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[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

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[abrightboy]

"How is that your fault?" Malcolm asks desperately.

[conning]

“He got shot by the person who shot me.” This isn’t going to work. He has to start sooner for it to make any sense. Does it have to make sense to the person he’s telling, is that part of the curse, or does it just have to make sense to him? The academia of the situation distracts him a moment, making him drift, but he doesn’t have time, he can’t afford distraction. He orients on Malcolm again. “I was protecting Peter. Broke the law to do it. Seigel… must have seen, something, don’t know what.”

[conning]

Neal blinks. “The… Girl in the Box?”

That’s more than just a descriptor. Malcolm says it like a title. Like a name. The rest of it is important, he doesn’t miss it and won’t ignore it, but there’s background here he doesn’t have.

[abrightboy]

“But how is that your fault?” Malcolm presses again. “Who made you think it was?”

[abrightboy]

“When I was ten years old, I found a woman in a travel trunk in the basement of my family home. I called the police, but when they came, she was gone. I didn’t understand, at the time, that my father had been drugging me into amnesia with chloroform. I didn’t know that he’d had lots of time to take her far away from our house. I thought I was saving her. But she wasn’t there when they searched. Everyone told me she was imaginary for twenty years, but she was real and I knew it,” Malcolm tells him. “But I couldn’t save her. Or the twenty-three before her.”

[abrightboy]

I have to sleep in restraints and I wake up screaming almost every night. One time, I fell asleep without restraints and almost stabbed her. She stopped taking my calls for, like, three months.

[conning]

“Should’ve been more careful,” he says softly. “Made more sure I wasn’t followed. Overconfident, distracted…”

[abrightboy]

"Victim-blaming," Malcolm says. "You can't control who chooses to prey on you."

[ukan]

Maybe you are worse than me. [He's teasing.

The smile drops away though.]

What causes you to stab people?

[conning]

Neal hates how close he is to tears again. He’s still bleeding, oblivious to the fact that it’s at least slowed a tiny bit. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

[abrightboy]

“I want you to tell me why it hurts you,” Malcolm says. “Why do all these things hurt you? I think the reason is the same.”

[abrightboy]

Night terrors. I didn’t know it was her; I thought I was fighting for my life. But I know better than to fall asleep unrestrained. I shouldn’t have been able to reach a knife to start with; I should have been strapped to my bed.

[ukan]

How long have you had these night terrors this bad?

[abrightboy]

Twenty years.

[ukan]

That's a long time to suffer.

What happened?

[conning]

“I don’t know,” he says, and he believes it, or half believes it. There’s truth to the statement, though a thousand emotions he can’t pin down boil underneath. “I just. Want them to…”

He gives a helpless little sound of frustration. “I don’t know what I want. I want them to trust me.”

[abrightboy]

“Why them?” Malcolm presses.

[conning]

“They’re my family,” he finally says. “They’re the only family I have.”

[abrightboy]

“Do you resent them for that?” Malcolm asks, even as he can feel the bleeding slow. “Don’t you think you deserve better from them?”

[conning]

He does resent them. He resents them enormously, resents every joke at his expense, every time they teased him about his radius, every time they assumed the worst without giving him a chance. He can’t make himself say it. There’s a part of him that wishes, imagines, contorts itself into believing if he could just do a little better next time, they’d stop.

[abrightboy]

"Don't you think you deserve better than that?" Malcolm pushes.

[conning]

"Yes," he grates out, wanting to shout and dropping his voice to a whisper instead. "Yes. Yes I do."

He finally opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling. "One of the last things I said to Peter, before I got shot, was when... we found out Rebecca wasn't Rebecca. We were searching her apartment, and I said 'you think I deserve this.'"

He presses his lips together for a moment. "He said no one deserved it. Not that he didn't think I did. Just that no one deserved it."

[abrightboy]

"Do you ever want to tell him it's not enough? His... stern chiding?" Malcolm presses.

[conning]

Neal subsides again. "He loves me."

He squeezes his eyes shut. "He cares about me. More than most people. More than--he really is family. I wouldn't have done everything I've done to protect him if he hadn't earned it. He's risked everything for me. More than once."

[abrightboy]

"So why won't he trust you?" Malcolm asks.