Winx Source

“You should be standing here, and me in the ground instead. They needed you. They don’t —” Need me, and though the thought is bitten back it does not make it any less true. The children they shaped but never claimed are grown, have moved ahead, moved on, mended the world they had broken in the blindness of their own youth. It feels as if only she stands here still, rooted, chained to a past she cannot let go, all of her meagre wisdom spent, all of her energy leached into the earth that has claimed so much that she never dared reach for.

She is bleeding. The wound inside will never heal, and she does not want it to. Not when it is all she has left.

The trees above her whisper, oak and birch and ash, leaves shivering in the breeze. If she closes her eyes she can imagine his voice mingling with their sounds, his presence a ghost in this place that had been the only home they had ever been theirs, prison and sanctuary all at once. It is her imagination — how can it not be, when she still holds one end of a broken tether — but that does not stop her from turning her face upwards, searching for something she knows she will not find.

He had been up one of those trees when they first met, a lanky shape in Specialist blacks clambering between branches, but she knows better than to expect him there now. It has been years since either of them had time for such things — if, in truth, she ever had.

I should have made time. Another admission she swallows down, releasing the stone as she steps back. The greens bleed into each other, fade into the grey of the sky, blunting, blurring even as she tries to blink away the moisture welling in her eyes. I should have told you to let me go, to be free — that I wasn’t worth this. That I needed you. That this isn’t enough.

And yet —

(“Ms. Dowling would have known what to do.”

“Farah isn’t here. We have to figure it out ourselves”)

But she had been. She’d heard — both what he said and what he meant. And she’d tried to protest, tried to push a denial across the shattered remnants of what had once been an unshakeable connection, but that had been an older magic, ancient and implacable, born of the stones and soil of this place and the blood he’d spilled to call her back, and it would not be thwarted. A life for a life, but what kind of a life had he won for her, when half of her self was gone?

(“Forgive me,” he had whispered, and the confession had been the first inhalation her restored lungs made. Her first exhalation, when she realised what had happened, had been a scream.)

“It should have been me,” she says again, rough and hollow, as her hands fall lax at her sides.

(How can she forgive him this?)

Bloom shot her a warning look over the box of her things she was carrying. “Mom. How many times are we going to have this conversation? I want to move in with the others. Enjoy a little independence away from your helicoptering for the first time in my life.”

“I resent that, young lady,” Farah shot back. “I am not a helicopter mom. I just want you to stay safe.”

“You can’t keep me sheltered from the world forever, you know. I have to grow up sometime.”

“Of course you do…I only wish it wasn’t for another decade yet.”

“Mom!”

“Alright,” the elder fairy conceded with a sigh as they entered the building. “Alright. I will respect your right for independence. Just as I’m sure you’ll respect that it is my right as headmistress to utilize the suite connected to my office so I’ll be nearby.”

Bloom groaned, head falling back, and shut her eyes. “Come on. It won’t kill you to stay at the cottage by yourself.”

“On the contrary, it most certainly will. If you’re staying directly on campus then so I am I. How else am I supposed to keep an eye on you?”

“You’re telling me the most powerful mind fairy in the Otherworld can’t do a little spyingfrom home?”

Farah shot her daughter a truly offended look, placing the boxes she was carrying down in the corridor, so she could turn on her, hands on her hips.  “I have never invaded your privacy like that, Bloom, and you well know it! Not since you were a baby and I was just trying to determine what was upsetting you!”

“Alright, yes, I know that,” Bloom sighed, glancing around them to make sure no one was watching. “Sorry. Just please don’t make a scene, alright?”

The blonde gave a little huff, picking up the boxes again and proceeding down the hall. “At least I will have the satisfaction of Terra being one of your suitemates.” Ben’s more level-headed daughter would hopefully be a grounding force for Bloom, just as he had always been the same for her and Saul.

“You say that as if it’s a coincidence and not of your own design…”

“Would you rather I have placed you with a group of complete strangers?”

“Some girls who don’t already know I’m your daughter would’ve been nice,” the teenager retorted sourly as they reached the suite. “The fact that everyone will find out eventually is bad enough.”

“It’s not the end of the world being the headmistress’ daughter, you know,” Farah protested, eyes shining briefly silver as she used her magic to open the door. “Not that you can expect me to grant you any special privileges.”

“You mean like the ones you offer to Stella?” Bloom asked innocently as she followed her mother inside, referencing another one of her suitemates.

She sighed. “Stella is the crown princess of Solaria; treating her like every other student is impossible…”

“Because it could cost you your job? Queen Luna’s the only one who can fire you, right?”