[for eden]

[notgoingtorun]

Neal had been settling into the island as well as could be expected. He was a chameleon after all, and if there was anything he excelled at, it was fitting in at just about any situation, so adapting to island life wasn't as hard as he'd expected it. He missed New York very keenly at times, and it wasn't helped by the fact that he'd fully assumed the identity of Victor Moreau, and he could only talk in vagaries about the people he'd left behind.

But conmen didn't get to say goodbye. They just dusted themselves off and started over again, which was exactly what Neal did.

At least the weather was beautiful. It almost made up for the clothes he'd been forced to wear. (After all, one couldn't exactly wear a Devore while lounging in the sand.) He tried to make a t-shirt and shorts as fashionable as possible, but he only had so much to work with.

Neal was stretched out under a palm tree, just at the edge of the beach. He had a book open in his lap, but mostly, he was watching the waves roll in and trying not to think of home.

Comments

[wishesandsmoke]

"Work up a tan, start looking like one of the natives," teased Eden. "Yeah, no, it's just that I'm pretty good with faces, and... yours is definitely new. But then, I've been here for ages, I have kind of a head start on that kind of thing." She didn't always know who people were, but the new ones got easier and easier to pick out.

[notgoingtorun]

"I'll work up a tan, but I'm not stooping so low as to some of that acid-washed denim I've been seeing in the clothes box," Neal said with a laugh. "I can only go native so far, and that's crossing the line." He'd been lucky that he'd been able to avoid anything too humiliating, but he knew full well that the day was coming where he'd be forced to wear tie-dye and cut-offs.

"I suppose it's hard to keep people straight with people coming and going all the time? From what I've heard, at least."

[wishesandsmoke]

Eden nodded, dropping down to sit. She wasn't invited, exactly, but she tended to make herself at home wherever she was, and besides, it felt rude to just loom over Victor while they talked, even if he would undoubtedly tower over her standing. "It can be," she said. "Some people don't stay all that long, others stay years. It's when people look alike that things really start to get confusing. Friend of mine dated a guy who looked a lot like you once, actually."

[notgoingtorun]

He would be more shocked by it if he hadn't already been told about so many absurd things that happen here on the island. "I've heard about that," Neal said. "People with the same faces, people who should only exist in books or movies." He leaned back, elbows digging into the soft sand. "This guy who looks like me -- is he still here?"

[wishesandsmoke]

"Oh, Bruce, no," Eden answered, shaking her head. Clipping the leash onto Mr. Muggles' collar, she let him out of her lap, grip tight on the end so he couldn't get far. He was a little terror, but he was important to Claire. "No, he's long gone. Vanished a... god, a couple years back now, I think. I used to have a doppelgänger, too. It's pretty weird."

[notgoingtorun]

"I can imagine. It's enough to want to put people in nametags, just to keep them straight." Neal chuckled quietly. "I can only guess how weird it would have been if that guy would have shown up to meet me when I got here. I would have been even more convinced that I'd just gone crazy."