Re: log: grant/matt, the woods
Finally it was Matt who closed the distance between them, definitively bringing himself in arm's reach. There was no one else here. He could hear his own blood in his ears, but he'd been trained better than to let that keep him from tracking movement or following motion out of the corner of his eye. He'd felt Grant behind him. He'd know now if he had friends.
There was no one but the two of them. No one following, sent by no one. They couldn't have faked that look in his eye, as good as they were, as powerful as their hold was when they really had you.
When did you wake up?
"Alaska," he said. He didn't understand the question, or understood it as he heard it. He woke up in Alaska. He'd woken up before, and been shoved back under again, but he had stayed awake. He was awake now.
"I didn't know you were here," he said, and there was that expression again, the anguish of not knowing something, of never having all the information, always mostly in the dark. But they couldn't talk about this in the open. If Grant was in this town, if he hadn't come for Matt and Matt hadn't come for him, then they came for the same reason. That meant they needed to go somewhere there was no chance of being overheard, already swept clean.
He stayed there for a half second, looking at Grant, his face, alive. He was real, and this was real. Reality was colder and more risky than memory. Reality could get FUBAR.
When had he thought he'd see Grant again? Someday, when he knew more, when he crushed everything that was left and no blood beat in it, and could face everything that had come before, all the things he hadn't been thinking about as he focused his energy on his cover, on the people responsible and the strings. He felt cold, and hot, and something like shame.
He turned away. The house was close, visible through the trees. "Not here." They would go to the house. Familiar ground. The closest thing to safe.