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mauve-n-arcadia · 4 years

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The Pining of the Void: Chapter 1 The Crystal mines

By Mauve & Arcadia

Deep in a Cave was not Where Glush preferred to be. It was damp and muddy, and he really didn’t care for how much washing it took to get the sweat and dirt out of his jumpsuit after a long day in the mine. He placed a chisel in between the rock and the crystal jutting out of it. The crystal shone a yellow light over his tools, thankfully making it very clear where Glush should strike, and he brought his hammer down on the chisel.

The rock was shunted down a bit and then sloughed off the crystal, letting more yellow light pour into the cave. Glush took off his left glove and wiped the sweat off his brow as he stood up and appraised his work. A good chunk of crystal about the size of his thigh was jutting out of the wall, and it looked like if he wiggled it a little he might be able to pull it free.

“How are you doing over here, Glush?” Glush looked over his shoulder to see the white light of a miner's helmet peeking out from behind him, then foreman Shadbak emerged from the depths of the cave.

Glush made a sound of annoyance, he was immersed in his repetitive motion and beat of his work. He gestured towards the rock as if saying, ‘it was going well till you interrupted’.

Shadbak gleaned the meaning behind the gestures and grunts.

“If you use your axe as a pivot from the bottom that should pop right out.”

Glush stared at the crystal appraisingly, he didn’t mind bashing it till the rock came out, but he wasn’t opposed to making his work easier.

He placed his chisel towards the bottom of the crystal, and it did indeed pop out with minimal effort.

Glush smiled at Shabak and then tossed the Crystal at her. Without missing a beat, she took a large bag off her hip and pulled it open. The Crystal disappeared into the bag with a swish.

“Good work, Think it’s about time we call it a night. We've tapped most of the big veins of spell crystal here, and we ought to give it a chance to regenerate.”

Glush smiled broadly and sighed in relief.

“You look like you could use the fresh air too!” Shadback added as the two of them started their way out of the cave. Glush thought that he could also use a nice long wash, and a cold drink.

As they crawled through bottlenecks and hoisted themselves up steep walls, Glush noticed that the rest of the miners were nowhere to be seen. He did have a habit for being the one to wander furthest into any given mine, weather he was directed to or not. It just seemed like all the best spell stones were in the deepest caves.

Glush wasn’t sure how he ever ended up with such odd talents, but it was just a fact of life for him.

Finally, at the mouth of the cave, Glush Stretched his arms as far above him as he could, and took in the sunset as it dipped below the horizon far to his other side. The yellow and orange hues were only interrupted by a light smear of clouds and Tall grass that went on as far as he could see.

It was a treat to see the untamed wild these days. It almost seemed like all of the land was taken up by some warlord or other. Though he knew that just behind him, atop the plateau stood Belladonna's west fortress, thakfully it was comfortably out of sight.

---

The next day Glush woke up sluggishly. He rolled out of his cot and hit the ground with a loud thud. He made his way through a small labyrinth of cots to get to the outside of the tent and approached the breakfast pot.

Today’s breakfast was a rather grey gruel, but Glush ate it all the same. The excuse for the poor breakfasts was that they hadn’t been meeting the quota, so the company couldn’t afford the proper meals. Glush knew it was more of a punishment.

Shabak of course, was already seated and eating. She was an early riser. Glush made his way to the pot, and ladled out some grey for himself in order to join her.

They ate in companionable silence. Every time Shabak opened her mouth to make small talk, Glush would spoon more gruel into his own mouth to avoid answering. She still found occasion to prattle on.

“Your numbers up yesterday, but everyone else's were down….we may need to move on from this location soon, or dig new tunnels.”

Glush fought a glob of slop down his throat, and cleared it to speak. His first attempt came out as a crackling squeak, then he tried again.

“Dig more and fort fall down into land.” Glush jammed another spoonful of the muddy grey in his mouth so he had an excuse to stop speaking again.

“Hah! I’d love to see the warlords fort sink into the earth as much as anyone, afraid that even though there are a considerable amount of tunnels in the plateau, it is nowhere near collapsing, which even if it’s good for Belladonna, it’s also good for us!”

Glush grunted, unconvinced. He was at least half sure that his deathbed would be under a ton of rocks, and probably one of the warlord’s shoddy fortresses one of these days. There wasn’t much he could do about it except hope it didn’t happen though. Spell crystal mining was about the only job that he could get.

Well, it was the only job that best fit him, He was qualified for it, it made him enough money to get by and buy the odd instrument here and there, and he didn’t have to talk to anyone. It was pretty absurd how many jobs required you to speak. That was never something Glush was very good at though.

In fact, Shadbak was probably the only person Glush had spoken more than a brief introduction to in years, and that was only because she would talk to him all the time.

He didn’t mind it much. Shadbak knew better than to expect a verbal response for the most part, but after they had been working together for about a year, she was too curious to not ask questions.

Speaking of which, she had that glint in her eye that meant she was probably about to ask him something. Glush put his spoon down and braced himself.

“So why the piccolo? You’ve been saving up for a nice instrument as long as I known you and you buy that tiny thing? It’s not even made for Orc hands.” she held up her own hands showing her broad palms, regular sized for an orc lady, but absolutely monstrous compared to human hands that such delicate instruments were made for.

Glush huffed. Questions about why he does what he does were the worst, because they were hard to answer, and when he did, Shadbak was rarely ever satisfied with his response.

Glush didn’t know how to articulate the answer she wanted. The piccolo just felt right, and sounded nice.

“Pick - low, not that small…” Glush struggled to find the words, “Sound nice. Like… hmm.” Shadbak was still giving him an expectant look, and he couldn’t think of any better words, So Glush fished the tiny instrument out from the inner pocket of his dust covered vest and began to play.

His large fingertips did not falter on the tiny machinations of the piccolo and for the brief moments he played he felt free. The notes danced in the air and flew from his lungs like a flock of birds out of a tree.

When he finished he stored the piccolo back carefully and looked at Shadbak, her eyes looked a little glazed over.

“Okay, I guess that’s a good enough reason.” She said. “You know with talent like that, you could easily make it as a minstrel. Nobles would pay fine for your little song twig.” Glush chortled and stuffed his mouth, making it clear he was not going to say anything else.

Shadbak looked thoughtfuly at Glush. “I guess it might be difficult since the nobles don’t care much for Orcs.”

Glush nodded, giving her a look like ‘duh.’

She got up and gathered her dishes, patting glush on the back as she walked by. “Their loss, we get to have the best flutist this side of Yshvid, and we’re just humble miners!”

Glush shortly followed her and got ready to start his day in the mines.

---

As he began to fall underneath the shadows of the plateau his ears perked to the sound of hoofbeats approaching rapidly.

An armoured figure appeared atop a grey warhorse.

They pointed menacingly. “You there” they snarled. “Where is the foreman”

Glush blinked a few times at the regalia of the knight and their steed. They were covered in checkered purple and green, and the hanging fabrics were decorated with purple bells. The whole display was a little ridiculous, as was the usual sensibilities of nobility.

Glush though, then he shrugged at the knight's question. He really didn’t know where she went after breakfast. She could be in her tent, in the mine, wherever she damn well pleased really.

Glush couldn’t see the Knight lips curl underneath their helmet, but he could certainly hear the acid tone in their voice.

“Well perhaps you should find him” and they tapped the insignia on their shield, a purple flower.

Glush turned without acknowledging their request and walked into the mines. He didn’t feel like dealing with nobility right now, and though the caves were never comfortable, their silence and isolation was welcome.

Well, relative isolation. The other miners kept to themselves, simply nodding and smiling at glush as he passed by. That wasn’t bad though, as long as nobody tried to talk to him, he actually enjoyed company.

He saw Shadbak sizing up a fresh outcropping of spell crystal. The vein was too small yesterday to really do anything about, with crystals smaller than a fist, but overnight it had grown drastically to the size of the crystal he had finished with yesterday.

She looked over her shoulder to see who was shuffling up behind her and smiled at Glush.

“Got a real good one right here, Not sure if we should take it though. Spell stone that grows this fast may be part of a node.” She felt her hand along the shining surface of the spell crystal. Glush didn’t understand much about the mechanics of magic, but he knew that if this vein was part of a ‘node’ it would be better left alone.

“Hmm. well, don’t really have enough time to figure it out, you and I gotta pick up the slack for the rest of the team, I’m tired of gruel for every meal!” She motioned for Glush to follow, and they both descended deeper into the cavern.

---

Glush and Shadbak fell into a familiar rhythm, She would guide him to the best spell crystals, tell him the most efficient way to pry it from the walls, He would make a few deft whacks, and toss the Rough gemstones into Shadbak’s bag. Time passed easily this way, and Glush had almost completely forgotten there was a knight waiting outside for the forman.

He held the spell crystal he just mined and paused, breaking their rhythm.

“What is it?” Shadbak asked.

“Knight, outside.”Glush said.

“Huh?” Shadbak’s face quickly went from one of confusion, to one of sudden and urgent realization. “You left a KNIGHT waiting outside this whole time?”

Glush shrugged.

“UGH, you are just awful sometimes.” She didn’t really sound serious, but it was clear she was annoyed.

Shadbak rushed out without another word. So Glush just...kept working. Without Shadbak guiding him, he found himself venturing deeper and deeper into the system. But there wasn’t much to be gleaned. Glush recognized all these tunnels from the many days spent in them before.

He was working on a rather stubborn crystal. Losing himself in the rhythmic clunk, clunk, clunk, of his axe, when he barely was able to make out the gathering bells at the front of the mine.

He gave the crystal a few last hurried clunks before it popped out, then gathered his meager findings in his arms to be deposited, and meandered topside.

Shadbak was already giving the others the news.

“We will be moving west, we’ll need to be packed up first thing in the morning” She announced.

Glush left his pile with the others for Shadbak to collect.

“But I don’t want to get farther away from my family's village!” One of the Orcs protested. Glush couldn’t remember his name.

“Then don’t come!” Shadbak exclaimed. It looked like she was getting frustrated with the pushback. They all knew we’d have to move on from this mine eventually.

“We’ll be meeting up with another mining company, so there will be plenty of workers to go around. AND, they are paying us 15% more per crystal at this location!”

The crowd murmured at that. Goodbye gruel, hello stew.

“I need everyone up and packing by 7am.” And that was the last of the speech. She found Glush at the edge of the group and locked eyes with him. The harshness in her face eased into more of a scolding look. Glush figured that maybe he was actually supposed to follow Shadbak out, and he pulled nervously at his collar as she approached.

“You hear all that?” Glush shrugged and nodded yes at the same time. He only heard the tail end of her announcement, but he got the important bit. Shadbak sighed. “Look, next time Belladonna sends a knight to our camp, don’t just blow him off. We’re lucky this was just about a job she needs us for.”

Glush shrugged again and smiled.

“Don’t pull that innocent bullshit on me, Glush! Now get your green ass in gear and get ready to go!”

---

#fantasy romance #gay orcs #orc #fantasy #romance #original writing #orc fag smashes some rocks

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navigatorwrongway · 6 years

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No-longer Secret Sherlolly Santa Gift

My assigned giftee was the lovely @mychakk, for whom I wrote a primarily Molly-centric wing!fic. Very sorry that it took this long, but I do hope you enjoy it!!

Molly is 13 years old the first time she grows a feather. She is woken up in the middle of the night to the unpleasant sensation of something tickling her upper back on the left side. She figures it might be the monthly shedding of the uterine lining they were warned about in Health Class, but truly confounding brush down of her lower self reveals no blood. Still, a shower might do her some good. It’s only after looking in the fogged-over mirror does she see it – thin and cream colored, like the one that’s framed in the living room, a memento from the doves released at her parents’ wedding. After the obligatory panic attack at discovering that she’s broken just about every rule of biology she can think of (Some sort of strange mutation? Is she the first of a new species? Homo Avies? No, evolution takes time. One minute change in DNA does not turn a perfectly normal teenage girl into a giant budgie. Or something), she lies awake in bed for number of hours before dashing for the library. Thankfully, it’s a Saturday, so she’s able to lurk in the biology section of the public library that will become her usual haunt without interruption. The next month is spent scouring book after book for information, maybe even an explanation, because, hello, humans are not supposed to suddenly turn into birds.

By the time summer vacation starts, she has two dozen or so feathers that cover the raised mounds that seem to be attached to her scapulai, and has only gotten more confirmation that whatever’s happening to her shouldn’t be. Since her inability to wear any loose tee or tank top with her new appendages really limits ways to spend hot summer days, Molly holes up in her room with every anatomy book she can get her hands on (in the long, lonely hours of her self-imposed exile, she decides that she’s going to be a pathologist).

Mid-July, her best friend calls her, presumably to invite her to come over. Molly lets the phone ring out.

When her friendship with Katlyn dissolves after 9 years of fantastic adventures and later, shared confidences of crushes and hopes for the future, it feels like her world collapses around her. Her father notices, too.

At first, Tobias Hooper is ecstatic that his daughter has decided to follow in her mother’s footsteps, judging by all the science textbooks she’s been hoarding. Then he finds her curled in a ball in the bathtub surrounded by torn-out feathers, spattered with blood and sobbing because it’s all too much and why can’t she just be normal and it hurts it hurts ithurtsithurtsithurts. He holds her until they fall asleep, his beloved daughter cradled in his arms once again. He joins in her quest for an explanation then – two heads are better than one and all that. He helps her organize a system to keep track of how the appendages grow and how to monitor her caloric intake; before she sprouts more feathers, she gets very, very odd cravings. In secondary school she’s the quiet, pale bookworm that wants to study the human body, of all things.

When her advanced biology class begins dissecting fetal pigs Molly is partnered with a tall, lanky boy who declares her to be “slightly less incompetent”. For some reason, the way his eyes (Blue? Green? A mixture of both, she decides, with a splash of grey thrown in) skate over her, pulling her entire life into the light for all to see (he either misses the fact that she has wings [proper wings now, she can move them a little, if she tries] – which is unlikely – or ignores it – even more unlikely), makes her feathers tingle in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant. They aren’t friends (“I don’t have friends, Molly.”), but he tolerates her. He gets bored to the point that he’ll deduce complete strangers for her amusement and she’ll quiz him on decomposition rates or the implications of different types of striations that can be found on corpses. She finds that her wings grow faster when she’s in close proximity to the ornery genius. She can’t say that it’s pleasant, but she’s willing to bear the discomfort for his company.

Once, she grew three feathers in a day while helping him try to convince the police that Carl Powers hadn’t committed suicide. Despite their best efforts, the investigators were unconvinced, and Sherlock had retreated into what he termed his “mind palace” for hours on end. Therefore, her near-constant shifting and stifled whimpers went unnoticed. After that he starts using his skills to solve local mysteries and disappearances, dragging her along with him more often than not. This comes to an end when they go to different universities, though she texts him occasionally with any observation of particular note. He never replies. She tells him the address of her matchbox of a flat in one of the last messages, with an invitation to drop by sometime (she’d be happy to have a roommate, flatmate, whatever, but certain things rule that out [Those certain things are about ten and a half feet across by now, with more joints than any bird wing she’s ever seen. Makes them a bitch to unfold, but admittedly does help conceal them under layers of baggy jumpers with the backs cut out]).

She never actually expected him to show up at two in the morning, looking (and smelling) like he hadn’t seen the business end of a showerhead in a month, pupils the size of dinner plates, and telltale track marks along his arms. As shocked as she is, she simply pulls him into the relative warmth, and goes to her room to see if there’s anything he could wear. One of her dad’s old shirts and sweatpants from when he last visited in hand, she steps back into what serves as her living room to find him… Pissing in her hall closet. Perfect. Wonderful.

“Um… Hey, Sherlock? What are you doing?” He glares at her in the isn’t-it-obvious-you-idiot way he’s mastered. Its effect is lessened, however, by the glazed, unfocused quality his eyes have taken. Oh, god, how is she supposed to deal with this? What took her closest non-friend, her ornery, brilliant, gorgeous non-friend and brought him this low? First things first, Molly-girl, an internal whisper that sounds (almost disturbingly) like her dad tells her. Right. Personal hygiene, then.

She steers Sherlock into the bathroom and leaves the clothes on the toilet seat. Get food, pipes up the voice. A grilled cheese is always good, right?

Bread? Next to the instant ramen. Cheese? Fridge, under the lettuce. Butter? Butter dish. Can of tomato soup? With all the other cans of soup. Can opener? Unemptied dish drainer. Pan? Already on the stove. Where you put it not five minutes ago, Molly, you dolt.

So focused (sort of) on her task that she didn’t hear the opening of the bathroom door, Molly only becomes aware of someone watching her when her feathers fluff up of their own accord as if to make her appear larger – ridiculous, yes, but instinct was instinct.

And then he’s lurching towards her, very little of his typical catlike stealth and grace evident (or is this clumsiness his new[ish] usual? Oh, god. How could she not have at least checked up on him? Then she would have known earlier, and she might know what to do now…) in his movements. Whatever he’s taken (Morphine, Molly suspects) has made him sluggish, allowing her the reaction time to dart out of reach from the hand that’s grasping at her wings.

Wings.

Oh, bollocks.

In her feverish panic regarding Sherlock, she’s completely and utterly forgotten that her sleepwear (a tank top and fuzzy pajama pants with little penguins) really don’t help conceal her feathered friends. At all. Which obviously poses a problem. Because wings. Is it too much to hope that he wouldn’t mention it? Probably, but that didn’t change the fact that Molly would wait until he (inevitably) brought the topic of her additions up.

Damn near miraculously, Sherlock doesn’t question her wings for his entire visit (if that’s the right word. She’s not quite sure). In fact, he barely speaks a word while he’s there, just staring at her with those ohgoditssowrongforthemtobesohazy eyes of his. He collapses on her ratty foldout sofa-bed, having been borderline force-fed soup and half a sarnie, about two hours after he first turned up on her porch. She keeps vigil over him that night, in terror that him might drown in his own vomit if she doesn’t watch him, after she cleans up the repurposed wardrobe. She must have dozed off at some point, though, because he’s long gone when she wakes up with a crick in her neck from sleeping in her beaten armchair. She can’t stay to see if he’ll be coming back – she has an interview with a Dr. Stamford at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

She gets the job. It’s just a position as an underling in the mortuary, but she can’t imagine working anywhere else. Her supervisor isn’t Mike, but a sexist, nasty, crotchety old toad whose hands shake to the point that she has to physically restrain herself from ripping the scalpel away from him before he cuts himself, her, or parts of the body that aren’t supposed to be cut. The hospital makes up for it, though, particularly the roof. On long, empty night shifts she can sometimes sneak up to the roof and spread her wings without fear of being seen. As long as she keeps low enough, she can glide and practice staying aloft and work on carrying increasingly heavier weights for longer when she feels the need.

Her co-workers notice her odd fondness for the place, and it officially-unofficially becomes recognized as ‘Hooper’s Territory’. At least, that’s what Molly gleans from overhearing Meena warning a new lab assistant away from the space. She can’t say she’s displeased.

It all goes very smoothly, until she’s called on by Scotland Yard to assist on a case that has their usual pathologist stumped. Once she finds a piece of evidence that eventually puts the nail in the case’s proverbial coffin (Seriously, why didn’t anyone think to check inside the upper lip?), the dubious honor of being one of the main contacts is hers. Over time, she strikes up friendships among the force, particularly with a charming older Detective named Lestrade, and to a lesser extent, Sally Donovan. Phillip Anderson was summarily banished the day he tried to tell her how to do her job (as if she doesn’t outrank him in pretty much every category except maybe socialization skills).

A year goes by, and nothing goes overly horrifically wrong, save Meena’s one and only attempt to set her up with a friend of a friend (she adamantly refuses to talk about why a documentary on Ireland’s Hooper swans sent her into peals of hysterical laughter, and everyone except for Caroline eventually lets the matter rest). And then Greg tells her that he’s bringing in a consultant – a private detective, outstandingly brilliant, apparently. As it turns out, she probably should have asked for a name.

#mar wrote a thing #fic #sherlolly #sherlolly fanfic #SSS 2017 #sherlolly secret santa 2017

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canadian-riddler · 7 years

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The Oldest Riddle

By Indiana

Characters: Edward Nygma, Jonathan Crane [Scriddler], Jacqueline Boudreau (OC)

Synopsis: Edward has located his mother and makes the trip to see her, but the result is not what he expected.

Note: In my series Jonathan was abandoned at birth on the steps of a boarding house in Georgia and largely neglected by the woman who ran it. Edward was given a stack of photographs of his mother in ‘Like Father Like Son’ which is referenced here. At this point in my timeline Edward and Jonathan are retired in Toronto.

AO3 en francais

It had taken him years to make this decision, but here he was.

He had previously made many excuses for his inability to locate her. He had no name, no face, no voice, even, to use as a starting point. No marriage certificate. No evidence, really, that she had ever existed.

Except for himself, of course.

On a whim he still did not know the origins of he had packed the stack of photographs given to him by his informant in Trois-Rivières into his getaway suitcase. He had crushed most of them into ruin but one of the pictures of her was intact. He had memorised the photos when first he’d seen them, but having a physical object helped to sharpen his focus. He had looked at it quite extensively on the plane east. You couldn’t glean much about a person from a photograph. Many of them held only lies. The one he had used as the basis for his search was the physical evidence of an event that had sent forward a lifelong set of falsehoods for his father, who had pretended to be one person to the outside world and let only one other see the truth of himself. More importantly, however, that picture told him the person he was searching for had once attended a certain university. It had taken a while to peruse the student records of an institution of that size, but once he had come upon her the resemblance to the photographs he had were unmistakeable. He had a name: Jacqueline Boudreau. From there it was simple enough to match the information he took from the university to the most recent New Brunswick census. He would find her in Grand Falls.

He’d debated whether or not he should actually act on this information. She’d left. She didn’t know who he was, or if he was even still alive. She did not care to track him down.

Well. He hadn’t made it easy to do that, so even if she had she would not have gotten very far. His name change had not been drastic, but it had been enough.

After asking Jonathan for approximately the twentieth time what he should do, Jonathan had finally snapped, “If you did not want to go you would not keep asking me whether you should! You would have lost interest!”

“Huh,” Edward had said, because as usual Jonathan made a good point.

“Book the damn plane to Nova Scotia already.”

“New Brunswick.”

“I don’t know where either of those places are anyway so it does not matter where I tell you to go. Just go before I lose my mind.”

And Edward had, but not before asking a few more times to make sure.

So here he was. In Grand Falls, New Brunswick, down the street from Jacqueline’s address. He could not quite think of her as his mother. And why should he? She wasn’t, in most senses of the word. She had carried him and bore him and… done something with him for approximately eight years, but did that even count if he didn’t remember it?

Would she?

He’d come all the way here. He might as well.

He got out of the car he had rented at the airport and walked down the street to the woman’s house. One storey with a car shelter, in good condition from the outside. He took a moment to choose between the doorbell and knocking and decided on the latter.

Only a few moments passed before a young woman opened the door; his stomach clenched in anticipation when he saw the doorknob turn, but this was definitely not her. Far, far too young. “Um… hi,” she said.

“Is Jacqueline at home?” he asked. She better be, because he did not want to have to come back.

“Yes. Who are you?”

He hesitated. If he provided his name, Jacqueline might well refuse to see him. He couldn’t have that.

“I believe she’ll recognise me.”

The woman squinted at him somewhat and closed the door. He listened for the click of the deadbolt but it didn’t come. He waited another minute or so before the door opened again and behind it was a different woman who was unmistakeably the one in his photographs, albeit more lined and with thinner, fading curls. She stepped back when she saw him, face paling. “Edwin?” she said faintly.

Edward found himself shaking his head slowly, the motion barely even qualifying as such. He found he had nothing to say, suddenly, when he’d had so much he wanted to say before. She looked at him for a long time.

“…Édouard,” she said finally, softly, and something about it got to him. He wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe he, somehow, had a trace of the memory of her voice buried deep in his brain someplace, and he was helpless but to respond to it. Perhaps it was simply the fact that he had not heard his name pronounced properly in thirty years. He’d convinced himself a long time ago it didn’t matter. It seemed to far more than he’d ever thought it would.

That seemed an accurate initial summary for his trip at the moment. And a terrible one, given he’d meant to have the upper hand for this as he had in all things. Having all of those largely unpleasant feelings scrambling his thoughts left him blank on what to say. He had never lacked words for so long in his entire life, and now was a terrible time for it to be happening. Before he’d had much more silence with which to humiliate himself she opened the door further and stepped back. “Do you want to come inside?”

He didn’t, he realised; he did not want that at all. But here he was doing it, crossing her threshold and sliding his shoes into her shoe rack and following her into her home. He gritted his teeth. There was a very vocal portion of the back of his mind relating to him just then how pathetic he was to hand control of his life back over to a woman who had willingly absented from it. He hated it because it was true. It was extremely pathetic and he bitterly asked himself how long he was going to keep doing it for. And why. He had no idea.

He also was starting to realise he didn’t actually know why he was even here. He’d been so focused on the journey he had neglected to make a plan for when he arrived at his destination. As he followed after her he found himself flabbergasted by what he was allowing to happen. This wasn’t like him. This wasn’t like him at all!

The front door led directly into the kitchen, which was somewhat cramped given there was an island spaced too close to the opposite wall. It was done up mostly in browns and the furniture seemed dated, but serviceable. The sitting room was further on from that, with more brown and some red accents. She showed him to the couch, which sank farther beneath his weight than was to his liking. She sat on the other side.

He looked to the opposite wall of the room, not because there was anything of particular interest over there but because all semblance of language seemed to have disappeared from his brain. This was ridiculous. When had he ever been without something to say?

“How far did you come?” she asked. It took him a moment of calculations before he realised she probably did not actually desire the distance in kilometres.

“Toronto,” he answered.

“The train?”

“No,” he said, confused. She shook her head, looking as though she thought he had missed out on something exciting.

“You see so much more on the train,” she told him.

Ah, yes. Might as well sightsee on the way out here, right? That wouldn’t have been a complete waste of his time at all!

The first thing of real significance he learned about her was that she did love to talk. She seemed quite content to direct faltering topics onto new avenues of conversation, and she was in fact quite clever and entertaining. He discovered that he liked her. He hadn’t expected to, nor really wanted to. But there it was.

She had remarried after returning to New Brunswick and had two children, and he had expected to hear that but had been unsure of what his reaction would be if he did. To his surprise, he found that he didn’t really have one. He was neither jealous nor resentful, and he did not have any particular desire to meet them. When she spoke of them, there was no real emotion in her words at all. Jacqueline just did not like children and seemed to have ended up with them anyway. Edward understood that completely. Jonathan disliked them as well and had no interest in Edward’s in the slightest. Jacqueline did ask if Edward himself had any children, but without looking at him and in an almost automatic way. He provided the barest details and she expressed no desire to know any more than that.

It was difficult, at first, to be faced with it. To be there in a room with her and the increasing obviousness that she did not care about him or what he’d been doing. She was doing this out of courtesy and that was all. He couldn’t pretend that didn’t hurt. He had gone into this with minimal expectations, but he had still expected something from her. Something more than an exchange between one stranger and another. As though there should have been some intangible connection between them borne in those eight years he didn’t remember. He was beginning to wonder if she was the one and only thing he’d ever forgotten intentionally.

Eventually they both realised it had grown dark in the room and Edward did not know where the lightswitches were, and Jacqueline stood up to rectify that. The conversation lapsed here and there was a moment in which it was clear neither of them quite knew where to pick it up again. Finally Jacqueline said, “I’m sure you have some questions for me.”

He looked over at her. At his mother. The woman who had brought him into being and then left him behind, as though he had not mattered.

No. This was not his mother, and he was not who he had been back then either. She had moved on, and he had… done something else, and there was no point in dredging up old history. She was not his mother, and he was not her son. They were two different people entirely now, and nothing linked them together save for whatever bits of her data had made it into Edward’s own. He shook his head.

“I don’t,” he said.

And he meant it. He was being completely honest. All of the questions he’d ever had throughout his life had… they hadn’t quite vanished. It wasn’t that. But the answers… if he had them, what was he going to do with them? He had moved on by now. He had moved on, and she had moved on, and it did not matter why she had done what she had done over thirty years ago because… he no longer needed to know. He had when he was eight. He had when he was sixteen. He had even when he was twenty. But now? No. No, he no longer needed to. It wasn’t important anymore.

He stood up, and Jacqueline showed him back to the foyer. As he slid his shoes back on she said, “I have one question for you.”

He straightened, smoothing down his lapels. “All right.”

“Did he send you?”

He felt it in his chest then: the helpless need for parental approval. He wanted to tell her all of it, all of the things his father had done and what he himself had had to do afterward. He wanted to know, needed to know, if she would have cared. What she would have done. He wanted to tell her he, too, had left. He wanted her approval for doing the same thing she had done.

He turned away from her and took a long, centring breath through his nose. He didn’t need it, he told himself. Not from her. She was meaningless. He needed nothing from her. It didn’t matter anymore. It was time to let it go.

“No,” he said, looking up at her again. He extended his hand. “It was good to meet you.” Good how, he hadn’t figured out yet. But he felt as though it would be, once he had.

She shook his hand wordlessly and he took his leave, walking to the rental car with his own hands in his pockets. There was an unsettling feeling in his stomach. He sat in the car for a few minutes, the house a blur in the corner of his vision. He realised it was going to take him the whole plane ride to properly process all of this and it made him even more reluctant to get on the aircraft than he had been before.

He smoothed his hair back and inserted the key into the ignition.

He’d been home a few hours when Jonathan asked, “Well? Are we invited for Thanksgiving?”

Edward looked up from his laptop screen. “Are we celebrating Thanksgiving now?”

Jonathan tapped the back of his pen against his ledger. “Are we?”

Edward considered the other side of the room for a moment. What on earth was he –

“Oh,” he said, returning to his computer. “No. She doesn’t care any more now than she ever did. Which she never did.”

“And?”

His eyebrows lowered in annoyance before he realised Jonathan was trying to be considerate and ask after the visit before Edward had some sort of issue over it. He liked to pretend he didn’t do that sort of thing and Jonathan usually humoured him, if in a jaded sort of way. But there was no need for any of it right now. And talking about it might help ease the discontent that had not quite faded in the handful of hours it had taken him to return to Toronto.

“And nothing. She simply doesn’t like children. She might have stuck around if my father were worth it, for his sake. She’s doing that with her current husband.” He sat back against the couch. “She reminded me of you a lot, actually.”

Jonathan almost smiled. “She must have been incredibly beautiful, then.”

No matter how many times Jonathan used this joke, it never got old. When he was finished laughing Edward said, “Absolutely. Outshone the sun. Exactly like you.”

Jonathan snorted. “Only during a solar eclipse, if that.”

Edward looked up again when he was able, having been overtaken with amusement a second time, to see that Jonathan was smiling now, just a little. It warmed his stomach, as always. "And you do not fault her for leaving?" Jonathan asked.

He paused to ensure he believed his answer. "No," he said. "She put her life on hold for a baby she didn't want with a man she didn't love." He tapped his mouse so his laptop wouldn't shut off. "She stayed as long as she could but there's only so long you can neglect yourself for the sake of people you don't even like."

Jonathan nodded once. "Will you go see her again?"

"No," Edward said, though he hadn't actually decided until that moment. "I'm not going to."

"Good," was Jonathan's response, and if anything else was to follow it was interrupted by Ada appearing from the other room and throwing herself into Edward's lap. He had given up hoping he'd ever be free of bruises and she was the entire reason why.

For you! she declared with intense enthusiasm, and she handed him some crumpled up piece of paper scribbled on liberally with glitter crayons. He took it and looked at it bemusedly.

"What is it?" he asked, unable to puzzle it out. She took it from him and rotated it before giving it back.

It's a swan! she said. It's origami and I just learned it.

"Aha." He was still unable to find a swan in the collection of folds and creases that this paper had become. "Thank you."

I'll make you one even prettier soon, she promised, and she hugged him far too hard as was her wont. It was painful but he'd never actually minded it.

"I can't wait," he said, and he meant it. He appreciated everything she gave him, though he was running out of places to put all of it. She jumped off of the couch and ran off as he leaned over and put the… swan… on the table.

"She's missing out," Jonathan said. Edward looked in the direction Ada had gone.

"She is?"

"Not Ada. Your mother."

"Jacqueline," Edward corrected. "My question still stands."

"She'll never know her granddaughter."

Edward folded his arms. "She doesn't want to, and wouldn't even if Ada weren't a robot. Why are you even bringing that up? You don't like kids any more than she does." Even Edward's.

"I like Ada sometimes." He reached for something on the left side of his desk Edward couldn't see from that angle, though he held it in Edward's direction in the palm of his hand. Edward forgot to look at it initially because he was distracted by Jonathan's elegant fingers. When he snapped to he got a little jealous.

"Why did she give you that and give me -"

"She didn't," Jonathan cut in. "She asked me to help her with it. When we were finished she said I could keep it and patted me on the head."

Edward wished he had been there to see that. It sounded adorable. Jonathan put the folded paper back on his desk.

"My point," he continued, "is that I don't care for children and yet Ada is fine as a person. I don't want to parent her or be otherwise responsible for her in any way. But she is a pleasant way to pass the time. I am glad that I know her, even if I don't always like her."

That was an interesting way of putting it. Edward got up and rounded the coffee table, moving to stand behind Jonathan's chair. He had the swan on top of a stack of other papers, and Edward thought bemusedly that it was going to end up lost behind the desk. He put his hands on the chair back, it suddenly occurring to him there was something much more interesting he could be doing than discussing a strange woman in New Brunswick. "So you don’t want me to fill out the adoption papers for you to sign?"

Jonathan leaned back in the chair and Edward had to remove his fingers in order for him to do so. He pressed his hands into Jonathan's shoulders instead. Jonathan folded his own hands into his lap. "No," he said flatly, and Edward laughed.

"But she would love it," he said close to Jonathan's left ear, kissing the lobe afterward. The skin on Jonathan's cheek tightened the slightest bit, but in response to what he wasn't sure.

"Edward."

"What," he said, bringing his thumbs up Jonathan's neck to the nape hidden under his curls. He kept himself bent over enough he wasn't far from Jonathan's ear.

"Stop doing that. I have work to do."

"You don't have a job," Edward reminded him, then bringing his lips to the top of Jonathan's head as he squeezed on his shoulders again. He did not miss Jonathan's short, quiet exhale.

"I hope 'because I said so' is reason enough, then."

Edward wasn't a fan of that reason but if he made Jonathan angry that would put him off for a long time. Edward had only needed to learn that lesson once. He stepped back and Jonathan moved his chair closer to the desk, picking up his pen. Edward sat back down on the couch and reactivated his laptop screen. He'd probably done enough anyway that Jonathan would be thinking about it all day until he felt like it later. He was rarely ever willing to get intimate before ten pm, but sometimes Edward tried his luck regardless.

That was fine. Edward actually did have work to do for the job he actually had, and unlike Jonathan he was far more able to ignore the call of physical temptation. Like right now. Jonathan was staring at the wall instead of anything in front of him, and he didn't stop doing that for the next ten minutes entirely. At this point he got up abruptly to make coffee, and Edward could finally start laughing without Jonathan being able to see him, with his thumb between his teeth to stifle the noise. He must have looked in a very good mood when Jonathan returned five minutes later with his coffee because he frowned and stopped in front of Edward. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Oh, you know. Memes.”

“What in the hell is a meme?”

Edward was decidedly failing not to laugh. “A joke you wouldn’t get because I’d have to explain it to you.”

Jonathan looked over the top of his screen and Edward pulled the laptop out of range of his coffee. “Get that away from my computer.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes and returned to his desk. “Because that’s the only one you have and you would surely be devastated if you were to lose it.”

“Says the man with every edition of a thirty-year-old textbook.”

“How else will I keep track of the minor edits and infographics inserted to inflate the cover price?”

Edward gave an exaggerated shrug. “Why would you want to?”

“It’s my hobby.”

Edward sat back and folded his arms, looking over at Jonathan now. He was paying a great deal of attention to his cup. “You have a side job as a textbook editor, eh?”

“Hobby, Edward. Try to keep up.”

That night Ada had gone outside, as usual, and they were in bed – Jonathan earlier than usual, probably because Edward had been away but he wasn’t going to ask about it lest it prod him into getting up – and Edward’s head was on Jonathan’s shoulder, Jonathan’s arm around his back and down to his hip. They’d been like that for about fifteen minutes but he was still hoping he was going to get lucky. “Do you know what I think,” Jonathan said, somewhat languidly. Edward was a little concerned that meant he was falling asleep.

“I would never make the mistake of attempting to guess.”

“I think,” Jonathan said, pressing one of his free fingers to the top of Edward’s nose without looking, “that mothers are overrated.”

“They would probably both say husbands are overrated,” Edward told him, scratching the place he’d touched. Jonathan’s nose brushed Edward’s ear as he murmured into it,

“Mine isn’t.”

Edward was good and tired of waiting to see how things were going to go. He threw off the blanket and positioned his knees on either side of Jonathan’s legs, straddling him. Jonathan’s habit of falling asleep sitting up put him in a prime position for Edward to lean in and kiss him deeply, one hand against the headboard for balance and the other nudging Jonathan’s chin in the right direction. By the time Edward needed to catch his breath Jonathan’s hands had made their way onto his waist, his hands gentle yet solid there. “I was beginning to think that – “ Edward began, but Jonathan put one finger against his lips to interrupt him.

“I believe there’s something more productive you could be doing with your mouth right now,” he said, and Edward had to admit he did have a point. Only to himself, though. He leaned back, enough that he could still kneel without leaning on Jonathan’s legs. He pressed one of his thumbs against Jonathan’s thigh.

“You don’t seem conducive to that sort of productivity at the moment,” Edward responded, and Jonathan did not even blink.

“You can poke fun at my age-related physical issues or…”

When he didn’t continue that sentence Edward removed his hand entirely. “Or?”

Jonathan was smiling, which meant he was going to get lucky indeed. “Or you can prove you’re just the person to do something about it.”

“Oh, I assure you,” Edward breathed, moving forward to brush his lips beneath Jonathan’s ears, “I certainly am.”

“Your bravado, while quite entertaining, proves nothing, I’m afraid.”

“Well? Did I prove anything?”

It was very obvious that he had; he’d been there, he’d seen it, he’d had his fun. But teasing Jonathan was every bit as entertaining.

“Hm?”

Edward was lying on him much the same way as before, except that neither of them were wearing pants. Well, Edward wasn’t wearing anything, mostly because Jonathan liked it that way. He had left his hand on Jonathan’s hip, which was covered by his shirt, without much thought, but now it was in a convenient position of him to slide it down and rest it on Jonathan’s naked thigh. “My bravado,” he said. “You told me to prove its merit.”

“Oh.” Jonathan made an attempt to move some of his hair out of his face. Nothing really happened. “I suppose. I’ll let you know when I decide.”

“I see,” Edward said, slowly sliding his hand back to where it had been. Jonathan’s hand connected with the back of his abruptly, aborting his progress.

“That’s fine where it is.”

“That’s what I thought,” Edward whispered into his ear, and before he had moved his head back down Jonathan pressed his lips to his brow. Edward smiled to himself.

Jonathan was languidly tracing the line of hair that ran up his stomach to his sternum, and it took him a moment to decide if he was okay with that today or not. Age and a period lacking in due diligence had added weight to his waistline, and though Jonathan had already told him more than once that it did not put him off in the slightest, Edward had still not actually accepted it himself. He was doing his best to maintain a regular exercise routine, but the plain fact was it would most likely take more hours at the gym than he was willing to put in to both remove it and keep it off. It bothered him, but he had more important things to do with his time. He would continue working on his fitness and his level of acceptance both, because he was going to have to reach a compromise at some point and sooner would be infinitely better. After turning all of that over he decided that, if Jonathan wanted to do that, he would let him. Other than that, Edward was doing well at not letting age steamroll him entirely. And it did feel nice.

“Edward,” Jonathan said after a moment, “I must admit earlier that I gave you an answer that was not quite reflective of what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking?” He said it less to make fun and more as a warning, in case Jonathan didn’t realise he was about to make some emotion-driven admission. Edward didn’t like those any more than Jonathan did after he’d discovered he made one.

“I do that sometimes. It keeps my brain warm.” He squeezed Edward’s arm a little, and he took that to mean Jonathan was fully aware of what he was going to say. “But yes. When I said your… Jacqueline was missing out, I wasn’t talking about Ada.”

That made his comment even more nonsensical than before. “Who, then?”

“You,” Jonathan said. “I meant you.”

Edward needed a moment to process that. In order to aid this he brought his hand up to Jonathan’s mostly nonexistent stomach. “Me?”

“Don’t take that to mean I dislike Ada. What I said was genuine. What I like about her more, however, is what she brings out in you.”

Had Jonathan noticed some difference in his behaviour at such times? “Hm?”

Jonathan’s thumb was stroking his arm very softly. He liked that. “You have a myriad of faces for all types of people. But there is one you show only your children. It fascinates me.”

Edward hoped he was going to get around to explaining it, because he had no idea what any of this meant. He didn’t act in a distinct way around Ada as far as he could tell.

“You always provide her the attention she wants, even if you aren’t in the mood to do so.” He rubbed at some place beneath his collar absently with his free hand. “The reasoning behind it doesn’t matter. Only the action. In doing so you become… warmer. This look comes over you, and it is that of… contentment. Quiet satisfaction. As though if you never had to do anything else, you would be happy.”

Edward had had no idea he did such a thing, though it was true… or at least he thought it could be, if ever he tried it. He did need other things, of course, but if events had played out differently and he had had to change his plans, he thought he might have been content to spend the rest of his days in the factory with his children. He would never know for sure. But he did know they were the only thing that had made him simply happy in those months he would have more or less lost to his delusional insanity without them. He moved his arm farther across Jonathan’s waist.

“You would have made a good father, I think,” Jonathan said. “Not initially. It would have taken you far more years to work it all out than would be good for anybody. But once you knew, you would not forget.”

He agreed with that. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like admitting he would be even the slightest bit bad at something. But Jonathan was right. He would have figured it out what would likely have been far too late. Such a thing was undeniably impossible now, even if Jonathan would have agreed to it, but that didn’t stop him from wondering what it would have been like. He could not deny that what had happened instead was infinitely better for everyone involved.

“It’s a side of you I enjoy a great deal.” He put his free hand over Edward’s. “It’s the only time I get to see whom you would have been, perhaps, if things had been different. A glimpse of a world denied through a shuttered window.”

A shiver ran through his stomach. Jonathan was so eloquent. He’d always had a mastery of language that rivalled even Edward’s, but sometimes he forgot. When he did Jonathan always seemed to know about it. Edward was so very lucky to have someone who could still surprise him.

“One last thing.”

He was almost afraid to hear it. What more could Jonathan possibly say, after all of that?

“Even if your parents aren’t,” Jonathan continued, very softly, “I am proud of you.”

Edward’s arm tightened around Jonathan’s waist of its own volition. It meant a lot, to hear that. More than he’d ever thought it would. Jonathan could be sparing in his affections; in part because it was his nature and in part because he knew Edward needed it that way. As such, Edward never had any idea when these sorts of things were going to come. But Jonathan always knew when he needed them most, before Edward ever did.

He had gone to New Brunswick to learn something Jonathan had known all along: everything he needed was right here at home. And it there it would stay. It wouldn’t vanish, inexplicably, in the middle of the night. Nor would it force him to do the same. The need to search for answers that weren’t there might never truly fade. But he would always have the ones at home to come back to.

“Thank you,” was all he had, and maybe this time such simplicity would be more than enough.

“You’re welcome,” Jonathan said, and he pressed his nose into Edward’s hair.

Author’s note

I made Edward’s mother Acadienne because there was one night when I once worked the overnight shift at Tim Hortons where I was supposed to do a shift with my sister and my mom refused to let her go to work. So I had to work the whole shift myself, from 11 pm-7 am, because it was Sunday and nobody would come in before 7 or to fill in the missing person. I was okay until the rush started, at which time the drive thru and the store was all backed up because I was good but not Superman, and I dropped a coffee pot and people started laughing at me and I just wanted to jump out the drive thru window and abandon my life altogether. (Not kill myself, just abandon my life). One of the regular customers that would come in at 3 or 4 am was a man named Robert who was from New Brunswick and had a French Tricolour attached to the bottom of his front license plate because he was Acadien. On this day I asked him if he would talk to me after work because I needed someone to talk to because I was really upset everyone, including my own family, had thrown me to the sharks, and he agreed and after I was done we drove down to the river and he let me sit in his truck and rant at him. When I didn’t have a car he would drive me home sometimes as well (I had to walk to work and it took me 45 minutes and I had to go to high school after) and during my break he would smoke and I would go out back and talk to him every day. So that’s in appreciation of Robert and the nice things he used to do for me.

#Riddler #The Riddler #Scriddler #fanfic #fanfic from Indy

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