Author´s note: I have never written a fanfic like this before, as in a fanfic which tosses a character from our world into a fictional world. It´s the kind of stuff you either like or don´t like which is why I would ask those that don´t like it simply not to bother with it. A few things about this however are important to me and the foremost of this is that I do not intend my OC as a kind of Mary Sue that swoops in and is capable of everything and anything, is related to everyone important and one handedly saves the galaxy. Quite the contrary. This is supposed to be a realistic as it gets take on a what-if scenario (as far as realism can be used as a term here) of a flawed character falling headfirst into the rabbithole and struggling with all kinds of things. It´s an attempt at a fic which will hopefully have both dramatic and tragic as well as light hearted and humorous moments. For those that are in for that kind of ride, sit back, read and enjoy.
Chapter 1
Snow and other craziness
How did I get myself into this? I probably shouldn´t have stolen. That´s how it all started.
But how should I have known It all began like an ordinary day. One of those days, in fact, that I started to wish was less ordinary even before I had gotten half way through it but which then took several nasty twists that made me wish back for ordinary with the heat of a thousand suns.
It was still relatively early morning and there had been only a handful of customers in the bookshop so far. I was following my own thoughts while sorting through the newest stacks of books that had been delivered earlier while my boss, Franklin, was creeping his way around the store on tippy toes that I would later learn were his way of trying to work up his courage to having that talk with me. That talk that started with "Look, Emily, we need to talk" and that gave me the by now familiar nervous flick in the stomach. I knew "Traditional Tomes" wasn´t doing great, hadn´t for a while, probably even before Franklin hired me. Good old Franklin with his feeble glasses and slightly out of style sweater vest that, despite dwindling customers and the increasing competition of online stores and big chains downtown had shown a big heart in hiring a recently-out-of job late 20-something with a college degree in an entirely different field, because he believed in her passion for books and in helping a fellow human being through a rough stretch in her life. He had probably known then already that it would be hard to pay my salary.
I followed him into his messy little corner office which had neat stacks of freshly pursued rare first editions along the walls that I knew Franklin couldn´t afford but that he just hadn´t been able to say no to, book lover that he was. "It´s not all about the bestsellers, you know" he would tell me that one time I carefuly wondered whether he could afford to invest in antiques. "It´s about books with a heart for people that appreciate them. The big chains just don´t have that kind of heart any more and that´s why we are here to stay." And while I agreed with him I also knew that bills needed to be paid. His and mine. And so my admiration for a fellow book lover was often overlayered by the urge of shaking the man to get a little ounce of sense into him.
He closed the office door behind him. As if to stop people from eavesdropping. As if to show me he took privacy seriously. In reality there hadn´t been more than three customers all morning so the chances of anyone eavesdropping trended towards zero. "Look, Emily", he said then, "We need to talk."
In this moment, I was scared he´d let me go. It wasn´t as bad though. The only little spark of light on what would turn out to be a truly a weird, crazy day. "I won´t be able to pay you a Christmas bonus. In fact…" he took off his glasses and started to clean them with a meticulously folded napkin, after meticulously unfolding it. "This December I will only be able to pay you half…"
I opened my mouth, not sure what I´d say. I should be concerned, should be mad in fact because Franklin didn´t have his wits together enough to inform me of that until now, but what would that help? Instead I closed my mouth again and he took it as a proof that he had made me speechless and that his probably often rehearsed version of this conversation was running one of the two dozen ways he had anticipated. "I really am sorry and I know it´s tough for you too, I….I just don´t want to let you go. You´re an assett. If you can make it through December and bear with me then… I´m sure things will look up once I get the redecorations done and we finished working out the promotion to set us apart form the chains. I…"
I sighed. I felt sorry for the guy, as much as I felt sorry for myself. "I like working for you." I said. "Really I…it´s okay."
No, Emily, my inner voice rejected what I had just said. No, it´s not okay. Rent doesn´t pay itself. You were planning t go home for Christmas and still haven´t paid for the plane ticket plus… it looks like once more your travel money box is going to take a backseat on the one for groceries.
Franklin sighed, finished wiping his glasses and put the napkin away, now able to look me in the eye again, now that I had not yelled at him. Not that I ever would. But Franklin was one of those slightly fearful people that always seemed to expect being snapped at. "Good… I mean…not good. You know what I mean. It´s not okay, Emily, but it´s all I can say for now."
Maybe it was time to redouble my efforts to look for a job closer to the centre again. Or to finally go international. With my degree I very well could. When had I given up on that anyways? That additional thought only added to that moment being a real downer. I mean, was I really planning on staying a book store´s assistant for the rest of my life? Or, worst case scenario, to become its owner sooner rather than later and inherit a bunch of debt on top of my student loans? I suppressed a sigh. "Don´t stress yourself about it." I said with a weak smile that I knew didn´t look like I meant it. "Really, I´ll be fine…if it´s just for this month it´s gonna be okay."
Franklin had been watching me, almost jittery, then pushed himself away from the desk he had been leaning against. "I know it´s bad." he said. "and as I said there is nothing I can do, really."
What happened next is nothing I am proud of and something I would soon regret. Something, it seems while I write this, without which none of what happened later, would have happened. I kept working for another two hour and I must admit now that, mulling over in my mind and coming to the conclusion that I wouldn´t be able to pay both my rent and the plane ticket, I must have come up with the plan to steal from my perfectly nice and good hearted boss even before he left for his obligatory coffee break at 1 pm sharp. I must have been set on my plan already by then because as soon as Franklin vanished around the corner, I made my way back into his office.
Let me say this one thing: I have never stolen anything. And I still don´t know why that changed this moment. I just know I did. And that I still feel bad about it, but for more reasons than the obvious.
The office was eerily quiet as I stepped in, listened once more and only when I was sure there was nobody just suddenly entering the store, I stepped around the desk to open the topmost drawer. I must have been looking for something valuable. Not money, not something so obvious, because deep down I knew I was doing something wrong and was hoping I would find the one perfect item that was both valuable and not important to Franklin at all. There were just papers in the top drawer. Letters, unopened bills…seems like Franklin was just as good at evading reality as I am at times. The middle drawer was empty apart from an old address book, the lower was far more interesting. I remember clearly how I rummaged through what seemed like an assortment of trinkets. A watch, some jewellery, some cash…and finally how I decided for the one thing that looked the least valuable and the least suspicious. Something like a flat , palm sized thing,no obvious markings or lines or ways to open it. Something like a flat silver box. I guessed it might be one of those old cigarette boxes. And I figured, feeling like the worst person in the world when I pocketed it, that if it was indeed silver, it might fetch some money to get me through the month.
The rest of the day was torture, because Franklin never suspected anything. He would never have thought of me as a thief and dearly hoped he´d never find out. While I was busy and my mind was still tormenting me about what I had done, I had my thoughts firmly set on what I´d do. Try to sell the thing at some pawn shop and get it back if I could. Maybe he would never even notice it was missing.
As the day progressed, even the weather took a turn for the worst. Some people might like a white Christmas but in this part of the country it´s more the question of whether we get a survivable version of Narnia or the merciless climates of planet Hoth.I like to use that line in random conversations. It usually gets a good laugh because hey, having some pop culture knowledge makes you interesting and fun these days.
In the course of the afternoon the snowfall that had started the night before was slowly turning into something really nasty. Thick flakes one moment, almost sleet the next. If that mix froze over, getting home would be a mess.
"Get out of here." Franklin told me around four, when it was already starting to get dark. "See that you get home before it gets worse." Home was about 20 minutes from the store usually, a little further away from the centre into a safe but not too expensive neighbourhood that had a number of middle class families that couldn´t quite afford the really fancy places and university students sharing apartments. In other words, it was a world of what-I-no-longer-am and what-I-not-yet-am without me even being sure I ever want to take a turn for the latter.
His words released a tension I hadn´t known was dreading fear that Franklin would walk to his office and figure out I had stolen from him. But he never did. And so, feeling my consciousness twist my guts once more and with the whatever it was heavy in my pocket I said thanks and goodbye, got into my beat up little chevy and made it out of the city faster than I had thought would be possible in this weather. Until I reached the Interstate that was. Cars lining up and nothing moving I stood for about a half hour before deciding for a u turn to try a detour. It would be a good way to get to a pawn shop that was far away from the one near the book store, too. I would be able to cash in the thing and I wanted to be rid of it as soon as possible, that dirty reminder of what a bad person I was. But maybe this day and weather had been a bad idea for a detour.
It was getting dark already and the further I advanced on that small, pretty much snowed in country road that my navigator insisted was a good alternative route, the more anxious I got. The snow let up after a while, appearing only as some thin flakes in the headlights, the kind that, in combination with darkness, threatens to make you drowsy behind the wheel. I turned up the music in order not to fall asleep, but every radio station seemed to have trouble, delivering an annoying mix of sound, music and static on every channel so that soon I switched it off and was left alone in the silent winter chaos with only the engine sound of my car and the muffled crunching sounds my wheels made rumbling over a thicker and thicker blanket of snown.
I don´t know when I first knew I was being followed. Despite the road being pretty lonely and giving me an increasingly bad feeling about its twists and turns and lack of a snowplough, there was, first of all, nothing too unusual about a pair of headlights in the rearview mirror – quite the contrary: the fact that there was another vehicle around meant that if something happened and my car tried to die on me I would be saved – hopefully by a nice person and not an axe murderer – instead of having to freeze solid out here. But there was something that was just strange about it. Maybe it was because the headlights, as soon as I had gotten used to them, vanished, only for me to notice a little later, only to reappear again, moving closer with a speed that was worrying in this weather. Whoever the driver was, was confident at best and drunk at worst and while I knew it would be best to drive to the side and let him pass, there was something inside me that kept me from doing just that. Something that told me: run!
Still, the other car kept a steady distance for another while, lulling me into the fake safety of its driver just being another person desperate to make it home. However when we left the last lights of the city behind us, he sped up. In retrospect I am telling myself that I could hear the engines roar up when he did, intent on what I now know was ramming my car with the intent to send it off into the nearest ditch, making me stop. But I really am not sure. I just know that it scared me enough to hit the gas pedal and ascelerate in a way that was both risky and stupid. The next bend almost send my Chevvy off the road, making it sway and me panickingly grasp for the steering wheel, just in time managing to keep the vehicle from spinning and to my relief it seemed that my crazy stalker was falling behind. Only for a moment, then the other car moved faster again, speeding up, making me curse under my breath, at a total loss of what to do.
I have little recall of how long this insane little race took. It seemed to more fit into an action movie – a low budget one at that. I just know that eventually I could see the other car sway and turn behind me and that I could see in the backmirror that the driver had overestimated himself in another turn of the road. The car had veered sideways and the hectic swaying and howling of wheels told me even over the sound of my own panicky heartbeat that I might be safe for now. Nonetheless I kept a slightly more than safe speed, tapping my controls for the cell phone´s loudspeaker. I would call the cops. Both to get that asshole into trouble for chasing me like that and well, because no matter how crazy that guy might be, there was a fair chance that getting stuck in this snow could lead to bigger problems than a nasty hangover.
I must have been distracted for maybe a split second, looking down at the controls, a moment before I punched the number, but that was enough. What I did next was on pure instinct. The same moment I saw a movement caught in my headlights, I slammed the break and my car spun around its own axis once, coming to a halt what must have been inches from what had just jumped in my way. At first, in that initial instinctive reaction, I had thought it must have been an animal. A deer, maybe a coyote. But when my car came to a jittering yet sudden halt and I gave a grunt of pain at the jolt and looked up… I discovered it was a man.
I instantly panicked. Somehow, even though it didn´t make any sense, I thought it must be the crazy person that had been following me, even though he was somewhere a mile behind me on the road trying to get out of a ditch. At the same time what alarmed me was the guy´s clothes. It was bleeping cold out and this fellow was wearing what looked like a beige tunic girdled in the middle, pants of the same make (both of which had made him hellishly hard to see in the surrounding snow) and, the only thing that did stand out colourwise, brown, almost knee high boots, a brown belt and a wide brown robe. The thing was wide and he must have been holding on to it but had let go of it in an attempt to avoid me crashing into him, the hood had flown back off his head, revealing part of his face. He was holding up a hand, but whether in an attempt to stop my car with sheer will power or because the lights were blinding him was hard to say. His raised arm had caused the belt to be more visible… as well as the metal thing that was clipped to it. I must admit the thing did look extremely realistic, or should I rather say well made since „realistic" is not really an apt word with regards to things that don´t exist.
In short: What I had nearly run over with my little car on the escape from some crazy drunk chasing me was a grown man wearing jedi robes and a lightsaber. Apparently, one crazy person had not been enough on my way home.
I was about to find out that I couldn´t have been more wrong.