Shadowcrest: Sam & Louis
Sam left Ocean's Eleven early that morning, and the guards and the nurse couldn't argue about it when she was going to see Neil and Lou, yeah? Whatever, she wasn't going back there anyway. She'd showered and braided her hair, and she'd stood in that huge fucking closet and considered clothing items on both sides. Wearing Meredith's stuff felt fucked up, like she was trying to take the woman's place by sleeping in her bed and wearing her shit. Wearing anything of Neil's felt even fucking worse, yeah? Like she had something proprietary going on with the man who'd walked away from her. So, yeah, no, neither of those things was going to work. The scrubs from the hospital were sudsy-bathwater wrinkled, but at least they were clean, and she put them on and layered two socks on, to protect her feet or whatever and, after one last look in the mirror, she left the penthouse for the first (and last) time since her arrival. She wouldn't be going back there. She meant wheat she'd promised Meredith, yeah? She was backing the fuck out of Neil's life, and she wasn't going to be there when he came home, when Meredith came home, whatever.
She had one thing with her - Joey's heart in its box, cold from the fucking fridge - and that was in the hotel's laundry bag, white plastic with Venetian written across the center.
Luckily, Sam knew Gotham. She knew Gotham really fucking well, and she knew where Shadowcrest was. The seven years spent there without anyone might have been a big fucking blur, but the city was the same. The place never fucking changed, yeah? Even when Neil had run a mob family, Gotham was fucking Gotham.
She circumvented all the fucking drug dens, and by the time she made it to Shadowcrest she was sweaty and tired, black hair escaping from her braid, her feet sore as fucking ache. She tucked the bag into some shrubs; she'd find someplace to borrow the heart once she left, someplace pretty.
The mansion's size didn't make her bat a fucking eyelash, and neither did the sweet basement nest that Lou was calling his. When she walked into the space, she looked at Neil first, yeah? Looked for some sign of booze, of anxiety, of something. But he didn't give her much time to look, and he didn't give her much time to say anything. He excused himself, some shit about napping, and Sam knew him well enough to know that was bullshit. He was trying to avoid her, yeah? And he'd been doing that since he got back, and she wasn't stupid enough not to see it. But this was more blatant than all the skipped invites and, yeah, ok. She got it.
It made her rethink for a few seconds, because she got it, and staying in his door wasn't going to be a thing, and hitting him up for a place was something she backspaced over and deleted in her mind; she wouldn't follow up, and he wouldn't remember, whatever. But then he was gone, and there was Lou, and she could wait to figure out what happened next once she finished visiting her brother. It wouldn't be the first time she had to hoof it on her own, and it wouldn't be the last. If there was one thing she wasn't going to do, though, it was lean on other bitches. She was done with that shit. If she failed, she failed on her fucking own.
Lou was talking, and she sat down next to him on that red velvet, her knees spread and her elbows resting against kneecaps. Hands clasped in the air between her legs, she looked over at her brother. Her inky blue eyes were red from tears, but focused, and he looked better here, in this weird fucking place. It felt like losing him a little, because this shit, it wasn't any place she'd be back to, even if the opulence didn't tweak her. Like Tess, like Cal, like Joey, he felt lost to her. Even like Shane, yeah? "You look good."