Margot Beauford (lostpages) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-03-18 11:15:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 35, margot bouchard |
Week 35: Wee hours of Friday morning
Characters: Margot Bouchard and Susan Hannigan (NPC)
Location: The winery/B&B in northern California
Summery: Margot seeks her best friends advice
Susan hummed idly as she worked on reheating the leftover’s from dinner that night on the little camp stove in their shared kitchen area. Being hungry had been a constant state of living ever since convenience stores and Taco Bells had ceased to be and, being the wiry woman she was even at 36, she was constantly feeling the clawing sensation in her belly. She’d been unable to sleep that night because it’d woken her up. It was only rice and red beans with jalapeno cheese whiz, but she felt guilty eating when she’d already had her share. Maybe she could convince Margie to go with her on a supply run tomorrow to see if there was anything they could scrounge up in the abandoned cars leading toward their little safety zone. That had been how they’d found the camper stove and a whole slew of clothes for the lot of them. People packed some crazy shit in their trunks.
A sudden noise startled her out of her cooking and she automatically reached for her gun -- a tick long-trained into her from her former life, and one that had proved on numerous occasions in her current one to be the one thing that saved her. She relaxed instantly when she saw the light shine off the familiar features of her best friend. Susan’s lips turned up in a half-smile.
“You’re still up? I’d’ve thought after today that you’d’ve hit the... sack... early.” The words trailed off as Susan felt alarm claim her. “Holy shit, what happened to your face?”
Margot had spent most of the last four hours in a brainless daze. No carefully mulled over thoughts were in her head, only the repeated images of what had happened once she shut the bedroom door behind her and Brian, filtering like a bad movie behind her eyelids. Sometimes even when her eyes were open, she could still see them, played out from the third person, and the darkened patch of skin across her cheek only throbbed more insistently. But when the sound of Brian’s sleep-heavy breaths stood as the only backdrop of her world in that moment, the utter shock finally started to wear away, revealing the sour truth of it all in its wake. He’d struck her: the snowballing decline in his civil behavior over the last two months had finally culminated to it’s inevitability--and Margot saw it clearly. It was the last straw.
His hand across her waist felt like a heavy chain where it had once been comfort and protection. She slipped out from under it and had waded through the dark hall for Susan’s room, only to be distracted by the light at the end of the hallway. Margot wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there when the floorboard under her weight creaked, and finally grabbed the blond woman’s attention. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before she noticed...
Margot instantly seized up in tears, her face tight with every negative emotion she had in her arsenal. “I--I dunno what to do...”
The instant she saw Margot’s tears, Susan moved around the counter and came rushing for her, arms pulling the smaller woman into her embrace. The leftovers could burn for all she cared.
“Oh, sweetie, don’t. Don’t cry. I’ll fuckin’ kill whoever did it, we just gotta make sure to drag him out of the house first or his screams’ll wake up er’rybody.” Margot curled into her friend’s shoulder, shuddering in the tide of choked sobs she’d been holding on to for hours. But she still shook her head.
Logically, she would’ve understood Susan’s sardonic tone as an attempt to make her feel better, but at the same time, she really couldn’t help but think the woman was being quite literal. She wasn’t exactly sure why the words twisted in her stomach like acid, but they did. It only added to her earlier statement; the one thing she did know, was that she just didn’t have a clue what to do from here.
“I can’t stay with him...” Margot choked back a thick breath in her sob, her face stinging with tears. “But... I can’t--”
“Brian did this to you?” Susan interrupted as she pulled back, her brown eyes widening before rapidly narrowing. “That... tweaker sonofabitch, I’ll kill him right now--!”
“No no nononono, please, Suz...” Margot grabbed onto her friend’s forearms before she could get away and shoot Brian between the eyes. Her expression, streaked by tears, was frantic, but genuine. Margot had enough sense to know you didn’t stay with a man who hit you, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still feel for the guy--however tainted those feelings were now. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t want to put Susan in such a horrific position.
“At least let me pistol whip him, fuck, Margie, your face--”
“He said he was---” Margot stopped herself before stumbling over the words. He said he was sorry. Just listening to them almost spilling out from her own mouth dropped her heart to the pit of her stomach. She cringed at herself, then hung her head for a moment--still holding on--trying to make sense of what had been, and what needed to happen now.
She pushed a shaken breath through her lips, the looked back up, meeting her friend’s eyes. “That’ll only make it worse.”
“As opposed to letting him just fucking hit you with no consequence?” Normally Susan was very, very rational about justice, but it had been domestic abuse that had gotten her into law enforcement to begin with. Her mother had been beaten to shit by her father so many times she’d had to have teeth capped. She’d been in the hospital once for three days when he’d pushed her down the stairs. Nobody had believed them. Seeing a man lay his hands on another woman in any capacity made her see red.
“I don’t care what the hell happens, he’s not gonna just get away with this, Margie.”
Margot rolled her lips together in tension and deliberation, then finally gave up and sat heavily down in a nearby chair. She put her face in her hands, and sighed into them. Normally she was a woman of quick, easy decisions in her former life -- what needed to be done in order to climb that ladder was done, without a second thought. Now, she still had no idea what to do.
“What--what if we leave?” The thought dawned as a far cry for hope, but it was the only lead Margot had. She looked up from her hands at Susan, seeking her input or approval desperately. Susan frowned at her, but it wasn’t the frown of disagreement. She made a noncommittal noise, going back to her food on the camper stove when she smelled something faintly burning. Margot looked at her, just a bit more distressed.
“I’m serious. We were planning on leaving eventually anyway, right?” Planned on leaving with everyone, of course, but the easy and immediate answer to the question of ‘what to do about Brian’ tugged at every fiber of her being. Might not have been rational, but Margot was still pretty rattled, and wanted nothing to do with any confrontation.
“He’s gonna be on us so fast, he’ll be coming out of us from the inside like that damn thing from Aliens,” Susan countered, pointing her cooking utensil at the younger woman before rapidly stirring the pot from the bottom and folding the contents over and over. She flipped the stovetop off with an audible click.
Margot went quiet, her lips pressed in a straight, anxious line before she shook her head, then hung it between her shoulders. Why did you make me? running over and over in her mind, worse when she closed her eyes to fight it back. Why did he have to make her need this conversation? Why couldn’t just one thing work out right?
Susan portioned out the food despite having had previous intentions of eating the whole pot by herself, bringing both little plastic bowls and utensils over to where her friend was sitting. She dropped the bowl into her lap wordlessly, then started to eat. Her face was pinched in thought.
“I should’a seen it coming.” The tang of jalapeno drifted up to her face from the bowl, which she cradled, but otherwise didn’t pay interest. Margot’s eyes squeezed shut, then opened toward the ceiling with her shaken sigh. “How many times do you read about this shit?” She stirred at the ‘meal’, again watching it with no small amount of displaced disdain. Susan remained silent. “I heard it a hundred times, but when it’s right there...” she trailed off, frowning deeply. God, she felt like such a damn fool.
“Eat your food. I’m tryin’a think,” came the older woman’s response. She didn’t want to think about stupid fucking Brian. If she thought about him anymore, she’d ignore Margot’s pleas and go put a bullet in his stupid fucking head while he slept, consequences be damned. Margot looked across the table, but stayed quiet.
She was silently thankful for being given a direction--something to focus on instead of being sucked into her own self-depreciation and anxiety. Margot’s thumb tapped at the tip of the spoon three times, as if it were a pen, then took a reluctant bite. They ate in silence for a few moments --Susan with obviously much more gusto-- before the other woman finally spoke up.
“There’s bound to be some sorta dope around here,” she said with sudden precision. “Xanax or some generic sleeping pills. I’ll find something. We’ll put it in his drink and sneak out when he’s dead to the world, figurativ’ly rather’n literally, though obviously the latter’s the better option--”
Margot felt her stomach twist, and it didn’t go well with the heart-burn inducing midnight snack. In time--and probably not much time--her lingering feelings for Brian would dissolve, but at the moment, she still cared about him, and that conflicted harshly with the equally strong need to be far, far away from him. She mulled over Susan’s list of possibilities, rather than focusing on the second part of the older woman’s plan. Her cheek pulsed with a dull ache every time she took a bite. They had run out of pain killers three weeks ago, which left one option. One that stuck out in her mind with a little edge of hope.
“We could get him drunk?”
Susan gave a snicker. “Dunno if there’s enuff liquor ‘round here to black him out altogether, Margie.”
“Could always try,” she said without color, the ire aimed at Brian’s insanely high tolerance. Margot pushed the cheesy mixture around with her spork. Susan hummed in acquiesce, finishing off her bowl a lot faster than she anticipated.
“We’ll do a run tomorrow and see what comes up,” Susan said at last.
Margot nodded quietly, though she had to admit, her friend’s acceptance eased the ball of nerves in her stomach, at least a little. Not enough to settle around the meal she didn’t want in the first place.
She set it under Susan’s gaze, and nudged it in the other woman’s direction. She was quiet for a moment, then continued quietly. “I need to get out for a while anyway.”