Chapter Text
“I-I’m sorry. I can’t–I…”
Alice fled the scene, ice in her veins and a pit in her stomach. Her mind was somehow both racing and empty–every train of thought she tried to follow quickly derailed into a fiery disaster. What the hell had she just stumbled upon?
Disoriented, out of breath, and sick to her stomach, she crumpled to her knees at a lamppost and vomited into a bush.
“What…the fuck…what the fuck…” she muttered to herself between gags. In her mind, she could still hear the dead woman reciting her strange poem…thingy. It made her bones tight. Helplessly, she looked around her, squinting to see in the dark, and remembered just how horribly far from home she was. Buses weren’t running this late, and while she was at first fine with the thought of walking home, now she felt she could hardly go five steps without looking over her shoulder. She grappled for her phone, only to find herself with empty pockets. She must have dropped it back where that woman was when she ran.
“ Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit–” She ran her hands through her hair, barely suppressing the panic bubbling in her chest.
Sam’s flat was even further than her own and in the opposite direction, so she’d have to chance passing the woman again…Colin…She couldn’t bother Colin with this, not after Lena finally got him to take leave…G–Christ, Gwen. Gwen’s place was only a few blocks down, if she remembered correctly. She bit her lip hard enough to taste iron and pushed herself to her feet. Her knees and palms strung from where she scraped them on the pavement. She welcomed the sting as a grounding sensation, keeping herself from curling too far up in her own mind. She glanced behind herself, heart racing at the thought of the dead woman following her, and began walking, unsteadily at first.
She always had a knack for psyching herself out. She couldn’t push that woman’s voice out of her mind, and in the still air of the night she kept thinking she was hearing it out loud. She broke into a nervous sprint for the next lamppost, then stopped, checked her surroundings, pinched herself, and sprinted for the next lamppost. She kept up this routine, barely suppressing burning tears, until she finally reached Gwen’s house.
Small, beige, and bland ( like owner like house , Alice thought dryly to herself), Gwen’s place was squeezed between the other houses on the block. Alice began to rethink her choices. Her flat was still several more blocks down, surely she could keep up her little intermittent sprinting routine…But once she would cross the street at the next block, the lampposts got more sparse, marking a decline in income of the residents. Alice cursed herself for not being born a trust-fund baby.
She clung to her lamppost, staring down the wooden door. It was more imposing than it ought to have been. A gust of wind brought with it a familiar scent of salt water and a horrifying implication of Alice being followed. She scrambled across the empty street and up Gwen’s front steps before she banged on the door, holding back swears or sobs or screams–she wasn’t even sure which would come out first at this point.
Gwen, who, by the looks of her eye bags and her haste to open the door, had obviously not been sleeping. She looked surprised, though, to see Alice, in her fearful and disheveled state, trembling in front of her. “Wh–”
“Let me in, please.” Alice’s voice was soft, strained through her tightening throat.
“C-Christ, fine, come in.” Gwen stepped aside and let Alice stumble through the doorway before poking her head out to check her surroundings.
“Lock it, lock it, lock it,” Alice urged her, gripping her wrist without making eye contact.
Gwen had never seen the office buffoon show true raw emotion, so she was especially worried at the intensity of Alice’s fear. She slammed the door shut and deadbolted it before double-checking the windows.
Finally able to relax, Alice slumped against the wall and stared, glassy-eyed, at her own hands. For the first time, she noticed the moisture on her hands. She checked the rest of herself to see where else it had gotten, and sure enough, her sleeves where the woman had grabbed her, her pants where she nervously patted her thighs as a soothing mechanism, and the edges of her canvas shoes were all soaked with salt water.
Once Gwen felt secure, she turned to the hunched husk of a woman in her foyer. She wasn’t sure what to say, though, how to stop her trembling or even just break the silence in the heavy air.
Alice did it for her, attempting to crack a dry joke: “Didn’t know there were people more lifeless than you ‘til tonight.”
“Did you–did you kill someone?” Gwen whispered, aghast. Jumping to conclusions was her forté.
“Christ, no! Or–maybe, if abandoning someone you just resuscitated…” She trailed off, still staring at her hands.
Gwen wanted to keep prying, but hesitated when Alice began shaking again, and choked noises rattled from her throat. “Okay, it-it’s okay, Alice, just…” Gwen approached her, knelt down beside her, set her hands upon her fragile shoulders. A nagging voice in her head told her the OIRA was behind this, that she was behind this.
“Let’s…let’s get you cleaned up, okay?” She gingerly took Alice’s hand, ignoring the fact that this night was the first time she could recall them making physical contact in a long while.
“Your hands are cold,” Alice muttered as she accepted Gwen’s help in standing up.
Gwen led her to her small bathroom and turned the hot water on for her. “Wait here, I’ll get you a towel and a change of clothes. Take as long as you need.” Alice sat on the toilet lid and let herself relax as the steam filled the room.
Gwen was glad she clung to her oversized college pajamas for so long despite never wearing them. Alice was much taller than she, so she could only hope that the baggy tee shirt and shorts would work for her. When she returned to the bathroom, giving a tentative knock to signal her presence, she found Alice sitting there with the same blank stare. It was eerie seeing her so humorless. She set the clothes and towel on the counter and cleared her throat awkwardly.
“I’ll, uhm, set you a place on my sofa.”
“Right.”
“Right…”
She felt herself standing there a beat too long and hesitantly stepped out of the bathroom before she could upset Alice further.
Alice stared at the water pouring from the shower head. She told herself the faint salty smell was her mind playing tricks on her and forced herself to step under it. The warm spray was a welcome relaxant. She couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes, not without worrying that she’d open them to the undead woman appearing before her, but she did let her head fall back and bask in the wonderful water pressure.
It took several minutes for the water circling her bare feet to run clear–the dried blood from her scrapes was especially stubborn. Alice had scrubbed her skin pink and raw, but the dull pain again kept her grounded, and any more gentle approach to cleaning would leave her feeling just as grimy and troubled as she had before she stepped into the shower.
She could have stood under that wonderfully warm water for a while longer, but the patter of the water onto the floor began to resemble the woman’s wretched monologue, and she cut off the water before the panic could well in her chest again.
Gwen fluffed the pillow what felt like twenty times, determined to make it look as comforting as possible. When she finally deemed the pillow sufficient, she turned her attention to the knit blanket. Would it be long enough for the tall woman? She had knitted it for herself over countless sleepless nights, so it was designed for someone of a much shorter stature, but it was the warmest blanket she had…Maybe she should give Alice her comforter…Maybe she should give Alice her bed, and she sleep on her own couch instead…
The whistling kettle broke her train of thought. As she stepped into the kitchen to make two cups of tea, Alice stepped out of the bathroom in slightly higher spirits.
High enough, at least, for her to make a proper jab at Gwen. “You really listen to this shitty band?” Alice asked with a wry, half-hearted smile, pointing to the band name on the tee she was given.
Gwen decided she didn’t need to let Alice have her bed after all.
“In high school, yes,” Gwen responded curtly. Then, remembering the reason she was speaking to Alice at all, more softly, “How do you want your tea?”
“Two sugars,” Alice said, secretly relieved Gwen was being so gentle with her at the moment. “Please.”
Gwen sighed as she set down the two mugs of tea on the table and pulled out a seat for Alice to take. “Sit?”
They sat, and they sipped, and they stared at the grain of the wood table in silence.
Every time Gwen opened her mouth to say something comforting, ask the broken woman before her what drove her here, or just break the glacial ice with small talk, she felt her vocal cords shrivel, and she closed her mouth once more.
Alice dug her nails into her palm and her teeth into her cheeks. After regaining a sense of safety, she quickly grew mortified at the situation she had gotten herself into. Gwen was the absolute last person she ever expected herself to have a breakdown in front of, and yet here she fucking was. She bit back acidic quips, her equivalent to a porcupine’s quills, and focused on finishing the tea in her hand.
A bang on the window made both women freeze. Alice’s face blanched, and she swallowed a sharp yelp. She looked (for a moment helplessly before she fixed her face) to Gwen, who slowly stood and approached the window.
Gwen peeked through a small opening in the curtain, then drew it open. The sun was just beginning to make its upwards crawl into the sky. She looked left, then right, then down. “A bird…Oh–” She had turned back around to see Alice with her head in her hands.
“It was just a bird, Alice,” Gwen said, chastising, before she could stop herself.
“‘Just a bird,’” Alice spat, mocking Gwen’s voice, though hers was tight and bitter. “You try it. You try convincing yourself that every little thing that reminds you of the horror you survived isn’t a part of it, isn’t going to bring you to the same fucking end as the people we file stupid fucking reports about.” She hid her scowl behind a large gulp of tea. It tasted like shit, but it was warm and washed the bile down.
Gwen’s characteristic frown crept its way onto her face. She pounded her fist against the table, fed up with Alice's...everything, and swallowed the satisfaction she got from seeing Alice flinch at the loud noise. “I have. I do. Every night I try to sleep, I do! Ever since I got this fucking promotion, I do! Our work means something, and maybe you don't mind ignoring that and making jokes and naming the fucking computers that read out people's living nightmares, but I know our work means something, and I know there's nothing 'stupid' about it!”
Alice looked up at her. Genuine, believing, she quietly asked, “What did you see?”
The sudden sincerity caught Gwen by surprise. She sighed and returned to her chair, preparing for the long-winded explanation she knew was her only option.
She took Alice step-by-step through the details of her promotion, how she procured it, what Lena had sent her to do, and the reports she had filed afterward. She felt herself get a little out of hand, describing every gory detail of Mr. Bonzo's putrid body, but she couldn't stop herself. It was therapeutic, in a way.
“You can’t say a word of this to anybody else, you understand?” She ended, staring a nauseated Alice down.
“Scout’s honor…Christ, that’s what we’re doing sorting through these reports?”
Gwen nodded solemnly.
“‘M gonna be sick,” Alice muttered.
“Not at my table, please.”
Alice looked at her for a moment, and then, though she knew, or perhaps because she knew Gwen didn’t mean it as a joke, she laughed. “I can’t believe I’m here right now. This whole night’s a fever dream.”
Gwen laughed, truly laughed, with her, agreeing. Alice fought hard to ignore how much she liked the sound of Gwen’s laugh. “Let’s just…go to bed, and when we wake up, we can forget this ever happened. You’ve got a whole weekend to recover.”
Alice nodded and followed Gwen to the living room. She noticed the blanket on the sofa and picked up a corner of it.
"You make this yourself?" She asked, though not looking at Gwen. Rather, she was admiring the weave, rubbing her thumb gently over the soft yarn.
"Er--yeah. Needed something to keep me occupied when I couldn't sleep."
"'S soft."
Alice got herself settled on the sofa with only a mild air of awkwardness as she brought the blanket over her shoulders and looked down to see her lower calves down exposed to the cold air of Gwen's house. Gwen apologized and was about to offer a second blanket when she noticed Alice staring uneasily at the front door and window where the bird had dived head-first. The dip in her worried brows stabbed at Gwen's heart, and, after a hesitant clearing of her throat, she made an offer she hoped she wouldn’t regret.
“I’ve got a queen size.”
Alice finally drew her eyes away from the window to look at Gwen, barely masking her surprise.
“Not–not anything like that, but–well, I mean, I’ve got some extra space from the door and a sturdy lock. You don’t have to, I probably shouldn’t have offered–”
“Sure.”
Gwen opened her mouth, realized her throat was dry, and closed it again. She stood there an awkward beat longer, then nodded her head and turned around in a way that beckoned Alice, who gratefully picked up the soft knit blanket and followed Gwen down the long hallway, feeling more secure with each step.
Gwen’s room was minimalist as could be. She had a queen-sized bed, yes, sat against the middle of the back wall fenced by thin nightstands that housed thinner lamps, but she had little else. Her work pumps sat neatly next to a nice pair of short heels. Her open closet door showcased shadows of her neatly hanged clothes, doubtlessly organized by color. Black on one side, white on the other, Alice thought. There’s no way she owns a spec of color. That was all. No vanity, no bookcase, no wall decor, nothing. Alice bit back any comments that sat ready to spring on her tongue.
Gwen meticulously slipped off her slippers so that they were ready for her to slide on when she woke and crawled into her duvet. Awkwardly, she patted the other side for Alice to lie on.
Alice was rethinking her choices for the umpteenth time that night when she glanced back at the lock on Gwen’s door. That alone took a heavy weight off her chest, and she slid into bed next to her office rival, though she wasn't sure she could still confidently call her that.
“You don’t snore, do you?” Alice drawled, hoping to break a little bit of the tension.
“No, but I’ve heard you snore at your cubicle during a talker more than once.” While Gwen’s response was without that sweet, wonderful laughter, it was still said jovially and made the atmosphere that much warmer.
Alice struggled to close her eyes, still worried about opening them to see the dead woman, but when she heard Gwen’s light breathing and a small, nasally snore that she would tease her about when they woke, she managed to quell her fears and sink into a deep sleep.