Rachel Eos (runrachelrun) wrote in darker_london, @ 2018-05-05 21:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | harley dumire, rachel eos |
Don't wanna live in fear and loathing (Rachel, Imogene, Harley)
Rachel refused to admit that staying up all night talking to Danny could have been a bad idea. He had managed to stop her obsessing over all the terrible things Imogene could do to her and her father, and she’d stopped reading everything people were saying online about Indigo and the massacre, so there was that.
News sites did not name Indigo – she was still a minor – and there was no mention on anything official that their main suspect was an unarmed teenage girl, but if you dug a little deeper (and Rachel dug) then speculation was rife. One of the ambulances leaving the scene had been attacked as well. There’d been a robbery and stabbing a few blocks over – everyone was saying that was related, but Rachel didn’t think Indigo would have tried to hold up a McColls.
After arriving at their house, Imogene had used Harley’s computer to log into all of Indigo’s social media accounts and delete them, but someone had managed to do a few screengrabs before that happened. Comments about the attack had started flooding Indigo’s YouTube channel and her Instagram and carried on in other parts of the internet.
Harley had made sure Rachel’s web presence was all but wiped out too, to keep her safe from anyone talking about her online. She’d managed to save her journal by creating a fake account, populating it with backdated nothing, then deleting that one in front of Harley. Getting rid of the rest made her feel like she was back at her old school, trying to get away from being Elaine the slut.
But it was worse now. The danger was real. Indigo was real. Imogene was really out there in the living room, freaking out. Indigo could show up here and kill her, kill her dad. Indigo had always hated her dad.
She’d grabbed Harley’s arm while Imogene was in the bathroom, either cleaning it or herself. “We should run,” she hissed, her voice quiet.
Harley curled a hand around the back of her head and kissed her forehead. “Indigo doesn’t know where we live, Princess,” he told her, his voice unusually calm. It made Rachel feel like she was overreacting, but she knew she wasn’t. Not this time. His calm felt like abandonment.
Harley had been panicked before Imogene arrived, a whirlwind of swearing and barricading the door and keeping the TV on for news (Rachel had seen footage of body bags being walked slowly out of the theatre before she’d escaped to her room) and if Rachel had told him then that they should have run, that she was ready to run, then – looking back now – he might have gone for it. They could have got out. But then Imogene arrived and Harley changed.
And now the sun was rising up between two buildings in the council estate and she’d been up all night and her body felt like it was humming like a power station and there were skittering things in the corner of her eyes and there was a long scream building up inside her that she was trying to keep pressed down. She’d told Danny that things had gone quiet about four in the morning and then, because she couldn’t sleep herself even though she was scared of making a noise and waking Imogene up, she packed a bag as quietly as she could. She had an escape bag already packed – always packed – and had stuffed all the money she had hidden around her room into it, but if she was not coming back then she wanted more than the one bag.
She was crying with relief, as she packed. She was going to stay at Zoe’s. But she was crying with guilt too. What about her dad? She didn’t want to leave him here with Imogene and potentially Indigo but she was too scared of Imogene to stay here. Imogene played with her mind. Imogene had pretended to be her father and trick her into coming back to the house so that she could send her to jail. She couldn’t live with Imogene. She had enough trouble with reality as it was. No, she loved her dad, she wanted to stay with her dad, but today, fear was winning. She was going to Zoe’s. She was getting away. Maybe her leaving would convince her dad to get away from Imogene too, but Rachel could only think about getting herself out. Feeling terrible about it - she could live with that, but she couldn’t stay.
Even before the massacre, Rachel had told Cai, if dad moves back in with Imogene, I’m gone. And Cai had said "Jesus Himself would have to stand in my way to stop me rescuing you if you have to live there again." She loved that boy.
Well, now she was going, and Jesus Himself would have to stand in her way to stop her. Rachel set her bags at the end of her bed, and slipped out into the lounge. She could hear her dad in the bathroom and knew he was awake.
She didn’t expect to see Imogene sleeping on the couch in front of the door, and froze as Imogene stirred. Her hair was the wildest mess Rachel had ever seen on her, and – Rachel knew this look well – she had definitely cried herself to sleep. Rachel didn’t know how to feel about that. Evil wasn’t supposed to cry itself to sleep. “Good morning, dear,” she said, her voice hoarse. Rachel pressed her lips together in a thin smile and moved into the kitchen, watching Imogene out of the corner of her eye.
The kitchen had never been so clean. The benches were spotless. “Um,” Rachel said, “Where’s… the kettle?” Where was anything?
Imogene rose, attempting to smooth her hair down with her hands. She smiled at Rachel as she stepped into the small kitchen and Rachel’s eyes widened in surprise as she backed out of it. Imogene retrieved the kettle from the cupboard, without explanation. The cupboard had been reorganised as well. “Let me fix your and your father some breakfast,” Imogene said.
“Um,” said Rachel again. Her stomach was a hard knot of nerves, and after staying up all night she was feeling both hungry and sick. She would have been happy with a cup of tea and a real breakfast at Zoe’s. Or, better, McDonalds, on the way to Zoe’s. Danny had said he would be there too. Hotcakes and Danny. Rachel could feel tears in her eyes thinking about it and tried to quickly rub them away.
She let Imogene have the kitchen, though, and drifted slowly around the living room, waiting for Harley while trying to pretend Imogene wasn’t there. This wasn’t possible, but she tried. The carpet looked like she’d gone at it with a professional carpet cleaner, although it must have only been the hoover. Every piece of furniture (though they did not have many) was neatly aligned with everything else in the room and crumb free. The only thing out of place was the couch pulled across the door, though Imogene had folded the quilt she’d been sleeping under. Harley’s quilt, Rachel realised, and wondered what her dad had used. It wasn’t as if they were the kind of household with spare quilts.
What had Imogene had told Harley? Rachel wondered if he could possibly know that Indigo was a demon. The thought made her uncomfortable; it bought him too close into knowing what Zoe and Cai were. Zoe would hate that so much, Rachel knew that with as much certainty as she knew anything, and for once it made her feel protective of Zoe. Now that was a strange role reversal. She’d felt protective of both Cai and Danny before, but never Zoe.
The bathroom door opened and Harley came out, freshly shaved, and wrapped his arms around Imogene, who, for a moment, burrowed into his chest. She was not very much smaller than him, but for a moment, she looked tiny. “Morning, my love,” he said, then looked over to Rachel once he’d released Imogene. “Morning, Princess.”
“Morning,” said Rachel, quietly.
“Made it through the night,” said Harley, and Imogene looked at him disapprovingly.
“Of course we did,” she said coolly, and inside Rachel’s head something went RUN. She found she didn’t want to say anything while Imogene was in the room, which meant waiting while they cooked breakfast. She tried a few times to catch her dad's eye and give him a can I talk to you look but he just smiled at her when he caught her looking and after a couple of failed attempts Rachel locked herself in the bathroom and had a shower and a panic attack.
When she emerged - after sitting in the shower, gripping her stomach, trying not to throw up for several long, painful minutes - breakfast was being served. It was not a normal Imogene breakfast because all she had to work with were Harley and Rachel ingredients, but she’d made simple banana pancakes with an old banana and a few eggs that hadn’t gone bad. The smell was, admittedly, making Rachel hungry. Dr Abby had said eating was a good grounding technique too. Her head felt terrible. Her eyes felt like dry fire. She wanted out.
“At ten o’clock Detective Ortley is coming to speak with us,” Imogene said, as they ate. “With me, specifically, but I said I wanted my family around me, for support.” Harley reached across the table and took her hand.
“Um,” said Rachel, quietly. “I was going to go to Zoe’s.”
Harley looked at her and frowned. “This isn’t the time for socialising, Rachel.”
“Um,” said Rachel, again. “I-”
“What are you going to tell them?” Harley turned back to Imogene.
“The truth,” Imogene said grimly. “That I do not know where my daughter is.”
“That all they going to ask?” Harley asked sceptically. “What about, what kinda gang is she part of? Where are they? Was this some new kinda terrorism?”
At least – thought Rachel, as she clenched her fists together on her knees under the table, as her heart raced – at least he doesn’t know about demons?
“Stop it, Harley,” Imogene put a delicate hand against her forehead. “I don’t know.”
“They’re going to expect you to know, I’m just trying to prepare you.”
“I don’t need you to try and prepare me,” Imogene snapped. “You have no idea.”
“No I really fucking don’t,” Harley agreed, and awkward silence descended on the table for a moment, before her said, “What’s wrong with your breakfast, Rachel?”
Rachel tried to swallow the lump in her throat as she unclenched one fist and picked up the fork. Trying to swallow the lump of pancake was even more difficult. She wanted to run. She really wanted to run. “Do they need to talk to me?”
“No,” said Harley firmly, as Imogene said, “I imagine so.”
“What? Why?” Harley demanded.
“Because she’s her step-sister,” Imogene snapped back. “I imagine they want to rule out the idea that Rachel had anything to do with it.”
“Of course she had nothing to do with it!” Harley yelled. Rachel flinched, and Imogene closed her eyes and let the volume wash over her.
“We know that,” she said, her voice calm. “The police are not mind readers, though. They need to ask.”
“You don’t need to use that tone.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m going to go and stay at Zoe’s,” Rachel blurted out, and both adults turned to face her. Harley dragged his hands over his face in a gesture of frustration.
“Rachel. I have already said this is not the time.”
“I’ll answer the policeman’s questions,” Rachel groped for a middle ground that would be logical, sensible. “But then I – I’m going.”
“Goddammit,” Harley said, reaching out to wrap a hand around hers. “We have to face this as a family.”
“She’s not my family!” Rachel jerked her hand away from his, pushing herself back from the table. Imogene put her head in her hands. “I didn’t marry into this – you dragged me!”
“You are not leaving this house!” Harley stood up too. “If you think I’m going to let you out of my sight when there’s a murderer on the loose then you’re an idiot. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be fine!”
“I said no!” Harley said, and slammed his hand down on the table, prompting a short, very sharp “Harley!” from Imogene. Rachel stormed into her room and slammed the door, then threw the tiny window open as far as it went, hoping the couple of inches of cold air against her face was enough to keep her from throwing up.