2010-03-09: You're Grounded

Starring:

Claire_V4icon.pngMrMuggles_V4icon.pngSandra_V4icon.png

Date: March 9th, 2010

Summary:

Claire finally gets home.


"You're Grounded"

Bennet House

How many times has she been missing? Her family probably has given up even worrying about her after crisis after crisis, kidnapping after kidnapping. After all, in the end, she's always alive, right? Why worry? It's been over a month since she was last seen. The cab pulls up at the Bennet residence and the girl pays the last of the cash in her wallet. Thank God for her Mastercard or she wouldn't have made it home at all. Plane tickets: $782, including taxes and fees. Cab fare: $43. Coming home to face your parents after some five or so weeks missing: Terrifying.

The door is locked, as is expected, and she has to knock because her keys are long lost with the rest of her luggage. Claire Bennet stands on the doorstep waiting to be faced by whatever member of her family is home — is anyone home? The thought occurs to her belatedly. She's out of luck if not, having no more money and having reached the credit limit of her card for the 24 hour period. Her clothes are not her own: she wears a Miami Dolphins sweatshirt at least three sizes too big, jeans belted to keep them on, and a pair of boots that make her toes hurt. Why is everything too big except the shoes. "Come on, Mom, be home, please?" she mutters to herself.

The first sound to come through the door is the little clicking of tiny toenails on the hardwood floor and then distinctive barking of everyone's favorite show champion, Mr. Muggles. "Arr! Arr! Arr! Arrr!" Then the barking stops as little pomeranian snuffles and snifs along the bottom edge of the door.

"I'm coming! Just a minute!" Sandra's been busy all day repolishing something or other. The entire house smells like lemon pledge or Calvin Klein's newest fragrance, take your pick. As she pads up to the door in her sock feet Mr. Muggles starts up again, prepared to defend the mistress of the house with every one of his 7lbs of pomeranian fury.

"Arf! Arf! Arf! Arf!"

"Mr. Muggles, it's okay… see it's ju—" Sandra says as she opens the door to spot the daughter she's been missing for over a month. "Oh my goodness Claire! Where have you been?!" The young blonde might find herself gripped in a tight hug as her mother tries to keep her eyes from watering. She's a mother, of course she worries, immortal doesn't mean invincible.

The petite blond gasps slightly as the air is pressed out of her by her mother's hug. She chuckles, and her arms come up to wrap tightly around Sandra. Her green eyes well up with tears before she closes them, basking in the warm embrace and letting herself be held for much longer than she would have normally. "Hi," she says softly, exhaling before finally stepping back.

Before Sandra can start with the questions, she takes a deep breath and begins to babble her defenses off. "I know I should have called but I didn't even get to a working phone until yesterday and I just wanted to get home as soon as possible and not have to explain anything until I got home and what's twenty-four more hours after five weeks, right?" Claire says huskily all in one rush. She closes the door behind her, and then reaches down to scritch the Pomeranian. "Hey, Mr. Muggles," she says. She even missed him. "Is everyone okay here?" It's sad she has to ask.

Sandra doesn't let go of her daughter as she leads her into the house. "Lyle! Come downstairs to get Claire's bags and put them in her room!" she calls up the stairs, to the boy that's probably playing on his hand held game system, which ever one he's got now. Who can really keep up. The older woman still has a bit of a limp and she's leaning on her cane as she walks. Being shot in the knee makes for a fairly slow recovery.

"We're both fine, we haven't heard from your father since before Christmas. He's probably still working somewhere." She doesn't sound bitter though, she's got twenty years practice at it. Once the floral patterned couch is within reach, Sandra grips the arm and turns to sit. "Sit, and tell me everything. Where've you been? Have have you been doing? Did you go somewhere?" Sandra's a little bit on the sly side, she knows that Claire's been somewhere. Especially since her credit card has seen airport activity.

"I don't have any bags," Claire says. "If I did, would I be wearing this?" she asks, with a wrinkle of her nose, gesturing at the teal and orange Miami Dolphins sweatshirt. She does take the offer to sit, flopping on the couch and reaching down to pull off the tennis shoes that were the closest thing to her size the Red Cross had.

"I … I went down to Haiti," she starts. "Kind of. I took a little detour on the way, unfortunately." There's a wry smirk at that. Why can't anything go according to plan? "I was supposed to meet some people there but took a different flight when I got detained. Went down to Miami, then got one of those small charter planes flown by crazy pilots that you swear got their license in a cereal box? You know the type."

Her feet now rid of the toe-pinching shoes, she pulls them up to the couch and sits cross legged. "We crashed somewhere between the Bahamas and Haiti. Took me a while to get to shore, and Haiti was a mess." This is all said matter of factly, but there's a hard look in Claire's eyes that suggests it was a frightening ordeal. Especially alone. "Man, I'm gonna have to drop my classes again," she adds with a groan, one hand coming up to hit her forehead in dismay.

There's just a stare, then the middle aged woman's eyes get wider and she lets out a long puff of air. That might be the signal for Mr. Muggles, because as soon as he hears it, he's leaping up onto the couch and into Sandra's lap. She scratches behind his ears absently for a few minutes while she takes the time to digest the entire story.

One of her fingers moves up to rub at her eye and she takes yet another deep breath. It's hard to tell what she's thinking, she's got such a good poker face. But before long she's looking around the room, then back to Claire, then around the room again, then back to Claire. "Claire…" she begins slowly, in the most maternal voice she can muster. "…You're grounded."

Claire fidgets as she watches her mother's reaction. It feels like it's in Slow-Motion! Then her mouth drops when that dreaded word is dropped from her mother's lips. Grounded?

"Grounded!" she repeats, her brows knitting together fiercely before she hops up from the couch and prepares to storm off to her room before she pauses mid-step. Wait a minute!

"You can't ground me. I'm almost twenty!" There might be the slightest touch of defiance in the way she raises her chin, tilting her head slightly as if to say, 'So what are you going to do now, lady?'

Apparently Sandra's thought the age thing through because as soon as the last words are popped out of Claire's mouth her eyebrows shoot up as if to retort 'I don't give a damn.' "You could be two hundred and if I were still alive you'd still be grounded. Do you know how worried I was about you? It's bad enough that your father pulls his disappearing acts whenever he feels like we need protecting but you are my daughter, Claire."

Mr. Muggles looks over at the girl and emits something that sounds pretty much like a sneeze of agreement.

"You need to start thinking about the other people in this family. You might be immortal but we're not. We, I, worry about you. You're still my little girl." Then she sets her lips into a firm frown and nods, "You have two weeks of Lyle's chores and your own. Which have been sorely neglected since you left."

Her brows knit together in a fierce frown, Claire looks like she is going to argue until she looks like she's about to cry. The change is slow — the look of anger slowly becoming one of apology; the frown contorts into a grimace of something like grief. She reaches for her mother and clings to her in a hug that is much more like the little girl that Sandra claims her to be than the 'almost 20' adult that she used as a defense. The tears fall, and they are for both the torturous ordeal she so concisely summed up in two dozen words and for the pain her mother has been through, on account of her and her father and their issues.

Claire's nose still wrinkles at the idea of chores. Lyle's are the icky ones like taking out the trash and picking up Mr. Muggles' doody.

Mr.s Muggles grumbles and moves out from between the women as they hug, preferring not to be made into a fluffy pancake.

On Sandra's part the hug is returned very tightly and the woman sniffles between her own tears, trying to keep as composed as she can. Just so Claire can't weasel out of the punishment, maybe? "If you'd just called, Lyle, Mr. Muggles and I would have been on the first plane to wherever it was to go get you." She murmurs into her daughter's hair. She reluctantly releases the girl and places her palms on either side of Claire's face, then as though challenging her to a staring contest, she locks eyes with the girl for a moment.

"You know that you can tell me everything, right? What we say is locked in the vault. If you don't want your father to know, I understand. There's just some things that he doesn't 'get.'"

"Yeah. I know." Claire smiles back at her mother. "I shouldn't have gone without telling anyone. I didn't mean to worry you all. And there's nothing he could do in this case. It was just me being a stupid and capricious teenager. There's no one's ass he can go kick in this case. The plane went down where it shouldn't have. Bermuda Triangle shit, I don't know. And swimming was never my strongest sport. And I got to shore in the most remote part of the country. I really did just get to civilization pretty much yesterday. There was no reason to have you all come down here — and I wanted out on the first flight." She lifts her eyes to the ceiling. "At least Lyle won't hate me as much for being AWOL once he knows he's out of chores for a week."

Yes, she's trying to cut her punishment in half by being sneaky.

"Two weeks, Claire. Keep pushing it and you'll get a month." Sandra replies in a stern voice. Then she breaks into a smile and removes the pooch from the couch and onto the floor. "How about we go to the kitchen? You have to be starving after your trip and I wouldn't mind hearing what Haiti was like." They've dealt with the harsh reality, now it's definitely time to get in the fun and gossip. There had to have been some, Claire's always been the optimistic type. She was a cheer leader after all.

Slowly, Sandra pulls herself off the couch and grips her cane again. She pauses to wait for Claire and gives her a smile, "I have a few things to tell you too. Like, I got a job." That might be a surprise to the girl, since Sandra has been a homemaker for as long as she's been alive. "And since you're dropping your classes, you might want to consider getting one too. We're not in hiding any more, thanks to your father."

"We're not? You did? I can!" This is all good news to Claire, and she's fairly beaming with the several announcements. "Something to eat sounds great. Let me just go get out of these disgusting clothes and take a quick shower? I want to be in clothes that I know where they've been." She has her suspicions where the ensemble she is wearing came from, and she'd rather not voice them in front of her mother. "I'll be right down."

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