Beholden never quite understood play.

She \emph{played,} that was for sure. She played with her music, her sound design. She played with people's voices, recording them for later and slicing them up into bits and bites, rebuilding them into some work of eerie or jittery or calming beauty. She played with the sounds around her house, her studio, the whole of the world. She played with acoustics. She played with spaces. She played with echoes and reverberations and dead-zones and cones of silence. She played with soundscapes and world-soundtracks.

She hummed and sang. She played the piano, the drums, the guitar. She played the clarinet badly and the flute worse. She played with A Finger Pointing, their own little jazz trio, their own little big band. She played with her friends, jam session after jam session after jam session. She played her own sets, forking countless times over to play at however many clubs or venues. She played at The Party—several instances thereof!—running now for the last century and a half, a party that never ceased, attendees sleeping wherever, in beds or where they had fallen, with each other, alone. Beholden To The Flow Of The Crowds existed for a reason, yes?

She played as she danced. She played with others, dragging them home for a one-night stand, a few-nights' fling, a relationship that lasted a month or two, but so rarely any longer.

And she played with Motes, too. She really did! She played with her little Dot, tickling her until she said she was going to be sick, or pretending to pick her up by the ears as the skunklet clutched at her forearms. She played dead for Motes when she grew too exhausted to keep up. She lay there, on the floor, eyes closed, breathing turned off, while her charge scampered around, leaping over her, triumphant, hollering about victories, or wept over her unalive-yet-still-souled body at the tragedy—oh, woe! Such tragedy!—of a fallen comrade. Less mother than cool stepdad, she played with her kid.

But she did not understand it. She did not really get it. She rarely thought about it, but when she did, it was more baffling than it was natural.

Beholden was not stupid. She was not an idiot. She could conceptualize things around her, and, as in all the many ways the rest of the clade was, she was wickedly intelligent in her own area of hyperfixation, hyperspecialization. When it came to emotions, though, when it came to instincts and base responses, she could not quite understand. It was not her fixation, her specialization.

She did not really know why she played, because she did not really \emph{care} to know why.

She did not know why she loved, why she loved A Finger Pointing or Motes. She did not know why she loved so few others. She did not know why she felt such devotion to her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—and her Dot in a way that she could not muster for anyone else. She never bothered to question why.

She did not know why she rose so quickly to anger. She did not know why she and Motes fought at times. She did not know why she got so mad when she saw Motes die on stage. She did not know why, when she and Slow Hours fought—usually about Motes's various deaths—it hurt so much. She shied away from ever trying to figure out why.

She just knew that she played, that she loved, she got stuck in her big feelings.

And so when she found Motes huddled in the middle of her studio, all but curled into a ball as she crouched on the floor, when she found her bloodied, beat up, Beholden panicked. She kept it together long enough to help the little skunk to her room, to fork, to bed. She held herself in one piece as she told Motes time and again that she loved her. She held the panic at bay until she made her way to her studio, locked the completely soundproof door, and crumpled to the ground, screaming and wailing and sobbing. She tore holes in the couch cushions with her claws. She ripped acoustic foam from the walls. She threw the table hard enough to shatter it.

And then, when sobs settled into simple tears and not great, heaving things, she waved her paw to unwind the tantrum. She brought into being a glass of water to set on the once more intact table, sat down on the un-torn couch, and moaned through her tears, letting the replaced acoustic foam absorb the sounds.

When she was next able to speak, she began a sensorium message to A Finger Pointing. \emph{``Dot is overflowing, love. She--''}

\emph{``I know,''} her partner interrupted. \emph{``I am here.''}

Quelling her shame, she straightened herself up as best she could, deciding not to fork away the mussed up fur or tear-stains on her cheeks, letting some of that trauma show for reasons she could not explain—validation, perhaps?—and stepped back out of her studio to find A Finger Pointing pacing back and forth in the living room.

``I came as soon as-- oh, Beholden\ldots{}'' Her cocladist's shoulders slumped as she trailed off, putting a halt to her pacing so that she could wrap the skunk up in a hug. ``Are you okay, my dear?''

Despite the stinging of new tears in her eyes, she nodded. ``Not particularly, but I am here. How did you know that Motes was overflowing?''

A Finger Pointing hesitated, frowned, and pulled a letter from her pocket, handing it over to the skunk. ``This. I did not \emph{know} that Dot was overflowing until I got here and saw her door shut tight. I was not at all surprised when you told me.''

As Beholden read through the letter, her lips curled up into a snarl, and she could feel a low growl build in her chest. ``\,`I expect better'!'' she muttered darkly, stamping her foot. ``Jesus \emph{fucking} Christ. `Grounded in reality' indeed.''

Smiling humorlessly, A Finger Pointing nodded toward the paper in her paws. ``I am assuming that this mention of a letter is what took Motes down.''

``Took her down?'' Beholden cried, then quickly tamped down the flare of anger, returning the letter to her partner. ``She was covered in blood when I checked on her. Someone must have hit her hard enough to give her a bloody nose. She was all scraped up.''

A Finger Pointing froze, face drained of color, then nodded slowly. ``Did you get her cleaned up?''

``Yeah, I brought her to enough to get her to fork into her PJs, but she is out hard right now in bed.''

``Thank you, my muse. I had assumed the last bit, at least, and have left her be. I did not wish to add to her stress at the moment.''

Beholden nodded. ``What do we do?''

``Protect our own,'' came the immediate answer. ``Protect ourselves. Protect our Dot.''

And so they did. They made their calls. They brought Dry Grass into the fold as officially as they saw fit, providing her with a house. They set up a gentle watch on Motes, set up alerts throughout the house for when her door opened from the inside, for when the bar or kitchen were entered by her. They sought out Slow Hours for a meeting asking for her premonitions, such as they were. They sought out Sasha for a meeting to confirm that there were no existential threats. They sought out Waking World for a meeting to get a better sense of Hammered Silver's intentions.

All the while, Beholden did her best to remain calm, or to at least push down expressions of overwhelming emotions. There were walks. Many walks. Many excuses to step away to the auditorium or to get fresh air or stretch her legs.

She went always alone on her walks, pacing out along the deer trails or walking the loop of the neighborhood time and again or poking her way among the seats and catwalks of the auditorium.

Or tried to go alone, as always there was someone willing to go with her, asking gently if she needed company, even if that company was silent, or if she needed instead to talk. Slow Hours volunteered. Unbidden volunteered. A Finger Pointing, having spent so many years, so many decades with her, did not volunteer, but did look after her with a mix of worry and understanding in her face.

The only time she accepted the company was when Dry Grass, fresh out of her meeting with Sasha, did not so much volunteer as, wiping freshly-shed tears from her face, ask Beholden if they could go for a walk together so that she could talk. That Beholden had already slipped on her hoodie, had already drank a glass of water, was already heading towards the door suggested that this was a form of volunteering, but Dry Grass certainly deserved as much as anyone the chance to talk through the position she had found herself in, so Beholden reluctantly said yes.

The two walked in silence, both looking down at the sidewalk as it passed beneath their feet, both processing in their own way.

``Hey, uh,'' Beholden said at last once they had made it halfway through the neighborhood, halfway around the usual loop. ``Are you okay? I mean, things are awful, but are you feeling okay?''

Dry Grass started at the sudden intrusion of words, smiling sheepishly over to the skunk. ``I mean, no. Yes, in a way, but also no.''

Beholden smiled wryly. ``Do you think you could unpack that for me?''

She laughed. ``Right, sorry. I am a bit all over the place at the moment.'' She took a deep breath before continuing. ``No, I am not okay. I do not even like Hammered Silver, nor do I-- \emph{did} I speak with many of the others in my stanza with any frequency, but Hammered Silver stabbed me all the same. It hurts to have someone hate me so much, never mind someone who is also in many ways me.''

``And the `yes' part?''

The answer was a long time coming. ``I feel vindicated,'' Dry Grass said at last. ``I feel validated that my estimate of Hammered Silver was correct. She is worse than I thought, maybe, but at least I was not wrong, yes?''

Beholden snorted. ``Wrong in the correct direction.''

She nodded, smiling as her gaze drifted out into the neighborhood, over at the playground in the central area. ``And yes because I am finding out in a very real way that there are still people on my side, that I still have friends. I still get to spend time with you and A Finger Pointing, and I still get to spend time with Motes. I just feel bad that she wound up at the center of this.''

``I do too,'' the skunk mumbled. ``I love that kid. I say it as often as I can, but I always worry that I am not as good at showing it as I could be.''

Dry Grass gently nudged her across the street, aiming for the playground and saying as she did so, ``I think that is something that every parent worries about.''

``I do not know that I am--''

``No, no, I get it,'' she said, taking a seat on one of the swings. ``I know that it is complicated. It is easier for some of us, but even my stanza, even the ones who leaned hard into feelings of motherhood still struggle with what it means to call someone like Motes \emph{their} child. Not just a child, but theirs. You do feel some of that sense of parenthood, though, do you not?''

``Oh, definitely,'' Beholden answered without hesitation, claiming a swing beside Dry Grass's. ``She is my Dot, I am her Bee. It took me a long time to get to this point, though, and even still, it feels weird at times.''

``I am curious how, if you are open to sharing.''

She shrugged. ``Sure, though I also want to know why you are curious about this in particular.''

Dry Grass smiled, shrugged as well. ``Something to talk about that is not my down-tree being a terrible fucking person.''

Beholden barked a laugh. ``Okay, yeah, that is fair.'' She scuffed a paw against the gravel, thinking. ``It was mostly just hard for me to wrap my head around, I guess. I have some of those same desires in me as your whole stanza does, but they were always minimized and pushed to the side. Even boss has way more than I do, right? Like, it is her job to take care of things. She is not really the boss of Au Lieu Du Rêve, she is its mom.''

Holding onto the chains of the swing and nudging herself back a meter or so with her feet, Dry Grass nodded. ``I can see that, yes. It is like how I headed into systech stuff because I cared for the System.'' She smiled faintly. ``I was Lagrange's mom.''

The skunk nodded. ``Yeah, like that. I just have way less of that in me than either you or A Finger Pointing. You are both way better at this than I am. Dot means a lot to me. A whole lot. That we have to have a systech on staff to kick her into forking whenever she dies on stage just kills me. It breaks my heart whenever I see that.''

Dry Grass winced. ``Me too. I will not show up to a performance if I know that will happen.''

``Really? Shit. I am sorry. At least I am not alone in that,'' Beholden mumbled, nudging herself to start swinging as well. ``It is moments like those when I feel most like she is my kid, though. I feel that family dynamic most when she is at risk, you know? When Slow Hours and I argue about that sort of thing, that is when I feel most protective of her, like my sister is doing something bad to her.''

``Was it always like that?'' Dry Grass asked. ``Did you always feel that?

She hesitated, simply letting the swing carry her for a few moments. ``I do not know. I was really caught off guard when she started calling A Finger Pointing `Ma'. I mean, so was A Finger Pointing, but that had a lot of implications for me, too, did it not? I was suddenly her mom's wife, right? Or at least partner.''

Dry Grass nodded.

``So it took me a lot of getting used to.'' She hesitated, looked down to the gravel as she kicked a foot through it. ``I am a little ashamed to say that I backed off from her for a while when she did that. I took a lot of walks like this or went out to clubs on my own to\ldots well, to not be around her. I loved her even then, but it felt like too much. `Bee' is a compromise that felt on the edge of comfort at the time, though now it feels really good when she calls me that. She was so patient with me.'' Drawing her attention back to Dry Grass, she smiled, adding, ``She calls you `Ma 2.0', did you know that?''

Dry Grass blinked, then burst out in laughter, laughing until once more the tears flowed down her cheeks, until she sobbed, holding herself still on her swing with feet planted firmly on the ground.

Beholden waited in silence. She knew well the mechanics of a hysterical laugh-cry—she had at one point recorded A Finger Pointing falling into such and chopped it into little slivers of half-recognizable samples and haunted an entire album with it, so beautiful had she found it—and while her and Dry Grass's relationship did not include a whole lot of hugging, she still nudged herself to the side far enough to rub at her cocladist's shoulder until the tears once more slowed and she was once more able to breathe but for a few aftershocks of chuckling.

``Sorry, Beholden,'' Dry Grass said, once she was able. ``I am a little fucked up still, I think.''

She chuckled. ``I mean, this is a pretty fucked situation, my dear. I would be surprised if you were not.''

They both settled into swinging in silence once more, just a gentle rocking back and forth to calm down and enjoy time away from so much stress before it would doubtless ramp up once more when Waking World was set to visit after lunch.

``Hey, Beholden?''

``Mm?''

``Can you tell me something good?'' Dry Grass sighed, gaze drifting out over nothing in particular. ``Just a good memory about Motes or the fifth stanza or whatever. Something to make this all feel a bit more worthwhile.''

Beholden let her swinging come to a stop as she thought back across the years, hunting for something that might fit. Finally, she said, ``One year, boss got Motes this harness that wrapped all the way around her torso and around her thighs like a climbing harness or something. It let us carry her around like a briefcase.''

Dry Grass laughed. ``Oh god, I cannot imagine.''

Grinning, the skunk continued, ``That was fun enough, but what we would use it for was, on summer days, we would lift her up, give her a good heave-ho and toss her into the pool. She would laugh so hard that she would have a hard time swimming and kept swallowing too much pool water. When it was winter, we would have it snow a bunch in one spot--'' She pointed over toward a spot by the slide. ``--and toss her into it, or let her go down the slide directly into the snow bank. We should dig it out again soon. When she is better, I mean.''

``I am absolutely going to do that if you all are comfortable.''

Beholden laughed. ``To her? Or as yourself?''

``Oh, to her!'' she said, smirking. ``Though who knows, maybe I would give the slide version a go, myself.''

The conversation of good things continued—Motes designing the playground; the slide that Warmth In Fire, Serene, and In The Wind designed that led to a hidden world of ghostly forests if you believed it would; Warmth In Fire designing the chalk lines that followed the two of them as they ran around; A Finger Pointing and Beholden sitting on the stoop of their home to watch the sun set while little ones played in the grass—until they grew weary of the swings digging into their backsides and hunger started tugging them back toward home and what joys they had built began to fade in the face of the immediate past.

With each step, a bit of color once more seeped from the world and a bit more worry once more gnawed at Beholden's gut.

Lunch, despite being a sauce served over rice, was all the same dry and ashen in her mouth as she struggled with so many swirling feelings, so many spiraling thoughts around what had happened.

Still, she managed to clean her plate, managed to straighten herself up for the meeting with Waking World, managed to only yell at him a little bit. She managed as best she could as they did their best to learn what paths forward they had.

She tamped down her emotions throughout, press-fit them into place within her so that they would not spill over into the world around her, bottled them up, wrote a label on the jar, and set it on a shelf high in her mind to deal with later, right next to all of the other jars about which she had promised the same.

She had to, at least for now, at least for the time being. She would someday need to reckon with the person that she had built herself up into. She would need to deal with all of the compromises that she had made in order to be Beholden. She was Beholden To The Heat Of The Lamps! Sound and music director for the troupe! She was lead sound tech! This was the cost of engaging so closely with what had once been her dearest friend's specialty. Michelle acted, and later taught. AwDae was the sound engineer. This was the price she paid for being Au Lieu Du Rêve's very own AwDae. While the others within the stanza, within the clade, may dance with em as they moved through the System, she, of all them, was perhaps one of the most entangled with em. It was Beholden who was with AwDae on her quiet walks, Beholden who was with AwDae, drunk under the stars, Beholden who was with AwDae when she was working. Or playing. Or crying. Or laughing. Or indulging. She could never escape em, try as she might, and so, from time to time, a woman needed a break from grief.

It was her fragility, and the only way she knew to reinforce herself was through setting such emotions aside. She would need to confront that—that and so many other things—but not just yet, not with so much before her.

And so, when A Finger Pointing stood, wobbled, and requested that she take her home, Beholden had been immediately ready to stand up and gently guide her from the library and back to the neighborhood. She let her partner hold onto her to the extent that she was comfortable, rather than the other way around, trusting that she would take only what touch she needed lest she get yet more overwhelmed.

She knew well by now the ways in which A Finger Pointing had changed over the years, about how the crash had affected her.

She knew well because she had seen the exhaustion or fear or slackness in her partner's face when the dissociation would crawl over her, insidious, had heard how she would turn down her sensorium almost all the way just to survive those moments.

She knew well because she had heard A Finger Pointing fall as the world ceased to make sense to her and vertigo rose like bile, had heard the shout of surprise as she tumbled from a catwalk where she had been placing lights, had heard the thud-crunch of her hitting the stage twenty feet below and the note of dreamy confusion in her voice when she realized, ``Oh, I am \emph{quite} broken,'' the tired frustration as she forked herself whole.

So she set her mind to caring for her love. It was as she had always done. It was as she must do. If the crash had shaped the way that A Finger Pointing moved through the world, the way she danced with those around her, so too had it shaped Beholden and her path forward. Even if she did not know it at first, even if her partner had only explained it after the fall, it had shaped the both of their lives and the life of their \emph{dóttir,} brought them insensibly closer together over the years to where they were now: a family true.

She pressed those emotions down and instead lingered on love. She lingered on her devotion to A Finger Pointing, on her protectiveness of her charge, her Dot. She lingered on those good memories as best she could to keep the very air from tasting astringent, to push away the feeling of desiccating sand gritting between her teeth.

Once A Finger Pointing was settled at home and Motes had been checked on, once the message had been sent to Hammered Silver and they had eaten and settled down on the couch for the night to rest, to at least pretend to work, only then, did Beholden very carefully open the jarred emotions from earlier, delicately withdrawing them one by one and laying them out before herself in her mind. She did not touch them, hot as they were. She used tweezers or tongs or perhaps chopsticks to lift them free, nudge them to lay flat that she might read deeper into them.

And then, exhausted by day, by the last few days, by worry over her Dot, her \emph{dóttir}, by worry over her boss—``not your boss'' the common refrain—she just as carefully replaced all of those emotions, still unprocessed, into their container and once more sealed it tight.

She could not do it, could not push her way into engaging with these feelings, these emotions. Not yet. Not tonight.

Perhaps some day she might.
