How to be Badass (2nd Draft)

The day Char had left, her hand shook as she wrote.

Em, she’d started, and then crossed it out and instead wrote, My love.

I am writing this note because I am leaving. I cannot tell you what happened but please trust that I made this decision for your and Sam’s safety. I love you both more than I can ever say. I know you will take good care of him, and I hope that without my mouth to feed things will be easier. I am so sorry.

-Char.

The table had been bare but for the note . Char’s heart had been bare. If it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have been able to do this. She had touched the note, an envelope that had had a bill in it that they couldn’t pay; she had touched the table, and it had wobbled dangerously beneath her touch. She had touched the walls, the crib, her son, as if by touching them she could infuse them with her love.

“Not to rush you,” said the large blond woman who had saved her, “but I’m on duty right now. I’m going to have enough explaining to do as it is. I’ll take you back to the preccinct and Queri will pick you up there.”

Char had nodded, not trusting herself to speak just yet. A moment later, and, “I’m ready.”

Allen knew enough about Dustin to know that if he was concealing something, it had more to do with what he was hiding from himself than what he was hiding from other people. That wasn’t to say that he wasn’t also hiding it from other people, but it was usually a product of hiding it from himself rather than a secret he was intentionally keeping from others.

“Ma—Secrecy, or concealment demon perhaps.”

What had he started to say, and why was he hiding from it? It could have been ‘maybe’ and then he rerouted to ‘perhaps’ at the end of the sentence instead, but it was unlike Dustin to not speak eloquently. Even if it had only been that, it meant that he had been frazzled by something.

“Are you okay?” Allen asked Dustin. Dustin’s eyes flickered from where they were fixed out the window to Allen and then back again.

“Yeah,” he said.

The fact that he hadn’t asked Allen how he was doing also said that something had him on edge.

“Are you sure?” Allen said, nudging him gently.

Dustin turned away from the window to give Allen his attention. His shoulders were uneven.

“You’re not,” said Allen.

“I’m—thinking,” said Dustin brokenly. His eyes found the demonslayers packed into the car around him. “Tell you about it later?”

Allen nodded. He could understand not wanting to talk about it in front of so many people.

They spent the night at the hotel, and drove back very early the next morning to the demonslayer’s house. Allen’s mind wobbled on the edge of the word home instead, like a knife balanced on its edge.

They hadn’t been inside for more than a few minutes when there was a knock on the door. Most of the demonslayers had disappeared, since they had to go to work. Allen didn’t envy them; none one had gotten more than a few hours of sleep. Allen was seriously worried for the customers Kidd would be serving; she looked like murder. When Allen had expressed this, she said, “Watch this.” Her face perked up, she smiled, and said, “Hi, what can I get you today?” in a voice so cheerful that it gave Allen shivers.

“That was creepy, please stop,” he said. Kidd had laughed.

“That’s my customer service persona,” she said.

“It’s convincing, as long as they don’t know you,” he admitted. “Please never do it for me again.”

Kidd had only laughed harder at that. Allen thought she was probably slightly hysterical due to a lack of sleep.

Dustin went to open the door. Allen wasn’t really paying attention until a very real chill washed over him and he did a double take. Had Dustin lost control of his power for a second? Concerned, he joined him at the door.

Dustin’s shoulders were hunched, he stood with one foot back, and his eyes looked like they were expressing an emotion somewhere between shock, fear, and sadness. Dustin probably had one word for that. The man on the doorstep wasn’t normal looking by any means, but he certainly didn’t warrant that kind of reaction. He was average height, with a slim, elegant build and a similarly elegant face. His jaw was broad in a way that said vote for me, his sleek hair black and his eyes an electrifying blue, but most notable was an ‘M’ that looked like it was tattooed onto his cheekbone under his right eye.

“What are you doing here?’ Dustin asked, voice ragged.

Allen frowned. He didn’t like Dustin sounding ragged. Between his strange behaviour earlier and this, Allen was just about done with whatever was making Dustin upset. He shoved himself between Dustin and the visitor.

“Hi,” he said.

“Allen,” he said courteously.

Well then. “How do you know my name?”

“I also know that that,” he gestured with a graceful tilt of his chin, “is Dustin, and he’s a half demon. Cold.”

“Who are you?” Allen asked, wary now. He wondered if any of the demonslayers would be close enough for backup should they need it.

“I am M,” he said, extending a hand. Allen squinted at it. Distrustfully, he looked back up without taking it.

“Your name is on your face,” he said, somewhat rudely.

“Stunning observation,” he said. His voice was a very smooth barritone. It bothered Allen for no good reason. “Are you going to invite me in?”

“Why in the demonic realm would I do that?” Allen said.

“I have information.”

“On…?”

“Isadora Lisbon.”

“So do we,” said Allen, still not moving to let him in.

“I have better information,” M said, smiling pleasantly. “I didn’t come to get you for your daddy, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Let him in,” he said quietly. “I trust him.”

Allen huffed, but Dustin put a hand on Allen’s shoulder, and Allen stepped back with Dustin to let M in.

“Don’t worry,” M stage whispered to Allen, smirking as he stepped inside, “I’m scared of him too.”

He was mocking him. Allen scowled soundly at him. His first impression of M was not a good one.

“Where is everyone else? They need to be part of the discussion,” M said, clasping his hands in front of him once they’d entered the sitting room and looking around expectantly.

“They’re getting ready for work,” Allen said.

“Oh, they should be down soon then. They won’t have work,” M said.

Allen wondered briefly if he was dreaming. Decided that if he was dreaming he would likely not be as angry as he was. In his dreams he was only afraid.

Sure enough, Kidd came downstairs first, looking confused. Seeing Allen first, she said, “I just got a call from work saying that my shift was covered. Maybe I’ll go back to slee—” catching sight of M, she stopped both speaking and walking and said, “Who’s that?”

“M,” said Dustin.

“How do you know M? Why is his name on his face? Why is his name a letter?”

All perfectly valid questions that Allen would like to hear answered as well, but Dustin was already looking shakey enough so instead Allen said, “Leave off, Kidd. Dustin vouches for him.”

Dustin looked at Allen gratefully. “It’s okay, Allen. No one knows why his name is M, or why it’s on his face. I know him because he was my mentor. He taught me how to come to the human world and how to fit in here.”

Oh, well that was interesting. Allen looked at M from the perspective of being someone that Dustin had been close to before he had met Allen. Allen wasn’t sure if he was more intrigued or jealous.

Slowly, the others came downstairs, and they offered introductions. M seemed to already know who everyone was, but he didn’t say anything about it. His knowledge of them was off-putting, but Allen had to admit it did speak well of the credibility of any information he was hawking.

Mimi was the last to come down. She stopped abruptly as soon as M came into view. “Okay, Dustin was one thing, but what is this one doing here?” The others looked at her in confusion, and she raked a hand through her hair. “That’s a half demon.”

A ripple of tension speread throughout the room, but the positive force that was Dustin was enough to stop any outright hostilities.

“This is M,” Dustin said, demurely. “He won’t hurt us. I can’t promise you’ll like whatever he has to say, though.”

“M,” Mimi said, looking bewildered, and then snorted. “What kind of demon are you, M?”

M gave a small, charming smile and said, “If you figure that out you will be part of an exclusive club.”

“How tempting,” Mimi said dryly. She looked sharp, but like a blade that was hurtling towards you might look sharp rather than one safely on a shelf. “I’ll be watching for you to use your power. One touch of it and I’ll put you in the ground, since we don’t know what it will do.”

M inclined his head in agreement, and Mimi waved her hands in a way that indicated that they should all make themselves comfortable in the sitting room.

“Who has weapons on them?” Mimi asked.

M clapped a hand to his chest in offense, but the look on his face was too mocking to take it seriously. Mimi ignored him and took a sweeping look at the demonslayers, who didn’t seem to be telling her anything, before nodding.

“Clever, clever,” M said. “Fay, Kidd, Char, and yourself I’d imagine.”

Mimi went white, and then red. She narrowed her eyes at M and didn’t sit down, although M did, looking quite relaxed. “You’re a pain in the ass motherfucker,” Mimi concluded.

“You’re not wrong.”

Allen was mostly just confused. Sparrow tapped his shoulder and whispered, “We use what are supposed to be invisible signals to communicate our arms, so that the enemy doesn’t know. It didn’t work this time. Obviously.”

“Please sit down,” M said. “We have things to discuss, and there’s no sense in you not being comfortable.”

“You invite me to sit down in my own home—” Mimi started, but Queri interrupted her by saying her name gently. Mimi glared at M a moment longer before dropping into an armchair, and arraying herself like a king. Back straight, shoulders back, legs planted. Everyone else followed her example, with varying levels of dignity. Allen sat between Sparrow and Dustin. Sparrow shifted to put an arm around Allen’s shoulder. The casual, familiar contact was foreign to Allen—with people who were not Dustin that is—but he had seen the others do it often enough that he didn’t protest it.

“What is it you want,” Mimi said, once all her people were sat down. M’s eyes glinted with something—approval, pride, mischief, or malice. It was impossible to tell.

“I come with information,” M said, “on the operation you’re currently trying to… dismantle.”

“What kind of information?” Mimi asked. “We already have the girl’s address.”

“That’s cute,” M said.

“M, please,” Dustin said.

M looked at Dustin for a fraction of a second, and Allen definitely saw something in his face change—and then it was gone. Too fast. Allen shifted closer to Dustin, pressing his own leg into his. Dustin matched the pressure.

“Fine,” said M. “I happen to know that the girl has moved, and her parents did not notify the family doctor. They’re suspicious. I think you have already figured out that they’re right to be.”

There were nods around the room.

“That’s the only information I’m giving you for free. Anything more will cost you.”

Allen looked at Dustin’s face, but he didn’t look surprised. He did, however, look relieved. Allen couldn’t fathom that. He supposed it was something he’d ask him about when he and Dustin got to talking about what had been on Dustin’s mind in the car.

“No,” Queri said flatly. “We don’t make deals with demons. We’re demonslayers; you can’t possibly have expected us to agree to that.”

M smiled tightly at Queri. Allen had to agree with her, the wound of his own broken deal with demons still raw. He swept his gaze over the others to gauge their reactions. Char and Mimi looked like she was on the same page as Queri and Allen; Fay, Kidd, and Sparrow looked less sure.

“I don’t know,” Sparrow said slowly. “If she really has moved, then we’re in the dark. It might be a good tactical move to make this deal, as long as the price is within reason.”

“That’s not how demons work,” Char said, her jaw tightened.

“I’m a half demon,” M corrected.

“Do you work with them or with humans?”

“Demons,” M admitted.Char sat back, flipping her hands in a way that said ‘well there you go’. “But I’m here on my own time and direction.”

That didn’t seem to make much of a difference to the nay-sayers.

“Nay,” Mimi said. “We’re not interested. Please leave our home. The only reason I’m not destroying you for working with demons and having the audacity to be here is because of Dustin. I wouldn’t suggest pushing your luck.”

M looked aggravated, and then smoothed his face over again. “Maybe I have some other information that can tempt you? Particularly about a certain event that occurred sixteen years ago…?”

“Sixteen years ago,” Mimi said, deadpan.

“Yes, I’m sure you can remember it,” M said, raising an eyebrow. “Although you were very drunk.”

“Oh,” the sound escaped Mimi, small and vulnerable, before her face morphed from shocked to enraged. “Out,” she thundered, rising to her feet. When M didn’t move immediately, she removed her whip from her hip and held the coil in one hand and the handle in the other.

At that, M got to his feet, hands raised in surrender.

“Wait, Mimi—” Fay started.

“Move,” interrupted Mimi. Allen exchanged a confused look with Sparrow, who shook her head to indicate that she didn’t know what was going on any more than he did.

M moved. Mimi walked behind him until he was out the door, and the others followed tentatively, confused by Mimi’s behaviour.

“If you ever come to my home again,” Mimi said, “or contact my family,” she put a hand on the doorframe and leaned threateningly out towards where M stood on the porch.

“Wait,” M disrupted, and then looked back over his shoulder casually. “Should anyone want to contact me, this is my card.” He held it forward.

Mimi scowled, and it was a force of nature. “I will end you.”

And then she slammed the door.

There was a moment of shocked silence from the demonslayers, and then Fay said, “What the hell was that? He could have been useful! Why did you even do that?”

“Good riddance if you ask me,” Char said, face hard. “People like him don’t belong here.”

“People like him?” Kidd put in. “I think Fay and Sparrow are right. Now we have nothing. How is that useful?”

“You’re a child,” Mimi snarled. “What do you know? He’s a got demon in him. We don’t trust their kind.”

Allen nodded in agreement, thinking of all the ways his life had fallen apart and how much of it was because of demons. Without them, he would have his mother and his father, he wouldn’t have stupid reactions to rooms, and he would never have had to kill anyone.

Kidd’s face hardened. “I’m older than you were when you lost everything,” she said, quietly, but her voice shook. Allen couldn’t tell if it was with anger or fear. “And I’m older than you were when whatever M was talking about happened to you. What happened sixteen years ago Mimi? Are you so scared of it that you’d put this entire mission in jeapordy just to avoid it?”

Mimi looked as if Kidd had slapped her. Kidd looked like Mimi had slapped her. It was a mess to watch unfold. “That’s none of your business,” Mimi said, knuckles white on her whip.

“Fine,” Kidd snapped. “Bury us all, then.”

As she stormed up the stairs, Mimi shouted after her, “I did this to protect us.” Her voice broke on ‘protect’. Allen wondered if she was trying to convince Kidd or herself.

“Wow,” Queri murmured. Sparrow chewed her lip in agreement.

Fay put her hands up in the air and followed Kidd up the stairs. Allen could hear her calling for Kidd once she was up there. Mimi went out the front door and Queri followed her, her brow furrowed. Char sighed and went to the kitchen, and Sparrow, after looking between the front door and Char uncertainly, followed Char. When only Dustin and Allen remained in the front hall, Allen was feeling rather lost and uncertain himself. He was so full of anger and confusion he thought he might break. Or break something.

Dustin, who had been very still and quiet throughout the entire episode, said, “I know demons have hurt you, but I thought I’d been there enough for you to not reject someone just because they’ve got demon in them.”

All of the anger and confusion in Allen shattered at that. He had fucked up. He could feel it in his bones, and when he turned and looked into Dustin’s eyes he felt it in his heart too. “That’s—that’s not what I meant,” Allen faltered.

Dustin just shook his head, an infintesimal movemet, and went upstairs. Allen watched him go, feeling stricken. Stupid, stupid, he thought to himself. How could I be thatthoughtless. Allen knew he was thoughtless. Dustin knew Allen was thoughtless. This was more. This was self-absorbance. This was hurting the first person to ever care that you were hurt and try to help you with that.

It was treason to what he and Dustin had.

Allen still felt like he might break, but instead of anger now it was regret and anguish.

Fuck.

Dustin went to the library. The library was his first and last haven, but he couldn’t read in the state he was in now. His mind was a hurricane, a monsoon, and he a fleck of dust within it. He sank into his chair, head in his hands, eyes staring in front of him but seeing only what was in his mind.

What the demonslayers and Allen had expressed had hurt him, but it was more than that. There was a part of him that agreed with them, and that hurt most of all because it gave the knives the words held drive into him from the inside. Maybe he shouldn’t be here. The door he’d uncovered in the doctor’s office floated in his mind’s eye.

It had been M’s power that covered it.

And then M had shown up. M had been closer to a father to him than Dustin’s real father ever had been. M had gotten him out of the demon realm when his father had denounced him, despite the threat of what Kryos would do to anyone caught helping him. M was a mercenary who had been bought off by Dustin’s dad for as long as he could remember. No one was sure what his demon type was—half demons weren’t able to be sensed by demonslayers in their world, or demons in their own world. They had the gift of ambiguity and M had used it well. The only thing people knew about him was his reputation.

When M had shown up Dustin had been afraid he had come to collect on Dustin’s debt to him. Of course he hadn’t just helped him to escape because of the time and the teacher-mentor bond they shared. That wasn’t M’s way. Everything had a price; it was how he had survived so long.

Dustin wished he had the gumption to go after M. To go after him and demand he help them, to run up his line of debt further in order to pay for it, but he was afraid. He was afraid of what he was; he was afraid to acknowledge M’s part in his past that, for him, defined the part of him he was afraid of; he was afraid of being rejected by someone he still saw as a father figure despite his better judgement. He wondered if this was how Allen felt, constantly afraid of his past leaping out and paralyzing him.

His mind whirled, and he chased it in circles. Dustin wondered how long until he would have to stop out of sheer exhaustion.

The door to the library opened. An ice cube dropped into his stomach. He didn’t want to deal with anybody, but he didn’t want it to be Allen. He didn’t think he could cope with that at the moment.

“Dustin?”

It was Allen. Dustin squeezed his eyes shut and slid his hands into his hair, elbows on his knees.

“What?” he managed.

There was silence, and a creak in the flooring and Dustin realized he was walking towards him. Dustin could see his shoes now.

“You’re not okay,” Allen said, and he sounded distressed. Dustin couldn’t handle the extra load of emotions right now. His hands in his hair tightened. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Not everything is about you, Allen!” Dustin snapped, breaking under the strain of his own thoughts and feelings and Allen’s too. “It’s not about you. Please leave.”

Dustin’s breathing was coming quicker now and all he could think was Please, please leave. He knew he had probably just hurt Allen. This lended its strength to the speed of the winds of his thoughts. What a mess.

Allen left.

A broken sob clenched Dustin’s chest.

Dustin didn’t know how long it took for him to pull himself together enough to think of action. In the end, it was another thought that froze the others, at least for a time. His emotions throbbed, unsure what to do without their fuel. He ignored them.

He wondered if that card M had tried to give them was on the porch.

His relief at not meeting anyone as he made his way down to the front door was strong enough to temporarily swamp everything else. When he opened the door and looked down, at first he was disappointed.

But M had never been straight-forward. Kneeling, Dustin carefully looked over the porch.

There—a glimmer of transparent power. Reaching out so that his hand formed a dome over it, he tried to overwhelm it, negate it.

Shit. Frost glimmered over the stoop, and when Dustin grabbed the card and stood the porch creaked unhappily beneath him. He held the card between his hands and read it.

Maximillian Fredrickson

PI

1.800.546.7666

Dustin was going to see how long it would take him to find the nearest pay-phone.

The next morning Sparrow was absolutely wiped. Between the adventures of yesterday and the day before, and the palpable emotional tension in the house following M’s visit, Sparrow had just about had all the excitement she could handle.

When she walked into the kitchen she was seriously considering having black tea. Double bergamot earl grey sounded really good just about then.

Mimi was sitting at the table with a pen and a pad of paper. Sparrow saw jot notes, some scribbled out and some underlined, all in a very business-like script. It was all short flourishes and hasty dots.

“What are you doing up so early?” Sparrow asked as she started the water boiling for her tea.

“Lesson planning for Allen before work,” Mimi grumbled.

“Aw, you do care,” Sparrow said.

“Of course I care,” Mimi said. “I care about everyone in this house so much and there’s no way I’m losing my family again.”

“This is a big thing we’re taking on,” Sparrow said slowly. “I still haven’t worked out how they have a doctor working for them.”

“Maybe it’s a half-demon,” Mimi said tiredly. “Managed to get his MD here.”

“Seems like a very long-term investment for a long-term plan.”

“That’s what scares me.”

“Have you eaten?” Sparrow started pulling out things for cream of wheat.

“No.”

“Would you like some cream of wheat?”

“That sounds like heaven.”

Sparrow smiled, easily pleased. “Strawberries and cream?”

“Heaven.”

Sparrow busied herself starting the cream of wheat, and missed her water boiling. She turned it on again. It had to be boiling while she poured for black tea. “What have you decided for Allen?”

“I’m going to teach him repossession,” Mimi said, tapping the end of her pen on the pad.

“Well, I thought that was the plan all along,” Sparrow said. After the spectacle that he had put on, it had seemed like the natural course of action to her. Maybe if you grew up with regimented levels the way Mimi had it didn’t.

“Thanks, Miss Smarty Pants.” Her voice was soft, fond. Sparrow kissed the top of her head and then patted it.

“You’re welcome. So what are you planning out then? How is different than teaching Fay and Queri for their dormant possessions?”

“He’s an open door, so my first priority is making sure he can beat the crap out of anyone who walks through it,” said Mimi. “He needs to be highly adaptable, which Queri and Fay do not because they just have the same demon every time. Allen needs to make split-second decisions on how to best overwhelm the demon who just happened to wander in to him.” She ran a hand through her hair, shaking it back from her face. “I forgot a hairclip. Anyways, I’ve decided to start with that instead of the other stuff. Start small. I’m worried it’ll trigger him, from all the times he was possessed in the past. From a purely technical perspective he should do better because he has so much experience being possessed.”

Sparrow worried with the bracelets on her wrist. They were all woven, and some were starting to fray pretty badly. She rubbed the fuzz along the pad of her thumb. “He’s doing better,” she commented. “I think something happened between him and Dustin though. Which reminds me—you need to talk to Kidd.”

Mimi looked straight ahead, face blank. Sparrow gathered that she was still upset about what had happened. “What did happen sixteen years ago, Mimi?” Sparrow asked gently.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Mimi said, voice tight.

“It’s the root of the issue,” Sparrow told her. “The words you exchanged were only symptoms.”

Mimi swallowed. “I’m not actually sure,” she said. “Like that bastard said I was… really wasted. It was my permanent state at that point. I’m not sure I even only had alcohol in my system. It was not long before Queri found me and got me living again.”

Sparrow still had trouble imagining Mimi being as much of a mess as she had been, despite how much sympathy she had for her at that point in her life. “What did it feel like?” Sparrow tried.

Mimi was clearly struggling, so Sparrow didn’t push when she didn’t answer right away, finishing up the cream of wheat and putting it in front of Mimi and sitting down with her own bowl and her tea. She blew on a spoonful as she and Mimi sat in silence. Then she said, “I know it’s hard for you to not be the strong one around us. Except Queri. Thank god you have that. But you found me in my darkest place and you don’t see me as less for it.” Sparrow’s voice tightened from the memory of that place. She saw dim lighting and sheets strung up on clothing lines enclosing her in a space she couldn’t escape. Her heart beat sped up in a direct counterpoint to its slowness in the memory. She took a deep breath, let the memory wash over her like water over stone, acknowledging it and its effect on her without allowing it to damage her. “Or at least, I don’t gather that you do. I don’t think you’re less now for having had weakness in the past—or even the present. It just makes you a more complete person.”

“I really can’t remember much.” Mimi’s voice was painfully vulnerable. “I don’t know if I was hallucinating—or—or what. I remember seeing icicles in the doorway. Maybe they were a Christmas decoration.”

“Eat your cream of wheat,” Sparrow advised. Mimi stuck a bit in her mouth and then made a very undignified noise when it was too hot. In a very Mimi-like fashion, she clamped down on it and swallowed it anyways. “You just burned your mouth, didn’t you?”

Mimi nodded.

“Try blowing on the next bite.”

“I’m not a child,” Mimi grumbled.

“No, you’re a fantastically strong woman and I don’t know where any of us would be without you,” Sparrow said, meaning every word of it. Sparrow couldn’t even fathom what would have happened to her if Mimi hadn’t stepped in. It might not have been her who rescued her from her physical situation, but it had been Mimi who had psychologically saved her. Mimi had made her feel strong again.

“Thank you,” Mimi said. “I can’t believe I have to go into work today and assign cleaning duty for this damn city when there’s something like this going on.”

“We’re at a stalemate for now anyways until we think of a new plan,” Sparrow said. “Hey, you can think about that today while you’re doing paperwork or whatever. Maybe you could see what you can find on the Lisbons.”

“I look forward to it,” Mimi said. “If only they were in my jurisdiction. I could do some snooping to see if they have moved. I asked Fay to see what she can find.”

“There you go, then.”

“There I go. Any thoughts on what we should do if the Lisbons have moved?” Mimi asked.

Sparrow had thought about it. “The only answer I can think of is kinda a state of the obvious,” Sparrow said. “We show up for her appointment time and intercept her then.”

“That is rather state of the obvious,” Mimi said, “and I didn’t think of it because of that.”

Sparrow patted Mimi’s head. “You spend too much time worrying to be able to think of things straight-forward.”

“Well, I guess that’s our plan for now then,” Mimi said. “It’ll be messy.”

“Yes,” said Sparrow. “Very. We’ll have to try to evactuate all the bystanders.”

“Yeah, the stone demon was enough civilan casualties to last a while,” Mimi said.

“Well, I’m off,” Sparrow said. “The rich and the desperate need massages.”

“I’m desperate. Do I get a massage?”

“Sure, tonight yeah?” Sparrow kissed her on the cheek , and then headed out. “Finish your cream of wheat!”

Sparrow exhaled deeply as she got behind the seat of the car. She could still feel the indents of the claws of the memory in her psyche as she put the keys into the ignition. She could feel them tugging down on her mood as the engine turned over and caught, and as she put the car into reverse. Crap, she’d forgotten her meds again. You’d think that after taking them for fifteen years you would remember that sort of thing, but Sparrow was persistently scattered and couldn’t seem to always remember for the life of her. She put the car in park again, and fished in her purse for the meds she kept in there specifically for this reason, and swallowed them dry, grimacing as she did. She was pretty sure that was unhealthy.

The action of taking the meds made her feel more stable. Not as a placebo affect, but more as a daily habit grounds you. It made her feel more connected to herself and her life as it was now, instead of how it had been.

Squaring her shoulders, Sparrow put the car in reverse again, and headed to work.

Char swung a kick at Allen, heel-first. He ducked, but a moment late so that he fumbled on his return, allowing Char to sneak inside. She didn’t actually hit him, but stopped short and said, “What is with you today? You’re usually vicious.”

He hadn’t been able to push back against Char even once. This might be the first time Char was training him, but she had seen him fight before and he was not performing. Char was also distracted, so he should have been doing much better than he was. Not to mention he’d only scowled once since coming in. He looked almost vulnerable without it.

To make it clear she wasn’t going to do anything until he spilled the beans, she walked to the side of the room and used a towel she had hung up on a weapon rack to mop the sweat off of her face and neck. Char liked this room better than the small one, anyways. She didn’t mind having to use it.

“I—I hurt Dustin,” he said. Char was thrown off by how easily he admitted it. “Actually, technically you did too, and so did Queri and Mimi, but I think it was worse coming from… me.”

Char frowned, and then her foreheard relaxed as she realized what he was talking about. “Oh,” she said.

“He said something about it to me after you guys left, and I think something else is bothering him and that might have made it worse but I haven’t seen him since then and I’m worried he won’t want to talk to me about it anymore and I don’t know what to do,” he said, all in a rush. He looked really very upset.

“Okay, hush now,” Char said, stepping back towards him and smoothing her hands on his shoulders. “You two are incredibly close and I’m sure you will work this out.”

“I just want to make it right,” Allen said. “I—anything it takes.”

“Then just tell him that, dumbass,” Char said. “Communication is the most important part of any resolution.”

“I’ll try,” Allen said quietly. Char silently resolved to check up on Dustin herself. If he was half as upset as Allen was about this then he could use some support, and she would need to apologise for dissing half his ancestry, even if the diss was true most of the time.

Just what she needed; more things to think about. As if she wasn’t put out enough thinking about the message she had left for Emmanuel yesterday. She had been obsessively checking her phone to see if he had called back and she had missed it. When Mimi had told her she had Allen-training duty, she had decided it was a good opportunity to stop thinking about it, even briefly. It turned out she was still thinking about it, but at least her phone was out of reach.

Now that she had taken that step she found herself paranoid of rejection. The words my son bounced in her brain like they weren’t sure they still belonged there. She had given birth to him, but she hadn’t raised him in the end. She wondered what he looked like. She wondered what he liked to do. She had a thousand questions, some old and many new. She remembered thinking about what his first word could have been, whether he had started walking, what his first day at school had been like. The first few years had been the hardest.

“Hi, it’s Charlaine,” she had said. “I know I basically up and abandoned you and Sam and I really wouldn’t blame either of you if you never wanted to see me again but I’ve… I’ve grown a lot since then and I would really like to see Sam. And you. Please call me back, even if it’s just to tell me to fuck off to the other side of the planet.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have sworn. Maybe if she hadn’t sworn he would have played the message for Sam and asked for his opinion. She had also thought a lot about if she should use ‘Char’ or ‘Charlaine’ when she identified herself. Calling her Char had been a privelege Em had only acquired when they were thick as thieves, partners in crime, accomplice in this crazy thing called life.

When she had broken that, she rather thought that she didn’t deserve to have him call her Char anymore. It was an intimacy she had betrayed. Her chest hurt thinking about him saying it. It was a strange situation; she had never really stopped loving him, but by the same token she was very much not the same person she had been when she had loved him, and when he had loved her. The idea of them becoming partners again was ludicrous. Still, some part of her wondered if it could happen. No doubt he had changed over all these years, too. She found herself as interested in who Em had become as a person as she was inher son.

She took a deep breath. “Try your best to focus,” said Char. “The demons aren’t going to go easy on you because you and Dustin had a fight.”

“It wasn’t quite a fight,” mumbled Allen.

“Close enough. Your punches? Not close enough.” Allen rolled his eyes, and Char counted that as a win. “He wouldn’t have left, would he?”

“Not permanently,” Allen said, but even as he said it he looked so anxious Char almost wished she hadn’t asked. This kid was such an open book when he wasn’t bottling everything up and turning it into rage. “Oh god, what if he did leave permanently? I don’t know if I could deal with that.”

Shit. Now she definitely wished she hadn’t asked. “Look, I’ll text the others and ask if they’ve seen him around. I’m sure he wouldn’t leave permanently. He cares about you too much to run off because you hurt his feelings a bit.”

Allen closed his eyes. “He wouldn’t leave,” he said quietly. “He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t but we never clash like this and—”

“You’re completely freaking out, yeah, I can tell,” Char said. “It’s normal for close friends to clash sometimes. You will figure it out. You guys care about each other too much to now.”

Allen nodded. “Okay. Hit me.”

Char grinned. “That’s more like it. But one more thing—you would be able to deal with him leaving. It would be hard as hell, but you don’t need him to survive.”

“I need him to want to survive,” Allen said quietly, twisting his shirt in his hand.

“You might have once, but is that still true?”

Allen was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

Char patted his shoulder. “Give it some thought. Now, you hit me.”

Allen didn’t need Dustin to want to survive. He thought about it. Dustin made it easier, and Dustin was like a keystone for his thoughts, clarifying the mess of his mind and giving them sense when Allen was too embroiled in them to see out. Allen would be okay without Dustin, but he didn’t want to be without Dustin. He could be happy without Dustin but he didn’t want to be happy without Dustin. He was happiest with Dustin.

-*Check that out up there might change it.*

Thinking about all of this made Allen ache and he wanted to find Dustin all the more. He couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say to him once he did, but he figured he would probably come up with some sort of word vomit when he saw them and hopefully that would be a good start.

Allen was not any less distracted for training with Mimi the next day than he had been with Char the day before. When they sat down in the attic library, Mimi opened her mouth to start speaking but Allen interrupted to say, “Have you seen Dustin?”

Mimi frowned, clearly not pleased at being interrupted, but Allen didn’t really care. Allen wasn’t sure that he and Dustin had gone this long without seeing each other since Allen had been sent to France for a job and his flight back had been cancelled due to weather. “Actually, I saw him in here yesterday,” said Mimi. “Asked him what he was doing. He said ‘learning’.”

“Oh,” said Allen, in a small voice. He was relieved that Dustin was still here, but he couldn’t help but feel that if he hadn’t run into him that it meant that Dustin was avoiding him on purpose. He had good reason for thinking this, considering they shared a room.

“I’ve decided that I’m going to teach you how to be successful at the actual act of repossessing before I teach you anything else,” said Mimi. “I don’t believe that the best offense is a good defense but I do think that you can’t launch a proper offense without first covering your defense. So, should the amulets fail again, you will have a defense.”

Allen nodded, but he was still thinking about Dustin.

“Hey!” Mimi snapped her fingers in front of his face. “You do realize lives are on the line here? Stop looking like a kicked puppy. This shit takes work. You need to be engaged.”

“Lives have been on the line for me since I was five,” Allen snapped. “I’m used to it.”

“This is fucking different,” said Mimi. “That was about taking lives. This is about saving them. Lives have been on the line for me since I was five as well. That’s when I started training. You could say it was the same for you. Queri told me that you were aware during the first possession she found you in. Was that the first time you became aware in a possession?”

Allen flinched as he remembered. “No. It was in the white room. I was in there for… two days… and it was only for a second.”

Mimi raised an eyebrow. “Well I can’t put your ability to repossess down solely to experience. You definitely have some innate talent for it. Often the biggest hurdle for a demonslayer new to learning repossession is becoming aware. How often are you aware then?”

“All the time,” Allen said, voice dull. “By the time I was seven.”

“What the fuck?” said Mimi. “You’re murdering people once a week and you choose to be aware the whole time? No offense but no wonder you’re so messed up.”

That made Allen angry. His eyes flashed as he said, “If you were forced into a situation like that where you have absolutely no control over yourself, would you give it up then? Would you let yourself have no idea what you were doing?” Allen struggled to express his emotional reasoning. It had been the only thing he had been able to control, his awareness. He damn well hadn’t been about to let it slip through his fingers, too.

Besides, if he was going to commit awful things, he thought he probably owed it to the victims to be aware of it. He wouldn’t afford himself the luxury of ignorance.

Mimi’s lips had tightened, but when she steepled her fingers she said, “I see what you mean. I probably wouldn’t.”

Allen relaxed back into his chair. “I was doing awful things,” he mumbled. “It wasn’t me. It would have been even less me if I hadn’t—” He broke off, not sure how to finish the sentence.

“Alright, alright, I get that you have identity issues,” said Mimi. “I’m sorry. Can I teach you how to save yourself from that now?”

“Fine,” Allen said. “Just so you know, saying ‘no offense’ before you say something doesn’t actually make it less offensive.”

“I know,” said Mimi. “I’m always offensive. Some people take it better though if they think I don’t mean to be.”

“That’s the most half-assed diplomatic solution I’ve ever heard of,” Allen said. He also thought that putting ‘no offense’ in front of anything made you sound more like a douche bag, not less.

“I’m not a diplomat, so whoop-de-doo.” She twitched a paper. “Here’s how we’re going to do this. I’m going to put a very weak demon inside of you. Okay? Then you’re going to try to repossess it. Actually, you know what, we’re going to move to the training room. I don’t want it to trash this library.”

They moved to the training room big training room (no one had tried to make him go into the small one after he’d had that melt down last time, to his relief), and Mimi took down some punching bags someone else had hung up while Allen tried to psych himself up. Now that he was confronted with being possessed again, he found he was in fact very afraid of it. It had been so normal before that he had had to suppress that fear in order to hold on to his own sanity. Now that he had the luxury of being without it for some time, the thought of submitting again to a demon’s will floored him with fear. It thickened his blood, freezing him.

Possession was something that Allen thought probably never became less terrifying. It was unnatural, and it was a loss of control on a level that any regular human couldn’t fathom.

Allen remembered Dustin’s excitement in the library after they had seen Mimi repossess a demon. He was taking his greatest weakness and turning it into a strength. He thought Dustin would probably tell him that he wasn’t submitting, since this was about fighting them. Thinking about Dustin calmed him down and made him sad at the same time, and then that made him frustrated.

“Sit down and get ready,” said Mimi.

Allen shook his head. “I’ve gotten more injuries from demons trying to get up off the ground in my body than I’d care to count. They’re awful fucking puppetteers.”

Mimi snorted. “Okay, fair enough. Stand there then.”

Allen did, trying to force his breathing down. He held his mind in place forcibly. He would beg to not do this if he let himself think about it, and he didn’t want that to happen. Allen watched Mimi. She was sitting against the wall, eyes closed. Her tongue rolled in her mouth, head tilted, and then her body slumped quite abruptly. It startled Allen enough that he lost hold of his mind—and panicked.

He didn’t want to do this. He really, really didn’t want to do this.

I don’t want to be possessed again I can’t do it I don’t want to lose control I don’t want to I don’t want to—

He knew Mimi’s awareness was not here. It was in the demon realm. Any plea he made for her to stop she wouldn’t hear, and so this was going to happen and there was nothing he could do about it. He was practically frantic with the knowledge. His breathing was shallow and his pupils blown and he was so full of adrenaline he thought he could feel it scorching his veins. It was like acid.

No matter how unnatural, the feeling of being possessed was nonetheless still a familiar one; it washed through him, leaving a demon in its wake. Mimi popped up, immediately on her feet. Allen’s expression had gone slack the moment the demon entered his body, and Allen fought to calm down enough to focus on repossession.

“I’m going to talk to you like you’re aware,” Mimi said. “Hopefully I’m not just entertaining a dumb fucking demon.”

Allen was aware. He wasn’t, however, able to control his panic enough to use this to his advantage.

“Now you’ve done this before. Take a moment to find your power. I can deal with this demon, just find your power,” Mimi counselled, and Allen desperately scrambled to try to do what she said. He wanted this over with. In his panic, though, he found his power desperately difficult to hold onto. It was slippery, as if slicked with his panic, with his lack of focus. His control passed through it like mist. The demon lurched towards Mimi, rolling Allen’s ankle painfully. He continued to walk on it as if nothing had happened, and that hurt like a bitch too. Fuck demons. Fuck this.

“Now you need to use the power to overwhelm the demon inside of you and take hold of it. This is going to be slightly different for every demon, especially more powerful ones, but this one is so weak that you should be able to just swamp it and that will work.”

Swamp it. Allen would need to be able to have some fucking control if he wanted to do that. Not much, granted—but something. He didn’t have that. He didn’t have that. When had he ever had that? The demon lunged messily at Mimi, and she sidestepped easily, even stepping in to catch the collar of his shirt and haul him back to his feet when the demon would have thrown them on their face. It choked him but it was ultimately preferable to a broken nose.

Allen tried—he really did. He tried desperately to calm himself enough to use his power, he did everything he could to stop his mind from running around like a headless chicken, but his physiology was out of his control and he was constantly assaulted by this fact. Sensations that were his and yet not, movements that were his and yet not, a demonic soul that was definitely not his and yet commanded his body as if it were.

Eventually, Mimi took pity on him, Allen supposed, because the next time Mimi grabbed him he felt a shockwave of power roll through him, and found that when it was gone, so was the demon. He collapsed as he found himself abruptly wired back in to his body, face contorting and muscles shuddering. He wasn’t that exhausted—the demon hadn’t done much other than follow Mimi stumblingly around the room—but his ankle hurt and so did his throat and so did his shoulder where he had bashed into the wall at a speed that was inadvisable.

He flopped backwards onto the floor, arms starfished out.

Mimi sighed, and Allen’s stomach curdled. He knew she must be disappointed.

“Sorry,” Allen said, staring stolidly at the ceiling.

“Honestly, you did fine,” Mimi said, and the words shocked him enough for his eyebrows to rise slightly.

“I didn’t do anything,” Allen argued.

“Yeah, that’s pretty normal,” Mimi said. “It takes a lot of practice. Remember what I said about this being a level 5/6 skill? Cut yourself a fucking break. Plus you have the lovely added benefit of trauma connected to this so that’s going to fuck you over a bit.”

Allen swallowed a lump in his throat. He wasn’t sure why it was there. He wished Dustin were here. He wasn’t sure if Mimi’s words made things better or worse. “How are you not disappointed?” he asked again. He couldn’t get past that. His father’s voice rang in his ears.

“Because I’m not, okay? Daiden knows being disappointed isn’t going to help anything. Just keep working.”

“Daiden?” Allen asked weakly.

Mimi made a noise of frustration. “Old demonslaying name… sort of like saying ‘God’ or ‘Christ’. He was one of the original six.”

Allen didn’t say anything after this, so Mimi continued. “I’ve used up all my pretty words.” Allen snorted. He didn’t think you could use as many curse words as she had and still consider them ‘pretty’. “Did you hurt anything? Or, um, did the demon hurt anything?”

“Rolled my ankle,” Allen muttered, sitting up and poking at it tentatively. “It should be fine in a few hours.”

“We should try again then. I’d like to be able to take this slower, but we don’t know what kind of clock we’re running against here.” Mimi frowned as she spoke, pausing as if in thought. “You want to go again or wait til later? I’m on call tonight so I can’t be cooped up in here babysitting demons all night.”

Allen’s first instinct was no, he didn’t want to go again. But somewhere between Mimi’s words and Dustin’s words Allen found his own motivation—the girl that they would be saving next week. He didn’t want to be a liability on that mission. He wanted to be able to save that girl from what had happened to him. If he could conquer it, she wouldn’t ever need to learn to do it herself.

Allen took a long breath, steeled himself, and said, “I want to go again.”

They went again. Allen’s body stumbled around the room. Mimi deftly avoided it and tried to stop it from damaging him too much. Allen was a little less panicked this time as he fought against the overwhelm of memories and fear and anguish, wrestling with adjusting his mental state from one of a passive observer with no control to a player in the field. He was a player, and he would beat this dumb, weak demon.

It took a couple tries, but with the new mantra of I’m doing this to save a child, a counterpoint to his usual I’m doing this to save mom, he was able to force the fear away enough to grab on to his power—all of it—and shove it the fuck into the demon.

The effect was instant. Where the power washed through him, the demon lost its hold, and soon Allen was, miraculously, breathing by his own voalition.

He stopped the latest in many headlong rushes towards Mimi mid stride. He lifted his hand up to look at it, just because he could.

“But that was so easy,” Allen said, inredulity making him childish.

Mimi snorted, and then the snort disorted into full-blown laughter. Mimi doubled over, holding her sides, and Allen was both very pleased and a little bit afraid. He’d never seen Mimi look so delighted. The smile was in her eyes, her cheeks, her forehead, her carefully painted lips. Allen couldn’t put his finger on it, but it warmed him.

“What?” he said, flushing.

“Oh,” Mimi said, still laughing too hard to properly answer him. “It’s—it’s just—”

“What?” Allen said, his expression lifting into a grin of his own despite himself. That was laughter in his chest. It felt alien, and his mind drew the absurd reference of the alien in Alien popping out of his chest, instead of laughter, and then he really did laugh. It wasn’t that funny, but Allen was so stressed and so relieved and so afraid and so victorious that once he started he found he couldn’t stop.

By the time Queri walked in on them, there were tears on both of their faces, and Allen found a savage sort of satisfaction in knowing that they weren’t from crying.