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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_{[There's a moment when she just watches him like she's assessing whether to believe him or not, and in the end, she does. He has no reason to lie to her. Unless he's indulging her somehow, telling her what he thinks she wants to hear, but he's been frank enough up until now and there's no reason that would have changed.]

[But the thing is, even if he believes it ... it matters that he does. It makes her feel like she can trust him, just a bit. But there are other things to take into account too.]

[She wets her lip in another subtle show of hesitation but her gaze is steady, still.]}

I thought the cops didn't believe in ghosts.

I believe in answers.

[It's that simple, really.]

When I come up with a better one for what I saw, believe me, I'll be on it in an instant. The guy who solved your case, he's good at answers. And he's been right enough times for me to figure out that sometimes I've just got to let him have his methods. I don't have to like 'em. I don't even have to believe in 'em myself. But I believe in the results.

_{[That's fair. You don't have to understand to believe things are true, even if just for a moment, and Laura knows this. In part she'd been asking about the rest of the force, what their explanation for something like BOB was, but ... maybe it doesn't matter what they said so long as they at least tried to understand the truth.]

[That's all she wanted, really. Truth.]

[And if this man and the one he's talking about are like this, then it seems like maybe that's what they got to in the end. It's comforting. It's terrible, too.]}

No one likes the answers.

Nobody likes cutting up dead kids to see what did them in, either. I do a lot of things I don't like. I found out a lot about you I didn't like.

[It still irritates him even now, the altercation in the morgue. Then, it had been for the more immediate, superficial reasons of having incompetent dunderheads trying to get in the way of his work. But the deeper-seated frustration stemmed from the knowledge he has now, that if they hadn't interfered when they did...]

I could've had him a lot sooner if your folksy friends down on the farm hadn't gotten in my way.

[He pauses, because he doesn't have to tell her what comes next; it won't matter to her in the long run, and it's arguably just as callous as detailing the way she died. But this time, he doesn't stop, because covering up the shame and injustice of something doesn't mean it goes away.]

Your cousin would probably still be alive if they'd have let me do my job. How's that for sentimentality.

_{[It's maybe a bit weird, but Laura appreciates that he's not trying to make his words pretty for her. People tend to either do exactly that or say things as crass and dirty as they can, but they rarely just give it to her straight like this. She likes that, even if it might have made her angry if it had been any other circumstance, because it's the way she prefers to talk to people - it's just that she never CAN.]

[But anything she might have said in response to those first few things is cut short when he brings up Maddy, and Laura's mind stops short for a moment. That ... no. Oh, god, why.]}

Maddy's dead?

_{[Maddy, who she didn't love because she didn't love anyone, but who she had loved once and who was almost like a big sister to her, who she hadn't seen for years but had said that she could call her anytime, and once or twice she had.]}

He killed Maddy?

[He should've pulled that one. If he were going to tell her, he should've led into it a little better, made it a little softer. And yet even as he stands there solemnly, watching her react to it, he doesn't regret it, precisely. She should be horrified. Not because she deserves to be punished with the knowledge that there's another body added to the count, but because dammit, these kids, they're dying and for what, for what, and somebody ought to be horrified but that's not Albert's job. Albert's job is to get the answers, catch the murderers. He can't weep for any of these kids because if started with even just one he'd never stop.

But it does make him angry, and it's going to bother him for a long time. He's going to carry the memories of Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson with a particular weight to them, the same one that some other victims have piled on before them (whose names and faces he remembers, when they'd had names and faces remaining to attach) — because if not for that incident, Ben Horne and Doc Hayward and Harry's fists and Cooper's deadly calm, if not for that he would've caught it. He could've had the killer sooner.

It means he didn't do the job the best he could've, and that leaves him feeling like he's failed them, these girls, these kids, because they got justice but it was a hollow sham of what it could've been.]

Yeah. She came to town to visit. Helping out your folks, I think it was.

[His voice turns a little softer.]

The two of you could've been twins.

We would pretend, sometimes.

_{[She says this quietly because the memory is immediately tainted with the knowledge that Maddy's gone and because if BOB killed her then Laura figures it has to be for that very reason, because they look so much alike. But unlike someone else Albert knows she's not going to blame herself for such a thing - it just makes her feel even more sick when she thinks about BOB. It's a mix of coiling hatred, shame and fear. Amplified because of Maddy and Ronette.]

[She wishes so much nothing of this had ever happened to her. She won't take the blame, none of BOB's crap is her fault (even if a lot of other things are), but she understands that she's still the center. And she hates it. She hates it so much.]

[Some of that is bound to be showing in her face, the fist she's making against her thigh.]}

Come sit on the porch steps.

[It's a repeat of the question before, but this time it's an imperative. A little gentle direction might settle her down, draw her back; in Coop's worst moments, he'd done the same thing. Simple, easy, uncomplicated instructions. Drink this coffee. Go take a nap, you'll feel better. Sit here, eat this. No need to think; just to function.

Maybe this is a good warm-up, since sooner or later she's going to have to hear it about her father.]

You've got questions you want to ask me, don't you?

_{[She still stands but it's not because she's stubborn. The way she lowers her head just slightly means yes, but also that he'll have to do it first, to show her so she can follow. She doesn't really want to move onto his side of the playing field without him showing her there's no danger in doing so.]}

Yes. _{[She is drawn back by that question, if she wasn't by the request, the suggestion before it. It's a surprisingly easy thing to admit, the next thing she says, probably because she knows distantly that this isn't real enough to stay with her when she disappears. There's no need to waste time. That, and he speaks without masks, so then she can too.]} But I'm scared to ask.

[Yeah. Okay, he can do that. He'd kind of had it in his head to, anyway, and when she doesn't immediately move that just cements his resolve to leave his coffee cup on the railing and take up a seat on the steps, hands resting lightly on one drawn-up knee and the other outstretched, relaxed, making contact a few steps lower.]

I don't blame you.

[He offers her a look that, if it'd been in his shoulders instead of his eyes, would've been a shrug.]

But are you ever going to get the chance to again?

_{[She hovers for a while before she sits and she picks a spot lower than him, careful not to touch him, careful to be able to watch him. It probably speaks about the abuse she's known, about the people she surrounded herself with.]

[Mixed in with that is naturally the topic at hand. But he's right, and she already knows she's going to ask about everything. She just needed that moment to admit to herself (and someone else, maybe that was just as important) how daunting it is.]

[She's still thinking about Maddy, but the question could mean either of them, when she does ask it after a moment of silence.]}

How did it happen?

[She's like a squirrel, or a chipmunk, or some other little fuzzy woodland creature. Cute, skittish. Brave enough to put its flight instinct away to come over and snatch scraps if it thinks you've got something it wants. And you don't want to let it bite you, 'cause it's probably rabid.

Sounds about right.]

You were found wrapped in plastic on the shore of a lake by a guy named Pete Martell. Maddy was found on a golf course — same M.O., wrapped in plastic. It's not the first time our office has chased a signature like that. We've seen other girls wrapped in plastic before, too.

Neither one of you died where you were ultimately found; you were both moved. You'd been tied up; she hadn't. Your killer probably had more time with you than he did with her, both in planning the murder and in — pun intended — executing it. From what you've told me here, my conclusion would follow — you knew your death was coming. She didn't.

You both died of blunt force trauma. For her, it went fast. He cracked her head open right here. [He taps his face, between the eyebrows and above his nose.] For you, it didn't go so fast. You suffered multiple wounds, and no single one of them was enough to do you in. Assuming the guy knew what he was doing, and given who we're talking about I expect that he did, that all suggests to me that Maddy's was an impulse killing, targeted toward the goal of seeing her dead as the desired endgame. You were someone he wanted to see suffer, so he made sure to make it last.

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011 | Saffron City | Action;

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