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[abrightboy]

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[forensicks]

"This is... very hard to hear." Walter tries to be honest. He's... hearing a distinct lack of anything more specific than purely verbal drama that Rosita surely flipped around, that this itself is a case of virulent hatred he hasn't expressed in this moment for the killers on the loose. "I've kept tabs on some of your other network dust-ups like Eiffel's movie night, and Ken and Hilbert. That's why I was going to check on you that day we watched Time Bandits, you know." Almost like it's a pattern!!! Though downplaying the horrors he's experienced is also a pattern. "But Rosita, no, I don't keep tabs on her. Being frank, if her sister showed up I might assume it was her, that's how long it'd been since I actually saw her video feed. Refreshing my memory, all that came to mind was that she seemed to be like me. Human. Hasn't attacked anyone here. But dealt an even harder hand in life."

Walter reaches for the cocoa cup, turning it to swirl the foam in funny shapes he looks down at.

"And she was saying something I thought I agreed with. That the middle ground of info on the attack was the worst of both worlds." He looks up at Malcolm. Thinking of his friend makes it all the easier to focus on, to fake, that sincere desire for absolution he felt in the chapel that first day. "No, it's totally different for me and Pyotr. He can't see the name tags either, so how is he supposed to know that wardens have worked on themselves ways inmates haven't been able yet? Experience. Trust over time. For starters, I was one of the ones actually asked if I wanted to live, and I'd been in that network access flood before too. He showed up right before a breach, me right after. Everything's added up so it's hard for him to put faith in the services in this place, and if you ever did get to catch up on the special person flood, I think you have an inkling for one big reason why."

[abrightboy]

“I’m human. I haven’t attacked anyone here. So your perception that Rosita must have been acting in good faith and I must have been acting in bad faith was based purely on the fact that she’s an inmate and I’m a warden?” Malcolm clarifies. He tilts his head again. “What did you mean when you asked if I wondered why it’s like you already know me?”

[forensicks]

"What you guys were actually saying can't be smoothly removed from the context, but yeah, I'd like to think that's what I reacted to." Because he agreed with Rosita's thinking that it was bad for the attack to be announced without a name and face... And was hurt by that sharp comment about inmates doing their best... It's hard to even quote word for word without losing the context.

He turns his head away towards one of the lovely windows. Gives a "pff" smile. "Maybe it doesn't even feel like that to you." That Walter knows him. Whatever.

[abrightboy]

“Why do you do that thing where you start a thought and abandon it as soon as I ask for clarification?” Malcolm asks. “I have a hard time with… the dance. I’m not trying to… make a point by making you say stuff explicitly. I need stuff to be said explicitly. Can I have some context for that observation, please?”

[forensicks]

"I know that's douchey, but sometimes I need to do it anyway because... there's also something to grapple with-" Haha, back and forth, like dancing- "when someone forgets. Not just doesn't intuit... Blocks it out. Forgets."

He sits there with the hot cocoa in both his hands and adds quietly:

"I know you struggle with that too."

[abrightboy]

“I don’t block stuff out,” Malcolm tells him, faint confusion returning. “What do you ‘know’ that from? What gave you that impression?”

[forensicks]

"Okay, what did I see then, a shutdown? A meltdown?" Walter supposed Malcolm has enough support to be completely confident in not missing time, that it's not what it's like from his perspective.

"Maybe some time when you looked like you weren't letting anything in even though you actually were? Because you were in trauma? ... Like the dream flood?"

[abrightboy]

“…You saw me shut down in the dream flood? ………You mean at Claremont?” He frowns faintly. “That’s where I saw her before,” he murmurs more to himself than Walter. Then he looks at Walter. “I remember everything from times when my emotions shut me down. I only lost time when he chloroformed me,” he explains reasonably.

[forensicks]

"I wasn't told the name of the place, but yeah, presumably that. You literally have the worst dad in the world, wow."

Might as well have his own distant matter of fact reaction.

"When you didn't react all those times... I thought, maybe it's because he can't see it. That you'd... judge her."

[abrightboy]

"Judge... your grandmother? Or... judge you for loving her anyway?" Malcolm clarifies.

[forensicks]

Walter gives that Oprah "and there you have it" shrug. "I mean, it's entry level psychology that a person would conflate one with the other," he says.

[abrightboy]

"A person might," Malcolm concedes. "But I was visiting my dad at Claremont in that dream because... I visited my dad at Claremont, where he's serving a life sentence without possibility of parole in a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane for twenty-three counts of murder in the first degree. And he didn't just kill those people. He... did things to them first. Experimented. They all died in agony. And when I started to see things, he chloroformed me so many times that it began to lose efficacy. I don't know how many times you have to chloroform a ten year old child for it to lose efficacy, but I'm going to guess... a lot? And I don't forgive him for any of that, Walter." Malcolm leans on the counter. "But he's still my dad. And I'll always be his son, whether I acknowledge it or not. And, you're not wrong: he's the worst dad. The worst. Did I tell you he escaped from prison shortly before I came here?"

[forensicks]

"That would explain why you had the opportunity to stab him," Walter says. The man being out of prison and in public, that is. He does wonder if the notoriety from the incident is yet another reason he'd rather stay here for a long time. "But... There are different kinds of love." Though Walter wouldn't want to invalidate, in his personal taxonomy he wouldn't say that Malcolm is describing love, but rather the aftermath of abuse that required acknowledgement and closure. "My grandma never hurt me, once, ever. You know how I was as a dumb kid, I honestly didn't like her being locked up one bit. Well, now I know better. Life doesn't work that way."

Here he is. Locked up. Separated from the one he loves.

[abrightboy]

"I... actually stabbed him in Claremont before, but that... was a whole different situation. The Marshals couldn't find him, they wouldn't listen to me, so I found him on my own, but he kidnapped me, so they assumed I was helping him and alerted the press.... then I was able to call it in and I turned him in again and he tried to kill me. I guess some part of him really thought we'd just... go on the run together or something."

Malcolm studies Walter for a moment.

"If your grandmother really killed someone, then... it's correct that she was in prison. But it's not incorrect of you to love her. And maybe you even understand why she did it but that doesn't make you a bad person. Having killed someone doesn't even automatically make her a bad person. Do you know why she did it?"

[forensicks]

That sure was a thing, as they say in those superhero movies. It's actually also kind of like Misty, the ghosts of Malcolm's past coming to haunt him all over again, and him doing the best to help.

"It never mattered to me." He's never been honest about that with anyone else. He's never looked more like Lydia than in that moment. "Even though the victim was Grandpa Joe. Isn't that crazy? But I only ever had one grandma." He recites with a distant pleasantness: "I can tell you she wasn't acting in immediate defense of her life or dignity or that of another. Oh, yeah, also no criminal insanity."

[abrightboy]

"So what happened? One complaint too many? One demand too far?" Malcolm asks curiously

[forensicks]

"He popped his gum too much ala Cell Block Tango?" Walter leers. "No, don't think so. I really can't tell you. She was close to-" as in nearly "-the only member of my family who wouldn't complain to a kid about something like that."

[abrightboy]

"I guess it doesn't really matter, in the end," Malcolm concedes. It's just his morbid curiosity. "How often did you visit her?"

[forensicks]

"Oh, never," he says nonchalantly. "After the sentencing, I never saw her again. We exchanged letters and cards about five or six times a year. I was a kid. By the time I could drive a car or what have you, it was too late." He shrugs and adds, "I don't think she was neglected, considering the preexisting conditions that was pretty normal."

[abrightboy]

"Never? ...You were visiting her in the dream. You only... wished you could?" Malcolm asks.

[forensicks]

"Yeah. It was like a breach for me. That's why all of it meant a lot to me." A lot of things that he has mixed feelings about, but still.

[abrightboy]

"Oh. It was just... basically a normal dream for me. Except for having someone my age to talk to," Malcolm tells him.

[forensicks]

"It's the barge, so I might as well ask: is he that strong in real life?" (God he did not have enough people his age to talk to.)

[abrightboy]

“Not… superhuman. Just your run of the mill gleeful predatory psychopath. Dangerous, though. I don’t actually visit him in the visitation room most of the time. He lives in a cell where he’s tethered to the wall at all times and cuffed when a visitor is entering and you’re warned not to cross the line on the floor because it would put you within the length of his tether,” Malcolm tells him. “Even so, a professional assassin tried to strangle him in his cell a couple years ago and… well. He should have kept his butt on the right side of the red line.”

[forensicks]

It seems like an outright smile on his face, and Walter isn't sure if it's a nervous smile? Or a got-what-he-deserved smile? Or a story where he at least has the comfort of knowing how it ends? "Let me guess, the strangler became the tether-ligature-stranglee?"

Walter really doesn't think it's too wild to be waiting for Malcolm to say of his own accord "it was special", "it was nice", anything. But maybe he doesn't think things could have been different. Maybe it could have been decided all that time ago in the past, when the crimes of their forefathers were already committed.

He holds up the basically empty cup of hot cocoa. "You know, I don't think I was really prepared to savor this one, but my medicine has kicked in now. If there's another round to be had, can the next one have marshmallows?"