Who: Jules and Neil When: Afternoon, Thursday, June 14 Where: Neil’s apartment
Jules was spiraling. At least that’s what it felt like sometimes. She was trying to keep herself busy with AIR and hanging out with Ethan, but there were times when she was alone in bed at night that she stared at her phone, willing Jasper to text or call her. To at least tell her he missed her. Something that would maybe ease the huge weight that felt like it was permanently crushing her. But they hadn’t spoken since they broke up and all she could do was imagine he was with Logan, having fun and doing things and maybe he didn’t miss her.
Maybe she was the loser here, clinging to something that was over. Maybe she would be a loser for waiting around for her ex to fuck someone else and then come back to her. Thinking about it like that definitely made her feel like a loser. A sad, pathetic loser. And feeling like a loser made her also feel angry. Because she was Jules Fucking Cooper, dammit. And anger was better than depression. So Jules took that anger and decided to let it point her in the direction of Neil’s apartment. She had promised Ethan she would talk to Neil and Jules figured if she tried to talk to him in her head, he would ignore her. So she was going to make sure he couldn’t do that. Jules wanted answers and in order to get them, she was going to go directly to the source. Or one of them, anyway.
She went to his apartment first, figuring if he wasn’t home he would be at the library, where she would go next. Jules knocked and stepped back, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and waiting. Despite her outward appearance of stoicism, inside her heart was pounding. Jules didn’t know what Neil would tell her, but she just wanted to know what happened to her dad.
Neil hated it when people came to his door, unannounced or not. He always worried it was someone from AIR, there to drag him away, and now he had that additional fear that it was one of those people he'd had a hand in sending to what was essentially hell - because of course they'd come back. He was reading when the knock came and nearly dropped his book in shock before taking a steadying breath. He wasn't helpless now. He had lightning. Whether he'd actually be able to use that on a person was another story but it helped some to think he might. It was probably just Jane come to bitch at him for how boring he'd been at the party (that she had lied to him about, it had supposed to be a meeting).
He wasn't even sure why he went to the door but he regretted it as soon as he opened it. It wasn't Jane, he could handle Jane, Jane didn't hate him. Jules Cooper did. He frowned with obvious confusion and alarm when he saw her there, they hadn't exactly met each other without the others present so why start now? "Jules," he muttered in some half-baked greeting. "Can I help you?"
Jules hadn't seen Neil since they left Witcham Road back in January. She avoided the library for obvious reasons and she honestly didn't think he ventured out into public, like, ever. But he was there now and Jules straightened her spine to convey confidence. He was the kind of guy who would've probably been terrified of her in high school. That helped her feel a little bit better, like she could handle this even though he was an adult. She had handled Caius D'Onofrio, right? She could definitely handle Neil Whatever His Last Name Was.
"Yeah, you can help me. I need to ask you something." Jules arched a blonde brow. "I can ask you out here, where someone might be eavesdropping, or you can like, invite me inside so I can ask you in private."
Neil's frown went from confused to irritated and he had to wonder what he'd done to deserve these awful women - or girls in this case - hounding him and threatening him with social awkwardness. On some level, Neil was beginning to realize that his neighbors probably wouldn't care if they heard what she had to say, they'd probably dismiss it as the lunatic ravings of a teenage girl if it was indeed something about their shared ordeal, if they even cared to listen. But knowing something and believing it were two very different things and his chest tightened with discomfort at the mere thought of his private affairs being aired out in front of strangers. "Come on in," he said tersely as he stepped aside to let her enter. "Do you want some tea?" Offering was a polite thing to do, but that was as far as it went and he obviously took no pleasure in doing so.
Jules stepped inside, but she didn't venture far. She didn't know if this would take long or not but she definitely didn't Neil pretending to be hospitable. And she didn't want to drag this out over forced niceties. "I don't want any tea," Jules said, unable to relax. Her fingers pressed harder into her arms. She realized she wasn't really sure how to ask Neil what she needed to ask, so Jules decided to just be blunt. Maybe that would startle him into honesty. "Did you start the fire at the AIR facility?" Jules stared at Neil intently. "Were you a part of that? Like, are you responsible for those people dying?"
Neil was taken aback, especially by being asked if he was responsible. He wasn't, he'd never felt guilt for that night, only fear that someone would come after him. "No," he said firmly, and at least he could say that with conviction. He hadn't so much been a part of Jane's plans as he'd gone along with them to survive. "I was lucky to get out alive." Jules had never showed them that picture of her father and maybe Neil didn't really want to know who he'd been, he just didn't see what good that would do them now. "Is that really why you're here? To find out how your dad died?" Teenagers and their search for truth and justice. It was exhausting, honestly.
"I know how my dad died," Jules said tightly. She wasn't sure if she believed what he was telling her, even though he didn't seem to be lying. But he seemed like the kind of guy who would answer questions a certain way, rather than offer any more information than the very minimal. "He died in a fire. The fire at the facility. But someone told me that the kids there were responsible for it. That they started it so they could get out. And you were there when it happened, Neil. If you didn't cause it, then you know who did, right? Was it Jane?"
It was a good thing Jules wasn't a mind reader like Mal because the first thing that flashed into Neil's mind at the question was Shane's face, both his face now, a carefree rich playboy, and the face of the kid who'd actually started the fire, naked and sooty and probably half deranged. It was hard to reconcile the two as the same person. "If any of the others was responsible for the fire, then I don't know who it was," he said and now he had to wonder who had told her that. Did he dare to ask? "I don't see how Jane could have done something like that. You do know what her ability is, right? And I didn't even have mine back then. I'm pretty sure they were getting ready to let me go so I didn't really stand to gain anything from this wild escape plan except my memories of it." And he very obviously didn't like remembering any of this, though he wasn't so sure they would have ever let him go. It was a comforting lie he told himself and he chose to believe it.
Jules's brows furrowed together. "I never said it had to be an ability. You could have just started a fire somehow." She paused. "So maybe someone could do something with fire. Like you can with lightning and Jane can walk through dreams. Those are... pyrosomething, right? Pyrokinetics?" She had no idea but she could google it, right? "If it was some wild escape plan, Neil, then you must have known something. It wasn't just you and Jane. I just want to know!" She was trying not to lose her cool, but it was becoming increasingly hard to keep her voice at a civilized volume. "I don't care what you had to gain or anything like that. I just wanted to know who did it. Because my dad died, okay? I want to know who was responsible for that."
"I didn't say I knew for sure it was an ability," Neil replied with growing exasperation. he'd assumed that was what she meant, had he just made things worse? "I don't even know if someone started the fire or if it was just something that happened. I was eleven! Maybe that doesn't seem so young to you since it hasn't been that long since you were eleven but it is. I was just a kid!" He wanted her to leave now, all too aware of what she could do if she got too agitated, all too aware that she'd probably happily send him to some hell dimension if the thought occurred to her and that was probably the only reason he didn't tell her the only people responsible for her father's death were her father and Doctor Wilkes.
Jules pressed her fingertips harder into her upper arms, her nails digging into the skin. She wanted to hit him so badly. Make him feel one iota of the pain that had settled into her for the past five months. Had he suffered from any survivor's guilt? Or had he just justified everything in his head so he could sleep better at night. Some deep-seated instinct told her he was lying but it was like she could dig into his head and find the truth. They could hear each other mentally, but that was it. "I want to know the truth," Jules said quietly, her tone taking on a darkness she hadn't known she was capable of. "Because if I find out somewhere else, or from someone else, that you're lying to me right now, I swear to god, Neil, I will make you so sorry for it."
Neil didn't doubt her for a second and his all too familiar anxiety grew and put some uncomfortable pressure on his organs. He might have told her everything he knew if everyone else wasn't so damn terrifying too and telling her the truth would make things worse, he could be sure of that. "Jules," he said with a tired sounding sigh, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose for a second. "All I remember from that night is unfamiliar faces, chaos and fire. I barely remember how I got out, someone got the doors. Outside was dark and I just remember staring at the ground to try to keep from tripping on something. That is the truth."
For some reason Jules wanted to believe him. It would be so much easier to do that, to realize she would never know the truth about how her dad died, or why. She hadn't known anything about it for so long and she had been all right. But now it felt like there were so many secrets and nobody would tell her a damn thing except Dr. Wilkes. "So you're saying you don't know anything else. You don't know anyone else who was there, or who might have started that fire." In the moment, Jules meant every word she had said to him. That if she found out he had lied to her, she would hurt him. She could do it too. She would. She was tired of being lied to. Maybe if the people in her life would have been more truthful from the beginning, she wouldn't be in the position she was in now. She would be hurting this way. Jules was starting to feel like someone else needed to hurt as much as she did.
Neil knew plenty of other things but he couldn't tell her any of them. It was easier to deflect than it was to lie and he shook his head firmly, closing his eyes for a moment. "I know that I was held captive as a child by an institution that experimented on children and your father... He worked for them. What did he do? Do you know? Was he just the janitor who was there at the wrong time? Or was he one of them? Do you think your father was capable of torturing children?" The way she was looking at him was making him deeply uncomfortable and once the angry words were out, he looked away from her, shaking his head again as if to clear it. "I barely remember anything from that time, I don't know how I could help you with whatever it is you're trying to find out."
Temper flashed in Jules's eyes and if Ethan had been there, maybe she should have scared Neil a little. Shown him how good she had gotten at what she could do. "He was a researcher. And he didn't torture anyone. You were just a kid. You don't even remember how you escaped so I doubt you remember much of anything. But you and Jane, you lied to me. I bet you're lying now too. And you don't even care. You don't care that we sent all those people to some kind of hell and you don't care that they could have died. You don't care that the fire killed people either. You're just an emotionless robot," she snapped, turning to the door to leave. "I'm going to find out what really happened and if I find out you knew, I swear I'll send you somewhere that makes that hellish fog dimension look like a fucking tropical paradise."
It shouldn't have offended him because he would actually have loved to be an emotionless robot, but her words stung and the rest of it was simply infuriating and terrifying. "You call me an emotionless robot but you seem to take some sadistic pleasure in what you can do. Using it as threat? You disgust me." He folded his arms tightly, relieved to see she was leaving. He would need to talk to Jane about this and in thinking about Jane, he realized she would ask him questions about this, ones he didn't have any answers to because he wasn't asking those same questions. "Who the hell have you been talking to anyway?" he asked before she could open the door. "Who's filling your head with all this nonsense?"
Jules snorted derisively. “I wouldn’t have to threaten you if I didn’t think you were lying to me. And honestly, I don’t care if I disgust you or not. You have no empathy for anyone.” It made her angry, knowing she had barely functioned as a human being after leaving Witcham Road and Neil was probably just going about his day, every day, like it didn’t matter. Like Jasper hadn’t mattered, or Carson. She almost reached out to Carson then, just for the comfort of hearing his voice, but she didn’t want to get him involved in this. He was gone. He got away from this place and Jules didn’t need to drag him back. So she opened the door and shook her head. “I’ll tell you as much as you told me, Neil. Which is nothing.”
God but Neil hated her in that moment, that arrogant little bitch with her queen bee attitude and self righteous indignation. "I've told you everything," Neil hissed, walking after her to make sure she wouldn't slam the door behind her and upset him even further. "You're asking me about things that happened seventeen years ago, making assumptions about me-" being an insufferable little terror. "We did what we had to do, none of us wanted Carson to get caught in the crossfire but none of us could do a thing to stop it. I think you're taking your own guilt and misery and twisting it into some misguided crusade. This isn't about your father, this is about you and what you did. Because you were there, you are as culpable as the rest of us." He kept his voice quiet because the door was open and he did not need his neighbors to overhear him but it was hard to maintain that level of discretion when he felt like screaming.
"I know what I did," Jules seethed. "I've thought about it every single day since it happened. You don't have any idea what I've gone through since then, knowing that people I care about were gone and suffering and maybe dead. What did you lose, Neil? Nothing about what I'm doing is misguided. I'm just trying to find out the truth about that fire. I want to know why my dad died. God, it's like you were totally born apathetic." She huffed out a harsh breath. "What are you doing to make any of this right? What are you going to do when someone shows up at your door, bitter and resentful and traumatized about what we did to them in January? Shrug and tell them it had to be done? Good luck with that."
"If they don't realize how dangerous they were back then, then they're sociopaths," Neil said but she was onto something there and he vowed to himself to never open his door again unless he was expecting someone. He wanted to ask if someone had confronted her already, if he had a reason to be on high alert now. It wasn't the only thing he wanted to ask her but he was too agitated and angry to really shift gears into something calm and rational. "I want you to leave," he said and if she thought there was anything they could do to make things right, it was too much bigger than them. Would stopping AIR help? Were they involved with every strange thing that happened in this town? Even then, it wouldn't set things right. Everything was too twisted up already.
"You're the sociopath," Jules snapped. "It's not surprising you haven't figured that out yet." She was more than fine with him wanting to leave since that was what she was doing anyway. Ethan probably wouldn't be too happy about the way the conversation had gone but apparently she still had a lot of pent of anger and guilt about what happened in January. It felt like she was the only one and that only made her more angry. She stormed from his apartment, more convinced than ever that Dr. Wilkes had been right about the fire. Neil had to have been lying to her. She would just have to ask someone else to find out for sure.
Neil slammed the door after her and locked it, pressing his hands against the wood for a moment as he tried to calm down. Oh he hated this. For all he knew she'd come back and send his whole damn building into another dimension. He needed to call Jane and possibly find another place to live, somewhere not listed anywhere. The thought he should leave this cursed town occurred to him, not for the first time, but it was chased away by that all too familiar hopeless fear that told him he had nowhere else to go. Maybe if he told Shane about Jules he'd deem her a threat and kill her. For a fleeting moment the idea made him feel good, before it made him feel bad and a little sick. Jules might be right, he didn't feel particularly bad about what had happened, they'd done the right thing but what if he was a sociopath? Did he care? He let his head thud against the door before he pushed himself away and peeked outside to make sure she wasn't still out there doing some awful hocus pocus shit at his door. Only when he was sure she'd gone did he head inside to find his weed and his phone. This could become a problem and Jane needed to know about it.