#mostlymaudlin

My tea is halfway to my face when my nostrils start to burn. My stomach lurches as I whip my head round. Crowley, I never thought I’d smell that again; sulphur and smoke bitter in the back of my throat.

She’s magic. I knew she would be.

Simon has frozen, face set like stone, still holding the box of jaffa cakes out of her reach. The thin cardboard box is starting to buckle in his fist. He’s so still his breathing seems to have stalled. She’s building up to a full tantrum and hasn’t noticed her father’s silence just yet.

I put my mug down and snatch the ipad from the coffee table. She’s got her back to me so I vault over the back of the sofa and into the kitchen, vampire quick and silent. As casually as I can manage I hold the ipad out in front of her face. “Tasha, sweetheart, why don’t you take this to your room for a bit?”

“But Daddy! Jaffa cakes!” she whines.

“Now, please” I don’t often give out direct orders as a parent. It works, though and she huffs as she takes the ipad and stomps away towards her bedroom.

“Simon, breathe,” I say as soon as I hear Natasha’s bedroom door close. I take the squashed box of jaffa cakes from Simon’s hand and put them down on the kitchen table.

Simon sucks in an uneven breath then he turns around and leans over, retching into the kitchen sink. I rub his back while he rinses his mouth under the tap. When he turns to face me, leaning against the worktop, he’s crying.

“Baz...” he looks so lost. I pull him against me and hold him tight while he takes several more shuddering breaths.

“It’s ok, love. It’s going to be alright.”

“Jesus Baz, I thought she was going to go off,” he pulls back and looks up at me, face tear-stained. He looks like a frightened child again and it hurts my heart. More than a decade after all that “chosen one” mess he’s made leaps and bounds in terms of recovery but some scars run too deep to ever really be healed. It doesn’t happen much any more but that just makes it unpredictable; something totally innocuous can trigger a panic attack and it’s so hard on him. It makes him dwell on all the horrid things that happened to him, that were done to him, that he was made to do. I hate it, it makes me feel as helpless as he looks. It reminds me of the year after Watford, when things got so dark I wasn’t sure we’d ever find a way out. I just knew that I would keep following him regardless.

“Simon, darling, we knew she would be powerful. She’s your child.”

“She’s ours” he says, reflexively.

“Your know what I mean,” I say, waving a dismissive hand. Simon has always carried some guilt about our daughter not being biologically mine. He insisted on a surrogate who had a similar ethnic background to me and looked a bit like me. It didn’t matter; Natasha looks just like Simon and I never tell him but I’m chuffed. I love her gold hair and her freckled face as much as I love his. She got his DNA and my mother’s name, that was the deal. “She’s related to you, the most powerful mage to ever live, and your mum who was at least as powerful as Bunce.”

“My power was all artificial though. I’m a Normal now... I thought she might be a Normal too.” He’s got his head down, he’s speaking to his shoes.

I roll my eyes while he can’t see me. “How many times, Snow? You. Are not. A Normal. That power was yours. You had two very powerful magickal parents.” I don’t like to mention his thrice-damned father but there is no denying that he was a powerful magician.

Simon knows there’s no point re-treading this well-worn argument; with me or Bunce, we’ve been having it since well before Natasha was born. Even Shepard agrees with us.

“God, Baz, there was so much magic pouring off of her. How do- I mean- I can’t-”

“Breathe, Snow. What are you trying to say?” I ask as gently as I can. I had to learn to stop saying “use your words” after he told me about the counsellor at the care home. I feel sick just thinking about it.

He takes a deep breath, then another. He puts both hands in his hair and pulls at the curls. He starts again.

“What if she’s like me Baz? What if she goes off? What if whatever he did to me cursed my entire bloodline?” He means the bloody Mage. Simon spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the Mage meant when he said “I got you wrong... I can’t fix you” it wasn’t productive. 

“It should have been you Baz, she should have been yours.” That is a whole other can of worms I am not going to open right now.

He’s starting to cry again. “Shh love, it’s ok.” I pull him into me again. “She’s only six, kids leak magic all the time. They don’t know how to control it. She’s not going off” I hope. Circe, I really, really hope she’s not going off.

“We’re going to have to tell her,” he says into my shirt.

“We were always going to have to tell her before she went to Watford. We’ve got plenty of time yet,” Natasha knows about magic, obviously. She knows I’m magic. She knows her aunty Penny is magic because you actually can’t stop Bunce from spelling everything in sight. And when she was little her Grandma Ruth would make brightly coloured bubbles shoot out of her wand to make Tasha giggle.

But she doesn’t know about Simon. She doesn’t know who he was or what he did. She’s heard the name Simon Snow, of course, from her aunts and uncle, most of who are at Watford now; but she doesn’t know that’s Simon. He took on his mother’s family name before we got married and Natasha is a Salisbury-Pitch, to appease my father’s grumblings about the Pitch line dying out. It did seem to help a bit.

We are going to tell her, before she goes to Watford and learns whatever version they’re teaching in their history lessons. I think Simon was just hoping she wouldn’t have any magic so he wouldn’t have to tell her, but that was never going to work.

I hold Simon tight around his waist. He’s soft and warm; I slide my hands under his shirt just to feel the heat of him. He stands up straight, pulling away from me. “Your hands are cold!” He sniffs and wipes his eyes, laughing weakly. “I’m so scared Baz; I don’t know how to cope with a magickal kid.”

“You don’t have to; I can deal with the magic. You can deal with the baking and Barbie dolls. We’re raising her together, remember. We’re a team.”

He sniffs again and smiles. “Yeah, we are,” He reaches out and squeezes my hand, I squeeze back. He told me once, years ago, that he wanted to try and he really hasn’t stopped trying since. I’m so proud of him.

“I love you” I say quietly. He leans forward to kiss my cheek.

“Papa!” Natasha shouts from her bedroom.

“No jaffa cakes!” I whisper as Simon wipes his eyes again.

“Jaffa cakes now?” she calls down the hallway. Simon picks up the slightly crushed box from the table.