005 - Three Plum

[deadly_ned]

[Locked to Thomas MacLaine]


We should probably...I don't know, talk at some point.

Um. My name is Ned. I'm your.

Warden.


Could I please come over.

Comments

[deadly_ned]

Who'd been in the way?

[The Piemaker knew exactly who, from reading the file. But he hadn't heard Thomas say her name yet]

[meanstwin]

Her name was Emily. I worked with her. It didn't have to be her, not that day...

... but I think it would have ended like that with us somehow.

[deadly_ned]

Did you hate her?

[meanstwin]

Do you already know the answer?

[deadly_ned]

I think it's rude to assume I know the emotions of other people based on an incomplete short story someone wrote about their life without their permission or input.

[meanstwin]

I didn't know how much you knew. [Didn't want to know, really, or to ask, because asking meant talking.] I-i'm sorry.

[deadly_ned]

To be honest, I don't know how much I know either. I know...facts. I don't know emotions, or...reasoning, or how you feel, or how to help. People don't - shouldn't - come with instruction manuals on how to put them back together.

Please don't be sorry. Not to me.

[meanstwin]

You're the one here.

But you can't know unless I tell you. So you can't do what you're here for.

So yes.

[deadly_ned]

What I'm here for is you. Everything else is just...background.

[meanstwin]

...all right. [When someone says something like that, he never knows whether he should believe them.]

I did.

[deadly_ned]

...And now?

[meanstwin]

I don't know. I think so. I want to.

[deadly_ned]

She's not in the way now. Your, um. I would say your death is more of an immediate hinderance.

[meanstwin]

If I went back.

I don't want to.

[deadly_ned]

What would you want to do instead?

[meanstwin]

Do you remember when I told you I had an offer for a different future, that I wanted to give my sister?

If I could have taken that, I would have.

[deadly_ned]

The trouble with the future is that we don't know if it's better or worse than the one we didn't choose until after we've chosen.

[meanstwin]

[Talking about this is as far as he can go, at least now. Ned has some idea of what happened, he knows that much already, so he doesn't have to explain everything.]

I already knew it would have been better. But I couldn't. I'd already gone too far. Even if the man I'd kidnapped told me I could go free if I let him go... enough had happened I needed to finish what I started. Even if I was going to die for keeping him locked up.

[Back home, Thomas might have been blamed for everything, might be the Raincoat Killer according to the papers, and while he doesn't know if that's all right with him, in a way, it's fitting. He's strange enough people would believe it about him.]

[deadly_ned]

It's...you don't need to make excuses. It's all right. We're going to...work this out, and we'll fix it. Just not all at once and not...today and we'll...hash out a plan once we've had a chance to get to know each other a little better.

I'm your warden. That...that means that I advocate on your behalf. So we don't have to look into what would have or should have happened yet.

[meanstwin]

Then what do you want to know? What did?

[deadly_ned]

I know what did happen. Files, they. They're good for that. [He holds up Thomas' own, giving an apologetic sort of smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes]

WHy do I have to want to know anything? There's no agenda. I didn't..come here to lead an investigation. I came to meet you.

[meanstwin]

[He twists in his spot, moving everything in his lap out of the way.]

I think there's always something. I keep hearing everyone's sent here to be made better.

[deadly_ned]

That's a terrible blanket statement for a place to have. It makes you think of rehab centers where heroin-addicted drop-outs go to detox.

Most of the people here are dead. It isn't being 'made better', it's being given a second chance at being alive again. It's figuring out who you are and who you want to be.

Who...you want to be. Not anyone else.

[meanstwin]

I already am me.

I just don't like it.

[deadly_ned]

Then...

Who would you want to be instead, if you didn't have to be you?