Work Text:
The cracks begin to form before he’s even born.
It starts with a name.
All rich men want sons to carry on their names.
Tiberias already has a son to share his name. He doesn’t need another one, but he gets one anyways. The consequence of maintain a perfect public image. He could’ve given his son one of the other names traditionally shared by men in his family. There were options. Elara puts her foot down, distancing her son from his father and brother before he even knows them.
But he won’t know that.
***
Maven trails after his brother, reaching for his hand.
It’s an unconscious habit. He learned to walk with his mother clutching his arm, holding him upright, keeping him steady. At the same time, it’s a comfort. Maven’s six years old, yet walking is still tricky for him. Without that firm grip, he feels unbalanced. The polished hardwood floors of the Calore family’s manor might soon have crushing reunion with his nose.
But Cal likes to walk fast, so Maven takes the risk to keep up with him.
“Where are we going?” Maven snags his older brother’s sleeve. The manor’s big enough that there are still places he’s never been too. Partly because he spends the majority of his time with his mother in her wing of the manor, and partly because he’s not allowed in most of the rooms in his father’s wing.
Maven has yet to show the mechanical genius that Cal has shown. Almost every machine he gets his hands on either explodes or doesn’t work at all. His father can’t have Maven in his study where he keeps all his important business documents, and precious prototypes. He might break something.
“Evie and Tolly are here,” Cal says, climbing a winding staircase. He takes two steps at a time practically dragging Maven along behind him.
It’s tiring. Maven doesn’t tell Cal that though. He can’t.
“You can’t trust anyone with your weakness,” his mother told him often. Because it disappoints his father when he trips over his own feet. “No one except for me.”
“Why?” Maven doesn’t feel any particular way towards the Samos siblings. They’re Cal friends. Neither of them seem to have a problem with him hanging around them whenever he can. Though Ptolemus is nasty sometimes and Evangeline is a little mean when she wants something. He tolerates them well enough.
“We’re going to build our machines for the inventors fair,” Cal says.
“Oh,” Maven says. “I want to help!”
Cal grins and throws an arm around his shoulder.
Ptolemus and Evangeline have brought Elane along. Which isn’t surprising. They’ve dumped a bag full of steel combs, wires, pistons, and metal cylinders onto the carpet of Tiberias’s study. Spread out large rolls of sketches and design plans. The corners are being held down by paper weights.
Maven sits with Elane, holding the tools. While Tolly, Evie, and Cal start putting together their projects. Nearly catching their fingers in turning gears, and almost shocking themselves trying to connect the wires together.
There are parts left behind. Maven has ideas of what he can make out of them. He nudges Cal with his foot and whispers, “I want to build something.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Ptolemus shaking his head and Evangeline shares a wide-eyed look with Elane.
Cal hesitates.
Heavy footfalls draw their attention. Tiberias steps into the study. Still wearing a fine pressed suit and a pair of dress shoes. He looks over the other’s work, their plans.
“Well done,” Tiberias says, clapping Cal on the shoulder. “But you’ll have more room in the workshop, I think. Come on.”
The others clean up their mess. Maven nicks some parts, stuffing them into his pockets. They follow Tiberias down the hall, towards his workshop. But before Maven can slip through the door, his father’s heavy hand lands on the back of his neck.
“Go find your mother,” Tiberias says. “There’s no room for you here.”
His mother won’t be home until later. Much later. They both know this. Still, the door closes in his face. So, Maven sits with his spare parts in the corner of the library.
Where the cracks widen.
The manor, he comes to realize, is cold. It’s a deep cold. One that settles in his bones and hallows out his chest.
Muted laughter and muffled conversation reaches him through the walls. Shadows move across the bookshelves.
Later his mother finds him with books laid open all around him and a contraption designed to burst and expel nails at the pull of a cord.
“My brilliant boy,” she calls him, rewarding him with a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup. The most he’s eaten in the last couple of hours.
It’s warm in stomach. He’s still hollow though and all around him the house remains. It’s fine. This will all be familiar soon. Maven will become comfortable with being an empty boy.
***
Year’s pass. Cal grows tall and broad. The perfect build for working in the forge, the heart of the Calore family business. He spends most of his time there now that’s he’s seventeen. His father says that he started working in the forge when was around Cal’s age.
“Builds a good character and a strong work ethic,” Tiberias says. “That’s important for the future of our business.”
When he’s not in the forge, Cal’s with Ptolemus and Evangeline. They’re his closest friends. Though even if they weren’t he’d have to spend time with them. It’s already been decided that he and Evangeline will marry when they’re older. The Samos’ business is one of the Calore’s best partners. It’s only logical that they merge their companies.
Doesn’t matter that Evangeline is completely gone for Elane, or that it’s utterly impossible for her to be attracted to Cal in both the physical and the emotional sense. They have to marry, make their families even more rich and power than before. It’s just the way it is.
“Still,” Maven says. “You don’t want a marriage like my mother and your father.”
His little brother walks along the edge of the forge. It makes Cal nervous. Since Maven’s started studying professional dance his balance has gotten a lot better than when he was younger. Still Cal worries that he might slip and fall into a vat of molten metal.
“Our father,” Cal corrects. He knows that Maven and their father have issues. It’s typical for boys his age.
If it weren’t for the absence of his own mother, Cal assumes he might’ve gone through the same phase that Maven’s going through right now. After all the only reason that Cal is so close to his own father because he has no one else. Elara doesn’t dote on him like she does Maven. She never stepped into that motherly role to do so much as brush the hair from his eyes. It was only his father who. Sure, his grandmother and uncle were around too, but
One day, Maven will come around from whatever rebellious thought process currently has him seeing his father as an enemy. Cal’s sure of it.
“It won’t be like that,” Cal says.
He sets the forge hammer down with a loud thud and wipes the sweat from his brow. The motorcycle he’s working on is nothing extraordinary. But he’s put a lot of love into it over the years. It’s one of the few projects that still bring out his passion for engineering.
Laying down on the padded creeper, Cal holds out a hand. He waits patiently for Maven to settle down by the toolbox and hand him a socket wrench.
He hears the snick-snick-snick of a lighter that Maven likes to keep in his pocket and pretends not to notice that he’s playing with it. Keeping an eye out just in case Maven holds the flame close enough to the skin of his palm to burn. It’s happened before.
“Evie and I have an agreement. In public we’ll be Mr. & Mrs. Calore, perfect just like Elara and dad. In private I’ll look the other way when she’s with Elane, and she’ll look the other way when I’m with whoever captures my heart.”
“Sounds like a happy, happy future.” Maven hums quietly to himself. His head twitches to the side. “Lucky you.”
Maven’s in a weird position in society. He’ll get to reap all the benefits of being born with the Calore name, he won’t have any of the reasonability or the pressure that Cal has as the heir to the family business, but he’ll still be confined to the same expectations of being born in high society.
There will be things that Maven will have to give up. He’ll have to lead his life a certain way, for certain. But he’ll never fully understand the situation that Cal has inherited.
That’s okay.
He’ll be more than happy and fine to live this kind of life. Because he loves his family, he loves his father, and he loves his brother. If this is what his father wants, then he’ll do it happily, and if he can grant his brother a little more freedom than he has, then he’ll do it without question.
“Your brother isn’t supposed to be in here.”
His grandmother’s voice draws Cal out from under the motorcycle to sit up and look at her.
It’s been a while since her last visit. Whatever disagreement she had with Elara must’ve been resolved. For Nanable stands in the doorway. The picture of disappointment with her hands on her hips.
“Knowing his luck, that lighter will slip from his hands into the vat. Burn the whole place down with us still inside.”
Maven pointedly flips the lighter’s lid shut. There’s something cold in his eyes.
With a sigh, Cal rises to his feet and throws his arm around Maven’s shoulders.
“Come on Mavey,” he says. “Let’s go play a game of chess.”
***
It’s ensured that Maven becomes a deeply lonely boy.
For a while, he has a friend. A boy named Thomas who he met at the hospital when he’s seventeen. Just days after Tiberias has him start working in the forge with the hopes that it makes him “more like his brother” in whatever sense he feels that it should on the given day.
Thomas is sweet. He’s got a nice laugh and likes to braid the end of Maven’s hair when he lets it grow out just long enough to curl around his ears. He doesn’t make the voices in his head quiet, or the shadows, silhouettes of people, that invade his vision every now and then go away. But it’s easier to ignore them when he’s around.
He doesn’t recognize Maven at first. He’s an academy student, training in medicine. It happens that Maven slices his hand open on the same day Thomas started his clinical training. He comes in with the medic, takes notes while Maven describes the incident, watches as Maven’s hand in sewn up, and leaves. Giving no indication that he would come back.
A pack of gummy worms being thrown at his face announce Thomas’s return.
Maven blinks at him.
“Figured you could use something sugary,” Thomas says, plopping down in the seat next to Maven’s cot. “You know to lift your spirits.”
“I don’t particularly enjoy worm-shaped candies,” Maven replies.
“Ever had them?” Thomas asks.
“No.”
His mother keeps him on a strict diet.
Thomas picks up the bag and shakes it expectantly.
Maven huffs, popping a gummy worm into his mouth.
It’s fine. Doesn’t taste like anything.
“I don’t particularly care for it.”
Thomas shrugs.
They end up splitting the bag.
Maven watches him with a frown. “Why are you here?”
“You looked lonely,” Thomas says. “A little sad too.”
“And?”
“Pretty boys like you aren’t supposed to be sad or lonely.”
Thomas doesn’t last long with him.
Maven makes the mistake of thinking he can keep him close. He sneaks him in through the window at night, steals small kisses in the dark, falls asleep curled up at his side. The next morning Cal finds them asleep under the covers, their legs tangled together. Opens the door and shuts it just as quickly with a laugh.
There’s never a chance for Maven to tell him not to say anything. Cal’s never alone. He’s always got his friends hanging around him, laughing, nurturing his pride.
Word finds its way to his parents. Then Thomas is gone. It’s like he never even existed. His house has been cleaned out. His classmates at the academy say that him and his family found themselves a better opportunity somewhere else.
“Your father had him sent away,” Elara tells him the truth, rubbing small circles on his back. “He couldn’t have you tarnishing the family name.”
Cal doesn’t even notice that Maven begins to retreat into himself.
The cracks widen further.
Sometime later he makes the same mistake.
Mare’s a promising inventor, and a terrifying young woman. It’s impossible to. She drags Maven out of the little corner that he’s retreated into. After she witnesses Tiberias admonish
“Older or younger?” is the first thing she says to him.
“What?”
“Your brother. He older or younger?”
“Older,” Maven says.
“My sister’s younger,” Mare says. “Doesn’t stop my parents from thinking everything she touches turns to gold.”
Maven smiles to himself. It’s nice to have someone understand the envy that ripples through him. Because Cal is perfect. He’s everything their father ever wanted in a son. Tall, strong, charming. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t have any particular grace when it comes to business, or that he’s a betrayer.
“His father will always excuse his actions,” Elara tells him.
Why? Maven doesn’t get it. What is it about Cal that awards him such favor from his father, such love and attention that Maven can never seem to obtain no matter how hard he tries?
The voices give him the answer.
He’s Coriane’s son, the living memory of his one true love.
You’re just what keeps him shackled to your mother.
***
Maven doesn’t tell Mare about the whispers or the shadows. He doesn’t want to scare her away. Too many people in his life have already caught him mumbling to himself, turning to look at things they can’t see. He’s heard what the Samos and Elane say behind his back. They think he’s too quiet. They think he’s too weird. He unsettles them, disturbs them.
In the end it’s a good call. Cal takes Mare away in a matter of months. All it takes is one stupid smile and some words prettily strung together.
Of course, she fell, the Mare in his head tells him. I would.
“My close friend Mare,” as Cal introduces her to his Uncle Julian when he comes by to visit. Which is codeword for his girlfriend.
“Nice to meet you Mare,” Julian smiles, shaking Mare’s hand.
“We were actually just headed out if you want to join us, Uncle Julian.”
“I’d love to. Just let me say a quick hello to your father.”
“Great! We’ll wait for you outside.”
“Cal doesn’t care for books,” Maven tells him once the other two are gone.
They’re good books. Well-written books by authors whose works Maven has enjoyed before. He could ask Julian for them, so they wouldn’t go to waste.
Julian slings the bag over his shoulders and turns away from him. “Your mother wouldn’t like you being here.”
It’s a dismissal. Clear as day. He doesn’t bother asking.
Maven knows better than to stay where he knows he isn’t wanted.
***
“I can’t marry Evangeline,” Cal says, interrupting his reading.
“What?”
“I can’t marry her. I can’t put Mare through that it wouldn’t be fair to her. It’s not fair to Evangeline
“You have to marry her, if you want to stay.”
“No. Dad will understand. He will.”
“If he doesn’t?”
“He will.”
***
Something finally slips.
The bottom of the wine bottle. It slips from Maven’s grasp so that he ends up holding the neck of the bottle.
Cal has told their father that he doesn’t want to marry Evangeline. That he’s going to give up everything to be with Mare.
Somehow, it’s Maven’s fault.
He’s the one who introduced them.
Mare’s supposed to be his friend.
It’s his fault.
They’re in the study. The three of them. Mare, Cal, Tiberias. Mare and Cal are holding hands, they’re weathering Tiberias’s outrage together.
Until it passes.
Then just like that, Tiberias is on board. Damn the Samos if they’re upset, and they’ll be upset. All except for Evangeline. It will be fine. They’ll deal with it. As long as it makes Cal happy.
“Now let’s celebrate the engagement over a bottle of wine!”
It’s not fair.
Maven’s standing in the doorway. His head is full of voices. The shadows have stretched themselves into people that laugh at him, mock him, tease him. They take on a familiar shape, reminding him of a boy long gone.
This isn’t fair.
Glass shatters.
A body thuds on the floor followed by a loud scream.
“Maven stop it!”
The shadows are still laughing.
“Maven get off him!”
He keeps hitting the body, again, and again, and again.
“MAVEN!”
Cal doesn’t get what he wants this time.
***
Tiberias Calore VI dies in his study, and Elara Merandus is swift in her grab for power.
Cal barely has time to wrap his head around it before the board of directors ousts him from the company he’s been preparing to run since he was fifteen.
Without the support of the Samos’ his grip on the company is so weak not even Evangeline’s support can help him.
It’s easy for Elara to take control over what would’ve been Maven’s position in the company and then Cal’s. All she has to do is have her son committed. She’s kind enough to keep him out of prison by making it seem like Tiberias attacked Maven first, that they were all in danger. It’s easy. Tiberias had his issues with drink. Then she slanders the three of them in the papers, painting Maven out to be another quiet, lonely boy who finally fell off the deep end, Cal as a self-centered young man who never noticed the neglect his little brother experienced at the hands of his cold unforgiving father.
It’s effective. Keeps the hospital from letting Maven out and Cal from seeing him.
On his part, Cal doesn’t do much to stop it from happening. He can’t unsee what happened that night. He tries for a long while to separate the person that killed his father from his brother.
Because Maven couldn’t have done it. Maven couldn’t hurt anyone. No, not his little brother. His little brother would never hurt Cal, choke Mare out, or cut his grandmother with a broken wine bottle like he did that night.
“He’s no grandson of mine,” Nanable says.
And she’s right. This isn’t her grandson. That’s a monster. They’re calling him a monster and that’s what he is. He’s not Maven.
Not Mavey.
***
Elara doesn’t last very long at the top.
The Samos tire of her quickly. They switch teams.
It ends with her car wrapping around a tree.
Cal doesn’t ask how it happened.
Mare and Evangeline don’t tell him.
***
A phone call is what gets him to visit Maven in the hospital.
Dr. Davidson is the neutral party in all this. He fills in on everything they’ve done to help Maven, because help is what he needed for a long time.
At the start, they had Maven handcuffed to the bed. He was violent, and erratic. A danger to himself and to others.
They’ve made progress since then.
Cal can see Maven through a one-way mirror. A young man with thick dark hair that’s long enough to curl around his ears, humming to himself, dancing by himself just like he did when he was younger. Not the monster that had killed his father.
There’d never been a monster.
Just his little brother. His unwell little brother who needed help.
How could Cal have not noticed earlier?
Davidson lays a hand on his shoulder and tells him a hard truth.
“It was never your responsibility to help him.”
FIN