firewatcher | [PSL] 2016: But I'll be here 'til chaos calls

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[PSL] 2016: But I'll be here 'til chaos calls

Night off, finally. Coming off a long shift like that all she should have wanted to do was sleep, but it never felt like there were enough hours in the day anymore. And sleep was more and more often an exercise in lying awake, alone with her thoughts in the dark. Just like every year around this time except worse. No thanks.

So Palmer made herself a cup of coffee and went to see if Great-Aunt Julia was what passed for awake. Weird how things changed so quickly—three months ago she would have sworn there was no such thing as ghosts, and now one was haunting her couch. Her aunt haunting her couch. She'd set a bunch of older pens on the coffee table in hopes that one of them would have enough emotional whatever imbued into it to work for Aunt Julia, but so far she'd seen nothing.

She did a quick double-take when she saw someone actually sitting on the couch, but then relaxed as she realized that it was just Danielle—who she had, she remembered, blearily, told she could come over whenever.

"'Lo, Danielle," she said, rubbing at her eyes and taking a seat next to her on the couch. "How's Aunt Julia?"

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"I always figured your type to be, well—more aggressively normal," Palmer said, running a hand backwards through her hair. Yikes, she needed to shower sometime soon. Not like she herself had anyone to impress, but. "Not so much just in the kind of folk you dated so much as in everything."

She shrugged, and put her feet up on the coffee table. "Not like I'm judging. My type is 'no sense of self-preservation,' apparently, so I'm kind of living in a glass house here."

A couple weeks and it'd be the anniversary of when Sam went. Was it too late to put a shot of whiskey in this coffee? Probably not. But she'd been hitting the liquor a little hard recently. That might have been an understatement, actually.

Frankly, Danielle was grateful at the opportunity to turn the conversation away from her. Palmer's well-being, after all, was the well-being of the family. Her own state of affairs--such as it was--didn't matter so much.

Or at least that was the pretty lie she was going to tell herself.

"I might have noticed that," she said. "I think Frankie mighta mentioned something about Liv declaring that she wasn't going to be your 'fucking midlife crisis.' You wanna tell me what that's about?"

Okay. Definitely going for the whiskey. Palmer stood abruptly and went to the sideboard for the liquor cabinet.

"She is not my mid-life crisis. Or my mid-life anything," Palmer growled, pouring a liberal amount of alcohol into her half-finished coffee. "Look, I—" She combed a hand through her hair again. "At my age, if I was going to have a mid-life crisis, I'd want a little less of a rollercoaster ride. As it is, she's not talking to me right now, anyway."

Which was... fine. After all, she was busy enough, anyway.

This angry Palmer was the one Danielle was more used to seeing. Not the teasing friend who wanted girltalk. It was easier--if not more tragic--this way. And it reminded Danielle, very clearly, where she stood.

"You know," she said, "I get it. I get what it must be like. Suddenly having her back among the living."

She wondered if she'd do the same if Jenni suddenly rematerialized.

Probably.

"But, Palmer..." She chose her words carefully. "You gotta know how dangerous a liability Liv is..."

"It's a real mindfuck, let me tell you," said Palmer, returning to the couch, remembering at the last moment to try and leave a person-sized space for the floating jacket. "Twenty years thinking she was dead and here she is back, looking not a day older. Welcome to your personal mid-life crisis hell, Maria Palmer."

She kneaded her forehead with both hands. "And yeah, I'm well aware, don't get me wrong. When the chips come down, I know what side she's going to be on. Sort of why we're not currently on speaking terms. I just..." Palmer made a vague waving motion. "Hard to let it go, you know. I hated seeing her this miserable back then and I hate it now. And I guess there's a part of me that keeps thinking that maybe this'll make up for... for not saving Andy, even though I know it doesn't work that way."

No. It didn't work that way at all. But sometimes, you had to tell yourself a lie, just to keep going.

Danielle got it. She really did.

She pulled on her jacket, picking absently at a loose thread. The damn thing was falling apart on her. Kind of like Las Vegas. "I wish I'd been able to find a better way to un-Ghoul her for you, Palmer." She really wished it. But lately, she felt like she was chasing her own tail when it came to the lore.

Nothing made sense any more.

Palmer glanced up at Danielle with a weary half-smile. "I know. I've got one last weird idea, but it's... kind of out there, and I can't be sure she'd actually do it, even not knowing exactly what she was going in for. Kind of dangerous and crazy even under what passes for normal circumstances." She shrugged, and her half-smile turned into a toothy grin. "Well, there's always the really obvious backup plan, I guess. I'm sure the Volkovs would thank me for that, too."

Her smile faded, and she drummed her fingers idly on the edge of the coffee table for a few moments. "Hey, Danielle. Remember when I asked you what you'd do if you found out that someone deliberately stopped you from getting there in time to save Jenni?"

"Yeah." It was hard to forget. It had been a uniquely personal question. And Danielle had put a great deal of her time into being as impersonal as possible with everyone--save for Shawn, but Shawn was the exception to every rule.

She pulled her ponytail out from under her jacket, letting it swing across the width of her back. "Why do you ask?"

Danielle wasn't really expecting much of an answer.

There was a gentle clunk as Palmer set her mug down on the table and sat up straight to meet Danielle's eyes.

"Because," she said, slowly, "someone made sure that I—that all of us Palmers—wouldn't be able to get to the Volkovs. Someone intentionally set things up so we'd all be out of reach or out of contact that night."

This was new information. Somehow, it wasn't mind-blowingly surprising. But definitely something she wouldn't have considered. Not until the last few months, anyway.

Danielle frowned, the corners of her lips dragging down into what Shawn jokingly referred to as her 'trout mouth' expression. She brushed her bangs out of her eyes with a finger, looking at Palmer.

"I'm guessing you have a theory on who that someone was?"

Palmer shook her head. "No, I don't have a theory, Danielle. I know who it was." She pursed her lips. Her first impulse was to preface it with "Don't freak out," but that never actually softened what came next.

She took in a deep breath, and let it out. "Danielle, it was Buckley."

Danielle folded her arms. And then unfolded them. And then folded them again. Her lips parted, but it took her another uncomfortable moment or two before she actually said anything.

Palmer was right. Saying 'Don't freak out' wouldn't have done much good.

To her credit, though, Danielle managed to keep her voice from cracking.

"How do you know that?"

"Apparently a long time ago Liv went through some files, found that out. You ever notice she really hates him, like—really, really hates him? More than everyone else. That's why. I think that's why she got her hackles up so bad about finding out I knew you and Shawn, too, since you're close to Buckley."

She rested her head in her hands. "I know Liv's motivations are sometimes... Liv's motivations, but she's a lot better at not saying things than she is at lying, and always has been."

"And have you seen these files?" Danielle asked.

She didn't want to come off as confrontational, but it was a little hard for her to swallow...well...everything. Buckley was secretive, sure. And a paranoid bastard. Proudly so.

But Liv didn't exactly strike Danielle as the most reliable source of information. And with Kitty pulling the strings, she just couldn't see it as anything other than an attempt to break up the alliance the Palmers had with Buckley.

Kitty had already tried to turn Danielle against every single one of her friends, at one point or another, after all.

"I haven't," Palmer admitted, and, after a pause, took another swig of her coffee, which was now about half-whiskey. "But Liv found this out long enough ago—years ago—that I have a hard time believing that it's all part of some extremely long con. After all, I was never supposed to run into her again, let alone make myself a fixture at vampire social hour."

She scowled. "And he'd already admitted directly to me that he'd known she was here the whole time, who she really was, and never bothered to tell me."

She wanted to run her fingernails down her face. This, she imagined, was what it felt like when mom and dad were fighting.

Turned up to an eleven.

"Look," she sighed. "The fact that Buck knew about Liv and didn't say anything is bad. Sketchy, even. I get that. But I'm not inclined to just take Liv's word for anything. If you had those files, maybe. But right now, it just sounds fishy. It sounds like Kitty trying to sow chaos and paranoia."

Palmer paused. Opened her mouth, went over several different ways of trying to say something in her head, and then nodded to herself. "I don't think—the circumstances of the conversation where I was told this... makes me inclined to want to believe it wasn't Kitty pulling the strings that time. It was, uh, kind of an unscheduled yelling match. Apparently she's confronted Buckley about it, too, a long time back, and he didn't deny it."

She shook her head. "But if you want concrete proof I can probably get it. If Liv decides she's speaking to me again at some point. I'm not ready to confront him about it yet, anyway. I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell him yet, until I decide what I'm doing." She leaned back and tipped her head up toward the ceiling. "I hate this. You have to know that I hate it. But it's times like this I really can't have doubts hanging over the people I have at my back, you know?"

Palmer leaned forward, staring for a moment at her open palms. "Last time I didn't go with my gut when I felt like something was wrong, it was Andy. And we all... know how that turned out." She tried not to wince. She did anyway. Almost eleven years now to the day.

Danielle scrubbed her face with her hands. Proof was good. It was best not to say or do anything without proof. Which meant she could pretend that the whole thing wasn't happening.

Just kicking the can down the road. But Danielle did that a lot.

Palmer probably knew it, too.

At any rate, she nodded slightly, muttering "Proof is a good start." She was suddenly seized with the bizarre desire to ask her mother for advice. Not because she felt her mother necessarily knew best but just because...that's what people did. Normal people.

Of course, normal people weren't so intimately involved with a terrible massacre.

"Yeah." Palmer nodded, mostly to herself, but with a quick glance up to Danielle. "Yeah, proof is a start." She'd known this would be hard for Danielle—it'd be even harder for Shawn, probably. Buckley had been like a father to them, in a lot of ways. Even she'd been reluctant to entertain the possibility at first. How could someone she'd known for so long have something that horrible within them?

But no, she knew how that was possible. All too well.

She stretched, putting her arms up on the back of the couch. "Anyway, well, I've got plenty of devil's work for my idle hands to do in the meantime. I'm planning on telling the Volkovs that I'm expecting to have an opening to take out the vampires' Spymaster sometime soon, and that if I get it, I'm going to take it. If I can pull it off, I'll have one less annoyance, and the Volkovs will hopefully like my performance enough to let me put some wrenches in their stupid plan."

Taking out Kitty felt like it would solve so many of their problems. Which, of course, Danielle knew was simplistic and foolish. But when she felt like she was constantly walking through tar, any little bit of progress was welcome.

"Do you really think you can pull it off?" she asked, more than a little childish hope sneaking into her tone. "Do you really think you can..."

She made the standard decapitation gesture.

"If I can get her alone, yeah," said Palmer, sighing. "That's the main issue. I might need someone to sit on Liv when this goes down, because she will kill me, and I think she can. But Kitty wants to be pals, for some reason—maybe hoping I won't decide to kill her, ha ha, maybe because she doesn't understand there's some shit I really can't forgive—so I think that might help get me a shot."

She circled her shoulders. "Bishop Christopher doesn't think I can do it without getting killed, but I swore an oath to 'protect the common man against the darkness, even if it costs my life,' and, in any case, I'm really not as good a person as he thinks I am."

"Well, she's technically working for Shawn right now. You could ask him to send Liv out on an assignment. I'm sure he'd be okay with it."

Frankly, Danielle didn't sense the same kind of hostility toward Kitty from Shawn as she did from literally everyone else in the family. But Shawn could be a hard read most of the time. And an open book in certain other ways that annoyed the hell out of her.

Still. She suspected he wouldn't really have a huge problem with her being removed from the picture.

"If you asked, then I'm sure he would." Palmer smiled, just a touch ruefully. "He'd do anything for you. You two have been through some real shit together, but I always sort of envied the way you two get along. Kinda wish Andy and I hadn't spent most of our adult years trying to spite each other. Sometimes I wonder, if I could go back..."

She pressed her mouth into a hard, thin line. "I wish a lot of things."

It wasn't every day that Danielle heard regret from Palmer. No, of all of them, she was the one who least seemed to bemoan the road not taken.

Danielle was the complainer.

For the second time in only a short number of days, Danielle couldn't help but shake her head and wonder when they'd all gotten so old.

"We aren't exactly the Brady Bunch," she said. "Families--real families--always come with issues. What Shawn and I have now didn't come from a golden childhood filled with happiness. It came from constantly being torn apart. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

Palmer regretted a lot of things. Talking about those regrets was something she did less frequently—due to a mix of personal pride, discomfort, and the fact that talking about things meant that you couldn't keep pretending they hadn't happened. "Yeah," she said. "Guess all God's children got troubles."

She tilted her head sideways, chewed on her lower lip slightly. "You managed to get this far without murdering your brother, though. That's something not all of us here can say."

"You didn't kill him."

For years, those four words had been brewing and bubbling beneath the surface of Danielle's trouty face. It was no surprise, no secret that Palmer blamed herself. But the situation had been immensely complicated.

And her association with Ruby hadn't exactly helped.

Of the two of them, she was probably more culpable.

"Ha ha, Christ." A brief, wincing laugh. "This is why I don't usually—" She stopped, mid-sentence, staring down at her knees. "I know you mean well, and I know you think I shouldn't blame myself. But there's a difference between circumstances causing things to shake out one way or another and actively making a choice."

She couldn't look Danielle in the eye. Instead, she just stared into the bottom of her mug. "And I made a choice. He was down, Danielle. He was down, and he said he hadn't meant for this to happen, and he said please, Maria, and I didn't listen."

"You don't know what Ruby would have had him do if you hadn't..."

She stopped talking. Not because there was a lack of possibilities. With a Ventrue and a Thrall, all things were possible. But because arguing about it wasn't going to do any good.

You couldn't change the past. Dead was dead.

Well. Sort of. Her eyes strayed over to Shawn's coat on the couch.

"He couldn't have done anything if he wanted to, or even if she was there to tell him to. Broken leg, broken arm, rest of limbs not in great shape. Even with fancy devil blood powers he was still just a little too far behind. And I was so angry, Danielle."

She shook her coffee mug, gently swirling the remains around in the bottom. "I'd been so pissed because he was leaving everything at home to me while fucking off constantly to his band gigs that he didn't even seem that happy about. And all this with Sam just gone and me with the kids and then that happened and I just--snapped. No, that's not right. I just didn't feel like holding back. So I didn't."

She closed her eyes and sat back against the couch. "All I had to do is not pull that trigger and tell him to sit tight for ten minutes and he would still be here, Danielle."

"Maybe."

But it didn't seem likely to her, somehow. If he'd been even remotely salvageable, that meant he was of no use to Ruby. And Ruby had a fairly precise way of dealing with anything that wasn't of use to her.

Danielle knew that from personal experience and more than a few gunshot wounds.

She sank down, sitting on an ottoman in front of one of the old squishy chairs by the couch. "What happened to Andy was a tragedy but...think of all the lives you've saved as head of the family. He could never have done it."

Palmer cracked a slight smile, but there was no cheer or warmth in it. "Glad to hear my approval rating continues to be high in these parts. But—yeah, he couldn't do this job, not like this, but doesn't mean he deserved what he got. Like you said—wouldn't wish that on anyone."

She drained the rest of her coffee and raised an eyebrow in Danielle's direction. "And if you were in my shoes, how would you feel about me saying something like that about, say, Shawn?"

She let out a soft, humorless laugh. "Whole different ballgame. Don't forget, I spent four years babysitting Shawn's baby vampire ass."

They had been four really strange years.

Danielle ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head. "I always told myself that if I ever saw him cross a line...I'd take him down. I mean, Shawn's always been pretty good at crossing lines, even as a human but..." She shrugged. "Devil's due, I guess. He's always been way...in control. I guess it's easier to tell myself that I'd stop him if I had to...since I've never had to."

"Yeah. You haven't." She shook her head. "And I hope you never do. I really, really hope you never do."

Palmer resisted glancing back at the whiskey bottle still left standing on the sideboard. "That night I remember you told me to kill you if you ever become a monster, and I said I would if you'd promise the same for me. I need you to promise me something else, now."

Oh, she didn't like the sound of this. Danielle desperately wanted it to be the whiskey talking, but she knew better. Palmer's tolerance was high and that one mug wasn't nearly enough to put her in some kind of drunken melancholia.

She braced herself, making sure she could keep her tone even before replying, "You know I follow your orders, Palmer."

"Ain't exactly about following orders," Palmer said. "You know I said it's your choice if you take the oaths, and it still is. But I'm about to do a bunch of really dangerous shit, Danielle, to try and save the things I care about, and I don't have any illusions about the fact that a lot of it's going to be deadly dangerous."

She sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "If I die, George and Susanna will need help, especially until Frankie and Jonas are a little older. You can't risk yourself avenging me against whatever happens. The family will need your knowledge and skills. So—please," she said, reaching across to lay a hand on Danielle's shoulder. "This isn't an order, this is me asking you. As your cousin, as a friend, as Maria. Take the oaths, and keep my family safe if something happens to me."

It had been a very long time since Danielle thought of Palmer as a cousin, as a friend, or as Maria. And she'd more or less assumed, after what happened with Andy, that Palmer felt more or less the same way.

She needed to. In order to do the hard job she'd done.

The pathos was unexpected and left Danielle blinking in confusion. "Shouldn't you be saying this to George?"

"He already took the oaths in his teens, like I did," said Palmer. "I guess what I'm saying is that—leading this family, you can't be an island. It's a hard enough job with your entire family behind you; feeling like you're alone and having to protect everyone yourself is..." She trailed off and licked her lips lightly. "It can be a lot of pressure."

She nodded. "You'll—we'll all need to support each other. Because things are going to get worse before they're going to get any better."

Danielle looked her right in the eyes. "I swear to you, Palmer, I will always be there for George. You don't have to ask me."

Or doubt her. But Danielle knew how shaky her credibility was.

Which was, naturally, all Miles' fault.

Palmer smiled. Wanly, but she smiled. "Will you take the oaths?" Her smile widened. "The script calls for a party afterward, you know. And you won't have trouble with the fire part. We can skip the cryptid hunt unless you really want to do it, since you've already proven yourself competent."

She pursed her lips. "I know the family hunting traditions haven't always been great for you, but I promise this one's fun."

Perhaps it was vaguely predictable, but Danielle shrugged slightly and said, "If Shawn does."

The two of them hadn't had a chance to discuss it really. What with the world ending and all, but Danielle was fairly sure he'd be on board. After all, he pretty much lived for the hunt.

And as for her own fresh start well...that wasn't happening.

Palmer shrugged. It wasn't a yes, but it wasn't a no, either. And not unexpected, true. "Well, let me know what the both of you decide. Doesn't mean you gotta stay here forever."

Danielle nodded. Her eyes strayed over to the couch. "I think...I think our mom would like that."

Well, she'd like the connection to the family, at least. The ship had already sailed on whatever hopes and dreams Julia Palmer-Remington had for her children. Or, at least, that was Danielle's interpretation of the situation.

She had a tendency to project.

Palmer laughed, a little shakily. Ah, her haunted couch. This was just her life now. "Ha, well, lucky you, you can actually ask her, I guess. I know that's important to you. The point is, it's just putting a ceremonial touch on something that's already true—that you have our backs and we have yours."

As a Cronie Dragon (Dragony Crone?), Danielle got the importance of ritual. Which was why she was giving the whole matter serious consideration. You never made decisions like that lightly.

But frankly, her opinions were the same either way.

This was her family.

"Always," she said, in her best Alan Rickman voice.

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[PSL] 2016: But I'll be here 'til chaos calls

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