maskormenacelogs | A time to build up, a time to break down

Carl has not been affected by this strange, time-twisted anomaly. But he has seen it in his own living room. Living with a father who never murdered murderers, who never seen the dead walk, and is untouched and perfect. It's frightening to see, and Carl is, deep down, bitterly jealous of the Carl this Dad have. A perfect son with a perfect life.

He needs a break from it all. But he doesn't dare go far away from Xavier's, or from Dad from that matter. Everything has gotten strange again, and he cannot abide with the thought of something - or someone - happening to Dad, even this shadow of his father.

Still, a break from this stress is very much needed, so he takes one in a form of a small cafe in Heropa. It's his favorite, as it is low-down, quiet, and not much happens. He opens the door and enters. He might bump in to you as well.

Edited 2016-06-26 20:18 (UTC)

By comparison, Enid isn't as hurt emotionally by the going-ons of the time anomaly, but she sure can feel how other people are. How Carl is, more importantly, when she spots him walking into a small cafe. Which is why, even though she hasn't said it at all yet, she is concerned for him as a friend.

This of course reminds her how Rick had once told her to watch out for Carl, many months ago, and as Rick was technically not the same right, makes her feel an obligation to keep that promise again. Or, at least, check up on him. It spurs her to follow and eventually come inside the cafe behind him, where she stops and looks around for where Carl took his seat.

Then when she finally spies again, she approaches and casually takes a seat. Permission or no.

Her look just settles on him to gauge how he is feeling, maybe a little bit using her one ability to peak at his feelings. If he was up to talk or not. Or hell, if she made a mistake sitting down.

She didn't offer any talk just yet.

Carl feels a little anxious, a little upset, and a whole lot of bitterness. He comes back to the original thought that it is so easy to hate the son of the Rick Grimes back in his apartment. He drinks his root beer and wishes it was the real thing. Maybe he'll steal a can from his father's cache after he's gone to bed.

He looks up and sees Enid taking a sat across from him. "Hey."

His clear anxiety doesn't help any of her own, so Enid presses her lips into a fine line, and takes another long moment to look at him. After which though, she gets the full gist of how he is feeling. It's not unlike what she already sensed from him before. Carl's been strange for a while now, but honestly not too different outwardly. So. She decides maybe it's okay to try approaching it.

"Hey... What's up with you, anyway? You doing okay?"

"No." With Enid, there's no point of lying, he finds. She's hard to lie to. She has this talent of discerning the real heart of the matter. "I'm not. Dad just woke up and is acting like the walker virus never happened. Like he lived this normal life all this time. He didn't even recognized Daryl. Just pulled a gun on him." He recognized Carl, in a fashion. Stared in horror at his face, at Carl's words.

You are not my son.

Those words didn't hurt at first - Carl was too busy figuring out the problem for it to really affect him until much later on. When everything was figured out and those words finally dug into the skin of Carl's heart and tears.

"I'm going to need your help in hiding our guns. Nearly all of it isn't legal, and Dad thinks he's still a cop by the books."

And one these days yet she would tell why that was. For a while now even, she has been thinking about sharing what her abilities were with him. Right at this moment though, she doesn't see how it is a good time to do that just yet either. Especially not with him opening up like he was, so she does what always tends to do.

She listens quietly the whole time he speaks, taking in the problem and the feelings behind it. It was pretty clear to her even before he asks that he needs an ear to listen and some help. However, what she can do for Rick, first of all, was very little. But with the gun matter, there was maybe something she could do.

And once it seems to her that's all he'll say, she gives him a straight look, nodding. "Okay." It was a little much to fathom, but she would help. Mostly because, even though they weren't part of her stash, losing guns to one of their own during another one of these weird situations would be beyond ridiculous. "You can sneak them to my place."

"Thanks, Enid. And I think you should keep your distance from him. He might try to check you out if he knows you are close to me. He doesn't trust me, you see."

He sighs and looks out at the window. The bright sun lands on his face, and the light makes the blue of his eyes even brighter. He sees a man with a young boy on the opposite side of the street, hands filled with ice cream. Are they father and son? Uncle and nephew? Or something else?

"He said to me that I'm not his son."

Carl grimaces and looks to the side. It's clear Carl is hurt by that, even though he knows it means nothing. Pretty soon someone is going to figure out the problem - whether it is because of the Porter, or because of magic or whatever - and will eventually turn back to normal. But the idea of being forsaken by family . . . that's something Carl wouldn't be able to deal.

That she would have never guessed Rick would ever say, so it comes as a surprise to her when she hears it from Carl. A thing like that she could never imagine knowing how to feel about though, but she gets a sense of it's like from him anyway. Hurtful doesn't even begin to describe it.

She follows his gaze to the adult and child outside together, watching for them moment, before deciding to bring attention away from his grief. "Okay. If you think I should, I will. But I don't know what point there is in keeping my distance. Don't you wanna help him?"

That's what they do, right. Every other act she's seen them do was for the group, even if just for one single person. It's who she understands Carl is. And she isn't about to let him stop being that person now. "We can go back to your place and figure everything out. There has to being someway to fix things. So what if he sees me."

"It's not going to help him if he learns that his fake son has his friend hiding away his illegal weapons in her dorm." Or that his fake son have any kind of weapons at all. He wipes at his face as a waitress begins to approach him. He asked for a water and waits until the waitress is satisfied with her order (if Enid wants to order anything) to walk to the next table. He lowers his voice considerably after she leaves.

"But the bottom line is I don't if we can help him. This is something an imPort made, I just know it - messing with peoples' minds by accident, I've seen it before. This is something we don't have a choice but to ride it out until someone can come up with a solution."

Edited 2016-06-29 00:08 (UTC)

"Then we don't hide them at my place," Enid suggests as an alternative. "We put them them somewhere else."

And that was just one idea to start. There was more that came to her mind. However, when the waitress comes up, she puts pause on those thoughts for a moment to order the same as he does to make the process quicker. Water is fine anyway. Once the waitress goes though, she looks at Carl again, with a visible sigh.

Her voice lowers to match his.

"You really think there is nothing we can do? We can look someone to help, rather than wait for them to fix it."

The line of Carl's mouth twisted. Asking others for help has left a sour taste in Carl's mouth. She's right about one thing - riding out this predicament might not be an option.

"The last time I asked strangers for help for Dad's sake, they stood by and allowed someone to kill him. I'm not going to do that again - not with people I don't know at any case. But we need to find out if the people we know and trust are affected to before we can even try to do anything."

It's so awful to Carl, thinking how he is back to his paranoid roots again. How he just can't reach out and ask for help like he used to. Enid, Daryl, even Dad himself can probably bring themselves to ask others for help, but not Carl. He's stuck in that terrible limbo where seeing everything is a threat and knowing otherwise, but can't bring himself to put himself back into a place where he might be vulnerable.

Jesse Pinkman really is the worst person in the world for taking away Carl's peace of mind.

"But I'm open to any ideas."

But he can at least try to take that peace back.

Enid looks thrown with what he added. Sure, she was already aware that Rick had been killed because of his network post a while ago, but until she could only guess how much that has effected Carl. Her guess was that he would only never trust the person responsible.

But not trusting anyone again? That didn't sit well with her. Then again, she wasn't exactly part of his group once upon a time so -

"So, looking for anyone that can help - that's automatically out the window? You know you didn't know me not too long ago. And I'm not saying we shouldn't look at people carefully, but there's no other way I see helping your dad than by looking for someone that'll help."

She pauses with that for a moment then. Both to give Carl time to consider what she said just now and to think over what she would do if he still is against it. What she ends up deciding is that if he won't look with her, then she will look by herself. She never promised she wouldn't.

She gives a light shrug at his question.

"I don't know. Who else do you know?" Maybe they could start there on looking for help, she figures. Or. "We can move your guns first."

And there it is that solid logic that Carl can't argue with. If there's the best solution to solve Dad's problem, then Carl's pragmatic enough to take it. But after what happened, his instincts scream against it. Is there a way for a middle ground? Carl's not sure. Carl doesn't want to be sure - he's more than happy to ignore others, and they him. His father - his family is the only trigger that can be pulled into lethal action. Working with others, with strangers

"I don't know anyone else. But consider this: RISE found a way to stop the Russians, and they let Jesse kill Dad just to stop them. If whoever it is found a way to solve found a way and they think hurting or killing Dad might help everyone who has changed as well - what would we do, then?"

Because then it will be LACKEY all over again. Everyone justifying Dad's death or trauma like it is a minor inconvenience, for the greater good. But this time, no one is going to hurt Dad again. He will not allow it. Carl would personally murder the entirety of RISE if that means it won't happen again. And anyone else who gets in his way as well.

His face was darkening all the while he has his thoughts and he shook his head, shaking them away like a dog would shake its fleas off. "But we should start small and keep our ears to the ground at least. Move the guns first, and see what we should do next."

The waitress arrives with their waters. From her neutral expression, Carl couldn't tell if she overheard their conversation or not. He hopes not - he realizes they both sound like some characters from a political spy movie or something of the like, filled with betrayal and death and politics

After listening to all that, the hurt just in his tone and in his heart - Enid has no immediate answer for him. She can't change what happened to begin with, and she has absolutely no idea what they would do to stop people from harming Rick again. They weren't exactly a match for an organization, just the two of them. What she does know though is that some of his fear is misplaced, even if she's still unsure of how to say it.

So she gives him a long look, even after the water is placed on the table for them and the waitress goes. She doesn't care to notice when that is so much as to figure how what to say. There is no fixing his mistrust in people right off the bat, she knows very well from her own similar scars, so doesn't even bother thinking she can. Eventually it occurs to her this situation is different than the one he's talking about so she points it out.

"Carl, I don't think this is the same. It's not... a right place, wrong time kind of thing. It's just helping find him someone who can fix his memories."

If he didn't want to talk about it more than that though, this was her dropping it. She would say nothing more and just do something about it by herself later. She gives him a nod then as a yes to starting small. It was exactly what she intended to do either way.

"To my place? Or do you want to move them somewhere else now?" The second she seems to asks that an idea occurs to her, bringing her to remove her necklace and set a skeleton key that transforms back to her normal house key on the table. To her it seems as good as any time to clue him into this power. "We can use this to move them anywhere."

Carl takes a deep breath . . . and sighs. He wants to believe her, he really does. But he cannot forget. He will not forget. And he won't let anyone else forget.

He looks down at the key she shows him, confusion tugs his brow. "What, your dorm key?" Is that what she's offering? To hide his guns underneath her bed?

Yes and no. She's offering to do whatever he chooses. Seeing that he doesn't understand the key she laid out, she shakes her head. "It is." Enid picks is up again, effectively changing it back to the skeleton key again, and lets him see it with his own eye. "But I can use it to open any door."

So what she's saying is: think bigger, Carl.

Carl leans over, looking closely at the key. He could've sworn it changed shape . . . so that means . . .

"Is this your power? To go into any door? At any place?"

"One of them." She tilts her head at an ankle in a partial nod and shrug response. "Opens any door as far I know."

"That's a handy power. You can do it to any key as well, or just this one."

"Any key, I guess. Just as long as it's on me."

And just one more time, she sets it on the table to show that it returns to a simple house key when she's not touching it. A couple of seconds after that, Enid pulls it back by the string and then around her neck again. The skeleton key hangs there only as noticeable as the rest of the jewelry she wore on her person in days past.

"You wanna move it somewhere else using the key?" She whispers that part so no one will hear.

"Yeah. Put it in your place for the time being, but if something comes up - bury it. Anywhere. It doesn't matter."

He looks at his water. The glass is sweating and the ice is melting.

"I'm going to meet up with Daryl at some point. See if we can figure something out - what ever this is, anyways."

That is not the answer she was hoping for, but it is a good idea still, so the sigh she gives is only very little. "Sure. My room."

She follows his glance to both the waters on the table. It prompts her to finally pick hers up and take a sip. Act as if she's not disappointed in just putting the guns in her room, or that it seems like she's being put at a distance with anything to do with helping Rick. She's trying not to take anything personally yet. Because she's not done pushing being apart of helping out the older Grimes.

"You want me to come when you meet up with Daryl?"

[ There's a familiar face in the cafe, standing at the cash register ordering coffee. When Joel pockets his wallet, dropping a tip of coins in the tip jar, he glances over his shoulder at the cafe in search of a seat - and spots Carl. An easy half-smile spreads on Joel's face.

He starts towards the kid. Joel looks exactly like he's always looked - greying hair, deep-set wrinkles, sun-damaged skin - but there's a lightness to his eyes and a friendliness in the lines in his face that nobody would be remotely familiar with if they knew Joel at all. He even walks with a friendly lightness in his demeanour. ]

Hey, kiddo. Fancy bumpin' into you here, huh?

[ The cheerful look on Joel's face is a first clue something is wrong. While Joel is friendly to Carl, but that's only because of a shared background. And even then he's tense and wary. He looks the same now, but doesn't act the same.

Just like Dad.

Carl's lone eye seizes up at Joel, and it's clear he's thinking as fast as those wheels can turn. ]

Hi, Joel.

[ He leans back in his chair, trying to look comfortable. He's not going to make a confrontation about it like he did to Dad. ]

Just ordered a coffee. [ Jerk of his thumb over his shoulder. His body language is brighter, friendlier. ] You ordered somethin', too? 'Cause if not, I can go order you somethin'.

[ Carl can feel his goosebumps rising on his skin. ]

I ordered something earlier.

How are you doing?

Heh. Can't complain. Pretty nice day out.

[ There's a faint, easy half-smile on his face as he says this. He gestures to the seat opposite Carl. ]

Mind if I join sit with you, by the way? Might as well, huh?

Sure. Go ahead.

[ Carl tries to discreetly study Joel. ]

How's the bar?

[ Pulling the chair out, he eases down onto it with a good-natured sigh, flashing a brief smile of thanks at Carl. ]

Oh, y'know. Same old. Been a funny few days, though. People've been actin' kinda weird.

But anyways, that ain't important. How're you doin', kiddo? Haven't seen you 'round much lately.

[ Another brief smile at Carl; a fond one this time. ]

Got busy with work. [ Being suspended from Xavier's gives him some free time. ] And other things.

[ Carl leans forward. ]

How weird? People dressing up funny or somethin'?

Despite the issue after . . . whatever that just happened to Dad . . . life goes on. And Carl keeps trucking. He's sort of going around cities.

In Heropa, Carl was taking a day off. Mostly to find places where he can get a second job, since he can't get more hours from the shelter. An imPort-run bait shop will probably do, he thinks, entering it and looking around.

After he is done with his business, Carl goes back out, just idling at the park. He looks at the children playing in the heat, enjoying the see-saws and the swings.

Nonah is a place where a lot of his friends seem to live, so he decides to pop in and say hello. He pops into a candy store quickly and bought some sweets and soda with him. Pretty soon, he'll be knocking on doors to say hello, or there might be a chance encounter on the streets.

In De Chima, he learns of Daryl and Dad saving up money to get a place of their own here. He never really spent much time in De Chima, but he decides to try to look out the city. He had only been here a few times, and those times are very brief, so he doesn't know how to navigate through the city.

So naturally, Carl has gotten lost. He is sort of walking around aimlessly, looking at the various stores. Natives take his picture while he ignores them, trying to find his way back to the Porter.

His trip to Maurita Falls has gotten a little dicey. The city has gotten worst to Carl the last time he was here. The natives glared at him and he stares at him right back. His cold look and his one clear eye made most people to look away, muttering, but some seem to take it as a challenge: two boys around his age or older are obviously following him. Their stupidity gives irritates Carl to no end. So he tries to ignore them, letting them follow him until they get bored. But they dog him after twenty minutes and after that he pretty soon loses his patience. Without any warning, he takes off, and the boys quickly followed.

But unlike De Chima, Carl has lived in Maurita Falls for nearly a year, and he remembers the dives and the crooks and crannies. With the kind of thinking on his feet that Glenn would've been proud of, he skids into alleyways and jumps over a dumpster. He grabs a fallen piece of metal on the dirty concrete - an old pipe tossed away - and allows a skin of rust to cover it. He takes another left and takes cover behind an old building, housing some grimy bar, and waits for the boys to come close.

A time to build up, a time to break down

Road Not Taken; Heropa

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The Rest of June: Heropa

Nonah

De Chima

Maurita Falls