Work Text:
Astrid sits heavily on the stairs, landing with a thunk. Her back twinges, an old wound, healed poorly. Daedal, the man she hired to keep the house when she was off, startles at the sound.
"Madam Astrid, may I inquire... Are you well? What can I do to assist?" His hands flutter about, a habit of his she'd picked up on the moment she met him. She rather likes it. It proves that at least one person in her life isn't dangerous.
"I'm alright, Daedal. In fact, you're dismissed for the evening." She catches his eyes and gives a small and brittle smile. He nods sharply, then leaves her alone. The silence is consuming.
Magic crackles at the tips of her fingers with nowhere to go. It is a childish thing, to not have control over it. Something that she’d been taught to deal with but she doesn’t now. Instead, she traces a rune into the air where it glows, blue and staticky.
"Wulf. I saw him, I spoke with him. With Bren. Would you come over this evening?" She flicks her fingers and the message sends. A moment later, she gets a reply.
"I will come," Eadwulf replies, stiffly enough that she thinks he might be in the company of others. He sounds out of breath. Then, after a long pause. "I saw him too." She sighs and leans into the banister, cool against her cheek. She takes some deep breaths, centering herself as she had done so many times before. She hadn’t lost control in front of Bren, that was what was important.
She didn’t get up from the stairs. Some amount of time later, she doesn’t know how long, there is a knock at her door.
She checks the wards etched over her doorway reflexively before she opens it. The first thing she sees is the bottle of dark liquor in his hand. Her eyes trace over the lines of his tattoos and up to his face. He looks worried, angry, tired. She’s arrogant, but not enough to assume that she looks any better. He pushes past her and into the house.
“Do you have class in the morning?” he asks. He wanders into her living room, but instead of taking a couch, he puts the bottle on the coffee table and lays on the floor. She almost laughs. She sits down next to him with her back against the wall.
“No,” she sighs, “one of my girls, Adria. She’s the little one, the halfling. She over-exerted herself. Used magic she didn’t have. She needs rest, the others are taking care of her.” She snags the bottle, pops the cork, and takes a swig. It’s awful. She takes another.
“You’re so soft on them. Think of the beating we would have gotten if we’d-” She cuts him off.
“She knows she’s in trouble. She’ll be punished for being so careless--- I’m just not going to beat her.” She passes him the bottle and he drinks. Her hand drifts to her shoulder, to a scar that she traces with her fingertips. She won’t do that.
“A whole day to recover. Soft,” he repeats, a smug smile on his lips. She kicks him in the side. She doesn’t want to get into it with him now. They’ve never seen eye to eye on this kind of thing. “Remember when my Acid Arrow nearly took your hand off?”
“I still won that spar,” she bites back, a smile creeping onto her face despite herself. She flexes her wrist and traces the scar that wraps around half of it. It’s what tends to happen when one goes without a healing potion for a few days. “Poor Bren spent the rest of the week tending to my grisly wound.”
“Poor Bren,” he parrots, “he definitely aimed for my hands for a few days after that. And do you know how I remember that? Because we didn’t get any time off.” She chuckles at the memory and feels unfocused magic crackle in her chest.
“That must have been before the residuum. He wouldn’t have let us if…” He nods and she trails off. She lets her head hang and the slight stretch in the back of her neck is grounding. They sit in the quiet for a while with only the sounds of the sloshing of the booze and the soft bustle of the city outside.
“He has a beard,” she says, once the alcohol made the edges of her anger and sadness go soft. “And long hair.”
“Yeah,” Eadwulf mutters, “and friends who aren’t us. Fuckin’ strange.” She laughs and rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. Little motes of light bloom behind her eyelids as she presses into them, willing away a building headache and the ringing in her ears.
“You met them? He came here alone.” He nods, not crisply like they’d been taught. She realizes that he must have started drinking before he got to her.
“I was at the Sanitorium this morning. They came with the Martinet. Lowlifes, the lot of them,” Eadwulf spit, “And idiots as well. ‘The Mighty Nein.’ Stupid name.” Astrid hums, considering. It’s been a while since she saw Wulf this upset, or felt her magic prickle so close to her skin. Vollstrecker value control, it had been beaten into them for years. And to be so close to losing it over what? An old friend? It’s unacceptable, they both know it.
"Those people, they stood between us like they were protecting him from me. From Trent, I understand but… They kept touching him, Astrid. I wanted to take their hands off." An electric shiver runs down her spine.
She takes the bottle and drinks as he continues.
“It’s not really him. Just some stranger wearing Bren’s face. He wouldn’t--- the Bren we knew would have killed -- a goblin. One of them was a goblin.” He snatches the liquor back and drains the rest of the bottle in one go.
“He’s not a stranger,” she mutters, her fists clenching until she can feel the familiar sting of nails cutting into skin. Her hands feel like they’re buzzing, and the bite of pain doesn’t help. “He’s changed. That’s a good thing. People change.”
“Well, he’s not our fucking friend anymore. I don’t trust those people he’s hanging around…” his sentence starts to fade out to a buzz, the thrumming in her blood eating up her focus. She feels Bren’s hand caressing the side of her face as if his palm had been on fire. Her scars itch where his fire had touched her decades ago.
He’s not their fucking friend. His piercing blue eyes, focused again, human again. He’s not their Bren. His worried smile, his smile, dreading to see her. She’d been ready for him to attack her, to kiss her, to ask to return, to tell her they’d never meet again. She doesn’t know his shaking hands. She never learned his hunched shoulders. She can’t fix them. He’s not their fucking friend. He’s not--
She feels a hand slide into her hair and tug. It knocks her from her train of thought and she focuses back in on the world around her. On Wulf’s face, right in front of her now. His lips are moving, but she doesn’t hear anything but the static. She knows this, she’s learned this, she can fix this.
“Pinch me,” she says, she knows she says it, but she can’t hear her own voice. He takes her hand and digs his fingers into the nerve between her thumb and forefinger. She takes a shuddering breath in and the static recedes. It’s just enough that she can gather herself, stop all the magic from bleeding out of her raw edges. The air smells like ozone.
“Sassa,” he says sharply, holding her gaze, “Sassa, calm down.” She sees his fingers tracing the somatic component for Charm Person and for some reason that scares her more than anything. She grabs his wrist and he stops.
“Don’t,” is all she manages. He nods, crisply this time. They studied and sacrificed and killed and tortured by each other’s side. She knows what his magic feels like when it gets him her head and she hates it. She grips tighter to his wrist, tight enough that she knows it will bruise. “Not that, please.”
“Are you going to get it together?” he asks.
“I’ve got it together,” she says, casting Prestidigitation a few times, changing the color of his shirt cuffs. “See? I’ve got it.” He nods again.
She lets out a shaky sigh and watches as some of the strength on his face withers away. His hand stays in her hair and they are 17 again. They are missing a piece, lost a third of their hearts to fire and broken glass. He touches his forehead to hers. It’s clumsy at best, but sometimes that is the most valuable thing they can give each other. Their wealth, their power is nothing compared to a moment with no expectations. A moment that will not leave the careful space between them.
“Did he seem happy?” Wulf asks. His voice shakes, so softly that the untrained ear wouldn’t clock it. She shakes her head briefly like getting it over with will make the answer hurt less.
“He’s alive,” she says, a consolation. Wulf sighs and lies back down. She follows him, resting her head on his stomach. “And he found us. Even if he isn’t really Bren anymore, he found us."
"Trent thinks he'll come back one day. Back to being a Vollstrucker." She shakes her head.
"Trent is wrong. He's done." She wants to tell him everything Bren had said, about every sad and distant look in his eyes, the frustration and the pity and the fear. But she doesn't. Some things aren't meant to be shared.
“Good,” Wulf whispers.
He weaves his hand into her hair again, but it's not painful this time, it's gentle. Or, as gentle as his hands can be after years of being good at their work. She feels the aberrant magic fade and fizzle, and with it comes exhaustion. She should be used to it by now, after 2 decades of being whatever he made her.
“All of this is worth it,” she says. It’s a question, but she doesn’t say it like one. She knows his answer already. She’s almost certain of hers. He hums.
“Go to sleep, sunshine,” he responds, his voice soft and fond. She feels the wave of magic pass over her and has just enough time to think ‘bastard,” before giving in.