The Park, Late Sunday Morning

[soniaroadsqueen]

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.]

Comments

[soniaroadsqueen]

"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.

[rebelseekspizza]

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.

[soniaroadsqueen]

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.

[rebelseekspizza]

"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.

[soniaroadsqueen]

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."

[rebelseekspizza]

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.

[soniaroadsqueen]

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."

[rebelseekspizza]

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?"

[soniaroadsqueen]

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 ;)]

[rebelseekspizza]

"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."

[soniaroadsqueen]

She moved again, her head coming up and her eyes sort of staring at him. Not in doubt, exactly, but in something like surprise.

Dante? Talked about, as he put it, "shit"?

[rebelseekspizza]

"Don't stare at me like that," Dante said, pulling a face.

[soniaroadsqueen]

Ringo's head snapped down, looking away from him like she'd been caught at something. Then she sniffled a couple of times.

"You don't talk," she said softly. There wasn't enough energy in it to be an accusation.

[rebelseekspizza]

"I talk," Dante said. "'m just not great at it."

Anders just had a way of making it feel like no big deal.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Oh."

Just not with her.

Though, to be fair, Ringo was pretty awful at making anything feel like no big deal.

"Still." She sniffled again. "It's not the same." Her head shook slightly, sending a little ripple through her hair.

[rebelseekspizza]

"Why not?" Dante asked, raising an eyebrow.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Well."

Good question.

"All that stuff you were just yelling at me about."

That was different, right?

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante blinked at her. "It'd be nice if you stopped going to the crazy act when you felt like shit, yeah," he said. "But doing that's like the opposite of talking."

[soniaroadsqueen]

"I-I tried," Ringo sniffled some more.

"But, I'm not like you." Her voice grew soft again. "Not strong enough to do it alone."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante sighed. "I'm not doing it alone."

Get out your 'things he wouldn't have said a year ago' bingo cards, folks.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"You were," Ringo insisted. "You told me I should."

Well, he hadn't actually said that, to be fair, but it had been implied.

[rebelseekspizza]

"No, I told you to deal with your shit," Dante said. "If that means going to somebody and crying on them for a while, fine."

[soniaroadsqueen]

She still hadn't looked up at him. So it would be pretty easy to miss her whisper.

"Who?"

[rebelseekspizza]

Long pause. "You really don't know anybody who's better at this than I am?"

It was an honest question. He wasn't good at this.

[soniaroadsqueen]

"Who?" she repeated.

If he had a suggestion, she was listening.