Chapter Text
Coco’s first winter in the atelier starts with Silver Eve, and like a dark omen, her nights only get worse from there.
It is two weeks, now, from the festival and the lights and the dark writhing shadow of the leech in the sky. She is once more back in the safety of the rolling hills of the atelier, bundled in thick coats and furs, comforted, if only slightly, by the knowledge that under Master Qifrey’s magic her mother will not bear the chill of winter snow. In many ways the evidence of that disastrous Silver Eve has been swept away—their clothes washed and mended, ink bottles refilled and small scrapes going from itchy scabs to only the faintest marks against skin.
But there is much of Silver Eve Coco cannot scrub away. The wound clawing up the side of her face, itchy and tight with every twist of her expression. The tights torn irreparably against rubble when she tried to claw her way to Custas.
Silver Eve has taught Coco many bitter lessons. In the weeks following, she learns one more: that even when the horror is over, it will stalk her to her home and cling to her anyway. In dreams. In whispering thoughts. In all the things she has never noticed before—not just in herself, but in the world around her.
It started to snow again, this past week. When Master Olly checks that the warming stones he gave them are still working, Coco turns the stone over her hand, quietly listening to Master Olly scold Master Qifrey into making sure he keeps his on him. “You’ll catch cold, knowin’ your bad habits,” Master Olly says, as Master Qifrey smiles emptily back. In the far corner, Coco stares at the stone in her hands, that gentle radiating warmth, and tries not to think too deeply on why her teacher might have those bad habits in the first place.
This, too, Coco brought back from Silver Eve—for there are questions Coco still has no answer for, and worse still is the dawning realization that each question asked could be the one to cut her teacher from her life for good. It is a strange feeling, to live under the care of someone who she knows, with stone-cold certainty, is lying to her: that he will continue to lie, because it is only by these means that he can continue to live. Custas, Coco finds herself thinking sometimes, deep in the dead night. Oh, Custas. Is this your future too?
She thinks of the way Custas screamed when he realized Dagda was dead. Coco does not sleep well those nights. Sometimes, in the pitch dark hours when her brain is too full of screaming and blood and Dagda lying still against the silver tree roots, she wonders if she’ll ever sleep soundly again. It took weeks for her mother’s frozen face to stop haunting her dreams; now her nightmares have only grown both in scope and in horror. Custas’s wailing turns to Tartah’s steely grip on her wrist, her own mouth betraying her; Master Qifrey’s weak smile as the silver branches sprouted from his eye. When she does manage to slip into sleep, it is feverish and restless, tossing and turning, each second of the night stretched into an eternity.
She knows the others have noticed. She lasted barely a week before the sleepless nights made her visibly sloppy, though she knows Master Qifrey must have known long before Coco started having bottles slip through nerveless hands and accidents so novice even she hasn’t made them in months. Master Qifrey hadn’t said anything, even then. Just placed the bottles back in hand, or quietly corrected her shaking lines. His guilt visible only in the faint pinch of his mouth, and only because Coco is looking for it. Her misery bids her teacher to live one day longer. She could laugh if she didn’t think she would cry.
In those moments, she misses her mom the most.
This night is just the same. It is late, again; she hasn’t slept, again. Even Agott has bedded down, so much more at ease now with her own magic, so much more willing to rest. The study upstairs is dark and still, and the lone window of Coco’s bedroom is clouded with creeping frost. It’s so quiet she can hear her own heart, pounding in her ears like a drum.
Coco tries, once again, to keep her eyes closed. She is just drifting off when something—a memory, a whisper, a cut-off thought—jolts her back awake. Her heart thuds in her ears. Her breathing feels twisted up and choked.
Worse still is the frustration. It’s been weeks! She’s tired of her own nightmares; she’s angry with herself. She stares fixedly out her misted window and blinks hot tears back from puffy eyes. It’s so stupid. This isn’t helping anyone, and it’s definitely not helping her. How is she supposed to save Custas now if she can’t even—?
It’s a mistake to think of Custas. She curls her fingers to claws in her sheets, and only manages to remind herself of the way he clawed at his own head, that shock of newly white hair, screaming like his heart had been ripped from his chest.
Coco’s own heart aches like it’s a muscle to be pulled; her bones feel heavy. She is struck with sudden and childish impulse, to cry and scream and break things, to give voice to the frustration closing up her throat.
Instead Coco rolls out of bed with featherlight footsteps, and makes at last for the door.
As she tiptoes up the stairs to the shared study, and out the room to the loft balcony, she finds herself bitterly nostalgic. It’s not the first time she’s done this. In her early months at the atelier, Coco used to do this often—sleepless, restless, wandering. Most times she’d force herself to stay in bed, but sometimes the itch would grow so unbearable she’d wander the atelier’s halls just for the sake of doing something. Back then it had only been her mother at her heels. Now her ghosts are many, and Coco feels the weight of them all the more.
That old habit aids her now. She makes her way down the loft by feel rather than light, and inches down the main stone stairs with careful movements. If she were more aware maybe walking around like this in the dark would unnerve her more, but as it is, Coco is barely able to pay much attention to where she’s even going. She only realizes she’s found herself in the kitchen when she sees the dim sheen of moonlight through the big window, soft and silver against the snowy grassland.
Coco pauses on the stair, briefly absorbed by the sight. Then a flicker of a golden glow catches in the edge of the glass, and her eyes trace that instead. There, in the depths of the far hall… a faint glow of lamplight, golden and flickering.
She’s following the light before she truly has a chance to think about it. Her head feels fogged and fuzzy, logic lagging behind instinct. It’s not hard to track the source of the glow. It is the only light still lit in the whole house. The faint rim of gold outlining the door to her teacher’s study…
This is nostalgic too.
Her hand reaches out before she can stop herself. The door is just starting to open when her mind finally catches up. Oh, no. Oh, no, what is she doing? What is this going to solve? The comforting words Master Qifrey gave her all those months ago will do nothing for the things haunting Coco now—and even if they could, it’s not like he can give her any real assurance. He can’t answer the questions burning a hole in her heart. Coco knows that now. She understands that. She really, really does.
But the door is already ajar—and a second later, it’s pulled from her grip with a gentle tug to open fully. Her teacher stands in the flickering light of the lantern. His one eye is shadowed and soft.
Coco belatedly realizes her hand is still outstretched. It drops back awkwardly to her side. “…Sorry, Master.”
“Coco,” Master Qifrey replies, kindly, as if this a conversation continuing and not just her barging in on him in the middle of the night: “Should it not be I apologizing to you?”
It’s silly to get choked up about that, but somehow the brazen honesty of it—the simple acknowledgement—sends a lump to her throat. It hurts. She’s just learned she can’t trust him at all, and yet she still can’t help but trust him so much. If she had a Silverwood tree inside her, surely she would live forever just from this feeling alone.
“Sorry,” Coco repeats, unsteadily, and twists her hands in the skirt of her nightgown. “I didn’t mean to…”
“You weren’t disturbing me,” her Master says, firm. “Oh, Coco. Can you still not sleep?”
Her eyes find her socked feet. The silence weighs on her. She hears the faint exhale of Master Qifrey’s sigh, and then he is kneeling down to match her height. His smile is still there, faint and sad; behind the respelled lenses, she can’t see a hint of Silverwood at all. It doesn’t comfort her.
“I thought perhaps to give you your space,” Master Qifrey says, half to Coco herself and half to the air. “But I see now that this has only let it fester.”
She shakes her head, eyes still fixed to the floor. “No, that’s not…! Master Qifrey, it’s really just… I just haven’t been sleeping well. That’s all.”
“I see,” Master Qifrey replies, even-toned. “But if you don’t mind, Coco… would you look me in the eyes as you say this?”
Silver branches twist in the darkness of her nightmares. Coco squeezes her eyes tightly shut.
The quiet weighs as heavy as a cloak. Then another soft sigh, a rustle of cloth, and a gentle hand chuffs under her chin. The touch is so jolting—grounding in the here and now—that Coco finds her gaze guided back up before she can think better of it.
Master Qifrey is still smiling at her. But his lenses are gone now—held in a gentle grip in his hand—and this time, when Coco glances at the eye her teacher has always taken such great pains to hide, the lack of branches feels less like a lie and more like a reassurance.
“Dear Coco,” her teacher says, voice soft. His one remaining eye is clear and calm. “Do not take my burdens as your own.”
She startles back to herself. “But…”
“I have lived with this for years, Coco,” Master Qifrey says, like he can hear the track of her thoughts. His free hand he places on her shoulder, a firm and grounding pressure. Only then does Coco realize she is shaking. “…It is true there is much I cannot say. I—I’m afraid in many cases, you will have to be content with this poor teacher of yours, who may speak falsely or vaguely instead of true. But it is not on you, Coco, to worry about me. Certainly not to the point where you don’t speak at all…!”
Coco can’t come up with the words to answer that. Her head feels full of cotton, fever hot and muddled from night after night of restless nightmares. Shouldn’t she be past this by now? Hasn’t she determined for herself that she must move forward, no matter what has happened, no matter what may come next? But the determination that seemed so easy to grasp in daylight has faded in her own memory, shadowed by Custas’s screaming, Dagda’s still corpse, the phantom pain of Tartah’s tight grip at her wrist.
I appreciate a reason to worry. Hadn’t Master Qifrey said as much, barely a week past? But the memory of that Silverwood branch curling from the empty socket is not easily forgotten. She wishes she could trust him. She wishes she could confess her fears and have him answer them, just as she did before. She wishes she could still believe in the simple fact he would have all the answers, and he could tell them to her, because he is her teacher.
But her teacher, like Custas, is dying.
And just like that, all the words shrivel in her throat.
Master Qifrey squeezes at her shoulder again, and then lifts his hand to carefully dab at her face with the end of his sleeve. Oh, no, is she crying? Again? She lifts her hands to hide her face, but Master Qifrey catches her wrists in a gentle grip before she can. The cold metal of his spectacles, still held in his hand, is shock of cold against her skin.
“How about this?” Master Qifrey says. He is still kneeling in front of her, crouched down on his heels to match her height, and somehow it is this—this common, familiar tactic, this thing her teacher does when they are upset and he is comforting them, that makes Coco’s eyes truly burn. He is her teacher and she cannot trust him. He is her teacher and he has lied to her, and used her, and… and he is sitting here in the dead of night, with that same patient and warm expression as always. Her teacher.
“Tell me what ails you,” Master Qifrey says, not so much an order as it is gentle suggestion. “What has kept you up these past two weeks. And then let me decide what fears I can answer.”
She is shaking her head before he even finishes; Master Qifrey places a quelling hand on her head. It is warm. It reminds her of Mom. Another hot tear burns down her cheek, and her teacher dabs that away too. “No—!”
“Yes,” Master Qifrey returns, unwavering. “Oh, Coco. It is true, in the end, that even with this method there may not be much I can say. And there is no guarantee at all that it will serve as a true answer to your questions or your fears. But won’t you at least let me try?” He brushes the hair from her tear-sticky face, and smiles down at her. “It is cruel of me to ask you to trust me. But I will ask this of you anyway: will you trust me, Coco?”
“I don’t want—want to—”
I have a feeling my roots will need plenty of space to grow. The comfort of sharing a secret; the relief of at last giving voice to a wordless guilt. What if she hurts him? What if these questions, these fears, if they…?
“I know,” Master Qifrey says to her stuttering, sleep-deprived struggling. “Rest assured that I, too, am quite content to stay as I am. If I fear the answer will put me at risk, then I will not answer. That is all. Trust me to know my limits… and please, though it is hard, do try not to worry.” He muses her hair. “After all, such things are best left to me, hm?”
This last bit is said in a conspiratorial tone, like another secret shared; his smile has grown a shade warmer. Coco sniffles hard, and wipes roughly at her face with her sleeve.
“Master…” Her voice sounds thick. Coco sniffles again. “That’s not funny.”
“Oh, well. I’ve had years to think of these little jokes, you know. It’s quite something to finally voice them. Do forgive me?”
It’s still not funny. She doesn’t think even he finds it all that funny. But Coco finds herself stifling stuffy giggles into her elbow anyway, and when she finally manages to blink her eyes free from tears, this time she meets her teacher’s gaze directly.
I forgive you, Coco thinks. She’s not so tired or silly as to say it aloud. She knows better now. But as she smiles weakly back at Master Qifrey, she thinks perhaps he hears it anyway. He ruffles her hair one last time, that unfaltering smile softened to something between sad and fond, and then rises from the floor and gestures her into the study.
Coco wipes the last of her tears away, and steps in after him.