House Call

Piles of bones and dust clattered to the ground, erupting in a cloud of dust and debris that vanished almost as quickly as it had risen. The Barrier faded away around John in a flash, casting away the faux village and the stormy night skies of Spain for the familiar, sunny weather of his new world. Everything was exactly as he’d left it – everything except for the impatient rabbit woman, her caramel skin shining in the day’s glistening light, her foot tapping loudly against the dirt, and one eyebrow quirked up as she gave John her best glare.

“Geez, it’s about time. I thought this was supposed to be my day, and here you are on your, what, fifth dungeon?”

“Huh?” John asked, caught off guard by her aggressive opening to the conversation, still partially in a combat mindset. “I didn’t realize you were watching, Lerianna. I thought you just wanted-”

“Besides, what are you gonna do, just fight all day? With all these pretty women around you, you’re just gonna leave them to entertain themselves? Pretty sure we banned you from training alone for a good reason, are we gonna have to reinstate that?”

“But I figured the afternoon was free, and Adantia just-”

“Fine, you wanna keep training? Come with me, we’re going on a run.”

Lerianna didn’t give John a proper chance to respond, turning and starting off at a brisk run that quickly turned into a pace fast enough that John would have to work at it if he wanted to catch back up.

“Ah, what the hell, I guess it’s still her day, I can’t be too mad at her,” John mumbled grouchily. Despite his words, John was smiling on the inside. It was slightly disappointing to see Lerianna’s outer walls rise back up so quickly after she’d been so ****, but the fact she’d put herself back together and the very first thing she seemed to have done was to come check on him and keep his spirits up did mean a lot coming from the distant bunny-girl.

John managed to catch up to Lerianna after a couple minutes of solid running, aided in large part by his newly gained levels, but she certainly didn’t make it easy on him. She seemed to be taking the bit about making it a part of his training seriously, even though he didn’t get much out of exercise the way she did.

“So, are you going to try to tire me out like this?” John asked when he was finally by her side again. “Because I don’t. Get tired, I mean. Hell, I don’t even get out of breath, considering I don’t have to-”

“Yeah, yeah, keep bragging,” Lerianna said, making an effort to keep her voice as level as he was, even through her well-paced breathing. “I had to try something to break you out of that loop. You totally forget what time it is when you start training, and everyone else is busy.”

“Sweet of you to care like that.”

“Bite me!”

John gave a long laugh as Lerianna picked up the pace, giving him a genuine challenge for a few moments as he had to exceed her impressive speed to catch back up. By now they had reached the shoreline, and were dashing along it at a breakneck speed, sand and dust flying into the air, the sound of the waves lapping against the shore almost completely overpowered by the sound of their frantic footsteps.

“Did you do a lot of cardio before you got your powers?” Lerianna asked as they jogged.

“None, really. I never had a reason to. I did a little bit of exercise in gym class, ate healthy enough to stay skinny, I guess,” John said with a shrug.

“Oh, nice, so you got to cheat your way to unlimited stamina without even hitting a treadmill?” Lerianna asked, quirking her eyebrow in a way that made it clear she very much did not think that was nice. “You ever hear anyone tell you your powers are kinda bullshit?”

“A lot. Usually about less mundane stuff than being able to run really far,” John mused, grinning sheepishly. “I guess it’s kind of a fair trade, since I can’t actually train this way anymore. If I’m not killing stuff, I don’t get any stronger.”

“Yeah, guess if you have to put your life on the line, I can’t complain too much… besides, you don’t get the best part of running.”

“What’s that?”

“The runner’s high!” Lerianna exclaimed, throwing her arms out as she shouted. “That’s my favorite part! Haven’t been able to enjoy it much since I was a little kid. Usually to keep myself in check, I had to work out so intensely that I’d nearly pass out as soon as I laid down, no matter what kind of endorphins the exercise kicked up. But I was hoping that now that I have a neat little middle ground with this miracle device, why not give it a shot?”

“Yeah, I think that sounds like a great idea!”

John and Lerianna turned away from the beach, heading up north to wrap around the lake. John’s eyes started to veer toward the site of their old home, but he caught himself before he could catch sight of the gravestone.

“So do you think you’ll start leaving it at this setting more often? Or are you still dialing it in?”

“Still dialing it in… but I think I’ll adjust it often enough I won’t really have a ‘setting’,” Lerianna elaborated. “Cranking it up to full gets rid of the distractions and makes it easier to focus, but only for a while. Eventually the lack of dopamine makes me get twitchy and start daydreaming. Tricia’s device seems to keep it from becoming a real problem – maybe it focuses on disrupting the conscious effects rather than the physical needs of the body?”

“She’s probably adapted the technology to not cause too many disruptions to normal biological functions, just the **** ones. She wears that suit twenty-four seven, and it’s usually cranked up high enough that she can just barely show any emotion.”

“Yeah… I noticed the way she acts. I never asked why she was like that.”

John bit his cheek, not feeling comfortable giving away too much about Tricia’s problems. There was nothing he could divulge that wouldn’t feel like a violation of trust. Considering that Lerianna and Tricia had been working so closely, he was confident Tricia had shared as much as she wanted to with Lerianna.

“Well, that’s good, anyway. Severe deficiencies of dopamine from the device would basically be giving myself an artificial version of ADHD… really messing up my body’s flow of serotonin, estrogen, or testosterone could have even worse effects, mental and physical. But even ignoring that, being able to crank up my energy levels, physical strength, and the speed I perceive things at a moment’s notice is super useful. Really, it’s kind of a miracle device for my people. I wish I could send some back home; it’s got uses for minor stuff too! When my body fluctuates through its natural cycles, this thing can let me control it and keep myself at a steady, even keel from day to day. And it’s way easier to crank this thing up than go around finding someone to kiss when you need a quick boost…”

“Safer for your health, too – pretty sure if I tried that on Moira when I knew her as well as you did back then, I’d have been dodging a hammer,” John said with a loud guffaw. “Though, I’m not sure she’d mind so much now. She’s gotten a lot more…”

John trailed off as a treeline came into his view. The northern forests were just a short distance out now, and at their current pace they’d be among the sparse trees on the outer edges. John slowed without thinking, a troubled look coming over his face as he did so. Lerianna took a moment to look over after John’s words stopped, and when she realized that the man had too, she quickly wheeled around to jog back over to where he stood.

“Hey, what gives? I thought you didn’t get tired now?” Lerianna murmured.

“Let’s… ah, let’s turn back.”

Lerianna frowned, but didn’t comment on John’s sudden change of direction – or the change of tone in his voice – until they were already back at full speed, and well on their way back around the lake.

“Didn’t feel like a trip through the woods?”

“I… just thought about where we were, I got a little too involved in the conversation,” John admitted. “It was lucky enough that she wasn’t hanging around the lake, but there’s no way we could go through the forest without running into her.”

“You know, you could be talking about either of them, but I get it. How long you planning on letting Vallya stew for?” Lerianna replied after a bit. “Whatever’s going on with her, there’s a good chance it’s only going to get worse if she’s alone all day. Orria keeps an eye on her, but I don’t think they’ve said two words to each other – and we both know she’s smart enough to stay away from Lunaya, after what she did. I think if we let it slip that Vallya was mostly hanging around the forest now-”

“I know, I’m leaving a problem unresolved, it’s just…”

John sighed, feet pounding the ground a little harder as they reached the beach, not propelling him much faster but at least letting off a little bit of steam as he left small craters with each step.

“...every time I think about what to say, or how to approach her, I just hear Magnus screaming again, and I can’t think clearly enough to come up with any way to deal with her. And every time I think about seeing her, to check in on her or just ask if she’s got herself under control, I have no idea what the point is. And to make matters worse…”

“It’s her day next, right?”

“...Yeah,” John said with a long sigh, grateful for his lack of need for air. “That’s why I can’t stop thinking about it lately. Tomorrow is a training day. Then I was going to take some time to visit Kim properly. But after that…”

“You spend all this time avoiding her, and you’re still thinking about giving her her day?” Lerianna replied warily, quirking an eyebrow at him. “No wonder you were so into your training. You always burn through your emotions by killing stuff, you know that? It’s probably unhealthy, but I didn’t get my degrees to become your therapist, so you do you, I guess.”

“I thought about setting her loose in the old world.”

The words hung in the air so heavily that even the loud sounds of both of their feet pounding against the beach sands could not dispel them.

“Yeah? You almost went that far?”

“I did. Before I saw that she seemed genuinely horrified by what she’d done, I thought about banishing her. She can take care of herself, and I wouldn’t have to always have that nagging worry in the back of my head about her being just a few miles away from my kids. But doing that would be… a drastic step. What she did was pretty drastic too, but for all we know, it might be my fault. Between everything else that had gone wrong…”

John didn’t want to admit that he still wondered about the memories of his creations – about whether a race of rabbit-humans did exist somewhere in some alternate universe. Saying he wondered if he was responsible for Lerianna’s issues that she’d only just fixed would be bad enough, but implying her whole species might be fake seemed beyond harsh. Besides, they were only his personal doubts. He didn’t need to burden her with an existential crisis on top of everything else.

“...Well, it’d just be one more thing that my weird abilities that I’m still trying to understand have royally messed up. That’s part of the reason I didn’t Purify her when she asked me to. Lately, it seems like I’ve gotten better control over it, at least I think I have. Yvara, Orria, and Shishun all came out fine, and they matched up with what little ideas I had in my head at the time, in their own ways. But I’ve only ever used it on someone who was already here once. Saving Mithra a year ago could have just been a fluke. I wouldn’t forgive myself if it turns out that I’m the one who messed Vallya up, and then I give her even more problems… or worse, completely erase her and turn her into something new. I need to think that she can come back. That one day things will be back to normal, and that I didn’t fuck it all up without realizing.”

“No need to blame yourself. You’re doing the best you can with what you’ve been given. Not like you got a damn instruction manual for the thing… and for the most part, I think we’ve all come out pretty good. And you’ve done more than your share in helping us fix what problems we do have.”

“Could she tell what I was thinking…?” John thought, catching a knowing glance from Lerianna as she said the last couple of sentences. “Well, if she is, she doesn’t seem upset by my doubts about her past...”

“I appreciate that.”

“So, you want to give Vallya her day because taking it away would feel like you’re giving up on her. Like you’re giving up on her ever being a part of your little family again.”

“Our little family,” John corrected. “Just because we aren’t sleeping together doesn’t mean that I don’t consider you a part of it, Lerianna.”

“Tch, whatever,” Lerianna said, though she smiled as she rebuffed him.

“But yeah, that’s about right. I just don’t know what to do about it.”

“Take me with you. I know I said I didn’t get my degrees to be your therapist, but it kind of sounds like you need one. Really need one. And I’m the closest thing you’ve got around here, unless you’ve been hiding a bookworm in the library,” Lerianna offered.

“You want us to do, what, couple’s therapy? I’m not saying that it’s a bad idea, just sounds funny, I guess,” John mused. By now they had fully reached the end of the beach, and the two of them had to turn around and head back towards the house before they crossed past the end of the new territory.

“Nah, you can handle most of the talking. Think of me as a mediator, I can call you both out when you’re getting hotheaded and stupid. Or when you’re not understanding each other, or getting blinded by emotion.”

John thought on that one for a moment, eyes unfocused on the grass below as it blurred beneath him.

“That would be great, actually. It makes me a lot less nervous thinking about going into this thing too. Actually, if you don’t mind, there’s something else I’d really appreciate your help on.”

“Hey, I’m not over here offering free labor!” Lerianna responded, shaking her fist at John for a moment, eyes twitching visibly even over the motion of her body. “Ah, fuck it, I guess this place can get a little messy sometimes. What’s going on, someone else an emotional wreck?”

“Heh…” John smiled, both at her attitude and the ‘problem’ itself.