Family Man

Some lines in the supernatural world were blurred. It was rare for species themselves to actually meld – although the talk of hybrids in Mystic Falls had kept him anchored here when he might otherwise have given up his investigation into the slaughtered wolf packs as a wild goose chase and headed home – but abilities, those could and did stretch across those lines. Like psychics druids could master tele- and bio-kinesis with years of practice, but mindreading? That wasn’t a skill Noah had in his back pocket. He didn’t need it though, not to feel the crackle of nerves in the air as he’d stepped into Destiny’s office. Would he feel that energy fall like rain to the office’s cheap, industrial carpet tiles when he stripped the curtain back and revealed the man behind it? God, he hoped not.

He'd felt his own stomach twist as his dad had paused on the phone the first time he’d mentioned James Baccari’s name. There was a whole world squeezed into that heartbeat of time. Dread, a sick anticipation and a wave of pity Noah knew he wasn’t going to let roll back out at Destiny when they spoke. People didn’t want to be pitied, especially a past that they only realised had been a minefield after they’d reached the other side of it. Sympathy, empathy, understanding – sure, but not that overwhelmingly sugary pity that filled people’s eyes and left you with that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach.

That was probably going to come anyway. Noah could’ve handed over the pages from his dad’s journal – the rumours, the stories, printed in that neat handwriting – but there was going to be no comfort in such stark accounts, just a razor’s edge that would cut soul deep. Not what you wanted when you were pregnant and every ounce of stress could upset that delicate balancing game between mother and child. Destiny hadn’t looked ready to drop the baby on the floor of his classroom when they’d spoken, her bump hidden beneath the concealing layer of clothes, hiding the timeline of her pregnancy like bark shielding a tree’s rings. He’d tried doing quick calculations in his head, figuring how long there might be before the baby arrived, but in the end Noah knew he couldn’t wait for that to happen before he pulled that curtain back. It wasn’t fair, no matter the fallout.

The moment he walked into her office and Destiny rose from behind her desk Noah realised it was probably too late for that concern. He wouldn’t be calling for an ambulance when he triggered and early labour with bad news. Either the worst had already happened or there’d been a fast bounce back after a pre-term labour. The answer was a mine he wasn’t about to leap right onto with both feet. There was enough bad coming in this conversation as it was – and if there had been a good outcome, Destiny would likely offer that truth up herself.

Noah’s throat was tight as he immediately adjusted his field of vision away from her flat stomach. Just a tiny bit but that shift in perception was almost always enough. His other hand came up to pat the back of Destiny’s as she squeezed, like the anticipation was making everything in her contract. ”I figured, so I erred on the side of caution,” he admitted. Family wasn’t always something you wanted going private, although in an office of reporters, could you ever get real privacy?

He was almost tempted to look over his shoulder to see if there was a disembodied ear dangling in front of the door, Harry Potter style as he sat down. Noah immediately reached into his pocket, setting his notebook down on his thigh. His fingers curled over it lightly as he shook his head, the corners of his lips tipping up in an echo of her smile. ”I was glad I could help filling in some gaps.” Not that those missing pieces of the jigsaw were likely to give Destiny the finished picture she was hoping for.

The smile that had been there – small and friendly – grew brittle. Noah pressed his lips together for a moment, knowing that Destiny would see the change, despite the hope that filled her big blue eyes. ”For a time they did.” An obvious observation given that James Baccari and his wife had died not that many years after he’d met the man. That meeting had apparently been a line drawn in the sand. ”Your dad was well known in our circles. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but … your dad … he burned most of those bridges. Destiny, he wasn’t a good man. I’m sure you’re somewhat aware of this but darachs, they’re the dark part of our world, your dad, he embraced that. He did some things …” Created ripples that his daughters, well, Destiny at least, seemed to have skated on top of rather than being drowned by. Others whose lives had taken a similar dramatic turn in their world hadn’t fared so well.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 849

Talking had always been the main part of the job, but negotiating and coaching didn’t always mean breaking the worst possible news someone could hear. People in the emergency services had training for that, practised for sitting people to do to tell them that their loved ones had been caught up in something horrible, informing them that they had died. Although he’d learned everything he knew pretty much at his dad’s knee, that was still something he felt clumsy with. All that bad news held in his hands as he’d spoken to Destiny over the phone, shuffled around like a hot potato that was about to drop and sear its way through the centre of Destiny’s life.

Noah could feel it there as he walked into Destiny’s office. He tossed it from side to side in his mind, still trying to figure out the best way to let it fall free. Did you just rip the band aid off – so to speak – and try and patch up the wound you left afterwards? Or, did you do it bit by bit, hoping that the tiny stings were easier to handle when they came one at a time? Not that finding out that your dad had slaughtered not only most of a wolfpack, but also its druid, someone who was supposedly a friend, was a little sting.

His own stomach had twisted with each word his dad had spoken over the phone. Beside him on the couch, his wife had tried to soothe those shifts she’d seen in his posture, her hand gripping his, rubbing those small circles on his back and eventually gathering him into her when he’d set the phone down and the weight of what he was going to have to do settled on him. He’d wondered if Destiny would have someone to do the same after their meeting, the faint signs of pregnancy he’d seen when she’d visited his classroom had told him that she probably did, but he’d learned a long time ago not to take anything as guaranteed.

Now, the bump that should’ve been there was gone, the hidden wounds she already bore probably taking its place. He didn’t want to deepen them, working into those sore spots with the sort of news that would devastate anybody even on the best day of their life with what he’d heard. Now he was here though, Noah figured he didn’t have a choice. He’d laid the groundwork for the revelation and Destiny would know if he tried to alter that at the last moment.

Her smile had been hopeful, his wasn’t, not once it started to crumble. It almost felt like she was preparing herself for that other shoe to drop then. Noah’s frown cut lines between his brows, his fingers tightening where they curled over his knees, like he could somehow squeeze that news down into something that was going to be easier for Destiny to swallow. She nodded slowly, almost as though she was accepting that first twist of the knife in her gut.

With his throat feeling raw, he paused after that first announcement. Destiny was frowning right back at him, her dark brows knitting together. Now reeling quite as much as he’d expected from it, especially not with that quiet ‘okay’. Noah cleared his throat, wondering just where he was in the minefield he’d been sure his discoveries had laid for him. ”Maybe not always a darach, but certainly by the time he … he cut ties with my father, he was one.” His throat tightened again, like a noose – or a garrot – had been slipped around it, strangely fitting considering just what James Baccari had done before he’d eventually died just the same way.

Shifting in his chair, Noah felt the pages of his dad’s journal crinkling in his pocket. Would Destiny believe those anymore than just his retelling of the phone conversations his father had with hers. ”Sacrifices, yes, and turning against the people who would’ve helped him. There was a lot of blood spilled.” His lips pinched, like he was trying to keep that wave of nausea swallowed down. ”He was involved with a pack, but it was another that he ended up destroying. Not long after my dad last saw him…”

He reached into his pocket with numb fingers to retrieve those pages. ”I don’t know why, I don’t know if anybody involved knew why other than your dad, but he started to pick off members of the pack. By the time he confronted their emissary – a man my dad considered a close friend – most of them were dead. He sacrificed their druid too. My dad spoke to him afterwards … on the phone … they didn’t see each other face to face again. He … he said it was for his children. I know that puts a weight on you and I’m sorry for that. It’s not easy hearing that your dad isn’t the man you thought he was.” That was a weight Noah knew he was unlikely to ever bear, his family had been lucky, their path always a clear one.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 853

The apology choked up in Noah’s throat as he saw the tears well up in Destiny’s eyes. A tremor rolled through his, upset biting deep. He looked around the desk for tissues to push on her, but didn’t see anything and it was no use patting his pockets down, he didn’t have a handkerchief to produce. This was ill prepared. He shouldn’t have suggested doing this at her work. Home wouldn’t been better, somewhere she wasn’t in the fishbowl of an office. Noah resisted glancing over his shoulder, by now there were probably plenty of eyes on the office, people were inherently nosy after all.

Empty handed, he scooted forward far enough he could at least settle his hands on the edge of the desk. Close enough that if he needed to he could reach for her hand, as though it would be a comfort that would make up for hearing that her father had lost his mind and killed a score of people. There was no making up for that, no matter what you had thought of him previously.

When Destiny had sat in his classroom there’d almost been a pride in an announcement of what she was. Now Noah wondered if that was all because of what her father had told her. This tended to run from one generation to another, parents teaching their children. His dad had filled his mind with all sorts of amazing things, making their position as mediators clear in it all. He’d embraced that, was still proud of it. How did you do that when your legacy was death? When you knew there was blood on your family’s hands? How did you feel anything but horror in the face of it?

Destiny hadn’t fallen entirely apart as those questions must have filtered through her own mind. Noah heard the crack in her voice though and reached out then, offering his hand in a gesture meant to comfort. ”I’m sorry that I didn’t find something less tragic. I think he was a good man once upon a time … a good father. One who believed that what he was doing was right. It’s easy to find the wrong path and once you’re on it, it’s nearly impossible to get off of it.” If you changed your mind that was. Some didn’t. They found whatever it was they were looking for on that path and they saw no wrong in it in the end. Like Destiny’s father. He’d seen reasons for it and if there was any guilt afterwards at what he’d done, then his own father hadn’t known anything of it.

It wasn’t his hand Destiny reached for in the end, but the pages he held in his other hand. Noah glanced down at them for a moment, almost forgetting they’d been there. He nodded, his frown deepening as he held them out to her. ”They’re not easy reading. There may be details in there that are difficult …” They were handed over all the same. He could offer help, but at the end of the day this was all in Destiny’s hands now, literally. Noah settled back slowly, his hands settling again on the arms of the chair he sat in. If this was him he’d have taken the news home to his wife and sister, knowing he was safe there to fall apart if he needed to. It was really none of his business if Destiny had anybody like that, but he hoped that she did and wouldn’t face this alone.

Teeth raked over his lower lip for a moment before his eyes ticked up to meet Destiny’s. The news of the sacrifices seemed to have hit his own father hard. A man he thought he’d known and had trusted had done something horrific – and without an ounce of remorse. He couldn’t imagine his own father doing anything like it, but others had, there were reasons why the wise oaks became dark ones. Noah nodded his head, his expression taking on that grim edge again, after a moment. ”He did. When he spoke to my dad he ... he told him that he'd sacrificed his own parents. People usually don’t fall that hard the first time, they work up to it.” Always pivoting around something though. For Destiny's father that had been his own parents, a cycle that seemed to continue as he and his wife had ended up sacrificed too. ”A few years after they lost spoke, your parents died too. In the same way. I don’t know if you know much about that? About them being sacrificed too? There was word that one of your sisters worked with a pack too for a time afterwards, but that’s a thread I haven’t had much luck in pulling yet, sorry.” His apologies felt weak in the face of it all. This was like trying to make up for an axe carving through the middle of your life with a single word – you just couldn’t patch it up that easily.

Tagged: DESTINY BACCARI * Word Count: 808