Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Lobby

[Jackie Cat]

Jesse made to reject the offer out of hand – c'mon, he wasn't some two-bit performer for hire! He was just doing something nice for the kid! Then he winced and clicked his tongue at the memory of his not having a goddamn penny on him of late. Of course he could earn a decent day's wage doing a mission off the local boards, but he was under-strength and all his intel was years out of date. Best to do the smart thing.

"Y'know what, sure. Ain't got formal pedagogical credentials or nothin', but I know my stuff and I could do with somethin' to allocate my mind to that ain't, uh. Well, y'know how it is."

Yeah. Something regular. Something altogether different than the goddamn box he'd been cooling off in, or the fighting that put him there.

Mercifully, there was food at last, and Jesse set upon it like a starved thing, only remembering several ravening bites into it that he was supposed to be a well-mannered 'mon, or something approximating that. Well, whatever. He was too hungry to care. Half the town thought he'd caught 'going feral' off his wife and kid anyhow.

 

[Butterfree]

Jesse made a face at the offer for money, but then relented. Was he broke, too? Christ. Dave figured at least he had a roof over his head in his old cabin, but... Sage was living there now, wasn't he. Uh. Awkward.

"Maybe for the tutoring Brisa can be there too!" Jean suggested brightly. "What kinda Pokémon is she? Is she a Fire-type, too?"

"Luxio, actually," Dave said. "Or Luxray by now? It's been a bit. I, uh, don't know if she'd join in, but who knows. She's apparently out of town right now but on her way back."

He glanced at Jesse. Brisa wasn't super enthused about her dad, last he'd checked; hard to promise she'd have patience for getting dragged into tutoring a child with him.

"She's a lion!" Jean gasped. At least no less enthusiastic to meet her even if she wasn't a Fire-type.

 

[Jackie Cat]

Jesse scratched the back of his neck, dropping eye contact. "Last I saw her she was a Luxio, but she's been ready to evolve fer a long time, t'be honest. I'm expectin' to see her for the first time in months, ah, any day now I guess."

He banished the dread, and looked at the kid to give her a real answer.

"She's tough," he began, because wasn't that the main thing everyone knew about his daughter? Sure, they said 'half-feral' but what that really meant was tough, tougher than they could handle. "Strong, sturdy, loves to fight. Damn good at it, too. She's always been a bit lonesome on account a' that – most townie folks ain't that tough. I'm sure if it weren't for her fixin' to take up my sheriff's badge, she'd have upped sticks an' gone to live with her ma years ago."

And wasn't that his responsibility? He'd made that choice impossible for her. He couldn't have made her stay, and she was headstrong as anything, but he'd spent years teaching her that the town needed her, enough to strike out the years of the town telling her it didn't want her. God fucking damnit.

He looked at Dave, unable to keep the gnawing guilt off his muzzle. Dave had met Sierra, hadn't he? What did he think of Jesse in light of all this? Did he have a partner of his own? Making a kid in a lab, maybe that didn't need a woman.

His mouth cracked open to ask does the kid have a mama? and then twisted askew as he aborted the question. He didn't know what Dave had told the kid. Townies could get weird about separations, divorces and such, depending on species – maybe Dave didn't care, maybe he did. Hell, he might be overthinking this. He couldn't even shoot a telepathic message to the guy, for fuck's sake. He settled for trying to communicate with his face alone and hoped he didn't just look like he was having some kinda fuckin' seizure.

 

[Butterfree]

Jesse looked noticeably tense about the topic of Brisa, a bitter, guilty look in his eye as he talked about how she might've moved out of town. He didn't mention the bit about the fucking mayor trying to get her hanged, but it looked like at this point he kind of wished she had done that, gotten out of there while she could. Different from what Brisa'd said about when they'd last met - that he'd insisted she should've been staying in town taking care of things in his absence. Perhaps prison had given him time to get his head out of his ass.

She'd always been lonesome on account of being tough. A gentle way to put being hounded and bullied. Jean nodded sagely at his description. Wasn't like Dave wasn't guilty of framing things for her as people being jealous because she had powers they didn't.

Jesse looked at Jean and him and opened his mouth as if to ask a question but then didn't, giving him a meaningful look instead. He narrowed his eyes, trying to decode it.

"Her mom? What's she like? Is she a Luxray, too?" Jean asked, eyes sparkling.

Oh. He was wondering about Jean, wasn't he. "We met her, too," he said to Jean. "She's chieftain of a whole tribe out there. They're very no-nonsense and love battling. You'd like them, probably." He turned back to Jesse. "No mom in the picture on our end. Not much room for dating in my life these days when the kids take up most of my time."

"I had a mom when I was a baby," Jean announced helpfully, "but she was a b-word." Dear God, Jean. Dave dragged a paw over his face.

"Yeah, uh, my girlfriend at the time was not exactly open-minded about the Pokémorph thing. No genetic relation, left a couple months in, never in her life. She was nobody." He didn't actually remember telling Jean about Jane - alcohol had probably been involved - but she'd apparently latched on to the idea of having had a mom enough to bring it up now and then, and every time it happened he regretted everything.

 

[Jackie Cat]

Jesse forked more of his food down his gullet, with the welcome benefit of being less attentive to what Dave was saying about Sierra. No mother, huh? Or, no— Dave wasn't dating anyone! Not that it was, y'know. Any of Jesse's business.

"B-word? Oh, bitch, right. I'm, uh, right sorry t'hear that, li'l miss."

He raised a brow at Dave. If you were gonna care about your kid swearing around folks, just don't teach 'em to. Seemed simple enough to him. Or, rather, it had seemed simple enough until he'd heard second-hand that Brisa had called the mayor a 'miserable cunt'. Oops.

(She hadn't been wrong, though.)

He sniffed, and cleared his throat. Metabolising actual food was starting to put his head right by now. There were worse things than sparing a few words about his ex. Even if he didn't have the luxury of dismissing her the way Dave could dismiss his ladyfriend past.

"I'm... on speakin' terms with Sierra, I suppose," he muttered. "After we travelled the Soja' together, it was unthinkable that we wouldn't make a life together after, in a way. We knew each other inside an' out, and we hardly knew anyone else half so well. But bein' close didn't mean we'd always be at ease with each other. We wanted different things, in the end. I wanted to settle down 'round here and keep it safe; she wanted to go back to her people an' do things their way. She couldn't stand townsfolk or their ways and manners; I was outta place amongst the Clan without a hope of makin' a place fer myself. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for us already havin' had a kid, y'know? We tried passin' her between us for a time, but she was old enough to get sick of us makin' her decisions for her real quick. Eventually she stayed put with me, figurin' she'd take up as sheriff someday. Damn, but I wish I'd at least sorted her a proper fuckin' badge and all afore I set out."

Jesse's paw twitched repeatedly, tapping his fork – clink-clink-clink – against his plate. He dropped it, and looked on (as if observing another body than his own) as his digits shook.

"I think I fucked up," he said, mildly. "I think... I think I shoulda done it all differently."