nessaa

The first detention went about as well as you could have hoped.

You sorted paperwork, mindlessly graded the very same pop quizzes that had nearly given Deuce an aneurism just that morning, and shined all the stupid glassware that was needed to make all the stupid potions. It was grueling. And to think—you’d been doing this shit for fun not a month ago. What had been wrong with you?

“Maybe it was the Stockholm Syndrome,” you muttered irritably under your breath.

“What?”

“Nothing, sir,” you grumbled, and went back to organizing all of your tormentor’s seemingly endless collection of bits and bobs.

Professor Crewel looked over at you, his face twisted up like he wanted to say something. But after a moment of awkward silence, he just ducked his head back down to his paperwork and carried on without saying a thing.

The next afternoon didn’t look like it was shaping up to be much better. You shined, he scribbled, and you wished for nothing more than the sweet release of death. The quiet was disconcerting. Say what you will about all the time you’d spent holed up in this office before The Incident, but ‘silence’ had never been an issue. Even Crewel’s snide little barbs would be better than this—this nothingness.

‘You’re not even worth insulting anymore,’ your brain supplied helpfully. ‘Wow. Isn’t that a trip?’

“Are you almost finished?”

You startled a bit. It was the first full sentence he’d spoken to you all day. You glanced pointedly from him, to the walls upon walls of vials, and then back.

“No, sir.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, like this entire situation was just all sorts of unpleasant for him. And not like, you know, he’d been the one to lock you into the school equivalent of prison labor for the next four weeks.

He closed the ledger he was working on with a pointed snap and stood from his chair with a grand swirl of his fur coat.

“You can be finished for the day,” he said, leaning forward to rifle around in the top drawer of his desk. “It’s already late, and you should start making your way back to your dorm before it gets too dark.”

You fought and won against the intense to desire to roll your eyes. The path back to Ramshackle was no easier to traverse in the black of night than it was in the bright light of the afternoon. And besides, it’s not like you were particularly worried about anything happening to you out there. The monsters at this school prowled its halls no matter the time of day. If anything, nighttime meant less potentially murderous magicians out on the loose. No one but you was stupid enough to try and go toe-to-toe with a wandering Tsunotarou.

“And take these with you.”

You startled once more as something was pressed into your hands. It was a familiar box—sleek and artfully colored with matte backgrounds and swirls of golden lettering etched across its face. These were the fancy cookies.

Thankfully, the spite in your belly was enough to gobble up whatever lingering love you had for the treats. Or at least, that’s what you told yourself when you passed them back to Professor Crewel with a tight smile.

“Thank you,” you said, pointedly reaching into your own backpack to procure a nearly wrapped pouch of Annie’s homemade pastries. “But I’m all set.”

His dark eyes lingered on your stash of chocolate chip cookies in a way that made you think he was going to demand you throw them away, and maybe start ranting hypocritically about the dangers of bringing food of any kind into an alchemical lab. His jaw ticked and you had the distinct impression that he was grinding his teeth.

Instead, Professor Crewel just sighed and returned the treats to his desk drawer.

“Of course,” he huffed, looking a bit dejected, and collapsed back into his chair without his usual elegance. Huh. Maybe you’d just foiled his plans to try and poison you or something. “Good evening, Prefect.”

The next afternoon, he did not mention the cookies. However, on your way out the door at the end of the night, you noticed that he’d placed the box near the coatrack—not quite on top of your belongings, but close enough.  

And then it was there again the night after that.

And then again, and again.

.

.

“How’s the internment going?”

You heard a dull thwack and some angry shushing. Mister Rogerson’s laughter was muffled through the phone’s speaker, and you had a feeling that Annie had just tried to beat him with her shoe.

“It’s alright,” you snickered into your hand. “Prison is prison.”

“You know,” Mister Rogerson huffed. “I still say all of this is horribly unfair.”

You shrugged, and then remembered he couldn’t very well see that through a phone call, and sighed. “It could be worse.”

“Could it?” he asked, a clear frown in his voice.

You dutifully did not mention anything about Overblots and just sighed again. “I mean, probably.”

There was a bit of a scuffle on the other end and you heard little snippets of Annie’s kind trill. There was more laughter. It sounded warm—cozy. You glanced around at the grey, soot-stained walls of Ramshackle and tried not to feel sorry for yourself. Grim rolled over in his sleep and burrowed into your hip with a contented little mewl, which did help a bit.

“Annie wants to know if you got her care package,” Mister Rogerson said after a moment, sounding a bit like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him. “And if you’ve thought at all about our offer to host you over the winter holidays.”

“I did, thank you,” you smiled. “It was all delicious.”

“And the break?” he asked after a moment.

“Crowley sent me some angry letter about taking care of the fairies that live in the kitchen stoves,” you said. “So I’ll have to see about that.”

“Just keep it in mind,” Mister Rogerson pressed, a bit of concern slipping into his otherwise laidback drawl. “Please?”

“Okay,” you smiled, feeling like you’d managed to steal a bit of that bubbly glow of theirs and tuck it away tight enough that even the chilly shadows of your new home wouldn’t be able to taint it. “I will.”

.

.

“Take care of the fairies in the boiler?”

“Yes,” said Crowley, with deadpan sincerity.

The other members of the staff looked on in silence—a lovely range of ‘fed up’ to ‘outright contempt’ twisting their faces.

“Well I thought it was an excellent idea,” he huffed, crossing his arms petulantly over his chest.

“No wonder this child hates you,” Trein hissed under his breath and worked his fingers into his temples like maybe if he drilled hard enough he could kill the Crowley-Induced-Migraine before it began.

The Old Crow gasped.

“How dare you—”

“And you,” Trein interrupted, turning on Crewel with a sneer. “What exactly are you trying to accomplish with any of this, Divus? An entire month’s worth of disciplinary action for one infarction? I thought you were better than, well,” a pointed glower at the raving Headmaster who was nearly collapsed in tears before them, “that.”

Crewel’s lips curled into a bitter snarl, but the aging historian before him was far from cowed.

“That’s none of your concern,” he snapped. “This is a matter between the Prefect and I, and their willful disobedience when it comes to following the rules of this institution.”

“Is that so,” Trein hummed, arching a brow in obvious skepticism. “But then again, what would I know anything about raising unruly children? I only have two lovely, successful, daughters of my own. Remind me, when was the last time you allotted even an ounce of affection to anything that wasn’t one of your purebred mongrels? Or your own ego?”

Crewel stepped forward with a scowl that was more a restrained baring of teeth.

“That has nothing to do with anything,” he sneered.

“Say what you will,” Mozus Trein tutted, and glared down his nose at the pair of them—Crewel with his poorly cloaked rage and Crowley who still refused to stop wailing about the injustices of it all. “But both of my children will be coming home for the holidays. Voluntarily.”

“Oooh,” Sam trilled, uncurling himself from the shadows for the first time all afternoon. “Get ‘em, Mozus.”

.

.

You ended up staying at Ramshackle over the break, if only because you couldn’t tell at this point if ‘oven fairies’ were a real thing, and if they were and they did starve, you’d feel absolutely terrible. Your rap sheet in this word was already a mile long—you didn’t need to add homicide to the list.

And then, of course, you ended up being kidnapped by Jamil and his smooth-talking self not a day in, so your act of goodwill really was all for naught.

You paced around your luxurious little guestroom cell, phone in hand. There wasn’t a lot of charge left on it, but you definitely had enough to make a call or two. Mister Rogerson would come help you, you knew he would. But… the problem was that you were kind of becoming a Blot expert at this point, and from the looks of things, Jamil Viper was about to go apeshit and melt into Enraged Ink Monster Number Four. Sure, the guy may have kidnapped you. But he also made great curry, and really didn’t seem that bad underneath it all. Just... quiet. And fed up with living a life of forced servitude and mediocrity. Which, y’know, totally fair.

You paced and paced.

“They have to be reported to the proper authorities,” Mister Rogerson had said. “And dealt with accordingly.”

“They’d be taken away?” you’d whispered.

“I know it sounds scary, kiddo. But that’s what we have to do to keep everyone as safe as we can.”

You grit your teeth and called Ace and Deuce instead.

They were immediately no help at all and Jamil ended up Overblotting anyways.

“Y’know,” Grim grouched, shivering into your side after Evil Jamil had yeeted you off into The Unknown and Freezing Corners of Sandy Hell. “You really should start charging for these things. We could probably make a lot of money or something.”

“That’s a great idea,” Azul nodded along, and you wanted to beat the shit out of them both.

In the end, you saved the day. As usual.

Jamil was de-inked. He was still a miserable wad of repressed hatred, but at least he was being open about it now. Everyone was alive. Azul promised to only bill you his usual rate for assistance rather than the holiday upcharge. Kalim held a feast, as per usual. And Ace and Deuce showed up at the tail end of it all, which was incredibly sweet of them and also on track with their usual brand of stupidity.

Everything had turned out great!

Except…

“How was your break?” Mister Rogerson asked. “We missed you over here!”

“It was great,” you lied, images of black tar running from narrowed eyes and the suffocating sensation of dark magic flooding your throat. “It was great.”

.

.

You walked into detention on Monday afternoon feeling like shit warmed over. And looking like it too, you would guess, seeing the way Crewel’s eyebrows shot all the way up his forehead.

You stayed silent throughout the whole thing, quietly sorting bottles and blends, and trying to keep your mind off the fact that you had very nearly died. Again. You could feel Crewel’s eyes on you throughout the entire ordeal, tracking you in a way that reminded you of someone watching a car crash that they just couldn’t quite force themselves to look away from.

“Prefect,” he called as your were half-way through shrugging on your coat at the end of the evening.

“Yes, sir?” you sighed, not even bothering to look up from the floor.

He was silent for one moment, two, three.

“…Get some rest tonight,” he ordered. It sounded like a cop out—like he’d wanted to say something else but hadn’t had the words for it.

You sighed again, bone deep and weary. “Yes, sir.”

.

.

You did not, in fact, rest that night. A horrible cocktail of nightmares tugged at your brain from dusk ‘til dawn, and you woke up feeling worse than you had when you’d gone to sleep.

You barely forced yourself to go to detention, and only because you knew it would only get worse if you tried to skip out. However, when the door to Crewel’s office creaked open, you were not met by a head of neatly dyed black-and-white hair, but a yowling mass of flying fur and limbs that immediately sent you sprawling to the floor.

Jasper and Badun yelped and cried in the ways that all excited dogs cry, and laved your face with so many kisses you couldn’t have counted them even if you tried. Your hands went into their soft scruffs on instinct, and you had to fight valiantly not to burst into tears.

There was a hand at your back then, urging you towards the comfy, plush, chair that you’d once called yours. You plopped gracelessly against the opulent cushions, and the pair of delighted dogs quickly bounded up to join you—squishing their too-large bodies into your lap and across the armrests. The duo buried their noses into your shoulder, your hip, any nook and cranny they could reach. And you felt warm for the first time since the holidays.

When you woke up later (hours? Days? You couldn’t tell), you and Jasper and Badun were all still bundled together in that chair—the three of you tucked in gently beneath the soft furs of a very familiar black and white coat.

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