Chapter Text
Act 2, Prologue.
He hadn't realized how much he truly had wanted to say to his girl. How he wanted to express his undying adoration and longing for her, how he'd wanted to tell her he loved her back then but simply never worked up the nerve. He also wanted to unleash his resentment towards her, understand why she'd tried to kill him, why she ran from him when all he'd ever done had been for her. The fact that he'd also benefited on occasion was irrelevant.
He delights in the fact that in a matter of hours, she'll never be able to run and slip from his grasp again, that she'll never have the power to keep their children from their father again. The truly reviling part of him pictures her chained by her pretty neck or dainty ankle to her bed, even more confined than when she was in that ghastly zoo enclosure. He shakes the image from his mind, knowing he'd never gain her trust if he did something like that, something so overt. He'll have to figure out soon how to give his songbird the illusion of freedom since he couldn't let her have the real thing.
He wonders if she'll immediately recognize him like he did her. She looks identical, with her clothes on anyway. It's as if time stopped applying to the skin of her face. He knows the same can't be said for himself. Long gone are the golden curls and blasted buzz cut, his hair is now a lighter, cooler blond, nearly white, styled back and straight. Lines have formed in between his brows and slightly around his mouth that he's hidden slightly with an equally blonde goatee, around lips that have been made subtly fuller over time. Someone very long ago told him a fat lip suited him and he took that to heart. Once he was able to, he began a soft cocktail of corticotrophin-releasing hormone, dopamine and gonadotrophin to stimulate his pituitary gland and make him taller, as he always should have been. It was painful having a growth spurt at twenty-five but it was worth it. He wonders if Silas Ochre will recognize that he's his father as instinctively as Coriolanus knew he was his son.
He instructed the crew to drop them off at the hospital first and give them all the exams and tests they wouldn't be able to conduct in the manor and give him the results. He wasn't terribly interested in Holly May's but it was always good to have more information than less. He was most concerned about Lucy Gray's reproductive health, he hasn't got the slightest clue what her pregnancy with Silas Ochre was like, nor his birth or her afterbirth. All he knows is that Holly May helped with the birth of his son. His own mother's passing imbued him with a healthy concern for his Lucy Gray's genital system safety.
He wants to know if they're missing anything important, if they're iron deficient or if they needed more vitamins and minerals, if they'd broken any bones while they'd been out of his sight. Any myriad of problems could've developed; marasmus, pulmonary diseases from inhaling too much smoke from their chimney, they could have cancer and not even know it. Hell, Coriolanus is shocked his son didn't come out of the womb with rickets. He knows they did the best they could with the supplies and skills they had, but now he could give them the best medical care currently possible. And nutrition, and rest and entertainment and comfort imaginable.
Sometimes upon coming to from anesthesia people will speak with out their usual mental-verbal filters, he plans to use that period with his Songbird to ask some very crucial, specific questions. She can’t lie or deceive him in that state, or use wordplay or double entendres. She’ll be an open book for him to read for his pleasure. If it wasn’t for the brain damage excessive exposure to anesthetics caused, he’d never keep her fully sober. They’d be here in two hours, that’s how long he had to organize his thoughts.