odette !
the fleeting smile that skirted across his handsome features was enough to encourage her to press onward, though she would allow him to go at his glacial pace if it meant in the end she would receive some semblance of an clue, a key to unlock and begin to tend to the wounds he guarded so heavily behind his tortured gaze. a soft laugh tumbled past her lips as she followed along with his light humor, nodding along as he objected to her misogynistic comments. ❛ sorry fabi, how medieval of me. if you want to be the damsel, i don’t see why i can’t be the knight, i’ll run to the armory at once and get fitted for my armor. ❜
though they had fallen into a sort of familiar routine after their legendary hashing out that fateful chilly october afternoon, the point they reached never provided a deep sense of understanding of what exactly they were. childhood friends? kindred souls? two unfortunately illfated teens condemned to a lifetime of suffering littered with anguish at every turn? perhaps. but the connection that remained from their childhood and continued to strengthen from that momemnt was hard to pinpoint and harder still to unravel or decipher. how could one begin to explain something so intricate, complicated and beautiful? the icy blonde could barely make sense of the chills that rolled up and down her spine every time his piercing eyes made contact with her own. worse still, how her hands continuously trembled when he engaged her in conversation but calmed down the moment his fingers touched her palm. there was beauty within their chaos, that much she could recognize easily. but when she dared question the motives behind it, she came up dry.
and that was just touching the SURFACE of their complex situation. her response to him, intangible as it may be, was just an evolution of what she felt as a child, morphing into what one would expect the entangled emotions of an adult to be, right ? now to add the very H E A V Y issue of her brothers passing and the similarities his case presented with gideon’s dissappearance, save for his return. the way he addressed it, though not outright and certainly veiled with a heightened sense of care, still made the petite witch wince. ❛ i understand why you wanted that to be the case, whether it was conciously or not. i don’t know if my words will have much of an impact but you have to know fabi, you can’t beat yourself up for having hope that he didn’t go through something terrible. or that you were holding on to the gideon you lost that day, because it’s what you knew him to be. when reality slaps us in the face, that’s the starting point. it’s when your brain gets handed details it doesn’t want but needs to move forward. and you have to do that WITH him. learn to come to terms with the gideon you lost and work on helping the one you got back. ❜ though he tore his hand away to erase the signs of exhaustion from his face, the stark contrast from the warm his touch provided wasn’t lost on her. it only pushed a frown to the surface while her hands searched for a way to T O U C H him again. this time she couldn’t be sure if it was to comfort him or for her benefit. after all, she sought solace in his warmth when breaching this subject. ❛ it’s not about being selfless. i can’t say i-…. listen, it’s a bullshit situation to be in. for both of us. if i had it my way, neither of us would carry the weight of this fucked up situation we’ve been forced into. but i can’t change what happened. elphias is gone… but gideon isn’t. and in some twisted way i’d rather help you and be here for you to try and find some good in that news than linger in what would have happened with my brother. i’d drive myself crazy staying in the ‘what ifs’, i do that enough as is. ❜ ❛ it won’t ever stop hurting. but i have to use that for something other than sulking around i think. i won’t hear the end of it once i meet him again if i don’t. plus seeing pain in those dreamy eyes of yours really fucks with my fantasies, i have to put a stop to it somehow for entirely selfish purposes. she muttered, hoping to lighten the mood if only partially. ❜
He wasn’t sure that was the real problem. Fabian felt ashamed when he realized Gideon was different. He felt selfish. Disappointed.
But she was right. Odette Doge, the young lass who would constantly follow him and Elphias around, was so bloody right he was unsure of how to respond. For a second, he forgot who was older. Who was taller. Fabian needed to be there for Gideon no matter the changes. He was struggling with something and regardless of the fallout, he had a duty to be there for his brother and to love him no matter what.
“When did you get so wise?” He mindlessly mumbled as he continued along their path, his movements lacking any of his usual swagger. A tentative hand moved to run through his hair, a cough destroying the slight awkward silence that followed her kind thoughts. He replayed each word, each syllable about a thousand times on high speed. Sometimes Fabian thought too much and it left nothing but a chilling quiet to surround he and whoever was foolish enough to have a real conversation with him in the first place.
His mother used to think he was deaf, often spending large chunks of his childhood shouting responses across short distances. Eventually she realized the same thing everyone else did: the bastard was just stuck in his own head. He understood the annoyance, especially when his mind would wander off mid-sentence because he was too busy thinking of the future while his mouth was spewing bullshit about the present. So instead of explaining to her friends that he had a hearing impairment, she simply smiled and called him a revolutionary. It was a bit much, but he never argued with her. He liked the title.
So it was no surprise when, after every beautiful thought and sentiment she gifted him, the same ones he saved and tucked away, fabian chose to comment on the one that didn’t fit. “Y’know, ya say that stuff a lot.” His comment was as blunt as he could make it, but not angry. After Halloween, he was fully aware that there were some things the two weren’t discussing one being the attraction he vehemently pushed aside. Where he avoided the topic, Odette had no qualms about sprinkling it on every conversation. “Keep it up an’ I might start to get the wrong idea, Dotty. Or the right one. Depends on how ya look at it.”
Maybe this was his attempt at escaping a serious topic, unaware that he was broaching an even worse one.













