love will tear us apart

[atehimrightup]

Lee knows what happened. Of course he knows. Maren wasn't taken from him. She didn't wander off and get lost like a fucking toddler. She isn't just around the corner somewhere, waiting for him to find her.

She left. She left him, very specifically and deliberately. She left him just like everyone else he's ever cared about, but this one hurts so much worse. It feels like she stuck a knife in his chest and twisted it, like he's being ripped open by her teeth. He thinks that he would have preferred that, actually. She could have eaten him up and it would have hurt less, because at least then he'd still be a part of her.

He drives through the dusty streets of whatever no-name town he's in, calling her name out of the open window of the truck like she's a lost puppy, and eventually he has to call it. She's gone, and she doesn't want Lee to find her. She made her choice, but that's the thing-- Lee thought her choice was him.

Lee keeps one hand on the wheel of the truck and reaches up to scrub the other over his face, wiping tears from his eyes before they can fall. When he drops his hand and opens his eyes again, he flinches so hard that he nearly swerves off of the road and he has to grab the wheel with both hands, jerking the truck out of the way as a little silver car zips around him, horn blaring.

Moments ago, he'd been the only one driving down a county road under a blazing afternoon sun, and now he seems to be in the middle of a city and it's nighttime. He blinks a few times and pulls over as soon as he can, clawing at the seatbelt to release it and opening the door. He gets out, feet hitting the fresh asphalt of a busy, well taken care of city.

"What the fuck," he mutters to himself, wondering if he's finally cracked. Everything is gleaming and shiny, with sleek, unfamiliar cars passing by. It feels like he's just stepped out of one of the shitty dime store sci-fi paperbacks that he shoplifts all the time, and he stumbles backwards until his back hits the side of his truck, hands pressing back against metal still warm from the sun.

The place across the street has a neon sign with a smiling cup above it, advertising some type of drink that Lee's never heard of, and he takes in a ragged breath as his chest seizes up with panic.

"What the fuck is happening?"

Comments

[andmissed]

Four days.

Joel has slept only in snatches in the SUV, ten minutes here, twenty minutes there. He doesn't go to the apartment that apparently belongs to him now. He's scoured the city from end to end, looking for Ellie, and found nothing. No trace of her. He's broken into homes looking for something useful, only to realize these homes are still inhabited.

No one has discovered him yet, no one has called the police.

He's having a fucking breakdown and he doesn't want this. Not on top of everything else. But he recognizes the panic in the kid, the way he backs up against his truck, and Joel casts a glance over at his own SUV, parked by the curb, then back at the kid.

"No one's gonna give you a good answer to that question," he says. His voice sounds old and unused, hoarse, like he hasn't spoken in days. Maybe he hasn't.

[atehimrightup]

Lee doesn't even notice the man approaching until he speaks and Lee flinches back against the truck with a thud, fists clenching at his sides as he tenses up, wondering if he'll have to fight. He looks the man up and down, swallowing hard and letting his eyes dart around briefly, as if trying to pick the best direction to run if he needs to.

"And who the fuck are you?" Lee calls back, trying to make himself look tougher than he is because he can tell just by looking at the guy that there's no way he'd win a fight. "What is this?"

[andmissed]

"Fuckin' impossible, that's what," Joel answers. Who the fuck is he? Good goddamn question, he thinks, still floating somewhere between awake and asleep, where panic pushes at his skull and his heart will suddenly thump hard enough to wrench him from whatever snatches of sleep he manages to find.

"Someone told me it was a, a pocket universe. A bubble." He laughs, as hoarse as his voice. "Whatever the fuck that means."

By now, though, he knows he can't leave. He's tried in every way imaginable and he's still here.

[atehimrightup]

"Yeah, no shit," Lee shoots back, chest heaving as his gaze darts wildly around the city, twisting slightly but unwilling to turn his back to this stranger. He doesn't look at the man, not directly, at least not until he speaks again. Lee's eyes snap back to him, widening in surprise but more so in anger, because he's got to be fucking kidding.

Except, he doesn't look like it. He looks as tired as Lee feels, like he's sick of fighting but doesn't know how to stop.

"You sound fucking nuts," Lee tells him, but his brows furrow as he looks the guy up and down. It does sound crazy, but Lee did just teleport in the blink of an eye. This is not anywhere near where he was five minutes ago, driving in his truck and trying not to cry, and a sudden, terrifying thought strikes him. "I crashed the fucking truck, didn't I? This is just like, my brain firing synapses off as I die, or some shit."

[andmissed]

The words are so similar to Joel's own thoughts upon his arrival that he huffs out another rough sounding laugh. He'd thought he was dead or dying, that Marlene had somehow hauled herself to her feet, shot him in the fucking head, and he was lying there in that parking garage with a spreading pool of blood beneath him.

But if he was dying, he figures this would be over by now. And if he's dead, this is a pretty shitty version of heaven or hell.

"In a couple days, when you're still here, lemme know if you still think that," he says. "Because I can't figure it out."

He pauses, then asks, "What's your name, kid?"

[atehimrightup]

The man's cryptic words don't make Lee feel much better. In fact, it only further cements his theory. Lee and this guy are both here, both of them looking like life has been riding their asses for years now, wearing them down. Maybe this is where people like them end up when they die.

"Alex," Lee says, because it's the first name that comes to mind. He rarely introduces himself with his real name, even with as generic as Lee is, because it's just habit by now. Yet another defense mechanism. He broke the habit with Maren, let her know the real him, and well-- look where that got him.

"Maybe this is purgatory," he mutters, watching as a pair of women caked with make up walk by talking to a rectangle at the end of a stick, giggling and waving, and Lee's brows furrow in confusion as they pass. "Maybe we got abducted by aliens, because what the fuck is a vlog?"

[andmissed]

"Video blog," Joel answers. He's from the end of the world and even he knows that, but that's more to do with Sarah than anything. It had been early days, in 2003, but Sarah had found a way to know about just about every new cool bit of technology that had come around and he remembers her chattering about it in the truck one day, telling him what it meant, how it would change the way the internet worked.

"It ain't purgatory," he says. "And I'm Joel."

Maybe it could be purgatory, but Joel doesn't believe in any kind of afterlife and if one does exist, with all the shit he's done, he's not going anywhere nice. He's not even going somewhere middling. If all that shit is true, Joel is going straight to the worst place there is and he knows it.

[atehimrightup]

"What's a blog-- you know what? Fuck it. I don't even care," Lee breathes out, shaking his head as he reaches into his back pocket to take out a pack of cigarettes. He puts one between his lips, hands trembling faintly as he flips open his Zippo and lights the tip.

"Nah, you're probably right," he mutters around the filter. Lee isn't a religious person, and pretty much think the whole thing's bullshit, but if Hell is real, Lee's getting rocketed straight into it the moment his heart stops. He lifts his head to inhale deeply as he looks Joel up and down, sizing him up. The guy's dangerous, but he doesn't seem like he's about to attack.

Lee isn't about to let his guard down entirely, but he does hold the pack out in silent offering, twisting his head as much as he can without taking his eyes off of Joel as he exhales a plume of smoke.

"Did you just show up out of nowhere, too?" Lee asks, quiet and curious.

[andmissed]

At the offer, Joel shakes his head. With Sarah around, smoking had been one of those things Joel always avoided, not wanting to cause any problems for his kid, and then after she was gone, the rest of the world had pretty well ended, too. Cigarettes had been currency, worth more to Joel than some smoke in his lungs.

"Drove in from Salt Lake City," he answers, dipping his chin in a bit of a nod. "Rounded a bend in the highway and ended up here instead of where I was supposed to be. It... it was a bad scene."

He'd nearly shot someone. Nearly strangled another. Joel doesn't like to think about where he might be now if he'd been successful.

"Apparently it happens to a lot of the folks who live here," he says. "Everyone keeps telling me it's safe and my life'll be what I make of it and a whole bunch of other bullshit."

[atehimrightup]

The guy turns down his offer and Lee shrugs, slipping the pack back into his pocket and then tensing for a moment. Hopefully they have cigarettes here, wherever this is, or he's even more fucked than he realizes.

He leans back against the truck after taking another drag, holding his cigarette between two fingers as he crosses his arms loosely over his chest, cupping his elbow in his free hand. Joel's voice is low and gruff, almost soothing in a way, and Lee listens to him curiously. A bad scene, he says, and Lee's eyes narrow a bit as he looks Joel up and down. There's a violence in him, simmering under the surface, barely restrained. Lee can practically taste it.

"I was in Minnesota," Lee says eventually, jaw working as he flicks ash from the end of his cigarette. He can feel that same violence within himself, hot like fire behind his ribs, but he keeps himself restrained. Outwardly calm.

"Sounds like bullshit," Lee replies, lifting his hand to scratch at his chin with his thumb. "Life will be what you make it," he murmurs, breathing in deeply and curling his hands briefly into fists for a moment. "So we're stuck here? This is just my life now?"

[andmissed]

"Shit, I dunno," Joel says. "That's what I keep bein' told and I ain't managed to find a way out of here yet. I tried."

He's still trying, although he's losing hope that he'll be the one to find a solution. The more Joel digs, the more it seems like people have been trying to do the same thing he is for a lot longer, people who are smarter and stronger than he is by far. If they haven't figured it out, he doesn't know how the hell he expects to be able to do it.

"The way they tell it, we show up here in an instant, we got no control over whether or not we leave, and if we try, we just get sent back." He shrugs. "And I've tried. A whole hell of a lot."

[atehimrightup]

Lee feels almost oddly calm, and he wonders if maybe he's in shock. Maybe he went through too much all at once and his brain just can't process it all, so all he can do is lean against his truck on suck on his cigarette, staring dazedly ahead as he processes what the man says, laying out the facts in his head like a neat deck of cards. Maren is gone. Missouri is gone. Kayla is gone. His mom-- well, fuck his mom, but she's gone, too. He's stuck here in some place he doesn't recognize. There's no way out.

"What do we do?" Lee asks after a moment, feeling utterly lost. Wondering why he keeps on fighting so hard. "People don't just get snatched up for no reason. What do they want from us?"

[andmissed]

One of Joel's shoulders lifts and then falls. He doesn't know. There's no answer that he can give, not one that will satisfy someone who's only just arrived here.

He should know, he was in the same boat not so many days ago.

"No one's got an answer," he says. "Just a bunch of 'I don't knows' and 'you make the best of its', which is a whole load of horseshit, you ask me." He pauses. "There's an apartment waitin' for you. I haven't spent much time in mine, kinda seems like a good way to get yourself in a bad situation."

[atehimrightup]

"Is that so much different from everywhere else?" Lee asks with a shrug. The only tether he had to where he'd been had been his little sister. He thought maybe he'd found another in Maren, but she'd left him like so many others had, and maybe he's too heartbroken over that to really panic at his strange new circumstances.

"An apartment?" Lee asks warily, but with a tiny bit of hope. He's never really had a place to lay his head. No, this place wouldn't really be his, either. It'd be his cage, if anything, by the sound of it. But a cage with a bed and a shower sounds kind of good right now. "How do I find it?"

[andmissed]

This kid -- Alex, Joel reminds himself, although he's got a sense maybe that's not his real name and that's fine, Joel gets that need -- sounds a little like maybe he hasn't had a place before. There's hope in his voice, just a little, but enough that Joel hears it.

He's not so much of a dick to leave a kid like that with only hope.

"They got this envelope," he starts. "And before you ask, I don't know who they are, that's just how other people explained it to me. Anyway, the envelope has a phone, some keys, money, stuff like that. There's an address on a card, too, and that's your place. Mine was waiting for me at the info booth at the train station."