Timestamp: June 25th, Afternoon.

MATEO

After the night of the proms, having Gabriel teetering on the edge, having had Isabel and Naomi in the middle of a fire, and Elena getting hurt, Mateo could only think one thing; he needed to talk to his master. He couldn’t though, not when Gabriel was in the hospital and he just wanted to be there for his friends. Mateo had made sure his master had gotten the message that he wouldn’t be coming, apologizing profusely, and with the promise that he would make it up to him no matter what it took.

Because he was tired. He was so, excuse the language, fucking tired of not being good enough. Of having to sit next to the people he loved while they were miserable and suffering because something happened that he could have prevented. That giant chandler had crashed down on Gabe and Mateo could only watch before the lights went dark. Elena had gotten hurt, Isa and Naomi had been in danger, too, and Mateo-. Well, Mateo had done nothing to help.

All he could do was hold onto them, and pace around the waiting room while they waited for any news on Gabriel. All he could do was cry silently because Elena had already been through enough, Isa had already been through enough, Naomi had already been through enough, he didn’t want them thinking they had to comfort him, too, on top of taking care of one another and themselves.

He was done. Done with being a terrible sorcerer who couldn’t perform a levitation spell for longer than ten seconds without something falling on his head and giving him a concussion. And he was done with not being able to do anything of use. No more, he vowed on the walk over to Arawn’s. He was done with the beginners stuff, he had already gone through that with Alacazar, and even with himself trying to back track in order to teach himself.

He knocked on the front door with the appropriate knock, which at the time Mateo had been super excited about because how cool was that, but now all he could feel was burning frustration and overwhelming sorrow.

ARAWN

He had gotten Mateo’s message about not arriving for their lesson because someone close to him had gotten hurt. Upon listening to the boy speak, blubbering and almost not understandable, he had rolled his eyes. Weak to be caring for someone that death could touch so easily.

It was why Arawn had gotten rid of anyone like that to him. First his master, then he waited for his parents to take their leave of this plane, and, well, anyone else he didn’t wait for. If he was so willing to put his lessons on hold for someone else then Arawn still had work to do.

But it was also a good thing, because at the end of the message he heard the tone in Mateo’s voice. The utter defeat. It was delicious, it had practically made this whole thing worth it.  

The smile had not left his face for the remainder of the time between the message and Mateo arriving to make up the lesson for that day.

Approaching the door at their knock, he schooled himself into a sympathetic demeanor. This boy had lost a friend after all, and he was supposed to be the mentor figure who was there for his student when he needed him most. He took in a final breath, ready to find a shell of the boy he had been having do chores around the house and town for him, but when he opened the door he found something he did not expect.

There was residual anger sitting hot and heavy in the boy.

Oh, how delightful.

He quickly looked up into the boy’s eyes.

“Mateo.” He placed a hand on Mateo’s shoulder and pulling him inside with a concerned expression on his face, “I thought I told you to stay home today. It’s too soon for you to get back into things.”

MATEO

When the door opened he straightened up, trying to look presentable in front of his master. As soon as the other man said his name and touched his shoulder Mateo deflated all over again. So easily broken under the touch of someone who cared about him. That was probably another thing about himself that he needed to change, being so open and emotional. It caused more problems than not. Like right now, when he wanted to be strong and ready to learn, he crumbled under Arawn’s touch.

“I,” he sighed at the sound of his voice, then cleared his throat. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m not interrupting anything am I?”

Suddenly he felt very self conscious, looking around the entry way for any signs of someone else being there. He knew Arawn was a busy man, that he didn’t have any right to be barging into his house pretty much unannounced. Then he looked to his master with wide eyes.

 ARAWN

The worry that welled up in the boy was rather interesting. Always thinking about others, wasn’t he? It’s why he was so easily exploited. Thinking about people before he thought about himself. 

That’s why he was doomed to fail. He would put everyone else before his studies, his magic, himself. Arawn was sure that if asked he would put his life on the line for someone he cared for.

He barely caught his smile from pulling at his lips at that thought.

Arawn released his hold on Mateo in order to shut the door behind them and lead the way to his workshop, opening the door to the room. There the sun was setting and the light that came through the windows was tinted more orange than the warmed yellow.

“No, luckily I wasn’t busy, but you should think next time you come over like this, Mateo, I can’t simply put my life on hold for you, you know.” He sighed, as if it were a chore to scold him like this and not like he was taking pleasure in it.

“But you’re here now, so there’s no reason to linger around that subject,” he continued on waving his hand in the air to dismiss it before Mateo could counter or apologize again. “Tell me, why are you here and not with your friend?”

 MATEO

Mateo followed Arawn into the familiar workshop, closing the door behind himself. He nodded, relieved at first to hear he hadn’t troubled his master, but then Arawn continued and Mateo felt his heart sink. He was still a selfish kid, wasn’t he? Always asking people to put him first, his needs first, what he wanted first, never thinking about his actions before he did them. Gosh, he was so stupid! It wouldn’t have been hard to wait to come when Arawn had told him to, or call ahead to ask if it would be okay for Mateo to come then.

But he hadn’t done either of those things, and the guilt would sit with him. He continued into the room, his head hanging so his eyes were trained on the ground, resembling the demeanor of a dog that had just been kicked, though, Arawn really hadn’t said anything mean. It was the truth.

“Well, I was...I was thinking,” Mateo started, his hands coming together to meet in the middle at his chest to pull at one another’s fingers. He just needed to say it, he just...just had to tell him! That’s all that was stopping him at this point. Himself. That’s it, once he could get past himself everything else would fall into place. Arawn had said that, too, after all.

God, Mateo! Just say it!

“I’m tired!” he blurted suddenly, head snapping up, eyes closed, hands turning into fists. And, oh no, here came the word vomit, “I’m tired of not being enough anymore! I want to be able to do magic! I want to be like my grandfather, and I want to be like you! I want to be able to pull ingredients from people whenever I see them, and I want to be able to use my Tamboritas like they’re supposed to be used!”

He started pacing then, arms wiggling around in the air, “I’m so sick of being like this, Arawn! I want to be somebody people can count on! I’m tired of having to sit around and watch as terrible things happen to good people because I’m not good enough. I want to be worthy of being my grandfather’s blood!”

Mateo stopped and turned to look at his master, still looking like the pitiful excuse for a sorcerer he was. His shoulders had fallen, his eyebrows were screwed up in misery. Mateo let his hands go limp by his sides.

“Please, help me,” he said quietly. “I can do more than this I just...I know I can. Please show me how.”

 ARAWN

He had stayed silent throughout Mateo’s little outburst, watching the fireworks shoot off of him in bursts of self hatred, anger, disappointment, shame. It was a lovely display. The words were a little lackluster but he made up for it in the way his face contorted into such a pitiful expression.

Arawn had never felt more pleased with himself in picking this child up off the street. Yes his house was spotless and his cabinets filled with the ingredients he needed thanks to Mateo, but this! Oh, this was more than he could have ever asked for.

The devotion, the want, the desperate need that Mateo was showing here was absolutely glorious. 

He kept his expression neutral for the moment, as if he was thinking about it instead of celebrating. Had he known he could get this reaction from Mateo from one of his friends getting hurt he would have killed off someone sooner.

“Mateo,” he sighed, stepping forwards and shaking his head. It was too easy, wasn’t it? He needed to make the boy work for it, see if he had it in him. And if he begged, that was just an added bonus. 

“Like I told you, you’re far too distraught to be here. I know you’re hurting right now, and that’s perfectly reasonable, but there’s no need to think of yourself like this. What happened wasn’t your fault was it? There was nothing you could have done, surely, otherwise you would have done it and your friends, and anyone else, wouldn’t have been hurt.”

 MATEO

“No,” Mateo tried to say, his voice airy as his lungs started to ask for more. He sucked in a breath and shook his head.

“No!” he said more forcefully, swiping his hand across the air. “That’s just it! I can’t do anything but I...I want to. I know I could if someone would just give me the tools I needed. I’m ready. I’m- I’m ready for this.I know I wasn’t ready before, but I am now!”

And he was. He really was. He didn’t want to see anything else happen to his friends, he was ready to be the sorcerer who could help Elena figure out the Scepter of Light and he was ready to be the sorcerer people could look towards for answers.

Mateo de Alva, grandson of Alacazar de Alva, was supposed to be the Royal Sorcerer of Avalor.

As of right now he was just some kid who had not only failed in his task in keeping the princesses safe when their Royal Guard had been ordered to leave, but a failure at the only thing he was good for. Magic. He wasn’t a sorcerer, he was a disappointment to the name. He didn’t want to be anymore. He wanted to be someone his friends could count on for help. He wanted to be someone his grandfather would have been proud of to leave his title to.

“Please, Arawn,” he said, stepping closer to his master, his desperation sinking his voice. “I’ll do anything.”

ARAWN

I’ll do anything.

He could feel the boy’s desperate pleads from where he stood. So pathetic, so helpless, who was Arawn to deny him? To those like he and Mateo, who possessed it at its rawest form, magic should not be oppressed. 

All over the world people were being hunted, sold, and thrown away just because they were better than those who dared to do those things. Because they did not understand, because they were weak minded.

He had once thought Mateo to be weak minded, sitting there through each lesson with a stupid grin on his face while Arawn insulted him. But finally his true colors were revealed, as everyone’s were when they had finally broken open.

Because their came a time in everyone’s life where they would have to choose, either to stay in their ways and be satisfied living in the mud and rot away among the foul stench of those doomed to fail or they would find their footing and move to the river to cleansed of their weaknesses.

“Mateo,” Arawn said, his voice clear and sturdy among all the soft whispers and crackling yells the boy had been spouting. “You have more power than I believe yourself to know. I have told you before that it is only you that is holding yourself back. Tell me, boy, what is it you are so afraid of? Why will you not allow yourself to be the sorcerer you are asking me to make you?”

 MATEO

He looked towards the ground, needing to focus on the words Arawn was saying instead of his face or the fantastic room around them.

The answer was there. It had always been there. Ever since the assassination of the King and Queen, since his grandfather had died at the hands of magic, ever since that evil sorceress had taken his home from him. It had turned up in a dream, and it had been left in his nightmares.

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Mateo said, looking up into Arawn’s eyes.

So many had fallen victim to want, to greed, to pride. It was all for the sake of humanity but Mateo couldn’t imagine them really believing such a thing. It was all due to selfish desire, cloaked in the mask of ‘for the greater good.’ He had lived through a life where he had walked that road, following an order that had made him kill. It had been fake, but he had still felt every moment of it. He had lived a life in the span of a night, and had woken up hating that he didn’t have the power he had been able to control within it.

“I love magic,” he continued, smiling sadly as he gestured around them. He reached behind him, pulling on the handle of the Tamborita that stuck out of his bag to hold it out in front of him. Mateo smiled down at it, “Ever since I can remember it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do and I’ve only ever wanted to be a sorcerer but-.”

He swallowed, finding his way back to Arawn, knowing he had promised to not keep things from him when asked. “But I don’t want it to make me into someone I’m not.”

ARAWN

Perhaps Mateo was not weak minded but his heart was still soft.

He regarded the apprentice in the fading light of the sun, the power pulsing just below the surface, waiting to be let free. It was being kept so heavily guarded by all of these fears. Dangerous for someone with that amount of residual power, both from being born from his bloodline and from the amount of time it had spent being locked away over the years, to be walking around in such an emotional state.

“I understand.” Arawn sighed. “Well, if that is the case then I’m afraid I cannot help you.”

He turned away from Mateo then, moving across the room to busy himself with other things.

MATEO

A hopeless, “No,” came from Mateo as he let out a breath, watching Arawn turn his back on him. They had only been apart of one another’s lives for a short amount of time now, but that didn’t change the fact that Arawn had been the only one willing to teach him in years.

No one in Avalor had wanted to take on the task and they hadn’t settled down somewhere for two years in order to be able to have someone teach him. Finally they had and finally someone had decided it would be worth it to take him on. He wasn’t going to lose that, not now.

“Please,” he said, taking a hard step after him. “Please! I’ll do anything! I can’t do this anymore, you have to understand! It’s miserable, and I can’t do this all by myself. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. I need your help. Please, tell me what I can do to change your mind.”

 ARAWN

Those words were like music to his ears. He was more than willing to get Mateo’s powers up to where they should be at his age, but he wanted to milk this. If he could push the boy’s desperation past the point of no return then there was nothing that would be holding either of them back.

He turned round to face him, pinning Mateo down with a glare for a moment until he fell silent.

“I’m not here to play games, Mateo, I told you that from the start,” he snapped. He needed to be authoritative and clear, no matter how funny this whole situation was to him. Ridiculously dramatic all because he needed Mateo to eat from the palm of his hands now. The time for caution and wariness would need to be behind them.

He needed the full trust and loyalty now, and if not then he didn’t want the idiot around at all.

“Do you hear yourself when you speak? Or think about your words?” Arawn scoffed and rolled his eyes. “What you’re asking of me is an oxymoron. There can be no success without failure.”

Another step closer. His eyes turned harsh to match his tone, “You are a failure. And you will always be a failure. You fear it so much, and because of that you’ve let it become who you are. You wish to know what you can do in order to change my mind? To become a sorcerer?”

  MATEO

He really admired Arawn’s ability to tell it like it was. There was never any lies, or a layer of sugar over the truth to make it go down easier. He was always brutally honest. It hurt but Mateo knew it was necessary. It was the only way he was going to get his point across to Mateo, who would otherwise probably not get what he was saying at first.

Here there was no mistake. He knew that Arawn thought so little of him, but was still willing to help. He was right, too. Mateo was afraid to fail because every time he had in the past bad things would happen, and he was in such a position that he shouldn’t be failing anymore. He should know the ins and outs of magic more so than anyone in Avalor.

Mateo held his ground as Arawn stepped forwards, but bent under his stare. His head lowered and shoulders fell forwards. He was a failure. He was right. The only person that had been holding him back was himself, because he was too scared at not being good enough when that’s exactly what he had been this whole entire time.

He swallowed, looking up at the questions his master was asking him. Mateo nodded enthusiastically, sniffling and wiping at his nose with his sleeve.

“Yes,” he answered too quickly. “Yes!”

 ARAWN

“Stop caring. Stop thinking so much about other people. They don’t give a damn about whether or not you become a sorcerer. It is up to you to get better.”

He thought back on himself. On a young boy who slaved over books and lessons, trying to understand what it was he was doing wrong. Arawn had worked harder than any other apprentice he had known trying to please his master, his family, his friends. There had been no one, and never would be, anyone more worthy of the title of Sorcerer than Arawn Prydain.

Yet he couldn’t even pull a single memory from anyone. He couldn’t get a spell to combine. Nothing worked.

“Magic will change you, there’s no getting around that.”

Not until he took it upon himself to become what he was today. He had done that, all on his own. No master, no friends. No one. Just him.

“I can get you there, I can teach you what you need to know,” he continued. “But I can’t do that until I know that there’s nothing holding you back.”

 MATEO

His first thought went to his friends which led him to remembering Gabriel in the hospital. To Elena bleeding in a basement in Germany. To Avalor having to sit in the palm of a tyrant while its people suffered.

He didn’t want to not think about them, it felt wrong to solely think about himself in a time like this but...but Arawn was right. Mateo hadn’t gotten any better with the weight of his failures sitting on his shoulders, just sinking further and further down. He had thought it would be good motivation to get better, that if he thought about all the things he had done wrong that he would get better in an effort to try to avoid them when he was a great sorcerer. Wise, strong, powerful. All the things his grandfather had been, and maybe a little bit more. If possible.

What Arawn was saying, it seemed like that’s exactly what he wanted for Mateo, too. Only he couldn’t worry about what other people thought about him anymore, and he couldn’t worry about the things his magic would do if it went wrong, either. He couldn’t look at failure as something to be scared of anymore. Mateo needed to become something better if he was ever going to be able to fill the robes that had been left for him and protect the people he cared about. That was the only motivator he needed.

“I understand,” he said finally. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”

 ARAWN

Arawn had watched the whole thought process pass over the boy’s face. He wasn’t awfully hard to read, his expressions always gave him away. It was cute. Innocent.

It would have to go, too.

Finally, though, he could see the acceptance release the worry lines and knew he had won. Lovely. This was going to be easy.

“Good. Then I must warn you that some of my methods are not the most widely accepted. But I can assure you, Mateo, that I am here for your benefit. I would never do anything to misplace your trust, and would hope that you would do the same for me,” Arawn said. “I will teach you my specialty under the circumstance that you are willing to listen and learn. My word is final and if you fail to follow my instructions, there will be consequences.”

He held out a hand between them, never letting his stare waiver from Mateo’s.

“Do we have a deal?”

 MATEO

Was that even a question? A bright grin appeared on Mateo’s face for the first time since he had arrived. Since even before he had arrived. He was just so relieved and happy and excited to finally be taking this step in his life! There was nothing that was going to keep him from becoming someone that his friends would benefit from being around, that his country would be happy to have under the title of Court Sorcerer.

The terms were fair. Who was Mateo to say that Arawn was wrong? He was the apprentice. And, as Arawn said himself, he was there to help Mateo. There was no reason to doubt that. All Arawn had done was teach him and help him, and now he was going to bring him up to a level that he should have been at years ago. The word, finally, kept running through his mind.

He grabbed Arawn’s hand and shook his animatedly, nodding and laughing, and only crying a little tiny bit.