Chapter Text
It's been a while since he's seen her this quiet.
The first time he met her, she was loud and brazen. Her gaze was clear and steel, darting to assess the situation. Her fingers flickered with magic, ripping and roaring into the fray. Even when he bit her—something he still felt super fucking bad about—she kept a stiff upper lip and fought off the disease that ripped through his own veins.
And even after knocking him on his ass, she offered him an out and got him this job with a smile and an apology.
Since then he's learned she is always afraid and he's been working his damn hardest to convince her that it's not normal. That she should feel safe. That she's worth it.
In his home—their home—she takes up more space with each day. She spreads books on the table, lembas and leftover containers on counters. She leaves pictures of her and her friends in frames around the living room and her Jacket of Useful Things on the table. She exists. She is.
So to see her small again, curled in on his couch, knees pressed against her chest, fidgeting with a spinner ring Kristen got her (it says, in fine Elvish script, "this too shall pass", which is the oldest affirmation in existence) is heartbreaking. He knows she's stronger. He knows she thinks she's weak for feeling like this.
He lets the silence blanket them for a moment. He lingers in the heavy fog, exhaling smoke and Prestidigitating it away.
(Prestidigitation the only spell he ever learned, not just because it's a cantrip and an easy fucking spell, but also because it's damn rude to smoke around people who can't consent to your habits. Better to just magic it away as it leaves your lungs. It's common fucking courtesy.)
Eventually, as all things happen, she speaks up. "Does it ever get easier?"
He raises an eyebrow and takes a drag, not answering. She never finished the question anyway.
Does what get any easier, Adaine Abernant?
She spins the ring some, fingers tracing the fine Elven lettering. Her jeans—no longer the new skinny black ones she had the day of that battle, but a ratty bootcut pair found 'thrifting' with Fig—are rumpled around her (secondhand from Fabian) sneakers. She picks at a loose string on her knee and takes a slow, long breath. "Not feeling like...this?"
"Well," he exhales a magicked away plume, "it's a journey. Like the mystery you and your party solved earlier this year? But longer and just about you."
She tries to speak, opening her mouth then closing it again. He can recognize the panic setting in. He also can recognize her intense focus on the raised band of the ring, the pattern of her breathing, and the beating of her heart.
That makes him so proud.
"If it's about you," he adds, "it doesn't mean it's just you. Easy is subjective. For instance: divination is 'easy' for you, yeah?" She nods. "I couldn't divine my way out of a paper bag if you gave me instructions. Likewise, I find running 'easy', but I bet you'd struggle to keep up on foot without magic, right?"
She nods again. Once. Resolute.
"And, I mean," he drawls—and it is easy for him to do so, the face shape of a lycanthrope does such to one's vocal chords that drawling is the norm—"a puddle to Gorgug is a lake to you is an ocean to Riz. Everything is subjective."
"That's bullshit though." He snorts at her outburst. There's the Adaine he knows. There's the spitfire. The fighter. The mage. "It hasn't gotten better! It just gets easier to deal with! I — I shouldn't be like this anymore! I should be better by now!"
Alright.
"Here's the thing about being sick," and fucking God, that's a loaded start to a hard fucking truth, "it never feels any easier. Much like learning combat, you get better at handling your illness as time passes."
"But—!"
He cuts her off. "Adaine; lemme put it this way: your first day at Auguefort, you bludgeoned a lunch lady to death with her soup ladle and had a panic attack afterwards, covered in blood and viscera. Almost two months later, you threatened to kill your sister, got her diplomatic immunity revoked, assisted in the torture and interrogation of a fellow classmate, and got thrown in jail without so much as blinking an eye. You weren't any less afraid, were you?"
"No, but—"
"And the danger wasn't any less real, was it?"
"No—?" She stops trying to argue for a moment. It's good. It means she's listening.
"If you took the Adaine from day one at Aguefort and put her in the fight against Kalvaxis, would she be able to win?" It's a weird metaphor, the reach he's going for, but it works.
"No. She'd be annihilated." The confusion reads on her face but it's gone from her voice. She's sure of her answer. She just isn't sure of what he's doing.
"And if you took the Adaine that fought valiantly against Kalvaxis and pitted her against the shit from day one, would she have frozen or hesitated the same way?"
"Definitely not!" She almost sounded affronted. It was funny how that seemed to rub her the wrong way. "She'd know what spells to use where and how to save Doreen without all the blood and...teeth…"
"Okay. Well each situation is similar but different. The perceived risk of both fights were high. The perceived chance of dying were high. Just because the Adaine from day one wouldn't know how to comprehend Kalvaxis or the Adaine from prom would be able to handle Doreen and the corn better doesn't make them less than what the were." And now the kicker. "The difference between Doreen and Kalvaxis—aside from a body count—" this earns a giggle, muffled into her Jacket, "is experience. They feel the same amount of dangerous because they'd are comparatively the same. You grew and so did what you considered to be dangerous. And as you looked back on your previous encounters and battles, you saw the flaws in your technique. It doesn't make what you did then wrong, it just means you're getting better. You just can't see it yet. You will, in time."
She smiles now, a million gold pieces, and fiddles with the band some more—though more because she already was and less because she needs to focus on it. She's uncurled on his couch, legs spread, comfortable.
He continues on, bolstered by his success so far, a wispy smog leaking from between his teeth—not dissimilar to the flames coming from Kalvaxis's crimson maw. A silent Prestidigitation rids the room of fumes and smell alike, leaving the pleasant buzz in his veins. "Same with the anxiety. You're so much better than you were before, you just can't tell because what used to bother you doesn't any more. You can deal with the old things, so the new ones feel like you're not making any progress when it's the opposite. Ya see?"
She nods, a bit of hair falling in her face. Her ears aren't pinned back any more, falling in a more neutral position. Her eyes sparkle with renewed vigor. "Yeah. I do."
"Now you and I can talk about your dosage later, okay? I got other kids to counsel." He waves a paw at her, laughing when she rolls her eyes.
(The Adaine of before, the one who helped him when he was down, wouldn't've had the stones to roll her eyes at an authority figure. Baby steps towards something nice. Even if it was a wild, powerfully magic teenager.)
Though—
"Before I forget!" She pauses, hand on the doorknob leading out of his office. Looking over her shoulder, she raises an eyebrow so he continues. "Tracker is gonna be with Kristen at some church thing and Sandralynn is busy doing border patrol so dinner is just you and me tonight. Your turn to pick."
She sucks on her lower lip, squinting. The silver-blue of her divinatory magic flickers in her eyes and she grins. "How about Chinese? No cooking tonight I think. Plus we can invite Gilear over. He could use the company."
"You sure?"
"As sure as I can be." She winks and it sets him into a barking fit of laughter.
"Alright, alright. I know what your divination mumbo jumbo sounds like. Chinese and Gilear it is." He manages to wheeze out between laughs. "Now git. Ragh's on his way in and you know how he gets."
"Later then!" And she's gone.
Baby steps.