Title: Terminus

Author: Lady Altair

Rating: PG/K

Author's Notes: Why hello those of you who remember me! Yes, I am still alive, and still writing! :) In exciting news, I'm moving back to England come January, which may (hopefully) dredge up some inspiration. Anyway, Hestia's been sticking in my mind lately - I think law school is making me empathize with her. I'm working on a longer collection of Hestia vignettes which will probably be the next post, if things keep up. This was actually originally intended to be the end of it, but it didn't fit with the theme and I liked it too much to do the complete overhaul necessary and tack it onto the end. Anyway, best way to inspire me? Review! That's honestly what made me blow off studying income tax and polish this - Cauterize got recced or added to some list or C2, presumably, because my inbox flooded with new reviews and I can honestly say it was the only reason I opened up Word and got to work. :) So if any new readers are on board, welcome! :)

Summary: The fall has come to a sudden end.

For weeks after, months after Caradoc disappeared, Hestia had craved proof. Proof of life, of death, of something to end the waiting that seemed to fray her very soul. Every sound from the fireplace stilled her heart, knocks on the door sent her scrambling to answer it. There was, for a very long time, hope. And it was cruel. She'd hated that hope, hated the elation that had risen up in her throat, a silent desperate plea that Caradoc would come stumbling out of the fire with some tale of high adventure and escape, or he'd just walk in the door like he'd never gone, throw his coat on the rack and rumble the house calling for her, calling for his hummingbird. She's lived with echoes of that hope for nearly twenty years – still her heart flutters at an unexpected knock, hope against hope that he'll somehow be standing there, aged as she is but alive and home. There's not the expectation anymore, though, and when she opens the door to the un-extraordinary, her heart doesn't shatter all over again.

Still though – Hestia envied those without hope. It was hope that she woke from in the middle of the night when Megan cried, maliciously vivid dreams pulled away to a reality so much crueler than any nightmare. She'd envied them, those with a grave to mourn at, with certainty. She never realized what hopelessness felt like. It's the difference between free fall and lying on the ground in a hundred broken pieces when that fall has come to a sudden end. Hestia's been in free fall for eighteen years.

She hits the ground when she sees Megan, sees her daughter, Caradoc's daughter, splayed and glassy-eyed on the floor of a classroom. Her whole body wavers, her head feels too heavy and tips back as though she's going to faint, but there's no such relief, no blessed unconsciousness to blind her to this. Blood rushes back and the image is stamped inside her eyelids, burning against the black when she closes her eyes.

Her daughter, his daughter, their daughter is dead. She'll never wonder if the knock on the door, the whoosh of the floo, that figure in Diagon is Megan, because all her life Hestia will carry this picture in her head, of her precious daughter, lifeless on the floor, forever eighteen and the image of the father she never knew. And Caradoc is gone all over again. Her only proof of him, the only piece left to her has finally been taken.

Even as she plasters herself against the wall of the classroom, shock stiffening every muscle in her body until her jaw, her chest, and her throat are all so tight she can barely force a breath, she already misses that hope.