026 》sweet troubled man are you giving or taking?

[thering]

characters: Malcolm, Neal, Negan, Raylan, Doc
location: 1306 Phillips Dr
date/time: day 26 morning
content: the reset Playstation button was pressed
warnings: tbd

After the strangeness of the past two nights they were likely fully expecting to awaken in the same strange, different, not-so-new anymore places they found themselves in in the past two days.

Instead everything seems to have reset, again. The three permanent residents and two guests are back in 1306, exactly where they had been two nights ago. Malcolm was in his own room, Neal was in Doc's and Negan in Raylan's master bedroom. The two displaced cowboys are downstairs sharing one too-small couch, a night of drinking culminating in fighting over couch space and who gets to be the bigger spoon.

The fire in the fireplace had gone out and their Winter 2020 Collection of bespoke lanterns have vanished, but nothing else seems to be awry.

Comments

[abrightboy]

“It wasn’t a projection - or it wasn’t all a projection - but it was staged. The boarding house didn’t shake like that but the power went out twice. Always at night. Only at night. What does that mean?” he pointed out.

[conning]

Neal shakes his head. He doesn't know. He doesn't know what any of this means. After the past two days he's not sure anything in this place means anything, beyond being meant to torment them. That he's sure of. They all were, by the second day. That someone was doing it, targeting them specifically, and that it was for a reason.

"Someone definitely wanted to... I don't know what they wanted." He shudders, almost convulsively. "It felt like... there was something behind it. It felt like there was some design to it, but if that's the case--"

His voice is rising. Neal cuts himself off. Closes his eyes. Reins himself in.

Jesus, Caffrey, it's two days without sleep. Relax. "I'm fine."

[abrightboy]

“Yeah, that’s that fine we were talking about,” Malcolm said with a nod. “I think the... messing with us was just a bonus for them. I think they penned us for a reason. Like the way the fog blocked part of the town until it was ready. I think they needed us contained to do some kind of work on the town. To move something in or out. To change something.”

[conning]

Neal keeps his eyes closed to prevent himself from crying. That's the last thing he needs to do right now. It's definitely the last thing he wants to do. He tries to focus instead on the rest of what Malcolm is saying, tries to feel something about the idea that the past two days were meant as a distraction. A calculated imprisonment.

He just keeps thinking about the wind, about every time he almost fell asleep but snapped awake again to the sound of voices in his ear or the tremors of the building.

Very quietly, he says, "It felt like it was going to go on forever."

Neal clears his throat and tries to sit up straighter, finally pulling his hands away from Malcolm's and picking up his mug again as an excuse for the motion. "What could they have changed with the storm like that?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm was only focusing on it like a case so he didn't have to think about what happened in the boarding house kitchen.

"I don't know. But I'm going to look once... Well. Maybe later this afternoon."

For now he was staying near the house. And the cowboys. Where things didn't feel completely unraveled.

"We only know the blizzard continued outside the buildings we were in."

[conning]

"This is the most elaborate con I've ever been a part of, and I can't say I like being on this side of it."

He almost manages to make it sound like a joke.

"Were you alone?" He shakes his head. "Not with the cowboys, I mean."

[abrightboy]

"Negan was where I was. Also John Constantine's girlfriend, Zed. A lady I never met before that could make magic fire. That was handy," he admitted. "Her name was Yennifer. Ellie was there. And another new person named Melanie." He huffed a laugh. "For the first week or so I was here, I only met one woman. At the time, I thought maybe she was the only one."

No cowboys.

"I wonder if they split us up the way they did on purpose or randomly."

There was no pretending, at this point, that someone wasn't behind this. Not with every single one of them taken from their beds and displaced and then, just as arbitrarily, returned.

[conning]

Negan. Neal hasn't run into him yet. He knows there's someone else in the house, but he was either unconscious or pretending to be unconscious for most of the day before... things.

"So no cowboys." He hesitates a moment before reaching out to put a hand on Malcolm's arm. "I'm guessing you didn't sleep much either."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm is surprised by the contact. It draws his eyes to Neal's face.

"Sleep? No. No, it wasn't safe. For them. I made restraints from bungee cords here," he explains, tilting his head towards the ceiling. "I have to sleep in restraints or I walk." A beat. "Walk. Run. ...Fight. It's... not safe."

[conning]

God. It's hard for Neal to imagine living that way. Not finding some kind of peace when he closes his eyes.

Though, granted, he's not sure he'll be finding any peace here any time soon. "How did you guys manage when the power went out?"

[abrightboy]

"Fire. Yennifer made sure it stayed lit. Something... kept making it go out."

He watched Neal for a moment.

"Did you guys stick together or... try to stay out of each others' way?"

[conning]

Neal lets go of Malcolm's arm, laughing faintly. "Little bit of both? Some of us were more helpful than others."

He taps his cup against the counter. "A woman named Daisy, we took care of each other. A man named Eliot did some cooking for everyone. Guy named Sherlock who kept losing it at thin air, like that served a purpose."

Another soft exhale. "Elijah was there. The vampire."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm was going to mention something about sometimes losing it at thin air himself and not always being able to help it but 'Elijah the vampire was there' made his eyes widen slightly.

"That's... unsettling. Did he say anything to you?"

[conning]

"I said some things to him." Yeah, he started that particular conversation. Neal shakes his head. "He said he wasn't himself when what happened... happened. Apologized."

Neal lifts one shoulder in a kind of shrug. "Didn't go after anyone while we were there."

[abrightboy]

"What did you say to him?" Malcolm asked with interest. "And what did he mean, he 'wasn't himself'? Was he under some sort of... influence?"

[conning]

Neal clears his throat. "I told him I was glad he looked like shit."

He turns his cup in little increments on the countertop. "I guess you could say that. He said didn't have full control of himself. That 'something happened' to him, and that he doesn't ordinarily drink from people without consent."

[abrightboy]

"I.... I mean, consent is better than not consent but. What happens if nobody consents?" Malcolm asked.

[conning]

"He said he had someone volunteer to help him."

Neal has his suspicions as to who it is. He's still not sure whether he should step in or not. He knows Peter would do something. He's not sure if Peter would step up as a volunteer himself. Neal knows he doesn't want to. Being bitten hurt. It made him feel small, helpless, violated. He's not sure willingness to go through it again would make those feelings go away. Besides, it's not like he owes Elijah. He doesn't even know Elijah. But there are others here the vampire could go after, and that, Neal cares about.

"Putting all of that on one person isn't a long term solution."

It's a step forward, admitting that they might need one. Neal still knows they're going to get home. They're going to get out of here, all of them. But it's starting to look like a matter of weeks instead of days.

[abrightboy]

"Maybe not. Maybe others will volunteer. But if it comes to him... forcing it.... Raylan and Doc won't stand for that," Malcolm told him. "He might have to be... isolated from everyone else, maybe."

[conning]

"So he can starve?" The thought makes Neal sick, but so does the idea of the town playing ring-around-the-blood-bank. He sets his coffee down and leans forward, digging his hands into his hair. He finds himself breathing the way he had in the Gull, in-two-three, hold, slow exhale.

He hasn't felt this way since after the explosion that killed Kate. This wrung out, this overwhelmed. And he keeps showing it. It's so much worse than the moments where he would lose control in the white collar offices after Kate died, those brief stints of shaking hands and anxiety that swept through him and forced out anything but the memory of heat against his skin. He should be able to perform better than this. He should be better than this.

"At least this place gave us options."

[abrightboy]

"It didn't give me options," Malcolm said soberly. His medication was - arguably - at least as important as food to his ability to function. "Aren't vampires technically already dead?"

[conning]

That's right. This place screwed Malcolm at least as much as it has Elijah. Neal closes his eyes.

"I guess. Hard to remember that when you're talking to one."

Quietly, he says, "I forgot. For a second. About..." He crosses his arms on the countertop, forces one more long, steady breath. Neal makes himself look at Malcolm, blue eyes meeting blue. "You have to be one of the strongest people I've ever met. I wouldn't be able to handle it. I'm barely handling it now."

It's a wrench to admit it, but Malcolm knows already that he's lying about being fine. There's no way to pretend when he's on the verge of falling apart already.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm reaches out, hesitates, then puts his hand over Neal's again and gave it a squeeze before withdrawing it.

He knew exactly how hard that was to admit. He knew what the 'I'm fine' defence mechanism was for and how bad things had to be to let it fall, even when everyone knew you were lying.

"I wasn't handling it either. There was a day, early on, when Raylan and I woke up in the lighthouse. Kind of... kind of like the way we woke up somewhere else the other day. I'd only just met him once, right after I arrived. For about ten minutes. He was tearing copper pipe out of one of the rundown houses. I asked him some questions. I wasn't... off my meds yet. I didn't realize what I was in for. Then, a few days later... suddenly we were in the lighthouse together and you couldn't reach it from here at that time. There was no door out. We went up."

He paused, shifting his weight, starting to unconsciously wring his hands.

"There was a moment when we were climbing the stairs up and up and up and I looked over the railing and I considered just.... falling. What if I just fell? It was just a thought. Maybe. But. Raylan noticed... something. He sort of... snapped me out of it. He wouldn't let me walk on the outside after that." He frowned faintly. "I think maybe he saved my life that day."

[conning]

He thought about it, after Kate's death. The possibility of just not existing. It wasn't that he wanted to die, really. It was just that there didn't feel like a point to living. It was the same question, or a variation thereon: What if I just stopped?

This time Neal's the one who reaches out, putting his hand over Malcolm's. He doesn't draw away. "We're all getting home. And we're taking care of each other until we do it."

He draws in a breath, opens his mouth to speak. Stops. Tries again. This is hard. "You asked about my dad. Whether I'd looked for him. I have. Off and on. I thought he was dead. My mom told me he died like a hero, went out in a hail of bullets saving the day. My aunt told me the truth when I turned eighteen. That he wasn't a hero, and that he wasn't dead, as far as she knew."

It's not the whole truth, but Neal isn't remotely ready to share that.

"So... I've looked. I've tried to stop looking. But I always end up trying again."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm managed a small but genuine smile at Neal’s reassurance. He didn’t know if he believed it, but he was still buoyed by the sentiment and Neal’s earnest commitment to it.

His expression sobered as Neal continued, his eyes focused on the other man’s face.

“It’s hard to let go of that connection, even if you want to,” Malcolm acknowledged softly. “Even if he’s despicable. Even if he’s evil. Even if what he did makes you physically ill.” He pressed his lips together. “He’s still part of what you are.”