"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."
There are a few things to respond to in that, but the unspoken one is the one that concerns him the most. He takes her hand and gives it a tiny squeeze.
"I just wouldn't be able to do that magical meditation thing he did, that's all," she says, shrugging. "Locking you in a room, yeah, maybe, but the rest? You might be stuck hating him forever. Better it doesn't get that far to begin with."
It's flippant, but with a note of truth behind it: even though she's making light of the situation, she still means the words themselves.
"No." He lifts a hand to cup her cheek. "Jesus Christ, no. I was pissed at you, sure. I wouldn't have been that mad if your opinion didn't matter to me. If you didn't matter to me. I never, never, never hated you."
Neal snorts, brief and undignified. "I mean, I just found out that my sister thought I hated her the one time we ever had a big fight, so that's... unpleasant, but I'll live. Have you thought that this whole time? That if we disagree on something, if I argue with you, it means I hate you?"
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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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"I dunno, nothing. Whatever. I'm glad you're not gonna go protective guard dog on Eiffel; it would hurt him a lot."
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"Sam. What is it?"
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It's flippant, but with a note of truth behind it: even though she's making light of the situation, she still means the words themselves.
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Finally, he manages, "Did you think I hated you?"
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She doesn't pull away, but she does frown a little.
"Are you okay?"
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