wildestlogs | "I'd rather die than ask for help, except I don't want to die"

"I know how that feels."

He spent the first sixteen years of his life with the same eight people and no one else. Losing them...

He thinks of what he saw in Elle's memories, the flash of Adam dying. And he pauses for just a second from working on Elle's flayed back to listen to the birds, look at the stars, remember that he's here, not holding his own little brother dying and retching up blood as a hole opened up in his guts, as his flesh turned rubbery and stretchy and like hot cheese as it melted.

He's here, with a kid's mutilated back and some herbs and the comforting unknown whispers of the woods.

"Where's the best place you seen? I've only seen North America."

It takes Elle a moment to think before she can decide.

She's been all around the world, at this point. She's vacationed in Tahiti, trekked through the Amazon, climbed Mt. Rainier, visited the Beast Courts in China, seen Marcus' home in South Africa, and that's not even considering some of the places she's gone to in the Umbra.

But there's one place that her mind always comes back to.

"Home, probably. Not Seattle, where I grew up, but the peninsula. There's a--" she tries to think of a word that can describe a caern, "--a commune, I guess you would call it. A village, maybe? I'm not sure how to describe it, but it's in the rainforest on the peninsula. It's where a group of us, shifters, that is, live. It's beautiful, untouched wilderness. All of the buildings have little to no ecological impact. It's the first place I ever really felt like myself, to be honest. It's where I met my pack."

Even after these last few years away, she still considers the Sept of the Blooded Root to be her home.

“That sounds beautiful.” Dan finds himself smiling, despite the gore he’s tenderly cleaning up. “Sounds like a wonderful home for a pack. Where I’m from, the packs are all over the continent, and I been lucky enough to be invited to stay with a few of them to catch my breath, at times.”

He rinses away some dirt from her injuries with his limited water.

“I’ve stayed with packs of werewolves, flocks of harpies, colonies of nymphs, a band of faun, once. I don’t know if they have those in your world, but it’s a similar idea. They’re all very conscious of how fragile nature can be.”

Strange to think of, when nature is so often so punishing, so unforgiving a mistress.

"Like I said, I haven't been back there in a couple years. Some shit went down and they all went underground. My pack and I decided to leave instead of hiding with them and as far as I know they have yet to resurface.

Elle shifts around a little as he cleans her back.

"Yeah, we have those, or at least things like them. In my world it's our job-- the shifters that is-- to take care of nature like that. Not that we've done a great job, historically."

She wonders what the werewolves are like where he is from.

"My pack is a kind of unusual. Cats don't usually form packs like the wolves do, it's just not in our nature."

That's not entirely accurate, some breeds like the Simbas tend to form prides, but it's a true enough sentiment that she doesn't feel the need to clarify.

"Isaac, who's a cat shifter like me, needs people to ground him. He's probably going to be leaving the pack soon. We can tell he's getting restless."

There's a note of melancholy in her tone. She doesn't seem heartbroken, but she definitely sounds resigned and disappointed.

"Yeah. That seems to be a common tale." Dan has the similar note of melancholy; he isn't the sort of person to be part of a pack, but he feels a lot of kinship with the werewolf packs, harpy flocks, so on, that just want to live their lives unbothered and are constantly under attack from humans looking to exploit them. It reminds him of growing up off the grid, of the way the government came for his family for tax evasion when all they ever wanted was to be left alone on their farm to raise their children.

"In my world, shapeshifting catfolk are called basts, and they're solitary. But cheshires, those are a smaller breed of catfolk that don't change shape, and they form colonies. And sometimes, some of them got to wander off too." He rinses out a little more dirt. "I understand why. I get restless if I'm around the same folks too long. That's why I don't stay nowhere for long."

"We're called Bastet," Elle laughs softly. "So you're not too far off."

"Isaac and I, our breed, we're kind of known for being wanderers and not being tied down. I'm something of an exception to that."

She's an exception to a lot of things about the Pumonca, and the Bastet.

"We're not actually supposed to have stayed together after my initial training, but Isaac has never been a rule-follower and I didn't know any different. Marcus got assigned to keep Isaac in line, and we just kind fell in together."

Fuck, she misses Marcus. She misses Lioness. She misses Isaac.

All of Elle's exhaustion hits her at once. She is so fucking tired and she's still so fucking scared and this random guy is taking care of her fucked up back and being so goddamn nice she doesn't know what to do.

She just wants to go home.

"I wouldn't be surprised if the term 'bast' is just because some humans didn't know how to pronounce 'bastet'."

Dan smiles as she talks about who her people are, opens up about loved ones he hopes she can get back to sooner rather than later. It's good she has kin. So many of the people Dan has met don't. Up until a few years ago, Dan didn't either.

"I'm going to start stitching, alright? So keep talking to me. Is it just you and Marcus and Isaac?"

"Yeah, us and the spirit we follow, Lioness. We had someone tagging along a while back, but he had been in the center of some pretty crazy shit and needed to figure some stuff out on his own. We keep in contact, though."

Elle winces a little the first time the needle punctures her skin, which is her first visible reaction to the pain since they had started. Her words become slightly more stilted.

"But yeah, it's mostly just the three of us. Well, two of us. Isaac goes off and does his James Bond shit so Marcus and I end up on our own pretty often."

She doesn't sound very bothered by that. If anything, there's a hint of relief in her voice that she can't quite suppress.

"Sounds like it's good for that tagalong to have some folks he can touch base with when he needs it."

Dan's stitch technique is very gentle, very professional, but he's taking his time to make sure it's done right, which means he's working slowly. He's very concerned about infection still; some herbs aren't guaranteed to keep all the worst bacteria out of these large wounds. There isn't much to be done about that except to rinse everything out with water and make sure his hands are as clean as they can be in this setting.

"James Bond shit? You got a super spy in your mix?"

"Yeah, he thinks he's hot shit. Worst part is, he's right," Elle chuckles. "At this point, there's not much he can't take on, but he's going to keep looking for bigger and bigger fights until he gets into a fight he can't win. Or at least can't win and survive."

It's true. Elle and Marcus have managed to hold Isaac back (if only just), but he's going to leave soon and he won't have anyone to make him stop and think things through anymore.

The hard part is, Isaac is good at wild, impossibly heroic stuff. Marcus and Elle have been keeping him from himself killed, but they've also been holding him back in a way that she knows he hates sometimes.

Unfortunately, their kind doesn't get happy endings. Dying for a just cause is about as good as it gets.

Dan bites his lip.

"Is it overconfidence, or do you think he's trying to find that one last fight?" Find it because it's the last fight, because to some people death is a gift, to some people the idea of eternal sleep is seductive. Some people's magnetic norths are nothingness.

Dan knows, because he's one of those people, and he knows about three sentences of information about Isaac but feels like he knows the kid.

"It's not overconfidence, he really is that good. He's reached the highest prestige that there is in shifter society. When I said there isn't much he could take on, it's not an exaggeration. He's literally one of the best in the world."

Elle sighs.

"I think he's been looking for a way out that lets him feel like he did enough, that it was worth it. That he's doing more good by dying than he would if he kept living. He has a lot of dark shit in his past, stuff that happened even a decade before I even met him. He carries a lot of guilt and he doesn't know how to put it down, so he just looks for something worth putting himself down for instead."

Elle's come to terms with who Isaac is and how his story's going to go, for the most part. She's know since she met him that he's trying to atone for something-- for a lot of things. He'll never feel like anything he does is enough even though he has literally saved the world on multiple occasions.

Elle just hates watching and knowing that if he was able to process some of his trauma and get some of the shit that Marcus and her tell him to stick, he would probably be a lot happier.

She can't change who he is-- she loves who he is-- but his story was always going to be a god damned heroic tragedy.

Edited 2021-11-11 08:46 (UTC)

"It's probably a good thing you're in his corner, then." Her description of Isaac doesn't track to Dan's mentality exactly, but it overlaps enough to be a little uncomfortable. Not like being seen in the spotlight, but like being caught in a highbeam while running into the darkness, a flash of recognition. "Guilt, though..."

Guilt is a bullet Dan mercifully dodged in most of his life, except for the way his kid died. He could have survivor's guilt to the gills over being the only member of his family to avoid slaughter, but thank God he knew, somehow, that he was doing the best he could, that his best was so limited by being a young person who couldn't read and had no documentation or money. Recognizing what he was up against made it easy to forgive himself for things he could have carried his whole life.

"Guilt's a tricky one. That ain't nothing you can force anyone to work through. They got to have that epiphany moment on their own." He finishes another line of the stitches along her back. "When I'm done with this, do you want me to help with the ones on your arms and legs? Just the hard to reach ones."

Elle can hear the weight in Dan's voice when guilt comes up. It's a heaviness that she's heard from a lot of people over the last couple of years.

"Guilt's selfish, is what it is. Knowing you've done something wrong and feeling bad about it? That's something you can actively work with. But if someone carries weight of decisions they didn't know they were making, or didn't have enough information but did the best they could, that's when there's a problem.

"You know how those Nightrenders got us all? They took the memories we don't look at and shoved them in our faces. It was devastating. Some people are haunted by those things enough that they could work through it and still function, but some people were completely paralyzed."

"Letting go of guilt isn't selfish. Letting go of people you feel like you've failed isn't selfish. What's selfish is holding onto it in a way that keeps you from living in the now, from being with the people who are still here and care about you."

Elle takes a deep breath.

"My brother... he-- well, you saw. Maybe I could've done something. Maybe I could've shifted earlier and fought that BSD off. Maybe I could've put myself in front of him."

It hurts to talk about, even now. Not in the same ways it did before, but there will always be an empty space by her side that no one else can fill.

"But all blaming myself does is keep me from doing better in the future. I'm never going to forget him. I'm probably never going to entirely forgive myself, either. But I had to stop punishing myself, because I was punishing the people I cared about too, and that wasn't fair."

She didn't realize how tense she had gotten while talking, so she lets herself relax.

"Isaac's done some bad things, yeah, but he was always trying to do the right thing. He was always trying to protect people from the worst of the world, but he won't accept any damn help with it. Even he can't do everything at once, but he pushes us away so that all of the responsibility is on him, as if he's protecting us by always putting himself in those positions. But he's not."

She's tried to tell Isaac this, but he doesn't understand. He thinks that just because he's a big, scary, bad-ass, he should be able to do anything for anyone, but he can't. He doesn't have to try every time, either.

Elle had almost forgotten about her other wounds.

"Uh, yeah. Only the worst ones, though, the rest will take care of themselves, for the most part. It'll just take a bit longer than I'm used to."

He listens to her work through all these thoughts - these heavy, hardwon thoughts - as he finishes stitching up her back.

"Well, at least one of you has your head on right. I couldn't agree with you more on what a useless damn emotion guilt is. Guilt..."

Is hard to shed, but Dan really believed in identifying why emotions exist. Guilt is only useful when it's teaching you not to make the same mistake twice; after that, it's just a slick slope down into useless self-pity. And that hole of self-pity is cozy and comfortable and easy to live in for the rest of your life.

The easiest time in the world for Dan to slip into guilt was after Ellie died, because there was no one he could easily identify as bearing the brunt of his self-pity, so he could just stay in that dark, drunk, sad little hole until the powers that be plucked him out of his filthy sleeping bag in his stolen car.

"Guilt's only useful so long as it's teaching you." He's glad that she has such a measured view on something as horrible as watching her brother murdered. "Sounds like Isaac might could not even be seeing how much you're protecting and caring for him."

He sits back, letting her feel that he's done working on her back. "Well, let me take a look, and then if you need anyone to do touchups without telling everyone you got some wounds healing slow, just let me know."

"He definitely doesn't. Marcus and I, we do our best, but...

"He just doesn't get it. Some people's brains just aren't hardwired to adjust like that, I guess."

Elle stretches just a little bit to adjust to the feeling of the stitches.

"I can't imagine that I don't look like hell from where you're sitting," she says as she moves to put the deeper woulds on her left arm closer to him. "I really appreciate it. I know you offered, but still. It's, uh, I know it's not pretty, and I know it definitely isn't an easy thing to do for someone, no matter how much you want to."

She's had to patch up people she cares about a few times, herself. It's always a harrowing experience.

"Yeah." Dan does get it. He's told Bunny that a few times: my brain just ain't wired right. It feels terrible, feeling so much like you know what the right way to think is and yet unable to click into it, interpreting shadows as threats.

He smiles and lets her get her arm in a comfortable position before he starts cleaning out the injuries. "You're a pleasure as a patient. I've stitched folks up who were flailing around hitting me in the face or spitting blood at me. You're more than downright easy."

He likes to be useful. He likes to help other people with their problems so he can put off dealing with his, the same way people will fervently clean their kitchens when they have an office deadline.

"You do look pretty beat up, though. Do you have anyone here you can rely on, who can at least help you carry your things and keep watch so you can rest deep?"

"Believe me, this is nothing. I've, uh, dealt with a hell of a lot worse than some minor cuts."

Okay, they're definitely not minor cuts, but compared to some of the other stuff she's been through, they might as well be.

Seeing the exposed muscles of her torso. Watching and feeling her skin regrow, inch by agonizing inch.

The memories of pain are still too close to the surface, but she tries to let it all wash past her without getting dragged under.

"Yeah, I know a couple of people here. There's this girl, Stacia, I know her from back home. This version of her doesn't know me, yet, which is pretty weird. But I trust her.

"At this point I don't know if sleeping is on the table for me, at least until I've healed a bit more. I'll probably keep watch so others can get some rest and take a power nap in the morning."

Is Elle exhausted? Absolutely, but she's also wired that she can't imagine trying to sleep right now. Someone needs to keep watch, anyway.

"Oh, I'm sure. But the fact that you done dealt with worse don't mean that these ain't some nasty cuts."

He takes a drink from his flask and starts to washing out the debris in her arm from his waterskin. "I know Stacia. Me and her met on the Rig she was kidnapped to all that time back."

He cares deeply for her, and since he adopted the last girl he developed a parental relationship with, he's also scared of getting much closer to Stacia. It's in his instincts to try and caretake and protect, but it runs against his interest in shielding his heart from harm.

"If you need someone to keep watch, I'm naturally nocturnal, and I'm getting enough sleep since my husband and me can swap watch shifts." He starts stitching her arm. "Wish I could offer you something for the pain."

Elle notices his drinking, but doesn't say anything. It's not like she can blame him, with the night they all had.

"I'll probably take you up on the offer, one of these nights. I think I'm too wired to even get to sleep right now, though."

Dan expressing a desire for an anesthetic warms her heart. She's feeling better and better about making the call to come to him for help.

"Probably wouldn't do much, anyway. I tend to metabolize shit faster than it can affect me."

"That seems like a lousy side effect of an enhanced healing factor." Dan gives a grim chuckle. "I'd share the whiskey with you, but whatever magic enchanted this flask meant it only for me. Plus, I hear cotton candy liquor is an acquired taste."

Dan likes things so sweet that they start boring holes in his teeth. He has no idea that your mouth isn't supposed to hurt when you eat.

"Makes me fun at parties, though," Elle laughs as well. It's much lighter than Dan's, in both emotion and tone. "I can't tell if that sounds great or absolutely fucking awful."

She scrunches up her face as she tries to imagine it. Whiskey and cotton candy... Yeah, she can't picture those going particularly well together.

"Eh, that depends. People say I'm fun at parties, too, and it depends on the person whether that's a compliment or not." Dan grins and takes another drink, then packs his flask away.

"Alright, well. Where are you spending the night tonight? I'm trying to get the lay of who's where."

"I'll probably be wandering the perimeter between the forest and the camp. Like I said, I'm too keyed up to get much rest tonight."

What Elle doesn't say is "There's an empty hole in my mind where my pack should be and I don't know if I can sleep without being able to feel them. I'm probably hurting too much to be able to lay down, and if I close my eyes all I'm going to see is my brother's dismembered body."

"I don't never sleep before five a.m. if I can help it, so we might could run into each other while pulling watch."

She doesn't need to say it; it's basically the same thing going through Dan's head. He slept in a van, cramped up with his siblings, for years as they got picked off one by one. It was fifteen, twenty years ago. He still feels that empty hole, still wakes up sometimes and thinks Kitty must have stepped out for a smoke or Zack's probably off getting us another can of gas before he remembers where he is. And he never goes to sleep easy, even if it's easier now that he's married and can drift off in someone's arms.

"You tell anyone else who needs stitching that they can come to me, alright?"

"I promise not to maul you by accident if I see you wandering around," she jokes.

Elle stands up and shakes out her limbs. She's feeling a little stiff from sitting in the same position for so long.

"I'll let them know," she assures him. She almost starts to walk away, but pauses.

"Thank you, again. I get the feeling you would do this for anyone who needs it, especially if they asked, but I still appreciate it. I like to think I'm a good judge of character, and I'm glad I trusted you."

She tries to put as much gentle, genuine appreciation in her voice as she thinks he'll be able to handle. There's a reason she makes it about herself at the end, there, and it's because she doesn't think Dan is someone who lets himself take compliments.

"I'm glad that I didn't give you no reason to regret that trust," he says to her, smiling as he gets to his feet - gingerly, like his back's really hurting him - and gives her a little wave. "See you around, Elle."

"I'd rather die than ask for help, except I don't want to die"

[cw: death description]

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cw: semi-graphic depiction of injury

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