#soulbartered

             “You’re Dorian Gray?” The voice of the woman came out a mix of starry and surprised. Neither was the tone she intended, but then again, those were not the words that she intended either. She had been sent to see how the wedding party had fared, according to Father Blackwood. And coming upon the address handed to her on a scrap of literature, she found the sight of the Gray Room almost... otherworldly. Perhaps it was. “I -- Hello. I apologize, I hadn’t meant to be rude. I--I’m Mary.”

@soulbartered​ | liked for Zelda Spellman

“Do you think, Mr Grey, that you could refrain from serving the students on a school night? If I have to listen to one more student complain about a hangover, I will show them there are worst things in life than a headache.” The witch muttered with a disapproving tut. Usually this kind of thing was just commonplace among the students, but the students couldn’t seem to handle their liquor like they could back in Zelda’s day. “I’ll take a gin while i’m here.”

She  was back,  though.  She was  there,  she was  alive,  she was  fine.  And suddenly,  he  was  himself  too. The  world  not  sinking  underneath the  cold  water. The  air  not toxins  burning  him from  the  inside. His  mind  far from  numb,  far from  helpless.  Feelings more  than  just grief.  Relief,  happiness, freedom  but  also shame,  guilt,  remorse. For  he  might have  locked  himself   away into  the  abysses of alcohol  and  numbness,   he  was  in  the  real world  now,  though. And  the  real world  was  full of  his  mistakes. It  was  not just  Sabrina  he’d failed.  It  was not  just  his slowness  leading  her to  death.  It’d been  also  his inane  decisions  destroying the  life  of another  as  well.   Dorian.  The  person he’d  gone  and cried  to  more than  once  in his  life.  The person  he’d  turned to  every  time  his  romance was  ravaged.  The  person that’d  paid  for his  decisions  and then  was  ignored  for the  sake  of  egoism.

❝ Good  to  see you  didn’t  close the  place. ❞  Casual  words concealing  the  hesitancy of  his  decision --  his  late appearance,  and  the yet  unspoken  apology --.   ❝ I… I  wanted  to talk  to  you. ❞  

@soulbartered​ | liked for a Charlie starter!

The witch was sat at the bar, the Grey Room mostly dead as per the norm for weekends when most students go home to their families. Save, the patron of the bar Dorian and some of the teachers and orphans. “Do you like working behind the bar Dorian?” she finally found herself asking as fingertips played with the rim of her glass.