consequences

It was a kick in the gut every time.

Oh, he knew she was here of course. Even if those messages weren’t flying back and forth and he didn’t check in periodically throughout the day, beady little black eyes peering in windows, keeping watch around a town that seemed to have embraced his sister into its darkest folds, he’d have sensed her the minute the lift doors opened. Dinner on the stove, that ‘welcome home’ in the scents of buttery potatoes and gravy. It made this feel like something more than just a place he’d move on from the minute the darkness wrapped around his life was shattered.

He would’ve done it. Even six months ago he’d have walked when it was done. The druid shaped monkey shrugged off his back finally, his sister in an unmarked, shallow grave somewhere, her rebirth and redeath just a dark smear to be buffed off the rear view mirror.

Grey had felt that little shift as he’d walked out of the lift and seen her there. Reassurance. Another day Leah hadn’t come slinking in again, no more warnings from the saintly brother of the bloke Leah had her hooks in. Scored off in his head – it should’ve been counting down towards Leah’s bloody end but it had started to feel more than those signs they always had in movies ’27 days since the last accident’. Exact periods calculated until he was shoving all that complex math down in his head for this.

Sat at the table, they ate what had been on the stove when he’d walked in – it had been used more in the last couple of months than any in any of the places he’d lived over here – he did at least.

Blue eyes ticked up as he swallowed the gravy drowned potatoes, fixing on her as Destiny stared down at her potatoes like the answers to all life’s questions lay at the bottom of that muddy pool. Grey’s brows furrowed faintly. They’d slapped band aids over the wounds Leah had created when she’d tried to claw at him again and there’d been some healing under them. Maybe not enough to take those dressings off but some.

He pressed his tongue against the bottom edge of his top teeth as she looked up and smiled, the corners of his own mouth twitching. That reassurance again for a split second until he fork was clattering down. ”Not hungry?” Grey asked, he gestured towards her plate with his fork as he went to cut off another piece of the chicken.

Eight little words from her lips and he wasn’t particularly either. All thoughts of clearing the table and dragging her back to the work room – training was usually wound up with so much else now, the slow drift of how things had started increasing in speed, dragging them into something more than that Pygmalion partnership.

Dark brows furrowed, his own cutlery set down slowly. A quiet chink of metal against the plate. Elbows planted on the edge of the table, hands folded for his mouth to rest against the mountain range of his knuckles. ”Alright,” he muttered hoarsely. He hated feeling as though he’d been backed into a corner. Each time it had happened in his life he’d fought his way out, standing on the other side afterwards, shaking with the fight, breath coming short as he tried to find a way to wherever he could go next.

Shit.

Her eyes dropping, that semi-irrational burst of temper rising in his stomach – not at her, never that, but swimming hotly around everybody else. Leah. The idiot boyfriend. Tanner. One fucking crack in the door to his cell and all they’d find was a stain, karma ridding the world of something else foul.

Pregnant. He’d …

The food he had eaten sat heavy in his stomach, shifting uneasily in a way that left him wondering if it would all come back up. Pregnancies were what had shattered his family. His mother’s struggle of one, the woman who’d whelped that bitch. One weighing on the other until his mum was gone. The curse had already passed to him and now …

Grey breathed out hard against his knuckles, trying to loosen to her through ringing ears. He stared at her mouth, eyes barely ticking up to where she was sniffling, then her eyes as she met his. The lines between his brows had etched what felt like bone deep. A kid … a tiny helpless target for Leah to – The nausea burned its way up his throat, left him wanting to push back from the table and pace again as Destiny explained.

Not the first time … don’t think it’s gonna last … have to try … lose that chance …

Words swinging around in violent circles, painting blood soaked pictures of that son-of-a-bitch doing something to her to take it before. Anger and fear swirled around tornado fast, sweeping his heartbeat up with it. Grey was dropping his hands, fingers knotting in his napkin as he continued to just stare at her, not even sure what had him frozen before. ”How did it happen? We were careful, weren’t we?” Not that they really had been, after the first time had thrown open the barn door and those horses had bolted out trailing fairy dust behind like comet tails. Careful enough hadn’t been enough and suddenly the darkness that had always hovered like a dark cloud on the horizon seemed to loom closer.

He blinked, once, twice, flipped back through his memory to try and pick apart everything that had made it through the ringing. ”You’re giving me the chance to bolt again? We … didn’t sign up for anything … not … not yet.” Unused to being that stumbling fool again, unable to see the next step let alone bolt or swagger for it. ”After all of this you think I’m going to walk and won’t want anything to do with the…” Baby. Jesus, the word wouldn’t even come out of his throat.

Grey sagged back in the chair, looking at her like some other explanation would suddenly spill out, like a wound bleeding clean after all the infection had been purged. Lifting his hands to his face, Grey scrubbed them over his face, peering at her through his fingers, eyes dropping to where the table top cut off her still flat stomach from view. ”He did something before. When you were?” Tanner hadn’t walked, no, he’d been dragged away for something else but he’d denied this chance, the angry vile spill of whatever raged volcanically inside of him leaving its scars on Destiny. Inside and out. A possible last chance with him. Jesus.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1119

A plan. Coming to Mystic Falls that was all he’d had – set up the hotel, luring people in while he dug into the druid presence here, drink in what he could, and then if he found the ones who’d done this to his ancestors, using what he’d taken in to finally eradicate them. Grey wouldn’t have cared if the hotel was even still standing after that. Money didn’t mean a damn thing in comparison to what was hovering out there on the horizon of his life like a dark cloud just waiting to descend. It was all about burning it away and then finally getting to set foot on fresh ground without the curse of the past tainting everything.

The wolflet getting the upper hand on him had been the first part of it that hadn’t worked out but that had come with some sort of flip side at least. One he’d metaphorically rubbed his thumb over and had held onto for a time at least. Then Leah’s hand had gripped that coin, tossing it in the air, not caring where it fell. The bitch. She hadn’t won, even if there’d been a period where it looked like she might, tainting the rewritten plan, but they’d flipped it back around, him and Destiny.

Grey felt his breath coming short as Destiny winged a brow at him. They’d gotten back on steady ground, his attempt to get a grip on his own fate again – and finding his hand slipping badly – forgiven if not entirely forgotten. They’d settled into a routine, that plan, dinner tonight just one of those tiny blocks falling into place, but this …the blocks were scattered, hands scrabbling around inside of him like he could still pick them all up and get this back into some semblance of what he’d seen coming next.

Which hadn’t been this.

His jaw flexed, his hands working the napkin like a cat making biscuits. ”No apologies.” No heat to the word, just a desperation not to send it down that path, no matter what the truth was that had sent those pieces tumbling. Not his fault, but his, the man who had put hands on her the first time – oh he was sure of that. Did she think he’d … Grey’s stomach churned harder, the muscles quivering as he tried to hold the nausea back. ”Book an appointment … to get rid of the problem.” Had the tattered bits of the truth he’d offered up in explanation left her thinking that he’d never want to pass what had happened on to a child?

Would he want to? God, he didn’t know. He wanted to grip his hair and pull it out at the roots, to pull the doubts out with it. Maturity was talking about it, giving people the choice but what the fucking hell did you do when the wound inside of you that wouldn’t heal was being torn apart by the choice. What could be – bright and shiny emerging from the tarnish both of them lived with – or what neither one of them wanted – the world going black and brutal with the curse that seemed to cling to both of them, scars from it carved deep enough that maybe there wasn’t ever enough healing to erase them both.

He wasn’t up on his feet and running at least, wasn’t pushing her out the door with the advice to do whatever she wanted. The one thing he was sure of was that he didn’t want to wash his hands of all of this or erase it himself the way Tanner had.

There was as ripping noise from the napkin, the linen giving way before he shoved it away and covered his face to ask about that. Grey felt the cord go tight around his own throat, as though he was sharing the fate he’d press on the jailbird now, choking off his anger at what had been done to put those scars on Destiny. Pregnant at fifteen with the promises of a sociopath making her feel safe after the nerves and upset must’ve left her like this. No words tripping off of his own tongue but he pushed the napkin, ruined as it was, back towards her. ”You don’t do that without meaning it,” he rasped hoarsely. Blue eyes fixed on where her hands knotted protectively over her stomach, as though she could stop the same thing from happening again. ”No amount of apologising changes that. He hurt you … and them.” Even at his worse Malcolm hadn’t done that and he had reason to when he’d knocked up the Alpha’s wife. All that anger and frustration and madness boiling in him but never sweeping towards an innocent life. Even with his mum … it had been her own torment that had pushed her to it, not Malcolm’s hands – the ones that trembled as badly as Destiny’s did now.

More than ever he wanted to lay hands on Tanner. To watch the life go out of his eyes as they bulged, power singing up the tight cords he gripped. Desperation to strip the fear from Destiny’s life bringing strength to fingers that wanted to go numb with this. ”No apologies,” he rasped, the warning even softer this time. Sorry wouldn’t wipe away what had happened, but it was like she thought he needed to hear it, like this was something she’d done wrong – it had been both of them if anything. He watched as she pushed her chair back. ”You’ve got a reason to be upset, a valid one.” Fear was reason enough – of losing the child, of the past repeating itself – even though he’d rather cut his own hands off than lay them on her in any sort of violence – of the baby’s aunt coming back to do just what she’d threatened.

Grey’s chest heaved faintly as Destiny seemed to pull herself together. A stab of a finger with the assertion that Tanner took so much from her. Her daughter, her chance to perhaps give herself an out now – a choice of whether or not to go through for a pregnancy that might be dangerous for her in other ways. She cared about him and didn’t want to lose him. It was a gut punch that had the air exploding out of him as he shook his head. Grey folded over, elbows planted on his thighs as he tried to suck in air. ”You’re not losing me, Destiny.” A fierce assurance in that he hadn’t expected to be able to give. ”What he did was so fucking wrong – I won’t …” Another assurance.

He wouldn’t be his father. Had vowed that since he’d been left running with the hounds of his family’s fuck-ups on his tail. A chance, she was holding that out in front of him now like another life preserver – her hands always offering them to him when he didn’t deserve them. Scary, he almost laughed at the word, hysteria trying to bubble up in his throat before he clawed it back down. ”Stand up,” Grey said hoarsely. He straightened up himself, an effort to do it. One hand went back to the table, closing tight around its edge, knuckles brushing the abandoned plate. The other gestured her up, around to him until she was there. Lips pressed together he was shaking his head as he looked up at her. Grey still wasn’t sure what he wanted but her leaving now, him leaving, wasn’t it.

Hands rose unsteadily, curling around the back of her thighs the way they’d once done when tremors had run through her body, put there by the thought of him getting free. It felt like they were there again but Grey suspected they were running through him not her. He squeezed lightly, his brows furrowing as he look at her still flat stomach as though it was suddenly going to expand in his face. ”You’re not an idiot for saying it all. You want it … this baby? You want the chance and I’m not … I’m not taking it from you or expecting you to give me an out from it just because … I don’t know.” His eyes lifted to hers then, his throat working as he tried to swallow the lump in it.

”I didn’t expect this, especially not now. I never expected to be … a father.” Didn’t think he could be one after everything his own had done. ”I don’t know what I can do for them or you but … I want to think about it. I think I want … a chance to see. If you’ll let me?” No promise to the words but a raw honesty. He hadn’t been with her before, glossing over everything because he hadn’t wanted her to see that doubt but now Grey let the shields fall away, stripping it all bare for her to see in the wide blue eyes that looked up at her.

No guarantee. He could try and keep her safe from Leah. Could try and do everything right with this and Destiny’s own body could turn against the baby, damage done half a lifetime ago coming back again to tear away everything. No guarantee. Just hope and he’d never thought he’d feel that again when he’d stumbled away from a past that would’ve seen him dead.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 1559