Dancing in the Moonlight

(Foreword: Good evening,  readers and Rabbits. As you can clearly tell, this isn't Tag writing his account of our first meeting after I came back to Sanctuary. I would have liked to have written it together with him, but seeing as he's a bit indisposed right now, I'll be taking over his blog for a bit. Hope you enjoy the ride, kids.)

 Jack wearily climbed the steps to her once home, eyeing myriad Rabbits happily scurrying by in their haste to.. something. She had lost track of the latest accomplishments, woes, and assignments of her people in the last six months. She had been over the hills and far away: chasing seemingly impossible goals, fighting death, and attempting to survive her own fatalistic nature for so long, the small details of the day to day lives of her friends slipping between her fingers like water.

Pushing the heavy red oak door open, she slipped inside quietly. Making no attempt to be seen or unseen. A few passerby she had known more intimately went to raise their hands in greeting as she passed them on the way to the staircase that lead to her old room, but stopped Midway. Perhaps sensing something had happened in her time away, their cheery greetings dying in their throats as they went to speak.

She nodded to them each in greeting, continuing on her way. Her appearance had mildly shifted several times since she last came 'home,' enough so she couldn't quite remember what she was supposed to appear as. It didn't matter, she supposed. Her aura spoke for itself with all those willing to listen.

She crested the top of the stairs and hung a right, pausing before the door for but a brief moment before quietly pushing it open. She stepped inside the room that had been converted into her right hand's office in her absence, her eyes quietly drinking in what changes had been wrought.

The paperwork no longer loomed above her head, shakily threatening to fall in a cascade of papers and ink. The water rings from her Tagalong's various glasses had increased, and set into the wood. The curtains, once drawn to let in the light, were now pulled tightly. Gloom infested the room, sticking in the corners, only disrupted by the occasional lamp's illumination or the soft glow of candles along the headboard of the bed she once called her own.

She stood inside the door for several moments, drinking in the scene. Gradually becoming more worried as her former mentor, well renowned for his own stealthy ways, failed to pick up on her entrance.

Rather than cursing the stacks of paperwork, head bowed over the desk trying to make out mission reports, or slumbering, or reading an occult novel of some sort as he was wont to do, he was unmovingly standing near the windowsill. One hand resting on it, gentling cradling a tumbler of liquor on the rocks. His gaze steadily staring at the curtains as if he could penetrate them with his sight by sheer force of will. See through them to the world beyond.

She gently cleared her throat, then when that incurred no response, she faked a cough into her hand before speaking. 

"Tag. Staying productive in my absence, I see."

Tag looked wearily to his tumbler, downed it in one giant gulp and wiped his mouth. He looked up, unperturbed by the arrival of his long missing best friend, cracking a tired smile in her presence.

“And what kind of time do you call this? Of course I’m busy...”. The words came out of his mouth in a slow slur, his body swaying as he got up and moved towards her.

“I’ve been... worried. burps sick about you. You want a drink? I have plenty.”

Jack shifted her weight onto her right leg, turning her body until it was but a profile. Eyeing him through the fringe of hair that still obscured others view of her face, she raised an eyebrow in mild worry and distaste. "No, thank you. I would have preferred to have his conversation sober, but it seems a bit too late for that desire to be made flesh."

She paused a moment, making a mental note to breathe shallowly. The smell of alcohol wafted off of her friend in waves strong enough to knock her on her ass.

“Well. I’m still stone cold Tag. Your shadowy bastard of a number two. Just... sauced!” He laughs mirthfully, somewhat cognizant of how happy he was to see her.

Shaking herself, her voice dropped an octave as she went to speak again. "You've known where I was for months. What I've been doing. You stopped checking in months ago. I haven't heard from you at all in weeks. Last I came by to check on you as I had promised, you had vanished, and no one had a clue where you had gone." 

A beat passes, then another.

"Now I find you six sheets to the wind, staring at my curtains as if you're banishing demons by your gaze alone. We have a conversation that is far past due to hold, and unfortunately for you, I'm not willing to wait for you to sober up to have it."

Tag looks her up and down for a bit before sighing solemnly. He looked towards her with a pitiful look in his eyes, the usual fire gone.

“I disappeared looking for some answers. Something I needed to know. Someone I needed to remember. The pain it caused threw me out for a fucking loop. You think I wanted to be here, drunk off my ass? I don’t. I’m sitting here, not wanting you to see me like this.”

He grimaced, but kept his gaze firmly on her, watching her and reiterating every point of his story.

“But here you are. Worried about me when I can’t Stop feeling like I should hate myself.”

“I went to the archives. The old ones. Deep within my fucking subconscious. I came back remembering who I was and what I had done. Who I let down. People I didn’t think I could save. I had my pity party on my own so I could come back to you, feeling like I could take on the world again.”

“Seeing as I’m still making sense, and I can remember why I started drinking, I’m clearly sobering up. You think it didn’t kill me to not see or talk to you, last time? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. It did.”

Jack's eyes widened marginally at his omission, but she stayed silent. Connecting the dots that were thrown before her in conversation like paints flecks on a canvas.

Their past was a deep, myriad, entrenched path of pain, hope, and attempted redemption. Depending on what he was referencing, there could be any number of incidents, or people, he was referring to.

“I got a visitor while you were gone. You read about that. It made me start thinking about what was getting to me. So I searched. And studied. I remembered her, Jack. I remembered you. I remembered Lilith.”

“I remember the battlefield where we met. Don’t you?”

Time seemed as if it stood still. Jack lost her breath, suddenly, and all at once. Willing her heart to keep beating as it ought to. 

She opened her mouth to speak, closed it. Opened it again, and cautiously spoke. 

"Tag, we met when you were working for the Board. You were my boss. Higher up than I thought, you were nevertheless my Handler."

She paused before the next words came out from between her lips. 

"....and of course you remember Lilith. Red hair, lost her mind, liked birds? She's dead. What's your point?"

He replied just as vaguely, a slurring rasp in his voice.

"Oh, we did. Of course. Yes. Not a blood soaked battlefield. Not at a serene lake by a forest. Not.. any of those places. Yes. My point is.. why do I remember meeting you so many times?"

"Every time you said 'Hi' while working at The Board. Felt like the first."

"Every time is a first, if your intentions are good." she replied solemnly, keeping her calm demeanor.

"Well, you changed your hair color a lot. But it was always easy to know it was you. But.. not you.. " Tag slurred on, trying not to stumble over his words, seeing double of the woman standing in front of him.

"Look, all four of you stand still and let me make my point.  You have any sisters or something? Because... it's like you're everywhere at once and I've always wondered about that... Are you the Original?"

"Because I remember you."

Jack froze, sweeping the hair out of her eyes in a clear bid to stall for time. She took a half step forward, then another. Sought out his gaze and held it, despite her every instinct screaming for her to do otherwise.

"There are several answers to your questions. I would be betraying your trust if I attempted to float most of them by you. I..."

She fought for her next words, an internal war clearly waging. 

"I am the first Día, and as far as I know, the last. You're.. leaving your questions too vague."

"But, to answer your question, I have never once forgotten you."

He sighed and gestured openly with his hands, continuing on his drunken diatribe.

 “Well. I’m clearly sauced anyway. What is a few vague notions between friends? I’m sure you missed our dancing? Stepping around direct answers.  Tip of the knife at each other’s throats.”

“You haven’t, have you? You’re Jack. I met you and we’ve been friends for as long as we remember. 

Maybe I don’t want answers from you? Maybe I want to just make sure you’re actually you.”

Tag shook his head. Debating on whether or not he wanted another tumbler before looking directly into her eyes.

“You’re Dia. I’m sure of it. My Dia. My Jack. Yes or no?”

He kept trying to goad her. Not on purpose, but out of desire to see what she’d do. His Jack would bite back. His Jack would make sure he was put in his place. Would make sure he knew that what was happening right then, right now. Was truly real. And not another dream.

Jack visibly flinched, her whole body going rigid with tension. Her gaze became as strong as steel, and as corroded with pain as rust eating away that metal. 

"You aren't going to like what comes out of my mouth next if you ask that fucking question again."

A flash of a bitter smile crept across her lips before disappearing as quickly as it appeared. She casually began to stroke the hilt of the hunting knife she now perpetually kept strapped to her hip in answer to his unspoken question. A momentary lapse into reminiscence, times and places far flung from the present crossing her mind.

Without missing a beat, Tag laughed at that statement, not out of mirth, but out of awkwardness. His drunken stupor hadn't blinded his senses that badly, albeit it ruining his usually tactful wordplay. His eyes lit up and he wrapped his arms around her, the stank of his hours of drinking loud and ever present on his breath. He'd have to apologize for that, if he remembered when he woke up. 

 "There she is. I'm.. sorry I pulled that vague wizard logic shit... Just.. I had so many dreams about this moment... So many times we'd have this conversation.. but they all just ended up being things I made up in my head.. You were still gone..."

His eyes went down to the knife at her side and he smirked.

"You bitch.. you were going to kill me for trying to question your resolve? That's you.. 100% you. I missed you."

Jack laughed, low and mirthlessly over his shoulder as she raised her arms to loosely encircle his middle.

 "I wouldn't kill you. If I'm stuck here, in this time, in this place, if not this plane, then you're stuck here with me. Get over it. We have other, more important matters to discuss."

"Guess I'll ask about the Knife later. Thought you were just excited to see me." he replied, both tired and joyful.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust and drew back, regarding his form. 

"You, however, need a cold shower and some sleep before I wind up tearing out your throat for letting yourself go like this."

Tag looked himself up and down, finally realizing how badly he looked after so many drinks to "calm his nerves."

"I'll admit. I've let myself get a bit too... Distracted and indulging in old vices."

He shook his head, trying in vain to shake the slight punch drunkeness in his system. 

"Maybe I should have stopped at bottle five.. Sure.. But I really wanted it. And psh, even if I was beyond fucking wasted, lying on the floor, stark naked, you'd still lift me up and carry me to the shower." 

He smirked again and moved toward the couch.

"Tearing my throat out sounds a bit nice for you."

He lied down on his personal couch and curled up into a ball, trying to get comfortable.

"You'd better still be here when I wake up. Last time I had this dream, I woke up and someone had drawn runes on my face."

Jack made a small moue of sadness before coming to perch on the edge of his couch, a hand reaching out to brush the sweat soaked hair out of his face.

"Yeah, hon. I'll be here."

"Oh.. okay..." he said, in a quiet, tired whisper.

 He reaches up and grasps her hand, holding it to his cheek. 

"You know, for someone they call the Ice Queen, you have really warm hands, Jack."

With that, he grumbled and passed out, listening to his best friend's last instructions. His thoughts turned to what he'd say when he woke up. Maybe a more sober conversation was in order, as he really didn't think his words through. Maybe he was too vague and too gruff with her.

Jack waited until she was sure he was asleep before gently disentangling her hand from his, and lying down on the wide couch to rest beside him for a while. She knew there were more painful, difficult conversations to come. 

What she had done, sacrificed. Become in his absence. 

But for this fleeting bit of time, everything would be alright. She had confirmation he was alive, and safe.

The rest could wait until he awoke.