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[abrightboy]

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[conning]

“Not an artist,” he says, softer, before he finishes off the water and eases himself around to set both feet on the floor with a groan. He massages one temple. “What happened?”

[abrightboy]

“It’s easy to define ourselves by what we’re not. It’s hard to be something,” Malcolm observes.

To the question he answers “something poisoned a bunch of passengers. I don’t know what yet.”

[conning]

Neal looks at him in surprise. “Shouldn’t you be focused on that, not on babysitting me?”

It’s not an accusation or criticism.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm blinks at him.

“Why?”

[conning]

Neal’s turn for confusion.

“Poisoning of the many outweighs the poisoning of the few…?”

[abrightboy]

“There’s no rule against poisoning everyone on board, apparently. You’re my only real defined responsibility,” Malcolm tells him.

[conning]

Neal blinks. “I’m what?”

If Malcolm told him about their pairing, he sure was not cognizant enough to remember.

[abrightboy]

“I’m your temporary warden now,” Malcolm informs him. “Lucky you, I know,” he adds flatly.

[conning]

He doesn’t flinch, quite, but again there’s that internal feeling of something curling up a little tighter to try and protect itself from shame. A little gremlin hiss in the back of his mind that says he can’t do anything right, that he’s so good at screwing up he doesn’t even know this time how he’s done it.

His surroundings aren’t helping, he decides. Neal squeezes his eyes shut and clutches at his temples. “Can we get a little air?”

[abrightboy]

“Whenever you want; I’m not that kind of warden,” Malcolm notes.

[conning]

He gives Malcolm a studying, worried look, like a golden retriever trying to gauge the degree of his leash-holder’s displeasure. He can’t find any real irritation, in spite of the previous comment.

When he gets up, he groans again, sore all over. “…It seems like wardens don’t get the best of the situation either, from what I’ve been learning.”

A small peace offering. “Maggie Garcia has been here almost a year and hasn’t been paired with anyone to even have a chance at earning her reward from the Admiral.”

[abrightboy]

There’s no displeasure on his part; he expects the displeasure in this arrangement to be Neal’s.

“That hardly seems fair,” Malcolm concedes. “I haven’t even asked for a deal.”

[conning]

He would be unhappy with any warden, really. He just expects those acting in authority over him to be angry or disappointed at this point.

Neal comes over to offer Malcolm a hand up, then pauses when his focus falls to the still-open algebra book. Neal loved school, Ellen’s voice tells Mozzie in his head. He shakes it off.

“I’m starting to think there’s not a lot of logic in how this place works.”

[abrightboy]

Malcolm watches something cross his face, then pushes himself to his feet.

"Maybe we just haven't figured out how it works yet."

[conning]

“Yeah.” He doesn’t like that possibility, even if it seems the likely one.

Once they’re headed for the deck—with occasional pauses as Neal gets queasy—he asks, “…Have you heard about the breaches and things that happen? People forgetting their lives, living as other people?”

[abrightboy]

"A little bit. Raylan Givens told me about them." He looks at Neal sidelong. "Why do you ask?"

Because he seems to have a reason.

[conning]

"Everyone I've talked to enjoys them. Being someone else for a little while. They talked about it like research for stories, or being part of a full-sensory movie."

They get out to the deck and Neal draws in a deep breath, the air out here full of some strange intangible that drives home more than anything else that they aren't anywhere remotely like earth. "I wonder how they'd feel if those other lives never went away."

[abrightboy]

"Wouldn't staying in one of those be... the death of... your real self?" Malcolm reasons.

[conning]

Neal doesn't answer right away. He goes to the railing, leaning on it with both hands both for support and to get a look over the edge into the impossible cosmos, the view interrupted half-way down by the nets meant to stop people from going overboard.

"Would it? Or would it be reincarnation?"

[abrightboy]

“I don’t believe in reincarnation,” Malcolm tells him. “Do you want to be someone else? Or do you just not know who you are?”

[conning]

“I don’t know how you can refuse to believe anything after this place.”

It’s an entirely diversionary statement.

[abrightboy]

“I’m going to take that as the latter,” Malcolm informs him. “Maybe that’s what you have to figure out to graduate.”

[conning]

“I know who I am,” Neal counters quietly. “I’m a thief and a con man. I’m a criminal. I am what I do.”

[abrightboy]

“I don’t know if that’s what you need to graduate, but it’s definitely something you have to work on,” Malcolm informs him. “You kind of believe it, but you also know it’s not really true. It’s external to you, the source of that definition of you. You have never defined you. You’ve… resigned yourself to accepting what other people say. Maybe because you’ve been told who you are by other people all your life.”

[conning]

Neal stares at Malcolm, giving him that half-hunted look he’s too accustomed to feeling on his face these days. What he said to his father bounces around his head like a chorus. I’ve had three different names and a dozen different aliases because of you. To be an artist, you have to know who you are.

He leans over the rail, willing himself to puke, even though he hates the sensation. Anything to get this sick feeling out of his chest and head.

“How do you know who you are?”

It’s figurative, rhetorical, but it’s also not.