Private Act of Contrition

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Lights" by Ellie Goulding)

Daiya tensed as the cybernetic man sat beside her, ready for the withering assessment of her driving skills. Her eyes fixed on a flattened piece of garbage on the dirty road, its filthy label only half-legible now. She focused her gaze on the mystery of it while the man started soft with words that only stirred her irritation more. The Doc made such an effort to be the irredeemably understanding being, if he was any kinder today the teen might just mistake him for one of the good guys.

"Why don't you just tell me I fethed up and get it over with?!" Her lips turned down, scowling at the Doc's easy acceptance of blame. Daiya didn't want to just be let off the hook. That felt more than wrong, it was like a violation of everything she had tried to accomplish today. Yet the more she tried to ignore his soft, understanding words, the more they seeped through her defenses, loosening slender shoulders and drying bleary eyes.

She wiped at them, frustration wicking away on her fingers. Daiya blinked back the rest, letting out a long sigh as the man finished his story. She wanted to scream some more, lash out at the too-considerate Doc and his Abyss-cursed graciousness! Her words weren't nearly as harsh. "You don't have to always be so understanding, y'know?"

She propped her chin up on clasped hands, the wheels on her boots whirring in and out from the flexing toes inside. Daiya hated feeling so useless to the beings she relied on, worse to the ones she looked up to. Right now, despite doing her best to punish herself, the teen couldn't help a sense of redemption creeping into her thoughts. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right. Her hands made a single, oversized fist under her chin. Why should she get a second chance when everyone around her had only one?

It was the way of Denon to be unforgiving.

"I wasn't even bad at first," Daiya found herself admitting. She bit her lip, wishing this story could stay bottled up. Her past had never helped her before, it was impossible to believe it would start now. Her chest shuddered with the effort of keeping it inside, betraying her composure with a labored sigh. "And it was sooo the worst time. We had to run, like Get the Feth Outta Denon kinda run, and guess who got to the speeder first? It was drive or get caught, so I drove."

Memory tugged at her mind, drawing her back to the moment. Daiya actually found it fun at first, thrilling in the same way she had an hour before on the Doc's bike. The chance to fly by herself, to swoop in and save the day, nothing could ever have felt better. "I totally made it pretty far, like all the way to the garage under the Blue Flame." The teen looked up at the Doc. "'Course, that's where I crashed it. I don't s'pose Shenn ever told you why there's burnt panels in the garage down there?"

Daiya pointed to herself, almost giggling from the expected revelation. She shook out her pink curls, "Even you would've been so pissed. Every single speeder down there was totaled, plus my arm. My right one, thank the stars, but still." She held it out, flexing fingers and twisting to show it off, the break had healed cleanly. It hovered for a moment as the teen looked down to the ground past, her arm falling as shoulders slumped. "Shenn was standing there like you are now, all calm and easy about it. You know what, he even laughed. Like it was no big deal, like he didn't just lose thousands of credits to me being a dumbchit kid, who couldn't land a speeder to save her fething life."

The young shadowrunner stood up, muscles in her legs screaming at her to move. Mostly, she just felt the need to move away from the Doc. His compassion was infectious, and if she stayed too near it, Daiya might not find the courage to finish their job today. That part, at least, the young shadowrunner knew she could do. Understanding hadn't perfected her skills there, not even sharing childhood stories had done that.

Daiya had perfected her skills with a threat of CorpSec looming over her.

"You know when I first felt like we had an actual conversation? Not just me needing something from you, and you being the a-mazing being that you are, offering it freely?" Daiya turned back around to the Doc, folding her arms gently. She needed him now, too, and his respect more than anything else. If she was always going to be the little girl who couldn't do enough in his eyes, then she might as well just go home now. "The day of the tatt-chat. That was real Doc. It really hurt me, too, but I kinda needed that, y'know? You didn't give up fighting for your way, but you didn't give up on fighting for me either."

"I like that Doc."

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

The Doc, as was his way, sat and listened. Really listened.

He had been waiting for this moment, dreading it - the moment when the tension that had been hanging over them all day would erupt out of one of them somehow. This wasn't how he'd pictured it... but he'd actually pictured it going much worse. The very last thing he'd expected was for Daiya to tell him that she'd gained respect for him at the Tatt-Chat, from the very interaction that he'd feared would end their friendship forever. But maybe that was where he'd been wrong, not only about what Daiya wanted, but about what she needed.

It was Doc Painless's way to be accommodating to a fault, to overlook a multitude of sins and give endless second chances. That was the only way to keep being an altruist down here, or to maintain much hope for the future. In a system as desperate and degrading as the one the CAD had created, it was all but impossible for the poor and marginalized to have squeaky clean hands - which made it easy for the wealthy to dismiss them a a criminal underclass, unworthy of respect or aid. To help people, you had to accept their flaws, their mistakes.

The Doc knew from experience that, as soon as he turned judgmental, he would burn his street cred at lightspeed.

But Daiya wasn't his patient - she was his friend. Maybe that called for a different kind of relationship. Maybe it required him to leave his comfort zone, the one in which he could forgive anything, and to speak his truth to her more forcefully and more often. Maybe a good friend wasn't just an unconditional supporter but someone who held you to a standard, who took a stand when you didn't meet the values that were important to them. Maybe a good friend needed to engage with the hurt and awkwardness rather than trying to brush past it.

That thought terrified Doc Painless, to be honest. It was easy for him to accept, to overlook, to forgive; it required little effort on his part, and little risk, because it was simply in his nature. But the truth was that the Doc placed very little value on himself. His service and his forgiveness were, he believed, what gave him worth in this galaxy. His true self? The person hidden behind that wall of altruism? He hated that person. He didn't want to show that self to anyone. He didn't believe anyone would stand by him without his mask of forgiving service.

He had taken steps to make sure he would never be a parent for the precise reason of avoiding this...

... but perhaps it wasn't only parents who had to hold children to a standard. Perhaps friends did that for friends.

"Okay," the street medic finally said, after Daiya's words had hung in the air a while. "I hear you. I didn't..." He trailed off, collecting his thoughts, choosing his words carefully. "I didn't mean to treat you like a kid, always accommodating, no matter what. I know you've taken charge in your own life, and I shouldn't diminish your self-responsibility by always overlooking fault, jumping to forgive and excuse mistakes." He offered her a sad smile. "It's not just for you, if that helps. I struggle with this with everyone."

"I've made enough terrible mistakes in my life that I find it easy to forgive little ones. Most big ones, too."

The Doc blew out a long breath, as if the weight of Denon's cloudcutters had suddenly come down on his lungs and squeezed all the air out. "I'm scared, Daiya. I'm scared of what will happen if we don't do enough, and I'm scared of what will happen if we do things the wrong way. I'm scared that, if I speak up too much, I'll lose everyone, and if I speak up too little, everyone loses." He looked right at her, his cybernetic eyes staring into hers. "I know what I believe, but sometimes I don't know the right way and time to say it."

He looked away with a sad little chuckle. "I guess I've got bigger things on my mind than an almost-crash."

Daiya​

 

[Daiya]

(Post Soundtrack: "Blame It On The Kids" by AViVA)

The air between charged with some sort of energy, held in suspension as the seconds ticked by. The teen held her gaze, shifting her eyebrows or nibbling the inside of her lip whenever it felt like too long. She couldn't enjoy moments like these, the thick silence that was desperate for someone to break it. Every fiber of her being wanted to be that someone. Had he been one of her friends, Daiya would have said a few consoling words to alleviate her friend's uneasiness and then happily embraced a change of subject. He wasn't like one of the teen's many friends, he one was different.

He was Doc Painless.

As she watched, he started to emerge again. Meandering and apologetic, slowly the real Doc started to creep out from under his weathered facade again. Daiya opened her mouth, ready to offer her response and embrace the Doc as a trusted figure again. The satisfaction pushed through her body already, warming parts of her that had might have forgotten what it was to have someone older and wiser she could listen to without second-guessing herself.

And then he began to tip the other way.

"No, no, no!" Horrified, the teen leapt to her feet, spinning around to stare back down at him. Her pink curls shook as she tossed her head, color running from of her face faster than any tears. Her feet urged her to move while her knees quaked with a question of whether they could hold her up. Whether it was stubbornness or determination, Daiya stood locked in place, staring down at the cybernetic man who could usually see far more than her. "The feth you're scared, Doc. Nobody's gonna call you out if you do it wrong, you don't have chit to prove. You've saved our asses more times than I can count, we're always gonna need you."

"You think you got problems, you don't have to try growing up with all this chit. Corpos change their tune every other week, and you wanna know how fething hard it is to find good help when you look like this?" The young shadowrunner gestured to herself, the cut-off shirt, her colored hair, the make-up on her face. It wasn't just her own style, half the effort she put into it was to look like a being worth being. Not just some hapless teenager. "Wanna know how many times I get told that I look twelve, or where my parents are? And right when I'm trying to get some fething info or answer for a job that needs doing. It's not like crashing a speeder is at the top of my freak-out list, either."

For a moment, she stood there, her thoughts storming unwieldy inside her head. The teen loathed it, wanting to be doing anything else at the moment. Not doing was when she started thinking and feeling too much, like the Doc was now. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, and Daiya had the sneaking suspicion that she had just reversed their roles enough to find herself consoling him. Finally, the teen threw her hand out to the Doc, ready to hoist the bigger man to his feet, as much as she could.

"You don't want the teenage angst of 'do they like me?' 'cause I'll send you the chitton I got." Daiya chided him, an impish giggle escaping from stern lips. Her eyes glanced over to the speeder bike, another source of teenage angst weighing on her. Not so heavily any longer, despite the pang of revulsion she felt while looking at it. It wasn't about to stop her from trying again, she had worse things to be afraid of than a crash at low speeds, especially with the Doc right there behind her.

"Get up and get on, I'm driving," she grinned wide, eyes sparkling with a renewed giddiness. Daiya was sure she'd still crash it, but at least this time it was just part of her plan. "We got a stake-out to get to."

Doc Painless​

 

[Doc Painless]

We're always gonna need you.

Doc Painless felt a sad little smile cross his face at that. She wouldn't always need him. She didn't need him. She and the others, young though they were, would get on fine without him, just like they had before he'd shown up. They were survivors, perhaps born that way, perhaps just made so by Denon, and they would keep going long past which his past-prime ticket got punched. But he did worry about what these kids would become when he was gone, or when they stopped listening. The galaxy had shown them little enough compassion. He had tried to make up for that, to balance the scales a little. Without that, would they show Denon the same ruthlessness they had been shown?

The street medic accepted Daiya's rebuke without protest or interruption. He'd missed the mark again, hadn't he? His young friend had been looking for someone to be a strong authority figure, someone older and wiser to set standards and hold her to account, and he'd started out promising... but then he'd veered into his own doubts and fears when she wanted certainty. This was why he was a surgeon and not a counselor. He felt compelled to explain and justify himself, to admit his flaws upfront, when that only undercut the point he was making. Daiya had ended up thinking he was worried about being liked, and that wasn't what he'd meant... but maybe it had come out that way.

There he was, doubting himself again. You're in your head too much, a voice from his past echoed back to him.

"You can keep the angst," the Doc replied, cracking a more genuine smile. "I did my time as a teenager, thanks." He accepted her hand, letting her haul on him, though he mostly got himself to his feet; he was a lot bigger than her, and a lot of him was metal. It was good to see her confidence restored - had his confession of his doubts maneuvered her back into the take charge position after all? He didn't question it. He just vaulted the side of the speeder, landing in the passenger seat with a carefully nonchalant expression on his face. Did he want to ride in a speeder she was driving after that first attempt? Not really. But he was glad she wanted to try again. He knew she could learn.

She wasn't always going to need him, but he wanted to help her, to build her up, for as long as he was around.

"Let's roll, then," the street medic said, habitually re-checking his gear. He was still anxious about this job they were planning to pull, as he was with any job where people he cared about - or simply anyone who didn't deserve it - might get hurt, but he was reassured that this whole thing wasn't some kind of gotcha scheme. Daiya thought she needed him. After everything that had passed between them, all the hurt from the very public break on fundamental questions of how this struggle should work, she still felt that way. And if that was how she felt, he would do his best to be what she needed - supporter and friend, but also mentor and accountability buddy. There was room for both.

"I'd hate to miss our window. Gotta pay for those noodles somehow."

Daiya​