Dale Cooper (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tapestodiane) wrote2012-12-03 12:49 am
tapestodiane) wrote2012-12-03 12:49 am
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!)
"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!)
action;
[Because you were happy, she thinks briefly. Because I had no reason to even think of doubting your face. Because, because...
She breathes in slow, tipping her head to regard him for a moment as she debates how much more to press. You should always ask questions when there's something you want to know. But she also knows there's a line between helping someone cope by talking about it and hurting them by forcing them to relive it.]
Did you shoot him?
[It's not an unreasonable assumption to make, not when she plays it out in her mind. The gun was there. He's a trained lawman; he's accepted a different set of inevitabilities than her own personal code. And perhaps taking a life on one of the few days in Johto when it would make the most difference would end up crushing him like this. The shock of doing it to someone with his own face...
She doesn't know. Maybe she's wrong. But things could add up that way, and either way, there are cracks beginning to split between them that will never be bridged until he lets her know what happened to render him like this.]
action;
[It's perhaps a surprising admission from someone like Coop, who cares so very much about people at large, not to mention doing the Right Thing. At the same time the answer is understandable because the circumstances couldn't be called normal by any stretch of the word - but it's more in his tone of voice. It's not regret or wishful thinking so much as a quietly presented fact.]
[There's all kind of interesting analysis to be made with that, isn't there? But there'd been something so utterly, fundamentally wrong in him (the other him) that he should have done something to stop.]
[Instead he'd found staring his own fear in the face too difficult to cope with.]
[And along with a haunted, hollow feeling, that's where the regret lies.]
action;
Something catches in her throat. It's hard to breathe, for a minute, because there's a lump there now that wasn't a moment ago and she can't seem to get it down. Four simple words and her eyes feel hot and this time she gives in to the urge to curl inward, drawing her knees up, bringing her shoulders down. She's pressing her lips together because she can feel them quivering, and even with the pressure she's applying, she can't completely suppress the movement at the corners of her mouth.
It's so wrong, the words, the tone, that she almost wants to shove herself up and escape — and she doesn't because she knows all too well that if she does, he'll let her go, and blame himself for that, too.
So instead she simply yanks off one of her gloves and presses her hand to her face, trying to anchor herself to the memory of Suhara's voice and failing rather badly as the situation sends her emotions reeling.]
Don't say that.
action;
[He's seen her vulnerable a few times before. Remembers in particular being called something missing when she had a hand curled into his jacket and he had his arms around her. This is different, and he only now really notices the physical distance between them with the way she purposefully or not is actually shielding herself from him.]
[And that hurts. It really does. He opens his mouth like he might protest, her expression or words or anything, but he swallows it and moves to reach out to her but doesn't quite finish the gesture.]
[He has a pretty good idea of what's wrong, but not what is wrong here, with this, between them and what it was that made her react so strongly.]
[He's seen her vulnerable before, but this isn't quite that. Not this kind of pain in her eyes, the way she's more visibly upset than he's ever known her to be.]
[He's never seen her cry, either. It's painful to realize that he just might.]
Carmen ...
[He hesitates, but then does touch her arm, shifts to regain some of that distance.]
action;
Confucius.
Suhara.
I bend and do not break.
Jean de La Fontaine.
Suhara.
She brings her hand down from her face and uses it to take his, instead. Her fingers are less graceful than usual as she entwines them with his, but her hand is dry and warm.]
I'm not losing you. Not to Johto, not to whatever you saw. And not to yourself.
[She breathes in, lets it out. That which bends, Carmen. The oak is mighty but the green reed survives the storm.
She looks down at their hands, then up to meet his eyes, blinking until the sting recedes.]
Figuring out what to do might be a journey of a thousand miles, detective.
[The reed bows to the storm. But it rises to stand tall again.]
action;
[To yourself ... it seems doubly appropriate now, doesn't it? It's a weird feeling he can't place, something at the back of his neck like being watched, that maybe he's lost already. But he'd like to believe that isn't the truth. And her determination, which might be rattled now but no less true to her character, the certainty she wills into those words: it's not exactly soothing, no. But it touches him.]
[Maybe that's enough, for the moment. To know that she's there.]
[He breathes in and tugs their joined hands gently towards him to press a light kiss to her knuckles in silent gratitude for that.]
[It means something.]
[The quote does, too, and there's a surprised - if weak - momentary smile when he looks up at her. He doesn't look much better, but maybe no quite so lost.]
I can't ask you to take those steps with me.
action;
There's a young man in him, too, beneath the fears and ordeals, the cases closed and the regrets still lingering.
And there is a time for the two of them, the thief and the agent, the fearless and the fearful, the mender and the martyr — but here, now, like this, it's time for just the two of them, holding hands in a quiet room an untold distance from anything either of them might call home, bridging worlds and crises and conflicts for the sake of staying together.
His doppelganger had asked her a question.
It's in the moment when his lips touch her hand that she thinks for the first time that she might know the answer.]
Then it's a good thing you don't have to.
[She shifts at last, uncurling, and moves to nudge against his side — there, undeniably close, and he can hold her if he chooses. But either way she's there, and will be, and in the end that's maybe all that matters.]
action;