Daylight... Part 10: Elaine Canmore's Legacy

"...Traditionally, I suppose, yeah." Robyn answered. "But that's not me, I... I really am on your side, Dominique. I am your friend. I am. I promise I am. It... may not have started out quite that way, but-"

"Stop!" Dominique demanded. "Just... stop." She asked, her voice having gone soft. She stood and walked away a few paces, needing some space. This was just... All this time, Robyn had been... It was something of a grand joke, she supposed, it really was...

Robyn stood too. "But even then, it wasn't—it was never like that. I swear." She pressed on, needing to make Dominique understand.

Dominique turned and looked at her, just looked at her... She could see it now. She hadn't before. Elaine... Robyn was... Elaine Canmore's daughter... And she'd lied to her, all this time... She closed her eyes and reminded herself that... this was Robyn. She was still her Robyn—still her friend—and she was confessing to this. Her mother's courage shining through, she supposed. "What... was it like then?" Dominique asked, feeling vulnerable and exposed in a way she couldn't quite ever remember feeling before. Robyn deserved to be heard out though—deserved that and a good deal more from her—so she could face this.

Robyn let out a breath, relieved. "We wanted to know." Robyn explained. "My... My brothers and me. You... You killed our da, but... I mean, and our mum was gone. We didn't know how. Jason, he- But, there you were, a champion of human rights, protector of the downtrodden. Didn't seem like you were much of a Demon after all, you know? And... well, none of us were willing to go after you, not unless we did know that you really were... You know, the creature of pure evil our ancestors... our da, that he made you out to be." She met Dominique's eyes quietly a long moment. "...It didn't take me long to figure out you weren't. You... And you were, are- Besides my brothers, I guess, you're the first real friend I've ever had. So, I guess I thought I'd just stick around."

"...And... these... brothers of yours?" Dominique found herself asking, absurdly feeling like she might cry. In that moment, you see, she really did realize that Robyn mattered a great deal to her... even more than she'd admitted to herself up to this point. And she was Elaine's daughter—if there'd been any doubt about that fact left, that she'd just confessed to having two brothers confirmed it beyond doubt.

Robyn sighed. "Less convinced of your goodness than I, I'll admit. But they don't know you, and I do. Which is... another reason I stuck around, I suppose. John's fine mostly, but Jason, well, you know, he's the eldest. He knew da the best. I... don't think he really wants to think that da could have been on the wrong side of things, you know? Still and all, he's not about to do anything until he's got his proof of guilt, and since there's really not any, I don't see there being a problem on that front." She quirked a smile. "He's got a lady he's fallen for even, so I expect that helps matters as well."

Dominique ran a hand over her face, trying to reconcile this. Oh, not factually. This... actually made a kind of sense that way. Maybe it was, at least partly, why she'd found it so easy to trust and befriend Robyn in the first place. There was even an almost eerie symmetry to it all, really. Emotionally, though...? She went to sit down next to Elisa again, who'd been watching all of this, looking like she'd been caught flatfooted.

Robyn looked after her, then looked over to find Adriana behind her, having stood up as well at some point apparently. She was just looking at her, open suspicion in her gaze. "I-" Adriana started to say, but... she just turned and walked away. Robyn watched her go and her heart sank.

Dominique looked up and saw Obsidiana go. Fantastic, she thought. "Give her some time." She told Robyn.

Elisa stood then. "I'll... um, I think I should probably give you two some space too?" She ventured, reaching out to touch Dominique's hand, kindness and understanding in her eyes.

Dominique looked to her, feeling bolstered and understood. "I... maybe so." She admitted, smiling to her.

Elisa moved in and kissed her softly for a long moment then, before turning to leave. Dominique stood there a moment, blankly watching her go, feeling a little dazed, and not unpleasantly so. Her lips still felt the echoes of their kiss. It really was remarkable, she thought to herself, how much Elisa could make her feel with such apparently almost negligent ease...

Robyn looked after Elisa too, then turned back to Dominique. She saw the dazed expression, and a fond smile came to her lips. Dominique turned to her then and met her eyes. "I..." But the answering quirk of a returned fond smile on Dominique's lips stopped whatever she'd been about to say.

"...Your mother..." Dominique began to venture. "Her name was Elaine, wasn't it?" She asked softly.

Robyn's knees felt a bit weak at hearing that name, and she sat down across from Dominique again. "I- Yes... it was." She admitted, feeling her stomach drop. "How..."

"I knew her, actually." Dominique confessed, giving her something of a sad smile in the remembering. "I... think you actually do take after her... Far more than you know, I suspect." She admitted.

"I... What?" Robyn asked in a small voice, her heart in her throat. Where was this... Where was this coming from?

Dominique nodded. "She... came to me one night, all those years ago... when you must have been only a young girl."

"I... Dominique, you can't... please tell me you didn't...?" Robyn found herself asking, her childhood fears getting the better of her.

Hurt, Dominique shook her head. "No... No, she didn't come to hunt me, and I... I never harmed her Robyn, not in the least. I swear..." That sad smile again. "Quite the opposite—you might even say she was my friend... As I told you, the two of you have a lot in common, as it turns out."

Robyn swallowed, her heart beating faster and her chest feeling tight. "Tell me...?" She found herself asking in that same small voice. She'd... She'd given up on it really, after all these years. Finding out? She'd imagined so many things. That her mum had just gotten sick of da and his ways and left, that she'd hit her head and had amnesia like on a soap opera, or she'd... been kidnapped by a handsome gypsy king or something. The obvious thing was that she'd died or been killed somehow of course. Jason especially thought it had been Dominique to—that the Demon had taken both of their parents... She supposed she was about to find out at last though, wasn't she?

Dominique smiled just a little at that, seeing in her eyes that Robyn hadn't lost faith in her after all. "She... wanted peace between us. Between myself and her—your—family... She found me. She saw me one night. I'd... come across a human child, you see... a young boy. He'd fallen into a river, running from some older boys. I'd been perched on a church above. I remember, I'd let my thoughts drift. I heard the small shouts from below, and looked down and saw the scene play out. I saw it happen. Saw the boy being chased. It reminded me of... of a similar scene from my past, long, long ago... I saw him stubble, fall over. The current was strong... I glided down and saved him, pulled him out and sat him down on the shore." She smiled fondly at the memory. "The boys who'd been chasing him certainly got a fright that night. I imagine I must have made quite the striking vision to them, a winged demon descending down from above them—from the roof one of their churches, no less." She remembered. "The boy was stunned and stammered his thanks to me. I sent him on his way home and I went on mine. I was hungry, I recall. Your... Your father, he'd burned me out of my refuge two nights past, but I was in that town for a reason. I... was stubborn. I stayed. I didn't want to run." She'd been looking for the Grimorum Arcanorum, she remembered. Thinking that it could help her with so many things. A fool's hope, she now supposed. "I... found a stray dog that night and cooked it to eat in a clearing a ways downriver. I... I've always liked dogs... but..." She sighed. Hunger could make you do many things, she'd found. "It was what it was. Your mother found me after the meat was skinned and cooking. She'd seen me from a nearby bridge, it seemed. She'd taken cover, apparently. Not that it would have mattered. I doubt I would have noticed her in any case."

Robyn smiled a sad smile to herself. "Even then, you were doing good deeds, it seems." She said softly. "...My father was a disgrace. I've always... I've always thought he could be." She admitted.

"...Truly." Dominique admitted.

Robyn looked up and met her eyes again. "Why... do I get the feeling I'm not going to like how this story ends?" She asked softly.

"...Because you won't. You very much won't. I'm sorry." Dominique told her in all sincerity.

"Get on with it then." Robyn sighed.

Dominique considered a moment. "I want you to..." She looked down, then met Robyn's eyes again. "You deserve to know: I had reasons, those I loved taken from me before their time. I thought it justified... I don't know if it did or not, really—I don't know that it matters whether it was justified or not, but... Your family's vendetta against me, it's not always been without cause. I'm... or, at least I'd hope that I'm... simply not the same person any longer."

Robyn, with some effort, smiled to her. "I believe you."

"...Good. Well, as long as you... know that." Dominique said, looking down at her hands again and remembering them covered in blood. The blood of humans, the blood of that dog... the blood of Robyn's father...

"Tell me?" Robyn asked.

Dominique looked up, meeting her eyes, for a moment not remembering what it was Robyn was asking her for. "I... Right." She let out a breath. "Elaine, your mother... She told me she'd seen what I'd done for that boy. She was nervous of me still, of course, but..." Dominique smiled fondly. "I guess you get your bravery, your forthright honesty, from her as well, don't you?"

Robyn smiled to herself at that, even as she felt her heart breaking all over again for the mother that was lost to her.

"She asked me..." Dominique went on. "She asked me why. Why I'd saved the boy. I looked at her. Saw... Saw you in her eyes, I suppose. So I told her, and we talked... We talked long into the night. I was mistrustful, but..." She sighed. "She left, and I left soon after. I followed after her, at a distance."

"Why?" Robyn asked.

"I... wanted to know, I suppose. I suspected she might try to use the... the fledgling friendship we'd forged—use it to lure me into her husband's snare. She... I'd thought that her seeing me, finding me that night, was happenstance, and standing there after she left me, I'd found myself wondering if she could have been playing me false. I... didn't like the not knowing, so I followed her. I followed her to her home, your home... I saw her go inside... I imagine she checked on you and your brothers, saw you were sleeping safe. Then, I saw her come back outside again, walk up a stairwell on the side of the home."

"Da's workshop." Robyn recalled stilly. Her da had a room on the second floor of their house back then where he kept the... family's legacy. She remembered watching him training up Jason there sometimes.

"Yes, I imagine so." Dominique allowed. "She... went inside. I waited, not willing to risk going in closer to attempt to listen in. I remember I felt foolish at that point, because how could I find out? How would I know what they talked of? ...I was about to go when I heard raised voices, a shout, heard your mother cry out. I turned back... I watched as your father... carried your mother's dead body from his house..."

Robyn broke out in a startled sob at that.

Her heart felt tight in her chest. It physically hurt, in fact...

She breathed through it though, and... she looked down, after the shock had partly worn off, and saw Dominique kneeling at her feet, reaching up tentatively to her. Without thinking, Robyn sank to the floor with her and sought refuge in her arms, letting herself cry.

Several long minutes later, Dominique found herself sitting Robyn down beside her on the sofa. "What... What happened next then?" Robyn asked, at length.

Dominique shook her head and sighed. "Are you sure you want to hear this now?"

"I need to know." Robyn told her stubbornly.

Dominique let out a breath. "The... sun was nearly up. I could not always endure the days without stone sleep as I can now. When I saw... When I saw him leave, with your mother. I would have slain him then but for that, I think." She admitted. "So I left, and I confronted him the next day."

"He... Wait, I remember. He came home that day with cuts and gashes, limping and with a broken arm and he told us he'd almost killed you." Robyn looked at her in some astonishment. "We... He had us packed up and headed off come the morning. Said... it wasn't safe, not until he'd healed himself up?"

Dominique nodded. "I was... I let my anger, my fury get the better of me that night—let him get the better of me." She smiled to herself wryly. "The funny thing is that if he'd come back to the scene of our struggle an hour later, followed the blood trail, he'd have found me face down in the woods, bleeding to death."

"To... death?" Robyn asked. "Wait..."

Dominique regretted her words. She shouldn't have said them, but she had to explain, didn't she? "I... I can trust you, can't I, Robyn? I... have your word that I can trust you?" She asked.

"I... yes, of course, I- You... You have my word. Always." She told her. Now more than ever, she considered—if this was true, what Dominique was saying. And it was true, she... knew it was. Between her da and Dominique, it was easy for her to decide who to trust. Not that it would be so easy for Jason, or even John, she knew...

Dominique nodded. "I can die, Robyn, it just... never takes for very long." She admitted.

"I... How...?" Robyn took in a breath. "No, you know what? Tell me later. For now, just... what happened next? With my da?"

Dominique let out a breath. "When I... recovered, I went looking for him, of course determined to be smarter about it this time, but... I wanted him dead, Robyn. For Elaine, yes, certainly, but... at the same time, I was also simply tired of it, sickened of it... Of being hunted? Of the sorrow, the tragedy of it all? This... just felt like the last, the very last straw... I wanted it to stop with him. I wanted... well, I wanted a better life for you, for your brothers too. I... I felt I owed her that. I'm... Sorry if it didn't turn out quite that way somehow." She admitted, thinking of her own son and how she so badly wished, even now, that she'd been able to give him a better, longer, life. "I... I tracked him down. It took me months, but I found him, and I... ended it." She confessed. "I... I watched over you, you and your brothers, for a time. I saw you taken in by Elaine's sister. I burned your father's store of history and weapons, and I watched, and I saw no signs that Rachel knew anything of your father's family legacy. So I left, believing I'd fulfilled my duty to her, ended the hunts once and for all. How... How did you find your way back to it, if I can ask?"

"Da... He had a second cache, Jason had the map to it. Aunt Rachel, she... died of a sickness a few years after we went to live with her, it turned out... Jason, he kept us together though. Had it in his mind to honor da, avenge him if we could." Robyn explained, looking down at her hands.

"That... is an old tale indeed then." Dominique observed, thinking about how much of her own actions had been undertaken with similar reasoning, similar justifications. Vengeance—for her clan, for her kind, for her husband, for her son... How much did it drive her, even now? Some days, she truly didn't know anymore.

Robyn looked to her, wiped a last tear from her eye. "Maybe it's time for something new, then?" She asked.

Dominique smiled, her heart feeling lighter... much lighter, in fact. An old weight, now lifted. "I'd like that." She admitted, moving to hug her friend.

Robyn hugged Dominique back, gratefully. She'd made the right choice, she realized to herself. She had... just like her mum, it turned out. She smiled a little to herself, thinking of that, even as she still felt the sadness and felt too a new bitterness settle in her heart over what her da had done...

Jericho Lockland knelt before a door to pick a lock. In his line of work, that you'd end up bending a knee to this sort of thing was inevitable. The door he found himself kneeling in front of today belonged to Natsilane Blackfeather—Nick, most called him presently, it seemed. Nick was ostensibly David Xanatos's live-in personal assistant. He had it fairly well substantiated by this point that he and David were a bit more than that though. Not that he was one to judge. What a man did in his own bedchambers was his own business, to his opinion—except, of course, when it wasn't.

When one of his best and only friends was missing and quite possibly dead was sure and certain one such exception.

The lock clicked and the door swung silently forward a few inches.

Jericho stood and walked in, taking an assessing look around. Nick maintained this place in addition to his, now former, residence at the Eyrie Building. Jericho had vetted Nick Blackfeather thoroughly previous to this, of course, but the fact that he'd been seen sticking close to Xanatos throughout all this was a red flag if ever he'd seen one. And then there was that other thing.

Dominique's prediction had bared out. His people had called him on the way here and told him they had not one Goddamned clue what had done that to the armor recovered from Brice's people. So... magic it was to be then.

Blackfeather was an expat from Queen Florence Inland in British Columbia, native-born to a tribe called the Haida peoples. According to the file he'd gathered on the man, he'd once been meant to be a medicine man to his people. So, there it was: The magic.

He'd called Dominique back to tell her when he'd found the connection, but she hadn't been there. Leon Travers had picked up instead. Stoic bloke, that one, but he was one of Dominique's inner circle and he had permission from her to talk freely with him, so he'd left his message and come here.

He didn't know what he was looking for, exactly. Something to go on, he supposed—anything, really. He was spinning his wheels otherwise. Tad and his people were watching Xanadu, he had people with Cole who'd call him as soon as she came out of her coma, and he knew well enough by now that he'd get results faster from his science team if he let them be. He was still hoping they'd get back to him and tell him it was all a mistake, or at least get back to him with something he could use to put up a proper fight against this Blackfeather bloke, or whatever it was they were facing.

He wanted to go and bust some heads until someone coughed up Brice, or Brice's body at least. His folks would get to properly bury their son at the bare minimum, of that he was damn well going to make very sure.

So he moved around the room, appraising everything carefully, looking for that something he needed. At first pass, the living area seemed nondescript enough. He saw the man's tribal influences here and there, and he paid close attention to those sorts of objects, touching a few to see if he got... hell, some kind of spark or something? As if magic were bloody static electricity... He had seen something in that armor though, hadn't he? Maybe he'd see the same sort of... unnatural bent in something else touched by the stuff?

No luck so far.

He was just heading towards the bedroom when he heard something over the hum of the air circulation system.

He turned and, sure enough, there was Jason Langston pointing a handgun equipped with a silencer at him, gaze fixed, hand steady. Looking at him, Jericho did not doubt that this was a man who'd pull that trigger if he had to.

"I... suppose this doesn't look too good for me, does it?" Jericho ventured. He must have triggered some kind of alarm, he figured. Langston was Xanatos's head of security, so it'd make sense he'd get the alert. Only thing was, if that were so... then how exactly'd he get here this fast? No, something else was going on here. Of course, he wasn't exactly in a position to ask questions about it at the moment, was he?

"That all depends." Jason told him, his senses on high alert. If what John had told him about this man were true, he had to be very careful doing this, or he'd end up very dead.

"Right. On what exactly?" Jericho ventured. Keep him talking—for now, that's all he could hope to do. Langston wanted something, he could see that now. All he had to do was play this nice and smart and careful-like... Wait for his moment.

"On what you can tell me about Dominique Destine and what her plans are." Jason expounded.

"Ah." Was all Jericho managed to say before Jason Langston fired his gun.

( to be continued )

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