The next few days passed in relative peace. There were no fights between the two skunks, and while, at least once a day, they set up a cone of silence to talk about whatever it was that True Name had discussed that first time, there were no more instances of May falling apart or True Name wearing herself out quite so badly. The discussions sounded serious, and never quite friendly, but ey was at least somewhat happy to see the two cocladists talking without quite so much ire between them.
May wasn’t the only one, either. At one point, Time Is A Finger Pointing At Itself and one of her up-tree instances, Where It Watches The Slow Hours Progress visited to talk with the skunk. Both were far more earnest in their affection to her, which ey supposed made sense, given A Finger Pointing’s habit of making friends with everyone she could.
Ey’d only met Slow Hours once prior and, while she was just as friendly as her down-tree instance, she also seemed somewhat removed from the world as a whole, as though seeing just a little more than everyone around her. “Clairvoyance,” A Finger Pointing had whispered to em after that meeting. “She has the outline of the world.”
They’d talked for nearly three hours that afternoon, breaking only to get more water part way through. When they were finished, True Name looked wrung out, though not unhappy. A Finger Pointing mostly looked confused and concerned while Slow Hours kept that faraway, nearly delphic air about her.
Curiouser and curiouser. Ey’d always pictured A Finger Pointing’s stanza as one of the more liberal ones, and had early on noticed that the liberal Odists had largely distanced themselves from the more conservative ones. To have two of them specifically drop by to visit True Name was quite unnerving.
The most curious thing, though, had to be May.
It wasn’t just that all the work she’d put into her feelings about her cocladist had seemingly paid off — other than a few tense moments, mostly silent, she was at worst quiet and at best willing to hold conversations with True Name about a limited set of topics — but that even in those tensest moments, she seemed to at least want to do something. Whether it was out of an earnest desire to improve the skunk’s life or to simply get this situation over with seemed to vary depending on her mood.
It was her discussion with End Waking that really knocked em off-kilter, though.
“Are you sure that’s even a good idea?” ey asked when she explained the idea. “I mean, won’t that just make her feel worse if she also has to deal with all of that regret?”
May fiddled with the corner of the top sheet. They’d sat up in bed, the topic not feeling quite right for pillow-talk. “Possibly, yes. I do not think that it would be permanently detrimental. If she has a fuller view of the world, perhaps she will be better able to engage with it with empathy.”
Ey bridled. “I don’t think you’re giving her enough credit on the empathy front.”
She clutched the sheet tightly in her fists, visibly counting to ten. “Yes. You are right, Ioan. I am primed to see less in her than you, I think.
“I know, May, I’m sorry,” ey said, shaking eir head. “I know it’s complicated.”
Smiling gratefully, she nodded. “Thank you, my dear. Let me rephrase and say that having that additional perspective will give her new tools to engage with the world.”
“Right, I can see that. I’m pretty sure I agree, too, so long as it’s consensual between the two of them. I just worry that now’s not a good time for it. If she’s distracted processing all that when she’s supposed to be thinking about what to do about Jonas, won’t that put her at a disadvantage?”
“I suppose,” she mumbled, then smiled lopsidedly to em. “But we have time, yes? Jonas said within the year, and I imagine it will take us at least a month to convince End Waking to join as requested.”
Ey sighed. “I don’t know if that’s necessarily reason to do it so soon, though. You’re right that we should take our time with the meeting and plan as best we can. I just worry about her going in there already a mess because of a ton of conflicts when she needs to be in the best shape she can be.”
“You are right, as always,” she grumbled, slumping forward to use eir thigh as a pillow. “Thank you for keeping me grounded.”
Ey stroked over the skunk’s head, toying with one of her ears until she batted at eir hand. “I know I say it a lot, but you’re a good person, May. So is End Waking, too. I think True Name having some of that will only help.”
“Do you think she is a good person?”
“Mmhm.”
“You answer so quickly, my dear. Is it that uncomplicated for you?”
Ey thought for a moment, still combing fingers through the longer fur on top of the skunk’s head. “I suppose. I’m not sure why, though. She’s complicated, and I disagree with her reasoning for a lot of what she’s done, but I don’t think that makes her a bad person.”
May nodded.
They stayed quiet until they worked their way under the covers again, cozying up for sleep, when May murmured, “I have to believe that she is a good person, or at least capable of being one. For my sake, I have to at least try to believe that.”
Ey kissed the back of her ears and shushed her to sleep.
What kept coming back again and again was the feeling of just how small this project — if ey’d been assigned to it as amanuensis, might as well call it what it was — felt. There were so few people involved. True Name and Jonas, then em and May on the periphery. Four people, three clades. It was intimate, in that way. True Name and Jonas were larger-than-life people most of the time, but, having been forced into sharing space with her, ey was far more willing to see her as just a person in over her head and Jonas as a power-hungry asshole, and emself as caught in the middle as Codrin#Castor had felt almost four years back.
The next morning saw both of the skunks more relaxed than ey’d seen them yet. They talked pleasantly over coffee, and True Name even stuck around, sitting on the couch and watching the snow melt off the balcony while May and Ioan worked, her on her monologue and em reading back through the volume of An Expanded History of Our World that focused on the Council of Eight and the Odist and Jonas clades in the centuries after their dissolution.
After lunch, True Name returned to the couch with a glass of water and, after a moment’s hesitation, May had joined her.
“Why are you spending today out here?” the skunk asked, finally voicing a question ey’d kept to emself until now.
“Honest answer or pithy one?”
“Both?”
True Name laughed. “The pithy one is that I am bored and lonely, and this seems to be my best bet at solving either. The honest answer is that I am bored and lonely and, even if the circumstances are not ideal, I want to at least try not to mope in my room all day.”
“You’ve said you spend most of your time working interacting with your instances, yeah,” Ioan said. “I imagine it’s been pretty quiet.”
“Yes. My instances, some up-tree cocladists, instances of Jonas, those of my…friends.” The last word sounded almost bashful for reasons ey couldn’t place. She shrugged and continued, “And now I am without all of those. No instances, none of my up-tree cocladists are responding, I do not want to speak with Jonas for obvious reasons, and the relationships I have with my friends are all bound up in that.”
May nodded. “I do not know if we are the ideal company for you, given our interests, but at least we can try, I suppose.”
“For which I am endlessly appreciative,” True Name nodded. “Though I do still miss routine. Good company and productive company do not necessarily overlap.”
”‘Productive company’?” May frowned.
“You are very nice to be around. Both of you. It is productive for my mental health, perhaps, and nice to be able to rest, but it is not what I do, May Then My Name. This is not who I am. I am not one to crash at her friends’ place, however pleasant they may be.”
Ioan could feel an argument brewing. What True Name was saying very likely was true: this wasn’t who she was as a person, and now she had been knocked into some new setting. Ey suspected May knew that, even, as ey could see the skunk working on keeping an open expression, despite her cocladist’s indelicate wording. Still, there was a thin line to be crossed, and they were edging closer.
“Well, it’s better than being assassinated, right?” ey said, trying to lighten the mood.
May grinned. True Name did not.
“Sorry, probably still a bit too soon.”
“Perhaps. I would rather be alive here than not alive at all, but it is not an ideal situation for any of us, I think, yes?”
May averted her gaze, but nodded all the same.
“My apologies, you two,” True Name said with a hint of a bow. As she continued, though her words came faster, hotter, more frustrated. “I am restless and anxious. I do not want to meet with Jonas. I do not want to stay in hiding. I do not want to go back to being overworked, but I am unhappy having no work. Call it addiction, if you will, but I am nothing if I am not True Name. And why should I not be? I have worked hard to become myself. That I am what I am and unrepentant of that is perhaps a disappointment to many, but it means more to me to stick to what I believe to be true than to–“
“True Name,” May said, interrupting the other skunk’s tirade. “Wait.”
Wrong footed, True Name frowned. “What? Why? I do not–“
May held up her paw, a brief glance at the ceiling hinting at a sensorium message elsewhere.
Ioan frowned as well. Intuition told him the discussion they’d had earlier had gone beyond the hypothetical. “May, are you sure–“
True Name jolted upright in her seat on the couch. “What the fuck is–“
“Accept it,” May said, and ey could see the full force of all her centuries of earnestness focused her cocladist, all of it fine tuned to show True Name just what she needed to see. “It will only help, True Name.”
Her face contorting with the strain of holding what must be a very large high priority merge at bay without either remembering or forgetting it, True Name gasped. “May… May Then… Why…”
May’s expression softened further, picking up a hopeful smile. “Please, my dear. I think you need this. I think we all need this, if we are to move forward, if you are to be able to move past what Jonas wants of you. Please accept. Please.”
The skunk nodded shakily, attempted a dry swallow, and then let End Waking’s centuries of memories crash into her.
The change was immediate and more dramatic than ey’d anticipated. Ey had been expecting a shell-shocked look and maybe a few minutes of silence, but instead True Name’s expression melted into a glazed, stroke-like stupor. The glass of water she’d been clutching at but had yet to drink tumbled to the floor and, as all her muscles gave out at once, she began to slide off the couch.
“Shit. Shit! Ioan!” May shouted.
Ey was already on eir feet and halfway around the table, thankfully in time to catch the skunk before she slid down into the pool of water on the floor. Ey managed to get eir arms under hers enough to hoist her up into the couch again while May ducked around to lift her feet so that they could lay her out on her back.
They both stared down at her.
“Fuck,” eir partner murmured.
“What just happened?”
“One moment,” she said, waving away the spilled water so that she could kneel by the couch. There was a moment’s hesitation before she brushed some of the skunk’s longer head fur away from her face. “Can you close your eyes?”
When True Name didn’t respond, didn’t move, May gently brushed her paw down to close them for her. She leaned closer, then, whispering a few questions ey could not hear to the skunk, though there was still no response.
After lingering a moment longer, she stood shakily, took Ioan’s hand in her paw and led em to the balcony. As soon as the door shut behind them, she burst into tears.
Ey guided her carefully to the bench swing to sit her down, letting her cry herself out against eir shoulder.
“I am sorry, my dear,” she said when she could speak again at last. “Really, truly sorry.”
Ey shook eir head, kissing her between the ears. “You don’t need to apologize to me. I’m more confused than anything. Was that your and End Waking’s plan?”
She pressed closer to em. “That was him merging back down, yes. We have been discussing it for days, now. I did not expect that, though,” she said, and ey could hear that she was on the verge of crying once more. “I never intended to hurt her.”
“Can you explain what happened, at least?”
She nodded, swallowing down that wave of tears as best she could. “We are good at forking and merging. Very, very good at it. I am pretty sure you know that, though.”
“Did something go wrong, then?”
“End Waking has not merged down in more than a century and a half. He has diverged quite far in that time, as is to be expected, which means the potential for conflicts.”
Eir frown deepened. Ey thought ey could tell where this was going. “Aren’t those usually just when memories don’t line up, though?”
May gave the barest hint of a shrug against em. “You have met her, and you have met him. Their viewpoints are almost diametrically opposed, yes?”
Ey nodded.
“Viewpoints are built atop a collection of memories. That they can share so many memories and yet have such different outlooks on the world and their actions is a subtler, but trickier sort of merge conflict.” She paused, took a deep breath, then continued slowly. “I pressed her to accept because I knew that she would accept the merge as smoothly as she always does if there was external pressure. She merged blithely and took on 156 years of End Waking all at once. All of his memories. All of his penitence. All of his loathing for what he did, what she was so proud of.”
“And it was too much?” ey asked.
Her face screwed up again as she nodded. “I nuh-never wanted t-to hur-hurt her,” May stammered as the tears started to flow once more.
Ey got eir arms around her again and held her close. A quick glance through the windows showed that True Name still lay on the couch, breathing shallowly.
“May, I want to ask you something,” ey said, once she had calmed down. “And…well, I think it’ll probably make you cry again, but I want to make sure we stay open about this. Is that okay?”
She whined quietly, but nodded all the same.
Ey took a deep breath, keeping eir voice as gentle as ey could. “I’m not upset with you, but I need to know since this is just getting weirder and weirder. Are you sure you didn’t want to hurt her?”
There was a long silence before she replied. Ey watched her count her breaths, one of the exercises that had worked best to ground her. At least she counted as best she could between sniffles.
“I think,” she started, then cleared her throat. “I know a part of me was acting out of vengeance.”
Ey nodded. “We’ve talked about that, yeah.”
“Right. I think that part was hoping that it would be a rough merge to knock her down a peg, yes,” she said, then let out a shaky sigh. “I did not think it would be this bad, though. I am really sorry, Ioan. I want to be a good person.”
Hugging her tightly to em, ey said, “It’s okay, May. You are a good person, promise. Just that even good people can resent others.”
She nodded, fell back into breathing exercises.
“And I believe you when you say you didn’t want to hurt her. Both those–“
She elbowed em in the side. “Yes, yes. Both can be true at once. You know we have the same therapist, right? She says the same things to me.”
Ey smiled, pleased to hear the humor in her voice. “Sorry, May.”
She wormed her arms around em to give a tight squeeze. “It is alright. You are just a nerd. Both of those things can be true, too.” After a moment’s hesitation, she asked more quietly, “Can you see her? Is she okay?”
“She’s rolled onto her side. Still breathing pretty quick.”
May nodded, wiping at her face, though it did little to help her disheveled look. “Let us get back in and check on her, then. We may want to get her into bed. Being comfortable can make it easier.”
“True Name?” ey murmured once ey’d crouched beside the skunk. “Can you make it to your room?”
Her eyes remained closed, flicking about beneath her eyelids. There was the tiniest shake of her head.
Ey looked to May, who only watched anxiously, wringing her paws.
Oh well, ey’d lifted eir partner on more than one occasion, ey supposed this wouldn’t be too different. Ey slipped eir arms beneath the skunk, though she remained limp. Through a bit of shifting, ey was eventually able to get her leaned against eir chest, head on eir shoulder rather than lolling back, with enough leverage to be able to lift her. She was lighter, but when ey lifted May, she usually got her arms around eir shoulders, too.
Ey was able to get her into bed easily enough, May holding the covers back while ey did so and then draping them back over her after.
It was eir turn to stand awkwardly by while May sat beside True Name and brushed a paw over her head. “I am sorry, my dear, I thought…” she started, then sighed. “I will sit with you. I am sorry.”
Ioan backed slowly out of the room, sliding the door shut quietly behind em. May sounded on the verge of tears once more, but, of all the things ey was not supposed to fix, perhaps least able to fix, this certainly felt like the top of the list.