Work Text:
January
It doesn’t matter how much they try, they can’t go back to how things were, how they should be.
They stay in orbit, circling their children, circling Jace, circling Arra. Circling graves, couches, the sides of houses that have seen New Year’s declarations. Circling newborns in hospital rooms that are now so close to graduating that it feels reckless, feels terrifying to comprehend them fully on their own two feet as adults. They watch his son and her daughter sit in love on the same couch that had born witness to the unforgivable. He drives her children to school when the snow falls thick on the roads, white-knuckles the wheel the whole way there as if the ache that follows will make her tainted, undying trust any less heavy on his soul.
She goes back to the diner.
He goes back to Aly. Fights with Aly. Makes up with Aly. Gets kicked out by Aly.
Baela doesn’t look at him except for when she has to. Dae looks at him like maybe he did something. Rickon looks at him like he can see the depths of Cregan’s guilty soul, and maybe that’s the worst part of the whole miserable affair.
. . .
“…at this time sixty-eight confirmed cases have been confirmed outside of China, affecting persons in fifteen countries…”
. . .
Sometimes they stand in the kitchen and they just don’t speak.
Sometimes they really do try, but it's like trying to play the guitar with missing fingers. The strings sound out of tune, the knobs turned so tight that they’ve rusted in place. They can’t unwind, they can only break.
She pulls away.
He lets her.
. . .
February
They don’t buy a cake.
There’s candles in the drawer, a full one through ten that no one has the heart to arrange into 39 for the first time. Jocelyn steals them to keep in her purse, the wick crumbling down in the nooks and crannies of pink polyester, smearing charcoal, and there they remain.
It pops up in the one year ago memory on his phone, Jace half-crushed by all his girls’ embrace, wrapped in arms with Alyssa on his back in front of the fountain that bubbles outside of his favorite restaurant. A snapshot of his head in his hands, live photo showing the shake of his shoulders with laughter, as the waiter leads the table in a verse of Happy Birthday. The moment after, turning to kiss Baela as smoke floats up from the cake, his arm around her shoulders.
Part of Cregan wishes he didn’t know how that moment felt.
The other part of him, the selfish part, the secret part, wishes that it’d happen again.
. . .
“…most cases of COVID-19 in the United States have been associated with travel from China, but some person-to-person spread among close contacts of travelers has been seen. It’s important to note that this virus is not spreading within American communities at this time…”
. . .
He’s meant to take the left turn driving home one afternoon, instead he takes the right. Lets it carry him down roads he hasn’t driven in a long time now, gravel beneath his tires.
There’s tree limbs down along the road, pine boughs thick with ice from the last storm, a crust of it on the dead grass. Slush on the roads, dyed dark with travel. Mud and muck and gravel speckled with litter.
The dock is caked in half-melted snow. The sight draws him from the dying warmth of the truck cabin, pulls his gloves onto work-weary hands, finds the shovel in the bed. Finds his rhythm in the clearing, the sweep of the boards, the slushy spray into the water. The dark, damp boards beneath gleaming in the weak sunset. He wishes he had salt in the truck too, to pour over the wood. Safety hazard, Jace says in his mind, tutting, we’ve got to replace some of these boards eventually before we get rot-
He sweeps another board clean before he sits down, the damp cold leaching through his jeans as he shoves his hands into his pockets. The sunset is hazy, full of clouds and pale blue. Cregan can’t help but wonder if it's him or it. Much of life had lost its brilliance for him, its vibrancy, he wasn’t quite sure what was true anymore.
There’s a lot he could say. Thank yous, apologies, fond memories, bad memories. Confession. Contemplation. It all swirls together, ties itself into a knot on his tongue.
There’s a lot he could ask. Could open with statements like, these girls of yours are causing me trouble, any advice? But then he’d end up back at confession because Jace could read him like a book even when he didn’t want him to.
So maybe confession is where he should be. Maybe it's where all roads have been leading all this time, to undeniable truths.
But when he goes to speak, the gravel crunches behind him, beneath a light foot.
There’s not many people who would have walked here, who sought that kind of solitude. He can count them on one hand.
He’s not very talkative today, he almost says, but doesn’t. If he was Jace, he wouldn’t want to comfort Cregan either. Baela, though, is a different story.
Instead, Cregan rises, puts his hands in the pockets of his coat to warm them, the joints stiff with cold, and finally turns to face her.
(When was the last time they were this alone?)
(They both know when)
The grey, muted sunlight makes her hair glow in a way that he can’t let himself dwell on. He looks at the dock instead, at the clumps of ice crystals trapped in the wood grain.
“I came here to talk to him,” He finally says, shifting his weight, “Great minds think alike?”
The pause is long enough to ache.
“Yeah, I suppose they do,” Baela says.
We were supposed to be fine, he almost says.
He doesn’t.
It was always a lie, even if they meant it.
“What can I do?” He asks, instead, and lifts his head to properly look at her.
“Nothing,”
It lands like a punch. Takes the air from his lungs. She steps forward, closer, closer, almost too close.
“It’s not you,” She whispers, tears in her eyes, and he makes himself look away again, “I miss him. All the time. I’m not trying to avoid you, Cregan, but it just hurts less when I do.”
It hurts me more, it sits behind his teeth like bile, selfish and sick and sinful, if you didn’t want to hurt, you shouldn’t have kissed-
He cuts himself off before he can walk any further down that road, but still it clings. Still it claws its way up his throat.
To keep from saying it, he walks past her, walks all the way to his truck.
She calls for him.
He doesn’t turn around.
. . .
“…today Governor Cuomo announced the state’s first reported case of COVID-19, a woman in her late thirties, who contracted the virus while traveling in Iran and is now self-isolating at home in New York City…”
. . .
March
He finds out by text that she’s leaving town.
Rhaena’s been away, he has some faint memory of Jocelyn mentioning it, helping Rhaenys after a surgery but it only really clicks into place with the can the girls stay with you? Rhaenyra can take them Thursday night onwards. And the dates of when she’ll be back.
Of course he says yes.
Of course his finger hovers over the space bar, as if there’s anything he can say that won’t push her away further.
. . .
“…as for the Grand Princess cruise ship, twenty-one people passengers have tested positive for the coronavirus. Nineteen staff and two passengers…”
. . .
“What’s going on with you and Mom?”
Daenaera looks so much like Jace out of the corner of his eye that it physically hurts. Arms crossed like a shield across her chest, jaw set, angry eyes. He’d know those eyes anywhere.
“Nothing’s going on.”
“I haven’t seen you speak properly in months.” Her voice shakes, “Don’t lie to me. Please. I'm not a child.”
Cregan sighs. Opens his arms to her and she crashes into him without hesitation.
“Sometimes,” He whispers, “When you’re as old as your mama and I, you just need time to grieve alone.”
“We aren’t meant to, Dad always said that. You know that. No one grieves alone in this family.”
“I know. But it’s different for us.”
“How?”
She sobs at the end of the word and it breaks his heart to hear.
“Honey,” He pleads and she crumples, weeps into the shoulder of his shirt.
“I hate this,” Daenaera says, again and again, “He’d hate this.”
Yes. Yes he would, honey. He’d have killed me for it already.
. . .
“…Governor Charlie Baker has declared a state of emergency in the state of Massachusetts…”
. . .
The day goes badly to begin with.
(The week, month, year, really. There’s a virus of some kind going around, though they claim to have it under control, and on top of that Baela hasn’t answered a text from him since he said yes to taking care of the girls while she was out of town. Not that he’s sent a bunch. Only a couple. A reasonable amount.)
The weather interferes with the job he’s working, puts them behind schedule and takes money out of his pocket. Not to mention when he gets to his truck and realizes the seal of one of his windows is leaking, the drivers seat soaked to the padding from the downpour. Then he gets a call that Rickon’s tire blew and he’s stranded on the side of the road with Jocelyn.
He’s done a lot of work in his life to be okay with Rickon driving. None of that work means anything during the first five seconds of a call that begins with Jocelyn crying in the background. That carries the words I was driving and-
It takes a moment for his heart to stop beating out of his chest, but the feeling of it lingers just like it does every time he drives over the railroad tracks on the way out of town. It only eases when he gets there, when he can breathe a sigh of relief at seeing them safe and whole and help Rickon put on the spare tire.
They’re almost done when Jocelyn climbs down out of Cregan’s truck, where she’s been sitting with the heat running and wrapped in Rickon’s jacket, her phone pressed to her ear.
“They’re saying the MLB cancelled spring training.”
“What?” Rickon turns towards her, “There’s no way.”
“They just said it on the radio,” Jocelyn says, “The hockey league too.”
“Are you calling your mom?” Cregan nods towards the phone against her ear as he packs up the tools, tossing the bag into the backseat of Rickon’s car and trying to ignore the pile of trash in the floorboard.
She nods, “She’s getting out of a follow-up appointment with Grandmama, should be back in a second.”
“Alright.” He holds out his hand when he sees her expression change, Baela’s voice faint through the speakers, “Give me the phone.”
She does and he leans against the side of the car.
“Jocelyn?”
“You need to come home,” He says, “Things are getting worse and I'm worried about you being in New York.”
“I’m not leaving a woman who can’t walk across her apartment alone, Cregan. Laenor will be back in a couple days and my flight’s booked for that night. Now give the phone back to my daughter.”
“Baela-“
“I can take care of myself.” She snaps. He grits his teeth against it, “Now Cregan.”
“Fine.” He says, too sharp. Sharp enough Rickon’s head snaps to the side to look at him, “You do that, then.”
It makes his stomach twist, uneasy. Jocelyn glares, which is almost as bad. She always had her mama’s temper.
“What is wrong with you?” His son asks, and when Cregan doesn’t have an answer, he gets in the car with Jocelyn and slams the door shut behind him.
. . .
“…Governor Cuomo has issued a state-wide order that all non-essential workers must stay at home. Cases of the coronavirus in New York have spiked from zero on March 4th to now nearly three thousand…”
. . .
Things change quickly, drastically.
The schools close, everyone is sent home. Cregan’s boss puts jobs on hold. Aly breaks her own silence with him to ask if they need masks, tests, anything that she could maybe get easier through the department than a store.
When they cancel the flights? It’s not a question of what needs to be done.
He just packs a bag, fills the truck with gas, drops the girls off at Luke and Rhaena’s, and then he’s gone. There’s nothing to discuss, nothing to argue about, he doesn’t let there be an opportunity. She may be able to take care of herself, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not going to watch her back in a fight.
It doesn’t matter if she won’t speak to him.
He’ll make sure she gets home anyways.