A/N: Time jump of three months here. It's now mid-March, six months on.
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She startles awake in some new motel, still exhausted.
Her memory fails to give her the story of what happened the night before, the journal lying open before her. Names sprawl across the page, and she panics. They're people and cities and books, they're towns and streets and everywhere she's been.
The first thing that occurs to her is that A has finally caught her, finally caught up to her and she isn't even sure if what she's feeling is fear because she's so far from Rosewood that A may as well be a ghost, a relic of a nightmare. Maybe its relief, relief that she will finally get to go home and answer to all the questions, start getting her life back.
Two pages back, the top of the page reads that she needs allies, and it's now that she starts remembering, fragments of the last night trickling through. More memories are triggered when she pours a glass of water, the glass clattering against the kitchen worktop.
Now she gets it – she went out for some holiday, found a college bar that ignored students' ages in favour of making profit. Went out and bought rounds of drinks, wove tales of traveling nomadically
(made it sound like a fun trip rather than a for-her-life one)
and coaxed people to set her up with contacts. There are what looks like dozens of names jammed onto the pages, it's more people than she's spoken to in weeks and she feels overwhelmed. Crammed into the thin lines are the details of who is who: someone who has a cousin who has a friend who needs a roommate, or a girl whose sister's boyfriend's aunt wants a temporary live-in cleaner. There are more relatives and friends on these pages, than there are in her entire life right now. These people all had different tales, but the one thing they all had in common was how easily they helped her when prodded. There are phone numbers and street addresses, all in different cities. It's enough to keep her alive – hopefully – for the next two years, if not longer.
She's sure that not every person is waiting to spring a trap, so she rips out the pages, finds a clean page and neatens up the notes.
0o0o0o0
The problem doesn't become clear until she goes to book more time in her motel room. It's only been three days, she's comfortable with another three before she begins to feel too conspicuous.
Paying in cash has been the method since day one, and she unfurls bank notes from her bag before going to reception. Instead, her fingers hit bare space when she reaches into the pockets of the bag – the money she should be finding isn't there.
It's like downloading and watching a movie, the way the memory makes itself known. She watches herself as she winds her way through a packed bar, promises a round of drinks on her. Watches as she pulls tens and twenties from her bag, scatters coins over the bar to pay for snacks.
(in her conscious mind, the one that's watching, she wants to reach out and scoop up all the money, wants to smack herself and make her leave the bar. instead she's watching, helpless as the money is gone before it hits the counter)
Frantic now, she scrabbles through the rest of the room. There's nothing in the pocket of her spare jeans, a ten-dollar in the jacket, and that's all she comes up with after an hour. She's not in the habit of hiding money in her rooms – it's a way to protect herself against both theft and the possibility of leaving something behind if she has to leave in a hurry. All the money she has stays with her, in pockets and old lip balm tubes, rolled up and hidden so well sometimes even she forgets where it is.
Only it's gone, the security it promised is gone.
Two nights are all she's got left in the room, it's all she was able to pay for upfront, and the idea of leaving for the late-autumn chill takes root in her mind, doesn't let her go.
Resignedly furious now, she barricades herself in the room. Flips the key in the doorknob , draws all the curtains shut. Four walls are all she needs and right now she doesn't even have that, can't rely on the partial warmth of the motel to stay alive.
For almost four hours, she doesn't move.
On the fifth hour she gets bored, hungry and almost falls asleep. The slush fund she had been saving is gone, wrecked in one night and for what? All it has got her is a list of names – people she doesn't know, in places she can't afford to go to. She hasn't got a credit card or checkbook that will take a day or two to bounce – she will not stoop further than what she already has.
Out of the motel, the wind is bitingly chilly and this is what there is to look forward to, she tells herself.
Might as well get used to it now.
0o0o0o0
It takes a few days of pacing the streets, waiting until cafes are near closing time before she can beg a sandwich. Sometimes if she plays it right she can pretend she's buying and forgot her wallet – well, the people get where she's coming from if she's hungry, and they're sympathetic enough to give her something for nothing. Sometimes she trades off an hour or two of off-the-books dishwashing for a meal; the skin on her hands dries out quickly thanks to industrial-strength dishwash and scalding hot water.
Well, it gets her fed. The hot water reminds her she's alive, and if someone happens to slip a ten-dollar note into her palm as she leaves, what harm can it do?
It works.
0o0o0o0
The queen has fallen, she remembers with grim satisfaction. It's alright though, she's not completely ruined. Now, she knows how to survive. She knows how to play people even better than before, knows how to get money for imagined bus fares and cash to buy meals, knows how to save that money.
It's a problem though because it's going to take a while to resurrect the slush fund and she's been here two weeks now. Two weeks is too long, soon there will be that old feeling of there being a spotlight on her and the worry of being watched will resurface. She knows herself well enough by now to know that once that sensation comes in, she'll continue the fears until she steps off the bus in another city.
(of course she knows herself, there's no-one else around to do it)
Washing dishes is meditative, and she comes across the perfect solution one evening as she scrubs. Hitchhiking isn't illegal – there are of course concerns with it nowadays, and safety, but she's pretty sure it would be safer than having death threats lipstick-scrawled over her mirror. Anyway, if she plays her cards right she'll be able to manipulate, be able to pick up on fears and insecurities and get just what she wants.
(no – needs. she doesn't want to go hitchhiking across states just to regain a sense of safety, but it's all the same at this point)
So she bundles up her bag and disappears from the motel, still owing a small portion of her last bill. It doesn't matter in the big picture, she promises herself. The motel will still be used, still drag on day-to-day. They'll still have customers who pay, still charge fees.
She pushes back the thought about how that will affect people, but it's there.
0o0o0o0
The thing with the money is that it feels like sabotage. For months she's been worried that someone was shadowing her, worried that there's someone waiting to trap her and drag her back to Rosewood.
For her to do something so unusual like that night at the pub… well, it worries her more than usual. She spends a lot of time worrying, but this is bigger.
What if A has been keeping tabs on her all along?
In the next city, at the next library, she Googles herself.
There are pictures of her, the good pictures. She looks happy and healthy, but she also looks blonder than she remembers being – she doesn't quite recognize herself.
People began fearing for her safety months ago, read the headlines. She checks every date obsessively, ruminates over some incident or another to match up a date with a memory of something. They began to think the search would turn up negative, she learns, still some months ago.
The latest news is that she'll be presumed dead soon. She's a minor and she's gone missing, maybe a runaway and maybe not. Her mother hasn't come forth about burying her, it seems, and nor has she come forth about watching her be hit over the head with a rock.
In fact, her mother hasn't come forth about a lot of things, and so she writes a list of questions in the back of her journal – questions to ask, questions to remember because she needs to know. She needs to know what she did that was so bad that she's going through all of this.
All it boils down to is her friends and family are releasing generic-sounding statements imploring her to return, imploring anyone with knowledge to come forth and it sounds like it's been recycled from every other missing person search. There's a reward out and she wonders why Mona hasn't come forth, spilled details that might let her come back. Might get Mona the glory she seemed to want.
The librarian jostles her from her thoughts, jabbing at where a wristwatch would be and making annoyed faces. It seems overly dramatic right now, so she wipes her computer history and leaves silently.
Silent as a ghost, even – you'd only know she was there by looking at security footage.
0o0o0o0
It is three weeks on from March, three weeks since she burnt all her money on making friends, but at least now she has a steady supply of housekeeping tasks to do. It's a big house with one resident who needs help keeping things clear – some architecture tours thing. She doesn't know the exact details, nor does she care to.
The city is a new one, the house is on the outskirts of town and big enough to warrant staff living there instead of commuting. As arrangements go, it's pretty close to perfect, and she is soon trusted enough to go out and do the shopping, bringing back groceries.
After the second shopping trip, her employer doesn't ask for the change back.
It makes the arrangement perfect, because she soon masters the art of picking out cheaper groceries and pocketing the extra cash. She'd feel bad about it, but a bleeding heart isn't going to help her survive.
It goes like this, then. Every morning she's up early, completing a list of tasks pinned to the fridge. It varies from day-to-day, and there's always money on the table so she can go and buy groceries, cleaning supplies, lunches. She learns her employer is allergic to tomatoes and dislikes strawberries; learns which sounds are a person walking down the hall and which are just noises of a settling house. She learns how to hide when another troop of tourists comes through the house, disappears into behind-couches and where the best part of the garden is to camouflage her presence.
At night they eat separately and at first she's offended – is she not suitable dinner company?
(it's been so long since she lived in a staffed house that it takes a week to remember, not everyone likes to eat with their staff as though they are friends)
Anyway. She gets it, and as long as she's being paid and fed, the solitary dinners aren't so bad. She's used to it by now, and the food is certainly better than whatever she used to scrounge when living out of her bag in a motel.
She could get used to this, could happily stay here for the next few months tending to the house and having proper meals, could get used to having a steady stream of income plus whatever change she keeps from cash purchases.
If this is being dead, maybe it's not so bad.
0o0o0o0
After two weeks the assignment ends. She calls it an assignment because it makes her feel better about being sketchy and showing up on the doorstep without a resume. It was only a temporary assignment, she knows this but when she packs up her bags and takes the final cash envelope (thicker than usual, evidently this is what people mean when they talk about a severance pay) she can't help feeling that she'll miss the place.
The drive to the bus station is silent, and she hurries in, keen not to let anyone see her hang around until she decides what bus to get. Eventually she decides on the first one going, hands over a few notes and takes a seat.
As she leaves the city, it kind of feels like a mistake.