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He had no idea when it would happen this time.
Since the loss of his powers several years ago, Stolas had no way of reaching out to the stars to find out anything at all, and that had terrified him at first. He had learned to appreciate the not knowing, not being able to reach out into the void of space whenever his anxiety threatened to overtake him, to grasp at starlight to calm himself, to search the cosmos for answers to the questions (and solutions for the fears) that swirled violently around his mind.
It was so very different this time around, of course, and in so many respects. He was nearing forty years old now, no longer a boy striding the cusp of manhood. He was no longer under obligation this time, finally allowed to make this decision on his own terms after many, many conversations with his partner. He was no longer living in a grandiose palace full of rooms waiting to be filled with whatever he pleased. This time, he was squeezed into the tiniest (and therefore the least expensive) three-bedroom apart Imp City had on offer. Stolas had insisted on having three bedrooms, one for himself and Blitzo, one for Loona, and one for "just in case," as he'd said to his husband when they'd begun apartment-hunting. He had been too scared to say what he meant in full—"just in case Octavia comes back"—but Blitzø had understood anyway.
Years went by, though, and although he'd not yet given up hope of reestablishing some sort of connection with his daughter, he'd also become painfully aware that he couldn't let life pass him by as he waited for something that might never happen.
"Listen, Stols," Blitzø had said as they talked about Via for the millionth time that month, both of his large, warm hands encircling and cradling Stolas's smaller one, "that's some major immortal being bullshit. Us mortals—we don't get to piss our lives away pining and wishing and yearning and shit. I want Via to be here with us as much as you do, you know that, but to be so fucking blunt about it, she's got the luxury of time and we don't."
Stolas had nodded, trying to no avail to stem the flow of his tears. "I know," he'd whispered, wanting to say so much more but unable to articulate anything of substance through his sobs.
Blitzø had hugged him tightly, one corner of his mouth quirking up a bit. "Besides, sleeping on the couch is a rite of passage when your family's broke. It'll be good for her. Builds character."
Stolas had managed a quiet but genuine chuckle at that. Of course. Just because she didn't have a dedicated bedroom of her own didn't mean she wasn't welcome in their home. It didn't mean she didn't belong there with him, that she wouldn't have a place in his life if she chose to be there.
Starting a family was so very different this time, but it was frighteningly similar in some respects. The painful twisting in his abdomen and the vile insults thrown at him by his own subconscious, for example, were roughly the same as last time—less noisy, perhaps, and more easily and openly fought against, but no less persistent—and he took a perverse sort of comfort in the familiarity of it.
He was also still newly married this time, although that decision too was one he'd finally had the ability to choose for himself. It amused him much more than he cared to admit, the thought that even when both of these major life decisions were firmly in his own hands, he still strode headlong into one right after the other. But to be entirely fair to himself, at even the first slightest implication that Stolas might be open to having another child, Blitzø had melted into a starry-eyed puddle on his lap. Hard to walk back from that particular precipice.
The wedding had been a formality more than anything else, really. They were already living together, after all, and truly the only reason that they had even gone through with it at all was because Blitzø had insisted they would benefit in the long term from having the legal protections and benefits associated with marriage. It had shocked him to no end to learn that he and Blitzø might be forcibly separated from one another in the event one of them was ever hospitalized, that they could be denied the right to even visit, let alone be there in the room to make critical decisions, if they didn't have paperwork to prove their connection. Millie had even told him that she kept an second copy of her marriage certificate in the safe in Blitzo's office at I.M.P., just in case something happened while she or Moxxie were on a job.
They had gotten married at the courthouse in Imp City for simplicity's sake, with Loona, Millie, Moxxie, Fizzarolli, and Asmodeus at their sides cheering for them both so loudly that some official-looking person or other had come over to ask them to quiet down. It was a far simpler affair than his previous marriage by orders of magnitude, but it was wanted and freely chosen, and those two things meant much more to him than the putting on of some garish display of wealth and power that his previous wedding had been. He was smiling in every single picture their friends had taken of him, in stark contrast to the multiple albums full of official photographs that Stella and her family had insisted be taken the day they married. He'd barely been able to hold himself together enough to get through the ceremony itself, but had he known what a point of contention it would be for the next nearly two decades of his life that he looked absolutely miserable in every picture, he might have tried a little harder to put up a more convivial front.
And not quite a year later, here he was holding an egg once again. Stella had shut him out surrounding the laying of Via's egg and forbidden him from seeing her or it afterward for some time. He remembers being relieved at first, happy to have an excuse to avoid his wife, but unfortunately, all the silence was eventually filled by anxiety about the egg, about the little child forming inside it, about the impending reality of his fatherhood and how in the fuck he was meant to raise a child in the first place, let alone how he was meant to do it with Stella.
It was told to him very early on after recieving his grimoire that using his gift to look inward at his own life was highly improper, and he had never questioned it, had always done as he was told despite the burning curiosity he had about what the future held for him. Except for once. Alone in a guest bedroom that Stella had declared far enough away from her and the egg, he had given into the desire for knowledge. Just once, he peeked at a corner of the cosmos that he wasn't supposed to acknowledge.
Not for himself, no, but for his child. Hopefully whoever made such rules would understand the distinction and allow him this one indiscretion.
He was indeed granted a vision. He watched as an eclipse took place in the red sky of the Pride Ring, and in the exact moment of totality, when near-darkness fell over everything before him and he could feel his body heat leaching from his feathers, he felt a weight in his hands. An egg. It radiated a steadily-building warmth for a long moment, and then its shell began to break open. Intensely-bright light shone from inside through the webbing pattern of cracks, and all at once, the shell virtually disintegrated, releasing what could only be described as the full power of a sun back into the sky.
And that was it. That was all the universe had seen fit to show him.
It had taken very little deduction to ascertain the meaning of that vision, that Via would hatch during a solar eclipse. He'd also hoped he was correct in believing that any child of his who was born under as auspicious a cosmic sign as an eclipse would be incredibly powerful. Both things had been proven true with time, and he'd never been more thankful.
He couldn't do that now, though. He was doomed to blindly groping through his future like the rest of Hell, equal parts a blessing and a curse.
A voice from beside him broke his train of thought. "You been awful quiet over there, pretty bird. Whatcha thinkin' about?"
Stolas blinked, eyes regaining their focus as he reentered the present moment. "Sorry. Did you say something?"
Blitzø shook his head. "Nothing that important. You just looked like you were…kinda far away. You good?"
"I'm fine," he replied, adjusting his grip on the egg and turning it in his lap, "just…thinking about Via again."
"Hmm, yeah, I guess it'd be kinda hard not to think about her right now, huh?"
Stolas nodded. His voice was trembling, barely a whisper, as he asked, "Have I ever…told you the story of when she hatched?"
He knew he hadn't. He still found it incredibly difficult to open up to Blitzø about that part of his life. As much as he loved Via with his whole entire being, confronting the reality of what he and Stella had gone through in order to conceive her any more often than was abolutely necessary still turned his stomach. The one time he and Blitzø had spoken about it previously, the conversation ended abruptly when Blitzø casually refered to the events as "rape". Stolas had disagreed so vehemently, so suddenly, so loudly that Blitzø was visibly taken aback, and while the imp had not argued with him further, the damage was already done. He couldn't stop himself from shaking, and the tears and the overwhelming depression and the numbness of dissociation inevitably followed. It took days for him to feel relatively normal again, and they hadn't broached the subject (or indeed anything approaching it) ever again.
"I don't think so," Blitzø answered softly. "But you don't have to, you know. If you're not…like, ready for it, or whatever."
Despite the slightly unserious nature of the words themselves, Stolas understood what his husband was trying to say, the kindness he was offering. "No, I know," Stolas said slightly less wobbly. "I think I want to. I—I mean, I do. I do want to."
"Alright. I'll listen then." Blitzø put one hand on top of Stolas's where it rested on their egg, and the love and care present in that simple gesture reinforced his burgeoning courage a hundred fold.
"When she was ready to lay the egg, Stella was…cold and temperamental. Even moreso than usual. She wanted nothing to do with me. Ordered the house staff to keep me away from her at all costs. Not that I blame her—egg laying is a very difficult and painful process, and I would only have been an additional hindrance had I been allowed to be present for it. But even after the egg was laid, she refused to let me see it. She sequestered herself in our bedroom for weeks, and not even Andrealphus or other members of her family were permitted to enter. For almost a month, I was left to my own devices, wondering what was going on behind that door, if Stella was recovering well, if the egg—"
There had been a brief moment near the beginning of that period of isolation when he had wondered if the egg had been harmed during its laying. They had been warned by Stella's obsetrician several times that weak eggshells were not an uncommon defect, that sometimes the laying process happened too quickly and physically traumatized both the mother and the offspring, that they needed to have a serious conversation about what decisions they would make if Stella became eggbound. He'd buried his head in the sand, not wanting to acknowledge any of that as a possibility because it meant that he would have to go through all of that for a second time, and—
Stolas shook his head. "Anyway. I had so many questions and no other way to get answers, so I…I asked the stars."
Blitzø smiled. "Yeah? About Via, I'm guessing?"
"Mhm." He turned his hand over so he could thread his talons through Blitzø's claws. "I was granted a vision. The cosmos told me that she would hatch during a solar eclipse, that her entrance into this word would snatch away the very light of the sun itself."
"Starfire," Blitzø murmured as he put the pieces together. "Since the very beginning, huh?"
Stolas nodded. "I was kindly allowed to know that she was destined for greatness, that she was to be a powerful magic user, but I still had…other questions. I was worried that—" He took a deep breath, willing away the tears threatening to spill down his face. He had never spoken about this to anyone before, and he hadn't realized how difficult it would be to say aloud. "I was worried that, because of everything, I wouldn't be able to love her."
Blitzo's free arm snuck around his waist, pulling him in for a quick, tight hug. He said nothing, just waited patiently for Stolas to compose himself.
"Even though it would have been through no fault of her own, I wasn't sure that I would be able to separate her from the circumstances of her birth. I was scared that every time I looked at her, I would only be able to see the obligation of her. That I would never be able to see her as my child instead of yet another weighty responsibility I had been forcibily saddled with. Prophet first, then Husband, and now Father—I hadn't asked for any of it! Paimon had been largely absent for the vast majority of my childhood, up until it was time to start making preparations for the wedding, and even then, he was there in a sort of manegerial role instead of as a supportive parental figure, to ensure the affair wasn't an embarrassment to his name and reputation. At the time, I had thought that I would be totally unprepared to be a father because I had no real example to follow. How was I supposed to know how to love this child when no one had ever—?" He turned slightly, burying his face in Blitzo's shoulder. "—had ever loved me?"
Blitzø adjusted his hold on Stolas and squeezed him tighter, graciously not commenting when he began to cry. The first time Blitzø suggested that Stolas's history with abuse might have begun a long time before his marriage, he'd scoffed and dismissed the notion out of hand. He hadn't been abused as a child. He'd never been stuck by anyone until Stella. His family was unimaginably wealthy, and he'd been very well looked after and provided with any and every thing he'd ever asked for. Clothes, food, toys, books, movies, several telescopes of varying complexity—all handed over to him the moment he expressed his desire for them. Gently, his husband had pointed out that perhaps locking a child away from the world in his home, never giving him the opportunity to make friends and develop age-appropriate social skills, keeping him so lonely and miserable that any scrap of parental attention felt like a blast of heroin injected directly into his brain, might also count as abusive behavior.
The revelation had floored him at the time, and he'd felt so stupid. Of course he'd known his childhood wasn't necessarily "normal" compared to the standards of the rest of Hell, but it was normal for the Goetia. Or at least so he'd assumed. But the more he mused on it, the more examples he dredged up from his memory of how his upbringing was abnormal even compared to his peers. Nannies were employed in almost every Goetic household, but he couldn't name anyone else whose parents had fucked off as entirely as Paimon had, dumping his youngest son on the servants and expecting them to do the difficult work of rearing someone else's child.
(It really was no wonder, was it, that Stolas had come away from the experience of his childhood with a somewhat lesser level of prejudice against imps. Mr. Butler was one of the kindest demons he'd ever met, and although, yes, he understood that a large part of that was certainly because he and the other servants didn't have a choice in the matter, that they were literally paid to be nice to him, he felt there was a point where the line between "employee" and "found family" became as hazy and indefinite as a mirage in the Wrathian desert. Blitzø's relationship with Millie and Moxxie was a shining example. In the very early days of his exile, when he had started to actively unlearn all the awful things that Goetic society had managed to embed in the very deepest parts of him, he had asked Blitzø to help him find Mr. Butler, whose real name he was absolutely ashamed to admit he had probably never even learned, so he could convey his thanks and appreciation for everything the man had done for him. Blitzø had returned to him several weeks later with a copy of a newspaper cliping and the most gut-wrenching sadness in his eyes, stuttering through an explanation that the gentleman had passed away several years earlier, and Stolas would carry that profound sense of guilt with him into eternity.)
Once his tears had subsuded, he cleared his throat and continued his story. "I knew which day she would hatch, I knew the precise moment of it, but when the time actually arrived, I…I panicked. Everything I had been thinking about over the course of the previous four weeks came rushing back and overwhelmed me, and I ran. I ended up on the balcony of the guest room I had been staying in, leaning against the ballustrade and gulping down fresh air like my life depended on it. It was the middle of the afternoon, and yet it was strangely dark outside, and that's when I remembered the eclipse. I looked up into the sky just in time to witness the totality, the fleeting few moments where the sun is completed blocked by the moon.
"And then, I heard someone behind me, one of the staff. He was holding a little purple bundle in his arms. I knew what it was, of course I did, but I still wasn't quite ready to acknowledge it. To make it real. I was so scared to face the reality of being a father, and—" Stolas blushed, retroactively ashamed of himself. "Rene handed her to me and told me her name, and for a moment, I was terrified I was going to be sick on her."
"Anxiety's a bitch," Blitzø agreed, rubbing his arm.
"And do you know what my very first thought was when I held her, darling? My beloved daughter who's presence in my life has brought me so much love and joy and fulfillment? I looked down at her tiny little face, big round eyes not yet opened, and I thought, 'She's quite ugly, isn't she?'"
Blitzø erupted into laughter. "I remember seeing that huge portrait of you as a newborn in the palace, so if she looked anything like that—well, fuck."
He found it difficult not to join Blitzø in this moment of levity, even though a voice inside him was scolding him for laughing at the expense of his daughter. "Implings really do have a significant advantage over avians in the cuteness department, don't they?"
"Fuck yeah they do! Barbie and I were the cutest fucking babies ever. We got awards for it and everything." Blitzø reached over to grab his phone off the coffee table and flicked through it for a long moment. "Here," he said with a grin as he turned the screen towards Stolas, "check this out."
It was a picture of an old photograph, he realized as he spotted Blitzø's thumb at the very edge of it. Two of the three subjects it depicted were immediately recognizable as Blitzø and Fizzarolli, perhaps only three or four years old (if that), alongside another child with tightly curled horns that Stolas could only assume was Blitzø's sister. They were all wearing matching clown costumes, the type with bright colors and clashing patterns that Fizzarolli still favored even now. They were each sporting a different implement of their trade. Blitzø held an untwisted modeling balloon and brandished it like a sword; Fizzarolli was in the midst of a charmingly uncoordinated launch of a couple of juggling balls; and Barbie had a large plastic sunflower pinned to her shirt and was squeezing the attached bulb to squirt water at whomever was behind the camera. The caption at the bottom, handwritten in a tidy script Stolas didn't recognize, said, "first day of clown school".
"Oh my dark lords," Stolas gasped. "How are you all so adorable?"
"Genetics, obviously," Blitzø replied with a wink. "The ridiculous costumes help, though. Fuck, I remember those things making me so goddamn itchy, it was a fuckin' nightmare. As soon as practice was over, I ripped that stupid thing off and ran around naked until somebody finally caught me and wrangled me into my pajamas. Momma—"
Blitzø cut himself off with a strangled sort of gulping sound, snapping his mouth shut so quickly that Stolas heard his teeth clattering painfully against one another. Even though Blitzø had shared some details about his past, including about the fire at the circus that had taken her life, the subject of his mother was one he was still noticeably uncomfortable to approach. Not that Stolas could blame him—he knew all too well that even the happiest memories of a person one loved could turn sour and unbearable with the curse of hindsight.
"It's alright, darling," Stolas whispered. "We can talk about something else if you'd like."
Blitzø looked away, breaking the tangle of their fingers and running his hand over his face. "Yeah, um…" he croaked. After a brief hesitation, he shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. "You didn't get to finish your story."
"Right." It felt a little awkward to go on while Blitzø was so clearly upset, but perhaps having a distraction from his own thoughts was the goal. "Where was I?"
"Fugly baby."
"Right! Well, the longer I looked at her, the more of her features I studied, and I noticed she already had a few downy crest feathers on her head, just barely peeking out from the blanket. Ever since Stella had announced she was gravid, I had for some strange reason thought of it as hers. Stella's egg, Stella's child. Logically, I knew my influence would be present in the baby in some form as well, but…" He shook his head and sighed. "I suppose I was just downplaying my own involvement in the whole thing. I couldn't imagine being a father at all, much less wanting it, wanting to be involved with the child, and I think I just assumed that Stella would force me to remain at arms' length from the two of them even after the egg hatched.
"So imagine my shock when I looked down at this wrinkly little thing that Stella had produced and saw, not the clean and lovely white feathers of her mother, but gray feathers. My feathers. She was mine too, a life I had helped create, a piece of me that now existed outside of myself as her own separate being yet was still forever indelibly linked to me. I had been so scared that connection would feel like an anchor chained to my leg, a burdensome hindrance that would prevent me from ever reaching my own happiness. But it wasn't a burden, not at all! It was the red string of fate that bound us together, strong as angelic steel but lighter than air, and it felt extraordinary and awe-inspiring and so fucking beautiful."
Beside him, Blitzø tried to hide his sniffles. "'s what happened the first time I saw Loona. She looked so hurt and scared in that kennel, I—I just—I had to protect her. Something inside me fuckin'…unlocked or some shit, and I wanted to give her everything."
"Yes!" Stolas exclaimed. He'd never been in a position to have this sort of conversation with anyone else before, and part of him was relieved to learn that he wasn't alone in the suddenness of that emotional journey. "I knew in that moment my life had irrevocably changed, but instead of the fear I had though been expecting to dominate my thoughts, I felt the possibility of hope and pride and endless joy. Fear too, yes, of course, I was riddled with anxiety still, but it absolutely paled in comparison to the love."
He gently adjusted the egg in his lap and hugged it close to him. "I loved her so much and so immediately, I didn't even understand how it was possible. And I was so overwhelmed that I—" He chuckled at the silliness of the memory. "I didn't quite know what to do with her, what to say to her, how to interact with her, and so I introduced myself. 'Hello, Octavia, I'm your father.' Oh lords, it's frightfully embarrassing in retrospect, isn't it?"
"No way, Stols, that's fuckin' cute as hell! A little corny, sure, but dads are supposed to be corny. That's 90% of the job."
"If you say so," he muttered, not completely convinced Blitzø wasn't just trying to make him feel better.
"Well, I do," Blitzø declared, "so don't argue with me."
Over the imp's shoulder, Stolas noticed the tip of his tail was wagging happily. He didn't dare comment on it, or else Blitzø would get embarrassed and force himself to stop it, but it was a sight that always made him smile, seeing such undeniable proof that Blitzø was happy. He deserved it. What little Stolas knew of his past seemed difficult and sad from an early age, which was likely why Blitzø always clung so stubbornly to the small pockets of peace and joy he could find in life.
His husband nudged him softly. "C'mon, don't leave me hangin', babe."
He smiled fondly as he recounted what happened next. She had opened her eyes when she heard his voice. It was surely just a coincidence, but his heart wouldn't abide an explanation other than that she had somehow instinctively known who he was. He had read that fetuses from live-birth pregnancies often learned the voices of their parents in utero and were able to recognize them soon after birth, but he hadn't known if hatchlings could do the same. Even if they could, he had been absent during whatever learning period she might have had. But that didn't matter now. She had heard him for the first time, and he would make sure she never forgot what he sounded like.
Her gaze shifted away from him, and though all the books he'd read had informed him that she would have very little control over her eyes in the beginning, responding mostly to sounds and lights without conscious effort, the trajectory of her sight had seemed to Stolas to point straight at the cosmic display above them.
He'd adjusted how he held her, leaning slightly so she could "look" at the sky unhindered. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" he'd said. "That is a rare and spectacular phenomenon known as a solar eclipse. When our planet's moon and its closest star are perfectly aligned, and for a few minutes, all the warmth and light from the sun is stolen away."
Her eyes rolled towards him again, and he amused himself by pretending she could undestrand what he was saying. "I saw this in a vision, you know. I traveled to the stars so I could ask the universe about you, and who you would be. And do you know what it told me?" A smile broke out on his face, pulling at the corners of his beak almost painfully. "It told me that you were the one who stole the star's fire. Is that what you did, little one? Was this your doing?"
Octavia squirmed in her blanket, and one of her hands broke free from the swaddling. He stared at that tiny fist for a long moment, unsure what the right thing to do was, to hold her hand or to tuck it back in, before deciding that she would never be a stranger to affectionate touch. Extending one long finger, he gingerly stroked her little hand, and in turn, she too reached out to him, her itty bitty blunted talons wrapping around his larger one and squeezing it more strongly than he would have guessed she was capable of.
A strong girl. His strong girl.
"It was you, wasn't it?" he asked with a soft chuckle. "That must be why you're so strong. And I bet you'll be smart too. What do you think?"
Their eyes locked, pink meeting red, and he waited as if expecting a response. She couldn't speak, of course, but there was almost something there in her eyes. Perhaps he was imagining it, perhaps it was simply a flight of fancy taken too far, but he could almost see a burning brilliance in her eyes, the potential and possibility within her, a glimpse of everything she could become when she grew up.
The rush of warmth and love that spread through him at the thought of her promise took him by surprise. He wanted to be there with her. Whatever her life turned out to be, he wanted more than anything to be by her side as she discovered it.
"I'll be honest, little one…I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I never had anyone to show me. But I promise to try my best. For you." Tears stung at his eyes and a lump developed in his throat, and he had to swallow several times before he was able to continue speaking to her. "I'll teach you all about the stars and the planets, I'll show you how to garden, how to read.…" His smile returned. "And maybe you can teach me a thing or two in return? How does that sound?"
Octavia's grasp on him changed, her fingers tightening ever so slightly around his, and against all reason, it felt like a handshake.
"Sounds like we've got a deal then, don't we?" he replied through a laugh. "My little Starfire."
As he finished his story, he fell into silence, a sharp pang of sadness coursing through him. He would give anything to have his daughter here with him now. Her twenty-first birthday had recently come and gone. She was now a grown woman by anyone's standards. He caught glimpses of her in the news sometimes, mostly when the supermarket tabloid rags had nothing more scandalous to talk about than Stella's latest party, and he both dreaded those articles and eagerly anticipated them in equal measure. Any information he could get about Via was welcome, even if it was just to confirm that she was still alive and unharmed since he was no longer there to be the object of Stella's rage, but most of the time when he saw the paparazzi photos of her, she looked so despondent and withdrawn that it made his heart ache.
Because he knew that expression intimately. He had worn it on his face for over 20 years, had seen it staring back at him in the mirror every morning as he fished a Happy Pill (or two or four) out of the medication bottle. He had no idea what was going on in the palace these days to put her in such a mood, but he could only hope that Via found a way out, regardless of whether or not she would accept his and Blitzø's help to do so, and that it didn't take her as long as it had taken him.
"I miss her so much, Blitzø," he whispered.
"I know, PB," his husband said, rubbing his back in slow, soothing strokes. "Me and Looney miss her too."
Silence stretched out between them again. It used to be that, when they talked about Via, Blitzø always assured him she would come around one day, that her anger would fizzle out eventually and she would reach out to him. He didn't say that as much anymore. It was just as well, really—better to respect her boundaries and let it be a pleasant surprise if she ever did decide to speak to him again. The alternative was deluding himself with some fantasy of a perfect family that may never exist, wasting what precious little time he had with Blitzø.
Still, though. The thought of Via willingly being part of his pasted-together little family made him happier than he could ever imagine. If she was the sun at the center of his universe whose radiant energy gave him life in the blackness of the void, then Blitzø was the Earth, the ground that kept him steady, and Loona the moon, a beautiful and mysterious entity whose regular presence helped calm the raging tides when he felt like he might be ripped apart.
"It's okay, Stols, let it out," Blitzø murmured, and oh dear, he was crying again, wasn't he? "We just gotta give her time. We'll have that scissor-orgy thing one day."
The statement was so perplexing that he very nearly stopped crying altogether, too distracted by his utter confusion to remember he was sad. "Blitzø, what the fuck does 'scissor orgy' mean??"
"I don't know, it's space shit!" he exclaimed. "You said something about it one time. Planets aligning or some bullshit. You're the bitch with the special interest, not me!"
He stared at his husband, his loving, attentive, intelligent, capable husband, searching his eyes for a solution to the riddle being presented to him. The flush on Blitzø's cheeks was adorable and deepened with every passing moment, and it took Stolas quite a long while to finally bridge the gap. "…do you mean 'syzygy', darling?"
"Yeah, that one, sure, whatever."
Stolas couldn't contain the little giggle that bubbled out of him. "…scissor orgy?"
"Shut up," Blitzø responded, playfully kicking at his foot.
"Scissor orgy!"
"Well, fuck me right in my little red hole for paying attention to you when you talk about the shit you like, I guess! You try to comfort a bitch, and he just bullies you for it. I see how it is."
They laughed together for a little while over Blitzø's (admittedly very charming) misremembrance, and for some reason, the joke and its mangled delivery did manage to cheer him up considerably. He still missed Via, he would always miss Via, every second of every day, but Blitzø's analogy was especially apt. The alignment of the sun, moon, and Earth that resulted in an eclipse was fairly common. Their occurrences could be tracked and somewhat easily predicted if one knew how to do the math. From there, all that was left was the waiting, allowing enough time to pass that the celestial bodies fell in line once again.
So he would simply wait, and one day, his Starfire would reappear and take her rightful place alongside him again, joining him in syzygy with Blitzø and Loona and (any day now) her new half-sibling, and his universe would be complete. Until that time, though, he would be content with the tidbits of information he could glean from afar, awaiting any sign that Via was ready for reconciliation.
As he and Blitzø cuddled with the egg on the couch, the door to Loona's room opened so suddenly that it surprised the both of them. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Sunday, and she typically stayed in her bedroom until they ate dinner if she didn't have any other plans for the weekend.
Before either he or Blitzø could make comments or inquiries, Loona held up her phone triumphantly, a tiny grin pulling at her lips. "Hey Pops, we've got a Code Pink."
His jaw dropped. "You heard from Octavia?" he said dumbly.
Blitzø skittered off the couch and bounded over to his daughter, hands reaching for her cell phone. "What happened? Did she call? Text? Sinsta DM? Is she okay? What's going on, you have to tell us!"
Loona deftly side-stepped him, padding over towards Stolas. She held out her phone so he could see the screen, where her texting app was open and displaying her messages with Via. The conversation was extremely sparse. The most recent message from Loona, a simple "happy birthday v 🎉" from 3 months ago, had not received a reply, and neither had the previous two. The last text from Via had been nearly a year ago, a link to a Sinstagram post of some kind by the looks of it. But today—!
He scrolled back down to the new message and nearly cried.
"is my dad ok?"
"What do you want me to tell her?" Loona asked.
Blitzø appeared at his side and read the message over his shoulder. "Not much to go on. You really think this is it, Looney?"
"I mean, it's not like we have prolonged deep conversations these days or anything, but…" She shrugged. "This is the first time in almost five years that she's been the one to bring up Stolas."
"Tell her…" he started, but his mind went blank. What should his response be? He couldn't assume she wanted anything other than what she had explicitly asked for, confirmation of his continued well-being, but it was difficult not to let himself hope for more, to wonder if this was the olive branch he had been waiting for all these years. "Tell her I'm okay. Just that for now."
Loona took the phone back, typed for a few seconds, and showed him the screen again when she was finished. "That good? I can change it if you want."
She had written, "he's doing okay, still misses u a lot".
He hesitated. Was that too much? Was it putting too much pressure on her to immediately remind her of their rift? He didn't want to scare her away. What if she interpreted that response as a barb designed to throw the blame on her? He didn't want to drive her away, he had to make sure this reply was perfect, or otherwise he might blow his one and only chance with her.
He felt Blitzø's hands on his, gently moving them aside as he took the egg out of Stolas's lap. He realized quite belatedly that he'd been curling his talons against the top of the shell as an anxiety response. "I'll go put D3 in the incubator for a bit, yeah?"
Stolas nodded, and as soon as Blitzø turned away, Loona took a seat on the armrest next to him. "Is your brain being an asshole?"
"Yes. I'm afraid that if we don't give the perfect response, she'll…" He couldn't bring himself to say it aloud.
Loona nodded. "She doesn't need you to be perfect, though," she responded. "She knows you're not, and pretending you are will just make things worse. For right now, she just wants to know how you're doing. That's it. No need to make it complicated."
She was right, of course. He knew she was. But it was still so frightening to imagine the fragile thread between them breaking because of his mistakes. Again. "Alright," he sighed. "You can send that."
She pressed the button and stood, walking back towards her room again. "I'll let you know if she replies again."
Hours passed before a response came, but it felt so quick compared to nearly five years of abject silence. She said simply, "will you tell him I miss him too?"
Over the course of nearly a week, a dozen or so texts were exchanged, a veritable feast for his weary soul. They all went through Loona, of course. Via mentioned in one message that she was thinking of unblocking him but was scared her mother or uncle would find out about it. Even though the mere idea that Via was considering speaking to him directly in some manner made his heart sing, he agreed that her safety should always be the priority. He could only imagine what she was dealing with on a daily basis still living in the palace, and he dreaded to think of the suffering it might cause her if Stella found out she was contacting him. His ex-wife had never been physically violent with Via before—that he knew of at any rate, she had always seemed to be more interested in tormenting him and largely ignored their daughter unless it served her—and he could only hope that she hadn't started since he was banished. Still, though, there was no need to poke that particular hellbear if they could avoid it.
They did manage a phone call once. Stella and Andrealphus were going to busy with something or other for a few hours, and Via thought she would be able to escape her bodyguard for a little while during their absence. It surprised Stolas that Stella wasn't just dragging Octavia along out of spite or a need to exert control over her, but he would take what he could get. The call was short, only lasting about ten minutes as that was all the time Via felt she could safely give before someone "came looking" for her, a sentence that made Stolas's blood run cold. He would address those concerns at another time, however, and focus on being present with his daughter.
The conversation started slowly, stilted and awkward to navigate for both of them after too much time apart. Mostly they just shared small tidbits about the current state of their lives, short, neutral statements that felt safe to share in the moment. She even asked after Blitzø at one point, and Stolas considered sharing the news about the egg before deciding it would probably be too much all at once.
Eventually, Via sighed and said, "I should probably go now. Sorry."
"No, it's alright," he replied. "I understand. I'm thankful we could get even this much time together, and I wouldn't want to endanger you by asking for more."
There was a long pause on the other end. "I'm sorry, Dad," she whispered. "For…everything, really."
"I'm sorry too, Via. I never meant to hurt you, but I did anyhow. I want to make things right again, if I can." He tried his best to hide his sniffle in his shoulder as his eyes welled up with tears. "If you'll allow me to try."
"Yeah," she squeaked, a sound he recognized as her own attempt to mask her tears. "I want stuff to be normal again."
The sentiment broke his heart, and he didn't stop himself this time from asking the question that had been at the forefront of his mind for half a decade. "Are you alright, Via? Your mother, I mean. Would you—if she's hurting you—"
"No, no, it's not like that. She's just…being Mum, you know?"
He didn't know how to tell her that she hadn't exactly assuaged his fears, seeing as his baseline with Stella since very near the start of their marriage had been domestic abuse of several varieties, but that was a subject for another day. "If she…if things ever change with her, Via, I want you to say something. Please don't be scared to say something."
"I will."
He hesitated, not wanting to overwhelm or scare her, but he needed to impress upon her how serious he was. "Promise me, Via. I know things are still rough between us, and I know I haven't earned your trust back yet, but I swear to you that nothing in all the Seven Rings of Hell would be able to stop me from protecting you if your mother ever laid her hands on you."
"I promise," she said, her voice suddenly so quiet and small, and he's terrified that she might think he's trying to drive a wedge between her and Stella, to break up what little she has left of a family. Maybe a small part of him wanted that, but not all of him. Not most of him. It should be Via's choice how she handled her relationship with her mother, and he's determined to respect that boundary for as long as he's able.
In the background, he heard a muffled voice, deep and authoritative, repeatedly calling her name. He presumed it belonged to her bodyguard. "Shit, I have to go."
"I love you, Starfire," he rushed, spurred on by the time crunch to take a step he'd been floundering about for weeks. "Please be safe!"
"Yeah," she whispered, panic rising in her tone. "Yeah, okay, I—"
She broke off, interrupted by a knock on a door, and that deep, gruff voice from before was much closer now. It warned her of Stella and Andrealphus's imminent return, and then the line went dead.
He let his arm drop into his lap, let Loona's phone slide from his talons and hit the couch cushion beside him. He cried, ecstatic joy and a creeping dread mixing inside him until he couldn't untangle the two emotions from one another. He wanted to storm over to the palace and find Via and either hug her and never let go or steal her away and bring her back to the apartment. Perhaps both.
His impulses nearly got the better of him, but as he stood up and walked toward the front door, he caught sight of the collage of photos in the entryway. Blitz had added a few pictures of Via to the mix years ago, things cut out from newspapers and magazines and printed from articles he'd found online, all fairly impersonal but still better than nothing. In the very center of the display was a drawing Blitzø had done of the four of them as horses, and for some reason, the sight of it stilled him. He'd given it to Stolas for his second Sinsmas, a gift to cheer him up when the realization that he hasn't seen or heard from his daughter in a whole year had left him numb and bordering on non-functional.
Before he could overthink his way out of it, Stolas picked up one of the spare pens they kept in the junk drawer nearby and unpinned the drawing from the wall. He added some doodles of his own, a small oval between his and Blitzø's horse bodies and a crude approximation of an eclipse in the blank sky above them all, and added a title in quotations centered along the top edge of the paper.
"Syzygy"
He replaced the drawing on the wall and snapped a photo of it. He considered sending it to Loona and asking her to pass it along to Via, but he ultimately decided against it. Instead, he sent it to Blitzø, just the picture with no caption or context or apology for defacing his art, and retrieved their egg from the incubator.
Settling on the couch once again, he held his newest child close and lovingly stroked her shell. "Dearheart, I'm not sure when you'll be able to meet her—soon, I hope—but I want to tell you about your other sister, Octavia…."