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]

Between their presence and Doc's reassuring hand, Malcolm's tension eased palpably, despite some remaining fidgets and uneasiness.

He looked at Raylan and then Doc.

"...The brewery? You're.... not going to go alone are you?"

[tinstar]

Raylan was sure this would all look comical to someone - three men, just on the edge of being ill fitted on the couch, not doing so great and all looking a little bit like they'd just come back from war. But it somehow felt just right for such a morning. He tried to not pay attention to the return of a warm weight next to him or the tension that just broke, focusing on the conversation at hand instead, like it was a raft for his attention.

"You can take Neal, I'll take Negan and Malcolm can check on the lanterns, but the brewery can wait. Least until after breakfast. If the house is still there, it's probably fine. Shit," he said as he propped his elbow on his knee and rubbed at the bridge of his nose and the impending headache. "It probably needed the chance to age. Let's get one house in order at a time."

But there was a sense of urgency around confirming who else was in the house and one that wouldn't let Raylan stay comfortably where he was, sending the Marshal pushing to his feet with a heavy breath. "Then some coffee."

[thering]

"Yes sir." All the things he had been worried about for Neal were slowly coming back to him. The gap in his memory about the attack seems normal enough but the state of him. The blood loss. That wound dressing probably needs changing, too.

He'll be needing his hat too. Can't remember where it ended up two nights ago though.

"We left the lanterns out in the garage," he tells Malcolm quietly, slowly pulling his arm back. He's not in as much of a rush to get to his feet but he'd gotten up once already to get the fire going. Once he's up again he won't be sitting back down.

"Been two days. They would have gone out." Leaning away from Malcolm, Doc reaches into his pocket for the box of matches he'd used for the fireplace and holds it out towards Malcolm.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm watched Raylan go like he wanted to say something but didn't, then looked at Doc as he spoke. He took the matches, looking down at them for a moment before leaning over and flinging his arms around Doc's neck in a tight hug.

Then he got up like nothing happened and headed towards the garage.

[tinstar]

Raylan nodded at the 'yessir' and headed up the stairs with a hand through his hair. He would have liked to stay on the couch for a few minutes longer, but that pesky responsibility towards other people had him moving with no regard as to what the Marshal wanted.

But that wasn't in the cards for him, nor was any hugs, so he kept on up and to the left towards Doc's room. Leaning against the door softly, Raylan opened it slightly with a gentle turn of the knob and peeked in through the crack. Well, that sure was a body there and it moved it it was breathing - Raylan would take the guess that it was Negan. Either way, the person was alive and that satisfied him well enough.

"Negan's there," he whispered to the upcoming Doc before heading back down and towards the kitchen. That coffee was going to be needed. He glanced to the right as he hit the first floor again, noting the open door to the garage and shivering at the draft it introduced. Yeah, they were going to have to stoke the fires today.

[thering]

Doc seemed a little stunned, and by the time he decided he ought to maybe react to it Malcolm was already halfway to the garage. It seems like today is going to be the day for close contact. But considering that they had just spent the past two days apart, he supposes he'll allow it. Just for this morning.

As long as they don't talk about it. Man up and get their shit together by the time breakfast is getting half-made.

"Okay," he says quietly, turning to give Raylan some space back into the kitchen. He tries to be a little quiet himself, heading up, avoiding the particularly creaky steps. He doesn't want to wake either of them if they're still asleep. Neal in particular needs the rest.

He does make it further into the room, padding over to the bed quietly, just to be sure it's Neal and that he's not pale or breaking out in cold sweat or doing anything other than sleeping like a baby. When Neal looks okay, Doc pulls a bit more of the blanket up to cover him properly before taking a mini-detour to swipe his hat up on his way towards making his way back downstairs.

"Maybe we should bring a mattress over from 1307," Doc muses as he hits the kitchen. Malcolm is out of earshot if he keeps his voice low. "Much as I don't mind your company I don't think you want me smothering you on the couch all the time if we have guests stayin' over."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm returned from the garage with Doc’s matches, holding them out as he drew near.

“They’re all gone,” he reported, shifting his weight back and forth, wringing his hands once they were free of the matches. “All gone.”

[tinstar]

The coffee was just being started as Doc came back and Raylan glanced at him in a half greeting before turning to lean his ass against the counter and cross his arms and ankles. Yup, gonna stay right here til he could have a cup.

"I've got my chair, you can have the whole of the couch to yourself. Mattress in the living room ain't a great look but we might have to consider it at the rate we're pickin' up people." He didn't sound annoyed or angry about it, they weren't going to talk about this morning, so there was no reason for anything to be weird.

He looked over at Malcolm as he came in, frowning gently. "Gone?" He glanced between them. "What's bets on this place takin' them back? Sure as shit no one stole them - they got their own and plenty layin' about."

[thering]

"Could keep it leaning on a wall somewhere until it's needed," Doc suggests. Maybe not the garage where it's cold and would absorb a lot of moisture. It's of no use to them in 1307 sitting there unused, in either case.

"Gone?" Doc, who had been perched in his favourite kitchen island barstool with one arm draped over the backrest and one leg hanging off dangling close to the floor, looking entirely out of place like he should be at a saloon than in this nicely done up house, reaches out to take the matches back, plucking it out of Malcolm's hand. Holding matches kicks up a fierce itch for something to smoke but he quells it, staving off the craving until later.

"Could walk the perimeter and look for any signs of a break-in but I doubt we would find any. Probably vanished as mysteriously as we did." He purses his lips and turns up an empty hand in a casual shrug. "Did you see any lanterns wherever you ended up?" he asks the both of them.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shook his head, wrapping his arms around his middle to tuck his hands under his elbows, swaying faintly where he stood.

"And I searched pretty thoroughly. I had to... look for some things."

[tinstar]

"Me either," he replied with a similar shake of his head. "No sign of the gap on any of the maps that I saw either, but Mathis has.. been around for a while. A little surprising that it's not more built up." But that was something else to chew over later.

"We'll have to keep our eyes out," he continued, nodding faintly before he turned around to pull down three cups and pour out for all of them, walking over Doc and Malcolm's cups together before getting his own. "After breakfast. I got a feelin' all of us could use a little protein."

[thering]

All this talk of what they had found in the respective places they ended up in reminds Doc of the photo he had taken from the mirror. He reaches into his trackpants' pocket, eyebrows in a deep furrow as he reaches into the one on the other side. Where's the photo?

Turning over his shoulder, he checks the floor just in case. Maybe he had dropped it upstairs?

"1872 was the date on the oldest photo... you didn't see one on the ground, did you?" Maybe the house... took it back, somehow.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm reached for the mug when Raylan brought it, wrapping both hands tightly around it in an effort to keep it from shaking too much.

He looked between them. Maps and photos.

"You guys saw... new maps and photos?"

He'd been in a location that fellow captives had been combing since before he arrived.

"What... sort of maps and photos?"

omg *trackpants*

[tinstar]

"Photo?" Raylan echoed shifting up off the counter in interest. "I didn't see any photo." Fallen out or otherwise.

"Just maps and dates and keys for me. Oldest was 1701 to 1801." He looked over at Malcolm. "One of the studies in the mansion had a.. I'd call it drawin' room more than a study, but it had four maps surrounded by twelve skeleton keys. I didn't recognize anything on the maps, but.. They said Mathis Township," he explained before looking over at Doc.

"What was the picture of?"

someone take the lululemons away

[thering]

"I suppose the house took it back." Which is, oddly enough, not the strangest thing to have come out of Doc's lips during his time here.

"Map of the town as it has changed over the years, I suppose. But it had nothing you recognised? Not even the town hall or the lighthouse? Maybe they were erected after 1801." He's not necessarily surprised that this town is at least 300 years old. Some places must be thousands of years old and the landscape has just changed drastically throughout time.

"We had a dozen photographs of a group of people standing in front of a big old house, throughout a similar time. 1700s to 1800s. Could have even been the house I was in. Didn't get a chance to see it from the outside. Mister Five had the same photo, dated 1964. Some of those faces looked the same throughout. It don't make much sense if you ask me - don't have many friends that are as long-lived as myself."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm's eyes widened a little at their descriptions.

He looked at Raylan.

"You... didn't happen to figure out what the keys were for, did you?"

[tinstar]

"Makes sense," he muttered with a deep sigh as he tongued the side of his teeth. "Also explains why I don't have the bottle I went to bed with." Dammit.

He looked over at Malcolm with a deep inhale, answer with his outbreath. "Some of 'em were for a couple of the locked doors, but some of 'em didn't seem to go to anything we had access to." Raylan had no doubt that the keys were meant to be used in the house, even if they didn't figure out how to get to all of the locks they fit in.

He looked back at Doc. "But nothin' on the map fit with anythin' I'm familiar with. Not even the Town Hall. I think someone said somethin' about a fire they found evidence of. Coulda taken out everthin' they had up until then," he offers with a turn out of his hand. "You find anythin' with your pictures?"

[thering]

There's a joke there about going to bed with bottles that Doc won't make.

"The same fire as the one that got the library, perhaps?" That was the only building so far to have looked to have been touched by the fire. Apart from the ones that are too run down to investigate, or already in ruins.

"Couldn't do much I'm afraid. If we were in the house that the photographs were taken of, we could not go outside to confirm it. The power went out yesterday and between the phantoms in the everchanging number of mirrors watching us, the strange noises and wondering if those with the swirl on their palms were going to die first, we were kept sufficiently preoccupied to not give much thought to the photographs."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looked back and forth between them.

Phantoms and photos and mirrors and keys?

"Nothing happened where I was." A beat. "Nothing that I didn't... do," he added, squirming a little. "There were some weird noises from the attic and the basement, which we couldn't get into. The power went out at night. But... it was the boarding house. Just. The boarding house where everyone lives."

He looked at Raylan. "Bottles?"