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MY LOG HAS SOMETHING TO TELL YOU.

[lanterman]

#lanterman. a twin peaks multimuse sideblog. please don't follow if you aren't mutuals with me on @lissome. written by dana/25/they. affiliated with @inflame.

muses: sarah palmer, margaret lanterman, annie blackburn.

[lanterman]

goodbye leland palmer. ben horne count ur fuckin days

[inflamearc1]

it's easiest, in the moment, to lean in and do as she's told, to just be grateful for the water. when laura reaches for the cup, though, she can't get it right: her aim is off, her grip too loose and then too tight, overcompensating. her mother has to bring it closer, hold the cup to her mouth and help her to drink.

try not to move too much. she smiles weakly, as if to say she doesn't think that's going to be a problem: that she is afraid, but she will not let herself cry, no matter how many times her eyes fill.

she's always held fast to her own little honor code.

it's been years since she's felt like anyone's daughter, anyone's child, but that isn't sarah's fault: she's never changed, not in any way that's mattered, that's made her less of a constant to laura. she's wondered, sometimes --- how could she not? --- but it all seems so clear now, even through the haze of painkillers. her mother would never just not be there. her mother --- who can't even leave the house, most days --- is here, wherever here even is, holding herself together, because laura needs her.

and because ... because there was no one else home on thursday night to make sure she didn't wake up, was there? laura still doesn't have all of the pieces, not yet, but the picture is slowly sharpening itself, coming into focus, with or without her blessing.

not that that's often mattered.

"okay?" she doesn't have much of a voice, laura's realizing: she isn't just tired, out of it. she means to ask if she'll be okay, if they'll be okay, if there's anyone around to look after sarah, who surely won't have eaten anything if nobody's brought it to her here. someone should call her aunt in montana. someone should tell her how long she's been here.

[lanterman]

it's true that sarah hasn't eaten in days. there's a cafeteria in the hospital, but sarah is entirely unwilling to leave the room, let alone the floor. if she stood, she might lose her footing. but leaning forward, her mind sharp and focused for the first time in ... how long has it been? she focuses only on laura, her own body inconsequential, as it so often is.

there's no way to battle through the mess of wires and cords attached to laura's body, though sarah does consider it. they're both too feeble, the hospital bed too small, for sarah to hold her. she settles for this: holding the plastic cup to her child's mouth and smoothing back her hair, sarah's cold, clammy palm on laura's damp forehead. it's an unromantic picture, maybe, but it's enough.

there's no one here to step between them. to push sarah aside and force laura to recoil, to withdraw from them both.

—

the hours pass slowly. laura rests. sarah achieves what can only be described as brief winks of sleep, jolting awake whenever she feels her body relax and slump.

the sun sets. a nurse wakes sarah with a hand on her shoulder that almost makes her jump out of her skin. there's a scream that catches in her throat, but she sees laura — the slow rise and fall of her chest, hears the steady beeping of the heart monitor — and swallows it.

she leaves the room, but only to stand in the hall. she crosses the threshold, but doesn't let laura out of her sight.

the nurse — an older, spidery woman — touches sarah on the shoulder as she hands her the receiver of a phone. she dials an extension as sarah peeks into the small, dimly lit hospital room; her own hard angles illuminated by the artificial white light of the hospital, reflected off every bright surface, making her look ghostly and pallid and sick.

doctor hayward speaks to her gently through the phone, careful with his words, bracing himself for an impact that never comes. the nurse had tried to take her further from laura's room, to feed her, to make her some tea, to give her somewhere comfortable to sit while she took the call. doctor hayward had insisted, but sarah hadn't budged.

sarah doesn't shriek. she looks at laura and hangs up the phone without response. there are no tears in her eyes or on her cheeks.

she lets laura sleep.

[inflamearc1]

he's not here. she doesn't know why he would be --- her father has never been one to look anything unpleasant in the eye --- but laura was counting on another answer, still, this once. she needed to hear that there's been some mistake. there's no room in her head for a reality where she's right, where she isn't out of her mind.

oh, god, please let me be crazy. and if she can't be ... at least don't let them know. don't let mom know. she's thinking that she can't recall ever feeling so helpless when all at once, she does remember. she remembers all of it, the cabin and the train car and ronette --- oh, ronnie, no. no.

"mom. mama." she's turning into a broken record, she knows, but she doesn't care. she doesn't care. laura grips the rail on the bed and manages to maneuver herself enough to retch, to cough yellow bile onto sterile white tile. how long has she been here? she had dinner, she knows that, because after she'd left for bobby's she'd felt so bad. she was always such a child about eating anything green. "i'm so sorry."

[lanterman]

"no, laura — oh, no, you don't have anything to be sorry for."

she ought to flinch at the sound of retching and the sight of bile; but it only reminds her that laura's alive, that there's somewhere to go from here. sarah moves what few strands fall into laura's eyes away from her face, holding back her hair with a gentle grip.

a nurse hurries into the room, moving around them silently, as though she doesn't notice their presence at all. she wears a bright red lip, a light blue dress and a crisp white cap that holds her perfectly uniform curls in place. she hurries about, scooping chunks of pale yellow fluid into a paper bag. and then she's gone, forgotten altogether by sarah.

she fills a small plastic cup with cold water from a glass jug.

"try not to move too much."

[inflamearc1]

it doesn't seem all right. laura feels like she's sinking, as though there's a great weight on her chest, and her arms --- her arms. no, she doesn't feel all right. she is not all right: she isn't right at all. she feels like she can't breathe. when she finally opens her eyes, she isn't at all surprised to see where she is, though she would rather not think about why.

"mom?" her voice comes out small, shrill, panicked. she tries to sit in the bed, but hardly lifts her head before relenting, lying back down. turning her face toward sarah and thinking dully, for the first time in her life, that her mother actually looks her age, and is that her fault? it's the last thing laura's ever wanted, for all the ugliness in her life --- in her --- to touch anyone else. and most especially her mother, who is already so frightened of so much.

she feels sick, more than anything: fear turning into dread, turning into a cold, cruel nausea. it's so consuming that she wishes for true pain, wishes that she could clear the fog curled protectively around her. wishes that whatever she's being kept from feeling could blot her out entirely.

"where's dad?" laura does not want to wake up.

[lanterman]

the words shoot right through her. where's dad.

"he's — he's not here."

she doesn't know where he is.

sarah can't feel the presence that lingers around the house. even when leland is gone — skulking around the great northern, doing whatever else it is he does when he's working late or running an errand for ben — the feeling tends to remain. she doesn't feel it now, here, almost a state away. the second skin clinging to her outsides feels like it's gotten a little looser. she almost feels calm.

( but there's an anger, too. somewhere very, very deep. belonging to her and to someone else. she feels it and swallows it and it's gone, festering in the belly of another. )

"my baby..." she wants to cry. every part of her body tenses up like it's about to, but the tears don't come. "oh, laura..."

something (someone) in her knows not to weep.

"you're safe — you're safe, now."

[inflamearc1]

laura is dreaming. it's christmas morning, 1979. she's just opened up an expensive hat box only to find a kitten curled up inside, solid white and fast asleep --- until she starts in with all the screaming and all the crying, at least.

(the memory is especially sharp to laura because there's video: of course there's video. there's only one of her, and dad's such a showoff.)

a year after that, she's finally brave enough to sleep over at donna's --- though she'll never admit what's held her back for so long --- and they bake a cake and stay up laughing until after midnight, making shadow puppets on the ceiling. they're terrible at it, but her recollections are always more gracious.

laura?

she's eleven and she's just had her appendix out, though the details of all the drama are still fuzzy. mom's worked nonstop on something she won't let her get hold of, still won't even let her see, which is driving laura completely nuts. it's there on her bed when she comes home: a sock monkey with a shock of red hair, wearing miniature nurse costume. she calls it judy.

mom. mom?

"no school," laura mumbles, managing a faint air of authority, "i mean it."

[lanterman]

"laura? laura —"

it's the same gentle tone she uses to rouse her from sleep each morning. but it isn't followed by an i won't tell you again. there's no threat of cold water being splashed onto her forehead, or a your breakfast is getting cold.

there is no soft light spilling through the window of laura's bedroom, no soft duvet to hold her tight. no light, fresh smell of rosewater face cream sarah applies dutifully each morning, no birdsong catching on the breeze. the hospital is cold and harsh and sterile, lit brightly, with no room to hide the rough edges around objects, the deep, dark circles beneath sarah's eyes.

"you can wake up, sweetheart. it's all right."

leland isn't here. she doesn't feel that cold prickling at the back of her neck. her back is against the wall. each time a nurse walks past the open door of the private room, sarah tenses, then relaxes.

"you're all right."

[lanterman]

@inflame

flying frightens her. hospitals frighten her. doctors, men with clipboards and unsmiling faces, nurses with needles and receptionists asking questions — it all sets her on edge.

but that fear doesn't compete with what she feels as she sees laura for the first time since telling her goodnight.

they let her stay, because they have very little choice. let her watch the weak flutter of laura's heart on the monitor. for hours, she watches, listens to the steady, electronic beating of her heart. visiting hours end, and she doesn't leave. they start up again, and she still doesn't leave.

she has been sitting here in a comfortable chair a nurse who pitied her brought around for her, tending to laura as best she can, for the better part of two days, snapping at almost every nurse who just wants to help — you need to sleep, let us give you something to help you — they attempt this routine one after the other, minutes, then hours apart, to no avail.

another night passes, and it's just as bad as the first. she wonders, as the doctors do, when laura will wake up. unlike them, she doesn't wonder if she'll wake up. she smooths back her hair and kisses her forehead so, so gently.

she does sleep, here and there, drifting off for what feels like a second and startling awake when she realises what she's done. her eyes are so heavy, her body feels weak, her — laura stirs. sarah bolts upright.

"laura?"

[rekant-2]

i have a lot to say about s/arah palmer. i think with media like t/win peaks, where everything is so fucking Complicated and connected, but also a lot of it is simply implied, trying to get Actual Words out is hard.

anyway. like. it starts with: i didn't like sarah when i first watched the show. i blamed her like everyone else blames her, because i – probably like most people who watch this show, and perhaps even like you – could not understand that she wasn't at least somehow complicit in the abuse laura faced under her roof.

and. i think. while sarah doesn't have the level of in-depth, first-person characterisation you get from laura's diary (nor does she get the screentime), the quote dax and i never stop using – "sometimes mom and i think the same thoughts. have the same dreams" – sums up. so much. about sarah's character, and why it is easy to paint her as a villain if you don't sit yourself down and force yourself to think about it/her for more than a minute (which is difficult to do, because she's never the most important person in what few scenes she is in).

and it's because she (like laura) is so fucking terrified of the awful awful shit going on in her own brain (and, like, ~supernaturally, in her dreams/subconscious/some other World – which, for sarah, is also fucking constant & neverending, because her husband has been drugging her for the better part of ... two decades so i feel like even when she's Awake the dreams are still leaking through, which canon does support with the constant hallucinations she seems to experience) that she tries to protect her by saying absolutely nothing. and unfortunately, she and laura have been driven so, so far from one another because they're trying to protect the other from the shit they're both going through (which, you know, is probably the point, narratively). so. while it's obvious that sarah is overtly "troubled" (i think once leland dies kids throw eggs at her house and call her a witch, or whatever) she also tries to hide the Worst of whatever "symptoms" she might show, because she thinks leland might have her locked up In A Sanitarium. or whatever the fuck.

and then there's judy. and the fact that she has been there since sarah herself was a girl. and that's. important to this. but also a completely different thing (and i also think about the fact that laura is judy and bob's daughter, which makes me think that judy [like a lot of alters] exists to protect sarah from her abuser. and thats. so so much to even consider)