"We missed a breach," she says, flopping an arm out to rest her hand on D.E.'s head. "Apparently. And you missed more; you were out for like a month and a half."
Neal grins, catching the towel before it can hit him in the face. He looks up at the bare ceiling, contemplative. "Not the worst idea, honestly. Stolas is extremely tall and adjusting the height of my ceiling automatically every time he comes over is apparently too much of a stretch for a cabin. No pun intended."
"I was plotting to murder Stolas in a dream once, she says, her brow furrowing. "That one flood-- you know. Haven't actually talked to the genuine article."
"He reminds me of me, when I was here early on. I may have projected a little hard in offering to not read his file--but he also thought he would have to give me a favor to get something of value requested from the Admiral, so the similarities are definitely there."
"Did you read his file yet?" she asks, flicking her gaze back over to him. She has strong opinions on this, but-- well. She's going to at least make an attempt to live and let live with this kind of thing, so there's no accusation or expectation in her tone.
"My first flood, we were temped. It was the uh, the one with emotional injuries--I don't remember if you were here for it, basically if you'd been hurt, emotionally, those injuries started bleeding in some less-than-metaphorical way. Some wounds worse than others. Only way to fix it, to get the bleeding to at least slow down, was to talk about what happened. I died twice that week."
He glances at her, eyebrows raised. She can probably start to guess where he's going with this.
"Then we got paired. Didn't take a brilliant profiler to realize I wasn't thrilled with anyone having a file on my life. So he did something I didn't expect. He gave it to me, after reading probably the first two pages, at most."
Neal shrugs. "The night before I woke up alive and free I gave it back to him."
Tiny noogie. "Now that I'm up, yes, I'm going to read it. In pieces, and talk with him after reading each piece. Ask questions, gauge his reactions. It'll let me see, theoretically, which pieces are most sensitive for him and start to clue me in on where we should focus. Hopefully build some trust or show me where I should step lightly. But anyone I'm matched with is getting the option of privacy until they trust me with that kind of information, slow path or not."
He sighs. "I really wish I hadn't gone down right after being paired."
He groans quietly, resting his head on the back of the couch. "Nope. And Norton was busy with his inmate brainwashing everyone's favorite Russian asshole."
Neal winces. "Sorry, I'm not making light of it, I'm really not, I was just doing a bit of back-reading on the network and saw part of the fallout."
"Insensitive? How dare you," she deadpans, because really, Neal, Shaw is the last person who's going to call you out for not being delicate enough. "I missed that, too. Who's the asshole, Hilbert?"
Neal rubs the bridge of his nose. "Yeah. My top three to-dos are to check in with Stolas, then Eiffel, then Malcolm, since Malcolm seems to have handled the whole thing pretty solidly and Eiffel seems to have done a bit of his own... It just clearly hit him close to home, and it looks like he decided to aim that at the people who had to deal with a brainwashed Hilbert murdering someone."
There's a brief pause here - because while she can easily imagine Eiffel flying off the handle because of his own trauma, she can also easily imagine Malcolm handling that poorly, and she knows where she'd place her bets on who Neal would be more defensive of and sympathetic to in that moment.
"Sounds like a plan," she says. "You know when it happened? I looked at the network when I woke up--"
Neal laughs quietly at that. "Part of the reason I've been so viciously defensive of Malcolm is that he's never defensive of himself. He almost always assumes his own wrongdoing first. He didn't this time. He stood up for himself. He held his ground, made his position known, and didn't change his attitude with he caught shit for it. I don't need to try and protect him here, so I'm not going to."
"Jumping straight to self-hate isn't exactly the same as assuming his own wrongdoing," she says, with uncharacteristic gentleness. "But okay. I get that; that makes sense."
"It can be hard to jump anywhere else, when self-hate is what you've been taught your whole life is an appropriate reaction." He matches her gentleness, his own smile warm and proud of Malcolm and of her, for reasons he doesn't have pinned down firmly enough to articulate yet. "I'm... glad he's finding somewhere else to land."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
too lazy for phone html
He towels lightly at his hair as D.E. trots over to Shaw, tail awag.
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Neal drops onto the couch next to her and drops his wet towel on her head.
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[ So many things, Shaw, and yet you love him anyway. She snatches the towel off herself and flings it at him. ]
The hell's wrong with your ceiling. You're not getting ready to recreate the Sistine Chapel, are you?
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"He reminds me of me, when I was here early on. I may have projected a little hard in offering to not read his file--but he also thought he would have to give me a favor to get something of value requested from the Admiral, so the similarities are definitely there."
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"I don't think I ever told you when I graduated. What happened the night before, I mean."
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She tilts her head, considering.
"I"m guessing... some display of trust or faith from Bright that you were able to take at face value instead of second-guessing?"
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"My first flood, we were temped. It was the uh, the one with emotional injuries--I don't remember if you were here for it, basically if you'd been hurt, emotionally, those injuries started bleeding in some less-than-metaphorical way. Some wounds worse than others. Only way to fix it, to get the bleeding to at least slow down, was to talk about what happened. I died twice that week."
He glances at her, eyebrows raised. She can probably start to guess where he's going with this.
"Then we got paired. Didn't take a brilliant profiler to realize I wasn't thrilled with anyone having a file on my life. So he did something I didn't expect. He gave it to me, after reading probably the first two pages, at most."
Neal shrugs. "The night before I woke up alive and free I gave it back to him."
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Tiny noogie. "Now that I'm up, yes, I'm going to read it. In pieces, and talk with him after reading each piece. Ask questions, gauge his reactions. It'll let me see, theoretically, which pieces are most sensitive for him and start to clue me in on where we should focus. Hopefully build some trust or show me where I should step lightly. But anyone I'm matched with is getting the option of privacy until they trust me with that kind of information, slow path or not."
He sighs. "I really wish I hadn't gone down right after being paired."
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Neal winces. "Sorry, I'm not making light of it, I'm really not, I was just doing a bit of back-reading on the network and saw part of the fallout."
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"Sounds like a plan," she says. "You know when it happened? I looked at the network when I woke up--"
For about three minutes, tops.
"-- but I didn't see anything. "
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"Go ahead." He glances at her, eyebrows raised. "I know you're thinking it."
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She doesn't say anything else: she just studies him, a step or two up from eyeing him warily.
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