white_oleander | Room 210; Late Friday Afternoon [03/26].

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Room 210; Late Friday Afternoon [03/26].

Obviously, Astrid was skipping her shift at T&C today, considering she'd just gotten back from California. She wanted to stay a little bit longer, let some of the things she'd discussed with Susan really sink in and settle, so she convinced the lawyer to include a nice room for the night, and then she spent her morning in the Hollywood hills, looking over the city in the distance, trying to ignore how she never really realized that the nice bungalow she had lived and Claire had died really wasn't all that far away from the apartment where it all happened, where it all started, and if she'd eventually be dragged back here for one reason or another, and what the city might feel like if Susan managed to work her magic and have Ingrid walk free again.

And those thoughts were still clinging to her when she got back, so there was only really one thing she could do, and it definitely wasn't sitting behind a counter at a grocery store.

She went back to her room, set down her backpack, fished the crumpled hundreds from her pocket to put into the shoebox with what was left of the money Ron had given her, and then started to pull her bed away from the wall. She pulled out the tarps and methodically spread it over the furniture nearby, dug out one of the cans of whitewash, and got to work in spreading it all over the sparkles of night that had made the last mural, so she could get started on the next: the sprawling view of the city of Los Angeles. A Los Angeles that still existed without Ingrid Magnussen in it, so she might enjoy it while she still could.

There was no telling when Susan might actually get back to her. It might be a week. It might be a month. But at least this was something that might help her keep her mind off of it in the meantime, especially since she hadn't yet decided if she would cooperate or not.

[[ door and post are open! ]]

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Sabine liked coming back to the room to see Astrid working on her side of it, though that did seem to mean something had happened.

"Welcome back," Sabine greeted her, taking a seat on her own bed to watch for a moment.

"Thanks," said Astrid, passing a small smile over to Sabine before her eyes returned to the work. "Kind of weird, still. Thinking about how I woke up on the other side of the country more than twenty years ago and now I'm already back and painting..."

"You haven't gotten used to that yet?" she wondered. She'd done something like that a couple times, but the timing never worked out to get to work right away.

"Not really," Astrid admitted with a shrug. "It's always....kind of a culture shock, in a way. Things feel...weird, back home now. Almost like it's not real."

Maybe it wasn't.

If it weren't for the money in the shoebox, she'd almost believe that.

Sabine tilted her head. "Did something happen?"

Maybe unreal wasn't the right word. Lonely or empty felt more apt.

Astrid was quiet for a moment, as she tried to think about the best way to answer. Just the sound of her broad, careful strokes of her brush, washing away the sparkling, ashen sky with bright, harsh white.

"Not yet," she finally said. "I just went to talk with a lawyer."

The next pause was short, hesitant, but she figured that even if Sabine didn't know details, she could at least empathize with the broader topic and what it might mean in general.

"Some stuff about my mom."

"Oh. That sounds big," Sabine said. Yeah, she didn't have details, but either way that sounded... involved? "Is it big?"

"Yeah," Astrid breathed out, before she could even think to answer that question any other way. "It's pretty big."

So then the next question was whether or not to explain to Sabine just how big it was. It would definitely be a whole thing, if she did, but she figured she could take her time deciding that right now.

Especially if she just focused on painting right now.

When Astrid didn't offer up more, Sabine took it upon herself to ask, "Good big or bad big?"

They really should have gotten into this more before, she could ask better questions then.

Would Astrid had been as open to answering those questions if they'd have come up earlier, though? There was something about standing on the edge of a precipice that made one more open, because what did it matter, once you went over?

Unfortunately, though, fornthat question, the only answer Astrid had still wasn't much.

"I don't know."

The good was that the ball was finally in her court. In her hands, even.

The bad was that she had no idea what to do with it now.

"Not yet, anyway. Hopefully soon, though."

That was about what Sabine expected, really.

"Well. I hope it works out for the best," she said. Whatever that was.

"Me, too."

Which was maybe a little obvious, but Astrid said it anyway, while she tried to work out what more she could say. Or if there was anything she should.

Mostly, she just kept painting.

But, eventually, she found a question of her own.

"Do you think," she ventured, "that people ever really change, Sabine? Or do you think we all just get steadily better at pretending to be different than we are?"

"I think it's possible," Sabine said. She knew she'd done some changing. "But I think the person really has to want to do it."

"Yeah," Astrid agreed, almost a sigh. "That's kind of how I feel about it, too."

And Ingrid Magnussen would never actually want to change. Astrid knew this. So why wasn't that enough to convince her anymore?

Because she might not want to change, but maybe if she had to...

"There a reason you're asking?" Which, of course there was. But if Astrid asked the question...

"...my mother," Astrid said, after a moment, focusing more now on doing arches of paint rather than neat, steady bars.

And she figured she should probably add a little more than that, too, at this point. She stepped back, to dip the brush into some more paint.

"This lawyer," brush and paint hit the wall again with a splat, "thinks she has a case to get her out of prison." Had she told Sabine anything about that? She was pretty sure she hadn't. Well, now she knew. "She wants me to testify in her favor.c

To lie, basically.

There had maybe been a vague hint once? Sabine at least knew that she wasn't around, but was somewhere.

"Oh," she said, digesting that. "Are you going to do it?"

Astrid lifted a shoulder.

"Got a couple hundred out of the deal for just considering it," she said. "Could probably get a lot more if I follow through."

But was that who she was? Could she really just sell herself out like that?

"I want to talk to her first, though. The lawyer's going to set it up."

It felt like she was pretty much preparing to go into battle.

Sabine couldn't judge the mercenary part of that, but she got complicated maternal relationships.

"I want to ask if you need any help with it," she said, though she had no idea what she would do.

But there really wasn't a whole lot that could be done to help at this point. Except maybe talking about it, but that....this was already Talking About it A lot, for Astrid.

"If I think of anything," she assured Sabine, "I'll let you know. Right now it's just kind of...waiting, I guess."

Sabine was pretty proud of her! And yet was a hypocrite.

"Do you know about when this might happen?"

Lana saw the open door and stuck her head in. "Hello. Mind me for a minimum of four hours?" She saw the paint. "Time for something new?"

"Hey, Lana." Astrid turned her head at the sound of her voice, then quirked her head as an invitation. "Come on in. It's a good time for a minimum of four hours. Especially if you like watching paint dry."

Which meant turning her attention of the black wall quickly turning white.

"Felt like a good time for a change, too, yeah."

"Would you like help?" Lana asked. "Art is beyond me; plain white I can do." Even if it didn't match the aesthetics she was used to.

"Well, it'll be a bit more than plain white by the time I'm done with it," Astrid noted, "I hope, but, yeah. This is the easy part. I'd love a hand, though. Grab a brush, there's a bunch in the desk drawer."

Or literally any drawer. You could barely take a step in this room without running into some art supplies.

"Right." Lana went for the brush, glad she'd worn short sleeves today. "Do you know what you'll be painting yet?"

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Room 210; Late Friday Afternoon [03/26].

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