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Qifrey rubs his ribbon between his fingers as he thinks. He thinks and he thinks, and he twists the ribbon around his index finger again and again until he pulls his hat off his work desk only to reset it and start all over again.
What he thinks is that the human mind is very stupid.
Animals are simple. They get injured, they run. They hide. They survive, and when they reach safety, they are consumed entirely by the parasite within them that was hitching a ride.
If Qifrey were as simple as an animal, his life should have ended when he was brought to the Assembly and given a warm meal and a soft bed. That should have been it, poof, end of Qifrey before he even knew who he was or what he was missing out on.
It hasn’t escaped him that his hatred of living under the ocean, his desire for empty space and the stars above him—that could be the parasite. Go somewhere new. Go somewhere empty. Go somewhere you can spread your roots and grow and grow and grow.
But humans worry. They can think about the future. They can suspect that the nice adults who pulled them out of coffins and brought them home might not have the best intentions for them. They can fear and they can dread being turned into a tree against their will.
That should have kept him alive forever. It’s incredibly stupid that even knowing about the bomb under his skin triggered only by feelings of safety, it can still go off. He’s never safe. He has never been safe. He knows this without a shadow of a doubt, but what matters is only if he feels this.
What does safety even mean?
He sighs as he pours himself more tea. Qifrey was buried under a tree, and in a way, he was very safe there. Silverwood seeds won’t bloom near the parent. They won’t bloom near other sibling-hosts, either. Beldaruit always assumed the brimhats throwing him in a coffin and burying him meant they were done with him. But they could have just tossed his useless corpse aside. They buried him a under a silverwood tree—insurance enough that he wouldn’t explode into roots and branches until they wanted him to. They put him under that tree for safekeeping.
The part that sickens him, the thought that makes him angriest—they must have made him love them for it to work. That day at the library, he didn’t think about that part too hard, what it meant that they were able to get him to bloom over and over. He hadn’t done it for himself yet. He hadn’t felt the trigger. But now that he actually remembers what it’s like right before it happens, that feeling that causes the seed to burst forth with new life taken from his own, now that he’s erased Olly’s memory of those blooms half a dozen times, and now that he has his own apprentices, young witches completely dependent on him, trusting him, he burns with anger.
And fear, though not the right kind.
His own motivations for taking in his students were less than altruistic. He took children into his care not because of a love of children or teaching, but in hopes of extending his own life. He didn’t know he’d grow to love them. He won’t lie to himself about why he did it. And loving them just throws into relief what a bastard he is for using them like this.
He has no idea why the brimhats did what they did to him beyond cruel experimentation, but wouldn’t they have their own “noble” explanations? Didn’t he bring Coco here just to get closer to finding them? They made Qifrey feel so safe while they were using him. Is he really any better when he tells Coco he will never let anything happen to her, even if it’s true?
The fear of the tree really should have been enough to keep him alive forever. He doesn’t want to be roots and branches. He doesn’t want to die, or worse. He doesn’t want whoever ran those experiments on him to come back and finish the job.
But fear of certain death is apparently no match for the unrelenting warmth of Olruggio.
Just thinking of his name does something to him—makes him relax his grip on the ribbon he’s now crushing in his fist.
It’s hard to fathom he once felt the same way about one of the brimhats, even if he knows kids are too trusting. He’s seen it himself with his apprentices—a warm meal, a listening ear, soft words, a little bit of guidance, a little bit of freedom...
He doesn’t know if they trust him enough for a parasite to destroy their bodies and minds, but he hopes they do. He wants them to feel what he’s never had for more than a moment or two. He looks for it in their faces, a sense of comfort, of safety.
Those times with Olly, right before the roots burst out of him, what wouldn’t he give to feel that again?
It’s a stupid question, because he knows the answer. He could march right down to Olly’s room right now and tell him everything. Tell him every miserable fucking thought in his head, every lie, every abuse he’s leveled against him, and give Olly one more opportunity to forgive him, and feel the absolute relief when he does.
Because Qifrey knows, he knows Olly will forgive him even if Qifrey can’t forgive himself.
And if Qifrey could feel a little less “safe,” then maybe… maybe he and Olly could… Maybe there’s a version of this life where they…
He pushes the thought away.
They won’t ever be able to be closer than they are, and it is a strange comfort to think that the last thing he’ll ever feel is that feeling, Olly’s warmth.
If he really wanted to live, he would do something… something bad. Something worse than all the things he’s already done. Something unforgivable.
He’s come close. He knows that pursuing the brimhats more aggressively would bother Olly. He knows it would lead him down a path that would probably take him over that edge. But every time he’s gotten close, Olly’s led him back to acting like the person he’s pretending to be.
If only it didn’t all depend on Olly.
Qifrey is the real problem. He knows that his life is held together by a thread—or a thin black ribbon—so it shouldn’t matter what Olly thinks about him. Or what Qifrey thinks about what Olly thinks about him. He should be able to stand there fully enveloped in Olly’s embrace and acceptance for as long as Olly wants to embrace and accept him and still fear for his life. That is the moment he should be most afraid.
And it is so fucking stupid it doesn’t work that way.
“You’re going to wear a hole in that thing,” Olruggio calls from his doorway, and Qifrey relaxes at just the sound of his voice as he disentangles his fingers from his ribbon.
Once a week he casts a mending spell on the ribbon to put it back to the condition it was when he first got it, because his fingers surely would have rubbed a dozen holes through it by now, but that’s one more thing Olly doesn’t need to know.
“Working on something?” Olly asks.
“Not exactly.” He gestures at his almost-empty work desk to make the point.
“Want to have a drink?”
He doesn’t think drinking will do much to help with where his mind is at just now, but he would prefer to sit with Olly over sitting alone in this room ruminating over Olly. Olly is leaning against the doorframe, bags under his eyes again, but he looks cheerful.
They see each other every damn day, yet just looking at him makes Qifrey smile.
Olly’s gaze travels to his hand, and he realizes he’s fidgeting with the ribbon again.
He stands up.
“Yeah.”
They leave the kitchen mostly dark, just a single lamp lit on the table. Qifrey barely sips at his wine, just another small lie for Olly so he can enjoy himself. Olly happily sinks into his chair, wine bowl propped up between his fingers, a look of contentment on his face as he takes a long drink.
“Olly,” Qifrey asks, “You spend all your time thinking about the comfort of others. What makes people feel safe?”
“You need me to tell you this?” He doesn’t look impressed by the question, and he gestures around them. “A warm house, food on the table, a nice vintage...”
He can’t work with that; the girls need food and shelter. He needs something that can affect him alone, that can make him uniquely unsafe.
“Anything else?”
Olruggio rubs his head in thought. “Well… stability? Most people don’t like big and sudden changes. They want to know the next day is going to be about the same as the last.”
Can’t do much with that, either. The girls occasionally create unexpected situations for him, but he wouldn’t do anything that would cause the same for them, and he can’t exactly encourage them to engage in unsafe escapades that require his intervention.
“Anything else?” he prompts again.
“I guess… people? Knowing that the people around you are safe. That they aren’t going to hurt you. That’s important.”
That’s the crux of it. Maybe if he moved them back to the Assembly, he could count on some backstabbing, could worry about Coco being taken by the Knights Moralis… but he can’t bear to go back there, and he wouldn’t risk Coco like that. It’s also not what he promised the girls when he took them into his atelier.
“Why are you asking this?” Olruggio prods. “Are the girls… struggling? Homesick? Having nightmares?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
Olly nods, but the concerned expression on his face doesn’t leave as he sips more of his wine.
“Are… you? Having nightmares?”
Qifrey smiles into his wine bowl and he wants to scream. What can he tell him? He feels too safe? That his options are to go on a quest of vengeance and danger and he-doesn’t-know-what or die because his life with Olly makes him too happy and yet not quite happy enough?
“I need you to hurt me.”
Olruggio chokes. “What?”
“But you can’t tell me you’re going to do it. You need to surprise me.”
“Wait, wait, Qifrey—”
“It’s important.”
For a moment he thinks he might actually do it. There’s that look in his eyes, like he’s trying to solve a problem or maybe steel himself for a challenge.
“You’d be helping me a lot,” Qifrey pushes, leaning forward in his chair, and now he’s just manipulating him.
Olruggio’s brows knit together in an expression disbelief and reluctance. He releases a small breath, turns away from Qifrey. There—he might do it. What wouldn’t he do for Qifrey?
Then his face breaks—he laughs. He laughs so hard he spills his wine. “Alright, tell me what the actual problem is and we’ll come up with an actual solution. You late on a deadline or something? Trying to avoid an invitation? You don’t need to fake an injury to get out of it.”
It wasn’t meant to be fake, he doesn’t say. Qifrey smiles, that fake smile Olruggio taught him so long ago, and he grasps at whatever anxiety he can. If that’s not Olly in this moment, then it’s Coco. He is worried about Coco. Olly’s smile can’t quite erase that right now, nor the guilt he feels for using Coco in this way.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’ll, um. I’ll figure it out some other way.”
But he can’t install a rabid dog in the nearby forest, because he would never endanger the girls like that. Same goes for a dragon or spells that hurl ice at random intervals or any number of things that would make his life intolerable enough to be survivable.
He watches Olly’s cheeks slowly flush with wine in his atelier under the open sky surrounded by people he cares for, and he’s as caged as ever.