blades before babes

Magnus hasn't told any of his numerous fathers his plan because he knows they'd put the kibosh on it immediately. Sunny knows, because he's doing it for her. Alex knows, because he's definitely going to be passing out in front of him. Galahad knows, because Magnus likes to keep him in the loop, and because Galahad needs to explain things to SecUnit if SecUnit notices and gets worried. (SecUnit doesn't know, up front, even though Magnus promised to tell it about dangerous activities, for essentially the same reasons he's not telling his dads.)

He takes Sunny flying around on Jack after lunch and then, when he returns Sunny to their dads, sends Jack racing around the entire diameter of their whole world a couple of times while he wrestles with Alex (in varying animal forms) and then wrestles with Alex (in an entirely different and human way). And then he spends about half an hour meditating on Sunny's siblings, and when he's so tired that he can barely keep his eyes open, he calls Jack back and returns him to pendant form, thinking Violet and Klaus. Violet and Klaus the entire time.

He can feel Alex catching his collapsing body, and then everything goes dark.

First, his dreams show him Blitzen and Samirah in the dressing room at Blitzen's Best. Sam is being fitted into her wedding dress; Blitzen has pliers out and is adjusting the chain mail lace detail at the edge of her hijab. Magnus takes a very careful mental snapshot of that so he can describe it to Alex later.

Next, his dreams show him Annabeth, chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen in one of her graduate classes. He can make out a slide about tensile strength of... something or another; in the corner of her notes, she's doodling blueprints for what looks like a truly awesome tree house.

Violet and Klaus, he thinks sternly. His dream slides past Hearthstone and TJ at the Chase Space helping some kid in the kitchen, past Mallory and Halfborn on what seems to be a date in Jotunheim, past Freya scratching the scruff of one of her cats...

...and then it slots into a scene he doesn't recognize.

Outside of a rather large hotel stand three figures. Two of them are Violet and Klaus Baudelaire, who Magnus will undoubtedly recognize, but the third is an unknown man wearing a suit with the word ‘MANAGER’ embroidered over the pocket of the jacket. A taxi pulls up, and two adults step out.

“Justice Strauss!” Violet calls at the same time that Klaus says, “Jerome Squalor!”

“I’m so happy to find you, I was afraid I’d never see you again,” Justice Strauss says as she hugs the two Baudelaires in turn. “I’ll never forgive myself for letting that idiotic banker take you away from me.”

“And I’ll never forgive myself for walking away from you children,” Jerome says, wrapping the two Baudelaires up in one singular large bear hug. “I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good guardian. As soon as I heard all about what happened to poor Sunny – Well. I began my own Baudelaire research.”

Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor explain to Violet and Klaus how they both were researching everything that had happened to the Baudelaires, both before and after Sunny mysteriously vanished. How they ended up learning about a secret organization known as V.F.D., and that volunteers from that organization had been leaving both of them letters and notes.

“Wherever I looked for you, Baudelaires, and wherever I looked for Sunny, I found selfish plots to steal your fortune. I read books on injustice in all the libraries you left behind and eventually wrote a book myself. Odious Lusting After Finance chronicles the history of greedy villains, treacherous girlfriends, bungling bankers, and all the other people responsible for injustice.”

“No matter what we do, however, we can’t erase the wrongs we did you, Baudelaires,” Justice Strauss says, regret evident in her voice.

“She’s right. We should have been as noble as you are.”

“You’re noble enough,” Violet tells them as Klaus nods in agreement, and all four hug again.

The four, as well as the man wearing the MANAGER jacket, talk more, about V.F.D, something about a sugar bowl, about how Count Olaf has something called the Medusoid Mycelium, but most notably, they talk about how the next morning Count Olaf and his associates are going to stand trial, that Jerome and Justice Strauss and other members of the mysterious organization have compiled evidence against him, and how hopefully all of the Baudelaire orphans’ worries will be over.

“You’ll never have to hide from Olaf again, or worry that anyone will steal your fortune,” Jerome tells them, and they hug once more as a large clock in the top of the hotel chimes out.

The world starts to go dark around Magnus's field of vision.

No, no, he insists. I need to see more—

But the world is fading around the edges. Magnus gets a good look at Violet and Klaus's faces — they're healthy, though they look worried — and then all he sees is a regular dream about Drosera wearing a judge wig that looks kind of like the one Justice Strauss sometimes puts on and acting as arbiter of animal justice among the deer and squirrels and occasional goats of this world.

When he wakes up, he's worn out. He kisses Alex good morning (...well. Good evening) and says, with a great deal of relief and a small amount of consternation, "It worked... but I don't really understand what I saw."

Then he kisses Alex some more, and after a good few moments of getting carried tiredly away, says, "We should probably eat dinner at the cottage tonight. I have a lot to talk to Sunny about."

Right! Okay. So the thing is that Magnus has a father (Frey), and he also has a father (Sagramore), and he also has a father figure (Hanguang-jun), and one of his fathers (Sagramore) has a husband (Laertes) who apparently wants to be a father, too, even though he brother-coded himself in the past???

(Alex teases Magnus sometimes for the full-on Father Web he's creating on one of the pages in his sketchbook back at camp. He's using red ink to draw out the lines, for the verisimilitude.)

He's sought insight from Father Figure Hanguang-jun and Father Haver Sunny Baudelaire. He's sought insight from Father Hater Alex Fierro. He hasn't sought insight from Original Father Frey, because that seemed like the wrong vibe for Frey's short little visit -- better not mention any dads at all, really -- but Adoptive Father Sagramore did have a few things to say, here and there.

It's time to go straight to the source! Luckily Laertes is a guy with a lot of interests, so Magnus has an easy list of places to look for him. Magnus tracks him down at the easiest one (read: returns Sunny to her house for lunch), and after he helps himself to some of the meal, too, he turns to Laertes and says, "Hey. Can we, like, go for a walk?"

Magnus has a huge agenda planned for his Magnus-and-Sunny time today. Not riding Drosera, sadly, but he thinks probably the dads should be there at least at the beginning. And maybe Galahad too, since they found it for her together, even though that's maybe a little awkward, socially. But there's plenty of other big plans!

After lunch (with Sagramore and Laertes, too, of course), he takes Sunny exploring in some new rooms he and Galahad recently discovered in the basement, because they're (literally, temperature-wise) cool and he's noticed she can get overheated on hotter summer days. Then, he takes her deep into the woods to show her the secret garden he and Claudius have almost finished from Hanguang-jun, since she's great at keeping secrets and has unparalleled excellence of opinion. Finally, and with her consent, he puts her in a baby-backpack he found, and starts climbing the tallest tree in the entire forest, as high up as he can trust will hold them both. It's no Yggdrasil, but it is tall enough that they can look out over the tops of a lot of the other trees and see pretty much their entire world - the lake and her house stretching out to the left, the leaf-obscured path to his and Alex's camp in front of them, and the shining endless sea to the right.

"The deal is either I hold you or you're attached to the branch with a harness," Magnus warns, once he gets a sense of just how far down the ground is. "Just to be safe. Or else we climb down halfway. Okay?"

After everything is over -- Aornis's death and funeral, the final preparation for and delivery of the wedding, and 90% of Magnus's task list for the week (checking to make sure the plant bodies are unaffected by any potential Aornis-ghost and still growing normally, getting Sunny formally adopted by her new dads, showing up bright and early in the morning to steal breakfast and establish that just because they're officially her dads doesn't mean he's going to stop being her brother, talking through the Charlie stuff with Tress, spending time in Uncle D's garden just feeling the sun soak into his skin, some cathartic cliff-jumps with Alex and Gu Xiang, trying to teach Drosera to fly before giving up and asking Alex to tag in, staring into the middle distance worrying that his and Galahad's relationship might change now that Galahad is married, and hardcore early-summer kitchen gardening) -- Magnus takes a deep breath. It's time.

He finishes up in the garden, loading up all the fresh ripe produce into a basket. Then he swings by the stable, where he tells Lancelot that he might not make it to practice that afternoon because he needs to tell Hanguang-jun about what they've been doing.

Then he squares his shoulders and goes to find Hanguang-jun in his favorite kitchen, cooking for his husband.

"Brought you some veggies," Magnus says, putting the basket on the counter.

Magnus is a man on a mission. Actually, he's a man on several missions, but now that he's successfully pulled off the bachelorette part of Galahad's wedding, this one stands out as of particular import. As such, he has a pad of construction paper chock-full of notes tucked in his backpack and he's swinging briefly into every room he passes, on the lookout for Grantaire.

Magnus, to his own shock and disgruntlement, is searching for not the top worst guy here. (Also shocking and disgruntling: the realization that Lancelot is actually kind of okay? Apollo is for sure way worse.)

He has his backpack on his back, with a few nonstandard items in it. Alex is busy throwing pots, Angus has Drosera, and Galahad is probably off with Hanguang-jun somewhere (but Magnus isn't jealous about that even a little bit at all). It's perfect. They're all going to be busy for hours, so Magnus can set his latest plan in motion.

He finds Lancelot by the stables. Being a respectful son of Frey, who (among other thing) is god of horses, Magnus takes a moment to catch up with Fenyes -- ask her how the pregnancy is going, if she needs anything -- and Rivelin, while Lancelot is actively tending to him. It's totally not rude to talk to the horses before the human. Totally.

Then, he leans against the wall and gives Lancelot a nod. "Hey. Dickface. You busy?"

Spring is definitely still a couple weeks away, but Magnus can feel it approaching. The snow is getting softer, melting down into mush; bizarrely, he can start to sense that plants and animals are quivering to grow.

Emboldened by the promise of an end to winter, and still on a kick of wanting to be helpful to people, Magnus decides to make preparations. To that end, he selects a particular book from the library, has Alex and Galahad help him hunt down some toolsets, and goes to the third shed behind the orchards. There, he drags out a couple of the busted-up bicycles he and Galahad found in there the day they found Drosera and sets to work trying to fix them up enough that people can ride them.

Dro is with him. She's incredibly helpful (read: trying to hide the tools in the same way she likes hiding all of Galahad's charcoals), and Magnus ends up opening the door the the first shed, too, so she can explore where she came from. She's inside, screeching about how she can't fit inside the old doghouse anymore, while Magnus takes a break to eat a sandwich and watch the clouds. He's about to go talk to her when he spots Hanguang-jun flying on his sword, and waves.

Look, okay. Magnus isn't trying to meddle, precisely. He's not really interested in meddling with his friends' relationships -- unless doing so involves confronting a father and/or god. Or god-father (literal). But he's a little worn out from growing produce all day for a week and a half straight, and he likes being Productive Member of Mansion Society Guy, and he likes talking to people and making fatherish figures Jack happy.

He doesn't actually know much of anything about Asmodean besides the facts that he plays a bunch of instruments and Sagramore loves him, and he's not, like, trying to be direct about anything -- such as by asking someone about Asmodean's schedule or the location of his room -- but surely if he wanders enough halls of the Mansion (but not that one, of course), he'll run into him eventually?

Galahad probably didn't expect Magnus to come pounding on his door in the middle of the day when they agreed Magnus would try sleeping on his own, especially since Magnus decided pretty quickly that he wanted to sleep outside again (but on purpose because he prefers it, not because it feels like the only option that doesn't end with the walls closing in on him). But here Magnus is, anyway, in the middle of the day, knocking loud enough that he has to force himself to take a step back so he doesn't break the door down.

"Dude, it's me, I need you," he calls, just so Galahad knows for sure it's him, or whatever. "You're in there, right? Galahad?"

Magnus wakes up, normal again except for how he's in an unfamiliar room. Not Galahad's old room, either. A nondescript one that, as far as he can tell, just has a bunch of clothes and stuff. Also he's wearing silky pajamas he'd never pick out automatically on his own?

It doesn't take long for him to feel like the walls are closing in on him. It's out of respect for Aornis that he stumbles out of her room through the door (barefoot and in the silky pajamas) and goes outside the normal way. Once outside, he flops into the snow, calling summer and feeling the way the snow steams against his skin as it melts.

He's not feeling totally regular again when he sits bolt upright, remembering that Drosera is probably in Galahad's old room with two people that aren't Magnus or Galahad. Existential crisis over, there's a child to retrieve! And hopefully, he'll run into Galahad in the halls.