villagelogs | 021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central/Western Mathias.
WHEN: Days 021-023
WHAT: A cold storm approaches.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Emily Kinney & Lauren Cohan "The Parting Glass"

DAYS 021-023
THE WORLD TURNS WHITE
“Are ye the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow,
For which, through naked trees, the winds A-mourning go?”
— John Banister Tabb
The howling wind is what wakes the residents of Mathias each day now as the world turns slowly into a bleak stretch of white. Snow continues to fall in thick curtains of flakes that accumulate on trees and rooftops, swirling sideways in the gusts of wind that bow trees and whistle through any crack they can find. The drifts of snow grow taller against the buildings and the wind makes the already freezing temperatures feel bitterly cold.

By day 022, the far ends of streets begin to resemble the hazardous fog with how little becomes visible as the winds pick up. Buildings can still be discerned as dark shapes but the weather's warning becomes clear — a storm is coming. And by day 023, the storm arrives properly, the wind still screaming through the streets like a winter banshee announcing so many deaths to come. These conditions are far from hospitable and only the truly mad would be foolish enough to venture outside in weather such as this.

THE NEWLY ARRIVED
With an embrace of wintery white, Mathias offers a chilly welcome to its newest residents. They awake along the southern treeline bordering Mathias, near the small makeshift cemetery containing a handful of wooden markers erected without names or signifiers of those buried within. And not far from them is the schoolhouse, where in a snowdrift they will the frozen corpse of a young woman named Rey.

LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS
“A lantern can give you light only when you light it”
— Munia Khan
When residents wake on the morning of day 021, they will find outside in the snow the abandoned lanterns of those shadowy spectres who have moved so silently through Mathias. Each nestled in a patch of frozen white outside their door, the lanterns are now cold to the touch, the half-burned candle within each one seeming to have been lit so very long ago. Inside the glass encasement is a small rolled piece of paper, upon which is written:

keep it lit
There is nothing more, and the prior owners of these lanterns will not return within these days.

There is one lantern waiting outside the building for each resident wherever they are sleeping — the exception for this is those who may have already claimed a lantern as their own. Removing a lantern from its resting place results in no apparent reaction, nor does lighting or not lighting it. However, whatever residents ultimately choose to do with these lanterns should be reported.

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— SNOW continues to fall, resulting over the three days in upwards of a foot of accumulation. The winds blow in gusts over 35 mph.

— VOICES are not openly haunting our residents, though they may still be occasionally encountered in the more heavily decayed buildings where some rooms seem to almost swallow whatever light tries to enter them.

— THE FOG has still receded from the town proper and much of the eastern and northern beach, with the path through the northern forest to the lighthouse still clear on day 021. On day 022, however, as the storm worsens, the fog returns to the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper or else.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue to plague the town. While Zed Martin has returned, Rey's corpse will be found in a snowdrift near the Schoolhouse; she disappeared on day 018.

— THE STRANGER is gone.

— THE SPECTRES are gone.

OOC UPDATES

— DISCOVERIES have been collected and collated for your review. Please note that this is OOC information only, put together for the purpose of helping you as players see connections and possibilities for CR and your own character's potential avenues of exploration and investigation. (If we are missing something, please report it so we can add it to the list.)

— AP REWARDS have a new option now — Ideas may be requested if you find yourself stuck. You may now claim up to 2 rewards per log: (1) idea and (1) other reward.

— SANITY may be regained in two ways: self-medication and treatment. In Mathias, this means such coping mechanisms as drinking or drugging oneself into a stupor that allows them to face their fears and issues, or talking to someone about those fears and issues. Since both of these will take some time, best get started. (A form will be added to the Sanity page.)

— REMINDERS — Don't forget about the bulletin board. Please continue reporting your updates to locations, plots, and discoveries. The map of Mathias has been added to the locations page for ease of reference. Make sure your character's sanity level is kept updated. Prospective players are still joining the TDM, so it's recommended to track new top-levels so you don't miss them.

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It was an easy time to be a hero or a villain. All it is is a matter of who's writing about what. The Earps and Doc could have just as easily been the menaces, shooting at the good guys.

"I fail to see how that has any bearing on this." Doc turns his head away slightly and brushes the backs of his curled fingers against his still slightly discoloured cheek. His hat has since been returned by Negan earlier today but he had gone two full days without it and just about everyone noticed.

"But, since you asked. I ventured into the museum with Mister Negan. We came upon something terrible. I grabbed him and hauled ass outta there. He picked it up along the way. I swear to God, Raylan, if you tell me right now you're going to go there poking around yourself..." Doc is not above slapping him.

It was something that Raylan kept in mind, even when he was younger. They were all still Just Men. Men who made history, but Men, nonetheless.

Doc knew full well the bearing it had. If he was going to ask for something as distinctly difficult as admitting he knew something, even half glancing down that road, Raylan was going to put him to his own point. Prove him to follow his own word before Raylan would consider following it in such a situation.

"Why, just cause you said not to? C'mon, I got more sense than that," he said with a little backwards pull of his head that came with a bob. "'Something terrible' is a little vague though, you wanna elaborate?"

This conversation is already going marginally better than the one he had with John Constantine about the same subject matter. Hopefully they can leave the garage with their friendship intact; he'll at least have won some and lost some then.

"Not everyone does," he says wryly, turning his hand up and scratching at the bridge of his nose.

"You know it's funny I-... I remember the first time I met Wyatt. What he said, what I said, what we were wearing. Hell I could tell you what drinks we were having - not that they make it anymore." He can't help that small little smile that tugs on the corner of his lips. "I could tell you everything I had for supper every day since I got here." He gets alcohol-induced blackouts, sure, like everyone else, but he hasn't drunk to that level here. Not yet, anyway.

"I was in there not three days ago. Couldn't tell ya what that was." And the more he thinks about it, the more he fixates on it, the more the thing he had encountered morphs into something grotesque and sinister and monstrous in his head. He can't tell if it's this place or just two weeks of not sleeping or what it is that's getting to him. But he would never speak of his responsibility to Malcolm as something that is affecting him negatively, not even if he happens to be on the other side of Mathias where Malcolm can't hear him.

"Only that... you know little Miss Ellie? She said it was a fungal outbreak, got everyone sick, made them crazy and turned them... feral-like, done the world in." Her world, but Doc is still figuring out this whole different worlds thing, and he'll get there - in his own time.

"There were spores, like snow, floatin' around in there. I tried to get Negan out before he could breathe any in, but. Who knows. I came back late that night because I was waiting to see if he would- I don't know. Snap. Turn. Attack me. If I would do the same. I was going to kill him, and then kill myself, somewhere nobody could find us, so we wouldn't infect anyone else." Doc cracks a smile then, tries not to laugh even though he does anyway. It's a terrible way to go, having a contagious disease. Everybody dies alone in the end, but being infected, being infectious - you have to live alone, too. Maybe it's a fate he can't ever run from.

True, not everyone had that kinda common sense. It was just Raylan wasn't that kind of stupid. Most of the time. He, unlike John, didn't have a death wish.

It was an odd way to start an explanation but Raylan trusted that Doc would work his way around to the point. His brow pinched as Doc came around to not being able to recall details. The preamble made more sense, the more he got on. Raylan nodded at the question about Ellie, interjecting only a brief "I do," before the pinched expression got a lot more serious and under his brow.

"Well I can't say I'm not glad you didn't get a chance to go through with that plan." He tongued his lower teeth. "That explains your hat. What about your face? Spores do that too?"

Doc can't resist adding a tinge of melodrama to everything. And while he wishes he could remember clearly exactly what it was that they had seen in the museum, he also knows that ultimately it is another part of the mystery of the town, and recalling all the details won't help them in their efforts to leave.

"No that was just. Carelessness. Would have probably traded blows with Negan though if we had to spend the night together. He's got quite a mouth on him." ...not that kind of blow, Raylan. Or mouth for that matter. He just gets on Doc's nerves and Doc is certain that he does so deliberately.

So no sweet loving time after Spore City, got it. Carelessness looked a lot like Doc getting punched in the face but Raylan wasn't going to push the details of that.

"Negan? Huh. Met him the other day as a matter of fact. Seems nice enough. I hope cussin' ain't what kinda mouth you're talkin' about. We got a lot larger problems then manners in this place.. Last thing we need to add onto it is spores," he said with a sigh, rubbing his forehead.

At least they'd gotten off the topic of Malcolm.

"And no, I ain't gonna go have a look. I've heard Ellie's stories." He didn't want to go out like that, thank you very much.

Sorry to ruin the surprise, Raylan, but that wasn't the reason Doc came home late. And he's been doing well to spend more time around the house since. Though of course, the increasing volume of snow has much more to do with that, it's also for Malcolm's peace of mind. He can't control what Raylan does but he wants to give the assurance that he would be around, not with words but simply by hanging around the house more.

"No, he is just a--... button pusher. But I would teach you some manners before we leave this place, Raylan Givens." Seeing as Arlo was probably not big on those. "You need to stop doing this, for starters." And Doc raises a hand to point at Raylan with his curled pinkie raised slightly before opening his hand fully and turning his palm up towards the ceiling.

"You would never catch a Southern gentleman dead pointing at people left, right and centre."

Raylan being around as much would not give Malcolm much additional peace of mind, beyond knowing he wasn't out getting himself get killed. It was a catch .22. But he planned on being in the rest of the night, so it was a moot point either way.

"I don't know who told you I was a gentleman, but I think they mighta lied," he replied with an innocent pull of his face. "The accent does a lotta the heavy liftin' for me; I can't help what people think."

No, he let people think what they would and just smiled his charming smile at them like he didn't know any better at all. It was the best defensive measure, some days. "Somehow, I get a feelin' you know what that's like too."

He glanced into his coffee cup. "How much longer you plannin' on freezing out here? My coffee's already startin' to join ya."

"Well then at least we have something to work on," Doc says with a sigh. It is so far down his list of priorities here, it is true, but he cannot keep himself going indefinitely if all he is doing here is running himself to the ground putting out fires. Just as they would both stop talking over their drinking sessions if all they ever talked about was deep, heavy shit they would rather keep bottled up and battened down.

"People take one look at you. Think they heard your name from some place, think they know you. I used to like having a bit of a reputation, setting people on edge before they even met me. Now you get to a point where you just let people think what they like," Doc agrees. He wants to rewrite his legacy, but he knows he cannot. He is still trying to figure out what he can and cannot do in this new world he finds himself in. Maybe it is for the better to just leave the past behind and move on. But a part of him feels it irresponsible to do so so simply.

"We should check on the boys," Doc says with a sigh. His smoke is finished. The moonshine can wait. He can't count on nothing bizarre happening to the lanterns but they can probably stay closer to the internal door to the garage. Less of a chance they get bumped into that way.

"Get you warmed up while we're at it. Malcolm could use a big old hug," he teases with a snicker as he starts to head back inside, bringing the lanterns along with to leave them on a stool next to the door.

"I do have manners, but pointin' helps put a point on points I'm tryin' to make, that's all," he defended with a good natured innocence that would have been ten times more trouble had he been a younger man. The truth was, Raylan used it to put people in their place, to assert his position of authority, though he tried to keep the pointing at least chest level or lower.

Of course Doc knew how people were. Raylan could guess that Doc also knew how to put that to his advantage. It was a structure and a script that they knew well enough, in most all of its variants. People who were pliable enough to be played by themselves sometimes deserved it.

The smirk Raylan wore at Doc's comment and sigh dropped into a playfully warning half tilted look at him. "Watch it. Only hugs we give are at night." And Don't you say shit about it either, he knows you do it.

"Funny I don't seem to recall you giving me a hug last night. Or any night," Doc points out with a chuckle. Of course, he won't bring up the topic of Malcolm once they're actually inside. They have unspoken rules around what gets discussed on the porch - and now the garage since the porch isn't available during the snowstorm - and what they bring back in with them.

"You should heat that coffee up." At least they still have power and all the comforts of indoor living while the weather's going crazy outside. Back in his day it would be candles and cigarillos, booze and being huddled around the fireplace waiting for it to blow over.

"You want one tonight before you go off to bed?" he teased sarcastically as he followed Doc in, closing the door with a shudder behind him. It was easier to joke about it with someone that wouldn't assume Raylan was making a pass at him. He didn't even think about if Doc would bring up Malcolm inside - John Henry Holliday was a mindful kind of man and Raylan trusted him to not throw either Raylan or Malcolm under the proverbial bus.

"I'll just top it off with fresh coffee. Maybe some 'shine. You want some?" He'd meant to ask about John and that nonsense, but now that they were back indoors, and the fact that Doc hadn't mentioned it, told him that maybe later would be better.

"Only if it's not too much trouble," he jokes back light-heartedly. Raylan doesn't have to worry about Doc misbehaving or not keeping his hands above board. If there's been any funny business it's purely accidental, after two too many bottles late at night.

"Wouldn't mind some coffee with my shine. Thanks." Doc hovers around the other side of the kitchen counter. Not once has the speed and veracity of their alcohol consumption come up in conversation beyond the occasional quip about how they aren't brewing a big enough batch to age at least some of it to palatable levels, and Doc is thankful for it. He isn't sure how he is supposed to get through life without self-medicating.

"You're not planning on heading out again, are you? Malcolm's already bouncing off the walls." And it's not that Doc minds sitting with him for a day, but he's worried about Raylan going out in the storm too, even if he's saying Malcolm's the one fretting.

He was all too aware of the dangers they presented each other with when they got to far into a bottle or three and if tonight went like any other, they'd be there again. Maybe Doc would get his hug, in the end, tease or not. It all fit in seamlessly with the relationship they were building, which made it much easier to even joke about it.

Raylan smirked at 'Coffee in my shine' and knew he was meant to pour heavy, pulling down a second cup and pouring them both a generous amount of moonshine before trading the bottle for the coffee pot.

"I might do one more round. I'm sure he'll be alright once I'm back in for the night." One cup was slid towards Doc as Raylan leaned his hip on the counter, free hand propping on his hip as he got his own cup. "He worries more than he needs to. I dealt with things a lot more dangerous than some snow. That's all this is. Not even keepin' us from nothin'.."

His gaze was probably weighty as he eyed Doc and weighed bringing up John. "You really doin' okay?"

"Thanks." He drags his coffee-laced bootleg liquor closer, not expecting it to be hot when he gulps down a big mouthful. Not with that proportion mixed in.

"I'm sure that was what we were thinkin' - that it's just a bit of fog," Doc points out wryly as he stifles a groan from the burn of the shine - just because he makes drinking it look good doesn't mean he doesn't feel the drain cleaning effect same as everyone else - and sets his drink back down again.

He raises an eyebrow at that somewhat inquiring look but doesn't seem fazed by it as he folds his arms over the countertop, hunching over a bit and leaning his weight on it, fingertips resting around the rim of his cup. They aren't really the type to talk about how they're really feeling without putting up a brave front, letting things roll off easily, proclaim everything's fine with a shrug and smile. It is not what men of their disposition do. Doc wouldn't understand if Raylan is expecting a different type of response.

"Couple more of these and I'll be dandy." He smiles and lifts his thinly-veiled moonshine, drinking another dose of Bottle It Up and Stuff It Down.

Only way to have the first sip was hot, in his opinion, but at home, he didn't drink so early in the morning normally. Nothing about Mathis allowed for normality; he was startin' to really understand that. It wasn't going to kill him to bend a little. There was no living well here, not like he tried to do at home.

"Hey now, that fog had intent to disorient in ways fog doesn't do that. Snow doesn't have that same gut feelin'." Both literal and metaphorical.

But his question was it's own subterfuge - No, Raylan wasn't expecting a different kind of response but it gave him a few more seconds to stall before comin' out with it. "You wanna talk about your fight with John?"

Doc takes in a deep breath and sighs out slow, taking his time with his drink. He hadn't mentioned anything of it, so it must have been John.

"Raylan if I told you not to go into the museum and didn't say anything else about it, you wouldn't think to go. Maybe you would have had questions, maybe you might have doubted my state of mind after all this not sleeping and strange shit happening. Maybe you would have asked around if anyone else had been in there. But you know I mean you no harm, and you wouldn't have gone. It is a matter of trust. Faith. Respect. Beneath all these modern embellishments and bells and whistles we know this still to be true; you don't take anything to the grave with you, and a man's word is all that he has."

Maybe it is old-fashioned for him to be thinking this way. Maybe there is no trust, or faith, or respect left. He wouldn't know if it was all used up sometime in the last century and a half. Or maybe this is only true of a world that no one else could ever comprehend.

"I would not ask for a man who does not know me to place his trust or faith in me. But that man does not respect a gentleman's honour." Doc lifts up his mug and turns it ever so slightly, unable to stop fidgeting and playing with it with nothing else to do with his idle hand. He took it very personally, to say the least.

"I said some harsh words I regret saying to him. But when he gets himself killed and his corpse turns up in the snow I will not be burying him." That too is probably harsh. Doc will get over himself. At some stage. "That is if he doesn't get someone else killed first."

It was a little old-fashioned and, if Doc hadn't been honest with him, he might have had to break those rules. But they understood each other and the base values they shared. He knew Doc wouldn't go around giving commands like this without it being deadly serious and in this case at least, if Raylan said he wasn't going to go, he wasn't going to go.

He wasn't that stupid often.

Raylan took in the deep breaths, the fidgets, the underlying tension in Doc's voice, jaw and shoulders. Oh yes. He could tell how deeply John had dug in.

"So you told him not to go and I'm gonna guess he told you to go fuck yourself." Sounds like the way John would start a fight, yeah. Raylan nodded, the edges of his mouth downturning in a facial shrug as he glanced into his own cup for a drink before looking back over at Doc.

"I will. Might just be outta spite and decency around corpses, though I suppose. I don't know what he tells other people but I've been yelled at plenty about how bein' around him is some kinda death sentence. Apparently, everyone oughta be aware. He's a big boy, he'll handle himself, in the end. We ain't responsible for everyone who shows up here, you know that right?" Even if they both had sort of tried, between Malcolm, Neal and now Negan, though the latter two were still in progress.

"Especially for people who don't want us to be."

"Something like that," Doc replies with a small smile and an upturn of his hand, as if to say, what can you do? But suffice to say, both of them had probably crossed a line. Doc would not deny responsibility to have fuelled that fight himself.

"I will confess to never being good at letting good men suffer in a reckoning of their own making." He can mind his own business just fine but he gets restless and antsy if he has to sit by and watch people stick their hands into the fire, especially if he has been burnt the same way before.

"Though I suppose there are no good men here." Not even present company. Even the good man Doc is referring to had his flaws. Doc finishes his drink, not wanting to think about any of that, and he places his empty cup close by where his folded arms are by the edge of the countertop.

"If we can't save everyone I would at least like to keep Malcolm and yourself intact. What one man does could have consequences for us all, and I have had enough of paying for another man's recklessness. It was not simply a matter of talking some sense into him." Lifting his gaze, he tips his head to one side and makes eye contact with Raylan.

"I do hate to ask this of you Raylan, but recent circumstances dictate that I must. If I ever go missing, assume the worst and don't come looking for me. You must promise me this."

"There's no stoppin' those kinda men. No use you gettin' destroyed along with 'em trying to keep them from the edge," he said with a shake of his head. He liked John, but he was less and less endearing in his grumpy nature lately and Raylan was starting to draw some subtle lines.

But he would agree he wasn't a good man. He was an alright man. As he was sure Doc was. There were no good pure men anymore. There never had been - it was a myth and had been for more years than he wanted to try to count.

He opted to skip the next statement for now, focusing on the request.

"You are absolutely out of your mind if you think we're not comin' lookin' for you if you go missing. Look, John-" he'd never figured out if it was John Henry or just John, but it didn't matter. He leaned forward on a cast out to the side hand, hazel eyes squinting at him. "I'd like to think we know each other well enough to not bullshit me that you wouldn't go out after us. Shit, I watched you agonize for half a day about goin' after the people in the fog. If Malcolm or I were lost out there, you bet your ass we'd hope you were comin' for us. Why? Because we're all lookin' out for one another and we don't leave each other behind."

It would be over Raylan's dead body that they don't go lookin out after Doc. It might have been selfish but he was attached and he didn't want to do the day to day without Doc if he had to.

Underpinning his request, which had stemmed from the unsavoury experience at the museum, is an underlying, flawed but deeply-seated assumption that had gnawed away at Doc for the past 130 years. He had passed that time alone thinking that nobody had come looking for him, even though he knew on some level that he had been put somewhere nigh impossible to be found. It feels, to him, a reasonable request, especially knowing what they know of this sleepy little town. Especially considering they might have known each other for less than three weeks now.

Clearly Raylan doesn't think so and Doc unconsciously straightens up a bit at his name, a name no one really uses. It is always Doc, a profession he had given up so long ago he doesn't even define himself by it anymore. Occasionally Henry, or Hank; his father's name. But John, the man beneath the title, the reputation. Maybe there is still a part of John left somewhere beneath that bravado and the trials that time and several questionable decisions have put him through.

"Things are different for me," he insists. He's wary of weaponising Malcolm's affliction to use against Raylan, which is the only reason he doesn't point out that one of them has to be around for him. If Doc had suffered from similar nightly troubles, he would not want Malcolm and Raylan using it to make a point. From there it is a slippery slope to becoming a burden.

"Come hell or high water I would look for you two, but I sold my soul for that privilege. And if I found either of you in such a state where you might bring harm unto others, if there was nothing I could do to help, I would do what needed to be done, for both my conscience and yours. This is not a sin I would wish upon either of you. Just think me paying back a hundred years of borrowed time and leave me be, Raylan."

"Oh bullshit things are different for you," he scoffed with a side bob of his head with the sound. He knew that Doc was immortal but that didn't mean that it made it any kind of right to leave him out there on his own. It didn't make Doc more suited for it or anything. He'd found Doc out on his own once and would do it again if he had to.

"Are you tellin' me that if you didn't have this perceived privilege, you'd somehow not come out for us?" The curl and pinch of his features suggested not. He took a breath and continued. "Leavin' you out there, no matter what state you're in, is not going to happen on my watch."

The G's were back, watch out. He was making points. "It'd be right for you to put us down if we were in such a state. If you ever get to a similar state, I'll have to do the same thing. I've shot people I like more for less-" So don't go thinking that Raylan will let sentiment stop what needs getting done for the safety for the rest of them, but he wouldn't be happy about having to do it in the first place. "-But that's not gonna happen. And you're not gonna go crazy; you would have already. And if you're lost, you've got the best kinda people to come huntin' for you."

After all, Raylan always got his man.

"Raylan I-" Doc makes a face, a tension settling in making his jaw tight, and he sighs. It feels like anything he could say at this point would be thrown right back at him. The truth of the matter was, he would be dead without this cursed blessing. And he wouldn't be here. Wouldn't have to decide then whether he would leave someone missing or brave the perils of this town, go out and look for them.

"I just don't want anything to happen to either of you." And if something were to happen to him and they were to come looking then something would most likely happen to them too. They've made it this far, mostly without incident. Doc doesn't want to live with being the one to have let them down.

"I won't argue this with you, Raylan. Just- tell me you'll do the right thing, when the time comes." Knowing that Malcolm's wellbeing should come first over and above someone who's been through a lot of shit and is fine with the idea of going out and never coming back, such a promise would suffice.

Raylan gave him a look and ambled a few steps closer, head tilted as he propped his weight on a hand, on the counter. He knew how hard what Doc was asking was - even voicing 'Leave me be' could be hard, especially with the context they were dealing with.

"I get that you're tryin' to look out for us. Malcolm more than me, I'd wager but both of us nonetheless," he started softly, eyebrows raised slightly with his sincerity. "And I appreciate it. I do. But if you go out there, he and I both are gonna do whatever it is in our power to do to get you back. Don't know if you've noticed, but both of us have taken somethin' of a likin' to you." Well, a liking was gentle and fell short of the truth of how they felt. Raylan couldn't be 100% sure that Malcolm agreed, but he'd take that leap right now.

"I won't let anything happen to Malcolm, but I ain't going to let something happen to you just to protect him." They had value too. They weren't just people that took care of others. They needed to take care of each other too. "If it happens that, for some reason, you gotta be put down, we'll do what needs doin'. But not without exhausting every other avenue first.." They needed him, for well more than moonshine.

"You're not gettin' rid of me that easy, Mr Holliday."

It's one thing to know that they've gotten comfortable in their oddly domestic little setup. Quite another to hear Raylan say it out loud. Raylan, of all people, who exercises that age old skill of saying more by saying less on the regular, with practiced ease.

"I hadn't noticed actually," Doc jokes it off. In terms of the repertoire of responses that repressed men can offer each other, the options are rather limited. "I have gone looking for the missing before. They don't always turn up again. If you must insist upon it, Mister Givens, don't waste too much of your time."

Doc had already written a goodbye note when he thought he might not make it another night after his and Negan's museum accident. Instead of burning it he's left it in his wardrobe drawer, trusting that Raylan will find it eventually. It might look like an apology followed by some drawings of willow trees, the last tweak of the moonshine recipe and a list of names, but like Raylan, he says more by saying less.

021-023 » the ghosts of fallen leaves

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Wanna wrap this one?

Ok!

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