hopeless time loop. the way out isn’t to save everyone. the way out isn’t to save even one person. the way out isn’t to change anything. the way out is accepting how it happened the first time is how it always will be. that’s how you acted, that’s how they acted, that’s how you would have acted every time if you weren’t given the curse of hindsight. the way out is accepting you can’t fix the past; you can only forgive yourself for it.
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PINK
— read this first or this might not make sense!
— ao3 link!
Sandra Lynn had noticed this pattern lately.
The house was full — always loud and busy — and she loved it. She loved knowing Lydia could work out in the gym with Ragh, and Jawbone hummed when he folded laundry; She loved when Tracker would shuffle about her room still in her parka as if the manor wasn’t always a toasty seventy something degrees, and Aelwyn snuck about to do her laundry like she wasn’t unignorable; She spent part of her evening on the porch watching Zayn and Adaine sit next to each other and whisper in soft tones and glowing in the graveyard mist; She loved hearing Fabian and Kristen shriek at each other about whatever crazy thing they were fighting about at that point — ribbon dancing maybe?
The point was, the noise would be so loud through every room of the manor, the whole place was bursting with shuffling, shrieking, static life, except for the room in the basement right under the piano. It was always just a little too quiet.
Figueroth Faeth was not a quiet kid, she never had been. For the first four months of the baby’s life, Sandra Lynn had gotten a grand total of ten hours of sleep a week and spoke her voice raw responding to the babbling as if it was recognisable language. When Fig was a little older, and crashing through their house with a velocity that neither she or Gilear could keep up with, there was singing to let them know where she was. Even after all the bad happened, and she was watching her daughter self-immolate, there was always laughter barking, happy or bitter; but always loud.
Not anymore.
For a while she told herself it was the exhaustion. The kids all had so much going on. Kristen was student body president, Adaine had a paid job, and Fig was pulling together the new album the band had produced; and those were just some of her girls. Sometimes though, she heard the three of them talking about it, half laughing and half yawning, in sleep blurred conversations behind doors cracked open so each knew the other didn’t want to be alone.
‘The Saint of the Twilight pantheon, the Oracle of Stars, and the Archdevil of Rebellion walk into a Haunted Manor –’ Fig would intone and the others would start cackling, drunk on sleep starvation, before she could finish.
It was summer now though, and the kids had been resting up for weeks after fighting Porter. The smudges of purple under everyone’s eyes had disappeared, and they all smiled like there weren’t weights on their backs now. She liked the new friends that were dragged to the Manor for the most part, she liked having Ayda’s feet clack over floorboards again.
Really though, she missed her kid. Her loud, wonderful Fig.
She imagined that Fig would get considerably less quiet imminently. Her hands were clutching a shirt and, even as she stared at the tattered posters and unmade bed in the room, she laughed a little hysterically at the pink (once white) shirt. It had been Ayda’s, but Fig had taken to wearing it to bed. Sandra Lynn was screwed. Her doom was only compounded by the emergence of horns over the top of where she was holding it up in front of her.
‘Mom? Is that Ayda’s shirt? What the hell!’ She shrieked, and then pink hands were tugging it from her grasp. They were a lighter pink than the shirt, but only by a few shades; those hands were one of Sandra Lynn’s favourite colours in the world – alive. She had seen what Fig looked like dead, her eyes glazed over and her limbs limp. Her skin, when she was upright and bright, was a shade of pink that had looked like all over sunburn to the untrained eye. It made her think of baby blankets and the strength of one of her daughter’s most crushing hugs after a long adventure. It was the colour of clouds at sunset and highlighter doodles in the corner of textbook pages.
‘Sorry – I’m so sorry Fig! Someone’s owlbear jersey got mixed in and I just… messed it up.’ She sighed and scrubbed a hand over her eyes, eventually dropping her hands to her sides and shrugging. It wasn’t as often that she felt useless these days, but now she did. One misstep and suddenly it was like she had to start all over. Her fingers spasmed to do anything but hang uselessly at her sides, but she made them stay still. For some reason, she couldn’t do the same to her voice, and she found herself restlessly still talking.
‘I hope you’re okay, kid, and not just about this, but everything. You’ve been quiet lately, and I don’t know whether it’s all this responsibility or your dad being so busy, or Gilear having a new baby, or even if it’s me letting all these people stay here…’ she breathed a long breath and wondered why she couldn’t stop and shut up ‘– but I want you to know I’m here for you.’
Big red eyes, squinted, baffled and amused before Fig screwed the shirt up and threw it to the side. She launched herself at her mom and Sandra Lynn wrapped her arms around her kid instinctively, running her fingers over that long intricate braid. The familiar feeling of horns poking into her shoulder was coupled with a voice that seemed quieter than it used to be, but not because it was any less happy, ‘mom it’s just a shirt, it’s okay.’
Sandra Lynn sniffled but tried her best to make it sound like a pained exhale instead, ‘it was a clean, folded shirt, but I’m glad.’
‘I love you mom,’ Fig laughed and pulled back to grin at the older woman.
‘Love you too kiddo.’
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