2019-11-18 - Path of Least Resistance

It's three in the morning and August is sleepily conferring with Itzhak about the meetup, and how it went, and what they learned, and more importantly what they didn't. A perfectly average conversation between them across Bed and Breakfast rooms, the sort of thing they've done a hundred times. Their own little ritual.

It's rudely interrupted as they wake up in a prison, about to be beaten to a pulp by guards. It gets worse from there; much worse.

August jerks awake. His first instinct: make sure Itzhak's okay. August smashed one sniper rifle, but had there been more? Had Itzhak been shot right as They let them out?

He reaches out to Itzhak, fear making his stomach churn. Yet the response is immediate; Itzhak's alive. 'Okay' is stretching it, but he's not badly injured. August leaves it at that, as the last thing either of the wants to do is talk about it. They want to sleep. They want to forget, leave it Over There.

He tries to, and just as he's drifting off, he hears it, echoing in his head.

LOCK DOWN

Just like that he's awake again, blinking back tears. Once his heart's slowed, he eases up, careful not to disturb Eleanor. The mass of black and blue on his chest and the throbbing ache in his left arm make it hard to move quietly, but he manages. Gets into the bathroom, shuts the door, stares at himself.

The feeling of that guard's (illusion's) heart tearing open because he told it to is rattling around inside him like a quarter left in the dryer. He'd assumed (wrongly) he'd never be able to actually do that. There'd been a wall, a barrier, the same way the brain has ways to stop you from biting off your own finger even though it's no more resilient to the human jaw than a carrot.

He should have known, though, after St. Mary's, that it wasn't true. Eleanor had stopped him then. Directed the rage which had boiled up out of him in response to seeing her attacked and hurting in another, ultimately more useful direction.

She hadn't been there this time. Seeing those guards swinging billy clubs at Itzhak, the memory of his icy panic from minutes before, was all it had taken. Itzhak hadn't even been badly injured, had been holding his own. But he'd also been in the throes of the dark ugliness lurking inside him he never wanted to show August, and August had decided someone was going to pay for making that happen.

He braces himself on the sink. It's one thing to know, viscerally, intimately, the feeling of a life slipping through his fingers like water. To feel those processes begin shutting down, to hear their mind go dark. It's another to make that happen because he wants to. Not an accident, not a miscalculation. He could have done what he's done before--damaged a kidney, the inner ear, collapsed a lung. That stops someone as sure as a heart attack. But he hadn't. They'd hurt Itzhak, and that wall had cracked wide open.

He wants to take a shower, but it'll wake up Eleanor. He also wants to go down to the bodega on the corner and buy a bottle of bourbon to crawl into. Get well and truly smashed for a nice round of self hatred and bitterness, and follow it up with a hangover for the record books in which he will argue with anyone because there'll be an ice pick lodged behind his eyes. Neither of these things will help the part where he's wondering if he's any good for Eleanor. They'll only make him feel better for about twenty or so minutes. (Maybe he should tell her to find someone else, someone who can't simply kill people by deciding it should happen. Someone who They're not coming after. Someone who won't get her hurt.)

Still, the shower won't cause a hangover, and it's free. He won't need to put on clothes. Also he's not getting back into bed covered in prison concrete dust and sweat and blood and his own tears. In the end, it wins by virtue of being the path of least resistance.

He turns on the water, nice and hot, to scour the Dream off himself. If it wakes up Eleanor, well. He'll think about burning that bridge once he's on it.