route_1065 | five days after black and red collide

Entry tags:

five days after black and red collide

Who: Dale Cooper and Heather Mason
Where: The Ecruteak City Dinerrrr
When: December 14th
Summary: After those three days that were lost a lot of people probably had weird dreams about things they can't for the life of them remember. Coop and Heather are two of these people. And they've got some things to talk about. _{(..or as Kit excellently summarized it, this is AWKWARD CANON ENCOUNTERS: THE THREAD.)}
Rating: Oh umm, PG for possibly triggery conversation?
Log:

It's absolutely freezing out and the snow is falling thick and heavy when Dale Cooper makes his way to the Ecruteak City Diner, jacket collar folded up against the wind and hands buried deep in his pockets for what little warmth there is to be found there. He's not particularly used to this kind of winter despite having grown up with something resembling it - he blames having lived in California for the past nine years where the winters are, honestly, quite pitiful attempts at everything the season is meant to be.

Especially when compared to Johto. Good old sparkling completely-covered-in-snow Johto. The weatherman had announced a break in the persistent precipitation yesterday, but today's weather is another prime example of just how trustworthy those people are. The weather gods must be at odds with them. Either that or the deities have a not-so-secret penchant for practical jokes.

Needless to say he's cold and shivering a little once he enters the diner, gratefully shutting out the wind and swirling snow behind him as the little chime above the door welcomes him inside. It's warm in there - warm and quiet. Doesn't look like a lot of people felt like braving the weather to get a cup of coffee better than what the Inn can offer (which really isn't all that good, in his opinion, entirely too mild) but Cooper is a man of habit ... or standard, if you will, and if he's going to start the day with coffee it better be a (damn) good cup of the stuff.

And that's what he's set on, really. He takes his coat off even as he walks through the area to one of his favourite booths: by the windows, just a little secluded, comfortable seats. He's got a few things to ponder and brought one of his notebooks, but his first priority is to allow himself to just melt into the seat for a second there.

...and man that is sweet. But what will be even sweeter is coffee. And possibly something sugary.

Waaaiiiitress? c:

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... you really shouldn't smoke, Heather.

He stands and motions for the cigarette with the full intention of snuffing it out against the tray on the table if she gives it to him.

She'd been planning on doing it herself (she'd done it out of pure habit and nothing more), but with watering eyes and a fist to her mouth, she hands the cigarette over willingly.

She hacks into her hand for a moment longer before finally being able to speak, in a croaky voice.

"Shit..."

He puts it out thoroughly and slides it to the edge of the table, but remains standing to be on eye contact with her, leaning on the table, hands flat against the top.

"You okay?"

It's a very serious question and it's definitely more about what he just told her than the cigarette. Now that she's got an idea of what BOB is he's anxious to know exactly what happened, what she saw, what BOB did.

Because he's worried. Very worried. He didn't want to go into that detail and he's sure she'll realize it soon herself, but an alarming number of people who's seen his true face have ended up dead.

Scrubbing at the side of her face a little with one hand, she nods.

"M'okay..."

She leans back and takes in a deep, shaky breath before straightening up again. All things considered, she's fairly calm. After all, going into hysterics doesn't help anything. Heather can't remember the last time she actually lost her head completely at anything. That gets trained out of you pretty quick when the Otherworld is involved. Or at least that's how it had been for her.

Lifting a hand, she cracks the knuckles. The sound always makes her feel a little better.

"All right. Yeah. I'm good. I'm okay."

Okay. She does look calm enough and he doesn't doubt that she's made of strong material but there's still a possibility that BOB could present a threat to her safety.

He remains standing.

"I need you to tell me what happened. What he said, did and under which circumstances. Anything you can remember."

Around that point, she slides down onto the seat. Probably not the best thing to do while wearing a dress, but it's baggy enough that it doesn't matter.

"Okay... well... I was in here. Working late. I think, because nobody else was around. It was real windy out. And I started..."

She trails off for a moment there, biting her lip. It's less of an unsure gesture and more one of distaste. As worrying as the whole deal is, mostly it just makes her feel kind of sick.

"... Hearing someone talking in my head."

That's news to Coop, previously unaware of BOB's ability to do that kind of thing. It's not ... surprising, not really, but it makes him tense even as he sits down to remain on level with her.

"What did the voice say?"

Still interrogative, absolutely. But this time he's the good cop. And somewhere this is crucial to him. If the first thing she gives him is new information, well .. if he can somehow remember it when he gets back, it could be of big help.

But that's for later. For notes and Diane.

He keeps his eyes on her, hands still on the table top.

Biting her lip in earnest now, she picks at the rubber siding on the edge of the table compulsively.

"... A lot. ... Stuff that no one should've known. And it kept saying my name. Heather Mason. ... Like it was makin' fun of me."

She doesn't bring up the part about it calling her a murderer. Cooper doesn't know that she's a killer, after all... and it's not something she feels like she needs to keep hidden, really, but she'd rather him not find out from this.

"... Said that I had fire in my hands. Which is..."

A scowl crosses her face.

"... accurate."

He could ask about that, but he's not going to. BOB knows things you don't want to talk about and he loves it, loves showing his words off like they're dead animals mounted on the walls.

Cooper knows what she's talking about. He can all too easily recall BOB-as-Leland shouting at him back in the interrogation room. It had been brief, among other people, and not inside his head the way Heather describes, but it had still affected Cooper to the point he had to physically step back from the man, the thing, and the waves of pure malice radiating off him.

He'd always been grateful to Harry for not asking what "that time in Pittsburgh" meant, and even more to Albert for not really bringing it up. Which is why he's going to do Heather the same favour.

He's already prodded at her past enough to last a rather long time, anyway.

"What else?"

"He said ..."

The scowl grows deeper and Heather lifts a hand to tap her fingers at her temple.

"He said he'd 'have' me. ... Or 'be' me. One of those. ... Or maybe it was both. Don't remember. Just that it was BULLSHIT and I told him so. And I... picked up a knife, and was telling him to come out and stop fucking around, but he just..."

She pounds her fist on the end of the table slightly, sounding almost indignant.

"He just kept GOING. Saying things like... like we "belonged" together and that I couldn't fight him, that he had my... like, heart... in his mouth, or something, and he brought up Dad at one point, and I finally just got fed up and asked him what the fuck he wanted, and then there was this ... weird light, and ... yeah. ... Yeah, there he was. Standing right there."

She points to the corner by the window-- not far from where they're sitting, actually. Quite a bit of that conversation had turned vague in her memories, but THAT was one image that had stayed clear as day in her head.

A man that wasn't a man, standing there in the corner with a mane of grizzled gray hair and eyes that could cut glass.

Cooper turns to look at the spot but the familiar pull towards the supernatural doesn't make itself known. He's not sure whether he prefers it like that or not.

It had always been there, after all. It wasn't a common occurence for it to show but when it did it was almost physical, a light pricking just beneath his skin that guided him down paths he didn't even think to resist. He'd never had a name for it, but he'd known early on to not question it.

So it's a little strange without it, even if he hadn't even noticed the change at first. But looking at the corner and almost expecting that sensation, the light pull of a message, because he always had a reaction to BOB, and not having it ... well.

Whatever you want to call it, is a small loss. It's not something he misses, because most of the time he doesn't even notice.

But he does now.

"What did he do?"

He's only halfway trying to hide his unease. Supernatural indicators or not, the fine hairs on his arms still stand on end.

Now that she's actually started TRYING to remember (as clear as it is, in some ways it's difficult-- it IS like remembering a dream. Everything from those odd blank-out weekends is), she doesn't notice Cooper's unease as much. She's too preoccupied. Frowning and wincing, she starts to knead at her temple again.

"I told him... I told him to stay back, but then he started... walking towards me, across the room with this... look on his face, like he staring into my brain..."

She trails off there for a moment, and it's unclear whether she fell silent from the intensity of the awful memory or if she's just... thinking.

But then, quite abruptly, she continues.

"So I threw a chair at him."

She-

oh, well then.

He loses his train of thought in favour of just staring at her for a second, but ... well, he wouldn't put it past her. Somehow it makes sense. Of course she threw a chair at BOB.

He'll speak slowly though because damn, girl.

"Did that .. change anything?"

"I dunno, I didn't stick around."

Her hands need something to do, so she busies them with reaching over for a few more sugar cubes to dunk into her coffee.

"I took off. ... And kinda... you know, hung around outside for a bit. But I had to go back in at some point, because it was freezing and all my stuff was back in there, so... anyway. When I went back in, he was gone."

Swishing the coffee around a little bit in the cup, she lifted it up to take a drink of it before it got cold. She hadn't even touched the remaining half since the topic of BOB had come up.

"But when I got over the counter, that... phrase, the fire thing, was written on the floor. In something red."

She pauses there, looking down at her coffee for a minute before looking up at Cooper.

"... At the time I actually totally thought that it was ketchup and the last thing I even remember, besides, you know, the unspeakable horror, was being sorta mad that he wasted it. That comes out of my paycheck, you know."

... It didn't, but when you're freaking out with terror, all kinds of dumb possibilities run through your head.

Sorry Heather, you lost him at having Fire Walk With Me written for you to find. He's not listening fully to what she's saying after that and almost interrupts her.

"Where was it?"

It's okay, she's sort of gotten to that point where she's now rambling like a bad comedian because that's how she copes.

Still, she sits up a little more so that she can twist around and point to the floor where he was standing.

"It's not there anymore... it ... I think it kinda disappeared. Like... right in front of me."

He looks at the spot and there's still nothing indicating anything to him - but he still feels unnerved when he looks back at her.

It could be a one time thing ... not that that calms him. To his knowledge Maddy Ferguson only saw BOB once and the next time Cooper had seen her, she'd been wrapped in plastic.

He'd like to do something. With his hands. But the cups and the rest of the things are off to the side and he's not going to reach for them.

Intead he locks his fingers together.

"Have you seen him or those words at any other time?"

She had gone uncharacteristically quiet while he peered at the spot, just sitting there and absent-mindedly nursing the coffee while she watched.

When he asks her the question, though, the owl-eyed look of someone being called on something returns. Not that she's really being CALLED on anything... but...

"... Well, uh."

This was the part that had REALLY worried her. Almost more, in a way, than meeting him here in the diner did. Because that... well, hey. That could be dismissed... passed off as one of the MANY crazy, sometimes-nightmarish things that had happened that weekend.

But... just a little over a year ago...

"... I hadn't seen... the words before..."

He actually covers his face with his hands for a second, breathing in slowly, in a rare display of vulnerability.

She's seen BOB before.

She's seen him before.

It means ... it probably means it's not just a game. Cooper doesn't know a lot about BOB's motives but he has a number of REALLY good suspicions and he thinks several appearances mean that BOB is committed.

Committed to Heather.

And threatening to climb up his throat are the lives of all the people he's ever failed to save.

"Tell me about it."

It's a demand that's sort of broken if you listen closely, but it's still a demand and its coupled with a look her way that means she really should.

His hands are back on the table, locked together hard.

Heather may be a bit oblivious to others' feelings at times, but even when she's in the throes of recounting freaky experiences, there's only so much she can miss. And just like she's never heard him so urgent before, so genuinely unsettled, she's never seen him do that.

Not even when he had told her about what his best friend had done to him. About the woman he loved.

So while she opened her mouth to start talking, the words die in her throat as she looks across the table in combined alarm and concern.

"I-- ... are... are you okay?"

He's not.

He's never really been. But what he does is keep all his hurt and troubles at a distance where he can examine the big image without the details, because the details are what continue to tear at him.

BOB is a new detail. A recent development. Except he isn't, and having to dig into it hurts Cooper in places he'd forgotten and still can't remember.

And what hurts him even more is having to face that yet again, someone he cares about is in danger ... and he doesn't know what to do about it.

Somewhere, he's even wondering if BOB found Heather simply through his own being here. That had seemed to be why the Little Man had showed up. To talk to him. Maybe BOB had followed ... and Heather just happened to be his kind of girl ...

He needs to know when the other time or other times were. And what BOB did to her, said to her.

That's top priority right now.

Not him. And he looks genuinely confused for a split second, like he has no idea why she's asking him that.

"I'm okay", and he isn't, and has never really been, but that's not important right now. "Now tell me. Please."

Edited 2011-12-20 21:50 (UTC)

Her concerned gaze doesn't leave him at first. She's not convinced.

But... well... okay.

Exhaling, she puts her own hand on the table in front of her-- the other's resting below the table, on her knee.

"Well, I didn't... I didn't remember it at all until I saw him here, in this restaurant... like, it was just completely gone. But..." She rubs the back of her head, biting her lip again. The coffee's forgotten, but there wasn't much of it left anyway. "About a year ago... during that first... weird amnesia weekend, I was ... at work, and going downstairs to get a clean hat, or something... I worked at the Goldenrod Department Store then, remember? Anyway, the laundry room was super creepy so like... prime horror movie material already..."

Her fingers keep absent-mindedly trying to pick at the frayed knees of the jeans she's so used to wearing, only to find that there's nothing there. GODDAMMIT WORK UNIFORMS.

"... I got my hat, and then turned around, and... there he was. Standing in the corner in the dark and grinning at me."

He doesn't answer. He nods and listens intently, trying to absorb everything she's telling him.

Standing in a corner and grinning at her ... sounds about right.

What IS it about evil and dark corners and grinning?

She spreads her hands.

"I remember... telling him to leave, because... dude, that room is Employees Only, and he was really fucking creepy, but he just... laughed. So I, uh... I walked out... and..."

Once again she rubs at her head, trying to remember. This one is fuzzier. More distant, just by virtue of time. But fuzzy is better than NOTHING.

"And he.... he, uh... shit, I think he followed me."

Biting down on one finger, she frowns, brows furrowed deeply.

"Yeah, he was following me, and ..."

... And then suddenly, as the memory drizzles back in, realization dawns on her face. It's like she suddenly remembered where she left the keys.

"... Oh... so that's why he called me 'rude' this time..."

... wait, what ...

He'll just settle with a small frown.

"What did you do?"

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