063-064 » no matter how much / part ii (group B)

[villagemod]

WHO: Group B members only.
WHERE: Mathias Township proper
WHEN: Days 063-064
WHAT: Matthias becomes a little larger and a little smaller at the same time.
WARNINGS: (PM this account to have a warning added!)
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ DEADLY AVENGER "Raiju"

DAY 063-064
NO MATTER HOW MUCH
“No matter how much suffering you went through,
you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
— Haruki Murakami
At first, in the calm following the storm, nothing seems amiss. When the residents awake, it is to another glorious morning dawning in the unsettling paradise that is Mathias Township. Indeed, it does seem rather glorious that morning, for there is sunshine in a blue sky that has been cleared of any remnant of the angry storm clouds from the day before. But before long, residents will start to notice signs of something being not quite right.

It should be a familiar sensation to most by now.

It begins as just a feeling, a strange hint of something in the air, a nagging voice at the back of the mind. They can't quite put their finger on it but there is something. Something wrong, something that shouldn't be — which is quite a statement in a town where everything shouldn't be. But then the pieces will begin to come together.

A person has gone who ought to be there. This in itself is not a strange occurrence, for many have vanished and then returned, or not. This time, though, it is one person, and then two and three... A dozen people or more have gone, with no trace of their whereabouts to be found.

No resident is alone, thankfully. There are others who also remain: friends, acquaintances, strangers. Others who are just as trapped in this nightmarish place.

As the hours stretch on and residents begin to venture beyond their self-claimed shelters and move about the town, they will find that their fellow captives are not the only things that have vanished. The Chasm is gone as well, the crack in the earth that once stretched across and cut off the western part of town. There is not even the smallest mark to show where it had once been; it has gone so completely that some might wonder if they had merely imagined it.




THE NEW ARRIVALS
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake up on the lawn of Town Hall, at the center of the little town square. There are shops all around them, with houses just beyond, and at first glance, everything seems almost picturesque. Except for the silence that is at times so complete as to be maddening... Welcome to Mathias.

---

ABOUT THE NEW LOCATIONS
POPPY COTTAGE This bed and breakfast has a sense of casual elegance with the elusive quality of being both sophisticated and comfortable at the same time. Aside from being covered in dust and grime, of course.

PENHEW HOUSE Perhaps familiar to some in Mathias, this grand house is different from any of the others the residents have entered. It looks... new. Fresh. Clean. The usual thick layers of dust and grime that would be caked onto every visible surface are nowhere in sight; this absence may be a relief for some and unsettling to others. There are certainly other unsettling things to be found in this location.

THE OLD CHURCH Barely more than ruins, the property is marked by a crumbled stone outline that has no roof and only partial walls, nothing left inside besides a broken cobblestone floor.

BANEBERRY HALL From the outside, Baneberry Hall seems like your average rich person's house, but one would be mistaken to assume anything of the sort. Even the baneberries that cover the back lawn leading to the forest treeline are deceptive, for they appear harmless but are fatal to any human foolish enough to eat them.

The building is decaying from within. The rooms have begun to rot, from the parlors and libraries still done up in grand and expensive style to the bedrooms that have locks on the doors and bars on the windows. There are restraints in some of those bedrooms, while others are bereft of sharp objects. In the hall closets, there are identical sets of white pajamas of all sizes, and the offices have locked cabinets (that may be picked) full of a rainbow of sedatives (that will not replenish). The names on doors and in logbook lists are all smudged beyond legibility, and all paperwork has been water-damaged and weathered, leaving no indication of who may have been kept in those bedrooms or why. But within each room, there is an item that may be familiar to one of the residents now wandering its halls. As caked in dust and grime as anything else, each item is placed as if it belongs there, as if it might have been there for years. But it couldn't have been... could it?



ABOUT THE ITEMS FROM HOME
Within the unsettling walls of Baneberry Hall, residents may find OBJECTS that are uncomfortably familiar to them. Each item has one singular memory attached to it that, when touched in any way, will be experienced first hand, as if the person receiving it had lived it themselves. This person will endure all of the associated emotions and psychological reactions to the memory that the memory's owner experienced.

— Items may only be found within Baneberry Hall. These items from home are not all in one room or a specific location but instead are scattered throughout the bedrooms. (Only the items on this list are available to this group.)

— Ownership and possession of the item are important elements to this event. While the item is in possession of someone who is not its owner, it will continue to infect all who touch it with the memory that belonged to its owner. The item will also, before long, begin to make the possessor ill, both physically and emotionally uncomfortable and upset. This only occurs until the item is reunited with its owner, or until it is no longer in someone else's possession. (For example, if Person A finds Person B's teddy bear and carries it with them, they will continue to experience the bear's associated memory until they no longer have it in their possession, whether this means they have left it somewhere or it has been returned to Person B.)

— Recipients of memories will retain those memories even after the event has ended.

— When the owner of an item finds their item or has it returned to them, they will also experience the memory once themselves, having it returned to them as if they had just lived those moments again. The memory is only replayed once in their minds and then the memory effect of the object is gone. After this point, the item can be held by the owner or any others without consequence.

— If a person removes an item from its room in Baneberry Hall but does not remove the item from the property entirely, the item will be mysteriously returned to its original location when no one is looking. This is so that people do not have to keep close track of where items are going in the possible changing of hands, so the original owners can still easily locate the item without having to plan in great detail. Once an item is removed from the property, it will not return to its original location even if it is discarded by the possessor before reaching its original owner. Instances such as this should be planned among all involved parties, including the owner of the item.

— Once an item is removed from the property, please comment below so that information may be updated. Items that are not removed by the end of the event may reappear at a later time, so accurate records are essential.

— Before an item's memory is viewed by someone other than the owner, permission must be granted or requested for that memory to be viewed by another character. Because the experience is an uncomfortable one for the other characters, the viewing of memories not their own should ideally be kept to a small number.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER conditions remain fairly typical for early fall: warm days and cool nights. It feels almost like spring arriving except that there fewer red and orange leaves on the ground and more of them oddly returning to the trees and slowly fading to green. It's like watching one of those nature documentaries that have a timelapse of the seasons, only it's going in reverse.

— THE FOG has new boundaries.

— Residents may now wander the southern stretch of the forest surrounding Mathias Township — it is possible to leave the paths but potentially unwise to do so.
— The fog has also retreated from the western section of town entirely.
— Access to the northern section of the forest is still blocked beginning a few dozen yards past the treeline; this section of fog will urge residents to stay huddled within the town proper by inducing a physical reaction of panic and fear.

— DISAPPEARANCES AND DEATHS continue! Yennefer, Number Five, and Tony Stark have vanished and Ellie is still missing, though this may be difficult to tell with half the town also seemingly having vanished. Will Graham's body may be found within the ruins of the Old Church; he appears to have been frightened to death. (If someone decides to take care of the body, please report it below. For in-game reasons, this does not need to be coordinated across groups.)

— ALCOHOL supplies have run dry, save for any dregs that have been squirreled away by individual residents. Moonshine can still be acquired by those in desperate need.

---

OOC NOTES

— NEW MAP Thanks so much to Scy for yet another amazing new map of Mathias!

— UPDATES Don't forget to report updates as they come up! Changes to locations (like toppling a few bookshelves in the library), big plots you have coming up that will affect the game (parties, major property destruction, etc), or exciting discoveries that may tie into the game's mythology (even the things provided by the mod) are very helpful to have in one place so relevant page updates can be made. IC events are also helpful to know about in advance so they can be included in the log write-ups.

— MOD STATUS For those who don't know, I run a summer program that is set to start in just 2 weeks. We've only recently been given the green light to go ahead in person, so it's a scramble to get everything pulled together in time. My non-RP life is going to be busy and chaotic for the next while and I am thus asking for your forgiveness and understanding as things continue to be slow, as I cannot guarantee timely mod responses beyond weekends, and even that is not guaranteed.

— NEXT LOG Because of the aforementioned real-life chaos, the next log will be more relaxed and free form with everyone coming back together again and having a few chill days. It would be very much appreciated if some of the more intense investigations could be saved to take place in future logs, as the new locations that are opening up in this log will remain open in the next few at least and there will be plenty of time to explore all their mysteries.

— ITEMS FROM HOME The items from home remaining in Baneberry Hall will not be available past this log, at least not in this form, so if you would like to play with these elements, you should not sleep on this opportunity. More things may show up in the future but, for now, this is the main event.

— DW NOTIFS Back at the beginning of the year, the issue of missing email notifs was discussed in a code push plurk by Mark of the DW admin team. For those who missed it, the gist is that the issue with missing notifs is not going to be fixed anytime soon. The issue is so sporadic that the dev team has concluded the only way to possibly fix it is to redo the notification system entirely. This issue does not extend to DW's internal inbox, so short of checking every thread you're involved in, the DW inbox is the best way to make sure you're not missing things.

— ACTIVITY CHECK Beginning with June's AC (posted at the start of July), all tags that consist of only dialogue will count as 0.5 comments, not just those that occur in an inbox thread. This applies to both AC and AP totals.

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DAY 64 (cw: past institutionalization, addiction)

[bardish]

After yesterday's experience with the mirrors in the possibly-a-cult-house, Jeff tells himself he's going to stay home today, just noodle around on his guitar and... what, try to fill every moment of silence while he waits for himself or Athena to vanish next?

Yeah, so that plan doesn't last long. Jeff's still shaking off sleep (or, rather, last night's nightmares) as he writes Athena a quick note and heads out, retracing his steps back to Hill Lane. This time, he passes right by Penhew House, heading straight down Phillips Drive until he comes to Baneberry Hall. Yesterday, it'd felt too daunting, too imposing, to explore. He doesn't even know what he wants to find, if anything, but he's all caught up in the impulse to run, and fuck it, this is where that impulse has taken him. He's just curious and self destructive enough to push the doors open and step into the rot inside.

WANDERING MEMORIES:
Jeff's already got one foot in the past when he enters the manor, and each room he checks out just sends him farther and farther back. The decaying opulence is a far cry from Harmony Grove, but the restraints on the beds are familiar enough. He doesn't know how long he spends in the building, exploring the rooms, rifling through any papers he can find, driven by some desperation to learn about the former patients.

(Residents. The staff always called them residents, back in Harmony Grove. They always opted for that softer language, when they could.)

He doubts they were like him and the other residents, the patients here. They couldn't have been an assortment of Gifted misfits and fuckups. And really, whatever their diagnoses, Jeff isn't too interested in any that. He's just curious about who they might've been, as people. Maybe it's the quiet, and the loneliness, of Mathias, the days spent in this town where the only person he knows is Athena, who's too much a kid and a daughter to ever be a friend, but...

He's lonely. So here he is, chasing some possible connection in the ghosts of whoever stayed in these rooms. He wishes he could find their names, and ages, piece together some impression of who these patients were. Eventually, he might find a personal effect, and pick it up in his curiosity, only to be hit with a... vision? No, not a vision. It's like he lived it; it feels so real, and personal, and fucking... voyeuristic, he wishes he could wipe it from his head.

God, he's going to be sick.

Others exploring Baneberry Hall might find Jeff in one of the rooms, sitting on one of the beds, leaning back against the wall. He's singing under his breath, a note of desperation in his voice, trying his best to find some sense of calm and comfort after what he's just experienced.

Maybe your personal object is in the room with him, whether he's touched it and experienced your memory or not. Maybe somebody else's is in the room. Maybe there's no object, and you've seen his own memory. Maybe nobody's seen anybody's memory, and you just want to coax this weirdo out of the room. Regardless, there's probably something to talk about.

PETTY THEFT:
The first time he comes across a cabinet full of drugs, he leaves it alone. Not even a second glance-- well, okay, maybe he gives it a lingering glance, but he's not tempted to break in and take anything. Same with the second time he comes across a stash. Those days are long behind Jeff.

Or maybe they're not so long behind him. The longer he stays here, in this fucking rotting tomb of memories, the more his own past starts to creep up on him, closer and closer, until it's like his own ghost's got a hold of him. After enough time exploring, accidentally stumbling onto others' pasts, Jeff's half-convinced that he's wandering through some warped version of Harmony Grove, like if he looks in the mirror, he'll see himself, twenty-some years younger, doped up and half crazy.

The next time he comes across the drugs, he knows he should leave. He tells himself he should, even as he yanks the desk drawer open and roots around for some paperclips. Just turn around and walk out of this fucking room, he thinks, opening the paperclips up, fashioning them into makeshift picks.

He's rusty, but fuck, it's like riding a bicycle.

And he's not going to swallow any of these pills. Really. He's just going to... take them, for an emergency. Save 'em for a rainy day. It's fine. He's fine. He's got his shit under control.

[bestfuneralever]

The memory isn't a terrible one, not really. It's soft and sweet and he knows how much this man loves him. Isn't that a lovely thing? He loses the game, but he doesn't care because the time here is the perfect bubble away from the rest of the world. But he knows it's going to pop.

Because all good things must end, and self-destruction is so much easier than being honest, isn't it? Walking away from someone with a lie on his lips feels familiar in a way that buries itself deep into his bones.

Klaus frowns and stares at the Birkenstocks in his hand. Not his size anyway. He shakes his head and wanders out of the room into the hallway, nearly running into-- Jeff. Yeah, he was sure it was Jeff. "Hey, man.. uh- have you..." He points vaguely in the distance. "Seen... any weird shit here? Like- I feel like I was in a weird lucid dream state just now. And I think I was in the role you..." Explaining it out loud is.... weird. It doesn't make sense. How would that even happen? He holds his hands up in surrender, "I swear to God, I have not taken any acid." But boy would he if he found some in this place. Or maybe not, this town is freaky enough on his own, and it's the last place he ought to enter a bad trip in.

[bardish]

Jeff yelps and takes an abrupt step back, narrowly avoiding a full-on collision with Klaus. And though he's totally startled, a bit shaken, he still tries to mask it with a smile, like they're just bumping into each other at, like, a coffee shop or something. "Klaus! Hey!"

And maybe what the other man is saying sounds totally weird and insane, but Jeff doesn't need to hear the full explanation to know what he's talking about. He'd just been through it, himself, drowning in helplessness and terror in the shoes of a child, left in the dark with the monsters by his own father. God, that feeling of wanting just the smallest scrap of comfort from a parent, and knowing he wouldn't find it... It's nothing Jeff had ever known before, his own parents having always been this warm, supportive, loving... constant in his life.

The fear and desperation is still fresh in his heart, like he can practically taste it, and as he looks at Klaus, it clicks, this sense of familiarity blooming up from the memory he'd lived. This is the boy.

So he breathes out, listening, nodding, looking a little shell shocked... Then totally hugs him in a desperate cling.

"Oh Jesus-- Dude, I totally believe you. I get it, I--" He makes a face and pulls back. "Wait, hang on, what did you... What role?"

[bestfuneralever]

"Heyyy, man. You okay?" He asks, a genuine concern coating his voice. He gets being jumpy around here, it's a lot, and new shit cropping up? Never particularly spells good news around here. He doesn't know Jeff that well, but the bonds they make in this place happen at warp speed on account of all the shared trauma they go through in Mathias, and so far, Klaus had no reason to have any ill will toward the guy.

He has no idea why he's suddenly being hugged, but he takes it in stride, returning it in a tight grip of his own. "I'm pretty sure I just lived through you walking away from, like, your soulmate, dude..." And his voice is sorrowful at the idea of it, he idly toys with the dogtags around his neck because of course it makes him think of Dave, and the brutal way he was taken away from him. Shit, he hopes that isn't what people see about him.

[bardish]

Okay. Okay, maybe it's weird to up and hug Klaus like that, like he's only just been through some kind of horrible, fucked up ghost trauma with a side of child abuse. Obviously, whatever Jeff saw-- whatever he relived-- is at least twenty years removed from Klaus, so this isn't exactly an emergency hug situation.

"Sorry. Yeah, no, it's-- fine. I'm totally fine." In an attempt to be super casual and fine, he adds, "How are you?"

And the face he makes, when Klaus lets him in on what he'd just experienced, is one of absolute bafflement, his brows going up, then furrowing in thought. Soulmate? He's not talking about the divorce with Lisa, is he? As far as breakups went, it was, like, the absolute definition of amicable. Jeff opens his mouth, ready to assure Klaus that it's totally fine, nothing to be sad about, the whole thing was totally friendly and mature, and hell, she's the only ex he's even friends with. It's not like it was with--

Oh.

Oh.

God, he hasn't thought about Ayo in years. What does that even fucking say about him? Jeff breathes out, looking down, catching the way Klaus's fingers toy with a set of dogtags.

"He wasn't--" No, it feels wrong to say that. "Um. That was... It never would've worked. He was better off without me."

[bestfuneralever]

"And a terrible liar," he laughs softly, resting his hands on the other man's shoulders. "What is it? What happened? You see something too?" Whatever it might have been seemed to have really freaked him out. He hasn't made the leap that it was anything about him.

Jeff has the kind of face that just goes on an absolute journey when something strikes him a certain way. Kind of reminds him a little of Diego, in a way. A much softer, more open sort of way, but there's the vaguest familiarity in the fact all the same.

"You don't sound so sure of that..." Or maybe it's just hitting Klaus' ears all wrong?

[bardish]

"I, uh..." He looks at Klaus and tries to smile, like that'll assure him that everything's fine, but it just comes across as a wince, which is even less convincing. So he gives up on the act and just nods. "Yeah. I saw--" What your father did. No, he doesn't want to launch right into it like that. "--something bad. And sad. Kind of heartbreaking? I guess that's the theme of the day."

Understatement. He should just tell Klaus, outright, but he's still not sure just how to articulate what he'd seen.

As for his own conviction, he wants to dance around the truth and say he's sure, Ayo's probably living his best life without Jeff, everything's better this way, but he really can't bring himself to put it to words. Because the truth is, Jeff doesn't know. He's never followed up on Ayo, at first, too afraid to look him up. And in time, he'd just... stopped thinking about him.

"I guess I'm not sure," he admits, huffing out an unhappy laugh. "But I don't think I could've been his soulmate." He lifts his gaze again to fix Klaus with a weak, if sad, smile. "You know?" Because a soulmate wouldn't do something like that to a person. Lying, turning their back, abandoning them for twenty years.

[descendent]

When Elena picks up a pair of Birkenstocks, the last thing she expects is to be hit with a tangible memory that leaves a taste in her mouth. After Elijah's memory, this one feels bittersweet. It's sad and heartbreaking, but it thankfully doesn't leave the bitter aftertaste of blood and fear in her mouth and throat.

Despite wanting to drop the Birkenstocks and leave them tucked under a bed so she can find the owner—a Jeff C., a surname she'll remember when she experiences the memory over and over—and ensure that it's returned to him safe and sound, she doesn't want to risk someone else finding them and separating the two shoes from one another. So, she takes them, fingers looped through the buckles as she carries them as delicately as she can (they're not her possession, so they deserve some respect).

Finding someone she doesn't know isn't easy. She doesn't know his haunts, the places he likes to explore, if he's the type to wander into Baneberry Hall and touch every surface like a hungry child (like her). Eventually, though, lady luck—or simply Mathias—leads her to him. She doesn't have superhearing, but the quietness of Baneberry means she does.

When she hears singing, she spins on her foot and backtracks to the room where it's coming from.

And there he is, she thinks, sitting on a bed looking a little worse for wear. "Hi."

It's a stupid thing to say, but here she is, standing in the doorway with two Birkenstock shoes in her hands.

[bardish]

Shit-- an audience! Jeff trails off mid-note, the song seamlessly transitioning into a slightly embarrassed: "Ohhh... Hi."

Don't worry, Jeff's an expert at saying stupid things. He offers a quick smile, trying to look like he's totally got his shit together, even if he is hanging out in some kind of fancy, decaying prison, singing to himself like a total weirdo.

He takes a moment to look the girl over, and even if he doesn't know her, his heart sinks a little. She's young, looks to be about Athena's age. Another kid swept up in this messed up town. It's fucking unfair.

And then he notices the sandals in her hands and smiles, a little more cheerfully this time. "Heeeey, nice shoes! I've got a pair like that back home. They're sooo comfortable."

Priorities, Jeff!

[descendent]

What he feels is him being embarrassing is him being a breath of fresh air to Elena. At least he's not feeling beaten up by this place. At least there's someone here who can still bring themselves to look on the bright side even when the sky's so dreary and depressingly grey.

Elena smiles, looking down at the shoes in her hands. Well, at least he likes them. It'd be entirely awkward if he actually didn't like these shoes and never wanted to see them ever again.

"This is going to sound really weird, but…" Now it's her turn to look a little awkward. Sheepishly, she looks down at the shoes. "These are yours. I found them in one of the rooms."

[bardish]

"They're... mine?" Jeff's brows go up, looking from the shoes, to Elena, like he's trying to suss out if she's joking, in what would be a strange and terribly confusing prank.

He gets up from the bed, approaching her so he can get a better look at the shoes. Yeah... okay... Those are the exact same size, and color, as his pair back home-- and maybe that's even his foot imprint, too, he doesn't know; he's not that familiar with the specifics and nuances of his toes.

"They are mine. Get the fuck out of here!" He straightens up, eyes going wide and apologetic as he looks at Elena and quickly adds, "Sorry, sorry! That was just-- a startled, but not unhappy, exclamation! Not an order to actually get the fuck out of here, which would be way aggressive and rude and, ah..." He trails off with a sheepish smile of his own. "Sorry. These were in a room here?"

Like the haunted sobriety chip he'd found, the one that belonged to a child, who'd only had a number instead of a name, and who felt familiar in some way he hasn't quite placed yet. Was that child here, too? Does everyone have something personal here?

sorry for the delay, i ended up being a little sick last week!

[descendent]

No offence taken, Jeff. Elena smiles in amusement, liking the journey his face takes as he processes the fact she does, in fact, have his shoes. Well, now he has them. She can only hope that they bring him good memories.

"They were. I'm not too sure how they got there, but I just... couldn't really leave them. They looked so new, and I thought maybe they were someone's," she says with a sheepish shrug. "I'm glad that they are. They're a little too big for me."

It's only now that she realises that it could've been some Mathias "trap". Perhaps those clean shoes were a way to get her to do... something. The town had so many dead ends that she's not quite sure what the objective would've been if they weren't someone's shoes.

She holds out the shoes for him to properly and officially take. They are, after all, his Get The Fuck Out Of Here shoes.

np!

[bardish]

"Oh wow," he breathes out, still processing the fact that something familiar, something that's his, is right here in Elena's hands. "Thanks-- um, for not abandoning my shoes in this spooky asylum. That's really-- that's so nice of you, and-- I'm Jeff, by the way!" Because it still doesn't quite click with him that she might know that. That his shoes might be cursed the same way the sobriety chip was.

"Thanks," he says again, smiling gratefully as he takes his sandals off her hands. And as soon as his fingers touch the leather, he feels that same flood of emotions and memory that he did with the chip. It's like he's experiencing that day for the first time, all over again, but all of those hours are crammed down and condensed into a single second.

And it's not bad, really. Just bittersweet, and more than a little shameful. How long has it been since he's thought about that day? Since he's thought about Ayo at all? He sucks in a shaking breath, blinking away what might be tears, and very nearly drops the shoes.

They don't feel like anything special now. They're just... his shoes. Ordinary, mundane shoes.

"Sorry. Sorry, I, ah..." He rubs his eyes quickly and smiles weakly at Elena. "Crazy question, but did you... when you picked these up, did anything weird happen?"

Here he'd thought that the vision he'd seen with the sobriety chip was just a one-time thing. Just a particular curse on a particular object, nothing more.

petty theft

[setthetone]

Baneberry Hall.

Maybe he shouldn't spend so much time here. Maybe he shouldn't roam these hallways as if in search for something to do, in wait for someone to call out his name. What does it say about his mental state that he almost likes it here? Just because of the mere idea of this being a place where they once practiced medicine? Maybe bad medicine. Maybe awful death and torture village medicine. Horror movie medicine. Whatever.

For some reason, he'll take it.

Carter takes his time exploring every room, grabbing whatever he can use for the clinic - empty charts, a portable stretcher, other items that the rot hasn't claimed yet. It's good. Moving. Keeping busy.

When he sees Jeff, he's in full on work mode and the associations are like flashes. How to spot drug seeking behavior in the ER, 101. Or maybe that's just him and maybe that's just this place and maybe that's just wanting to be home so badly he almost rolls up on one of the old stretchers to close his eyes and pretend he's in Exam 1 for a nap.

"Mr. Givens?"

There is a puzzled look on his face when he stops in the doorway and takes in the scene.

"What are you doing?"

It's a stupid question, for more than one reason. One, you didn't have to be a genius to understand what was happening and two, well. Carter has had the very same idea. If maybe for less recreational reasons. Unless Mr. Givens had planned on bringing them to the clinic?

[bardish]

The lock gives just before Jeff realizes he's not alone, and thank fuck for that timing, because he's pretty sure he would've flinched and snapped the paperclip off in the damn thing if Carter had arrived just fifteen seconds earlier.

Of course, there's no time to pat himself on the back for his successful attempt at breaking into a cabinet full of drugs-- a feat that would've made his younger self very proud-- because now that he's got an audience, all he can feel is a sinking feeling of shame.

...it doesn't help that his audience thinks he's Raylan. Or that, for a moment, Jeff feels this terrible fucking impulse to just try to roll with it, like he can foist the consequences of his actions off on a man who doesn't deserve it. The fact that he even considers it for a second is enough to send guilt sinking down in his stomach like a stone.

Besides. There's not a chance in hell Jeff could pull off a remotely convincing Kentucky accent.

"Oh, uh... I'm not... Raylan. And I thought..." He gestures vaguely at the now-opened cabinet. "Medicine! Could be helpful, you know? For, um... people, in an emergency?" Well, he's not lying, exactly. It's mostly the truth! He's just omitting one important detail, is all.

[setthetone]

"What?"

For a moment he's dumbfounded. Not Raylan? That's right, the accent is different as are the mannerisms. A brother then? ... But wouldn't a brother have the same accent unless this is some weird parent trap bizarro event, Mathias style? Huh.

"Uh. Okay. Hi? John Carter, I guess we haven't... met then?"

It's just a lot of information at the same time and Carter's mouth opens, closes, while he's processing all this.

"Are you a doctor?"

He sounds almost hopeful. He was so happy about Caitlyn's arrival, having yet another doctor would be such a relief...

[bardish]

There's still some teeny tiny part of Jeff that's convinced this is absolutely a weird, cosmic parent trap situation, so he and Carter are at least on the same page where that's concerned.

"I'm J--" He drags the 'j' out for a moment, like he's debating giving some fake name just in case this goes south. But then, that would be totally stupid-- and pointless-- considering there's only about twenty people in this town, and he already looks like Raylan, so, how would an alias go, exactly? Best case, people just assume they're a set of mysterious triplets. "Jeff. Hi."

As for the question... God, he wishes he could say yes. There's a note of optimism in Carter's voice that he'd hate to dash. But here he goes, dashing it anyway.

"And, ah... No. More like--" He moves in front of the cabinet, peering at the bottles, before taking one and setting it on the desk behind him. Then another. "--a concerned citizen." He picks up a third and gestures with it, vaguely, as he looks back at Carter with a totally casual smile. "And former juvenile delinquent. So the lock was a piece of cake."

He sets that third bottle down with the other two. And if the other man takes a moment to get a closer look at the meds on the desk, Jeff's just going to suuuuper subtly slip another bottle of pills into his pocket with his free hand.

[setthetone]

"Right."

It's a very special kind of right. It's polite but it's also an unmistakably looking-through-your-bullshit right. Carter's eyes dart down to the bottle, up to his face again, clearly pondering his next steps, words.

"You know, there's no real way of telling if they're actually safe. Or how long they've been sitting here."

Look at that. He picked the appealing to reason approach. But he's already bracing himself for potential defensiveness or rationalization.

"I really think these should be for emergencies only."

[bardish]

...okay, that's a fair point. Jeff can't even find any dates past the 90s on any document here, and there's no telling what year it is, considering.... timelines and time travel and shit. For all he knows, these pills are decades expired.

Or they're still good. It's kind of a crap shoot.

Jeff hums thoughtfully, and nods. "Yeah. Emergencies..." he repeats, mild and agreeable. It's not like he has any plans on taking any pills recreationally, himself, so he'd like to think he sounds pretty sincere right now. The bottle of pills Jeff just slipped into his pocket? It's just... security. For a rainy day. He doesn't want to take it, but... "You never know when heavy narcotics might come in handy. Especially in a place like this."

MEEEEMORIES

[citharede]

Of course Athena goes to pick up the Birkenstocks when she sees them. She knows exactly who they belong to, and the weirdness of seeing them sitting in a room with restraints and tidy white scrub pajamas makes Athena's skin crawl.

So she grabs them without thinking.

And then drops them just as fast.

For a little while after that, she wanders Baneberry hall, a little dazed. Morbid curiosity, stupid impulse makes her touch a few more things before she wises up and keeps her hands to herself except for stealing some restraints for Malcolm. (He's going to need them when he comes back.)

It's the singing that draws her into the room where Jeff sits, and for a second she just watches him sitting in this little institutional room with his back against the wall, her skin crawling with a memory that isn't hers.

"Come on, Calhoun. Put a little force behind it."

Her usual levity doesn't quite carry through.

[bardish]

Jeff stops singing, huffing out a laugh before he forces a smile that he certainly doesn't feel. It's there, then gone, because he just can't pretend everything's okay right now. He can't, not with a shameful bottle of pills in his pocket, and Athena's shirt on the bed, folded up next to him.

(It seemed the respectful thing to do, folding it.)

The terror still feels fresh, even if Jeff's gotten control of his breathing, and his heart rate's dropped back to its usual, steady beats. A part of him wants to cry. Another part wants to shout and wreck something.

It isn't just Athena he's thinking about. It's, god, so many of his students over the years. It's Mel-- of course it's Mel. He knows how easily she could find herself in Robbie's situation, pinned down, arm twisted back-- god, she's so skinny, so slight, so fucking breakable. Mel, Robbie, Athena, his students...

They're just kids.

"Maybe I'm going for a very moody cover here. Unplugged and slowed down so a studio can use it in a movie trailer."

He tries to smile again, and fails again. Jeff wrings his hands together for a moment, guiltily glancing down at the shirt beside him and admits, "I've got something of yours."

[citharede]

Athena's breathing hitches a little when he says that. Thoughts cascading through a thousand possibilities, things he could have seen. Lived through. She feels small and scared and part of her is waiting, just waiting for him to say he's disappointed in her before she finds out for what.

"I... there's something of yours here, too, I. I should have hung on to it, tried to, but when I tried to--" She stops herself before revealing that she's seen Kirigan's past. "When I tried to bring something to someone before, I just... kept living through it, and..."

It was selfish, to leave his token or whatever where it was. She's not even sure which room it was in. "I'm sorry."

[bardish]

Now it's Jeff's turn to feel a little knot of dread, wondering what Athena might have seen, how many different ways he's shattered whatever impression she has of him as a good person, one of those rare men that she can trust. He swallows, then offers another smile-- reassuring, and real, this time.

"Listen to me, songbird. You've got nothing to be sorry about."

Fuck, he'd be the worst kind of selfish asshole to want her to relive his shit over and over again, just so he can get, what, some stupid trinket he probably doesn't even need?

He pats a spot beside him on the mattress, on the other side of the shirt. He doesn't want to just hand her the damn thing without warning, not if touching it means she'll relive that terrible night, too.

"C'mon, sit down. We can talk about... I dunno, anything you want to talk about. Or!" He holds up a finger. "Artfully avoid anything you don't want to talk about!"

[citharede]

Athena crosses the room with only a moment's reluctance. That pause, the fact that she ignores it, tells her more than anything how much she's changed. When she first got to Lenore's she would have bolted without thinking twice.

She sits down next to Jeff and leans against him immediately, lifting his arm and putting it over her shoulders. It's hard to make herself even ask the question--she can't look at him as she does. "What'd... you see?"

[bardish]

He leans against her in turn, squeezing her shoulders with his arm.

"I saw... two kids in Central Park, getting by with just each other. They seemed pretty happy. And they weren't doing anything wrong--" He tilts his head to one side, adding a facetious: "Dubious uses of the Gift aside."

Like he's one to talk. They both know it.

"And then... I saw what they did to you. To her-- Robbie." His voice gets a little tight, strained with anger that he tries to swallow back. "Those fucking--" He stops himself, takes a deep breath and tries to let go of a hurt that isn't even his to own. "Fuck... I'm sorry, kid. That-- what happened to you two-- it wasn't mine to look at. If I'd known what was going to happen, I never would have picked it up."