[Plot] Where Everybody Knows Your Name

[Will Stanton]

Over the ensuing days, turning into weeks, Will's self-imposed quarantine continued, as he struggled to try to find a new normal with the voices inside his head -- and tried to figure out just what was happening to him.

As the days went on, the shapes and forms inside the room began getting more...complex. Or organized. Or something along those lines. At the point Tosh had stopped in for his chat, the room has been decked out more or less generically -- some tables, some chairs, the like. But as time passed, it started getting more unified; the shapes and accompanying forms working together to create more sophisticated arrangements.

On Monday morning, steam had leaked out the windows and doors, as the room has been transformed into a tropical jungle; dense foilage and rustling in the trees from unknown, growling animals.

By the afternoon, however, steam was still coming out -- but it was from the '50s diner hopping inside, a poodle skirted Will dancing to the jukebox. No sign of the jungle remained, just hamburgers, shakes and fries.

This sort of thing continued throughout the week. At any point, passers by might hear the thumping, driving bassline of a nightclub in full action. Or the sounds of a string quartet, constantly tuning and re-tuning. For a few hours, the Points' servers would have recorded a number of machines trying and failing to connect to the network, as a new server room hummed. Moans and screams echoed from a particular version of the room no one chose to enter. The bleeps and bloops of classic arcade games could be heard at another point, followed by a zen-like silence.

These, and dozens of other configurations, seemed to come and go, replacing and swapping with one another. A clipboard hanging on the wall outside the door showed the efforts of people to keep track of these things, but no clear pattern had seemed to form.

And the rooms weren't perfect, either. There was always at least a few things out of place -- the jukebox playing songs from the wrong era; the string quartet joined by a tuba; a concrete path in the jungle.

And there was always, at most, one person-shaped Will -- never more, with most of him spent as less interactive bric-a-brac. This was similar to what Tosh had encountered in his trip into the room earlier.

And, at SOME place in every form, there was still the large lump of clay, sitting there in a corner.

((open))

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam had spend some time in the room between her own struggles to get a better grip on her powers, beginning to question how viable her plan even is as Will cycles through wildly disparate expressions of the chaos in their head. And with no one around to really run her idea past she's getting worried. At least Will is stable - in a sense - but she can't let this become the new status quo and get complacent. Which means even if she's unable to come up with a long-term solution just yet, at the very least she needs to try and see if it'll even work at all. So she heads into the Menagerie of Wills to find the humanoid one and explain her plans.

[Will Stanton]

A bell rang as Miriam entered the room, alerting Will to her presence. The smell of lit, aromatic candles -- lavender, if she wasn't mistaken -- filled the air, and some soft, relaxing music was playing from some speakers in the corner. This was clearly one of Will's calmer moments.

"Oh, hello again, Miriam!" Will smiled as she came in. He was dressed in a loose t-shirt and slacks, both cut fairly short to show off some muscularity in his arms and legs. He sat, cross-legged, on a masseur's table in the center of the room, rocking slightly from side to side.

"Always a pleasure....Normally a pleasure," he corrected himself, with a small chuckle. "We're glad you came back."

[Miriam Bell]

"Of course. I said I was going to try and help you. How are you? Aside from being a little too honest about the effects of my presence."

[Will Stanton]

"We're....trying to keep ourselves busy," Will nodded. "It's still a nightmare up in here," he said, pointing to his head. "And if anything, our voices are growing louder.

So we're trying something a little more zen at the moment, punctuated by points of letting it all out. It's...an ongoing process."

He popped himself up with his hands, hanging for a moment above the table, before hopping off entirely.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam nods. "If it's at least the right direction then I think my idea could work. I don't know how to make it stick yet, but I... figured we should test it out first anyway."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, we're not sure it's the right direction or not. We're just trying to do what comes naturally," he said, motioning for her to come and lie on the table.

[Miriam Bell]

"Balancing 'zen' and letting it all out makes me think it'll mesh well with your gut feeling." she says as she walks over to the table and after a moment's hesitation shrugs slightly and undoes her top before lieing down. When in Rome. Besides, with how his power relates to body structure Will probably gives one hell of a massage.

[Will Stanton]

"Well, lay it on us," Will said. "At the very least, no harm comes in talking about things."

He began to work on her shoulders, firmly yet precisely beginning to work out the kinks.

"We're a little concerned that we haven't quite found our balance yet. We're beginning to worry that it might be beyond us, and good heavens, you are like ice. No circulation, one supposes."

[Miriam Bell]

"None. Like never feeling warm, right down to the core." she says before changing topics swiftly.

"Way I figure, you need a covenant with yourself. To let those aspects stretch their legs independently and incorporate all they did and felt and remember merge back into the whole. But if they're to not vie for dominance the 'whole' would have to remain... neutral. A repository of Will they can return to."

[Will Stanton]

Will was silent for a moment, and stopped massaging Miriam.

He walked over to a shelf on the wall, popping open a bottle, sniffing it, closing it, and grabbing a different one before walking back to the table.


"I don't know," he finally said, pouring some oil on his hands and rubbing them together. "You talk like there's more than one of us. How can we have a...covenant, you said? With ourself?"

The massage resumed, and this time, Miriam would feel warmth, as Will worked at rubbing some heating oil in as he went -- perhaps not a replacement for the bitter cold inside, but a sensation she wouldn't have had much of ever since she had been bitten.

[Miriam Bell]

The content sigh she lets out indicates her appreciation for the heat and she rolls her shoulders to try and relax them.

"There isn't really more than one of you. At least I don't think so. Which is the problem, isn't it? You're trying to be more than one Will but right now it's all a hodge-podge mess."

[Will Stanton]

Will continued the massage lower down, spreading the heat along Miriam's back as he worked out some of the kinks in her muscles.

"It's...very disconcerting. There are voices in our head, all the time. Shouting, yelling, screaming. They don't want to be quiet. It takes all of our willpower to not...let them go.

It was quieter in the countryside. It was even quieter when you knocked us out."

[Miriam Bell]

"That's why I was thinking... what if you could have both? You rest in the quiet, zen, hopefully happy and content because your purpose is to let the parts of you that want or need out spring forth. As many as you want or can handle."

[Will Stanton]

Will tensed up for just a moment, then continued the massage.

"Flowstone had...well, I guess you'd call it a giant vat. Of Him. To dispense as she saw fit."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam doesn't know what exactly Will is talking about, but she can glimpse enough from Will's thoughts to get a good enough feeling.

"I can try to come up with something else if that hits a little too close to bad memories..."

[Will Stanton]

"Flowstone was the evil version of our wife," Will explained. "And, for quite a while afterwards, whenever we'd look at her, we'd see...her.

And Legion was the evil version of us. What was it you called me? A simp? Well, you should have met him.

We're....concerned. That that future is...inevitable."

[Miriam Bell]

"So what if you're cut from the same cloth. I certainly know what I could be capable of but I like to think it's making me strive to be better. As if that somehow proves the other version of me wrong."

[Will Stanton]

"It's hard to know what we want," Will sighed, continuing to work on Miriam's back. "You make it sound so simple; something to push against and fight against. But we don't even know what's happening to us -- not really, at any rate.

In our weeks in here, we've found ourselves wanting everything. Things we thought were sure about us...aren't so clear, anymore. We guess even quiet voices can make themselves heard if they shout loud enough and long enough. And they are shouting so loud, and so long. Tosh suggested dealing with these...things just came with practice. We do not know how much 'practice' we can get.


What did you have in mind?, anyway"

[Miriam Bell]

"Tosh's idea of practice is to never be perfect enough to actually commit to doing anything."

"It was that perfect stillness that gave me that basis of an idea. Like a smooth mirror surface you can find peace and quiet in while I give you a frame. A literal one, made from my mental constructs to help you form whatever version of Will you wish to send out through the mirror."

[Will Stanton]

"...What, like some kind of...Will soap bubble?

Can you even keep your mental constructs around that long?"

[Miriam Bell]

"A... oh, yes I suppose you could look at it that way. The permanence is... a work in progress. I've done it before but I'm still trying to figure out how exactly I managed."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, as you can see, we're still very much a work in progress, too," Will sighed, gesturing at the room. "Progress, indeed, but very much a work.

We are getting to the point where we do not collapse immediately, which is promising, we guess."

[Miriam Bell]

"If you'll let me, I'd like to try my plan, see if it'll even work."

[Will Stanton]

Will paused for a moment, looking off into space.

"We're willing to give it a shot, as long as you don't think there's serious risk."

[Miriam Bell]

"I don't even know how exactly it's possible I'm making mental constructs real, so if I'm honest I have no earthly idea what could go wrong. Do I think it'll be fine? Yes. Do I know? Hardly."

[Will Stanton]

"We always find you so reassuring, Miriam," Will deadpanned.

He slowly walked across the room, picked up one of the lit candles, and stared into the flame for a moment.

"Even when acted upon by an outside force, we tend to be able to recover," he mused, holding his hand over the flame for a moment. "And the clarity it can bring is difficult - perhaps impossible -- to replicate." He paused for another moment, silently, and then turned back to Miriam.

"What do we need to do? What sort of material do you need?"

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam sits up and pulls up her top against her chest as she swings her legs over the side of the table.

"Mirrored glass, I suppose? I don't know how mirrors are made. I think what's more important is that it's all of you." she adds with a pointed glance around the room.

[Will Stanton]

Will thought for a second.

"All of us? We lent Tosh a computer, so he could do some analysis. Is that going to be a problem?

There's also the issue of some of the gifts we gave last year, but we suppose those bits are old enough as to not be trouble."

[Miriam Bell]

"I'm pretty sure the gifts aren't a problem. I have no idea about the computer. Probably not? The whole idea is that you'll be able to absorb the parts you split off back in, so if that ends up being a problem the whole idea is probably flawed. I really just want all of you that are in my range so I don't have to split my attention."

[Will Stanton]

"Right. Going for the big swing right off the bat - that makes sense.

It will take a few minutes for us to get everything together," he added, tossing Miriam a towel. "But we shall endeavor to make the process...swift."

[Miriam Bell]

"Take your time. Neither of us are going to die of old age." she says as she cleans herself up and gets properly dressed again.

[Will Stanton]

As Will waited for Miriam to be done, he slowly walked around the room, taking things down one at a time. He blew out the candles, and gently placed them in the blob of clay in the backcorner of the parlor. He removed the little bell from above the door, softly tinkling it before placing it in the clay.

Other things, he was rougher with. Ripping up the carpet required a bit more raw effort, cutting it into smaller patches so it could be ripped off the floor. The massage table creaked as Will roughly pushed it along, groaning under the stress of it being moved.

As he continued shoving things into an ever-growing grey blob, he began to be helped by some of the things around him -- the bottles on the shelf rolled themselves over, the paint flecked from the walls, all by themselves.

Finally, with the room back to being almost entirely bare, Will took the towel back from Miriam, pausing to sniff it a bit. "We think that's about as thorough as we're going to get, considering," he said, eying Miriam appraisingly. "Most of the rest of us would be out of even your range, we imagine, or will be fading fast."

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam watches, fascinated by the sheer amount of activity as the room disassembles itself and retreats back into the clay.

"Seeing how that barely encompasses the room, yeah. Sam's the one with the ludicrous range."

[Will Stanton]

"Well, there might be traces left in the oil, but that can't be helped now," Will said, placing the towel on his shoulder and walking towards the mass of clay.

"The show is yours now, Miriam. Most of us trusts you. Do your best," he said, stepping in to the clay and sinking, eventually disappearing beneath the surface.

Miriam was left alone in a stripped room with a boulder of silly putty, a far change from the warm and peaceful massage parlor which had existed not five minutes prior.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam folds her legs underneath herself and sits down on the bare floor in front of the clay, placing her hands on it and letting her fingers sink into it a little.

"Okay, here goes..." she says, taking a steadying breath and letting her mind spread out, seeking out Will's. And as she did at the farm, she calms her thoughts like an expanse of water, thoughts rippling the surface like drops and with each breath smoothing out, settling until the surface is so clear it's simply a perfect mirror. Here and there thought-droplets still fall but simply bounce on the surface tension once or twice before they're absorbed into the stillness. And then she begins letting the mirror-lake spread from her mind to Will's, hands pushing down on the clay and flattening it out against the floor.

[Will Stanton]

If anything, Will's mind is busier than she had ever felt it before -- busier than it was on the farm; busier than it was in her room. The weeks spent in isolation hadn't helped there; if anything, the problem had only deepened. And now that all of Will was back together again, it was like gunfire in his head. Intrusive thoughts. Obsessive thoughts. The scars of trauma, paved over from time, exposed.

But Miriam had been practicing, too. And Will was clay, after all -- even metaphorically, clay was meant to be shaped and molded. The stillness rippled out against Will's barrage of thoughts, like a blanket over a roaring fire. It took concentration, and it took more effort than previously, but Miriam's stillness began to smother the flames.

The giant clay lump shrunk a little as Will's thoughts slowed down -- still rather large, but becoming more manageable all the time. And as Will flattened, the clay began to take on a mirrored surface, much like the pancake Miriam had made in the barn -- shiny and reflective. Or, well, almost reflective, because as Miriam looked down into it, it was Will's face looking back at her -- her clothing, her hairstyle, her expression, but in Will's form.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam tries her best not to let what's happening in front of her eyes distract her. Facsimiles of her reflection keep cropping up lately, first Laura, now this. Like that superstition of learning a new word and coming across it repeatedly. The tangent her sort-of reflection sends her thoughts on ripples across her mental surface and disturbs her work, but this time Will's roiling thoughts are pushing against them from the other side as well. Keeping the delicate balance is getting harder, thoughts slipping and the more things go wrong the harder it is to keep a calm mind.

She slams her flat palms down on Will and spreads them wide. Forcefully. Creating a smooth spot between them from the tension to give her something to stay grounded on.

[Will Stanton]

Slamming her hands on Will caused ripples and shimmers to go through the surface at first, disrupting, if only for a moment, her unusual reflection. Even through the ripples, she can see Will's (her?) face scrunching up, trying to focus and concentrate, trying to maintain order in the chaos.

Sliding her hands across the cool surface, Miriam stretched the mirror out like cloth, creating tension, physically forcing the ripples to stop -- an area of control and command, of imposed order, stretching it taut.

Her palms sank a little bit into the mirror -- it wasn't strictly solid; it was semi-permeable, and she could see the cool reflective surface popping up between her fingers as they sank a little bit deeper. And, outside the smooth spot, Will continued to expand somewhat, taking up more of the floor. More of the floor around her.

[Miriam Bell]

The tension is good. Guidelines, to maintain the calm. She focuses on that, trying not to let the rampant growth of Will beyond that make her panic. One thing at a time. She reaches into herself, for the ideas and plans she'd mulled over, the framework for maintaining, regulating, structuring. She just has to make some adjustments on the fly so it'll fill the role her hands are taking up right now. Maintain the right kind of tension so the mirror doesn't buckle or shatter. Slowly an elaborate wooden frame pushes out from the floor underneath Will, catching two corners of the smoothed out surface and raising it up as the two prongs fold and try to connect to each other. The whole assembly is jittery, lacking a connected top and the entire bottom, balanced precariously. If Miriam was alive she'd be sweating, her muscles tensed up. Like trying to thread a needle from ten feet away in a storm.