Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She can’t really blame Charlene for freaking out in the moment, though the stricken look on the child’s face makes her wish the former Guardian had kept her cool in the moment.

But then again, there was a child in the Library.

Soaking wet from the rain, wearing a threadbare coat too big for him and shivering, dark circles under his even darker doe-eyes as they stare up in amazement at the nearest artifact.

She snatches up the boy before he can get his tiny little hands on the Ushanti of Ammit, spinning him around and setting him down near a relatively-harmless bookcase. He stares up at her with those big eyes, those eyes she would be powerless against in the years to come.

“Where did he come from?” Charlene demands. “How did he get in here?” The child flinches at the Guardian’s stern tone and ducks away from the two of them.

“Well, little ankle-biter?” she asks. “Whatcha doing here?”

His eyes get even bigger as she speaks, and a toothy grin greets her for her question. He grabs a backpack she didn’t notice before and pulls a white envelope out of it. She gasps and looks to Charlene, who appears just as astonished.

Perhaps it’s foolish—she’s a Librarian, and Librarians die. They chase legends and myths and adventure and ultimately they die. They don’t raise children. They don’t have families—not close ones, anyway. But as she carries the little boy on a tour of his new home (the Library had brought him here and this is where he would stay), seeing the world she had become used to through the eyes of a child, listening to him finally speak to her (and he has her accent, and it’s too late, she’s already attached to him), she decides she doesn’t mind as much as she thought she would.

And when he finally falls asleep, head leaning against her shoulder and tiny little arms wrapped around her neck, she hums a gentle lullaby and sits down at her desk to keep reading a book on ancient temple traps, smiling as Charlene places a note on her desk that reads, “Write down everything you think you’ll need.”

~~~

“Gently now, don’t force it.” Wilde’s hands rest over Ezekiel’s as he shows him how to delicately pick the ancient lock. “Remember, a lot of magical locks have traps inside them. If you’re not careful—”

“Kaboom,” the Librarian’s ward finishes with a smirk.

“Yes, precisely.”

The lock springs free under Ezekiel’s hands, and the lid pops open. Inside rests the boy’s phone, placed there as motivation.

“Perfect!” the Librarian praises. “You’ll be an expert in no time.”

Ezekiel grabs the phone. Wilde waits for him to scamper off with his well-earned prize, but he doesn’t. Instead, he stares at the box. “Can we try again?”

“Again?”

“Yeah. I wanna do it by myself this time.” He puts the phone aside and closes the lid to the box. It locks, and he snatches up the lock picks and sets to work. Wilde waits by his side, silently timing him. In less than thirty seconds, the lock clicks open again. Ezekiel immediately closes it again.

The doors at the far end of the room open. Wilde leaps to his feet. Behind him, Ezekiel hovers close to his back, fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt. Expecting to see Charlene or Judson, Wilde forgets how to speak for a moment at the sight of the gangly teen standing at the top of the staircase, battered suitcase in hand and eyeing the artifacts like one might explode.

His eyes settle on Wilde, and the Librarian— he who spent his days reading people like books, who could tell a person’s life as if the lines on their face were written in ink— recognizes the same wariness in them he sees in little Ezekiel’s eyes, the same pain he sees in his own when he looks in the mirror. This boy has seen too much in his short life, has fought demons of his own. And here he stands in the Library, a white envelope in his free hand.

~~~

It takes their small family time to adjust. Just as it took time for Ezekiel to accept Wilde as the new Librarian, to process his grief at losing the woman who’d been a mother to him for so long and to allow someone new to take her place, the familiar tension centers around Ezekiel and Jake. If Wilde has to listen to one more too-serious suggestion of how to hide a body or one more snippy remark about “the ankle-biter,” he swears he’ll pull his own hair out.

Then a girl stumbles into the Library, holding herself stiffly and primly, head bowed as if expecting bad news and already mourning what she hadn’t yet lost. Wilde is hardly surprised to see the white envelope in her hands and merely escorts her to a room, sending Jake for some tea and Ezekiel for extra blankets.

It becomes apparent why the Library sent for her, and Wilde’s heart breaks as he realizes what has been stolen from this girl. With the threat of death looming over her head, it seems those in her life have chosen to hasten the grieving process and bury what’s left of her while she still has breath in her lungs.

Jake and Ezekiel’s rivalry is set aside, and though their banter doesn’t cease, it takes a new tone; less harsh and snappish and more relaxed. They seem to understand without being told that Cassandra needs a place to heal. To learn to speak out again. The first time she jumps in on one of their arguments with a witty remark about Jake’s poor pronunciation of “Library,” blushing and smiling shyly as Ezekiel doubles over with laughter beside her, Wilde could cry from the overwhelming warmth flooding his heart.

~~~

Flynn had expected a job at a library. Sorting books, organizing the card catalogue, maybe dusting.

He hadn’t expected a magical library, or dangerous artifacts, or to be laden with an Atlas-level burden, the fate of the world settled on his shoulders.

And he hadn’t expected the wards.

Three of them, withdrawn and grieving, clothed in black and red-rimmed eyes fixed on the floor.

Charlene offers introductions. Apparently the title of Librarian also comes along with the title of pseudo-parent to three traumatized… what are they, actually? Mini-Librarians? Ezekiel has his arms wrapped around Cassandra, her own head resting atop his, and it’s hard to tell who’s sheltering who. Jacob stands in front of both of them, arms slightly spread to his sides as if trying to keep them both from Flynn’s view. As Charlene gives them his name and tells them that he’s the newest Librarian, he watches their barely-concealed flinches, the way the youngest hides his face in his sister’s shoulder and the way the eldest’s hands curl into fists.

No, this wasn’t what he’d signed up for at all.

But he was here now. He was here, and Wilde wasn’t, and someone had to look after his kids.

~~~

They settle into a tense peace.

Ezekiel doesn’t like him. That much is painfully obvious.

Cassandra wants to like him; she spends the most time around him, leaning over his shoulder as he works, and he pretends not to notice her dance skittishly away when he moves too quickly.

Jacob is… tricky. He’d been practically an adult when the Library had called to him, and he takes his duty as the eldest sibling seriously. So perhaps he feels threatened by Flynn stepping into the role of responsibility.

Satisfied with his analyses of the three, Flynn leaves it at that. It’ll get easier with time, surely, and until then there’s work to be done and artifacts to rescue. It’s a solid arrangement that works for them.

Until it doesn’t.

And Flynn is left reeling, the shaky foundation he’d built with the wards crumbling under his feet.

It starts with a mission. There are always missions. He leaves, sometimes for days and sometimes for weeks, and the wards send him wary glances as he steps out the door and hastily-concealed looks of relief when he returns. But this time, it’s a matter of ancient Armenian art, something he knows little about but that Jacob understands easily. They hover together over a book, Jacob’s fingers flitting over the page as he explains. Then he makes his offer.

“Let me handle this one. It’ll take too long for me to teach this. I can get it done in half the time it’ll take you.”

And Flynn laughs, his weeks of successful missions offering a well of confidence for him to draw from. “Absolutely not. This is a job for the Librarian, and that’s me. You stay here with the kids, and I’ll call if I need you to translate some colors or something for me.”

Jacob’s face grows as hard as his surname, something cold and dangerous flickering in his eyes. “You got a problem with admitting I know something you don’t?”

“No, I have a problem with you trying to do my job.”

“What do you think I been doing all these years? Dusting the shelves? What do you think we been training for? You ain’t the only person here who knows how to do stuff, Carsen.”

“No, I’m just the only Librarian here.”

Across the room, Cassie and Ezekiel freeze, halfway through a game of Jenga. They stare over at the two adults with wide eyes.

Jacob scowls. “We didn’t ask for you to be here,” he hisses, lowering his voice and turning his head away from the younger two. “We were doing fine without you.”

“If you were so fine, why’d the Library pick me, huh?” Flynn gets a sort of heady high from the argument. It’s pointless and stupid and childish, but the words rush out before he thinks better of them. “You may not like it, Stone, but this is how it is. I’m the Librarian, and you’re not, so you don’t get to tell me how to do my job. So you just do… whatever the heck it is you do here. What do you do here, anyway?”

Jacob recoils like he’s been struck. His gaze flickers over to his siblings. Cassandra has gone still and small again, but Ezekiel— fiery Ezekiel, with lightning-quick fingers and a tongue sharper than Excalibur—looks on the verge of leaping over the table and clawing Flynn’s face off. He has only a second to consider what he’s done wrong (other than insult Ezekiel’s older brother) before Jacob crosses the room, takes the other two by the arms, and pulls them from the room.

“Fine, Librarian,” he calls over his shoulder as they leave. “You’re on your own. Good luck on your little mission.”

The mission is a disaster.

Flynn barely gets the artifact in time, limping back to the Library with at least two cracked ribs and a long gash down his leg. Judson bandages him up, a wordless admonition in his eyes. The wards are nowhere to be seen.

~~~

It takes time to rebuild. It takes time for him to realize his mistake, and even longer to muster up the courage to apologize. He finds Jacob in a laboratory, welding some metal together. The man—and really, Flynn should be ashamed of himself to refusing to acknowledge him as a peer these last few weeks; he had come to the Library as a child, and it was easy to see him as such, hovering as he always was next to barely-twenty Cassandra and fourteen-year-old Ezekiel, but he was an adult— lifts his mask and puts his supplies away, leaning back against his table with his arms crossed.

“Look,” Flynn begins, hands clasped in front of him. “I think we need to talk.”

“You do a lot of that,” Jacob answers bluntly. “Enough for both of us.”

Flynn winces, but really, Jacob deserved to say what was on his mind. “Oookay. Fair. And sometimes, when I get to talking, I say things without thinking. I need to work on it. You’d think someone who wasted his life getting this many degrees would’ve gotten some social smarts at some point. But… I think I may have misread the situation here. And I’ve probably said a lot in the last few weeks that was…”

“Ill-informed? Offensive? Downright dumb?”

“I was gonna say incorrect, but I guess I deserved that.”

Jacob motions to a chair.

They talk. Flynn learns. He’s decent at that, at least. Learning. For someone who spent his entire life in college, he should have learned quicker, but better late than never. He learns that Ezekiel had been a ward of not one but two different Librarians, that he had few memories of his time before the Library but was still haunted by the worst nightmares of cold and pain and hunger, that Wilde had been like a father to him for almost nine years. He learns that Cassandra has a tumor, one that slowly consumes her mind and leaves her with devastating migraines and hallucinations; that her parents had all but buried her already; that she had walked away from the hospital late one night with nothing but the clothes on her back and an envelope in her hands, only a letter left behind to tell her parents not to look for her.

He learns that Jacob won’t talk about his own past, no matter how he asks, only says that it’s better left in the past. Though Jacob won’t say it, Flynn learns that he’s wary around other adult men, that they don’t keep any glass bottles in the kitchen, that his relationship with Wilde was probably just as strained at the beginning as theirs is now. Jacob won’t say it. But Flynn is learning how to learn. And now the clues he’s seen in the last few weeks are starting to put together an ugly, scarred puzzle.

The puzzle, full of broken pieces and sharp edges, is more than Flynn thought he’d be privileged to see. It’s a part of Jacob Stone that he leaves hidden under his flannel shirts and brusque accent. And it’s what helps Flynn understand.

“You wanted to be the next Librarian,” he offers softly, hesitantly. Jacob may throw his words back in his face, may leave like he did last time. “Wilde was training you to take over for him.”

It’s a raw and painful wound, and Jacob flinches away. It’s a scar that traces over every interaction he has with Flynn, that keeps him in the room every time one of his siblings is with Flynn. Jacob had grown to trust Wilde— no, Wilde had earned his trust, had taken his past and his fear in stride and had become for him what no one else had managed to do.

Of course Jacob wanted to be the Librarian. Not just for the job. He was perfectly qualified, yes. He would be a brilliant Librarian. But Cassandra and Ezekiel were part of the job, one that Jacob didn’t trust anyone else to take. It was the Librarian’s job to look after the wards. And Cassandra could leave if she wanted, yes, but Ezekiel was a child still and had nowhere else to go.

They were Jacob’s family, not Flynn’s.

All he can offer is a promise, a promise that no one should have to make to a child because no child should need it. It should be understood, so deeply ingrained in every adult that to do the opposite would be unthinkable.

“I’m not trying to hurt you or your family. I’m not Wilde, and I’m not trying to replace him. Not as your… guardian or keeper or whatever. I might be the new Librarian, but that doesn’t mean I can be what he was for you. And I’m not trying. But Jacob, I’m not here to hurt you, or Cassie, or Ezekiel. And I know it’ll take time for you to trust me, I understand that. But I promise you, I won’t ever hurt you. And if you’ll let me, I’d like the honor of being allowed to protect you and your siblings.”

Jacob doesn’t answer. He stands and turns back to his metalwork. Flynn bows his head; it must be too much too quickly, and Jacob may need time to process his words.

“There’s an extra mask over on that workbench.”

Flynn looks where he’s pointing. Standing, he crosses to the bench, spotting the mask. Jacob motions him over. “You know anything about welding?”

“Not a thing.”

“Well. Good time to learn.”

Flynn takes the mask. He takes the lesson. He takes the second chance Jacob offers.

~~~

One week later, he meets Wilde for the first time.

And the last time.

Chapter Text

Ten years pass quickly.

Cassie blossoms into a brilliant, wonderful young woman, into the lady she’d been becoming before Wilde’s death had shattered her all over again. She breezes through complex mathematical equations in her sleep and reminds Flynn to stop and eat when he starts to overwork himself. When he takes her out for her first field mission, she stays close by his side, but it’s her quick thinking that gets the trap disarmed before the curse activates. He makes another promise, one that he doesn’t share out loud, a promise that he’ll find a way to save her. Whatever it takes.

Ezekiel still doesn’t like him, at least on the surface. It takes Flynn longer than he would like to see past the youngest ward’s standoffish personality, to see it for the defense mechanism it so obviously is. When his personal items go missing and show up in the space Ezekiel has claimed for himself in the main room, when the boy watches him with sharp eyes to see how Flynn will react, Flynn thanks his lucky star he sees it for the test it is before he responds.

And Flynn promises himself every day he won’t throw away the chance Jacob gave him. He takes him on missions and lets him share the burden of leadership; he takes the lessons Jacob offers and takes care of the other two without trying to share his place in their lives. They have late-night talks, and Jacob doesn’t watch his hands the way he used to; he sits next to him, posture relaxed and eyes turned away instead of watching Flynn’s every movement. When he sends him on a solo mission for the first time, they shake hands, and another wall between them breaks away.

He learns about the Library from them; the hidden rooms, the keys to every door, the existence of an Annex somewhere far away and its mysterious Caretaker (they share conspiratorial smiles and never ever mention his name; he is their secret, the one they aren’t ready to share). He learns how to fight from Excalibur. He learns languages and art and math far more complex than anything they taught in college. He learns the job, and he learns it well.

Then Baird arrives at the Library.

~~~

He laughs aloud when he sees her standing with Charlene, holding that blasted white envelope. If she weren’t a full-grown adult, he’d think she was another ward. The Librarian’s instinct in him is torn between yelling at her to go away and offering her a room and a cup of tea. He settles for the former. And she yells back, all fire and metal and spite. Following him through the Library, intending to do a job she didn’t even want just because he didn’t want her to do it either.

This time, it’s Flynn who makes the introductions, sitting the wards down and telling them the Library had sent another invitation. They take it better than they took his arrival; though when he tells them she’s supposedly a Guardian, their confusion radiates through the air in thick waves. They’d never had a Guardian. Nicole had been his for only a short time, and she rarely, if ever, came to the Library when Wilde was the title-holder. Probably at his behest. What was Baird supposed to be to them? The Librarian was responsible for the wards. They so rarely invited new people into their lives; now they were expected to let Baird keep them alive?

She settles in quicker than he did, and maybe it’s her going with him on missions and bringing him back alive that lets them accept her quicker than they did for him. He explains their situation in part, leaving the details for them to share with her when they’re ready, and she doesn’t press. She sets up training routines, self-defense lessons, and they learn from her just as he learns from them.

“What happened to the last Librarian?” she asks one day, leaned over his desk.

His gaze flickers down to a locked cabinet— enchanted with several different spells to keep Ezekiel’s clever fingers out—and back up. She doesn’t miss the look, she never misses anything, but she doesn’t comment on it. “He died,” Flynn answers.

“Yeah, I guessed that much. How?”

“Painfully.” He answers truthfully since the wards are nowhere to be seen. “Most Librarians do.”

“Well. You won’t if I can help it,” she offers. “I know you don’t like having me as a Guardian, but it’s time we start working together instead of whatever this is we’ve been doing. Avoiding. Dodging.”

“I’m not the one that needs protecting.” He nods to the doors leading to the main hall. “It’s them. The Library chose them for a reason. Not just because they needed help. Lots of people need help. But it chose them. So they need you to keep them alive till we know why.”

“The Library chose you, too. Getting yourself killed won’t help them. You said they were pretty torn up by Wilde’s death. They don’t need to attend your funeral.”

He doesn’t answer. He isn’t— has never been— to them what Wilde was.

And he will never hurt them the way Wilde would have.

~~~

The Serpent Brotherhood attacks the Library.

How they got in, he can’t be certain, but standing in the woods with his blood seeping between his fingers and Baird’s voice in his ear and the wards clinging to each other, it doesn’t matter.

The Library is gone. Untethered.

Their home is gone.

Charlene and Judson are gone.

It’s Jake who takes over, pulling Ezekiel and Cassie behind him as he picks a direction and starts walking. Baird follows him, Flynn’s arm slung over her shoulders. By the time her phone gets enough signal to let them know where they are, Jake’s led them to a road in the middle of nowhere, where an old man leans against a car. He takes in the sight of the five escapees, nods, and loads them all up into the car.

“Thanks, man,” Jacob murmurs from the passenger seat. Cassie, sitting on his lap due to the limited number of seats, reaches over and takes the old man by his free hand. “Thanks for coming.”

He hums and nods, squeezing Cassie’s hand.

The Caretaker takes them back to the Annex. Flynn leans against the table weakly. His injury slowed for now, he knows it’s not enough. He’ll die within the day. And the wards will grieve, and the Library will send more envelopes, and another will take his place just as always happens in the endless cycle. It should be Jake. He’s ready— been ready, really, and he’ll be able to keep watching his siblings without needing to worry about someone else coming in and putting glass bottles in the kitchen.

He slumps at a desk identical to his own. Distantly, he hears Jenkins explaining the purpose of the Annex, that any book from the Library can be found here as well. His eyes lock on the drawer, where in his own desk a book has been sitting for ten years. This desk doesn’t have the same magical enchantments. He opens the drawer and runs his fingers along the leather cover. If the wards have been to the Annex, it’s a small miracle they’ve never run across this. He’ll have to secure it— and quickly, before he can’t.

“What is it?” Baird hovers over his shoulder. He glances up. The kids have clustered over by the staircase, holding cups of tea while Jenkins checks them over for injuries. They don’t look his way.

“Baird,” he says softly. “I need you to promise me something.”

“What?”

He takes the book from the drawer and sets it on the desk. “This book. I’m gonna lock it up. Don’t ever let them look at it. They can’t read it. Don’t even tell them it exists.”

“Sounds serious.” She pulls a chair up beside him. “What is it?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“If it’s this important, it does matter.” The woman of metal and fire, so harsh and unyielding when she needs to be, places a calloused hand atop his. “Flynn. Don’t do anything you’ll regret. We’ll save you, I promise. But whatever this is, you need to deal with it.”

“It’s done,” he answers flatly, staring at the compass design in the floor or the card catalogue or anywhere except her eyes. “It was done ten years ago. But they can’t ever know.”

“What happened? Ten years ago… that was when the last Librarian died?”

He places his other hand over the cover of the book. “This is a chronicle of the Librarians. Or more specifically, their deaths.”

“So you don’t want them to know how he died?”

He laughs, a harsh and miserable sound. The room blurs as his eyes mist over. “Yeah. They don’t need to know that.”

“Flynn.” Her grip tightens. “What aren’t you telling them?”

“Something they wouldn’t understand. And something they wouldn’t forgive.”

“Forgive you… or him?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does! You don’t know they won’t.”

“No, I know.” He takes a deep, rattling breath and winces at it pulls at his side. “I told you he was family to them. And they trust me, sure, but I’m… not. Not their family. This… is something I can’t ask them to forgive. I can’t hurt them like that. I made a promise.”

“What happened that day?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t tell you. That way, if they ever ask, you don’t know. You don’t have to lie to them.”

She watches him, unshed tears clouding her eyes. Beneath the thin sheen is the same hard resolve he sees in Jake’s eyes, the same problem-solving determination he sees in Cassie’s, the same fierce passion that Ezekiel never seems to lose. The Library had chosen well; she was the perfect Guardian for them— not for him, he was too far gone— and even now, her drive to find a way to save him is enough proof that he’s leaving them in qualified hands. She won’t let go of them, won’t ever stop trying to find a way to keep them safe.

It's too soon; they aren’t ready for another person in their lives, they don’t know her well enough. He’d promised not to hurt them, and now he was leaving.

Maybe they would forgive him for that. Maybe they wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t get the chance to find out.

~~~

Against all odds, he lives. Saved by Cassie. Who should have saved herself.

She cries in his arms, buries her face in his shoulder. He presses a kiss to her head— just inches above the tumor she was supposed to heal instead of choosing him— and holds her close. Ten years melt away, ten years of distance and unspoken promises and loving from a distance, and that’s his girl in his arms. His girl, not Wilde’s, he didn’t deserve her. Neither of them did.

Ezekiel is next, sitting beside Flynn and leaning his head on his shoulder. One hand rests on Cassie’s back, rubbing small circles, and the other clings to Flynn’s sleeve. He’s lost too many Librarians already. Too many family members. Everyone from before was gone— his first Librarian mother, Charlene, Judson— and all he had left was them. And Flynn had been going to leave him, too. He was going to leave his boy.

Jake sits on his other side, their shoulders pressed together. He holds himself stiffly, not meeting Flynn’s eyes. His arms and hands shake, whether from nerves or anger Flynn isn’t sure. He would be angry too, in his position; it was Cassie who was supposed to live, Cassie who was supposed to use the sword and heal herself. Not him. Though Jake didn’t want to lose anyone else, Cassandra meant more to him that Flynn ever could, and he’d just taken away her one chance at survival.

It feels so wrong to congregate in the Annex that night instead of the Library’s research room. It looks the same, completely, but beyond the wide double doors is nothing. No home. No Judson, no Charlene. Jenkins sets up cots for them, piled high with quilts and pillows, and the wards fall into restless sleep, their beds shoved one against another so they can cling to each other. Flynn sits at his desk, pencil tapping listlessly against his lips as he thinks. The book is in the (now locked) drawer in his desk, the page where his name would one day be still thankfully blank.

Would Cassandra’s name fill the page?

~~~

Nothing stays a secret for long in the Library.

From Flynn, maybe. Jenkins, his privacy protected for ten years by his friends. Ezekiel’s secret movie theater room. The location of the Ushanti of Ammit, which had been placed out of reach of the youngest ward’s nimble fingers years ago. (Only Jake knew the location, and he wasn’t sharing.)

Still, Flynn had hoped to keep this secret a bit longer.

Ten years was a pretty long time, as far as secrets go, so maybe this was due. His past, their pasts, coming back to haunt them. Like an overdue book finally returned, blood-red ink staining its pages.

Perhaps he’d gotten careless. Things were better. The Library was back. Jacob, Cassandra, and Ezekiel were expert Librarians, handling their missions swiftly and cleverly in ways Flynn would never have thought to, and Eve was the best Guardian they could have hoped for. With such raw magic in the world, it’s little wonder the Library prepared and trained these three for so long: much as he was loathe to admit it, he needed them. Seemingly overnight, his caseload had increased far beyond what he could naturally do. And his team was there to do what he couldn’t.

So when he and Eve stumble into the Annex after a late-night fiasco with some mummified garden gnomes, he’s halfway across the room before he notices the wards clustered around his desk.

He stops in his tracks; Eve, who noticed and recovered before he did, grabs his jacket before he overbalances and falls. “Umm… Hey, kids,” he stammers out, wincing. They didn’t appreciate the nomenclature. “Everyone alright? Thought y’all would be asleep by now, like a sane… person…” He trails off as he notices the leather book sitting on the surface of the desk.

It sits open, resting on the last filled page. Ezekiel stares down at the words, hands curled into fists on the paper, shoulders shaking. Tears course down his tanned cheeks, falling from his face to land on the book in front of him. Jake stands beside him, jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. Cassandra has her arms wrapped around herself, muttering softly about “timeline and vectors and toroids.” She’s too clever for her own good; why had he thought that magical enchantments could keep her out of anywhere she wanted to be?

“What is this?” Ezekiel rasps.

Flynn can’t answer.

He glares up at him, dark eyes narrowed. “What is this?” he echoes. “Is this true?”

Eve rests a hand on Flynn’s shoulder. “I think we need to take a breather,” she warns.

He steps away from the desk and closer to Flynn. “Is it true?” he demands. Flynn opens his mouth to spew some self-righteous defense, but nothing comes out. There’s nothing to say. What defense could he give against Ezekiel’s accusations, when the book before him tells the entire sordid tale?

“Jones,” Eve warns.

Ezekiel’s voice cracks as he chokes out, “Did you kill him?”

What else is there to say?

“Yes.”

The fight leaves Ezekiel’s body, his shoulders slumping forward. Over the racing of his own heartbeat, Flynn listens to the shaky breaths racking the boy’s body. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, each more shaky than the last till he feared he would pass out.

Eve, still by his side, freezes. “Flynn?”

“Did you… plan this?” Cassandra whispers. “You wanted to be the Librarian, so you…”

“No! Never. Cassie, believe me, I had no idea— I thought he was dead, I promise.” Flynn shakes his head.

“The dates…” she muttered, wincing. “Few weeks after you got here. He… faked his death?”

“Yes.”

“Then you found him… and killed him for real.”

He’d imagined telling them, all these years. How he would say it, how they would react. Their confusion, their hurt, their anger. But he’d always imagined he’d be the one to confess to them. He’d sit them down, make tea, and show them the book. He would tell them what happened that day, what Wilde had said. And they would hurt, yes, but in time they would understand. And he would be patient with them, give them their space until they did.

This was so much worse.

“Why?” Cassie sobs. “Why did you?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jacob answers lowly. “He wanted to be the Librarian. If Wilde was alive, then he wasn’t.”

“No!” Flynn holds up his hands. “Listen, it’s not what you’re thinking. I can explain—”

“You always have an answer, don’t you? And we always listen.”

“Eve?” Ezekiel turns wide, wounded eyes to his Guardian. “Did you know?”

Eve’s voice catches in her throat as she answers. “No.”

Flynn takes a step toward Ezekiel but stops when he flinches away. Jacob leans forward, as if preparing to get between them— like he thinks Flynn is a threat. Like he would hurt his family. Cassandra has shrunk again, looking more like the girl she’d been when he’d first gotten to the Library, staring at him with wide eyes and raised brows like she wants to believe it’s all a misunderstanding. Like he could say something in the moment to absolve himself, explain it away and rebuild her trust in him.

“I didn’t have a choice,” he manages to choke out. “I didn’t— please, let me just explain.”

“Explain what?” Ezekiel lifts his head, body tense again. “What could you possibly say to make this better? He was alive, and you killed him! He was everything to us! He was all we had! And you killed him and left us stuck with you!”

“Ezekiel, please—”

  A fist lashes out, catching Flynn across the bridge of his nose. Pain blossoms across his face, sharp and stinging before it settles into a dull throb. He blinks up at the ceiling— yes, the ceiling, he was flat on his back. Ezekiel stands above him, chest heaving, blood dripping from his knuckles to fall in thick drops onto the mural on the floor. Eve steps forward, but Ezekiel turns on his heel and storms from the room, spinning the globe at random and disappearing through the door.

A muffled cry breaks from Cassandra’s throat as she presses her hand to her mouth.

Jacob takes her by the arm, nudging her over to the still-glowing door. He wraps his arm around her as they walk. Casting one last scornful glare over his shoulder, he says flatly:

“You made a promise, Carsen.”

The door shuts behind them. The glow fades.

And Flynn’s heart breaks.

Chapter Text

He’s screaming.

He’s screaming, and it isn’t stopping, and his throat hurts. His chest heaves as he gasps for air, hands clutching at his throat. He’s screaming, and he thinks he might never stop because if he stops, he may just stop breathing. If he stops, then he has to open his eyes and face the truth.

Strong hands grab him and pull him against a sturdy chest. A hand runs through his hair, pressing his head against someone’s shoulder. Broken sobs tear from his throat in between the screams. Clutching Jake’s shirt, he curls closer and buries his face against the flannel, gripping the fabric like it would disappear if he let go even the slightest bit. The familiar scent of woodsmoke and leather— and he would never live that down, Ezekiel would never stop reminding him he smelled like a dark and brooding morally-gray love interest in a teenager’s first story— is grounding, comforting, something that usually drifts in between the musty layers of books and sealing wax. It’s safe and warm and home. It’s something so antithetical to the man who parades around the Library, hiding lies in sealed books.

He distantly hears Jake whispering to him as his screams finally taper off, distantly feels a smaller hand on his shoulder— Cassie. Jake pulls her into the hug too, and they’re all crumpled up together on the ground of… wherever it is Ezekiel’s dragged them to in his haste to get away from the stifling confines of what had once been his home. He’d caught a glimpse of thick grass and still water reflecting the moonlight before he’d fallen apart, shattered as surely as his trust in Flynn was shattered. It must be somewhat safe here, though, if Jake was allowing his meltdown; as hurt as he had to be because of this, Jake would always see to their safety first. He could never allow himself time to grieve when other things required his attention. And Ezekiel had taken that from him, taken away his chance to process his hurt by rushing off to the middle of who-knows-where.

They stay huddled up a while longer, and even Jake lets himself cry, though far quieter and more composed than the other two. He holds them in his arms as his tears drip noiselessly into their hair.

Too soon, though, he pulls them to their feet with a hushed murmur of needing to move somewhere more secure. Ezekiel follows after him numbly. All that exists in front of him is a pattern of red plaid. If he looks any further than that, if he lets go of the imaginary line tying him to his older brother, he’ll drift away, untethered. Unanchored. Like the Library did, its lines severed, its connection point broken. Adrift nowhere, damaged and wounded. He had only come this undone twice before. Once, when the Librarian he considered a mother had died. Once, when the Librarian who had been a father to him had died. Was murdered.

And now this. This pain, this betrayal. From Flynn, who had worked to convince them to lower their shields, to convince them that he wasn’t there to hurt them. Who had been there for them for almost twelve years now. And all this time, he’d known. He’d lied.

It was as if he’d brought Wilde back from the dead, just to kill him again in front of them.

~~~

Ezekiel wakes up in the back of a car— a rental, he thinks, distantly remembering the lot and the rustbucket and Jake hustling them into the vehicle in the early hour before dawn. They’d been driving ever since, stopping once or twice for snacks.

He sits up and leans over the center console. “Where are we going?” he asks, wincing at the hoarseness of his own voice.

“Oklahoma,” Jake answers from behind the wheel.

“Oklahoma? As in ‘never going back there ever because of your bum dad’ Oklahoma?”

He shrugs. “I stayed in touch with a few people. The pastor said we can stay in the guest house for a bit.”

“Then what?” Cassie asks softly. “What do we do now? I mean, can we really go back to the Library? It’s our home. But he’s there, and…"

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It was our home before it was his.”

“Yeah, but he’s the Librarian,” Ezekiel drawls out sarcastically.

Cassie sniffs and rubs her wrist across her eye. “I just don’t get it. I don’t get why he… I mean, why did he kill him?”

“Does it matter?” Ezekiel argues. “He did. It happened.”

“Yeah, well, I want to know why. If he didn’t… if he didn’t kill him till a few weeks after his fake death, then it was when he went to get the Spear of Destiny, right? But why did Wilde fake his death in the first place? Why didn’t he tell us he was still alive?”

“Maybe he knew it wasn’t safe for us.”

She turns to glance over her shoulder. “You don’t think maybe there was a reason that Flynn—”

“No, I don’t!” Ezekiel yells. Cassie flinches, and a dreadful wave of guilt washes over him. He holds his breath and rides out the wave just as he does each wave of grief and each wave of anger, turning his lock picks in his hand because he needs something to ground him, something to move forward to, some target in the distance to keep him moving so he doesn’t untether and drift away. “Sorry, Cassie. But you can’t defend him. He killed Wilde.”

“I just want to know why.”

“I don’t. Wilde was the closest thing any of us ever had to a dad. And Flynn took that from us.” He curls up in the seat, drawing his knees to his chest. “I hate him.”

“What about you, Jake?” Cassie asks.

His fingers curl tighter around the wheel, knuckles paling. “All I want right now is to get us somewhere… else. Anywhere else. We need to sleep, and we need food. Everything else can wait.”

Ezekiel scoffs and lays back down on the backseat. He turns the lock picks over and over, the thin metal slipping between his thin fingers, clinging to the far-too-thin line binding him to this reality. He has several sets of picks. But this had been his lucky set for years. He could still feel a pair of hands resting over his, gently moving the picks so he could feel the tumblers clicking.

The pressure builds in his chest again, threatening to spill from his mouth in a long breathless scream.

~~~

Jake sits on the couch, head in his hands.

Cassie and Ezekiel are still asleep in the other room. They’d arrived shortly after midnight, using the key in the hanging plant to let themselves inside the house. Bottles of water and a basket of snacks sat on the kitchen table. Jake would wake them soon; they’d need to talk everything over. But for now, they needed to rest.

When someone knocks on the door, he sighs deeply and pushes himself to his feet with a grunt. He’s drained, physically and emotionally, and the long car ride yesterday had done no favors for his bones. Sliding the lock back, he opens the door and nods a wordless good morning to Hezekiah.

The preacher holds out a casserole dish. “Mornin’.”

“Hey, man.” Jake opens the door wider. Hezekiah comes inside and sets the casserole on the table. “Thanks for letting us crash. ‘Preciate it.”

Hezekiah shakes his hand. “Anytime. You been good? Ain’t seen you in years.”

“Yeah. Been good.” Jake sits back on the couch. With all the heavy pressure that came when he thought of his past, Hezekiah was never a part of that pressure. He’d been the one to encourage Jake to go to the Library when the letter came.

Hezekiah sits on the coffee table. “Talk to me, brother. What’s going on?”

Jake shrugs. “Remember that coworker I told you about? Flynn.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, he, uh… We’re having some trouble with him. He’s been lying to us, man. For years. It’s— we don’t know what to think anymore. The other two are taking it pretty hard.” He gestures behind him to the bedroom. “They really needed him. I mean, ‘Zekiel was just a kid when they met.”

“And what about you?” Hezekiah asks softly, leaning forward.

With a shake of his head, Jake leans back into the couch. “I’m fine. Really.”

“Lying to a preacher? Really?”

“Worth a shot.” He gives a humorless laugh. “I don’t— I was an adult by the time he got hired, so it’s not as hard for me. I’m just… angry. He coulda hurt Cassie and Ezekiel. I trusted him. I let my guard down, and this is what happened.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Yes, really, he did, but how could he? Hezekiah could never know about the world he’d supported Jake in finding. He could never know about the magic, the wonder, the mystery, the constantly saving the world. How did one break the news that a coworker had admitted to murdering the man who had taught Jake how to trust again? This pain could only be shared by the shoulders still tucked under blankets in the next room, and Jake would never ask them to bear his share of their misery. He would take every ounce of that weight off of them if he could, bear every ounce of the pain so they wouldn’t have to.

“Not really,” he answers instead. “It’s kinda… personal, I guess.”

Hezekiah nods and stands. “I understand. Listen, y’all are welcome to stay as long as you need. There’s soap and spare toothbrushes in the bathroom. If there’s anything else I can do, just call me, alright?”

“Thanks, man.” Jake nearly chokes on the words, his throat stinging. “Means a lot to us. Sorry you didn’t get to meet the others.”

“Another time. It was good to see you again.” He starts for the door, then pauses with his hand resting on the knob. “Try to stay out of trouble, alright? Things are heating up a little bit, ‘specially around that worksite. Don’t want you getting tangled up in it.”

“What worksite?”

“Few miles west of here. Weird things happening around there. Cars blowing up, riots, all sorts of stuff going on. After that sinkhole opened, it was like all Hades broke loose.” He gives a stern glare so reminiscent of Jenkins that Jake wants to laugh. “I’m telling you this so you don’t get involved, got it? Your old man’s company is in charge over there. This is not me giving you permission to go meddle.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

Hezekiah nods and leaves.

Jake leans back into the couch and rubs his hands over his face. Of all the poor timing. Of course this had to happen right as they came to Oklahoma for some peace and quiet. Why had he thought they would find it here, when he couldn’t find it in the seventeen years before he left?

The bedroom door swings open with a slight creak. “Are we gonna check it out?” Cassie asks softly.

“Why?” Ezekiel grumbles behind her.

“Could be something we could do,” Jake offers. “How long you been up?”

“A few minutes,” she answers. “Sorry, we weren’t feeling very… social.”

“I don’t blame you.” He gestures over to the table. “Get some breakfast.” They emerge from their hiding place to get food and congregate in the living room. After putting the remainder of the casserole in the fridge, he continues, “Look, we may not be on our game right now, but we still got a job to do. Suspicious activity around a sinkhole? I say we check it out. If it’s not something magical, then we drop it and let the local police handle it.”

“But your dad—”

“We’ll be in and out. Won’t even see the old man.”

“Isn’t this a job for the Librarian?” Ezekiel drawls, sarcasm dripping off the syllables. “I say we let him handle this.”

Jake stands and pulls his flannel on over his t-shirt. “I won’t make y’all come. You can stay here, get some more rest. But I know if Isaac Stone is involved in this, then it’s something bad. I don’t want that man getting his hands on anything magical. I mean, can you imagine if he had the Apple of Discord or something worse?”

They both shudder.

“I’m coming,” Cassandra decides. “Need to get out of my head right now. A distraction would be nice.” She steps closer to Jake, leaning against his left shoulder.

“Never stole from a construction site before,” Ezekiel adds. He nudges his shoulder against Jake’s right arm. “Could be an… interesting new venture.”

Jake’s breath catches in his throat. The weight pressing down on him lightens.

If they dared to ask, he would blame the mist in his eyes on the spices from the casserole.

~~~

Of course, one can only snoop around a construction site for so long and ask so many questions before people start getting too curious. Their story about “Dr. Oliver Thompson” doesn’t fly for as long as they would have liked, and someone calls the foreman. Isaac Stone drives into the site, alarmingly drunk and quintessentially belligerent, and starts flinging profanities. When he catches sight of them, he freezes, face twisting in a haunted half-scowl. The distance between them is somehow too close and too far at the same time, split by a thick band of tension.

Cassandra takes a half-step in front of Jake, sizing up Isaac in less than a second— quite literally, as lines measure the ground between them and his height and estimated weight and the circumference of his balled fists. Calculations cross her line of vision, offering suggestions on how quickly he could close the distance, how much force he could put behind a swing of his arm, the odds of this meeting ending peacefully (dismally low). On Jake’s other side, Ezekiel steps forward too, measuring Stone on his own scales. And Jake— the noble, self-sacrificing idiot— puts a hand on each of their shoulders and pulls them back behind him. He would never let them stand in front of him and take a hit when he could do so for them.

Stone crosses the distance and stands before them. “Jake?” he half-whispers, as if the specter before him could be anyone else.

Jake nods once. “Hey, Pops. Long time.”

The old man shakes his head. “I ain’t drunk enough for this,” he grumbles. “Where the devil have you been, boy? Thought you was dead or somethin’.”

“Some welcome home,” Cassandra mutters under her breath.

Stone glances at her, then Ezekiel. She took a small bit of satisfaction in imagining the smoke rising from his ears as he tries to think through his haze, tries to calculate just how old Ezekiel is compared to Jake. “You didn’t, uh… procreate, did you?”

Jake blushes scarlet. “Do I look like— he’s my brother. Ezekiel. And my sister, Cassandra. Not that it’s any of your business what sort of family I choose to have.”

Stone huffed. “Whatever. What the devil are you doing here, anyway?”

They manage to give an excuse about archaeology and art that doesn’t sound half-fake, and Stone agrees to give them access to the hole, if only to cool down the protests still going strong just outside the gates. So Jake, Stone, Ezekiel, and the Choctaw representative Muntzi go in, and Cassandra waits and monitors at Jake’s request. (He tried to ground Ezekiel, too, but the kleptomaniac had promptly started eyeing some of the unsupervised heavy machinery.) Unfortunately for Cassandra, that gives her permission to do the one thing she wanted to avoid: to get lost in her own head.

To keep her focus, she mentally recites Pi while she watches the screen. So far, nothing bad— Stone is keeping his distance, and Jake is keeping a firm hand on Ezekiel’s shoulder (whether to keep Stone from hurting him or him from hurting Stone, it’s not clear). If she can’t be down there, at least one of them is to keep Jake safe. He would claim he didn’t need their protection; if anything, he thought he was protecting them from Stone. But as long as it had taken Ezekiel to grow on them, and them on him, he was loyal to a fault and wouldn’t hesitate to make Stone’s life a living nightmare if he hurt Jake. He might not attack him the way he had with… He may not hurt him physically, but he’d drain the man’s bank account or put a virus in his company computer before the bruise even darkened on Jake’s skin.

And with the way Ezekiel is staring daggers at Stone and the way Jake’s grip tightens on his shoulder from time to time, maybe he would attack him.

She loses count somewhere around the 270^th digit as something on the screen catches her eye. Mumbling measurements to herself, she stares at the walls. The numbers are all wrong. She runs the calculations in her head twice, then thrice just to be sure.

Before she can find out what it was, a familiar flash of blonde hair shimmering with sunlight strikes the corner of her vision.

~~~

Forget Stone. Flynn showing up here was the worst possible scenario.

They call a temporary truce long enough to get Jenkins on the phone. Jake stands between Flynn and Ezekiel, with Cassandra hovering nearby. The Librarian and Guardian keep their distance, putting the phone on speaker and setting it on the table between them while Jenkins explains shapeshifters to them. Three sets of pointed glares land on Flynn when Jenkins mentions their food of choice: lies.

“Hokolonote,” Jake rasps. “I missed it. It was right in front of me. Hokolonote— he’s a Native American trickster god who feeds on lies, telling and hearing them.” He quickly explains what his section of the investigation had turned up: Stone’s lies about the permits and undoubtedly dozens more in the last few days.

“So how do we defeat him?” Ezekiel asks.

“We get him back to the hole. It’s where he was trapped the first time; it’s where we can trap him again.”

“I can work with that,” Flynn says. “I’ll lead him back down into the hole. Eve, you be ready to trap him.”

Jake scoffs. “Do you have any idea what’s down there or how he was trapped?”

He shuffles his feet. “No, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out when I get down there.”

“Yeah, just like always, huh? Rushing in without a plan. You have no idea what you’re doing, but you just wanna lead Hokolonote in and hope everything works out?”

In the past, Flynn might have made a comment about how he usually did that and things usually work out, but he bites his tongue. “I… don’t know what to do, not really, so if you think you can figure something out before we trap him, then I’ll defer to your judgment on that. First things first, then, we need to get back down into that hole. Can you figure out how to trap him?”

“I can figure something out.”

The five descend back into the hole. Jake watches Cassandra as she works, watching for any indications that she’s nearing a collapse, but her rapid-fire calculations bring her the answer before that happens. She points to a wall that’s standing too far forward, a wall adorned with a coiled snake.

Jake presses the center coil.

The wall crumbles and disappears in a flash of gold.

A short hallway lies on the other side, leading to a wooden door. Three bolts slide open with a creak and a thud. Then the door swings slowly on its hinges toward them.

Inside the door is a small room. Ezekiel’s shoulders hunch, and Cassandra shudders. Jake stares at the painted symbols on the wall. This was where Hokolonote was trapped. This was his cage.

For half a second, Jake allows himself to entertain a small sliver of pity for the creature. Then he shoves it aside.

The creature— wearing Flynn’s face— is standing in the doorway.

~~~

It should have been an easy plan. But no plan survives first contact, and the second Jake and Eve follow the shapeshifter outside the door, it slams shut behind them and the locks click shut. Leaving Ezekiel and Cassandra trapped. With Flynn.

Echoing thuds resound against the wooden door as Jake’s fists strike the surface again and again. He yanks at the handle, at the locks, but nothing moves. Ezekiel shoves down the rising panic as he tries to open it from the inside. But this cage was designed to hold a shapeshifter; what chance did they have against it?

Cassandra gives a bright grin, but it wavers at the corners. “It’s okay,” she calls out to Jake and Eve. “Go get the shapeshifter. We’ll find out how to get the door open.”

“I ain’t leavin’ you in there with him!” Jake yells back.

“We’ll be okay. But you gotta get Hokolonote before he destroys the hole. Don’t worry about us.”

They can hear several shuddering breaths on the other side of the door before he answers, “I’m always gonna worry about you. I’m coming right back, you hear?” The words were a promise and a threat.

The noises on the other side of the wall fade away.

They’re left alone. With Flynn.

Ezekiel can tell by the dimming light in Cassie’s eyes that her optimism is fading fast. Despite her brave words, she holds herself away from Flynn, refusing to look his direction. Examining the door again, he can’t help but grimace; no locks, no handle, absolutely nothing he could use to get the cage open. The door is wedged too tightly against the stone to get anything through to the other side. Clapping his hands together, he rolls his head, wincing at the cracking in his joints. “Well, if a door has a lock, it has a key,” he suggests. “We just have to find out what the key is.”

“Power, focus, and effect,” Flynn offers. “A cage made to trap a trickster. The power is the lies. The focus is Hokolonote. And the effect—”

“Chaos,” Cassandra finishes. She taps her fingers together, not raising her gaze from the stone floor. “Magical theory suggests that magic is a dual current. That means whatever is keeping us here can also be reversed.”

Ezekiel puts the pieces together and scowls. “No. Don’t say it.”

“It could work—”

“You are not about to say ‘the truth will make you free’.”

Flynn shrugs. “It makes sense, when you think about it. How do you trap a liar? In a room that only opens when you tell the truth. He keeps himself imprisoned by his own nature.”

“So we’re trapped in a room that only opens if you tell the truth, and we’re stuck with the biggest liar in the world. Great.” He would be a liar himself if he claimed the hurt look on Flynn’s face wasn’t at least the slightest bit vindicating.

“Look,” Flynn says, a small crack in his voice. “I know you don’t want to be around me right now, and I respect that. Once we deal with the shapeshifter, we can sit down and talk about what comes next. I won’t try to force you three to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. But I need you to understand, I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I just wanted to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, well, maybe the person we needed protecting from was you. You killed one Librarian. What’s three more?”

Maybe it’s just the torchlight that makes Flynn’s eyes shimmer with the illusion of unshed tears. “You can’t think I’d do that. Ezekiel, have I ever hurt you?”

“You don’t hafta put your hands on someone to hurt them.”

He winces. “You’re right. But I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I didn’t see any other choice. Wilde—”

“You can’t justify that! You killed him.” Ezekiel sees red that had nothing to do with the flickering fire on the wall. “He was everything to us, and you took him away!”

“I’m not trying to justify it! I didn’t want him to die!”

“But he did,” Cassandra speaks up, turning her glare on Flynn for the first time. “You can’t change that.”

“No.” Flynn’s voice breaks fully this time. “I can’t. But believe me, if there was any way I could, I would. If I— If he had given me any other choice. But he didn’t. I didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she argues. “I could have chosen to— I could have healed myself. But I didn’t. Wilde could’ve refused to let us come to the Library, but he didn’t.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Flynn snaps, and Cassandra flinches. Ezekiel takes a step closer to her, putting himself between them. “You weren’t there. You don’t understand.”

“What don’t we understand?” Ezekiel snaps back, fingernails digging crescents into his palms. “What could he have possibly done that made killing him the best option? Because he was in the way? Because you wanted to be the Librarian?”

“Because he was going to kill you!” Flynn yells. Something in his eyes shatters, a wall he’d left up to keep distance between him and them, to hide the sharp past within himself so it wouldn’t damage anyone else. “Okay? Wilde was going to kill you. All three of you. He betrayed the Library. He was part of the Serpent Brotherhood. He wanted the power of the Library for himself, and you were in the way.”

The line tethering him to reality snaps.

He’s drifting, aimless, breathless, cognizant of only the solid death-knell of the door’s first lock clicking open.

His knees hit the dirt. He doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel the cool damp of the cage. Feels nothing besides Cassandra’s small hand on his back and the stabbing pain in his chest where his heart used to be.

Flynn keeps talking. Or maybe Cassie asked him to continue. He keeps trying to explain past the tears clogging his own throat, tries to tell them what happened when he went looking for the Spear of Destiny. “He said… He said he would’ve taken you three with him, would’ve used your talents for the Serpent Brotherhood. But he knew you’d never betray the Library. So he was going to use the Spear and kill you.”

Ezekiel thinks of the beautifully-crafted Roman spear sitting on crimson cushions in the Library. He must have walked past it a thousand times. A beautiful and deadly weapon, used to pierce the side of the Savior after His death, and yet so easy to overlook amidst the flashier and more useful items that called the Library their home. Items lost to time and history, finding sanctuary somewhere they would never be used or abused again.

Cassie is crying by his side, tears falling noiselessly to the dirt. Her hand on his back shakes. He reaches up his own to take hers, curling his fingers around hers.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Flynn whispers. He’s crying, too. “I had to protect you. And— and I never said anything because I didn’t want to taint your memories of him. I wanted you to remember him as the Librarian.”

The Librarian. Ezekiel’s Librarian. Jake and Cassie’s Librarian. Their dad.

Unbidden, a memory claws its way to the front of his mind. Ezekiel, years younger and smaller, sits behind a desk too big for him, dressed in a black suit too big for him, while a stranger walks around the Library’s main room, eyes filled with wonder and magic. The new Librarian, here to take the place of the last. To take the place of Ezekiel’s mom. When he sees the angry and bitter child watching him, those eyes turn from wonder-filled to pitying, aching, sharing Ezekiel’s pain through one glance.

How long had he pushed Wilde away, refusing to allow him into his life, before Wilde had convinced him to lower those walls?

Ezekiel slowly lifts his head. Flynn kneels in front of him at a distance, his own eyes reflecting their pain the way Wilde’s had.

He speaks before he can think better of the words. “Wilde yelled at me once.”

Flynn’s eyes widen. Beside him, Cassie stiffens. He’d never told her this, either.

“Just the once,” he continues, bringing up a hand to brush his wrist across his eyes. “I’d done— something, I can’t even remember what. Something stupid, probably. And Wilde yelled at me.” His voice shakes, but he pushes forward. “Then Jake was standing in front of me. He didn’t say anything. Just stood there with his head down. Like he thought Wilde was gonna hit him. Hit me.” He can see the hesitant question written in Flynn’s expression, the silent plea to know that he hadn’t been too late, that he had saved them from Wilde before the man hurt them. “And Wilde, he didn’t— he just hugged us both. He promised he’d never hurt us. He promised—” His voice breaks, and he can’t look either of them in the eye anymore. “He promised. He promised. Why— Why did he—" He can’t finish, words sticking in his throat as a rising scream presses to get out. The backs of his hands are damp. Another tear falls onto his left. When had he started crying?

The door’s second lock clicks open.

A warm hand settles on Ezekiel’s shoulder. Too large to be Cassie’s. He leans into the touch.

“I didn’t tell you about Wilde,” Flynn chokes out. “Not because I was trying to hurt you. The opposite, actually. I thought— I thought I was doing the right thing. Wilde wanted the power of the Librarian but not the responsibility. He got so lost in thinking about what he could still get that he lost sight of what he had. Who he had. He had the three most amazing people in the world. He had your trust, your love, and he threw it away for more power. And maybe— maybe there was a part of me that wanted to be selfish. I wanted to be better for you than he was. I didn’t want to hurt you the way he would have. I love you three. I tried not to. I tried to keep my distance because I thought that’s what you wanted. I wasn’t trying to replace Wilde in your lives. But I do love you. He didn’t… he didn’t deserve you. And I wanted to. I wanted to deserve you.”

The third lock clicks open.

He doesn’t see the door swing open, doesn’t see Jake and Eve drag Hokolonote in a few minutes later. He hears him, though, the quiet hiss between his teeth as he takes in the sight of the two of them in Flynn’s arms as they cry, as all of the built-up hurt and agony of the last few days comes crashing down all at once, screaming for release.

Flynn lets go of them quickly, but Ezekiel still doesn’t look up. He can’t bear to see the disappointment, the betrayal, that Jake must feel.

A familiar arm wraps around his shoulders. “Get the feeling I missed a lot,” his soothing rumble echoes through Ezekiel’s frame. “Anyone want to share some context?”

Ezekiel leans into the hold. A deep, bone-aching weariness has latched onto him, dragging his eyelids down. “Can we… can we go home? I want to go home.”

“Yeah.” Jake leans his forehead against Ezekiel’s hair, pulling Cassie into his other arm so her head rests against his chest. “Yeah, we can go home.”

It’s not enough, not yet. Jake still needs to know, the wounds need to be treated and not just covered. But it’s a start. He’s tethered again, lines attaching him to his brother and sister and to his Guardian— and even a tentative line stretching between him and the Librarian. Later, when they’re home, they can confront the truth about Wilde together, as a family. They can mourn his death— the death of the man they had known, who died long before his heart stopped beating— together.

They will face the truth together. And maybe— just maybe— it can make them free.