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Cillian never does answer his phone.[break][break]

He's not ignoring Tulio. Not intentionally. He's ignoring the world, throwing himself into Rocket with reckless abandon as if it might offer a respite from crippling grief. (It doesn't.)[break][break]

Once, his cage had seemed so large that he'd forgotten all about its bars. Once, the chains had felt light enough that he could pretend they weren't there. It was easy to keep a prisoner if they didn't want to leave. Galar had been a bitter reminder of that.[break][break]

No, not a reminder. A memory of freedom, nothing more. And memories were fleeting, the details already fading at the edges. When he feels himself beginning to forget, he holds the silver Corviknight feather tight enough to cut his palm and pictures their daughter's face. It was the only trace they'd found of her, frantically searching through the blood and poisoned muck. Their borrowed world had collapsed before they'd been given any closure, one way or another.[break][break]

Yet he hadn't fought against declan walsh upon returning home.[break][break]

Know your place. He's always been good at that.[break][break]

He barely spends time enough at home to remember to clean it. He works until he can't keep his eyes open, stumbles home and sleeps for hours. Sometimes Tempest Quinn is there when he crawls into bed. Sometimes his husband is absent, too.[break][break]

They haven't talked about it. It's a fresh wound each time he looks at his husband, a reminder of everything they'd had. Everything they'd lost. Some relationships never survived the death of a child. Would theirs?[break][break]

A knock at the door sees Cillian start, shaking his head as if to clear it. He ponders not answering, leans forward on the couch to scowl at his faint reflection in the coffee table's glass. He looks as rough as he feels, flattening his mussed up hair with a hand and scrubbing at his face as if it might somehow clear the deep bags from beneath his eyes. His cheekbones are sharpened by a weight loss that had started months ago, when he'd read Rowan Wrynn's letter and his life had begun its downward spiral.[break][break]

The door again. Louder this time. Cillian sighs and forces himself off the couch.[break][break]

He's scowling when he opens it. He hadn't thought to check the cameras. His brain's not working as it should.[break][break]

That scowl falters as he registers the unwanted guest.[break][break]

"Tulio." It's flat with surprise before dull gold sharpens. "Shit. Is everything OK?"[break][break]

His first concern, even now, is for Temp.

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Tulio blinks back at the man before him. There is a somber weight on the lines of his face. Weighed down by worry. The man, though, doesn't seem annoyed or bothered that Cillian Quinn has ignored him. That it took a visit out to the city in a crater to get in contact with the other man.[break][break]

No, Tulio takes in Cillian's appearance and his own features soften.[break][break]

A firm hand is placed, slowly and gently, on Cil's shoulder. A firm squeeze of comfort before he drops it back at his side.[break][break]

"I was hoping you could answer that for me, son." Tulio smiles and it is sad. Whatever worry he was feeling also extended to Cillian as well.[break][break]

"May I come in and talk?"

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Son.[break][break]

Gold shimmers wet before Cillian blinks it away.[break][break]

My daughter wanted to see the trains.[break][break]

She had eyes the colour of the sea and hair like fire, and she was gone.[break][break]

"Temp," Cillian starts, closing his mouth with a frown when his voice cracks. He clears it and says more steadily, "Temp's not home. He's, uh, working on something in the city."[break][break]

But Tulio is family regardless of Tempest Quinn's presence, and Cillian steps back to hold open the door. A somber invitation.[break][break]

Even the dogs seem subdued; they fed on the grief of their masters, and tails wag almost uncertainly as they mill about the guest. Cil dismisses most of them with a click of his tongue and a sharp gesture, but some (Temp's, mostly) persist.[break][break]

"Sorry about the state of the place."[break][break]

His neck burns hot with shame. It's not as if it's trashed, but a thin layer of dust and a small collection of mugs beside a take-away container on the table might as well be the messiest state they've ever left the house in. Cillian ordinarily enjoyed cleaning, but the meditative quiet was filled now with his troubled thoughts. He'd cut himself last time he'd done the dishes.[break][break]

Books have been left out, as well; like Temp, Cil had written down as much as he could remember. There were history books laid out as well, one still opened to a page on Circhester's Hero's Bath. The cracks in the surrounding street were different than the ones he'd remembered.[break][break]

Closing the book, he hefts it in his hands before realising he had no idea what to do with it, sheepishly setting it back down.[break][break]

"Can I, uh, get you anything?"[break][break]

Cil wrings his hands, then drops them stiffly to his sides.[break][break]

He's barely holding it together.

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Tulio pays no mind to the dogs. He pays no mind to the refuse or any other signs of grief in the home. When he had come here, he had expected to see Cillian Quinn in a better state. Had expected perhaps they had had a fight or something small and silly. But Temp had provided no answers. Rather than pull teeth on the front, he had wanted to see what Cillian had to say.[break][break]

His eyes soften further. A hand pats one of the dogs before dismissing it. Tulio walks over and sits himself on one of the chairs.[break][break]

"That's okay." It's soft, like he's trying to coax a frightened wolf out of an attack.[break][break]

"What happened to you two?" The words are easy but still sharp. Tulio didn't believe in beating around the bush with such matters. You would slice to the middle- regardless of it anyone bled.

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Cillian registers the softened tone. It sounds almost like pity, like trying to talk down a frightened animal. He resents it, even if he doesn't resent the man behind it, and resigns himself to a hard conversation when Tulio refuses the offer.
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With no busywork to distract him or his hands, Cillian sinks back into his nest on the couch and tucks his legs beneath him.
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Though he doesn't realise it, it's a defensive position.
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"We're..."
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He starts to answer too quickly, bites off the 'fine' and lets the excuse trail off.
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They're not fine. Would they ever be?
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Cillian chews the inside of his lip.
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"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you," he says at last. "It's... a long story."
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Twenty years long. Twenty years lost.

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Tulio is already taking in a breath to dismiss what Cillian Quinn almost answers.[break][break]

They're not fine.[break][break]

But the Cillian corrects and Tulio is ready to listen.[break][break]

A hum. The older mans shifts back on the chair. His smile is tight but soft; he will not press the other for answers even if he seeks them. All will come in it's own time, after all.[break][break]

"Look back at the shit that's happened to Hoenn in the last five or six years. Give me more credit for belief." A small chuckle, humorless as it was.

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Tulio has never been unkind to him. He has been more of a father than Thomas Quinn ever was. Yet Cillian still shifts uncomfortably beneath his probing gaze, even as he's afforded the grace to collect himself. He will never feel entirely at ease.
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The chuckle is met with an equally humorless attempt at a smile, aborted halfway through into a pained grimace.[break][break]

"Fair," Cillian concedes.[break][break]

Yet it's a long moment before he speaks again. He's not sure where to start.[break][break]

"You know what I do for work," is the first step taken, and immediately that brings to mind something else. Cillian frowns, shifting back in his seat before unfurling from his huddled position.[break][break]

"Take out your phone." He recites a number from memory. "My work phone; I'll always answer it. For emergencies."[break][break]

It was not something he gave out to civilians. Ever.[break][break]

Thoughts of Rocket seem to change him. Having shifted out of his vulnerable position, he adopts now the stoic mask of an underboss without realizing it. Scarred hands fold in his lap.[break][break]

"We were on the job, and we got pulled into another world." It was only a memory, and yet it had felt so real in the moment. He can feel his grasp on it slipping like sand through an hourglass. "For twenty years."[break][break]

His throat feels dry, and suddenly Cillian wishes he had something hard to drink.

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Tulio nods. It was a dirty thing, wasn't it? And yet not at all. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as they say. His own love had been much like Cillian Quinn. More wild, he thinks, but with that savage look in her eyes that promised trouble. She had never been an innocent woman. Tulio had loved her all the same; knew he couldn't fault Temp for his choice in partners. For his choices in life.[break][break]

There were many who disagreed with how they viewed things, but the fact of the matter was that the Children of the Sea had gotten the shortest end of the stick since Hoenn had been taken from them and those like them. It was no surprise that Temp, and Tulio himself and many of their tribe, didn't really care if Rocket or the League were the ones in charge.[break][break]

Subjugation was subjugation at the end of the day. The time would pass anyway.[break][break]

Yet, that wasn't here nor there. For now, Tulio takes out his clunky and ancient phone. He only struggles for a moment, squinting at the screen, before he remembers how to put in contacts. Cillian will have to repeat the numbers more than once and check them over when Tulio is done; Tulio did his best but he was less of a learned man than Temp was.[break][break]

"Only for emergencies." Repeated, Tulio making a complicated series of hand gestures over his chest and face. Cillian had probably seen Temp do it from time to time, too.[break][break]

Yet, when Cil drops the bomb, Tulio still sucks in a breath through his teeth.[break][break]

It sits between them for a moment.[break][break]

"Ah." But that wasn't all of it, was it? It placed a dramatic shift into perspective. Of rumors he had heard from the other Sachem and the sad looks they would give to both Temp and Tulio himself. Of why Temp had crushed him into a hug and hadn't let him go for a long, long time.[break][break]

Twenty years.[break][break]

"You lost someone?" Leading but not demanding. Tulio smiles and it's filled with so much anguish and understanding before Cil even confirms what he suspects.

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"Our daughter."[break][break]

It is the first time he's acknowledged it aloud.[break][break]

His voice breaks on the word, and Cillian's neck burns hot as he looks away and forcefully blinks away the tears that swim in his eyes. He has not allowed his husband to see those tears, and neither would Tulio see them shed.[break][break]

But he might see the redness of his eyes when Cillian looks back.[break][break]

"I don't know what he's told you," is forced out, stilted, "but I didn't — I don't want kids."[break][break]

But twenty years and another world, and a child had wanted him.[break][break]

"There was a battle..."[break][break]

He can't say it, but he knows he doesn't need to. Tulio had lost a daughter as well, after all.

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Oh, there is an anguish there. Confirmed. A grandchild Tulio has never met lost. It fills him with a pain so profound he almost tears up himself.[break][break]

But it isn't just that. It's reliving memories. It's the horror of being a parent and knowing you child is going through profound pain. Tulio knew the pain that Cillian Quinn and Temp were going through. It was something he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.[break][break]

It explained so much. It was a terrible curse.[break][break]

Tulio stands, slowly, and trudges over to sink onto the couch next to Cillian. Much like Temp, he was a physically affectionate man. If Cil had allowed, he would have pulled the other man into a hug. Am embrace of father and son, of mourning and loss. Instead, for now, Tulio offers the other his hand. A connection of solidarity.[break][break]

"I had wondered why he... he's seemed unstable. This makes sense." Another deep breath, one Tulio chokes on at the end.[break][break]

"I wasn't very... stable, either."[break][break]

Tulio stays quiet for a few more moments. While worry was for his son, yes, Cillian still had an important place in his heart now. He needed to make sure that Cil knew he was just as supported.[break][break]

"It doesn't really ever stop hurting." Is what he finally breaks the small silence with, quiet and wizened. Tulio, in that moment, looks every bit a man trudging well into his fifties. "But you get used to it, over time. You grow around the hurt. Then on good days you can think of them and remember the good times even if it stings."

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Tulio stands, and Cillian's tension is immediate and palpable. Perhaps this is what persuades the older man that a hug might not get the best reception; it is only the context of the situation and Cillian's knowledge of their shared grief that stops him from getting up to put distance between them. Survival instincts are challenged with logic, though he must breathe through the urge to bolt.[break][break]

He places his hand in Tulio's and squeezes with all of his strength.[break][break]

"That's the thing," Cillian admits, his voice raw around the hurt. "I'm already starting to forget. That's not supposed to happen so — so soon."[break][break]

Her hair was red, her eyes were blue, her name was Diot.[break][break]

When he tries to picture her face, it is only an approximation.[break][break]

"That place we were sent to, it wasn't..." But real feels insulting to the emotions he felt that certainly were. "It wasn't a proper world, like ours," he settles on, at the end. "It was a memory."[break][break]

And like memories, it was imperfect. Subject to fade.[break][break]

A silver feather, lovingly washed of blood and muck and polished now to a brilliant sheen, is pulled from his pocket.[break][break]

"I might've thought it was a dream if not for this."

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All things fade with time. Yet, it is odd that Cillian Quinn's memories were fading so soon. Something to do with the strange world they had been in? But, well, that didn't make it hurt any less, did it?[break][break]

It was still hard to wrap the mind around.[break][break]

A shiny silver feather is shown. Tulio squeezes Cillian's hand back tight.[break][break]

A weather wallet is pulled from his pocket. It looks like a child made it- probably was, given the make. And old, too. Patched back up and sewn together for years and years and years. But he still uses it, a precious thing to Tulio. Flipping it open he pulls out a small and creased picture, just as aged and weathered and rubbed raw at the edges as the rest of him.[break][break]

He offers this to Cillian.[break][break]

"I wouldn't... I wouldn't remember what they looked like if I didn't have this." Already, without having glanced in so long, Tulio found he couldn't recall what color his daughter's eyes had been.[break][break]

The photo is of the four them, standing on Tulio's fishing boat. He looks proud, twenty years younger holding Temp's younger sister on his hip. The young girl smiles wide, eyes creased, and she shares eyes with Temp but her hair is the same wild mess of curls as her mother's. His wife is next to him, more someone Cillian would recognize; her smile is almost demure, yet sneaky, her hand resting on the shoulder of Tempest who stands in front of her. Temp smiles wide, nose crinkled, two teeth missing. He's maybe eight in the photo. This couldn't have been taken long before the accident happened.[break][break]

Tulio smiles again and it's so very, very sad.[break][break]

There is no comfort to be offered.[break][break]

Just the reassurance of experiences shared.

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Cillian had never met Aurora, who had died long before he and Tempest Quinn had met, but it was impossible to mistake the smiling girl in the photograph for anyone else. Alvilda is more familiar to him, and Cil's gaze lingers fondly on the younger Temp even as his heart wrenches with Tulio's shared pain. This was a loss like no other.[break][break]

"Met your wife on the Border," Cillian confesses after a melancholy pause, eyes still on the photo. His laugh is strained but true. "She tried to knock me out. Lovely woman."
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Protective of her family even after her life had ended. Would he be the same?[break][break]

"I've wanted to help him." Speaking again of Temp, Cillian's voice is heavy. "But I've hardly known how to handle it myself. Twenty years in the blink of an eye, and they expect us to carry on like normal."[break][break]

They. Rocket. The driving force behind his every breath.

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