August 12 | 10:45 PM | The holodeck, open to everyone.

[wise_ass]

It's late, but still a fairly respectable time to be up and about. He passes a few people on his way up to the holodeck but thankfully, when he gets to the door, he finds there's nobody else in sight. He lights up a cigarette and stands in the center of the dimly lit room, a blank page waiting impassively for his command. Bert takes a long, easy breath and sighs; the cigarette smoke is toasty, familiar, divine. The first one he's had in days.

"You wouldn't happen to know Mejis, would you?" he asks. His tone is polite-- it sounds like he's already forgiven the computer for not having the first fucking clue about where Mejis is, but before he can explain himself, the room has already started coming to life.

It flickers a few times through scenes Bert's not sure he recognizes as even from his world, but when it finally settles, he finds himself standing on one of the rolling hills overlooking the little town. The oil derricks, far over the hills to his left, are backlit by a fiercely beautiful sunset. On his right he can see a wide, treeless horizon that tells him he's not far from the Clean Sea.

It must have been a market day. The people below are packing up their stalls and loading up their carts. There's a tense moment where he's terrified he'll see something, someone he'll recognize before he realizes that the computer's brought him to a Mejis about fifty years prior to his ka-tet's infamous visit.

He heads down the hill and wanders a bit, trying to stay out of people's way, but enjoying, as he usually does, the novelty of secret immersion, not even minding when a woman gives him the obligatory small-town stink eye reserved for unfamiliar, unaccompanied young men. In fact, it makes him smile. It doesn't seem to improve her opinion of him any, but he can't help it. He walks through the market with that shit-eating grin, hands stuffed in his pockets, enjoying the alien quaintness of it all with a bizarre brand of contentment he figures can only be enjoyed by holidaymakers in other worlds.

He's in another world even now, though, isn't he? The station? The idea is an uncomfortable but not unwelcome knot at the base of his skull. He's spent nearly all of his time here doing penance, even if he hasn't realized it, but the last month has actually been penance in earnest. Bert had been drinking whiskey when zombi Alain had helpfully suggested he eat a bullet to better cope with his guilt, and mayhap it was a blessing, because the stuff just hadn't tasted the same after that. Or mayhap it was his own self-pity that didn't go down sweet anymore.

Cuthbert wasn't sure what he'd expected to feel, standing in the red dirt of Lower Market, surrounded by the smells and sights and sounds he's spent the last seven or so years trying to smother from memory. And mayhap it'd be different if he'd been dropped in at the right time and seen ole Kimba Rimer or Cordelia Delgado strutting through town. Mayhap.

But right now, the air feels clean, and somewhere a hundred wheels away, Cuthbert Allgood hasn't even been born yet. He closes his eyes and lets the idea sink in.

Behind him, the holodeck door opens, and he smiles-- that wide, idiot grin that says he's actually pleased for company-- and squints to see who it is.

"Hey there," he calls out, his voice warm and animated. "Just mind the cow pies."

Comments

[wise_ass]

He gives her a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. It's the healthy shame of having turned away just about everyone who's shown him kindness or concern over the last few weeks, the embarrassment of his black mood throughout their little war against the monsters and in the days afterward, when he should've been helping to clean up, and the confusion of where to pick back up with her, gracefully, without denying any of it.

"It is indeed. Right down to the friendly townspeople," he says with a wry little smile, because they're both getting a look, him for being a single male marauder, her for her complete lack of bonnet and hoop skirt.

Bert moseys over to a porch swing in front of the general store, making room for Lauren on it.

"I hope the new people aren't mussing up your lab too much."

[dr_lauren]

"Not too much, though you wouldn't know it from Sherlock's huffing," she says, putting an hand on the arm of the swing and then sinking down onto it. "I think we were already pushing the limits of his patience and now there's two more bodies in the mix." Not that she blames him entirely; it's almost like a real lab now, and that's strange for so many reasons.

"How are you settling in with the new neighbours?"

[wise_ass]

Bert gives her a sideways smile at the mention of Sherlock. It's not hard to imagine.

"Fine, I guess. I've been keeping to myself so I haven't made too many friends, but it seems like most of us are playing our cards pretty close anyway."

There's a lot more he'd like to say, but not here, not when anyone could just walk in.

"I came up here to be alone and think," he says after a moment, and heaves a big sigh, fully reclining on the swing with his arms outstretched. "Had about five minutes of that before I got bored, and five more minutes later you came in. Saved me from counting cows, so that was a kindness."

[dr_lauren]

When he mentions wanting to be alone Lauren almost jumps up right then and there; luckily she catches the rest of his words and relaxes, relieved she isn't intruding on his private time. She knows the danger of being alone too long with your own thoughts, but Bert doesn't have that haunted look that seemed to ride him throughout the monster attack and after, and she's glad. Boredom is better than ennui.

"I'm sure you could've asked the computer to make the cows more entertaining," she says then with a smile. "But I can understand trying to stave off boredom however you can. Despite all the changes lately it seems like there's not much for most people to do." She thinks of Sam, idle against her will, and wonders if Bert is having a similar lawman's dilemma. Nothing going wrong should be a good thing, and yet.

[wise_ass]

Bert nods along in agreement, and then he's quiet for a moment, idly inspecting a tear in his denim that needs mending.

"So," he says, and his voice loses some of that easy levity. "Any good gossip going around about one-eyed Allgood finally going off his rocker?"

He smiles at her, and then feels a little bad; Lauren probably doesn't share his slightly skewed sense of humor and it seems mean to put her on the spot.

"I guess I want to know what everyone's thinking." He rubs his palm over his face roughly, as if to clear his head. "I don't know what you've all heard..."

Bert trails off, looking between Lauren and the sunset, giving her some time to frame her answer.

[dr_lauren]

What had she heard? Lauren frowns as she tries to remember the rumours that had been whispered around that time. "I think everybody was pretty shaken up by what happened," she says, shaking her head. "We all got put through the ringer so I don't think anyone blames you for being a bit quiet." Of course, Bert had been more than 'a bit quiet' - he had been withdrawn, moody, and had shut down any attempts at communication - but everybody dealt with crisis in their own way.

A beat.

"I heard you met one of those... boggarts. That couldn't have been nice."

[wise_ass]

A bit quiet is certainly diplomatic.

He's quiet for a long time as he swallows the reflexive urge to make a joke, shrug it off, answer sarcastically. He waits, actually biting down on the tip of his tongue inside his mouth, a childhood holdover that persists whenever he needs to make a real effort at silence.

"I hadn't even realized what was happening," he says quietly. "I'd been in the observatory, it was late, I was drunk."

The last word is loaded with shame, because of course everyone had seen him, smelled it on him, had known that his fine, featherlight moods were more than half the whiskey's doing. But they'd been too kind or too unsure how to tell him, or else he'd done a damn good job of looking like he'd been in control of it. Also possible. The townsfolk have mostly vacated the streets by now, and down the avenue, doors are shutting. The porch swing creaks on its chains. Bert leans forward, elbows on his knees, and rubs his eyes.

"The fucking thing showed up looking like a friend. A dead friend." He cannot shape the words to say just how Alain died; his jaw refuses to unhinge for those particular words. "I don't want to tell you too much," he adds, and there's pain in his voice. "It's so ugly, Lauren."

He waits, head in his hands, for a moment or two before he pushes himself up and out of the bench, color high in his cheeks, and leans against a pillar across from her, arms folded tightly.

"Why do you think we're here? Really. Tell me what you really believe."

[dr_lauren]

She almost laughs at the question, though it's amusement borne of hopelessness, not good humour. She hasn't given up trying to find out what brought them here or how they might escape, but as to a reason behind it all...

"I don't know," she says honestly, hating the phrase even as she says it. Usually 'I don't know' is a call for late nights of investigation and testing, but how do you test for motivation when you aren't even sure who it belongs to? "I don't know. I thought for a long time that this was some kind of hallucination or brain damage. I'm still not sure it isn't, but how would I know? But if it isn't, and this is real... then I have no idea. There's no pattern to the people here, no link between us. If there is a purpose to it all I haven't figured it out yet."

[wise_ass]

Bert's hanging on her words as she works her way through an explanation.

"Are you a religious sort of person? Do you believe in god? In ka? Fate, anything like that?" He hasn't moved from where he's standing, arms folded tightly in front of his chest, still listening intently.

[dr_lauren]

"I'd call myself an agnostic," Lauren says with a shrug, though she elucidates at his curious look. "After everything I've seen, all the things I knew couldn't exist that ended up being all too real, I'm loathe to say for sure I know everything that's out there. I don't follow a religion but... I don't know." She trails off, a dissatisfied frown falling over her features. What does she believe in?

"I guess I'd like to think there's something bigger than us out there. I'm just not sure it's friendly."

[wise_ass]

Cuthbert has never heard the term agnostic, but as Lauren explains it for him, he finds himself filled with sudden gratitude that she's here. He's never heard anyone describe their philosophy in such a way, but it fits his own notions like a glove. And that's no small thing. He'd been the only one of his tet to greet the idea of gods or ka with any skepticism, and it was skepticism that had turned to outright rejection within a few days of his experiences in Jericho.

But Lauren's right. Just because the great Turtle isn't tenderly shepherding the good folk and Old Man Splitfoot isn't skewering the world's sinners on his pitchfork doesn't mean there's nothing.

Seems to Bert like whatever's there just found something worthier to tend to.

He stares at her thoughtfully for awhile, digesting the idea.

"I think that thing found me because I was in the right place at the right time, whatever that means. And I think it duped me so well because I was drunk. And I think it chose Alain's shape because it... read my mind, or whatever-the-hell it does. And I know it wasn't Alain, just a very, very good copy."

That last part sounds more as if it's a mantra he's had to tell himself again and again, perhaps especially at night.

"If Zoe hadn't walked in, I'd be dead. One of you'd've been cleaning my brainsplatter off the window glass, that's a fact." It's a harsh thing to say with such levity, but he feels awfully alive when he remembers it, and he owes Zoe the credit if he's going to tell anybody about this at all.

He's meandering around his point, which even he's not sure of. It's not a conversation he's rehearsed, however much he's dreaded having it with the people he's close to. Maybe he's hoping Lauren will put a bow on it, tie his messy thoughts together, or maybe he's hoping that he'll be able to connect the dots once he's said them aloud. Bert cradles his temple in one hand.

"I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I was dead when I came here. I don't know what miracles they worked, but they worked plenty. I managed to pull the shaft of the arrow out of my own eye on the battlefield, thank gods-- how humiliating, right, walking around with something like that?" he asks, laughing edgily, "but when I got here I was all patched up, nothing more than a few pale pink scars and an eyepatch to show for it. Sharon thinks I couldn't have been dead, just close to, but let me tell you-- you damn well know when you die, contrary to all sense and reason. You do.

So what's the point? Is this the clearing beyond the path? Is this punishment? Limbo? It's a piss-poor heaven," he says, huffing a laugh. "I guess what I'm trying to say here, is-- I don't know how to carry on now. I won't be so pedestrian as to say I think life can't have meaning in a new world, but I sure as hell don't know what kind of meaning it has for me. I spent most of my disgracefully short life toting a gun and taking orders and I just don't think I want to do it anymore, Lauren. I've got nothing to offer anyone here, I can barely manage to send a message on my gods-damned communicator, there are plenty of people more apt and inclined to protect civilians, I can't cook worth a damn. Well, sure, chili. I'm pretty damn good with a side of bacon. ...the point is that I feel completely useless. Lost. And I feel I've fucked things up too badly with the people here worth sticking around for. I think that's why he had it so easy."

He being the boggart. Bert swipes a hand over his eyes, looking exhausted by his own diatribe, but also a little relieved.

[dr_lauren]

Lauren's not a touchy-feely type of person, generally, but as Bert shares his thoughts and the circumstances of his past she can't help but feel the urge to wrap him up in her arms and promise him that everything will work out in the end. Except it might not, and she doesn't think he'll believe it any more than she does.

Had he died? She can remember the feel of hands around her throat, the burning in her chest, the creeping black that edged her vision threatening to block out Nadia's face contorted with rage. If Bert says he died, well, she believes him, because she isn't completely convinced she hadn't too.

"Look, Bert," she says eventually, trying not to let the silence creep out too long so that he starts getting nervous or regrets telling her. "I like problems that have answers. Things you can put under a microscope and study and eventually crack... it makes it easy to solve them with a pill or an injection. But this sort of stuff... there's no pill for it, is there?" Maybe he's depressed, and maybe a pill will help him feel a bit better, but it won''t answer his questions or give him a purpose. "But this is what I think: Heaven or hell or limbo or whatever this is, we're in it together. Whatever you end up being willing and able to offer, people will take it, and they'll give back in turn. I can't claim to know everybody here well, or even like them all, but we need each other. We need you to do whatever you can do to make this work - be it shooting things or making chili or cracking jokes or something else you haven't discovered you want to do yet."

She stands as well, turning to look over the landscape for a moment before turning back to him. "And maybe I shouldn't be speaking for everyone else and I'm dead wrong about them. But I think that dead or not, you've got a lot to offer, Bert. Just look at what you're bringing with you."

[wise_ass]

What is he bringing with him? What is he if he's not a gunslinger? If he's not Roland's second?

What would life be like if he really put all that to bed? Not all of it; it was his life, it made him who he is, and yet-- it was brutally short and truthfully, he was filled with regrets. Winning his guns had been one of the most important days in his life, but he can't say in earnest it was one of the best. He'd always thought that one day he'd marry and have kids like his own father. He'd barely had a chance to be a child he'd been so busy preparing to be a soldier, and then had come being a soldier... he'd never even had a proper girl, for Gan's sake, just a string of (occasionally very sweet and memorable) hookers. There had been a few girls, fine, but none he'd really been able to court. And he would've liked to train under Vannay, for instance, if there'd been time. Ideally before he needed a cane to get up the tower stairs. He'd never gotten to see Kashamin or the Western Sea or, now that he's thinking of it, Roland's gods-be-damned Dark Tower... or more accurately, the crestfallen, slightly confused expression on Roland's face when they got to the ends of the earth and he realized it really was a ridiculous fairy tale.

And his juggling still needs a lot of work, say true. The gypsies would never take him at this rate.

He sits down next to her, looking both a little lost and suddenly energized.

"You don't have a handkerchief, do you? That would've made the angels weep."

Bert looks at her, and though his eyes are dry, his half-laugh, half-sigh has a shaky, breathless sound to it.

"Thank you, Lauren. I am remarkably functional for a dead man, if nothing else."

[dr_lauren]

"That's something to be proud of," Lauren replies with a wry grin. She's glad to see Bert's not dismissing her words out of hand; maybe she's not as bad as this as she always felt she was. Or maybe he's just that desperate for reassurance.

Anyway.

"So. Sam'll have my head if I don't invite you for dinner once you're up for it. Consider it an open invitation to the replicator's finest."

[wise_ass]

"I'd like that. You two should better acquaint me with your worlds, show me a good movie while we're at it. I'm carrying a case of culture lag so devastating you wouldn't believe it. I've been whittling in my spare time, Lauren."

Bert grabs her hand tightly and fixes her with an imploring look. "Whittling!"

[dr_lauren]

"That does sound dire," she says, chuckling at his expression and generally lightened demeanour - not artificial, she thinks, or at least hopes. "Well, if you find yourself with idle hands and nothing to carve I could always use another pair of hands in the lab. Or... better yet, you should talk to Sam." The other woman was much in the same situation as Bert, without anything to occupy her and a growing ennui that Lauren was beginning to worry about.

"Just no whittling. That's the last thing I need."

[wise_ass]

"I don't think you want me anywhere near the lab," he tells her honestly. "Bull, china shop... but I'll certainly talk with Sam. ...how she's holding up, anyway?"

Bert scratches his temple, fixing Lauren with a slightly rueful smile. "I can't imagine she's enjoying this."

Sharon and Sam had that much in common, anyway; Restless Peacekeeper Syndrome. He feels a little guilty that he's not more disturbed to find their levels forcibly occupied, honestly; it makes him more nervous to see how it's affecting the others.

[dr_lauren]

"No, not really. So any distractions are welcome. Just... don't tell her I arranged them."