Thom Rainier (Blackwall) (tryingagain) wrote in thedoorway, @ 2013-02-13 19:25:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log, hermes, luke castellan, may castellan |
Log: Luke, May, and Hermes
Who: Luke Castellan, May Castellan, and Hermes
When: Wednesday, February 11, a little after 8 p.m.
Where: May and Hermes's apartment
What: Luke gets the big news
Rating: G
Luke was walking down the hallway with an easy smile, because he had absolutely no idea what he was walking into. Later he might say that he'd be lured in under false pretenses. His mother had texted him with an offer of cookies. Luke pretty much never turned down cookies. It still felt strange, visiting his mother and knowing that the cookies would actually be edible, but it was good. He enjoyed his visits with his mom. There was a certain amount of bittersweet longing for what could have been, if Fate had set them all on a different path, but Luke was getting better all the time at living for the present and the future. His stomach still knotted up at the idea of picking up a sword again, and he'd quite deliberately chosen to spend Compitalia cooking for the Victory Feast with Peeta rather than watching the gladiator contests, and sometimes he still had days when the guilt of his past seemed like it might crush him, but he was carrying on better now. Talking with Audrey helped, and Thalia forgiving him helped, his work at the youth center helped...in general, his days were easier than they had been at first. He could go to eat cookies with his mom now without it having to be a meeting fraught with anxiety. Or at least it wasn't until he walked in and discovered that his father was there, too. Luke wasn't angry at his father anymore, but what relationship they had was still awkward and stilted. Hermes wanted him to forgive himself and to believe that he was loved. Luke wasn't comfortable with any of that, and sometimes he still thought his father was waiting for a moment to trip him up and see if he'd fail again. At the end of the day, Hermes was always going to be a god first; even as determined as Luke was to do things right, trusting him and taking him at his word wasn't going to come easily. Luke's smile didn't falter, but his surprise was evident. "Oh, hey! Sorry, I didn't know you were coming too. You leave any cookies for me?" He added the joke, because it was the most reliable method he knew for keeping the anxiety and awkwardness to a minimum. May really was nervous about this. All of this. She had known from the beginning that there was always going to be a chance that she could conceive another child, especially with Hermes. After all, it hadn't taken them very long the first time. But she had thought she was still so close to Luke's birth- at least in her timeline- that she had a little while before she could. Either way, it had happened. She hadn't meant to make it seem like some sort of intervention when Luke arrived to find Hermes there as well. She could feel the tension in the room and she hated it- her stomach was already in knots, both out of nerves and a lingering morning sickness. At Luke's arrival she smiled and greeted him with a brief hug. "Hey. Sorry, I thought I'd mentioned. But no, there are plenty of cookies for all of us!" She led him to the kitchen passing him a plate and a mug of milk before pouring herself some grapefruit juice. Most of the time she didn't drink it, but she'd been craving it more and more recently-- she remembered doing the same with Luke. Hermes forced a smile, feeling the awkwardness as acutely as Luke. It would never stop paining him that he had failed so utterly with his beloved son, but he desperately hoped that the new child May carried would give him the second chance he worried Luke never would. A second child, of course, would never replace Luke in his heart. Nothing could do that. He would love the boy for the rest of eternity, no matter how much anger or hatred his son threw back in his face. He could understand, he supposed, why Luke was so angry, although he felt it to be desperately misplaced. It had not been his fault, what had happened. He had been as much a victim of fate as his son, and every moment he wished that things had been able to turn out differently. Nonetheless, there were things that could not be said, or had been said so many times already that they had lost all of their meaning. So instead of apologizing again, he would simply try to move forward with their relationship. And hopefully things would get better. He raised an eyebrow at Luke's question. "The cookies are for you," he said with a shrug. "I haven't touched them. I am here because...this is something that should be discussed as a family." Referring to them as a family, while accurate, was still strange, and he broke his eye contact with Luke at that point, wishing that this did not always have to be so awkward. Luke's smile had fallen at Hermes' statement. Nothing good ever came of the phrase Something That Should Be Discussed. It was right up there with We Need To Talk on the list of discussion openers that never went well. Between that and his parents' collective insistence on not recognizing his cookie comment as jest, Luke grew increasingly worried. The idea of a baby hadn't occurred to him. Ever since he'd come through the Tesseract to be greeted by Annabeth insisting that of course she would forgive him, Luke had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. He ran rapidly through a list of worst case scenarios: They didn't want anything to do with him anymore, and they were moving away, or they had finally come to their senses and realized Luke wasn't worth of all this forgiveness people kept handing him, or Hermes had decided that he needed to have a duel to the death with Jason Grace, or the gods had made a mistake and they were sending him to Tartarus right away, or this actually was Tartarus and the part where they reminded him of everything he could have had was over now...the possibilities were endless. "It was a joke," he said, feeling vaguely numb as he steeled himself for the inevitable. "About the cookies. I...I didn't mean anything by it." Hermes crossed the room, putting his hand on his son's shoulder. He seemed tense, and there really was no need for it - not here and now. This was a happy thing, a good thing, and while he wanted to blurt out the news right now, it was not truly his place to do so. "Your mother has news, Luke." "I know! No, love, you're fine. I promise. Seriously. Have as many cookies as you want- there are plenty. For all of us." May looked up, noticing the nervous expression on Luke's face. She sobered slightly, then busied herself with putting the juice and milk away before moving to a seat at the table. "I just- I wanted to speak with you, Luke. About your father and me. We're- well, I'm- you're-" She broke off, fumbling slightly. "You're going to have a sibling." For a second, he thought he must have heard her wrong. Luke blinked as he pieced the words together, one at a time, and processed them into a clear sentence, and finally got the idea to take hold in his brain: his mother was going to have a baby. With his father. He was going to have a brother or sister. Of course, that was assuming that his mother didn't get abruptly yanked back to the other side of the Tesseract again, where she would be mad and alone. Other than that, though...this had to be a happy thing. His mother was going to get a chance at actually raising a child now, with all her faculties about her and with plenty of help. His father would get to be there for this kid, who was unlikely to have a dark and terrible fate hanging over its head. The two of them, together, would get to have a kid who wasn't a complete mess, and that was great for them. The fact that it felt a little like being replaced was immaterial. "Congratulations," he said, smiling. "That's awesome. I'm really happy for you guys." May bit her lower lip, watching Luke. "Are you sure?" The question slipped out before she'd meant it to, and she reached across the table for his hand. "I'm not trying to- I didn't mean for it to happen. But- I don't want you to think I don't want to be involved in your life, too, Luke. It's not going to take away from you, okay? I'm just- I'm so nervous that you'll think I'm trying to replace you and that isn't it at all, I promise." "No, I know that," Luke said, laughing. "Of course it's not. C'mon, Mom - it's not like I'm four years old and don't know that people get siblings sometimes." He was trying to convince himself as much as he was her, but Luke refused to behave like a pouting child about this. He knew well enough, intellectually speaking, that everything he was saying was true. He also knew that after the mess he'd made of his last life, he owed it to his parents to be enthusiastically happy about this new kid. He would do everything he could to make sure that New Kid's childhood was as different from his as humanly possible. It was never going to be scared, or alone, or hungry, or even the least bit sad if Luke could help it. So Luke stepped forward and hugged his mother again, tightly this time, and making sure he didn't let his smile waver. "Congratulations," he said again, and then let go to turn and offer an appropriately manly handshake to his father. "And same to you." Hermes returned his handshake, a small smile creeping across. "I know that you have had half-brothers and sisters, but this will be something different. Your mother and I are very excited, and we hope that you can have a part in your sibling's life. This is how our lives should have gone, Luke." He stopped short of calling them a 'family' - that was still awkward to him, but it was implied by his words. "No, I know that, Luke, I just- it's a lot. I didn't think- I didn't realize that- I don't know. It doesn't matter. I just- I want us all to be happy, if we can manage it." She hoped they would be able to. May wanted things to work out for them all so badly, and she didn't always know quite what she could do. May stepped into Luke's embrace and hugged him closely, closing her eyes tightly for a moment. She was smiling a bit as she stepped back and he turned to Hermes. "I would like for you to be involved, though, Luke. If you're interested. I've seen how good you are with kids, and I'm sure you'll be a great rolemodel for this little one." At least this time he'd managed to say "congratulations" to his father without immediately being questioned about it. Maybe they were getting somewhere on this 'attempting to get along' thing. "Yeah, I...I definitely want to be involved," Luke agreed, even though he wasn't as sure as his mom was about him being a good role model. As far as he was concerned, he was mostly a great case study in What Not To Do. Maybe that could be a good enough, though. He'd dedicated almost all of his time here to giving support and help to other kids so they wouldn't end up like he did; he could help at least that much with this kid, too. He still felt awkward about...well, nearly every relationship he had, but he'd do his best. It was all he could do. "Thanks," he added nonetheless, because he wanted them to know that he appreciated it. "For telling me, and for, you know...wanting me to be part of things." "You don't have to thank us, Luke. Not for that. I know that I- that I failed you, before. But I want to make it up to you, aside from- from this.." May motioned to her midsection. "I don't- I don't want to keep secrets from you, and I didn't want you to think I was hiding anything from you. And I want to just- to do better for you from here on out." "No, no no..." Luke said quickly. "Look, stop with the--" He couldn't really ask her to let go of her own guilt, Luke realized, when he wasn't willing to let go of his. He didn't think she should be so hard on herself - she'd just made one mistake, and it hadn't been her fault that things went wrong because of it. He'd deliberately done the wrong things for the wrong reasons. But Audrey kept telling him that people's feelings belonged to them, and they weren't something you could change or critique or take away. You shouldn't even try to do that, because sometimes people needed their feelings. "How about we make a deal, okay?" he offered, a little more quietly. "You don't beat yourself up where I can hear it, and I won't beat myself up where you have to hear it. As long as we're around each other, we can just...cut ourselves a little break. Maybe?" "I think that sounds like a good plan," Hermes interjected, although he had not been directly addressed. It hardly mattered, of course. Gods commented on things that didn't directly concern them all the time. It was kind of the whole point of being a god. He looked between his son and May, feeling a strange sort of contentment. No, things weren't perfect. They were far from being perfect. But in contrast to the world he had left behind, in this world, at least, he had hope - the chance that perhaps things could get better. Luke was alive, whatever that meant, and he was glad for it. May was sane, and wonderful, and they were going to have another child. As much as his responsibilities pulled him back towards his New York, there was part of him that wanted to stay here, forever, in the world that should have been. "This is our chance," he said, crossing his arms across his chest. "To be the family we always should have been. If we can just put the past behind us, that is." |