Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ismene's Counsel

September 10th, 2011 4:02 PM

God damn, I want a beer, she wasn't always sure of much when it came to the blonde woman in front of her, but Rachel was fairly certain that if she voiced that thought to her biological mother, her legal mother would hear about it. There was no proof that they talked, precisely, but on occasion they would talk about things relating to her in very similar ways. It led to Rachel being sure enough about their communication to pick and choose her words carefully. So, she kept to herself her desire for a night of cheap beer and cuddling. She was, at least, promised the second and if she wasn't mistaken there was something harder than beer hidden somewhere in Max's dorm room.

Honestly, though, she was enjoying the feeling of comfort at seeing Sera again. It had been the better part of three weeks since Sera had had a night off that really coincided with Rachel being able to escape Arcadia Bay for a couple of hours. The woman's slightly brighter blonde hair was pulled back most unusually as she gestured for Rachel to sit down on the old couch against one wall of her apartment. Rachel did as she was asked but took time to sweep her eyes once around the sitting room. It hadn't changed any since the last time she was there. The carpet was still grey and ragged, the furniture more fifth hand than second hand and Sera still hadn't been able to afford a television or even a laptop, though there was a radio at least two decades old sitting on a folding television tray to one side of the room. Sera often said she preferred music to the tube anyway.

It took the woman a moment to return when she disappeared to the small refrigerator in the attached kitchen, but when she did it was with a couple of cans of coke and what she called her 'guilty pleasure.' Rachel didn't say anything out loud, but if Sera's guilty pleasure was a bowl of relatively fresh grapes, part of her worried about whether the woman was eating well enough. All in all, the life Sera was living was not one Rachel was satisfied with. If she had had her way, the woman would have a much better time of things but that wasn't the way the world worked and, Sera had told her several times that she was not supposed to be worrying about Sera. If anything, and only if Rachel gave her permission, it was probably supposed to be the other way around.

Rachel had given that permission, though she could still remember keenly how embarrassing it felt to do so..

"So, Rachel," Sera settled back on the other end of the couch, a slow, luxurious sigh escaping her as she freed her hair. "What the hell have you been up to?" Rachel offered a grin in response to the honest question, the honest interest. These days, Rachel was able to see herself in Sera's face more often. Though, it wasn't helped along by how tired she looked. "I haven't heard from you in a bit." That was true if one discounted one or two text messages every other day. Rachel wasn't sure if that was too frequent or too infrequent of communication but she had never particularly been handed a pamphlet that had guidelines for reconnecting with your birth mother. If there were rules about this kind of thing, Rachel was in the dark.

"Well," Rachel trailed off. The truth was she knew exactly what she wanted to talk to Sera about and it both rhymed with and was David Madsen. She just wasn't sure how to lead into the conversation. Going down that rabbit hole could have all kinds of consequences and not the least of these was the potential that Sera, stuck in a small apartment on the bad side (as if there was a good side) of Edgeton, Oregon could decide to get involved. Putting Sera in David's path was bad news. If Rachel was pissed at him already she couldn't imagine how bad it would get if the man turned on one of her mothers to top it all off. Telling him to go to hell would become at best a mere formality or at worse a self-fulfilling prophecy. "Max came back into town last week. We've been pretty worried about her, of course, so it was good to see her."

"How's she doing and is there a chance you'll convince her to finally come and see me? I do sort of owe her at least a 'thank you'."

"She wouldn't take it from you," Rachel promised. "I'm pretty sure she's just happy everyone got out of that alright. But," back on the Max subject… "she's not doing so hot. As best as we can tell she doesn't eat too well. I've been being a total bitch about it, you know, putting her favorite foods in front of her whenever the school serves them, but there's only so much you can do." Not that I haven't considered holding her down once or twice so Chloe can force feed her a damn meal. Sera nodded, her face darkening slightly. Rachel watched a thought cross the woman's face and then get buried. As she did, though, Rachel began to get the idea that maybe Sera had something specific she wanted to talk about. And so do I, so maybe make this quick, Rachel? "Chloe's um… well, she's been better." Rachel looked down at her hands quietly, trying to give Sera the opportunity to chime in.

"What about you?" the woman queried, finally. "Are you, you know, feeling well?" The stress on the last word made it clear she was speaking more on the level of mental and emotional health than say, a flu. Perhaps fittingly, Rachel had always found herself to do fairly well with most physical illnesses.

"The therapy's helping," Rachel admitted as she opened her momentarily forgotten can of coke. Before she took a sip she reached out toward the bowl of grapes and took one. Okay, so they're good, so what? "I mean, I'm getting better at recognizing what I'm feeling and sometimes why?"

"Which kind of brings me to asking why you look so upset?" To buy herself some time, Rachel popped the grape into her mouth. Her biological mother, leaned back against the couch behind her, arms only uncrossing long enough to pull from the can in her hand. It was while she was trying to figure out precisely how to answer that Rachel glanced around the room and noticed the lack of any ashtrays. Holy shit, did she kick the habit? There were plenty of people who weren't living in stressful circumstances who seemed to have trouble putting cigarettes away. It was impressive. "One grape can really only buy you so much time, you know?" the woman asked in her low, drawn out and slightly scratchy tone, the kind that seemed to be her 'down to brass tacks' voice.

"I am upset about something but that's kind of an understatement," Rachel took a long sip from her can and sat it down between her knees, her left hand resting atop it for balance. "I'm trying to decide what to do about a problem and it doesn't seem like there's a really good option." It was starting to feel warm enough-and Rachel was fairly confident that that was not her fault-that she placed the can of coke on the table in front of her and removed her favored jacket, the one stitched with a white raven on the back. It was aging well, she thought, laughing at the idea that she had had it less than a year. "In fact, all I can find is bad options."

"What's got you conflicted?" Rachel wasn't sure how to explain it any better than she already had without giving anything away, so she responded with a question instead. Her bio-mom's heavily lidded grey eyes sharpened as if recognizing the gambit for what it was, but the woman stayed quiet until she finished.

"How do you handle people who are up to no good? I mean, the ones who are at best assholes and at worst, dangerous."

"Is that your way of saying you're in danger?" Rachel shook her head and then immediately regretted it. The decision to be honest came almost as soon as she finished lying.

"Actually, maybe?" Rachel sighed and then spoke more openly. "There are a few people in Arcadia Bay that are at least assholes and a couple of them might be dangerous. And, yeah, I am at risk, but right now the worst that is happening is that one of them is following me around town sometimes. He's also following Max, and Chloe and maybe even a friend of ours." Despite looking exhausted, Sera dropped her air of relaxation and leaned forward, elbows digging into her knees. She clearly wanted more information. "I'm going to need a promise before I say anything else." The request sounded somewhat on the desperate side and that was not how Rachel wanted to present herself to the woman.

"Which is?"

"Everything I'm saying is between us," Rachel clarified. There was a moment of hesitation, of eyes meeting eyes, wills being examined, determination tested and after several seconds in which Rachel did not blink, it was Sera's turn to sigh, loudly.

"Fine, as long as you don't tell me that someone is about to be injured." This caveat was fair enough and Rachel took another long drink to allow herself more time to process. She wasn't entirely sure if she was anxious about telling Sera what was going on, or if thinking about all of this made her anxious. She knew without a doubt that thinking about it made her angry and she wasn't interested in losing her temper and exposing her abilities to her biological mother, not when, a year and change later she still knew nothing about them. Also, I would hate to burn down the fucking building .

"Chloe's stepfather, David."

"Blowhard military guy?"

"That's him. He doesn't like her very much. He doesn't like me very much."

"Shocker, you're two punkass kids who think authority in general is fallible. People like him hate that, because you're fucking right." The one thing that Sera did which endeared Rachel to her was to always tell it like it was, even if she did it in the kindest way possible. Besides, if Chloe had heard the woman use the term 'punkass' to describe them, she would have worn that word like a badge of honor for the next week. And she would have been insufferable doing it. The thought was almost enough to make Rachel smile. Almost.

"He doesn't like her, so he definitely doesn't like me or Max. Thing is, he's the security guard at Blackwell and he's definitely been following Max and I around on campus. We were digging around at Chloe's place the other day- uh, before she moved out a few days ago?" Sera did not visibly react though, Rachel had no reason to assume she was doing anything but paying close attention. "And it- he had like, files on all of us and our friend, Steph. Makes us sound like we're the biggest drug runners in Arcadia Bay history, because he saw Max buying pot once… kind of." This did earn an eyebrow raise from Sera, but she did not interrupt Rachel.

"He saw her near a drug dealer, as far as we can tell. But he's spun this really fucked up narrative about us and now that I know he's following us around, it's kind of scary." It was only with some restraint that she did not tell her biological mother about the cameras all over the Madsen household. Perhaps it was the growing sense of anxiety in Sera's eyes as she spoke, but Rachel did not think their confidentiality agreement would cover the existence of spycams in the bedroom of seventeen year old girls. And it shouldn't, Rachel thought. But this is why someone has to handle him. Despite the fact that the woman was already frowning, Rachel added, candidly. "Top it off, we found some e-mails that say he's being paid to protect someone who is really really shady and kinda has a reason not to like me or my girls."

"Yikes," Sera started.

"Yikes," Rachel agreed. "The worst part is, honestly, David's capable of violence and so is the person he's protecting. I don't think David would help the guy if he knew what he was all about, but he'd never believe it if we told him. David… David distrusts women."

"Starting to think women have a reason to distrust him."

"Chloe thinks so," Rachel added.

"You know, I burned my old life down a long time ago." There was no accompanying massive tonal shift but Rachel wasn't entirely sure where Sera was going with this. She grew still and quiet, making only the noise needed to sip from the can in her hand as the woman spoke. "But there's a motto I've lived by my whole life and it's the only thing I've kept from before. Defend you and yours in the moment but anything past that is about revenge and that's a dangerous road to ride down. It's okay to go to someone for help, Rachel." There were many reasons that answer didn't sit well with her. First and foremost, with the confirmation that David worked for the Prescotts she knew he had enough 'help' of his own that she wasn't sure there was anyone left to turn to. Perhaps the most damning part of this, though, was that what Sera was saying was something akin to, 'do nothing.' She was being told to do nothing and that didn't feel right at all.

Unbidden she recalled the sight of Max tied to Nathan's computer chair, drugged half out of her mind. Following behind that thought was the image of David sneering down at Max and Chloe outside of the photography classroom, his derisive, cruel expression of superiority a beacon, like a douchebag lighthouse for all the douchebag ship captains to ever sail the seven douchebags. Fuck that, Rachel decided right then and there, even as she gave contemplative 'hmm'. I'm not going to be some passive little bitch and sit back and let the next person come along and hurt Chloe and Max. Sera, Rachel decided almost immediately, was wrong.

"Could we talk about something else for a few? I need to think." She hoped the lie wasn't obvious. She hoped that the first time she went to her biological mom for advice the woman wouldn't realize that circumstances had forced her to dismiss that advice out of hand. If Sera did know what was going on within the confines of Rachel's head, she didn't let it show, only nodding in agreement. The woman was still dressed in her uniform from the convenience store she was working in, so Rachel's immediate inclination was to ask about work. Instead, more generally she asked, "What have you been up to since last time?"

They passed the next few minutes in discussion. Sera revealed that while work was tiring and unfulfilling it was good enough to keep most bills paid. More than that, she had applied and been accepted to the University of Portland to pursue a business degree. Realistically, she told Rachel, she is going to have trouble moving up in the world without it. She has nothing else and doesn't have the energy or the time left in life to take a lot of risks. This is yet another time when Rachel disliked what Sera was saying, but kept it to herself. The idea that the woman in front of her who had already taken such great risks in her life was unable to take any more seemed absurd. It wasn't her place to interfere, though. Still, the riskier the road, the greater the profit. Rachel blinked once as the thought rose to the back of her mind. Oh holy shit, you just quoted the Rules of Acquisition. I think Chloe's already lost her battle for your sci-fi soul.

Despite disagreeing with a couple of things, Rachel found the discussion with Sera much easier than having one with her own mother. She wasn't sure entirely how she felt about that, but by the time she got out of the woman's apartment her attention had already been pulled away from the question. Though she had not particularly planned on this, Rachel made a quick stop at the town's Big Box Mart before she started back toward Arcadia Bay. Her purchases were enough that, without a self-checkout lane she might have raised an eyebrow: a bandanna, black gloves, black ski mask, plain black sweater. The receipt she shoved into one of the bags could have screamed 'cat burglar' to anyone who looked. Rachel had no plans of wearing the outfit to steal anything, though the end goal of obscuring her features was much the same.

From the moment she had decided to stop at the store all the way up until she crossed into Arcadia Bay's city limits and pulled over on an abandoned stretch of road, everything Rachel did felt cold and distant. Her very thoughts could have been messages sent to her from miles away. She could not shake the grim understanding that there was no one truly willing to act to protect any of them from people like David and Nathan. Chloe and Max were going through too much on their own for her to ask them to get involved, either.

This was on her.

Sitting on the side of the road, Rachel sent a text message to confirm her 'appointment' with her final stop of the day before she settled back in at school. It took Frank Bowers something in the way of five minutes to respond with an address where she could meet him. The drive took her slightly closer to town proper and the roads began to get more and more crowded as she went on. This necessitated at least a little more focus on the road and pulled her farther and farther away from the cold, distant voice in her head telling her that her bio-mom was wrong, that steps needed to be taken to ensure that people knew who they shouldn't fuck with. Judging by the incident in the photography classroom, Nathan was apparently too stupid to remember his lesson from the year before, but maybe David Madsen wouldn't be.

Maybe. She was going to have to take care with him.

Either way, her attention was pulled to the road throughout the trip. By the time she arrived at the very park where she first sat eyes on Sera Gearhardt, the very park that was the site of the start of last year's forest fire, it was starting to look closer and closer to sundown. The truth was that replacing her nearly dwindled stash was something of a smokescreen. Ooh, good pun, Rachel thought as she turned the car off, eyes locking on the RV across the small lot. I'm keeping that one. She was coming to see Frank to make sure that he was free and clear. The idea that David had turned his watchful gaze on the man threw Rachel off.

Like it or not, she owed Frank big time when it came to connecting her to her bio-mom. Not to mention that whatever Max said about her knocking Merrick out, it was hard for Rachel not to think that Frank was the reason no one had seen him since that day. In the end she wasn't sure how he'd respond to the idea that he was falling under more scrutiny than usual. She just knew that she should at least come and see and, maybe, tell him. Then again, he's gotten a lot shittier since then.

The door to the RV opened and very briefly as Rachel got out of her car she saw the man framed in it before he climbed back up the steps. That was as clear of a 'come on in' as she was likely to get from him. Jacket fixed firmly into place she took the man's show of hospitality before he found the need to ask her a second time. It took a moment to pull herself back up into the RV but when she passed the top step and the door shut behind her, she marvelled at how comfortable she had gotten to feel in there. It wasn't that she was sure Frank wasn't dangerous, it was more that she had made a habit for a while of visiting him whenever her or Chloe's stash ran out. It had been some time, though, since her last visit.

For the first few seconds, Pompidou raised hell from behind the door of what she knew to be Frank's bedroom. Without speaking a word of greeting to her, Frank took a step back into his 'kitchen' and snapped his fingers once. It was a piercing sound, certainly loud enough to be heard by the dog in the back, who gave one disappointed half-whine and then grew quiet. Personally Rachel thought that the dog's viciousness was something of an act. Then again, whether Frank had adopted a 'tough guy' persona for real or not, dogs were typically pretty protective of their owner and able to read the owner's feelings toward a person. Maybe Pompidou was nothing to be fucked with, but she had not seen him in some time. The last time he had still somewhat resembled the small, nearly rotund puppy of his youth, even if barely.

"You can come out when she's gone," Frank assured the dog through the closed door and then turned back to her. "What?" he asked, apparently reading something in her gaze that Rachel had no conscious knowledge of sending out. The man tossed aside a 'Tapout' cap, revealing the worst case of hat hair Rachel had seen in some time. She wanted to get a read on if he looked bothered, tired or harried, anything to suggest that he was having difficulty but nothing jumped out. If Frank was seeing evidence of David's watchful eye, he wasn't letting on about it. If he thinks we're working for Frank, he's watching him, Rachel thought, sure of herself.

"Nothing," she said.

"Well, do you want the usual or not?"

"Yeah," Rachel replied. "Fifty, right?"

"Fifty," he agreed, before disappearing from the kitchen toward a rack of shelves a little farther back in the RV. Chloe might have lost the war on what type of sci-fi Rachel liked, but she had won a different battle. Rachel reached into her back pocket and pulled loose a trifold leather wallet. As far as she was concerned anyone who didn't carry one of these was nuts. It beat the hell out of lugging a heavy purse around. Then again, there's a reason people carry them, I guess. I just haven't found it yet. She dug a few bills from the wallet and slid it back into place as she broached the subject she had been trying to since stepping in.

"Shit been going well?" Rachel asked.

"Fuckin' peachy, Amber," the man shot back, one hand rising to itch the side of his face, the other absently digging through the shelf. She wasn't sure precisely what he was looking for, but she decided to approach things from a different angle.

"So, doesn't the RV draw some attention at this point?" Being blunt either worked fairly well with Frank or it completely bombed. She wasn't entirely sure why that was. Sometimes she thought he was bit slow on the uptake but at other points he acted sharp as a tack. Tonight, it seemed, it was going to bomb.

"No more than anything else," he replied, turning his brown eyes on her all of the sudden, instead of finding whatever he was looking for. The man let both arms fall to his sides and turned to face her. Rachel responded by crossing her own arms across her chest. This was as close to a gesture of peace as she was going to offer the man. She wasn't foolish enough to outright trust him and even if she were he seemed to like someone expressing confidence in their ability to protect themselves. "Not like I go parking in front of the police station with it. Why?" Suspicion was almost like an afterthought in his voice, but it was still there alongside narrowing eyes. His right hand was gripping at something, suggesting he might have found 'the usual' all prepped and ready for her.

"No reason," she replied as off the cuff as possible. The truth was she was fighting a little battle inside on whether or not she ought to warn Frank then and there. Frank represented this ambiguous figure around Arcadia Bay. Reasonably, she should feel grateful to him for helping Chloe and Max rescue Sera from Merrick. That's almost everyone she cares about owed to him all in one fell swoop. That being said, her ambivalence came from his attitude, the wall he kept around him and the idea that he might have killed someone. It had little to do with the dealing of drugs: people either chose to do them or not. Or they're slipped into their drink, Rachel thought, swallowing. She hoped he did not sell to Nathan anymore. Unsurprisingly that last detail was one she got stuck on, especially given how it affected Max. More than that, Rachel had to remind herself that willingly or not he had made Max an accessory to murder and the brunette was never going to forget that.

Unable to reach a decision either way, Rachel paid him once his suspicion calmed enough to take it and then made her excuse to leave. Frank must not have been feeling particularly chatty as he let her go without so much as a 'goodbye.' Neither her frustrations in her attempt to figure the man out, nor what she told herself was the imagined sound of a camera shutter as she stepped out of the RV did much to pick up her mood. All told, Rachel left the lookout hoping for an evening curled up with Max in front of Netflix.

Half an hour later, long after she was parked on the grounds of Blackwell Academy, the text she received from Frank was enough to make her cement her belief that the only good thing she had done with her day was to purchase the outfit she currently had laying on her bed, still in bags. Well, that and come back to Blackwell Academy and drag Max away from her long-running study session for cuddling and pretending to watch Star Trek.

Frank

Amber do you wanna tell me why twenty fucking minutes after you leave the cops show up to ask me about selling drugs to a high school girl?

Me

I wouldn't have said anything, it wasn't me.

Frank

Someone was probably following your ass. If you want so much as another joint in this town, you won't bring shit like that down on me again.

Shifting from her spot on Max's bed, she put the phone back into her pocket and pulled closer to the girl. All pretense of watching a show was long gone by that point and they were simply enjoying being close to one another. Frustrated, she buried her face against the back of Max's shoulder and rested one hand atop her stomach. Though Max reached up to place her hand atop Rachel's it was pretty clear that the brunette was only barely awake, certainly too out of it to ask Rachel who she was texting. Rachel was fine with that. There was a story that needed telling but her irritation also could do with some soothing. The scent of Max's shampoo and conditioner, the warmth of a quilt slung over both of them and the occasional grasp of the photographer's hand to one of hers was wonderful for that.

Rachel wasn't stupid, she was able to piece together what must have happened pretty well: David had likely followed her to Edgeton and then back to Arcadia Bay. She could imagine the man practically drooling when she pulled up in the same lot with Frank. There was no other real explanation for the police being called on Frank so soon after she left. It meant that warning Frank about David keeping an eye on him had become both more important and scarier. You know, this would be easier if you knew if he was friend or foe.

"Rachel?"

"Yeah, sweetie?"

"It's starting to get warm in here." Max turned and slipped the quilt down the bed until it rested beneath at its foot. The brunette was a little red in the face. I didn't think I was getting that upset, Rachel told herself.

"I think this one's just you," Rachel shot back, trying to anchor herself in the moment. Max looked pensive for a moment. Rachel's eyes wandered the girl's rosy (if too-gaunt) cheeks and traced the way the red trailed down her face, down her throat. No, this one was definitely on Max.

"You know people have body heat normally, right?" Max replied, laughing as she rolled over to look her more directly in the eyes. Rachel hadn't really been thinking about normal body heat, only her tendency to heat up a room when her mind wandered or other distractions elicited other responses. Max could see this and looked poised to tease her about it.

"I'm not warm," Rachel responded, feeling a bit stubborn on the issue.

"In that case," Max started, moving herself closer and closer to Rachel. For her part, Rachel sat aside her worries for the moment, but also denied Max the end of that thought as their lips met. Maybe I'm the only one who wants to handle Sergeant Shithead, but sometimes, baby, it's good to be me.