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I raised my eyebrows and gestured to the camera and its protruding microphone. David smiled quietly and replied in our old tap-code, a quick drumming on the table that even the guys in our unit never thought was more than a nervous tic we'd shared.

"No. Rob broke the mic." David tossed a nod to a tall, uncomfortably chipper man on the other side of the glass. The presumably-Rob fellow nodded back and tapped his lips with two fingers. "Go ahead," he drummed. "Try it."

I cleared my throat and tried to speak with intensity. "You son of a bitch, I'm glad you're cuffed because I'm going to kill you where you sit." I pushed my chair back as if to stand, my motion not matching my tone. A beat, two, three. No response. I stood anyway, just to make it less strange a sight. I stretched, then sat again. Now that the moment was here, I found I had a hard time speaking.

"It's okay," David said, in a quiet, even tone that was unfamiliar and disquieting coming from him. "I know why you're here. You can say it."

You can say it. How different this was, from the last time we'd spoken in a quiet room, when he'd asked me to join him. When he'd rebuffed every excuse, when he'd left me out of breath even though I'd barely said a word. And now here he was, the charisma still there but restrained, humming under the surface while he waited for me to speak. I took a deep breath.

"I don't think I can do this." He nodded, looking... Resigned? Accepting? I wasn't sure what to do with this new David. But at least it wasn't going to be a fight. "I still have the gear from the job. It's in a crate, in the back yard. I can go to the cops, I can tell them what I-"

"NO."

I stopped, sitting up in my chair. The look on David's face had gone from beatific resignation to a barely-contained snarl. He hadn't shouted; he hadn't moved at all, but his voice had been final.

"David. You know this isn't right. You didn't kill that man. You shouldn't be here. If I hadn't been shot you wouldn't be here."

"I would be here, with you. And you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't have been at that goddamn bank. You shouldn't have been in that hospital, you shouldn't be here visiting me now. You should be at home." His shoulders were still but tears were pouring down his face. Eyes that had locked with mine that night when he'd outlined the plan, that had stilled all objections, now couldn't seem to rise to look at me.

I traced the scars on my face. Three surgeries, six months in a coma. I'd learned to walk again pretty fast but they still wouldn't let me drive. And I liked asparagus now. "You didn't drag me to that bank. I needed the money. I came to you with a problem. You offered a solution."

"Do you know what a solution would have been? Just giving you the money. I had it. I would have been tight for a few months but Claire would have gotten her medicine. I could have given you the money and put off the bank job until the next quarter and done it with a full crew. A solution would have been helping you set up a Go Fund Me or whatever ended up paying for Claire's meds and your surgeries and Angie's bills while you were in a goddamn coma. A solution would have been telling you to go fuck yourself and letting you find your own way. But I wanted the glory days. I wanted you on board. I wanted to drag you down to my level. So I got you drunk and talked you into robbing a bank and a cowboy teller died and you almost died and now I'm here and that's exactly the way it should have ended. So keep your fucking mouth shut about what's right, you sanctimonious idiot."

Now he was crying. He was careful not to move much so they wouldn't think it was an emergency or something, or that he was dangerous. God knows they had to see tears on these cameras pretty often. I choked a little trying to respond. "David..."

There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was clearer, almost the way it used to be. "Are the girls okay?"

"That's not... Yeah, man, they're fine. That's not really the point. They're fine, but..." I trailed off. He finally looked up at me, saw my face, and nodded.

"That is the point. That's been the point since you got shot. It should have been the point when you showed up at my door." My hands were shaking on the table. No words, just the flickering stoccato of a man realizing that he's trapped outside his own cage. He kept talking. "Go home. Go home to your daughter, go home to your wife. When they're out getting ice cream or something, you dig up that gear and you burn it."

"I can't, David. I can't just pretend it didn't happen."

"You can, and you will. You have to. Because I'm all good now. I'm at peace. I've got my books and my routines and my therapy. I know I should be here. I know I should have been here years ago." He leaned over the table, and that old glint in his eyes flared up, and for the first time in our lives I had the good sense to be scared of him. "But in a year? Two years? Five years? Eating this godawful fucking food and talking to these idiots and taking beatings from these prick guards?"

I swallowed. I nodded. I understood. But he had to make sure. He kept talking, and I saw him for what he was, finally let myself understand just who my best friend had been for as long as I could remember.

"You told me you had it. And where it was. And I know there's no way for anybody to know what really happened. But if you had the gear? And I could get out of here quicker by telling them where it was? Maybe even convince them it was you all along?"

A vein on his neck was pulsing and his teeth were gritted. His voice was a hiss. And then he suddenly seemed to realize what he was doing, what he was thinking, and he closed his eyes. His mouth moved slowly, silently; maybe he was praying. I know I was. The clock chimed and the door opened. A guard walked in and told me our time was up.

"It was good to see you." David didn't look at me as he said it. "Tell Angie and Claire I said hi. And get that landscaping taken care of. Your place is a mess." I just nodded.

The guard walked me out to my dad's waiting car. He looked at my face and didn't say a word as I got in. We were close to the house when I turned to him. "Hey Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I need a few hours to calm down after that. Think you could take the girls out to ice cream for me?"

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/08/30/check-me-out-i-am-david-duchovny

Not sure if anyone will be interested, but I like this story so I'm sharing it anyway. The newspost on this comic is the first time I heard about the practice, in August 2004. It happened at an early Penny Arcade Expo.