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lysistrategic) wrote2012-07-07 10:32 am
lysistrategic) wrote2012-07-07 10:32 am
Entry tags:
July 9-20: Operation: Sundowner
The first time it happens, Joan wakes and curls toward the warmth of the sun on her bed, eyes shut tight against the sight of her husband not there. When she rolls, her hand touches flesh, a broad barrel chest; an arm lifts, and as she always has, Joan curls into the curve of his strength. She doesn't dare open her eyes and find it's just a dream, but it's so powerfully real, tears leak from the corners of her eyes.
"Joanie?" Arthur rumbles, half asleep but worried half to death.
She knows the tone and the reason, of course; she never cries and if she is, then something is terribly wrong. When she shakes her head, her tears dampen her hair and it sticks to him. He smooths her hair, catches her chin and makes her look at him but she's still afraid to open her damp, sticky lids. Finally, she does and his thumb sweeps against her cheek, questions in his eyes.
"I dreamed you were gone," she says, because she's a spy and she knows if he's confused then it has to have been a dream. Nightmare, the longest of her life. Months. Is Emily real?
"I'm still here." Confirmation, still.
She nods and he kisses her, in that steady, certain way that he has. It's always been her undoing. "Love me?" she asks, and after he tells her, "Always, my wife," he does.
Hours later, when they rise from bed well after breakfast to an empty kitchen - their own home, Emily and Matt moved out last week - Joan remembers. She knows the island's playing this trick, but Arthur will worry. So she leaves it at nightmare and moves on. But she spends the rest of the afternoon making notes about everything she knows on the island and everyone. At the top of every page in the notebook, it has her name and Arthur's, the date of their marriage, and Annie and Auggie's names. Just in case it happens again.
****
The second time it happens, she is doing laundry. Hers and a man's. She doesn't recognize the room she's in, but she knows her name and her job. There's a notebook in her back pocket, a dangerous crutch. She pulls it out, reads, and wonders...are Annie and Auggie the names of the children this cover are supposed to have? Practical, she puts the load in to wash and hops up on the washer (she's young still, she can get away with these things) and reads what she's written. It's beyond strange and she can't begin to imagine the stakes if she's ended it with It's all real. But she hides the notebook under the dry laundry and she runs with it.
It's not until two days later that her memories return.
****
After that, it comes and goes. Sometimes for as short as minutes, other times for days. She converts the notes to a locked file on the computer she's borrowed from Dairine and it pops up every time she powers it on. The password her first phone number, 4645215, which she keeps despite the temptation toward security change because the first thing in the file after Arthur is your husband is always Don't change the password, Joan.
It's terrifying, this journey back and forth in time. But she does her best to keep it to herself, not wanting to worry Arthur and Emily and Matthew, Annie and Auggie and Sarah, Anatoly, Jonas, Dairine, and John. Arthur's name becomes a mantra. A totem. The day she's at the beach and it takes her back to the hospital, she finds a pleasing shell and pockets it to rub with her thumb. When she finds her way back home (carefully, carefully, because something is obviously wrong), opens the computer and the file, she uses ink from her drawing class to write Arthur's name inside the shell. After that, she never leaves it home.
The worst are the days when she's ten and Daddy's gone again or in the field and Megan's missing, at least until she ends up back in the terrible six months where everything with Arthur was wrong. She finds the notes and knows they've made up and he never strayed, but the new ring on her finger sits wrong and it's impossible to pretend she's deeply, warmly in love when she wakes up wanting to strangle him for the brush of his fingers against her skin.
Most of the time, she's in the field again, which makes her think it's a coma she's in or a concussion on the lucid days. There's almost always an op she has to finish, some dire countdown or parcel trade or seduction. When she comes back around, memories restored to the present and all is well, it's not the tear-stricken days of her youth or almost losing Meg that kills her. It's almost betraying Arthur that - uncharacteristically poetic for her - rends her soul.
Eventually even her good days turn sour, filled with fears of forgetting. The coffee she always has in hand cools, forgotten while her thumb sweeps against the inside of the shell. Even when she remembers who she is and where, Joan's cast adrift on the stormy sea of memory. The island is responsible, she tells herself firmly, but the specter of Alzheimer's, sundowning, early onset dementia looms large, leaving her often raw, frightened, stripped bare.
[ooc: find Joan anywhere on the island, any time between now and let's say the twentieth of July. Things she does regularly: her classes, cooking in her kitchen or the main one especially when she's stressed, laundry (and if you want to tag her off the laundry scene here email me because I only want one), drink coffee and read off her laptop, run in the mornings, yoga at night, help Matt with the garden he's putting in, wandering aimlessly looking for her targets. If you need a specific date/date-range, let me know. And if you want her without amnesia on one of the raw days, let me know that too. I'll decide what she does or doesn't remember for your thread. If you want to discuss in advance, drop me an email at technosagery @ gmail and I'll get right on it.]
"Joanie?" Arthur rumbles, half asleep but worried half to death.
She knows the tone and the reason, of course; she never cries and if she is, then something is terribly wrong. When she shakes her head, her tears dampen her hair and it sticks to him. He smooths her hair, catches her chin and makes her look at him but she's still afraid to open her damp, sticky lids. Finally, she does and his thumb sweeps against her cheek, questions in his eyes.
"I dreamed you were gone," she says, because she's a spy and she knows if he's confused then it has to have been a dream. Nightmare, the longest of her life. Months. Is Emily real?
"I'm still here." Confirmation, still.
She nods and he kisses her, in that steady, certain way that he has. It's always been her undoing. "Love me?" she asks, and after he tells her, "Always, my wife," he does.
Hours later, when they rise from bed well after breakfast to an empty kitchen - their own home, Emily and Matt moved out last week - Joan remembers. She knows the island's playing this trick, but Arthur will worry. So she leaves it at nightmare and moves on. But she spends the rest of the afternoon making notes about everything she knows on the island and everyone. At the top of every page in the notebook, it has her name and Arthur's, the date of their marriage, and Annie and Auggie's names. Just in case it happens again.
****
The second time it happens, she is doing laundry. Hers and a man's. She doesn't recognize the room she's in, but she knows her name and her job. There's a notebook in her back pocket, a dangerous crutch. She pulls it out, reads, and wonders...are Annie and Auggie the names of the children this cover are supposed to have? Practical, she puts the load in to wash and hops up on the washer (she's young still, she can get away with these things) and reads what she's written. It's beyond strange and she can't begin to imagine the stakes if she's ended it with It's all real. But she hides the notebook under the dry laundry and she runs with it.
It's not until two days later that her memories return.
****
After that, it comes and goes. Sometimes for as short as minutes, other times for days. She converts the notes to a locked file on the computer she's borrowed from Dairine and it pops up every time she powers it on. The password her first phone number, 4645215, which she keeps despite the temptation toward security change because the first thing in the file after Arthur is your husband is always Don't change the password, Joan.
It's terrifying, this journey back and forth in time. But she does her best to keep it to herself, not wanting to worry Arthur and Emily and Matthew, Annie and Auggie and Sarah, Anatoly, Jonas, Dairine, and John. Arthur's name becomes a mantra. A totem. The day she's at the beach and it takes her back to the hospital, she finds a pleasing shell and pockets it to rub with her thumb. When she finds her way back home (carefully, carefully, because something is obviously wrong), opens the computer and the file, she uses ink from her drawing class to write Arthur's name inside the shell. After that, she never leaves it home.
The worst are the days when she's ten and Daddy's gone again or in the field and Megan's missing, at least until she ends up back in the terrible six months where everything with Arthur was wrong. She finds the notes and knows they've made up and he never strayed, but the new ring on her finger sits wrong and it's impossible to pretend she's deeply, warmly in love when she wakes up wanting to strangle him for the brush of his fingers against her skin.
Most of the time, she's in the field again, which makes her think it's a coma she's in or a concussion on the lucid days. There's almost always an op she has to finish, some dire countdown or parcel trade or seduction. When she comes back around, memories restored to the present and all is well, it's not the tear-stricken days of her youth or almost losing Meg that kills her. It's almost betraying Arthur that - uncharacteristically poetic for her - rends her soul.
Eventually even her good days turn sour, filled with fears of forgetting. The coffee she always has in hand cools, forgotten while her thumb sweeps against the inside of the shell. Even when she remembers who she is and where, Joan's cast adrift on the stormy sea of memory. The island is responsible, she tells herself firmly, but the specter of Alzheimer's, sundowning, early onset dementia looms large, leaving her often raw, frightened, stripped bare.
[ooc: find Joan anywhere on the island, any time between now and let's say the twentieth of July. Things she does regularly: her classes, cooking in her kitchen or the main one especially when she's stressed, laundry (and if you want to tag her off the laundry scene here email me because I only want one), drink coffee and read off her laptop, run in the mornings, yoga at night, help Matt with the garden he's putting in, wandering aimlessly looking for her targets. If you need a specific date/date-range, let me know. And if you want her without amnesia on one of the raw days, let me know that too. I'll decide what she does or doesn't remember for your thread. If you want to discuss in advance, drop me an email at technosagery @ gmail and I'll get right on it.]
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And her heart yearns for Meg.
"I'm sorry," Joan offers, more for wandering than for the state of this Lex she doesn't know, but she can sympathize. She can imagine how Meg must be feeling now, wondering where she is and what she's done. She also feels that displacement, uncertainty, wondering what to do. "How long has it been?"
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"It feels like a dream, like a nightmare, rather, and yet it doesn't seem to end. I am... I am trying not to hope this is only temporary but it is difficult."
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Her eyes shine with an uncharacteristic, suspicious brightness. She hopes, oh she hopes, that she's not letting down this man as well. They seem to be very close, from how openly Anatoly's speaking and she would hate to hurt him when his lover is already doing so.
She decides, abruptly, that she doesn't like the dishonesty of this. "I know he will, Anatoly, because I'm also experiencing this memory loss and it's terrifying to think I may hurt people I care about with not recognizing them. I've made notes, but it's not the same at all."
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Or perhaps she had just been trying to go on as if everything were fine. He certainly could empathize with that sentiment - he had done the same thing more times then he cared to remember. Sometimes that was the best thing to be done, to simply go on even if the rest of the world was collapsing around your ears.
He squeezed her hand gently, grateful for the touch. "It is terrifying for me and I cannot imagine how much more terrifying it is for you."
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"I tried to keep it from him for awhile, but it's difficult to fake being in love with a man you've never met." Even for a gifted covert operative; one of the Agency's top assets. "And even harder when you've been dividing your time between marriage counseling and murderous rage."
She sighs and passes a hand over her face, ashamed of being so labile when her emotional control is far better than this, especially as, to her, he's a perfect (although perfectly kind) stranger. "I apologize that I don't know you well enough to be the friend you seem to expect from me. I don't mind listening, but I can't imagine it's much of a comfort."
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"I would not like to trouble you while you are going through this terrible thing," he said. "Is there anything I could do that might help you? To tell you the truth, I could very much use something to be busy with."
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She sighs quietly, trying to find the presence of mind she's used to having but Nairobi is always volatile and she's having a difficult time reconciling the relatively peaceful present on this island and the frenetic pace of the station.
"I do wish I had work to offer you." Has she been developing him as an asset? She really doesn't know. "I'm sorry."
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"Of course not," he reassured her once he thought he had himself under control. "You were very sweet as you always are."
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"Oh, Anatoly. Do I remember right, did you say that Lex has forgotten?" Joan can only imagine how devastating that must be, considering that her cultural memory of Lex Luthor paints a less than kind picture of him.
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