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[poetontheinside]

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[credere]

"I'd never seen anywhere like this before the Barge," he remarks quietly. "Not even the parks, really. Ma didn't like us going in those places."

Dens of iniquity, etc.

[poetontheinside]

"What, parks?"

He takes a second to think about it, imagines the amount of tramps and drug users and other weirdos, and has to admit: "Yeah, she probably wasn't wrong about parks. This is nice, though, right? And uh, Fraser took me ice-fishing here, once."

[credere]

"Oh. Was that...fun?"

Because it sounds kind of terrible, honestly.

[poetontheinside]

"Yeah, I hear you," he says, grinning over at him as he digs his hands into his pockets. "It sounds like it sucks, right? Boring as hell. But uh-- I dunno. It was nice. Peaceful, and I don't get peaceful too easy."

And it was nice to spend that time with him, feeling like they were far away from the world. But he's not about to say it like that.

[credere]

"That does sound nice," Credence says quietly, more sincerely. "How long have you been friends?"

[poetontheinside]

"He kind of hated me at first, so maybe a couple months?" He scratches his nose.

"I try not to treat him like the Fraser I know back home. That guy, we've been friends for about a year and a half. But he's not the same guy, so..." So a few months.

[credere]

"So not very long."

He looks ahead of them.

"I told a - a friend," there is no category fit for Peter Nureyev, "that none of my friends have ever come back. But I don't know what I'd do if they did but they'd never known me."

He still hates that he inflicted that on his friends, however briefly.

[poetontheinside]

He shakes his head, then shrugs. Credence is absolutely right, but he hardly feels like his feelings are what matter most here.

"I couldn't see him as another person at first, but I could tell it bothered him a lot. Didn't you hate it when people treated you like someone else, at first?"

[credere]

"I killed Quentin because he kept trying to talk to me like nothing had changed," he say, very quietly. The guilt lingers, still. "And he let me."

[poetontheinside]

"Yeah," he says, softly. "Yeah. I punched a hole in his wall the first day, bet you can't guess why he didn't like me, huh?"

He sounds, and is, ashamed of himself still. At least it worked out, in the end.

[credere]

Whereas Credence just sounds bewildered.

"....Why?"

[poetontheinside]

He looks over at him, making a bewildered face. "Because a guy he didn't know came into his home and punched a hole in his wall?"

[credere]

"No. Why did you punch the hole?"

Come on, Ray.

[poetontheinside]

Oh. That makes more sense.

"I uh... I really got my Hope's up about him being here, y'know? My best friend, on the Barge. And I thought he was a warden. But he wasn't, and he didn't know me, and he got so fucking -- when he wants to, Fraser can get under your skin in no time flat. I guess he wanted to, 'cause he niggled until I lost my temper."

Ergo, hole in wall.

"Patched it up a few months later, though."

[credere]

"You did better than I did," he points out, a little bleakly.

[poetontheinside]

He shrugs, again. "It turned out the same for both of us, right? Eventually."

[credere]

Credence shakes his head.

"Not really. I got my memories back. Things are mostly like they were before, now."

For him and Quentin. Ray and Fraser have to rebuild.

[poetontheinside]

He clearly hadn't thought of it like that yet, and the realization makes him sink into thought for a minute.

"I went back, after you graduated. Did I tell you that?"

[credere]

"....No."

A short, tense silence.

"Did it work? Your deal?"

[poetontheinside]

He didn't want to bring it up, because part of him feels weird about having profited off of someone he calls his friend. In the end, he wouldn't have given it up, thought.

But it's relevant now. He nods, hands dug deep into his jacket pockets. "It worked. She's a free woman, now, Beth. I got the evidence I needed. We did-- me and the Fraser from my world."

[credere]

Credence nods, and offers a tiny flicker of an almost-smile.

"Good. She gets a second chance too, right?"

[poetontheinside]

Something in Ray cracks open when he sees it. There's a reason he told hardly anyone about this, about his deal or about the fact that he went back.

It feels like he couldn't be really happy about it, for a lot of reasons. This being a big one, bigger than he'd realized.

He pulls in a breath and nods. "She deserved it as much as anyone here. You'd have liked her, I think."

[credere]

"Maybe I could meet her sometime. After I have my deal. Iris said she'd take me anywhere I wanted to go."

[poetontheinside]

He looks over at him, now smiling a little himself. "Yeah? I'd really like that. Really."

He's almost forgotten why he started to tell him this at all.

[credere]

Credence nods.

"She said I could go whenever I wanted, but...I'm not leaving until I've earned it," he says solemnly.