Chapter Text
“Alright, we have our coffee, we’re here annnnd- give me one second.”
Loona tapped the vibrate-only function on her hellphone before pocketing it.
“There. Full undivided attention. Now, what’s up, Via?”
Octavia and Loona were sitting at a corner booth of the Starschmucks a few blocks away from I.M.P. Octavia had called earlier to request meeting up, though the nature of her request had been vague which gave Loona the feeling it was something important. Blitzø and his crew were off on another mission but it was just targeting a former political rival of a client so leaving a sticky note behind on her desk saying ‘Out 2 Monch’ was heads up enough.
The owl princess held her cup between her hands but had yet to take a sip from it. Whatever was on her mind must have been weighty as she had to take a moment to figure out how to start this.
“Take your time. I ain’t going anywhere,” Loona assured with a smile.
Octavia tapped her fingers against the side of her cup before she huffed a sigh and decided to just get it over with.
“So… long and short of it… this deals with my dad.”
Loona nodded encouragingly. “What’s up? Has he been doing okay ever since he got out of the hospital?”
“Well—physically, yes.”
“But not in other ways?” Loona prompted.
Discomfort creased lines onto the princess’s face. She nodded before sighing again. “He thinks I tune out 99% of the world since I have my headphones in all the time. But what he doesn’t realize is that I can see and, more importantly, understand way more than I let on. He still thinks of me like I’m five sometimes, I swear, oblivious to everything except whatever amuses me.”
Loona snorted, sitting back with her arm resting across the top of her seat’s backrest. “And I bet he still insists on doing stuff you couldn’t give two shits about or acting all overprotective and obnoxious just cause he’s your dad, right?”
“To… some degree yes. But I’m sensing some projection here on your part?” Octavia teased, laughing softly at Loona’s ‘oops busted’ expression. “It’s okay. I’ve seen how Blitzø acts around you. If he were my dad, I’d be tempted to kick him in the balls too, I suppose.” That made Loona grin.
“So, you’ve seen your dad be not so okay……” the hellhound started, prompting Octavia to continue.
“Right. Yes.” Octavia sighed before she finally set her cup down and gestured in a manner that was very reminiscent of the owl prince with her hand reaching towards the sky and the other pressed over her heart. “Lately, my dad’s been sad. I mean—really sad. Breaking out into song like an animated princess in a movie type of sad. No, seriously, look.”
She took out her hellphone and accessed her videos, tapping on one to play. The angle was from the ground floor looking up towards a balcony. Stolas was leaning on the rail of the balcony while reaching skyward, singing a lasting note from a power ballad.
“Damn. And I thought Moxxie was a complete fucking nerd,” Loona commented before adding on quickly, “no offense.”
“No, it’s okay. I know my dad is one. But do you see what I mean? He’s been sad before but now it seems like his feelings are so overwhelming that he has to release them somehow. I guess I know where my coping with the world through music came from now... But anytime I try to talk to him, he acts like everything is okay or that his behavior is from being too tired or some other bullshit excuse like that. He slaps on a smile like everything is fine when I know it’s clearly fucking not, and I wish he’d just…” Octavia pressed her beak together in a grimace, “... I wish he’d… just… be okay with showing he’s not okay. I wish he’d scream, throw things, do something other than holding it in and pretending everything is fine.
“So, that’s why I’m coming to you now, Loona. Because I have a hunch this also involves your dad. After all, my dad didn’t start changing until he began lending out his Grimoire to Blitzø. He also started becoming more melancholic and theatrically dramatic when he thinks no one else is around after the weekend I spent with my mum that preceded her moving permanently to my uncle’s palace.”
“When would that have been?” Loona asked, trying to think back to recall any moments when Blitzø was acting weird in the past few months. It was hard because he was always being weird.
“Mm. Maybe a few weeks before an assassin tried to kidnap and murder my dad?” Octavia was saying this very casually but Loona could definitely sense the faint hitch in the princess’s breath, the way her pupils dilated just a little bit more. Being reminded of how close she came to losing her father permanently was still having an effect on her.
Loona couldn’t be sure of the exact timing, but something stuck out to her in her memory—the night of Queen Bee’s party.
‘I can taste the flavor of people at my parties and he’s giving off a very… not okay vibe, you know?’ Beelzebub’s voice repeated.
Then… ‘Fuck… Fizz was right. I’m going to die alone, aren’t I?’
The way Blitzø had said that… The uncharacteristic seriousness and melancholy… Loona wouldn’t admit it aloud, but it had actually worried her a little. She chocked it up to her adoptive dad drowning in booze and being out of it at the time. But now that Octavia brought up her own father’s sudden turn in mood, Loona couldn’t help but feel there might be a connection too. Before she had retreated to her room that night, Blitzø had been mumbling a series of names. Millie, Moxxie, and… Stolas.
“You might be onto something there, Via,” she admitted, her ears twitching as she pondered the situation. “But at the moment we don’t have anything really definite to go off of. For one thing, we don’t know what the fuck happened to explain why they’re acting this way.”
“Maybe it has something to do with the divorce?” Octavia supposed before she pursed her beak together. “Actually, no, scratch that. Regarding the divorce, my dad’s been very open with how he feels about my mum. If anything, he’s very open about how liberating it is being separated from her. And I don’t see how Blitzø would feel any which way about it—at least not to my knowledge?”
Loona shook her head as confirmation. “Yea, no, he hasn’t really made any comment about it. The most he’s said about your dad was wondering if he had to go over to return the Grimoire and if he’d be staying for the night. I wasn’t really paying that much attention since this was a conversation he was having with M&M, but I got the gist of it. Other than that, he’s not really brought your dad up much.”
A moment of silence settled between them with minutes passing filled with furrowed brows, frowns and sips of coffee.
The hellhound would be the one to finally break the silence with a definitive pound on the tabletop with her fist.
“Alright, we’re at wit’s end here. Why? Cause we know fuckall to figure out what to do. So, here’s the plan.” She pointed first to herself then to Octavia. “We need to do some reconnaissance. Think you got what it takes to snoop in your dad’s stuff?”
“His things?” Octavia repeated, unsure. It was one thing to observe his behavior by chance—it was another entirely to invade his privacy.
“Yeah! Like his phone or his diary or whatever you can get your hands on to learn more about what could have caused the change in his behavior.”
“Mmn… I suppose I could try. He leaves his hellphone on the charger 98% of the time when he’s home anyway….” Octavia admitted.
Loona reached across and whopped her on the shoulder encouragingly. “Attagirl! And Blitzø is so messy, he wouldn’t think twice about not having his hellphone for a while. He’d think he left it in his other pants or something. Okay! Let’s meet up again, say, two days from now? Same place, similar time?”
Octavia felt a swell of hope mix with tiny prickles of misgivings. But, ultimately, this was her effort to help her dad out; she could do this for him. Plus, she wasn’t going to be alone either. With Loona’s assistance, already their chance of success had gone up!
With her resolve strengthened, she nodded and held a hand out, smiling when Loona grasped it and shook it firmly.
“Sounds like a plan!”