sunnydalealum | (no subject)

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Her duffelbag is heavier than it should be, as she moves out through the AirTrain lobby and onto the street. She feels slower than before. Weaker.

She feels light enough to spread her arms and soar up into the sky.

The number's still in her cellphone's immediate memory; it's the last number she called.

"Hello?"

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"You went to law school." He nods, slowly. "That's a perfectly valid reason for getting involved with a law firm."

But, shaking his head as though to dispel that line of thought, he gestures for Beth to go on. Never mind him.

She flushes at that, but goes on.

"And, I mean, long-term -- I can't even think long-term. I can barely think about what I'm gonna do after we're done here."

"Well... Make yourself at home. Make a home. Take it easy, smell the flowers, stick your head out the window just to feel the breeze..." He smiles, all too able to imagine doing all those things and man, does it sound sweet.

"No rush, right?"

"Home," she murmurs.

"...I should probably go back to my apartment, yeah."

"Or, maybe to your family. If you'd like, I mean. I'm sure they're worried to bits and pieces about you."

Just because his family sucks doesn't mean everyone else's do too. Family can be a real fantastic thing to have, or so he's learned over the years.

She bites her lip, and looks down. "They might think I'm dead, by now. It's been more than two years. Two and a half."

"I don't know, peaches," again he reaches for her hand. "But if I had a daughter and lost her through some twisted chain of events, I would never give up hope. I'd like to think it wouldn't be in vain.

"Think about it, all right?"

She squeezes his hand hard.

"I, I don't even know w-what I would tell them."

"That you're alive. That you miss them." He holds on, his thumb rubbing her knuckles softly. It makes for a nice counterpoint, the way they're almost turning white.

"That you got your world mixed up with some bad people, and you had to go into witness protection, but that everything's fine now, and that all the bad guys got what they deserved. Of course, you don't want to talk about it, now that it's finally over... But you're okay. You have a good job, working as a secretary-slash-assistant to someone very well-to-do, you have a place of your own, but most importantly-- You have friends who care about you very much."

She has to swallow before she can speak, and there's a slight unsteadiness to her voice that suggests suppressed tears. "Witness protection. That, that's pretty clever."

"I'm a clever guy." He smiles bravely, slipping into something more like the role he played once upon a karaoke bar ago; just a little detached, so as not to get too affected by the threat of tears.

"A clever guy who likes Law & Order a little bit too much."

"Well." She tries a brave smile of her own. "It's worth a try. And if they don't believe me, well... I'm no worse off than I was before, right?"

"If they don't believe you, you could always tell them the truth, and see where that leads to." He has a few ideas, but hopefully, Beth's family is nothing at all like his own. Speaking of horrid families...

"It can't go any worse than my not so spectacular reunion a few years back."

"Oh." Courtesy wars briefly with curiosity, and loses. "...What happened then?"

"Long story short, one of my friends got caught up in a portal leading to my home dimension. Naturally, the rest of us had to find a way to get her back. And let me tell you, I was so scared to go back, I was terrified... What will they think? What will my friends think when they see the horror that is my home world?"

He still hasn't let go of Beth's hand, even if his grip has softened. "Mom thought I had done the right thing and offed myself when I didn't come back from whatever it was I was doing in the woods the night I disappeared. She was so mad at me for coming back and bringing shame to the clan, she spat me in the face. And that was just the beginning of it."

He shrugs, then adds, by way of explanation, "Pyleans don't normally have the emotional range of humans. No music, no love, no nothing."

Beth's eyes widen in shocked horror. "Your mother thought you should have --" She can't even finish the sentence.

"Your own mother?"

He nods. The cat was already clawing its way out the bag, he might as well give it a hand. He was going for something that might cheer his friend up, but now that it's out there, he thinks maybe it only sounded funny in his head.

"I know. I can't even excuse her by pointing out she's a demon, and I won't."

"But why..." She swallows. "Because you didn't want to be a hunter?"

"Because I wasn't like all the other children. I was too--" His free hand makes vague little ripples in the air that don't actually clarify much. But maybe it's just enough.

Maybe just enough when combined with some familiarity with Lorne: his habitual flamboyance, his mannerisms, his taste in clothes....

Beth's mouth closes hard, and there's a glimmer of righteous anger in her eyes.

"It's not so much that I didn't want to be a hunter, I did... But when I got old enough I started asking questions. I just never was a hunter." He smiles, but something in Beth's eyes stops his smile from reaching his own.

The anger dies away, into sadness.

Muffled: "Everybody always wants us to be something we're not."

"And that's exactly why we have to resist the temptation of letting them get away with it. People put you in a box, it's so easy to stay there. But nobody's puttin' me in the corner." To paraphrase one of the most famous movie quotes of all time.

He shakes his head just a second later, smiling wryly. "Challenge people's views of you, sugar. You'll feel better for it."

"I don't even know what people's views of me now are going to be."

It's plaintive when she says it, but then she blinks, as though unexpectedly stepping into sunlight.

"So? It's a new beginning. You can be anything you want to be."