Reborn Omega; I Refuse To Be Your Substitute

Embarrassing yourself

Lucien pulled into the driveway forty minutes later than he meant to, phone still warm in his hand from the calls he'd been making since he left the office. He hadn't managed to reach her once. Not one answer, not one text back, and that alone was enough to put a knot in his jaw before he even opened the front door.

Damm it!

The house was quiet when he walked in. No dinner smell. No sound of Esme moving around the kitchen the way she usually did this time of night.

"Esme?"

Nothing.

He found her in the living room, curled up with a book, the lamp beside her the only light on in the whole downstairs. She didn't look up when he walked in.

"I called you six times," he said.

"Did you?" She turned a page.

"Esme."

"You don't pick up your calls when you're at work anyway," she said, still not looking at him. "I didn't think it would matter much if I didn't pick up mine."

He stared at her. Something about her tone bothered him more than the words themselves. She sounded almost bored, like this conversation wasn't worth the effort of putting the book down.

His jaw clenched. "That's different. I'm working."

"Of course." She finally glanced up, and there was something in her eyes he didn't recognize on her, something sharp that had never been there before. "Work must have been so busy tonight."

"It was, actually."

"I'm sure."

He raised his eyebrows. "What is that supposed to mean?"

She closed the book slowly, one finger marking her place, and looked at him with an expression so calm it made his skin prickle. "It means whatever you want it to mean, Lucien."

He felt his temper rise before he could stop it. "You know what I think? I think you're jealous. I think you sit here all day imagining things about my work, about the people I meet, and you let it turn you vile."

"Jealous." She said the word like she was tasting it. "That's an interesting choice."

"Isn't it true?"

"No." She stood, setting the book down on the side table with more care than he thought the moment deserved. "But it's easier for you to believe that than to ask yourself why I might be tired of waiting on a man who forgets things."

"Forgets what things?"

She looked at him for a long moment, and something crossed her face, so fast he almost missed it. Disappointment, maybe. Or something worse than disappointment. Something closer to giving up.

"Nothing," she said. "Never mind."

"No, tell me. What did I forget?"

She didn't answer. She just turned and started toward the stairs, and the fact that she wasn't even bothering to argue anymore unsettled him more than if she'd raised her voice.

"Esme."

Regina's voice cut in before Esme could reach the first step. "There you are, both of you. Lucien, thank goodness! Maybe you can talk some sense into her."

"What's going on?"

"Your wife," Regina said, crossing her arms, "has decided she no longer has to show me any respect. She spoke to me earlier as if I were the help in my own son's house."

Lucien turned to Esme, expecting her to look guilty, expecting the old flinch she always gave when Regina complained about her. It didn't come. Esme stood on the third stair, one hand resting lightly on the railing, and looked at both of them with something close to indifference.

"Is that true?" he asked.

"I told her not to call me useless again," Esme said. "That's all that happened."

"She threw a vase at the wall after I said it!” Regina snapped. "I'd hardly call that nothing."

"You threw the vase," Esme said, and her voice was so even it almost made the accusation sound gentle. "I only told you the truth.” Lucien felt the muscle in his jaw tighten. This wasn't like her. Esme didn't talk back. Esme apologized first and asked questions later, smoothed things over before they ever had the chance to become an argument. This woman standing on the stairs, calm and unbothered while his mother's face went red with fury, felt like someone he didn't fully know.

"You need to apologize to my mother," he said.

Esme looked at him for a moment. Seriously??

"No," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"I said no, Lucien. I won't apologize for asking to be spoken to like a person in my own home."

"This is disrespectful," Regina said. "This is exactly what I'm talking about, Lucien!”

"I agree," Esme said, and for a second Lucien thought she was actually conceding the point, until she continued. "It has been disrespectful. For years, actually. I'm only now doing something about it."

The room went quiet.

"Esme," Lucien said, lower this time, "you're embarrassing yourself. Quit it already."

"Am I??”

"Apologize to my mother, and we can put this behind us."

She studied him for a long moment, and something in her expression shifted, settled into something he'd never seen directed at him before.

"You know," she said, "it's my birthday today."

The words landed strangely in the room, out of place, and Lucien blinked. "What?"

"My birthday," she repeated.

"I—" He stopped. He genuinely hadn't known, hadn't thought to check, and the realization sat badly in his stomach even as he tried to talk his way past it. "That's not the point right now."

"No," she agreed. "It never is."

"Esme, I'm asking you to apologize to my mother."

She looked at him for one more second, and then, quietly, almost gently, she said, "Have a good evening, Lucien."

She turned and continued up the stairs.

"Esme!!”

She didn't stop.

"Esme, we are not finished with this conversation."

Her footsteps didn't slow, didn't hesitate, just carried her calmly up and out of sight, and a door closed softly somewhere above him.

Regina huffed beside him. "Do you see what I mean?? She's changed. Ever since that fainting spell she had, she's been acting strange. Cold. Like she doesn't even care what we think of her."

Lucien didn't answer. He was still looking at the empty staircase, at the space where she'd been standing a moment ago, calm and unshaken while everything around her tried to provoke a reaction she simply refused to give.

"Lucien."

"I heard you," he said, though he hadn't, not really.

He climbed the stairs slowly after his mother went off to her own room, muttering under her breath the whole way. He stood outside Esme's door for a moment, hand raised to knock, and then didn't.

He didn't understand what he was feeling. It wasn't anger, though he'd expected it to be. It sat lower than that, uncomfortable in a way he couldn't name, something that felt uncomfortably close to being afraid of losing an argument he hadn't realized he was having.

She used to look at him like he mattered. He'd never thought much about that look, never thought to wonder what it would feel like if it disappeared, because it had always just been there, steady and constant, something he assumed would never change.

Tonight, for the first time, she hadn't looked at him like that at all.

He stood there a long while, staring at the closed door, and the strange, hollow feeling in his chest refused to go away no matter how many times he told himself it didn't matter.

It didn't matter anyways.