Don't Stop Believing
Characters: Meg and Mojo Setting: Music room, afternoon
After her encounter with Evan, Mojo really didn’t know what to expect of the day. She’d already been bracing for spending it walking on eggshells, hoping for it really after Caroline’s death. It had thrown her in ways she hadn’t anticipated, though Mojo couldn’t have anticipated that happening at all.
She felt like maybe she should’ve, though; the pieces of warning had been there. Giving convicts liquor, removing Dominic with no explanation, forcing public humiliation of Ryan and Caroline... how else was it supposed to add up? If she thought about it, Mojo couldn’t see an outcome that didn’t involve someone breaking.
But the pretense of this being a safe place was still there, and it was easier to buy into it than to focus on what was gnawing at her. So if that meant cruising over to the music room after dropping off her loot? Mojo could play ball. She figured she was a touch early, even, just lingering in one of the beanbag chairs with the book of karaoke songs in her lap, idly flipping the pages with a grin.
Really Meg had no interest in the administration’s attempt to increase socialisation or whatever bullshit term they were calling it but she needed something from them and until she had it, the best thing she could think to do was play ball. So she’d messaged Mojo who, on the journals at least, thankfully seemed alright - a little strange but certainly not setting off any alarm bells - and set up a meeting, only afterwards realising she should probably clean up a bit given she hadn’t showered or changed her clothes in a few days.
Although she wasn't the type to take a long time getting ready for anything by the time she'd washed, dressed and tamed her hair into vague submission, she was on the verge of being late. Dragging on her boots and grabbing her room key, she headed out, caught slightly off guard by how cool it was in the courtyard and realised she hadn't actually left her room in almost two days. Briefly wishing she'd put on something warmer than the shorts and ripped band t-shirt she had on but not caring enough to enough to go back and change, she hugged her arms around herself and set off for the music room.
Arriving to find someone already there and apparently busy, she hovered on the threshold of the room, caught up in a moment of uncharacteristic uncertainty. "You Mojo?" she asked, the Southern twang more prominent in her voice than usual after a couple of days of not talking.
“That’d be me,” Mojo answered at the sound of Meg’s voice, flipping the book shut with a finger between the pages, “And if I knew they had ‘Barracuda’ on this thing, I would’ve been down here waaaaay sooner. Love it.” She was grinning as she looked up at last, hair pulled and tied into a mess of black strands that spilled unevenly towards the collar of Mojo’s overshirt. Her first impression? Was that they shared fashion sense (or lack thereof), and that stretched her smile wider as she looked Meg over.
“Dr. Meg, I presume?” she joked with a slowly-raised eyebrow, “And nice shirt, I love thinking of, like, interns or something that run this place having to go second-hand shopping for stuff like that.” She laid the songbook down by her beanbag chair, slipping out of it languidly and moving closer. “C’mon in and chill, yeah? I don’t think there’s an uncomfy chair in the room. Or a real one with legs, even.”
Considering Meg didn't like a whole lot of people it caught her by surprise that she found herself smiling a little at Mojo's greeting, the older girl's relaxed demeanour putting her at ease. She wasn't ready to get chummy or discard the 'strange' label yet, particularly given Mojo's choice in karaoke songs, but it was definitely a start. "Ya presume right," she replied, stepping into the room and letting her eyes wander and take in the surroundings as she ambled over to one of the bean bags. The comment on her shirt had her glancing down at it, a huff of amusement passing through her lips at the image the other girl described. "Nice thought," she said, dropping herself down onto the squashy seat. "Though I gotta say I kinda miss the whole not having to decide what to wear in the morning."
Mojo nodded a little as she paced around the front of the music room, light and energetic on her feet even if she’d been docile a moment before. “I get that, for sure. But as nice as it was doing zero-effort apparel, and as fun as a jumpsuit is for a striptease?” she said then, grinning wider, “Orange does nothing for me.” Mojo chuckled richly, finally stopping her movement by the piano and leaning against it. She watched Meg for a moment, smiling over the wander of her gaze around the room and herself. “Still think this whole thing’s kinda trippy?” Mojo asked with a shrug at the room around them. “I know I do, and not in the fun ‘let’s drop acid and swap clothes’ kind of way any more.” Not with a body count or the idea that people could be punished or yanked away with no explanation.
Perhaps because it was in such sharp contrast to the emotions that had been suffocating Meg since Dominic's removal, the blonde found Mojo's good mood almost infectious, her own smile widening in response. "Don't do a whole lot for me neither but I aint never been one to let that stop me, I'm a sucker for neon," she chipped in, toeing off her boots and pulling her legs up underneath her. "The striptease though I'll take your word on." The smile dimmed however at Mojo's assessment, replaced by an expression of disgust. "More like a headfuck," she said, thumb instinctively going to twist her wedding ring. "Least in prison you kinda knew what you were getting, here though..." She trailed off and shook her head.
That expression wasn’t lost on Mojo, it was an immediate red flag to catch, a clear sign that the weird shit they’d all been enduring had touched Meg more personally on some level. “Yeah, I didn’t really know what to expect in prison,” Mojo admitted with a shrug, “I mean, I was only in for like a month or something? All I had to deal with was getting macked on by other chicks and all the shit of actually being locked up. Which was more boring than anything else, I guess.” Sure, in time it would’ve stifled her with the idea of losing so many years, but it seemed as if Mojo had been spared that fate. “Something happen in here? To you, I mean,” she clarified, “Not, like, with that Caroline chick or anything.”
In truth Meg hadn’t been in prison that much longer than Mojo had and most of the time she was there she hadn’t exactly been fully present but she had grown up surrounded by people more than familiar with the inside of a prison cell and hearing them talk about life on the inside so prison hadn’t exactly been a culture shock for her. She didn’t say that however, nor did she share her own experience of prison which had largely revolved around being on suicide watch and bouts of solitary confinement, instead she just span her ring around her finger watching as the skin around it started to turn pink. The direct question she didn’t ignore though, glancing up at the other girl. “Yeah it did,” she replied, making no attempt to hide the bitterness that flooded into her voice. “Four days I had him back, four. Then they took him away and it’s like he weren’t even here at all, like it was just some kinda fucked up dream I had.”
Him, Mojo thought with a slight frown, a faint pursing of her lips. It took her a second before the possibility unfolded for her; they’d lost two people so far, one man and one woman. An accidental death and a removal. “Shit,” she murmured in realization before Mojo’s legs folded under her, her back settling against the piano’s side. How close they’d been, Mojo had no clue. But the agonized edge to Meg’s voice matched something in her downturned eyes that seemed like the emotional equivalent of a car crash. And Mojo could relate to that. “Why?” she asked eventually, not guessing for the details she assumed to this point.
Of all the follow-up questions she could have asked, really it wasn’t that surprising that ‘why’ was the one Mojo had gone with but that didn’t make it any easier to hear, landing on Meg like a punch to the gut. “Good fucking question,” she replied, bitterness now joined by a touch of the hysteria that had been dogging her. “Been trying to figure that out ma self but I aint got there yet.” And with her journal post going largely ignored, she was no closer than she had been after receiving the administration’s message.
“Well, what did they tell you?” Mojo asked, scowling over the lack of answers. “Because it’s Tantric-levels of fucked if they expect us to form a community or whatever bullshit, and then not be given answers when they disrupt it.” And she doubted Meg was thinking that clearly on it, but even if she felt pangs for the other girl? Mojo was still detached from it, feeling more like a spectator with her misery.
“My boyfriend died before I landed in jail,” she offered in a quiet voice, feeling like at least that loss was something similar to Meg’s plight. “I know it’s bullshit when people say they know what you’re going through? But I feel like there’s some overlap, y’know? In case you ever need to talk or take a swing or... yeah, I’ll just shut up,” she finished, voice a low mutter throughout. Sometimes it would probably be nice to not put a joke in everything, but no one had told Mojo.
Meg ran her hands over her face, the words of the administrators’ message as clear in her mind as they had been when she first read them. “That he’d been put in ‘nother facility for the safety of someone I’d done something with,” she replied. “Been trying to suss what the fuck it was and who the fuck they’re talking about but I got nothing.” Her fingers slid up to her hair where they tangled amongst the curls as she took hold, her frustration palpable. “I gotta go back to ‘em, see if they’ll actually tell me something useful.”
The way Mojo’s voice changed as she spoke about her own loss cut through everything for a moment and Meg glanced up at her, surprise colouring her expression. Kyle, hell even Beckah, had said they were there if she wanted them but it was clear from the way the older girl spoke that she actually got it in a way the others couldn’t and she bobbed her head in thanks. “‘ppreciate the offer,” she said, voice equally quiet. “Don’t let me go taking swings at you though, shit like that’s what got me here.” And, because she wasn’t as self-absorbed as she believed herself to be, added. “M’ sorry to hear ‘bout your boyfriend. What happened?”
“Well, I could probably take a hit,” Mojo assured her with a hint of a grin, “So if it’s do that or do something that’ll get you locked in the stocks? Do that.” And although she hadn’t expected to find it this way, Mojo was realizing that the somber turn of their talk was exactly what she’d needed to calm her zeal. “It was... god it was so stupid,” she answered then, letting her head fall back against the piano.
“We were going to some party, and Scott, my boyfriend? He was only twenty,” Mojo recalled quietly, “Which didn’t stop us from getting all sloppy-drunk before we even hit the road. So we’re driving and he’s spending more time trying to put a hand up my skirt than watching the road, so I tell him I’ll give him a reason to keep his eyes ahead?” Another smile, this one more bitter with the recollection before Mojo continued. “And I climb in his lap and we start doing our thing. Then he drives through the guard rail, I get thrown from the car, and he takes half an hour bleeding out while I’m just... just trying to be there. Hold his hand, stop some bleeding, keep him conscious until paramedics show up. None of it mattered. I tried and all I got was charged with his fucking death.”
“I ain’t in a position to judge you for doing something stupid,” Meg said, a wry twist pulling at her mouth. She didn’t say anything else though, listening to Mojo speak and feeling both a strange kind of catharsis in the other girl’s story and an all too keen sense of empathy, memories of Dominic shot and bleeding rushing forward in her mind. Difficult as it was though, she forced them back, focusing instead on Mojo and the anger she felt rising on her behalf. “That fucking sucks on so many different levels,” she said, shaking her head.
Mojo could only shrug a shoulder at that and give a little huff of agreement, something close to a laugh but not quite. “Like I said, I know how stupid it was. I just... I don’t even know. I didn’t really get a chance,” she muttered, “And if it was a year or two? Sure, I’d say I owe that. Nope, fucking twenty.” That was why this place mattered to her already. It was a fair chance for the lot of them, a do-over. “You and your man, Dominic, right? I remember seeing the charges on the computer, but what was the deal there?” she asked, not wanting to dwell on her own.
“Twenty?!” Meg exclaimed, eyes going wide with disbelief. “The fuck?” She might not exactly be hot on the legal system but she’d heard enough over the years to know an unfair sentence when she heard one. Mojo seemed eager to change the subject though and Meg couldn’t really blame her for that even though she knew thinking too much about Dom was a slippery slope. “Yeah Dominic,” she said, looking down at her wedding ring. “Me and him, ‘Bonnie and Clyde for the Facebook generation’ they called us.” She let out a humorless little laugh. “Sounds fucking stupid don’t it?”
Mojo was quiet over that before a crooked smile split her lips, chased by a rough chuckle of her own. “Honestly? Yeah,” she agreed, “So you just kicked off a spree for the hell of it? Why?” It had her curious as hell, raising a mental itch that left Mojo wondering. Was it to chase some rush together? Like she had with Scott multiplied by some absurd number? Mojo could respect that, if the name given by the press meant what it implied.
It wasn't the first time Meg had been asked that question, journalists, lawyers and shrinks had all posed it to her and they'd all been answered with a reply like 'why not?', 'boredom' and, on one notable occasion, 'because there's never anything good on tv'. She didn't want to fob one of those answers off on Mojo though even if it would have been easier to do so. "Never planned on it being a spree," she said, glancing up her. "Hell, never really had a plan full stop, it was just him and me together and shit kept happening." A ghost of a smile started to appear as happier memories bubbled to the surface. "I ain't saying it wasn't fun 'cause a fuck lot of the time it was but it weren't about the crime, it was about being together - the two of us against the world."
“Living the dream,” Mojo said in understanding, grinning wistfully at that. Some people had the impossible ones that were, simply put, chasing the rush. That was what Meg’s recollection sounded like to Mojo, and it made her own lazy-yet-spirited life on the outside even more missed. “Don’t give up on it, y’know?” she stressed then, thinking of the sharp shift between Meg’s downturn and this moment that had that faint smile on her lips. “Even if he got pulled from here, he’s out there. Hold on to that and the good stuff.”
"Don't often meet folk who get it," Meg replied, warming further to the older girl. Sure there had been people who'd said they did but with Mojo, it seemed genuine and that struck a chord with her. At the talk of not giving up however, she was powerless to stop the slump in her shoulders as her expression turned grave once more. "That what he was saying first few days here, carrying on, doing the stuff on our list but with him gone again....It's hard you know? He's my everything and if I'm not with him, all the shit just comes rushin' in..."
Quiet for a long, long moment there, Mojo knew that what she was hearing was personal; Meg practically ached with those words. And as fucked up as it was, with the murders and robberies? She felt for the younger woman. Sitting forward from the piano, Mojo’s shift to face Meg was slow as she crossed her legs. “My mom killed herself when I was three,” she offered abruptly, arms folding in her lap as one set of fingers began to worry the nails of the other.
“I guess she had postpartum pretty bad... point is, my dad brought me up. All we did was travel,” she recalled with a flash of something bright in her eyes, “And he taught me about the country, history, culture, how to live off the land. Everything really, but we never stopped moving; I didn’t live anywhere longer than maybe four months. He didn’t do real well after my mom passed, but he was always there for me. And you can still love someone even when they’re not entirely right, y’know? You love the person, not the problems.” She hadn’t talked about him since coming here, Mojo realized. And maybe that made how she felt about Caroline something else entirely.
“So when I was seventeen, we were down in Colorado, camping for a while. My birthday trip,” Mojo continued at length, “And I wake up one morning, go for my hike and a dip in the river and he’s gone when I get back.” She just let that hang for a moment, smirking bitterly. “Two of my bags are sitting where the RV is, and that’s all I knew. And yeah, I was pissed,” she said with a sharper note, “But when he didn’t come back? I had to keep going, and after a while I felt like not having him around now couldn’t touch what had already happened? I dunno, it’s hard to explain, but I felt like knowing I’d been happy once meant I could be again someday. Which sounds fucking flowery, but anything’s possible. Anything. And that’s a hope and a burden at the same damn time.”
As she listened to Mojo talk, Meg couldn’t help but be struck by two things; one, the parallels between their two relative upbringings and two, just how open they were being with each other, in a way she hadn’t been with anyone other than Dominic. “I didn’t know my mom neither, she left when I was four,” she said quietly, an air of resignation in her voice that had come to replace the resentment she felt towards the mother she barely remembered. “My dad...” She trailed off as memories assaulted her, phantom pains of old injuries whispering through her body as she closed her eyes. “Don’t think I would’ve ever got away from him if it weren’t for Dom. He came into my life and he made everythin’ seem better, the world got bigger.” She sighed and forced her eyes open again. “He’s the only person who ever thought I was worth lovin’ and I just...” Her voice cracked and she pressed her palms to her face. “Nothing that good’s gonna happen to me again.”
“It happened once,” Mojo pointed out softly, picking up on the unspoken bits. A bad home life and desperation would’ve broken Meg if not for Dominic, by the sound of it. “Did you believe it could then?” she asked, trying to plant that idea in the younger woman. “I mean... if he changed the way you saw things before, that’s something no one can take away even with their absence. It’s just something you have to hold onto. Which, jesus this place is making me sound fruity,” Mojo realized with a small laugh, scooting over to sit closer to Meg. “My point’s that you’re talking about impossible odds, yeah? But just from what you’re saying, they’re not impossible.”
Optimism had never really had a place in Meg’s life, experience having taught her time and time again that the world was a cruel, unfair place where nothing good could last, but somehow in spite of that she found herself wanting to believe in what Mojo was telling her. That holding onto some kind of hope, even if it was the smallest amount, wasn’t a bad thing. Hands leaving her face, she looked back at Mojo, eyes bright. “D’ya reckon?” she said, voice quiet.
“I do,” Mojo answered with a slight nod, “I mean, I’ve got just enough knowledge to know I don’t know anything? But there’s no sense in accepting something that hasn’t happened yet. All that does is let you deny yourself early.” Daring to reach out for one of Meg’s hands, Mojo gave it a squeeze as she put on a more solid smile and matched it with a flicker in her eyes. “Fuck. That,” she stressed quietly, “Us being here means we’re not being denied. And as much as I hate to quote fucking Journey of all things? Don’t stop believing.”
Letting out a small huff of what might have been amusement if it weren’t so coloured so much by exhaustion, Meg squeezed Mojo’s hand right back in a gesture that surprised no-one more than herself, the brunette’s odd mix of optimism and forthrightness having made it’s mark. “Better Journey than something religious, I’ve had enough Bible quotes thrown my way for a lifetime,” she said, a wry twist pulling at her mouth in spite of everything, including the tears still threatening to fall.
With the gesture returned, Mojo felt safe in hanging onto Meg’s hand, as if she could support the younger woman with the sustained contact. “So I should keep quoting them, then?” she asked jokingly, head shaking before Meg could answer, “I won’t for both of our sakes, don’t worry. But unless you were gonna hang around here anyway, you feel like grabbing a bite? I make a mean-ass sandwich.” Being in motion never hurt, neither did a change in scenery. And even if they didn’t help, either, Mojo wasn’t having a hard time considering this meeting a good thing indeed.
The mention of food triggered a sympathetic growl in Meg’s stomach and she dimly wondered when the last time she’d eaten anything substantial that she’d managed to keep down. “Sure, I could eat,” she said, unfolding her legs from beneath her and standing up, pulling Mojo after her before letting go of her hand. As much as she was loathe to admit it, the administration had actually done her a solid with asking for this meeting and while she wasn’t about to declare Mojo her new BFF, it felt like a connection had been made and she was grateful for that.