Chapter Text
Jacks stood at the frame of the door, watching Evangeline curled up on a rocking chair, her rose-gold hair strewn across her sleeping face. He slowly edged closer to her, and found himself smiling as he saw the infant wrapped in her arms. The little girl was no trouble at all. Jacks found himself in her wide blue eyes, coiled blonde hair but when she was asleep, she took after her mother. The same adorable pout on both their faces. Who’d have thought that the Prince of Hearts would one day be a father? Not Jacks that’s for sure.
Tenderly, he removed the pink curls from his wife’s face and placed a kiss on her forehead. He watched her for a moment, making sure that he could still feel her breath on his cold fingers. A slight crease in her brow suggested that she was still alive. Jacks still always made sure. He sighed, and straightened.
There was a nudge at his foot. He looked down and nearly groaned. It was an orange-tufted griffin that always made its way in through the doors. Maybe The Hollow was purposely letting it in to get on Jacks’s nerves. His daughter liked it though. So he decided to keep his disdain to himself. The little girl didn’t know yet how violent griffins could get. It nudged at his foot again looking up with its yellow eyes. It didn’t try to act all adorable like it did with Evangeline and Estella, so it must have known Jacks was on to its ploys.
“What do you want?” he hissed.
It gurgled again, promptly padding out the door. Jacks knew a sign when he got one. He lazily followed it out, until he was on the edge of the property. It was frigid outside, the air full of winter's bitterness. Jacks shoved his hands in his pockets. The griffin stopped, and its tail curled around its body.
“Chaos,” Jacks called.
For a moment, all was still. Jacks maintained an indolent posture, but his blue eyes surveyed the area keenly. As suspected, Chaos moved out of the shadow’s darkness. His helm looked particularly prisonous tonight. The dark holes he had for eyes looked more tired than usual. For a moment, Jacks saw Castor. The boy with a heart of gold and love for days. But the moment he opened his mouth, all Jacks could hear was Evangeline screaming as life left her eyes.
His eyes creased like they always did. “Hello friend.”
“Not your friend.”
Chaos regarded him for a moment. “You were right.”
Jacks laughed wryly, “I always am.”
“I can’t do it. I can’t watch him grow up a monster.” The vampire raked a hand through his hair, and the griffin came to sit at his feet, snapping its beak at him. “LaLa’s always telling me that it's going to be fine, maybe Rhett is going to avoid the curse, but Jacks, I see it in him. This darkness is festering. This…this hunger I see in the fledglings. It's there a moment and then it disappears and that's what scares me the most. I chose this path. He didn’t. If he is raised as a human, then he’ll hate his monstrosity. If he is raised as a monster, he’s going to hate his humanity. And…”
“And?”
“And I don’t think I can be a father.”
He looked at Jacks now, who couldn’t help but feel a pang in his chest. He almost wished he could go back to a time where he felt nothing for Chaos at all, but Jacks feared that time had never existed. Worse, he knew exactly how that felt. The last thing Jacks wanted was for his callous history to ruin Estella.
“If you were Castor,” Jacks began trying to find the correct words, “I would have told you that nobody would have been a better father than you.”
Chaos scoffed, but the sound came out strangled. “And what do you say to Chaos?”
“I say,” Jacks thought of his daughter and the power she carried. It was subtle and much weaker than Jacks’s own, but it was there. Estella would not be raised weak. But she would not be a monster either. “I say raise him human. But when the time comes and he develops the taste for blood,” Jacks pulled the bejeweled knife from his sleeve and held it up to the immortal bastard’s throat, “You better keep him on a leash and away from my family.”
“See,” Chaos laughed that canned laugh, “This is why I came to you.”
The Prince of Hearts rolled his eyes. “Doesn’t mean I trust you.”
In one swift movement, Jacks split his throat. Chaos dropped to the ground like a clipped bat. The griffin immediately went for his throat, licking the welling golden-silver blood. Whether the thing was tending to Chaos’s wound or had just been hungry the whole while, it didn’t matter. Jacks couldn’t believe there would be two of them now. A breeze whistled through the trees carrying that iron-y smell of blood. The Prince of Hearts wrinkled his nose and turned on his heels, returning back to the warmth of The Hollow.