Conner Reece (reece_con) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2012-10-03 19:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | day five, matt, matt and reece, reece |
Down the Rabbit Hole
Characters: Matt and Reece
Setting: Block B - Farming area, late morning
Maybe Reece was listening. Not much, but something had filtered through and he’d actually not been a lazy ass this morning, getting up at a semi-reasonable hour. He’d glanced at the computer and updated map long enough to notice something was different so instead of taking his morning coffee and cigarette in the courtyard he took one elevator down and another up to arrive in cellblock B, which was how he was thinking about it despite the fact that it wasn’t technically a cellblock.
Squinting a touch at the morning sun he studied the plots laid out for heavy gardening, he grew up close enough to real farms to know that when he saw it. This was definitely going to be interesting. Seeing someone else he smirked, upnodding towards the guy. “Seems like the Community just keeps growing huh?”
Unsurprisingly, it had taken Matt precious little time on discovering the new addition to the facility to make his way over there, camera in hand and couldn’t help but be impressed by what he found there. It was also delightfully quiet there with no-one yet in residence and he the only explorer, something he found rather liberating and so he indulged himself a little, first by simply sitting in the sun awhile and then experimenting with his camera. He hadn’t even realised how much time he had spent there until someone else arrived breaking his reverie and he saw how high the sun had gotten, his relaxed mood quickly disappearing in light of the sudden and unexpected company. “That it d...does,” he replied, quickly standing up having been knelt down to get a close up shot of some of the herbs - regardless of how the administration hoped they would behave, he wasn’t going to present himself as a target, especially not to one of the male residents,
Reece watched the sudden change in stature, but didn’t make much of it. The guy was tall, sure, but most of that was his hair and he wasn’t exactly a broad sort of thing. If it came to blows, which Reece guessed it probably wouldn’t, he wasn’t exactly worried. “Wonder what else is hidden that we can’t get to. I thought the pool was too much already. Apparently I was off.” He waved his hand towards the happy gardening area and then reached in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. It was warmer today and he might not need the jacket, but it was so like the one he’d worn before prison, military style and olive drab, that he felt more at home in it than he did in just the t-shirt. “Not sure I would want to spend my days gardening. Seems a little too much like home for me.”
"Appp...arantly so," Matt replied, twitching the end of his shirt sleeves down over his hands, wishing he'd worn his hoodie instead and the comfort that came with having the hood pulled up. "There's another locked room over there as well." He made a vague gesture in the direction of the greenhouse and the room that lay behind it. There was also a second floor but currently there was no access to it, much to his disappointment.
At Reece's distinct lack of interest in the garden, he merely shrugged, looking down at his camera to scroll through some of the pictures he'd taken, not looking to encourage conversation. "If gardening's n...n...not your thing, you could check out the w...workshop."
“Another?” Reece asked, looking in the direction that Matt had gestured. “So this place has loads more to it than we ever imagined.” Which made it seem more and more like a permanent sort of setting. Or at least some sort of hippie commune. Though that might just be a reaction to the gardening plots.
“A workshop?” he asked, not caring that Matt was essentially blowing him off with looking at the camera instead. “What’re taking pictures of? And where’d you get the camera?”
So a conversation was going to happen whether Matt wanted it to or not. Fantastic. Not wanting to purposely antagonise the man, he lowered the camera again, nodding in reply to the question. "There's an old car sitting in there at the moment, how they got it in there I have no idea." The query about his photography he was more reluctant to answer and his grip on the camera tightened. "This and that," he said non-commitally. "And I requested it from the administration a couple of days ago."
“How’d they get any of this in here?” Reece asked, raising one eyebrow at the camera as he took a long drag on his cigarette. “Did you? Looks like they’ve been granting wishes left and right.” Or they’d granted his one request, maybe two though he hadn’t actually asked for the booze they’d provided. Mostly because he assumed they wouldn’t get it. “There’s some saying about rabbits...from some cartoon movie...I think that’s what this is,” Reece said, mind jumping to an Alice and Wonderland reference that he didn’t quite know well enough to appropriately quote.
Reece had a point and Matt bobbed his head slightly in acknowledgement of that. His grip on the camera tightened further under the older man's scrutiny and he had to resist the urge to put it somewhere out of sight as quickly as possible. The comment about cartoon rabbits however surprised him to the point of being diverting and he frowned as he tried to figure out what Reece was referring to. "Are you talking about Watership Down?" he asked, the only film he could think of that fitted, where the rabbits discovered the suspiciously perfect warren only to discover it was a effectively a death trap. Needless to say it had made an impression on him as a child and it was a morbidly apt comparison to make to their situation.
Reece frowned. “Watership Down? That sounds like a movie about boats.” He chuckled at himself and shook his head. “Something about a rabbit hole. Honestly I don’t remember really.” He shrugged one shoulder and focused on his cigarette instead.
“Maybe so but it’s actually about rabbits,” Matt replied, feeling a touch defensive even if it didn’t enter his voice. “It was a book first, a good one if reading interests you.” Not that he looked the type to indulge in literature. The mention of a rabbit hole clarified things no and his lips parted in a silent ‘ah’ of understanding. “You’re talking about Alice in Wonderland, when she followed the white rabbit down the rabbit hole and wound up in Wonderland.” He hummed thoughtfully. “Fitting.”
“A book about rabbits. That sounds a little silly," Reece said, making a little face. He wasn't much of a reader, and that definitely didn't sound interesting. "That's the one. Wonderland…it does seem like that."
Matt shrugged. "Maybe it does but that doesn't stop it from being a g...good story or having interesting themes." He wasn't about to start a discussion about the finer points of literary analysis with the older man though so he didn't push the subject further. He couldn't help liking Reese's comparing the facility to Wonderland however and he ventured a small smile. "It certainly doesn't feel like the real world does it? he said.
“Themes,” Reece said, recalling something vague from a school he’d lost interest in a long time ago. “Whatever you say.” He shrugged one shoulder then smirked in response to Matt’s smile. “Exactly. Not that prison felt like the real world either, but this with the little garden and workshop and all that, that’s almost too much.” And way too good to be true, but Reece didn’t say that. Instead he focused on the cigarette in his hand then moved forward a few steps, studying the herbs planted there for a long moment. “Really is making it hard to think about what comes next.”
"Too much what?" Matt asked. He agreed that prison had been nothing like the 'real world' as Reece had put it but the facility was something else entirely, a half-way point between the two that somehow managed to feel utterly different from both of them. "And I must confess, I haven't thought too much about what will happen after we leave here." Unexpectedly his thoughts went to Edan and what she might do next and he frowned slightly, unsure where the thought had come from.
“Too much this,” Reece waved his hands and shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what to make of it. I like being out of a box but it’s just a bigger box and really, I don’t know if I’m ever leaving. Though leaving doesn’t sound all that miserable minus the whole cabin fever thing.” It was more words than he usually bothered to string together but Reece was feeling oddly out of place this morning, something twitching the hairs at the back of his neck. Like something bad might happen.
Not that he was really in a position to judge anyone else on their conversation style, Matt couldn't help noticing Reece wasn't making a whole lot of sense. It had to be granted though their situation was a peculiar one and he couldn't blame him for feeling a little off-kilter. "It's hard to know where we stand in a place like this, precious little to go off other than cryptic messages and each other," he observed, poking the ground with the toe of his sneaker. "It's...discomfiting."
Reece rubbed at the spot on his neck that was tingling and shook his head. “Damn right it’s discomforting,” he said missing that that wasn’t the word that Matt had used. He didn’t exactly have the vocabulary to keep up, but his mind supplied something similar.
Even if he had gotten the word wrong, Matt found it oddly comforting knowing that Reece shared his feeling on the matter and bobbed his head. "I guess we just do what we have to to get through it," he said quietly, in that respect the facility was no different to the prison he'd left behind. "It's probably harder on the people who've spent the most time in prison." He was curious as to how long Reece had been incarcerated for but didn't voice the question, the common ground he'd found with the man not enough to make him overcome his wariness.
Reece watched the other man curious what he was thinking. “Just how long do you figure people were locked up? I was there for five years.” Which to Reece was long enough, but barely skimming the surface of his sentence. “We stay vigilant. Be ready for anything.” Wu had been right about that, that it was best not to get caught up in things, or at least too caught up in them and Reece was taking it to heart. “And maybe enjoy what little freedom we have.” He finished off his cigarette and stubbed it out on the bottom of his boot.
Matt shrugged. "There's no discerning pattern between those of us here so who could say," he said, secretly pleased that his unasked question had been replied to. "I've done four years myself." Reece's philosophy was one he could definitely get behind and while not phrased the same way, was similar to how he had talked about his own feelings on the matter to Wren. "But I think you're right, caution is essential but that shouldn't stop us from appreciating the boon we've been given here."
Reece made a face, leaning towards Matt to study him more. “You were in prison for four years?” The underlying comment was surprise that he still talked like that and that he wasn’t dead yet. Maybe he’d come close. Or maybe he was something Reece didn’t fully understand. That had happened before.
"Yes," Matt replied, trying not to read too much into the meaning behind Reece's expression. After all it was hardly the first strange look he'd been on the receiving end of in his life. "A third of my sentence though you wouldn't be the first not to believe me if you think I'm lying." His tone wasn't confrontational but rather held the quiet acceptance that most of his speech did, of someone well aware of their lot in life and aware of their inability to change it.
Chuckling a little Reece raised his eyebrow at the kid again and nodded. “Wouldn’t accuse you of lying,” he said with a nod. “Not about something like that. Doesn’t seem to be much of a point right?” His tone, while mostly amused carried and undercurrent of of being impressed. He wouldn’t have pegged the guy for lasting six months.
Matt just shrugged again and rubbed the back of his neck. "Perhaps not but then people do, there was certainly plenty of it at Moran, inmates looking to create a reputation for themselves. Here though...like you say, it's different. Normal rules do not apply."
“There were plenty that tried and plenty that suffered for the bullshit,” Reece said with a shrug. “Always was more impressed by the ones that just survived on their own accord.” He looked around them again and let out a sigh. “Yeah it is different. Makes me wish I hadn’t been as locked up as I had.” This conversation would be different and he sure as hell wouldn’t have that fresh thread of jealousy he’d had towards Ryan either. He probably still wouldn’t like the guy, but the reason would be less because they’d fucked the same girl. “Workshop?” Reece said with a nod in the direction Matt had pointed earlier.
"There's always suffering in prison, some more deserved than others," Matt replied. "And no-one comes out unchanged." Usually in a negative sense, Reece's clear regret and his own amplified issues over being touched paid tribute to that. At the query, Matt nodded, glancing in the direction of the room. "Workshop," he echoed, a little relieved that their conversation was apparently winding to an end.
Reece chuckled again though it was hardly a humorous noise. “Isn’t that the idea? That no one comes out the same?” he asked then shook his head, taking a few steps in the direction that Matt he pointed. “Stay out of trouble,” he warned, though it was hardly ominous, more like a warning he’d given more than once as an older brother.
Matt's lips twisted into a sardonic smile that held as much humour as Reece's chuckle had. "So they say," he replied wryly. The friendly warning he didn't expect and caused his expression to soften slightly. "You too." He started walking towards the elevator, intent on heading back to his room, before pausing to turn and add "I'm M...Matt by the way."
“I doubt I will, but I can hold my own,” Reece said. Trouble just seemed to find him, but at least he could be ready for it. “Reece. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
"I'm sure you will," Matt said and, with a small wave, turned and continued off on his way. He had photos to go through, a map to amend and he needed to eat something before his meeting with Wren; besides which the new space had lost some of its appeal now he wasn't the only one there.