#if its ooc blame it on them both being halfway asleep

[septimus-heap]

Okay here's the fic snippet

Is this how it feels to have a mother? Boy 412 found himself wondering, Marcia's arms still warm around him. He'd managed to climb halfway into her lap when he was crying, and she never seemed to like being touched, but she held him now like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He sniffled again, and resisted the urge to vigorously shake his head to rid himself of the thought. It didn't matter if this was what having a mother was like. Marcia was the ExtraOrdinary Wizard. She could not be his mother. She was probably only holding him like this because she pitied him.

But-

But if he was allowed to choose - and he wasn't, that wasn't how mothers worked at all (not that he knew very much about them) - he would choose Marcia, he thought. The first adult he'd ever met who'd been nothing but kind to him, even though he'd tried to get them all killed. Probably the person he trusted most in the whole world.

He could always pretend, right? Marcia didn't need to know. No one ever needed to know, and it would only be for tonight, for right now. Only because he'd had a dream he was back in the Young Army, and curling up against someone who was much bigger than him, and hadn't hesitated to whisper reassurances into the still air of the cottage, had made him feel further from them (further and safer - if there was one place no one could hurt him, it was right here) than ever before.

He leaned back against her, listening to her breathe.

"Better?" she whispered, and he nodded.

He expected her to push him off her then, now that he didn't need the comfort, but she made no such move, only hummed quietly in response. Boy 412 didn't move either. Marcia didn't seem to mind, so he was perfectly content to stay right where he was, warm and comfortable. His eyes seemed to close without his permission, his thoughts going fuzzy.

SO. YEAG. FIC <3 I said it was self indulgent and by god I meant it. This is a snippet from smth that's going to be much longer than this ideally (probably only like 2k words max but that is long for me) so the beginning and end r weird but that's not my problem <333