deadly_ned | 022 - Caramel Apple

[Public]

Is there someone here with a camera? A regular...picture-taking camera. Not a video camera. I mean. I suppose I could use the one attached to the communicator but it's sort of low-res and I didn't know if there was actually anyone whose job it was to take pictures.

..So...camera.

I know it's an odd thing to ask with the Barge fractured and in pieces but I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't important.

[Warden Filter]

Is there a plan for Dr. Lecter? He's out - or should be out - of Zero by now. Is someone watching him to make sure he's not...I don't know...pointlessly slaughtered and/or slaughtering over and over again?

Just. Curious.

[Alpha]

I need your help.

I need...you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

deadly_ned

I know. I don't have any other choice.

What happens to crazy wardens, Dean? Can you be demoted if your type of crazy doesn't hurt anyone else?

From:

surfaceshine

No.

[There's a long hesitation, and a low exhale, but Dean switches over to Private.]

Bear with me here. I'm not...

Why do you think you're crazy?

From:

deadly_ned

I can't sleep.

And I can't go into my own bedroom.

And I can't go into kitchens.

And whenever something stresses me out, I bake. It's how I've coped. For twenty years this was how I coped with anything that bothered me.

And now I can't stomach the idea of baking. It was ripped away.

I'm cracking.

From:

surfaceshine

[Dean is silent for a long time. It takes effort to think around this. He has to do it very carefully, neither of which are things the hunter is used to doing.

Then, very quietly:]

You can't let him have it, Ned.

Edited Date: 2013-10-22 03:06 am (UTC)

From:

deadly_ned

I'm not trying to give it to him. He takes what he likes.

From:

surfaceshine

Don't let him have it.

You have twenty years of good memories of baking, of loving it and taking comfort in it.

You have seven days of having it used against you. Take it back.

From:

deadly_ned

Every time I close my eyes and knead dough, I'm imagining parts of my friends being floured and salted and spiced and set to fry in a pan at medium heat for twenty-five minutes in an olive oil-based braise.

From:

surfaceshine

When did you make your first pie?

From:

deadly_ned

When I was ten. In a boarding school kitchen at three in the morning.

From:

surfaceshine

You figure it out on your own?

From:

deadly_ned

I remembered what my mother taught me.

From:

surfaceshine

Tell me.

From:

deadly_ned

I would sit at our kitchen table in our old house. I'd come in after a day of playing outside with Chuck. She would send me upstairs to take a back, and when I came back down Digby and me would sit on the floor and I'd watch her roll out the dough and slice the apples and make the cinnamon mix.

From:

surfaceshine

Close your eyes.

Give me details. Walk me through it.

Edited Date: 2013-10-22 03:34 am (UTC)

From:

deadly_ned

The dough's easy. Baking's mostly..fractions and following directions. You can't afford to get too creative with the staples so dough was just always a mix of flour and water. Mix it and fold it and spread more flour over the countertop so that it doesn't stick, for as long as you can do it until your arms get tired.

The apples depend on the season and the flavor. Apples differ in flavor, in sweetness. You slice them thin, but save it for last so that they don't brown out too much. You can do them in cubes but she always did slices.

Sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and vanilla. Mixed together, add to apples.

Roll the dough out again, slice in two, Fit over the pie tin, start to layer the apples.

Layer complete, use the second half of the dough by rolling it out and cutting it into thin slices, layering them over the top in a thatched pattern.

Powdered sugar on top, set to bake.