haunting me

She knows that there’s a chance that this won’t work. The cigar smoke might not be the sign that she hopes it is, and there haven’t been any other indications to suggest that Allen Snow’s ghost is hanging around the MACUSA building, why would it be? His death is unfinished business to her, yes, but he knew his secrets, he knew why he did it all. She doesn’t know the logistics of this––and neither does Cypress, she would guess––but she’s not sure if it’s only lingering ghosts, or if it might be possible to find spirits who have moved on. Either way, she can’t help but get her hopes up a little. Hanging in limbo isn’t something she’s content with, especially not when they had gotten so close to things, only for it all to come to a halt, timed perfectly with Judith Eames’ disappearance. She knows it’s all connected, knows it must be another case of wrongs being righted after mistakes were made, but she doesn’t have the pieces to connect it all yet. A conversation with Allen Snow, the real Allen Snow, could be the thing that would fill in the gaps.

So Baron just nods, letting her thoughts race, already trying to work out the best way to go about this all, as they head down to the training rooms, and lock themselves away in an empty room, sitting down. It feels weird, sitting in a training room, the bright florescents, everything about it impersonal, but then maybe that’s right for this; her job has been her whole life, up until recently, and maybe part of that was Allen Snow’s problem, too.

It’s strange, it feels like they’re playing pretend, but she focuses, nods along with his words, closes her eyes, because that feels right, thinks about all that she knows about him, thinks about what it was like to see someone masquerading as him, thinks about that smell of cigar smoke, the taste of bourbon. She reaches out, and puts her fingers on a card.

“I never met him, but I know he liked good bourbon, neat; my mom got that from him. No ice, even. She never talks about him, but one time I caught her mixing it with Ale-8, and she told me he had said that’s the only way you should ever mix bourbon, and even then, only on occasion. I don’t know many personal things about him… he kind of looms larger than life,” she says.

She lets out a small sigh, as she opens her eyes, wondering if that’s the sort of thing Cypress was looking for. Either way, Baron finally draws a car, and looks down at it, resisting the urge to ask what it means.

.

She places the card on the table. The Hanged Man. For the tarot cards being something he’s carried with him nearly every day since he was eighteen, he really doesn’t know that much about what the individual cards actually mean, but the image is familiar, and grim, and strange. He wonders what it means, in the context of Allen Snow, wonders if it squares with what Baron is saying about him, this man that loomed larger than life.  

He takes the card, picks it up so he can focus on it, focus on whatever energy he’s sort of desperately hoping this little made up ritual he’s had Baron go through has imbued it with, some kind of essence of Allen Snow, some anchor to bring his ghost into this room with them if it’s close enough to even notice what they’re trying to do. He doesn’t know anything about summoning spirits, has never even tried to contact ghosts that weren’t already there, too preoccupied with the plethora of ones that followed him around already and crowded up places with their too loud voices, their too big presences. He doesn’t know if this is right at all, is torn between wishing, as he sits there and closes his eyes and focuses on the tarot card in his hand, that he’d just told Baron to go to an actual medium who knows what they’re doing, or that he’d bothered to go talk to an actual medium about how the fuck any of this is supposed to work at all.

He’s spent so many years being the only person he can find who can interface with ghosts in the precise way he can that he never bothered to think those who willingly talked to ghosts might have some helpful advice for him. Maybe he knows better, now, maybe he’s learned, but it doesn’t matter—he just has to do his best here, just has to know whether or not he can do it, whether or not it’s possible...

And then he feels something stir. Smells, for just a moment, cigar smoke. Like Baron had mentioned.

He opens his eyes, very suddenly, looks at her, makes eye contact, eyes wide with surprise at the sudden shift of the energy in the room, wondering if she can feel it too.

     “I think...” he starts, but stops himself from finishing it I think he’s here. It might not be him, might not be Allen Snow. The haunting of cigar smoke Baron had mentioned might have been someone else the entire time, some other ghost with some other reason to linger here. “I think someone’s here.” 

The occlumency rooms are soundproof. It’s funny, that he’s never thought of that before, never thought to come here when the ghosts were all too loud, but he’s suddenly realized that it is really, truly silent in here, in a way he finds almost unsettling, because he’s never really been somewhere before where he couldn’t hear anything, anything but the sound of his own breathing, too loud in his ears. 

She’s unexpectedly impressed with this sudden determination from Cypress, no matter how resigned it does seem to be. Or maybe reluctant is the right word. She can’t say what she would have done if she were in his place, or if she had ended up with one of the dozens of unasked for natural abilities that can come up in people with magic, but she thinks she can see a little better now how terrifying it would be to feel like you couldn’t control part of yourself. She can see, even if not fully understand, how some people would want to run away from that. So it feels like a pretty enormous thing, even just from the little she knows about Cypress, that he’s looking to face this head on.

Baron gives him a nod, an encouraging smile, because it does seem like a good thing for him to dive in, and try. 

And she’s more than happy to be the test subject in his work trying to know what he’s doing with his abilities. Even better for both of them. It does make sense that he would offer to try with her rather than some of the other people she knows in the office who might want to try. Hers isn’t necessarily an emotional desire, at least not in the same way others might feel about contacting a dead relative. She just wants information, and Allen Snow wouldn’t be a malevolent spirit, maybe just a bitter one. 

He literally rolls up his sleeves, and then he pulls a tarot deck out as he asks about places Allen Snow might be lingering. The best place is a place they can’t go, but maybe here is enough. “We can’t get into Chief Cooke’s office. But I think anywhere in MACUSA could be significant for him. An occlumency room, maybe? The least chance of being interrupted or overheard,” she reasons. She doesn’t like the idea of doing it here, but she also thinks somewhere in MACUSA that he might’ve been at some point is a better idea that taking Cypress somewhere else. But another realization hits, considering the Eastern Squad offices, and the last time she was there.

“When I was on a case a few weeks ago with Harlow, we were in the Eastern Squad’s offices for some questioning, and… I could smell cigar smoke in his old office, but no one was smoking. It lingered when we left. It’s… it’s happened a few times since. He smoked a cigar right before he died, Cypress,” she says, voice low, the excitement creeping in, as she gets up from her desk, even more ready now. 

.

It makes sense, that MACUSA would have been a place important enough for Allen Snow to stick around—if the once-chief of the Easter Squad had been anything like their own acting chief, or any of the other higher-up aurors Cypress had dealt with before, his job had probably been pretty much his life, at least enough for his ghost to make some lasting impression on it. But then there was the problem of space, the weird fact that while, yes, the Eastern Squad offices were technically just one floor down, they were also technically in an entire other state than the Central Squad offices. Or... something like that. He’s never bothered to question the metaphysics of their many-entranced office.

But the rest of MACUSA is in New York, along with the Eastern Squad, so her suggestion about the occlumency training rooms is probably a good one, as good as they’re going to get without getting into the Eastern Squad chief’s office. There’s no telling what kind of range his ghost will have, if it’s even here at all, but it’s the best answer they’ve got—

And then, Baron mentions the cigar smoke, and maybe it’s a stretch, but... maybe it’s just the sign they need to know that he actually is still here, in some capacity, that there may be some chance of communicating with him after all.

     “Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it’s worth a shot,” he says, his voice a little more level than the excitement in hers. He wishes she wouldn’t get her hopes up like this, but, well, he can’t really blame her, and he did offer. 

It’s a quick trip down to the training rooms, and once the two of them are there he takes a seat across from her, sets his deck of cards on the table. The room feels nothing like the kind of place where a seance should take place, sterile and too well lit; it feels like there should be candles or something like that. He’s not sure. He’s never been to a seance, is basing all of his assumptions of what they look like in late-night movies. But he also knows his powers don’t work based on whether or not there are candles, so maybe it doesn’t really matter at all what the room looks like.

Her natural state is not to worry about pleasantries any more than they can put her in a better position to get what she wants, but she’s been a little more aware of herself lately, and she knows that the way she had tried to get something from Crow during their last one on one talk hadn’t been one of the nicest things that she had done. It’s why she’s trying harder now, even if it’s hard to bite back the curiosity of why he might be bringing it up again, hard not to jump to conclusions about things any more than her question already is doing just that.

She’s curious, suddenly, about the case, when he says that it’s kind of about that. She had heard from Hadrian the way things had seemingly changed with Blue’s control of their abilities after the Nashville case, and she has to wonder if something like that had happened with Crow, too. And that’s all but confirmed when he finally goes on, the pause between his words agonizing, patience never a strong suit of hers, either. She doesn’t fully understand how Crow’s whole thing works, she knows the gist of things, by virtue of being nosy and working in the same office, and being lucky enough to having seen it on a case, but she got the impression that it wasn’t easy, before now, for him. But he seems more willing to try, which is a shock, but one she’s glad to hear.

“Really?” she asks, genuinely surprised by the offer. She had assumed that their last conversation on the subject was going to be the end of it, and she had respected that, given up on the idea that there might be some supernatural way to get the answers that she wanted. It had been easy to move on from that idea, after all, considering how much things had started to move so soon after she had posed that question to him. Everything she had gotten, after all, she had gotten through hard work, she was willing to accept that there would be no simple solution to this, either, no calling up the long dead to ask the questions she wanted the answers to. That she would have to find them herself.

But now that he’s offering, now that it seems like whatever happened on that case had maybe given him better control, or a better understanding of his ability, well, Baron has never been someone to pass by an opportunity. Even if it didn’t work, the slim possibility that it would was worth it, especially given that she and Marleigh were in limbo at the moment.

“That would be really amazing,” Baron nods, trying not to get too excited. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to, though, if it’s too difficult, or too dangerous for you. But it would be big, if it worked. It might give me the last piece of this puzzle.”

.

She sounds surprised by the offer, and for a half a second he regrets even offering because maybe she really did have no plans on following up on her initial request, maybe she really was going to let it go and never bother him about it again, and maybe it was stupid for him to come and offer without waiting to see what she’d do, but—no, he stops himself from going down that train of thought. Because even though there’s an excitement in her voice that worries him just a little bit, he really does need to keep pushing himself outside of his comfort zone a little at a time, or he’s just going to shut back down, go back to being afraid of all of this all over again.

And he’s so, so tired of being afraid.

He has his wards. He’s prepared himself for this. He’s agreed, now, he’s not going to back down or back out. It’s a step in the right direction, a step towards taking control of his life and his powers instead of letting them control them the way he always has. 

     “I get the feeling I’m going to have to start knowing what I’m doing a little more now, so I might as well start now, right?”

He takes a second, actually rolls up his sleeves, just because he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands, and then he remembers the tarot cards in his pocket, the ones he’s had for so long and never actually learned how to use for their intended purpose. Not that communicating with a ghost is their intended purpose, either, but... Magnolius had said any focus object might help, and they’re pretty much the item he always has with him, the thing he’s had for the longest, so he slips them out of his pocket, giving Baron a wave with them.

If anything could break HQ’s heart somehow, it would be the way that Cypress’ talks through the slight shake in his voice, at the idea of giving in to this plan, giving in to the ghostly voices that plague him day after day. Hades doesn’t like the idea of letting these dark figures and dark feelings traverse through Cypress’ head unchecked. It’s such a precious thing, Cypress’ mind, his softness and his charm and the way that Hades feels about him, the way the love keeps blooming more and more inside his chest, more powerful with every passing moment, with every passing day and every passing glance. He wishes again that he could smoothe away all the pain and all the fear that crowd in Cypress’ mind. But all he can do is help him moving forward, be a strong figure to help them on their way into the abyss, and try to pull them out again if things get hard, if the darkness seems too crowded in to get out of again. 

HQ maintains his quiet, lets them speak and lets Cypress rise from his seat, keeps careful eyes on him as he shakes Professor Magnolius’ hand and says his goodbies. Magnolius’ voice is gentle, when he speaks of his door always being open, and HQ thinks for a moment that that tone of voice was exactly why he liked the man so much when he was at school. These had been rooms where he always felt welcome, where the world was exciting and big and full of so many different possibilities, where passion had gotten him further than any real talent in magic would have.

He considers saying something, but limits himself to a warm goodbye. He takes Cypress’ hand as they leave again, as they make their way out of the school and back into the wider world, the one they’ve both inhabited for such a long time now. They make their way together, back to the pier, both understanding that doing this earlier was probably better than doing it later, with all the world around to watch them. HQ apparates them to a spot nearby, and they make their way in to the park, much quieter now in the light of day than it had been when they were looking at the ghosts the night before. 

HQ stops Cypress a few feet away from where they had first seen Vivienne, and rests his hands on Cypress’ shoulders again. “You’re okay with this?” He asks, because he has to be sure, he has to know that this is the best if not only option. “Because if its a place you don’t want to go, we can find another way. There are always other answers.” His voice is soft, gentle. It’s the kind of thing that can only be genuine, can only imply that he means what he says. There’s no pressure here, not on his part at the very least. He won’t be the person who pushes Cypress in to this, who doesn’t give him the other options that he should be allowed to have. 

.

It’s easy to sit back a little and let HQ take the lead again, apparating them back to the pier, leading them back in the direction of Vivienne’s ghost. Easy to fall back into feeling like he’s just following his lead auror around, not having to make any decisions. He feels distracted, trying to comprehend what he even needs to do, trying not to think too hard about what all of this means—and about what it will mean if even this isn’t enough, if he can’t do it even now. He doesn’t question it, when HQ stops, a few feet away, puts his hands on Cypress’ shoulders again. 

But HQ’s question tightens something in his chest, again. It’s almost harder, being asked. Being given the option to say no, an option he’d barely ever been given before when it came to this. He’d never been given a say in whether or not he wanted this ability, never been given a say in whether or not he wanted to be an auror, never been given a say in whether or not he would use his ability on a case he’d been put on. Abel had been the first person to give him a say over it all—but even that had been a when more than an if, both of them knowing Cypress would need to do it at some point but Abel at least giving him the space to recover, to step away when he needed to. 

The fact that HQ would let him say no, would do what he could to find another way... he feels like a coward for wanting to bury his face in HQ’s chest and beg him to find another way, for wanting to run from this, hide from this, the way he’s always done. For wanting to put it all off a little longer. For being scared, so scared, that whoever he will be when today is over, it will be a person HQ won’t like. Will be a person he doesn’t like, either. 

     “I’m scared,” he admits, the most obvious statement in the world, because he’s sure HQ can feel that, can feel that he’s terrified, to the point of almost feeling numb. But there’s a part of him, too, that’s tired of running. Of hiding. Of not knowing. He feels like he’s spent half his life exhausted, and if there’s any chance that when things change, they might change for the better? It’s a risk, and he’s never been much of a risk-taker, always preferred playing things safe. “I mean, I’m terrified. But it has to happen eventually and...” 

And at least if you’re here, I know I’m in good hands, he wants to say. He looks at HQ, soft and more than a little vulnerable. HQ. Soft HQ, strong HQ, brave HQ, who had never once flinched away from this, who had been steady and open and willing, who never seemed to want anything from him but honesty.

     “At least I’m with you,” he says, with a nod, and he hopes HQ can feel that he means it, and everything he means within it, all the feelings wrapped up in it, the trust and the honesty and the way that, no matter how mixed up his feelings are, no matter how scared he is, he knows he needs to do this, and he’s okay with it. 

He takes one last moment, hand on HQ’s hand on his own shoulder, before stepping back. He’s still not sure what to do, other than that he’s just supposed to let his instincts take over, to focus on not blocking anything out or holding anything back. He can’t hear Vivienne, as he approaches the spot she’d been in the night before, by the edge of the pier near the ferris wheel. He can’t see her either. But as he draws close, he can feel her. His feet automatically find their way to where he’d stood, facing her, the night before. He closes his eyes, puts his hand out where it had been when she reached out for it, and with his eyes closed—he can feel something. A hand, touching his, just the faintest pressure, the nerves at the tips of his fingertips alive with sensation.

     “I’m here,” he whispers, into the air, just because he feels like it’s what he should do, letting his gut lead him, following his instincts. “Whatever you need to tell me, I’m listening. Or—if you can’t tell me, show me.” 

He waits, a moment, a long moment, and the pressure against his fingers gets a little firmer, more insistent, and he finds his eyes drifting open. And as they do, it takes a moment for his vision to stop being blurry, for him to recognize that what he’s seeing isn’t the pier where they’re standing, but something else entirely, somewhere else entirely. 

Despite things seemingly having slowed down from the outside, dead ends hit on both public and private fronts, she’s only taken it all as a sign to focus on everything else more intently. Somehow, too, it feels like having things outside of work to care about just makes her all the more motivated. 

Waiting in limbo for more information to turn up for either her or Marleigh, and knowing that the sudden disappearance of Judith Eames has to have something to do with Appius, all things considered, it feels like she’s looking for clues everywhere. They’ve seen, after all, the way old cases were tied up in everything decades ago, when Allen Snow was dealt seemingly the same hand as Judith Eames for making a mistake. The problem with that, though, is that there’s no way to know until a case has been nearly solved, if they’re doing things similarly to how they had back them.

In the absence of much else to do, she’s taken to combing through all of the cases closed in the past few weeks since Scotland to see if anything seems strange or suspicious. Unfortunately, though, despite one or two sticking out, they don’t seem to be because they’re the work of Appius. With a few new case files of her own, though, she’s hoping that maybe one of them might end up related to this whole mess, even if it seems wishful thinking, looking at the cases she’s got coming up.

Either way, she’s wholly engrossed in one of the files this morning, when her train of thought is interrupted by Crow. She had heard that the case he had been on had done something to change things, had looked through the file herself, searching for other things, but she hadn’t actually considered what that might mean until she’s looking up at him, and he goes on. 

“I do remember. And I apologize for that, it was tactless,” she says, offering him a sympathetic look, because that feels like what she should do here, despite the questions on the tip of her tongue. “Is this about the case you just finished up?”

.

She sounds like she’s trying so hard to be polite, to be tactful, like she obviously remembers, like she hasn’t stopped thinking about it but is holding herself back from rushing headfirst into asking him again already, like the only reason she hasn’t asked already is because he hasn’t yet offered. 

     “Sort of, yeah,” he answers, and maybe he’s just going to have to get used to feeling like some part of him is always at war with everything he had done before, every rule his past self had made: no giving people false hope, no intentionally contacting the dead because someone asks you to, no doing anything that might make him responsible for someone else having information they shouldn’t have, or didn’t want, or that hurt them in unexpected ways. He can’t say no to everyone forever.

And he’ll never really know what he can do now, if he doesn’t try testing the waters. Everything that had happened in Galveston—the visions, the voices, the way all of it had led them right where they needed to be, even if it had opened him up to other, more malevolent forces—had happened on instinct, pure reaction, his mind seeming to know what to do as soon as he let down the walls he’d built around it to keep everything out. But nothing else had been that instinctual; he was going to need to try now, to get used to pushing himself until he can establish the new boundaries that go along with this change in everything he’s known. 

Baron Snow isn’t Jim; she isn’t haunted, not to the same extent, at least that he knows. Or, if she is, it isn’t to the same extent. He’s never heard voices around her though, granted, he’s been giving her a wide berth since she first asked him about whether or not he’d heard her grandfather around, bristling at her insistent curiosity. There’s a chance nothing will happen; there’s a chance something will, and she’ll get what she was looking for and they’ll both be able to leave it alone with Cypress on slightly surer footing of what he can ask of himself now; there’s a chance it will end in disaster, but that just seems to be the way of things these days. As long as he doesn’t end up possessed by Allen Snow, he thinks whatever happens will probably be alright.

He’d taken a few days off, after Galveston. A few more than he’d meant to, really. A day to stay home, with HQ, wrapped up in each other and trying to recover for everything that had happened. A day to visit Professor Magnolius again, to thank him for his help, to try to wrap his own head around the way everything felt so different, now. That had been the plan. And then he’d woken up, the next day, with a migraine so bad he’d hardly been able to get out of bed. 

And so it had been almost a week. He’d heard the news of the impeachment trial second-hand, mostly through HQ stopping in to check up on him as he waded through several days of headaches, the rest from Magnolius himself and from the little radio he kept in his office, turning it on to check in periodically as he and Cypress worked their way through a series of temporary wards that would hopefully help keep anything else malevolent from getting into Cypress’ newly-opened mind.

But the part that had him most anxious about returning to the office, in the midst of all that, was the fact that the news that he had a greater control over his powers than he had two weeks ago was bound to filter through the rest of the office, until everyone knew—and all the requests for help he’d pushed off because he couldn’t actually do what people wanted him to do would be front and center again.

Better, he thinks, to face them all head on. Better to just get it over with than to sit around anxiously awaiting the moment someone decides to ask again.

And so he takes a moment, at his desk, to get settled in, to prepare himself. Baron is sitting at her desk, working away diligently on something, and he hopes maybe that will temper her reaction a little bit, when he offers to actually try his hand at the seance she’d wanted him to do for her months ago.

And then he gets up, and goes.

Silence doesn’t usually –– doesn’t always, come easy to HQ. It had been his job to fill it when the time came, when he was young and his entire world was made up of Athena, Athena, Athena. His dear sister, so quiet, leaving him to talk for the both of them and make sure that they were heard, leaving him to offer comforting words to her in the dark. The silence was lovely when he needed it the most, when he would climb into her bed at night and seek comfort in the way she could give it to him, someone to hold him and someone to pet his hair when nightmares came or he was shaken by some strong emotion that seemed to creep in through the floorboards and sink into his heart. Sometimes, he still feels like he needs to fill the world up with something, voices and laughter. But the best thing to do right now seems to be keeping quiet, letting Professor Magnolius speak to Cypress and ask the questions he seemed to need to know the answers to, in order to offer his advice. 

The best thing to do would be to keep his comments by himself, to remain a steadfast and strong fixture by Cypress side while the two of them talk about his gift. His heart aches all over again, at the weary tone in Cypress’ voice when he mentions that they was only hired because of his gift, because he could talk to ghosts, and something like that was valuable on a whole lot of cases. Hades was glad for the case they’d worked together before, the one with Silverthorn. At the very least it had been a chance for Cypress to stretch his feet, to solve a case without having to rely in ghosts. He had done it just because he was good, because they were together and they had seemed to bounce so well of one another, seemed to work together better than magic could explain.

He hates to think it, but it seems like the Professor might be on to something when he says that Cypress might be blocking himself up, that he might be holding himself back too much to break through to whatever is trying to reach out to him. He remembers Athena again, in that cafe just the other day, telling him that he’d always been able to read her mind, that his gift expanded far past what he usually allowed himself to imagine. He didn’t want that part of it, the messy and harsh part that left him knowing with a strange sort of certainty exactly what people were thinking, exactly what they were thinking about him. It was what had left him feeling so cold around his parents, with the absolute certainty in the fact that they were disappointed in him, that he wasn’t what they had wanted in a child. It was better to imagine that all he knew were the feelings, that the thoughts weren’t real.

He reaches out, a bold move, not very professional, and he takes Cypress’ hand. He doesn’t really care about keeping their relationship away from work, not when they’re talking about things like this, not when Cypress is being told to let all the dark voices lingering out there on the horizon right into his head, with nothing to hold them back, nothing to protect him, walls that he might not be able to put back up again. Professor Magnolius has leaned forward to touch Cypress’ hand too, so it can all be excused in the end. 

“Isn’t that…dangerous?” He asks, voice soft. “Letting them in, not holding them back?” Cypress was already torn apart so frqeuently by them, driven to the darkest places, enough that he was worried he would say things that would hurt HQ more than HQ could imagine. 

“All things are dangerous, gentlemen. But it may be the only way for the both of you. Holding back never got anybody anywhere, even if it seems to be the more pleasant option.” 

The more pleasant option. It would certainly be nicer if they didn’t have to do this case at all, if people weren’t telling Cypress to lay himself down into an early grave, in a certain sense. He doesn’t want to encourage Cypress to do this, so he just looks at him instead, looks at him tenderly with the implicit message in his eyes that it’s up to him, that no matter what he does HQ will support him, be at his side. 

He’s grateful, for HQ’s hand in his, steadying and firm, reassuring, not going anywhere. He hates this, hates the suggestion, hates that it’s right, hates that the answer is that this is all one Pandora’s box he may never be able to put the lid back one, one good thing—solving the case—amidst all the bad, all the dark that could come with this. Instincts or no instincts, he knows in his gut that even if he can find it in himself to let his walls down, doing it is going to change something in him, something deep and fundamental, something at the very foundation of him, change it irrevocably, change it in a way that might just change everything else around him, too. 

He feels like he’s been living as a coin, flipping in the air, sometimes heads up sometimes tails, sometimes the warm, mild-mannered Cypress he tries to be, the one HQ likes so much, the one HQ wants to buy hot chocolate for and hold hands with and kiss, so gently, and look at with that warmth and fondness in his eyes, and the one he is when the ghosts get to him, when he’s exhausted and at wit’s end, temperamental and selfish and angry and breaking apart at the seems, the one that had driven such a wedge between himself and Abel all those years ago, always half a second away from snapping. He feels like this is the moment the coin hits the ground, finally, and one side has to come up and stay there, feels like it’s a coin toss between whether letting his guard down means he’ll be able to be someone HQ can still like, or if he’ll be stuck, forever, being the side of himself he can’t stand to be, the side he’s always trying his best to avoid. 

But, as much as he hates to admit it, he doesn’t have a choice. 

The coin is going to land, eventually, no matter how long he’s staved it off. And if he’s going to let it, he might as well catch a serial killer while he’s at it. He might as well do it early enough that HQ won’t feel bad, if it turns out Cypress ends up being someone he could never love. He might as well get it over with, before he gets too comfortable—because this is the first time he’s felt comfortable in a long time, having friends, real friends, a job he’s learning to be better at, things to care about and things to fight for. It would only be a let down, to let any of that go any further, knowing there’s no way any of it can last unless he finally faces this.

     “You’re right,” he says, and he hates the way his voice shakes as he says it, hates the way it breaks a little bit, hates feeling like he’s thirteen again, hates the way he feels like he might cry, here in Professor Magnolius’ office, like nothing’s changed in twenty five years. “I’ll—I’ll try again, see what happens.”

He doesn’t feel any better than he did when they got here. In fact, he feels much, much worse as he stands up, shakes Magnolius’ hand again and gets ready to go. Back to the amusement pier, back to the ghosts. It’s still early, but he thinks maybe it’s a good idea to try it when the place isn’t crowded yet, people still on the beach instead of riding rides. The ghosts might not be visible during the day, but he knows where Vivienne is, now, and maybe it will be easier to hear her when he can’t see her, too.

HQ is struck again with how proud he is of Cypress. He knows this isn’t easy –– none of this has ever been easy, nothing at all. Except for the two of them, maybe, but Cypress had struggled with that as well at the start, perhaps he still did. HQ would find it hard as well, if he had a talent like Cypress’, if he had to use it in the way that people expected. Central Squad kept throwing him at ghosts, at murder victims and grusome deaths, witches burned at the stake and haunted houses. HQ doesn’t know that he could take it, having to use that gift, that burden, in the way people wanted him to. 

But he’s proud that Cypress is doing it now. He’s proud that they’re going to solve this case together, once they get their heads around what they need to do. He’s proud that they’re going to bring this story to some kind of close, possibly reignite a cold case and finally be able to shut the book on it for good. HQ would like that, if they could finish this, if they could find the answers that no one else could, and save the day, and give people the closure that they really need. 

The Professor arches an eyebrow, when Cypress admits that the ghosts couldn’t be heard, even by him with all of his many gifts. That was unusual for Cypress, who always heard ghosts even when he wished that he couldn’t. And it’s even more distressing when HQ thinks about how he had felt yesterday, out on the peir, after that ghost reached out to him. 

“Oh my. Not a sound?” He asks, with eyebrow still arched, voice thoughtful. It’s a familiar expression something that HQ can easily recognise from his days at school, when he had been so utterly delighted by this man that he could hardly believe it. “Not even a whisper? Are we sure they’re really ghosts, not just…a no-maj trick? They can do such wonderful things with lights these days.”

“They’re definitely ghosts.” HQ says, with confidence that he isn’t really sure he’s earned. But he knows. He knows that they’re ghosts.  They couldn’t be anything else. A projection couldn’t do what they had done, couldn’t have reached out and moved through Cypress like that, couldn’t have inspired all of those feelings. “The one we tried to talk to reached out and touched him and, well… It didn’t seem good. We’re wondering… if something could be blocking them. Blocking him.”

.

Professor Magnolius seems to consider it for a second, sitting back in his armchair and hmming thoughtfully. It takes a long moment, too long for Cypress when every second seems to stretch out to an hour’s length in dread, and he’s moments from sitting forward and suggesting they try a different path, have Magnolius suggest a real medium they can ask to try to communicate with these ghosts for them instead, when Magnolius finally leans forward again. 

      “Does your ability come in handy often, in your work as an auror?” he asks Cypress, and Cypress can hear the real question behind it: do you use it more willingly now than you did when you were a student here? It’s a question he can’t in good conscience answer correctly, can’t figure out how to explain that he does because he has to, because he has no choice, but wishes desperately he didn’t need to. It feels like it would be such a let down to explain that he never even wanted to become an auror, that he’d become one under duress and only really passed his auror training because he had a useful skill that someone wanted to make him use.

But lies aren’t going to help anyone, here, not himself, not Magnolius, and certainly not the victims of the Pelican Island Killer. So he bites the inside of his cheek for a moment and puts together the words.

     “It’s why I was hired,” he admits. “They rarely put me on cases where I don’t have to use it.” The rest, he thinks, is implicit in the sound of his voice, a miserable little sound to it. “I know people say that practice makes perfect but I’m not any better at it than I used to be. I’m just... better at shutting it out, when I’m not working.”

     “It sounds like the something blocking you might be you,” Magnolius says, and his voice is so achingly kind. It always was, every other time Cypress sat here to be lectured about his reluctance to learn how to properly understand his abilities, how dangerous it could be to him to keep ignoring them, like the pressure might build up inside of him and explode if he didn’t learn how to embrace it and work with it. He’d always hated it, the kindness, because it felt so unearned, felt too much like pity, and because the answer he’d always gotten when he came to Magnolius for help—work on it, stop fighting it, listen to it—had always been the opposite of what he’d wanted it to be. 

He doesn’t hate it, now. Just takes it with a kind of resigned and miserable acceptance. Because that’s always been the answer, and he’s known it for longer than he cares to admit. Talking to Eden, watching them and their own abilities... he knows his desperate desire to escape this has only made it worse. 

He’s quiet, for a long moment. He feels like he should be embarrassed, that HQ is sitting here listening to all of this, knowing that all this trouble might be something as simple as a bad mental block he’s built up for himself over the years as a coping mechanism, a dam against the fear and the anger and the hundred powerful feelings that aren’t his—but... But HQ would understand that, surely. Better than most. HQ knows what it’s like to be subjected to thoughts and feelings that aren’t your own, except that he can walk away from people and let it calm down, but ghosts are everywhere, over every inch of the entire planet, nowhere safe for Cypress to run.

     “But what do I do?” he asks, after a moment, his voice breaking a little bit as he looks up t the Professor, and he must have sat here a hundred times, asking the same desperate question, and he suddenly feels so young again, so small, so helpless. And Magnolius leans across the space between them, puts a warm, steady hand on Cypress’ own for a moment, waits there until Cypress finally looks up, looks him in the eye.

There’s a strange kind of excitement, stepping back in time and walking through the halls of Ilvermorny again. HQ had practically been racing to get out of this place by the time his seventh year of school came around, never having been as academically inclined as his sister was. But he couldn’t deny that he had at least a few fond memories of the place, of the magic that was woven in to every inch and every second of the experience. 

And its strange to be here with Cypress, strange to think that  they walked through these halls at the same time, an overlap of several years, and they never knew each other, never noticed each other and never stopped to try to. It was like the world waited until they were ready for each other, like the universe threw them together exactly at the right moment for this love to bloom, to shine a light on their potential under just the right conditions. He didn’t know who Cypress was, then, but he’s so damn glad he gets to know him now, that he gets to do thinks like take him home and kiss him for hours at a time, that Cypress is charmed enough by him to want to be with him for extended periods of time. 

As hard as this case has been already, will be in the future, he’s glad that Cypress is here with him, glad that they can do it all together. 

Hades smiles when they step in to the Divination classroom, as warm as it’s always been, that distinctive smell of incense and the light streaming in through the wide windows. So many afternoons spent tucked away in these walls, doing his damned best to pull any sort of future out of the mist. He never could, but that was okay. He did well enough despite it all. And he liked Professor Magnolius. So his smile grows even wider when the man actually appears from his little office, seeming exactly the same as he had before.

The Professor takes Cypress’ badge and his eyebrows shoot up, flicking between them both. “Auror business? Well i’ll be damned. I hope you’re not investigating that ghastly Tarot Card Killer. The cards haven’t revealed anything to me about my potential impending doom, so if you’ve come to tell me I’m a target, I would be very upset indeed.” 

Hades lets out a small laugh, still smiling. “You’re in luck. Far better aurors than me are working on that case. Unfortunately this one… is still serial killer related.” 

A soft hum escapes the man, and he opens the door to his cozy little office space. “In that case, you’d better come get settled and fill me in on the thrilling tale. I can offer you all the time you need, gentlemen.” 

Hades follows him in to the room, his hand finding the small of Cypress’ back for just a moment as he guides him through the door, before he finds a place to sit on the plush little couch tucked into a little nook, opposite the arm chair that the Professor sits in. He decides to launch straight in, begin the story so that Cypress can ask for whatever help it is that he needs here. “We’re having a little problem with some ghosts, old victims of the Pelican Island Killer. You’re familiar with his work, I assume?” 

.

Professor Magnolius’ office is somewhere he spent a lot of time, in his school years, not always willingly, the Divination professor trying to encourage him to hone his abilities, to embrace them; every other time he’d sad on this couch he’d been angry, or reluctant, or annoyed, or exhausted, or some messy combination of all of them, but it feels easier to walk in, given the distance between then and now, given HQ’s hand at the small of his back, a small sign of comfort as they make their way to the couch and take a seat across from the professor.

He feels as much like a disappointment as he had all those years ago, but all in all, even given the small freak out he’d had the night before, he’s in a much better place than he’d been back then. He finds himself glad that HQ hadn’t known him, when they were both students here, that HQ hadn’t seen what a mess he was as a teenager, before he’d had reasonably healthy coping mechanisms to help him through the worst of it, when he’d been scared and angry all the time, when he’d been desperate enough that he’d almost wished he didn’t have magic at all if it meant he could get a decent nights’ sleep every once in a while without ghosts keeping him awake. 

     “From a few years ago, yes?” Magnolius confirms, tapping a kettle with his wand and setting it to boil as he takes a seat in his armchair, looking between the two of them. “Don’t tell me another victim has turned up. Those stories, when they happened, those poor people...” 

     “No,” Cypress reassures him, jumping in quickly to steer the conversation in the right direction. “No new victims that we know of, thankfully.” It’s the one saving grace of this case: that the Pelican Island Killer hasn’t killed in something like six years, that there’s no sign he will again—unless that’s what the ghosts are trying to tell him, in which case, better to focus on them than to dwell on it. “No, it’s actually that several of the ghosts of his victims have turned up, in a sort of... unusual circumstances.”

     “Ah,” he replies, a look of understanding coming across this face. “Is that where you come in, then, Cypress? Using that gift of yours to find a serial killer, finally close a cold case?”

A part of him hates how easily Magnolius comes to the conclusion, how quickly he knows, because why else would Cypress Crow—unmotivated, unambitious, not particularly hard-working, middling grades, utterly ordinary at every single other form of magic except the kind he didn’t want to excel at—be an auror? What would have possessed the Central Squad to hire him except this? But there’s another kind of understanding, on Magnolius’ face, too, as he says it, a sympathetic look from the man who knew best just how much it had always plagued Cypress, this unwanted gift of his, this curse. 

     “That is... the hope, yes,” he answers. He takes a second to glance at HQ, to ground himself in his presence at his side, comforting and encouraging. HQ had thought this was a good idea. It is a good idea. “The ghosts are strange: they’re visible, but not corporeal, almost like projections of some kind, and they seem to be stuck in one place. But the strangest part is... they look like they’re talking, and I can’t hear them. I mean, no one can, but I can’t hear them.” 

HQ cups Cypress’ cheek in the palm of his hand, a soft and grounding touch. As much as he’s trying to pull away and clear their heads so that they can work this case to the best of their ability, he can’t help but reaching out to touch that face, to smooth a thumb over the delicate expanse of his cheekbone, near the semi-dark circles under his eyes. He’s just so tender when it comes to Cypress, its hard to fight through that. And he doesn’t see any reason why he should have to let go of him, why he should have to give up on the touches that make the both of them feel better, a little safer and a little more at ease. 

“Professor Magnolius!” He says, a little bit brighter. Because yes, that sounds like a solution. That sounds like something they should try, at the very least. Hades remembers Professor Magnolius pretty damn well. He’d never had a real talent for Divination, but HQ had been enthusiastic and his empathy was still a novel little game, something that he could use to wow people like that when he needed it too. “That’s a great idea, Cypress.” He says, warm and bright, because they could use a little hint of that, they could use a tiny bead of hope in this world, the idea that there might be an answer or someone who can help them. “Even if he just points us toward someone else, it will be worth it.” 

HQ considers it for a second. He doesn’t think that there’s anything else they can do here tonight, if the ghosts can’t actually communicate with them. All they would really be doing was wandering around a fair that neither of them were up for looking at, or making Cypress try again with a different ghost. But the outcome would be the same, HQ was sure, if they tried that last option. It would tire him out, it would make everything feel worse. 

He nods his head, smiles just a little bit, and ducks forward quickly to press another kiss to Cypress’ forehead. “We’ll head over first thing in the morning. Talk to the Professor, come back here when the sun starts to set.” Thats a good plan, thats a good course of action to settle in on. For now, all they can do is wait until morning. Which is good, because HQ is achey, and he just wants to take Cypress home, he just wants to take care of him and make all of this better if he can. He wants to make Cypress soup, and wrap a blanket around him, and kiss him softly until they both fall asleep together, wrapped up in each others arms. That would be perfect, and HQ is pretty sure that Cypress would enjoy it all just as much as he did. It might be nice, to spend some time caring for him. 

“All you have to do tonight is let me take you home and take care of you for a little while. We can worry about it all tomorrow.” He says, voice soft, and stands up straighter to get them moving, holding out a hand to offer it to Cypress. “Up and at ‘em, dear.” 

He feels just a little brighter, just a little more hopeful already, and HQ always seems to have that effect on him, practically effortless; he isn’t shaking anymore, his heart isn’t racing. It’s easy to let himself lean into him HQ’s touch, to believe his reassurances. To feel like it really is a great idea and not a complete waste of time. And he’s still nervous, still a little shaken, still a little hopeless, but they’re manageable feelings now, small ones, ones he isn’t worried are going to drag HQ down with him if the feels them too much.

And it’s late. And going home, staying with him, taking a break from it and coming back refreshed... it sounds not just like the easy option, but also the right one, the productive one. The one that will actually help instead of just ending in him tormenting himself for a few more hours and being too tired and frustrated to be of use tomorrow.

So they go home. They go home, and they have a late dinner, and he lets HQ take care of him for a while, falls asleep wrapped up in him. And first thing in the morning, they swing by the office and get the floo to Ilvermorny, and he follows the familiar route from the headmaster’s office up to the divination classroom, with its big arched windows and its warm decor, a place he hadn’t spent nearly as much time as he maybe should have, when he’d been a student here himself. 

     “Cypress Crow,” he hears, before he can even turn to locate the voice within the room, Professor Magnolius apparently coming out of his office to the side of the room just as they’re entering. “And Hades Falconer-Quinn? Wow, my leaves weren’t wrong this morning when they told me today was going to take me by surprise. Well, gentlemen, to what do I owe the delight of your company?” 

Half of him wants to smile, at how utterly familiar it is, how Professor Magnolius hardly looks like he’s aged a day in almost twenty years, and certainly has no less energy than he used to when Cypress was in school; and half of him tenses, his chest tightening, at the familiar sight and the familiar voice, with the feeling of guilt that even after all these years he’s never lived up to the unwavering faith and expectations Magnolius always had for him. Still, he pushes past it, lets himself smile a little, pulls his badge out—it may not be as impressive as it looks, but it’s something, a small sign that he’s done something with his life, even unwillingly.

Someday, maybe, his heart will stop aching for Cypress so damn hard. He can’t actually imagine it ever happening, but he’s sure that some day he’ll feel just a little different than this. Right now, he feels sore with how much he cares, he feels like it aches more than it ever has before. Cypress reaches up and holds his hand there against his face, as if he just needs something to hold on to, as if Cypress needs someone to support him so damn badly. And that will be HQ. HQ will always be there, he thinks, to hold on to. He’s sure that he’ll never leave Cypress behind, that he’ll never ever pull away if Cypress needs him. 

HQ lets out a soft sigh and listens, listens carefully to every single word that comes out of his mouth. He feels scared about how scared Cypress feels, how scared that girl must have felt, the way the two fears radiated together and mixed in the air, behind Cypress’ eyes. It isn’t fair that Cypress has this weight on his chest, that this burden is his to carry when HQ would gladly take it away if he could. 

But it does belong to Cypress, and HQ doesn’t know how to take it away. 

His voice is shaking, and the words that they form make HQ want to hug him, make HQ want to pull him close and never let him go again. After a moment he does, he shifts up and wraps his arms around Cypress, holds him close, a solid hug full of solid warmth and so much affection. He can’t hold it in, he can’t really stop himself when he needs to comfort someone like this. So he gives in and he hugs Cypress, and he tries to think it through, decide the best thing to say. 

“You can do it. I know you can.” He says, soft. Softer than he would with anyone else that was sitting there doubting themself. HQ knew that they could do this, he knew that they could do it together, that they would get through it no matter what it took. “We solve cases all of the time without… our weird superpowers. If you can’t help them with what you hear, you’ll help them some other way. We’ll help them together.” 

He feels more confident about it than he really should, because he doesn’t exactly know how they’re going to manage it, but they won’t give up. He lets out another breath and kisses the side of Cypress’ head. And then he pulls back to look Cypress in the eyes, to look at him gently and warmly. 

“Maybe…” He starts, and then hesitates, and then he starts again. “Maybe there’s someone we can ask for help? Someone who can offer some guidance? Like, when I’m stuck, when I can’t do something, I go to Athena. She’s smart. She knows more than I do.” He nods his head. “We’ll talk to someone, because asking for help is always the first thing you should do when you feel… helpless.” 

.

Everything seems to still, a little bit, to quiet, with HQ’s arms wrapped around him. They make him feel safer, a little studier. They make him feel like he can stop shaking a little bit and let his racing thoughts slow, make him feel like HQ doesn’t need an answer he doesn’t have in order to sit here and keep his promise. He doesn’t know that he believes what HQ says, doesn’t actually think there is a way to solve this without finding some way to hear whatever Vivienne was trying to tell him—certainly not him, only a halfway decent auror in the first place, who had fumbled his way through training, who never would have been here except for the accident of fate that was his abilities.

But HQ sounds like he believes it. And Cypress doesn’t want to ever be the reason HQ stops believing in something, stops hoping, stops that relentless optimism he always seems to have, the way he believes so damn hard. So he just nods, a little, leans into the soft kiss, lets his eyes drift shut for a second until HQ is pulling away to look at him again.

Advice, he thinks. Someone else to go to. He’d never found anyone else, who heard ghosts the way he did, never heard of another medium who did similar things. He’d... never actively sought out another medium before, in all honesty, had tried to stay as far away from that as he could. Of course there were plenty of them, all over the country; they could probably find one, but he wouldn’t know where to begin looking.

But he knew someone who did. Who had offered, when he was younger, to help him find someone to teach him, to guide him.

     “Professor Magnolius,” he answers, before he even means to say it out loud, the moment it comes to him. The Divination professor at Ilvermorny. Cypress hasn’t seen him in almost twenty years, but he’s fairly certain he’s still there, even as a teenager Cypress had thought he was on the younger side compared to most of the old professors there. No matter how much Cypress had bucked against his ability, no matter how stubborn and reluctant he’d been to even take Divination, let alone let himself try to be any good at it, Magnoluis had been just as stubbornly consistent, and reliable, and helpful, and hopefully. He thinks, now, he didn’t deserve to have had a teacher that good for all those years and not appreciate him in the least. 

It feels very powerful, in a way they maybe haven’t felt before, when they try casting the spell, with Cypress keeping a firm hold on them, almost as if their energies, their distinct but related abilities combined only make it all the stronger. The silence feels strange, after so much noise and pressure for what feels like a small eternity, but it feels light too. They hold their breath as Cypress offers to try, takes a moment to assess if it seems safe, now, if it really did work.

And they breathe a sigh of relief when he goes on, voice quiet, as if not wanting to disturb the peace that now stands before them, and they open their eyes slowly, half expecting to see the women and dark, creeping shadows before them again. But they do not. The room is normal, looks just the way it had through their tattoo. Cypress is right, it’s over. They look around, almost surprised by how normal it all looks now, before they reach out, mark the spot on the floor with an x with their wand, just in case.

They feel as if they’ve run a marathon, and their head is pounding, the lights feel too bright to their eyes, but they do not care so much, because they did it, they both got through all of it together, and found a way to stop it at least for long enough to get someone who is an expert in that sort of protective magic to come in and make certain the wards won’t shatter again.

“We did it!” they breathe, a small smile sliding over their lips as they look back at Cypress. 

Despite themself, they lean over and give Cypress a big bear hug, unable to keep the very deep affection they’ve cultivated for him over the course of this case from spilling over. Whether he likes it or not, he is going to be stuck with them, after doing so much, allowing them to trust him so greatly, and get them through all of that. When they pull back, they pat him on the shoulder.

“Thank you, Cypress. We would not have made it this far without your guidance and strength,” they nod. “We should find Randall, and let Farris know the hotel will be safe again. I think it should hold until we can get an expert here to strengthen the wards. But I am taking you out for a beautiful night on the town, Cypress, you have no choice in that matter.”

Distracting the ghost hunting duo for the moment is actually a lot easier than Hades expects it to be. They live off drama, they live off fun, and they want to make sure that they get the best footage possible for the show that they’re making. Hades knows that the most important thing for him and Cypress in this moment is to keep them far away from the actual ghosts, while Cypress is trying to talk to them. HQ didn’t think that the apparitions would show up on camera, but he didn’t know for sure. He feels a little bad for the things he does to try and get them out of the way, but it all works out for the best. 

He casts a confundus charm on the camera man. And the more enthusiastic looking of the duo. That’s step one. And when he stumbles and drops his equipment, everything else kind of turns into chaos for the minute. HQ plays the part of helping them, and engages them in a big long conversation. They seem so damn earnest, and he feels kind of bad for briefly fucking with their heads in order to make sure that they don’t get in Cypress’ way. But the case comes first, always, and these no-maj ghost hunters would only get in their way if they were hanging around here all night.

In the end, their camera is slightly damaged, and one of the main stars of the show is clearly not in his right mind. They leave and decide to come back the next night, when they have everything in order again and the star of the show feels better. Hades watches them leave with a distant kind of satisfaction, because he acomplished at least one thing to day.

He’s had his feelers out for Cypress this whole time, trying to latch on to the one beacon of emotion that he knows best in the crowd. Cypress doesn’t feel great, but he’s been nevous since this started, they both have been. Only the longer he’s gone , the more the storm of feeling seems to grow. Confusion, frustration, fear. The second that the ghost hunters have turned to move away, HQ moves as well, back in the direction of the ferris wheel so that he can get back to where he really needs to be, beside Cypress. That seems like the most important spot in the universe sometimes, the place that he always wants to be. If he could reserve that space for himself he would, from here until the end of his life. So that at times like this he can reach out and take Cypress’ arm, and offer some kind of comfort. 

HQ moves quickly, the giant wheel is something easy to navigate to, and Cypress is like a strand of string tied around his heart, pulling him to just the right spot in the crowd. He sees Cypress there, and he sees the ghost. Vivienne Draper, in all her glory. Cypress had been right before, these didn’t seem like any regular ghosts. HQ catches the end of the moment in his vision, catches the last few words out of Cypress’ mouth: I just need to hear you.

He sees the ghost reach out to him, passing through him, and the feelings spike in HQ’s chest. Nothing feels right, nothing feels normal about this, and when Cypress moves to the bench HQ unsticks his feet from the ground and rushes over, kneels in front of him and touches his face, looks up with worried eyes. 

“Hey, hey. What’s up, Cy?” He says, soft but a little frantic with a hint of worry. He feels sick, and he’s not entirely sure which one of them that is. Most likely its HQ himself because he hates seeing Cypress like this, hates seeing him shake and hates knowing how strange and wrong this all is for him. “What happened? Did she say something?” 

.

HQ is there, at his side, in a rush, kneeling in front of him, hands gentle across his face, sounding worried, and of course he is, of course he does, he’d promised he would be listening for them, promised he would feel it if they got upset, promised he would be right there with them, and HQ isn’t a person who promises things and doesn’t follow through on those promises. It’s one of the things he likes most, about him, the way he feels like he can always depend on his word.

He lets one of his shaking hands come up, grasping for HQ’s hand on his face a little desperately, fingers closing around his wrist like Cypress is trying to keep him there, or maybe just hang onto something stable while he tries to figure out how to explain everything he’s just experienced—so, so much of it, and all so useless.

     “I couldn’t hear anything,” he says, and he sounds a little despairing about it. His whole life spent trying not to hear things, and the one time it matters, the one time he really, really needs it, there’s nothing there. “She was trying to tell me something, I could see it in her eyes. She seems... stuck. She looks so scared. She feels scared. But I think there’s something blocking her from talking. Or... blocking me from hearing. I don’t know, I can’t make any sense of it it.”

He doesn’t know how to explain it, but mostly he thinks that’s because he doesn’t know what it is he was feeling, what was stopping him from being able to hear her, or what she was trying to do by reaching out to him physically when she realized he couldn’t hear. He’s never dealt with a physical ghost like that before, which makes it all the more complicated. And he wants to be honest with HQ, like he promised he would, like he’s been trying so hard to be, knowing that will make things easier, but it’s impossible to articulate something he doesn’t know well enough to put into words. 

     “I don’t know what I’m doing, HQ,” he confesses, his voice still shaking, just a little. He finds himself thinking, again, of Eden’s question, if he’d ever had any real training with his ability; he’d been so upset to learn, as a kid, that being magic didn’t mean he wasn’t a freak anymore, that he still heard voices no one else heard, that he’d accepted that no one could do what he’d do and just learned how to survive it with as little pain as possible. Even as his Divination professor tried to lead him towards resources, towards some kind of apprenticeship to learn how to use it. He didn’t think he could. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to. And now here he was, being asked to do it, needing to do it, and failing. “I don’t... I’ve spent my whole life running away from this. I don’t know how to make it happen. I don’t know how to make myself hear her. I don’t know how to reach out to her, in any other way. I don’t... I don’t think I can get anything.  I don’t think I can help her.”

They’re angry, angrier than they can recall feeling, after spending so much of their life desperately trying to keep any hints of anger and rage away from their mind, so worried that those would be the triggers to the cruel, vile future they had seen for themself all those years ago as a child. They don’t want to be a thing of anger, and perhaps that is part of it, they feel anger that the energy here is doing it to them, only compounding on the fact. They are ready to fight these phantoms in front of them, do anything they can to make them stop this, because it feels like it’s all coming from them, but no, that isn’t right. Because to fight they would need to let go of Cypress. To fight, would mean to give into the rage coursing through their veins, the pressure in their mind. But they raise their wand, anyway, and the three women just smile back at them, and that makes their blood boil, makes them forget what they’re here for, momentarily, the voices only crescendoing around them, as if they want them to strike, to lash out against these phantoms.

Before they can, though, they feel a tug at their arm, more solid than the others, hear their name in the familiar voice, and they remember why they’re here, what they’re meant to be doing. Cypress keeps talking, talks about things they can’t see with their own eyes, and the women stand, start moving forward toward them, the darkness coming with them, and instinct begs them to fight. But they focus on Cypress, on what he’s saying, that they have to focus, have to stop it. They screw their eyes shut again, force them closed and try desperately to keep them that way, but as soon as they do it sounds like a storm of voices in their ears, feels like they’re being pulled from every direction.

They can see again, though, see the plan breakroom around them, see the path of concrete that looks just a little different, what Cypress is talking about, and they are determined. They wish that they had asked their friend all of the intricacies of the protections they had placed on their tattoo, and the bracelet for Cypress, wished they might’ve realized sooner that a close approximation while under immense psychic stress might not actually be enough, but there is nothing to do about that now. All they can do is try.

They push forward, try to focus, to remember everything they had witnessed, and they hold their wand out, and they start. They try their own version of the magic their friend had performed for them, considering, instead the sort of things they had been taught about at school, the old, ancient Russian magic, productive magic as it had been called, that they had heard of, thinking perhaps that is the way, here, with no claim to voodoo of their own.  

And it feels like a dozen voices are crying out, fighting against them as soon as they begin, Russian spells muttered as they pass their wand over the patch of concrete, hoping that the focus of the words in their mother tongue might drown out all the other sounds. The lighter patch of concrete glows, and pressure in their mind does as well, the voices turn to screams. Then suddenly, there’s silence. They stop, too, but they hesitate, a splitting headache behind their eyes, worried that they might not be in the clear.

“Should I… do you think we can open our eyes?” they ask tentatively. “Does it feel like it’s over to you, too?”

.

Eden starts speaking, a kind of chanting, in words Cypress doesn’t understand but knows much be Russian, and it’s all he can do to keep his hold on them, to keep them grounded and focused, to try to lend them some support, or even some small part of his own magical power as they attempt the spell. He watches, as the spot on the floor begins to glow with magic, and for a moment, he feels it too, the pressure in his head, the overwhelming noise of it all, like nothing he’s ever heard before, even in the worst of his own moments of hearing screams outside his own head.

And then it quiets. And Eden asks, if he thinks they can open their eyes. Everything looks the same, through the tattoo on their hand, but they won’t know until they try, and it’s better that he tries than Eden, just in case there’s something else there that neither of them has anticipated. 

     “Let me try,” he says, and it takes a moment to psych himself up enough to actually pry his eyes open, they’ve been shut so tight. 

And the room they’re standing in is... normal. The same ordinary little break room he’d seen with his eyes closed, sad looking couch, concrete floor, table and chairs. The shadows seem to be gone, and whatever Eden had been seeing before they’d closed their eyes and managed to cast their protective spell, there’s no sign of it, no shadows or people or anything of the sort. 

     “I think... I think it’s over, Eden,” he says, and he realizes suddenly that he’s whispering, which is strange, because it feels like only a moment ago he was shouting, and so were they, and now everything is so... quiet.