LILY OF THE VALLEY

“— i saw the world i had walked since my birth and i understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”

The whole election for Orator felt like a farce in some regard. She’d have to ask Connor if he knew anymore of it than she did, but it felt so stupid that there was even a proper election at all, giving some false illusion of choice. Assuming that one didn’t get a debt called in for their vote, they were expected to vote for their Circle leader, not across party lines, and to do so with a smile. Meanwhile, Chloe watched the rat race this entire thing was, knowing that more than a few of these leaders were corrupted in their own ways, and the ones she didn’t know about were probably corrupted in others. Frankly, she didn’t want to vote for anyone, but at least Thaddeus didn’t scare her outright. 

As long as she didn’t have to vote for Hollis or Damian, Chloe would be more than pleased with the whoever else got the Orator seat. Karlha or Thaddeus would be fine choices in her book, even if they didn’t make such extravagant shows of their power as Hollis clearly was. Anyone who fell for their act was a bigger idiot than Chloe anticipated. 

Worse was watching the way the family paraded around the room, noses in the air as they played with everyone else like chess pieces in a game no one else agreed to playing.

“This whole thing is so stupid, I can’t believe anyone would fall for that.” If they were truly so royal and special, what business did they have running for Orator? Sure, it was customary maybe with having all four circles have someone run, but there were plenty of Tainted, Imps, and more through the Underground, all o which Chloe would sooner vote for than Hollis. “With my luck, the pearls are probably enchanted with something if they leave Hollis’ possession or something. They don’t strike me as very charitable.”

『  ☢  』

Lilith has to laugh. Chloe’s right, it’s stupid, it’s transparent as all hell, but it works. Has worked before. Better this than all the chaos they’d succumbed to when there were no leaders, no one to look to and no higher power to mediate between feuding parties. She couldn’t say one was the lesser of two evils, but Lilith didn’t speak for the majority. If enough of them fell for this, then someone like Hollis would come into power. More minuscule then what they must have here in this realm, but perhaps the Midnight Underground was a playground, some temporary pastime until it was time to take over the throne on this side of the veil. 

Playing God in a world where rules didn’t very much apply to them. 

She wishes she knew more though, about these people, who they were, why they were like this. The Faerie Folk liked keeping their secrets and sometimes she wonders if much of anything the hegemony knows is true at all. Well, there’s the iron and past that, their inability to lie, but everything else is shrouded in too much mystery and this royal family doesn’t very well paint the members of their species in the very best light. A celebration like this was all opulence, and while there should have been substance, it simply felt as if it were lacking in the company of the Fialas. One such show of magnificent proportions, a power play but not much else.

“Honestly, people want to hope. They want to be naive regardless of everything because it feels to bleak living in this hidden company where the clouds always seem to be painted in shades of grey. The members of the Wild circle want protection, leeway in all they do perhaps, I’m not sure how Hollis went around convincing these people but if the majority of those Fae wish to come home to their families then, you have to wonder if that was on the line...besides that, they have power, influence, a million other things, ridiculous things with so much meaning.”

Another look around the ballroom and she wishes she didn’t have this mask on her face; Artemis, she was hungry. “Not in the slightest bit...one of those, charitable when the people can see me being charitable types. A tragedy though, the pearls look so pretty on you.”

Wednesday had come around much sooner than Lilith anticipated; she’d taken to staring at the clock in that way you do...when you’re hoping the hours slow because you’re paying attention to them. There had just been far too many things on her mind, all fighting for her attention, stepping over one another in their desperation to be known, understood or deciphered. Each one a priority, but Lilith was only one— duplication spells were complicated as it was when she had magic, and even then it was near impossible to duplicate one’s consciousness. Splitting it brought immeasurable consequences for the caster.

Many things in her life were like that. Born from two families composed of more magic than many others, tasked with protecting some of their Goddesses greatest treasures— a fire used to destroy and a magic used to displace. Lucy and Dominic were an odd pair as it was, but they loved each other, she thinks. An arranged marriage that blossomed into a respectful if not tender love...Lucy’s fire tempered by Dominic’s firm hold on the family and then, she was gone from this world and he lost all his softness and when Levi was gone...Dominic wanted nothing more to do with her. Demanded she change her last name, that she was nothing to him anymore. Lili has to wonder how many parts of that parallel Josefina and her own father’s relationship. How all of this could affect the girl sitting before her.

“Okay, so...there’s two sides to this honestly. The way it’s looking to everyone else, and the way it’s looking to a small group of people trying to keep a wolf from getting wrongly convicted. But then I might just be getting ahead of myself.” This feels delicate, wanting to spill her guts and tell Josefina everything she was thinking but not wanting to seem so biased that these opinions gave her tunnel vision. “Right now evidence says he didn’t do it, but...Chloe had a vision about someone shooting Karlha, we were trying to figure out who would do it, before the clock struck twelve and all. We think your father was going to, but then Karlha wasn’t shot, it was Hollis and I’m sure you know, he mentioned he was thralled to them so people are saying a thrall wouldn’t shoot their thraller, it’s just...it’s weird. The pieces are mismatched.”

Means you just found your way back home. 

The ghost of a smile traces Chloe’s lips hearing that. It went without saying that she didn’t feel like she belonged anywhere until she landed here. She had insisted on that fact to her parents, her Dad shutting it down every time, fluctuating between reminding her how far from home she was and how dangerous or unsustainable it was to live in the City or be a part of her club as she called it.

Peeling her eyes from the pages again, she looks to Lilith. “I am, I’d like you to stay, too. Not just for the family secrets.” Though, she was sure those were a bonus in the matter.

Eyes falling back onto the pages, Chloe continues to read, skimming certain parts about her day, who she was going steady with— Ruì had been a Teacher, apparently. Chloe couldn’t begin to imagine such a career for herself. Finally her eyes landed on a familiar name. Cicerone. 

Cicerone appeared to me today. It was unexpected, I never thought I would see her with my own undeserving eyes. However, she insisted that our family have been good to her. That we were destined for great things. Insisted she wanted me to have that power, even. I didn’t know what to say, but I very well couldn’t say no! 

She placed a hand over mine, and swore to me that my family would be powerful seers again. Revered like we were before we left for America. I know she’ll make good on her word. 

Chloe’s jaw set as she read it again and again, knowing perfectly well the answers to her questions lied further into the book, but she couldn’t help but harp on the same thought over and over again. Why did she leave? Cicerone had promised her what Chloe’s own Grandmother had been working so hard to achieve: The power that had belonged to her family long ago. There had to be something that made her want to walk away from all of that. Something that had never been disclosed to Chloe.

“Sor— or, uh. Cicerone. She visited Ruì? Promised to make her family powerful and revered.”

Chloe doesn’t feel the need to disclose why that sounds so odd to her. Lilith knows, anyway. She had grown up around almost exclusively Unaware people in a small town in Maine. Virtually untrained and uncontrolled in her skills. Far from powerful. Even farther from revered, at least in the same sense as the likes of a Talbot or Devlin.

“She was a School Teacher by day and the Underground’s most powerful Oracle by night. And… I didn’t know.” Chloe looks to Lilith, brow furrowed. “How did I not know? Why wouldn’t this be… be talked about at least?”

『  ☢  』

“So I’ll be here.” She would busy herself with something else if needed but Lilith would figure that moral support was paramount for something like this. That she should give Chloe her full attention, that she should give these journals her full attention. There’s another book she set on the table, off to the side and away from the journals, some information on oracles lay within those pages, but that could wait for another moment. 

Those words sounded familiar. Guide and Cicerone, that woman— Goddess really had a flair for the dramatics...or more fitting, the Goddess really had her favorites. But then, as she’d mentioned before, it was easier to choose the many in a lineage than it was to choose the one.

For a moment, her eyes are drawn to the small flame at the other end of the room, sat behind glass, always burning. A parting gift from her mother, and that itself a gift from Sōel, Apollo, and every mask in between. Her gifts were entirely different than Mēnōn’s— Artemis’, but they needed to be cultivated all the same, nurtured. Lilith was always told that She only chooses those worthy of said gifts, a bloodline with threads spun from gold itself. Then again, her mother may have been embellishing those golden threads, but that woman had never been a good liar. 

If she’d told her children such things, it was because she believed it. “Yeah, that sounds about right. In any of those moments you’ve spoken to her, has she offered you the same?”

“People hide a lot of things for a number of reasons,” she says, Lilith herself is one of them, “and it’s not fair to you, of course, but you’ve found that knowledge now, haven’t you? Maybe with these journals you don’t need your father’s well-kept secrets....and again, it’s not fair, but then you wont have this looming over your head, wondering if there’s something you’re missing. You have her own words to fill in the gaps.”

Dossier:

Name: Lilith Gaumond

Age:

Species: Undead ( Human formerly— Wizard )

Circle: Night

Known Relationships: Carmen Blakely ( ‘Sister’; Best-Friend ), Abernathy Talbot ( Ex-Husband ), Connor Henry Talbot II & Clifford Austin Talbot ( Grandsons ), Connor Talbot I & Kenneth Talbot ( Sons ), Catherine Talbot ( Daughter-in-Law ), Cameron Kiskadden ( Son-in-Law ), Esmeray Talbot ( Granddaughter-in-Law ), Chloe Li ( Date, Close Friend, Partner-in-Crime ), Nora Lucas ( Apprentice, Close Friend ), Sebastian Harker, Matthew Coleman-Reyes and Elias Hart ( NYE Party Crew ), Henry Jones ( Close Friend, Study Buddy ), Juno Williams ( fellow Undead ) etc. etc., she’s been around so long, the list goes on.

Interview:

What's your name?

For all intents and purposes, the Archives are the perfect place for these little interviews. Besides the privacy, the acoustics could rival any one of those Catholic churches littered around the world. “Lilith Rhian Talbot— well, no actually, strike that from the record or whatever Carmen says with these court things,” Lili was divorced now anyhow. She’d best get into the habit of using her maiden name again. “Lilith Rhian Gaumond.”

How do you know Tabitha Spencer?

“I know everyone— kind of. Many people in passing, but otherwise I never forget a face. Tabitha I know on behalf of her brother, Sebastian. He tends to ask me a lot of magic-related things. Sometimes I knit like hats or vests for the shelter animals and then Tibby uses that for the shelter’s social media. She’s a good kid. Both of them are.” And perhaps it was the fact that the girl was a wolf, and that her own children, though born, had been that age before, has her worrying. 

How do you know Jose Alves Cruz?

She shrugs at first, a voiceless answer...it only registers after that this is a recorded audio and not some federal deposition they’re getting on camera. “Honestly honestly, I’ve never been very good at keeping up with current events where the Unaware are concerned. So like if he was your average mayor, he’s lost to me...that being said, he comes from a family of thralls, one of which is thralled to me. So that’s two things I know for certain. And besides that I don’t have the best impression of him, though that’s my opinion. Saw him giving a...a waitress a hard time.” Rosie. Though she’s not too sure she should involve the girl anymore than she is. Instead, Lilith writes the bitten wolf’s name on a piece of paper. 

How do you know Hollis Fiala?

“Yeah. Wild Circle Leader. Heir to the Seelie Court...” ex-flame/rebound of her grandson and holder of one of Lili’s debts, but that one would stay off the record. “They’re interesting but like, aren’t all Faeries interesting in some way? That being said I don’t think their poor attitude is a cultural thing.”

Did you see the shot/what happened that night from your perspective?

Funny the way these things unfolded; she’d mentioned something weeks ago about being too prepared, how that itself was fatal in the right circumstances and now, “well...no. We were anticipating this; a gun fired around midnight, during the fireworks display or somewhere in that timeframe. So when that first shot rang out, or the mimicry of it, you’re not thinking oh that’s a fake gunshot, you’re thinking hey we might need to fall into formation to keep my circle leader from embracing Artemis herself. I looked in her direction but there wasn’t any blood on her dress and that second gunshot rings out, or first, whatever, and Hollis is the one with a bullet wound. Jose’s on the floor in pain, which yikes, and some guards have Tibby restrained. Jose accusing her.” It all happened so fast. These things usually do, don’t they. “I tended to Hollis after. Henry came prepared for anything, ”

When did you get the invitation for the party/know you were going to work it?

“The invitation I got at the same time as everyone else I’m sure...as far as knowing when I was going? I wasn’t sure if I was going to go. I didn’t feel too much like celebrating the end of the year, and then Clem announced her party and that was something else I could have attended instead,” she’d been to so many of Thaddeus’ parties, trying to call her husband each year whenever the clock struck twelve. Always unsuccessful. And well, now she was getting divorced. It didn’t seem like a smart idea to attend; she hadn’t even told her son about it. But then things don’t ever go as planned, “Chloe basically recruited me into this little Code Name: Kids Next Door thing. She had a vision, I’m sure she would’ve mentioned it in her interview...and we were hoping to mitigate an unfortunate outcome.”

Did you go with someone?

“Yeah, I went with Chloe. And a group but basically, Chloe was my date. We were at the same table, we arrived together, all of those things.” The book she was currently adding to her inventory was in simplified latin— easy enough to understand. “As far as the group en masse though, there was Cameron, Henry, Sebastian, Elias. Matthew. But everyone was sat at their own little tables anyhow...oh and Kellan. Our third wheel, for Chloe and I.”

Do you own a gun/have you ever owned a gun?

“This is where I tell you something corny like, Connor, we wizards are the gun, and blah blah, but I wasn’t that type of wizard...my mom was though, could’ve burned an entire building to the ground without breaking a sweat, but I could only ever scorch the Earth for controlled burning, never a raging wildfire.” For all the woman’s softness, her own fire burned blue. If Lili ever tried to call the flame, hers was a warmer yellow, sometimes red. Her mother was told not to nurture that magic in her children and later in life, it left Lilith operating on a learning curve. “Definitely not the question though...Reno is what it is and my mom thought I should be armed, but with Levi— I didn’t keep guns in the apartment because I thought it’d be more dangerous for him than it would be for some dumbass pushing their luck...long story short...I was gifted a gun by my mom, magically enhanced, might I add, but it’s in Reno. Tell Tale Heart style.” 

what: li family history in talbot family archives who: @lilieths​

There was an energy running through Chloe that she couldn’t place with an emotion. It thrummed under her skin like a current, begging for release in a mixture of tears and screams as she stared down at a burgundy bound journal, pages aged, spine creased from where it had been opened pushed back hundreds of times over the years her Great Great Grandmother had held onto it. Li Ruì. Ruì had been her name, it had escaped Chloe for years. Her script in paling black ink on the inside cover, dated with her birthdate, but her death date was missing. Makes sense seeing as it landed here and not with Chloe. 

tentative fingers thumbed the pages gently as she observed the book before her. Years had been spent wondering about the unanswered questions of the shift in her family’s lineage. Why the east coast? Why the secrecy and uncertainty in recent years? What changed? Hopefully what lied within these pages would answer all her questions. 

Her eyes moved from the book to meet Lilith, and she beamed, though the hint of nerves could be seen in her hands as she drummed her fingers gently against the leatherbound cover. “Li Ruì, double Great Grandma. This is her journal. She’s basically a mystery. She even was to her own children and grandchildren. No one knew what happened to her journal, she always told people she had lost it even though everyone knew she was lying.” 

Gingerly, she pulls back the cover, and starts to thumb through the pages with intent, skimming through her younger years. Their time traveling through California in her teen years, until they hit Northern Nevada as she turned Twenty. And then— 

“Holy shit. My family settled in Vegas. in 1905,” Her brow creased as she reread it over and over again: We moved to Las Vegas today. The town has something special about it, I can feel it in my finger tips. 

“That’s fucking news to me,” She says, a gentle finger skimming down the page as she reads. “Hope you don’t mind a play by play, you’re getting it one way or another.”

『  ☢  』

The moment felt familiar, if not inverted. Two siblings tucked away inside her father’s study late into the night, one ear to the door and eyes devouring decades, centuries and more of their family history. Lost to them if Lilith had heeded her father’s warnings. Lost to whatever family remained after her father passed; lost to the family she had now. And in that way, those journals were as much part of the archives as everything else, an echo of a lineage, an echo of a magic bestowed by their very own Goddess; one that had evaporated from her being. 

Levi had it now, for ‘safekeeping’ as she’d began saying some years ago— it was about time she paid him a visit again, tend to the overgrowth surrounding his grave. 

“Makes sense it ended up here then. A lot of what I have here are ‘lost’ things, myths, journals and tomes and whatever else has no business existing or went missing from circulation. Double Great Grandma might’ve left it here or serendipity really had a hand in this one.” And that itself wasn’t as farfetched as one would expect. Stranger things had happened in the Midnight Underground, and stranger things would continue to happen so long as they existed. 

“So much for not having roots here,” Lili says, scribbling away some cursory notes as she updates her inventory— the first ‘loss’ in her archives, though she wouldn’t deem it as such, these belonged to Chloe, “means you just found your way back home. Trés poetic, if you ask me.” Even more than, it was a curious thing considering all Chloe had mentioned before, but what family like these didn’t have their fair share of secrets and skeletons in the fridge?

Connor pauses what he’s doing, letting the gingerbread fall where it may so he can reach out, removing her hand from the mug she’s been death gripping so he can interlock their fingers together. He looks at her seriously and his voice gets softer. “I know you didn’t do it for praise or glory, Lili, you did it because you loved me. So let me do the same thing. Because I love you.”

And he would love her no matter what form she took. Lilith Talbot, his grandmother. Lilith Gaumond, his protector. Lili, his best friend. There would be a million more changes in his life, a million more labels and dynamics they might shift through, but marrying Esmeray had given him so much. He wouldn’t leave her, not like his coward of a grandfather had. She would always have him. They would always have each other and for that he could not thank his wife enough.

“Good. Because if you don’t talk to him, I’ll talk to him for you. Or worse, I’ll have Austin ask his girlfriend to talk to him about it. And is that what you want? Really? Think about it.”

He pauses again, “I just want to see you feeling better, alright? It’ll be a process but that’s fine. I’m not going anywhere throughout it. Now, will you please stop mopping and use your grandma powers to help me make a gingerbread house my wife will love?”

『  ☢  』

Humor has always been a defense mechanism for Lilith; her father never truly appreciated the jokes, but they helped fill the gaps in her seemingly unfulfilled life. When she rolls her eyes then, it’s not because she thinks the moment is weightless or stupid or any of those things— it’s because it’s always been easy to cry in her grandson’s presence. All that warmth and comfort he exuded begot all of those emotions, “if you really insist wolfenstein, but like, I’m living in your house now, I think that’s a big one...just don’t evict me anytime soon.”

She squeezes his fingers in return, forever grateful that her life had led her here. All of these losses in her life and yet Connor had been an enduring facet, one more piece of normality for a woman who’d been made for abnormalities. For all the years she’s lived, Lilith has understood the consequences of dealing with forbidden magic, of her Frankenstein’s monster of necrobotany, eternal life and all else, but this boy hadn’t left her side so long as he’d known her...and she’d never leave his if he allowed it. 

“Are you seriously threatening me right now? I didn’t know we’ve gone and stooped so low, Connor. Am I getting a timer for your little demands, or can I procrastinate this until I force your hand?”

Fuck, his sincerity was annoying sometimes. She drops her shoulders, smile almost dropping as well, but she’s better than that, “I know, that’s always been the goal with you hasn’t it? Now though, I get to guide you to success and you have to listen to me nag about gingerbread infrastructure...scoot over, or are you gonna let your grandmother stand around all day?”

Chloe hummed, eyeing up the faerie in question who was all but unrelentlessly trained on Connor. Frankly, if Chloe had to choose, she’d take out Hollis in a heartbeat. Maybe even over Damian if the scenario presented itself as such. But, it won’t happen tonight. Mostly because Connor, Lili, and Esme would sooner toss her into the next realm than cause another scene in the Fae court. 

It’s a shame seeing as she had made a hell of an impression on them the last time. Maybe they would have all enjoyed a reprise of the deranged and broken seer. 

But, Chloe would keep to herself and her kind. She may be a welcome guest in this realm, but she’s no more than a piece of performance art for the people of this realm. Like a wind up toy to be coiled and sent off the edge of the table, forgotten as soon as they were bored of the modicum of entertainment. Her lifeline, even now as extended as it was, was a small blip on the course of all their lives. She had no doubts she was an expendable plaything in their eyes. 

It was better to stick to her people, anyway. They’d keep her sane and grounded, something she would not manage to do herself.

“Too much. You think they’d be trying to campaign or something. They don’t exactly have public opinion on their side.” But that was neither here nor there. Chloe reaches up to touch one of the pearls on her mask, and scoffs. “I’d like to say they’re fake, but knowing Hollis? They’re very real, I’m sure. They wouldn’t skimp, even on our lowly selves.” It was a show, that was clear, but a show of power and status. No room for false stones here. Chloe’s eyebrow raises beneath her mask at that, doing a quick skim of the crowd. “Really? Do the Fae even, like, do proposals like that? I kind of figured it was super old Baroque era marriages around here or something.” Dowry and all.

『  ☢  』

It’s undeniable that this realm is a beautiful, the festivities even more so— from all she had heard these lands were endless, fractured in two but no less vast. Lili doesn’t think an expedition across the realm would be such a bad thing, curiosity had never relinquished its hold on her, dangerous as it was, and she’d compiler her findings in one more journal to add to the archives. Henry might enjoy hearing about such things and some sylph had boasted about their in-house apothecary. If only this wasn’t more than a show of...well, she didn’t know what exactly, maybe a show of hubris, avarice...a few of those things were fitting for the heir. 

As it was, there were more pressing matters. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were annoying her grandchildren, Lili had stuck herself to the same far wall of the dance hall and she’d tensed her jaw so tightly, she was starting to think the night would end with a chipped molar. There was no enjoying this Faerie holiday, not while they sat trapped inside a beautifully furnished snow globe, traipsing around like some random Faerie wouldn’t decide to steal their names or feed them some non-Fae-enslaving finger food. The possibilities were endless.

So was the night and that itself was really testing the bounds of her patience. From what she knew of this realm, time passed differently but there was additional magic blanketing the space; she could feel it. 

“Knowing Hollis, this itself is a part of their Orator parade— forget cupcakes with their face on them, when you can give the little people a taste of your grandiose. Might sway people to know they come from greatness, even if that very thing might’ve been skipping these past few generations.” You could never trust these royal types to do anything without an ulterior motive. “That better be a little Fae souvenir then. Here’s hoping you get to keep the pearls.” It was the least the heir could do for all of those they tried crushing beneath their thumb, and what are a few pearls when you’ll be inheriting the entirety of a Seelie court? “I’m not even sure, if I’m being totally honest. Seems like it’s more of a formality than anything, the lucky Faerie’s supposed to say yes...it’s not so much a real question.”

“Come on, you think I’m capable of not showing you appreciation for being here?” It was not in Clementine’s nature to be anything less than the hostess, kind hearted, well mannered little lady she had been trained to be. 

All traits that very well could become a detriment to her. 

She may have looked it, but she was no fool. Clem was aware she was soft, kind, and easy to take advantage of. Anyone who knew of her could be quick to label her as spineless or even fearful, and those were things that would not serve her well when she came out as a Devlin for everyone else to speculate on as well. 

Clem knew she would need to learn to be much stronger and more assertive. Hell, maybe even a little colder than she was now if she was going to survive. Everyone always told her there were people who would look after her and protect her. But this was still the Midnight Underground. There would come a day where no one would be able to take care of issues for her. She’d need to be able to take care of it herself, and she was determined to be able to do just that.

But, that’s not tonight. Tonight, she’ll be Clementine Johnson. Not Devlin. 

“It’s perfect, it’s like you knew! Did you recruit Chloe or something,” Clem teases, holding the bat up to her side against the red and black tinged dress that was just as over the top as she felt.

“Well, we’ll see how the will reading goes. And, everything that comes after that. This… is kind of a soft launch, and is being done among friends. The surreal feeling after everyone knows might be a different breed. But, it’s okay, I’m expecting it. It was my decision, I know what I’m signing up for. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think I was ready.”

『  ☢  』

“Probably not, but the option is on the table. Consider it one of those—” she has to stop herself short of using the world maternal, not knowing if that was a landmine waiting to blow but certain that this wasn’t the time or place to test it, “like a nurture thing? A soothsayer thing? Which sounds like I’m just throwing out words now, but this is me trying to say that I’d be here sans appreciation. It’s nice, but certainly not a caveat for my being at your party.”

The world was full of thankless jobs but attending this party for someone she cared about was not one of them. One small thing like this was a drop in the ocean anyhow. 

A million little things like that became second nature, inconsequential parts of motherhood and all that came after. Parties like these, sports games, doctors appointments, parent-teacher conferences. You made time for the people you cared about— the rest of the night would be tumultuous, maybe even dangerous, but she’d wanted to carve out some time for Clementine. For most of her early life, Lili grappled with that, dedicate time to anything other than her studies. She’d suffered for it in the end, but it was one more lesson learned.

Not everyone needed to be taught such harsh lessons though; not everyone deserved such a brutally eye-opening experience. Those things changed you in extremely fundamental ways.

“Guilty as charged,” she teases in return, holding up the basket filled with all sorts of themed goodies, “this one was all me though, and don’t you listen to anyone else who tells you otherwise.” An entire day and more was spent looking for all the perfect goodies, a cheeky necklace among other things. If Clementine insisted on showing her appreciation towards her than she’d best accept that same appreciation in return.

“Which is nothing short of amazing, Clem, like really. I told you before, so long as this decision sits well with you, so long as this is what you want then, what else really matters? Besides all that other stuff, but that can be dealt with in the aftermath. Might strike some fear into them because you’ve been bold enough to brace this head on.”

It strikes him then how much Lilith really has been protecting him his entire life. Austin needed it more, that much he knew. He’d been sick his entire life and there were only 8 years of being an only child. Sure, Connor had been spoiled in that time, but he’d never felt protected. He was the first born Talbot son and that meant he was going to be alpha. If he didn’t grow up fast he would sink to the bottom of the ocean and his parents would simply just watch. So perhaps Lilith was looking out, making him feel powerful, protecting him from further feelings of inferiority, by making sure Miss Scarlet was the baddest bitch in town.

“I knew there was a reason you always said you had to be the one to shuffle the cards,” he sighs. “And it wasn’t because my hands were too small because you let me shuffle them when you taught me Blackjack.” Those Goldfish and Hershey kiss betting nights had been some of the best New Years celebrations of his life, back when he was too young to go to the parties for fear he might open his mouth too wide and make the pack look like fools. He’d had a knack for that his entire life.

Not that Lili ever made him feel stupid for being Connor “Big Mouth” Talbot. Not unless he’d earned it.

“I mean the only known gender grandson/grandmother,” Connor teases, taking a deep breath as he studies her again. She isn’t lying, which is good because if she was he was going to mad. “I never minded it. You do other things for me. Just as important ones. If I have to be your check in nurse during your recovery as a thank you for making me not develop an inferiority complex then so be it. Have you talked to Dr. Jones about what else you can do? Clifford mentioned Juno’s on a bunch of supplements to help her body regulate back into having the nutrition it needs so she’s not overgorging. And I was asking a few other Undeads I’ve run into at work and they mentioned when they get like this having people around them makes it easier to take it slow.”

He’d been researching in his own special way, just like she always had for him.

『  ☢  』

“I trained a Blackjack legend, and maybe that’s the legacy I’ll leave in this world.” Some of her fondest memories were spent playing the card game, others were spent teaching him silly tricks she’d learned from Carmen. The illusory magic of the mundane, she’d deemed it. Echoes of whatever magic wizards could bend to their will. On her more sentimental days, she’d wax poetic about how her magic had been displaced so she could find one more pure, more fulfilling. Family, as cheesy as it was. But there was something there anyhow, untraceable to the naked out though Lili was convinced that such things existed. 

Or perhaps motherhood had softened her edges, and maybe that wasn’t such a terrible thing. Selfishly, she’d thought that it was only fair then, that life had given her another family, another chance, another purpose. 

She laughs then, one of those genuine sounds that had been few and far between these days, “you know scientists are still trying to figure that one out. But there’s merit in being a medical anomaly, beastie.” Like there was in being undead; for all that had been taken from her, had Lilith not gone and forfeit her own life, she wouldn’t have been living this one...as difficult as it was on some days. “I know you don’t because of who you are, but it worries me that you’ve had to take on this role in my life. I don’t want you feeling like you have to take care of me on top of everything else you have to deal with. And I didn’t do any of those things for the praise and glory, Connor. You never have to thank me for any of it.”

Love was unconditional like that; not a transactional thing.

“Henry has enough to deal with, you know...I might ask him about those supplements though, that might be a huge help. Having people around though, that’s—it’s embarrassing, wolfenstein and I hate the fact that I have that lack of control. You shouldn’t have to see me like that. I try to pace myself and I just can’t and then I make myself sick and it feels terrible but I can’t stop it.” Lilith had always wanted to be some immovable pillar of strength for her family, for her boys, but she’d failed so miserably in these past twenty years. Broken, leaning on those who should have been leaning on her.

Sometimes it seemed like Josefina and Lilith were made in the same vat of toxic sludge. In truth, she’d mostly started chasing her around in hopes of a thralling just to fuck around and find out, but the longer they interacted, the more time they spend together, the easier it was to see why she’d fought so hard. Lilith was motherly even at her strangest. And Jo had had Marcia, for awhile, but not really - not ever like this.

“God who the fuck even knows, to be honest. I think he’s like vibing with his kids tonight though, which, much deserved. They kept texting asking why he was taking fistfulls of Advil and it’s like I don’t know Paulina maybe ask your dad instead of sending me the fourteenth text in twenty minutes, I’m busy doing gay shit.”

Jo rolled her eyes, looking over to access Lilith’s outfit. “Tres chic, I have to say. It’s a great color on you, but what isn’t? Politics is politics though. Trust and believe I get it.”

“Is it bad I’m nervous?” she asked after a moment, taking a deep breath. “About Clementine. I’ve never been nervous about anyone in my life until this moment. I just want it to go well. Like I’ve finally got this chance at something I’ve literally always wanted and now I’m staring it down about to choke.”

『  ☢  』

It was odd how two people could come together like they did, with a nonsensical genesis like theres and now Lilith couldn’t imagine another path down this road. She might not ever forgive herself for indirectly inflicting pain on Josefina, but there were certainly other ways to repent for that. Past that, she’d felt lucky enough that Jo even wanted her to remain in her life after the events of this past month.

“Definitely good for him. I take it he’s not putting the pendant back on? It would’ve curved the headache I’m sure but that’s a bandaid he’d have to rip off some other time.” Not that it was any of her concern either way, if he’d wanted to remain ignorant after or explore all the Midnight Underground could offer him. But she was glad he could maintain that sense of normalcy nonetheless. “Honestly just copy and paste the same reply each time, message received, doing gay shit, see you next year. Which is a stupid joke but what’s a little tom foolery?”

The undead woman shrugged in response, her bits of dramaticism the true spice of life. “I had to represent my baby tarantula. Hot pink though? A real travesty against this skin, but everything else is a winner. Save politics, we’re all losers under whatever warped system we’re wading through. Imperfect is better than nothing though, I guess.”

Which was one of those things you could apply to multiple parts of your life; and yet it was another one of those things that was easier said than done. 

“No, it’s not bad, it’s normal I think? But I don’t consider that choking, you’re just getting closer to that thing you’ve always wanted and it’s finally settling into your bones. That’s all gonna melt away after you go and kiss her anyhow...what is it people are always talking about, you’re on the precipice of something great? It’d be weirder if you were chill about it, you know?”

It didn’t feel like enough. Not without Sorcha’s journals, his mother’s. Even then, though - until they had answers, real answers, the kind you could be sure about, could do something with - nothing’d be enough. Cam had sat back from the absolutely deranged sprawl of what he’d brought Lilith, laid out across one of her research-sized worktables. The Talbot Archives loomed around them, as beautiful as he remembered. Always warm-lit and warm-feeling, in that way magic could be. It was, he’d always figured, the magic of a place well-loved. And dangerously, deeply protected. All that, as much as the Power in those books, every one of them full to bursting with spells and stories. Kept so carefully, on these shelves. Trusted to Lilith’s care. Like everything he’d just told her, unraveling what little he had of all the frazzled, tangling threads of whatever the hell was going on in the goddamn Underground.  

Almost. Almost everything. The rest - the hardest part, the closest-clutched, the truth that’d nearly cracked Connor’s mind past repair - would wait. Just a little longer. They would wind around it, first. No way to escape that, with what he’d put on the table. He’d watched Lili scan and slide through it all, the sight of her working-frown and the sound of rustling papers some strange sort of comfort. Nostalgic. Nice to find a little history that didn’t hurt, first and foremost. 

It’d been an honour, to set foot in the Archives at all. A privilege, to learn from them. And a pleasure, once he’d ironed out those over-keen hunter’s instincts, to do so alongside his mother in law. She’d never been less than that, to him. Or to Kenny. Lili was Ken’s mother, loved like that, trusted like that. Abe leaving hadn’t changed them the way it seemed to change Lili and Senior, Lili and Cathy. Sure as hell hadn’t made her less of a grandmother to those kids they’d both helped bring up. That, that’d been - everything. Honour, privilege, pleasure, purpose.

And they’d both lost it all, and he still owed her the truth of how. Cam shifted in that sling, his shot-up shoulder hardly a day out from being poked through by the good doctor. And feeling like it, that healing ache turned tar-thick, not-so-slowly seeping through those too-human painkillers Henry had insisted on. “Sorry about some of that chickenscratch,” he interrupted, quietly, with a wry, apologetic sort of smile. “Sonofabitch got me right in the penmanship. Pass anything you don’t wanna squint at, I’ll read it out, spare you the headache.” Whatever he could do, to get this not-so-little research project rolling. Fast. 

@lilieths​ 

『  ☢  』

She’d missed a lot, an obvious consequence of being gone for— well, not as long as she’d originally thought. It was impossible to tell time from the basement of that building; her watch had been taken, windows were nonexistent and they’d kept the lights on around the clock; it was easy to feel like a month had come and gone. Easier to lose time with the hunger overtaking you. Easier to lose sight of everything else after. Honestly, it’d be easier to lie to herself and say that it had been four weeks and not one? Two? The details are still foggy, but not this, not all that’s been laid out before her. Better to focus on this than all else. Another puzzle laid out in front of her, one she’d pour over for as long as was necessary and more.

A plethora of mismatched bits, conversations had, marks left behind, a name, a letter.

Truly a miraculous thing that she had the archives then, a place to hold all of this information, to work your way through the chaos of a mystery without having to look over your shoulder. It was a sanctuary of her own creation. An amalgamation of all that curiosity and wonder she’d held onto past the loss of everything in this world that could have inspired such feelings. Her alcove of leviathan size, shielding her from all those things that sought to fracture her heart, her mind. History would tell you that pain begot artistry and these archives were her magnum opus. All those years ago, Lilith was convinced that no other thing in her life would have such permanence, and that maybe she’d been plagued with her own curse, paralleling that which her boys insisted ran rampant through their lineage. Fuck a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But she’d been prepared to outlive her husband, her sons and grandchildren— everyone who came after. Lili had resigned herself to it; there was no legacy to be left behind but she would know loss and whenever the thought became too overwhelming, she hid away here. Cowardice perhaps, but then she’d never left Las Vegas for it. Lilith had planted her roots here and, she’d opened her doors to this space to those she loved, people like Cameron, people like Connor. They brought life to these archives in a way she couldn’t, and the added company was something she was entirely too grateful for. 

“You can say that again,” she teases, trying to add some levity into this moment. Lili had always been that kind of mother when she needed to be, that kind of grandmother even. When laughter was the only salve available, and she’d expertly displaced someone’s attention elsewhere. Focus was needed in this moment, but so was that; for her as well, anyhow. “I’d think you were writing in the old Latin, Cam...what’s this one there?” She asks, handing over a piece of paper she’d been trying to decipher for the past two minutes. 

“You never let me win at Clue,” Connor counters, breaking off a piece of the gingerbread for himself. It sucks, still, like it did the last two times he bit into it out of frustration. “I was fucking amazing at Clue. You let me play as Miss Scarlet. Even though we all know I’m the hottest person in the room so I should get to play as Miss Scarlet.”

It’s hard to focus his eyes on the candies and the sweets when his grandmother is right there looking like she’s still starving herself. She’s not, he knows that, because Dr. Jones said it would be important to eat a little at a time to build up her strength. They’d been so starved that over eating was likely going to make them sick. He tries not to acknowledge the fact she hides from him during mealtimes, always claiming that she’s busy in her room with something or another. Hopefully she’ll come to him when she’s ready.

Difficulty mostly in lies in the fact that he’s seen her do this before. Not exactly this, because Mateo and Abernathy are not the same people and the situations and far more complex, but Connor still remembers being 12 years old and making her breakfast in the morning because she couldn’t even begin to get out of bed. Even the thought of it makes him want to snap the houses in half and order her some fucking eggs. Not that he can force her. He shouldn’t force her.

But she had taught him to cook and now she wouldn’t even eat it in front of him.

“I deserve fairy Jesus and a grandmother, I think,” Connor chuckles, offering her a half smile. “How are you feeling today? Like, honestly, no bullshit. I’m worried about you Lili.”

『  ☢  』

“If you say so, Wölfflin...but it was just really odd how you always won in the eight inning, like clockwork.” He’d come into his own eventually, but, before he could even think to take on this world on his own she’d shield him from something so small as failure. And when Miss Scarlet finally kicked Mr. Green’s ass, she was all the happier for it. Lili would always look back on all of those moments with fondness, those bits and pieces of memories with her family. Whenever she’d doubted her place among the Talbots, she’d thought back to all those nights playing Clue, weekends having family dinners and vacations to Aspen. 

She’d spent more years with them than she had with her own sept anyhow.

Abernathy wouldn’t entertain the thought of more children, and after asking once and being chastised about it, she’d spent the rest of that year feeling ungrateful for the bout of baby fever. He’d been right anyhow, Conny and Kenny were more than enough and Lili herself wasn’t sure she could have children as an animated corpse. So she’d be the last Gaumond— not even that for some time, or maybe it had been wrong to think herself a Talbot.

Maybe that’s why she’d dug her claws into this family— Abe said as much during one of their few arguments...he’d apologized after the fact, said he didn’t mean it but perhaps he’d been right. Perhaps she’d only attached herself to the Talbots because she had no one else in this world, nowhere else to go for those fourteen years Carmen was gone from her life. 

But it didn’t make her love for them any less binding; didn’t make it any less valuable. That’s what she’d been hoping, but if one day they decided that wasn’t enough, she’d make her peace with it. They owed no loyalty to Lilith...she was no wolf.

“That you do, little wolf...maybe that way, your little gazebo wont be looking so...quaint?” Though she’s just teasing; it’s a cute little thing and none of these other kids could understand gingerbread structural integrity enough to make the attempt. And she’s almost wishing she would have stopped at another table to ask some random kid about their gingerbread shack. “If you must know, I feel like hot garbage, honestly, no bullshit. Seriously, though, you worry about me too much, Connor. You always have, which is a real role reversal on this whole grandmother/grandson duo and I’m really losing gigi credibility here.” 

This entire thing feels like absolute insanity. Clementine never thought she’d make herself known once she finally learned she was Devlin. She though, forever, she’d be a secret until she inevitably withered and died with the secret held close to her chest, shared only with the people she trusted the most in the world, and those who were privy to the information before she had a chance to do anything with it. 

It had brought her nothing but heavy weight, especially since her Mother’s death. Between the fact that she would never know her Mother for herself, and the fact that she was a blood relative, passed down the debts of several generations past. Now, she was having a party to announce this to friends and those she considered family in the hopes that it would lessen the blow of the rest of the Underground learning the truth upon the reading of Moira’s will. The only Clementine had given permission for her name to be read off those very pages.

There was the chance people wouldn’t believe her, and that was okay. Debts didn’t lie. The late Orator’s signed and sealed will didn’t lie. The face that stared back at Clem in the mirror didn’t lie, either. She stood nothing to gain from being a fake, and everything to lose by being real. 

But, that wasn’t what tonight was about. As friends milled through the house— her house —she mingled and greeted people with open arms and appreciation for their support. One of the people she was most excited to see? Lilith, hands down. 

Clem had nothing but love and respect for Lilith, and all that she had to offer. And, naturally, she came rushing over with arm fulls of presents, and Clementine couldn’t help but laugh as she shifted around her in a calculated maneuver not to knock anything over, and squeezed tight. Not too tight, she was trying to learn her own strength now.

“Lilith! Thank you so much for being here! I’m excited to see you.” Last time she had seen Lilith was when she dashed into the bathroom at Pete’s, but that was not discussion for this party either. “I’m feeling okay. Everyone has been super supportive, but it just feels… surreal.”

『  ☢  』

She’d been in this mansion a few times, never allowed behind the velvet rope but coming close enough. The first time had been twenty years ago, a rare moment of eclecticism in that sea of melancholy and gloom she’d been floating in since her husband left. It’d been Moira’s forty-seventh— six hundred and forty seventh. Artemis, she’d gotten so drunk that night, woke up in one of the upstairs bathrooms and tripped over herself trying to sneak out. Lili had locked eyes with the vampire, raising a hand in the air before the woman could even think to speak and begged for mercy, ‘please don’t ask...I’m out of your hair as soon as I walk through the door.’

That they repeated the same exchange a few times over the years, was never anybody’s business. But Lilith has to wonder if there’s still that dent on the fifth step from when she’d tripped that handsy kelpie. 

It hadn’t changed much since then, if she was being honest with herself, but at the same time it had? In the same way her own home had, forever altered by the loss of an otherwise perennial fixture. Moira Devlin had walked down these halls for years and then she hadn’t. Abernathy Talbot had slept beside her for thirty years and then he hadn’t. And she, well, all those years spent in the family estate and then that was lost to her.

Tonight wasn’t for any of that though, they’d be celebrating a plethora of things— before the world potentially went to shit, of course, but...Lilith was ever the optimist.

Pulling away from Clementine, she takes in the image before her; the end of the night isn’t certain but she knows she’s proud of this little dhampir and all she’s decided to do.

“Nope, I don’t wanna hear a single thank you...listen, you could ask me to party with you on Mt. Vesuvius and I would, no questions asked, and just look at you! This dress is gorgeous, you’re gorgeous and you and this stuffed bat match, which, insane.” She may have done a bit much as far as gifts went, but a love language is a love language. “Everyone being supportive is good though, yeah...that surreal feeling might stick around, but it shouldn’t be too bad?”

Having Lilith back was a blessing and a half. Chloe would have done anything not to lose those weeks without her, knowing how she had been tormented feeling the dread, hunger, and anger course through her own body within visions. But, the fact that she had been strong enough to not take a bite out of anyone, and come back to them in one piece, at least physically, was enough to be gateful for.

In normal circumstances, the two would likely find a way to cause trouble. Maybe for themselves, maybe for everyone else. But, with Connor preoccupied, Chloe often looked to Lilith for fun. They were so similar, it just made sense to her to latch onto Lil. But, it was different this time. As calm as everyone was trying to be, she knew someone was in work mode when she saw it, even if it was buried under a mask. It was in the tension grabbing at her shoulders, and the set of her stance. 

But, what good could they do here and now? Little to nothing what with the nature of the event, they were at a disadvantage after all. So, Chloe would remain well behaved, and bite her tongue behind the beaded veil in front of her face.

She gave a small, dramatic dodge as Lilith tried for a drink of her glass to no avail. Chloe knocked the beads that dangled around her mouth with her finger, and a deep sigh. “It felt so incredibly pointed, as pretty as it is.” And it was. She was willing to give Hollis that much credit, but no more. “Honestly, though, another hour of wandering around this party, biting my tongue, I might take you up on that.” 

『  ☢  』

Besides the typical and all too ridiculous machinations of Lilith’s mind, the event itself was a nice distraction— in all the ways that pretty gilded things could be. Everyone in the ballroom was dressed to impress, the Fae themselves dressed in their gossamer fineries and Lili wondered, for just a sliver of a moment, if someone like her could belong someplace like this. The knot in her hindbrain would tempt her to try, but those more pragmatic parts of the archivist said otherwise. 

Lili was a sentimental old hag, and she wouldn’t want to leave any of the people she held near and dear. People like Chloe and the rest.

Just the same, they should have kept to one another. The Faerie Folk were beautiful in the same way oleanders were, but poisonous all the same. Even Esmeray, who, for all of her beauty and elegance, was a force to be reckoned with. There was so much they didn’t know, so much to be learned and as she collected more texts and tomes, it was obvious that those of her realm held no true knowledge of these worlds. The Verum Illud barely scratched the surface.

And there her thoughts went again, operating on a hundred monitors at once, running on fumes and somehow surviving. Somehow she’s still surviving. 

Fuck it if she didn’t wanna test the waters and rip this mask off so she can drink a bit of this plum wine— the Fae equivalent, at least. “For someone leading an entire Circle, they’ve got a lot of free time on their hands for plotting and party planning. But yeah, it is almost as pretty as the wearer. You think those are real pearls, at least?” It was only fair after all. “Give it a minute...I hear someone’s getting proposed to tonight. Wonder who it is.”

He’d needed a minute, after Connor tore back off into the glow of the party. Just one.

And yet. Cam was on his tenth, at least. Dry-eyed, finally; or close as he was likely to get, this evening. Still, he’d kept to the quietest corner he could find, burning through a cigarette, slowing his sore, happy heart. Bit by bit. Hadn’t been doing too bad with it, either, when a face that hadn’t changed in all the time he’d known it and a voice he hadn’t heard since - since that call - drifted up close. Cam had expected to see her, of course. Lili’d never miss a thing like this. No matter how much it must ache, like a phantom fucking limb. 

All the same, he hadn’t figured she’d actually cross the floor his way. He straightened up a little, blowing some smoke over his shoulder as his chest unstuck enough to start working again. More or less. With something like a smile, even, as she spoke. Wasn’t that the gentlest reception he’d got so far? A Talbot who wasn’t looking to take a piece of him, on sight. 

That’s what Lilith had been, to Cam, like she had to Kenny: a Talbot. Family. Even if not in name. Made two of them, or it had, once. Different as they’d seemed, him and Lili… they’d shared so much of what mattered most. What they loved, most. Christ, the things the two of them had talked about, up late with the last of the dinner wine once the kids were in bed; with Kenny right there in the den, smiling as they got on, picking away at his guitar and chiming in.

The good old days. How many days ago, they’d been. Cam managed something like a smile, a flicker of that puckishness from back-when to the way he brushed the nicety right off. “Mm. Kind of you to lie.” And it’d be kind of him not to tell her the same, even though he would mean it, honestly; of course Lilith was every bit as lovely, as unchanged, as undead, as she’d been the day Abernathy met her. And the day her husband turned his back, on her, and his sons, and all the rest. But Lili was still here. Watching one of the Talbot boys she’d done so much to bring up get married to somebody he loved more than his skin or pelt. While a certain set of alphas bristled, hard-eyed, at just about everything and everyone. Her included, he’d noticed. Guess they could share that, too. 

Was he enjoying himself, though? Like that was an easy thing to settle and say, for either of them. Which was the point, wasn’t it? That they both knew the other’s answer. Bittersweet. Cam had turned a little, into something like that conspiratorial shoulder-to-shoulder sort of huddle they used to find themselves in at so many Talbot occasions. “In a way? A few. Trying. You know.” She would. “So long as they’re happy. Happy as they can be. Right?” Seemed easier, safer, to talk about that, about who they still shared, than… anything or anyone else. He’d searched a glimpse of Connor and Esme out of the crush, and smiling got simpler, at the sight of them. “God, don’t they look it…” 

『  ☢  』

Sometimes the guilt weighed heavier on her shoulders— speckled moments in her periphery, the looming whispers of a poor man’s survivor’s guilt. It’s what she’d considered it at least, self-deprecating as it was. An odd thing, to oscillate between feelings of loss and shame. This family had been a broken thing when she’d married Abernathy, a young boy missing his mother and a newborn that would never know her. Lili hadn’t even thought herself ready for motherhood, but she’d held Kenny in her arms and all she knew after was that she’d love these children, her children, for so long as she was ‘living’. A promise was made to those two boys, that she’d keep them safe, loved, cherished...but she’d driven their father away.

And Lilith always wondered how different their lives would have been if she were the one to go. Connor always repeated the same sentiment, ‘better him than you,’ but Lilith wasn’t a wolf and she’d no longer held any magic in her bones. What could she do to protect her children and their children? What could she do to soften the resentment in her eldest’s eyes? A man who strayed further and further from her with each passing phase of the moon. 

Grief and loss were the true inheritances of immortality, but Lili didn’t want to lose another family; not to soon; not when she’d barely even survived the loss of the first.

Her husband’s promises had been as porous as his loyalties and she’d been left to deal with the aftermath. And all that came after. A loss so great, Lilith thought she’d die right alongside her son and his babies— no mother should have to bury their children, and even then she knew the day would come but not so soon, not before they’d lived all the life Artemis had blessed them with. 

The moments after had been a fervent sort of blur, as she tried to call her husband, pleading and begging him to answer her calls. Lili Talbot howled at the moon that night, those broken screams of a mother permeating the still night, the woman inconsolable as she’d told her son, his wife, her father. And that night, she’d laid in her son’s old bed, holding a picture frame to her chest as she’d cried all the tears left in her. Days, months, and years after would be spent in mourning— the rest of her life would be. She knew that emptiness in her chest would never subside and Artemis, how Cameron must have been feeling. The phone call was etched in her memory, alongside that anxiety she’d felt at just the sound of his voice. 

Reason and decorum kept her from throwing her arms around him in an act that could have been comforting once upon a time; but she didn’t know where they were now after all those years. That conversation had been their last, punctuating the years they’d known one another, an end only remedied now with their bittersweet reunion. Despite everything hanging in the air, her smile widens, “don’t even start with me, Cameron...you look good. Scouts honor.” She could almost hear Connor Sr.’s words now, mom, you were never a scout; one other thing that had changed in the years since their family was fractured even further, teetering on the edge of erasing themselves from existence. A chisel and hammer striking their most vulnerable parts.

“Yeah...I know,” the words are soft as they stand there, admiring a moment that once belonged to her and once belong to him. Lili still has the ring— Helene’s. She can’t bring herself to remove it from her ring finger and even now she’s fiddling with it. A nervous habit. A reminder of his promises of forever, and all that came after. But then, Connor and Esmeray were a reminder that love could still blossom, that it existed still, that her grandson could grasp it. “They sure do look it— after all those years of avoiding the obvious, they deserve this.” Despite everything, they did. 

“How’s the Underground been treating you, kiddo?”