Bella James Morrison McConnell (bella_mcconnell) wrote in btvsal, @ 2010-05-10 13:38:00 |
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Current mood: | calm |
Moving Forward
Who: Bella and Chloe
Where: Chloe's Sugar Shack
When: Saturday, May 8th, 2019
With a scarf wrapped around her head and large shades on her face, Bella McConnell walked into the original Chloe's Sugar Shack in hopes of seeing her best friend. Well, her best friend in 2000, Chloe Van Warren. Was it still Van Warren? Four months of being in the future, and she still had none of her original memories. She had spent most of those last four months on a contractually obligated tour, which obviously had eaten away all of her time. However, now she was back in LA and ready to figure out just exactly what she should really be doing. All this time, in the back of her mind, were Lindsey McDonald's words about how the world would end if she didn't go back. She wasn't even sure HOW to go back, but that was besides the point. It hadn't ended in a week, which made her a little suspicious of what he had said. Right now she just wanted to talk to someone who would be honest with her, and she knew that, if nothing else, Chloe would be honest with her and tell her what she really needed to do.
Chloe was there, which was an actual surprise now, as she was still busy in two bands. Van Warren was no longer together, but she still drummed for Suicide Messiah and Broken Sunrise, even if the lineups had changed a little over the years. The biggest differences that were obvious in the leggy blonde, as she sat behind the counter, were the severe burns she had along her right arm... and the extreme lack of that old, infectious smile. She didn't look miserable or anything... but she certainly didn't look like the old Chloe, either.
Bella actually stopped in her tracks when she saw Chloe. God, that wasn't what she expected at all. Then again, she still didn't know what had happened to a lot of people since she had last seen them eighteen years ago. She really hoped that she hadn't caused those scars like she had with the scar on her mother's face. Luckily, the store was empty at the moment, so Bella pulled off her shades. "Chloe?"
"Bells?" Chloe spun around, eyes wide. She knew the girl was... back to normal, as she'd spoken to Skylar, but it still did little to dull the shock of seeing her friend 'normal' again. "Hey... I... I was hoping to see you again eventually... how are you?"
"Yeah, it's me," Bella said to her. "I'm...I'm doing alright. Just got off a tour of the country. Apparently once they set those things in place, you can't really do anything to get out of them." No matter how much she had pleaded and begged. "How are you?"
"Same old same old..." The blonde sighed, giving a forced version of that old, sugar-happy smile. "How's the memory treating you?"
"You say 'same old same old' like I remember what that means," Bella pointed out. "Memory's still gone. I had to learn all of my songs so that I knew what I was supposed to be singing on stage."
"Oh. Well... considering everything that's happened to me, I'm ok. Not all happy-go-lucky like I used to be, not since I got hurt, but I'm mostly the old me, still. Kevin and Lucy are almost exactly the same..." She reached over and placed a palm on Bella's cheek, as if still in disbelief that the girl was here again.
"Can I ask what happened?" Bella was all but dying to know, but not in that 'tell me everything he said when he proposed' happy kind of way. A part of her really had to know if she had been the one to do that to her.
And Chloe could see that in her eyes. She immediately moved to comfort her. "Don't worry, honey... this ain't like Skylar. Nobody hurt me but myself. You know me and that magic..." She rolled her eyes, looking a bit ashamed. "I... got a bit carried away with trying to master it after Nica died, annnnd... ended up screwing up a lightning spell and burned... quite a bit of my body. I haven't touched magic since."
Bella slowly nodded. She hated herself for feeling relieved that she hadn't caused this. "I'm sorry to hear about Nica," she said. Ugh, shouldn't she already KNOW this stuff? She hated not having her memories.
"She pretty much drank her liver into oblivion. I had a hard time dealing at first. I'm... ok now. Haven't seen anyone in a few years now, but maybe one day." She smiled a little, giving a small shrug.
Bella arched an eyebrow. She couldn't help it. She hadn't exactly known Nica all that well in the past, but she certainly hadn't remembered her friend dating a raging alcoholic. "I didn't realize her drinking was that bad."
"She... drank a lot. So much that she didn't even get DRUNK that often. Her tolerance was that high. The problem was that because of that, NONE of us realized JUST how bad it was." Chloe sighed and shook her head. "So... do you know anything about the disappearances?"
Wow, she hadn't known that at all. About EITHER thing, apparently. "Um...no. Wow, I feel like I apparently constantly live under a rock, with how out of the loop I always am. Who disappeared this time?"
"Well, your brother, and a few of your friends." She blurted out in the typically Chloe way. "Brayden, Kim, Karissa, Courtney, Abbi and her friend Lynn, they all poofed. We think it might have been someone TRYING to get YOU back."
Bella blinked. Wow, other than Brayden and Abbi, she didn't know a ONE of those names, and she only knew Brayden and Abbi because they were her siblings. "That sounds about right," she said with a sigh. Of course, no one from the past asked her if she WANTED to come back, but whatever. "So, how do we fix that?"
"No idea. I gotta find out WHY they're gone first. I'm trying to contact anyone I know who still uses magic, who might be able to look into it for me." Like she was gonna try? Please.
"Actually, there was one person who talked to me about something..." Should she mention Lindsey McDonald. He's the one who seemed to know everything about everything, after all. "Do you recognize the name Lindsey McDonald?"
"It sounds... vaguely familiar? But it's not ringing any bells or setting off any inner alarms, no..." She said with a blink of those bright eyes, before finally just blurting this next part out. "It's so nice to see you normal again. Not a vampire or a bratty, bitchy human."
"He came up to me spouting some stuff about me having to return to the past to prevent something from happening," Bella admitted. "And...uh, it's nice to be normal? Well, sort of." She wouldn't quite call this normal.
"So... do you WANT to stay here? Or are you trying to get back to the past again?" The blonde asked, not wanting to try making the girl stay somewhere she didn't want to be.
"I...I don't know..." She finally admitted. "I don't want to leave Damon. I don't know if he can really handle it. But, this guy came to me and told me that, if I don't go back, then the world's going to end. I don't know if I can believe him, but I don't want to be responsible for the world ending."
"Well... there has to be a balance of some kind, sure. But I mean... if they're there NOW, and you're HERE... and we still exist, clearly this isn't end-of-the-world stuff YET. So for now? No worries." That's how Chloe's mind always DID work. If it wasn't right in front of her? She didn't fret about it.
"Well, that guy might know how to get them back as well," Bella said. "You know, fix what was broken or whatever?" She really didn't know how to phrase this kind of junk, after all.
"We'll work on it. Maybe... if you can find that guy? Send him my way. Maybe the two of us together can figure this out for you." If she could help make her friend's child happy again? Chloe would consider herself a success.
Bella opened her purse and fished out the business card that he had given her. "Maybe you two should talk then," she said to her, giving her the card. "If this is something worth actually fixing, then we should fix it."
"Alright... I'll call him. After we talk... where can I get you?" The blonde asked, honestly unsure of where the girl would be staying now.
"I'm staying with Damon still," she said to her. "We've got our own little place together." She grabbed a napkin and quickly scribbled down the number to it. "Cal anytime. One of us is always up."