AN: This story is a continuation of my two previous Gargoyles fanfictions, "The Secret of Bain Felix" and "Adelpha". If you haven't read those first, you will find many of the characters in this story to be acting out of character, and some plot elements will not make much sense, pretty much from the beginning. Therefore, I highly recommend reading those stories first. Also, I have based the timeline of my stories on a "gargoyle life cycle" that I imagined and I felt was consistent with the limited information in the show, but is inconsistent with the "canon" of the comic strips. Details of my timeline will be included in an appendix at the end of the story. Thank you so much for reading, and please remember that reviews, even constructive ones, are always highly appreciated. (Particularly since the website seems to have given up on posting stats and so reviews are the only way to know if anyone is reading at all!) Thanks, Allegra
The rich fall colors in the park gleamed brilliantly in the late afternoon sun as Elisa Maza made her way to the main entrance of the Edgar Holman Academy. She held a small girl by the hand, whose bright, curious eyes took in the showers and swirls of brightly colored leaves with a sense of longing, as if she wished the powerful gusts of wind would carry her up among the glistening stone and steel towers that surrounded them.
"Look, mommy!" she cried with delight as she pulled the woman to an abrupt stop and pointed to a miniature cyclone of leaves that had formed in a space between the two brick garden boxes that bordered the sidewalk. She watched the spectacle for a moment, then wrenched her hand free so she could spin around with the little dust devil, her arms outstretched exuberantly and her open hoodie flapping behind her like scarlet wings.
Elisa Maza felt inclined to pause a while and take vicarious pleasure in the child's play, but after a few moments, she called the little girl back to her.
"Your brother's waiting for us, you little whirlwind!" she chastised affectionately.
"I'm a tornado!" she shouted boisterously as she burst through the center of the dust devil and took her mother's hand. She watched over her shoulder with satisfaction as the cyclone reformed behind them and she was pulled gently toward the main entrance.
The detective had to stop and catch her breath after climbing the stone steps that led to what had once been a parish rectory for the adjacent St. Jude Catholic Church, but now served as a discrete entrance to the small, private secondary school that catered to families who valued discretion. She steadied herself with one hand, against a stone planter that someone had decorated with an arrangement of silk sunflowers, glitter-tinged pinecones, and a golden pumpkin. Her heart raced as her burning lungs struggled to keep up with it and a thin, anxious man stepped through the heavy door.
"Are you alright, Ms. Maza?" he asked urgently, offering his arm and she smiled self-consciously and dismissed him.
"I'm just fine, Mr. Wardenberg," she assured him, "I was just admiring the view of the park." She gestured toward the lovely sunset of colors that seemed to burn beneath the silver, sparkling New York skyline.
"Ah, yes," agreed Timothy Wardenberg, the school's most passionate teacher as well as its reluctant administrator, "It was breathtaking when I arrived this morning, and so late in coming this year! I was beginning to fear we wouldn't see any colors at all! But I'd say these were worth waiting for. I don't think we'll ever see a finer display."
Detective Maza nodded her head thoughtfully as the little girl at her side shifted her weight with impatience.
"Can we find Ori now?" she pleaded.
"You must be Bonnie," the gentle teacher replied with an encouraging smile, "Ori talks about you all the time. How old are you now?"
The small girl's face fell, and she glanced up at her mother for direction.
"Do you know when your birthday is?" he asked again enthusiastically.
"We don't have birthdays," the child explained and the man suddenly looked anxious.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Mr. Wardenberg stammered, afraid he had made a terrible faux pas with his innocent questioning, "I didn't mean to-
"No! Don't apologize!" Elisa pleaded assuringly, "You've done nothing wrong. Bonnie is three."
Mr. Wardenberg looked very relieved that he had not caused any offense and Bonnie smiled up at him.
"We're here to pick up my brother," she explained, "And we're going to the park!"
"Well, then we must get him quickly," Mr. Wardenberg replied, "I believe he is playing basketball in the courtyard." He led them through a small office, where a single receptionist gave them a friendly wave in lieu of a greeting, as she was answering the phone, and into the hallway.
"Three what, Mommy?" the little girl whispered. Elisa Maza groaned softly.
Holman Academy was a very new school, housed in a very old building. The hallway they walked through had stained, squeaky floorboards. The once ornate woodwork at the crown of the wall was in notable disrepair, and there were several discolored blotches on the walls where holes in the aging plaster had been mended by an amature craftsman. The building was a large house that had once been the rectory of a vibrant parish and had been built to house a dozen priests. As the parish had declined, the council had sought to find a tenant who would help with their dwindling finances without completely dismantling the building and placing unwanted stress on the church's operations. To their delight, an anonymous donor had inquired about the piece of prime Manhattan real estate for the purpose of housing a new, private school.
The school had six large classrooms, a small library, a former chapel that could be used for assemblies, a kitchen, and a dining room, all under continuous construction. There was also a courtyard, made private by the stone church, parish center, and rectory that surrounded it, where students could relax at picnic tables or play basketball or other sports on a makeshift, blacktop court. Though the school could fit around one-hundred students, there were currently less than thirty enrolled. Nearly all the pupils were the children of affluent and somewhat eccentric families whose lifestyles required flexibility in education that even typical private schools were not apt to accommodate.
Mr. Wardenberg did not balk at the task of providing such accommodations to these privileged youngsters. He believed firmly in individualized learning and his charges thrived under his tutelage and that of his small team of instructors.
"How is Alex doing?" the administrator asked, referencing the close family friend who had first connected the detective with the academy.
"He's doing very well," she replied with a smile, "He's still at Loyola."
"He's finished his degree?" he asked and she nodded in reply.
"They offered him an adjunct professorship," she explained, "Which he has accepted, to the shock of everyone who knows him."
The teacher's eyes widened for a moment at this unexpected news, but he quickly gained his composure. Prior to his working for the New York City Public School system, he had been Alexander Xanatos' private tutor for four years. It was David Xanatos, the young man's father, who had tapped him for the position he now served, which he'd been more than grateful to accept as the Covid 19 closures had kept him from his beloved classroom for so long, he thought he would go mad if he couldn't teach again. If there was one thing he'd come to expect from working with the brilliant son of a secretive and powerful billionaire, it was the unexpected.
"Perhaps he's discovered a passion for teaching?" Wardenberg suggested, though he suspected that what young Alex had actually discovered was a passion for being away from the restraints of his father's empire. Elisa Maza shrugged her shoulders and smiled in a way that suggested that she thought the same.
The hallway ended at a glass double door that led into the courtyard, and Bonnie immediately ran to greet her brother, who was playing basketball with two other boys.
"Hi, Orion! Hi, Liam! I'm three in human years," she told them matter-of-factly. Liam, who had been chugging water too quickly from an aluminum water bottle, snorted water all over himself at this greeting. The other player, an older-looking boy with a snarky look to him rolled his eyes at his school mate's little sister.
"Human years?" he asked incredulously, "What are you? An alien?"
Bonnie erupted into laughter at this question and squealed, "No! I'm a gargoyle, of course!"
Orion gave Liam an apologetic look at this strange confession, but Liam, being a very sophisticated thirteen year old, did not appear shaken by the strange utterances of hyperactive preschoolers. In fact, he had his own younger siblings at home and knew the drill well.
"It's your first time trick-or-treating tonight," he commented, "Are you going as a gargoyle?"
"I'm going as a zombie gargoyle…" she moaned in a low, afflicted voice with dramatically outstretched claws and the older boy rolled his eyes again, and gave Orion an annoyed look. Clearly, he categorized little sisters as "lame" and blamed Orion for bringing such lameness into his presence.
"Bye, guys," Orion said, departing hastily with his little sister in tow.
"See you tonight, Ori," Liam replied as he bounced the basketball back into play and shouted, "Bye, Bonnie!"
"Mom, do you have to bring her in here?" he whined as he approached Elisa Maza, "How am I going to make friends if she says stuff like that?"
"What are you talking about?" she asked, feigning innocence, "Everyone loves Bonnie! She's adorable!"
"Yeah…but…
The little girl looked up at him, her bright eyes anxious.
"You still like me, don't you Brother?" she asked hopefully, reaching her arms up toward his neck. A little pink in the face, Orion gave one last futile glance toward the basketball court before surrendering and lifting her up to carry on his back. She squealed with laughter and Elisa smirked at the pair of them.
"Peer pressure has got nothing on baby sister cuteness," she commented.
"Well, it's too late to try to look cool now," he reasoned out loud with a sigh "So I might as well let my freak flag fly."
The two boys stopped passing the ball to watch him gallop toward the door with his excited sister on piggy back chanting, "Trick-or-treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!"
"Giddy-up, Bonnie!" Liam cheered tauntingly, while his associate just groaned and muttered something about how "cringe" the whole display was.
Outside again in the fresh, cool air, the family made their way into the park. Large gusts of wind were dislodging the late-comer leaves from the tops of the mature pin oaks and sweet gums, and they came down in showers of colorful stars, to their delight. All throughout the park, children were gathering up piles of these treasures and jumping into them before the park department cleared them away. Bonnie ran around euphorically, making fast friends with other children and informing them that she was going to be a zombie gargoyle for trick-or-treating.
Elisa and Orion found a spot on a nearby bench where they could watch her disappearing and reappearing in the piles. The afternoon was lovely, but the mood had turned somber.
"How long are you going to be gone?" Orion asked her.
"I'm not sure," Elisa explained, "It's an experimental treatment. They will need to keep me close to watch how it affects me. But once they are sure it's working and it's safe, I will have breaks in between treatments where I can come home."
"I thought this was over!" he complained, aware of how babyish he sounded but feeling too helpless to care, "You said the cancer was gone!"
"I know," she replied, "It was gone, for a long while. But it's back now, and the doctors say this is my best shot for fighting it."
"It's because of 9/11, isn't it?" he asked angrily, "All the poison you breathed when you were searching. That's what made you sick in the first place! Why did this have to happen? Why did you have to…"
Elisa embraced the boy's shoulders tightly as his voice trailed off. The infamous attack had occurred over a year before his birth, but the memory of it had been prevalent his entire young life. He knew she'd attended many bedsides and funerals of fellow police officers and first responders who would never be sure if their choice to save others during those tragic days had been what caused their terrible and fatal illnesses. He had accompanied her to some of their wakes and seen their grieving families, many of them children like himself.
"Even if that was what made me sick, even if I could have known then, what else could I have done?"
"Nothing," he agreed adamantly, despite his tears, "We don't run away when people need us."
"That's right, my little warrior," she praised him, kissing his hair.
"Goliath's going with you?" Orion asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Of course. But he will come back in a moment if you need him."
Orion scoffed at this promise.
"St. Louis is 874 miles away," he reminded her, "And he can't exactly teleport."
"You know what I mean," she replied, chuckling at his literal interpretation, "But he's a phone call away and Xanatos can get him here in a matter of hours if need be."
"We won't bother him," Orion told her bravely, "Brooklyn will take good care of everything. The others will help him. We don't want to upset or distract you guys. We just…need you to get well and come home!"
"You can help too," she informed him.
"Yeah, right," he scoffed again, "What can I do?"
"You can help with the little kids. Keep them out of trouble, especially during the day when Brooklyn and the others have to sleep. Make sure the pages do their training and don't quarrel too much. Make sure the hatchlings don't worry."
"That's Sister's job," he remarked, "None of them will even listen to me."
"You're their big brother," she assured him, "They listen to every word you say."
"They never mind me though. Sister's the boss that rules the rookery!"
Elisa smiled at his protestations.
"She has a way of getting things done, doesn't she?" she admitted, "But she'll need you while we're gone. And you'll need her. Stick together and help each other."
'We will," he promised, "We're rookery mates."
"I know you will. And I know the clan will watch over one another. You've got this!" Orion smiled at her confidence in them, but then his face fell a bit.
"Mom?" he asked, "There is something I've been kind of worrying about, ever since I started school. I don't know how to say it exactly, but…If I don't say it now…I'm not sure I can talk about it with any of the other grownups." Elisa drew a slow breath. She could tell there was something weighing heavily on her son. He looked around, hesitantly, as if afraid someone might be listening in.
"Has something happened?" Elisa prodded anxiously, thinking of the arrogant older boy he'd been playing with, "Has someone been giving you a hard time?"
Her son responded with the snidest of eyerolls.
"Come on, Mom," he pleaded, "What hard time could those human kids give me that my own siblings haven't dished out already? This is more about…transforming in general." Orion stopped at this, looking down at his sneakers. Elisa waited a moment, to see if he would continue.
"If it's about that, maybe Adelpha would be a better-
"No!" Orion interrupted quickly and adamantly.
"I just mean that she has more experience than anyone on that subject," Elisa explained, slightly taken aback at his outburst, "She and Lyra have talked about-
"Lyra's different from me, Mom," he interrupted again, his voice getting shaky, "She doesn't care about going to school, or fitting in, or…any of the stuff I care about. She's…just happy with who she is."
"That's probably because she's younger," Elisa suggested.
"No," Orion replied, but he offered no further explanation.
"Well," Elisa began again, after a long span of silence, "You know I am here for you, but if you aren't ready to talk about it yet, Adelpha will be here for you too. She loves you so much, Orion."
"I know she does," Orion assured her, "And I love her so much. But I just can't talk to her about this. At least, not until I've got it figured out for myself."
He sighed and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked at the cracks in the path in front of them. Elisa waited patiently, trying not to let her worry show.
Orion was, in many ways, a very confident child. He was confident in his physical and intellectual abilities and courageous in his love for his family and his desire to serve their community. In that, he was much like his father, which was a fact that gave her great pride. But he had also inherited a tendency to struggle over philosophical thoughts and moral issues that were much more than what would bother the mind of a typical child his age. He often struggled to put these concerns to words and she could tell that whatever he was brooding over this time was distressing him more than usual, and he felt pressure to share it with her in person, before she left him.
"Okay," he said finally, taking a deep breath to ask the crucial question, "Am I a gargoyle that turns into a boy, or a boy that turns into a gargoyle?" Elisa began to answer quickly, but then paused, realizing that the answer she had meant to give seemed too obvious. If he was questioning something as crucial as his own species, then the answer clearly wasn't as obvious to him as it was to her, and probably deserved a bit more deliberation. Orion looked up at her expectantly and he frowned a bit at her hesitation.
"You don't have an answer either?" he exclaimed in consternation.
"I have an answer," she told him, "But I'm only thinking that if you need me to tell you the answer I have, would you really accept it from me if I did?"
Orion shrugged.
"Probably not," he admitted, "But I still want to know what you think."
"I think," she began, "That what I think is not that important."
With a huff, he flopped against the back of the bench, frustrated with the world.
"I love you," she told him confidently, as she tossed his dark, wavy hair.
"I love you too, Mom," he replied, gazing at Bonnie in the distance, who had already shed her hoodie, both shoes, and one sock in the leaf piles.
"I'm proud of you," she continued, "And I know you are strong enough for the battle we both have to face."
"Yeah," he agreed, "You have to go fight cancer, while I have to find my true self. I have the easier of the two battles. I just wish I didn't have to do mine while studying for my finals, taking care of the kids, keeping Bonnie from killing herself, keeping Sister from killing Bonnie, and…"
Elisa laughed affectionately at her son's melodramatic ranting.
"You know, Goliath and I are doing you a favor," she informed him jokingly, "No one ever found their true self watching Youtube videos and playing MarioKart. At least, no one with a true self as incredible as yours. We are providing you with a prime self-discovery environment here. You're welcome."
Orion scrunched his face at her "responsible adult" sense of humor. He would have retorted, except they were interrupted by Bonnie, with several scratches on her joyful face and a mess of colorful leaves and twigs twisted in her auburn curls.
"You're a mess, girl," he informed her and she stuck out her tongue at him.
"You're supposed to come and play with me," she complained.
"If we're going to go trick-or-treating," Elisa reminded her, "We've got to leave and get you into your zombie gargoyle costume."
Her eyes widened excitedly and she reached out to take their hands. They strolled along the path together, watching their own shadows stretch far in front of them in the low angle of the evening sun. Bonnie chattered happily about ghosts, goblins, and zombies until she caught sight of the car.
"No!" she shouted, her legs suddenly turning to liquid.
"Bonnie, you have to ride in the child seat," Elisa told her firmly.
"Nooo!" she continued to screech until she had managed to draw the attention of several passersby. Embarrassed, Orion lifted her and hightailed it to the backseat of the van, where he tried to stuff her through the door into the plastic protective seat children were required to ride in.
"Be quiet, Bonnie," he hissed at her, "People are going to think you're being abducted!"
"You're abducted!" she retorted angrily, as Elisa took hold of her kicking feet and tried to get her to sit far enough into the seat that she could put the harness in place.
"Come on, Bonnie," Elisa pleaded with her tyrannical child, "You were such a good girl on the way here. Don't you want to get changed and go trick-or-treating?"
"I hate the carseat!" she wailed, thrashing wildly and gripping the side of the door so no one could close it on her, "I'm not a baby! I don't want to be strapped in!"
"I knew we should have taken the train," Elisa grumbled.
"It's worse if this happens on a platform in front of the whole world," Orion pointed out as he tried to get his sister's body to bend into the seat. Well versed in the carseat game, Bonnie-the-zombie-gargoyle had managed to stiffen her planked body into some form of spiteful rigor mortis and refused to let herself be strapped in. After several minutes of epic battle between the small one and her two much bigger and stronger adversaries, Bonnie realized her own strength was failing and brought out her last carseat avoiding strategy. This one always worked.
"Bonnie, don't you dare!" Orion warned, to no avail. With an inhuman snarl and a sudden convulsion, the child's eyes glowed red. Her dress ripped open as a long thrashing tail emerged along with a small set of wings. Claws grew at the ends of her small arms and legs, while horns developed at her crown. The monster child snarled again, but with the touch of the late autumn sun, she fell silent onto the floor of the minivan, a defiant smile etched into her stone face. She would not be strapped into that car seat.
"Not again!" Orion groaned, "She's always doing this!"
"Don't worry," Elisa assured him, "I've got bungee cords and a fold up dolly in the trunk."
"At least it didn't happen in the park this time!" he commented.
"No kidding!" she replied, "She's gotten too big to lift! Even with the two of us together!"
A short time later, Elisa wheeled an upright dolly into the new, modern rookery of Castle Wythern, and carefully placed a defiant stone hatchling on the clan's "uncooperative mat". The squeaking of the dolly's hinges caused a stirring in the corner of the quiet room, and a pale woman with red tresses rose slightly from the daybed, where she'd fallen asleep with her beautiful young daughter curled up at her side. The book they'd been reading together still lay open on the cushion.
"Again?" the woman asked Elisa.
"Again," she replied with a touch of fatigue, "It was the child safety seat this time."
"I'm sorry," the woman whispered genuinely, though her face betrayed a slight smile that showed the humor of the situation had not escaped her. She gestured for Elisa to come closer, so they might talk without disturbing the sleeping child in her arms.
"What did they say at your appointment?" she asked her, her face free of any emotion.
"Well, they had some suggestions of treatment options," Elisa explained, without giving up any useful information.
"It isn't good, is it?" she asked darkly.
"No, it is good," Elisa insisted, "The doctor discussed my situation with a team of specialists in St. Louis. They feel that I'm an ideal candidate for the new treatment they are starting there."
"You will have to go there, then," she replied.
"Yes."
"When do you leave?"
"I'm supposed to meet with the team at 8AM tomorrow," Elisa explained, "Xanatos has offered to fly me there as soon as the Halloween party is over."
"This is why you stay sick," she chastised her, "You never sleep!"
"Well, I'll have plenty of time to sleep during this trial," she assured her.
"Goliath will want to follow you."
"Yes."
"Are you afraid?"
Elisa didn't answer this last bold question, but she knelt at the side of the day bed and kissed the hair of the child that was sleeping there. As she rose, the woman rested her own hand on her shoulder.
"Get well, my sister," she whispered, "Come back to us soon."