Battle Vixens! - 66

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Episode 66: Watching Through the Window

"Um, Clark..?" Rory stood just a bit behind him as he got to work rinsing off the dishes and dropping them into some kind of machine built into the kitchen counter.

"Yeah?"
"I uh, I don't really want to do, 'husband-wife' things. But..I just, want to be close. I-I really want a hug," she said.

"Oh. Well, that we can do," he said, setting down what was in his hands coming closer to put his arms around her for a moment. She returned the hug tightly—somehow, even though she felt strong enough to crush him, it was easy to keep the embrace harmless—and buried her face in his shoulder for a moment, then let go. He still had work to do, after all.

But the message was more or less received. After he finished cleaning up, and they went to the living room couch to talk some more, Clark took a seat on one side of the couch and let her—or maybe even encouraged her to—sit right up against him and slowly arch her arm up around his back to rest the hand on the opposite shoulder. It was a little embarrassing feeling/hearing her tail swish across the material on the opposite side and thump the back of the couch repeatedly, but..she was happy like this, and just couldn't help herself!

They spent a while talking about Clark—his past, his interests. Some parts of what he said were incomprehensible, some of it felt familiar, but it felt so good to hear him talk happily about his interests, his dreams..what he liked. This was eventually interrupted by some beeping from the...phone, right—on the little table next to where Clark was sitting. He reached over, picking it up to look for a second, then reached for another thing on the same table, pointing it at the big rectangular thing (sort of like her laptop's screen) that took up a prominent position across the room in front of them. It seemed that it was another kind of screen, as this act turned it "on" and it began to show images and play sounds.

It was a lot like the videos she'd seen on the laptop, and seemed to involve people talking and shaky footage of some people Rory had seen the day before—and one she hadn't, with a hat—fighting against some sort of shadowy beasts. Seeing those monsters themselves made the fox-girl's fur stand on end, and Clark felt very tense watching it, too.

"Um.." she started—it hadn't felt right to interrupt at first, but it was getting to be an uncomfortable silence, the noise from the screen notwithstanding.

"I'm..watching to see if they need my help," he said, anticipating her question. "It seems like they're doing all right, but...just in case."
"Oh. Should I help too—"
"No," he very nearly cut her off.

Rory looked over at him. He'd tensed up again, more than before, and his face was in the middle of a transition from a deep frown to a performative calm, neutral expression. "But..I can, fight them, right? I mean—I feel like I can," she said, feeling uncertain.

"It's just.." He made a clear effort to calm and physically relax some. "You, you only just..came back to life. You don't remember anything. That's...you could get hurt fighting those, and—I think it would be best if you wait until you remember more, to know for sure that it's still worth the risk. Knowing..that you really did get killed once before."

"Oh..okay," Rory said. It was a good explanation, seemingly well-thought-out, but something about it still felt disingenuous and evasive to her. But, because something about this subject clearly pained him, she didn't want to press the issue. Anyway, it seemed like the people on the screen were indeed doing a great job on their own.

Once the big bear-thing went down, and the lightning girl jumped back away from its falling body, Clark breathed out a sigh of relief, and raised the device to turn the screen off again. "Hey, are you..getting hungry for lunch?" he asked. "It's a bit early, but maybe I could get something started."
"Uh, certainly," Rory said. "Is uh, do you think I could help any?"
Clark stood up slowly and turned to look at her; there was a tiny bit of surprise evident on his face. "Well—sure, if you want."

While she followed him into the kitchen, Clark seemed to sense her confusion about this. "Sorry, it's just that—you'd never offer to help before. I've asked for it when I just needed an extra pair of hands now and then."

"Really? I, I made you do all the work?"

"No, just most of the cooking," he said. "I don't mind—we both pull our own weight, and the overall distribution is totally fair."

A bit later, after he gave her instructions on how to cut something and she got to work, he was looking at her. "You still seem a little worried," he said. "Look: I like the way our relationship worked—works. We both have things we like to do for each other, and things we don't like doing."
"Then why'd you say yes when I offered to help?"
"Because you offered—which meant you wanted to, right? It'd be ridiculous of me to turn you down when you want to do something that helps us both."

"Well then, isn't it wrong of me to expect you to not need any help?"

"Not when I have an established pattern of generally not needing help, and asking for it when I do," Clark replied.

"So, does this mess something up? I-I mean, are we not a 'fair distribution' if I'm doing this?"

He turned to face her for a moment. "Rory. Dear. Just because I'm happy with things one way doesn't mean I can't be equally happy if they change up a little. You want to help, and I appreciate the help, and that you want to help. Petty little details aren't what matter for our relationship, and if we're both satisfied then it's working out fine. If one of us decides she's not satisfied and wants to change things, there's a bit of push and pull until we're both happy again. In this case I'm already happy you want to help, so we're fine."
"H-heheh. Okay."

---

They were probably in trouble.

Not long after the amnesiacs came back into the VI building, they were more or less gently herded back into a room similar to the one where they'd had their situation explained to them the day before; maybe it was even the same room. The podium was empty, though, so everyone just sat or stood talking or staring around the room wondering what was going on.

"Heyy," Cynthia said. "You got real mad when that bird-lion thing tried to snap me up."
Dawn shook her head. "No, I, I was—terrified. Real scared. I-I felt, I felt like it was gonna happen again," she said slowly.
The redhead tilted her head a bit, folding an ear down. "Like what was gonna happen again?"

"I..I-I don't, know," she said, the words sounding pained. "Cynth, it's just..when I look at you sometimes, or, or I'm not thinkin' of anything...or, last night, in my dream...I feel like..."

She paused for just a moment, trying to take hold of a slippery thought, and seized on a more recent memory instead. "..Rowan said you died before I did, right? I-I think, I must've seen it. A-and I'm rememberin' that, or..some part of me is tryin' to."
"Well, I'm glad you don't want to see me hurt," Cynthia said.

"N-no, but..!" Dawn shook her head emphatically. "I-I don't just feel, sad or...angry, when I think of that. It's, I feel, guilty more than anything else. L-like I did somethin' horrible." She shuddered, and the temperature dropped in the air around her. Some tears came halfway down her face, freezing into little icicles and dropping onto the floor.

"Hey. Heeyy.." The shorter girl climbed herself up into a hug, so their faces were right in front of each other. "Dawn. Look at me! It's okay. I'm okay now, and you're okay too! Whatever happened...I'm here now." She ran a hand through Dawn's hair, across her ears, and the air slowly warmed again.

The taller girl slowly, hesitantly returned the hug with one arm, and sniffed. "Y-yeah. Sorry, Cynth..." She ran her free hand through Cynthia's hair, and then gently set her down again, feeling better..at least for now. But some uncertainty lingered. She thought that maybe she was closer to remembering than before. It felt almost like...

Rowan Shepherd came into the room from a door near the podium. He wasn't loud or even particularly physically imposing, but something about his entry and presence in the room caused the chatter to die down quickly, people mostly sitting down and turning to look. He didn't actually walk up to the podium, instead coming up in front of the platform it was on. His expression was unreadable—serious, certainly, but not angry, Dawn thought somehow. "Sorry you all got chased in here," he said. "I only wanted to speak with you for a moment.

"First of all, thank you. You may have saved this building, and the people within it, by your actions. Secondly, though, you really shouldn't have needed to do that. It was a..tactical error on my part that left this place undefended to begin with, and for that I am sorry. Most of you aren't even from here, and none of you really have the full picture of what's going on..so it wouldn't be right to ask you to fight again. I'll try to be more careful in keeping those of you who are still here tomorrow safe."

He paused while the interpreters in the room finished echoing his words. "That's about it," he said then. "I understand your lunch was interrupted; the kitchen staff is making something fresh for you if you're still hungry."

The other vixens began filtering out of the room at this point—many of them attracted by the offer of food. Dawn was interested in that too, but Cynthia was headed Rowan's way, so she followed. "Hey, the two of us are from here," she said. "So we can fight those things tomorrow, right?"

"...I can't ask you to," he said after a moment. "You already risked, and gave, your lives in this fight once. Kids like you don't deserve this kind of burden, and, as I said, you don't understand enough now to really make an informed decision."
"Excuse me?!" Cynthia leaned up confrontationally; Rowan stayed upright and stone-faced. "I know those things tried to kill us today!" she said, pointing vaguely off to one side like the monsters were in that particular direction. "A-and lots of other people too! And they'll come back tomorrow, and the next day, and—am I wrong about that?"
"No."

"And I know we're supposed to have these, weird powers to fight them with. Right?"

"That is supposedly the reason we were given them," he said neutrally.

"Then how is that not enough context?!"

"Uh, Cynth—" Dawn half-muttered, getting the sense that making a scene like this wasn't exactly out of the ordinary for her.

"You don't know who you are," Rowan said; he didn't seem to be intentionally cutting her off, and probably hadn't even heard her. "You can die, or worse, fighting them, and right now you have no idea whose life you would even be risking."

"Wh—I know who I am!" she said, incredulous. "I'm—me, I-I-I'm—"
"Cynthia," Dawn said, managing a volume that both of them could hear this time. She turned back toward the taller vixen, still looking angry, and Dawn folded her ears down. "It's—he's just worried about you. About us. And, don't wanna see us, get hurt," she said.

The redhead looked between the two of them, growled incoherently, and stormed out of the room, leaving Dawn behind with Rowan. There were some tears in her eyes in the flash of her face that Dawn could see during this, but...again, she had a vague sense that had to be coming from her lost memories. It said: Leave her alone for a few minutes to cool down, then go to her. Meanwhile...

She looked back at Rowan. It was strange: His expression didn't seem all that different, but Dawn had the sense that he was more relaxed now. "You want to ask me something," he said—not a question.
"Uh, yeah. I..it's just, lately I feel like.." Dawn shook her head uncertainly. "Rowan, did I—" She looked down at the floor, and shook; she wasn't even sure she wanted to know, but she needed to know. The temperature in the room dropped palpably as she turned her head back up to face him again. "D-did I kill her..?" she squeaked softly.
"...Listen. You know now what those monsters are like," he said slowly and patiently—she nodded. "They will try to eat us, to take our powers and use them against the rest of us. You and Cynthia were fighting one of them, and it tore off one of her arms and ate her," he bore down, keeping his tone even and serious—like an imitation of how he talked as a vixen, if with slightly more emotion. "You took it down, but she was left unconscious, and with trauma which she would not have survived."

The room had gotten even colder, and Dawn shivered, some frozen tears falling off her face. "A-and so I..I did it then, huh?" she said in a choked voice—half concluding, half remembering. Rowan just nodded.

"I didn't want to tell you before you had enough context—nor her, but I'll leave that up to you to decide," he said. "I can't tell you whether you did the right thing, but—for complicated reasons, she's alive now because you did that. Make of that what you will."

Dawn took a deep breath, then continued breathing slowly, calming herself down; the temperature around her went back to normal as she did. Then she said: "Rowan. I...I did somethin' else horrible too, right? B-before that..."
He nodded. "I really...don't want to burden you with that knowledge before you actually remember it. But...you should know that you didn't do it for selfish reasons. You were never a bad person, Dawn, but from what I can tell, you've always valued her far above yourself. And the two of you were...backed into a corner."

Dawn nodded and sniffed, wiping her face quickly on a sleeve. "T-thanks. I gotta..she'll wanna talk to someone soon," she said, turning to leave.

---

The lunch came out very good. Since she wasn't starving or sleepy from just waking up, Rory tried to imitate the more polite way Clark was eating instead of just stuffing herself carelessly. It turned out that she seemed to already know how to eat like that, but just..had some sort of habit of eating more rudely here, or possibly when just with him.

After they ate, he didn't seem to do as much of the work with the dishes as he had after breakfast, instead heading back into the living room and grabbing for the device that turned on the screen again. "The city might be under attack by now," he explained when she followed him. "It's..less likely that they need my help, or that I can get to them in time to do much, but...I'd like to know things are okay there, just in case." The screen was re-showing video from before instead, so he shrugged and pushed a different button that made it quit making sound before going to sit down again. Then they talked some more, Clark mostly focusing in her direction with the occasional glance toward the screen.

It seemed like Clark had a much better relationship with his family than she did with hers. He said they liked her too, as though this was unusual..so maybe it was. He had several siblings, while she was an only child. It seemed to her like he was a consistently nice person, maybe to a fault of giving in to what others around him wanted. How did two people so different end up together in the first place? Or..maybe being different this way was somehow beneficial, she thought.

The screen finally did show whatever he was waiting to see—more of people she half-recognized, from the 'city' she guessed, fighting more of those monsters. What was more, a bunch of the other people they'd said had been brought back to life along with her were fighting them, too. Rory felt sure now that she could be fighting too—the earlier doubt brought on almost entirely by Clark's sudden, sharp negative answer. Not only was she keenly aware of being very strong and sturdy, but she could tell that as a second or perhaps even first nature, she had the ability to pump 'something' into her own body to make it even stronger or tougher, or change other physical properties it had. All of this made her feel a twinge of guilt that she hadn't helped—that she seemed to have also kept him from helping, too—when they both had the chance. Clark almost certainly sensed this, but he didn't say anything in response to it. He wanted to talk to her about a lot of things, but this just wasn't one of them, it seemed.

The phone rang an hour or two later, and Clark picked it up after finishing the sentence he'd been in the middle of. "Hello?"
"Hey, uh.." A male voice which Rory thought she recognized came out of the phone—but it wasn't anyone she'd seen yesterday, she thought. "So Magus wants to talk to Light, and Gemma wants to talk to Magus, and...Light wants to tell her about me. It'd be, probably good for us to all meet up somewhere relatively 'neutral', but we don't have the keys to the lounge, and campus is busy today anyway so it wouldn't be all that private..."
Clark exhaled something like the tail end of a sigh. "You can all come here, it's fine," he said. "Our backyard fences are high, and I think the reporters still won't get too close. Probably better if whoever's driving parks a bit away and Light hides you all walking here, just to be safe."

"Sure. Uh, thanks. Thank you. Really."
"It's no problem," he said before hanging up.

"Well, we're going to have some guests," he said. "Mostly people we fought with yesterday, and one..new vixen, I suppose. You..don't mind, do you?"
"No?" She tilted her head slightly; the question had seemed slightly apologetic, but it wasn't like she knew enough to tell who should visit or when anyway.

"H-heh, okay. I'll answer the door when they show up."

---

"..Sorry for the wait." The door shut behind Rowan as he came in. Tora and Zeno were crowded around Petra, all of them watching or reading something on her phone; Fay and Hugo were standing off to one side; and Corporal Langdon was more or less standing at attention over by herself. "I suppose you've heard by now, but the puppeteer's victims helped defend this place."
"Yeah, they're all over the news," Zeno said—in the process of stepping away from Petra's phone, a motion which Tora more or less mirrored.
"They've dubbed them all 'the reborn'," Petra added. "And that Cynthia is 'The Phoenix'," she recited dramatically. "'Cause: Fire, back from the dead...no flight, but hey, two outta three! Actually, I bet she could do some kinda fireball double-jump thing which is a bit like flying, yeah?"
Rowan cleared his throat. "I wanted to thank them, but also ask them not to put themselves in danger like that again," he said.

"What, even Dawn and his girlfriend?" Zeno said. "They're both from here, and—she was more or less leading the charge today."

"She's emotionally unstable," Rowan snapped. "Not that I blame her, but—she needs help. Therapy of, some sort." He regretted not knowing enough to use the right words. "Not to be..drafted into a war all over again, with even less of an idea why than before!"

"Well..you've got me there," Zeno shrugged. "I'd say they all probably need that, but it'd be a little hard to get them to talk to someone when they don't even have an idea of what a psychiatrist is. Or the laws involved with confidentiality and such."

"..Anyway, you all did well today," Rowan said. "Despite how many of them showed up, nobody was hurt, and there wasn't even much property damage—aside from this building. And..that comes down to my mistake. It really should've been obvious by now that those things target the empowered specifically, and I suppose they have some way of 'knowing' when one of us is nearby. For as long as we have those guests, we'll need to guard this place carefully.

"Now..I don't know whose idea it was, but you need to stop calling me 'boss'," he said, crossing his arms and glaring toward Petra and Zeno. "I'm not anyone's boss here."

"All due respect, you sure seem to call the shots," the Corporal spoke up. "Ain't hard to see we're more effective with your direction."

"It's one less syllable than 'Rowan'," Petra helpfully added.

"Still. I don't like it," he said. "So stop."

"Ohh, alright. Maybe I can get Karis to come up with a good hero name for you instead," she said.

Rowan just shook his head. "Anyway, that's all for today. Stay sharp."

However, as they began to filter out, he had one thought—and moved toward Petra. "Simon."
"Yeah?"
"I know she's reluctant, but..you think you could convince Gemma to visit tomorrow, after the attacks are over? Maybe learn some of our guests' powers before they leave?"
"Sure, but—why me? You've got her in the app too."
"You're better at convincing people to do things," he said.

"True, true." She nodded—then paused, folding her ears back to glare up at him. "Heeyy, so I can't take a picture but she can come grab everyone's powers?"

"She'll be asking permission," he countered.
"...Fair enough. I'll see what I can do!"

---

Clark stood up slowly and stretched at about the time he expected everyone to arrive. It was nice to have a break from standing and lecturing, running and fighting. Despite sleeping reasonably well the night before and taking a nap before that, he now felt uncharacteristically tired. Maybe the Giver's spell had taken even more out of him than either of them thought. It was...also tiring to keep up a conversation with his wife for hours, but it was worth it. No sooner was he through stretching than the doorbell rang, making Rory jump slightly at the unexpected (possibly unfamiliar) sound. "They're here," Clark said as he started toward the front door—supposing, correctly, that she'd understand the meaning of the noise from this context clue. She stood and followed a bit behind him, staying a few steps back as he opened the door.

"Welcome," Dr. Quinn said. "Good job out there today." Amp and Emma were in the front, the latter in her "combined", two-tailed form, with Light behind them. He moved out of the way and they came in, Light stopping about at the threshold.
"Magus is coming pretty soon," she said. "I'm gonna go 'ferry' her over."
"Got it," Clark nodded, letting the door shut after she turned and started off the other way.

"How are you feeling?" Amp asked as they all started toward the living room.

Who she was asking wasn't entirely clear, but Rory answered. "Um, I'm well," she said. "I think. I seem to be alright. But not much has really come back yet."

"Well, just give it time. Rome wasn't built in a day." Rory just seemed confused by the statement; then she turned to look at Emma for a moment.

"Aren't you, um..two?" she said. "Sometimes?"
"Uh—yeah. It's really useful when I wanna do more than one thing at the same time," Emma said, "but I um..talk kinda weird, then."
"Oh."

They stopped in the living room, with Rory still looking at Emma like she was trying to remember something. When the two-tailed vixen tilted her head slightly, she finally said: "I'm...sorry. You're really a good kid."
"Huh?"
"Um.." Rory folded her ears down a bit, looking deeply uncertain. "I..felt like I needed to say that to you, but I have no idea why."
"Well, um..thank you. I think?"

"Hey," Clark interrupted, "you two go on and take a seat." He waved to the couch. "You want some cookies? I'm in a mood to bake something."
"Well..sure, if you're offering," Amp said, Emma nodding quietly toward him to echo the sentiment.

"You, um, want me to help?" Rory offered—as he'd more or less hoped she would. There were a lot of recent memories of these people, and trying with little success to put them together seemed to be making her very uncomfortable. Pulling her into a situation where she could still see and hear them, but didn't feel obliged to participate in their conversation, seemed best.
"Yes, please. It should be fun," Clark said, gently guiding her toward the kitchen. "The end result is tasty, too." Also, he really did want her to taste his cookies for the "first time" again, while the opportunity existed.