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Coco tiptoes, unsteady, to Qifrey's door. It feels stupid to be doing this. It's the middle of the night, and he's probably asleep, and it was just a bad dream. But she knows, she knows, that if she tries to go back to bed now, she'll spend the night with her stomach twisting up in knots. She'll just peek in and settle her mind, then she'll be fine.
The hinges don't creak as she pulls the door open, too well-maintained for that. She can't quite see inside. Everything is too dark, and there's hardly any light coming in from the window — it's a new moon tonight. Slowly, carefully, Coco creeps into the room, toward the bed.
There, the white feathering of hair against the pillow, the subtle rise and fall of shadows. He's alright, as much as he can be. She breathes a sigh of relief.
Qifrey shifts. "Mm?"
Coco squeaks, then slaps her hands over her mouth, then freezes.
Too late. He sits up, looking strange in the half-light, bare-faced. His eye lands on her, and in an instant, the lamp beside his bed alights. A warm golden glow fills the room, a bubble of light encompassing them both. Qifrey runs a hand through his hair, adjusting it to cover the left side of his face. He still looks weird without his glasses.
"Coco? What's wrong?" His voice is rough with sleep.
"Um," she says. "Sorry, Master Qifrey, I— I just—"
"Bad dream?" he asks.
She nods, clenching her hands in her skirt. The words don't want to come out.
"That's perfectly normal," he says softly. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He's being so nice and understanding and she knows, sick to her stomach with it, that he must be uncomfortable somehow because he's still here. It's awful. She tries not to think about it, but every time they have a meal or take a walk or do anything, she wonders if this will be what does it. If she'll blink, and then he'll be like Custas, and there will be nothing she can do.
"I…" She swallows around a lump in her throat. What is she meant to say? It feels wrong to talk about it more. It feels childish to be so scared, to be so useless. She's a witch, she should be able to fix this.
Something hot and wet trails down her cheek, and she realizes she's crying, which only makes everything worse because then she can't stop.
"Oh, Coco," he whispers. She rubs at her eyes furiously with her sleeves, only to be stopped by gentle hands on her wrists, pulling them downward. Qifrey holds them carefully, like she's the fragile one. "You're allowed to be upset. Come here."
She crawls onto the bed and lets herself be hugged, gathered into his lap. It's not pretty. She gasps and buries her face in his shoulder and nearly hyperventilates trying to stop the hitching, rough sobs that keep tearing out of her. He keeps a hand on her back, warm and firm, clutching her close. And it hurts, knowing that he's doing this to comfort her, knowing that the same thing would kill him.
"It's not fair," she whimpers into the damp spot on his shirt where her face is pressed.
"I know," he says. "It isn't, you're right."
"You should— shouldn't be—" She breaks off again with a wretched choking noise.
He pets down her back, over her ribs, up and back in a steady rhythm. "Shh. Just breathe. In and out, nice and easy."
It's not. Nothing about this is nice or easy or right and she's so helpless she could drown in it all. What's the point of magic if it keeps hurting people and can't help them?
But she can only cry for so long before her body betrays her. The exhaustion sets in, heaviness filling her like sand in an hourglass. She sniffles and can't even make herself draw back from the wet, tearsoaked mark she's left.
"Master Qifrey," she says, feeling quite small indeed. "I don't want you to die."
She can feel him tense just a bit. His hand goes still, resting on her spine.
He's supposed to say something reassuring right about now. Make her some impossible promise about how he won't die, they'll find another way, that's what magic is for. In the light of day she can gather up enough hope to keep going despite the fear, but in the darkness she just wants to be told everything will be okay. If she asked, he would tell her exactly that.
She can't do it. She can't ask him to lie.
"You should go back to sleep, Coco," he says gently. "You'll feel better in the morning."
The thought of going back to bed and laying there in the darkness makes her shiver. If something happened, how would she even know? She might wake up to the atelier swallowed by roots.
He notices. Of course he does. "You can stay here, if you'd like. There's nothing wrong with wanting a little comfort."
She's cried all the tears she has inside her tonight, so she can't manage any more in response to that horrible, horrible thing he's said. Maybe she's selfish for that. Maybe she's selfish for nodding and letting him tuck her under the covers, keeping one hand on her all the while, until she's curled up with her head under his chin. It is comforting, being cocooned in warmth and false certainty that surely nothing too terrible can happen so long as she's here.
The light goes out. She lays awake for a long, long time, listening to the sound of his breathing. She thinks he's doing the same.