Chapter Text
It’s the apocalypse, and Roxanne is at brunch.
D-Day plus three weeks. After the initial screaming confusion, life in the city is uncomfortably normal. If anyone didn’t get out of the city pretty much immediately (and most people didn’t), they aren’t getting out now, it’s completely cordoned off. Trying to sneak out on semi-trucks and freight ships hasn’t gone well; Roxanne actually had to report on the president of Metro Standard Light and Power being dangled by a brainbot above the lake, along with a great deal of his smuggled fortune. If the rich and powerful aren’t getting out, what chance do the rest of them have?
“So!” Samantha is trying to be very positive over her blintzes. “Ladies: this is when we lean on our divine sisterhood. It’s mental health check-in time.” Two of the women in the booth are sighing with aggravation; Roxanne doesn’t seem to be listening, chin resting on her palm, staring into the restaurant. “Becky, how’s the hospital!”
“Um-” Rebecca is caught with a bite of mushroom-and-swiss-omelette in her mouth. “U-uh… Weirdly…normal?”
That’s it, isn’t it? There’s the rub. You go on with whatever it is you normal people do, that’s what he said. Ignore the man behind the curtain, ignore elected government being thrown out, and if one ignores the weirder-than-standard shit of gangs (not all of them villainously themed) carving out territorial niches more openly than before across the city - then yeah, it does seem pretty normal.
Becky has swallowed down her bite of food. “We got the insulin and antibiotics shipped in, that’s what I was losing sleep over. Don’t know how we’re getting my wing’s MRI machine replaced, but that’s, uh. That’s something?” She manages a very anemic smile over a blood orange mimosa.
Even Samantha looks reluctant when she turns to Victoria, who has an imperious expression of don’t ask. “Vicky!” She asks anyway. “I bet it’s really exciting at the City Manager’s office?”
“Seriously, Sammy…?”
“It’s not exciting.” Victoria stabs at her smoked salmon benedict. “It is, and please pardon my French, fu-”
“Guys, come on.” Roxanne flops back against the booth, looking dead eyed over a Spanish coffee. “There are kids in here.” There are kids, what’s he going to do to the kids, oh my God-
“There is a fish-robot…thing that has pulled all the permits for City Planning, Roxie. I get that’s not so weird to you, but for the rest of us-”
“Divine! Sister! Hood!” Samantha is clapping her hands emphatically. “We need to support each other more than ever! No Oppression Olympics!”
Vicky sighs, swears into her Bloody Mary, and turns back. “Roxanne - I’m sorry. I’m just really stressed out after those freaky robots nearly drowned my boss in the reflecting pool.”
Rebecca was spreading jam on her toast. “I thought you hated your boss?”
“I mean, yeah. I’m not saying I didn’t like some of it.” Roxanne has mumbled something of her own, Victoria turns back to her. “What’s that, Rox?”
“Minion.” She says it louder. “The fish-robot. That’s Minion.” Everyone’s doing that thing where they look at each other and silently judge her, she hates this. “Listen, just - if you’re nice to him, he’ll be nice to you.”
“I’m not fucking a robot-fish, Roxanne.”
“Ladies!” A waiter has appeared with far too large a grin (“Jesus Christ, Victoria, that’s not what I said-” “You say be nice to him-” “I expect that from Samantha, not from you-” “How would that even work, anyway?” “Did he give the fish a dick?” “Do fish…have…?”). “I just know we want dessert - or to check out right now, I also brought the check-”
Roxanne snaps it out of his hand and lets it flutter behind her. “I want the crème brûlée.” The waiter looks very defeated, writing her request on his pad. Someone else gets the seasonal berry crumble, someone else the lemon cheesecake, and Victoria gets another Bloody Mary. When he’s slunk off back to the kitchen to place the order, Roxanne says: “I’m serious. Bring in a tray of your biscochos and I guarantee you’ll be surprised how talkative he can be.”
Victoria crunches on her celery, but acquiesce. “This is so goddamn weird…”
“Okay, Roxie.” Sammy smiles at her, wiggling her shoulders. “Your turn: how’s things at the station?”
Roxanne finishes her coffee and licks the last of the whipped cream off the rim. “Oh, I’m absolutely getting fired tomorrow.”
The table erupts. “Can’t fire you-” “Channel Eight’s star reporter-” “What about all your reporting on-”
It’s all sweet, but Roxanne knows when she’s pushed too far, and she really did it on Friday. She had planted her feet in front of City Hall and cooly raged into her microphone, watching as Hal sweated behind the camera. “Behind me, you’ll notice ongoing construction next to the main building-” she pointed, blue eyes burning right through the lens. “Traffic has been completely disrupted in this part of the downtown corridor. Because our viewers may be wondering where supplies are coming from during the city-wide shutdown,” she flipped dramatically through her notecards, “I understand most of this is stolen - I’m sorry, repurposed, from other buildings.”
“Rox-” Hal hissed at her. “The anchor is trying to ask-”
“Those buildings-” she kept right on going, “include the Metro Grand Hotel, an unfinished housing development, and the Metro City Museum of Art-”
Her senior producer was a furious crackle in her earpiece, and there was no way he wasn’t doing the same to Hal. “Goddamn it, Ritchi, when I said report on the traffic diversion, you know damn well I meant-”
“From our investigation, this seems to be entirely to the benefit of the city’s new Overlord, as he’s calling himself. And I know I speak for the city when I ask-”
Her producer in her ear: “-if you don’t shut your mouth right this second-”
Roxanne ripped her earpiece out. “-just how much of our city he plans to ruin for his own selfish, self-centered- Hal, you point that camera back at me!” Hal bobbed nervously between listening to his boss and his crush. “And I would just like to remind our viewers that he can’t beat all of us! Not if we-” He seemed to be settling the viewfinder on a pair of ducks in the reflecting pool-
In the here and now, Sammy is giving her a very sympathetic look. “I thought you were very brave, Roxanne.”
She snorts a little. “Someone had to be.” It’s like they forgot Metro Man already. He stood for something. For standing up for what was right, and…and never giving up and- Oh hell, when had she finished her Spanish coffee?
Howard had been spitting mad when she got back to the station. He even had that thing where his vein throbbed in his forehead. Lots of shouting of, “-now I have to go in front of the Board and try to explain to them why you mouthed off to the most powerful man in the city-” and “-just because you have a goddamn death wish, Ritchi, doesn’t mean you get to drag the rest of us with you!” And she couldn’t help it, she just couldn’t help it, screaming back that Metro Man would never have just laid down and taken this, and-
“Fuck Metro Man! He’s dead! He’s gone to the choir invisible! I have a station to run, Roxanne!” She could have kicked him right between the legs with her high heel if she hadn’t shaken with so much anger and adrenaline. “Take the day off! Be back on Monday, and bring boxes, because ten-to-one you are history around here, Ritchi, and you’ll be packing your desk!”
“Okay…” The waiter is back with a tray of desserts. “I have the lemon cheesecake, the raspberry crumble, another Bloody Mary-”
Roxanne walked home, all sixteen blocks, until there were blisters on her feet. She stormed into her apartment, grabbed a throw pillow off her couch, and screamed into it until her voice hurt - until she started crying, she missed him, she misses him, how is this happening, why did this have to happen-
“And a crème brûlée!” he finishes with a sunny expression, apparently glad the women at his table aren’t continuing on about the sexual anatomy of fish. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”
Hal had called her and said, if she did get fired, she was always welcome to crash on his couch as long as she needed.
She sips her water. “I feel like a Parisian in 1940.”
The other women are doing that look again. “No one gets your old people references, Roxanne.”
“Oh my God. So the Nazis split the country into occupation zones-”
The waiter is back with the check yet again, despite it being about ten seconds since he last left. “Who needs boxes?”
Back in her apartment (for however long she has left to enjoy it), Roxanne returns her mother’s missed call, kicking off her shoes as she flops onto the sofa. “Hi, Mom! Yup, still alive.”
Rhoda Ritchi has been calling every day, provided the cellular network isn’t overloaded. Most of the time it isn’t. There were a couple of days, right at the beginning, of rolling blackouts, and then they just….stopped. As if overnight, there are solar panels and wind turbines all across the roofs of the city center. There are new cell towers, too, and they’re brand new, 4G LTE. It’s…weird. She is tapped into a persistent rumor as well, that a nuclear generator has gone online, and Roxanne is itching to know where and how, and Howard is never going to give her that chance now.
“I’m fine.” She tries to sound more chipper into the phone than she feels. “I was just at brunch. Yes, with Vicky, Becky, and Sammy.”
Mom wants her back in Beaver Dam, well across the state line, safe in the family bosom with her, her four brothers, and the extended family. She doesn’t want to freak her out that that isn’t possible now.
And even if it were, she’s not going.
“Yeah, it was good!” She twists one foot in the air, the white sock stopping just below the ankle. “No, those supply chain problems seem to be worked out.” There was a lot of hoarding at first: fuel, food, really weird and random things like toilet paper. Roxanne had to do so many broadcasts urging calm and that there would be plenty for everyone if people didn’t panic. And then the brainbots rolled out, and that might have been better than the thugs breaking in people’s doors and dragging hoarders out into the streets. The Pluritsky mob had been big into that. The station has to repeat every new rule from the Overlord multiple times a day, which means Roxanne chokes on his commands, too: hoarders would face serious punishment, and the confiscation of anything more than reasonable personal use.
It’s helped that the trucks and trains and boats are rolling back in, even if people aren’t rolling out. The sanitation crews are back on schedule, the grocery stores are pretty well stocked, and if one didn’t know there is a curfew, things could almost seem…
Roxanne chokes on the thought, coughing. “I’m fine! Sorry- swallowed wrong.”
And then here it comes: the tight-throated voice of her mother, a tough midwestern woman who is holding back tears. “Roxie - maybe you could just come visit for a bit, sweetie. Huh?”
Oh Mom… Is it worse to give her hope? Roxanne doesn’t know. “I might be about to get some time off from the station.” Permanently. “If so, I’ll come out, okay?”
“Yes! That would be- yes, that would be lovely! I’ll have your old room set up, and I’ll get all your brothers to come by-”
“Uh-huh. Okay. Mom- Mom, I’ve got to go. Yes, I love you, too. Yes, I am being safe. I promise I am. I love you, Mom. I have to go. Okay- bye.” There’s a dull click as she snaps her phone shut. She hates cutting Mom off when she gets emotional like that, but it’s just one more thing she cannot handle right now. She can’t admit to her mother that she’s scared. Then she’ll just worry, the calls will increase, the panic will rise-
It’s a good day for a movie. Roxanne swings her legs off her sofa and goes to her DVD collection. She’s watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and that blue dictator can’t do a thing to stop her.
On Monday morning, Roxanne goes to work with an empty bank box.
It was a good run, she has a lot to be proud of. Moving up from intern to star reporter; her regional Emmy for her breaking story on the misappropriation of funds at the Department of Human Services. If she gets out of here alive, maybe Mom can get her an in at WPR. She used to want to go into radio anyway. Probably less kidnapping involved.
“Ritchi.” Howard is standing in his office door, looking exhausted. “C’mere a minute.” She sets the box down and comes over, holding her breath. “I need you to grab Hal and get over to Police Headquarters. I guess there’s some new standards for policing coming out. Channel Nine is already on the scene.”
Roxanne can’t really believe what she’s hearing. “You said-”
He winces. “Forget what I said, Ritchi. Listen…” He removes his hand from the door handle and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You are one of the best. You are giving me an ulcer - but you’re the best. You’re not fired. Please get what you need from your desk and get down to the HQ?”
“Okay, um-” She stumbles backwards toward her desk. “Th…Thanks, Howard!” Mom is going to be disappointed; Roxanne is flush with confusion and relief.
“And Ritchi?”
She pauses.
“You could try to be a little more circumspect right now - yeah?”
After a moment, she smiles at him. “I’m the best, Howard.” He grumbles and disappears back into his office, pulling the door closed hard behind him.
Hal is bouncing up to her at her desk. “Roxaroo! Back at it again, the ol’ duo. I’ve got the van gassed, we have jelly donuts, what are we waiting for, let’s ride!”
“One second, Hal.” She needs to gather her thoughts, her clipboard, her pens- it’s not how she expected her morning to go.
Roxanne’s hands pause over silver velum stationary sitting on top of her keyboard - with a blue seal over the envelope. Oh no… Hal’s noticed, too. “Should you, uh…open that…here?” God, she hopes it’s anthrax.
It’s not. She breaks the seal, and nothing happens, despite Hal wincing and ducking beneath the desk. Slowly, she pulls out the card inside, the same heavy, silver velum, covered in an elegant, swooping hand.
Miss Ritchi-
Excellent reporting, but who could expect anything less from you?
Keep up the good work,
M
Roxanne doesn’t exactly know what to feel about this.
Howard’s door has opened and he’s shouting again, which is at least normal. “Do you think you might like to do your job sometime today, Ritchi!” Hal has grabbed her arm and is dragging her out. But it doesn’t really matter: there’s an identical card on Howard’s desk, and in the mailbox of every member of the KMCP Channel Eight Board.
Miss Ritchi stays on the air.