Kimmy Meets a Princess!

[notbreakable]

Kimmy Schmidt: The Shame of Durnsville.

The Reverend had always spoken of the Devil twisting things, twisting words, but wasn’t he the one that changed his story whenever it suited him? How was it that a man who kept four unwilling women captives for fifteen years was less shameful than her? Than Ed Hardy?

But it’s not the shame that Kimmy cares about. It never has been. The moment they were freed from the bunker and became Mole Women for the rest of their lives (a fact that no amount of plastic surgery or cycling her feelings away can ever fix), a cloud of shame would follow them. Shame that Cyndee and Donna Maria would use for their own survival, pity their prize for their suffering, but shame nonetheless.

There was no shaking it and no point trying anymore. What Kimmy really cares about is Cyndee. It’s always been about Cyndee, a closeness that could only be found in fifteen years of bonding in the darkness of a bunker.

(And not the weird sex stuff that everyone’s thinking, okay?)

Now Cyndee blames her for seven more years of misery that she had to suffer but, at the time, for all Kimmy knew she was saving her life. She would have stepped out into the hellfire first if she’d had the opportunity. She would have risked everything for a glimpse of freedom, however fleeting.

She just couldn’t risk someone else, someone who had been her best friend, no matter how awful the circumstances that forced them together – and now will keep them apart, if the Reverend gets his way.

Why should he? It just doesn’t seem fair at all. Fifteen years of controlling their lives is more than enough, should be more enough to doom him to a life in prison like the one he’d kept them in (except with more TV and better food, probably.) Kimmy’s not about to give up on capturing him. She might not have an apocalyptic cult she can lure him into with baby bunnies or candy, but she has the truth: and that’s a heck of a lot more than he ever did.

Titus is right. She can’t just give up for the exact same reason she couldn’t on her very first day in New York City. She’s going to save the day… if only she can figure out a way.

Or which way to go. It’s only a few hours since she’s stepped into the courthouse from the streets of Durnsville, but she’s positive even in the new light this wasn’t how it looked. There’s no outline of where the river used to be, no weird protestors standing around screaming about the apocalypse (as if she hasn’t heard enough of that to last a lifetime.) It smells different, too. Better.

And no one’s calling her name like they have been all day, comparing her to Paul McCartney or the Wendy’s girl.

“What in the ham sandwich is going on?”

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[anopendoor]

It isn't the first time Anna has witnessed something like this, but it never gets any less strange. She's not sure it ever will, no matter how much time she spends here in Darrow, where people can arrive — or, for that matter, disappear — at any moment. Understanding the possibility of it is one thing, but seeing someone there who wasn't just a moment before is another entirely. Still, even as her eyes widen, she doesn't have it in her to walk away and leave the job to someone else. She remembers how difficult it was for her, and she'd been lucky, showing up with Elsa at her side. Not everyone gets that. The least she can do is try to explain it, hopefully a little better than someone who's actually from here might.

"Oh," she says, making her way a little closer, "um, hi, are... you okay?" It seems like the best place to start, given that she probably shouldn't just blurt out what's going on, or as close an approximation to it as she can manage. She does kind of have to wonder where this woman is from that they use ham sandwich in a sentence like that, but that's not what's most important right now.

[notbreakable]

It might not be Durnsville, but it's definitely not New York, either. In Kimmy's limited experience with New Yorkers, very few have been willing to help random strangers having emotional breakdowns on the street.

Not that that's what's happening. She's cool as a cucumber. It's not like it's the first time she's had her whole life changed in a single moment, though at least she'd known where she was when she was pulled out of the bunker into the sunlight.

"Do you know who I am?" she asks by way of response, because if the girl doesn't, she'll know it's not Durnsville for sure.

[anopendoor]

It isn't the answer — or, question, she guesses — Anna is expecting. Some general confusion, that would be expected, or even someone full-blown freaking out about being somewhere they weren't before. Everyone has their ways of dealing with things, though, she supposes, and everyone who shows up here came from somewhere. Back home, everyone would have known who she was. Maybe that's the case with this woman, too. Or maybe she's just completely missing something, something that wouldn't surprise Anna to learn of herself.

"I... Should I know who you are?" she asks, her slight frown and the furrow in her brow a fairly clear sign that she does not, in fact, know who the woman she's speaking to is. It seems more polite, though, than just coming right out with it, and every once in a while she can manage to remember somewhat decent manners.

[notbreakable]

Kimmy shakes her head, a little relieved and a little scared all at once. It's freeing, having someone not know her as a Mole Woman, as some kind of victim, but it also doesn't make it any clearer where she is.

Or why she's here.

"No, definitely not," she says, then glances around again. Maybe if she'd ever left Indiana when she was younger she might be able to place herself better, but she hadn't even made her first big break for Ohio before everything turned bad. "...do you know where we are? I'm not playing twenty questions, I swear."

[anopendoor]

"It's okay," Anna assures her, not wanting to add that she doesn't know what twenty questions is. The name is pretty self-explanatory, sure, but what playing it would involve, she has no real idea. Right now, it isn't what's important. She could far too easily get sidetracked from trying to answer the woman's question, and given how much she's going to have to try to tell her about, she can't really afford the distraction. Even having done this before, she still barely knows how to, anyway. "I do know where we are, but I should tell you know that it's going to be a really long, really weird story."

[notbreakable]

"Okay," Kimmy draws out slowly, and for a moment it's tempting to bounce up and down on her toes and exclaim that she's not really here, but that's never gotten her anywhere. Wherever she is and whatever's going on, she'll have to face it head on.

Things can't possibly be worse than they've been, anyway, not when she can feel the sun against her and breathe in fresh, non–recycled air. Fifteen years sure have put into perspective whatever triviality had sent her running away from her mom. "I think I can handle it," she says, then swallows, stands a little taller. "I can."

[anopendoor]

"Okay," Anna says with a short nod, smiling just a little, an expression that's meant to be reassuring. Under the circumstances, she doubts it very much is, but at least she'll have tried. That's all she really can do, when it comes to something as crazy as trying to make sense for someone of the way this place works. "Where you are is a city called Darrow. I can't tell you how you got here, because no one knows how anyone gets here, only that it's... as out of nowhere as I'm guessing it just was for you."

She gestures animatedly with her hands as she speaks, a habit she's only half aware of as she does it. "I also can't tell you how to get back, because no one knows that, either."

[notbreakable]

"Darrow," Kimmy echoes, eyes narrowing a little as she watches the girl speak. She doesn't look like she means badly at all, though, and Kimmy's spent more than a decade watching the world's biggest liar lie, so she thinks she's pretty good at telling when someone's being honest with her. She decides the girl (whose name, she realizes, she still has to ask for) is probably telling the truth. She tilts her head to the side. "Is that in England?"

[anopendoor]

"Nope," Anna says, cringing a little before she continues, "It's kind of not really anywhere." She's not sure how best to put it, really, though there's probably a less alarming way. When it's in no country, though, surrounded by nothing, as far as anyone is aware, just a city that exists entirely on its own, she can't really describe it as being a part of anything else. If it were, she might even have heard of it before now, even if she didn't remember doing so. She never really paid a lot of attention in most of her lessons, growing up. "Just... a city. A very, very weird city. And I don't know when it was for you, but it's 2015 here, and that can kind of make a big difference."