Avoidance only gets you so far

[myagents]

Who: Dan and Price
What: finally making up (or not), discussing imprisonment, teaching self defense
Where: out in the nearby woods
When: after the haunted house plot
Warnings/Notes: typical Dan related warnings, typical Price related warnings, animal death



Though he's sad about Aziraphale being gone, Price still doesn't give up on trying to give his contribution. It's a good thing that he and Jennifer are friends, and while they usually decide to do chores together, this time they are out there exploring and picking berries. Price seems endeared seeing Jennifer pet Brown when the dog sniffs around and starts digging a hole in the ground, gives them a smile, and then wanders off to keep filling his basket on his own.

He does so quite distractedly, eyes glued to the sky and fascinated by the birds. He looks slightly put out as one of the birds gets hit by an arrow. Looking down, he sees Dan, who is too close not to notice him, so he has to greet him.

"Oh." he mumbles "Good morning."

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan’s been finding his groove again after the haunted house, mostly just grateful for the fact that, if they had to all have their minds fucked with yet again, at least this time he didn’t have to revisit any of his worst memories or intrude on those of others. For once, the pain of the past was left relatively inviolate. Dan’s shocked at how much that surprises him, how he feels grateful to be able to keep his private tortures private. It’d something he should be able to take for granted, and yet so many times now, the presumption of secrecy has been yanked away from him.

He’s out hunting this evening, looking to bag a deer to bring back to the castle, where meat supplies are starting to dwindle. He was tracking a doe for about three miles, about as far as he could get away from the castle, until he noticed that her tracks were unbalanced in a way that indicated she was pregnant. There’s no good in hunting a pregnant animal. Bad karma and malnourished meat, as the mother gives all her nutrients to her growing embryo, so Dan abandons her trail and starts scouring the woods for something else to bring back. Something big, he hopes. There are plenty of mouths to feed.

He stays out hunting all night, which is fine, because that’s his normal circadian rhythm, but he would like to at least come back with game instead of with everyone suspecting that he went off to get shitfaced in the woods again. He sighs, quietly and without moving any, when he sees the birds that he’ll have to pick off to feed people, wishing he could have found something bigger so he only would have to take one life instead of sniping off birds so small they’re only a satisfying meal for one person at a time.

He picks one out of the air, hears where it lands, and then snipes two more as the flock starts to panic and scatter. They all fall around the same area, and Dan moves almost silently through morning dew and fog towards where the birds went down. He sees Price before Price sees him, but he doesn’t see any benefit in hiding from him.

“Good morning.” Bunny doesn’t want Dan hanging around Price without supervision, but that would be awkward to bring up here, the two of them alone. “The day treating you well?”

[myagents]

Imagine the day treating Price well! He looks down at the bird, not even it can fly away from whatever mess this interaction is going to be. Yes, Price is anticipating pain. Doesn't matter whether Dan means to hurt him, he usually ends up doing it anyway.

With that in mind, he nods.

"Jennifer and I are picking berries. Brown is helping, he already found truffles."

[hallelujahjunction]

"That's great." Dan gives Price space as he navigates around him to grab the felled bird, to look through the brush to see where the other two landed. He's a fantastic shot, was an excellent marksman even before the longbow's magic went into effect; the birds were dead before they hit the ground. "Are you having a lot of success?"

I miss this game :(

[myagents]

"Well, my basket is not full but I am not finished yet."

He gives him a neutral polite smile just to be sure. He's...Conflicted. Now that Aziraphale is gone he really feels lost and in need of a friend, and Dan is right there, and understands parts of him that others refuse to see but...It's still a trap.

[hallelujahjunction]

"I ain't had a particularly good night hunting, but..." Of course Dan's noticed that Aziraphale is gone, and that that leaves Jennifer as Price's sole friend, and of course that makes him want to extend an olive branch, but the last time he tried that he got shoved in a river and everything escalated so far beyond what he would have ever wanted.

"I only got enough birds for a few folks to make meals of them. Do you want one of them?"

[myagents]

"No, thank you," like hell he is taking anything from Dan "but I appreciate the thought."

And Jennifer is...A difficult one. She is understanding and is glad to help him convey his point of view to others, even when explaining to him why the things he does hurt those around him, but...There is something patronizing about it. It's not the intent, she would never mean it, but she seems convinced at least on a subconscious level that Price is a lost cause and she's doing charity. Which he doesn't like, but is completely true.

[hallelujahjunction]

"Alright." Dan isn't insulted to have the offer rebuffed, but he it does leave him uneasy about his next steps. He considers offering to help Price look for berries - Dan's background in wilderness survival has left him with excellent foraging skills - but isn't sure that won't be rejected in the same vein.

"Would you rather I just leave you alone?" Dan supposes he could call the night a bust for hunting and go to bed now, what with the sun up in the sky heralding Dan's usual sleeping hours.

[myagents]

Price presses his lips.

"Perhaps that would be better."

Hell, if only to avoid Bunny kicking him while he's down as always, it's the best choice. It's been so long since that morning and he's still traumatized - which is silly because he's been through so much worse than that. The severe injury from Rowena's spell must have made it so that he has a lower tolerance for trauma, but it's fine, he's readjusting, it's fine. All he needs to do is to stay safe from Dan and Bunny and not respond to anyone else's remarks, just put his head down and work.

"I doubt it would go well if we actually kept speaking to one another, and I am tired of the repercussions."

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan closes his eyes and sighs. He's used to not getting a clear answer about what Price wants, because he's accepted that even Price doesn't seem to know, seems to be just chronically incapable of connecting action to consequence in a realistic way, but it still leaves Dan with no roadmap on how to act.

"Is it what you want, though?" Dan unsticks the arrow from the dead bird and slides the carcass into his carrying bag. "Either way, before I go, do you reckon you could help me find the other two birds I shot? They fell around here someways.

[myagents]

It's not a trick question, but it sure feels like one.

"I want your husband to leave me alone. And I used to like talking to you, but it always got me in trouble."

He huffs lightly through his nose.

"But yes, I'll help you."

[hallelujahjunction]

“Well, you did push me into a river.” Dan slips his longbow back into the holster at his waist; it makes him feel more at ease, carrying a weapon. He grew up with a firearm strapped to his hip or thigh. It’s only been the last few years that the Rig took that from him.

“But so long as you don’t do nothing violent to me, I can keep him away from you.”

[myagents]

Price rolls his eyes, then looks down at the ground pretending to search for birds, mostly to distract himself.

"It doesn't matter what I do. It's everyone's word against mine, after all."

Dan didn't know in what awful state Bunny found him in, that morning, not fully. He didn't know that Price was being civilized, that he wanted to just talk, that he was trying. If he got dismissed, mocked, and treated like he was crazy and stupid then he had a right to get mad at Bunny, but the bastard took that bit out of context and the defense became an attack in that goddamn mirror, and what's it to him? It's nothing, it's easy.

[hallelujahjunction]

"It weren't your word. It was your action. You pushed me in a river."

Dan starts to peer through the brush, frustrated at how insistent Price is about playing the victim when, in the grand scheme of things, Price got out pretty well. If Dan hadn't done damage control from the moment Elle found him, the moment he went back to Bunny and said be gentle, the moment when he was still cold and in excruciating pain, Price could have ended up actually hurt instead of just ostracized.

But the fact that consequences aren't as bad as they could be doesn't mean those consequences are easy to bear. Dan has to remind himself of that. He's worn down from being the bigger person, but there doesn't seem to be an acceptable alternative.

"Look, can you just- can you tell me what happened that morning? In your perspective? I already heard Bunny's take on things, and I just don't understand what I'm missing."

[myagents]

Price clenches his jaw, focuses on a dead bird he spots on the ground.

"I'm not falling for that."

He snaps its wing just because he can.

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan snorts. He should have expected that. He doesn't want to encroach on Price's space, but he also doesn't want Price to destroy one of the few pieces of meat Dan's been able to secure, and it's hard to feed someone a pulped bird full of shattered pieces of bone.

"If you want to believe everything I do is a trap, I can't stop you. It don't make it true." He approaches and stops about six feet away from Price, holding out his hand for the bird. "Give me that, please."

[myagents]

It takes him more restraint than it looks like to comply without just throwing the beast him.

"Everything I do is not a trap either."

He doesn't need to add 'but', Dan knows damn well how others respond to him.

[hallelujahjunction]

"I know. That's why I ain't accusing you of nothing."

Dan keeps his hand extended. He feels like it's just putting into flesh what he's always doing with Price, extending a hand, waiting for Price to just do something benign instead of snapping at the vulnerability.

[myagents]

Price observes the bird he put in Dan's hand. He doesn't know what to say.

"Well, I have been leaving you alone and none of us got hurt from that, so I am not sure what you aim to accomplish here. It's in your best interest to keep going like this, I am actively trying not to hurt you, alright? What else do you want?"

He sighs.

"And you already know my side of the story. I shared it and you decided to gaslight me."

[hallelujahjunction]

"Ah, right. My best interest. Something I'm definitely keeping in mind at all times." Dan sighs and laughs all at once, then shakes his head. "I don't know your side of the story. I know Bunny's, and I know that you keep telling me I know your side, but that ain't the same as actually knowing."

He raises an eyebrow. "It might could shock you to know that I don't just automatically take my husband's side just because we done got married."

[myagents]

Price stays silent for a moment, eyes glued to the ground.

"I told you that what you were doing was hurting me, and you said that you didn't see it, and it was just you being a good person."

He clenches his fists.

"You only come to me when you want to make a mistake, or to regret something, and I am supposed to be grateful for it? If I should be treated like a human being - your words, not mine - then why is it dirty, wrong, or regrettable to touch me, to care about me, to listen when I speak?"

He holds back a sob.

"I really thought I could trust you to be genuinely interested, because everyone else wanted you to stay away from me, but you just wanted to be a contrarian, to tell yourself you were doing a good thing when you just wanted to hurt yourself. Maybe it's nothing to you, but there was no one else for me - there is no one else, Aziraphale is gone - and I was alone against everything, but clearly it did not really occur to you. If it was a dog instead of me, what would have changed? Nothing, it was never about me. That's how I know I was wrong to trust you."

[hallelujahjunction]

Dan listens, worrying a feather on the dead bird's wing with his thumbs as he does, letting Price explain to him what Dan has struggled to piece together on his own. Price's behavior has been so perplexing to him, and while Price's explanation clarifies some parts of it, others remain shrouded. Dan tries to think through what's actually complicated and what's just something he doesn't want to hear.

He waits until Price finishes and then he gives it a moment to sink in.

"I don't know if there's any way to convince you I am genuinely interested. I made a mistake using you to hurt myself. It was impulsive, it was stupid, and I'm sorry for it, but it weren't our whole friendship."

It really did break Dan's heart to see Price lonely. It really does haunt him to think of the group killing Price to get rid of an inconvenience. He really did enjoy a decent amount of the time they spent together. He just doesn't know how to convey that or if Price is even capable of listening.

"When I said I didn't see it and didn't understand how I was hurting you, I was trying to explain how I felt and what was driving me, not trying to invalidate your feelings."

And Price shoved Dan into a river over it. Dan can't help that that hurt, that an action that left Dan in days of physical pain, set half the squad into a tizzy was unnecessary that Dan had to try and de-escalate, was something Price seems to think was as natural a consequence as gravity drawing something thrown back to earth. That Jennifer came to Dan to ask him to forgive, forgive, keep on forgiving, and it's not that Dan is tired of forgiveness but that eventually even he gets tired of getting beat on.

He never means to hurt Price. He's gone out of his way to try and protect Price from others, to de-escalate, to coddle. Price has meant to hurt him.

"I didn't just want to hurt myself."

[myagents]

"You know I was trying to be good, I was trying really hard, so why are you surprised that I may not be nice if you actively sabotage me like that? Besides, your leg is fine now, while I don't think I will ever be alright."

It may sound dramatic but it is true.

"I am not even supposed to be here, anyway. Unless it was to punish me or to exhibit me as an example of how not to be good, or innocent, or heroic, or any quality that it is seeking, then I am not of any use here. I should be back into my cell by now."

[hallelujahjunction]

"I never meant to sabotage you." Dan's firm in that. As far as he's concerned, he's only ever tried to encourage Price to be good, to accept kindness, to resist that impulse to lash out that Price seems so wed to. "I think- I don't know how we got on such different pages about that. If I sabotaged you, it was an accident."

If Dan sabotaged Price at all, which he still doesn't understand. All Dan wanted was clarity and to express his intentions. He just wanted to dispel Price's illusion that Dan only ever lives by his ideals because he has some sort of survivor's guilt. Dan doesn't carry guilt that way. Dan came by those ideals honestly, from the cradle, raised up to believe what he does.

"I still stand by the sentiment that don't no one deserve a cell. Being in a cell certainly didn't make a better man of you, just like it didn't make me any better a person."

[myagents]

Price looks away.

"Either way, I am not supposed to be here, so it's hard enough already. "

He's sad as he says so because in some way, this is freedom, it's not like on the Rig, and it's not like prison. Perhaps it's true that he can only do well in Project Freelancer. It's what he's convinced of, anyway.

[hallelujahjunction]

"I know. It's hard on me too."

Dan puts the bird away in his bag and, to give Price a break from attempted eye contact, starts looking for the third bird. This adventure has worn Dan down. He's come to care about people, and that's turned into a constant, exhausting thrum of anxiety that won't quiet down. He's been drinking more and eating less, sleeping with constant interruption and sick to his stomach without, wearing his body out and scrambling his ability to think clearly.

"But it's better than a cell." Dan knows that for a fact.