PSL: Travels outside the Barge (w/Malcolm)

[empathicfault]

Piloting their new ship is a little difficult. It takes reading the (somehow enclosed) manual back-to-front and learning the control panel, now situated in what looks like a little closet on the window side of the living room. It's in the new hallway that leads to the small courtyard, which Will intends to decorate once they get this one chore done first.

Thankfully, the majority of the controls are intuition-based, going off the person who puts their hand on a small orb on the panel. The rest, as it turns out, is tweaking. And luckily (or otherwise), no tweaking is necessary for their first flight.

They're heading to Will's home world.

But Will doesn't specify where, just a year later than he left. he inadvertently brings them to where he'd left. The door opens from a wall of Hannibal's cliffside home, and looks out onto the driveway. The Dragon's wings are still there, staining the cement. They overlook the grey day and the churning seaside.

Will finds himself stuck in the doorway, unsure whether he's compelled to walk out and remember or slam the door shut and take them elsewhere.

Comments

[abrightboy]

Malcolm is accustomed to being stared at with vague unfounded suspicion. He barely notices.

“That’s a relief,” he assures Will.

[empathicfault]

"It is," he admits. "Doesn't mean I'm not keeping an eye out for Freddie or any of the other murderers I caught. I keep expecting them to be right in the corner of my eye."

He takes another bite of his treat, but- it doesn't quite illicit the same spark of happiness he had before. He's thoroughly ruined the mood by remembering what most of this world seems composed of. "I do feel closer to them here. I'll have to ask Wiktor if that's...I don't know, something."

[abrightboy]

“Well, they’re from here? So their energy is… in this world… somewhere. Right?” He doesn’t know that much about it; if he’s honest, he feels like… not even a third wheel to that training. Like winter tires in the summer, stored in a shed somewhere. But he gamely tries.

[empathicfault]

Will goes to say something. Then he stops, thinks, and rubs his face with one hand. "It all sounds so much more reasonable on the Barge. Nearly scientific, even. Here?" Will shakes his head. He sounds like a new age cultist, bringing it up.

"I'm not sure if it's energy, if I'm honest. That'd make the most sense. There are...connections I've fostered. That I asked for. I thought it was the specific way I could delude myself, a perk to all the downsides of mental illness. But what I was seeing was real. Objective, merely well hidden."

He sighs and gestures with his spoon. His tone shifts from serious to sarcastic. "Like the most obnoxious set of fingerprints in existence."

[abrightboy]

“You’re like the UV light and they’re the bodily fluids at the crime scene?” Malcolm hazards. Will Graham: the only UV light that can see the stain inside people.

[empathicfault]

Will chuckles, smile coming back. "That sounds more apt. I have to describe what I see, rather than show it to other people. And of course, most would rather not know about these sorts of stains. But they solve murders..."

[abrightboy]

“It goes over well with a very specific crowd,” Malcolm notes with a grin. Himself, for one. And others that are… less of a support when it happens but just want to milk it like a cow full of answers. He knows about those too. “It’s not weird,” he says matter of factly, taking another little bite of dessert.