Post by Philip Garwin on Apr 20, 2022 7:19:23 GMT -5
The split custody agreement ends before Rin turns eleven.
Later, when she’s older, she’ll note how strange and out of character that decision was for her dad - Tristan had spent years cajoling her into visiting Bethan with a smile, had tried his hardest to convince her that she’d have fun if she only gave her mother a chance. It makes logical sense in hindsight, of course. Her dad is a shadow of himself for a long time after Drake dies; he doesn’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to try to make her want to spend time with Bethan. As his daughter, she is perhaps the one remaining thing in his life guaranteed to bring him joy and he no longer feels the need to share her with someone she so clearly doesn’t wish to spend time with.
At the time, however, Rin thinks nothing of it; she simply beams with an unrestrained joy which has become increasingly rare in her expression since her training intensified and hugs him around the waist before darting away to the garden with boundless energy. She’s a child, young and still easily distracted from things that mean little to her, particularly with the promise of Uncle Stephen finally teaching her how to gather ingredients and mix poisons. She surrounds herself with family and danger and Cayden - because even as a child, Cayden is not family but something different, something for which she doesn't yet have a name but something no less important and vital despite her inability to put a name to the warmth she feels for him.
Bethan has no place in the midst of all this and Rin does not miss her presence. She has her dad and Wyron as parents, because Wyron is as much father as godfather or uncle. Her childhood and adolescence is heavily dominated by masculine influence; between her cousins and uncles and her dad's continued uncharacteristic lack of interest in anyone warming his bed, the only women in her life are her grandmother, Flick, and Ana - none of whom could be accused of meekness or quiet gentility. Without her mother to force her to sit still for tea parties and dolls and other such inane things that Rin had always scorned, she runs free and skins her palms climbing trees, learns how to sail and emerges from the sea with salt-soaked hair, provokes Flick to terrified rage by taking it upon herself to climb the rocky edge of a cliff to investigate a bird’s nest. Stephen spends years training that wildness into something controlled and dangerous, and Rin soaks it all in with a grin that grows increasingly sharper as she settles into the skills that seem to come so naturally to her.
***
No one could claim that Bethan doesn’t try; she visits faithfully for a few years - birthdays, Christmases, any day she can feasibly attach some sort of sentimental meaning to - but Rin disappears at 17 and doesn’t return for a long time. She cuts even Cayden and Wyron out of her life for this period of time, has minimal contact even with Tristan, and only reads correspondence from Avis or Uncle Julien if it contains her next assignment. Her mother never had a chance of being included in the exceptionally exclusive group of people whom Rin permits to know her location. Her dad barely knows where she is; neither of them ever pretend that Wyron doesn’t have tabs on her at all times but Rin reads exasperated pride in her dad's letters on the few occasions she successfully manages to evade whatever methods her godfather uses to track her. It becomes a game, just as trying to sneak up on him in the castle had once been. She lays false trails and leads the people she can sense on her tail - Wyron's spies or someone else's, she doesn’t know and doesn’t care - on a merry chase, laughter always bubbling up in her throat as she does so because this, this is freedom and she never wants to give it up. It comes with a price of course, because everything in life does. She misses her family and Cayden so much that it physically hurts when she thinks about them for too long - but that’s precisely why she can’t go back. Rin wants to outrun her feelings to such a degree that they can never catch up, wants to leave her heart buried in some far corner of the world so it doesn’t hurt so badly to know that she’ll never get what she needs from the man she loves.
Oliver is her only companion for the nearly three years that she’s gone. He's supposed to be at her side at all times, the thief tells her with an amused scoff that Rin echoes disparagingly. Neither of them would cope well with such a stifling restriction. Oliver is nearly a decade older than her and has been on his own for longer than Rin can really imagine. He disappears at regular intervals, though never for more than three days at a time, and always returns with a thoroughly satisfied smirk and some trinket of high value that sometimes gets sent to Avis and sometimes gets tucked away in a private stash. Rin watches him with sharp and often distrustful eyes but she keeps his secrets and his indiscretions tucked away behind her teeth even when Avis asks her directly if Oliver is holding to the fine print of his contract. She doesn’t always like Oliver but she recognises the shadow of herself in him in his darkest moods, recognises the jagged edges of someone who has been shattered by a person he still yearns for. He's arrogant and brash and annoying but he can’t wear a mask all the time, no matter how hard he tries, and she can find sympathy within herself for the flickers of the man she catches brief glimpses of sometimes.
“I’m only contracted to be here for a year, you know,” he tells her one evening, breaking the silence that had settled over them as Rin watches the stars appear in the dark sky. She makes a noncommittal noise that she knows Oliver will take as permission to continue, arms crossed behind her head on the scratchy roof tiles. “Ana told your dad about me so he asked me to keep an eye on you, convinced Avis to draw up a contract for twelve months. I could keep stealing for my own benefit, so long as I acquired everything she asked me to on her behalf. It's a sweet gig - your dad paid me a decent sum upfront to stick around for a year, Avis pays me for anything I send her in those twelve months, and I get to fence things on the side too.” Rin hums again, a quiet, meaningless noise that settles the uncertain tension building in Oliver. Neither of them mention that months have passed since that contract would have expired and the companionable silence falls over them again, until Oliver breaks it with a tone that Rin knows beyond doubt means he's smirking: “And that stern uncle of yours is the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in my life. Maybe he’ll give me a bonus for a job well done.”
The very thought of Uncle Julien and Oliver together makes Rin scoff, scorn audible in her voice. “You’d have better luck with Liam,” she murmurs with a huffed laugh. Julien has no time for anyone in the way that Oliver is clearly suggesting and her uncle has never shown any interest in his own gender anyway, unlike his brothers. Oliver sends a speculative glance her way at her cousin's name and Rin shakes her head firmly, quietly protective. “Don't you dare,” she warns fiercely. “Liam isn't like us. He’s a good kid. Find someone else to pass your time with when we go back home.”
***
Rin is...different when she returns. She comes back with shadows in her eyes and new scars on her skin, including the one which mirrors Wyron's and binds them even closer together, and reflexes so sharp that they make her truly dangerous to be around if startled. Kellen ends up with a blade to his neck three times before he finally learns not to wake her when she's sleeping; the fourth time, he throws a cushion to smack her in the face and waits out the long seconds it takes for her heartbeat to settle back into a normal rhythm before he tips his head invitingly and tells her that she has to come see Landon's mysterious new friend. Rin rolls her shoulder, lying to herself both that she no longer notices the tightness of the scarred skin stretched over the joint and that she's not at all intrigued by the idea of her reclusive cousin with a friend, and pads after Kellen silently.
Things get better from there, for any given measure of 'better', as her family slowly coax her back to some degree of domesticity. Rin figures out how to switch off her instincts (or at least dull them to the point where she doesn’t nearly decapitate one of her cousins for moving too quickly in her peripheral vision) and she learns how to live with the permanent ache that Cayden carves into her chest (because that’s not going to go away, not ever, it’s as much a part of her as the dark violence that lives in her veins) and eventually Wyron quietly broaches the topic of her returning to society properly. She is a Cartier after all, with all of the privilege and weight that accompanies the name and wealth, and she has responsibilities.
“Alright,” she sighs heavily, resigned to the reality that she has to return to. “I’ve managed to avoid tailors and canapés and small talk for four years, which s longer than I thought I’d get. Just please make it something that my mother isn’t invited to. I haven’t seen her since before I left and she’s going to be unbearable if we cross paths.”
Later, when she’s older, she’ll note how strange and out of character that decision was for her dad - Tristan had spent years cajoling her into visiting Bethan with a smile, had tried his hardest to convince her that she’d have fun if she only gave her mother a chance. It makes logical sense in hindsight, of course. Her dad is a shadow of himself for a long time after Drake dies; he doesn’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to try to make her want to spend time with Bethan. As his daughter, she is perhaps the one remaining thing in his life guaranteed to bring him joy and he no longer feels the need to share her with someone she so clearly doesn’t wish to spend time with.
At the time, however, Rin thinks nothing of it; she simply beams with an unrestrained joy which has become increasingly rare in her expression since her training intensified and hugs him around the waist before darting away to the garden with boundless energy. She’s a child, young and still easily distracted from things that mean little to her, particularly with the promise of Uncle Stephen finally teaching her how to gather ingredients and mix poisons. She surrounds herself with family and danger and Cayden - because even as a child, Cayden is not family but something different, something for which she doesn't yet have a name but something no less important and vital despite her inability to put a name to the warmth she feels for him.
Bethan has no place in the midst of all this and Rin does not miss her presence. She has her dad and Wyron as parents, because Wyron is as much father as godfather or uncle. Her childhood and adolescence is heavily dominated by masculine influence; between her cousins and uncles and her dad's continued uncharacteristic lack of interest in anyone warming his bed, the only women in her life are her grandmother, Flick, and Ana - none of whom could be accused of meekness or quiet gentility. Without her mother to force her to sit still for tea parties and dolls and other such inane things that Rin had always scorned, she runs free and skins her palms climbing trees, learns how to sail and emerges from the sea with salt-soaked hair, provokes Flick to terrified rage by taking it upon herself to climb the rocky edge of a cliff to investigate a bird’s nest. Stephen spends years training that wildness into something controlled and dangerous, and Rin soaks it all in with a grin that grows increasingly sharper as she settles into the skills that seem to come so naturally to her.
***
No one could claim that Bethan doesn’t try; she visits faithfully for a few years - birthdays, Christmases, any day she can feasibly attach some sort of sentimental meaning to - but Rin disappears at 17 and doesn’t return for a long time. She cuts even Cayden and Wyron out of her life for this period of time, has minimal contact even with Tristan, and only reads correspondence from Avis or Uncle Julien if it contains her next assignment. Her mother never had a chance of being included in the exceptionally exclusive group of people whom Rin permits to know her location. Her dad barely knows where she is; neither of them ever pretend that Wyron doesn’t have tabs on her at all times but Rin reads exasperated pride in her dad's letters on the few occasions she successfully manages to evade whatever methods her godfather uses to track her. It becomes a game, just as trying to sneak up on him in the castle had once been. She lays false trails and leads the people she can sense on her tail - Wyron's spies or someone else's, she doesn’t know and doesn’t care - on a merry chase, laughter always bubbling up in her throat as she does so because this, this is freedom and she never wants to give it up. It comes with a price of course, because everything in life does. She misses her family and Cayden so much that it physically hurts when she thinks about them for too long - but that’s precisely why she can’t go back. Rin wants to outrun her feelings to such a degree that they can never catch up, wants to leave her heart buried in some far corner of the world so it doesn’t hurt so badly to know that she’ll never get what she needs from the man she loves.
Oliver is her only companion for the nearly three years that she’s gone. He's supposed to be at her side at all times, the thief tells her with an amused scoff that Rin echoes disparagingly. Neither of them would cope well with such a stifling restriction. Oliver is nearly a decade older than her and has been on his own for longer than Rin can really imagine. He disappears at regular intervals, though never for more than three days at a time, and always returns with a thoroughly satisfied smirk and some trinket of high value that sometimes gets sent to Avis and sometimes gets tucked away in a private stash. Rin watches him with sharp and often distrustful eyes but she keeps his secrets and his indiscretions tucked away behind her teeth even when Avis asks her directly if Oliver is holding to the fine print of his contract. She doesn’t always like Oliver but she recognises the shadow of herself in him in his darkest moods, recognises the jagged edges of someone who has been shattered by a person he still yearns for. He's arrogant and brash and annoying but he can’t wear a mask all the time, no matter how hard he tries, and she can find sympathy within herself for the flickers of the man she catches brief glimpses of sometimes.
“I’m only contracted to be here for a year, you know,” he tells her one evening, breaking the silence that had settled over them as Rin watches the stars appear in the dark sky. She makes a noncommittal noise that she knows Oliver will take as permission to continue, arms crossed behind her head on the scratchy roof tiles. “Ana told your dad about me so he asked me to keep an eye on you, convinced Avis to draw up a contract for twelve months. I could keep stealing for my own benefit, so long as I acquired everything she asked me to on her behalf. It's a sweet gig - your dad paid me a decent sum upfront to stick around for a year, Avis pays me for anything I send her in those twelve months, and I get to fence things on the side too.” Rin hums again, a quiet, meaningless noise that settles the uncertain tension building in Oliver. Neither of them mention that months have passed since that contract would have expired and the companionable silence falls over them again, until Oliver breaks it with a tone that Rin knows beyond doubt means he's smirking: “And that stern uncle of yours is the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in my life. Maybe he’ll give me a bonus for a job well done.”
The very thought of Uncle Julien and Oliver together makes Rin scoff, scorn audible in her voice. “You’d have better luck with Liam,” she murmurs with a huffed laugh. Julien has no time for anyone in the way that Oliver is clearly suggesting and her uncle has never shown any interest in his own gender anyway, unlike his brothers. Oliver sends a speculative glance her way at her cousin's name and Rin shakes her head firmly, quietly protective. “Don't you dare,” she warns fiercely. “Liam isn't like us. He’s a good kid. Find someone else to pass your time with when we go back home.”
***
Rin is...different when she returns. She comes back with shadows in her eyes and new scars on her skin, including the one which mirrors Wyron's and binds them even closer together, and reflexes so sharp that they make her truly dangerous to be around if startled. Kellen ends up with a blade to his neck three times before he finally learns not to wake her when she's sleeping; the fourth time, he throws a cushion to smack her in the face and waits out the long seconds it takes for her heartbeat to settle back into a normal rhythm before he tips his head invitingly and tells her that she has to come see Landon's mysterious new friend. Rin rolls her shoulder, lying to herself both that she no longer notices the tightness of the scarred skin stretched over the joint and that she's not at all intrigued by the idea of her reclusive cousin with a friend, and pads after Kellen silently.
Things get better from there, for any given measure of 'better', as her family slowly coax her back to some degree of domesticity. Rin figures out how to switch off her instincts (or at least dull them to the point where she doesn’t nearly decapitate one of her cousins for moving too quickly in her peripheral vision) and she learns how to live with the permanent ache that Cayden carves into her chest (because that’s not going to go away, not ever, it’s as much a part of her as the dark violence that lives in her veins) and eventually Wyron quietly broaches the topic of her returning to society properly. She is a Cartier after all, with all of the privilege and weight that accompanies the name and wealth, and she has responsibilities.
“Alright,” she sighs heavily, resigned to the reality that she has to return to. “I’ve managed to avoid tailors and canapés and small talk for four years, which s longer than I thought I’d get. Just please make it something that my mother isn’t invited to. I haven’t seen her since before I left and she’s going to be unbearable if we cross paths.”