Friday's posting! Enjoy it :)
s*t*a*r*s
“Nat,” says Mike hugging Natalie as she greets him at the door.
“She’s the first here, Lexie has her meds ready. In case she’s not awake to take them,” says Natalie.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, yet,” says Natalie. “I’ll take the fight to them when I find out.”
“Don’t forget to tell me where the fight is,” says Darci from the door. Abby walks in languishing steps behind her.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” smiles Natalie. “Let’s get them upstairs, maybe I can counter this spell.”
s*t*a*r*s
“It’s happening again,” says Rylee, the silence is killing her but there is nothing to say until this plays out.
This time the whiteness of the room fades to a large living room, where Amy Astin is sitting, staring across the room at Dylan Larkin, her husband.
“I’m sorry, Larkin, but I want a divorce.”
“No,” he says softly as if Amy had just asked for a puppy instead of a divorce.
“I’m divorcing you,” states Amy.
“If you do…,” begins Larkin in a threatening tone.
“What the hell is this?” blares the older Tegan Larkin. She remembers this day vividly, but this hadn’t been part of the conversation she’d heard.
“Your mom and dad aren’t split up,” says Rylee.
“No, my mom told my dad that she never loved him…,” says Tegan.
“That’s harsh,” says Sydney.
“Larkin, I can divorce you, I’m old enough to get married and I’m old enough to get a divorce,” says Amy with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.
“I’ll make sure you never see Tegan again,” he threatens.
“What?” whispers Tegan, walking around her father, unseen.
“You don’t have the balls,” says Amy making to walk out of the room.
“I do, and I’ll drag up every single thing about you that I know. Cheated on her lover in high school, with me, pregnant the day she graduated. Wanted both worlds, Jo Wheaton and me. But I won, didn’t I?”
“You were never this big a bastard in high school,” says Amy. “Tegan will never believe the things you say about me.”
“She will, you know she will. I’m the one who raised her, she’s my daughter, my little girl. To you, she’s a jumping point to a campaign.”
“Fuck you,” says Amy, slapping him so hard that he flies back into the chair he is standing next too. “I never loved you the way I loved Jo because you weren’t Jo. You were a sperm donor! You were a means to an end and if Jo hadn’t left, I’d still be with Jo, we’d have raised Tegan.”
“That’s what I heard,” says Tegan softly. Her body begins to shake with the shock of what she’s heard again.
“Then what?” asks Rylee.
“I left, I was right…,” says Tegan, running towards the door that leads to a hallway. “…there. I left. I, oh god, I found one of the secret service guys and I… seduced him.”
“Interesting way of revenge,” says Abby.
“You didn’t know that Jo is a girl,” says Rylee.
“No,” says Tegan. “I didn’t know, I thought it is some guy and I never asked. I never got along with my mom, but after this, I hated her so much that she treated my dad that way. But all along, he was the one that was holding her hostage, I didn’t get why she stayed.”
“Fine, I won’t have you poison my daughter against me, I’ll stay and play your pretty wife, but it will cost you,” promises Amy as she leaves the room.
“She stayed for me,” says Tegan in a pained voice.
“Mother’s do things like that,” says Sydney.
The room again changes and snaps to the white room with the blinding light.
Spencer closes her eyes to it, the pulsing behind her eyes makes her queasy and sick.
“You hated her for all the wrong reasons,” says Abby. “I hated myself for all the wrong reasons.”
“I am my mother’s daughter,” says Spencer forlornly.
“What?” asks Tegan.
“My mom, she used to say that I was just like her, I am my mother’s daughter. But sometimes, just once in a while, she’d say I acted just like my father. I never knew who he was though, it was this big secret,” says Spencer.
“You know his last name was Andrews,” says Rylee.
“No, it wasn’t, that was his first name. She told me his last name would have sent up red flags to the people who might want to hunt me down,” says Spencer. “Never could get a straight answer out of Jo about who he was.”
“Any guess as to what we see next?” asks Abby.
“Me getting drugged up?” offers Sydney. “I mean, I got HIV from a needle, what more could there be than that?”
“Spencer?” asks Tegan.
“I-I-I don’t know,” lies Spencer.
“Me breaking my parent’s heart,” says Rylee.
“How?” asks Abby.
Before she can answer, the room again fades to color.
*s*t*a*r*s
“I cannot believe we are here again,” whispers Darci. Wesley is standing behind them, tapping his foot on the marble floor.
“I feel like I’m 18 again,” says Emma. The castle is unchanged and the familiar surroundings are oddly comforting to Emma.
“God, she looks like her,” whispers Darci as she looks at Spencer.
“Glad she isn’t awake to see you staring at her,” says Natalie. Leading everyone to the warm basement room, they place the daughter’s of J*A*D*E*S on small cots.
“I’ve been trying to work this out, but I can’t seem to figure out who is doing this,” says Natalie. All staring at Natalie, the woman stands in the center of the five fallen girls. “I think – I think its Susan. If that is possible, I am beginning to think she is alive.”
*s*t*a*r*s
“Where are we?” asks Abby looking around at their new destination.
It is a grimy back alley, somewhere in Seattle. The walls of the buildings to either side look dirty, the ground that they are walking on is slimy with grit and other unspeakable things.
“I used to shoot up here,” whispers Sydney. She trails her fingers over the brick wall, caressing it as she remembers her foggy time in these back alleyways. “I’m pretty sure I got HIV somewhere in the bowels of this building.”
“I don’t…,” stammers Abby.
“What, you don’t want to see it?” asks Sydney. Her voice is filled with sarcasm. “I’ve seen what happened to you guys – why not the other way around?”
“It’s intimate,” says Spencer. Her eyes adjusting to the low light, Spencer ducks through the doorway.
“Spence,” says Rylee wanting to call back Spencer. Instead, Spencer only walks faster, having her leg, she is taking advantage of her speed.
“Christ, she’s fast,” says Abby as they all delve into the scene that they know is about to happen.
Sydney walks behind them, already knowing the way. Her dark blue eyes recognizing every single turn and every smell brings back fresh memories.
“Come on, she’s out, she won’t even know,” chuckles a lanky figure that hovers over the younger vision of Sydney Doyle.
“I’m not watching this,” says Tegan in disgust. She turns right into Abby and Abby hugs her as Tegan hides her face in her shoulder.
Spencer cocks her head to the right, wanting to grab the closest grease ball and pummel them until her knuckles no longer heal.
“It wasn’t drugs,” says Sydney forlornly. “It was sex, well good for me.”
“You know you can live for…,” begins Abby.
“You call this living? Taking more pills a day than I can fit in my hand? Never being able to be with someone, or having kids? About the conversations I know I’ll have to have with whoever I want to spend my life with? About the time bomb ticking away in my veins?” snaps Sydney.
“That’s better,” says Spencer. Her kaleidoscope colored eyes meet Sydney’s.
“What is better?” asks Tegan in a wry tone.
“Truth, she’s been hiding how she really feels about what she’s got,” says Spencer. “That is what this is all about, it’s not making us weaker, it’s making us stronger. We might have gotten this all wrong.”
“How?” asks Abby.
“The truth,” says Rylee, turning away from the younger Sydney being dragged off to another room. One man’s hand is already taking her clothes off. “If we – we have to trust each other if we know the truth. We all knew pieces of the truth, but this is pulling us together. Abby you are holding Tegan. Spencer telling Sydney that feeling is good. It’s not to pull us apart, but to bring us together. It’s forcing us to bond.”
“But then…,” begins Tegan, the scene again dissolves, and they are back in the white endless room. Tegan opens her green eyes. “As I was saying – then why all this cloak and dagger?”
“Whoever is doing it,” says Rylee.
“Jayden,” says Spencer in a hard voice. Opening her eyes and this time, she is able to keep them open, but they shine amber.
“Holy crap!” roars Abby taking a step back, tripping over her own feet and landing with a hard thud on the white floor. “What is that? Spencer, what happened to your eyes?”
“I guess it’s time to accept what we are,” says Spencer in a deeper voice than normal. Her eyes flicker over to Rylee and a glimmer of a smile touches Spencer’s lips. Yes, it is time to be who they were all fated to be.
*s*t*a*r*s
“How do we wake them?” asks Darci. “I’ve tried everything I can think of.”
Wesley is pacing the outer hallway. Mario is leaning up against the wall, watching as the women conference about what to do.
“This is why we moved,” says Wesley, his hands wringing before him.
“If you hadn’t, this might not have happened,” says Mario. “They’d have been together and they would have been strong enough to fight them off. No one would ever have caught J*A*D*E*S by surprise like this.”
“You think so, huh? They decided to split up – I didn’t force the issue,” snaps Wesley.
“We told you, we said if they were split up things might happen,” says Mario in a knowing voice.
“You didn’t fight very hard when you moved to Hawaii, buddy,” says Wes.
“You were already gone and Mike and Shelby were in Seattle, what was there left here in LA for us?” muses Mario. “Yeah, we left, but we were the last to leave.”
“Mario,” says Emma as she leans out of the room. She is calm, but Mario can see the stress in her shoulders. “…we need – to do something. And we think you boys should take a powder since with Spencer’s power it might be unpredictable.”
“Oh boy,” mumbles Mario. “Crater?” Emma simply nods.
“Larkin is on his way,” says Amy snapping her phone closed. “How about we wrap this up before he gets here?”
“Wrap this…,” begins Natalie.
“..up?” finishes Darci questioningly.
“I’ll close the bridge,” smiles Mike slickly. “Let’s see if he wants to swim the channel.”
The still handsome man moves passed the other two husbands and leaves the room, and then he turns, “Both of you, with me.”
Wes looks at Darci who nods.
Mario kisses his wife. “Get her up. Get her well, the rest we can deal with.”
“I will,” says Emma, kissing him fleetingly again. “We raised a strong girl.”
“We did,” agrees Mario and he turns to follow Wesley and Mike.
“Let’s hope they are all strong enough,” says Amy.