12 for Garcy? Only if you want to of course:)

The house is not far from where Flynn grew up, not far from his late grandmother’s apartment off Ilica, one of those big old places with overgrown vines on the walls, gables, rambling turrets – looking straight out of a gothic novel, for all that it’s five minutes from bustling downtown Zagreb. It is obviously a fixer-upper, and Lucy broke through a floorboard in the basement the other day and discovered a nest of mice. (She’s not proud of the fact that she, having coolly faced down ruthless secret societies and all manner of nasty villains throughout history, ran upstairs screaming at Flynn to call the exterminator now, but hey, they all have their secret shames.) But it’s the kind of house that bookish little girls dream about while reading under the sheets at night, and it’s theirs. They’re working on, or rather Flynn is working on, rebuilding it, and it looks better every day. Real. True.

Both of them are not sad to be out of America for a while, and they have no definite plans to return immediately. Lucy finally sold her mom’s house and doesn’t exactly have an academic job to leave behind, and it was time for a new beginning. She’s doing some work in state archives over here and guest lecturing at the University of Zagreb, and Flynn – well, it’s a lot stranger for him to be back here, especially without the NSA job that was the reason for his presence last time. But he seems happier, in a way she’s never seen him, or maybe that’s just because he’s finally starting to shed the iron-hard shell in which he has lived by necessity for so many years. Lucy does love Zagreb. It’s a charming little town-city, there are plenty of side streets, square, churches, cafes, museums, markets, gardens, galleries, and other places to explore, and everyone either speaks English or is vastly patient with her stumbling attempts at Croatian. It’s so different from the crammed crowds, the hustle and bustle of San Francisco, the on-the-go-go-go Bay Area, where everyone is always worrying about money or bathrooms or traffic. She can walk everywhere, or take the tram. Shopkeepers have made an effort to remember her name. It’s weird.

Lucy gets home tonight with an armload of groceries, unreasonably proud of herself for having navigated the aisles of Konzum without having to pull out her phone to Google Translate product packaging, and sets everything on the counter. There’s still a faint haze of sawdust floating in the air – Flynn must have been busy today – and a fresh coat of paint drying on the living room wall. He’s good with his hands, not that that’s surprising. Building things, building places, building a house, a home, and she glances around for him, but he’s not here. Probably had to run out to get more drywall or whatever it is.

Lucy opens some cans and valiantly sets about cooking dinner. She is, of course, very far from a culinary maestro, especially in a second language, but she’s working on it, and she likes to have the ritual of eating together. Once she’s slapped together something resembling cordon bleu and put it in the oven, she glances around for Flynn again. She thinks about texting him, but decides she can wait a little longer. They’re living together, they are together, they’ve been like this for almost eight months now and left California five months ago, but she worries about being clingy.

At last, as the timer is going off and she hunts in the bare drawers until she finds an improvised oven mitt, the door opens and Flynn appears, looking fresh-scrubbed and oddly furtive. He sticks his nose in, clears his throat, and says, “Uh, smells good.”

“Thanks.” Lucy eyes him curiously. “Big line at the hardware store?”

“No.” Flynn backs out of the kitchen and zooms up the stairs at warp speed, forbearing to offer any more details about his afternoon adventures. Since this is fairly standard for him, Lucy rolls her eyes tolerantly, but when he comes back downstairs, clearly having tackled his unruly dark hair with a wet comb, he seems even more skittish than usual. When she asks him if he wants to sit down, he jumps, then nods gravely, as if invited to a state dinner by the President. He perches in one of the undersized chairs, then says, “Thank you. Ah, for dinner. It looks, ah – my grandmother used to make this, it’s – nice.”

“You’re welcome,” Lucy says, dishing them up and sitting down across from him. They eat in silence for a few moments, Flynn looking twitchier than ever. Then finally she says, “Garcia, is everything all right?”

“I…” Flynn debates the answer to that question. He gets up, jostles the table, grabs some matches, and determinedly lights some of the candles they keep around for atmosphere, as if gosh darn it, something will be romantic around here. Then he says abruptly, “Lucy, do you – do you like this? Here? Us?”

“What?” It’s Lucy’s turn to be surprised. “Yes. Of course I do. I love it.”

Flynn coughs. He can’t seem to meet her eyes. “I just thought,” he says, to the ceiling fan rather than her, until he wrenches them down to face her. “Well, my mother came over here – rather haphazardly, admittedly – to be with my father, and you – and I’ve been waiting… I hoped…”

“Garcia,” Lucy says again, not entirely sure where this is going and feeling obliged to offer a helping hand. She loves this man to her very soul, but my god, the density. “What are you saying?” A sudden spear of anxiety goes through her, turning her cold. “Is it that you don’t like this?”

“What! No!” Flynn looks aghast. “I just – I wanted to be sure, I thought about doing this some other way, and maybe it’s not what you want, you don’t have to, I can live, I just – I had to, I want nothing more in the world, and… ”

And with that, as Lucy finally cottons on where this is going and can’t breathe, Flynn reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small box, and goes to one knee on their half-finished kitchen floor. He looks up at her with those devoted, drowning, unbearable eyes, the ones that want more than anything, and can sometimes struggle, to put it charitably, with turning it into words. “If you wanted,” he says. “We could have our books here, and our nights in bed, and the windows open, and go up to the roof to look at the stars. We could have – this could be our house. It could be like this. Mice and all. It could stay. You could have it.” He pauses. Then he adds, almost as an afterthought, “And me.”

“You…” Lucy is laughing and crying and laughing all at once, as she gets out of her chair and faces him on the floor. “Garcia, are you asking me to marry you?”

Flynn realizes he hasn’t done that yet, and looks chagrined. He pauses, and then at last, he nods. “Yes,” he says. “But if you don’t want – ”

The rest of his sentence is cut off as Lucy flings herself into his arms, knocking him backward, and the ring flies out of his hand onto the floor. Neither of them care, because she’s landed on top of him, she’s kissing him senseless, he’s kissing her back just as savagely, and neither of them say anything until they’re good and damn well ready to, which takes several minutes. “Yes,” Lucy Preston says, and it is the easiest thing she has ever said, the best decision, the deepest and most desperate desire of her heart. “Yes, yes, yes.”

(They finally hunt down the ring, and he puts it on her finger looking like a man in a dream, and they go upstairs to their bedroom, in their house, and she does not mind in the least that her dinner has been entirely forgotten.)

(september prompt list)

“I’ll take care of you.” “It’s rotten work.” “Not to me. Not if it’s you.” Pretty please for All Souls Gabriel and Garcia?

Nantes, BrittanyOctober 25, 1440

The scaffold stands nearby, looming in the darkness, the hangman’s noose clutching a gasp of empty air where tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, it will clutch Gilles de Rais’ wretched neck. Dry kindling has been stacked, awaiting the burning, and most townsfolk have kept well away from it, only to spit and cross themselves if they must pass. Nobody wants this to be a spectacle, grievous and awful as the accused’s crimes are. He was a war hero ten years ago, the close companion of Joan of Orléans, marching against the English invaders, heroically beating them back, and now this. Ordinarily he should have been sent to Paris for trial, but the courts do not want the English getting wind of the fact of Gilles de Rais’ crimes. Some details are so heinous they have been stricken from the court record. The sorcery and sodomy and murder, the unnatural usage of children before they were killed, the torture and the occult experimentations, the dabbling in black magic. It would be too convenient.

Gabriel de Clermont stands in the shadows of the far side, regarding the courtyard, the pacing guards, the knowledge that this square will be flooded with the folk of Nantes and the surrounding countryside by sunup tomorrow, all eager to see Rais burn. He stole their children, he was the monster that they welcomed into their homes and hung with laurels, he was the one they believed in, and it began almost the moment he returned home from Joan’s campaigns, after they burned her in Rouen. Gabriel knew the Maid of Orléans only briefly. He customarily finds religious zealots unpalatable and inflexible, but he had something of a soft spot for her, this tiny nut-brown peasant girl whose rural French sounded half like Occitan, spitting furious and full of righteousness, who was questioned for days and never broke, who put on armor and did what this entire godforsaken country has failed to do itself in beating the English. Gabriel is, after all, and has been for many centuries, French himself. And yet –

We should have done more, he thinks. We could have done more. They had to step back and let Joan burn, and then for eight years, even when appeals were sent to the Knights of Lazarus as knowledge of Gilles de Rais’ crimes began to seep out across the countryside like poison, his lord father has refused to take a hand. We do not fight the humans’ wars. We are not their judge and jury. Gabriel could recite the speech in his sleep. He knows, he knows, that it’s not that Asher de Clermont does nothing. Asher has protected the mortal world from threats they have never even imagined, has fought monsters beyond all comparison, has trained his sons to do the same, and the world itself made it through the last few hundred years, beset with its human problems even as it was, because the Knights of Lazarus were there. And yet, to stand here and look at this scaffold, soaked in eight years’ worth of children’s blood, because Asher did not deem it noble enough to interfere in humans’ business –

Gabriel breaks off and starts to walk, angry, burning, restless. He knows the arguments. We are too strong for them. We cannot appoint themselves their gods, their judge and jury. We cannot let them rely on us to do what they must do for themselves. No wonder the de Clermonts’ rivals jeer that Asher is too soft and too principled and too honorable to ever make a proper leader for their kind, even if they would not dare say that to the Grandmaster’s face. The humans are weak, they have been for years. Plague, famine, war, unrest, economic and religious and political upheaval. They tear themselves apart easily, they die like flies, in their hundreds and their thousands. The creatures, witches and vampires and daemons alike, could emerge from the shadows and strike, kill all the humans easily, make this their world, and it is only Asher’s restraint and power that stops them. Gabriel loves his father, adores him and admires him beyond all words, knows that they must make sacrifices, but at the same time –

You could have let us stop Gilles de Rais, he thinks. Just this once. Just as if you could have let us save Richard, and you did not.

Gabriel comes to a halt, leans against the wall of a wattle-and-daub inn, and then almost jumps out of his skin, fangs flashing out and eyes going black as he hisses, as someone’s hand touches his shoulder from behind. It takes only an instant after that for him to land rather sheepishly. “Ah,” he says breezily, feigning his usual devil-may-care demeanor. “Hello, darling.”

Garcia eyes him, unconvinced by this bravura performance. (He is the only one, Gabriel thinks poignantly, who would even know that it is one.) “What are you doing skulking out here?” his brother asks. “It’s getting late, and – ”

“They only intend to burn one monster tomorrow, so far as I am aware.” Nonetheless, Gabriel grudgingly consents to turn away from the square and the waiting scaffold. They walk down the lane, pass a tiny church, and Garcia absently crosses himself. He is Catholic in a way Gabriel is not, born to it just as the first missionaries were reaching the pagan Slavs of Ragusa, whereas Gabriel was born before the Romans nailed that Jewish carpenter to a tree and has duly converted with the rest of the family. As they emerge on the far side, Gabriel bursts out, “We could have stopped this, you know.”

Garcia pauses, a look of pain on his face. He takes a moment to answer. Finally he says, “You know that Papa – ”

“Yes,” Gabriel snaps, “yes, I know what Papa. Eight years. Eight years of – you’ve heard what that bastard Gilles has been doing, and if it was my child – if someone had laid a hand on Christian like that, torn him to pieces and used him vilely, and there was someone who could have stopped it happening to any other son, and did nothing because of principle – ”

Too late he wonders if he should be lashing out about their father to Garcia, as Garcia fears too much that Asher might not count him his own son enough to openly criticize him, but Garcia reaches out, grips Gabriel’s arms, and holds on hard. “Shh,” he says, a little roughly. “Shh, moje srce, we’ll make it right.”

“How?” Gabriel demands, the word raw on his tongue. This whole spectacle is doing nothing for his cherished reputation of never giving a fuck about anything, but it’s too late. “Turn back time? Bring those dead boys back to life? Apologize to the mothers and fathers for being able to do something, but deciding that our father just would not stand for it, so very sorry? If they marched on Sept-Tours with pitchforks and decided to avenge it, they would be entirely – ”

“Shh,” Garcia says again, more forcefully, and this time, Gabriel is forced reluctantly to listen. “We will watch Gilles de Rais burn tomorrow. We will do what we came to do, and we will see justice done. It’s not your ill. It’s not your sin. There are other battles to fight, where we can make more of a difference, stop much greater evils. All right?”

Gabriel doesn’t answer, chewing over it, not wanting to argue, still not entirely agreeing. Finally when he still doesn’t speak, Garcia says awkwardly, “Do you – do you want to find a brothel?”

“What?” That startles a disbelieving whoop of laughter out of Gabriel, despite his dark mood. “Did you just – you hate brothels!”

“Yes, well.” Garcia shrugs defensively. Vampires can’t flush, but he’s trying anyway. “I thought it would cheer you up.”

Gabriel isn’t sure how to respond to that. He looks at Garcia, still trying so hard to pretend that this is actually how he wants to spend his evening in any remote measure, sitting stiffly while the whores flirt with him and Gabriel goes upstairs with an armful and must be turfed out the next morning. “No, darling,” Gabriel says at last, with genuine regret that he loves Garcia too much to make him endure that – at least tonight, as both of them know full well there will be many others. “Come on, let’s find supper. Though if you propose to keep my company, be warned it’s much less scintillating than usual.”

Garcia shakes his head. “Not to me,” he says. “Not if it’s you.”

So they start to run, breaking into supernatural speed away from the village, bounding across the dark countryside in pursuit of stags to catch and drain, and sit together beneath the stars, and on that night, terrible as the weight of the injustice may be, Gabriel de Clermont does not mind his own sins so much.

(september prompt list)

“I am burning in stars/I am feverishly filled with stars.” Asher/Maria

At first, Maria passes it off as just the winter.  If she is cold, if she is constantly tired, that’s only because even when it isn’t snowing or raining, the sun isn’t out for long enough for it to be helpful.  If she’s overly emotional at times, that’s only because Asher keeps being sent away on secret assignments that he can’t discuss and she misses him and worries.  If she gets nauseous sometimes…well, there’s been a stomach bug going around the neighborhood.

There’s an explanation for everything.  And it’s easy to look at each piece in isolation than in the aggregate.

She’s at Asher’s mother’s house when it finally comes together.  Katya is in the kitchen preparing dinner as Maria works on sewing up a hole in the pocket of a pair of pants.  A perfectly normal evening.

Until the smell of fish hits Maria’s nose and she barely makes it to the bathroom before she loses the contents of her stomach.  A moment later, she feels her mother-in-law’s hands, Katya humming sympathetically as she strokes Maria’s hair and presses a cool cloth to the back of her neck.

Maria is about to blame the Novak children from the end of the road for getting her sick, when Katya says—

“How far along are you?”

—and Maria goes utterly still.  

Her mind rapidly cycles through the last two months—the fatigue, the nausea, the mood swings—and settles on the most glaring symptom that she missed.  When was the last time she—?

“At least two months,” she says, her voice strangely far away to her own ears as she sits back on the floor, her hand fluttering absently over her stomach.  Katya smiles and gently squeezes Maria’s shoulder before stepping back.

“I’ll make you some tea.  And then we’ll talk, yes?”

“Okay.”

Later that night, as she lays in bed alone, Maria stares at the ceiling and thinks about Gabriel.  

The next few days pass in a daze.  Maria swings between elation and heart-stopping terror—she wants to laugh, she wants to dance, and yet also weep, wail, run away.  She feels as if her feelings are too strong and varied for her body to contain, a supernova trapped under her skin.

Finally, Asher returns.  And Maria—

“Are you okay, love?”  He asks between kisses, unable to calm her roving hands as she tugs at his clothes.

“I just missed you,” she replies, and there are no more words for some time.

—well, she sees no reason not to put her nervous energy to better use.

After, she curls around him in bed, resting her head on his shoulder and tracing stray patterns on his chest.  Outside, a storm rattles the windows, and Asher’s arms tighten around her.

“Where are you?”  He murmurs, pressing his lips to her hair.  “You seem…far away.”

Maria swallows and lifts her head to kiss him properly.  

“I’m here, I promise,”  she says.  “I just…I have something to tell you.  And I’m not sure how.”

Asher cups her cheek, his thumb sweeping across her cheekbone.  

“You can tell me anything,”  he assures.  “No matter what.”

Maria bites her lip as her fingers trace the lines of his collarbone.

“Tell me you love me.”

Asher’s mouth curves up.  “I love you.”

“I’m pregnant.”  The words escape her in a rush, the first time she’s officially said them aloud this time around.  And for that moment, as Asher goes still beneath her, the terror vanishes in the surge of overwhelming joy that follows.

“You’re—”  Asher sits fully up, his eyes wide.

Maria nods, then squeaks as he pulls her in and kisses her fiercely.  

“Sorry,”  he pants when he pulls away, releasing her only for his hands to hover by her waist like he isn’t sure whether she’s too delicate to touch.  “Sorry, I—is this—can I—?”

Maria laughs as she sways in to kiss him again.  

“You’re happy then?”  She asks once they’ve settled once more.

Asher shakes his head, but rushes to clarify before her stomach can drop.

“There is no word in any language I know that can adequately express how I feel,”  he says.  “It far exceeds happy, it is—it’s as if I’ve been filled with stars, too bright to look at, too vast to truly know.”

Maria smiles and cuddles closer.  “I’ll take it.”  

“Among the faithless, faithful only he.” - for Garcy

After the end of it all, Flynn goes back to church.  It isn’t planned—he’s out walking one day around Lucy’s neighborhood, or rather, their neighborhood since he’s living in her spare room, and when he passes the church, he just…stops.  And he goes inside.

It’s the first time he’s been in a church in years, since the trip he took before he went back to Chicago to meet Al Capone.  He isn’t entirely sure how to feel about it, but he doesn’t fall down dead the moment he crosses the threshold, so perhaps he and God are more square than he thought.

There’s a sign on the back wall that says confession will be held at 3PM.  Flynn crosses himself and slips into a pew, but he doesn’t expect to stay long.

Then again, he never does.

I’m asking for absolution.

Flynn stares at the cross, at the tabernacle in gold behind the altar.  The afternoon light filters through the stained glass and washes the scene in fractals of reds and blues and yellows.  And he thinks about war, and Lorena and Iris.

And he thinks about Lucy.  Lucy who loves him.  Who he loves.  Lucy, who is still waiting for him to be ready.

What if He led you to me?

“Sir?  Are you here for confession?”  

This priest is older than the one Flynn remembers meeting before Chicago,  hair neatly combed, but stubble flecked silver and white.  

He should say no.  But when he opens his mouth, what comes out instead is, “I’m not sure you would have the time to hear all my sins, Father.”

The priest raises a brow and pulls back the curtain of the empty confessional.  

“Why don’t you try me,”  he replies.  And Flynn, despite himself, gets up.

“Do you remember how to start?”

Flynn clears his throat roughly and stares down at his hands.  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.  It has been—”  how long?  A decade?  Longer?  “—many, many years since my last confession.”

How long has he been fighting wars?  One after another after another, leaving blood on his hands and scars on his mind long before Rittenhouse.  And when Rittenhouse came, that was just another war of a different kind.  

It’s hard to believe in a righteous God after you’ve spent half your life in a warzone.

I’m asking for absolution.

“I can’t,”  Flynn says, at the end of it all.  He doesn’t know how long he’s spent in the confessional, staring at his hands, at the pattern in the wood of the partition—long enough that his throat is raw and mouth dry.  But he can’t finish it.

“Why?”

“Because, I—”  He rakes a hand through his hair and stares up at the ceiling.  

“You don’t think you deserve to be forgiven,”  the priest fills in.  “Many people don’t.  Usually, the ones who are the most truly contrite.  So perhaps it’s for the best that isn’t your decision, but God’s.”

I’m asking for absolution.

Flynn rubs at his eyes and clears his throat again.  

“I—ah.  I never learned it in English,”  he says.  “The prayer.”

“The Act of Contrition?  That’s fine.  I’ll take you at your word you aren’t just reading a grocery list.”

After, Flynn can’t decide whether he feels different.  Or whether he’s meant to. 

But he does know there’s one thing he has to do.

“Hey,”  Lucy says, smiling at him over her shoulder when he walks through the front door.  “Good walk?”

“I—”  The words stick in his throat.

Lucy’s smile drops as her brow furrows.  “Garcia?  Is everything okay?”

It only takes a few steps to close the distance.

When he kisses her, it tastes like peace.