Author's Note- Well, here it is, Resbang 2015! Before you read, I want to note that this fic is not completely finished. I had some extenuating circumstances (illness, being stuck for days sans computer) that cut down my writing time severely. The Resbang mods were aware of this ahead of time and gave the okay for me to post the last couple of chapters a bit late. If it weren't for the holiday I would say I'll have them up by the end of the week, but I don't want to bet on having time to work around family stuff, so if I can't get everything up by Friday, then definitely you'll see the remainder of the fic by next week.
And now that the heavy stuff's out of the way...
When I signed up for Resbang this year and planned to write TsuLiz, I planned to write a short, sweet, fluffy established relationship fic. And then I decided I was going to write an incredibly messed up Revolutionary Girl Utena AU. As you may have noticed, this is neither of those fics. Whoops. Instead, this is an AU based on Diane Duane's Young Wizards series (which I highly recommend checking out, they were some of the most influential books in my development as a young author when I was in middle and high school). It's set in the YW universe and there may or may not be a few sly references to canon YW events, but it is not following the plot of any of the books. This is also the first installation in a TsuLiz series, and unquestionably the least shippy (which is a shame, because when I started out, like I said, I wanted fluff and smooches), so stay tuned for the next installment!
I'd like to give a few shoutouts, firstly to my artist partners. Scarl, ProMa, Kasper, you guys have been amazing to work with, and you all inspired so much of how this fic grew and developed. You're the fertilizer that helped this project grow. I'll be including links to their art in my profile (and by that I mean on my tumblr link page because ffnet no longer allows links outside of this site in profiles) so keep a lookout for that! Secondly, thanks to my beta team, which also included ProMa and Scarl, as well as the fabulous Lucyrne and Dollypop. You guys rock.
Please be aware that this fic contains strong language, portrayals of physical and emotional domestic abuse, allusions to prostitution and drug use, and... well... Giriko. So, you know, proceed with caution.
The front door of the run-down apartment slammed shut behind Liz Thompson as she stomped down the cracked concrete steps. Her left sneaker was still untied, but she didn't stop to fix it until she had stalked to the end of the block and out of sight of the dirt-caked windows of her building. Only then, once she had rounded the corner, did she bend down to lace it up properly.
Shoe fixed, she slumped back against the brick building, eyes closed. She sucked in a few deep breaths, trying in vain to steady her pulse.
Another day, another screaming match.
It was far, far from her first fight with her mother, and it most definitely would not be the last. Liz was used to it by now— or at least she should have been— but every single time, she still found herself trembling from a jumble of anger and fear. It was always a coin toss which emotion was going to be more prominent on any given day.
Once she was reasonably collected and back in control of her face, she stepped away from the brickwork and set off down Rose Avenue, determined to head the school bus off before it got to their block.
She got to the intersection of Rose and Ashburn in the nick of time. Waving frantically, she caught Patti's attention through the window, and after some fancy talking to convince the bus driver to let one of his charges off a few stops early, she had safely collected her little sister.
"Hi, Jellybean," Liz said, wrapping an arm around her sister's shoulder and squeezing her to her side as she steered her away from the bus stop. "How was your last day?"
"Good!" Patti exclaimed. "Miss Yumi brought ice cream!"
Liz kept her grin tucked in her cheek, giving her sister one more affectionate squeeze before releasing her. "That's great. And how's the report card?"
Patti glanced shiftily around, eyes sliding away when she caught Liz's gaze. "Goooooood," she said, and the dubious way she drew out the syllable told Liz all she really needed to know.
"Let's see it." Liz held out her hand.
She reluctantly swung her neon pink backpack around and rummaged through it, producing a little manila envelope that looked a bit worse for wear, as if it had been thrown on the ground and stomped on a few times.
Liz opened it and pulled out the card inside. "Hey, this is pretty good!" she said. "You got A's in art and gym… and look, a C in reading!" The less said about her other grades, the better. Patti wasn't stupid— the opposite, actually— but she had a hard time focusing for long, and her grades tended to reflect that. She would be starting junior high in the fall, and Liz worried about how she would handle the harder classes. There wasn't much she could do if Patti was struggling. She was no academic herself, and she sure as shit couldn't afford a tutor, and neither could their mother.
Not that the bitch would even if she could, Liz thought bitterly.
Her praise had put a smile back on her sister's face, and Liz breathed an internal sigh of relief. She was more than four years older than Patti, but that didn't mean she always knew the best way to make her happy.
"You're coming with me to work today," she said, as they turned off Rose and onto the busier Oakland Avenue.
"Won't Mr. Buttataki mind?"
Liz shook her head. "Nah, Joe's always cool with you crashing in his office, you know that."
Patti grinned that sunshine grin of hers. "Yay! He let me play on the computer last time."
"That's great, Patti," she said, silently thanking her boss for being so tolerant of her sister. On days like this, when she didn't dare let Patti go home without her, Joe was a godsend. Admittedly, he was a godsend anyway for "not noticing" that her mother's signature to permit employment of a minor was very obviously forged. Plausible deniability, he had called it. After all, how was he to know what her mother's handwriting looked like?
She was pretty sure Joe knew more than he let on about their home life, but he didn't pry, which she appreciated, and he let her keep her job, which she appreciated more. It was only minimum wage at Starbucks, but it was money she controlled instead of her mother.
It was reassuring to have Joe as a reminder that not all adults were the scum of the earth, but Patti's next words derailed that pleasant train of thought quite effectively. "Is it Mom again?"
"Huh?"
"Is. it. Mom. again?" Patti asked. "Is she why I can't go home?"
Liz violently hated that she couldn't shield her sister's mind as well as she shielded her body. No kid deserved to know their mother was scum. "Yeah," she said. "She's got a new boyfriend. Doesn't want to be disturbed." Among other things.
Patti nodded solemnly. "She never wants to be bugged anyway."
While Liz was trying to find a response appropriate for an eleven-year-old's ears, she was jostled by someone carrying an armload of books. One of the books slipped from the pile and landed with a slap on the pavement.
"Watch where you're going, asshole!" she exclaimed as Patti bent down to pick up the book.
"Shouldn't we give this back?" she asked, holding up the slim volume.
Liz shrugged and tried to catch sight of the person who had bumped her, but they seemed to have disappeared. They were in a busier area now, closer to downtown, and the streets were crowded. Whoever it was had already gotten lost in the crowd.
"Nah," she said. "If he can't be bothered to stop, he must not want it that bad." She plucked the book out of her sister's outstretched hand and tucked it into her purse.
She thought no more about the incident until several hours later.
It was only the end of May, but the heat of the Nevada desert was already impressive, even in the evening. When Liz and Patti stepped out of the air-conditioned interior of the Starbucks hours later, the heat hit them like a wave. There was only a narrow strip of greenish light lingering on the horizon, but the heat radiating from the sun-warmed pavement kept temperatures in the city several degrees higher, even as the parched land beyond the city limits started to cool off.
After she waved a lazy goodbye to the closing crew, Liz took her sister's hand and led her back in the direction of the apartment.
The grungy apartment complex they called home wasn't much to look at from the outside, only two stories tall with dirty windows and a cracking brick facade, and it wasn't any better on the inside. The hallway was narrow with dark wood paneling that made it seem even more claustrophobic than it was, and a faint odor of mildew and marijuana lingered in the air no matter how many fancy air-fresheners the landlady sprayed when showing the place to new tenants.
It was obvious the minute Liz pushed open the door that her mother had been smoking. The ashy, bitter smell of tobacco stung her nose, and she wished it had been weed, because that wouldn't be quite so noxious. Patti's cough when she followed Liz inside was a sharp reminder of why she had quit smoking.
Liz glanced across the living room and made eye contact with her mother. Roxanne "Roxy" Thompson, the Head Leech herself, was sprawled in a threadbare recliner, blue eyes glassy and fixed on her daughters. Her feet were propped up on the glass-top coffee table, the only really nice piece of furniture that they owned, and Liz winced at the scratches her cheap heels were making on the glass.
"What time is it?" she demanded harshly.
"Quarter to ten," Liz said tiredly.
"And what the hell is my babygirl doing out of my house so late?" Roxy said, mashing out her cigarette on the ashtray before getting unsteadily to her feet. "School got out at three."
"Nice of you to remember," Liz muttered under her breath.
"Liz took me to work with her!" Patti piped up. "Mr. Joe let me play on his computer."
Roxy raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? And why the hell did you go there?" she said, and her tone was dangerous. "Thought I told you to come home after school."
Patti opened her mouth, but Liz stopped her with a light touch on the shoulder. "How about you go have a shower, Patti? Mom and I can talk."
Big blue eyes blinked up at her as Patti eyed her doubtfully. "Are you sure?" she asked.
Liz nodded. "Yeah, go on." She gave Patti a little nudge toward the door to the bathroom between the apartment's two tiny bedrooms. Once she had trundled off and closed the door behind her— not that a door was likely to do much good— Liz turned back to look at her mother.
"The hell did you take Patti to fuckin' Starbucks for?" Roxy demanded.
"Figured since you were so busy with your new boyfriend, you wouldn't want company," Liz said, unable to keep the sarcastic sneer out of her voice even though she knew it would get her in worse trouble.
The sleep-and-whiskey glazed look didn't leave Roxy's eyes, but her gaze sharpened anyhow. "That's not your fuckin' call to make," she growled. "I'm her damn mother, I'm both of yous mother and you do whatever the fuck I say."
Liz snorted. "Yeah, okay," she said. The sarcasm was in the building and it wasn't going to be leaving anytime soon, apparently. This was the problem, this was what always got her in trouble, her complete inability to just keep her mouth shut and roll with the punches.
Roxy took a worrisome step closer. "Don't you dare take that attitude with me, I'm your mother and you will respect me."
"Gimme a reason to, and maybe I will."
Liz really should have seen the backhand coming.
"She's my daughter! Mine, not yours, you self-righteous bitch!" Roxy shouted, voice creaking and weak from too many cartons of cigarettes over the years.
There was a fire burning in Liz's gut and she was sure it shone out her eyes as she gave her so-called mother the devil's own glare, but even she knew enough was enough. Her cheek was stinging and she'd probably have a enough of a bruise tomorrow as it was.
"Fine," she muttered, and turned away. "I'm going to bed."
"Whatever. Just remember to pay the fuckin' rent tomorrow."
Liz shrugged and walked away. She was grateful that Roxy didn't say anything else or try to follow her. Two arguments in one day was enough, and all she wanted was to go to bed.
Liz made a brief detour to the kitchen. She could have gone to the bathroom but she didn't, not because the sisters felt the need to give each other that much privacy in the shower, but more because she didn't want Patti to see if she was already bruising.
She surveyed her reflection in the microwave, and saw that in addition to the bruise she would have tomorrow— which, this time at least, would not be hand-shaped— she had a little cut right above her cheekbone from her mother's cheap ring. She grabbed a paper towel and wet it at the sink, then dabbed at the small spot of blood that had welled up.
Hopefully it wouldn't scar. Her skin was so fair that any blemish or flaw stood out too clearly. Well, she thought, I still have some money left over from my last paycheck. Maybe I can go and buy some of that scar cream they advertise on TV, just to make sure…
Roxy was still glaring at her as she left the kitchen. Liz pointedly ignored her and turned the corner through the living room into the smaller of the two bedrooms. Shutting the door behind her, she set down the purse she was still carrying with a sigh, and was momentarily surprised by the thump it made, until she realized she still had the book she'd picked up earlier tucked away in there. She bent down and extracted it, tossing it towards their bed (which was actually just a mattress on the floor, but that was fine) as something to look at later. It had been a long day, she still smelled faintly of coffee, and she wanted was a distraction from the way her cheek throbbed.
She tied her hair up, shed her clothes in favor of an oversized t-shirt, and settled down on the mattress. Despite the warmth of the evening, she wrapped herself up in the stained quilt, burrowing down beneath it. Once she was bundled up enough, she opened the book.
Liz had never been a great reader. She'd cracked open a book now and then, but mostly for school, and mostly she found herself not giving a shit. Right now, though, she wanted a distraction, and she had to admit she was curious.
It was a fairly plain little book, bound up in that blue buckram like a school-library encyclopedia. The front was stamped with a title in gold: Wizard's Manual.
Liz frowned. Must be some kind of fantasy book, she decided, and nearly tossed it away right then and there. She didn't have much interest in fantasy— some of her classmates before she'd stopped going to school had eaten it up, but she didn't have much patience for it. She could see the appeal to an extent. The escapism must be nice. But Liz didn't have the time to forget reality. If she'd been an only child, maybe, but she had Patti to think about, and daydreaming away wouldn't get her sister fed and clothed and sent to school on time.
But when she opened the book, she found that it was not a novel after all, but instead a sort of… instruction manual?
She skimmed the table of contents, eyes catching briefly on chapter titles such as "Introduction to Spells & Bindings," "Physical Aids for the Beginner," and "Moulding Granite and Monoliths: On Persuading the Immovable." It had to be some kind of joke or parody. It had to be.
And yet...
Flipping through to the foreword, she began to read.
The history of wizardry is nearly as old as the universe itself, and just as complex. Countless ages ago, far back at the Beginning of Things, Life called into existence a host of Powers, charged with managing creation in all its variances. What followed shortly thereafter is a story known and retold throughout the world, familiar to every species that has evolved a sufficient level of sentience to recount stories— and quite a few that have not.
You yourself are surely familiar with the old tale. An old Power, greater and more beautiful than Its fellows, but full of pride and envy, who waited until after Its peers had brought forth their own creations to unveil Its own. The contribution this Lone Power made to the universe is, of course, entropy— the slow decay of the universe, the inevitable trickling of sand through the immeasurable hourglass of Time as the finite energy of the worlds is gradually expended— and the final symptom of entropy: Death.
And then there was war in heaven and the other Powers cast the Lone One out, but the damage, as all Life can attest, was done. Death is loose in the universe, and entropy is running.
That, of course, is why there are wizards— to manage the day to day troubles of the worlds, to slow the rate of entropy in the universe.
It all kind of sounded like religious mumbo-jumbo, as far as Liz was concerned, but she had to admit she was intrigued. She skipped a paragraph or twelve until another phrase caught her eye.
Wizards are not born: they are made. Wizardry is a Choice. Nevertheless, certain qualities must be present in the individual for the Choice to be offered, the raw materials, if you will. The very fact that you have come into possession of this manual, that you can see it for what it is, speaks highly of your potential. The Wizard's Manual, in whatever form appropriate for the species of the candidate, will always find its way to those suited for practice of the Art.
Liz's brows drew together. It was Patti who had picked the book up. Maybe this manual had been meant for her?
But no, she was the one who was reading it. She was the one seeing the manual's true form. And maybe Patti would see it, too, if she were the one looking through the careworn pages under the harsh light of their shadeless lamp… but right now, it was in her hands, not Patti's.
The next pages contained a list of qualities often found in potential wizards. There were plenty that Liz did not feel she possessed in any measure, but two in particular stood out.
...creativity, even to the point of being cunning…
...the use of the wizardly Speech, the language which all Life understands, is crucial to the practice of the Art, and as such, a gift for persuasiveness is one of the most commonly found traits among wizards…
She had never considered herself book-smart, but she could talk her way out of the stickiest situations if given enough time, and that in itself took plenty of "creativity."
Despite herself, she was wholly drawn in. She couldn't have explained why if asked, but her natural skepticism was eroded by the eloquent words, stamped in an old typewriter font in faded black ink.
She flipped to the next page. It was blank, except for a bolded heading: The Wizard's Oath, and a small block of text, centered on the page.
In Life's name, and for Life's sake, I say that I will
use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life.
I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve
what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will
change no object or creature unless its growth and life,
or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened.
To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage,
and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe's end.
Liz tapped her fingers against the page, staring at the printed words until her eyes blurred. The words were heavy, but one part in particular stuck out to her. Unless the system of which it is part is threatened…
What was her dysfunctional family if not a 'threatened system'? She couldn't remember a time when things hadn't been fucked up beyond belief, when she hadn't had to worry about whether there was booze in the house or if she was going to have to take Patti to work because their mom was in a Mood. But change, the book said, changing systems that were threatened…
Well, what was the harm? If she said the words and they were just words, nothing would be any worse than it had before. But if it was real, maybe she could fix things. Maybe she could make them rich, or make her mother less of a bitter skank, or… or something. The book made it seem like magic was meant for more important things, but what did that matter? What could be more important than giving Patti a safe home to live in?
She heard the water turn off, heard the clatter of the shower door opening, and made her decision. Before Patti could interrupt her, she spoke the words, swift and sure.
Liz wasn't entirely certain, but she thought there might have been the slightest shiver in the air as she finished.
Before she could think any more about it, however, Patti walked through the door, stark naked and dripping.
"I forgot my towel," she announced, perfectly indifferent to the trail of wet footprints she left as she walked over to the closet.
Liz rolled over and shoved her face into her pillow with a groan.