The Tangle Meet me out by the fire escape

She would sing to them. He should have known that she would - had known that she would. But the significance of that fact had not struck Ashlar until this very moment, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with the complicated emotions of it all once more. The choices they made were so large and so wrought.

There's... yeah. When I was little, mama would sing this in the dark. At times the shapes in it had frightened him but the song never failed to quiet those fears and remind him, no matter how dark, he was loved and cared for. Maybe it would bring them a similar comfort.

He closed his eyes, remembered, and sang it the way that she had. He would not be capable of explaining the emotions he felt, the depth of his missing, experiencing the words again.

Une chanson douce...

It was a song in another language, one mama and her family had spoken but baba never had. He'd worried, but then he caught tones of it in Chacal's own voice, and his worry had settled into a quiet wonderment. Perhaps the world was small, or perhaps the threads that connected them all ran deeper, and more broadly, than any of them could understand.

Jusqu'à la fin de ma vic.

He finished it, trailing off softly and leaving the silence to linger for a moment. He hadn't ever sung that song without her accompanying. Yet he remembered the words perfectly, as if he were still small and trembling against a darkened world.

Maybe they will sing it with you, like I did. he added softly. The poignant reminder of his own parents, and childhood, left him feeling emptier than he had at the start. Because of him, there would be no 'baba'. No figure alongside Chacal, no second source of truly inherent belonging. His parents would be disappointed in him, he imagined, for the choices he had made.