all_inclusive | my mind's not right.

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my mind's not right.

The guards snicker behind me. It's a nervous titter, because these men have seen the worst offenders, but they have not seen the likes of me before, and now they are scared. I want to turn to confront them, provoke them, with my newfound sense of confidence, but they both wear tasers at their hips and while I am braver now, I am also not stupid.

They know what a catch they have in me. They think the other inmates here are going to chew me up and spit me back out, and they can't wait to see it. They don't realize that this is the last thing the others here should do. They don't realize that I have been pushed to the brink, shoved into darkness, had my very sense of self corrupted, but even the darkness was afraid of what I knew.

Nothing any of these criminals has to say to me would mean anything. They can't break me. They think they want to get into my head, screw with the new guy? Shout their lewd jabs, try to pry open my healed wounds? They're welcome to try. They might not like what they see.

I should be in a panic, but I am calm, and that scares the guards just as much as the crimes they know I'm accused of. I should be dragged, kicking and screaming, to what will possibly be the home for the rest of my life, natural or otherwise (there is dissent over whether you should execute the mentally ill, which seems to be my only hope at dying a natural death rather than a state sponsored one). Instead, I go peacefully. I have made one attempt at escape and while it led to some particularly useful revelations, it also led me right back here, to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

The guards, despite their fascination to see what happens, are more than eager to see me into my cell and wipe their hands of me. I follow orders -- step into the cell, back up to the bars, no sudden moves. I am docile, tamed, cowed. I am what they want me to be, because that way, they will leave me alone.

I try not to shudder when I hear the ominous sound of industrial locks clicking shut behind me. I try not to feel anything; I am numb and triumphant both, and cannot spare a thought for this. Behind my back, the guards undo the chains at my wrists and ankles, freeing me from one set of bondage right into another.

"Your suite, Agent Graham," says one of the guards, and I don't even need to see his face to know that there is a mocking sneer plastered across it. He is probably the oldest child in his family, grew up poor, bullied others to get his way, and had it reinforced by some rather undistinguished military service. If I had to guess. But what do I know; as far as everyone is concerned, I'm a murderer. I'm insane. I'm a toy, to be played with and destroyed and discarded.

I turn to face front, half a mind to correct the inaccurate title he's given me, but for some reason, the scene has changed. Instead of damp brick and two overgrown oafs, I see a nondescript hotel room. A double bed with an ugly floral patterned duvet, peeling wallpaper, a painting of a windmill. I turn in quick circles, taking it in, and now the panic rises and bubbles in my chest.

I was cured, I had thought. They pumped me full of steroids and antibiotics. I have a clean bill of health. I haven't had a hallucination since they woke me up, and besides, this scene has no meaning to me. There's no reason for it. It doesn't fit the pattern.

Haltingly, I take a step forward, reach out with one hand, and run my fingers across the bedspread, the cheap wooden bedframe, the grimy nightstand. Everything feels real, but I know it can't be. Testing the limits of my freedom, I step towards the door, place my hand on the doorknob, twist and pull. The door swings open easily and my feet are carrying me, on automatic pilot, out the hallway. It's a slightly more lavish hallway than the room I just left, but something feels wrong, sterile, otherworldly.

I don't know where I am or how I got here or if this is even real. I wonder if I'm sick again, and then realize that I don't care. Not right now. Not after everything else. I turn back to the door I just stepped through, but the handle won't turn, and I have no key. Whatever is happening to me, it appears that I must go forward, not back. I can't help it. I swipe a hand across my brow, sweat slicking my skin; my lips pull back in a parody of a smile, and I laugh. It sounds haunted and sick to my ears, and I suppose I am, after all.

[ hover for an ooc note regarding will's clothing which is a mild spoiler for 1x13.]

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Nick is covered in sweat and dirt, as he usually has been these days, and he's on his way back up to his room with an aching back and mind he can't keep empty.

(His room isn't like Larry's familiar, heartbreaking living room, home and not home. It's just--a room.)

He stops for the man dressed like a prisoner or a painter, taking him in with one quick sweep, and all thoughts of his own situation go (with relief) unwanted out the window. He's gotten so much better than he ever wanted to be at recognizing people on the verge of breaking down.

So Nick waves, with a soft, empathetic look, and scribbles in his notebook before stepping close enough that this man can read it while Nick holds it at arm's length: You look lost.

Through my own mild hysteria, bubbling up to the surface, I notice a young man approach. I am tempted to recoil, but he looks harmless, seems ordinary. His face isn't familiar and I have a hard time placing him in the context of whatever this is that I'm hallucinating; usually, when I see things, there's a point, a pattern, not just random faces.

There's a notebook in front of my face, I realize. He's probably been holding it up too long, waiting for me to notice. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, rubbing slowly, then drop my hands back down to my sides. They shake, I notice, before turning my attention to the page.

There are only a handful of reasons why someone would only communicate in writing. Some medical; others, the domain of the professionally paranoid. He doesn't fit the profile of the latter. I've known those people. (I've been that person.) This is something else.

I have to clear my throat before speaking; and when I do, my voice is rusty with disuse. "I am, yes," I say. "Or, at least, being lost is maybe the best outcome for my problems, I don't know." I have a thousand questions and I don't know if he has answers to any of them. "Where am I, let's start with that problem first."

It's OK.

Nick has worked with horses before. They're skittish, easily terrified creatures, and he was in a stall with a sick mare when she started--who knows at what, it could have been anything, a noise he couldn't hear or a shadow he didn't see--and this man reminds him of that, the way her eyes rolled as she slammed against the wall. When they shot her he left that farm.

It's not the same, of course. Nobody's going to shoot a man for that trapped, panicked look; he's not going to hurt himself. (Unless he does.)

All the same, Nick makes sure that his hands stay where this man can see them, and he's not making any sudden movements of his own. He's good at being the calm place in an uncertain world.

We're in a place they tell me is the Nexus Hotel. It's safe. He tears that page out and hands it to Will so he can continue writing. You look like you should sit down. My room isn't far. This isn't a come-on. I'm Nick.

This man is careful in his interaction with me, and my mind already starts to try to piece together what I can about him. Some past trauma, an abusive upbringing, anxiety? Being mute for whatever reason -- physical, psychological, something else -- could lead to plenty of less than optimal interactions. Even through the haze of my own uncertainty regarding the situation, I can still find his caution admirable.

I read the next series of notes and chuckle darkly to myself. "It's not a come-on, but -- but that's how people die, alone and desperate and --" I stop, clear my throat, exhale again. The words coming out of my mouth are inappropriate, and I stop before Nick starts to think the worst of me. I clutch the piece of notepaper in my hands, and I feel it start to tear under my fingers.

"I'm sorry, that was -- unnecessary." I roll my shoulders and try to remember how exactly to interact with humans -- not prison guards or mentally ill inmates or people who know me yet think me capable of atrocities. "My name is Will. Thank you for helping me. Yes, I would like to sit down." I feel and sound robotic, my voice foreign to my ears, and rough. It takes all I have to not just sit down right there in the hallway and wait to be back in my cell.

Nick reaches out for Will's shoulder instinctively, but then he thinks better of it. He glances down at his outstretched hand, then back up to Will with a faint little smile. There's amusement there, the soft, worn type like a cloth wrung too many times, and it's entirely self-directed. He draws back and tips his head towards his room down the hall.

Let's agree nobody gets killed, OK? He hands Will that note with due seriousness, tilting his head as his smile disappears in the wake of lifted eyebrows. Don't be sorry. He adds that on a second note, and then starts guiding Will towards his room with the watchfulness of a shepherd.

He wasn't lying. His room is close, even though the numbering system makes no sense, and the door itself doesn't match the two on either side. His key (a real metal one) clicks home, and he opens up on a room that could be a college student's. Or a halfway house resident's. The walls are a warm but quiet beige, with white bordering. The bed is a single with neat, almost military cornering on the sheets. There are no pictures, but the desk next to the bed (with a minifridge underneath) has an open notebook on it--one without writing in it, yet. The flooring is rough green carpet.

The most personal touch Nick has left on it, besides the way he made the bed, is a single white daisy in a blue coffee mug.

He pulls the wooden chair away from the desk, but gestures at the bed for Will--it's softer, but it's his choice.

Do you want anything? I have water. Nick leans against the desk for now, eyes back on Will--the room is small enough that if he writes in reasonably large letters it's legible from anywhere. That's something for it. He flips the page and adds: I don't know what's going on, you should know that. Bright side: no one does.

Normally, I would have some sort of feeling that I shouldn't be doing this, that I should just stay put in one place and wait this out, whatever this is, but there's something about Nick that feels like calm in a storm, and I realize that I'm following him before I've even had a chance to think about it.

We don't go far, but as we walk, it occurs to me that I'm still shuffling my feet like I'm in chains. Even my freedom isn't entirely free.

The room is plain, sterile, normal, and utterly different from the room I just left. I wonder if this is a conscious choice by the hotel, to make every room a different style, or if there's something else going on. I don't know what that something else would be, though, so I ignore it for the time being once I realize that Nick is waiting for me to sit.

I lower myself down onto the desk chair, posture straight and rigid; I am tense, my body whipcord tight as I perch on the edge of the chair. My hands are wrapped tight around the edges of the seat, knuckles white. It keeps my hands from shaking, keeps me grounded in place, so I don't care that I can feel the rough underside of the wood chafing against my fingers. It makes this real.

"Water would be nice, thank you," I say after reading Nick's note. "I'm still a little concerned that this is all -- well, I wasn't exactly, per se, well for a long while, and I'm just thinking -- this isn't real. It can't be real."

All signs point to that being a false statement. It must mean something that I am hoping more that this is another hallucination, perhaps a psychotic break, than something real. At least the former makes sense, given prior history. The latter -- there's no explanation, and that makes me uncomfortable.

Nick retrieves a cold bottled water from the fridge and sits across from Will on the edge of his bed, far enough back to avoid being in Will's space.

What happened to Nick was quick and painless. He was here before he knew enough to feel anything. So he showed up mostly startled, not afraid. It wasn't like this. He didn't realize he should have felt lucky until now.

He's never had a reason to doubt his own mind, but being unable to trust the senses he does have is a horror like being blind. It's an idea that immediately opens up a new well of sympathy for Will, and there's a careful gentleness in how he hands Will the untwisted bottle of water--the cap is still on, just broken, because Nick has a feeling that if Will was left to crack the seal on it himself his shaking hands wouldn't be able to hold on. Nick knows that if he was the one breaking apart he wouldn't want to feel any more embarrassed by not being able to open a damn bottle.

I thought I was dead. Nick leans forward on his knees, keeping his head down but eyes up. I could be. Don't know if this is real. Do we know enough to say it's not?

Jane Foster. He hands that scrap of paper torn from his book to Will, and writes on a fresh sheet. She's trying to figure this out. Knows more than me. Just a gardener.

If I were more in my right mind, I would want to pick at Nick to understand his story. There's a subtle caution in the way that he interacts with me, and I wonder if it's because I am obviously, very clearly on edge, or if there's something else to it. I'm not, though, and I file my curiosity away for later, to pick over when I have the ability.

I have to focus to hold onto the bottle of water. I could go for an aspirin or seven right about now, but of course they take all of those things away whenever you're booked into a mental institute-slash-penal institution to await trial for hideous murders.

But I'm not there anymore.

I take a deep swallow from the bottle, then read the notes.

"Dead?" I ask, eyebrows raised with the question. "That's, well, pretty final, I think. More final than where I was, before."

There's no way that happened to me, it's impossible. The only culprit would be the guards, and even though Chilton's incapacitated right now, he'd still have their heads if he knew that one of his men took out Chilton's newest prized possession.

I take Nick's note with Jane Foster's name on it and slip it into the pocket of my shirt. "Could it be some sort of shared delusion, a collective unconscious?" I'm thinking more out loud to myself than I am asking Nick, trying to work out what's happening. "No, that's too theoretical, too -- not actually the way the theory works. Delusion, yes, but let's not get into theory, that's not helpful. There's no -- no -- there's no context for something like this, no plan or design to it, nothing that would make sense."

I am desperate for this to make sense.

Maybe.

Nick wishes he could answer Will's clear distress with something concrete. He can see, all too easily, wrapping him in blankets and telling him that everything will work out--but he couldn't even do that to Tom, could he? Nick can tell when someone is talking to themselves and not him. It's something that seems to come up more often when people think you can't tell what they're saying.

There was a bomb. Nick writes, hesitantly, the tip of his pen lighter on his notepaper. But I've dreamed things like this before. I just don't know.

Nick taps his paper and holds up five fingers on his left hand: this is going to be a bit of an explanation.

Jane thinks that this place is where dimensions rub up against each other. I come from a world where almost everyone was dead. Most people here aren't from where I'm from. I met someone with my face but not my past. He can hear. Nick hands that over, and continues writing.

I dreamed of a place that was real, but I'd never seen it before. It's not impossible. If someone had told me that could happen before, I wouldn't have believed them. I'm not sure I believe. But I know how hard this is for

He pauses there, running a hand through his hair.

This is hard. He writes instead. I know. It doesn't make sense.

I know that if I can help you, I will. That's a fact.

Nick gives Will that sheet of paper with a slight hesitation, but the thing is that he can't not. It wouldn't be right to walk away, even if it'd be easier; and a low, shameful fact is that Nick feels better when he's the one providing help, not the other way around. Will's character is untested, but he's done nothing to set Nick on edge yet. That's good enough, for the moment.

I take Nick's notes and read them. I try to let my mind absorb the fact that what he's saying may very well be true: this is all real, and no one understands any of it. Leaning forward, I press my free hand to my temples and rub. I had thought that the terrible headaches I'd been having were brought on solely by my illness, but it looks like they're at least marginally stress induced, too.

"Thank you," I say, leaning up slightly to turn my face towards Nick so that he has a view of my lips. "I appreciate it, I do." It feels so foreign to have anyone else show even the slightest interest in my well-being, with no mailce or manipulation or disbelief, that I don't entirely know what to do about it.

"This is all a little more supernatural than what I'm used to, where I'm from. Suddenly finding yourself in a completely different dimension is the domain of science fiction movies, or, alternatively, people in dissociative states. This... if this is real... is the realm of the former, then. I don't know how I feel about that."

There seems to be a lot about this place that I'm going to have to accept on faith, and I am a man of very little faith. I suddenly understand how the forensics team must feel when I can say unequivocally how a murder has taken place, and I don't like this feeling of uncertainty.

Do you need a painkiller? Nick has noticed the special care Will takes of his skull, and it occurs to him now how thoughtless it was not to guess at him needing something for the disorientation, if nothing else. He doesn't have anything in his own room, but he knows where things are, which is more than Will has.

I don't believe it either. He smiles, with a wry twist. God might exist. I'm dead and I'm thinking. I'm still an agnostic, at best.

Real gods don't need instant belief. Neither does real magic. It just is, I think.

All of this touches on Mother Abigail in ways that are too sharp--but there was nothing about her that was sharp, was there? There was just soft, uncompromising belief. After what Larry told him, how much can Nick disbelieve? Or what can he believe?

Whatever it is, that's not Nick's choice for Will.

Maybe it is sci-fi, though. Like Isaac Asimov. That would be neat.

"Aspirin, or whatever you have on hand would be nice, thank you, if it's not too much trouble." I can't turn down the offer of something, anything, to dull the ache in my head. I'm sincerely hoping that it's just the stress of being here. That's what I'm going to count on -- everything else can be ignored until I've fully wrapped my mind around this place.

"My life has been a little more, ah, horror movie rather than sci-fi lately," I say, a little bitter laugh escaping me. "If this is what I get instead -- a mysterious hotel, spontaneous travel to an unknown location, well.." I let my words trail off as my fingers run overtop the letters that Nick has written. "In all honesty, I think I'll take the sci-fi story."

I think I just have to choose to believe that this -- whatever this is, exactly -- is all real. I've already been crazy once, far too recently for my liking. Accepting anything other than that this is reality means that I am probably crazy again, and that is the last thing I need right now.

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my mind's not right.

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