A.D. 2013 October
Earth, [REDACTED]
"There are a handful of people I expected would one day show up on my doorstep," Yaijinden mused aloud, pouring from the pitcher of orange juice into two glasses. "You were honestly not on that list."
"Ha. Yeah, that's me. Full of surprises."
The sheer lifelessness of Mango's answer drew his gaze back her way, studying her anew. Where he had merely been curious before, he was now somewhat concerned. Yaijinden and Celeste had known that their attempts at privacy would be breached at some point; the only questions would be 'who,' 'when,' and 'why.'
On a hunch, he opened the cabinet above the sink and procured the bottle of vodka hidden there, adding a shot to both glasses, and brought them both to the dining table Mango was seated at. Her gaze was firmly directed out the window, her legs were crossed, one heel bouncing, tapping lightly on the hardwood floor; it was an interesting sign, for Mango was never that focused unless something was bothering her that she couldn't shake. "How have adventures been with Furu?" Yaijinden asked, taking a long pull of the screwdriver he'd mixed.
"Fine," she said listlessly, taking her glass but not moving to drink from it yet. "Furu's all kinds of crazy. A little clingy sometimes, though."
"That seems to be a statement true of most of them," he mused. "Nothing too intolerable?"
"Nah." A brief, wan smile lit her expression. "He did make me a Valentine's Day heart made out of spines and skulls. That was neat."
"How very romantic," he said, smirking. The alcohol shiver finally made its way up his spine, completing his readiness to get into serious things. "So what brings you to our little hobbit-hole?" Yaijinden asked, hands folded together. "Certainly not the garden harvest, not at this time of year."
"Huh." Mango chewed on that thought for a moment. "Do you ever regret what you did?"
"No."
"Not about adopting the baby. About doing what I asked you to do."
"No."
A pause. "Am I asking the right question? I don't think I'm asking the right question."
Yaijinden grinned. "Take your time," he said lazily, taking another long pull from his drink. "We've got plenty to spare."
Several moments passed while Mango gave the matter delightfully-uncharacteristic serious consideration. She'd figured out this was a Teaching Moment; he and she had them every so often when she had come across something worth thinking about, and he was always glad to provide an whetstone to hone her edge.
It was refreshing, in a way that very few other people had ever been for him.
There was a tug at his pant leg. "Yes, kiddo?" Yaijinden asked, looking down at his daughter beneath the table.
"Mama up," Faye said emphatically.
"Do you want to sit in my lap for a little bit?" With a practiced maneuver, he bent over and scooped the toddler up, sitting her in his lap, where she seemed content to snuggle for a little while. Idly, Yaijinden bounced her gently on his leg, giving a bit of motion, and was rewarded for his patience when Mango took the glass containing her screwdriver in both hands for the first time. "Have you found your question?"
"A long time ago, you said you cast regret away," Mango said, a certain curious detachment in her voice and expression. "What does regret mean to you?"
A wide smile played across his face again. "Regret can mean one or more of many things," Yaijinden said, settling into his seat. "Most of them can be expressed in the English, 'I wish I hadn't done that,' or 'I wish I had made a different decision,' which, like most of English, is next to worthless when it comes to capturing subtleties. One of the cleaner forms, such as I've found it, is the rebuilding regret, where you wish you had not hurt another because it was not what you had wanted to do. It's an expression of compassion, helpful for the rebuilding of bonds you value, and thus has a function."
The young woman nodded, considering. "And you don't regret what you did for me that way?"
"You weren't running from anything," he explained. "And you weren't running to anything. If there was anyone who could have taken the strain back then, when I was handling cardioectomies out like Christmas cake, it would have been you. That and we've bonded as a result of it, so I don't regret it in that sense."
Mango nodded again, putting the drink to her lips and then wincing a bit when she got a first mouthful. "What's in this?"
"Wodka." He thumped his chest for emphasis. "Good Russian stock, the swill they sell overseas rather than the shit they purchase for themselves."
She made another thoughtful noise and then took a longer pull, now prepared for the alcohol shock. "What's another regret?"
"Another form of regret is resentment regret, where you wish you had acted in a different fashion to avoid your current troubles. It's a bit more self-centered, a bit more common, because we as thinking creatures occasionally make the wrong decision." He shrugged lightly at that. "Which doesn't preclude it from being useful. If I see I've caused myself problems, when I'm functioning at one hundred percent, the cause and origin of my problems merely becomes a data point for future reference, to avoid or invoke as I see fit. You're a lot like me that way, which is one of the reasons we get along so well."
A small, pleased smile lit Mango's face. "What about another regret?"
He straightened a bit, shifting Faye in his lap; her curiosity as to what was going on at the table had apparently been sated, and the child was starting to drift off in the safety of her parent's arms. "The third regret is the pining regret, which says 'If only I had done differently'. It laments what has been lost and only laments. It is pitying self-indulgence. The one I was prone to in times before my life became interesting, the one I bargained my heart away to cast out."
"And you don't regret giving me what I asked in those ways, either?"
"I don't." Yaijinden idly traced a gentle circle on the top of Faye's head with a fingertip. "If I regret helping you, I regret creating the you that gave me my daughter and provided me such delightful entertainment."
Mango was quiet for another long moment, still pensive, still thoughtful as she took another long drink of the screwdriver, finishing it off in a single swig. "What happens now?" she asked, absently, abstractly, detached from the question as anything but a curiosity.
"That's a good question." Yaijinden half-smiled and shrugged with one shoulder again. "One I don't have the answer to, either, because the only person who can determine that is you. I do have one that you may be able to answer, though."
"Mmm hmm?"
"How did you find us?" He gestured broadly out the window. "We're not exactly close to Russia..."
"We aren't?" Mango blinked and followed his finger, looking outside. "But I know I was in Russia," she murmured, head canting to the side again. "I was at the Olympics place just yesterday, walking through the ruins..."
"Walk me through it." Yaijinden leaned forward, interest sharpened, leaning slightly back in his chair and balancing the toddler in his lap. "What were you doing before you saw me?"
Mango bit her lip, thinking. "I was walking through a field," she said slowly, thinking aloud. "Snow. Cold. Scrub trees. I was wondering why I'd chosen to come here, and I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake, and I started thinking about mistakes, and I started thinking about regret. And then I remembered something you'd said a long time ago about casting away regret, and I wanted to ask you if you still felt that way about..."
"Go on," he prompted her gently.
Her gaze unfocused, reaching back into fragments of memories, trying to piece things together. "And then," she said, puzzled, "I was walking up your way and I saw you in your garden, and Faye playing in the dirt. How did I do that?"
"You passed through Elsewhere."
Mango's face screwed up in a frown as she looked back to him. He half-smiled again and went on: "It's a subtle technique that bridges gaps in time and space, letting you pass from one place to another. When you set your will towards being somewhere, and the stories of the universe don't have any hold on you-- or believe they don't have any hold on you-- you can effectively walk anywhere you are not forbidden to walk."
Her expression settled into a scrunched pout. "...I don't get it," Mango admitted.
"You may not for a while yet,"he said freely. "You probably have a ways to go yet before you understand. But you can count on this much: when the student is ready, the master appears."
She made another thoughtful noise. "So, you're saying don't worry about it?"
"Pretty much."
"Kay." Mango chewed on her lip for a bit. "So. Got another question."
"Shoot."
"How do I get back to Russia from here?"
Yaijinden made a sound that somehow managed to combine a snort, a sigh, and a laugh, and shifted Faye into his arms to fetch the paper he needed.
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