Stick it

[nepharious]

For just2hands (conditional others)

  

Dimensional travel feels and looks a lot like being strapped to a firework.  Or how Neph imagines that must be, careening around at violently disorienting speeds combined with streaking colors and a total inability to guess direction.  As for the landing, eh, it’s very second-verse-same-as-the-first, splayed out on the ground like a drunk with her stomach in her throat and her vision badly out of whack.  Her arms are a tangle over her head, caught in the sleeves of her borrowed coat.  There’s a weird tingling in her toes, and a cold strip across her lower back and belly where her shirt’s ridden up, dew and morning air pricking goosebumps from her skin.

“Not gonna throw up,” she tells the whirling sky, and means it.  Not like she plans on being a frequent flyer (or an ever-again-flyer, a thought that twists her already unsettled stomach) but there oughta be some improvement in her arrivals.  

The sky drifts to reassuring stillness as Neph breathes through her nausea.  There’s a mid afternoon quality to the light, and the air is lighter and thinner than Faerun’s, less weighty with magic but way more familiar for it.  Grass tickles her neck and the exposed small of her back, the wet green smell undercut by gasoline and bugspray.  That, more than anything, tells her she’s come home.  She’d worry about finding herself splayed out in somebody’s backyard, but there’s no accompanying hum of traffic or distant voices.  

Neph rolls onto an elbow and eases herself upright, bracing for a stab of vertigo that never comes.  These surroundings are less ‘deep woods’ and more ‘cleared but abandoned’, the occasional pioneering tree struggling through choking grass and shrubs.  That is not a distinction she’d’ve known how to make three (Three? There’d been snow on the ground when she left.  There isn’t now, but there’s a nip in the air and a frosty hardness to the earth that hints at frosty nights yet) months ago, but circumstances kinda forced her out of her urban comfort zone for a while there.  She shakes the chaff of old grasses from her hair and reaches for the vials strapped to her wrist.  Now that her stomach’s settled, she wants her metals in it.

Standing, she can just make out the artificially straight line of a road girder in the distance.  Neph tugs her sweater back into place, shrugs the wool-lined leather of her coat over it and stomps the last of the tingling from her toes.  Only her boots survived the unexpected Faerun vacation, but she and Moritz had tried their best to assemble an outfit that wouldn’t draw too many odd looks back home.  So what if she’s got no idea where the portal dumped her?  This is her own Earth under her feet, there’s a road in easy striking distance, and a car’ll come along eventually.  Nephele turns up the collar of her coat, inhales the lamp oil and applewood smell of that other world still lingering in the fleece, and hums to herself.

Time to go home.

Comments

[just2hands]

Being a doctor for Ziodex wasn't always labs and tests, reports and research. Selene had been overly generous for the past few years, allowing Anika nearly free reign to go overseas and back on paid grants to Nigeria and the surrounding countries for months at a time to participate in the volunteer programs that aided the displaced, the diseased and the desperate.

Still, there was a price to be paid for that time and money, and this was part of it; to be down here, in Miami, at a medical conference where she had to hob-nob with others in her particularly chosen field. Fortunately, she managed to get away right after lunch, and turned down the near-obligatory 'happy-hour drinking' by begging off with a headache. Which she did have, so it wasn't completely a lie.

Anika had just taken off her second boot, throwing it into the closet and laid down on the hotel bed. With all the pillows she surrounded her head with, perhaps she could now drown out the sounds coming from the rooms next door. From the hallway. From the walkway outside.

When it comes, it's like a bolt of lightning, crackling along the suddenly-reattached psychic cord that Ani shared with Nephele. The cord that had been severed the day, the very instant that Neph had disappeared off the face of the earth. It shocks Ani so badly that she bolts up in the bed, jostling pillows onto the floor as she gasps for breath. "Alive. She's alive!"

Oh dear lord, oh god, oh... Ani fumbles to the side, half falling off the bed while trying to find the light switch and get her boots on; while zipping up her jeans; while looking for her phone and rapidly sending off a terse, swift group message to Logan and Ashley. Somehow she is able to accomplish all of it - more or less - and just barely remembers her purse with money and photo ID as she runs out the door. Clothes are left behind, suitcase, makeup; all of it discarded in a moment as Ani takes the stairs down to the main floor and skids to a stop at the desk, her boots still untied.

"Family emergency, I have to go." Dollars are thrown on the counter, tens, twenties. "Have someone pack up my room and hold my things. I'll be back for them." But honestly, Anika isn't sure she'll ever come back here again. And she doesn't really care. She does wait long enough for a cab to be called, to take her to the airport. And from the airport she uses a credit card to catch a lucky flight from Miami, heading Northwest. In Casper Wyoming she finally gets off the plane, heads into the terminal, and starts looking for a car rental booth.

And no, she hasn't slept yet. Her mind has been frantically stretching along that thin, silver psychic cable, feeling frantically for emotions, for physical health; any and everything she can think to check she does.

Except for her cellphone. That lies forgotten in the bottom of her purse, with the sound shut off accidentally so she can't hear if anyone is calling or texting her back.

[nepharious]

The few cars speeding by flash Wyoming plates. That's a much wider margin of error than Nephele had expected when she stepped through the portal. Like, a whole continent's worth. Steffan and Moritz had warned her there might be a hike involved, since accuracy was never assured when traveling such long distances, but now she wonders if there was something else in play. She's a lot closer to the old house in Cali than the new place in New York. Could the spell have locked in on a place where she'd spent more time? She swore some pretty hefty oaths in NoCal, yeah, and it's an even split as to whether she bled more magic or actual blood in LA. That sort of thing's more Phil's specialty, so Neph makes a mental note and settles into a comfortable walking pace.

Traffic's sparse, whole half-hour chunks going by without a car sighting. Mostly the ones she does see pick up and blow past her, like a pedestrian speedwalking by a homeless person. Neph finds she doesn't mind, that there's something tremendously grounding about the mountains at her back and the great flat stretch ahead and the silence all around. She's not an outdoorsy person, made for metal and concrete rather than rocks and trees, but she's spent months in close quarters with strangers and appreciates the chance to get reacquainted with the pattern of her own thoughts. Neph walks with one hand on the girder, trailing her fingers along the beaten metal, and doesn't even try to rope a ride with Brass.

She moves off the road after dusk, because you know what kind of people pick up girls in the dark? Axe murderers, and Neph did not survive harpy-devils just to get axemurdered. Temperatures drop with the sun, not quite frosty but close enough that she's glad for her sweater and coat and the thick woolen socks inside her boots. Her time away hasn't exactly turned her into a great survivalist, but she picked up a few backpacking skills trekking around with Moritz and Lee and the others. Now she knows how to build a fire, how to shield it from the wind and minimize telltale smoke. She's always been able to sleep anywhere, but she no longer twitches at the night sounds of hunting animals and stirring branches. Neph wraps herself up in her coat, fishes a bar of pressed nuts and honey from the pocket and watches the stars. They're not as bright as she's come to expect, not even out here in BFE Wyoming.

When she wakes in the night, there are no warm bodies at her back or front. She rolls closer to the embers of her fire and wills herself back to sleep.

Maybe she made landfall on a Sunday or something, because there are way more big-rigs on the road the next morning. She thumbs a ride still yawning and knuckling at her eyes, and spends the distance between Rock Springs and Cheyenne chatting with a trucker named Cheryl and her pomeranian, Steve-O. Cheryl's a big lady with buck teeth and a million stories about her twelve grandkids. Steve-O has terrible gas but is happy to split the bag of beef jerky in the glove compartment. Neph soaks in the conversation, readjusting to Earth-side cadences and colloquialisms.

Cheryl's heading south to Colorado Springs from Cheyenne, so Neph hugs her and Steve-O goodbye and splits to find some lunch. She lifts a wallet off a guy at one of those little coffee kiosks that dot the whole freakin' northwest, leaves him enough for a grande whatever and zeros in on the nearest IHOP. A stack of waffles should complete this homecoming nicely. Maybe something meaty wrapped in bacon? Yeah, that'll do the trick.

[just2hands]

Out of Casper, Ani takes Rte 220 heading southwest and stops about an hour later at the Independence Rock Rest area. There she spends a few extra minutes buying a phone charger for the car, buying a comb and a toothbrush, and deodorant. She doesn't like any of the elastics or other haircare products so in the end she just braids her thick black hair and ties the end with bright blue shoelaces that she's bought.

She also spends a few extra minutes drinking down a huge cup of coffee and staring at the Independence Rock, with all the names carved into the huge stone as the young doctor waits for her phone to charge enough to call Logan.

Driving in the dark, she realizes that Neph has stopped moving and Ani tries to drive all night to reach her friend by daylight but finally has to pull over when she reaches the town of Warmsutter on Rte 80. She'd only meant to catch a few winks, just sleep for a little while. Just a short nap, she promises herself as she locks the doors and adjusts the front seat in a reclining position, staring out the front windshield at the stars above. Neph hasn't moved, but the pull of the thread is steady and strong, and Anika wishes her pleasant dreams as her own eyes flutter closed, and stay that way.

When she wakes, it's mid-morning, and somehow in some blasted way, Neph has passed right by her while she was sleeping on the side of the highway and is now headed in the opposite direction! Biting back an actual scream of frustration, Ani slaps her hand against the steering wheel, and gets back on the highway, turning around and heading back east, heading toward Cheyanne.

Finally, FINALLY, she's closing in and Ani slows down, staring at all of the restaurants and fast food joints as she drives down the road. Her mind calculates the distance, and she steps on the gas. Only another mile or so and... and.

Pulling into a parking lot, the young doctor gets out of the car carefully, feeling more than seeing. Feeling the cord, resisting the pull and desire to run tearing into the building and grab Nephele into a hug right then and there. Still, she can't help tearing up a little, wiping the wetness of her cheek with the back her hand as Anika opens the front door of the International House of Pancakes.

[nepharious]

They say journalism's dead and print media's a fossil, but Neph's always found both to be pretty handy. She's snagged somebody else's discarded copy of the Cheyenne Tribune Eagle (and wow, WOW is she ever Out West, a name like that sure does scream 'welcome to the land of enormous shiny belt buckles') to read over her waffles. The stack, when it arrives, is bigger than her head and covered in seasonal fruit. Neph's pretty sure strawberries don't count as 'seasonal' during springtime in Wyoming, but who is she to argue with the miracle of preservatives?

She's forced to amend that thought when she gets around to scanning the paper. It might have made more sense to read while she waited, but she's half-afraid her time in Faerun will turn out to work like a trip Underhill, worried she may have been gone years. That hadn't been the case for Moritz, but who knows how portals really work and, anyway, there were totally elves involved in the trip, so...it's anyone's guess. So she drowns her waffles in blueberry syrup and unfolds the paper, scanning the headline. Turns out it's not technically spring yet, not that that makes the strawberries any less suspect: the paper reads March 24.

March.

"MotherFUCKER." she slams her hands on the tabletop hard enough to send silverware and syrup carafes dancing. It's noonish on a weekday, there aren't too many people in the IHOP, but most of those present shoot her sharp looks or disapproving hisses. Neph doesn't notice, doesn't look up until her waitress steps up with a frown that teeters between 'worried' and 'irritated'.

"Is everything okay?"

"Hm?" Neph jumps and presses her fingers to her mouth, more to keep from screaming than to filter profanity, "What, yeah, no, sorry, I...I forgot something. Important."

Since there aren't any actual rules against swearing in a family restaurant, the waitress can only purse her lips and nod. "Ah, all right. Just checking. Let me know if you need anything." She whisks away, leaving Neph stabbing at her strawberries.

Her birthday would've been the end of February. Somewhere, between the foot-travel and the urban guerilla warfare and the search for a warlock and the whole devil crisis thingie she'd just...missed it. She can't even say for sure where she would've been when it fell - camping under the stars or hunkering down in a warded inn while batwinged nightmares wheeled past the windows? It's not as though she (or, until recently, anybody else in her life) makes a big deal out of her birthdays, but...

"I'm twenty now," she whispers as she cuts her waffles into manageable pieces. Twenty. Two whole decades. Neph can't help but feel like somebody out there just lost a shitton of money now that she's made it out of her teens. If she can manage to survive this long, with everything that's happened, what's next? Thirty? Is thirty a possibility now? "Huh."

She's halfway through that waffle stack before her daze clears and her hunger dies down enough to let her think of other things. Like how to get back to the East Coast, for starters. She could hitchhike the whole way, but that could take weeks and she's only got four days' worth of metals. Hitching's risky enough that she'd rather not do it unaugmented. There's always lifting enough cash to buy a bus ticket, but maybe she should prioritize a shower and new clothes first? Somehow the thought of rolling up to a payphone, calling Ashley and asking him to dispatch his private eco-jet or whatever never occurs to her. If she's honestly been gone for three months, it doesn't seem fair that her first contact should be a phone call. How impersonal. What would she even say, "Hey sorry about that portal that ate me I hope that wasn't too traumatizing could you come pick me up from the boonies before I get eaten by a steer?"

Actually, that line does have a certain understated appeal. Neph's just replaying it, a smirk on her lips and her right cheek stuffed with partially chewed waffle, when the IHOP door chimes. She happens to be seated facing the entrance, with no possible way of missing Anika's entrance.

Nephele did not survive six weeks under devil siege to choke on pancakes and die, but it's a really close thing.

[just2hands]

Anika goes from counting the yards between them to counting how many feet apart they are. In fact she's whispering the numbers as her hand turns the brass doorknob, opening the door to the restaurant.

"Fifteen, thirteen, eleven..." Her eyes bright and brown and sharp as lasers survey the room, taking in the mop-top of silver hair in an instance.

"Nine, eight, seven, six" Anika is walking, no the young doctor is stalking down the center aisle toward her friend and housemate; ignoring the hostess, the waitstaff, and any customers who may be looking at her. Which might be all of them, and it might be none of them, she seriously couldn't give a damn right now.

"Five, four, threetwoone." At the table, Anika simply stares down, and then slides onto the benchseat next to Nephele, turning toward her and putting an arm up on the top of the back cushions.

"Zero. Hey-ya Nephele, you're looking good. Long time no see! Missed you in Warmsutter, but I'm glad you're not dead. And how are the waffles around here?"

At that very last word is when Anika's shell cracks and she breaks down in tears.

[nepharious]

Neph makes a gold-star effort at disappearing into the cracked vinyl upholstery, pressing backwards so hard her shoulders scrape wood. She cranes her head away as Anika slips into the booth, counting under her breath like a time bomb, shit, what--

--wait. Oh. Oh, no, not time, but distance. Steps or inches or something, the way she used to in the days just after Oni's death, stalking from survivor to survivor murmuring increments under her breath. Neph's stomach drops and she goes to reach across the table, wincing at the offhand I'm glad you're not dead. Had it seemed like she was, when she disappeared? Anika's mutation stretches so easily across the planet that it never occurred to Neph to wonder if it would work across realities.

Then Anika bursts into tears and she practically dives over the tabletop.

"A-Ani, hey, don't--come on, it's, would you just--I wasn't trying to--"

People are openly staring as Neph slaps her stolen twenty down beside her plate and slips out of the booth. She wavers for a second, torn between throwing herself down next to Anika and wrapping her up in a hug, or moving this somewhere less conspicuous. Old habits being what they are, she comes down on option two. The arm she throws over Anika's shoulder is half a lever, pulling the taller woman out of the booth. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry but we can't--not here, not in a freakin' IHOP, what the heck's a Warmsutter anyway, can we go outside please?"

[just2hands]

"Oh, oh" Anika is pulled out and stumbles to her feet. But before she does, a hand comes down to slap at the table, scattering the fork and knife, nearly toppling the forgotten glass of water. "Fuck IHOP! Damn it Nephle, it's so... "

Damn them all for looking, and damn that waitress with the mouth like a lemon who''s making a beeline toward the two of them. It's not her business and Anika-Amadi gives her a fierce glare as she's continued to be pulled and tugged out of the restaurant, nearly tripping over the wooden threshold as they left.

That car you're looking for Neph, is the silvery-gray Dodge Avenger parked haphazardly over in the corner. And no, the driver wasn't drunk.

Anika just waved at the car, managing to keep up with, and then overtaking her friend's shorter stride. Her sudden waterworks were nearly as shocking to her as they were to Neph, and she kept wiping her eyes, sniffling as she fought to regain some self-control.

Electronic keys were a godsend, all she had to do was to click the button from a distance and the car doors unlocked. And Anika is about under control once she slips inside the driver's seat, turning once more to look at the younger woman who was getting into the passenger side.

"So yea, Hi. Welcome home." Damn it, here come the tears again.

[nepharious]

The waffles sit heavily in her stomach as Neph tugs Anika into the parking lot. Was it supposed to go like this? An angry homecoming? Is Anika even angry, or is this that thing people do when they're just too overwhelmed to cope? If she'd really thought Neph was dead, if she'd felt her 'thread' snap like with Oni and Han...

On the upside, if Neph's confused then those folks back in the IHOP can't have a fuckin' clue what just happened. So that's good.

She follows Anika's gesture towards the car, noting the make, model and rental plates with professional detachment. Automatic key fobs aren't standard, not yet, they wouldn't be the midrange option on the lot. So either the rental agency was down to the expensive dregs and Anika splurged, or her friend's a bit more financially stable than she was the last time she and Neph talked.

Which...would've been a while ago. Longer than Neph's been gone. They've spoken to each other, sure, in those windows between Anika's charity work and Neph's clients, but it's been a long time since they've had a conversation as friends, or even as people who had much to say to each other.

If she's being honest with herself, Neph knows exactly when their last real talk was. She can recite most of it from memory, the words overlaid in her mind with the smell of wine and old blood. She wonders if anyone's filled Anika in on the latest Sylar-related developments, and then finds herself hoping they have, because she's just not sure she can handle that right now.

"Um. Thanks," she says instead, sinking her muddy, grass-stained self into the nice clean upholstery. Not a lot she can do about the mess. "You know I wasn't--I didn't leave on purpose. You know that, right? Logan told you what happened?"

There were days on Faerun where only the knowledge that Logan saw her go, he had to know she was still alive somewhere kept her upright and moving. If she'd allowed herself to think that this man, her father, was mistakenly grieving for her, she'd've crumpled in on herself. The possibility twists up under her ribs and catches in her throat. Please say Logan told her...

[just2hands]

Ani leans back, resting her head on the headrest of the driver's seat as she get's a grip on herself once more. It's Nephele, it really, truly is her! From her words though, it's become obvious that Neph didn't have a clue about what happened, how it all fell out after she left. Using the palms of her hands, Anika pressed them against her eyes, then lets them fall away. The tears have mainly stopped as well - but how else should she feel when someone she thought dead had, for her, come back to life?

"Neph" she begins gently, her voice calmer now, quieter. "I felt it when you 'went away' did you call it? Went away, yes. I felt the moment it happened. It snapped your cord. And when I called Logan, he said he'd seen you get sucked through this portal..."

Anika was actually playing it rather cool for her. Between her frantic call and Logan's bellow of 'What the fuck do you mean, her cord's been cut', it was as if all hell had broken loose for a while. Anika had come home that night. Or rather, she'd grabbed a flight, and then another one overseas, and she met up with both Ashley and Logan at the apartment. From there, they talked, yelled, cried, broke things and generally tried to figure out ways to either find out if she was alive, to find her, or at least to find her body and bring it home.

And then, like a rubber band wound too tight, each one of them had broken off in a different direction, spinning wildly to different corners to lick their wounds and try to find Nephele own their own, or try to live their life without her.

"You are the very first person in my life who's ever had their cord cut, and then reattached it. When I felt you again yesterday I... I thought I was dreaming. Or that I was going crazy or something." A smile breaks over her face now, a smile and suspiciously shining eyes, where tears may still lurk.

"But you're back, you're back and I've... that is we've, I've, missed you so much!" Nephele doesn't like being touched, Anika needs to touch her, or to touch something; so she ends up grasping the steering wheel.

"They know I'm here. Both of them. They let me do this." Which was typical Anika speak for 'I went off and did this, and they didn't get a chance to stop me this time'. "But they want to talk to you. They want to hear your voice, made me promise to get you on the cellphone as soon as I found you." She fumbles in her jacket pocket for the phone.

"After that, maybe you'll let me get you some new clothes and we can find a decent hotel for the night and hole up with snacks and sodas and video games or something?"

Her voice is hopeful, slightly cracking. The woman is under a lot of stress here. "And then maybe I can bring you home?"

[nepharious]

After managing to choke it back on arrival, now Neph really thinks she might be sick. Whatever Logan had thought when she'd first disappeared, Anika's mutant-mojo might've convinced him she really was dead afterall. Ashley too, it sounds like.

Neph can pretty well imagine how that went over, by all the things Anika's not saying. These people, her little family, they don't have the best track record when it comes to handling loss. Addicts, all of 'em, to work or booze or ideology, losing their pain in it. She wonders if they've talked much since her 'death', or if Anika's latest update came totally out of the blue (she wonders how coherent Anika was when she made that call, whether or not the others do know what's going on).

She curls forward, pinches her nose and drags her thumb and forefinger under her eyebrows. "Okay, so we've learned something about your mutation today," because snark is surely a better option than vomiting all over a rental car, "It won't stretch between planes of reality. Which is, uh, where I was. On another world for a while." She's no longer so sure Logan told Anika anything, overwhelmed as they all must've been by thread-snapping-panic. Maybe Ani doesn't know about Moritz or the work they put into the portal or any of it.

Maybe she doesn't know about Sylar.

"Let's...yeah, let's get a room, I need a shower, you look like you could use some sleep," they were friends through the last years of Anika's residency, Neph knows what those hollow cheeks and that particular messy bun mean. "You know the second we go somewhere with a mirror Ashley's gonna waltz right through it." It's all going to end in rib-creaking hugs, something Neph's been yearning for for months. Last night's solitude was a nice break between worlds, a chance to get her head on right before slipping back into all the secrecy her home demands of people who are different, but it'll be nice to fall asleep to someone else's steady breathing again.

Since Ashley and his Garou hugs are still a whole continent away, she takes Anika's hand instead of the offered phone and pulls her over the gearshift, tucking her head into the taller woman's neck and slinging her free arm over her shoulders. It's an awkward hug, but Dodge doesn't allow for a lot of wriggle room so Neph will make do. She's good at that.

[just2hands]

"Planes of reality..." Anika lets that one sink in for a minute. Sure, Logan had friends who he'd said had been to other places (and the implication was that those other places did not include Mars or Jupiter) but to her knowledge, Ani had never actually met someone who had been out, you know, there.

It was with overly shiny eyes that Anika attempts to start the car a few minutes later, missing the ignition twice before her fingers can slide the key in properly. The way her hand is shaking may have something to do with that, but she pretends not to notice. The look she gives Nephele when she finally manages to start the engine is half embarrassment, and half 'it's just my luck'.

"Remind me to get a GPS or something." Ani actually is able to laugh a bit. "I was able to pinpoint you, but now that you're here, I don't know where the heck I'm going. Lets try and find a decent hotel around here; and if we're lucky, there's one that has room service and HBO."

"And hopefully Ashley won't come through the mirror until after we get cleaned up."

She is able to get the car out of the parking lot finally, and leaving IHOP in her rearview mirror, Anika gets back on Route I-80, starts cruising down the strip. "Hey look, over there!" The sign was up over the highway, to their left. Ani switches lanes, turns onto the road crossing the highway and halts the car on the side of the road, looking at the hotel.

'Springhill Suites, Marriot' what what the sign reads. Ani pauses to see if her passenger has any yays or nays regarding the hotel, then simply presses down on the gas and brings the car into the parking lot. Getting out of the car, Ani pats her pocket where her wallet is, then heads into the building, letting Neph relax in the car while the young doctor handles the details. At the desk she asks for a 2-bedroom Queen suite, slides her ID and credit card across the counter. After a few minutes of anxious waiting, she is given two keys and returns to the car.

"I told them to bring up extra pillows and blankets, and I've got the location to the nearest taco joint and all-night convenience store. We can stock up on soda, popcorn and Slim Jims and then catch up on the latest show on AMC if you want." Ani hands over one of the electronic business-card type keys, and then

"Before or after the shower though, we really need to give the guys a call. I promised them."