ungrateful little bastard who had no respect for his family.
The one where he'd gone to college to become an astronaut. That he was going to fly to the moon someday, would wave at them as he slipped out of one atmosphere and into another. Weightless and free.
The one where he'd run away and no-one had seen or heard from in him in weeks. Where he was probably dead in the gutter like his father and it was one less mouth for her to have to feed so good riddance.
The one where...
So many the one wheres that the truth got lost in the middle. Tied up and tangled in threads and spindles.
Knotted loosely around her fingers and fraying fast.
- - -
She slinks back in the general direction of his room, one hand trailing against the wall again. Left this time instead of right. As though the alteration might make some kind of tangible difference.
He’s asleep when she gets there. Eyes closed, lips parted, some type of tube device wrapped under his nose. The perky blonde curled in a chair by his side, her fingers laced through her brother's like some kind of proof that she’s supposed to be there. Like the chair has been placed in that spot just for her.
Like she’s family.
The sight ices the blood in her veins.
- - -
She guesses she should leave. Just get back in her car and point it east and forget the whole thing ever happened.
But she’s outta gas. And money. And she’s already pawned the only piece of her past that ever meant anything to her anyway and now she’s too empty to even move, let alone run.
Run away.
Run fast.
No matter what her instincts are screaming.
“Get out, get out, get out while you still can…”
She slides down the wall ‘til her backside meets her damp heels. Waits for her legs to fade slowly to numb so they’ll finally match how her insides seem to feel. Blinks a look at her watch and attempts the sloppy calculations that will give her an idea of what’s going on at home.
Home.
Wonders with a jolt where that even is anymore.
And math never really was her strong suit.
- - -
She’s half asleep when she’s pulled to her feet. Pins and needles and cool hands around her wrists. The room has faded to dull and she blinks, guesses night has well and truly closed in on them.
Heavy and haunting.
She’s pushed into the back of a car, too tired and too lost to protest her apparent abduction. Somewhere in a very primal part of her brain a voice is screaming blue murder, fingernails down a chalk board, but it’s too deep to transform into actual sound and so she stays silent, buckles her seat belt like the good girl she’s never quite managed to be and concentrates on keeping her eyelids stretched to open for one more minute…
One more minute, one more minute…
- - -
They drink tequila, she notes. This mismatched group of humans her brother seems to call his friends. They drink tequila and lots of it.
Most of the time they don't even bother with the limes.
That they fill her shot glass to overflowing without question tells her more than any amount of forced conversation ever could.
And she always was well versed in the art of effective self medicating.
Wonders, absently, if it's maybe a genetic thing...
- - -
They let her stay for a week before the questions start. Before the sideways looks and the whispered conversations that they think she’s oblivious to ramp up in frequency. Before judgments are made by people that don't know the first damn thing about her.
She fights with him then.
Beside his bed in the hospital. Where tubes disappear under covers and into holes between his ribs. Where a perky blonde sits vigil, watches her through lowered lashes like she knows things that are none of her freaking business anyway.
Bitch.
And she says all the things that she swore to herself she’d never give voice to. Hateful accusations delivered with a venom she'd not known before. Throws her fists around and stamps her feet like the five years old girl she thinks she’ll always be when it comes to her big brother and the way she remembers him.
She regrets it immediately. Begins a rapid recant of her words that is stumbling and desperate and little more than a sob that gets stuck somewhere high in the back of her throat. And he's staring at her like maybe she was the one with the gun all along.
And she remembers then. In that heady moment between hiccuping gasps.
She remembers the true The one where....
Realises without doubt that the trigger had been pulled on him long before this most recent bullet slashed a path through the place where his heart should beat.
- - -
She came in from playing once. Making mud pies in the flower bed out back.
As idyllic as that sounds.
And there was screaming. But there was always screaming and so it didn't feel like anything new or different or out of place.
But there was blood on his face.
And her mother was crouched in a corner holding the kitchen broom over her head in some macabre tableau of self defense that would have been funny but...
But there was blood on his face.
And she reached for him. Pushed chubby, childish fingers into the slick and pulled back when he didn't so much as flinch. Pressed her fingertips together and rubbed. Her brother's red blood. Smeared to pale pink under her nails.
A stain that she never quite managed to wash away.
Not like mud pies that dissolve and disappear down drains.
And the difference was, this time, the screams were her own.
- - -
She makes it as far as the elevator. Polished metal doors painted with the smudged fingerprints of strangers. They remain steadfastly pressed together, a karmic fuck you. She pushes her fingers into her mouth. An attempt to muffle screams that escape and evade nonetheless.
Foot steps sound behind her. The sloppy slap of rubber against floor tile that comes to a squeaky halt somewhere in the space behind her back. Where most things of consequence seem to happen these days.
And she thinks she can almost predict how the next five minutes of her life will pan out.
- - -
She's herded down stairs and along hallways to a bathroom in a part of the hospital that she doesn't quite recognise. Is plied with paper towels that have been soaked to dripping and torn and ends up with mascara smudged to her chin.
The perky blonde looks as perfect as ever.
She slams her eyes shut to erase the image.
Hears a voice echo in the back of her head instead. A looping monotone that could be her own but isn't. Because fathers get drunk and mean. And they slap people around and treat you like you're nothing, and mothers bail right when you need them most, and siblings are never what you build them up to be. Disney fairy tales of white knights on horseback and cinderella princesses dancing in impossibly fragile slippers.
And as much as she wants to scream into her perky blonde face with the straight, white teeth, just shut the hell up, she twists herself into the words instead and lets them catch her before her head slams into the concrete slab it feels like she's spent the last ten years plummeting towards.
- - -
She did a project once. In ninth grade. A rudimentary family tree for a science class on genealogy. Spent three weeks crafting a completely fictional picture perfect structure of a mother and a father. Of brothers and sisters who lived together and functioned in some kind of dream-like harmony.
She got ninety three percent and a constant stare of pitiful concern that followed her around for the days and weeks the followed.
She'd fooled no-one but herself.
- - -
They sit. Side by side.
Silent.
Shoulders pressed together in some jagged gesture of shared experience and solidarity. She hates it even as she leans her weight more completely into it.
Whispers then. Whispers that she's sorry. That she's sorry for screaming. For ruining everything.
For even coming here in the first place.
Landing on their doorstep like some after school special in need of an intervention. Filled with big ideas full of nothing but hot air and steam.
Whispers more forcefully that she'll be leaving now. Undoing what she's done in the way that all Karevs undo their mistakes. At a run that doesn't allow for turning back.
For looking over shoulders at the people left behind.
Faded and fading into the distant horizon.
But she can't actually see through the stinging saltwater blur. Not even the tips of her toes. And she isn't sure she quite has the energy required to run just yet.
Not now.
Maybe tomorrow.
So can she please stay.
“Please? Just one more night?”