Chapter Text
Solomon had never been a very adventurous boy. He’d grown up in Louisiana, bouncing between the outskirts of Hammond and the heart of Honey Island while under the care of his mother and close family-friend, Lancaster. What little he remembered of his childhood was kept straight under the might of his mother’s wooden spoon and Lancasters’ educational study programs. It wasn’t much, but it was so much more than what the other kids in his neighborhood received. Besides, it kept him out of trouble.
It also helped kick-start his passion for the sciences. The non-environmental side of science. Actual, real science that extended past things like soil quality and erosion. Solomon found that he enjoyed working with his hands. Enjoyed being elbow deep in wire coil and blistering circuitry. The satisfaction of a machine humming to life beneath his fingertips. Solomon still thought fondly of his first computer. It had been built from a kit. That computer had also provided him with an escape.
Despite his own mother’s belief in the supernatural, and Lancaster’s study of cryptid biology, he’d simply never taken to the flare of his ‘magical’ state. Solomon held no interest in the occult. His mother found it horribly ironic. It had been a spot of contention between the both of them for the longest. Solomon was more than aware that his home state was considered a supernatural hotspot. He’d just never fed into the gimmicky attractions that lined the more prominent buildings around New Orleans. Most of what was advertised was simple tourism. Nothing more, nothing less. It was all a quick cash grab.
Perhaps that was why he struggled to open himself up to what was beyond the boundaries of accepted science. Cryptids themselves rode that precarious line. They were creatures that shouldn’t—couldn’t—exist but did anyway. Even then, they could be explained in a way that made sense. It was all about biology, natural selection, mutations in breeding. Perfectly understandable, logical things.
And then he met Drew Blackwell. They’d met sometime in their sophomore year of college. At the time, he’d thought she was incorrigible. He could say that with sincerity as she had sat next to him for the entire semester that they’d taken that one off elective about the Southern Mesopotamia.
Drew was eccentric, to put it plainly.
Solomon had assumed her constant tardiness stemmed from some lackadaisical attitude towards education. He had never seen her with any supplies except for a blue pen, which stayed tucked behind her ear. If she bothered to write notes on any given day they’d appear on her forearms or on a crumpled receipt she’d pull out of her jean pockets.
He couldn’t decide if it was cute or careless.
Solomon might have extended the olive branch by offering a spare sheet of looseleaf, but Drew was the one to nurture their relationship into something greater. It was overwhelming. She came and went like a whirlwind. Nothing could keep her captivated for long.
Drew was larger than life.
And yet, she chose him.
She chose Solomon Saturday. An African American with an accent strong enough to make even the most accepting of people give him a wide berth. Drew looked at him and saw past his quiet, stoic attitude and decided he was worth her while. She was one of the few that were interested in him for something other than the thrill of pissing off her relatives. Or his deep pockets—not that she had been aware of the sizable trust fund he’d come to inherit. No, it was his ‘big brain’ that she fell in love with. And his kindness. Mostly his kindness. Or so she said. He didn’t think he was very kind before Drew entered his life.
She made him want to be, though.
In a world where everything was cut-and-dry, she made him want to step outside of the cookie-cutter life he’d decided for himself. It terrified him. He was in-line to graduate as valedictorian. He planned to return home with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. A minor in biology.
Solomon threw it all away in a heartbeat.
Oh, he still got that degree. With a fiancée attached. He never did return home, though.
After Drew, he knew Louisiana would never satisfy him the way it did when he left. Maybe they could have made a life there. It would have been an easy one. A lifetime with minimal strife or hardship. Drew wouldn’t have complained. She wouldn’t have been truly happy though. Louisiana wasn’t magical. It was stifling and afraid of change. The people moved too sluggishly to keep Drew content. People didn’t go to Louisiana to make a life—they went to drink themselves to death and settle unknown into the countryside.
And, well, Solomon wanted to live. He wanted to see everything with Drew. The mountains she grew up in; the rolling dunes of the Sahara; the lush jungles of the South American continent. He wanted to experience the world. More than that, Solomon wanted to be a part of the one she lived in. He wanted to find out for himself just what Drew saw in the crumbling ruins of the past civilizations she’d doodled in the margins of her borrowed notebook papers.
He pictured a life of adventure. Nothing less would suit her. When he proposed—midnight exhaustion, finals, Chinese take-away—he imagined a life of challenge. A push and pull between the two of them as they found the middle ground of their beliefs. An intellectual who not only matched his own wit but could leave him baffled by the extent of her own. Nothing about what they had could be described as easy. He loved her for it. Each sunrise led them to something new.
Fresh from college and recently eloped. Nothing but the future ahead of them. It felt too easy. Fun. A taste of eternity with his wife. With someone who was a little bit of the both them.
Looking back on it all left a sour taste in his mouth.
He had grown lax. Complacent. Drew had overwhelmed him completely. Entirely seduced him into a state of arrogance. With her by his side he felt invincible. It felt like they had never left behind that honeymoon stage in their relationship. Like they were still that lonely boy and larger than life girl sharing a summer elective.
Their son—their pride and joy— paid the price for it. Their tiny little boy that took the best from them and hid the worst. A boy that tried to walk in shoes far too big for his feet. Solomon was just the good-for-nothing father that let him. He thought that he could protect his boy. He should have known better.
The world was too wide for that.
Zak took after his mother in the worst ways. If she was a tempest, then her son would be a forest fire. A great, roaring fire. He was insatiable. Reckless. Energy personified. Nothing would have stopped him. He grew bright and strong until he, too, felt larger than life. Impossible to contain. Solomon couldn’t bear to lock him away. He’d never been able to say no to Zak. He had no reason to.
Solomon and Drew had the world. When they gave it to their son, it swallowed him whole. It was inevitable. Too much too soon.
Solomon charged the defibrillator.
Zak’s heartbeat had been a miniscule, fluttering thing when they pulled him from the depths of the Weird World rubble. Solomon thought it would have stopped altogether during the frantic scramble back to the airship. And yet, Zak persevered. His grip on life was a stubborn, tenuous thing.
There wasn’t room for error.
“Clear.”
Solomon charged the defibrillator, again.
They’d survived the impossible before. They could do it again. Solomon just had to hold out for one more miracle.
It was funny how far he’d come. Believing in miracles.
There was a time when he wouldn’t have held his breath waiting for a miracle.
“Clear.” He recharged the defibrillator.
Now it was all he could do.
Solomon’s hands shook as he lowered the defibrillator again.
The sharp shock of electricity echoed in the silence of the infirmary. He couldn’t keep going. It wasn’t working. The heartrate monitor didn’t display any promising signs of recovery. In fact, the graph had gone eerily still. The last non-aided, irregular pulse had died down mere seconds before Solomon had delivered the final shock. Even so, he couldn’t force his hands to detangle from the machine. Surely, if he just tried one more time—.
His eyes burned.
Solomon couldn’t hesitate. He needed to continue administering treatment. Luck had always been on their side. It couldn’t ignore them now when they needed it the most. That wasn’t fair. Zak had done nothing to earn an early grave. He was a good boy. Gentle and kind in the way Drew thought Solomon could be. No one, not monsters, thugs, or scientists could say otherwise. Not when his son looked at their wrongly directed anger and fear and blamed himself.
That was what made Solomon’s blood boil the most.
Somewhere along the line their closest friends had become the greatest threat to his son. Their peers had taken one look at the boy they’d known since infancy and thought he was capable of world-wide warfare. They had ignored nearly two decades worth of trust and association over a myth generated hundreds of years ago. A myth that Drew and Solomon had propagated themselves.
A decade of searching for Kur. A year of denying that they ever existed. A day to kill them.
‘Kur’ was twelve when he died.
Awfully young for a legend.
Solomon inhaled.
Funny how fast twelve years seemed to fly by. Solomon wondered why he didn’t cherish the time when he’d had it. He’d become so accustomed to Zak being around that he’d never imagined a time without him. Zak was a known, safe constant. An extroverted soul that warmed what was left of Solomon’s social reluctance. Certainly, he could always depend on Zak to be running amuck underfoot. Didn’t matter if it was by handing him tools in the lab or assisting in cryptid rehabilitation halfway across the equator. He could never understand how much goodness could fit into someone so small.
Small.
Zak had been so small when Solomon first held him. His barely developed lungs had more than overcompensated for the fragile form Solomon got to cradle in his palms. Those first wails had struck a chord in him that had never been replicated. His heart ached from the sheer amount of love he held for the child he created. And then—and then, those little squinted eyes looked at him like Solomon was something great. Like he was the center of the universe and the stars and everything that reached beyond what his brain was capable of comprehending. That’s when Solomon knew that he’d never be the same. He could tell that even from such a young age his Zak would be something special. A bravehearted and surefooted boy. Solomon’s greatest achievement.
He had been so sure that Zak would grow into something great. Extraordinary. 
Zak would never get that chance, now.
His hold on the defibrillator faltered. The device clattered against the cool tile beneath his feet. Solomon didn’t hear when it shattered. It was hard to hear anything over the rush of blood in his ears. Or the shrill scream of the machine connected to his son. Then again, it wasn’t the only thing screaming.
Solomon felt tired as he glanced back at his wife. She was half curled against her brother. Her face completely hidden away in his tangled hair. Drew couldn’t have been closer to him if she tried. Doyle didn’t seem to mind it. Then again, Doyle didn’t seem entirely present, either. His hands were loosely placed around her back and hip. His arms twitched and flexed but his face remained stiff. Solomon wondered where he tried to escape to. Something close to pity bloomed in Solomon’s chest. Grief had almost made Doyle look young.
The eerie screech generated from the heart monitor flatlining continued. No one wanted to unplug the machine. Solomon dug his fingers into the bridge of his nose. The room was captured in limbo. There were no words exchanged.
Solomon glanced at the clock.
Time of death— 9:45 p.m.
Just a little after bedtime. Wasn’t that something?
He pressed the palm of his hand into his lame eye. Solomon pretended that he wasn’t on the verge of tears. How was he supposed to move on from a grief so fresh, so all-encompassing it felt like he died too?
His son was dead at twelve years old.
Zakariah Saturday died at 9:45 on a Thursday night and Solomon would never recover from it.