Archive of Our Own ^beta

Fabian’s sixteen years old, looming over his father. His sword is slick with his father’s blood.

He’s made his choice. He has to live with it now. 

—

Adaine does not feel sorrow. 

She stares into her father’s eyes. A man who has given her nothing stares back at her. 

It’s a rather easy choice to make. 

—

Fabian's sitting on the roof of Seacaster Manor at his own birthday party.

He knows how pathetic it must look. He knows —he's thinking about it even now. But for some reason, the yawning void in the pit of his stomach, the one that he's been trying to push down since prom day on freshman year, has become too all-consuming. Something that Fabian can't even try to avoid, no matter how much he wants to. 

It's a vise grip on him, though, as the party blares on in the background and he's alone. Always alone, these days. 

He tries to suck in deep, deep breaths, but to no avail. The empty eye socket, the one that he had gotten carved out the same day, is aching something vicious, throbbing with a vengeance. He doesn't take off his (papa's) eyepatch, though. He can't bring himself to. Not right now.

The image of him driving his blade through his father's chest is emblazoned in the back of his mind. He doesn't think it'll ever go away. He doesn't know if he wants it to go away, as sickening of a memory as it is. It's not a good memory, not by any means, but it's his last memory of him living. It's his last memory of the one he loves. 

But even still, he doesn't think about prom day as the worst day in his life. That's not even what he's thinking of now, not the main thing at least. No, he's thinking of Leviathan. Of the week-long breakdown that was the Nightmare Forest of sophomore year. Of the way he singlehandedly sullied the memory of his father.

For everyone. For everyone but him. 

He looks up at the sky, the same one that has given him a sense of relief, of reprieve. Like the world can't all be bad if he can still see the stars. 

He hears someone come up the roof, scrambling, and he hears someone murmur fuck under her breath. Fabian looks over, squinting at the intruder, only to realize that it's Adaine.

"What are you doing here?" Fabian says, in lieu of a proper greeting.

"What are you doing here?" Adaine shoots back, in that way that makes it seem like she probably has an idea of what's going on. "You ditched your own birthday party—was it really that boring?"

Fabian huffs out a laugh, but it's watery, butterfly wing-thin. "No, it wasn't."

Adaine hums, and she crawls over to Fabian gingerly. Fabian has to stifle a laugh at the sight. "Well, that's good, at least. What's up?"

Fabian looks up at the sky, the same sky that will eventually haunt him and the rest of the Bad Kids. Everything. "Nothing in particular."

Adaine doesn't look all that convinced. She opens her mouth, as if she wants to say something, but she closes it as quickly as she does. She seems hesitant. "If there was nothing in particular, you wouldn't be sitting on the roof, Fabian." It's measured, but gentle, like she meticulously chose each word out of the air before she spoke.

Fabian takes a deep breath, and his eye slides shut. Gods, does he need pain medication. He might have to ask Kristen for a heal.

“Well,” Fabian says. It’s all he can say. All he can get to come out of his mouth before his tongue knots up. 

“Well,” Adaine echoes, and as she’s sitting down on the rooftop, she asks, “Mind if I keep you company?”

Fabian stares at her, baffled, wide-eyed, and he nods numbly. He still doesn’t say anything. 

His father’s ghost does not linger much longer that day. 

—

For some reason, it doesn't really feel right to bring her father's death up to anyone. Especially not to Aelwyn.

They both skirt around the subject, as if it were poisonous, as if bringing it up would smite the two of them dead too.

It feels maybe eerily simple to her. Angwyn Abernant was a fucking piece of shit. Angwyn Abernant hated her, let Aelwyn be tortured, and tried to "shape her" into the person he wanted her to be. Angwyn wanted her—wanted the person that she had fought so hard to curate—to die. He had to die instead.

It was simple. Straightforward. More so than most of her world is, at the moment. But a version of her, a version of her that's six and sixteen at the same time, the version of her that stares up at the ceiling when she can't get herself to trance, does wonder what could have been. If Angwyn could have ever thought to love her, to truly love her. If there was a universe where it didn't have to come to her ending her father's life.

This is the part she never talks about to Aelwyn. The part she never talks about to Jawbone, even. Because somehow, it feels more shameful than the act of killing her father to admit that she ever wanted his affection to begin with. She looks down at her fists on those days, thinks about how easy it was to cast the spell that killed him. How empowering it felt, even if the six-year-old version of herself sobbed in the back of her mind.

Aelwyn catches her unable to trance one day. The day right before Adaine and the rest of the Bad Kids had to go off to fight the Night Yorb, the day that became night before everyone's eyes. Aelwyn had climbed down their bunkbed, going to get a glass of water.

She leans over, a quizzical look on her face. "Adaine?"

Adaine rolls over on her side, staring at Aelwyn carefully. Her darkvision makes everything greyscale, makes everything seem a little hazy, but she can still see concern that she would have never shown painted on her expression. She doesn't answer, not verbally, just lets Aelwyn speak.

"Are you alright?" The words sound foreign on her lips, like she's not able to get her mouth to shape the correct syllables. Adaine says nothing of it. She knows what it's like for something to feel that odd on your lips.

Adaine almost tells her. She really does. She almost blurts it all out to her, how she doesn't really regret killing her dad but also some part of her does. She almost asks her if their father's death haunts Aelwyn like her own death haunts her. 

She doesn't say anything. She pulls herself up to a seated position, and she shrugs, a movement that she knows Aelwyn can see. 

Aelwyn's mouth twists in something akin to disappointment. Direct to what—or whom—Adaine can't tell. She's never been able to read her sister that well.

Aelwyn inhales, a deep, slow thing, and nods. "I'm...well, I'm here if you need anything." It comes out stilted, just as awkward as when she asked how Adaine was doing in the first place, but Adaine doesn't comment on it. She watches Aelwyn leave, as quietly as when she'd snuck up on her.

The weight in her chest doesn't leave.

—

Fabian dreams of his father's death almost every night.

It's a fact of the universe—just like how the sky is (usually) blue, how the grass is green. He goes to sleep, and he feels his sword drive into his father's chest. Some days, when he dreams, he touches his own chest and his hand comes away bloody, sometimes with his own heart pulsing, beating blood through disconnected veins. Some days, he sees the timeline where he doesn't go to Hallariel first. Where he watches as Bill Seacaster dies a dishonorable death. 

(That dream, that dream in particular, it comes up a lot more after Leviathan.)

This dream, though, felt worse than all the other dreams combined. He's not sure what it was in particular—it wasn't anywhere near as gory as the usual dream. He still feels like he's reeling, though, struggling and gasping for air in a way that he hasn't before. He clutches his chest, feeling as it tightens against his will.

He can't get his thoughts straight. They come out disjointed, off-kilter. He feels like he's been thrown overboard on his own ship. His mouth feels like it does right before he's about to throw up, that thick, saliva-y feeling. He can't stand it.

He takes a deep breath, ignores the way that he's unable to get it right, and he heads into the kitchen to prepare himself a glass of water (one of the only things that he actually knows how to do, how to do competently at least), and he chugs it in less than ten seconds. He's still gasping for air, worsened after his water consumption, unsurprisingly, and he slides down against the kitchen counter, eye slid shut and screwed tight. In, out. In, out.

For a second, he almost thinks about calling Adaine. He's not sure why—maybe to get pointers on how to stave off a panic attack, maybe to ask her about if she sees her father like he does. He doesn't move. He doesn't try and get the crystal. He doesn't know if he knows how to move right now. He could sink into the ground, he thinks. He could sink here and melt until he becomes one with the kitchen tile, and it would be fine and he wouldn't have to deal with his bleeding heart in his hands.

Someone steps into the kitchen, then, and Fabian gasps, straightens up. He feels naked, vulnerable in a way he's not used to feeling. A way he doesn't want to feel. He peers out, around the corner, only to see Cathilda in her nightgown, which just brushes the ground.

"Master Fabian?" Cathilda asks. Her voice is soft, too soft, and Fabian doesn't know what to do with it. It feels wrong. He feels wrong.

"I'm—I'm doing okay, Cathilda. Don't worry about me."

Cathilda's eyebrows furrow, and her expression lit up by the one light by her. "Are you sure? You look like you've just seen a—" She trails off before she can finish it, almost as if she knows. Fabian freezes in his spot, his only movement being digging his fingernails into his palm, just to bring himself back.

They stare at each other for a tense moment, waiting for someone to break the silence or admit to something, and Fabian can't breathe. He still can't breathe. 

Cathilda's eyes narrow, just a bit, enough for Fabian to know that she's on to him, but she folds her arms, taking a deep breath. "Would you like me to bake some cookies?" It's soft, hesitant, and Fabian can't help but relax himself. It's an out, and Fabian knows it, and he'll take it for all that he's got.

"Cookies sound splendid, Cathilda," Fabian says, and it's a little reverent and a little wistful. Cathilda smiles, a sense of relief flickering on her face.

The cookies taste just as good as they always do. He's able to claw out the tendrils of his dream with more ease than usual.

—

Adaine is so, so tired.

She had thought she knew what it was like to feel tired. Her panic attacks take a lot out of her, for one. Sometimes, they would get so bad that she wouldn't be able to do anything for the rest of the night except sleep. That tiredness, somehow, didn't amount to the exhaustion she felt now. That any of them felt now. Adaine almost wants to cringe when she sees the deep bags under everyone's eyes. The way everyone's movements are so sluggish, like they want nothing to do but to sleep. Adaine's heart hurts in a way that she never expected, and sometimes she wonders if this is how Gorgug feels when he has his tachycardia episodes.

She looks in the distance, and for a second, Angwyn Abernant appears in the corner of her eye.

She knows it's not real. She knows it the second she sees it—save for the brief thought that maybe, just maybe, someone had cast True Resurrection on the bastard. She knows that she's been sleep deprived to no end, and that it's probably just a hallucination. All the same, it sends nausea in her gut like no other. Something flutters, uncomfortably, in her stomach, and she almost wants to dart into the Hangvan. 

She doesn't, though. They're this close to finding out how to defeat the Night Yorb, and she can't back down now.

Even if she keeps thinking she's seeing her dead father in her vision.

Fig keeps looking at her. She can tell, practically can feel the way Fig's eyes bore into her, searching, prying. The little Adaine, the one that wasn't ever sure if she'd be loved in the way that her parents never loved her, is happy about it. The little Adaine nearly preens over it. But the other Adaine, the older Adaine, the one who can't even start a conversation about her dead father without wanting to scream or cry or something worse, wants to hide. She wants to run away, so far that Fig can't even think about asking her what's wrong. 

It's one thing to ask during her panic attacks. It's another to deal with the fact that she's still seeing her godsdamned father all these months later.

Adaine slides into a chair, holding her head between her knees and her hands interlaced over the nape of her neck. She takes comfort in the quiet, in the way the sound is muffled. It's nothing like Gorgug's noise-canceling headphones—nothing can rival the sheer quality of those headphones—but it's something. It's enough, and it almost soothes Adaine enough that she could possibly sleep, if she stays in this position. Or maybe it's the sleep deprivation. Adaine can't tell at this point.

"Adaine?" The voice is soft, uncharacteristically so for Fig. "Adaine?" She shakes her shoulder lightly when she still doesn't get a response, and Adaine can only hum in response.

"Adaine," and it sounds more urgent, now, more desperate. If Adaine thinks about it hard enough, she thinks she can hear Fig's voice break. "Are you okay? Do you need to sit out?"

Something lodges in her throat. She can't speak, she can't get the words out of her mouth. She shakes her head, but even she doesn't know which question she's answering.

She lifts her head, only to look at Fig, and immediately regrets it. Something about the way that Fig's eyes look watery, how she's clasping her hands in the same way she does when she's trying not to cry. Adaine tries to swallow against the lump in her throat again to no avail.

"I'm okay," Adaine says. She doesn't see Angwyn Abernant out of the corner of her eye again. She doesn't. 

"If you say so," Fig says, and it's soft, hesitant. It's clear that she doesn't want to leave. Her feet are rooted to the spot even as she's getting up. She leaves anyway. 

Angwyn's ghost does too.

—

It's well past the end of junior year when either of them actually get the balls to talk about it.

It's a sticky day in Elmville, the kind that hangs on clothes and lingers even when you wash it countless numbers of times. The Bad Kids are out at the beach, just for some reprieve from the relentless sun. Fabian's sitting on a beach towel and just watching everyone swimming in the ocean. He doesn't particularly want to get his hair wet; he just got his locs done and he doesn't particularly want to have to pay extra to get it redone, even if he can afford it.

Adaine's also sitting back, book in hand as she pulls her sunglasses down over her eyes. She looks calm, in a way that Fabian hasn't seen in a while. It's nice to see it, though.

Fabian pulls his sunglasses up and over his head, and he asks, "What are you reading, Adaine?" If only to make conversation.

“Just one of my spell books,” Adaine says, looking at Fabian, unimpressed. She goes back to reading just as quickly as she was interrupted, and she scribbles something off in the margins of the book as she reads. Fabian just sits and watches, not wanting to disturb her. But something buzzes under his skin, clawing to get out. He covers his arm with his hand, even though he knows nothing's there.

The air's silent, static in a way that Fabian's unused to feeling. It feels cold, too, that bone-chilling kind that can't be abated even with his Owlbears jacket on. Adaine herself pulls on her denim jacket, too.

"Do you ever see it?" Fabian asks softly. 

"Fabian," Adaine says, her voice flat, but she doesn't sound like she's upset. "I'm the Elven fucking Oracle. You need to be a little more specific than that."

Fabian inhales sharply, and a withering grin wavers on his lips. "Sorry," he says, but it comes out on the wrong side of dry. Adaine gracefully doesn't say anything about it, just shakes her head.

"I mean," Fabian says, haltingly, and it's now that he realizes he has absolutely no way of trying to start the conversation that he didn't even realize he was going to start in the first place. "I mean, do you ever think about the fact that you—killed him?"

Adaine inhales, and it's shaky, sharp, all at once. "Do you mean my father?" It's slow, lilted too, and it almost sounds like she's just talking about the weather, if Fabian's deluding himself. 

He nods. He can taste the salt on the back of his tongue. He can't tell if it's from the wind or the threat of tears he can feel at the back of his eye.

"Ah," Adaine says, and that's all she offers. Fabian thinks he might lose his mind, just a little bit. 

After a beat, or two, or three, Adaine exhales. "I mean, as much as the normal person thinks about it." Neither of them state the obvious. Neither of them say that no normal person has to kill their dad. No matter the circumstances. 

Fabian watches as Gorgug lifts Riz on his back, bright peals of laughter echoing in the quiet air. The static crackles loudly, and Fabian faintly wonders if Adaine can feel it too. He doesn't ask though—he's not sure if he's more scared of her not believing him or her agreeing with him. 

Sometimes, it's better not knowing.

"Do you—" Fabian's voice gets all choked up in his throat, threatens to not come out. Threatens to never come out. "Do you ever wonder what would’ve happened if you didn't do it?"

Adaine turns to him, a quizzical expression on her face. She tucks blonde strands behind her ear. "I mean. I don't particularly like thinking about that, all things considered."

Right. It's not the same. Sometimes, Fabian has to force himself to remember that, when he thinks about all of the times that he wants to ask Adaine about her father like he is right now. He feels unmoored, untethered, and he almost wants to throw up with the feeling. 

They don't say anything. They can't. The saltiness gets to be all too much, like he dumped a spoonful of salt in his mouth. He distantly thinks that that might be less painful than this, whatever this is.

"But," Adaine says, and it's slow, halting, like she's not able to admit it to herself, "I do. I do a lot. How can you not?"

How can you not.

Fabian's mouth feels dry, too dry, like the salt's sucked all the moisture out and rendered him unable to move or speak or do anything other than think. "I do too."

Adaine takes a deep, shaky breath, and her eyes slip shut. "It's almost my father's birthday."

Fabian goes very, very still. 

"What—" Fabian clears his throat, and for a moment, his voice comes back. "What are you doing for it?"

Adaine's mouth twists, and her eyes fixate on Fig and Kristen playing beach volleyball—Fabian thinks, he's not really sure what exactly Fig and Kristen really do at any given moment. "I'm not sure. Probably write a letter to him?" She exhales, draws her knees up to her chest. Her spell book is thrown aside now, or maybe it had been for the whole conversation. "I dunno, that's what Jawbone's recommended me to do."

Fabian can only nod solemnly. He's not sure what he'd write in his letter to his father, if he ever had to. He's not sure what to say that hasn't already been said. His nose hurts, the same part that Bill Seacaster slammed into the prison floor.

Do you think it'll help? He doesn't ask it. He doesn't know if he wants to hear the answer. He just stares at his hands, the one that gripped the rapier and killed and kept killing. The more he thinks about it, the happier he is that he retired that sword for good.

(He knows it's not healthy, but it's still in his closet. He pulls it out on the days that get bad, the days that he wakes up gasping from his dreams, and he feels just as disgusting as he did before he drew it out but it's still an odd sense of calm that washes over him. He hasn't told anyone, not even Cathilda—even though she was the first one to see it when he did it for the first time.)

Adaine tugs on the string at the end of the book, the one she's been using as a bookmark. Her eyebrows are drawn, mouth creased in a way that makes it incredibly obvious that she wants to say something, but that she doesn't know how to. Fabian doesn't move, doesn't give any indication either way.

"I just want to leave it in the past," Adaine says, and it sounds so tired. Fabian can only think of the way that they all felt in the Night Yorb attack. "I don't want to—this is fucking—" She exhales, and her tone grows more exasperated. "This sucks."

Fabian has to hide a mirthless snort. "I know."

Adaine moves her chair closer, ever so slightly, and she leans over, resting her head on Fabian's shoulder. He has to fight every muscle in his body to not flinch at the contact, but he closes his eyes, lets himself have this. 

For a second, Fabian sees his father's ghost morph into one with his own face. A content smile flickers on his lips. The weight of his father's memory is as light as it can be.

(He doesn’t know that it's one of the last days that Adaine sees her father's ghost in the background.)