Let this be my last word...
She knew Gwen had spoken to the staff at Waverly; the bustle of people around them, just outside the aegis of calm that her sister exuded, had of course demanded attention, but Regan remembered little of it. The important piece was that her brother wished to see her; had, in fact, sent a number of nurses and a healer fleeing from his rooms at the news that she'd arrived.
The healer in charge, Digby, an older fellow who looked, at least, more weary than terror-stricken, a popular shade among the other attendees, was stationed in the corridor to the private rooms. She'd met him before, and recalled his round face vaguely. With a quick glance back to Gwen, nerves creeping up on her now that she was there, she moved toward the end door, his, her hands curled tightly at her sides.
The door opened, and she froze, breath and thought stolen away by the barreling wave of presence the motion precipitated. It was him. Himself. Gwen had spoken truly, though she knew her sister would never lie, and certainly not about such a thing as this. The steel-blue of his eyes shone with that which was innately Tristan, and though his face was softer than the last she remembered, hopeful, she knew this man to be her brother.
Standing in the doorway, wary of reaching out to her just yet, Tristan watched, waiting, as his sister sized him up. She was slender, still, and would always be so, but he saw a young woman hesitating in the corridor there, and neither the wraith he'd formed nor the girl he remembered. Regan was lovely, and poised save being faced with half a nightmare and half a dream. He ached for what had been lost; the perfect, unvoiced trust that once had been, but in its stead pride welled, for the careful and unwavering regard she currently possessed.
"Regan," he ventured quietly, one hand opened to her even as he stilled the rest of his form. She had all right to fear him, and in a way he hoped that she did, for he could not be her keeper any longer, not now. At present, though, he knew she would come to no harm, and awakened by first contact with Gwen, he needed to hold her and be sure she was real.
The offer. How many times had she dreamed this? To see him whole, aware, and asking for her... it had laced her resting hours for months, sometimes sweet, sometimes twisted into a hellish mockery in mere seconds. Her nails bit into her palm, then, and the pain startled her from her reverie.
It was him... she'd always read his eyes better than he wanted anyone to be able to, and this was her Tristan. The past year in snippets; pictures, feelings, memories, rushed through her mind in an instant, and above all, the pain and longing she'd been carrying since that summer crashed over her. The blank canvas of her expression crumpled and she ran the few steps left, flinging herself into his arms as a sob tore from her throat.
Though he was out of practice, Tristan caught her up easily, lifting her into his arms and letting her cling to him as though resisting the winds of a hurricane. Holding her as tightly as she did him, he turned from the door, leaving it ajar as he'd been bid, and carried Regan to the sofa in his quarters, shushing her softly as she howled into his neck, one hand running a circuit over her back, just as he'd done since she was an infant.
He'd expected the tears, this time, though Gwen's had not surprised him overly. She was stoic in the public eye, but had not been so with him after their first chance meeting. Regan seemed to have unearthed a measure of control for herself as well, but not one to withstand this upheaval. Tristan shifted her to curl in his lap, wrapping his arms around her shaking frame and letting her pour out her grief until words found her once more.
"I am sorry, little one," he murmured, knowing the words would heal nothing, but somehow unable to keep from saying them. He would do his penance, gladly, the rest of his life if it was required of him. He had failed her, and that was the one thing he had promised her never to do.
Shaking her head, her breath still coming in great hiccoughs, Regan raised her wet face, bracing her hands on Tristan's broad shoulders. "Not for why you're saying it," she rasped, coughing and wiping at her cheeks. Tears fell, but she marshaled herself enough to speak, her gaze boring into his. "It wasn't you, by then. Not for locking me up, for hurting me, for trying to let us die. That was the emptiness, not you. I watched. I watched all the light fade away until there was nothing."
She'd managed to keep the accusation from her voice until then, and she smacked the flat of her palms against his chest, hard enough to make her own skin sting with the impact. "Why did you leave me?!" she demanded, dissolving partially into a sob once the question was out. It was the most paralyzingly frightening thing to have happen to her, just when she'd been pulled into the warm lap of a family, and he'd just gone, and she'd never known why.
Startled by the blow, as Regan had certainly never made to strike him before, much less done so, Tristan was still for a moment, absorbing her words. All were true; he had memories, unclear but terrible yet, of the acts she named, and sickening clarity for the feeling, the sound of her wrist snapping in his grip. For none of those was he to apologize, but for the one thing that was outside what he could claim.
"Not of my will, Regan," he answered eventually. "I could feel my world going wrong, around me, but I was not of it, to stop the events put into motion by my hands." The admission, confessing that kind of loss of control to the one person he'd always kept himself so strong for, was the revelation of an ultimate fraud, and Tristan's stomach turned at those words coming to her ears. He, her protector, had watched the small, isolated world of his making crumble about them, crushingly powerless as it battered her toward his own depths.
The small woman regarding him, however, seemed to have patched herself admirably, and while five minutes of tears and a few sentences were no measure of her inner countenance, Regan had always shown out what she felt within, and there was so little of what he had feared seeing in her as to be unnoticeable. She was not the frail, shrinking thing his shell had provoked into being, and he had no adequate answer for the completely reasonable censure she flung his way. It was a first, or nearly so.
"They said there was something wrong with your mind, the way it works. Is there?" Regan asked, more calmly. His previously-ignored 'birthright', she could forgive him, as she carried it as well.
Slowly, Tristan nodded. "The way the biological parts of it work, yes. I am frankly not adept enough at potions to explain it fully myself, but it is something corrected by a bit of chemical tinkering, which I have been doing myself, as the healers seemed more concerned with keeping me subdued." He was bitter about that, but it would wait. His displeasure had been made known, and if necessary he would contact an external supplier for his needs.
"Will it happen to me, too?" It was an important question, and one she'd been asking, without his inclusion, prior to this, for most of her life. She'd been doing much better, with Gwen there for her, and seeing Charlotte regularly, and if she still felt a bit 'apart' from those around her, she attributed it to her past and what it had made of her; old-world and isolated unless she strove against it.
Tristan pet a hand over the familiar blonde locks, curls now instead of the plait he recalled, and Regan allowed it, but did not seek the touch. "I know not," he said simply. "Where you have always been a bit different than girls your age, I was not from my peers, save quieter, but I am here, and perhaps you may never be in my place. I hope for it, but I can give you no clear answer that is true, and I will not lie." He let his hand fall, not ever willing to press contact on her, and waited, giving space for her questions.
Settling herself, some of the tension subsiding as her anger faded, Regan slipped one hand into Tristan's large one, holding their joined fingers in her lap. "I've missed you," she began after a stretch of silence, eyes darting to his and away as she spoke. "I've had to learn living without you there, and it's not been easy. I've quarreled with Gwen more than I ever thought to do with anyone, but she loves me still, and I'm learning that, too."
She traced her fingertips over his hand, watching their progress as she voiced, "I have things that are mine now... I finished school... more because Gwen wanted it than I did, really, but I did the lessons and got my certificate. I go and speak to Charlotte when I'm supposed to, and take care of my dog, and watch Tess, and go out with my friends when I like." He didn't know this life she lived, now, and as unfathomably wonderful as it was to sit with him, to have him answer, there were parts what she had at present that were... better... as painful as it had been to get to them, than what she'd had before.
Gaze lifting properly to her brother's, Regan prompted, "What will you do, now?" She had no interest in the business or property she'd inherited, nor more of the fortune than would provide for her, and expected to sign it back to him once he was finished putting the hospital staff in their places.
Digesting the information Regan had provided, the sudden deluge quite something to process, given its content, Tristan answered gradually, "I expect the most pressing orders of business shall be finding a suitable residence, and petitioning my current shareholder for control of my trade. Beyond that, I could not say, yet." He let the statement lie a moment, then asked, "Did she really get you a dog? Is it huge?"
The first smile, provoked, she realized, but warming nonetheless, appeared on Regan's lips, and she nodded. "His name is Teddy... he's a collie, and about three-quarters as big as I am, I suppose, though he's not quite grown, yet. He was a darling fluffy little puppy at the end of summer. Gwen calls him my 'beast'."
Rounding the distraction, Regan prodded at the real answer she'd been given. "You shall have Ivy's Run, of course," she insisted, "and your business is as you left it, with all the regular orders filled."
Tristan shook his head, offering a wan smile at her assumption. "The estate is yours, though I shall need to collect my tools, and arrange to purchase out your shareholding in the enterprise." She had inherited rightfully, under condition of his being unable to care for her, and he would not reverse it, though he knew Regan expected him to and would have made no fuss.
"But Trist," she protested immediately, only to be silenced by a motion of his hand. Glowering, she let him speak.
"No. If you won't live there, save it for your eldest. Everything is legally in your name now and I will not have it else," Tristan asserted. "I want to start over, Regan."
"What about your eldest?" Regan persisted, shifting to meet her brother's eyes.
His mind flashed briefly to Gwen, and the little girl she'd described, and Tristan shook the image away. "You know better," he said softly. "Not now, not after this. Ivy's Run will go to your children, who will have no memories to haunt them there."
It was true, but it hurt, and Regan let her feet find the floor and stood, leaving the comfort of Tristan's lap for a space to herself, to think. She paced over to one of the windows and stood, looking out, her arms wrapped around herself. "You'll tell me, though, where you'll be, once you find it?" she asked without turning around, not sure, now, what 'starting over' might mean to him.
The question stung, though he knew he'd seeded its origin. "Yes, just as soon as I know the coordinates myself," Tristan assured her, sitting forward in his chair, but not moving to follow her. It spoke of the time they'd been apart that she'd left his space willingly, her own decision.
Nodding as she released a breath, relieved that things were not so bad, she looked back to him, wondering what else could be said, that was needed just now. It felt wrong, to hesitate in his presence; her brother, who'd raised her, cared for her, but she didn't know where to begin next.
"Come and say goodnight, and go home with Gwen," Tristan suggested, watching the confusion in his sister's bearing. She was lost and overwhelmed, with good reason, and the best he could offer was not himself, but the person who had become her home.
Grateful for his ability to read her, though it had vexed her often enough, before, Regan crossed the room again, pausing beside his chair and just looking at him, blessing the recognition in his eyes. "I'm glad to have you back," she murmured, sliding her arms about Tristan's shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
Curling a hand along Regan's face, Tristan met her eyes, close, and held her there, just for a moment. "I love you," he said softly, conviction ringing deeply through the simple words.
Her own fingers coming up to touch his at her cheek, a fresh sting of tears needling her for attention, Regan was mute. She'd said those words so many times in the past year, with no real hope of hearing them in return, that to hear them was the last drop in the cup of overwhelming emotions in that day.
Swallowing to clear the strangling lump in her throat, she nodded, and turned her head in his grasp to touch her lips to his palm. She left a kiss there, too, and closed his fingers over it as she pulled away, backing to the door. There would be time again later, to speak such things, but just now she could not, and with a last, still faintly disbelieving look, she turned on her heel and fled.
Summary: Regan has her first reciprocal visit with Tristan in over a year. Things get emotional.
The healer in charge, Digby, an older fellow who looked, at least, more weary than terror-stricken, a popular shade among the other attendees, was stationed in the corridor to the private rooms. She'd met him before, and recalled his round face vaguely. With a quick glance back to Gwen, nerves creeping up on her now that she was there, she moved toward the end door, his, her hands curled tightly at her sides.
The door opened, and she froze, breath and thought stolen away by the barreling wave of presence the motion precipitated. It was him. Himself. Gwen had spoken truly, though she knew her sister would never lie, and certainly not about such a thing as this. The steel-blue of his eyes shone with that which was innately Tristan, and though his face was softer than the last she remembered, hopeful, she knew this man to be her brother.
Standing in the doorway, wary of reaching out to her just yet, Tristan watched, waiting, as his sister sized him up. She was slender, still, and would always be so, but he saw a young woman hesitating in the corridor there, and neither the wraith he'd formed nor the girl he remembered. Regan was lovely, and poised save being faced with half a nightmare and half a dream. He ached for what had been lost; the perfect, unvoiced trust that once had been, but in its stead pride welled, for the careful and unwavering regard she currently possessed.
"Regan," he ventured quietly, one hand opened to her even as he stilled the rest of his form. She had all right to fear him, and in a way he hoped that she did, for he could not be her keeper any longer, not now. At present, though, he knew she would come to no harm, and awakened by first contact with Gwen, he needed to hold her and be sure she was real.
The offer. How many times had she dreamed this? To see him whole, aware, and asking for her... it had laced her resting hours for months, sometimes sweet, sometimes twisted into a hellish mockery in mere seconds. Her nails bit into her palm, then, and the pain startled her from her reverie.
It was him... she'd always read his eyes better than he wanted anyone to be able to, and this was her Tristan. The past year in snippets; pictures, feelings, memories, rushed through her mind in an instant, and above all, the pain and longing she'd been carrying since that summer crashed over her. The blank canvas of her expression crumpled and she ran the few steps left, flinging herself into his arms as a sob tore from her throat.
Though he was out of practice, Tristan caught her up easily, lifting her into his arms and letting her cling to him as though resisting the winds of a hurricane. Holding her as tightly as she did him, he turned from the door, leaving it ajar as he'd been bid, and carried Regan to the sofa in his quarters, shushing her softly as she howled into his neck, one hand running a circuit over her back, just as he'd done since she was an infant.
He'd expected the tears, this time, though Gwen's had not surprised him overly. She was stoic in the public eye, but had not been so with him after their first chance meeting. Regan seemed to have unearthed a measure of control for herself as well, but not one to withstand this upheaval. Tristan shifted her to curl in his lap, wrapping his arms around her shaking frame and letting her pour out her grief until words found her once more.
"I am sorry, little one," he murmured, knowing the words would heal nothing, but somehow unable to keep from saying them. He would do his penance, gladly, the rest of his life if it was required of him. He had failed her, and that was the one thing he had promised her never to do.
Shaking her head, her breath still coming in great hiccoughs, Regan raised her wet face, bracing her hands on Tristan's broad shoulders. "Not for why you're saying it," she rasped, coughing and wiping at her cheeks. Tears fell, but she marshaled herself enough to speak, her gaze boring into his. "It wasn't you, by then. Not for locking me up, for hurting me, for trying to let us die. That was the emptiness, not you. I watched. I watched all the light fade away until there was nothing."
She'd managed to keep the accusation from her voice until then, and she smacked the flat of her palms against his chest, hard enough to make her own skin sting with the impact. "Why did you leave me?!" she demanded, dissolving partially into a sob once the question was out. It was the most paralyzingly frightening thing to have happen to her, just when she'd been pulled into the warm lap of a family, and he'd just gone, and she'd never known why.
Startled by the blow, as Regan had certainly never made to strike him before, much less done so, Tristan was still for a moment, absorbing her words. All were true; he had memories, unclear but terrible yet, of the acts she named, and sickening clarity for the feeling, the sound of her wrist snapping in his grip. For none of those was he to apologize, but for the one thing that was outside what he could claim.
"Not of my will, Regan," he answered eventually. "I could feel my world going wrong, around me, but I was not of it, to stop the events put into motion by my hands." The admission, confessing that kind of loss of control to the one person he'd always kept himself so strong for, was the revelation of an ultimate fraud, and Tristan's stomach turned at those words coming to her ears. He, her protector, had watched the small, isolated world of his making crumble about them, crushingly powerless as it battered her toward his own depths.
The small woman regarding him, however, seemed to have patched herself admirably, and while five minutes of tears and a few sentences were no measure of her inner countenance, Regan had always shown out what she felt within, and there was so little of what he had feared seeing in her as to be unnoticeable. She was not the frail, shrinking thing his shell had provoked into being, and he had no adequate answer for the completely reasonable censure she flung his way. It was a first, or nearly so.
"They said there was something wrong with your mind, the way it works. Is there?" Regan asked, more calmly. His previously-ignored 'birthright', she could forgive him, as she carried it as well.
Slowly, Tristan nodded. "The way the biological parts of it work, yes. I am frankly not adept enough at potions to explain it fully myself, but it is something corrected by a bit of chemical tinkering, which I have been doing myself, as the healers seemed more concerned with keeping me subdued." He was bitter about that, but it would wait. His displeasure had been made known, and if necessary he would contact an external supplier for his needs.
"Will it happen to me, too?" It was an important question, and one she'd been asking, without his inclusion, prior to this, for most of her life. She'd been doing much better, with Gwen there for her, and seeing Charlotte regularly, and if she still felt a bit 'apart' from those around her, she attributed it to her past and what it had made of her; old-world and isolated unless she strove against it.
Tristan pet a hand over the familiar blonde locks, curls now instead of the plait he recalled, and Regan allowed it, but did not seek the touch. "I know not," he said simply. "Where you have always been a bit different than girls your age, I was not from my peers, save quieter, but I am here, and perhaps you may never be in my place. I hope for it, but I can give you no clear answer that is true, and I will not lie." He let his hand fall, not ever willing to press contact on her, and waited, giving space for her questions.
Settling herself, some of the tension subsiding as her anger faded, Regan slipped one hand into Tristan's large one, holding their joined fingers in her lap. "I've missed you," she began after a stretch of silence, eyes darting to his and away as she spoke. "I've had to learn living without you there, and it's not been easy. I've quarreled with Gwen more than I ever thought to do with anyone, but she loves me still, and I'm learning that, too."
She traced her fingertips over his hand, watching their progress as she voiced, "I have things that are mine now... I finished school... more because Gwen wanted it than I did, really, but I did the lessons and got my certificate. I go and speak to Charlotte when I'm supposed to, and take care of my dog, and watch Tess, and go out with my friends when I like." He didn't know this life she lived, now, and as unfathomably wonderful as it was to sit with him, to have him answer, there were parts what she had at present that were... better... as painful as it had been to get to them, than what she'd had before.
Gaze lifting properly to her brother's, Regan prompted, "What will you do, now?" She had no interest in the business or property she'd inherited, nor more of the fortune than would provide for her, and expected to sign it back to him once he was finished putting the hospital staff in their places.
Digesting the information Regan had provided, the sudden deluge quite something to process, given its content, Tristan answered gradually, "I expect the most pressing orders of business shall be finding a suitable residence, and petitioning my current shareholder for control of my trade. Beyond that, I could not say, yet." He let the statement lie a moment, then asked, "Did she really get you a dog? Is it huge?"
The first smile, provoked, she realized, but warming nonetheless, appeared on Regan's lips, and she nodded. "His name is Teddy... he's a collie, and about three-quarters as big as I am, I suppose, though he's not quite grown, yet. He was a darling fluffy little puppy at the end of summer. Gwen calls him my 'beast'."
Rounding the distraction, Regan prodded at the real answer she'd been given. "You shall have Ivy's Run, of course," she insisted, "and your business is as you left it, with all the regular orders filled."
Tristan shook his head, offering a wan smile at her assumption. "The estate is yours, though I shall need to collect my tools, and arrange to purchase out your shareholding in the enterprise." She had inherited rightfully, under condition of his being unable to care for her, and he would not reverse it, though he knew Regan expected him to and would have made no fuss.
"But Trist," she protested immediately, only to be silenced by a motion of his hand. Glowering, she let him speak.
"No. If you won't live there, save it for your eldest. Everything is legally in your name now and I will not have it else," Tristan asserted. "I want to start over, Regan."
"What about your eldest?" Regan persisted, shifting to meet her brother's eyes.
His mind flashed briefly to Gwen, and the little girl she'd described, and Tristan shook the image away. "You know better," he said softly. "Not now, not after this. Ivy's Run will go to your children, who will have no memories to haunt them there."
It was true, but it hurt, and Regan let her feet find the floor and stood, leaving the comfort of Tristan's lap for a space to herself, to think. She paced over to one of the windows and stood, looking out, her arms wrapped around herself. "You'll tell me, though, where you'll be, once you find it?" she asked without turning around, not sure, now, what 'starting over' might mean to him.
The question stung, though he knew he'd seeded its origin. "Yes, just as soon as I know the coordinates myself," Tristan assured her, sitting forward in his chair, but not moving to follow her. It spoke of the time they'd been apart that she'd left his space willingly, her own decision.
Nodding as she released a breath, relieved that things were not so bad, she looked back to him, wondering what else could be said, that was needed just now. It felt wrong, to hesitate in his presence; her brother, who'd raised her, cared for her, but she didn't know where to begin next.
"Come and say goodnight, and go home with Gwen," Tristan suggested, watching the confusion in his sister's bearing. She was lost and overwhelmed, with good reason, and the best he could offer was not himself, but the person who had become her home.
Grateful for his ability to read her, though it had vexed her often enough, before, Regan crossed the room again, pausing beside his chair and just looking at him, blessing the recognition in his eyes. "I'm glad to have you back," she murmured, sliding her arms about Tristan's shoulders and pressing a kiss to his cheek.
Curling a hand along Regan's face, Tristan met her eyes, close, and held her there, just for a moment. "I love you," he said softly, conviction ringing deeply through the simple words.
Her own fingers coming up to touch his at her cheek, a fresh sting of tears needling her for attention, Regan was mute. She'd said those words so many times in the past year, with no real hope of hearing them in return, that to hear them was the last drop in the cup of overwhelming emotions in that day.
Swallowing to clear the strangling lump in her throat, she nodded, and turned her head in his grasp to touch her lips to his palm. She left a kiss there, too, and closed his fingers over it as she pulled away, backing to the door. There would be time again later, to speak such things, but just now she could not, and with a last, still faintly disbelieving look, she turned on her heel and fled.
Summary: Regan has her first reciprocal visit with Tristan in over a year. Things get emotional.