With the understanding that this will undoubtedly be a be careful what you wish for situation might I request Gabriel spoiling Jiya madly for the first time/the two of them spending time together (preferably from Gabriel’s POV because I like pain apparently?)
The first time Gabriel de Clermont meets his niece, he comes within inches of killing her.
Nobody knows this, of course. Nobody realizes. It’s been almost thirty years since she joined the family, and that was the first time they were face to face. It’s 1916, France is in the grip of the Great War, Gabriel has returned home to make preparations for the defence of Sept-Tours, and that is when they first cross paths. He is aware, of course, that Garcia has added a blood daughter to their number, that he turned some tavern wench in San Francisco, 1888, rather than let her die after a brawl in Chinatown. Gabriel notes in mild interest that Garcia has apparently managed to do it successfully this time, rather than what happened with Matej and the monster that he became, but he almost wishes it hadn’t worked. Why does Garcia get to have a child again? Garcia, who still grieves his human daughter of fourteen hundred years ago, Garcia, who won’t even let this new girl call him “Father,” Garcia, who Gabriel holds as responsible for Christian’s death as if he drove the stake in himself –
The girl’s name is Jiya. She is wary of her powerful uncle, perhaps having been forewarned, and doesn’t look him in the eye the whole fortnight he’s there. Gabriel can feel the desire burning through him, even as he fights against it. He could kill her. He had to kill Matej, after all, Garcia’s last botched sire. It would be so easy, and nobody even need ever know that it was him. Garcia deserves it, doesn’t he? That he can’t see – that he still can’t understand – that as much Christian and Matej died that year, Gabriel did too –
(He knows that when he tells himself he will never forgive Garcia for it, he means that he won’t forgive himself, but a few lies are the least he can bear.)
After that, after one moment where he might actually have killed Jiya if Cecilia hadn’t come in (did she know, did she sense, it was dangerous to leave them alone together?) Gabriel doesn’t see his niece again until 1962. It’s a formative, troubled decade for France, as it is for the rest of the world, and Jiya is studying at the Sorbonne and taking part in the increasing student protests. Gabriel, of course, lives in Paris, and grudgingly offers her to come over and make use of his spacious penthouse in one of the baroque old buildings of the Seventh Arrondissement. The de Clermonts look after each other, and with Papa’s death still a raw wound that may never heal, with Maman spiralling into the wastelands of guilt and grief and vengeance, Gabriel tells himself he won’t be like that, he will try, he will try to make amends. It’s there when he discovers to his consternation that he likes Jiya. She is – well. She’s not what he expected.
“Thanks for having me, Uncle Gabriel,” Jiya says that night, as they’re sitting on the balcony and looking down over Paris, each with a cigarette and a glass of wine, her hair tied up with a colorful scarf, her strappy sandal dangling off her foot. The air smells of diesel exhaust and the flood of the Seine and a thousand lovers arm in arm. “I didn’t think you – ”
She stops, flushing, but Gabriel can guess what she was going to say. He finds it as strange to be addressed as “Uncle Gabriel” as Garcia must to be called “Dad.” Wyatt has never sired a child, and this is Garcia’s only one, so it’s a strange, new, unused title. He glances over at her tentative, frightened face. “It’s fine,” he says gruffly. “We need to stick together. And I assume it’s preferable to whatever ghastly student housing they have on offer.”
“Well, yes.” Jiya hesitates, with that empathy of knowing they’re close to something she shouldn’t pick at. “I just… I know this must be difficult.”
Gabriel takes a long drag on his cigarette rather than answer. Jiya is vaguely aware that she once had a cousin named Christian, and that he died long before she joined the family, but that’s it. They have never given her the details, she has never pressed for them, and she certainly does not know the full and horrifically tragic story of Matej Radic and everything that happened to them as a result. Gabriel keeps thinking it might hurt less, eventually, that even time will dull the wounds. But now he’s lost his father, he can’t see Maria ever recovering from that, he barely speaks to Garcia once a decade, and perhaps it’s too late, it’s long past any chance they ever had. Perhaps Jiya is the only chance he has.
“It’s fine,” he says again, stubbing the cigarette out. Turns and offers a crooked smile. “With Harry out half the time, I don’t mind the company.”
Jiya grins faintly at the mention of the daemon butler – well, butler is the most convenient term for the function Harry Houdini fulfills for Gabriel, but he’s friendly and kind and he befriended Jiya quickly, and if nothing else, she’s safe from Gabriel because of that. They sit out there for a while longer, and then she bids him good night, touches his shoulder lightly and goes inside, and Gabriel stares out into the horizon and wonders how on earth he can protect her. Enough terrible things have happened to their family, old and scarred and too powerful for their own good. Jiya doesn’t seem to deserve that. Even he, with his ugly impulse to punish her for a crime in which she had no part, needs to be guarded against. But how?
After that, slowly, they start to see each other more often. Jiya finishes her studies at the Sorbonne and goes onto Caltech, in the States, one of the first women admitted. Gabriel whisks her off on a round-the-world trip for her graduation, since it seems like something she might enjoy and which, at least, money can provide for her. He can speak the language almost anywhere they go, and Jiya is admiring. “How old are you, exactly?” she asks shyly, as they’re trekking along a remote section of the Great Wall of China, mist rising from the mountainside. “If you don’t mind me asking?”
“Old,” Gabriel says wryly. “I was in the Senate when Caesar got stabbed. Not actually there,” he clarifies, “but I was a member.”
Jiya looks impressed. She starts to ask him a few questions about life in ancient Rome, which Gabriel answers dutifully, and they make their way down off the wall and deeper into the countryside. This is 1970s China; posters of Chairman Mao gaze down from the walls of rural teahouses, Westerners are a vastly uncommon sight especially in the interior, and when a member of the state police demands to see their documents and seems inclined to hassle Jiya particularly, Gabriel bares his fangs. “Leave my niece alone,” he spits, in perfect, accentless Mandarin, “or you will only wish you did.”
The policeman is deeply taken aback, is dispatched with the judicious application of a bribe, makes a bowing apology, and scuttles on his way. Jiya looks pleased, and a little surprised. She doesn’t mention it, though, and neither does he. It just remains there, to be implicitly understood.
It stays like that, the next few decades. They see each other occasionally, Gabriel will buy her something expensive or take her on an exotic holiday, and then drop her back off without much else said. He knows that perhaps this is a stunted, shallow way to show affection, that they should talk more than they do, but he does have the money, he might as well make use of it, and since he cannot spoil Christian, cannot do anything for him, Jiya has somehow become an acceptable proxy. Besides, nobody talks in this bloody family, especially not him. Jiya doesn’t even know that there’s anything to talk about. She can enjoy him as the wealthy uncle who parachutes in from time to time to spoil her, and nothing more. It makes sense that way. It is controlled. It is for the best.
Sometimes, once or twice, Jiya asks him about his past with Garcia, about things they must have done together, places that they have gone. Gabriel always pretends he doesn’t hear it when she does, changes the subject, and by now, she has learned not to try.
