Work Text:
BAZ
You could hear a fairy sneeze, it’s so quiet.
The small flame dances tenuously in my hand as I lead the way through the damp darkness to my mother’s tomb. Despite the Catacombs’ high ceilings, the space around us feels only as large as what the light reaches, which is far larger for my eyes than for Simon’s.
My other hand is warming in his loose grip. He feels as fragile in my palm as the flame does.
The Mage’s body has vanished in the shadows; we’re making our way through the maze of tunnels slowly now, the silence interrupted only by our sluggish footsteps and the occasional drip of condensation falling onto the bones.
Strolling feels odd, but the slow pace is a welcome change. Seems like everything since the night I first called the Chimera has come at us at breakneck speed.
Fighting to flirting. Cursing to kissing. I don’t know how we got here without self destructing or bursting into flames. These last several months have felt like being launched into space without depressurizing.
And now, in a feat that would baffle Merlin himself, we’ve defeated the Mage.
The silence is full of questions I can’t ask out loud. Is it finished now? With the Mage gone at last, are we done? There wasn’t a war, so was there a victory? (If there was, what did we win?)
I glance sideways at Simon’s face. He doesn’t seem particularly victorious. Instead, he’s staring ahead looking as stoic as I’ve ever seen him, and I recognize his expression as the one I wear when I’m walled up in my own mind.
After all this time, it seems I’ve finally rubbed off on him.
“Simon,” I whisper. “All right, love?”
His eyes flit in my direction without meeting my gaze. He shrugs.
“I’ve had better days.”
I snort, then gesture to the bones with my lit hand. “I’m sure we could find those words engraved over a tomb down here somewhere...”
He smiles weakly and plods on.
I decide not to push him. The Mage is gone. More than that, everything the Mage has ever meant to Simon is gone. Snow’s finally looked behind the curtain and learned what I’d suspected all along: that everything he trusted in that man was a sham. For all his mentorship, he was a criminal and a traitor. A poor man’s Robin Hood who used his position for a smoke screen so he could manipulate Simon into a war he didn’t ask for.
I told Snow we’d figure out what to do with the body later, but I’ve already got a solution. I’m going to leave that bastard’s corpse to the rats.
When Simon finally speaks, his voice sounds far away. “Reckon there’ll be a tribunal.”
I nod. “Probably.”
“And an investigation.”
“Definitely,” I say, casting my eyes warily in his direction. “You realize we’ve done nothing wrong, don’t you?”
Simon doesn’t answer.
When we arrive at my mother’s tomb, I take him by the elbow and guide him to the ground next to me. Before us is the placard that marks her resting place, and I watch nervously as he runs his fingers over the engraving.
“Headmistress Pitch,” he whispers, and warmth surges in my chest at the sight of Simon kneeling beside me, here at the most sacred place I have.
“Do you think she knows about us?” he asks. “Like, really knows?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I talk to her, so I suppose some part of me believes she’s listening.”
He nods but doesn’t look at me. “What do you talk about?”
I’m grateful for the dark because I can feel the flush of bright red embarrassment rise in my cheeks. “Mostly it’s apologies for what happened to her,” I murmur, picking at the dust that’s collected on my trousers. “For what I am and various other unfortunate things I can’t control. My classes. The war. Falling hopelessly in love with my roommate...”
Snow looks up at me then. I’m not sure what I see in his face, but suddenly he looks far older than sixteen, the light in my palm casting hard shadows on his eyes and cheeks.
I rest my hand on his.
“What do you tell her about me?” he asks. Quietly.
I sneer at him. “That you’re exactly the obsessive, uncultured hothead she’d never allow me to date.”
This makes him laugh aloud, and the sound of it echoing around us is such a relief that a smile overtakes my face despite Simon watching.
“Did you tell her I’m the git who stalked you and read your diary and spelled us together against your will?” he asks, his eyes downcast, abashed. “Crowley, what a tosser, that bloody Snow,’” he says in his best impression of me. (He makes me sound like Captain Barnacles from Mordelia’s favourite television show.)
“I might have mentioned it,” I confess, grinning.
“I can just imagine her gasp from beyond the veil the moment you told her you were with the Mage’s Heir,” he murmurs, his smile wan as he watches my thumb draw circles on the back of his knuckles. “She’d call you mad for dating me.”
I shake my head. “I daresay I need some madness in my life,” I remark. “I’d tell her you’re only as ridiculous for me as I am for you, which probably means we’re perfectly matched. And anyway, I chose you.”
Snow is still looking at our hands, but his eyes are unfocused. I can tell he’s far away even as my hand holds his.
My voice lowers to a whisper.
“I told her I can’t remember my life before I loved you.”
He raises his gaze then, meets mine, and holds it. The smile is gone from his face, and as I try to make out what it means, I realize the atmosphere around us feels different, like the oxygen is being pulled from the air. I let go of his hand and cup the flame to protect it.
Simon must feel it too because he rises to his feet and reaches out to help me to my feet.
“We should go. The fire's dying," he says.
I hope he's talking about the flame.
SIMON
I don’t know what to feel.
Baz is walking next to me, blessedly, and I should feel relieved. I am relieved; I nearly lost him. I keep doing that—nearly losing Baz. I hold on too tight or else I’m too careless, or worst of all, I try so hard to do the right thing that I wind up fucking everything up.
What is the right thing? Can I even recognize what’s right if the Mage can go from hero to villain in the space of a day?
The Catacombs were getting more claustrophobic by the second when we left it, but I’m not sure this is any better. Back in Mummer’s house, our room feels like we had abandoned it ages ago and someone preserved it in time, freeze-framed in sepia tones at whatever moment we both occupied this space and felt at home in it. The permanent marker is still on the floor, a dusting of cat hair scattered on both our beds. It occurs to me how much easier standing close to Baz felt when I could blame our proximity on a spell gone wrong.
Now Baz and I are standing awkwardly together in the middle of the room like we’re afraid to sit on the beds and disturb the sheets.
I scan the room. “Where’s the bloody cat?” I ask.
At that moment, a loud knock at the door startles us apart.
“Simon? Simon, open the door!”
“Penny...” I run to the door and swing it open, at which point she hurls herself at me and grabs me by the forearms.
“Nicks and Slick, where have you been?” she cries. “Something has happened to the Mage!”
Baz and I exchange worried glances. “The Mage? But how did you—,” Baz begins but Penny cuts him off with a harried flourish of her ponytail.
“The wards on the school—they’re gone!” she squeaks, half-hysterical. “There may as well be a giant red pin over Watford on Google Maps! A fucking neon sign! ‘Are you a dark creature or other qualified villain looking for magical gates to storm? Well, look no further!’”
All the colour must have run from my face because Baz inserts himself between Penny and me.
“Slow down, Bunce,” he says, pointedly calm. “What do you mean, ‘they’re gone’?”
“The Mage cast wards over the school to protect us from outside threats. Unless the Mage removed them himself, something happened to him to render them useless. The magic protecting the school—it’s gone.”
“But Penny, how could you know that?” I manage to ask.
She grabs both Baz and me roughly by the wrists and drags us to the window. Then, pointing out toward the Wavering Wood: “Look there!”
My eyes focus on the treeline. “Merlin and Morgana,” I gasp.
Creatures. Dark ones. They slither out of the dirt, crawl out from between the trees and shrubs, some shaking the ancient walls with their enormous footsteps, Diphthongs and basilisks and aspsassins and freaks of magic I can’t name or recognize beyond knowing that the Mage once made me fight them off on some bloody procurement mission or other.
Even the merwolves have surfaced in the moat and fixated a menacing glare on the grounds. It’s as if they were waiting all along for the Mage’s demise to unleash their revenge.
On me, I think.
“Seven fucking hells,” Baz whispers, his face white as a sheet. When he turns to look at me, his eyes convey a dozen things at once.
The air in the Catacombs. It had felt different, and this is why. The Mage’s wards had lifted.
I turn and grab Penny by the shoulders. “We have to go. Now.” I pull her out of the room by the sleeve of her jumper while Baz races ahead of us. “I’ll explain on the way!”
__
Baz dashes across the grounds to round up reinforcements, marking a path from Mummers to the Weeping Tower in the hopes Watford contains enough magicians to meet the threat gathering beyond the ramparts.
Meanwhile, Penny and I hurry to the stone wall to survey what we’re up against. Along the way, I bring Penny up to speed, describing in hurried detail everything from the invisibility spell surrounding the school to the Mage’s betrayal to the moment we faced off against him in the Catacombs. When I’m finished, Penny and I are stumbling out on the ramparts, out of breath and red-faced. She presses her hand to her forehead in combined horror and astonishment.
“Fuck a nine-toed troll,” she pants. “All this time... All these years... The Mage was a bloody Brutus...”
I rake a hand through my hair and nod. “And now he’s gone, and if I’d known killing him was going to unleash a fucking battalion of dark creatures, I dunno, maybe we could have just thrown him in a tower?”
“No time for regrets now,” she says, swiping a hand through the air for effect. “We need a plan!”
I hear a bell ring out. From the White Chapel.
Baz must have found Miss Possibelf because she’s sounded the alarm.
When I look back over the moat, my stomach lurches at the sight. Dozens of goblins have joined rank at the forest’s edge. The basilisks have begun traversing the moat, their bodies forming several bridges over the water for the rest of the creatures to climb across. The drawbridge itself is already crowded, overrun with orcs beating their clubs against the gates.
Fuck.
“If you have a strategy, Penny, now would be the time to share it!”
Penny’s got her palms pressed against her temples. She looks like she’s trying to summon a miracle. “Simon, if you went off right now—”
“Merlin, no.” I gesture to our classmates filing onto the ramparts. “The entire school will be out here in a moment. It’s far too risky.”
“Then we reset the wards,” Baz calls out from behind us, bounding up the stone staircase two steps at a time. “Together.”
Penny instantly revives. “Of course! Why didn't I think of that?”
Baz leans over the ledge to look. "Because I thought of it first."
Before long, the ramparts are filled with terrified students, everyone clamoring over one another to see over the wall, their wands and magical instruments brandished. Miss Possibelf materializes behind them, her bright robes a beacon amidst a growing sea of Watford uniforms.
“Miss Possibelf,” Penny shouts, and when no one hears her, she casts A little bit louder now on herself and booms, “Miss Possibelf!”
Possibelf turns and immediately pushes through the throng toward us. Once she’s within earshot, Penny cries, “We need to reset the wards!”
Miss Possibelf shoves past us, aims her wand at the drawbridge and shouts “London Bridge is falling down!” A deafening crack sends a tremor through the rampart walls. In a cloud of debris, the drawbridge is reduced to planks, splintering and tumbling into the moat with a mighty splash of murky water. The orc herd and a cluster of merwolves go down with it, howling.
“Yes, I realize that,” she shouts breathlessly over the noise, spinning back towards us. “Wards powerful enough to protect all of Watford require as many voices and as much magic as we can spare! And time—more than we have at our disposal, Miss Bunce. We’ll need to divide our resources—cast and fight!”
I call my sword and swing it in my hand, warming up my wrist for the melee. “Time, I can give you,” I say. “I’ll go down and hold them off until the wards take hold.”
“Put that bloody sword away, you’re not going anywhere,” Baz yells over the noise at me.
For a moment, I wonder if I’ve heard him correctly. “What?”
“You can’t fight. They need magic, and you’re practically a generator,” he reasons. “You have to stay here.”
I shake my head because I don’t understand a word he’s saying. “Stay here? Then who’s going to fight?”
Before I can protest, Baz climbs onto the stone wall and looks back over his shoulder at me.
“I am.”
BAZ
“Are you off your fucking trolley?” Simon balks, his eyes wide.
“Law of averages says I’m more rational than you,” I retort, but as my hand dips into my pocket for my wand, I feel Simon’s fingers close firmly over my wrist.
“Like hell you are,” he growls, pulling me away from the ledge. “I just got you back, I’m not losing you again!”
“Don’t be an imbecile. You’re not going to lose me!”
“One battle against the Mage doesn’t make you a soldier,” he shouts angrily.
“Yes, yes, I know. You’re very impressive,” I hiss. “Now let me go! There’s no time!”
“Baz—”
“Aleister fucking Crowley, you just need to trust me!” I shout, wrenching my arm out of his grip.
With the best “float like a butterfly” my magic can muster, I step off the ledge. Simon calls my name over the ramparts, but I’m already gone.
I land gently on the grassy side between the wall and the moat.
The beasts are everywhere, and whatever their objective was before, they’ve abandoned it to glare menacingly at me. A second later, their teeth and claws and wings and Chomsky-knows-what-else are out and scrabbling toward me, so I point my wand and take a deep breath.
Right. I’m not sure I thought this through.
Thank Crowley I’m good at improvising.
Just then, I hear a loud thud behind me and spin around to find Simon bloody Snow looking very much like another beast with wings, only considerably more attractive and a damn sight more muleheaded than every goblin and troll currently charging at us with a staggering array of sharp, pointy weapons.
“What are you doing here?” I snap, then level my wand at a troll. “Off with her head!”
Simon leaps over the troll’s rolling head and runs at me like he’s about to rugby tackle me, his wings tucked back and sword out and swinging. Before I can move away, he thrusts the blade behind me, spearing a troll at my back.
“What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?” he growls. “I’m—” Another swing of his sword, and he’s lopped the arm off a goblin, rounding back to stab it in the chest. “Helping!”
Simon wipes his brow and races toward the mob collecting on the banks of the moat. Crowley, he’s so gorgeous in battle, he drives me to distraction. Which is the absolute last thing I need right now.
The ground shakes under our feet. “Bugger off!” I roar, swiping at the air with my wand. An aspsassin the size of a small tank falls back and tangles in its own tail. “I’m handling it!”
Dodging its legs, Snow jumps on its abdomen and plunges his sword into the monster. “You’re clearly not!”
“I’m starting to think— Slice and dice it! —you have a savior complex!” A basilisk comes apart in bleeding segments, like it’s been prepped for sauté by an invisible butcher knife. I duck a mace and fire a curse at the offending orc.
“It’s not a complex... if you don’t... have a choice,” he grunts, between picking off goblins one at a time.
“You could choose to let me handle it, you great winged twat!”
Suddenly, I hear a sound travel over the rampart walls the likes of which I’ve never heard before in my life. Time seems to stop as our eyes float upwards to squint at the sight of hundreds of students lined up in a single row around the perimeter of the school.
They’re singing.
“Man up… Hold tight… Driving dark… Head up… Foot down… Speed of sound… ”
As their voices carry over the wall, a curtain of violet light begins to spread across the ancient stonework.
The wards are taking hold.
“Time's up… Kick start… Keep on track… Flags out… Sit back… Safe and sound…”
It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.
And Snow is enthralled as well.
Snow is so enthralled, he doesn’t see the Diphthong skittering toward him.
“Simon!” I shout. I fire a spell at the creature, but either my voice is too slow or my wand is; it swipes its razor-sharp tail at Simon’s back before I curse it to a crisp. A ribbon of scarlet blooms into the fabric of Simon’s shirt, his hand flies to his back, and he falls to his knees.
I’m running towards him without sparing a second to think. None of these beasts are a match for my speed.
I fly to Simon’s side. Like I’m the one with wings.
“You absolute nightmare. You colossal prat,” I whisper, pressing a hand to his wound and aiming my wand at it, ignoring the blood. Only I don’t even get a chance to register the scent of it—his skin is burning.
Literally.
“Simon?”
He begins to glow and spark. I draw my hand back like I’ve touched an open flame. Around us, the throng of dark creatures cower and stumble over themselves to get away—they know what’s about to happen. They’ve probably seen it before. (I’ve definitely seen it before.)
He’s going to go off.
I don’t take cover. There’s nowhere I could hide.
Instead, I throw my arms around him and close my eyes. So he knows I’m here.
He’ll protect me if he knows I’m here.
The last thing I see before Simon’s magic rockets through me in a blaze of blinding light is one remaining gap in the glowing violet curtain.
It seals shut.
SIMON
I wake up in the turret with Simon (the other one) nestled in my armpit and a headache like my forehead’s been steamrolled. The low light in the room tells me it’s evening, and though the open window has chilled the room, I am, for all intents and purposes, sweating through my t-shirt. This buggering cat feels like a fuzzy little furnace curled up against me. (I wonder when exactly he decided I was worthy of being cuddled.)
On the other side of me is Baz. He’s as pressed up against me as the cat, a bit rumpled, but sleeping soundly and so beautiful it hurts my eyes to look at him.
Fucking tosser.
I elbow him so hard in the side, he nearly falls off the bed.
“Great snakes,” he gasps, his arm flying out to catch himself. Simon (the cat) tumbles off the side of the mattress, hissing. “What’s the matter with you?”
“You incredible arsehole,” I grumble, slowly pulling myself up to a sitting position. Fuck, my head hurts.
“Oh. Yes. I’m the arsehole,” he retorts, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and standing over me. “The one who mended you after you went and got yourself sliced by a diphthong, you great thundering git!”
“It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t flung yourself over the wall—“
He rolls his eyes mightily. “Not this bollocks again—“
“Thinking you could take on a hoard of dark creatures alone!“ I finish.
Baz plows both hands through his hair in exasperation. “To buy time! Provide a diversion! Obliterating the entire British dark creature population wasn’t ever in the plan,” he counters. “You did that all by yourself.”
“I did what I had to!” I say emphatically. I don’t know why I feel like I’m losing this argument, because: “They were attacking the school!”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I was there,” he says, raising his voice. “I was taking care of it!”
“It wasn’t your responsibility!”
“And you think it’s yours?” he asks, incredulous. “Crowley, are you so obsessed with playing the hero you can’t trust anyone else to save the day?”
Despite the throbbing pain in my temples, I spring to my feet. “How am I supposed to trust you?” I shout.
Baz steps back like I’ve slapped him.
“Really?” he hisses. “It’s back to this, now, is it?”
I look skyward and sigh. “I didn’t mean it that way.“
“No, I think you’re being pretty fucking clear, actually,” he sneers, backing away from me. “Simon, I genuinely don’t know what else needs to happen for me to earn your trust. You’ve read my deepest secrets and bloody broadcasted them to nearly everyone we know. You’ve followed me. Lived with me. You even dared me to trust you!”
“It was always more complicated than that,” I say weakly, my headache jumbling my thoughts. “I had a purpose to protect. A mission—“
“The mission was rubbish!” He fires back, his nostrils flaring. “The war was a fucking farce and so was the Mage! He was always just using you, and yet you seemed to have no trouble at all trusting that snake in Galahad’s clothing!”
“But that’s just what I mean!” I shout, and I feel tears sting at the corners of my eyes. “Merlin and Morgana, I trusted him! I put all my faith in him, and look what he did with it!”
Baz’s eyebrow shoots halfway up his forehead. “You’re not making any damned sense...”
“Jesus—Fuck… It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I insist, and my voice comes out thick and broken. “It’s me!”
He halts, his mouth open, his brain stalled mid-thought. I must be crying because Baz looks pained, my eyes are burning, and my chest is in a vice.
I squeeze my eyes shut against the sight of Baz’s stunned expression. “Friend. Foe. I couldn’t fucking tell the difference, could I? Those monsters came for me. Because I was a fool— I mistook the Mage for an ally. Because I’d done his bidding,” I say. “How could I leave you to fight my battle? I only know what I can do and what those creatures can do, and I couldn’t risk leaving you alone out there knowing what I’d done to bring them here! What if—”
At that moment, in a gust of cedar and bergamot and hundred-year-old dust, Baz traverses the room, takes my face in both of his frigid hands, and stops my mouth with his.
He kisses me so deeply I could swear I’m lifting off the ground. His lips are cold on mine—cold and eager and unbearably soft—and it feels so good, I go limp in his embrace. His grip is steel. I couldn’t resist him if I wanted to.
I don’t want to.
When he pulls away, I’m out of breath, my face is wet, and my shoulders are heaving.
“The Mage was a villain and he tricked you,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to mine. “It wasn’t your fault, Simon. It was never your fault.”
“He nearly killed you,” I whisper. “Forget dating the Mage’s Heir; what would your mum say if she knew what I almost let happen…”
Baz wipes the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs.
“It didn’t happen. We took him down together,” he whispers back. “You save me. I save you. That’s how this—“ his hand draws a line in the air between our hearts—“arrangement works.”
“I think I’ve got the better end of it, to be honest,” I say softly, managing my first real smile since the Mage went down.
“You’ll have no argument from me on that,” he laughs. Then quietly: “I know your faith in the Mage was misplaced. But you can put your faith in me.”
His arms circle around me, tugging my hands toward his waist as they do. So I hold him tight, because he’s solid and sure, and whisper promises against his lips.
I kiss him like I can’t remember my life before I loved him.
And for the first time since the Mage went down in a shockwave of magic—despite an investigation and a trial and a political shitstorm for the ages—I feel like everything might just turn out all right.