#also also dropping in my personal headcanon that toto was originally a bird like gargoyle

[catsafarithewriter]

"Can you stop implementing secret rooms in my house?" You will do something brilliant with this, I just know it!

A/N: Okay, so I promise this prompt, uh, prompted this ficlet, but it went off the rails. If you were hoping for humour, sorry! I humbly offer you heartfelt sincerity instead! Have a ficlet about Baron’s early years in the Sanctuary! <3

x

"I know of a place," the crow gargoyle had told him. "It's not a home but it's safe. It's a refuge for Creations."

At first he stays because it's safe.

Beyond the Sanctuary lies a world torn apart by war. A treaty may have been signed, but the echoes of the conflict linger in poverty, and hunger, and mourning, and he finds he can help only so much from the confines of his creation.

He is nothing but a figurine, after all.

The Sanctuary is quiet. Empty. As he had been promised, it is a refuge, not a home. The little Creation world lines up a sea of houses which go vacant, and he chooses a simple workshop build with an eerily familiar shop front.

And so he retreats into that world, at least until the drone of planes and the stench of grief are almost forgotten, he promises himself.

And then he stays because he has nowhere else to go.

"I will make my way there eventually," says the gargoyle who tells him of the Sanctuary. The other Creation gestures to the remnants of the cathedral which had once been his perch. "But first I must see my people safe."

Baron has no people. He left behind his world – one of magic and mystery – in search of his lost soulmate, and instead found himself in a place plagued by destruction. He has had no time to form the familial bonds which tie others of his kind to this world.

Other Creations come and go through the Sanctuary, but none stay. Why would they, when they have homes or roots or people to return to?

It's not their fault he does not.

"The war must have driven many Creations to seek a refuge," the gargoyle Creation remarks when he finally makes his way to the Sanctuary. He has given his name as Toto, and there is less of the gargoyle about him than Baron remembers. Baron wonders how long it has been since the war ended. "Whenever I've dropped by, this place has been almost always empty."

Baron does not speak of the keening loneliness which has kindled within him, nor the surreptious timing of so many Creations finding their way to the Sanctuary's threshold. It has been a kindness, even if the ever-turning carasol of new faces is only a skin-deep balm.

And then he stays because maybe she will hear of the Sanctuary.

He has no other word for what Baroness Louise von Gikkingen is to him, other than soulmate. It is perhaps more literal than how most take it; they both were formed from the same soul of the same artisan, and were never meant to be apart.

She still exists – he'd feel it if she had been utterly lost – but the connection is faint, and he fears he could search a new world every day and never find her.

(He voices his grief for his missing half only once, but does not miss the portrait that appears on his mantelpiece the following day. Neither does he ask how the Sanctuary knows her face, and yet cannot find her.)

And then he stays because he is comfortable.

"I've never known a Creation to visit here for so long," Toto says in his next flying visit. He has almost entirely shed his gargoyle origins now, bearing more resemblance to a common corvid than the creature of tooth and talon he'd been carved as. Baron, meanwhile, has changed little in the intervening years, save for some alterations to his colour palette.

He has had no need to change.

"Where else would I go?" Baron asks. He opens a cupboard door and gathers up a bag of tea leaves. He's never gone shopping, but the Sanctuary never seems to run empty.

"I've heard of you in my travels," Toto says. "The Cat Creation who helped so many."

"I tried," Baron corrects.

"I would have thought you'd have grown bored by now," the crow continues.

Baron pauses, his hands curling around the kettle which never needs filling. "It would be... inauthentic to say I have not thought about it," he says. "Life is consistent here, unchanging. It was a relief when I first arrived, but sometimes I do miss the unpredictability of the outside world."

"Perhaps it's time to leave."

Baron smiles, and sets to making his tea. "I will think on it."

The next day, he selects a book off a shelf, and a hidden door slides open.

The door is new.

The book is not.

The passageway leads deeper into the Sanctuary, to a room impossible by human physics but unrestrained by the Sanctuary's magic. Bay windows look out onto a sea of stars, galaxies swirling like whirlpools across the expanse. And for the first time in too long, Baron feels life return to his old wooden heart.

It's the first secret room he discovers, but is far from the last.

He knows the cupboard under the sink wasn't always a tunnel, nor the western window a portal or the mirror a doorway, and at first it is a delight. His world, so safe and secure, now has surprises. Secrets.

Discoveries.

And so he stays because he is curious.

"You're looking better than my last visit," Toto remarks. He's added some light to his form, now bearing the marks of a magpie, and it feels like a pointed move away from his gargoyle origins. "Brighter. More awake."

"I was not aware I was so lacking during our last meeting."

Toto shuffles his wings. "Not lacking, but... sedate," he settles on. "Last time, it felt as though life had ceased to surprise you, and you are too young a Creation to feel that already."

Baron opens a cupboard. It's filled with jam jars. He tries it again, and this time he finds the tea leaves he is looking for. "Did you only come here to share judgement on my life choices, or can I offer you a spot of tea?"

"I came because I found her."

Baron drops the tea leaves. The cupboard door slams shut of its own accord.

"Her?"

"I found a trail," Toto clarifies. "A man who had once been engaged to a woman who had once had the Baroness in her possession."

It's a lot of loose connections, but it's the first breadcrumb he's found in decades. Baron feels his lungs go tight, his heart constrained by an unfamiliar tendril of hope. "Show me."

Toto nods and nudges open the doors, but instead of the Sanctuary courtyard, they are met with a corridor, old and dusty.

"Uh, Baron – is that normal?"

Not now.

Not like this.

Baron doesn't reply. Instead he shuts the double doors, counts to ten, and opens them again.

This time it's a different corridor, one marked with elaborately carved sconces lighting up a polished marble floor.

Again, and it's a tunnel, roughly hewn from rock that shouldn't be there.

Another try, and it's a hall of mirrors.

Baron stares at the infinite reflections, all staring back, and wonders when his fur had so dulled. In this light it's almost grey.

He shuts the doors once more.

"Baron...?"

"A moment, Toto." He sets his forehead against the grained wooden lines of the door. He notes the pine scent, and realises it's been too long since he breathed in air not saturated with Sanctuary magic. "Old friend," he murmurs, "you have been nothing but good to me, but I need you now to stop implementing secret rooms in my house. I need you," he says, "to let me go."

The door shivers.

"She is my soulmate. She is all I have left of my old world, my old life," he says. "Let me go to her now."

The door shivers again.

And then it clicks open.

Not onto the Sanctuary courtyard, but to a simple street. To the Human World.

And so he leaves.

The man whom Toto had talked about owns a humble antique store and so it is easy enough to blend in. Despite the Human World being less believing of the supernatural than Baron remembers, the man seems to take the talking figurine in his stride, and shares all he knows of his once-fiancee. Separated by the same war that Baron discovered this world in, the man can point him in no direction, but offer him a place to stay in hopes that one day that will change.

And so he stays.

The Human World has changed since he last retreated from it. The war still bears its marks on the older generation, but the children speak of futures untainted by conflict. The man's grandson wishes to craft violins, and the kids in the street take time to pet the stray cat on the shop's doorstep.

And then the girl arrives.

She is lost in more ways than one, but carries a curiosity that he recognises. She is young, burdened by that weight that all youth feel in that they must know their life's course or else flounder, and so he reaches out. He tells her a story – his story – and she discovers a passion in writing.

He helps.

And he succeeds.

It is not long after that that the antique shop's owner tells him he's tracked down a clue to his lost fiancee. Baron bids his farewell to the man and, with the unexpected aid of a stray cat, sets out to find his soulmate.

He does the unimaginable.

He finds her.

She has changed since they last saw each other – not so much in looks (her dress is different, and her hat has changed, but her fur is the same snow-white as before) – but in personality. She is bolder than he remembered; she stands taller, surer, and there is a cocky, reckless sort of grjn that he is sure their artisan never carved. She has discarded her Baroness title for all but the rare moment, instead going by Louise to those who know her now.

She pulls him into a tight embrace and tells him all about her missing years. About the adventure, and danger, and the worlds she has seen.

"Did you never look for me?" Baron asks.

She breaks the embrace and, oh, how he has almost forgotten those sapphire-blue eyes. "Of course I looked, Humbert. I found my way back to our artisan, but he said you had gone. So I came back, but this world is so large and we are so small..." He sees the glimmer of something akin to guilt. "Eventually I decided to live my life."

To move on, is the unspoken addition, but Baron can't even find it in himself to be hurt. Sedate, Toto had called him, but now he wonders if faded would have been truer. He looks to Louise and sees that she is more alive than he has been for decades.

"But we're found each other now!" Louise declares. "We can travel the worlds and see everything there is to see – together! Oh, there are worlds with waterfalls of diamonds, and flying whales, and – oh, so many people! There's so much to learn!"

"That sounds... wonderful."

His soulmate fixes him with a steely look. "But?"

But he thinks of the schoolgirl with her passion for writing, and the sense that he was finally helping someone again.

Oh, how he had missed that.

"But I think that we have different paths to happiness," he says. "I think I may have just realised what I want to do with my life."

"And it's not gallivanting off through other worlds, is it?" Louise asks softly.

"It's not." He smiles. "But I think our paths will cross nonetheless."

He returns to the Sanctuary with purpose, and it responds in kind. Alongside the stray cat who had helped him find Louise, he sets up the Cat Bureau in a little cottage-like house which bears striking resemblance to the old antique shop. The Sanctuary finds those who need the help of a cat Creation, ushering them into its world, until the Bureau garners enough of a reputation that clients find their own way there.

"So you're staying for good this time?" Toto asks. He's returned to a full black plumage, and his feathers shimmer with an iridescent gleam.

"I believe so." Baron regards his friend. "What's this? No recommendations to venture further afield this time?"

Toto casts a beady eye over the Bureau, and then Baron, both sure in purpose. "No. Finally. You're not running away from something, but to it instead."

"There's always room for another member in the Bureau, you know."

Toto smiles. "I'll think on it."

And Baron stays because he is home.

x

A/N: This whole ficlet started because I looked at that prompt and thought “what if the Sanctuary tried to cater to Baron’s personality and installed hidden rooms to keep him entertained” and then snowballed rapidly into “the Sanctuary is so used to being only a stopping point for Creations, never a home, that when Baron stays longer than usual it becomes attached to him and tries to tempt him to stay permanently by always giving him exactly what it thinks he needs/will make him stay.”