[psl] 2004: the weight of the world resting on my back

[firewatcher]

At least Maria could be certain that Danielle would be up at this time of night. Small favors of having a vampire in the family—you could always be sure they'd be up in the middle of the night if you needed to talk about something. Normally she would have asked Sam, but—well.

That was the thing, wasn't it?

She picked up the phone, and dialed the familiar number, hoping that she could manage to at least sound less tired than she felt. "Hey, Danielle," she said. "It's me."

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[beyondthisillusion]

It had been a slow night. Minimal court bullshit. After a few hours of shuffling around papers, Buckley finally told Danielle to take the night off. She'd resisted, of course. But hell had no fury quite like Buckley being told 'no' so after a few circles around, she'd finally agreed.

Which had left her at odds.

At first, she'd considered going to see a movie. It had been ages since the last time she did. And then she toyed around with hitting one of the gaudier casinos, just to do some people watching or hang in a bar.

In the end, she settled on curling up with a good book.

A part of her was exceedingly grateful when the phone rang. Danielle didn't like sitting still that much. But Maria's voice on the other end didn't sound cheerful. "What's wrong?" she asked immediately.

[firewatcher]

Granted, it wasn't as if Maria was real cheerful basically ever these days. More like alternately pissed off, exhausted and sad, although she did her best not to let anyone see her when she was the latter.

"Nothing wrong, really, just—well, mom stuff," she said, shrugging to herself. "Just got the kids to bed. Amity's decided to be a handful, lately. Tried to fake being sick to get out of martial arts class. Said she didn't want to do it anymore, that she wanted to take music lessons after school with 'everyone else.' I offered to sign her up for that and take her to class on a different day, though, and she still had none of it. Sulked all through class and got herself put in time-out for hitting another girl in the face. Intentionally, I think."

It was weird and frustrating—and sudden, too. She'd always been such a sunny, enthusiastic kid, like her dad.

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle smiled wistfully, shutting her book and leaning back against the window seat where she'd been perched. "It probably won't help you to know that I did the same thing when I was her age. Only it was soccer instead of music. Or maybe volleyball."

Something 'normal,' either way.

Maria was a better parent than Miles, though. At least she'd been willing to compromise. Amity was being stubborn, but that was kind of what kids did. Add to that the grief of losing a parent?

Well...

"I'm not sure if it's a good idea or a very, very bad one, but maybe Shawn should talk to her," Danielle said delicately. "After all, he knows what she's going through right now. Probably better than me."

[firewatcher]

Maria rubbed her temples with her free hand. "She was doing so well, though. She loved taekwondo. I just don't understand it." She sighed. "I dunno, maybe it is just a kid thing. She's seven, she wants to try new stuff, it's early yet. Hm—"

She'd never known Shawn as well as Danielle, if only because he'd been absent from the city for a long time. "Shawn, though? Why him?"

[beyondthisillusion]

"Because he remembers what it was like to lose a parent." Danielle had lost two. But then again, she never felt like she'd had any. Her feelings regarding Miles had only hardened with time.

But best to stay off of the subject of Sam as much as possible.

"Besides" she continued, just a little too quickly to be entirely natural, "He's great with kids. Crazy great, actually. Which you wouldn't think, given the lack of time he spends thinking with his upstairs brain."

[firewatcher]

"Yeah, I guess that's true. Yeah," said Maria, after a long pause. Breathe in, breathe out, this will not destroy you, you have survived worse. She laughed, though the sound was a little hollow. "That's probably the reason he's so good with kids. They don't think with their upstairs brain a whole lot, either, I think."

She leaned her elbows on the desk, propping her head up with her hands and cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder. "Do you think that's it? This is about... about Sam being gone?"

Amity had always been really attached to her dad; she took after him, in a lot of ways. Same nose, same smile, same tendency to blindly and cheerfully throw herself into new things.

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle pursed her lips, the corners of her mouth pulling down into that infamous 'trout mouth' look she was so known for. She'd given Maria an out. But Maria hadn't taken it.

Maybe that was a good thing. Healthy.

They'd barely talked about Sam at all since...

"Yeah," she admitted softly. "I think that's a big part of what it's about. Loss is hard on kids. I think they let themselves feel things more than adults do."

[firewatcher]

"Hah, yeah. Hard not to feel things, when you're young, I guess. Everything seems so big and immediate and world-shattering, and you've got so much free time to think about it." Keeping busy, that was the secret. Letting your head be occupied long enough for time to dull everything.

(It had not been great, the couple weeks afterward when she'd had her broken leg healing and couldn't go in to work; she'd spent most of it doing administrative paperwork with a glass of whiskey in hand.)

She traced a figure-eight with her finger on the desk. "I knew it wouldn't be forever. I just sort of hoped we'd get more time than this, that the kids wouldn't have to deal with this so early. At least I was in my twenties, you know?"

She'd thought she'd be the one to go out first. By all rights it should have been her.

[beyondthisillusion]

"Could have been worse," Danielle offered, trying to make lemonade. "I have zero memories of my mom at all. At least they got a few good years with Sam. That's something."

A pittance, really. But what could she do?

"It's always gonna be hardest on Amity. She's the oldest. She has the most memories, the most time with the way things were. It's going to be an adjustment."

[firewatcher]

"Yeah. Suppose so. This is her first big one, too." Which of her relatives had gone first? It might have been Uncle Al, when she was about Amity's age. Suddenly there was a perpetually empty spot at the dinner table, a hook with no coat on it, fewer affectionate hair ruffles. She hadn't been particularly close to him, but it was about then that she realized that sometimes when people went away they didn't come back.

Her eyes drifted to a framed photo at the back of the desk—it had been her dad's, from back in his twenties, showing him with his brother and his own cousins. Precious few of them were around anymore. "I guess when I got my first brush with the concept of death, I doubled down on wanting to learn this stuff so I could get out there and help. Maybe Amity's doing the reverse."

[beyondthisillusion]

"That happens," Danielle sighed.

She felt no need to point out the obvious and glaring differences between her approach to life and Shawn's. It was just one of those things. And, in a sense, it made them a better team. Each of them brought half of what they needed to the table.

Danielle turned to glance at her reflection in the dark glass of the window. Her father's nose looked back at her. Fight it as she did, she knew that she was very much her father's child.

And she hated it.

Turning away, she sighed again. "Have you tried talking to her about it?"

[firewatcher]

"Tried," said Maria. "Didn't do much. Kiddo's clammed up a lot, and what I could get out of her was cranky and borderline hostile." She sighed. "That part she got from me, I guess. The stubbornness, too." She pushed her chair back from the desk to stand up and stretch her legs. "I think she might blame me."

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle didn't want to say that Maria had a point but...Maria had a point. It wasn't necessarily fair or true, but if Amity was looking for someone to blame, Maria presented an awfully convenient and tempting target.

"I'm serious, I'll pimp Shawn out to you. He might be able to get her to open up. He's not...I mean, you're an authority figure. Shawn is just kind of goofy to her, I suspect."

He was goofy to a lot of people.

[firewatcher]

"Yeah, forever doomed to be the bad cop parent. It's what I'm here for." She ran a hand back through her hair, pacing across the library. "Yeah, maybe it's not a bad idea, I dunno. He comes with fewer expectations, so maybe she'll open up for that." Didn't solve the problem of how do I get my daughter to not hate me, but that might just not be fixable right now.

Maria leaned back against one of the bookcases. "Maybe ask him if he's got a free night to come over for not-dinner, sometime? Or if both of you could come by, sometime when Andy's out. He's been weird, lately, and I think you guys still kind of put him on edge."

[beyondthisillusion]

"That's why you're my favorite cousin," Danielle replied.

She tried to sound droll. But the truth was that Andy's recent behavior had been upsetting. It bothered Danielle to no end that even after decades of proving herself, he still remained distant. She'd known it might be a possibility, but she'd just worked so hard.

Maria got it, anyway.

Drawing in a deep breath, she nodded. And then realized that Maria couldn't see her nodding. "I'll talk to him. And I do want to come over. I feel like...like I haven't seen you in forever."

It was this deputy business, really. Maria and Danielle had known what they were getting into. But sometimes, Danielle couldn't help but feel like it was pulling her away from what really mattered.

[firewatcher]

"Well, we've both been busy. Hazards of age, I guess. You've got your work, I've got mine, I've got the kids and the family, you know how it is. I'll ask Andy what his schedule looks like. Maybe we'll manage to get a day when Susanna's home and not holed up grading papers—I don't think you've met her yet, but you'd like her, I think."

Susanna was a relatively new addition to the family, within the last couple years, but a welcome one—she'd apparently gone to one of Andy's band's gigs near the university where she worked, which was how they'd originally hit it off. Thankfully she got along with the rest of the family fairly well, and took their general weirdness deftly in stride.

"Maybe Saturday? I'm off that day, people will be home, I'm pretty sure Andy will want to be out of the house at night." Maybe that's what nagged at her; him distancing himself felt at times like it had when Vera had been on one of her self-destructive kicks.

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle had no real schedule. She worked as the job required. But when it mattered, when it really mattered, Buckley always found a way for her to be where she needed to be.

And at the moment, she felt that she needed to be with Maria.

"Yeah," she said. "Saturday is good. We'll make a point of being there. I'll even bring a pie."

[firewatcher]

"You and your pie. Thanks, I appreciate it." Danielle and her baked goods fixation, even though she couldn't eat any of them. Then again, if she herself never got to eat again, she'd probably develop some weird hang-ups about it, too.

She ran one hand idly over the spines of the books on the bookcase behind her. Time to change the subject; this was more emotional honesty than she usually went in for. "How about you? The rest of the bloodsuckers behaving?"

[beyondthisillusion]

Maria had no idea how timely she'd been. Danielle could feel the urge to ask Maria about her own emotional welfare rising. She knew that she wasn't supposed to. Palmers--most hunters in general--rarely talked about their feelings. But Danielle was constantly filled with the urge to rush in and embrace.

Lowercase-E, embrace.

And a part of her would forever see Maria as that twelve-year-old girl.

But she decided to go with the flow. "Well," she sighed irritably, "the Prince is still a pain in the ass. I kind of like the new Seneschal, though. She might actually have the ability to pull her head out of her ass and try to shake things up."

[firewatcher]

"Really," said Maria, frowning. Shaking things up was all well and good, but that often spelled trouble. "That's a new one. What's her deal, then? I don't suppose we can count on her to start some kind of bloody vampire civil war or stick a knife in King Whatever." Probably not, but she could always hope. Aside from the inevitable collateral damage, it would solve a lot of her problems if they would just all fight each other to the death.

[beyondthisillusion]

"She was formerly banished," Danielle replied, smiling a little like she knew she was playing an excellent hand. "She's the King's childe and she defected from his covenant."

Three things that made her extremely interesting, as far as Danielle was concerned.

Also, "For what it's worth, she doesn't seem like a total dick. But her mere existence could cause said bloody civil war."

[firewatcher]

"Huh." Yeah, sure sounded like trouble. What kind of trouble remained to be seen, though. "Could cause vampire society to implode by existing; I like her already. For a given value of 'like', anyway."

She shifted on her feet, took a few steps across the room. "Formerly banished, though? What's her deal now, then?"

[beyondthisillusion]

"Carthian," Danielle replied.

On the continuum of covenants, she found the Carthians to be one of the less offensive, all things considered. They weren't exactly tree-hugging hippies, but some of them, especially the young ones, were a little bit better at seeing humans as people, rather than buffets.

"One of those weird Ventrue. Like I said, the King is the baby daddy."

[firewatcher]

"One of the cannibals? I am not really feeling your optimism, but maybe you know better than I do." She shrugged, drawing her mouth into a thoughtful line. "Carthian... at least that implies that she sees people as something other than food sources, but that's not really a high bar, you know? Was that the reason she was exiled, or something else? And why did she get to come back?"

Maria paused herself, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Sorry for the interrogation," she added, after a moment. "It just sounds like trouble on the horizon, is all."

[beyondthisillusion]

"Still looking into a lot of that stuff," Danielle admitted with a bit of a sigh. "You know how it is. Getting the truth out of a vampire is like trying to squeeze a rock to get water."

She was fairly certain there were things that even Shawn hadn't told her. And she had to admit, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know what they were. She didn't have a problem with the Lance exactly, but there was no dying there was a darkness to them. And it scared her more than a little bit. Some nights, she still couldn't believe that Shawn walked among them.

Other nights, she didn't want to.

"I'll make friends with her," she sighed. "See what comes from it. Looks like minimal cost, anyway."

[firewatcher]

"Yeah." Maria exhaled, closed her eyes. "Just be careful. And don't get in so deep I can't get you out if I need to."

It had occurred to her more than once to clue Andy in on this whole thing they had going—he was supposed to be in charge, after all, and she technically reported to him—but she'd always stopped short. After all, if he didn't know about it, it wasn't his problem, which was probably the way he liked it.

She stretched her head back and forth, cracking her stiff neck joints. "And let me know if there's anything I can do to help. You've done a lot of heavy lifting on this."

[beyondthisillusion]

"Invent a way to make vampires more interesting conversationalists?" Danielle quipped easily.

It wasn't entirely fair, she supposed. There were some vampires--especially the not-entirely-dick variety--who were great conversationalists. The intellectual part of Danielle especially enjoyed talking to people who'd been around for important historical events. It was always interesting to hear a first-hand recollection. With or without editorial.

Only...

Well, the number of entirely-dick vampires was overwhelming. And getting bigger every day, it seemed. Partly because of her 'guilty until proven innocent' stance, and also, she feared, because Embraces were increasing. Recklessness was on the rise.

[firewatcher]

"God, if only," said Maria, rolling her eyes. "The only situations where I've known 'em to get real talkative and real interesting real fast are not really friendly ones, if you know what I mean." No, vomiting up everything you think a hunter might want to know would not save you. But she did appreciate it when that did happen, even if it was mostly what she already knew.

She tapped a finger against the shelf, thoughtfully. "If you can get me a name and description, I'll see if I can get any interesting tidbits from the police or something that might help you out." She sighed. "Man, we always end up talking about work on these calls."

[beyondthisillusion]

"We do," Danielle replied.

And she paused a minute. And then shrugged. And then remembered Maria couldn't see her. "It's better than talking about men?" she offered.

Actually, Danielle never talked about men any more. Or women. That particular aspect of her personal life had essentially become a nonsubject.

"Shit," she added, letting out a low whistle. "If Amity is this bad now, just wait until she starts dating. You're going to end up the scary parent with a shotgun."

[firewatcher]

Maria groaned. "I am going to do my very best to not be judgmental," she said. "I remember how hard it was to bring anyone over, friend or otherwise. At least with... with other hunters, you didn't have to explain the taxidermy and the weaponry. And hopefully this will just be a phase."

She herself didn't expect to be talking about any men or women anytime soon, either. Wasn't as if she was in her prime, anymore, and what was the point of bringing another person into their lives who they might lose? Maybe someday, but it was too soon to think about it.

She wasn't really sure it would ever not be too soon, but.

[beyondthisillusion]

"Trust me, there's no way you can possibly be worse than Shawn was."

Actually, Danielle had only ever brought back a date once or twice. And certainly never intentionally.

...especially not the second time.

[firewatcher]

"Really? Based on... literally every story you've told me about him, I never took him for the overprotective type." More like the opposite, actually. Though maybe that was just when it was about him, rather than his sister. "You can't just tell me that and not tell me the whole story. I know a story when I hear one."

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle let out a sound, halfway between a laugh and a squawk. Not overprotective? Not overprotective? It was, at once, both Shawn's best and worst quality. It was also why he was so good with kids. He'd more or less raised Danielle, where Miles had failed.

From what she understood, he'd been the one to haul her six-month-old ass out of a burning building, back before their lives were turned upside down.

"Take that 'daddy with the rifle' stereotype and multiple it by every weapon in the trunk of Shawn's car," she said.

[firewatcher]

Maria paused, trying to picture it. It was both surprising and not at all surprising how easy it was. "He's so relaxed-seeming whenever I see him outside of business... Guess how you handle your own personal affairs is no indicator of how you handle your sister's, eh."

She laughed. "I think my brothers mostly just knew I was the scariest out of all three of us, when it came down to it."

[beyondthisillusion]

"Without a doubt," Danielle agreed.

But Maria was also her favorite. By leaps and bounds. And so was Amity, when looking at the next generation.

So there was that.

[firewatcher]

She looked at her watch. "Yikes, it's getting late. Where does the time go?" Into work, into shuttling the kids around, into hunting. Not a lot of time for anything else—though having made time to call Danielle, she did feel a little better. That was something, anyway. Enough to take the edge off going to bed alone, at least. "I'd probably better get to bed to prepare for yet another day of the entire universe trying to fight me."

[beyondthisillusion]

"Just half of it," Danielle said cheerfully.

Gallows humor was a stronger bond between the Palmers and Remingtons than even Danielle's own DNA.

She smiled into the phone. "All right, coz. Get some rest. Shawn and I will see you on Saturday."

[firewatcher]

"Yeah! I'll look forward to it. Come over about eight, and I'll rent a movie, or something like that. Hope you guys like kiddy movies, because that's all we watch here, these days."

She couldn't see Danielle smiling, but she could hear it in her voice, and smiled back. "Maybe you guys could come by more often. With... Andy being out so often, it gets quiet, you know."

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle mentally made a note that she would start trying to visit the house at least once a week. It wasn't exactly out of her way. And if anyone saw her, she could legitimately claim she was just visiting a police informant to do her job.

"Trust me," she said, "a kiddy movie will be about perfect. Grown-up movies just have a tendency to confuse Shawn with their...plotlines."

Except for porn. He was very good at following that.

"Goodnight, Maria."

[firewatcher]

Heh. "Night, Danielle."

Maria ended the call, and stood there for a moment just breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. As long as you're breathing it's not the worst it could be. It was late enough that by the time she got to bed she'd probably drop off right to sleep, anyway. None of that lying awake for hours.

She placed the phone back in its cradle on the table, and stretched, again before crossing the library toward the main downstairs hallway, flicking off the light as she went. It must have been because of the darkness that she only barely she was about to walk into Andy as she turned into the hall.

"Andy—yeesh, sorry, I didn't hear you come in," she said, regaining her balance and flicking on the hallway light. "How'd the concert go?"

He shrugged. "It was all right," he said. "It was fine. Pretty average show, not a lot of people out on a weeknight."

"Yeah, guess so. You've got another one this weekend, right? Maybe that'll be better."

"Oh—yeah, I do," he said, seeming a little surprised she'd remembered. "On Saturday. I'll probably be out pretty late, you know how those shows run long."

She nodded. "Yeah, it happens." How long had he been standing out there? "You need any help putting your gear away? I was going to go to bed, but I've got a few minutes."

"No—no, I don't, it's fine," he said, quickly. "Already put the stuff away, don't worry about it. I'll probably stay up for a while, anyway."

"All right," Maria said, shrugging, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't forget and get some rest, too, dude."

Andy heaved a sigh. "Don't worry, Maria, I'll be fine."

"Suit yourself," she said, and headed up the stairs. She couldn't help but think, though—was he, really? That, however, was a question for another day.