sixthiterationlogs | [closed] while i calculate and calibrate; don't make me explain

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[closed] while i calculate and calibrate; don't make me explain

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: House 19; House 10; The Inn
WHEN: Early August, morning to evening
OPEN TO: Credence, Jax, and Samantha (see comment starters)
WARNINGS: May contain references to epilepsy symptoms

The journals have taken some doing, gathering or making enough materials, deciding how to put them together. They’re nothing as clean as the pads he picked up from the piles of supplies in the Hall, but they’re functional. The paper takes his pencils, the binding holds when he opens and closes the covers, folds open pages.

For how long, he can’t be sure, but it’s not like anyone’s buying the things from him.

After a couple of dry afternoons on his porch--after getting the house sorted; after staking the sheets into the yard and finding a few more window screens on houses too far gone to matter to anyone; after boiling every bit of leaf litter and shredded cloth as he could--Jude has three journals to show for it. They’re thick with hand-torn pages, enclosed in old encyclopedia covers recovered from the ruins of the school, and bound with a combination of rubber tree sap and braided grass. He’d had to punch the holes with a skewer from the kitchen, and they’re still a little rough at the edges--all of it’s a bit rough at the edges, but he kind of likes that about them.

Now he just has to track down the people they belong to.

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In theory, Sam should be one of the easiest to track down. Expanding on that theory, he realizes she wanders and explores as much as he does himself, and if he doesn’t find her at the inn, he’s going to have to leave the journal in her room--a little too much like their captors for his liking--or climb up on the roof and look for a blue wig on the paths.

A bit too much effort, when he thinks about it. He’ll run into her or he won’t, and he doesn’t think the thing is going to fall apart if he doesn’t hand it off today.

Individually, none of the journals are too heavy, but altogether they’re a bit unwieldy. The edges dig into his arms and chest, the set fanned out in his grip to lay as flat as possible. The lower parts of the inn are only full of those passing through, and when he ventures upstairs, he realizes he only really knows which room is for storage.

He’s hovering outside its door when another opens, and he turns with both arms wrapped around the journals, curious and hopeful.

Leaving the inn, Jude doesn’t get so lucky as to find Jax out front, but tracking back to the house lets him remember the direction they left in after clearing the debris from his bathroom. The point B of Jax’s porch is something he remembers, but transitions are always harder, like he starts coasting along out of gear.

Thankfully, the smell of smoke catches, turns the engine back over. As he wanders the paths, the familiar scent pauses him at a familiar enough tree, and from there he follows it out. Once he’s found the porch, he takes a seat on the steps, pair of journals stacked at his hip. This time, he tries to study the place--the trees around it, the foot-worn path from the steps to the dirt track that cuts several ways across the village.

Next time, he’ll remember. Next time for sure.

Eventually, the cigarette smell intensifies, and Jax comes back through the trees. “Hey.” Jude lifts his chin in greeting, and picks up one of the journals from the pile. “Finally finished them.”

Today, Credence isn’t to be found in his own shadow. Jude had hoped that wandering the village, saving him for last, might summon him from the trees, but he’s been alone in his travels throughout the day. The house is the last place he looks, for some reason--it’s an odd thing, to knock on the doors here. It’s an odd thing for him to seek anyone out at all.

But when he’s been through the Inn, wandered out to the ends of the paths toward the other houses Credence visits, checked the fountain, and doesn’t feel like walking the entire length of the river just to avoid it--he’s left with the house.

His first knock is hesitant, then stronger, chastising himself for it. If the older man Credence lives with answers, he’ll leave it with him. If no one does, he’ll leave it on the porch and be done with it. Crossing his arms, the journal dangling from his fingers, he waits to see what it will be.

Sam's shark-like tendencies had been dialed up to an eleven lately. Sitting still was hard work. Even harder, she realized, than forcing herself to eat. And equally nauseating. Her walks were getting longer and longer, but increasingly aimless too. There was no winning. Every outlet she took, along with every turn in the path, felt increasingly pointless.

How much could you accomplish in a Skinner Box, really?

At the very least, she hoped she was as boring as hell to whoever was watching the clown rodeo.

After more than a little bit of unhealthy pacing, she made up her mind to take a walk down to the area that had been split open by the earthquake. If nothing else, it was something new. But when she walked out of her door, she nearly barreled straight into Jude.

He was pretty much the closest thing she had to a friend here. So it figured he'd be the victim of her almost-hit-and-run. "Dude!"

"Dude," he answers, almost solemnly as he straightens out of her direct path, going flat against the wall with the books still held close in his arms. It's good to find her this easily, but also good to just--see her up and moving, a little more animated than before. Quiet as he is, Jude knows when quiet isn't sitting right on other people, and it had been a blanket over the village for some time after the earthquake.

Pulling one of the journals from the layer in his arms, he held it up by the makeshift spine. "I was looking for you," he says; "I got these done today, if you want one."

She blinked in surprise, first at Jude's unexpected snark. And then at the journal. Mostly at the journal. "Holy fuck," she said, reaching out to gently take it from him. "You made these?"

He was either a true hipster or Amish. Maybe both. There could be an Amish hipster, right? Maybe out on Rumspringa or something?

Didn't matter.

Carefully, almost reverently, she turned the journal over in her hands, examining it from different angles, admiring the craftsman ship and the strange beauty of it. Sam was both artistic and scientifically minded. But she was also a 21st century girl. The idea of making paper, making a book, seemed remote and abstract. But Jude...Jude followed through. It was more than a little impressive.

"They're sexy. I'm impressed."

Jax stubs out the cigarette he's smoked to the bitter dregs and his mouth turns up in a half smile. He's happy to have something to write in, something he can pour his thoughts into so he doesn't have to have them rattling around in his brain day in and day out. He doesn't have any real craft to it or anything like that but it's nice to just let the ink flow onto paper and his brain to stop turning for a while.

"Hell of a gift," Jax says, holding his hand out for one. He's been known to write on things as ignoble as post-its and old receipts so having actual handmade paper that some hippie out on the Bay would pay thirty bucks for is some shit he'd never thought he'd be writing on.

"Back home, you could charge out the ass for this shit. Handmade paper, locally sourced? Hipsters eat that shit up."

The laugh snorts up out of him, more surprised than anything. Sexy isn't a word he uses in general, much less for a pile of paper and grass. It makes a kind of sense coming from Sam, slots her in with the kids at school who took the train to New York on long weekends.

Gathering the other two against his chest, he stands a little straighter than usual. Even a strange compliment is a compliment, and probably more genuine for it. Anything's an improvement over their last meeting, kicking around rubble, little to hope for.

"I don't know what you've got to write with, or how sturdy they'll be, but--you wanted paper." What little he speaks up about doing, he always gets done.

"Back home I wouldn't have to make paper," is the practical reply, down to a single journal and twice told the worth of them. His pleasure for the praise is in the tuck of his chin, the drop of his eyes. Hiding behind his hair and surveying what amounts to a yard in this place. Dirt and trees and summer grass. About what he had at the trailer.

Jax isn't Charlie in the slightest--or if he is, it's a version Jude wasn't allowed to know--but it's close enough to wish. He doesn't know what his dad would have thought of hand-made paper. Probably not much, but glad his son knew how a thing worked and had something to show for it.

"They're kind of a pain in the ass," he adds. Not trying to hype the gift--he takes care of what he says he'll take care of. He's glad of it, in a way. The kind of pain in the ass that gets you through a day. "Better write something good in it."

"I did."

But Sam wasn't exactly used to getting she wanted at the drop of a hat--or word. That was one of her first habits to break, as soon as she left Lake Forest. And she was weirdly proud of herself for it.

Still. She wasn't about to complain.

She looked up from the journal to Jude, blue eyes honestly earnest for once. "I wish I had something to offer you in return."

Jax laughs a little and shakes his head. "Sorry, it's gonna be the same old shit. I'll try to sound like I know what I'm talking about, though, so I don't waste the gift or the time. I'm not much of a writer."

John Teller had thought he was, playing at philosophy, but can't be much of a philosopher with a beer in one hand and grease stains smearing the pages. John Teller had pretended to be something he wasn't, had pretended that SAMCRO was something bigger and more noble than it is and Jax isn't going to let himself be that delusional. He knows what he is - good and bad, sometimes with a little more bad than good. He's no hero.

"Did a good job, though. If we ever get out of this shithole, you need to head out west. People pay out the ass for this shit."

"Just take care of yourself," he says, simple and a little cheesy. Some of it's still the cave-in, and some of it is what Bodhi said--being fucked in the next emergency if there's no one to think of you.

His list keeps growing, and that can't be a bad thing, even if he's bad at keeping up with it. At least he's kind of figured out where Sam lives. "You gotta stick around long enough to do something with it."

"People pay out the ass for everything out west," is his understanding of it. Everything from a roof over their head to gas in their tank. His old man had been back and forth a few times, riding cross country on his own, or with a few friends when he was younger. It's how he'd found mom, wandered out to the side of the road in a nightgown.

Like something out of a storybook, but Jude isn't so good at writing either. All he ever sat down to write on purpose was his letters to her, and he could never remember what he put down, after.

Maybe he needs one of these for himself, just to keep it all sorted. "What were you working on," he asks, nodding back the way Jax came. "Need help with anything, I'm still standing here."

She gave him a wry smile, earnestness slipping away. Sarcasm and cynicism. Her two trademark coping mechanisms. Her protectors. "I'm not sure I get much of a say in how long I stick around," she said dryly.

Or, for that matter, where she went if she didn't.

There had been stories going around. People spontaneously disappearing. And only myths and legends to explain where they went.

Sam couldn't help but shudder a little at the thought.

Credence has been fluttering. Fluttering in this instance is the wrong word, but the only one he can think of. He moves from place to place, helping but never for very long before going to some other place. There's a strange feeling he's getting, and it's not the type he likes to ignore. He's learned to trust his gut, mostly--you don't survive a household like the Barebones' without some form of self-preservation--but there's still a moment of doubt.

After all, he's been here an awful long time. Maybe things are just too happy. Maybe things are just too normal.

Things like getting a knock on the door, for example--Credence is up, Credence is always up, doing chores, taking care of the house--and when he opens the door it's with slight confusion. Not very many people visit him.

The look is wiped off his face, however, and a small ripple of a smile crosses his lips, shy and unsure.

"Jude," He greets, and opens the door a little wider. "Did you come to play chess?"

Credence seems a lot more like a person when he smiles, and it's strange to see one so immediate on his face--the gift not even given, Jude's purpose not even stated. Maybe he shouldn't wait for Credence to spend a few hours in his shadow before looping him into his day, but it's been the path of least resistance for awhile now.

It's a kind of playing possum, in a place like this. If some invisible force is going to call the shots, he's going to be as unruffled as he can manage.

"No, but I guess I could," he answers, the other journals passed on to their owners, his energy for other people at a minimum that Credence seems to little affect. "I made you something," he says, holding out the last of the journals, bound with some gutted encyclopedia.

"None of us do," he agrees, a shrug that lifts up out of a kind of exhaustion and shifts the journals still in his grip. There are two things he tries to manage, day in and out: don't get too tired, don't get too overwhelmed. There's a minimum of shit he can indulge in before his head slips below water, and he starts seeing things, hearing things.

That's nothing to do with this place, and it doesn't need anything extra in the experience.

"What we do get a say in is whether or not the people upstairs take us out, or our own stupidity does it for them."

That Zen-like philosophy was equal parts admirable and obnoxious. Which kind of reminded Sam of LA, in a way. Enough to get her to crack a little smile, anyway.

Which was no small feat.

She stepped out of the doorway, gesturing him inside. "C'mon in," she said, in what she decided passed for polite. "I'll offer you a cup of...hot air."

Somewhere across the multiverse, her grandmother was rolling over in her grave.

"Today? Still doing roofs. Pain in the ass to get up there but once you are, it's easy enough work to replace the shingles. They're not too bad but some of them still have hail damage from before."

At this point, Jax thinks there's going to be steady work in construction regardless of what comes next. It seems this place is hellbent on pulling down any structures there are, even the ones built up and provided to them by the Powers that Be, and Jax is just doing patch jobs and fill-ins. He's not building anything from scratch.

"You ever replaced a roof before, Jude?"

"Don't remember even having a real roof," he answers with a shrug. "Dad and I lived in a single wide, didn't have any problems with the tin up there." Nobody made out well in the divorce, and they'd been starting over from scratch in Hollow Creek.

It doesn't change the offer: he can't imagine anything about the structures here is very complicated. Either you can slap enough patches on the buildings to use them, or you can't, and you tear it down for parts. "I know how a hammer works and I've got two arms, though," he adds. "I can figure it out."

"Oh, I just assumed. I don't want to inconvenience..." His immediate apology dies in his throat even though it had been so readily and quickly available, and the pale man looks down at the other's hands, confused, before he realizes it's not just an encyclopedia. The papers are too odd, jutting out but still neat, and Credence's brow furrows. He can't quite tell if it's because of confusion over what it is or confusion over why he's being given something entirely.

He should probably let Jude in. Instead, he takes it and leafs through it, and gasps, startled as he comes to the realization that Jude has made an entire journal. Not just any journal--a journal for him.

There's only one place the book could come out of, too. The schoolhouse. He remembers a conversation, months ago, about the fact that the schoolhouse could never be fixed, but maybe it could be turned into something new. This isn't what he'd been thinking of, but it's perfect. A sort of balance, if he thinks about it.

Making a note to tell Clint later, he runs his fingers across the blank pieces of paper, feeling how strangely rough and exciting it all is. When he looks up, his smile is wider. He can't help himself.

"You really made this for me?"

"I'll use it to bake you a cake," he rejoins, matching her tone. It always seems easiest in dealing with Sam: match her or flounder. Maybe the reason they can talk at all is the unflinching self, very little of either side compromising for the other.

Jude is used to the world refusing to compromise, but not so much being afforded the same.

It's his first time in one of the inn's bedrooms. They seem spartan compared to the houses, a single bathroom for the whole building--but at least a beam didn't fall on its bathtub. He's used it a few times now, but it might be worth it to haul something out of another, differently ruined house for his own. "How long have you been--making this place home?"

Sam's room was more or less standard issue. Except for the walls. She'd gotten her hands on some charcoal and ended up putting it to less than practical use, decorating the room with sweeping, panoramic scenes. One wall was a jungle. Another a cityscape. The third was some sort of underwater scene. The fourth remained blank, at the moment. Sam had been thinking about doing some kind of starscape, but was wondering if she had ambition enough to put that on the ceiling instead.

Her artistic integrity was at war with her current sloth.

As for the rest? It pretty much looked like a messy dorm room. Sam didn't really have a lot in the way of possessions, but what she did have had already managed to metastasize all over the floor and what little furniture she had.

"I wouldn't exactly call it a home," she said, closing the door behind him. "More like a...nest."

"Yeah," Jude answers, snorting as Credence flutters, and wilts, and goes through all the motions of--being Credence. "How dare you impose on all the time I could spend making even more paper, or wandering around a cave."

His hands finally freed, he can find little use for them beyond stuffing them in his pockets. The new clothes fit, which shouldn't bother him, but they also fit like new clothes. He needs to live in them a bit before they feel like something he owns.

"I did. I made a few, but I figured you'd like this one best." Short of ruining one of the books Credence actually reads, which--might still go over alright, considering.

It's similar and utterly dissimilar from the dining room Jude sleeps in almost every night, passing out on the window bench instead of making it to one of the bedrooms. His walls are covered in uncut sheets of homemade paper, charcoal drawings of the village, the trees, the walls. A crude map, an eerie drawing of what he last remembers from home.

He's trying to put this place down on paper, stick it in his head better. Sam is--escaping.

The underwater scene draws him in, much as the real thing terrifies him. He doesn't even like the aquarium, unable to shake the stress of all that water held back by glass, one engineering flaw away from flooding the room. But he's always liked photos and videos of the ocean, drawings his friends brought back from the exhibits. "I can give you some of the bigger sheets," he says, drawing his gaze back around the flow of art along the walls. "The ones I don't cut up at all."

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[closed] while i calculate and calibrate; don't make me explain

Sam - The Inn

Jax - House 10

Credence - House 19

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