Chapter Text
“Then the Lord said, ‘I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Per′izzites, the Hivites, and the Jeb′usites.’” (Exodus 3:7-8 RSVCE)
“For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents' help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized - child or adult on the road of Christian life. Their task is a truly ecclesial function (officium). The whole ecclesial community bears some responsibility for the development and safeguarding of the grace given at Baptism.” (CCC 1255).
"The bee is more honored than other animals, not because she labors, but because she labors for others." - Saint John Chrysostom
Despite his current feelings about his fallen-from-grace former employer, Quill Kipps would always stand by the training he had been given at Fittes. Tony might tease him, might say that Fittes was a hive of swarming drones serving a tyrannical queen, but he’d earned a decent living, done his best to keep larval little junior agents alive, and earned the skills which not only let him age out of a position that many never graduated from, but helped him take down the whole rotting colony once it turned out the queen was rationing honey for the workers while she had her own well of royal jelly that could save all the bees in not just this one hive, but thousands.
…okay, maybe he’d been spending too much time listening to Karim wax poetic about the set of hives Lockwood had let him stick in the back garden of 35 Portland Row, but the point still stood. The fact was, he’d been a good agent. His team had the highest fatality rate not because he was bad at his job, he always told himself, but because they took on jobs no one else could . He’d faced every kind of Type One and Type Two in existence. Everything from the most mournful Cold Maiden to the ugliest Raw Bones had come against him and lost more than it gained. The loss of his Sight had been a blow, of course. One that had him grasping for a flicker of any sort of light in the night. But once the goggles gave it back to him? Not even a tricky little stab wound had held him back. After a stint in hospital and weeks of Holly forcing him at rapier point through physiotherapy (a bit insensitive if you asked him), he’d soon found himself back to gleefully brandishing his own rapier and sealing sources like a newly certified Grade Four in the brief time between the Fall of Fittes and the Problem’s true end.
Like a storm drain cleared of muck and leaves, it was as if the ghosts were sucked away in a whirlpool with only traces of filth left behind. There was a certain existential horror to it, to watching the world he knew melt before him. Eighteen months, too many jaunts to the Other Side to tear down barriers, and a mostly restored Portland Row later, and it was over. Fifty years of terror washed away. The night was safe. There was no reason for him to fear anything—living, dead, or somewhere awful in between.
So why, over five years since he’d last seen a ghost, was he stuck to the front stoop of 35 Portland Row like a rat in a glue trap?
To be so stuck flew in the face of a decade and a half’s worth of commands to never hesitate on a threshold. If his first team lead at Fittes, a squat, serious young woman with no tolerance for nonsense could see him now, she’d surely give him the thrashing she’d often threatened, but her conscience had never let her administer to an eight-year-old.
(She’d been struck down by a pathetic Shade at the tail end of his first year as an agent. Her Sight had only just begun to fade at nineteen. As an eight-year-old he’d thought her ancient. At thirty, he stubs out his grief like guttering prayer candles. He lights one for her, for all of them, every Friday. Offers a rosary, too. He prays for peace. For them, for himself, for the ones left.)
The fact is, Quill is a little ashamed. Lockwood and Lucy had invited him to come ‘round long before now. He’d only hoped he’d be forgotten in the shuffle. A contingent of Lucy’s sisters had come and gone, with Mary still there for another week yet. Some of the Lockwoods’ friends from their married couples’ group at St. James operated a steadily chugging meal and housework train. Holly was over as often as her position at the PR firm she worked for allowed, Karim was practically moved back in, and Flo was rumored to have darkened the stoop a time or two. Even Barnes, the source of all this information, had visited once already—with plans for another visit on the books.
“Get your arse over there, Kipps,” Barnes commanded as lovingly as only he could, “Lockwood is asking after you, and I can only tell him you’re swamped with paperwork for so long before he looks into it himself. He says he called.”
He had. And Quill had answered, so he couldn’t even claim that the machine ate the message.
Tony had rung him up at three in the morning two weeks ago, all out of breath and sounding far too grown up for the slick brat who’d stabbed him in the backside all those years ago. The shrill, unrelenting whistle of the telephone had forced Quill into a begrudging state of wakefulness. As he fumbled for the receiver, he wondered blearily how he’d ever stayed up so late for all those years if waking after a solid six hours of sleep now felt like a fate worse than ghost touch. “Wassit?” Quill grumbled into the phone. If this was another bloody telemarketer, he was going to get his rapier out of storage.
“Quill?” a frenzied voice reached across the crackling line, “Kipps! Kipps, she’s here! She’s finally here!”
“Wha-? Tony? What are you—?”
“My daughter. My daughter was born this morning. She’s—she’s absolutely perfect. Just like her mother. Lucy’s just incredible. Just—just the most incredible, strong, wonderful woman. It all happened so fast!” here, Lockwood had to take a breath so that he might let out an awestruck little laugh. “Lucy might not say the same if you asked her, but to me, it felt like no sooner had we got here, then someone was handing me a baby and telling me to cut the cord and calling me someone’s dad. I’m a dad!”
“You—Tony, you mean the baby’s born?!”
“What else!” Lockwood bellowed a euphoric wheeze of a chuckle, “Or do you know any other reason I’d be calling you from a hospital payphone at three in the morning?”
Quill could think of quite a few, but now those only existed in the ephemeral sort of nightmare that vanished like a Grey Haze upon waking.
“You have to come down and meet her, Kipps. George is…well, George is asleep across a few chairs in the waiting area, and Holly is on her way as soon as Arif’s opens to snag us something to eat that doesn’t come from the hospital canteen. The sister horde is scheduled to descend once their trains arrive in a few hours, so best come before then. Lucy’s alright with it. She’s asking for you all.”
“I—ah, yeah, Tony, I’ll be down.”
“Good,” Lockwood said. Quill could hear the smile in his voice through the phone, “Because, well, for the first time in years, I have someone I’m closely related to. She’s got my mother’s eyes, Kipps. They say they’ll change, but those are my mother’s eyes. Mum’s eyes and Dad’s nose and Jess’s eyebrows and my hair and Lucy’s everything else. And that…that’s something I want to celebrate. So throw on one of your hundred turtlenecks, buy an outrageously loud toy to pay me back for all the misery I’ve caused you, and come meet my daughter.”
Quill sucked in a breath. “I best let you get back to Lucy and the baby. But…congrats, Tony. No one deserves this like you two.” With that, he let the line go dead.
Every day for the next two weeks, he promised himself he’d go visit. He made up excuses like it was a game. First, he didn’t want to get in the way. Lucy’s sisters, not so estranged as they once were, would undoubtedly be clogging up the hospital room with their chatter and laughter and their own small children. Then, he convinced himself he would be intruding on the new family as they settled in at home. He assuaged the nagging voice in his head by purchasing first a ridiculous silver rattle he knew Lucy would roll her eyes at, then a less ridiculous stack of picture books and a greenish blue swaddle patterned with gold stars that reminded him dimly of Guadalupe. Quill even went so far as to wrap it all and set the gift bag next to the front door of his flat. But, until Barnes came to chastise him? He’d planned on staying away until the kid could come chasing after him herself.
And so now he found himself frozen like he was ghost locked, clutching a pastel pink gift bag festooned with all manner of ribbons and tissue paper in one hand, an increasingly drooping bouquet of flowers in the other, trying to convince himself to just ring the bloody bell and get it over with. At least baby Lockwood had had the good sense to be born in mid-May. Now, in early June, the weather was nice enough that he was neither freezing his nose off nor drenched in sweat as he loitered like a prowler on the stoop. He was just considering knocking on the door and abandoning his gifts like a cardboard box full of puppies at the RSPCA when it opened.
“Kipps?” a confused George paused, hand on the doorknob, one arm in his light late spring jacket, “Why are you out here with…all that pink stuff?”
Seeing as it was too late to take his chances scaling a nearby tree or jumping into the neighbor’s bins, Quill straightened up and cleared his throat. “Ah, George. I’m just bringing a gift by. For the baby.”
Karim looked him up and down. He snorted, “Then why are you standing out here like you’re working up the courage to tell your parents you’ve dropped out of uni to pursue a promising career as a DJ?”
“I was about to knock,” Quill protested.
“You have a key. Several, actually. Yours, the spare, Lucy’s spare, and the ones from the old locks.”
“Yes, well,” Quill stammered. “Wanted to be polite, is all. Didn’t know if she was sleeping or something.”
“...and a key is noisier than a knock how , exactly?”
His patience wore thin, “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Karim?”
George looked at him askance. He pulled his jacket the rest of the way on, shrugging into it like he was pushing off Quill’s bad mood in doing so. Cheeks puffed out in a huff, he spoke, “ I’m heading to the shops for groceries and diapers because someone on the meal train brought eel pie for dinner and Lucy will commit murder while rocking her baby if she has to eat it. I know this because I’ve been here every day for the past two weeks. With Lucy and Lockwood and the baby. Where Holly’s been. Where Lucy’s sisters have been. Where people who haven’t faced the Other Side and Marissa Bloody Fittes with us have been. So don’t get tetchy with me because you feel guilty that you ignored Lockwood when he asked you to come visit the day the baby was born, because I was there, and I haven’t slept more than three hours a night since our niece was born.”
Quill said nothing, just looked down, scuffing his boot against the step.
With this, George breezed by. Seemingly thinking better of it, he stopped and spoke, more subdued, over his shoulder. “You know she’s safe, right? The baby. It’s okay to love her. It’s not going to be like it was for us.”
“I know that.”
“And even if it were…it wouldn’t make losing her any easier, Kipps,” George’s voice was almost soft now, “It would just mean she’d lived her life with less love than she deserved.”
“I—thanks, Karim,” Quill rasped. To his horror, a few errant tears pricked at the traitorous corners of his eyes. He blinked them away, as though by doing so he might banish even their memory.
“Just go meet her. If you’re still here when I get back, you can have dinner with us. I’m cooking sosis bandari and I guess I can stretch it to feed five.”
Quill knew this to be a massive understatement. Lucy and Tony had learned how to cook better since George moved out when they married and were no longer living off of tea and toast and Thai takeaway, but Karim still made enough for three meals worth of leftovers whenever he came over to Portland Row. He claimed that it was because his mother and grandmother only cooked in large batches, and he learned from them. There was a silent agreement to let him think they all believed that.
“If you’re still on the stoop when I get back,” George grumbled like he knew what Quill was thinking, “I’m ringing DEPRAC and telling them a Pale Stench escaped from the Other Side so they come and pelt you with salt.”
Shaking his head, Quill laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a sight?” he murmured. He carried laughter with him into Portland Row.
Stepping in the front door at 35 Portland Row was always a bit of a shock. Some part of him always expected to see the dusty artifacts and curiosities lining the walls, no matter how many years had passed between the siege and present day. A few remained. Favorites of Lucy and Tony’s dotted the walls, mixed with bots and bobs from their own travels, photos, and bits of art he recognized as Lucy’s handiwork. He had his own favorites, of course, and greeted them like old friends as he paused out of habit to unlatch a rapier that was no longer there to place in a stand that had been in the basement for years. There was the San Damiano crucifix Lucy bought when they traveled to Assisi for Tony’s job, gazing in beatific medieval peace from its spot next to the front door. They’d brought him a duplicate for his flat. It hung above his nightstand with his rosary draped over top to remind him to pray. An icon of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa. Framed tickets from the Fittes at Fifty Gala.
Then, there was the photo of all of them sprawled on the bare floor of the empty library, sharing cold pizza and lukewarm beer. He’s not in the photo, because he took it. Lucy’s laughing so hard her face is a plum. George is a blur of motion. He’d been howling with laughter, tears of mirth rolling down his face. Only Holly is trying to hide her amusement, but the sparkle in her eyes gives her away. In the middle of it all is Tony. He looks as though a blizzard blew through the house and dumped everything it had on top of him—which served him right for trying to empty the hoover’s bag after he’d ignored all of them telling him not to use it to suck up the sawdust left from sanding the floors. A thoroughly petulant scowl twisted his face, doing nothing whatsoever to detract from the comedy of the situation. It was the first moment things started to feel as though they stood a chance at moving on from the horrors of the Fall of Fittes, the hive collapsing in on itself. Now that moment had the chance to live on the walls of Portland Row forever, even if said walls were patched and plastered remnants of their former selves underneath their new, cornflower blue paint.
He passed other treasures as he meandered his way to the library, where he knew the Lockwoods would surely be. A pram now lived in the hallway, with a bag that spewed forth nappies and swaddles and all manner of baby paraphernalia on the floor in front of it, holding its wheels stationary. Peeking out above these was a framed sonogram. The first Lockwood baby’s only picture. She sat in good company. On one side sat a photo of her paternal grandparents on their wedding day, Jessica’s eyes staring out at him from Donald Lockwood’s beaming face. The other side, a picture of her aunt. Quill had taken that picture, too, on Jess’s last birthday before she died. He’d taken her and Tony to the zoo, and Jess had wanted to stop in the butterfly house. In the photo, two have landed on her head and nestled themselves happily among her curls. He hoped she had butterflies where she was, now. That she and her parents were showing them to the niece that never took her first breath, while he ignored his duty to that niece’s younger sister.
(He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about a world where he wasn’t visiting Portland Row alone. In that world, ghosts didn’t jump out of jars and the queen of the colony didn’t orphan little boys and their big sisters. Perhaps, in that world, he wasn’t “Uncle Kipps” in name only.)
Jessica’s eyes seemed to beg him, “Go on. I’ve got this one. Take care of the other one for me.”
“But what if you’re all I see when I look at her?” he wanted to beg, “What if I let her down, like I let down you? Like I let down Tony and Ned and every last bleeding kid that I was supposed to protect? I’m not enough, Jess.”
“Don’t worry about being enough,” her eyes commanded, “Worry about being there at all.”
Quill Kipps always did what Jessica Lockwood told him to. He stopped wearing his hair the way she told him looked stupid when he was thirteen. He brought the specific varietal of lavender she liked best to her grave every week because she’d asked him to bring her lavender, always, when she was fourteen. And he prayed for her soul because she made him swear to never stop going to Mass. No, Quill Kipps, soldier, drone, steadfast past the end, had never disobeyed a direct order from Jessica Lockwood. Today was not the day to start. So, he put one foot in front of the other, and entered the library.