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Post by cmccall on Feb 4, 2011 22:55:58 GMT -6
 2 PM, MONDAY, 2012 - MCCALL AND JACKAL P.I., VALKRYIE, CALIFORNIA.------ She had been driving for five days and four nights. It wasn’t the longest time she had been in a car or even on a road trip but she was still tired. She had barely paused in the various towns and pit stops she had passed, only stopping for the night when she really had to. Not that she would ever admit it to anyone, but she was afraid that if she stopped for too long the fears and worries that simmered beneath the surface of her mind would consume her and send her back into the manacles her father probably had waiting for her. Yes, she was on the run - from herself, from her father, hell, even from school. Over the last couple of weeks it had been gradually getting too much. Everything had just piled up like an out of control game of Tetris and she had been unable to stop it. Instead, she had watched hopelessly as everything had spun out of control. If anyone knew what she was feeling they surely would have laughed. Carson Mccall out of control? Hah! As if! No, Carson was intelligent, rich, aloof from life’s problems and immune to feelings. Did she have a heart? No, Carson was heartless, just like a robot. None of this was true of course, but it was easier to lock oneself in an iron cage rather than prepare for battle with one’s father.
------ The final straw had been the earthquake in Valkryie, the town her brother had eventually settled in and the place she was heading to now. When she had seen it on the news her fingers had instantly started dialling her brothers number. It didn’t matter that she rarely talked to him, the only thing that had been running through her mind at the time was the instant fear that he was in trouble. After seeing the wreckage and destruction it had caused, she hadn’t been able to think straight. Her brother was the only one in her family that she had any real connection to and even then it was worn thin from neglect. When her brother hadn’t picked up, she had begun to really worry. She had instantly begun packing her bags, readying herself to head down to Valkryie to search for him. And then he had called back a couple of minutes into her freak out and she hadn’t been able to stop herself. She had yelled at him over the phone, screaming at him about how he should have had his phone on. It hadn’t occurred to her that the phone lines might be out or maybe he hadn’t had his phone with him. She had instantly feared the worse and that had come across in her hysterical voice over the phone. To say she had been shocked at her own reaction was an understatement. Carson didn’t have freak-outs; she was as cold and empty as a marble statue.
------ Carson ran one hand through her hair and sighed. It had been six months since she had last seen her brother and now that she was almost there, she was struggling not to do an illegal u-turn and get out of there. She was taking a huge risk in going to see her brother. If her father found out where she was she would be out on the curb before she could even start trying to explain. Her father wouldn’t have understood her reasons for seeing her brother; the two hated each other so it would have only made matters worse to tell her father where she was. Instead, she had left a message on her father’s mobile, telling him that she was going on a trip with some friends. She had made sure to mention some names of friends that her father actually liked. Carson actually hated the people her father liked but what could she do? It had always been like that. Her father would choose her friends and she would pretend that they were great when usually they were just rich brats who had tons of money and whose fathers were in business with hers. Once she had tried to talk to her father about it but he brushed aside her comments with a wave of his hand. His face had been filled with disappointment and Carson had immediately pretended it was a joke. How could she disappoint her father? The father she loved? Now that she was older, this love had changed into a burning resentment, something she was acting on now.
------ After hanging up on her brother, Carson had realised she needed to get out and this had been her only way. The only person who knew where she was going was her mother. Carson had waited until she was sure her father would be out of the house to talk to the one parent who would understand. She had told her mother that she was heading down to see her brother to see if she could help with the clean up and to make sure he was okay. Neither had mentioned her father, nor had her mother said she knew that Carson was finally trying to escape. Ever since she had been little, her father had made sure he had an emotional hold on her. He had also made sure that there was a glass wall between her and her mother and brother. As a result she had grown up virtually alone in a household fraught with tension and unable to voice her pain because there was no one to listen. Now she was finally beginning her escape. Baby steps, Carson,
[/color] she whispered to herself. This was only the beginning and it felt good. It also felt like she was standing on the edge of a cliff – to quote a cliché. On one hand, she could venture back from the edge, back to her father and safety, but on the other, she could throw herself into the unknown and see what came of it all. ------ Carson looked about her, careful to avoid the multiple cracks and pot holes in the road. The earthquake had destroyed most of the city, leaving buildings unstable and crumbling and the roads a mess. Still, some had been lucky. Carson had already spotted lines of houses and buildings that had somehow managed to avoid the disaster. She turned the car down a side road and parked outside an inconspicuous building. It was the first time she had been to Valkryie but she recognised the name of the detective agency her brother owned. Carson rubbed her eyes. She knew that she had shadows under her eyes from lack of sleep, she also knew that she was feeling hostile because she had been driving for so long. She knew she should have called her brother before coming but she couldn’t take the chance. Seeing her bags half packed on her bed, she had come to a sudden decision. She had to get out of there, she had to try and escape her father’s grasp and this was her chance. Carson pulled her keys from the ignition, grabbed a bag full of her stuff and the four pack of beer she had picked up in the last town she had stopped at. In the car it had been warm but now that she was outside, she shivered slightly. Dark clouds had gathered as she drove into town and now they hovered ominously in the sky. ------ Quickly, she climbed the steps and let herself in to the small reception room. All in all, the business was quite small but she knew from the last time she had talked to her brother that he was staying here instead of at his house because of the earthquake. Carson had only gone a few steps in when someone entered the room behind her. Quickly she turned on her heel to see who the new comer was.[/size][/blockquote][/blockquote] tags: evan/ruby.
status: finite.
word count: 1321.
outfit: here.
music: boys like girls.
notes: finally done : D
credit: rosie of we are valkryie.
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Post by evan on Feb 5, 2011 18:13:42 GMT -6
 VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, MCCALL AND JACKAL P.I., JANUARY 2012[/font][/center] -----he woke up a mess every night but not by choice, never by choice. because of course if he’d ever had a say she never would have killed herself of their child. hell if he could have turned back time he never would have gone back to work early despite their financial troubles. he should have brought her to a day care center of something just during his work hours but fate just had a way of making his life miserable. they couldn’t have afforded for him not to work. they couldn’t have afforded to put her into day care. there was so much he should have done and so little he actually could have afforded to do. money. it was always about the damn money. he’d been the only source of income back then. he’s tried his best to take hours that worked better than other but really he’d done all he’d known to do at the time. with school, work, a new baby, no support from his family, and with her medication costing as much as it did, he really had done everything he knew to do. how was he supposed to know that she hadn’t been taking her pills but instead had been flushing them down the toilet because she knew he was suspicious and counted them. who would have been wiser when, at the times he was home, she acted as though she’d been getting better?
-----”no!” he screamed as he shot up in bed, which was actually nothing more than an old leather couch seated in his workplace. his hands gripped at the cushions so hard they groaned in protest reminding him to let go before he was forced to by yet another set of couch cushions. he relived every night the scene he’d stumbled on. every day since it had happened evan had woken up to the thoughts that forever plagued his mind. though they’d been off and on as of late, evan still couldn’t get used to the terrors. regardless of what he tried to do to overcome them he always woke up in a state of sheer terror, reliving every moment of the past. his grip finally loosened completely and evan flexed his hands trying to ease the strain against his muscles. he’d been gripping the couch for some time apparently. his eyes squinted against the sunlight cascading through the windows of mccall and jackal p.i., the name given to the business by its former owner, the man who’d been like the only father evan ever knew. the blinds were terrible. they weren’t made to suit a room that was doubling as a bedroom. in his old place evan had enforced blinds that could keep the sun out no matter what time of day, something necessary for a person with as weird of hours as his job demanded. but since his place had crumbled in the quake, evan didn’t have much of a choice but to stay in the only other building he had a stake in. still, the blinds didn’t keep out the light worth a damn. sleep was never nice to him regardless but it was always worth the effort. it always seemed like when he didn’t battle the nightmares he battled insomnia or he battled the sun in a fight over whether or not his eyes could stay shut. regardless of how he wanted of tried to sleep, he usually couldn’t unless he was doped up on benadryl of he was drunk. sometimes a combination of the two. it was like he’d been in some constant state of unrest since his fiancée and his daughter had died. all there was for him was constant awake, constant reminders, and constant misery and it wasn’t like he could convey that to anyone anymore. after having gotten this job evan took up with the man who had been the owner of the p.i. business evan now ran. he had grown into a father figure for evan within the first few months and when he’d passed he not only reminded evan of all he’d lost before but adversely he’d given evan the business along with the last bit of his advice written to evan in his will.
-----”don’t live the remainder of your life in the past…” he’d written to evan in a note left behind along with the will stating that he’d left everything to evan, ”the fear you embrace now can never compare to what you had before nor to what you could feel should you choose to live again.” the words rang true enough from a man to whom evan had never confided in about his emotions toward his wife. somehow harry “jackal” davis had known evan’s darkest secrets and yet had chosen to never bring them up in conversation. he’d known evan’s back story because it was his job but he’d never spoken up about it because he had wanted evan to open up about it at some point, which he never had. evan took the man’s wise words to hear but saying he would try again and actually putting words to action was a much bigger deal. harry had always been one to give him advice whenever he needed it, should it be about a case or life in general, but he’d never pressed evan to talk about the family that had been. still he’d known it had hit evan deep. though he really wasn’t the talkative and open type, evan did was the definition of clamming up whenever the conversation turned to the past and what he’d had before. harry’s words had really hit him hard, but had it him his hard enough to make him actually want to try again? after all the whole concept of family and love had gone so wrong for him since the very beginning. he’d had incredible troubles within his family since birth when problem had first arisen with his father. he’d grown up in a miserable family situation with the idea that when he got out, he’d create for himself a family that would put his father and his ideals to shame…only he’d never succeeded. if evan’s life had brought any shame to his father, it was because he’d let sarah stay at home with their baby girl without ensuring that she was well enough to not do something stupid. he’d obviously failed.
-----evan finally coaxed himself up off the couch, heading to the door and unlocking it as the business hours labeled on the door dictated him to do so. evan could have changed the hours and in fact locked up the building with a notice every time he went out on a job, but call it attachment or something else entirely different, it just didn’t feel quite right yet to alter the business so soon after harry had died. it had only been a few months since a heart attack had claimed the man. living in the office already felt odd enough. he didn’t feel like it was the time to start changing everything around. besides, things had always worked out fine for harry for as long as evan had known him. though in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t a long time, evan still felt like he’d known the man forever. plus, evan didn’t like change. he’d seen enough of that in the past few years to want things to just stay the same for a while. evan smacked the cushions a few times to get that “just slept on” indents out of the cushion before he walked to the bathroom and took a washcloth to his face. it wasn’t a shower, but seeing as how evan had only been out less than four hours ago watching a cheating husband from his car, that didn’t necessarily dignify and actual shower. besides, showering meant going up to harry’s place above the office and though it was technically evan’s place now…it just felt weird. evan used the shower and all that, but going in there gave him the creeps so badly he stayed away as often as he could. as you could see he certainly didn’t use the bed. as he was putting the towel back on the rack, evan heard a noise coming from the front of the office. he was pretty sure his client, to whom he’d been tending to a few hours ago, wasn’t due in today for an update and so curiosity lined his brow as he stepped out of the bathroom and walked toward the front of the building. what he saw next damn near made him think he was actually asleep and dreaming. ”uh…what are you doing here?” evan said as his long lost sister turned around to face him. not the most awe-inspiring welcome but it was weird. his sister…in his place of business…holding beer. it was like his brain had merged together his old life with his new life and the product was what he saw right before his eyes.
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status • finished
words • 1533.
tagged • carson !
clothes • lotsa layers and denim !
notes • --.
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Post by cmccall on Feb 5, 2011 21:22:10 GMT -6
2 PM, MONDAY, 2012 - MCCALL AND JACKAL P.I., VALKRYIE, CALIFORNIA. ------ Carson turned, her face as impassive as ever as she heard the door open behind her and someone step into the room. She wasn’t one of those people who could welcome someone with a smile, especially if it was only a client of Evan’s. In fact she had always been the sort of person to be cold to people first and a friend later – that was, if they ever got that far which was highly unlikely - it was easier than being rejected. It was kind of a messed up theory but the fact was, after her father and everything that had gone on between them, she couldn’t deal with rejection. In the end it was just easier to feign indifference and pretend that she was content with being lonely. Besides, why did she need to welcome some stranger, it wasn’t like it was Evan anyway. Carson’s train of thought stopped suddenly as she realised exactly who the person was. ”Uh…what are you doing here?” okay, so maybe it was Evan and from the look on his face, her showing up had taken him completely by surprise. Hopefully not in too much of a bad way because frankly, now that she was here in Valkryie she didn’t want to leave. Her great escape was just beginning and there was no turning back. Carson smiled a little and shrugged her shoulders, ”I just thought I’d take a semester off and come and visit you…”
[/color] She trailed off towards the end and for a fraction of a second her smile faltered but then it was like nothing had happened. Showing emotions wasn’t really her thing if you hadn’t figured that already, in fact it wasn’t a Mccall thing at all. ------ Carson held up the case of beer and laughed lightly. "I thought this might grease the wheels of welcome a bit."[/color] She grimaced playfully and held it out for Evan to take. "I know I should have rung first but you know….suprrise!”[/color] As excuses went it was lame and to her, totally see through but she wasn’t about to tell Evan why she was really there. Evan and her father hated each other enough already, she didn’t want to bring more drama into the family and besides, if Evan did see through her façade she could just pretend like nothing was the matter and he was just being silly. Yeah, so maybe she should tell him about why she had driven for almost a week to come and visit him but it wasn’t like they were particularly close. Carson shifted on her feet and then dropped her bag of luggage on the floor. Maybe if she started dropping her stuff Evan would be too distracted by her turning up unannounced to think about kicking her out. Carson shook her wrist and the bangles clinked and jangled. As per usual, she was wearing bracelets on one hand and a cuff on the other. She liked the jewellery she wore - accessories were important to Carson, especially shoes. For some reason, she had the intense desire to fiddle with something, anything if it meant that she didn’t have to look Evan in the eye. She probably should have realised that this was going to be more than a little awkward but it wasn’t like she was the sort of person to look ahead to the future anyway. ------ Though she had not seen him in months, she did not hold out her arms for a hug. The Mccall family weren’t exactly the Brady bunch. Inwardly she smirked. She doubted that Evan would be in for a chick flick moment anyway. Her eyes surveyed her brother discreetly. Like her, he looked tired and worn out. He was probably working too hard. From what she had heard from her mother in a brief phone call home about him, he loved his job and worked hard at it. If Carson knew her brother at all, it was that he was probably working too much during strange hours of the night. Then again, it wasn’t like she knew him that well anymore. Except for that brief phone call straight after the earthquake, she hadn’t talked to him for months so really, she wasn’t even sure if he had a new girlfriend or how he really was. She chewed lightly on her bottom lip and stuck a hand in the back pocket of her jeans. Usually, she was content to stay quiet when she was with someone but now that she was standing in front of her brother, she felt like she needed to speak. It wasn’t to say something serious or even emotional but more of the small talk kind. It made Carson feel uneasy and even though she wanted to say something, her mind was a mental blank. It also didn’t help that she was grumpy on the inside and all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep for a full twenty-four hours without having to succumb to the worries and fears she was still trying to keep under wraps. She really should have thought things through more and called up Evan before she left Princeton. Then again, she had never been a rational sort of person, had she?[/size][/blockquote][/blockquote] tags: evan.
status: finite.
word count: 876.
outfit: here.
music: boys like girls.
notes: so hot, hope it's not as trashy as i think it is.
credit: rosie of we are valkryie.
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Post by evan on Feb 6, 2011 10:52:20 GMT -6
VALKYRIE, CALIFORNIA, MCCALL AND JACKAL P.I., JANUARY 2012 [/font][/center] -----family was lost on evan, had been for a long time. since he was a kid to evan the only people who really made up his family was his mother, and in some sense, carson. his mother was always there for him no matter what. she’d treated evan like he was a human not like some product that needed to be molded to fit the needs of his careless father. brooke mccall loved evan enough for both a mother and a father, despite his familial condition. she’d tried desperately to make up for the failure her husband had become. though he was a brilliant and wealthy man who could do no wrong in the eyes of the public, at home he was a tyrant, a dictator. he was a bastard in every sense of the word. he was a cheater, a liar, and had no regard for the feelings of those he supposedly cared enough to put a roof over their heads. hell evan was lucky to even get that. he was lucky that his father hadn’t thrown him out on his ass when he was a kid. what even never understood was where the hate came from. evan was like the all-american kind of kid. he played football in high shcool, he dated and fell in love with his high school sweetheart, he even went off to college. what the hell was it that he had done that his father just couldn’t seem to acknowledge? was it the fact that evan had gone about doing so without any of his father’s help? couldn’t have been because his father had been hating him long before evan would have ever thought about looking for a handout. was it because he breathed and took up his mother’s affection? breathing maybe but he couldn’t have possibly given a damn about brooke’s affection seeing as how he’d been cheating on her long before evan was even born. when push came to shove ian jacoby mccall was nothing more than a bitter, angry man for no reason whatsoever. it was likely going to be something no one ever understood. he was chronically angry. if evan even wanted to think about it he’d bet ian was a dick even to the women he was trying to bed when he cheated. probably treated them like shit through it all and shoved them out the door the minute he was satisfied. you had to wonder if he wasn’t hugged enough as a child or something equally stupid and psychological. whatever it was, evan didn’t so much as even care anymore. he pitied his mother for continuing to deal with ian’s shit but as far as evan was concerned, ian was nothing more than a sperm donor and the man who’d really acted like a father to him had died a few months back.
-----evan knew his father was a class-a dick but that still didn’t mean he had ever anticipated his sister winding up at his doorstep. carson was a spitting image of their father, not in the conventional looks sake but in attitude. ian had taken her on from a young age and molded her into what he’d wanted her to be. evan…well he felt bad for her because there was nothing he could have done, but as a child carson had seemed to revel in it all. she had loved the attention she got from their father as he bathed her with it in an attempt to win her over and seclude her from the rest of the family. see? there was always an ulterior motive with ian mccall. she had been pleased as punch that daddy liked her best and so she’d grown up that way. must have been nice, only after a while ian stopped playing the game. he must have had to do so because it was exhausting. pretending to care only to sway your child to prefer you to anyone else. to give her no other way out then to turn to you any time she needed someone. the kind of power he had over her was incredible and he’d done so by molding her at a young age. still that didn’t explain in any way why she was here now…standing in his office with a four pack of beer. ”grease wheels huh?” evan said with skepticism in his voice. he didn’t like to not believe in his own sister but she was after all a product of ian mccall. she could very well running some stupid recon for their father so he could see just how miserable his son was without him, or to see just where he could strike to hurt him the most. either way it was likely going to lead to something immature from a grown ass man who should know better.
-----evan stalked into the room more, taking the beer from her and putting it on his desk. once there he turned around, leaning up against the desk with his arms crossed in front of him. ”now the real reason.” he said cocking an eyebrow at the youngest born. ”i haven’t seen you in years and you show up out of the blue? what the hell is going on carson?” evan asked, locking eyes with his sister. evan had learned that trick a long time ago when waging war with old daddy dearest. he would lock eyes with his father and the one who won would always be the last to look away. evan, having learned a long time ago that his father’s opinion didn’t matter, would always have the upper hand and as such usually won. ”you here for him or what?” he said finally, the silence doing nothing more than pissing him off.
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status • finished
words • 996.
tagged • carson !
clothes • lotsa layers and denim !
notes • sorry it’s not as long as usual but i’m makng an attempt to cut back on my use of word vomit for filler.
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