OPEN | prompt nine | ROAD TRIP

[dondarrion]

prompt nine | R O A D   T R I P prompt style. you're in a car. good luck with that.

 

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( G R A C E | d e d u c t i o n s )

[aware]

[ Road tripping with a fourteen year old means double-duty behind the wheel. Not that Eamonn particularly minds and not that Grace thinks she's incapable of it either. But as far as he's concerned, they've broken enough rules already — crossing stateline after stateline without Grace's parents' explicit consent. Eamonn's discovering more and more as the days of his employment under them wear on: being as 'hands-off' as the Stewarts were could be as much a blessing as it was a curse.

He starts them off early and retires them early too. Grace is particular about her surroundings and Peek is particular about her particulars. They've only been driving for an hour and a half when he spies her yawning out of the corner of his eye. ]

I still t'ink you should be sleepin', Gracie.

[glimpses]

[ When she shakes her head, covering her mouth with one hand, the gesture is curt and quick, tinged with the barest traces of annoyance — not at the suggestion but rather at her own body for betraying her so quickly. There's no reason for her to be tired just yet, after all. (It's a combination of the warm weather and the motion of the car more than any physical exhaustion, neither of which she can help to any extreme degree.) ]

I don't want to.

[ She manages to keep any petulance from her voice, the phrase coming off as a simple statement of fact rather than complaint. (She'd rather keep him company than doze off.) ]

I'll be alright in a bit.

[aware]

You'll be out like a light, I'm tellin' you. [ His tone is conversational, not argumentative. When Grace made up her mind to do something, she did it, whether or not Peek disapproved. Even though he was the adult, the one behind the wheel, she was the captain of their tethered lives together and she was the one who steered them both — from this port to that, following the breadcrumb clues from victim to perpetrator and from looming question to startlingly nuanced answer.

His fingers drum upon the very top of the wheel, a rythymn so absent that it was hardly a rhythm at all. ] Y'know — soon's we call it a night an' find a room, it'll be beddy-bye f'r you. An' me left t'm'lonesome. [ He peels his attention from the road just long enough look at her. (Infantalism hardly flew with Grace but, again, she knew he never meant it.) To soften the blow, he adds ruefully: ] Who'll keep m'company then? T'e pay-p'r-view?

( T R A M M E L L | v e n u s )

[folded]

[ For a girl who simply opens a door and shuts it behind her again in order to find herself someplace else, the thought of owning a car is a rather novel prospect — nevermind a daunting one as well. One would think Wallace has never seen a car before, the way she stares at each of them head-on as she contemplates their color, her chin dropped down to her breastbone as she endeavors to meet their headlights eye-to-eye. It's a terribly strange and alien process to watch, though by now this sort of behavior on Wallace's part is old hat to Trammell.

She's frowning at a VW bug when she finally pipes up, looking very much like she's trying to move the entire car with her mind. ] —how do you know?

[ There's inflection in her voice for once. Which means she's excited about something. ]

[mocked]

[ The lot is relatively small, and it doesn't escape Trammell's notice that the salesman now has Wallace pinned as slightly off her rocker, though Trammell's presence (dad, guardian, dealer, no-good layabout boyfriend, whatever he thinks he is) seems to do a little to ease his mind.

Wandering about with his hands thrust into his pockets, he glances over when Wallace speaks, eyebrows rising. ]

We can stop by the mechanic, next, if you like, [ he offers, winding his way back to the VW. ]

'M sure they'd be thrilled to have someone as rapt to attention 's you are.

[folded]

[ Wallace doesn't look up straightaway, still determined to maintain eye contact with the car in question. It's not that she's never dealt with cars before &mash; she's dealt with plenty (and buggies and horses and hovercraft and all the myriad ways of getting about of both the future and the past). But given her particular gifts from mother, she's never had to own one before and she takes that quite seriously.

Her lips pursing into a duck bill-like shape she finally straightens and places her hands on her hips. (The gesture is undeniably childish, though not through any deliberate action on Wallace's part.) ]

They all seem so unhappy. Is that normal?

( R E G I N A | the memory collectors )

[collection]

[ There are some things that are routine for them, and some things that aren't. What is routine is that they always meet up, one way or another. What isn't is how. Sometimes he meets her there, sometimes she travels with him, sometimes it takes a couple of stops for them to see each other again. It's door number two, this time around. She meets him while he's still in Pennsylvania, clearing up the fallout from an overturned train, and she stays with him for the drive into Connecticut. He doesn't know that she'll stay, once they're there, but, as always, he'll take what he can get.

It's been an hour or so on the road when he looks over, the radio finally starting to break into static. ]

You comfy?

[curios]

[ The car is a rental: a mid-sized luxury sedan with all of the amenities, no expense spared. When Lex takes the scenic route or has no particular destination (a rarity, given his line of work) it's policy for him to pay out of pocket, but this month has been nothing but disaster after disaster — an unlucky strand of pearls that finds Lex busy and Regina around more consistently than usual.

(There's no telling whether she'll come or she'll go once they reach Mystic together, but all of the signs point towards yes. She's more present than usual and her eyes carry a cloudless focus that he doesn't see often. What it means is anyone's guess. Maybe it's just the season for heartbreak.)

She's looking out the window, her nose so near that every breath fogs a small halo around her mouth and every time the car jostles, the tip of it bumps upon the glass. (Regina doesn't seem to mind it.) ]

Yes, very comfy, thank you, Lex. [ A beat then she makes a quiet sound of surprise. ] Are those cows?

[ She asks as if she's never seen a cow before, but she has. She just doesn't remember it anymore. ]

( P H I L O M E L A | pound of flesh )

[reive]

[ The Saint family, as befitting a well-established bloodline, keeps a summer home (though the word seems too small as a properly descriptor — villa, more like) by the coast. The weather improves through the week and it's on Thursday that Valentine comes into Philomela's room and asks if she'd like to take the weekend off. He packs one bag for the both of them (they don't need to take too much with them) and they set off on Friday afternoon. He keeps one arm slung around the back of the passenger seat, sunglasses perched on the bridge of his nose, the lines of his face — for a little while, at least — drawn smoother than their usual sharp angles. ]

[reave]

[ The weather improves from rain to cloud, from cloud to sun and from sun to eventual shine. Blue skies, record highs coupled with record lows in the evenings means that Valentine has to pack swimsuits as well as sweaters but both he and his sister are economical creatures compared to their family's standing. Not quite Spartan, but approaching it, their definitions of luxury left to lie much closer to the bone than for their brothers; in a way, their co-mingled existence is almost simplistic. Blood, meat, family, love. The rest is excess and not for them.

Valentine has sunglasses but Philomela has none, so she squints soundlessly into the sun for a mile, maybe two. Relenting, she eventually wrinkles her nose, bringing both hands up over her eyes to cast a short shadow across them. From the safety of her sunless spot, she declares: ] I miss the rain.

( I A I N | s o m n a c i n )

[bounds]

[ Akker doesn't do house calls. Not if she can help it.

Even though the Project is an international affair with operatives scattered cross-continentally and a home office smack-dab in the middle of Europe, her sort of work doesn't travel well and so she refuses to do it. Assessments done in the field are often sloppy, misleading and subject to pressures that would just as readily skew the results as provide her insights. She has told her superiors this loudly and frequently and, as a result, has successfully stonewalled any attempts to sidestep her authority for the sake of paperpushing bureaucracy.

Every so often, however, she can be convinced to make an exception.

She gives Iain a dry, you owe me one look when she finds him waiting outside the gate with an unsurprisingly crappy car. ]

Tell me this isn't us, [ she says, instead of hello. ]

[marling]

[ To his credit (or discredit, depending on how you're looking at it), he doesn't try to play coy, throwing the keys up in the air once before catching them and opening her door for her. She doesn't do house calls most of the time and he's well aware of it — it's the least he can do. There's a white paper bag waiting for her on the passenger seat (a small plastic bottle of ginger ale and a bagel with cream cheese inside) and he doesn't wait to close the door behind her before circling around to get into the driver's seat, putting her suitcase in the trunk on his way. There isn't that much traffic around the airport for now, and the car sputters to a start before he peels it away from the curb and onto the road. ]

( THE GIRL IN RED | i m m u n e )

[nonimmune]

[ He isn't quite sure how long it's been when they finally emerge from the tunnels. (He loses a few of the needles, when they're attacked in the dark. He has to use a few, too. The numbers don't add up in his favor.) But after that darkness — darkness broken up by flickering orange light and echoes upon echoes — even the grey ash that waits for them above ground seems like a blessing. The rattle in his chest is near-permanent, now, even after a new dosage of the vaccination. He says nothing of it, just keeps moving and makes sure the girl is safe. They don't have a lot of time and they have a lot of ground to cover. (They don't have any room to slow down.)

He takes her by the hand, now, his long, thin fingers curled around hers, even if the shakes have him so bad that he can't much hold on to anything. (Sometimes he thinks he might just disappear into the waste — grey upon grey upon grey — but single flare of red keeps him going.)

He glances back at her once, now, the light in his eyes the sole bright points upon him.

(Just a little further.) ]

[immunisations]

[ The man in grey is dying and has been for some time now. The girl in red knows because the sickness is inside her too, only instead of rot, it whispers and sings, telling the girl how sick is sick and how long is long. (Months, weeks, hours, minutes — never the former, sometimes the last.)

Day by day the man's song changes. Sometimes death lurks just around the corner, sinking its claws into his flesh and giving him fever dreams that make him call out at night; and sometimes death is miles away, not just days but weeks, weeks that seem infinite. (But they never are and they never last. The girl has learned as much by now.) On the days that he's good, sometimes the girl cries, little whimpering animal noises that she weeps into his hands and her own hair. Tears of happiness, of fleeting frustration, because whatever sickness smolders in him never dies, only quiets, before roaring loud once again. On the days that he's bad, she's stronger, stubborn even, her lips pursed down into a perpetual frown that tells him: no death today, no. Those are the days when she pulls instead of follows, when she protects while the man shivers and coughs red. On those days, the sickness is a friend, a passenger that riles alongside her as she spits black blood at those who would hurt them. (They run screaming, shouting devil demon! to the empty sky as they go looking for water with which to uselessly wash.)

Today is neither good nor bad and so the girl with the red hair is quiet and staid. The man's hand shakes in hers and so she grips it all the more tightly, drawing to his side, elbows bumping, to stare lingeringly at his profile as they walk.

(Worried now.) ]

( u n c l e P E T Y R | s o u t h s i d e )

[neighbourhood]

[ The Vale is a three day drive from Boston north into Maine and then further north into Canada. Sansa knows this cause she Googled it as soon as her mother had told her, informing her after dinner one night that they'd be joining Aunt Lysa for her annual summer excursion into the mountains for the sake of clearing up sickly Robert's lungs. Sansa had complained, of course, bemoaning how far she'd be from the luxuries of her life in Boston: her friends, her possessions, her cell phone reception. Those complaints had all but dried up when she heard that Uncle Petyr was coming too. (Not so much a silver lining as the promise for some form of entertainment.)

Day two, and Sansa sits slumped in the passenger seat, knees drawn up to her chest and her bare feet curling over the perforated leather. The air conditioning is turned up to ten and the jet blast of cool air has got her in goosepimples all over, but she doesn't go to warm her arms with the pass of her hands, just continues to tap away on her phone — wholly disinterested in the scenery that goes passing by. ]

[precinct]

[ Day two, and they're a couple of hours behind the caravan. (Her other siblings are packed into her parents' car; it had been Petyr, in the end, who'd suggested that Sansa ride with him so as to fit the rest of the Starks' luggage into one car.) He'd left something (left ambiguous) behind at the motel, and they'd had to backtrack to retrieve it before getting back on the road. An excuse, of course, to grab a little extra time, though neither Ned nor Cat are any wiser for it (nor to any of what else has transpired between Petyr and their daughter).

It's a while before he says anything, following the instructions spat out by the GPS that sits mounted on the dashboard as they come one by one. ]

You still getting a signal?

( P I A N O | the inquisition )

[graced]

[ He doesn't have a lot of time left, though it's neither of their places to know that (at least, not for certain). Still, there are signs. His rage is more terrible than ever, as is his guilt, the two see-sawing desperately as if an excess of both might create some kind of temperance. (It doesn't.

Once, he strikes her hard enough to knock her unconscious. When she wakes, her frame is cradled to him, and the words I'm sorry are the only ones to pass his lips for some time. He'd never used to apologize, before.)

As usual, he drives in dead silence, hands gripped tight around the wheel, gaze fixed dead ahead. (Anger to despair to anger again — there's no middle ground.) ]

[retributions]

[ The most obvious lesson is the one Piano never learns: you should fear a man like Perahia. What little good there is in him is too easily tamped down and smothered by the rest. He rants, he rages; he's jealous and petty. He wants and he takes and then feels anger at the guilt that follows, disgust for himself and for his own weakness, resentment for her (so much greater, made so ignoble by something so simple as his presence).

As bad as things are, they get worse after Colorado, after he fucks her in a motel room with Jesus Christ hanging crucified on the wall above the bed. Then again in Kansas. Nebraska. South Dakota. He fucks her and sometimes she fucks him and the only place they've got left to go is down down down.

Her cheek is swollen, gauze pouched between teeth and tongue, copper filling the inside of her mouth as she tries not to swallow too much of her own blood. Perahia's never kind, but he's growing wreckless, worse than a chinashop bull. The last time he hit Piano she nearly bit off the tip of her tongue and even though there was no need for stitches, she hasn't spoken a word in days.

Slowly she blinks, her eyelids heavy. He loads her up on painkillers to try to make the drive bearable, all of the jostling of the car making her teeth chatter and her tongue ache inside her mouth. ]

( D U B H L A I N N | she loves me (not) )

[preoccupation]

[ (The entire right side of her body is bruised and battered by her attempts to simply barrel roll out the door. But it's never any use and they're going too fast so, after a while, she tries hitting him instead. In the end, hitting is like yelling in all it does it make him angry with her. And an angry Dubhlainn is much more frightening than a confused and frustrated one.

She begs until her throat's torn to ribbons and cries until her eyes are so swollen that she can barely keep them open anymore. Then she sleeps.)

How many hours has it been, how many miles — Waverly doesn't know. When she finally cracks her eye open, all she gets is light — golden, late summer sun sinking down beneath the tops of buildings that she doesn't recognize. Her head hurts. Her wrists hurt. Everything hurts. She shuts her eyes again.

Waverly's voice is a thin, papery rasp that stings at her throat. So faint, it's difficult to hear even in her own head. ]

—help.

[erotomaniac]

[ He doesn't understand.

Every time she tries to run, every time she begs and cries, his reaction wavers somewhere between desperation and anger. (Isn't this what you wanted?) She loves him, he knows she does. And yet, and yet. He could almost believe that her tears were genuine. Maybe it's a test, he thinks, to see how far he'd go to hold onto her. It makes the thought easier to bear in theory, but no easier in practice. (Shut the fuck up and stop crying, I swear to god. What's wrong with you? Don't you love me anymore?)

When she finally speaks, he's quick to glance over at her, his grip tightening briefly upon the steering wheel. A moment later, he pulls the car over to the side of the road, hands remaining on the wheel for a minute after the car's stopped before he finally turns to her, reaching for the water bottle that sits between them. ]

Feeling any better?

( R U T H | f u g i t i v e s )

[duplicit]

[ They'll be stopping soon, if Saul's estimation is correct. The sun has begun to disappear from the sky and the lights that dot the road are starting to flicker to life — yellow, white, and orange against the oncoming dark blues. A familiar sight, by this point. (It's odd, to a degree — taking a trip that doesn't have any destination or return date. Their only purpose is simply not to get caught, and they've done pretty well at that thus far. He still feels somewhat guilty about having hauled Ruth along with him, but arguably she'd been the one to haul him off, and he knows already that she wouldn't take to him feeling badly. After all, were their roles reversed, he'd do much the same thing.)

At length: ]

Next exit, y' think?

[complicit]

[ Ruth is not naturally inclined to running, but when Saul shows up on her doorstep one night spattered and swearing and driving a dead man's car, there isn't much room for debate.

(In the end, the plan is mostly hers — how to ditch the car, how to scrape the cash — where to get the guns and stash the knives until they make it across the state line. It's Ruth who gets them their first car — and then their second — Saul picks up the slack after that. She decides where they stay and for how long, where to go next once they've worn out their welcome.)

A glance at the clock set in the car's dash reveals it to be 6.12 PM. (Saul's right.) Instead of answer she hums and looks out the window, down the road and into the valley where the sun's already faded and the lights come flickering to life. ] It's almost pretty. Wouldn't you say?

[ Next exit. Sure thing, Sally. ]

( R U T H | the aviary )

[argued]

[ There's blood under his nails, rimmed a dull crimson around the cuticles in his right hand. They don't have far left to go by Noah's estimation; it's getting dark already, the sky more pink than dull red. He shakes his leg restlessly all the more for it, scowling every time a bump in the road makes his grip unsteady, the point of a knife scratching away at the blotchy stains on his nailbeds. It's a coin-toss as to how Noah's wired at the end of the road — hyped up on adrenaline or dulled and unfocused. Either way, lashing out isn't anything new. (Ruth gives as good as she takes, anyway. His lip still feels sore sometimes.)

He glances at her side-long, expression pulled into something of feigned boredom. The sprinkling of lights aren't new: the neon signs are, flashing vacancies up ahead. ]

We there yet? [ Or, maybe: we could spend the night. If you want. ]

( FREE FOR ALL: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO )

[recovers]

[ Sometimes the pain knocks her out. Lara falls asleep curled up in the passenger's seat, forehead pressed against the window; when she blinks awake and tips her chin, there's a smear of breath and the press of skin on the glass. It takes her a moment to remember where she is. (The sun's bright today.) ]

Um. [ She gently flexes her hand, stretching the skin of her knuckles and the bones in her digits. (She still doesn't look up, eyes flickering between her lap and the fingers curled around the steering wheel. At least they're familiar.) ] I'm awake now. Sorry.

[eavesdrops]

[ It's been quite a long time since Curie last had to drive.

Arguably, it's a useless skill for a boy who can tiptoe from shadow to shadow, winking in and out of one to trade it for the next. Still, as in all things in life, there are exceptions to even the most universal rule. For every patch of light there is a swatch of shadow; but sometimes, only sometimes, those dark places are too few and far between and Curie has no choice but to walk or bike or taxi or—

Or, yes, sometimes drive.

When she stirs he turns to look at Lara and smiles at her brightly, even though he has reason enough to be cross with her. Finding her hadn't been difficult but reacquiring her had been nasty business. Not that Curie minds, per say. (It had won them a new car, after all.) ]

You're a very popular girl, Lara, [ he says with only the faintest suggestion of admonishment coloring his voice. Curie tips his chin towards her, his gaze flickering down to her abdomen, a nasty stain on the front of her shirt. ] Are you feeling any better?