Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-12-14 07:35 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-12-14 07:35 pm
Fanfiction: To a Flame (Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2)
Can't believe I'm posting a new fic four days after my writing wrap-up for the year, thus rendering my wrap-up inaccurate. Outrageous.
Anyway, here's a Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2 crossover in which Sean meets assorted first-game characters in prison. It occurred to me a few years ago that Sean could theoretically end up in a prison in Oregon, and this idea has haunted me ever since.
Title: To a Flame
Fandom: Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2
Rating: 15
Wordcount: 5,200
Summary: Sean makes some interesting friends in prison. It's possible 'friend' isn't the right word for some of them.
Warnings: Canon-typical dark themes.
Sean is shaking when he walks into prison. It doesn’t feel like the best way to make a first impression in prison, but he can’t stop.
Maybe that’s normal? Maybe everyone shakes; maybe the hardened, emotionless criminals he’s picturing are just in his imagination. Maybe they’re all just scared kids who never meant to hurt anyone.
He knows by now that he can’t trust the police. Why should he believe that anyone else belongs here?
-
“Here it is,” the guard escorting Sean says, coming to a halt in front of an open cell. “Your cellmate’s Nathan Prescott. You two can bond over how much you love shooting women and fucking up your teenage years.”
You weren’t there. It’s so quick and sharp in Sean’s mind that he has to bite down on the words to keep them from escaping; they’d definitely get him into trouble. I didn’t want to shoot her. The church was burning and we had to get out, and Daniel—
It had really scared him. Daniel had been throttling Lisbeth with his powers, had refused to let her go when Sean asked. What, was he supposed to just stand there and watch as his kid brother killed someone?
So Sean had to shoot her himself. He hadn’t wanted to. But the alternative was so much worse he couldn’t face it.
He can’t be sure that this Nathan guy doesn’t have a similar story. He tries to tell himself that, tries not to let his body tighten up at the thought that his cellmate shot someone.
Of course he won’t have a similar fucking story. How many people have telekinetic younger brothers?
The cell door slams behind him, and Sean just stands there, eyes flicking around his tiny new room. Is he supposed to introduce himself? He doesn’t know how any of this works.
There’s a guy sitting on the top bunk. He guesses that’s Nathan.
From what the guard said, Sean was half-wondering whether he was about to meet another seventeen-year-old who’d ended up in this place, but Nathan looks a few years older than him. Although he doesn’t know how long it’s been since Nathan got locked up here, he guesses.
Fuck. He’s going to be here for years. Decades, if he doesn’t pass his hearing fifteen fucking years in, and he’s only getting that because he’s under eighteen; if this whole shitshow had happened a year later, he wouldn’t have a chance.
Don’t think about it.
“Uh, hi,” he says. He doesn’t know if attempting to have a conversation is going to get him into a fight with a probably-murderer, but right now that at least sounds more appealing than thinking about his future.
Nathan glances over at him, then away. He doesn’t say anything.
Okay. It’s not exactly making new friends, but Sean guesses it could be worse.
As Nathan’s already on the top bunk, it looks like Sean’s getting the bottom one. He lies down on it, testing the thin mattress. It’s not exactly luxurious, but it’s better than sleeping rough, if you forget that it’s inside a cage.
The lower bunk suits Sean; it’s where he slept when he shared a room with Daniel as a kid. At first he protested; why did Daniel get the top bunk? He’d come to kind of like it eventually; it felt cosy and safe, enclosed on three sides, listening to Daniel’s breathing as he slept.
He closes his eyes and pretends himself back to those days. He’s in his bunk, Daniel sleeping above him, and in the morning they’ll race each other to the kitchen and fight over the last toaster waffle.
Fuck, he needs to stop thinking about this. He can feel tears building at the corners of his eyes.
-
Lunch is in a crowded cafeteria without enough places to sit, but there’s a vacant seat next to some guy with glasses, maybe late thirties. In a place this busy, empty seats feel like a warning sign, but the guy doesn’t look too intimidating. Sean takes the risk of sitting there.
The guy glances up as Sean sits down, pauses. “How old are you?”
Sean freezes, not sure how to answer. If people know he’s a teenager, are they going to go easy on him, or are they going to see him as weak prey?
The guy lets out a quiet, half-amused breath. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You don’t have to answer.”
“Sorry,” Sean says. He kind of feels like, if he’s not going to answer the question, he should at least offer something else about himself. “Uh, I’m Sean.”
The guy nods. “Mark. Although I have the impression you knew that already.”
He didn’t know that. Why would he know that?
“What are you in for?” Sean asks. People ask that, right?
Mark looks sidelong at him for a moment. “You’re not an Oregon native, are you?”
“Uh, Washington,” Sean says. “My brother lives with our grandparents in Oregon.” He was going to say Beaver Creek, caught himself at the last moment. Probably shouldn’t spread too many details about Daniel around. “I wanted to be near him.”
“It’s easy when you’re a kid,” Mark says. “They didn’t listen to any of my transfer requests.”
“Yeah, well, they still tried me as an adult,” Sean mutters.
Shit. So much for hiding his age.
“What did you do?” Mark asks.
He doesn’t even know how to start explaining that. “I don’t know. A lot of shit I didn’t want to.”
Theft, murder, battery, breaking and entering. A lot of resisting arrest, obviously. He never thought of himself as a criminal, but he looked at the list of charges and... yeah, they were all technically things he’d actually done.
Except the arson and property damage. That was Daniel, and it was an accident. But he wasn’t going to say anything to get Daniel in trouble.
They didn’t even charge him with the death of that first police officer. Not enough evidence, apparently. That might be the most fucked-up thing in all of this. He can’t stop wondering: if he hadn’t run, would things have played out differently?
Just another thing he has to try not to think about for the rest of his life.
“Condolences,” Mark says. “If you’re going to end up in prison, it should at least be for something worth doing.”
-
By the time Sean gets up to return his tray, he’s feeling a little better, maybe. He’s not feeling good, but the tension in his gut has eased a little. He’s had something to eat, and he knows from his time on the run what a difference that can make.
Plus he had a conversation with a fellow inmate and came out of it with all his fingers. That’s not bad for prison, right?
It’s not until he’s back in his cell, lying on his bunk, that he realises Mark never told him why he’d been arrested. But he guesses he wasn’t exactly an open book himself.
-
Nathan seems on edge, pacing the cell, glancing occasionally over at Sean. It’s kind of putting Sean on edge as well. He hasn’t been here long enough to know Nathan’s mannerisms; he really hopes this isn’t going to be a daily thing.
“I saw you talking to Mr Jefferson,” Nathan says, suddenly.
Sean looks at him, startled. Nathan hasn’t exactly tried to make conversation; he’s mostly just been muttering to himself. And... “Mr Jefferson?”
“Mark Jefferson,” Nathan says. “He’s – he’s dangerous. Don’t go near him.”
Does everyone call him Mr? How much respect do you have to command in a prison to get that kind of treatment?
“Dangerous how?” Sean asks.
-
“My cellmate told me some fucked-up things about you,” Sean says.
Mark looks at him for a moment. “Did they put you with Nathan?”
Nailed it on the first guess. Because he knows Nathan has a vendetta against him? Or because all that insane shit actually happened?
“I suppose he didn’t tell you about his part in it,” Mark says. “It’s interesting that you’re still sitting next to me.”
That... does kind of make it sound like it actually happened. Holy crap.
“Nowhere else to sit,” Sean says. “And—” Should he say this? “You seemed normal. I guess I’m finding it hard to picture.”
“You don’t think I did it?” Mark asks. It’s not hopeful, exactly; it comes across as a kind of detached curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Sean says. “Maybe you’ve... reformed, I guess.”
Mark laughs. “I’m touched by your faith in me, but things would be very different if I had my freedom and my equipment. As it happens, I can’t carry out my crime of choice, and I might have a reduced sentence for good behaviour. Why not be polite?”
Sean suddenly has the weird feeling he’s looking at some kind of reversed image of himself. Sean did a lot of fucked-up things because of the circumstances he was in. It’s strange to meet someone who was forced by circumstance into having a normal conversation with a scared teenager on his first day in prison, helping to set him at ease, instead of doing something fucked-up.
“If I’d been at your school,” Sean says, and then he can’t keep talking; it feels like his mouth has dried up.
“You sound like some of the letters I get,” Mark says. “I’m interested in innocence, Sean. Nobody in this place is a suitable subject for my lens. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
In a weird way, it does kind of feel like a disappointment, being told he’s not good enough to be abducted. Sean has no fucking idea what’s wrong with his head sometimes.
He doesn’t manage to eat much, walks away with his head swimming. The person he knows best in this terrifying new place is a pretty awful person, it turns out.
But he’s still the person Sean knows best. Everyone else is a blank to him.
He hurries to be one of the first in the cafeteria queue the next time the meal bell goes off. Pretty much has his pick of the tables. Hesitates, looking over the room.
In the end, he takes the same seat and waits until Mark, laughing quietly, sits down next to him.
-
It’s weird how quickly you can get used to a totally new situation. It’s a survival thing, Sean guesses; the brain just focuses on whatever’s in front of it.
It’s not like he’s happy here, obviously, but he thinks about the outside world a lot less than he’d have expected to. He’s only a few weeks into his sentence, but sometimes it feels like he’s never been anywhere else.
Except when Daniel visits, and everything Sean is missing crashes straight back into his head. It’s good to see him, obviously. But it hurts like hell.
Lyla’s applied for visiting as well, although she hasn’t been able to make it down from Washington yet. He needs to see her, desperately, but he knows it’s going to destroy him; he could barely handle seeing her signature on the application form.
Anyway. Visits are rough, but they’re limited to one a week, and there are weeks when nobody visits. Claire and Stephen have said they’ll try to bring Daniel by about twice a month.
The rest of the time, Sean just falls into a routine. Sketching in his cell, walking laps around the yard, trying not to catch the eye of anyone with white-power tattoos. Doing any jobs he’s assigned; honestly, peeling potatoes in this place kind of beats working on the weed farm. Keeping his head down, trying to avoid anything that could get him into fights or extend his sentence.
Sitting with Mark at mealtimes.
He’s not sure if he should be doing that one. But he has to sit somewhere, and Mark seems like a known quantity, at least.
-
“Visitor form,” Simons says, passing a sheet of paper through the bars. “Sign it if you want to see ’em.”
Sean’s already signed for visitation from Daniel and Lyla and his grandparents, obviously, so the form itself isn’t new to him. But the name of the visitor is. Max Caulfield.
He doesn’t know any Max Caulfield. Why would some stranger want to see him? One of Cassidy and Finn’s crew, maybe, under another name?
Simons is one of the friendlier guards, so Sean risks asking. “Who’s Max Caulfield?”
“Oh, it’s Max?” Simons asks, glancing at the form in Sean’s hands. “She’s a regular here. Comes in to visit a couple of our guys. What history you got with her?”
“Nothing,” Sean says. “I don’t know her.”
She keeps visiting more than one person at the prison? Is she, like... a serial killer groupie?
But Simons thought he had history with her. So the people she visits are probably just people she knows.
And Sean, apparently.
Did he hurt her, somehow, without even knowing she existed? Was she friends with Lisbeth? Was she someone he stole from?
He signs the form, in the end. He’s kind of scared of finding out who this person is to him. But he needs to know.
-
Being in the visitors’ room is always a weird experience. For a couple of hours, inmates and free people can sit opposite each other at these crappy little metal tables. And then it ends, and they go back to totally separate worlds.
Simons escorts Sean over to the table in the corner.
Max is young, white, can’t be more than a few years older than Sean. She doesn’t look familiar.
“Good to see you’re getting better taste in guys,” Simons comments to her as Sean sits down. “He might be kind of young for you, though.”
Max gives him an unimpressed look. “It’s not like that.”
That rules out the ‘someone who got a weird crush on him from the news reports’ theory, at least. Who is this girl?
“Hi,” Sean says, because he doesn’t really know what else you say in this situation. “Uh, I’m Sean.” Which she probably already knows, but, again, he doesn’t exactly have a rulebook for this.
“Max,” Max says. “Uh, good to meet you.”
She doesn’t seem much more confident than Sean does. Sean’s been trying to picture the kind of person who keeps visiting different prison inmates; it seems like the kind of thing you’d have to be pretty bold to do.
“So... I guess we don’t know each other,” Sean says. She just introduced herself, after all; she’s probably not someone he’s forgotten. “So why did you want to talk to me?”
“I met your brother,” Max says.
That’s not what Sean was expecting, and it tenses up his muscles. “Daniel?”
“We were in the visitors’ waiting room together,” Max says. “He was visiting you, and I was visiting...” She hesitates, pulls a face. “Anyway, he told me a lot about you. I guess I got curious.”
“So you applied to meet a prisoner you didn’t know?” Sean asks.
“It’s kind of reckless, right?” Max combs her fingers awkwardly through her hair. “This might not make sense, but I guess I’ve been trying to be more reckless lately.”
As life goals go, yeah, it’s kind of weird. If Sean ever gets out of here, he’s never going to act without thinking things through again.
I’m not dangerous, he wants to say. But he shot Lisbeth; that’s a fact. He never thought of himself as the kind of person who could kill someone, but apparently he was wrong.
He’s only dangerous when he’s protecting Daniel, he tells himself. And he can’t help Daniel in here.
“How’s he doing?” Sean asks. “Daniel, I mean.”
“He was really excited about seeing you,” Max says. “I think he misses you a lot. But he seemed like he was doing okay.”
Sean lets out a shaking breath. He didn’t know what he wanted her to say, afraid of Daniel suffering without him, afraid of Daniel forgetting him. It’s probably the best answer he could hope for. No way to know if it’s true, but it’s good to hear it, at least.
Daniel was crying so much during his first visit that he could barely speak. He’s seemed a little more together the couple of visits since then, at least.
“Can you keep an eye out for him when you come here?” Sean asks. “Just... talk to him, if he needs it?”
Max nods. “Yeah, of course. You really care about him, don’t you?”
You could say that. I murdered someone so he wouldn’t have to. It’s in his throat, blocking it up, but he doesn’t want to scare her away. “He’s my brother.”
-
Max is a lot less weird than Sean would have expected from someone who apparently spends a lot of time visiting prisoners. She’s a freelance photographer; she’s probably single, judging from an offhand comment she makes at one point about usually only cooking for herself, although Sean’s kind of embarrassed that he picked up on that. She seems kind of bookish, but she didn’t go to college; she didn’t have a great time at school, apparently, although she seems reluctant to go into any detail about it.
Honestly, she just seems like a normal person, and normality is something Sean has missed for so long.
“You want to talk again?” Max asks, when their time slot is drawing to a close. “I can figure things out with Daniel so our visits don’t clash. You seem a lot nicer than the other guys I visit here.”
Huh. “If they’re not nice, why do you visit them?”
Max goes quiet for a moment. “I don’t know. Looking for closure, I guess.”
She feels like a link to Daniel; she feels like a link to the real world. It’s strange to think of the outside as ‘the real world’. But Sean kind of feels like he’s trapped in a bad dream, like he’s been having a nightmare ever since he got into a fight with Brett in his front yard.
It’s still so strange to look back at that day. He hates thinking about it, all the what-ifs, all the ways things could have played out differently.
None of that helps him now.
“Uh, yeah, come back if you want,” he says. “Thanks. For... talking to me.” Does that sound totally pathetic? It’s too late; he’s already said it.
Max nods. “Good luck in here.”
-
If Daniel were here, Sean would tell him about Max. It’s the most interesting thing that’s happened since he ended up in this place. He met someone new, just a normal girl who heard about him and got curious. He’s kind of hoping she’ll visit again, and he can already hear Daniel teasing him: Eww, is she your girlfriend?
She’s not, obviously. Sean’s not under any illusions. She’s nice and normal and probably in her early twenties; she’s not going to be interested in a teenager with a conviction. But she’s willing to treat him like a person, and that means a lot on its own.
Anyway. If Daniel were here, he’d be able to talk about her.
He doesn’t want to mention her to Mark. She’s on the tip of his tongue, and then he remembers the shit Mark did, he swallows her down. Mark can’t touch her from in here, obviously, but Sean doesn’t want to talk to him about girls; he doesn’t know what he might be thinking or picturing.
He doesn’t bring up Daniel when he’s talking to Mark, either; not since that first conversation when he didn’t know who Mark was. Daniel doesn’t fit the profile of Mark’s victims, maybe, but Daniel’s an innocent; this guy doesn’t get to hear about him.
But he still talks to Mark. He talks about being in prison, what matches up with his expectations, what’s been a surprise to him, what he misses about his old life.
(Not Lyla. He never mentions Lyla in their conversations.)
Mark doesn’t talk about what he misses, which is probably for the best. But he talks about prison, he shares occasional tips about how to get better food or stay on the guards’ good side. It feels like a betrayal of all those unknown girls to benefit from his advice.
Sean doesn’t know what else to do. He’s never been alone before, except those sickening few months he was separated from Daniel on the run; he’s always had friends around, family, Lyla. He needs someone to talk to. And Mark Jefferson may be a monster, but he’s a monster who’s willing to make conversation.
-
Max seemed mainly curious on her first visit, a little awkward, a little nervous. The second time Sean approaches her in the visiting room, it’s like she’s a different person. He’s startled by the focus and determination in her expression. Honestly, it’s kind of scary.
“Is something wrong?” he asks as he sits down.
Max folds her arms on the table, but she quickly unfolds them an instant later, like she’s consciously trying to keep her hands free. “Nathan said you’re friends with Mr Jefferson.”
It’s not at all what Sean expected, and he has to take a moment to sort through all the questions it immediately slams into his head.
Question one: Max talked to Nathan? Yeah, apparently she visits people here, but Sean wasn’t expecting one of them to be his cellmate. Although, thinking about it, they’re probably around the same age; maybe they knew each other at school or something?
Question two: is he friends with Mark? Sean doesn’t really like the idea. But they eat together, they talk together, and it doesn’t exactly feel hostile. It’s not like he has a lot of non-criminal options for people to hang out with.
Question three: was Max one of Mark’s students? Probably, right, if she’s calling him Mr Jefferson? Is she one of the girls he...?
Oh, man. It’d explain a lot. Why is Max always visiting inmates at this prison? Because she’s looking for closure, and two of them abducted her and took a load of fucked-up photographs.
And Sean’s cellmates with one of them, and he eats his meals with the other one.
“I, uh.” What the fuck does he say in this situation? “I don’t know if we’re friends. We just talk sometimes.”
“He isn’t safe,” Max says. “I don’t think you should get involved with him.”
He thought she’d be angry. She’s worried about him?
“He took on a teenage apprentice before,” Max says. “Nathan Prescott.”
“I’m not his apprentice,” Sean protests. The idea kind of makes him feel sick.
Max is still talking over him. “And, yeah, Nathan did some shit, but in the end Mr Jefferson just... killed him, just threw him away.”
It jolts Sean’s insides. He has to take a moment to make sense of things, try to put reality back in order in his head. Tries to speak, swallows, tries to speak again.
“Nathan’s not dead,” he says. “He’s my cellmate.”
Max stares at him for a few seconds, frozen.
“Right,” she says, after a long moment. “Y-yeah, sorry, of course. I just got confused.”
How do you get confused about something like that?
-
He approaches Mark in the prison yard. It feels weird; it feels more like a conscious decision to spend time with him than sitting with him at meals does. There are only a few free seats at mealtimes. But, in the yard, Sean could stand anywhere.
“What did you actually do to those girls?” Sean asks.
It’s been haunting him since he started to have suspicions about Max’s connection to Mark. He’s struggling with mental pictures he’d prefer not to have, and the uncertainty only makes them harder to push away. He’s hoping that, if he actually knows, maybe he can at least do something about it.
It feels like he’s invading Max’s privacy. But he doesn’t know what else to do.
Mark looks over him, a shrewd up-and-down rake of the eyes that Sean can almost physically feel.
“Well, you’re more tolerable than my last apprentice, certainly,” Mark says, after a moment. “But I’m not taking on anyone new at the moment. In my experience, all assistants are good for is getting you caught. I’m sure you’ll understand.”
The words seem to catch in Sean’s gut and twist there. “I’m not – I’m not interested.”
Mark raises his eyebrows. “If you’re not interested, why are you asking questions?”
Fuck, he misses the internet. Somewhere he can satisfy his morbid curiosity from a distance. Asking Mark directly doesn’t feel safe.
“I don’t know,” Sean says. “Nathan says you drugged girls and tied them up and took photographs. Is that—” He doesn’t want to know this. Why is he asking this? “Is that it?”
“In the eyes of the law, that’s more than enough,” Mark says. “Are you saying you disagree?”
“I guess it’s just kind of an unusual crime,” Sean says. “It’s not exactly murder or... I don’t know, whatever.”
“Burglary?” Mark asks, with a trace of a smile.
Sean shrugs, uncomfortable. “I guess.”
“Nathan’s the one who ended up killing someone,” Mark says. “All I was doing was creating art.”
It doesn’t feel right. Mark has to have killed someone. There’s no way Sean’s killed someone and this guy doesn’t have any blood on his hands.
But he clings to the hope that it’s true, that those girls – maybe Max? – didn’t go through anything worse than...
Well, the stuff Nathan told him about was fucked-up enough on its own. But maybe that’s where it ended.
-
He wasn’t sure whether Max would come back, knowing he’s kind of linked to Mark. But she books another visiting slot two weeks later, and Sean’s heart kind of stutters when Simons drops by to let him know; he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or nervous.
“Hey,” he says, when he sees her. “I didn’t know if you’d want to talk to me again.”
Max shrugs. “I guess you’re not the only person who talks to Mr Jefferson. And at least you have less of a choice about it than I do.”
Has she been talking to Mark? Somehow the thought hadn’t crossed Sean’s mind. But he probably should have guessed it; he already knew she was visiting more people in here than him and Nathan, and Mark’s the only other inmate he knows she’s connected to.
He doesn’t like the idea. Has Mark sat in the same seat Sean’s in now, across from Max, picturing her tied up for his photographs?
“I swear I’m not into his stuff,” Sean says.
“I believe you,” Max says. “You really don’t seem the type.” She hesitates, glances down at the table. “I mean, I guess he didn’t, either. But I believe you.”
“Did he ever kill anyone?” Sean asks.
Max meets his eyes, frowning. It feels like there’s a question there.
“Because... you said he killed Nathan, right?” Sean asks. “I thought maybe you got him confused with someone else. And b-because, uh.” He has to force himself to say it aloud; there’s some part of him convinced that, if he never says it, it won’t have happened. But she’ll know it already; she must have looked through his convictions before deciding to meet him. “I killed someone. I didn’t want to, but – it happened. And... I don’t think I can handle being worse than him.”
“Okay, I’ve met you three times and I can promise you’re not worse than him,” Max says. “You’d be better than him even if he hadn’t murdered anyone. But he definitely has.”
It’s a weird feeling, not quite horror, not quite relief. He’s not worse than Mark Jefferson. But he’s also been eating his meals with a murderer. Not that that’s much worse than what he already knew.
“Who was it?” Sean asks.
“I don’t know,” Max says. “He wasn’t charged with it. But he’s done it before, because he definitely knew how to kill someone.”
Sean takes a moment to try to get his head around that. “Uh, how do you know someone’s good at killing if you don’t know who they’ve killed?”
Max hesitates. “It’s going to sound completely insane.”
“I mean, yeah, it sounds like this whole Dark Room thing was insane.”
Max shakes her head. “I mean... literally impossible. That kind of insane.”
Okay, he’s curious. “Hit me, I guess.”
“You won’t believe me.”
Sean shrugs. “There’s only one way to know for sure, right?”
There’s a long pause. Max taps her fingers on the table, biting her lip.
“I won’t use it,” she says, eventually. “I’m going to say that right now. The consequences are way too big; it’s really dangerous. But I’ve kind of got this... superpower.”
“Telekinesis?” Sean asks, instantly.
“No,” Max says, and then, “Wait, what? Why would you just assume it’s telekinesis?”
Is it true? Whatever it is, she’s said she won’t demonstrate it, so she could be making things up. But, after seeing what Daniel can do, Sean can’t just dismiss the idea.
“I kind of have some experience with superpowers,” Sean says.
-
The guards are patrolling the room, obviously, and they sometimes pause to listen in. Sean quickly changes the subject whenever they do. But eventually Simons nudges his shoulder and goes, “Hey, nothing wrong with roleplaying,” and he realises that, yeah, of course no one is going to believe a word they’re saying.
Nobody but the two of them. This table feels like a little island in the midst of everyone else’s understanding of reality; here they are, two of the few people who actually know how strange life can be.
It’s kind of hilarious to think back to their first visit, to how relieved Sean felt to be talking to someone normal.
The visiting slot feels like it ends far too quickly. Their stories are both long and totally impossible, and Sean needs to know more, needs to talk more, needs to ask more about this Chloe girl and what happened to her. Right now, if he knew a way to break out of here, he’d forget the consequences and do it; he can’t leave this conversation unfinished.
Maybe Max is feeling the same thing. “I’ll come back,” she says, as the guards start calling for them to wrap up.
“You have to,” Sean says. “It feels so good to actually be able to talk about these things. Maybe you could tell Daniel as well?”
“Uh, I think Daniel might be kind of young for my story,” Max says. “But I could tell him you told me about his powers?”
“He’d love that. I think he probably needs someone to talk to about them.” It always feels kind of awkward to bring up Daniel’s powers in the visiting room, with Claire and Stephen there, even if they technically know.
“No problem,” Max says. “I’ll tell Daniel you said hi. And you can give my regards to Mr Jefferson.”
“Are you asking me to punch him?” Sean asks. “They’ll put me in solitary.”
Max laughs. “No, that’s fine. Just tell him I said fuck you.”
There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“I don’t know why I keep talking to him,” Sean says. “Sorry. I’ll stop if you ask me to.”
“No, I get it.” Max brushes her hair back behind her ear; it’s a slightly awkward gesture. “It’s... hard not to try to understand why he did those things, right?”
Maybe that’s it; maybe that’s the reason Sean can’t just walk away from him. It feels like Mark is a caged flame, interesting but dangerous, and they’re both just moths battering themselves to death against it.
Honestly, even if they both end up destroying themselves, Sean’s just glad not to be alone.
Anyway, here's a Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2 crossover in which Sean meets assorted first-game characters in prison. It occurred to me a few years ago that Sean could theoretically end up in a prison in Oregon, and this idea has haunted me ever since.
Title: To a Flame
Fandom: Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2
Rating: 15
Wordcount: 5,200
Summary: Sean makes some interesting friends in prison. It's possible 'friend' isn't the right word for some of them.
Warnings: Canon-typical dark themes.
Sean is shaking when he walks into prison. It doesn’t feel like the best way to make a first impression in prison, but he can’t stop.
Maybe that’s normal? Maybe everyone shakes; maybe the hardened, emotionless criminals he’s picturing are just in his imagination. Maybe they’re all just scared kids who never meant to hurt anyone.
He knows by now that he can’t trust the police. Why should he believe that anyone else belongs here?
“Here it is,” the guard escorting Sean says, coming to a halt in front of an open cell. “Your cellmate’s Nathan Prescott. You two can bond over how much you love shooting women and fucking up your teenage years.”
You weren’t there. It’s so quick and sharp in Sean’s mind that he has to bite down on the words to keep them from escaping; they’d definitely get him into trouble. I didn’t want to shoot her. The church was burning and we had to get out, and Daniel—
It had really scared him. Daniel had been throttling Lisbeth with his powers, had refused to let her go when Sean asked. What, was he supposed to just stand there and watch as his kid brother killed someone?
So Sean had to shoot her himself. He hadn’t wanted to. But the alternative was so much worse he couldn’t face it.
He can’t be sure that this Nathan guy doesn’t have a similar story. He tries to tell himself that, tries not to let his body tighten up at the thought that his cellmate shot someone.
Of course he won’t have a similar fucking story. How many people have telekinetic younger brothers?
The cell door slams behind him, and Sean just stands there, eyes flicking around his tiny new room. Is he supposed to introduce himself? He doesn’t know how any of this works.
There’s a guy sitting on the top bunk. He guesses that’s Nathan.
From what the guard said, Sean was half-wondering whether he was about to meet another seventeen-year-old who’d ended up in this place, but Nathan looks a few years older than him. Although he doesn’t know how long it’s been since Nathan got locked up here, he guesses.
Fuck. He’s going to be here for years. Decades, if he doesn’t pass his hearing fifteen fucking years in, and he’s only getting that because he’s under eighteen; if this whole shitshow had happened a year later, he wouldn’t have a chance.
Don’t think about it.
“Uh, hi,” he says. He doesn’t know if attempting to have a conversation is going to get him into a fight with a probably-murderer, but right now that at least sounds more appealing than thinking about his future.
Nathan glances over at him, then away. He doesn’t say anything.
Okay. It’s not exactly making new friends, but Sean guesses it could be worse.
As Nathan’s already on the top bunk, it looks like Sean’s getting the bottom one. He lies down on it, testing the thin mattress. It’s not exactly luxurious, but it’s better than sleeping rough, if you forget that it’s inside a cage.
The lower bunk suits Sean; it’s where he slept when he shared a room with Daniel as a kid. At first he protested; why did Daniel get the top bunk? He’d come to kind of like it eventually; it felt cosy and safe, enclosed on three sides, listening to Daniel’s breathing as he slept.
He closes his eyes and pretends himself back to those days. He’s in his bunk, Daniel sleeping above him, and in the morning they’ll race each other to the kitchen and fight over the last toaster waffle.
Fuck, he needs to stop thinking about this. He can feel tears building at the corners of his eyes.
Lunch is in a crowded cafeteria without enough places to sit, but there’s a vacant seat next to some guy with glasses, maybe late thirties. In a place this busy, empty seats feel like a warning sign, but the guy doesn’t look too intimidating. Sean takes the risk of sitting there.
The guy glances up as Sean sits down, pauses. “How old are you?”
Sean freezes, not sure how to answer. If people know he’s a teenager, are they going to go easy on him, or are they going to see him as weak prey?
The guy lets out a quiet, half-amused breath. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You don’t have to answer.”
“Sorry,” Sean says. He kind of feels like, if he’s not going to answer the question, he should at least offer something else about himself. “Uh, I’m Sean.”
The guy nods. “Mark. Although I have the impression you knew that already.”
He didn’t know that. Why would he know that?
“What are you in for?” Sean asks. People ask that, right?
Mark looks sidelong at him for a moment. “You’re not an Oregon native, are you?”
“Uh, Washington,” Sean says. “My brother lives with our grandparents in Oregon.” He was going to say Beaver Creek, caught himself at the last moment. Probably shouldn’t spread too many details about Daniel around. “I wanted to be near him.”
“It’s easy when you’re a kid,” Mark says. “They didn’t listen to any of my transfer requests.”
“Yeah, well, they still tried me as an adult,” Sean mutters.
Shit. So much for hiding his age.
“What did you do?” Mark asks.
He doesn’t even know how to start explaining that. “I don’t know. A lot of shit I didn’t want to.”
Theft, murder, battery, breaking and entering. A lot of resisting arrest, obviously. He never thought of himself as a criminal, but he looked at the list of charges and... yeah, they were all technically things he’d actually done.
Except the arson and property damage. That was Daniel, and it was an accident. But he wasn’t going to say anything to get Daniel in trouble.
They didn’t even charge him with the death of that first police officer. Not enough evidence, apparently. That might be the most fucked-up thing in all of this. He can’t stop wondering: if he hadn’t run, would things have played out differently?
Just another thing he has to try not to think about for the rest of his life.
“Condolences,” Mark says. “If you’re going to end up in prison, it should at least be for something worth doing.”
By the time Sean gets up to return his tray, he’s feeling a little better, maybe. He’s not feeling good, but the tension in his gut has eased a little. He’s had something to eat, and he knows from his time on the run what a difference that can make.
Plus he had a conversation with a fellow inmate and came out of it with all his fingers. That’s not bad for prison, right?
It’s not until he’s back in his cell, lying on his bunk, that he realises Mark never told him why he’d been arrested. But he guesses he wasn’t exactly an open book himself.
Nathan seems on edge, pacing the cell, glancing occasionally over at Sean. It’s kind of putting Sean on edge as well. He hasn’t been here long enough to know Nathan’s mannerisms; he really hopes this isn’t going to be a daily thing.
“I saw you talking to Mr Jefferson,” Nathan says, suddenly.
Sean looks at him, startled. Nathan hasn’t exactly tried to make conversation; he’s mostly just been muttering to himself. And... “Mr Jefferson?”
“Mark Jefferson,” Nathan says. “He’s – he’s dangerous. Don’t go near him.”
Does everyone call him Mr? How much respect do you have to command in a prison to get that kind of treatment?
“Dangerous how?” Sean asks.
“My cellmate told me some fucked-up things about you,” Sean says.
Mark looks at him for a moment. “Did they put you with Nathan?”
Nailed it on the first guess. Because he knows Nathan has a vendetta against him? Or because all that insane shit actually happened?
“I suppose he didn’t tell you about his part in it,” Mark says. “It’s interesting that you’re still sitting next to me.”
That... does kind of make it sound like it actually happened. Holy crap.
“Nowhere else to sit,” Sean says. “And—” Should he say this? “You seemed normal. I guess I’m finding it hard to picture.”
“You don’t think I did it?” Mark asks. It’s not hopeful, exactly; it comes across as a kind of detached curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Sean says. “Maybe you’ve... reformed, I guess.”
Mark laughs. “I’m touched by your faith in me, but things would be very different if I had my freedom and my equipment. As it happens, I can’t carry out my crime of choice, and I might have a reduced sentence for good behaviour. Why not be polite?”
Sean suddenly has the weird feeling he’s looking at some kind of reversed image of himself. Sean did a lot of fucked-up things because of the circumstances he was in. It’s strange to meet someone who was forced by circumstance into having a normal conversation with a scared teenager on his first day in prison, helping to set him at ease, instead of doing something fucked-up.
“If I’d been at your school,” Sean says, and then he can’t keep talking; it feels like his mouth has dried up.
“You sound like some of the letters I get,” Mark says. “I’m interested in innocence, Sean. Nobody in this place is a suitable subject for my lens. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
In a weird way, it does kind of feel like a disappointment, being told he’s not good enough to be abducted. Sean has no fucking idea what’s wrong with his head sometimes.
He doesn’t manage to eat much, walks away with his head swimming. The person he knows best in this terrifying new place is a pretty awful person, it turns out.
But he’s still the person Sean knows best. Everyone else is a blank to him.
He hurries to be one of the first in the cafeteria queue the next time the meal bell goes off. Pretty much has his pick of the tables. Hesitates, looking over the room.
In the end, he takes the same seat and waits until Mark, laughing quietly, sits down next to him.
It’s weird how quickly you can get used to a totally new situation. It’s a survival thing, Sean guesses; the brain just focuses on whatever’s in front of it.
It’s not like he’s happy here, obviously, but he thinks about the outside world a lot less than he’d have expected to. He’s only a few weeks into his sentence, but sometimes it feels like he’s never been anywhere else.
Except when Daniel visits, and everything Sean is missing crashes straight back into his head. It’s good to see him, obviously. But it hurts like hell.
Lyla’s applied for visiting as well, although she hasn’t been able to make it down from Washington yet. He needs to see her, desperately, but he knows it’s going to destroy him; he could barely handle seeing her signature on the application form.
Anyway. Visits are rough, but they’re limited to one a week, and there are weeks when nobody visits. Claire and Stephen have said they’ll try to bring Daniel by about twice a month.
The rest of the time, Sean just falls into a routine. Sketching in his cell, walking laps around the yard, trying not to catch the eye of anyone with white-power tattoos. Doing any jobs he’s assigned; honestly, peeling potatoes in this place kind of beats working on the weed farm. Keeping his head down, trying to avoid anything that could get him into fights or extend his sentence.
Sitting with Mark at mealtimes.
He’s not sure if he should be doing that one. But he has to sit somewhere, and Mark seems like a known quantity, at least.
“Visitor form,” Simons says, passing a sheet of paper through the bars. “Sign it if you want to see ’em.”
Sean’s already signed for visitation from Daniel and Lyla and his grandparents, obviously, so the form itself isn’t new to him. But the name of the visitor is. Max Caulfield.
He doesn’t know any Max Caulfield. Why would some stranger want to see him? One of Cassidy and Finn’s crew, maybe, under another name?
Simons is one of the friendlier guards, so Sean risks asking. “Who’s Max Caulfield?”
“Oh, it’s Max?” Simons asks, glancing at the form in Sean’s hands. “She’s a regular here. Comes in to visit a couple of our guys. What history you got with her?”
“Nothing,” Sean says. “I don’t know her.”
She keeps visiting more than one person at the prison? Is she, like... a serial killer groupie?
But Simons thought he had history with her. So the people she visits are probably just people she knows.
And Sean, apparently.
Did he hurt her, somehow, without even knowing she existed? Was she friends with Lisbeth? Was she someone he stole from?
He signs the form, in the end. He’s kind of scared of finding out who this person is to him. But he needs to know.
Being in the visitors’ room is always a weird experience. For a couple of hours, inmates and free people can sit opposite each other at these crappy little metal tables. And then it ends, and they go back to totally separate worlds.
Simons escorts Sean over to the table in the corner.
Max is young, white, can’t be more than a few years older than Sean. She doesn’t look familiar.
“Good to see you’re getting better taste in guys,” Simons comments to her as Sean sits down. “He might be kind of young for you, though.”
Max gives him an unimpressed look. “It’s not like that.”
That rules out the ‘someone who got a weird crush on him from the news reports’ theory, at least. Who is this girl?
“Hi,” Sean says, because he doesn’t really know what else you say in this situation. “Uh, I’m Sean.” Which she probably already knows, but, again, he doesn’t exactly have a rulebook for this.
“Max,” Max says. “Uh, good to meet you.”
She doesn’t seem much more confident than Sean does. Sean’s been trying to picture the kind of person who keeps visiting different prison inmates; it seems like the kind of thing you’d have to be pretty bold to do.
“So... I guess we don’t know each other,” Sean says. She just introduced herself, after all; she’s probably not someone he’s forgotten. “So why did you want to talk to me?”
“I met your brother,” Max says.
That’s not what Sean was expecting, and it tenses up his muscles. “Daniel?”
“We were in the visitors’ waiting room together,” Max says. “He was visiting you, and I was visiting...” She hesitates, pulls a face. “Anyway, he told me a lot about you. I guess I got curious.”
“So you applied to meet a prisoner you didn’t know?” Sean asks.
“It’s kind of reckless, right?” Max combs her fingers awkwardly through her hair. “This might not make sense, but I guess I’ve been trying to be more reckless lately.”
As life goals go, yeah, it’s kind of weird. If Sean ever gets out of here, he’s never going to act without thinking things through again.
I’m not dangerous, he wants to say. But he shot Lisbeth; that’s a fact. He never thought of himself as the kind of person who could kill someone, but apparently he was wrong.
He’s only dangerous when he’s protecting Daniel, he tells himself. And he can’t help Daniel in here.
“How’s he doing?” Sean asks. “Daniel, I mean.”
“He was really excited about seeing you,” Max says. “I think he misses you a lot. But he seemed like he was doing okay.”
Sean lets out a shaking breath. He didn’t know what he wanted her to say, afraid of Daniel suffering without him, afraid of Daniel forgetting him. It’s probably the best answer he could hope for. No way to know if it’s true, but it’s good to hear it, at least.
Daniel was crying so much during his first visit that he could barely speak. He’s seemed a little more together the couple of visits since then, at least.
“Can you keep an eye out for him when you come here?” Sean asks. “Just... talk to him, if he needs it?”
Max nods. “Yeah, of course. You really care about him, don’t you?”
You could say that. I murdered someone so he wouldn’t have to. It’s in his throat, blocking it up, but he doesn’t want to scare her away. “He’s my brother.”
Max is a lot less weird than Sean would have expected from someone who apparently spends a lot of time visiting prisoners. She’s a freelance photographer; she’s probably single, judging from an offhand comment she makes at one point about usually only cooking for herself, although Sean’s kind of embarrassed that he picked up on that. She seems kind of bookish, but she didn’t go to college; she didn’t have a great time at school, apparently, although she seems reluctant to go into any detail about it.
Honestly, she just seems like a normal person, and normality is something Sean has missed for so long.
“You want to talk again?” Max asks, when their time slot is drawing to a close. “I can figure things out with Daniel so our visits don’t clash. You seem a lot nicer than the other guys I visit here.”
Huh. “If they’re not nice, why do you visit them?”
Max goes quiet for a moment. “I don’t know. Looking for closure, I guess.”
She feels like a link to Daniel; she feels like a link to the real world. It’s strange to think of the outside as ‘the real world’. But Sean kind of feels like he’s trapped in a bad dream, like he’s been having a nightmare ever since he got into a fight with Brett in his front yard.
It’s still so strange to look back at that day. He hates thinking about it, all the what-ifs, all the ways things could have played out differently.
None of that helps him now.
“Uh, yeah, come back if you want,” he says. “Thanks. For... talking to me.” Does that sound totally pathetic? It’s too late; he’s already said it.
Max nods. “Good luck in here.”
If Daniel were here, Sean would tell him about Max. It’s the most interesting thing that’s happened since he ended up in this place. He met someone new, just a normal girl who heard about him and got curious. He’s kind of hoping she’ll visit again, and he can already hear Daniel teasing him: Eww, is she your girlfriend?
She’s not, obviously. Sean’s not under any illusions. She’s nice and normal and probably in her early twenties; she’s not going to be interested in a teenager with a conviction. But she’s willing to treat him like a person, and that means a lot on its own.
Anyway. If Daniel were here, he’d be able to talk about her.
He doesn’t want to mention her to Mark. She’s on the tip of his tongue, and then he remembers the shit Mark did, he swallows her down. Mark can’t touch her from in here, obviously, but Sean doesn’t want to talk to him about girls; he doesn’t know what he might be thinking or picturing.
He doesn’t bring up Daniel when he’s talking to Mark, either; not since that first conversation when he didn’t know who Mark was. Daniel doesn’t fit the profile of Mark’s victims, maybe, but Daniel’s an innocent; this guy doesn’t get to hear about him.
But he still talks to Mark. He talks about being in prison, what matches up with his expectations, what’s been a surprise to him, what he misses about his old life.
(Not Lyla. He never mentions Lyla in their conversations.)
Mark doesn’t talk about what he misses, which is probably for the best. But he talks about prison, he shares occasional tips about how to get better food or stay on the guards’ good side. It feels like a betrayal of all those unknown girls to benefit from his advice.
Sean doesn’t know what else to do. He’s never been alone before, except those sickening few months he was separated from Daniel on the run; he’s always had friends around, family, Lyla. He needs someone to talk to. And Mark Jefferson may be a monster, but he’s a monster who’s willing to make conversation.
Max seemed mainly curious on her first visit, a little awkward, a little nervous. The second time Sean approaches her in the visiting room, it’s like she’s a different person. He’s startled by the focus and determination in her expression. Honestly, it’s kind of scary.
“Is something wrong?” he asks as he sits down.
Max folds her arms on the table, but she quickly unfolds them an instant later, like she’s consciously trying to keep her hands free. “Nathan said you’re friends with Mr Jefferson.”
It’s not at all what Sean expected, and he has to take a moment to sort through all the questions it immediately slams into his head.
Question one: Max talked to Nathan? Yeah, apparently she visits people here, but Sean wasn’t expecting one of them to be his cellmate. Although, thinking about it, they’re probably around the same age; maybe they knew each other at school or something?
Question two: is he friends with Mark? Sean doesn’t really like the idea. But they eat together, they talk together, and it doesn’t exactly feel hostile. It’s not like he has a lot of non-criminal options for people to hang out with.
Question three: was Max one of Mark’s students? Probably, right, if she’s calling him Mr Jefferson? Is she one of the girls he...?
Oh, man. It’d explain a lot. Why is Max always visiting inmates at this prison? Because she’s looking for closure, and two of them abducted her and took a load of fucked-up photographs.
And Sean’s cellmates with one of them, and he eats his meals with the other one.
“I, uh.” What the fuck does he say in this situation? “I don’t know if we’re friends. We just talk sometimes.”
“He isn’t safe,” Max says. “I don’t think you should get involved with him.”
He thought she’d be angry. She’s worried about him?
“He took on a teenage apprentice before,” Max says. “Nathan Prescott.”
“I’m not his apprentice,” Sean protests. The idea kind of makes him feel sick.
Max is still talking over him. “And, yeah, Nathan did some shit, but in the end Mr Jefferson just... killed him, just threw him away.”
It jolts Sean’s insides. He has to take a moment to make sense of things, try to put reality back in order in his head. Tries to speak, swallows, tries to speak again.
“Nathan’s not dead,” he says. “He’s my cellmate.”
Max stares at him for a few seconds, frozen.
“Right,” she says, after a long moment. “Y-yeah, sorry, of course. I just got confused.”
How do you get confused about something like that?
He approaches Mark in the prison yard. It feels weird; it feels more like a conscious decision to spend time with him than sitting with him at meals does. There are only a few free seats at mealtimes. But, in the yard, Sean could stand anywhere.
“What did you actually do to those girls?” Sean asks.
It’s been haunting him since he started to have suspicions about Max’s connection to Mark. He’s struggling with mental pictures he’d prefer not to have, and the uncertainty only makes them harder to push away. He’s hoping that, if he actually knows, maybe he can at least do something about it.
It feels like he’s invading Max’s privacy. But he doesn’t know what else to do.
Mark looks over him, a shrewd up-and-down rake of the eyes that Sean can almost physically feel.
“Well, you’re more tolerable than my last apprentice, certainly,” Mark says, after a moment. “But I’m not taking on anyone new at the moment. In my experience, all assistants are good for is getting you caught. I’m sure you’ll understand.”
The words seem to catch in Sean’s gut and twist there. “I’m not – I’m not interested.”
Mark raises his eyebrows. “If you’re not interested, why are you asking questions?”
Fuck, he misses the internet. Somewhere he can satisfy his morbid curiosity from a distance. Asking Mark directly doesn’t feel safe.
“I don’t know,” Sean says. “Nathan says you drugged girls and tied them up and took photographs. Is that—” He doesn’t want to know this. Why is he asking this? “Is that it?”
“In the eyes of the law, that’s more than enough,” Mark says. “Are you saying you disagree?”
“I guess it’s just kind of an unusual crime,” Sean says. “It’s not exactly murder or... I don’t know, whatever.”
“Burglary?” Mark asks, with a trace of a smile.
Sean shrugs, uncomfortable. “I guess.”
“Nathan’s the one who ended up killing someone,” Mark says. “All I was doing was creating art.”
It doesn’t feel right. Mark has to have killed someone. There’s no way Sean’s killed someone and this guy doesn’t have any blood on his hands.
But he clings to the hope that it’s true, that those girls – maybe Max? – didn’t go through anything worse than...
Well, the stuff Nathan told him about was fucked-up enough on its own. But maybe that’s where it ended.
He wasn’t sure whether Max would come back, knowing he’s kind of linked to Mark. But she books another visiting slot two weeks later, and Sean’s heart kind of stutters when Simons drops by to let him know; he doesn’t know whether to be relieved or nervous.
“Hey,” he says, when he sees her. “I didn’t know if you’d want to talk to me again.”
Max shrugs. “I guess you’re not the only person who talks to Mr Jefferson. And at least you have less of a choice about it than I do.”
Has she been talking to Mark? Somehow the thought hadn’t crossed Sean’s mind. But he probably should have guessed it; he already knew she was visiting more people in here than him and Nathan, and Mark’s the only other inmate he knows she’s connected to.
He doesn’t like the idea. Has Mark sat in the same seat Sean’s in now, across from Max, picturing her tied up for his photographs?
“I swear I’m not into his stuff,” Sean says.
“I believe you,” Max says. “You really don’t seem the type.” She hesitates, glances down at the table. “I mean, I guess he didn’t, either. But I believe you.”
“Did he ever kill anyone?” Sean asks.
Max meets his eyes, frowning. It feels like there’s a question there.
“Because... you said he killed Nathan, right?” Sean asks. “I thought maybe you got him confused with someone else. And b-because, uh.” He has to force himself to say it aloud; there’s some part of him convinced that, if he never says it, it won’t have happened. But she’ll know it already; she must have looked through his convictions before deciding to meet him. “I killed someone. I didn’t want to, but – it happened. And... I don’t think I can handle being worse than him.”
“Okay, I’ve met you three times and I can promise you’re not worse than him,” Max says. “You’d be better than him even if he hadn’t murdered anyone. But he definitely has.”
It’s a weird feeling, not quite horror, not quite relief. He’s not worse than Mark Jefferson. But he’s also been eating his meals with a murderer. Not that that’s much worse than what he already knew.
“Who was it?” Sean asks.
“I don’t know,” Max says. “He wasn’t charged with it. But he’s done it before, because he definitely knew how to kill someone.”
Sean takes a moment to try to get his head around that. “Uh, how do you know someone’s good at killing if you don’t know who they’ve killed?”
Max hesitates. “It’s going to sound completely insane.”
“I mean, yeah, it sounds like this whole Dark Room thing was insane.”
Max shakes her head. “I mean... literally impossible. That kind of insane.”
Okay, he’s curious. “Hit me, I guess.”
“You won’t believe me.”
Sean shrugs. “There’s only one way to know for sure, right?”
There’s a long pause. Max taps her fingers on the table, biting her lip.
“I won’t use it,” she says, eventually. “I’m going to say that right now. The consequences are way too big; it’s really dangerous. But I’ve kind of got this... superpower.”
“Telekinesis?” Sean asks, instantly.
“No,” Max says, and then, “Wait, what? Why would you just assume it’s telekinesis?”
Is it true? Whatever it is, she’s said she won’t demonstrate it, so she could be making things up. But, after seeing what Daniel can do, Sean can’t just dismiss the idea.
“I kind of have some experience with superpowers,” Sean says.
The guards are patrolling the room, obviously, and they sometimes pause to listen in. Sean quickly changes the subject whenever they do. But eventually Simons nudges his shoulder and goes, “Hey, nothing wrong with roleplaying,” and he realises that, yeah, of course no one is going to believe a word they’re saying.
Nobody but the two of them. This table feels like a little island in the midst of everyone else’s understanding of reality; here they are, two of the few people who actually know how strange life can be.
It’s kind of hilarious to think back to their first visit, to how relieved Sean felt to be talking to someone normal.
The visiting slot feels like it ends far too quickly. Their stories are both long and totally impossible, and Sean needs to know more, needs to talk more, needs to ask more about this Chloe girl and what happened to her. Right now, if he knew a way to break out of here, he’d forget the consequences and do it; he can’t leave this conversation unfinished.
Maybe Max is feeling the same thing. “I’ll come back,” she says, as the guards start calling for them to wrap up.
“You have to,” Sean says. “It feels so good to actually be able to talk about these things. Maybe you could tell Daniel as well?”
“Uh, I think Daniel might be kind of young for my story,” Max says. “But I could tell him you told me about his powers?”
“He’d love that. I think he probably needs someone to talk to about them.” It always feels kind of awkward to bring up Daniel’s powers in the visiting room, with Claire and Stephen there, even if they technically know.
“No problem,” Max says. “I’ll tell Daniel you said hi. And you can give my regards to Mr Jefferson.”
“Are you asking me to punch him?” Sean asks. “They’ll put me in solitary.”
Max laughs. “No, that’s fine. Just tell him I said fuck you.”
There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“I don’t know why I keep talking to him,” Sean says. “Sorry. I’ll stop if you ask me to.”
“No, I get it.” Max brushes her hair back behind her ear; it’s a slightly awkward gesture. “It’s... hard not to try to understand why he did those things, right?”
Maybe that’s it; maybe that’s the reason Sean can’t just walk away from him. It feels like Mark is a caged flame, interesting but dangerous, and they’re both just moths battering themselves to death against it.
Honestly, even if they both end up destroying themselves, Sean’s just glad not to be alone.