#Acutally Witch Suga can have it

[b1cr1ptic]

Witch Suga for Sara, who asked me to draw this marvelous scene from her very magic fic, The Other Side, which you can read here 8) This was tons of funs to do! Is always deeply entertaining to develop settings and details!

[skittidyne]

deleted scene from chapter 23

“We don’t know if he can. He’d have to…” Suddenly, suspiciously, Suga’s thoughtful look falls away in the favor of a bright-eyed smile. “Yes, he can help. Iwaizumi, pelt back on. We’re opening another portal.”

“Opening a portal to the Dreamlands in front of the tengu who—” But Suga had already thrown open the door and proudly marched back out. Iwaizumi and Tooru exchange a long, lingering look. They had to trust him. Right? “C’mon, Iwa-chan, of course we trust Suga,” Tooru mutters with a pat of his cheek, then follows him out.

Akaashi and Iwaizumi refuse to look at each other. Kenma, on the other hand, stares hard at Iwaizumi—until Iwaizumi makes the mistake of looking back, in which case he suddenly finds Tooru’s collection of knickknacks incredibly interesting. The witch is small, noticeably shorter and slimmer than even Suga, winter hat pulled low over his short hair and golden eyes sharp as a knife.

Iwaizumi isn’t sure he wants to trust him. Some animal instinct deep in his brain does not want to trust Kenma. Maybe it’s the smell of demon that hangs over him like a shroud. Akaashi looks at a point over Iwaizumi’s shoulder—the closest they’ll get to him—like they’re threatening him.

“You two, stand over here, please. Don’t be alarmed by what you’re about to see,” Suga instructs and herds the two across the living room. He nods to Tooru, and Tooru in turn tugs Iwaizumi back down to the floor, seated cross-legged across from each other. He rubs his thumbs over the scales covering Iwaizumi’s wrists.

Iwaizumi holds his tongue until they’re both in that void again, alone, world crashing around them. “I thought we wanted to keep this a secret,” Iwaizumi says, voice thundering in the emptiness. They both wince, and Tooru’s hands tighten on his, an echo of their waking world counterparts.

“I trust Koushi!”

“I—” He wants to. He does. Sugawara Koushi is a good man, but he makes tragic, stupid mistakes, and he has a stunning disregard for certain types of collateral damage. Iwaizumi realizes he would rather fight anyone else than risk Tooru in that.

They wake with the Dreamlands twinkling behind them, pink and purple and fizzing. Iwaizumi’s ears ring, and blood drips down Tooru’s face. His eyelids flutter, but he smiles up at Suga, proud. “So, what’s your master plan this time? I think I’m risking hemorrhage if I do it any more today.”

Maybe this had been worth it if only for the utterly stunned expressions on Akaashi and Kenma’s faces. But Iwaizumi doesn’t laugh at their expense, and instead reaches to tilt Tooru’s chin back with a clawed finger. “We’ve been able to do this pretty reliably now, but there’s a lot we don’t know about what’s going on,” he mutters by way of explanation.

“Kenma, can you make a binding magical hook and tie us together?” Suga asks.

“I don’t think I could seal that again,” Kenma replies, dazed.

“We can seal it again ourselves,” Iwaizumi grunts, then waves his hand. Kenma writes a few runes in the air, eyes still locked onto the disk of otherworldly light. “That part isn’t the issue. The part is the—”

Suga, content with the plait of magic Kenma weaves for him, takes hold of it and hops through the hole into the Dreamlands.

The magic snaps at the same moment Tooru shrieks, “Koushi!”

Iwaizumi feels a heartrending pull somewhere just beneath his sternum, and the portal flickers. Tooru makes another dismayed sound, and scrambles to his feet, but Iwaizumi wraps his arms around his waist and stops him from throwing himself in after him. “If we both need to be on this side, then we’re fucked!”

“Why did he—?” Akaashi begins, and cuts off when Kenma pushes past them to step through the portal himself. “Wait, Kenma!”

Iwaizumi coughs, then heaves, unable to catch his breath. Tooru is swearing, and he thinks he hears Akaashi, but everything else is lost. Iwaizumi clutches onto Tooru’s waist, both to keep him away, and for stability; his vision swims and the pulling in his chest is getting more acute. Sharper.

His grip goes slack after the coughing worsens, and Tooru steps out of the circle of his arms.

Iwaizumi reaches for him, already knowing he’s heading toward the Dreamlands again, but he can’t fucking breathe and his vision is going dark at the edges. The portal seems to be a mirror for him; it begins to drip onto the rug, quavering at its fuzzy edges, pieces breaking off and crumpling into shards of memories. Iwaizumi flinches when he sees a flash of Ptar-Axtlan on one.

Suga and Kenma stumble back out of the light without having appeared on the other side. They pop into the living room, covered in blue goo, eyes watering, supporting each other. Akaashi catches them both before they can stumble, and Tooru is a beat behind them, wrapping his arms around all three of them with a dry noise terrifyingly close to a sob.

But his voice doesn’t shake when he snarls, “You dumb fuck, both of you!”

“Why did you do that?!” Akaashi, on the other hand, trembles.

Iwaizumi collapses onto the carpet, finally able to breathe again, limbs tingling. They made it back. He was going to kill Suga, but god, every single fucking god, he came back.

“You can’t see it from the other side, the view is not indicative of what is there,” Suga rasps, his voice a dry husk, “the portal kills the magic, th-there was—”

“Time passes differently,” Kenma adds, voice similarly wrecked. “We were there almost an hour.”

“What are you two covered in?”

“A flower,” Kenma says.

“A flower’s…?”

“The flower itself,” Suga agrees hoarsely.

Kenma nods, sour-faced. He glances down at Iwaizumi with an inscrutable look. Then, politely, he turns up to Tooru, still clinging to him, and says, “I’ll take that cursed mirror now.”

“Is that the only reason you went in after him?” Tooru asks, laughing and affronted and edging near hysterical. He still has blood drying on his lip, and now there’s goo everywhere, too.

“Kuro likes him,” Kenma mumbles.

“Give us the mirror before Sugawara does anything stupider,” Akaashi says, and protectively pulls Kenma from both of them. Kenma nods.

They really can’t say no after that.