Debarre — 2350

The next few days after Ioan’s visit and brief explanation about what had happened with True Name were full of long walks and longer silences. End Waking politely requested that Debarre remain behind for the majority of the walks.

There was a sense in the air that the skunk wanted to ask him to leave again, to fall back into solitude and, though he’d never use the word around him, moping. He’d still talk, still hold up his end of the conversations, but always there would be a slight pause before speaking, always a bit more distance than usual, always something out in the forest that called to him just that much more strongly than the weasel before him.

It was never comfortable to be asked to leave one’s partner. He knew the reasons, could understand the drive, but to build a relationship up over however many decades it was now, and yet still need to put it on hold for months or, on one occasion, years at a time still hurt.

He knew he had a temper, too. He’d spent the last centuries going all the way back to Cicero’s death working on setting that aside when he could feel it getting too hot within him. He always worked his hardest at that around End Waking. He loved the skunk, wanted nothing but the best for him, and although he knew that End Waking was one of the more resilient Odists, he had also known Michelle far longer than…well, just about anyone possibly could, now. Two and a half centuries was a long time to understand just how the other person processes pain and trauma, and he didn’t want to add to any of the Odists’ burden, having spent so long with them from the beginning. From before the beginning, in some senses.

Well, except perhaps True Name.

There were few enough people he hated in the world, though certainly a great many who grated on his nerves. True Name and her ilk, though, were universally among that number. He knew he could never hurt anyone, but, well, everyone had their fantasies. He knew he should never wish harm befall anyone, but some people…

This latest development was putting this to the test.

He’d continue the work on the cabin while End Waking went for his walks — they’d gotten the floor and stove in place, as well as the A-frame, but the canvas of the tent still needed to be strung, and he had a few ideas for improvements — and all the while, he’d swing steadily between the poles of feeling nauseous at the thought of one less fraction of his friend in the world, one more death of one of the lost, and wild fantasies of popping champagne upon hearing that her final instance had been destroyed.

Part of him wondered if End Waking was going through the same. He wanted to ask, but didn’t want to risk that pushing the skunk over into requesting that he leave with the tent not yet complete.

So, Debarre just kept working, kept fantasizing. He’d gotten the last of the canvas lashed down over the sides of the frame and was on to working on the front wall of the tent. At least there was productivity to lean on, even if he couldn’t lean on his boyfriend at the moment.

He jumped, startled out of work and reverie by two sensorium pings in short order. The first came from End Waking, the word ‘company’ muttered quietly, and the second was a ping of arrival from the sim itself.

With the new tent, End Waking had made the default entry point around a small rise from home, leaving it a short walk around — or a shorter but much steeper dash up and over — the ridge.

Debarre opted for the up and over, nearly tumbling down the other side of the hill to where the form knelt in the clearing. End Waking was just making his way through the trees on the opposite side, so they converged on the visitor at the same time.

May Then My Name was sobbing. It looked as though she had been for a bit, too, judging by the mess of tear-tracks in the fur of her cheeks.

There wasn’t much that he could think of to say, so he awkwardly shifted from a crouch to a kneeling position beside her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and gently tugging her against him. Although he rarely had reason to comfort May Then My Name in particular, it was familiar enough from all the way back at the Crown Pub when Sasha’d come back from some break-up or another.

“I will get water,” End Waking murmured, leaving the physical comfort to someone better able to provide such.

Her cry must have been nearing its end before she arrived, as she’d settled down to sniffles by the time her cocladist arrived with an enamel mug of water and a damp rag.

“Can you drink, May Then My Name?” he said gently.

She nodded and accepted the mug with both paws to hold it steady, taking a few unsteady laps of the water before simply clutching it to her chest. “Thank you,” she croaked, freeing up a paw to use the damp rag to wipe her face. “I am sorry for so dramatic an entrance.”

“Hush. You are fine,” End Waking said. “Everything sounded quite dramatic indeed. Please take your time, and we can discuss it later.”

She nodded, slouched a little further against Debarre, and sighed shakily.

He shot a quizzical look over to End Waking, who sent a brief sensorium ping in return. She must have explained a good bit more before arriving, then.

They sat like that for another five minutes or so, another few bouts of tears hitting the skunk while he tried to be as steady as he could for her, petting over her ears and murmuring reassurances. She’d leaned on AwDae more often than she had on him, all those years ago, but a friend’s shoulder was a friend’s shoulder, and he’d always offered when he could. This was, he supposed, no different.

When she was finally able to pull herself together enough to walk, Debarre helped her to stand and the three of them made their way back to the tent. He sat her down on one of the two fallen tree trunks that had been set before the tent to either side of the fire pit, then took her mug to refill it while End Waking started a small fire. It wasn’t that cold out, but warmth was warmth, comfort was comfort.

With the cup safely back in her paws, Debarre sat beside May Then My Name once more, arm around her shoulder. “Feel up to talking about it?”

“Um, a little, maybe,” the skunk said, voice raw. “Just in general.”

He nodded.

“True Name has been staying with us the last few days.”

“Sounds miserable.

She smiled halfheartedly. “Ioan expanded the house out to the other side with a separate bedroom. She has been spending most of her time in there, doing whatever it is that she does. Perhaps she is still pulling strings somewhere, I do not know. I do not particularly care.”

“I’m surprised you let her move in there,” he said sourly.

After a long pause, the skunk mumbled, “It was my idea. I insisted, Ioan agreed.”

“Why?” End Waking asked from where he crouched beside the fire.

“I have incomplete thoughts. In terms of logistics, it made sense to have her where Jonas could not act against her.”

End Waking nodded. “Yes, but why? Why did you not just let her build herself a new home? Leave her to her own devices until time, Jonas, or madness took her?”

May Then My Name averted her gaze. “I do not want her to die. I do not want her gone.”

The other skunk went silent, staring at her for a long moment before getting back to building the fire up to a comfortable level.

“I’m guessing it’s the non-logistical side of things that’s complicated,” Debarre said.

“Yes. I seem to be cursed to think about her and after everything, I do not know why it is that I care about her.” She sniffled and scrubbed her face with the rag as though to preemptively snap herself out of an oncoming wave of emotion. “It has not been all that bad, really. Awkward, yes, but she spends most of her time in her room except at breakfast and dinner. Today, though, she requested to talk with me, and…I cannot even begin to comprehend the specifics, but Jonas has…ha-has been…”

Debarre rubbed at May Then My Name’s back when that wave of emotion finally washed over her.

“I am sorry, Debarre. It was a lot,” she mumbled. “Jonas has been playing her for centuries now. He has been structuring her life for her in such subtle ways that even she was not able to see it. She…well, something happened a few years after launch. A trap of sorts. Jonas’s plans hit all at once and she has been working under his thumb since then.”

They sat in silence for a bit, Debarre racing through various questions, rejecting each as too personal, too mean, too off-topic. Finally, he asked, “So, why are you so upset?”

“That is where the specifics I cannot mention lay. Beyond that, though, I am just…torn. I am torn. I want to kick her out. I want to invite Jonas over and have him bring his pet assassin. I want her to disappear into ignominy.” She took a deep breath, continued, “But I also want her to get out of this mess. I may not want her around, but I want her to find something — anything — else to do with her life and to not have to deal with that living, breathing sack of shit anymore. No one should have to deal with that.”

“E.W. said he needed to be better than her. Sort of like that?”

She shrugged. “I do not know. It does not feel accurate for me to say that, but I cannot explain why.”

“Well,” he said, waving the point away. “I’m with you on the feeling torn bit, at least. Was just thinking about that when you showed up. Like, would I celebrate if she died? Or would I feel like there was just that much less of you around?”

“You think about it from the outside, my love,” End Waking said. “You think about who we were. You have the capacity to do so. May Then My Name and I have diverged so far from True Name that she has become a new entity, and I do not think that we can so easily see Sasha in her.”

May Then My Name nodded toward End Waking. “And that is the source of at least some of my resentment towards her. I cannot see Sasha in her, and yet I was created from her. I see that of Sasha in myself, the caring side of her who got lost looking for lost friends, and while I can remember those few years that I was True Name, I am not that person. I do not feel like I ever was that person. Becoming me was waking up from a dream.”

“A nightmare, perhaps,” the other skunk murmured.

“You and I have different resentments. I would say an unnerving dream that makes me all the happier to be what I am now.”

“You are a better person than I.”

Debarre threw a twig at his boyfriend. “No moping. You’re both good people. Jury’s out on True Name, but given that you two get so fucking upset whenever she’s around, I’m leaning towards not so good.”

End Waking smiled. It was slight, but he was pleased to see it all the same.

“Qoheleth, poor, stupid man that he was, had much that he was correct about, but one thing that he completely failed to understand was growth,” May Then My Name mused. “There is plenty of growth, here. That is perhaps the one thing we have more than memory, the one thing that protects us from too much memory. All that time may still drive us mad, but at least we have the ability to grow to the point where we are no longer True Name.”

“A-fucking-men.”

She laughed. “Right? Thank you two for talking, though. I know it is not really a pleasant topic, but it has helped me immensely.”

Debarre squeezed her around the shoulders. “Of course, skunk.”

“You feel so much more than I do,” End Waking said. “So I cannot understand the ways in which you are torn. There is also much more than I think you are saying–”

“There is, yes. Sorry.”

“–and so I cannot offer much in the way of advice, but I can welcome you to my forest and offer you company and a meal. Will you be staying for dinner?”

“I would like to, yes.” She hesitated, then added, “True Name has joined us for dinner these last few days, and I would like a break.”

“Are you opposed to an early dinner, Debarre?”

“‘Course not. If you cook, May Then My Name and I can get the cot in the tent.

They broke from there. May Then My Name forked several times over to help him in repopulating the inside of the tent with the necessities while End Waking made venison cutlets and savory corn griddle cakes.

“There’s still a lot we need to do in here, so we can’t drag everything in yet,” the weasel explained as they returned to where End Waking’s goods were stored under a canvas tarp. “But getting a few essentials in here will help in the meantime. Hopefully just a few more days and we’ll be all set again. I think E.W. may kick me out at that point.”

“So soon?”

“He called me back in the middle of a solitary spell, remember?”

She nodded. “Well, yes, but I had hoped that…well, I am sorry, Debarre. I imagine it must be difficult.”

“A little. I miss him when I’m gone, but I usually merge back down and get to focusing on whatever #Tracker is up to, then re-fork when he’s up to having me around again.”

“We are different in that respect, I guess. If Ioan requested six months away from me I think I would have a pretty rough time of it.”

He laughed and ruffled a paw over her ears. “I think you’d fucking explode. Thankfully, ey doesn’t seem like the type.”

She nodded gratefully. “Ey does not, no. I am just sorry that I was too heated to stick around and talk with em about this. Thank you again, Debarre. I needed to talk about it, just with someone who has an appropriate distance from the topic. I cannot overstate how terrifying what she said was.”

“Uh, of course, May Then My Name. Can you tell me any more about it?”

“Perhaps over dinner, my dear. I need food, and I need to talk to your boyfriend.”

Dinner, it turned out, was not long in coming. Well-seasoned deer and griddle cakes cooked in the grease. “I have made them with too much salt just for you, May Then My Name,” he said with a polite bow.

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Much appreciated. It tastes almost like normal food.”

He made a rude gesture at her, but grinned all the same.

“So,” Debarre said between bites. “Anything else you can tell us about what True Name said?”

The other skunk stacked a bite of griddle cake on top of a bite of venison and chewed thoughtfully. At last, she sighed, saying, “I do not want to talk about too much of it, not aloud. It is too close to the surface as yet and I will turn into a sobbing mess. Again, I mean.”

“Of course, no rush.”

“Right. Well, Jonas got her involved with something in the late 2130s. It was sort of a side…thing, very hush-hush but it still has taken up at least a small part of her attention ever since. It was all very low-level stuff — low enough that it flew beneath even her radar — and I guess after Launch, he dropped it all on her in a meeting similar to what he had promised for Secession day. All that time had turned into a lever to use against her, and I think that, whether she realizes it or not, relatively little has been done of her own accord since then here on Lagrange.”

Debarre nodded, waiting for her to say more, to which she eventually shook her head. “I am sorry. I need at least a few days to be able to process it. I cannot even think about it without wanting to…I do not know. I want to quit and force a merge on her. I want you to force a merge on her,” she said, nodding to End Waking. “I want her to know something other than herself.”

The skunk sat up straighter. “So you have hinted, yes. Why, though? Why would you want her to feel that resentment? Why do you think she would be able to internalize my penance? Why the fuck do you–”

“E.W.,” Debarre murmured. “Cool it.”

He tugged his hood down lower over his head and stayed silent for several seconds. “I am sorry, May Then My Name. I did not mean to yell. It is just that I worked hard at getting where I am now, and if she is to feel any — any — remorse about what she has done with her life, I would like for her to come by it honestly, and if she does not, then I would like her to face the consequences of her actions.”

“I do at least understand that,” May Then My Name said cautiously. She had shied away from her cocladist at the force of his words, but the apology and explanation drew her back. “You do not need to answer now, or ever for that matter, but is it something you would at least consider?”

“Perhaps. I do not feel the need to engage with her as you seem to, but there is little enough engagement in merging down. If I had not made my rejection of what she is a part of my identity, if I could let that go, then I would rescind my membership from the clade just to sever what ties of association remain.”

“Would you just be End Waking of no clade, then?”

“Perhaps I would just call myself E.W., my love.”

Debarre grinned. “Excellent.”

“You two are disgusting,” May Then My Name said. “Please keep up the good work.”

“You’re one to talk, smartass. You and Ioan could make my teeth rot.”

“I have em well trained, do I not? Perhaps I will make em an honorary member of the clade in your stead.”

End Waking smirked. “Would ey take my name, then?”

“No, we would have to give em a similarly Odist name. Some silly line of poetry, a few nonsense words smashed together. Gentle Confusion or something.”

They laughed.

“Where I Am Overcome By Gentle Confusion of the Ode-Bălan clade,” Debarre said. “And I’d be something like Even Real Shitheads Know Their Dreams.”

May Then My Name flicked a crumb of griddle cake at him. “Good job on the first name, not so much on the second. I do not think it fits the tone very well, even if you are a bit of a shithead.”

“Confirmation at last,” End Waking said dreamily.