Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 297: To Never Leave

The world lurched.

It was the same sickening sensation as before. Reality folding, compressing, spitting them out into a place that was solid and entirely wrong after the soft glow of the villa, the sound of waves, the warmth of lantern light.

The war tent materialized around them in fragments. Canvas walls, the scent of dust and old leather, the distant murmur of soldiers who had never known a night like the one they had just left.

All four of them groaned.

Eastiel’s hand shot out to steady himself on the table. Arkai pressed his palm to his forehead, eyes squeezed shut, breathing through the nausea that rose and fell in waves. Oathran stood very still, his face pale, his hands clenched at his sides, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

But Cecilia... Cecilia burst into tears.

"Oooooh, I’m so so sad!" The sob tore out of her suddenly, the sound she had been holding back for hours, for the whole long evening of smiling and laughing and pretending that everything was fine.

Her face crumpled. Her hands flew to cover it, and her shoulders shook, and the hot tears spilled through her fingers. "What the fuck, you guys should have told me sooner that you returned from a different point in time in the scenario!"

Eastiel and Oathran chuckled, helpless, the sound caught somewhere between laughter and the grief of men who had been holding themselves together all night and were only now, finally, allowed to fall apart.

Arkai sighed, his hand finding Cecilia’s hair, his fingers threading through the golden strands, his palm warm against her scalp.

"Alright, sshhh," he murmured, but his voice was thick, and his eyes were wet, and he pulled her closer, wrapped his arms around her, held her while she shook.

"Oh, I want to stay a bit longer." Cecilia’s voice was muffled against his chest. "Just a bit longer. I wanted—I wanted to see the sunrise. I wanted to make breakfast. I wanted—"

"You want to never leave," Arkai whispered.

"Come here." Oathran’s voice was rough. His arms opened, and Eastiel moved first, stumbling into him, and Arkai followed with Cecilia.

Cecilia was still crying, still clinging to everyone and still trying to say all the things she had not said in the villa. She imagined the lanterns still low and the moonlight soft and the fathers standing at windows, waiting for a morning that would not come.

A morning that would never come.

Oathran’s arms closed around all of them. His face pressed into Cecilia’s hair. Would this also be how it would go if he left one day?

"Why are you the one crying?" Eastiel’s voice was muffled against Cecilia’s neck, his arms tight around her waist, his face buried. "Now I wanna cry again."

"Oooooh, our two crybabies." Arkai laughed and it sounded wet and uneven. He was clearly trying very hard to be steady and failing. His arms were around Eastiel, around Cecilia, around all of them, and his eyes were wet, and he was not hiding it.

"Why couldn’t we bring the water flavors that that world invented?" Cecilia sobbed, the words coming out in hiccups, the pettiness of it mixing with the grief in a way that was so her that it made them all laugh, even as they cried.

"Just the little packets! The zero-calorie ones! They wouldn’t have missed them!"

"The smoothie was nice too." Oathran said wistfully, almost dreamy. "And the meat pie. I didn’t get the recipe from the Athenaeum’s staff." He sighed, and Eastiel snorted against Cecilia’s hair.

"And we didn’t get to try the dildo either." Arkai’s voice was low, almost thoughtful, and the tent went very still.

Cecilia stopped crying. Eastiel’s head lifted. Oathran’s arms loosened, just enough to look at Arkai’s face, which was perfectly, completely serious.

"Aaaaaah shut up!" Eastiel yelled. He was crying again, or still, or maybe he had never stopped. "I still want my dad, waaah—" His face crumpled. His arms tightened around Cecilia. "Why are you guys talking about unnecessary shi—"

"Awwwwww—" All three of them reached for him at once, hands on his head, rubbing, soothing, pulling him back into the circle of their arms.

Rub.

Rub, rub, rub.

Rub, rub, rub, rub.

Fuck, it didn’t get better. It was still painful, like losing them for the second time.

Yet, Cecilia’s tears slowed. Her breathing evened. Her hand found Arkai’s, and Eastiel’s, and Oathran’s.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. We’re back."

They were back.

***

The villa’s kitchen was chaotic this morning.

Flour dusted every surface, fine white powder that drifted through the air and settled on shoulders and hair and the particular creases of sleeves that had been rolled up in haste.

Eggs had been sacrificed, shells scattered across the counter, their insides whisked into a frenzy in a bowl that was far too small for the task.

Somewhere, the fish was burning. Somewhere else, bread was toasting. The coffee pot had been filled, emptied, filled again, and now sat steaming on the stove, waiting.

August stood at the stove, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, a man who had commanded armies he was, and now, for the first time in his life, decided to handle eggs. The fish sizzled. He flipped it. It sizzled louder.

Eliam was at the counter, his hands buried in a mound of dough that was supposed to be something like bread and was currently something like a very sad, very flat rock.

He kneaded and remembered he had once been told that baking was relaxing. He just learned that this was a lie.

Roarke was the designated runner, moving between stove and counter, counter and pantry, pantry and the sink, which was slowly filling with the casualties of their efforts.

His face was flushed, his hair was wild, and he had, at some point, acquired a streak of flour across his cheek that no one had thought to tell him about.

"This is fine," Eliam said, his voice bright, too bright. "This is absolutely fine. We’re doing great."

August’s fish crackled. He flipped it again, perhaps more aggressively than necessary. "The eggs are going to be cold."

"Then we make more eggs."

"We’re out of eggs."

Eliam paused. His hands, still buried in the dough, stilled. He looked at August. August looked at him. Roarke, who had been halfway to the sink with a stack of plates, stopped in the middle of the kitchen and looked between them.

"We used all the eggs," Roarke said slowly, "on the first batch."

"The first batch that we burned," August added.

"The first batch that we burned," Roarke confirmed.

Eliam’s face did something complicated. His hands emerged from the dough. He looked at the clock, then at the corridor that led to the bedrooms, then back at August. "They’re still asleep."

"Still asleep," August agreed.

"Which means we have time."

"Some time," August said. "Not a lot of time. But time."

Roarke set the plates down. He moved to the pantry, opened it, stared into its empty depths. "There are no more eggs."

"We don’t need eggs," Eliam said, even knowing he had misplaced confidence in this situation. "We have... bread."

"The bread is flat."

"Flat bread. It’s a delicacy. In some places."

August’s fish had begun to smoke. He grabbed the pan, moved it to a cool burner, stood over it with his hands on his hips. He finally acknowledged that he could not make breakfast.

"The children," he said slowly, "are going to wake up. They are going to come to this kitchen. And they are going to find..." He gestured at the flour, the shells, the sad flat bread, the burned fish, the cold coffee that had been made three times. "This."

Eliam looked at the kitchen. At the evidence of their desperate, hopeful, terrible attempt to make something that would say we were here, we loved you, we did not know how to tell you, so we tried to feed you instead.

He started to laugh. It was a quiet laugh at first, then it grew. His hand came up to cover his face, and his shoulders shook. August was looking at him like he had lost his mind.

And Roarke was standing in the middle of the kitchen with flour on his cheek and eggs on his shirt and a streak of jam across his sleeve. He was laughing too, helpless, caught in it.

Eliam’s hand found his shoulder. "We have time," he said. "We have time. They’re not awake yet."

August looked at the clock. The sun was rising, the light was changing, the world was beginning to move.

"Let’s finish this before they wake up."

***

Somewhere down the hall, four people began to stir.

The girl in the middle woke up first... and she smiled. A tear fell down her cheek.

"Ah."

"They’ve left."