Work Text:
There had been a look waiting for Gerard when he returned home.
It was one he knew well. The pinch of her brows, the thin line of her mouth. Her arms crossed as she took in her wayward son: scraped up and bloody, cobwebs caught in a tangle of hair growing too long for her liking. Clothes, already tattered, with a few more holes in them. It was almost a sneer, the way she looked at him, with a familiar reprimand where have you been growing in her throat.
But then her eyes fell upon the book. Tucked under gangly arm, hugged against his narrow frame. Pristine and perfect in all the ways he was not.
Her eyes lit up at the sight of it. His clumsy fingers fumbled for it, presenting it to her as she swooped forward, hands outstretched. She snatched it from his grip, mouth stretching into the closest thing Mary Keay ever got to a proper smile.
"You found it," she practically sang. "You clever thing."
In the hollow places of his chest pride welled, pushing against his seams until he almost smiled from its glow. But then she turned on her heel and away from him without another word. His shoulders slumped, as though that joy had been the only thing holding him aloft.
The wind taken out of his sails and adrenaline waning, the aches from his mad dash pushed themselves to the forefront of his mind. His feet ached. A bruise knotted on his hip made itself known. He tried - failed - to remember where he had crashed into something. It had all been such a blur.
But he had gotten the book. He'd found it and ran and now his Mum had another for her collection.
Mum examined the book, not yet daring to open it. She trailed her fingers over its cover, its spine.
"Good work," she said, her voice still soft with reverence for the work she held in her hands. She turned back to look at him, that stern annoyance creeping back into her expression. Like she couldn't believe what she was about to say. "But you need to be more careful. You know how dangerous these things are." He was old enough to remember such things and do what he had been told.
someone died in those tunnels but it wasn't me. they died and i got out because i know what im doing. He did not argue with her, only cast sheepish eyes to the ground.
"Yes, Mum."
She looked at him a beat longer, and something in her expression, her posture softened. She signed with an exasperation that was not quite fond. "Go get cleaned up," she said. "I'll put a kettle on."
She shooed off her son with a flick of her wrist. He mumbled a soft thanks and darted off, looking over his shoulder once more before he vanished to his room and bath. Mum remained where she had been, examining the Leitner with an adoration he never saw at any other time.
***
Gertrude always had a look about her, Gerard thought. Narrow eyed and thin lipped. Like she was always calculating, always taking in the world around her to find the pieces that did not quite fit. To most others she must have looked like a stern librarian or some such, always quick with a rebuke and slow with praise.
She moved with a purpose while he trailed behind, a good half a foot taller than her. People had begun taking them as Grandmother and Grandson. It was always an effort not to laugh when the subject came up, at least for him. Gertrude kept a straight face, fell into a role of a stern Grandmother that was only half pretending. He could never tell when she was in on a joke.
They swam through the world most did not see - did not wish to see - like clever little fish. In quiet moments, when nursing a wound in a cheap motel or washing off the stink of some beast that had to be dispatched, he recognized the echoes to his prior life. He traced fingers over their outlines, pricking skin on jagged edges, and then he took them to hide away in the far corners of his mind. Placed in a box labeled gratitude, never to be examined if he could help it.
His mother's eyes still bore into him, in those quiet moments. The smell of blood still clung to his nose.
He followed Gertrude without complaint, putting those things Mum taught to a better use. To help, he thought, watching the dancing flames of a burning book that had torn lives to shreds. He was not sure if it felt good, and Gertrude was so rare with her praise, but some sense of pride drove him forward.
The two of them were sat in some cafe in a city whose name sat awkwardly in English speakers mouths. Gerard hunched over his sketchbook, sketching out the smattering of strangers in their own little worlds. A cup of coffee in a chipping mug was growing cold by his elbow. Gertrude sipped her tea, reading an old paperback she had picked up in some other town some weeks previous.
"Stop slouching," she said, finally. Gerard looked up and met her eye, peering at him from over her glasses.
"Sorry?"
"You're making my back hurt." Her sharp eyes darted to his mug and back again. "And careful with that. It'll make a mess."
Gerard rolled his eyes, tapping his pencil against his sketchpad (a gift from Gertrude, with a reminder to keep up his hobbies in her prim handwriting). He straightened his back and pushed the mug toward the center of the table, keenly aware of the hawkish gaze of Gertrude Robinson watching him.
"Yes Mum," he mumbled under his breath.
She rose an eyebrow in an expression that could have been called amused. "What was that, Gerard?"
Gerard stilled, feeling like a kid being caught stealing. "Nothing," he said.
She huffed something close to a laugh and turned back to her book without another word. Gerard watched her for a moment longer, then let his attention drift away, back to everyone else in their safe little bubbles. And he went back to drawing.