Partners

who: doc and kayos
where: the Martens residence, back porch
when: later evening/night

Kayos had set up hotel accommodations for herself and Nemo, and she'd actually gone all ritzy-like and chosen the Landmark Inn. Which was probably far better than Nemo was used to and the like, but whatever. She didn't feel like going elsewhere, and it was closest to the building she was already having Teddy push through paperwork so she could own the damn thing. And by push through paperwork, she meant figure out how she could come up with a deed or something so she could start the renovations.

At current, she was walking around inside, having teleported in so she could. It was sealed up pretty tight, and it was going to need a shit ton of work, but she liked it so far. The structure itself was sound enough. So the floors weren't about to cave in on themselves or anything which was a big old plus. Singing to herself as she listened to her music, she was mentally making notes about what needed to go and what could stay. Shining her flashlight into another room, she had to take a good look at all the grafitti. It was interesting.

"And to this day, shes glided on, Always home but so far away...Like a word misplaced, Nothing said, what a waste...when she had contact...with the conflict..."

Across town and seated on the back porch, Doc had a glass of whiskey perched on the arm of his chair as he sat, cigarette pursed in his lips and glowing. He held an old notebook in one hand, pen jotting across the page as Doc let his thought process expand out. The day had ended with a thoughtful mood taking hold, the result of talking with Jocelyn, meeting with Eris, and Kayos' less-than-stellar welcome to town.

Scrawling out one last line, Doc flipped the notebook shut and set it aside, digging his phone from his pocket. Whatever Jocelyn's feelings were? Doc was glad Kayos was here, she'd been so pivotal a role in his life before. Dialing Teddybear's number, Doc quirked a faint smile as the familiar picked up. "Feel like giving me a line to our girl?" Doc asked, chuckling as the line clicked over and rang on what he could only assume was Kayos' number.

The ringing really interrupted her song, and she reached up to flip the music off and the phoneline on. "Yo." she answered, squinting at one bit of 'artistic' expression, and she tilted her head to the side, vaguely wondering if that was even physically possible. She was flexible and everything but man. ....definitely like, fifteen year old boy territory. Shaking her head to clear it of anatomical nightmares, she turned back around to walk through the room to the hall where her voice echoed less. While acoustics were cool for singing, they were less awesome when it came to talking on the phone. "You have reached the offices of Kayotic Industries. Our business hours are from two a. m. to midnight, on some time zone that probably includes swahili tribes and such, who don't give a shit about the time anyways. If you have an emergency, please leave your number and a detailed message after the beep, and we'll get back to you as soon as you can. Beeeep!"

"This message is for Bridget," Doc began, playing along with a smirk, "First off, you'd better be in bed, young lady. Because if you're not? And you're not here drinking with me? You're grounded, which I realize is and always was an exercise in futility." He chuckled quietly, shifting the phone and taking a sip of whiskey. "And uh... yeah, weird damn day. Sorry for that. So call me back, deal?"

"Please hold while we contact the party whom you are trying to reach." she said, then hummed for a minute as she smiled. She happened to choose some old REO Speedwagon song, just because. "Hello, this is Bridget. I'll have you know it is not past my bedtime, it's--" she paused, frowning a little at the display on her watch. "...It is not sixty six o'clock!" she said. That was weird. "Or, if it is, them I'm way way past my bedtime. Or I've just been on the clock too long, and a drink sounds good." she said. Then paused. "...you're not there with...like, children who might freak out at seeing me or other certain people who happened to not seem overjoyed with my presence...are you?"

Doc sighed, smirking a bit at her protests as he looked out across the yard. "The twins are crashed out, Jocelyn's at her place, and I'm outside at any rate. In the back yard, because as weird as it is? I have a yard, I've even mowed it before." It was late enough that he doubted Kayos would wake the twins, and even if she did? The vague differences in how she looked would hopefully be enough to keep either Seph or Syn from freaking out. "Punch out for a few, we deserve breaks when we have a chance to take them."

"Wow, seriously? Doing big burly man-work and everything? Do you have one of those aprons that says 'kiss me, I'm a nuclear physicist'?" she asked. "and alright, I'll sneak out, see if I can dodge my supervisor. I didn't really want to come in early on saturday anyways. So, I'll just...be there in a sec." she said, hanging up and getting the coordinates from Teddy. So, really, she was there in a sec, literally. There was the little flash of blue light, and then she was at the foot of the steps, looking around. "...eesh. A yard and everything. Is there a sprinkler to play in? Only not cuz of the whole winter of it all?"

"Nope, no sprinkler," Doc assured her, smirking and letting the wave of awareness he felt wash away. "I do have some old croquet hoops we found in the attic, I stretched them out wide enough for my dog to run an obstacle course. Also, I have a dog," he informed her, grinning wider as he poured a fresh glass of whiskey and offered it over, taking a drink of his own from the bottle. "An adorable, hyperactive little thing. It messes with people. Grab a seat."

She took the drink, then walked up the steps and sat down on the porch next to him. "You have a dog. And a little dog at that." she said, shaking her head. "...you have a weird life, Eric." she told him, taking a sip of her drink as she just kind of assessed the situation. A porch to sit on that wasn't half collapsed. Not a household full of random people who happen to be fighting on the same side, with various levels of injury. Just...some kids and a dog, apparently. Yeah. This was just bizarro land. Not bad, but just weird for her.

Chuckling at the observation, Doc nodded in agreement as she settled nearby. "This isn't lost on me," he joked, "But it's also the logical extension of things, I think. Where you were, we never stopped fighting. Here, bit by bit we got pulled apart by things a lot more subtle than the threats out there. I kept at it for a long time, and then I was needed here. And... I like it? But over time the calm got to me, made me miss the road. So yeah, got a dog. Trained the twins. When I got the new job? The dog became my herald, the kids part of the operation." He took another swallow of whiskey, lighting a fresh cigarette off his old. "I'm guessing the last few years were just a break before the fight started again, a chance to catch my breath."

From what I understand, you took this break because I checked out. she thought, but she didn't say. Instead, she listened, nodding a little in acknowledgment. "Well...it looks nice." she told him. She still didn't quite like the whole 'new job' of it all, but she didn't imagine she was meant to. If she got complacent about it, if she just shrugged and accepted...she would't be doing her job as partner. "What's your dog's name?" she asked.

"Voltaire," he answered quietly, glancing back at the solitary light from within the house, "Gotta say it quietly though, or we'll have twenty pounds of excitable corgi to deal with. As nice as it is? It still feels strange, like I'm lying just by being here." Doc sighed with the confession, looking Kayos' way. "Before? It was just a place to sleep, y'know? And we were just hunting... but now? It's... it's bigger, this new task. And this lie of a normal life, when I walk the dog and we get the newspaper and I have the kids help me bring in groceries? I don't know if it'll ever feel like it's me, even if it makes me happy giving them a foundation."

She knocked back a good part of her drink at that, then cleared her throat a little. "This...new job. That's what you're viewing as your truth?" she asked, wanting that clarified. She didn't necessarily like that. That seemed to her how things got out of hand. You got sucked in, and the next thing you knew, you were in too deep to back out, and you just didn't see the traps as you walked in. Yeah that was most definitely not comforting to her. But, she wanted to hear what he had to say about it first.

"Just a part of it," Doc answered, expanding on the idea for her. "To me, it's three parts. I'm War, who has a big old task to do. I'm Doc, who still knows the rules of a hunt and how to work the job. And I'm Eric, who has a family again. Maybe not in that order, either. But the lie is there too, y'know? Being practically familiar to some people in this town?"

Kayos didn't say anything for a long few moments, assessing. "Maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe that's not really a lie, but just something you need. If nothing else, for perspective." she said. She took another drink, and then elaborated on that. "People like you and I...we've had a fight to throw ourselves into for pretty much ever. But one of the things that I've seen, and I don't know if you have, or if...if other-me did, or whatever, but if you don't know what you're fighting for, or lose sight of it, don't even have that experience...when things get hard, and we all know they will...it's easy to forget. And considering your new apocalyptic demon title...maybe you need that. Maybe that needs to not be a lie, maybe it needs to be truth."

That bore a moment of consideration, as Doc had said similar things very recently, himself. Somehow it was always harder to take advice that was given, it seemed, even if it was a close parallel to his own. "Tell me something about the me that you knew," Doc murmured, looking her way, "Did he tend to get too wrapped up in the big picture? Like, so focused on the horizon that he didn't see the ground in front of him? I know I do, like now. Even if I accept this life overall, I just blind myself to the details of it around me."

Glancing over, she took another drink before she was going to go answering that. "You did. Sometimes I thought it was a defense mechanism, one that just happened to do more damage than help anything. Like, if you stopped, then you'd have to recognize the fact that our ranks weren't exactly as full as they used to be. And the wisecracks didn't come as often, or people had that shellshocked look in their eyes. I think you did it to protect yourself. Unfortunately, by doing that, you cut yourself off from everyone in the first place, and that made things worse for them even if it maybe helped you--I'm not sure it actually did. You can't fight side by side with everyone and place yourself as some...leader that doesn't have to stop and be in the shit with everyone. All it did was make you distant. I mean, I could get through that, because...well. You know me, I don't put up with that shit. But other people had trouble with it. And other people...well, why should they have to put in a ton of work to get the real you when they've got so much else going on already?" she asked. "It was already hard, and people didn't have a lot left to give after a while. So if you were going to be distant, then you were just going to be distant, and if they were falling apart, you didn't really see it unless I told you." She paused. "No, scratch that, it wasn't quite that. I think you saw it, it just didn't register the way it was meant to. I know you had your reasons beyond just the emotional impact of things. I know you thought that you needed to be that leader, that someone had to do it, that someone had to call the shots and make the shitty decisions. I think you just missed out on the part that no one asked you to be that leader. I think if we had a proper say in things, we might have opted for no leader. To behave more like a family than a unit." She finished her drink. "I think Eric took a back seat, and Doc was who we got full time. And Doc didn't have the same relationships with people as Eric did. I know you're the kind of man that takes the weight of the world and set it on his shoulders. That's just a drive in you, and I get it. I do. I just think we all did a hell of a lot better when we had Eric around, before he sank down beneath the title. Back when I was a kid, when yeah, times were incredibly shitty, but we all had each other. ...and that included you."

"Long answer," Doc teased, smirking humorlessly as he thought on all of that. Everything she was saying had been true at some point in this life as well, but hadn't he learned to avoid it? Or was he walking right back into it? "And I'm toeing that line, I think. I... for a while it was just me, the twins, and my friend Kurt. We held the defenses, and even if Kurt was as welcoming as a bucket of needles, we were a family, I think. He was the scary uncle, maybe." Chuckling quietly, Doc took a moment to hope for Kurt again, shaking his head at himself.

"We, the whole town I mean, we got hit by a warpack. Acherus, lots of them. Then there were werewolves, and I ran across a hunter I'd known when I was working solo. And I got to thinking about putting a crew together again, and now? Well, I know I'm close to that old line of thinking. Calling shots, giving orders, lining up jobs and contingencies," he went on, giving her a somber look, "I know that no matter what, we won't all make it. I've known that since before my first job. Just... for a while I wasn't Doc, I was Dad. I was Eric. Now I'm War, and that responsibility makes the old face appealing, kiddo. Just... I feel like the old instincts are going to betray me. Like I can't do this right by fighting, or closing people off."

She listened, propping her chin on her hand as she did so. The 'dad' thing kinda got to her. She wanted to ask where Darren was, but she didn't. Darren, Doc's kid who'd just gotten taken. Every once in a while she even looked, knowing it was hopeless, but still. "Does having a crew of people automatically put you into the placement of the leader who's doing all of that calling the shots, ordering things?" she asked. "You're making it sound like if you've got anything of the kind, you're automatically it. That if one exists, the other has to. That's not really the case. And I get what you're saying about the whole 'old face' thing. But still...maybe it's time to try a different one. Or better yet, ditch fronts entirely." She didn't say anything about the 'I'm War' thing. That was still bugging the living shit out of her. She didn't forsee it becoming easier to deal with in time, either. In fact, part of her saw it as it being her duty not to get complacent.

"Well, that's what I'm trying to work against," came Doc's explanation, "I know it doesn't have to go that way? But I'm gathering up disparate elements; some of them have never worked like we do, some only know their own kind. It makes the old methods pretty appealing, even if I know that's the trick to watch out for." His jaw set when she suggested dropping the fronts, that was a scary prospect to consider. He hadn't been fully, truly honest with anyone in decades. Even the Kayos he'd known didn't hear everything he'd been doing, though she'd been sharp enough to see the toll it took on him. "I think I need help with it," Doc added, a step forward all by itself, "Reminders, pushes to keep me from getting puffed up on duty, someone to tip my head down now and then so I see what's right in front of me."

Kayos didn't say anything about that for a few long moments. "You don't have anyone to do that for you right now?" she asked, her voice light. It had been her duty with her Doc, she knew. Even if it hadn't so much worked all the time, it had been her job. People tended to get frustrated and not talk to him about it. Or, things would start falling apart, and she was the one who could see a bigger picture, even if she was still in the middle of it all. What she didn't want to presume, however, was that just because she'd dropped herself in his lap with a 'Hi! I'm from a bad place and how 'bout you just take me in and I'll pick up where I left off!' didn't mean she either had a right to impose herself or that she should assume it was her that was required for him in certain capacities.

Considering that, all Doc could do initially was shrug. "I do and I don't," he said cryptically, "Syn's great at it? But she's been taking care of her brother lately, and he needs her there. There's a little spitfire of a witch who I think would be good, but I hardly know her. And there's my sorta-boss, who really? Has better things to do. Not to mention I think she gets amusement out of watching me sort this stuff out on my own." Maybe that had been when everything went sideways for him too; when he'd lost the ability to be pulled from his own perspective. All those years on the road had let him sink deeper and deeper into certainty, when Doc had always believed that everything should be questioned.

"Who's Syn?" she asked. She didn't really want to hear about the boss. Or, not right now. Maybe eventually. When she was less fantastically twitchy over the idea. "Well, I'm here if you need it, or if you want it." she offered. She was still trying to keep in mind that she couldn't just put herself in here. Her whole idea that she'd fit right into this time and place had been well and truly shattered this morning, and she wasn't a girl who didn't heed lessons, hard ones or not.

Her question sent a pang through Doc as he was reminded once more that this wasn't her, not the woman he'd known. It wasn't the Kayos who'd been terrified of being a mother but stepped up to the task anyway, who'd taught her daughter well even if she never realized it. It was still her on some core level, but the differences stood out starkly for a moment. "Syn's my daughter," he answered finally, "Short for Synnove. And..." Doc sat forward, swigging one more drink off the bottle before he set it aside and watched Kayos intently. "I know that this morning with Jocelyn was a mess. I doubt you'd really want to stay at that house, knowing she'd pop in randomly. But I'm glad you're here, and I do need you. You helped me here, you helped me there. I need my partner."

It took her a second to put it together. "Your daugh---" she started the broke off, blinking. He meant her daughter. Other-her. Synnove. That was pretty. Synnove and Eric. Right. God. She nodded to stop him from answering her since she got it. "Oh. I...okay." she said, not knowing what else to say. She was silent for a long few heartbeats after he brought up the whole that morning thing. She'd not been going to bring it up, really. It wasn't her business, or she was telling herself it wasn't her business. That was harder than it should have been, because she had very clear opinions on the matter, but...yeah. Not her place. Not your place, not your time. she reminded herself internally. She heard him when he said she was his partner, and it gave her a pang in the heart. She really wanted to hear that. She also felt the same way. She just wasn't sure how it was going to work. "....I really missed you, Eric." she said quietly, a statement that she didn't actually plan on saying, but was suddenly out there, and she unfortunately felt tears sting the backs of her eyes and she internally groaned and rolled her eyes at herself.

She wasn't the only one fighting the burn beneath her eyes, though Doc wasn't chiding himself for it. He hadn't let himself really cry since she'd died, and even that had been a private affair. The closest he'd come in three long years was sitting with Seph as he mended, telling the younger man that he was Doc's son in every sense that mattered. "You have no idea," Doc murmured, smiling more gently than he thought he could as he reached out to smooth a gnarled hand across Kayos' hair. "I... I visit you every month, just to sit and talk. But I still missed you like I could never explain."

She looked at him, and felt like maybe she had a place. She was just going to need to find it. But this was a start, anyways. And, after a moment, she leaned over to put her arms up around his neck and she hugged him. It would work a lot better than trying to put together full sentences. Especially when she still felt like she was going to up and cry. Crying and speaking weren't mixy things.

What came next felt, to Doc, like the most natural thing since breathing. His inhale shuddered a little as Kayos' arms wound around his neck, and before he could even register the reflex on his part? He'd slid his arms around her ribs and lifted her up, standing as he hugged her and let her feet dangle. "We get one more try," he murmured into her hair as his eyes squeezed shut against tears. One more than I deserve. "Thank you," Doc added, hugging her tight, "You found me... thank you."

She hadn't quite expected that to happen, but she also didn't fight him on it. It wasn't like he hadn't done it before...or...whatever. She was tired of quantifying everything in her head so she stopped for a few. She hugged him and let herself feel a little better. She hugged him tighter and had to find her voice again. It took a second, but she managed--even if it was rather unsteady. "Thanks for accepting me." she said. Because she was grateful for that. After all, he could have decided...well, a million other things, and she would have been on her own again. But she wasn't. She was back with her partner, and that was necessary.