BACKDATED: An Aftermath of Ghosts [locked to New Hires, including Kokichi]

[credit_not_blame]

[The morning after three ghosts visit the Rig in the night, Stacia appears on the comms.]

All right, I've had my coffee now. Anyone else have weird dreams last night? Because I sure did. If I appeared in yours and you have questions or concerns, I'd prefer to talk about it in person or otherwise privately. I imagine everyone else would too, given the themes.

Also, sorry about all the blood and/or violence.



((OOC: feel free to have locked threads between non-Stacia characters in this post as well!))

Comments

[hallelujahjunction]

He found a pack, eventually. Became the leader of it, honestly. And he was a good man, so he'll do right by them.

[Some stories do have happy endings.

He watches as Stacia's knuckles whiten, reads the tension on her body, pretends he doesn't by drinking more coffee.]

Is that how your family started? Breaking off? [He pauses.] Sorry, I'm not trying to pry.

[credit_not_blame]

Good, I'm glad. Humans and wolves are both social creatures, neither is meant to be alone.

[She sighs and lets go of the rail to flex her fingers.]

No, it's okay. I'd like to talk about it with someone. Maybe you can help me figure out if I'm right to be mad, or if it's just something I should get over.

[She stops flexing her fingers and takes a deep breath. She lets it out again, and starts tapping her nails against the side of her cup, staring down at the ripples.]

She didn't...warn us that werewolves were a thing. Not just that, she lied to me when I tried to ask about it. When I tried to tell her about the "weird dream" I had, she looked...well, I assumed that she'd repressed some traumatic memories. There's a bunch of asshole werewolves out there, it wasn't a stretch. So I didn't push it.

[Stacia takes another deep breath and works her jaw to keep from clenching it.]

And then a year later, my new boyfriend, who knows about the stupid werewolf stuff, calls me to tell me that there's a strange woman creeping around outside his house. And it was my mother. I hadn't introduced him to my parents or even mentioned him yet. So I went and I confronted my mother, and she tells me that she'd known about the werewolf stuff all along.

[Stacia turns away to glower out at the horizon.]

I'd almost died at least a dozen times, I'd had to pick bits of monster out of my teeth, I couldn't sleep through the night for nightmares, and she'd know the whole time and hadn't said a damn thing.

[hallelujahjunction]

[And Dan's a good listener. He's an excellent listener, even, not interjecting but sensing when the silences are actually invitations for input, picking up between the lines, intuiting when someone wants advice or someone just wants to be heard.

He won't tell Stacia this, but once upon a time - before he really stopped being able to feel anger at all, it seems - he wrestled that same question about his parents, who got themselves and all his brothers and sisters killed. In the end, anger wasn't productive, so he didn't let it go so much as it just faded out of him until one day he realized he didn't have any of it left anymore. It took a few years. A shockingly few years. So few years. He's not wired to hold onto anger.

When she's finished her story, he takes a moment to consider it.]

The way I see it, you have the right to do both. Stay angry - hell, furious - and get over it at the same time. Anger's how you feel. Getting over it's how you act about you feel, if that tracks.

[He takes a deep breath and drinks more coffee.]

You got the right to be hurt and angry that the person who ought to have been protecting you decided not to step up and be honest and help you when you were scared and horrified and confused and needed someone. That is your right. She did wrong by you. She did so wrong by you.

And if you want, you got the right to get over it by going ahead with life without that anger making the decisions for you. If you want, when all this is over, even in how you treat her. You can hold onto still being mad and hurt but decide that's not going to be the determining factor in the way you love her, if you still want to.

I guess my point is that it ain't something you should get over. It's something you can, if you want to, and that getting over it don't mean denying how much it hurt you or pretending it didn't happen. But she hurt you bad enough that there's no 'should' anything.

[He's sure that's a garbled mess, but it's sincere.]

[credit_not_blame]

[Stacia breathes a sigh that sounds somewhere between relieved and heart-broken.]

Okay. Okay, good. I was worried...when I asked her if she was sorry for not telling me sooner, she just said that she wasn't going to apologize for protecting her family. I wasn't sure if I was being unreasonable. [She scoffs.] I thought being hurt and mad was reasonable, but I didn't have an unbiased source to check with. Just angry assholes and people who have to deal with those angry assholes. Maybe she'd explain herself to you differently, but she never explained it clearly to me, so I can't tell you her defense.

[She wraps her fingers around her coffee.]

I'm not even mad about the ambush, though I guess we should talk about code words in the future. Just the lying.

[hallelujahjunction]

You don't got to tell me her defense. You don't owe it to her. [But he knows how tempting it is to try and defend one's parents who did wrong. Sometimes he even just hears things about other people's parents who did similar things to his, and he wants to jump in and play devil's advocate.

He drinks more of his coffee, then holds the styrofoam cup up to the sunlight to see how much more he has left.] Having an unbiased source or two around definitely helps sometimes.

[credit_not_blame]

[Stacia smiles, small and vulnerable instead of her usual toothy grin, but still sincere.]

You're right. I guess I don't.

[She takes a swig of her own coffee, then copies Dan's trick for checking how much remains.]

Thanks for listening to me vent, I really appreciate it.