This song is appropriate.
And it's better acoustic. Okay, it's good both ways. But, FC singing FTW.
"She's wanted to come home for a long time, Oliver." The young Gawyne replied quietly, ink-stained fingernails digging into his palms in his pockets. He didn't even need to be told that to know it, to see it. The older Venora's next words stung him, strangely enough, and his eyes narrowed for a moment as the color faded from them, forced to look away from Darcy into the cold cycle barrenness of the rest of the garden. Her brother just had no idea. He didn't. He couldn't. And for that brief moment, Caius felt the weight of how isolated he was, how alone on the front lines of a battle he didn't know how to fight and he knew he wasn't equipped for. He'd told the other man hastily, selfishly, needfully when he'd last been here in this very garden because he'd felt so alone.
Bogs—what was he doing? What had he done?
Darcy smiled and he wanted to smile back, but he couldn't, Oliver's tone of voice already a trigger. His chest tightened and he didn't even want to take the cup of coffee that was pressed into his hands as they fumbled clumsily from his pockets like unwilling participants in the situation that he could already feel unfolding. Holding his breath at the words, pale eyes flicked desperately downward into the dark liquid as if hoping he could read the future in the arrangement of foam and steam.
There were no answers there.
It was when he looked up into the shockingly darker gaze of the delicate pianist that he managed an exhale, but it was as if her accusation had punched him in the gut. He hissed the last of what was in his lungs as she aired their intimacies in front of her brother,
"In my bed? Really. You want to go there, do you? Fine." Caius' tone held no regrets for anything and everything they'd shared that morning and yet the color that heated his face gave his peculiar comfort in what had once been their deserved privacy away, "What you mean to say about that truthfully is how you showed up barely conscious on my doorstep in the last breaks of the night after taking all the drugs you could find in your room. That's the part that should be added there for Oliver to hear, Darcy. Remember how much better it was that I watched you sleep—yes, in my sarding bed—instead of taking you to the Fates-be-damned infirmary lest someone tell your sword-wielding, loving brother—"
So he told Oliver himself instead.
"—but this is not nothing. This is fucking everything. That shit defines you, defends you, destroys you. And you sarding well know it."
The young Gawyne didn't move when Darcy turned on him in anger, so close that he ached to touch her, to snatch her hands in his and squeeze until she understood. But both their pairs of hands were otherwise occupied, sard it all, and so he struggled to not spill his coffee instead,
"All this time, yes I sarding did."
He snapped back, Caius' voice breaking on the last few words, "It all fits together, Darcyanna—it's not one or the other that's killing you: it's both. Both! I never promised to keep your secrets, and I told you that. I told you that when it came to protecting you, when I had to make that choice between keeping you safe and keeping myself quiet, I told you what I would choose. This, this addiction is part of that choice. And I would make it again. The consequence of following this path to its conclusion, these drugs that do more than just help you sleep—"
His face had twisted in pain now, and Caius did all he could to keep his own tears from flooding his eyes, from trailing down his face in the chill, but it wasn't enough.
Why did this matter so much?
When did she matter so much?
He could easily walk away, wash his hands from everything, spit at the House Venora, and no one would bat a damn eye over any of it. So easy, this arc, to blame it all on the ugliness that had erupted, exploded, and been dealt with among the Venoras ... and the young Gawyne would be absolved from any scandal. Simple as that.
And yet, he couldn't bring himself to do such a thing. Because he didn't fucking care about the scandal.
He fucking cared about Darcy.
Pale eyes studied the blond Venora's face and he breathed,
"—the drugs are killing you. She is killing you. Your sister is winning and I won't fucking stand for it. You don't have to like what I did or how I did it, but you remember my face after I came home—no, after you came home, after you told me how you almost died when I was away—you remember my face and hear me when I say this: I did the right thing. Because I care. Even my silence was for you."
Caius set his coffee down just so he could curl fingers down to his knuckles against his skull and in his hair, feeling so incredibly unhinged.
Darcy apologized to Oliver, and the northern noble came apart, her quiet words the last straw. He'd carried it all for trials now, buried it in the cavity of his chest, hidden it desperately from view when all the rest of him was laid bare for her enjoyment, felt it burn through his very bones like so much melted lead. For trials.
And here he was. The asshole. Broken.
Shoulders sagging, he looked to Oliver in wild desperation, aware of what had been aired of their relationship but it seemed so petty compared to everything else. His tone was so even and sharp he could cut flesh with it, the strength of his determined resolve that he'd done the right thing humming with his pulse. But it hurt. So. Damn. Much.
Looking back at Darcy, his words were quiet,
"I'm not. I'm not sarding sorry for any of it. I did all of this for you."
❦
