Riley's Dream
Riley notices Ben first. Ben's got that important, "I'm solving a centuries' old mystery right now, so shush" look on his face. He's also talking, but Riley can't make out the words. He might as well be saying "wah-wah-wah."
When Ben notices him, he's a few inches away, playing with the objects on a desk he swears wasn't there just a second ago.
"Torture," Ben says, and that Riley hears clearly.
"Excuse me?" he says, glancing at Ben's face, which has changed into his "I'm talking about history now" one. "Torture?"
"Drawing and quartering."
"Ripped apart by horses?" See? He listens. "No thank you."
"Ah, my personal favorite then," Ben smiles and it's so, so cold. "Disembowelment and setting the entrails on fire."
"For me?" Riley pokes his own chest, because Ben's looking at him with a funny, new expression on his face.
"Well, you did commit treason," Ben says, that cold smile back in place.
"Um, no," Riley squeaks, aware that Ben looms over him, and is now holding a curved blade. "I helped you in your quest. If anyone's getting disemboweled, it's you."
"Nonsense, Mr. Poole," the blade glints wickedly, and so do Ben's eyes, "you're a perfect first choice."
"Yeah, about that," Riley says, scooping up one of the knickknacks, and how ironic is it that it's a miniature of Benjamin Franklin encased in plastic-glass stuff? He chucks it at Ben anyway, turning on his heel and running away. He doesn't dare look back in case Ben's chasing him.
After a few moments, he drops to the ground, strangely hard-packed dirt that scrapes his palms when he lands, gasping for breath.
Ben isn't anywhere near him, and he sighs in relief.
"You're not touching it with those filthy hands!" Abigail yells behind him, and he jumps.
"Oh, god," he whimpers. "Oh, you scared me."
"Honestly, Mr. Poole, must you desecrate one of the oldest documents in American history?"
"I'm not touching anything!" Riley protests, glancing at the ground where his hands are still. Underneath them is a document, something he can only see the back of. "Oh, crap," he murmurs, ignoring Abigail's incensed breath on the back of his neck as he turns it over. "Oh double crap."
The Declaration of Independence. Under his hands, his dirt caked hands.
"Here," he says, shoving it at Abigail. She glares at him, and he's reminded why he called her a "mean declaration lady."
"Security!" she cries, and he covers his ears at her piercing shriek. "Over here!" She motions to someone behind him, but when he turns to look, no one is there.
"Okay," she says, dropping to her knees next to him, handing him a pair of latex gloves. "If you are going to do it at all, you might as well do it right."
"But we already did this," he says. "Can't we just skip to the part where we have to figure out the next clue?"
"Security!"
"Ow!" He rubs at his ears. "Please don't do that. I'm not even touching it." He holds up his hands to show her, but she isn't dissuaded, calling for security again and again.
Riley searches the ground and finds that damn Ben Franklin memento again. He throws it at her, lightly though. She laughs when it bounces off her chest, and her next word is, "Security!"
He runs away again, this time checking over his shoulder to make sure she stays exactly where he left her.
"You look relatively intelligent," a voice says when he stops to catch his breath again.
"Oh no," Riley mumbles, staring up at a box seat suspended from a great oak tree. Sitting alone, a pair of binoculars stuck on a stick and a popcorn bag next to him, is Agent Sadusky. "I'm really not very good without my computer," he calls up to him, craning his neck as he tries to figure out how Sadusky got up there in the first place.
"That's all right, you're a brilliant boy. You'll figure it out." Sadusky leans over the edge of the box, dropping down a small basket attached to a thin rope. Inside, Riley finds a Rubik's Cube wrapped in a napkin.
He solves it quickly, replacing it and tugging on the string like he's a fish. He thinks it's an appropriate metaphor; after all, he's just taken Sadusky's bait. Sadusky sends the basket down again, and this time it's one of those Sudoku puzzles Abigail is so fond of.
"I do not have a pencil," Riley remarks, and then yells when Sadusky drops one on his head.
"You have two minutes, Mr. Poole."
Riley finishes it faster than the Rubik's Cube and puts it back in the basket, the pencil too. Sadusky drops down another puzzle, this one a crossword with most of the words filled in.
"Aardvark," Riley says, "axiom." He fills in the missing words and sends it back. "Look, how much longer are you going to do this?"
"Just one more, Mr. Poole," Sadusky says, dropping the basket one last time.
This time, it's a page with scribbled text. Riley sits down to decipher the nearly illegible handwriting, waving a hand at Sadusky's two-minute warning.
The years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
I found myself further and further from my home
And I guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
"What?" Riley mumbles, mouthing the words. "Against the Wind?" He looks up at Sadusky, who nods.
"Now, Mr. Poole," he says slowly, raising the binoculars to his eyes, "I've distracted you long enough. You may proceed."
"Aha!" Ben yells, popping out from behind the tree. Riley screams at his sudden appearance. "Ready?"
"For disembowelment?" Riley backs away, staring at Ben. "Sorry, got another appointment. Maybe some other day." He runs again, picking up his pace when he hears Ben huffing next to him.
"Come on, Riley," Ben whines, "you can't escape me."
So, Riley does the only thing he can think of: he feigns sleep. He drops to the ground, still hard-packed dirt, and curls up, pillowing his head on his arms and keeping his eyes closed. He slows his breathing, even as he feels Ben's hand smooth through his hair. After a few tense moments, Ben leaves, and Riley "wakes up."
He's no longer near the tree even though he's sure he didn't get too far away from it before he ditched Ben.
Instead, he hears water falling, and finds he is standing on an observation deck. He sees people sitting at a table near the edge of the deck.
It doesn't look like Ben, Sadusky, or Abigail, but the faces are familiar, so he makes himself step closer, trying to hide his shock and surprise at seeing Ian, Shaw, and Mitch sipping tea calmly, gossiping about different types of biscuits, which he takes to mean the mounds of cookies Shaw is hording.
"Afternoon, Riley," Mitch says favorably. "Beautiful day, isn't it? Too bad your great-great-granddaddy tried to plan Lincoln's assassination."
"That was Thomas Gates, and he tried to stop it."
"Oh, shut up," Ian says, but it lacks the venom he used to use, and Riley just smiles at him.
"You're looking well, Ian," he greets, and then turns to Shaw, "And you're not dead."
"I could say the same for you," Shaw replies without looking up from his biscuits. "Raise or call?"
"Call," Ian says, throwing his cards, which were always there, Riley thinks, onto the table. Mitch follows suit, and Shaw grins as he scoops more cookies into his pile.
"Where's Ben?" Ian asks. "I would very much like to not be the worst player at this table."
"I could play," Riley offers, shrugging when they stare at him. "It's a beautiful day, and Ben's trying to kill me."
"Good for him," Ian says, although he has a funny expression on his face. "Deal him in."
"Do I have to?" Shaw complains, "You know he counts cards."
"Does he?" Mitch says, and his smile looks so much like Ben's cold one, that Riley jerks away. "Tell me, Mr. Poole, how would you like to die? Falling to your death or drowning?"
"Neither, thank you very much."
"I keep telling you," Ben says, crawling out from under the table, "cut open the belly, pull out the entrails, and burn them! It's my personal favorite."
"You failed to protect the Declaration," Abigail says, grabbing Riley's shoulder and shaking him. "Security!"
Riley sinks to the deck's floor, hands pressed over his ears. He tries to ignore the people tugging on him, dragging him closer to the table, closer to the edge of the deck, and closer to losing his mind.
"Hey," Patrick says, and this is his first appearance, "I think he's waking up."
"No, I'm not," Riley says, and his eyes are closing. He lets himself drift off, only to be jerked awake by a hand on his arm. He glares at Abigail, feeling a little guilty when she pulls back.
"Yeah, he's awake."
"Don't call for security," he whispers to her, surprised by how hoarse his voice is. "I swear I didn't touch it."
"Okay," she says, the word drawn out like she thinks he's speaking crazy. "Ben, any time now."
Riley lets out a harsh noise as he struggles to sit up, a soft "No," escaping his lips. "No, no disembowelment, and definitely no burning of my entrails. Do you know how much I need them?" He's a little ashamed to find he's crying. When Ben drops into his line of vision, Riley jolts fully awake, noticing the distinct lack of a knife in Ben's hand. "Oh, thank god," he says, eyes falling closed in relief.
"No one's going to hurt you, Riley," Ben says slowly, like he thinks Riley doesn't understand him. "Do you know where you are?"
"Your dad's house?" he tries, looking up at a ceiling that is neither his apartment's nor Ben and Abigail's house's. Patrick, who really is there, nods, offering a cup of something to Riley, helping him hold it as he takes a sip. Chicken soup. Yum.
"I guess I was dreaming?" he says, blinking at them, and receiving more nods. "Sorry," he winces. "Not very nice thoughts."
"Yeah, well," Ben says, scratching his head and looking sheepish. "We shouldn't have really had that horror movie marathon last night."
Abigail glares at them both, but Riley smiles. "No, it was fun. I just, I have a cold, don't I?"
"The flu," Patrick corrects him. "Now, finish your soup and go back to sleep. We'll be close by if you have any more bad dreams."
He finishes the soup, swallowing quickly and noting how his throat is sore. "Thanks," he calls out as they all step back. Ben comes back and tucks a pile of blankets around him.
"Sleep tight, Riley," he says.
"'Night, Ben."
He drifts off, thinking about Sadusky stranded in that box all alone, popcorn nearly gone and more puzzles made up. He thinks about Abigail yelling for phantom security officers while she tries to process ancient documents in less than ideal conditions, and he dreams Ben plays poker with Ian, Shaw, and Mitch, entertaining them with stories of old fashioned deaths. He dreams Patrick takes him fishing and shows him the meaning of life.
Riley smiles in his sleep.
Riley is having a fevered dream in which Ben orders his execution—using the same words as he'd used with Abigail. Abigail keeps lecturing Riley on the proper way to clean a document, and then calls for security every time he touches it. Sadusky sits in a box and gives Riley riddles to solve, some of which are actually lyrics to songs or Sudoku puzzles. Riley manages to escape all of them by pretending to sleep, and when they aren't looking, goes to Niagara Falls where Ian and Shaw and Mitch are having tea and discussing the weather. Riley asks them if they've seen Ben, and Ian points out where Ben is keeping an eye on them. Riley wakes up and they—Ben, Abigail, and Patrick—try to convince him that he's okay. He finally believes them and drifts off to sleep again.