strangetrip | [EP] Maria and Brad

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[EP] Maria and Brad - OTA

Maria decided to take a page out of Liz's book and waitress. She enjoyed the casual attire and lack of uniform. She liked she could make her own hours. She liked that she could take breaks whenever she wanted. If only real life could be like this.

She was still learning the ropes of the Madonna Inn. She knew her way around now, but the quirks of each person was still a mystery to her. Her fashion remained the same which was the 90s with hints of hippie inspiration from her mother. Today Maria wore jeans and a tank top. She brought an order out and placed it on the table. "Here you go. Hot out of the oven."

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Brad was also at the restaurant. He was working on some writing he had started when he first got here. What was first letters to his mom and brother were now stories of the Inn. The creative writing class had always been one of Bradley's favorite classes. He found writing about the Inn and the events that transpired calming in an otherwise nerve-wracking place. As he went to write on the next piece of paper, one of his full ones flew off the table and drifted away. On that paper was the beginning of the retelling of the attack on the Inn.

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Liz walked into the restaurant and smiled when she saw Maria. It brought back a lot of familiar feelings from back home. Working at the Crashdown was one of her best memories.

"I wonder if it's over-kill if I work the same shifts as you." Probably. Still, once in a while would probably be nice.

"Liz, you have to teach me the rope," She said. "How will I be able to figure things out when it's always so busy around here."

Maria gestured to the near-empty restaurant with a wide grin. Then the grin turned quickly to a frown.

"How are you?" She said. "I feel the need to apologize for the like, hundredth time which is still not enough, but -"

"Maria, I'm okay, I promise." She even reached out to hug her friend to demonstrate as such. "You can't help what happened back home and I'm glad you told me instead of lying and keeping it in, I promise. You don't have to keep apologizing to me every time you see me."

"Yes, I do." She said. "It's like, a rule when your best friends and you bring your best friend the worst news ever in the history of news."

"Okay, well, everytime you say it, you're still going to hear that I'm fine so." She gave Maria a 'you're so silly, but I love you look.'

"How are you settling in otherwise? Have you met any nice people?"

"I met a kid who looks like Peter. Super weird." She said. "And this woman who sings and plays guitar. Curnen. She's cool. She wants to sing together which is basically more than anyone back home wanted to do."

Maria smiled. She thought the Madonna Inn wasn't so bad.

"Brad. Yeah." She nodded. She found herself almost avoiding him sometimes because she was worried she was giving him the wrong impression.

"Most people are nice here. Some just take a little more getting to know. Like Illyana. She's teaching me Russian. She comes off as mean, but she's actually really nice."

"Is she the one who works at the library?" Maria asked. "Talk about scary."

Illyana reminded Maria of her Math teacher in eighth grade.

"Anyways, back to Peter's look-a-like," she said teasingly. "That must be cool, huh? Two Peters. I mean, you like the way Peter looks, right? I mean, it just screams romance novel, if you know what I mean."

She wiggled her eyebrows with a large grin.

Liz blushed and pushed at Maria's shoulder, though in a friendly sort of way. "Maria! No." Okay, maybe once or twice, but not in a serious way. "Brad and Peter are very different people even though they look a-like." And Liz was confident she could always tell them apart.

"Anyways, new subject... like are you going to come to some classes with me while you're here?"

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Snow was pondering just going straight to the kitchen to get food from the source instead of having to deal with the pair of dizzy girls who made up the waitstaff. She liked Emma, though. But before she could go with that decision, she saw the paper float away from Brad's table unnoticed.

She might have just let it go, but Brad was okay. He didn't make her feel nervous and edgy like a number of people here did to some degree.

"You dropped this," she said almost whisper quiet as she restored the paper to the table.

Edited 2018-09-16 04:44 (UTC)

He looked up as he was in the middle of a sentence about how people in the Inn seemed less phased about the attack than one would think. He liked Snow. She didn't seem to require him to be at peace with being stuck here and he appreciated it. While he knew he shouldn't dwell, Brad still felt out-of-place at the Inn filled with superheros, aliens, and witches.

"Thanks," He said sheepishly. "Did you, uh.. read it?"

Snow shrugged. "Glanced, kinda." Enough to know what he was writing about anyway, if not the details. Snow herself had been in an interesting middle ground in the battle where Rose Red hadn't done so much singing in years and it had felt wonderful to shoot so many things. But she was also just a girl with a gun. Once her bullets had run out, once her mama had left to help Vax and some others, she'd had to retreat to the Temple (a building she found little peace in and didn't particularly care for). "You're writing about the attack?"

"Yeah, I guess." He said. "I'm sort of... writing like it's a fiction story."

Because back home it would be.

He looked at the pages in front of him. He appreciated the chromebook he had at school to do his typing.

"Do you think that's not too disrespectful?" he asked with a pause.

Snow had to stop and think about that. There were many things in her life that she couldn't tell unless and until they were stories. The courtship--or theft--and death of her mother was something she could only tell as half a fairy tale. "Dunno. Why would it be?"

He shrugged.

"I don't know..." He replied. "I've never really written about real things before. Usually my creative writing stuff is all fiction back home. So I guess maybe I'm just worried people are going to think I'm implying their fictional."

Bradley straightened the papers on the table.

"No one would really believe me about this place either way, though." He admitted. "Would they for you?"

"In Gotham, yeah," Snow answered without hesitation. This kind of strangeness wasn't unknown there, though that didn't make it any less devastating when it happened. "Where I was born... no. There's a lot about here they'd never believe."

"Yeah. I barely believe some of the stuff myself." He admitted. "But I'm getting better. The whole appearing back here after leaving for four hours and people who have magic make the weird hard to ignore."

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She smiled her thanks to the newer waitress and wondered how Liz got along with her new co-worker.

"Thanks. So how do you like working here?" She asked as she reached for a fork to taste the chicken pot pie.

"You know? It's not bad," She replied. "I'm used to locals and like, super weird tourists most of the time, so this is sort of nice. Plus there's way less use of the fryer here which means I have like, a way higher percentage of not smelling disgusting after a shift."

Michael isn't a cook, though. Maria missed Michael.

"So this is what you did before the Inn?" Jane asked her curiously. It seemed some people gravitated to what they'd done before and others tried something new.

"Yeah. I used to work at a diner." She replied. "With Liz, actually. Do you know Liz? Liz Parker."

Maria assumed that she must.The inn was small enough everyone had to know everyone else to some degree.

Jane gave a surprised laugh. "Well i guess that answers that question I had about how Liz got along with the new waitress." She smiled, "Liz is a friend. I'm Jane."

"Oh!" Maria said, then smiled. "Hi! Yeah. I'm Liz's best friend, actually. From home, anyways."

Maria extended her hand. She knew adults like this form of introduction.

"Nice to meet you." She said. "Oh! Jane. Jane. Right. Liz mentioned you."

Liz let Maria read her journal so she knew how Liz felt about Jane and her memories.

"All good things, I promise." Maria added with a laugh.

Jane shook her hand with a wry smile. "It's good to know it's all good and it must be really nice for Liz to have her best friend here." She might or might not have her best friend here. Or she supposed she should say Thor might or might not.

"And for you, it probably makes it easier to adjust to being here."

"Yeah. I mean, thankfully weird back home is super weird, so this place is a little easier to swallow," She said. "But Liz here makes it so much easier... actually, that's pretty much like back home too. Liz can keep calm usually when the weird stuff gets really bad."

Maria wondered how Liz did on her own here. She had a feeling even after reading the journal she didn't understand everything.

"Any tips, though?" She asked. "You know, for the new person in town."