PSL - On a stormy sea of moving emotion...

[beyondthisillusion]

More often than not, Danielle spent most of her days sitting on a moldering motel bedspread, a rifle across her lap, with one eye on the door to the light-tight bathroom, the other on some crappy soap opera or another. Sometimes she would drift a little. And on very rare occasions, she would dream, seeing watery images of the life she should have known, the shapes running together like water colors.

That morning, her attention wasn't quite so split.

From sunrise until the last lingering rays of sunlight vanished beneath the jagged silhouette of the city, she sat by the motel window and stared up at the sky. Why was it she'd never appreciated how beautiful it was? She could still see a sliver of the moon throughout the day, like a pale, white toenail clipping in the sky. Clouds rolled by, shaped like whipped cream on top of sundaes. And then there was the sun. The big, beautiful, perfect sun.

This...this was what she was being asked to give up. How could she? How could anyone?

But people did. It happened all the time. More often than anyone realized and decidedly more often in her family than was normal.

As the sunlight faded in the west...Danielle wondered if she would ever see it again.

Comments

[beyondthisillusion]

"No."

She said it a little more fervently, more passionately than she meant to. Than she should have. And immediately, a look of pure and unadulterated guilt flashed across her face.

"No," she said again, in a softer, milder tone. "There are just things that...I mean...I've been thinking about things. Like...I don't know...going to law school..."

[soaringeverhigher]

Well, that... sorta came out of left field. He leveled a bemused expression at her.

"Law school."

[beyondthisillusion]

She immediately felt embarrassed. Color rose in her cheeks as she lowered her eyes, half burying her face in the menu.

"It's something I've been thinking about," she said quietly. "One of a lot of things I've been thinking about."

[soaringeverhigher]

"You wanna be a lawyer?"

She could read it as judgement if she wanted — depending on just how embarrassed she was — but he was genuinely confused.

[beyondthisillusion]

"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "Maybe. Maybe there's something to the idea of helping people without having to break the law all the time to do it. Maybe I could use the law to my advantage."

People did that all the time. Followed the rules. Worked within the system. Normal people. Good, regular, old-fashioned, normal people.

Danielle could be like that.

"Or...I don't know. What if...I want to get married some day?"

[soaringeverhigher]

Of course, there was the little problem that the type of helping they did often existed outside the law. What was she gonna do — hunt down rabid Gangrels through the power of the courts?

"Thinking of settling down?" That came with a little smirk, because come on. It was a little funny to imagine. But — this wasn't really about higher education or a white wedding. It couldn't be. Shawn's expression turned back to something more serious.

"Come on. What's this really about?"

[beyondthisillusion]

He wasn't wrong. But that somehow managed to infuriate Danielle.

"What if I want to have kids?" she asked sharply, leaning forward in her seat. "What if I want to work a nine to five and come home to a house with white picket fences and eat a pot roast while I listened to my family talk about their days? What if I wanted a life where the worst thing that could possibly happen was an IRS audit?"

She took a deep breath. "Shawn...what if I want a normal life? I go through with this, that's out the window. Gone. Forever."

And forever was literal in this particular instance.

[soaringeverhigher]

"Maybe." He had to at least acknowledge she had a point. But. "But don't you think that fate was signed, sealed and delivered a long time ago? From the moment we were born? I mean, Jesus. Even the Palmers don't get to live perfect apple-pie lives."

From what he heard about them, at least. Dad's never been on the best terms.

But he kind of life she's talking about... It would mean walking away. From everything. And not just leaving behind the violence. It would mean still knowing everything was out there, and doing nothing about it. He wonders.

"You really wanna leave us?" Leave me?

[beyondthisillusion]

"No," she said, just a little too quickly, maybe. It seemed to be a running theme for her. "Shawn...it's not about you. It's about me. It's about...growing up. That's what people do. They go out on their own and they live their own lives."

Emphasis on the living.

The corners of her lips turned down in that pensive way she had, the one that made her look strangely like a fish. She was hurting him. And that was the last thing she wanted to do. But Shawn had never been good at separating 'us' and 'you.' Which was probably why he was Dad's perfect soldier.

"Do you really believe in fate?" she asked quietly.

[soaringeverhigher]

"I believe in something," he shrugged. "Our lives—" so to speak, "—are shaped by the ones that came before us. If you were someone else's daughter, you wouldn't be you. You'd be... Danielle Smith."

And really, who the hell was that?

[beyondthisillusion]

"I know who I am," Danielle said. "And I know who I want to be." They weren't the same thing. Obviously, they weren't. And it was a problem a lot of people had, she knew that. But that problem generally didn't include a side of facing immortality and dependency on blood.

She sighed. "There are certain doors that...I mean...if I close them now...what happens in twenty years when...I want to open them?"

[soaringeverhigher]

Shawn had never been one to think about the future. At least not beyond the next job, the next town. Kinda hard to do any long-term planning when you could die tomorrow, or at least need to pack up and move. So at a certain level, he couldn't understand why she was even thinking that far ahead.

"I don't know," he said. "I dunno where I'm gonna be in twenty years. Hell, I dunno where I'm gonna be next week. The future's never a sure thing, no matter what you do.

"But — I'm bein' straight with you — I think that's a good thing. I do. You never know what's around the corner. Or which doors are closed. All you can know is what's right, right now."

And here's what he knew: "We make a good team, Dany. I don't wanna see that end."

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle nodded vaguely. Because there was one statement that was pure fact. No contention. They'd always worked well together, complimenting each other as if they'd been designed to do it. But that brought back in the fate issue and...well...Danielle was more on the side of free will.

Maybe it just felt better.

She reached across the table, squeezing his hand. "Danielle," she corrected him gently. She'd always hated the nickname, half-convinced that her father and brother came up with it to try to make her more like the boy they wanted, instead of the girl they got.

Was that a part of it too? The fact that she was a girl? That she could sometimes think about wanting to have kids...

That she did sometimes thing about it...

Letting go of his hand, she picked up the menu, just to give her hands something to do. "What if what I think's right right now is to say no to Dad?"

[soaringeverhigher]

He gave her a tight, apologetic smile at the correction. He'd always have a soft spot for the nickname, even if she didn't love it.

As for saying no to Dad — he'd be mad, sure. There'd be some tough nights ahead, a lot of disappointment. If she tried to pull this kind of argument with him, it'd go a lot different. But if she wanted to go that way, that was her choice. Seemed like she could use some reassurance of the fact.

"You know, nobody's forcing you to go through with this."

[beyondthisillusion]

She gave him a matching tight apologetic smile in return. Dad wouldn't exactly tie her to a chair and force her to be Embraced over her objections. She was sure of that. But he'd be...disappointed. To the point of their biggest blow-up yet. And despite their differences, Danielle couldn't stand fighting with Dad. Or Shawn.

They were her world, after all. And she couldn't imagine going out and forging a new one that didn't somehow include them.

Or, at least, Shawn.

It was so complicated.

"What's the best thing about being a Kindred?" she asked Shawn in a low voice. "And don't give me any kind of answer that involves your junk."

[soaringeverhigher]

He gave her a wry look. He could have made the answer about his junk — inconvenient boners now being a thing of the past — but all right.

"Eternal youth's not bad. No more need for beauty sleep." So maybe he couldn't resist leading with a joke, gential-related or no. Seriously though, folks.

"I like knowing I've got a leg up." He nodded. "Humans, you know — squishy. On a pure physical level, the cryptids have all the advantages. It's practically why we invented guns." Or it would, at least, be a better reason than going to war with other humans. "Now I know that I've got a better chance of walking away. If they really wanna hit me hard, they gotta get their hands on a UV lamp. And I don't think most of them would be able to operate it." He made a crude imitation of awkwardly snapping claws with his hands.

"Point is, I can protect myself. Makes it a little less scary out there."

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle believed it. Every single word of it. Both because it made sense as what Shawn would say and because she'd had the same thoughts herself. There had been plenty of close calls in their sordid history of monster hunting. One-too-many near-death experiences and one-too-many broken bones. The idea of being made of stronger stuff was definitely appealing.

But that was the easy question.

"What's the worst thing?" she asked.

She didn't add any qualifiers, but her eyes were definitely begging him to tell the truth.

[soaringeverhigher]

This time, he didn't hesitate. Couldn't get more honest than a snap answer.

"Blood's kinda gross," he admitted, at a lower volume than before. Conspiratorial. "It's only one texture. And the taste doesn't change much, either."

He looked down into the surface of his coffee and sighed. Deeply. "I miss pie."

[beyondthisillusion]

The corners of Danielle's mouth twitched. Just slightly. She couldn't be disappointed by the answer, as she hadn't known what to expect, really. But she had to admit, it made sense coming from him.

Shawn and his oral fixations...

"Pie," she said, her tone filled with a million kinds of fondness she couldn't express.

[soaringeverhigher]

He smiled in return, although it was a sad smile.

"You should order something," he said, sitting back again. "Pie, or whatever. Anything you want, I'm buyin'."

He could call it a last meal — Dad had — but that was a little morbid for right now.

[beyondthisillusion]

She wondered why the waitress hadn't come back. Probably thought they were having some kind of intimate lovers' quarrel or something. Danielle looked up, trying to spot the woman, but didn't see her.

Didn't see any of the wait staff, in fact.

"Huh," she said, a small line forming between her eyes as she brought her brows closer together.

[soaringeverhigher]

"Hey, doll—" Shawn called out, turning in his chair to look for the waitress, just before noticing exactly what Danielle was noticing.

"What the hell?"

[beyondthisillusion]

Danielle turned back to Shawn. But her eyes strayed. "Old man in a booth by himself. Been here since we arrived." And he hadn't moved. "Couple of frat boy dicks in the corner by the head. Been working on the same pitcher of beer for ten minutes."

Not really viable suspects of...anything.

"What do you have?"

[soaringeverhigher]

See, this was exactly the sort of situation where those heightened senses would come in handy. But hey. They'd done this loads of times even when they were both still warm and breathing.

"All quiet on the western front," he added, eyes toward the kitchen. Weird. And hard to notice for the average person, since the air was still full of conversation (from the frat boys, mainly) and the sound of buzzing florescent lights.

"I'll check it out." He rapped his knuckles once on the table and stood, heading for the counter and the kitchen doors behind it. Chances were, whatever creepy thing was going on would be found back there — but if it turned out to be one of their fellow patrons, this could draw them out.

[beyondthisillusion]

Like hell she was letting him go alone.

Danielle slid along her bench, following after him with a light tread. She reached behind her back, feeling the handle of her gun. She knew better than to draw it outright, especially with a lot of squishy and slightly drunk witnesses. But she felt a little vulnerable.

She strained, trying to hear voices in the kitchen. But all she could pick up on was the ambient noise of the lights, the revolving display case of pies, and the grill.

"I don't hear anything."