Disclaimer. If it was mine, you'd know, but it's not.
Early on Coe reminded her of Gregg and Bea with her dark mascara and infectious enthusiasm, but nowadays other people remind her of Coe. The two of them are sitting on the curb of what used to be her old neighborhood, autumn leaves skittering on the pavement with the wind. She's right in front of what should be where her old house stood, but all the homes here are so similar it's hard to really know.
Her neighborhood had been far from the hardest thing to find. Earlier she'd spent about an hour walking around the endless blocks of stores and restaurants and boutiques trying to place anything she saw to her memories. She'd almost been ready to give up at Coe's suggestion when she saw an oddly stout brick building sandwiched between a pastel-hued clothing store and a tech outlet. The windows were set in neat rectangular frames, with the ground portion of the building boasting a large set of glass doors, but the building still kept its old number, now displayed on a thin metal sign above the entrance: 1063.
Gregg and Angus broke up about a year after they moved to Bright Harbor. It was a quiet affair, they both just agreed that the relationship had sailed its course. Financial matters kept them both sharing the same flat, so she'd been privy to accounts of the awkwardness that came with in the early months after the break up from both. Eventually things settled. She hasn't heard from either of them in some time, and she hasn't had much free time to really try to contact them.
She wasn't the only one busy. She still talked with Bea a fair amount, but calls were almost always shorter than she liked, and in-person meetings had dwindled and dwindled. Part of it's that Bea's still running around trying to support her father – and she doesn't begrudge her that – part of it's that she's got meet-ups with friends that live closer, and other calls, and a job.
Coe's just Coe in her head now. But when she first met her she just couldn't stop seeing Bea, from the way that she dressed in black like it was going out of fashion to her sense of reality. As it stands, Coe just sits on the curb with her, not saying a thing. That's one of the things she loves best about her – that she can match all her highs and her lows without skipping a beat. The smooth asphalt feels solid under her feet, and she wonders what's sitting on the bones of Germ's house, on the bones of the well. When construction started tearing things down, did they send a crew to check the caves? The lack of headlines means they must've not found the cult. Or the hole.
There's some kids yelling and running off somewhere in the background, but she just scoots closer to Coe and tries not to feel the bodies in the cave under the earth.
Author's Notes. 002/100 for the 100 Fandoms Challenge. Written for prompt 88 – here. Originally posted on 2020.11.3 on Ao3 with an epigraph and a untruncated title.