My Parents' Keeper

“Samuel Gilbert.”

Wait was that what the emergency broadcast was about?  Because I wasn’t really listening.  But that’s actually really good, I mean it’s another sign that Falsdom isn’t as strong as he says he is.

Briony was on her way back from the Owlery, having needed to send a letter to her parents the moment she heard the news. Her mind was elsewhere, not at all focused on where she was walking, and she ended up bumping into someone, hard. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Are you alright?”

“Yeah I’m fine,” Hunter smiled at her, “not hurt, nothing to worry about.”

“Finally. The bastard had it coming.”

Who exactly are you talking about?

“And you don’t really have a choice, so you either deal with it or you let yourself be miserable or make it worse. There really aren’t any options.”

Nope, and I’ve made myself miserable enough for this year.

Luka nodded. “Well. I guess it’s just something that we have to deal with then.”

Yeah, I know.  I mean I dn’t like dealing with it, but at least it’s only a couple more months.

“Or it hasn’t. You don’t really entirely know how they looked through it. So maybe that helps.”

A little.  Not by much though.

“True could have been actual drugs or something else.” 

Exactly.  Just try to think positive about teh whole thing.

The way he just tossed it out there like that made Hannah wonder what his motives were behind saying it like he did. “Sorry,” she apologized immediately. But she believed in reincarnation and a lot of other things that didn’t depend on survival of one life, so she didn’t say much more than that. 

“It’s fine,” Hunter said, “even though you really didn’t need to know that, so sorry for dropping it on you.”  Really he hadn’t meant to tell Hannah, it had just sort of slipped out.  Which in a way Hunter knew was good, at least for him, because it at least meant that he was accepting that this was happening, at least to some degree.

“Then I guess you should learn it,” Hannah said with a shrug.

Yeah, I kind of forced myself to this semester after I got my terminal illness diagnosis.  So now it’s just the accepting part.

“It’s all good,” Hannah pointed out, giving him a strange look. “You don’t get to pick what happens to you sometimes.”

Yeah, I think that’s the lesson that life wanted me to learn.  Because every time I turn around it’s another thing reminding me of that.

“It’s not all about fighting,” she said, shaking her head. “Adrian’s teaching how to defend yourself, which is something you might not have a point for. Newt’s is the same way. And Nadya and Bethany are doing healing, which… is completely different.”

Healing could be good, I’ve done some research into it, but it’d probably be nice to get to learn how to do some of that.

“I mean, that’s things you guys get to work out together. Even if you don’t have any right away, you have each other.” 

yeah I know.  I mean we still have to figure out logistics, and budget, and stuff like that, but is it weird that I’m excited for all that stuff too?

“Does saying it to yourself just make it sound more real?”

Yeah it does.  Plus it makes it exciting, even though we have a lot to figure out.  Like furniture, I’m not sure if we’re going to actually have any at first or not.