The Door

[Near]

Jude seems disproportionately worked up about all this, to a degree that Near really isn’t sure what to make of it except to abstractly lament how far it is from the apology that he really did know better than to expect.

“I didn’t do shit.” All emphasis, the weight of the world, is on that “do,” so that it bends and flattens and hardens around the edges into a clear indicator of not just action but of weirdness, the kind of doing that belongs to Jude and things like Jude and which Near wants no association with.

“You –” he points his finger, as if there is someone else standing there whom he could be mistaken for accusing “-- fucking trapped my legs in the floor. I just pulled them out.” The volume of his voice increases in degrees, one per thought, until the feeling that snuck up on him inside reappears. It’s not embarrassment, but it hangs out in the same neighborhood, as if he is raising his voice to describe a sensitive medical condition. Anybody walking by might overhear.

Jude. Jude is a rash that keeps coming back.

After a pause, a digestion of the news that he wasn’t supposed to be able to get out, he dials it back down to indoor voices, though not quite as church-hushed as Jude’s. “You wanted me to be just … stuck in the floor. Of my kitchen. What, forever?” His accusation hand drifts to his face, where his fingers curl over his lips in a thoughtful gesture that manages to half-hide a developing, disturbed frown. He didn’t do anything, but if he did do something, he’s glad as fuck that he did, and he’ll do it again if he has to.

[Jude]

Of course. Of course! Of course Near's head is so far up his ass that he is going to say he didn't 'do' anything. His dignity having been lost after throwing his shoe at Near's head, Jude lifts a hand and rubs his face, not bothering to try and conceal his immediate frustration. Rubbing his forehead helps to delay the headache that Near always seems to induce.

"For a while," he says tiredly, of how long Near would have been stuck in the floor. Cheap flooring like that? Jude assumed Near could thrash himself out in time, or otherwise howl hysterically until a neighbor heard him through the thin walls. The point of the torment was to impress upon Near that Jude is not some joke for Near to complain hysterically about or otherwise diminish. A little respect here! And then Near somehow met Jude's ace with his own. Now they are at war, waiting to see what's the next card on the flop.

"But you didn't stay stuck in the floor." Jude drops his hand. "That's what I'm talking about. You should have, but you didn't. Did you know you could do that?"

If anyone overhears them, they will likely assume this conversation is euphemistic, drunken, or both. Stuck in floors? Yeah, that definitely can't be literal.

[Near]

Near opens his mouth, locked and loaded with yet another rebuttal, how he absolutely did not do “that.” How he did not do anything at all. But he snaps his jaw shut before the words discharge.

A vision: those toy plastic boxing robots awkwardly flailing at each other until one connects and a head pops off. That’s this. They will keep sparring until one of them finally explodes, and as certain as Near is that he has a few more rounds in him at least, he’s also certain that an exploding Jude comes with the extra risk of more asshat reality-breaking displays. Can he wrench himself out of concrete? Can Jude do anything worse? Would he? So, a decision. He knows he’s in the right, but Jude’s commitment to the crackpot theory of Near’s having done something can have the win. Near can still be the reasonable one. Fine.

He throws the fight, announcing surrender with the white flag of a “No!” stitched-together from half a shout and half an exasperated sigh, both ragged. Again, “No,” firmer, settling toward resignation to whatever the consequences of a loss might be. Follow-up questions, gloating ... “I didn’t know I could do that. I didn’t know I was doing that. So sorry I fucked up your plan to starve me to death in my own kitchen.” See, an apology. How hard is that?

“I don’t know if you overheard while you were creeping around the place I work, but I’m moving. You don’t need to worry about me doing it again. You can have this whole coast and all its important people to yourself. We good?”

[Jude]

This must what it's like when an untamed animal is kept as a pet. That's what Near reminds Jude of now: a poorly socialized dog, maybe an exotic animal held without a license. No. No, Near didn't know. He has been walking around with his own power all this time unwittingly.

One answer brings up a million more questions. Has Near always been this way, or did something change? Did something happen to him? Was something done to him? Jude feels a strange, accusatory feeling towards the deceased Courtland Farr. Again he feels that Courtland was meant to leave him, Jude, a plan. Instead, Jude has been left with undomesticated Near.

Jude covers his face with both hands again. Jude, the lone hero, searches his soul for whether he can stand to be part of a dynamic duo. And a duo with someone who can't stand him, and who he can barely stand.

He thinks about his sister. The hairs on the back of Jude's neck prickle.

He drops his hands. "Don't move. Come with me."

[Near]

Only seconds prior, Near announced, out loud, for Jude’s benefit, that he is getting the fuck out of Dodge. I’m moving, he said. Still, “Don’t move” registers instantly as a threat aimed at him, jabbing as it does into some poorly protected nerve that is primed and waiting for Jude to transition from mild irritant into genuine hazard. An inevitability.

So there’s the old adrenaline spike, the unconsidered decision to choose fight over flight, wrapping him up before the possibility of any other interpretation has a chance to occur. And it’s not like the adrenaline magically drains away as soon as he recalls the concept of context. He’s stuck in overclock, the pulse behind his ear ticktickticking and he has to wrestle himself down from the urge to snarl some form of fuck off, which he is now murkily aware might not fit.

“What?” he fumbles, gone clumsy with the sincerest of disconcertion.

(Dumbasses say what?)

“Like … now?”

[Jude]

Misery loves company, as does clumsiness. Two people slipping on the same icy puddle, one after the other. The pain of the fall lessened by shared weakness and humiliation. What? Near asks, and Jude can only feel relieved to repeat himself. The incredulity of Near's voice matches the incredulity of Jude's spirit, as Jude worked himself around to this proposal.

"Like, tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after that." 'Now' seems a little abrupt, a demand so steep that Jude will exponentially increase his chances of being rejected.

In either case, he does not know what he is going to do. In Near's presence, Jude misplaces insight. Perhaps that is somehow within the realm of Near's capabilities: then Jude can blame it on something real and measurable, rather than a nebulous, speculative law of emotional physics. For every action, an equal and opposite reaction.

[Near]

Pause. Regroup.

Near shakes his head slightly, eyes narrowed and mouth cramped into a lopsided frown as he arranges the pieces of this exchange thus far in order and reviews them one by one like trying to decode a sentence spoken too quickly in a half-familiar language.

After a few tries he’s able to conclude that the words make sense syntactically. Come with me as a request, not a hostage-taking demand. And: tomorrow. The day after tomorrow. Not now. Whatever has triggered this is not, then, an emergency. Or it is one of Jude’s slow-moving emergencies, like his end of the world. Not with a bang, but – Still, it all fails to connect in the way that Near’s brain needs it to to craft a coherent response. After the last time they were together, and the time before, an invitation to give it another go seems like the worst idea either of them could come up with. Perhaps it is a strange Jude-ese idiom he’s never heard before, which literal translation will never serve. But what other methods of interpretation are there to try?

Back in – probably – elementary school, everyone learned the however-many Ws of journalism. He has already covered what and when. Who feels intuitive enough, barring surprises. That leaves –

“Why?” he asks, still hopelessly confused. If he sounds like he suspects that underneath it all is a trap waiting to be sprung, that’s because he does. “And where?” (An afterthought. “Come with me” is vague enough to mean feet or miles or anything, really.)

Somewhere on the street-side a car alarm begins blaring.

[Jude]

Is there a polite way Jude can answer 'why'? He has written and rewritten the answer in his head many times. The original 'why' was twofold: because Jude had liked Courtland and trusted him, and because Near was presumed to have inherited some of his father's influence, gravitas, and intelligence. The refurbished 'why', present at their last encounter, was that Near had asked after him, leading Jude to believe there was perhaps a delayed inheritance of the idealized traits. Instead, Near revealed himself still destitute in terms of an attractive personality.

Then he revealed something else.

The car alarm rings out in the silence, the pitch rising and falling, screaming out for its owner in the dark.

"You could be useful," Jude says finally. Near's suggestion to fight had been asinine before, but now it has some teeth. Or, maybe not teeth, but there's a shield. Jude wonders whether he can die, but while he's not raring to find out, he at least feels confident that he could scramble away from a violent encounter intact enough to regenerate. Near Farr in a fight? Pure liability.

Until the reveal. Now Jude thinks there's a real chance that Juliet wouldn't simply invent a way of exploding Near's head like a grape and using the ensuing torrent of blood to drag her twin brother back to their world-ending lair. Moreover, Jude thinks that maybe, just maybe -- big maybe -- Near is the key Courtland left behind. Maybe that's why Near didn't know where to look.

[Near]

Useful.

Could be.

Near is supposed to willingly return to the orbit of this person who has, on one occasion, abandoned him in the woods and, on another, trapped him in the floor, for what isn’t even an attempt at a mildly flattering assurance that he brings something to whatever table Jude is sitting at, but the possibility that Jude’s autistic alien toddler ass might be able to use him for something. Like the emergency kit you toss in the back of your car. What does useful even look like in a Judecentric situation? Human shield? Organ donor? Christ, he’s an idiot, isn't he? Standing here asking why as if that could be anything other than an insult. He should have just refused.

He says nothing in the immediate wake of the statement, though, waiting to hear the answer to Question Part Two: Where? But none is forthcoming. It’s all car alarm and then, after a few seconds, alley ambience.

“Have you ever had a conversation with a real person before?” he asks. Pure rhetoric. If Jude has managed to get through his entire life with no one telling him that “you could be useful” shouldn’t feature prominently in a persuasive argument, then Near feels fine assuming the answer is no. Unlike with most people, the answer may legitimately and without exaggeration be no in Jude’s case, but the more time that passes between the present moment and his appearance at The Reaches, the less the whole traveling circus freak upbringing feels like an excuse for his communication skills.

But here’s the thing -- the little glimmer of light that keeps him from turning around and walking out of the tunnel: that Jude has made the effort to show up here at all, to initiate this conversation, feels like a tell. Right or wrong, he seems to have gotten it into his head that Near has something he wants, even if he doesn’t want to frame it that way. And that’s leverage.

“You know what? Apologize.” The demand is issued almost flatly, with just the slightest slope toward the caution of not wanting to overplay his own hand and end up part of the building.

[Jude]

Jude's return was delayed by the psychic torture he inflicted upon himself via imagining this exact conversation with its infinite branching humiliations. The scales were set out. On one hand side was Near's singular power; on the other Near's singular ability to misunderstand Jude. There is no clear path to anything, no high road. It is stumbling through brambles, being torn apart by small questions and huffs of disbelief.

It's only the world they're talking about, only all of human life.

The question being obviously rhetorical, he does not answer it. In the time Jude had spent balancing the scales, he persuaded himself both of the inevitability of the painful path and the necessity of enduring it. Never does Near consider there is something wrong with him and his ability to parse what is being said. Blame is externally assigned. He is still the only person Jude has ever known who can do what he does. Jude said 'useful' and moderated it as not to inflate Near's ego. The real word is 'valuable', and the attendant adjective is 'very'. The Family had never spoken like Near could exist; they cannot possibly know what he is, or they would have killed him already. He is a weapon and a shield that they cannot anticipate.

This is too much to say. You could be useful is the tepid, obfuscating confession.

An apology is survivable. Jude assumes it's for the thing about the floor and not about Guthrie, and the former is easier in terms of feeling some measure of sincere remorse. "I'm sorry," he says, as a tired middle-schooler might when called up to the teacher's desk after class, already knowing the first delivery will be found unsatisfactory and a second will soon be demanded. Jude soldiers on -- for the good of the world, he tells himself, including Near's own good -- though Near is unlikely to be grateful. If Near was drowning, Jude thinks, he would complain about being pulled out, during and after.