#anyways guess who fuckin graduateddddddd

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Just Fine and Dandelions

(Part 2/3)

(Previous part)

There is a reasonable explanation as to why witches are territorial.

It is not the main reason, perhaps, but it still is a reason:

People notice when the items needed for spells start going missing. Yes, many of them also have everyday uses, so it’s not a huge surprise when Marinette takes a basket of dandelions home with claims of having a hankering for a salad, nor is it all that interesting when she grabs a bundle of sage with talks of burning it to keep her house pure.

But some things are harder to hide. Precious gems are hard to come by. People guard those with their lives. Marinette got by by chipping tiny pieces off of the townsfolk’s findings, or by scooping up the tiny shavings they left behind when sanding down and polishing them. She would say that she had a love of jewelry, but then she would have to explain why she never wore any out, and why the gems she bought were drained of color within a week.

This was no longer an option. Now, two witches were scrambling for the village’s scraps. Now, more was going missing. Especially since, in their desperation to make sure that they never went without, they started taking more and more materials.

Which is how they got into this predicament in the first place.

The town noticed that there was a witch amongst them. Being scared of something did not necessarily mean that you did not understand it, sometimes it meant that you knew too much. So, when they started noticing that their thief was targeting specific items… well, they put two and two together far sooner than either witch would like.

Marinette stood with everyone else in the town center, her cloak drawn around herself, eyes flicking nervously from person to person. Admittedly, this behavior was not uncommon, everyone else was looking around with such intense focus, as if they were scared to so much as blink, or else a witch might get them... it was simply that she had a different motivation.

One wrong move, and she would be bound in chains and tossed into the nearest lake.

Duke Thomas stepped into view.

Her fingernails cut deep crescents into the skin of her palms.

From the way he gritted his teeth and averted his gaze immediately, he wasn’t faring much better. A twisted sense of glee poked at her at the thought.

It was short-lived.

Because the townsfolk’s plan was to implement a sort of ‘buddy system’ to figure out who among them was secretly a witch. It was smart, based on their limited knowledge of how witches worked – the witch would rot if they did not steal, and if they did then their ‘buddy’ would be able to report their absence. Unfortunately for them, more powerful witches absolutely could mess with the memories of humans, and even the less powerful witches like Marinette and Duke could often scare them into staying quiet. Their plan would not have done anything at all.

If she had gotten paired with anyone else.

“Why him of all people?!” she hissed.

They kept themselves calm by staying as far away from each other as was physically possible. His house was on the exact opposite side of town. It was irritating, but in the way a gnat flying around was. An annoying little thing that you only really notice when it's right in front of your face. But if he was staying in the same house as her? They were going to kill each other. They already almost had, that first day.

Plenty of witnesses had watched them walk into that backroom together, and a sudden disappearance would raise more suspicion than they would want to risk. So, they’d held back, but only just.

"Because you two hate each other," they explained, as if it were obvious. "You won't be inclined to cover for each other."

"He's just going to lie and say I'm a witch to get me killed!"

"He won't do that," the woman said.

Far too confidently, in her opinion. If she were to turn around and see the look Duke was shooting her over his shoulder, she would be just as concerned as Marinette was.

“But – but –,” she stammered, trying to come up with something, anything that would convince them. “All the theft started when he came into town, right? What if it’s him? I don’t – I don’t want to live with a witch!”

“We don’t know that for sure,” the human tried to soothe. “It might just be trying to frame him, you know, in order to alleviate suspicion.”

Why hadn’t she thought of that?

Marinette opened her mouth, about to press further, only to immediately snap it closed, only just in time to stifle a scream.

Duke slung an arm around her shoulders. She swore it burned.

“It’s just until the witch is caught, Marinette,” he said. He was smiling, it wasn’t reaching his eyes in the slightest. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re perfectly safe.”

“How sweet,” she gritted out.

He led her away, towards her house. She knew that it was because her own house was in the middle of the town center, and they would need to be close by to even have a chance at stealing when the townsfolk were so on guard, but all she could think about was her Item. A pair of black earrings, sitting on her bedside table so innocently, as if they weren’t in danger at this very moment, as if Duke touching them wouldn’t immediately force her to bend a knee to him.

He couldn’t stay with her.

“Why didn’t you argue?” she hissed. “If we both said no they might have found someone else.”

He rolled his eyes. “We need to work together to frame someone, otherwise our chosen victims may conflict with each other.”

“That’s a temporary solution at best and you know it. They’ll realize they have the wrong person eventually. They’re going to figure us out one day.”

“A temporary solution is better than none at all! Besides, if we’re together, we can cover for each other.”

“Maybe I want you to get caught.”

“Tough luck, because if I get caught then so do you.”

She didn’t have a retort for that. He must have known this, because he felt smug enough to squeeze her with the arm around her shoulders.

She hooked her foot around his ankle and tugged. He fell, and so did she by extension, but she couldn’t help but feel pleased despite the scrapes on her forearms and knees, because he hadn’t been able to react in time, either.

She smirked in the face of his bloody nose. “You should be covered in blood more often. The look suits you.”

He slowly removed his hand from where he had been trying to stem the blood flow so he could glare at her.

And then he shoved his blood-covered hand towards her.

She shrieked.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Marinette watched as Duke set yet another box of papers down. He had yet to find a ‘proper’ job, instead choosing to make a living telling stories. He wove together stories in the town square, telling an enthralled crowd about grand adventures and heroes and kingdoms that had long since fallen. Tales of gods and their hubris, of men outsmarting demons, of people banding together to defeat a monster in their midst.

The stories must have been plenty entertaining, because he wasn’t in want for cash.

She had never gone to see any of this for herself, of course. Not simply out of spite, but because she had always assumed that the tales he spun were either things he had experienced himself or stories he had been told during his travels. Witches can live for quite a long while, after all, they had plenty of time to gather a myriad of fun stories.

But, as she looked at the boxes upon boxes of papers, she supposed that she had been incorrect. Perhaps he really was coming up with the stories that the kids in town loved so much that they would happily make runs to the market for their families just in hopes that they might pass him on the way there.

She’d heard that he was teaching the kids to read and write, too.

She tried to fit that ideal with the person who had drained the color – the life – from her skin, that had made it so her shoulder was an ashy gray to this day. To the person that she had watched cough up flowers and roots and dirt and...

Marinette sunk back into her pillows. “You’re doing it so they’ll hesitate to kill you, aren’t you? So they think you’re safe?”

Duke jolted in surprise, almost dropping a box on his foot.

And then he smiled.

“Of course.”

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

It was the third day of lockdown, and their reserves were already running low.

Witches don’t need sleep. They don’t even need to breathe or eat or force their hearts to beat in their chests at all.

So it was… painful. Staying awake, horribly aware of the gnawing at the back of their minds. Like an itch that they just couldn’t scratch, but worse, because they were starving.

They were rotting.

Marinette ran careful fingers through her hair. Normally, she would use a brush, but that was too risky now – she might just end up pulling all her hair out, as fragile as it was at the moment. Even when she was simply combing her fingers through it, a worrying amount of strands fluttered to the floor.

Across the room, Duke didn’t seem to be doing much better. He glowered at his hands, as if it would make his fingers stop lengthening and fix the many oddly-placed joints.

Marinette was sure that, by this time tomorrow, their faces would start to split with wrinkles. Given another day after that their other eyes would start to poke through the folds in their skin.

She knelt to start sweeping up the mess she had made of the floor.

“We have to make a supply run tonight.”

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Marinette and Duke stood outside a shop filled to the brim with crystals, hoods pulled low over their heads, their faces practically pressed against the window. Even just being near magical items, even through a layer of glass, was enough to send relief flooding through their veins like a drug.

“How are we going to get i –?” Duke started to ask.

Marinette didn’t even let him finish. She smashed her hand through the glass, blood smearing its way over her arm. She didn’t have to pretend to care, not when her only company was Duke. She grabbed ahold of a crystal and her eyes lit up – quite literally, dancing with a dim glow – when she finally got her most recent dose of magic.

The glass started to melt away, the red eating away at the material like acid, allowing her to lean through and scoop handful after handful after handful into her bag.

Some of the haze over her mind finally dispersed. She hadn’t even really noticed it was there, not until the fog holding her brain hostage finally let go of its hold.

It was only then that she realized Duke was staring at her, his mouth agape.

“What?” she asked.

“I… I thought we were going to hide it a little more.”

Her eyes gleamed coldly. She tossed a crystal to him. The moment it touched the tips of his fingers, he gave a tiny sigh of relief. The grass at his feet blackened and burned.

“It’s better if they know that someone has managed to break in despite their new system. Let’s make them paranoid.”

He looked at her for a few moments more.

“Didn’t you say that you think that they’re going to catch onto us eventually?”

“Oh, sure, of course. But until then? I want to watch them tear each other apart.”

He tipped his head back in a laugh.

And then he held a hand out for her to shake, his lips curled into a wicked grin.

“Let’s make those humans miserable for daring to try and go after us.”

She clasped his hand in her own, and found that it wasn’t quite as uncomfortable to touch him anymore.

“Let’s.”

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

Whispers and suspicion hung in the air the next day.

People stood close to their ‘buddy’s, sure that they were the only person that could be trusted in this horrible place, since they had been with them at the time of the break-in.

No one was safe. Even people you had known your entire lives could have become a witch. All it took was a deal, after all, and they would be stripped of all of their humanity, left to be naught but a shell – a powerful shell.

Hadn’t the scholar mentioned that he was struggling with a particular question? Had the baker changed her recipe? Wasn’t the blacksmith running low on funds?

No one was a guarantee.

No one… except for your buddy.

Right?

Marinette and Duke’s fingers remained tightly woven together as they made their way through the crowd. It was necessary for their act, that they looked just as scared as everyone else in the town. It was getting easier, too, to be around each other, the longer they kept in contact. It still didn’t feel good, quite the opposite, actually, but they were getting used to it.

The slightly pained, cautious expressions on their faces only helped them, though. Even in a situation as stressful as this one, people don’t forget their hatred for each other overnight. It only falls by the wayside.

Their cover was perfect. It was far too easy for Duke to slip something into the pocket of the town scholar’s pocket when they brushed past to get closer to the stage.

It was only discovered when the guard patted him down.

The amethyst shard had been drained of all color, to the point where it could have been mistaken for a piece of the very glass that had drawn all of their attention, if it were not for the slightly foggy sheen that could only be found in a used crystal.

His buddy started backing away immediately, their eyes wide and terrified. “How did you – ?! I didn’t even notice you leave last night!”

“Because I didn’t!”

“Clearly you did!”

The scholar’s eyes widened. “Holy –! Did you plant that on me?! Is it you?!”

“Don’t try and pin this on me!”

Two bodies sunk to the bottom of the lake that night, with nothing to show for their lives other than a couple of air bubbles that popped the moment they reached the surface.

If anyone noticed Duke and Marinette squeeze each other’s hands tighter, almost to the point where they could draw blood, then they would interpret it as fear.

(Next part)