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ramshacklerumble · 3 months

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after party

twst fic | words: 7k

Despite this being his final year on campus— Trey Clover had never stepped foot in Diasomnia before now. He quickly decided there was a good reason for it.

Someone like Trey had no business in the Thorn Fairy’s domain.

Even in a school of magic where everything carried a sense of power— the air within Diasomnia all but crackled in its might, testing the mettle of those walking within its walls.

Meanwhile, in contrast to the unfriendly atmosphere and how it made Trey’s skin prickle, Lilia’s smile was all cheer at the center of the lounge. His fangs caught in the glint of Diasomnia’s everpresent green firelight. “Cater! And Vice-Housewarden Trey! Welcome both of you.”

“Hey, Lils.” Cater waved with both hands as Trey gave his greeting and he was glad Cater offered to come along. They stuck out like sore thumbs, but there was something to be said about Cater’s ability to find his place just about anywhere. If Cater felt as out of his depth as Trey did, he didn’t show it. “Thanks for letting us drop in outta the blue, I know you got your hands mega full.”

“Not a worry. I’m sure the same can be said for you two, yet here you are.” Lilia looked over them before his eyes paused on the pair of boxes held in Trey’s hands. “Oh?”

Trey lifted the top box for Lilia to take, “We just wrapped up our unbirthday party and I figured I’d save you a tart for your trouble.“

Lilia giddily twiddled his fingers before taking the box, his face lighting up as he opened it to see what was inside. The delight overtaking his face almost made it easy to forget Lilia was a third-year like Trey, if not just a little older. “Very thoughtful of you! And— oh! There’s two.”

“I thought you might try to share yours with Malleus,” Trey said, a little sheepish in his assumption, but he’d seen Lilia put Malleus on the forefront enough times to feel he wouldn't be too off the mark.

Lilia chuckled and he closed the box back shut before it disappeared in a sudden burst of green sparks, “Very thoughtful indeed, thank you, Trey.”

He gestured at the box still in Trey’s hand, “And I’m fairly certain I know for whom that one might be.”

“Caught us~” Cater sing-songed, “We thought we’d see Sorrel at our unbirthday party, but he didn’t show up. Then it kinda occurred to us that we haven’t seen Sorrel…at all. Like, in days.”

“Ah. He has been feeling a little under the weather…” Lilia held his chin in his fingers, looking at them with round eyes. “But… What's this about an unbirthday party? That’s certainly news. Given it’d been your own housewarden who’d barred Sorrel from ever setting foot back in Heartslabyul.”

“Ah-ha…” Trey gave a thin smile— or at least what he hoped came off as a smile, not a grimace. Riddle had nearly chewed Lilia’s ear off the year prior since he couldn’t bring his grievances up to Malleus on account of Malleus being…well, Malleus…and therefore, nowhere to be found. So it’d fallen on Lilia to keep a raging Riddle from collaring a shaken, shivering Sorrel. “Yeah, I’m…really sorry about that. Again. But, it’d been Riddle himself who’d invited Sorrel.”

Lilia’s brows shot up in high arches, “Really..?”

Cater’s shoulders bounced in a gentle shrug, acknowledging the suspicion, “S’True. Riddle was pretty bummed to find out Sorrel wouldn’t make it.”

Lilia nodded, but how he studied them both gave Trey the impression the fae wasn’t buying it. He smiled at them even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes, “So am I to assume you’re here as friends or as soldiers?”

“Oh, no, no!” Cater laughed, although he couldn’t keep a twinge of nervousness from snaking into it. “I’m just saying Riddle would’ve liked to talk to him, that’s all. We didn’t tell him we’d drop our buddy a visit, though. That’s all us.”

“Riddle is trying to make amends.” Trey said, “But whether or not he can make it happen…well, that’s just outside our control.”

The corners of Lilia’s mouth twitched thoughtfully, his lower lip sticking out in a way that shaved a handful of years off his face, before perking up in his usual smile. “This year has already been shaping up to be fairly interesting. Silly of me to wave aside the prospect of new beginnings. Bully for Riddle!”

With a single clap of his hands and a spin of his heel, Lilia gestured towards a set of steps leading towards an upper corridor— no doubt leading into the dorm rooms, “I’m sure Sorrel will be ecstatic to have his friends drop in at long last. Or wildly unprepared, I haven’t seen him head out for his laundry in a minute. It’s been sitting in a wet heap. Regardless, a solid shock is good for the circulation. Come now!”

—

New students often complained about Heartslabyul’s corridors and how its onslaught of bold colors and twisting patterns made their eyes swim.

Trey was sure he hadn’t been anywhere near as disoriented in his first days as a Heartslabyul freshman as he was now. While Lilia led Trey and Cater through Diasomnia’s halls, Trey’s gaze pinged about searching for anything that wasn’t gray, stone, a wooden door or a green-fire torch.

They passed by other students as they walked. Much like how his eyes flitted across passing billboards during car rides, Trey felt his eyes immediately try to take in any new information that crossed his sights as Lilia and Cater chatted away. Mostly fae students, though that was unsurprising.

Trey saw many a pointed ear and without fail, the owners of said ears would give Lilia a nod of greeting ranging from attentive to solemn, and Lilia would wave back without skipping a beat of conversation with Cater.

This made one particular student stick out to Trey. Besides his rounded, human ears— he towered over most of the other students Trey had seen, including himself. The off-white mask over his right eye was the real icing on the cake.

The student hadn’t paused to greet Lilia or bothered to spare a glance in his general direction and walked as though nothing could stop him, not even the harsh and solid dorm walls, so he hadn’t been in Trey’s line of sight for more than a few seconds. Still, Trey couldn’t shake the thought that the student’s mask had been molded after— if not, made out of— a human skull.

He couldn’t entertain the idea for long though once Lilia stopped in front of one of the many identical doors spacing the walls.

“I’m sure he’s still in here,” Lilia said as he lifted his hand to knock. There was a brief pause before his knuckles touched the wood. Lilia’s head tilted to an almost imperceptible degree, considering.

But the moment passed so quickly, Trey hadn’t been able to ask what was wrong before Lilia followed through.

A startled cry, cut short by a pained curse, answered Lilia from behind the door.

“Sorrel, you have visitors!” Lilia chirped as though he hadn’t heard anything.

Trey and Cater shared a glance but slapped on a pair of polite smiles at Lilia as he turned to them and said with a wave, “Thank you again for the tarts. Send Riddle my well wishes, will you?” And like the tarts, Lilia disappeared in a flash of viridescent sparks.

“Ow. Uh…Lilia?” Sorrel’s voice called out still within his room, “Sorry, I didn’t hear you, did you say, visitors? Could you say I’m not he…”

The door opened just wide enough for Sorrel to peek out, clearly expecting his vice-housewarden, then froze.

“Yo!” said Cater.

Sorrel closed the door.

Trey and Cater shared another glance— something Trey suspected would be happening a lot this visit. He stepped against the door and gave it a few coaxing raps with his knuckle, “C’mon, Sorrel. We’re already here.”

“We brought you tarts!” Cater piped in from behind him, “I mean, Trey brought you tarts, but I’m here so it still counts as a Cay-Cay Special Delivery!”

Trey tilted his ear towards the door, trying to hear anything. Like shuffling. Or the opening of a conveniently placed window as Sorrel made a run for the hills. Did Diasomnia rooms have windows?

“Um…” Sorrel’s voice sounded close, though a little shaky from the other side of the door, likely holding onto the doorknob for all it’s worth. Trey gave it a test jiggle and heard Sorrel squeak as the doorknob fought the effort. That was good. That meant Sorrel opted to stay put. “Y-Y’know, guys. I’m not feeling too hot. I don’t want you guys to get sick.”

“You sound fine,” said Trey.

Sorrel started coughing.

Trey rolled his eyes and knocked on the door again, “You’re not getting anywhere with that. You know I’ve got little siblings.”

“Not including the dorm,” Cater added, joining Trey in his knocking. “Come out, come out~”

As he said this, Trey happened to look down at his feet. He hadn't paid much attention to it at first, but when he’d stepped up against the door he felt a sudden graininess under his shoe. Looking at it now, Trey realized a slight spread of sand had sprawled over the stone floor when Sorrel opened the door earlier.

Sand.

He remembered waves of it colliding against the torrents of flames threatening to sear them days before. How Sorrel stood before Trey, keeping the heat off him as Trey fought to keep Riddle’s unique magic constrained under his own, even after Sorrel had tried to convince him to run.

Maybe under normal circumstances, someone like Trey had no business in Diasomnia. But if the person who’d helped save the life of his and his own refused to come out, then it would fall on Trey to seek him out.

“Even if we leave now, you can’t avoid us forever.” He said, “And if you didn’t want to see us anymore, then you wouldn’t have stayed and fought Riddle with us in the first place, right?”

Silence.

Trey and Cater stood there, ears still pressed against the door, as they waited for a reply. Cater caught Trey’s eye and made a questioning motion with his hand. “…Sorrel?”

A soft thud sounded from Sorrel’s side, as though he’d thumped his forehead against the door. Trey heard him sigh. Then the doorknob jiggled.

Trey and Cater took a simultaneous step back as the door creaked open, wider than before, but still narrow enough so that only one of them could go through at a time. Sorrel was nowhere in sight, intent on hiding behind the door for as long as he could get away with.

All light died before passing through the threshold. The room beyond it— little more than a void. Was that a privacy accommodation granted by the magic of the dorm, Trey wondered, or was that Sorrel’s doing?

With a roll of his shoulders, Trey angled through the opening and immediately felt the change between the hard stone corridor and an unsteady, sandy, softness within Sorrel’s room. He looked down at his feet to see his shoes sunk a couple inches deep into the stuff.

Behind him, Cater slowed to a stop with a sound of bewilderment.

Torches flickered to life throughout the room and though the flames were the same shade of green as fire was wont to be in Diasomnia, the light they cast was comfortable— if not warm in color. This only added to the surrealness that greeted the Heartslabyul duo.

Sand, mounds of it, not only made up the entirety of the floor but covered what Trey could only assume was once furniture. It didn’t make sense. It was as though they’d been dropped into the bottom of an hourglass.

Behind them, the door clicked shut. They whirled to see Sorrel had finally revealed himself.

Clad in his ever-present green woolen poncho, a pair of gray boxers and…not much else— Sorrel’s curly mop of hair sported the frizzled, gravity-defying energy of a storm cloud. He kept his eyes downcast. They were bloodshot and only made to look further exhausted by the liner smudged around them.

With his scruffy beard and myriad of face piercings, Sorrel never truly managed to conjure the same aura of nobility that exuded from Diasomnia’s students, but now he resembled a wayward drifter moreso any student from the highly esteemed Night Raven College.

He pushed his toes into the sand, as though he could maybe dig his way out since there were, in fact, no windows in his room. His arms clutched something to his torso. A semi-translucent green slab as cracked as he was.

“Um…” Sorrel started, still not looking at them, “You can sit.”

“…Where?” Cater managed to answer. He’d been so quiet since entering the room, Trey had nearly forgotten he was there.

His question got Sorrel to blink, just now noticing his mini-desert of a living space as he looked around. “Oh.”

Sorrel lifted a hand and waved it like a music conductor before an orchestra. Around them, the sand swayed. Someone was shaking the hourglass. Then with a snap of his fingers, the sand evaporated. Just like that.

One second they were standing on dunes, the next there wasn’t a grain of sand to be found. The room was practically gleaming. It had taken days to get Heartslabyul’s garden back in order after the battle even with the whole dorm assisting and Trey was still shaking sand out of his jacket. What came so simple to Sorrel was leagues beyond Trey.

Sorrel might not have the air of a Diasomnia student, but there was no denying he had the magical skill in spades.

“Yikes on bikes,” said Cater.

Sorrel jerked his head to him, but his gaze was still too distant, “You want it back?”

“NO!” Trey and Cater said at once, startling Sorrel. They led him to his bed by his arms. Trey set the tart box on his desk as he passed, “Have you been in here since last week?”

“Off smell alone?” Cater wrinkled his nose as Sorrel plopped down on his mattress, “Buddy-Honey. You are ripe.” He started towards a tall dresser, but when he opened it, he was greeted with empty hangers and a very singed dorm uniform. “Oof.”

He set one hand on his hip and the other thoughtfully rubbed his chin, “You’re about my size, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for him to answer, “Don’t worry, Cay-Cay’s got you covered. Split Card.”

“Heyo!” Cater #2 popped into reality with a wave. “Ooh, I’ve gotta set of really cute PJ’s.”

“Oh, I know the ones.” Cater said, “Those will do.”

“You don’t have to…” Sorrel’s protest, undercut by his own confusion at seeing his dresser empty, faltered at Trey’s hand on his shoulder.

If Trey also knew what pajamas Cater was talking about—and he was sure he did— he didn’t think Sorrel would be too happy about walking around the dorm in those, either.

A peach and cream silk set with a white rose pattern sent to Cater by his sisters. He put it on to send them a thank you picture and then never put it on again. Say what you want about him, Cater knew how to seize an opportunity.

“Unless you’re planning on finally picking up your laundry in just your underwear, I think you’d better just take the offer,” Trey said, smiling at seeing the realization click on Sorrel’s face as to why he had no clothes. Trey himself still had no idea.

Cater #2 saluted and promptly left the room as Cater made his way towards Sorrel’s vanity table.

A pause hung in the air. Sorrel went back to staring at his toes.

Trey sat beside him, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t want to walk out in my underwear,” said Sorrel.

“…I meant about the overblot.”

Sorrel shifted uncomfortably under his gaze, still holding onto his slab as though waiting for Trey to reach over and pry it out of his hands. He’d never seen it before.

“…I did say something about the overblot,” he mumbled.

“To Lilia?” Trey thought about how breezy Lilia seemed as they’d talked, not the least concerned beyond his initial skepticism of the two possibly trying to bring Sorrel into Riddle’s court as accused. While Trey knew he was particularly free-spirited, he’d seen him work as his fellow vice. Lilia, for all his eccentricity, cared for the students under his charge. “He knows you’re…you’re like this? That you’re not handling the overblot well?”

“Handling the…” Sorrel’s brows pinched in trying to gain focus. He looked washed out, his skin the luster of cardboard, “N-No. No, I don’t think he knows I was there. I haven’t seen him since before that. Wait, what are we talking about?”

“You ghosted us after Riddle overblotted.” Cater was peering into an intricately painted terracotta mug before he flipped it over and shook it for good measure. When nothing came out, he set it down on the vanity, took his magic pen, and tapped the rim a couple times. The sound of pouring water came from within the mug.

“It was a mess and a half— I get it.” He continued, picking up the mug in one hand while holding a bottle of makeup remover and a face towel in the other. “Probably the worst housewarden duel in the Heartslabyul history of like…ever, but we came out on top.”

When he walked over to them, Cater offered the mug to Sorrel with a firm, “Sip.”

Trey watched Sorrel as he did as ordered, “What were you talking about?”

Sorrel winced like he found the water hard to swallow and coughed to clear his throat, setting the mug down on the floor. “Uh…” His legs began to bounce on the balls of his feet. To his credit, it did look like he was trying to figure out how to say something.

Cater had set down the face towel beside Sorrel, unfolded it— revealing the make-up remover pads he’d tucked within— and took one. He’d dabbed make-up remover into it while Sorrel continued his stranded fish imitation before saying, “Just a guess. But this wouldn’t be about how you randomly happened to show up at our dorm just as Riddle went berserk, would it?”

Sorrel grimaced, “Uh…”

Cater tilted Sorrel’s chin in his fingers, the makeup pad hovering over his face. He had a strange little smile. “And the rats people have seen around our dorm?”

“The rats?” Trey echoed.

He’d noticed them, too.

Since late last year, Trey got glimpses of them scurrying about. Heartslabyul didn’t originally have rats so he’d assumed they’d started sneaking through the mirror entrance.

He’d put out traps around the kitchen— non-lethal ones meant to only capture since Riddle would have his head if he injured an animal under his reign— but he’d never caught anything. And most curious of all, no matter how much he checked, Trey had yet to find any sign of them scavenging through their food supply. Not a claw mark or nibble. So he stopped minding them.

Trey knew Sorrel owned a pair of pet rats, he could see their (suspiciously empty) cage from where he sat now, but it’d never occurred to him to connect Sorrel to the ones around their dorm. Judging by the increasingly guilty look on Sorrel's face, however, Trey realized he probably should have.

“I don’t understand,” he said, “What do your rats have to do with anything?”

“I was…” Sorrel started as Cater gently swiped away at his liner, “I was trying to keep an eye on things.”

“You were spying?” Trey hadn’t meant to sound scandalized, but the thought of it— well, it weirded him out a little. He glanced at Cater. He didn’t look surprised, he’d figured this part out.

“I wasn’t— Not on you.” Sorrel said quickly, closing his eyes as Cater motioned him to. “Honest. You’re the vice-housewarden. You just tended to be around.”

“Around…Around Riddle.” Trey squinted, his brain trying to put the pieces together. He had questioned why Sorrel, despite being banned from Heartslabyul, had coincidently appeared when things went critical. No one had gotten the chance to make a run for it yet— let alone warn anyone outside. In truth, it was part of why he wanted to speak to Sorrel.

If Sorrel had appeared because he’d gotten an alert from his rats, that would explain it. Strangely, Trey also figured out why Sorrel didn’t have an extra shirt to spare. He’d likely been doing his laundry and never returned for it as he made a bee-line for Heartslabyul.

What it didn’t explain was why Sorrel had been keeping such a close eye on Riddle in the first place. Unless…

“You knew Riddle was going to overblot.”

Even after Cater wadded up the pads in his fingers and tossed them into a nearby trash bin, Sorrel kept his eyes closed. “…Yeah.”

“How?” Trey pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, “Sorrel, I’d been doing nothing but keeping a close eye on Riddle since he got here and it’d never occurred to me as even a remote possibility. You spoke to him once.”

A soft huff left Sorrel, “I’d known before then.”

He took a deep breath and curled around the slab in his exhale. After another beat of silence, he said, “Sandseer.”

“Your unique magic,” Cater said. He looked down at Sorrel from where he stood leaning against one of the bed posts.

Sorrel laughed. It was so sudden, that both Trey and Cater twitched at the sound. It wasn’t the usual nervous, jittery chuckle that often peppered his speech. It was low and bitter.

“Unique magic.” Sorrel pulled himself upright, a miserable smile on his lips, “Y’know, I’ve never heard it called that until I came here. My family just calls it our gifts.” The way he said gifts made it clear that’s not how he saw them in the slightest.

“Our.” Trey said, “You said you were the only-born mage.”

It wasn’t accusatory. It was the only thing he could think to say.

The smile slid off Sorrel’s face. He never radiated the same regality often associated with Diasomnia, but in that instant, it occurred to Trey it was because Sorrel had never wanted to. “I am a Madrigal.” He said, “We get our gifts at six years old.”

“Sorta figured.” Cater’s eyes widened when Trey and Sorrel turned to look at him and waved dismissively, “I-I mean, not that part exactly. But I figured you probably had a little something hidden up your sleeve. When it comes to practical magic, you’ve always pulled ahead for someone who supposedly had no other magical experience.”

He shrugged as he finally sat down on Sorrel’s other side, “And I’ve read your fortune for you a couple times, remember? It’s always pointed at you holding back.”

“You really got a knack for it,” Sorrel said numbly.

Cater winked, “Coming from you? Not bad for Cay-Cay.” Gentleness came rarely to Cater, it suited him more than he thought it did. “Your unique magic. It’s precognition, isn’t it?”

“Funny thing.” Sorrel said devoid of humor, “I’d sworn I wouldn’t use it while I was here, but it was because you read my fortune that I thought I’d give it a shot again.”

“What?” Cater blinked.

Still refusing to let go of the green slab, Sorrel shook his palms in a dazzling motion. “It’s gone so well, I said, What’s the worst that could happen? I’ll luck out this time.” He snorted, shaking his head. He swallowed thickly. Within a few blinks, his eyes turned glossy, “I just wanted to see the upcoming Spelldrive scores…”

“You’d tried to warn Riddle,” Trey said as it dawned on him, “That’s why he exploded on you, he must’ve thought—“

“No.” The word was hoarse with dread. Sorrel squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head with so much despair, like he regretted speaking up, but he said “I did warn him, but that’s not…”

“But—“

“I need you to understand.” Sorrel turned to him. The desperation in his stare was so intense it jolted an unfamiliar shiver of fear in Trey, “I didn’t know what to do. I’ve never been wrong before. I…I’ve tried to change things before they happen and it never works.”

Sorrel shot up from the bed before Trey and Cater could grab him— for a second, Trey thought he’d make a bolt for the door— but he turned to face them. His chest heaved, he was gripping onto his slab so tightly his knuckles paled. Tears fell down his cheeks, “I need you to understand. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know it’d end up this way. Just please understand I wouldn’t have tried if I’d known.”

“Tried to what, Sorrel?” Trey spoke in the same hushed tone he would a frightened animal.

“I’ve never been wrong.” A sob shattered out of Sorrel, on instinct, he covered his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked so in pain and even worse, angry about it. “Riddle wouldn’t listen, but I thought if I stopped him before it could happen…I couldn’t go through with it.” He pulled in air with a hiss. “I couldn’t do it.”

Trey had never gotten the real reason why Riddle had banned Sorrel from their dorm. Riddle had ranted and raved about Sorrel, how he’d tried to threaten him. That had always seemed strange to Trey. Sorrel? Threatening someone? It didn’t sound like him.

He was a bit of an oddball, sure. A little unintentionally creepy at times, especially when he stuck to the shadows with his hood up, and he had a habit of sneaking up on people. He could be blunt and his jokes didn’t always land. But it took all of five minutes chatting with the guy to realize he was perfectly harmless.

Trey wasn’t sure how it’d happened, but Sorrel had become one of his first friends in NRC and if there was something he knew was deeply true about Sorrel— is that he had an instinct to aid those around him. People often mistook Trey for the kind to look out for others out of sheer goodwill, but if there was anyone with any real sense of community in this school, it was Sorrel Madrigal.

So he’d thought perhaps Sorrel had simply made a joke that Riddle took horribly wrong. It wasn’t the first time a quip sailed over his head and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. And when he’d asked Sorrel later on, he’d said the same thing. He’d made a bad joke.

It’d taken a lot of convincing on Trey’s part to talk Riddle from active aggression to stewing anger, but in the end, Riddle conceded and understood Sorrel just had a rather strong case of Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome. This didn’t lift Sorrel’s ban, but at the least, it wouldn’t get him collared so long as he kept his distance.

The fear in Sorrel’s eyes never left, though. Trey had figured Riddle’s rage had simply scared him half to death, but he’d noticed Sorrel had changed since then.

Sorrel had always been big on superstitions, but over the next several months it became almost a compulsive, neurotic need to avoid every crack he encountered. Knock on wood wherever he passed. Throw salt over his shoulder every so often from the pouch he carried everywhere. He jingled with his ever-growing collection of lucky charms on his person.

Trey had known something was off, but in typical Trey Clover fashion— he’d simply hoped it’d resolve itself if he didn’t push it.

Fat good that did him.

One friend nearly died and almost took half the dorm with him and the other had been driving himself insane with the guilt of contemplating murder.

“But things turned out alright.” Trey ventured, because— really— what else could he say? “We’re fine. We’re all fine.”

Sorrel had reigned himself in. He hunched down on the floor and pulled his hood over his head, using the cloth to dab at his face. “That’s what I don’t get.”

Finally, he pulled the slab away from himself and turned it to them to see its face. This also allowed Trey to see the tattoo on Sorrel’s chest. He wasn’t aware he had one. A glowing candle on his upper sternum and two hands hovering over its flame, shielding it.

The slab was even more curious. It looked made of sea glass and it was far more than cracked. It looked like it’d been shattered outright and then painstakingly glued back together. Floating within the glass was a 3D image, not unlike those laser-etched crystal cubes often sold in souvenir shops.

Except, this wasn’t a delicate rose or a horse memorialized mid-gallop. What came through from within the glass was the overblot battle— and everything had gone wrong.

Ace hadn’t been spared by the rose trees. Falling spears of ink did away with Deuce and Cater. Trey’s ‘Doodle Suit’ hadn’t managed to hold out for long enough judging from the collar around his neck— but the flames engulfing him were the bigger concern.

At the center of this morbid collage was Riddle. What was left of him, anyway. The Phantom had overtaken him completely.

Trey rubbed his thumb between his brows. That was certainly going to make its home behind his eyelids for a while.

“This was my original vision,” Sorrel said, buffing his poncho over the glass as if he were to hang it for posterity, “Not exactly something you talk about over lunch.”

Cater choked, “Dude? Have a little respect for me, I’m dead.”

Sorrel’s eyes flicked up to them before landing back down on the vision slab. He seemed to find it easier to look at their corpses than their live counterparts. “Sorry.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.“ Trey tore his eyes away from the glass, “Original vision. You had another one.”

“No,” Sorrel said, “This one changed.”

He tilted the slab to a different angle and the wretched etchings within it shifted. The image now shown through the glass was far more familiar to Trey. It was how things had happened.

It was Riddle, his head on Trey’s lap as he cried. Around them stood— all perfectly alive, healthy, and not the least bit shish-kebabed— Ace, Deuce, and Cater. Three more figures stood with them, absent from the first vision. Sorrel and the Ramshackle Duo. Gia and Grim.

Trey suspected Sorrel hadn’t made it to the original battle, but the other two…had they somehow survived in the first variation? Or was there simply not enough space in the glass?

“I’ve never had a vision do this before.” Sorrel tilted the slab back and forth, back and forth— mesmerized, until Cater finally put his hand on it to make it stop. Sorrel coughed, “My visions, they’re always set. So I…I tried to...”

“Sorrel,” Trey said, “Nobody would know what they’d do if they were in your shoes.”

The seer dropped his head.

At only eighteen, he was an early grayer. Silvery strands shimmered within the rest of his dark hair. He’d said it was hereditary, his mother had gone entirely gray before Sorrel had any real memory of her before then.

But Trey wondered.

“Okay, but…” The color had returned to Cater’s face, but despite his quip from earlier, he still looked a little shaken, “What…happened? We’re all still alive, not that I’m complaining, obvi— but, if you’re never wrong and yet we’re still breathing…something isn’t adding up here.”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out,” Sorrel leaped on the question, relieved to jump on the opportunity to do something about it rather than continue to wallow. He stretched out, reaching underneath his bed between Trey and Cater’s feet. “Ever since we, y’know, didn’t die, I’ve been in here looking into what did this. I might have a theory, you’ll think I’m crazy.”

He glanced up at them. “…Uh. Crazi-er. Crazier.”

Clearing his throat, Sorrel continued, “I’ve never been able to cause a change in my visions. If anything it always seemed like whatever I tried to do only cemented the outcome. So, I know it wasn’t me. And since I hadn’t looked at this vision since I tried to…talk…with Riddle, I didn’t notice when it’d given me this new ending. Did it show up after everything unfolded to reflect the events? Had it changed before then? I just don’t know.”

With a heavy sigh as he pulled back with another vision slab from under his bed frame, he said, “So…I figured why not give this another go.”

Sorrel tapped on the surface of this new slab. Unlike the first one, it was in perfect condition.

“Please tell me you actually got to see the scores for the next Spelldrive tournament this time.” Cater pleaded through a grimace.

“Uh…” Sorrel tilted his head as he squinted at the slab, “Maybe?”

“Maybe?” Trey and Cater chorused.

Trey took the slab from Sorrel’s outstretched hand.

‘Fuzzy’ was the first word to pop into his mind. This slab had, like the first vision, not decided on a single future to show. However, this one was a fan of ‘The More, The Merrier’ approach. There were so many images stacked one on top of the other, it was hard to parcel out where one scene began and the other ended. Trey thought he caught a couple of hazy faces, quite a few beastmen from his class, like Leona Kingscholar. The sophomore that often hung around him as well, Ruggie.

A single figure stuck out through the chaos of the vision soup—still blurry, but wholly recognizable no matter what angle he held the glass in.

“…Gia?” Trey looked at Sorrel for an explanation.

Sorrel pointed at his first vision slab, “He wasn’t in the first vision either, and then suddenly, poof. He’s in the next one.”

“But Gigi’s totally magicless.” Cater played with one of the loose strands of hair framing his face, “What could he— Wait, hold on.”

He pressed his fingers on the edge of the glass, slowly adjusting the tilt in Trey’s hands, a sudden severity sharpening the green in his eyes.

“Cater?”

He paused his search, slowly lifting his hand to tell Trey to hold still, “There.”

Trey scanned the slab, trying to see what Cater saw, “What?”

Cater tapped somewhere in the corner left, “Spelldrive scoreboard.”

Sorrel perked up on his knees, trying to see, “Where?”

“Guys, can we focus?” Trey pulled the slab away from them, ignoring their protests, “Besides, it’s not like we need foresight to know who’s winning the tournament. We’re sitting in his dorm.”

Sorrel shrugged, “Hey man if you want Malleus on your team, you can have him. I’d like to play in an interdorm tournament at least once before I graduate.”

“Would he have to wear our uniform or would we all have to match his?” Cater held his phone as if he were ready to snap the mental photo into existence with it, “Either way, it’d make a great post.”

While Trey had meant to get the conversation back on track, the casualness with which they’d fallen back relieved him. He’d been beginning to think he wouldn’t have anything like this again. Silly as it was, he missed the days when he could just sit and chat about anything with Sorrel and Cater.

“Digressing,” he pressed, “Cater’s right. Gia has no magic to speak of, how could he be messing up yours?”

“It’s important for you guys to understand that my gift only gives me glimpses into future events. I don’t control them.” Sorrel yawned into his fist, plopping back down on the floor. “He’s not messing up my magic. I’m still getting visions, it’s just nothing’s for certain when he’s involved.”

“That…is terrifying,” Trey admitted.

“Sorta,” Sorrel agreed, “Not in the ways you’re probably thinking, though. This…Gia. I don’t know the specifics of it, but he’s not from our world, right? The Magic Mirror pulled him out of someplace else.”

Cater hummed, “Gigi’s a tough little nut. I’ve asked ADeuce about him since they seem to be the only ones he speaks a word to and what little they’ve pulled out of him matches up with that.”

“I think…” Sorrel looked up at the ceiling as if someone had written the answers there, “I mean, this is the best I got, but—I think Fate just doesn’t know what to do with him. It’s like…you’ve got this party, yeah? You’ve got your guest list and your itinerary. You’ve got everything planned down to the millisecond and then…there’s just some extra guy you had no plan for showing up last minute. What do you do with them?”

Strange as the analogy was and as much as Trey never bought into the concept of fate, it did give the idea enough traction for him to wrap his head around. Whether he was right or not, they couldn’t know, but as Sorrel said, it’s the best he’s got. Trey said, “I guess if you suddenly throw in an extra variable that was in no way meant to be there, there’s a space being filled that didn’t exist. Would make sense if things got thrown through a loop.”

“Is anyone starting to feel like this is totally beyond our pay grade?” Cater said, scrolling through Magicam. Trey idly watched as Cater swiped his thumb over his screen and noticed he wasn’t liking anything, “Like, okay. We’ve got a potentially reality-shattering entity in our midst. What does that mean for us? More importantly, what are we supposed to do about it?”

No one answered.

The silence had gone awkward until Cater spoke again, “Look, all this aside, there is something I’ve been wondering about.” He took his gaze off his phone– not that he’d been looking at it to begin with– and set it on Sorrel, “If you really thought we were gonna die, why’d you stay?”

Sorrel’s mouth opened, but only made a weak sound. He swallowed, eyes darting briefly to Trey, then back to the slab in his hands. He closed his eyes. A resigned sigh sagged his shoulders, at last he looked at them and smiled something hollow. “The people of my town are scared of me. Every single one of them. Most find it easier to pretend I’m paint on the wall when I’m in the room so long as they don’t look me in the eye. I never thought I’d have the miracle of having friends again.”

He blinked slowly, his palm reaching to rub at the candle on his chest, “I don’t like the way a lot of things are run where I’m from, but if there’s something that’s been drilled into me since I was a kid it’s that we protect our miracles with everything we got.”

Trey started to say something, but with a rattling BANG that caused all three of them to nearly jump out of their seat, Cater #2 walked through the door holding the peach-and-roses pajama set at arm’s length like he was afraid it’d bite him.

“Special Cay-Cay Delivery-Round-Two-Slash-Cleaning-Service!” He said, “I found your clothes, dude, I think something was growing out of them. But no worries, I ran into Ruggie along the way and he’s taking care of it.”

Cater sprang up from the bed, “Oh, lucky! That dude really knows how to make your clothes smell fresh for weeks if you pay the price. Four out of Four Diamond Approval Rating!” He breezed past Sorrel on the way to his copy.

Sorrel ran his fingers through his hair before pulling his hoodie further down his head, blinking hard. When he noticed Trey looking at him, he mouthed– Tired.

Trey offered him a smile and extended his hand towards him.

Sorrel– with his early grays and tired eyes and strange tattoo and scruffy beard– looked at him with the same timid hope of a boy being asked to play.

“C’mon,” said Trey, “We need to get you clean yesterday.”

Sorrel snorted a laugh as he took his hand and let Trey pull him up to his feet, “That tart box you brought in..?”

“Chocolate raspberry.” Trey took Sorrel’s slab and stacked it on top of his over the bed.

Sorrel tried to step around Trey to grab them, but Trey matched his step.

“After you take a bath.”

Sorrel groaned, suddenly feeling a lot better.

Trey chuckled and glanced at where Cater was still chatting with himself before murmuring, “Cater’s just…doing his usual, but I know your sentiment means a lot…as it does to me.”

Sorrel’s eyes widened so much that Trey could see they were a kind of coffee brown instead of their usual apparent black. He fiddled with the sleeves of his poncho, “...That’s really open of you.”

“When you almost lose two of your best friends because you weren’t open enough…you start wondering if you deserve the title.”

It was the first sincere grin he’d seen on Sorrel in almost a year.

It didn’t last that long.

“Lookie, lookie~” Cater and Cater #2 approached him holding the pajama set towards him, “I hear this color really brightens up your skin tone.”

“Um–” Sorrel stepped back only to bump into Trey, “I mean, I need a bath. A long one. My laundry’ll be ready by then, right?”

“Ruggie said he might not have it for you until tomorrow,” said one of the Caters.

Sorrel looked up at Trey for help, but he just shrugged.

“Go on,” he said, “Try it on, make sure it fits first.”

“Okay, wait a minute–”

What Sorrel said next was drowned out by the Caters hauling him off as Trey laughed.

While one Cater played tug-of-war with Sorrel’s poncho and the other slid on a pants leg onto Sorrel’s ankle, Trey turned to the slabs on the bed. He picked up the one with Riddle, tilting it back and forth like Sorrel had, frowning thoughtfully. Then with a huff, he slid both visions under Sorrel’s bed.

Sorrel could use a break from looking at the past as much as he did the future. Enough maybes and what-ifs for the time being. He could stand to be in the now.

And Trey wouldn’t mind standing with him, too.

tag list:

@cyanide-latte @inmateofthemind @simons-twsted-children @tixdixl @blithesharem @thehollowwriter

@jovieinramshackle @theleechyskrunkly @skriblee-ksk @boopshoops @the-trinket-witch @twistedwonderlandshenanigans

@kimikitti @felix-cant-ski (dm to be added)

#hi not dead ive just been really distracted lately #twst #twst oc #trey clover #cater diamond #trey clover x oc #cater diamond x oc #diasomnia oc #twisted wonderland oc #twisted wonderland #shout out to tixdixl for giving me their ship name #cards of fate #sorrel madrigal #gar’s art #gar’s ocs #gar’s writing #oathofoaks

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