Things were back to normal, mostly - even if Dan hesitated to define what normal was at all. In Vallo, that could mean a number of different things. But for him, it meant that there was no Overlook Hotel, which was now gray ash and dust drifting across the rocky cliffs - it reminded him kind of like a nuclear fallout, with the remnants still lining the atmosphere. The place was gone, however - that was the important thing.
Normal also meant planning a wedding, ironing out relatively last-minute details (hard to believe the event was mere weeks away). It meant waking up everyday and falling back into a routine - work and home and dropping off and picking up Claire from school and cooking dinner sometimes, and Allison and seeing her everyday and knowing that they’d be moving into their own place soon. That part was actually exciting.
He needed money, however, to help pay for that new place - so that’s where the clinic came in. That day he showed up in scrubs and comfortable sneakers, blinged out stethoscope around his neck and his organizer stuffed full of tools he needed attached to his scrubs. He carried a clipboard in his hand too, heading out to the reception area to collect the next person.
Who was Siri, coincidentally. Looking a little banged up.
“I’d hate to see the other guy,” he quipped. “Come on back, then.”
Siri smiled. “Hello to you, too.” Stifling a short-lived wince as she rose up to follow, she added, “Technically, two other guys. It should have been three, but I got distracted.”
Normally, she wouldn’t have come to the clinic to get patched up. The Temple had ample medical supplies and no one there was surprised when Siri needed to avail herself of them, especially after ‘Fight Night’. After the first one, she had explained to her fellow Jedi the point of connecting with the other people of Vallo on their level. None of them truly bought that excuse though.
Tonight, she just wanted an excuse to talk to Dan. Thin one, perhaps, but she disliked the idea of bothering him when he was planning his wedding and dealing with so many issues with the hotel. So she’d stayed back, ready to help if he needed it. He hadn’t, thankfully.
“It’s helping my reflexes, you know. So there’s reasons.” She smiled, just a little, as she took a seat on the table in the room. The minor cuts on her face and upper arms said that more improvement was needed.
Maybe if he were a few years younger, Dan would have gone for the whole Fight Club thing - as it was, he had plenty of years where he sought out plenty of bar fights anyway, sprays of blood and the crunch of bone, because beating someone’s face in and tapping into a dark kind of violence happened to be the only way he could even begin to connect with or understand his father. Those days were long gone. He didn’t like taking out his anger on other people, though he could understand how Fight Club was therapeutic for some.
And he’d gladly treat any injuries on participants, after they wandered into the clinic post-brawl.
“What’s the saying? Whatever floats your boat?” he chuckled, slipping into a pair of latex gloves after he made a few intake notes on his clipboard. “Alright, let’s have a look.”
Siri didn’t appear to be in too bad of a shape, but there were some cuts and scrapes that needed tending to and some deep bruises that needed assessing, just to make sure it wasn’t anything that required compression. He got started with the water and soap, cleaning around the various wounds, gently, all on her face. “How have you been?” he asked, since it had been some time and - well, then the Overlook happened.
Amused and perplexed both, Siri repeated the strange phrase under her breath, floats your boat, before shaking her head a little. Not too much, as she didn’t want to interfere with him working. She pondered his question for longer than most people likely did, giving it more weight than a conversation starter. “Less busy than you,” she finally said. “Some newcomers from my galaxy, and some revelations, but at least I haven’t had to deal with a dark-powered entity. Not yet, anyway.” She glanced down at a bruise on her upper arm, thinking. “Don’t worry, I heeded your advice and steered clear of it, although it made a valiant effort to draw me in.” She thought about Ahsoka’s experience but thought her friend might want to keep that private. “Are you alright, since then?” That was another ulterior motive, making sure that he was safe. A bit carefully, she probed with the Force, to see how he was feeling.
He felt the Force, the gentle push, and it was like another way to communicate - Dan projected emotions sometimes onto others and could also sense them with the Shining, a way to speak without words; there was a complexity to his emotions like most anyone else. A melancholy that still lingered, covering an expanse like dirty snow and greying a lot of his perceptions - guilt over the Overlook, sadness over Stan disappearing. But beside that there was a happiness present too, the love he felt for Allison as peaceful and serene and sure as the ocean, wearing shimmering stars whenever the next wave came.
Maybe a lot of people had cold feet so close to their wedding, but Dan didn’t. Not really, anyway. He was looking forward to it.
“I’m alright - I hated that everyone had to deal with it, but I’m trying to put the whole experience behind me. It drew you in?” he asked, frowning. He also really hated how persistent the Overlook had been, how it needed to feed off the fear of others. “What did you see?”
If Siri didn’t want to talk about it, that was fine too. He’d just continue to clean up her cuts without asking.
“Not what I saw, but what I heard. Felt.” Satisfied with what she had found with her senses, Siri cast her mind back to her brief encounter with the dread hotel. “I had a padawan once--an apprentice, you would say here. His name was Ferus. He was the only padawan I ever had, for several reasons.” She obediently turned her arm as he checked out a bruise there, although she wasn’t overly concerned about it. “He was a brilliant young Jedi-to-be; kind, observant, disciplined. I could not have been more proud of the person he was becoming. But during a mission of ours, another padawan died due to Ferus and the others not being as diligent as usual. He took it badly….so much so that he left the Order altogether. And my own missions meant I could not keep in contact.” Her eyes grew unfocused as she thought back; she was seeing a different time and place. “I don’t know if he died with all the other Jedi when the Order was wiped out. He was known enough. But either way….the hotel tried to reach me with his voice. Tried to pretend that he was there, suffering and in need. But I know Ferus too well.”
“The energy of the Overlook, its brand of evil - it’s good at mimicking,” Dan said, adding a bit of antibiotic cream to some of the worser cuts on Siri, though none were particularly bad or requiring something like stitches. He found one of those disposable ice packs, unlocking its chilly magic with a crack - and pressing it to the arm bruise. Cold the first day, then heat - not the other way around. The cold first reduced swelling and constricted broken blood vessels.
Either way, it probably felt nice - whenever he used to get into fights, he always appreciated the press of a bag of frozen vegetables on his face afterward. “But you faced your fear? That’s good. I’m glad you didn’t give it what it wanted.”
He was even more glad the damn abomination was gone. “I recognize that the Overlook will always be a part of me,” he admitted. “There’s just no changing that. I just don’t want it to be the only thing that defines me.”
Siri’s eyebrows knitted together as she looked at him, perplexed, even as her hand came up reflexively to hold the cold pack in place. “But it obviously is not the only thing that defines you,” she answered, firmly. “You are….you. A father, a soon-to-be husband, a caretaker and nurse. A willing ear.” She paused. “And a good friend. These are only some of many things that make you who you are. Why would this entity determine more about you than any of those aspects.” She blew out her breath in a dismissive noise. “You take too much responsibility for actions not your own. That thing may be linked to you but it is not you.”
Dan exhaled a chuff of air that was meant to be a laugh, capping the ointment - those cuts were clean and were pretty minor, they could go uncovered. As long as the nasty bacteria was gone then all was well. Siri would live to do Fight Club another day - or next month, since he assumed the schedule would hold and not waver.
“Sometimes logic doesn’t always assert itself,” he shrugged, and he knew all of what she said was true - but emotions were pesky things, especially when you had been plagued by the trauma caused by the Overlook for years and years. It had nearly destroyed him and if Dick’s spirit hadn’t talked some goddamn sense into him - well, who knew where he’d be.
The gloves he wore, he slipped them off and tossed them into the proper waste receptacle. “But it’ll be okay. I’m not going to wallow in it, don’t worry - I plan to focus on wedding planning and being nervous during the final stretch,” he promised and, well, that sounded more desirable than dwelling.
Siri nodded, a bit rueful. “Not all Jedi are logical either, even though we are supposedly trained in it.” Her tone said that she doubted some of the training stuck. “But the hotel is gone. Doesn’t do us any good to linger in the past.” Another lesson. Truthfully, bits of the past clung to them whether they liked it or not, in so many cases. And at the moment, she couldn’t claim to be free of it, not with all her lingering memories of the other Jedi, now dead and gone.
The memory resurfaced, sobering her again. But clearly he had finished with her medical care. “I shouldn’t keep you,” she said, knowing others were waiting. “I just wanted to make sure you were well.”
Yeah, well. No matter how much the Jedi tried to assure their soldiers were stamped free of emotion, sometimes it cropped up - logic wasn’t always going to be there. “I think that’s pretty human, Siri,” Dan pointed out. “Few of us have particularly happy pasts, but - we find a way to reckon with it, since we can’t change it.”
He leaned in and gave her a little hug, a brief one, careful not to press against any bruises that would just cause more pain. “I appreciate the check-in,” he said, and he did. More than he could articulate - there were a lot of folks here in Vallo he could count on and that meant everything to him.
“How about we get together soon? You can help me pick which mask to wear for the wedding reception,” he grinned reassuringly, since he had no idea about that sort of thing.
The hug was more welcome than she expected; but then, her tension levels were much higher these days. She returned the gesture, glad for it. She had few friends, inordinately grateful for those that did exist.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen enough of my fashion choices to trust me on that yet,” Siri replied, with a half-smile of her own. “But you’re offered, and now you’ll have to stick with it. Message me when you have time.” Her quick gaze took in the cleaned up cuts. “Thanks for the non-judgemental care, too.”
“Non-judgmental care is what I’m about,” Dan promised. It was his job, after all - he liked working in medicine; he’d been in this field for awhile, and one good thing about Vallo was that all sorts of new opportunities were open to him (and to everyone else, should they choose to take advantage of those opportunities). Nursing school didn’t cost an exorbitant amount either so he’d be an idiot to pass that up.
He walked Siri out, giving her another squeeze on the shoulder. “I’ll see you soon,” he promised - and hopefully it wouldn’t be for more non-judgmental ‘I’ve just been punched in the face multiple times’ medical care but if so, he'd do his best to help. He always did.