darker_london | Aberdeen (Merry, Ellie, Geordie) (Reply)

Merry, Geordie and Ellie were staying in a nice little guest house called Lillian Cottage, with Matt the medium shacking up with a lady friend of his not too far away. All three of them took turns driving, though Ellie did not quite have her full license yet she was an excellent driver, and unlike Merry her leg didn’t start throbbing to the point of distraction if she held it in the same position for too long.

Merry had a map of the city laid across the kitchen table, held down with a coffee cup in one corner and a jug of milk in the other. It was a warm morning, the windows open and the wind pouring in off the North Sea. She was the first awake, even though she was still feeling pretty exhausted from spending the whole day in the car yesterday. She’d been the first to bed, too, and had spent most of the night drifting in and out of sleep, comforted by the times she woke up and hear Geordie and Ellie’s voices through the wall.

But the night left eventually, and next time Merry opened her eyes it was after eleven and she scrambled out of bed to get the maps and coffee out and figure out how the hell she was doing to do this ridiculous thing. She stressed and gnawed at her thumb and tried to call Joss’s phone twice, left one message, felt ridiculous, felt angry, felt helpless.

Geordie emerged from the bedroom they were all sharing, his long curly hair a soft mess around his sleepy face. “Good morning,” he yawned, coming to stand behind her, looking down at the map. She’d circled all the places she thought Joss might like, places of music and coffee, castles and art galleries, but would he even be going to those places? Maybe, if he and Kenzie had gone to them. Maybe.

“This looks good,” Geordie said, and Merry was filled with a love for him. He and Ellie both. Indulging her ridiculous need to find him.

“Thanks,” croaked Merry. “I made coffee but I drank it all already, sorry.”

“That’s okay, I’m in a tea place in my life right now,” Geordie said, heading toward the kettle and the cups. “Ellie’s just waking up, she was going to have a shower then join us. Have you eaten?” Merry shook her head. “I’ll make eggs then.”

Merry nodded her thanks and went back to her map. “Geordie,” she said, as he pulled out the frying pan and the eggs. “How do I find someone who doesn’t want me to find them?”

Geordie shook his head, and didn’t say anything for a while as he prepared the kitchen for eggs a la Victor. It wasn’t that he had nothing to say; Geordie did this mature thing where he thought carefully about his words before they came out of his mouth. It was a skill Merry was yet to master.

“Let’s just get a lay of the land, to start with,” he said. “That’s all. It’s a nice day, let’s go for a walk, if you think your leg can handle it. We can do a loop of the block, maybe head up to the university and have a look around there? Try not to think too hard about where he might be, because he could be literally anywhere. Let’s just work out where we are.”

“There’s something very philosophical about what you just said,” Merry commented, sounding a little bitter. Geordie gave her a happy shrug, Merry smiled gratefully at him, and started plotting a walking route up around the university.

In the days that followed they played tourist, and quite often their time in Scotland did feel like a holiday. Merry laughed more often than she thought she would, and they stayed up late talking about the future and their lives and how much of history could be explained better if they added the supernatural world into the equation. They went to the Satrosphere Science Centre and had a ball even though most of the exhibitions were aimed at kids.

They went island hopping to Orkney and Shetland, took a round trip back through Scrabster and Inverness. They spent a day on the Isle of Sky, another seeing the Cairngorms National Park. Wide open wilderness made Merry nervous, since her time in the woods with Pat, but she just grabbed Ellie’s hand tightly and told herself over and over that she was safe and the world was beautiful. Ellie held her hand and went on and on about environmental protection and how Tarique was so jealous she was up here because he would love to work here one day.

One evening, back in Aberdeen, she let Ellie and Geordie see her scars. The gunshot wound above her knee she showed them one night in her pyjamas, and the large D that Pat had forced her to carve into herself. The D that was meant for Daria to find. The D that Merry planned to never, ever show her sister.

They both looked at her in silence, waiting for her to say something. Ellie looked pale and a little sick, but Geordie understood scars pretty well.

Merry had thought she understood scars too, after the school shooting. But the one graze on her forehead and the second on her arm – the same arm – were a far cry from the D scar. Even the bullet wound above her knee wasn’t as bad. Wasn’t as personal. She thought she’d understood scars before – once they didn’t hurt anymore they couldn’t hurt you. Once they didn’t hurt, they didn’t have to have any impact on your life. They didn’t change who you were as a person. They didn’t make you ugly. They didn’t hurt you any more.

This one was different. It had an impact every time she looked at it. It changed her. It was ugly.

“I think one day I’ll get a tattoo over top of it,” Merry said, looking down at her arm for a moment, before she rolled her sleeve back down.

Ellie nodded grimly.

“I like that idea,” said Geordie.

She heard from Joss once during this time. Very late that night, when she hadn’t been able to sleep, she’d sent him a text: Please just let me know if you’re getting my messages, if you’re alright. It was the first time she’d used the word please.

A few minutes later, he’d replied. Both, he said.

She thought about calling him, then. He might have picked up. It was almost four in the morning. They were both far from home. If she’d called, he might have answered.

Good, she replied, then tucked her phone under the bed and closed her eyes. It didn’t buzz again, and a little while after that she went to sleep.