Work Text:
And no alchemic incantation
For a counterfeit salvation
Can appease your leviathan groom
"Why are you being so stubborn about this, Qifrey? It's not like you."
The coolness of the windowsill soothes the heat raging across Qifrey's skin, his forehead almost plastered to the glass. He isn't entirely sure how lucid he is, everything dull around him except for the acute awareness he always has that it is bloody well raining outside.
Olruggio stands in the middle of his bedroom with his hands on his hips, a small bag in hand of salves that Qifrey keeps on hand, tucked away and hidden from prying and watchful young eyes, for the days when his pain from the silverwood is too great to bear.
But today is not a good day for Qifrey. Today feels like a day the pain he carries is deserved for his rebellious ways against the order. A day where he wonders if all he truly is meant to do in life is suffer.
"Qifrey?"
Hmm. He'll probably have to erase Olruggio's memories again. Of all the forbidden magics, anything to do with the healing arts seems to carry some of the heaviest seriousness to it.
There's a gentle hand on his shoulder, an old warning, before a hand is placed on his forehead underneath his bangs that fall over his missing eye, fingers careful to not touch the empty socket.
Olruggio's hand is warm. Olruggio is never cold, ever. But the touch, unusually careful and gentle, jolts Qifrey out of his stupor for a second before he finds himself careening forward into it
"Whoa!"
"You're warm," Qifrey mutters, mostly out of it, eyes slipping shut.
His joints ache. His ribs and back hurt from coughing. Everything burns.
"I was gone for three days, Qifrey, and you manage to get sick? This isn't like you," he hears Olruggio say.
Whatever quip Qifrey was going fire back is lost as he coughs, deep and wet, the fit last long enough he's gasping for air when it is finally done, falling further forward with a groan, the world going grey.
"Qifrey, you idiot."
When Qifrey wakes up again, the storm hasn't receeded, but he knows he's staring up at the blurry ceiling of the hospital.
"You're awake."
He feels unusually trapped in the bed, something heavy surround him on nearly all sides. Vision blurry, he tilts his head to the side, looks past a pink cloud of hair to see Olruggio's blurry form in a chair next to the bed.
He exhales, something of a sigh of relief, and goes back under.
Waking again a second time proves to be much easier and far less constricting. Richeh is still curled up at the foot of the bed, fast asleep, that much he can tell from a quick glance, but he can hear quiet chatter off to the side.
"No, the sigils should be here," Agott's voice corrects. "Otherwise it'll be off-balance."
"Aren't they too long, though?" Tetia chimes in.
"Sorry," Coco's sheepish voice says. "My pen got caught on something in the floor when I was drawing it."
Qifrey just…lies there. Lets the world pass on around him. It is good to hear the girls work through the problem they'd been given, the occassional sound of a spell being cast, the brief smell of something mysteriously being set on fire and being quickly snuffed out. Richeh shifts once, rolling a little more onto his feet, in a position that surely cannot be comfortable, but she naps on anyways.
It would be so easy right now to just…let go. Weak as he is physically, the storm having quieted down to a steady pitter-patter of rain against the windows and on the roof, at peace as he is in the middle of this little scene of quiet.
The silverwood whispers, stretches, and Qifrey takes a deep breath-
"How long have you been awake?"
Ah. Olruggio.
Something is pressed into his hand, his spectacles, and Qifrey moves to put them on, squinting a little with his one failing eye as the world adjusts a little bit into focus, Olruggio standing on the other side of the bed with his eyebrows pinched and arms crossed.
"Not long," he croaks. Wow, his voice sounds horrendous.
"Master Qifrey?"
Instantly he's crowded on the other side, three faces staring up at him in a mix of relief and joy.
He smiles, the tension in his chest unwinding quietly, the silverwood's whispers retreating. "Hello girls."
It's another day before Qifrey is discharged from the hospital. Apparently the little cold he had been fighting off had turned into something more serious in the three short days that Olruggio had been gone, leading to a scolding by one of the doctors that Qifrey needs to take better care of his health, especially with apprentices under his care.
"You left me to the scalewolves with her," Qifrey complains to Olruggio as they step out into the street. The girls were running on ahead of them just a bit, excited to be heading home and for the sun to finally be showing her face after so many days of rain.
"You deserved it," Olruggio says, entirely unsympathetic, hand at Qifrey's elbow to help suppoort him as they walk at a much slower pace befitting two elderly grandpas on a stroll. "She's right, you need to take better care of your health."
"Pot, kettle," Qifrey quips.
"Yes, but I don't have four young apprentices relying on me, now do I?"
Something about the way that Olruggio says it sobers Qifrey and he peers at his old friend from underneath his bangs. "……did something happen while I was in the hospital?" he dares to ask.
Olruggio lets out a heavy huff of air. "No, other than you worrying all of us nearly out of our minds. But Qifrey, if something were to happen to you, where would the girls go?"
Qifrey looks down, a tendril of guilt slithering through his heart.
He doesn't have an answer for that one. Truthfully, he hadn't thought that far ahead, and if he was being entirely and completely honesty with himself, he had maybe assumed that Olruggio would just take the girls under his wing in the event that Qifrey couldn't hold back the silverwood any longer.
(It had, in all honesty, never ocurred to Qifrey that something like natural causes would take his life. He had always assumed it would either bet the Brims or the silverwood, most likely the silverwood first. Old age was, quite frankly, something that happened to other people. Entirely out of reach and unattainable for Qifrey. Making it to thirty is even a dream in and of itself.)
"I suppose you wouldn't take them?" he asks quietly.
Olruggio's hold on his elbow tightens. "Don't be silly, it would take more than a cold to kill you."
Qifrey supposes he should probably have a plan in place in case something goes horrendously wrong.
But he doesn't want to think about that just yet. He wants to enjoy the sunlight and the people around them and watching the girls dart from booth to booth as they go through the city streets…at least while he still can.