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first ll prev ll next comicfury mirror
Welcome to the (unofficial) end of Plant part 2! Oo-oohh we're 2/3rds of the way there. Roughly. Really can't tell with the way I'm doing this story.
Sorry for the long post too, I always cringe inwardly a little when the page count exceeds 10... suffer with me, sorry, put me to tumblr jail. Anyway! Hope you've enjoyed the ride this far!!
second chances
mob boss! lando norris x reader
part forty-three: y/n
word count: 5.5k
warnings: this chapter contains descriptions of violence and gore. reader discretion is advised.
forty-two | forty-three | forty-four
“Y/N—”
His knees hit the tile hard.
There was no time to think. There was no protocol or logic. There was just instinct — vicious, blinding instinct — as Lando dropped to his knees beside Y/N, already reaching for her, already trying to stop the bleeding with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
She was on her side, curled in on herself like her body was trying to hold in what it couldn’t. There was blood — not a lot at first, but more now. It soaked through her shirt in thick, wet patches and smeared across the floor from where she’d moved, or at least tried to. Her fingers were clumsy where they pressed against her own side, slipping and twitching with every shaky breath she tried to take.
This isn’t happening.
There was also the sound. It wasn’t a scream or a cry. Instead, it was just a wet, desperate wheeze. Her body jerked with each gasp — shallow, wet, choking sounds that made him feel like he was suffocating too.
“Hey. Hey, look a’ me.” His voice shook. He grabbed her face too quickly, too rough, trying to tilt her towards him, but he didn’t know what else to do. “Stay with me. Please.”
It hurt worse because she was trying.
He could see it in the way her mouth moved, like she was trying to say something. His name, maybe. Or help. Or hurts. But all that came out was more blood — red against her lips, down her chin, too bright.
His stomach turned.
“Fuck—what happened?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “Who– Who did this? What the fuck happened—”
He was interrupted when her body jolted slightly and her hand clutched at his wrist and she was coughing again, harder now, the blood bubbling from her mouth and dripping down her cheek.
He froze.
Then panic ripped through him like lightning.
Somewhere in the back, the phone kept ringing.
“Help!” he screamed, his throat raw. “Somebody fucking help me! Please— please, she’s— someone call an ambulance!”
He could barely breathe. His whole body felt wired and numb all at once, like he was floating above himself watching it happen.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed how her hands were still pressed against her stomach, but they were losing strength — fingers twitching, slipping, losing grip. He pressed his palms over hers, harder than he should have, trying to add pressure, to stop the leak, to fix it somehow, but the blood kept coming, dark and too much and too fast.
“You’re okay,” he said, his voice thin, breaking. “You’re alright, yeah? I’ve got you. You– You’re okay. You’re— fuck, what happened?”
In response, she could only look at him. Everything seemed to blur around the edges, including the outline of the man now holding her. Her eyes were wide and wet, dark pupils blown and drifting.
This isn’t happening.
Her lips moved but no sound came out. There was only more blood.
“No, no, no, no—fuck!”, he muttered under his breath, clearly frustrated. He grabbed her more tightly now, easing her onto her back as gently as he could. “You’re okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. Just—just breathe, alright? I know it hurts, I know, but you have to stay awake, okay?”
Instinctively, he still looked to her for a response. Maybe it was some desperate hope that she’d do something, make a gesture of some sort – that she’d do anything that she was aware, that she was here with him now.
It was only then he noticed the way she was shivering, the tny tremors wracking her weakening form. He didn’t know if it was fear, or shock, or from the blood loss — probably all of it. Her whole body was trembling against him and her eyes were unfocused now, lashes fluttering, her gaze slipping somewhere just past his shoulder.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck–,” Lando swore loudly. His eyes darted to her side, where her hands were trembling against her stomach, barely pressing now, too weak to hold their grip. Immediately, he moved to take over, desperate to do anything to help as he pulled up her shirt just enough to see the wound.
The moment he saw it, all the oxygen escaped his lungs at once.
This isn’t happening.
Just where the cartilage met the bone of some of her ribs was a single, deep puncture wound. The incision was clean, even beneath the mess of fresh and dried blood that decorated its entrance, more blood spritzing weakly each time she attempted another shaky inhale.
Lower right lung.
Clean.
If it nicked somethin’ in there–
Lando couldn’t afford to think like that. So instead of thinking, he pressed down hard against the open flesh wound. Y/N let out a strangled cry, but at least it was sound.
She can’t do that if she’s dead, he had to remind himself. That means she’s still alive.
She’s still alive.
Keep her alive.
Soon enough, even his hands alone weren't enough to stop the never ending flow of blood. Desperately, he spun his head around, looking for anything he could use, anything that could help. Anything even remotely useful was too far for him to reach without letting go of her, to far to reach without getting up.
Wild eyes flitted in every direction, hoping to find a miracle. Eventually, when all else seemed to fail, Lando remembered the sweatshirt he’d been wearing.
I can use that. I can use it like a bandage and it’ll buy her time. It’ll buy her time so that she can–
So she could what?
Physically shaking the thought from his mind, Lando quickly pulled his sweatshirt over his head, before wadding it up and pushing it into the wound. As the fabric soaked up the fresh blood, rubbing up against the injury, Y/N cried out in pain again, the fabric’s brush causing her wound to burn. Her brown eyes widened with pain, her breath hitching and rattling.
“Y/N,” he called out, this time louder, hands shaking as he tried to steady her. Scrambling to find new patches of the fabric that hadn’t already been soaked in her blood, he explained, “I think– I think you’re bleedin’ into your chest. Shit—shit, I think ‘s your lung or somethin’, fuck, fuck—”
Her eyes were unfocused, her skin pale.
There was no way for him to know what was making it worse and what wasn’t, certainly not when his mind was blank and filled with static the way it was then. All he could do was hold her tighter, his palms pressed to her side as he tried to keep the warmth in. He pressed harder with little regard for her discomfort, because he would happily apologize for the rest of his life if he could just manage to keep her alive, if he could just manage to keep the cold tinge of death from creeping further up her fingertips.
“You’re okay,” he lied, smiling up at her. It was a warped, terrified quirk of his lips more than anything, but he put everything he had into making it as convincing as possible. Y/N deserved at least that much.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You’re okay, Y/N, you’re fine. ‘M right here.”
Below him, in his arms, the girl blinked slowly, like even that small action took too much effort. Her fingers twitched beneath his as blood leaked between them. Her legs twitched weakly once before going still again.
What? No, that can’t—
“Hey, hey, hey, stay with me,” Lando begged, his voice breaking completely. He’d begun to rock ever so slightly without realizing it, as if trying to soothe her to rest. “Don’t close your eyes. I swear to God, don’t fucking do that to me—”
Her eyelids fluttered anyway, as the colors only began to fade more feom view. Y/N tried desperately to focus on anything — the beaming overhead lights, the color of Lando’s eyes — but to no avail.
Oh, she realized distantly, trying to force herself to sort out her muddled thoughts. Lando’s here.
It was hard to know if she had managed to smile, since everything was so hard and Y/N was so very tired. But what she did know was that if Lando was here, he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
As if triggered by that very thought, the singing pain in her side began to lessen, an odd coolness beginning to spread in its place. It was now significantly less uncomfortable, enough that she could finally allow herself just a moment of rest—
“No, no, don’t— shit, HELP!” Lando screamed, the sound so raw it scraped up his throat. The cry seemed to reverberate in the empty of the store. “SOMEONE HELP ME— SOMEONE FUCKING HELP ME, SHE’S DYING!”
No one answered.
With shaking hands and blood-slicked fingers, Lando managed to pull out his phone and dial the emergency number, snapping at the dispatcher so fast they had to tell him to repeat himself. How could barely recall anything he’d actually said — their location, that she was stabbed.
He’d told them she was dying.
That he remembered.
By the time he ended the call, she was barely conscious.
“Hey. Hey, don’t fucking do this t’ me.”
He cupped her cheek with one hand, the other still pressing hard against her wound. His hands, his forearms, his clothes – everything was covered in her blood. His jeans were soaked through. Her breath was uneven, sharp and hitching.
It felt like hours passed before her eyes fluttered. Her lips parted in another attempt to speak, but all that came out was another choke. Blood bubbled at the base of her throat.
He nearly lost it then.
Hazel eyes met hers as he searched her face once more, looking for any sign she was in pain. But where there was once a grimace, now there was nothing. Nothing except familiar brown eyes, now wide with terror.
With his hoodie still pressed to her side in a futile attempt to put pressure on the bleeding, Lando was finally at a loss of what to do. There was no trick, no plan, no scheme that would whisk them away from this nightmare. There was only them, waiting on the faith that help would eventually arrive.
As they waited, there was nothing he could do to take that look off her face. So he did the only thing he could still do for her.
“You’re gonna be fine,” he lied, his forehead pressed to hers. He had to force himself not to flinch in response to how cold her skin was against his.
She’s not supposed to be cold. She hates being cold, always wants socks or a blanket or to lay next to me so she isn’t cold.
She’s not supposed to be cold.
“You hear me? You’re okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you, promise.”
It might have just been his own wishful thinking, but Lando almost could’ve sworn he heard her try to mumble his name. But when he looked at her eyes, they began to flutter shut.
“No. No. Stop it, stop it. Don’t– Please, sweetheart—”
The phone clattered to the ground beside him, forgotten. If the dispatcher said anything else, Lando certainly didn’t hear it. Even as he gently tried to shake her awake, her eyes continued to slip closed.
“No, baby, hey—hey.”
He leaned in, voice cracking under the weight of panic and heartbreak. “Stay with me, okay? I know you hate me. I know. But don’t—please don’t leave me like this.”
She didn’t answer him.
Her lips barely parted with each dwindling breath, but that was the only sign she’d ever been breathing at all. Her lips moved, but there was no sound now. Where there once was muffled coughing or gurgling or even just weak wheezing, now there was no sound at all.
“Somebody help!” he shouted once more, one final hail mary attempt from a boy who was watching the one thing he loved fade before his very eyes. “Please— SOMEONE HELP ME!”
Nothing happened.
No one came.
There was just the sound of her ragged breathing. Just the music still playing softly in the background, some lazy instrumental track that suddenly felt cruel. There was just the blood on the floor, warm against his knees.
As he sat there, swathed in artificial lighting and surrounded by a puddle of darkening red, Lando Norris finally broke. He cried like his chest had split open, because for him, it had. He cried until his shoulders shook and his tears fell to the tiles like a sorry attempt at washing away the damage that had already been done.
Lando Norris cried like a little boy.
Even in his despair, his fingers curled tighter around her, holding her closer the way he used to as they laid on her couch not long ago. This time, however, his hands shook as he pressed harder. Her blood had now soaked through every layer of his clothing. He could feel it stain the skin of his knees, the fabric of his sleeves, could feel it dry into the crevices under his fingernails.
“You’re okay,” he continued to ramble quietly, his free hand searching frantically for some place where he wouldn’t somehow make it worse, where he wouldn’t somehow reap the soul from her body any faster than he already was. “You’re gonna be okay, I’ve got you. You’re gonna be fine.”
As her body held on to the last tendrils of consciousness, Lando finally heard a faint sound in the distance.
Sirens.
He could hear them approaching closer, growing louder as they neared. But even then, they still sounded too far away.
Brushing the hair out of her face, Lando tried to give her a watery smile. His free hand reached for one of hers, squeezing it in an attempt at reassurance as tears streamed silently down his face. The sirens continued to grow louder as he curled himself around her further, like he was putting himself between her and the rest of the world, as if he was afraid someone would take her away from him.
He leaned his forehead against hers and whispered shakily, “Don’t go where I can’t follow, okay?”
Y/N didn’t answer.
Even when the ambulance finally arrived, his hand never left hers.
Not once.
While the EMTs rushed to prepare the ambulance to take her, Lando appeared to be lost in his own world. The rest of the world faded into the background as he kept all his attention on her, nothing more important to him when every second she was in her arms could be her last.
He cupped her cheek with one hand, the other still pressing down on the gash in her side, and gently brushed his fingers against her cheek in soft strokes.
But she was so still now.
So quiet.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he whispered. “You hear me? You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna get through this, and I’m gonna tell you m’sorry a thousand fucking times, and you’re gonna roll your eyes and make fun of me for crying. You’re gonna tell me I’m being dramatic and tell me to shut up and maybe— maybe even let me kiss you again someday.”
Y/N’s eyes finally slipped closed.
Panic consumed Lando like a tidal wave inside his chest. “No. No. Y/N—open your eyes. Please.”
The ambulance lights hit the windows as they finally drove away: red, then blue, then red again.
Lando didn’t remember walking through the doors of Princess Grace Hospital.
He could only vaguely recall being in the ambulance, muttering things under his breath, his words only soft enough for Y/N to hear. He remembered being upset about something…
But about what?
It took effort to recall the details with any level of clarity. As he strained himself to remember, he was suddenly overwhelmed with the chaos of the emergency department as the main doors swung open before him.
One medic was already haunched over her, checking vitals and shouting numbers. Another was holding pressure on the wound — not his hands anymore, someone else’s hands. That shook him more than he’d expected. She was bleeding out under someone else’s hands now.
Forcing himself out of whatever haze threatened to cloud over his mind, Lando rushed to keep pace with the rest of the medical personnel as they transferred her from one stretcher to another.
He followed them as far as they let him.
“Sir, you can’t come past this point—”
His brows furrowed, immediately upset. “She’s my— I’m with her!”
Still, Lando wasn’t allowed past the double doors. He barely got a glimpse of her being wheeled away — her face slack, lips blue, oxygen mask pressed too hard against her skin. He tried to follow, tried to push his way after her, but someone — a nurse or a security guard, maybe both — held him back by the shoulders.
“Sir, you need to let them work.”
He nearly decked the guy, but he couldn't conjure the strength to. It was as if when she had left through those doors where he couldn’t follow, his strength had left him too. Instead, he just stood there shaking, covered in blood that wasn’t his.
Lando stood there for a moment. Just stood.
Someone said his name — maybe one of the nurses.
But the hallway started to stretch. His ears rang. His vision blurred around the edges, the sterile overhead lights casting everything in too much white.
As a nurse ushered him into a seat, his leg bounced. His fingers wouldn’t stop twitching. The front of his shirt grew stiff with her blood — and no one had asked him to change yet, probably because no one could even look him in the eyes.
Once he was seated, that was when they proceeded to ask him her full name. He gave it without hesitation. They asked her date of birth — he knew that too.
But medical history? Allergies?
He didn’t know.
He didn’t fucking know.
He’d memorized the sound of her laugh. The rhythm of her breathing when she slept. The exact way she liked her coffee down to the swirl. But he didn’t know what kind of blood ran through her veins, or whether she could take O-negative, or if she’d ever had surgery before.
Something like anger burned in his throat at the mere suggestion that Lando didn't know her. Who the hell were they to even think that? They were’nt the ones who had to know what it felt like when your heart lives outside of your chest. They weren’t the ones that had their hands stained red with her blood. They weren’t the ones who had to listen for the faintest sound of her breathing after knowing what her heartbeat sounded like when she slept. They weren’t the ones who had to watch her go still before their very eyes.
They took her into the OR, and he was left in the waiting room.
He hadn’t moved in hours.
He hadn’t taken a sip of the vending machine coffee someone handed him. He hadn’t gone to the bathroom. Hell, he hadn’t even breathed right since the EMTs took her from his hands.
Now he just sat and waited. When he got too restless, he forced himself up onto his feet and paced. Back and forth, back and forth — near the entrance, then the vending machine, then the desk. Then he sat. Then he stood again. Then he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes like that would stop the image of her from flashing over and over in his mind — her on the floor, her blood in his hands, her fingers slipping from his grasp like the whole world was tilting.
She’d been in surgery for three and a half hours.
The nurse at the desk had said they’d update him.
They hadn’t.
When it felt like time had slowed to a glacial pace, he’d gone to the front desk and asked if they could tell him anything — how deep the wound had gone, what organ had been hit — but they just kept saying they were doing everything they could. That she was in “good hands.”
Lando didn’t give a shit about good hands.
He just wanted her.
He wanted her yelling at him, telling him to go home. He wanted her brushing him off, rolling her eyes, pretending she hadn’t missed him even though he could always tell when she had. He wanted her awake. Breathing. There.
Yet as the clock ticking menacingly on the wall of the waiting room never let him forget, she was somewhere behind a wall of double doors, split open on a table, while strangers stitched her back together and tried to keep her from bleeding out entirely.
Lando pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes.
He wasn’t crying.
He refused to cry.
He’d cried enough already.
Instead, the endless hours left him with ample time to play it all over and over again in his mind, like horror film he never wanted to see. Scrunching his eyes shut, his ears echoed with the memory of when the paramedics tried to pull him away from her. He’d screamed at them.
Don’t touch her. Don’t move her. Don’t take her away from me.
They hadn’t listened.
In the ambulance, he just kept whispering to no one: “She has to be okay. She has to.”
Somewhere around hour five, his breath started catching in his chest again. His hands felt like ice. He leaned forward in the chair, elbows on knees, trying to steady himself.
One of the nurses nearby seemed to notice the way Lando was hyperventilating as if the walls were closing in on him. She tried to get him to eat, to get some rest.
Lando wordlessly waved her away without answering.
The truth was that he was stuck. He was stuck in the moment he saw her eyes start to close, in the way she’d tried to say his name but couldn’t, in the way her hands slipped away from his and her body went so, so still.
He remembered thinking, This is what it looks like when someone dies in your arms.
And he hadn’t realized until just now that he was still holding her weight, even when she wasn’t there.
Physically, Lando Norris was sat in the emergency room of one of the best hospitals in the world, armed with a soft paper cup of lukewarm coffee that he wasn’t drinking, squinting every time the doors swung open just in case it was someone with news. However, in his mind, Lando was still on that café floor, still whispering to her through the blood, still begging her to hold on.
“Are you here for Y/N Y/L/N?”
Lando instantly bolted upright. “Yes. Is she—?”
“She is still in surgery,” a nurse said calmly. “We just wanted to inform you. It is… taking a while.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, voice too rough to sound like himself.
The nurse hesitated. “It means she lost quite a lot of blood. And her body isn’t responding well to the transfusions.”
That news marked the beginning of hours of pacing and stopping and pacing again, of every clock tick feeling like a needle to the back of his spine. He’d already asked the nurse’s station a second time too — no update. She was still in surgery. The damage had been extensive. The blood loss alone would’ve been enough to kill her if they’d gotten there even five minutes later.
What do you even say to that?
It was hour six when a surgeon finally emerged, just after 4 a.m. He looked middle-aged, and weary-eyed, rubbing at his face like the surgery had aged him in real time as he approached where Lando sat in the waiting room.
“She made it through surgery,” he stated first. “But it was close.”
That word didn’t leave Lando’s head.
Close.
“She lost a significant amount of blood,” the doctor went on, voice calm but firm, like this was just another case. “The stab wound punctured her lower lung, missed a major artery by about a centimeter. We had to do an emergency thoracotomy and abdominal exploration to control the internal bleeding.”
“She’s had two transfusions already,” the doctor added. “Her body’s reacting slowly. It could be the stress, could be the shock. Maybe also she was on the floor for longer than anyone realized.”
Then hee paused, as if trying to decide how much to say.
Lando only stared.
“They’ve had to go very slow with the replacement as she is rejecting some of it. It’s not uncommon. But it is dangerous. And the wound was… close. It missed her major artery by about two centimeters. We had to transfuse more than we expected — her body’s not accepting the new volume as quickly as we’d like. We’re monitoring for signs of organ stress.”
Lando’s mouth was dry. “But she’s alive?”
A beat.
“She made it through surgery,” the doctor said. “The blade missed several critical nerves by millimeters. But she’s still in critical condition. We need to see how she responds.”
Lando nodded once. Truthfully, it was about all he could manage. All the exhaustion of the day caught up with him at once, every muscle and joint aching as if he had spent the whole day sparring or running. Everything felt weaker, more fragile somehow.
“She’s being moved to ICU,” a woman came to inform him afterward. “She’ll be monitored for the next twenty-four hours. Those will be critical. If she stabilizes by tomorrow morning, her chances go up. If not…”
She didn’t finish the sentence.
She didn’t have to.
They didn’t let him see her right away. “ICU protocol,” they’d explained.
But through the small window of the door, he could see the outline of her body beneath the thin white blanket. Tubes in her arms. Wires on her chest. The hiss of a ventilator helping her lungs do what they should’ve been able to on their own.
She looked nothing like herself.
She looked… small.
He pressed a hand to the window, even as it smeared blood across the glass. He didn’t wipe it off, content with finally being able to see the steady rise and fall of her chest, if even from afar.
They let him in around 3 a.m.
The nurse didn’t say much — just nodded toward the hallway and told him to keep it quiet, and please don’t touch any of the monitors. He didn’t answer, just followed the linoleum path past doors that weren’t hers until he reached the right one.
When they finally did let him see her, he wasn’t ready.
He’d thought he was. He’d spent hours pacing that waiting room, rehearsing what he might say, bracing for the worst, calculating how many apologies he’d need to string together just to deserve breathing the same air as her again.
But when he stepped into that sterile, humming room and saw her lying there, he was startled by how pale she was. It confused him to see her, to see the girl he loved hooked up to more machines than he could count. Her skin appeared faintly clammy under the pulse monitor’s clip.
Looking at her, the words left him entirely.
He hadn’t spoken since they let him in. Instead, he just watched her, just let his eyes move over every inch of her like he was memorizing her face all over again. Her lips were chapped. Her knuckles scraped. Someone had cleaned the blood off her hairline, but he could still see the faint trace of it, like something haunting the edge of her skin.
It was too quiet inside.
Machines hummed softly. One beeped — slow, steady. The fluorescent lighting had been dimmed to a low twilight glow, casting shadows on the walls like ghosts that refused to leave. It only made her look more pale, highlighting the way her lips parted just enough to see the breathing tube. Her arms were tucked with wires and tape and bruises blooming beneath the skin.
Lando sat in the stiff plastic chair at her bedside, elbows on knees, head bowed like he was in prayer. He wanted to reach for her hand, but he flinched when he found that her arm was hooked to an IV line, fingers limp against the starched sheets. A compression cuff hissed softly every few minutes. The bruises on her ribs were starting to surface now — angry, blue and blooming like ink stains.
At least she’s alive.
His elbows braced against his knees. His hands folded in front of him. His eyes didn’t leave her.
“Hey,” he said quietly, because anything louder would’ve felt wrong. “You look terrible.”
He waited for a beat, but there was no laugh or eye roll or snarky comeback about his own disheveled mess. In the silence of the room, there was just the soft hiss of the ventilator, the steady beep of the heart monitor.
Something about the sounds irked him. Slowly, he rubbed a hand down his face, cleary tired beyond just what anyone from the outside could see.
Y/N would’ve been able to see.
He missed her.
“I never meant for this t’ happen,” he muttered. His voice sounded too loud, even though it was barely more than a whisper.
“I was going to let go,” he added, quieter. “I wasn’t going to bother you anymore. I just… I just wanted to see that you were okay. That you moved on. That you—”
He swallowed, jaw tightening.
“But I ruined everything,” he finished, his voice wavering.
He looked down at his hands, still tinged red no matter how hard he scrubbed them raw. He looked down at the hands that had done everything they could to try to keep her alive, only for her to end up like this.
Of course you couldn’t keep her alive.
He was The Reaper, after all. And everyone knew that Reapers could only take lives, not save them. And Lando Norris had never known how to hold anything without killing it.
He stared at her. The only part of her that moved was the slow rise and fall of her chest — mechanical, borrowed, a rhythm not her own.
“I don’t know how to make this right,” he said after a long moment, almost to himself. “I thought I could keep you separate. Like maybe if I loved you hard enough, it would cancel everything else out.”
He let out something like a laugh, but it didn’t sound quite right.
“But it doesn’t work like that. You can’t love someone enough to undo what you are.”
His eyes burned, but he didn’t cry. He never cried when it mattered most. He just sat there, with hands that didn’t know how to be empty and a silence that felt like penance.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he whispered. “I’d take it if I could. Every drop of it. Every minute.”
He reached for her hand, then hesitated, then folded his fingers around hers gently – like if he was any less careful, he might truly break her beyond repair.
Her fingers didn’t move. The machines went on ticking, reminding him that time was still passing — still moving forward, even if he didn’t know how to follow it anymore.
He didn’t let go. The thread bracelet was still around his wrist. It was half-soaked with blood, but still there. He looked at it now, turning it over between his fingers. It was proof that she would always be a part of him, long before she’d even known the truth.
“I don’t even know if you’d want me here,” he murmured, voice rough from too many hours without speaking. “If you knew I was sitting here like this.”
Out of habit, his thumb traced mindless patterns over the back of her hand. It reminded him of warmer times, of simpler ones. Lando would give anything he had to go back to then.
“I used to think the worst thing I could do was lose you. But now I’m starting to think it was letting you know who I really was. Like if I’d just stayed Liam a little longer… you might’ve never looked at me like that.”
He swallowed, hard.
“I don’t want to be the reason you stop loving anything. Not this place. Not your work. Not people.” He shook his head. “But I ruined it. I fucking ruined it. And I would trade everything I’ve ever built just to go back and not—”
He let his eyes fall shut for just a second.
That single second was just long enough to miss the sound of the door creaking open. It was just long enough not to hear the footsteps behind him.
The sound of a safety being turned off was unmistakable, the quiet click of it echoing in the silent room.
Lando didn’t even need to turn around to know what it was. The cold metal pressed to the back of his skull was confirmation enough.
He froze.
A beat passed.
Lando didn’t breathe.
“I knew I’d see you here, Norris,” the man behind him whispered. Alex Albon leaned in slightly — just enough for Lando to feel the weight behind the gun now.
“You’re so fucking predictable when it comes to the people you love.”
a/n: ...
"Looks like you made it home safely."
🥀A Safe Place to Land 🌹
Jason Todd x Single Mom!Reader
Chapter Forty-Three False Patterns
Moretti is watching for the connection. So the Batfam gives him one. With Sophia safe at Wayne Manor, Reader steps into the strategy room instead of the sidelines, bringing a piece of her past to the board that no one else could have found. Jason moves into Gotham with a false trail to lay, Barbara controls the pattern, Tim muddies the data, Dick makes noise, and Moretti proves exactly why he is not a man to underestimate.
A/N: Thank you all so much for sticking with me while I find my rhythm again after the hiatus 😅 This chapter was one I really needed to get right because it shifts us from reaction into strategy. We are officially back on the board now: Reader is not bait, Jason is not spiraling, Sophia is safe, and Moretti is finally starting to understand that he is not the only one who knows how to play the long game. 🖤
🥀 A Safe Place to Land Master List 🌹
Reader POV
By the time you return to Wayne Manor, Sophia has apparently declared martial law in the drawing room.
You hear her before Alfred even gets the front door fully open—her little voice carrying through the entry hall with grave, three-year-old authority.
“No, Titus. Tea first.”
Alfred’s mouth twitches.
“I’m afraid the household has undergone something of a regime change in your absence, miss.”
You laugh before you can stop yourself, the sound loosening something in your chest as you step inside. “How bad is it?”
“Master Damian has been assigned snack distribution. Master Titus has been invited to tea. Master Ace has appointed himself personal escort.” Alfred reaches gently for your coat. “All appear to have accepted their responsibilities with admirable composure.”
From somewhere deeper in the house, Damian’s voice rises in immediate contradiction.
“Pennyworth, the dog is not drinking imaginary tea. He is contaminating the service.”
Sophia giggles.
Your heart folds in on itself.
You find them on the rug near the long windows, afternoon light pouring across the floor in warm squares. Sophia is seated in the middle of an elaborate tea party constructed from plastic cups, stuffed animals, and what appears to be one of Damian’s chess pieces seated in a saucer.
Ace is stretched out beside her, patient and watchful, his head resting near her knee. Titus sits on her other side with the dignified misery of a creature who has accepted that love occasionally requires humiliation.
Damian kneels across from her in immaculate posture, holding a tiny pink cup between two fingers like it might be evidence.
Sophia sees you.
“Mommy!”
She launches herself upright so quickly that Ace scrambles to move with her, immediately shadowing her small sprint across the room.
You catch her against you, the impact forcing you back half a step. Her arms wind around your neck, warm and sticky and familiar, and you hold her tighter than you mean to.
Not too tight.
Never enough for her to notice.
“Hi, baby,” you whisper into her curls.
“I had tea,” she tells you immediately. “And crackers. And Damian said Titus can’t eat the blue cup.”
“That is correct,” Damian says from the rug. “It is plastic.”
You look over Sophia’s shoulder. “Thank you for maintaining order.”
He gives you a curt nod, like this is an assignment he has performed to expectation and no more.
“She was adequately entertained,” he says. After a slight pause, quieter, “She did ask when you would return.”
Your throat tightens.
Sophia pulls back from your shoulder, one hand still curled in the collar of your shirt. “You came back.”
“Of course I came back.”
She accepts that immediately. No fear. No desperate grip. Just certainty, simple and clean.
Then she points toward the floor. “You have tea now.”
You allow yourself to be dragged into the middle of the rug.
For the next twenty minutes, you drink invisible tea from a cup far too small for your fingers while Sophia explains the complex social hierarchy of her stuffed animals. Ace shifts every time she shifts. Titus permits a purple napkin to be placed over one paw with monumental patience. Damian corrects her when she tries to serve a wooden block as a pastry, then quietly accepts it when she informs him it is actually cake.
You watch her laugh.
You watch her lean into Ace’s shoulder when she loses her balance, trusting without even thinking about it.
You watch Damian reach out automatically to steady her cup before it spills onto the rug, his movements careful enough that she never notices she needed help.
She misses you.
But she does not need rescuing from missing you.
The distinction hurts and heals in the same breath.
When Alfred appears at the doorway with a plate of real sandwiches, Sophia scrambles up again, instantly distracted.
“Lunch,” Damian announces with palpable relief, removing the tiny cup from his hand.
“You were doing wonderfully,” you tell him.
His expression goes flat. “I have faced armed assassins with less arbitrary rules.”
Sophia beams at him. “More tea later.”
Damian visibly calculates whether fleeing the country is an option.
You laugh softly, and that is when you feel the presence behind you.
Jason stands in the doorway.
He is dressed like himself instead of Red Hood—dark jeans, heavy boots, worn jacket—but the night still sits around him in quiet layers. His eyes go to Sophia first, as if checking the one fact he already knows to be true.
Safe.
Laughing.
Fine.
Then his gaze finds you.
The last time you saw him, he stepped into Gotham carrying the warmth of your hand and a decision neither of you could afford to treat lightly.
Now, instead of hesitating, he crosses the room.
He doesn’t make a performance out of it. Doesn’t pull you into him in front of everyone. His hand simply settles at the small of your back as he bends to press a quiet kiss near your temple.
Private, even here.
Deliberate.
Your breath catches anyway.
“Hey,” he murmurs.
“Hey.”
Sophia spots him before you can say more.
“Jason!” She abandons the sandwiches with shocking speed and barrels toward him.
Jason catches her easily, hauling her up against his side with a grunt that is mostly theater.
“Hey, trouble.”
“I had tea.”
“So I heard.”
“With dogs.”
His gaze flicks toward Titus, who still has the napkin over his paw.
“Looks like they loved it.”
“They did,” Sophia says confidently.
Damian rises to his feet, dignity reclaimed now that the tea service has been abandoned. “Todd. Brown and Drake arrived ten minutes ago. Gordon is in the Cave.”
Jason’s expression shifts.
Not cold. Not distant.
Focused.
His hand stays against your back.
“Time?” you ask.
He looks at you for half a second, checking—not for weakness, not for permission to exclude you.
For readiness.
You nod once.
“Yeah,” he says. “Time.”
⸻
The Cave is colder than the rest of the house.
Not unpleasantly so. Just deliberately. Stone and steel and screens lit in shades of blue, the underground air carrying that faint mineral damp beneath the clean scent of expensive technology.
You have been down here before.
Still, walking in with Jason’s hand brushing yours and Barbara waiting at the main console feels different.
This is not an invitation to witness.
It is an invitation to participate.
Barbara turns slightly as you approach, her wheelchair positioned within a crescent of monitors that paint pale light across her face. Tim sits at a secondary station with two laptops open and a drink beside him that looks like it has enough caffeine to qualify as a controlled substance. Dick leans against the edge of the platform, arms folded, looking far too cheerful for a meeting involving organized crime.
Bruce is not at the center console.
He stands farther back near the stairs, silent, present, letting this belong to them.
To you.
Dick looks up first. “There they are. Gotham’s most emotionally responsible tactical couple.”
Jason stops short. “I can leave.”
“You absolutely cannot,” Barbara says without turning. “Sit down.”
“I’m not sitting.”
“Then brood vertically and try not to interrupt.”
You bite the inside of your cheek.
Jason sees it. Narrows his eyes at you.
You smile sweetly.
That gets the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before he schools it away.
Barbara brings up a map of Gotham on the central screen.
Red markers blink across the Narrows, the East End, the waterfront, and several commercial blocks downtown. None touch your apartment. None touch Wayne Manor. They are scattered, almost meaningless until Barbara layers a second set of data over them.
Red Hood appearances.
Not all of them Jason’s. You can tell by the look he gives the screen.
“Someone’s adding sightings,” he says.
“Someone’s asking for sightings,” Tim corrects, fingers moving across his keyboard. “There’s a difference. Street-level chatter is being scraped for Hood references. Locations. Timing. Who he disrupts. Who he doesn’t.”
Dick tilts his head toward the map. “Basically, someone’s making a very creepy murder scrapbook.”
“Thank you for the technical summary,” Barbara says dryly.
“You’re welcome.”
Barbara zooms in on a narrow cluster near the waterfront.
“Moretti knows an information request around your name produced a response,” she says, looking at you. “He does not know the nature of that response. He does not know about Sophia. He does not know about you and Jason.”
She glances at Jason.
“But he has begun asking why Red Hood activity has started scraping the edges of his network.”
Jason’s jaw tightens, but his body does not shift away from you.
That matters.
“So we give him a reason,” you say.
Barbara’s mouth curves slightly. “Exactly.”
Tim turns one laptop toward the rest of you. “Moretti’s money is fragmented. Restaurants. Transportation fronts. Nightclubs. Small warehouse holding companies. We introduce enough disruption in one lane, and it becomes the obvious explanation for Hood’s interest.”
“Territory,” Jason says.
“Or trafficking,” Dick offers.
“Weapons,” Barbara says. “Cleaner. Believable. Red Hood intercepts a weapons route tied to one of Moretti’s fronts. Tim seeds transaction inconsistencies. Dick makes visible noise elsewhere to widen the apparent investigation. Jason applies pressure where they can see him do it.”
Jason looks at the board. “And he stops wondering about her.”
Barbara’s eyes remain on the screen. “He starts having better questions to ask.”
Not a promise.
A move.
You step closer to the display, reading the list of businesses as Tim scrolls.
Most of them mean nothing. Names designed to mean nothing. Holding companies named for dead relatives and streets that do not exist. An import office. Two bars. A private lounge.
Your breath stills.
“Stop.”
Tim’s hands freeze over the keyboard.
Jason turns toward you instantly.
“What?” Barbara asks.
You stare at one line halfway down the screen.
Vesper Room — Hospitality Holdings, Bristol District.
The name sits there clean and ordinary, white letters against a dark background.
But the memory is neither clean nor ordinary.
A narrow staircase with a red carpet too plush for the neighborhood. A gold-framed mirror near the bathrooms. Nico’s hand at your waist, not affectionate—guiding. Positioning. Men in expensive jackets laughing too softly upstairs while you waited at the bar with a drink you had not asked for.
Jason says your name softly.
You realize you have gone quiet.
“That one,” you say.
Barbara’s attention sharpens. “You know it?”
You nod once.
“Nico used to take me there.” Your voice is steadier than the inside of your chest. “Not often. Only when he had meetings he didn’t want near the usual clubs.”
Tim is already pulling up a deeper file.
“What did he call it?” Barbara asks.
You search the memory, letting it surface without letting it swallow you.
“Neutral ground,” you say finally. “He said nobody did business there unless they wanted everybody else to know they were still playing nice.”
Dick’s expression loses its humor.
Jason does not say anything.
His hand comes to rest against the edge of the console beside yours. Not touching you. Near enough that you can choose to close the distance.
You do.
Your little finger hooks around his.
The contact steadies without interrupting.
Barbara turns back to the map. “A neutral location tied to Moretti’s holding structure gives us exactly what we need. If Hood disrupts a transaction connected to Vesper, it reads like he found a business route. Not a personal one.”
Tim nods. “I can seed transfer data through three adjacent fronts. Enough to imply inventory movement without manufacturing anything that would pull innocent people into it.”
“And I,” Dick says, recovering just enough brightness to be himself again, “can be the extremely handsome distraction with cheekbones.”
Barbara closes her eyes briefly. “That is not an operational designation.”
“It should be.”
Jason ignores both of them, gaze still on you. “What else do you remember?”
The question lands gently.
No you don’t have to.
No attempt to wrap you in cotton and carry you out of the room.
Just trust that you know what you can give.
You look back at the screen.
“Back entrance off the alley,” you say. “No sign on the door. Staff smoked out there during private events. Nico never parked in front. He’d have someone drop us half a block away.”
Tim types it in.
“There was an office upstairs,” you continue. “He got angry once because I started walking up after him. Said the rooms up there weren’t for girlfriends.”
Jason’s fingers shift against yours.
Not tightening.
Just present.
“What night was busiest?” Barbara asks.
“Thursdays,” you say. “Late. After ten.”
Dick glances at the clock on the screen. “Convenient.”
Tonight is Thursday.
The room changes around that fact.
Not panic.
Commitment.
Barbara begins assigning roles before anyone needs to ask.
“Tim, route the financial breadcrumb through Vesper and one shipping subsidiary. Keep it plausible. Nothing too tidy.”
“Already on it.”
“Dick, you make noise on the south side. Nothing connected to Moretti. I want Hood’s supposed investigation to look wider than it is.”
Dick salutes. “One dazzling red herring, coming up.”
“Jason.” Barbara’s voice stills the air. “You hit the transfer connected to Vesper. You take records. You leave witnesses breathing and annoyed.”
Jason’s mouth curves without humor. “My specialty.”
“And you do not improvise because someone says the wrong thing about her.”
There it is.
The red line.
Jason’s gaze lowers for one second, then returns to the screen.
“I won’t.”
Barbara turns to you.
“You stay here tonight. With Sophia. Once the operation begins, movement from you creates noise we don’t need.”
It is practical. Straightforward. Not a cage.
You nod. “Okay.”
Jason glances at you, a question in the look.
You squeeze his finger once before letting go.
“I’m okay with that,” you tell him.
He believes you.
That is another thing that feels new.
⸻
By the time the meeting breaks, Sophia has apparently finished lunch, overthrown Damian’s initial tea-party restrictions, and convinced Alfred that dessert is a legitimate afternoon activity.
You find her in the kitchen with a smear of chocolate at the corner of her mouth and Ace stationed beside her chair in transparent hope.
“Mommy!” she announces when you walk in. “I got cake.”
“I can see that.”
“Damian got cake too.”
Damian sits at the island with a plate in front of him and the expression of someone enduring public slander.
“I was served against my will.”
Alfred sets another plate on the counter before you. “An ordeal, sir.”
Damian glares at him.
You smile, but your gaze drifts toward Jason as he stops in the doorway behind you.
He is already halfway elsewhere.
Not distant. Not withdrawing.
Preparing.
Sophia sees him and holds out her fork with a generous clump of cake balanced precariously on the end.
“Bite?”
Jason looks down at the black shirt he is wearing, then at the chocolate-covered fork.
You can see him calculate the disaster potential.
He takes the bite anyway.
Sophia giggles triumphantly.
Jason swallows and nods gravely. “Good cake.”
“It is,” she says.
For a second, he looks almost wrecked by the simple fact of her being happy.
Then he catches you watching, and the look changes. Settles.
He does not step away from it.
⸻
You find him in one of the smaller rooms off the Cave twenty minutes later.
Not the armory exactly. Not somewhere so dramatic. A preparation room lined with equipment cases and neatly folded black fabric, where Jason stands with his helmet on the table in front of him and checks each piece of his gear in methodical silence.
He hears you come in.
His hands still briefly over a holster.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
You close the door behind you.
Not for secrecy.
For a minute that belongs to the two of you.
“This could take a few hours,” he says.
“I figured.”
“Maybe longer if Moretti’s people decide to play dumb.”
“They will,” you say.
Jason huffs softly. “Probably.”
You step close enough to touch the edge of his jacket, smoothing down a fold that does not need smoothing.
“And if he follows the wrong trail?” you ask.
Jason looks down at your hand, then up at you.
“Then we know he bites.”
The answer should scare you.
It does not.
Not because you do not understand what it means, but because everything about this plan has been spoken aloud. The risk is not hiding in the dark anymore. It has shape. Roles. People carrying parts of it.
You curl your fingers into the edge of his jacket.
“Come back when it’s done,” you say.
Jason’s expression softens just enough to hurt.
“I will.”
He kisses you before the old instinct can tell him not to.
Not near the screens.
Not where anyone could interpret it.
Not for anyone but you.
His palm cups your jaw, warm even through the cold focus already settling into him. The kiss is brief but firm—something chosen, something he takes with him instead of leaves behind.
When he pulls away, his forehead brushes yours.
“Stay with her tonight,” he murmurs.
“I am.”
“And you?”
You understand the question under the question.
You nod. “I’ll be okay.”
His thumb brushes your cheek once.
Then he steps back and lifts the helmet.
The red mask takes his face, but not the moment.
Not from you.
⸻
Jason POV
The Vesper Room looks exactly like the kind of place men build when they want dirt to wear perfume.
Gold lettering. Black awning. No obvious security near the front, because obvious security suggests you have something worth defending.
Jason is not interested in the front.
He lands on the roof of the building opposite the alley and crouches low beneath a rusted sign, helmet optics pulling the narrow service entrance into focus.
Two smokers. One delivery van. One man standing too still to be staff.
Barbara’s voice comes through his comm.
“Tim’s package is in the network. Financial trace reads as weapons inventory routed through Vesper to an East End holding site.”
“Copy.”
“Nightwing makes contact in thirty seconds.”
Jason watches the alley.
Twenty-seven seconds later, a commotion erupts three districts south—police scanner chatter, a warehouse alarm, and Dick’s infuriatingly cheerful voice slipping through the encrypted channel.
“Operation Handsome Distraction is live.”
Barbara sighs. “I regret letting you name things.”
“Too late.”
Jason almost smiles.
Almost.
Then the Vesper service door opens.
A man in a dark suit steps into the alley with a metal case handcuffed to his wrist.
Jason’s focus narrows.
“Target moving,” he says.
Tim’s voice replaces Dick’s. “Case matches manifest dimensions. Whatever’s inside, it’s valuable enough they want it visible.”
“Good.”
Jason steps off the roof.
He hits the alley hard enough to make the man with the case stumble backward before he has time to pull a weapon.
The first guard reaches inside his jacket.
Jason catches his wrist, twists, and puts him into the brick wall hard enough to end the argument without ending him.
The second is slower.
Jason sweeps his legs out from under him and puts a boot to his chest before he can finish swearing.
The man with the case backs into the door, face blanching beneath the expensive suit.
“Red Hood.”
Jason tilts his helmet.
“Glad the branding’s working.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Yeah?” Jason reaches down, snaps the chain at the man’s wrist with a compact cutter, and takes the case. “Get in line.”
The man’s eyes flash. “You have no idea who you’re interfering with.”
Jason feels it then.
The old heat.
The impulse to grab him by the throat and ask him if Moretti knows what happens to men who go digging through the lives of women who have already survived enough.
He thinks of your hand open on the table.
Choose it on purpose.
He lowers the case to his side.
Calmly.
“Tell your employer,” Jason says, voice flattened through the modulator, “that if he’s moving guns through my city, he’s paying me a toll.”
The man stares at him.
He has heard the message.
Good.
Jason fires a smoke pellet into the alley concrete. By the time the haze clears, the case is gone and the witnesses are alive, angry, and carrying exactly the explanation he wants them to carry.
Barbara’s voice returns in his ear.
“Clean.”
“Too clean?” Jason asks.
A beat while she reviews feeds.
“No. You gave him ego and money. Men like Moretti understand both.”
Tim cuts in. “Traffic just started. Two messages out from Vesper security to adjacent channels. They are using the phrase ‘weapons route.’”
Dick whistles. “And the Oscar goes to the emotionally constipated man in the red helmet.”
“Shut up, Dick.”
“Welcome back, little wing.”
Jason moves across the rooftop line, metal case in hand, Gotham opening beneath him.
He should feel better.
He does not.
He feels the trap settle.
Which means it might work.
⸻
Moretti POV
The report reaches Moretti before midnight.
He reads it once.
Then again.
The man standing in front of his desk has a bruised wrist and a carefully controlled expression that tells Moretti humiliation hurts more than injury.
“Red Hood intercepted the transfer from Vesper,” the man says. “He took the case. Said if we’re moving weapons through his city, we owe him a toll.”
Moretti turns one page.
The false transfer record is neat.
Not too neat. That is important.
Multiple subsidiaries. A delayed shipment. A route that could have drawn a vigilante’s attention through nothing more interesting than greed and bad operational discipline.
It makes sense.
Across the desk, the man shifts. “We think he’s been tracking the weapons lane.”
Moretti sets the report down.
“We?”
The man clears his throat. “The operation. Our people.”
Moretti looks at him until he stops trying to sound useful.
Then he reaches for the thin folder lying beneath the report.
Her folder.
The one that had produced a ripple when touched.
He places it beside the Vesper file.
Two pieces of paper.
Two stories.
One very convenient explanation.
Too convenient?
Perhaps.
Or perhaps Red Hood had found a weapons operation, and the woman had never been anything more than incidental noise.
Moretti dislikes coincidence.
He dislikes dismissing it even more.
“Where was she?” he asks.
The man blinks. “Sir?”
“When Red Hood was making himself visible at Vesper,” Moretti says patiently, “where was the woman?”
“I— We weren’t tracking her.”
“No,” Moretti says. “You were not.”
The man pales.
Moretti turns his attention back to the files.
A weapons route was the obvious answer.
A personal attachment was a more interesting one.
He does not need to choose yet.
He moves her folder out from beneath the stack and places it beside the Red Hood report instead.
Not closed.
Not discarded.
Promoted.
The man at his desk shifts again. “Do you want us to follow Hood?”
Moretti’s mouth curves faintly.
“No,” he says. “He wants to be followed.”
He closes the Vesper report with one hand.
“Let him think we did.”
⸻
Reader POV
The Manor is quiet by the time Jason calls.
Not silent. Houses like this are never silent. Pipes settle in old walls. The wind moves through trees outside the windows. Somewhere upstairs, Titus shifts against the floorboards with a heavy sigh, refusing to abandon his post even in sleep.
You are sitting in an armchair beside Sophia’s bed, a book open but unread in your lap.
She fell asleep halfway through the second story, one small hand curled beside her face, completely unaware that several adults and at least two dogs have rebuilt the night around keeping her world ordinary.
Your phone vibrates once.
Jason.
You stand before answering, slipping into the hallway and pulling the bedroom door nearly closed behind you.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” His voice is tired, filtered through the aftermath of the helmet instead of the helmet itself. “She asleep?”
You glance through the narrow gap in the door.
“Out cold. Damian lost the tea-party negotiations, but he survived.”
A quiet laugh breathes through the line.
“Good.”
“How did it go?”
A pause.
“He took the trail.”
Your hand tightens around the phone. “That sounds like it should feel better than your voice says it does.”
Jason is quiet for a second.
“He’s smart,” he says finally.
You understand.
Taking the bait is not the same thing as believing it.
“But we moved first,” you say.
“Yeah.”
“And he doesn’t know what he thinks he knows.”
Another pause.
“No,” Jason says. “He doesn’t.”
You lean against the wall, exhaustion settling over you now that you have permission to feel it.
“When are you coming back?”
“Soon.” His voice lowers. “To the Manor, if that’s okay.”
Your eyes sting unexpectedly.
Not because he asked.
Because he did not assume.
“Yeah,” you say softly. “Come here.”
“Okay.”
The call ends.
You return to Sophia’s bedside and settle back into the chair, but you do not reopen the book.
A little while later, you hear the careful sound of footsteps outside the room.
Jason appears in the doorway in clean clothes, hair still damp from what must have been the quickest shower in human history. He looks exhausted. Bruised around the edges. Real.
You lift your hand without speaking.
He crosses the room and takes it.
Not out of fear.
Not because anyone is watching.
Because no one in this room has to pretend distance is the same thing as safety.
Jason lowers himself to the floor beside your chair, his shoulder resting against your knee, your fingers still folded together between you. On the bed, Sophia sleeps on, safe and soft and untouched by the shape of the night.
Outside these walls, Moretti is moving pieces.
Let him.
Tonight, Jason is here.
And the hand holding yours is warm.
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Commentary on Chapter 43 of The Blue Castle
“And his money isn’t tainted money. He made it honestly. His medicines are quite harmless. Even his Purple Pills do people whole heaps of good when they believe in them.”
I don’t buy this, sorry. I think it is “tainted money”. I do understand why this paragraph is here though.
“But—I’m not fit for your life,” sighed Valancy. “I’m not—clever—or well-educated—or——”
“My life is in Mistawis—and all the wild places of the world. I’m not going to ask you to live the life of a society woman. Of course, we must spend a bit of the time with Dad—he’s lonely and old——”
Yes, I do wish he would call her “clever” :(. Though, to his credit, he did call her “witty” in the previous chapter.
“I couldn’t live in that house myself. It has a white marble stairway with gilt bannisters and looks like a furniture shop with the labels off.”
Again, the gaudiness of Doc Redfern’s tastes is always a fun detail.
“And our autumns travelling. I want you to see the Alhambra—it’s the nearest thing to the Blue Castle of your dreams I can think of. And there’s an old-world garden in Italy where I want to show you the moon rising over Rome through the dark cypress-trees.”
“Will that be any lovelier than the moon rising over Mistawis?”
“Not lovelier. But a different kind of loveliness. There are so many kinds of loveliness. Valancy, before this year you’ve spent all your life in ugliness. You know nothing of the beauty of the world. We’ll climb mountains—hunt for treasures in the bazaars of Samarcand—search out the magic of east and west—run hand in hand to the rim of the world.”
Montgomery typically likes and worships Western Civilization: Greco-Roman mythology and Victorian writers are her main references, and beauty is always “white”.
So as someone from the “East”, I appreciate that in this novel the protagonists value the East (specifically Islamic East - Alhambra and Samarcand) as well as Rome. Also remember that Valancy’s eyes had “a slant that was almost Oriental”.
I am not someone who bemoans of “Orientalism” when I encounter enthusiasm about Eastern cultures like Barney’s, and find it tiring when people do that. I like it when people appreciate my culture or cultures similar to it. It is certainly better than them hating, fearing or ignoring my part of the world.
“And we must see about that picture by Tierney, after all.”
Now that they can buy it…
“Will you promise me one thing?” asked Valancy solemnly.
“Anything,” said Barney recklessly.
“Only one thing. You are never, under any circumstances or under any provocation, to cast it up to me that I asked you to marry me.”
This is wise of Valancy. It is really the kind of thing people can cast up in a fight six years later.
Also, there is something about this chapter ending that I like: Valancy is getting everything, but she is still worried and solemn and insecure. Even the prospect of traveling the world with Prince Charming the Millionaire can’t immediately erase 29 years of being in the sidelines.
