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Home.
What a strange word.
It means different things to different people. To some, it is the love and the embrace of another. To others, the house in which all the people they love are waiting for them to get home with smiles on their faces. To others still, the warm taste of Cinnacreme on their lips, or the gentle scratching of a woollen jumper on their arms, or the nip of cold air on their nose as they step outside in the early morning.
To Linh?
Home doesn’t mean anything.
It’s an empty word. Empty of any love for her, empty of any meaning, empty of any memories.
She’s never had anywhere or anyone or anything that’s home enough to be associated with the word.
Tam came close. He’s her favourite person, most definitely, but she doesn’t know him as one would know their home. She was advised to stay away from him as a child — he was rowdy, rebellious, and young ladies such as her shouldn’t be associated with boys like him, even if they were twins — and he’d gone to the Neverseen, and they couldn’t talk in Exillium, either, so really, they weren’t as close as they both wished they could be.
Maybe, if she had tried harder to reach out to him, he would be her home.
But he wasn’t.
And she hated that.
She hated that she didn’t have a home.
She hated that she didn’t belong anywhere.
She hated that she had no desire to fit in with anyone.
God, she wished she could just fit in.
……
Prentice was Tiergan’s home. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind of this fact.
Swan song. Swan song. Swan song.
They were each other’s whole world. They would have torn everything apart for each other. They would have given up everything, everything, just to know that the other was safe.
And he did. He almost did.
Swan song. Swan song. Swan song.
Alden had arrived first. He’d sat them both down and asked if Tiergan wanted tea. He’d declined, suspicious of whatever his motives were. He hadn’t spoken to Alden in years. Not since their Telepathy training fell apart. Not since their breakup.
Quinlin came soon after. His upset look only worsened the tightening of Tiergan’s chest.
What’s going on? Why are you both here?
Can’t we catch up with a friend?
Cut the bullshit, Vacker, you haven’t considered me a friend in too many years to count.
A sigh, weighted down with disappointment.
Prentice. Your…
Husband. My husband.
Your… husband. He’s been arrested. His trial is tomorrow, but there’s no doubt the Council will ship him off to Exile the moment it’s over.
Quinlin hadn’t spoken since he’d greeted Tiergan at the door.
What the fuck?
There were rumours that he was part of a rebellion group seeking to take down the Council. These rumours have been found correct.
A swallow. A gentle shake in an exhale. Reluctant eye-contact from eyes glinting like sapphires.
Do you have any idea what the phrase swan song would mean?
No. I don’t.
Lying through his teeth, as he had always done.
Protecting the Black Swan, who hadn’t done shit to protect him.
To protect Prentice.
Swan song. Swan song. Swan song.
His husband was as good as dead, and Alden had the audacity to make tea. Quinlin had the audacity to refuse to even look at him.
He hated them. He fucking hated them all.
And he was going to watch the world burn, if only he could get Prentice back.
Because the world was never his home. The only thing that he had ever considered home was Prentice Endal.
And now his home was gone.
And there was nothing worth living for anymore.
……
Wylie never had a home. Not really.
First it was with his parents, with Prentice and Cyrah. That was… probably the closest one he had. The closest house and the closest family to a home.
But then his father went to prison. And his mother faded away. And so the closest thing he’d ever had to a home was dead.
Next it was Tiergan. Tiergan was… Tiergan was fine. He was great, even. But he wasn’t… he wasn’t Wylie’s. Wylie’s skin was too dark, his shoulders too broad, his legs too thin, his hair too curly, his eyes too light. Tiergan and Wylie… they fit. They did. But Wylie’s puzzle piece had more than one joint. And Tiergan looked like a corner piece.
Neither of them quite knowing how the other works.
His third house was Foxfire. By far his least favourite. It wasn’t bad for him, and he didn’t hate school, but he… he definitely didn’t consider it a home. Barely even a house. It was a shared bedroom and a shared bathroom and an even more shared kitchen. Not that sharing was bad! But he’d rather… he… he wasn’t sure.
Maybe he’d never have a home again. Maybe now that his parents were gone, his puzzle piece wouldn’t fit anywhere again.
His fourth home was back with Tiergan again. But this time… this time, his dad was back. And he had a little sister and a little brother, and… a Neverseen refugee that seemed very distant and vague but also nice?
And he couldn’t quite call it a home. Not yet. Tam and Glimmer were still distant, and Tiergan was still a corner piece and needed to work out how to let everyone else fit, and Prentice’s puzzle bits had been torn off without a clear way to fix it, and Linh was still trying to get used to a real house again, and Wylie still felt an empty spot where his mother should be, but it was a start.
And, in most cases, starts are better than ends.
……
Glimmer’s home was, and still is, with the Neverseen.
She’d grown up with them. Gisela had been… Gisela had been a mother, to her. A good one. Better than what Glimmer had seen her behave towards her own son, her own eyes and hair and flat nose and beauty spot just under the left earlobe. And Ruy had been a nice brother, if he was a little too affectionate with Alvar right over her dinner.
But it had been a lie.
All of it.
A lie.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t want to go back.
You can’t suspend everything you believe in as soon as you find out they’re wrong. You can try, and you can get there eventually, but never immediately. And Glimmer was trying. She was, she swore to herself every day in the mirror that she was trying her fucking hardest, but it wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.
Because she still wanted Gisela’s arms around her when she scraped her knee running from the Council or the Black Swan, reminding her that all pain is valid, even the small ones, even the ones you can’t see.
She still wanted training with Fintan, and his words of praise as she finally bends her light in the right way.
She still wanted to playfully banter with Ruy, swatting at him over an empty bowl, a smile not leaving her until he does.
She still wanted her family. Her home.
And she hated that she still wanted that. That she even considered them that.
She hated that she heard Tam and Linh’s wide smiles as they argued over which music to put on and only heard her laughter mixed with her shouts as she told Ruy and Alvar to get a room.
She hated that she looked at Wylie’s gentle hands, guiding her on cutting the vegetables for dinner, softly, lovingly, training her, and saw Fintan’s rough ones, moving her arms in time with the light and the fire, bending them, swirling them, training her.
She hated that she felt Prentice’s lips on her forehead and Tiergan’s arms on her shoulders as they wished her a silent goodnight, and felt only Gisela. Glimmer’s mother, or the alternative that was as good as, if not better.
She just wanted to stop loving them. Loving the Neverseen.
But it’s very hard to stop loving your family.
Your home.
……
Prentice wanted to go home.
He wasn’t yet sane enough to know where home was. There were vague memories; blonde hair and dark lips and small arms wrapped around his legs. That felt like home. Those memories felt like home.
He wished he could access those memories in his darkest moments. When he feels the most broken. They’d help to close up the cracks, a little bit.
But all he could remember was swan song.
But not now. Now, he could remember other things. No names. No faces. But the gentle brush of red hair, and eyes of all shades of blue, and hands with all shades of skin; dark and light and something in between, connected, love coursing through the veins like water down a river.
Prentice missed the river. He’d go down there as a kid.
He missed everything, really.
He missed fresh air and light and being sane, being really sane, not these little snatches he got when the pieces of his mind bumped together and closed the cracks for a few moments.
He missed whatever it was that his heart was calling home.
He wanted to go back there, if only for a bit. If only in his fragmented mind.
He would do anything, anything, to get back home.
And as he slipped slowly back into madness, he was granted his wish.
He went home.
And his mind slipped him more than just feelings and quick flashes of images.
A name.
Three names.
His home.
Cyrah. The red hair and the pale hands and the dark, dark blue.
Wylie. The small arms and the curly hair and the squeals of laughter.
Tiergan.
The blonde. The callouses. The kisses. The almost-purples.
And then he slipped away.
And it all disappeared.
……
Home was a house. It was a house. That was its definition in the books. So that’s what it must have been.
A place in which one resides. A home.
A house. A home.
A person, a feeling, anything at all that you loved. Not a home.
Because a home… a home was permanent, if it was those things. When you love something, it’s permanent, and that’s not your fault.
That’s what Tam told himself when his heart said he missed his parents in the dead of night. Even though he didn’t. He couldn’t. He really, really hoped it was wrong.
It was permanent, and he couldn’t control this, and that wasn’t his fault.
Houses aren’t permanent, and so homes aren’t either. But love is, so a home can’t be love.
Linh wasn’t his home. She wasn’t. She wasn’t. (This is what he told himself when he could only find comfort in her embrace.)
Tiergan and Prentice and Glimmer and Wylie weren’t his home. They were his family. But not his home. (This is what he told himself when he felt safe when they’re all together, no matter their location.)
His parents weren’t his home. They never were. (This is what he tells himself when a memory of his old life resurfaces and it’s tainted pink with love.)
His home was Solreef. Not the people in it.
A home is a house.
Because if it’s anything else, then it would hurt even more to lose it.
A home is a house.
Because if it’s anything else, then anytime Linh gets hurt, he’s homeless.
And homelessness is a vulnerability that you can’t have in the elven world.
And Tam doesn’t want to be any more vulnerable, or weak, than he already is.
Because that is what will get him and his family killed.
And that is what would leave him broken.
He doesn’t want to be broken.
He doesn’t want to be homeless.
A home is a house.
If it’s anything more, then Tam would not be able to take it.