Hansel: Progeny

Roddy had written: *The next thing I knew Goro was crying.* And *Hansel’s not gonna be happy.* And *I wish I could talk to Hansel.*

Written it again and scratched it out.

Hansel didn’t know where he’d fucking gone wrong with this one, but he clearly fucking had. He walked out into the courtyard and paced around the fountain, then widened the circuit, going past the guardhouse, the boathouse, the stable. It was fucking cold out, he knew -- dead of the goddamn night, middle of winter -- but he wasn’t feeling it.

And this wasn’t working. He went back in through the dining room, into the kitchen again, to grab a bottle of whiskey, and started up to his room. Mishka was in his study, or somewhere else, which he was kind of relieved for -- if Mishka’d been there he would’ve just gotten distracted being fuckin’ sad and letting Mishka try to make him feel better. He closed the door behind him -- didn’t lock it, but this would let Mishka know to knock first. Give him some space.

He went to their bedroom and dragged Jonn’s bag out from under the bed.

Roddy had written: *I don’t know what’s up with Jonn.* And *Something bad is going on.* And *I hope Jonn’s okay.*

Hansel didn’t know how to fix things with either of these goddamn kids. Neither of them would fucking talk to him. He figured -- he figured, with Jonn, it was Mishka. Kid was scared of Mishka. Maybe he was angry at Hansel for going back to him, but he hadn’t seemed angry, when they’d talked on the balcony -- he’d seemed fucking scared. Roddy, though -- he was angry. Hansel didn’t know if the kid was angry at him, because he just seemed concerned for Jonn, and he didn’t really seem fuckin’ mad at Goro, either.

He only seemed to be upset with Hansel. Thought he couldn’t talk to him. Hansel remembered the kid getting all cagey when he’d had that first talk with him, about Goro, but it’d come so soon before the Gruumsh shit -- it’d just gotten lost, somehow. He remembered being vaguely conscious, fucking delirious, and Roddy carefully patting his back and telling him he’d be okay. Him and Luci crafting a plan to save him while he was out cold. He loved that kid so goddamn much and he didn’t know what he’d fucking *done*.

He sat on the edge of his bed for a while, in the glow of the crystal on the table, looking down at Jonn’s bag. Couldn’t fucking figure out how to fix things with Roddy. Couldn’t fucking talk to either of them. But he did have Jonn’s goddamn notebook, and if he could -- maybe he could get something out of it that’d help Jonn, and … maybe that’d make Roddy trust him again. Prove that he cared about them both.

His spyglass tumbled out of Jonn’s bag, and then Jonn’s hand crossbow -- the one he’d tried to kill Mishka with -- and a quiver full of bolts. A little sleeve of alchemical shit for making poisons, and a couple vials he recognized from his own dabbling in alchemy: snake venom, drow poison, a shimmering golden truth serum. The sketch Jonn had always carried of Luci. The newspaper clipping from the day his parents had been killed -- Hansel had always thought that was fucking morbid, but it hadn’t really surprised him. Some basic supplies -- a candle, a crowbar, a tinderbox, pitons, rope, a little silver bell. A pair of fingerless gloves that looked like they’d barely been worn.

The journal wasn’t last, but he left it for last, turning it over in his hands hesitantly. He left the pile on his bed and took the journal into the sitting room, to the desk, to sit down, and sit it in front of him, and regarded it for another long moment. He’d seen Jonn writing in it a few times.

*What’s that all about?* he’d asked, eventually.

*Notes,* was all Jonn had told him.

And he’d dropped it, because he was a goddamn idiot. Just shrugged and gone back to drinking, not even watching Jonn out of the corner of his eye. Figured kids needed privacy -- the two of them already fuckin’ lived together. At that time Jonn had still had to curl up next to Hansel almost every night to keep him from waking them both up with night terrors, and that’d been a fucking upgrade from neither of them sleeping at all. He’d felt so fucking guilty about how much he needed the kid -- even though Jonn never seemed to hold a bit of it against him, or even realize that was a fucking option -- that he hadn’t wanted to ask anything else of him. Let him have his weird journal. Hansel left it alone.

He popped open the whiskey and took a long drink, then cracked open the book. Stared at it blankly, and started flipping through, nonplussed. None of these were fucking words. Just -- collections of letters, some of them scribbled out, jammed into the margins, squeezed between lines, filling up every bit of space on every single page. He kept flipping. Started to get a little more organized, after a bit, less cramped, but still illegible.

There were some diagrams. Floorplans. Sections of maps of the city, and routes through it. He recognized this as thief shit, and there were some brief notes here and there, in this part, in Common -- times, shop names, people’s names -- Helena, Finch -- attached to what seemed to be advice. *Finch says second-story window. Helena: take the Highway.*

Other diagrams, of what living things looked like underneath, when you cut them apart. Tendons and bones. Dots of rusted blood on the paper, and fingerprints on the corners

And then there was a page that was almost entirely blank, but towards the bottom, it said: *red sky at dawn. blood in the water?*

Then the list he’d given Jonn of shit to not do, laid out carefully but then amended so many times, as Hansel had realized what had to fucking be spelled out, that it was about as cluttered as the earlier sections.

More thief shit. Research on poisons. Fucking notes on Mishka’s movements around Skyport and his estate, which made Hansel’s gut twist. More code, shoved into the margins, ink dark and splotchy from the pen being bared down on.

Notes about sailing -- shit Hansel had been teaching him. Sketches of kittens accompanied by names. A drawing of Roddy up in the crow’s nest.

A fucking sketch of the tattoo on Goro’s forearm that chilled Hansel the second he recognized it.

Some pages torn out; he ran his fingers down the ragged edge and counted three missing.

More code, and the words, *Helena went somewhere and she didn’t come back,* and then nothing. The rest was blank.

It was fucking *useless*.

He slammed the book closed and took another couple shots out of the bottle, and started pacing around the room. He couldn’t even fucking read most of this shit. Couldn’t just talk to either of the goddamn kids, and one was burning his journal, and the other wrote in some kind of crazy fucking made-up language in his. There was no goddamn way he was going to be able to make sense of this shit. He bet Mishka could, or Goro, or fuckin’ Larkin -- shit, if it was some thief nonsense maybe she wouldn’t even have to puzzle it out. That kid fuckin’ had it in for Jonn, though, and Hansel couldn’t ask Mishka to help him with this. Goro, maybe.

Fuckin’ Goro. Hansel felt ill about the fact that Roddy had made him cry -- must’ve been the day they’d gone to the Sanctuary, that morning. Goro had said something to him about not feeling like part of the family, and he’d cried. Hansel told himself that -- the talk they’d had out in the woods -- that it’d made a difference. And he was getting the fact that Goro fucking liked helping him, that it probably made him feel needed, more a part of the group, because Hansel fucking felt that way too.

Just fucking felt wrong to ask him. Roddy made it sound like Goro was trying to fucking help Jonn, or something, and Goro had offered to help Hansel deal with Helena Baron, or fucking whoever -- Morgan Wyn, who fucking cared -- but the idea made him pace faster and rub at his beard. Jonn was his fuckin’ responsibility, not Goro’s, certainly fucking not Mishka’s. He needed help with this, though. Who else was there -- he considered Luci, because even if she didn’t know the code already, the kid was sharp, but he couldn’t make this her responsibility, either. He needed someone -- without a personal stake in this. Someone he could pay, or owe a favor, and know they’d call it in, not just help him out of the goodness of their fucking heart. That was the part that made him grimace.

Hm.

###

He found Ombre in the library, sitting cross-legged under the table with a book in her lap, reading by a little mage light and idly brushing one of her many tails. Must've been a good book. She didn't seem to hear him come up.

“Hey.”

She scooted away deftly, standing and putting the table between them, and he quickly put up his hands.

“Hey, hey, I'm -- it's fine.” He took a couple healthy steps away. “Don't blink away, all right? I wanted to ask for your help with something. I'll pay you, or -- I'll owe you. I can pay you back by fuckin’ leaving you alone.”

She narrowed her eyes and leaned in a little, sniffing. “Yeah, you don't smell fine.”

Ah. Right. The whiskey. He'd -- been very fucking drunk, that night at the Sanctuary. Reeked of it, he was sure, when he'd gone stumbling towards the ship and wandered into her.

She'd tried to help him. He'd noticed that about her -- that she was always trying to make people feel better. Picking at Goro, grinning with Roddy, playing little pranks on Mishka, helping Joan with her adventures. He had paired her up with Gwydion, when they did the buddy thing, just because he wasn't sure what to do with either of them, and her response had been to hug Gwydion delightedly.

She just fuckin’ seemed to like everyone, and he assumed she'd liked him too, and that was why she'd stopped him in the port town and asked him if he was okay. But he hadn't fucking been okay, and he’d crushed her shoulders in his grip, and snarled drunkenly about how he'd fucking murdered and eaten his crew, and laughed hysterically about the fact that he just got to goddamn walk around like a person, that no one even knew what he deserved.

*Hey, you know that fireball spell?* he'd asked her. *Could y'do me a favor and fuckin’ kill me? It'll be easy. Won't fight back.*

That'd been the first time she'd blinked away. Or gone invisible and just booked it. He'd dropped down in the fucking street and laughed and cried and held himself, because Mishka was dead, Mishka was fucking dead, and it should be him, and Larkin should be the one to do it.

Eventually he'd thrown up in some bushes from sobbing so hard and gone back to the bar to see if it really was biologically fucking possible to drink yourself to death. And when Larkin had finally sent someone for him, she hadn't fuckin' killed him either, and he'd just had to carry on being alive.

Not that he wasn't fucking glad he was alive, now. He just fucking wished he knew how to make Ombre stop being freaked out by him, but he hadn't been able to, because she wouldn't even fucking talk to him. A goddamn running theme, apparently. Probably how Mishka had felt, sending him letters, trying to win him back, getting fuck-all in response -- knowing the silence was justified.

But Ombre didn't bolt right away, just gave him a suspicious glare. He hesitated.

“I fuckin’ -- I've been drinking, yeah,” he admitted. “But I'm good. I'm not …” He kept trying to tell people he wasn't dangerous without actually saying it, because it'd be a goddamn lie. “Listen, I'm not gonna try to hurt you. I never -- fuckin’ was.”

She curled one lip. Could've been a snarl, or a grimace. It was hard to tell exactly on a fox face. “I'm not scared you're going to hurt me.” Her voice was cold, an octave or two lower than normal. “I just don't want you near me.”

“Yeah, fair. No, I get it.” He winced. And still he was going to fucking ask for a favor. “I dunno how to … eh.” Make it up to her? “Listen, I just -- you're fuckin’ smart, and I got this thing written in a code that I really need to read, but it'd probably take me the rest of my goddamn life to figure it out.”

She tilted her head, almost looking intrigued, before abruptly crossing her arms.

“Like I said, I can pay you --,” he started, but she cut him off.

Her voice was still low. “Why don't you ask Goro to help you? Since he's so in love with you.”

“'Cause -- 'cause he'd fucking do it, probably, and --.” He faltered, and finally dropped his hands. “'Cause I know you don't fucking like me, so if I offer you a favor or some shit, you'll cash it in, and then I don't have to fuckin’ feel bad about taking advantage of anyone's goddamn kindness. All right?”

She studied his face, making one of her own. “That's really dumb. You should just ask Goro for help.” Then she looked him up and down, and seemingly reluctantly, asked, “What's the code?”

Hansel held up a finger, and dug into his bag, pulling out the book. He took one step closer, then tossed it onto the table, where it slid across to her.

“It's my kid's journal,” he said, as she picked it up.

“Which one?”

“Jonn. I'm worried he's in some trouble or --.”

“Oh, the fucked up one,” she commented, flipping through the pages. “Guess that's not surprising.” She paused on one page, scouring it, and after a beat, she said, “Yeah, I oughta be able to crack this.” Her voice had gone back to normal. “I can get a transcription back to you in … I dunno, a week?” She snapped the book closed and looked up at him. “So what do I get in return?”

“I --.”

“And I don't need gold.”

“I don't fuckin’ have gold,” he joked weakly. “I'll owe you. A favor, whatever you fuckin’ want, whenever.”

She looked unimpressed, but he didn't know what else to say. After a moment, she said, “C'mere,” and circled the table, walking past him, leading him over to the balconies and out onto one. “Y'know, I'm an illusionist,” she said. “Because it's fun. It makes people happy. They get all surprised, and they laugh, and I love doing that.”

She rubbed her hands together as he stared at her dumbly. Then she pointed out across the grounds, and a massive, blinding fucking fireball erupted suddenly over the lake, cracking the ice covering it with a sound like thunder, dragging clouds of steam into the air.

Ombre looked back to him. “But I do know that fireball spell.” Spots danced in front of his eyes as he blinked at her. “I'll do you that other favor if you hurt Goro.” She stepped forward to jab a finger into his chest, and he found himself taking a step back. “You better be on your best fucking behavior.”

“I'm trying,” he said faintly.

“Well, make sure you try real hard.” She turned away to head back inside. “I'll work on this code for you. I want you to --.” She paused, but didn't look back. “I want you to give me a reason to change my mind about you. I don't like … this. Goro loves you, and so does Roddy, and -- I want to, but I think you're unstable and crazy and you're going to hurt them.”

He could have said, *Yeah, me fuckin’ too, lady.* And, *Not sure about the Roddy thing, though.* Instead, he nodded, then realized she couldn't see that, and said, “Yeah. I -- I don't like it either. I'm sorry …” He didn't even know what to apologize for anymore. “I mean. Yeah. I'll -- I'll fix this.”

Must not've sounded that convincing, because she just muttered, “Whatever,” and blinked away.

###

Mishka curled against his chest, warm and cool at the same time. Hansel pressed his lips against Mishka's head and played with his hair, with one hand, stroking his back with the other. He sighed.

“Mishka.”

“Mm.”

He was sleepy. Hansel didn't want to keep him awake, so he didn't say anything else. Fuckin’ stupid, anyway.

Mishka stirred. “What is it?”

“Never mind.”

I fucked up, he wanted to say. Don't know what I did. I keep fucking up. I should stop picking these kids up and even trying. I'm just making things goddamn worse for them. And I'm making it worse for me, because I can't seem to help upsetting them and that fucking devastates me.

Luci just fuckin’ tolerates me, he wanted to say, and that's the best I've got going for me right now. Jonn's scared of me. Roddy can't stand to be in the same fucking room. Tried to use magic to get away from me. And I fucking shoved him for it. I proved him right.

I keep fucking up, he wanted to say. I don't know what I'm doing. Help me.

He didn't know how Mishka always knew what he needed, but he did. He touched Hansel's face and made him look at him -- still sleepy-eyed, but frowning.

“Hansel. What's wrong, beloved?”

Hansel shook his head silently. Mishka kissed him and shifted to cradle his head against his chest, and gave him time -- petted his hair and let him be miserable, for a bit, and stayed with him through it.

Eventually, muffled against him, Hansel said, “No one fucking taught me how to do this.”

“How to do what?”

“I fucked up with Roddy.”

Mishka drew back to look at him, concerned. “How do you mean?”

Hansel pulled him back in. He couldn't do questions right now. “Don't know what I'm doing,” he muttered. “But I'm fucking doing it wrong.”

Mishka was quiet. Hansel hadn't fucking given him anything to work with, any way to help him. Mishka just rubbed his back and stroked his hair. After a moment, though, he delicately said, “When you say that no one taught you how to do this -- you're right, you know. The whole parenting thing. I'm sure you've made mistakes, but you've made fewer ones than your own parents, from what you've told me.”

Hansel made a noncommittal sound.

“No.” Mishka pulled back again and made Hansel look at him. “You fucking look at me, Hansel Granger. Tell me this, then -- how often -- no, how many times have you ever hit Roddy, or Lucienne or Jonn?”

Hansel opened his mouth, and Mishka cut him off warningly.

“And if you say *oh, I've grabbed them*, or *but I've pushed them from time to time to keep them from walking off cliffs or some such idiocy*, so help me.”

Hansel closed his mouth.

“That's fucking right. Do you yell at them, then, routinely? Any of them? Do you call them names, and do you tell them people will descend from every angle and stone them for making one misstep?” He paused. “No? Do you tell them they're monsters? Do you tell them to stay away from anyone but you? Do you tell them no one else will ever care for them? Do you tell them it's in their blood to hurt people, and tell them to be so goddamn delicate and ginger that they're afraid to come near anyone at all?”

His voice had turned vicious. Hansel just stared at him; he could feel tears pricking in his eyes and refused to blink and let them spill. Mishka sighed, and softened, and pulled Hansel back in, sliding a hand through his hair and giving him the dignity of pretending like he wasn't sniffling.

“You aren't your stepfather, Hans,” Mishka said quietly. “No one taught you what to do, but -- you know a thousand things not to do. It'll be fine. You know those kids all fucking adore you, don't you?”

Another noncommittal sound, a bit weaker this time.

“Well, they do.” Mishka kissed his head. “They're allowed to be upset, sometimes, you know. It doesn't make you a failure of a surrogate father.”

“Don't know what I did,” he mumbled.

“Have you considered the possibility,” Mishka said patiently, “that you didn't goddamn do anything?”

“Hm.”

“Absurd, I know. Just putting it out there. Listen.” He kissed the top of Hansel's head again, then scooted down to be at eye level with him. “Whatever it is, Roddy will settle down. He'll talk to you. Turtle Kid has a good head on his shoulders.” Mishka studied his face for a moment. “He's not going to run away from you, beloved.”

“Hm,” Hansel grunted, with slightly more conviction.

“*Hm*,” Mishka teased. He nestled against Hansel's chest again, wrapping his arms around him, and let him mull it over. Hansel wrapped around him in return without thinking about it, then did think about it and hugged him tightly.

He'd thought about going home, once.

Years ago, when Jonn and Luci had been small. He'd been so fucking scared of messing them up and kept trying to think, *What would my parents do?* But it'd fucked him up, made him realize he would never fucking treat them the way his parents had treated him. He tried to emulate how they'd treated Leigh, instead, all protective and controlling, but that hadn't felt right either. He'd just buried the entire thing and done his best on his own.

But not before standing outside Skyport's northern gate with a bag on his back, watching a merchant caravan leave, thinking, *Mom, you have to help me, what do I do, I ended up with kids I never asked for just like you did and I'm afraid I'm fucking it up.*

*Were you afraid you'd fuck it up too?* he wanted to ask her. *Were you doing your best too?*

He'd turned around and gone back into the city, and blown the money he'd been planning to use for passage on cheap, foul booze and a couple of pretty prostitutes instead, and spent a few days making himself forget he'd ever entertained those questions. Shambled into the port hungover and found a new ship, when he ran out of gold, put it out of his head. Tried to do his best with the kids, even knowing his actual best would be seeing them more often, and probably not fucking drinking so much around them, but he kept getting so goddamn nervous about seeing them at all, and --

He sighed into Mishka's hair.

He'd thought about going home, once. After they'd gotten married. When he was so goddamn happy. It'd been a little spiteful -- wanted to rub it in his stepfather's fucking face. *Look. Look what I did. I'm not a fucking monster. Someone does love me. Someone goddamn amazing.* And -- to show his mother -- something. That he'd fucking turned out all right, somehow, he guessed. That he didn't need her help.

He pulled Mishka tight against him and closed his eyes. Fuckin’ stupid. Like seeing his fucking mother would clear anything up, or make him feel better. His family had been dead to him for twenty goddamn years. No sense in resurrecting them now.

Kept thinking, though, about Goro's voice when he'd said *I have to go visit my mother. Now. I need to.* He'd recognized it. Felt it a lot when he was younger and always ignored it, let it clot and scab over in his chest, turn into a scar. Gave him fucking phantom pains in Amari's kitchen, demanding to be acknowledged as real, as still existent.

In the back of his head somewhere, he knew, he still asked himself what his mom would do. She'd speak very quietly to Roddy, in a level voice laced with steel, and she'd've made him understand that she was trying to do what was best for him. She would have kept him calm. She never would have yelled or shoved him. But she wouldn't have told the kid he could talk to her, either. Wouldn't have asked what was wrong. Or what she'd done to upset him.

Either way, he guessed. They'd both fucked up.

Kept thinking, though, about what she might look like now. How she was doing. What she would say to him -- if she'd say anything at all. And about Leigh -- he'd be what, now, twenty-seven? Did he even really remember Hansel? Did he fucking hate him? How the hell could Hansel understand the relationship Roddy and Jonn had when he'd fucking abandoned his own baby brother? The two of them probably had it figured out better than he did.

Roddy had written: *I’m the worst at family.*

Hansel wanted to tell him that wasn't fucking true. And he wanted to fucking … do better.