Chapter Text
Walls a gentle beige and potted plastic plants at every window set a soft contrast to the busy sound of nurses moving to-and-fro, of patients shuffling in-and-out, of doctors hmming and hawing. The small hospital was a building trying its best at being comfortable without true comfort. It didn’t fit Serenity at all. Joey hated it.
At least the vending machines had decent ice cream. Serenity had always been partial to the fudge-filled ones.
Nails clicked on the tile behind him, but he hardly spared his shadow a glance – this visitation would be the second in as many months, the nurses looking sympathetic and the doctor’s mouth pinching at the corners as she warned their mother of what to expect in the coming months. Their mother hadn’t wanted Joey in the room for the diagnosis, but what did he care? Like she had any right to boss him around. She was supposed to be the one taking care of Serenity, not letting her get sick.
Turning the doorknob and bumping the door open with his hip, he mustered up a big, wide grin as he flourished the ice cream bars. His smile softened at Serenity’s delighted gasp, and he relinquished the bar to the bright-eyed lemur (-- the Madagascar documentary had left a mark, huh! -) that bounded over with no small bit of pride. He clambered back with barely a word of thanks – more excitement than rudeness, Joey figured - into the bed with an excited babble meant for Serenity’s ears only; Joey, meanwhile, took to the chair right next to her head. With more of an awareness than he wanted to give, he noticed the doctor and their mother were nowhere to be found.
“Ooh, fudge? Thanks, Joey!”
“Don’t mention it. See, they try to hide all the good stuff, but I found them out! You’ve just got to go two hallways down.”
Serenity’s smile rivaled the sun’s. Her eyes crinkled at the corners – one a quarter foggy, a white blotch sitting like an ugly sore, from it’s not bad, brother, I just need glasses to can you sit on my left? My right side isn’t so good…
Stupid, fake hospital. What good was it if they couldn’t even take care of a little girl like her?
“… Joey? Is dad here?”
He froze.
“What?” He gave her a funny look. That bastard wouldn’t be caught dead within five miles of their mother. “No.”
“Oh… I just thought… Well, isn’t that Maizey?”
For the first time since hearing his sister had maybe six months’ worth of sight left (a number with too many zeroes required to stall it longer, and who knew if it might progress further?), he glanced down to his side. Chocolate eyes set in a white, boxy face gazed back at him.
He didn’t know what to say. Neither did she.
Had she said anything since they arrived?
He hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t thought to notice. Serenity had been the priority…
An awkward silence stretched out – it wasn’t broken until the nurse returned. Even then, he didn’t say anything to Danielle, and she didn’t say anything to him.
---
Not until they were away from the hospital. They stopped in an alleyway a block from their apartment, the sun casting long shadows over cracked pavement and crumpled cardboard boxes.
“Can’t you change?”
Voice a whip: scandalized, hurt, wanting to hurt.
“I can’t.”
Defensive, upset. Affronted.
She had no right to be affronted. She’d chosen this!
“The hell is wrong with you?” This was what she was – this couldn’t be what she was! Hands clenched into fists, shoulders a tight band. “The hell is wrong with us? Shift! Come on! I want a—a bear! Be a great, big bear! Or a wolf! I always liked it when you were a wolf!”
“—But it doesn’t work like –“
“’But?’ Shut up! Don’t give me excuses. Be a lion! Be a—remember when you were an otter for a month? Be an otter again. God, Dani, why are you—one of those mutts? Shit, you know, I don’t care, be some slimy slug, just—change!”
“I want to, but this is… -- No! What am I saying? You’re being dumb, Joey! Listen - I can’t! Okay? I can’t! Something’s wrong with the both of us, because I can’t change anymore!”
They said in school there was no choosing your own daemon. Dozens smarter than him had tried to no success. Daemons didn’t listen to reason and logic like that—they were what they were, and they weren’t what they weren’t. Some scientists might’ve said it was more complicated, but it never had been for Joey. The simplicity had always been comforting.
Not like this, though. Not as a mirror image to his bastard father’s daemon.
For the first time since their dad struck out at Serenity and neither of them had done anything to stop it, he hated her.
---
Her name was Danielle, and she was a pitbull through-and-through. Pink nails, pink nose, floppy ears, short white fur and eyes that followed everything, a mean set to low shoulders, chest round as a barrel--- she matched Maizey, his dad’s, in all but height. In that way, she was shorter.
But not lighter. Compared to his father’s, Danielle packed in the muscle. She quickly learned how to put it to use after school when – inevitably – some moron thought he could pick a fight.
The differences between Danielle and his dad’s weren’t worth noticing, though. Nothing stood up to the look of approval that came over his father’s face once he figured out Joey’s daemon had settled.
---
He hated her. He hated her.
---
Tristan tried to comfort him. His own daemon had settled months prior – Joey had been one of the last at sixteen – into a respectable black Labrador, her fur a glossy black and tongue perpetually lolled out in a sloppy grin. Shelby wasn’t anything special, Tristan said, but she was his – and that pride, that affection, it rankled Joey so bad. Why couldn’t his have settled into something better? Dani was his daemon – why couldn’t she have been something worth being proud about?
He’d thought Tristan and he—well, he thought they were tight. That Tristan understood. That nothing would break them apart. And this wouldn’t, it wouldn’t, it was just a stupid daemon.
It was just Danielle, who had changed into an anteater and lumbered in silly circles to make a younger Serenity squeal with delight. Just Dani, the one who gave him the best advice that he didn’t always take, who knew when to shut up and give him space and when to pull at his hair to get him to pay attention and what to say to get teachers off his back. It was just his own soul.
Danielle bit Shelby in seriousness for the first time that week, after the black lab tried one too many times to get her to play. Tristan looked upset, Shelby whining in more than physical pain. It squeezed something in his chest to look at the two of them.
He stormed off without apology, Danielle racing ahead of him.
He bumped into Yugi Mutou on his way off school grounds. The kid’s books went flying, a stupid-looking box spilling twinkling, golden pieces across the pavement.
Mouth twisting into a sneer, words sharper than usual (great, just great, why couldn’t he catch a break?). “Watch where you’re walking, midget.”
Yugi’s daemon clung as a bat to his sleeve, but – “It’s okay, Yugi, I’ll help,” - shifted swiftly into a tiny orange monkey to help him pick up the pieces. Joey’s eyes narrowed at the sight. So the scrawny brat’s hadn’t settled, huh? Lucky kid. Dumb, lucky kid.
“Sorry, Joey! I, uh, just—”
“Apologize, twerp.” Dani stepped with muddy paws on one of the books, heavy head swung low to growl straight into the monkey’s face. It floundered backwards into a fearfully hissing cat, even though Yugi only froze, uncertain, with hands raised. What did he have to be confused over? It was like he expected a different turn of events every time they met. When was the kid going to get it? There was nothing to be surprised about. This was how things were.
But before he could wrap his hand in the brat’s coat and drag him up to knock sense into him, Joey’s eyes caught again on the peel-back of Danielle’s lips, the yellowed teeth a familiar cut in a familiar head, and –
“Whatever.”
Hands stuck deep into his pockets, Joey turned and stamped out of the school grounds.
It took a few seconds, but eventually, Danielle followed.