Labyrinth
A/N: First fic I will update regularly as a series, so go easy on me.
Disclaimer: I am but a simple person at a keyboard. Nothing is mine.
This first chapter will be very short because it's the prologue. The upcoming chapters will be long.
Going back to Arcadia was like trying to relive a past life.
It was weird, feeling strange and uncomfortable in her own hometown, like she'd been living on another planet for the past four years or something. A planet she'd heard about a million times, but never even dreamed of visiting. A planet of colleges and room mates and missed phone calls. Meanwhile, Arcadia was still earth, with everything she thought she'd somehow escaped.
She couldn't really remember when exactly she'd began to feel so alienated. Was it really just that simple? Could you really walk out your front door one morning and manage to remove eighteen years of your life?
North Carolina and Maryland aren't that far apart, she reminded herself.
She racked her brain for something that would clear the tangled web of thoughts in her mind. Like, what if another planet exactly like Earth was discovered and she moved there? Would it really be all that different? Then again, if it was exactly like Earth, how would she know she was there? And if she never really knew if she was there, would she ever be able to get home?
This is when Luke would interrupt and tell her that they'd never find another planet exactly like Earth in their own galaxy, if she still had Luke, anyway.
She analyzed it the best she could, just so she'd be able to fall asleep.
Her life.
Wake up, cook, eat, work, class, class, class, eat, study, sleep.
After June, she realized she was down to: wake up, cook, eat, work, eat, sleep.
It didn't seem like much of a life to her. She didn't like it.
If she had learned one thing at college, though, it was that life is never what you think it is. You have everything but you're empty handed. You have nothing but everything you need is at your feet. You're in the light, but you're really in the dark. You're blind but you don't even really need to see. Diplomas, essays, cars, goals, dreams: none of it matters. Looking at the big picture, things that small aren't even really there; you could be holding them in your hands, but you don't really have them. What do you have? You have pain and you have happiness, and all that matters is you know where those two thingscame from.
Joan stares outside her old bedroom window at the first rainfall of summer and wonders when she lost Luke, Adam, and Grace.