Event: Target

Doc looked disgruntled, but didn't keep arguing.

Isabelle folded her arms and rocked back on her heels. She'd take disgruntled over dead any day of the week.

That said she rummaged in her pack and pulled out a pair of sunglasses that she handed to Riesy. "I got you these before it all went to hell in there. It's going to stink to high heavens over on Poplar. Strangely enough no one wants to pick up trash when they could get pancaked by an invisible beast. I mean I can't imagine why," she rolled her eyes.

As the group regathered on the far side, and headed back out into the sun, Tanner tilted his head back and took a moment to enjoy the sense of freedom that came with being back outside. He didn’t particularly enjoy being cooped up, and shopping wasn’t his favorite thing even when the store wasn’t threatening to consume them in impossible quicksand linoleum, so it was- definitely nice to be out.

Even if out was probably just as dangerous.

He couldn’t help but listen to Doc’s half of whatever conversation he was having with Eve; they weren’t exactly spread out, and Doc wasn’t making any obvious effort to keep the words from carrying. His stomach twinged at the very blunt reminder of just how dangerous this all was, but it wasn’t exactly anything he hadn’t already known, and at least- at least so far, the group had done pretty well, keeping together and protecting each other.

They felt like a team, and it- was worth the risk, to have that feeling.

And then Doc’s tone changed, and the words that followed made Tanner’s stomach turn over. All he’d ever heard, growing up, was how awful the Troubles were. How they were Curses, how they were punishments, how they ruined lives. And then they’d come back, and he’d seen some of the damage they could do, and he’d- believed it, had accepted that they were as awful as he’d been told.

He’d never heard anyone talk about welcoming them, he’d never heard of anyone waiting for them to come back with yearning instead of fear. He’d never heard anyone talk about losing their Trouble as though it was something they would regret.

All Tanner wanted was his silence back, but Doc talked about silence like it was a wound he would carry.

It unsettled him, left the music humming an anxious melancholy as he tried to put that information into some kind of context he could understand. It didn’t fit, it didn’t match what he’d always been taught, what he’d always thought he’d known.

What he’d thought he’d seen proved, when the meteors fell, or when the wall came up and the new Troubles came down like the wrath of God, punishing the whole town for whatever they’d done to keep them there overlong.

When Isabelle explained what was coming next, the anxious melancholy shifted into just plain anxious, and Tanner tried very hard to make himself smaller; he reminded himself that nothing and no one had ever noticed the music if they hadn’t already noticed him, told himself it would hold true. That maybe he could still be of more use to the group than he was risk-

-but Riesy’s words put a very precise point on exactly the thought he’d been trying to dodge. He hunched in still further, feeling queasy, throat going tight around warring urges. He should offer to stay behind. He should offer to go ahead. He should-

-he didn’t know what he should do, he didn’t know how to not be the bad odds, here.

Riesy fingered the sunglasses awkwardly. "Thank you," s/he said to Isabelle, torn between gratitude and consternation. S/he was used to people noticing how shiz Trouble affected them. S/he didn't know what to do with someone who knew what it did to shim.

Then s/he rounded on Tanner, own problems forgotten. "So, wait...what you said before. If your faith is no comfort, is it at least a focus? Like could you pray? Now? To keep the music down? Keeping a lid on your Trouble is like...it's like focusing before a big game. What do you do then?"

Tanner swallowed down the immediate, caustic response that rose up, because lashing out wouldn’t help, because however much the question upset him, Riesy really wasn’t the one he was angry at. And it wasn’t like their earlier conversation had been all that private, even if it felt different, being called out so directly and with everyone actually listening.

He wasn’t going to yell and snarl and throw a fit. He still had some dignity left.

Or he would have, if the music wasn’t giving away just how harsh his automatic response had been, if it wasn’t roiling and seething with angry, discordant strings and sharp notes.

“Amazingly, despite all the lectures to the contrary, praying doesn’t actually seem to make it go away,” he said, not quite managing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “And I don’t- I didn’t get nervous, before games, I didn’t have to do anything to focus. I knew what I was doing.”

"Just, think about baseball or do some multiplication tables or something, then," Isabelle ordered, the angry strings getting on her last nerve. "And don't lag behind and scare yourself even more, either."

Riesy cocked shiz head back as if struck, but instead of looking cowed by it, looked ready to strike right back. S/he did not, though.

"Okay you," s/he said firmly, a single finger raised at Tanner, "I'm going to give the chance to remember who's been trying to get you right with your new lot in life for the past three hours and you," s/he turned shiz other finger on Isabelle, "I'm gonna tell to back off. Your methods can motivate and strong arm but calming someone down is going to take a little more delicate handling." S/he turned and grasped Tanner's forearm, loosely so he could get away if he wanted, and tugged him away from the group. "Go rewrap your leg or something, take the harness off the cat."

“I didn’t ask you to,” Tanner said defensively, muscles going tense under Riesy’s hand. He felt cornered, wasn’t sure if he should be more angry about being singled out or about needing to be or about the thought that he needed to be coddled over it.

He wasn’t a child, he wasn’t that weak, he wasn’t going to stop being useful over a harsh word. He wasn’t going to stop being useful just because he was falling apart.

He’d never had the luxury of letting his doubt hold him still.

“I don’t need anyone to calm me down. I’m fine.” The sharp tempo of the music made the lie laughable, but what else was he supposed to say?

"We could knock you out," Doc suggested with blunt practicality.  "No music if you're not awake."

Tanner flinched at Doc’s words, taking a single step back as he folded down, shoulders curling in and head dropping, the antagonism- and color- draining out of him in an instant. It was- there was a certain brutal practicality to the suggestion, it made sense, but...

“Would. Would that- actually be... easier?” he asked, shifting his weight and flexing his hands as he pushed down the instinct to refuse without another thought. “Or- is, you’d just be trading the- the noise, for dead weight, that... Is it worth it?”

"Could carry you easy enough," Doc shrugged.

<We are not knocking him out,> Eve chided. <You said yourself, better chance to get the book with more hands, and we might not even run into the thing anyway. Let's just go.>

Riesy froze, giving them both an unimpressed look that said exactly what s/he thought of that idea. S/he looked up at Tanner, no lashes, no artifice. "Please?"

S/he sat, back to the rest of them, on a concrete divider between parking spaces so they could be shoulder to shoulder and less confrontational. "Look, I know you didn't ask anybody for anything here, but maybe, for once, you fucking should. And ask somebody who's not going to tell you you're a piece a shit now just because you're Troubled. Tanner," s/he ducked down to look up under his fringe, "you're not a piece a shit. You're a sweetheart who gives teenaged girls a shoulder to lean on and bullheaded paramedics gum to clean their sicked up teeth and knows to address the cat when he's talking to the cat and dives in after the idiot that can't keep shiz feet on the ground. But you're not fine. Your head's up your ass and you're getting offensive when we need you on defense with us." S/he sat back to get out of his space. "So what do we do? From the person trying to help you instead of control you, what do we do to keep your head in the game with us instead of where it's at right now."

Doc grumbled something about no one listening to his good sense, but didn't press the point.

As Doc subsided back- and Tanner could only assume that was Eve’s work- Tanner let Riesy move him slightly, clenched his jaw and let her steer the conversation, tried to listen and not just react. He heard her out, hands flexing and closing, before he shook his head.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said, finally, voice raw. “It’s like you think I haven’t-” he stopped, and took a breath, and then another. “I don’t understand any of this. Everything I’ve ever been taught, it’s- not exactly been helpful. And I’m trying, here. I am. I am- I’m dealing. But you- you’ve been dealing with this for a while, right? And you’re, what, you can warn us when a noise is going to be bad? Eve’s a cat, and I’m guessing that’s not entirely voluntary.” He paused, and shrugged, brow furrowing. “Or maybe it is, I don’t know, if I could be something else right now maybe I’d be happier staying that way.”

He shook his head, because he’d lost the thread of his thought in there somewhere.

“Not- I just. I get that maybe there’s some nuance here, that maybe- maybe people can figure out how to- to mitigate, a little. Or use it, I- what Lilybeth did, that was amazing. But I’ve been dealing with this for three days. What do you think I’m going to figure out in the next ten minutes, exactly? What do you think I’m going to be able to do, when everything I know says that this is some kind of punishment? When-”

He cut himself off, choking back those words with a grimace, because that was more than any of them needed to hear. It wasn’t anyone else’s business, and it wasn’t going to help anything.

“So,” he started over, the word catching, “so I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know what you want me to do. So just- tell me what to do, tell me what fixes this, tell me how it works, tell me something that I can use, but don’t just tell me I’m being stubborn like I’m being difficult on purpose!”

Lilybeth looked over at the intense, almost heated conversation between Riesy and Tanner, not sure if it was any of her business to interrupt, but who knew, maybe she could help...

She wandered over. "It's too bad Officer Parker's not here--I've heard she can teach practically anyone to control their Trouble--but since she's not, I might have an idea?" Turning to Tanner, she asked, "is there anywhere you go or anything you do where you feel completely, I dunno, one with everything I guess?"

Tanner bit his lip and ducked his head when Lilybeth interjected, partly to hide the not particularly warm reaction to the name, partly because he hated being this exposed, hated having his inadequacies on display so blatantly. When the initial flinch had passed, he forced his expression into something neutral, and looked back up, considering her question, because he wanted to be able to provide something, to have some kind of answer, he wanted to be useful.

“...I. Uh. I dunno? There’s a- out at the north end of town, at the edge of the State Park? There’s some trails, I run there, it’s. I like being out there?” He didn’t know exactly what feeling like one with everything would actually feel like, but running let him relax, if he ran hard enough he could almost forget himself, and maybe that was close enough.

Lilybeth nodded, "For me it's the deck of the Sarah Elizabeth, on, like, a sunny day with a bit of wind in my face. It's where I feel the most, the most me I guess. So whenever I use my Trouble I picture myself being there, and sort of plant my feet, like I'm standing on the deck."  She flushed a little, having never really put the process into words before.  "I feel like it helps me use my Trouble better, so maybe something like that would help you turn yours off?"

"That's what we want from you," Riesy said, throat tight. S/he cleared it against the sting. His opinion of shiz Trouble hurt. His rejection of his own hurt. And so did him not understanding what s/he wanted on shiz own. "A little cooperation so we can help you with this new thing." Shiz voice cracked again but s/he kept going. "We're not trying to attack you, we're trying to walk you through this so you don't have to do it alone."

“...I’m trying,” Tanner said, the words soft and guilty, because he wasn’t trying to be uncooperative, he just had no idea how to start being cooperative. He wasn’t being difficult on purpose, but he had no frame of reference, he had-

-it didn’t matter. What he had or didn’t have, what he knew or didn’t know, it didn’t matter. He was here, now, and Riesy was trying, too. Lilybeth was trying.

Even if it would probably have been simpler for them to cut their losses, they were trying, too.

He bit his lip again, turning over Lilybeth’s words, connecting them to Riesy’s comment about focusing before a game. Trying to understand, and he’d never been any good at understanding.

His father would’ve said he was making excuses.

Not a helpful thought.

“So... I, I should... try to think about running the trails? Like, on a good day?” He could- he thought he could do that, it wasn’t like he didn’t remember how it felt. Autumn colors and frost in the air and the morning light low and golden, everything quiet and still, and nothing to pay attention to but the miles ahead.

"Maybe?" Lilybeth said. "Try, like, closing your eyes first--see if that helps?"

Tanner did as he was told, closing his eyes and focusing on the idea of a good morning run. Harper’s loop, three point eight miles, slightly hilly. Early October, chilly but not yet cold, a few days after a storm so the path was dry but not hard, just the right amount of bounce underfoot.

Some of the knot of tension and twisting unease that had formed in his chest eased. That was part of why he liked running- it was simple, it was easy. No questions, no decisions, nothing but movement.

No one watching, no one judging, no one he had to put on a smile for, no one he had to agree with-

-not helping. Top of the hill, where one side was mostly clear after a rockslide a few seasons back, a view over the valley, gold and orange and green and sheltered. Safe, quiet, isolated. A good place to stop, to stretch, to catch his breath before he pushed through the next leg.

The music changed, but didn’t fade, soft piano that sounded like sweeping vistas- less distracting, certainly, than the pounding of drums or the urgent shriek of strings, but not any quieter than it ever was when he was calm.

He opened his eyes, and gestured helplessly, not sure whether that counted as progress or not, not sure if it was a useful effort or just a waste of time- no matter what he was picturing when they were sitting still, he doubted he’d be able to hold it, if the situation got tense again.

Isabelle listened to their advice with shame in her gut. She wasn't any better at controlling her Trouble than Tanner was. At least hers had proven useful. There was bound to come a time when it proved a liability though. She wasn't looking forward to that. So she listened, and she held her breath while Tanner attempted to consciously affect his Trouble, and she prayed it would work.

When the music changed she smiled, it spread wide across her cheeks. Probably the first real one she'd had all day.

"It's a start," she said and clapped him on the shoulder. "Good job, kid."

Riesy nodded and rubbed a hand over his back, eyes distant. "That was good." What the hell could it be? There had to be a point of control. "Yknow that woman gives me the heebie-jeebies," s/he said absently, turning it over and over again in shiz head. "I can't feel a damn thing from her, she's like a...like a blank...like negative space...you're the main character. When does the protagonist get silence?" S/he leaned around him without taking shiz hand away, trying to measure the parking lot. "Shit, I'd say 'let's take a few laps now,' but we don't have time," shiz voice shorted out again and s/he cleared shiz threat loudly, refocusing and noticing Tanner was shaking.

S/he patted his back and stood, offering shiz hand down. "C'mon. That's gonna have to be enough for now, you're right. We push too much harder in this ten minutes we could get you hurt."

Blinking, Tanner rocked a little under Isabelle’s approving touch- the piano shifted back to strings, but they were at least slightly less anxious- he hadn’t expected praise, not for a failed attempt. He hadn’t expected to be told effort alone was worth anything, certainly not by the actual person in charge.

He didn’t know how to react, didn’t know what to do with it, but it was- good. He thought.

Riesy’s touch felt no less approving, and the sense of relief hit hard, and he didn’t know what to do with that, either. Didn’t know what to do with wanting that approval, knew even less how to handle getting it, and he ducked his head, his cheeks heating up at the prick of tears, and that was not happening, that was definitely not happening, but while a few savage blinks could keep the tears back, he couldn’t do anything about the shiver that rolled through him, or the one that followed, fine tremors that rattled through his frame.

He concentrated on the path again, on the safe and simple clarity of that moment, so much easier than anything happening in the present, and it wasn’t as easy, the piano wasn’t as smooth, but it was recognizable.

“...I. What- do you mean?” he managed, trying to follow Riesy’s line of thought, and falling short. He shook his head, managing a faint flick of a smile at the idea of running a few laps, but they definitely didn’t have time, and he doubted it’d be half as soothing in the middle of a town gone End-Times.

And he didn’t understand, didn’t know what to do with being told that was enough when he hadn’t really done much of anything- hell, even his coaches pushed harder than that, with less response- but they were still burning daylight. And maybe if he could just keep the music calm that’d- be enough.