Chapter Text
Sherry—
remember how I said I would abstain from talking about it with anyone? My most sincere apologies, but I was on a job with Eve and just had to pick his brain over this. He promised not to share any of what we discussed with anyone, and considering that I am footing his espresso bill for the next two years in exchange, his word is worth more than gold.
Both of us are somewhat out of our depth as neither of us has ever even dabbled in healing magic, but after what has happened last time you visited, I could not do nothing . I’m not letting you die a death straight out of some fucked up fairytale, and Eve is not big on letting people die either.
As I’ve told you, it’s looking bad. Time is of the essence, so we’ve been looking into fast-acting solutions. As you and I already thought, using ice magic to kill the flowers is a non-starter; Eve let me talk for fifteen seconds before he stopped me. If you need help to imagine his face, he looked like I did when I checked your lungs. So yeah: horrified.
But! Eve had a couple interesting approaches. He agrees that machine takeover magic would probably be the most radical solution, but sadly, that takes years to master to the point where you can constantly maintain a lung made of steel, and we are kinda on a schedule here. I wish, I truly wish the human body was as easy to fix as a machine. I wish I could do more to help than freak out whenever I look at the . . . progress or lie to Master Bob about where the sudden interest in books about medicine comes from, so please tell me if there’s anything I can do for you.
There was one question Eve did ask that I could not answer: what about having an open, honest conversation with Lyon is so terrifying that you were talking about all the radical ideas that no healer worth their oath would ever consider.
Love, Jenny
The letter was burning a hole into Sherry’s pocket as she sat opposite of Lyon in a much too small compartment. Jenny had the almost annoying habit of being right often, and to never be graceful about telling others that she was right and they were wrong. It was no surprise that the blonde was insisting on her admittedly justified belief that the easiest and least dangerous solution to Sherry’s plight would be to be an adult about this and talk to Lyon. Jenny had abstained from calling her a coward, but she did not have to be that blunt, the message had been received already.
Jura . . . Jura had been kinder about it, probably because Jura did not know how to be sharp outside of battle. She had not had to tell him, he had handed her a cup of tea and told her he knew, had gently drawn circles on her back as she had almost coughed out her lungs. Out of all the people in her guild who could have found out, he was arguably the best and the worst, simultaneously. The best because no one would question the excuses he made for her. The best because he seemed to have a sheer inexhaustible stock of tea, specifically composed to ease her illness, and because it was not out of character for him to hand her a thermos full of tea around noon every day.
(No one in the guild could brew tea the way he did, and she had been trying for years.)
Still, even with the thermos sitting in her bag, she hated this. She hated that she was making Jenny worry and bribe Eve with espresso, she hated that she made Jura lie for her, she hated that she was making such a mess out of something that should have been smooth sailing. She had had a plan, had decided that she would make a dignified exit, only to stumble back into love with someone who could not even look at her anymore.
*
The silence was painful, Lyon mused as he stared out of the window, doing his best to avoid Sherry’s wandering gaze. One look, one pointed question — and he would spill over. He had to be guarded lest he wanted that she deduced what was happening within him; he had once picked her as his second-in-command because she was good at spotting anything that was wrong, and now he was almost praying that he could escape her scrutiny.
‘‘You have been absent from the guild a lot, lately.’’ Her voice was calm, perfectly even. There was not much of an inflection that could have given away what the point of the statement was, but if he would not know what concern looked like when she wore it, he could almost have fooled himself into thinking that she was . . . worried. About him. After so many years.
Turning his head to look at her shoulder, he nodded. ‘‘I have been busy with independent research,’’ he said. It was not quite a lie, but it was farther from the truth than he was comfortable with. To lie to Sherry had always been reserved for emergencies only, had been supposed to be a way for him to navigate her stubbornness to trick her into doing what was safest.
Sherry smiled as she propped up her chin against her fist, but the smile looked tired . ‘‘You can tell me all you want about your research when we go back home,’’ she suggested as her free hand drew lines (or runes?) onto the small table that separated them.
‘‘ If we go back home,’’ he replied gloomily before he could get a hold on himself. Wonderful , now he was spewing pessimistic nonsense at her. It was as if Gray was possessing him, but that was a line of thought he refused to follow for even a second. Because only ghosts could haunt him like this, and Gray was not dead .
Her smile brightened as she rolled her eyes at him, and yet — something inside his chest soared higher than it should be allowed, higher than it had flown in a long time. ‘‘We will be all right,’’ she said quietly, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘‘I will, uh, sleep.’’
He nodded, allowing himself a faint smile. ‘‘I’ll wake you when we get there,’’ he promised and sat back, following his own thoughts — how this was almost like before Nirvana, how this felt familiar in the most heartbreaking way — as he watched her shift in her seat before she had found a position that let her drift into her slumber. He had missed this, more than words could say. He had missed the soft rustle of his cloak as he slipped out of it, as he carefully used it to cover Sherry. Yuuka had been right; when it came to Sherry, Lyon was a certified softie.
Sitting back down, he reached into his bag for his book. It was a long way to their destination.
*
Sherry had woken up feeling warmer than she would have expected, but as soon as they had gotten off the train and had stepped out into the city they had been sent to, a bitter cold had seeped into her bones. This was unusual, in an almost unsettling way. She had grown up in a town that had not been far from this city, and she had never felt cold then. Perhaps, she thought as she shoved her hair under her hat, it was an emotional kind of cold she felt. Or it was another fucked up symptom, another thing she would have to deal with until the curse was no longer bothering her.
‘‘It’s a nice city,’’ she said where she would have let companionable silence reign, once. ‘’Very cute.’’
Lyon snorted as he shook his head. ‘‘There are nicer cities than this, but the snow is . . . picturesque,’’ he mumbled into his scarf. Translated into normal people speech , it meant something along the lines of I don’t agree with you, but I don’t care enough to fight over this , and she once more rolled her eyes at his back.
‘‘Our inn is that way,’’ she continued, pretending the interlude had never happened. ‘‘I do not know about you, but I need some proper food and then more sleep.’’
And it was too late to go meet the mayor about the details of their job; Ooba-sama had been vague at best when she had briefed them about this quest, had only told them the most basic details, reassuring them that they would receive a proper briefing when they would speak to their employer. It was less than ideal, a lack of information meant that she could not properly prepare, and ever since the Nirvana Assignment, a lack of decent preparation made Sherry anxious. It had been close to six years now, but the thought still lingered: that for a council-assigned mission, it had been a far bigger mess than it should have been, given the council’s manpower and their wealth of knowledge. Maybe she was bitter about this whole thing, but who if not her was entitled to bitterness over this?
At her side, Lyon’s hand brushed against her suitcase. ‘‘Maybe I can scout the area a little tomorrow before we go to the briefing,’’ he suggested, and she had to wonder if this was how he always went about his missions, assuming that those who were with him just knew that he was an early riser and that he was in the habit of wanting to get his own first impression before anyone told him about it. She knew, obviously, but others would be right to complain about bad communication.
‘‘It’s a good idea,’’ she agreed as her eyes kept searching the admittedly picturesque scene that was stretching out in front of him for anything that would disturb the peace. ‘‘If I’m up, I’ll come along.’’
‘‘Don’t force yourself to wake up early, Sherry. I need you fit and alert.’’
*
Closing the door behind him, Lyon had to lean against it for a moment and take deep breaths. Faintly, he reminded all the times he had assured Yuuka that he would just avoid Sherry during the mission they were supposed to work on together and how it would all work like a charm because he was capable of some self-restraint.
Evidently, this was not working out at all. The hand that had almost touched Sherry’s earlier still felt tingly and warm despite them having shared a meal in almost-no-longer-awkward silence before going up to their rooms. Biased as he was, he was faintly optimistic that by the time they returned back home, they would be able to have some small talk. A hope that should not feel as daring as it did; once, many mistakes ago, he had been sitting with Sherry at the fire, long after it had gone out, drawing lines into the ash and discussing everything that had gone unsaid during the day.
What had become of them . . . it was genuinely sad, and suddenly, Lyon was very glad that he had not managed to convince Yuuka and Tobi to volunteer for the quest and tagging along. While Yuuka knew how hopelessly gone Lyon was when it came to Sherry, Tobi still lived in a world where the head of his team was not acting like a schoolboy who was nursing his first serious crush, and Lyon would rather like it if at least a few people retained some respect for him, considering how much time Yuuka had spent laughing at his face.
Only the soft beep from his lacriphone distracted him and in a moment of mad hope, he retrieved it from where he had tossed his jacket to the ground. As he should have expected, it was a message from Yuuka and not Sherry, asking him if he wanted to grab a drink at the bar downstairs. How is it going? the screen read, and the ice mage groaned.
‘‘Fuck you, Yuuka,’’ Lyon told the room that taunted him with its silence, reminding himself that Sherry would have to knock as she did not have his number.
Pushing himself up, he padded over to the little bathroom and splashed cold water into his face. ‘’You’re a certified idiot, Vastia,’’ he snapped as his reflection. ‘‘Just, for the love of all that’s holy, get your act together and act your age for a change.’’
He was almost completely certain that this had been the so-called subtext of Yuuka’s text, and maybe it was something that had to be said. Hell, it was not as if Lyon knew how this was supposed to go.
*
Sherry wished she had slept more as she clung to her tea cup, bleary eyes scrutinising the mayor as he sat on the other side of the room, hands folded neatly in front of him. She had woken up three times, her throat itching before she had vomited flowers. It had been difficult to get rid of the mess in a way that would not draw the attention of the cleaners in the morning. The tea Jura had suggested was perhaps not the typical blend people used to manage the curse (though she was diligently drinking that one, too), but it was perhaps doing an even better job at masking her suffering as it did not have the telltale scent. Still, it did not make her any less tired.
Lyon was next to her, tapping his fingers against his legs. He was impatient, not nervous, and it was a sentiment she shared. From what they had been told so far, the job sounded rather straightforward, and frankly put: she did not care much about the personal dimension this had for the mayor; if his one-time best friend did not want to be met with Lamia Scale’s finest, they should perhaps reconsider their stance on blackmailing the man.
Of course , there was always the possibility that they were being hired to clean up a messy breakup between two criminals, but this was hardly something the mayor would tell them. If there was something fishy about this job, their own investigation of the matter would reveal it — and Sherry had great faith in their ability to unveil the truth. With the way Lyon’s forehead was in furrows and the corners of his mouth were turned down as he listened, she wondered how the mayor had ever been elected to a public office if he was that bad at reading a room.
‘‘—I was wondering,’’ she started slowly, smoothly cutting the mayor off before he could go on yet another tangent about the importance of agriculture for his town, ‘‘if we could go take a look at the city before it is fully awake? I do like to have a general idea of the area when I start a job.’’
It was not entirely true as she knew that Lyon had been scouting before the sun had been up in the sky, before she had woken up, but they were wasting daylight and she was eager to draw her own conclusions instead of listening to the mayor who would not tell them what they needed to know.
Lyon nodded, his body losing some of its tension as he moved. ‘‘Exactly,’’ he agreed, quickly but not hastily , ‘‘the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll finish.’’
*
Sherry stalked ahead of him as they circled the house where the mayor had been dropping off the money for his blackmailer, the soft ground beneath their feet muffling the clickclack of her heels, and Lyon had to hide a smile. Her annoyance had rolled off her in heavy waves that had crashed against him when they had spoken to the mayor, but she was more relaxed now as she ran her hands over surfaces, searching for something that was out of place. She did not pay him much heed, lost in thought as she was, but this was all right. There was something about watching her work that was almost captivating. The woman he loved (and there was no point in lying about this, not to himself) was a knife: sharp, versatile and dangerous.
‘‘What did you think of the mayor?’’ she asked as she tapped her fingers against the abandoned house’s window, balancing on her toes as she peered inside. ‘‘I did not like him very much.’’
Lyon snorted as he shook his head. ‘‘You hardly ever like employers,’’ he muttered under his breath before he raised his voice. ‘‘I do agree with you; this feels fishy, but right now, I can’t tell where the stench is coming from.’’
‘‘Me neither,’’ she said and her face grew stormy before she turned towards him and grabbed his shoulder, dragging him down with her, just before an arrow hit the door he had been trying to open. Definitely fishy . The mayor had assured him that no one knew he had asked for Lamia Scale’s aid so while they were certainly known as mages were something akin to celebrities in Fiore, no one should feel concerned enough to attack them without warning.
Crouched on the ground, he exhaled before he patted her leg and eased her grip on his shoulder. ‘‘My head thanks you,’’ he said quietly as he slammed down his hand to create a shield made of ice.
A glimmer of a smile ghosted across Sherry’s face as she adjusted her ever present gloves. ‘‘I saw the reflection, and I did not feel like taking risks,’’ she replied as she squeezed his shoulder gently before letting go of him. ‘‘Plus — your head is the most attractive thing about you.’’
He laughed quietly, even as the foul sweetness threatened to rise within him, and threw a look at their attackers, a crowd of local criminals, from the looks of it. ‘‘You’re faster than me,’’ he said as she shifted next to him, her magic drumming so loud in her blood that it echoed in his ears. ‘‘And it is good manners for a gentleman to let the lady have the opening move.’’
Tresses of pink caressed his face as she threw back her head in laughter. ‘‘This is not a chess game, but the sentiment is appreciated, good sir,’’ she replied. ‘‘I’ll go first, then.’’
*
To the surprise of hardly anyone who knew her and who knew that she had opinions about nearly everything, Sherry had her preferences when it came to locations for fights. For her magic to show its full potential, she needed things she could use to shape her dolls, her puppets, and traditionally, areas that were rich in stone and fallen trees were places that allowed her to show off her skill best. Doll Play, Marionette Magic was not made for neat, orderly places. It was made for the verge of ruin, was at its most powerful when its user was surrounded by rubble.
Similarly, although the very next day, Sherry would make adjustments to this list, she was in her element as her magic washed over the area to pull together a figure that would have been a match for Makarov Dreyar, revealing the proficiency he had with his Giant magic. Only — this was hardly a good time to think of a guild master who was missing, much like a large number of his mages. Especially given that one of the missing mages was Lyon’s brother.
‘‘Show-off,’’ Lyon muttered with a scoff as he dashed past her, quickly slipping into his stance and casting Ice Make: Dragon . As if this spell was not part of the repertoire he defaulted to whenever he wanted to show off.
It was quite difficult to remember that things were not as they had once been when he talked to her like he had then. It was even harder to only roll her eyes and not make a comment, because despite how he had chosen to act, she knew that things were not the same despite what she might wish. And she knew better than to waste time on pointless thoughts during a fight . Another time, she might rest her head on one of Jenny’s throw pillows and ask what it meant that Lyon acted as if nothing had ever come between them when in truth, almost everything had come between them.
But there was something, an old truth no one else would ever understand: she felt safe as she raised her dolls, as she twisted her fingers and sent them towards their foes. She felt safe because she knew (had known) Lyon well enough to predict his moves, his decisions. She did not have to question the intent behind his spells, she had seen his fighting style pan out so many times that it was an open book to her. And yes , no two fights were the same , but they had fought together often enough for her to know which strategy it was he was employing.
Another deep breath, another reminder that this was not the hardest assignment they had ever been sent on, and Sherry turned her back towards Lyon and focused on her share of the fight.
*
It had been years since the last time they had fought together, but although so much had changed, they fell back into their old rhythm as if it had only been days since they had started to go separate ways. His back was turned towards her, but he knew he did not have to watch out for friendly fire — as much of a sledgehammer Sherry’s magic could be, she wielded it with the same precision a surgeon would use a scalpel. She was a good one to have covering his back, even if they were not really talking these days. Maybe they could sit down with some coffee once they had sorted this mess out and figured things out.
Then — the sudden rockslide, set off by an errant spell, gave him pause and erased all thoughts of coffee and talks that might absolve him of the curse growing in his lungs. His hastily cast ice shields shattered as they collided with the avalanche, and dread did not bother to sneak up on Lyon, it pounced on him. He could not move out of the way fast enough, not over the slippery ground, not over the ice he himself had put there. The part of his brain that was not preparing itself for the impact mused about the irony of this. Lyon told the part in question to kindly shut the fuck up , just as he let go off all his spells and was hit. Oh, that was his arm. Oh, that were his ribs. Oh, how funny that he felt and heard the fractures as they happened, but that he could not feel any pain yet.
Then, he was shoved forward by a rough, callous hand — out of the immediate danger zone and towards where Sherry had been last he had checked. Behind him, something was pulverised with a sickening crunch, and in a strange moment of absolute clarity, he knew that it could have been him instead of whatever doll Sherry had pulled from the ground to push him.
Vision fading as the pain set in, he looked at Sherry who was still on her feet, holding up the boulder with the ice dragon he had cast, her hair a banner fit for a revolution behind her. With gritted teeth and a scoff, she extended her arm even further, pushing the rock off its path and rendering it perfectly still. He did not think she had ever looked more radiant or more striking than right now as she was livid. With the sun’s rebirth behind her and the skies almost sharing the colour of her hair, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. And, as his vision darkened and his consciousness faded rapidly, his last thought was whoops, I said that out loud .
*
Sherry was pacing. That was to say: she was wearing down the floor in the waiting room and was on the best way to leave a path that would show where she had been, where she had walked until the day when the hospital was torn down to make place for something newer. While this was surely one way to leave a legacy, it was not the one she wanted to leave. Halting, she listened into the silence to see if she could hear anything aside from the tick-tock of a nearby clock, but no matter how much she focused, there was nothing for her to hear. No footsteps, no voices. Turning on her heel, she marched into another direction, rubbing ice cold fingers against her neck to startle herself awake.
Gently put, this was a disaster. But at least — no one had died. Her method of evacuation might have been rough and might have broken more bones than intended, but anyone who had been there had gotten away with a scare.
But the scare ran deep, bone deep. She shuddered involuntarily as she turned on her heel again and tried to count her breaths alongside her steps. She could not get the sickening crunch of the breaking bones out of her mind, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe if she had been faster. Maybe if she had focused less on Lyon and more on their surroundings, she could have stopped this from happening.
‘‘Miss Blendy.’’ The nurse appeared almost out of nowhere, armed with a tray; on it, the dreaded cotton swap, drenched in something that would sting, and a cup of tea. Thyme with honey, from the scent of it. ‘‘The doctor asks that you let me look after your arm and that you drink something before you go to the ward.’’
Her arm. Sherry blinked owlishly as her gaze followed the woman’s, only to come to rest on the gash that she had been ignoring. It was not deep and in her concern for Lyon, she had forgotten that she had been hurt, too. But just a little bit . ‘‘Of course,’’ she said numbly as she shoved up what was left of her sleeve and held out her arm. ‘‘So — is Lyon awake?’’
The nurse nodded as she jabbed the cotton ball at the gash and Sherry was not sure whether it was the sting of the tincture or the knowledge that Lyon was awake that commanded her legs to move. The iron grip on her upper arm was all that kept her rooted where she stood, and the other woman’s voice was understanding as she spoke. “He asked for you,” she said, “but he’ll still be here after you drink your tea and let me bandage your arm.”
*
Sherry swept into the room like a storm as the doctor was leaving, and a rare sense of peace filled Lyon’s veins, something that was both unconnected to and far more powerful than what he had been given for the pain. She looked weary and tired, and her clothes had suffered — but she was fine . Unhappy , he corrected himself as he spotted the telltale darkness in her eyes, but unhurt. The look on her face was an expression he knew, was something he had seen enough times before to know what it meant. After what had happened, she had always reminded him of one of Jura’s origami figures — in theory, a simple, familiar thing, folded and changed beyond recognition.
“You scared me.” Her voice was flat, unnaturally so. “For a moment, I thought that this would be it.”
He nodded — because she was right, because he could have died — and looked down at his arm, at his ribcage. “My apologies,” he said as he reminded himself of the role he had chosen, though this was an old game for them. For as long as they had known each other (and they had known since they had been teenagers , angry and reckless), they had always been two people, playing pretend. The roles he had played had changed; he was pretending not to be in love rather than to be fearless, but the same rules applied to both.
Her face scrunched up and she rolled her eyes as she leaned against the wall, arms crossed and her gaze directed at the trees outside his window. “No casualties,” she finally said quietly and relief washed over him. “Bunch of broken bones, but no one died. Rune Knights took over.”
“And yet you’re unhappy,” he replied. As far as playing it cool went, this was probably a bad decision, but if he made a fool out of himself, he could blame it on the medicine, no matter how lucid he felt. It took more effort than it should to sit up and he almost would have slumped back down, but Sherry’s hand was there, helping him to sit as her other rearranged the pillows. Then, she moved back to the wall, her gaze lowered and her eyelashes curtains he could not see past.
Something — once so familiar, a ghost from easier days, unnameable now — crossed her face and then, she shook her head. “I do not want to do this now,” she said slowly before she halted and added, “I cannot do this now.”
There were no good answers to this — it was true and it was not — but he could not push here. He could not hop over the line she had drawn and ask her since when she had cared about what she could not do. But he was not out of moves, was he? And even if he was, he was no king on a chessboard. Slowly, he held out his hand and after a moment, she accepted it. “It’s all right,” he said and for once, he believed himself. “I’m still here. I won’t leave. So, you take your time, and I’ll take mine and . . . we’ll both be fine.”