Sorry but I'm really freaking out

Yang Xiao Long (Fireballin17)

to me | 12:32 AM (9 hours ago)

Hey Blake. I know it's been a while since we talked or whatever, and it might be a little weird to just, like, message you out of the blue like this, but I kind of need to talk to somebody right now and I'm not sure who I can talk to, so I'm messaging you. Sorry, I'd normally call dad or Ruby but I'm really feeling like a trainwreck and I don't want them to see that. I guess I know you've seen worse from me. Anyways, if you want to just ignore this message, that's fine, I get it. No hard feelings or whatever, but, well, here's the deal. I found my mom.

I think. I really hope. Or maybe I don't hope, I don't know. Like I said, trainwreck. I've been looking for her for a while now actually. All dad really knew was that she went out East, like 22 years ago, so that was a lot of help. She doesn't have facebook or any kind of social media thing as far as I can tell, but fortunately Raven Branwen isn't such a common name. I had a few leads, but honestly I wasn't super hopeful about any of this.

Tried a few places in the midwest, but they were mostly on the way to this bar in Jacksonville, Florida. It was the best lead I had, her name with a picture of her and a few other people. Apparently they founded this place together and called it The Raven's Nest. Guess me and dad aren't the only ones with a bad sense of humor.

So yeah, a picture, which was great, but it was taken like nineteen fucking years ago, so who actually knew if she was still there, right? Still, best shot, so I had to take it. Side note, I don't remember my third birthday at all, but my dad does have this super adorable picture of it. I had apparently decided I loved cake and needed to share that love with the whole world, so when dad left to go get his camera, I shoved my hands in the cake before Summer could stop me. By the time dad got back, I had packed my mouth full of cake and was trying to smear the rest over Ruby in her high chair. She was laughing and Summer was just standing over us trying to be strict, but when dad took the picture she was laughing harder than Ruby was. When that picture was taken, my mom was opening a bar in Jacksonville fucking Florida.

Sorry, I'm a little drunk typing this and drinking makes me rambly. But you know that. Anyways, thank god for spell check, right?

So it took me a while, mostly because I still had other leads I didn't feel like backtracking to follow up on, but I finally got out East, saw the Atlantic and everything. I think that's been my favorite thing I've seen since I've come out here. I mean, yeah, if you look at it, it looks just the same as the Pacific, but then you think about how it faces the wrong direction. It's the passage to the rest of the freaking world. It was really nice. I wish you could have seen it.

Sorry, rambling again. The bar's still here, apparently it was started as this biker place, so mom was a biker (insert like-mother-like-daughter joke here). The guy who's running the place now said he bought it like, fourteen years ago. He actually met Raven when he bought it, said she was eager to get rid of it, she was tired of being in one place for so long. Quick depressing fact of the day: mom stuck with this bar approximately 10000000% longer than she decided to stick with me.

All he could tell me was that he thought they went north and the group she was with called themselves "Tribal Heartache." At least I'm learning that my mom has always been an edgy teenager at heart. I was kind of running low on funds at this point, so I started having to move slower, take some odd jobs as I headed north. Because I know you'll ask, no, I'm not driving Bumblebee. I took Summer's old station wagon. It took me ages to get it started again, but dad said as long as I could fix it up, I could have it. You know me, I love tinkering with stuff. Hell, half the reason I bought Bumblebee in the first place was because I really wanted to take a bike apart and see how it worked. I'm just lucky he could never bring himself to sell that old car. I've been living out of it mostly. Saved me a lot of money, but food and gas still cost things, so odd jobs it is. Good thing I've got a trade, right? I've been wandering for a while now, trying to go anywhere that they have a decent biker population because a) best chance at tracking these Tribal Heartache people, and b) there are a lot of dumb people who like bikes but have no idea how to take care of them. Plus I don't ask awkward questions like "is it registered?" or "why doesn't this bike have vin numbers?" and stuff like that.

I finally ended up in this city called Augusta. Apparently it's, like, directly on this one well-known motorcycle trail that people love to take, so all the dive bars are also biker joints. Somebody I asked mentioned that Tribal Heartache comes through every couple months, so I've been here a while. I got a job bartending at their preferred place, just been waiting around to see if they would show. And they did. Mom wasn't with them, obviously, but one of the older guys told me that he'd known her and that they still wrote letters to each other sometimes (letters? Geez, not only is she an edgy teen, but she's an edgy teen from, like, the 80s). Last time he got a letter from her wasn't that long ago, it was dated back in July. The return address was for a PO box in Detroit. My mom was in Detroit, like, three months ago.

And that's as far as I got until the "oh shit, maybe I'm not crazy and, like, this could be a real thing what the fuck am I supposed to do now" started setting in. Because, I mean, I didn't come out here just to look for Raven, you know? That was more like the excuse. That was, like, okay, I'll go until I run out of trail to follow and then I'll find a new direction to go in arbitrarily. I figured there was no way I'd catch a break like this. I mean, a few months, sure, she could still be gone, and maybe by the time I make it to Detroit, she will be, but I never thought I'd be this close, and it's super weird and I've been drinking a lot. It's not really helping.

I honestly don't know what I expect you to say, or what you could do to help or whatever. I'm just not in a good place right now and you've always been best at handling me like that so, yeah. I'm sorry. I really need you right now.

No I don't know where I'm going

But I sure know where I've been

Hanging on the promises of yesterday

And I've made up my mind

I ain't wasting no more time

Here I go again.

Sent from: Augusta Georgia

A/N: This piece is something of an experimental collaboration between myself and ElfenLied1012, author of the much-acclaimed fanfic, Choice. She will be writing for Blake's emails while I write Yang's. Mostly chapters will consist of a single email like this, although that is subject to change with the nature of exchanges (a series of shorter emails may be posted together as a single chapter for example).

I highly encourage you to check out ElfenLied1012's other work if you like this story. She's been a huge inspiration to me and the reason I started putting my own stuff out there in the first place.

That's all for now. Cheers.