Re: Great Gatsby: Jude/Clem/Shane/Graham
Clem didn't care where she stayed, here or Gotham. The place didn't didn't matter even a lick to her. Long as there weren't zombies walking, she was glad of it. It was just as she told Graham when they'd been talking, she needed a soft bed and a real deep tub, and beyond that location didn't matter like it might once she was feeling more herself. Right now, she was entirely comprised of pretending, and that pretending hadn't seeped its way into her soul yet. It still felt fake, and she wanted it to feel real. She didn't want to become her momma, but it was looking more and more appealing to shove all the bad things away; dealing with them wasn't something she was keen on doing.
She'd been waking up nights screaming, shying back from some weight that wasn't pinning her down and prying her thighs wide, and she figured the best way to counter that was feeling safe as could be. Jude had made promises about Chloe and Alex, and she believed them some. She believed he wouldn't knowingly let a thing happen to her, but it was the unknowing part that worried her something awful. She couldn't deal with her other siblings just then, even if they came with consolations and soft words. She was a husk, and being a husk wasn't real good in a fight. But Graham, if Graham stayed, it would be just fine. Even Shane, wherever he was, was something safe now in a way that only folks that had lived in that damned door could understand. Humanity was a thing that was long gone, left in Vegas, and she wasn't real sure what it would take to get it back.
But Jude had found her storage unit, and it had the jewelry box her daddy had given her when she was small, and which he'd put something into every year on her birthday. There was her favorite cream mink, long to the ankles and thick, and she'd never been the type to worry after the critters that had died to make her feel pretty. Her daddy had given her that coat when she turned twenty-one, and she remembered him slipping it on her bare shoulders himself. The last thing in the unit were pictures, wrapped in ribbon, of Lore. She'd tied them up at sixteen, and she'd tucked them away, but they were real worn at the corners, the stack inches thick.
When the maid came telling her Graham was downstairs, she wrapped that mink around her, like it would protect her from something or another. Unpleasantness, maybe, because she was expecting some, and she made her way down in 1920s pajamas in sage. Her face wasn't swollen anymore, but her right eye, cheek and jaw were a nasty purple that hadn't managed to settle into green or yellow yet, and her lip was scabbed over where it was split from top to bottom. Everything else, all that other bruising, was hidden in swathed cream, and she joined them on the balcony like it wasn't odd to be outdoors in a mink in summer. She didn't say a thing, and she didn't hug Graham right off, thought it was plenty clear she wanted to.