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Around half an hour after getting out of bed, tidying up the living room, and preparing the ingredients to make breakfast, a pot breaks. It smashes against the ground and leaves behind small shards, sharp, designed to cut.
Flinching away from the noise, one leg brought up and hands cradled close to his chest, Qifrey curses. Once; twice. Where before was a nice bowl of soup, now rests the remnants of food staining the wooden floorboards.
“Fuck,” Qifrey repeats. Liquid pools under his feet. He can feel is through the soles of his boots — except that may just be sweat, actually. It’s a hot day out; mid summer.
Usually… he’s usually not one to be so clumsy. The ceramic contraption simply slipped from his hands like soap, like a cloud, impossibly soft. His fingers weakened before he could realize, and now he has to deal with the danger of there being shards on the floor, which anyone could step on if they’re not careful enough.
Teachers are meant to be wise and careful and wholly dedicated to keep their students safe from harm. When a young witch goes out to be taken in by an Atelier, the master must also be willing to adopt parental behaviors, because to a child so young, being away from home can easily become detrimental to their mental health. As every parent and teacher should do, he keeps the house clean, cooks them meals, buys them supplies. Keeping his voice calm and steady is a practiced manner that has become habit; keeping his hands gentle and soft.
Another thing they ought to do is make sure the kids don’t stab their feet. Another thing he ought to do is tidy up his mess, because if the girls come by running, the house is sure to end up covered in blood and tears.
“Damn. What the hell happened here?” Olruggio’s voice comes from behind him. In front? On the corner of his eye, he spots a ribbon, and he follows it intensely until he finds— until he—
“Nothing,” Qifrey breathes out. Too abnormal, from the way Olruggio’s eyebrows raise.
“That doesn’t look like nothing,” Olruggio points out, tilting his head to the side and gesturing at the mess.
Remaining flesh in his empty eye socket, hot and red and angry, twitches. No leaves. Qifrey says, mouth stuffed with cotton and sap, “I simply dropped the…” He blinks. The what? “The pot."
Stars, his throat itches. It’s distracting.
Qifrey looks back down, and finds himself with a broom and a dustpan, each in one hand. The right swiftly swipes the shards into the small plastic shovel; the left holds it in place. When did he kneel down? When did he start cleaning up?
Most of the job is already done. The parasite moving his body leaves him all at once and his arms slump like a puppet with cut strings. But it hasn’t left. He’s wrong, it hasn’t left. It never will.
“I… can see that,” Olruggio says. Qifrey’s lips part, and he tries to get the strings in his voice box to be well tuned and clear, but all that leaves him is a shaky sigh. “I’ll grab a bag.”
Squinting his eyes in suspicion as Olruggio begins to walk, now in Qifrey’s field of vision, he asks, “what for?”
Olruggio pauses. “To throw away the shards in the trash.”
Oh. “Oh,” Qifrey says, small and wary. Yes, of course. Olruggio would never put it over his head. Suffocate him. Pin him down. Take from him what he thought couldn’t even be grabbed in the first place.
“Here,” Olruggio says, tossing him a trash bag. Qifrey hadn’t noticed he came back (was barely aware he’d left in the first place), but he quickly gets to work, in instinct.
To help, and keep everything pristine clean. What he was made for: for others. His arms move in muscle memory, not having to consciously command them at all, his thighs shift in place, wholly uncomfortable but refusing to move, under threat.
A shadow above him watches, and he fixates his eye on his fingers to avoid meeting its gaze. Urges try to get him to curl up and disappear, to dig a hole and lay there and close his eyes, far away from view, but Olruggio awaits, and he can do none of that when his Watchful Eye is nearby.
Familiarity and comfort are two different things. He supposes he ought to be grateful for that. He thinks, I know this, and then, I’m used to this, and then, why am I used to this?
Forcing his legs to obey and bring his body upwards until he’s standing, facing Olruggio, he takes note of the fact that it is spring, and since it is spring, quiet mornings like these are covered in sunshine. Thank the stars; it’s always been a pain to wake up and find it’s still technically nighttime.
Olruggio’s eyes are a deep blue, he finds now that he looks at them. Much like the sky in late hours, or like the deepest parts of the ocean. Qifrey takes note of the fact that he is barely taller than his best friend, and that if he moved forward, his lips could meet the man’s forehead.
“Thanks,” Qifrey says after a moment of silence, drawn out for too long.
Olruggio opens his mouth. Closes it again. “Are you—“
“I shall go make everyone something to eat now,” Qifrey says cheerfully, throwing the bag on the trashcan (score! It landed perfectly) and spinning on his heels to head to the kitchen counter.
“Qifrey…”
“We can’t let the girls go hungry, after all, right?” his neck twists, grin plastered on his face. A silent plea: let us have this.
It takes a while. But, finally, Olruggio lets it go.
“What’re we having today?” Olruggio asks.
“Something simple,” Qifrey answers. “Just some toast, with egg and bacon.” He sighs, feels his hair ruffle with the wind as he turns to face his best friend. “Olly, we need to go shopping.”
As expected, his best friend reacts with discontent. “Ugh. Do we really?”
“Don’t scowl like that, your face might get stuck that way,” Qifrey reproaches, pointing at him with his index finger.
“I’m not a child anymore, I know that’s not true now,” Olruggio grumbles, rolling his eyes.
With a laugh, Qifrey teases, “but you were quite eager to believe it all those years ago. Remember?”
“That was ages ago,” Olruggio sputters. “Let it go!”
And if I didn’t? Would you leave me then?
Advice after advice, being told to let things pass, to just wait for a better future, to forget the past — in the underwater prison he’d been forced to call home, he was not allowed to retaliate with, I’ve already forgotten the past, how can you tell me to do it again?
Olruggio was always the only one to never ask that of him. Never, ever, ever. Sticking to his side, blissfully unaware of Qifrey’s parasitic existence, of the leech clinging to the skin of his back, walking the earth in a flesh suit and pretending to be a witch and not a rabid creature, forevermore. More than anything, Qifrey wants him to leave. He wants him to find his own life and be happy until he dies, far away from this. He wants to never have met him in the first place.
This man, stubborn and all seeing, moves his jaw. Lips mouthing words Qifrey can’t hear, a secret kept by him instead of from him for once in his life, and he wants to run away. Of all people, Olruggio wouldn’t harm him — wouldn’t… wouldn’t, wouldn’t, just wouldn’t. But how can he tell? How can he know?
His fingertips brush the edges of his cap, around the brim — no pun intended. It’s still there. Restraining himself and keeping his hands still to not reveal the spell underneath, just to make sure it hasn’t disappeared, is most certainly a struggle. But he manages.
There is nothing out the window, and there is nothing on the floor.
“Qifrey? You listening?”
Qifrey blinks. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
Olruggio’s frown turns into one of concern.
“Are you—“
“Oh, dear,” Qifrey interrupts, “the toast is charred.”
Blackened around the edges. Some brown remains, at the center. Qifrey takes a knife (grips it tightly; doesn’t let go; doesn’t plunge it into anyone’s chest and doesn’t cut the roots inside his shoes), barely noticing Olruggio jerking away, and starts to scrape off the burnt bits.
Not particularly a bad technique, albeit not the best one. Truthfully, the only way to have an actually good toast is… to just not burn it. Qifrey, unsure of when exactly he lit the fire, guesses this will have to do. The rest of them are bound to come out neat. He’ll just eat this one himself and give the rest the ones that haven’t been burned beyond recognition.
“I think it’d be better if you just made another one,” Olruggio says. He’s currently cutting an avocado in half, and preparing some eggs in a pan. What a helpful man. Qifrey hates it.
“No need,” he dismisses with a wave of his hand. He wanted to make the eggs. Olruggio is simply another person ready to undermine his wishes, even when he begs them not to, even when he screams at them to stop, even when he tears at his throat to get it out—
What?
No, no. Of course not. Olruggio is kind, and gentle, and warm. There is a reason why he cannot get too close to him without shriveling away.
“See?” Qifrey shows off the results he’s gotten. The toast is broken, some bits having fallen on from how roughly he’d managed it, but it is mostly uncharred.
“And now we’ll have to clean that up,” Olruggio says, pointing to the kitchen counter. Oh. There are crumbs covering the surface, almost coating it completely. They dance in circles, forming spirals, dyeing themselves fun colors as they drip to the ground.
“It’s fine,” Qifrey says. He’s taken too long again.
“Hey,” Olruggio calls out, voice soft; a lighthouse for the lost boat, a lantern for the wandering gardener, “how about I take the girls out shopping today, and you stay here and take a break?"
Qifrey bristles. “You think I can’t do it, you think I’m incapable of—“
“Qifrey, please.” The pleading tone has him flinching. “Just— just let me help, this once. Don’t make it into a big thing.”
Olruggio looks hurt. Olruggio looks hurt and Qifrey is the one who hurt him.
Oh, what else is new.
His hand is on his cap again. There is nothing out the window, there really isn’t. “Sorry.”
The way Olruggio softens immediately, taking whatever Qifrey can give him regardless of how small and pointless and ugly it is, has him wanting to die a little bit.
“It’s alright,” he says, like it actually is and like there’s nothing wrong with the world. Nothing wrong with him.
“When are you leaving?” he asks, quietly. It is a sentence, life or death, shackled and weighted down — they’ve always walked together like a four legged monster, and now Olruggio cuts through their conjoined skin.
He won’t come back, will he? He won’t come back.
“In a moment,” Olruggio answers simply. It’s easy, to him. Of course it is. He’s not the one with no hope of survival. “After breakfast. The girls sleep on, after all.”
It is quite early, yes. He’d be right about that.
Qifrey hums. It echoes in his ears, turns high pitched, sings. His hat is on his head. There is nothing out the window.
“You don’t know what abandonment actually means, do you?” Olly chastises, clicking his tongue in disapproval. “You don’t know anything at all.”
Olruggio sighs. “Get some sleep while we’re gone,” he orders as a smile creeps up on his face
“I do,” Qifrey says. Then, he corrects, “I will.”
“Like I believe that,” Olly scoffs. It must come with the loss of autonomy, with being defined by a single thing that happened to you and nothing more. It must be about the integrity of your innocence being ripped away from you, violent, cruel, like a skinned animal kept alive.
The ribbon in Olly’s hat could do very easily wrap around his neck. Qifrey could so very easily grab it and wrap it around Olruggio’s. And squeeze and choke the life out of him like they did him, all those years ago, no memory intact but the phantom sensation of hands clogging his airway remaining anyway.
He takes a deep breath. The shadow falling on the glass that shows the landscape like a painting is not a shadow. The man that stares at it, blue eye widened with intensity, is not a man.
Everything seems to be going wrong today. First the ceramic, then the inedible toast, then Olruggio walking away like he was always meant to do.
The house is empty. Qifrey has walked up the stairs and visited every room, then gone back down and checked behind every door, and he has done so twice. There’s no one here, since the girls and Olruggio left for Kahln.
He could die here. Spread his roots, let them take over the place. Branches would make home for birds, nests sitting on top of him, and bugs would crawl under his bark, and maybe Olruggio could tear the blackened branches and boil them (submerge them underwater; how he was found, over and over, never to end).
Trapped inside a small glass jar, unable to fully extend his limbs no matter how hard he tries, kept in a pocket to be used and defiled and then put away again until it starts over, and the tip of a— of a pen would stain itself with his corroded ink and press against the paper. A receptacle for all that remains of him, pressed between an index and a thumb. It would be the stars instead of stone ceilings above him, and he would be able to find it nice.
Turning, as always, his thoughts shift: the better way to say it, the thing Olruggio would want him to focus on when his memory’s wiped and he doesn’t have the chance to wish pain on him, would be: to create magic, to create warmth, one needs to draw. And were he to plant himself here, he could be the very source of— of Olruggio’s drying spells, his glowstone path, his sigil rings.
He ought to boil himself, then. Olruggio would hate causing him harm himself (that’s why he chose to forget and have Qifrey live with the consequences), so he’ll just… take the pain from him, like he did for him all those years ago. One last time.
Something in his collar stirs. Qifrey blinks, one hand going up to softly pet the brushbug with his fingetip. He’d forgotten it was there.
“Puff-puff,” he murmurs absentmindedly. It bristles at the nickname, but he pays no attention to its annoyed little noises. “Puff-puff, can you see them? Have you spotted them?”
The brushbuddy squirms on top of his shoulder, curled around his neck. It lets out some meek sounds, cute and tiny, and it makes Qifrey want to squeeze it like a balloon. Adorable. No wonder Coco likes it.
It rubs its face against his nape with a small complaint, and Qifrey lets out a huff, even as his eye drifts back to the window.
Don’t be silly. There’s nothing there.
“There could be,” Qifrey says with a scoff. “Puff-puff, do you think they’re there?”
It stills on his hand, no longer chasing the friction of Qifrey’s index; a silent question.
“The brimhat,” Qifrey answers. Who else? Everything goes back to them.
Something he’s defined by. Something his life revolves around. Olruggio would say, why can’t we stay here? You can’t possibly not see the life you’ve built. Isn’t it worth it? And Qifrey would answer, it is, is is and that’s why I can’t forgive them, and Qifrey would think, I can’t have it, I can’t have what you want me to have, and I can’t be who you want me to be.
They must be somewhere. He always knew they’d return, like ghosts plaguing his mind — he’s been chasing them from youth, and it’s about time they returned the goddamn favor.
“They’re there. I know they are,” he whispers.
They always have been.
And here comes shade. And then he sees a shadow, engulfing him darkness and light all the same, and it eats him from the inside even though it’s by the window, and it burns, and he misses Olly. But Olly is gone, and he’s not coming back.
It’s them. It’s them. It’s that one, it’s them again, and he has the chance to—
He bolts outside immediately with a speed so surprising he almost runs straight into a wall. The brushbuddy lets out a startled nbi and clings for its life to his cloak, but he pays it no mind.
Outside, running in circles: the story of his life. He’s barefoot, he realizes, and spines dig to the soles of his feet with each shaky step. He runs to the garden, following the smoke, where fire could be, and it makes him think of Olruggio. Where Olruggio is, what he’s doing.
He left. The brimhat is here and Olruggio left.
Qifrey pants. He can’t find them. They’ve slipped out of his grasp, just like every other time. Another failure for the pile; one more lie to tell when the others get home — except that they won’t! Isn’t that funny? They’re not coming home this time.
He turns. Even though he knows he won’t find them — he never does — he still turns, and looks as much as his damaged, root bound eye allows him too.
Huh. There’s a bird stuck in the fence.
He hadn’t seen it before. But it is definitely there.
Absence of life, cadavers void of blood, thin and stretched — sometimes, the string of a memory comes to him, and he realizes: he knows this. But it never lasts. It’s nothing more than a fleeting sensation, bordering on fake.
His hands reach out, trying to catch the thread. He doesn’t quite manage it, instead losing his balance and fumbling forwards. Instinctively, he closes his first around the fence. The pointed fence, with pointed hats, digging into his skin, drawing blood like witches draw ink from the Silverwood trees, from him. He hisses.
The brushbuddy squeaks, and leaves. Its escape is silent, in the way a creature as small as that barely makes noise, but he can feel its tiny feet on his back and it crawls towards the floor. He doesn’t look back, eyes fixated on the bird — and his bloody hands, red, dirty. Were he to bring them closer, he could cradle its body. Is it alive?
He knows it. He knows death. It has always been watching over his shoulder like an old friend (and the irony of the phrase isn’t lost on him, O, Watchful Eyes), carefully waiting, watching him struggle against the waves to keep himself steady even though he already knows the current will take him.
You have students now, Olruggio would say. You have a duty to children you must protect, he would follow it with. Then, finally: you have me.
And Qifrey would think, no, I don’t, and I hate you, and I wish you’d never met me. Or maybe he wishes he’d never saved him. It’s the same thing, really.
Suddenly realizing that wired fences cutting your palms hurts, he retracts with a shudder. Pale skin greets him the second he brings them close to his face; clean, unharmed.
The fence has no spines.
“But the bird is trapped regardless,” he says. He should cut it.
Not the bird. Silly thing, nymph-man, leaf covered organs. The wires!
“Yes,” he breathes out. “The wires.”
While they were still rebuilding the shepherd’s house that is now their Atelier, Qifrey and Olruggio had noticed the fence. Unlike now, it was dirty, covered in rust — they’d both winced at the sight, torn with wires pointing at every direction, and immediately agreed on the fact that a child should not be around that. So next time they went to town, they bought a replacement; and some bolt cutters, to take down the old one.
Pair of shears slicing through the metal, they’d turned it into a competition, as the youth often does. Too similar to childhood days, Qifrey was soon to realize. When he cut his finger, winced at the blood and the concerned look on Olruggio’s face as he walked away, it was on purpose.
They left them here, instead of bringing them back inside. Because Olruggio chased after him, and they’d talked, and they’d argued, and Qifrey had grabbed his cap.
After that, Olruggio forgot the bolt cutters even existed in the first place, and Qifrey kept delaying grabbing them back.
“Over here,” Olly says, nudging something with his foot.
Qifrey falls to his knees, pets the earth; finds nothing. When he turns to him, he finds Olly holding back laughter.
“Oops,” he says innocently.
“Don’t do that,” Qifrey murmurs, never one to be mad at the boy for too long. When he blindly searches with his hands a little bit to the side, he finally finds them.
“A little birdie told me it killed itself,” Olly draws out with a whistle. His arms are behind his back. His robes flow behind him. There’s no wind at all.
“Who did?” Qifrey humors. Who wouldn’t?
“Bark against bark,” Olly sings with a spin, “wood pressed to wood! Do you want a hint? Hey, Qif, do you want a hint?
His smile is bright, showing teeth, bared in a grin. It is boyish, and young. How old is he? He can’t be much older than the girls.
“Is it me?” Qifrey asks.
Is it you?
“Is it you?” Qifrey echoes.
Is it me?
Ribbon flutters close to his face, brushing his skin and giving him goosebumps. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” Qifrey tells it. He shoos it away with a wave of his hand, dismissive, the way one may swat away a fly. It buzzes in his ears.
Things there, here, everywhere. In a forest, there is nothing to clean, because everything is already dirty. Oh, no, no, no. Not there, not here, not everywhere. Does it matter? Does anyone care? An empty husk, filled up and drained again and again and again. There is an itching around the throat that does not leave even when scratched.
Laughter builds up in the thing’s chest, escaping through gritted teeth, bared in a hostile grin. Tee, hee, hee. When a witch spins, robes spin with them, and dizziness droughts inside his skull with every turn — a dance amidst the trees, next to each other, warmth pressed against warmth. The world is colorful, and cruel, and kind, and monochrome. Silvery greens surround the feet planted in the ground, a mimicry of leaves, a mimicry of grass. The earth below the human being sings along their permanent melody; rotting where it meets him, then, worm covered and aching.
Knowing and not knowing. Remembering and not remembering. The why and the how and the what if of every question escape his grasp every time he tries to grab them. And it is infallible in its truth, in the spell drawn and kept safe beneath a cap, and it is maddening when it makes his eye roll back in his head. Were he to pluck it out, were he, were—
No, no, no. You have a job to do! Even as his blood rushes in his veins, even as the slow realization that he can feel it washes up on him like a bucket of cold water, there is still something he must do. Always, of course: even when the person doesn’t know what it’s there for, the meaning is not yet erased. It carries itself along in memories, those sweet moments collected like pictures, hung on strings like leaves on branches.
Whatever does it mean, then? If you are pulled away from your life. If you… do you even exist? If the parasite was ever taken away (if it ever could), what is it that would remain? Wood is his insides; wood is his flesh. Only skin, then, a lump, a blanket made of something that used to be human. Empty eye sockets and a lack of teeth and no filling for the cake of body. It’d be a scary sight.
There would be no pretending. No way to act like a person. He’d lose his lies and the world would crumble beneath his feet and he would be left naked, shivering, exposed, and everyone would know he’s not much more than a host. Brainless and dead. A walking corpse, from birth — or closest thing he has to it: being covered in other people's appendages and ripped from the earth.
They would see. Everyone would see. Everyone would know. And he’d be pulled down. And he’d be held in place while a hand was pressed against his forehead, and the familiar sense of release — of something abandoning him — would come in waves, and he would think, finally, and, I don’t want to go, and—
“Do what you need to do,” he hisses, having stopped spinning, now the world spinning in his stead, “you useless tree stump.”
Hurry up, the thing thinks. The thing is him. It. Not a person, never a person.
“I’m not a human being, y’know,” he tells the injured bird. “Undeserving of the title.”
Rain got inside his coffin, pooling up inside and damping his clothes. His body was dead. He was dead. There was nothing he could do to stop the droplets from falling on his face; from entering through his nostrils; from killing him inside out. Qifrey is a dead man walking, here, today, because then, and there, he’d drowned himself inside an impenetrable stone box.
“That looks nasty,” Olly says. “Is it dead?”
“Dead,” Qifrey echoes. Dead. Buried. Gone, buried, drowned.
“Maybe that’s the one that killed itself,” he hums. “Or maybe they did it.”
“They’re here,” Qifrey gasps, “you’ve seen them, haven’t you?”
“I saw what you saw.” He shrugs, like it doesn’t matter at all. “Cut the bird free.”
Right. Right, right, right. He can’t go after the brimhats without the bird.
Freedom is a value held close on the chest. It means the breeze ruffling your hair, your feet in the water, smell of food filling the air as meals cook in the oven. Bread, at the stone oven Olruggio built. Salads, vegetables taken from his garden.
Who is he to deny anyone of it? He can’t bend metal, can’t break the chains with his fingers, but he can do this. He would never imprison one the way they did him. He would never keep them inside a stone room as he talked outside with the Knights of what to do with the ill child, the cursed child, the forbidden child — to kill it? To wipe its mind, again, ignore the shudder that tours its body when he realizes the very little he has will be taken from him? Again. And again. And again.
The illness, not the ill. The sickness bit of in sickness and in health. Olly says, “I’d say you’re keeping us locked up.”
Hypocrite, the wind chimes in his ear. “You asked me to.”
“I begged you,” Olly corrects. Selfish thing, Qifrey is. Very, very selfish.
“It was your decision, not mine,” Qifrey defends.
“What, so you wanted me to watch my best friend die in front of me and do nothing?” Olly clicks his tongue. “Qifrey, you know about Noz.”
“No,” Qifrey chokes out, “no, no, no, I didn’t— I didn’t mean it that—“
“Hey.” His breath hitches, and he bites his lip until he tastes metal, but he shuts up. “Free the damn bird already.”
“The bird,” Qifrey echoes. He can’t go after the brimhats without—
He presses the blade close to its body. It trembles, and he finds himself mimicking it.
Saved, freed. Not synonyms. Puppet strings pull his arms forward, the forest long behind him — they want him to turn back. They want him to turn around and return. His roots would spread, and he would plant himself still, in a single place.
And they would push his head down as they dangled what was taken from him over his waist, and they would take it again, and again, and again, and again.
Branches tearing through his body, penetrating his insides, a defenestration; violation; seed, planted, growth in the worst sense of the word.
The bird falls to the ground, some of the wiring surrounding it falling with it. It is dead.
Dead. Gone. Drowned.
You were too late! Always too late, too slow. Your limbs were pinned in place as Olly pressed paper to his forehead, and there was nothing you could do to save him. Because you were too late. Too slow!
A startled laugh escapes him. Easy noise. There is no red pooling under its corpse. You remember choking on your own blood, do you not?
“It was rain, wasn’t it?”
He can’t go after them without the bird.
“Oh, Olly,” he whispers, “it didn’t work.”
He will never get it back.
Qifrey killed this version of his best friend the way they did to him repeatedly, neverending. Olruggio was right to leave.
“Who’s dead?” Who’s dying? “Who’s not?”
“You,” Qifrey grits out.
“Grab a shovel and dig me out, then.”
To atone.
Forehead now resting against his arms, a corpse in the ground in front of him as his knees dig into the earth, Qifrey says: “Olly, nothing ever works.”
Being taken out of there was an accident. It was a coincidence. He’s listened to the whispers many times, the ones that say it was an act of fate, that someone wanted him here and held him above the earth on purpose; but no matter how much he tried, his heart never swallowed the words, and Olly was never able to convince him otherwise.
They killed him. They killed him, and they killed the bird, and they’re going for the girls next. There’s nothing he can do. He was too weak to fight them the first time, he knows, even though he can’t remember, and he won’t even get the chance to fight them now.
Electric shocks would run up his legs if he forced them to move. A deep, guttural sound reaches his ears (and it takes him a moment to realize it comes from him) every time he tries.
Something’s broken. Broken in the wiring of— broken in here. He can feel it. It burrows into the skin of his forearm as he tries to peel it away and reveal whatever is wrong with him, leave it in plain sight. A freak case, to be put in a museum; embalmed. His fist hits stone when he tries to reach out to the sun, and it’s dark, and he can’t see the stars anymore. They merge together into a single curtain, never to be distinguished from each other ever again.
Because he was deemed worthless, thrown away. And branches curl around his ribs, comfortable in their safe spot below the meat of the living. He wants to pry it open. His throat itches, and there’s something inside his chest that has shattered and left shards delving into his flesh, and he’s tired of pretending they don’t exist. He wants them out. He wants them out. He wants—
Why not?
So long spent hiding. So much time wasted. Why not now?
Medicine is forbidden to witches much like magic is to the common folk. Organs exposed to the cold air, an autopsy of the self — Qifrey recognizes the sight. It is familiar.
“Stop scratching your neck,” Olly scolds, crossing his arms. Qifrey blinks. He hadn’t realized he was doing that. “You’ll make yourself bleed.”
It’s stupid, and unfunny, but it makes him giggle anyway. “Wouldn’t be the first time.” Trees aren’t allergic to blood, but it can still be quite effective at driving parasites away, even if not permanently.
The room spins, and he has to shut his eyes to not make himself dizzy. Olly tells him, “Qifrey, we’re not in a room, we’re outside.”
Not in a coffin, he thinks. Not in a coffin. Not back there, and not in a forest, and not underwater.
Is it for the best, that he can’t remember what they did to him?
There’s no way of knowing. But Qifrey hates it. He hates wondering, and thinking: this is it, this is what they did, only to end up doubting himself again by midnight. He wants it gone, the goosebumps, the seed inside him, the fear when someone reaches out.
“Don’t get distracted,” Olly chastises. Qifrey hears footsteps by his sides, and then the shuffling of clothes, and when he opens his eyes again, he sees that Olly has crouched in front of him to meet his eye. It’s just like what Qifrey does with the girls, when they’re upset.
“I’m not a child,” Qifrey complains childishly.
“There’s nothing you can do about that,” Olly soothes. “Does it still itch?”
A gasp. Then, “yes.”
Olly turns his head to the side, feigning indifference. With a hum that lasts only half a second before it dies out into a sigh, he says, “I think you’ve got a way to fix that.”
To fix it. Fix what was broken. He needs it out, and he can fix it. He just needs to… he just needs to pry...
“The bolt cutters,” Qifrey states. Olly shrugs noncommittally.
“If you wanna use ‘em.”
He’s useless like this, without the bird. He can’t go about the brimhats without… without…
Hands shaking, breath hitching, eye half closed. The last thing he sees before his eyelid falls shut is Olly’s deep blue eyes.
A spell etched on his forehead, carved with ink and burning pen. He opens his eyes again, abruptly, and there is nothing different in Olly’s face.
He presses the side of the blade to his neck. It still itches even when he drags it up and down. He presses the tip instead.
And doesn’t move.
“You’re a coward,” Olly says.
Qifrey wants to sob. “I know.”
“Just do it.”
“But what if it hurts?”
“Since when do you care about that?”
He has a point, of course. Pain was always an easy way to keep himself alive.
He’s about to close the space between each sheet of metal, when something else closes up on him, and wraps him, and traps him.
In instinct, he (of course) thrashes, tries to get away. The phantom feeling of limbs all over him mixes with the very real sensation of fingers wrapping themselves around his wrists and pressing down, hard, until he cries out and drops the— the object. The weapon.
No. No, no, no, no.
In his ear: “Qifrey, what the fuck!”
Over his head: “Aw. You were too slow again.”
From his mouth: “Wait, no, I can’t breathe, I can’t—“
The hold loosens, and he immediately lunges to take back the bolt cutters, finish the job. When he’s done, he’ll chase after them, and he’ll be void of any radix, and everything will be fine. Olruggio, can’t you see? It has been ages since the promise, and Qifrey doesn’t want to keep it anymore. He wants it out.
You would’ve thought that after having spent so much time longing, Olruggio would’ve been happy to know Qifrey was finally ready to settle down.
As soon as he tries to regain what’s his, the weight of a body falls on top of him and keeps him down. Something clasps around his wrist (cold, metallic, tied by chains to a wall), but there’s nothing on his ankles.
“Let go of me!” Qifrey screeches underneath— underneath—
Olruggio (oh. Olruggio) says, “and let you— and let you kill yourself? I’d rather die!”
He can’t find Olly, he realizes. Did he leave? Did he leave again? The last time he did that he returned, pyreball lit in front of him, close enough to wood that he felt the warmth and prayed it would burn him down — he returned, and it was with a new idea in mind, a plan to share.
He should’ve died before he got back.
“Where’s Olly?” he says dazedly. His spectacles are on the floor, and his vision is blurry.
“I’m right here. It’s okay, you’ll be okay, I’m here.”
No, he’s not.
“No, you’re not,” he echoes. “Where’s Olly?”
“I’m right here!”
Ignoring the voice, he calls out, “Olly! Where did you go?”
“Qifrey, shut up!” Olruggio sobs. “I’m right here!”
Olly wouldn’t just— just pin him down. Wouldn’t do this. At all. Never, ever, ever, ever. The tiny creature inside of him, parasite recently unearthed from its grave, says childishly: Olly would never hurt me.
Olly would. He has. For Qifrey, only for Qifrey, but hurt nonetheless.
“You’re with them,” Qifrey yells. It’s the only plausible explanation. Why else would he—
“I’m not!” Olruggio screams. “God, Qifrey, why would you ever think I am?”
No, obviously he’s not. Qifrey must be stupid. It’s funny.
“Stop laughing,” Olruggio begs. He had no idea he was doing that, but he wasn’t about to stop.
“The bird,” Qifrey gasps between giggles, “Olly, did you see— the bird, the—”
“There’s not a bird anywhere,” Olruggio hisses.
He blinks.
There’s not?
And reality washes over him like a bucket of cold water, painting him blue to match his gouged out eyeball, fruit of a timber he on no occasion recalled sowing. All over him. On top, below, to the sides.
He can imagine it, and it’s so clear, so vivid. They must’ve held him down as he thrashed under their grip. They must’ve told him to shut up as he cried and begged them to stop. They must’ve dug their fingers in his eye socket and plucked it right out.
Is it happening again? It can’t be. It shouldn’t be. Qifrey was supposed to be far away from them— but the shadow, and Olly leaving, and the bird, and the bolt cutters—
“Please,” please, not again, please, “don’t touch me, let go of me, don’t—“
Shuffling above him makes his limbs lock up; freeze, unmoving. If he’s quiet, he might not be noticed. But there’s no stone wall to press his back into, no cramped corner to hide himself in. A small noise escapes his mouth, similar to a whimper, and his shoulders tremble while he bites his lip to smother it.
A sound, then. Something being thrown, and falling, out of his field of vision. Right in the side where he’s got no eye. It’s got to be on purpose. He wants to scream in frustration: does he really find this funny?
Then the pressure vanishes. Slowly, but surely, Qifrey’s released from the strain on his back. As soon as it leaves, he turns so his spine is pressed to the land.
He covers his face with his hands, laying there, then inhales a shaky breath, forcing himself to not move, to not even blink.
“I’m sorry,” Olruggio says, voice soft, like he’s sharing a secret. “I’m—” His mouth seals itself shut. When he opens it again, his voice comes out ragged, choked. “I’m just sorry.”
I want to die, Qifrey thinks instead of soothing. “Olly, I’m tired,” he mumbles. "Where— where did you go? Where are you?”
Olruggio should’ve noticed something was wrong.
Or, rather, he should’ve noticed that whatever was wrong was bad enough that Qifrey almost died.
The man (loved; so loved, yet acting like he does not know it. Is it a farce? It could be. Olruggio is very obvious with his affections) had been acting weird for some days. Shifty, jumpy; flinching at shadows and things that weren’t there, only to smile that lie Olruggio taught him when asked what happened.
It became a common sight to watch his jaw clench, his fingers curl up into fists. Like he’d been holding back something — something he didn’t want to do, or say.
Once they returned home (that’s the only word that wholly fits their Atelier, perfectly), Tetia and Coco chatting loudly and high-pitched as Richeh and Agott walked close behind with matching laughter, Olruggio almost tripped on the brushbug and fell on his face.
The first thing he realized, after that, wasn’t how oddly the animal was behaving, but rather how Qifrey didn’t come out to greet them.
It was easy to deduct the brushbuddy his best friend calls Puff-puff wanted to show him something, after that.
It wasn’t easy to connect the image of the love of his life, cherished and kind and so bright even if he does not see it, with the man about to slice his own neck.
Olruggio remembers pulling him out of the water. He’d been so sure he was lost — and then, he’d been so sure he’d been trying to drown himself on purpose. But no: he was trying to escape, to go outside. What’s worse is that Olruggio could relate to that, even if he was feeling a bit… conflicted about the method.
But this isn’t that. This was deliberate, and Qifrey had been so out of his mind that he flinched away from him, and begged him to get away, and accused him of siding with the people that harmed him the most.
That hurt. It really did.
The man in question shifts in his sleep. Having tossed and turned for hours, this is a big development. He seems almost comfortable, with a pyreball lit to keep him warm, and Olruggio by his side.
Not long after— after that, Qifrey laid limp and refused to move. Olruggio had to carry him inside and put him to bed, where he eventually fell asleep. He’s been rubbing circles on the white haired man’s temple, because even though Qifrey usually leans away from physical contact, he basically melted under his palm when he pressed it to his forehead to check for a fever, and scrunched up his nose if he tried to leave.
How did he not see this coming?
Olruggio knows Qifrey better than anyone else, even if he doesn’t let him in. He’s always been a bit odd, for witch standards, but he’s not the type of person that would just freak out like this out of nowhere. Something must’ve led him here. Something Olruggio didn’t catch.
What a Watchful Eye he is.
He brushes Qifrey’s bang from his face in a soft, tender movement. Presses a kiss to his right eye, even if he knows he shouldn’t.
Only seconds after he pulls back, he finds that his eye socket has been filled with leaves.
Olruggio blinks. Dread, familiarity — oh. Oh, this isn’t the first time that’s happened.