Welcome to Gaia! ::

He relished how exhausting the work was now, regardless of his success rate. Two days in and he could feel the ache in his heart seem to shrink in comparison to the daily bumps and bruises, the well known Moon stamina able to keep him going longer than average. It was the closest to feeling like he was on autopilot since the incident proper: wake, eat, work, work, work, eat, work, work, work, remember a semblance of bathing, sleep. It left him incapable of contacting everyone he wanted to see, but as long as he didn't see them buried in the wreckage, he was okay.

(He isn't strictly okay, but it's okay nevertheless.)

Only on the third day in did he feel up to finally answering Maebe's silent summon. Seeing glimpses of each other at work wasn't near enough. Dawson didn't have a clue what he was going to say, but there he was anyway, wickedly tired and rubbing his face with one hand, knocking the door on the other. He wondered if she still locked it now.

He was too tired to try and wrestle a hello hug in and merely shuffled after her, closing the door like an afterthought. "Hey, hun," he greeted belatedly, his tired face still managing a smile. "Sorry took so long. Shifts're brutal right now." She didn't need reminding. Nobody did. "How ya been?"

He didn't know how best to process her tone and merely continued to smile back as he sat down next to her. "Yup." Just dandy.

Dawson scratched under his chin. "Wouldn' lemme see Meri r' Taym, but I think they doin' okay. Prob'ly need lotsa rest after all tha' anyway, yeah? They been through a lot." Although not so much that Taym didn't have the energy to send him one sassy DM in reply. He'd actually chuckled despite how annoyed it made him.

"Wanna add Huggy to the mix?"

His face fell. Dawson had hoped Maebe wouldn't scorn him this even with the delay and the stress.

"You gettin' there," he offered, and then more hesitantly asked, "You, uh...mad at me or somethin'? I cain' tell."

"Those can go hand in hand," he joked weakly. "Usually do." His smile fell in seconds, though, and after a moment he reached out and put a hand on her knee to try and comfort her. Dawson just couldn't avoid touching her for too long.

"We can talk about if if ya want," he offered. Always give options. "S'hard t'take alla the past month or so in like that, 'specially with the way it ended. N', well, 'specially with the clones."

He squeezed her knee gently back. "'Ah, don' be like that, Mayb. You know me by now, I like makin' my own judgments on stuff people think is bad." For better or for worse.

And speaking of.

Dawson wanted, needed really, to talk to her about what she had witnessed in the life building's basement. But the look in her eyes made his chest tighten, not just from what he saw but because it was so similar to what he had seen in Cami, and thinking of someone else in the middle of it was not helping, and maybe he was just a little bit so tired himself, and why was his brain jumping through so many thought trains right now?

Trying to push it all away, Dawson scooted closer. "I'm thinkin' I owe you a couple a'explanations 'bout what happened down there at least, yeah?"

His mouth opened in protest (God, but he owed her more than just words), but she grabbed the initiative on that before anything could come out, and his mouth closed. Despite her knowing generally what he was up to as far as Caly was concerned, it still felt like he had been harboring a secret from Maebe; both guilt and relief mixed and rose. And fear as well—fear that despite the results, she would get furious. Worse than furious.

He slipped her hand from his cheek and cradled it between both of his hands, grateful for the anchor but too nervous to let her affectionate gesture stay while he talked.

"I, uh...I kept to the phone," Dawson began, his gaze fixed on their hands. "Mostly. Easier fer me anyway, y'know? N' I know you said she was jus' tryna confuse me to her side or somethin', but it wasn'. I didn' force you t'go talk to her when she got lonely n' wanted someone there, I didn' say that t'nobody." His brow furrowed, his fingers slid between hers. "She was people, Maebe. I know you only see her as a clone, but she was people. The DMs we had, s**t, I couldn' imagine how she felt.

"She didn' even wanna be Meri, y'know. Didn' wanna try n' take her place or anythin'. She wanted her own things, her own memories. A home. Ain't it what everyone wants? She picked her own name too: Caly, 'cause I told her the story 'bout Calypso, she's this..." Was that deviating too much? He knew he was prone to rambling, but it felt important to add in. Everything did. He wanted Caly remembered.

"Calypso's the daughter of this Titan guy who fought against Zeus in this big war. So when the big guys won, Zeus banished her to this lil' island called Ogygia fer supportin' her dad. You know about Odysseus, right? Real big Greek hero, main character a'the Odyssey? Well on that epic quest, he got shipwrecked and ended up on Calypso's island, n' she took care a'him fer seven years or somethin'. N' you know, it ain' a huge surprise she falls in love with him while she do. N' she tries n' tries t'keep him there n' offers him things like eternal youth n' immortality, but he still got his quest to do n' his wife Penelope's waitin' fer him.

"Eventually Hermes gets sent over to tell her t'cut that s**t out n' let him get back out on the sea, n', like, you jus' can' refuse an order from Zeus. But she really reamed them, y'know, fer bein' so cruel n' wantin' t'take him away even though she was in love. Still, she got him a boat n' some stuff n' let him go." Dawson paused awkwardly. "A-Anyway, she liked the story, n' since Twitter got that character limit, I kept callin' Calypso 'Caly', so, that was how that happened."

He wouldn't tell Maebe the end of that story: that Calypso had tried to commit suicide afterwards so that she wouldn't be cursed to live forever with heartbreak, that her own immortality wouldn't let her be free of suffering.

"I always felt fer her in that tale," he went on more quietly. Without thinking, he had pulled their hands closer to his mouth, leaned forward as though he was in a state of prayer. "'Cause she was lonely n' hurtin'. N' Caly was, too. She didn' know if she had a soul, if anyone would ever accept her even if she did good by 'em, if she deserved anythin' at all. Only reactions she got was bad stuff from people who knew." Save for maybe Lawrence it would seem, but he was definitely not going to mention that. "That's why it was important someone was there for her, Mayb. You've all people should know how God damn important support is, e-even f'it's just from one person."

He was quiet for a few moments, both to let everything sink in and to try and control his shaky breaths. It was pointless; one eye was already beginning to leak, the other was soon to follow.

"She tried, Mayb. She tried so hard t'fight those shitty orders Merlin was tryna make her do." Something that should have been a laugh softly warbled out of his throat. "She helped me pull people from the wreckage instead. Said ******** you t'the guy even though she was scared ******** n' hurtin'. Sh-She was...She was somethin' else."

Dawson didn't dare look up now. Slow tears crept down his cheeks and nose. "She was the one who felt where Meri was. She led me down there, n' sh-she..." He sniffled, how embarrassing. "She g-gave everythin' back, Maebe. Her choice. I-I always told her she always had choices, she c-could...N' when she was just crystal, Maebe, it wasn't all black." The tears crawled over their fingers now. "There was blue there. Blue. She chose Protection, she saved M-Meri, she saved her..."

And that was it. Dawson succumbed to the tears and curled over their conjoined arms, shaking with sobs he still tried to contain for his pride.

It wasn't total agreement, but it was acceptance nonetheless. That was probably more than he would ever get from anyone else, and it was enough to mitigate some of his shame from once again breaking down into tears in front of Maebe. He wondered just how many times he had pushed that duty of consoling him on her like that now, if she was ever going to tire of it.

Dawson tried to recover as quick as he could, but it felt so good to just cry in someone else's arms rather than his own that for once he let himself be a little selfish, curled over her arm and clutched it and wept for longer than he might have. For Caly, for the clones like her, for the people of Deus lost in the explosion, and for himself, because he was starting to wonder if the only person who could possibly sympathize was ******** Lawrence of all people, and their DMs about it had ended about as nicely as could be expected. (But he had to avoid thinking about it now, because he had thrown enough on Maebe in one go, and because he didn't think he could hold himself together at all if he thought it for one second more.)

One day's open mourning wasn't enough, but it was a start.

When his sobs became stuttering breaths and sniffles, he tried to wipe his face on his sleeve. "A-Anyway," Dawson croaked, as if he hadn't just cried, "that's how I-I figured out what t'do with the other one you saw." He still couldn't look at Maebe, preferring to focus his red eyes on the wall. "Chris I didn' know 'bout 'til literally tha' day."