Adventures of Matt Parkman, Chapter 17: Family ties
Some time later Matt blinked. Something had changed. He kicked Maury out of his head immediately. The man went without a problem. Matt rubbed at his temple. He hadn't expected to lose a moment there. He looked around for the time, then went in the kitchen and looked at the clock on the stove. It was no help, really, since he hadn't known what time it was before his father had done whatever it was he'd done.
"You only lost a minute or so," Maury volunteered from the living room, even though he couldn't see him where he was standing.
Matt glowered in his father's direction and got down a cup for coffee.
"Make me one too." He heard his father sit down on the couch.
Matt snorted softly but did it. As he poured the second cup, he hesitated. How did he know I was getting coffee? How did he know I was looking at the clock? He sorted through his mind and found it - a portion of Maury's mind, in his, just as he'd put a part of his own into Ryan. He'd linked them, yoked them together mentally, though just like Matt had done to Ryan, it was one-way. Maury had built a way past Matt's defenses for him to use his ability on him at will.
He gathered himself and tried to purge it with all of his power. Instead of erasing the presence, it was as if Matt's attack had been solely launched at himself. He yelled, grabbing his head and falling to his knees. The agony was worse than his back - it was like he was trying to kill himself, get rid of himself. The second cup of coffee tipped over at his motion and splashed on him, but it took a second for him to even realize it - he was that lost in the mental pain. He pulled away from the near-scalding water running down his arm, a rivulet down his aching back, and rocked on the floor, holding his head. The whole world was on fire and he was the incinerated core of it. He could barely breathe. Tears ran down his face at it, when he hadn't shed a drop for being beaten earlier.
Maury called calmly from the living room, "It's a feedback loop, Matt. Anything you try to do to me or that link goes right back against yourself. I'll feel every use of your power, every time you use your ability, but it won't touch me. I know every thought in your head."
Matt picked himself up off the ground, carefully reining in his ability, guarding himself against using it accidentally. He staggered out into the living room and glared at his father. "Is there anything to keep me from just killing you?" he asked hoarsely.
Maury shook his head. "Not a damned thing, Matthew."
The younger man hesitated, his brows pulling together. Surely there was a catch to it. When his father didn't say more, he asked, "Then… why shouldn't I just kill you? That would end it."
The older man nodded. "It would end it. You asked me to help you. Do you want help?"
Matt breathed harder and felt weak. He walked over and sat down at the dining room table. All I have to do is kill him, kill my father. I… I asked him to help me. Do I want help? Do I? He stared at the table blankly, unsure. For the last several months, he wouldn't have had to think about what he planned to do with himself, because he already knew. His future was set, laid out. He didn't have to make decisions like this. It seemed bizarre somehow that now he did, like the world had gone fundamentally wrong.
Maury stood and went past him into the kitchen. Matt watched him take a towel and clean the coffee off the floor and the counter, cleaning up his son's mess in a literal fashion. When he was done, he brought Matt's coffee out to him and set it down, then went back and poured himself a cup with what was left in the pot. He brought out cream and sugar. It was in Matt's mind that he wanted it, but he hadn't said. He also brought him a spoon. He set them all in front of his son and sat to join him.
Matt looked at the coffee and remembered being so frustrated at Ryan for not being able to get this right. He shook his head slowly.
His father said, "I can read your mind, Matt. He couldn't. It wasn't his fault."
Matt looked at him and nodded slowly. It was depressing. He had a feeling his future had been decided, settled, but he didn't know what it was. He felt the urge to shoot up and find out.
"No more drugs."
"What?" Matt's head came up.
"I said, no more drugs."
"But… that's the only way I can see the future!"
"Matt, you're not high now and you have a sense of it. Why do you think you need drugs for it?"
His son's mouth worked and he looked away. He had no answer for that - no answer he was ready to accept, anyway. He looked back and doctored his coffee. At least he could have caffeine.
"That's the spirit," his father muttered and sipped at his own, taken black. He looked past Matt at Ryan. After another drink in silence, he said, "I'm going to do something you're not going to be happy about, so I'm warning you first. Don't get physical with me over it, because it's hard, but there's nothing else to be done."
Matt was looking at him intently, wishing he could read Maury as easily as his father could now read him. Maury's eyes went past him and Matt turned to look at Ryan too. He looked back at his father. "Is there…" he hesitated. Maury didn't help him out by admitting he already knew what he was trying to say. His silence meant Matt had to say the whole thing. "Is there anything that can be done for him? To fix him?"
The older man shook his head. "Not within the resources I have at my disposal, no. Somewhere, somehow, I'm sure there's someone who could fix him, but I don't know who since Daniel died and I'm not keeping him around until I find someone. You've already made a mockery of his death by keeping his body around and doing whatever with it. Don't make it worse."
After a long moment, Matt looked at the table and nodded. Most of a minute passed before he heard Ryan fall over on the couch, dying from asphyxiation. Breathing was the easiest of the critical body functions to affect, since the brain was already familiar with regulating it voluntarily. Matt looked back at him. The body was quivering slightly as it struggled to live even though the mind was long gone - gone for months now. He suffocated slowly, the process taking an excruciatingly long time compared to similar deaths on television.
I'm a coward, Matt thought. I should have done that a long time ago, but I was too much of a coward to do it. He hung his head, trying to ignore the sounds from the other room. He took a cold comfort in the thoughts of the people he'd saved. It didn't make up for the one who was dying on the couch now, but it was at least a comfort. After drinking half his cup, he asked, "When are we leaving?"
"Not anytime soon. We've got your whole life for the last few months to unravel here."
Matt looked up at him, his face falling, feeling dread. "What… you mean…?"
Maury shook his head slowly at his son. "You're not getting to walk away from what you did, Matthew. We're going to fix it, you and I. There are a lot of people out there who aren't living their lives thanks to you. Maybe you think they're lowlifes and maybe they are. I used to be one of those lowlifes."
Matt winced as he felt his father's mind probe through his own. Almost reflexively, he tried to resist it and discovered the feedback loop considered this something it needed to activate against. He jerked back in pain. Putting his tortured back against the chair made him flinch forward again. He held his head and let his father pick through his memories. He was quick about it, at least.
Maury waited until his son wasn't in so much agony he couldn't hear him, then continued, "I used to be one of those pieces of street trash like that young man over there was. I went from gambling hall to gambling hall, played cards, hustled pool, talked people into paying me too much for things I'd stolen. I was a thief, a con man and a cheat.
"Think about that, Matt. Maybe I was a little smarter than Ryan over there, but I was no better than him. I didn't finish high school… hell, I didn't finish middle school. That was me, sitting on the side of the road, looking for trouble to get into. Think about it." He reached out and gathered up the cream and sugar, taking them and his own now-empty cup back into the kitchen.
Matt stared at his coffee and shut his eyes. Maury looked in the fridge and the shelves and finally came out with a box of cereal and a bowl. He put them down in front of Matt. "Eat."
"We don't have any milk," Matt said sullenly. So much had happened this morning. He could hardly think. His head still ached from the feedback.
His father nodded. "I saw that. You can have water, cream, or dry. Pick."
Matt poured the cereal into the bowl and ate it dry. After the first two spoonfuls, he asked, "Why am I eating cereal? Why are you making me eat cereal?"
Maury paused as he went through the cabinets, looking at the food choices. "I'm not making you eat cereal. I'm telling you to eat it. There's a difference and you need to recognize that. Have you looked at yourself lately? You're a wreck. I'm putting you on a diet and it's to gain weight, not lose it. I know you were always fat, but the way you are now is terrible. You're unhealthy. I'll get some vitamins. We need to go shopping."
He turned and looked at Matt. "I want to help you. You want to be helped. I can see that. It's not like you have to do what I tell you to, but you sure as hell can't make me do what you want. You're going to have to live with having someone around you can't give orders to. Depending on what kind of stupidity you get up to, I might make you do something, so don't push it if you want to keep your free will, or at least the illusion of it."
Matt huffed, but he ate. "Where's Patty? What did you do to her?"
"I made her give me her house keys and told her to stay out at least an hour. So… wherever she was going, she might be getting back in another fifteen minutes or so. Maybe longer. You should shower up. If you want, I'll put bandages on the parts of your back that are weeping, if you have any. Otherwise just tough it out."
Matt tried to marshal his thoughts. The idea that his every notion was being listened in on was grating.
Maury snorted.
"What?" Matt said, angry.
"Why is it so grating, Matthew? It's the same thing you do to everyone these days, isn't it?"
Matt raised his head. "You can't tell me you don't do it too. You don't have the moral high ground here either."
Maury smiled at him. "No, I don't. I never claimed to, either. You and me, we're down in the mud together. Leave the moral high ground for those fancy-nancies with the white shoes." He walked out of the kitchen and over to Ryan, lifting the boy's legs over the arm of the couch and turning his body so he lay on his back. He reached over and shut the dead man's eyes. "Do you want me to give you some privacy? Butt out of your thoughts and let you plan and scheme where I can't hear you?"
He moved around to put his hands under Ryan's arms and pulled him with a grunt, laying him out on the couch. Maury reached over and adjusted his head so he looked like he was merely asleep. He smoothed the man's hair down briefly with a familiar, intimate gesture.
Matt sighed, watching him, thinking his father was kinder and more considerate with Ryan than he'd ever been. Of course he'd been hitting him in the face earlier with a belt. He was a hard man to figure out.
Strangely, now that his father mentioned it, he sort of wanted him in his head. He was pretty sure it wasn't a compulsion. He sorted through himself carefully, taking a long, slow catalogue. He didn't seem to have a single extra command in there - nothing about trust or obedience or abstaining from harming him. Of course, those could all come later, as his father had threatened. Matt never gave people this long though. Not for months he hadn't.
Maury roamed around in the apartment, eventually finding the linen cabinet and getting a sheet out. He unfolded it and laid it out on the floor. He reached over it and tugged Ryan off the couch until he fell unceremoniously onto it, then the older man knelt and began to wrap him.
"How many people have you done that to?" Matt asked.
Maury shrugged. "Oh, forty or fifty, maybe more. You mean the body disposal, right?"
Matt blinked. "No, I meant the… the… you called him a zombie. How many people have you turned into zombies? Wait, you… you're not reading my mind?"
Maury paused in his work and said, "No. I cut that off. I asked - do you want privacy? You didn't answer."
"Oh." Matt thought about that and picked up his bowl of cereal, turning with a wince so he was facing the living room. His back really hurt, every time he moved. Maury had returned to tucking and pulling on the sheet, getting it arranged as he wished. There was some specific pattern he was folding it in.
Matt said, "Um… no, it's okay. It might make it easier… things like this… you won't misunderstand me." Matt smiled suddenly, bitterly. "You'll know how I like my coffee." It seemed like a ridiculous reason to surrender his privacy, his aloneness, but he was also greatly warmed that his father had butted out as soon as he'd mentioned it. "Will you… will you leave if I ask you to?"
"Sure. I'll leave right now if you want. I'll argue with you, but it's up to you." He looked over at Matt thoughtfully, then turned back and tucked the last fold of the sheet over Ryan's head and into the rest. He gave the boy a pat on the chest and struggled to his feet. He rubbed his shoulder, the one that had been hurting since he flogged his son.
"You'd leave, right now, if I asked you to?" Matt said disbelievingly.
Maury nodded and walked over, looking at the empty cereal bowl in his son's hands. "Go take a shower. You smell like shit."
"Thanks, Dad," he muttered sarcastically and set the bowl aside. He did it though.