Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Kimmy tried not to cringe when she knocked on the door. Summer had apparently come early, crisping up the lawns and shredding all the gardens into curling, wispy bits of dead flowers. This place was huge, all massive windows and walls that jutted out, abstract in a cool way, naturally rough and naturally polished stuck together. Standing here? She felt out of place. Beads of sweat trickled down her neck, dampening her collar, shoes intentionally mismatching, one red and the other blue, probably definitely leaving a smudge on the spotless doorstep. This was a job, she told herself briskly. Just one job. 

She knocked again. Kept at it. Pretended that the sun wasn’t burning a hole through the back of her shirt. Finally it grudgingly cracked open, revealing a cool interior. “Hey. It’s me,” she said, voice a little rough. Apparently practising a speech the whole way to the big house did shit because she couldn’t remember a single word. “You know how delivery guys are supposed to take a photo dropping off a package so they can prove that they did their jobs? That’s me.”

“What?”

“Dunno if you checked out ReDream’s current catalogue, but there’s interest. Crazy interest, actually.” 

“Heard some of the reviews.”

Ouch. Kimmy straightened her shoulders a little and tried not to look like she was obviously floundering in front of Brandy Friday. Experimental, raw. That was the overwhelming response from the majority of viewers of the rebooted Hotel Reverie, definitely enough positive hype to kick-start a trend of ‘modern classic cinematic twists’, something that secured both Ryan Gosling and Ryan Reynolds into staring in individual movies. They even scored Leonardo DiCaprio into playing Jay Gatsby for the 1926 silent adaptation, bending cinematic history sideways. But they flopped, absolutely, when they tossed Zendaya into the role of Claire Standish for The Breakfast Club, forgetting how Judd Nelson was a devoted method actor for the role, harassing their cut-and-paste in star to the point where she punched him in the face, ruining the big emotional high of the film. Shallow on a new level, came loud and clear from critics.

That was when interest started to drop. Cinemas were emptying again, people returning to the consumable and easy streaming services, a fast eight or ten episodes per season, something always new circulating around. The Breakfast Club was the first sign of bad luck. They got Gone with the Wind all wrong, casting a nightmare, and that furthered the spiral down the drain. 

“Okay. Well, they want to put up a sequel to Hotel Reverie. Crazy, I know. That movie was… real, you know? A total dream box.” Kimmy shrugged, helpless. “They want to see what they can pull out of it now.”

“She’s dead.”

“Yeah. Clara's whole ending— look, nobody saw that coming. Maybe that’s why it did so good, people liked that it was the same and different all at once.” Enchanting despite the initial awkwardness of Brandy’s acting. Peopled flocked their film, put it beside the original and gave it the accolades. Kimmy was just a nobody from Brooklyn, some film major with a thing for old Hollywood. But now? If she called? They picked up for her. Put her right through. No run arounds, no call backs. A little gold made her a priority. ReDream wasn’t her concept, but she made it herself. Marketed the pitch, found the data mine, pushed the concept until the media fell in love with it. “They want more, Brandy.” 

That was the lesson she learned, anyways. They always wanted more with just one little taste. 

Kimmy was prepared for rejection. This wasn’t even her idea. She had shelved the script when she heard about it, buried it under a bowling trophy and some obsolete tablet from Arkangel Tech that they pulled out of a storage unit for some other project. 

Brandy’s stare looked unfocused, like she was seeing straight through Kimmy. It was funny, being this close. The first time Kimmy had even seen the actress was on a massive screen from the middle of middle row - best, definitely, for getting the full score of the backing tracks -, and now the only thing that really separated them was a bit of darkness from inside the house and clarifying whiteness of sun outside. “And they want me?”

“Stuff went majorly weird, I know. I wouldn’t blame you if you passed up on this. All you have to say is that I made the official offer and you told me hell no or something, and that’s it. We’re done.”

Brandy Friday, star of current and old cinema, opened the door a little wider. “You got a script for me or something?”

Granite lined the kitchen, making it grey and dark. Kimmy’s own kitchen was roughly the size of a shoe box, barely big enough to dump ramen noodles into a pot of boiling water, half her spices lining the top of the stove, but she made herself at home fast. If Brandy cared, she didn’t show it. Her focus was fastened to the stack of pages, oblivious to Kimmy yanking open cabinets and looking for a water glass. 

The fifth attempt showed wine glasses. She took one and called it a win, filling it with water from the tap. “This is voluntary, right? Say no and the whole project gets dropped.”

“Let me guess. You didn’t bring me a love story, did you?”

“Well— no. Audiences liked the ending of Hotel Reverie. Lightning in a bottle and all that, can’t be switched up. Common memory is great, you know? We built a classic on top of a real classic. When people talk, they’re talking about our project.” Kimmy had a feeling her eyes must have looked like dollar signs, greedy for a little more. “What we want now— what we absolutely need, is for Alex to return to the scene of their heartbreak and burn it all down. Very Daphne du Maurier, Manderley on fire, you know? Trust me, viewers will eat it up.” Or they wouldn’t, actually. It was a risky narrative to play with in the current climate, especially with the big story about that murder-suicide couple making the rounds on headlines. “Picture this: Alex returns to the very scene of their grief just to go looking for a ghost of their great love. But a ghost is just regret, right? By the end of the movie, the whole thing will be set to burn, washing Alex free of their heartbreak.” 

It was a fucking insane stunt to play. ReDream had expanded and was willing to invest big money into this project, artificially staging data from the original movie and their creation. Casting characters, setting scenes… Technology was always crashing out and going obsolete. How many free rides into success was a company going to get? 

Brandy lowered herself onto a chair and looked at the script without actually reading it. “Return me to the hotel and engage with some light arson, huh?”

“We all do crimes for love. I keyed my ex-boyfriend’s car.” 

“What’s the catch?” 

“You do us a favour and this’ll get you back out there.”

“I’m not hurting for cash,” Brandy said, eyes narrowing a little. 

Kimmy laughed a little, playing it off. Keep it light, keep it friendly. Nobody rejects a friend. That was the golden rule to selling anything. “Cinema has been lacking your name lately, hasn’t it? You just— dropped off. I have to say, this summer’ll suck without another blockbuster with you as a feature.”

That’s what summer was to Kimmy, anyways. Shitty theatre, sticky floors, a soda cup parked in the cupholder. Not budging until after the credits finished. Her dad always said she needed to wait until the names were gone, that every single person played a crucial role to developing the stories. She couldn't go until set designers, make up artists, sound techs, and film interns had had their name up. 

“This is a terrible run through.” Now she lifted the papers, flipping them slightly. “Wooden, bad direction.” 

She sunk down into her own seat, uninvited and comfortable. “I know. Arya keeps making big swings and missing just to get writing credits.”

“You need my name to make this happen.”

“Yeah. We do.” Don’t do it. 

“I want more.” Brandy didn’t blink. “I want to help direct this. If I’m doing this, it has to be worth my time.” 

“Converting this script will take time.” Kimmy privately agreed. It wasn’t very good, full of cliches and awkwardness. And some of the plot depended on whatever they were able to pull up for generated concepts. Timeless, that was the charm. Right now it was bruised up, a peach rotting in sun. Give it a few minutes and the peach pit would turn sweet with cyanide. “You’ve got better offers. You should— holy shit, are those scripts?”

Now she was staring at the massive stack of books behind Brandy. Her house was empty, devoid of personality, but those scripts had piled up like bricks. Offers, big and small. She jumped up and rushed for them, fingers greedy to flip through. A big thrill lately was superheroes and she recognized on producer’s name, hoisting it up and whirling around to face the actress with an accusing stare. “What are you doing? This is… dude, you have to do something with these!”

“I’m not interested.” 

“Get interested!” Kimmy’s heart thumped in her chest. “What’s your agent doing? He should be, like, seriously on your case. Call somebody back. Tell them you want a role for triple the offer.” 

“That one,” Brandy said, pointing to the script Kimmy was holding, “has me chasing after a dead guy and solving what the hell happened to him. Or I get to parade around in spandex and swoon right after the big climax, right? They’ll airbrush my hips down a size, probably, make sure I come off like a girl on Sunday morning. Easy to digest personality. If I do the period film, it’ll be clunky as hell. Acrylic nails, blow outs… there’s not a single offer in that pile that has me being authentic. I’ll play a role and that becomes my filmography.” 

Still clutching the script, Kimmy said: “That was a lot of words at once. I thought you were broke or something. Can you say more?” 

“Those projects aren’t worth it.”

Great, she thought. “So you’re saying no.” 

“I’m saying that this one might be worth it.”

Shit. Her head was pounding. Maybe it was the house itself, bland with a few curvy looking vases staged around, or Brandy’s tired face, but Kimmy felt a lance of guilt shoot through her. Putting down the glossy super hero script, which actually looked incredibly lame judging a few one liner statements sprinkled through, she crossed the kitchen carefully. Yanked open the fridge and searched around. Came back up with chocolate milk. 

Serving it up in wine glasses, Kimmy slid one over. “My dad always wanted to do film. He was so that kid running around with the camera. I found a trunk full of old tapes he did with his friends growing up. They’re terrible,” she said, laughing a little. “Bunch of kids running around with construction paper masks and sticks for swords. But the vibes were alright. You could tell he loved it.”

“What happened to him?”

“Life.” She traced a singer around the base of the glass. “Went to school to be an accountant, became an accountant. Safe, reliable work. Somebody always wants a numbers guy to get the job done.” 

“So you went and did all this.” 

“Movies are… fuck, movies are great. The chemistry? You’ll never get that in real life. Can’t just press a button and magically convince people to believe in what you’re saying, but movies make it different. They want to believe you.” Now Kimmy looked at Brandy, focused on those hands that were clutching that script. “Art imitates life. That’s all it really is.”

“I want to be onboard. Help build this from the ground up, work on the rewrites.” Now Brandy cracked a tiny grin. “Put me in, coach.”

Kimmy swallowed. When she was sixteen years old and just a little stupid, she broke into a closed up theatre. Half the place was fuzzy from black mold and maybe she junked up her lungs a bit from it, but it had felt magical. Wandering through the big atriums, gazing at the gutted red seats. Above her was a cracked ceiling, lines spiderwebbing. It was a dead area, shafts of light filtering in through the holes, and it transformed her understanding of space. All it took was a bit of sound and film to redefine it. That she could be elbow to elbow with somebody else and sharing the same physical space along with the mental space. If she was a kid with money, Kimmy would have grown up and bought that place, rebuilt over the old, buffed until the whole place shone like a new penny. 

But no, no justice for a kid with dreams. Kimmy told her parents she applied to NCU for accounting and only informed them upon move in day that she was actually majoring in Film Studies. Spent half her assignments comparing old and new, talking about the cliches that defined such a major part of their culture. Barely kept enough cash on her to afford rent for a fire trap of an apartment that featured one window and the fridge in the bathroom, definitely a little illegal, and snuck into theatres on Tuesday nights when employees gave less of a shit about their jobs. 

Should she have done it right? 

It could’ve been easy, tapping numbers onto a calculating and figuring how to screw over the government come tax season. 

But no. Give Kimmy a little magic and she would dedicate her whole life to it. 

“Alright,” said Kimmy slowly, clinking their glasses together. "Let's do it."

It was a bad idea, a terrible one, but God, she could do with a little more magic. 

Story text crumbled under a red pen. “This is horrible,” Brandy told Arya politely. “Nobody talks like this.”

“Well, they did. We have to make it sound old.” 

“You’re forcing it.”

“I’m writing it the way it has to be written!”

“And that’s a break, guys,” Kimmy interjected, clapping her hands together. “Lets, uh… there’s some sandwiches, over by the door. How about we take a slow ten and come back to this in a bit?”

The work station looked like a murder conspiracy board. Photos were pinned to the wall with red strings connecting back and forth. Get this right, her boss said, don’t fuck it up again. 

The Breakfast Club was integral to movie history. Kimmy could’ve told them a hundred reasons why they should’ve left it untouched. Nobody could film a proper reboot of it, recreate it. It stood without action, a couple physical scenes to flesh out the background. Zendaya could’ve swanned through Helen of Troy properly, maybe Cleopatra, but no. They wasted her on easy popularity. 

Disco style music was pumping through the speakers from across the room. The data guys, now plural, success meant more people on board for a project, were hunched over computers. They were sourcing images to build new scenes, keeping everything time period accurate. On their team was a history intern fresh from school, surveying references and styles to keep it authentic. When Kimmy and Arya went for food, Brandy went to stare at the monitors over their shoulders.

Judith Keyworth swanned through the room. Her step had gotten a lot more perky, studio definitely firmly in the green. “Tea?”

Coffee sounded better, but Kimmy took the tea. Sometimes it was important matching a partner, looking like a united front. Judith hadn’t been impressed when The Advocate called Hotel Reverie ‘refreshing, a queer take on a beloved classic’. Popularity increased sky high in June, boosting sales. Drive in theatres had taken to acquiring access to it for late night showings. Right now Judith was looking at the material around them like she was ready to start clutching those pearls, mouth wrinkling prematurely. 

Pulling out a piece of paper, Kimmy handed it over. “You need to consider some of this stuff, it’s… it’ll be good, perfect intro to lead into the film.” 

Building from the ground up, after all. They wouldn’t have original music built into the film anymore. And they needed their own style, anyways, to separate it. 

“Is this…” now that mouth wrinkled a little more. 

“Totally cool,” Kimmy told her, beaming. “Each name on that list is popular with the target audience currently.” 

Someone above her in station had pitched Ashley Too. Her sound, both new and old, wouldn’t work for the film. Kimmy’s list contained popular artists that could mimic sound and style, probably backed with a big orchestra feel. Something that would rise and fall smoothly, big noise with high vocals. She closed her eyes and imagined the staging of scene one, the big lift off. Exposition, character reveals, the music that would fade out in favour of dialogue. 

But that sound— it would capture the full intensity of their project. Something to captivate, go triple platinum by the time that they were finished. 

Judith ran a finger down the list. “Well, if you’re certain…” 

“I can make you a mix tape, you know. Get a little funk, slow it down.” Kimmy dated an audiophile for a summer which ended terrible, car keyed and all, which meant she still possessed their entire assortment of playing devices. Some stuff got kept after the break up like a trophy… Kimmy had their favourite shirt, a playlist, and a bunch of headphones. He had her bowling shirt. Fair was fair in love and war. 

“This won’t be as, well… you know what they said last time.”

“Well, you know what they say about gift horses and their mouths,” Kimmy said feebly, flashing her a thumbs up. “They bite a little.”

Sometimes it was impossible to save the older generation from their own opinions. Politely disengaging herself from Judith’s critical stare, she floated over to where Brandy was hovering, eyes burning holes into a mock up a theatre. 

“—not necessary,” said their intern, Olivia, frowning. “It won’t match what we’re knitting together.”

“Audiences love Easter eggs. It makes them feel part of the joke, that they know something that we know,” Brandy countered. Her body looked relaxed and easy going, green cardigan slung over one shoulder, gold glittering from her fingers and ears, but her stare was a little harsh. “Movies inside of a movie. Who could hate that?”

“But the accuracy,” Olivia whined, a little shrill. 

“This is getting big.” Theo pointed at the screen. A map flashed. Green lines made up the hotels, the exterior streets. “Can we slow down?”

“Why? Isn’t the point to go big or go home?”

He sighed at her, frustrated. The tech team was working overtime, manually filling in strings of data. “Okay. You have a house. Picture building a massive tent over it. You use the house to support it, to hold up that tent. Maybe you hang some stuff of it, alter it a little. A windy day comes along and blows it around, but the house is still going to be in there.” He jabbed a finger. “The more stuff we combine, the heavier the risk of reset is. Glitches, black spots, slowed down source material… you’re running full speed with insane weight.” 

Kimmy her tea down, porcelain tea cup right beside a wireless mouse. “Alright. We cool it, then?” 

“How much of the original work are you putting in?”

“All of it.” 

Brandy looked interested. “Really?”

Theo ran his fingers through his hair. “Obsolete code hangs around. Nothing really gets deleted, that’s what we source each piece off of. It’ll keep the main script authentic while we pile in alterations and new bits. Players are set, story is different. They’ll respond to you regardless.” 

“Make sure they’re wiped clean,” Kimmy told them. “No surprises.” 

“Yeah. That’s what I’m doing, obviously,” Theo grumbled a little. She made a mental note to get him a bonus. The last two projects had increased his stress levels to the point he was prematurely going grey. Maybe he could buy a sick car and chill out after this. 

Catching Brandy by the arm, Kimmy pulled her over. “You wanna slow down with Arya? She’s pretty fresh still.” 

“Hey. My name on the project? It better be good. That’s all I’m saying.” Her smile glittered. 

“I think there are easier ways to give people complexes. That’s it. She’s, like, eight years old and you’re crushing her confidence.” 

This was their third week of starting the sequel. Brandy came through on the first day with a bundle of tulips and pastries, deliberately shaking every single hand who was involved on their project. She bustled and shone, industrious to her core. Even tolerated Judith without flinching at the well, you played a dyke very well, didn’t you? Albatross around a captain’s neck, heir to the estate hovering over their shoulders. 

Brandy didn’t look soul crushed anymore. No blood shot eyes, no feverish expressions. 

Just passionately involved with their collective project. Actor Brandy Friday, Co-Director Brandy Friday— big step for her, engaged with producing what she was starring in. 

That was why she cared so much. That was why she had pulled herself together and come rolling through those doors like a wave of molten lava. 

Kimmy’s stomach twisted with frustration. “The ending is the ending, right? You’re not— you’re not gonna change up on me, right?” 

“Place goes up in fire. I got the notes.”

“Just…” now she hesitated. All around them people were working, everyone knitting together a masterpiece. She should love this, the collective force of people involved… a visual wasn’t complete without sound, a script wasn’t complete without backdrops. “Remember how this ends, okay? Don’t go off script.”

Brandy tilted that glimmering, perfect smile at her. “Story ends with the credits. I got it.”

“That is— That is as good as what I can expect from someone like you,” Brandy told Arya sincerely as she scratched out a whole page of text with her pen. 

“Really?” 

“Yes,” she told her, that one word somehow sounding like you are incredibly gifted at breathing oxygen and nothing else. 

Kimmy kicked her under the table. “Dude, I said to be nice, not to nice-up your hate.” 

“Fine. I take it back. This is completely terrible, an insult to the original writers.” 

Arya’s mouth trembled. 

Their studio is buried under ten different studios, props and different design pieces scattered around. New and old, two worlds stitched together. Kimmy stole a golf cart and drove it like the devil to get off site, barely holding herself together long enough to park outside of the scary no smoking sign before devouring her flavoured air, cotton candy vape clicking against her teeth. 

Old Hollywood used to reuse pieces. That’s how they managed to burn Atlanta in Gone With the Wind, setting fire to former sets that weren’t needed anymore. Costumes, extras… this was a blurry world where westerns were filmed next to romanic epics. 

It didn’t exist anymore, though. What Kimmy was part of? It pulled old cinema apart to the bones and cannibalized it. Chewed up one legacy and actor to paste in another. Was it good? Was it worth it? Her work, sure, but also the work of filmmakers and designers who came before. They were trusting her with that history and hoping she would give enough to make it new. 

Vibes were good, always. Slapping new paint on an old place usually upped the resale value. But what did they take away? What was lost? 

Closing her eyes, Kimmy imagined that old wreckage of a theatre. Heard the static before sound properly cut through, screen bursting with image suddenly. Felt a stickiness beneath her feet, pretended she was surrounded by the cold blast of a functioning air conditioner. Hotel Reverie, the original, Alex and Clara. 

“— turn to the left and you’ll see ReDream’s newest facility!” 

She opened her eyes and watched a massive trail of tourists streaming through the open street. Directed by a woman in a blue polo shirt, she kept them moving to where the big white building stood. “Technology is all the rage these days! Thank goodness, because what’s a little art without something to make it real?”

Nervously she turned her attention back to her vape. Pretended they weren’t around, that the studio was just a fake bit of pretend. 

“What? Who is this?”

Her digital watch scorned her. “Hey.  It’s me.” 

“Kim?” Her dad’s voice splintered a little, followed by the sound of him wrenching himself up out of bed. “Kimmy? Are you alright?”

“What was the last great movie you watched?” Dumb question, definitely. He was probably picturing her with a cracked open skull in some emergency room, not sleepless and in bed. “Like, really great. Infinitely great. You watched it one and you’ve never stopped thinking about it.”

Air puffed, making their connection fuzzy with static. “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” Kimmy admitted. Calling home wasn’t something she did. The best way to avoid a guilt trip was to not be present. Do you know how much your mother and I sacrificed to make sure you had a good future? And now you’re throwing it away on a hobby! Even landing a major job in her field wasn’t good enough because no matter how high she climbed, she still disappointed them every step of the way. “I just can’t remember the last time I watched a movie and it was good, not something I was pulling apart, looking at it for a short cut to the ending.” 

“Are you hurt?”

“Hurt in the head, I think.” 

“You sound hurt. What happened?” 

“You know what? I’m totally cool. I shouldn’t have called. Just— just go back to sleep, right? I’ll talk to you later,” Kimmy said, breathing out a little. “Love you, dad.” Hanging up with a sharp little click, she plunged her room into total silence. He didn’t ring her back. 

“Okay, guys!” Clapping her hands together loudly, Kimmy managed to coax attention onto her. A few more work stations had been established which increased the budget to a higher number and now she competed with technology for their eyes. “This is, wow. Seriously, round of applause to everyone for this.”

Music blared, beta testing their intro theme. Piano keys, strings. It was light and deep at once, definitely somber. Backing vocals would be layered on top. Total Sad-Girl energy that fit the period perfectly, but with a modern edge that would make it relate with targeted demographics. Theo gave a limp whistle of approval, one hand still tapping out code. Two characters needed to be altered to move and talk, scripted points of engagement. Crunch time was breathing down his neck.

“Tomorrow is the launch day. Make sure you’ve tidied up your stations, completed any loose ends. We need a solid launching point.” 

Maps of where Brandy needed to walk, specific faces to connect with… every bit of the movie was dissected and stretched out. Kimmy had to pause, looking at their star. “And for our ending… I’ll be yours forevermore. So, look sharp. You know, rest up, break a leg— come to set ready to play. And we’ll burn the house down at the end.”

They’ve already plastered the city in posters promoting the movie. For saying they had no trailer to launch properly, they were doing a decent job in gathering interest. Brandy traded her a mutual non-smile type of smile and proceeded to tip her head in agreement. Intro, middle, and end. That’s all they needed. 

“I’m going to call in a few specialists for back up support, just in case. No criticism or anything, but we need all hands on deck to make sure no big errors come up.” Like an actress getting lost to a digital world and her physical body at risk for dying. No big deal, Kimmy thought briskly. 

Now Theo thrust his hand up, annoyed. “We’ve altered way beyond the point of accessibility. You won’t find a specialist capable of getting into this code.”

A few of Brandy’s ideas had meant heavier content-input. Definitely beyond the current concept they drew up. Theo, a silver fox at twenty-two, looked prone to keeling over for every suggestion. The hotel was a hotel attached to tennis courts and a functional street, traffic moving per minute with both cars and pedestrians. Those streets met with shops, interior moving with individual bits of merchandise and shoppers. Mannequins in the windows. A theatre, two individual screening rooms. You’re not giving me whiplash between with a montage again. Find some way to make it whole, Brandy had said, refusing their splice technique. 

Which was fair, technically. Hard to apply ethics to technology, but an actor could refuse. They got the whole ethics business in the bag. 

“This is a serious deal.”

“And I’m being serious! I am swimming in an ocean’s worth of data to fund your ten big scenes alone!” 

Not a cuckoo clock. These moving parts didn’t rest when unseen. Constant motion, constant story. Delayed by the process, they had missed the deadline to hit the theatres for early summer sales. But nothing would compare to this film, nothing but the first, nothing but the original. “Moving on,” Kimmy said loudly, pretending like Theo wasn’t blistering in outrage, “I’m just really proud of all the work that has gone into this project. Bigger than what we’ve done before and definitely and shoe-in for a few awards. This is gonna hit audiences like a punch to the heart.” Now she smiled a little wider. “When they think of movies, they’ll think this one. Now and Then,” Kimmy said, referencing that AI Beatles song, extracted and cobbled together, additional lyrics and voices pieced together. “That’ll be us.” She sounded positive so they wouldn't sense her doubt, her nervousness. Twice she tried scaling back what Brandy wanted to build up. 

By mid-day everyone cleared out, leaving her alone in the space. Brandy had sailed off, her stare enough to send Arya scurrying away, and it left Kimmy to gaze at the empty facility. Without people, it was just a room. Blank surface, full potential. 

She sat on a chair alone, swirling around idly. The quiet was nice. Without all the bodies around it was easier to keep the room clean, most computers turned off and no longer putting off heat. She sipped soda from a can and spun until the chair refused to let her, proceeding to then turn the other way. Back and forth, idle in a pleasant way. 

Someone came through, nearly tripping over the ledge, and Kimmy had a heart attack trying to stash her vape away. “There’s, uh— there’s a package, here?” The kid announced, waving a parcel. “For a Kim…” He squinted at the writing on the box. 

“Yup. That’s me,” she said, getting up and almost staggering from dizziness. Her dad’s writing was squished together, parcel not very big. 

“I just have to, you know…” he waved his phone. Kimmy restrained herself from rolling her eyes, holding the package up so he could snag a photo of it. In a few minutes a notification would be delivered to her phone with that picture and this item has been successfully delivered at 3:07 P.M. How would you rate this service? 

A tape slid out into her hands when she tore it open. Thankfully there were dozens of instruments scattered around, a definite advantage. Her bedroom was covered in layers of DVD discs, some bootlegged and some authentic. A tape like this felt a little funny, scratching some layer of her mind where she plugged them into the player at home, watching animated princesses swirl around, rewinding by the time the credits finished. 

“— filming this?”

Her mom’s voice came through before the visual connected. A hospital room, white and basic. Kimmy’s brain unfairly compared it to the search bank of set designs they sourced and their tags. Hospital, labour, mid-1990s. 

“I don’t want to miss it,” her dad’s voice said, unseen. He was holding the camera. This was before her, moments before, and thankfully the footage cut into a different scene before Kimmy had to watch any more of that. Christmas, she was two years old probably, hair janky as hell like she had just discovered razor blades and scissors. Her hands, pudgy and small, were trying to figure the mechanics of opening up wrapping paper. 

More events burst on screen. She got the big screen to her advantage and no witnesses, sitting cross legged with a cranberry soda in one hand and her vape in the other. She’s riding a bike, she’s five years old and failing at soccer during a game, she’s seven and accepting an award for best-artist in her class. Kimmy morphed and shifted, older and older, her mom in the background, her dad always just a voice behind the actual camera. This was what she had forgotten— Kimmy remembered the old movies he staged and filmed, but she didn’t remember these home videos. The ones that lined the shelf above the TV. They were nothing, little souvenirs of a day already gone by. No action, no cinema, no script… just ordinary. More footage burst and split by, quality a little skewed, and she saw herself crossing the stage for her diploma. Graduated from film studies, broke as hell and with incredibly limited job opportunities, and the biggest grin for the crowd. Finally the screen went black with zero credit score. 

Kimmy swallowed around the pain in her throat. What was the last great movie you watched? Like, really great. Infinitely great. You watched it once and you’ve never stopped thinking about it.

“I’ll be yours, forevermore,” Kimmy said to the empty screen, the stillness around her. And then she left, stage empty and ready for a performance of a lifetime. 

Obviously Kimmy rated the kid with the delivery gig a five stars. She always appreciated somebody hustling to make it.

“Alright. You remember how this goes?”

“Call me an expert,” Brandy said dryly, lying down on the elevated platform pliantly, hair pulled up in her original style from her first run through with Hotel Reverie. “You remember how to work this?”

“Call me an expert,” Kimmy told her sarcastically, like she hadn’t sold this equipment for the last five years to wary studios. “Remember what I said? Art imitates life? That’s all this is. Don’t get caught up in the details.”

“Wasn’t it life imitates art?”

“Stop overthinking it. Just remember your lines.”

Tapping the device to Brandy’s temple, the softest and most vulnerable part of her skull, Kimmy watched as her expression went slack. Within a single second, she went hollow and lifeless. A prop to their needs. Kimmy was already rigged and ready to go, separate script book with notes sketched into the margins in hand, sucking down a greedy lungful of air. “Alright. Ninety seconds. Stand at the base of the stairs. That's your launch point to the story.”

The big screen showed Alex at the mouth of Hotel Reverie, face apprehensive. People were motionless around her. She set her jaw a little, gritting her teeth, and it looked good. Wary, defensive. Her black suit looked like an inkblot against the white soaked steps, the lighting around her almost bending itself away. “Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight…” Kimmy counted down. “Alright.”

Music filtered through. Ethereal vocals came up, arcing like a wave. It made the hairs on her arms stand upright. People started to move at once, the establishment bustling. Alex stepped forward, climbing those stairs. She pushed through the door and saw the familiar lobby, empty piano and setting laid out. It was identical to the original with a few differences: table cloth swapped out for an ivory set, sconces on the walls updated in the three year difference between that movie and this time frame, general stylistic choices pasted over the original set. Easy, Theo had grumbled when requested, copying over images until it showed as a film from every angle. Seamless work. 

Alex drew herself up to the massive desk and planted both hands against it like she was holding herself up. The man behind it beamed a little, uniform buttoned up to his throat. “Welcome, welcome.”

“I have a booking.”

A blue bar escalated in Kimmy’s peripheral. “Great. You’re on time,” she told into the feed.  

Trading her name, Alex was given a key for a room. 

“What brings you to Hotel Reverie?” 

“I’m attending a symposium for the Daly Foundation.”

He snapped his fingers and beamed. “Ah, you’re a doctor? Wonderful. Tell me, how would you treat and cure a broken heart?” 

Arya trembled beside her, mouth a fine line. This was her original script coming out, fleshed out a little. Every good movie started off fast, hammering out the fine details before shoving it aside. Alex wouldn’t be galavanting with doctors in some dusty lecture hall somewhere or plunging her heads into an open wound, but this would make sure audiences knew she was a person of means. Cinematic magic, details on details on details. Sometimes flashing something as small as an EpiPen was enough to connect to a future allergy on screen. 

Now Alex smiled a little, withdrawn and distant. “I would start with a drink. And I would end with one, as well.”

Now she was directed by the employee to the gleaming bar. Familiar territory. It showed up crisp, same angles from the original footage. Alex abandoned her luggage and walked through the tables and chairs to get to the bartender. Beat for beat. The piano stood like a grudge behind her, empty of a player. 

No awkwardness this time. Brandy had vanished, showing a gutted individual. 

The bartender came on scene smoothly. The mahogany bar looked grey, soaked in shadows. Compared to it, his blonde hair looked white. Combining image results of Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn, and Clark Gable had resulted in a vaguely familiar individual, masculine energy radiating off of him. His tag read John, a throwaway reference to one of ReDream’s producers. 

He gave an easy smile. His business was drinks and Alex had clearly arrived looking for one. “May I help you?”

“Yes. A Black Rose, if you will.” 

That had been the subject to much debate. Scotch suited the clean lines of the suit, looked good in Brandy’s hand all together, but ordering the Black Rose set an emotional connection. Alex wasn’t drinking for the sake of a drink but to remember Clara. 

It was splashed together quickly, serviced in a glass with a smile. Claiming a seat, the original seat from the Hotel Reverie opening, Alex appeared to salute that empty piano. And as that drink vanished, quickly like water, obviously familiar with the sharp edge of alcohol with all this time, a voice appeared: 

“I remember you.”

Chapter Text

“I remember you.”

Brandy turned to acknowledge Madam Roban. Something about her dress was a little blurry around the edges, programming stuttering before securing the three-dimensional appearance of a silk robe with long sleeves and a glittering brooch. She tipped her head just a fraction. “Hello,” greeted Brandy quietly. This was the kick off moment for the sequel, the thing that secured it as the continuation of the original work. For a small cast production, the script was dependent on a familiar face. “I thought I would be touring this establishment alone. I am surprised to see that you’re also in attendance.” 

Brandy could practically feel Kimmy’s apprehension through the system. The intro had to be perfect, she had to be perfect. Playing for tense directors wasn't new, but this plan? She’s playing a fine game on a razor wire. She must be smooth and careful, a beautiful face amongst a sea of beautiful faces. Their movie already had a pulse, they’re just working over time to ensure it beats for a lifetime. 

“You’ve come looking for the ghosts, haven’t you?”

She imitated confusion. Quickly looking around the room, she observed staged people. They flow in and out of the door, constantly living tiny lives. Everything felt real, even more real than the first time. Back in the real world Brandy had devoured articles about the technology that brought back Hotel Reverie. Learned how it evolved into smarter technology. A single wire morphed into ten, more powerful. “Ghosts?”

“Yes. Stories have come flying out of this hotel, heard all the way from one coast to the other coast,” Madam Roban dipped her voice a little, accent thick. “Ghosts wander these halls. Everyone comes to gather and hope that they will appear. What we miss the most shall appear.”

The script called for a beat of hesitation. Obliging it for a moment, Brandy nodded towards the bar. John was already assembling a martini for a man waiting, programmed to be skilled at his task. He breathed and moved, took two steps to the left to pour into a glass, gently slid it across the bar with a white napkin— a pulse, lungs that inhaled and exhaled, totally alive in this world. “Could I offer you a drink, madam?”

She accepted. It didn’t take long before John was sliding it over in a tall, frosted glass. It went from his hand to Brandy’s before Madam Roban took it, fingers briefly in contact before she spun around, fabric of her dress billowing slightly. “You see this hotel, don’t you? Grand and beautiful. Built for a lifetime of memories. We gather and pass through the rooms, your bed imprinted with the dreams of a former occupant. What do we leave behind when we must go? What is it that makes a physical memory so endearing?”

“One night here has felt like two years.”

“Hey. That’s not your line,” Kimmy immediately said through her microphone. That was a test, a gentle probe to see how closely she was listening. “Brink of ruin, that’s what you’re supposed to say.”

But it didn’t matter. The characters were capable of rebalancing and pivoting for a detail alteration. Madam Roban didn’t even blink. She touched a locket and gently pryed it open, revealing a small portrait of a dog. Behind her a loud family was entering through the doors, children darting around. “I am haunted by what I miss.” 

“Nothing hurts more than missing something very dear,” Brandy murmured accordingly. Her hands reached out and took the older woman’s gently, looking for all the world like some sympathetic doctor. “Your loss is—”

“My dog,” she warbled out, a little comedic. This was what would lift the dreary plot up a little. Alex lost their love. Madam Roban was the victim of a slip up with poison. “I lost my very dear dog. He was murdered in this very place.”

This was how a story worked. A little texture and some colour fleshed out the important bits. Brandy couldn’t act without assembling her character off of those things. Alex, quiet and awkward Alex, wasn’t just a doctor. They were a person capable of love, someone who wanted to pursue and love. And the dog thing, yes, was a little obvious, but that was how Hotel Reverie opened. A woman who refused to inconvenience her beloved pet so that Clara might sit. 

“So you’ve come here to reunite with a ghost,” Brandy said a little dryly, fingers slipping down Madam Roban’s hand to her wrist where a faint flutter of a pulse caught her attention. “That is why you’ve returned to Hotel Reverie.”

“Who knows what lost dreams we might find roaming the halls.” 

Scripted: a pull away shot that showed the bar and lobby at wide range. They are just two people together amongst a crowd. Music kicked in faintly, strings and soft keys tapping away. Only Brandy could hear it playing. “Best wishes to you, madam.”

“And you, why do you come back to this wreckage of a heart?” She inquired quickly, a touch breathless. “After such a horrid experience before. That girl, your girl… your short forever.”

Now Brandy knew the camera would be focused on her face. Would it show the sleepless nights carved under her eyes? The raw hunger? A long moment pulled tight before she let it break apart. “I suppose I’m looking for my lost dream,” Brandy said as herself, the very line she had written. “That’s all.”

“Alright. Finish scene and back away,” Kimmy instructed. “You want to take a left. Go through the gardens… well, you know your way around.” 

She did. Brandy felt like she had returned home after years of living as an exile. Her feet followed a blind path to the gardens where leafy bushes quivered from a breeze. Someone had left a newspaper sitting out on a bench, folded to show an article on luxury trains. 

Brandy was always used to fast, convenient travel. Why drag her heels when she could hop on a red eye, order a coffee mixed with two shots of espresso, and make it for the table reading by 8AM sharp? Once she went on a cruise and spent two weeks meandering around decks, a little lost with no real direction. She could get off at the ports, she could stay on the boat… the whole process disoriented her. She was used to the bustle of an airport, just one person trying to get to one destination amongst a thousand people and a thousand destinations. 

This was Dorothy’s garden. The place where Clara splintered a tiny fraction, confused by Brandy’s slip of a name. Now only Brandy wandered the area, fingers combing through the dense florals. A bee, grey and white, buzzed softly around one fuzzy headed flower. Strange to see it. She was used to the robotic replacement, the quick innovation to keep their life from collapsing inwards. Sometimes technology had a purpose. Sometimes technology was frivolous. Sometimes it could be both at once, a need and a want. 

That’s what desperation was. 

“How we doing in there?”

“Great. Like shooting a movie or something,” Brandy said, trying not to snap. She couldn’t help that temper. It came from the nights where she couldn’t sleep and the nights where she had dreams of Dorothy dying in her arms. “How’s it looking?”

“So far so good. I think the guys in the business are going to be pretty happy. Do you wanna head on up to your room? We’ve got a night time scene ready— we’d snap you into position, but you didn’t love that, right?”

She grimaced. “I’ll take the long way.”

“Great.”

“Kimmy?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I might need to go off script. I think certain scenes will come off more natural if we… try something different.”

A pause sounded. Brandy wondered what was happening on the other side. Wondered what her body looked like, splayed out on a table while her mind wandered circuitry. “What is the point of having a script if you’re going to wing it?” Kimmy seemed suspicious, easy tone going a little tight. “That’s why we rewrote the script seven times, isn’t it?”

“That was a bad script.”

“Brandy.” 

“I’m co-director on this. I get some creative say. Trust me on this one. Do you want the film of a life time or some B-Grade movie that skips the theatre release and goes straight to streaming?”

“As long as we hit the desired ending,” Kimmy allowed. “You know how this movie needs to end.” 

Brandy looked around the black and white coloured garden, the hotel itself framing her. She swallowed. A faint perfume of lilac haunted the air. “I know,” she said very quietly, admitting those two words to the space, the absence of something. 

Truth: Brandy had only ever wanted to be an actor. She was the girl stomping right up to the stage for auditions. She was the girl ironing out her hair until it was pressed straight because anything loud made her look loud in the wrong way. She had to be digestible for the people assigning roles, had to be easy for dress rehearsals and make up, had to sort her own baggage out just to fit into a very tight, confining world. For every star, there’s a burn out. 

Her ambition was locked into Hollywood. She wanted to melt her way into someone else, wanted to become something different. It was harder to be herself. A cliff to water, things eroded. And Brandy liked that changed, liked shifting through scripts and finding herself it fragments. At the beginning of her career? She had no idea who she really was. Now she was a kaleidoscope, some kind of quilt sewn together from those pieces. Movies made her relevant. Head shots, the kind where she posed thoughtfully and looked gentle, made her agreeable. Alex made her—

No, Brandy had never once wanted to be a director. 

Linens. A window left open to usher through a spring-raw breeze. Her luggage has been unpacked and stored neatly away. Brandy usually slept in a pair of Juicy Couture sweats but those hadn’t made the cut here. She’s buried beneath layers of cool sheets and a heavy spread, legs bare. The silk slip she was in rode up a little, twisting around her thighs. 

She’s supposed to be asleep. That’s what the script called for: Alex sleeping in bed when the clock touched midnight with both hands. And the clock, somewhere, complied. She heard the jangle of it, familiar from a previous lifetime of sleeping in this hotel. 

No door opens. She’s bolted it already, aware that the camera somewhere was recording that action. The window is only open a few inches, impossible for a body to leverage themselves through. This room seemed impenetrable. 

What couldn’t be seen? A five petal flower under pillow, not quite crushed. 

Alex only opened her eyes when she felt a weight slide on top of her. Legs straddled her, locking around her hips. Above her a pale face looked down at her. The ghost, a tragedy— Clara returning for her Alex. Just like Madam Roban said: your short forever. And like everything in this hotel, Clara felt real. Her body had a heat to it. Probably even a pulse. 

Clara said nothing. Her eyes were wide and dark. Alex lifted a trembling hand to her face and brushed against a cheek, her thumb sweeping over her lips. Beautiful in moonlight, so smooth and raw. They’ve been in a bed like this before. She knew Clara because she knew Dorothy, knew the way she responded to certain touches, how easy it was to undo her laces and let loose a free bird. 

“You’re blue, aren’t you?” 

The famous alteration to the original movie. Queer magazines quoted it constantly. Clara tipped her head a little. 

“My skies are blue,” Brandy said very quietly. “Every room that I find myself in is blue. The people I am with— well, they’re indigo. They cannot change what I drown in. I dream wine-coloured things, I speak blue words.” No response. “Have you come to haunt me, my darling? Because you are late. I have been haunted for such a long time.”

Word for word, line for line—

Perfection. 

Hotel Reverie was a different process for filming. Brandy was used to skipping around for scenes. She might start at a midway point before straight to the end, beginning left for the final round of filming. She has been spliced apart to reshoot scenes. Nothing has ever been straightforward in shooting a film ever. Until this. 

And right now? She wanted the ending. Her bones vibrated from raw desperation. She wanted that ending so badly. 

She’s never been a gardener before, but she’s planted enough seeds to grow something here. This script is going to perform to her desires. One shot. That’s all she’s got. 

A mansion to herself and empty rooms was a poor consolation prize. An empty life was nothing. 

The weight holding her down was everything. 

“Seasons interrupt our forevermore.”

Arya’s words in Dorothy’s mouth with Clara behind the wheel. So casually strong. So casually indifferent. 

Tears spilled down Brandy’s face, melting into her hair line. “Take what you want. Finish this lifetime of blue.”

Clara leaned down. They could kiss, almost. Brandy touched her waist, felt the sharp ridge of her spine. She’s built out of moonbeams, a cool shadow. Lips brushed her ear and whispered, “you ache and that’s how you know that you’re alive.” 

Brandy didn’t want to shut her eyes but she complied for the sake of the script, holding tight to the illusion in her arms until it snapped away, space reset entirely. Nothing but her in the bed and rumpled bedding, no proof to signal that anyone but a ghost had been inside the room. Dorothy’s dying breath rattled through the space, a trick of sound just like the music had been. Something for the audience to devour. 

She rolled onto her side, sheets falling loosely, and stuck a hand beneath a pillow and withdrew that five petal flower. It looked helpless in her palm, ruined by her hopes. When it was fresh and hanging properly from a stem, it looked full of potential. 

Now it was wasted. Dying by her own severance. 

Her own jaw is locked up tight so that her scream doesn’t sound. 

Truth: Brandy Friday was sixteen years old when she got to perform as Lady Macbeth in a school play. Wikipedia made a false claim that it was Juliet for Juliet and Romeo, tricked countless people into assuming she was a blushing rose at the edge of a balcony, hands clasped together in foolish misery. The Lady Macbeth that she played was the kind that lunged across the stage and spat out heavy chunks of dialogue quickly, like some kind of machine gunfire. 

The audience loved it. They laughed and grinned, watched her for every move. The panic and hysteria… the threat that she was to the players on stage— Brandy learned how good an applause could feel. And she never learned how to live separate from it. She did a few more plays before dipping into proper films, doing her intro bits as an extra or two, the stereotype black girl who died at the end of a thriller. Each project taught her a little more. 

Be agreeable and you can disagree. 

Be kind with a smile and you can walk away. 

Be approachable so you can approach an issue. 

Don’t be loud, don’t be angry, don’t be anything but what they want. 

And that was how she became a star. She just never got to play anything as passionate as Lady Macbeth ever again. She made a whole career chasing after a school play. She was still chasing something even now. 

Two bland scenes drift by. They’re subtle, Brandy helping an old man with his bag and him giving her a silver lighter in return with a ‘I shouldn’t need another spark to see me through this lifetime’, jostling off out the door. He’s a solider, implied with a fast bit of dialogue, but it doesn’t actually matter who he is. 

His purpose was to hand Brandy a tool to create fire. A spark in the dark. 

It also showed a different perspective of the hotel. Subtle details are stashed everywhere— violets and lavender in thick bunches, a bust of Sappho down one hallway, and even a labrys mounted over top one doorway. If everything was for nothing, at least Brandy could sign off on a movie that the younger Brandy needed growing up. 

She’s chewed up a decent amount of dialogue and waited to catch her beat between a grand hall and the back part of the hotel. A swimming pool glistened, blackish waters swirling around in a marbled basin. 

“Remember how you killed it on the piano before?”

Her infamous misstep. Brandy hummed a little as she stepped closer to the pool. Her own reflection peered back at her through the dark water, a white robe held tight by a sash. “I remember.”

“Yeah, well— you do know how to swim, right? That wasn’t a stunt double swimming for you in—”

She dropped the robe and dived into the water without responding. It was cool, a nice reprieve from the heat baking the walls of the hotel. Her body cut down low like a knife, skimming the very bottom of it with her fingers. One of her last big movies, a thriller with a tense music score, required her diving off of a building into water. It had been nearly impossible to get the insurance agency to sign off on her doing the stunt herself, but she was always a good swimmer. 

Swam in a turtle pond when she was a kid, spent a good chunk of her life envious of the kids who grew up with chlorine pools in their backyards, saved up money for a public pool pass. Anything to separate from her skin and turn formless, hair a cloud above her skull, eyes burning from peering at the world underneath the line where water met air. 

Above her light splintered, blocky chunks of disturbed water. It looked a little like a stain glass window for a church. Brandy flipped onto her back and swam up slowly, meeting air like a stranger. 

She knew it was going to happen. 

It was scripted. 

She dove back down. The water felt real, that if she didn’t surface for air, she would drown and die. Brandy swam with her eyes open under water and found Dorothy coming up out of the shadows like a swan, all white and shimmering, loose hair framing her face in lazy motion. 

Bubbles streamed from Brandy’s mouth. She reached for Dorothy. 

Dorothy just wasn’t to be touched here. 

She was blank, expression shuttered. Brandy swam closer but a pressure trapped her chest like a vice, painful. It hurt needing air. Her mouth festered with the taste of chlorine and blood, that she must have bitten that slip of cheek between her teeth. 

Kicking upwards, Brandy popped back up and sucked down a greedy lungful of air before returning. Her ghost wasn’t to be seen. It was just Brandy in the pool until the screech of children interrupted her privacy, a family entering the grounds of the pools. They settled on the chairs and talked quietly together, woman with a gossip magazine and the man holding to a leather bound book, children rushing to hit the water. 

Truth: Brandy made the creative choice to have Clair de Lune played over that moment. The haunting threads of the piano keys, the way it pulled the listener apart. Nothing had ever been more beautifully done than a tragedy. 

It could have been different. She could have sat back and let music producers craft something new, something cunning enough to match Hotel Reverie Reborn. New vocals and old music, revisit old aesthetics, maybe even run a few key words through an AI program and come up with something decent. 

But no. Brandy argued until everyone was bored to tears. Clar de Lune needed to be played. She was their starring actress, their co-director—

Brandy was the sad girl sitting beside an invisible wreckage that nobody could understand. You lost a bit of time, don’t worry about it. Not: wow, sorry you lost a whole life. 

It would be a good shot and it would translate beautifully to the screen. Kimmy had pitched the option for the big release to be done with a special live orchestra performance, making the movie even more three dimensional. She doesn’t know who will play the piano and lead the music up into that bursting swell, but she did know that it would be an absolute disappointment compared to the subtle brilliance of Dorothy Chambers playing at the keys.  

“I didn’t imagine that I would be seeing a familiar face here,” a man’s voice said roughly. “Have you a lighter?”

Brandy turned and greeted the sad looking man, retrieving the lighter from her pocket. “Inspector—”

“No, no. I have no title these days.” 

“You’ve retired, have you?”

Lavinge lit his cigarette and stepped back a little, looking up at the great hotel. Here they were on the street, a coincidental meeting between two strangely connected individuals. Last time Brandy saw Lavinge, Dorothy died. He stood with his police, means to an end. She shivered a little, unfeeling to the hot sun above. “I am out of work for a moment. Needed time to clear my mind of the cobwebs.” He exhaled smoke, a bit like a dragon. “Certain things feel different now that I’ve seen justice turn so, so badly.” 

“I fear I’ve been caught in a spiderweb these days.” Cigarettes for dinner, cigarettes for breakfast. Brandy feasted on that smoke just to stay awake and coherent. Grief devoured her body and she had nothing to offer it but a bed of grey ash. “Hard to forget what happened.”

“I come here daily just to see her.”

“The Hotel Reverie?”

“Her.” He pointed up. White silk curtains fluttered at the windows, building blinking sleepily back. “I think of her, that poor woman— gone forevermore. What a life she could have had, all that potential and opportunity. Gone in an instant.”

“I think she would care a great deal for your happiness. That you wouldn’t be so upset.”

“Does it matter? We spend our lives waiting to die.” Now he leaned closer, chin quivering just a touch. “Have you not seen your unfortunate mistress? Haven’t your eyes found that mark of ruin?”

“No,” Alex said, lying. Inside their skin, Brandy breathed very deeply. “No ghosts come to haunt me these days.”

“No? No trick of light? A sound from another place?”

“Well— there was a moment.” Two, but the script called to confess only one. Arya’s misstep. “I thought she was with me again.”

“Tragic, being within reach and yet… you see, don’t you?”

“I came here looking for a place to rest and yet I fear I go mad chasing something down the hallways. It might be nothing. This idea of a ghost lives inside my skull and maybe I conjure a fantasy from my own wanting. That what I see isn’t a ghost but a dream, a lovely, terrible dream.”

Lavinge looked at Brandy very carefully. “She’s well, yes? This ghostly dream of yours? She’s healthy and unbloodied?”

“There’s never a drop of blood.” God, it had been black against her stomach. A wetness that coated Brandy’s fingers, plastered fabric to skin. 

“I wish very much to share that dream, then. I wish to see that ghost without the pain. That she might drift untethered to such mortal afflictions.” 

“Perhaps we should arrange for coffee,” Brandy said to him quickly, voice a little rough. “It would be good to share this dream with someone.” 

Lavinge agreed, quickly jotting down a time to gather inside Hotel Reverie, a spot of coffee amongst the quiet bustle. He was step two for the plot to work. Between Madam Roban and himself, they were necessary tools, introducing the audience to a haunted ghost and the grief. That’s why the French woman dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief at the edge of a shot, that’s why an obnoxious family with their gossip magazine and leather book appeared. 

This was the moment where the plot turned weak. Brandy hadn’t been able to find a decent excuse to fit the upcoming scene in properly beyond it’ll look really cool. Theo had been seething about it, that Olivia hated because it made no sense. She took a taxi cab, grey washed as everything else, no bright yellow for her, and put in the address for the Paramount Movie Palace. 

This was something constructed from the ground up, built on the very edge of the map Theo assembled. Streets webbed out from Hotel Reverie, certainly far more extensive than the limits of Hotel Reverie Reborn. Those streets pulsed with movement. Riding around in the cab felt incredibly real, people wandering through and enjoying their lives, completely oblivious to what was happening. 

Paramount Movie Palace sat like a temple. The architecture was seductive, captivating enough that even Kimmy put down her reluctance to include it into the storyline. “Alex needs to get out of their head. They needs to gain perspective on their own,” Brandy had argued, cutting Arya off with a twisted sort of glee. “Add a little movie magic to this.”

And they did. They combined images of places like the Shanghai Grand Theatre with Ottawa’s ByTowne Cinema. Embossed plasterwork came from Webb Theatre. Open air aesthetic, velvet luxury seating, lion head details taken from Loew’s Valencia, and massive ceiling frescoes that were inspired by dozens of other film houses. Neon lights buzzed when the cab coasted up to the curb. It should have been luxuriously drenched in gold and red coloured, but the black and white overlay turned the whole place into clean lines. Brandy stood at the mouth of the two screen theatre and gazed up at the sign. 

Saint Juniper and Hope Cove. 

Two movies. Two very different places. 

Critics would hate this. As beautiful as it was, it was a waste of time. A definite drag on the plot.

Brandy went in and purchased a ticket for Hope Cove, Dorothy’s debut film. An Easter egg for the fans. She then proceeded to wander down the hall, a lonely figure amongst the place. Lion heads snarled at her from door knobs and sconces, constantly swimming around the decor. 

And there:

Clara. 

She stood right between the two doors for the screening rooms. A literal path diverging. She’s supposed to go into Hope Cove and take her seat, accompanied by the silent ghost. They would gather together in extreme silence and watch the film. While everyone else would laugh and react, Brandy was meant to sit emotionless. This would be the last time her ghost would show before the fire. 

One shot. 

“Hey, Kimmy?”

“Yeah-huh, what’s happening?”

“We’re taking a creative divergence,” Brandy said, striding forward and grasping Clara tightly around the arm, squeezing when she tried to reset her position, to push away and return to her spot. “C’mon. Let’s see a film,” she said overtop of Kimmy’s frantic squawking in her ear. 

Clara stumbled over her feet, obviously confused. “You are aching, aren’t you?” 

“Let’s skip the sad parts, okay? Take a breather.” 

“You lost me.”

Brandy tugged her a little harder, hauling her into the empty auditorium. “I’ve got you now.”

The screen rose from the very front like a massive window showing grey mist. The animal inside of her, the thing that wanted to break Clara into pieces just to scoop Dorothy up out of the wreckage, also wanted to rip that screen to pieces. She was tired of movies. Every dream she ever had of them seemed fragile and bitter like over steeped tea. Clara’s mouth pinched a little, Dorothy showing, and she seemed wary. 

Her role was to linger over Alex’s shoulder. They weren’t supposed to sit side by side together. 

Brandy wanted the ending. Brandy was terrified of the ending. 

Both things could be true at once. 

“Have I seen this movie before?”

It was starting. Music played, summoned up by the movie. “No,” Brandy said quietly. “But you know it. This was the movie you were supposed to star in. The one scheduled for after Hotel Reverie.”

Saint Juniper. They recasted Dorothy’s character, put some blonde girl in to say her lines and dance around for the music number. A coastal town, a girl feeling out of place… Dorothy would have made a monument out of that film if she hadn’t overdosed. 

Her ghost recoiled a little. Brandy hadn’t let her go yet. 

“What’s going on?” Kimmy asked louder. “Damn it, Brandy. This is weird. We’re going… we’re going to rewrite this bit, get you to reset. Arya just has to— fuck, Arya! Why is she crying? Why are you crying, that’s not immediately helpful to this.”

“I do not understand.”

“Don’t worry. We’re just tourists for a bit. That’s what you said, that’s why you liked movies. We all become tourists for a spell.”

Darkness folded around them. A girl gazed into the mirror on screen and frowned a little. Dorothy’s original scene. 

Just not Dorothy. They hadn’t even mentioned her on the title cards, just wrote in some other woman instead, tossed out the film from two scenes worth. 

“Hold on, Brandy. The creative team is being creatively challenged right now.” 

“I’m not here.”

Brandy grabbed Clara’s chin and forced her to look at her, fused from where their skin connected. Sparks burst from the contact. Warm heat, that slender wrist… “No, Dorothy. This is real.”

She smiled weakly back, still confused. “My name is Clara.” 

“It isn’t.”

“I’ve only ever been a Clara. I can’t imagine a different name.”

“Yes. I know you can. You have been. Fuck, Dorothy. This is it. This is our one shot. So you have to come back because otherwise?” Brandy slashed her finger up to the flickering screen to a woman standing where Dorothy Chambers was supposed to reign from. “That’s the hole we never get back from. Don’t you get it? I know this is hard, they’ve written it out so you’re underneath everything, but they never erased you. Everything that has ever made you so impossibly you is still here.” 

“I fear my mind is becoming possessed, I don’t understand what you’re saying, nothing you are saying is making sense,” Clara said nervously. Her fingers folded into a loose fist, Brandy’s hand a shackle to her wrist. “No. I fear either you’re mistaken or my mind has become quite possessed. I am not this person, this… this Dorothy that you are seeking.”

“Don’t say that! I have been looking for you since the end, our last end,” Brandy bit out wildly. “The story went wrong before, we got our timing all wrong— don’t let this end again, I am begging you. They’ll wrap us up and get it all confused what we meant. I don’t love you because of a script that’s implied some great romantic harmony, love at first sight cliches, that you’re character A to my character B bullshit.”

“—hey, watch the swearing, huh?” Kimmy said through the microphone, still listening. 

“—I love you because I want to rewind the tape until I get it all back. Until I get you back.”

“I’m afraid you’re at the bad end of a deal,” Clara told her gingerly. 

“Don’t.” Tears slid down Brandy’s face. “Stop it.”

“We are strangers, aren’t we? Of a peculiar sort? I follow ribbons of blood and I find you at the end of them. You’re the anchor that keeps me to this place.”

“Stop it,” Brandy said again, softer. 

Clara tipped her face closer, mouths separated by a sliver of space. “Is it regret that has you chasing ghosts? Are you haunted so absolutely? Or are you the one that haunts me?” The hotel was a temple. This theatre was a temple. Silver edges glowed molten, the light pouring off the screen was white. Beneath her own skin the bones had been transformed to iron, the only thing strong enough to keep Brandy upright. That if she didn’t hold herself very still, everything would tumble apart. “Does the colour blue haunt you?”

“I drink constantly because I don’t know how to stop. I don’t leave my house. I keep getting offers that show up at my door and I can’t bring myself to take them because nothing interests me anymore. I told my agent that I wanted to pursue something, that what I wanted most of all was to be the one running for a carrot,” Brandy seethed and trembled all at once, angry tears coming down her face. “And that’s what I have become. You are the golden mirage that makes me push a little harder. I do not sleep because I am running after you, chasing whatever scraps I can find. You— you are this beautiful, incredible thing that provokes every single thought in my skull. I am blue because you have bled all over my hands, left me with this outline of what you were.”

“Is it what you’ve lost that hurts so much? Or is it what could have been?”

“Our almost,” she countered. “That’s what hurts.”

The movie was almost done. Their movie was almost done. 

“Do you know what happens when somebody dies in a— in a situationship,” Brandy said, stumbling over the words. “They’re out. Someone is left behind. They’re left with all this feeling and no one to share it with. Not like a break up or divorce because at least you both agree that whatever you’ve got is over. No, Dorothy. When you’re gone, you’re left with nothing. Just deadweight that you’ve got to drag around because that’s what everyone expects.”

“That’s not my name.”

Credits were flickering suddenly. Brandy nodded towards them and said, agreeing, “neither is that.” Some other woman’s name flashed right where Dorothy’s should have been. 

It made Clara’s eyes go wide, following the list of names down, screen bursting from grey to black. She went soft very quickly, shivering a little. “Is that all there is?”

Brandy swallowed around the tightness of her throat. “Not always,” she admitted. “Sometimes you get a little more.”

It could have been a brilliant movie, maybe one of Dorothy’s best. Usually her pictures were on the theme of neat London love affairs, the tidy bits of intimacy with splashes of comedy along with the kisses. Once she did a bit in a sword and sandal flick, sauntering around in a flowing gown of what could’ve been purple, jewels stuck all over her skin. This film was a bit more innovative, sci-fi for a time period where that was a brand new region all together. It was a shame she never had the chance to perform in it. The chrome accents were visually neat, a definite prop for clunky script writing.  

Clara looked down at her hands, studied her palm lines intently. “I’m lost, aren’t I?”

“I’ll give you this key,” Brandy said, taking out her room key and placing it gently in one, folding her fingers around to hold. “Let this key anchor you. No more blood. And you'll know where you're going.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“All you have to do is want it.”

“I—” Clara started and then flinched, that black screen looming overhead, empty of film. And the shadows were thickening, pooling around the pair. It was a dense, cold space that bloomed. 

“Hey! What the hell is going on?” Kimmy barked. “You’re glitching out the sensors.” 

Brandy stood. “Find me and I’ll run for you. I won’t stop running until I get to you.”

This was a trust exercise. Sometimes at the start of a project they would line actors up for shitty little trust falls, a stupid waste of time before diving into memorization and table reads. But right now? The house was coming undone. Brandy trusted that darkness. They had overshot the delicate systems that balanced everything by lingering so long in this theatre. 

It needed to mend. 

“Okay, so slight problem. Arya is locked inside of the bathroom and won’t come out. We’re kind of at a loss for scene rewrites. Can we just move on? Maybe we can edit after we get you out. Revise and reshoot.”

“Sure,” Brandy agreed, vanishing from the darkening room. Agreeable, smiling, approachable. That was the secret to show business. 

The truth was this: while a few writing credits and a full script worth were different things together, Arya was not terrible. She was just new, and like all fresh things, a bit of pressure made cracks.