Work Text:
Philippe took Jack on outings, sometimes. Being both immortal and ludicrously wealthy, for Philippe "outing" usually meant a trip to Europe. They go all over, wherever it is safe in those fraught times long past, skirting human conflicts and creature politics alike.
By the time Jack has seen his first century come and go, he speaks more languages than he once knew existed, has seen more cities than he once could have imagined.
Philippe never tells Jack to call him anything, never imposes any rules or imparts any family wisdom. He doesn’t teach Jack how to be a de Clermont.
For a long time, Jack thinks this must be the price that Father Hubbard exacted from their grandsire. The condition he placed on Philippe’s carte blanche access to his charge.
But as the centuries begin to blur, one into another, Jack begins to realize that no such strings are attached to their outings. By Philippe or by Father H.
Because Father H has only ever wanted one thing for Jack, the same thing he wishes for all of his children—for them to be safe, and healthy, and most of all, happy.
And Philippe….Jack ponders what he gets from their outings, this lion of a man, with all the time and money and power the world has for the taking. He ponders it for a long time.
He’s still pondering it one summer in the 1920s, when they stop upon a hill in France, grandsire and twice great-grandson.
Philippe takes him out into the wild one morning, leads him through woods and valleys, around and around until Jack is nearly dizzy. As the day dies, they pause upon a hill, the dirt beneath their feet soaked with the blood of many wars, another hanging upon the horizon.
Philippe stands with his back to the sunset, his features thrown into shadow, so even with preternaturally good eyesight, Jack hasn’t a prayer of reading Sieur’s expression.
A gloved hand is extended to Jack, golden light glinting dully off worn leather.
Jack’s bones feel fragile in the grasp, gentle and deliberate as it is.
Philippe turns his eyes to the sun, drawing Jack with him until their shoulders brush. Jack follows his gaze along the horizon, coming to rest on a castle of stone, just visible through the gathering mist of the valley that lay between it and them.
“This was my eldest son's favourite spot. He made his first kill here.” The pride was evident in Philippe’s voice, shining through the heavy weight of grief coating the words.
“He always said he felt safe here, within sight of home.” One day, Jack will know of whom Philippe speaks. One day, he will tell of this moment to those who loved Hugh de Clermont.
In that moment, sunset slipping into twilight, Jack curls his hand into Philippe’s and squeezes.
And together they watch as the last of the sun’s rays catch upon the castle towers.
Jack counts seven before the mist swallows them from view.
***
When Philippe returns him to London, he pauses upon the steps of Greyfriars church.
Jack has never seen his grandsire hesitate before. It sends a chill through his bones, for reasons he does not yet comprehend. Firm hands find his shoulders and pause there, golden eyes holding his gaze with a burning intensity.
“Jack…. don’t forget what I showed you. Show it to Matthew and Diana, one day.” It is the first time Philippe has mentioned their names in three centuries, but instead of hope sparking in his chest, Jack feels only dread.
In that moment, he feels very young. “We can show them together. We can take grand-mère and all have a picnic.” Father H appears at Philippe’s shoulder, as if from thin air.
Jack remembers the panic that crawled up his throat, the urgency he could not yet name.
“Promise we can show them together. Promise me, grand-père, please.”
It is the first and last time Jack addresses this lion of a man as what he has been to him, as who he will always be to him.
There is only the briefest of moments before those golden eyes close in the face of Jack’s pleas, but he will never forget the tears that gathered in them.
Never forget the heat of his grandfather’s kiss upon his forehead, the brush of a last breath in his hair, before Father H’s arms draw him close, before Jack closes his eyes on tears of his own.
When he opens them, it is as if Philippe was never there at all.
Jack never sees his grandfather alive again.
***
It is not Jack’s birthday. Birthdays are a distant concept, and one that he has little use for, even after Matthew and Diana, after his parents, come back into his life.
But when they give him official adoption papers, their names and his written openly, proudly upon the page, well, that is a day that Jack will never forget the date of. Not least because those signed adoption papers are carefully framed and lovingly stored at his bedside, wherever he goes in the years that follow.
So when the first anniversary of that date blooms on the horizon, Jack is unsurprised when Matthew regards him warmly over a morning cup of blood and asks how he’d like to celebrate.
Nor can Jack keep the thrum of excitement out of his posture as he shyly asks for a picnic.
It almost blots out the ache in his heart, as Matthew shares an indulgent look with Diana.
His dad’s gaze turns decidedly bemused when Jack insists on Father H coming to his picnic party. Mum hides an amused snort in her teacup as Becca lets out a delighted shriek of “Papa Hubby!”
Matthew almost manages to suppress his growl. Jack is very proud of his dad for that.
It is Diana who turns to him, the traces of amusement lighting her eyes, and asks where he’d like to have his picnic.
For a moment, gazing into his mum’s eyes, Jack wonders if she knows. Diana knows so many things that should be unknowable.
Jack has always known that knowledge of the future is a dangerous thing. Looking back, he realizes that it is also a painful thing.
Diana’s eyes are, for once, free of such shadows. And Jack cannot bring himself to change that. Not in these moments of peace, hard fought and hard won.
He doesn’t think that’s what Philippe would have wanted. For any of them.
He never had the privilege of knowing his Tio Hugh, but he things that isn’t what he would have wanted either.
So he takes a sip of blood—bear, Philippe’s favourite in France—and says with all the blithe innocence that comes of four centuries being raised by de Clermonts and Hubbards and Fuchses.
“Let’s have it somewhere in the open, but with a view of home.”
No one at the table requires more of an explanation than that.
***
Diana spreads the blanket out with magic, wind and fire licking at the checked fabric in an incandescent display of power and precision.
Jack can’t resist squealing in delight, right along with the twins, who squirm in their big brother’s arms, eager to be released to cause terror.
Matthew looks at the three of them and promptly bursts out laughing.
Jack wishes he could record that sound and listen to it forever.
Watching his parents share a blissful kiss, sun dappling the air about them, Jack thinks on the longing that lingered in Philippe’s eyes on every one of their outings, the longing that increased with each passing decade, and he finds he no longer has to wonder what Philippe got out of those outings. Of their time together.
Jack only got to be a parent for a few moments. His bio grandfather saw to that.
But he will never forget the fierce protectiveness that had surged in his chest when he gazed upon his son and his daughter. The fierce love.
He imagines it is an intoxicating thing, to see one’s children happy and healthy and free.
He imagines that one would give almost anything, go to any lengths, to ensure such a future.
“Come on Jack, help us set up.” Jack spits out a mouthful of grass and surges up to tackle his big brother, laughter rocking through their bodies as they collide with the ground like a thunderclap.
“Boys, mind the crystal.” Uncle Baldwin’s prim reprimand sends them both into fits of giggles, and as he catches a twinkle in his uncle’s eyes, eyes that for a moment are so like his father’s, Jack feels a lump form in his throat.
He will never forget how lucky he is, to be here to see this future.
***
Jack is utterly unsurprised when Father H ends up with both of the twins nestled in his lap before the party is even an hour old. His other father has always been like that, for as long as Jack’s known him. Children gravitate to him, as do those in need, and most forms of animals.
Case in point, there are at least three squirrels hovering in Hubbard’s immediate vicinity, and none of the dozen or so attendant vampires has attempted to turn them into a snack.
Matthew has been watching Hubbard and the twins like a hawk, his gaze so intent on his grandson and children that Jack is fairly certain his dad has even stopped pretending to need to blink.
Becca’s current favourite food is cucumber sandwiches, for reasons that escape Jack. To be fair, he never had the opportunity to taste a cucumber when he was human, and most human food smells repulsive to vampires.
Father H raises the sandwich to his nose to take a careful sniff, as Jack has seen him do a thousand and one times before trusting the sustenance with which he is about to feed his charges. The man’s been doing it with Jack’s meals since 1592.
Matthew, apparently unaware of this fact, promptly snatches the sandwich from his grandson’s fingers.
Philip makes a startled noise, while Becca merely looks mournfully after the sandwich.
At Philip’s noise, Father H instinctively gathered the twins closer in his arms and sets Matthew a challenging glare.
Matthew pays precisely zero notice, holding the sandwich up like evidence in a crime.
“What were you thinking?! Where you trying to poison yourself?” His dad’s roar is loud enough that they probably heard him back in London, but naturally Father H looks utterly unfazed by the volume. Jack has half risen to intervene, to explain, when the words register in his brain.
If the utter silence that descends upon the meadow is anything to go by, he’s not the only one at a loss for words.
Uncle Gallowglass doesn’t appear to be having the same problem as everyone else.
“Since when do you give a damn about Andrew Hubbard?!” Despite the presence of young ears, not a single soul calls Gallowglass on his language.
To be fair, the twins have probably heard worse. And certainly will hear worse, in their lives.
And it is a fair question.
Matthew carefully returns the sandwich—or what’s left of it—to it’s container and closes the lid with a distinct snap. His answer is just as matter of fact, “Since he loved my son, when Diana and I could not.”
The lump is back in Jack’s throat. Father H is studying the checked pattern on the blanket with far more concentration than it deserves.
Next time, Jack gets veto power over the picnic accessories.
Philip glances around for a moment, and promptly hacks up a lung full of fire.
In the smoke and chaos that follows, Jack wonders when Matthew figured it out.
He still isn’t sure when Philippe figured it out, or if he ever did, in the end. For all that he was the one who started all of this.
That in truth—this family was always forged in love, rather than blood.
***
Jack has little to no experience with what most picnics are like, what is appropriate to pack for one and what is not.
So when Matthew brings out an entire cello after the food has been packed away, Diana’s startled laugh is as baffling to Jack as Aunt Sarah’s amused scoff. At least Jack thinks it was amused.
Matthew hesitates for a moment before extending the instrument to Marcus.
Jack dives for his sketchbook in the next moment, his heart thrumming with the need to capture the look of hopefulness and love that slowly spreads across his big brother’s face at the gesture.
And as the haunting strains of horsehair on strings echoes over the hills of their home, Jack does just that, etching love into immortality with so much charcoal.
***
As the picnic winds down and twilight comes to that crest upon one of the hill’s that overlooks Sept-Tours, Tio Fernando stands for the longest time, his gaze fixed upon the view of the west most tower of the de Clermont home.
“Hugh loved it here.” It is breathed into the wind, but as he watches grand-mère Ysabeau go to her son-in-law’s side, gently take his hand and whisper her own remembrance into the wind, “As did Philippe,” as he watches pain and grief echo and break and be shared anew, Jack feels his heart pulse for those this family has lost, those they never got to know.
And for but a moment, Jack could swear he feels the ghost of a kiss upon his forehead.
***
Jack waited four hundred years to be part of this family.
To belong to Matthew and Diana. To belong to Sept Tours.
Watching them now, smiles tinged with grief but laughter full of love and hope, Jack aches for charcoal and pastels, for paper and stone, to capture this moment and immortalize it.
Next time, he’s listening to Father H and Mum when they tell him to pack extra art supplies.
He can picture it now, grand-mère Ysabeau elegant in purple, passing a strawberry to Father H, Becca holding her hands out eagerly for it, Philip floating his through the air as his sister squeals in indignation and Diana laughs in delight, holding her youngest son close to her heart and placing a kiss upon his cheek.
Matthew and Fernando and Hamish looking up from their chessboard, fond smiles on their faces, matching sweaters about their shoulders.
Baldwin and Gallowglass in a staring match to decide who would challenge Father H for the chance to hold Becca next.
Marcus and Phoebe dancing around the picnic blanket, weaving in and out with Chris and Miriam, vampire speed prompting spurts of giggles and shouts of fake indignation.
Marthe watching over them all with a look of such love, cups of tea steaming beneath her hands.
Sept-Tours’ towers glowing golden and bright in the background.
And just there, on the edge of the forest, half obscured in the growing dusk, ghostly figures watching over their family, as they always have, and always will.
Father H lets Jack sleep beneath that painting once it is complete, and every night after that. And for the first time in over four centuries, it is a sleep without dreams.