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 Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:07 pm
By the time Talia got home, it was just Zac in the living room. She'd been across town when he texted her but she still made it back in record time. He hadn't called her; this wasn't something to talk about over the phone, and he couldn't trust himself not to be too loud about it anyway. If he'd been smarter about texting, he wouldn't have half-ranted updates to her, but she had the very basic idea even before she pulled into the driveway.
Maxim was anxious, pacing around the living room with Zac. His ears were low and his tail dragged on the ground. He kept bumping into Zac's leg, and more than once, Zac had to stop and pet the dog to reassure him. Probably, Maxim wanted to be in Julian's room, but the door was closed. Closed.
In all the time Julian had been here, Zac had never seen the door opened less than three inches, except in the rare situations where he might have been changing. The door was always open, or at least cracked.
Except for now.
It had been quiet. The television was either off or low, and the light was off.
If Julian wanted privacy, Zac could give it. For a little while, at least. He didn't really know what to do right now. He'd read the paper a dozen times, and was reading it over once more as he paced in a circle around the living room.
Every car that passed made him, and Maxim, look up. When it was actually Talia pulling in, Zac met her at the door.
He wasn't doing a great job hiding his emotions. Fury was etched into his features and his scowl had settled so deeply it looked as if he'd never known a smile. He tried to soften the anger in his face, but in doing so he failed to control the anger in his motions. The door twisted sharply and he yanked it open. It took a great deal of effort not to just shove the legal documents into Talia's hands and let her decipher it.
None of this was her fault, or his, or Julian's, even. He was just mad.
Zac forced himself to cool off enough to speak in a quiet, even tone.
"Julian's upstairs," he said, because he knew that would be her first question. He didn't tell her he was okay because it would have been a lie, anyway.
"His caseworker left about ten minutes ago. The cop was about half an hour. She's going to email me some information. She'll be back in two weeks and we can text her if we have any questions."
Of course, he had a lot of questions, but it was going to be hard to make sense of them beneath the string of profanity that threatened to spill out of his mouth every time he opened it.
"He's not in trouble. Legally. It's not something that's going to go on his record. It's just a 'no-contact' order," he said, nearly spitting out the words. He offered the papers to Talia, crumpled and creased from where he’d been gripping it too hard.
He doubted she could make anything more out of it than he could, not when the information was written in convoluted legal jargon, and only really outlined that he was not to attempt contact--in person, online, on the phone, or through writing.
Maxim pressed his face into Talia's hand. His ears stayed low, but his tail wagged hopefully behind him.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:08 pm
Talia was taking in breaths that were supposed to be deep. Steadying. They weren’t. She wasn’t quite hyperventilating, but she wasn’t calm either. Maxim was helping, to a point, and as she took the papers from Zac, she pressed her other hand against Maxim’s face, fingers gently rubbing the short hair around his nose.
“Not…in trouble legally...but he’s in trouble regardless? Zac, why were the police here to talk with him...like.”
She wasn’t sure what she was asking. What she was trying to ask but. Had she been the one to reach out? But then why would Zac be saying Julian wasn’t legally in trouble. A no contact order against his mother or against him?
Talia’s eyes drifted to the papers but the words were blurry, and they didn’t appear to be in English right now.
She kept her voice low, just in case Julian could somehow hear from his room. “I don’t understand.”
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:08 pm
“No, he’s not in trouble,” Zac said, and gestured to the page like it had any more answers than he did. “He’s just not supposed to contact her. And she’s not supposed to contact him.”
The silver lining, but it didn’t feel like much.
“The police didn’t talk with him, they just had a paper to sign. Just a receipt. It was like, five minutes. Terry was here for longer. She was blindsided too, I guess.”
Zac was vibrating with angry energy but he kept his voice low. Julian was two rooms away, minimum. He wouldn’t be able to hear from his bedroom in the attic. The garage was between them, too.
The room had even been soundproofed a bit, in case Julian wanted to play his violin! He knew Julian couldn’t hear!
It didn’t stop Zac from keeping himself quiet. That was maybe the only thing keeping his anger simmering instead of exploding.
“The whole system is ******** up, nobody talks to each other until something’s going wrong, apparently.”
Zac couldn’t pace as easily now that Talia was here and he wasn’t going to just stomp in circles around her. He stood still and crossed his arm over his chest, tapping his foot impatiently instead.
“Terry started asking questions when Julian started asking questions. She says the system’s swamped, things get lost. She’s his fourth caseworker. Some things got messy between her and the first.” It wasn’t an excuse. Zac was as mad at her as he was any of the others, even if he’d never met them.
“Julian didn’t know they terminated parental rights. He didn’t know those letters–the ones he writes every week?–weren’t being sent. She brought a whole stack of them back for him. I guess someone told him in the beginning that he could write and they’d be sent. They just forgot to tell him that they’d just been lying to get him to warm up to them. So they’ve had all of these in his file or something. I don’t know. I didn’t get to talk to him afterwards, he just signed the receipt and wanted to go up to his room. I talked with Terry some but she’s mixed up too.”
He sucked in a breath, sharp and angry. It burned on the way down. “I don’t know what to say. Have you ever talked to his guardian ad litem? I never met the guy–just some dickhead who gets to make legal decisions on his behalf, apparently without roping us in.”
Zac didn't even know his ******** name. ”There might have been a–” he made air quotes “–’breakdown of communication’. She’s going to get more info for us. But I guess the guy that handles legal stuff got the no-contact request, consented, and–I don’t know. Signed off on it without a hearing or anything. Maybe someone from his office was supposed to give us a heads up. She says their backlog is insane. She was upset. I probably didn’t help.”
He was still pissed, and didn’t know what to do with his arms. He rubbed his eyes with both hands but even that was too rough.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:09 pm
Talia was trying to follow everything Zac said, but her head was spinning and her heart was breaking. She wasn’t sure what she should, or could say, but one thing stuck out and she shook her head. “...I thought we were his guardians? I thought that Sol made that a thing, god Zac did I ******** up somehow? If I was this…If ******** moved away from Maxim and took hold of the papers in both hands, bringing them closer to her face as though that would solve the issue of her being unable to make out the words, but it didn’t. Time, and a less stressful environment would do that but…right now she didn’t have either of those.
“How could they do that? He…he loves his mother.” Her voice dropped to the quietest whisper that it could. “She doesn’t deserve it, but he does. And he was so excited when he found out she was getting out…I. How could they do this to him? What kind of people are they?”
But. To be fair, there must be a lot of situations. A lot of people like Julian in the world…still though. Kids like that needed more protection, and letting them fall through cracks this big…was utterly disgusting. “Zac…what do we do...”
Talia knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to fix this. To stop it from happening again. To make things better for Julian…to…do…something.
Cookies wouldn’t make this better.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:10 pm
Talia was pale. Her hands were trembling. She was crinkling the papers in the same way Zac had.
Anger was easy. He could be angry at the court, angry at the proceedings, the law, the people involved. He could channel that into something productive.
Talia–
Was blaming herself already.
He exhaled, and placed a hand on her shoulder, guiding her to the couch. He pushed her down onto it, not forcefully, but because he didn’t want her to start spiraling.
“You didn’t ******** anything up, Talia. This isn’t anything you did. Or didn’t do. We are his legal guardians. Every kid in the system has a third party legal representative. He made a call–a bad one–because he thought it was in Julian’s best interest. And–”
Zac almost sat down next to her, but he couldn’t. He paced the length of the coffee table, back and forth. Maxim jumped up on the couch next to her and pressed his nose into her shoulder.
“On paper, I get it. I get the ‘no-contact’. I get thinking it’s safer for him if they don’t talk. But this should have been against her, not him. Legally–there’s no difference. It’s a ‘no-contact’. It just means no contact.”
If he said it enough times, maybe it would sink in for him, too. His face was still red. He was still furious. He still wanted to go break something.
“He can’t get in trouble as long as he’s not trying to talk to her. Same for her. It’s just the court ‘setting boundaries’,” he parrotted, but rolled his eyes at the same time because it sounded as stupid when he said it as it had when Terry did. Julian wasn’t the sort to break rules. If someone had just told him to stop writing, he would have.
It didn’t have to get this far.
“The legal guy just looked at what was on paper and what was in his file. It doesn't matter what Julian wants, it matters what’s ‘best for him’. And the courts think,” he gestured vaguely. “This isn’t supposed to hurt him. It’s supposed to keep him safe.”
Of course, he was upstairs and hurting right now, so that was some sort of backwards ******** philosophy already.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:10 pm
“How…”
Talia drew in a breath. Two. Three.
“What…happened. Did Julian reach out, or was this from him asking Terry? Did Terry reach out? What caused the police to decide they needed to come out and scare our baby instead of just politely telling Terry? What is the point of that and how is it going to help anyone?”
Another breath. Two. Three. Four. Talia looked at Zac. “...Did that woman get some of his letters then? Is that how he–” She crushed the papers in her hand just a bit more as she curled her fingers into air quotes. “Broke this totally and completely obvious no contact order?”
The words in her mouth made her want to spit. They tasted foul. Horrible. Stupid. After a moment, her anger broke and she dropped the papers, reaching out and tugging on the hem of Zac’s shirt.
“...What do we do?”
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:10 pm
Zac was mid-step when he felt the tug on his shirt, so he took a step back and stood still so as not to break contact.
Honestly, he didn’t have an answer. He didn’t know what to do, outside of ‘take care of Julian’, the same as always.
“Let me slow down,” he said, grinding his teeth together. He didn’t want to give Talia half the information, or make her think this was–what, worse than it was? How did you decide how bad something was?
Trying to compile a straight-forward, productive summary of their conversation wasn’t easy. Zac had to speak slowly, and sometimes had long pauses while he decided what was important enough to say now and what could be saved for later.
“I don’t think his mother ever got any of his letters. Terry made it sound like none of them were ever sent. Somebody told Julian he could write, give his caseworker the letters, they’d be mailed. Somebody was supposed to tell him that the letters weren’t being sent, and he wasn’t going to be getting any. I don’t know who dropped that ball. But it hasn’t been a problem because the letters weren’t being sent. Terry never sent any, she was told to just keep them with the rest. Even if they were mailed, they’d have been screened out she says.”
He spoke slowly, with as much patience as he could muster, like he was trying to talk himself down, too. There were still parts that didn’t make sense to him, but Terry didn’t have all the answers, either.
“Now that his mother’s moving into her own place, nobody’s going to be watching her mail. The no-contact order is for now, not before. As long as Julian’s not trying to reach out to her, there’s no trouble. The cop didn’t come out here to scare anyone. He didn’t even want to be here, it was in and out. Literally just a signature saying Julian got the paperwork.”
It sounded so simple, so brief. Five minutes.
“Terry came out first so she could explain things. I guess while she was trying to get answers, she found some red flags, and she strung things together. Doesn’t sound like asking questions caused this problem, just helped find it before,” he gestured vaguely.
Because what was the alternative? Nobody had a heads up? The cop just dropped by, got a signature, and left–and then all they had was more questions?
No, to be fair to Terry, she tried. She made more of an effort than everyone else, it seemed. But Zac was still mad at her, and the rest of them. He had too much anger and nowhere to direct it, so someone had to take the blame.
It might as well be the broken, faceless system.
“So in terms of what we do--I don’t know, what do you want to do? Do you want to take it to court and contest it? Do you want to file complaints against the guardian ad litem? I don’t know what Julian wants. He’s–”
Zac glanced towards the garage door and then shook his head. His jaw was sore, and his face hurt. “I don’t think he’s going to want to deal with that stuff right now. He seemed like he just wanted some space. He was–”
Quiet. Agreeable. Shut-down. Small.
“He looked overwhelmed already. So I don’t know what he wants right now. His door’s closed, so I figured he just wanted some time alone. I didn’t want to push him.”
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:11 pm
“Julian won’t want to make waves. He’ll say he’s fine. That everything’s fine and will just…god Zac this is so ******** up…he was just…I’m not upset that she can’t contact him. That she can’t get him…take him away I just…how could things break down so badly…I don’t.”
Talia finally let go of Zac’s shirt and just fell backwards against the couch.
“I don’t know if we can do anything to fix this. All we can do is be there for Julian…which, obviously we were going to be. We love him…he’s my. He’s our…he’s ours...”
The papers were placed beside her on the couch and she ran a hand over her face. “I’m. Going back to school. Going to school. Going. ******** this. I’m not. How do I get into this profession. How do I stop this from happening again? How do I help my baby…”
It felt hopeless. Julian wouldn't ask for help. He would shy away from her. From them. But. Maybe not. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything right now. And it felt like such crap.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:11 pm
Zac had too much energy to let himself sit down, but as he resumed his pacing, he stayed close to Talia just in case. Maxim watched Zac warily, but he lowered himself to the couch so he could lay with his paws in Talia’s lap.
He opened his mouth to say something but his face scrunched up and he turned back to face her. “Are you being serious?”
It was one thing if she was just shooting the s**t, but he didn’t want to blow her off if she was setting a new life course. He was already distracted; he had a million things going on in his head right now, but all the gears grinded to a halt.
Talia didn’t sound like she was screwing around.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:12 pm
“Julian himself told me I could go back to school. Should find something I wanted to do…I. Yeah. I think I’m serious. This. Is something important. That could actually make a difference in the world.”
Maybe not the world but in the lives of kids like Julian. Kids who needed people that didn’t just…allow the cops to come to make sure they weren’t contacting their abusive parents. LIke it was their fault that everything happened and.
“Yeah no. <********> this. I knew that the system was bad but this…this is abuse from the people who are supposed to be keeping people safe it’s. So ******** up, Zac. Someone has to do something about it.”
And maybe she wouldn’t be able to do much but. ******** it.
“Do you think I could help? Do you think that’s something I could actually…do? Is this even. The ********, Zac…”
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:12 pm
Zac raised both hands to massage his eyes before rubbing his face roughly. He stood in place for a minute and drew in a long, slow breath.
He still hadn’t come down from before and the pressure of everything felt like pinpricks across every inch of skin.
When he finally stopped rubbing his face, his palms stayed pressed to his cheeks. He dug his fingers into his temples but it neither helped nor worsened his headache.
“Yeah,” he said after a minute. “Of course. I think that’s something you could do.” What he knew about the college application process was limited to Julian and Riker’s experience, and they were both still coming out of high school. It seemed like there might be a few more steps to take if you were going back a decade after you graduated.
Oh, and Talia had no high school transcripts, so she’d need a whole fresh start.
“Soleiyu can probably get you whatever you need.” Like a fake high school transcript. “A lot of scholarships are closing up by the end of March, so if you’re thinking about applying for any of that,” he shrugged. He had a thousand different things running in his mind at once so his brain kept hopping topics. It was hard to stay on track.
“Sorry–what exactly were you thinking about going to school for? I might need you to explain it to me once you’ve looked some of it up. I’m sure DCU has the courses you’ll need.” As long as she could get in before the seats filled up.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:13 pm
“I didn’t even think about transcripts…I’m sure Sol could figure that out and…scholarships…that’s a thing too, yeah…um.”
Talia seemed to deflate slightly, still excited. Not, excited but. Passionate. But.
“I guess…law? I would think it would be law, maybe? Or like. Extreme…child care? I don’t…I really don’t know it just…sounded better to me to plan something rather than just…agonize about what’s going on…I don’t know. It was…it felt like a good idea but I would need research…maybe it’s silly but…I want to be able to do something…”
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:13 pm
Zac was thinking about too much simultaneously and his mind felt like tectonic plates smashing into one another. He could feel the vibrations reverberate inside of him, an earthquake trapped under his skin. He nodded along with Talia, trying to keep himself tethered to one thought instead of the dozen warring in his head.
“Wanting to do something isn’t silly.”
He’d been gritting his teeth too hard; his jaw was sore and he could still feel a vein in his forehead, even though he was sure the threat of it popping was long past.
“I just don’t know much about it. It sounds like a good thing to research. You’ll have to tell me what you find out. ”
He massaged into his temples.
Evan was gone with Riker on his school trip, which meant someone had to make dinner or decide what to order for takeout. Zac had enough strangers at his house already today, and having something to do while he sorted out his thoughts was better than just slowing down and ruminating. He needed to figure out a plan, too.
“I’m going to get started on dinner,” he decided. There had to be some normalcy in this house. And they all needed to eat.
He didn’t really know what else to do, not when he was so frustrated that any minor inconvenience might set him off.
He knew his weaknesses, and he didn’t want to inflict that upon anyone else right now.
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Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2026 7:13 pm
Talia hummed softly, sitting back against the couch and going a bit boneless for a few moments. Finally though, after considering something, she stood up and reached out, taking hold of Zac’s hand and squeezing it gently. “...I love you. I think. We’ll figure this out. We’re Julian’s real family. His found family, and the family who loves him. I think. I hope this will all work out in the end.”
And if it didn’t? They would be there for Julian, they would love him, just like they had been doing. This wasn’t going to change anything involving how they felt for him. And that? That was some kind of a good thought to hold on to.
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