Work Text:
Agott can’t help noticing how thoughtful Coco has seemed lately. “Lately” is a flexible term, but Agott can roughly trace it back to the Silvernight Festival. Or rather, that was when it became impossible to ignore. At some point, there was no sign left of the inspired, awkward Coco she used to know.
Well, to be accurate, she still acted like herself. Like Coco. With her enthusiasm and her tendency to charge headfirst into things. With her simple spells. With the sleepless nights of practice that, at some point, had become routine. Agott herself hadn’t even noticed when she started going to bed before Coco over and over again. And even if she grumbled at Coco to go to sleep because exhaustion never led to anything good — as Professor Olruggio liked to say — after watching Coco once, she realized her concern was like water off a duck’s back. Beneath the blankets, the silhouette of a light glyph illuminated Coco as clearly as dawn.
Agott began watching Coco more often than not. It no longer embarrassed her. Whenever their eyes met, Coco would simply smile at her, while Agott continued resting her chin on her hand in thought.
As if the whole world had turned upside down.
Now it wasn’t Coco following Agott’s every movement anymore (and Agott, believe her, had been thoroughly fed up with Coco’s relentless attention toward her drawings back when they first met. “Agott this, Agott that...” she recalled, involuntarily blushing. “There are... plenty of... amazing witches here...”), but Agott... watching her. Glyphs had begun taking shape effortlessly, falling onto paper through muscle memory, through repeated motions performed hundreds of times already.
Agott couldn’t stop thinking, unconsciously holding her breath, about how someone could desire self-improvement so desperately. To such an extent that nothing could stop them.
Coco had a terrible habit of embarrassing Agott with sudden compliments. It felt like if someone asked what was so remarkable about Agott, Coco would never shut up, so Agott tried not to ask, though circumstances did not always cooperate with her.
“Ohh, what an amazing glyph!” Professor Qifrey smiled as he examined yet another invention Coco had handed him for evaluation. Coco was visibly vibrating with the need for PRAISE, but Agott knew perfectly well that criticism wouldn’t upset her. She would accept it, smile, and run back to their room to make it even better.
“It’s Agott’s! I saw the way she dra—”
After that, Agott’s thoughts dissolved. She registered every word leaving Coco’s mouth, yet somehow still felt absent. She could have quoted everything Coco said while her mind desperately tried to distance itself from it all, while she buried her face in her sleeves so that not a single ray of sunlight would touch her burning cheeks and reveal them.
“I see,” Professor Qifrey continued smiling. He looked at Agott with that usual gentle gaze of his — the kind one desperately wanted to trust, yet could never fully read. Agott swallowed hard. “I’m glad you girls are learning from each other.”
Agott would not be lying or exaggerating in the slightest if she said she had learned a great deal from Coco. So much, so much. The way stars learn from the sky, and the sky from stars. She knew it was mutual because, on Coco’s side, it had always been that way first. As though Coco had understood from the very beginning how things were meant to be, cutting through Agott’s darkness like a ray of sunlight and settling there no matter how hard Agott tried to brush it away. So she owed Coco something in return.
Everyone knew what had brought Coco into the world of witches in the first place. Usually, the Unknowing did not become witches, so rumors about cases like that spread quickly. They sparked curiosity, caution, and of course ridicule.
“I just can’t shake the feeling that something about this is wrong,” drawled a stranger around their age — maybe a few years older — the second time they ran into him on the streets of Romonon, when they had gone there to replenish supplies. “An Unknowing girl apprenticed to another former Unknowing. Doesn’t that seem suspicious? What if people have decided to reach for magic again, just like in the good old days?”
His words drew the crowd’s attention. People gathered around them, already attracted by Agott’s argument with the warlock. Agott clenched her teeth and refused to let Coco’s persistent tugging at her cloak distract her.
“So you’d rather children who’ve done nothing wrong lose their memories, their homes, and any chance at a future?”
Agott KNEW whose apprentice she had become, even if back then she hadn’t realized just how talented and powerful Professor Qifrey truly was. He had taken her in when the whole world had turned its back on her. His atelier had become her new home, the place where she could improve herself. And Coco... Coco had also been taken in because Professor Qifrey was kind. No one had the right to speak about him like that.
Her words didn’t affect the stranger at all, and it immediately became obvious that it had been the wrong move. The ring of people around them only tightened, and nothing good could come of it.
“Yes,” the warlock said. “I’d rather people capable of destroying centuries-old traditions be eliminated as early as possible. It doesn’t matter whether they’re adults or children. They are still a THREAT.”
The words struck Agott’s heart like an icy spear. She realized she had never known how to find the right words, and this time was no exception. She clenched her jaw.
“It’s true that I used forbidden magic without understanding what it meant.”
Agott hadn’t even noticed when Coco stopped pulling her back. Coco spoke from beneath her bangs, her voice muffled, yet everyone heard her.
“But Professor Qifrey isn’t guilty of what happened to him. Listen to Agott. Would you really leave a child with nothing — no family, no hopes, completely alone — just to preserve rules that wouldn’t even be broken if the child were initiated?! Do you distrust the world around you that much?! We keep the secret that witches are made, not born, and so many people could become wonderful witches if they were given power. They could create so many good things. Hasn’t Professor Qifrey created good things? What exactly are you accusing him of besides your own fantasies?!”
Coco’s speech made the crowd falter. Agott found the strength to move and grabbed Coco’s hand, pulling her away from the center of the confrontation. The circle let them pass as though a spell had collapsed before completion. They disappeared into an alleyway, and Agott watched helplessly as Coco cried.
“How can they... be so... so unfair to Professor Qifrey...” Coco wiped at her endless tears with her sleeves, sniffling over and over, still looking furious.
Agott understood her feelings — she was angry too. But in all of this, Coco, as always, ignored the most important part of the equation: herself.
“Are... are you okay?” Agott asked timidly.
As gemstones harden beneath the earth, as a river’s current grows harsher downstream, so Agott’s resolve strengthened, her steps toward Coco becoming surer with every passing second.
For the first time, Agott hugged Coco to comfort her, and she felt as though she were holding a porcelain doll. That sensation vanished when Coco clung to her as though Agott were her last chance at salvation. Agott ignored her burning ears and supported her because if this was the way she could help, then she would do her part. If all she had to do was stand there, hold the spell, and not draw attention to herself, she could manage that. Enough showing off — Coco was crying.
“Thank you...” Coco whispered when she finally pulled away. She was still sniffling, but she looked more alive already. Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself, her expression settling back into something closer to her usual self, though still swollen from tears.
At the edge of Agott’s consciousness flickered a thought she did not want to hear.
NO ONE GETS THIS UPSET OVER A SIMPLE INSULT TOWARD THEIR TEACHER. NOT EVEN COCO. SHE ALREADY KNOWS THAT MOST OF THE WITCHING COMMUNITY DOESN’T PARTICULARLY LIKE HIM.
“Do you feel better?” Agott couldn’t stop her fingers from brushing lightly against Coco’s cheek, wiping away the last tear.
“Yes,” Coco said, smiling at Agott as though trying to show her what sunrise over a fire would look like. “Everything will be alright.”
---
No matter how badly Agott wanted to believe Coco, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. That feeling had misled her before — particularly with Coco, whenever she thought Coco was planning something — but Agott couldn’t completely ignore it. It had saved her too many times. It had kept her afloat and kept her composed. She smiled at Coco when Coco smiled at her, but there was none of the old strength in that smile. Not for either of them.
She noticed how close Coco had become with Professor Qifrey. That closeness had always existed, no matter how hard the professor tried to maintain some distance; it was painfully obvious that he would follow Coco through fire and water alike, as he already had several times. But something subtle in the way they both looked prevented Agott from feeling at ease. Coco’s smile had become DIFFERENT. Could Agott really be called paranoid for thinking someone’s smile had changed?
“I don’t think so,” Professor Olruggio said.
Agott always felt strangely timid in his presence. As though her body might suddenly be lifted into the air. Or maybe not. That uncertainty alone was enough to keep her tense.
Agott hated breaking rules — especially rules written directly on the door in front of her nose — but she had hoped Professor Olruggio would understand the seriousness of the situation. Even if the seriousness sometimes felt exaggerated to her. But the thing about HER adults was that they LISTENED to them, to children. And Agott’s heart couldn’t help beating faster because of that.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Olruggio rested his head more comfortably on his folded arms hanging over the railing. His eyes resembled the smooth surface of a lake, and if Agott had stood any closer, she would have clearly seen her own reflection in them. “I think you’re just worried. And that’s normal.”
Before Agott could become embarrassed by those words, Professor Olruggio continued.
“I’m worried too...”
Agott didn’t dare move, afraid of breaking whatever mood he was in. She remained silent. Until Olruggio’s silence became unbearable.
“So Professor Qifrey...” She had no idea how she intended to finish that sentence. “You and Professor Qifrey...” something like that, but how was she supposed to phrase it? She wasn’t even entirely sure what she was trying to ask.
Olruggio sighed heavily, HEAVILY, and lifted his head from the railing.
“You children have no idea how difficult things can become. But that isn’t your burden to carry.”
Agott could have taken offense. She HAD BEEN ABOUT to take offense. Instead, she lowered her head.
“I’m worried that Coco isn’t telling me everything she’s really thinking.”
There. She had finally said it.
Those words did nothing to change Olruggio’s thoughtful expression. His eyes flashed toward Agott, and it was a truly charged look.
“Well, you should support her either way, shouldn’t you?! Maybe she’s going through difficult times she doesn’t want to talk about. I don’t know what’s on her mind, but that happens!! Sometimes we simply don’t know, but we still have to stay by their side.”
Agott completely agreed with him, and yet...
That “yet” would not leave her alone.
Handing Coco stacks of paper day after day, cooking together and laughing together, Agott couldn’t shake the feeling that she SHOULD know. And understand her correctly — she was done with selfish theatrics. She had learned to think about others, about Coco... But what if Coco was hurting herself? Was Agott supposed to stand by and simply accept it? Absolutely not.
Professor Olruggio was a kind man, but perhaps even he did not understand everything (somewhere in the next room, Olruggio sneezed loudly and scratched his back. His head was full of anxious thoughts he was trying to distract himself from with a new spell).
So Agott... perhaps she snooped through Coco’s glyphs a little.
There was nothing unusual in them — and that was frustrating. Ordinary creations by the witch known as Coco, in her style, with her annotations. Slightly messy drafts cluttering the margins of the pages. Dark lines, heavy pressure. Coco always held her pen as though she were holding a sword, and the paper were her enemy.
But now her lines seemed even darker.
As though every drop of ink were a drop of blood.
Late at night, Agott woke to a strange noise, despite usually sleeping soundly. She turned her head — a Brushbuddy was rummaging through her papers (glyph drafts) on the bedside shelf, and Agott hissed at it to scare it away. Honestly. Of all places to play around. The Brushbuddy grabbed one of Agott’s fresh glyphs — one she still hadn’t decided what to do with — between its teeth and darted out of the room. Swearing under her breath, Agott chased after it.
She lost sight of the Brushbuddy once she entered the common room and saw Coco asleep right at her workspace. Her heart tightened in that familiar way, and she rubbed her forehead, trying to drive away the feeling that everything was happening again.
Agott woke her by touching her shoulder, because if she kept sleeping at the table, she was going to ruin her back.
“Hm?” Coco startled awake. She rubbed her eyes, her gaze slowly focusing on reality. “Did I fall asleep?” She looked at the glyphs she had collapsed over, scattered across the table before her, and her expression darkened.
Agott couldn’t handle this anymore.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Huh?”
“What’s been bothering you lately? You seem very... lost in thought.”
Coco didn’t answer for a long time, and Agott was already considering changing her approach when—
“Well. You noticed.”
“Well”? Agott furrowed her brows. The choice of words unsettled her. Coco looked so sacrificially saintlike in her thoughts, as though a god were speaking to the faithful. It was infuriating.
“Why wouldn’t I notice? You spend all day looking detached, barely commenting on the taste of food, like you’re just mechanically forcing it down. You eat breakfast with us every morning, but even when you laugh and smile, it feels like you’re not really there.”
Coco smiled that same smile again, but it quickly faded from her lips.
“You’re right... You noticed everything. You’re very observant, Agott.”
From anyone else, that would have sounded sarcastic, and Agott had spent her whole life interpreting remarks exactly that way. But most of her classmates had turned out to be shallow fools who couldn’t deceive even a gnat. So if Coco said something, she meant it.
Agott scoffed softly. It did nothing to get information out of Coco, and Coco opened her mouth to say everything was fine — Agott could see it in her eyes — but Agott caught her face in her hands, forcing them to look at each other.
“I don’t believe you’re okay,” Agott said simply.
A smile appeared on her face on its own, like a promise of something better, as she looked into Coco’s surprised, sparkling eyes.
“But I think it’s okay for you not to be okay, after everything you’ve been through. And I probably can’t even imagine what that was like,” Agott said, remembering Olruggio’s words.
Coco couldn’t tear her wide eyes away from her.
“Just...” NOW Agott was the one becoming awkward under Coco’s attention. “I want you to know it’s okay if you’re not okay. And I’m here if you want... if you want to... anyway...”
Agott had no idea how to finish her thought, but she didn’t need to.
Coco immediately threw herself into her arms, but Agott had not expected that at all, so both of them toppled onto the floor.
Against the pounding rhythm of Agott’s heartbeat, Coco buried her face in Agott’s shoulder and whispered things Agott could not fully understand. About “bad things,” about “secrets that aren’t hers,” about “this unfair world, why is it so unfair, Agott?!”, about dark magic, and about how it would not leave her alone.
They fell asleep like that after Coco finally exhausted herself, while Agott was lulled to sleep by warmth and by anxieties that had retreated, if only for a second.
Because while Coco was in her arms, she would never let—
(Don’t tell anyone.)