tapestodiane | 028

[He's ever so friendly, ever so charming — just a respectable middle-aged man with graying hair, too-bright eyes, a curling smile.

You'd never guess he murdered his wife, and came very close to doing the same for the man in front of him.

His stance is nonchalant, his whistle in one hand, the other in his pocket. He gestures lightly with the whistle when he speaks.]

I could tell you a great many things, Dale. This place is a land filled with mysteries. Would you like to hear some of the ones I've deduced?

_{[Coop is aware of it, and acutely aware of how it can be used as a weapon and that he himself has very little other than a selection of pokéballs on his belt - that he can't trust, he realizes, knowing that sometimes when these things happen your pokémon aren't normal, either, or won't listen.]

[But other than a very brief (but telling) glance towards it, he keeps his eyes on Windom's, meeting the challenge in them with caution.]

[He doesn't say anything, but tilts his head forward in a slight nod. He's so sure he doesn't want to know. But he's equally certain he has to.]}

[He draws his hand out of his pocket, and holds it up to display what he's got between two fingers and a thumb: a Pokeball of his own. He turns his eyes to it, giving it an almost fond look.]

The most remarkable woman greeted me upon my arrival here, Dale. Charming, sweet, forthright. I think you would've liked her very much. She offered to make me dinner, you know, and I asked her what she thought of love and fear, good and evil.

[A pause.]

She didn't have an answer, so I killed her.

_{[Coop's eyes lingers by Windom's face for a moment before he looks at the pokéball. There's nothing significant about it other than the fact that it is one.]

[It's jarring, seeing Windom in Johto, and seeing him behave with such ease, like he belongs.]

[There's a momentary widening of his eyes when he realizes who Windom is talking about, the universal oh, shit easy to recognise before he opens his mouth again, voice slightly tight but betraying little.]}

People don't die here.

_{[It's a protest disguised as a simple stated fact. Cooper knows people don't die - but he also knows that every other rule that he knows of has been broken today.]

[He'll cling to that, though. He has to believe that the people he cares about are still safe by that rule.]

[And that Windom didn't actually ... no. Not only kill Mom, but meet her first -]}

I know! Isn't it marvelous?

[And suddenly he lights up, abruptly animated, almost delighted by this new information that's just come to light.]

No one dies here. No matter how many times you do them in, they always come back. Again and again and again.

[He knows, of course. There's no doubting that this statement is coming from personal experience.]

_{[He shifts his weight backwards involuntarily, like he might turn on his heel and walk away. There is absolutely no way he could, though. It's just a tiny effort in trying to get away from what he's saying.]

[And what it means. What it means he's going to do.]}

And your "new friend"?

_{[Just - trying to get the facts. Distraction. Something. And there is his starter theory - maybe it could help.]}

Oh, this?

[He turns the ball over in his hand once, twice, and then gives it an effortless toss; what erupts from it a second later is a Hoothoot, ragged and large and with a nasty look about it.]

Ah, yes, my stalwart companion. I hear he's supposed to be my partner! And wouldn't you know it? He's just as bad at chess as you always were. I think it must be a trend.

[The Hoothoot flaps its wings, abruptly rising into the air and flapping straight toward Coop's face — but it'll eventually miss, careening over his shoulder and ascending up into the sky overhead.]

_{[Cooper ducks, he has to. For all his composure he can't, and could never, really, handle birds that close. There's a twitch in him when he steps aside, trying to win against the fright in his features when he follows the bird with his eyes. For a time, he's unable to look away. Birds are threats. And now he feels surrounded.]

[He could .. Tricia, maybe, or Holmes. But he still feels reluctant to include them. It's between Windom and himself. No one else, despite the twisted game Windom chooses to make of it.]

[He'd like to say something, really, but his mind is reeling, thought process momentarily shattered by the Hoothoot, and the only thing he can think about is that he had a Hoothoot too, and that's something he definitely doesn't want to share.]

[He has a feeling Windom would eat it right up.]}

Though at least the owl won't steal my wife.

[He raises the whistle again, pipes a few notes — for any Neil Diamond fans, it's "Sweet Caroline".]

No, no, I think it's my turn to take someone of yours away, isn't it? Fair's fair, Dale. Everything in balance, yin and yang, light and dark, good and evil. Life and death.

King and queen.

_{[And that snaps him back into something that resembles control, but is mostly defense.]}

You were the one who killed her, Windom. Not me.

Is that what you tell yourself when the guilt catches up with you? Oh, I killed her, but you failed her.

[They're still at a distance, but he lowers the flute and uses it as emphasis to make a slow, deliberate jabbing motion — the sort that, were they standing close enough for it to connect, might strike Coop just below his heart.

He should find that one all too familiar.]

That was always your downfall, my boy. I'd take your queen and the rest of your game would just...fall apart.

_{[He does, and actually takes a small step back, a flinch like Windom really had stabbed him again, but also backing away from the words.]

[He can't argue with them. It's true. He did fail her. There are so many little things he could have done differently. She should have lived. She was getting better, and they were going to get a break and put Windom away, and she should have lived.]

[Maybe not with Coop, maybe in fear, but she could have been alive. And that was on him.]

[But still, he's aware of the mind games, despite how they get to him. For the moment, he tries to detach himself from Windom's words, precise as they are. And really, he needs answers. He's gone so long without understanding what happened and it's tearing at him.]}

You failed her first. You tortured her. And then you drove us together just to tear us apart. Why?

[For a minute, there's silence, as he gives Coop plenty of time to stew in his thoughts; when he does finally reply, it's after lightly wagging a finger at him, and his words are singsong — a very deliberate echo of something Coop himself said earlier.]

That'd make it too easy, Dale. Even for you.

[Like he'd ever give you the one thing you want to know most.]

Besides, you've put a new queen on the board now, haven't you?

_{[How does he know? The fact that Cooper assumes that he does rather than figures it's an assumption, or a bluff, is telling of how he really, in the end, does NOT underestimate the man.]

[And the flex in his shoulder is back when he again, reflexively, wants something to defend her with.]

[Which is likely confirmation enough.]}

No. _{[Not denial; rather, "I didn't put her on the board. Don't touch her." He measures his next words carefully.]} There is no board, Windom. These are human lives. Are they really so easy for you to take?

Of course they are.

[He says it so pleasantly, so simply, like he's discussing the weather and not murder.

Cooper is so easy to manipulate sometimes, strung and played like a fine violin. A few plucks to tune it up and what follows is the most elegant concerto of misery and despair.]

It's as easy as pulling a trigger. There will always be death and sacrifice — the only aspect in question is whose it is, and when, and how.

_{[Except, he thinks, it's not as easy when you're using knives. That takes force. Commitment to the act in a different way than a gun does.]

[He takes a breath. Testing.]}

And you will decide mine.

And you will decide theirs. One by one. All around. Each and every move you make.

[And now, at last, he takes a step forward. Just one step, but a definite invasion.]

Two kings, Dale. Only one left standing in the end. Everything else is incidental.

_{[He holds his ground; feels like he has no other option. He tenses a little bit further, though, and his breathing slows.]}

And if I resign?

No, no, you're not ready yet, not nearly ready yet.

[He seems to say this more to himself than to Cooper, low and rapid, musing aloud. And then, abruptly, intense, shouting—]

That's not how you play the game, Cooper!

[And then his voice drops low again, but it's not smooth this time, it's edged and threatening and feral, like a dog on the end of its leash.]

And you will play, or I will find someone to take your place. And you, you won't die, but you'll wish you had, because I'll make sure she doesn't die, either, when I send you her fingers and ears and eyes. And if she does? Whoopsie-daisy, we start over again tomorrow with a fresh slate and a full board, again. And again. And again.

_{[Cooper remains in place but feels increasingly helpless, something he's trying to fight. There has to be a way to solve this, get out of it. Protect the people he knows. The one Windom is referring to most of all.]

[Stall, he thinks, that's what they'd been doing in Twin Peaks. But that had been different. He'd had help. They'd all been looking. Now Windom Earle is right in front of him and setting the terms. It's vastly different but the feeling is largely the same. Only worse.]

[He could bluff. But he knows full well there's nothing he could say that Windom would buy or that would fall short on closer inspection.]

[He could play. But that's the worst option of the three. It's giving up, because he could never win that game. Accepting to play would be a death sentence. The difference there is just that he's not quite sure whose sentence he'd be signing.]

[That leaves reasoning. Which is stalling by another name, in the end, but Coop's ready to grasp for straws by this point.]}

Please.

_{[It's the most he's ever put into the word, but he's already sure it won't be enough.]}

This isn't you, Windom. Something happened when you disappeared. Let me-

_{[And something cuts him off. It's painful, and he can already hear the laughter that's inevitable to follow what he'd meant to say, and he feels like he's fresh out of the Academy again and trying to live up to Windom's expectations and being scared of falling short.]

[But this time he knows he will. He's trying so hard to not accept it as a truth, but it certainly feels like one.]}

Something wonderful happened.

[The look in his eyes, it's manic, too-bright, glittering with almost unearthly enthusiasm. Wonderful isn't the word any sane person would use for what happened to Windom Earle when he disappeared, why he came back changed.

But wonderful is the word he uses now, because he knows what he saw and found and was sent back to do, and he knows how much it destroys his former partner to remain in the dark — about him, about Caroline, about everything.

And his despair, his fear, that broken note edging in his voice, is so exhilarating.]

And someday it will happen again.

[It is happening. Again.]

_{[It stirs in his mind that it could all be connected. Windom, the Little Man, his visions and BOB, and fire walk with me, but it's only a flicker of an idea that doesn't get much hold. Instead he thinks of Caroline.]

[Her and Windom had been happy, once. And Cooper couldn't save either of them.]

[It really hits him, right in that moment, when he sees it this close, that he's lost Windom too. He'd known that before, of course, but this is different. This is a confirmation that's another knife between his ribs. It hurts that much.]}

Where did they take you?

The Black Lodge.

[And they are Lodge Brothers, aren't they. And they will be again, someday, when poor Dale's self-sacrificing nature comes back to haunt him in the worst way.

His moves are as predictable as his chess, and this is why he never wins.]

I'll kill her, Dale.

[It's so simple, so easy, so devoid of theatrics. Deadly real, fatally reliable.]

_{[And that's where he takes half a step back to reclaim the space that Windom had invaded those few minutes ago. He needs it to look at him. Needs it to think. He's mouthing an echo of the words, "The Black Lodge", and it makes sense.]

[It just does. It falls into place.]

[And it terrifies him. Because they are Lodge Brothers. The Soulless. He just doesn't know it consciously yet. But it's there; has always been.]

[And that's what makes Windom's worth so true, too. He's thoroughly lost to Cooper. Is probably lost to himself. But something else knows what it's doing, and it guides it all with a firm, steady hand.]}

I can't let you.

_{[Even to his own ears, it sounds just a bit false.]}

Then stop me.

[His laugh, when it comes, starts out faint and low and then burbles up from deep within his throat.]

It's your move.

[And he begins to back away, back into the concealing shadows of the trees, simultaneously daring Coop to hinder him and confident that he won't.]

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tapestodiane - 2012-05-27 07:40 (UTC) - Expand

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likediamond - 2012-05-27 07:45 (UTC) - Expand

028 - 4th wall

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