Chapter Text
If Sunday had gone any differently, learning more about Snow would have been the last thing I’d have any interest in. In a normal, sane situation, there was a long list of things I would have preferred before stooping to that.
Like, drain a merwolf. Fight a swarm of flibberty-gibbets. Even clean Snow’s crumb strewn side of the room, sans-magick, Merlin protect us.
I knew enough about Simon Snow as it was- I’d never had a choice in the matter. If I had, you could trust I would’ve done what I could to drain those magic-damned details out of my brain.
So it was that, more even than than the restraints on that’d been on my wrist, or the way the dark had adjusted in my eyes like I’d been born to it, that really proved what dire straits I was in. The nail in the coffin, I suppose.
To be clear, this was not a choice made because I liked it. There just wasn’t much to do, and I can only endure so much at a time. Being kidnapped is the kind of thing that seems exciting when you talk about it. (Well, for some people. Usually those hoping to play the hero). I have a better idea of it than most, and at the very least, I would’ve expected a devastating fight, the kind that either would have paved the way to a daring escape or given me some excuse not to make one.
But the reality was far more boring.
If this was what Wellbelove was always complaining about, I think I might respect her and her mooning even less than I already did.
The whole thing was dreadfully mundane. I’d been on a walk.
A walk.
Not even the kind of walk Snow liked to call a “prowl” or a “stalk”. There was literally no villainy to it at all, Crowley forgive me. Magic, it would’ve been far less embarrassing if there had been.
But, no. It as a very regular, boring walk on the grounds, and then a somewhat unusual but not totally surprising appearance of the Mage asking to speak to me, and then... Well, that part of the afternoon wasn’t the clearest. It was there in bits and pieces, but it was easy enough to put it together when you already knew where it ended up.
The stupidest thing about this whole kidnapping plot, was that I hadn’t even been afraid. Not when the Mage spelled me into a stupor, or when even on waking up in this strange and musty obviously secret room attached to his office. Honestly, my thought was just that the Mage had finally cracked. That now, after all the manner filled indirect threat, he’d decided to cut to the chase and do some interrogating, or use even use me as a hostage. Retaliation was long overdue.
But it wasn’t that. That much had become clear. It was the way he’d looked, when he’d left me here, after spelling the place stiff, that had done it.
It wasn’t are to see the Mage look like he thought he was the master of the universe, especially if you knew what to look for, instead of just blindly worshiping. I’d seen his pompous face, his veiled annoyance at people for not simply falling into line. I’d even seen a flash of danger now and then. It had almost made me like him, for a moment.
But the look on his face before he’d left the room, let the door slide back into its hidden position, knowing he was leaving me tied down by magic and half-concussed. That was....
Well. I wasn’t afraid at this point, either. Because I’d accepted in that moment that there was no way I was getting out of this.
In the most likely reality, I would be gone before anyone even realized I’d been taken. Who would be looking, after only a few days? Surely not the families, not without some scheme I was meant to report back to them for- that was the only way they’d realize I wasn’t where I was meant to be. No. There would be no one looking. There was no one to miss me.
Still, three days of being trapped in a dusty room had left me restless. I’d already undone the simplest spells, the ones meant to keep me tied down to the spot (the fact that the Mage had left me my wand was the worst omen of all) but that still hadn’t left me the ability to do more than wander the small space. As it was, there was only room for a few steps from one wall to the other.
It was filled with tiny magical items, barely holding any power, and papers. Papers about theories, and rituals, mostly. But in my boredom and, maybe at this point, fraying nerves, spotting Snow’s name had seemed to serve as a good enough distraction.
Yes, at the best of times I didn’t want Snow and all is bloody information in my life (honestly I’m surprised no one’s made him into a training card yet, they certainly like to memorize facts about him). But this was the kind of information that was hard to look away from. The kind that felt important. Useful.
Maybe it’d be good blackmail. It was healthy, I’d decided, to let myself be a little delusional.
It might have ben hours later, when my eyes were neatly burned out of my head.
“Allister Crowley!”
I shielded my eyes from the sudden light cutting through the darkness the traitorous things had already gotten so used to.
I must have been dreaming. The papers and the stress of kidnapping and my omnipresent, worse now wandering thoughts (as awful as they were) had driven me mad.
Because Simon Snow couldn’t be standing here right now, hands at fists, and eyes shining and huge in the dark light.
His mouth was a perfect “O” of surprise, before his eyes scrunched with suspicion. He looked at me like he wanted to get trapped in a hidden, musty room. Like it was the part of a dastardly master plan.
I decided on instinct to look like as if it was.
“What are you doing here?” Snow demanded
“Couldn’t I ask you the same thing?” I eyed the door meaningfully, and the office behind it.
Snow’s ears went red.
“I- I’m allowed here.”
“Are you?” I asked, coolly.
Snow’s face scrunched further.
“You- I’m- You’ve been here for three days?” He finally spluttered.
“Oh, were you looking for me?” I raised an eyebrow, and did my best to squash my genuine surprise into a mask of cool amusement. “Don’t like sleeping alone, Snow? I thought you’d be glad.”
Simon spluttered and reddened again, and I watched him start to turn and do the very Simon Snow thing of stalking off. And immediately realized that I couldn’t let him leave.
“Wait.”
For a second it seemed like Snow would keep going just to spite me. The tosser.
Then he stopped, and turned back like he expected a wand held to him. Which was an idea, actually. I’d put it under advisement, if this didn’t work.
“What?” Snow’s eyes were narrowed.
“I think we can help each other.”
Snow turned again so immediately it was like he’d teleported. Maybe he had. It was exactly the kind of magic he’d never purposefully achieve, and exactly the kind that would leak out into some dangerous, unfortunately impressive (to those who had no understanding of Snow) stunt.
The words shot out less composed than I’d been trying to fake- they were messy and desperate, but they made him freeze.
“Do you want to know who your parents are?”
It hung in the air between them.
I held my breath.
Really, I didn’t want to care if Snow took the bait or not. LIke I said, I’d accepted the clinical, cold look on the Mage’s face when he’d locked me here. I’d understood enough of the papers on the shelf to know what was waiting for me, and that no one would be expecting it- certainly not enough to come form some kind of rescue.
But there was a difference between accepting your fate, closed into what could be a tomb, and letting any hope of rescue walk away from you.
And Simon bloody Snow looked too much the hero to not give anyone horrible, probaby misplaced hope.
After a long second, Snow looked back at me.
“You’re bluffing.”
“I’m not, actually.”
“How do you know anything about my parents?” He demanded.
I kept my face blank. Any attempt to explain would only give away his bargaining chip. I just had to hope that Snow was emotional enough to-
“What kind of help?”
I swallowed and tried not to let the relief- or surprise- show. “Believe it or not, I don’t actually want to be stuck in this closet. I want out.”
Snow took a few steps backwards, like he was clearing his way toward the door.
“Not that kind of help, you dolt.” Though it was a relief to see he was willing, at least.
He glared. “What are you talking about, then?”
“Your precious Mage is keeping me here.”
I knew it was a misstep before I said it. I’ll blame dehydration and temporary insanity for ever thinking it would work.
The expression on Snow’s face changed in an instant.
“Then he must have a reason.”
And he was leaving. He was actually bloody leaving me here, trapped.
“But he also has a reason not to tell you the truth!” I shouted out, not even bothering to hide the desperation now. Let him know, I thought savagely, let him know what the Mage is like.
Snow.... slowed.
“Why?”
“Why what?” I asked. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t about to give the answer to either.
“Why did he trap you in there?”
Snow still wasn’t looking me in the face. He was was standing, pointed towards the office like he could leave at any second. The light from the sconces burned his hair into a copper glow. He looked... Morgana. He looked-
Like my last chance. Crowley.
“He kidnapped me, days ago.”
“Sunday,” Snow guessed- or, maybe didn’t. He really had noticed, then. Really had been looking.
“Yes. Sunday. And he brought me in here...”
“Why?” Snow asked again.
I could see the words written out, like nothing more than theory. A boy made as a vessel. The magic that could have been split, hypothetically. What you’d have to do, to get the magic out of two vessels and pour it into one instead.
I was going to die for Simon Snow, and I would never be abl to get my dignity back.
Or- maybe I wasn’t.
“He brought me in here because he thought I was plotting something that I wasn’t,” The lie was easy enough. It wasn’t exactly a good lie. But it was probable enough, at least.
“How do I know you weren’t?”
“Well. He thought I was stealing your things to send to my father. He thought we were making a weapon to target you.”
Snow made a face that probably meant something like “that sounds exactly like something you’d do”. And he was right- it was a plan the Families had tossed around a few times last year. All in all, it hadn’t been effective of their combined energies.
“Check the room,” I held up my hands. “I haven’t taken a thing.”
I’d expected Snow to go and tear the room apart. It would have made sense. I even expected, if I have to be honest, for Simon to go do that and then not come back. (Obviously I had not stolen any of Snow’s cheap and generally filthy things, but surely there were enough missing things in that mess that he’d happily blame on me).
But instead Snow came back in, expression wary but not suspicious. He reached out his hands, as if he could feel the magic holding me there. It was a strange time for Snow to start trusting a thing that came out of my mouth (he had once insisted that I was lying about tomatoes being a fruit due to some level of villainy I still can’t parse), but I wasn’t about to complain.
He moved around the room a few times, and it was near impossible to watch him without letting my hope of leaving this room rise and fall erratically. There were a few times it almost looked like Snow had found something.
It was a tragedy how easy it was to fall into rooting for Snow. He should’ve bee born with a different face.
“I can’t feel anything,” He finally admitted, and it I suddenly realized, with his breath hitting my hair, just how close to me he’d gotten.. The circling of the room had brought him back to my squalid corner, nearly knee to my knee, as he let his hand drop from where it had been reaching out.
I swallowed again, and spluttered out, “Bring Bunce?” mostly to break whatever fresh hell this was.
His eyes narrowed again. But, he did also take a step back. Thank Morgana. This room was too small for Snow. If I didn’t need his help, I would have banished him into the office at the very least. Some place I didn’t have to... Acknowledge him. He’d always been so impossible to ignore.
Anyone, he was still staring. No, better. Still glaring. I knew what to do with that, at least. A fairly familiar look coming from Snow.
I met his glare with a roll of my eyes.
“Oh, come on, Snow, we all know she’s your best tool.”
“She’s not a tool,” He argued, sharply.
“Yes, obviously. You’re the tool.”
Snow looked strangely unoffended by that.
Also, I decided, a bit of a tragedy.
“I’ll do some research and come back tomorrow.” He did not add with Bunce, so there probably wasn’t much hope. It was a relief anyway, even if it shouldn’t have been.
Snow’s eyes lingered for a long moment, on my face, I thought. My skin immediately began to crawl.
No, not crawl.
Tighten. Spark.
I shifted on the ground I was still sitting on, trying not to feel Snow’s eyes. And then immediately missing them when Snow looked away.
Bloody hell.
This was all it took for every bad and stupid thought to take control, was it? Three days of isolation and Snow looking at me without following it up by trying to bloody me?
A third, and worst, tragedy.
“Will you tell me about my parents?” He asked, and there was something childlike about it.
I almost hated himself for saying, “That defeats the purpose of the bargain.”
“Fine.” Snow bricked up again, and when he turned away this time, he was clearly leaving for real.
I reminded myself that he was coming back tomorrow. I reminded myself that he’d survived this long without snow.
Still, I couldn’t help myself from calling out, before he was gone, “Have you been looking for me since Sunday?”
Snow missed a step. “I thought you were planning something.”
“So yes.”
“I-” He saw him ran a rough hand through his hair. “Yes.”
And the words, stupidly, left my mouth before I’d even realized I’d thought them. All reason was draining away, it seemed.
“Your mother’s name was Lucy.”
Snow spun around.
And that childlike gleam that had ben in his voice, was in his face so clearly it was hard to look at,
“Lucy?” He repeated.
I nodded, schooled my face into the face of a bargain maker. “Come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell you more.”
Snow closed his eyes for a second, before nodding back. He looked resolute.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
And as the door swung shut, leaving the room and myself in the dark again, I thought I could hear Snow repeating under is breath, “Lucy....”
The dark was somehow darker, without Snow there.
But I closed my eyes to it. Closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see them adjust and get stuck back in the part of my head that wondered. Or the part that was sure I’d never see light again.
Closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the emptiness of this small, dank space, or paint it with the places Snow had stood.
Tomorrow.
I’d promised myself a long time ago never to rely to Simon Snow. Never to be one of those fools who expected him to save them.
But, honestly, I had already failed so many times before. In so many ways. I was failing right then, anyway.
So, really. What was one more desperate, stupid, misguided hope?