Some Faraway Place

by Lauren Shippen

  Anyway, thanks for all of you who have been rooting for us. It’s so weird having so many strangers on the internet invested in my relationship—good weird! But weird. This community—the whole MCU community, not even just the people who I interact with on here—has been so important to me. Not just during this bonkers, wacky, upside-down year, but through the past eight years of my life. I’ve grown up with you guys and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

  Wow, does it sound like I’m giving my Oscar speech or something? Or my own eulogy? Here’s the tldr: you guys are the best. And I want to keep leaning on this community for everything in my life, but I’ve realized there are just some things that are best kept offline, and that includes my relationship with Daisy. Even though I’ve been using a fake name with her and, hello, none of you know who I am anyway, I’ve thought a lot about privacy and boundaries these past few months and … well, it’s important to be responsible with other people’s stories.

  I’m here to tell my own stories, in my own way, on my own terms.

  And I’ve got a lot to say.

  MAY 19TH, 2017

  It felt like time had been rewound, to two months ago, sitting in this same booth, across from Damien, watching him dump sugar packet after sugar packet into terrible, burnt diner coffee.

  “What are you doing back here?” I asked, folding my arms in front of me in my best attempt to seem intimidating. I don’t think it had the desired effect because he just smirked, his cheeks rising unevenly. At least they looked a little fuller than the last time I’d seen him, like he was actually eating for once.

  “Believe it or not, I don’t actually let a bunch of people who hate me dictate where I do or do not go,” he said.

  “Really? Because that’s pretty much the opposite of what you said last time we were here,” I said. “You seemed very adamant about doing what other people were telling you to do, even if it screwed over other people.”

  “Are you … mad at me?” he asked, having the gall to sound genuinely surprised.

  “You’ve been gone for two months, Damien,” I snapped. “A lot has happened.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.” He snorted. “I got all the way to Wyoming.”

  “So why come back?” I asked again.

  “I have some lingering business to attend to,” he said.

  “With Mark?” I asked, aiming to hit him where it hurt.

  “No,” Damien said adamantly. “None of that gang knows that I’m here and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I fucked up bad with them,” Damien said simply. “I don’t particularly want to repeat that pattern.”

  “Yeah, well, if it makes you feel better, I fucked up bad with them too,” I said, ripping open a sugar packet. I didn’t like sugar in my coffee but I wasn’t sure how else to drink diner coffee that had been sitting around since the lunch rush when it was now an hour to closing.

  “What, you try to kidnap one of them?” he asked dryly. “You actually kidnap another one?”

  “No…?” I said, unable to tell if he was joking or actually asking if I’d made the same mistakes he did.

  “Then you didn’t fuck up as badly as me,” he said, mock-soothing.

  “What’d you do?” he asked after a moment, a rapid series of blinks giving away how deeply interested he really was in the answer.

  “I went for a dive,” I said. “Several, actually.”

  “Without permission, I’m assuming?” he guessed. I nodded. “Why? Why would you even want to see their dreams?”

  “I wanted to see who they really were,” I explained. “After everything they told me about you … I don’t know, even though you didn’t deny any of it, it just felt like they were hiding something.”

  “You thought they were lying?” he laughed. “Those Eagle Scouts?”

  “They lie a lot to each other,” I said and I saw his eyes flash in glee for a second. “Or, at least, they hide things. Tell each other half-truths. I wasn’t sure what to believe.”

  “That must get confusing,” he said, before taking a sip of his coffee and wincing at how hot it was.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We lie to ourselves so much in dreams,” he went on. “Our brains tell us stories about ourselves that aren’t true; make monsters out of even the smallest fears. But that’s half your reality. More than half sometimes. Where does the real reality begin and the animated fear end?”

  “That’s … surprisingly insightful, Damien,” I said.

  “I’m not as heartless as everyone thinks I am.” He smiled wolfishly. Someone had clearly regained their confidence and I felt like I was looking into a kaleidoscope and seeing the person Damien was when he had his ability. I wasn’t sure I liked this version as much as the broken man I’d met in January, the man who really understood what it was like to have a monster follow you out from inside your head.

  “Did you get your ability back?” I asked and he blinked in surprise.

  “What, no, why would you think that?” He sounded panicked.

  “You just seem … different.”

  But I believed him, despite all my best instincts. Because there he was, sitting across from me after texting me out of the blue and asking to meet at the diner that somehow felt like ours despite the fact that we’d only been there once, understanding me better and faster than anyone I’d ever known.

  I wanted to tell him everything—that I’d spent a terrifying four days pacing the hallways of the AM, not even caring that I maybe was walking above a basement full of people held against their will because all that mattered was that the AM was taking care of my dad. I wanted to tell him that those four days were for nothing; that we were sent home with a new medication, one to help him manage the seizures but do nothing else, and just told to wait and keep an eye on him, not leave him alone in his work shed around all those sharp objects or let him operate heavy machinery in case he had another seizure. That that was likely, that the seizures might happen more frequently, but it was just a symptom of the disease, that it didn’t necessarily mean things were getting worse. That I’d lost all hope that I was going to have my dad at my eventual culinary school graduation. At my future wedding.

  Instead, I found myself asking the question that had been begging to be asked since I’d first been in Damien’s dreams, seen all those bits and pieces of his soul. The question I knew the answer to, but not the full truth of.

  “You were in love with them, weren’t you?”

  “Who?” Damien’s eyes were wide with fear—somehow deeper and more real than the fear in him when he talked about the AM.

  “Mark.”

  “What?” His eyes widened impossibly farther.

  “And Sam?”

  “What?” Something in his fear broke and he shuddered. “God, no. Sam? No. Ugh,” he added for good measure, shaking his head back and forth like he was trying to shake water out of his ears.

  “But Mark…?” I ventured.

  “What makes you so sure?” He crossed his arms, narrowing his eyes at me. He also wasn’t very good at being visually intimidating and it made me feel a little better.

  “What do you think?” I said, fixing him with a blank stare. He blushed.

  “Yeah, okay,” he conceded. “Fair enough.”

  He shifted in his seat.

  “It helped, you know,” he mumbled. “What you did. It helped.”

  “Oh.” I breathed, and then my face broke out into a smile. “I’m glad.”

  “What did you mean by ‘them’?” he asked.

  “There was something else I saw,” I said. “A woman. Two women. Warm smile … flowers.”

  “Indah.” He sighed, his eyes closing like he could smell the flowers suddenly. That was a look of love if I’d ever seen one.

  “And the other woman…” I tried to remember the flashes of feeling from those early dreams. “Bright and blue…”

  “Neon,” he whispered, his voice g
rowing hoarse.

  “Ex-girlfriends?” I asked.

  “Ex-somethings,” he said annoyingly.

  “Like Mark?”

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment, like admitting that out loud, even in a single word, was difficult.

  “So you were in love with them?” I pushed.

  Seeing his expression, like he was trying to put something indescribable into words, like he was in pain and always had been, I rephrased.

  “You are in love with them?”

  “No,” he said, somewhat automatically. I raised an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know.” He breathed. “Indah and Neon … I haven’t seen them in ten years. They wouldn’t even remember me.”

  “I’m sure they would,” I said, trying to comfort him.

  “Trust me, they wouldn’t,” he said darkly before exhaling loudly again.

  “I guess … I don’t really know what being in love means,” he said. “But I’ve felt things for people … Indah and Neon and Mark … it’s different from how I feel about other people. Even people like you.”

  “People like me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “People that I like.”

  I found myself oddly flattered at that, especially when our eyes met and Damien gave me the tiniest smile, one that threw me for a complete loop for a moment before I realized that it was because I’d never seen a true, genuine smile from him.

  “So what you’re saying is you’re not in love with me?” I said, deadpan, trying to cut the tension but unable to keep myself from smiling back.

  “Don’t be creepy, Dorothy.” He chuckled, and his smile grew. I laughed exhaustedly and put my elbows on the table, leaning forward into his space.

  “Damien, why are you back here?” I groaned. “Just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me and then we can be out of each other’s lives for good.” I had meant it as a joke, but it vanished Damien’s smile immediately and I wanted to take it back.

  “Is that what you want?” he asked. “Because I wasn’t even planning on calling you when I first got back but then—”

  “Wait, how long have you been back?” I asked.

  “A month.”

  “A month?” I gaped. “What—why—what’s going on?”

  “I was getting to that,” he said, lowering his voice like he was trying to use it to calm me down, which I found VERY annoying. “I came back because…”

  He blew out a big breath—I had kind of missed his drama if I’m honest—and leaned back in the booth.

  “I need some things from the AM,” he said after a moment and I instantly snapped.

  “No, no way—” I shook my head. “That’s what you were trying to trick me into doing the very first time we met and I’m not having it—”

  “I’m not asking you to go back into a program or make an appointment or anything,” he said.

  “What are you asking?”

  “To break in with me.”

  I sat, shock-still for a second before a hollow laugh burst out of me.

  “Oh, so just the way more illegal version of the already very sketchy thing you wanted me to do—”

  “There’s—” he started, putting up his hands to calm me down, before lowering his voice. “There’s a new doc who just arrived in town.”

  “Okay…”

  “Dr. Sharpe,” he said, letting the name hang in the air.

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me, or…?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “But it means something to me.”

  That was when Damien explained the whole truth. The real truth this time. And FUCK I was so goddamned furious at first I wanted to stab him with a diner spoon.

  “Wait … so you’re telling me that your friend, Blaze, the pyrokinetic who got experimented on and had his power start to burn him alive from the inside out—that was a real story? That really happened?”

  “Yes.” He nodded and at least had the good sense to look sheepish about it.

  “So you lied to me—”

  “I didn’t lie—”

  “No, you lied to me about lying, which is somehow even more messed up—”

  “I wanted to cut you out, Rose,” he said, leaning forward, almost like he wanted to grab my hands. “I needed you to hate me. I just wanted you to have a good normal life and there was no way you were gonna have that if we were friends.”

  “Nice to see you’ve given up on that hope for me completely,” I grumbled.

  “You’re missing the point of what I’m trying to tell you, Rose,” he said. “You can yell at me all you want later—”

  “Oh, I will—”

  “But my friend Blaze is real, and he has been sick for the past ten years and I—after I got out of the AM, I got curious. About what happened to him. So I tracked him down. And like I told you, he’s been in a facility out in LA but he was just brought here. To Boston. The lead doctor on his case—”

  “Dr. Sharpe, I’m assuming?”

  “See, I knew it was good to have you around.” He smiled. “You’re … sharp.”

  “Wow,” I said dryly.

  “I couldn’t help it.”

  “Get to the point.” I waved my hand in a “hurry up” gesture.

  “She’s working on a cure for Blaze,” he said. “Something to suppress his power, make him able to live his life without constantly lighting himself on fire. I promise you: this is real.”

  I started to shake, and not just because the diner coffee may as well have been jet fuel. Damien told me all the details—Dr. Sharpe had been working on the serum in LA but had come to work at the AM in Boston because they could offer her more resources. And she was close. Close to making something that could turn off abilities in Atypicals who were hurt by their powers.

  “But there’s a catch,” Damien said and I didn’t even have the wherewithal to roll my eyes at this expected turn of events. There was always a catch with Damien but this was a chance—a real chance.

  “I want to break Blaze out at the same time,” he said. “And everyone else down in that basement. No one should be stuck down there.”

  He leaned closer, lowered his voice to a whisper.

  “You in?”

  I’m on the bus home now, and my mind is racing. I know it’s a long shot, I know that this Dr. Sharpe might not have a cure, but, at the very least, I can help Damien’s friend, and stop the AM from experimenting on him anymore. For once in my life, I can do something right.

  LATER

  I knew it. I KNEW IT. I knew that Aaron has been reading my thoughts ever since I came back from the AM the last time, because he was always a little too present whenever I was about to go off and do something stupid, like meet with Damien, and now it’s confirmed.

  I had been home all of two minutes when Aaron came storming into my room, slamming the door behind him, and launching into an argument like we’d already been having it.

  “Are you serious?” Aaron asked, looming over me in his most imposing big brother stance. “Like, really, Rosie?”

  “What? Aaron, what the hell—”

  “Damien!” he snapped. “You said you were working the late shift—”

  “I was—”

  “And decided you’d cap it off with a midnight rendezvous with your favorite creep? I thought that guy was out of your life for good!”

  “He was,” I said. “He is but it’s just—he knows a lot of stuff that we don’t know, has had a lot more experience than us with Atypical illnesses and the AM and just everything weird that comes with being Atypical and I’m not going to ignore that stuff just because it’s coming from an inconvenient source.”

  “An ‘inconvenient source’?” he scoffed. “Come on, Rosie, you’re smarter than this—”

  “Don’t patronize me—”

  “He’s a kidnapper and a liar by his own admission and now he wants you to break into a government facility with him?”

  “Wow, so have you just given up the p
retense of not listening in on my thoughts entirely?” I snapped.

  “Rose, I’m worried about you—”

  “No, stop!” I shouted. “Just stop!”

  To his credit, he did. We stood there, in my bedroom, both panting with anger and scowling at each other.

  “You don’t get to just decide when you want to be an older brother,” I growled. “You can’t just do it whenever it’s convenient for you.”

  “And you can’t just decide what you believe is moral or immoral based on how much it’s going to serve you,” he snapped back.

  “Get out.” I stomped to my door and wrenched it open, not looking at Aaron. “Get. Out.”

  Even after I slammed the door on Aaron’s exiting back, I willed myself not to think about anything related to Damien. It’s only now, now that I can feel the edges of Aaron’s unconscious sleep state, that I feel comfortable writing the rest of it down.

  community/TheUnusuals post by n/thatsahumanperson

  I just got into the worst kind of knock-down, drag-out fight with my sister. We’ve been swinging between approaching something like real, genuine connection and absolutely at each other’s throats for the past month, maybe longer. Ever since she came back from That Place a second time … things were so bad in the fall when she was sleeping all the time, and it felt like I was dealing with my dad being sick all on my own, but now that she’s doing better with the dreamdiving and is actually spending more time awake, it’s somehow worse. It’s like she’s replaced her desire to stay in the dreamworld all the time with trying to solve some weird mystery with That Place that has nothing to do with her. She now has all of these Unusual friends—or, I don’t know that she would even call them friends—and thinks that there’s some kind of big answer to my dad’s illness being kept from us and I’m really worried about her.