[Location: Speares; Westen House] (locked to Michael)

[just_axe_me]

To tell the truth, it was him who started doing all of the preparations for walking into a trap. Not going into this unarmed, Mike, he'd said, and Michael had agreed: they'd passed a petrol station two blocks down that had an open shed. If both of them were right they could've just ambled in and nobody would've cared what they'd taken out, but they

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[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

"Mikey, look at me." He wouldn't. Michael Westen was staring off across the living room like he could see things nobody else could see, shadows beneath the couches and the television set. "Mike. Listen."

There was nobody around, barring bugs -- and what could they do against bugs? If it really was Maddie Westen's there'd be enough junk in boxes that they could rig something up, Michael could do a bug-finder out of batteries and radio equipment and TV antennas, but how were they do know they'd even find them? How much info would be salted in? -- there was nobody around, so it was useless to lower his voice. Sam did it anyway. "Yeah, they're messing with us," he said quietly. "Mike, at this point I don't even want to touch it any more. But we torch it, we walk away, and we won't know why they're messing with us with -- well, this."

There were even ashtrays. Just no ashes. "We know one thing more than we did. Let's go slow, sweep the house, see if they screwed up. FYI, I have a serious case of the get-the-fuck-out-of-heres, but let's take it easy."

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

If they screwed up, it was hard to see where. Even the dimensions were uncannily right. Unless both Mike and Sam had bad enough memories that they could get something like this past them, but somehow that seemed unlikely. Michael didn't acknowledge what Sam just said, which was kind of typical, oh well, but did go on a little calmer: "They'd have had to measure this down to the inch. They'd have had to have this under surveillance for months. A whole year. They've have had to break in. This is ridiculous."

He ran his hands through his hair, both of them, and paced in a line once back and once forth, looking kind of wild-eyed. "You know," he said, "I'm seriously starting to question my own sanity here."

But he closed his eyes and took a moment here anyway. That wasn't a train of thought either of them was going to ride anytime soon. There was no point.

"Okay," he finally agreed. "They built us a little dollhouse. We can play Barbie. Anyway, where would we go?"

They both knew that was the real thing keeping them at Madeline Westen's ghost house right now.

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

Where would they go? They were both silent. Every place was as bad as every other place. Wherever they went, they were never guaranteed anything. It was every bit worthy of the fuck he'd broken out with. It was bullshit. It was playing chess with three pawns and a bishop. Actually, no bishop.

But it was nagging in his brain -- Sam dropped the keys on the kitchen countertop and went over to the sunroom, heaving one of Maddie's bric-a-brac cases out of the way. "When your mom and I bombed her sunroom," he said, "which, I'll state again, was a two-way street -- well, she was ten levels of pissed-off, Mike. So, I was doing the plaster and I managed to dent her wall. Karen and Richard were carpenters, Sam Axe sure as hell isn't. Anyway, I wasn't going to tell her. So -- "

The little shelving unit was heaved to the side. Everything looked seamless, except as he picked at it a square of wallpaper peeled off; there was an ugly plaster hole beneath, and the wallpaper had obviously just been glued on. You'd had to have known it was there, and Sam regarded it with weary old familiarity. "Mikey," he said. "Is there anything in here that only you'd notice? Surveillance wouldn't look at twice, no matter how good?"

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

Michael was already running upstairs again in lieu of an answer. "My room," he called after him, his voice fast fading into muffledness, "there's places I haven't touched since I was --"

There was no point in following him. Whatever he was doing, he'd decided to do it alone. Anyway, it wasn't longer than a few minutes before he emerged again, a little dustier, a little more wide-eyed, with a lint-covered magazine in his hand.

You could make a joke about teenage boys hiding magazines under their mattresses here, but it was really unlikely the only hiding place Michael Westen could think of was under his mattress, and anyway it wasn't exactly that kind of magazine. What Mike had in his hand was a 1993 U.S. Army recruiting pamphlet, coated in dust except for where his fingers had touched it just now. The photography was just yellow enough.

He opened it up and flipped through it, particles of dust flying through the air. He batted them away from his nose, now with eyes narrowed. "Just where I left it," he said grimly. "Either they're really uncanny or we're, we're dealing with something, I don't know. You haven't noticed anything either?"

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

"No, Mike," he said. Suddenly Sam felt very tired. "I haven't."

They both knew what that meant: if it had been a case where it was only Sam's memories driving the house, or only Michael's, that would have been a different relief and a different set of answers. Would have made their captors non-omnipotent. Would have raised the question of -- one of them being real, too, and one not, which was not a question he wanted raised. But it would have been a cold comfort, a chilly one, Antarctic-level cold comfort.

"Well, that's the pits," he said with forced cheerfulness. It was habit that made him start to slide the shelving back to where it was, like Maddie'd walk back in any moment and demand to know what had happened to her drywall. "Means we're stuck with the crappy plumbing in the spare bathroom. That shower in there is like being sandblasted, Mike. Takes all my outer layers off. On the bright side, your mom hoards bullets like the Tooth Fairy hoards milk teeth. Why don't we go round up the firepower?"

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

"If they left us that," said Michael, making a face as he leaned on his mother's wallpaper, "then they don't give a red cent what we do. I'm starting to get the impression they don't, actually. Sam, I don't think this is a prison," he walked over to the kitchen, where he started looking for something which Sam guessed would be a .45 Glock 30, squirreled away, "I think it's a prison colony. Papillon's Île du Diable. Designed and built just for you and me. And --" he found the gun, brandishing it backwards so Sam could see it around the corner "-- all the other people stuck here."

He jammed the gun down the back of his khakis and walked back into the living room. "Not everybody here's military or government, but it seems like there's a lot of us. Then a bunch of kids; I met a girl who used to be a college student, now runs a shop over in Wilde, who was telling me not everyone here is -- human? The agent I met was thinking maybe we're getting selected for exceptionalness, which," he frowned, putting a hand on his hip, "is flattering, but probably bad news. Makes it sound like a cross between a zoo and a cage match. Honestly, given they're letting us have these," Michael indicated the gun, "that's what it's starting to sound like to me."

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

Sam was already waist-deep in coats looking for the shotgun Maddie kept in the closet: she kept the rounds underneath a box full of magazines nobody would ever read or touch, first-copy subscriptions of things like Cat Fancy that had mildew on them. She was nobody's fool.

"Everything's here," he said, and he hoisted the shotgun over his shoulder as he hauled out the box. Their eyes met over it, briefly, for another silent conversation; this one was brief. "Look, Mike, if that's the case when do we start gunning each other down for resources? You're in a prison colony, inmates are choked for the best stuff, things are squeezed so the scum floats to the top. Inmates aren't acting like that here. Hell, my shakedown was so friendly I'm surprised I didn't get given a 'welcome to the neighbourhood' tunafish casserole. So if your theory's right -- this is the zoo part, and the cage match hasn't started."

But he was Sam Axe, and Sam Axe was not glass-half-full. "Yet," he said. "We're pissing in the wind here, brother."

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

The look Michael gave him over his shoulder was grim. Mike Westen didn't like being told any more than anyone that he was fighting a losing battle; in fact, as far as anyone could tell Mike Westen didn't believe in losing battles if he was fighting them. That was an argument nobody wanted to get into with him.

"We'll see," he said and went back to rummaging for the Glock rounds. He shook a Nutella jar, which rattled; "There we go," he said with a little bit of satisfaction. He emptied the jar into his hand and started counting out the ammo onto the kitchen counter.

"The difference between a neighborhood full of good neighbors and a real-life game of Survivor is a little bit of desperation, Sam," Michael said, loading the gun. "Give them a little scarcity of resources and it'll turn into the kind of prison colony we've heard of, I'd bet you money. On the other hand," he cocked it experimentally, "if they really are just an unlucky band of prisoners from various walks of life -- they might be willing to stay good neighbors if you give them a little organization to get the ball rolling."

Oh, Lord.

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

He'd seen that look in Michael Westen's eye before. Oh, Lord.

"Mike, a civilian militia is a bad idea," he hedged. "Neighbourhood watch I can get behind, but how far are we going to go? Who are we even going to work with? This isn't going to be a band of Merry Men, brother, it's going to be a band of trigger-happy child soldiers."

You know, of the Michael Westen kind. Well. Maybe not of the Michael Westen kind. The Westenkind were a rare breed, confined to, uh, pretty much one. At the flat look on the other man's face Sam gave up. "Look, keep the kids out of it and I'm your man, Mike, but I'm not gonna lie, 'organisation' gives me deep-tissue chill. I need a deep-tissue Shiatsu to get it out."

If he didn't say 'yes' now Mike was probably going to go and do it anyway. Better to get more info before presenting an argument.

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

"Just a watch," Michael said, raising his hands as if to say hey, chill, Sam, I'm not going and starting a war here. As if that was reassuring. Michael often went and did things right after assuring people he wasn't going to. "Look, I don't trust any of these people with weapons. You know I think people generally degrade when presented with firepower, not upgrade. Fi being the -- uh -- sort of exception to the rule. More like an addendum to it published a year after the rulebook."

He knelt down in search of what had to be a gun belt or shoulder holster. "We need some way to know if something explodes on the other side of the city. Right now we don't even have the 11-o'-clock news," he pointed out, pushing aside cans of Campbell's tomato soup. "It's -- you know, is this why Mom always made so much tomato soup? Can't she have stockpiled something more interesting?"

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

"Your mom puts tomato soup in everything," Sam pointed out, and slipped bullets into the shotgun like shiny little presents. No point in anything else: its owner didn't keep it loaded, but she kept it running sweet. "You were just never around to have to eat those casseroles. Should've given me hazard pay when I was keeping an eye on her. So, in review."

With a click, he ratcheted the safety down. No point in taking the shotgun, but every point in keeping it ready -- he'd already dropped one of the pistols into his belt. "No news. No safety. No law. Well, we're starting Lord Of The Flies from the bottom-up, brother. You know, we could get our own cute little banana republic going here. Introduce a little Sam Axe democracy."

That joke was tainted a little with bitterness: being where he'd been, fighting where he'd been deployed they both knew it was morbid and in crappy taste. He looked up at where Mike was doing his holster up over his shoulder, and said: "Hey." When the ex-CIA agent looked up quizzically from his work, he added, "We're in this together."

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

Michael looked at Sam for a moment or two, still quizzical. Then he smiled at him sort of half-heartedly, more hesitant than anything; they weren't in much of a situation for smiling, but, there was the sun peeking out from behind the clouds a little. "Yeah," he said. "We are."

He had his suit jacket folded on the floor next to him, the floor that was still cleanly dusted like the Westen family had just been in there. When he was finished with the holster, and habitually re-checked the safety on the pistol, Michael shrugged the jacket back on over it and stood up. He looked more like Michael Westen now, more at-ease with a gun he could brandish more often than use, even, though probably missing his pocketknife and the other tools of his ramshackle trade. Still. A house and some weapons was better than no house and no weapons, even with the suspicious absence of a price tag.

"So," he said out of nowhere. "You want Mom's room or Nate's?"

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

They looked at each other. Michael's face was even, as though to say so what, yeah, fair question? and he knew his own face was -- well, he laughed crookedly, and then he realised it wasn't a Westen joke. Well. It wasn't totally out of the question. The crazy question. Things were bad at this point: bring your sleeping bag and you're out in a week, Mike had warned him, the first time he'd wanted to crash --

"Mike, I don't have to stay with you," he said, setting the shotgun down on the table. "I can go find my own squat. Seriously, this place is a classy one step up from finding abandoned condos." Why was he protesting. He was Samuel Axe. "Hell, I can't sleep in your mom's bed. She'd kill me."

[Location: Westen House]

[midwesten]

"Then sleep in Nate's," said Michael like that was the end of it. "He has a better mattress than me. He broke his first one once trying to hide pot there, is why, Mom bought him a new one."

He unfolded his sunglasses and put them back on, which probably indicated he thought they were leaving in the next minute or so. Sure enough, once he checked his bracelet clearly expecting there to be a watch there out of habit (and frowned at it, like it was paying him an active insult by still being there), he went on, "So, what do you say we hit the grocery store and maybe the nearest Nordstrom's again? I'm not sure if my five-finger coupons are going to run out, but I don't think so, and right now this house isn't what I'd call livable. Or booby-trapped."

Only Mike Westen, thinking of a generic department store off the top of his head, would pick Nordstrom's. He raised his eyebrows expectantly at Sam.

[Location: Westen House]

[just_axe_me]

Everything was surreal, a kind of Salvador Dali cherry on top of the what the hell sundae. The only thing that really surprised him, though, was that at one point Nate Westen had been incompetent enough to break his mattress in the process of hiding pot there. What was he doing, tunnelling out the springs? Then again, with Frank Westen for a dad, you'd be playing Treasure Island with the inner ear of your bed too hiding that --

"Deal," he said, with as much cheerfulness as he could. "But I'm telling you in advance, Mikey, no giving me crap about my idea of snacks. I'm pretty sure all that yogurt you eat is giving you a syndrome. And like I said, it's a hell of a thing when you get on a man for his taste in gourmet high-salt meat products when you never bat an eyelid at Jesse Porter's spray cheese."