Previous Post “So, what are your instincts telling you about this one?” Jack Burns allowed the corners of his mouth to curl in a wry smirk. “My current instincts are telling me that my initial instincts, that none of them did it, might be wrong,” Vicky Cameron blinked her eyes and shook her head. “You'll probably laugh, but just looking at him was starting to give me a headache.” “It's not just you,” Jack reassured her, as he shut his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The fluorescent orange and neon green hurt my eyes enough, but I'm pretty sure he was … vibrating in place. He … blurred around the edges, just enough to give me a migraine, any time I tried to focus on him.” “What sort of idiot introduces himself to investigating officers, at his own interrogation, by bragging about what a great liar he is?” Vicky rolled her eyes. “Especially when he's so terrible at it? His body language couldn't have given him away any more if he'd tried.” “You noticed that too, then,” Jack nodded. “Our boy's right-handed, and every time he talked, he looked away and to his right. Shrinks say that's one of those left-brain-versus-right-brain things –” “Yeah, where he's drawing from the half of his brain that fabricates things,” Vicky summarized impatiently. “He kept sticking his tongue out from between his teeth, too, without it touching his lips.” When Jack squinted at her curiously, Vicky elaborated. “It has a few different meanings, but most often, somebody who does that is saying either, 'I got caught,' or, 'I got away with something.'” “Not exactly living up to his clever reputation, is he?” Jack snorted. “In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd almost think he wanted to get caught –” he stopped suddenly. “What is it?” Vicky finally prompted him, after a few seconds of silence. “It's time we concluded our conversation with Dreamcatcher Foxglove,” Jack decided. Dreamcatcher Foxglove was still smiling when Jack and Vicky returned to the small interrogation room of the Lair Legion mansion where they'd left him. “You didn't do it,” Jack frowned at Dream, “and you don't know who did.” “Of course not,” Dream beamed. “That's what I've been saying all along.” “Bullshit,” Jack shot back. “You did everything you could, short of actually lying, to make yourself look and sound guilty to us –” “Because then, we wouldn't be focusing on your friends,” Vicky realized. “You know you're innocent, so if we spend our time trying to pin this on you, you know you're safe.” She turned to Jack. “I should have seen it before. That's one of the other meanings, when someone sticks their tongue out like that. They're saying, 'Look what I can do.'” Dream flashed an inscrutable grin, and leaned back in his chair, as Jack and Vicky stood over him. “One of the very first lessons I learned about social behavior,” he shrugged, “or at least, about the way it works for most 'normal' people,” here, he made quotes in the air with his fingers, “was about truth, versus the appearance of truth, and which one people will believe more.” Dream inhaled sharply and stretched out his arms, before crouching forward in his seat. “See, I actually started out an impeccably honest little kid,” he cracked his knuckles in front of him as he spoke. “The problem was, I didn't have the right … delivery, affect, expression, whatever you want to call it. Point is, I always told the truth, but because I was such a weird little kid, how I did it made it seem, to almost all the adults around me, like I was … wrong. Like I was lying.” “Until they found out that they were the ones who were wrong, about you,” Vicky completed Dream's train of thought. “And that made them even more pissed off at me than they'd been when they thought I was lying to them,” Dream bared his teeth ferociously, and jutted the tip of his tongue out from between them. “Because if you act like you're not telling the truth, people will doubt your honesty, but if and when they ever do figure out, on their own, that you are telling the truth, they'll be forced to doubt their own judgment instead.” “And you think that's what you've managed to do to us?” Jack scoffed. “Guys like the Hooded Hood think they're such good liars because they can lie by telling incomplete truths,” Dream chuckled. “I'm such a great liar, I can lie by telling you the full, unabridged, complete truth, just like I am right now, and you still won't know how much of it is bullshit.” He met Jack's glare with a steady gaze of his own. “We're done here. If you people want to do a witch hunt of my fucking friends, you can do it without my goddamned help.” “We could charge you with obstruction,” Vicky warned. “For what?” Jack conceded wearily. “Telling the truth? After all, his alibi will check out … won't it?” he challenged Dream. “You should certainly feel free to confirm it,” Dream rose to exit the room. “In the meantime, I'll leave you to search for the real killers. Here's a hint … try running a search for some actual bad guys, rather than folks who save lives on a regular basis.”

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