fandomtownies | The Park, Late Sunday Morning

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The Park, Late Sunday Morning

Crazy Apple was sitting on a park bench, her legs folded beneath her in silence. Her breathing started off slow and steady, almost like she was meditating or something.

The thing about Crazy Apple was that she knew she wasn't really some sort of other personality of Ringo's. Not in the way people usually meant when they talked about that sort of thing. It wasn't the same sort of thing as what Agito and Akito had back home. Neither of them really remembered much of what the other had done, leaving some odd fuzzy areas in both of their memories. But Crazy Apple knew everything Ringo had done, and Ringo, underneath it all, could see and hear what Crazy Apple did.

Crazy Apple was who Ringo became when she felt overwhelmed and couldn't deal with the things she was seeing or doing, but she kept seeing and doing whatever it was, which meant she'd either have to deal with it eventually or keep being Crazy Apple.

Still, Crazy Apple was independent enough to make decisions, and while she wasn't particularly interested in what Ringo ultimately decided to do, she still had little ways to influence that sort of thing. Like what she was doing now: sitting still, clearing her mind of distractions, leaving herself with few ways to avoid mulling over the thoughts swirling in her head.

Or maybe you can start dealing with your own shit like the rest of us do, Ringo, Dante had said. Fake split personality bullshit ain't cute.

Her breathing slowly sped up, becoming a little more ragged, as unformed thoughts of outrage and betrayal and an undercurrent of shame and worry slowly swirled beneath the surface of Crazy Apple's active thoughts. Ringo's emotions. The ones she didn't want to deal with. They weren't enough to push Crazy Apple aside. Not enough to pull Ringo to the surface where she could curl up and cry herself out from too many competing feelings. So Crazy Apple continued to sit there, trying to keep her breathing under control and let those emotions keep swirling.

Wondering if anything would come of it.

[ooc: Open.]

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Well. Fuck. Dante had absolutely zero idea how to deal with this. It didn't feel true? But he wasn't exactly a miracle with feelings, so maybe it was?

"Stop saying 'Ringo'," Dante snarled, because anger was easy. "You're Ringo! If you're so pissed at me, at least fucking say so to my face without pretending to be somebody else!"

Her smile was cold and triumphant, like she'd just won something.

"Everything's gotta be so simple for you. This all has to be some game. I'm faking it."

"She's scared, Dante. Most people run away when they're scared. It's just that most people don't have someone to take their place if they run."

"You're not someone else, you're Ringo," Dante maintained steadily. "But you know what-- I know you. You're that fucked-up part of her that went nuts on me last year, aren't you?"

"Yep."

"And I suppose that's not a bad way of describing me."

She chewed on her lower lip for a couple of seconds. "It might be more accurate to say that I'm the parts of Ringo that she wishes she didn't have. Ruthlessness, cold-blooded calculation, a sense superiority. That sort of thing."

"Fantastic," Dante snarled. "I remember last time we met, 'you' nearly made 'her' do something she was gonna regret. So is this what 'you' do? Ringo feels bad and things aren't changing fast enough, so you show up to make shit worse?"

Her sudden smirk wasn't like Ringo's at all. Way too cold.

"I'm not really the one who decides if I'm around. Oh, sure, sometimes if things get crazy, the line between us starts to blur, but for something like this?" Her lip curled again. "I'm basically the one Ringo hides behind to keep from facing what she's not ready to."

Which almost certainly wasn't an even remotely healthy way of dealing with anything ever.

"As for making shit worse?" Shrug. "Who's to say?"

"Me," Dante said flatly. "You-- she tried to kiss me when she didn't want to 'cause you were at the wheel. And now you're being a fucking jackass to all of your friends while whining about how they won't listen to you. What the hell do you think that's gonna do here, huh, Ringo?"

"I don't know."

She fell silent for a moment, head tilted to the side as if thinking about something, or listening to a voice that only she could hear.

"Maybe someone will pay attention."

Not a fair little dig to get in, but Crazy Apple didn't really care much about fair.

"Or maybe next time you can just come to me and say 'hey, I'm having trouble', like you've done before," Dante said irritably, "Instead of saying nothing and then throwing a monthlong hissy fit at everyone around you."

Sorry, Crazy Apple. But three days hadn't done much to restore his ability to cope, and he hadn't exactly been full of tact to begin with.

"What?" She raised an eyebrow at him. "You weren't grateful that Ringo wasn't bugging you all the time? Banging on your door at all hours, demanding you talk to her about stuff you hate talking about?"

At this point she was mostly picking at him to pick at him, despite the fact that she knew it wasn't helpful.

"I would've rather had that than you being a vicious dick," Dante shot back. "At least that woulda been honest."

"It takes a lot more energy to keep reaching out to people when they push you away. Even Ringo was bound to run out eventually."

"And if it's some sort of dishonesty when I'm a dick, what is it when you are?"

Even if that had been a real question, and not just another little dig, asking it this particular weekend wasn't exactly calculated to get a real answer.

She had him there. But only to a point.

Dante pulled a face. "I don't act like a dick at people and then turn around and whine they're not paying attention to me," he retorted. "Maybe if you - if Ringo said what she actually fucking wanted for once, she'd actually get somewhere."

You know, like the times she'd shown up on his doorstep crying and obviously looking for help, as opposed to all the times she'd shown up on his doorstep, picked a fight about something stupid, and barged off.

For a moment, Crazy Apple's expression wavered. Almost like she was about to wear a real expression on her face. But she shook her head and the moment passed.

"Maybe she was tired of falling apart all over you. Being a bother."

"You made it clear enough that you didn't want to deal with 'that crap'."

Well. He'd said that, but he'd kept right on with the being there whenever she needed it.

"Jesus fucking christ," Dante muttered, facepalming.

At himself or at Ringo, even he wasn't sure. "Look, you wanna hear that you're welcome to come fall apart on me any time? Fine," he said. "You are. But you could've just said so in the fucking first place instead of trying to lay some shitty guilt trip on me afterward."

"You tell someone to stop being a bother often enough, and they might just try to do what you want."

"Besides. All I've done is answer your questions. You feel guilty, that's on you."

Which was total bullshit, and Crazy Apple knew it.

Someone else might have felt nice and/or guilty enough not to point that out, but-- "Bullshit." --she was trying to pull that on the wrong person.

Crazy Apple just smiled coldly and shrugged. A sort of 'you caught me' gesture.

And shifted the subject slightly away from how full of crap she was back toward another attempt to needle Dante.

"You know what surprised me the most? How long it took for anyone to notice."

Probably because folks had been dealing with things a that were a little bit of a higher priority than a teenager's emotional breakdown.

Edited 2017-04-10 12:07 (UTC)

"What's surprising me most is that I'm sticking around here talking to you when all you've got is whining about poor, abused snowflake Ringo, guilt trips and fifty pounds of bullshit," Dante snapped. "I'm done. You wanna talk to me, Ringo, invitation stands. This routine, whatever it is, it can fuck right off."

He started walking agai.

He got a few steps before she spoke again.

"Dante, wait." Those three syllables contained more emotion than the entirety of what Crazy Apple had said. Fear, hurt, shame, and a dozen other feelings swirled in her voice.

"I'm s-sorry I'm not as s-strong as you are. You and K-kathy never need any help."

One last step, and Dante had come to a stop. He actually hesitated for a second, unsure if turning around was going to be something he regretted, but he did.

"Also bullshit," he said, but it wasn't anger in his voice this time.

Crazy Apple's mask was gone, leaving behind a fearful little girl with ugly tears tracking down her twisted face.

"I-it's not," she managed to get out around ragged gasps for breath. "Neither of you e-ever need m-my help, but I'm always b-bothering you."

Dante sighed, shaking his head - at himself, not at her - and walked back to her bench. "Just 'cause we don't go asking your help doesn't mean we never need help," he said - which wasn't something he could've seen himself saying a year ago, but the past few months had been a time for thinking.

Loads of thinking. "You know what I did after the fight last weekend?"

Ringo just shook her head mutely. Saying anything felt like it would take too much energy at the moment.

[ooc: Sorry about the delay. Ongoing work emergency will probably make me slow all day. Also, thanks for putting up with all the drama ;)]

"I sent all of you back home and then I let Anders drag me to a hotel room and we had pizza and we talked about shit," Dante said.

A beat. "But don't tell anyone else I told you that. Anyway, I needed that."

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