They find her sitting alone outside the entrance to the emergency entrance, her head in her hands and fresh tears rolling down her cheeks as they approach.
"Mom?"
At first, they wonder if the trembling woman has even heard them until she gives the sniff of a sob then lifts her bowed head enough to look up at them each in turn. "Cal's in surgery." Her voice breaks as she talks but she doesn't recoil when Theo gingerly lowers to sit beside her on the small bench seat.
Margot and Sebastian stand a kind of guard around the broken mother. "They say it was a close call." The hunter goes on now leaning gratefully into her vampire son's offered attempt at comfort. "Also said our girl put up one hell of a fight getting them to let her ride with her instead of staying to give a statement."
"She would." Theo muses more to himself than anyone else.
"The insanity of first love." Margot sighs her eyes falling on her husband now as Sebastian seems more than a little preoccupied at the moment despite the shining of his own unwavering affection for her in his slightly glowing eyes once he'd torn them from the glow of his cellphone screen.
"Nothing like it," He says in agreement as he brings her hand to his lips for a kiss like some kind of 'old time' movie. "excuse me." He says in departure when his phone buzzed again. His eyes now preictally pulsing a rich emerald when he next looked up from a quick reading of the newest incoming message. "Trust me, I won't be gone long." He soothes giving his wife another soft kiss before walking back towards the Fairmont car like a father on a mission. His phone was now pressed close to his ear as he waited for whoever he'd chosen to call to pick up, leaving Margot to slowly lower herself to sit on Taila's other side.
"No one will tell me anything," Taila says hating just how broken she sounds as she leans a little more into Theo's grounding presence.
"She'll pull though, Mom." Her son calms wrapping an arm even tighter around his mother's trembling shoulders. "She will." He repeats when unsure, watery eyes lift to catch his over the purring growl of the Fairmont's sleek sports car peeling out of its parking space.
"That's my little girl in there." His mother whispers her voice breaking yet again as she speaks with her head lowered to Theo's shoulder.
"Calliope is too stubborn to let even this keep her down long." Margot answers resting a hand against her fellow mother's shoulder. "What are you doing out here anyway?"
"Mother said I should come out here. Take a moment. Catch my breath." Taila says as if this were the most obvious thing to be said in this moment as she attempts to dab at the still-falling tears spilling from her eyes. "She'd keep an eye on Juliette, and let me know when Cal was out of surgery." She lists in a daze with tears falling fast a free down her cheeks. "Not that they are giving good odds given her condition."
"Mom. Gran passed away…." Theo starts to say in a reminder, but his mother is already shaking her head in denial.
"Not my mother." She denies. "not in blood anyway." She adds with a laugh before she lifts her head to catch Margot's eye. "But now that I think about it. I am curious. Since Cal and Juliette aren't together anymore what does that make us?"
They could both see the question strange thought it was to be asked at the moment must be Taila's way of distracting herself from worrying more over Cal.
"I'll tell you once you answer Theo's question on why you would call someone not your mother by that title." Margot offers curious herself as to the answer. True there was a reason in the vampiric world, but she found it odd that the human one would allow for such things when they don't honor the First Mother as the legacies and other monsters.
Not that she gets one with the hurried steps of squeaking sneakers on the medical-grade cleaned floors drawing closer to their meeting place.
"Is that….?" Talia starts to ask seeing the sparks of expectation in Margot's eyes as the doors hissed open allowing her unknowing but seemingly mission-driven daughter entry into the emptied parking lot.
"My baby." The tearful mother sighed as she watched Juliette's eyes cast wildly around before landing on Taila's hunched form with a grateful flush of relief. But it's the deeper remembrance kind of look dusting Juliette's eyes when as she drew closer, the sheer relief in her smile as recognition seemed to slam into Juliette's glazed eyes once her daughter registers the others shadowing Cal's waiting mother that has Margot's heart ping-ponging against her ribs in delight.
Only for that happy bubble in her chest to be hit with a white-hot dagger of electrifying pain sliced between Margot's ribs when Juliette dodged so smoothly around her to fling herself into the arms of the turned one still sitting beside his own mother.
Theo's guilt is palpable as his arms closed around his maker's back in steading response when at his touch a truly pained sob shook Juliette's small frame. As if until that very moment she'd been holding herself back from truly expressing the depth of her tangled emotions. "Wasn't supposed to be like this." the legacy girl sobs with a guilty shaking of her head.
"I know." Theo agrees.
"It wasn't…" Juliette repeats then stops when her voice breaks and more tears spill from her eyes as she looks between each watching face and then back towards the mocking medical doors.
Theo's hand reaches back stalling either watching the woman's movements when in between her heartbroken sobs Juliette's hands begin beating weakly against Theo's chest with a repeated "Why?" each asking paired with a strengthening fall of a trembling hand.
Even Talia tears up in sympathy at the honest question asking until the full sentence is strung together. "Why do I love her so much? I- I hardly even know her."
"Oh, Jules."
Ashley immediately backs away towards Cal's mother at the sympathetic outcry as her gaze lands on the owner of that softly spoken voice. Or that could be because of that suddenly still heartbeat drumming sluggishly against her ears.
The swarm buzzing filling her head grows louder when she catches the older woman's eye. Her head now pulsing with stinging pain as a wheezed coughing rips through her sending Ashley to her knees with a clawed hand pawing at her own chest as she struggled to catch her breath with a broken, "Cal." As her world shattered around her.
"Look at me, my child."
Ashley can barely register the three around her gape as if in shared shock at her kind of mother's sudden appearance now kneeling in front of her. One hand covers Ashley's against her chest another against her back as Ashley herself attempts to lift her bowed head.
"That's it." Was the soft hiss in coaxed action. Those soft jade-colored eyes seem to glow brighter in their emerald depths as Ashley attempts another broken breath. "Close your eyes."
Ashley obeys. How could she do anything else?
"You feel her?"
It was always there. In the back of her mind no matter how clouded her thoughts became. A warm band around her slowing heart. But also, so different from the one first forged with the scent of cherries and the biting undertone of freshly spilled blood in the air.
And just for a moment, Ashley pretends she's back in that pantry room with Cal leaning in in front of her.
She can see her so clearly. Just as she had been that very first time, she'd followed so willingly into the pantry of Noah's parents' house.
"Cal?" uncertainty now as she quietly probs along the offered lifeline when again it seemed to flicker within her mental grasp.
"Cal." She whispers to the vision-created hunter in her thoughts when the fragile bond seems to stabilize itself.
A fanged smile greets her now as the Cal in her mind stops flickering like a projection in her mind. "Miss me? Jules?"
Unlike the other times now it was as if she were feeling her other half as she'd felt the first one, she'd made as her in that bloodied bathroom stall.
Unthinking Ashley's free hand reaches to rub at the oddly warmed scars against her chest. She guessed from the accident when she'd crashed her car all those months before as she reached out as if the threads, she found truly were tangible things that could easily wrap around her searching fingers as Cal's phantom hand lifts Ashley's wrist to her seeking lips.
Cal's tongue flicked out to wet her fanged teeth as her searching eyes flick back to catch Ashley's gaze in quiet asking as she bent her lips to Ashley's offered forearm.
She could almost feel Cal's jaw twitching in answer as her phantom self also obediently bent to press her vampiric kiss against Ahsley's offered wrist.
"She's being moved to her room," Ashley informs the waiting group once the deed is finished and Ashley picks up the groaned scraping of the wheeled bed being guided down a hallway just as the medical doors open allowing a dark-scrubbed med student to exit.
"Come on. I'm not leaving her alone again. Let's go." Ashley probs unthinkingly grabs the hand of the kind-faced one who'd let her cry herself out earlier as she starts towards the door.
"Oh uhh…." The now flustered girl stammers slowly releasing the hand she was holding at the unexpected chuckling the action triggered.
"Theo."
"Theo," Ashley repeats as if testing out the name as her eyes search until they land on Taila with a guilty expression.
"Theo is Cal's older brother," The hunter's mother informs getting to her feet on Margot's helpful guidance, "well one of them anyway." She amends leaning into her fellow mother just as much as Margot was staggering into her after her own daughter's reaction to the mere sight of her.
"Erm…hi." Ashley manages as if one just came out of a dream then adds a flustered "Uh erm sorry about all that." as she lifts a hand first to rub her shirt sleeve against her tear-stained eyes then moves it outward in a more formal kind of greeting. "Ashley Lennox. Nice to meet you."
Three pairs of eyes all draw towards the scared marking of Theo's fanged bite against the inside of the currently human legacies' forearm as Theo himself accepts his maker's offered handshake. The wound once thought healed over was bleeding anew. A fresh set of teeth marks now embedded along with Theo's own marker.
"Now come on. Cal's waiting for us." Ashley smiles not catching the looks as she leads the way back into the hospital.