Voicemail (IC Contact Post) OLD - at capcha

[abrightboy]

 This is Bright. Leave a message.

Comments

[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.

[abrightboy]

“Who said that I do?” Malcolm points out. “Maybe they paired us for a reason.”

[conning]

“I can’t do this,” he mumbles. He leans back enough again to press his forehead against the comparative coolness of the railing. “I can’t do this. I can’t do all of this.”

For a wild, idiot moment he considers vaulting the railing, and everything in him recoils from the thought. He lets go of the barrier and walks unevenly toward the gazebo.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm just follows, doesn’t say anything until they draw close to it.

“I know it feels like you can’t, but you can. I’ll help you.”

[conning]

“No, I…” Neal stops outside of the gazebo’s door, looking at it, then at Malcolm, wanting to ask to be let in and hating that he needs to. He starts to press the heels of his palms against closed eyes, remembers what Malcolm said about trauma responses, and let’s them drop again. “This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing.”

He’s got too much left unfinished. Too many loose ends.

[abrightboy]

“If you graduate you can leave. Or graduate an inmate and magic it done, apparently,” Malcolm tells him.

[conning]

“Can you please just let me in here?”

There’s a desperation in his voice he hates.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks at him for a second, then looks at the door and realizes what the problem is.

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

He opens the door.

[conning]

Neal darts inside, making his way immediately to the art supplies. Refamiliarizes himself with where everything is. Touches things in sequence of use, straightens a few brushes.

Starts to calm down.

[abrightboy]

“Are you going to paint?” Malcolm asks him, lingering near the doorway.

[conning]

Neal looks over at him from where he's gotten caught up in comparing a spectrum of unique purple oil paints, clearly confused for a moment. Then he registers the question. "I don't know if I'm supposed to be here unsupervised."

Not that it would stop him, but he's not eager to get Malcolm in trouble either.

[abrightboy]

"...I don't understand how that's an answer to my question," Malcolm confesses. Had he suggested he had somewhere to be?

[conning]

"...Would you be painting too?"

He's also confused. In part because he's not sure which thing Malcolm is confused about.

[abrightboy]

"That's probably in nobody's best interest," Malcolm informs him. "Art therapy never went well for me. But you can if you want to."