Chapter Text
It’s already been two weeks since Douxie’s “disappearance”. He and Archie have gone away to protect Nari from the Arcane Order and Zoe is the only one who knows the name of the city in which they are living. But that’s it. She knows they got there safe, well, she knows they are safe because of a magic necklace she shares with him, but that’s all and it is driving her completely insane.
You see, she and Douxie have known each other for ages now, but they have also been “normal” teenage friends for around ten years when she was sent to Arcadia to work on a super important mission that involved protecting the fate of both the human and the magical world. Sounds exciting, right? But for her this promotion was like being sent to hell itself. In London, where she was living back then, she had a perfectly good life developing new and thrilling gadgets for the magic community; in the US on the other hand, she would be living in a small town where everyone knew who you were and no one knew how to properly use a simple computer.
“It really sucked”, she thought to herself while looking down from the counter at the empty record store she owned. It was getting dark outside, but Douxie wasn’t coming for her to go hunting for goblins and little demon thieves. She got up from her chair and closed the entrance door, then rushed to search for a specific album, Sing the sorrow from AFI. “But you were there for me that night”.
That night was one on the first month she spent in Arcadia. After a long day at the record store, which included a long discussion with an obnoxious customer, Zoe walked out of her shop gibbering insults when she realized someone was looking at her.
“YOU!”, she shouted, “Oh no, not you”
Douxie was grinning, one shoulder on the wall trying to strike a seductive pose, Archie on the other anxiously staring at Zoe. “Did ya miss me?”, he smiled.
“Oh, don’t tell me YOU are the wizard I have to work with”
“If I didn’t know you better I’d say you are not relieved that it is me”
“Relieved? You are a pain in the ass of any developer, Hisirdoux Casperan. You, you..”
“Okey, I know I’m always breaking your toys, but aren’t you glad I’m here too?”
“Not really” she said quickly and without thinking. She was lashing out at him because she was pissed about the whole moving thing, but actually, she was also hoping to get away from him since it was getting harder and harder to hide her true feelings and this was going to be a major step back.
A weird looking shine went through Douxie eyes as he touched the back of his neck. Did he looked… hurt? It was an image Zoe could never forget, even now, years from that, it made her feel a little sad.
“I mean…”
“Hey, I am here too, you know” Archie said and Zoe hurried to caress him behind his fluffy ears.
“Have you eaten? We can go to the taco stand down the park”, she suggested looking for Douxie’s eyes with a smile on her face.
“Tacos? Yes, please” Archie said jumping to the floor and starting to walk down the path. Douxie, still in silence, started walking too.
The three of them had met each other around four hundred years ago when Zoe was also assigned to work with Douxie, only then she didn’t know much about the job since she had been an apprentice for so long. Hisirdoux on the other hand was kind of a legend, but not in the good way. He was supposedly Merlín’s latest pupil, but most of the time he acted like he didn’t know what he was doing. They met in Brittany, France, near Brocelind Forest where Zoe’s teacher reside, a friend of Douxie’s that had asked him to take Zoe under his wing although in the end it was the girl who took care of him.
Details aside, the adventure ended after a couple of years and since then they’ve been good long distance friends who run into each every once in a while on their different journeys. But for Zoe Hisirdoux was so much more than just a mentor and a close friend. She had loved him fiercely when they were together in Brittany and had tried to erase that feeling from her heart for the last centuries. Her last years in London came after the biggest fight between them and she had been trying to move on, focusing on her job as a developer. Now, all of her hard work started to feel like a waste of time, since she didn’t know what the fuck was she supposed to do in this forsaken town and was back where she always had melting under those dark yellow eyes of his.
“I’m sorry if I sounded like… well, like an asshole back there” Zoe said while they were sitting on a bench in the park. Archie had fallen asleep on her lap after the meal.
“It’s okey. I know we haven’t been exactly close during these last couple of years”
“It’s not that, Doux… I just” she was mumbling when she met his golden worried eyes “I just had the worst day and I lashed out at you. It wasn’t fair”
“Oh, need me to punch someone? You know I’ve been exercising” he showed her his arm muscles making her laugh. There he was, that sense of humor, that smile.
“Right, you are a big boy now”
“I was always the biggest one of us, you know, and the more experienced”
“Is that so? Because I remember saving my mentor’s ass several times, you know” she teased him like they always have. Damn it, she was back in the beginning, nowhere to run.
“No, but seriously thou, are you ok with this? I mean, I can leave, I know what you said last time…”
“Doux” she interrupted him “No, I’m glad you are here with me”. She knew she really meant it.
His smile lightened his face, a different glow now invading his eyes. There it was, the same story over and over again, but Zoe didn’t know then just how much their lives would change, how much they would learn to rely on each other, to live for each other.
Now, in the present, Zoe put the AFI record on the gramophone Douxie bought for her. This song he loved, “Silver and cold”, was playing and while Zoe was remembering all those times together in Arcadia Oaks she couldn’t help but cry sitting on the floor, hugging her own legs and hoping that he was really safe.