support group one: no one left behind

[hearnospeakno]

When: Friday 6:00 p.m.
Where: Attic Observatory
What: Community Support Group

As Nick promised on his open advertisements, there are chairs and coffee in the Attic Observatory. There's even a table laden with what food products Nick and co could round up.

The process of setting up for a group meeting felt enough like Boulder that Nick took a short break to lean, palms first, against a wall. It was a short, easily displaced moment, and he has no intention of lingering on it.

This is about everyone, one way or another. For all the people stuck here, and everyone new, and all those in-between. Nick left the purpose of the group intentionally vague. In the future, he assumes it'll have to be narrowed down and split up for the sake of different needs, but for this first coming together of the displaced in any non-official capacity he wants it to be open for everyone. It wouldn't be right, otherwise.

So all newcomers will find Nick by the attic observatory door, nursing a cup of black coffee next to a clearly printed sign:

Hi, I'm Nick. Welcome to the first Nexus Hotel Support Group. Whatever your problem, we'll listen. Help yourself to coffee and food.

Underneath the words, Nick has drawn and crossed out a mouth and ear, leaving an arrow pointed at himself. His pad of paper and pen are obvious on his lap.

Comments

[vampire_shield]

"Well, it smells wonderful, if that helps any, so I wouldn't give up the coffee making just yet." She liked the woman's accent, even though it reminded her a little of Alastair and the fact that he left them to their own fight once he realized she was making contingency plans for Ness and Jacob.

"Have you been here long?" she asked and waved a hand around the room to indicate the hotel itself. "I've met some that have been here for weeks and some just for a few days, like me."

[legendthatwas]

Martha was trying to figure out how the coffee could smell good but not be something one wanted to drink, until she remembered how her uncle Tunde loved the smell of people making coffee but refused to drink it. Odd, but understandable--every Christmas he would eat the little coffee-flavoured cakes from Sainsburys like they were never going to be offered again.

"I've been here about a week and a half," she said. "It was weird, I was here a few days, then got shifted back home again for a week or two, then suddenly turned a corner and ended up here. I wish I could explain it."

[vampire_shield]

"I've heard that there are doors that open for some back to where they came from, but I haven't found one like that yet." Though she tried to not show her longing to find that door out of her voice, but she was pretty sure she didn't do such a great job of it. Keeping it rough and human-sounding were more important.

"There was one that was close. I mean, it sort of smelled like home, sounded like it, too, but it wasn't. There wasn't anyone there but me and a lot of animals."

[legendthatwas]

"For me it was completely by accident," Martha said. "I'd have to do it a few more times to see if there's a pattern." Though correlation didn't always imply causation, of course, of course--it was still a fairly good indicator in the real world outside science.

"A lot of animals?" she echoed, brow furrowing in thought. "That's a little weird, unless you needed to commune with nature or something and this place was giving you what you needed..."

[vampire_shield]

"Or something," Bella agreed with a nod. Her hand went up to her throat when she felt the burn flare to life at the memory of hunting that day. With effort, she pushed it to a far corner of her mind and locked it away. She was doing okay here, dwelling on her thirst wouldn't help anything.

"I guess you could say I have some very peculiar dietary restrictions," she offered with a sheepish smile.

[legendthatwas]

"I see," said Martha, who didn't, really, but something about the smile told her it was better not to ask. Not exactly a small-talk conversation. Besides, she was rather pleased at the verification of her theory. "Providing you what you need, then. That's really interesting...maybe that's how this place works."

[vampire_shield]

"As long as it keeps working the way it did when I needed it to, I'm not thinking about that part too much." She also wasn't thinking about what would happen if it didn't, though guy she'd met had agreed to help if that ever happened.

"When you said you'd been home, was that to England? Or do you just have a British accent but live somewhere else?"

[legendthatwas]

"Yeah, to London," Martha said in response to the first question, then laughed a little at the second, more at herself than anything else. "I'm London born and bred, though I seem to get around travel-wise more than I anticipated doing, growing up. Always seem to get back to London, though. Are you from the US? Or are you a Canadian?" she added, with an apologetic wince.

[vampire_shield]

"My mom and I traveled when I was younger. We'd take a trip every summer to see weird stuff, like the world's largest rubber band ball or two headed lobsters, stuff like that, but I only ever went out of the country once." Bella's fingers absently turned her engagement ring around her finger. "I'm American, yeah. I've never even been to Canada, but we live near the border."

[legendthatwas]

Martha was faintly relieved by this. She'd made the mistake a couple of times and had lived to regret them. "It's still travelling, the US is so big that it's like a dozen countries," she said, and found herself smiling a little wistfully. "Sometimes the weirdest stuff is the best stuff. I've seen plenty of it in my time, though I've been trying to settle down."

[vampire_shield]

"I was hoping to do a little more traveling with my husband," Bella said, wistful and clearly missing him. "We went through some...well, some really hard family stuff right after we got married and our honeymoon was cut short."

Which was a really boring way to sum up her death and change into a vampire, the birth of their daughter, and a gathering of the ruling vampires looking to eradicate her whole family under a false pretense. Since it was still the truth, Bella figured she wouldn't look like she was lying.

"Things had just settled down and I ended up here."

[legendthatwas]

"He's not here with you? Oh god, I'm sorry," Martha said, brow furrowing in dismay. True, she missed her family, but it wasn't as if she saw them constantly back in London. They knew she had a busy schedule, and so did all of them, if she were being perfectly honest. "Not to mention if you'd just got things sorted. I...had something like that with my family, took us months to get back on the right track."

[vampire_shield]

"No, he's not here," Bella said. "And no amount of searching has found me a way to return back to them even though some seem to be able to do just that. I'm trying not to think about my family thinking I've disappeared and looking for me, but it's not easy. I have to sort of lock it away in my mind and not dwell on it. If I did, I'd probably a miserable mass, rocking in a corner somewhere."

She grinned, but she was only partially kidding.

[legendthatwas]

"As a doctor who's done a psych rotation," said Martha, "I shouldn't advocate that kind of detachment." She leaned in a little, and whispered, conspiratorially, with a wry smirk, "But it's always worked for me, I'll have you know." More often than one would think, to be honest.

[vampire_shield]

Bella's mouth twisted in a wry smile of her own. "Trust me when I say that's the best coping mechanism for me. I have a history of not reacting well to sudden separation. The first few days I was here, I expected to have the same system shutdown that I had once before, but it's looking like my brain has changed in ways I never really expected and I'm better able to handle things than I ever was before."

[legendthatwas]

Martha blinked at the shutdown part--it sounded rather codependent to her, but what did she know about marriage? It wasn't like her parents were a great example of how to get on, even now that they were back together.

"Around here, it's not like you've got many other options, for that matter. Glad you're here, though, and okay..." She paused for a second, looking sheepish, and said, "I'm Martha, by the way. It's nice to meet you."

[vampire_shield]

Bella matched her expression, even shrugging a little with it. "Apparently I'm not only having adjustment issues, I've completely lost all my manners. It's nice to meet you, Martha. I'm Bella."

[legendthatwas]

The name spurred something vague in the back of Martha's mind, but she couldn't place it. She simply said, "So've I, so don't worry about it. I think we're allowed to be a bit awkward. Lovely to meet you, Bella."

[vampire_shield]

"You might be onto something there," Bella laughed. "I suppose being stuck in a hotel that's stuck in space kind of makes everything else sort of trivial, huh?"

[legendthatwas]

"Maybe just a bit," Martha agreed, laughing. She took a long slurp from her rapidly cooling coffee (oh well, wasn't like she hadn't made loads) and winked at Bella.