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Brood of a New Age

79.

Brooklyn wandered the battlements, not knowing - again - what to do. The members of the clan had dispersed, but their separation was more than just physical. And he, who was supposed to hold it all together or put it back together, didn't know how.

Again this feeling of drowning. Struggling against endless masses of water and not making it to the surface.

He leaned over the railing and took a deep breath. Why didn't all this air up here make him clearer?

The smell of old leather and concrete - but in a good way - wafted up his nose all at once. Brooklyn smirked without turning around. Hudson was still a pussyfooter even at this age when he wanted to be.

"Does it ever get easier?" Brooklyn asked, raising his eyes to the sky. Probably nowhere in Manhattan could you see the stars better than on top of the tallest building in the city. Still, the light pollution made them few and far between. Beside him, he heard an amused snort.

"It's never going to be easy. But it will get different. You get used to feeling helpless and often thinking you could have done better for your loved ones. At some point, you just accept that there are no perfect solutions to anything and that whatever good you end up working hard for, you have to make sacrifices for."

Hudson put a firm hand on his shoulder and Brooklyn looked at him for the first time. Warm eyes that were brown only up close, but otherwise dark like his. And the uplifting, patient smile that he and the generations before him had grown up seeing even when they landed nose and beak-first in the dirt during combat training. "Loyal friends and good advisors help you, - if you learn to put your trust in others. And even their decisions are not perfect and you still have to rely on them afterwards. But over the years you become a unit and understand each other without words when they act as your extended arm and you are their mouthpiece. That's how it was with me and the one-armed one. So it will be with you, Second." Brooklyn rested his hand on Hudson's on his shoulder. That the elder emphasized his status was perhaps meant to be uplifting and affirming - but it sounded like mockery. He knew exactly that impression was only forming in his head but it still sounded like that.

"I've gone back to treating Nashville the way I never wanted to. Like a dictator. Like a tyrant. He told me the truth to my face for the first time and I punished him for it."

"You didn't punish him for that, and you know it. You locked him in the rookery to protect him. I used to be a clan leader, too. Sometimes we have to make hard choices to protect those we love and are entrusted with.

"Like when you left Demona to Culen to prevent further slaughter?"

Hudson smirked. "Did I really leave her to him? Or did I just lend her to him to take back later with a toll of blood?"

He chuckled, but Brooklyn could barely manage more than a polite smile.

"Oh Brooklyn, I can understand if what Nashville said troubles you."

"It depresses me - yes. I'm his father. But I didn't realize how much he was really struggling. I thought he was settling in here. Faster than Katana. Or me. "

"You, lad?"

"It wouldn't be very mature to whine now. "

"To whom if not to me could you whine? I'm 120 years old! You're little more than an egg to me, laddie."

Brooklyn laughed softly about his former clan leader, who had not only cheated himself a little older but had added the diminutive form to the usual lad on full purpose. Hudson was so understanding, so level-headed. As age probably brought. Why couldn't he be like that? He had learned to cope with many situations and if he couldn't cope with them, at least he had always managed to get himself and his loved ones out of them. And now he felt so ...

"What now, laddie?"

He snorted and put his head back, looking again at the nearly starless night sky. No comparison to the immaculate wide sky over Ishimura the 17th century or the middle age. No comparison to the sky of the future without air pollution but darkened by ships of the Space Spawn."

"I feel so helpless Hudson. Not just toward Nashville now. I feel out of joint. I've been away from you all and from this time for forty years. Forty years - half my life! And for you guys, it was just a blink of an eye away. I couldn't blame anyone for the way everyone looked at me - like an alien. Or a ... Imposter who could slip up at any time and one wrong move could give him away."

"No one ever thought of you that way, Brooklyn."

"No, they certainly didn't. I thought those looks would pass. This ... strange tension between me and the others, who remembered the younger version of me. And it's really changed, I can tell. But ... "

"It can never be the same again."

"Yes. I know. No more volatile, carefree, boisterous Brooklyn. No more Trio."

Hudson laughed out so Brooklyn winced and looked at him in horror as the big brown elder put an arm around his shoulders and gave him a painfully rough squeeze full of affection.

"Oh laddie!" he said, full of mirth but also reproving. "Now, now, that's all right. You're too old and too experienced to start feeling sorry for yourself just because your spawn has been barking at you - something, by the way, for which former naughty hatchlings had to spend weeks scraping the slime off the rocks of the rookery." Then his voice grew more serious.

"Brooklyn, you're not the same but you have to give everyone time to get used to your current self. It can take years, but it will happen. You should not mourn for what is no more but arrange your life so that you are fine now. You're more tense and harsher than you need to be. You isolate yourself with it. I can see that you want to be different. You're not alone, and you don't have to bear all the responsibility right away - not even for Nashville. Ask your clan for help. Everyone is waiting for it. And now I want you to think back and tell me if you are VERY sure that your memory is not deceiving you.

"With what?"

"With you as a trio. And with whether you were carefree."

"How- how do you mean?"

"Brooklyn- forty years may have made you forget. But for me it was only last year. You and Broadway and Lexington woke up in a new time. And, of course, for months you clung to each other much more intensely than would have been usual if you'd still had forty brothers-and yes-also nineteen sisters. And even without a big clan you have gradually grown apart with more certainty during this time. Everyone has found his own interests and that you have felt or feel lonely in the process of time is normal. And regarding the other thing. You were not carefree. You were unhappy. Maybe even jealous of Broadway because Angela wanted him.

"That's-!" began Brooklyn indignantly, but under the elder's one-eyed gaze (as one-eyed as his own) he felt much younger and fell silent.

"All right," he admitted. "I was very glum about it. But I never held it against either of them."

"And now you have a partner to whom you seem very attached."

Instantly, a broad smile spread across Brooklyn's face.

"Yes, I am."

"If it weren't for Phoenix Gate, you never would have met her. She would have been dead long before you woke up again in Manhattan. I've thought a lot about your journey in the last few months. And your destiny has led you not only to places that needed you but also to others that YOU needed. I know you don't feel that way. But the gate has done you a favor in its cruel way. Because nothing is more valuable than finding its counterpart. Even against the merciless machinations of magic and time."

"I am now older than Goliath. Isn't it ridiculous that he still considers me his Second? "

"He will not take back his choice. On the contrary. Even though you are now slightly older. Your wealth of experience makes you far too valuable for that. Does it depress you that he won't make you leader right away?"

"NO! I would never take Goliath's job away from him. He is the leader. Until he won't be able to do it anymore. I can wait."

"I don't think you have to wait as long as you think."

"What do you mean? Is-is Goliath okay?"

Hudson raised his hands defensively. "I didn't mean to imply THAT. And I'm not implying anything, because it's the clan leader's decision and his alone. But ... just let it come to you."

"Katana has consulted Goliath rather than me regarding Nash. I think bypassing the Second doesn't speak well for my leadership abilities. Or my abilities as a father."

"Your mate wanted to take that burden off your shoulders. Part of a partnership is trying to do that. That it failed does not diminish her effort. That she sought counsel with the clan leader before you on this subject that so consumes you is no proof that she doesn't love you."

"I know that. I am always aware of her love. And I love her. And we both love Nashville. But ... I can't let him associate with Anthony Dracon's daughter! That would be like painting a target on all of us and him first and foremost on his chest and back."

Hudson propped his arms on the parapet as he did.

"I have no solution for that either. This situation is really unprecedented. Where is your mate now?"

Brooklyn sighed.

"She's at the dojo Xanatos set up for her. She said she needs to meditate but I know she's ashamed of her misjudgment. I don't think she has anything to be ashamed of. What should she have done? Investigate on a vague suspicion that the child might not have been just any child? She had hope and faith that it would be okay. Bringing the children together was her expression of love. How could I blame her for hope and faith and love?"

"You should go to her. When I had doubts or my plans didn't work out, my mate's presence always did me good."

Brooklyn smiled. "I remember her. The female with the short beak who always spoke verity."

"Aye, even to me. Especially to me. In our last conversation before the battle that robbed me of her, I asked her if I wasn't making a terrible mistake in allying myself with humans who sought our help. And she said "Wouldn't be the first time, my love."" Hudson laughed, and it was the laugh of someone who has had decades to get used to the mixture of unending pain and comforting memories.

"She was wise," Brooklyn confirmed. "She said the problems of the humans would always eventually become the problems of the gargoyles. That wasn't your saying. It was hers from the beginning."

"Oy, you babes were eavesdropping back on the cliffs at the negotiations!" exclaimed Hudson artificially.

Brooklyn grinned. "Sure we were eavesdropping."

The two elders laughed.

"My beloved said all things are connected. There is no fate separate from the other. That's why we can't isolate ourselves just for the sake of safety. Not forever. Not when the world is changing so fast. So enough with regret and remorse. Go to her. Offer her your ear even if she doesn't know she needs it yet. Do you feel a little better?"

"Actually. Much better. You really should have been a therapist, Hudson."

"My hourly fee is prohibitive for you," Hudson said as dry as sandpaper, and Brooklyn looked at him, befuddled. Until Hudson's poker face fell in on itself and he grinned.

"I heard that on TV."

"Hahhaha, that was a good one. But ... even though it's out of my price range - what am I going to do about Nashville?"

"He's your son," Hudson said, shaking his head with a pinched face. "Heavens, it's so strange to refer to and look at a single Gargoyle child as the son of a single clan member. Sorry, that's something I can't get used to."

Brooklyn shrugged. "Now that we're back here, I've resolved that I actually want the next eggs to look at everyone as parents again. With Nash and our time travel, that was pointless. But here ... "

"I'm sure Angela and Broadway can go along with that if Angela gets used to the idea. No youngster should ever feel like an orphan left behind when one or both of their producers die in battle. This time is even more dangerous in its own way than the Middle Ages. With those firearms. And those laser things."

"Laser projectiles," Brooklyn muttered, guiltily gripping his gun, which he always carried. The little laser gun, made in the future for gargoyle hands, rechargeable by solar energy just like gargoyles themselves. Hudson smirked at this. Just as he took the sword to help balance his damaged eye, he didn't resent Brooklyn's use of his weapons. Presumably, this was simply the expression of the new times, when one had to be prepared for one's enemies. Brooklyn kept his big gun in his room and used it only for extreme missions - like shooting Goliath out of jail. So much for being volatile and carefree. He wasn't ready to be leader of a clan that went beyond his mate and Nashville. He still needed Goliath's, and thus Hudson's, guidance and advice.

"We're going to have to keep a much closer eye on him once these three days are over. And the social workers or whoever need to get the girl away from the Dracons and get her far away from their sphere of influence. It was obvious that the girl didn't know who her father was. But the two can't be friends. Not currently. He just doesn't understand the implications. I know that with my harsh behavior I have hurt Nashville. It will take me a very long time to mend those fences. If I succeed at all."

"I admit. It was easier to have a whole clan as rookery parents. When Angela calls Goliath father it feels like someone is walking over my grave," Hudson admitted with a stony face and Brooklyn nodded hastily.

"That's how I felt when Nash dragged that girl in!"

"And that was before you knew what unfortunate clan that girl came from. But Nashville was right. That kid can't help her father."

"Taking a kid away from his family ... even if it's the Dracons ... that seems kind of-"

"I know. If there is a danger to her from her family's "business," then maybe she can be pulled out of there with a clear conscience."

"But if not, or if Graziella refuses to be taken out of there in court then ... the two can't be friends. Either way, they can't. The risk is too great. Nashville won't see that. Maaaan, I've fought aliens but a confrontation with my son makes me sweat."

Hudson skipped over the alien comment. He didn't understand and didn't want to understand these newfangled or even future analogies.

"Do you want to hear my suggestion that involves your ... son?"

"Gladly. I'd love to, my mentor."

Hudson smirked at that and at the alert look of the red gargoyle who also sparkled with one eye just as inquisitive as before. All would gradually internalize that this was THEIR Brooklyn. Older, tougher, and with a family. But their Brooklyn.

"Nashville's not stupid. He'll have to digest that the girl is a Dracon and will understand the danger that contact with her can pose. My advice. Leave the lad alone. I would instruct everyone to leave him alone. Tonight. Tomorrow night. Maybe longer. Tonight he might make a fuss, but tomorrow, when he realizes that no one will let him out, he will start to think. He has a lot of things to work out with himself now. Sometimes adults just need to give young ones that time to think. Just like we gave it to you and Broadway back when you ran off into the woods after a fight with your rookery siblings."

"What, you knew we were in the woods? The whole four nights?"

"Of course, the best scouts had their eyes on you rascals."

"Even when we fell into the wolf pit, couldn't get out, and were deathly afraid that after sunrise hunters would find us and smash us?"

Hudson grinned. "The scouts were about to get you laddies out. But then-"

"- Lexington showed up and instructed us on how to make ourselves a ladder out of sticks," Brooklyn recalled, smirking and putting a hand to his forehead in recognition of the old memory.

"Such an experience seriously awakens the awareness of how important a clan is to you, doesn't it? And after that, there were three of you, keeping each other on track. A win-win, if you ask me. And you don't even have to keep an eye on Nashville. What's going to happen to him here in the castle when he's sulking in the rookery? There are no wolf traps here."

.

.

Nashville scratched at the wooden door until he came across the titanium core Lex had told him about and nearly chipped his claws on it. He rubbed his aching hands, sank down on the steps, and panted hard. He had guessed they wouldn't let him out. And how stupid to pound and shout here. As if someone were standing guard outside. Dangerous prisoners needed a guard. Stupid kids didn't. Later they would bring him food but even then they would not let him out no matter if he whined and begged. This was so unfair. He couldn't have known that Graziella was a Dracon! She herself didn't know that her dad was a criminal - even an idiot would have seen that as perplexed as she had reacted.

Perplexed? No. Scared. Terrified at Broadway's outburst and at the general commotion. With wings dragging behind him, Nashville stumbled down the long flight of stairs to the clutching trough. The throbbing in his skull had only grown more violent with his shouting and the argument before. He felt so drained. He couldn't even really be mad to his heart's content at Broadway because he knew what his turquoise uncle was like in truth. He was kind and good-hearted. Probably the friendliest and most open Gargoyle of all. Only the Dracon issue triggered him and Nash guessed just at that moment he would be sitting somewhere blaming himself terribly for having snapped at Graziella like that. And he himself had called Broadway crazy! Because he had been so angry. Luca had called him a monster and Nashville had thought the same. The word that hurt him the most when people shouted it at him. Broadway had looked like his heart was breaking there. Nashville lowered himself to the soft ground in front of the egg. He carefully turned Egwardo as Katana had shown him so many times before, and that small effort alone set off vertigo.

What if she was so scared that she ran into bad people? Who would hurt her. Or ... what if she was in danger even in her house? What if she got punished for coming home so late?

And she had been SO shocked. So distraught. Because of Broadway, Brooklyn, even Goliath and generally the whole commotion. The sight of two gargoyles getting upset and the rest of the clan wrestling with them was terrifying even for adults. A gargoyle getting angry - even if he had no intention to kill - was horrible to watch. And how Graziella had looked! So shocked. Because of his family. Of whom he had assured her so often how wonderful they all were.

He felt like a liar. Like a cheat. What if she thought he was a liar? What if she never wanted to see him again?

No matter what his father said, he still wanted to see her. He didn't know how to do that but Nash couldn't imagine living without Graziella. But she would certainly never want to meet him again on her own. They had all behaved terribly. Like wrestlers, all going at each other at the same time and struggling with each other. They had all behaved like lunatics.

The fear for Graziella, the fear of Graziella's reaction triggered nausea in Nashville. He stood up, stumbled a few steps away from the trough and egg - and collapsed as his body suddenly became his enemy and a seizure overtook him. He slumped to the floor. He heard a whole series of his own vertebrae crack in his back, tail and wings as his body writhed like a bow and long-forgotten pain shot through his head, so much stronger than any migraine attack humans suffered.

Images flooded his mind incoherently. It was not a movie that played before his inner eye. They were cutouts, fragmentary set pieces of larger images, either too bright or too dark. He saw Castaway's face grinning broadly. He saw a golden string vibrating. Feathers swept past his mind's eye, and he heard the cry of the ferruginous buzzard he had freed at the zoo. He saw a dirty person crying who looked roughly like that reporter who had covered Goliath's trial. Dozens of flashes of light blinded him and were like knife wounds in his brain, though at the edge of his perception he felt the limits of his twitching body and also felt that he had his eyes squeezed tightly shut. And he heard gunshots and saw Tony Dracon's rat face with his mouth open in glee and his laughter echoing as if he were in a wide space. And he saw Graziella with a cadaverous gray face. And blood. He felt as if blood was flooding his inner eye. The rest of the images drowned in a dark red pool and only with the greatest effort was Nashville not himself swept into the depths and suffocated. He clawed his hands into the sand on the floor of the cave and held onto that sensation to keep himself from being lost. Then it was over. He gasped convulsively for breath and the warm somewhat musty air of the rookery in which he found himself although he had never left it was a relief to his aching lungs. Although every muscle was now overworked, he reflexively turned to the side and vomited gushes of foamy mucus mixed with blood, which did not come from his stomach and smelled like rot and burnt caramel.

He curled up, now master of his body again, even if it felt like that of an old man. He had had another one. The last one had been so long ago and he had hoped that the previous dull pain was not a warning sign. But it really had been a seizure. An absence.

He had to get out of here. Now more than ever!

To see if she had made it home. To see if she was okay at home even though it was a Dracon house and she was obviously Anthony Dracon's daughter. And most importantly - to talk to her to make sure they were still friends. He had to convince her to believe him and come with him. That he had seen things that described the future and they had to stop it.

He would get her out of there, he would save her. From the Dracons. From his clan and the social workers Elisa would send.

He could glide away with her. Far away from all this blood.

He loved his clan. He loved Hudson, Lexington, Goliath, he loved them all, even his dad (sort of) and Broadway. But if they couldn't stand him being with Graziella- then he couldn't stay with them. And hadn't the images in his head shown that he and she had to get out of here? He had to prevent all this blood. Yes, that was certainly how it was.

With difficulty, Nashville sat up. He had to break out of here. But how?

"I have to get out," he growled in frustration. As he stood up, he leaned against one of the damp walls - and suddenly toppled over as it gave way. He fell to the floor again, looked up and noticed that the wall had not given way or collapsed under his really not massive weight - but that he had apparently found a secret passage! Whether built in by Xanatos during the re-location of the castle or adopted and actually centuries-old "escape tunnel" to bring the clutch of eggs to safety from whatever dangers. He looked into the deep black corridor of which even gargoyle eyes could not estimate how long it was. He looked back again into the cave into which he had been banished and from which there was no way out. Except this one, perhaps. On all fours he crawled through the opening and shortly behind him the wall slid shut again with creaking noises, leaving him in complete darkness.

"Oh no," he wailed, trying to push open the passage through which he had just come and which now already no longer existed. But nothing moved. Or he was too weak in his current seizure-shaken state.

"Oh no. Oh no," he said louder, breathing heavily. He reached out with both hands and on either side were walls. Walls walls, everywhere. Only this time, not metaphors but actual walls that seemed to crush him, seemed to steal his air. He felt himself becoming claustrophobic, trying to be more angry than afraid so that his eyes would start to glow and he could at least see something-whatever-with that light.

"I need air," he whispered. "I need light."

He had spoken the last word, and as if he were a magician and the word was full of magic, lights suddenly lit up around him and in that part of the secret passage. It was only then that he realized that the wall had also just slid away earlier when he had said he wanted out.

Was ... were these technical installations? For 1997 advanced voice recognition programs, AI and command controlled hydraulics? A system coupled with light?

Or was it simply magic? Ancient magic to keep the gargoyle spawn of centuries past safe? It did not matter to him.

All that mattered was that this was his way out. Knowing that he had power over this tiny part of the castle with his commands, he strode down the corridor, trying to keep a calm head. He crept around the next bend in the rough-hewn corridor where the lights dimmed, feeling his way along the walls again. "Lights on," he commanded AI or magic aloud, and again his surroundings were illuminated by unknown sources. Nashville laughed at this. He wasn't comfortable with unknown magic or whatever but he liked having a small measure of control. Several times Nash turned corners and had the impression not only of going deeper but also of running in circles as if in a downward spiral. Finally he stood in front of a massive wall. He scanned it but found no lever or button or device like in any adventure novels or movies. He took a step back, smugly smiling and quite confident by his previous successes.

"Open up," he commanded.

Nothing happened

"I want to get out of here," he said aloud.

"...Open Sesame?"

"...Abracadabra?"

Nashville put his hand to his beak thoughtfully.

What else could he say? He had only said earlier that he wanted to get out. He had held on to the wall and-

No sooner had he put his hand on the stone in front of him than this seemingly massive wall also slid to the side, crunching and cracking. Nashville backed away because he was suddenly blinded by artificial light. Only after a few moments could he crawl to the opening and look down into the wide space below. He was above the arboretum hall, even above the iron ceiling beams where the spotlights were mounted. It was ... too perfect. Nash leapt onto the outer stone shell of the former Wywern Castle caverns as the exit closed once again and nimbly crawled over it, hoping and suspecting that not even Xanatos would be crazy enough to put cameras up here. No one would notice his disappearance. He was on his way.

His way into the frying pan, perhaps. -..-

Thanks for reading, Q.T.