tapestodiane | 032 - action/audio

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032 - action/audio

Sometimes, being right isn't all that gratifying. In actuality, it can be devastating, especially if there's bad thing coming. Cooper wouldn't claim to have foreseen what would happen during those days; in fact, won't claim to be able to foresee anything. But he'd had a feeling, had been bracing himself, and yet he'd been completely unprepared for what happened and the things he saw.

"I don't know what to do", he tells his audio recorder (not Diane) later in the day, voice uncharacteristically choked. It's the simple truth in light of everything he can recall - actually recall, not just piece together, and that alone is worrying in a whole new way.

He's trying not to think about all that, not yet. And for the next few days he's still trying to clear his mind, even if his motions are distracted and his focus is shaky and his thoughts are stubborn and loud. Whatever is happening, it's escalating, but he feels powerless when it comes to stopping it or even figuring it out.

He wouldn't even assume he had the right question to ask, were he given the chance for an answer.

[Action for Justice Farm: When he wakes up the day he'd normally have been (mostly) mind-wiped, he's still exhausted. Most days will find him in the kitchen with his hands around a coffee cup and none of the usual enthusiasm for the beverage inside, staring distantly out the window with the look of someone who hasn't slept at all. It's a change from his usual demeanor, but whatever is going on in his mind, he doesn't seem all that inclined to share.]

[Audio, for the network, backdated to the 29th:] I'll keep it brief: who else can recall this weekend with a lot more clarity than the previous ones of its kind?

[Action for Saffron: He's around, so feel free to bump into him. He's been on quite a few walks lately. Walks are good.]

(KIND OF BACKDATED and spans all days from 4th wall end til like yesterday, so feel free to bump in with whatever, whenever!)

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[I don't know what to do, either, she wants to say — a rare admission for her, so perpetually confident and in control of her circumstances — but maybe the difference is that she still has resilience to her where his has been eroded away, and she may not know what to do but she knows she will, somehow, because she always has and there's no reason to believe that this time will be any different.

(And yet it doesn't escape her, the cruel poetry of it. The higher one climbs, the further one has to fall. And to think just a handful of days ago, they'd both been so happy.)

She should fix this, like she fixes everything else. This should be a puzzle with an answer that she only needs to find, and then it will be solved and they can lay it to rest.

More and more, she's growing to appreciate that not everything works that way.]

Come here.

[She offers her hand, careful and unimposing. There's poetry in that, too.]

_{[For a moment, he doesn't move. For a short moment he has this absurd idea - and he's well aware of just how unreal it has to be and puses it away as soon as he identifies it - that if he moves away from the wall, the window, something might happen. He'd like to say he doesn't give into that belief, but fact of the matter is that even though nothing happens when he eases himself away from the wall, he doesn't make it over to her.]

[Instead he turns his head towards the window, one hand pushing his hair away from his forehead in a distracted but slow motion.]}

The birds came back to me.

_{[And with them, something else.]

[He can't help it. His voice is getting a little thick.]}

[And it's frustrating, somehow, that she can hear that sentence and know exactly what he means, and yet still be completely in the dark as to what it means. It's earning a single new piece in a puzzle without holding enough of them to even yet show its shape. What's made him this way is the birds, and she knows why they frighten him so — he told her once, finally, the night he told her about his mother and the dream she'd —

...Dreams.

They'd all thought the lost days were dreams.

Something scared you. But it wasn't just that I disappeared.

I told you what we can remember from the days we lost probably happened.

And the only difference now is that they didn't lose them this time.

The birds came back to me.

He'd told her he'd had that dream, too.]

In the forest.

[She closes the distance. She has to. Even if what she'd seen was as real as the horrors haunting him right now, even if there's still the nagging thought that this lamb's wool might yet hide a wolf inside. She'll let it happen if she has to. She'll gamble on it.

She's not wrong, and she can't rescue him from his own fears if she's willing to let her own control her.

She draws in, within arm's reach, and risks a touch to his shoulder.]

They can't have you.

[And that's...strange, because she meant to say they can't hurt you, but that one word slips and makes all the difference.]

_{[The touch doesn't transform him. He's still as far from a wolf as you can get. What happens is that he turns his head towards her again, and there's surprise in his eyes at her words. Then he does take that step towards her, and without seemingly being aware of when he did that exactly he's touching her face. But he's still at an odd distance, a space between them their hands aren't bridging.]}

I wish that was your call to make.

_{[Earnest, vulnerable, and surprisingly easy to admit in her presence because she's the only one who knows. He doesn't talk about the birds or his mom, but he'd told her - and maybe another reason he feels he can trust her with this, his wounds and scars, is because she's trusted him with some of hers.]

[They can't have you ... there's nothing he can believe about that. They've had him his whole life. Yet still, he's trying to keep it from his mind, or at least the forefront of it.]

[And it's showing. Because there's a lot to hold back, to get a grip on and manage and just try to understand.]}

[She wants to cover his hand with hers, the same familiar way she's done so many times before, but something keeps her from it. It's as though to do so this time would be to acknowledge the space between them, acquiesce to it, let him keep her at this odd arm's length with a chasm widening between them. And she knows what he's doing. It's what he always does — parry, deflect, turn the concern away, double it back to where he thinks it's needed more. He's standing here broken and trying to comfort her because he thinks it's a better use of the comfort, that there's no point in wasting it on him.

And somehow, the thought just makes her angry.]

Don't do this.

[Again, the words slip out almost before she realizes she's said them, but this time they're precisely what she means. But there are a dozen different sets of unspoken words that might be added to the end of it; don't do this to yourself, don't do this to me, don't do this to us. Don't. Don't let everything fall apart like this.

She pulls away from the hand on her face.]

This much is my call to make.

[She eliminates the distance, fearless, and takes him in her arms.]

_{[In a way, he should have expected that kind of thing from her, but Carmen was always good at keeping him on his toes - that's only one of the many things he finds so attractive about her. Maybe it's because of the way he put that bit of distance between them earlier that he doesn't see it coming. But suddenly she's not there, and then she is.]

[He breathes in through his nose in that slightly upset way but it's really not hard to just lean on her, to return the hug and sort of sink into her shoulder and stare at the opposite wall like it's a suicide note. He finds comfort in the way she hugs him, kind of has to if only because he can't find it anywhere else. But in the end it's not just that - it's also because it's her, it's Carmen, and though his attachment to her is]

[dangerous]

[that still makes him hug her back, like maybe to say that he's sorry, or like he can't quite let her go despite what his ... other self ... had meant, had done.]

[Because it weighs heavy on his mind, the simple recollection of a too-wide smile a bit too close, and he has no idea what to do about it. Birds - they're only half the truth, but it's the easiest part of it to share. Her response to it is what pushes a few other things to the forefront of his mind.]

[Including himself, eyes dark, empty.]

[And distantly, Windom and Caroline.]

[His finger on the trigger.]}

[Even this isn't enough, she thinks with a sort of hollow clarity. She's adjusted to the thought of embraces like these, but there's still an element to them that's unfamiliar; holding him like this is many things — an extension of comfort among them — but there's nothing about a hug that rings as a remedy to her. She's spent her life without them, picking herself up when she fell and carrying on without this sort of support, and so trying to give it is still strange to her. Maybe that's why it becomes so clear so quickly that it isn't working; because in some unconscious sense she never thought it was something that could work in the first place.

It's not about holding him. It's not about assuring him of her presence. He knows these things, and has them already. No, it's about bridging that chasm that's opening between them, and physical proximity isn't enough to do it when the divide is one of emotion.

She doesn't need to embrace him. She needs to reach him.

And yet...

She pushed too hard with the birds, the first few times around. She thought she could solve it if she could only find the answer, could push him into a solution without making him a part of the decision. It had worked for Suhara, when she'd done the same thing to help him, but...]

You don't have to figure this out alone. You don't have to do it by yourself. You don't... [She trails off, reconsiders, whispers.] You don't deserve this.

[She frees one hand and reaches up, combing the fingers gently through his loose hair in the hopes that it'll get him to focus on something besides whatever horrors are running through his mind right now.

And if he looks at her like this, maybe he'll catch a glimpse of how much this is killing her, too.]

_{[He does look at her, does see it, because her words make him withdraw enough to watch her face. It's a somewhat urgent motion, like he's all to ready to protest what she's saying, but he doesn't actually say anything. Not at first. He just watches her and feels it all slowly coming, her pain about the situation magnifying his own, his eyes stinging ...]

[Heather had told him precisely that once before. AJ and Rainbow Dash had been adamant about similar things. And now when Carmen is telling him, it strikes him in a way that makes his breath catch and he has to swallow something down to find it again.]

[He remembers what he told AJ, back then: It's the only way I know how.]

[Yet ...]

[It's almost with a shiver that he leans forward again, this time like a slow fall with his forehead coming to rest lightly against hers, and he closes his eyes, feels her fingers still in his hair.]}

It's still happening.

[He whispers it back. It doesn't matter what he deserves or not. It's still something he has to deal with.]

Shhh.

[She settles her hand into a slow and even rhythm of stroking through his hair, aiming to lull and soothe him with the consistency of the touch. In the back of her mind, there's the tiniest pinprick of something like apprehension, standing with his face so close like this (what big teeth you have), but the petting is as distracting for her as she hopes it is calming for him, and for a period she lets them linger there wordlessly, listening to the sound of his breathing as it softly breaks the silence.

Eventually, she tips her head slightly, brushing noses as the hand in his hair shifts to momentarily rest against the back of his neck.]

Things happen. You don't have to face them by yourself.

_{[That's easier said than done. But he's starting to realize that that's exactly the kind of thinking that he entertains to allow him to keep doing what everyone is asking him not to do.]

[But that still doesn't change the fact that it's difficult. He's just having a hard time pinning down exactly why it is so damn hard to agree, to say "yes", to let someone help. Because how could they?]

[And how could he?]

[Her petting does calm him, though, especially with the silence. It doesn't help his thoughts much, but it does help him get a slightly better grip on them. So when her hand moves and he listens to her, he opens his eyes to look at hers.]

[He makes a leap (low, slightly cracked, yet still clear), but for the wrong reasons.]}

I saw myself.

[For a moment, she goes cold.

They were going to have to talk about it sooner or later. She knows that. She's known it ever since she woke up and found that she could still remember it, the kind face morphing into something wild, the gentle eyes suddenly alight like black coals. Sooner or later, it was going to come up, and now it has.

Her heart skips, then races; adamant, she forces herself to stay calm. The arrow will fall when it is ready. These are lessons she knows.]

I did, too. Something that looked like you.

[It scared her, and she doesn't hide that. But that's different than being afraid of it. Being scared, that's a fleeting feeling, an alarm response. Staying afraid of something...that controls her. That's something she won't allow.]

_{[Just like that, he draws back, worry and fear in his eyes again when he watches her. There are no signs of injury - he would have been able to tell already if there were. But that doesn't mean anything. And even if it did, a lot of damage can be done without being physical and he knows this better than most.]}

Did ... are you hurt?

_{[Had he hurt her? Or if it wasn't really him (and he wishes desperately for it not to be), what was it, and why ...]

[And unlike her, he IS afraid. His life has in large parts been dictated by the fact that he always, to some level, is. And that's not going to start now.]

[Now, he's afraid for her. And them.]}

No. I'm not hurt. I'm fine.

[She says it rapidly, maybe too much so, in her haste to set his fears at ease. But he's right to be afraid, she thinks in the moments that follow after; how would she feel if their positions were reversed, if he'd seen her with a monster's face?

(Sarah Bellum did exactly that, once — stole her identity, masqueraded as her, kept her in captivity while she carried out her own destructive plans. Sarah is no monster, but the analogy is fair. She got what was coming to her, too.)

She doesn't try to bridge the distance again, letting him have his space while she simply breathes and centers herself. What will help most is staying calm, reasoning rationally. She can't combat his fear if she's preoccupied with any of her own.]

It startled me. I knew it wasn't you, but.

[But she indulged. Always a bad habit of hers.]

...I'm rattled. That's all. I wasn't...expecting what happened. That's all it is.

_{[He doesn't let go of her completely, doesn't think he could. But he runs one of his hands through his hair again and he's looking away from her for a moment to gather himself, real distress in both his stance and his expression. He makes absolutely no effort to cover that up when he looks back to her.]

[He doesn't have to ask how she knew it hadn't been him. It had been easy to tell. He hates that he even knows.]}

What happened?

Come sit down.

[One of the flaws of the Justice Farm bedrooms is that the house is old and the furnishings are as yet still sparse; one of the hotel rooms in the city would've had chairs, a small couch, sometimes even a window seat. Here, there's not as much, and for lack of a better immediate alternative, she simply sinks down to the floor, leaning on the wall the same way she had in the hallway. She could try to move him further, probably, but she suspects he wouldn't follow. This, at least, might stand a chance of getting him off his feet, and closer toward the capacity to relax.

The carpet, at least, is soft despite being a little worn in places, and it doesn't take much to get some semblance of comfortable. Certainly moreso than standing, anyway. And this has other advantages, too. It's less personal, less reminiscent, than trying to get him over to the bed.]

Come on. Then we can talk as long as we want.

[Then we can stay together, she thinks, as long as we both need to.]

_{[And he does follow suit, even if only so he can still watch her face. Watching for anything now, any sign of what might've happened, anything to indicate that she's not as okay as she says, or that she ... well, that something might be wrong between them now, too.]

[Who's to say the other him wasn't really him?]}

I'm listening, _{[He says kind of breathlessly once he's on his knees, his hands reaching for hers. It's quite an obvious request, even a plea. There's nothing he wants more right now than to know what happened between her and - well, him - so that he can know how to tackle it, both as a problem, that he has to fix or alter or remedy -- and as a riddle, something to be solved and understood.]}

[She doesn't begin right away. She takes her time first, as much for her own sake as for his, adjusting her legs until she finds a position that will be comfortable for the long haul. It's going to be a long haul, she knows that much already; there's no possible way it can't be, considering what's happened and the implications it might hold for the two of them.

But once they're settled, she doesn't waste time with hesitation, either. The words may be quiet, careful, but they're not weak or uncertain by any means.]

I was out. It always seems I'm...out, days like that. At least, I have been both times it's happened. [It's a delicate way of saying she had a heist on her mind; she's not about to deny it, but that's another debate entirely, and not one they need to get into now.] You — no. He was there, but I could tell it wasn't you. I just...knew.

[She presses her lips together slightly, a little put off at that. Intuition is fine, but she feels as though she ought to have a better explanation than the only one she does.]

He asked about you. That isn't how I knew the difference; I knew it before then, already. But he was...curious. About you. And me.

[And now she does slow down, more careful — not scared, not shaken, but there's an odd and hollow way the memory reflects around her eyes.]

He told me to be careful. And then —

[Her brow furrows and she shakes her head slightly, her gaze turning down to the floor beside her as she tries to recall something that isn't quite there. She knows what she saw — but where are the words to capture it?]

_{[... curious. The chill he gets from the world is only topped by the keyword succeeding it: careful. Be careful. How many times haven't he heard it used as a threat? And how much doesn't it sound like something foreboding and dangerous in this context?]

[Her trailing off doesn't help, either, and he squeezes her hands in his, but it's more for his own comfort than hers. He swallows - his mouth has gone dry - as he looks down as well for a moment.]

[But when he looks up again he's scared and intense when he searches for her eyes, his own shiny and wide and urgent.]}

Carmen, _{[And he has to clear his throat,]} did he- did he say anything about fire? About burning?

_{[Loaded and significant and if she says yes, then ...]}

[It's the way he trips over his words that makes her look up, accompanied by a new rush of concern. It's not hard to see that this is one of those terrible questions, the ones that render a person simultaneously desperate for an answer and yet dreading what might come. And his sudden urgency sparks something off in the pit of her stomach, too — a faint twist, because he knows something, he's waiting for something, and whatever she says next will either confirm it or not.

(Calm. She's calm. It's not normal for her to be so affected by someone else's distress — but then, it's not particularly usual for her in the first place, the relationship she has with him.)

She thinks carefully back, tracing the lines of memory as best she can remember, letting her focus drift to a point far away — a sharp contrast to how intently he's still watching her.]

No. He knew things about me, but he didn't know that. It was only things you would've known.

[Which is still a remark loaded and significant, perhaps, but not in the way he's expecting.]

_{[... yeah. Yeah, it is. There's a change in his expression when he releases the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, but it's incredibly mixed in both relief and falter and a double-take as he tries to mentally regroup. What she says eases one problem but presents an entirely new one, one he's not sure how to ...]

[There's a hand over his mouth again, briefly, then through his hair and of course there's still fire in the picture.]}

What kind of fire?

_{[Still low, very much between them, quiet but no less intense.]}

[She takes a minute to just look at him, silently, and almost finds herself wanting to smile; how long has it been since the moment she first recognized how good he is at getting her to say things she wouldn't to anyone else? That's a gift that goes back long before she ever knew his face, and it hasn't gone away yet.

A person can't go for long, seeing and doing the things we do, without facing down at least one run through fire.

She's had several, herself. Some were at the hands of madmen who would've liked nothing more than to see her go down in flames. But one...]

The headmistress told me I smelled like smoke, when the policeman found me on the streets of San Francisco. And I remember fire. More than that...

[She shakes her head, tipping her head back to rest against the wall behind her.]

It's the earliest memory I have, and even that much is fuzzy at best.

_{[He still hasn't figured out what the fire is. But whether this was a fire, just a fire, or something more ... were he in his normal state of mind, he'd like to think he'd look at it critically, note it for the record and keep an eye on any possible connections. Now, he just absorbs it as the pattern repeats itself.]

[There's something frantic in his eyes when he thinks about it, wonders if that's how her parents disappeared - dead? missing? - and what kind of marks it would have left on her. He remembers the locket around her neck, of course, but that's not it, not quite ...]

[Instead, a note written in blood presents itself at the forefront of his mind. And distantly there's an echo of Heather saying something about fire being a thing.]}

I don't know what it means. Fire, destruction, ruin ... sometimes passion, but just the passion for chaos alone-- but that's what he is.

_{[Whatever he just figured out, he's not explaining it, but he's still looking at her as he speaks.]}

It doesn't fit.

[She listens quietly, watching him watch her, biting back the vague inchoate feelings of apprehension at the intensity in his eyes, the odd character of his voice. It doesn't mean anything, she knows, but it's still a marked shift from before and the last time she went along with a marked shift from someone wearing his face —

She shakes her head, frees a hand, and reaches out to snap her fingers in front of his face, a reasonable but short distance from his nose.]

You did this the last time, when it was your old partner we were talking about. If it's important enough to make you worry about me, it's important enough to warrant telling me more than just the bits and pieces you think it's safe for me to know.

[She remarks, following it up with a light brush of her knuckle over the curve of his cheek.]

_{[Whatever he'd been going to say next is silenced in the sheer 'wait what' of what she just did, but in a way it might have been exactly what he needed. Just the simple request to know, to be let in on what is going on. And it's a fair one, even if he doesn't think he can gather himself to tell her everything.]

[But it makes him stop and try to focus, which helps the way he's riling himself up.]}

There are more things in the world than we realize. _{[He says it after a moment, softer than before, but still with a faint split to his voice.]} When things happen that we can't explain ... sometimes that's my job. To find the reason.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

[She quotes it back just as softly, still watching, still intent on keeping him grounded. That's what it seems to have come down to, at this point; that once again, just like before she came in, he's tempted to drift away on his own thoughts, and she's the only one holding him down to make sure he stays where he ought to.

And what a reversal that is, isn't it — that for once, he's the one slipping away, and she's the one pursuing.]

You can't think my past has something to do with what I saw.

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