Infinity Smashed: Calls with Vandorsky
Feb. 1st, 2021 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeCalls with Vandorsky
Series: Infinity Smashed
Summary: The end of the adventure.
Word Count: 2800
Notes: Winner of Patreon poll. Late. Sorry. "Goodbye" takes place right before the events of The Start of a Beautiful Enmity, "Hello, How Are You?" after the events of Six Weeks to Recovery.
Ring. Ring.
I drummed my fingers against the pay phone. Come on, Vandorsky, pick up.
Ring. Ring— “Hello?”
“Hey Vandorsky. It’s me.”
“You toolbag!” she shouted, loud enough I had to pull the receiver away, and she burst into explosive tears.
“I’ve been checking the obituaries for months! When you said you needed to get out of here, I thought you meant, like, my neighborhood for a couple days! Not until summer vacation!” Wheeze. Hiccup. “I checked all your stupid old places, all the people I knew you ever talked to, and none of them, none of them had seen you! I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere and I’d never know if they found you and I was freaking out and you didn’t even write me a letter, you capitalist douchemonger!”
I just stood there.
“Well?”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“What were you even doing all that time?”
My voice was weak. “…adventuring?”
The sobbing stopped. Vandorsky blew her nose. She sighed.
“You’re a toolbag, Maribelle Dawn. A first-class, one-of-a-kind toolbag.”
I didn’t even protest at her whipping out my full documented name. She was upset enough that I felt I’d earned it.
Then she sniffed and went, “Hey. You’re calling me.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh a phone.”
“Lost my telegraph.”
She ignored me. “And I can hear you fine. You’re not staticky or breaking up or anything.” Pause. “Where are you? The ID just says Unknown Caller.”
I ransacked my pockets and shoved a few Susan B. Anthonys into the slot. This would take a while.
I told her everything, and finished with, “…so yeah. That’s it.”
Silence on the other end.
“Vandorsky?”
In flat tones, way worse than her earlier sobbing, Vandorsky said, “you’re not messing with the schizo, are you?”
“No!” I was honestly horrified. “I’d never!”
“This isn’t you trying to unravel my head because I get weird ideas that I shouldn’t believe but I do because the world is a messed-up place and my brain doesn’t work sometimes?”
“I swore! We had a deal! Never.”
“Okay. Okay.” Deep breath. “Then you should get why I’m going to hang up now.”
“What? No! Vandorsky, please, I am stuck out on I-10—”
“You’re always stuck out on I-10.”
That stopped me short. “What?”
“Or some other township, or the police station, or something. You’re always in trouble, M.D. Always. You go, you disappear, I don’t hear from you, I worry you’re dead for real this time, and then you turn up in trouble. Again. And every time, I bail you out, and then you disappear again, and the whole thing repeats. I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”
I was silent.
Sigh. “I don’t know what this latest crazy stuff is you’re in, but I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over, acting like it’ll turn out different this time. I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. Okay?”
My voice sounded very small. “Okay.”
“I love you a lot. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Get better.” She hung up.
I stood there with the receiver in my hand until it told me to please hang up and try my call again. I put the receiver away. I trashed the phone booth.
The PIN found me there halfway through the process and picked me up.
Raige tugged his bangs. “Uh, hi? I’m calling for…” he realized in horror that he didn’t know her first name. “…M.D.’s friend Vandorsky?”
Pause. In a guarded voice: “This is she. Who is this?”
“Uh, my name’s Raige, I’m one of M.D.’s other friends, and she wanted to let you know she’s doing okay, but in a way that wouldn’t be weird for you. So I volunteered. Hi.”
It hadn’t been that simple, and Raige wasn’t really sure that M.D. could truly be described as “okay.” She’d been in the Jaunter’s League mental ward for months. He’d found her surrounded by crumpled abandoned letters, frustrated and paralyzed, and he’d asked her why. Up until then, Raige had barely even heard of Vandorsky.
The volunteering part was true, at least. Raige figured he could act as a buffer… and maybe do something useful for M.D., because so far he felt like he’d been more hindrance than help.
“Oh. Okay. That’s… good to know.” Pause, as though checking something. “Caller ID says you’re calling from Vago. Is that right?”
“Yeah. Oasis Valley.” That wouldn’t mean anything to her. “North Vago.”
“How long have you known M.D.?”
“Since Spring Break. So… about six months? Yeah.”
Another pause that Raige couldn’t read. Vandorsky’s voice was so flat, he wondered if he’d offended her. But then she said, “Okay. This might sound weird, but Vago’s not so far. Could we meet? In person, I mean.”
Raige thought about it. Flagstaff was only a couple hours north—albeit mostly uphill. His evenings and weekends were claimed by marching and symphonic band practices, but… “I could maybe make it Thanksgiving weekend. I mean, if you don’t think it’s weird. I could try and give you proof of identity or something first?”
Vandorsky laughed, such a short flat sound that Raige almost didn’t recognize it. “You’re named Rage. Of course she knows you. Here, we can meet at my favorite coffee shop. I’ll have zines out on the table, so you’ll know it’s me.”
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Raige made the drive up to Flagstaff, specifically the Skull and Croissant Scones. The sign had a big painted teacup with a skull and crossbones on it. Vandorsky had already arrived; he could see her through the front window, sitting at a table with a mug and the promised stack of stapled paper.
Vandorsky herself was a pudgy girl with a round moon face, black dyed hair, and super-baggy black jeans. Her black shirt was for a punk band that Raige had barely heard of, and her black denim jacket was covered in safety-pinned patches for various political causes and zine distros.
Raige parked the car, got out, and went inside, to her table. “Vandorsky? Hi, I’m Raige; we talked on the phone?”
She stared at him, and for a horrible moment, he thought he’d approached the wrong person. But then she shook his proffered hand and went, “Wow. You are way less punk than I expected.”
“Yeah, the nickname’s outdated. And I’m sorry, but I have no idea what your first name is; M.D. didn’t tell me.”
“Oh. It’s… it’s Karlotta.”
“Cool! Nice to meet you, Karlotta!”
She seemed to relax a little, though it was hard to tell. She already had a big mug of lapsang souchong, so Raige went and got a soda and a sandwich. He sat, she put the big book away, and they descended into awkward silence.
“So…” Raige finally said, shifting his mug from hand to hand. “How do you know M.D.?”
She stared at him. “Special Ed,” she said, and Raige must’ve visibly wilted because she said, “It’s okay, I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I… didn’t know.”
“I’m not surprised. What did she tell you about me?”
“Uh, you like punk music, zines, and Bela Lugosi? And you were friends but…” He didn’t know how to finish.
“Right on all counts. We were.” She took a sip of her tea. “Okay, so here’s the thing. You said you’ve known her maybe six months. I’ve known her since the fifth grade. We met in Special Ed because I was crazy and she was… something else.”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, I’m just telling you. We were in classes together a long time. Then I left Special Ed and M.D. left school.”
“Like… homeschool?”
“If so, she didn’t tell me, and she still dropped out.”
“Oh.” Raige sat there, staring into a drink he no longer had any interest in. “She didn’t tell me that either.”
“Yeah. She does that. That’s why I wanted to meet up, because there’s a lot you need to know and she looks to have entered your life about when she left mine. So, ask me anything.”
Raige thought about it. The only other person he knew who’d met M.D. before himself was Bobcat, and only by a few hours. Vandorsky had years on them both, and she was a total stranger. Raige had never been to Flagstaff before, and he doubted there’d be anything to bring him back. He really could ask Vandorsky anything.
“Who… who’re M.D.’s parents? Her adopted parents.”
“You mean her foster parents. There’s been a lot of them, and none of them matter now. M.D. left home around the time she left school. Sometimes she stayed with me. Sometimes she didn’t. She didn’t tell me much about that.”
Raige remembered the big Army backpack, the blue tarp and cord she’d used to shelter them in the forest. He remembered her efficiency, as though she’d done it a million times. He felt sick.
“I thought she learned it camping…”
“She did. Different kind of camping.”
A million questions came to mind, only for Raige to discard them. How did she eat? Probably the same way she’d slept: wherever and however she could. Wasn’t there anyone who…? No. But why…?
It all made sense. Why M.D. had taken things so calmly, how she’d been so good at doing what she’d had to. Why no one had come looking or asking for her, why she’d never seemed worried about the people she’d left behind. She’d never seemed to miss anyone, and at the time, he’d thought it was just because she was less of a wuss than he was, but now it looked like there was no one to miss. There was no one to claim her except some Dellan bioprop collective. M.D., the smart gutsy adventure girl he’d crushed on all the way to Treehouse, had been lost. She’d fallen through a million cracks until all that was left was this Goth girl in a coffee shop to worry for her.
It seemed so obvious. It’d been staring him in the face all along. How could he not have seen it?
It must’ve showed in his face, because Karlotta Vandorsky said, “Hey. Are you okay?”
Raige lifted his drink, coughed when he drank it too fast. “Just… realizing a few things. Jesus. I had no idea it was that bad.”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to warn you about. Like, you’re here. You called me to help her out, right? So I get it, you want her to be okay. I do too.” She reached over and put her hand over his. “But you have to know, someone has to tell you: it’s not your fault if she never is.”
Raige flinched back. “What? Hey…”
“No, I mean it. I’ve known M.D. for five years, and she’s never been okay. Not in that whole time. She’s never okay.” Vandorsky took a sip. She didn’t sound angry, or resentful, just tired. “I tried to get her into a youth shelter once. She wouldn’t go. M.D. has a thing about adults. Maybe you noticed?”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“Its like she sees them and all her sense goes flying out the window. I don’t know why, but even the nice ones, she can’t see it, can’t deal with them. They’re all bad to her.”
Raige thought about what he knew of the Dellans. Of Number One. “I think I know why.”
“Yeah, I can make a few guesses. But you can’t live like that, you know? You can’t live in a world without adults. She never understood that. She acts like she can just fight them all the time, and…” She sighed, and Raige saw the frustration and worry in her eyes. He imagined how many times she must’ve thought and said it. “Has she changed at all?”
Raige thought of Bobcat. Of Scorch and Flame. Of Biff. “A little. Maybe. But it’s hard going.” He thought of back when she’d tried to comfort him in the forest. “She told me her life was an adventure.”
Vandorsky snorted into her tea. “Oh, so she gave you that whole spiel too?”
Raige was silent.
“That’s what she always said. Oh, it’s an adventure. But you know my favorite part of adventures? They end. One day, it’s over and you go home. That’s the whole point of adventures; they aren’t your normal life.
“But with M.D., it never ends. It’s why I had to stop being around her. At first, you think it’s exciting. Fun even. And sure, M.D.’s exciting. If the world ended tomorrow, I can think of worse people to team up with. But the world hasn’t ended! You know? And it never stops. She never stops. She never goes home, never gets better, just goes through disaster after disaster and…” she paused, struggled, got her voice deadpan again. “And I couldn’t watch her do that anymore. It’s like watching someone wreck their car, over and over. It’s too crazy.”
They sat there with their drinks and untouched food. Vandorsky didn’t seem to feel like Raige needed to talk, which was good, because his head was too full with thoughts to say anything. Up until then, he’d managed to think that this was just a momentary setback. M.D. was having a hard time, and one day, that hard time would end, and things would be okay again. But after hearing this, he had a terrible feeling that M.D.’s hospitalization wasn’t just one thing, but everything. It sounded like the hard time was her entire life, and now it was all catching up to her at once. How did you fix that?
“So,” Vandorsky said into the ensuing silence. “Is she really doing okay? Or is this just the next big adventure?”
Raige thought about that for a long time. Then he said, “I think this is the end of the adventure.”
Even with the deadpan mask, Raige could see Vandorsky’s skepticism.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think she’d keep it going forever if she could. But you’re right, no one lasts forever, not even her, and I think she’s finally out of gas.” He remembers her padded room. “I think she even knows it too, even if she won’t admit it. Eventually you have to go home.” A hopeful thought came to him. “Maybe the thing was, she didn’t have a home to go back to before, so she couldn’t stop. And now maybe she can because that’s changing.”
“So she was somewhere to stay? Somewhere real?”
Raige thought about the small but cozy room under Scorch and Flame’s healing practice, the drying herbs hanging from the root timbers, the nest of blankets, the anatomy books. He thought about the job that M.D. was still determined to do, the job she truly did seem to love. “Yeah. Yeah, she does.”
“And she has people to take care of her? Adults?”
Raige thought of Biff, lugging meals out to the League, arguing with M.D. and fighting with her and not taking her shit. He thought of Thomas, getting M.D. sorted at Treehouse, and Bobcat, trying to get her the care she needed, and even those long-gone PIN employees who hammered out the paperwork. He thought of all the Treehouse people, lost like her, weird like her, building a town from the rubble and detritus of countless worlds. And not human, so not like her owners.
“Yeah,” Raige said. “There’s a lot of us looking out for her. It’s not all on you now… or me either. And you know, she’s been through a lot, so I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I do know she’s been through a lot, and she’s still here. She’s got more guts than anyone I’ve ever met, so maybe she’ll have the guts for this too. And I know you’re worn out, and I can’t blame you, I don’t know what it’d be like, doing what you did for five years, and… and yeah, things aren’t okay right now. But maybe one day they will be.”
“I hope so,” Vandorsky said. “I’d miss her.” She raised her mug. “To getting better.”
Raige raised his. “To getting better.”
Clunk.
Series: Infinity Smashed
Summary: The end of the adventure.
Word Count: 2800
Notes: Winner of Patreon poll. Late. Sorry. "Goodbye" takes place right before the events of The Start of a Beautiful Enmity, "Hello, How Are You?" after the events of Six Weeks to Recovery.
Goodbye
Ring. Ring.
I drummed my fingers against the pay phone. Come on, Vandorsky, pick up.
Ring. Ring— “Hello?”
“Hey Vandorsky. It’s me.”
“You toolbag!” she shouted, loud enough I had to pull the receiver away, and she burst into explosive tears.
“I’ve been checking the obituaries for months! When you said you needed to get out of here, I thought you meant, like, my neighborhood for a couple days! Not until summer vacation!” Wheeze. Hiccup. “I checked all your stupid old places, all the people I knew you ever talked to, and none of them, none of them had seen you! I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere and I’d never know if they found you and I was freaking out and you didn’t even write me a letter, you capitalist douchemonger!”
I just stood there.
“Well?”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“What were you even doing all that time?”
My voice was weak. “…adventuring?”
The sobbing stopped. Vandorsky blew her nose. She sighed.
“You’re a toolbag, Maribelle Dawn. A first-class, one-of-a-kind toolbag.”
I didn’t even protest at her whipping out my full documented name. She was upset enough that I felt I’d earned it.
Then she sniffed and went, “Hey. You’re calling me.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh a phone.”
“Lost my telegraph.”
She ignored me. “And I can hear you fine. You’re not staticky or breaking up or anything.” Pause. “Where are you? The ID just says Unknown Caller.”
I ransacked my pockets and shoved a few Susan B. Anthonys into the slot. This would take a while.
I told her everything, and finished with, “…so yeah. That’s it.”
Silence on the other end.
“Vandorsky?”
In flat tones, way worse than her earlier sobbing, Vandorsky said, “you’re not messing with the schizo, are you?”
“No!” I was honestly horrified. “I’d never!”
“This isn’t you trying to unravel my head because I get weird ideas that I shouldn’t believe but I do because the world is a messed-up place and my brain doesn’t work sometimes?”
“I swore! We had a deal! Never.”
“Okay. Okay.” Deep breath. “Then you should get why I’m going to hang up now.”
“What? No! Vandorsky, please, I am stuck out on I-10—”
“You’re always stuck out on I-10.”
That stopped me short. “What?”
“Or some other township, or the police station, or something. You’re always in trouble, M.D. Always. You go, you disappear, I don’t hear from you, I worry you’re dead for real this time, and then you turn up in trouble. Again. And every time, I bail you out, and then you disappear again, and the whole thing repeats. I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”
I was silent.
Sigh. “I don’t know what this latest crazy stuff is you’re in, but I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over, acting like it’ll turn out different this time. I can’t do this anymore. I’m done. Okay?”
My voice sounded very small. “Okay.”
“I love you a lot. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Get better.” She hung up.
I stood there with the receiver in my hand until it told me to please hang up and try my call again. I put the receiver away. I trashed the phone booth.
The PIN found me there halfway through the process and picked me up.
Hello, How Are You?
Ring. Ring. “Hello?”Raige tugged his bangs. “Uh, hi? I’m calling for…” he realized in horror that he didn’t know her first name. “…M.D.’s friend Vandorsky?”
Pause. In a guarded voice: “This is she. Who is this?”
“Uh, my name’s Raige, I’m one of M.D.’s other friends, and she wanted to let you know she’s doing okay, but in a way that wouldn’t be weird for you. So I volunteered. Hi.”
It hadn’t been that simple, and Raige wasn’t really sure that M.D. could truly be described as “okay.” She’d been in the Jaunter’s League mental ward for months. He’d found her surrounded by crumpled abandoned letters, frustrated and paralyzed, and he’d asked her why. Up until then, Raige had barely even heard of Vandorsky.
The volunteering part was true, at least. Raige figured he could act as a buffer… and maybe do something useful for M.D., because so far he felt like he’d been more hindrance than help.
“Oh. Okay. That’s… good to know.” Pause, as though checking something. “Caller ID says you’re calling from Vago. Is that right?”
“Yeah. Oasis Valley.” That wouldn’t mean anything to her. “North Vago.”
“How long have you known M.D.?”
“Since Spring Break. So… about six months? Yeah.”
Another pause that Raige couldn’t read. Vandorsky’s voice was so flat, he wondered if he’d offended her. But then she said, “Okay. This might sound weird, but Vago’s not so far. Could we meet? In person, I mean.”
Raige thought about it. Flagstaff was only a couple hours north—albeit mostly uphill. His evenings and weekends were claimed by marching and symphonic band practices, but… “I could maybe make it Thanksgiving weekend. I mean, if you don’t think it’s weird. I could try and give you proof of identity or something first?”
Vandorsky laughed, such a short flat sound that Raige almost didn’t recognize it. “You’re named Rage. Of course she knows you. Here, we can meet at my favorite coffee shop. I’ll have zines out on the table, so you’ll know it’s me.”
On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Raige made the drive up to Flagstaff, specifically the Skull and Croissant Scones. The sign had a big painted teacup with a skull and crossbones on it. Vandorsky had already arrived; he could see her through the front window, sitting at a table with a mug and the promised stack of stapled paper.
Vandorsky herself was a pudgy girl with a round moon face, black dyed hair, and super-baggy black jeans. Her black shirt was for a punk band that Raige had barely heard of, and her black denim jacket was covered in safety-pinned patches for various political causes and zine distros.
Raige parked the car, got out, and went inside, to her table. “Vandorsky? Hi, I’m Raige; we talked on the phone?”
She stared at him, and for a horrible moment, he thought he’d approached the wrong person. But then she shook his proffered hand and went, “Wow. You are way less punk than I expected.”
“Yeah, the nickname’s outdated. And I’m sorry, but I have no idea what your first name is; M.D. didn’t tell me.”
“Oh. It’s… it’s Karlotta.”
“Cool! Nice to meet you, Karlotta!”
She seemed to relax a little, though it was hard to tell. She already had a big mug of lapsang souchong, so Raige went and got a soda and a sandwich. He sat, she put the big book away, and they descended into awkward silence.
“So…” Raige finally said, shifting his mug from hand to hand. “How do you know M.D.?”
She stared at him. “Special Ed,” she said, and Raige must’ve visibly wilted because she said, “It’s okay, I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I… didn’t know.”
“I’m not surprised. What did she tell you about me?”
“Uh, you like punk music, zines, and Bela Lugosi? And you were friends but…” He didn’t know how to finish.
“Right on all counts. We were.” She took a sip of her tea. “Okay, so here’s the thing. You said you’ve known her maybe six months. I’ve known her since the fifth grade. We met in Special Ed because I was crazy and she was… something else.”
“I… I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, I’m just telling you. We were in classes together a long time. Then I left Special Ed and M.D. left school.”
“Like… homeschool?”
“If so, she didn’t tell me, and she still dropped out.”
“Oh.” Raige sat there, staring into a drink he no longer had any interest in. “She didn’t tell me that either.”
“Yeah. She does that. That’s why I wanted to meet up, because there’s a lot you need to know and she looks to have entered your life about when she left mine. So, ask me anything.”
Raige thought about it. The only other person he knew who’d met M.D. before himself was Bobcat, and only by a few hours. Vandorsky had years on them both, and she was a total stranger. Raige had never been to Flagstaff before, and he doubted there’d be anything to bring him back. He really could ask Vandorsky anything.
“Who… who’re M.D.’s parents? Her adopted parents.”
“You mean her foster parents. There’s been a lot of them, and none of them matter now. M.D. left home around the time she left school. Sometimes she stayed with me. Sometimes she didn’t. She didn’t tell me much about that.”
Raige remembered the big Army backpack, the blue tarp and cord she’d used to shelter them in the forest. He remembered her efficiency, as though she’d done it a million times. He felt sick.
“I thought she learned it camping…”
“She did. Different kind of camping.”
A million questions came to mind, only for Raige to discard them. How did she eat? Probably the same way she’d slept: wherever and however she could. Wasn’t there anyone who…? No. But why…?
It all made sense. Why M.D. had taken things so calmly, how she’d been so good at doing what she’d had to. Why no one had come looking or asking for her, why she’d never seemed worried about the people she’d left behind. She’d never seemed to miss anyone, and at the time, he’d thought it was just because she was less of a wuss than he was, but now it looked like there was no one to miss. There was no one to claim her except some Dellan bioprop collective. M.D., the smart gutsy adventure girl he’d crushed on all the way to Treehouse, had been lost. She’d fallen through a million cracks until all that was left was this Goth girl in a coffee shop to worry for her.
It seemed so obvious. It’d been staring him in the face all along. How could he not have seen it?
It must’ve showed in his face, because Karlotta Vandorsky said, “Hey. Are you okay?”
Raige lifted his drink, coughed when he drank it too fast. “Just… realizing a few things. Jesus. I had no idea it was that bad.”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to warn you about. Like, you’re here. You called me to help her out, right? So I get it, you want her to be okay. I do too.” She reached over and put her hand over his. “But you have to know, someone has to tell you: it’s not your fault if she never is.”
Raige flinched back. “What? Hey…”
“No, I mean it. I’ve known M.D. for five years, and she’s never been okay. Not in that whole time. She’s never okay.” Vandorsky took a sip. She didn’t sound angry, or resentful, just tired. “I tried to get her into a youth shelter once. She wouldn’t go. M.D. has a thing about adults. Maybe you noticed?”
“Yeah. I noticed.”
“Its like she sees them and all her sense goes flying out the window. I don’t know why, but even the nice ones, she can’t see it, can’t deal with them. They’re all bad to her.”
Raige thought about what he knew of the Dellans. Of Number One. “I think I know why.”
“Yeah, I can make a few guesses. But you can’t live like that, you know? You can’t live in a world without adults. She never understood that. She acts like she can just fight them all the time, and…” She sighed, and Raige saw the frustration and worry in her eyes. He imagined how many times she must’ve thought and said it. “Has she changed at all?”
Raige thought of Bobcat. Of Scorch and Flame. Of Biff. “A little. Maybe. But it’s hard going.” He thought of back when she’d tried to comfort him in the forest. “She told me her life was an adventure.”
Vandorsky snorted into her tea. “Oh, so she gave you that whole spiel too?”
Raige was silent.
“That’s what she always said. Oh, it’s an adventure. But you know my favorite part of adventures? They end. One day, it’s over and you go home. That’s the whole point of adventures; they aren’t your normal life.
“But with M.D., it never ends. It’s why I had to stop being around her. At first, you think it’s exciting. Fun even. And sure, M.D.’s exciting. If the world ended tomorrow, I can think of worse people to team up with. But the world hasn’t ended! You know? And it never stops. She never stops. She never goes home, never gets better, just goes through disaster after disaster and…” she paused, struggled, got her voice deadpan again. “And I couldn’t watch her do that anymore. It’s like watching someone wreck their car, over and over. It’s too crazy.”
They sat there with their drinks and untouched food. Vandorsky didn’t seem to feel like Raige needed to talk, which was good, because his head was too full with thoughts to say anything. Up until then, he’d managed to think that this was just a momentary setback. M.D. was having a hard time, and one day, that hard time would end, and things would be okay again. But after hearing this, he had a terrible feeling that M.D.’s hospitalization wasn’t just one thing, but everything. It sounded like the hard time was her entire life, and now it was all catching up to her at once. How did you fix that?
“So,” Vandorsky said into the ensuing silence. “Is she really doing okay? Or is this just the next big adventure?”
Raige thought about that for a long time. Then he said, “I think this is the end of the adventure.”
Even with the deadpan mask, Raige could see Vandorsky’s skepticism.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think she’d keep it going forever if she could. But you’re right, no one lasts forever, not even her, and I think she’s finally out of gas.” He remembers her padded room. “I think she even knows it too, even if she won’t admit it. Eventually you have to go home.” A hopeful thought came to him. “Maybe the thing was, she didn’t have a home to go back to before, so she couldn’t stop. And now maybe she can because that’s changing.”
“So she was somewhere to stay? Somewhere real?”
Raige thought about the small but cozy room under Scorch and Flame’s healing practice, the drying herbs hanging from the root timbers, the nest of blankets, the anatomy books. He thought about the job that M.D. was still determined to do, the job she truly did seem to love. “Yeah. Yeah, she does.”
“And she has people to take care of her? Adults?”
Raige thought of Biff, lugging meals out to the League, arguing with M.D. and fighting with her and not taking her shit. He thought of Thomas, getting M.D. sorted at Treehouse, and Bobcat, trying to get her the care she needed, and even those long-gone PIN employees who hammered out the paperwork. He thought of all the Treehouse people, lost like her, weird like her, building a town from the rubble and detritus of countless worlds. And not human, so not like her owners.
“Yeah,” Raige said. “There’s a lot of us looking out for her. It’s not all on you now… or me either. And you know, she’s been through a lot, so I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I do know she’s been through a lot, and she’s still here. She’s got more guts than anyone I’ve ever met, so maybe she’ll have the guts for this too. And I know you’re worn out, and I can’t blame you, I don’t know what it’d be like, doing what you did for five years, and… and yeah, things aren’t okay right now. But maybe one day they will be.”
“I hope so,” Vandorsky said. “I’d miss her.” She raised her mug. “To getting better.”
Raige raised his. “To getting better.”
Clunk.
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Date: 2021-02-02 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-02 10:40 am (UTC)Also, Maribelle Dawn!! XDDD
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Date: 2021-02-18 06:38 pm (UTC)Raige grew up on fantasy novels where children go on adventures all the time without consequence. It's easy not to know something when you REALLY don't want to think about it too hard.
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Date: 2021-02-02 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-14 03:48 pm (UTC)