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Octavia strums the strings gently, their sound playing quietly through the empty room. It could be one of the palace's many guest rooms, neutral to be inoffensive and lacking any distinguishing accessories. She sits on the bed, one leg folded under her guitar, the other cast over the edge, swaying in tune with the melody. She keeps her gaze on the instrument, on the hazy page of sheet music. She plucks another string.
"He loves you, not me," she says, and it carries through the silence to reach the figure sprawled across the window seat.
Blitzø hums skeptically, crossing his arms. His tail flicks dismissively. "Now, see, by that logic, he still wouldn't love you."
She freezes, breath and all. She flattens her hand against the strings and forces herself to start again. "What?"
Blitzø picks his teeth, aloof. "Yeah, if he can only love one person, then if he loved your mom, he wouldn't be able to love you. And if he loved you instead, then he wouldn't love your mom. Simple." He cracks a mean grin, eyes hard as he stares her down. "And well, what do you know! That sounds familiar. So maybe you're right and he has only ever loved one person." He jabs a claw in her direction. "You."
No, that— that doesn't make sense. "He'd love us both," she tries next, but she can feel the logic starting to fall apart under her feet.
Blitzø snaps his fingers. "Okay, so he can love two people! So why can't he still love two people, even if one of them isn't your horrid bitch of a mother?"
"Hey," she mutters, a weak automatic protest.
"I'm not wrong." He isn't, but Octavia doesn't have to acknowledge it.
"So he can love you and your mom, but not you and his boyfriend? Isn't that about the same thing?" Blitzø's voice gentles, pity or sympathy, she doesn't know but she doesn't like it. "You do understand that it's a different kind of love, right?"
Theoretically. But she's never had a crush on anyone herself, so she doesn't know what that kind of love would feel like. And she's starting to think that the only one to ever show her true, unselfish love was her dad, and now, she can't even be sure that it was ever real. (Because if her own mother only ever loved her to spite someone else, how can she be sure that that wasn't why he did it too? How can she know, when she's no longer sure she actually understands what love is?)
Blitzø continues once she's been silent for too long. "I've got a daughter too—Loona, you've met her—and I love her to pieces. But I also love Stolas just as much. Differently, yeah, but. I can love both." He gestures helplessly. "So why can't Stolas do that too? You and your mom aren't a package deal. He doesn't have to drop you both just because he has a new partner. So why can't he still love you?"
"It's different…" Octavia murmurs.
"Why? Because I'm a man? Or is it because I'm an Imp?" He says it like a swear, like a slur. He says it like Stella would. Octavia hates it. His smile is gone, now, a defensive sneer in its place. "Which prejudice are you going with?"
"I'm not… I…"
"Or maybe," he continues, ruthless, uncaring of the fact that her mind is spinning and it's hard to breathe, "deep down, you always knew that he never loved your mother. And you couldn't understand why he didn't love his wife. So you rationalized that he loved you instead of her. But now that he's dating, he must love that other person instead. Because he chose to love you over your mother, so he must have chosen his new partner over you.
"But that's not how it fucking works. The world isn't kind or simple or logical. Love is messy and wild and uncontrollable, and sometimes it doesn't line up perfectly. Sometimes the life you find yourself in sucks ass, but there's this one spot of light, and you cling to it with all you're fuckin' worth and damn anyone who tells you you can't—!"
"Stop it, stop it!" Octavia yells, covering her ears and curling in on herself. "Just shut up!"
A breath. Blitzø leans against the window, arms crossed, scowling at a corner of the ceiling. Octavia strums the strings of her guitar, but the notes are stiff, jagged. They echo sharply through the room, ringing in her ears.
Blitzø sighs through his nose, still irritated.
"He didn't want me to die," he says, each word solid and deliberate. She opens her mouth to object but Blitzø growls and glares and she clicks her beak shut again. "No, shut up!" He swings his legs over the side of the seat, leaning forward with his claws digging into the wood. "He loves you so fucking much, it's honestly a little terrifying. He didn't save me thinking he was making a choice between us. He didn't go in there thinking he was going to lose you if he saved me."
"He thought he was going to die," Octavia protests weakly, still bitter and hurt and terrified, even though it didn't end up happening.
Blitzø shrugs with his own grimacing scowl. "Yeah, well, he's a dumbass. I mean, really. Kill an Ars Goetia?" He rolls his eyes, scoffing, as if she doesn't remember how real his fear sounded before they cut the broadcast. "Of course they wouldn't do that. We all got caught up in the moment, but it was obvious in hindsight. No, he wasn't going to die.
"But I was." His breath catches for a single second, and he slumps over in the window seat, a hand over his face. He lets it drop, and the expression he wears is so defeated that Octavia hurts just looking at it. She can't imagine how much worse it must feel to wear. (And isn't that the point?) "No one cares about an Imp. No one would even bat an eye at my death. It'd be a spectacle, that it got all the way up to the Sins' court, but the buzz would fade before the next big news story even hit. No one would care.
"But my friends would," he whispers. "My daughter would. And so did Stolas, enough that he rushed in there without a single damn thought in his stupid bird brain. No plan, no escape. He just didn't want to lose one of the very few people that make him happy.
"And then he lost you anyway."
Octavia flinches. She curls in on herself, cradling her guitar close as if it could shield her from the stabbing pain in her heart. Heat crawls up her throat and stings her eyes, and she shakes her head in denial of it all, as if that ever managed to save her from any of it.
"You said he only stayed because of you and was miserable because of it," Blitzø recounts. He tilts his head, a pensive frown on his face. "Would you rather he have killed himself?"
Terror strikes through her heart at the very thought and she rears back as if he slapped her. "What!? No!"
"Then if he couldn't leave, and he couldn't love Stella because she hates him and he's gay," he counts on his fingers, then spreads his hands imploringly, "then what else could he have done?"
"She doesn't hate him…" Maybe they haven't gotten along these last few years, but they're her parents. They're married. If they hated each other, neither of those things would be true.
"Honey…" his voice is horribly condescending and Octavia scowls at her hands, clenched around the fabric of her dress. She hates this. She hates him. (How dare he make her think about these things? She doesn't want to see it.)
Blitzø sighs, leaning back against the frame of the window. He glances outside but turns back to her after a moment. "She's put at least three hits out on him," he reveals with an empty voice. "He was in the hospital from one of them. I don't know about you, but I'd have to hate someone pretty badly to do that. Maybe it's different for royals. Fuck knows you lot are crazier than a rabid hellbeast sometimes. But for us average folk? That's not love. That's nowhere close."
It doesn't sound like love to her, either. She stays silent, because she can't admit that. It would make it real, and it can't be.
Blitzø tries a different angle. "Say the divorce worked out like it was supposed to," he posits. "Stolas keeps you and Stella is gone. Is he supposed to stay single forever after? Never know the joy of a spouse who actually loves him back? When you grow up enough to move out and get your own family— is he supposed to stay here, all alone?"
She shakes her head slowly, blinking against the tears prickling in the corners of her eyes. "No, that… that sounds horrible…"
"But if he dates again, you'd feel betrayed," Blitzø keeps going, ruthless. "So he can't, if he wants you to feel like he still loves you. Even though he always would, whether or not he's dating someone. He can't, because he cares more about what you think of him than for his own happiness.
"That's why he stayed. That's why he put up with all the shit your mother put him through—"
"If he hates her, then why did he pick her?!" Octavia shouts, feeling like inside of her has finally snapped.
Blitzø stares at her. "He didn't," he reveals in a soft tone, leaving her floundering. "It was an arranged marriage. His dad set them up when Stolas was like ten or whatever."
"No, that's…" She never knew that. He'd never mentioned that, and her mom never said anything either. Why didn't either of them ever tell her that?
"That's not something you tell your kid," Blitzø says. "There's some things you don't want your kid to have to worry about, or deal with, and maybe some of it spills out into the open without your permission, but you keep everything you can tucked away. And sometimes that's the wrong call. But you never know until you have to face the consequences." He breathes out through his nose. "He only ever wanted to keep you safe. He didn't want any of this hurt to tarnish your view of your family."
"Bit too late for that," she grumbles. Blitzø huffs a rueful laugh.
"Yeah…"
They sit in silence for another few moments, their quiet breathing the only sound.
"What are you going to do when you're betrothed?" Blitzø asks curiously.
Octavia blinks rapidly, thrown by the conviction in his idle tone. "What? I'm not… interested in that, so I won't."
"You're royal," Blitzø points out. "Either your mom or uncle or granddad are going to set you up with someone eventually. I'm surprised you haven't been already. Maybe Stolas convinced them to hold off…"
"No, they— They wouldn't do that."
"How do you know?"
"Dad always said—" she breaks off, looking away. He said to follow her heart, wherever it took her. That he would support her no matter what.
She never talked to her mother about it. Has never felt comfortable enough to mention it. Would Stella have agreed with Stolas? Or would she have told her that it was just a phase she'd grow out of someday? Would she have cared at all?
"He doesn't want what happened to him to happen to you," Blitzø whispers. Octavia clenches her jaw and doesn't look back at him. She grabs her guitar again instead, squinting at the open notebook of scrawled sheet music. She knows what's there, but she can't quite see it clearly…
Blitzø sighs, and the total exhaustion in that sound makes her peek up at him through her hair. He catches her eyes then looks away, out the window into the misty void.
"Look," Blitzø starts, and pinches the bridge of his nose. "I don't know the magic words I need to say to convince you, but just, think about it? All of this." He waves his hand at nothing, then drops it into his lap. "Stolas misses you," he murmurs. "He thinks you hate him and it's killing him. He's trying to pretend like it isn't but I can see… I know that it's wearing away at him. I don't know how much more he can afford to lose…"
She clenches her jaw and looks away, and pretends that her vision is blurry because of this nonsense realm they're in. No other reason. None at all.
Octavia doesn't give him a response, and he doesn't push for one. He stops speaking to her entirely, in fact, curling up against the window and staring out into the darkness. She returns to her guitar, slowly plucking notes that hang, hauntingly, in the air between them.
Neither really notices when this world dissolves around them, as gentle as a fading breeze…
Octavia opens her eyes. She doesn't move other than that, laying still in the silent darkness of her room. The curtains are closed against the Ring's dim nighttime glow, and the stars her dad enchanted to her ceiling are almost burnt out after so many years. Shadows swallow every defining feature, leaving her in a familiar void.
The dream stays in her mind, swirling through her thoughts, soft around the edges but settled in her memory. All the arguments and counterpoints, the anger and heartache and fear. All lies, probably. Rational made up by her turbulent emotions to explain why her life was falling apart around her, funneled through the only asshole who would dare to bury her under those revelations.
She scoffs and turns her face further into the pillow, pulling the blanket up over her head. "What a stupid dream," she mumbles bitterly. She squeezes her eyes shut again and forcibly pushes all of those thoughts as far down as they'll go. It doesn't matter anyway. Dreams can't change anything.
Nothing will ever fix what's been broken.
Blitzø wakes abruptly with a snort. He blinks at his ceiling blankly for a long minute, then rubs his face, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Weird fucking dream," he declares. It wasn't a nightmare, even if parts of it resembled some of his frustration paralyzation terrors, but he doesn't know how to classify some random made-up encounter with his boyfriend's daughter.
It's weird that he can remember it so well, too. Usually his dreams fade away like smoke in the morning light, or the midnight gloom, or the midafternoon glare. They don't usually stick around. Makes him think it might not have been a dream, but he obviously didn't go anywhere and why the fuck would he be meeting up with Octavia anyway?
Like, sure, it'd be nice to know her—she's Stolas's light and he loves her more than anything. A good partner strives to learn all they can about the things that are precious to each other. Blitzø understands the importance of a daughter. So, yeah, he hopes that one day they can all exist together in whatever form of peace you can get down here, but, well… He's not getting his hopes up too high. This fantasy doesn't have a net waiting to catch them when it falls apart.
She didn't listen to him anyway. Or, well, this figment of his imagination didn't listen to him, but it all felt authentic enough, from what little he knows of her. He wonders if there was anything else he could have said, but he thinks he ran through every argument that could have had an impact. It was doomed from the start, whether or not it was real.
Whatever.
Blitzø wriggles around on his bean bag chair, punching it back into a half-way comfortable shape, and slips back into sleep.