Things To Be Mended
Outlast
Waylon Park/ Eddie Gluskin
A/N:Just finished playing the Whistleblower DLC and have to say while it terrified me and Gluskin disturbed me on a deep, psychological level, I actually quite enjoyed it. I will write this until I get tired of it.
He's become a kleptomaniac.
The Park household (or rather what his family is now forced to call 'home' while on the run from the damn Murkoff Corporation) is filled with drawer upon drawer of batteries. Double A's, Triple A's, even those expensive rechargeable ones that can plug into the wall.
It drives Lisa mad. Perhaps the stockpiling of batteries wouldn't have been an issue if she knew why. If he could explain what that asylum had done to him, what the doctors had done to him, what the inmates...
She has so many questions for him. The people that put him into a sort of makeshift witness protection gave her (against his wishes) a basic understanding of what the Morphogenic Engine hoped to accomplish. Lisa has no idea of what occurred after.
Waylon intends that she never will.
Darling.
Waylon's frozen. He knows it's only his wife watching one of her period pieces, that Pride & Prejudice shit, and she had the volume turned up too high again. Some quiet, logical part that had been eaten away by that fucking place, tells him that it isn't him. It's just some pompous Britt on the television, trying to woo someone in one too many skirts.
Darling!
Lisa finds him later, hiding underneath their bed. He's fallen asleep and mutters, "please, don't, please" in between panicked breaths.
He goes to therapy. He hates it.
Waylon's had more than enough of doctors and clean, white rooms that so easily could be painted in red.
So he's surprised when one of her "coping mechanisms" actually helps. It involves using his laptop which has always brought him a sort of calm, focus. As she instructs, Waylon writes about Murkoff and Mount Massive Asylum and stops his retelling at the first time he met (in person-video chat evidently didn't count) Jeremy Blair. The first time he's been committed.
After spell-check and a few grammatical corrections, Waylon goes back to her office to show off his good work.
Typing out his aggressions allows him another media to attempt to deal with what had happened to him besides going over that damn footage like his therapist had first suggested.
After she reads his paper his therapist questions why he wrote mainly about the Murkoff Corporation and not about any of the individuals involved.
"Now," she lisps, shuffling through his papers and arranging them out of order, "your relationship with inmate Eddie Gluskin, now that's interesting."
Waylon learns (mostly through snooping) that she's using him to write a book.
It's his last session.
His sons (with the help of their grandfather) buy him a cane to help with his limp. It secretly doubles as a sword and they play pirates and jedi knights until mom comes home. The cane goes into storage.
Black vans come for them a few nights later. It could have been Murkoff, but it isn't. Their little on the run family has to be moved again. Waylon makes the snap decision to split up, Lisa and the kids one way and he in the other. Lisa screams at him, but their mysterious saviors agree and his eldest son won't look at him as they drive away. The youngest won't stop crying.
He lives alone in his new house for three months before Lisa is brave enough to call him, voice shaking as she tells him that she met someone. Waylon asks to speak to the kids.
His protection from Murkoff (he doesn't know who they are and he wants to keep it that way for as long as possible) tells him that they are other survivors from Mount Massive Asylum. Waylon only bitterly informs them that no one survives that place.
But one did.
"Darling."