nightlogs | I've Found Work and Welcome Everywhere I've Been [Closed]

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dan sagittarius

I've Found Work and Welcome Everywhere I've Been [Closed]

Who: Dan, Miguel and eventually Sam
What: Monster-hunting mission in rural Quebec
Where: This universe's equivalent of Shawinigan
When: After Valentine's Day
Warnings/Notes: The usual Dan warnings, some references to timeline collapses, subsistence butchery...and Quebec.

Shawinigan, population a little under fifty thousand, has been troubled this year. People have been disappearing, mostly children, and the Guardians suspect that some nasty thing has been emboldened by Kuk's presence and started abducting them.

Dan suspects he was chosen because the local heavily-accented French here tends to dodge the translation magic, but he learned Quebecois French as a teenager and can parse what the magic can't. He gets the lay of the land, descriptions of the missing persons, and a lead from a mill worker, who says that most of the missing were last seen around one of the several Catholic churches in the region. The miller tells him that some stones from the church foundation have also gone missing, and when Dan investigates he finds the shoe-marks and strides of a large horse - Dan suspects by some urine he finds in the dirt that it's a stallion, not a gelding - and a little more talking with the locals unearths an urban legend about a devil horse that eats flesh. Dan decides to avoid staying with a stranger or the one terrible motel in town and instead to try and get some progress done tonight.

He's brought Concrete Blonde, and when he finds a promising-looking area of the woods, he tethers her to avoid her hoofprints muddying the scene. The weather here is better than expected for March - Dan would consider this temperature typical for May or June - but Dan isn't about to complain about that. It's warm, humid, sticky, thick with early emulsions of midges and swarms of horseflies, loud with insects and whooping birds. Dan can smell the lake a few hundred yards off and barely hear a sluggish tributary leading into it, a minor artery off the main river that runs the hydroplant and the mill. He has a pack with the materials to camp out here for a few days if that's what it takes.

He gets his flashlight out and starts to case the location by his usual checklist, first ensuring that it's not already occupied, then that it's defensible, and only after establishing those facts taking his time to look for clues and leads. He's picked up a few things that indicate he's in the right area, but it's too dark to follow the trail, so he tracks down dinner. He's getting a doe strung up from a tree to bleed and butcher when he hears a crash; he drops his knife and whirls around with his firearm and his flashlight.

He lowers the firearm as soon as Miguel's distinctive silhouette appears from the snowglobe portal.

"I was wondering if they were going to send someone to be my partner." Dan smiles, but he's carefully watching Miguel's body language for a rejection. There's an unspoken are we good? to his tone, not an accusation but a wary question.

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The leap through the portal manages to end in a graceful landing despite the welcome at the point of a gun. Dan gets greeted by immediate irritation from the flashlight to the face, unprotected by the lenses of his suit. Pupils shrink to pinpricks and he raises his hand up to block it. Unpleasant memories, that. It was a little too similar to a searchlight.

"Your other Punchy options were occupied." Miguel explains through a sharp grimance. He looks away to give his eyes a reprieve. The nightshine is all the more stark in the pitch black of the forest.

He had foregone the webs both due to magic in the region and in case they were to bump into any locals. So, outdoor clothes for brisk weather such as this. He'd brought extra supplies, too (with help from the yeti, who knew more about wilderness survival than him). All tucked in neatly in a leather pack. There were even shades, but he didn't think to wear them when he was joining Dan at night. This entire mission is terribly old-school for him.

Dan lowers the flashlight as soon as he sees the hand go up, flinching sympathetically at the awareness of how that must have felt to Miguel. He switches the setting on it to resemble a more diffuse lantern, then hangs it in another bough.

"It's deer blood. It ain't mine." He's only got a little on him, having just started the butchering process, but Miguel's got good senses and Dan doesn't want to give him cause for alarm. He holds the lantern up so Miguel can see the silhouette of the trussed kill. "You hungry? I can have dinner ready in an hour or two. Give you a chance to get situated. I already cased this place for two hundred yards each direction."

Offering hospitality is almost a universal constant when trying to set people at ease, and Dan isn't sure how Miguel feels about him still or if the girls went after Miguel as they suggested. "I been here most of the day, so I got a chance to get some intel from the locals."

Despite having all the trappings of something that should feel right at home prowling around in the woods, he is quite out of his element and needs a moment to adjust.

The rustling of bird and rodent aren’t so different, but the vibrations are muffled by tree and dirt rather than made sharp by concrete and steel. The lack of Nueva York’s perpetual roar softly centers all the noises and evidence of living things that settle into a new ambience. The running water sits at the bottom of it all like a low crackle of an old radio. Different from Nueva York. Different from the Pole, as well.

He opens his eyes, situating easily to the dark. His mood is better with the softer light.

“I’ll eat when you’re ready. I don’t need much setting up.”

The deer carcass is met with a discomfort that he swallows in the interest of making his own gesture of goodwill.

“Do you need help with this?”

Edited 2024-03-04 08:58 (UTC)

"Only if you know how to gut and quarter an animal." With a second person to keep watch, Dan can more closely focus on getting dinner together. He grabbed some snacks in town, mostly cheap sugary cookies and a six-pack of beer and baguette chips, but he knows he can be more resource-efficient getting his own protein than relying on the sad, dodgy supermarket here.

But he knows most people don't like to watch cute animals get diced up, so he starts to unhook and move the deer to a few yards away where a tree will obscure what he's doing. For as gentle as Dan is, for as softly as he carries himself, there's a workmanlike bluntness to the way he handles butchering. It's not artful, but it is competent and clean.

"I'm glad you're here. I was considering how to get the remains of what I didn't eat here back to town for the locals. Now we can just enjoy the venison ourselves." Dan hopes Miguel hears the I'm glad you're here embedded in that, that Dan's glad Miguel's here not just to be another mouth to prevent food waste. "We're looking for a killer horse."

Dan grins at that.

"Of course we are." It had to be a horse for the sake of irony, he thinks.

The pack sheds off his back with a dull thump next to the other supplies. It contained dry trail food and water, mostly, and a hammock to sleep. There are a few other effects that were for Just In Case and Hopefully We Won't Need It scenarios adding a little extra weight. He surveys the camp, now that his other senses were acclimated, and makes note of Concrete Blonde tied nearby alongside Dan's other preparations. Any other larger animals nearby were keeping their distance, as far as he could tell.

Dan's easy forgiveness surprises him. Glad to see him? Miguel's unsure whether he should move forward right away with an apology or maybe ease into it once they had a stew or whatever it was they were going to eat.

"I can cook, but the meat just tended to come in smaller pieces."

With less anatomy and organs to worry about.

"What did the locals say?"

"I can cut us up some deer bacon," Dan says, peeking out from behind the tree with a smile. He isn't going to bring up their last interaction until Miguel does, because he typically, after conflict, lets someone else set the tone. Dan feels like his own ego and concerns can be de-prioritized when someone else has emotion to burn. If Miguel's still upset at him, Dan would rather address that than his own hurt, which has curdled into a sort of nauseating guilt that's been haunting his body since they clashed. "If you can make sure the fire's well-fed. There's dry wood in a stack over there."

Everything Miguel's told Dan about Nueva York has Dan expecting that he'll be taking the lead on tracking a beast in the woods - this plays exactly into Dan's skillset. In a way, he feels sort of affirmed that he's in a situation to show off what he's good at, rather than stuck in another opportunity to reveal himself a dangerously ignorant schmuck who'd trip ass-over-kettle into dooming the world.

He tries not to think about that as he handles animal entrails.

"Six kids and two teenagers missing since January. I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't might be surprised if they froze to death even if they didn't get ate, given the temperatures outside. All of them vanished from Eglise Saint-Pierre, all of them on Sunday mornings before service, and after each one there been a stone missing from the base of the church. I went by and found hoofprints and horse piss, and there's a local legend about the devil taking the form of a horse that snatches folks away, so I reckon that's what we're looking for. A myth turned bodily, snatching people away."

Dan hopes the sounds of hide being sliced or bones being cracked isn't too painful on Miguel's superior hearing.

"I followed the trail here to the woods but it's too dark to track through mud right now. Town's about five miles back."

There is a dutiful knit of the eyebrows that suggests Miguel's worries are focused on the injustice of those early deaths rather than their previous conversation. He stalks away towards the fire, taking up even a small task just to avoid being idle - if it werent for this, it'd probably be tying up the hammock. He could prioritize their mission over any personal feelings of his, at least.

It didn't need wood yet. The soft firelight nor the sounds of butchering meat seem to offend the senses quite like a flashlight. He is free to stare right into the centre of it unabated.

"Are there any hills or peaks higher than a tree around here? I can give you a better survey from a high elevation." His form of 'hunting' is methodical. By appraisal and scans rather than scents and tracks. "I assume from the gun that we're going for the lethal option."

Killing isn't his first choice, but once certain lines are crossed he will do what he has to.

"Nah to both of those. This is relatively flat terrain, but I did at least choose the tallest tree as our landmark here. That maple looks about ten feet taller than the rest of the canopy."

Dan figures they can climb up and down trees and look for the tall one if they get split up or need to store belongings for later. He'll probably take the rest of the deer up there when it's time to stash it, like a leopard. He bets Miguel can at least get a sense of where the town is in relation to them and the way the rivers and lake link themselves from a higher vantage point.

"But I ain't looking to shoot anyone or anything." He guesses it makes sense that Miguel would assume that from the firearm, but Dan finds himself not rankled but a little disappointed that that's what Miguel thinks Dan's plan is. "I'm a good enough negotiator that a piece is just a tool to get someone to listen, and I'm a good enough shot that if I do have to shoot, I can usually avoid killing."

Again, the idea that he's killed his universe coils in the base of his stomach.

"Reckon we can agree on that maxim? Killing as a last resort only?"

His attention wanders upward as he catches the Maple in question, gauging how many leaps would be needed to scale to its budding top. It's no skyscraper, but it will do for some long-distance peering over the canopy. It seemed to have sensed that Spring had come early as well, if it was getting so lush already.

Dan gets a doubtful look at his claim to miraculously non-deadly marksmanship, but Miguel is not here to question methodology. Whether a devil horse is killed or captured will be enough to take it out of action in this region. So he nods, figuring it is basically what he would have done regardless.

"I usually try teeth before that. My venom is a paralytic, but it wears off after a time. I'll just need an opening."

A suggestion of a game plan, should the opportunity arise. The downside being that he will have to taste devil horse if he's successful - but he's fared worse. Horses are more robust than humans when it comes to toxins, though, so he might have to use more than usual.

Dan catches the doubtful look, and for a moment he considers just letting Miguel keep his opinion, except they're working together and it's important they have accurate assessments of each other's skills. That means he needs Miguel to trust his marksmanship.

"I'm real good at kneecapping folks, is what I'm saying. And good at keeping them from dying when I do." Dan knows there are different schools of thoughts or situations where that's opening the door for retaliation, and that the only reason Dan can default to that use of force is that he's been firing guns since he was in diapers, and he considers telling Miguel how many people he's killed, but they've already come to an agreement. "But it don't matter in this case. I can wrangle a horse, especially if you slow it down first."

He bets Miguel can, if he looks at Concrete Blonde's saddlebags, tell that there's plenty of extra rope and clips and a muzzle.

"Problem is the myth ain't clear on if it's sentient or not. We might could be dealing with a real smart horse." Dan laughs, but it's partially to cover up for the sound of his pulling the lungs out of the deer. "It's a reassurance to know I got someone with some muscle to tag-team it, though."

Lines of distaste appear on his face - the wording does not seem to be convincing him at all. ‘Kneecapping people’ does not have a particularly positive association to him, not when it was more often used in simply hurting others for the sake of it. But they were dealing with some monster horse, not human beings, so Miguel catches himself in letting his own aversion to guns cast aspersions on Dan’s abilities.

Then again, he never did see the man in action.

“You’re being nice.” He adds cynically. “I know I can be difficult, so, we should clear the air.”

They are working together, he reminds himself. Maybe they should just get this out of the way from the get go.

“I’m a nice person.” Dan says that with a softness, a self-awareness that turns it into a bit of a joke after having just described shooting out a kneecap, a bit of a gesture that the way he comports himself is less about Miguel than it is about his own self-conception. It also buys a moment to think.

He doesn’t like conflict. He avoids it whenever he can. He doesn’t know if this rift between him and Miguel can be healed when it feels like their own peace is such a distant concern compared to the fate of a whole universe, Dan’s Schrödinger’s home that may or may not be doomed or dead already.

“You had reason to be difficult with me.” He finished with the entrails and tidying those up, but he’s rather keep working with his hands for this conversation. “Most folks would have might responded the way you did.”

Miguel levels his expression, but the look about him is just as intense all the same. He was preparing his words the same way one might consider which wire would defuse a bomb.

“The balance in my end of the multiverse has been disrupted for some time. Things didn’t start out so delicate, but intermingling recklessly started to unravel the order of things. And it’s been my job to clean it all up. The work isn’t close to done yet, either.”

It feels a little strange to talk about such large-scale things when they were standing in the slush of defrosted forest. But for him it was a matter he thought about all the time.

“It’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have lost my temper at you for it. And I’ve realized that you must think I loathe you for all this, and…”

He pauses.

“…Well, that didn’t sit right. For whatever that’s worth.”

Edited 2024-03-05 18:10 (UTC)

"I reckoned it was about what you seen as much as what I might could have done. You don't got to apologize to me for reacting from that place. From those experiences and your obligation to your work." Dan doesn't keep eye contact; he just works with the meat.

He did think Miguel loathed him. He tries to see himself through Miguel's eyes and he sees someone reckless, gullible, stupid, ignorant and incurious; he sees another iteration of the way a lot of people see him, the way he's been dismissed a thousand times, only this time it's grounded in more than his poverty and his illiteracy and his addictions; this time it's grounded in a catastrophe he might have caused. He figured that if Miguel didn't loathe him, he at least no longer respected him.

"I'm here to listen, if you want to walk through everything now that we're both calmer. Or we might could just ignore it. It's up to you."

“I think we’ve done enough of ignoring each other.”

It gets a little easier to speak once he starts. Less like he might stumble over his own emotional tripwires and summon another immutable tide of rage.

“I was so afraid of the worst outcome coming to pass that I didn’t consider if it was possible for there to be alternatives.”

Or that maybe it would be too bitter and painful to accept he could have had that too. An alternate-alternate life where his own mistake could have been avoided. Where happiness was still within grasp.

“The implications of that felt like too much to accept. But it’s not helping my work to refuse to look.”

"Do you think there are alternatives?"

So much hangs on how Miguel answers that. Dan feels his heart leap at the potential that everything turned out okay in his world. He wants to believe it so badly, but a part of him treats the fact that he wants to believe it as evidence that it must be untrue.

He and the girls concluded that Miguel must be wrong. He and Bunny concluded that Miguel must be wrong. He holds to that. And he listens closely to the implications of what Miguel's saying, and he hears between the lines. He listens to the unspoken sentiment that Miguel's universe might have collapsed unnecessarily, instead of as a matter of destiny, and he hears how terrible that knowledge would be to swallow.

"I didn't think. I couldn't might think of nothing except how much they deserved to live and how unjust it was for them to die those ways." He fills the cavity in the deer up with ice he got in town. "And all I can do is hope that I did it right. But I just..."

He sighs. "I can't never think straight where my family is concerned. Can't make more thoughtful choices. I wouldn't have run that risk knowingly but ain't no scenario where I would have thought to ask if there was a risk at all."

“You and anyone else with loved ones.”

He can’t fault Dan for doing anything in his power to save his family. It’s a form of selfishness he finds ultimately forgivable, even if he finds himself in conflict with it.

“It’s the multiverse. There may be rules in the mix of it, but anything is possible.”

A contradictory sentiment he’s had to wrangle with since he and Lyla discovered their web of realities and all the horrors of predestination therein. He used to believe more in the latter sentiment back when he started. Not so much, anymore.

“This isn’t a greenlight to do whatever we like when similar situations pop up, but maybe there is a reason for optimism. Or at least grounds to try and investigate more, when there’s a chance.”

Dan closes his eyes for a moment to process that and to allow himself the absolution that hope brings. Maybe everything can be okay. Maybe it's alright to feel this, to let go of this anxiety and guilt, because neither of those serve him or anyone else. Maybe allowing himself to believe things will be alright isn't just the easy and self-serving thing to do, but the responsible thing to do.

"I been pulled into three different realities without my say-so. I reckon anything's possible." Mostly, Dan feels a sense of optimism about that as well, about the idea that the universe is big and full of people to meet and things to learn, but he does also wake up every morning and have to still a quiver of fear within him that he'll open his eyes to another strange world and be alone in it. "I ain't looking for a green light. And this is all beyond me."

Dan's just a guy swept up in everything. He's a small-scale person. He saves lives, settles ghosts and soothes monsters on a one-by-one, case-by-case basis. He lives responding to what's directly in front of him. His ability to conceive of the world outside his immediate periphery is blunted; he has to proactively think of the impacts of his actions outside his own sphere, about the fact that things exist at all when they're out-of-sight and therefore out-of-mind.

He's aware it's his deepest flaw. He tries to catch himself in it. It doesn't always work.

"But this, this working on a small scale, that I can do." He pulls the cut of meat he wants from the deer for dinner and puts it in a Tupperware, peeling off the bloody gloves he used for the gutting, wiping down his gun and flashlight from the errant blood. He brings the cuts of deer belly over to the fire. "Do you ever love it? Learning about the multiverse?"

Or is it all just work, trauma, tragedy, the burden of obligation?

"There wasn't always so much trouble."

The irony of discussing this in their very rustic camp is not lost on him. A log is tossed into the flames and rattles over the charcoal skeletons of its predecessors, lifting with fresh flames as Dan approaches. Meat usually benefitted from high heat in his run-of-the-mill kitchen sort of cooking, and he imagines the same principle applies.

"At the start, when it was mapping out the different realities, it was just... miraculous. An infinity of worlds to travel to, with the only real limitation being time, and interest. It was everything, sitting in the palm of your hand."

He prods the assortment of wood fuel with a rod, arranging it neatly.

"Most of the Spiders connected more to each other than to me, but I could get used to that. My base in Nueva York became a hub of activity, and I suppose it was nice not to feel alone."

For a time, it assuaged his solitude, even if he was something of an outlier compared to the others.

The way Miguel's tending the fire makes Dan smile. Sitting around the fire has always felt very peaceful to him. He's sat across or beside people at the fire in so many context, listening to his father tell him stories, singing songs with his siblings, breaking bread with woodland monsters, meeting strangers in the Wilderlands.

He brings the meat and six-pack over, setting the latter between him and Miguel in a silent offer to share a drink. Miguel might judge him, but Dan believes that a modest amount of recreational alcohol is a time-honored tradition among hunters and naturalists. He holds off on smoking, though, aware of Miguel's heightened sense of smell.

"It took me a while to feel like all of this was miraculous. It was, you know. Consciously reminding myself that there's this whole world of folks to meet and things to learn, instead of just a lot of things that can go wrong." He puts the meat in a camp pan and sets it over the fire, then cracks a beer for himself. "Maybe at some point I won't feel so alone either. I ain't quite got the hang of that. You'll have to teach me."

He knows well enough that Dan can hold his alcohol, so he refrains from judgment at the first drink. A second can is opened in the interest of mending the bridge between them, but drinking isn’t typical of the type of ‘hunting’ he tended to do. Not until afterwards, and at the stubborn behest of friends.

“You’re the married one, Dan.” He reminds him. “I’m the last person you would want to emulate on companionship.”

The meat sizzles with the heat and that inevitable alluring scent rises from the searing and escape of some of the juices. He seems to relax some. All the scents and sounds of cooking remained pleasant to him, even after his body changed.

“Is there salt?”

He looks up. He’s never tried game meat before, but a little seasoning never hurt.

"Being married don't mean you don't feel alone. It just means you got someone to talk it through with." There are topics Bunny and Dan can't discuss, topics Bunny can't wrap his head around, and topics Dan just can't articulate. He always feels a sense of distance between himself and the world, that slight feeling of unreality, of being unanchored in space and time, of being a third party to his own life.

He pulls his coat and jacket open to reveal a bandolier of small baggies and McCormick's canisters tucked against his chest and side. He pulls out a salt shaker as well as curry powder and thyme. "In my world, our magic is ruled by herbal practice. Different plants and spices and metals can ward away or invite in spirits or monsters. Having this sort of thing on hand goes a long way towards not having to resort to lethal force, but most folks don't appreciate it like that, so I had to learn a lot from trial and error."

He takes a sip of beer. "I still feel a sense of wonder with my work, too, sometimes. I been doing this since I was sixteen, and I still learn something new on every hunt. It's...I ain't going to say I live a charmed life, because I don't, but I've had the honor of meeting so many different cultures and hearing so many different stories and getting intimate with a part of my world that don't basically no one know about besides a small handful. I take some pride in that."

This is Dan's realm of expertise, so when he unzips his jacket and unveils a pantry's worth of seasonings strapped to his body, Miguel does a very good job of keeping a straight face. He's seen Dr. Strange's magic at work (for better or for worse). This can't be much weirder than that, right? It comes with a better scent profile, at least.

"I don't have much good news to give from the other side." he adds, feeling no less pessimistic about the whole topic. "Even in a multiverse of people similar to yourself, the feeling comes back once the novelty wears off."

He sounds resigned to the situation. Even in his more vulnerable moments, Miguel manages to project some measure of strength through the sadder notes of his past. But here, he is convinced he is out of all available options, that any company he accepts is fleeting, at best. Whatever destiny has been doled out to him had been proven time and time again to be immovable, so he's all but given up on trying.

Using the stick in hand, he gestures to the bandoliers: "Is there a flavor in mind for the Horse?"

"Mm. I was feared that was the case."

Sometimes Dan wonders if something about him were different - if he could read, if he could do real magic, if he had the same views as everyone else, if he hadn't spent his youth digging graves - if he wouldn't feel this pervasive sense of disconnect from people. The alternative is to believe that it's something inherent and unchangeable about him, something innate and essential, that keeps him feeling apart from others, no matter how much he cares about them. He cares about people in the abstract deeply, and in time he's started to care for people again directly and closely in spite of his vows not to get attached, but the loneliness remains like the underpainting of an oil masterpiece.

He dusts some of the spices onto the meat and turns it over in the pan with the tip of his hunting knife. He wants to tell Miguel about the version of Dan - Danny, younger, having been through less, the perkier version of Dan who benefited from that altered timeline - who's out there running a bed and breakfast, and how even to think of him makes Dan feel more isolated, not less, but he doesn't want to bring up how he might have broken his universe. Not when they seem to have reached a sort of peace with it.

But he understands. He hears the vulnerability and he's too polite to dig into it, and instead just allows his own to be evident if not spoken.

"If it is diabolical, anything that's been touched by Hell can be warded with plants we call cold plants. Mint, camphor, eucalyptus. I warded this area for us to sleep with all my usuals except for the camphor, since that's so invasive and I don't want to throw the ecosystem here off-kilter." Dan taps his lower lip with his fingertips. "The problem is that I reckon we're rather lure it than chase it away. Once we cross it we can track where it's been and hopefully find the folks it stole away."

Probably just their remains, but Dan doesn't have to say that out loud. Instead he grins.

"And I ain't going to lie, I can't wait to break a devil horse. I feel like this mission was made in a lab for me."

The glimpse of sadness passes - it really isn't the time or place to linger on it for too long. Neither on his own brush against happiness nor the happier alternate self he was content to watch from afar. He focuses instead on the gleam of the hunting knife and the clean flip of the food and internally feeling irritated at the Myth power of ruining his appetite by nearly eliminating it altogether.

"That's what the offal of the deer could be used for, I'm assuming?"

He muses, before the heavy pause of a rather morbid realization makes him skip a beat.

"Or does it have to be human flesh?"

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