A/N: Originally, this chapter was going to be another one-shot (hence why it's written in a different tense from the previous one), but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the two were in the same universe (albeit, a fairly alternate one). So, what I'm kinda thinking of doing with this story is presenting a series of April/Ann incidents that may seem a bit disjointed at first, but will hopefully cohere eventually. (Sorta like what Ezra Pound tried to do with his Cantos. Yes, I did just liken myself to Ezra Pound (minus, of course, his fascist anti-Semitic tendencies) in terms of April/Ann Parks and Rec fanfiction. No shame. Okay, maybe a little.) Anyhow, we'll see where it goes. If anywhere. It'll be exciting. Or something. I promise.

Warnings: the inclusion of a substance that could very likely be alcy, some mild language, a tad bit AU, perhaps a some OOCness, aaaand we may be heading in a femslashy direction

Incidentally, I Never Got to Montana

She had a look on her face like she didn't know where she was. And maybe she didn't. Clutching that plastic cup like it was the only thing between her and the pits of Hell or something worse. Something like Heaven. She was a different version of lonely tonight. That empty, dizzying feeling - the one you get when you've had a drink too many. And maybe she had. Or maybe she just wished it.

When you're alone in a forest in southern Indiana you might as well be nowhere at all. And April was nowhere.

"Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere," she whispered it into the night and it emerged shrouded in a white fog. "Nowhere, nowhere…" The words ran together, sticking to one another oddly as if bound incorrectly by some intangible adhesive. "Nowhere, no where, now here." She took a gulp of whatever was in the cup, drowning her whispers in icy fluid. What are the use of words at a time when there is nothing to say?

It was snowing and she knew this even though it was dark and she was numb with cold and her version of loneliness. She tried to forget the snow. Tried to forget that it was falling, even as it made contact with her hair, her skin, her clothes. But it wasn't easy and she had to think of something more than darkness.

She wasn't sure if she was sitting or standing, but when she tried to take a drink and felt something that tingled with a perplexing warmth cascade over her cheeks she became aware that she was lying down. She let her arm fall to the ground at her side. And the cup grew heavy with snow. And she was blind to it all.

Light does not often penetrate the darkness of nowhere or the forests of southern Indiana and so, when April saw it, she assumed, and reasonably so, that she had finally forgotten the snow. However, when she became aware of a second light accompanying the first, she knew she must be mistaken. A steady crunch and the sound of machinery. A scene change brought on by the shifting of lights and an entrance. Cue the violins and forget the music.

"April?" A softer, more frantic crunching than before. An unsteady rhythm that flowed under the shouted word. The shouted name. Her name. She must be somewhere now. She must be here now.

April sat up and the blood rushed to her head, bubbling in a way that was not quite pleasant. Her voice came out loud and abrupt and this surprised her, "Ann." And the white mist cloaked the name and she wished it wouldn't. She really wished it wouldn't.

The footsteps stopped and a dark figure swam into view, silhouetted by the light pouring from the headlights of the still running car. She could see the snow too, falling in and out of the light – translucent flakes of crystallized cloud. "April…" the word, the name, her name, came in a softer tone now, quite unlike the panicked shout of the prior moment, "Are you okay? Are you…drunk?" The last question was edged with discordant disappointment and April wanted to flinch away when she heard it.

She sat up, brushing snow from herself with fingers red and raw. The cup still sat on the earth beside her, gathering snow like a grail filled with unholy liquid – a beacon of some unrecognizable significance, stretching across all of time vicariously through the length of its shadow, which blended smoothly into those patterning the forest floor. "I'm fine." She stood up and her vision instantly blurred, but she kept her footing and stared levelly at her rescuer. The word sounded inapplicable, ridiculous even, when she rolled it about her mind. Everyone needs rescuing.

April closed her eyes, shutting out the light and Ann and thoughts of rescue. Everything was dark for a while – seconds, minutes perhaps, hours, or other illogical, nonsensical methods of measuring how many times a pair of hearts beat in a series of instants. When she opened them again she felt warmer and she wondered if she was being embraced by Ann or the snow. However, when she moved to return or recoil from the gesture (she had not yet decided which), she found that she was held by only a thick winter coat. It was warm. The artificial, residual warmth of a someone whose arms were not around her.

"How long have you been out here?" The question was direct and it caused April to swim out of her thoughts, thoughts that itched and stung the back of her mind. She looked at Ann and saw that she was shivering now due to the absence of her coat. She wasn't sure how this made her feel. She didn't care to feel anything at all about it. So she didn't.

"Wow Ann, you look like a real idiot coming all the way out here in nothing but that sweater," the words came out slowly and without any real conviction, but they successfully served to evade the pointed question.

Ann sighed and took a step closer to April and this made her distinctly uncomfortable. The kind of discomfort that isn't exactly unpleasant, but engulfs you when you don't expect it – when you see the sun shining on the mountains and it makes you think of something that you haven't remembered in a long, long time. She wanted to step back, look down, run away, but she couldn't. Maybe she didn't actually want to. So she stood and watched and waited and thought about hoping, but she wasn't sure for what.

And Ann took her hands, her cold, cold hands, in her own and April wondered briefly what it would be like if she could feel it, but she couldn't and she didn't bother trying. And after a moment Ann let go with muttered declarations that she was reasonably sure that April would be okay, and for the first time April knew what it meant to miss a moment of her own life.

"Get in the car, April; I'm taking you home." Ann was already walking towards the vehicle with an air of assurance that April would follow. And she did. Of course she did. And she wondered what Ann's eyes had looked like while she was holding her hands.

The car was warm and within a few minutes the tips of April's fingers had begun to tingle, but her mind was still clouded by white mist shot through with the golden notes of the late night jazz that issued from the radio. She spoke without thinking, as if she were in a dream, as if she were sailing on clouds of gold and rain and something that could not quite be pinned down with words, "Ann…how did you know I was here?" Slow words. Sticky words.

"Don't ask me things like that, April." She couldn't tell if Ann was upset or cold or tired or something else entirely. How could she when Ann herself wasn't sure?

"Come on. You knew. How? I didn't even know where I was. Still don't." Do any of us? The words were half mumbled and she wasn't sure when she had stopped speaking and started thinking.

A sigh followed by a vague and cloudy and wholly unsatisfying confession, "I just knew, okay?"

A pause. "Why?"

"Because…because it's where I would be if…" Ann trailed off.

"If what?"

"Oh God, I don't know April…if I were younger, if I were stupider, if I followed my thoughts without really thinking."

April didn't respond and Ann figured that a combination of alcohol, exhaustion, and the warmth of the car had finally knocked her out. Good. It was better that way.

Time passed with the rushing of headlights on dirt, gasps of gold that didn't shine, before April spoke again, "Let's go to Montana, Ann. Let's go to Montana." She said it methodically, as if she were nodding in and out of sleep, but with a touch of something that sounded like purpose.

"Montana?" Ann asked, distracted by the snow and the darkness and the driving and the absurdity of it all.

"Yeah, Montana. They get it there."

"They get what there?"

"Damned if I know, but they do. They get it there. Let's go to Montana, Ann. Let's go to Montana."

"We can't go to Montana. I've got to get you home."

"You don't get it Ann. You just don't get it." She said it in the same steady tone, not angry – just lost in the snow.

There was silence and Ann thought that would be the end of it all. She could already feel the sting of dying potential, but the potential for what she did not know. She didn't like the feeling and she liked even less the uncertainty of it. But she didn't quite hate it. There was something about it that she clung on to. Longed for even. She tried not to dwell on it. It made her hope.

And then, "Let's go to Jack-In-The-Box, Ann. I want a milkshake." April wondered if she was asleep when she said this. It seemed rather stupid. But true nonetheless.

Ann laughed, a tight worried sound, but with something warm beneath it. Something she didn't like to think about, "A milkshake? You were freezing to death ten minutes ago and now you want a milkshake?"

"Yeah, let's go to Jack-In-The-Box, Ann. The one by my house."

Now it was her turn to pause and question, "Why?"

"I want to pretend."

"Pretend what?"

"I want to pretend that we're from somewhere else. And we're driving through. We're just driving through Indiana. We're not going there or anything. We're just driving through. And we see that Jack-In-The-Box while we're driving and we decide that we want to stop for milkshakes. I want to pretend that, Ann. I just want to pretend that."

"So where are we going to?"

"Montana."

"Uh-huh. And where are we coming from?"

"Montana."

Ann let out another harsh, unintentional laugh at this answer. She wasn't sure how to respond. Or whether to respond at all. Part of her wanted to know why April was out here in the first place, but most of her didn't so she chose not to ask. She chose to respond. "April…?" she said and she said it softly.

April mumbled something that sounded like "Yeah?"

"April," Ann repeated. Like she liked the way it sounded. Or maybe she was just having doubts. Either way she repeated it once more before pressing forward. "April…why are we driving anywhere at all? Not now, I mean, but to and from Montana by way of Indiana. Why you and me?"

"You were the one who agreed to come along." It seemed like the only response for such a question.

April wasn't so numb anymore. She wasn't so tired either. She wasn't sure what she was. Even when the headlights of Ann's car washed over the front of her house she wasn't sure if she was home. She got out of the car and didn't thank Ann for the ride. Some nights, snow isn't the only thing you want to forget.

The passenger door closed and Ann was alone, save for the radio and memories of recent conversation.

And where there were once words, she now heard music.