Participants:
Scene Title | Lost Girl |
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Synopsis | When Isa gives chase, she loses both her game and her bearings. |
Date | November 3, 2020 |
Midtown North, Manhattan
4:42 p.m.
Canvassing is a thankless job for any homicide detective. No one wants to talk to the police, but at least the 18th precinct isn’t in a bad area of town. Isa’s major frustrations are being stonewalled by housekeepers rather than getting a gun pulled on her, as she makes her way door to door in the many apartment buildings. Murder in this neighborhood is rare, though — with a handful of cases in a “busy” year — so it’s time to earn her keep.
It’s late afternoon, that time where even though there’s another hour or so of sunshine, it’s too hard to find between the tall buildings. Long shadows cast on the street tell her it’s quitting time. By the time she gets back to the station, it will be, anyway, she tells herself, as she begins to walk to where she’s parked her car — in a red zone, but if her badge doesn’t get her out of some parking tickets when there’s not a parking spot anywhere on the block, what good is it?
She sees a figure near her car, silhouetted by the scattered rays of the setting sun as it stripes the street from the west. She can’t make out the face, but there’s an innate, catlike grace to the man’s posture and a long coat that suggests an aesthetic she knows all too well. John fucking Logan.
It's as if she's entered a movie as the whole world tilts and slowly rotates as she stiffens around the sight of that fucking guy. Hazel eyes widen and then narrow and she slips behind a nearby pillar with her relative small size and looks at the figure a bit more closely.
Thalia.
It's the only name that matters in this moment besides John fucking Logan. In the moment she wishes she had taken a few of her pills, keep her calm, keep her steady.
But she doesn't have any sort of vice in her system right now, the last three days of trying to "kick the habit" have reversed to kick her in the ass and boy does it hurt. Gun unholstered, held tight in her grip. She takes a deep breath and then just runs towards the figure, "Don't you fucking move!" She shouts as she gets close, eyes wild with anger.
Logan scoffs at that directive, a plume of silvery smoke rising as he languidly lowers his hand from mouth, the white cigarette tossed on the gray sidewalk.
He doesn’t even deign to reply as he turns away. He’s not in a hurry. She hasn’t identified herself as police and he could argue he didn’t recognize her face or see the detective’s badge hung around her neck — the distance is long enough. The light is bad enough. He’s an expert at finding loopholes, after all, and trusts that she won’t shoot him in the back — she’d have killed him years ago if she were that sort of person.
He doesn’t run, but merely turns the corner, obscured by the corner of the all apartment building. At least in this neighborhood, there’s nowhere for him to hide — large, tall buildings flank the street like sentinels. There are no alleys or small yards to hide in, just a relentless cage of concrete, steel, and glass for a city block.
"No! You motherfuck-" Isabelle runs harder, passing the vehicle with murder in her eyes. The longer he evaded justice the more the detective wanted to take matters into her own hands. But even now she stops herself from lifting her gun. It would be to easily traced back to her. Her family had been through enough already, her rotting in prison wasn't the answer.
But catching, John \\Fucking// Logan would have to do. Would have to be enough.
If he fucking stopped that is.
"God fucking damn it!"
Strands of brown hair fly into her eyes and lips but there's no time to stop and fix anything, she had to get him. "Stop you fucker! Don't make me do this!"
Isa's running has her hitting the corner hard and she pivots fast with wide hazel eyes as she rounds on the corner and mouth open, baring teeth.
When Isa turns, what should be the 57th Street is…not.
Instead of the tall buildings looming over the streets south of Central Park, she finds herself somewhere else entirely.
Hunts Point, The Bronx
4:44 p.m.
The buildings are far shorter, a few storeys tall rather than sky scraping, and dirtier, grimier. The streets are lined with older-model cars, and reeking trash bags sit out on the sidewalk. Every window has bars on it; some have bullet holes.
This isn’t Midtown North.
Ahead, she can see John Logan slip around another corner. As he goes, he looks over his shoulder — his green eyes and that self-satisfied smirk on his face are unmistakable, even at this distance.
"The fuck…" Is how Isabelle greets the strange sight before her but she can't slow down, not too much beyond the initial bewildered turn of her head. Maybe he sprayed something in the air that made her perception warped.
Maybe she needed a pill.
Disoriented but determined the detective charges forward. "John Logan, fucking stop!"
As she runs, she takes a note of street names — these small back streets are near impossible to know by heart, even for a native New Yorker, but she knows they don’t belong to her precinct. The buildings suggest the Bronx, far from the Midtown block she had been canvassing.
The turn around the corner brings another jarring change of scenery. This time she finds herself running along a quaint row of brownstones like one might find in Williamsburg or somewhere near it. Children’s voices can be heard laughing at the green park across the street, and she can see little girls swinging on the playground while a pair of mothers push strollers along the paved path that winds around the park.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
4:45 p.m.
A little boy rides by Isa on a bike, hurriedly pulling his helmet off the handlebars where it’s perched to shove on his head as soon as he sees the detective’s badge hanging around her neck. His eyes widen as he looks over his shoulder, waiting for Isa to chase him. Despite his blond hair and impish little face, he’s no John Logan, somehow made miniature.
John Logan is nowhere in sight, and she’s across the water from her squad car and the crime she’s investigating.
A door opens to the brownstone and a woman steps out, dressed for a run. She pops some Airpods in her ears and pushes play on her iPhone before tucking it into her arm strap.
At this rate Isabelle isn't sure of what exactly is going on but she's clearly frustrated and she yanks at her hair and screams while bending over. Her screams echo down the street and she ignores the cute child trying to behave around her and looks up to the sky and almost screams again. Instead she just crouches and places her hands on either side of her on the pavement.
She's failed again.
The bizarreness of the situation doesn't elude her but her guilt surrounding Thalia's murder and Logan's freedom is near crushing and it's why she is usually under the influence. But the pills are in her car. And the car is across town and she now can't take the edge off.
There's a wild moment of grabbing her gun and doing something drastic but that's quickly shoved away and replaced with thoughts of her husband, Shahid's face calms her and after a few more moments she's standing and avoiding looking at anyone on the street, which means in her avoidance she finds the woman about to run near her.
Isabelle doesn't know whether to sheepishly smile or glare and stalk off.
So she just stares.
When Isa screams, the little boy looks back with saucer eyes, and his bike topples over with him in it as he loses his balance. He doesn’t even cry out, just disentangles himself from the bike with a few kicks, hops to his feet and books it down the street, up a few steps into a brownstone that must be his.
“Miss?” murmurs the would-be jogger, as she pulls her Airpods out of her ears and slips them into her hoodie’s pocket. She takes a tentative step down, and then another, her hands held out just slightly like she expects Isa to fly at her like a stray cat might.
“Officer?” she corrects herself when she sees the badge around Isa’s neck. She reaches around her arm to tug the cell phone out of its sleeve. “Are you all right, ma’am? Is there someone I can call for you? Or you can use my phone?” the woman asks tentatively, crouching a few feet away as she peers at Isa out of arm’s reach.
Her mouth claps shut and Isa looks at the ground, feeling dizzy. "I'm fine.." Standing properly and trying to catch her breath all the while Isa looks confused still, slightly panicked. "Sorry about that, had a … thing." Total temporary meltdown?
"Do you know the time?"
The homicide detective could figure that out herself but since the woman seems to be wanting to be so fucking helpful.
Why was she in such a bad mood?
It sort of killed a piece of her to realize she was almost always in a bad mood.
The woman offers a quick, easygoing smile, then looks at the display on the phone, then back to Isa as she retracts her arm, sliding the phone into the strap at her arm. She stays in her crouch, resting her rear on the back of her purple Nikes that match her LuluLemon exercise outfit perfectly.
“Nothing to be sorry for, ma’am,” she says. “It’s 4:45, or, well, 47, actually, if you need it to be more specific. Can I get you some water? I have some cold bottles in the house. It’s not the best for the environment, I know, but they’re so easy to grab and go.” The woman chatters a little, maybe to make Isa feel more at ease or because having a police officer at the end of her stoop makes her nervous, it’s hard to say.
The shadows on the street aren’t any longer than they were when she was in her own precinct, and they seem to be at the same angle slicing across sidewalk and street. Looking toward the west Issa can see the sun has dropped just the smallest amount lower, inching toward the horizon line, from when she looked to the sky outside the tall apartment building in Midtown.
"Maybe I could use some water," Isa breathes and sighs before putting her hand on her forehead, she felt so disoriented and turned around. She thinks again how none of this makes sense. She would have to tell Shahid. Something happened, she wasn't well.. could she trust herself with a gun?
The neurosis of having to know what's going on and not having much patient almost makes Isabelle scream but instead she just sighs and stands on her feet while looking out over the street and witnessing the sun slowly begin to dip behind the buildings.
"What's your name? I can't imagine how I must look."
“You’re fine. We all have those days. I just usually scream into a pillow so no one hears me,” the woman says, standing as well, and tucking a strand of dark hair behind one ear. “I’m Natasha. Gimme a second and I’ll grab you a water, okay?”
The woman is nice, but not quite nice enough to invite the clearly unsettled woman into her little brownstone, it seems.
In the couple of minutes that Natasha is inside, Isa has gotten her bearings and found the nearest station a couple of blocks away. The M line will have her back in Midtown in half an hour.
Midtown, Manhattan
5:23 p.m.
As she sipped her water from the plastic Dasani bottle, Isa kept her eyes on the window as the train hurtled toward Midtown, almost daring it to change before her eyes.
But this time, there’s no John Logan to wind his way through backways and alleys. This time she’s alone, if surrounded by strangers on the M train. The glass rattles and the cold seeps into her bones, despite the too-close press of bodies on either side of her.
When she exits at the Bryant Park Station, Isa finds herself physically in Midtown once more while her mind is anywhere but.