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[angelhunter]

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[angelhunter]

Hap is transfixed, brow knit. This Movement is not like the others. Neither is her guardian. He very nearly wants to meet the boy himself. It's the first chug in a long train of thought that Joan throws herself in front of, stopping dead, when her eyes meet his through the camera. Her voice carries through his computer and, fainter but clearer, through her door.

He wants to trust her. He wants to believe.

A heretofore unused speaker relays his response to her, "Stand in the far corner, to the left of the window. Face it. Don't move."

[poleaxed]

"Of course you got a speaker," she murmurs, but she does as told. She could strike out and hurt him, and she might, but he has to earn it. She won't fight unless he's earned it-- it has to always be him, or she's not punishing anything, just breaking bones because she likes the sound.

But she puts her hands far apart, just in case he tries to cuff her. She's never likened him to a cop before this moment-- he's far more intelligent-- but she's not risking it.

[angelhunter]

Making haste down to the lab, he throws on his utility vest on his way back up the stairs. He stops by the desk to confirm she's done as told, grab his polygraph device from a drawer, and then he goes to her room.

"Don't move," he reiterates. Hap locks the door and turns the light on. His chair drags dully on the carpet, positioned to face her bed with a berth of a good two and a half feet. Hap conceals another tranquiliser under his thigh and balances the device on his knee.

"Alright— good." Credit where it's due. She'd do well to keep up the compliance. "You can turn around. Come. Sit."

[poleaxed]

Joan moves without the carefulness of their previous interactions; she's no longer trying to impress him with politeness. Her capitulation never meant anything to him, and no amount of it would have ever been enough. Had Luke told her that? It feels like something Luke-- the other Luke, the one that still lives-- would say, but she can't remember the words. The sound of his voice is already fading from her memory like those underwater sand castles they used to advertise on Nickelodeon. Floam. Why does she remember the name of Floam and not her brother's voice?

So she sits with a lazy lean, posture poor, hunched over like a boxer waiting to be called into the ring. One hand worries the medal at her neck-- tacky with dried blood, she realizes, cringes, and begins wiping it and then herself off.

"Okay," she says without looking up, "shoot."

[angelhunter]

Hap is too out of sorts to react as he normally would to her excessive display of languor. It's inconsequential to how she now knows how to move, the purpose with which he just watched her dance. (The Joan he was cultivating is not lost. This is a rough patch. She's in there, still; scattered. Joan has dispersed those pieces of herself out of embarrassment.) Popping an earphone into his ear, he switches the device on and calibrates it.

He shifts in his chair, readjusting — a course correction from leaning forward, towards her. If he didn't have years of training keeping his hands steady, he'd be vibrating.

"Stupid questions. Let's get them out of the way." What's happening is too important to waste time and energy being glib. He'll distrust her if that's what she chooses. "Tell me your name. The color of your hair. Your favorite season."

[poleaxed]

Joan rolls her eyes, pretending she's not deeply mollified by him calling his own methods stupid. "Joan Agnes Dority, red, summer. August twenty-fifth in eighty-seven."

[angelhunter]

It's not as stupid as the fact that he has to resort to this, even though there was apparently no other way to get here. The ghost of Luke is as fickle as his sister and more punishing than her captor. Hap at least made it clear what he wanted from her.

He turns one dial, then another, calibrating to her elevated baseline heartrate. It could mean anything. It could mean many things. She can be both excited by her revelation and coiling to spring on him.

"Tell me what you remember about the dream. Tell me what he told you, again."

[poleaxed]

Joan closes her eyes again, but it doesn't help this time. There's no after-image, no hint of light. She keeps her eyes closed anyway; she doesn't want to look at Hap. "Everything was rainbows. Like he was a prism and the light was shining through him-- but it was flames. He was holding a book, obviously. We were in this room, but we were floating, and everything was so bright. It was beautiful."

[angelhunter]

Hap watches her closely, observing her emotions and loosening the grip he has on his. Some of the awe he urgently put away shines through. His heard thuds in his ears, warmth climbing up his chest, his throat. He can see the flames around her, growing out of her like wings.

"What did he say? The Fifth Movement, did he call it by name?"

[poleaxed]

"This isn't part of that," she says, her eyes opening slowly. Hap looks beautiful, resting in the echo of her memory. His hard edges are softened, and he seems like someone she could touch.

She does not touch him.

"He showed it to me. We danced on the roof. I don't- I don't know what it's for."

[angelhunter]

"Not —" part of it? Hap stops himself, rigidity creeping into him. He can feel an angry scratch at the base of his skull. He won't let it in, and it's not insisting. Not yet.

He readjusts the bud in his ear.

"How did it make you feel, dancing it with him?"

[poleaxed]

A pause, which she spends staring at Hap's brow, avoiding his eyes. "Important," she finally says. "Worthwhile... Equal to him."

She'd forgotten what that felt like, to have an opposite, an other half.

[angelhunter]

Hap sighs silently, dropping his gaze to spare her admonishment. He told her several times that she's important. That her worth is in what she is working to accomplish and there could be no higher calling. But he plays second fiddle to a dead boy. His words weren't falling on deaf ears. She was busy listening to someone else.

"How aware do you think he is of your situation here?" He raises his eyes back to her.

[poleaxed]

She catches his eye, or tries to. Free of his puerile judgement, she feels oddly light. "He knows everything," she says. "He was mad I was trying to get you to trust me. He-" she hesitates, squirms- "That's why I kept dreaming I was dead."

[angelhunter]

He nods, holding her gaze. So Luke knows there's nowhere to go without him. As long as she's behind a locked door, she can't kill him without killing herself. In this room, in her cell, or even roaming free in the lab, she'll starve to death. (Because if it's possible to dance a man back to life, why wouldn't it be possible to dance him to his grave?)

"He wants you to live." Hap scrapes some of his fascination into a slack smile. The two of them are of a mind on that, if nothing else.

[poleaxed]

"He wants me free," she says. Joan collapses forward, head in her hands. "He's gonna be pissed I'm playing nice with you again. He always hated me making friends."

[angelhunter]

While she can't see, he shakes his head. Another short straw for Luke Dority. Beyond the inconvenience of teaching the Movements to someone new, Hap didn't care whether or not Joan finds him alive in the next world. He may soon start to.

"We're friends again, are we?" He's making light, but anything feels achievable in air this charged. She's deepening his understanding of why she's always running. It would seem Joan is grievously codependent. A lot falls into place, realizing that.

[poleaxed]

It takes effort to pull herself back from the sharp edge of antipathy; hate is a different thing from loathing. She bites the inside of her cheek. "Yeah, sure."

She wipes a dirty hank of hair from her greasy face. "You're recording this, right? In my dream, the dance went like-" She taps a tempo onto the bed, quick-quick-slow quick-quick-slow: a waltz.

[angelhunter]

He watches her fingers and nods along to their simple beat.

"A waltz," he supplies. A word everyone's familiar with. But has she ever danced it? Hap's first was standing on his mother's feet while she did the box step for both of them. Joan never talks about her parents.

"You looked like you were holding someone. On the camera." He waves his hand to it behind them. "This Movement needs to be performed as partners?"

[poleaxed]

She nods. "I danced it with Luke, and then I woke up. I dunno what it does when you're already awake. Open your third eye, maybe." She doesn't sound like she believes that.

[angelhunter]

Hap doesn't look like he believes it. He accepts the rest of her answer, breathing in and processing all that's happened. She didn't lie about any of it, but her heart's only begun to slow down over the past couple of questions. Deceit, present or premeditated, could have used thrill as a smokescreen. She could be excited about the chance to pull the rug out from under him again.

His finger taps a waltzing rhythm on the device as he sieves through the possibilities.

Nothing is certain except that she did see her brother and he taught her something new.

"Okay, we'll practice. In the evening. I'll bring you up a few hours earlier than usual."

[poleaxed]

Joan has a bright flash of inspiration: she could punch him in the gut with no effort at all. It makes her heart start thudding again. The application of violence is a vital skill because it gives her vitality.

"Okay." She sits up a little straighter. "What now, you tie me up again?"

She hasn't decided if she's going to fight him or not.

[angelhunter]

Her pulse purrs in his ear like the rev of an engine. He can't account for that. His heels plant firmly on the ground, his own heartbeat rising.

"No," he sighs. If he gases her, she may forget the motions, and if she's strung out on recurrent doses, he isn't sure the dance will take effect. Hap suspects that she has to want what the Movements can give her, or why would they have first revealed themselves to a soul as hungry as Prairie's?

"We'll do what we did tonight. When I knock on the door, you go to the corner, and stay until I call you over. When I walk you up or down, you walk ahead of me. You don't stop or turn around, or there will be consequences. A lot worse than a little cut on the cheek. Understand?"

[poleaxed]

Joan rubs at her face, nodding absently. No longer does she think that eye contact will win her sympathy, or prompt respect will endear her to him. "Juvie rules. Cool."

She's never been to juvenile detention, but let Hap assume. He clearly thinks she's lower than pond scum anyway.

"Does your little machine think I'm lying?" She leans forward a little.

[angelhunter]

He lets the comparison slide. Hap may be wary but his admiration hasn't entirely waned. Soon, he'll be remiss not to be able to offer her something to show it. A shower. A cup of coffee. A new set of clothes.

He can't do that, and she doesn't want him to. Not really. Her gratitude could be genuine and she'd still toss it aside as if it were a cheap ploy.

"You're not lying. You're agitated. Admittedly, it makes it hard to tell, but I'm choosing to believe you." Lying to him about this would be beyond forgiveness. Not only does she understand that, she's seen him act without reason. He's not proud of it but it can happen. He believes unconditionally that she's too good at surviving to be that reckless.