Fanfic: To Chain Together [The Doctrine of Labyrinths]

[hoursgoneby]

Title: To Chain Together
Author: Hours Gone By
Fandom: The Doctrine of Labyrinths
Pairing/Characters: Mildmay Foxe, Felix Harrowgate, Shannon Teverius
Rating/Category: PG-13/Gen
Prompt: Shannon shows up in Grimglass, wondering why Felix doesn't seem to be making any attempt to go back to Mélusine.
Spoilers: For the last two books of the series, The Mirador and Corambis.
Summary: What do you say when someone you never expected to see again shows up to say what you never expected to hear?
Notes/Warnings: (if applicable) PG-13 for some swearing.

Written for smallfandomfest

~Mildmay~

Felix getting us exiled again wasn’t no big surprise. Trouble followed Felix like nobody’s business and I ain’t so dumb as to think that’ll ever stop. I was surprised to find out we were moving to a lighthouse, what with Felix being scared of the ocean and all. But I figured maybe the library that was supposed to be there’d be enough to keep his mind off it and maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

The lighthouse was on this long skinny piece of land that stuck out into the bay. I’d kind of pictured, you know, just a big tower with a light up at the top, but there was a house too, called the Keeper’s House. It wasn’t near so big as some of the flashie houses I’d seen, but it was plenty big enough for Felix and me. It was attached to the tower so you didn’t have to get your feet wet to look after the light which got lit by some kind of hocus machine at the bottom of the tower and after one look at them stairs winding steep and narrow all the way up I was just as glad. Felix wouldn’t be any good at working gears and stuff, or remembering some days, but the machine was set up so anyone could turn it on once it was ready. I guess it was something like how the trains worked. There was even a little courtyard for a vegetable garden to one side of the house, with high walls to stop the wind and the spray, with the beds all raised up in wooden frames, so you could get the dirt deep enough for stuff to grow in I guess. I liked that because it meant I didn’t have to kneel down to weed or harvest or anything seeing as that wasn’t the easiest thing with my leg being all stiff and all, and hey, turns out I kind of liked gardening too.

Felix turned out to be pretty okay with being near the ocean, mostly because he didn’t go outside and look at it. Virtuer Hutchence hadn’t been kidding around when he’d said there were centuries worth of records, and Felix seemed like he was determined to go through every shelf and box before he saw sun again. I dragged him out for food and sleep often as I could but half the time he’d go on about some new hocus thing he’d found until I was ready to put him back again.

We’d been living in the lighthouse for about a year when about the last person I’d ever expected to see again turned up, right on our front doorstep.

I was in the little room off the kitchen I used as a kind of study, working on one of the copybooks I’d bought when I figured that since I’d learned to read it’d be nice to know how to write too, when I heard the knocking. Took me a moment to figure out it was coming from the front door, since mostly when people came to the house during the week they were delivering something, or visiting from the village, and used the kitchen door. The ‘tradesman’s entrance’ it’s called in flash houses back home.

Now, I figured it was someone there to see Felix on some kind of University or Keeper’s business or the like, but I’d never have figured it for who it turned out to be.

“Fuck me,” I said when I opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Er,” said Lord fucking Shannon Teverius, and just sort of stared at me with eyes big as bell wheels. I don’t know if he didn’t understand what I’d said, or if he’d had this fantasy of Felix - since I knew for fucking sure he wasn’t here to see me - opening the door and falling into his arms or the other way around or what.

“You here to see Felix?” I said, once my brain caught up to my mouth, and added, “my lord?”

I don’t know how much he caught of that besides ‘Felix’ and ‘my lord’ but he said he was and I remembered my fancy manners and showed him into the drawing room off the hall that we’d mostly managed to keep clear of books and papers so it was okay for company. I left him there looking like he wasn’t sure he wanted to sit down or maybe just leave and went to drag Felix out of the library.

~Felix~

I stared at Mildmay in disbelief when he appeared in the library and told me who had come to see me.

“Here?” I asked, astounded. “Why? What for?”

Mildmay shrugged. “Dunno. Didn’t ask. You want to see him?”

Did I? No. Yes. I had no idea. “Do you think I should?”

Mildmay shrugged again. “Awfully long trip just to send him away again.”

Which was true, but only beggared the question of what Shannon was doing here in the first place. I had known Shannon very well for a long time and he’d never been given to travel, preferring to stay in the city with all its attendant luxuries. Perhaps Curia politics were currently such that it was better at the moment for the youngest Teverius to be far away, but that still didn’t explain why Shannon was here, specifically.

“I suppose I should then,” I said, hesitantly, getting up from my desk. Mildmay trailed me as I made my way to the room I knew Mildmay would have left Shannon in.

Shannon was standing the middle of the room, hair, face, and brilliant blue eyes just as I remembered. His eyes went wide when he saw me and I could almost see whatever opening he’d prepared stumbling to a halt before he’d even begun. Despite the journey he’d made, he hadn’t expected me to simply come see him.

“Hello, Shannon,” I said as I entered the room, Mildmay still behind me. I knew without looking he’d take up a place where Shannon could forget he was there.

“Felix,” Shannon began, and fell silent for a moment. “I came here because you didn’t - no one has heard from you. I thought you might at least send for your books, some of them. You...”

I wondered if that sentence was supposed to end ‘obeyed orders for once’, as I was, but never found out. Once I would have said something cutting, something cruel, but I found I had no urge to do so now. Mildmay, blending into the wall behind me, certainly wasn’t going to break the increasingly uncomfortable silence. It was something of a relief when Shannon finally spoke again.

“Felix, I came because I just - I wanted to say I’m sorry. For - for everything. It isn’t enough, and I don’t expect you to say you forgive me but,” Shannon made a vague, helpless gesture. “I am.”

“I know,” I said, gently as I could. “I knew when I saw the necklace.” His mother’s necklace, used to chain together my rings which he had returned to me when I’d left the Mirador, apology and understanding both. I wore the rings on my fingers: the necklace was upstairs in my bedroom, secure in its box in the dresser.

“Oh.” Shannon had been playing with one of his own rings, now he glanced down at what he was doing and stopped. “Felix, <i>would</i> you come back home? If Ste - if the Curia allowed it?”

I’d left and come back once before and that certainly hadn’t solved anything. I was also fairly certain that the Curia had no attention of ever allowing me back, short of the Mirador itself threatening to crumble into ruin. I’d tried not to think about it, and by and large succeeded.

“I don’t know,” I said. I hoped Shannon didn’t intend to speak to Stephen on my behalf. Stephen had never liked me, much less so when I was living with Shannon, and would probably have liked to send me half a world away just to keep us separate. Shannon’s intercession would most likely only make him more determined to keep me here.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Shannon said, surprising me. He looked back up at me, frowning slightly. “Felix, are you all right here? Are you happy?”

I thought about it. I wasn’t mad, haunted, or in danger. I had work that engaged me, and easy company in Mildmay.

“Yes,” I said, thoughtfully. “I think I am.”