decisivestriked:
The sentence ‘our whole lives’ gives Laurie a jolt of immediate fear. She doesn’t really want to consider the implications of living her whole life in a place like this; the Entity’s realm was bad, but at least there she had the comfort of being frozen out of time, the idea she would go home to a place that was unchanged. What Min is proposing is the threat of a world that keeps on evolving without Laurie Strode in it, and she immediately, instinctively hates that.
For the time being she chooses to ignore it. She is here now, with a friend who’s happy to be around her, and the potential of meeting other people. New people, interesting people. And while the question of if she will be able to connect with people who don’t know her yet, don’t know where she’s been, is an open one, she chooses to ignore that too.
So instead she gives Min a smile and decides to cross bridges when she comes to them.
“Ms Feng, I would be delighted,” she says. “I can’t believe how big this whole place is. And how beautiful. If the rest of the seas are like this… Maybe I can see some of the appeal. It’s almost like being on holiday.”
Holiday was a nicer way to think about it. Holiday implied things would go back to normal, one day.
“They are. They’re all lovely - Crises isn’t, but I like it there.” Min pauses, bites her lip. “There’s a lot of new areas opened up, actually, so everywhere’s kinda huge now. Maybe raincheck the full tour, but we can go get a coffee and look at the maps? Oh! Do you have...”
She fishes in her pocket and comes up with her holophone in its sleek electric blue case, waving it at Laurie. “You remember how we were all telling you about mobile phones, right? Cordless, tiny, and they have touchscreens so you don’t have to use dials or whatever? There should’ve been one in your room. Come on, lemme show you on yours how you get the maps up.”
Her phone goes back in her pocket as she starts to walk again, Laurie trailing behind, her big 1980s hands fumbling with her holophone in a way alien to Min’s technology-era sensibilities. She thinks about taking Laurie’s hand and settling the phone in her palm properly. She thinks about holding Laurie’s hand, full-stop, just to make sure that she’s really here, that her friend isn’t going to dissipate in a swirl of black fog - but now that that first moment of elation is over, she doubts Laurie would allow it. Laurie Strode, only survivor of the Haddonfield Babysitter Murders, the only person Min knows who’s more emotionally closed-off than herself, is not someone who likes to be touched. Hands under her arms to drag her off the hook, the graze of fingers against raw skin damp with blood, are the only times Min has ever seen anyone touch her; she even sat apart, at the campfire.
Min did, too, when she first arrived. Near the edges, always ready to slip away at a moment’s notice. She never even consciously registered the change when she began to sit closer, but she did.
She snaps back to reality at the gentle sound of wind-chimes above the door of the coffeeshop. Laurie is frowning down at her holophone; Min reaches over and touches her wrist, a brush of her hand, and points at the bear standing at the counter. “Do you want a latte?”
