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hamelin-born:
angelrider13:
hamelin-born replied to your post : Out of curiosity - was Thalassa able to save any…
Luche probably just. Collapses when his daughter is presented to him - falls to his knees, rocks her back and forth, and cries when his daughter calls him ‘dada’.
@hamelin-born
Whelp. I guess this is canon now. Have a thing.
Luche stands to the side, watching as people reunite with lost loved ones, and tries to pretend that he isn’t jealous. It doesn’t work nearly as well as he wants it to and that alone makes him feel guilty. He just. He sees the smiles and tears and he wonders -
But he had stopped hoping for things a long time ago.
(He still remembers that day. Remembers running back home, towards the billowing cloud of smoke, sprinting, his legs burning, lungs screaming at him. His home is a ruin, his neighbors’ bodies strewn across the street like they were little more than trash to be tossed aside.
He finds his mother in the cove a few minutes from their house. Their cove, he’d called it when he was small. It was the place his mother had taught him to swim, shown him how to hunt for shellfish. Where she taught him how to fall and throw knives and the right way to curl his hand into a fist so he wouldn’t break his thumb when he punched something.
There are a dozen MTs scattered on the ground in pieces.
His mother is slumped over on her side, MT oil coating her hands and smeared across her face. Her front is stained red, her eyes glassy and sightless. He closes them with trembling fingers and swallows down his grief and forces himself not to cry. Later, there will be time for that later.
His mother is here, but his daughter is no where to be seen.
He looks.
He doesn’t find her.)
The sound of a throat clearing as him snapping out of haunted memories. Leviathan stands before him, brow arched, but before he can ask if she has need of him, his eyes catch sight of what she’s holding and he promptly swallows his tongue.
He knows that face.
Small and round with rosy cheeks and a narrow chin and a little nose and light, feather-fine hair framing her features. Bright gold eyes, the same eyes as the goddess holding her, peer up at him curiously, blinking slowly. There’s a moment where all sound fades out as the two of them stare at each other. Then her face scrunches up and her head tilts to the side and -
“Da?” she asks.
Luche chokes out a sob and he doesn’t know if he snatched her up or Leviathan handed her over, but either way, his daughter is in his arms, warm and breathing and alive. His daughter who he thought he lost, who he thought was taken from him far too soon, who he thought he’d never see again.
“Alyne,” he croaks into her hair as he falls to his knees, curling up around her like he could hide her away from the world.
“Da!” Alyne exclaims, sounding so pleased with herself, the same tone she used to use when she’d find him or his mother during hide and seek or when she found the toy he’d hidden when they played treasure hunt. That was her victory tone. That was her I found you tone.
There’s a hand in his hair, gentle and strong, and Luche isn’t sure if he somehow manages to express his thanks through his tears or if Leviathan just knows, but the next moment a kiss is pressed to the top of his head and her presence moves away.
“Bye bye, Ma!” Alyne calls and Luche gives a wet laugh that sounds much more like a sob as the sound of his daughter’s voice brings a fresh wave of tears to his eyes.
“Da ow?” Alyne asks, patting his wet cheeks, looking up at him with worried eyes.
Luche shakes his head. “Da’s just happy.”
Alyne looks skeptical and Luche forces himself to swallow down laughter he’s fairly certain would sound hysterical and possibly a bit unhinged.
“You found me,” he explains and that makes her face light up like the sun.
“Da!” she says, and it sounds like an agreement as she burrows into his chest, and he rocks her there, on the floor, the same way he did when she was new to the world and became the most important thing in his life, as he cries for his mother and his daughter and his family.
For this first time since he lost his home, Luche hopes.
@angelrider13 , you made everyone cry upon reading this!
Just. Yes. No wonder Luche was anger and bitterness wrapped in a compact package, no wonder he hated so - his daughter. His daughter. And here - here, it was partly that he didn’t know. He didn’t know what had happened to his little one, he didn’t have that closure, he didn’t - he lost his mother, he lost his home, he lost everything - and he lost his daughter.
And now. Now his daughter is here. His daughter knows him. His daughter is so happy to see him, and Luche breaks. He cries, as he hasn’t for so long - cries, as you said, for everything he’s lost. But it’s a good cry, it’s a good hurt - it’s the scar tissue being ripped open so a wound can heal clean.
And Alyne is so cute! Treating finding her Da like winning at hide-and-seek, so bright and innocent in the sheer joy of her triumph, worried for her father - and yes. Yes, she found him.
(I have slightly crackish mental images of Luche all but tearing apart Insomnia to find a toddler-supplies story open at this hour, because he needs All The Things for Alyne, and Tredd helping, increasingly fascinated by this small family - he’s never seen Luche like this before, and Alyne likes him! Likes Tredd. Can you imagine that?)
(…and now I’m picturing Alyne as the impetus for Tredd and Luche getting together somewhere down the line. Alyne has two Dads and a Mother. And she is happy.)
@hamelin-born
I’m glad you like her!
Alyne is teeny tiny and she was even teenier when everything went down, so she doesn’t really understand what happened. All she really knows is that her Grandma told her she had to hide and there were a whole lot of scary noises and then her new Ma was there. And her new Ma told her that they wouldn’t be able to find Grandma anymore, but they could find her Da if she wanted to.
And Da is the best hider, so he’s really hard to find, but Ma says that all the best hunters are and Alyne knows that her Da is the best, so it makes sense.
(The first thing Alyne does upon meeting Tredd is tell him that his hair is pretty in that serious, solemn way that toddlers are about the most random things. Tredd’s hair is the prettiest and she needs him to know that.)
(…well now I want Luche and Tredd to end up as queerplatonic life partners. Tredd just sort of moves in gradually, visits running longer and longer until he just. Doesn’t leave. And neither of them realize what’s happening until Alyne calls for her Da, but she’s talking about Tredd. Tredd BSODs and Luche blinks at the expression on his daughter’s face - the one that tells him that he really should have figured this out already.)
luche comes home one day to find alyne standing on tredd’s shoulders luche: …why is she on your shoulders? tredd: she likes to be tall alyne: i’m taller than da! sweat tears or the sea au luche lazarus tredd furia alyne lazarus
@angelrider13
Yes. I think - when he hears her confused recitation of events? Luche is desperately, terribly grateful that his daughter doesn’t really understand what happened. That his mother - accidentally or on-purpose - reframed what was going on for Alyne as a form of hide-and-seek - as a game, almost. That the worst of the horror and the terror passed her by.
(And oh, but Luche wants to weep again when he pieces together what his mother must have done - took Alyne to the cove and fought for his daughter, and trusted to Leviathan and the ocean’s mercurial mercy - because it was the only thing she could do. A terrible, desperate chance - and it worked. His mother saved Alyne. His Ma won.)
Luche is so terribly, terribly grateful to Leviathan. I see him as - something of an atheist, almost - what have the gods ever done for him? But Leviathan - she did something, without thought of praise or reward, and she will always have Luche’s gratitude for that. Always.
Alyne singing her Da’s praises is just. So cute. Because of course she sees her Da as the Best Da! And Luche looks at his daughter’s beaming, open-faced admiration, and feels his heart crack just a bit more. (In a good way!)
…all the Glaive are. So happy for Luche, of course, for getting family back - and also slightly surprised at the immense change in his attitude. Luche is. Luche is happy, now, Luche has something to fight for, something to come back for, and it shows.
And yes, Tredd would be - immediately charmed by Alyne. And it’s true! He does have the prettiest hair; the little lady has good taste! Tredd is probably Luche’s go-to babysitter on the very rare occasions he can’t be with his daughter; Tredd probably tagged along and held all the purchases that first night when Luche went on a positive rampage through Insomnia’s late-night stores looking for supplies for his daughter, Tredd is - Tredd is there.
And it’s easy for them to fall into a domestic partnership. So damn easy - why, Luche wonders privately, didn’t they ever do this before? Seriously, why? And he’s grateful to his daughter all over again for pointing it out.
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