fandomtownies | The Park; Saturday Morning [02/09].

When she'd awakened that morning, she'd had no idea who she was, where she was, why she was there...and a thorough investigation of the apartment she was in revealed some interesting, somewhat helpful but perhaps not, information. She had a lot of weapons, for one, which was slightly reassuring, a lot of leather jackets...and a lot of identities. She found information to suggest that she could be any of more than half a dozen different people--Rosa Diaz, Emily Goldfinch, Amanda St. Claire--but the mail on the kitchen table, confirmed by a glance at the mailboxes on the way out, told her that, apparently, here, she went by that first one. And by the badges she found, apparently, here, she was a cop.

Or at least pretended to be one.

Who was she, that she would have so many indentities, so many weapons? That she would wake up not knowing who she was or where? The only logical conclusion was that she had to be some sort of spy, and some mission had gone south a bit, and that's why she ended up here, possibly drugged, probably taken to some safe space by a colleague looking out for her.

Oh. And there was one other thing she had.

A dog. A very cute and very eager dog who pranced around her and nudged at her and rolled around trying to up the cute factor until she caved in and abandoned her investigation to finally take her out for a walk. If anything, it would give "Rosa" the chance to scope the place out a little, maybe pick up a few more hints about her current situation, and they eventually made their way to the park, where she stood and frowned at the pond, deep in thought, while that stupid dog decided it would be fun to start chasing the ducks...only to have the ducks mostly chase her instead.

[[open for all your park-related needs!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One major advantage of having a therapist-ordered journal was that when you woke up dissociating so hard that you had no idea who you were, it was real easy to get caught up.

One disadvantage of apparently being the sort of person who kept her journal in disjointed cartoon journal form was that getting caught up didn't necessarily mean you actually knew anything important at all.

So the girl who was apparently named Mae and liked to draw people with animal heads headed out into the world. By bouncing along fences and tree branches, because she'd drawn people doing that in the journal and honestly? It was a lot of fun.

"Hi," she greeted from her improbable perch on the end of a tree branch. "How's it going?"

Rosa looked up toward the greeting, quirking a faint eyebrow as she took in the anthroporphised cat balanced on a branch, and then she looked back to her own dog lunging at a duck and then making a furious break-away from it as the duck decided to lunge back.

Well, that proved it. Her dog was dumb; she couldn't even talk like this cat.

"Hey," she said, quirking a chin in greeting when she looked back at the cat. "It's been better."

At least, she figured it had been. She couldn't exactly remember.

She eyed the cat thoughtfully again before asking, "You live around here?"

"Up in the castle," Mae said. She didn't know for sure if that was true, but there was no reason for this lady to know that. "You?"

"Over in that building over there," said Rosa, gesturing vaguely behind her, because this cat didn't need to know where she lived. This cat could be one of the enemies. She'd have to guard her information closely, which shouldn't be difficult, since even she didn't know any of it.

By now, though, the dog had noticed Rosa talking to a potential new friend and, deciding that the ducks were kind of mean and boring anyway, came trotting up to get a better look, tail wagging furiously behind her. She looked up, saw the new friend there in the trees, and let out a few excited little barks, because new friends shouldn't be up in trees! They should be down on the ground where they could play together!

And Rosa, who still seemed to understand some deep universal supposed truth about cats and dogs on a level far beyond simple memory, was just going to watch what happened out of morbid curiosity.

Mae looked down at the dog, her ragged ear twitching. She didn't think she liked barking dogs very much.

Maybe that was why she drew herself with a cat head in her journal.

"Your dog could use some more training."

And that dog was just going to sit, lightly, on her butt for a moment, never taking her eyes off the new potential friend, tail still thumping the ground underneath her, ready to get up at a moment's notice and practically twitching with the excitement to spring at every breath Mae took.

Arlo 2 got very excited about new friends, but she had been working on her patience. See? See? Look! Patiently waiting for new friend to be ready to come down from that tree so they could say hello!

And Rosa, looking at that eager pup doing her very best to hold everything back, actually was mildly impressed. But that didn't seem to stop her from saying, "My dog could use a couple more brain cells, too. So what are you doing up there, anyway? You just like hanging out in trees?"

"You don't?"

She would probably have dropped down to the ground by now, but . . . dog.

"I don't....think so," said Rosa, after a moment of realizing that her initial knee-jerk response of 'no' might not actually be correct. She had absolutely no evidence to support whether she hung out in trees a lot or not. She didn't think she did, but the fact that she couldn't be sure that she didn't kind of bothered her a little.

"I can't really say, one way or the other."

There. That was nice and truthful and irrefutable.

Well. That was interesting.

"Have you ever tried?"

How was it that even a simple question like 'have you ever tried hanging out in trees before?' (clearly, a staple of any normal conversation) was something she just could not actually have an answer to?

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Maybe. Maybe not. Probably. But I can say that I am definitely not interested in trying it now."

And it was nice to actually be certain about something.

"Oh my god! Are you dissociating too?!"

"Dissociating?"

Rosa Diaz, who of course spent at least a few years of her life actively pursuing psychiatry as a potential carreer track, knew exactly what that was and would likel point out that that was not exactly what was going on here.

'Rosa Diaz,' however, did not.

Because amnesia could be selective like that.

And Mae Borowski, who had about six months of therapy under her belt with a man who also claimed to specialize in family medicine and dentistry, really only had a Tumblr-level understanding of the term, amnesia or no.

"It's a brain thing," she explained. "Bad stuff happens so your brain just kinda goes 'nope!' and fucks off for awhile."

Rosa considered that for a moment, forehead furrowed in a frown that suggested she wasn't too pleased with the idea that that was what was happening.

"I can't figure out what's worse," she said. "That, or my original theory that I'd just been drugged by some bad guys."

Or good guys, she realized. She did sort of give off a bit of a villain vibe, and did not feel any strong urge to lean away from that at all.

"Nope," she decided, because deciding things when she was this uncertain about anything made her feel at least she had some control over something. "It's definitely that. Dissociating's worse. How messed up would it have to be for your brain to nope the hell out that hard?"

"Right, because people hating you enough to drug you out of your identity is definitely better."

Mae tugged idly at one of the branches near her. Huh. It would probably make a good club. . . .

Rosa thought about that for a moment before she shook her head. "It is," she said. "Because if other people did it, then you can kick their ass, get revenge, get rid of them. If it's your own brain doing it, well...that you're kind of stuck with."

Nice, Rosa.

Real nice.

. . . Yeah, Mae was not finding that reassuring. (And wouldn't if she remembered things, either.)

"But also people wouldn't be out to get you?"

The Park; Saturday Morning [02/09].

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject