chaos_junkie | (no subject)

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She's missed this. A part of her feels awful for thinking so, given the shit that's going on now, the painfully familiar state she'd seen Ian in, but then, their lives wouldn't be their lives if there weren't something fucked up going on at any time. It comes with the territory of being a Gallagher. Anything else, and that's what would be impossible to wrap her head around. This... God knows it's not going to be easy, least of all for Ian, but at least it's something she has an idea of what to do about. At least she's here for it at all. She would count herself lucky to have gotten out early anyway, but now she really does. It's a hell of a thing to have come home to, but she can't imagine the others having to deal with it on their own with her in jail for another eighty-some days, Debbie and Carl only somewhat recently acquainted with the extent of what this did to Monica, Lip with so much on his plate already. A lot of that is her fault, and she's not sure she'll ever really forgive herself for that. Sitting on their front steps with his hand in hers, though, everything feels closer to normal than it has in a long time.

Finally, finally, she's gotten her family back. The rest, she can deal with. It doesn't mean there's not a lot of shit she still has to figure out, but she feels a lot more capable of it now than she did even a few days ago, and she's pretty sure that has less to do with the NA meeting than this right here.

Fiona isn't sure how long they stay there, but finally she pulls herself to her feet, tugging at her sleeves as she does. "I'm going inside," she says. "Don't freeze to death out here, okay?" With as used to Chicago winters as they are, she knows full well there isn't any chance of that, but they could probably use a little levity, under the circumstances. There hasn't been much of that in a long time now, or at least what feels like it, the time since her birthday having felt like a fucking eternity. Shooting Lip one last thin smile, she pulls open the front door and steps into the house.

Except it's not the house she steps into. Just where she is, Fiona hasn't got a fucking clue, but she's lived in one place her entire life, and whatever this place is, it's not that. It's in much better shape, for one, and when she turns to glance back out the door, it's a different door. Instinctively, she tenses, trying hard not to panic. Shit, Lip just finished telling her that people can have their first psychotic break anytime in their teens or twenties, and she's still firmly within range of that, and wouldn't that be just her luck, too? Gets out of jail, finally starts to pull herself together, only to lose it in spectacular fashion at the worst possible time. That's the last thing she needs. The last thing any of them fucking need, after everything else.

A shrill beeping sound pulls her from her thoughts, and she glances down at the monitor on her ankle, the source of it. In a way, it's as much a comfort as it is a relief. On one hand, it means chances are she hasn't snapped, because it wouldn't be doing that if she were standing just inside the front door of her own house. On the other, she doesn't have a fucking clue how she's going to explain this to her PO without sounding like she's gone on another bender, and she really doesn't want to get hauled off to jail again already, least of all when she didn't do anything this time.

Tapping her foot anxiously, as if that might be enough to stop the ankle monitor beeping, she takes a few unsteady breaths, then blurts out, "Shit. Shit!"

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It's a weird fucking thing, feeling like he's almost got his life back. Maybe it's only for a couple of hours every couple of days, but the times when Liam's a preschool and Lip has fuck-all to do because his boss is shit at scheduling him consistently are some of the best times he's got.

He's accepted this by now. Or at least, he tells himself he has. That day on the L, riding home with Liam, he'd wondered to himself if he was gonna have to do this. If it was his turn to give up all his shit to take care of his siblings, and here it was. He'd work, he'd get Liam through school, and maybe by the time Liam was 16, he'd finally get to have his own fucking life back.

Lip had been pissed, for a while, at least. Pissed because even though they're in Darrow now, he can't help but think that this all goes back to that night with the coke, the hospital stay, Fiona fucking up and Liam almost dying. If not for that, maybe things wouldn't be like this.

It's fucking ridiculous, he knows, but for a long time, having his kid brother in tow all the time, it's all he kept coming back to.

In a couple of months, it'll be a year since he ended up in Darrow, and a year since he's gotten to do much of fucking anything that's just about himself. He hadn't thought about school when they first got to the city, because he hadn't trusted anyone else to look after Liam. And after that he'd figured that there was no fucking point to it in the first place.

There's been a part of him, the past few months, that's wondered whether or not this is part of the shit that had lead his sister to fuck up like she did. Maybe Liam's not the whole pack of them— Lip hasn't got to deal with Carl, for starters— but he's starting to resent this, just a little bit. And he fucking hates himself for it.

Sometime in the afternoon, Lip figures he should probably head out, find something for dinner— there's a coffee and bread place that throws out day old baked shit, and he knows a guy who'll set them aside after his shift— and pick up Liam on the way back.

The beeping, he hears when he's down the hall, but the voice doesn't register right away. At least not until he sees his sister standing there in the lobby of the Bramford Building, yelling at a beeping ankle monitor.

"Shit. Fiona? Holy shit."

It's only been a few moments since she left Lip on the porch, but the sight of him now is an almost overwhelming relief. His being here probably doesn't eliminate the possibility of her being crazy and this all being in her head, as unlikely as she wants to think that is, but when she doesn't have the first fucking idea what's going on or where she is, Lip's presence is one of the only things that could make her freak out about this a little less. Granted, that's not really saying much, when each beep from her ankle monitor leaves her nerves increasingly shot, but maybe he'll have some idea what to do about this. At least now he might actually be inclined to help her out, too, something she wouldn't have been as sure of a week or two ago. Then again, even when things were at their worst, she can't see him actually thinking this was somehow her fault.

"Lip, Jesus," Fiona says with a heavy exhale, crossing towards him. "What the hell is going on, do you know? Where are we?" There's every chance he'll be as lost as she is, but it seems worth asking about. She doesn't see anyone else around yet, which may well be for the best, under the circumstances. How Lip would know when she doesn't, when she saw him maybe a minute ago, she has no idea, but it wouldn't be the strangest thing happening right now.

For a second, he thinks that maybe it's not his sister. There are a lot of people around in Darrow who look like other people, and it'd be fucked up, but probably not impossible that someone with his sister's face would show up in his building. Though, she immediately recognizes him, and he's not sure whether he's pissed at her for showing up or pissed at her for taking so long to do it.

"New hardware?" he asks, because he doesn't know where the hell to even start answering her other questions. It's gonna sound fucking crazy no matter how he puts it. Plus, Fiona didn't have an ankle monitor when he left home, so he's got no idea what she remembers happening.

"Yeah," Fiona says, huffing out a laugh, though she's too anxious about this to be remotely amused. Lip being here, wherever the fuck here is supposed to be, goes a long way towards putting her mind at ease, but that's still only saying so much. Whether she's gone off the deep end or not, she's very suddenly got a hell of a lot more problems than she did even a few minutes ago, and not the first idea what to begin to do about it. And as much as the last thing she wants is for Lip to have to get her out of another fix, he's around and she can't think of anyone who might be better able to help her out anyway. "They're charging me for the last one, too. Which I guess makes sense, but — shit, how am I suppose to explain this to my PO without sounding like I'm on something?"

The last time she'd turned up somewhere unfamiliar like this, she'd gone on a bender the night before. She might not know much now, but she does know that that isn't the case this time.

PO. So she's already had her hearing, already got the ankle jewelry to prove it. So maybe she took a deal or something and got probation for what happened to Liam. Maybe she didn't have to serve any time for it, even though Fiona had been as guilty as guilty got when it came to what happened to Liam.

Lip's trying not to think about that, though. It's been almost a year ago, and LIam's alright now. And Lip's not as pissed as he was back then.

"Yeah, it's... it's kind of a long story," Lip says, "We should probably get that thing off first, though. Before the neighbors get pissed. PO's not gonna give a shit. Promise."

For a moment, all Fiona can do is look at him like he might be the crazy one. It's hard to imagine there being any reason for her PO not to care about her having gone completely off the grid, barely a day after having been let out. Then again, no matter how badly she's fucked up, no matter how mad he might have been at her, she doesn't think Lip would go out of his way to land her in any more trouble. That wouldn't help any of them. Besides, this is one thing that inarguably can't be her fault at all. She doesn't have any idea what's going on here, and if Lip somehow does, then he's got to know that's the case.

"You sure?" she asks, still sounding a little dubious. "That seems like a lot to hope for."

"Yeah, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet, seeing as we're not in Chicago anymore," Lip says, and he knows it's gotta sound crazy, but there's not really any other way to go about it than to just dive right into the bullshit. And as far as bullshit goes, there's a lot for them to wade through before any of this starts making any fucking sense at all.

"C'mon, I think I've got a screwdriver or a butter knife or something upstairs," he says, and starts to head back towards the stairs, gesturing for her to follow.

"You know you're not making this sound any less crazy, right?" Fiona asks, though she follows along after Lip even so. That they're apparently not in Chicago anymore would have been easy enough to guess, but that still doesn't explain where the hell they are or how she got here, when she was only heading back into the house. It also makes her still very much in violation of her parole. If Lip says it's not going to matter, then she believes him. She just can't figure out how any of this can be happening. "And how do you know all about this anyway?"

It was fucking crazy when he showed up in Darrow, and he's lucky that he hasn't had to explain how all this shit works to too many people. There was Merry, but that whole thing had been kind of a disaster, considering she'd been about to bawl on a bus bench when he and Liam had come across her.

"Uh," Lip starts, but there's really not gonna be any bullshitting this, he realizes, "'Cause I've been here going on a year now. Me and Liam."

Lip's about to continue with what he knows is a fucking crazy explanation, when some lady on the second floor pops her head out of her apartment long enough to yell about a beeping sound.

"Yeah, we're going!" he shouts.

"Wait, what?" Fiona asks, and if all of this seemed like it might be crazy before, then it really does now. Lip having some idea of what's going on is one thing, but his claiming to have been here for an entire fucking year — and with Liam, no less — is another entirely, going beyond implausible into completely nuts. And while, on one hand, she can't really doubt what's right in front of her, the sudden, bizarre change of scenery, a building she's never seen before, there's nothing she can think of that would account for what Lip is saying now. A year is a long time, especially with the kind of lives they have. "No way. I was just with you, like, thirty seconds before I saw you downstairs. How are you supposed to've been here a year?"

Edited 2016-03-04 07:03 (UTC)

"Pocket dimensions?" Lip says, knowing it sounds like bullshit, "It's um... quantum physics. Like, alternate dimensions. It's like... everything that's ever happened, is happening all at the same time. So I've been here for a year, but I was back home too, at the same time."

Lip reaches into his jacket pocket for the keys to the apartment, unlocking the door when they finally reach the door.

Jesus, he can barely remember the last time he saw Fiona. It was the morning he told her to sort her shit out, before the hearing that he guesses eventually got her the loud as shit ankle accessory.

"Yeah, I'm not really up on any quantum physics theories," Fiona says wryly, though there's no getting around how shaken she is to hear something like that. In spite of what Lip is telling her, there's just no way to make sense of it, and the more she finds out, the more she just winds up with questions to ask. If it were coming from anyone else, she'd write it all off as insane. It sounds insane, enough that a part of her is still expecting to blink or take a step and be back home, everything that's happened in the last few minutes some weird hallucination.

Lip wouldn't lie to her, though. Not over something like this.

"So... Say this is really happening and you have been here a year. That means you don't remember anything that's happened over that past year?"

"Back in Chicago? No," Lip says, and opens the door. The apartment isn't as much of a mess as their house back home is, but Lip's no housekeeper, so there's still a sink full of dishes, a few piles of clothes left out, and a couple of toys on the living room floor form where Liam was playing with them the night before.

The apartment's never gonna be home, but he and Liam have mostly settled in. It's not like they were any other thing for them to do.

"All I remember is ending up here with Liam and sticking it out. Okay, one sec, I think there's a screwdriver in here somewhere."

Fiona stops not far inside the door when he lets them in, looking around as she tries to take it all in, the whole idea of it still too fucking weird. On one hand, under the circumstances, this is about what she might have expected from an apartment that Lip and Liam have been living in alone. On the other, it should never have come to that. Even when Lip left for college, he could still come home, and the rest of them were still there. This is something different entirely, and though it's not like she could have done anything about it, or even known, she can't help feeling a little guilty for it even so.

"Thanks," she says, though she sounds a little distracted when she does, and sighs. "So what do you remember, then? 'Cause that's gonna be a lot to fill you in on."

"Uh," Lip says, and he's searching through a kitchen drawer that's mostly turned into a place for him to toss junk, stuff he wouldn't want Liam to get his hands on. Though, Liam's not Carl, and cocaine-eating incident aside, he doesn't go looking for shit that he shouldn't too often.

"Liam getting out of the hospital. You were, uh. You were supposed to go to a hearing later. That's about it."

Letting out a slow breath, Fiona nods. It's not as bad as she'd expected — not actually a full year she has to catch him up on, at least — and yet, at the same time, it's somehow worse, too. What he last remembers may not be all that long ago, but a hell of a lot has happened in a short time. She and Lip being on better terms again has been a big part of that, and she doubts that's something that's going to happen now just by her telling him about it. He's had a year, so maybe that will have helped, but she doesn't know if she should count on it.

Still, he's helping her out now. That's got to count for something, when she doesn't know that Lip back then would have.

"That wasn't actually that long ago for me," she says, and it's clear that it's still an awkward subject. "I mean, a lot happened, but... at least there's not a whole year to catch you up on."

Lip doesn't know why the hell he even has a screwdriver, but he's glad when he pulls one of of the drawer. If only because the fucking beeping coming from Fiona's ankle monitor's about to drive him crazy, and it's only a matter of time before one of his asshole neighbors decides to call the cops or something.

"How long?" Lip asks, and he pulls over a chair, gesturing for Fiona to prop up her leg. He's hoping this thing comes off easy.

"Few weeks, maybe. If that," Fiona says, shrugging as she props her foot up on the chair. It hadn't taken her long at all to fuck up epically, something that would be a lot easier to come right out and say if Lip actually lived through all of that. As it is, with what he does remember, for all she knows, it would just be one more reason for him to hate her. As weird, as difficult as it might be, she's got to tread carefully here. There's no way she'll be able to do or make sense of any of this on her own. "You'd just found out that you passed your midterms."

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