Brave... Part 14: Friendship's Cost

When they got to John's SUV, he opened the passenger side door for her and she got in, putting her tea in a nearby cup holder and her small to-go bag in her lap. John got in across from her and closed the door behind him, putting his coffee next to her tea and turning on the overhead cabin light as he did. It was a big sort of vehicle, spacious you know. Just a bit chilly perhaps, but it was a fairly warm night and she had her coat on.

"So..." She started. "I... take it you've news to share?" She asked.

The corners of his mouth went up a bit in something that was almost a smile. "You doubted it?" He questioned.

"Oh, far from it, brother mine." She scoffed. "Worse than a hen in a henhouse, that's you."

He did smile then. "So you say."

"So I do. But, well, are you going to be out with it then?" She asked. "Some of us would like to catch something at least vaguely resembling a nap tonight, if you don't mind."

He shook his head. "I really have missed you, Robyn." He told her fondly.

"And so have I you, Johnny boy. So have I you." She told him tiredly.

"Is it that bad?" He asked.

She sighed. "No. No, it's not. I'm just tired." And worried for a friend, she considered to herself. She still hadn't heard from Dominique and she'd be lying to herself if she didn't admit it was weighing on her still. Enough that she'd felt guilty just going home as she had, but, well... there hadn't exactly been anything more she could do but deprive herself of sleep for the entire night, which would do neither her nor Dominique Destine any good at all, now would it?

"I can imagine. I can imagine you and Jason are probably in about the same boat that way, actually." He offered.

"True, true." She admitted.

"So, as stated, I've news..." He ventured.

"You've heard from him then?" She asked, referring to their oldest brother, as if there could be any doubts.

He nodded. "He's still at it over there, even now. In terms of his job, this might easily land on him if he doesn't get results. Which, as you'd likely be imaging, would be partly why I'm here talking with you at this hour as I am. Jason thinks this... situation, if you can call it that, might be a tipping point for us, if we play it right. He thinks that either David Xanatos struck first and this is just reprisals on the Demon's part, something vaguely in the realm of self-defense, however extreme, and... whatever the costs were... or he thinks that maybe Xanatos found out something. Something the Demon's planning, something like what we've always thought she could be up to. If that's it, then she's desperate to have gone to these lengths and you need to step up your game, cousin, because she's never going to be more distracted than she is right now and... if she really is up to something as horrid as all that, then we need to know before she's got the chance to see it through, don't we? So we can be about stopping her. So we can be about having our justice." He told her.

Robyn closed her eyes, wishing this all would go away. "Wait... What was that you said about costs there? That sounded like-"

"A man's dead." John interrupted her.

"Some assassin though, yes?" She asked.

He shook his head. "A working man—a janitor. He'd been working the floor below and the roof came down on him."

"Fuck..." She spoke. She usually didn't like to swear, but just... fuck.

"That's about the size of it, yeah..." He admitted. "Makes you think it's our fault a little, doesn't it? That... you know, if... If we'd done as we were supposed to, done what dad wanted, what's the Canmore legacy, then..."

She looked up at him, angry at that. "Then what?" She challenged. "All our ancestors going back to who knows when have been trying it, haven't they? Trying to be the Demon's death—how far'd they get, exactly? Oh, that's right, they all failed utterly, didn't they? ...What makes you think we'd do any better if we'd tried? What makes you think more janitors and working men wouldn't be dead in the trying? What makes you think you... What makes you think you wouldn't be, or Jason, or me... Just like mum and da?" She asked plaintively.

"Robyn..." John started, looking a bit small.

She knew she'd hit him where it hurt with that one. She did. He always was insecure about this, about her and Jason. He'd been the youngest of course, when it had happened, and it seemed he'd always carry the worry of losing more of his family to this calling of theirs. She could relate of course—Jason and John were her only family as well after all, and if she lot them... If it did happen though, she was sure it would be heart-wrenchingly terrible, but she thought, in the end, she'd be able to manage it. Jason as well, though the anger in his heart might kill him in the end. John though, well, he had never been a strong one that way. This supposed hunt of theirs wasn't good for him, it really wasn't. Her and Jason could handle it well enough, but she often wanted to just quit the whole thing—for John's sake, even if she hadn't become fast friends with the woman they were meant to be after. It was one of the reasons why the idea that it could all be a lie, that Dominique Destine wasn't really the monster they'd been raised to believe she was, had such an appeal for her. If it were true, then they could just give this up, be a normal family again—have lives, marry, have children, without worrying that by doing so, they'd be dooming those sons and daughters to this same sort of life, as their father and mother had done to them. "I'm sorry, John. That... I shouldn't have said it that way, I know." She told him.

He smiled, looking wounded but being brave about it. "Maybe not... Don't make you wrong though, does it?" He had to admit. "I mean... we've all thought it, or I certainly have at least."

"You think Jason might not have?" She asked, hoping to lighten the mood just a bit if she could.

He smiled to her then. "Well now, there's a question, isn't it?" He joked. "...But, no, he's thought it. You know he has."

"Yeah, I know." She admitted, the two of them falling silent for a beat.

"...It was hard on you just now, wasn't it?" He finally asked. "Finding out she killed an innocent man like that?" He questioned, knowing he was venturing into uncertain waters. He knew well enough that, well, that the Demon might have earned Robyn sympathies to a degree. He couldn't have missed the signs... He'd often wondered just what she was really like, this Demon of theirs. He'd... never gotten up the courage to really ask her, not for real. Oh, they'd asked, he and Jason, of course they had, but they'd both let their sister play it off to one extent or another... He'd read Dominique Destine's background information, and he'd had to admit: All the charity work? Everything she'd done in Central America especially? Despite that she'd been so heavy-handed about it, well, the United States and a few partner countries of theirs had ran those sorts of interventions in the world at times, hadn't they? Called it all humanitarian or a moral act? They'd been not less bloody and more besides, and with not nearly the positive result. If he'd not had proof, he'd... be hard pressed to think of the Demon from their family's old tales and journals and Dominique Destine, world-renowned crusading philanthropist, as being one and the same. If he'd had Robyn's bit in all of this and the woman had turned out to be a genuinely agreeable sort of person to boot, he wondered just how objective he'd have been able to stay? ...If you could ever stay objective in a situation that had to do with the death of your parents, that was... He tended to have his doubts...

She looked at him then and considered what to say. "It's... a bit of a bitter pill. Yeah." She admitted.

"No, I mean- it's more than that, isn't it?" He asked, looking uncomfortable. "I... Just between us, I won't tell Jason if you don't want me doing, will you tell me what she's like with you? I mean, what she's really like with you?"

She sighed. She looked at him and felt her guts twisting a bit inside. She couldn't do it though, him looking at her so open and kind and innocent. She'd never been much good at telling him no when he got to looking at their that way, even when they'd been kids. "...She's my friend, John." She told him. "And that's just the plain, hard truth of it. She's my friend, maybe the best one I've ever had. We talk, she makes me laugh, she's unfailingly kind to me, I..." She caught herself before she admitted to loving her—but she did though, most likely. Not in a romantic way, but... it was love anyway, or probably it was. "I know she can... be a hard person. And I know it's horrible—what she did tonight, if she really did do it? I don't know... I mean, it's tragic yes, but it's happened in my own back yard, you know?"

"It's murder, Robyn." John interrupted. "You don't get to shoot two military grade rockets into a building in the middle of a city and get to say, oh, well, I didn't mean for innocent bystanders to die... It doesn't work that way, and you know that as well as I do."

"Of course I bloody well know that, John." She told him, frustrated. "But I knew damned well she did things like this—heaven help me, I've probably helped her do it more than once. I'm not saying it's... I'm not saying I'm proud of it. I don't think she'd... I don't think she'd ever say she was either, but... It's for a greater cause, John. You... You know the good she does in the world. Well, I know it too, and more, I've seen it. I've been to Central America, and I've seen good people walking the streets with food in their bellies, proper shoes on their feet, and not needing to worrying for the safety of their young ones. Did some bad folks have to die to make that a reality? They surely did, but it's better than good folks having to die and suffer in greater numbers for worse lives all around. Did some of those good folks end up getting caught in that crossfire? Maybe—I'd expect some did, and that's a sad thing. A very sad thing... but that doesn't mean she's a Demon, and it... it doesn't make it all her fault, or all my fault either for that matter. Wouldn't have been any need for any dying at all if the fuckers who think a gun makes them a god of who lives and who dies, makes them think they get to decide who starves, who gets raped, who's mum gets killed, whose da, who's kids... I've seen the pattern, John. Those are the kind of people to blame for these things if anyone is, and those are the kinds of people Dominique fights against every day. If she's done this thing now, I'll need more than just some tall tales our great, greats, and great, great, greats've handed down to convince me that she's really the one to blame for this, and not David Xanatos."

She looked at him with defiance, but was also willing him to—hoping that he'd—understand.

John shook his head. "You really believe all that, don't you?" He asked, not really needing her to answer. "You... You trust her that much? Are you- Have you even really been trying all this time? To find her secrets? To... To bring an end to all this?"

She sighed. "Maybe not as much as I should be these last months, I'd admit." She confessed, because it was true, and it had been going on for longer than she'd like to exactly confess to just now. "But I have looked John. I've rooted around in her metaphorical cupboards more than I'm proud of, and I keep looking every day. I'm right there, right at the heart of it, and I see her just about every day too. She's a good friend to me, you know? Just... You know, and she can make me laugh without even trying sometimes, make me feel like my heart's light, and maybe I do that for her as well, and, well, and I see the weight she carries too, and I see... I see that she's sad for, I don't know, a lot of reasons I'd have to think. She's sad a lot, John, and I don't think, I really can't imagine she wants any more reasons to feel that way. Maybe... I don't know- Maybe in the beginning, whenever that was, there could have been some truth to the stories. Maybe she really has done some of the things we'd thought she had, but she's... She's been alive for a very long time. Lifetimes, John... if she was that person, that Demon, who's to say she is any longer? Who's to say she wants to be?" She gave him a hard look now. "And who's to say any of its even true at all. You've got to wonder sometimes—wonder if... if maybe it's all been a lie, don't you think? I mean what if it is—what if we're the ones who've been persecuting her without good cause? What if we're in the wrong on all of this, and she's simply been justifiably angry with those who've been trying to kill her because of it? There's no proof, and that's why we're here, isn't it? Because there's not? Because we wanted to know if we were doing the right thing? Well I don't have quite the rosy memories of old da as Jason does, I don't know if I've said. He was a hard man, John. A hard man, with not much warmth about him. And aye, I looked up to him, the way all little girls probably do, the way all little boys probably do too with their da, but that's just that. That's just a child looking at a grown man and making up a fairytale about him because we can never, never really know. It's—can you imagine it? If I had a little girl, all cute and button-nosed and smiling and asking me things? I like to think I'd do a fair job, but, but she wouldn't hardly know me at all, would she? Maybe she'd know me more than I knew our da, and maybe not, and what would your daughter, your son know about you?" And yes, she was talking a lot, but she did have a tendency not to stop sometimes once she'd well and truly started up with it. "And those other old men and women, now long dead who came before us, who learned it from their da, who learned it from their ma, and who's ma learned it from her da, and who's da learned it from his ma, and on and on, and how in heaven or hell can we expect to rely on any of it? Her entire race hasn't been hardly heard a peep from since who knows when. The stories, they say there used to be as many gargoyles about as there were humans once—well, what happened to all of them, huh? Maybe we did, John. Maybe our family did and those just like them who saw a body, a people, who looked different from them, who struck some fear in them when they went to bed at night and maybe they thought: Well, wouldn't the world just be better for me and mine if they weren't there in it any longer? Maybe that's just exactly all it ever was—hate—hate and old stories that are just as likely naught but lies. I've got no proof that's not so, John, and my friend has given me a bundle of proof that it is." She finished... and oh bloody hell did it ever feel good to finally get it all off her chest for once.

John kept looking at her a moment, then he turned away and lay his dead back in his seat, looking blankly at the ceiling. "...You don't though." He finally told her, patiently. "Have the proof I mean, not really." He said, sitting back forwards a little and looking at her again. "You know that, don't you?" He asked, hoping she could see this for what it... well, what it might not be. He realized of course, that she was asking him to do the same from the opposite direction. He wasn't sure how much he'd be able to just yet, but he was trying to... and he would keep his word to her. Jason wouldn't hear a word of this, unless it was from her. You didn't break your word with family—you just didn't.

She tilted her head a little, considering. He wasn't taking this hard at all, which was good. "Pretend I don't and spell it out for me, would you? So we both know about that of which we speak?" She asked. It was a trick she'd learned in business that she used every now and then. It could be useful for getting some clarity, and... as a stalling tactic.

He nodded, taking a sip of coffee and keeping the cup in his hand as he started to talk. She did likewise, the warm tea a comfort. "What you've said... It could all be true for all I know, I'm... not fool enough to deny that. And you'd be right to say you'd have more insight into the Demon's—the woman's—motives than I could. Again, I'd be a fool not to concede that. But you'd also have to concede that you might be too close to this, because there's another way to look at this. I'm not saying it's how I look at it, because I... Well, I'm not sure how I look at it. I honestly think I might be going through the motions more than anything of late, hoping to find footing again at some point. But here's maybe how Jason would want me to tell it—how he might look at all the same things you are..." He looked to her.

She nodded, willing to hear him out. "Go on then, I'm listening." She told him, giving him a look that would tell him she really was.

"Right then." He took another sip of coffee and went on. "We've got two owners of multi-national corporations and their dueling it out. People are getting killed. Notice I said getting killed, not have been killed, because I'd not be at all shocked if more bystanders suffer for it before this, whatever this is, is over. And aye, sure enough maybe David Xanatos is the one to blame. Maybe Dominique Destine really is the woman you take her for, but maybe not. David Xanatos is a charming, friendly sort of man to meet, Jason's told me so, but he uses it, he doesn't do it for free. Now, your Dominique isn't precisely that I'd think, but she is a powerful woman, and power... well, it's an old bit of wisdom everyone knows that power, it has a tendency to corrupt people, even if they've got the best of intentions. As to that she's your friend, well... everyone wants those, Robyn—likely even Demons, I'd imagine. They make us feel less alone. She acts a friend, but how far does it go? If she found out your name, your real name, Robyn Canmore, can you say with certainty you'd survive the night?" He sighed. "I don't know. I just think there's a lot we don't know here and I won't sleep too well at night if we left this off before we found out." He turned to look at her. "Look at it this way: If we do keep digging, if we do stay in this, and this woman you're calling your friend really does turn out to be Dominique Destine, hero to one and all and blight to all the world's ills, and not this Demon that's haunted our family for so long, then we might just be there to help her when she needs it. And if not, well, then we'll be there for that too."

Robyn considered that a long moment, looking down at her tea and lusting after the tiramisu in her to-go bag. She let out a breath. "Alright, fine. You've got a point." She finally admitted, turning to look at him pleadingly. "Now can we eat this food we've bought, please?"

He smiled warmly to her. "I thought you'd never ask."

They ended up chatting a little more over their food. John asked her a few pointed questions about if she'd noticed anything odd or that stood out at Nightstone or with Dominique of late—anything that could hint at this secret Jason thought the Demon might be worried was getting out. They shared a memory or two as well, and Robyn found herself being dropped back at the building where she lived a bit later, feeling better for the talk and the food, despite that her thoughts were still plenty stirred up. Still, it really was a weight off, to have told John her secrets as she had.

She decided she'd probably just skip trying to watch that portion of a movie she'd been contemplating before in favor of just going right to bed, or, well, maybe the couch since it was closer. She really did need sleep. A good long nap at least, if not a full eight hours as she might like...

( to be continued )

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