The Lengths That I Would Go To

[abrightboy]

The killer was moving around the country. Malcolm Bright could see the pattern, but he wasn't working for the FBI these days and they weren't exactly taking his calls. Short sighted of them, but they did fire him on suspicion of being crazy. The NYPD's jurisdiction was New York. With the killer beyond its borders, they handed it upwards and left it at that.

Let it go, Bright, had been Gil's sage advice. You can't catch every killer in America single-handedly.

Challenge accepted, some part of him retorted, though he'd only nodded mutely and forced a smile. Gil knew he hadn't simply let it go, but he wasn't going to have him followed to stop him doing anything stupid, either. He didn't have the will or the resources to keep tabs on Malcolm Bright 24/7 and Malcolm Bright knew it.

His mother, on the other hand, had extensive resources, so he simply didn't tell her he was leaving town. He did arrange for Ainsley to feed his bird, so the truth would come out eventually, but he'd be several states away by then.

He rode the bus. There was something oddly comforting about the anonymity of being in a crowd of strangers who had no interest in him whatsoever. He stared out the window and watched the country go by. When he stepped off the Greyhound in Lexington, Kentucky, he walked to a nearby hotel and checked in, then headed straight to the US Marshals office. There was no point in trying to talk to the FBI. If he was going to stop a killer from killing again, he needed someone in law enforcement to listen to him. The pattern suggested the next murder would happen in one of the rural communities around Lexington and it would be precipitated by a young woman's disappearance. He needed law enforcement with local knowledge, specifically.

He wandered into the Marshals' offices in a tidy three piece suit, charcoal grey with a burgundy tie perfectly knotted at his collar. He got a few suspicious sidelong glances but nobody asked if they could help him. He cleared his throat.

"Um, hello? I'm wondering if there's anyone here I can talk to about murder." He held up his hands. "Stopping murder, specifically, not... like... smalltalk."

Comments

[abrightboy]

The faint clinking of Malcolm's restraints alternately pulling taut and the rustling of his blankets as he began to toss started just before 4am. He started muttering shortly after that.

"I'm trying..." he murmured. "Trying."

Suddenly he jerked, yanking at the restraints as he thrashed towards the edge of the bed. He would certainly have gone over the edge if he hadn't been restrained, doing a header onto the floor like he had at Arlo's. The hardware held. He jerked in the other direction.

"I CAN'T REMEMBER!" he screamed. "STOP! STOP!"

[tinstar]

Raylan was a deep enough sleeper that the rustling and starting murmurs weren't quite enough to break him from the depth of his slumber, but the sudden jerk of restraints was the tipping sound and by the time Malcolm started screaming, Raylan had jerked up from his makeshift bed, hair and eyes wild.

"Shit." This time though, he had a plan.. Well, half a plan. A quarter of a plan, if he was being generous.

"Hey hey," he started as he scrambled from his bed, pillow in hand, knowing full well that wasn't going to wake Malcolm alone and opted to start by.. shaking Malcolm's foot. Quickly, Malcolm was kind enough to shoot that idea down like a 50 millimeter gun and before Raylan decided to go to any real extremes, he pitched his pillow hard at Malcolm's face with a very loud, very commanding, "HEY."

It was worth a shot.

[abrightboy]

In his dream, John Watkins stepped out of the shadows behind the girl and hit Malcolm hard in the face with his elbow. Malcolm reeled, but he didn't wake. He took shaky breaths, trying to scramble backwards, away from the killer. Away from the knife in his hand.

"No. Don't. DON'T! STAY BACK!"

[tinstar]

Double shit. Raylan didn't wanna slap Malcolm. He took a half step back, watching a guy he'd slowly become friends with over some weird and gruesome murders, sure, but he didn't deserve to suffer all this.

"Aw hell," he swore for a third time before coming around to the side and sliding a hand up Malcolm's chest to hold him down, off hand coming to cup the man's face and slap him lightly. Raylan was cognizant of the danger Malcolm and his blind terror could cause and kept himself leaned back, weight mostly on Malcolm's chest but just enough to keep the man from sitting back up and thrashing towards the side.

[abrightboy]

He jerked wildly, thrashing violently for a moment at the weight on his chest, but he thrashed out of it, and a moment later he was blinking groggily at Raylan's face, a little confused for a moment.

He frowned, still a little breathless from the exertion.

"I woke you up."

[tinstar]

Raylan kept his hands where they were, slowly hesitant to release the preassure on Malcolm's chest and withdraw his hand from his face with a lighter, fonder pat as he leaned his elbows on his knees.

"Nah, I just love coming to bother you in bed," he said sardonically with a smirk barely visible in the faint light. "We both knew it was gonna happen. Don't worry about it," he said with a following pat on Malcolm's chest before tugging his pillow off the bed and tossing it on the floor.

[abrightboy]

Slightly tousled, Malcolm looked at the pillow like it was a foreign object and then propped himself up on one elbow to follow its trajectory onto the floor. He looked up at Raylan.

"Do you need a new one?" he asked in all sincerity.

[tinstar]

"What?" Raylan followed Malcolm's glance to the floor and laughed softly. "No. That's where I'm going to be relocating to for the night," he replied, pushing up to pad over to the couch, still fully in his jeans, to grab his blanket and head back towards Malcolm.

"Go back to sleep, if you can," he said with a dad grunt as he worked himself down onto the floor, blanket getting swished to cover everything smoothly. "Only a few more hours til sunup."

[abrightboy]

His brow creased slightly.

"...Y-you're going to sleep on the floor?"

[tinstar]

"All the better to reach you," Raylan said from below, echoing the Big Bad Wolf in tone. "Saves me the effort of sprinting across your apartment; trust me. It's a time saver." He sighed deeply. "Ain't the first floor I slept on, ain't gonna be the last."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looked a little dubious, but he didn't know how to begin to phrase any question in his mind, so he just opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, shut it again, opened it again, then gave up and shut it again.

"Oh."

He shifted his blankets around so they weren't all askew from his kicking them, his restraints clinking faintly at the exertion, then settled back again, his hands resting just below his ribcage.

"Thanks," he said after a long moment. "He was going to stab me." He glanced over towards the edge of the bed. He couldn't see Raylan, but could feel the warmth of his presence there. "When you woke me up."

[tinstar]

It almost felt like a sleep over. Like kids laying apart, whispering things too late in the night for their own amusement and discovery. Raylan murmured something that sounded like 'You're welcome' before falling silent and letting a beat pass before he continued.

"Who?" He had a feeling it was Martin Whitley, on gut alone. "Your dad?"

[abrightboy]

"No. Not this time. A friend of his. A murder friend of his. Quarles is far from his first protege. He took me on a camping trip shortly before he got arrested. With this friend. I think the girl from the box was in the trunk of the car." A brief pause. "He was a big fan of knives, this friend of my father's."

[tinstar]

"Murder friend," Raylan huffed quietly, marveling in the world that Malcolm was forced to live in. What phrase. "Is.. it a memory or just a nightmare?"

What a loaded question, but Raylan couldn't help but ask, the guilt of him dodging Malcolm's earlier question starting to weigh on him.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm took a breath, then swallowed and then finally said "A... little bit of both. Shortly after I got back from Lexington, I got a lead on him. He... managed to turn the tables and abducted me." He glanced towards the edge of the bed. "He only had me for about a day and a half," he clarified quickly. "But he wanted to finish my father's work, grooming me. He told me that when I was ten, I stabbed him in self defence during the camping trip. I still don't remember it. But then he stabbed me in the same place and left me on the floor of what turned out to be my father's secret murder dungeon under my mother's house. He said it was the first trial, and that if I passed all the trials, I'd be a killer too."

He held up a hand, restraints clinking faintly. "The department and my mother's money kind of kept it out of the papers, so it's not... it's not really common knowledge, this kidnapping."

[tinstar]

The fact that Malcolm had gotten abducted had Raylan rolling over onto his back, mostly, kept at an angle by the favor of flesh alone.

"What did they do about it? Someone did something, right?" There was a clear, heavy expectation in his tone. The questions were enough for him to turn onto his back properly and push up onto his hands, wild hair and eyes just peeking above the edge of Malcolm's bed.

"How's surviving bleeding out make you more a killer?" He didn't understand that either.

[abrightboy]

"Well, he believed his murders were a mission from God, so if you put yourself in those shoes... I guess it makes a twisted sort of sense. And the team was looking for me. Gil tried to find out from my father where Watkins would take me, but he wasn't... abundantly helpful. Nobody else knew about the room under the house. Not my family. Not me. It took me a while to figure out where we were. Watkins' second trial for me was getting rid of what he called my 'weakness'. He was going to kill my mother and my sister. I couldn't wait for them to find me. I had to stop him." He held his left hand - the one nearest Raylan - up and looked at it. "I was chained to the floor, but he left his tool bag just laying there. A ball peen hammer wouldn't break the shackles, but there was another way. The hole in the cuff was three inches. My hand is five inches." He looked over at Raylan. "All I had to do was make my hand three inches," he explained with a sort of detached matter-of-factness. "That's just math."

[tinstar]

This... had suddenly turned into so much more than talking a scared man through his nightmare. Not that Raylan was surprised, Malcolm was a hole to fall into. It felt like the man needed someone, anyone, to just.. listen to him. To help share the burden of his nightmares, if only in the scant way that company afterwards could.

"Math," he echoed hollowly, looking at Malcolm's hand before his eyes widened in understanding and returning to Malcolm's. "You broke it. The thumb joint that keeps the cuffs on." A beat. That in-of itself was.. terrifying and impressive. "But what did they do about it, what happened to this. this.. Watkins?"

Malcolm was fine now, he'd clearly gotten help with his hand which allowed Raylan to focus on the bigger questions.

[abrightboy]

"I smashed it to pieces. The cast only came off about a week and a half ago." He held a finger up. "It was a lot more painful than the stab wound," he told Raylan, because it could be useful information and few people experienced them concurrently to relate it.

"Watkins is in jail, awaiting trial for... I think the official body count for his serial murders is up to sixteen." He looked at Raylan's eyes, just above the edge of the mattress. "I subdued him," he explained. "With a crowbar and his own intense claustrophobia."

[tinstar]

Oh the adventures Malcolm got up too when he wasn't been watched. Raylan's eyebrows lifted towards his hairline with great enthusiasm, though he stayed silent on the comparison. Sadly, Raylan had experienced them in a similar order but he was too wrapped up to share that.

"Good." There was nothing but firm support in the word. One might even say that there was a sense of righteousness in the praise. "Behind bars, he can't hurt you." Raylan nodded before sinking back out of view as he laid back down. "And he comes in here while I'm here, I'll shoot him for you.. Free of charge."

[abrightboy]

He didn't have to shoot anyone for Malcolm's sake, but the offer was oddly sweet and endearing, somehow. Malcolm smiled faintly at the ceiling.

"I mean, I guess the useful moral of this story for us is that my father really knows how to pick these lunatics."

[tinstar]

"I suppose that's a skill that's useful.. somewhere. Don't ask me where though." That was debatable but Malcolm was right. Martin sure did seem to know how to pick 'em. "You seem to pick pretty good sane people, so maybe it evens out."

[abrightboy]

He thought about that and smiled.

"I think this is the best group of people I've probably... ever been surrounded by," he conceded. "But Gil picked most of them. Including me. So I guess it's Gil that evens things out."

[tinstar]

"He's the one that responded to your call, right?" Raylan couldn't stop the yawn that crawled outta him. "Looks like he's still lookin' after you. Good guy." Better guy, for what he'd done. "Guy to trust."

[abrightboy]

"Yeah."

He could hear the fatigue in Raylan's voice, as he looked up at the ceiling.

"Anyway, I'm going to give sleep another try. Thanks again. Good night," he said.

He wasn't going to give sleep another try, but he was going to stare up at the ceiling for a couple more hours so Raylan could sleep. Once he heard the Marshal's breathing even out, he'd wait long enough for him to be in a deep sleep cycle before quietly slipping out of bed and into his morning routine: coffee in the french press, pills, daily affirmations, exercise, yoga.