#s*percorp if you squint sort of i guess

[performativezippers]

Chapter 3: Now that you have Stood in a Diamond Formation with your Friends And Enemies, you are No Longer likely to Kill Your Co-Workers and Neighbors!

Before they graduate, or whatever it is from the USDMAMANC, they’re supposed to learn how to work with their affiliate elements, which is a nice way of saying everyone who isn’t their opposite. So Alex has to learn not only to work with any Earth mage, but also any Air mage. Kara’s supposed to do the same.

They’re not required to work together, Alex and Kara, Fire and Water, but everyone thinks it’s a good idea, just in case.

But first, after a long series of arguments with Kevin, Linda, Nancy, and even Maggie, both sisters agree to learn to work with their affiliates before they try again with each other.

The improbable, fascinating thing between Alex and Maggie doesn’t go away. Alex always has at least a couple motes of Maggie’s Earth magic around her, even when they haven’t seen each other for days. And when they do see each other – when they’re in the same space – it looks like Alex’s magic surges over to Maggie. Like it’s being magnetically pulled over to her, like an Air mage is creating some sort of suction system.

It gets to the point where Alex can tell when Maggie’s nearby, because her Fire magic starts to flow purposefully through a particular wall.

And, of course, there’s a surge of yellow and golden brown that floods into Alex at the same time. Through her strongest shields, even.

All the instructors are baffled. There’s nothing about this in any of the texts that have been passed on from the time before the magic went away. But it’s not making either of them weaker – because even when Alex is hemorrhaging her own magic, it’s always replaced by Maggie’s. And she can, they learn at the end of one particularly exhausting session, use Maggie’s magic like she’d use her own.

So it’s not hurting anyone, and it’s not going away, so everyone sort of shrugs, accepts it, and moves on.

[keep reading on AO3]