Octavia mourned her alone time being disrupted as the door to the balcony slid open with a thwack. The air that night was slightly cooler than usual, providing some much needed relief from the stuffiness of the apartment. She still didn’t entirely like visiting, but she was trying her best to mend the remaining fragile thread of trust she held with her father.
“Hey, kiddo.”
“I’m not a fucking kid,” Octavia replied with a pout. “I’ve already turned eighteen.”
Blitzø snorted on his way over to rest his arms next to her on the balcony railing. “Y’know, you’re just like my Loonie sometimes.”
“Really?” Octavia said, eyes shining. “I mean— that’s cool, I guess.”
He gave her a fond look as she turned away, embarrassed. The girl’s shyness was endearing, but so was the fire that burned deep inside her and reminded Blitzø not only of Loona, but also of his own younger self. She probably wouldn’t be as excited about being compared to him, though.
Part of it was teenage angst, he had no doubt, but the rest of it was just her. Octavia had to have inherited something from her bitch of a mother, and as long as she kept it under control, that rage could be a powerful force in the future. It would keep her from ending up in Stolas’ position, at the very least.
“I know you’ve been through a whole lot of shit with your family,” Blitzø said, “and honestly, I get it. More than you might think.”
Octavia scoffed. “What would you know about royal families?”
“I don’t know jack shit about royal families, but I sure do know about broken families. One parent putting up with too much bullshit from the other tends to fuck you up when you’re stuck in the middle of it.”
She turned her head sharply in that eerie owlish way, searching Blitzø’s face for something, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her. His gaze remained low, past the balcony and over the rooftops of IMP City, although he wasn’t really seeing anything.
“Mama— my mother, she was the best hellborn that ever existed, in my eyes,” Blitzø spoke, voice weaker than he’d hoped. “I had never understood why she stayed with my shithead of a dad, why she didn’t just tell him to fuck off and be happy, but sometimes it’s really just not that simple.”
“I’ve heard that one before.” Fiddling with her fingers over the railing, Octavia was pensive but clearly still on edge. “Why can’t anything ever be simple? Why is it all so fucking much?”
“I don’t got the answer to that, sweetie, I’m sorry. Some parents really can’t leave, others just think they’re doing the right thing by staying together for their kids. Doesn’t make it your fault, but I know how fuckin’ hard that is to believe. I still blame myself for… what happened with my mom, but even before that I felt like I had to be some kind of fucking protector, like I could make up for her shitty sacrifice. Fat lot of good that did me.”
“Isn’t it my fault, though?” Octavia asked as she shook, fists clenched tight in frustration. “He spent all those years miserable, just because he thought that sparing me was worth more than his happiness. If I had never been born, he could’ve been free.”
Blitzø turned to grab her shoulders firmly, looking straight into her eyes this time. “Don’t you ever say that shit. No one would be better off without you, I can promise you that. And if you want the harsh fucking truth, some other royal kid would’ve been popped out in your place and treated the exact same damn way. You’ve never been the issue here, Via. It’s this whole fucking system.”
Her eyes watered a little at the conviction in his voice. He was an asshole, but he was her dad’s asshole, and she couldn’t deny that she appreciated him being real with her. Sometimes it felt like Octavia had never experienced anything real her entire life until this imp and his daughter came barreling in. Her existence could reasonably be separated into two Pre-Blitzø and Post-Blitzø chunks, and she wanted to despise it. She truly, truly did.
But once she found out that her parents’ marriage had been arranged, that her dad didn’t betray her mother so much as finally choose something for himself, she couldn’t help but cave and give him another chance. It didn’t undo the years of strain and the feeling of dread that lingered from the divorce, but… seeing her dad start to thrive in this shitty old apartment was something of a wake up call. While he seemed tired, he had also never looked so content before.
A large part of Octavia still blamed herself for his unhappiness. She wanted to lash out and make him feel all her pent-up pain and anger, but the few times she did shout or shove away his attempts at affection it made him recoil so pitifully that she began trying to refrain. Purposefully blocking out the potential reasons for that specific reaction, she had continued to chalk them up to foolish, paranoid thoughts because surely her father wasn’t a victim of the awful things her mind conjured.
Octavia wasn’t sure how much Blitzø knew about her parents’ marriage, but with the way he spoke it sounded like he was either more knowledgeable than her or had put two and two together much earlier. Oh, how she wished to be a child again just to avoid doing the math of this blatantly obvious equation.
“She… did she hurt him?” Octavia ended up asking.
Head tilted and brows drawn together in sympathy, Blitzø responded, “You know that’s not my place to say, sweetie.”
She let out an emotionless chuckle. “So that’s a yes, then.” Kicking at the balcony bars, she yelled, “Fuck!”
Sighing, Blitzø rested his forehead against his arms before carefully considering what to add. He didn’t want to say anything he’d regret or that Stolas would resent him for sharing, but someone was going to have to clue the girl in on most of what went down eventually.
“Stolas’ relationship with her was… not the greatest,” he decided to start with.
“You don’t have to be all fucking cryptic about it. I can handle it.”
“I’m sure you can, Via, but I’ve already made too many mistakes to risk your dad losing you again just because I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut.”
The young owl scuffed her foot against the concrete landing, brimming with a sourness she couldn’t put into words. “He won’t lose me. I promise.”
Blitzø gave her a long, intense look and then conceded at the familiar stubbornness he saw in her expression. “Your mother hit him, threw shit at him, made him feel like crap constantly. She was the one who fucking put a hit out on him — multiple times, might I add.” His own indignation came through the more he went on, though it fizzled out by the end. “I don’t know what you saw between them that made you think there was ever love there, but I can guarantee it was all Stolas trying to put up a good front for you. Stupid fucking good-hearted bird.”
The tears that dripped down Octavia’s face were more out of a searing humiliation than any kind of sadness, ashamed that she’d missed the signs for so long. How had she been so oblivious to her father’s suffering? Sure, she had been a child for most of that time, but Stolas had taken on his expected responsibilities far earlier than her. What was her excuse?
The treacherous thought that perhaps Blitzø was making things up crossed her mind for a split second, but she quickly dismissed it. What purpose would that serve when everything had already happened? The divorce had gone through, she had full control over which parent she spent time with and when, and the man seemed far too invested in his own fury on Stolas’ behalf to be fake. She knew he was telling the truth; she just didn’t want to admit it.
“C’mon, Octavia,” Blitzø said, gently removing her talons from where she was digging them into her arm. “Let’s not hurt ourselves. Y’know, I should really take you to a rage room. Loonie and I love that shit, bet you would too. Hell, maybe even Stols. It could be a family outing!”
Stols. She’d never heard his name spoken with such care or casualness before, and certainly not from her mother.
“A family outing?” is what came out instead. “Since when were we a family?”
Octavia regretted the words as soon as they left her careless beak, but it felt as if she simply couldn’t control the urge to antagonize him despite the way he was growing on her. Maybe she wanted to see how much she could push until he finally broke and gave her the verbal lashings she had surely earned, since her own father never would.
“I— I mean,” Blitzø sputtered. “I guess we never really talked about it, but you’re welcome to be part of this fucked up little family anytime you want. We’re a buncha misfit freaks, your dad included, but it’s just… nice, to be wanted somewhere. I think you could use a bit of that feeling, kid. Plus you’re cool as fuck, and we could always use some more cool around here.”
Instead of arguing about her age again, she simply took a few deep breaths and let the words wash over her. Her dad’s imp— his partner, was offering her space in his heart that she wasn’t sure she deserved.
“You’re pretty cool too, sometimes,” Octavia begrudgingly admitted. “You know, when you’re not being a home-wrecking twat.”
Blitzø cackled in glee, seemingly delighted at her choice of crude words. “I’ll take it,” he said, looking back out at the lit-up nightscape with a looseness to him that wasn’t there earlier.
Happiness looked just as good on him as it did on her dad, she decided. Maybe it was time she let it spread to her, too.