Chapter Text
She still wasn't used to the quiet. Not silence, exactly. The house was rarely silent between Loona's music blasting faintly through the walls, the TV on somewhere in the background, and Blitz talking louder than anyone reasonably needed to. But it was different than the palace. Different from the shouting echoing down the hallways, different than constantly waiting for the next argument to start. There, the noise felt warm. Lived in. Safe in a way she wasn't entirely sure how to process.
A lot had changed over the last year, starting with her father's exile. It took roughly six months for her to actually have a conversation with her dad, which took Loona cornering her in her palace bedroom and dragging her to him, where she locked them both in the office until they talked.
It was a hard conversation with a lot of tears, yelling on her part, more tears, and a complete dismantling of the image of her childhood and her mother. Of course, she didn't forgive her dad right away. How could she? But it was a start.
It took another five months to rebuild what they had, and during that time, things got a lot messier. When she turned 18, Stella immediately started shoving men in her face, proclaiming them as possible matches for her upcoming, against her will, marriage.
"Now that your pathetic excuse of a father is gone, we don't have to wait any longer. I wanted to do this when you were much younger, but that idiot forbade. Honestly, me agreeing to wait until you were 18 was a courtesy." She insisted.
Via ended up shoving some stuff into a bag and wound up on Bitz's doorstep in the middle of the night. Loona just silently took her to her room to sleep it off, and she caught them up to speed the next morning. That's when Loona brought up the idea of just leaving it all behind for good.
The thought had crossed her mind a few times, but she never let herself think too hard about it. It hadn't felt obtainable, after all; someone had to read the prophecies in her father's place.
She didn't expect her father to readily jump on board. He told her that while he would always love the stars, he would always love her more. And that was the nail in the coffin.
Working in the shadows, she was able to convince her uncle, Vassago, to take up her position alongside his own. This let her dad still have access to the stars whenever he wished, and ensured things would continue to run smoothly. The hard part was actually getting out.
First, she kicked her mother out of what was technically her palace. That didn't go without its own set of roadblocks. Her showing up screaming, trying to guilt her, a failed attempt at getting her grandfather involved (which didn't go well. He didn't give a shit about Stella. To him, she was just a carrier for the heir.), and her showing up at Blitz's place to berate her dad, which got shut down quickly with the threat of an angelic bullet, courtesy of blitz. Stella sulked back to the palace. Oddly, Octavia didn't care whether or not her mother kept her title of Princess. She just wanted her out of her life
She was surprised at how quickly her previous feelings about her mother faded. She had realized a long time ago that she didn't feel as strongly about her as she did her dad, but she thought leaving her would be harder than it was. She knew that, to an extent, she loved her mother, but she didn't and still doesn't like her. What love she felt for her turned into cold indifference, and a feeling she couldn't quite place.
After the events of that week, they decided they should probably move. It was for the best; the apartment was too small for all four of them anyway. They put that plan into motion immediately.
Next, she had to renounce her title. It was a headache, but she was eventually free of it all, her only real sacrifice being her immortality, but she wasn't exactly too attached to it. Her father didn't have his, and she didn't want to live an eternity without him anyway. She had a longer lifespan than the average hell-born, even without it. Her dad was in the same boat, albeit not willingly, though she had a feeling it was a relief to him once he settled into his new life. He no longer had to worry about the possibility of living centuries without Blitz.
When she was finally able to take her bags and leave, she went straight to their new house. It had a room waiting just for her, and she was allowed to do whatever she wanted with it. She, despite being a princess, didn't actually have that much freedom when it came to decorating.
She chose a simple gray for the walls, with purple accents, and covered them in posters. She also got hanging shelves and lined her walls with knick-knacks and her taxidermy.
She had never felt more at home, and she wasn't sure how to feel about it.
She knew it would be different from her life before, but she wasn't prepared for how stark the differences would be. She guessed that was what happened when people grew up in unstable homes, only to leave those situations. It made her oddly sad, seeing how disgustingly in love her dad and Blitz were. Not because she didn't like it. No— her dad deserved a real love story after being deprived of it.
It was the fact that it took so long to get there. It wrestled with the fact that sometimes, she wished they had found each other sooner, or that her parents had never married at all, even if she wouldn't have existed. He deserved love, period. Not as a sort of consolation prize for surviving.
She was coming around to Blitz, not that she would ever admit it, not any time soon, at least. He openly loved her dad; he treated her like he did Loona, even if more distant to respect her boundaries, all the things Stella never did. He doted on and spoiled her dad; he was never aggressive, he gave him gifts "just because," and he was openly affectionate.
It was completely different from what she was used to, and it was jarring at first, but soon, a month had passed, and she was getting used to it. But she still couldn't help but compare their old and new lives in her head. Trying to find even a sliver of peace in her old life, something that measured up. She never did.