It's a long walk up from the edge of Cauldron Lake.
(—Don't think that. You'll send yourself in circles.)
Cut that. Try: the walk up to the overgrown lot where the two FBI agents had left their car is shorter than it feels. Blame it on the wet shoes. The wet socks inside them. The overabundance of clinging moss, and splash of cool colored stones, the snatches of dazzling gold-colored dusk sky winking through the bristled tree tops like lights in distant windows. The sensory overload is enough to make Wake squint against the glare, his progress slowed by disorientation.
(Better.)
He's slow enough that Agent (not Detective) Casey loses a scrap of patience. "There's a roll of paper towels in the trunk," Casey bites out. "I'll get the backseat ready for our guest."
Saga Anderson's partner lengthens his stride. In a moment, he's disappeared around a bend in the foot path.
"How long have you two been working together?" Wake asks in his absence.
It's a ridiculous question. Who washes up on a lake front after thirteen years and asks that? Somewhere under the headache thumping between his ears, it sounds tinny and strange. Fake. Like he knows already that the answer won't actually make any of this make sense. But it feels like a long walk even if it isn't. And if he's going to try sounding like a person who hasn't completely lost it, then he'd better start getting his bearings somehow.
Saga watches for a moment as her partner quickens his pace and disappears around a bend in the path, before turning her attention back to Alan. Thirteen years. He’s been missing thirteen years and suddenly he’s back like he never left. Washing up on the shore in the middle of their investigation into the murders that turned out to involve an FBI agent that had disappeared right around the same time.
It's too much to be coincidence.
For now, though, they need to get him back to Bright Falls for questioning. So while Casey goes ahead, she keeps pace with Alan, watching him with a careful eye. Of all the questions he could ask, after being missing for 13 years, that wasn’t one she expected. It’s an easy enough one to answer, though. “Four years or so, now.”
There's something to that—how much it doesn't make sense; how much there shouldn't really be a Casey to begin with, much less a partner of four years—that makes his head hurt. Puts pressure right there between the eyes like a thumb pressing hard at a bruise. Casey is a fictional character dying to be replaced. Casey has been Anderson's partner for four years. Did he write that? Which part?
(Maybe this is a trick. Maybe he's not really out. Don't look back, he tells himself. If you look, and the lake is there, maybe this whole thing crumbles to pieces.)
Saga looks at him askance for a moment at that, raising an eyebrow. Familiar how, she wonders. Is it his name? Or something more? She doesn’t think the second one would surprise her much, anymore. After Agent Nightengale went on a rampage in the morgue she thinks that WEIRD is going to make a whole lot more sense than it used to.
“He does share a name with a fictional creation of yours,” she comments lightly. He'd always gotten hell for the fact he shared a name with the protagonist in Alan Wake novels.
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crowbars in a scene post-Return 2
Date: 15/03/2024 06:53 (UTC)(—Don't think that. You'll send yourself in circles.)
Cut that. Try: the walk up to the overgrown lot where the two FBI agents had left their car is shorter than it feels. Blame it on the wet shoes. The wet socks inside them. The overabundance of clinging moss, and splash of cool colored stones, the snatches of dazzling gold-colored dusk sky winking through the bristled tree tops like lights in distant windows. The sensory overload is enough to make Wake squint against the glare, his progress slowed by disorientation.
(Better.)
He's slow enough that Agent (not Detective) Casey loses a scrap of patience. "There's a roll of paper towels in the trunk," Casey bites out. "I'll get the backseat ready for our guest."
Saga Anderson's partner lengthens his stride. In a moment, he's disappeared around a bend in the foot path.
"How long have you two been working together?" Wake asks in his absence.
It's a ridiculous question. Who washes up on a lake front after thirteen years and asks that? Somewhere under the headache thumping between his ears, it sounds tinny and strange. Fake. Like he knows already that the answer won't actually make any of this make sense. But it feels like a long walk even if it isn't. And if he's going to try sounding like a person who hasn't completely lost it, then he'd better start getting his bearings somehow.
no subject
Date: 16/03/2024 11:03 (UTC)It's too much to be coincidence.
For now, though, they need to get him back to Bright Falls for questioning. So while Casey goes ahead, she keeps pace with Alan, watching him with a careful eye. Of all the questions he could ask, after being missing for 13 years, that wasn’t one she expected. It’s an easy enough one to answer, though. “Four years or so, now.”
no subject
Date: 17/03/2024 06:16 (UTC)There's something to that—how much it doesn't make sense; how much there shouldn't really be a Casey to begin with, much less a partner of four years—that makes his head hurt. Puts pressure right there between the eyes like a thumb pressing hard at a bruise. Casey is a fictional character dying to be replaced. Casey has been Anderson's partner for four years. Did he write that? Which part?
(Maybe this is a trick. Maybe he's not really out. Don't look back, he tells himself. If you look, and the lake is there, maybe this whole thing crumbles to pieces.)
"He seems familiar."
no subject
Date: 06/04/2024 08:34 (UTC)“He does share a name with a fictional creation of yours,” she comments lightly. He'd always gotten hell for the fact he shared a name with the protagonist in Alan Wake novels.