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heliads · 11 months ago

Note

Praying I’m not too late because of school!!

Anyways, post undivided/unbound, grace and argent reunion fic please? Like, after the events of Unbound, Grace and the rest of the main gang meetup again and they’re all hanging out on some unknown port. Meanwhile Argent’s there running errands for Divan. The two bump into each other and hurt/comfort reunion ensues!! Also I wanna see Argent grovel for Grace’s forgiveness hehehe (Also the Grace Redemption Arc continues wooo)

'one more game to play ' - grace skinner

masterlist

Grace Skinner is doing well, all things considered. She is not dead. No one wants her dead, either, except perhaps some of the adults down at the park, the ones who sit in front of their chess boards rain or shine in search of a good opponent. It’s not Grace’s fault if they fell for her strategical schemes. Perhaps they should practice more.

Aside from the chess players, though, Grace is fine. She’s doing well as a new entrepreneur of tissue synthesis technology. Her friends, for the most part, are still whole, although Connor Lassiter has a new crop of scars that he doesn’t seem all that keen to show off. They’re getting better, slowly, and everything is fine.

It’s like a game that Grace can play, and she’s excellent at games. Whenever she catches herself slipping, she thinks about good things, like the health of her friends and the success of her latest enterprise. She takes walks. She clears her head, and she doesn’t think about what she shouldn’t. There are topics that are off-limits. Grace knows the rules, and she follows them.

Right now, she’s on her way to meet up with some of her friends. They’ve arranged for everyone to gather at a nearby pier. Apparently, the sea air will do them some good. Plus, the fresh breeze tends to restore all of them to finer spirits. Farther away from the city, they won’t be exposed to things that bring back bad memories, like the precise scent of smoke that burns down an antiques shop, or the routine shuffle of police footsteps outside a hiding place.

No, no. Grace reroutes her thoughts again. She was close there, but she won’t lose the game. She’s been playing it steadily for a while now. They all have. They stick to their houses or go somewhere so far away that no one even knows who they are, but it’s just different versions of the same idea. Different rulebooks, maybe, or different players, but the same damn thing in the end.

At the crosswalk in front of her, two children carefully walk into the road, eyes wide to avoid any cars. There isn’t that much traffic this time of day, but the older one still takes the hand of the younger anyway, ushering them across with far more gravity than the situation perhaps requires. She sees their faces, a boy and a girl, maybe siblings. Grace can remember when she had a brother who would do the same thing for her, before–

Her breath catches in her throat, and Grace remembers.

She’s lost the game again.

Grace doesn’t realize she’s stopped walking until she starts attracting funny looks. Quickly, she starts moving again, picking up the pace. She doesn’t want to be late to the meetup. Tardiness will attract questions, like just what she was doing to cause her to be distracted. Grace is always precise, perfectly on time. She doesn’t usually make mistakes like this. She doesn’t usually lose the game when she’s so certain about winning.

She keeps walking, passing the two maybe-siblings and leaving them far behind. They don’t matter. They’re just kids. Grace is older than them by many years and many memories. She does not have to look at them and wish that she could have her brother back, even for the time it took to cross the street, even for one half-moment when she could just talk to him and say–

Something, maybe. Grace doesn’t even know. She doesn’t have to know. Grace doesn’t know where Argent Skinner is and she probably never will. Connor told her that her brother was alive, but even he didn’t know where Argie had ended up. Her brother is pretty good at keeping to himself, even if he’s better when he has someone to talk to. That person used to be Grace. She doesn’t know who’s taken her place, but she hopes they’re good enough.

Most of her friends have arrived by the time Grace shows up at the pier. She waves hello to the ones she knows best, and casts a hopefully warm glance towards the ones that are more like acquaintances. Connor gestures for her to join him and Risa in a lively debate; apparently, they encountered an open-ended riddle while traveling here, and wish to have her input.

The discussion is broadened to the group at large, and in between trying to figure it out, people start talking about where they’ve been and what they’ve been up to since the last time they were all together. Hayden’s trying his hand at public speaking, although he says it feels different when many people are actually watching him instead of just listening along. Lev has been working with Miracolina on how to prepare past tithes for the future they never planned on reaching. And Grace, of course, has the organ printer. All good things.

Still, she can’t help her gaze from drifting listlessly from the many faces on the pier back towards the bustling business of the port. Grace likes spending time with her friends, really she does, but having this many people here gives her the expectation that she’s got to perform for them in some way, be a better version of herself without quite knowing how, and it tends to stress her out a little. Looking at the bricks of the low buildings, watching the cars driving back and forth across the roads, is a lot easier to focus on than the discordant harmonies of so many voices.

Grace can feel her pulse starting to come back down again, and then she sees a silhouette slipping out of an open door. Their back is to her, so she can’t make out their face, but the advantage of spending one’s entire life around one single person is that you tend to remember them, and Grace swears she knows this person perfectly. The swing of his arms as he walks, the absentminded tilt of his head. This– this is Argent. Impossibly, it’s Argent. Grace’s brother. The reason she has to keep distracting herself from the awful truth that the closest part of her family is gone.

Grace’s breath catches in her throat. Truth be told, she didn’t even know if Argent was alive. He certainly hadn’t reached out to her, but then again, he would have no way of doing so. Vividly, Grace’s mind flashes back to a terrible night in Ohio, when she had seen a man she had thought was Argent, only to see part of her brother’s face on a different guy’s body. What if this is the same thing all over again? What if he really was unwound, even despite being old enough to avoid the limit, and one recipient just happened to get all of her brother.

Grace should look away and spare herself another horrorshow. She can’t take another brother-based heartbreak, that would go beyond losing the game to losing herself. Still, the silhouette mocks her silently as it walks away. It looks an awful lot like Argent, doesn’t it?

She can’t take it anymore and murmurs an excuse to her friends before heading off back down the pier towards the town. The young man who could be Argent Skinner isn’t walking all that fast, ambling in the vague direction of his destination, wherever that may be. By contrast, Grace is setting new records for speed walking, fists pumping as she hurries towards her supposed brother.

Just before she reaches him, Grace hangs back a little, giving herself time to judge the situation. If she’s wrong, she’s wrong now, and she’ll know it. However, the more Grace looks, the more she’s certain that this is indeed Argent. She steadies herself slightly, curling her hands into tight fists, and says uncertainly, “Argie?”

The figure stands stock-still, all momentum blown out of him like a limp sail on dead seas. Slowly, he turns around. There’s a moment before he completely faces Grace, a moment in which time feels as if it takes twice as long to pass. The instant of hesitation lasts for infinities, and then the figure stands directly in front of her and she knows– she knows it’s her brother. Knows it like breathing, like plotting out the winning move in a chess match. This is Argent, and she is Grace, and they are back together again.

For a while, they don’t say anything at all, just taking in the sight of each other. At last, Grace understands just what was done to her brother– half of his face is still scarred, as it was when Connor Lassiter attacked him when escaping his capture, but half of it is even more so damaged, still vaguely pink and irritated from the lingering aftereffects of a biobandage.

“Your face,” Grace says uncertainly, then immediately wishes she hadn’t.

Argent’s hand rises up instinctively– not to the fresh scars, as Grace had assumed he would, but to the old ones, the wounds Connor had given him. It’s as if he’s afraid that the other side of his face, too, would be ripped away when he least expected it. Dear God. What have they done to him?

“Never trust a parts pirate,” Argent growls.

So that’s what had happened. It makes sense that the man with Argent’s face that Grace encountered before he burned down the antique store would be a parts pirate. It also makes sense that Argent had tried to trust one. Lonely, hopeless Argent, who kidnapped the Akron AWOL then lost it all because he just had to post a selfie of the two of them together, who had joined up with a disreputable parts pirate because he wanted some grand expedition of revenge. Faceless Argent, who bears a countenance of wounds marking both times he learned his lesson.

“I missed you,” Grace says unexpectedly. “You didn’t call.”

Argent squints at her. “How could I? You left home and so did I. ‘Sides, I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me, on account of you running off with Connor and me trying to hunt you two down.” Upon seeing Grace’s crestfallen face, he adds hastily, “That didn’t mean I didn’t want to, though. Christ, Gracie, you’re my sister. That might not mean a whole lot at times, but I’ve felt rough about it ever since. Seeing you is good, though.”

“Thanks,” Grace whispers. All of a sudden, she feels eleven again, never quite saying the right thing to her cooler brother, not enough to make her one of his friends but enough to be a sister, as always. Well, maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world. Being a sister. It means she would feel less alone than she had before.

“I owe you more than that,” Argent confesses. “I’ve treated you something awful, haven’t I? Enough to make you run off with Connor and not come back. I’ve overlooked you, Gracie. I’ve treated you badly. It just tore me up inside, thinking that maybe you’d get hurt because of stuff I did. Say you’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

Grace hesitates a bit, mulling his words over, then nods at last. “I do forgive you, Argie.”

Her brother’s face washes over in relief. “I’m mighty glad to hear that, I have to say.”

She chuckles. “I’m mighty glad to hear you apologize. Thought you never would.”

“So did I,” he admits.

They stand for a few moments in awkward silence, not sure what to do now that the obvious has been taken care of. Then, in a sudden flash of reality, Grace remembers the group still bunched out on the pier. “A couple of us are hanging out past the docks. Do you want to join us?”

There’s a careful light behind Argent’s weatherbeaten eyes. “Are you sure? I reckon they might not be the happiest to see me right now.”

“Don’t mind that,” Grace says with a wave of her hand. “You saved Connor when he was unwound, right? He told me about that.”

“The Akron AWOL is saying I saved his life?” Argent asks, unconsciously puffing out his chest a little.

“He is,” Grace confirms. “Come on, you can hear him say it for yourself.”

With that, she turns and starts walking back towards the pier. A few moments later, she hears Argent following her. He catches up when they’re about to cross the street, insisting on going a half step earlier so he can watch for cars. Grace instantly remembers the younger pair of siblings she’d seen just an hour or so earlier. She’s got her brother back, she realizes with piercing clarity. They’re together again, the two Skinners, watching out for each other once more.

And with that, Grace wins the game.

requested by @sirofreak, i hope you enjoy!

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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