no subject

[weighted_reality]

He's turning into Cobb. It's not a good thing. It's not acquiring the boundless creativity and subtlety of construction that the man strives for in dreams and extraction. It's not the ability to love something and fight for it so fully that onlookers can only wonder how he hasn't collapsed. No. It's none of that.

It's the shades in his mind and the doubting, darting glances that he's barely controlling. It's the questions, the roll of the loaded die and the increasing worry when it lands again, and again, on the same number. It's the assurance that he's part of reality now, even though this hotel can't be. The hotel is too strange and circuitous and maybe there are no closed loops or tricks of vision, but Arthur can't believe this is real. Real life doesn't just allow for the opening of the door to lead to an entirely new world.

Every single part of it is becoming a puzzle that he is increasingly more desperate to solve.

Soon. Too soon, Arthur thinks. Soon he's going to exactly like Cobb, sitting at the coffee table of a hotel room, watching his totem fall with a loaded pistol in hand. His totem will call the shot.

Today, Arthur hasn't gone that far, not yet thank God. He's gotten as far as a bar with a gold-brown glass of bourbon warming his insides and making all of this seem at least a tiny bit more possible.

no subject

[the_watchtower]

Chloe has been through some weird shit in the past several years. She's basically got a mark on her forehead that says, "Need a hostage? I'm available!" but she guesses that's mostly because of Clark Kent and not necessarily because of her.

This takes the cake. She woke up this morning in a really bad knockoff of Madonna's "Like A Virgin" get up and between the splitting headache and the memory loss, she's not really sure how she tumbled out of a closet and into the hallway of a hotel. She doesn't even know which hotel it is, except it's not Vegas or Metropolis or any other place she's ever been before in her life. It's sure as heck not Kansas anymore but where it is? She has no idea.

So she's screwed. More or less.

She wanders down the hallway and ends up finding the front desk, at least, so that's an improvement on her current situation. Not that it tells her much. There's a key for her and a room assignment and some instructions about the amenities and Chloe tunes it all out. She needs to know what the hell happened to her that she's got a big, black spot for the last 12-24 hours and she needs to find Clark and Lois or someone who was with her so she can start piecing things together again.

She guesses a regular person wouldn't care so much that they blacked out drunk but Chloe isn't a regular person. Her memory lapses tend to be the result of some catastrophic event on a global scale (well, maybe not exactly but they coincide) and she'd like to know that Metropolis isn't in a crater and looking suspiciously like the aliens won in Independence Day.

So she decides to go back to where it all started. She's in the hallway tugging at the door she tumbled out of, feet braced against it so she can pull at the handle with all the power that her five foot five can manage. It's not a lot.

"Oh my God, Clark? Could you please show up any time now?"

no subject

[makingnerdslookgood]

"I made it to the rage phase," Sloan says coolly, leaning in nice and close to get a good photo of Scott with her phone. He looks terrible, writhing in pain on the floor with blood streaming out of his nose.

Good. Asshole deserves it.

Spinning on her heels, Sloan exits the board room and crosses the waiting room, where Don (good pal that he is) is waiting. Scott's $400 wing tips stomp across the floor as he follows her, but Sloan doesn't slow down or even look back. Don has her covered.

As she looks down at the photo on her phone (which she is strongly considering making the wallpaper on her work computer), a triumphant smile appears on her face.

The rage phase feels good.

Exhaling slowly, Sloan pushes open the door to the stairwell and steps through, knowing Don will catch up in a minute.

Eyes flicker up from the phone's screen and widen.

"Okay, maybe not," she mutters to herself. The stairwell that she knows is supposed to be there just isn't. There's a bar, but it doesn't look like any bar she's ever been to. Whirling around, incredibly confused, she turns the knob on the door she just came through. When it opens, she sees nothing familiar, not the hall she just came down, no Don waiting for her, nothing.

Stifling back one of those laughs that tend to bubble up when you panic, Sloan swallows heavily and looks around.

It had been a hell of a day and she was in a bar. Maybe a drink wouldn't hurt.

Besides, after the day she's had, Sloan figures she deserves one.