Battle Vixens! - 68

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Episode 68: All Apologies

Not long after the discovery about the Giver's appearance, Magus happened to glance at a clock and exclaimed that she had to go now or else be late to a class. If there had been any doubt she was a student at the college before, all those present knew now—which also lent some credence to her worries about keeping secrets. Light helped her back out to her car, then came back to get everyone else. Everyone thanked the Quinns (mostly Clark) for their time, then they went out to Amory's car and got in, all but Light shifting back to human form.

"Hey, can you explain exactly how the channeling thing works?" Light said, leaning forward slightly in the backseat.
"Um, it's not very complicated," Emma said. "You just..think about the thing you wanna do, but don't actually do it. And..keep thinking about doing it until you do it?"

"Hmm. Guess I'll try it later..."

"I wonder if I can still pull her into the dreamscape thing," Amory said. "I mean, she doesn't 'count' as a vixen for the 'you're cute' thing, but...oh, shoot." He snapped his fingers once.
"What?" both of them said almost at the same time.
"Ahh, I meant to tell Rowan about that yesterday. Or at least, way earlier today. Slipped my mind. When we get back, remind me."
"Sure."

"Um." Emma half-turned back toward Light. Speaking of meaning to remember to tell someone something: "Yesterday...Dawn was trying to tell me, to tell you that 'she' had lied to her. But..I couldn't get her to say, about what?"
"Hmph." Light crossed her arms. "Well, it's not like I trust her word anyway..even though nothing she's said so far has been false."
"And a lot proven true," Amory added. "But her stated goal is to still manipulate people, even while telling the truth all the time. That doesn't mean she couldn't have made Dawn believe she said something that wasn't true with language games."

"Yeah," Light nodded. "Like, 'What if I told you the moon is made of cheese?' That isn't technically a lie, because it's a hypothetical question, but it implies the speaker believes the statement contained in the 'what if' and means to relay it."
"That's kinda cheating, in a way," Amory said, "but it still fulfills the letter of the law, so to speak. And there's lots of other, more subtle ways she could say something that makes someone believe she's telling them something she isn't. Like: Getting someone to ask her a certain question, and then just staying silent and letting them assume she agrees with whatever they already believe."

"I think it probably had something to do with getting her to go fight the puppeteer alone," Light said. "Since...as far as we know the only visit she had was just before that happened."

"That makes sense," Emma said. "Still, I...she wanted me to tell you specifically for some reason, so.."
"Yeah," the white-haired vixen nodded. "Thanks. Maybe she told Dawn she'd talked to me a lot, or she was just aware of that for some other reason."

---

Dawn left, starting out into the hall, but she wasn't immediately certain which direction Cynthia had gone. She started toward their rooms—about the closest thing to "somewhere to hide" that they had at the moment—but stopped briefly into a bathroom to actually rinse off her face. Looking at herself in the mirror for just a moment, she felt she knew—Cynthia wasn't ready to know yet.

For one reason or another, Dawn was remembering things so much faster than her—not that she remembered all that much, but somehow..she felt much more stable and secure here than Cynthia did. Rowan was right—it would be wrong to burden her with that knowledge when she didn't even know enough of what it meant. Or...a guilty part of her argued back, maybe she was just rationalizing. Maybe this wasn't really something she wanted her to know, for much more selfish reasons.

Dawn shook her head at herself. Not now. Not this conversation, she thought, turning to leave. Either way, I ain't ready to tell her.

Her guess was more or less right. Cynthia was lying on her back on their—on Dawn's bed, rather—staring at the ceiling. Her fox-like ears had heard someone coming, and her head quickly turned toward the door when it was carefully pushed the rest of the way open. "Hey...sorry." She sat up while Dawn came inside. "I, made a mess with your friend, huh?"

"I think he understands...kinda. He seemed more, uh, relieved than mad," she said.

"Yeah, but I bet he still thinks I'm..." Cynthia struggled for a moment as though some more words were caught in her throat, but she didn't know what they were. "...I guess I must do this, a lot? It started feeling familiar after a sec."

"To, me too, actually. But I don't think..."

Dawn paused, going to a chair to sit down—finding she didn't like talking down toward Cynthia like that. "You're...you just, don't take no one's lies," she said. "Or, nothin'. You want to keep both of us safe, right? And...maybe others?"

"I guess." Cynthia looked away slightly.

"We...I bet we're used to bein' in situations where we gotta stand up for ourselves or get eaten alive. And you always do," Dawn said, holding back a part of her that wanted to add except with—. She didn't know except with who, and contradicting herself on something half-remembered didn't make much sense right now. "That's gotta be why, you weren't scared to go out and fight those things...right?"

"You don't think I'm scared!?" she snapped, looking back up. "I'm terrified! I woke up with no idea who I am, and—and I still don't know, even though I feel like I should. I don't know this place, I don't know these people, and there are monsters outside trying to kill all of us!" She waved emphatically in no particular direction, meaning 'outside'. "A-and, now they're all looking at me like I know what I'm doing, and I don't! I just ran out there 'cause, 'cause I-I have to do something, to feel like I'm in control, and—and I'd rather die fighting than just sit around waiting to get killed!"

Cynthia leaned forward, sobbing into her hands. Dawn rushed over to try to hug her from one side—which was easy enough to do. "Cynth..I'm sorry."

She sniffed loud and long in response, pulling her hands off her face and half-composing herself. "I...I don't know how to talk to people. When I'm mad at myself I take it out on everyone around me."

"Ain't I the same way? Just..haven't been mad here yet," Dawn said. "Someone..anyone say somethin' bad about you, you'll see it then."
"Hhh-heheh.." What started as another sob terminated in an uncomfortable sort of half-giggle. "That sounds..like you all right." She sat up just enough to look the taller girl in the eye for a second or two. "Thanks for following me. I dunno if anyone else would've, if not for you. And then I'da been fighting those things alone."

---

Relieved to be done putting on a brave face for the moment, Clark took one last cookie and went straight to the living room couch, sinking into it, leaning his head far enough back on the cushion to be tilted upward, and closing his eyes. Rory took a moment to realize he'd left the kitchen, then came to the doorway between the two rooms. "Are you—did I make you tired?"

"Yes. Good tired, don't apologize," he amended quickly, leaning up slightly and making his eyes open enough to look at her. "You can keep eating cookies if you want."

"Oh, uh, I'm quite full actually. Maybe...I can just look some more stuff up with the computer?" she suggested.

"Go ahead." He didn't exactly fall asleep, just went into a half-meditative, blank mental state for a while.

It didn't last as long as he really wanted it to—the sound of bones cracking and the sight of a body lying on the ground, twisted around like a broken ragdoll, floating to the surface. A sharp intake of breath came in response; he sat up and forced open his eyes open to look around the room—at anything else. It took him a moment to realize the cracking sound was actually the clicking of keyboard keys, and even after that realization he still felt slightly sick. Eventually his gaze settled down toward his hands, turned upward and spread where he could look at the palms.

There was nothing on them.

How could he feel guilty about doing the right thing? Someone had to do it, right? Rory—if her memories were back—would tell him he was being foolish, wouldn't she? If Tobias hadn't cut her off, she'd been just abount to punch that fox-girl's relatively fragile body with enough force to...

to break her...

Clark's teeth gritted in a wince; imagining something even that close to the reality was sickening and almost physically painful. Anyway, that wasn't the point. Everyone was there specifically to kill her. Rowan shot at her. Light was ready to stab her or something. Emma...wasn't prepared to kill someone, but had clearly accepted the necessity of the act enough to help the others try. Rory would...would willingly have taken her out, and then cracked her knuckles as if to say, "another monster down." Was that a good thing? Was he even right about it?

Rory would say this was all stupid. He shouldn't feel bad at all about killing a megolamaniacal murderer. He should, instead, feel great about saving who-knew-how-many lives and bringing back the dead, however "incomplete" of a resurrection it was. She would...

"Um...what're you..doing?" His head snapped up and over to find Rory looking at him through the doorway again. "Are you okay?"
"It's...nothing. I'm..." fine. The word wouldn't come out. She was giving him a concerned look, but at the same time acheiving the familiar expression of her old self which informed him that she knew he was trying to lie and wasn't about to tolerate it. He exhaled, not really wanting to have this conversation—ever, if possible. "You know that...the person who killed you. I killed them."
"Yes?" Plus an implied 'how is that relevant?'

"Her death was...logically speaking, necessary. And good. Without even counting the.." He half-waved toward her. "What happened afterward, to bring some people back to life, taking her down saved many lives."

She came around toward him. "You don't seem very happy about that."
"I'm...not. Because I can't convince myself to be. I just feel...wrong. Sick. I feel guilty, because I killed someone who had to die."

At this point, Clark was looking down again; he'd dropped his hands away and was just staring at the floor instead. For this reason, he was much more surprised than he otherwise would've been when his wife bent over and easily lifted him up into a hug. "Aack!" He struggled briefly in surprise before making sense of what was going on, and of course that wasn't enough to combat her present super-strength.

"Uh..sorry. I surprised you," she said.
"Yes..." Clark returned the embrace before she could think about putting him down.
"It's just..maybe it's a good thing to feel bad about killing someone," she said. "Anyone. They still have..lives, and families, and someone who cares about them. Maybe not guilty, but..you can feel bad about it, for sure. You even...just found out what it's like to lose someone, too, didn't you?"

"I did." Clark sniffed, and realized that both of them had tears coming out, even though Rory was sort of half-smiling. He leaned over onto her shoulder for a moment. What use was it trying to figure out what the 'old her' would say? Rory was right here, and memories or not, she understood him perfectly and knew what to say.

"Oh, Rory, I'm sorry.."

"Well, don't be! You, you don't have to apologize to anyone for how you feel," she continued. "Trying to hold it back just makes it worse. Let it out, and then you can move on with your life." At the same time...that's right. That's the kind of thing she would say. "Um.." Minus the slight hesitation afterward, at least.

Clark pulled back enough to look her in the eyes again. "See? That's you," he said, running a hand over one of her ears and through some of her hair. "You can drop any doubts you have left now."

"H-heheh..if you say so."

---

"..for an experiment."

The interpreter on the phone relayed Rowan's message in Japanese, then paused to hear the reply. "We are likely willing to help, but need more information about this 'experiement'," he said.

"Well, I think you're aware of how the Giver is able to draw us into a 'dream space' to talk. We may have a way to use that space to speak with each other. All you would need to do is go to sleep tonight in empowered form."

"...That sounds easy enough. Count us in."

Rowan nodded. "Thank you. Your help is most appreciated."

Once both sides hung up, the interpreter set Rowan's office phone back on its base, nodded to him and left. Now that the room was empty, Rowan noticed the faint buzzing of his personal phone informing him of a call he'd just missed. It was Dr. Quinn—the male one—through the VI app, so he tapped to call back.

Rowan spoke first: "Hello?"
"Ah—yes, sorry. I was just..well, I thought better of it and hung up almost right away," he waffled nervously. "Didn't want to bother you with.."
"Please, go ahead. I'm not busy right now, and we've both been through a lot," he said.
Clark exhaled into the phone. "Okay. Well—you know that I, after yesterday's events I have...the same powers Tobias did, in addition to my original ones."
"Right." This seemed like more of a lead-in than the actual content of his question.

"I just...how do you..

"How do you use a power you saw kill people you care about? How does it not..?"
"I see. Well—it wasn't easy, at first," Rowan said. "I had some doubt. Plus it's...possible to, take on some of the emotions that characterized the original owner's expression of the power when you wouldn't otherwise. I made some...mistakes that way. But...Mmm, this may sound pretty corny to you. Once I had...the full extent of my power unlocked, I swore to myself aloud: 'I will save more than she killed'.

"That may be a tall order for you. Tobias...had much more time and power to do harm," Rowan continued. "But I think the general idea works. It doesn't matter where it came from or how it was used before. Our powers are a tool to be used how we wish. For what it's worth, I think we can trust you to use yours right."

"...Thank you," Clark said.

"By the way...I have what you could call a theory," Rowan said. "About..their memories."
"Yes?" He seemed particularly eager to hear this.

"Well..Dawn has been very quickly remembering some things that I know were...extremely emotional for her. I'm not sure in how much detail yet, but...I think the more 'emotional' a memory is, the easier it is to bring it back. It's probably something to do with how the Giver says our powers are temporarily strengthened by emotions."

"That...tracks.

"Look, I'm..sorry I haven't contacted you before now, but..she visited me last night," Clark said. "Wanted to make sure my 'prize' was satisfactory. She wanted to assure me that the people we brought back are really the same people, the same 'souls' pulled back among the living using their powers as 'rope'. I can..type you out a more detailed summary. Maybe it'll help."
"I'd appreciate it, but don't feel obligated to share anything you feel is too private."

"Got it."