strangetrip | [GP/EP] Check-in Day

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[GP/EP] Check-in Day

It was a musical day at the Madonna Inn, both inside and out. Curnen had taken her usual place up on the roof and was singing charms to the sky to keep any wanderers from getting lost (though that part of it was not immediately obvious). Unrelated to that, Sunny was on the dance floor in the bar, summoning songs of her own with her knife to keep her moving before she went to do her shift at the library later. It was one of those days where if she thought about it too hard she’d start thinking about that empty bed in her shitty room and the person she most wanted to be there.

This of course eventually seeped into her magic. She knew better. Maybe she’d even wanted that to happen.

Because just once, between different pop hits and dance beats came a rather unexpected French love song. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but the exasperation didn’t last. Before the lyrics started up she was waltzing. By herself and not caring how it might have looked. And for those three and a half minutes, she dared let herself hope for the slimmest chance that Orlu might come through that door.

She didn’t let herself hope too hard, though. There was admitting to feeling things and there was setting yourself up for certain disappointment. She’d lived too long with disappointment to do that to herself.

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Corbie shook her head and almost rolled her eyes, the question inspiring both affection and exasperation. "Nah, he's fine. Only so much trouble he can get into on an average day 'round here."

But when it came time to say what it actually was, Corbie felt suddenly shy. After all, Sam had been here much longer than she had, what the hell was she getting so upset about? She bit her lip and half hid her face in her arms.

"Corbie." Worried, Sam ran his hand through her hair. He wanted to pull her into a hug, but they hadn't been that close since the mistletoe kiss and he didn't want to assume that would be welcome. "Come on. Talk to me."

The touch that she got, though, was welcome. Corbie's body relaxed some at the feeling of fingers moving through her curls. "It's an indiction today. Fuck. Year. Fucking whatever."

"A... an indiction." Sam repeated it, because his one psych class had taught him mirroring helped. And it always had when they were in the field. Also because he had no idea what she was...

Oh.

"Long time to be away from home." He remembered that. "When I went away to university, I had some bad days at first. But it wasn't until it'd been a year without Dean and Dad that it really hit home."

Corbie nodded, though it was as much about the time as it was about the way he fumbled the word that was so familiar to her. "Yeah."

She'd cried herself to sleep for weeks when she'd first arrived. At first it was every night, and then a few nights, and then perhaps once before she'd learned some measure of peace. She'd made friends. She'd found people she connected to. And of course... "I mean, I shouldn't complain or nothing, I've got Mildmay now."

Sam lifted her chin on his fingers finally to get her to look at him. "Who says you shouldn't? An indiction ago--" There was no hesitation this time. "You were cut off from everyone and everything you know. Anniversaries of loss are hard, no matter who's there with you."

And this time, when he'd finished talking, he did pull her into a hug. He liked her, she was smart and funny and pretty and they'd both been here a really long time. He wasn't going to let one 'almost' keep him from being a good friend forever.

Nobody here had actually tried to use that word before, in part no doubt because Corbie had bowed to the more popular term even though no one in Corambis used it. It wasn't until she met Felix that she'd actually heard someone use the word 'year' naturally. Now she was the odd person out, and it felt... not uncomfortable exactly, but off.

When Sam pulled her into a hug, she snuggled close. "I know... I just--" she buried her face in his shoulder. "I wanna go home."

This, he'd learned to do with Jess -- to hold on, stroke hair, be comforting and protective and try not to say anything dumb like 'it's okay'. So that was what he did, and rested his head against hers when she hid her face.

"Would it help to talk about home or just make it worse?"

Corbie thought about that. "I'm not sure," she admitted. "Sometimes, being here's like... y'know how when you're going down a flight of stairs and it's fine and then there's one less step than you expected and it fucks everything up for a second? You get back to what you were doing and everything, but for that one second you were just confused. Being here's like that."

"Yeah." Sam knew that feeling exactly. "It got worse when Dean came back, for me. Because we were out of sync again. Everything will be going along normal and then Dean will say something that makes me miss a step. Is Mildmay from around the say time as you?"

Corbie nodded. After she'd gotten over her initial giddiness she knew she was extremely fortunate that Mildmay had known her at all. "Mildmay's the only person I never get tripped up with. Ain't like anybody's been a dick to me or anything, just... little things. Like words."

"We did kinda fall into using the words that were familiar to the first arrivals." He and Steph and Dean, they'd had a common language, and Snow hadn't had words for a lot of it. "Sometimes I wonder if that was wrong, but I'm not sure what else we would have done." Sam stroked his hand through Corbie's curls again. "I'm sorry it's been hard on you."

Corbie shook her head, nuzzling deeper into his shoulder so that her face was tucked against his neck. "Nah... that's just what language does. Gotta talk somehow. I just miss it being normal, y'know? People always came through Bernatha from all over and I did what I could to help, but I never really felt what that must be like."

"I wish you didn't have to," he said to the crown of her head before he kissed her curls. It wasn't just words. Somehow she brought that out in him, his white knight streak Molly would probably say. But it wasn't a streak, just...he cared about her. "I'm sorry you're having a rough day."

"It'll pass," she murmured, because she knew it would, and because, "And if it don't, I'll make it. My gran'd be ashamed to see me moping."

"This place'll make anyone mope sometimes." His lips twitched with a smile while he rubbed his hand against her back. "Even your gran."

Corbie smiled a bit herself. "Never saw her do it in my life, not until--"

Not until that day I came home all lit up with magic and nothing was the same again.

"Anyway," she said, pushing the memory away in favor of another with fewer sharp edges. "She always used to say to me that when something bad happened, you could worry, or you could work, and we didn't have time for worrying."

Sam would point out that time was pretty much all they did have here. Way more time than work. But it wasn't going to help Corbie's mood and the last thing he wanted was to bring her back down.

"Which means we need a project." We, not she. He was going out of his mind with boredom.

The word choice made Corbie pause, and she lifted her head to look at him. "Didja have anything in mind?"

"I wish." Sam sat back now that she was doing better and leaned into the bar on his forearms. "Most of the stuff I'm good at isn't useful here." He didn't mean to sound sullen, but most of the time he feels completely useless here.

Corbie usually wasn't one to focus on her own problems anyway, but when she did get stuck, nothing got her out of her own head like curiosity about another person, or someone she perceived as needing attention more than she did. "Like what?"

"Saving people, hunting things--" Sam's smile quirked darkly wry. "It's the family business." He shrugged though, rolling a shoulder in a way that looked very like his father and his brother. "Okay, maybe I do more saving the things we're supposed to hunt, or at least try to, but protecting people from monsters and all the stuff that goes with it is most of what I know."

Corbie's head tipped to one side like a kitten's. "What kind of things? Like ghouls?"

"I've never tried to save a ghoul, but yeah, that's the general idea. Vampires, werewolves, demons, changelings," Sam continued, deftly remembering to leave witches out of it in time. "If you've heard a scary story about it, or if you did in my world, we either hunted it or stopped it from hurting people."

Corbie had to shake her head. "I've heard all of those words, but I don't really know what some of those are." Demons of course she knew, and werewolves she had an idea because of Dyson, even if she didn't ask questions. Vampires, though, were still largely a blank. Changelings she had no idea.

And even if he'd left it out, she knew full well from her conversation with Dean about the witches.

[GP/EP] Check-in Day

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