Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a relatively calm day, all things considered. Jaiden had been invited over by Baghera to hang out with her, Charlie and Quackity at her house for the evening since they said they wanted to hang out, and just happened to need a fourth person to play Uno. It wasn’t said, but there was a silent understanding that they also wanted to check in on her, make sure she was holding up alright. It had been a little over three months since the day her son…

It had been a little over three months since that day. Jaiden wouldn’t say she was doing okay, but she was doing better. The unbearable despair she felt in the beginning was lessened, pushed to the back burner for the time being. Moving out of their house – Roier’s house – probably hadn’t helped her to adjust in the way she thought it would in hindsight.

Her last conversation with Roier was at his wedding. She missed him, but he seemed like he was doing better. Cellbit seemed to make him happy, and that was all she wanted. She needed him to be happy, with or without her. Ever since she moved out, she couldn’t shake the lingering thought that she had made a mistake, that she should run back to him and bury her face in his shoulder, pretend she’s just coming back from a long day of mining and sit down at the table, dinner already set and her best friend by her side.

Hola, Jaiden, he’d say, voice soft warm, waiting for her in the kitchen. Te extrañé. Comamos juntos. Te quiero.

Nothing could make her regret her house in Bobby Fields; nothing could take away the quiet satisfaction and melancholy feeling she felt for the home she had built in her son’s memory, in remembrance of her first family. But she missed the space her boys took up. She missed having someone to come home to. She missed having someone know how she liked her seasonings, and knowing how someone wanted their sheets folded. She missed the domesticity. All she’s left with now is the absence, an echo, the phantom feeling of a steady hand at her back and a smaller hand clutching her pantleg.

Jaiden sighs softly, clearing the grief from her lungs, taking in the warm, homey atmosphere of Baghera’s living room. The lights are dim, and the setting sun glows lazily through one of the windows by the patchwork couch, in perfect view of her armchair. Jaiden watches the light dance across the floor, her eyes tracing the faded colour of the floorboards that have been bleached by the sun. Her gaze slides up to the sunlight peeking out from behind a hill, just shy of sinking out of sight. The sunbeams shimmer and waver in the air as the sky grows steadily darker, the pink and orange tainted clouds slowly fading into blue. She watches the sky, sun stinging her eyes, letting the light wash over her.

Jaiden settles back against the armchair, her mind drifting as she feels her feathers drag gently against the cushions. The chatter of Quackity, Charlie and Baghera in the background acts as pleasant white noise as her thoughts wander, her eyes never leaving the sun. She wonders what Roier would be doing now. Maybe he’d be spending time with Cellbit and Richarlyson around the island. Maybe visiting Foolish and Leo at their builds. She hopes he isn’t lonely without her. He certainly shouldn’t be alone.

 The sun dips lower. The room is darker, though no less warm. She straightens up as the sun is dragged below the horizon, taking the light with it. She cranes her neck slightly as she tries to follow it, a strange tug on her heart begging to give chase, not to let it leave.

“Jaiden, what do you think?”
Jaiden blinks rapidly as her attention is pulled back to Quackity sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her, opening her mouth before she can register his question.

“Huh? Sorry, what?” She smiles apologetically as Quackity rolls his eyes, Charlie and Baghera watching them both from their place on the couch. Baghera is using Charlie’s shoulder as her personal headrest, half on top of him, but Charlie doesn’t seem to mind.

Baghera stretches lazily, almost hitting Charlie in the face, who lightly cuffs her hand away. She leans the opposite way, falling backwards onto the other half of the couch so she can rest her legs in Charlie’s lap.

“Quackity was just asking if one of us turned into a cow, would we still taste good?” Baghera visibly bites back a smile as Quackity tries to interject.
“That is not what I was saying-!”

“I think Charlie would taste the worst. He’s too slimy.” Baghera makes a face at Charlie, snickering as he gasps in indignation.

“I will have you know, Baghera, I taste perfectly fine! Great, even!” Charlie huffs, crossing his arms and sinking back into the couch. “Mariana says-”

Baghera and Quackity both begin to shout over him, shaking their heads and gesturing for him to shut up as Charlie laughs at their reactions. Jaiden shakes her head in amusement, chuckling as Baghera knees Charlie in the stomach and Quackity throws a cushion at his head.

“God, Jesus, my bones! Didn’t know you guys were so sex negative…” Charlie doubles over, clutching his stomach and grinning with no real annoyance. Quackity continues to shout at Charlie, who starts gesturing wildly as they both grow louder, and Baghera turns her attention back to Jaiden.

“What do you think, Jaiden? Who would taste best?”

Jaiden tilts her head, smiling.

“I thought the question was about if we could still taste good if we were cows.”
Baghera shrugs, pulling her legs towards her and sitting up on the couch, chin on her knees as Charlie launches himself off the couch at Quackity and they both start trying to smother each other with pillows.

“Well, now it’s changed. Who tastes best, do you think?”

Jaiden hums, thinking.

“Just out of us?”

“No,” says Baghera, shuffling out of the way of a thrown pillow. “I guess we can include everyone on the island too.”

Jaiden nods, lifting her legs up onto her chair and out of the way of Charlie and Quackity’s pillow-fight-turned-wrestling-match. Despite the absurdness of the topic, she finds herself genuinely considering her answer.

She briefly thinks of Foolish, but he doesn’t seem like a good candidate. His whole golden shark, totem, whatever thing, didn’t exactly make him a top contender for cannibalism. Would it still be cannibalism if he was turned into a cow? Is it even cannibalism now if he’s a totem and she’s an avian? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, he’s out of the question.

Quackity? Jaiden doesn’t think he’d be too happy if she picked him, and while they were definitely friends, she didn’t think they were close enough friends to consider eating him, even as a cow. Is eating someone a compliment? Charlie seems to think so, if his reaction to being called too slimy to eat meant anything.

Charlie was also out – too gross. Cellbit? Not close enough friends yet, and the whole threatening-to-hunt-him-down thing was a bit too fresh. Baghera? A little on the nose, and a bit too much feathers. Maybe she’d lose them as a cow though, who knows.

“Then… I’d have to say Roier,” Jaiden says, her voice confident and clear.

“Really?” Baghera raises her eyebrows, taken aback slightly. “You sound so sure.”

Charlie looks up from his position on the floor, pinning a flailing Quackity to the ground by sitting on his back.

“Charlie get the fuck off of me-!”

Quackity is quickly cut off by a pillow being shoved under the bottom half of his face and Charlie pinning him down. He slumps in defeat, face down on the ground as Charlie pretends he isn’t sitting on a guy.

“Didn’t know you were like that, Jaiden,” Charlie says, smirking at her. “I don’t think Cellbit would take very kindly to you saying that about his husband.”

It isn’t malicious in any way. She knows Charlie isn’t trying to be anything more than teasing and playful, and he’d never say anything he knew would upset his friends, at least not while he’s in a better mental place. So why does Jaiden feel a stone sink into her stomach?

She splutters, floundering for a defense. “That isn’t what I was- I wouldn’t be trying to—"

Charlie’s grin grows wider, taking her stuttering as an opening to start a bit. His tone is cheery, practiced, but his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Well, I mean, Cellbit did kind of steal your husband, right?”

“What?! He isn’t my-! He didn’t steal-”

Charlie raises his voice over her own, drowning out her weak attempts to speak up.

“Homewreckers at every turn on this island, huh? At least I’m not alone in being abandoned by unfaithful partners, amiright?”

“Uh… Charlie-?” Baghera is barely heard over Charlie’s continued onslaught of words, his grin stretching his cheeks a bit too much, his eyes a bit too bright to be believable.

The stone grows heavier. Her chest feels tight. Baghera and Quackity tilt their heads towards her in concern, eyeing Jaiden’s wings where they flare up and twitch behind her back.

“He didn’t abandon me, that isn’t-” Jaiden tries again to cut him off, but it feels weak even to her own ears. Her heart is a hummingbird, its anxious fluttering making her chest twinge. Its twittering tries to no avail to make itself heard over the din, crying out to no one as Charlie carries on.

“It’s okay, Jaiden! Fine, you don’t have to admit it, but maybe it’d be good to take chunk out of him, right? Cathartic, I get it, no judgement! It’s not like he needs to stick around for the family anymore, right? He killed your kid; I think you deserve to be a little-”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Charlie’s mouth clicks shut, his rant screeching to a halt. His posture snaps ramrod straight and he pales before his skin gains a faintly green hue. The sudden silence is deafening, Charlie staring into nothing, his eyes wide and glassy, the once warm room now sullen and tense, its inhabitants frozen in place.

Charlie barely manages to catch himself as he falls sideways onto the ground, Quackity pushing out and away from under him to gape at him in pure shock.

Baghera makes a sort of strangled choking sound from her place on the couch, and anxiously flicks her eyes between Charlie, Quackity, Jaiden, and back again, her hands clenched tightly on her knees.

And Jaiden-

She expects to feel outrage. For the tightening coil in her chest to snap, setting off a barrage of red-hot words to articulate the deep hurt she feels. To call him a hypocrite, to demand he explain how he has the audacity to say this to her when his own daughter is dead, killed in an eerily similar way to her baby boy. To bring up the careless swing of his sword and his wife’s bloodied blade. She expects to want to cut him deep in return, have her grief overwhelm her and set fire to the room they’re sitting in, let her heart crack open for the second time and stain this stupid, tacky carpet to all hell.

Jaiden expects to feel anger. To feel anything.

She catches sight of a painting on the wall, just behind Baghera’s head. She can see the faint outline of a little girl with butterfly wings and a red beret. Some cartoonish ducks, stars, robots, and a moon float around her in the background. The girl is smiling. There’s a smudge of paint in the corner, left behind by a careless, tiny thumb.

The tightness in her chest morphs into a frigid, icelike fog, blanketing her body and numbing her senses. She feels nothing but the familiar, quiet disconnect she felt when first hearing the news, watching herself from outside her body as Quackity crawls forward in front of her chair. He could be saying something, but she couldn’t say for sure. Her head is full of cotton, and she can’t stop staring at that little girl, and she can’t stop seeing her little boy.

She just feels cold.

“-aiden, hey, you’re okay. Do you need us to give you some space?”

Belatedly, Jaiden registers a warm hand on her shoulder and a veil of blonde hair at the edge of her vision. She turns her head slowly up at Baghera, who had at some point come over to stand above Jaiden with the softest eyes she can manage. Her presence does nothing to chase away the chill in her bones or the ache in her chest.

“Jaiden…?” Quackity’s voice is gentle and soothing, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. Jaiden doesn’t even think she’d have reacted if they had shouted and shook her.

Jaiden lets out a shaky breath, feeling her lungs relax as the air is released. When had she started holding it?

“I’m-” Her voice cracks terribly, and she clears her throat to ease it. She wishes they’d stop staring.

“I’m okay. I promise.” She gives a smile that feels a lot like a grimace, and stands slowly, forcing her wings to flatten against her back. Baghera’s hand slides off her shoulder, taking the warmth with her.

“I think I’m just gonna go home.” Jaiden shakes her wings out and straightens her back as much as she can to assure them that she isn’t too affected by the situation. It’s forced confidence, it’s self-preservation.

It’s not working.

Baghera stands as well, Quackity not far behind her, hovering by her shoulder with a quiet stare. Charlie hasn’t moved from the floor. He hasn’t even looked up.

“Do you want us to walk you home?” Baghera offers, her voice carefully quiet, as if something too loud might set Jaiden off. It’s a kindness; Jaiden knows that. It feels a lot like pity to her heart.

She shakes her head, pauses a little too long.

“I’m okay,” she repeats, like a broken record, like an echo. “I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

She moves like she’s in a dream, her body shambling on autopilot out into the hall and turning towards the front door. She hears Baghera and Quackity call out somewhere behind her, and she responds the same words as before, reassuring the empty space she moves through. She pulls the door open with fumbling fingers, her voice still replaying that same empty melody. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

The wind hits her full in the face, and for a moment she can’t tell the cold of the night from the cold in her chest. They blend into each other, becoming one with the other. The cold on the inside is the same on the outside, and if she really tries, she can trick herself into thinking that means she’s warm. What is grief if not a cold night on her own.

She stumbles through the garden and out the gate, watching her feet as they fall upon the dirt path. The trees in the wind creak and sway, the sound a lifetime away. In the distance a cicada sings, keeping time with her staccato breath. She looks up and away from the earth and finds the sky looking back at her, its one white eye wide open. She breathes, slow, in and out, trying to regain the rhythm. The night stares back, unblinking.

The moon’s glow is nothing like the sunlight that warmed her just an hour ago, and she finds she resents it for not being what she needs. She can’t remember what she needs. What does she need?

Home. She needs to go home.

Where is home? Jaiden asks herself, blowing dragon’s breath into the night. My home is my heart, but my heart is untethered without him. Where do we go?

To our house, whispers her heart. Our house is home.

Bobby Fields? Her stomach twists painfully at the thought.

Some days that house is a blessing, a place where nothing is sad, where she can spend her time with what little she has left of her son. But that house is a double-edged sword, a careful trap of nostalgia and sorrow. Going back to it now feels like a punishment. A reminder of what she’s lost.

No, her heart demands. Our house. I want to go home.

Jaiden watches the trees sway and hears the cicada singing. The moonlight brushes over the face a pond, soft in its touch, leaving a glimmer behind. She turns and sees the tiny gate wide open, swinging gently in the wind. The lights in the window are on and she can see shadows moving behind the curtains.

She rests a hand on her chest, tries to center herself. In, out, she remembers to breathe.

In, out. In, out.

Her heart gives a steady thump under her palm, a quiet plea.

I want to go home.

Jaiden begins to walk.

Chapter Text

Between one step and the next, Jaiden is standing just before the bridge in front of their old house. Roier’s old house, she reminds herself. She doesn’t know if she’s allowed to call it their house anymore. Months ago, or maybe yesterday, it had been theirs as a collective, always a trio and never apart. She misses it. Maybe she can have it back, just for tonight. One night is all she needs.

Jaiden crosses the bridge, her heart thrumming louder with every step. Whether out of lingering anxiety, or relief at the familiar sight, she doesn’t know. She wants to have one last night to just be in this house, sleep in her old bed, pretend for a few hours that time is stopped still. Her baby is at a sleepover and her best friend is at work and she’s going to see them in the morning and hug them hello. Nothing is wrong and she can rest for the night and wait for her family to come home tomorrow.

They always come home. Nobody has left yet.

She feels her communicator vibrate inside her jacket and she pauses, fishing it out of her pocket out of habit.

Slimecicle whispers to you: im sorry about that

Slimecicle whispers to you: thst was shitty of me idont know why i did that

Slimecicle whispers to you: i hope youre okay. i know roier didnt mean it and i know he loves you i think im just jaelous lmao

Slimecicle whispers to you: *jealous

Slimecicle whispers to you: ill leave you alone now. im sorry again i was wrong for hurting you

Her moment of calm bursts like a soap bubble. Her heartbeat roars in her ears as Jaiden shoves her communicator back in her pocket, letting go as if it had burned her.

If she were in a better headspace, she would have appreciated how Charlie took the effort to apologise for his words. He wasn’t exactly known for his emotional breakthroughs, more inclined to denial and repression. But right now, all it does is remind her of her reality, why it’s so cold, why she feels such a strong need to return to this place.

She stops just outside the door, hesitating.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe it wasn’t smart to come back, where she knows there are still toys in the bathtub and untouched clothes in the hamper. It’s the same house, with the same walls and floors and beds – but it’s a pale imitation of what she had. A snapshot frozen in time, perfectly encapsulating everything she’s lost. She doesn’t think she can take the sight of cobwebs in a place that used to be so alive, so full of warmth. She can’t, she can’t, she can’t-

She takes a staggering step back, swallowing her panic and clenching her hands to lessen the shaking. She turns, resigned to another night in an equally haunted house, in a faux happy field, without her family and surrounded by her love and loss and longing.

No! Her heart cries out, panicked. The love still lingers!

Jaiden stills, confused. She softens her breathing to listen.

It is not the same, her heart admits quietly. It will never be the same.

She thinks of how little she sees Roier nowadays. How little she smiles. How often she has cold leftovers for dinner. She thinks of how tonight in Baghera’s house was the first time in a long while she’s been around people that weren’t Foolish or Cucurucho.

She thinks of the empty house in front of her and frowns, etching deep lines into her face.

Yes, she agrees, the ever-present fog clogging her throat. It is not the same, and it won’t ever be again.

Her heart knocks gently against her ribcage, a request to continue listening.

Not the same, her heart repeats, agrees. But the love does not go away. She might go by a different name, but the grief in this house does not want to hurt you.

Jaiden closes her eyes, letting her breath fill her chest and leave as a heaving sigh. She looks at the overgrown wheat by the river and the untrimmed trees on either side of the house. There are scrapes on the underside of the balcony from her son’s attempts to hang upside-down like Roier, and fingerprints smudged on the bottom of the windowpanes, the highest he could reach.

She listens to the wind and thinks she hears his laugh. The leaves rustle in the wind and echo the flapping of his wings. Somewhere a branch creaks and his claws scrape along with it.

She listens to the quiet and sees evidence of life in every corner. When had she stopped listening? How can she find the strength to start again?

You have been grieving. Her heart thumps slow and sad, a steady drum from inside her. You have been grieving for a very long time.

What else was she supposed to do? Her sun is gone, and the dark is what she is left with. Grief is a cold night on her own. She’s been living that for the past three months.

But love is also a night on your own, her heart insists. A secret you keep to yourself, you hold close to your chest, right next to me. You should know that. It doesn’t go away.

Jaiden huffs, unconvinced. There is no love in the dark. There is no hope without the sun. She thinks of her family, bright and beautiful, untouched by shadow. That is what love is, she thinks.

The moonlight is sunlight just the same, her heart sighs. It does not look like sunlight. It does not feel like sunlight. But it comes from the same source. Please, don’t resent her for adapting.

Jaiden furrows her brow, frustrated. Nothing is the same if the feeling is different. How can you stay the same if everything changes?

You changed, her heart reminds her.

Exactly, she thinks, sharp and bitter. She changed. She is not the same.

Her heart hums, considering.

Were you still you when you met your family for the first time?

Jaiden turns her back to the door of the house, sliding down and onto the ground with a gentle thud. Images of dragon tails and spiderwebs fill her head.

Yes, she thinks. That was me.

Were you still you when you grew to love them?

She runs her hands through the cold, wet grass, absentmindedly ripping out blades with her nails.

Yes. I never stopped loving them.

What about when you spent every day with them, when you grew confident, and proud?

Yes. They made me better.

So, you were still you even though you changed? When they made you ‘better’?

She shakes her head, brushing off the dew on her hands onto her pants. No, she thinks. That was different. She only grew, she did not change. When the grief broke her, when she closed herself off and stopped feeling happy. When she told Roier she’d stay, that nothing could ever tear them apart - but then Bobby…

She lost Bobby. That is when she changed. When she became someone else. Something else.

Growing is changing, her heart reprimands. You only grieve because of who you are and who you were. You have changed, but you are fundamentally the same. You are not someone else. You have been broken down and hurt, but you have adapted. You will never stop adapting. Learn to accept that now and stop running from this grief that shadows us.

Jaiden blinks as her eyes begin to sting. Her heart is wrong. It must be. The grief in this house has left no room for the love they left behind. She doesn’t know why she thought this could be what she needed in the first place.

Because you know that grief is not really the loss of love, but the ache of it. Your love is so big, so true, but it has nowhere to go but your head, and your heart, and this house. Stay in this house just one more night and move on. You have been grieving and loving but you have forgotten to live throughout it. Spend one more night with him and live. He wants more than anything for you to live.

Jaiden buries her face in her hands, feels nothing but the constant thud, thud, thud in her chest, and the hard metal door against her back.

She can’t go back to Bobby Fields. She knows that.

She raises her head and looks up at the sky, watches the stars blinking back at her. They’re almost like fireflies stuck in a big black puddle, swimming high above her head. They circle, shimmering and warping, then still again. She dries her eyes.

Steeling herself, Jaiden rises to her feet, turning to face the door. She waits one, two breaths.

Three-

She opens the door.

Chapter Text

Jaiden pushes the door open, the motion familiar, the lock recognizing her easily. She steps over the threshold before stopping dead, wide-eyed and standing in the doorframe.

She feels a sudden, violent urge to flee, but a stronger urge keeps her rooted to the spot, staring in shocked silence.

In the kitchen is her heart, disheveled and hunched over the lit stove, turned to look at her in startlement. Jaiden can smell the heady start of a meal, and it makes her chest ache at the familiarity. She didn't expect to come home with dinner waiting for her, and it's both comforting and utterly terrifying to know she isn't alone here.

Her heart breaks the silence first, raising an unsure hand and waving to her.

"Hello, Jaiden."

Jaiden tries to give a smile, raises a hand in return.

"Hola, Roier."