worktodo | 011 | Saffron City

011 | Saffron City | Action;

[So here's Albert.

Since coming to Johto, Albert's seen a lot of wacky shit go down. He's seen people mutating into some kind of hideous hybrid creature from an airborne mutant virus. He's seen ledges that defy the laws of physics. He's seen dragons and dinosaurs and aliens. He's seen people who claim beyond a shadow of a doubt to be actual ponies. He's been yelled at by a teenage Viking. He's been flown all over creation on a bird with clouds for wings and carried forcibly around by a giant green sparklegrizzly and endured patently stupid roadtrips that involved caves and forests and god only knows what else. He's been taunted by ghosts. He's been assaulted with puppies. He's fallen in a really big hole.

He's survived the freaking Armageddon and still didn't let it ruin Christmas.

And now, here on the third day of this latest bout of flagrant insanity, in his quiet home in Saffron City with a brand new swimming pool sparkling in the yard and a snarling levitating three-hundred-pound flesh-eating snowflake snapping at the end of its chain near the outhouse, he is stepping outside to collect himself with a cup of coffee and a moment's peace—

...

And there is a BIG DAMN TREE TRANSPLANTED RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF HIS FORMERLY PRISTINE SIDEWALK, and WHEN THE HELL DID THAT GET THERE and WHO THE HELL EVEN RIPS UP A TREE AND—

...

...

Silently, Albert sips his coffee.

Just another day in Johto, apparently.]

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You didn't have to do anything.

[His voice is tense because what Cooper's saying, it's adding up. Things are adding up and he's always been good at putting together the nuances and tidbits like that, and suddenly it's making sense — the visions, the rock-throwing, the dances on the volcano — and for once, he doesn't want it to. He doesn't want it to make sense if the answer he's going to get is this.]

So what. You're just. You're just gone?

[Cooper.]

_{[And this is the hard part. This is what's really hard and if there's a suspicious light in Cooper's eyes it's not just a trick of the light.]

[He doesn't want to say this. But he has to, even if he'll first give what little reassurance he can give. And it's not much at all. It isn't even reassurance.]}

I'm alive in the Lodge, Albert. And I think I will always be.

_{[He pauses again before he continues.]}

But BOB has my body now. The way he had Leland's. That's where I need you, Albert. I'm sorry.

So you're telling me—

[Sum it up, Albert. Put it together. Pick up the clues, draw the inferences, paint the whole picture from the facts you've got. That's your job. That's what you do. Don't let emotions get in the way of the job.

That's what Coop's counting on you for, isn't it.]

You're telling me you went into this...place, and he got you, and now you're trapped and he's walking around wearing you like a meat suit just like—

[Leland Palmer. He hits Leland again, and all the implications start spinning out. Coop's body, danced around like Leland Palmer's was. Driven around. Manipulated. Like a puppet on a string. Defenseless.

Coop's body, doing to some girl what Leland Palmer's did to—

Jesus.]

You need me to stop you.

[Oh, he knows exactly what Coop's getting at here. Dale Cooper would never in his life ask to be rescued. That's not what this SOS is for. Not in a million years.]

Him. You.

_{[Coop lowers his eyes for a moment in silent admission to everything Albert is saying. It's also a small gesture of defeat, although not one he's giving consciously or willingly.]}

You are all in danger. The young woman taken hostage - Annie, Annie Blackburn - I kill her first. You don't suspect me because there's no reason to and all evidence is circumstancial at best.

_{[And he looks up again and he's so infinitely sad and completely accepting of this, that this is what he becomes, have already became.]}

I need you to remember this in order to prevent it. I told Harry a few things - not all of it. I ... I hate having to ask this of you. But I don't know what else I can do.

_{[Other than guard dead girls and keep an eye on the beings that talk so strangled and stilted and only in riddles he understands the meanings of but yet find to not make any sense at all.]}

Where am I. Why wasn't I there.

[What kept me away, he means, because clearly it must've been wild horses or the equivalent, if Coop got himself into this much trouble and nobody thought to call him.

He hates that look in Cooper's eyes, but they have to finish this before he can take the steps necessary to drive it away. This is too important, and if there's one thing they all learned from Laura Palmer, it's that you have to put the job before sentimentality first.]

How do I get him out of you.

[Say your newfound psychic mumbo-jumbo gave you new clarity and insight. Don't say it's the same way as Leland.]

You're there. You're helping me investigate Windom's disappearance.

_{[There's almost - almost - abysmal black humour in the way he says that, because the man Albert is helping at present back in San Francisco is an imitation. But there's nothing funny about any of this, no matter how you look at it.]

[And Cooper seems to balance on something for a little while, but he still stands there, steady, both feet on Johto ground. The thing is, though, he still sees the Lodge in his mind and he knows where he belongs. Maybe that's where it finally shows, the strain, the tear, the pressure of it all, and most of all the hopelessness.]}

I don't know. Believe me, I wish I knew. I tried- I tried to change the way things happened, prevent getting trapped. It didn't work.

_{[Time is fluid in the Lodge, he'd figured that out pretty quickly. It had taken him longer to find a way to use it. But then maybe just because of that, it might not have taken him any time at all. (Or all the time in the world, en entire eternity.)]}

That's not what I meant.

[What he meant was probably something closer to, why didn't I get there in time, but the answer he gets is chilling anyway. Given the choice between the two, he'd rather take too far to help than too stupid to notice there's something wrong.

He'd notice if there were something wrong with Cooper, wouldn't he? Everybody noticed there was something wrong with Leland Palmer, even if nobody knew precisely what. Damn small-town yokels had just chalked it up to hysteria over his kid.

What's he chalking it up to, if he hasn't noticed that something's wrong with Cooper?]

Okay. So I can't stop you from getting in, is that what you're saying? But I can do something about after. When he's pretending to be you.

[And it's his pure straightforward cynicism that leads him to the obvious conclusion first — probably the one Cooper's been wanting him to draw all along.

He's not asking to be saved. He's asking to be stopped.

And if for some reason Albert can't do both, then he's well aware which one Cooper's asking him to choose.]

Annie Blackburn. Harry'll know who she is?

_{[The thing is that BOB had Leland for years even before Laura died. This is something that Cooper now understands more clearly than he ever wished to know, but that man has more lives on his hands than the three they know about, and yet ... I did not kill anybody.]

[The other thing is that despite that, of course Albert noticed. There's been moments where BOB has slipped up and Coop knows this, but why would anyone assume that Cooper is no longer there when everybody can blame it on him not being quite right after getting out of a place like hell itself?]

[But Albert is noticing if he isn't yet he inevitably well, and that means he's in danger.]

[Cooper doesn't say any of this. He watches his friend quietly, watches him think, and that silence is confirmation enough in place of the 'yes' he's not voicing.]

[He answers the question, though. Of course he does. This is information that needs to be shared.]}

She's the sister of Norma Jennings. You remember her?

_{[Harry will know. Albert too, now.]}

The blonde at the diner with the pies you're in love with.

[There's something that compels him to throw in that last little bit of commentary there, and he's not sure why. The pies you're in love with. Maybe it's because a part of him hates this Cooper standing in front of him, so calm and weary and resigned. He's mocked and derided that bright-eyed puppy dog optimism for years now, and oh, what he wouldn't give to see it again right now.]

I didn't know she had a sister.

_{[And there's nothing bright about the solemn nod to tell Albert he's right.]}

She lived in a convent for a time before she came back to Twin Peaks.

_{[A neat explanation for why a lot of them didn't know. That, and it was hardly relevant to their cases, and maybe something Norma would have liked to keep a bit discrete anyway, given what had happened in Annie's life that Cooper had only gotten to know parts of.]

[Being forced to betray that trust put in him weighs heavy on his shoulders, slows his movements a fraction.]}

[That is a neat explanation. It's also one that sets Albert to wondering why Cooper knows it. Why some girl that nobody'd ever heard of before her miraculous return to Petticoat Junction? What's the connection to this? How'd she get tangled up with Cooper?

It's only because Albert's been doing this a long time, and because he knows Coop's track record, and because he knows how to put two and two together from the things that have been said — Cooper threw himself to the wolves for Annie Blackburn's sake, and Windom Earle is in play, and this is sounding entirely too much like a variation on a theme he's never wanted to hear again, a reprise of a cacophony he's long since grown to loathe.]

You love her?

[Maybe it's brutal, considering. Maybe he wants it to be a little brutal, just on the off-chance that he'll manage to see Cooper feel something again.]

_{[If he wants a reaction, he gets one, but it's probably a rather disappointing one all in all. There's a smile but it's hollow: a ghost of his usual sunny one. He's remembering a deceased. He remembers beating her down. The memories are all his despite the fact that he did nothing.]

[And yet, she's right there with him at times, amid the drapes. He supposes he does love her sometimes just for that even if it's tainted by the strangled words between them and the occasional white of her eyes.]}

I feared for her, Albert. Fear opens the door.

_{[It wasn't about love even in the reality where he never met one Carmen Sandiego. It was always about his fear that someone would once again die because of him. That's why he had to follow, first of all. If he had followed simply because of love he would have found himself someplace else.]}

Windom.

[Leave it to Windom Earle to do it. Love was a foreign thing to the guy — maybe not always, but certainly so after he'd gone crackers — but fear? Fear he excelled at. Especially when it came to instilling it in one Dale Cooper.

So Windom played with fire and Cooper got burned. Why is he entirely unsurprised by that.]

I'll stop you, Coop.

[He should've said he'd stop Windom, maybe, but there's a finality to the story Cooper's been telling that makes him think the chances of that are slim — and besides, it ends with Windom Earle sleeping in the bed he made for himself, anyway. So be it.]

Thank you, Albert.

_{[He's solemn. He's appreciative. He's deadly serious and beyond sad but he's thankful to Albert for shouldering this thing, too, and he's glad he's gotten to tell someone. He needed to. He's had no real human contact for what feels like years. Just imitations, images in his mind ... and he touches Albert's shoulder in an expression of all those things, watching him still, always steady, always gone.]

[He knows that Albert will do everything in his power to help him, too. It's something he needs to do and Cooper is going to watch him do it from the sidelines in the Lodge, hoping he will succeed but knowing he will probably fail.]

[That's another thing he's resigned to.]

[But so long as Albert knows when to stop trying - and he will - then things might just work out if not for the best, at least as good as they can given the circumstances.]}

[Speaking of shouldering.

The touch doesn't last long, but that's only because with the sound of the words, "Thank you, Albert," that means business has concluded, the plan is set, and now Albert can finally set aside the work still left to do in favor of grabbing hold of his friend and pulling him in for a protective hug, holding him tight and cradling his head against his shoulder with one hand cupped gently against the back of his hair and not even giving a damn about the gel for once.]

You hold on, you understand me? Don't you ever quit. You hold on.

[He can't be there to hold Coop up this time. He can't give him a shoulder this time. The only thing he can give him is words and memories, and that means they've got to be enough.]

_{[It's not surprising, what Albert does, and Cooper finds himself in the hug willingly and hugs Albert back because they both need it. They do. It won't be easy to go back but Coop is sure it will be even harder to remain, with the knowledge and no means to do anything, to wait and wait and hope, to walk in circles in your own mind and try to come up with something, anything - and pray that you will even remember it when (if?) you do come back home.]

[There are so many things that might not work, that won't check out. But Cooper feels better for having told and for getting to see Albert again and for this very clear comfort, this contact, and for once he's selfish enough to just draw from it.]

[So he hugs back and watches the oh-so-familiar back yard because if he closes his eyes he might be elsewhere and he misses this, he misses this so much, but his soul is too old to let him cry for having lost it.]}

I'll try, Albert, I promise you.

_{[The real answer is: I don't think I have a choice. It's only hell because it's limbo. But he's taking care to not lose himself. He's making sure to watch everything that happens to him outside. It hurts, but it's his reality, and he's holding onto it. He is. He will. He can do that.]

[He was weak enough to break beneath the Lodge but once in it he knows he's strong enough to remain without crumbling.]}

[Lucky for them both, Albert's got nowhere to be and plenty of strength left. Coop fits where he ought to against Albert's shoulder and one of these days, hours, minutes, he's going to slip like sand through his fingers (here and there both), but for now he's solid and here and Albert's not going anywhere, even if Cooper is. He can stand here a long time. He can stand here forever if he's got to.]

Hey.

[Pay attention, buttercup. He's only going to get one shot at this, so it's got to be enough.]

I love you, Dale Cooper.

[And here, there, no matter where, you better not forget it.]

I know.

_{[What he thinks is, You would have made it.]

[He doesn't say that. He hugs back. He knows. He never doubted.]

[There's something almost symbolic about the fact that Albert chooses to use his full name, moreso than Albert himself might realize. In the lodge, he's either Dale or Agent Cooper or he has no name at all. Elsewhere, he's Coop, both in Johto and Kanto and Earth. But right now it's all of him, and it's fitting because it finally truly is. He's whole. He's gone. He's at the end of his line and he's where he was always supposed to be.]

[Dale Cooper.]

[He might have forgotten.]

[Albert is good like that.]}

I love you, too.

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011 | Saffron City | Action;

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