Oceans of Oceans by InSilva
Chapter Two: Where it all went wrong…
Disclaimer: lest there be any confusion, none of these characters are mine.
He was dressed in the kind of casual, preppy clothes that Danny remembered him wearing when they first met. His hair was a little dishevelled and he seemed completely fed up.
"Linus is the character that went missing?" Danny frowned. "How did that happen?"
"Stupidity," said Mr Ocean succinctly.
"Hey!" Linus objected.
"Well, it was," Mr Ryan went on. "Do you want to tell them or shall we?"
"I...oh…I feel like I've told this so many times," Linus sighed. He looked glumly around at the men surrounding him and then over at Danny and Rusty, just inside the doorway. He slumped on the couch and Danny and Rusty moved forward till they were either side of him, perched on the arms. Danny put the half-drunk glass of whisky down on the table, ready to listen.
"You remember when we all met up at Reuben's and how no one was committed to anything yet and how we could leave if we wanted to."
He looked down at the carpet and scuffed his shoe a little. "Well, I left."
"You turned us down?" Rusty said disbelievingly.
"You left?" Danny said slowly.
"He left," Mr Ocean confirmed.
"But the job wouldn't have worked without Linus," Danny said. "So how does that play?"
"You see," Rus smiled at Linus. "They think the world of you. We all do."
Linus looked a little comforted.
"The story changed so the job changed," Mr Ryan said in answer to Danny's point.
Rusty was rubbing his mouth. "If Linus left, surely all we need to do is make sure he enters the story again at that point. Wouldn't that put things right?"
"Weren't you listening?" Mr Ryan rolled his eyes. "The story changed."
Rusty shot Danny a glance. He may be me, but I don't have to like him.
"You are right, Rusty," Daniel said, frowning at Mr Ryan. "Putting Linus back is what we have to do. Long-term, anyway."
"What's short-term?" Danny asked.
"Dealing with what filled the hole left by Linus," Mr Ocean sighed. "You see, when the story was compromised, it found another way to continue. It hooked on to a piece of fan fiction, a story where Linus leaves and is replaced by his sister."
"A sister I don't have, by the way…"
"She's seventeen and she's called Aphrodite," Rus said helpfully. "Actually, Rusty has a bit of a crush on her."
"I do?" Rusty looked as if he were trying to remember the last time he'd fancied a seventeen-year-old.
"Oh yes," Rus beamed. "She has with long blonde hair the colour of the happiest sunshine and eyes bluer than the sky on a summer's day…"
"You sure?" Danny stared hard at Linus. "I mean from the same gene pool?"
"Hey!" Linus said again, looking suitably offended.
"She's smart and funny," Daniel went on, "she's better at picking pockets than Linus, she's better at disguises than Rusty, she's-"
"She's completely unlikely," Mr Ocean stated. "But she's in the story. The story."
"OK…" Danny was thinking aloud. "You say everything's on a continual loop. Why not wait till it tracks round to where Linus leaves and reinsert him as Rusty suggested?"
"The story is on permanent hiatus…it's unfinished," Mr Ryan explained. "It loops from Aphrodite's arrival right up until the point where she's been invited to dine with Terry Benedict."
"He has a crush on her too," Rus added. "He dumped Tess because of her."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa…he dumped Tess?"
"In a heartbeat, Danny," Rus nodded solemnly.
"What we need to do," Mr Ryan went on, "is continue the story to an end. Then it will start from the very beginning and Linus can slip back in. Is that clear?"
"As mud," Rusty agreed.
"I've got an idea," Danny said. "But we're going to need another Rusty. One that doesn't come with a Danny."
"Hmm…" Mr Ocean looked at Mr Ryan. "You think…?"
"There's got to be."
Danny looked at Rusty. That's more annoying than you realise.
"OK," Mr Ocean decided. "I can take us to some angst we waded through before we found Rus and Daniel. There must be a spare Rusty there."
"Do we all go?" Danny looked round the room.
"Normally, I'd say no. But fic-hopping's not that precise. It might take a while to find everyone again and I don't think we have that time."
Mr Ocean produced a cell phone from his pocket.
"Straightforward enough," he said conversationally to Danny. "It's primed for voice recognition courtesy of my author. You say "control enter" to page break to the next scene within a story – that's what we did at the airport to Rusty - or "find story" and then a name if you know it. In this case…is everybody ready?"
They all nodded
"Find genre 'angst'," he said and the hotel bedroom melted away.
They emerged on an ill-lit corridor with rooms off. Mr Ocean and Mr Ryan walked confidently down it, Rus and Daniel following. Rusty and Danny brought up the rear, either side of Linus.
"What made you turn us down?" Danny asked.
Linus shrugged.
"Not sure. It was just a whim really. I was stood there watching all of you chatting like you'd known each other years and I just felt…like an outsider."
I suppose we can be…
Yeah.
"See!" Linus exclaimed. "That's the sort of thing."
"What happened after you left the story?" Rusty wanted to know.
"I walked out of Reuben's house and found myself in a corridor like this. I wandered round a few rooms – a few stories - until those two picked me up."
"These rooms are stories?" Danny looked with interest at the doors.
"All of them."
Something stirred at the back of Danny's mind.
"Mr Ocean," he called ignoring how ridiculous that sounded, "hold up."
The four men in front of him stopped and turned round waiting for Danny to speak.
"I want to ask something that I should have asked a while ago and would have done if I hadn't been caught up with the general weirdness."
Danny looked Mr Ocean directly in the eye.
"How come you knew there was something wrong? How come you were able to be objective enough to leave your story to fix it?"
"Ooh, good questions!" Rus clapped.
"How about telling us the answers, before we go one step further?"
Mr Ocean held Danny's gaze and for a moment, it seemed that he wasn't going to respond. He flicked a glance round at the others which lingered for a second on Mr Ryan and then appeared to make his mind up.
"When I said that we came from a fic, I wasn't strictly telling the truth. We come from an early draft of the movie script. When it was all going to be quite hi-tech. Few more gadgets. A little less humour."
"Before they went for the eating thing," Mr Ryan gestured at Rusty. "Before the tattoo."
Rusty glanced down at his left hand. Unlike his own, there was no trace of ink.
"When Linus left, we were amongst the first to feel the aftershock. It shook us free."
"OK…so once this is all over, what happens to you? What happens to us?"
"I don't know," Mr Ocean confessed.
Danny looked at Rusty. Now he tells us?
"Now you tell us?" Daniel sounded outraged.
"You never thought to ask," Mr Ocean reminded him. "Look at it this way, either you'll be happily back in situ or you won't but if you hadn't come, your situ wouldn't have continued happily for long anyway. Understood?"
They all looked to be in agreement apart from Rus who was mouthing "situ" to himself.
Mr Ocean looked at a nearby door and gripped the door handle.
"No knowing what's inside so brace yourselves," he instructed.
The door opened onto a motel room. There was a bed with a bright orange coverlet as if someone had thought that would make it look cheery and a TV and that was it.
Curled up on top of the bed lay Rusty. A Rusty, Danny reminded himself and looked over at the Rusty he knew, suddenly protective and possessive of what was his.
The Rusty on the bed was sobbing gently, his fingers curled around a bow tie.
"I wasn't there for you," he wept. "And now it's too late to tell you everything you meant to me. The way you picked me up after Isabel's death, the way you looked after me…and now you're dead! Robert "Rusty" Ryan's life is over!"
Danny looked at Mr Ocean who looked at Daniel.
Bingo.
A/N: Yes, Aphrodite is meant to be a Mary Sue. I've written a few Mary Sues in my time and she is named in homage to one of my own favourites wot I wrote called Pallas McAllister, "probably the most brilliant mind of her generation". (rolls eyes at self).