present day: the morning after
She wakes up with Godric's arm around her and a pounding in her head.
There is little comfort in the situation, but she finds solace in the fact that one will go away. The other, however, will not.
She shifts slightly and Godric lets out a groan, lifting his arm and rubbing his eyes. "Good morning."
She looks at his face and realizes, with a start, that this is what her mornings are going to be like now. This is the face that she is going to see every morning until she dies.
And it's not the face that she thought it would be. For when she imagined her future, she always dreamed that she would be with Salazar.
Salazar.
He hasn't left her mind since he kissed her before the wedding. She can't get his piercing green eyes, his face, his touch, his voice out of her head. Last night, when she consummated her marriage in the dark, she pretended it was him on top of her. Only Godric's clumsiness and awkward touches prevented her from moaning Salazar's name.
She wonders where he is right now and hopes that he's all right even though she knows that he isn't. She's torn his heart into little pieces, but it hasn't been without pain.
Her heart is equally as fragmented, and she doesn't quite know how to put it all back together again.
She exchanges pleasantries with Godric, and knows he senses her discomfort because he leaves their chamber to bathe. Raising herself from the bed, she walks over to the mirror on the dresser-table. Her eyes are bloodshot and her hair disheveled, wildly curling around her face.
Her appearance is that of a stranger, she doesn't like it at all.
She reaches into the dresser drawer for a hairbrush or a comb or something to tame her hair and instead pulls out a bottle of firewhiskey. It's dusty, but she can see the liquid swirling and swishing inside and she knows that just one sip will numb her enough to get through this day.
If only it could get her through the rest of her life.
She's about to uncork the bottle and take a drink when Godric comes back in. He's forgotten his shirt. She drops the bottle into the drawer with a thud and turns around, muttering something about a hairbrush. Godric comes close to her, pushes her hair behind her year and tells her she always looks beautiful to him.
And then he leans in and he kisses her.
There's nothing wrong with the kiss itself, but he doesn't taste right. He tastes like honey and syrup, not freshly fallen snow and mint. He feels unusually smooth—he doesn't have that light stubble that Salazar always has.
She kisses him back, but only because it is what is expected of her.
The first time she sees him is at breakfast. He sits at the table in the front of the Great Hall, eating in silence. She can barely look at him without her heart rate speeding up, her stomach beginning to sink and her breath hitching in her throat.
His eyes are bloodshot, his skin is pale and he is unshaven.
It slowly hits her that she has led to this change in his appearance.
She isn't sure she can bear sitting next to him, so she sits on the opposite end of the table, smiling falsely to the students below, playing the part of the happy bride.
The only thing she's happy about is that there are no classes today. She needs time to adjust to her new role.
But weekends bring the weekly reports and she finds herself in the headmasters' office at that horrible square table, staring directly into Salazar's green eyes. She feels trapped, caught in his gaze and unable to worm her way out—although she's unsure if it's because she can't or because she won't.
She has a strong suspicious that it's because she won't.
Merlin, she wishes she'd had that firewhiskey.
He greets her before the reports begin, kissing her hand. "Lady Gryffindor," he says, in a rough, yet formal voice that she hasn't heard in so long, and she's overcome with a desire to pull him towards her and kiss him, just as he kissed her yesterday. She doesn't want the formality, the Lady Gryffindor's (she hates that this is her name now and she hates that he's reminding her of it) and the Lord Slytherin's. She just wants Salazar.
But she cannot have him, so instead she sits, wrapped in his eyes, only half-listening to Godric as he reports on his students' progress. She knows that Salazar isn't listening either, for he is as focused on her as she is on him.
If Helga or Godric notice anything, they don't mention it.
She delivers her report stuttering and sweaty, pretending that her nervousness is due to her new status as a wife. Godric smiles and hugs her, even leaning across the table to give her a tiny kiss on the cheek once she is done.
She sees Salazar flinch and she knows she's hurting him, but she doesn't know how she can stop it, how she can fix this.
It's simple- she can't.
They are the last two out of the door. Godric rushes ahead, saying that he's scheduled an extra lesson with a student, while Helga ambles on to the kitchens. Salazar opens the door for Rowena and whispers, "My lady," as she makes for it, his breath brushing her ear and making the butterflies in her stomach flutter like crazy.
"Salazar," she whispers and he lets the door swing closed.
"We can't linger here—someone will notice."
"I don't care," she says, bringing a hand up to cup his face. "I don't care."
And then she leans in to kiss him.
It's the second time she's been kissed today and this time, it feels right. He kisses her back, and it's powerful and passionate and she doesn't want to let him go because it just feels right. He pulls her close—one arm around her neck and entwined in her hair, the other around her waist and deepens the kiss. A moan escapes her throat and he responds by kissing her harder.
She reaches for the buttons on his tunic and undoes the first two before he pushes her away. She staggers backward, shocked and a little hurt. "What happened?"
He's shaking his head. "We can't do this."
"But—"
"You're a married woman, Rowena. We can't."
Before she can say anything, he's gone, out the door, his presence only lingering through the taste of mint on her lips. She stands alone in the middle of the room, wondering what it is that she did to deserve this at all.
Unable to find a satisfactory answer, she hits the wall in despair.
Walking away from her was the hardest thing he's had to do in his life.
He thought his pounding headache was bad—coupled with the emotional pain he's feeling now, it's practically blinding. He stumbles through the corridors, grabbing the wall for support and before he knows it, he's in his chamber, he's found a bucket and he's throwing up the contents of his stomach.
Even half an hour later, when he's sitting on his favourite chair by the window, his mouth still tastes bitter.
He doesn't truly know why he did it, not when it would have been so easy to lean into her again, to let her pull his shirt off and to take her, right then and there. But he knows, deep down, that things can never be the way they were anymore because they have changed. She's a married woman now, and he can never touch her again without ruining her reputation.
He knows how much the school means to her, and he can't rip that away from her. He can't have her branded as an adulteress, shamed in front of all those people that she's known for years. He's heard himself described as cold and snakelike, but he certainly isn't heartless.
He can't ruin her and it kills him because he wants her, so, so much. And he's never been good with not getting what he wants.
The pain floods back, rushing through his blood vessels. His hands begin to shake and he wonders whether the pain will ever get better, or if it'll just keep getting worse and worse.
Instinctively, he reaches for the firewhiskey that he keeps in the bottom drawer of his dresser. His hand scrapes the nothingness as he remembers that he drank most of his supply last night and Helga confiscated whatever was left over.
His painkiller is gone. He'd rather burn up than feel like this, but it appears that there's no choice.
He's just going to have to learn how to deal with it. The only issue is that he's not sure he can.
