2020-06-03 - jingle jingle

Presumably, somebody made sure Megan Keene wasn't going to die from all the things that made her unconscious - Bennie's trick and the head trauma following the car crash. Similarly, we're going to assume they had the good sense to take her promptly somewhere that she wouldn't, for example, wake up, electrocute everyone, and leave. Instead, she's conveniently unconscious for however long it takes to arrange this holding cell to suit a psychotic psychic.

She's gonna wake up pissed for sure. Any second now.

Somewhere, like one of the holding cells at the local precinct. Which, once Megan wakes up, she'll find curiously ablated of any charge whatsoever. Three featureless walls, one housing a steel plank bench bolted to the floor, and a set of chipping iron bars providing a view out into an equally featureless corridor, along which an officer or suited detective occasionally passes.

Seated on one end of the bench, opposite Megan's slumped form (handcuffed, but otherwise free to roam), the familiar, bulky frame of the uniformed captain. Back against the wall, phone in hand, he appears to be playing a game of candy crush while he waits for the girl to wake up. There's a brief glance at his watch, and a flick of dark eyes to the hall, like he's expecting someone else. Who could that be?

She arrives with very little fanfare, and with quick, brisk strides. Isabella emerges from the end of the hall, her phone in hand. "Sorry, there was an accident, I had to find another way around," she tells Ruiz. There's another glance at his text, before she flashes him an amused look, and one that says: Cute ass? I didn't know you were looking.

Green-and-gold eyes fix on Megan, scrutinizing her carefully. "How is she, you think?" she murmurs to the Captain, a little more serious this time.

Even when you have seven dots of stealth or your sheet, handcuffs make jingly noises when they move. So the handcuffs make a jingly noise when Megan moves, specifically reaching the heel of her hand to test the side of her head where it knocked against the rear window of a (now deceased) sentient Cadillac. Her brains aren't falling out of some gaping wound so...

She slams her hands down on the bench, which makes a lot more noise than just a little jingle, really bad for maintaining the kind of focus required to crush all the candies. "What happened to me? Did you do this or the Doctor?" So the answer to Isabella's question would be: pissed. Megan is pissed.

The captain's phone buzzes, right before that little jingly handcuff noise. He flicks his eyes over to check on the girl, maybe make sure she isn't about to pull some movie shit and try to choke him out with the chain or something. Then, satisfied that she isn't, he goes to check his phone. And chuckles softly. A quick reply before the thing is shoved into a pocket of his uniform, and then he pulls to his feet slowly. "Did who do what to you? The handcuffs were me. The room.." He looks around briefly. "Was Alexander Clayton. Pretty good, yeah?" He sniffs once, digs his keys out of his pocket, and prowls for the gate so he can unlock it and let Isabella inside. "The rest of it, you're going to have to be more specific."

(TXT to Isabella) Ruiz : Not sure yet. I can't read her in here, or I would. And what do you think I am, blind?

(TXT to Ruiz) Isabella : Definitely not, but I'm very much commending you on your very good taste. ::winky emoji::

The text digs into her smartphone, Isabella managing to bite back a laugh before she fires off the reply text. Tucking the device into her pocket, she would say something else with her own voice were it not for Megan's sudden rise from the bench and the loud sound from within the cell. She nearly jumps, her heart ticking quickly against her bones. With the police captain leading the way, though, she follows.

"We heard you were taken, and the Captain said we ought to get you before anything terrible happened to you, so we did. But after what happened in the Asylum, I wasn't sure..." She furrows her brows. "Alexander did this just in case. I wasn't sure how long you were in there after the Doctor's men took you, just when we finally figured out how to get to you."

Megan is accustomed to using non-verbal communication. Normally, this is of the invasive, 'talking right into someone else's mind' variety. Since that's not an option... she gives Ruiz the finger to answer how pretty-good she thinks Alexander's accomplishment is. It also serves for her opinion on the handcuffs. "Tell him to stop. Get back on your fucking phone," this to Isabella, and they had such good rapport before~, "and tell him to turn the lights back on." She might be having the same thought about the versatility of handcuff chains, just based on how hard she's pulling her wrists apart against them and the hard look she holds on Isabella.

This totally just occurred to her, by the way: "Why am I in jail?"

Megan's one-finger salute just gains a smile from the cop, and a slightly ominous creeeeak of the bench as he sinks back down against it. Someone might need to lay off those donuts once in a while. "I was hoping for a thank you, at the very least," he mock-grouses, weaving those weathered, inked, inelegant fingers together on his lap as he watches the girl beside him. "Anyway, no. The lights are staying off. For now. We'll do this the old fashioned way, yeah?"

Then as if remembering something, he furrows his brows and reaches for the service pistol holstered in his rig. Slides it out, checks the safety, and ejects the clip in a single, practiced motion. Then gun and clip are set down on the bench, one after the other. Thunk, thunk. A wave of his hand toward Isabella, as if to bestow upon her the honours of beginning.

The question about why she's in jail? Totally ignored.

She remains standing, examining the byplay between Megan and cop. "I'm not like Alexander," Isabella tells Megan, and that's the truth. "I'm actually not quite sure how anyone can remove what he did in the cell, or even if he knows how until it just wears off." She slides her hands in her pockets instead. "You might just have to wait until that happens. As for the cuffs, you'd have to ask the Captain, I think."

She fixes her eyes on Megan. "I was surprised when I heard that the Doctor's guys grabbed you. Were they doing that to everyone who escaped, or was it just you and Alice?"

Megan-the-actress clasps her cuffed hands together, turns wide eyes toward Ruiz with a damsel-like flutter of her lashes. "Thank you so much!" That exclamation is coated in syrupy sweetness. From there on out, it's all just hatefulness. "For handcuffing me in a room where I'm literally powerless. My fucking hero." Her hands drop, pretense abandoned, turned onto her lap so while she slumps onto the bench, turning less lash-batty eyes upon Isabella. They hang there listlessly for a notable pause after her question, one that lengthens... and then she suggests, "Let me out, and I'll answer your questions."

The whole thing with the gun? Totally ignored. SHE JUST WANTS HER POWERS BACK YOU GUYS WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG

With the playing field thusly evened, Ruiz leans back against the wall and re-clasps his hands together. Megan's regarded evenly, if a bit skeptically when she starts in with the fluttering lashes at him. Because obviously he's not buying it. "Precautions," he informs her with a lift of one shoulder. "And I'll tell you what. Here are your options. Option one. You start fucking talking, and if we like your answers, maybe we all go home in time for dinner tonight. Option two, you continue to be a bitch, and I have charges pressed against you, and we take this shit through the legal system. Which will be slow. And fucking annoying. And after all the effort these people went through at my request to rescue you, I'd feel really fucking badly about that, yeah?"

With the less-batty eyes turned to her, Isabella opens her mouth - but with Ruiz laying down the law, so to speak, her jaw shuts with a click.

"The number of fucks I give about how you feel?" Megan makes a circle out of the fingers of one hand, goose-egg on the Ruiz-feels~. Her hand drops, her eyes roll toward the ceiling and stay there when she slouches on the bench, like she's really thinking hard about this. "Put me in your system. That'll be a thrill a minute." There might be a little bit of manic underneath her snickering, but she has been in a mental institution on and off for the past year, so.

She's still looking at the ceiling like she's deliberating when she adds, "Me. Alice. Some others." She takes a quick, sharp breath and points out, "Or I could just be lying. Too bad there's no way to know for sure in the dark." At least she's entertaining herself, based on the follow-up snickering.

Megan's zero fucks gains, in return, an exaggerated moue of upset from the cop. Like, stop, you're breaking my heart. "Happy to," he returns to her telling him to put her in his system. Not that he's jumping up to do so right fucking now. But then she talks a little, and he ticks his eyes up to watch hers as she responds. "Why'd they want you back so badly? Did you know they were coming for you?"

Ruiz's questions are also ones which she wants answered, Isabella furrowing her brows when she thinks about the encounter. Her hands slide further into her pockets as she regards Megan with quiet scrutiny from where she's leaning against the wall. "Do you know what the Doctor is, exactly?" she asks. "What did he want with all of you that he would make the effort to drag you all back into the Asylum?"

"I don't know," seems like an honest answer to the first of Ruiz's questions. "Because I escaped? Because I was fixing memories? Because they didn't have any better to do for Memorial Day?" The dumb guesses end with a limp-shouldered shrug. Her eyes slide dully toward Isabella when she asks about the Doctor, and her answer to the first question is, "Powerful." Then she shrugs the same limp shrug rather than restating her half-ass guesses.

The captain listens along, brows furrowed slightly at the answers (or non-answers) given. It's hardly an interrogation in any real sense of the word, but then she's also hardly here in any official capacity. He rests his elbows against his knees, and examines his hands as the pair talk. Then, "Why were you.. fixing memories? What the fuck's in it for you? Why are you doing any of this?" He spreads his fingers, dark eyes shifting to meet hers, intent. "You act like you don't give a shit. Like you'd as soon kill us and fuck off. And yet.."

"Alice was terrified of him and so were you," Isabella includes in Ruiz's litany of questions. "I just want to understand why - what he wants with you. Now that you've escaped again, will he keep coming after you?"

"Because I had to." Megan squints at Ruiz, head cocked at a confused tilt, like she's searching for his angle here. "Or stay faded. And fuck that." She casts a look around this irritatingly DARK room, then fixes her attention back on Ruiz with a brow-quirk that does not argue with his last comment: she'd absolutely just as soon kill them and fuck off.

"Probably!" she tells Isabella with way too much cheer about the possibility. "Which makes it really great that you two decided to lock me in a room where I can't fucking defend myself."

"Stay faded," Ruiz repeats, squinting at the girl slightly. "What.. faded you in the first place? What the fuck happened? What does it have to do with the 'doctor'?" And yes, he puts fingerquotes around that. As to her last remark, he simply offers a wry twist of his lips. "I guess you're just going to have to trust me to keep you safe, then. Aren't you." Awfully sure of himself, isn't he? "Though, you get any wise ideas and try to kill one of us, I assure you. Accidents do happen." He's not really smiling when he says that part. Probably just as well that this little chat's not on the record, either.

"I don't know if you can. Defend yourself," Isabella says quietly. "Javier's tried to shoot him, he bent lightning thrown at him...I don't think whatever you can do would be able to hurt him, if you're able to and the safest place for you might be here with the Captain. As far as I know, even the Shadows can't penetrate a nulled room. I know it sucks, Megan, but we are trying to help, if we can...the Captain, especially. But we won't be able to do so as effectively if we're left in the dark as to what he might want with you and all the other inmates."

Megan, frustrated, opens her hand at Isabella like she’s looking for some support here with the whole faded thing. “If you’d had the stones to get your memory back, this would all make sense to you.” Any attempt she might have made to explain further gets derailed by this whole ‘keep her safe’ notion and she just gapes between them, incredulous. Clearly, the idea of trusting these people to keep her safe upsets her way more than blurting out everything she knows so!

“I don’t know what The Doctor is. A fucking god or something. I assume they wanted me back because they didn’t want me out there, fixing people’s memories, and they wanted Alice back because she’s fucking nuts. Have you ever talked to her? She’s batshit insane.” [insert comment about pots and kettles here.] “Can I go now?”

"Nothing to do with balls," de la Vega opines, slanting an irritated look Megan's way. "I don't fucking like being bullied. And I don't trust you. This.." He looks her up and down briefly. "Isn't helping." He blows a breath out his nose, then scrapes his hands over his face in evident agitation.

A while passes before he speaks again, hands dropped to his lap, dark eyes cutting toward Isabella. "Well, unless Doctor Reede's got anything else she needs from you." And while he waits for her reply, he goes to retrieve his gun and clip, and slot the one into the other. Maybe he's simply planning on shooting Megan and walking out of here.

"It's true," Isabella tells Javier - she gives Megan that support at least. "I believe the act also helps her put things together in her own way." Her mind backtracks, recalling the question Alexander asked of her regarding Dr. Hailey Stevenson - if she had been working with Them during her time with the Asylum, would you ever forgive her, to which she replied, it depends on what she was doing since then. She might be unsure, but as usual, she is willing to gamble.

When prompted by the police captain, she shakes her head. "I've got nothing else, unless Megan has more to add." Back to the other woman, she continues, "If he's a god, and he wants you, and you don't want to be brought back to him, if you can think of anything else that might assist us in backing you up, you could share it with us and we will definitely try. Like how we tried and succeeded in getting you back. I just don't know how long that will last, with something like him on the board."

He doesn’t like to be bullied, “Neither do I.” At which point, Megan lifts her cuffed hands with a little jingle of the chain between them, a tinkly little undercurrent to the dark look that hangs from Ruiz. Megan doesn’t say anything about trust, but the baleful look speaks volumes: right back atcha. She drops a look to the business with the gun, then leaves her hands - and the cuffs - extended into the air between them, expectantly. Maybe he’s simply planning on shooting her and walking out of here, but it’s gonna look real bad if he does that while she’s handcuffed, right?

The hands stay there, suspended, while she listens to Isabella. And shakes her head at the offer to add more to all this. “I don’t think the Doctor, any of the ones like him? The Director, the... other one?” So much for shaking her head like she has nothing to add, huh? Has the meta reminded everyone that she’s been in an institution for the majority of the last year? Yeah. “I don’t think they can come over here, to this side. Just their fucking minions, the guys with the white vans.” Ruiz knows those guys! Which is to say, “I can run, and I can hide. Just as soon as you let me the fuck out of here.” Jingle jingle.

Clip loaded, safety notably left engaged, the cop's gun is palmed in his right hand as he pushes to his feet. His phone's screen is checked with a furrow of his brows; he got distracted, after all, and lost his game of candy crush. Isabella's words draw his gaze back up, but don't soften the hard line of his jaw or the brittleness in his shoulders. Then Megan, regarded with a swoop of those dark eyes. Her face, and then her outstretched hands.

"They won't be able to get to you in here." The guys in the white vans. He does know those guys. And he seems sure of that.

Then the captain holsters his gun, and ambles in closer while digging in his pants pocket. A tiny key is produced, don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what it opens. "And running and hiding didn't fucking work out so well for you before, did it?"

"....the Director?" Isabella wonders, furrowing her brows. "That's one I've not met, who is he? And the other..." The other one. Doctor, Director. Doctor Director. Doct-or, Direct-or... "...the Collector?" She chews on her bottom lip in thought. "When I first heard about the Collector, I was told that he tended to take things from this side and back into the other side to fill up his Museum, but I don't think I was told that he actually retrieves these items himself. I wonder..." Her green-and-gold eyes wander to the side of the cell. "That's some measure of comfort, at least, and it makes sense on some level." Theories bounce around her skull, but she pushes them aside for now. "Thank you, Megan."

Another glance to Ruiz, when he brings out the key, and she takes several steps sideways to give Javier the room. She doesn't know what's going to happen to her now, but Ruiz wanted her free from the Asylum, at least, and she's clearly deferring to his decisions there. "If you get cornered again, toss out a shout? If not me, then Javier."

Watching Isabella dully, Megan chimes in with, "Yeah. You're welcome." It's neither authentic nor convincing. Megan's not happy to be helping. She's just upholding her end of the bargain: start fucking talking. Having done so, she keeps her hands out there toward Ruiz and the key whose purpose is obvious to everyone, even Megan. Jingle jingle.

"Running and hiding worked fucking great till I stopped running. Because I was waiting for someone to come around." One index finger points Ruiz's way, her smile saccharine for a second. "It won't happen again." She jingles the handcuffs more firmly this time, JINGLE JINGLE. "Just lemme out of here, and we'll allllll go our separate ways."

The captain stops short about a foot away, a wry twist of his mouth for Megan's saccharine smile. He cuts a brief glance toward Isabella as the woman moves aside to make room, with a slight twinge of something in his expression as he catches on something she says. The Collector.

Then he moves in the rest of the way, puts a knee to the bench, and grasps one of Megan's wrists a little more roughly than perhaps he needs to. jingle, jingle as he gets the key inserted, turns it, and springs her from the cuffs. They're slipped loose and collected with a dull clatter, and he pushes off and goes to mosey for the locked cell door. "You try to hurt Alexander Clayton again, and I won't be bringing you in. I won't be wasting my time putting you through the system." Does he need to say it? Does he need to say what he'll do?

Her eyes find Javier's and hold. But with the woman released and the warning given, Isabella slides her hands in her pockets. Her focus is on both, though subtle tension returns to her shoulders when she realizes that the man intends to set the woman free.

Her lips part; she's about to say something else, but the police captain - no, acting police chief - takes the words out of her mouth, and delivers it with the authority that she would never manage convincingly. Instead, she gives the two a wide berth. For once in her life she isn't diving headfirst into a confrontation.

Her eyes roll at the mention of Alexander. "I have no interest in hurting Alexander Clayton. He knows which one of us is a murderer and which one of us isn't. That ought to sting him worse than anything I could come up with." Loose, Megan rubs her wrists, making a face 'cause that extra roughness was unnecessary, weren't they establishing some kind of rapport here?! "I just wanna get out of here." Witness the way she's on her feet, rolling onto her toes and then back onto her heels in an eagerness to have that door open. With conviction, "And never see any of you people again." Like they're the problem here.

So no, Ruiz doesn't need to say anything. Everyone is on the same page: they want Megan to leave Alexander alone, and she's happy to oblige. Just waiting for that door to open, like she could will it to happen with her mind. Which she can't. Which is why she wants out so badly. And so on.

Sure they were establishing a rapport. A rapport where he roughs her up a little, and she thinks twice about fucking him around later, if the opportunity arises. The cop even smiles, though it's kind of wolfish and not very nice; all crow's feet and the sharp tippy tips of canines. "Moretti'll escort you out." That's the big black guy waiting for her on the other side. Then the gate's swung open, and she's free to go. Just a few parting words for the girl, before she slips past him.

"Cuando la noche me rodeó, nací de nuevo: era el dueño de mi propia oscuridad." Does he care that she doesn't speak Spanish? Not one whit. He's already being beckoned over by a couple of other officers who need a hand with a detainee, and holds up a finger to them to make sure Isabella has everything she needs, first, with a look pitched in her direction.

"I'll wait for you so we can talk," Isabella tells Ruiz simply with a faint smile, when he turns that dark-eyed look in her direction. She waits as Megan leaves, before she, too, starts to exit the jail cell - and proceeds to the waiting room where she will clearly sit herself and be good until the man is let out of duty.

There's zero indication that Ruiz's parting words struck any chords with their erstwhile prisoner. Megan glances at him, but there's that 'no comprende' glaze over her expression; no powers, no espanol.

Megan Keene is out the door without another word. The second she's beyond that dark space, she's essentially vanished. Left town. Gone. Poof. As promised, she's done with you people.