Note: Sorry – so very sorry...

Title: What Can You Do, Milly Sue?
[a parody that takes itself way too seriously]

Author: Greyline

Beta: None

Written on: 2017-01-27

Post date: 2017-08-15

Universe: #19B [2006]

Summary: Sometimes dreams and reality conflict and collide until they become indecipherable from one another. On the b-side, a thousand differences in history have forged an almost unrecognizable world. At least three times a week, Mildred wishes she could return to her own world — to a place where there are no vampires, no witches or werewolves, and where there are fifty states. Unfortunately, it seems that the powers that govern the universe have very different plans for her life — she's replaced the lead-heroine in a trashy TV show and, as it turns out, only a true Sue can save the world.

Chapter: Just when Mildred thinks she's sorted, at least temporarily, everything she can realistically sort – kind of – without Damon making his move, everything quickly goes to shit in a quiet way.

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/ june /
the generally batshit

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For nearly an entire week following Mildred's bungled acquisition of the vervain, nothing new seemed to go wrong in Mystic Falls. The biggest problem was that several not-good things had been set in motion already.

These things weren't improving any.

For example, Matt, one of her favorite people in this reality, wasn't speaking to her after the incident at the Boarding House. This was a big achievement since a, Matt was happy to speak to practically everyone and b, he still drove her to school each morning; he now did the latter in silence, or humming aggravatedly along to popular dream-world songs whose genre she still couldn't quite place. No matter what she said to try and smooth things over with him, or that her gift of a vervain 'please forgive me' friendship bracelet now protected him, he didn't relent.

Also, last Wednesday the school principal called her into his office to solemnly inform her that, though he fully sympathised with Mildred's special circumstances – and she couldn't help but think he didn't even know the beginning of her 'special circumstances' – it was looking more and more likely she would fail the semester. Principal Adler claimed that, if she didn't buck up her ideas, her GPA was going to drop so low – thanks to a combination of recent poor showing on tests and a string of uncompleted assignments – she would either have to attend some summer classes to make it up or repeat the year. Yay her!

Even better, the man had spoken with Jenna and her aunt was extremely displeased about her poor test scores. This was in spite of the fact the woman had originally maintained Mildred shouldn't go back to school at all, due to the accident. Jenna had planned to have the Gilbert children just study hard in the summer, then take a couple of the specially organized exams that were held in the town hall so they could all head into the correct respective grades still. Mildred was sure her chewing out from Adler – and subsequently Jenna's – was Tanner's fault; everything that went wrong at school was caused by that arrogant busybody one way or another.

So, when it came down to it, the only lights in her day to day life were currently her near-daily excursions to the Forbes household, and little Magda, who regularly accompanied her there.

As it turned out, the littlest Gilbert just loved music, and Caroline, siblingless herself, adored indulging the toddler. She and Mildred had been working hard on a few different songs they could potentially perform at the town talent contest, though all those her friend assumed 'original' were simply purloined from the real-world. Mildred wasn't so much a creator as a performer.

If you were going to make yourself a whole dream-reality, you might as well make it easy to look awesome simply by virtue of everyone else being woefully ignorant of the real-world. Sometimes, when she felt best grounded here, Mildred considered starting up a super-duper tech company to fill in the space Apple's absence left… Then, through her giddy imaginings of becoming a bajillionaire, she would always recall she was technologically-challenged and in a world where she was hardline failing govec – any business plans she may have were probably best left alone.

In an attempt to make her week better, she'd secured herself a place at Mrs. Lockwood's dance studio, which at least gave her something to look forward to once the horror of repeating school was out for the summer.

Other rare plus sides in her life were that, though still sullen and sometimes withdrawn, Jeremy now went out and smiled enough that she didn't feel a gross need to worry over his state of mind. To be fair, she had caught him with a joint a few times but, as far as she could tell, this was a pastime he'd also indulged in before the accident. Mildred didn't have a high level of concern about her brother's relaxation habits. It probably wouldn't do the boy's memory much good if it were a long-term thing, of course, though it was good news he'd started drawing again.

Also of the good was that Mildred hadn't encountered Damon in any more dreams on the rare occasion she stayed at Caroline's, suggesting the vervain was doing its job and keeping him out her head. She hadn't had any more hallucinations of Lucy, either, nor had she felt herself begin to spontaneously combust only to be miraculously healed moments later. Mildred was obviously still troppo – because, you know, she was living in a fantasy world she couldn't wake from – but at least her current level of crazy wasn't that of talking with invisible people or predicting the end of days. She figured, when people in your fantasy thought you'd lost it, that was when you were really in trouble – see 'Matt and the existence of vampires' for details.

Her friends and family had now all, knowingly or not, accepted trinkets or beverages containing vervain. It gave her some peace of mind.

The task of heating the herb in the oven one night had been all too easy, as had adding the resulting crumbly leaves to the loose tea she'd often seen Jeremy, bizarrely enough, drinking in the mornings – he probably would've preferred psilocybin but he'd have to live with what he got. Some of the flowers were pressed into oil, which Mildred mixed into Jenna's various perfumes and moisturizers. Caroline got a string of loosely joined pearls: The girl immediately took them as a token of forever-friendship, declared them both dressy and casual enough to go with everything – much to her friend's delight – and swore to never ever take them off.

Magda, Mildred chose to leave unprotected. This was mainly because a vampire seemed slightly more likely to kill a witness they couldn't compel to forget than one they could. While she would be upset should any member of her adoptive family get hurt, she would be completely crushed if something bad happened to her baby sister.

So...all said, everything that could be expected to be shit was shit, and all she currently had the ability to fix had been fixed.

Five days before her birthday – no matter the world, a birthday was a birthday! – things started to get really strange in Tanner's class. Well, stranger than her life usually was, anyway.

"Now," Tanner said dryly, while Mildred worried about Damon's imminent return to Mystic Falls, "despite having declared themselves politically neutral throughout a large number of conflicts, can anyone tell me what move made by the Britons finally caused Sweden to abandon that neutrality, and during which war this occurred?"

Around her, the class just stared at the bullying, course, sorry excuse for a teacher. Sometimes, when bored, Mildred wondered if the man'd taken Harry Potter a bit too seriously when training for this position. He would have Snape down to a T...if it weren't for the fact Snape was apparently actually good with his subject and happened to serve spy-related services beyond it. As far as she could tell, Tanner was useless all round.

The man gave a heavy, fake sigh when none of his students spoke up. "Really?" he asked in displeasure. "Nobody has an idea? What about you, Mr. Watkins?"

"Uh...the World War?" the stocky boy gambled, fidgeting under Tanner's hard stare.

"Excellent!" the teacher enthused, clapping his hands together and walking back toward the whiteboard. "The World War is quite correct...even if it was a guess. Now, the other part of the question – why did Sweden abandon its neutrality? Come on, come on, look sharp people – it stares at you from a map every day..."

Mildred had no clue. History was way too weird here for her to even begin trying to answer the man's questions. Presumably, her ineptitude in this class was the reason Tanner disliked her so much. She got the impression that, prior to her predecessor's unscheduled departure, Gloria Gilbert had, if not been advanced in this class, at least been polite, attentive and somewhat liked by Tanner.

He still called on Mildred every lesson, even though she was rubbish. It was like he hoped she would've studied between lessons or something.

"You, Ms. Gilbert," he predictably drawled, his pointing finger right between her eyes. "Can you tell me what change to a map caused Sweden to join the Allied Forces?"

At this point, she almost wished it was a gun, not a finger. He'd singled her out twice already in the past few weeks, demeaning her in front of the entire class, and she didn't fancy another go.

Resigned to another dressing-down off this immature man, she ventured, "Uh...Forsmark?"

Silence.

Tanner gave a horrific grimace that was probably meant to be a smile. "That's correct, Ms. Gilbert. I see you opened a book recently… Indeed, the historically disputed territory of Forsmark, owned by the British Union but originally colonized primarily by Scandinavian settlers, changed the game for Sweden. The Britons agreed to stop fighting for it, to stop taxing its people unjustly, if Sweden would join the Allies."

Drawing down a previously-rolled wall map, Tanner pointed at Forsmark with a dry-wipe marker. "This shall be our final topic for the year. There were many reasons as to why the Britons – traditionally difficult to negotiate with regarding land ownership, as we in the US are well aware – were willing to..."

Mildred zoned out because, even though the subject was mildly interesting, Tanner's Binns-voice was enough to send even the most dedicated young historian to sleep. Seriously, he should pack up and move to Hogwarts – they had an opening there for a history professor dead like him.

Urgh, fuck history, she had bigger problems. Like the fact she'd literally invited Damon to come see her on her birthday.

Back when she'd done that – only a couple of weeks ago but it felt like years – it had been under the influence of a lot of lust, assuming she was in a dream. Well, she was in a dream, but she'd logically assumed would wake up in short order. This hadn't happened.

Now Damon was going to come back for sure. Mildred wasn't certain why she was so...well, certain the deal made on the road had been a serious one that the vampire would see through. Just...something niggled in the back of her mind, telling her she ought to prepare for their inevitable confrontation. Plus, he was definitely around – he'd snuck into her dreams a not that long ago and compelled poor Caroline into a bit of a confused mess. Mildred would've cautiously labeled him an unfriendly just for the compulsion alone, let alone for the dreamscapades in the night.

Question was, what did Damon want with her? The novelty of her Catherineness must be part of it and that bit didn't worry her. Worrying her was what the obsession he had for the ancient vampiress might cause him to do. He could use Mildred as a fuck and feed like he had Caroline on TV – or he could try, at least, not knowing she was up to her gizzards on vervain – and subtly torment her until she didn't know whether she was coming or going. He could hurt her for looking like the woman he loved and lost, or, in lieu of that, hurt the rest of the Gilberts for daring to be 'related' to her. The man was a complete wildcard, really, flirting with the area of a character-chart labeled 'chaotic evil'.

"Psst..."

God, why is she even in this mess?

'Cause this world's a cake and you gotta believe in it.

"Psst!"

Mildred sighs, frowns, fiddles with the split-ended hair at the bottom of her plait.

At the desk next to her, a fellow classmate continues going psst...
Like they are a gas leak and they want to make sure she knows about it.

"By the One Ring, think Tanner's the biggest bore I've ever seen… If the speakers on my compusci'd been like this, I'd've had to drop out or risk sudden death from terminal boredom – future in a gutter be damned."

Mr. Tanner hasn't reacted to the girl's hissing insults toward him; nor has anyone else in the classroom. He just drones on and on, so monotone Mildred can honestly say she agrees that his voice could probably be effectively used as an execution method should any government be inclined to test it.

"Gotta tell you, surprised you're still listening to this douche. If'n you decided you want a bit of better butter, you know where I'm at..."

Wait...Mildred knows this voice. It's not one of the other students.

When she glances over, she finds not the quiet Asian girl she's been sitting next to since Matt ditched her – the one who works at Marcia's – but her old friend Lucy... again. Obviously, Mildred spoke too soon when she said at least she wasn't hallucinating anymore. Clearly, she still is, just not with regular frequency. Just fantastic.

"Hey, Tanner!" Lucy calls out loudly, the name stretching out low and heavy in her accent. Adopting some kind of, uh, gangsterish voice – and doing a very poor job at it – the woman exclaims, "Tanner, muh homie, I put a griddle on yo shizzle so you can waffle while you waffle!"

What the fuck! Is Lucy trying to get her in trouble?

"Shhh!" Mildred hissed, eyes fixed on her friend's normal-looking, if thoroughly out of place face. "Fuck," she mutters under her breath, "Tanner'll hear you! What are you doing here? You can't be here – not here, not now!"

Lucy chuckles irreverently – she sounds so much like Damon in that moment it makes Mildred shudder.

"Now's the only time I got for the moment," the other woman says. "Been chasing your crumble all week. You know–" the redhead waggles a carefully-manicured finger agitatedly "–you're one hard cookie to track. After all this is done with, I reckon I'll qualify to head up the RDW Division."

Doing her best to ignore the hallucination – no good can come of it – Mildred squints at Tanner's map of North America. Something the man's doing to it is making wavy arrows change the borders of countries...presumably to demonstrate how they've shifted in the last couple of hundred years?

Pretending Lucy isn't there – because she isn't – doesn't help. The woman chatters away loudly, as she always has, ignored by everyone else in the class. Yeah, she's a hallucination, right? Which means only Mildred can see her.

"I've been looking for you since that parking lot. Gotta put a sorry out for that, by the way – didn't realize my presence would be so destructive or I'd never've touched you. Donatello says I shouldn't've been there like that, no without my Image. Rookie mistake, that. It's 'non-traditional and dangerous' he says – it does things, apparently.

"Anyhoo, since then I've been looking for you everywhen and where, but my Image is – all my b-side Distortions, actually – a bit...frickin' catty, for want of a harsher term. I've been all over worlds with proper vampires and magic – kept running into yous who weren't you… or Distortions of yours that weren't you, anyways.

"Seriously, it's been way freakish. Guess the Gilbert gals are twinnies in most of them worlds. So far, I've knocked up a Deliah and Irayna – over in five-b, funny place – a Morena and Elena – you do not want to see Mystic Falls in that one, trust me – and a Diedre… Last was damn depressing – girl's a wreck, dead sisters and–"

"Keira's dead..." Mildred whispers against her will, finally breaking her old friend's rambling. Then she goes stock still and chastises herself, Don't interact with hallucinations...and never in public. Honestly, hasn't TV taught you anything?

No answering that, Lucy advises seriously, wait for your lawyer.

Then – "Who's Keira?"

Going against her better judgment, she fills her hallucinatory-friend in. "My twin sister here – Gloria's sister. Look, I don't know why you're here, what's going on, but I've got this class..." And if I keep at this, people're going to notice me talking to nothing, going to think I'm–

"Stark raving bonkers? Few cards short a deck, a basket case, Observatorium's missing its telescope? Besides, what's going on is this world's closed up for business! You've bricked it so hard Walkers can't fiddle right here anymore. There's some major league outrage through the Order bigwigs about that one, believe me."

"The Order of the Phoenix?" Mildred asks bemusedly.

Damn, she knew she shouldn't've spent so much time contemplating Tanner's possible career as Hogwarts' new history professor. As a big dreamer, Mildred knows full well your thoughts carried over into your dreams… This also seems to be true for hallucinations.

"The Order of Dreamwalkers, you dimwit," Lucy groans exasperatedly. Under her breath, the woman sarcastically adds, "'Order of the Phoenix', honestly? ...Everyone knows that's a b-side thing."

"Well, if you're just going to– Wait! There's a real Order of the Phoenix?"

Lucy elegantly shrugs one shoulder. "Sure, lot's of them, too. Seven or eight on the top-tier at least, by my last reckoning."

Now uncaring of what her classmates will think of her – probably that she gave up on life because of Tanner's dull dull lecture – Mildred lets her head flop onto the desk.

It really fucking hurts.

It's still less painful than her hallucinatory-friend's idea of small talk.

"Oh God..." she mumbles into her blank notepad, "I'm totally insane, completely cuckoo, round the twist, got roos loose in the north paddock–"

"Pencils up your nose, underpants on your head – just say 'wibble'?"

Head rolling to the side, she peers up at Lucy tiredly. "No can do… No Blackadder in la-la land – no Stephen Fry."

"Whoa – totally sucks… Anyhoo, now for something completely different – you think you're crazy but...not so much..." Lucy assures in her most serious voice.

Her tone sets off klaxons in Mildred's mind – nothing good's about to happen when her friend gets serious.

"Nobody ever prepared you for this, did they?" the redhead asks kindly, resignedly. "Well, not this specifically, 'cause I'm gonna be Frankie with you here and tell you – this ain't exactly normal, never been done like this 'fore now. But nobody ever told you what you are? I mean, how could they? I wasn't even sure till… Well, till you got your cutest little butt stuck here, I wasn't even sure you was one of us – not always so easy to tell, you know? Not like we've got ourselves Boltish speed or mad telekinesis...nothing noticeable. Usually, the Order tries to keep a track on families, but sometimes people'll get a smatter lost and–"

"Sargent!" Mildred exploded, having enough of this deep level of her subconscious' word-vomit.

This imaginary woman sure talks like the real thing; that's because she herself knows her friend so damn well. Now Lucy's halted her confusing tirade, Mildred takes the opportunity to try and make sense of what her hallucinatory-friend has said so far.

Now there's a sentence worthy of getting carted off to the funny farm.

"As if I don't know that!" Mildred snaps angrily. "It's not like I suddenly decided one day 'Hey, I know what I should do – a quickstep off the springboard of reality. Good place to land? Happy-go-lucky vampire world! That would really cheer up my long, going-nowhere, monotonous life of half-rate matinee and bemonocled chumps telling me to give it more feeling'." Drawing a shaky breath, she puts on her best voice over imitation, "Screw matinee, try metanoia – the new, top-of-range selection of machine-elf-worth brainsplosions… They will literally blow you onto a whole new plane of existence!"

Lucy just laughs. Fuck her twisted, uncaring soul.

"Fine – keep at it, chuckles," Mildred grumbles. "Truth is, you're not the one who's brain's soup. When was the last time you woke up in Cloudland?"

A perfectly curved eyebrow cocked, her friend casually responds, "Kinda right now."

Of course...because that makes sense.

Inpatient and confused – a poor combination at the best of times – Mildred pushes on in her quest for answers from not-Lucy. "One of who?" she asks, referring back to her friend's previous rambling 'explanations'. "Keeping track of who, 'us' who?"

"Doctor Who?"

Resisting the urge to slam her head against the desk again, Mildred groans, "Yeah, that's just what I'm asking you. I need you to borrow me your Radio Times again – my interdimensional internet connection's been flaky!"

A winning smirk across her face, Lucy drawls, "I've told you it before, get your own subscription. You slopped coffee over it last time – not like I can just pop down the street and grab a newun. Gotta have it shipped over 'specially."

"Why do I even bother talking to you?"

"'Cause I'm the best that's ever been! You know you'd be lost without me."

Mildred huffs derisively, feeling so displaced and confused that the external display of these things is nullified – there comes a point when there's no point railing against the insanity of it all. Is this how Matt took it last week, when she and Zach Salvatore made it clear they both believe in bloodsucking monsters? No wonder the boy won't speak to her – he felt out his depth and she's done little to really bring him up to speed. She'll have another chat with him.

"Look, I know you've questions," Lucy states gently, twisting in her seat. "There's no way you even can be so apathetic to all this you don't need them answers. I'm here to give them to you – weren't 'ticularly easy to break through the walls, so no point wasting more of our time… By the way – nice job on fucking this place up. You told Matt about vampires? Yeesh – ouch."

Ignoring the last comment, already well aware how dim she is, Mildred settles for, "Questions about what? About why the hell I'm stuck in vampire-wonderland, who this Order of yours is, why my subconscious keeps throwing you at me? 'Cause yeah, course I have questions about that, but–" she shoots her longtime friend a baleful look "–since when've you been capable of giving a straight answer to anything?"

"Since now. Too important to be beating round the bush – the situation's a serious one," Lucy declares, looking extremely sober for once. "So, in reverse order – it's not your subconscious… Or, well, it is your subconscious 'cause you're dreaming–"

"Really? Hadn't figured that one out yet."

"–but I'm not an aspect of you, a dream-thing, I'm real – I've independent thought, I know things you don't. I'm a real, separate person. I'm not your imagination."

"That's exactly what a hallucination would say," Mildred deadpans.

"How can a prove it to you I'm real? This'd go a lot smoother if you trusted me."

Shrugging, Mildred suggests, "I don't know – tell me something I couldn't possibly know."

Her friend rolls her eyes like that's a predictable and pointless suggestion. "To what ends? I tell you something about our world, you've got no way of confirming I'm not spewing bullshit. I tell you something about this world, you confirm it alright but – and here's the kicker – convince yourself you want me real so bad your subconscious has changed your 'dream' to fit what I told you… Can't win."

That… Well, that makes a lot of sense...and sounds exactly like the twisted ass kind of psycho-logic Lucy often comes out with. Though she's always been able to follow the other woman's trains of thought to a certain degree, she's never been capable of producing them herself; if her subconscious is producing them now...either she's in possession of deeper, less vapid levels than she's been aware of until now, or Lucy really is a separate entity capable of thinking for herself.

"Okay, say I believe you..." she ventures slowly, eyes narrowing at her real-world friend, "What would you tell me about this situation? Could you explain why I'm in a messed up dream-world?"

"Well, if you believe me, I would tell you this isn't a dream-world at all. Or, it is but not for you – not for people from here. It's only a dream for people from other worlds, yeah?"

"Thanks… It'd be really annoying if you didn't make any sense."

"You've never gotten my mind's workings," Lucy laments. "Okay, this is how it is," she tries again, beginning to make weird gestures with her hands. "Here's–" she displays on level hand, palm side down "–the world you know, the world we both of us come from, right? The year's twenty-sixteen, the Twin Towers're so much dust in the wind, and the Falcon's've never won the Super Bowl – this hand's our world. With me so far?"

"Okay..."

"Right, and this is where you're living now–" she explains, putting her other hand below the first, this time palm up against it like she was preparing to play snapsies "–on the b-side. This of the world's iterations is pretty familiar, close to ours in shape and color, excepting it packs way more of a magical punch – it's got vampires and wizards and big destinies and stuff… I still got you?"

"Yeeeeeaaaah yea– No, not a bit."

"Alright, alright," Lucy hurries, pulling forward a piece of paper and drawing a crude skyscraper. "This here's our world. And this–" she draws a mirror-image skyscraper below the first "–is this world you're in, right? They're similar but different, inextricable, connecting to each other."

The woman draws a brown horizontal line between the two buildings and a pair of arrows, one pointing up at the sky and the other pointing down at...not the ground but a different sky. "Like this here's our world, so this one up here's world A...and this one down here's world B – reflections of each other, like a postcard of the New York skyline mirrored by the sea. Personally, I like to think of it as an LP universe – there's an a-side and a b-side – both exist at the same time but you can only play one at a go. We're from the a-side up here, and you've managed to get yourself stuck down here on the b-side…

"Am I making any sense?"

"Kind of, I guess," Mildred frowns dubiously, prodding at the upside-down skyscraper, "but not at all. If I was stuck down here, in the not-world–"

"It's not a not-world – it's a real world, just not the real-world we're from."

"Okay… But if I've gotten stuck down here, then… How? Why?"

"Well, that's bringing us to your second question – what the Order of Dreamwalkers is."

Lucy leans back in her chair, giving off a completely relaxed air; Mildred finds herself on edge again, sensing the lack of tension is forced.

"Basically," the other woman begins, "our world has something akin to magic – not really proper magic or anything, 'cause there's only so much of that to go around, needed to keep the universe operating, and most of it's on the b-sides… But some people can tap into it, are...magical. Okay, it's really more a sensitivity, an atypical neural state–"

"Like a mutation?"

"Yeah, if you like it. Some people are capable of spying into other worlds – most just into their Images or their Meanwhiles, sometimes even their Distortions if they're really gifted. Some of us can get into other heads, people not counterparts at all – you've gotta learn that if your counterparts're...difficult."

"You've lost me. Meanwhiles, Distortions, Images?"

"We'll come to that if'n you get the basics of the thing. What you're needing to know for now is this – everybody on the a-side has a direct counterpart on the reverse, the b-side. A counterpart they're born with, an equal and opposite, a balance… A soulmate, kind of. A Walker can easily get into the minds of their counterparts, see through their eyes, play with what's going on in other worlds a bit."

"You mean that...these people can visit other worlds, body-snatch and change stuff?"

"Not really… I mean, yeah, they're using other body's, visiting counterparts' lives, but even where the situations're real, they're not actually in the other world – their peering into it in their dreams. You're just sleeping, your mind makes an exact copy of the other world – local events only, probably, otherwise your brain'd explode with the struggle. Anything you do while there doesn't really happen – or it does but it doesn't hold, it snaps back the minute the Walker wakes.

Lids closed, eyes crossed below that, Mildred tries desperately to find her calm. Breathing in and out slowly, staving off the panic and kill-me-now frustration, she sighs out, "I suppose you're telling me I'm some kind of dream traveler–"

"Dreamwalker," Lucy corrected absently. Clearly aiming to break the dour mood with humor, she quips, "We wanted just Traveler but it was taken. And yeah, obviously it's what we're getting at here… You're one of us 'mutie' freaks – really, I prefer sensitives or superhumans. We see into other worlds, travel into our various counterparts."

"Various counterparts?"

"A conversation for another day. The point of all this mess is, right at its co–"

"GILBERT!"

The room distorts, a shimmering rainbow rippling across it as when pressure is applied to an LCD panel. Spinning dizzyingly, her flesh is particles revolving around a void or the waterspout above an emptying plughole.

Lucy dissolves like sugar in hot water.