Django Durango

September 6th, 1964

Haworth made concerted efforts not to get comfortable with his life in the glass cell. Getting comfortable was dangerously close to getting lazy. Getting lazy would leave him unprepared to take an opportunity as it presented itself. So every morning, he dressed in his full attire just as he would have were he at home – or as if he had full intention of leaving Haworth Labs that day – before Dr. Hughes came around to dose him with Coconut.

Some mornings, though, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

When the lights flicked on overhead today, the light filtering in under the blanket he always pulled up over his head as he slept exactly because the lights flicked on so abruptly, Haworth eased into wakefulness and an oppressive gloom. He woke with that feeling often so he got out of bed like he always did and dressed before his usual morning audience arrived in spite of it.

Sometimes the Coconut would help, pushing the dreary feeling into the background. By the third day of the same dosage, however, the odds were in favor of the morosity winning out. He’d been in a sour mood since yesterday’s visit with Verloc, brief moment of fun working out that code with Gemma notwithstanding. His patient notes had really said it all. Admitted November 10th, 1960, the day his entire world inverted on itself.

At the time, he’d suffered a grief so intense that he couldn’t eat. He’d lost not only his liberties, his laboratories, and his reputation as he later gleaned from the nurses and orderlies. He’d lost Anton. Or rather, the version of him that Verloc had presented. Haworth wished he could blame the Joy for it. One of its most prevalent side effects was a perception that gave everything around you the benefit of the doubt. It didn’t account for his time living with Verloc in his house though. He hadn’t been on Joy for most of that. At least, not enough for it to excuse the difference. It was impossible to reconcile his bright if prickly protégé with the man who locked him in this cell.

But Verloc certainly seemed to be trying to.

Now that Haworth had to see him every day to cover for his Crash doses, he was faced with this strange paradox of a person who was keeping him prisoner but was trying to convince Haworth to treat him as the friend he once was despite that. It could be tempting sometimes, when Verloc said or did something that reminded him of how they used to be, but on the whole it just unearthed that grief of loss Haworth thought he’d already worked through in his sober years separated by the glass.

Nurse Burke came in with his breakfast tray and set it on the table before him.

“Are you feeling all right?” she asked. “You look a little… sad.”

“Sad? In a Downer rehabilitation program? Perish the thought!” Haworth teased, forcing a little grin for her lest she recommend an increased dosage. He decided to throw in an excuse for good measure. “I’m not sad, dear. It just an old rugby injury acting up. What’s the weather like today?” If it wasn’t raining now, it was going to be soon so it was an excuse that was always valid. The nurses also conveniently forgot all about the fake rugby injury when Haworth no longer needed to call upon it.

“Ooh, you played rugby? Oh, I bet you looked awfully handsome in the scrum back then,” Nurse Burke said. More like in the stands, Haworth thought, but why ruin the fantasy for her?

“Are you saying I don’t look handsome now?” Haworth asked in further jest.

“Oh you!” Nurse Burke chided playfully. “It was cloudy when I came in. It’ll probably rain today if it hasn’t already.”

“I thought so,” Haworth said, giving his knee a rub to sell her on it. “I landed on it the wrong way once, and then four other blokes landed on it too, so now it always aches when its going to rain.” A bit of story was never amiss either. “Nothing to fret over, I assure you.”

Nurse Burke gave him a sympathetic look and said, “I don’t think Dr. Verloc will let me give you anything for it, but I’ll see if I can’t convince him.”

“You’re a peach,” Haworth told her as she left. When the door shut and the bolt slid on the other side, Haworth looked down at his breakfast and huffed. He wasn’t hungry. He was sad. It was a dampened, academically detached sort of sadness, but it was there nonetheless. It didn’t do to be too sad in here though, not least of all because there was nothing to do about it but mope. If he let on that he was this unhappy, they’d up his dosage again and that was the last thing he wanted before a Crash day.

He drank his grapefruit juice as a small concession to Nurse Burke’s concerns about his vitamin C intake, but left his breakfast otherwise untouched. Taking his jacket off and hanging it on the chair, he toed his shoes back off too. Haworth got back into bed and set his glasses on the dresser. He lay on his stomach, face buried in his pillow. If he was going to spend the day mourning his lot in life, pretending he was sleeping was the best way to disguise it.

Nurse Burke came in half an hour later to collect his tray and found him that way.

“I forgot to ask about aspirin, but if you’re feeling too sick to eat, I’m sure Dr. Verloc would let us give you some Neximide,” Nurse Burke offered.

“It’s just my knee, dear. Don’t worry about it,” Haworth insisted, turning in bed to face her and propping himself up on an elbow, rallying enough to look convincing. He was relieved she forgot to ask about the aspirin. He wouldn’t have to make excuses about it to Verloc later. “If I just keep it warm and straightened out, it’s not so bad.”

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “But you’ll tell me if you need anything?”

“Yes,” Haworth agreed. As she let herself back out, he lay back down and pulled the blankets over his head to dim the light.

—

“Harry? Harry!” Haworth was jolted out of his brooding by the door slamming shut and Verloc yanking the blanket back. Haworth started at the loud thud and flinched at the sudden exposure to the lights.

“Jesus, Harry,” Verloc said. “I thought-” he stopped himself and exchanged his relief for annoyance “I hate how you sleep like that, with the blankets over your head. It makes you look like a cadaver in the morgue.”

“You know what they say,” Haworth said, rubbing his eyes and rolling over to sit upright. “Dress for the job you want.”

“Don’t joke like that,” Verloc snapped.

“Oh, do lighten up, Anton.” Haworth reached for his glasses on the dresser and put them on. “You’ve taken anything I could kill myself with in here.”

“Everything you’ve tried with so far,” Verloc qualified bitterly.

“I do have all day to think on the problem, but I haven’t come up with any solutions for at least a year now,” Haworth said. This was a simplified estimation of his efforts. He had thought of other possibilities, but his track record of failure and that anything he used to try to kill himself was removed afterward made him hesitate to act on these remaining ideas. His suicide attempts thus far had been calculated risks in the hope of ending his own life without making it any less comfortable if he didn’t succeed. Now that he was on Coconut most of the time, he couldn’t formulate plans to kill himself anyway. “Aside from sleeping my way to death faster, that is,” he said through a yawn. “I’d have thought you’d stop worrying about it.”

“So that’s your plan then? You’re trying to starve yourself again?” Verloc accused. “Or is this just a ploy to force my hand with Dr. Hughes?”

Haworth squinted in bleary incredulity at Verloc and this volley of allegations out of nowhere.

“What?”

The look of affronted scorn dropped from Verloc’s face. A brief flicker of embarrassment replaced it, then it was supplanted by the more usual look of peevishness.

“The nurse said you didn’t eat your breakfast.”

“What of it?” Haworth asked. One missed meal was hardly cause for an interrogation.

“You stop eating when you’re angry with me.”

Haworth let out a little bark of amusement at that. “Anton, there has not been a waking moment since you put me in here in which I was not angry with you,” Haworth told him. “I’m always angry with you. Furious. I could kill you right now if your damned Coconut didn’t make it seem so exhausting.” Verloc swallowed in nervous reflex at that. “But I only stop eating when you drug my food.”

“I didn’t!” Verloc leapt to deny.

“No, you did not,” Haworth concurred. “Therefore, I have not stopped eating. I simply wasn’t hungry this morning.”

“Are you not feeling well?”

“I’m fine.”

“If it will help, I could get you a Neximide tablet or some salti-“

“I’m fine.”

They sat in their silent impasse for a moment, before Verloc chanced to try again.

“If there’s something I can do for you-“

“You want to do something for me?” Haworth snapped. “You can stop coming in here and acting as if we’re still friends. Or indeed that we ever were.” He crossed his arms and leaned on his knees, the fury leaving him just as quickly as it arose. “It was always just an act and when you come in here and try to trick me into thinking it wasn’t… It’s like being haunted by a ghost.”

“I am exactly who I always was,” Verloc said, irate. “And you were on so much Joy, there’s no accounting for how distorted your memory might be. The fact is I am the only real friend you had.”

“I need a friend like you like I need a hole in the head,” Haworth harrumphed.

“You were lucky I was here to look out for you,” Verloc vented. “Anyone else would’ve taken advantage, if they weren’t all on Joy too.”

“Really? I don’t feel very lucky,” Haworth said. He leaned lazily on one elbow. “You certainly seem to be though. You were in the right place at the right time, weren’t you? Miss Byng just happened to pick you to put in my place, did she?”

Verloc looked away and huffed.

“You cannot honestly be angry about that. You were indisposed and she had to pick someone. I was the best choice. And you were going to leave me in charge of the labs anyway.”

“No, I’m not angry about that,” Haworth drawled. And he truly wasn’t, for the most part. “I just find it all very convenient for you. Almost as convenient as how I suddenly went insane once I was well enough to see that you were trying to trap me in your house so I couldn’t return to my labs.”

“I was not trying to trap you in the house,” Verloc protested too much. “I told you, the security measures were to keep Downers out.”

“They keep Downers in too.”

“Fine, if you want to put it that way, yes. The point of the security measures was to keep you and the Downers separate of each other. And if you understood how it is out there anymore, you would have been grateful for that.”

“You haven’t exactly been forthcoming about how it is out there,” Haworth pointed out.

“You haven’t exactly given me the opening to be,” Verloc countered.

He supposed that was true. The closest thing to an invitation to tea that he’d extended Verloc in his time here was hurling his teacups at the glass as he walked by. That said, Verloc seemed to do his best to keep news of the world beyond his cell from him. The nurses and orderlies were hesitant to discuss anything beyond the weather and the day’s duties. They didn’t even get Uncle Jack on the loudspeakers that ran at all waking hours, only recorded music. Gemma’s outburst after her first dose of Coconut had been the only real news he’d heard since he’d been locked away.
As such, this tack Verloc was taking now was intriguing. Did he genuinely want the opportunity to say what it was he claimed to be so concerned about or was this just a ruse to put the blame for the lack of communication on him?

“Explain it to me then,” Haworth said.

Verloc froze, looking very put on the spot. Haworth knew he hadn’t expected to be given the chance to explain himself. It was Haworth’s usual way to just pick and jab at him until he grew frustrated and stormed out. Verloc checked his watch and frowned at it.

“I don’t have time. I have to check in on Mr. Plantagenet.”

“Convenient,” Haworth said, rolling his eyes. Just more lies and evasions then, an attempt at redirection. It was disappointing.

Verloc opened the door to let himself out, but he lingered in the doorway. “If you really didn’t skip breakfast just to spite me,” he asked, “then will you eat something at lunch? I know you’re not going to eat until tomorrow after that.”

The immediate response that leapt to mind was giving Verloc a non-committal “maybe” and letting him agonize over it for the few hours between now and then. Haworth knew perfectly well he was going to eat lunch. He was growing hungry already now and Verloc was correct in that he was not going to eat at dinner or breakfast when he had a Crash injection coming the next day. He’d have to eat at lunch or else he’d be in for an even more miserable time than usual. Verloc surely knew that too and that he was chancing Haworth’s outright refusal by bringing it back up and yet he did all the same.

Rather than debate the meaning of Verloc’s want to ask after his lunch plans any further, Haworth just took it as an opportunity to throw him for a loop again.

“Yes,” Haworth said as he took his glasses off again, set them back on the dresser, and lay back down.

Verloc was shocked to get a cooperative answer, but had the sense not to say anything to ruin it. He nodded to himself as he left.

Haworth pulled the blanket back over his head again.

—

He was permitted to “sleep” through shower time, but Nurse Burke nudged his shoulder to “wake” him after she set his lunch tray down on his tea table.

“Sorry to bother, but Dr. Verloc said you promised to eat lunch,” she said.

“‘Promised’ is a rather loaded way of putting it,” Haworth grumbled but he threw back the blankets once again. Nurse Burke was a little put out by his ornery attitude, but brightened back up when she saw he was heaving himself out of bed.

Once he moved to his table, looking sloppy and rumpled before his plate, Nurse Burke smiled. Satisfied that she’d done her job adequately, she let herself back out of his cell.

When he was halfway through his sandwich, Verloc passed by the window. He didn’t stop to look in, as he was trying to look engrossed in the papers on a clipboard he was carrying. Still, Haworth could see Verloc trying to spy on him out of the corner of his eye. He was checking on him, to make sure he was eating. Haworth had half a mind to set his sandwich down right then and there. Verloc probably couldn’t actually see him out of the corner of his eye like that though. He wore glasses. All he was likely to have caught a glimpse of in his unaided peripheral vision was a blurry form that could have been a man eating a sandwich. Though Haworth was well-practiced at cutting off his own nose to spite his face by this late date, he reasoned with himself that two and half missed meals before a Crash injection would probably feel magnitudes worse than just the two even and kept eating.

He finished his sandwich and, when she came to collect his tray, Nurse Burke was pleased to see a clean plate. After she left, he stayed at his tea table and pondered what Verloc had said earlier.

Ever since Verloc started this program and necessarily gave himself the opening to talk to Haworth again, their conversations often included vague allusions to the town and how it was not as Haworth understood it to be. That Verloc never actually explained what these circumstances were only suggested to Haworth that Verloc was lying about it. It was all just part of this ploy that Verloc kept trying to pull, to try and treat their relationship as unchanged in spite of the damage Verloc had imposed on it.

Verloc was not lying about one thing though. Haworth didn’t know how things were anymore.

But Gemma did.

Haworth bolted up from his chair and stood before the window, rapping on the glass with more force than he meant to use. His knock startled Gemma, who had been laying on her back with her head at the foot of the bed. She rolled over on her side and turned an annoyed scowl on him, but it fell away to concern when she saw how agitated he was. Haworth gave her an apologetic look and she rolled out of bed to stand at the window too.

As she stood there waiting to see what he wanted, Haworth found himself paralyzed by the sheer number of things he could ask. He really had no clue where to even begin and he struggled to settle on a single question. The scope of his inquiry was so large, but their method of communication was limited that he felt it only polite to pick something specific. All the while Gemma waited for him to say something, her white-masked face smiling despite her concerned eyes.

Haworth frowned, pointed at his own face, circling it a few terse circuits, then gave her the questioning shrug.

Gemma shifted self-consciously at the question as she thought about the most expeditious way to explain it. Instead of signalling, she simply took her mask off and showed it to him. She looked strange without it, not least of all because she now lacked the uniform smile that everyone around him except Verloc sported. Her bare face was a shade paler than the skin around her eyes. Without her mask on, Gemma’s mouth sat in a flat, cheerless line.

Seeing Gemma’s face without her mask was like recognizing the one other sane person in an asylum.

She held the mask out towards the glass so he could see the inside of it and pointed specifically to the molding around the mouth. Then she tucked the mask under her arm so she could use the index fingers on both hands to prod her own mouth into a forced smile.

The mask forced the wearer to smile. Haworth didn’t understand why everyone had adopted this trend. It looked terribly uncomfortable to him. He gave Gemma the questioning shrug of Why?.

Gemma frowned and thought for a moment before she put her mask back on to free her hands and started signing at him.

3,2 3,4 4,2 1,1 3,1 1,5

Morale.

Then, Gemma added on to give further explanation:

5,1 1,2 5,4 3,3 2,2

V. Byng.

Ah, that made more sense. Miss Byng had always been a proponent of stiff-upper-lippery. Quite literally these days, it seemed. Forcing people to grin and bear it was exactly the sort of immediate surface solution that she would have liked. Although… that begged the question as to why morale needed to be improved. Harry signaled Morale back at Gemma, gestured in an upward motion with both hands, and gave her the questioning shrug.

Gemma ran her hand through her short hair and grimaced. It must be quite a large question. She took a moment to ponder where to begin before she began signalling.

1,2 1,1 1,4 2,4 3,4 5,4 1,2 1,1 4,4 1,3 2,3 1,5 4,3

Bad Joy batches.

3,2 3,4 4,2 1,5 1,4 3,4 5,2 3,3 1,5 4,2 4,3

More Downers.

4,3 1,3 1,1 4,2 1,3 1,5 2,1 3,4 3,4 1,4

Then she pointed at her wrist and mimed checking her watch and looking anxious before signalling some more.

3,3 1,5 5,2 2,1 3,1 1,1 5,1 3,4 4,2

New flavor.

The town was waiting for the new flavor of Joy, Coconut.

They were going to be waiting for a while yet, to judge by how things were going in here, Haworth thought.

Gemma signaled at him some more.

1,1 4,2 1,5 5,4 3,4 4,5 3,4 2,5 1,1 5,4

Are you okay?

He grimaced and looked up aimlessly. Obviously not, but what else was new? She looked worried though and even with her mask, looking too worried would make trouble for her. He shook his head and let out a rueful little chuckle that only he could hear, held his hand to his chest for a moment in the hopes of indicating that the following was a feeling, then began signalling.

4,3 3,4 4,2 4,2 5,4 2,1 3,4 4,2 3,2 5,4 4,3 1,5 3,1 2,1

Sorry for myself.

Haworth glanced away, somewhat abashed about Gemma having noticed his spending all morning moping in bed. Or maybe just that he was bed-wrinkled and had no shoes on, contrary to his usual fastidiousness.

Gemma looked pensive, which created a very curious expression in conjunction with her mask, and then she flashed the V for Verloc at him and then signaled another word at him, concluding with the question shrug.

1,3 4,2 4,5 1,5 3,1

Cruel?

Was Verloc cruel to him? Haworth reflexively shook his head no to the question. To the point, aside from experimenting on him, Verloc made every effort to gild the cage. The way these gestures made Haworth sick with resentment and embarrassment over being treated like some sort of prized pet could have been considered cruel if he thought Verloc was more cunning. He was never the sort to play mind games beyond simple tricks and influences though. His past attempts to make Haworth more comfortable were just about caring for his possessions. He had Haworth exactly where he wanted him; there was no reason not to give him anything he might want. He seemed to want Haworth to accept being stuck as he was and had tried everything he could think of it to encourage him to. As for his current efforts, Haworth assumed there was some reason Verloc wanted to behave like they had in the past and putting on his old act was not intended to dig up the grief of his betrayal like it did. If Verloc was cruel, it was incidental, not intentional.

He could hardly explain all of that to Gemma so he settled on giving her Verloc’s explanation. He gave her the two-fingered V for Verloc, repeated her gesture for “says” from the day before, and pointed at himself before signing:

4,3 1,1 2,1 1,5 2,3 1,5 4,2 1,5

Safe here.

Haworth scowled and signaled further.

3,1 2,4 1,5

Lie.

Gemma decrypted his message, but her face was thoughtful, like she wanted to give Verloc the benefit of the doubt. He could feel a small tinge of anger surface at that. She signaled back at him and gave him the questioning shrug.

4,3 1,1 2,1 1,5 2,1 4,2 3,4 3,2

Safe from?

He gave her an annoyed shake of the head and made the speaking gesture again. He never says.

Gemma considered that. A wily look rose up on her face. She pointed at herself and gave him a wink and grin not unlike those he’d given her yesterday when she asked about Nurse Burke. She thought she could drag it out of him. Haworth had to smile at her audacity. It made him wonder.

He made the V for Verloc and did the wavy hair gesture, specifically looking at his hand as he did it for emphasis, pointed at her, made the speaking gesture again, and finished with the questioning shrug. It took her a minute to figure out what he was asking, if she was asking Verloc about his hair with a particular intent, but the crafty look came back to her face and she nodded.

Haworth gave her an emotionless wink and the questioning shrug. As a trick?

Gemma made a seesaw gesture with her hand. She pointed at her self and then signed:

2,3 1,1 4,2 3,2 3,1 1,5 4,3 4,3

Harmless.

Haworth smiled and nodded with approval. Gemma grinned back, proud of herself.

Just then, Haworth heard the bolt slide on his door. He spun away from the window, not wanting to be caught conversing with Gemma. Nurse Burke came in again. Haworth gave her a quizzical look; it wasn’t time for tea. No one had come to do the hourly rounds yet so she was ahead of schedule.

“You didn’t get to shower earlier so I came to see if you wanted to now,” she explained.

Haworth perked up at that. He was feeling rather muggy after spending all day under the blankets.

“Yes,” he said, putting enough gratitude in his answer to please Nurse Burke. “You’re too kind to think of me.”

“I think some heat and steam might do some good for that knee of yours,” she said, letting him walk ahead of her out the door. Per her inadvertent reminder, Haworth stiffened his “bad” leg so that he walked with a hobble. Petcher was waiting outside, as was standard protocol to ensure test subjects behaved themselves outside their cells. Haworth saw Petcher’s eyes lingering on the fading bruise on his forehead and smirked. Petcher glared but said nothing. The two of them escorted him the short distance down the hall.