Shay found Chloe after one of her usual DSU meetings. Shay didn't go to those anymore. She supported the DSU, but she didn't want to see any of it up close. She wasn't a Demon, and most of her connections to them were gone now. It was all just salt to a still open wound.
The last Shay had seen Chloe, Chloe had enlisted her help in destroying Chloe's father's shrine. That was just a polite way of saying Chloe had waved a hammer in her face (a gigantic hammer) and wanted Shay to prove Gabriel wasn't controlling her. It was enough to make Shay want to laugh. Gabriel wished!
And all of that had led to this. Shay didn't know exactly what it was or why she was bothering, but she wanted to bury the hatchet, so to speak. Was it a new perspective? Maybe it was just time and healing. Either way, whatever the cause, it had led her here, catching up with Chloe after a busy afternoon before she had to return home.
"Chloe," she called said, stepping in the Demon's line of sight before she could rush off and do other things. "Can we talk? in private?"
- Nov 22, 2014
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She didn't know what Shay wanted, but she had a feeling it was an apology. So as soon as Chloe finished leading the way into another empty classroom and closed the door, she started out with "Ok, so first of all, I'm sorry about the whole shrine thing. And threatening you. At the time it seemed like I had really good reasons for doing all of that stuff. Is that what you wanted to talk about?"
It took Shay a moment to catch her bearings when Chloe started off with an apology. Shay peered at Chloe as though seeing her in a new light. Shay shook her head.
"No. Honestly, I felt strong-armed into making the shrine anyway. No love lost between your dad and me. And I'm used to being threatened. But speaking of your dad, I did want to talk with you about family. More specifically the spiderlings.
"I know we never really got off to a great start, what with all the Gabriel stuff and shit. You probably don't think I'm a great influence and I've always been a little jealous of your rapport with Klaus and Vito. I just wanted to say we... should really put it all behind us. We both want to be there for the spiderlings, you know?"
Shay had spoken quickly enough that she needed to catch her breath once she had said what she wanted to say. Shay tended to like getting everything out there on the table from the first get go. That had bitten her in the ass more than once.
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Her gut didn't agree. She hesitated.
"... I can get behind that," she said. "Really, I'd love if we could close that chapter in our lives. But I have to ask - and I'm being a mom here now, my mom always used to say paranoia came with the territory so please don't take this the wrong way, I'll take all the help I can get with the girls, but..." she took a breath, "I have to ask - why are you this interested in them? At best, they're ultra-distant cousins."
She had some ideas why Shay would care, and most of them were entirely non-threatening. It would still reassure her to hear Shay explain it.
As Chloe spoke, Shay removed her gender swapping charm – pausing when Chloe told her not to take this the wrong way. She smiled bitterly and met Chloe's eyes.
"At best they're ultra-distant cousins? Excuse me?" Her smile twitched, somewhat brittle and with something very dark peering out her eyes. Like the mask might fall away, and behind it maybe a monster lurked.
"I knew those girls before you did, Chloe. I knew Pandora and Malara before you did. They are my family. Nothing distant about it. One of the only I have left. Now don't take this the wrong way but If you hadn't screwed Pandora and gotten Amber, do you think you'd be part of this 'family'? No. You wouldn't. But I would. I still would. So don't question my motives with the girls I helped to raise. All of them.
"And for the record, I do find your thinking I have nefarious plans offensive. You have some real brass balls being concerned about me. Weren't you the one who almost smashed my face in with a sledgehammer?"
- Nov 22, 2014
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This was supposed to be about mending their relationship, Chloe told herself. Shay was, as she said, one of the closest kinds of things she had to family here. And that was worth nurturing, so she needed to hold back a lot of what she was feeling right now.
"Well. Good answer, I guess. The part where you... actually answered my question, about why you care about these girls. Who are like daughters to me, who I try to take care of in and out of school, who I clean up after and cook for at home, and for whose safety I would risk fucking eternal damnation and in fact have done so. And!" Chloe caught herself before she started shouting. After a moment's pause, her next words were quieter. "I guess I should really be grateful if, ah, I feel like play this... 'which of us cares about them more' game with you. Right? And that's petty bullshit anyway. I shouldn't have even started. Even if you..." she took a sharp breath in and shook her head. "No. Forget it."
She tried to force a smile, but she was hurt. Shay knew where to twist the knife on her.
"No," Shay said. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to pretend you care more just because you live with them. And you don't get to push me out of this family too. You don't get to demonize me or vilify me. Do you understand? I'm done with that."
She stared Chloe down, seeing the hatred in the other's eyes, there was a kind of dare in hers. Go ahead, she thought, smash my face in.
"You don't know anything about me, you never have, and you've never tried to as far as I'm concerned. You seem to think everything wrong that happens is my fucking fault? Like your dad taking advantage of me. Somehow that was on me. You know how much that hurt me?
"You don't get to continually act like you're better than me when you're on the same fucking level. Yeah, I was with a mob family, but guess what, so were you. You don't get to act like I'm a terrible influence on the girls when I've yet to do anything to influence them negatively. You don't get to act like I'm going to damn them when I've done so fucking much to help them. When I lie awake at night worrying about them.
"So stop. Just stop acting like I'm the enemy. I don't want us to be friends. I just want this to end. It will end."
- Nov 22, 2014
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"Look... you know what, I'm sorry I was shitty to you before. I did a lot of shitty things to try to appease him and get along better with him, but that's not even a good excuse. You didn't deserve anything he did, or anything of how I treated you, and I was a real piece of shit for ever pretending otherwise. And maybe I was out of line for asking about your motives, too. So I'm sorry about that too. Ok? I had more than enough evidence by today that you didn't have bad intentions. I just..."
She started shaking her head. "Fuck, I'm at a point now where, if I see a bug on the wall or a, a suspicious-acting squirrel? I'm worried it might be a spy, or an assassin, or something. I don't even trust a dumb squirrel to be a dumb squirrel. I've nearly left the club out of fear that one of the members is working for him, and they probably have nothing to do with him, but I know for a fact that he would do something like that." There was some desperation in her voice - she needed Shay to believe that this wasn't ridiculous, that these were reasonable concerns, that she wasn't devolving into a paranoid wreck, or at least if she was that she had a good reason to be doing that. It wasn't sickness if someone really was out to get her.
"And so... I guess I just needed you to reassure me. I should have just known better and I shouldn't let it push you away."
Shay watched Chloe, guarded and wary as she went on to explain her paranoia and dread for the future. As Chloe got to the end, as her voice grew more and more desperate, Shay's features softened to something like understanding.
"Yeah, I get that feeling," she uttered with a sigh. "You remember at, uh, that one party? When I stole his phone? And you mentioned being in his realm and everything? You said you heard chanting, something like milk canon."
She paused, debated, then nodded and continued. "He showed me what he looked like. Hurt like a motherfucker, but I got a good look, and I never forgot you telling me that. I looked in the good old book."
Shay's smiled bitterly, "I had a lot more resources back then. You gave me the key to figure out his real name. Along with seeing what he looked like and seeing his sigil, that is. If I give it to you, I don't know that will help, but you get a wish. You just can't give the name to anyone else. I never wished for anything, so," she shrugged. "It was a just in case he got out of hand."
- Nov 22, 2014
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And she could have gotten so much more for it. She knew, and Mikhainon knew that she knew. But she was very generous with him in the end. She wouldn't have felt right, ruthlessly abusing her power over him. Maybe it was because he was family, or maybe it was because she didn't want to be like him. It could have even been because she was hoping, somehow, there would not be hard feelings. Even in freeing herself from eternal servitude she cared what he thought of her. It would sicken her to think about it in those terms.
"How did he show his true form to you, though? Were you, uh, in hell?"