He heard his name, heard Arthur call for him, small and scared.
And he'd still gone. It reminds him, of all things, of the last major discussion he and Natalie had had, which of course reminds him of Natalie. Is he the asshole?
Probably. He'd tried not to be. But as he'd been telling Malcolm, it's apparently just his nature. Seeing that hand rising to tear him off, push him away- he can hear the fabric rustle, doesn't know why, and realizes only after a moment that he's shaking.
Probably a reflection of Arthur, he lies to himself before looking at his communicator, which is when he hears the door next door slam. His grip around it tightens.
He makes two calls. He doesn't know if anyone will answer but he-
Hello. I was recently murdered by your inmate after conversationally provoking him in return for his attempt to conversationally provoke me.
I have a lot of warden friends who have feelings about it.
Would you be willing to share with me, or them, what you're doing and the reasoning behind it, since he's your inmate and I'm getting tired of trying to convince almost all the wardens I know that the only way this works is if the person who knows the inmate deals with the inmate?
What I'm doing is keeping Johann away from you and all your lovely little warden friends who, let me remind you, are all affected by a flood at the moment. Everybody is going to stay away from each other until calmer heads prevail and this goddamn flood ends.
Though I do have to ask: what are you, five? Or are you going to happily blame the flood for the fact that you respond to provocation with upping the ante?
Hey. Now that I'm no longer prone and unable to eat solid food, I want to know: why the fuck were you such an asshole to the person your inmate killed when he got in touch actually wanting to calm shit down?
I will happily accept your non-apology and not press any further if this means I get to complain to someone about fucking Lark.
You know, Pagan and I are together. And I try to bite my tongue about how much that man irritates me because Pagan used to be Lark's inmate. But Christ that man irritates me. He talks to everybody like he's auditioning them to join his creepy werewolf cult!
Johann spends a few hours in a cabin, an empty cabin, wishing he could tear out his heart. Wishing he could drown, that the sea would rise up and swallow him.
But he eventually drags himself up and makes his way to Dorian's door, banging as loudly as possible.
Dorian, who went in the weird hole, has spent the past few hours trying to piece together what the hell happened. When he hears that loud banging, it pulls him out of his metaphorical stringing things together on the corkboard mindset as he gets up and opens the door.
There's Johann. And he looks rough. Not in a physical way, Johann couldn't look rough that way even if he tried. But in an emotional way.
"Come inside," he says, without hesitation. "What's fucked you up?"
Because he had a hand in causing this mess. And when your lover dies partly due to your actions, you feel weird and confused and don't know how to deal with it—doubly so if you're a poorly socialized monster.
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