losttheright: (pic#2993650)
A few days after New Year's, things go back to normal.

Well, for a given value of the word, anyway. There aren't animals roaming the city, out for blood anymore; she can go to and from work without worrying that she's about to get attacked by something. She might even be able to start getting more than a few hours of sleep every night. Actually normal, though, is still the long way off. Her boss is still in the hospital, and though he'll be fine physically, hasn't been taking well emotionally to the loss of his eye. Two out of six city council members are dead. It's going to be a long time before things are functioning the way they used to, and Molly is acutely aware of it, unbelievably fucking exhausted, barely able to wrap her head around everything going on. She can focus on work while she's doing it, but that's about all she can do, or, at least, all she's been able to do before now. Things are starting to settle. The most they can do from here is try to pick up the pieces.

Part of doing so is thinking ahead, now that she can. Both Phyllis and Amit's funerals will be next week, and as much as she can't stand the thought of it, there's not really any way she can get out of being there for both. And with both in such quick succession, no matter how awful she feels for considering it, she probably can't get away with wearing the same dress to both. Being at least pretty sure that it's safe now, she goes to the mall after work with that in mind, trying to ignore the way her stomach turns. She hates funerals, inevitably winds up thinking about what hers must have been like when the subject comes up, which doesn't help matters any when the deaths themselves are so upsetting. Phyllis had a family, kids who'll grow up now without their mother. Amit may have been kind of a douchebag, but he was smart, and five fucking years younger than her. Regardless, no one deserves to go like that anyway.

She's just headed inside, trying to figure out where she should start looking for a dress, when her phone goes off in her pocket, and the message on the screen makes her go pale. Orrin Fillby has been found dead on the floor of his apartment, the side of his neck bitten out by his myna bird the night before. No one thought to look before now. The very idea of it is so fucked up that for a moment all she can do is stand there, stunned, not even realizing that she's frozen in the middle of a shopping mall.
losttheright: (pic#2993705)
The first cop who comes in to get her statement is a stranger. There have been a lot of those tonight, between the other woman at Patrick's and the assorted medical personnel she's seen, but somehow, counterintuitive though she believes it to be, the thought of talking to one, just as the thought of being treated by one, makes her too uneasy. Much as Molly doesn't especially want to talk about it to someone she knows, either — she'd rather not talk about it at all, though there's no pretending like she's fine in the face of this when her physical state alone is proof that she's not — if there's anyone she wouldn't mind seeing her like this, it's Russell. Besides, there's comfort in the familiar, though God knows there shouldn't be. It's the part of this that still doesn't make sense to her. She'd known Patrick for ages, had spent plenty of time around him, and she'd never once had any idea that he was capable of something like this. Even now, she still doesn't know why he would have done any of this. She just knows that, in spite of it, it's the idea of speaking to someone she's never met that unnerves her, cop or not.

He doesn't seem all that inclined to listen to her at first, and she can't even hold that against him when he's clearly just here to do his job. Even when she tries to, though, figuring she ought to be helpful, that she has no reason not to, she can't bring herself to tell him anything. Just thinking about it is fucking difficult enough, and she can't get away from that, panic surging through her all over again if she lets herself think too hard on it, until she reminds herself again that she's safe now, that Patrick is dead. She'd seen his body. It should have been far more reassuring. It's when she starts to really withdraw, only half-aware of doing so herself, that the man's demeanor softens somewhat, and he says he'll see if Russell will come in, as she's asked him to. Once he's out of the room, she lets out a breath, resisting the urge to bite at her already-bitten lip, throbbing faintly where there are a few stitches in it. She catches herself wondering, not for the first time, if it will scar, and feels just as fucking stupid for it as she has before. When she's lucky to have walked away from all of that in the first place, the condition of her face shouldn't be one of her primary concerns. It's always been her way, though, to act as if she's fine even when she isn't, and like this, she couldn't even come close to passing for it. Besides, the last thing she wants is to have to look in the mirror and see reminders of all this for however long she has left.

Reaching carefully for her phone where it's resting on the table beside her bed, she pulls up her email. Work probably ought to be the last thing on her mind right now, but she needs something to focus on while she waits to see if Russell will get here. Being in her own head is too dangerous right now.
losttheright: (pic#2993714)
Days pass. Gradually, things start to go back to normal. It isn't as if Molly is especially surprised by that — the people in this city are resilient, she saw it before after monsters attacked and she's seeing it again now, when the enemy wasn't something tangible, but illness — but it strikes her as noteworthy all the same, in large part because, for once, she's having difficulty doing the same. If there's one thing she's ever been good at, one thing she's prided herself on, it's her ability to keep going even when things are at their worst. Back on the campaign, she managed it even when her life was falling apart, and when the very man she was campaigning for was, in large part, responsible for it. It's different now, though. A pregnancy in its early stages wasn't anything that could have been noticed, and she always meant to take care of it, anyway; if not for how complicated everything got, it would never have been consequential at all. The bruises on her face, though, are unmistakable, nothing that could have just been pretended away, and the result of something a lot more awful than ill-advised sex with her boss. She can hole up in her apartment all she likes, but even that makes little difference when she still knows, when she can barely sleep at night for memories of having a gun held to her head.

The week it takes for her to pull herself together before she goes back to work — as much, too, because she's worried about coming into contact with the virus again as for the way she looks, though the latter's been more of a concern — is also time enough for the bruises on her face to fade a little, the swelling around her eye to go down some. With makeup to cover the marks left on her face and jaw, she looks almost normal, nothing too evident to anyone who wouldn't be looking, and that's enough for her to act like it, too, at least around other people. Of course, it's not as simple as that, the damage done more than physical, but she'll take what she can get, and not having to field questions about why she looks like she got beat up is a big step.

That is, maybe, why she's let her guard down a little, heading back to her building with that same outward sense of normalcy, grateful for the diminished chaos. It's also why, as she pushes the button for the elevator, the last thing she's expecting is to see Russell heading in the same direction. When she knows his apartment is here too, this was bound to happen eventually, but seeing him for the first time since he threatened to kill her shakes her more than it ought to, and it's all she can do not to let that show. As it is, she still keeps her head turned away, tension in her shoulders, hoping she won't have to say anything and hating herself a little for it.

Profile

losttheright: (Default)
Molly Stearns

April 2022

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 29th, 2025 07:52 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios