Ariestess - Fic - the principle of uncertainty
Title: the principle of uncertainty
Author: mizzy2k
Giftee: ariestess
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Sophie/Tara, Sophie/OFC
Word Count: ~3300
Spoilers: All of it, to be safe.
Warnings: Amnesia-fic. 2nd person POV.
Disclaimer: None of it belongs to me!
Summary: You can't remember who you are, but you know what that light means: you're in the middle of a con.
You don't know your name, but you know your past: criminal.
Your future is just about as uncertain as your name.
Notes: Based in a roundabout way on your first prompt: Sophie gets amnesia & isn't sure which of her various aliases is real or not.
Borrowing telaryn's account because I have another thing in the queue. Thanks Tel! ♥
You're lying on a museum floor.
The wood flooring is smooth and cool under your cheek. This is the first thing you know, and it's the only thing you know for certain. Your lift your head and hair tumbles forwards into your vision. You push it away, and your limbs register their protest.
You're hurt, then. Your hand moves to the back of your head, and comes back sticky and wet.
You nearly throw up, but you're not new to this game and you manage to hold it back in time, because there's a small red light flashing on a small white box on the wall, and vomit does not belong at crime scenes.
You can't remember who you are, but you know what that light means: you're in the middle of a con.
You don't know your name, but you know your past: criminal.
Your future is just about as uncertain as your name.
#
The moisture on your finger is the same colour as the security light. Blood.
Something's gone wrong. Something's gone really wrong. You try to remember the play you were making, and your only memories are white light and maybe a car and a harness? What?
You don't know your name, but damn do you remember that you do not do heights.
That's why you became the master of the long con. You like to be able to walk through the front door. Preferably with an escort, someone to hold onto, and whisper sarcastic jokes in their ear. Someone to discuss (argue) about the best approach with. For a second, there's a name on your lips, but you don't feel like a Tara.
Tara. Ta-ra. You mouth the name under your breath. No. It sounds like a name you say. Tara. It almost sounds like a prayer when you say it out loud.
You climb to your feet, and look around the green room. Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn stares at you in her languid, confident, sensual pose.
You're in Los Angeles. The J. Paul Getty museum. You know this place.
How can you know that, but not know your own name? Your fingers fumble with your pocket. What you think is your face stares back at you from an ID card, impassive, unsmiling. JENNIFER SAYLES.
It's an alias. It has to be. Right? You dig in your pocket to see what else you've got on you. You only carry the minimum of equipment when on a con; it should help you decipher what's going on now.
There's nothing but a set of what looks like house keys and a wallet, which holds two hundred dollars in twenties, a platinum credit card with J SAYLES printed neatly on it, a library card and a blue TAP card for the Metro. No clues as to where the keys lead, or what kind of scam you're on.
Something's happened. Something to hurt you, and steal your memories. You don't know anything for sure, apart from you're a Grifter. Lies are in your veins. You run long cons. You want to be an actor. There's someone called Tara, and it's not you. You have a pocketful of items that belong to Jennifer Sayles.
Maybe you're not on a con? You do want to be an actor. You like the freedom of the stage. You like being in a story which is not your own. You're already in LA. You've always known you would quit Grifting at some point. Maybe you've already quit. Gone clean. Maybe you are Jennifer Sayles now.
It's plausible that you could be an art curator. Heaven knows you've stolen more art than some experts get to see in their lives. You're the upmost Jean Mettier expert in the world, and you can recognize all the paintings around you easily. Maybe you've gone clean and you haven't yet found your feet as an actor, and you found work in the art sector to pay the rent.
It's plausible. Jennifer. You could be a Jennifer. Yes, that sounds fine. Plausible.
Jennifer Sayles.
You try thinking it. It's Jennifer's sitting on the floor at the J. Paul Getty museum. Jennifer's been knocked out. Someone knocked Jennifer out and took her memories away. Poor Jennifer.
Poor you.
The alarms sounds after a while, and the security guards don't look too surprised to see you. Jennifer must work late a lot. Yeah, that sounds about right. Jennifer's a perfectionist. The police come, and an ambulance comes, and the paramedic asks her about the hospital.
Jennifer says she'd like to go now, please. She's lost her memories. The paramedic nods, like this happens all the time.
#
You don't mind hospitals. You can't remember the last time you were in one. The other patients in the ER seem to be shifty, nervous, but Jennifer feels like she should be quite calm. This is the place they fix you.
The doctor sees you and sends you for tests. No one comes to find you but the police, who take what little statements they can, and give even less information back. You're Ms. Jennifer Sayles, recently transferred from the MQB, in Paris. That's a little jarring, because you don't think primitive art is one of your specialities but everyone has to start somewhere. You're fairly sure you have an apartment in Paris. Maybe France made you decide to come clean.
Paris air does that to people, you think, as you lie in the CT scan machine. Makes you think romantic things about changing your life. Makes you fall in love with-
Someone. Someone with blue eyes. Someone who knows you better than anyone's ever known you.
It's not exactly a memory, but it's enough to startle you so much that they have to run the scan again. When you're wheeled to a ward and told you can finally sleep, you dream of blue, blue eyes.
#
No one comes to find Jennifer Sayles, but you don't get disheartened at that, because you've only recently come to LA from Paris. Making friends is difficult. Real friends, that is. Because you've spent your life playing make-believe, and truth is a little harder to find.
The police show you back to your apartment. It's a sad apartment. The fridge is empty apart from an almost empty jar of mustard, and the walls are bare. Perhaps you get enough art at work. The police watch you as you walk around the small apartment, touching each surface, trying to drag memories out of thin air.
The air remains still, and the memories remain elusive. The police look at you, sadly, like you don't have enough of a life to forget.
#
Two weeks of chasing dust motes in an empty apartment is too much. You ride the Metro, but it feels new, like you don't do it enough to justify the 15 days of credit left on the TAP card. You show up at work, and they don't know what to do with you at first. When they put you in the archive room, to scan some of the million pieces carefully wrapped in tissue and cardboard to display on the website, it feels like a relief.
You have no friends here, but at least you have somewhere to be. Somewhere certain. Somewhere unchanging. It feels like you've not had that before, and you like it. You think you grow to love it, and you start making friends. There's a new intern called Marsha with long blonde hair that falls straight to her waist, and she doesn't know about your accident, so she doesn't treat you like a million dollar vase.
You don't talk much to her, but sometimes she leans into your space, and your mouth goes dry.
After three days of working with her, you think you might accept her invitation for a drink, but something in her brown eyes, staring at you, stops you still, and you shake your head, suddenly shy.
"As a friend," Marsha pushes, her own eyes suddenly downcast, her friendly touches drying up immediately. You're not a liar yourself anymore, but you can spot them from a mile away.
Marsha means as a date, and she wouldn't have asked if you hadn't been open to it, but you can't say yes now without looking like a contrary fool.
"A friend would be nice," you say, too quickly. She knows you've seen her lie, but she doesn't call you out on it.
#
When you go out on your drink, two of the security guards from the museum join you, Earl and Johnson. The four of you laugh into the small hours. Sometime after midnight, someone calls you Gretta.
"This is Jennifer," Marsha tells them, loud in the way only a tipsy person can be, when their volume dial can only switch between too quiet and too loud.
"Sorry," the woman with black hair says to you, "you look like someone I used to know."
#
You take Marsha home anyway, to your sad little empty apartment. She swears like a sailor and kisses you like she's trying to convince you of something.
You remember a night like this, but with a man you didn't love, lying there and making the motions.
It's better than that with Marsha, but it's not love.
When you wake up, Marsha's back is to you; she's as far away from you on the bed as she can possibly get. You try to pull her back, to kiss an apology into her shoulder, but she pulls away.
"You called me Tara," Marsha says, and pulls a face. "Bad break-up with an ex?"
"I don't remember," you say.
Marsha's mouth is an uncertain line, which only curves more downwards when you tell her about the amnesia, that you don't remember anything.
"You could have a family, Jennifer," Marsha shouts, picking up her clothes, and storming to the door without even putting her shoes on. You don't know why she's so angry. "You could have a husband or a wife or children, and how would you know?"
You stare after her, but let her leave.
You've been wondering the same thing.
You've been wondering if you care if it's true.
#
You think once, daringly, they haven't come looking for you, so what does it matter if you don't care about them?
The thought feels like ash. Marsha transfers to the front desk. You don't even talk to the next intern they send down to work with you.
#
You think you might have been here on a con after all.
You only find this out a week later, when a Jean Mettier exhibition opens up on the main floor. Your heart thumps when you automatically identify at least five ways to lift a piece or three. Four of them are easy, if you're playing a long game.
Your fingers curl. You could still do it.
But that's not who you are anymore. Jennifer's a civilian. She's out of the game.
You're out of the game.
But the exhibition is still vulnerable.
You watch, waiting.
#
It's an accident that you see her. Sometimes down in the archives you forget how long you're working for, and someone sends for you to make you take a break. It's while you're being led to the front door by Earl the security guard that you see her.
Blonde hair. Blue, blue eyes. The blue eyes you've been dreaming of for weeks now.
You stop automatically. She bumps into you.
"I'm sorry," the woman says, automatically, not even stopping to look at you. Carrying on her way, eyes sliding up to the cameras.
Exactly where you would look if you were casing the joint.
You open your mouth to say, "It's okay," but instead something else comes out.
"Tara?"
The woman - Tara - whips her head back around.
She says, "Sophie?" in the most shocked tone you've ever heard.
#
Tara talks a lot more than you've imagined the owner of the blue eyes might talk. She talks energetically, and shakes your shoulders with long perfect fingers, and she's beautiful.
Apparently, she says, you have left a family behind. A man named Nate, and the three kids-
You shake at that for a moment, because you don't feel like a mom, you can't be a mom, you can't have a husband, there's no ring and you know from Marsha that you like the feel of soft skin and curves under your hands, not angled planes and hard flesh, and-
"It's a metaphor," Tara says, and you like what humour does to her voice. Makes it huskier. "They're just your team. Jeez, Soph. You look like you were about to have a heart attack."
She says Soph easily. Like Sophie's really your name.
You try it out in your head. Sophie. Sophie?
It's not right. It's not your real name. You know that much for certain.
"They've been looking for you, Sophie." Tara's smile is soft, almost longing when she adds, "They miss you."
You don't know what that means.
#
Not until Tara puts her hand on the small of your back, and takes you out to the car. Her heist on your museum's forgotten in favour of taking you home.
It's a 15 hour drive, over 1500km. It would be quicker to fly, but she insists on driving you. You drive with the top of her car down. You're not even sure if it is her car, but Tara's laughing and you don't care.
You stop partway as a place called Red Bluff. The town is full, because it's late September and time for some annual fair. Tara laughs as she takes you to the tail end of it, and she's a Grifter too; you ride the Giant Wheel for free four times.
It stops at the top, and Tara looks out at the view. You look at her, and you don't have to memorise the curves and planes of her face. You already know Tara. Your heart thumps when she catches you staring at her, and she deciphers you incorrectly.
"We'll have you home soon enough, Sophie," Tara tells you. "Just lie back and enjoy the moment."
You still don't feel like a Sophie.
#
You share a bed in a hotel in town, because the fair means the town is full to bursting. It's a double bed, but Tara doesn't hesitate. Your heart thumps as she strips down to her underwear, matter-of-fact.
She catches you staring, and misinterprets it. "I wasn't expecting to stop," she says, waving her hands at the hotel room.
"Why did you?" you ask.
"Are you kidding me?" Tara frowns, like she can't believe you're asking. "You saved my life, Sophie. You don't remember?"
You shake your head. You wish you remembered saving the elegant woman in front of you, sitting without self-consciousness in bra and panties in front of you. You wish you remembered this woman with a look of gratitude, saved up just for you.
"Maybe I didn't tell you," Tara says. She pats the bed and makes you sit down next to her. She doesn't know how much she's distracting you. "After we worked together - Paris, London, Dubai - I owed you a favour for something we did on a job. You called in that favour three years ago, and I worked with your team for a year while you couldn't. Working with them… reminded me that if I'm Grifting, I should be having fun. It's not all about the money."
"So I saved your life-"
"-by lending me your dysfunctional family, yeah." Tara laughs to herself. "I probably never did tell you."
You feel oddly paranoid. "Did you ever tell them?"
"Christ, no," Tara says. "They have egos bigger than ours, darling. Their heads would explode."
You laugh even though you have no mental image of these people, and then you try not to shiver, because she called you darling, and that makes you feel more than any name has yet.
#
You strip to your underwear too, and lie awkwardly on the bed, not touching Tara, because you think if you start, you might never stop. She mutters something about being up in time to grab a picnic breakfast and watch the sunrise.
In the morning, you wake up with your limbs intertwined. Her skin is smooth and warm against yours. It's later than you intended; the small room's already flooded with morning light.
Tara doesn't even startle when she wakes and sees you. She smiles. It's like you were up early enough to see the dawn anyway.
#
Tara drives below the speed limit all the way to rainy Portland.
It's like she's dragging out the inevitable.
#
The four individuals in the restaurant stop what they're doing and run towards you in unison.
They're babbling madly, excitedly, at you. There's a cup of tea pushed in your hand, just the way you like it, and there's a man with blue eyes who keeps smiling and smiling at you. The girl with blonde hair won't leave you alone, and the terribly handsome black guy who's wearing a shirt for reasons unknown to god and man keeps laughing (and the blonde girl swears he hasn't even smiled since you went missing) and the scary man with the eyes even cracks a smile or two.
And Tara backs away from you, a step at a time, a soft and sad and longing expression on her face when she sees you with your "family".
You smile and clasp hands and hold onto their shoulders, and you wish you remembered them, but you don't. You don't.
The only thing you remember is backing out of the door, her beautiful face cracked with that expression.
Like she wishes she was where you are.
"Thank you, Tara," the man with the blue eyes says, and both his hands clasp around yours.
His eyes aren't the blue eyes you dreamed of, but maybe they could be.
#
You last for about ten minutes, and then you're out of the door and running.
Tara's sitting in her car, staring at the restaurant like it's done her personal harm, and she jolts when you climb into the car next to her.
"Take me home," you say, unsteadily. "I don't remember those people. I remember you."
"You'll remember them," Tara says, firmly. Like she's trying to convince herself while trying to convince you.
"I remembered you," you insist.
Tara frowns a little. "I don't have a home to take you to."
"Then let me come with you. You said we worked together before. Let's be a team again." You're speaking fast. You're desperate. She still might leave you, and then where will you be? Stuck with those people who don't know you? Who call you the wrong name?
Those people might have been your family once upon a time, but the woman they know is gone. You're what's left behind, and you don't know them at all.
"I'm not-" Tara says. Her eyes are blue and warm and close. "I'm not your team. They're your family, Sophie."
"Stop calling me that," you say, because you don't feel like a Sophie. "I'm not Sophie and I'm not theirs."
Tara's hand is warm on your wrist; her fingers dig in like pencil points. "What are you then?"
"I think," you say, and it doesn't feel difficult, like speaking to those four people, the four people who called you Sophie and smiled like you were necessary. "I think I'm yours."
"Oh," Tara says.
It sounds like a breath, and it sounds like a prayer. It looks like she wants to answer, and you hold your breath, waiting for it.
Her eyes study you, patient and fond. "I think I can work with that, Sophie."
You don't know who you are, but you finally know where you're going. It's the uncertainty principle in its most human form, and you've never felt more certain of anything.
"Sophie's not my name," you say, automatically. "It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like me."
"What works for you, then, darling?" Tara asks, her hand curving into your hair as she leans in close, her mouth grazing yours.
You're too busy kissing her to answer, but really, darling sounds just about right. You'd say that names are overrated, but later, when you're alone, she makes you call her name again and again, using just her tongue and fingertips, and that sounds good too.
Author: mizzy2k
Giftee: ariestess
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Sophie/Tara, Sophie/OFC
Word Count: ~3300
Spoilers: All of it, to be safe.
Warnings: Amnesia-fic. 2nd person POV.
Disclaimer: None of it belongs to me!
Summary: You can't remember who you are, but you know what that light means: you're in the middle of a con.
You don't know your name, but you know your past: criminal.
Your future is just about as uncertain as your name.
Notes: Based in a roundabout way on your first prompt: Sophie gets amnesia & isn't sure which of her various aliases is real or not.
Borrowing telaryn's account because I have another thing in the queue. Thanks Tel! ♥
You're lying on a museum floor.
The wood flooring is smooth and cool under your cheek. This is the first thing you know, and it's the only thing you know for certain. Your lift your head and hair tumbles forwards into your vision. You push it away, and your limbs register their protest.
You're hurt, then. Your hand moves to the back of your head, and comes back sticky and wet.
You nearly throw up, but you're not new to this game and you manage to hold it back in time, because there's a small red light flashing on a small white box on the wall, and vomit does not belong at crime scenes.
You can't remember who you are, but you know what that light means: you're in the middle of a con.
You don't know your name, but you know your past: criminal.
Your future is just about as uncertain as your name.
#
The moisture on your finger is the same colour as the security light. Blood.
Something's gone wrong. Something's gone really wrong. You try to remember the play you were making, and your only memories are white light and maybe a car and a harness? What?
You don't know your name, but damn do you remember that you do not do heights.
That's why you became the master of the long con. You like to be able to walk through the front door. Preferably with an escort, someone to hold onto, and whisper sarcastic jokes in their ear. Someone to discuss (argue) about the best approach with. For a second, there's a name on your lips, but you don't feel like a Tara.
Tara. Ta-ra. You mouth the name under your breath. No. It sounds like a name you say. Tara. It almost sounds like a prayer when you say it out loud.
You climb to your feet, and look around the green room. Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn stares at you in her languid, confident, sensual pose.
You're in Los Angeles. The J. Paul Getty museum. You know this place.
How can you know that, but not know your own name? Your fingers fumble with your pocket. What you think is your face stares back at you from an ID card, impassive, unsmiling. JENNIFER SAYLES.
It's an alias. It has to be. Right? You dig in your pocket to see what else you've got on you. You only carry the minimum of equipment when on a con; it should help you decipher what's going on now.
There's nothing but a set of what looks like house keys and a wallet, which holds two hundred dollars in twenties, a platinum credit card with J SAYLES printed neatly on it, a library card and a blue TAP card for the Metro. No clues as to where the keys lead, or what kind of scam you're on.
Something's happened. Something to hurt you, and steal your memories. You don't know anything for sure, apart from you're a Grifter. Lies are in your veins. You run long cons. You want to be an actor. There's someone called Tara, and it's not you. You have a pocketful of items that belong to Jennifer Sayles.
Maybe you're not on a con? You do want to be an actor. You like the freedom of the stage. You like being in a story which is not your own. You're already in LA. You've always known you would quit Grifting at some point. Maybe you've already quit. Gone clean. Maybe you are Jennifer Sayles now.
It's plausible that you could be an art curator. Heaven knows you've stolen more art than some experts get to see in their lives. You're the upmost Jean Mettier expert in the world, and you can recognize all the paintings around you easily. Maybe you've gone clean and you haven't yet found your feet as an actor, and you found work in the art sector to pay the rent.
It's plausible. Jennifer. You could be a Jennifer. Yes, that sounds fine. Plausible.
Jennifer Sayles.
You try thinking it. It's Jennifer's sitting on the floor at the J. Paul Getty museum. Jennifer's been knocked out. Someone knocked Jennifer out and took her memories away. Poor Jennifer.
Poor you.
The alarms sounds after a while, and the security guards don't look too surprised to see you. Jennifer must work late a lot. Yeah, that sounds about right. Jennifer's a perfectionist. The police come, and an ambulance comes, and the paramedic asks her about the hospital.
Jennifer says she'd like to go now, please. She's lost her memories. The paramedic nods, like this happens all the time.
#
You don't mind hospitals. You can't remember the last time you were in one. The other patients in the ER seem to be shifty, nervous, but Jennifer feels like she should be quite calm. This is the place they fix you.
The doctor sees you and sends you for tests. No one comes to find you but the police, who take what little statements they can, and give even less information back. You're Ms. Jennifer Sayles, recently transferred from the MQB, in Paris. That's a little jarring, because you don't think primitive art is one of your specialities but everyone has to start somewhere. You're fairly sure you have an apartment in Paris. Maybe France made you decide to come clean.
Paris air does that to people, you think, as you lie in the CT scan machine. Makes you think romantic things about changing your life. Makes you fall in love with-
Someone. Someone with blue eyes. Someone who knows you better than anyone's ever known you.
It's not exactly a memory, but it's enough to startle you so much that they have to run the scan again. When you're wheeled to a ward and told you can finally sleep, you dream of blue, blue eyes.
#
No one comes to find Jennifer Sayles, but you don't get disheartened at that, because you've only recently come to LA from Paris. Making friends is difficult. Real friends, that is. Because you've spent your life playing make-believe, and truth is a little harder to find.
The police show you back to your apartment. It's a sad apartment. The fridge is empty apart from an almost empty jar of mustard, and the walls are bare. Perhaps you get enough art at work. The police watch you as you walk around the small apartment, touching each surface, trying to drag memories out of thin air.
The air remains still, and the memories remain elusive. The police look at you, sadly, like you don't have enough of a life to forget.
#
Two weeks of chasing dust motes in an empty apartment is too much. You ride the Metro, but it feels new, like you don't do it enough to justify the 15 days of credit left on the TAP card. You show up at work, and they don't know what to do with you at first. When they put you in the archive room, to scan some of the million pieces carefully wrapped in tissue and cardboard to display on the website, it feels like a relief.
You have no friends here, but at least you have somewhere to be. Somewhere certain. Somewhere unchanging. It feels like you've not had that before, and you like it. You think you grow to love it, and you start making friends. There's a new intern called Marsha with long blonde hair that falls straight to her waist, and she doesn't know about your accident, so she doesn't treat you like a million dollar vase.
You don't talk much to her, but sometimes she leans into your space, and your mouth goes dry.
After three days of working with her, you think you might accept her invitation for a drink, but something in her brown eyes, staring at you, stops you still, and you shake your head, suddenly shy.
"As a friend," Marsha pushes, her own eyes suddenly downcast, her friendly touches drying up immediately. You're not a liar yourself anymore, but you can spot them from a mile away.
Marsha means as a date, and she wouldn't have asked if you hadn't been open to it, but you can't say yes now without looking like a contrary fool.
"A friend would be nice," you say, too quickly. She knows you've seen her lie, but she doesn't call you out on it.
#
When you go out on your drink, two of the security guards from the museum join you, Earl and Johnson. The four of you laugh into the small hours. Sometime after midnight, someone calls you Gretta.
"This is Jennifer," Marsha tells them, loud in the way only a tipsy person can be, when their volume dial can only switch between too quiet and too loud.
"Sorry," the woman with black hair says to you, "you look like someone I used to know."
#
You take Marsha home anyway, to your sad little empty apartment. She swears like a sailor and kisses you like she's trying to convince you of something.
You remember a night like this, but with a man you didn't love, lying there and making the motions.
It's better than that with Marsha, but it's not love.
When you wake up, Marsha's back is to you; she's as far away from you on the bed as she can possibly get. You try to pull her back, to kiss an apology into her shoulder, but she pulls away.
"You called me Tara," Marsha says, and pulls a face. "Bad break-up with an ex?"
"I don't remember," you say.
Marsha's mouth is an uncertain line, which only curves more downwards when you tell her about the amnesia, that you don't remember anything.
"You could have a family, Jennifer," Marsha shouts, picking up her clothes, and storming to the door without even putting her shoes on. You don't know why she's so angry. "You could have a husband or a wife or children, and how would you know?"
You stare after her, but let her leave.
You've been wondering the same thing.
You've been wondering if you care if it's true.
#
You think once, daringly, they haven't come looking for you, so what does it matter if you don't care about them?
The thought feels like ash. Marsha transfers to the front desk. You don't even talk to the next intern they send down to work with you.
#
You think you might have been here on a con after all.
You only find this out a week later, when a Jean Mettier exhibition opens up on the main floor. Your heart thumps when you automatically identify at least five ways to lift a piece or three. Four of them are easy, if you're playing a long game.
Your fingers curl. You could still do it.
But that's not who you are anymore. Jennifer's a civilian. She's out of the game.
You're out of the game.
But the exhibition is still vulnerable.
You watch, waiting.
#
It's an accident that you see her. Sometimes down in the archives you forget how long you're working for, and someone sends for you to make you take a break. It's while you're being led to the front door by Earl the security guard that you see her.
Blonde hair. Blue, blue eyes. The blue eyes you've been dreaming of for weeks now.
You stop automatically. She bumps into you.
"I'm sorry," the woman says, automatically, not even stopping to look at you. Carrying on her way, eyes sliding up to the cameras.
Exactly where you would look if you were casing the joint.
You open your mouth to say, "It's okay," but instead something else comes out.
"Tara?"
The woman - Tara - whips her head back around.
She says, "Sophie?" in the most shocked tone you've ever heard.
#
Tara talks a lot more than you've imagined the owner of the blue eyes might talk. She talks energetically, and shakes your shoulders with long perfect fingers, and she's beautiful.
Apparently, she says, you have left a family behind. A man named Nate, and the three kids-
You shake at that for a moment, because you don't feel like a mom, you can't be a mom, you can't have a husband, there's no ring and you know from Marsha that you like the feel of soft skin and curves under your hands, not angled planes and hard flesh, and-
"It's a metaphor," Tara says, and you like what humour does to her voice. Makes it huskier. "They're just your team. Jeez, Soph. You look like you were about to have a heart attack."
She says Soph easily. Like Sophie's really your name.
You try it out in your head. Sophie. Sophie?
It's not right. It's not your real name. You know that much for certain.
"They've been looking for you, Sophie." Tara's smile is soft, almost longing when she adds, "They miss you."
You don't know what that means.
#
Not until Tara puts her hand on the small of your back, and takes you out to the car. Her heist on your museum's forgotten in favour of taking you home.
It's a 15 hour drive, over 1500km. It would be quicker to fly, but she insists on driving you. You drive with the top of her car down. You're not even sure if it is her car, but Tara's laughing and you don't care.
You stop partway as a place called Red Bluff. The town is full, because it's late September and time for some annual fair. Tara laughs as she takes you to the tail end of it, and she's a Grifter too; you ride the Giant Wheel for free four times.
It stops at the top, and Tara looks out at the view. You look at her, and you don't have to memorise the curves and planes of her face. You already know Tara. Your heart thumps when she catches you staring at her, and she deciphers you incorrectly.
"We'll have you home soon enough, Sophie," Tara tells you. "Just lie back and enjoy the moment."
You still don't feel like a Sophie.
#
You share a bed in a hotel in town, because the fair means the town is full to bursting. It's a double bed, but Tara doesn't hesitate. Your heart thumps as she strips down to her underwear, matter-of-fact.
She catches you staring, and misinterprets it. "I wasn't expecting to stop," she says, waving her hands at the hotel room.
"Why did you?" you ask.
"Are you kidding me?" Tara frowns, like she can't believe you're asking. "You saved my life, Sophie. You don't remember?"
You shake your head. You wish you remembered saving the elegant woman in front of you, sitting without self-consciousness in bra and panties in front of you. You wish you remembered this woman with a look of gratitude, saved up just for you.
"Maybe I didn't tell you," Tara says. She pats the bed and makes you sit down next to her. She doesn't know how much she's distracting you. "After we worked together - Paris, London, Dubai - I owed you a favour for something we did on a job. You called in that favour three years ago, and I worked with your team for a year while you couldn't. Working with them… reminded me that if I'm Grifting, I should be having fun. It's not all about the money."
"So I saved your life-"
"-by lending me your dysfunctional family, yeah." Tara laughs to herself. "I probably never did tell you."
You feel oddly paranoid. "Did you ever tell them?"
"Christ, no," Tara says. "They have egos bigger than ours, darling. Their heads would explode."
You laugh even though you have no mental image of these people, and then you try not to shiver, because she called you darling, and that makes you feel more than any name has yet.
#
You strip to your underwear too, and lie awkwardly on the bed, not touching Tara, because you think if you start, you might never stop. She mutters something about being up in time to grab a picnic breakfast and watch the sunrise.
In the morning, you wake up with your limbs intertwined. Her skin is smooth and warm against yours. It's later than you intended; the small room's already flooded with morning light.
Tara doesn't even startle when she wakes and sees you. She smiles. It's like you were up early enough to see the dawn anyway.
#
Tara drives below the speed limit all the way to rainy Portland.
It's like she's dragging out the inevitable.
#
The four individuals in the restaurant stop what they're doing and run towards you in unison.
They're babbling madly, excitedly, at you. There's a cup of tea pushed in your hand, just the way you like it, and there's a man with blue eyes who keeps smiling and smiling at you. The girl with blonde hair won't leave you alone, and the terribly handsome black guy who's wearing a shirt for reasons unknown to god and man keeps laughing (and the blonde girl swears he hasn't even smiled since you went missing) and the scary man with the eyes even cracks a smile or two.
And Tara backs away from you, a step at a time, a soft and sad and longing expression on her face when she sees you with your "family".
You smile and clasp hands and hold onto their shoulders, and you wish you remembered them, but you don't. You don't.
The only thing you remember is backing out of the door, her beautiful face cracked with that expression.
Like she wishes she was where you are.
"Thank you, Tara," the man with the blue eyes says, and both his hands clasp around yours.
His eyes aren't the blue eyes you dreamed of, but maybe they could be.
#
You last for about ten minutes, and then you're out of the door and running.
Tara's sitting in her car, staring at the restaurant like it's done her personal harm, and she jolts when you climb into the car next to her.
"Take me home," you say, unsteadily. "I don't remember those people. I remember you."
"You'll remember them," Tara says, firmly. Like she's trying to convince herself while trying to convince you.
"I remembered you," you insist.
Tara frowns a little. "I don't have a home to take you to."
"Then let me come with you. You said we worked together before. Let's be a team again." You're speaking fast. You're desperate. She still might leave you, and then where will you be? Stuck with those people who don't know you? Who call you the wrong name?
Those people might have been your family once upon a time, but the woman they know is gone. You're what's left behind, and you don't know them at all.
"I'm not-" Tara says. Her eyes are blue and warm and close. "I'm not your team. They're your family, Sophie."
"Stop calling me that," you say, because you don't feel like a Sophie. "I'm not Sophie and I'm not theirs."
Tara's hand is warm on your wrist; her fingers dig in like pencil points. "What are you then?"
"I think," you say, and it doesn't feel difficult, like speaking to those four people, the four people who called you Sophie and smiled like you were necessary. "I think I'm yours."
"Oh," Tara says.
It sounds like a breath, and it sounds like a prayer. It looks like she wants to answer, and you hold your breath, waiting for it.
Her eyes study you, patient and fond. "I think I can work with that, Sophie."
You don't know who you are, but you finally know where you're going. It's the uncertainty principle in its most human form, and you've never felt more certain of anything.
"Sophie's not my name," you say, automatically. "It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel like me."
"What works for you, then, darling?" Tara asks, her hand curving into your hair as she leans in close, her mouth grazing yours.
You're too busy kissing her to answer, but really, darling sounds just about right. You'd say that names are overrated, but later, when you're alone, she makes you call her name again and again, using just her tongue and fingertips, and that sounds good too.