The room remained silent as all of them stared at the TV. Sam started pacing back and forth, before glancing out the window once again.
Still no New York.
"Seriously, what the fuck happened last night?" She threw her hands in the air, "Cuz this...this is just fucking bullshit."
"C'mon guys, this is just some elaborate prank. Some punk whatever tv shit," Weston spoke up, before wincing.
"The fucking neighborhood is gone. Fucking New York City is gone." Sam pointed at the window. She unlocked her phone and glanced at the weather. She turned her screen towards the rest of her friends showing them how Gotham is a humid 50 degrees right now. How could some shitty network tv show pull off changing an entire skyline in addition to a whole fucking cable network and weather app?
Adrian and Marley rushed to the window as Sam made her way to the open chair left of the couch. This can't be happening, it literally can't be because it is fucking impossible.
"This is somehow your fault." Adrian pointed at Sam causing her to glare at him.
"Adrian now's not the time," Marley snapped at him. Her brown skin paling slightly, appearing like she was about to throw up any moment.
"Yeah shut the fuck up Adrian."
Before he could say anything, Marcus clapped his hands which silenced the bickering.
"How bout all of you shut the fuck up yeah?" He rubbed the temples of his head. "Obviously something happened between us drinking last night, blacking out, then waking up. Bitching and blaming others isn't exactly productive right now."
Sam raised her hands in surrender while Adrian muttered incoherently under his breath.
"Sam does have a point," Marley pointed out, "What the fuck happened last night?"
"Well okay," Marcus sighed as he turned off the TV, "Last thing you all remember."
The room grew silent.
Marcus sighed loudly, "I'll start I guess. Weston handed me two shots."
Sam frowned, trying to dig up any bits of clear memory. "Uh...the last blur I had was telling people to drink water and eat bread to avoid blacking out. Turned out well it seems."
"Laying on the couch next to a trash can," Marley said, her eyebrows furrowing close together.
"Smoking by the window with Wes." Sam's eyes turned toward Adrian.
"Uh," Sam turned her attention towards Weston, "Fuck, my third shot of vodka?"
Sam sighed and clapped her hands together, "Great, still no answers on how we ended up in a fucking city that has a vigilante that is a billionaire furry who is one of the poster children for severe childhood trauma."
"Well by some means we ended up in Gotham," Weston said, his voice laced in exasperation, "hate to be that guy but there's isn't much we can do to change that." He paused, "for right now at least. But hey, we still got our apartment. It seems everything is the same, but only kinda different."
Marley, Adrian, and Marcus broke out in discussion over the fact they were in Gotham (with few fucks being shouted as well as dead, Joker, and terrorism) while Weston laid his head back on the pillow. Sam watched them for a moment before mulling over Weston's words. Her eyes glanced at the blue couch-not the tan couch but the blue couch-and then the calendar. She got up and made her way to the fridge. "Who remembers that couch being tan?" She questioned loudly, catching her friends' attention.
"What?" Adrian asked.
Sam glanced back at them, calendar in her hand as she gestured at the couch, "the couch. Do any of you remember it being tan?"
She watched them as they thought in silence, her foot tapping on the hardware being the only source of noise in the room.
She watched as Adrian's eyes widened as he did a double-take.
"How-" Adrian started before being cut off my Marley.
"Where did you get a calendar?"
Sam nodded her head towards Weston. "Mr. Crossfaded was right." Sam used her finger to gesture a large circle around the apartment, "Same." She pointed to the couch, calendar, and the windows. "And different."
Marley raised her hands allowing Sam to toss her the calendar.
"Okay, two minor differences and one is well...Gotham. Why the couch and the calendar then?" Marcus questioned.
Sam shrugged, "I never said there wasn't more." Her voice trailed off, eyes widening as the words left her mouth. "Oh shit."
It was like the world froze. Sam watched as everyone's' appearances mimicked a deer in the headlights look. Suddenly, as if in fast motion, Marley and Marcus went on their phones. Weston merely let out a tired moan as he laid on the couch while Adrian glanced down at his towel.
"Oi, if you're going to double check your dick, spare us the horror and do it in your room," Sam shouted as she made her way to her room to find her laptop.
"Oh fuck you Sam." She heard Adrian shout at her causing her to smile slightly.
Thankfully, her laptop was where she last left it. Hopefully, she would still be able to get on it. She grabbed her computer and started to head back to the rest of the group before entering Weston's room. After glancing over the rather barren room, she spotted his laptop and phone.
Sam made her way back to the living room, balancing two laptops plus one cell phone, to be greeted with a mostly clothes Adrian with a laptop along with Marley and Marcus scrolling through their phones before switching to their laptops.
"Wes, wake up." She tossed his phone at him before placing his laptop on his stomach.
Weston let out a loud sigh before pushing himself up.
Despite this most likely being the worst morning imaginable, Sam was glad to have a couple of small graces. The first one was her password was still the same. The second was her CV was still the same. She didn't work her ass off during her bachelor's to get into Yale for her doctorate just to lose it due to some bullshit she doesn't even remember. However, it seemed her clinical internship changed from Bellevue to Gotham University Hospital. Sam felt her eye starting to twitch again.
Taking a deep breath, she closed her laptop and checked her contacts on her phone. A sigh of relief escaped her lips as she passed familiar names of her friends back in California as well as the names of her family members. A quick look through her photo gallery eased her worries further as the faces of her family stayed the same.
"Majority appears to check out over here," Sam announced to the silent room, "Just one thing from the past decade from what I can tell at a glance."
"What changed?" Marcus asked, his words coming out slowly as he switched between his laptop and phone.
"Uh, my clinical internship. Bellevue to Gotham University Hospital. Still in the forensic section though."
Sam watched as her friends' paused at what they were doing.
"Gotham University?" Marley mused aloud.
Sam nodded her head as she glanced at each over their faces, taking in their facial expression to see how their faces lit up in recognition. "I'm going to go on a limb and guess that was a similar change for y'all as well."
She watched as her words were greeted with multiple head nods.
Sam propped her legs on the coffee table. "Okay, so what the hell does this mean?"
"Two hypotheses," Marley said as she closed her laptop, "One, we ended up in an alternate universe. Two, we ended up in a different multiverse and the universe had to change to accommodate us."
Sam narrowed her eyes and she mulled over Marley's words as if it was a complicated math problem. She opened her mouth, "But-"
"I don't think that's how alternate universes work," Weston said, cutting Sam off. Sam snapped her fingers, nodding her head in agreement.
Marley let out a scoffed then shrugged, "Well then, any bright ideas then?"
"Again...Does it really matter? Our memories from last night are fucked. I say we just gotta deal with what we've been dealt with cuz in case you forget, we are in fucking Gotham. I think we have bigger problems to deal with before even touching the hows and whys."
"Our memories are fucked," Sam agreed, glancing at her phone, "But, if anything weird happened here then someone must've reported on it."
"That is a point," Adrian admitted, sitting on one of the stools by the breakfast bar, "But this is Gotham. Weird shit is the norm."
Sam couldn't help but remember Danny Devito playing the Penguin and slowly nodded her head in agreement. Weird shit indeed.
"Well," Marcus cleared his throat, "If it is any consolation, there was a several hours long blackout following a quote on quote 'fireworks'. Which could be anything considering this is a universe with Superman."
Sam felt a surge of frustration growing within her. How could everything get so fucked so quickly? "Adrian?" her voice came out weak and tired. God, it feels like she aged a decade in the past hour. "Please tell me you know a good amount of DC Comics."
The face that he made did not bring any relief to Sam's worries. He shook his head, "I'm more of a Marvel guy. I know mostly the basics and then the movies."
Sam threw her hands in the air, "Well, this is a nightmare yeah?"
A sparse mutter of agreements greeted her ears. She was way too hungover to deal with any of this disaster of a Saturday.
"Well, let's look on the bright side," Marley said softly, "We ended up here together, we still have our apartment, we still have our lives with a couple of minor changes that we know of." Marley pointed at Marcus, "You still have your public policy masters right?"
Marcus shrugged and nodded.
"Wes and Adrian, you still have your law degrees yeah?" Sam watched as her two friends slowly nod, their eyes barely open.
"I'm still in my med program which is a fucking relief because that MCAT was a fucking bitch."
Sam nearly flinched back when Marley pointed her finger at her, "And Sam. You still got your Ph.D. from Yale. Fucking Yale. Plus you just got a job here."
Sam blinked in confusion. A job? When the fuck did she get a job?
"Wait what?" Sam raised her eyebrows, "You had me for a while, but the whole reason we got drunk was because of my interview being a shitshow."
Sam ignored the snort from Marcus as well as his muttered of "pessimistic moron."
This time Marley was the one frowning, the hopeful smile was not a confused frown. "But, didn't you accept a job this morning?"
She blinked. Then she blinked again. What the hell was she talking abo-Oh.
"Wait so that wasn't a dream?" Sam quickly unlocked her phone and checked her previous calls. A pit of dread dropped in her stomach as she glanced at the unknown number that she had barely register she picked up.
"Uh Adrian, does the name Jeremiah Arkham mean anything to you?"
The dread grew more and more as she waited for his response.
"Uh, the head of Arkham Asylum I think."
Sam waited a beat.
"Any other Jeremiah Arkham's. Maybe one from Arkham, Massachusetts?"
She chewed on her lip, drawing blood when she watched Adrian shake his head. "We didn't find ourselves in an H.P Lovecraft novel Sam."
A string of curse words flooded her mind as she laid her head in her hand.
"Did you accept a job at Arkham Asylum?" Weston asked slowly.
"Marley? Check the calendar," Sam mumbled.
She listened to Marley's nails tapping the paper of the calendar and she didn't need to look up to know the answer to her unspoken question.
God, how the hell did she make to 27 years old?
Slowly, Sam got up from the chair, her shoulders hunched forward in defeat, and she silently started to walk out of the room.
Sam heard Marley shout "Uh Sam what are you doing?"
"I'm going to go drown myself or wash away my stupidity or something on those lines."
Was it too late to start day drinking now?
A shorter chapter that is mostly set up. Don't worry, the next chapter will be kicking things up a bit.
There were some changes I made to this story such as changing one of the character's name to Marcus and replacing Batman from the character tag with disaster child Jason Todd. This is due to the fact I have several scenes planned for our boi Jason. Sorry for any typos and grammatical errors, I don't have much time to actually edit.
I hope yall enjoy! Until Next Time