I told myself this fic would be short and cute, and then it was long and angst. This is becoming a pattern with me.

A few details put me on the fence about posting this fic at all, but I've resolved to myself to stop letting my fics die in my Dropbox at the request of my inner editor. The character appearances and dynamics in this fic actually have a few things in common with a trilogy draft I've been playing with, so I guess this 20K-word fic will be a litmus test about whether to release the longer one.

This fic will have four chapters, including this one.

Once upon a time, in the middle of the woods, there lived two brothers and their mother. The three of them loved one another dearly. They lived solitary lives at the edge of a village, less of their own will than the fact that the mother was a witch, the only one in the region, and the village didn't especially approve of how her healing potions and farming charms came into being (much as they needed them and paid accordingly).

To the relief of Valka, the mother, one man did see past superstition and choose to marry her: a man named Aldrich, who himself had two sons.

Lukas, the elder son, then twelve years old, took one look at his new brothers and frowned. "Will we tell them about me?" he asked his mother, holding the hand of his six-year-old brother Emil a little tighter.

"We will," said his mother placidly, watching her new husband and sons step down from their carriage. "I'm sure Gilbert and Ludwig are open-minded young boys. You'll have new friends, you know. Brothers, even."

This illusion was fractured that night at dinner, when Gilbert, the older of Aldrich's sons, took a wide and considering look at Lukas and Emil.

"Are you a witch too?" he asked Lukas, the very question Lukas had been dreading.

"Yes," said Lukas quietly. "Mother is teaching me."

"So you'll be doing the chores then."

It was not the development Lukas had hoped for, but he counted himself and Emil lucky that at least they weren't going to be chased out of their own house.

Lukas secretly wondered why his mother, usually so calm and content with their lives, had chosen to marry. He learned her reason only a few months later, at her deathbed.

"I love you more than all the world," she said, stroking his hair as he struggled to hold back tears. "You and Emil both. But the cottage and your brother are too much to put on your shoulders."

"But we won't have—" you, Lukas couldn't quite choke out.

His mother smiled, less serenely with every day. "You'll have each other. And your new father and brothers." Slowly she planted a kiss on his forehead. "Take care of them, my Lukas. Like I always knew you would."

Valka left her family overnight, leaving a hole in her sons' lives to the point that Emil wept whenever Gilbert tried to take her seat at the table beside his father.

Aldrich and his sons were admittedly less sentimental.

Aldrich took Lukas aside once he'd set his brother to bed. "Your mother left us in trouble," said Aldrich. "Her healing potions and spells were all the income we had available to us. There's no work for me to be done in this forest." He looked outside the window at the crops with a snort.

"So," Aldrich continued, "you will replace your mother. She has taught you what she knows, I imagine."

Lukas kept quiet.

"Has she?"

"Yes," murmured Lukas. "Mostly. I know potions much better."

"Pity, the crop spells brought in more money," said Aldrich. "All the same, you will continue caring for the crops to hone your skills. In your spare time, you will make the same potions your mother did. We depend on you, Lukas," said Aldrich, and for the first time he didn't sound unkind to be saying it.

Lukas's hope slowly grew. "Mother said I would be attending school soon," he ventured. "I can already read and write, but she was hoping for me and Emil to make friends with the other children."

Not that Lukas didn't have friends already, he supposed. Around the time Emil was born, Lukas had been venturing in the forest and befriended a cheery young boy named Mathias who also lived in the woods. Lukas had had to stop visiting as Valka began courting and needed Lukas at home, but he'd promised Mathias to see him in school.

"Well now," tisked Aldrich. Lukas's hope sunk to his feet. "As Emil has shown no traces of magic, he may attend. You, on the other hand…well, you will frankly taint my own sons in the eyes of the other children. You and your magic belong here. And you'll be too busy, won't you?" Aldrich raised an eyebrow. "A young wizard has a different place than more…normal boys."

And so, with dismay, Lukas's indentured life began.

Lukas and Emil developed a daily routine. Every morning before sunrise, Lukas awoke and tended to the livestock: the few cows, chickens, and sheep they had. He took what was needed for breakfast and hastened to the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Aldrich, Gilbert, and Ludwig would only come when called: Gilbert would loudly and sloppily eat while Aldrich and Ludwig maintained their manners but watched Lukas stoically, as if daring him to sit among them.

Gilbert and Ludwig left for school, while Emil—not yet old enough to attend—would awaken and eat his own breakfast and Lukas would clean the dishes. At Emil's request, Lukas would let him tend the garden while Lukas alternatively plowed, sowed, and harvested the fields depending on the season. Lukas frankly understood Emil's reluctance to stay indoors; the only other person inside was Aldrich, who spent his time in correspondence with people Lukas didn't dare to ask about but assumed were former business partners. He demanded absolute silence

In the afternoons, Aldrich would go to town—possibly for meetings, possibly for a drink, Lukas never asked and Aldrich never told—and Lukas and Emil would retreat to the shack alongside the proper house. Here, Lukas brewed potions to sell and, rather than telling Emil how to make them, made Emil read aloud to him from readers and spellbooks alike.

Emil was going to go to school, Lukas vowed. He was going to be the best of his class, because he would never be the most popular for the witches' blood that ran through his veins, and he was going to find himself a life away from here.

In the evening Aldrich returned and Lukas left, carrying that day's potions for sale. On all but the worst weather days, he let Emil come along. On the days it was too cold or raining too hard, Emil cried.

"Gilbert always wants to play games," he would sniff.

"That's not so bad," Lukas would say, but deep down he knew that Gilbert was learning quickly to hate witches as much as the other children, and that any games Gilbert had in mind could very well involve Emil getting hurt. "And there's always Ludwig."

"Ludwig won't speak to me," Emil would return. And Lukas couldn't argue. But he had to leave, and Emil had to get used to the silent judgment of their kind.

Lukas would return hours later, coins jingling in a bag he had to surrender to Aldrich every day for counting. Aldrich's contribution was to keep the order records and the accounts in order. Lukas ended every day hanging his head in front of a man who should have been his father, hearing the laughter of boys who should have been brothers, while Emil waited a door away, half asleep but unable to drift off without a story of fairies or giants or heroes.

Emil's favorite stories were of the noble prince Mathias, who slayed giants and ogres alike to defend a noble kingdom of fair folk and magic-wielders alike. The real Mathias was probably no more than a hazy memory to him, a shock of blond hair and a wide smile that Emil lost as easily as his toddler's waddle.

But when Emil had drifted to sleep, Lukas's exhausted eyes stayed open only a few seconds more, to remember the one person outside his family who had learned what he was and smiled.

Years passed. Lukas grew, shorter and leaner than he would have liked, but such was the price of leaving the best portions to Emil. Emil was twelve years old against Lukas's eighteen, and due to start school. Gilbert, already finished with school for a year, had found a trade but had not left the house.

Why would he? Lukas thought bitterly as he trudged through the muddy village streets with his potions. Today was a rainy day. With me at his beck and call, he has a better life than he would out here.

He was nearly done with deliveries for the day when he heard a voice in the distance.

"Lukas?"

Almost no one used his name here. Most called him "boy", though by many standards he wasn't anymore. Maybe some would start using "witch", not knowing or caring that a male one was a wizard. He ignored the voice, assuming it was meant for someone else.

"Lukas!"

The voice was coming closer. Despite himself, Lukas turned.

Growing closer by the second, dressed in a red tunic and taller and more freckled than he had any right to be, was Mathias.

For a moment, Lukas couldn't speak.

Mathias stopped only a few feet away from Lukas, taking in his rain-drenched cloak and the messenger bag full of potion bottles, and broke into a wide grin, the likes of which lit up his entire face. "I can't believe—er, I—I really hoped it was you!"

Lukas was blushing, he realized belatedly. For a moment all thoughts of coins, of Aldrich, of how Emil was probably worried sick, left his mind, and he was only a young man breathless with awe for the most handsome man he'd ever seen.

"I tried to tell you," Mathias was rattling on, "but I didn't realize we were closer to different villages, so my school was a different one from yours. I tried to find your home, but then my father didn't want me wandering, and then he got sick, so I had to…" He trails off, and then shakes his head. "But that's not important now. How are you? How's Emil?"

And the unguarded interest in his eyes, the tilt of his head, the boyish freckles on his face and the broadness of his shoulders, turned the ache in Lukas's chest from hope to love.

Then, because fate was cruel and had no good intentions for Lukas, his worn, waterlogged leather shoes split open to reveal one of his toes. Within seconds Lukas saw himself as Mathias must surely see him: drenched and hungry and too short for his age and an outcast not worth talking to.

"I'm…fine," said Lukas unconvincingly, shifting his balance to hide the protruding toe. Water was dripping in his eyes. At least Mathias had a cloak. "Emil is fine. Due to start school soon."

"And you're finished, I guess," said Mathias with a softening grin. "I, uh, I guess you had your hands full, huh? Since you had to learn two different trades."

Despite his shame and his need to get somewhere dry, Lukas had to know. "What's your trade, then?"

"Oh. Uh, I'm working on it. Trying to sell wooden figurines around the villages. In the meantime, I'm farming and doing some fixing."

Lukas could see it in the ropy muscles of his arms. Mathias had no siblings, this he knew. Everything he grew, he ate himself. And the sturdiness of his hands definitely—

Lukas had to stop this.

"Well," said Lukas. "It's good to see you." He turned to leave.

"Wait!"

Lukas froze. He pressed his lips together, and turned back.

"Er…ah, do you want to visit? Sometime?" For the first time since this conversation started, Mathias looked unsure. After a moment, he bit his lip. "It's been ages, Lukas. I wanted to visit you, really."

"I believe you," said Lukas quietly. "But…I can't spare the time. These days."

"Ah. Yeah, you're probably…high in demand."

Oh, if only.

"I'll see you," said Lukas by way of farewell. "Now that you've found this village."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll see you." Mathias gave him one last, lingering look, and Lukas had to turn away before he committed the softness in Mathias's expression to memory.

Lukas surrendered his coins to Aldrich and came to his room to find Emil crying, something he hadn't done since he was nine.

"What's wrong?" Lukas asked, immediately settling himself beside his brother.

"I cast a spell," Emil spat out.

Lukas froze. "What spell?" he asked in trepidation.

Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it was a drop of potion spilled and left uncleaned.

"I brought a plant back to life."

Despite himself, Lukas lost his breath. This was a spell that Lukas himself couldn't do. He'd tried, certainly, but for all Aldrich's hopes that Lukas's farming would gain him the familiarity with agricultural spells his mother had had, it seems he'd invested in the wrong wizard.

Lukas could see it now. His brother was the same age now as Lukas had been when Aldrich and his sons had moved to their house. If Aldrich found out that Emil had magic ability as well as ancestry, he'd almost certainly indenture both of them to this house, and live off of their skills until his dying day. Lukas had tried so hard to take the brunt of the labor, but because of this new development, Emil would have to take his own share, almost in lockstep with Lukas's own life.

And for what? All the money Lukas made for their family went to Aldrich, and through him to Gilbert and Ludwig. Gilbert was burning through gold at an alarming rate, starting and failing at his own businesses, and Ludwig was politely demanding to be sent to another city to continue his education once he'd finished with the village school. And Aldrich so clearly (Lukas couldn't keep the bitterness out of his own thoughts) prized his own sons ahead of the ones who brought in the money that kept them alive and prosperous, and if Emil was going to be yoked into this life…

No. Lukas couldn't let that happen.

Lukas wrapped an arm around his brother, whose tears were steadily drying, and swore, "I'll think of something."

The idea struck him belatedly, given that Lukas surrendered every non-Emil thought to Mathias for days after their chance encounter. But the minute he had it—toiling in the fields while Emil picked at the garden—he clenched it until the earliest moment he could act on it.

"Emil," he said once they'd shut the door to the potion shack, "I need you to take down a letter for me."

Emil paused. "You never have letters to write."

"Today I do. Get the parchment." Lukas could very well write the letter himself, but due to the flu spreading around the village, he was backed up with potions orders and on a tight schedule. And besides, he didn't have a better idea of how to say goodbye to Emil.

Frowning, Emil grabbed a piece of parchment and a quill.

Lukas rifled both for ingredients and for the right way to greet a man he couldn't afford to be in love with. "…'Mathias,'" he settled for.

Emil paused. "From the stories?"

"No, that's the greeting. Write it. 'Dear Mathias', if you want."

Emil hummed skeptically and began writing.

"I know I'm asking you an enormous favor," dictated Lukas, the idea becoming crazier and more desperate as he voiced it, "but there's no one else I can turn to. My brother, Emil, is a wizard like me."

Emil's eyes widened, and he glanced up at Lukas between words.

"I'm begging you," dictated Lukas, keeping his eyes trained on his brew, "to take care of him. Adopt him as your own brother, like we pretended when we were children. I'll send for him when I can. If I can. Please." His hands trembled, and he set down the clay jar he was pouring from. "He's the only family I have."

Emil set down the quill. For twelve years old, he was already so mature, but his widened eyes reminded Lukas of just how young he really was. "Lukas," he murmured. He leapt off the stool he was perched upon and wrapped his arms around his brother's waist.

"Don't make me go," he gasped into Lukas's tunic.

Lukas wrapped his arms around Emil's shoulders. "If I knew another way, I'd do it." He rubbed his brother's as they both tried not to let loose their tears. "But I can't let you stay here."

As I was editing Mathias's and Lukas's first re-meeting, It's You That I Want by The Yearning came up on the radio, so I hereby claim it as a dennor OTP song and the honorary song for this chapter.

I adore Gil and Ludwig, so I'm not going for a truly "evil" thing with their family. Aldrich is just a very practical man who knows a good opportunity when he sees one (and has about as much respect for wizards as the rest of the village).