Sallie's Journal

Esme Cullen, for being a vampire, manages to make four walls and a ceiling seem like someplace warm to be. There are throw rugs obscuring most of the wood flooring, and a kitchen fit to feed a small army from.

Oh, and a bed and curtains and a shower stall and all that other stuff Esme decided to care about.

It's such a pretty kitchen, though.

At least there's a doorbell on the outside.

Sallie doesn't need a huge room to herself in Milliways. Mike's suite is a suite because he lives with Mel and it is his permanent residence; Sallie's permanent home is on Shadow.

But there will be nights spent in Milliways, and there's no way Sallie is crashing on a couch. (Or Mike's enormous bean bag chair. Duibuqi, Mike.)

There's a room an appropriate size a couple of doors down from Mike's suite that Sallie ends up taking a liking to - there is a window with a decent view of greenery that doesn't make sense to Sallie since she thought she was on the opposite side from the forest, and room enough for a sleeping area and office area, with a separate kitchen and bath.

At least there is no furniture to clear out, but by the time her invited guest (slash hired consultant) arrives, Sallie has acquired a pair of rubber gloves, a bucket and a mop. The floor is almost done.

Mike and Tom have both assured Sallie that the spell to add her (Sallie refuses 'turn her' as an acceptable phrase) as co-Barman is painless and simple both, though they both seem to insist on her sitting down before Tom starts in on something that sounds like a pile of vagueness and Latin.

And then it's all Can I get a and Est-ce que je pourrais comman-- and Sallie winks her eyes shut, hard, as if stopping her eyes from seeing slows down the velocity of -- of everything.

"Sallie, are you quite alright?"

Sallie isn't noticing Tom speaking to him, though she hears it perfectly well. She is staring at Mike.

It's like wearing a new dress or pair of pants. Just accept that the material is scratchy and not quite right yet. Let it pass and soon you won't be able to feel it.

"Order's up on three." A little dazed.

Oh, this is going to take a while.

Even though Sallie was the first to walk back from the lakeside to the bar after her conversation with Mike, she knows to take a step back and let Mike start the...conversation? discussion? declarations? fireballs?

This is going to be different.

Malcolm never checks on Tequila and Lime enough. This may have Sallie in a grumpier mood than usual as she storms off to the stables. Like she doesn't have enough work to do at home? Gorramit, Malcolm.

Between Joy of Cooking and a deal made with a sabretooth tiger, Sallie has a lot of work cut out for her. Beyond the turkey, she tries to stay as much as possible with ingredients that she has access to on Shadow - Sallie is too well known for her hospitality in her kitchen to not require contingencies if an employee walks in to find her with a bird far bigger than any chicken to grace the district.

What bothers Sallie as she is rolling out the pie crust -- pumpkin is a thing she's never thought to try as a pie -- is the utter lack of appropriate holiday decoration for this...Thanksgiving. Every decent holiday in the 'verse had decorations. Maybe Thanksgiving got ignored with it being so close to Christmas? Hmm. Something to ponder.

The main problem Sallie has with the experience of cooking dinner like this is the pre-planning: nearly four hours for the turkey, the time for the pie crust, then the pie, stuffing...Sallie cheats on the rolls, acquiring some from the bar.

That, and the cranberry sauce. I. Hate. Cranberry Sauce, Sallie decides, chucking the half-gelled attempt at making some fresh.

When Sallie finally looks up at the clock, she realizes how late it has gotten and sets to making up the (new-ish) dining table. Food set out (and rolls warmed in the oven), Sallie changes into a skirt that doesn't look like she had been hauling ass all day. Bounding as only sixty-something ladies do down the stairs from her room, Sallie climbs into her own pantry, leaning into the door to Milliways and calling out, "Winchesters! If you want cranberry sauce, ask for it from the bar!"

It's damn near November, and Shadow's starting to feel like it; the wind is sharper as it whips down from the Hill and there's less daytime to finish all the work what needs doing.

The weather is matching Sallie's mood of late, and riding around the drying fields for a fence check in the morning dawn sounds like the best plan ever, even if she does submit to the elements by digging out a heavier jacket from the spare room on the first floor.

Sallie leads Athos through the door to Shadow, which ends abruptly at the back end of her walk-in pantry.

"You'll have to excuse me," Sallie explains, maneuvering around potato sacks. "I would make my pantry more suitable to visitors, but I am sure that you can imagine the silliness in that particular notion."

Sallie downloaded her notes onto the display in her kitchen.

The notes are starting to shake themselves out into a new recipe, and it's the first time that she's had any inclination to poke around in her own kitchen for a while.

The tulips have wilted, but Sallie'd moved them to the living room before she had to throw them out.

Sallie turns sixty-three in a little under two months. With the legal new year at August 1st, Sallie turns sixty-three in 2522. Her son, Malcolm Beauregard, turns thirty-six on August 30th, 2522.

---

Forty Years Ago

"And I, Sallie Abigail Macmillan, do solemnly swear to love, honor and obey my chosen husband, Beauregard Matthew Reynolds, all the days of my life."

The young woman is grinning at her groom as she slides the ring on his finger, even more so than when he nervously did the same not two minutes ago. The service is a small one; family only -- not that anyone else would have attended. Jefferson District may not be known for its shotguns, but there are certainly enough small arms within arm's length of any male Macmillan to be...influential.

Sallie didn't care. She couldn't care less if she tried.

She had her husband, and soon she will have her child.

She knows she shouldn't, but Sallie has already started to hope her child is a girl.

---

Thirty-Nine Years, 6 Months Ago

It had been a girl.

Even if she'd lived, Beau would've been disappointed.

The land Beau's family bequeathed him at marriage for he and Sallie requires nearly around-the-clock work and supervision, especially since they are far too young to be taken seriously as employers by many of those even desperate for work.

"What can I do to help?" Sallie called from the kitchen toward the front hall where Beau was speaking with two men in crisp suits the young Mrs. Reynolds didn't recognize.

Through strained teeth: "Just the coffee, thank you, dear."

---

August 30th, 2486

Sallie had a hard-ass gorram time believing this young snaptwig of a man could have ever rutting finished medical school. He's practically her age.

"Push," Dr. Gaetano ordered firmly. "Sallie, you can do this, but you need to do it now, dong ma?"

She could hear Dorothy behind and above her, brushing her hair out of her face, and whispering something Sallie didn't put enough effort into deciphering. The doctor's hushed reply of "[Someone should go find that idiot]" suggests a meaning that the woman in labor chooses to ignore.

"Push" the doctor ordered, and Sallie obeyed.

---

Summer, 2489

"He's at the bar and you know it, if you don't mind my sayin', ma'am."

"He and I are your employers and I rutting well do mind, Skouris." The scolding is halfhearted as a scolding can only be when there's a possibility of truth to the accusation.

Immediately: "My apologies. Sallie."

The familiarity throws her off, and Peter Skouris, at 22 years old and with three months' tenure at the Reynolds Ranch, strode forward and kissed Sallie Reynolds on the mouth. It's a long and shocked second before Sallie shoves Skouris away at the ribcage. Peter bites his lower lip and storms out the front door. At least he didn't wake Malcolm.

---

November, 2493

"What. Is This."

Malcolm is with the Shens at the other end of the District; he doesn't need to be here for this, though Sallie knows her son is far more aware of the situation than she would like. Beau slams the front door closed, paper waving in his hand as he points at the suitcases in the dining room. "Are you trying to leave me?" Angry and burning.

"No." Cold, to kill the flames. "The suitcases are yours; I've filed for a divorce."

"chúfēi wŏ sĭ le. Under what goddamn grounds?"

"Property theft, rustling and denial of land ownership." Some of the strictest law in farming country is law of the land, and Sallie's done her homework. "You thought you could sell the ranch without me? You could take my name off the property without me finding out?"

There's only a flicker of distress in Beau's eyes. One step closer. "It's my land."

"Our land. We been married 11 years, Beau -- it's our land."

"You gorram whore -- "

Sallie steps out in front of Beau, taking a risk with her penknife still just in her pocket. "Do it again." Almost a toothy smile, with the hinge of her jaw still sore from last week. "Do. It. Again."

---

April 16, 2506: 11th North Shadow Battalion Deployment + 4 Days

"You can't listen to the newsfeeds every damn second of the day, Sallie."

Sallie clicks off the feed, crawling back into bed and rolling away from the man laying next to her. He doesn't let her get away with it;  he pulls himself flush against her back. Sallie can't tell if it's out of consideration for her or just to make himself more comfortable on her bed. It doesn't matter one way or the other; he'll leave next week or next month. With Jefferson District an outlying department of the City, day workers can find labor where they need to.

Even at night.

---

Today

The tulips Sallie'd received from Joe are in a discreet vase on her nightstand; away from people who would question how she managed to get real ones. Alongside the vase is a handkerchief Sallie hadn't realized she'd held onto until arriving at home, and she very well wasn't going to turn around and go back, after her display.

Joe was...a comfort. Which was appreciated. Sallie exhales smoothly, sitting up out of bed and sliding on a pair of slippers before going down to the kitchen for tea and paperwork.

It is what it is. It's time to get back to work.

The kitchen table was hard to explain, especially to Jack.

So she didn't. Old lady's prerogative; employer's prerogative.

She's starting to get more stares than usual.

---

The bruising has gone down, and the slice on her arm is a minute scab. It might not even last into a scar.

She's still wearing longsleeves in the middle of a Shadow summer.

---

"I did what you asked, Ma," Malcolm waves one night.

"Good."

"Now, are you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to get Jack to let me in over there?"

He should know, Sallie thinks. He's her son, and he cares about her welfare.

"Malcolm, I am okay."

"Then why did I shoot a medbag out the damn airlock?"

"Because I asked you to and I'm your mother."

The truth would freak her son out too much.

---

It's been several days, and Sallie hasn't tried to contact Sam and Dean; something she intends to rectify one evening when she is leaning over a countertop for lack of a larger writing space.

Sam, Dean --

I know you probably hear this all the time

No.

I don't know how to thank you for helpi

Helping. The other Sallie, the ghost in her head, didn't believe they would (or could) help.

She had been so angry, and Sam and Dean helped by sending her to...where do ghosts go when they die?

The attempt at a letter gets trashed and Sallie jams her pen into the mug where she keeps her writing implements against a pillar of the kitchen, eyes tearing up.

Sallie Reynolds hasn't baked a pie in days.

Sallie is sixty-two years old, and there is absolutely no reason why any situation she comes across should leave her entirely baffled.

Except when two of them happen in rapid succession, so fast her head spins thinking about it.

Knocking on the brothel door, the old woman hasn't even figured out what she's going to say.

Sallie's accustomed by this point in her career in Milliways with bringing people through to her house.

Sometimes however, she does forget to mention that her door leads to the back end of her walk-in pantry.

"Mind the rice bags, please," Sallie throws out behind her. "I haven't had a chance to put them away yet."

'Them', here, meaning 'a stack of burlap bags waist high that restricts the narrow walkway of actual living space to about half of its original width'.

Sallie's concise like that; even she has issues navigating it all.

It's not hard, now that the weather's turning warmer, to keep Jack busier than usual.

What becomes harder is fulfilling Dean's request without arousing any unwanted questions from employees. Or friends - Sallie spends a good portion of her day now tending to Dorothy Gaetano, since her daughter had her children to get home to in the North City.

"How's about I set the table in here for dinner?" Sallie calls to Dorothy from the kitchen, artificially chipper. You can't avoid your own kitchen, dear.

"No - I'm getting rid of that table."

"Oh." Peeking her head out to look at her friend in her usual recliner in the living room. "How come? Not a fan of it anymore?"

Dorothy looks back. "I can't clean the blood off of it." Horrified, Sallie turns back to the kitchen table, currently covered in an oversized tablecloth. Closing her eyes and swallowing hard, she opens them again to look under the cloth.

No blood. Of course.

Sallie looks down at her feet, slowing her heart rate some, to sound just a bit more together. Then she squints.

The discoloration in the floor from whatever solvents they used to clean up after starts at the base of the table leg.

---

It's easier than Sallie thinks it really should be to get ahold of Fed incident reports. Also, they really should pay security guards more; especially if they have to wear that awful shade of purple.

A lonely gray room with a lonely gray console, and stacks of information recorded on digital paper. Sallie scrolls through some of the more recent entries, finding Doctor Gaetano's --

"See similar cases," the note reads at the bottom of the page, "Numbers 25201004, 25200601, 25160804 on current record."

Sallie copies the four files without opening the attached still-captures and quietly thanks the 'guard' on her way out.

---

"You keep forgetting to take that, you know."

Dorothy's pointing to the black medical bag, untouched, sitting by the entranceway next to an empty umbrella stand.

"I suppose I keep hoping you'll change your mind."

"You have a friend who's a doctor, right? He'd get more use out of it than I would."

Sallie has a hard time arguing the point, so she picks up the bag and gives Dorothy a short hug goodbye before heading home.

---

I wonder if Simon would actually use any of this, Sallie investigates the contents of the bag. Least I can give 'em a good cleaning.

The contents are laid out across a countertop normally reserved for nothing more influential looking than a filet knife -- a stethoscope, scalpel handles in one bundle, the blades in their own seperate box, and several other tools Sallie is happy she doesn't know the uses of.

The handle of the last piece to be removed slides down and beyond the base of the satchel as the contents are arranged and rearranged; when Sallie extracts it, the base of the bag itself lifts up as well.

"Even doctors got their secrets, I suppose."

The only secret in this false bottom appears to be a small coin pendant on a cord. It's...pretty, in its own way. Could use some shining up, of course, being stuck in a bag all this time -- the doctor probably didn't even know it was there.

"Wouldn't match Simon's ensemble," Sallie jokes lightly to herself. When she hears Jack and several others marching into the house for business with a side of biscuits, it's easier to stick the necklace in her apron pocket than it is the bottom of that old bag.

Things have gotten better.

In that she hasn't seen Ennis since he's been back.

That's her definition of better.

That, y'know...and pie. It's hard to beat apple pie and whipped cream at the bar, some days.

Sallie doesn't need to come to Milliways. Not really. And her door to the bar at the end of the 'verse doesn't move anywhere from the back wall of her pantry, so to come to the bar is a conscious decision. A willing one.

Well, not entirely -- she has responsibilities, here. Sallie won't ignore them just because she's uncomfortable.

Though she thought about it.

Regardless, she's done with lessons for the day, and listening to recordings of her students, making notes while seated in a booth.

After the newsfeed, Sallie couldn't get out to see Dorothy as quickly as she would have liked. This may or may not explain fretting more than required with the basket of vegetables in her hands as she knocks on the doorframe to the former home of Doctor Nicolas Gaetano, still home to the newly-widowed Dorothy.

Not that it is Dorothy who answers.

"Wèi, missus Reynolds," a young woman answers the door, blonde hair and light eyes doing nothing to cut down her somber demeanor. "Ma's in the sunroom. I'll take you -- "

"I know my way, sweetheart. Xiexie." Lifting the basket, "Take this for me?" Dorothy's daughter nods, moving off to the kitchen.

Sallie finds Dorothy much like she finds herself on the quieter nights; a soft chair and ottoman, the arrangement of the room facing her out toward the land surrounding the house.

The mirrors still have white cotton swaths covering them -- this is not like home.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get here sooner to help," Sallie starts, claiming the ottoman at Dorothy's side. "I went to visit him; the site looked good." It's small talk, but it would help her.

"It doesn't matter," Dorothy utters finally. Looking up at her friend, "He was murdered. No other way 'bout it. My husband was murdered and the feds can't find any proof who did it."

The newsfeed didn't say. "How...how did he...?"

"'Exsanguinated', they said. "From the throat. No knife, no anything near 'im. Just..." Heavy swallow. "Found him. In the kitchen. Red."

Sallie's mind is racing even though she's not responding to Dorothy's words. He bled out, maybe he fell, but in the throat -- ?

" -- Just like the others."

Sallie's distracted, to say the least. She's trying to write out a short piece for Gavroche and Ingress -- they keep exceeding her expectations at music level.

Perhaps acquiring music from Bar would be a better plan -- she hasn't gotten more than a few measures on the page between all the pencil-tapping and playing with her necklaces like she's doing.

" -- This is Andrew Huang with your News From the City. First off, the headlines for the evening of January 20.

Renowned doctor Nicolas Gaetano, pride of the Jefferson district, was found dead this afternoon -- "

Sallie nearly dropped the plate she'd been putting away, startled by the declaration over the audio-only wave.

" -- unknown causes. In lieu of flowers, donations are being accepted at the Church of Mary and Matilda. Gaetano is survived by his wife Dorothy."

"Jack!" Sallie cries out. "I'm goin' out early tomorrow!"

Sallie Reynolds is Christian as strictly as anyone is in her where and when; enough to have passed on to her son some form of an actual denomination as he grew older.

Having Jack and Kate and Piotr over this year? The holidays are feeling a lot more hectic, for Sallie, but she's been smiling almost nonstop. She knows Jack's noticed as well; he's stopped looking at her worriedly while he thinks she's not paying attention, enjoying his own lopsided smile as she makes him eat a second helping of everything.

Dinner is a spectacle even by Sallie's standards -- there's the normal amount she cooks extra to give out to her staff the next day, but having three people in the house besides herself? Ham, potatoes, red corn (a specialty on Shadow -- another terraforming quirk), and as a last-minute addition, wassail.

The influence of Milliways.