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This close to the chasm, there’s a railing. It’s to keep idiots from pitching themselves off, supposedly, although it’s easy enough to climb over. There is always a breeze running through Pillardrop, and it’s luck of the draw (or fate’s blasted decision) whether it ends up tousling one’s hair in an artful manner or, well, otherwise. A ledge of rock shields two figures from the rain, but not from the cold.
Marty’s shirt is still a little damp from the rain and occasionally the breeze blows pinpricks of cold into his face where he leans against the railing. Arms crossed, he sulks, looking out upon the chasm.
“If you’ve brought me up here to watch you mope, I’m leaving,” Bentley drawls, a few feet further back. In his coat, a Lorehold native, he feels little of the cold from where he stands leaning against the rough-chopped rock wall. His voice is just as biting and bored as the monotony of the weather, and it wakes a petty irritation in Martin.
Marty doesn’t respond, electing only to send an unimpressed glare over his shoulder.
Truthfully, he isn’t sure why he’s brought Bentley up here. Honestly, he had imagined a refusal. They interacted so little, despite living on the same campus, and Marty knows Bentley doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like Bentley back. Marty doesn’t even like this wretched university, even though it’s been only a handful of weeks since he’s started here. He’s too stupid for Strixhaven, just like his parents had warned him.
But he deserves to be here, just like the glory-hound of a relative stood behind him.
“Martin,” Bentley prompts after several long moments more of the silence, voice short.
“This is where you died, isn’t it?” Marty says, “The second time.”
He doesn’t look at Bentley, this time. The silence is heavy, broken only by the soft howling of the wind and the timeless drip of rain sinking into old rock. The air smells close and earthy, like a crypt. You can’t see much of Strixhaven from here, only the twinkle of lights from the other side of Pillardrop, hazy through the sheets of the lazy storm.
“It is,” Marty hears the approaching footsteps of his cousin, and sees the dark shape of him coming to stand beside him at the railing. Resolute, Marty glares out at the chasm.
“Is…that what you want to talk about?” Bentley continues, rough voice unsuited to the context. Hallwinters did not speak of their feelings with each other, as a general rule, but it would seem that fraternising with a Clifford has changed things. Softened Bentley up or made him weak. Like Marty needed Bentley to talk about his feelings with. His big, brave cousin, so vastly intelligent and greatly capable, had been seeing a shrink. That’s what Marty’s heard.
“Not really,” Marty says.
“You’re insufferable,” Bentley bites back almost immediately, already exasperated.
There’s another long stretch of nothingness. Martin waits until it seems that Bentley will turn to leave, until he’s on his last thread.
“A second time, Bentley,” Marty snaps, taken by a sudden expulsion of emotion he’s been keeping under lock and key for months, and months, and months. He turns to face his cousin, “You died a second time.”
Bentley glares at him, nose wrinkled and frown setting his sharp jaw even sharper. Martin could sketch the look from memory, if he had to - in his mind’s eye, Bentley’s face took no other form. He’d never given Marty any other kind of expression, not for years and years and years. Always a scowl.
The wizard opens his mouth to speak, to snarl something back, but seems to lose steam. He shuts his mouth, and folds his arms over his chest, glancing to the floor and then the chasm.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he insists. Marty stares at him, almost disbelieving. Maybe there is something imploring, left unspoken in his gaze, but he is sure the look is not returned. The air is palpable with the inability of either of them to put words what they actually mean to say.
“Well – I do,” Marty mumbles. Perhaps it’s selfish, “No one talks…about…no one talks about it at home.”
“I see.”
Unbending, as usual.
“No, you don’t. You were here,” Marty’s voice is sharp, bitter, and stubborn. He looks at Bentley so fast, with such a glare, it’s like a lash across his skin.
Bentley huffs a sigh, closing his eyes momentarily and clawing at patience. He hates that Martin wants to talk about his past – about both of their pasts. He hates that he’s chosen this place, of all places, in which to bring it up. They were both so clumsy with it, with their feelings. Bentley can see it, now, but has no idea how to get past it.
Most of all, he hates that Marty has a point.
“Go on, then,” Bentley says finally, voice dulled like a concession, “What do you want me to say?”
Marty fumbles to respond. He grips the railing with his hands, and then lets it go, only to grasp it again. He had expected more shouting from them both. All he can do is look away, avoid those dull grey eyes. Although, they weren’t always grey these days, where they? Sometimes blue, like his own, but from perversity. Marty trails the tip of his finger through the collected raindrops upon the surface of the railing and shoves his damp hair out of his eyes, scowling down at the depths of the huge chasm they stand before. It must take hours to reach the bottom of it. What a dreadful place.
No good place to live, really.
“They’ve replaced the bridge over the river, you know,” Martin says, after a long time, “You remember the old one? The fireflies still gather down there, despite the gardener’s efforts. I’ve tried telling him that they won’t leave, not those kind, but he won’t listen.”
Bentley is taken aback but doesn’t show it. Talk of home pulls painfully at his heartstrings, although he has been back to Darkwood twice since his second incident. Somehow, he had not noticed the new bridge. It’s almost surreal. But Marty had always been unduly, unusually attached to the most specific of things, memories that Bentley had never been able to parse the rhyme or reason of. He raises an eyebrow.
“You visit?” he asks.
Martin hums, guarded.
“Someone had to,” he shrugs. No one had to. But Marty had still done so.
“It would’ve survived just fine on its own,” Bentley says, a poke with words. It’s hypocritical of him, to want Martin to admit things when he could never do it himself.
“Fuck you, Bentley,” Marty bites, frustrated, a snarl in his voice. Then, sudden and direct, “I hated you, but I still missed you. For what everyone calls a prodigy, you’re awfully stupid, you know that? Not everyone hated you.”
Bentley’s first instinct is a flare of anger, of indignant and wounded pride, something defensive. But it fizzles just as fast as it manifests, and he stares, eyebrows knitted in awkward confusion. No - not confusion. A difficult and messy guilt, framed with melancholy. There’s a vulnerability in the look, something neither man would be able to voice.
“Yes, well,” Bentley says, quiet, one hand rested on the railing and rubbing the pad of his thumb against the cold iron, “I wish you had written.”
The admission feels painful. Outlandish, and disproportionate. They had never gotten on, let alone thought to send each other letters. But death and distance does much. Bentley had been awfully lonely, and Martin had never in his life not been so.
“I should’ve.”
“What?”
“I said,” Marty grumbles, “I should’ve written.”
Bentley clicks his tongue. The two of them artfully side-step the point.
“Instead, you enrolled?” he says, only half-sneering.
“That’s different,” Martin insists, “Not everything I do is about you, cousin.”
Bentley shakes his head. He knows that, despite the way conceit insists otherwise. A younger him might’ve blown up at the slight, but he’s older and calmer and a lot more tired now than to start shouting matches with the only cousin he’s in contact with. They had grown up together. For a fleeting moment, Bentley manages to wonder how he might’ve felt, had Marty been the one to get himself in such dire straits as Bentley had.
Something to unpack later, perhaps.
A silence settles on them both, after that. There is too much left unspoken, with neither man brave enough to broach it.
“Still, I do not understand why you insist on fraternising with new money,” Marty continues, resorting to his own petty habits, licking the vulnerable wounds he’s just exposed, “If you’re trying to prove yourself capable of getting some –”
“Quiet,” Bentley demands. To the shock of them both, Martin does. Bentley did not know the authority he could wield with his voice, sometimes; but if anything could call such a skill forward, it would be any slight against Lawrence.
“I suppose he’s definitely whipped you into shape,” Marty continues, a well-schooled bitterness in his tone. Bentley lets it slide, somewhat, “I did not know you were capable of such softness.”
“Some of us do not hand ourselves out like cheap parchment,” Bentley drawls, surprisingly patient.
“Tch, I don’t do that,” Marty insists, frowning.
“I never said you did.”
“What’s so bad about cheap parchment, anyway?” Marty sneers, mocking the analogy. He’s only half certain that he knows what Bentley means and feels defensive for it. Silverquill teaches him much, and words are about the only thing that Marty knows how to be clever about – but sometimes, they still escape him. It doesn’t help that his cousin is so cryptic.
“It’s useless for spell-making,” Bentley says, “You’ll get nowhere with it.”
Marty glares at the chasm, grip tightening on the railing, before he lets it go.
“You can still write on it, though,” he says, “So it’s still – still bloody useful.”
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s your stupid metaphor,” Marty huffs, wrinkling his nose, his patience worn thin.
The two of them stand in another extended silence, both feeling a little miffed and a little foolish. Bentley shifts from foot to foot once and rolls his shoulder unconsciously. He deliberates far too hard over whether he’ll say what he says next.
“There’s…nothing wrong with,” he clears his throat slightly, “With softness, as you call it,” Bentley sneers the word. It’s unclear whether he disapproves of the concept itself, the word it’s made of, or the fact that it’s the name that Marty’s given it.
Marty laughs, almost bitter.
“He must be mighty good in bed, huh?” he bitches, deciding that Bentley’s truly grown pathetic. Moreso than he already was. No self-respecting Hallwinter would be peddling such platitudes without bending to some great amount of external influence. Influence from a penniless Clifford whore, no less. Marty’s nose itches, the skin across its bridge a little tight.
“Martin,” Bentley warns, a well-leashed threat in the name.
“I’m just playing, cousin,” Marty sneers, a nasty laugh in his voice, giving Bentley a playful shove to the upper arm. It would seem the two of them would never play nice with one another. Bentley snatches Martin’s wrist, scarred fingers wrapped almost painfully tight around the joint.
“Don’t touch me,” he says.
“Jesus, grow up, Bentley,” Marty snipes, pulling his wrist back and shoving his hand in his pocket. For a moment, his shoulders are bowed like a lesser man’s.
He straightens up, pulling a confident smirk onto his face. Bentley knows how deep the farce runs. Has always known.
“Are you done?” Bentley cuts in, before Marty can spout whatever nonsense he’d planned on saying. Bentley isn’t sure whether he’d have been able to keep a lid on his temper, if Martin had been about to suggest Bentley quit wasting his time. He had skipped a class for this nonsense.
Marty’s smirk falls to a scowl.
Go fetch your brother, Master Hallwinter, he’s causing a fuss.
Sorry Miss, that’s actually my cousin.
It’s funny, how many people had made the mistake of thinking them siblings, of thinking them two sides of the same coin.
“Yes, I’m done with you,” Marty declares, a sneer, “I have things to do.”