Chapter Text
The rain is heavy, almost deafening as the droplets strike the canopy of leaves above your head, but the silhouette of the witch you’re tailing is shielded from the downpour by a sphere of shimmering magic. He’s stooped over in his little bubble of sunshine, plucking some mushrooms from the ground into a basket. It’s been hours of this, lurking just out of sight as you battle internally over whether you really want to speak to him. Whether it would break or mend your heart to hear his voice again. Your body is beginning to protest the cold of the rain, joints groaning in discomfort as you shift up from the crouch you had held in the brush. You step carefully from the cover of the trees and make your way towards the grey cloaked witch, your approach concealed by the pattering of the rain until you step into the protective bubble.
“Mind sharing your umbrella?”
Qifrey recoils from the sound of your voice as if he’s been burned. As he turns to fix his gaze on you, the glowering expression on his face intensifies when he sees the brimmed cap rested on your head. You should be used to that look by now, but it still sends a brief pang of hurt through your chest.
“Must you always look so venomous when I visit?”
“What do you want?”
Despite the scowl he’s still wearing like armor, there’s a tinge of gentle sadness in his voice as he straightens up. You pout half-heartedly at the way he’s withdrawn his hands into his cloak, obviously in search of his components.
“Just to talk,” You lift your hat from your head, beginning to wring the rainwater from your soaked hair. “To see how you’re doing; how the girls are.”
Qifrey scoffs coldly. “I’m swell, thanks for your concern. We’ve developed a conscience now, have we? Or are you here to collect information for your higher-ups?”
His mocking tone sparks an anger that burns deep in your chest. To suggest you possess no real regard for their well-being, knowing you abandoned witch society in pursuit of the goal he is only willing to chase in shadow, that is a disrespect that cuts deep. You place your cap back onto your head, ignoring the way the crease between his brows deepens as it obscures your eyes.
“Don’t take a moral high ground against me, Qifrey. Don’t you dare accuse me of trading the safety of those children for reputation points among the Brimmed Caps.”
“I’m supposed to believe you joined the Brimmed Caps just for the aesthetics?”
The air buzzes with a simmering tension, as if the forest itself is waiting to see which of you will escape your standoff unscathed. These trees had seen the two of you in every stage of your relationship; the awkward first kiss, the stolen moments away from the responsibilities of teaching, the fallout of realizing some things are too painful for love to mend.
“I did it for us. For you.” Angry tears pool at the edges of your eyes, hot and infuriating in their testament to your emotions. You grit your teeth and force the wavering from your voice. “Not all things can be cured within the confines of the Pact; I’m not sorry for having the sense to seek out a solution you’re too cowardly to even consider.”
“Oh I’m the coward?” Qifrey takes a threatening step towards you, his one eye wide with frustration. “You want to accuse me of cowardice as you hide beneath that brim?”
This was not how you wanted this encounter to pan out. As delusional a hope it was, each time you came you wished for a happier reunion. It never was. You begin to retreat, to put some distance between yourself and him, but Qifrey lunges forward as if on instinct and captures your wrist in his hand.
“Face me and tell me what makes your path deserving of my respect, Brimmed Cap.” He spit the words at you with such vigor that it must knock all sense from your mind. A tidal wave of emotions crashes through you, and your hand closes around the golden pendant that joins the two halves of his cloak together. You yank him to you, and before your lips have even met, he’s thrown his willowy arms around you, holding you so tightly it hurts. The kiss is desperate and harsh, almost cathartic. You feel the anger dissipate, as if it was merely a toxin you needed Qifrey to siphon from your bloodstream. You lock your arms around his neck, desperate for this to last forever. If you could not have his love, you would drown yourself in his hatred. This messy, hostile tension would have to substitute for the gentle kind of companionship you had had once before. He pulls away from you, breathing heavily, and you can only afford enough time for a few gulps of air before you’re pulling his face back to yours. It’s as if the second he withdraws you’ll come unraveled, too fragile to return to the bitter reality of who you both are. This kiss tastes like salt, warm tears that you can’t determine the source of. He’s released his grip on your waist, tangling his long slender fingers up into your hair and knocking your hat from your head.
And then the rain drops onto the two of you like a sheet.
The seal Qifrey had drawn to ward of the water is crumpled in the palm of his hand, ruined in the intensity of whatever just happened. The drenching is a harsh return to earth; Qifrey shudders with the sudden cold and pulls away from you, sucking in gasps of air as he tries to process what just happened between you. There’s a pain in his expression that makes you want to reach for him.
“Tell me it’s worthwhile.” Qifrey is boring holes into you with the intensity of his gaze, that blue eye zeroed in on you as if he can see the doubt laced into your heart. You pick up your cap, anxious to replace the shield of the brim onto your head. “Tell me the shred of hope to find some way to be healed with magic was worth throwing your life away. That you don’t regret giving up all you’ve lost in accepting forbidden magic.”
He doesn’t need to elaborate what exactly you gave up. The words hang unspoken in the damp air of the forest. Now that his spell is gone, the moisture feels suffocating; though that might just be your heart lodged in your throat that’s making it hard to draw breath.
Tell me it was worth losing me.
You’re grateful that the very cap he’s condemning shields your face some as you feel the tears you’ve been collecting again finally cascade down your cheeks. He would take them as surrender; as evidence that you thought you’d made a mistake in pursuing forbidden magic to try and revive the practice of healing witches.
He would be wrong.
“We could have found ways to ease the pain.” Qifrey’s voice is still stern, but it lacks the bite of true anger. “Olly could have made you some contraption to help you manage it, to help make drawing easier.”
You flex your hands anxiously within your cloak, the dull ache you know will crescendo into agony after a day spent in the chilling rain making itself known with each movement. No number of herbs, Healing Spire visits, or warming contraptions from Olruggio could rid you of that horrible pain nestled deep in your bones.
“We would have kept looking for our antidotes together. You would have had my love to soothe your pain.” The slightest crack is there in the words my love.
“Your love was never going to be my cure.”
The guilt that strikes you as you say it seems to tilt the earth beneath you; you feel sick.
“Then why do you return to me like a moth to flame? Why torture us both with ghosts of what was?”
There’s no good answer you can give. He’s a vice to you, a reprieve from the darkness of your world that you selfishly seek out like an antidote to your fear.
“Until next time, Qifrey.” You tug the brim back down to conceal your eyes, closing out your own umbrella spell and once more shielding the small clearing from the downpour. You leave behind the seal as you turn your back on the silver-haired witch, a feeble attempt at an apology for ripping open old wounds.
Perhaps one day there will be a world in which you two can reconcile your differences. But for today, you must leave him. Even if it’s a pain more agonizing than any physical ache you’ve ever experienced.
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