not_a_traitor | IC Inbox

"Not too forward at all," Gaeta reassures him. Reflexively, he checks the clock. "I'll be free then, yeah. Should I come to your place, or somewhere else?"

Letting Mulcahy set the venue seems extremely prudent, given everything.

"My house will do well enough. I'll put a kettle on for tea. When should I expect you?"

He hums, considering. "An hour and a half from now?"

And true to his word, exactly an hour and a half later, there's a knock at Mulcahy's door.

A patter of feet on the stairs, the telltale jingling of keys. The door swings open.

“Ah, Gaeta!” he chirps. “Thank you for coming. Come in. Make yourself comfortable in the kitchen.”

The house is still pretty austere and undecorated, but the disturbances from Gaeta’s stay have remained. A blanket folded on the arm of the couch, a few things rearranged in the kitchen. There’s already some pastries on a plate on the table and a cup of tea Mulcahy’s poured for himself. While he’s going about and getting place settings for Gaeta, Peter takes it upon himself to hover suspiciously close to his pockets for anything metal.

“How have things been for you? Not terrible, I hope?”

There's something new in Mulcahy's bearing that makes Gaeta take a closer look. Not merely fatigue, like the last few months; almost like part of him is -- erased, somehow. Washed out. The light doesn't seem to illuminate the color in his face and clothes very well.

"No, not too terrible," he says. Gaeta throws a tolerantly amused glance toward Peter. As if in offering, he fishes out a piece of Brass and holds it out in his palm. "I'm afraid to say calmer -- I think I might jinx it. But it's been easier than I expected."

The vague unease of the Visitor's Center can't compare to a full-on plague, after all.

"What about you?"

Peter is delighted and scoops it up immediately, dashing to perch with its treasure in the cat bed that Mulcahy has left on top of a bookshelf.

"Oh, it's been alright." Which is still a little bad, and as good as it ever gets for him. "Same as you, really. It's funny--some days it feels a little like being back in the military. Long stretches of quiet, up until another flood of wounded, or friendly fire shelling, or someone cooks a bad Thanksgiving turkey."

He sets down Gaeta's tableware. "I know I already did in the letter, but I really must thank you again for staying with me for those two months."

Night terrors, screaming, the occasional sleepwalk. Sometimes the only reason Mulcahy doesn't end up in the street is because of Peter or Gaeta. So often Mulcahy would tell him that he's under no obligation to stay, and every time he did. How anyone could tolerate him like this is beyond him, and yet.

(It was not just that. It was also tea at night; it was also waking each other up, being there for one another, it was company in the dark.)

"Before I start explaining myself, I... well, I don't really know where to start. Were there any questions about this that you had in mind? Anything particularly bothering you?"

Edited 2024-10-09 01:51 (UTC)

"If you are, then I should thank you, too," he says: quieter, but completely sincere.

They never spoke of what transpired in their respective dreams, during those late night talks. But Mulcahy was not the only one who woke up screaming sometimes. Panicking, gasping hoarsely for air that could not seem to make it into his lungs, shivering hard enough that it sometimes took multiple blankets and a good twenty minutes before Gaeta's hands were steady enough to hold a cup of tea. He'd become so used to bearing it alone that the simple gesture of someone shaking him awake -- hearing a voice not his own, grounding him in reality -- almost undid him the first couple times it happened.

And so the cautious trust he placed in Mulcahy settled to a comfortable weight. Familiar. Welcome. He didn't expect it to come so easily once it began, but it found the grooves worn deep in Gaeta's nature, cleared out the debris left behind by Raptor 718... and here they are now.

"Mm." He thinks it over. "When you first mentioned the basics, that it was a home invasion and kidnapping, I thought it might be a POW situation. But... it was more than that, wasn't it?"

His voice doesn't quite tip up into a question, but it's there.

“Ah, yes.”

He sits, clasping his hands together. “It’s not a complicated story, but it is a rather bizarre one. I’ve been… displaced from my home world for many years, even before I came to Pumpkin Hollow. The place I ended up in was a prison ship that ran on suffering, and it…”

He shakes his head, as if it’ll loose the words. It’s another few moments before he finds the right ones. “Every month it was some new and torturous game. Death was temporary. Even outside of those excursions, people became very prone to violence, I suspect out of desperation. After almost a year, the Captain wanted to dispose of us. A man named Number Two said he could save us, and led us into a pocket world beyond the ship.

“He lied. The world was a limited place called the Village, and he was its tyrant. It was his utopia in which we were all dolls to be beaten into shape. By hook or by crook.”

Edited 2024-10-14 20:58 (UTC)

Gaeta breathes out a curse. It's too easy to take Mulcahy's behavior and line it up against this new information, filling in the gaps with the worst possibilities. Beaten into shape alone -- frak.

"I knew about the ship," he says. "Some of my other friends were aboard; they explained what happened on there. But nobody ever mentioned a Village as part of it."

Mulcahy looks upwards in thought. "The thing is... this Captain had summoned and disposed of many groups of people throughout many thousands of years. My 'voyage' disappeared into the Village five years ago. Many of the former voyagers you see now are from a more recent group."

Another, longer pause. His brow furrows. "For some reason they were sent by the Captain to the Village, where my group still was. Any significant rebellion of ours was long gone, but their arrival... invigorated things, so to say. It was a month before they somehow managed to destroy Number 2 and his world. The bubble popped. All of their group spilled back safely onto the ship. Of mine..."

He swallows. "There was me, the Arrayer, another Father, and the Ancient Fuelweaver. There were only four of us. The Arrayer and the Father... they disappeared. When the prison ship was destroyed and we were scattered on this island's shores, there was only me and the Fuelweaver, who had been turned into an object that I carried out with me."

He hasn't touched the food.

Gaeta hasn't touched much of his, either. He has both hands clasped in front of his mouth, listening intently, as he ignores the nausea twisting around his gut.

Six years of torture, a prison break, and in the end, fewer people made it to freedom than can be counted on one hand. Yes, he knows Hawkeye's from Father Mulcahy's unit; so is that good-natured (and scarily efficient) kid Gaeta's spotted around town sometimes. But how can that compare? It would be like Gaeta's family washing ashore, parents and cousins and all his other loved ones ignorant by design of everything the Fleet endured. He'd be overjoyed, of course he would, but how could he ever explain? How could anyone who wasn't there ever relate?

The colorless affect to Mulcahy seems worse, for a moment, as if the light has shifted again. (I wasn't there, either, Gaeta hears himself think. What right do I have to compare or relate?)

"I've seen him around. I think." A grapple at hope; at something to say that isn't a meaningless, worthless I'm sorry. "The... giant skeleton? Did Mortanne transform him back?"

“Oh, yes. He was turned into some kind of quaint little ornament. The giant shadow skeleton is how he normally looks.” He laughs a little. “We used to be assigned roommates. We became very good friends, but he frightened the stuffing out of me the first time I saw him.”

The thing about lonelinesses this absolute is that he would hope that Gaeta could never relate. To be able to be known down to the marrow, to bare the whole of his hideousness and still be cared for, that is the wish of his soul—but he has the Fuelweaver, and first he wants to be known at all. To be considered. To be accommodated without asking. For someone from outside to look at what happened to him and say, You’re right, that wasn’t fair. I’m sorry.

It starts with this. Gaeta will never look at him the same way again; good. He doesn’t mean to horrify, but there’s no way to say this without doing so.

It doesn’t make him feel any less bad about it. Reflexively, “I’m sorry. I know it’s… unpleasant to hear, but it’s… simply true.”

"What?" Honestly, this is the most shocked Gaeta has looked since the conversation started. He lowers his hands; goes on, with a quiet vehemence, "Mulcahy, you don't have to apologize, gods. It's not like you were responsible for what happened. You didn't do anything, it -- was done to you. That's not your fault. You're just sharing facts, like you said."

He reaches across the table to clasp one of Mulcahy's hands between both of his own. Tethering, grounding, a gesture he repeated dozens of times while they shared space.

"I've handled a lot of unpleasant facts before now."

"It's a lot for someone to handle." ~~(I'm a lot for someone to handle.)~~ "I just thought--I..."

Gaeta takes his hand.

The world moves from under him.

(Because why not apologize? Why not be sorry for being messy, for not handling it--why not be sorry for failing to keep it together, for saying things that upset people--for constantly reviving the Village's memory and wanting people to listen--for being the thing that killed Hawkeye, that killed Powell--for the fact of himself--for deserving it--)

(But is Gaeta wrong? Does Gaeta not see him in all his screaming nightmares, and does he not forgive him for it?)

"... I don't understand."

He keeps hold of Mulcahy's hand, unflinching, and does not look away. The world shifts -- and maybe, for a moment, the light shifts with it.

"Every person I knew back home," he says, still with that quiet, firm certainty, "had something awful happen to them. Usually something even worse than the baseline of our worlds being destroyed. If I turned away from them because of that, I wouldn't have said a word to anybody in four years."

Carefully, he draws his thumb along Mulcahy's knuckles, just once, skating over a little of the discoloration that marks the back of his hand. "I think everybody has their times where they're a lot to handle. But just saying, 'this is what I lived through,' shouldn't be one of them." A small huff. "I know I don't exactly talk about it much, either, but gods, I'd hope someone wouldn't walk away from me just because I told them about the Colonies or the Cylons."

For other reasons, sure. For Gaeta's actions, they would be within their right. But not because he was acted upon.

"That's a part of my life, too. Who I am."

It’s funny. Nothing Gaeta is saying now is particularly fascinating; these are all things he knew very well already. When Gaeta told him about the Colonies and the Cylons, he offered his shoulder; during that terrible cult dream, he offered his own strength. It was and remains the most natural thing to do.

“Of course. I accepted that when I became your friend, and you were hardly the first.” His eyes are still downcast as he gently squeezes Gaeta’s hand, almost burning warm against his, always cold. “I care for you in your entirety.”

There has to be a reason why he feels like this. Like he’s an exception, or… or… what is the difference in the way they see their pasts? Is it just the difference in how they see themselves? It feels a little beyond a matter of mere ego. Is it only because apologizing has become so habitual? He meant it then, though, just as he does every time.

How his skin itches at such kindness.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he uses his free hand to dejectedly stick a tea cookie in his mouth instead.

"So can you see how I'd care for you the same way?"

Gently said. He means it as a genuine question, not a push in one direction or the other.

(And he tries not to think, as he so often does: you only say that, Father, because you don't know the entirety of me yet. What a frakking hypocrite he's become. Reassuring a friend he'll stay after hearing about his worst moments, and never offering him the same chance. Expecting he won't receive any kindness from one of the kindest people he knows.)

"You don't -- have to answer that." Since the deflection with the cookie is pretty clear. "But think about it. All right?"

(There's no getting out of the fact that it goes both ways. That if one can be forgiven then so must the other, and if one can't, then so can't the other; and that if he has his way, Mulcahy will bury what his own hands have done in his own grave.)

Once he's done chewing, "Alright," he says, softly. "... Alright. Yes, I see what you're saying."

He has no more left in him to argue it. "Thank you, Gaeta." And he does mean it.

Edited 2024-12-20 10:10 (UTC)

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