This chapter is almost purely self-indulgent, since it largely comprises one of my favourite tropes - namely the 'adult becomes concerned about seeing a child always hanging out alone' trope (guess who I blame for my love of parent-child trope-y stuff...lookin' at you, Toni).
I also bring you cute sleepy Lukas, so enjoy ;-;
Soren honestly felt as though he practically had children coming out of his ears.
First, there had been Olivia, whom Soren had no idea existed until he dragged himself away from his books and blueprints to eat at the table for once, only to find a little girl with curly pigtails sandwiched between Ellegaard and Magnus - the latter of whom was shooting the girl the occasional look, as though sizing her up. Gabriel was sharpening his sword nonchalantly in the corner, his expression screaming 'just another day in paradise'. Fortunately for Soren, Ellegaard emerged from her spiel on solar power long enough to take pity on his poorly-disguised confusion and explain to him that she'd found Olivia poking around in her lab several days ago and honestly, she wasn't all that surprised he hadn't noticed their new houseguest sooner. Soren had nodded as though he understood then barricaded himself in his library for a few hours after the meal. At least the plot twists that his books threw his way usually had some forewarning and sense behind them. But Olivia turned out to be an intelligent, helpful child whose presence meant that Ellegaard could get more done in a shorter space of time and therefore had more time to relax somewhat, and so Soren supposed he didn't mind accepting this particular twist.
Then, not long afterwards, Magnus had darted past him with what appeared to be another, bigger green blur behind him. The rogue, obviously noting Soren's stare on his way past, gabbled something about the blur's name being Axel before the two of them were disappearing through a door, leaving Soren standing with his mouth open in an aborted series of questions.
A part of Soren could not quite smother the distinct impression that one of Magnus's reasons for taking the boy in may have been a petty retaliation of sorts towards Ellie for spending more time mentoring Olivia than paying attention to his antics. Still, Magnus had done quite a few rather more frustrating things before and he seemed to genuinely enjoy having Axel around. Soren just hoped (illogically) that he had enough responsibility not to endanger the child he appeared to have adopted through his more...reckless stunts.
(Really, though, had it been strictly necessary on Ellegaard's part to roll her eyes the first time he voiced that hope?)
And now? Now there was a different child altogether for Soren to ponder over.
He was no stranger to the library in the next biome over; his own private one always needed more volumes to fill its shelves ("'Too many' is never enough, Magnus." "That makes no sense, Soren..."), after all. And neither, it seemed, was the strange blond boy who sometimes sat in a corner or at one of the little tables while absorbed in a book of some kind (rarely the same one two days in a row), sometimes wandered amongst the shelves running his fingers along the spines of the neatly lined-up books, but was always present and always by himself. And always seemed to arrive before Soren walked in and was still there when the architect left, even on the occasions where it was well after dark and almost closing time.
Even though Soren was often too preoccupied with the fascinating worlds, the tales that promised treasure and glory, that the books offered him to give the matter a great deal of thought, wasn't he just a little bit curious as to why a boy that age spent his days in a library, of all places (not that libraries weren't perfectly respectable, enjoyable places to go, of course, but from Soren's own childhood experiences, many youngsters tended not to see it that way)?
Indeed he was.
But whenever that curiosity surfaced, Soren forced himself to remember that very few people appreciated someone who pried and settled down to whatever tomes had caught his interest this time, although he did glance at the child out of the corner of his eye from time to time. And that's the way the matter likely would have stayed had Soren not arrived at the library around daybreak one Thursday morning.
He'd shot up from his...bed (he internally winced at the fleeting vision of Ivor's expression if he ever found out that Soren had dropped off to sleep at his desk again) at the crack of dawn, roused by a suspicious noise that, typically enough, sounded as though it had come from the 'Magnus Chamber', as the rogue called it. Soren was on the point of storming into said room and delivering a lecture or two on the need that lesser humans than Magnus had for uninterrupted sleep when a clamour of voices rose from the hallway that linked the Magnus Chamber and Ellegaard's lab. Magnus's (admittedly rather impressive, if only for its breadth and creativity) array of expletives, Ellie's threats to cut off various parts of Magnus's anatomy, booming laughter than could only belong to Axel and, before long, Olivia's sleepy voice asking what was going on, evidently having been roused in a similar manner to Soren and gone to find the source of the disturbance.
Soren rose to his feet, tugging at his hair in frustration. To stay and listen to the bickering would be foolish; to try and intervene would be pointless at best and suicide at worst. That being the case, he decided that a little trip to somewhere with rows of nice quiet books was in order.
As he passed the open door of the kitchen, he had to physically restrain himself from facepalming at the sight of a bleary-eyed Gabriel taking a shot.
It was as Soren was sliding a book titled March of the Endermen off one of the shelves when he heard a soft snore.
The book fell from its high perch, slipping through his fingers and landing squarely onto his right foot. He paused only to pick it back up (he may or may not have also muttered something that would have both made a sailor blush and earned him an approving slap on the back from one Magnus the Rogue) before squinting into thin air, trying to determine the source of the sound.
The sun was still coming up, after all; Soren himself and the mouth-breathing librarian were the only two who'd conceivably be in a library at such an hour. Weren't they?
Or so Soren thought, until he found Blond Boy slumped over a table with his hair falling over his face, which was pillowed in the inner spine of the book open in front of him.
Soren's eyebrows lifted. Surely the child hadn't been there all night? But the quiet snores drifting out of his slightly open mouth confirmed that he was quite deeply asleep and had been for some time, even though the library had only opened for the day ten or fifteen minutes ago.
A frown creasing his forehead, Soren shook his head in concern before going to fetch a blanket from the so-called children's corner (making sure to glare at the oblivious librarian on his way past the front desk).
As the architect draped the coverlet over the boy, the latter shifted the tiniest bit, murmuring something indistinct, then settled again, eyes staying closed. Sleeping hunched over like that didn't look terribly comfortable or healthy, but Soren thought better of trying to move him. Instead, he decided to seat himself on a chair with unnecessarily thin padding, earning himself a ferocious-but-deliberately-ignored glare from the librarian as he dragged it a few inches across the floor so that he was situated directly across from the kid, as though the sight had awakened a protective instinct within him that was usually reserved for when he believed his fellow Order members, his family of choice, were under some kind of threat. He suspected that perhaps it was because something about the picture was simultaneously slightly pathetic, oddly moving and (Soren allowed himself a smile) reminded him of himself in his younger days.
Oh, who was he trying to fool? It reminded him of himself as he still was.
With that thought, Soren focused his attention onto his Enderman book, only half-listening to the muted snores in the background. In fact, a while later, he didn't even register that they'd stopped until he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.
The architect gave a start as blue eyes fluttered open, their owner pushing himself into a sitting position before squinting at Soren.
Well...in Soren's general direction, anyhow.
Soren's mouth twitched under his beard, but he continued watching the boy with something like wariness, which the child returned. His rumpled blond hair and the fuzzy blanket now hanging crookedly off his shoulders made the slightly suspicious look more endearing than disconcerting, however.
Their impromptu mutual staring contest was broken by Soren semi-awkwardly clearing his throat. Just as he was about to lower his eyes back onto his book, however, the child seemed to really notice the blanket for the first time. His still-heavy eyes focused their gaze onto it for a few seconds, then darted said gaze to Soren's face, apparently putting two and two together. He said nothing.
The man focused on the page open in front of him and was just getting back into 'the zone' (as he'd heard it called) when there was a soft mutter of "Thanks" from across the table.
Soren paused briefly, glancing up at the boy before going back to his reading, not without the slightest of smiles. "You're welcome."
On the whole, nothing had changed. Soren still went to the library as regularly as he had before the encounter and the boy could still be found there. However, when Soren happened to make eye contact with him, he would now give a nod or small wave of acknowledgement, which the boy would answer with a nod or wave of his own. The faint, nagging curiosity still persisted, though. And from the way the child would sometimes glance the architect's way through narrowed eyes, Soren wondered once or twice whether the feeling was mutual.
He wondered several things about that boy, if he was honest (he pushed down the unpleasant pangs of conscience he feared he and his friends would soon come to associate with that particular word).
So one cloudy day, Soren set his pile of books down onto the table where the boy was sitting, by himself yet again. The boy didn't really seem to register his presence at first, deeply engrossed with the book (this one somewhat smaller than you would expect, though Soren didn't dwell on this detail) his head was bent over.
Soren took a chair at the table, silently cursing the fact that it hadn't gotten any comfier since he'd last sat there and watched over, almost guarded the child as he slept and said, without any preamble (he did so hate preliminary small talk), "You come here rather a lot, don't you?"
The boy blinked at him, glancing back over his shoulder as though trying to find anyone else to whom Soren could possibly be talking. He gave the man a long, scrutinising look, evidently trying to figure out whether there was any significance behind the question. "I guess you could say that, yeah," he eventually replied, a tad cautiously but offering Soren a tiny smile to indicate that the man's company wasn't altogether unwelcome.
The architect barely lasted a second before continuing, "May I ask why?"
Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies, snarked a mental voice that Soren chose to ignore.
He'd been doing that rather a lot lately.
The child abruptly dropped his gaze, shrugging. The gesture held a sort of feigned nonchalance that caught Soren's attention. "I don't know. I guess I don't really..." He cut himself off with a deep sigh. "I don't have a lot of other places to go," he finished, looking very much like it had cost him a considerable effort to get the words out. He appeared to be staring down at his lap rather than paying attention to Soren's expression, but the architect hoped that the pity stabbing at his chest didn't show on his face anyway. He got the distinct impression that it wouldn't be appreciated.
Unfortunately, this had the regrettable effect of leading into a strained silence. The boy shrugged again, more to himself this time, and continued with his book. The scratching sound of the pen in his hand caused realisation to dawn on Soren.
The boy wasn't reading.
He was writing.
A vision of his own younger self, bright-eyed and enthusiastic with inkstains lingering under his fingernails, swam in the architect's mind for the briefest of moments.
"What have you got there?" he asked casually, endeavouring to betray none of the strange sudden excitement he felt.
The boy paused in his scrawling. "Oh, I...well, I like stories – always have, really. And sometimes, I just...kind of like to make up my own," he explained haltingly. With a small, nervous laugh, he added, "I know that's not exactly the coolest thing to do, but-"
"Not at all, not at all," Soren corrected him immediately. "Stories are rather magical things. Doubly so when one writes their own."
"Well, I'm not all that sure how good mine are," the child admitted, fiddling with his pen. "I don't write properly. I don't really plan anything; I just kind of...let it write itself, almost." He cast his notebook a somewhat disdainful look, appearing to be cross with himself.
Ah. Soren knew that feeling.
"There's no 'properly' when it comes to something like writing, my boy," Soren assured him, the term slipping from him before he could catch it back. If the kid noticed, he didn't comment. "May I take a look?"
The wide-eyed stare his request was greeted with convinced Soren that he'd gone too far in his prying, but just as he opened his mouth to form an apology, the notebook was slid over to him. The architect hesitated for all of two seconds, then opened it, registering vaguely that the name 'Lukas' was printed on the inside of the front cover. He flipped through page after page of adventure, high fantasy, dystopias, written in a hand that was neat but childish.
Feeling the kid's – Lukas's – eyes upon him, Soren lowered the notebook, reluctantly passing it back to him.
"Nobody's ever...been interested in stuff I do before," the kid told him, with a resignation that caused the architect's shoulders to slump a little.
"Well, that's their loss," Soren found himself declaring bluntly, Lukas looking up at him from under his eyelashes. "You have a great deal of potential, Lukas – that is your name, right?"
Lukas nodded slowly, a genuine smile curving his mouth. Soren was about to add something else when his eyes happened to fall upon the nearby window.
"It's getting late," he noted, glancing around and realising that most of the other library patrons had left.
Lukas's face clouded over again. "Oh...yeah. Well, you should get off home, I guess, and I'll just..." He left the sentence unfinished, bowing his blond head over his notepad again.
Soren would've said goodnight and turned to leave, but something was stopping him. He gave Lukas a scrutinising look not unlike the one the boy had given him earlier. "You said you had nowhere to go, correct?"
"Yeah," the kid replied, a note of defensiveness in his voice. He glanced over at the front desk and lowered his voice. "If I'm quiet, the guy at the desk usually doesn't notice I'm still here when he locks up for the night."
Soren took in a deep breath, something about Lukas's matter-of-fact tone saddening him. "I know another place you could stay. A place with actual beds," he added, sparing the excuses for chairs a contemptuous look.
Lukas's eyes widened, then narrowed. "What do you mean?"
Soren gingerly placed a hand on his shoulder. "I swear you can trust me," he assured awkwardly, changing the subject. "What got you into writing in the first place?"
At the words, the incredulity in Lukas's face fell away, replaced by an enthusiasm more suited to his young face. "When I was a kid – younger than I am now, I mean – I always used to have these really vivid dreams whenever I heard a good story and then in the morning, I'd write them down before I forgot them. And one day, I just looked at them all and-"
Soren listened attentively to the kid's ramble, hearing more and more of himself with every word. And Lukas innocently talked on through his tiredness, heartened by the promise of somewhere safe and warm to go.
"Lukas is a snorer" headcanon hours! (also "Old Order see their younger selves in their New Order counterparts" headcanon hours)
Please do go ahead and drop a comment :)
(*awkwardly tips hat*)