Robin Thorne confronts the man who should have been their father.
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the songs of the Nightingale are sadder than you know
June 2nd, 2024
Duluth, Minnesota
They didn't need to use thaumaturgy to track down Westbrook. Florence had already told them where to go.
Thorne had never been to Duluth, but they recognized the old pier immediately. Even after three decades and change, it remained nearly identical to the image of recorded memory that Florence had left in her journal. Only when they pressed a hand to the gem and called up the memory for a direct comparison did the differences become apparent — there was more rust and grime, the smells of industry had faded, and a creeping sense of decay now loomed over the waterfront. Duluth hadn't yet gone the way of Detroit, but it was on that path. In the end, entropy would claim its toll from the town, as it had done for the rest of America's industrial heartland.
They found Westbrook at the end of the pier, exactly where he had been in Florence's memory. It was clear as they approached that, unlike the rest of the memory, he hadn't been able to evade the rigors of time. His once-blond hair had faded to gray, and his face was worn with weariness and age. He seemed thinner too, no longer lanky but now lean and gaunt, like a starving buzzard. There was an eerie stillness about him, as if he had surrendered to death long ago and was merely waiting for it to notice. Looking at him, Thorne almost felt pity for the broken man before them.
Keeping a hand on their mother's necklace, they thought about Westbrook. The spells laid into the gem were idiosyncratic in the extreme — reflecting Florence's largely self-taught understanding of occult theory — and they hadn't fully mastered them yet, but whatever magic powered the journal was able to recognize the nature of their query. From the response, it was clearly a long-anticipated question.
Cody Westbrook is the most deceitful, manipulative human being I have ever known. Florence's voice sounded in their mind, full of a venom that Thorne had never heard from her in life. From the very first moment I met him, everything he did and said, every facet of his personality that he presented to me, was carefully crafted to deceive. He is such a skillful liar that he even managed to make himself believe he loved me. I hope that you will never meet him, but if you do, trust nothing he says or does. He is not your father, and you owe him nothing.
That banished any hint of sympathy they might have felt. Drawing on the memory of their mother's anger to steel themself, they stepped forward into Westbrook's peripheral vision.
"Director Westbrook?"
"Unfortunately." He turned to look at them. His eyes were like dry wells — deep and dark and empty and haunted by the ghost of better years — but a spark of cunning intellect flared within them as he studied Thorne. He had fallen far, but this man had once been the rising star of the Foundation, the young task force commander already on the fast track for a Directorship. He had been fearless, brilliant, charming, and above all else cool.
Now, he was just one of those things. And the world had enough of his kind of brilliance, so it had set him aside.
The moment of recognition was obvious and almost immediate. "This was her favorite spot on the lake, you know." He put so much emotion behind the pronoun 'her' — so much pain and longing and regret — that it needed no antecedent. "We used to come here on shore leave, to talk or just to watch the ships. She would—"
"Don't." Thorne cut him off. "Just don't. You're not my father, you're not going to win any brownie points with me by reminiscing about my mother. I mean, I knew her a hell of a lot longer than you did — she was with the Foundation for, what, barely five years? You can't tell me anything I don't already know."
The barest hint of a smile crept onto his face. "Oh, I very much doubt that. She never told you about me, did she?"
That was true, and it was one of the first things Thorne had tried to find an answer for within the gem of memories. At first, it had been for safety — knowing anything about their father could have put both Robin and Florence in jeopardy. But Florence had kept his identity hidden long past that point, and there had been no pure or altruistic motive for it.
It had been to hurt him.
"She never told you about me either, and I think that says a lot more about you than it does about me," Thorne countered, delivering the hurt just as intended. At a different time, in a different place, in a different circumstance, they might have done something different — might have refused to be their mother's instrument, might have offered Westbrook an olive branch, might have tried to have some kind of relationship with the man who could have been their father if he had only made a better choice.
But it was this time, in this place, in this circumstance. So Thorne continued, "I have her journal, I know exactly what she thought of you, and I know better than to trust you."
"Is that so?" He raised an eyebrow, trying to appear unfazed. "Why are you here then? Just to torment an old man with the price of his mistakes? To show me just how much I lost? Some final act of misguided revenge on her behalf?"
All of those had been among Florence's reasons, and Thorne didn't disagree with them. But there was something much more important than revenge.
Justice.
They looked him dead in the eyes. "Did you kill her?"
He recoiled. "What?"
They grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him closer. "Look at me when I'm speaking to you. Did you kill her? Did you order her death?"
"How could— no, of course not! How could you even ask that?"
"Because she thought you did!"
Westbrook gasped. It was an anguished death rattle, totally inappropriate from a still-living throat. He sounded like a ruptured balloon. He sounded like a deflating airbag. He sounded like he had just been punched in the chest.
"I didn't give the order," Cody Westbrook said truthfully. It might have been the first true thing he had said in thirty-four years.
Then, after a few more shaky breaths, he did it again. "But I know who did."
Thorne inhaled. This was what they had been working towards since Spencer had given them the oneirograph.
They leaned in. "Tell me."
"It was the Overseers." Westbrook sighed, finally unburdened by the secret he had carried for sixteen years. "I don't know which ones, but they had a full vote of the Council. It was an official operation."
Thorne released their grip on his collar. It was exactly what they had expected, and the last thing they had wanted to hear. Maybe that was part of why they had come to Westbrook — in the hopes that he would tell one more lie.
"How do you know?" They asked. The question was curt, perfunctory, more the result of their interrogation instincts taking over automatically than anything.
"Corwin told me, after the vote."
Thorne let their thumb brush against the edge of the sunstone, receiving an answer without any question. "Director Corwin? From Site-64?"
Westbrook nodded. "Yes, but he wasn't a Site Director anymore. This was when he was O5-7."
Thorne didn't know what to say. The identities of the Overseers were the Foundation's most closely guarded secret. There were many organizations, including the UIU, which maintained a standing bounty for any information that would lead to the identity of even one Overseer. Having it confirmed, and so easily, was an unexpected coup — one that they were entirely unable to celebrate, considering the circumstances.
Finally, they asked, "Where is he?"
Westbrook shook his head. "You're too late. He died years ago. I have no idea who replaced him."
Thorne couldn't be disappointed. It was just too predictable.
"I'm sorry," Westbrook said. "I wish there was more I could do. I couldn't stop them."
Thorne clenched their fists. They took a few breaths. They exhaled and relaxed. There was nothing that could be done now. It had simply been too long. The universal statute of limitations had lapsed.
"I loved her," he said.
They stared off into the distance as they nodded slowly, then removed the necklace and offered it to Westbrook. "Here. She would have wanted you to have this."
A flash of gratitude sparked in his eyes as he looked at them in surprise. Smiling broadly in the first true sign of happiness that they'd seen from him, he reached out to take the gem from their outstretched hand.
They punched him in the gut.
The blow caught him completely off guard, knocking the wind from his lungs and sending him stumbling backwards. He doubled over in pain, unable to do anything but gasp for air.
"How dare you," Thorne said, eyes blazing with fury as they loomed over him. "How dare you call yourself my father. How dare you say you loved her. How dare you consider yourself the victim here, after everything you did. You have no idea how much you hurt her, how much pain you caused her. But you will."
Grabbing his wrist, they pressed the gem into the palm of his hand. As they did so, they reached deep into the matrix of the spell and called forth the memories buried there — some of the earliest memories recorded in it, from the exact moment when, thirty-four years ago on this very same pier, Westbrook had destroyed Florence's life with the revelation of his treachery. They called up all the pain, the rage, the despair, and the hatred that Florence had felt in that moment, and in all the moments since then whenever she had thought of Westbrook. Then, using that unbreakable link that was the terrible evidence of their parentage, Thorne forced him to experience all of it.
He opened his mouth to scream, but there was only enough air in his lungs for him to choke out a whimper. What they were doing was dangerous — as the target of most of the emotions that he was now receiving, experiencing them like this could shatter his psyche and destroy his sense of self — but Thorne didn't care. They were getting all of those emotions too, and right now they were gripped by a ferocious hatred of Westbrook — a hatred that Florence had concealed from them, even as she had nurtured it over the years.
Thorne had come to the pier fully prepared to kill the man who should have been their father. But now they realized that was too good for him.
"There was nothing you could do?" They demanded. "Nothing? You knew it was going to happen, and you couldn't do anything? Do you really believe that? Do you have a single ounce of shame in your worthless excuse for a soul?"
He didn't even notice as they took the necklace from his unresistant fingers and slipped it back over their neck. They gave him one last contemptuous look before turning to go.
"So glad we had this talk, dad. Enjoy the rest of your life, because you're going to die alone."
Robin Thorne stalked away down the pier without looking back, leaving the man who had never been their father crying and shivering in the cold.
do not cry for the Nightingale. he is a motherfucker
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