Back & Blessed

I don't know the details yet but I need to put one or both of them in a situation with Mugwort because it's a plant known as "witch's herb" for a reason...plus is extremely allergenic when in bloom, and extremely sternutatory when in its dried/powdered form.

R/io being allergic to cats and Agatha guffawing: "what kind of a witch are you, anyway?"

R/io always sneezing in multiples and Agatha, on more than one occasion getting annoyed [because she keeps getting interrupted? is distracted? turned on?] and snapping: "can't you just... consolidate all of....that?" -> cue R/io finding a way to prolong things (eg. intentionally stifling because doing so only multiplies Things) PURELY out of spite

R/io will often bless A/gatha just before she sneezes -- often before A/gatha is even aware she has to sneeze -- leading A/gatha to wonder if this is some kind of a prophetic blessing (so to speak) phenomenon or if R/io is somehow causing this to happen for her own pleasure -- because she does not/cannot believe for one second R/io "could just tell." (they argue about this often)

Does A/gatha ever attempt to cover a sneeze? That depends: does lifting one hand up halfway towards her face without appearing to know where it means to go and occasionally sneezing towards/at it~ count? if so, then yes. sure. let's go with that.

A/gatha being allergic, or at least uhhhh ~sensitive~ to things with purple flowers, R/io pointing this out, A/gatha vehemently denying it. R/io smirking, manifesting a sprig of lavender and saying "...care to prove me wrong?" maybe they fight about it later. maybe they fuck about it. who am i to say.

R/io seems like someone who would have a paradoxical reaction to cold medicine and instead of getting drowsy would stay up all night and annoy the hell out of Agatha -> see also: modern/Domestic!AU in A/gatha wakes up at 1am to find her rearranging the pantry and gets her back to bed with considerable protest, only to wake up at 3am to find R/io outside, watering the garden while shivering and entirely unaware of how cold it is outside and how much worse she's probably made herself

Despite her back-to-back infections, she refused to cancel her lectures, determined to make tenure to prove to her aristocratic old money-family that her decision to go into the academic field hadn’t been a waste of time… but to make tenure she couldn’t be seen as more frail and weak than she was already perceived among the old guard of tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking men that made up 99% of the faculty.

Today she was battling yet another cold, heavy, thick congestion had settled deep within her sinuses where the pressure indicated that she would soon have to make yet another trip to the doctor for yet another round of antibiotics. And even though her sinuses were bricked up with congestion, her poor irritated nose was streaming at the same time. The persistent trickle of liquid kept making her nose tingle, and she could try to fight the urge to sneeze, but the physical reflex would always win in the end. Willpower alone didn’t stand a chance against her physiological collapse.

Right now she was fighting for her life – or at least her academic pride – in front of seventy students who were there to learn about Victorian literature and not about her talent for turning the smallest virus into a buffet of cold symptoms, but unfortunately got both.

“...which betrays the ultimate tragic irony of the Victorian elite… snrfff… their obsession with preservation is precisely what accelerates their d-decay... heh… excuse me one moment…”

She reached into the pockets of her blazer, frantically looking for a fresh tissue, but all she found were used and crumpled ones. The prickle in her nose intensified and eventually she had to settle for one of the used ones, bringing it up to her nose and mouth just in time to at least save herself the embarrassment of getting mess everywhere.

“Haah-AATSSCHH! AATSSCHH! Excuuhh… HAA-ATSSCHHuh! Excuse me.”

She immediately blew her nose, only too aware of her body’s little quirks. If she didn’t blow her nose, she would usually just keep sneezing in one prolonged fit. It was ridiculous, but at least that particular quirk was something she was used to. It appeared to have been hardwired into her early on, while her proclivity for catching everything that came her way had only lasted a few years. She kept hoping it would end as suddenly as it began, but so far it kept happening.

The sneezes hurt her already sore throat and she blinked away tears of pain when she heard a loud whisper – the kind of whisper that aimed to be heard – from one of the rows in the back.

“And there she goes! Professor ATSCHfield delivers again!”

Giggles followed this remark, and she felt her cheeks heat up from more than the developing fever, but something inside of her had had enough. She stared down the student in the back, and though her voice was raspy and thick, it held a core of the ice that would become legendary later in her career.

“If you gentlemen in the back find human physiology more intellectually stimulating than Dickens’ prose, I suggest you transfer to the medical faculty. If not, I expect your full attention on the subject matter of this lecture. Do I make myself clear?”

The students in the back nodded without looking at her.

“Yes, Professor Ashfield.”

She knew, though. Once that nickname had been spoken aloud, it would take hold, just as certain as every virus she inhaled took hold in her sensitive mucus membranes. Most teachers got nicknames eventually. She’d just hoped hers would be a little bit more dignified.

At least it’s not ‘Professor Sneezy’, she thought tiredly and reached into her pocket again, pulling another crumpled, unpleasantly soggy tissue from its depths. She proceeded to turn towards the chalkboard and blow her nose.

Or even worse, ‘Professor Snotnose’, she thought and shook her head a little as she felt the tissue flood with the overly generous contents of her inflamed nose. Good God, I’m a repulsive mess. It’s a wonder no one has walked out of my lectures in protest of the biohazardous environment yet.

Still holding the tissue to her nose with one hand, as she felt another sneeze beginning to prickle itself into existence deep within, she reached for the chalk with her other hand. She wrote three words in her elegant handwriting and underlined it twice.

Preservation = stagnation = decay

She put the chalk down, but she still didn’t turn back to face the class. She was definitely going to sneeze again, and she’d rather get that over with first. She was getting quite tired of having an audience for every moment her body decided to betray her.

She took a shaky breath, closed her eyes and stopped fighting the sneeze; it was coming no matter what she did. Her head bobbed forward as she sneezed again into the damp Kleenex.

“Uuh-AAATTSCCHHH!”

She blew her nose once more, tired beyond words, dabbed at her chafed pink nostrils, waited another couple of seconds to make sure there wasn’t another sneeze coming, and when she was reasonably sure there wasn’t, turned back to the class. This time she didn’t bother apologising, she just went right back to the lecture, tissue crumpled up in her hand.

“What happens is that the elite’s armour becomes its own coffin.”

She paused briefly, waiting to see if any of the students would be cocky enough to make a snide comment about her frail health and a coffin, but no one said a word.

Good.

She quickly glanced at her wristwatch and was relieved to see that she only had to muddle through this lecture for another ten minutes. Then she could finally go home, have some soup, and take a hot shower. Maybe it would clear out her sinuses so she’d be able to breathe through her nose for a few hours. That would be nice for a change.

Ten more minutes. She could do ten more minutes. No problem.

But she had barely finished the thought when the urge to sneeze hit her so suddenly there was no time to even un-crumple the tissue in her hand, she just pressed her half-fist with the tissue inside against her mouth and nose and bent over at the waist, practically exploding into the well-used ball of paper.

“HaaATSSCHH! HATSCHHOO!”

She sneezed so hard several blonde strands came loose from her French twist, and then she started coughing, a raspy cough that wasn’t quite painful yet, but she knew from experience that her lungs would soon feel like she was breathing through two bruises inside her chest.

“It’s like being taught by an actual Victorian, pale, feverish and ailed by consumption,” a student in the first row mumbled.

“Miss Wallace?” Clarissa said, her tone calm but her voice husky and on the verge of giving out. The student swallowed and looked up at her.

“Y-yes, Professor Ashfield.”

“I can assure you, what ‘ails’ me today is a cold, not consumption.”

“I’m sorry professor, I… I didn’t mean…”

But Clarissa was unable to listen; the sickly professor had already turned away to spray yet another sneeze into her used, crumpled, sad tissue.  

“Hah-ATSSSCHHoo! Oh my God… excuse me.”

Clarissa blew her nose again and dropped the now disintegrating tissue in the bin. Annoyingly enough she still felt that prickly, almost fluttery sensation in her left nostril, and she just knew this cold was nowhere near done humiliating her in front of her students.

“That’s all for today,” she sniffled, suddenly feeling unable to push through the last few minutes of this lecture-turned-public humiliation. “Next week we’ll discuss how Dickens’ way of portraying women reveals the Victorian man’s greatest fear.”

The students began packing up their stuff and heading out. Clarissa waited until they had all left the lecture hall, then she leaned her hot forehead against the cool chalkboard and closed her eyes for a moment.

It’s just a cold. Just a garden variety, run-of-the-mill head cold. I’ll just rest up over the weekend and I’ll be fine on Monday.

With the pounding sinus ache growing steadily behind her cheekbones, she didn’t really believe it herself. And even if it was true, who knew what the next thing would be to knock her off her feet? Another cold? A stomach bug? Flu? Mono? Last semester she’d somehow managed to get chickenpox, a childhood illness! Wasn’t she too damn old to get childhood illnesses?

Clarissa sighed deeply, and then she started coughing again.

A modern woman with a Victorian-style constitution. That was what she was.