kore_logs | I smile when I’m angry, I cheat and I lie...

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I smile when I’m angry, I cheat and I lie...

Who: Meyer & Ned
Where: The church
When: Day 76
What: Meyer and Charlie have been working on setting up their poker game, but there's still some clean up needed, and Meyer's somehow convinced Ned to help with that.
Warnings: Probably swearing because that just happens. And probably talking about dark or intense stuff because that's how they usually end up with these two!

Meyer has no problem with hard work, and he's a lot stronger than he looks. Still, that doesn't mean he'll turn down help when he can get it, and this cleanup project is taking a lot longer than he'd expected. With Charlie off doing whatever it is Charlie does when they're not together -- somehow he generally feels it's better not too ask too many questions about that -- he calls on Ned for assistance; Ned's tall, and he looks like he can carry things. Even more relevantly, though, he's better company than most.

When Ned shows up, Meyer's in the process of cleaning broken glass up off of the floor. Every place in this damn town seems to have broken glass in it, or some other unpleasant debris. In his newly hemmed jeans (thanks to Jubilee, who'd saved him the trouble of doing it himself or the embarrassment of wearing them cuffed all the time) and a plain white t-shirt, he's far more dressed down than he's used to, and it's making him feel slightly odd. Add that to the obvious fact that he hasn't shaved today, and he could almost pass for a modern guy. Almost.

The broken glass might be an irritating mess, but really, he's just biding his time until Ned gets there, so that they can move some of the bigger mess together. He could really go for a cigarette right about now. That, and a cup of coffee.

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When Ned spots Meyer, he doesn't recognize him, just for a second. He's used to seeing Meyer in a suit, after all, not to mention clean-shaven. The difference such small changes make are rather startling. But he recognizes him and, luckily for him, Meyer wasn't looking at him to witness that moment of hesitation.

"Wow, you weren't kidding about the state of things in here."

Ned had been more than willing to help out, but he hadn't quite realized the scale of the cleanup operation that would be needed. Plenty of this is clearly thanks to yesterday's disaster, but the less said about that the better, he guesses. He'd rather not think about that day, and the fear and the fire and the disappointment.

"So, where do we start?" Ned rubs his hands together, more than happy to take Meyer's guidance and help out in any way he can.

Meyer's still not quite used to this whole dressing casually thing. It makes sense, he knows -- the suit is the only one he has here, and he wants to save it for the nights they're running the card game, or the times he really needs to look good -- but it doesn't feel right. It's been a long time since he's even gone without a tie in public, not since he was a kid, and now he's going without almost any of the clothes he's used to. It's just another strange adaptation to this place, but he's not sure he likes it.

"It's a mess," he agrees, turning around to face Ned with a slight smile, "but it's manageable. For now, I think we should focus on getting the biggest pieces of debris out of here."

And there were, indeed, larger pieces of debris than he'd been expecting. Sure, he'd seen how wrecked the diner was, how wrecked other places in the town were, but when they'd looked at the church previously, it hadn't seemed nearly so bad. Still, he's determined to get it done so they can start making some money -- or cigarettes, as the case may be.

"How're you at lifting heavy stuff?"

"Decent," Ned says, modestly, looking over the space. He isn't sure what Meyer wants here and what he wants gone. Still, there seems a decent chance that he doesn't want the large piece of a pew that is partially obstructing the way in. Ned lifts it - not to show off, exactly. He'd prefer to think of it as demonstrating his ability and willingness to help out.

Okay, maybe he's showing off a little bit. Surely a forgivable offense. But he's had plenty of practice with heavy lifting, what with moving crates of fruit back and forth, and that sort of thing. Meyer looks strong than Ned would have thought, but he is around a foot taller than the other man, and it certainly helps.

He braces the wood against his hip, asks, "Where am I taking this?"

Even if it were showing off -- which he's fairly sure it is, at least to some extent -- he can hardly fault Ned for it. He wouldn't necessarily have figured Ned to be extremely strong, but the height helps, and now that he gives Ned a more thorough look, he can see that he appears to have decent muscles, as well. It's not that he's looking at Ned critically, per se, it's just that he likes to know where peoples' strengths and weaknesses are.

He looks at the broken pew Ned's holding, and frowns slightly. "I don't think it'll fit in the storage room, and I doubt anyone who actually uses the church would be very happy if we just dumped it in the areas they use. Maybe we should take it outside -- it might be useable material for the reconstruction team."

He is, of course, part of that team, and fairly familiar with taking things apart and building things himself. The large stack of cinderblocks on the floor is also going to have to be moved, probably outside -- they'll also make good building material -- so he picks up as many as he can before indicating for Ned to lead the way.

Ned follows Meyer's direction with alacrity, heading up the stairs and through to the grassy area just outside the church, where he sets down the pew heavily, brushing his hands off on the front of his thighs. There is something strange about seeing a pew, or even a piece of one, in the out of doors. He steps aside quickly to give Meyer more room to put the cinder blocks down beside it, glancing up at the main structure of the church.

Something Meyer had said struck him, just then. A crease forms between his brows as he asks, "Are there people using the church, then?" He shouldn't be surprised. Even if they aren't having services here, if there are no clergy, people could go in and pray. The kind of people who prayed, anyway. Still, the thought is vaguely repugnant to him. As if that were going to do any good, getting any of them out of here. It isn't as if anyone is actually listening, except perhaps the scientists, having a good chuckle over the superstitions of their prisoners.

"Apparently," he says dryly, seeming to echo Ned's thoughts of it being vaguely repugnant. He's not going to say it straight out, of course, that he finds it useless at best and downright silly at worst, but he can't see why anybody would bother with religion here. Then again, he'd met several people who'd claimed that some of the inhabitants of this place were angels, as though that wasn't completely unbelievable.

"Some people come here to pray, I guess," he continues, setting down the cinderblocks and shrugging. He's not out of breath at all from carrying them, but he still can't stop the ingrained habit of reaching for a cigarette every time he does something somewhat physically active. He shoves his hands in his pockets after a few fruitless seconds of looking for his lighter or his cigarettes.

"And some people'll come here to play poker."

It's obvious which he considers the better pastime.

"Like it'll do them any good," Ned mutters, with near-tangible disdain, heading back down to the basement. Poker, he understands. It's a social activity. People coming to have fun, to interact, to see what they can win. They have a better chance of improving their circumstances, even if only a little, by playing poker than by praying.

At the same time, though he wouldn't admit it, he understand the impulse behind the praying, too. He'd been that sort of person, once. When he was young and stupid. But there are no children, here. Just people willing to act like children and put their faith in a magical man in the clouds who will get them out of a bad situation, because they think the world is good and they are deserving.

This time he follows Meyer's example, grabbing half of the remaining cinderblocks. The work may be tedious, but it isn't so bad, with company.

"You don't believe in anything?" he asks casually as they head back in for another load of cinderblocks to haul out. It's a valid question, he thinks; he knows that Ned, like Charlie, is a lapsed Catholic, but he's curious about the extent to which Ned has rejected those ideas entirely. Despite his casual tone, he is very much prying into Ned's life, wanting to learn more about his thoughts, but that's how he always is; Ned can tell him to stop asking or refuse to answer if it bothers him.

When they get back into the building, he notices a large, rolled up carpet in the corner. They'll need to move it out of the way at some point, but they'll tackle the cinderblocks first. Funny, he thinks, how some people had taken offense to the fact that they were holding the game in the church. It has struck him, of course, that Charlie was probably drawn to using the church partially out of some remnant of rebellion against his upbringing, but for Meyer, it's just a building like any other -- albeit one filled with quite a mess to contend with at the moment.

"I believe that praying is useless," Ned says, bluntly, deliberately misinterpreting Meyer's question. The question of his own religious beliefs is a bit of a nebulous one. He is certain that he doesn't want to believe.

Still, he can't help remembering the last time he'd prayed. It had been that first time he'd met Meyer, when he'd been tied up and practically rattling with fear. He'd prayed for his life, then. But River's arrival wasn't divine intervention. It was just the training (brainwashing, he thinks with spite, as he exits the church again and sets the cinderblocks down atop the others) from his childhood taking over.

The unseen hook and invisible line are in him; he knows that.

"What about you?" He knows that Meyer isn't Catholic, but he might be a man of faith all the same. Perhaps he ought to have asked, first.

"When I was a kid," he begins, and it's almost funny how old he sounds when he says it, as though he's seventy, not twenty one, as though he's looking back over the long expanse of a lifetime where childhood was a distant, vaguely unpleasant memory. Maybe it's a little sad, too, how acutely aware of the fact that, for all intents and purposes, he'd never been a kid like other people had been. He doesn't remember a time of no responsibility, of happiness and blind faith in his parents, doesn't even remember a time he felt secure, much less invincible like so many children do. "When I was a kid," he continues, "I wanted to believe in something. The way I saw it, I liked the traditions well enough, liked the idea of all of it, but..."

He pauses to set down a particularly heavy cinderblock. "My parents believed. They wanted I should have faith that everything would work out. Maybe they were just saying that because they didn't know what else to say."

He doesn't oppose religion, if it's what other people want in their lives. Maybe there is something comforting about it, maybe there's a reason for it. It's not for him, maybe it never has been, although he still likes certain traditions, still occasionally observes holidays, still pretends to his family that he's not entirely faithless. It's not an easy charade to manage, but he does, like he manages every other lie in his life.

Edited 2013-05-31 23:12 (UTC)

It doesn't escape Ned's notice that this is the first time he's heard Meyer so much as mention his parents; he also takes note of that interesting turn of phrase, that everything would work out. It's nonspecific, but whatever it might refer to, it indicates trouble. Worries, cares: something on a large scale, leading his parents to try to reassure him through spiritual means. He sets that information somewhere safe in his mind, without asking for details.

If he were a different person he would offer the corresponding information that his mother was the religious one. She'd been the one to take him to church on Sundays, remind him to say his prayers before he went to bed. She was the one always baking things for gatherings and volunteering at the Sunday school. When Ned thinks about faith, rather than institutions, she is what comes to mind.

But Ned, as a rule, doesn't talk about his mother. Ever.

Instead, he says, "I was the same. I bought it, when I was a kid. All the pageantry and pompousness." The exertion is now enough that, hands free again, Ned unbuttons his cardigan, drapes it over a nearby tree-branch to keep it out of the way as they are working inside. "Then I grew up."

That, alone, is plenty revealing: Ned thinks of faith as childishness, foolishness.

"Kids usually believe whatever you tell them, for awhile."

It's unclear whether he's referring to other kids with the exception of himself, or including himself in that, too. To be certain, he'd believed his parents more when he'd been younger, but it hadn't been that simple; he'd always known that they were trying to console themselves as much as they were trying to console him when things were bad. And, given the few things he'd said so far, things had been bad, but he doesn't care to go into it in great detail.

"There's some people in my profession--" he's probably referring to something less than legal here, since Ned already knows that about him. Maybe he means entrepreneurs specifically, maybe he means card dealers, maybe he means gangsters. It's hard to tell. "--people like me, I guess, who've seen a lot of what I've seen, and who still buy all of that pageantry. It's hard to know why, but they do."

He's always found it strange, that disillusioned people with relatively skewed moral compasses would fall for religion, but he's associated with men in the past who seem to have no problem reconciling their belief in something with the horrors they'd seen in the world. Maybe it requires a different type of mind than his.

When Meyer says in his profession, Ned definitely assumes he means the more mob-inclined side of things. He figures it's all bound up together - the card game, and whatever else Meyer does that is a little less above-board. Unlike Meyer (and perhaps because he has no first-hand experience with such men), Ned isn't surprised at all to hear that many of his fellow criminals are religious.

"I think it's less about profession and more about what type of person you're dealing with."

He makes his way back to the basement, hands in his pockets, waiting for Meyer to indicate what he should move next. "Some people believe in luck, and others people believe in numbers. Some people like to believe there's some deity watching their back, and other people like to watch it for themselves."

It's clear from the way he phrases this that he puts himself and Meyer in the latter category, both times.

Looking around the basement, he considers the mess that still remains. A great deal of it is furniture, or at least pieces of furniture, some of which might be salvageable. He gestures to the rolled up carpet that's leaned against the wall, sighing. Carpets are always difficult to move, unwieldy and heavy, but with the two of them together, he thinks they'll manage it just fine. "We can get this out of the way."

And then, seamlessly, he moves back to the topic at hand. "Luck's never done anything I can think of," he agrees, shaking his head slightly. It seems that he and Ned are in agreement about a great number of things, and perhaps that's why he finds Ned surprisingly easy to talk to. Meyer's excellent at holding a polite conversation with just about anyone, but it's rare that he finds someone to talk to whose opinion he actually values, whose story he wants to know more about for more than just informational purposes.

"But you're right, a lot of guys I know rely on luck. Guys like that, they think there's some kind of divine intervention that can help them. I wonder what it's like when they find out they're wrong?"

Ned nods, moving over towards the carpet, coordinating his movements with Meyer's with small nods and little gestures. It's all that is necessary. Once they've both gotten a hold of the thing - it is heavier than it looks, he realizes, and inconveniently bulky - he says, voice just a touch strained as he heads towards the door and maneuvers his end of the carpet around the corner, heading for the stairs, "Some people like that never get it, though. They'll ignore the evidence in front of their eyes and blame some superstition they didn't follow or ritual they forgot to uphold."

Just like how religions worked. Set up a network of ludicrous practices, intricate and impossible to maintain without flaw, and then blame all hardship on peoples' failures to live by their rituals perfectly.

"It's all a scam, you know?" He's starting to go up the stairs backwards, now, "It's a good one, but that doesn't change anything. It's all about controlling people. Making them think they're in more control than they are, but also less."

He'd known the carpet would be heavy, but that doesn't make it any less of a pain to carefully maneuver around the corner and up the stairs, although he knows he has it better than Ned, who's going up backwards.

"You're right -- it's a scam, it's a business. Sell people what they want to hear, but sell them fear along with it. Can't blame anyone for taking advantage of a deal like that."

The people who're selling it, he means. As far as he's concerned, the people who're buying into it should be a little more aware of what they're buying, but then again, the world is filled with con men, and in a way, he's just another one of them, too, albeit selling an entirely different product.

"You went to a religious school as a kid, right?"

Ned isn't sure he's quite as forgiving as Meyer is, towards the people perpetuating that particular kind of scam. It has a different resonance, for him. He thinks again of his mother, how deeply and sweetly she'd believed every word of it. Or had she had doubts - secret ones? Ones that she kept hidden from her son, who was only a child after all? But no, he can't quite bring himself to imagine that. It's frightening to realize just how little of her he knew, to think about how time and repeated revisiting may have worn his memories of her down to a caricature, an inaccurate cliche.

Luckily, Meyer is asking him another question before he lets his brain travel too far along that road.

"That's right." Ned adjusts his hold on the carpet, manages to bang his elbow on the doorjamb and lets out a soft hiss of irritation. "The Longborough School for Boys. Nine years of seeing that business up close and personal."

Meyer isn't forgiving, exactly. The difference between his own acceptance of that kind of scam and Ned's distaste for it may be easily chalked up to the fact that, while Ned seems to have some kind of moral compass, despite a dislike of religion, Meyer's often noted -- not critically, simply matter-of-factly -- that he himself seems to have no moral compass whatsoever. It's not as though he doesn't know what other people consider wrong, it's simply that he can easily put himself in the mindset of someone who thought religion would be a good scam to perpetuate.

"I think if I'd've been stuck in a place like that," he says, trying to take a little more weight of the carpet in case Ned's elbow is injured from the doorjam, "I'd've gone insane. That's like a prison sentence. How'd you deal with it?"

Despite the trouble he gets himself involved in on a regular basis, he's never been caught for anything, although he assumes the authorities watch him, look for opportunities to arrest him for some reason. The people he associates with back home are reason enough for cops to look askance at him these days, but so far, they have nothing concrete. Still, he thinks about prison sometimes, and from what Ned's said about that school of his, prison isn't a bad analogy.

"Something like that, yeah." Boarding school was, in Ned's admittedly limited experience of it, quite a bit like prison. Some details were different, but the majority were not. The defining feature of both was a complete lack of control over his life. What he ate. When he woke, when he slept, when he was allowed inside and when outside. What he clothes he wore and how he wore them. Both institutions relied on routine and hierarchy, turned blind eyes to much that they should not have.

Ned answers with a shrug, though it's a small one, considering the amount of weight he's carrying. "Didn't have a choice." Which isn't an answer, exactly, to what Meyer had asked. He'd had his little strategies, ways of making things easier. Digby had helped. Baking pie at night or when he could break into the kitchens had helped. He'd been able to retreat into his mind, into the fictional worlds of books and movies that he'd seen. But in the end he had coped simply because he had to. It was that or, as Meyer had said, lose his mind. Or, at least, more of it than he did end up losing.

"I don't mean to- it wasn't all that grim."

They've finally reached the rest of the stuff. With a sigh, Ned sets his end of the rug down across the broken bit of pew, standing up and stretching his arms with a little smile. "It wasn't a Dickensian orphanage, or anything." That's an old enough pop cultural reference that Meyer stands a chance of understanding it, right?

He sets down his end of the rug a bit clumsily, nearly dropping it on his foot, but at least the weight's out of their arms and they can stretch out. He rolls his shoulders a little, trying to loosen up so they can get back to carrying the rest of the stuff out of the church, but for now, a small break doesn't seem like it would go amiss.

He remembers he has a cigarette -- just one, so as not to be tempted to smoke what little he has left -- and procures it from his back pocket, looking at Ned questioningly. "You mind if I smoke?" he asks. It's strange, having to ask people if they mind; back home, almost everybody smokes, and those who don't don't seem to care. Just another odd thing about being brought to the future.

At Ned's comment about Dickensian orphanages, though, he returns that little smile, mostly because someone had finally made a reference to something he understood. "If it were a Dickensian orphanage, then you'd've had a lot more ridiculous of a name, like most Dickens characters. Probably for the best that it wasn't."

Although come to think of it, he has no idea what Ned's last name is. It could be utterly ridiculous, for all he knows.

"Go for it." Ned is glad for the break, as well. It's a nice day out and there is no need to rush, after all. Isn't as if either of them have busy schedules to get back to, once they are done here. Besides, he really does enjoy Meyer's company. It occurs to him now, for the first time, that it shouldn't be surprising that Meyer smokes, though he hasn't seen him do it before. Everyone from that time smoked, didn't they? Or at least, the vast majority of men, if not women.

At the comment about ridiculous names Ned can't help but smile, raising his eyebrows just a fraction. "You're right. Nothing all that absurd about Ned, is there?" Something in the way he says that hints strongly that a completer version of his name might well qualify him for the pages of that particular novelist. His birth name is neither here nor there, though. It's certainly not something he's going to be divulging to Meyer, ever. Or anyone else here for that matter. It is going to stay firmly in his past, where it belongs. He hasn't used it, or allowed anyone around him to use it, since he got out of that boarding school, and he has no plans on changing that.

"No," he agrees, lighting his cigarette and taking a long drag on it, the expression on his face as close to contented as it ever really gets. The lack of cigarettes here has been a problem, more than he'd care to admit; he knows he has an addiction to the damn things -- he'd have to, he thinks, since he started smoking at eight and never stopped -- but he hadn't realized quite how much living without them would irritate him. If he's been a bit more on edge lately, a bit more snappish than usual, he's inclined to blame the nicotine withdrawal, although being stuck in a strange place with no escape doesn't help matters, either.

"Ned's a perfectly normal name," he says, and he hears something in Ned's tone that suggests that maybe Ned is a nickname for something unpleasant. However, if it's something too unpleasant, he doesn't want to pry, doesn't want Ned to stop answering his questions. He's stockpiled quite a bit of information about Ned thus far, more than he has about the other residents of the small town, but he's working on learning something about everyone. It's a way of keeping busy as much as it is a way of satisfying genuine curiosity.

"Was it boarding school that made you start thinking this whole religion thing..." he sweeps the hand holding the cigarette at the church idly, "... was a bunch of bullshit? Or was it before you went to school?"

Once again, Ned shrugs, clasping his hands together behind his back - one of his more relaxed postures. "It was definitely somewhere a few years into my time there. Didn't just happen overnight." Certain of the reasons for his loss of faith Ned would like to keep private. He'd let slip about his father leaving him there to Charlie (and so, he knows, it is possible Meyer knows), but he certainly hadn't said anything about his months of praying for him to come back, or discovering that he'd started a new family. He also, of course, is hardly going to say anything about the role he'd played in his own mother's murder and the murder of Charles Charles, and his conviction that he was a lost cause, anyway.

He opts for a flippant answer - one that has crossed his mind more than once in past years, but that he's never had the opportunity to really share. He's confident that Meyer won't be offended, too, which is a bonus. "Suppose I realized one day that it wasn't all that much of a miracle, the dead coming back to life. Big whoop. I could make that happen, too."

Ned ignores the twist of discomfort that his own joke causes him. That hook is still in him, tugging at his guts even when all he's done is jokingly blaspheme. He clears his throat, explains a bit more seriously, "As I got older... I saw that it was just scare tactics, like you said. Just a way of keeping us in line and keeping us from asking questions."

Of course he laughs at Ned's flippant joke, and of course the thought had crossed his mind once he learned about Ned's lapsed Catholicism in combination with his powers, but he's glad it was Ned who made the joke and not him. Somehow, joking about one's own beliefs, one's own past, is a hell of a lot easier than anyone else joking about it.

He's concentrating on his cigarette hard now, wanting to get every possible amount of enjoyment out of it that he can before it's gone. He'd never thought that there would be a time in his life when he'd begin to worry about rationing food and supplies like he had as a child, that he'd be stuck in a place where luxuries weren't even simply unaffordable, they were nonexistent. It bothers him a great deal more than he'll ever admit to anyone, although he's fairly certain Charlie's picked up on it.

"What questions do you think they're trying to keep us from asking?" It's almost a hypothetical question, really, but he'll be interested to see how Ned answers it, nevertheless. He agrees -- religion is used to prevent tricky questions from being asked, and that's another reason he's wary of it; when his parents tried to keep him in line (or keep him safe, or feeling secure, but he sees them all as falsehoods, no matter what the intent behind them was) they resorted to appealing to a higher power. It had always rung false. It had never made sense to him, how so many bad things could be happening, if there really was something divine out there.

"Oh, y'know. The randomness and indifference of the universe. Why bad things happen to good people. Why we had to behave a certain way. Nothing like a promise of everlasting hellfire to make us want to follow the rules, even if they make no sense."

Their experiences might not be exactly analogous, but Ned wonders if Meyer knows the sort of thing he's talking about. Perhaps his parents grounded their discipline in faith, too. That seems likely, given the time that he was from (Ned has a nebulous idea that people were just more religious in general, before the 50s or so).

"Religion's... it's an excuse that people use for their own cruelty. To hate people who aren't like them. Whether it's people who don't believe or who believe in other things," a faint incline of his head towards Meyer, "or whether it's people like me, who don't make sense, according to their rules."

And here, now, he is coming closer to the real crux of it. If all of it is true, then how can he be anything other than an abomination? It's one thing for Ned to tell himself that, to believe that of himself. It's quite another to think that other people might be right in thinking it.

He understands well enough -- of course, his experience with Catholicism is all secondhand, but there's enough similarity, he thinks, that he can understand what Ned's saying. His parents tried to explain away the bad things he saw happening to good people from a young age, but it had never made sense to him. He'd come to believe that it was all nonsensical, that things happened simply because there was nothing out there to stop it from happening, nothing out there controlling what people did, nothing to punish those who did anything wrong. Perhaps that was why it was easier for him to do what some people saw as 'wrong.'

He can't see Ned as an abomination, but he has the vague sense that religious people might. To him, Ned's powers are inexplicable and strange, but not immoral or wrong in any way. It had taken awhile to accept that people could have powers, simply because he'd never seen it, but he harbored no judgement against any of it (although, he had to admit, he had a healthy dose of suspicion of certain powers.)

"You might not make sense according to their rules, but that just proves that their rules are ridiculous," he says, finally stubbing out his cigarette. "They don't account for people like you. Doesn't that mean their rules are inherently flawed?"

"Account for?"

It's an interesting way of putting it. Ned's gone back and forth on this issue, unsure whether or not he would be able to fit within the nexus of Catholic belief. Maybe their rules do account for a creature like him, but they use words like demon rather than ones like mutant. It's not so much that he thinks he has no place within the magical thinking that governs this particular religion. It's just that he doesn't like that place all that much, or thinking about the fact that maybe, just maybe, it all really is true, and he is some kind of unnatural twisted thing, evil by birth and condemned by default.

"I'm not sure about that," he says, at last, realizing that he's been standing there silently for perhaps too long, "Religion can't account for what I am, entirely, but neither can science."

And Ned has almost as many problems with science as he does with religion. Both, to him, encourage zealots and torturers. Both are willing to inflict great cruelty in the name of their view of the world. Scientists are the modern day inquisition, and he is a piece that doesn't fit properly into the puzzle.

He nods his head in the direction of the door, asking if their break is over and they should go back to work. With a hint of a wry smile he says, "Maybe I'm just unaccountable."

He nods at the door to acknowledge that they should, as much as he'd like the break to go on -- if it had more cigarettes, that is -- get back to work. "I guess, as much as I hate to admit it, there're a lot of things science can't account for."

It's disturbing to him, that you can't give total meaning or understanding to the world with religion or science or even a combination of both. For someone who's so deeply invested in numbers, in logic, in figuring out everything, in knowing that everything has a correct answer, the way things like powers and seemingly magical abilities work confuses him. He wants to understand how everything works -- that's part of his fascination with taking things apart and putting them back together -- but he knows that he'll never understand Ned's powers, and perhaps that's not such a bad thing, really.

"At least around here, there're a lot of unaccountable people," he says, thinking over all of the various powers he's seen in his time in this town. It's strange, the way he feels slightly out of the ordinary simply by virtue of being ordinary, but then, that must be how Ned feels all the time, in his own world.

"Yes, there are." He doesn't pick up on any of that uneasiness from Meyer about being outnumbered by unaccountable people or he'd probably have a thing or two to say. Instead, he considering broaching a subject he'd brought up with Charlie. He hadn't received it very well, but then he's a very different sort of man than Meyer is - far more given to reacting emotionally, and jumping to conclusions.

So, once they reach the basement again and he's contemplating what to take next, he says, "Seems unfair to me, for people like you and Charlie. The rest of us, I mean-" How should he put this? It's not exactly the stuff of light conversation, but he knows that Meyer won't treat it as such. Ned stalls by extricating a long coil of heavy rope from beneath a broken table. This would probably be useful to the construction types, but out of place in a poker room. He hefts it around his shoulder, stands up.

"Let's just say that when I woke up here I knew exactly why they'd picked me. I was always pretty sure that if anybody found out about me, something like this would happen- well. Not exactly like this, per se." He'd been imagining much, much worse. Then again, much much worse is always a possibility for the future. "So it wasn't entirely unexpected."

He picks up a fold-away metal ladder, looks at it rather than at Meyer as he says, "But I can't wrap my head around what you've done to deserve getting experimented on."

He's picking up two broken chairs, wondering if they're salvageable -- he's not bad at fixing things, really, but he'll move these somewhere else for now, perhaps into the storage room. What they need is a clean space, not more projects for him to embark upon, as tempting as it is; he's the kind of guy that usually has too many things going on at once.

"Yeah," he says in response to Ned's thought, and he knows what Ned means. He and Charlie have a lot of enemies; there're people who'd prefer to see them dead and gone. On the other hand, none of those enemies seem to be here, and nobody he's met back home is capable of dragging people into a different world, anyway. Being injured, being threatened, maybe even being killed, those had all struck him as a constant and likely outcome for him, back home. It was a risk of the job. But this? This didn't make a whole lot of sense to him, either.

"I don't think it comes down to deserving," he finally says, after pondering it for a bit longer. He's prone to deep thought, to serious contemplation, and although he's good at keeping his conversations entirely surface level, although he's good at polite chatter, he thinks that his conversations with Ned should consist of something better, of something meaningful. Ned clearly isn't afraid to bring up this kind of topic, and Meyer isn't the type of guy to shy away from this kind of thing if it comes up;

"The way I see it, what we've got here is kinda similar to aspects of religion, yes? Control, manipulation, the idea that bad things happen to good people for no apparent reason..." He trails off on that last sentence, gives Ned that quiet, lopsided smile that's far more genuine than his big, charming grin. "Maybe I wouldn't call guys like Charlie and me good people, but you get what I mean."

"Good people is relative, if you ask me," Ned says, evenly. He's not contradicting Meyer, quite. He doesn't know exactly what it is the two of them have done in their lives, and he's actually just fine with that. Unlike Meyer, he doesn't feel like he needs to know everything. Ned doesn't believe it's his place to pass judgement on them. Apart from their inauspicious first meeting, Meyer's never been anything but lovely to him.

Would River qualify for the category of 'good person', considering what she'd been made into? All the people she'd been forced to hurt and kill? Circumstances had conspired to push Meyer and Charlie into their profession, too - was any of that really their choice, any more than it was River's?

What about him? His hands aren't exactly stainless, either.

"But you're right. It is awfully similar. The constant surveillance." He shoots a dark look at the nearest camera as he begins to head back outside, "The lack of answers. The power games." Ned recognizes the kind of tactics being used on them. If the people who have brought them here from across time and space can do that, surely they could provide sufficient food, if they wanted. Provide them the means to be happy and content, after a fashion. But that is clearly not what they want. They want struggle, and pain, and suffering, and hardship. The scraps of happiness that he and others have found here are against the odds.

"Maybe you're the control group." He's not sure Meyer will know the terminology, explains, "I mean, you're here because you're normal. So they can see how different things affect... people like me, as opposed to people like you."

He hasn't heard the term 'control group' before, but the idea makes sense to him from a scientific perspective, as much as he distrusts and dislikes whatever bizarre form of science their kidnappers are practicing by keeping them here. It does seem that their captors are studying something, attempting to ascertain some kind of answers, though what they stand to gain from abducting people from across time and manipulating them is almost impossible to tell. The lack of answers makes him almost more uncomfortable than anything else, even more so than the constant surveillance, although he still occasionally feels the urge to shoot those cameras (he doesn't give in to the urge; he knows they'll only be replaced the next day.)

"Shouldn't there be a larger control group, then?" he wonders out loud, almost idly, following Ned back outside again. "Most of the people here have some kind of..." It's obvious, as he trails off, that were his hands not full, he'd make that gesture he always makes when he's searching for a word. Despite English being his third language, he speaks it almost impeccably, but occasionally, his thoughts run too fast, and his mouth needs some time to catch up and figure out what he's trying to say.

"... some kind of ability," he says, setting down one of the broken chairs outside. "An ability that allows them to do something out of the ordinary. I'd say that's the large majority. There're only a couple of us that can't do anything at all. It'd be a better scientific study if the groups were evenly disbursed."

"Probably," Ned agrees, setting down the things he was carrying, likewise. There's a question he's been meaning to ask, but he isn't sure if he should bring it up. The whole topic is so potentially volatile; perhaps some things were best left unasked. That's been his strategy until now, but the conversational opportunity has presented itself, and so he decides, impulsively, to go ahead.

"Does it frighten you?"

He knows that fear can be a delicate topic for lots of men, particularly men as concerned with control as Meyer clearly is. That is one reason why he answers his own question first, gives Meyer a little window in which to contemplate his answer, if he wants, and to understand why Ned is asking.

"I was afraid of normal people, growing up." Which, since Meyer knows he was the only one with abilities he knew of, translates neatly into the fact that he was apprehensive of every single person he met. "I knew- I thought they would be afraid of me, if they knew I wasn't like them. It would be all torches and pitchforks, or... well, experiments."

"Does it frighten me?"

He frowns a little, trying to think of how best to phrase it. He understands why Ned is asking, understands that for someone who'd never been around anyone else with powers, being the only one with those capabilities could have been very isolating. It's not that he's afraid of admitting fear -- fear is healthy, he thinks, as long you don't let it control you. It's better to have reasonable, well-managed fear than to run fearlessly into everything. Fear breeds caution. Caution breeds good decisions.

"There're things about this place that frighten me," he finally agrees, looking back at Ned, "And the fact that people here have powers I can only barely imagine is one of them."

There's a long pause before he speaks again, but it's with a shrug that he says the next part: "I'm still more afraid of normal people. More afraid of what they do to people who they decide don't fit in with them somehow." He may not have possessed powers like Ned, but there had always been things that had set him apart from most people he knew -- and 'normal' people had always noticed that. It doesn't take a genius to know that Ned's probably right, that 'normal' people probably would have experimented on him. That, and what little Meyer knows about the future of the twentieth century, are the reasons supposedly normal people will always, in his opinion, pose more of a threat to him than any of the people with mysterious powers here do.

It's surprising how much of a relief it is, to hear that from Meyer. Meyer doesn't lie to him and say that he is totally unafraid of peoples' powers, and Ned appreciates that honesty from him. Of course, knowing how accomplished Meyer is at lying, perhaps all of this isn't the truth, but Ned trusts his intuition that it is. What could Meyer stand to gain from lying, after all.

For him to know that the real danger is, as he says, people who decide other people dont fit in... that leads Ned to believe Meyer's spent some time of his own not fitting in, in one way or another. It changes you, changes the way you perceive the world. Perhaps that is why he finds Meyer so easy to talk to, to relate to. Almost as if he did have a power, though Ned knows he doesn't.

"You're a very wise man," he says. It's the sort of statement that others might deliver jokingly, but Ned is perfectly serious. He thought how nice it was, talking to Meyer. How interesting, how enjoyable. And so, spontaneously, and with a small and rather lopsided smile, "I'm glad we're friends."

Because they are, aren't they? Friends are the people you call to help you move a bunch of smashed up furniture out of a basement, only to end up talking about deep philosophical questions. Friends are the people you ask to teach you to play poker and lie like a champion - or at least competently. Friends understand what it's like to see the world from your perspective, even if their own lives and opinions are very different. So, by all those standards, and by virtue of the fact that he says so, Meyer is his friend.

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I smile when I’m angry, I cheat and I lie...

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