Bode 'Bishop' Coldiron (minorpiece) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2016-04-20 14:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2019 [04] april, bode coldiron, viktor scherbatsky |
something's gotta give
Who: Bishop Coldiron and Vic Scherbatsky
Where: Bishop’s trailer
What: Bishop and Vic cuddle babies and tackle the things that have been weighing them down lately.
When: April 7th, 2019 - Evening
Discouraged didn’t even begin to cover how it was Bishop felt. Teagan had now been missing for over twenty four hours. A twenty four hours he never expected to endure, since their children had been born he hadn’t seen them out of her sight for more than a half hour at the most, and now here they were going on a day. To say he was beginning to worry would have been an understatement -- and that worry only rose when Teagan’s bike was found, but no trace of her.
Was he doing this dad thing on his own? Had she abandoned him and their children? Bishop couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that she would have left them. Not after she had made it more than clear she had fought like hell to get back to them. Would she have fought so hard only to turn around and leave? That was the question that weighed him down, or one of them.
He had never seen himself taking on the role of father. Uncle, yes, but never father. And yet here he was with two little boys who would rely on him and expected him to fill that role. Bishop didn’t even know where to begin. He had always been able to hand his nieces and nephews back to their parents, but there would be no handing Jackson and Lincoln off. They were his responsibility.
They had returned from their search for Teagan, and Bishop had felt both deeply upset and a little terrified. Upset because as much as their relationship had had it’s tensions, he had been looking towards the future and working things out with her. And terrified because upon returning back to his trailer he would be left with two little boys who might very well be motherless.
Thankfully he wasn’t alone, Vic had come back to his trailer with him, having expressed a desire to talk to him about something. So after Bishop had thanked Bunny and Cherry profusely for watching the boys, the two men had settled down (each with a baby) and Bishop had turned his attention onto his friend.
“So, what’s weighing you down?” He questioned, finding it easier to focus on this task (a familiar one, after all he was Chaplain) and shift his attention away from his own concerns for the time being.
Vic laughed humorlessly, the bitter sound echoing dimly in the space around them as he shifted Jackson in his arms, mindful of the baby's head. The little boy slept on, undisturbed for now. "What ain't on my mind, brother?"
His shooting lessons with Ruth -- something he hadn't yet told Bishop about -- were going well, but whatever the fuck was going on with Teagan had done little to reassure him that he could adequately protect their camp. The fact that he'd overlooked all the double crossing that Sonny had done to them also didn't speak well to his abilities, either. How many people had they lost over the last two, almost three years? He knew it wasn't just his responsibility to look out for the rest of their people, but it weighed heavily on him all the same.
"Just dunno how much shit we're gonna keep getting tossed our way before something gives and it all comes crashing down," he added after a moment, shaking his head. Vic wanted to believe they'd find her, but why would she possibly not want to come back? "We used to fucking run this city, and now look at us."
As Vic spoke Lincoln stirred in Bishop’s arms, but the little boy didn’t wake up. Nothing that the larger man was saying was news to the Chaplain. At one point in time or another he had had the same thoughts, the same concerns. It was a relief to hear that he wasn’t the only person who had any of this on his mind. “Just keeps adding up,” he agreed with a sigh, glancing down at the baby in his arms as his mind drifted to their mother. Would Teagan be the last person to go missing from this place? Or was it only a matter of time before someone else vanished with any leads to go off of.
“You and me, we’re thinking the same things,” Bishop continued as he met his friend’s gaze. “But I’ve got a feeling this conversation’s just begun.” They both agreed that things were looking real dire, but if Vic was bringing it up he had a feeling the other man had a particular thing weighing him down, something he hadn’t yet verbalized in their conversation.
It wasn't the first time that Bishop had picked through the officers' concerns and worries, and Vic was sure that it wouldn't be the last. The man had a gift for it, almost like his position had been created just for him. Of course, it basically had been, just like all theirs had.
Vic shrugged his left shoulder, careful to not upset the baby. "Just keep thinking about everyone we lost over the last couple years." He didn't need to say their names aloud, sure the guilt would crash hard onto him just like it always did when he started this kind of thinking, but he was sure Bishop knew all the names. "It's supposed to be my job to protect our people. So much for that."
While it wasn’t his given role to protect the inhabitants of the Dog Park, Bishop could understand the kind of guilt that Vic must be carrying around over the losses they’d endured over the last year. He felt responsible on some level for some of them as well, how could he have not picked up on the fact that Sonny was their rat? How could he have doubted what Teagan had told him and allowed the Capitol pigs to think for even a moment it could have been her? He was a man who prided himself on his clear judgment, and yet he had been so extremely wrong on both those counts.
“We’ve lost way too damn many,” Bishop murmured, his gaze traveling down to the baby he held in his arms, the one who’s mother was very possibly on the list of lost souls now. “But that ain’t all on you,” he continued, tone firm. “Some of those losses are on all of us, or on me for not picking up on the fact that Sonny was the rat the whole damn time.” Would Jonny still be alive if they’d figured that out sooner?
"Not just you," Vic pointed out, aware that he was doing the same thing to Bishop -- encouraging him to offload some of that responsibility -- that his friend was trying to do to him. Easier said than done either way, he was sure. "I knew about that too, at the carnival. Somehow still managed to miss the fact we went behind bars with a dirty fucking rat."
“We were blinded by loyalty,” Bishop replied, knowing it wasn’t just on him. But it was his job to catch the hints and shit that other people didn’t. Still, he appreciated the other man trying to shoulder some of the blame and relieve his guilt. “And you need to think of the people who have been saved because of you,” Bishop’s expression was serious as he added. “Hell, I’d be six feet under if you hadn’t been there in La Quinta to save my ass.” The chaplain knew his actions inside of the prison had been reckless, fueled by the thought that he hadn’t had much to come back to out here.
Vic shook his head, shrugging off the praise, though he knew that what Bishop was saying was true and the acknowledgement on a personal level did mean a lot. But it was true: things could've gone a lot worse somewhere over the last three years. Small consolation, though, as far as he was concerned. "I know it's always 'win some, lose some.' Just wish we didn't have to gamble with our friends' lives." He paused, allowing a wry sort of smile to appear briefly on his face, then added, "But I guess that's what we asked for when we started doing things the way we do."
Had any of them expected casualties like this though when they had taken on the wolf patch? Bishop surely hadn’t. Of course he knew they were going to ruffle feathers in Austin, but somehow he had thought they’d be exempt from the same kind of losses they had rained down on the Capitol’s department of Justice or the Ghouls. Maybe Noa was right and they did all think they were invincible. “We started a war,” Bishop sighed. “And we weren't ready for the consequences…” He shifted the baby in his arms, the realization having set in that if their mother never returned he was all either one of his boys had.
“Have you ever thought we should do things differently?” It would have been a lie if Bishop said he hadn’t thought about what things would be like if they hadn’t started a full on war with the Capitol.
"I dunno, man." Vic shook his head, thinking about the resistance he'd put up last August. "I thought Rodeo was full of shit back when he said we had to change our ways, but look where we are now." Jackson stirred in his arms, then calmed down after a few small, gentle bounces. He had never known Sasha at this age, but it was hard to not be reminded of how, right before he'd been hauled into the Patrolmen's truck, he'd been plagued with thoughts about how he'd let his son down. How he would make it out of the hellhole that was La Quinta so he could see his family again.
"I don't regret protecting what's ours. If them cats hadn't come after the Dog Park and the LBJ I would've been good to leave them be. But all this shit with the Capitol… All that time we spent piping drugs into the tunnels to flush the Ghouls out of Austin..." It had been so easy to justify those decisions back then. How could they ever trust themselves to make any other choices in the future, knowing what they'd brought onto themselves? Vic felt a sudden, surprising spark of annoyance at Rodeo, knowing all the while his own input in all those council meetings had played a role as well. But still: how had the man they called their leader steered them into this fucking mess?
Bishop could remember the Chapel clearly and the resulting council meeting, the discussion at the time being changing their ways and how each one of them in their own right had voiced concern on that matter. Would changing their ways have had any effect on any of this? Or would the mayor still have targeted them, along with the ghouls and the cats putting them in their crosshairs. What ifs were a slippery slope, one which Bishop knew they could get easily lost down if they allowed themselves too. “But we have no guarantee we wouldn’t still be right at this point if we’d done anything differently,” sure there was that whole butterfly effect theory, but not even that was one hundred percent proven, right?
“Sometimes it all just feels like we brought this upon ourselves,” Bishop sighed, his gaze dropping downwards as Lincoln began to fuss and no amount of bouncing him would calm him. The Chaplain had quickly learned the tricks to calming his children -- Lincoln liked to be moving, So wordlessly he stood from his seat and began pacing in the small space that was his trailer. “The real question is will the enemies we’ve made allow us to change our ways?”
"I guess we'll just have to wait and see." The rain had calmed down and they were now free to move around Austin again, but the Dog Park felt like it was at a standstill now with Rodeo and Teagan both missing. Vic didn't know what the future would bring, but there was no way -- especially now that he had an Old Lady -- he was gonna risk being torn apart from his family again. "We just gotta do the best we can and hope we come out the other end of it alive."