Super Special Ep: Show and Tell (Part II)
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Aiden doesn’t follow his words up with anything immediate. He’s struggling badly.
He understands completely why Ralph gets that suffering expression in his eyes when he’s trying to talk like this. He was very right when he said that none of them are hardwired for this type of conversation.
“Shit,” Aiden laughs, but it comes out sounding all broken and anxious. He shakily swipes his hand over his glowing eyes, then rubs his jaw, which is tensed to the point of aching. “Why is talking like this such a nightmare for the three of us, you know? This - this is painful.”
Noah and Ralph don’t answer, and they don’t move. The frozen, thunderstruck silence lives on.
Noah breaks it with a few very soft words, but they’re in French. Aiden couldn’t have understood even if he could have heard him clearly over the thunder of his own heartbeat in his ears.
“It’s not easy to explain,” he forges on, struggling to try and steady out his voice. “But I - I do have something to get off my chest, and I’m gonna do it.”
Noah answers in a numb, stammering whisper. “Is it something about Magic Mike XXL?”
Aiden drops his head into his hands despairingly. “Okay. Nothing about this conversation is going how I planned. Nothing. It’s official, now.”
Without breaking his gaze away from the ice-blue glow swimming in Aiden’s eyes, Ralph stretches out an arm to smack Noah’s shoulder.
“Get - get your shit together, Noah,” he stammers hoarsely. “Stop freaking out, we said we weren’t gonna-”
“Stop freaking out? Like you aren’t, dude? Aiden is finally admitting that he’s - some kind of - I don’t…?”
“Guardian.” Aiden quickly lifts his head again, speaking all in a breathless rush, trying to get it out as fast as possible. “I’m a Guardian, and I’ll expl-”
“A guardian angel?” Noah cuts in, mishearing Aiden’s strangled words. His grey eyes somehow go even wider than they were before. He reaches across Aiden and fumbles to seize Ralph’s wrist, his voice filling with panic. “Oh, shit - angels are real, that shit is all real - Ralph, neither of us has got religion, we - we’re gonna burn, dude!”
“I know,” Ralph stammers, his grey-green eyes full of mounting alarm. He turns over his hand to squeeze Noah’s fingers, gripping them tightly. “Maybe - maybe Aiden can call in a favor for us upstairs?”
“Or - maybe it’s more fun to be downstairs, anyways?” Noah says desperately. “Based on all those rules you gotta follow to get up top? It’s gotta be boring up there, right? Seems like the kind of place we’d get ourselves kicked out of.”
“What-?” Aiden blinks hard at Noah, then twists to look at Ralph, who he had expected to jump in with some common sense. But Ralph looks like he’s out at sea, with no idea of what to believe. So much so that Aiden nearly laughs again, to his own immense disbelief. “Okay, what the fuck? You - you two dumbasses, you’ve known me since we were all thirteen, and you don’t realize I can’t fucking possibly be an angel? I don’t even have religion, either! If you guys are gonna burn, I am, too!”
“Bro, you just said-”
“No, I didn’t, Noah!” Aiden pries Noah and Ralph’s hands apart, but it’s not easy. They’re holding on with a grip like they’re headed straight to hell, and they don’t want to lose each other on the way down. “I was going to say I’m a Guardian, you dipshits, and the type of Guardian I am is a Heliomancer!”
Ralph and Noah freeze, lapsing back into startled silence. Noah drops his gaze to his boots, blinking fast, like he’s searching his memory to see if he knows what any of that means.
Ralph’s eyes narrow and grow distant, in a way Aiden recognizes. He’s trying to solve it in his head, thinking at Mach One speed with his powerhouse mind. He’s probably gonna find his way to an answer before Aiden can find the right words to explain it -
“Helio… sun - sun magic?” Ralph says abruptly. And then, in a hoarse voice - “Magic, Aiden?”
Noah looks up sharply at Ralph, then turns his enormous eyes to Aiden.
Aiden stares anxiously at Noah and Ralph, then slowly shrugs his shoulders. They both take in an instant, jagged breath, drawing back in stunned disbelief.
Aiden runs a hand over his aching jaw. “What did you guys think it was?”
Ralph answers as if on autopilot. “We - we didn’t know what to… Noah’s first guess was a - Spiderman situation…”
Noah’s cheeks color up as Aiden turns his incredulous eyes on him.
“I didn’t say Spiderman, dude!” he protests indignantly, throwing an aggressive air punch at Ralph. “I knew it wasn’t superhero shit! I said a radioactive spider bite type of thing! Type of thing, okay? It doesn’t even have to be a spider! And you went off and started looking for books about - telepathy, and whether it’s possible according to - extreme quantity feelings theory-”
“Experimental quantum field theory,” Ralph corrects automatically, still sunk in a daze.
“Yeah, like that made any more sense! You’re a mad nerd on the low, by the way, you know that?”
“I barely even know what it means, Noosh, I was just feeling for answers! I - I didn’t know what to think…” Ralph trails off, his wide eyes full of reflected ice-blue light. “I mean, occurred to me it could be, I read up on some myth and folklore and shit, but - but I didn’t actually think…”
“Magic,” Noah murmurs in disbelief, his eyes on the glowing blue light in Aiden’s.
Aiden drops his gaze anxiously, and they land on Tycho.
She’s woken up, and caught sight of his glowing eyes. She’s peering up at Aiden with only one eye open, and when he looks at her she drowsily gives her tail a little wag, then closes it again. Settles her head back down onto her silver paws. Apparently unconcerned, just like Luna and Jumble seem to be around Aiden’s magic.
Ralph and Noah, on the other hand, look shaken to the core.
“Well, that’s what it is,” Aiden stammers, forcing himself to speak with enormous effort. “It’s actually fate magic, but each Guardian has their own way of channeling it. That’s how I’m a Heliomancer, too. Light, heat, energy. That’s what I can do best, although honestly, I’m not really that good at any of it. But, yeah, I… I have magic. That’s what you guys have sensed before. It happens by accident when I’m worked up, or feeling a lot.”
Aiden is blinking hard, his words coming out in a rushed tumble. He realizes that he’s fidgeting with a wildflower he must have pulled up. He tosses it and runs a trembling hand over his face, wishing that Ralph and Noah would say something. But they don’t, so Aiden tries to take a bracing breath. He looks at the clouds in the night sky overhead, helplessly feeling for his words.
Can’t find them. Not the right ones, anyways. The silence goes on, in a torture of anxiety for Aiden. In frozen motionlessness for Noah and Ralph, who go on staring at Aiden with shockwave eyes.
“Magic,” Ralph repeats again. He finally breaks his gaze away from Aiden to stare with unseeing eyes out at the park. “Real. Real magic. You can do that.”
Silence again, for a moment.
“So - wait a minute,” Noah says slowly. “What exactly does this change between us?”
The color drains from Aiden’s face in a heartbeat. Dismayed tears fill up his eyes so fast he nearly doesn’t have time to blink them back.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” he whispers, staring imploringly at Noah, wincing as he hears his panicked voice turn hoarse and desperate. He laces his fingers behind his own neck, trying to hide the fact that they’re trembling. “It doesn’t change anything, not a goddamn thing! We’re still brothers the way we’ve always been - don’t - please don’t-”
“Hey,” Ralph cuts in gently, knocking the side of Aiden’s knee. “Think that might have been exactly what Noah was saying.”
Aiden swiftly darts his eyes to Noah and looks searchingly into his grey eyes. Sees that Ralph is right. Noah is looking back at Aiden the way he always has, except that he looks startled by Aiden’s reaction to his question. Presumably because Aiden misunderstood it so completely.
The panic and the danger of tears begin to subside, just a little bit. Aiden slowly drops his hands from his neck, his racing heartbeat gradually slowing down.
“Come on, Aiden,” Noah says, in an unusually quiet, serious voice. “Doesn’t make a difference. Wouldn’t have mattered what you turned out to be. Every time you look back, we’re gonna be right there at your shoulder. Same way things have always been.”
Aiden does his best to gather a full breath.
“That’s all I want,” he manages, in a ragged, stammering rush. “For things to be the same way they’ve always been. Think - think you guys could do that, knowing…?”
Aiden trails off, because Noah is already nodding earnestly at him, like - duh, obviously. Aiden catches his lip between his teeth, then turns his anxious, searching gaze on Ralph, right as Ralph looks back at him out of the shadowy darkness.
Their eyes meet in silent, unspoken understanding.
Aiden slowly looks out over the starlit park again.
“Oh,” he murmurs unsteadily, barely speaking out loud. “Okay. Good. Thank you. That’s really - that-”
Aiden stops, then suddenly puts his elbows on his knees and drops his head, buries it in his arms. He lapses into overwhelmed, thankful silence. It feels like some colossal weight was just taken from his shoulders. He’s light enough to lift off, all of a sudden.
“I’m glad you finally told us,” comes Noah’s voice.
Aiden chokes out a fractured laugh.
“I am, too.” He lifts his head and tilts it back, takes a deep breath. “Oh, man, you guys have no fucking idea how good it feels to-”
Aiden breaks off in faint confusion. He thought he heard Ralph’s breath catch sharply, and a soft gasp break from Noah at the same time.
Aiden opens his eyes and finds his brothers staring upwards with stunned, rounded eyes. Both of them are breathing heavily and helplessly in fascination. Noah is holding tight to Ralph’s wrist again, and Ralph is leaning back, his mouth slightly open, his enormous grey-green eyes on the sky.
Aiden gasps when he realizes what happened. He really isn’t doing a good job keeping his magic under control tonight.
A single sunbeam is falling from the low, heavy clouds of the night sky above them. It spills right down into the park, golden and glowing radiantly. Or - maybe it’s spilling upwards, shining up from Aiden to hit the clouds, instead of the other way around.
Half in a panic, Aiden throws a hand out and reaches up for it, urgently summoning back the energy he let get away. The sunbeam answers. It gathers itself together, growing thinner until it’s small enough to fit into his hand. In one swift drop, it tumbles down into his palm like a rushing waterfall of light, and vanishes.
Aiden’s shoulders sink in relief. The slender little sunbeam was only there for a few seconds, so it’s probably fine. Anyone who might have glanced in the direction of the park in time to catch it will probably think it was a trick of the shifting clouds, or a strange flash of moonlight.
But Ralph and Noah know it for what it was.
They know because its circle of light pooled exactly on the rock ledge, fell exactly over the three of them sitting there. It was a shaft of soft, golden afternoon sunlight, unmistakably. They felt the warmth of it on their faces.
“Shit,” Aiden breathes softly.
Just as a cold blade of panic starts to cut him, he remembers with a sudden jolt that everything’s fine. It doesn’t matter that Ralph and Noah saw Aiden do that. They know the truth about him, anyways.
Aiden lets out a helpless laugh, shrugs his shoulders sheepishly. “I’m sorry about that, boys. My bad.”
Noah and Ralph stare at him in complete silence, looking like they’ve both short-circuited.
Aiden uses the opportunity to throw an arm around each of their shoulders and briefly squeeze them to him in a tight, grateful hug. The fraternal fire in his heart is burning at extreme temperatures again.
Worker of sun magic, friend and brother that he always was - not incompatible things, it turns out. Not in the eyes of his brothers.
Aiden lets them go, then takes a deep breath. He’s got a lot of explaining to do.
~~~~
The night is soft and breezy as it grows later, with a cold trace of the earlier rain left in the air. Leaves skitter down the hill with papery whispering sounds. The clouds shift slowly overhead, filtering and diffusing the moonlight. It glides in slow movement over Ralph, Noah, and Aiden as they sit clustered together on the rock ledge.
Aiden is finally done with his explanation of what a Guardian is. Noah and Ralph have been listening in rapt silence for a long time. Now they’ve been processing in silence for some time, too.
Aiden is nervous, but feeling much better than he did before. Like he has his feet back under him. He keeps glancing back and forth between Ralph and Noah, full of warm affection.
They’re both staring straight out at the park, struggling to absorb everything.
“Jesus, Aiden,” Ralph says softly, after a long, long stretch.
Noah finally turns his head to look at Aiden, his grey eyes blinking hard. “How many have you saved?”
Aiden gives his head an uncertain shake. “Honestly, man, I’ve lost track.”
Silence again. And then, from Ralph - “How many have you lost?”
A stab of blinding pain gets through into Aiden’s chest before he shoves it back into the dark place in his heart where he always tries to leave it.
“Lost - lost track of that, too.”
Noah runs his tattooed fingers over his mouth, his eyes wide all over again. Ralph drops his head, wincing deeply.
They all sit there without speaking for another long moment.
“Oh my god, Aiden,” Ralph finally says, in a pained voice. “That’s what you were running off to do, every time you got up and split without saying anything?”
“Mhm. Sorry for that, by the way. Probably seemed like I was just being an asshole, but I couldn’t exactly explain. You guys didn’t know, back then.”
A burst of brightness goes up in his heart. Back then. Because they do know, now.
Ralph has turned his unseeing eyes back out to the park again. He’s biting his lip hard.
“Why’d you tell Roger and Luca first?” He’s carefully avoiding Aiden’s eyes, but there’s an edge of hurt showing itself in his voice. “I know it’s not really what matters, but - them, before us?”
“That was not my intention, alright?” Aiden says firmly. “Jamie and I had to rescue Roger, and Luca was there! They both saw a lot more than I wanted them to see. Signed on to help, after that.”
Noah’s gaze snaps back to Aiden’s face, his eyes widening. “No, shit - Roger? He would’ve died, if you and Jamie hadn’t-?”
He breaks off, staring at Aiden as he nods in confirmation.
“You saw the burn scars on his hand, Noah.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think too much about that! He’s a firefighter, right?”
“Well, that’s from the time he nearly lost the firefight.”
Noah’s eyes fill up with startled, immense alarm. It takes him a few seconds of silent fidgeting with his lip piercing to find his words again.
“Jesus.” He looks and sounds deeply unnerved, shaken at the idea. “Know I only met Roger yesterday, but he seems like good people. That would’ve been so - so - oh, shit, and poor fucking Luca, can you imagine?”
Based on Ralph’s troubled expression, he’s imagining that right now. He opens his mouth to answer, then pauses, some thought dawning across his face. His eyes flit to Aiden, narrowed and searching.
“Have you ever saved one of us, Aiden?” he asks.
“Yes, and not just from all the little scrapes, either.” Aiden shoots Ralph an exasperated glance, then gives his head an affectionate shove. “You sure know how to get into trouble, don’t you, dumbass? How is it that I’ve never had to save Noah, but I’ve had to save you?”
“What?” Noah gasps. “Are you fucking serious?”
Ralph draws his head back sharply, staring at Aiden, his sage green eyes huge. “No, you - you’re fucking with me.”
“Really, Ralph?” Aiden tips his head to the side, skeptical. “You can’t think of one time when you thought to yourself - oh, shit, this is it, I’m gonna die?”
“Fucking of course I can, that’s a common enough thought in my line of trade! But you weren’t there after the business got big, I saved myself when shit went downhill! Or Noah did! You were gone, you couldn’t have-”
“Oh, I doubt I’ll ever have to rescue you from something related to your business,” Aiden cuts in, waving a hand at him. “You’re too good at that shit to need my help. It was personal, though, and unfortunately we’re all fuckups in that arena.”
“Personal?” Ralph repeats, then stops, blinking hard. “Oh, the - the… oh.”
He cringes with his whole face, so hard that he closes one eye. He’s already figured it out, apparently.
On the night when Cam sent Ralph a fake text from a made-up girl, lured him out to the bar in an attempt to take the Corvette back - Ralph got wasted after the girl didn’t show. He was pretty much blackout by the time Aiden and Jamie got there.
But based on the embarrassed way his cheeks are coloring up right now, he held onto enough memories from that night to piece it together retroactively.
“Shit, over that?” he groans, pressing his palms over his eyes. “Really?”
“Yep.” Aiden shakes his head in fond exasperation. “Nice one, man. Somehow you managed to almost get yourself killed over a girl who doesn’t even exist. This is what I mean when I say we’re all fuckups in that arena.”
Ralph drops his head onto his knees, groans again. “Yeah, yeah, I got it.”
“Is someone gonna tell me what the fuck we’re talking about?” Noah asks, bewildered.
“Nah, we - let’s just move on,” Ralph says hastily, flapping a hand at Noah. “I was - feeling low enough for anything, and I got this - text - forget it, alright? Guess I’m glad it was nothing to do with the business, anyways, since… wait, the - the…”
Ralph trails off. He sits perfectly still for a long moment.
“Did I build my business all by myself the way I thought I did, Aiden? Or was someone helping me cheat my way to where I got?”
“For fuck’s sake, dude, give yourself more credit.” Aiden hooks an affectionate arm around Ralph’s shoulder, gives him a fast squeeze. “I haven’t given either of you any serious magical help with anything. Not unless your life was on the line. Nothing of yours is mine to take credit for. Promise.”
Ralph turns his face away after Aiden releases him. He lets out a long, heavy breath. For a second he looked like Aiden was about to take something vital away from him, and now he looks a little shaky with relief.
Aiden knows the best way to help him get back to normal is to annoy him a little bit. He gets up, stretches, and nods at Ralph.
“Move over, yeah? I’m done being in the middle, having eyes on me from all sides.”
Ralph pulls it together instantly. He shoots Aiden a dark glare, staying firmly where he is on the ledge.
“Don’t you fucking tell me what to do. I don’t take orders from anyone.”
“I bet you’d take them from Calla,” Noah snickers, moving over to offer Aiden his place on the ledge instead. “Bet she could have you taking orders and liking it.”
Ralph opens his mouth to answer, but stops just short of saying anything. He bites down on the inside of his cheek, then runs a hand over his face, hiding the sudden blush rising in his cheeks.
He lets out a startled curse when Aiden uses his foot to shove him further down the rock ledge, at the same time dragging Noah back to where he was before he moved over.
Aiden returns Ralph’s indignant scowl with a big smile, then drops down to sit in his place, leaving him in the middle instead.
Ralph breaks in the face of Aiden’s unwavering smile, lapses into one of his own for a split second. He turns his face aside and lets out an exasperated sound, but Aiden can hear the warmth beneath it.
Silence gently descends over the three of them. Aiden stops to take a breath, growing serious again. He can see that Ralph and Noah are sinking back into the stunned haze they just briefly broke out of.
“Look, I know you guys probably have a million questions,” Aiden says nervously. “I want to answer them, it’s just hard to know where to start. I was hoping maybe we could do it kinda gradually, instead of all at once. You know Jamie’s the talker, not me.”
“Yeah, word,” Noah murmurs, in a dazed voice. “Fair enough.”
Aiden gives him a relieved, grateful glance. “That said, I can take a few right now. I owe you guys some answers.”
Ralph looks up suddenly.
“You said each Guardian has their own way of channeling their power. Each Guardian, so that means - there are more of you?”
Strikes Aiden as a surprising place to start, but then again, that’s why he wanted them to be the ones picking the questions.
“Yeah, but I don’t know how many,” he explains. “I’ve never met another one, not one I’m not related to. It’s one for a place. And a lot of the Trees have fallen. Ketterbridge is one of the few places that still has one. The Callahan side of my family has been here since, like - for as long as Ketterbridge has existed, I think. So… can’t really speak for anywhere else, but there’s always been a Guardian here.”
Except for the eight years when I was gone, he nearly adds.
But it’s too hard, too painful to admit. Aiden lapses into silence instead. Waiting for the next question, which this time comes from Noah.
“D’you… want me to not tell Raj and Mel about any of this?” He rubs the tattoo on his wrist anxiously, then drops his fingers to his wedding band. “I - I kind of feel like I shouldn’t be, um…”
“Only for a little while,” Aiden explains hastily, with a twinge of guilt. “I’m sorry, Noosh. I’m gonna tell them eventually, I’m just trying to do one thing at a time. Wanted to start with you two.”
Noah’s expression instantly brightens. “Oh, okay. As long as you’re gonna tell them in the long run. I just don’t want to be keeping secrets from my husband and wife, like, not big ones…”
“I’ll tell them, I promise.”
“And Ripples, right? He’s like family, too.”
“Mhm.”
Noah lets out a long breath of relief, closing his eyes. “Okay. Cool.”
Thoughtful silence falls again for a beat before Ralph breaks it again.
“So you can hear us? Me and Noah? Our - soul notes?”
“Yeah. I mean - not specifically, I can’t. Unless you’re in life-threatening trouble. There’s only ever been one note that I could easily pick out from all the rest. Besides my own, anyways.”
Noah tilts his head to the side, his grey eyes full of curiosity. “Whose note?”
“Ah…” Aiden fades off reluctantly, but he only realized what he let slip when it was too late to go back. “Jamie.”
He’s determinedly not looking at them, but in his peripheral vision he sees Ralph and Noah look at each other sharply. There’s a short silence, and then -
“Aw,” Noah laughs, as Ralph breaks into soft laughter, too. “Really, man? Only Jamie?”
“Ugh, shut up!” Aiden lets out an agonized groan. “Yes, really, alright? If you could hear how good he sounds, you - just drop it!”
He takes a swing in the general direction of his brothers. Ralph catches his arm, shoves it back at Aiden with another soft laugh. But pretty soon all the snickering trails off into thoughtful silence again.
Aiden knows better than to think Ralph and Noah are through all of their questions. The more likely scenario is that they have so many, it’s taking them some time to sort through and choose the ones they want answers to first.
“The eight years you were gone.” Noah tosses his long hair back from his face, raising his eyes to Aiden again. “That had something to do with all this?”
Aiden flinches unhappily.
“Yeah,” he answers, speaking slowly even by his standards. “But that’s a long story. I’d prefer not to get into it right now. Got some real bad memories associated with all that shit. I - made a lot of mistakes.”
This last part is said with an obvious rasp that Aiden badly wishes hadn’t happened. He clears his throat, dropping his gaze to the grass.
“Fucking embarrassing to admit that, A.” Ralph clicks his tongue, looking at Aiden with you’re-pathetic eyes. “Especially to me and Noah, since we’ve never made any mistakes. What was I doing that night you saved my life, again?”
Aiden lets out a startled laugh. He flashes Ralph a small, grateful smile.
“I’ll tell you about why I left another time. I promise.”
No one answers, but the agreement is understood as settled between the three of them.
Ralph shifts his position on the rock ledge slightly. He slips his pack out of his pocket, then absently taps his lighter against it, lost in his thoughts. The trees rustle in the lingering silence, filling the breeze with their whispering sounds.
“The ghosts are real, aren’t they?” Ralph says softly, suddenly.
Noah shoots a startled, questioning look at Ralph, then turns swiftly to Aiden, his grey eyes widening again at the possibility.
Aiden hesitates, then nods slowly.
“The - the ghosts are another long story,” he murmurs, running a nervous hand over his stubble. “That one’s for another time, too. But yes, they’re both real. I made one of them. A previous Guardian in my line made the other.”
Noah and Ralph stare at him in stunned, wide-eyed disbelief, thunderstruck all over again. A minute or so passes this way.
Noah silently takes the pack of cigarettes from Ralph’s limp hands and lights himself one.
“You smoke off my pack, you’re buying me a new one,” Ralph informs him.
It comes out sounding blank and numb, automatic. He’s still staring at Aiden, and his gaze doesn’t break away when Noah flashes him a shaking middle finger.
“Fuck off, dude. I don’t care if it’s the last one. I need it. You owe me a million of these, anyways.”
Ralph doesn’t answer, or seem to realize that Noah said anything, or even that he said anything in the first place. He goes on looking at Aiden, then slowly turns his face out to the park again. His dark green eyes pick up the starlight, so that Aiden can practically see the storm of thoughts swimming around in them.
Ralph slowly runs a hand through his blonde hair, then starts messing with the leather bands around his wrist.
“Can you make anyone into a ghost, Aiden?” he asks quietly, keeping his eyes out on the park. “Anyone who’s - gone?”
Aiden stares at Ralph, caught by surprise. He’s confused, and searching his face for some kind of explanation. Noah is looking at Ralph in much the same way, equally surprised by the question.
“Um… no, I definitely can’t,” Aiden answers slowly, his eyebrows knitted. “I’ve only ever made a ghost once. It was by accident. And I had to catch the soul before she could move on to - whatever’s next. It’s hard to explain, but you gotta go fast. They start to get away real quick, once they get free of their bodies.”
Aiden pauses, then adds, without thinking -
“In some weird way that always made me feel better, when I couldn’t save someone. That their soul energy took off in such a hurry.”
Ralph takes a long, slow breath, then drops his gaze to his wristbands, twining them between his fingertips.
“Oh, yeah?” he asks quietly. “Why’s that?”
Aiden shrugs his shoulders, not sure how to put it. “Made me hope that it was because they caught a glimpse of what comes after this, and it looked good to them. Good enough to run towards.”
Something in Ralph’s expression makes Aiden stop abruptly for a moment.
“But, um… yeah, I - can’t call up anybody as a ghost,” he says quietly. An apologetic tone is coming into his voice, even though he’s not sure why. “It just doesn’t work that way.”
The starlight is softening as the sky begins its slow shift from deep navy to a lighter shade of indigo. The faintest smudge of pale, pale pink is beginning to make its way up from the horizon line. Ralph keeps his eyes on the growing sunrise, the rough cut of his jaw sharpened to a hard line of iron with the way it’s tensed up. His fingers are folded tightly around his woven leather wristbands.
He nods his head, taking a few fast, shallow breaths through his nose.
“Figured - figured as much,” he says, in a rough, breathless voice. “I’m sorry. Had to ask. There’s - someone I really wish I could talk to. Thought you might have the phone that could make the call to that side.”
Aiden blinks hard, then looks over at Noah, thinking that Ralph must be talking about something that happened during the eight years he was gone. He’s already caught off-guard, but the feeling redoubles when Noah meets his look with similarly startled, baffled eyes. Like he doesn’t know what Ralph is talking about, either, and he assumed that Aiden did.
They both look sharply back at Ralph as he keeps talking.
“But hey, if - fate, and soul energy, and magic are all real…” A breathless, shaky laugh breaks from Ralph. “That changes things. Maybe - maybe that means I’ve always had the phone, and I just can’t see it. Or maybe I don’t n-need it, to… I mean, who fucking knows how it all w-works, right? Guess anything’s - anything’s possible. Maybe he’s been listening from - from that n-nice place you hear them running off to, after…”
Ralph breaks off and swipes his sleeve very fast beneath his nose, breathing unsteadily. Aiden and Noah are both motionless, too startled to speak.
“Sorry,” Ralph manages, in a rough, trembling voice. Not looking at them.
“It’s - it’s fine, man,” Noah says gingerly, taken aback. “But who are you talking about?”
Ralph bounces his knee and chews his cheek in silence, keeping his eyes on the treetops of the park. Giving off every sign that he isn’t going to answer.
So Aiden and Noah both startle a little when he suddenly does.
“My dad.”
Aiden and Noah both draw back sharply, blinking hard and fast, staring at Ralph with matching stricken expressions in their eyes.
“Ralph, what-? Are you fucking serious? I - I thought he was deployed, or he just lived somewhere else, like my dad!” Noah sounds like he doesn’t believe it. “You always made it sound like you two were really close…”
Ralph shakes his head, then suddenly answers again, his words breaking free in a hoarse, stammering rush.
“Yeah, man, we were, but he, um - he was KIA before I even m-moved to Ketterbridge.”
Speechless, frozen silence falls. Then Noah draws an audible breath, and Aiden drops his head so Ralph doesn’t see the pained expression on his face.
The sympathetic pain in his chest hits him with all the force of a truck, a stab of hurt so deep that it knocks his breath from his lungs.
Ralph keeps his gaze determinedly trained on the half-lit playground at the bottom of the hill. Holding tight to the leather wristbands. Not crying, but blinking a lot, breathing unevenly.
Aiden and Noah lean back to look at each other behind him, communicating in silence. Then they both lean in at the same time, loop their arms around Ralph, and give him a tight squeeze. Noah meekly, apologetically sticks the last cigarette from the pack between his fingers, still lit.
Ralph breathes out a soft laugh, drops his head.
He lets the hug go on for a little longer than Aiden expected him to. But after a moment he shoves Aiden away, then Noah.
“Alright, enough - enough of that.” He takes a long, shaky drag from the cigarette, his voice a little steadier. “It was a long time ago. I’m alright.”
“God, Ralph, but how the fuck could you not tell us?” Aiden asks, reeling. “Not one word about it to either of us, this whole fucking time?”
Ralph looks sideways at Aiden, arches a blonde eyebrow. Aiden stares back at him in confusion for a second before it dawns on him just how much that question could be turned around on him, given what he’s admitted tonight.
“I’m sorry,” he says guiltily, shifting his snapback over his hair.
“No, don’t be sorry. Shit, after the things you’ve forgiven me for, Aiden? I should be afraid to show my face around you. Either of you.”
“Jesus Christ!” Noah blurts out, flinging himself flat on his back on the grass, his dazed grey eyes staring blankly up at the sky. “Am I the only one not sitting on some - some dark secrets, from some dark history?”
This actually sounds about right to Aiden. Noah always was a little tumble of brightness into their lives, when he and Ralph were lost in the dark.
“No dark secrets, but you’ve sure as shit got some dark history,” he tells Noah, trying to be helpful.
Ralph swats Aiden’s arm, letting out an agonized groan. “Don’t bring that up, Aiden! I don’t wanna think about how it was me that caused it!”
“God, sorry! I’m doing my fucking best, here! This has been a lot of talking! Can things just go back to normal, now?”
Ralph cracks a smile at Aiden before he takes a drag from his cigarette. “Yeah, sure.”
Noah reaches around him to slap Aiden’s shoulder. “With one key difference, hey, Heliomancer?”
“Two differences, Noosh,” Ralph corrects him, then turns to Aiden. “You realize, right, that me and Noah-”
“Goddamnit,” Aiden sighs.
“-are coming with you for the rescues whenever we can?”
“Oh.” Noah sits up in surprise. “I didn’t realize we had to say that part out loud. You knew, didn’t you, Aiden?”
“Yes, but I’m gonna make at least one attempt to talk you out of it. That much I fucking insist on - don’t frown at me like that, Noah! I know you two are more than fit for the fight, okay? But I’ve got to warn you, the rescues - they’re not easy, and there’s no standard one, no way to know what to expect. We could lose people, you get that? You could get hurt, yourself. I have. Jamie has, too. But you don’t have to do this. I have to, but you guys-”
“Aiden,” Ralph cuts in firmly, “If you could get hurt doing this, then Noah and I have high stakes in this game. Just like you. Don’t tell us not to play. It’s not gonna work.”
Aiden screws his face up in agonized frustration, then looks over at Noah.
“I got nothing to add,” he says calmly, knotting his long hair up into a bun. “You guys can argue about this for s’long as you want. Argue about it from here to Greenrock and back, for all I give a damn. I’m still gonna go, if there’s a rescue.”
Aiden lets out a heavy, aggrieved sigh, but - deep down, he feels only warm and grateful. Overwhelmingly so.
He looks first at Noah, then at Ralph, trying to use his eyes to make them understand what he wants to say.
They both get it. Aiden can tell.
Noah smiles, dimpling the corners of his mouth, then takes the cigarette from Ralph and hands it to Aiden. Aiden lets out an exhausted, helpless laugh before he takes a steadying drag of it. With his other hand, he messes up Ralph’s blonde hair, then gently slaps Noah’s back. They flash him two matching smiles in answer.
The three of them sit in silence for a long time, watching the sun make its slow climb into the sky at the distant horizon line. Tycho lets out a little sigh in her sleep, her white ears pricking up as birds begin to cheep and twitter throughout the canopy of treetops. Every leaf in the park is softly gilded with indigo dawn light, a blue tinge to all of the green. It’s cold, and a white morning mist is slowly building over the vivid spring grass.
Aiden sits close to his brothers, warmed by the fire in his chest even as his breath frosts on the chilly air. He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes. Overwhelmed with gratitude, to have brothers like his.
Their kind of devotion may go mostly unspoken, but no one could ever call it unadmitted.
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