I managed to scrape together a quick study on family dynamics. Not an AU, per say, just as canon as any of my plots attempt to be. I attempted a longer title and the writing style is new to me, but I hope it turned out well?

Disclaimer: Characters are not mine

It's 3:17 in the morning when someone starts pounding on the door.

Macon knows the exact time; it's damn near burned into his retinas from the bedside table alarm clock. The irradiated red numbers flash behind his eyelids through each blink as he snaps his book shut and glances towards the door. It couldn't be a Caster—any Caster who looked for him wouldn't think of this motel or hesitate long enough to knock—and if someone from the Blood Pack were on his trail the pitted metal would be shattered, or, he supposed, Hunting's brood would be fond of staining it crimson. Mortals wouldn't be about this early—he didn't smell smoke and there wasn't the scream of sirens—and he could practically hear the hell that would brake loose in the hallway if the person didn't stop knocking.

In all honesty, he should have gone further. The near miss in Florence County was still raw in the back of his mind. Hunting's slew of idiots could follow a trail, at least, and Macon hadn't made it more than ten miles before his hands had started shaking and his trust in Traveling had diminished completely. What was left of the gasoline was spent on burning the stolen car on the side of the road with miniscule artifacts in it—a fob from Milan that ticked quietly enough he almost forgot it counted down his seconds and a notebook that held scribbles he thought about enough times they were sharper than the pen could recreate them—his clothes were dropped off at a house that vaguely reminded him of Gatlin. Consequently, the house also yielded a decent change of clothing, albeit not his preferred attire, and, when he wandered to the motel blocks towards the highway, the front deskman hadn't questioned his acquisition of a small room, even when he overpaid by nearly fifty dollars.

Instead of listening to any of the warnings pounding beneath his ribs, he crosses the six paces it takes to reach the door in a series of stumbling, shuffling strides and hopes to holy hell whoever is waking up his neighbors isn't out for his blood.

He doesn't bother with staring through the peephole's fisheye lens long enough to recognize who is on the sidewalk, instead opting for tugging the chain lock out of the door and throwing wide the pitted door. Admittedly, it takes him longer than it should to recognize the overcoat is similar but new and the hair is in a braid, not a ponytail, but he sighs in relief anyway when the form is recognized. "Hells and heavens," he murmured.

Leah's body casts a long shadow into the room.

She looks uncomfortable, cagey, hands shoved into the pockets of her overcoat and not quite shuffling from foot to foot. She's sporting a split lip, and there's a smear of coal on her jaw. She attempts to offer a smile, but it manifests like a nervous tic of her cheek. The harsh light emphasized the hollowness of her cheeks, the starkness of the shadows beneath her eyes, and the exuberance harbored within them. He himself can't be much better with the only light behind him being the flickering of a dim lamp.

She doesn't say anything, predictably.

So Macon does. "Where did the wind take you this time?" he offers, the question rhetorical, a greeting more than anything else. It's been about two months since he's seen Leah, but he learned years ago not to bother worrying—or looking for her—when she drops off the grid.

When her lips only tighten, he turns, shuffling back into the blessed near-darkness of the room, hears Leah catch the door before it can swing shut. The light scratch of her pulling the laces of her boots open breaks the silence.

"Heard the Pack's storehouse had problems," Leah says, and Macon's exhausted, but he manages his knife-edge smile; Leah can act like she doesn't care all she wants, but she's never been able to not keep tabs on him.

"Good take, no injuries." Macon sits down on the remade bed, facing her. "Well, Barclay sprained his ankle, but that happened after we left the radius." Which, to be fair, if there were ever a good time to sprain your ankle, Kent found it. "But, you know," he says, gesturing vaguely.

"How it is," Leah supplies, expression softer now. "I do."

"Barclay's on his way to Barbados."

"You stayed behind to…?"

"Wrap up." He glances to the clock again, then to the open book on the cheap desk.

"Wrap up—"

"Permanently." Macon meets her stare. "You would have been a beneficial addition," he continues, raising an eyebrow.

"You could have brought Obidias," Leah points out, never to be guilt-tripped—never to be manipulated, and that's why she's good at what she does, why Macon has never been able to take the animal at the center of Leah, the wild, headstrong thing within her, and grab hold and control it, not for any sweet-talking or bribes or threats in the world.

"He had more important matters to attend to."

Leah shakes her head, chuckles. "It took a while to find you." She gestures to the motel room at large. "This is very…"

"Very," Macon echoes.

"Different. For you."

"There's a distinct lack of alcohol, cigars, or botanicals," Macon rattles off, swinging his feet up on the bed and leaning back. He has the money for extravagance, but, sometimes, extravagance is exhausting. Sometimes a place off the highway where you have to check the mattress for bed bugs is comforting.

(Sometimes it reminds you of years ago, when you're fresh-faced, twenty-something and consulting a younger woman whose Cajun accent hasn't bled out yet, whose eyes are the same shade of hearse glass as yours, who hasn't killed a man but wants to, asks to, needs to.)

Leah stands off to the side in a way that could be considered awkward if it'd been anybody else. Macon glances at her form. "New overcoat," he admonishes, and it coaxes a laugh from Leah, who rolls her eyes, shrugs out of the coat, and joins Macon on top of the sheets. It's smaller than they're used to; then again, whenever these occurrences manifest, Macon takes the floor or the couch. Leah's body heat radiates out from where she's propped up against the headboard, left leg pressed up against Macon's right, black denim to some cheap polyester-blend. She smells a little like gasoline, like cigarette smoke, like gun oil.

And she's stiff, like she tends to be, like she has to take some time to remember how to stop being the person she becomes when she leaves, like she needs to familiarize herself to this life, to work passed the block in her throat and file down the rough edges of herself to fit back snug in this broken jigsaw of existing.

"Europe," she offers finally.

Macon thinks about that. It's farther than he thought Leah had gone. "For?"

"Loose ends. Clear my head."

Meaning Leah had business to take care of and then took some time to play lone wolf, to take refuge in long days of silence, in single-man jobs, in boxy motel rooms probably not unlike this one. She's never been gone for two months before, but to be fair, the last time she'd done this was nearly a year ago.

Macon doesn't understand the appeal of isolation, but he knows Leah needs it sometimes, like how Obidias needs it, like how Lena can't stand it. It's quiet for a moment, the easy, familiar silence starts to lull Macon to remembrance, but Leah shifts over and leans down and kisses his cheek before he loses himself. He relaxes the way he does only at the end of a decent night, when his gaze has skipped heads on instinct, when his quarry is in his hands or on the floor.

Last time, it wasn't like this. Last time, Leah showed up and everything was off, tension crackled, twisted, jittered up his spine in a terrible way. Macon doesn't remember who threw the first punch, but he remembers the moment of shift, of something sparking in Leah eyes and Macon stepping towards her while she slid down the wall of his study, memories sliding down her cheeks and sobs tearing her throat, the door still open to the cracked stone confines of the Tunnels.

Sometimes that's what it takes for things to go back to normal.

Leah leaves and Leah returns, and they yell or cry or both, or go on a drive, or feign platonic affection in some dodgy motel room on the outskirts of Effingham.

What they don't do is talk about it. And that's good. That's easy. Uncomplicated. He'd rather act like they'd been siblings for the entirety of their lives, that she had grown up with him, than take his jumbled mess of thoughts and try to hammer them out into something coherent.

When she leans back, Leah has her hand on Macon's arm, the blank pale of her fingers in stark contrast to the dark shirt Macon's wearing. She pauses, her fingers tense lightly, rise to brush close to his eyes.

"You've put up with the stress remarkably."

"Adequately," he corrects. "Time still passes when you aren't here, Leah." It's the wrong thing to say, Macon knows, even before the syllables cut off his tongue. The subsequent stretching beats of silence confirm it. He's great at keeping Leah's eyes off his cards, but hells if he doesn't show his hand at the worst moment every time. Eventually, he looks away from the blank wall, towards her.

Leah regards him carefully. "You missed me?" she asks, and it'd be the perfect mix of humor and nonchalance if it weren't for the caution in her eyes, in the way her fingers press into the small wrinkles formed around his eyes.

There's nothing Macon can say to that question without opening up one can of worms or another, so he closes his eyes. Of course I did, you dolt, there's some sort of emotion in this mock-camaraderie. I wouldn't be here if I didn't care for the state of your being, let alone if you were still on this plane of existence. The words were simple enough; the implications were not.

And soon Leah's talking again, breath quick and light, babbling about how crooked the streets are or how she met a man who pronounced her name wrong, called her beautiful, and she made sure he knew she was more than that much, while Macon listens quietly as a subtle reminder—you're back, you're here, you're somewhat safe, don't stray for so long.

It's just past seven in the morning when Leah's words run out, sunlight streaming in through the thin curtains and prodding Macon slowly into reluctant awareness. The weight dipping the mattress beside him is an anchor, is a reason to sit up and press the heels of his hands against his eyes.

Sometime during the night, Leah changed into a flannel two sizes too large for her. She's awake, the trashy paperback crime thriller Macon picked up a couple days ago open in her lap next to his notebook. She hasn't slept—Macon would bet anything on that—and won't, probably, until they're back at Ravenwood that night, the familiar chaos of three children and an overgrown pup running amok giving her enough security to keep her eyes shut. He's sure he'll find her curled up in a bathtub tomorrow morning, a childhood habit she hasn't broken.

(Macon was able to admit a long time ago that nothing feels like home quite like any place where Leah, Lena, and him are together. It's going to take Leah a while to get to that point, he thinks, even if Leah keeps tabs on him when she's four thousand miles away.)

Macon leans against her lightly. "How long?" How long will you be gone this time? How long will it take you to remember you despise stability? How long until I'm not enough to drag you back? How long until we can act like you're happy to be back at Ravenwood?

Leah hums quietly. "After you take a shower?" Leah prompts, closing the book and raising an eyebrow at him.

"—she says, unaware that she's a hypocrite who smells like the inside of a gas tank."

Leah smacks him with the paperback, but she's grinning her half smile, and Macon convinces himself that's a victory. "To think you're supposed to be a gentleman."

"And you were supposed to be the charming, delicate flower."

"Well, neither of us quite lived up to expectations, did we?"

"Expectations are investments in disappointment, Leah," Macon allows, climbing out of bed and stretching his shoulder across his chest as he walks to the bathroom. He's not even sure there are towels for them both, but he can't find it in himself to care.

"No," says Leah, "to wish is to hope, and to hope is to expect," and then she laughs, chuckles, when Macon sends an astounded glance her way. "You're not the only one fond of classics, brother-mine."

Macon lets the sound of the water against battered tile devolve into white noise, stripping out of the few remaining articles of clothing he's got on as the mirror steams up.

"We could skip breakfast," comes Leah's voice, muted through the thin wall and the sound of the shower, but Macon can hear the cautious exhaustion in her voice. "We could just go straight home."

And Macon steps into the shower, water matting his hair down flat to his head and drilling a staccato massage into his shoulders. He thinks about Ravenwood, about the fork in the road, about the magnolia blooms, and about the three sets of eager eyes and one wagging tail waiting for them to walk through the front door.

Once the water runs clean and his dull headache dissipates, he steps out and dresses quickly. He turns the water off—Leah rarely figures out what knobs are what before dousing herself in frigid water and cursing wildly, he figures he deserves some sort of compensation for last night—and glances out the cracked door.

She's leaning back in the office chair the motel provided, precariously tilting towards the floor. Her hair is falling out of its braid—he can't deny his fingers itch to tug it into her trademark ponytail—and her eyes are closed, her chapped lips open slightly. "It's all a bit tragic, isn't it?" He blinks, bites his cheek. "I could live a hundred lifetimes in a hundred different worlds, in any version of reality, and I'd still end up here, chasing ghosts."

"As opposed to a life of bravery and sacrifice?" As opposed to a normal life where our mother didn't run away for fear of murder? As opposed to a life where storms were simply storms and sixteen was a chance to give freedom, not a fate?

"As opposed to a life of choosing paint colors and names." She sighs. "Don't let it end like this, hm? Rewrite the Ravenwood name, please." Then, the chair crashes to its natural position, she stands, meets his eyes in a sudden act of forced happiness. "We could skip breakfast," she repeats. He nods.

"We could," he says, eventually, once he's somewhat sure in the line of her mouth, in the form of her hands. Dimly, he notices her boots are half-tied on her feet; her cheeks are stained with blush. He notices she's lost the stiffness; the set of her shoulders is relaxed, comfortable, trusting. She fixes his collar with nimble fingers; the smell of gasoline makes his head spin again, but he buries the notion. "Let's go home."