strangetrip | [EP] What a nice surprise

"Eugene Thompson," repeated the Innkeeper, when Sam finally broke down and stopped searching for the wheelchair guy to ask. "One moment, please. Do you need any--"

"No. I have plenty of towels." What the heck was it with the towels, anyway? Sam shifted his weight to his other foot and tried not to screw up his face too much. The guy was just doing his job. Even if that was literally all he could do. "Um, but thanks."

"You're welcome." The Innkeeper did something that was probably smile, but Sam couldn't have described it, or his face for the life of him. "Ah, yes." He tapped a finger against the rounded black monitor screen that was as almost as old as Sam. "Mr. Thompson has checked out."

"Huh?" Sam's felt the surprise overtake his face and he had to work hard to plant his hands at the edge of the counter instead of reaching across to grab the guy by the collar. "I thought you said we couldn't leave."

"That is correct."

"But Flash--"

"Flash Thompson has checked out."

"How does that even make--" Never mind. The lyrics of Hotel California came to him. "So, you're saying he's dead and I should look for his ghost?"

"I have no record of His Ghost."

Sam rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Okay, yeah. Thanks."

After he'd stalked away from the front desk, Sam dropped into one of the round red leather booths in the Copper Cafe and pulled out his cell...which was absolutely fucking useless and he still forgot half the time. "Great. The Innkeeper's useless. Flash has 'checked out'. And I can't text anyone to tell them about it."

Oh yeah. Life in the days before instantaneous communication sucked. And blew.

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Sam didn't mind being quiet and eating. At least with Snow, not-talking wasn't Not Talking. It was just Snow being Snow. Turned out, too, that when she finally did speak up, it was on a subject he'd been pushing around in his brain.

"I don't know," Sam told her honestly, while pushing at his salad with his fork. He shrugged and lifted his gaze from his plate. "Could be he just went back where he came from. Or somewhere else like this. I'm gonna keep looking, but so far it doesn't seem like we're gonna find anything to say otherwise."

"I wanna go home," Snow whispered. And then she jumped, surprised as though she both couldn't believe she'd said such a thing--for a variety of reasons--and then fear as though she expected to be punished somehow for saying it.

She looked so scared, Sam almost wanted to look to see if there was anyone behind him. He didn't tell her it was okay, because none of this was okay and she didn't need him to patronize her. Instead, he asked quietly, "Where's home?"

"Gotham," Snow mumbled with an awkward, one shouldered shrug. Fear faded and embarrassment flooded in, leaving her face a bright pink.

"Steph's Gotham?" Sam couldn't help asking. The two women didn't seem to know each other when they got here, but living in a big city, they could easily not have met.

Snow White could only shrug at that. "I think we're talkin' 'bout the same city. Same version or year, though? No clue." She took a breath before she went on, like stringing so many words together was work, and for her it probably was to some degree. "Not from there, originally. Got dragged there from 1878. I was somewhere in Montana, at the time."

That was more words from Snow than Sam thought he'd ever heard, not just at once, but all together. So when he'd finished his bite of salad, he asked kindly, "How long were you in Gotham before here?"

"'Bout two years." Had it really been so short a time? When Snow thought of her time with Regina and Bear and Sissy and Roy and everyone else, it seemed so much longer, more vivid and colorful than the seventeen years that came before.

"Longer than I've lived almost anywhere." Stanford had been the one exception. But it couldn't be home. Not anymore. Not with Jess dead. But it had been before that. And for someone like Snow who seemed to have been so badly abused--Montana, 1873, and at least part Indian almost guaranteed it, whether she'd been residential schooled or not--two years somewhere with people who treated her well, two years would be a lifetime. "Long enough to make a home. Did you have people, family, there?"

Snow froze. Nodded. Turned back to her food.

He'd heard the expression a deer caught in headlights his entire life, but this was the first time he'd seen the genesis of it. If her eyes were any more frozen, if any of her was, she'd ice over.

Poor kid.

"I get it. I won't ask anymore if you don't want to talk about it. But if you want to, or want to tell me their names so I'll know if they get here, I'll listen."

Snow went quiet again, for a long enough time that it probably seemed she wouldn't speak again at all. "Bear was the first Indian I ever met," she said in a little whisper.

His professors at Stanford had drilled racial, ethnic and gender sensitivity into his skull for four years, but time on the road with Dean had eroded his grasp on the issues. He still cared, but he no longer imagined he had any understanding of what it might be like to be Snow on any level. There was probably some ethnically appropriate thing to say, but all Sam had was the fact he cared what happened to her.

"Yeah? That must've been...big."

"Yes," Snow whispered. Really, Sam probably knew more about Indians than she did, at least as far as quantifiable information. She had never known even her own mother--Gun That Sings had died giving birth to her. Bear was the first person who had ever told her--shown her--that there was no shame in being who and what she was.

And now all she had was that fucking room making fun of her. Snow folded in on herself then and went back to not speaking.

"Nothing I can say is gonna make him not being here better," Sam acknowledged, because he knew if someone was trying to make him feel better, it'd just make him want to hit things. "But if you ever want to talk about him, to keep the memories fresh, I can listen."

He wanted to tell her she wasn't alone here, but it sounded so stupid inside his head that he didn't. Just picked up his fork to sit and eat with her, so she didn't feel abandone.

[EP] What a nice surprise

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