Rinse [manxman]

Rinse

Rose Coven Chronicles

*Can be read as a standalone story*

Trigger Warnings: graphic depictions of abuse; sexual assault; and suicidal ideations

Please practice self-care before, during, and after reading.

*~*

Intelligence could never rinse the shattered.

It was something I knew. I knew it from common sense, and I also knew it from the oh-so generous sources that told me all those years ago. No amount of magical knowledge or information on all the other realms in existence could ever provide a remedy for the gashes in my mind.

Thought made me sick. Nightmares were a plague. It was all a burden that I would never be able to rid myself of. My best friend could allow me to wallow in his company, I could play with his children for hours on end, but nothing stopped the lonely, horrific hours that I spent holed up in my head.

Ever since Dakota, my best friend, left to take command of his unit in the recent war, it had only gotten worse. I didn’t spend as much time alone, but I felt alone. Without him, not a single person in the world knew about the nightmares. No one could take me out of my head. That isolation would have killed me if I didn’t have his three children to look after.

With that thought, I glanced at the cream-colored ceiling, frowning as I heard little footsteps streaking across the hallway. They knew better than to be running around after their bedtime...

I sighed and pushed a hand through my black hair as I heaved myself off the sofa. The stairs creaked softly under my weight as I went up, peering down the dark corridor with a brow cocked. I knew I had heard one of them. Slight mental instability or not, there was nothing wrong with my hearing.

A soft gasp came from the left. A shadow ran for the second door on the right. I waited a moment before walking into the room and flipping on the light. I crossed my arms over my chest and raised a brow, giving the wildest of the trio a stern look as he burrowed under his blankets, pretending to be asleep.

He had his eyes squeezed shut and his little mouth pursed into a firm line. His brown bangs flopped into his eyes. Panicked bursts of breath were the only sounds in the room.

“Farley,” I drawled, staring at him, trying to keep a small smirk from my lips. It was so typical of him. “Come on, I heard you.”

He didn’t budge.

I sighed and flipped the light off. “Okay, I guess he’s asleep,” I said, walking in place and making it gradually softer to get him to think I had left the room.

His eyes snapped open.

I flipped the light back on, and he grunted, burying his face into his pillow. I propped my hands on my hips.

“What were you doing up?”

“I wasn’t!”

“Come on, I heard you. Just tell me.”

Farley huffed and peeked back at me with deep, green eyes. “Nothin’.”

I nodded skeptically. “And I bet when Sophia wakes up in the morning, she’ll still have her bear, right?” Farley stealing his sisters’ things had become common over the last week. We had had a talk about it a few days ago, but it seemed that he had not retained what I’d said.

He bit his lip and scooted farther under the covers.

“Farley.” I pulled back his blanket and saw his sister’s teddy bear sitting there. “Do you remember when we talked about this the other day?”

His lower lip jutted out as he looked away. “Yes.”

“Remember how we talked about how you would feel if someone took your things?” I took his plush dinosaur from his side. “How would you feel if someone took Rex?”

He sat up, reaching for the dinosaur. “No!”

“You would be upset, wouldn’t you?”

Farley nodded.

“So, won’t Sophia feel upset about Cupcake too? Doesn’t she love Cupcake as much as you love Rex?”

He just sat there for a minute, his eyes fixated on Rex as he pouted before nodding reluctantly.

“Don’t you think you should give Cupcake back to her, then?”

He nodded a little more. The pout remained as Farley handed Cupcake to me. I gave his dinosaur back to him. He wrapped it in a tight hug and lay back down.

I crouched by the bed and stroked his hair back. “That is very nice of you, Farley. It’ll make Sophia very happy.” I kissed his forehead and stood back up, pulling the blankets over him. “Good night.” I flipped the light off, Cupcake in hand, and left the room.

Sophia’s bedroom was at the other end of the hall. When I slipped in, she was fast asleep, not even the slightest bit aware that her brother had kidnapped her teddy bear. I sat it back on her bed, and then watched her for a moment.

She snored softly, her little, strawberry blonde curls fanned out on the pillow behind her. The moonlight shining in made her look pale.

I left Sophia’s room and headed back downstairs. It was still pretty early, just a few minutes past eleven. It would’ve been the perfect opportunity to catch up on some sleep, but the heaviness hadn’t crept into my eyes yet. Inevitably, when I tried to sleep without feeling tired, my nightmares were worse.

If the kids’ father were there, I would at least have someone to talk to. I understood, though. Dakota had worked for the military for as long as I had—before I resigned anyway—but I missed him. The kids missed him too. It was even worse because the holidays were coming up. It would be the second Winter Solstice celebration that they would spend without their father. Farley couldn’t even remember the last celebration he’d spent with his father—he’d only been a little over three years old at the time. It wasn’t fair to him... to any of them.

Admittedly, it could have been worse. Most kids in military families with only one parent were shipped off to temporary homes or even orphanages if families were running low. A lot of those homes weren’t exactly what I would call safe or sanitary either. Instead of putting them through that, Dakota left them with me. I was a friend of the family. I had been present for each of their births, and I had attended every birthday and holiday. I was more of a parent to them than their mother ever had been.

I could never replace their father, though. I knew that they wanted him home... They wanted him home as much as I did. We didn’t share all of the same reasons, but in essence, they were very similar. Regardless of the reasoning, we all needed Dakota to return home safely and quickly.

“Shit,” I gasped, tensing as the phone rang. I stretched to the other end of the sofa and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Blake?”

“Dakota?”

“Gods, you sound so different!”

He was alive. He was safe. I had to get the kids. They needed to speak with him before he had to hang up, before—

“I bet you look different too.”

“Not really,” I breathed, running a hand through my hair. “I just...” I couldn’t even find the words to speak to him. After all the time I had spent fantasizing about what I would say to him when I had the chance, I was speechless.

“Blake, are you okay?” He sounded a bit worried.

I shook my head. “No, no I’m fine,” I said. “I just... I’m so happy you’re safe.” I exhaled shakily, smiling as I shook my head again. “And the kids...” I glanced back at the stairs.

“I miss those three.”

“They miss you too.”

“How are they?”

“Great! Lila is doing well in school. Sophia still isn’t talking much. Right now, her doctor and I are thinking about doing a little therapy.” I paused, half-smiling and half-frowning as I thought of Farley. “Farley is into anything he can get his hands on, and if he can’t get into it, then he’s finding a way.”

“I bet he’s so big now.”

My chest tightened at that. Dakota had missed so much with him. Even before he was deployed, he was constantly running between the capital and home, so he had missed Farley’s first word; he’d almost missed his first steps. While he was fighting in Qizade, he’d missed his first day of school. He’d missed all the little things too, not just with Farley, but with Lila and Sophia as well.

“Soph doesn’t need therapy either,” he said, breaking me from my thoughts.

I frowned.

“She’s just going through that phase. Lila had a time when she didn’t talk much either.”

“That was called infancy.”

He sighed. “I think that was what was missing from your voice earlier. That sarcasm really just makes all the difference.”

I chuckled softly. “I understand your concerns, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least get a professional opinion.”

“You’re a professional.”

“Not in psychological phenomena. I just want to make sure that she is all right.”

“You worry too much.”

“It’s what I do, Dakota. Fish have to swim, birds have to fly—”

“And Blake has to worry. If it were any other way, I might seriously be worried about an apocalypse.”

I smirked at that and leaned back on the sofa, sighing. “Anyway, would you like to speak to the kids?”

“Shouldn’t they be asleep right now?”

“They are, but if you want to speak to them, waking them up is not out of the question.” In fact, there was at least one of them that was still wide awake if my gut was right. I might have settled Farley for the night, but that didn’t mean he was ready to surrender... If he wasn’t asleep soon, I’d have to break out a sleeping spell. That’d be the fourth night that week.

“No, let them sleep,” Dakota said at last, despite the yearning in his voice. “If everything goes right, I’ll be home soon.”

My chest tightened. “What?” It was hard to get clear updates about the war, even with the media covering it morning, noon, and night. Still, if Dakota said it was so, I believed him. Out of all the people there, he was probably the one that knew the most.

“I’ve been gone for so long, Blake.”

“Wait, when will you be home? How did—?”

“I can’t set an exact date right now, but it will be soon. Things are going pretty well, and I might be able to talk Goss into a little while at home, even if the war doesn’t end.”

He didn’t make any promises, but the very thought of him coming home within the next year was enough to excite me like he’d be home the next morning. Finally, there was a time frame for just how long it would be before I would get to see that shaggy brown hair and those gold-green eyes. My best friend would return. I wouldn’t be alone forever, just until he managed to come home.

He would come home. It wouldn’t last forever.

And the kids... They would have their father back. Lila would get to be with her father again. Sophia would start talking, and Farley... Gods, seeing Farley and Dakota interacting again would be amazing. They were both so creative and intelligent, and he was so much like Dakota anyway. I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

Of course, before that happened, Farley would have to reacquaint himself with Dakota. He’d seen the pictures and heard my stories, but he didn’t remember his father... And gods forbid Farley from slipping up and calling me dad.

I had managed to nip that little habit in the bud pretty quickly, but there were still occasions when he got tired or sick when he called me dad. It was understandable. I had been like a father to him. After Dakota’s ex, Jennette, had left, I’d stepped in to help him raise the kids. I’d been around morning, noon, and night ever since Farley was a newborn. But, I wasn’t their father, and I wasn’t about to steal that from Dakota just because he had a duty to serve the realm.

“Blake? Are you there?”

“Yeah.” I snapped out of my thoughts. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just... Gods, the kids will be ecstatic!”

“I hope so.”

“They will be!” I assured him. “It’ll feel nice to have you back home for a change.”

“I know...” A long exhale came from his end. “You know, I never said anything when I left, but I really do appreciate you sacrificing all your time to take care of them. I know it isn’t easy, and I apologize for sticking you with the job. I hope you haven’t had to break out the little black spell book too much to make them behave.”

“Do not apologize. Those kids are perfect, and I would stay with them to wipe their noses and chide them for eternity, Dakota.” Even before he’d gone to fight, I’d more or less moved into the house. While I was always glad to see Dakota, in the last few years, more and more of my visits had been because I wanted to see the kids. They had become part of my life, even before I became their long-term babysitter. “Being with them has helped me too,” I said.

“Really?”

Perhaps I was having more nightmares, but that wasn’t because of the kids. It was because Dakota had left. I was alone again. However, the kids had definitely helped me see a lighter side of life, which was something that I had long forgotten.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he breathed, sounding relieved. “I know you still worry about what happened back then, and I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m glad you’re doing all right.”

I would feel even better if he would just get home already. “Me too.”

He laughed, and then quieted down as a small scuffle sounded in the background. I heard him say something away from the phone. A gruff response bit back. Dakota replied colorfully and snorted.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Bly’s giving me a tough time. Apparently, it isn’t tough to call your best friend.”

“He doesn’t have any friends, does he?”

“Not many. But, I gotta go before everyone else comes in and things get noisy. Once I actually get home and settled, we’ll talk.”

I smiled. “Sounds good. Behave and be careful!”

His eye roll was practically audible. “I will,” he drawled. “Tell the kids I love them.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you soon, Blake.”

We cut the connection, and I hung up the phone. A small twinge of sadness threatened to wreck my giddiness, but I managed to fight it off. There was too much to look forward to for a simple goodbye to bring me down.

Dakota was coming home. The kids would get their father back. I would have my best friend at my side again. The nightmares would settle... not that I would talk about them. It wasn’t that Dakota didn’t want to listen—he begged for a little insight. The problem in that situation was me. If I had things my way, no one would ever know more than the story I’d told Director Goss. Not even Dakota would ever receive all of the gory details. Some things were best kept locked in the depths of my mind, if not for the simple reason of my pride staying intact, then for the reason that I was far too selfish to give up the fragments of happiness I’d managed to find with Dakota and his kids.

I sighed and flopped back on the couch, lying down and letting the news that Dakota was coming home sink in. It was very surreal and exciting. It was also a bit unnerving at the same time. While Dakota was my best friend, we’d danced on the fine line between friendship and love for the last decade.

I was in love with the man. After watching him go through a hellacious marriage to his on-again, off-again sweetheart that had been absent and spiteful after vowing to stay by his side and love him for eternity, I couldn’t say that I wasn’t secretly thrilled when he’d broken off their relationship shortly after Farley was born. It’d been almost painful watching him go through the bleeding in order to undo the sacred blood-bind he and Jennette had shared. As witches, blood-binding was the only way we could share our power with others, namely the one we married.

Dakota had bound himself to Jennette, and then had to go through a bleeding to expel her blood, to sever the bind they’d had. It was looked down on; however, it was no match for those witches that sought out others to consume their blood due to the pleasurable effects that stemmed from the blood exchange. Witches were meant to swap blood with their soulmate, and that was it. That never stopped Dakota from undergoing the bleeding, though.

Following that, he’d been so busy with the kids and work that he hadn’t had much time to go hunting for another spouse. That lack of a new romantic interest soothed some of the ache inside my chest, but even so, I knew Dakota mostly viewed me through the lens of friendship. I was nothing more to him than a buddy and maybe a kicked puppy. There had been an out of place conversation or two a few weeks before he went to war, but nothing came of them. Hell, anything he said then could’ve been caused by pre-war stress.

Even if by some miracle he was the slightest bit interested, if he ever found out what had happened before he drug me out of that shithole during the last war, he would immediately drop his curiosity to replace it with disgust.

As much as I wanted to be with him as more than a friend, I valued his friendship above all else. If I could only have him that way, then it was fine by me. It was enough just to have him close by. Still, if I ever had the chance and I knew it wouldn’t wreck what we had, then I would go for it without hesitation. That would never happen, but even I had to dabble in fantasy occasionally.

Time kept ticking, nearing midnight. I had spent more time on the phone with Dakota than I’d thought. If I didn’t head to bed soon, tomorrow would be a long day, especially considering the kids typically roused themselves around nine, sometimes earlier depending on the day.

I sighed and heaved myself off the couch, and then went to the spare bedroom upstairs, right across from the bathroom and next to Lila’s room. I changed into a baggy pair of sweatpants

with a faded black t-shirt before crawling under the blankets and going to sleep.

For the first night in far too many nights, I had no nightmares.

Waking at eight o’clock to the sound of two rambunctious children, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly a dream, though. I went downstairs and started cooking breakfast when the phone blared again.

I rubbed my eyes, leaving the stove long enough to grab the phone.

“Hello?”

“Shit, Blake,” Elizabeth snorted.

I almost groaned. I loved that girl to pieces, but I wasn’t in the mood for her sarcastic flavor at that point in the morning. The only thing I’d managed to do was scold the children for being so noisy and start cooking breakfast. I hadn’t even had the time to think of coffee.

“You sound like you were up all night. I didn’t think Kota had come home yet.”

I raised a brow at that. I hadn’t told her that I liked him, but she seemed to know. Then again, that was something that happened when two people had known one another for as long as Elizabeth and I had. Hell, we’d practically shared a playpen. “He hasn’t. I was on the phone with him. I got to bed late.”

“Ah, that explains it.”

“What about you? Did Luca wake you for a sunrise rendezvous or something?”

“Ha, ha.” Elizabeth wasn’t amused. “For your information, the bastard kept me up all night, even after I told him I had shopping to do this morning.”

“Shopping?”

“The Solstice is coming, Blake. For fuck’s sake, we’re celebrating tomorrow!”

I rolled my eyes. I was fully aware of the holiday. Lila had taken every opportunity she had to remind me of the fact. “I know.”

“Well, if you know, how much stuff do you actually have done?”

“I have the kids’ presents wrapped and well hidden.”

“What about plans, huh? What are you guys doing tomorrow?”

I sighed and used my spatula to push bacon around the skillet. “I don’t know, probably binge eat cookies and argue with the kids about opening presents early. Same routine.”

“Shake things up some this year! You guys should stop by here!”

“Seriously?”

“No, I just thought I’d offer to hear your oh-so polite rejection.”

“I don’t know, Liz. With Soph acting so weird right now, and the kids—”

“The kids are fine, Blake. Stop worrying and just bring them. It’ll be good for all of you to get out of the house for a bit. You can come over, let the kids play with Zoey, and actually have an adult conversation when we eat. How’s that sound?”

It wouldn’t be a bad idea. As much as I just wanted to lie around in the living room, wallowing in chocolate and my thoughts while the kids slept, I knew Elizabeth was right. The only time I ever got to speak to anyone above the age of eight was on the rare occasion I got a phone call. Even then, it never lasted long.

Getting the kids out would be good too. Sophia always got along well with Elizabeth and Luca’s daughter, Zoey. Perhaps she would be able to persuade her to talk. It would give Farley a good chance to be around other people and hear different stories about his father too. Maybe it would wear him out as well. I hated using so much magic on him, but there was no getting around it. He had to sleep.

“All right,” I sighed, setting the spatula down before I slid the biscuits out of the oven. “What time do you want us over?”

“Let’s say... seven-ish?”

“Kind of late.”

“All right, Papa Bear, it’s not like they have school the next morning. Besides, if they get tired, they can stay here. It’s not like we don’t have plenty of room.”

I set the pan of biscuits on the counter and leaned against the oven. “Just remember that this was your bright idea... Is there anything you want me to bring?”

“No, but you can leave your charming personality at home.”

I glanced around the kitchen, checking for the kids, before I muttered, “Bitch,” into the phone.

She laughed. “Nah, but really, you could bring some of your peanut butter pie or maybe a plate of brownies.”

“I can do that much.”

“Good. See you tomorrow!”

“Bye, Lizzy.” I heaved a sigh and took the phone back to the living room. I called for the kids to wash up and returned to the kitchen to finish the bacon. I set out the plates and put food on each of them before pouring the kids some apple juice.

Farley bounced in first, just as I took a seat at the head of the table. Lila followed shortly behind and Sophia came in last. They all sat around me, eagerly digging into their breakfast.

“Who was on the phone?” Lila asked, taking a small bite from her biscuit.

“Liz. She wants us to come to her house tomorrow to celebrate the Solstice. What do you guys think?”

“Yeah!” Lila exclaimed, her crystal blue eyes shining. “I love going over there! Liz always gives me the best books!”

Farley didn’t comment, just kept dunking his bacon into his apple juice, only to cringe and do it again, even after he knew how disgusting it was.

Sophia had a small smile on her lips. Her eyes stayed on her juice, but I could tell that she was finally excited.

“What about you, Soph? Do you want to go?”

She nodded hastily, her eyes flicking over to me. “Yeah.”

I smiled, my chest tightening. It had been a while since I last heard her speak. “Great. Maybe you guys can help me make some brownies to take over there. How does that sound?”

A chorus of ‘yes’ rounded the table. Despite the fact I knew it would all turn out to be a horrific mess, I still couldn’t stop myself from asking them. They enjoyed things like that, even if it made me want to pull my hair out from time to time. It was worth it, though. No matter how much it stressed me out, it taught them something. Even if the lesson was to simply keep hands off of pans that just came from the oven.

However, Farley seemed like he was lagging behind in that department.

Regardless of that, I continued ahead with our plan to bake together. Shockingly enough, there were only minimal injuries to the children—Farley’s hand got into a small squabble with a pan. The kitchen, however, was in ruins.

I loved the kids, probably more than life itself, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t looking forward to Dakota’s return. If not for myself and for the kids, then for the simple fact that I would actually have someone that would help clean up.