Chapter Text
“Heart handfast in heart as they stood, "Look thither,"
Did he whisper? "look forth from the flowers to the sea;
For the foam-flowers endure when the rose-blossoms wither,
And men that love lightly may die—but we?””
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Forsaken Garden
You thought I was going on hiatus. *I* thought I was going on hiatus. We were both wrong. I wrote almost a whole season in a weekend. The writer's block is cured I guess? now if only I could get over my homework block.
Sometimes, when Andrew and Frank were out and he had nothing better to do, Louis would climb down from his lurking spot up on his bunk and sit on the couch for a change. Having spent the whole break hiding from his father, who had been more angry than usual after the results of an important poll didn’t go his way, Louis was trying to get used to taking up space again.
There was a knock at the window. He jumped, looking over to see Amanda, who was laughing at how startled he had been. He opened the window, and she climbed through it.
“Hey, idiot. Did I scare you?”
“Maybe. What are you doing here?”
She pulled her broom through the window. “Visiting. Maybe cutting class. I can’t confirm or deny anything.”
Of course she was breaking some sort of rule somewhere along the line. He nodded, standing there awkwardly as she stole some sparkling water from the minifridge that Louis and Frank had dragged up the stairs last month while Andrew stood nearby and made unhelpful comments. It was heavier than it looked, and it held many cases of La Croix. Amanda flopped down on the couch and stared up at Louis with a smirk. She seemed more vibrant somehow, more herself. All smudged eyeliner and bravado. He supposed that going home had done that for her.
“So. How’ve you been?”
He shrugged. “Eh. How was your break?”
She sighed. “Well… I don’t actually remember a lot of it?” She pulled up the corner of her shirt and edged down the waistband of her skirt to reveal a tattoo running along her hipbone. “I just woke up with this one day and I have no clue how it got there. My sister has one too, so the theory is we got matching tattoos at some point? My mom got really mad, but she made bad choices in the nineties and has a tramp stamp, so she can’t really judge.”
He just looked confused. “…what exactly did you do?”
“Maybe I should start from the beginning.”
And so began what felt like a montage of Amanda’s exploits (at least, the ones that she did remember), set to some classic rock song to punctuate the epic chaos.
“I realized that my little sister’s life is kind of boring. So, of course, I had to take her out to go do some illegal stuff.”
“….but the cops turned out to be some old friends of mine. We had really bonded over all those times that I ran away from home as a kid. So they let me off with a warning, but they took my fake id, so I had to get another one…”
“…but Claire got a little freaked out by the rave, so I said ‘screw it, we don’t need an organized party to have fun,’ so we went to the park to see what was up over there…”
“…and then we got grounded so hard. But I thought, you can’t send me off to f***ing magic school and then try to keep me on the ground. So I got my broom back and we took off from the fire escape…”
“…she was actually impressed. She said “I wish mom and dad had shipped me off to magic school.” And honestly, that was the best part of all of it. Making her jealous. You’d understand if you had siblings.”
“…but then the police said I had already had my chance and they called our parents, so now I’m double grounded. But it’s cool. The good thing about magic school is they can’t control me as much over here.”
Louis had been nodding along for the whole story. “Did they ship you off to magic school like some would be shipped to military school?”
She bit the inside of her lip. “That’s part of the reason. The other part is only a witch can inherit the family fortune, and my parents had to use one of their kids to get it. They picked me because I was the troublemaker. They also sort of need magic for the family business, but if they expect me to work for them, they can f*** off.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Bitter, are we?”
“Maybe a little. I don't like the way they use magic, or the way they use me. But whatever.”
“All that illegal stuff sounds fun. I don’t commit crimes these days. Perhaps I ought to.”
“…these days? What crimes did you commit before these days?”
“Oh, the usual spoiled-and-acting-out sort. Underage drinking. That’s legal now, which is why I can’t say I’ve committed crimes recently. DUI’s, speeding, nothing you can’t pay yourself out of. Bringing shame upon the family. I myself have been threatened with military school, on occasion.”
He told her a few of the things he had done.
“Wow. I’m actually impressed, buttercup. We should commit crimes together sometime.”
“Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were asking me out.” He had taken to flirting with her, at times. If she already knew how he felt, then he had nothing left to lose in making light of it, and surprisingly, she didn’t mind. She enjoyed the banter, and it was always fun to shut him down. “It’s a good thing you know better, then.”
“I suppose we can commit platonic crimes… do you think you’re ready to fence again?”
Amanda looked at the carpeting. They hadn’t fenced since she had stabbed him all those months ago. She hated that she wasn’t able to pick up a sword without remembering it. They had been doing other things, hanging out in the dorm, wandering around town looking for trouble, and the like, but not fencing. “Maybe,” she said. “Do you still have the swords?”
“Yeah, they’re in the umbrella stand. I did my best to get all the blood off.”
“I mean the practice ones. The ones you can’t stab anyone with.”
“Also in the umbrella stand. As well as a particularly long ruler, a cane Andrew bought to hit people with, and a stick Frank found one day.”
“Dang. Do you guys even have any umbrellas?”
“No. I suppose we can’t call it an umbrella stand at this point.”
Amanda got up and walked to the umbrella sword, lifting the practice swords out of it and tossing one to Louis. “En garde.”
He caught the sword. “What, here?”
“Why not?” She strode forward and poked him gently in the face with the tip of her sword. “Boop.”
He slashed through the air, and thus began the laziest sword fight in all existence. At one point, Andrew came in to fetch something and found Louis spread out on the couch and Amanda sprawled on the floor, both waving swords violently through the air. He was, understandably, very confused.
“What’s going on?”
Louis glared at him. “Can’t you see? We’re fencing.”
“Why is she on the floor?”
“Perhaps I defeated her.”
“F*** no,” she said, sitting up slowly. “He could never defeat me. We’re just lazy as s***.”
“…okay?”
Amanda decided to be evil. “Hey, Andrew, what happened with you and Akko? Hannah and Barbara are losing their minds over the society columns.”
The fear and anger that flashed over his face was surprising to both of them. “What did the society columns say.”
“Something about a Christmas party. Mistletoe? They’ve been questioning her about it nonstop. Apparently you kissed some mysterious brunette with a red dress and lightning scars down her back. And I know one person who fits that description.”
Andrew could not have been more relieved. Thank the fates it was just the Christmas party. “They exaggerate,” he said, keeping up an angry facade. “It was on the cheek. Nothing scandalous.”
“Sure. Akko was a lot more embarrassed than that.”
Andrew shrugged and hastily left.
“That’s more than he’s said to us about anything over the break.”
“Only confirms my suspicions something’s up. I’ll have to grill Akko when I get back.”
Louis planned to tell Frank and team up to interrogate Andrew about whatever had happened, but when Frank got home from meeting Lotte when the day’s worth of classes had ended, there was so much more drama that that plan was quickly thrown to the wind.