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Just-- a few seconds, Mister Caustello?

[There are others he could ask for advice, it's true. Other people who could assure him about a challenge still more than a year away. But...

Andrew's uncle and Rachel's father simply carries a bit more weight at the moment.]

[He lifts his head from the book and flashes a warm smile that clashed with the words he had just spoken. Clearly those words were meant for someone else.]

For you, young man, you could have the rest of the afternoon.

[It's a relief, obvious in the unknitting of the teen's brow as he takes a proper step into the room. Charles was a fine father, after all, but not the sort of person who simply made time for his eldest son. Edgar was meant to be in control, to be perfectly set and ready to take on the world.

Not acceptable to need a bit of reassurance like this. Thank god for Caleb.]

I promise I won't take nearly that long. I just... had a few questions.

[Caleb had more of a gentle touch. Came with daughter territory, perhaps.]

Of course. Have a seat. Do you want something to drink? [After all, beyond mere formalities, Edgar was old enough to be offered a proper drink.]

No, sir, thank you. [Sitting comes with the appropriate straightness of his spine expected of young men of standing, just the tiniest bit of a jangle to his foot belying his energetic nerves. Better than he'd been able to sit the year before. Always progress.] It's far too small a thing for all that.

Her hand falls away from the door with a heaviness he won't see because he isn't looking. Her voice stays light even though her expression falters, hurt visible to him if he only bothered to glance up for a moment.

"Were you-- planning on coming to grandfather's dinner, tonight?"

It was something of a tradition, after all. But then, he'd missed the traditional Caustello Christmas party at Uncle Daniel's. And the New Year's bash at Aunt Bridget's.

And the other small and not-so-small gatherings of friends and families in the past few months, too, the sort of things she'd loved going to as a girl because it'd always be fun to watch him interact with the people he cared about.

She supposes, now, that maybe all that caring was simply gone.

Alright. [He leaned back against the backrest of his chair and rested his hands in his lap. The pages flew but for the moment, the only thing that held Caleb's attention was Edgar. Though he couldn't claim to know Edgar intimately well, Caleb wouldn't mind at all if he had had a proper son like him.]

How can I help?

His head was propped up by one hand nested in his hair, elbow on the table. The other hand was stroking the tumbler, caressing it almost affectionately with a thumb and two fingers.

His eyes were closed, as if he was savouring the silence that was so abruptly broken by a little girl's voice. 'Grandfather's dinner.' The words take their time to sink in. He sighed as he picked up his empty tumbler and swirled it, and ice cubes clinked in the bottom of the glass. A rhythmic accompaniment to her angry words.

The bottom of the glass made a loud thud against the table as he set it down none too gently.

"Shouldn't you..." A deep breath. He finally opened his eyes then and tilted his head back up to free his hand so that he could top up his glass. He finished his question as he poured himself what was left of the fourth empty bottle on the table.

"Be there?"

[Maybe someday. After all, in the starry-eyed future, maybe Edgar would be Caleb's son-in-law, when his feelings about the man's son crystallized. But that's time away.

And right now, what's pressing at his mind and jiggling his foot is much more immediate.] I've just-- started thinking on my first challenge. It won't be long now, and--

[It's not the 'proper son' thing to be scared on top of the excitement. His entire face furrows as he searches for the word he means.]

[Caleb's eyes brighten in the dimly-lit room. The warm smile that accompanies it did the reassuring that words would inevitably stop short of.]

It's a little unsettling, I suppose. Most rites of passage are. [And that was what it was. Something that almost everyone who comes into the Deck, one way or another, will go through sooner or later. In their case, sooner was always encouraged. Attaining and maintaining a respectable rank was written into their lives the moment they were born.]

Unsettling, yes.

[That's the word. It makes Edgar's smile briefly flicker--briefly allow itself to be unsettled before he ducks his head, nudges slightly at the crease in his pants.]

But it's not... really acceptable to be unsettled by it, you know?

Look at me, she wants to scream as he tilts his head back and refills his glass, but it dies in her throat like a thousand others like it have before. Instead, the words that come out are even, somehow manage to reign in the hurt she feels even though he'd see that ache if he only looked.

"I was..." The words catch again in her throat, and her gaze drops-- unable to stay focused on the man before her, "I was waiting to-- to see if you were. I thought we might..." Go together, but that dies out, too, because Together is something that they haven't been since her mother passed on.

Be that as it may, you are still human. [Barely a man yet, with many years ahead and many more things to learn. There were a number of things that had been deemed unacceptable or inappropriate for men like them, but that didn't make them anything more or greater or better than what they were.]

Life is full of uncertainties. It's normal to feel just that little bit unsettled. But a challenge is an opportunity for you to prove to yourself - far more so than to anyone else - that you can find courage in those moments of fear and anxiety, and overcome whatever doubts you may have to outperform the person you're challenging.

But it's just chess.

[Because of course it's already planned out. He knows who, he knows how long after his birthday, he knows where he'll propose they play.

And it's only chess.] What about-- later? When I want to challenge with-- something actually properly dangerous?

He didn't respond for a while. In fact he seemed more fixated on his beverage than he was on her, and he drained his glass before deigning to give her a response that she was quite likely not looking for.

"I haven't gone to the last six or seven or twenty fucking family gatherings. Why-" He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. Now that his glass was empty, he turned to look - properly look - at the girl standing in his doorway.

He didn't see a girl who needed him to be sober and functional and reliable and loving. He saw only her. He saw the only thing that had mattered to him, that had been taken from him, and what was left standing there alone casting a long, dancing shadow out the door was punishment. Rachel's very existence tormented him, and he wanted nothing more than for her to have gone to whatever the hell party it was - party, as if there was something worth celebrating - and just stayed there.

There was a time when his words had not known venom and bile. There was a time he would never lose his composure, or swear in front of his daughter. There was a time where everything in the world made sense. Now everything was a has been, could have been, and will never be.

"Why would I want to go to this one?" The tumbler slipped out of his upturned hand and almost rolled off the table had it not rolled into a wall of yet-to-be-opened bottles.

[Caleb leaned in a little closer then and held Edgar's gaze, as if he'd find something there if he searched long enough.]

You're not suggesting something barbaric I hope, Mister Eicheln.

[Leaning gets leaning, although the statement gets the teen jerking back almost instantly. He'll have to learn to hide his emotions, but for the moment, the shock and confusion and mild horror flicker free before he settles for simply worried.]

Of-- of course not! It's just-- You know how people can be when you only challenge in-- chess and debate and-- things like that.

['People,' of course, being 'people like Charles Eicheln.']

[He's not being entirely serious, though Edgar's reaction did make him feel somewhat relieved. If he'd been anything but repulsed at the idea, this conversation may have gone well into the afternoon.]

A time will come when you will find yourself in a dangerous challenge, and that is an eventuality that you will have to prepare for. [It was not their way of doing things, but there were others who thought that to be an exploitable weakness.]

But we begin with chess, and we get comfortable with challenges before we start hurting ourselves and racking up the drycleaning bills.

[The thoughts require a bit of mulling, his head bobbing slightly and his attention flitting away into himself.

Start with chess. Work up. It feels easier hearing someone else--someone older, wiser, who'd actually done this before--agree that it's not just probable. That it might even be the best way to go about things.]

It gets... easier by then, doesn't it?

Challenging gets easier. [Not the individual challenges themselves, of course, but how to go about researching, issuing and winning a challenge was something that could become almost a memorised routine.]

Hurting someone intentionally, on the other hand. That's difficult every time.

...is it harder than training?

[He didn't like actually hurting people in the ring. He felt horrible when Andrew sported a black eye or walked with a gimp because of him.

But... in the moment, it was never a hesitation. Was that not the way of things?]

It's different. [Said with the smallest of shrugs. You could walk out of a round of training and know that all was forgotten. Injuries that were traded would heal over time. Bonds would be further strengthened. In the real world, however, the motivations behind wanting to hurt others were very different. Some slights could last a lifetime, and accidents could be fatal.]

You could hurt a friend when you see an opening, and know that cuts and bruises will heal over drinks and jokes afterwards. But could you live with yourself if you hurt someone in a way they cannot ever fully recover from?

[Really, deeply thinking about it gets Edgar's face crumbling all over again. Could he live with himself, having injured someone that way? Having perhaps taken a life?]

...I... suppose you have to, don't you?

[The truth was that they would all hurt someone, sooner or later, be it in a physical altercation, or words spat out in the heat of the moment that can never be taken back, or hearts broken in ways that left more emptiness than pain. But hopefully it would be a few more years before Edgar found himself saying or doing something he regretted.]

Try not to put yourself in that position, Edgar.

Of course.

[It's something other people might want to put themselves up to, but Edgar? Edgar had too much of what was even and balanced about the Clubs in him. That's what settles, finally, over his features: something settling toward calm.]

Besides, that's... all a long way off. Got to get through the first one first.

It's good that you're thinking ahead, but we shouldn't get too far ahead of ourselves just yet. [He patted Edgar on the shoulder.]

There'll be time for swashbuckling adventures after chess and debates.

[There, at last, comes back the flicker of a smile. Something that feels more like himself, even.]

...thank you, sir. For-- listening.

[Charles, like any other father, would want the best for his son, even though he might seem to act otherwise, and might not have the same kinds of conversations that Caleb did with Edgar.]

You are always welcome here, Mister Eicheln.

He's been more fixated on the drinks than he was on her. Been more fixated on the grief than on searching for the joy. Been more fixated on sorrowing over the past than on finding hope in the future. It's a bitter pill to swallow for someone so young, to know that he sees nothing but a ghost when he bothers to look at her at all.

She can't help but flinch as the tumbler falls and rolls into the bottles. Hides a little behind her hair as she looks back up at him, struggling to find the words she wants to say.

"I just thought that maybe..." That maybe things would be different, although she really shouldn't've expected otherwise. "...I know grandmother's been-- wanting to see you."

The woman had been stopping by, after all, as well as leaving messages and well... trying to communicate with her eldest son in any way possible.

Rachel imagined she'd learn soon enough. Caleb simply didn't want to be spoken to.

The messages were piling up. Trees had been slaughtered in the making of meaningless condolences, written and sent to him in hordes as if they could bring Liz back. The phone kept ringing and ringing incessantly. Caleb had answered the calls in the first few months, thinking that he would hear from Liz even though he knew he would never hear her voice again.

Now he didn't respond to just about anything, or anyone. Only Rachel now, and a few Castle staff who came and went regularly to collect the empty bottles had any visual confirmation that Caleb was still barely alive, hanging on to his sanity by a thin, spinning thread.

"Go to her then. You can tell her I'm still alive." Maybe she would stop bothering him then. Both mother and daughter might stop coming to him and leave him in peace.

"Go. Get out of my room."

She shifts her weight just a little, but doesn't leave the room just yet. Can't help the quiet plea the slips out, makes her sound younger than her years.

"Papa, please..." Please come back.

Because really, she'd lost both her parents the day her mother died.

Liz would have been heartbroken if she saw this now. Angry and heartbroken, certainly. But Liz couldn't see this now. She couldn't know how her death had destroyed her family.

Rachel wants him to be there for her, but he can't even hold himself together. What could she expect from him?

Liz had already taken everything from him. What more could she want?

"Get. Out." There was a clear break between the words that cut through the drunken slur. And Rachel was smart enough to know that the raised voice was a warning that should be heeded.

The anger in his voice has her starting, has her moving toward the door again before she even registers it, the rage subconsciously reminding her of his cousin who has begun to make his life just as much of a living hell as he was. Caleb's not struck her more than once or twice-- at least for now-- but it's enough times that she's no small amount of fear when he gets to that point again.

But she still stops, just at the door, and murmurs as she always does before leaving him be, "I love you, Papa."

A foolish, childish, hopeful attempt at trying to reawaken the man who once said it back, but she can't help but try anyways.

(no subject)

1985! Edgar looked more like this: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5gxzvBEjd1ryolxbo1_500.gif

D'aww. Okei X)

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Early 1987ish, and they're at least part Irish, so I guess St. Patty's Day right after Liz died B|

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Because daddy needs more excuses for drinking XD

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Oh, totally. xp

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