nightlogs | Will these two finally manage to have THAT conversation?

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Will these two finally manage to have THAT conversation?

Who: Aiden Price, Dan Sagittarius
What: Price brings Concrete Blonde to Dan and they have a heartfelt discussion about imprisonment
Where: Outdoors
When: After Branch
Warnings/Notes: Prison related topics, Typical Dan related warnings, typical Price related warnings, overall toxic behaviours

Price was going for a walk on his own, figuring that alone meant staying out of trouble - which is not a smart deduction in an unknown place, but nobody tell him, he's just starting to think that maybe the brain damage didn't make him completely useless -, and he happens to run into a pleasant surprise: Concrete Blonde.

He likes to spend time with her, feeding her, and cuddling her. He was about to give her a bath but he remembers reading on the subject while in the Wilderlands library and concludes that it's not the case to do so, especially in these cold temperatures. See? He does go out of his way to ~~serve~~ help, it happens very often! Absolutely appalling that nobody will listen to reason when he calmly - accommodatingly, even! - explains that nothing is his fault ever.

That's why he decided to start refraining from conversations as much as he can. It does pain him because, for all those accusations of being 'antisocial', he really likes people in his own way. Dan, however? He is not like most people. There's something deeply wrong about whatever their friendship is, and Price can't put his finger on it. He feels safest when he avoids him, and yet he needs him. There are so many thoughts and feelings that he has on the matter, but he doesn't feel like being gaslighted about them so, he tells himself, he'll just bring the horse back and then leave Dan alone to his devices.

"I found your horse."

Technically it's their horse, but better not to claim her to make this less difficult. He won't say anything more than what is strictly needed.

"I figured you would want her back."

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"Not to be morbid, but I doubt I'll live long enough for a slow decline to be a problem." Which isn't really true; it's not that Dan thinks he'll die, but that he simply can't envision a future existing. It's like there's a little voice in the back of his head, one that pipes up, deafeningly, whenever he considers how long he might live, that goes: you're supposed to be dead already. Maybe you already are. "My lifestyle runs a little hard."

Even now, married and stable, his day job is running into squabbles with monsters and spirits and fighting evil, and his hobbies include recreational poison.

"Anything I can fix with over-the-counter shit?" He runs his thumb over his chewed knuckles. "You been panicking lately?"

Ah, not thinking about the future. Price has the same problem, for different reasons. He knows for a fact that his life is over, or at least was supposed to be over in prison. It's not that restarting is not feasible in terms of logistics, but be it because he's getting old, Price isn't sure he can sustain lying about being a good person to make friends and get some love. He knows better than to try something like that, at this point.

"I am sure the inflammation can be contained with some medicine."

He hesitates before answering.

"A little bit, perhaps. I did regain some strength, and am familiar enough with the rehabilitation exercises to practise on my own...But it was frightening in the first period."

"Ibuprofen and tylenol?"

Dan doesn't know anything about treating inflammation, and he's not even sure if Price is talking about his organs or his joints or any other part of his body. His experience with medicine is field medicine, trauma, open wounds, so on, and stopping the bleeding, stitching people up and disinfecting the injuries. He doesn't know anything about chronic ailments or longterm care.

"Anyway, don't tell Bunny none that there's anything wrong with me. He wants me to live to a ripe old age of a hundred and ten."

It's one of their great sources of disagreement, Bunny's desire to keep Dan as long as possible, Dan's inability to work towards that goal. Almost as punctuation, Dan takes a drink from his flask and sets the horse brush down.

"What happened? When was this?" Dan suspects now that he knows what happened, and he feels embarrassed and alarmed that he didn't pick up on it until it was laid out for him like this. All along, he's been assuming Price's erratic behavior was innate, the same way as when Price threatened to jump off the Rig or accused Dan of pressuring him into intimacy just to throw Dan off-guard.

"That's alright, I am probably not the best person to discuss the matter with him either way."

Is Price's behaviour innately erratic? Now, that's a juicy question, isn't it? He knows how to be cautious, how to hold back, he even does it well, but something inside of him just itches to be reckless. He needs to break things and see what happens. There are healthier ways to satisfy his neverending curiosity, and he doesn't mind them, but they don't really scratch that itch...But something did happen.

"You were there. When that woman cast that spell on me, I...I'm not sure how, but it had severe repercussions. I have been having symptoms of brain damage since then."

"I didn't realize."

Most people bounced back from magic done to them in the Wilderlands in a way that Dan hadn't seen in the world he comes from - but he suddenly feels a swell of kinship with Price and the idea that they were both, at some point, cursed, and both had their brains changed permanently in the aftermath. Dan's post-traumatic symptoms, Price's brain damage.

"I'm sorry. Has it gotten any better since then?"

"It appears so. The journey to recovery is at the very least two years long, five to ten in more severe cases. I believe I got lucky, my language was not affected at all."

Which is probably the most important thing of all. It's his eloquence and ability to negotiate and manipulate that allow him to translate whatever he is to everyone's idea of human being.

"Then again," he gestures emptily, somewhat bashfully "the way I am has always come with some brain damage."

He says it to rationalize, to sneak through the back door. If the Director valued him, well almost valued him before, then there is a possibility that he still will even if the type of brain damage is different...Right?

"And I suppose that's...Okay."

It's not.

"...All factors and circumstances considered."

"I mean, trauma in childhood does warp the brain." Dan knows. Dan worried about it with his siblings for the first year or two, too, but then, after a few of them had been slaughtered, the idea of having to worry about something as remote as brain damage became laughable. "And I know you didn't have it easy."

He pulls a baggie with some slices of apple in it from his pocket. He holds it out to Price, offering to let him give the snacks to the horse.

"Ah."

Price doesn't know how to respond. Even though he inevitably is the product of his childhood, he refuses to think about it. He's already felt plenty of powerlessness during his adult life, inflicting thoughts of childhood on himself reads as unnecessary self harm.

"Everyone has trauma in childhood. Being a child is an inherently powerless position."

Many like the idea of consoling sad children and giving them sweets, but as soon as those little humans start showing more severe signs of being troubled it becomes another story, one that's not worth bothering to solve their problems, because what do kids know about real problems and how to behave?

Price takes the apple slices very carefully, trying not to touch Dan's hand. He doesn't make it obvious, besides he's not sure whether there is anything to be gained from Dan hypotethically using the power he had on the Rig on him. He feeds the horse to distract himself.

"I didn't." And while Dan knows that's a lie, knows that being raised in isolation and using firearms and explosives at an age when he could barely string words together was dangerous and outright abusive, he believes it. Believing it is what matters. Deep in his soul, he feels like his childhood was perfect.

Price doesn't need to believe it. Most people with a shred of information about Dan's childhood don't. Dan doesn't want to get into a fight about it, because it's so personal and so closely-held and so tender. It would be an easy place to twist the knife.

He's glad Price takes the apples. He makes a gesture with his hand to demonstrate how to feed the horse. "Fingertips curled under, like this, so she don't accidentally nibble a finger or two."

Yeah, no, Price is not going to argue about Dan's statement. If he wants to lie to himself then so be it. Until he finds a better truth, he can choose not to look at this one. Price knows he doesn't like the idea of Project Freelancer being proof that all his talent went to waste.

Seeing the hand gesture, he replicates it easily and complies. He's the type to learn very fast by observing, which once again would make one wonder what the hell did he ever observe to learn certain behaviours. That would be a rhetorical question, of course.

"...I am absolutely not planning on telling him, but...What would happen if your husband found out in what physical state you are?"

Price kind of wants to know what would be the right to do, or rather, he's trying to figure it out as an exercise.

Edited 2023-10-31 21:45 (UTC)

"That my body's falling apart? Ain't nothing he can do about it. He's immortal and I ain't. It's an inevitability."

Dan shrugs. He doesn't want to think about it and doesn't want to have those conversations with Bunny. He can see plenty of ways this scenario plays out and it all ends in a fight where Bunny takes it personally that Dan doesn't have the motivation to take care of himself, that no amount of love will light that candle for Dan.

"Besides, reckon feeling like shit all the time is a rite of passage to being almost forty."

"Well...Physical ailments are bound to worsen one's mood and performance. You would be able to provide assistance more efficiently. I am saying this because I know that it is important for you."

He gives Concrete Blonde a gentle pat.

"...I do understand why you don't want to have that conversation with him. With all the unpredictable dangers that have come in the way of our group, I suppose you could die from something else before even feeling sick."

If one side of the coin is Price using people's problems against them in a malevolent way by twisting the knife in the wound and triggering them, the other is just the enabling that he thinks is love. By far the more dangerous of the two, but this is affection to him. Besides, he can relate. If the Director were here, he would not want to tell him he has brain damage, although for very different reasons.

"...But all that damage comes from years and years of unstable lifestyles. If he really cares about you, he will understand."

Alright, technically this is just a somewhat triangulating comment because Price dislikes Bunny, but although expressed in an inconvenient way it's a kind sentiment that he's trying to extend.

"Be that as it may, you don't really want to see what kind of performance I turn in without my creature comforts." Dan can't imagine cutting back, much less getting clean and sober. He thinks he'd just die. He thinks he'd just kill himself. He'd last a few days tolerating the waves of despair and hopelessness and then he'd implode on himself and die. Can't provide anyone assistance when he's dead.

He thinks of how he just told Price that the last time he was in solitary, he bit himself down to the bone. It wasn't being in solitary that did that to him, he thinks. It was being wrenched away from his ability to self-medicate, and that left him with no way to distract himself from all those things that hide in the periphery of his mind except to feel pain.

"He does care about me." There's a flatness to Dan's tone, like he's stating a fact, a law like gravity, something that isn't up for debate. "We have conversations like this. They're- they're private. Just between us."

He doesn't want to shut Price down, but he doesn't want Price prying into his marriage.

"I understand."

Price could only state that someone cares about him with the same certainty if that someone was being hugely manipulated and misled. So he understands everything but that part.

"Well...I can make some ice, too, if you or anyone needs it."

He ponders for a bit on whether to say or not, and then concludes it that he can turn it into a test:

"However I did not regain the hot laser. It could do plenty of useful damage, although I do not think we need to break into a safe or anything of that sort."

Dan won't tell him if he regained his Rig powers either way, but seeing how much he trusts this could probably be useful.

Dan holds the flask up and wiggles it back and forth in his hand. "I can always use ice. Want to share a vodka on the rocks?"

He gives Concrete Blonde a pet and steps away from the stable stall. "I won't let nobody know about the lasers if you don't want me to. I didn't get none of my powers back, but I can summon Concrete Blonde whenever and she's got an upgrade in terms of speed and durability."

Dan feels a bit uncomfortable with the idea that Concrete Blonde is more his horse than Price's, when Price helped him get the horse in the first place, but Price is the one that grew up on a space ship and Dan's the one who grew up on a farm. The powers that be seem to think him more fit.

"I was more thinking of using ice to reduce swelling in case of injury."

The way Dan mentions not having regained his powers seems casual enough, sincere enough, because he didn't look like he thought about it much, but who knows, Dan is a good liar.

"Durability as in stamina or can she also withstand violent attacks?"

Price likes animals but he doesn't mind verifying. He doesn't mind doing most awful things. Certainly he's not offended by this world registering Concrete Blonde as mostly Dan's horse, it is true, Dan is the one who can take care of her more properly. Price may have not technically spent his childhood on a space ship but he still had little room to interact with nature before he sailed to space.

His guardians would make sure he wouldn't get any pet therapy or another type of chance to interact with animals because he would have hurt them. What those people failed to understand is that sometimes you need to practise. The normalization of sim troopers hasn't exactly helped Price see those gratuitous sacrifices as something bad.

"That's a good use for it, and you know, we won't always be at the Pole with a bunch of ice available." Dan wants to encourage Price in any kind of helpful, healing practice that might fit Price's skill sets. He felt of two minds teaching Price to trap game, worrying all the time that it was encouraging viciousness instead of just practicality. Taking care of sprained ankles and muscle soreness with spontaneous ice packs feels like a much more straightforward enterprise.

"I ain't put her up against violent attacks. I ain't sure how I'd test that without potentially harming her." And Dan wants to treat this horse well. She's been a sturdy companion since the Wilderlands. "But she can go faster and further than she used to. Now I'm the one tapping out because she goes faster than I can weather the wind resistance, so I don't know her top speed, and I think she can run on water."

"Running on water can be useful, it could serve as a good decoy to lure an enemy and have them attacked from behind by someone else while they chase you."

Price has plenty of viciousness in him, sure, but he mostly likes to think of what is convenient and channels his energy in that direction. He also figures that it's sensible to focus on combat strategy so it doesn't even register as a habit, the fact that his mind immediately goes to dangerous scenarios.

"...Right?"

"That's clever. I like that idea." Here in the Pole, falling into the ocean would be deadly cold, but in different terrain luring enemies into water might even be a non-lethal way to shake a tail. And Dan likes to give Price compliments where he can.

"Hey, on that note, do you want me to show you how to shoe her?" Dan pats Concrete Blonde's haunches as he gets her big blanket out. "I'm out with Bunny often enough that I don't get to fix up her feet as much as I might could like."

It didn't really occur to Price that it was a non-lethal way to go about it. He merely figured that the enemies were not going to be so stupid to follow them into the ocean and would need to be cornered and killed from behind. He still nods at the compliment.

"Oh, yes, I would like to. It's always good to acquire new skills." and nobody can really blame him for not knowing how to shoe a horse when he never saw one in real life before Wilderlands. He lets it known more, now:

"Is she going to get taller or is she finished growing?"

He can't tell how old Concrete Blonde is, never really learned how - he's more of a bird guy, if only because he liked how they could just fly away and envied them for it - , and honestly he had always imagined horses to be bigger.

Dan smiles when Price agrees to learn. He throws the blanket over Concrete Blonde's shoulders; she's still mulling an apple slice in her mouth.

"Reckon this is about as big as she gets. She ain't a Clydesdale. She's a quarter horse, about sixteen hands high at the most, built for agility and racing." That places her shoulders at eye level for both Dan and Price. "That's why I don't never ride more than two people on her at a time, and not more than one if I can help it. That's about as much as she can take without wearing out, or at least, before she got whatever boost she got here."

He gestures with his nose to a wooden trunk in the stall, tucked underneath where Concrete Blonde's reins and saddle are hanging. "That's where I keep most of her tools. Can you grab me the bag of nails, a shoe, the hammer and the knife? I'll show you how to clean her up and re-shod her so her hooves handle being a workhorse better. It might could look a little alarming, since I'll be stabbing the soles of her feet and driving nails into them, but I promise it don't hurt her."

He wonders if the violent but harmless action will feel therapeutic to Price. Dan finds it relaxing, though not because of the stabbing and hammering. He just likes working on the horse. He pulls a stool out from the side and sets it near Concrete Blonde's withers. He pets her neck again, feels the way she's casually finishing her apple and investigating the bale of hay hanging in front of her.

"Horses got better senses than humans do, and they're panicky animals. Freak out and bolt at the drop of a hat. If you're near a horse and they're calm, that means ain't no danger nearby."

Dan always feels like there's some danger nearby, always feels the pulse of fear chemicals in his brain, that sense of dread and hypervigilance and paralysis, and here he is next to a horse that would die of fright if some mortal threat approached. That's calming. That's a beacon of ain't no danger here pushing back against Dan's inner but there must be.

"I find it helps when I can't seem to stop feeling shook up. Being around her."

He figures Price is afraid and anxious all the time too. He thinks that's a commonality between them.

Edited 2023-11-24 21:13 (UTC)

Price complies by fetching the needed tools. It's not that he doesn't have fun backstabbing and causing problems on purpose, but he is cooperative to a fault. This will give him something to do, and it's useful, so why not? He can't follow Aziraphale around like a puppy all the time.

There is also the medical help he offered, but not many people seem ready to accept it. One day, he secretly dreams, he will prove that he is helpful and needed because of the way he is rather than in spite of it, but that's more something he tells himself in fits of anger and bitterness rather than something he believes to be feasible. Not until he relearns how to live outside of prison.

"It's good that you can summon her."

He doesn't expect Concrete Blonde to have a calming effect on him. In a way, he is always calm? But he has to scan for threats, for one reason or another. Problem solving (or problem causing as a step of problem solving) is vital to understand any situation, anything in the world around him. There is no such thing as an environment without problems, or an individual without mental issues, that's why studying is fundamental.

The degree to which he has witnessed environments and people be insane, though, doesn't fully occur to him. He just figures that it's a greater challenge that he should take on because he technically has the skills for it. Or the creativity of his unconventional ways, at least. If he doesn't want to revert back to the violent wounded animal he was at peak untreated brain damage and while being cornered, then he can't acknowledge that things that happened to him were messed up. When you're the messed up one, it cancels it out, they say.

Which makes him feel silly about ever bringing up the Director and not being able to get over the fact that he was left to die after a decade of loyalty and zero mistakes. There, maybe the horse is the only one he can talk to about that.

Edited 2023-11-24 22:12 (UTC)

"Yeah. I wish you might could too." He still wishes Price would let him teach Price to ride, but he knows why Price won't. He isn't going to try and force Price into anything; Price's privacy is maybe the only thing he feels like he has.

"Thanks," he says, taking the tools and setting them next to his stool. He chooses the knife for now. "Alright, so when you shoe a horse, you don't never want to be anywhere that she can kick you or stomp on you if she gets spooked."

He pulls the neck of his shirt aside. There's a light scar where his shoulder and neck meet. "I got kicked once when I was young and stupid and careless shoeing, and I'm lucky that it was just a glancing blow that gave me a little slice. A few inches to the side and she would have smashed my brains out."

He says that like he's genuinely glad he didn't get kicked to death. As far as he's concerned, he could have just taken a hit to the head and never gotten up. It would have been quick.

"First, I'm going to make sure everything looks right, no nails pulled out, shoe flush to foot. Then I'm going to start taking the nails out so I can trim the hoof and clear out all the grime. Can you give her some more apple? She trusts you."

Well, that little anecdote does not exactly fill Price with confidence. He will not voice it, though, and try to pay attention to the instructions. He has the great gift of fast learning, and he manages to emulate others rather easily when it comes to practical activities that don't require much strength.

He complies and feeds the apple slices to Concrete Blonde. It's crazy to him that she trusts him. He didn't trick her or anything, he likes animals but has barely ever interacted with them, he doesn't know how to handle them...But whatever, she 'trusts him' somehow.

"How often is this required?"

The idea of scheduling something, even if it's shoeing a horse, gives him relief. It's the illusion of control, as always.

"A little less often than once a month. I try and do her every lunar cycle and a half." Dan has two calendars in his mind, the Gregorian calendar and the moon's routine on which the magic of his world is scheduled.

He gets Concrete's Blonde foot into position, demonstrating where to place pressure and how to arrange both his own body and the hoof to keep her from being able to kick him, and then starts to remove the nails. All throughout, he coos and praises her; she may be one of the few living creatures who likes Dan's voice, and between her two masters with their praise and the apple, she seems quite calm.

"Alright, this is filthy work. All this is dirt and manure and hay." Dan gets the knife and indicates what he's talking about with the tip. "You didn't get to spend much time with animals before the Wilderlands, right?"

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[cw: a little suicidal ideation]

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