#hackle

| Inspired by a painting 'Samson and Delilah' by Jan Lievens

Hecate sits on Ada’s floral-patterned coverlet, watching her wife as she sleeps.  Ada looks older in sleep than in waking, or perhaps she’s just looked older in general since Agatha vanished herself – the lines at the corners of her mouth are very plain in the dim moonlight, and Hecate thinks she can still make out traces of tear tracks on her cheeks, remnants of tears Ada wouldn’t let herself shed when anyone but Hecate was around. Her silver hair is mussed against her pillow; very, very gently, Hecate guides an errant lock of hair off Ada’s temple, tucking it behind her ear.  In the stillness, the slight ticking of Ada’s bedside clock sounds very loud.  Hecate presses a kiss to Ada’s forehead.  Ada sleeps on. 

“I thought I’d lost you,” Hecate whispers. 

Ada doesn’t stir. 

Hecate speaks just a little bit louder.  “I thought you were gone.”

Ada sighs a bit in her sleep, nestling into her pillow.

“I knew it was Agatha,” Hecate tells her sleeping wife in hushed tones.  “I didn’t want to know, but I knew. From the moment she came back with that nonsense story about a protection spell that ‘had taken a while to kick in’ – and then when she said ‘or my name is not Ada Cackle’ – but I still pinned that hideous brooch on, I still tried to convince myself it could be you, because I couldn’t face life without you.  I still feel if I’d done more, if I’d been more skilled, maybe the whole thing could have been avoided.  I could have gotten you back and no one would have had to be vanished.  I know you’re grieving Agatha.  I blame myself.”

Ada’s lips appear to purse a little in her sleep. Hecate watches her more sharply for a moment, but gradually her mouth relaxes again, and her expression is peaceful. 

“I tried to give up my magic to save you,” Hecate says suddenly. 

The faintest of lines appears to crease Ada’s brow for a second, but when Hecate looks more closely she concludes it was a trick of the moonlight, because Ada’s expression is as tranquil as ever.

“I did it knowing you'd hate my having done it if it did work and you came back.  I don't even know if you'd want me that way, without magic, relegated to the ordinary world. The life we've known together would be gone, that's for certain. Perhaps the person you married would be gone – without my powers, I hardly know who I'd be. But I'd sooner a life without magic than a life without you. And yet… it didn't work.”

Hecate knows that she’s imagining the faintly accusing tone of the silence now.  She knows she is imagining it.  And yet. 

“It didn’t work!” she says suddenly, heatedly. Ada twitches a little on the bed, but Hecate’s not looking at her now – she’s looking off into the distance, seeing scenes a few days old, scenes that seem to have a grayscale tint in her mind, as though Ada had taken the color of the world with her when she’d gone. “You needed a reversal potion and I had to let Mr. Daisy make it with his damned machine.  I brought to bear every iota of skill and power I have ever had, and I failed.  I couldn’t rescue you, and everything that followed on happened because of me. I was useless to you, Ada.  Absolutely useless.  And I don’t know how you can forgive me for it.  I can’t forgive myself.”  Hecate swipes tears off her face in a hard, impatient gesture. “I’m sorry.” 

Ada is motionless, calm. Hecate’s hand steals across the bed, enfolding Ada’s fingers in her own. Gradually her tears begin to slow as she focuses on the soft feeling of Ada’s hand against her own, the bones of Ada’s fingers feeling very delicate and fragile under wrinkled skin. Eventually, once she’s cried herself out, she sighs and makes a gesture towards her own body, and her stiff, constricting black dress has vanished, replaced with a slightly less-stiff leather dressing gown.  Her hair, formerly braided into a tight bun, cascades down her back in unheeded waves.  She stands up, turns the covers back on her side of the bed, and gets in, curling her body around so that Ada is the little spoon. She stretches an arm around Ada’s waist, taking her hand once more, and begins to drift off, comforted by the slow, regular sound of Ada’s breathing, the warmth of her body, the familiar scent of her. 

Wrapped in Hecate’s embrace, Ada lies with eyes closed, thinking.  She knows how hard it is for Hecate to speak of her emotions, knows she’d never have said a word of any of that if she’d known Ada was awake and listening.  She’s profoundly shocked by some of what Hecate said – trying to sacrifice her own magic to bring Ada back! – and profoundly moved by all of it. It’s more than time, she thinks, to think of some way to reassure Hecate that she bears no responsibility whatsoever for what Agatha did or what happened to her – but she knows that if she tried to break her silence in this moment, if she let on that she was not asleep, Hecate wouldn’t feel reassured, she’d feel humiliated, shamed.   It’s up to Ada to find a way to convince her brilliant, beautiful, heartbreakingly vulnerable wife that she is exactly who Ada needs her to be.

Grasping Hecate’s hand a little tighter, Ada musters up a flow of wordless, formless magic, love in its deepest and most inchoate form, and passes it on to a now-sleeping Hecate, hoping it will comfort. Tomorrow she’ll find a way to get through to Hecate, without giving any sign that she heard any of Hecate’s nighttime musings. Tomorrow she’ll continue to mourn Agatha.  Tomorrow they’ll find a way to keep going, the two of them.