xxx

Despite the cold bite that was hovering in the air, Taeko hadn’t been able to resist taking her reading out into the garden. Enticed by the bright rays that had been streaming through the library widows, her mind had been made up in seconds and without much thought she’d picked up the book she was reading and found herself a spot in the garden. As much as the library was by far her favourite place in the house, her sanctuary even, the smell of old books couldn’t compare to the freshness out there. It was as invigorating as the library was comforting and familiar. 

Time often slipped away from her when slim fingers turned page after page of a book and today was no different. As always she was captivated by the information that the pages held, dark eyes scanning over them with a sort of hunger as determination to devour it all as quickly as possible crept in. It wasn’t until the sound of footsteps reached her ears that the girl even looked, book almost completed. A warm smile was given to the person who’d approached her, followed her almost cooing about the weather. “It’s just such a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

There might be a chill to the air outside, but it’s preferable to how confined the inside of Kykuit seems right now. A thought that doesn’t seem fair when things are running more smoothly than they have in a while, and he’s known too much war in his life not to be appreciative of that. Samson’s got his brother back, and if Ethan’s honest with both of them he figured they’d be bringing him home in a body bag. Which wasn’t a comment on the exorcist he’d been sent. Only that he’d learned by now not to pin any hopes on a best case scenario. Better to prepare for the worst.

It doesn’t surprise him to find Taeko outside, even less to see her with a book in hand. That intelligence is part of what kept here here, because he’ll deny any sentimentality playing a part of it. It’s easier than admitting a certain sense of responsibility there, because he remembers her father and he remembers what happened to him. It’s fitting that it brought them both into this life, just as fitting that it’s why there’s an exorcist still sitting inside the walls behind him. Death was a more binding force than life most times.

“Can’t complain.” He doesn’t agree or disagree, but she should be used to him by now. He gives a nod of his head before focusing on the book in her hand. “What’re you reading?”

She almost smirks. She almost tells him that she can think of a time when he can be accommodating, but it’s nothing that leaves his bedroom. It’s nothing they talk about outside of those walls and it’s nothing she’ll even elude to. Even with the room occupied only by themselves, she knows better. This house has eyes and ears everywhere. And while she’s not ashamed or embarrassed by anything she did, especially with him, it’s still something that could stir unwanted attention in the wrong areas. It was better kept a secret. 

“No,” she agrees instead. No, no one would ever accuse him of being too accommodating. He was strictly business with new recruits and she knew it had been the same for when Max had shown up. A professional welcome, a tour, a laying down of the ground rules. No offer to help move them in or get them acquainted. Everyone who walked through those doors was already expected to be able to do those things on their own. This was the Tenebrae. It was simply how the organization operated. 

He aims the comment back at her and if anything, that’s what draws the smirk from her face. He knows how she operates. Maybe at first there’d been some growing pains when she’d been assigned to this Sect, but he’d been informed of the part she’d played in shutting down the Seattle Sect. He’d learned quickly how she operated, keeping people at a distance and beguiling people out of their secrets. 

There was no denying that it was true. That she was good at reading people and very rarely was surprised by someones true colors being shown. Sooner or later, all people showed it. Risk assessment, she’d call it. How would those true colors bring detriment to the Sect, to the Tenebrae? 

“Answers,” she says plainly and if he takes it as a sarcastic answer, then she’ll let him. But it’s probably the most honest answer. He wants answers about a lot of things. Right now, probably the most looming thing being the true origins of Max and whether or not she can confirm or deny his suspicions. She doesn’t elaborate on her initial answer. Instead, she leans against the arm of the chair, giving a coy smile. “And the report on Elijah’s exorcism. It’s filled out and completed on your desk.” 

He snorts at the response, because in the end it tells him enough. She knows exactly what he’s asking. She’s not offering it freely, or maybe not at all, but he doesn’t truly need or want her to say it. It feels unusually like cowardice this time, because he’s always been a man to face his problems head on, with a smile on his lips. He’s never shied away from confrontation, from violence, even death. But this is something different. It’s the life he could’ve had, it’s the family he didn’t know he was abandoning, and he’s not sure yet how it can all fall into place now.

That’s nothing she can tell him. Nothing anyone can tell him, and it’s a hard won patience that has him putting it on the back burner for now. She’s right, he’s made his call, and the boy’s got a place here solely for being useful. Everything else aside. “Well, you’re mostly right.” There’s a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, even if the words don’t offer much to read into.

There’s still a quiet confidence that she knows what else he’s looking for. She’s sitting right in front of him, even if it’s nothing he’d call love. Understanding, maybe, and he’s human enough to appreciate the feeling of a warm body next to his.

He straightens up, hand pressing against the back of the cushions in something like dismissal. It’s the opposite, but he’s sure she knows that by now too. It might be his house, but some days he thinks she sees more than even he does. “I’m gonna head to bed. I’ll read over your report in the morning.” No matter what else goes on under his roof, no one could ever accuse Ethan of neglecting his position. And if he was appreciative that she handled more of the paperwork for him, there was nothing that went out with his signature on it he didn’t read over first.

But if he’s curious what she had to say about the youngest of the Gray brothers, it’ll keep until morning. Instead he leaves the unspoken invitation there, because she’ll do what she wants either way.

This conversation felt awfully cat and mouse, but she knows why. It’s not something she’s unfamiliar with, especially from Ethan. A power struggle, some might call it. Not her. That’s not what this is. She doesn’t want power over him, she just wants to maintain her level of secrecy. And while it’s fun to purr and hiss lies, dodging questions – she’s no intention of him getting an answer out of her without him asking the question outright. There’s the coy idea that she’d like him to know, to learn, that if he wants something from her, he’s going to ask plainly. 

It was how all of this started anyway. Polite professionalism, strict manners and talk and then she’d brought it up. He’d been stressed, caught in thoughts he rarely shared with others. So she’d told him. You should sleep with me. It was as simple as that. Sex, I mean. Because that’s all it was. She’d made her case. That despite how hard they tried, they were still human and they had human urges. That she could keep distant and still please him. That it was better this than to risk it outside of these walls with things that could use those needs to kill them. She argued a decent point, when she wanted to.

She appreciated bluntness and she would reward it as such. If he wanted to know if Maxwell Mendoza was his son, he just needed to ask. 

“You are the leader of this Sect. Your impression should be the only one that matters,” she answers, not giving him what it was he was searching for. She continues, because even if it is a game, she still has an opinion on it all. “It’s a precarious balance. Too accommodating and he’ll think you a fool. Too strict, a drill sergeant. But…” she sets the guns down in front of her, leaning back on the couch so he has her full attention, a tight smile on her face. “You should be used to reading what people are looking for.” 

Past potential. She smiles more genuinely at that. They’d seen first hand what exactly he was capable of. The kid had power. Strong power. She’d rarely seen exorcisms go that well. Especially with someone so young at the helm. 

“Good. Then you’ve made up your mind.” 

It becomes apparent by her answer that she’s not granting him any favors on this one. Whatever she knows, and he’s certain it’s more than him, he doesn’t know that he ever really expected her to offer it up easily. But he doesn’t know that he truly needs the confirmation either, it’s simply too much to admit that he’s been struggling with the kid’s existence ever since Max walked through the door. He brings too many memories and too much history with him, and it’s nothing he knows what to do with.

Ethan isn’t a man who allows much time for regret. And he’s never allowed much room in his life for anyone he can’t file neatly under the role of asset. Anyone in this house he calls himself close to is because they fit readily in that category. Maybe his son will prove to be the same. But there’s a feeling of responsibility there that has nothing to do with the training of a new recruit.

He’s sure she knows all this. It’s almost frustrating, and for a moment he’s sure that’s written on his face, an annoyance that comes when he thinks she could easily be sitting there giving him advice on how to endear himself to a son instead of a member of the Tenebrae. Anyone else he’d shut them down quickly, because when it comes to his house, his sect, he feels confident enough in what he’s doing. It’s an earned thing, enough years beneath his belt now, and the fact that he’s still standing and breathing is testament enough to his knack for survival. Even if he has scars to show for it.

But she isn’t anyone else, and after a moment that frustration fades into something like amusement. He snorts out a small laugh, shaking his head before he leans to settle his arms against the back of the couch. “Don’t think anyone would accuse me of being too accommodating.”

There’s no shame in it, or at least none that he feels. He’d prefer being too strict over too lenient, because that’s how mistakes are made. And in this business it almost always ends with people killed. Or possessed, and if nothing else that’s enough reason to make Max’s presence here a useful thing. Regardless of whatever baggage he brought in with him. That he’ll have to deal with on his own time, whatever it is the kid wants from him now.

“Could say the same about you, you know.” He tilts his head to look at her, and regardless of her assessment he doesn’t think he ever knows what she’s after. “What do you think I’m looking for now?”

She watches him for a moment, eyes tracing the lines of his face as she wonders how he’d respond if she said she can laugh too sometimes. She thinks he knows that any laugh she’s had in this house has been for show. Has been to put someone at ease, to be inviting or comforting and all of those things she can pretend to be when it’s necessary. She can pretend to be anything and people will believe it. And if she’s ever laughed in front of him, it’s been in the very early hours of the morning while she still had her head on his pillow. 

It’s not something she asks of him because it feels too much like she’d be fucking with him. Testing him when she already knows answers and she tries not to test him when it doesn’t need to be done. She’s gotten to know him well from the time she’s been here and she has respect for the man. Is aware of his capabilities and some of his shortcomings. If she’s a fortress, he’s something almost equally as guarded. She enjoys that. Most days. 

“It’s his decision,” she answers, as if she doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. As if she doesn’t know exactly what Maxwell Mendoza stepped through these doors trying to find. She doesn’t let that shine through in her words or her features, not even a little bit. “He did what you asked of him. Maybe we made a good enough impression on him.” 

There’s a smile as she says it and it’s a soft thing, but only because she knows Max’s own first impression of herself was anything but good. She was cold to him, blunt and unrelenting. If she had an opinion one way or another about the kid, it didn’t matter. What mattered was what unrest he’d stir if he stayed. And right now, that outcome was teetering between being manageable and threatening to undo all of the order and habits that had been established in this sect. The last thing she would allow would be for some kid to crumble this kingdom. 

She tilts her head as though she’s considering something for the first time. “Do you want him to stay?” she asks, watching his face for anything she can read and get off of him. “Enough potential there?” 

The words don’t clarify much for him, though it’s an answer to a question he hadn’t asked. The Tenebrae doesn’t keep dead weight and they don’t risk resources just for the sake of family ties. If that was the case he imagines they would’ve set Sam loose months ago to look for his missing brother, regardless of the mess it might’ve made. And Max isn’t here just because of who his father is. It’s because of who his mother is, because that woman held power in her veins that she’d passed on to her boy. He’d witnessed that much firsthand.

If his presence here is up to Max, it means they’re content to hang onto him for that much if nothing else. Which means those above Clare either don’t know or don’t care who his father is.

He can’t say the same for her, and he can’t help but push for it. “You mean if I did.” Looking for an honest answer might be a waste of both their time, but it might be the closest he gets to admitting it right now. Because once he says it out loud, it’s real, and that means there’s a kid here beneath his roof that he all but abandoned. And he can blame his mom for that, but it doesn’t ease the guilt.

She asks if he wants him here, and he doesn’t doubt for a second that she knows what a loaded question that is. If he, personally, wants his son here. It’s nothing he’s been able to say out loud yet, not to Sam, not to the kid. Though if Max hasn’t looked at him and named him father, there’s just as little doubt in his mind that he knows exactly who he’s looking at. The kid might have more features in common with his mother, but if nothing else he thinks he inherited his temper.

It doesn’t make the answer easy. On some level it is, because knowing he exists, even without any official confirmation, he doesn’t want his son out there where he can’t see him or know he’s safe. It seems worse somehow, because if he left him once he can at least claim ignorance. He didn’t know he was sacrificing a family. It was a break up, and a hard one, but people went through those every day. This is a whole other life that was stripped away, maybe at his own hands.

But Max isn’t a child anymore, long past the point where he needs a dad, or feels he needs to listen to one. He’s trouble, and logically Ethan knows that. He just doesn’t know that it changes anything. “He’s past potential. He knows what he’s doing. So yeah, that’d be useful.”

“He does,” she says with the same confidence she always proclaims things with. She’d learned at an early age that if she wasn’t confident in herself and her capabilities, then it was a weakness people could exploit. She’d stopped allowing herself to be exploited before it had ever become an issue. It meant she was observant, it meant she kept her hand close, rarely let people fully into a plan she executed or knowledge she had. No one held all the pieces when it came to Clare. It said something that Ethan was probably the closest and she still kept a thousand secrets from him. More. “He’s just the only one who laughs at them.” 

She smirks ever so slightly when he admits that Max showing up wasn’t what he had in mind when he’d called for an exorcist. Best case scenario, Mitchell would have shown up himself. But in his place, he’d sent some punk kid with a chip on his shoulder who’d made waves in the house from the moment he’d stepped foot over the threshold. It had been interesting seeing him work. There was potential there. But it wasn’t how their organization worked. Potential was wasted if they didn’t come already trained. Already ready for action. 

She knew why Max was really here. Mitchell was the only one laughing. 

“No,” she agrees easily. If he’s looking for confirmation about hunches from her, she won’t give it to him. It’ll not be from her lips he confirms the truth and she’ll make sure she knows when that truth comes out. It’s her prerogative to know what goes on in this house. Ethan’s house. She’ll never admit it to him, but it’s also her prerogative to keep it his. Whatever schemes she works on, she does it to keep that balance of power in his favor. She doubts he knows that. It’s nothing she’d tell him or even hint towards. 

“He has a problem with authority,” she continues, whether Ethan asked for her opinion on the kid or not. “And doesn’t like to follow orders. I’m relieved you spoke to him about both.” She’d hadn’t been there for the conversation, wasn’t even a hundred percent sure that it took place. But she knew Ethan and she knew the kid’s file. She knew both would have been something he’d addressed with him the moment he’d come into this house. But Ethan didn’t have to know she wasn’t 100% sure. It was the way she operated.

There’s a tilt of his head, a nod of agreement at her assessment of Mitchell. He might be tempted to use harsher words right now, but he bites his tongue before they escape him. It’s probably unprofessional to stand here badmouthing the head of another sect, and he can’t even say he thinks that badly of the man. Only that he thinks he’s being fucked with, and whether it’s thanks to the exorcist across the country in California or the woman next to him, the joke’s the same. “Long as someone is.”

He doesn’t ask for her assessment, but he isn’t surprised when she offers it anyway. It’s clinical and almost cold, and part of him appreciates that constant professionalism. It’s always made working with her easier, at least for him, because he’s never been overly emotional. With the exception of his temper.

But there’s a quieter part that wants to break that down, to see her without any wall put up around her. He’s caught glimpses, but there’s always that doubt, that quiet thought that she’s bullshitting him and he’s just buying into it because it’s what he wants to see. None of it's anything he’ll say to her, because he knows what this was supposed to be and it’s nothing that allows for too much honesty.

“He’ll fall in.” He says it with the same confidence, because most of him believes that. He’ll fall in, or he’ll leave, and it’s odd that he hopes for one over the other this time. 

“Assuming he stays.” It’s nothing he can honestly say with any certainty now, even if he thinks he’s come to some kind of momentary peace with the kid. He’s still Tenebrae, he’s still asking the son of Lucretia Mendoza to follow orders, and he doesn’t think for a second it’s anything that comes easy. Decades might’ve passed and the woman might be dead and gone now, but his memories with her are still precious enough things, kept carefully in the back of his mind like faded photographs.

It’s not why he says it though. It’s for the sole purpose of gaining some kind of response, some hint that she already knows exactly where he stands with Max. If he might allow Claire more glimpses into his mind than most, he’s careful when it comes to his doubts because he can never tell what side of the line she’s playing. He’s certain if there ever comes a day where she thinks he isn’t the right man for a job, then he’ll be replaced as quickly as he came. There’s no room in the Tenebrae for weakness or failure, not when the stakes sit so high and they’ve got so many monsters on their leash. 

The house was quiet for once. At ease, maybe, but Clare knew better than to think it would last long. An exorcism of one of their own, missing for months, had brought about a peaceful quiet that was bound to be shattered sooner rather than later. Nothing stayed quiet. Nothing stayed peaceful. She knew better than most. Maybe not better than people in this house, but this was the life she’d lived for as long as she could remember. Her first encounter with a monster, her first kill, she hadn’t even been in the double digits of her age yet. 

Eli was back. She had no love for the man, but no hatred either. He was entirely neutral to her. A little bit of a loose canon, if she had any opinion, but so long as he respected the chain of command, including his brother’s, then she had no problem with him. When he’d gone missing, she’d felt nothing. If it was a cruel thought, it was nothing new. 

She prepared for people’s deaths the day she met them. 

It made everything easier. When they lost someone to tragedy, when the tough calls had to be made regarding their own, if she kept in mind that no one was eternal, it was easier to deal with their endings. And while she hadn’t written Eli off when he’d gone missing, the chances of him coming back the same, or even a sliver of the same, had been thin. She hadn’t had much hope. But again, that was nothing new. 

The quiet footsteps behind her were the only thing that gave him away. And even though they were alone in the living room, she still kept her usual professional front up. There was only one room in this house where she let it down. One room where she believed in privacy. And it wasn’t her bedroom. 

“Max did well,” she said as she continued to clean her guns, so he’d know that he hadn’t snuck up on her. “I wasn’t sure that Mitchell hadn’t just sent him as a joke. But he proven capable. Of this, at least.” 

It doesn’t surprise him when she hears him coming. She always does, even when he’s his lightest on his feet. And he might not step as softly as he used to, but he doesn’t believe that has much to do with it. If there’s anything he can say with confidence about Clare, it’s that she always knows what’s going on in his house, usually before he does. It used to bother him. Some days it still does, when he gets blindsided and she’s as cool and confident as ever. But today’s not one of those days.

Today it’s enough that one of their own is back under his roof, and whatever he thinks about Eli as a person doesn’t factor in. He’s selfish, and it’s enough of a relief that he can take one more weight off his shoulders. He won’t have to keep walking around with that quiet concern that Samson’s just going to break their rules and charge off half-cocked after his brother. There’s no way that would’ve ended well, even if he did manage to drag him back in one piece. If it didn’t end with one of them being zipped up in a body bag then there still would’ve been hell to pay for everyone involved.

If his existence is built on trying to prepare for worst case scenarios, he’ll consider it a victory that he doesn’t have to fall back on it.

The voice that greets him is cool and professional, like it always is, and that’s nothing new. But he knows what it sounds like when it’s just his name on her tongue. Maybe she’s using him. Maybe he’s using her, though it’s harder to believe when she’s always one step ahead of him.

“Ain’t sure Mitchell knows how to make jokes.” He stops at her shoulder, arms crossed loosely over his chest as he looks down at her cleaning weapons. He can’t tell if the words are loaded, if she knows just how much irony there is in Mitchell sending him the kid, but it’s hard to think otherwise. 

“Not quite what I had in mind when I asked him for an exorcist though.”