Work Text:
Eda finds Darius more or less where she expected to: nursing a strong drink in the frigid night air.
He’s leaning over the balcony, fingers shaking around the glass. She walks up to him slowly, carefully, but not quietly. His shoulders stiffen for a moment, but he doesn’t tell her to leave, so she makes her way to his side.
“What’s on your mind?”
He scoffs, taking a long sip from his glass.
“Right. Stupid question.”
It’s all about Hunter, obviously. It’s the only thing he can seem to focus on right now. Most of the time, he’s optimistic, grateful that the boy is finally safe, but…
But this isn’t the first night she’s found him like this, angry and sorrowful and finding a brand new way to punish himself.
If she didn’t know any better, she would say that a simple drink on the balcony is an improvement. But she does know better. She knows.
“Y’know, he’s going to be fine. I get the worrying - honestly, I do - but he’s in good hands now. There’s literally nothing to worry about.”
“That’s not true,” he says bitterly, fist clenching around the glass. He glances at her with bloodshot eyes, frowns, and looks away. “You should go to bed, Owl Lady. I don’t need you here.”
“I think you do.”
“Edalyn-”
“Come on, Darius. You did everything you could, and he’s safe now. You’re not helping him by getting blackout drunk in the middle of the night.”
He’s silent for a moment, then takes another drink without meeting Eda’s gaze. She rolls her eyes, crosses her arms over her chest.
“You know-”
“I didn’t,” he says, setting his glass down on the railing.
She pauses, forgetting what she was going to say. “What?”
“I didn’t ‘do everything I could.’”
She sits in stunned silence for a moment, then exclaims: “Are you kidding me?”
“He deserves-”
“No, stop. Listen. You searched for him for weeks. If I remember correctly, Raine had to drag you to bed most nights to keep you from passing out in the woods. You wanted nothing more than to find that kid, and bring him home safe. And you did, so you can stop wallowing in self pity now, alright?”
She’s trying so, so hard not to go all owl beast on him, but she’s getting sick and tired of his nightly pity parties and slowly spiralling self-destruction.
Anyone with eyes can see that Hunter needs him, and she’s not going to let the kid down by allowing Darius to rip himself apart before he can even begin to recover.
“Before that.”
She groans. “What are you talking about now?”
“Before that,” he repeats in a growl, whirling his head to the side. He stares at her with red, teary eyes and his teeth clenched so hard that she’s worried he’s going to crack one. “I wasn’t there for him before that.”
They both go silent for a moment. Eda isn’t sure what to say - if it were Luz or King, she would know exactly how to calm them down, but she hasn’t been close to Darius since they were teens, and even then, he was more Raine’s friend than hers.
He turns away.
“Before he disappeared,” he begins, his voice deliberately even, his pain cleverly hidden, “I was not… good to him. I saw him as nothing more than Belos’s little pet, an obstacle to the rebellion at best. I didn’t want anything to do with him.”
“Yeah, and then you changed. You’re looking out for him now. You’re a good parent, or whatever you want to call it.”
Darius hisses, brings a gloved hand up to cover his face. “You’re not… I didn’t just dislike him, Edalyn. I hated him. I ridiculed him, undermined him every chance I got. None of the coven heads liked that a child had been named our superior, perhaps none more than me.”
“Lilith was pretty jealous of him too, so what? Like I said: he’s safe, and he needs you now. Whatever you did back then, it doesn’t matter.”
“But it does,” he roars, eyes flashing a bright, eerie green behind his hand. He pulls it away, turning slowly to face Eda with a solemn look on his face. ”That… that monster was hurting him every single day behind closed doors, and I did nothing to stop it. None of us did.”
Eda shakes her head, “You couldn’t have known-”
“But we did,” he says, voice suddenly small, eyes shut tight, lips pursed in a thin line. “We did know, and we didn’t care. I didn’t care.”
“Oh.”
She fiddles with her ring, staring down over the edge of the balcony. The forests seem to come alive in the dark, calling to the owl within. She sighs.
“You know you’re not responsible for what Belos did to the kid, right?”
“No,” he agrees, voice thick, “but I am responsible for what I did, and for what I failed to do. I had every chance to get him out. Every chance to stand up for him.”
He finishes his drink in one long swig, then throws the expensive crystal glass into the woods below. Eda watches it fall, glittering in the moonlight, until it is too small to see. Darius grips the edge of the balcony, his fingers trembling.
“We would see him show up to meetings with bandages, and we didn’t think to wonder why he hadn’t sought out a healer. I passed him limping in the hall once, and I just… I shoved past him. I pushed him out of my way.”
“Darius-”
“He came to me for help once, and I ignored him. Eber growled at me, and he thought they were mad at him, and I didn’t correct him because I didn’t care.”
He’s crying now, voice wet and almost shrill. Eda tries to put a hand on his shoulder but he shrugs it off, scooching further down the railing.
“Alright,” she says, trying to hide her irritation. “You were pretty awful.”
He growls. “I know that, Edalyn. Believe me.”
“Oh, come on, what am I supposed to say here? Yeah, you messed up. But you’ve been making up for it every day since. That kid was clinging to you like a lifeline after what happened. You’re not doing him any favors by beating yourself to death before he even wakes up.”
“He deserves better.”
“Yeah, well, he wants you. Maybe he does deserve better. Who am I to say? I wake up every day thinking that Luz and King deserve better. But I’m what they’ve got. If they deserve better, fine. I’ll just have to be better for them.”
“But I’m not-”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” she presses a finger up to his mouth in a “silence” motion, and he sputters, leaning away and shooting her a glare. “The kid needs you, okay? He needs you. If you won’t fix yourself up because your friend is asking you nicely, how about doing it for your kid?”
“He’s not my kid.”
“Uh, yeah, he is. I think you’re the only one who doesn’t see it.”
He sighs.
“I’m going to bed, Owl Lady.”
She leans against the railing, twisting her ring along her finger. “Just… Think about what I said, okay? Don’t make me come find you again tomorrow night.”
He doesn’t answer. The door swings open, then clicks shut.
She can only hope he’ll remember this in the morning.