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It’s the day after the day they went to war.
And somehow, that’s not even the craziest thing to happen to them in the past twenty-four hours, so when Musa makes it out onto the training fields for the first time that morning and sees the undeniable evidence of the fighting that went on in the light of a new day, it shocks her despite having been part of the battle herself.
That fact is also shocking, but not as unpleasantly so.
She’s been awake for hours, courtesy of Aisha’s internal alarm clock not allowing for a snooze even after saving Alfea from Blood Witches the night before. A slightly longer respite from reality wouldn’t have been unwelcome, but there’s no amount of delaying the inevitable that could’ve softened the impending blow. There was no chance of any of them going back to sleep after the water fairy’s early morning discovery.
Musa’s ears ring.
Her muscles ache.
Her heart cries.
It’s ironic after everything that’s happened with Sam — that she did to Sam — that the only overwhelming emotion she can focus on right now which is truly her own is anger. Anger that Bloom didn’t give them an opportunity to try and talk her out of it. That it had to be Aisha who Grey got close to before revealing himself to be a lying traitor. That she managed to save Flora from being thrown to the scrapers only for the sole way out of their Blood Witch chokehold to be Flora luring every single scraper to her.
Anger that reuniting with her magic feels natural, and whole, and nothing at all like the burden she’s been telling herself she’d been relieved from since the night at the lodge.
It’s loud to the brink of overwhelming, yes, and she’s exhausted from the morning spent doused in the conflicting feelings that have been swirling around their suite and her head. But underlying the vertigo is a humming in her veins, a comforting tingle in her frontal lobe that just feels unequivocally…her.
It aggravates her in a way she doesn’t have the energy to confront right now.
Out of nowhere, she gets a small pique of curiosity that momentarily overpowers everything else, the mind fairy equivalent of a tiny spitball blown against the back of her head from a deconstructed pen. When she looks over her shoulder, that analogy makes even more sense. It’s Riven, sitting on the steps of the largest platform across the pond, a small knife twirling between his fingers.
He’s in his Specialist uniform — still or again, she can’t tell from this distance — with swords strapped and everything, and she briefly wonders if they’re expecting the Blood Witches to try again so soon. He’s not actually patrolling, though. She now knows how focused he gets when assigned a mission, and while he’s clearly alert, he’s too fidgety, his eyes a little too far away despite flicking between her and the door to the Specialist Hall.
She makes a conscious decision not to read him purposely, but if she did, Musa’s pretty sure his mind alone would not feel very different to her than the post-battle cacophony of the entire Alfea student body. He feels a million things at a million miles at once, hides every unwanted emotion behind another that suits his public persona more and then adds a weighted blanket of audacity on top for good measure. And yet, in a juxtaposition extreme enough to give her whiplash, he’s so brutally honest in his discourse and conduct, so steadfast in his choices and opinions, that it’s hard to believe he could ever be misinterpreted.
She came outside to find some stillness, and he’s the opposite of that, but she finds herself moving towards him instinctively.
It’s a strange kind of affiliation that they share, now. They’ve barely talked more than a handful of times and approximately half of those instances were nothing short of hostile, but through some weird twist of fate, Riven’s come to know something about her that no one else does. Something fundamental, something ugly. Dirty laundry he could’ve stolen from the basket to air in public, pretty much a signature move for the boy with eyes and ears in every corner of this school and a tendency — if not affinity — for running his mouth.
Except he hasn’t. He’s not told a single soul. He hadn’t even told her he knew until she’d dug herself into a hole with Terra (or Terra had dug her into a hole and then sealed it shut, more accurately) and it became impossible for him to keep it to himself and call her out on it at the same time.
And then there’s the other half of their conversations. The ones where he offers her stout, and saves, and an understanding she hasn’t found in anyone since the day her mother passed on.
“Hey,” she simply offers when she comes to a halt in front of him, though not quite as close as normal conversation would warrant. Truth be told, now that her temporary magical reprieve and their battle-fueled adrenaline have both worn off, she’s not sure how he feels about having her in his direct vicinity. It wouldn’t be hard to uncover, of course, but that is a self-fulfilling prophecy waiting to happen, so she opts for the non-empathic version of feeling it out.
His mouth quirks, but a wisp of concern drifts through her mind. “Am I…” he mimics something swirling in front of his eyes, like a halo of stars around a knocked-out cartoon character, “too much?”
Riven is nothing if not observant, even if he is misreading her hesitation. The excuse suits her just fine though — it’s not wildly off the mark and allows her to avoid the subject of his opinion of her — so she runs with it.
“If anything were to tip me over the edge, it would be your ego,” she quips half-heartedly.
“So stay the fuck out of my head,” he jests back, then suddenly tenses up, like he’s nervous that was too much for the day she’s having, but she needs this. Needs some semblance of normalcy to grab onto amongst the plethora of highly abnormal emotions roaring inside her head.
His reaction doesn’t come across as being outrightly opposed to her presence, so she takes the chance and ascends the steps, lowering herself onto the black-stained plywood edge of the actual platform, one level above him. His eyes follow her as far as they can without him having to crane his neck.
“Everyone’s in my head is what’s happening here.”
“You’ve got this, Musa” he assures, a word for word repeat of the night before, when his hands wrapped around her upper arms and hers grasping his elbows had been the only reason she didn’t buckle under the weight of the surging aftermath of Sebastian’s demise.
He flicks the knife up into a flip before catching it. “How are they taking it?”
The uncharacteristically careful tone of his voice makes it clear what he’s talking about. He knows, then. Which means that Sky knows, too, and although she can’t say she’d call the blond Specialist a friend, the sharp pull on Musa’s heartstrings at the thought of Sky waking up and finding an envelope with his name on it in Bloom’s cursive handwriting very strongly indicates she’s not indifferent to him, either.
“Uhm…not great. It’s…” her eyes automatically well up just thinking about it all again, “…a lot.”
He turns his head to the side in surprise, then twists his entire upper body towards her upon realizing he’s interpreted the quiver in her voice correctly. She almost wants to apologize, explain that her own emotions are amplified now that she’s further away from the moody onslaught that is the inside of Alfea’s historic walls.
But he’s seen her like this before and he’s as unfazed now as he was then, nothing even remotely resembling the ‘deer-in-headlights’ look of a teenage boy confronted with a tearful girl on his face. He merely looks her in the eye, lets her take a moment to just be — a solid, soothing presence that clashes with everything that is said to make him Riven.
Not for the first time, out of everyone it could have been with her that night in the lodge, she’s almost relieved it was him.
She pulls herself together and blinks the mist out of her eyes. “Sky?” she questions.
“A wreck,” he sighs, turning back around, elbows on his thighs. “And I don’t blame him. You could’ve taught Red a thing or two about stealth; woke us both up slipping the letter under our door. Never seen Sky get up and dressed that fast.”
Her eyes widen. “He tried to go with her?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if he considered it, but no.” He spins the knife between his fingers absentmindedly. “Tried to stop her. Even told her he loved her.”
“Shit,” she exhales, quietly impressed. “I mean, it was obvious, but…”
Riven snorts. “Yeah. Called it on the first day of our second year. One chat with her and it was all he could talk about. ‘California, Riven, can you imagine? She doesn’t even know what a Specialist is!’ ” he mimics fondly and mockingly at the same time.
They fall silent for a moment, his worry about Sky’s current disposition condensing into a thick, low-hanging cloud that she has to squeeze her eyes shut against to clear.
“What about you?” she asks.
He peers over his shoulder. “Me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m aware you don’t think much of me, but even I wouldn’t go for my best mate’s girlfriend, thanks.”
She shoves the toe of her boot into his lumbars and he folds backwards with a chuckle. “Not what I meant and you know it,” she berates with a smile. “How are you? It’s not like you’ve had a quiet night in.”
He corrects his slump by rotating sideways and swinging his legs up onto the same step as the rest of him, wrapping his arms around his bent knees. The low-standing sun illuminates the tips of his hair and casts his shadow across her legs.
“I’m fine.”
One of her eyebrows rises high enough to be hidden behind her fringe.
“This is what I’m trained for,” he brushes off her obvious skepticism.
“For combat, yeah,” she agrees. “Not for the enemy being your own mind-controlled teammates, or for your best friend to get taken as leverage by Blood Witches. And,” she glances around, but the outdoor area is devoid of other students. “I know you were on weird terms, but…Beatrix…”
His face falls immediately, although he tries — and fails — to cover it up by clearing his throat and changing his posture to stare off into the distance instead of at her.
“I’m not sure what happened between you two, but I know you cared about her, for some time at least.”
He doesn’t confirm or deny it, pursing his lips. They both know it’s a useless front after they’d pushed through the doors of the courtyard together when she’d gathered her bearings the previous night, desperate to find out whether all of their friends were okay, only to find Beatrix’ unseeing eyes staring straight at them from across the room. She had felt every muscle in his body tense up so instantly there was a tangible shift in the air between them, his jaw and fists both clenched tightly enough that his entire frame trembled with the force of it until Silva had had the presence of mind to step in front of him and block his line of sight.
No amount of battlefield triage afterwards was going to erase that image from his retinas. Musa doesn’t feel guilty for choosing to stay and be there for the girls, but she does feel a sudden rush of regret that she didn’t check up on him between asking Silva for an update and going on her vending machine heist.
Focusing on her friends and their pain had made her personal anguish a little more bearable, so she hasn’t really had time to contemplate her own feelings on Beatrix’ final act and its fatal consequences. Reading her on their first day at Alfea had felt ominous, like reaching out to pet an undomesticated cat — better left avoided if you didn’t want to end up with bloody gashes across the back of your hand. She can’t remember ever initiating a noteworthy interaction with her after that. She doesn’t even know if Beatrix was ever told about her role in the redhead’s rescue from the lodge. She’d certainly never thanked her.
Unless that’s exactly what she’d been doing when they’d locked eyes in the dormitory hallway and Beatrix had hissed at her to go.
“I’m sorry she’s gone, Riven,” she near-whispers, watching from the corner of her eyes as he traces the creases on the inside of his palm with the tip of his knife, using just little enough pressure not to break the skin and leave marks. Again, he forgoes words, merely inhales sharply through his nose.
“Are you going to the memorial later?”
He doesn’t answer her immediately. “Haven’t decided,” he eventually settles on.
She could leave it at that. Probably should leave it at that. Just because he’s familiar with some of the most intimate shards of her pain doesn’t mean she’s entitled to his and she’s trying, truly, to do better at knowing when enough is enough.
“I knew it was you who broke Silva out.”
She jerks upright at that, the accusation and change of subject seemingly coming out of nowhere.
“Well, I wasn’t sure about you, specifically, until just now,” she rolls her eyes at his triumphant smirk, “but definitely Bloom, Aisha, Terra. Their magic isn’t exactly subtle. And it might not have seemed like it, but I wasn’t keen on shipping Silva off into exile, so I kept quiet. Bea…”
He falters for a second, snapping the knife shut with a click.
“I caught Beatrix snooping around in me and Sky’s room at one point, trying to find out if he was involved, and in an attempt to convince her that he wasn’t, I may have made it a little too obvious I knew something. Next time Rosalind went off on Andreas, Dane and me for not getting any concrete leads on Silva’s whereabouts, she ratted me out.”
Musa shakes her head. “That’s fucked up.”
He lets out a humorless laugh. “Not as fucked up as my brain was after Rosalind was done with me.”
“Riv, what the hell?” She exclaims, indignation on his behalf coloring her voice and her features. He’d made his bed and most people would say he deserves to lie in it, but even the part of her that regularly feels like smacking him upside the head with a bo staff revolts against the coil of shame in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“I told Sky, not like anyone else was gonna care. She, like, took the memory or some shit. Couldn’t even remember what it was I knew until after Bloom incinerated her. It was like I was watching a ‘Healthy Day in the Life’ but the influencer stopped recording for twenty minutes to eat a fatty burger off camera.”
Musa’s mind reels from the revelation of another secret about her — and her friends, this time — that he’d kept, at least until someone had violently made sure he no longer could.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could’ve—”
“Because I was definitely keen on having a second fairy in my head that day,” he snaps sarcastically. She lost the right to feel offended the moment she read his thinly veiled contempt on these very training grounds the year before, she knows, but it stings nonetheless. And he can sense it too, reels himself in. “Besides, we’d spoken like, once, back then.”
“I would’ve still helped,” she insists, even though her grasp on her powers doesn’t even scratch the surface of Rosalind’s and there probably isn’t anything she could’ve realistically done for him. “But I can understand I wasn’t top of your list.”
His piercing green eyes meet hers again. “It didn’t feel the same. What you did and what she did. I know it’s not the same.”
Her hands wring the air on top of her legging-clad thighs. “I still shouldn’t have done it. I haven’t since, to you. Not intentionally.”
She expects a scoff, but gets an olive branch instead. “Apology accepted.”
Something in her chest releases at those words. Gathering ammunition to strike back at someone who hit a nerve isn’t the worst thing she’s abused her powers for, but they are on the edge of something reminiscent of friendly, her and Riven, and it feels unexpectedly alleviating to dare to imagine having a friend that isn’t nurturing a grudge against her at the same time.
“Was that the only time she did that to you? Went into your mind?”
“As far as I’m aware,” he shrugs, because that clearly doesn’t prove anything. “Me being a dick was really just me, I’m afraid.”
He means for it to be funny, but it doesn’t sit right with her. Again, he’d made his bed, his choices, but if there were ever a day on which his casual self-deprecation is misplaced, it’s today. She’s shaking her head before he’s even finished his sentence, leans forward so he doesn’t look away.
“When we went to the lodge to find Beatrix, you were first through the door despite what you just told me. You’re the one who came back for me, and don’t think I don’t know the whole ‘chucked you over my shoulder’ skit was bullshit.”
He tucks his chin down a little too late to hide the pink hue that creeps up from beneath his collar.
“And yesterday, when it came down to it, you were Silva’s right hand man. Not Sky, not Dane. You led the antidote team into battle, you acted as primary field medic, and you watched my left to make sure I didn’t get myself killed.”
“You were managing without me.”
Musa wants to bask in the compliment — because that’s what it is, even if it is in Riven-speech — but she has one of her own to hand out.
“You stepped up, Riv. You even have a battle scar to prove it.”
She reaches out, brushes the pad of her thumb over the inflamed red line across his nose without even thinking about it. He bats her hand away, but there’s a hint of a curve to his mouth.
“I’ll come with you,” she says after a beat of silence. “If you decide to go.”
She deliberately phrases it like a causality instead of a question. He’s only got one choice to make: go to the memorial or don’t, and if he does, she’ll be there with him. She’ll metaphorically sit in the middle of the track with him like obnoxious assholes and tell Craig to fuck off on top of that if it means he’ll feel comfortable enough to allow himself a little bit of closure.
It’s a risk, because despite his amicable demeanor she’s still not sure at all how comfortable he’s able to feel around her now her powers have returned, and when he drops his legs back down onto the lower step and rotates away from her she instantly fears she’s gone and crossed yet another line.
“I’ll think about it.”
She follows his far-off stare until she notices Silva walking out of the Specialist Hall and it suddenly makes sense why Riven has been out here on his own. He’s made himself scarce to give Sky and Silva privacy to talk, but his aura is instantly bustling with impatience now the opportunity arises to return to his best friend — or maybe interrogate the Headmaster about his assessment of said best friend.
“Back here at a quarter to three if you choose to go,” she says, and rests her hand on his shoulder to push herself back onto her feet. She feels his fingers brush against the tips of hers as he reaches up and covers them with his own in a reflex before she pulls away and makes her way back to the suite.
———
He’s there when she follows the girls back out onto the grounds at nine to three. Aisha stalks ahead with Terra scurrying to keep up, while Flora drifts behind hand in hand with Stella, whose eyes Musa can tell are already wet despite her black veiled hat hiding them from sight. It’s extra, the way the princess has dressed not just herself but all of them in their best blacks when they’re mostly just going to support her in her grief, but they’d collectively and silently agreed to let her have this if that’s the distraction she needed.
Riven’s in a dark suit jacket too, though, over gray jeans, and it throws her for a second. He’s no stranger to a black outfit, but he’s a steady hoodie and leather jacket or Specialist armor kind of guy — though she vaguely remembers catching a glimpse of him in some kind of blue suit during the Alumni Banquet even if that entire evening is a blur.
He saunters forward from the wall he’d been covertly leaning on once her suite-mates have passed and she trails behind until they fall into step. The additional pair of footfalls goes unnoticed by her friends in their rush to make it to the graveyard in time.
It’s not a busy affair. She and Riven linger on the peripheral, near the decades-old iron fence, their upper arms just barely pressing against each other in a way that may have been considered accidental if it had been more crowded.
The other girls keep advancing, taking up the space beside Dane, Luke and Kat at the foot of the coffin. Terra and Flora conjure up a simple, elegant wreath while Silva says a few words about self-discovery, and courage. Stella proclaims gratitude on behalf of the Crown with a voice that’s far steadier than it has any business being, and really, that’s all it is. The only vague family ties Beatrix had left were to Sky, who hasn’t shown, and the only people Musa can really think of that could say anything meaningful about who the air fairy had been are Riven and Dane, and that’s not happening either.
People start to disperse to trek back to the school, and her friends finally turn and notice Musa never caught up with them, and isn’t alone. ‘A microphone on a windy peak’ is what Dowling had called her, but the confusion hits her more like a tropical cyclone before splitting apart into separate whirlwinds of suspicion, worry, disappointment and frustration. She inhales a shaky breath, knows her eyes are flickering in and out of their violet haze.
“Hey.”
It’s a low whisper from her left, and he’s already glancing down at her when she tilts her head towards the sound. His waterlines look a little raw, but his gaze is warm and he leans into their adjoined arms with a playful nudge.
“Still interested in those pointers?”