#the entire party then went back to his grave to make sure the microwave was turned off

[thypickles]

I am dming my first campaign and what I have learned is that I am very much the type to plan the bare minimum then have to improvise absolutely everything. I am sometimes just as surprised by what I say as my players are

[cordonian-literature]

The Aftermath - Ch. 2

International News

Summary: Drake finds news about Riley and goes to tell Liam

Word Count: ~2.7k

Warning: Mention of character death

*All characters belong to Pixelberry, except those that are unique to my story (I’ve also used some characters and fictional instances from Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch”)*

Catch up here!

Tags: @captain-kingliamsqueen​ @marshmallowsaremyfavorite @gkittylove99 @lovablegranny @loudbluebirdlover @mom2000aggie @kingliam2019

- DRAKE - 

Taking the leftover pizza out of the microwave, Drake eats his dinner leaned against the kitchen counter, facing his empty living room. He had Bartie over last weekend. When the boy walked in, the entire place felt more illuminated. Not only was the place more lively with some company, but Drake was finally able to see exactly how boring his cabin was — of course, the initial plan was to go camping, but it started raining, so Drake thought his place would be the next best thing. But alas, it wasn’t. He did his best to make the place a little more fun and to make Bartie’s time with him enjoyable. All he wanted was to give his nephew a break from courtly life. When Savannah came to pick him up Monday morning, the house felt dim again. He knew that even if he preferred being alone, he wouldn’t enjoy it as much as he would’ve enjoy being with friends or with the people he cared about.

Tonight was supposed to be the night that he and Liam went out drinking, but Liam had to reschedule due to an overload of meetings. Drake didn’t take it personally, and was recently used to Liam distancing himself from everyone.

After Riley had left, Hana, Maxwell, and Drake went to Los Angeles to try and find Tariq by themselves. When they got him to give an announcement, it was sent out in the middle of Liam’s and Madeleine’s engagement shower, even though the group wanted desperately to do it quietly. Drake remembered Liam’s face after Madeleine had calmed down the crowd and was giving her own thoughts about how the court had treated Riley; Liam had scanned the crowd for her face, his eyes passing over the faces of his three friends, no Riley in sight. Afterwards, Drake had to tell the entire group that Riley had left the night before. He thought she was bluffing, so he did nothing to stop it.  

The court remained in New York for another long week, in an attempt to try and find Riley. They’d gone anywhere they thought could help find her, even the bar they first met her at and her old apartment. They even tracked down Daniel, Riley’s co-worker. Liam had gone as far as to tell Bastien to do a background check on her parents and had a security team monitor her mother’s house for any signs of her. 

Drake had been the one to put the issue of finding Riley on his shoulders. His guilt for letting Riley leave that night was something that he knew he would take to his grave. Sometimes he’d work with Olivia and Maxwell — Hana had left court after there was no sign of Riley returning. They’d send small search parties internationally and contacted any establishment that they thought she would have any association with. 

Of course, nothing turned up, but Drake still kept his eye on international news, while Maxwell and Olivia continued their own searches. Even though they’d all lost hope for finding Riley long ago, she still remained in the back of their thoughts.

The two best friends were beginning to distance, but Drake was glad that him and Liam were at least trying to stay connected — even though he had moved out of the palace a while ago, his cabin wasn’t a ten minute drive away. 

After putting his plate in the sink, he took out his phone and decided to scroll through the internet and current news.

Out of all the states in the country Drake paid attention to in his search, he slowly began to ignore New York. He figured that if she didn’t want to be found, that would be the last place she would go. 

He begins pouring himself a glass of whiskey, when he stumbles upon a vague article title: 

America Left in Shock as Country's Largest Museum is Bombed Over the Weekend.

With the slight hope that the museum wasn't in New York, he clicks on the link and reads about a bomb going off in a new exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He almost exited out before noticing that an internationally known CEO had been found dead and a Senator was badly injured.

He keeps scrolling and sees the subtitle Known Visitors around Time of Incident and Their Conditions. Beneath it was a list of names with either “dead”, “injured”, or “unknown” written in bold next to them. 

He scans through the names, as he's always done with any list ever since Riley left, a dull hope in the back of his mind that one day there'd be a list with her name on it. His heart gives a jolt when he reads “Riley Brooks injured”.

- Liam -

After hours of back to back meetings with dignitaries and ambassadors from all over the world, Liam finally gets a chance to close his eyes and lean back in his chair. A rare moment of peace. 

He didn’t mind the workload. In fact he embraced it. It allowed him to distract his mind and his heart from the void Riley had created when she left. Years after her departure, Liam never stopped putting the blame on himself. He regretted the heartache he put her through during the Engagement Tour. He regretted that she had to suffer her name being dragged through the mud by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. He regretted every moment he didn’t tell her that he loved her. He regretted every moment that he didn’t cherish her. Every moment he hadn’t held her in his arms had been a moment wasted. 

Of course she’d want to leave me, he told himself routinely. I never deserved her. What type of man forgets to cherish such a precious being? How did I forget to cherish the woman who stood by my side even when she was experiencing Hell? 

Diving head-first into his work was a necessary reprieve from this thoughts. He would never want to forget her, but he hated remembering how he didn’t keep her safe. This life of loneliness was his punishment, and he believed he deserved it.

When the door opens and the light thud of Drake’s foot steps barrel towards him, Liam doesn’t open his eyes, but asks, “How are you Drake? Did you have a nice weekend with Bartie?” 

Drake freezes. “How did you know I spent the weekend with him?”

“Maxwell told me.” He looks at Drake and goes to fill a glass of scotch for himself and some whiskey for Drake. “He usually calls to tell me how his day’s been going. That day he was particularly upset. Sunday, I think it was. I heard Bertrand or Savannah trying to cheer him up in the background, though I couldn’t make out the most of what they were saying through the sobs.”

Drake takes the glass of whiskey. “He cried to you? About what?” Maxwell crying or showing any emotion wouldn’t have been surprising when Riley was around, but after she left, everyone had bottled up their feelings. It seemed unnatural, but everyone was so focused on hiding their own emotions from one another that they didn't even notice that they were all doing the same thing. Lately though, the walls they had built around themselves were crumbling. Their decade of ignored pain was becoming too much to handle, but none of them were ready to face it yet. 

Liam sighs, looking down at his drink. “About how Riley never got to meet Bartie.”

“She saw him in Paris.”

Shaking his head, Liam says, “It’s not the same.”

The men take a moment to finish their drinks, the silence hanging between them, as was usual when anything about Riley, her social season, or the Engagement Tour ever came up. 

“Speaking of Riley,” Drake starts, pulling out his phone. “She’s in New York.” 

“What?” Liam jolts to attention and reaches for the phone, scanning the screen that Drake opened up for him. When he looks at her name, he can’t take his eyes off of it. 

Riley Brooks. His Riley. 

Injured, but alive. 

The article was uploaded less than two hours ago.

Disbelief, shock, pain, and hope all flash through Liam’s face when he looks up at Drake, who explains what happened at the Met, and when he’s done relaying the information that he has, Liam takes a moment to absorb it all. He pulls out his own phone and looks for more articles to read; he was alive with the need to see her name again, the need to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. After all this time, it felt too good to be true.

He’s only able to type “The Met NYC” before he looks back at Drake and breathes, “Maxwell and Hana. We need to let them know.” 

Drake takes a moment to respond. Liam scans his friend’s face, and is shocked to find himself expecting Drake to disagree. 

And he does: “I don’t think that’s the best idea right now. We should take our time and approach this slowly.” 

“Not the best idea?” Liam stands, abandoning his phone. He blinks a couple times, making sure that he's really in the moment, and that he really just heard those words come out of Drake's mouth. “When will it be the best idea?” He stands, leaning against the table to close the distance between himself and Drake. “Eleven damn years isn’t a long enough wait for you?” 

“Liam that’s not what I meant. I just think we should give her space. Reach out to her. She's been hurt—.”

“Space?" He turns around and begins to pace. There are too many words, and he doesn’t know how to get them all out. After a desperate decade of trying to find her, trying to find the only woman he’s ever really loved, he has to wait even longer? "Where was ‘give her space’ when you ran after her car the night of my coronation? When you wanted to jump on the plane to New York and follow her?” He took a moment to stare down at Drake. “Do you understand how hard it’s been, religiously searching for her name in every one of Bastien's daily reports? Waiting for Maxwell or Olivia or you to call and say that you've found her or had a lead? Do you understand how hard it is, traveling without her by my side, or without her waiting for me back home? How hard it is, during every damned press conference,” his voice breaks, “being asked of my marrying or at least producing an heir? I can’t get over it. I can’t get over her.” He puts his head in his hands. “Ten damned years and she’s still the person I work to be a good king for...." He takes a deep breath, trying to control his volume. "I understand that you are in pain as well, Drake, she's a sore wound to pick at, but we’ve all been hurting. Maxwell cries about how his ‘little blossom’ would have enjoyed the last Beaumont Bash and how she would have made it more memorable, or how there’s no one else he would want to star with him in his ‘breakdance opera’. We have been calling Hana incessantly over the past five years about returning to court. Do you know what she said to me a few weeks ago? She said she doesn’t want to return without Riley. That it won’t be the same without her. And when I gave my speech to the court and to the people at Applewood last month, it felt just like that, so so empty. All these years—.”

A knock on the door interrupts Liam. He leans back, dusts off his clothes and takes a moment to compose himself, making sure no tears escaped him. He calls for the person to enter and Olivia walks in.  

“Liam,” she starts, but stops herself as she notices Drake sitting in front of his desk, and how tense Liam’s shoulders are. 

“What is it, Duchess Olivia?” Liam asks. 

“It’s Riley,” she starts, all business. “She’s in New York, but has been injured after a bomb went off in a museum she was visiting. I don’t know which hospital she might be in, but I have a list of places I assumed they'd put her.”

“We know about Riley,” Drake scoffs. “Since we know where she is, finding the hospital they put her in shouldn’t be too hard.” 

“Actually, there’s quite a number of hospitals she could be in. I called some to check if her name was on their list of patients brought in from the bombing, but they said the hospital they put the victims in would depend on the type of injury. And since I’m not exactly in New York, they wouldn’t let me know if she was there or not, and said I’d have to be there in person for them to give me information.”

“I’ll have Bastien look into it,” Liam suggests. 

“Hopefully he’ll have narrowed it down before you get there,” she says. 

The men fall silent, looking between themselves and Olivia. 

“What?” she spits, taken aback. “You two have been an emotional mess because of her for the past decade and now that you know where she is, you don’t want to see her? You’ve given up, just like that? At the most crucial moment? I didn’t take you two for such cowards.”

Drake stands, balling his fists. “Giving her space isn’t called being cowardly.” 

“Maybe not,” she speculates, “but what is cowardly is letting someone you love leave without fighting for them.”

Liam puts his hand up, asking for peace. “We will go.” Drake looks back at him, but Liam doesn’t meet his eyes. “We were discussing whether we should tell Hana or Maxwell yet.” 

“Tell them before you take off. They’ll catch up.” 

“Will you be accompanying us?” Liam asks. 

Olivia’s face falls. “I think it’s best if you all greet her first. If she’s to receive a reminder of Cordonia, I’m sure my face isn’t one she’d want to see first.” 

“Nonsense,” Liam claims. 

Drake looks back at Liam. “I’ll go tell Bastien,” he says. “Get some things together, Liam. I don’t know how long we’ll be gone, but pack quickly. Hopefully we’ll be able to take off within the hour.” 

...

Liam had taken many trips across the Atlantic after Riley left. Though more than half of his trips were for political conferences or parties, the other times Liam would come to just absorb the atmosphere of the city: the constant motion, the consistent energy of people always going somewhere, needing to be in another place, waiting to start something new, unafraid of any interruptions as long as no one stopped moving. It reminded him of her.

Looking down at the water under the plane, Liam imagined what Riley would have been thinking about on her first flight to Cordonia with Maxwell and Drake. Was she nervous, excited, regretful? All of the above? He wondered if she ever crossed the Atlantic again, after she left. Did she ever dream of visiting Cordonia, the same way Liam dreamed of greeting her at the airport after all that time? 

He couldn’t even remember what it felt like, to be in her embrace, to force himself not to look back at her during courtly functions when they were on the Engagement Tour. He carried the memories of their stolen moments like talismans, and more than anything he wished he had savored those moments more. 

After the men are off of the plane, Bastien told them that they all have to go through a mandatory security check, a precaution after the city had been closed off for the weekend. He notified Liam and Drake that he wasn’t able to get farther than what Duchess Olivia had found. He suggested visiting the hospitals one by one. 

“That could take days,” Drake protested. "There has to be a faster way."

Liam thought about contacting Riley’s mother, hoping that the woman had heard something about her daughter and could help them locate her. He decided against it, not only thinking that the woman might not be alive, but he thought it better to respect her family’s privacy. After all, they were in the same city. Their reunion was inevitable.

[theartofbeinganerd]

Working on other fics tonight, so here’s another one from my collection of one shots. I wrote this either the day of or the day after 4x12, because hearing about Fitz’s father of course made me think about Fitz as a father - which led to Fitzsimmons talking about babies, obviously. 

And since we’re talking about Fitz’s crappy dad, there are of course brief mentions of child abuse, but nothing explicit.

(Ao3)

-

Jemma could remember with ease the very first time Fitz had mentioned his father to her, all the way back during the summer following their first year at the Academy. Of course she’d wondered about the lack of father whenever Fitz talked about his home life, only ever “Mum” this and “Mum” that, but no matter her issues with decorum, even Jemma had known that that wasn’t something one just bluntly questioned.

Finally, after six months of friendship, it had been June, and Jemma and Fitz had spent hours talking on the phone, much like they did every other day. They both had gotten teased by their respective families for their tightly bound friendship (really, Jemma thought, they should’ve known that what they had went far deeper than friendship), and after several calls up the stairs to hurry up off the phone and that Fitz would still be there tomorrow, her father had finally knocked on the door and reminded her that they needed to get going to her grandparents’ house. It had been Father’s Day, and they’d planned for some time to celebrate with her one living grandfather, her mother’s father.

When Jemma had breezily explained it to Fitz, hurrying to finish the conversation so as not to make them any later, Fitz had gone eerily silent on the other line. She’d prompted him several times, worried that something was wrong, and eventually he’d answered with a simple “oh”. Another pause had followed, and then he’d told her to have fun.

But, even though she’d only known him for six months, she already knew him better than she imagined she knew anyone else. She knew his expressions and his moods and his tones, and she knew that something was paining him, something was tearing at his heart, and she could just tell that it had something to do with his strangely absent father.

So she’d told him softly, gently that he could talk to her if he wanted to, but he didn’t have to, she was always there for him.

There had been a shuddering breath on the other line, then another, and then the floodgates had opened and he’d tearfully spilled the whole story to her.

Jemma had curled up in her bed, pressed up against the wall and with her face buried in her pillow to hide the angry tears, to muffle the broken sobs at Fitz’s long-held, undeserved pain. She’d excused herself from the party at her grandparents’ and instead stayed home, pressing the phone to her ear and listening to every painful admission of inadequacy Fitz had, whispering fiercely to him that none of it was true, balling her hands into painful fists in her sheets as she imagined what she’d say to the man that had torn her new best friend to shreds when he’d been so vulnerable.

When moonlight was peeking through her bedroom windows and she could hear her family returning to the house downstairs, she and Fitz had said their soft goodnights. With a sniffle, he’d thanked her for listening, for being there, and Jemma had made a silent promise to herself at that moment that she would spend every single second she had with Fitz working to make him believe that he was more than enough.

Much to Jemma’s shame, she’d unintentionally broken that promise when she’d left for HYDRA after the pod and Fitz’s coma, and it was something she still struggled with at times, something that still plagued her when she least expected it. But, as Fitz (Fitz, the incredible, unspeakably amazing man that he was) was so fond of reminding her, it was what she’d thought was best at the time, that she’d never intended to hurt him in the way she had, and that she couldn’t have known the effect it would have on him.

Since then, she’d been doing her level best to make up for it, and now that they were together, her words of admiration for him came easier, and truly Jemma had never seen his self-esteem healthier (and it was likely only partially due to their fantastic sex life).

However, with the recent stirring of the pot and reopening of old wounds thanks to Radcliffe, Fitz’s self-esteem had taken a hit, his damnable father’s words coming back to haunt him, if only for a short time. He’d assured her that he was over it, that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and that he just wanted to move on. But, as they lay side-by-side in their bed, hands held loosely between them as they watched an old episode of Dr. Who turned down low, she could tell it was still on his mind.

When it finally came, it was abrupt, the words spoken with no preface, no warning. “I just can’t imagine someone saying those kinds of things to a little kid, y’know?”

Jemma turned her head to glance at him, resting her cheek on her pillow and finding him with his narrowed gaze focused on the ceiling. “I know,” she murmured, giving his hand a gentle squeeze, stroking her thumb lovingly over his skin. “Neither can I. But he wasn’t a good person, Fitz. He was a horrible man, one who didn’t have the same values, the same decency that you or I have.”

Fitz shook his head absently, letting out a frustrated sigh. “It’s just… I mean, sometimes I try to imagine that there’s some circumstance where maybe it’d make sense but…but I can’t. I would never say that stuff to my kids. Never.”

“I know,” Jemma repeated, her tone earnest as she reached over with her free hand to grip his between both of hers. “Because no matter how horrible your father was to you, you still became the incredible man I see before me, the man our children will be so lucky to have as a father.”

For a moment, he didn’t respond with more than a vague ‘hmm’ that showed he wasn’t really listening to what she was saying, too caught up in his own head. However, then he went rigid, his eyes popping open wide as he turned to stare at her in shock, his mouth falling open in disbelief.

“What?” Jemma asked in concern and a bit of self-consciousness. “It can’t really be that shocking, can it? I mean I know we haven’t talked about it, but…” She trailed off, her anxiety rising the longer he stared blankly at her, as though she’d just started speaking in an entirely foreign language. “Oh dear,” she murmured, her cheeks heating in embarrassment, “I’ve overstepped, haven’t I?”

Wincing at her incredible inability to just talk like a human being, Jemma opened her mouth to begin spouting apologies and pleas for them to forget all about her slip, but before she could get another word out, Fitz pounced.

Her gasp of surprise was muffled against his lips as he eagerly pressed her back into the mattress, his hands gripping at her waist, her hips, her face, her hair, all over her. Her own hands fluttered about, unsure for a moment at the complete one-eighty, but then his teeth tugged at her bottom lip and it dragged a moan from her, her hands finding their rightful place holding the back of his head to make sure he stayed where she wanted him.

The desperately passionate kiss went on for a long moment, and when Fitz parted from her, both of them panting for breath, she couldn’t help her little moan of loss. Fitz dropped his forehead to rest against hers, his eyes dark and intense from pupils blown wide as they stared into hers. “You wanna have my babies?” he asked, his tone filled with awe and his voice low and rough from desire.

Jemma was only human, thank you, and one of her weaknesses in life, she’d found, was Fitz’s accent when it became thicker and rougher around the edges when he was turned on (when she turned him on). As such, a shudder was sent through her body at the pairing of that accent and that question, and she very nearly let her legs fall open with an enthusiastic “hell yes, let’s start now”.

Thankfully, Jemma had managed to hang on to a smidgen of self-control, so she took a deep breath and fought down the hormones and instead cupped Fitz’s beloved face between her hands. She brushed her thumbs over his cheeks, tracing beneath his eyes and over his nose and around his lips as she smiled breathlessly up at him. “Of course,” she murmured sincerely. “There’s no one I’d rather start a family with, Fitz. Are you really that surprised?”

“Well…no. Maybe. Caught off-guard, I guess. You’ve never mentioned it before,” Fitz admitted, his expression becoming a bit more shy and boyish as he shrugged sheepishly, but he was no less attractive to her, no less dear to her.

“I suppose there was never a reason to mention it.” Smiling lovingly up at him, she felt her cheeks growing warm once more as she confessed quietly, “But I’ve thought about it. Perhaps more than I reasonably should.”

Fitz’s eyes fell closed, his head bowing slightly as he was overwhelmed with emotion, and Jemma lifted her head from the mattress to press a kiss to his forehead. After a moment, his voice gravely, he said, “Me too, Jem. God, me too. You have no idea.”

“Good. Then we’re on the same page.” Gently, she lifted Fitz’s head back up so that their gazes were once more locked, and she bit her lip against a ridiculously giddy smile as told him, “We’re in agreement that someday, we’re going to have beautiful, blue-eyed, curly-haired children who will take apart our microwave and build functioning rockets in our garage.”

“Hey now,” Fitz started, a frown tugging at his lips, “why can’t they be gorgeous little brown-eyed, freckled children who bring dead rats and squirrels into the house and dissect them on the kitchen counter?”

“Well I don’t know why you think they’d do that,” Jemma shot back, pressing her lips together to hide her smirk as she insisted, “Any dissections they do will be proper, in a lab, where there shouldn’t be food.”

“Oh not this again,” Fitz groaned with more exasperation than he clearly felt, given the way his eyes were shining. “It was lunchtime, which obviously meant to put away the disgusting cat livers where they belonged, not drop them right on the table next to my sandwich!”

“You know I never eat lunch when I’m on a roll! Why put a groundbreaking discovery off for something as trivial as lunch?”

“Oh, for the love of –” He cut himself off when he leaned down capture her lips once more, kissing away anymore arguments she could’ve made (arguments she’d already made many, many times over the years).

When they parted that time, Jemma let out a soft, breathless laugh. “I like having that fight so much more when it ends like that.”

Fitz grinned a bit guiltily, giving a chuckle as he agreed, “Me too.”

They simply gazed at each other for a moment, nothing needing to be said, but Jemma eventually broke the silence to offer quietly, “Wouldn’t it be even more perfect if they were brown-eyed, curly-haired children who build rockets and dissect squirrels? Or blue-eyed, freckled children who have their mother’s practicality and their father’s warm heart? Some kind of utterly perfect combination of half-you, half-me, as if someone took all of our genes and mixed them up in a bag, picking and choosing until they’re left with the both of us put into the most adorable little packages.”

The look on Fitz’s face just then was one she was now intimately familiar with, one that made her heart clench in her chest and her stomach twist up in delightful knots. It was a look she equated with his love for her personified, made real and tangible and visible in his eyes as they burned into her, as though it was too much for him to contain inside of himself and it had no choice but to spill out of him through his intense gaze. She honestly wasn’t sure how long he’d been directing said look at her without her notice, but she was infinitely glad that he was no longer afraid to let her see just how deeply his love for her ran, because she would never get tired of that look.

“Yeah?” he questioned lowly, his voice nearly breaking on just the one word, and Jemma couldn’t find her own voice, instead nodding in answer, her gaze soft and loving and only for him. “They’ll be perfect. Incredible. The most…the most amazing little kids in the whole damn world.”

Her breath catching in her throat, Jemma shifted her hands back to hold his face between them, tears beginning to build in her eyes and a tiny smile curving her lips as she told him, “See? Not even born yet, not even conceived yet, and you’re already a better father than yours could’ve ever hoped to be. You could never be him, and I hope you know that, Fitz. All I want is for you to see yourself the way I see you. If you could… If you could, you’d never have to wonder about being enough again.”

Fitz let out a shaky breath, and there it was, that look again as he shifted his weight to rest on one arm, lifting the other to stroke the backs of his fingers down her cheek. “I love you,” he whispered hoarsely, “I love you, Jemma. So much.”

“I love you too, Fitz.” She skimmed her hands down his neck and shoulders to his back, gently tugging at him until he lowered his weight to rest fully on top of her, their arms tightening around each other in a tender embrace. She let out a content sigh, her eyes falling closed as she turned her head to press a kiss to his temple.

No matter how many years passed, Fitz’s father was always going to be a dark mark on his past, coming back at the most inopportune times to remind him of all the awful things he’d tried to convince Fitz he was. But, no matter how many years passed, Jemma was always going to be there as well to pull Fitz back from the depths of his dark thoughts, to remind him that he was none of the things his father had called him, that he was good and warm and smart and enough.

And perhaps, maybe, when they someday did have their own family, when they’d left the danger in their pasts and begun a new story in Perthshire with a brood of beautiful children, he’d be able to fully put his father behind him to focus on his new family, the one that loved and appreciated him for who he was and would never dream of leaving him.

Jemma was so content, in fact, that she nearly felt herself drifting toward sleep, when Fitz suddenly shifted slightly, lifting his head to whisper near her ear, “Hey Jemma…d’you wanna start practicing for making those perfect babies?”

Even as she snorted in disbelief at his proposition, Jemma already knew exactly what her response to it was going to be. She was only human, after all.