A/N: if this is a mess, I'm very sorry – I'm finishing up my finals (just one more thank God) and I'm trying to get back into the groove of writing because I definitely have not given up on my stories. This is my most outlandish one so I thought it'd be a good one to get back into the swing of things with. I haven't proofread and my brain is mush so this might be crap, so sorry for that. I actually have this planned out in its entirety so it may be good as long as I don't completely mess things up.

-o-o-o-

The woman, her aunt, reminded her of a child. In spite of her harsh demeanor and foul language, Jean Louise Finch seemed to be filled with a sense of wonder. She played with the manual crank that lowered her window, sticking her face and hands out to feel the breeze hit her. She sat with her ear pressed against the radio speakers, laughing at how the bass felt against her skin. She didn't sit still, her hands fumbled in her lap, her eyes wide with wonder as she had her first glimpse at the outside world in God knows how long.

"Where you gonna take me?" she asked about an hour into the car ride. "Back to Maycomb?"

Maycomb. Lux had been born there but she had no memories of the place. "No," she responded. "I haven't been there since I was a kid."

"Then where are you takin' me?"

"New York."

"New York?"

"Well, that's where I live."

"I'm livin' with you?" She asked.

"Is there a problem with that?"

The woman paused for a moment, as though she was deep in thought. Lux looked over and saw that she had almost her entire arm out of the window, her hand swaying with the air that rushed around it. Her eyes were out the window, big and dark and perplexing.

After what seemed to be an eternity, Scout finally said. "It ain't a problem."

"Good," Lux said, smiling to herself. "It's not a big place but I think it'll work."

Scout rolled her eyes and chuckled to herself. "I'm sure prisoners have cells bigger than the rooms we had at that shitshow. Your place will feel like a manor."

"Was it that bad?" Lux asked, afraid of what the answer may be.

Scout didn't answer.

-o-o-o-

The car ride had been a quiet one. Lux drove, her map rested on her lap, trying not to make it obvious that she was watching her aunt from the corner of her eye. She wanted so badly to open her mouth, to ask her questions about who she was, why she was in that asylum, how long she had been there, but she couldn't bring herself to ask. Based off of Scout's demeanor, she wanted to forget about that place as soon as possible.

"I lived in New York, you know." Scout said as the two of them drove into the city.

"I didn't know that," she said. "I, erm, don't know much about you, actually."

"Not much to know." Scout shrugged. Lux wondered if she had hurt her aunt by that admission, by basically acknowledging the fact that her mother acted as if her father ceased to exist the moment he died.

"I don't believe that," Lux said, cautiously navigating Afton's car throughout the traffic. "I think that there's a lot to know."

"When you spend nearly twenty-two years in a loony bin, your life becomes one big gray stain." The woman shrugged, her eyes trying to absorb the entire city all at once.

"Twenty-two years?" Lux nearly shouted. "But, what –"

Scout shrugged. "Shit happens, kid."

"Aunt Je—"

"Call mean Jean one more time and I will jump out of this car."

"Scout." Lux said firmly, a large part of her believing that threat. "Why were you in that long?"

A mischievous smile played upon her lips. "Model patient," she responded. "They loved me so much they just wanted me there forever."

Lux had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. "How did you—"

"Listen here," Scout said firmly, the smile leaving her face. "I don't want to talk about that place, alright? For Christ's sake I just left there a few hours ago."

Lux realized she had been holding her breath. "I'm sorry," she said sheepishly. "I just, I have a lot of questions. About you, your life, where you've been, why I've never heard about—"

"You can blame your mother for that."

"I-I know." Lux stammered. "She isn't…" Lux trailed off.

"What?"

"If I don't ask about that place, then you don't ask about my mother." Lux said, in an attempt to compromise.

The smile came back onto Scout's face. "She's still a bitch then, huh?"

-o-o-o-

Instead of her first destination being her apartment, she met Afton at the same train station that she had dropped him off at to return the car. He was standing on the sidewalk, his arms crossed and a sour expression on his face. When Lux put the car to a stop, Scout appeared startled – especially once she saw that they were at the train station. Lux wondered if Scout thought that she had lied to her about staying in New York, and that she had actually changed her mind and was going to ship her off on some train going southbound. "This isn't my car," Lux explained quickly. "It belongs to my friend there," she said, pointing at Afton. "We'll have to walk to my apartment if that's alright."

Instantaneous relief. "That's fine," Scout said.

The two women got out of the car and Lux quickly got Scout's two suitcases out of the trunk. Scout and Afton stared at each other, both silent. "Thanks again," Lux said, going to kiss his cheek.

He walked away.

"Convincing my wife I had business to attend to was like pulling teeth," was all he said before nearly slamming the car door shut.

Lux shrugged him off, like she usually did when he was in these moods. It wasn't her fault that he was like this, she'd tell herself, he was just prone to these moods.

"Some friend," Scout said, grabbing her bags out of Lux's hands. "Now which way are we goin'?"

-o-o-o-

The walk to her apartment took a half hour longer than it usually would, though she couldn't really complain. The entire time, Scout hardly watched where she was going. She stopped at everything that interested her, commented on all of her surroundings, asked questions that Lux couldn't even begin to answer if she tried – about businesses, architecture, people, you name it – it was clear that the years that Scout spent locked away filled her head with such an imagination and now that she was actually back in the real world her thoughts were exploding.

Scout marveled at Lux's apartment building, reminisced about her own brief time in New York as they made their way up the stairs, and said hello to Lux's neighbor who had been checking her mail (despite her harsh demeanor, the Southern hospitality was still very real). "This is excitin'," Scout marveled as Lux fought with her old lock. "I remember movin' to New York when I was young, this feels just like it did then."

Lux smiled to herself as she finally opened her door. Her cat, who was waiting by the door, mewed loudly, indicating how angry she was that her owner was gone for so long. "Lord Almighty!" Scout exclaimed.

"Sorry about her," Lux said as she tried to shoo the cat away. "She can be a pain."

Scout went over to the cat, who looked at the stranger with suspicion. However, when Scout extended her hand, Rose sniffed it, and then allowed Scout to pet her. "She looks just like Rosie," Scout laughed to herself, almost in disbelief. "I'd be damned…"

"Who was Rosie?" Lux asked.

"Her full name was Rose Aylmer," Scout informed her niece, now sitting on the floor and stroking Ruth. "She was my uncle's cat, a big fat beautiful orange thing. Jack fed her table scraps which is why she got so fat, but he was a doctor you see, and he told Jem and I that she ate all of the spare fingers at the hospital." Scout was laughing now, cupping Ruth's head in her hands. "Yeah, she looks just like Rosie."

"Jem," Lux said slowly. "Was that Jeremy?"

"We called him Jem."

Lux felt a pang of regret for not knowing that. "Mama never told me,"

"We're not goin' to talk about her, remember?"

"Right."

"When Jem got into high school, he tried to get us to all stop calling him Jem and to call him Jeremy," Scout said, laughing as she recalled that memory. "It didn't last long."

Lux, frankly, did not know how to respond. She felt herself feeling slightly overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the fact that she just found out that her father, a man she never knew, had a sister she never knew about. Overwhelmed by the fact that said sister had been living in an asylum for twenty-two years. Overwhelmed by the fact that her aunt was now living with her. Overwhelmed by the fact that her father had once been a living, breathing person.

"I don't have much food," Lux informed her aunt. "How about we go grab some takeout?"

-o-o-o-

Scout had been so overwhelmed by her dinner options that Lux had decided to just buy a Hodge-podge of different things. Chinese, Italian, Indian, you name it. The two of them, carrying enough food to feed a small family, laughed together as Scout tried to guess what each food would taste like. Lux took these simple things for granted – being able to step out her door and have whatever food she wanted at almost any time – and didn't even realize that this would be something completely new to Scout. She couldn't help but to be excited to experience this with Scout, a piece of her father that she had never known.

The two of them settled at the kitchen table, which quickly became full of all of the different foods they bought. Scout didn't like Indian, it was too spicy, but she thought that it was something Uncle Jack would have liked. Italian was good, and Scout said that she thought that would have been her Aunt Alexandra's favorite. Alexandra was apparently a real piece of work who probably wore a corset until the day she died and was dead-set on Scout being a lady. Scout decided that the Chinese was her favorite, and thought that her father, Atticus, would have liked it, too. "He used'ta eat pigs' feet," Scout divulged. "I was used to pretend like they were a science experiment."

"What would Jem have liked?" Lux asked, letting his childhood nickname roll off of her tongue like she had been using it her entire life.

Scout thought for a moment. "He was like a human garbage bin," she said, eyeing all of the food around them. "He would eat anything. I think he'd probably put the curry on top of the pizza or some weird shit like that and think it was God's gift to earth."

Lux cringed. "Are you kiddin' me?"

"Nome," Scout laughed, putting more food on her plate. "He liked the weirdest stuff."

"What was his favorite food?" She asked.

Scout laughed, which caught Lux by surprise. "You sound like me."

"How's that?"

"My mama died when I was two," she divulged, her mouth full. "I asked Jem about her all of the damn time."

"I never knew that," Lux said slowly. "How?"

"Heart attack. Just like Jem."

"That's awful."

Scout shrugged. "I think he liked Cal's roast pork the best."

"Cal?"

"She took care of us growin' up."

Lux's head felt like it was spinning. There was so much she was finding out, but at the same time, there was so much more that she wanted to learn. It was as though the floodgates of her past had been ripped open, and she was being bombarded with memories that she didn't know existed, that weren't even hers. She was overwhelmed, but at the same time, she didn't want Scout to stop talking. She wanted her aunt to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk until Lux knew everything about this past in Maycomb, Alabama.

"There's so much I need to know," Lux said slowly, pretending not to see her aunt feed Ruth a scrap of food.

Again, Scout shrugged. "You'll find out eventually."

-o-o-o-

Because Lux didn't have time to figure out a sleeping arrangement for the two of them, she let Scout take her bedroom while she took the couch that her mother bought from a neighbor's estate sale before Lux moved to New York. Perhaps she'd buy a smaller bed or something, and the two of them would share her room. She couldn't quite afford a two-bedroom apartment, but maybe if this arrangement lasted long enough, she would think about saving up for one.

She stared at the ceiling, a sense of uneasiness filling her. She wasn't worried that her aunt was some sort of psychopath or killer. Rather, she wasn't sure how she felt about learning so much about a side of her family she hardly knew existed. One part of her wanted to know about her father, to know about his family, and to know about Scout and how they ended up in this predicament. However, another part of her wasn't sure if she could handle this, after living in ignorance for nearly twenty-six years…

"Hey,"

Lux jumped and yelped as the figure of her aunt appeared at the foot of the couch. "Don't worry," Scout said as she moved to sit on the couch, forcing Lux to sit up. "I'm not a crazed murderer or anything."

"Is something wrong?"

"I was thinkin'," Scout said.

"Yes?"

"I saw you have a typewriter in your room."

"You can use it if you want,"

"I've got rheumatoid," she said quickly. "My hands don't work quite as well as they used to."

"Oh."

"So I got thinkin'."

"About what?"

"I came here to write," she explained. "All those years ago. I wanted to write things, stories, articles, you name it."

"Okay?"

"But I can't do that so good now because of the rheumatoid."

"Mm hm."

"And you want to know more about your family, don't you?"

"Well, yes."

"Well, what if I tell you my story and you type it?" Scout asked. "We can do it piece by piece every day. We'd both win."

"Why not?" Lux shrugged. "I'll help you. I'll be back at work on Monday, but we can do it when I get home."

"Great." Scout said, standing up to go back to the bed. "Thanks, kid."