tavihargrave:
He can see the shift in Hadrian’s posture, just barely there, the kind of thing he might not have noticed two or three weeks ago, before he was so intimately acquainted with every movement of their body, so attuned to reading the changes in their expressions, searching out signs of comfort, signs of hesitation. He can see them freeze up, just a little, as he says it, and it isn’t a reaction he understands, not entirely, but they look a little bit like a prey animal caught in the gaze of its predator, the moment before it bolts—just for a moment, before he sees them swallow and compose themself as they start to answer, start to disagree with his suggestion.
He has no idea why, can’t suss it out just from watching them, can only hear the nervous note in their voice that means they’re serious when they say they don’t want to trust the local aurors even though, for all intents and purposes, that’s what the local aurors are there for, in this case, to pass on the information they need to they can hit the ground running. Nathan Tucker, from the notes that had come along with the case file, sounded a little high-strung, a little stressed out about the whole thing, but ultimately happy to help, relieved to have someone else on the case. But… he doesn’t want to push it, if they feel that strongly about it. If they know something he doesn’t. He has to believe they have a good reason for it, whatever that reason might be.
“Okay…” he answers, slowly, taking a second to put the words together, his mind already moving onto the next step, which is narrowing down which errand here is going to get them the most useful information in the limited time they probably have, if they can’t just get it all from Tucker having already done the work for them. “I mean, it’s ultimately your call, so that’s fine, if that’s what you think is best.”
He takes a second, looking back down at the case file, trying to squelch the frustrated feeling in his chest, the spike of fear that, without that, he’s not going to be able to do this in time to get this girl out of the game safely. He looks back at the list of persons of interest, at the notes on the steps Tucker had already taken towards solving this case before passing it upwards, trying to make sense of it all in a way that makes sense for them to approach things. As much information as they could get about the game quickly, and then he’d take a look at the tech and hope there was something obvious, or at least something that wouldn’t take him days to deal with….
“In that case, we should talk to Milla Phan. See if there was anything in the game that might give us a clue about why Isobella’s stuck in there?”
It feels like a worse suggestion than his first one, but it’s the best one they have left, the most efficient option in terms of the ratio of how long it will take to how much information they’re likely to get. Phan’s the only other known person who has ever been inside of Journey to Excalibur, and he hopes she remembers something that might help them out, might at least give them somewhere to start.
They feel foolish already, like the vapid and silly person who should never have become an auror in the first place. Little Hadrian Vernier, who thought too much about romance and liked their clothes just so, who only started this in the first place to catch a boy. People thought they would be too emotional for the job, not rational enough to make the right decisions when it had come down to it. And Hadrian had worked so hard to prove everybody wrong, to make sure that they went above and beyond what was expected of them. They did their job and they always did it well, and they always trusted the people who wanted to help them. They had always trusted people far too much. But Hadrian had learned the way that trust could be thrown back in their face, now. They had learned the way it could make things hurt all the more, the way it could cloud their judgement and lead them down the wrong path on a case. If they hadn’t blindly trusted a man in Nashville, things might have gone very differently. Eden wouldn’t have been hurt. They would have found Alina without making fools of themselves.
Hadrian understands that they fear in their chest now is an irrational thing, something that they ought to be fighting against, something that they shouldn’t let get the better of them. But it has. The damage has been done, and Hadrian is too scared to take this local auror at face value, to put all of their faith in to a man they’ve never known. They don’t think that there’s a cage here to be locked in at the end of the story, but they don’t have the bravery to wait and see.
They just hope that Tavi won’t find out what a fool they are. How stupid and how childish their request had been. Distantly, Hadrian knows its wrong to have disagreed with him on a case like this, where he was the expert and he was clearly worried about saving this girl in time. If they lost her because they were too busy gathering their own information, that would be Hadrian’s fault, and it could ruin everything. It could ruin a life, it could ruin whatever is growing here between them. God, they wanted so badly for Tavi to like them, for Tavi to cherish them in all the ways they’d dreamed. And they can see now that they’ve thrown him off, that he doesn’t understand their decision and he doesn’t feel good about the suggestion he offers next.
Change your mind, they tell themself. Say you’ll do it, say you’ll trust Nathan with the information he’d gathered himself. There are no cages in this story, but cages don’t always look like cages, and there are a hundred different ways this can go wrong, a hundred different things that Hadrian will be worried about the entire time if they let someone else take the lead on this.
So they don’t change their mind. They don’t take it back, even when they should.
“Yes,” They say, quick, grasping on to it. “Yes, that’s a good idea. She seems the most important to me.” And they still feel foolish, they wonder if Tavi can read their shame in their eyes, if he’s grown to know them well enough to see the way they’re faltering now. They cast their eyes around the room, wishing that they could see Eden and take some kind of comfort from someone who would understand why they’re being such a fool. But they don’t see them, so they look back to Tavi instead, already pushing away from their chair as they do. They hope that this will all go well, that they won’t have to disappoint the man in front of them, the man who already means too much in the grand scope of things. They shrug on their coat, and offer Tavi what they hope will be a comforting smile, but feels shakey even in their own mind.
“We’d better be quick about it, then.” They say, gathering their own file and shrinking it down so that it fits inside the pocket of their coat, gesturing toward the door with a slight incline of their head.
