Destiny Village ~ X-Eye Cauldron

[Dragonfree]

Dave raised an eyebrow at Brisa. "Hi." He downed the rest of his glass and waved to the bartender for another.

"Hello," Mia said.

The other Poochyena looked up warily. "Are you here to talk about Spirit's Edge?"

Fuck's sake. "No, she isn't." Dave glared up at Brisa, eyes bloodshot. "I have not had a great fucking night."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa shook her head. "I ain't here to talk at all, just t'drink. Not surprised or unhappy t'see ya here. I weren't expectin' t'see yer Shadow, though. Must've been one especially shitty night."

She wasn't having a great time either, but at least her fucking Shadow wasn't manifesting...

 

[Dragonfree]

"Good." Dave got another glass and downed most of it.

The Shadow gave Brisa a hesitant look; Dave glared at it. "As for my night," he said, "I just got assaulted in the street by that fucking Mudkip? Apparently he's come up with some kind of batshit conspiracy theory where I'm a danger to children, and after I'd kicked his ass and was walking away, he used some kind of cheap revenge move. Still fucking hurts."

"And before that, too," muttered the other Poochyena.

"God, shut up. Why the fuck are you still here?"

The Shadow shrank back. "I'm still scared and shaken after all that. The alcohol's not really helping."

"Yeah, well, I've fucking tried to sit here and focus and you're still here."

Mia looked critically between Dave and the Shadow, then narrowed her eyes at Brisa. "Why do you say that?"

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa rolled her shoulders in discomfort.

"Best I can tell, shadows are the thoughts and feelings we're least comfortable with, comin' out when you're in a bind."

Her gaze drifted off into nowhere.

"I saw my shadow just the one time. She was chained up, weepin', and bleedin' from the chest. Not an encouragin' development. I don't like t'think about it all that much."

She blinked.

"Hang on, didya say Nate attacked you? Why the fuck would he get it into his head to do that?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Mia tilted her head at that explanation. "That's weird. Feelings are just neurotransmitters and neural activation within a brain. You can't have a person who's just some feelings and nothing else."

Dave gave Brisa a silent glare. "Yeah. Nate attacked me. Apparently Mia told him that I'd made her and the others, and several drinks and mental gymnastics later, therefore I'm some kind of fucking pedophile. Or something." He raised a paw towards a waiter, pointing to his glass, before knocking back the rest of it.

The other Poochyena shuddered, but said nothing.

"Do you have all his memories?" Mia was asking it, interested. "Does it split where you came out of him?" The Shadow shook its head slowly in apparent confusion.

Mia turned back to Brisa, undaunted. "Bleeding from the chest is dangerous. Did you take her to the hospital?"

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa's lip curled back and her brow furrowed as she processed both Mia's jargon and Dave's paraphrasing of a bizarre belief.

"One thing at a time... First, we ain't exactly done any research on shadows, but fer whatever reason, Spectrum folks sure do seem to manifest 'em under great stress, and they sure do seem to behave in a manner befittin' of our figurative inner demons. That's just the way it looks.

"I don't know what the fuck was goin' through Nate's head, but I think it probably has more t'do with him than you, partner. I don't know that I've exchanged more'n a dozen words with the fella, or I'd try'n talk him round.

"And uh. No, I didn't take my shadow to the hospital. By the time I'd calmed the fuck down, she'd dissipated into nothingness. I've never been in a bad enough way since to see her again."

 

[Dragonfree]

"Yeah, no shit it's more to do with him than me." Dave received another glass and sipped it irritably.

Mia peered at Brisa, and the Shadow, and back at Dave. "You aren't under great stress now, though."

"So you'd fucking think."

"Then why didn't it dissipate?"

"Fuck knows," Dave growled. The Shadow looked almost pleadingly at Brisa, ears flat against its head, but under Dave's critical gaze, it didn't speak.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

...'Not under great stress now'...? What?

Brisa chewed her cheek as she looked over the odd trio. Took a long drink of her beer. Flicked her tail.

"Y'all mind if'n I take our shadow companion here aside fer a minute? Fer a private conversation, like."

 

[Dragonfree]

"No," Dave snapped.

Mia cocked her head. "Why not? It would be interesting to see what happens if you're in different places."

He squeezed his eyes shut, dragged a paw over his face. Why, God, why did this have to become even more difficult with Mia there. It was hard to think. He took another gulp of his drink. "Because it's going to start saying some stupid shit, all right?"

She frowned. "Why?"

Dave waved a paw helplessly. "That's just what it fucking does."

The Shadow shook its head, turned in tight, agitated circles on its seat, trying to get comfortable, never quite managing to.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Dave's Shadow looked absolutely wretched. The sorry creature surely needed nothing so much as a kind word or a hug but... Well, Dave had been clear.

"Fine," said Brisa. "We can just drink." And she did.

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave exhaled slowly. Okay. That was one problem dealt with, for now.

Mia asked a few more questions about the Shadow, mostly random shit about whether they could use it to scout locations and have Dave recover its memories. When he'd said several times that he didn't know, and vaguely told her maybe they could experiment later, she left it alone, still dissatisfied.

Dave glanced towards the other Poochyena every now and then, but it seemed moderately calmer now, though it tensed when it caught him looking at it.

He finished the glass, and another. He glanced at Brisa, who was just drinking, looking silently at the Shadow every so often. Goddamn it.

"Look," he said, eventually, "I'm sorry about what happened with your dad."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

She hadn't actually expected him to apologise, and hadn't been fixing to ask. Huh.

"Yeah, well, it coulda gone plenty worse, believe me. I'm just amazed he fuckin' said sorry."

That was something Jesse and Dave had in common. Stubborn as hell right up until you counted on it. She kept at her ale, though pacing herself.

 

[Dragonfree]

“I guess,” Dave said. Yeah. Somehow or another, he had. That was something.

The Shadow was shivering again, looking at Brisa. Dave watched it, tense, his chest tight.

“That shit you saw there,” he began before he could think better of it. “It’s not...” His jaw clenched. What the fuck was he even going to say?

”I’m sorry you saw that,” muttered the Shadow.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"Don't worry about it," said Brisa. "It's fine." It wasn't entirely alright, but it wasn't as much of a problem as the Shadow seemed to think, and that... meant it was fine.

Then, considering with her tail flicking in discomfort that this might not be wholly reassuring, "I still appreciated you comin'."

This was true. It was more complicated than just that, but at least she meant it.

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave quirked an eyebrow at that, took a gulp of his drink. It’s fine. Sure. What a thing to say.

”Did you?” asked the Shadow. ”I only made things worse.”

Dave rolled his eyes at it but didn’t say anything. Mia was looking between them, confused.

”...Those memories,” the other Poochyena murmured. ”What did you...”

Dave gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his forehead against the cold glass. “Well, somehow she’s still fucking here, isn’t she?” he muttered under his breath.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

More beer. Drinking gave comfort, in exchange for some of her mental sharpness. She wished for both, but chose to be goddamn comfortable.

"I was better off with you than alone. Better than with almost anyone who coulda come, probably. I mean that." Again, her tone didn't match the appreciation she felt. She sighed. "I saw some shit that weren't fer me t'see. I also saw enough fer me to believe I'm right to trust you."

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave blinked at her. "If you say so."

Mia was squinting at him. "What memories?"

He waved a paw. "It's... it's not important."

"You sound like it's important."

Of course this was happening. Dave chugged the rest of his drink, ordered another.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa hadn't spent much time around Mia, but she was starting to pick up on how the relationship between her and Dave worked. She hadn't figured out if there was a useful way for her to interject yet, but... she was working on it.

In this case, she didn't care about being useful.

"A person's memories oughta be private, 'less they volunteer 'em," she said, flatly.

That was just the fucking way of it.

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave looked at Brisa, blinking, a weird sting in his heart. Fuck. This fucking kid.

Mia gave her a suspicious glance. "Why?"

He took a deep breath, rubbed at his eyes, tried to focus past the alcohol, figure out what to say. Everything was heavy and unpleasant. "Sometimes you remember shit you don't want to remember, and it's bad shit, and you don't want other people nosing around about it, all right?"

The other Poochyena was curled up tight, shuddering. "I wanted to throw Jean into a wall."

Just hearing it again, the inevitable mental image of that crack, chilled the blood in his veins again, made him nauseous. He wanted to shut that mutt up but didn't have the energy to do anything but sit there with his forehead against the table, eyes shut, trying to breathe.

"When? What did she do?" Mia asked, in the same tone as always, as if nothing were more natural. Of course she didn't think fucking anything of it; why the fuck would she. He knew that from the start, too. He could've told her the whole thing and she would've shrugged and moved on with her day.

He took a shuddering breath. "She didn't do anything. She was a fucking infant. I was just... I was just drunk. Fuck."

"Jane had just left, and I didn't know how I was going to raise a kid alone, and I was scared of what was going to happen, and I took it out on her," the Shadow added, and he gritted his teeth.

"But you didn't do it. She's still alive." Mia was waiting for something, something actually substantial that mattered, because what the fuck did it matter anyway? Mia probably ideated bloody murder daily, and he'd told Jesse why that didn't mean shit.

"No."

"Is that all the memories you're talking about?" Mia sounded like she was frowning. Dave dragged a paw over his face. Fuck, fuck, he couldn't do this right now--

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa listened to the three of them talk and forgot her beer, her tail thrashing with increasing intensity as the emotional charge got worse and worse. Dave was gonna snap any minute and she didn't have an angle on Mia and the Shadow yet, groups were so complicated–

"Mia," she said. "Rememberin' times they were in pain can be painful fer some folks. Now's not a good time to be promptin' recollections of hurt from Dave."

There was that frown again.

"And if you lay off fer tonight, I'll fight you first thing in the mornin', how's that?"

No peaceful drink for her, Dave didn't have his shit together whatsoever, and this was one hell of a stressful interaction, but at least she had a fight to look forward to, since Mia always accepted offers of sparring matches. (Brisa let her draw blood, and didn't pull her own punches either.)

...now to figure out how to help the Shadow.