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darrow 2,
newt

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Philip has passed most of his time in prison sleeping and thinking of painful ways to make dear Officer Cooper pay for having arrested him in the first place.

Having been given a phone call earlier, he'd tried to call the real Coop, only faintly irritated to find he's really one of the few people in Darrow he can call in a situation like this, but the call hadn't gone through. He'd tried Agent Reid next, because he hasn't technically done anything wrong to end up in prison here and if anyone can get him out, he imagines it would be another law enforcement agent, but that call doesn't go through either, and it was at that point they'd told him he was done and forced him back into a cell.

He doesn't know anyone in this city. No one knows he's here, he hadn't bothered to tell anyone he was coming through, and now he's being held hostage in a jail cell for daring to cross the street at the wrong time. The officer who's arrested him looks exactly like the man he's been planning crimes with in Darrow and carries the same name, and from what he can gather there's someone here with his name, too, who manages to get arrested often enough, given that everyone keeps referring to him as Phil and acting as if they're old friends.

It's enough to drive a man mad, he thinks.

At least he's alone in his cell, though almost as soon as he thinks that, there's a rattling in the hall and then the door opens to admit someone else into the room. Philip squints against the light, looking at the new arrival, half hoping it's someone he recognizes, and he frowns when he discovers it isn't. Just another criminal, he imagines, someone else thrown inside for god only knows what. Perhaps looking at Officer Cooper the wrong way. He seems to arrest a fair number of folks around these parts.

"Hardened criminal or did you run into the overzealous cop?" he asks, her voice dry as he relaxes back onto his bunk. The man hardly looks like the type who deserves to be in here, but Philip supposes he could be wrong.

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"A horse and a child and a very beautiful wife," Philip says, as if knowing all this information isn't just the slightest bit unsettling. It's useful information, though, even if he hasn't found a use for it quite yet.

This man's wife isn't likely to be of much use to Philip at all, especially not if she's as entirely engaged with him as he seems to be with her. Married women aren't impossible to get his hooks into -- quite the opposite most of the time -- but every now and then he finds out that seems impenetrable.

"Maybe she'd be willing to pass a message along to someone who can help me," he suggests. "Or if she gets you out, maybe you'd be willing. Speaking to Coop should probably be enough, he'll find a way to get me out of here." He better, since it's essentially his fault Philip is here in the first place.

"Do you guys get together every month for book club or something?" Newt asks, peering at Philip over the rims of his glasses. "If you don't, you totally should. Just for some sharing time, y'know? Like AA except it's for guys suffering from getting mistaken for like, eighteen different people."

They actually all look different enough to be told apart, at least the ones Newt's seen. Maybe the one with the horse is a dead ringer for one of them, but Luke's got that unmistakable beard with the white stripe in his hair, Kili's a frickin' Dwarf, and Philip... well, Newt supposes Philip's the one who's not Luke or Kili.

"Anyway, yeah, dude, I can totally pass the message on to Coop. After I throttle him for putting me here in the first place." It's not Real Coop's fault, but Real Coop is the one who's going to be on the receiving end of Newt's wrath. Mostly because he can't take out his irritation on a police officer, especially not one who would probably call it a form of assault and arrest him all over again.

"You know, no one has once mistaken me for any of them," Philip answers, as if this should be somehow surprising, though it isn't. He doesn't look the slightest bit like any of them, besides the obvious, and he doubts anyone would see Luke Garroway's kind face and think he might be Philip Lombard. Anyone who knows either of them would be able to tell the difference in an instant. It isn't even just their physical attributes, but something in their eyes.

Philip knows he's different. He's perfectly happy with that.

"Appreciated," he says. "And do try not to kill him, he's likely one of the few people who know me well enough to get me out of here." Agent Reid might be willing to lend a hand, but Philip doesn't want to bet on it. Coop is a criminal, not quite like Philip, but far more similar than Reid would ever be. He's more likely not to ask questions either.

He pauses, then asks, "And your wife knows you're here already?"

"That's fair. Well, when you guys make your club, and I say 'when' because how can you not have done that already, it needs to happen, but when you guys make your club, you should totally invite me. You'll need a moderator." Newt would be terrible at moderating, but he'd still volunteer. "Hey, wait, now. So you got the one with the wife, and I know Kili's gettin' married. The guy texts me all the time even though I've met him like, twice. Heard it through the grapevine that Luke is, too."

He pauses, letting his head rear back a bit as he arches a skeptical brow. "You're not gonna go and marry Coop, are you? Because that'd be weird. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd show up, but it'd just be... I don't know, fuckin' weird, man. Although, hey, if you guys do decide to get hitched, you should recruit all your look-alikes to be your groomsmen. How awesome would that be?"

Coop doesn't seem like the marrying type and to be honest, this guy doesn't, either. But then again, Newt's known Philip all of three seconds so it's not like he's got a super good gauge on him. He's just a little... unsettling, that's all. Not that he freaks Newt out or anything, Philip just seems like the kind of person he'd have to be careful around.

"And yeah, she definitely knows I'm here. Okay, maybe not here here, but she knows I'm here, as in this city. She'll figure it out once I don't come home when I said I would, though, I know she will." Newt doesn't want to say he's predictable but at the same time, in certain ways, he knows he definitely is.

"I am certainly not going to go and marry Coop," Philip answers with an amused snort of laughter. The very idea of getting married is one that absolutely does not appeal to him in any way and he very much doubts Coop has much interested in it at this point either. If that changes in the future, it'll very likely be because Coop has found someone else to tie himself to for the rest of time.

That's not the role Philip is ever going to fill in someone's life, something he's perfectly happy to know. No one in their right mind would want to marry him, on top of all that, for which he wouldn't be able to blame them.

Newt's wife knows he's here, however, which is something. At the very least, she'll be expecting him to come home, which can't be said for Philip. Maybe, if pressed, he'd said in this situation marriage might have its uses.

"And what shall we do until then?" he asks, eyeing Newt curiously. "What sort of a name is Newt?"

"What kind of name is Philip?" Newt counters, though he wrinkles his nose because it doesn't pack much of a punch. Philip is a pretty regular name, though Newt would argue that's why his own is clearly superior. There aren't many Newts in the world, even fewer Newt Geiszlers, and he's pretty sure there's only the one Dr. Newt Geiszler.

"Anyway, I don't know, I didn't name myself. It's actually short for Newton, my parents apparently figured I'd grow up to be the awesomely badass scientist I am. And if we're playing the 'getting to know you' game, you just learned what I do for a living. Your turn now."

He already knows who the guy's banging, might as well get a better idea of who he's sharing his cell with. There's not much else to do until Kate gets here, after all. Newt just hopes it's sooner rather than later.

"Greek, I believe," Philip answers, as if Newt had actually been asking for the origin of his name. Newton, though, does make a bit more sense, even if it's still a rather unusual name. And he has to admit, even if only to himself, Newt is a better nickname than Phil, which is what he apparently goes by in this awful city.

"My turn," he echoes, debating whether or not there's actually any benefit to telling Newt anything. He would prefer to stay on his good side, at least for now, since he has a wife who should inevitably be coming to rescue him. No one is coming for Philip and he doubts Newt will ask his wife to pass a message along to Coop if Philip has pissed him off somehow, so he decided to go ahead with it.

"I work for Todd Chad," he says. "Well, Todd Chad's security team. It's rather boring, no one ever seems to think to threaten him or try to kidnap him."

"Oh, fuck Todd Chad," Newt says, immediately forgetting the whole name thing because seriously, fuck Todd Chad. "That guy almost got me killed, man, way to ruin New Year's Eve."

Those goddamn ice bees had given him hypothermia, he'll never forget that, and Newt still thinks it's weird that Todd Chad had somehow been resurrected considering he'd exploded into a billion ice pieces or whatever, but he's long since grown accustomed to Darrow's weirdness. It's been almost three years, which is crazy, and he kind of has to wonder if there is anything left that would surprise him. Even the whole breach to another Darrow thing hadn't exactly blown his mind.

"Well, I don't think anyone has much use for a zombie quote-unquote musician. Like, why does a dead guy need a security team, am I right? Or undead. Whatever the hell he is, I don't even know anymore."

"You would apparently be quite surprised by how many people are still absolutely enamoured with both him and his music," Philip answers. "Not that I disagree with you regarding said music." Sometimes he wonders if it's because he's from a different time or if it's something else entirely, but he truly doesn't understand a good portion of what passes for music in this city. Todd Chad is certainly no exception to that, but he also doesn't particularly care about the music one way or the other, so long as he keeps getting paid.

"The boy is famous, therefore he has strange fans and lots of money to spend keeping himself safe," he says with a long, lazy sort of shrug. What Newt is saying about him is interesting, though, the idea of him being undead. Philip has heard the rumours, of course, but he hasn't delved too deep into it. Not yet anyway. Not while he still wants to take the money.

"What happened on New Year's Eve that he almost got you killed?" he asks.

Newt rolls his eyes at that, not at all surprised, in fact. "Yeah, well, some people in Darrow are out of their goddamn minds. Namely, the ones who think they're, y'know, native to the place or whatever. It's not as bad as it used to be but when I first got here--there, whatever--you'd get dirty looks just for mentioning you weren't from the city."

More and more often, he notices people seem to be a bit more welcoming of newcomers, though he isn't sure whether that's got more to do with time or like, some kind of reprogramming of their brains. He'd be willing to be on the latter.

"Well, long story short? Ice bees. They busted out of this effigy and stung the shit out of your boss then went after everyone else, the little assholes." So okay, it hadn't really been Todd Chad who'd done the almost killing, but Newt still associates New Year's Eve 2013 with those little fuckers and that little shit with the awful music so it basically is the guy's fault. "I got frostbite from getting stung, dude, it was the worst. You're so lucky you weren't here for that, I heard people's fingers were falling off and everything. Not the best New Year's Eve we've had."

That doesn't sound like it was particularly Todd Chad's fault at all, but Philip doesn't feel any real need to defend the man either. He may be paying Philip to do exactly that, but against physical assaults, not verbal. And it's not as if Todd Chad is here to hear what's being said about him either.

Nor would he care, Philip imagines. There isn't much that seems to reach him. He's always imagined it to be some product of mental illness, but perhaps it's only that he's dead.

"And is that what killed him?" he asks. "Seems as if you got frostbite from being stung a few times, having the shit stung out of him might do more than that." He shouldn't be asking, but he can't help himself.

"He exploded," Newt explains, "into a billion ice pieces. Bye-bye, Todd Chad. Except obviously not because the next year, he was all put back together as a zombie popsicle. Hey, do they like, keep him refrigerated at night or something? If you could find out who brought him back and get me in to talk with them, that would be awesome because I'd be super down to learn how they figured out human regeneration."

Plus, he could test the process on Seymour. Sure, he'd have to dig up the little guy's body, and it'd probably be decomposed by now; but on the off-chance it isn't, it'd be pretty sweet to have his buddy back.

"I don't know," Philip answers and that, at least, is entirely honest. That isn't what he does for Todd Chad. In truth, most of the time he isn't entirely sure what his purpose is, because for the most part, the entire team seems rather content to let him drift around the exterior. They haven't called on him for anything in particular, but Philip has a feeling they're simply waiting until the right time to use him.

It's possible that should worry him. Once they're done with him, there's every chance they'll just throw him aside, but he's hoping he'll be able to avoid that and will manage to still get his pay.

"They're not particularly keen on answering questions," he says. "And I prefer getting paid to knowing Todd Chad's intimate details."

That doesn't come as much of a surprise, at least not the part about nobody wanting to answer questions. Newt obviously doesn't know Philip that well but honestly, one striking difference between them has become very clear. If there positions were reversed, Newt would be doing everything he could to find out how the hell Todd Chad's people keep him relevant and, more importantly, alive.

"Your loss, I guess," Newt says, casually shrugging his shoulders, though he narrows his eyes. "Bet you could make a lot of money exposing that whole operation. Oh, well, though, right? Doesn't seem worth the trouble."

Except it totally seems worth the trouble and maybe Newt's curiosity has gotten him into trouble once or twice before but come on, ice zombie pop stars with a team of people trying to keep that shit in line? That's too good a mystery to pass up.

It's something Philip has considered a time or two, whether or not he might make more money passing along some pertinent information to the right person in Darrow, but that would be a one time windfall and being employed by Todd Chad leads to a permanent, very legal, and generous amount of money deposited into his account every two weeks. It would take a considerable one time sum -- or his eventual and inevitable boredom -- to change his mind.

It's only having been in poverty, though, very near to complete bankruptcy, that he's really come to appreciate what a steady job can offer him. And in the meantime, he keeps himself from growing bored with outside projects. All in all, it's a perfect arrangement for the time being.

"Are you offering?" he asks, amused, sincerely doubting that to be the case. "A lot of money to expose that whole operation? You're confident they're not paying me well enough to counter an offer like that."

"Oh, please, dude. No. Might be a cool thing to piece together but no, the only thing I'd waste on that is a little bit of time and maybe some effort." He and Kate may still have money put away from their lottery winnings, aside from their nice little pot saved up from their salaries, but even Newt isn't about to go blowing that all on some Tad Choad-related project. No, Todd Chad. Whatever.

He pauses then, grinning broadly. "That being said, if anyone ever does actually offer you an assload of money to find some shit out, feel free to come find me. Sharing is caring."

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