Title: Overthrown Moonlight (Crossover with High School Musical/Hairspray/Slaughter House 5)
Rating: PG (will change later on)
Summary: Tracy comes unstuck in time. Like a fly broken free from amber. She must find a way to fix it all.
She had set out to change the world. To make something different, to color it brighter. To make the whole thing spin just that much faster and fairer. She didn't know that the world had set out to changer her. To give and take, to set her spinning and whirling and falling. Like dropping from her second story window, with nothing but air and such big dreams to catch her. The world handed her the future, floppy haired and cool, with so much more boy than man. In the end she was the future and so was he and so was Link, it was them twined together like taunt strings waiting for the fall and the break and the end.
The world changed them and they were never the same.
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The day it begins, is as normal as 1960's Baltimore can give them. All girls in skirts and boys with smirks and swivels and Elvis eyes. Women with buggies and cooing infants, a picturesque world of simpler times. But for Tracy the where underlaid with tension and rebellion, for her she saw, things that faded into the same and nothing different. Stale land and dried up hopes and dreams, not hers, but others, who couldn't drink from the fountain and boys that had to play basketball in fenced in yards far from the nicer cleaner ones in the park. She looks out from windows and saw cages and times of turmoil and she was ready to stand and fight and change the world. Her mother's soap wafts through the air and the peace in her stomach is lurched forward.
"Trace, hun. Come down for breakfast. Link will be here soon."
"Coming Ma."
The kitchen is warmth and hearth and it makes Tracy uncomfortable, like it's a lie. Even as she knows it's not. The world is different and new and 1964 isn't the dream of 1962, it's a darker, more frightful time. And Tracy isn't sure anymore where she fits.
"We are so glad to have you home, sweetie. Your Daddy and I miss you so much. Why you couldn't have lived here and just gone to school closer by."
"Ma."
"Edna, babe. Let's just have breakfast." Wilbur looks over at his daughter and smiles, but in it Tracy can see that though he is oblivious to much, something in him can see that she has changed and grown and fallen away.
"Ma, I think I'm going to take a walk instead."
"Tracy Turnblad, you sit yourself down and finish this meal." Her mother's strong voice makes her sit immediately.
They eat in a uncomfortable silence.
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It's cooler here than what he was use too. But the air smells different and the sweaters he's gotten almost used to wearing no longer choke him, instead it's the strange lonely feeling he isn't use too. He misses the red and white of years past. He misses the thrill and the excitement of things that are now memories in hard bound books. He's content here, but he isn't sure he's happy. Albuquerque is far away and there is so much time and dust between there and here, he might as well be in some foreign land.
"Bolton, you staying in tonight again."
"I have a term paper due, like tomorrow."
"Pussy, you're only in college once, and you waste it." He thinks about saying something about scholarships and money but knows it's a lost cause.
Instead he sits at his computer staring at never ending blank pages and wonders how he is suppose it write on things he has never understood. Segregation and division, of shows with more song and dance than blood and guts and nude live girls. He types slowly " Time is a different thing now, how can one hope to understand how different the world is when this is the only one you've ever known. "
Troy thinks of how the beginning is like the end and tries to ignore how much the world looks like it's all falling apart at the seams.
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The air is cool in Baltimore, with the playfulness of summer fading somberly into autumn, he glances in the rear view mirror and shudders. His once stunning hair, all bounce and swave is now just a messy mop, the Beatles had changed more than music it seemed. He never told anyone but he missed the weight of Ultra Clutch in his hand and the heaviness of his hair, like a hard hat for life. It was something safe and true and something he spent more time on every school morning than he thought prudent to mention. And now it was as easy as sleeping and showering and walking out the door. There was no finesse in it , no detail, nothing but go go go.
He fidgeted with the seat belt again
He isn't use to the new ways yet. The floppy hair and the new rules about safety and seat belts and changes so big he can't see beyond changenewdifferent.
But as he pulls onto the Turnblad's street he is hit with the sinking feeling that the biggest change is in Tracy. She's gone from starry-eyed dreamer into passionate crusader and he isn't sure if he can keep up.
He can see Tracy from the street staring out the window, her eyes clear and sharp but still the same soft brown. He remembers their first kiss, the first time she had leaned close to him and said I love you with her breath forming clouds on the December day, how her cheeks were red but her eyes were clear. How in moments they had gone from high school romance into something that time and distance had yet to break. But how now, there was something that had formed in them, something that stretched and pulled and was in the air but he knew it wasn't them, but everything else. Something he knew was going to happen. Something was going to change. Only he didn't know what.
Instead he pulls over and stares, he hums a tune from long ago, about love being the answer, but he isn't even sure what the question is anymore.
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When he sleeps he dreams of back home. Of red and white and simple. But they're also dreams of running, of going away and never going back. Sometimes in them the people aren't there at all. Instead of Gabby he's leaning in to kiss someone else. Someone with bright eyes and a curved smile. Of someone he's never seen at all. And when he wakes, covered in sweat and shaking he can't remember anything except the exact shade of her eyes.
He's leaning over to her. This mystery of a girl, her curvy hips under his hands and her head tilted toward him, when she is broken apart by light and screams. He wakes with his hand on his chest and a scream in his throat.
And in the darkness of his room he can see something there, crouched in the corner.
"What happened? Ginger? Ginger?"
He tries not to roll his eyes. Another drunk girl trying to avoid a walk of shame.
"This is the boy's dorm."
"What! It can't be."
"I am pretty sure it is. Seeing as how I am a boy." He hits the lamp beside his table and sees a short oddly dress girl leaning against the wall.
"No, I mean this is a girl's college. There's no way this could be a boy's dorm." She looks at him then squinting through the brightness. There is something about her that makes him feel odd, like he's known her forever.
"This college has been co-ed since '71." He gets up but stays back She finally meets his eyes. And he is left breathless. "Who are you?'
"It's only 1964, it would be impossible for it have been co-ed in a year that hasn't happened!" His eyes widen. He feels the laugh bubbling before he can stop it.
"It's 2011. Did you drink something," he feels something shift. "Did you take a drink from something Alex gave you? That bastard is always trying shit like that! I should call security." He turns to go to the phone.
"It's 1964, the conflict in Vietnam has just started. I just got dropped off by my boyfriend Link." her voice is rasing with every word. "I just got home from a weekend with my parents. Seaweed just sent me a letter from overseas, he was telling me about the jungle. My Momma packed me a lunch and my Daddy gave me five dollars, Link said he loved me and and and he gave me this braclet." she shoves out her arm and then starts pacing around the room. "Are you on something? I don't want anything to do with that! I'm not like that! DO-" He rushes toward her but stops short. She sort of sways a moment and then slides down the wall. "You aren't telling me the truth."
"I am. It is 2011. In Baltimore. Look." He passes her his laptop. And she looks so lost. He looks around his room and sees under the dirty clothes and the papers, a calander that his Mom sent him months ago. "Look here." She starts shaking her head and tears are falling down her cheeks.
"No. It's 1964. Look." She pulls from her back a soft date book. In red letters it has March 1964.
"It isn't though." But somehow he knows that she isn't lying either. Somehow he believes her, even though everything that is happening is surreal and wrong and he feels like the world is gone awry. He slides down the floor beside her. And brings his arms around her shoulder. She keeps murmur that it can't be. Till she leans on his arm and sobs.
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She wakes up with her head burning and her face wet. She feels strange and broken down.
She's somewhere she was never suppose to be.
"Are you okay?" And she laughs because this isn't okay. She isn't okay. Nothing in the whole world is okay. Even as she laughs, she cries. What about her Mom and Dad and Link? She shudders. Link, Link that she loved and wanted even as they grew distant. Link who had leaned over at that last minute and kissed her like it was the first time. She cried harder and the boy just held her tighter. And even though it was strange and wrong, being so far gone from everything, she leans into his arms.
"What am I going to do?"
"You'll stay here till we figure something out." And she didn't know why that should be a relief, but looking up at him, for what felt like the first time, she saw eyes that were the exact same shade as Link's. She nodded. Somehow, she knew, that staying here was the exact thing she was suppose to do.
"Won't you get in trouble?" He shook his head at her.
"As long as we don't parade it or cause trouble no one will even notice. Are RA isn't exactly the most observant guy." He leans over and thumbs away the streaks of tears on her cheek. She wants to lean in but sees behind him like a ghost Link. Link who is still her boyfriend even if she is as far away as she can get.
"How did this even happen?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything about stuff like this." He stares ahead. "Maybe I should call Ryan, behind the musical geek, there's another layer of Sci-Fi geek." He grins and then looks back at her. "I don't think you should...you know... parade the fact that you're not from 'this' time." He shakes his head again. "This is the weirdest thing in the world."
"You don't believe me?"
He laughs. "No. That's the thing I do. I believe you, even though there's no reason to. But as soon as I saw..." He stops and continues to stare at the blank wall.
"Saw what? My date book?"
"No. Your eyes." He leans his head on his knees. And keeps staring. "I feel like I've seen them somewhere before."
"They're brown, that's not exactly a shade that's uncommon. I mean it wasn't then." She feels her heart race faster and before she can think of it she blurts out. "Is it now, has everything changed. Do people no longer have brown eyes are they all the same color as yours."
He grins at her. "No brown is still the most common color."
She tries not to feel disappointed. She wonders if anything has changed at all. She looks at his room and despite some glowing numbers and a few things she can't place, it looks as ordinary as her own room back home. "Has anything changed at all?"
She watches as he struggles with what to say. "Do you not want to tell me?"
"I don't know, everything's changed I guess. But maybe not enough." And she understands at once. She nods and looks at the wall too. It's white and pale and even though it's the same shade as all walls are, she can see the cracks and the chip and the age. Everything is different now and everything is the same. Just like it always is.
"What's your name?" His hands are playing with the frayed ages of his night pants. She blushes.
"Tracy Turnblad." She leans her head against the wall and tries not to think about what this all means.
"Troy Bolton." He glances back at her. But turns to stares back ahead.
And everything is different now. With his name in her head and the curve of his bare back in her mind. But still she can feel the dangling of Link's bracelet on her wrist and in her mind she can see the letter from Vietnam in her purse. And everything is the same. She shudders and slumps at the wall.
Just like always.