#flashbacks cw

He ends up taking a walk. He walks around the back of the building and he keeps walking along the wall of the shopping complex and every time he blinks too long he’s not anywhere at all so instead he just keeps taking stock of what’s around him.

Grass, concrete, dandelions. Sunlight, shadow, sky.

By the time he gets back to the car, Mal’s already there with bubble tea, squinting against the sun and leaning against the hood. He smiles easy and offers out Cass’ drink. Like he hasn’t been waiting for ten minutes. Like Cass didn’t disappear with no explanation. 

They get into the car in silence, strapping up their seat-belts, and Mal doesn’t turn on the car for a bit, pretending to fiddle with something on his phone. He’s good like that. Doesn’t ask, but always leaves space. 

“There were other boys,” Cass says eventually, staring out the windscreen, biting at his thumbnail. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Mal shift a little in his seat, kinda turning to face him. 

“Yeah?”

Mal says it like it’s something he doesn’t already know. He doesn’t already know it, not this, but he thinks he does, and so it’s nice anway. Mal thinks Cass is talking about the other boys at the Estate, who he knows about just fine, but he still says yeah? like it’s some new information and even though he’s misunderstood, Cass appreciates the gesture.

Cass takes a breath, in and out, and remembers what Tahlia says about releasing his jaw, letting the muscles in his shoulders relax. It helps and he doesn’t know why but he doesn’t need to know why because it does. 

“I don’t mean Christopher’s boys,” he clarifies, after a heavy beat. “I mean there were other... there were other men. Men who, um... who kept... other boys. The same way Christopher kept me.”

There’s a long, still silence.  If Cass listens he can hear Mal’s breath hitch. Internally, he flinches.

“Sorry. I don’t want to-”

“No, you’re fine,” Mal assures, stopping him before the run-away train starts. “Keep going if you want to. Or stop. Both are fine.”

Cass nods, squeezing his eyes shut for a sec, hands gripping his seat belt like it’s a lifeline. Maybe it is today.

“They, um,” he has to stop and take another breath. “They had it worse than me. I think. I mean, I know–”

“Mate, you know that’s not something you can-”

“No, I mean it,” he says, turning to look Mal in the eye. “I really mean it. They were treated like… They wore, um. They had to wear…” he makes a gesture around his throat when he thinks words are gonna fail him and then- “Like dogs.”

Mal takes a big, deep breath in and for a second, Cass doesn’t think he’s gonna exhale ever again. But then he does. “Did seeing the collars in the store make you remember?”

“Yeah,” Cass says, frowning and wiping at his brow with the back of his hand. “Not that I forget really. Ever. But it’s usually kinda…”

He trails off and his eyes flutter closed, makes another gesture.

“In the backwaters?” Mal offers up. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, and it’s-”

He can feel something welling up. Feels his breath starting to pick up and he closes his eyes and lets his body take over. Sometimes it's better to just let the feelings come. Let his body sort it out. It helps, somehow, to just feel the panic run him through instead of trying to squash it or push it away. It stops the numbness from setting in.

“M’fine,” he mumbles as reassurance though it comes out high and squeaking. He presses his hand to his eyes, elbow resting on the sill of the car window, and the breathing switches from steady to laboured. From even to quick.

“I know you are, mate,” Mal says, voice soft. Cass is certain that if he were to open his eyes and look down, the man’s hand would be offered out on the console, to grab hold of if he wanted, to leave if he needed. He doesn’t know when it started being a thing they all did for him — Mal, Josiah, Lou, whoever – but it nearly brings him to tears every fucking time. Today he leaves it. 

The breathing evens itself out in a minute or so, and Mal’s there waiting for him as it does. Cass feels tears on his cheek before he feels much else, and the headache starting quick behind his eyes. “What am I meant to do with that? What am I… how am I meant to deal with that?”

“We’ll figure it out,” is all Mal says. 

Cass sniffs, swipes his cheeks dry. More tears come and he lets them. He takes Mal’s hands and closes his eyes again as he feels the other man squeeze it. He cries, breath quiet and hitching in little bursts, and when that finally evens out, “Do you think any of them are still alive?”

There’s a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, mate.”

“Please don’t lie to me.”

And Mal never does anyway. He’s good like that. He shrugs. “Best guess? Probably not, no. But you’re here. And that wouldn’t have been my best guess either.”

Cass kinda laughs. The best way you can when you’re already halfway through crying, anyway. “Yeah. And you’re here too, I guess.”

Mal closes his eyes with a smile and a breathy laugh, shaking his head. “Yeah. And I’m here too.”

“Sorry, I’m not saying-”

“I know you’re not saying,” he says. “You’re all good.”

Cass stares out the windscreen for a long while, chewing his lip. His head feels waterlogged and heavy, like he’s just been drowned. Or not quite. It aches more when you’ve been drowned. And your throat and nose burn more.

“I hope they’re not alive,” he says, watching a pair of birds hop along the roof of the shopping complex. His voice comes out clearer than he’d expected it to.  “I hope they’re— I mean, I don’t… I don’t want them to be dead, but I don’t want… If they’re still... I hope they’re not-”

“Yeah,” Mal says. Righting the run-away train again with a word. Another sigh. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Me too.”

There’s a long, heavy silence that settles over them that lasts maybe a full minute.

Cass watches a mum walk by with her kids, one sitting in the front of the trolley she’s pushing while the other one skips backwards, walking beside. He can just barely hear the bubbling of her voice. She sounds happy. Excited. It makes him smile just a little, corner of his mouth twitching up even though he still kinda feels wrung dry. Up on the roof, another pair of birds join the first. 

Mal gives his hand a departing squeeze and then lets it go, turning on the engine and sticking the car in gear. He pulls out of the lot and reaches across to hand Cass his phone as they turn onto the freeway, AUX cord already plugged in, ready to go. “You wanna put the music on?”

“Yeah,” he says. He scrolls through and picks a playlist that looks like an easy mix of not too heavy and not too happy and sets it to play. “Hey, I’m, um… I’m s-”

“Don’t be,” Mal says, with a quick little glance across at him. “Thank you for telling me.”

The guitar riff of the song filters out the speakers and Mal turns it up just a little, humming a long with the melody. And then –

“Thalia tomorrow?”

Cass nods. “Yeah.”

“Wanna order in lunch after you get home?”

For most, that would have been a compelling enough indicator to stop. However, someone as spiteful as Oswald would loathe the very concept of being affected to the core in such a manner. It simply doesn’t sit well with his control issues. Thus the device played a prominent part in his subsequent interrogations and various purposes for a time.