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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 9: The Children Who Did (and didn’t) Make This House a Home

For generations, the Starrberg and Laprise families had lived side by side, their estates sprawling alongside one another; yet, the families themselves rarely interacted outside of formal events and meetings for this or that.Their homes stretched through forests both manicured and left wild like the children who would eventually live within their walls. Gardeners came and went. House cleaners swept through each, happy and silent and fearful of their occupants. The children of each generation occasionally crossed paths in their school lives, but they were never friends—The Black Knot’s ruling families occasionally found true friendships with their classmates, but never with a member of the Starrberg family.

While Miles was by far the most prominent and well known of his family’s long line of politicians and philosophers, of explorers and renegades, many a wild child had grown within the walls he and his wife would eventually call home. He and his brother had been wild children, his long-presumed-dead brother more so than Miles himself. , it had been no surprise to anyone when Porter had gone off the travel time and time again, returning with stories of wonder and magic and near-death experiences, and then, one day, never returned. That man had been made to die on an adventure. Still, it was only in comparison to the explosion that was his brother that Miles would ever find himself called .

The reality was much more complicated, and Miles would never claim that his daughter had come into their household entirely the chaotic being she was meant to be. Had she been wild? Curious? Insatiable? Brilliant? Yes, but while many people were all too happy to slap the labels onto him, Miles had never claimed to be a soft-spoken, polite man himself. Combined with his penchant for pushing rules and being a bit of a pretty brat himself, it wasn’t uncommon for anyone who knew him well to see exactly where his influence had laid over his daughter.

Emilia, for all that she had always been a child meant to climb walls and break them down in equal measure, had been formed into a child, a teenager, a young woman who could be confident in all her decisions, no matter how bound up in ethics or pain or pettiness, by Miles’ own confidence—by his unwavering support for what he thought was right.

It was hard to do , sometimes, and for so much of his life, Miles and Porter both had stared at the deep-grey wall that broke their property away from the Laprises’ and wondered about the people on the other side. They knew the children over there were far younger than they themselves, Penelope and then Carnelian Laprise decades younger while their parents were decades older. They sat in the middle, and being friends with their neighbours had never been possible, despite both brothers feeling as though being friendly with their neighbours, who would always be both a power of the Penns and outsiders within their community, was

So, when they happened across the older generation at gatherings, they were polite; when they met with the younger generation, they politely asked what sorts of things they were learning in school. Neither Starrberg brother thought it endeared them much to the Laprise siblings, but the pair were polite in return, and by the time the pair had graduated and gone on to their positions within The Black Knot, Miles thought that at the very least, if The Black Knot ever ordered any member of the Starrberg family dead, the siblings wouldn’t kill them without question.

So, when they met with clones, they asked their names, what they were interested in—all the niceties that no one ever seemed to bother with. Of course, they had to ask each clone their name whenever they struck up a conversation, unsure which clone stood before them, but once they knew, both brothers could pull a thousand facts about any they had met or heard stories of from their mind.

So, when the Baxter fathers announced their engagement, Miles—as by this time, Porter had vanished into the wind, each passing day another bit of hope that his brother might return sliced away from Miles’ heart—sent congratulations and gifts, and somehow or another, wound up as a witness for the pair’s union—a thoroughly strange affair, as he had come away wondering if the men actually liked one another. Later, through interactions with the pair and hearing stories of them from their children and his own, Miles would come to realize that no, the pair were colleagues and little more. Friendly in the most benign of black knot ways; partners in the sense that Levi they might have sex, but that was only because he’d heard stories of his fathers’ youthful escapades and nothing of such things following their marriage.

If they’d both had lovers in the past and seemingly none since marrying, perhaps the Baxter fathers at least found each other pleasing sexually? Miles remained unclear, and while it was none of his business, it was interesting—after all, he and Marina had managed to make their long stints away from one another work by allowing others into their beds, if never their hearts.

They could have sex with other people, but they could not fall in love. Perhaps more importantly, they could not accidentally create children with another person.

For over a century, he and Marina had tried to have children of their own; it had never worked out. There had been blood spattering over the floor, the bathtub, the stone walkways that wound through their estate. There had been contemplations of using surrogates or IFV, of adoption or procuring donor eggs or sperm. A thousand reasons stood between them and accepting one of those options.

They were both the problem—sperm that , a uterus that would struggle to carry to term. It wasn’t a , but a road that wasn’t meant to be walked by them and that was liable to fall to rubble every time they tried.

Yet, they had tried and suffered the consequences because in the end, they hadn’t liked the other options—hadn’t felt right about raising a donor-conceived child when they knew such children often suffered as a result of their separation for their biological identity. There was a reason, after all, why the Laprise and Baxter families used their own family as donors.

The Laprise boys were biologically Clarissa and Carnelian’s, their uncle having no part in their upbringing but there to answer questions about himself if the boys wanted, Penelope their biological aunt but always their —as much as a black knot can be a , anyways.

Miles wasn’t sure who the Baxter twins’ birth mother was—a cousin of Leonel’s, he thought—but neither had ever had much interest in the woman. Samina seemed to accept her fathers how they were. Levi only wanted his fathers to see him—to disciple and love him.

No such familial donations were possible for them, Porter long gone and Marina an only child without close relations to any of her distant, maternal cousins—they’d all cut her mother off, after the woman had . So, they’d let the idea of a donor-conceived child die, while the idea of adopting had never seemed… . They’d glanced through documents on adoption at times, especially during the times when Marina had lost yet another pregnancy and been unable to contemplate ever even allowing Miles to touch her again, lest she find herself expelling a child she wanted so badly from her perfect, flawed body once again. Still, the idea of adopting hadn’t seemed the right decision.

So, they’d go back to trying again, to losing yet another pregnancy, contemplating options that didn’t seem , trying again, on and on and on.

Then, Miles had been promoted to Secretary General, and suddenly, the idea of leaving his job or leaving Marina to raise children by herself for long periods of time had laid before them. There had been arguments, tears, collapses into balls of pain and Marina trying again for a child and almost dying for it, Clarissa Laprise finding her bloody on the walk up their house, Miles a continent away.

He hadn’t even known she was pregnant when Penelope had contacted him, and he had returned home to his wife, broken and tore apart and hating herself and her body.

his beautiful wife had said, curled up in her hospital bed, her arms hugged tight around her stomach, still adjusting to so much of her insides having been removed—, Doctor Vickers had said, an implication in his words that it was for the best: if Marina didn’t stop trying to have children herself, one day soon, it was going to kill her.

After that, there had been no more trying for children, and Marina… Marina had been different, something in her vanishing into the abyss of the flames that had taken so much of her insides— burned away into the aether. So, it had never come up again, and they’d gone on with their lives, learning to live without the wild children they had always imagined filling their too big house. There had seen been tears, of course, especially when their friends had children, when those children graduated and started making families of their own.

Not a life for them, even if they had both wanted it and had accepted that they would forever be mourning the life they hadn’t managed to make for themselves, for the bodies of all the babies Marina—they—had lost over the years. It was that sort of painful reality people accept because they have no other choice, and yet, they never truly accept.

For as messy as The Black Knot’s family’s could often be, Miles could appreciate the way they raised their children, and in the years before his own children had bounced unexpectedly into their house, Miles had often watched those parents and their children and their nannies wandering the streets. It wasn’t that he had been jealous, but there had certainly been a sadness there.

Here were these families, formed through some mixture of friendship and convenience, each partner so much younger than he and Marina, none of them seeming to the children they were expected to raise, with so many children between them.

The hardest days had been after Malcolm was brought home, his little cries floating over the wall between their properties and bringing Marina to tears. By then, old as they were, they’d accepted that children would never be a part of their lives, even if they chose to try and adopt. They could have, and Miles had suggested it at the time, Marina staring out of their bedroom window as Malcolm learned to crawl and walk, as he moved through milestone after milestone from afar.

Marina had said, turning towards him with tears in her eyes.

His wife had been bending the truth, a little bit; for as old as people lived these days, it wasn’t uncommon for parents to be anywhere between forty to over two-hundred-and-fifty, for grandparents to be long-dead of old age or not even one-hundred. They could have been parents, but if Marina didn’t want to be an older parent, Miles would accept it.

Whatever his sweet wife wanted, he would accept—at least, that was what he had thought, until meeting Emilia.

That adorable child had immediately captured his heart, with her big purple eyes and teasing smile and far too much understanding of the world for someone so small—too small, given her age. Later, once she tested as a non-dev, people would ask if he had known—if some part of him, having met multiple non-devs throughout his long career, had known what power she held within herself. Sometimes, Miles thought he must have known; other times, he thought there was no way he had known. No matter what, however, Miles knew that either way, when he had left the orphanage, the only thing that had mattered was that sweet little girl.

In no world had Miles wanted the little girl for anything but the girl herself—his little starlight.

Marina had asked him later that evening, his mind lost in thought for his meeting Emilia—for not only that, but for the reality that he had seen laid out around and within her.

Her thin body. Her admission that she was punished often for things that no child should ever be punished so severely for. Being mouthy. Not wanting to eat the food. Signing. Playing with her imaginary friend. Asking questions, questions—

he could still hear her saying, perfectly aware that adults could be cruel and disgusting and knowing that she was lucky she hadn’t been assaulted like that. The very fact that she knew that much was enough to know she’d seen and experienced too much—heard too much from the mouths of adults for such a small, innocent child.

his wife had asked, as though he hadn’t just explained the horror of that place to her and said he wanted to make sure that little silverstrain was safe with all the implication that he wanted to do that. Marina, for as much as she had once nearly died trying to have a child, didn’t want one anymore, didn’t want an adoptive child, didn’t want to be an older parent.

Miles had to accept that; yet, he had struggled, wandering through their home like the dead for weeks. Marina, he imagined, got sick of it—got sick of asking him what was wrong over and over and always receiving the same answer:

Sick of it as she’d been, Marina had gone to see what all the fuss was about. Hours later, he had been working with a lawyer to fast track the adoption of Emilia, Indigo, and Atticus—they were all coming home with them, according to his wife, and Miles hadn’t met the latter two, only heard of them from Emilia, but who was he to complain when his wife seemed to have come alive again.

For the first time in decades, Marina had held fire within herself, and while their lives with their new children had always been up and down, filled with complications because all three were broken and strange and perfect, they had been happy, their huge home filled with wild children, the wall between the Starrbergs and Laprise families finally scaled by those small souls they’d suddenly found themselves responsible for.

Chaos and laughter, tears and heartache had filled their home for the last twenty-four years, and fuck the aether for threatening to take that from them with all this nonsense—seriously! He hadn’t actually thought Emilia needed a babysitter; rather, he had set her up with them to be silly! To think that this situation would erupt around his child and that it wouldn’t even be her fault? Honestly, Miles much preferred when his dumbass child got herself into mischief of her own accord. This thing was not working for him.

Miles breathed into his mind as he stared out across the expanse of Seer’ik’tine’s northern district,

Across his Censor, Emilia’s Censor remained offaether, showing her as effectively dead. He knew she wasn’t, of course, messages coming in through Lan’za’s xphern regularly, updating them on the situation with Emilia. Miles could tell something about the story of what was happening was wrong, however. While he was sure his daughter was still alive—half the boys on that stupid, suicidal mission wouldn’t be able to lie about such things—and that she really had been hit by some sort of oil that blocked the aethernet, the rest of the story? The bit about how she was moving through the city and would hopefully be reunited with the soon?

Yeah, that was complete and utter lies. How did he know? No one was giving a proper timeline—not even as to how far apart they were and when they hoped to be together coming through. On top of that, Emilia herself didn’t seem to be messaging, answers to Miles’ questions to her coming in too slow, and for as distractible as his child was, she wouldn’t be leaving him in silence so long.

Miles couldn’t tell if he was grateful his daughter was trying to protect him from the reality of whatever she was doing, or concerned that she might actually think this ploy was working. Perhaps she knew he’d figure it out. He wasn’t about to ask.

Whatever was happening, he simply had to believe that his daughter would be alright—had to believe that he would see her again.