#iseult x aeduan | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eilonwiiy · 4 years

Text

Bookends ; A Witchlands AU

Chapter 8

When Aeduan’s old partner shows up, he is confronted with a shocking piece of news. Meanwhile, Iseult learns that not talking is just as hard as talking.

Summary: Iseult det Midenzi never expected to go to a top university, so when her mother falls ill and she is forced to drop out to make ends meet, life has never seemed so unfair. But when she starts working at the local library and is unexpectedly assigned in the Children’s Room, a certain monosyllabic man and his thrice-damned demon child start showing up and Iseult begins to wonder if the threads of fate have a plan for her after all.

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Ships: Iseult/Aeduan, Safi/Merik, and more… stay tuned!

Tags: modern AU, college setting, family, friendship, humor, fluff, slow-burn, romance, eventual smut

Read on AO3: here

Tag list: (please let me know if you’d like to be added!) @lseultdetmidenzi @twilightlegacy13

* . * . * . * .

“You surprise me, partner.”

Aeduan’s jaw ticced. He didn’t need to look to know who was behind him.

“Never did hear where you ended up. Not that I asked.”

Slowly, Aeduan turned to face Lizl. She hadn’t changed since he left the force. Her dark hair was pulled in a single tight braid, not a hair out of place, leaving her amber brown face bare. Her badge gleamed against her policeman’s uniform, shiny, like she’d polished it the night before. Aeduan knew that she did. They’d been partners, after all.

As tall as Aeduan was, Lizl was taller. He rolled his gaze upward, expression flat. She was grinning smugly at him, like she’d caught him in a more nefarious act than buying coffee.

“What, no hug?” she asked innocently.

Aeduan didn’t react. “What do you want, Lizl?”

“A cup of coffee.” She folded her arms across her chest. Her posture was deceptive in its casualness. In the 14 years he’d known Lizl, he’d come to know that there wasn’t a relaxed bone in her body. “Turns out this place runs a good bargain.” She gestured to him. “Free refills and a floorshow.”

Lizl’s gaze fell to Owl in his arm and Aeduan watched her expression soften. She may have hated Aeduan’s guts, but there were lines she wouldn’t cross. She wouldn’t pull any shots in front of a child. She held herself to a strict moral code that wasn’t just reserved for convicts. It was one of the things Aeduan respected most about her.

That didn’t mean he had to like her, though.

Aeduan glanced over at the coffee counter. Iseult hadn’t come back yet and some of the tension he’d been holding since Lizl’s surprise appearance loosened. That kid was probably still talking her ear off and for that, he was grateful - even if that did mean she was suffering. He didn’t want her to see him with a cop. For some reason, he cared about what she would think. He didn’t know why, but he did.

“What do you want, Lizl?” he demanded again more firmly.

“Nothing. You’re about the last person I’d ever want to run into,” she answered, a little of her casual exterior slipping. There was a hint of sourness in her tone. Her jaw clenched and unclenched with her lips pressed firmly shut as they stared at each other.

“So,” she finally said. “Is it everything you hoped it’d be?”

“Is what everything I’d hoped it would be?” Aeduan asked, more bored than curious.

“Life without the badge.” Lizl paused. “Or your daddy’s leash.”

So much for that strict moral code.

Aeduan swiped his coffee cup off the counter and, without so much as a glance at Lizl, marched to the door and left the cafe. There were lines Aeduan wouldn’t cross in front of Owl too. If he’d stayed, he might forget that. Besides, he didn’t owe her anything. If anything, he’d done her a favor by walking away - from police force and right now.

It didn’t take long for the bells above the door to Jitters to jingle again.

“I just don’t get it,” Lizl voice knifed through the cold. It had started to flurry. “That job was your life. You were in your dad’s pocket. Set to make detective. Become head of the department when Bastien retired. Why throw it all away?”

“Why do you care?” Aeduan snarled, pivoting and getting right up in her face. He kept his voice low, not wanting to wake Owl.

Lizl frowned, not the least bit phased by him invading her personal space. “I don’t care. I’m just- confused. You could have had everything.”

“And with me out of the way you can have everything. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Make detective, have a shot at the promotion.” Lizl only stared stonily at him and Aeduan shook his head, expelling some of his frustration and replacing it with exasperation. “I don’t know why you're angry at me. We were never friends.”

Lizl nodded. “Just partners.”

“Exactly. So what is the problem? I thought you’d be happy that I left.”

A bitter laugh burst from Lizl’s mouth. “Happy?” She shook her head at the ground and dug her boot heel into the concrete, leaving little half moons in the thin layer of snow coating the sidewalk. She buried her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. She seemed to be weighing her options - over what Aeduan had no idea. He just watched, waiting. When Lizl looked up, she was grinning, but there was no amusement in it.

“You have no idea, do you?”

Aeduan’s insides went cold. “What are you talking about?”

Lizl looked off to the side. Something had shifted. The hostility was gone. She just shook her head like she couldn’t get over whatever it was she was about to say. Eventually, she looked him dead in the eye.

“I didn’t make detective.”

A line wedged itself between Aeduan’s eyebrows. He didn’t know what he had expected her to say, but he hadn’t expected that. With or without Aeduan in her way, Lizl was a shoe-in for the job, a star cadet all throughout their time at the academy, second only to Aeduan. No one worked harder than she did. Her not making detective was… inconceivable.

For the first time in months, Aeduan felt the heady rush of a facing puzzle itching to be solved. There had to be some ulterior motive on the line here. She wasn’t giving him the full picture.

“And I didn’t get the promotion.”

Aeduan’s spine straightened. He didn’t like the way Lizl was looking at him. She was still wearing that awful smile that wasn’t a smile. It set his nerves on edge.

“Would you like to know who your father picked for the job?”

Aeduan found himself tensing, bracing for the answer without asking to be told.

“Natan fon Leid.”

Natan fon Leid. It took a whole 5 seconds for the name to sink in. He’d grown into quite the impressive egotistical prick, having been a bully all of Aeduan’s childhood. He’d never really understood how or why the jerk was stationed in the Domestic Violence Unit. He wasn’t exactly a drain on the department, but as far as he could tell, there wasn’t an altruistic bone in Natan’s body. The thought of him running the DVU was unsettling to say the least.

And complete bullshit.

“My father,” Aeduan said, doing nothing to keep the venom out of his voice, “would never replace Bastien with Natan fon Leid. Bastien was a man of honor. Integrity. Natan is nothing more than a power hungry lapdog.”

“I agree,” Lizl responded without blinking an eye. “And now he’s your father’s lapdog.”

Aeduan’s chest puffed out. He hated the way his blood boiled at even the slightest mention of his father, even though they weren’t speaking - even though he had every right to despise him. He still couldn’t temper the urge to come to his defense. And that angered him even more - maybe more than anything Lizl had to say.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he ground out coldly. There wasn’t much else he could do with Owl curled into his chest.

“Ask him,” Lizl simply replied, ununciating each word crisp and cool. It sounded more like a challenge than a suggestion.

He’d do no such thing.

Aeduan had never been crazy enough to carry around some fancy notion that being partners had meant anything to Lizl. She’d never liked him. Hated him, even. But they’d worked alongside each other for years and never let their personal feelings get in the way of justice.

The snow was coming down in earnest now. Owl stirred in Aeduan’s arm breaking the tension for them. Lizl’s expression went blank and after a couple seconds of grudging deliberation, she gestured resignedly to her squad car parked by the sidewalk.

“Do you want a ride?” she asked. She sounded tired, like she already knew the answer.

Aeduan didn’t reply. He didn’t say goodbye. He just turned away from Lizl and left her standing on the sidewalk. There was nothing left to say. Not to her, at least.

* . * . * . * .

The new Fiona Apple album thrumming through Iseult's earbuds was doing nothing to cover up the lively debate going on in her head.

For what felt like the first time in forever, Iseult wasn’t working in the Children’s Room, but rather shelving books upstairs as she once used to. She should have been relieved. She could finally have a quiet evening without the stress of worrying about patrons coming up to her with questions or children unexpectedly popping up between bookshelves.

But she wasn’t relaxed. She couldn’t relax, in fact. No, instead, she was torturing herself over whether or not to call Aeduan.

Leave it to her to let a complete stranger ruin her evening of peace. She still carried his phone number from their encounter at Jitters yesterday in the safety of her pocket, and even though the first thing she'd done when she got to work was find his book, she had yet to get in touch with him.

She’d said she would, so she should. But with each hour that passed, it was growing more and more late, and the window of opportunity to call was getting smaller by the second. Surely Aeduan would still be up. But as the clock approached 9, she found herself wishing she had mustered the courage to call him during the day when it was still light outside.

For Iseult, nighttime meant winding down. Eating leftover Arithuanian takeout right out of the carton in her monkey slippers and fuzzy bathrobe. Curling up with a book and falling asleep mid-paragraph with the light on.

But this was Veñaza City and she was some weird anomaly. While she was nose-deep in Joan Didion, some twenty-something year old was taking their third shot of the evening before heading out to a party. While she was setting her phone alarm for 6 a.m., someone was texting their hook-up. While her and Safi fought over who got to take a shower first in the morning, someone was getting thrown out of a bar.

Veñaza was a college town and it was no secret to Iseult that she was living a much less thrilling life than her former peers. While normally that wouldn’t bother her (why submit herself to the experience of doing jello shots when the option to eat a jello cup and not throw up was right there?), wondering if Aeduan shared her nightime habits made her feel self-conscious. He may have had a kid, but that didn’t make him a monk.

She thought about what it would be like dialing his number and him picking up, his voice deep and rough sounding on the other end of the phone. A shiver ran through her. Then nausea.

She couldn’t do it.

Late night phone calls were reserved for hook-ups or emergencies. Not librarians.

She sighed. She was left with two choices:

She could call first thing in the morning. While she had just spent the last hour wondering what Aeduan did at night, this option brought with it another dilemma: how Aeduan spent his mornings. Iseult didn’t know why, but he seemed like the type of guy to start his day early. Down a glass of orange juice, go for a jog around the neighborhood, and be showered and dressed by 7:30 kind of guy.

Iseult shook her head. She really didn’t need to be fantasizing about his morning routine. And she definitely didn’t need to think about him showering. Nope. She definitely wasn’t thinking about him naked and dripping with water.

Stasis, Iseult. Stasis.

Then there was the more tempting and pathetic option: she could scrap calling him altogether. And what great loss would that be really? she thought to herself. It wasn’t like he was sitting by the phone waiting for her call. He probably didn’t even remember asking for the book or giving her his number in the first place. Her stomach dropped at the thought.

She was overthinking this. Big time.

She rolled back to their conversation yesterday and how Cam had interrupted them. She was sure that Aeduan had been about to ask her something just as Cam burst through the door. She didn't hold it against the kid, but she was dying to know what Aeduan was going to say. And then, of course, there was the mystery of the cop. She'd seen them talking outside. By the looks of it, it wasn't a friendly chat. It had ended with Aeduan storming off and the woman cop looking troubled.

Iseult slipped a hand into her pocket and dug out the napkin with Aeduan’s phone number. She unfolded it and looked it over, just as she had the dozen or so times since he’d given it to her. By now she’d memorized the 12 neat letters strung together in broken cursive underneath the number. Aeduan Amalej.

A pulled in a shaky breath and retrieved her phone next. For a paralyzing moment, she held them out in front of her, the number in one hand and her phone in the other. Thinking. Stalling.

“Moon Mother, you are such an idiot,” she muttered to herself before unlocking her phone - her hand shaking with nerves - and punched in Aeduan’s number.

Right into a new text message.

Ok, so she’d told him he’d call him. But this way she didn’t need to find out just how devastating her stutter be over the phone. With her sanity hanging in the balance, copping out of calling was of little consequence. There were way more pathetic things she’d done in her 21 years of living. This wouldn’t be a highlight in her memoirs.

With that in mind, she got to it and prayed that she typed faster than her determination could devolve into an entirely new spiral about whether or not a text was too casual.

* . * . * . * .

Aeduan knew he was in trouble the moment he opened the book.

Chapter One

My Father Meets the Cat

Owl’s eyes had widened as Adeuan read the words and she’d peered up at him from her place under his arm nestled into his side.

It had taken every bit of restraint he had to keep his expression neutral. The librarian just had to pick a book that featured a stray cat.

Iseult had been right though: Owl loved the book. Every night for the last week, Owl would crawl into his bed, make her nest, and sit there, impatiently waiting for him to finish meditating and running through his nightly stretches. He made sure to take his time; he wasn’t about to teach Owl that she could get anything she wanted just by giving him those sad puppy eyes of hers. He'd had plenty of practice resisting those eyes with Cora, who as a little more needy than Lisbet; Owl was powerless over him. Most of the time.

Meditation was an important, albeit unexpected, part of Aeduan’s life. It was the one lesson from Evrane that actually stuck. Sometimes he wondered why, out of everything, this one practice never wavered. Over the years, it had become more than a ritual in calming the body and quieting the mind. It had become his anchor. Something he depended on. Somewhere along the way, he’d learned that how he started and ended his day was the one thing he had true control over. He'd been taught early in life that there was no prelude to change. If he could hold on to this one thing, he would.

Luckily for Owl, he was done with meditating for tonight. Even with his years of practice, he hadn’t found much solace in it. He couldn’t get what Lizl told him yesterday out of his head.

He had told himself to forget about it the moment he’d walked away. That the police department wasn’t his problem anymore. He’d left for a reason, and even if he tried to convince himself that it was all because of Owl, he knew deep down that that wasn’t true.

Storming away from Lizl had felt good. Right. But now…

Doubt plagued his every thought. He couldn’t shake it off. This feeling that Lizl was telling the truth. They’d never liked each other, but he knew that - just like him - she respected him enough to trust him on the job. He saw it in the moments that mattered most. She was one of the good ones.

And the fact remained that Lizl wasn’t a manipulator. It wasn’t in her nature. Why bother with mind games when honesty landed harder? There really wasn’t any reason for her to lie to him. So that meant what she’d told him was the truth.

But why? Why would his father give Natan the job? He was an unmitigated piece of shit and Ragnor had always shown very little tolerance for unmitigated pieces of shit. If his father had promoted Natan to the top spot, then he had a reason. A good one.

He should just forget it, he told himself for the hundredth time.

For the next half hour, Aeduan found his mind wandering, even as he read aloud, and it was some time before he realized that Owl had drifted off to sleep.

He sighed, letting his head drop against the headboard, and the book propped up in his hand fell closed against the comforter with a soft thwump. He stared at the opposite wall, knowing he should transfer Owl to her own bed before it got any later, but he couldn’t find the motivation to move.

Lizl. Ragnor. Natan. Their names were an endless chant in his head. A chant that rang of doubt and the promise of another sleepless night for Aeduan.

There was only one way to put an end to the madness. He’d need to go directly to the source: his father.

The thought alone was enough to make Aeduan want to slide down his mattress and pull the covers over his head. He didn’t, of course. But the impulse was there, as embarrassing as that was.

It’d been 3 long months since he’d last seen his father. 3 months since he’d marched into his office, left his gun and badge on his desk, and walked out of his life. Ragnor hadn’t even tried to get in touch with him since. Aeduan hadn’t expected him to.

He didn’t know how he felt about that. Hurt, probably. His father’s silence was louder than most. But Aeduan was the last bit of Dysi left on this earth. Had it been easy for his father to let go of his only son? He’d done that with everything else that reminded him of Dysi after she’d passed, so why not him too?

Pressure pounded behind Aeduan’s eyes. His head ached. Not getting more than an hour or two of sleep the night before must have been catching up to him. Maybe he’d just let Owl stay in his bed. If he were being honest with himself, he didn’t want to be alone right now.

A soft chime broke the silence in the bedroom. Curious, Aeduan turned to his nightstand where the sound had come from. His phone softly glowed with activity and he could see the animated little envelope on the screen that meant he had a new text message. Careful not to disturb Owl, he reached for the phone and grabbed it from the stand. He settled back against his pillows, expecting to see something from Lisbet, the only person he had the patience to text with - even if she did bombard him with memes he didn’t understand. Before even opening the message, he was all ready to tell her to get off her phone and go to bed.

But it wasn’t Lis.

It was an unknown number. He frowned. But then he read the message, and he realized who it was. His heart stopped.

Unknown Number – 9:07 PM

>> I found the book you wanted. I put it on hold for you. You can come pick it up anytime.

>> (Hi. This is Iseult from the library.)

Without even realizing it, the noise in Aeduan’s head faded to nothing. Iseult had said she’d let him know about the book, but he was still surprised to hear from her. And - he thought, checking the time - so late.

He reread the message a couple more times before clicking the screen off. He was about to return his phone to the nightstand when he paused.

He should probably respond with… something.

Aeduan pulled his hand back, easing back on to his pillows, and opened the message. His thumbs hovered over the keyboard, trying to think of something to say. His eyes flicked to Owl, dead asleep next to him, then he began typing.

Aeduan - 9:18 PM

>> Ok.

Well. Ok then. Obligation fulfilled.

Aeduan took off his reading glasses and stowed them along with his phone on his nightstand before he switched off the lamp, plunging the room in darkness. He settled beneath his covers and rested his head on his pillow. He felt the ball of warmth that was Owl curled up beside him. Moonlight streamed in from the windows, and for a few quiet minutes, he watched the snow falling outside.

An hour later, Aeduan rolled over and reached for the phone on his nightstand.

Aeduan - 10:16 PM

>> I’ll come by tomorrow and pick it up.

#the witchlands #witchlands #baeseult #iseult det midenzi #aeduan #lizl #iseult x aeduan #truthwitch #bookends #my fic #mine

17 notes · View notes