Archive of Our Own

Rain was pouring hard.

Each drop of water hammered on the ground, on the mud, on the body of the man lying there on some combination of solid stone and viscous mud, heedless of his injuries. The rain was unforgiving and uncaring; it hit on the robes and torn cloak beneath which surely sat wounds and broken bones all the same as it did exposed skin, harsh and unrelenting and freezing.

Beneath it, Olruggio simply laid still, too weak to move. Whether it was his body or his mind, or both, that was too weak to move, he didn't know. He probably should move. Should try to draw something, make a shelter for himself. Should try to at least get his palm windowway out and call one of the girls to help him out, they probably would murder him themselves if they learned that he hadn't and had chosen to just continue staying here, down this muddied rock slope that he hadn't seen, too occupied by the downward spiraling that his mind loved to subject him to. He found that he didn't have the strength to do any of that; his hands were tied by pain, somehow sharp and blunt at the same time, and he felt as if all his energy had been sapped away.

That last one didn't come as a surprise, though; it had been a constant for him, since the day where Qifrey had succumbed to the silverwood seed in his otherwise-empty eye socket, all those years ago. The details of what led to that were hazy to him at best, but the torment of remembering far too clearly how the roots and branches had twisted out from Qifrey's limbs and eye socket, how he had stared on with his sky-colored eye helpless and dull and apologetic as Olruggio had put together the whole story from the half that he could explain, how whatever light still in that eye had faded as silver branches cocooned him entirely before Olruggio could think of anything else, all of it had latched onto him and stripped him of his energy, even as Coco and Agott and Richeh and Tetia had still needed a teacher, still only fourteen years old as they had been and not having taken the Pentacle of Proving's Fourth Test yet. And now, at the foot of this slope that he had fallen off and scratched open wounds on, it was sapping him of his will to fight for his life.

Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing, though. He had been rather useless, after all. Steadily deteriorating with each passing years, despite the girls' repeated attempts to help him out of it, despite his own attempts to fight it if just for the sake of passing the Fifth Test, and staying a somewhat-decent teacher and provider for a while longer. He had barely managed to hold it off for long enough for the girls to graduate. Nowadays, he could draw for barely more than five minutes on a good day, he kept losing track of time, he had to be nagged to hell and back just to do basic things such as eating and taking care of his hygiene, even the smallest thing he did burned through far more energy than it ought to, his sustenance was basically replaced by alcohol in an attempt to at least blurry away those far-too-clear memories of losing the one person that mattered most, and he was pretty sure that taking care of his miserable ass was the only reason why Tetia had come back to the very same place where she had lost her actual mentor and then ask its useless Watchful Eye permission to call it her atelier. Maybe his death would lift off a burdensome deadweight from the girls' shoulders. They'll get back up from his death with more ease than they had Qifrey's, they were well-accomplished witches, praised everywhere for their skills and impressive resume of kickstarting a whole new era, and no longer kids in need of a stand-in teacher. Or maybe it was just his justification for selfishly wanting to drift off to blackness and maybe join his childhood friend somewhere in the afterlife if Death was kind enough, who knew anymore.

Everything was getting blurry, he noticed. Consciousness was slipping away from his fingers, that were barely even attempting to hold onto it. It looked like he wouldn't get to make the choice to try and live another day anyway.

"………Lly……… Ol………io………!"

Hm? That voice in the distance seemed really familiar… oh wait. Right. It bore a surprising resemblance to Qifrey's voice. Or maybe, if he reached hard enough, it was Qifrey, his spirit or ghost or something, coming here to welcome Olruggio to the other side himself. At this point, Olruggio didn't really know whether he was still alive or dead anymore, which was kinda strange when he still had the capacity to ponder about it, wasn't it? Maybe he was half-dead, and that was why he couldn't make out Qifrey's words clearly, because he still had one foot in the living.

And then suddenly he could no longer feel the harsh raindrops on himself. Not through his cloak, not on his face. He was about to think that he might have lost touch with his senses, but then came the distinct pressure of someone pushing on his shoulder. Was it bad that he no longer had the strength to scream out at the sharp pain that it drew?

The pressure on his shoulder immediately ceased, as if whoever this was could read his pain on his face, and the touches went to his head instead, prodding with soothing gentleness. If Olruggio squinted hard enough, he could distinguish something black outlined by white. Frankly, he didn't really know, everything was a blur. He tried to look up; nothing to see there, his eyes refused to cooperate, and at most he could tell that whoever this was had black hair and a skin tone on the lighter side against the sky's… when had it stopped raining?

"N………ncussion……… leas………ld on………"

Yeah, this definitely sounded too much like Qifrey's voice. Maybe the guy happened to have a similar voice register, and Olruggio in his state of fading consciousness was mistaking it for his old friend's or something. Also was that just him or it was getting a bit warmer here?

And then a cool mist engulfed him and left just as abruptly as it came, and next thing he knew, he was feeling clean and dry. Far cleaner than he had felt for a long time. And also the pressure on his other shoulder that was also in pain ceased, and his back somehow found itself against something extra fluffy. And warm. Huh, fluffy and warm… sounded a lot like Tetia. That blue sky was already fading to black, as something cold cupped one of his cheeks.

And that was all that he could process, really. Darkness finally reached its hands to close his eyes, pulling him into painless bliss.

~~~~~

"Here, tea."

"Thanks, Tetia." Coco sighed, gratefully bringing the cup up to take a sip of the charmonie tea that had become a specialty of Tetia since the day she had begun taking on apprentices. A given, in hindsight, because of its ability to make your stomach feel like it got wrapped in warm clouds.

The pink-haired woman looked at her friend with quite a bit of worry, pushing her twin-pointed hat to the side so that she had a clear path to the green-clothed witch. "Coco… I know that being a Wise is a lot of work, but you're getting enough sleep, right?"

Coco stayed silent to that question.

"… Right?"

She really didn't have the heart to tell her old friend that she had four hours of sleep per day at most, which made for a lot of sleep to catch up on the long run. She'd have liked to take the proper eight hours of sleep per day, she really would, this was worrying Tetia and Richeh and her darling Agott, but being the first Wise in Ethics meant that there was a lot more work for her to do to fully anchor the new laws into witch society. When she had accepted that role, freshly out of her Fourth Test at fifteen years old, she hadn't expected that task to drag for quite as long as nine years; she blamed paperwork and the old-minded Pointed Caps for that. And maybe the unrelenting Brimmed Caps too, those greedy bastards. None of those had ever entertained the notion of balance, it seemed.

She hoped that whoever would come to succeed her as the Wise in Ethics would have an easier time. And that they'd consider slacking off on the tri-yearly legislation update a crime, too, but she hoped nonetheless that they'd have an easier time navigating all that. Not like her, whose fellow Wise could barely provide any guidance that wasn't about politicking, for they had all been raised believing in a pact that forbade healing magic for being in the same category as Forbidden Magic, an era that was now called the First Pact.

It wasn't like she was the only Wise working hard either, and actually that might make this even worse. Just the day prior, as she had been preparing to take her leave from the Great Hall, she had found Beldaruit in his bed looking horribly drained, emptily staring at nothing.

Writing the new laws was one thing. Implementing them and making sure that they stayed solidly anchored? It was another thing entirely.

If the minds of people confronted with magic was a river and the laws were a dam, then the Second Pact, a dam that was destined to guide the river rather than block it, was an emergency project made mercilessly difficult by the damage that the previous one had caused in the long run, she was the engineer who, amongst those who had devised the said new dam, stayed to ensure that the construction process went well, and the original Three Wise were the masons and scaffolders and advisors who brought her and Agott's and Richeh's and Tetia's plan to life, and there were vandals trying to ruin it all because they saw that dam as no different from the previous one and wanted that river fully free, heedless of the fact that in its untethered freedom it'd destroy everything in its way and around it. Luluci, the newest Wise of Principles, was working herself and the Knights Moralis (she once told Coco that she was debating on changing the organization's name — this old one carried too many negative connotations from the First Pact) under her commands to the bone to fend off the still-unhappy Brimmed Caps; Lagrah was working himself to the bone to recalibrate the frayed relationships between witches and healers who were once again allowed to learn magic, and the rest of the world who still weren't allowed that because they had yet to find a way to control the flow of people's mentality and avoid the devious ones; Beldaruit especially had been running himself to the ground to implement teachings that would keep the future generations' minds clear of any thought about using magic for anything else than the good of people. Maybe part of his efforts was also to prevent that another tragedy such as his apprentice's fate would ever be made again, just like it was an integral part of the entire reason why, day and night, Coco relentlessly scanned over reports and and watched over the healer witches and checked in with her coworkers and learned from them and supervised the political situation of the witch society.

All that work was worth it, though. Only one decade in, and there were healer witches uniforms flocking around everywhere and already helping a lot more, with their patients' wellbeing of body and mind as their only shackle. The Brimmed Caps were a lot less convincing now, putting so many people to harm in their attempts at fighting against the notion of restraint, harm that the healers could mostly undo, even as they were running themselves ragged to do so and catch up for their years of having missed out on magic at the same time. Custas had defected from the Brimmed Caps along with some other kids, and was working overtime helping the healers with some of the job, helping the Knights Moralis where it involved chasing down Brimmed Caps, and conducting research on silverwood seeds, all of that partly to prevent himself from meeting the same fate as Master Qifrey, and partly because the fact hadn't changed that he just wanted to help.

Speaking of research on silverwood seed…

Coco couldn't help her eyes drifting to the window. To the one from where, just a distance away, silver twisted and spread into the form of a tree, standing tall and large, leaves rustling under the rain.

The tree that had taken everything away from Master Qifrey. The tree that had taken him away from his best friend and his students and his own teacher. Yet also the same tree that none of them could really bear to part from. The same tree that Coco and Tetia drew their magic from, for they refused to leave their late mentor out when they could make a place for him and his magic, and the same tree that Agott and Richeh refused to use the blood of, for they didn't want to feel like they were taking advantage of his demise.

Most of the world didn't know of Master Qifrey's grim fate. Not yet, anyway. Custas had given them hope, had given Beldaruit hope, that maybe they could reverse the damage done one day. So, for now, all the world knew was that Master Qifrey had disappeared to stars-knew-where for some undisclosed reason, while the six of them searched for a way to remove the seed, to undo the curse. Not seven, because Master Olly, unfortunately, refused to get his hopes up, deathly afraid of shattering even more than he already had; all the atelier's members and Beldaruit had been devastated by the loss, but it had hit Master Olly especially hard.

Hold up. Speaking of the man.

"Tetia? Where's Master Olly?"

Tetia chewed on her lip. That wasn't new.

"He's gone off to a commission that requires his presence. And um… he still didn't take 'no' for an answer."

That also wasn't new. Now, Coco would've loved to see him trying to get back a grasp on the reins of his life, but unfortunately it wasn't the case here. It never was the case when he did this. If it was, she imagined that he'd at least cut his bangs; in his self-neglect he had let his hair and beard grow uncontrolled, resulting in his hair getting in his sight's way, and the only instance of him trimming his beard had been for Agott's and Coco's wedding (whose ceremony had happened because both Coco and Beldaruit had worked like crazy to clear their schedules) three moons ago. No, it was always because he felt useless and was convinced that he had to make himself useful somehow. The girls and Beldaruit hoped that one day it'd register for him that he didn't need to feel that way, that he didn't need to waste his energy on trying to fix inexistent problems when his grief already siphoned most of his strength away most of the time. But until then, they could only continuously repeat it to him every time that he was better off turning his efforts to finding whatever would help him replenish some much-needed energy instead. The one time Richeh had told him, in very blunt and no uncertain terms, that this behavior of his was driving them all insane with worry, he had just ended up a sobbing mess holed-up in his workshop, so none of them had ever tried that route again.

This time around was going to end up very unusual, though. The two unsuspecting women got informed of that by nothing else than the sudden, heavy and frantic banging on the atelier's front door spooking them. Master Olly always entered directly without knocking, and quietly as though trying to blend into thin air so that Tetia's apprentices wouldn't see him in whatever miserable state he constantly believed himself to be in these days.

Tetia, bless her, was the first to bolt out of her chair and run to open the door, with Coco following closely in tow. The pink-haired woman's apprentices were away to a sleepover with a friend of theirs in Kalhn, so fortunately whoever this was wouldn't get a bunch of curious gazes on them. The door swung open by Tetia's hand, and their first surprise came when instead of heavy rain intruding inside like the sight outside the windows suggested it would, there was a clear sky in the doorframe. The second and far more prominent and heart-dropping surprise was Master Olly in princess carry in the arms of a stranger, unconscious, dry-looking and wrapped in a stark-white cloak, beneath which sneak-peeks of bandages could be seen.

The third, and arguably just as big surprise, was the man carrying him: he looked identical to Master Qifrey, if not for the complete pair of eyes and the black hair not covering the right side of his face. His pince-nez-style monocle on his right eye did nothing to hide that. The resemblance went right down to the expression he was making, the exact same expression that Master Qifrey would make whenever his distress would slip out from his control.

That man didn't let them process the situation further than that; he began speaking, with Master Qifrey's voice, clearly trying his best to remain calm and concise in his frenzy, "Oll- this man is injured. I- I know this is sudden, but please let me take him to a bed."

"He's injured. He's injured?" Coco whispered, then went straight to near-yelling, "He's injured and your first action isn't to bring him to a hospital?! What-"

"This era doesn't have the knowledge needed to heal him!" The Qifrey-lookalike argued, "I'll explain later. I have tools and a medical license, please let me in!"

Ugh. Whatever. Master Olly was injured. Coco had to let this man in and trust herself to handle him if he turned out to be anything like a threat. So she stepped aside, wordlessly inviting into the atelier the man who bolted straight for the kitchen and then up the staircase at breakneck speed as if he somehow knew exactly where he wanted to go.

She turned to find Tetia, who was already at the staircase leading to the windowway. Before she could say anything, the pink-haired teacher filled in for her, "Go, I'll call the healers."

The green-haired woman nodded in gratitude, and then quickly followed the man's trail up the stairs leading to the bedroom. Once up, it immediately hit her eyes that the only door opened was the one to Master Qifrey's room; maybe that guy had closed the doors behind him out of politeness, maybe he had lucked out and found the only actual uninhabited room in the fray. A look past the doorframe, and his old bed had already been moved to the center of the room where one could circle it unperturbed, and the man was already at work, holding a palm quire above a spot on Master Olly's bandaged waist. He wasn't lying about being a witch, at least there was that.

Coco wanted to know who on Zozah's green grass this man was. But more urgently, she wanted to know, "How's he?"

"In critical hemorrhagic shock." He immediately answered, and Coco's heart dropped immediately; as far as she knew, critical hemorrhagic shock meant that the victim was beyond saving, for nobody had yet managed to replicate blood's properties, there was something about that liquid that they didn't yet understand. "First-aid spells have managed to sustain him for now, but that won't be enough. Is there any large sheet of paper in the room? An expanded quire would be too cumbersome."

The woman narrowed her eyes, as she reached for her own wand and quire. "How do I know that I can trust you with my mentor's life, sir stranger?" Nevermind that said 'sir stranger' looked and sounded identical to Master Qifrey. Except for the hair color and the complete set of eyes.

In response, with swift moves the man closed his quire and reached into his thin-looking stark-white mantle, and pulled out from it a card that he threw to her. "Here, my med field ID card. The license itself would be too much trouble to go through."

Coco picked the card up, an expansion spell already drawn and just waiting to be closed; said card felt surprisingly solid, yet also somewhat malleable. And not quite as cold as metal would be. She had never seen this material before, and in normal situations she'd have been fascinated. This wasn't the time, though. "… I can't understand what this thing says."

The man, already back to holding his quire over Master Olly's bandaged body, cursed under his breath then said, "Forgot you don't speak English. Kaslana Hyposelenia, just call me Kaslana. I'm a doctor. A healer witch, if you will."

The Wise stared at him as he worked, as her wand glided to complete the glyph on her palm quire, a paper sheet randomly taken from Master Qifrey's desk (that Tetia had done her best to keep the arrangement of) hovering in front of it. At least his demeanor was one that healers strived to keep: calm, quick, efficient. Also, Master Olly was in literal critical blood loss, and this man was somehow keeping him alive; she could see his chest heaving slowly and deeply from where she was, despite the extreme pale complexion that he normally wouldn't reach despite his unhealthy habits. She had to trust this complete stranger with Master Olly's life, it was no longer a choice. Maybe never had been.

And so, with brusque motion so that the rustling of paper would alert him, she handed him the paper. "Will this size do?"

For probably the first time since she had entered the room, the man — Kaslana — moved his unnervingly Qifrey-like blue eyes away from Master Olly to take a look at what she was giving him. "… Yes. Yes, I believe this will do. You-"

Right at that moment, Tetia finally came in with a healer. "Coco! Here, we have a healer!" And it happened to be Sinocia too. The woman who had taught Coco much about medicine.

The man looked up at the newcomer, unflinching in the slightest, looking instead like he was turning to a coworker coming in. "Wonderful. Miss Sinocia, may I trouble you to look after Olly while I prepare the blood-transfusion spell?"

And poor confused Sinocia hadn't even opened her mouth to introduce herself yet, and Coco seriously doubted that Master Olly had given this man permission to use his nickname, and then you had Kaslana who said all that nonetheless without missing a beat.

The healer blinked. "Huh?? But-"

"Please."

It was a simple word, spoken quietly; yet, the tone told them everything they needed to know. Sinocia considered him, then relented, "Fine. I'll keep an eye on him."

"Thanks." And then, not wasting a single second, he slapped the paper sheet onto the ground and began to draw.

Both Tetia and Coco leaned down to peek past his shoulders, very interested in what he had in store for Master Olly. Though, they soon had to give up on that endeavor, for far too many of the keystones were unknown to them. Maybe an older Wise, like Beldaruit for example, would be able to recognize them, but they couldn't really afford the luxury of fetching him right now. Another strange thing was that he never once dipped his wand into any inkwell, and yet the pen somehow never ran dry — it must be a contraption of some kind.

Soon, he had drawn all the incomplete seals of the three linked glyphs, and swiftly closed the one that looked the simplest, summoning a construct that resembled a needle. With it he pierced a spot on Master Olly's forearm, pondering over the skin beforehand like the placement of the hole mattered, and drew from there a drop of blood, which then floated to hover above the paper sheet. Then, the second and most complex glyph, a nested one comprised of a honestly impressive amount of seals, and suddenly the simple small drop of blood expanded and became an orb the size of a standard vapor bubble. The final nested glyph was closed, and a small rope shot out for Kaslana's skintight-gloved hand to catch, and he quickly brought the pointed end of that rope to the exact same spot where he had pricked a hole into Master Olly's forearm, planting it there. Wait, had he put on skintight gloves that quickly, or was it Coco who hadn't seen him do it?

Sinocia immediately understood what he was trying to do. "Sir, we've already tried to make blood and give it to the body. It didn't work."

"Because you didn't know of its exact properties." Kaslana explained near-absentmindedly as he carefully oversaw the flow of blood entering Master Olly's body, "Which means that you wouldn't know what you want to replicate. Also you don't just stuff big quantities of liquid into the body in one go, you have to let it trickle gently, and sustain the patient via external means during that time. Would you pass me the quire, please?"

She did exactly that, hesitancy in her gaze. But also, the curiosity of a student tentatively learning something new. "… May I bother you with asking what we were missing, then?"

He hunched over the quire, and his hair fell over his right eye as a curtain, and now suddenly the only thing left that still separated him from Master Qifrey was the hair color. "Can this wait until I've set up the life-support spells? The first-aid version can only work for so long."

"Um… of course."

Quickly, swiftly, he drew seals after seals, with sigils and keystones that none of them had ever seen, passing each one over the first one he had drawn to transmute the paper into a material similar to the card he had given Coco, hanging them on the bed frame at both ends. Then, he must've judged that he had drawn enough of them, for he brusquely set his pen and quire aside and began pulling thin ropes out of each of the seals he had hung, placing their ends on various parts of Master Olly's body with motions that suggested that the placements were in no way random. One of those went to his face, its end forming something that kind of resembled a muzzle. After placing the last of those ropes, he took out a tube that emitted light on one of its ends, and with it he scanned over the unconscious man one last time, checking the eyes, the points where the ropes connected to the body, various other things.

Only after he had met every bullet point in that checklist that Coco wasn't privy to (but could very well make an educated guess of) did he breathe out a sigh of relief. "All good to go. Now, just gotta monitor the transfusion."

Coco squinted for just a bit longer at Master Olly. Just to ensure that Kaslana wasn't lying. It didn't look like he was. "… That's good to hear. How did you find him?"

"I don't know exactly how I got to where he was either." The guy said like it was a perfectly normal thing to say, as he brushed his hair curtain out of his right eye's way. "All I know is that I was on my way back home from my office, somehow found myself near a forest, and then while attempting to understand where I was I found him down a slope. A steep one with rugged stones, the terrain on top was muddy, there was a trail of blood, and his clothes and skin were heavily scrapped, so I assume he must've slipped down and fallen onto the slope's ground hard enough to create friction." Then, he frowned, in that exact same way Master Qifrey would whenever he'd find something particularly worrisome about his closer ones' wellbeing, "Though I have to ask, why's he so… why's he in such a heavy state of neglect? What does he usually eat? Isn't he sleeping much?"

Tetia chewed on her lower lip. "I usually give him chicken broth, since that's the thing least likely to cause him to vomit. He doesn't keep food down, even despite that healers have found nothing wrong with his stomach. And… he wakes up often. Very often." Because of nightmares, she didn't say. Didn't need to say; her face just about spelled it out.

"You haven't tried giving him medication, right?"

Tetia shook her head. "We didn't want to risk it."

"When has this begun?"

"Shortly after… um…"

Kaslana suddenly drew a sharp breath. "… Is it after I- after Qifrey succumbed to the silverwood seed?"

Coco tensed. There was too much certainty in that latter half of his sentence — a statement within a question. "How did you know about Master Qifrey?"

"Unimportant." He dismissed with nary else than the turning of his gaze to the wounded man, "I just need to know if that's where it began."

"… Yes." Tetia answered, even as her gaze on him turned wary, "He did his best to keep his food down until we and two other apprentices graduated, after which he stopped trying."

"Alcohol consumption?"

"… He drinks a lot."

The monocle-wearing man's expression took a turn for the alarmed. "And you didn't try to stop him??"

"… Agott did. He just ended up more miserable."

"And alcohol doesn't help!" Kaslana protested, then with a groan he did his best to take a deep breath and calm down. "Anyways. This narrows the cause down to high levels of stress." He dropped his head onto a hand propped up on his thigh, "Which means he needs therapy. Which I don't know jack shit about. Wonderful."

It was weird to hear a voice sounding that much like Master Qifrey's swear, but that wasn't Coco's utmost concern right now. "Explain."

"He needs therapy. To help him heal his mind." When he looked up and realized that Coco wasn't the only one who didn't understand what the hell this had to do with Master Olly's stomach problem, he elaborated, "Illnesses of the mind make it interfere with the body it inhabits. Some of them sap away the victim's energy and will to live, and a mind in that state makes the body reject what's essential for its survival. Does that make more sense?"

Sinocia nodded. "Put like that, yes."

Both Tetia and Coco also nodded. Because that description correlated a bit too well with what they had seen so far — Master Olly's lack of energy, of appetite, and his dread of having to face another day. His apparent desire to just lie there in his room and ignore his body's needs. An illness that siphoned his will to live made a lot of sense. A bit too much sense.

Coco was next in speaking up, "How do you treat that?"

"With proper medication and company." Kaslana removed his monocle with one free hand, then aggressively rubbed his face with the one he had previously buried it in, "We can give him only the latter. Medication must be handled by a therapist, which, nevermind that I don't have the license, I've never studied psychotherapy, I've got nothing but the basic facts that everyone should know."

Huh. That sentence had just brought back up the other question wildly flying in Coco's mind. With narrowed eyes, she gestured with the card that he had given her, the same card that allegedly told her that he was a licensed healer (and also one that featured a small painting of his face, one that was absurdly realistic). "Who're you? And I don't mean just your name."

In response to that question, Kaslana took a long, deep inhale, then grunted, "Some guy in a time-travel shit show. That's the only thing I can tell you without sounding like I'm on LSD."

What's an LSD, Tetia mouthed to Coco.

I don't know, she mouthed back.

Sinocia, meanwhile, bless her soul that wanted to learn more about medicine and help more people, brought their attention back to the deep-crimson bubble floating right there with her own request, "Um… so, could you tell us what you know about blood, now?"

"Haaaaaah… of course." The man, the very very weird man who claimed to be a time-traveler, put his monocle back on as he flashed a smile that hit Coco in the face like a hammer with familiarity. Then, he picked up his wand and quire that had been forgotten on the ground until then. "Let's begin by what blood is made of, yes?"

(If anything, his ensuing crash-course on blood and its properties were backing up his claim to be a time-traveler. Blood being the means via which nutrients and air were delivered to the flesh and organs was such an obvious concept, in hindsight, and that was to mention only one of the knowledge he had that even Sinocia hadn't had until then. Couple that with his demonstrated expertise in treating Master Olly's wounds, and it was clear that he wasn't lying about being a healer either.)

((Both Tetia and Coco could barely bear to follow his teaching; it bore a painful resemblance to Master Qifrey's own.))

~~~~~

If anybody asked Olruggio, he had to admit that he hadn't actually expected to wake up. Much less to a ceiling that he was probably too familiar with.

And most of all, definitely not to the sight of an absurdly Qifrey-ish man with black hair. The only reason why Olruggio didn't mistake him for Qifrey right away was because in absolutely not a single world he had ever imagined Qifrey with two eyes. Two. In his eyes, Qifrey was eternally one-eyed and sporting his pristine hair that reminded him of Ghodrey's snow.

To his greatest damn, the man also sported the exact fucking same smile that Qifrey always had. "Welcome back to the world of the living. How do you feel?"

Kinda numb. Dull throb on the back and one whole half of the body. "… Who the fuck are you? Why ya lookin' so much like Qifrey?" Ah fuck, his throat felt so dry.

The guy's smile took on a slight pained quality, and suddenly it was the exact same damned smile Olruggio remembered Qifrey sporting as the silverwood took him away. Olruggio was handed a cup of water, as the guy began speaking gently with that voice that sounded too much like Qifrey, everything this man did was too much like Qifrey. "I suppose an introduction is in order, then. Kaslana Hyposelenia, generalist doctor, at your service. Just call me Kaslana."

"Great. Doesn't tell me why ya look like Qifrey."

"At least drink your water while I summarize your situation first. Seriously, one'd think that where this is and how you got here would be your bigger issue."

"I recognize the place perfectly, thanks." Olruggio said, attempting to huff despite his parched throat, "And I remember enough to figure out that you brought me here."

The Qifrey-like guy sighed, "Then at least let me do my job as a doctor — healer, sorry — and inform you of the state your body's in."

"The state my body's in is the fucking least of my concerns-" Olruggio interrupted himself to heave a breath — it was difficult to talk continuously for long with his dry throat. "-When there's a fucking Qifrey doppelgänger right in front of me!"

"And it's at the top of my concerns." The guy said lowly, his clipped tone identical to Qifrey's own whenever choice was an illusion, "It's at the top of Coco's and Tetia's concerns. It'd be at the top of Agott's and Richeh's concerns if they were here. They wouldn't want their only mentor figure left to forsake himself, so please do the sensible thing, for their sake if not your own, and drink some water."

It was a low fucking blow. It was too effective. Olruggio now had questions about how the guy knew about the girls, but he had to surrender and take the cup from the guy's hand. Only then did he notice that he was already propped up, via something that looked a lot like Tetia's bed of sand.

Kaslana watched Olruggio gulp down his first mouthful of water like a hawk, even as he began his explanation, "Your right side and your back have sustained severe tears due to, presumably, friction with the slope you fell down on. Broken bones have already been mended, so no need to linger on it, but as for the wounds themselves, only your blood vessels are mended — your muscle mass is too low for tissue regeneration to be an option, it'd cause problems down the line. Thus, we have to let those wounds heal by themselves. Also, you're one hair away from severe acute malnutrition, your weight-to-height ratio is worryingly low, and you show signs of sleep deprivation, though I can't really tell which phase you're in without examining you while you're awake. As you can already guess, this means long-term treatments and you being stuck in bed for quite a while."

Which meant that he was even more of a deadweight for the girls, now. Great.

As if he could read Olruggio's mind, Kaslana spoke up again with narrowed eyes, "Whatever dark thought you have, I greatly recommend that you try to turn your mind's eyes the other way. Negative mindsets will only harm you further."

"But it's true, innit?" The far-weaker man argued, moving the cup of water away from himself for he felt like he might just vomit if he took another gulp, even though his throat was demanding more water still. "I'm already useless here."

"Now who the fuck told you th-"

"I can barely draw anymore, and I drink a fuck ton, and I waste Tetia's money on alcohol. And now apparently I'm bedridden, and will spend even more of her money on getting a treatment for whatever health problem I have. I know the only reason why she doesn't, none of the girls does, give up on me, is 'cause they're still attached to useless ol' me." Maybe Olruggio shouldn't be yapping away at this stranger, but the guy's Qifrey-like face and mannerism were trampling down all notions of a wall. He wished that he had the energy to hold his tears back, he wished that he had the strength to scream instead. "They should. I'm fuckin' wastin' their time and space and money. I'm hoarding this workshop that'd be better off lived in by someone else. Maybe I'm better off dead, and maybe if I luck out I'll be buried under Qifrey's tree, and I'll no longer be a nuisance to anyone, I wouldn't be wasting everyone's time and space and money, I wouldn't risk infecting Jahoda and Merlin and Arlan with my misery, I'll just disappoint Tetia and Coco and Agott and Richeh 'cause I'll never get better-"

"BULLSHIT!!!"

Olruggio nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn't heard the chair that Kaslana had been sitting on fall, but there he stood, hunched yet still towering over Olruggio, one hand somewhere behind the bedridden man, a harsh frown on his brows, his jaws clenched and tense. He looked a mix of furious and scared and pained and whatever else.

"You can get better!" He argued, his tone sounding convinced and not ready to take 'no' for an answer. "You can get better, Olruggio, you just need proper help and good company! We- you already have the good company, we still just lack the proper techniques! So- so please…" There, his voice began getting weaker, as the anger faded away from his face, pain overtaking it all, "Please… never consider dying again. I can't afford to lose you, Olly, I just got back. I just got you back. What happened to that light in your eyes? What happened to-"

The man he was talking to frowned, tiredly eyeing him as his face contorted in pure pain and fear and whatever else there was that Olruggio couldn't make sense of. He could barely make sense of what Kaslana was talking about.

Then suddenly, a sob. "Did- did I cause this? You-" Another sob, "Oh I'm sorry, Olly, I'm so sorry-"

Next thing Olruggio knew, Kaslana was on his knees with his head on the bed, not quite on Olruggio's waist but certainly touching it, hands gripping the blanket like they wanted to tear it apart, shoulders shuddering violently. He was still babbling on between sobs about how he really should've left Olruggio alone before the rot within him could reach Olruggio or some shit like that, his voice muffled by the sheets, and it took Olruggio far too long to understand.

He passed the cup of water that he was still holding to the hand on the opposite side of where the guy was, then, tentatively, he brushed his newly-freed hand onto that mop of jet-black hair. "… Qifrey?"

That drew a sharp hitch that barely managed to stop the sobbing. Then, with great struggle, Kaslana — was he really 'Kaslana'? — unglued his face from the bed, revealing a splotch that proved that he actually had been crying, his pince-nez monocle forgotten there, and attempted to stifle his sobs further with one wrist trying to wipe away his tears, hair still hiding his face. "I- sorry, you were s'posed to learn that only- only once you got better. T'wasn't supposed to come up this way."

Olruggio nearly choked on his own intake of air. His hands began to tremble, and fuck that cup of water actually; he dropped it, and while the hand already near the guy's head traveled to his chin to pull his face lifted, the now-freed other hand went and ruffled the guy's very-not-white hair and-

This guy wasn't a Qifrey doppelgänger. This guy was Qifrey point blank. Black-haired, familiar sky-blue eye glassy with tears, and very real under Olruggio's touch.

Everything else blanked out around the two of them. Olruggio put his hung mouth to use and asked, his voice now shaky and too high-pitched for his own liking on top of being raspy, "… Qifrey? It's- it's really you? How??"

"Reincarnation and then time travel, or that's what I think it is at least." Qifrey — it was him, it was really him — answered with a sniff. "It sounds unreal for me too. That's, like, the reason why I was gonna wait till you get better. To try and understand what exactly happened, and how to explain it to you and Coco and Tetia without sounding like I ate weird mushrooms or like I'm an impostor with a nonsensical excuse or something."

That managed to tear a laugh out of the wounded man's dry throat, though it sounded more like a cry in his own ears. "That's why you introduced yourself as Kaslana Hypo-whatever?"

"That's my current self's name, mind you."

Okay. Yeah that made sense. Fucking whatever.

Olruggio launched himself toward Qifrey, in an attempt to hug him, only to be held back by a sharp pain blooming in his back. Qifrey immediately pushed him back onto the bed (well, cushion) of sand with a gentle, yet firm hand. "Careful now. We don't want to tear your blood vessels again."

Heedless of the warning, the still-injured man poured all of his meager strength into attempting to get back up again to get a hug. Unfortunately for him, his meager strength was very meager, and he did basically nothing to the hold on his left shoulder. Qifrey breathed out that same familiar resigned sigh he'd make whenever he'd give up trying to reason, and leaned forward, nesting his forehead onto the hollow of Olruggio's neck. Olruggio lost no time wrapping his arms around that offered head, ignoring the painful protest from his back.

"For the record," He said with his raspy, shaky voice that was beginning to get obstructed by tears, "T'wasn't your fault. Yer where I drew my strength to live from, if anythin'. 'M sorry for not havin' found a source from the girls, I tried, I really tried-"

Qifrey shushed him, and he could feel a cold hand gently holding his waist and a thumb drawing soothing half-circle through the bandages. "S'not your fault, Olly. Thanks for trying. Thanks for having lived till now. Thanks for letting me find you again."

And, weak as Olruggio was right now in every sense, that did it for him. He broke down into full sobbing, tears and snot and all that, and Qifrey let him cry into his hair with nary more than that thumb eternally drawing half-circles.

~~~~~

It was only long after Master Olly fell asleep that Coco dared to enter the room. The man so-called 'Kaslana' had already finished wiping tears off the other man's face and cleaning his own hair, and was now sitting there, watching over Master Olly like a vigil. His stark-white mantle was hung on the backrest of the chair he was sitting on, revealing a black hips-length tunic made of delicately-thin fabric. The cup that he had asked Tetia some time before sat there on the nightstand, its base holding in place a torn-off Vapor Bubble seal that had been used to return to it its spilled content.

Evidently, the black-haired healer had heard her come in, for he turned to her, his right eye very much there and seeing unlike what she remembered of her mentor. "… Oh. It's you."

"It's me." She confirmed, unsure of what tone to use. "I've brought sandwiches."

"Thank you." He said with a nod, as he turned to receive the tray she handed him. Then, seemingly putting his metaphorical healer mantle back on, he let his gaze drift back to Master Olly's unconscious form, and spoke, "His condition has fully stabilized now. Hopefully, this means that we can let him out of surveillance for long enough to make broth for him to eat. IV nutrition can only go so far before inactivity weakens his stomach further."

"Tetia could help with the broth part if you tell her what should go in there."

"I don't want to trouble Miss Tetia further when she has apprentices to take care of."

"You don't need to 'Miss Tetia' her, Master Qifrey."

That drew a startle out of him. A sharp breath. Then, "… How long did you stand there?"

"Long enough to listen from the beginning to end." Coco answered. Then, biting the inside of her cheeks, she admitted, "Where I stood, you were a Qifrey-lookalike stranger who barged in with an injured Master Olly in tow. Grateful as I am for the treatments, I was still wary, Tetia was still wary, so we decided that I'd stay here to spy on you, while Tetia arranges for her apprentices to stay away a bit longer and contact Richeh. I've already contacted Agott and Beldaruit, between. Um, sorry."

"Don't be." The man turned his gaze back to her, and prepared as she was, it was still painful to see that familiar reassuring smile on him. Coco couldn't decide if him being exactly who his appearance and mannerisms and everything suggested him to be softened the blow or made it hurt more. "In your position, I'd have done the exact same. Can't let a stranger get too comfortable around a loved one while they're entirely too vulnerable, can we now?"

Coco quirked the corners of her lips up in a sad smirk. Or a sad attempt at one. Fuck if she knew. "You understand me too well." Then she went right back to chewing on the inside of her cheeks again, before it came to her that she had better ask, "Will you be alright telling them everything right away? I mean, they all should arrive shortly; I don't think they'll give you the time to process what happened to you, Agott and Richeh especially will want to know what happened to Master Olly and who this," She brought her hands up to gesticulate playfully, "Qifrey-doppelgänger man who brought him back is-"

As if right on cue, the thundering sound of footsteps falling heavily on the floor and stairs made itself heard, as did Agott's booming cry, "Master Olly!! Coco, where are you?!"

Master Olly remained oblivious to such cacophony, a telltale sign that he was unfortunately unconscious rather than sleeping, for he was an incredibly light sleeper these days; maybe something placed there by a mind not too eager to face the realm of nightmares that inevitably waited for it. Master Qifrey, meanwhile, took on a startled expression, "… Ah."

That was all he was allowed, for not a second later dearest Agott barged right into the room, in her full Head Librarian glory, heaving like she had run all the way to here from the windowway. Her eyes widened as soon as they landed on the man who was basically Master Qifrey's twin in everything but hair color, and immediately she shot her questions, "Who're you?! What happened to Master Olly?! How's he?!"

And without waiting for an answer, she beelined for the bed where Master Olly laid limp. Master Qifrey sighed. "Agott, if you intent to wake him up and ask for his side of the story, you'll have to wait for quite a while. In his weakened state, sleep deprivation has caught up to him, I fear."

Immediately, she turned her head toward him so quickly that Coco feared for her wife's neck. "You! Who're you, and why do you look so much like Master Qifrey?"

Coco winced in his place. "Um, Agott, darling… can this wait until everyone else is here? It's um… quite a weird situation."

"And might also sound a little bit Out There." Master Qifrey added with that Master-Qifrey-Special sheepish face that Coco knew was taking Agott aback. "And I don't really understand all that well what happened to me either, apart from, like, the trope. I mean, the most evident thing someone could guess given the summary. Something like that."

"What he means it, let's wait for the others to arrive, so that we could make sense of it together." Coco followed from there, "In the meantime, would you like sandwiches? I can go fetch you some."

In the time it took for them to say all that, Agott had calmed down from her frenetic urgency, just enough to pointedly look at her wife and sigh. "… I'd prefer knowing how Master Olly's doing first."

That was cue for Master Qifrey to answer, as it was his newest domain they were treading on. "If you mean his injuries, then he's fine, he'll just be bedridden until his flesh has healed naturally. If you mean his general condition…" A long, long wince, "… Not great. That one will have to wait until all of you arrive, though; it'll be much less of a hassle telling you all at the same time, instead of one by one."

"No need to wait, then." An airy, feminine voice shot up from the door. They all turned around; there Richeh and Beldaruit both were, expression hardened, Tetia right behind them. Richeh continued speaking, "We're all here. And as much as I want to know who on Zozah's green grass you are, you make Master Olly's state sound far more concerning. What's that about his general condition?"

"Um…" The healer intelligently said, clearly having expected to have to wait a bit more before time came to do this. Nonetheless, he quickly bounced back up to do his job. "Put in simple terms… he's one hair shy from life-threatening malnutrition, and I've still not yet determined how severe his sleep-deprivation is, but I can already guess that it might be on the higher end of the bar. Malnutrition is, as far as I can tell, the issue with the most evident solution — we have to continue artificially introducing nutrients directly into his veins, while we train him to keep more and more food down."

Beldaruit frowned. "Introducing nutrients into his veins? That's feasible?"

In response, Master Qifrey gestured toward one of the seals that he had hung on the bed frame at the head's end, the only seal that he had left there; above it, a Vapor Bubble with a thin rope that entered Master Olly's body at the crook of the elbow, the exact same way Coco had seen that blood bubble do. Then he added, "We just have to resupply the IV bubble with nutrients every now and then. It's a drop-by-drop process, so we should have some time until the next round."

The seal itself piqued the old Wise's interest, and with just a bit of careful maneuvering he sneaked his way to it. "… Curious… there are quite a few keystones here that I've never seen before. And, what is this sigil?"

"A medical sigil discovered down the line." The black-haired man (the conscious one anyways) swiftly answered, and then just as swiftly cast down his metaphorical healer coat to scratch his neck, "Which, uh… brings me to Agott's earlier question. About who exactly I am. It… probably sounds unbelievable?"

Richeh tilted her head. "Are you about to say that you're a time-traveling healer?"

"… What gave me away?"

The blue-haired woman answered that question with nothing else than a stare that just about spelled out 'are you stupid'. Beldaruit sighed and answered for her, "Your 'down the line' does not sound like you're talking about a forgotten spell from the Days of Yore, healer. Also, and this is my side of this guess, you don't look like you feel naked before an audience in those… undergarments of yours," That made Master Qifrey hastily look down at his thin button-up hip-length tunic (that had a rectangular pocket sewn on one side of his chest for some reason) and his skintight pants made of thick cotton-like material. "So it's easy to conclude that you come from a place where that's considered normal, and you have a well-traveled witch who cannot recognize for the life of him any culture that dresses that way. The next best guess is then that you don't belong to this era."

At that part, Coco winced. "Uh… well, he both does and doesn't belong to this era?"

That got her four pairs of sharp, questioning eyes directly boring into her soul (Master Qifrey's wasn't doing that, so he didn't count). Agott decided that her turn had come to be the mouthpiece of the group, and asked bluntly, "Explain."

The time-traveler saved Coco by butting in with a hand held up, "Before she does that. Um, anyone here familiar with the concept of reincarnation?"

This time, it was Tetia who spoke up. "I think I saw it in one of my novels before… is it when people die and wake up as a baby?"

He nodded. "In a nutshell. That's the trope where dead people's soul incarnate a new body and, well, start over with a new life. Second chances and all that." Well, that certainly did its job explaining a lot to Coco. "Some rare ones get to remember their first life, unless you're in an isekai trope but we're not talking isekai here. Now why do you think I'm bringing this up?"

Agott squinted, "Because this has got something to do with you? What, are you about to say that-" She suddenly cut herself off. Then, her amethyst eyes began searching wildly on the Qifrey-like healer's person. "… That…"

Beldaruit too, had frozen where he sat. Eventually, when he did open his mouth again, his nonchalant probably-sleep-deprived mask slipped away from his grasp, revealing the pained visage of a grieving father. "… Do you intend to deceive us? Give us false hope?"

"No, I don't think he does." Everyone turned (sharply, in everyone's but Coco's and Master Qifrey's case) to the one who spoke, namely Tetia. "I mean, everything just fits too well. His mannerisms, the way he just recognized Miss Sinocia right away, the way he-" She choked over that one, "The way he taught. Everything fits too well."

"No." Agott said lowly, "Hold up. Hold up! Didn't he say reincarnated people get a new body? Why should a reincarnated Master Qifrey look like Master Qifrey?"

To that, Master Qifrey shrugged. "Coincidence, probably. I mean, my parents do look like they could've given birth to a black-haired version of myself. If it's worth anything, the entire rest of my life is pretty different from the one I had here."

"That's a given, sir healer." Richeh huffed, then stomped toward him. She stopped right before where he sat, and with a hard stare, demanded, "Prove it. Prove us that you're Master Qifrey. If you're him, you'd know which kind of spell he'd draw, right?"

To that, the man gave her a sad, understanding smile, and reached for his wand and quire. With them, he began to draw, expertly placing keystone after keystone around a sigil of water before finally closing the glyph. Immediately, water was drawn from the cup forgotten on the nightstand, molded into a dragon above the seal. The creature then broke free from the seal's confines, flying and drawing one or two circles around them all, before plunging right back into the cup, from where a water bud emerged and blossomed into a beautiful rose.

"I hated water." He spoke quietly, as the rose fell back down into the cup, "I still do. So, at Olly's advice, I took to mastering water, so that I'd never get wet again. Didn't work all that well, considering that the Brimmed Caps just loved to waterboard me." Then, he let his gaze wander toward Beldaruit and continued, "I once gifted Beldaruit a teacup set as an apprentice. A contraption that'd mold the tea into the form of a dragon for as long as the cup was sat on the saucer. And I absolutely adored dragons."

Then older man looked so close to tearing up. "… Qifrey… so it really is you, my boy."

If anything, Master Qifrey's smile only doubled down on the sadness, and only now did Coco notice how he seemed older than last she had known him. "It's been a while, isn't it." Then he turned his attention back onto his former students. "You all have grown so much. Look at you: uniforms of your own, established lives as accomplished witches… seeing you girls like this, in the flesh in front of me, is so much better than getting glimpses of you through history books. How long has it been?"

"Ten years." Coco answered just as quietly. "How… how long has it been for you?"

"Forty-five years. Can't really count the time in-between, I don't remember it."

Coco clenched her jaws. Agott and Tetia jolted as if slapped. Richeh scrunched her nose, like she found that time span distasteful. Beldaruit took on this expression that told of pain. Compared to their ten years of having to grieve him and move on, forty-five years of having nothing else than historical records to reach those you cared for with sounded like torture. Judging by how close he looked to tearing up, it had been.

"But hey, y'know what I say to that?" Master Qifrey stood up, only to immediately plop onto the bed where Master Olly lay still oblivious to the world, his smile turning into an attempt to look cheerful instead. "I'm back here now, and I'm here to stay unless the universe decides to be a killjoy, so let's not let the angst win out, yes?"

"What's an angst." Agott murmured, but nonetheless scooted closer to him.

Coco plopped onto the bed right beside Master Qifrey, as her black-haired wife stole the chair that he had been sitting on until three seconds ago. Richeh stayed planted there in front of that same chair. Tetia, meanwhile, trotted her way to the other side of the bed; her way to include both Beldaruit and the still-unconscious Master Olly. They all looked like they wanted nothing more than to crash into a group hug, yet they couldn't, not while Master Olly was still injured and unable to join them.

"So." Tetia said, her cheery voice doing much of the heavy work to dispel the gloom and grief that previously hung in the room, "Tell us. How did you get here? How does it work? What does the era you come from look like? Is Kaslana Hypo-something your name there?"

"Is my name that much of a mouthful??" He shot with an affronted expression.

Both Coco and Tetia descended into a wheezing fit, even as Richeh loudly asked what the heck Master Qifrey's new name was.

(Some time later, Olruggio awoke to a slight pressure on various parts of his body.

Turned out, it was Qifrey and all the apprentices and his teacher, all peacefully sleeping, all piled up on and around Olruggio, just carefully enough to avoid hurting him. For once feeling like he was drowning in joy and warmth, Olruggio fell to his first dreamless slumber in years.)

~~~~~

Things didn't automatically get better for Olruggio. Of course it wouldn't; what soon became clear was something along the lines of depression couldn't be willed away just like that.

"Come on," Qifrey would press thrice a day everyday, "You need to eat, Olly."

"Not hungry." Olruggio would say every time, looking half-dead in Qifrey's old bed. Looking like he still longed for the darkness that death offered, and oh didn't it claw into Qifrey's heart.

Truly, the universe must hate them both in some capacity; throwing Qifrey into Olruggio's life at a point where he surely had been at a most vulnerable state of mind and likely to latch onto just about anything, letting the Brimmed Caps inflict the fate of hosting that cursed seed onto Qifrey, throwing Qifrey back here when yet again Olruggio was at his lowest and wanting nothing more than relief, any form of relief that he could find, with death as the most absolute option. Grateful as Qifrey was to be back here, he cursed the universe. Maybe Olruggio would've been better off, his radiance never dimming off like this, if Qifrey had never appeared in his life in the first place.

But such thoughts didn't help Olruggio in his recovery in the slightest, so Qifrey learned to designate them as his shadow, ban said shadow to getting grounded in the corner, then turn around and simply appreciate this second chance that he was given. And also do his job as a doctor, though he did curse himself to hell and back for not having dipped toes into psychotherapy during his rabbit-hole deep-dive into the world of medicine.

Anyways. One week into this, and it was made all too clear that Olruggio thought he was bothering Qifrey too, with that guilt that he was too exhausted to mask in his tired eyes. This couldn't go on like this, Qifrey couldn't let the star that had guided him his whole existence continue to think that he was a burden, so Qifrey came up with something that legit therapists might kill him for.

"Those thoughts that sap away at your energy? Everything from within you that you see sapping away at your strength and will to live? Think of them as a monster." He told his dearest, tired friend, "A monster that feasts away within you. Now fight back against it, Olly, don't let it win. Don't let it tell you that your victories are for naught. Every victory counts."

The first time he heard that, Olruggio absentmindedly nodded, the way someone did when they were only half-listening. The way Qifrey distinctly remembered he would whenever he'd be only half-listening.

Because Qifrey knew that Tetia could distract her students from the atelier for only so long, eventually he told the inventor, "I'm gonna tell the kids that, okay? That there's a parasite sapping away at your strength."

Evidently, saying out loud the word 'parasite' wasn't the brightest idea, for Olruggio flinched at it. Still, he had to persist — there wasn't much else he could do to make absolutely sure that they'd understand just how dire and difficult this was. Even in the twenty-first century, too many people didn't clock that.

A day after that (kinda one-sided) conversation, Tetia could no longer keep her students away, and had to bring them back to the atelier. Qifrey immediately got informed that they had been told about him via a blonde twelve year-old barging in to ask if he was her other grandmaster that her master had been talking about.

That girl turned out to be the energetic and blunt Jahoda. The two boys that entered the room right after her were Merlin and Arlan respectively, and Qifrey nearly got a heart attack at the sight of the later's white hair until he realized that it was just the boy's natural hair color. They took turn yipping questions at him, and another thing he soon learned was that Tetia's story about him was a vague one about how he had been whisked away to the future, and now the kids were waiting for an epic adventure tale about time-travelers. So then he had to pull out of his ass a story about how a riff had opened right where the resident silverwood tree now stood, how he had been pulled in, and had to live for forty-five years in a world full of both magic-less and magic-full technologies alike in a body with slowed-down aging rate. He ended up saved from it by young Merlin, bless him, asking about Master Olly's wellbeing, since Grandmaster Qifrey was a healer.

So he told them. He told them about a parasite that resided in the mind, a parasite that fed on its victim's strength and will to live, a parasite that festered on until its victim was nothing more than a miserable husk of themself. A parasite that the host, and only the host themself, could starve off. He told them, and the whole while Olruggio silently cried, only just able to turn his face away, unable to curl up and protect himself from the things said, the story that was maybe too reminiscent of the silverwood that had once plagued Qifrey. The hand-holding couldn't do much to soothe him; Qifrey would've loved to bodily hug him, but he had grandstudents to teach.

"Can we help in any way?" Arlan asked once Qifrey had said his piece.

Jahoda huffed, hands on her hips, looking like someone had just insulted her entire bloodline. "Wrong question! We should be asking, how can we help?"

Qifrey smiled with relief. These were truly sweet children Tetia was nurturing. "You can help by keeping it all in mind. He'll be struggling a lot, and he needs understanding. Leave the rest to us adults; in his place, I wouldn't necessarily appreciate burdening a bunch of kids who should be enjoying themselves for a while longer."

They looked upset about it, but nonetheless they nodded. Olruggio looked upset about it too, and Qifrey could guess that it was because he was, in this way, still involving children. He could do nothing else than give the bedridden man's hand an apologetic squeeze.

Olruggio was willing to make the idea work in Qifrey's defense, though, because from there on, he began to try harder. So as to not disappoint the kids was all too clear on his exhausted face, but Qifrey couldn't afford to complain — every step forward was a step forward, away from those horrible thoughts that stifled his guiding star's light.

It first began with the food, as would be when one was essentially stuck in bed.

The first time Olruggio tried to eat the liquid chicken broth Qifrey made for him, he puked, and only the basin that Qifrey had prepared and left there in advance saved them from a mess that'd have added to the already terrible feel that Olruggio was dealing with. The next couple times were punctuated with his attempts at keeping that liquid down, with varying levels of success, until he got to where he could keep it down for long enough for his stomach to do its job. Qifrey celebrated with praises, adamantly chasing away all of Olruggio's attempts to talk himself down for it being just flavored water or some other untrue shit his depression was putting into his head, and then served him differently-seasoned versions of that same broth a couple more times to get him used to it, and then started adding finely-diced bits of meat into the broth; Olruggio puked again, and nearly abandoned at the prospect of his stomach not being able to stomach those 'small-ass bits of meat'. Though, the next meal, Merlin sat there insistently staring as if summoned and given command by the gods of food therapy to ensure that his bedridden grandmaster did eat, and so Olruggio caved in. So then the cycle repeated, then Qifrey started to dice the meat less small, Olruggio puked again, then Jahoda went up to the room and gave both men a haunting stare that said Master Olly has better eat well or else. Qifrey started to put some crushed bits of noodles that Tetia had gotten her hands on at his request; Olruggio puked again, and the next meal it was Arlan like the kids were taking turns.

It continued like that, with Tetia often taking a minute to check in, until, three weeks later, the chicken broth had evolved into more solid stuff than broth, with full set of noodles and always-changing meat and vegetables in there for Olruggio to chew on. He had taken to doing so languidly, his appetite still Not It, but at least he was appreciating what he was putting into his mouth, if the way he had begun noting the flavor changes was anything to go by.

One day, both Tetia and Jahoda blocked his path toward the staircase to the rooms with the air of people preparing to execute someone.

"Can Master Olly handle pie?" Tetia asked, "And tea?"

Qifrey blinked, feeling completely lost. "… In small quantities, I believe so?"

That meal saw him come up into his old room, that had turned into Olruggio's room somewhat, with a serving of summerberry pie and a small cup of charmonie tea in addition to the beef noodle soup, accompanied by a get-well card destined to the bedridden inventor, signed by every other resident of the atelier (Qifrey was easily coaxed into signing it too) and littered with hearts and thumb-ups drawn by the kids. That night, Olruggio let tears fall unchecked, looking too exhausted to sob or make a sound, yet that night was also the first time since forever that Qifrey saw him smile. A small, genuine smile that radiated warmth and gratitude through the silent tears.

Another day, Qifrey found his now-long-haired friend sat up and staring weirdly at the spot where his lower belly was covered by the blanket.

"… Qifrey?"

"Yeah?"

"May I… ask a question?"

"Shoot."

"… Why's it I don't wet myself despite basically never getting up?"

The doctor pointed at the footboard, from where hung the only two support spells that were still maintained, for he trusted Olruggio's digestive system to properly process food, not the man's wounds to not open up and tear away at the blood vessels within them. "See those spells over there? They basically send your waste to space, Toilets of the Void style. It's normally only used in case we don't have the water-purification jars at hand, though; them astronauts had a nasty time when they set out for Mars and discovered all the waste just littered there."

"… You guys went to space???"

And that was how Qifrey spent the entire afternoon wildly switching back and forth between explaining twenty-first century concepts and explaining how each of the keystones that was still new to Olruggio worked, a demonstration of the seals drawn in regular ink.

It was still far from fine and dandy, though. Nothing was ever fine and dandy with depression around, that shit just loved to fuck things up.

For one, Olruggio's sleep-deprivation issue was still fully ongoing, despite all the atelier residents' best efforts. And the nightmares that caused it often led to several steps back, sometimes touching square one, much to the doctor's dismay.

When Qifrey had set up a mattress for himself, right beside Olruggio's bed, right after that conversation with the girls and Beldaruit, it had originally been to keep an eye on the injured man's condition. One night in, and it had swiftly turned into an excuse to always be there ready to wake up at the slightest sound of distress, the slightest whimper that the constant nightmares always pulled out of Olruggio. The man didn't talk in his sleep, but the few times Qifrey had waken him up right in the middle of those nightmares, he had waken up either screaming Qifrey's name, or whimpering to an imaginary version of Coco and Agott and Tetia and Richeh that I'm sorry I'm not getting better I'm sorry imsorryimsorry and Qifrey had held him as tight as could be allowed to in his wounded state, as he sobbed, and they had done this enough times to know that it was always those. Waking him up didn't make him feel any better at all, so the next solution Qifrey flocked to was to try speaking reassurance words to a sleeping Olruggio.

That one, he discovered some weeks into taking care of Olruggio, worked much better when someone held him the whole way through. And he had discovered it only once the state of Olruggio's wound was stable enough that he could allow himself to give in and hug that dearest, flickering star the whole way back to sleep. Sleepy as he himself had been, he had forgotten to get off the bed and back onto his mattress, and had thus been dozing off until Olruggio's whimpers had pulled him awake again. That he had still been holding Olruggio hadn't made much of a difference the first couple minutes, as he tried to talk his trembling friend through it as he normally would; the difference made itself known only one or two minutes later, as Olruggio slowly, somewhat erratically eased his trembling against the random patterns that Qifrey drew on his shoulder with his thumb, because the risk that he hurt his dearest friend in his sleep if he rubbed at the back was still too high, while he continued to blab reassurances. Qifrey had feared that his old friend, once awake, would react to finding the other man trapping him in a tight hold with fear, or even resignation at his own helplessness; instead, what he had found on Olruggio's face that next morning was relief and solace.

So Qifrey continued doing it. Every night he'd climb onto Olruggio's bed, while the man himself was still fully awake and watching, and every night the man would greet that with not resignation but a tired, hopeful gaze. Every night Qifrey would let himself get pulled awake by the inevitable small cries of pure distress, each night he'd hold his guiding star tight as he whispered you'll be alright, I'm here, Tetia's here, Jahoda and Arlan and Merlin are here, Coco and Agott and Richeh are proud of you, and each night he'd watch as Olruggio's trembling body slowly stilled and melted into whatever that was he was pressed against. Each morning, Qifrey'd wake up to the sight of Olruggio already awake, watching him with tired eyes that looked like they had found peace, maybe even contentment, in something they saw.

Okay, so maybe a part of this practice was Qifrey selfishly wanting to hold the sky's kindest star close, hide him away from hurt, cocoon him and protect him, but in his defense said practice was working; Olruggio was getting back some of that much-needed sleep, and his eyelids were drooping less and less, and his hands had stopped trembling enough for him to draw for more than five minutes — he had started occupying himself with random seals drawn in regular ink at Qifrey's advice, a way to stimulate his inventor witch brain to whatever capacity he could. The great thing was, finding out that he could now draw for longer had improved his mood exponentially, even if maybe not for so great of a reason (he still wanted to feel useful, that much was clear in the way he looked at them seals). A step forward was a step forward, though, and Qifrey couldn't afford to be picky about how those steps forward were made.

And so, sleeping together became a routine.

A month after Qifrey somehow time-traveled back to his loved ones' sides, Olruggio's scarring wounds were stable enough for him to get out of bed at last. The last of the support spells were transmuted from plastic back to paper and torn, and he was free to roam the atelier after a fair amount of stretching exercises, since his leg muscles were beginning to get atrophied from the amount of time staying exclusively in bed.

Now arose the new problem: Olruggio didn't want to go out.

"Come on, Olly." Qifrey tried to coax, "You need at least twenty minutes of walking around."

"Don't wanna go out." Olruggio grumbled stubbornly and refused to elaborate, curled up against a corner of the room that may now be as well his. His bed was back to its actual spot at the other otherwise-free corner of the room.

The doctor soon learned of the reason for this refusal, via his friend's dreadful glances out the window, from where silver branches and foliage were visible.

… Ah.

The silverwood tree that had grown at his expense. Of course.

Qifrey ended up suggesting, "Would it be better if I walk the whole way with you?"

It was after that and some more coaxing that Olruggio finally agreed to step out of the atelier.

For the first ten minutes or so, Qifrey tried to avoid letting that tree into Olruggio's sight. Eventually, though, they did need to begin their trek back to the atelier, and it wasn't like any of them could avoid that thing forever anyway. He knew the exact second where the silvery foliage did enter his friend's line of sight, for the hand tremors that they had managed to mostly get rid of came back in full force.

Immediately, Qifrey turned on his heels to stand right in front of the still-recovering man, hands squeezing both his shoulders. In a firm tone, he said, "Olly. I'm here. I'm alive. I'm not in that tree anymore."

Well, technically, old-him might still be in that tree. But that was anything but what Olruggio needed to hear right now.

The longer-haired man darted slightly-frenzied eyes back and forth between the man in front of him, and the silvery tree whose foliage was still visible behind Qifrey's head, for that accursed tree stood very tall. A hand slowly rose to grip at Qifrey's arm, feeling it, confirming that it was indeed real. It took a long while for a sigh to come out of Olruggio's lips, and then the next words came rough and quiet, "… Right. Sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for, dear." Qifrey gave Olruggio's shoulders another squeeze. "Do you need a moment?"

A sharp inhale. Then, even more quietly, "… No. No, let's… let's continue." The hand on Qifrey's arm tightened its hold. "We gotta- I gotta continue."

And so they continued.

The whole while, Olruggio gripped tight onto Qifrey's arm, as if to ensure that he was still there and hadn't disappeared into thin air.

And just like sleeping together, this became a routine.

~~~~~

It wasn't until some months after Master Qifrey's arrival that both Coco and Beldaruit managed to clear their respective schedules, at least enough for a visit to Tetia's atelier.

Luluci and Lagrah looked hesitant between feeling dreadful at the prospect of having to handle all that work (because there was still so, so much work to do to fully implement the Second Pact, as the first generation of Wises to guard it) between just the two of them, and being relieved for Beldaruit. Coco definitely was choosing the latter; one would've thought that Master Qifrey coming back to their lives would make this man slow down somewhat, but nooo, he had been working even harder. It was a miracle that he wasn't sick. That the two other Wise still didn't know of Master Qifrey's return only made their worry worse, but their colleagues couldn't afford to tell them yet. Not without consulting Master Qifrey and all the others for a definitive cover story to give the world.

Anyways, Coco and Beldaruit bid goodbye to their two coworkers and made their way past the windowway.

"Mas- Kaslana will so kill you for your amount of work at your age." Coco huffed as they began their trek up the staircase.

Beldaruit had the audacity to scoff. "At my age? I'll let you know that I'm perfectly functional at any age!" At his grandstudent's roll of the eyes, he decided to switch topics, "Speaking of age, how's your mother?"

"Easing well into her retreat, I'd say." The woman shrugged with a slight smile. Eight years ago, after the removal of the First Pact's rules, she had finally managed to undo the damage she had done to her first home and her mother, and apologize for the mess and everything else. The goodbyes that had immediately come then, for her daughter was a witch in a position full of power and heavy responsibilities, made the memories of it all as bittersweet as the memories of why Coco's love for magic had sparked in the first place; to this day, she still hoped that correspondence with Mom was doing more than just the bare minimum to bridge that gap between Mom and the world.

"Wonderful, wonderful. Um, does she know that you're funding it? Her retreat?"

"Nope. Let her think that her work was enough to sustain her."

Beldaruit looked like he was about to seriously question and even argue against the logic, but the sight that greeted them at the top of the staircase cut that conversation short.

There in the living room, surrounded by three enthusiastic grandstudents that shot questions left right and center, was Master Olly looking very tired still. Yet, his eyes were shining with a light that Coco had thought long-lost since Master Qifrey had surrendered to his grim fate, as he quietly answered the children's questions, quire and a pen not quite his in hands. His hair was tied into a low ponytail behind him, and his bangs had been cut back to the very shape that Coco had first met him with.

Up until last Coco had seen him, he had looked like a dying man bleeding out, and in fact had come too close to being literally a dying man bleeding out. Now, he looked like a properly-bandaged man curled up in a snugstone-warmed blanket.

"Oh, hi Coco, Beldaruit!" Someone chimed in from somewhere beside them. There Master Qifrey was, still very real with his very black hair and his very complete set of eyes, smiling brightly at them like things couldn't get better, "Are you here for a visit? For a stay?" And then his mood soured considerably the second he properly laid eyes on the older of the two Wise. "Beldaruit, you look like you're one hair away from collapse. What on Earth happened?"

"Nothing happened!" Beldaruit answered at the exact same time Coco huffed "Him overworking himself, that's what happened."

Unfortunately for that absurd old man, Master Qifrey was much more willing to believe his student than he was his teacher. Beldaruit shot her a betrayed look, as his student stepped forward with a dangerous expression, eyes sharpened and all on him. "I do hope that you have a personal healer we can contact, because we'll be teaming up to have you rest. You're nearing your middle-eighties, Beldaruit, and your constitution makes it even less ideal for you to overwork yourself."

At this point, the healer was looming ominously over his old teacher, who himself seemed to be sinking on himself, into his chair that was sinking to the ground. Coco did her best not to laugh. Though, the children and Master Olly were standing (sitting) witness to this whole thing too, and weren't as proficient in concealing their feelings as Coco was (thanks to politics which were on so many levels all about slight-handed tactics); the young apprentices' snickers ended up contaminating her, and they all burst out into full-on laughing as Beldaruit was dragged away to the kitchen by the chair, screaming like he was getting dragged to his own execution instead of to proper healthcare. Master Olly kept it to just snickering, and it sounded like genuine amusement instead of him trying to force himself to roll along, and it was very high on Coco's list of the most reassuring sounds she had heard in a decade, second only to her wife's awkward attempts to sing to her the same lullaby that Mom had once sung.

They quickly settled back into the young students yipping questions at now-both Master Olly and Coco herself about keystones and spells and what it was like to be an inventor, though just as quickly Merlin stopped his two peers and lured them upstairs to ask Master Qifrey about medicine and healingcraft instead; he was teaching them stuff, it seemed. That left Coco and Master Olly alone in the living room, Tetia still nowhere to be seen yet. Maybe she had gone out to do groceries.

Coco went to sit right beside Master Olly on the rug in front of the fireplace. Once comfortably settled, she waited some more, just to ensure that if there were curious ears they were upfront about it instead of eavesdropping like she and her fellow students had once done, then turned to him. "So… how've you been doing?" Just to be sure.

The man shrugged. When he spoke, it was with the quiet, deep tone of someone still recovering from heavy exhaustion, "Better." That was all he said before he looked down, seemingly searching for something to continue his trek with.

From this close, Coco could see even more clearly that yes, indeed, he was getting better; his clothes no longer seemed so baggy on him (something that had had him confining himself to the bathroom the one time she had pointed it out), his skin now bore a healthy flush that she was no longer used to, his eye bags were only half as bad as last she had seen, and his hair had lost the oily sheen in favor of a more lustrous shimmer, and she hadn't realized that said hair had been thinned away so badly until now, seeing all that still-short new hair over his thin ponytail.

Coco ended up the one to break the brief silence first, tone as quiet as his was. "I'm glad that you're now in good hands."

"Hey, hey, now." Master Olly scooted closer to pat her in the back, "I've always been in good hands. Simply we didn't have someone to tell us that this ain't just grief."

"But it's not just that, is it?"

To that, he said nothing. There was nothing he could say; the years of Master Qifrey's absence had made it all too clear why he was recovering only now. It was because Master Qifrey was now here, giving him back a reason to live and get better, by his presence alone or because he was persuasive. Coco wondered if maybe it was because she and her fellow students hadn't managed to convince him that they still needed him in their lives; maybe that was where the need to feel useful had come from. A still-standing echo that still clung to a reason to keep living.

Eventually, he was the one to speak up again first. "… Sorry. For not having clung harder to life, I mean."

"It wasn't your fault, Master."

"It kinda feels like it is. I could've clung harder onto you girls."

Coco cusped his closest hand with both of hers. "That doesn't matter. What does matter is that you're doing better now, and that we'll be here with you all the way. If not physically, then in spirit."

He gave her a smile. Small, genuine, full of gratitude. "Thanks, Coco."

They ended up lust staying there, in silence, until Tetia came back with her groceries. Not for longer, for she dragged them both into helping her with preparing food.

(That one ended up in a lot of screaming and the building nearly getting set on fire once Arlan got to the kitchen and tried to help, and Coco learned for the first time that he was an abysmal cook.)

~~~~~

One year after that conversation, not much had changed. Apart from those daily walks having evolved into daily jogs instead, but that was a minute-detail.

And, well, Olruggio sought to change that pacing today. For the better or for the worse, though hopefully for the better. Hopefully.

Tetia had taken her apprentices to a camping field trip for the next three days; they needed to develop their spell-application and problem-solving skills, she had said, and camping was sure to be a challenge, with all the things to do to ensure that it stayed manageable and fun. Olruggio felt miles better than he had one year ago, but that didn't mean that he'd feel motivated to spend a night outside in the woods in the slightest, and Qifrey had stayed behind with him because 'old geezers solidarity', as he had put it. Which meant that, for the next three days, he and Qifrey would have the atelier to themselves.

And damn if he didn't make use of that.

Tonight, it was Olruggio who cooked; his hands had, to his greatest joy, stopped trembling entirely. Tonight, for probably the first time since Qifrey came back, he was allowed to open a bottle of wine, though he had to enjoy this to the fullest for this would not be happening often, not until another full year because Qifrey's healer self was even more of a worrywart than his teacher self had been. The dinner was a simple one, really; beef stew with bread, and puddings for dessert because he might as well put to use Jahoda's insistence on teaching him the recipe. Qifrey didn't seem bothered in the slightest bit by the simplicity of it, busy relishing in the stew's taste instead.

It was after dinner and having flocked outside to sit on the grass and stargaze that Olruggio, with his pounding heart and anticipation and fears and all that, decided to make his move; he had waited for too long. Or maybe he hadn't waited at all and just couldn't remember having done it before, and in that case he'd be really pissed at himself for having had that memory erasure idea in the first place.

He turned to Qifrey, who was fully laid down on the grass, watching the night sky with an absentminded gaze. 'Vibing', as he'd call it sometimes. "Hey, Qifrey?"

Immediately, gentle day-blue drifted toward him. "Yeah?"

"Um… I've got something to tell you. Since, like, before you uh…" Olruggio risked a quick glance to his back, where the atelier's local silverwood tree could be seen some distance away. Fortunately, these days, the heartache that the sight of it caused was far more manageable. "… Since we were teens. Maybe I've told you this before and forgotten it, maybe I haven't."

Qifrey's curious dog head-tilt did its job telling Olruggio that either he was having trouble connecting the dots or they had never actually talked about this before, as he sat up to meet his bearded friend. Looking him in the eyes was too nerve-wracking, though, so Olruggio had to quickly turn away, turn up to the sky.

"And I've been waiting since a while to tell you, y'know, since you're back and all that, and I didn't want you to think that I was just confusing things out of gratitude or something. That I'm very certain of what I'm saying." Goddamnit, Olruggio, stop rambling and get to it already! Deal with that fear of ruining everything later, just get it out! "Anyways, what I want to say it, I love you. As in, romantically love you. Ever since I met you, I think." Then, quieter, "That's why I couldn't handle losing you. You were basically my everything."

His tirade was met with silence.

The long kind of silence that weighted heavy on the mind of a man who refused to look at his interlocutor.

Olruggio's mind began spiraling. What if this actually did change things for the worse? What if it did ruin what they already had between them? What if Qifrey hated Olruggio and his stupid ass and his stupid feelings that couldn't stay in the boundary of friendship now? What if-

"Olruggio. Look at me."

That was said in a quiet tone, one that had something heavy in it. Still, Olruggio complied, and slowly dragged his gaze down to Qifrey and- oh.

That face looked a cross between absolutely elated and so, so guilt-ridden, as the older man brought a hand to gently, maybe even tenderly, cup Olruggio's face. "Are you sure? After everything that I've done to you?"

It took Olruggio far too long for his liking to get what Qifrey was talking about. Once he did, though, he lost no time rebutting, "Qifrey, you absolute idiot. That Memory Erasure spell? The whole cycle that came with it? It was my idea. And what have you done this past year, while curse-free? Nurse me back to health. Guard my sleep against nightmares. Give me what I needed to fend off this… this mind-monster. You've been doing stuff for me, Qif, not to me, so take that idea out of your head and throw it as far away as you fucking can. And maybe just acknowledge that I love you, I don't expect you to do anything else than that between. We can just… keep things as they are."

Silence.

And then…

"… What if I don't want to keep things as they are?"

The bearded man of the two turned to Qifrey with a stupid-ass blink.

With slow motions, Qifrey leaned in and began crawling toward the other man. "What if I want to do more than just acknowledge stuff?"

"… Uhhh, Qif?" Olruggio could feel heat rushing to his face, despite him willing it down with every ounce of willpower he had, as the man with clear day-lit skies for eyes climbed onto his lap. "Whatcha doin'?"

The said man answered that question by, "What if I want to kiss you silly right now?"

Olruggio's mind braked to an abrupt halt.

And then next thing he knew, his hand had shot to Qifrey's neck and pulled him down, so that their lips could meet.

It wasn't fuzzy and soft in the slightest, nor did their lips slot together like two pieces of a puzzle, unlike popular depictions of kisses (at least according to Tetia, Olruggio himself didn't read romance). It was messy and desperate and their teeth clashed with only their lips as barrier and their nose bumped and it was like Olruggio was a parched man offered the purest ambrosia there was. He drank every single drop of it, and then asked for more by a lapping at Qifrey's lips. And the man responded so well, opening his mouth just enough that the tips of their tongues could meet, still too shy to go further. To his dismay, Qifrey pulled away afterward.

And then dived back in for a second kiss.

This one fit the 'soft' part of the romance novels description a lot more. Great. Still didn't fit the rest. It wasn't fuzzy in Olruggio's belly, it was warm and pleasant and comforting, like a snugstone nested in his stomach. Their mouths still didn't fit like two pieces of a puzzle, not that they needed that to convey the tenderness and love that he had once thought he could only dream of. It was fucking perfect.

When they parted again, they weren't really all that willing to fully separate, so they ended up with their foreheads pressed into each other's, Qifrey fully-sat on Olruggio's lap by now, arms wrapped around his neck, just as he had his own arms wrapped around the older man's waist.

"Is this an adequate answer?" Was the first thing that Qifrey asked after a while of basking onto this.

The guy whose lap he was sitting on snorted. "Are you kidding me? It was perfect. It was amazing. I'm in a dream- OW! Okay okay, I'm not in a dream, you didn't need to pinch me!"

"How else was I to convince you, dear?" Qifrey answered with a shit-eating grin. "So that means we're dating now?"

"What the fuck does 'dating' mean?"

That was how Qifrey spent the entire night explaining the concept of 'dating' and its differences with courting, and all the tangents that he essentially roped himself onto because of the inevitable mentions of twenty-first century stuff that piqued Olruggio's interest.

~~~~~

One week later, they both neared death's door out of sheer shame.

The reason why? All the inhabitants of the atelier, old and new, along with Beldaruit who had metaphorically fist-fought paperwork to get a day off, had reunited to discuss their masters' (son's and son's lover's, in Beldaruit's case) wedding.

"You've been acting like a married couple for as long as I've known you." Richeh pointed out with far-too-straight a face when Qifrey managed to barge in and ask the reason for this absurdity — the two of them had been dating for barely a week. "Imagine my sheer disgust when I discovered that you weren't. Ye hath deceived us, and now ye shall pay for this by inviting us to your wedding."

What was worse was that all three other girls nodded along, face completely serious. Beldaruit joined in too, because that senile old man was a traitor.

"I thought Grandmaster Olly was a grieving widowed man." Arlan added in very unhelpfully. "Now that I think about it, this whole thing with Grandmaster Qifrey getting an impromptu time-travel experience did come close to that."

"And the universe has decided to give them another chance!" Tetia immediately followed, because of fucking course. Her and her romantic heart. "They should make the most of it! And it begins by actually having this marriage, because goddamnit you two make the word 'soulmate' sound so… so… so… basic and vulgar and unrefined, it makes me ill! Affectionately."

"At last someone gets me!" Coco, the absolute worst of all traitors, exclaimed. "Agott keeps insisting that they acted like normal lovers! Like, no, they're beyond soulmates! With tragedy sprinkled in because Fate is morally grey and the- and apparently loves tragedy and doomed lovers."

At this point, Qifrey looked like he was ready to sink straight through the floor. Olruggio looked up to the ceiling, feeling absolutely no better.

This was his life now apparently.

And he couldn't bring himself to dislike it in the slightest.