Chapter Text
There was a knock on her door, and Brigitte looked up from her writing, expecting Ghost, or even Alice - come to ask why she'd skipped group today.
In truth, she'd skipped group because if she had to listen to Winnie burst into tears one more time, she might punch her in the face - and who knew how easy it would be to break bones with the growing strength in her, the strength that was foreign and not her own.
She didn't even have time to move off of her bed, or say come in before Marcus stuck his dark head in. No knock, as usual. What she wondered, if I was changing my clothes or something?Surely there had to be rules against that kind of thing.
She should be able to lock her own door - but here in Happier Times Care Centre, even their private half-bathrooms didn't lock.
"Brigitte?" he said, and she felt her anger - her territorial instinct (another unfamiliarity) dissipate as his tired, hangdog brown eyes found hers. "You have a visitor."
He must have registered her look of confusion as uncertainty because he said "Just go down to the second floor. It's the second door to your left as soon as you get down the stairs. But he'd misjudged her confusion…
He'd ducked out and shut the door before she could voice her question.
But who?...
Who knew that she was here? Who would come to visit her?
She pulled her Velcro shoes on and slipped out of her room - only opening the door as far as she had to in order to slip out and take the stairs, avoiding the eyes of the curious girls in the hallway. Probably thinking the same thing she was.
Thank God Ghost wasn't around to ask her questions.
As she took the stairs, she felt the anticipation in her building. What if it wasn't someone she knew? What if people were coming to take her to another place? Another 'care facility' where she would be kept in even closer quarters - put in an even more hopelessly dangerous environment.
The door was open just enough for the catch to be resting against the doorframe. She reached out and pulled it open, keeping her hand on the cool metal doorknob as she stepped inside.
The boy at the window - it was unmistakably a boy, broader shoulders tapering into narrower hips - was backlit, so that she couldn't, for a moment, even tell what he was wearing, or even what colour hair he had - and yet somehow, instantly she knew, and she fought the urge to scream or run. Her fingers tightened like vices on the doorknob, slipping a little, with the sweat that had sprung up from her skin.
He hadn't even turned to her - she just saw him in profile, against the impossibly white winter Winnipeg sky, and she knew that it was Sam.
Her heart was beating out an allegro agitato against her throat and she wondered, vaguely if she was going to be sick. He faced her, and she blinked, her eyes adjusting to the light now, and Sam the drug dealer's eyes met hers, and she felt her shoulders rise up around her ears, her entire body tightening in fear and anticipation.
"Hey there, Bee F."
"Sam," she said, more of a question, more of a shuddering expulsion of syllables than his name, because how was this possible? Ginger had torn his throat out in the basement of her Ontario childhood home.
"I guess you're probably wondering how this is possible," he said, in such a reasonable, conversational manner that she began to think he was an illusion, just like Ginger was these days. She knew her sister wasn't real, wasn't there - she knew it was unhealthy to allow the illusion to continue, but at times it was so comforting, just to hear her voice so close, as much as it was terrifying and unnerving. Just like now.
"How-?" she stammered.
"The virus. Saved my life." He said. "I don't know how, but it did. It must have. Unless it was some freak of biology and the mixture of shock and pot slowed the flow of blood so that I didn't bleed to death. But when I came to, you were gone."
"No," Brigitte said, feeling like her world was reeling around her. "You're dead - I saw it."
"Yeah," he said, dropping her gaze and reaching up to scratch at the back of his neck. "I thought I was too. And I thought that that must be what you'd thought, because there's no way you'd just take off like that, if you knew, right?"
"Did my parents find you?" she asked, and she wondered if she was changing the subject.
He was looking at her again, and she found herself staring down at her shoes and her sweatpants collecting messily at her ankles where the elastic held them up a bit too far, unable to meet his eyes. She felt like a little kid - all awkward and confused.
"No," he said. "But I'm afraid I didn't stop to clean up before I got the hell out of there."
Brigitte thought, again, of how they must have felt, Pam and Henry, coming home to their house destroyed and covered blood. What they must have thought had happened to their daughters. Or what their daughters had done.
But at least there hadn't been a dead boy in their basement. Just a hulking huge beast, with a kitchen knife buried in its side, just under its breast.
"I'm sorry," Sam said, then. "About Ginger."
She couldn't cry, she thought, as her nose began to sting. She shut her eyes tight and pressed her thumb and forefinger against the bridge of it, taking a deep breath. Behind her, she still grasped the door handle with shaking fingers.
They stood in silence for what felt like a very long time. And then Sam said "Brigitte?"
"I'm sorry," she blurted out. "I panicked. I thought you were gone, or I would have-" she would have what? She didn't know. It was too much, suddenly. And the thought lingered that she was taking to an illusion - that she had finally snapped, and maybe she did belong in Happier Times after all, or the kind of place that strapped you to tables and administered electric shocks to your brain.
That was the kind of thing Ginger would have loved the idea of. But faced with the reality of it - as Brigitte always seemed to feel and understand much more tangibly than Ginger ever did, she was terrified.
Suddenly something was brushing her forearm, the one holding her hand up to her forehead, and she flinched away instinctively, covering her ears with her hands in a gesture she'd used for protection ever since she'd been a little kid. The door clicked shut behind her as she leaned back against it, pulled away from Sam's touch, looking out at him from under the protection of her hair - unwashed today and hanging, stringy, around her cheeks. For a moment, just a moment, she was feral and safe, and then the all-too human emotions flooded back in.
"Don't," she said, dropping her hands and shaking them out, excess nerves, uncertainty. She felt every inch the sixteen year old girl that she was. She took a deep breath. "It's too much." She said. "I thought you were dead. How did you even find me here?"
Jumping into action, clearly wanting to make things better in this moment - cut the tension, Sam reached into the back pocket of his pants and handed her a folded up newspaper clipping - the paper soft and faded from continuous handling.
It was a photograph, covering the top half of the page, and for a moment she didn't understand, until the walls, a few people began to look familiar. There was an article underneath about hope for today's Canadian wayward girls at Happier Times, and she scanned the words for her name - printed without her permission, certainly, but she didn't find it. She handed the paper back to him. "That doesn't explain how you found me," she said to the back of the newspaper clipping, to his hands as he took it.
"Look," he said, taking a hesitant step, then another, moving closer. He held the paper out again, standing almost beside her and he pointed to the board - the one with all their names on it, and in the middle, only slightly blurred, was her name. She stared at it, and then looked at him, so close she could smell him, and she hurriedly stepped away.
"You came here from Ontario - from Bailey Downs - because of the name 'Brigitte' in a newspaper clipping. About crazy girls."
He smiled at her suddenly. "Yeah," he said. "It's an uncommon spelling. And it worked didn't it? I was trying to find you for months - I was getting desperate. I almost gave up, actually, and then I saw this one morning because some old guy had left it on the counter where I was eating breakfast. Funny that. How things work out."
"How long have you been following- ridiculous leads trying to find me?" Brigitte asked, her incredulity making her voice higher, less guarded. Less low and safe.
"Since Halloween," he said. "Since I lost you."
She wanted to ask why, but she was too scared to. Too frightened of the answer.
"You're really real," she said.
"Yeah," Sam said. "I really am. And you're really not crazy, so what are you doing here?"
"I wouldn't be so sure," Brigitte muttered, then shrugged her shoulders and glanced at the door. "They found me face down in a snow bank after I overdosed on monkshood. There's one of them after me… I was running from it. They think I'm a drug addict with social problems."
"Well they're only half right, aren't they?" Sam asked, then met her eyes. "Sorry."
"So what now?" Brigitte asked, glancing towards the door, choosing to ignore his last apology.
"Now," said Sam, his voice low, his face very close to hers, dead serious. "We get you out."
"And how do you propose we do that?" she asked.
"I'm glad you asked that," he said. "Because I've been developing a plan on the drive up, just in case it was your name on that board, but I need you to tell me some things first."