- (tinieblas) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-04-09 05:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | !ocean's eleven, *narrative, sam alexander |
Narrative
Who: Sam
What: Getting settled and passing time
Where: Ocean's Eleven
When: Recently (and the past year, kind of)
Warnings/Rating: Language & themes
She spent a day in the hotel hallways, because she didn't know where the fuck to go. None of the doors seemed right, none of the ones she knew, and she wasn't wandering, no fucking way. She knew better than to do that shit after where Meredith ended up, yeah? And she'd ended up stuck in her own fucking time loops in the past. Yeah, no, no weird places. But she didn't want to get used to the hallways again. She'd lived in the fucking hotel's public areas for the entire fucking time that Neil was off swashbuckling or whatever. The whole point of being involved in hitting up that store in the Bronx was to get somewhere, to change shit, and she needed to keep sight of that. For her, it was too easy to avoid roots. Since Vegas, it had become some kind of unthinking defense mechanism. If she didn't have anything, she couldn't lose anything, and it was taking its toll on an already fragile mind.
It needed to stop.
She finally settled on Ocean's Eleven, because fuck everyone else. She liked Vegas; it felt like home, and she didn't need to be anywhere near Neil. Whatever, yeah?
She walked through, and she knew shit was weird before she saw the date on the newspapers.
2000. (2014 for Marvel, for Gotham, yeah?)
Ok, and then she had options. She could find people. Over a year in the past, and it was still the fucking hotel. Neil would be around, and he would be younger and ok. Gotham, yeah? Based on the date on the newspaper, she and Neil and Lou, they should all be in Gotham. Lou wasn't spewing locusts, Joey was still alive, Tess was still around, and Shane was actually a part of everyone's fucking life. Better, and she could go find them. Maybe the version of her that was there would disappear or some shit. Who the fuck knew, or maybe she wouldn't be able to find them at all. But she could try, and she spent a good day wandering and trying to decide. The bag slung on her shoulder was heavy with stolen gems and gold, and she could trade some in, but she waited. She needed to think this shit through.
She didn't really want to go back, yeah? That was her decision. Going back, that was just fake shit. And checking Marvel for Cris? That wasn't going to yield anything either. He wouldn't be there.
So, yeah, Ocean's Eleven. She left Vegas and drove out a half hour to Lake Mead, where the memories were few, and where the sky was fucking huge. She rented someplace shitty, despite having enough gems for better, and she got fake papers and her OSHA license. And it took a while, yeah? Months before she was clean enough and good enough to get a real place without anyone asking if she'd stolen the cash to pay for it. A bike, and quiet, a part-time job at the Bellagio's Gallery of Fine Art, plus weekends on construction sites to burn off the steam from the week; she was still a fucking adrenaline junkie, yeah? That far away from the bright lights, staying sober was easier. She drove in for work, and for NA meetings three times a week. And, ok, so she fucked up a few times. The wagon was easy to fall off, and man, she fell good, because she still hungered for the needle every fucking day. But the seizures were worse now, yeah? Bad, and getting it together after was harder. But she got back on that wagon; she didn't stay off like she normally did. No one telling her how fucked up she was, and no one looking at her like she was a problem, and no one making her choices for her. And, ok, so she was lonely, but she was good. Better than in a long time, and she got used to it.
But the calendar on the kitchen wall, it kept ticking off days. Closer and fucking closer to the day she went into Bellevue, the last day she saw Cris, the last day she talked to Neil, and then the day she got out, and she knew, man. She knew how this hotel bullshit worked, and she knew she'd have to go back to dealing with people again soon. It was like love/hate, yeah? She wanted to see the people she missed, but she didn't want to end up all fucked again. She tried to tell herself she was ok, better, whatever. Therapy, meetings, a job, a house, a dog (Rodin), and they were all good things. Twenty-four was different than twenty-three. But she also lived a completely stress-free fucking life, and people brought stress, yeah? And a year, a year wasn't that long at the end of the day, not for someone with her damage.
But time moved, like time fucking did, and she knew precisely when shit changed back. It wasn't some feeling, some sixth sense or something existential like that. No, it was the fucking journal that ended up at her door, a box and her old graphics tablet, lost when she'd walked back through the door. And all her shit, falsified for the past year, was real now. Her papers, her identity, and she tried not to feel stress about that.
She wasn't very successful.
Fucking great.