Closed.

[11calls]

Who: Alex Reagan and Simon Reese.
What: Alex knows that Simon was there listening to her conversation with Strand and she’s calling him out.
When: Immediately following Alex and Strand talking.
Warnings: Stalking, demons, children in danger from demons, murder, the end of the world and everything else TBT-y in nature.


The conversation with Strand had felt like a small battle in a long war that he’d been in with Alex since he’d arrived here. While Alex wants to be hopeful about things getting easier once he actually listens to the show and the two of them are on the same page, right now she doesn’t have a lot of faith in it. Richard Strand, after all, can be famously contrary to her, and she knows that it’s only something that’s more likely to increase once he knows everything and realizes just how much she knows and how she discovered it. Frankly, Alex is aware of the fact that giving him the entire show is a quite good way for him to end up with ammunition to use against her just as much as he seems to now, but he deserves to know. More than that, if Richard Strand wants to condemn her for something, Alex would vastly prefer that he does it for her actual actions and not just what he perceives her transgressions to be for knowing what she does about him.

It’s a lot and Alex is just hoping that it doesn’t increase the animosity between Strand and Simon that he’d mentioned before. Strand has never been Simon’s favorite person and Alex is aware of that and since he’s been here, she’s also becoming more aware of the fact that he thinks that he needs to defend her or whatever. Being a grown ass woman, the thought that someone feels like he needs to defend and protect her chafes a bit, but Simon is the one who has all of the answers and he has been for a long time. What Alex wishes that Strand would understand is that she gets how much it sucks that you can only understand some things from your future from what the person ahead of you knows. The difference, Alex supposes is that Strand has trained himself not to believe in anything (even her, some tortuous part of her brain reminds her. It’s a familiar pain that’s leaned upon like a bruise but in the end it’s an old one and she knows how to deal with it.) and Alex can’t help but to believe.

Alex Reagan is a believer and she always has been. She always will be.

Because Alex is a believer, and because she knows Simon, as soon as she steps into the hallway that both Strand’s cabin and her own open onto, she just sighs and says. “Alright, Simon, come out. I know you were listening.”

Comments

[11calls]

Even at the beginning of this, when Alex had still had doubts about the nature of the things that the show was uncovering, she'd never thought that Simon was a deranged murderer. When Nic had showed her the video of Simon being interviewed by the psychologist, she'd had far more empathy for the eleven year old who claimed to murder his parents than she'd had for the man who was being paid to try and help him. Despite the way that Simon had been an asshole to her when she'd interviewed him after he'd gotten himself drawn to the attention of Alex and her show, she'd not thought that he was a deranged killer. While she didn't know quite what to believe with what had happened with him and Trent (even if she did know that the things that Strand had tried to use to explain what had happened was bullshit) she didn't think that he was evil or something.

As the murders had piled up, as she'd fallen deeper and deeper under the spell of the spiderweb of a story around her, Alex Reagan still hadn't thought that Simon was nothing more than a deranged murderer. He was doing it to protect kids like him (like them really, which isn't a thought that sits comfortably in Alex's stomach and she doesn't think it ever will) and to stop the manipulations to end the world. Someone needed to do it, and Alex is aware of it, even if she's not a violent person herself. Of course there's the uncomfortable way that she knows that Simon has been using her show as at least some of the way to find more parts of the conspiracy (like Maddie Franks) but she's not going to examine that too hard right now.

If the Strand here was the one who had been from the same place in the timeline as Alex was (or Simon himself of course) she's pretty sure that it would be easier to convince the skeptic that Simon wasn't deranged. Of course she may not have been able to convince him completely, but there might have at least have been a better chance for it. Alex Reagan, at least has never met a challenge that she's said no too, so she's not about to let this notion of Strand's go uninterrogated. "I will do everything that I can to make him see you as more than that, Simon. I promise." And then because Alex is Alex, she also adds a bad joke. "Even if I need to sit in on your sessions with a spray bottle and spray him every time he's an asshole."

[bilocates]

Strand's unfounded explanations were often as wild as the tales of the supernatural he was trying to debunk. More so, given he was willing to make his own wild leaps of logic based on flimsy evidence at best when the evidence presented to him otherwise was much stronger. It was a large part of why Simon wrote him off so early. Richard Strand wasn't going to help, not on his own, but Alex Reagan, well... she could be reached. She would help him preserve sunsets.

He knew she understood. All the way back to Maddie Franks he knew, deep down she knew he was right. What he was doing was necessary. Alex understood and that's why he could trust her, not only with this but in general. She wasn't judging him the way others would and did. She understood that he didn't do what he did out of some sick pleasure, only necessity.

He didn't want their world to be lost. Neither did Alex.

Her agreement was met with a faint, tired smile. "I know you will," Alex was good on her word like that. "He might protest, I think that's a great idea." Something of a bigger grin crossed his features at that. Simon thought Alex's bad jokes were great.