Chapter Six

AKA Ich Bin

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Nora effectively clears out most of the residents of Red Lily Hall with the unapologetic volume of her music, which filters all the way down to the common areas and the laundry room in the basement. With midterms only a few days away, the feat is both horrendous and impressive.

Ella is the notable exception to the scarcity of the dorm, of course, because of the silencing wards she's set around her room. If not for the subtle vibration of her walls, she wouldn't have noticed Nora's dorm-wide disruption at all; when she opens her door to investigate, she nearly cringes at the sheer volume. It's like being dead-center front row at a concert in the middle of the day. She's almost impressed her magic had blocked out the noise so thoroughly.

Almost. It would be less annoying if she weren't hungry, which meant she would have to endure the noise long enough to make herself something to eat. In the kitchenette, Ella rummages through the cabinets to the soundtrack of a wailing guitar, looking for something to sate her hunger that wouldn't force her to actually cook. She settles for some kind of frozen egg-and-bacon pastry that only requires a toaster – it looks disgusting, which is the mark of an excellent junk food.

Her stomach rumbles in anticipation, but she isn't so distracted that she fails to notice when Nora clomps down the stairs. Nora's nose is tilted appreciatively in the air, taking in the buttery scent of the toasting pastry as she passes by to drape herself across the kitchen table. "I'm so hungry and tired of studying," Nora complains. Her arms and chin are marked up with the evidence of neon-bright highlighters and, for a werewolf, she does look more than a little haggard.

Ella meets Nora's eye as she retrieves her lunch from the toaster.

Nora licks her lips, gaze riveted on Ella's plate. "I'm so, so hungry," she says again.

Ella raises a brow.

Nora clasps her hands together, a mimicry of silent begging.

Ella sighs. "If I give this to you, what do I get in exchange?"

"My eternal devotion," Nora says immediately. She grins happily when Ella passes over one of the pastries and sets to devouring her share while Ella grudgingly places another two into the toaster. It isn't until the toaster pops up again that Nora sits up a little and frowns at the relative silence of the house, with the exception of the music still blasting from upstairs. "Where is everyone?"

"Hiding in the library, probably," Ella mutters.

"Why?"

Ella stares at Nora, momentarily stunned by the werewolf's capacity to be oblivious. Then, shaking her head, she dishes up her food and jumps up to sit on the counter. Nora begins chattering between big mouthfuls, cheery enough to keep talking even though all Ella contributes to the conversation is a few hums of acknowledgement.

"Oh, yeah!" Nora says suddenly, cutting herself off mid-sentence. Cheeks bulging, she chews and swallows hastily. "Forgot to mention earlier – and I totally meant to, I swear – but me and some friends were planning on celebrating the end of midterms on Saturday. Like a hurrah, we survived the scary-scary tests, you know? Anyway, we're planning on meeting up at Sam's Diner around five and you absolutely have to come."

Ella wrinkles her nose. A social gathering? Not really her thing. "I don't know. I might have a shift."

Nora huffs at her lame attempt of an excuse. "Oh, come on! All you do is brood in your room and study and work. You never have any fun and this is college. Join us!"

Ella glares.

"Don't make me beg," Nora says daringly. But when Ella is still reluctant, Nora shifts as if to drop down to her knees and, even though she makes a face, Ella finds herself agreeing to the plans. Victoriously, Nora smiles brightly. "Great! I can't wait to introduce you to my brother!"

And suddenly – inexplicably – Ella no longer feels like sulking.

She'd somehow forgotten that Nora is a McCallister – as well as forgetting that she has something of a werewolf mystery on her hands. It's a different kind of puzzle to solve, trying to figure out the identity of the wolf – her wolf . Whoever he is, he assisted with the redcaps and witnessed a very rare moment of vulnerability. She needs to know who he is, because she doesn't like owing favors to anyone – certainly not strange werewolves who show up right when she seems to need someone the most. And the fact that Nora belongs to the biggest wolf pack in the area is certainly a place to start.

Maybe she can rule out Nora's brother on Saturday.

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Midterms are fucking awful. Ella fails half of them and she doesn't need to look at the red inked specifics to know that every test she failed was because she bombed the practical magic assessments. Literally in one case, which both baffled and horrified her professor; the Intro to Magic lecture hall will probably never look the same.

It's been the same story the entire semester and she is tired of it, perpetually in a state of agitation, magic crawling and twisting beneath too-tight, too-hot skin. She doesn't know what's wrong but it's been getting worse ever since she left Glenn's house. She has half a mind to blame the ACE campus and whatever ancient magic is wrought into the wards – but that can't be the problem. If it was, then surely other magic using students would be having the same issues.

And they aren't.

Ella is, once again, the outlier in the statistics. The problem child. The fuck up. The mar in an otherwise perfect picture.

Raven thinks she's being overdramatic, but Raven is a bird and doesn't know what she's talking about. Animals, even oh-so-wise familiars, are ruled by instincts and fall short of understanding the complexity of human emotion, especially if the emotions in question are Ella's particular brand of screwball. To Raven, she should be focusing less on what the fuck her problem is and instead learn to work with the inconsistent flares of her magic.

As if it's that simple. Which it isn't – because lately, these unpredictable flares have begun to hurt and her magical sixth sense is more like sensory overload and her whole body aches at the end of the day. The ring on her finger is heavy and too tight, the magicians glass alternately like ice or lava to the touch. She's exhausted and pissed off and pretty sure she's on her way to failing out of college like the goddamn troublemaking loser all her foster parents ever accused her of being.

Fuck them all for being right.

And damn her for thinking she could ever be something like normal.

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Moody mid-day wandering around campus has brought Ella to an unlikely place – the studios in the art building. When she was younger, she'd held some affection for art classes in school. The opportunity to work with her hands, to lose herself in creating something for a change, was always a welcome time. It helped that she has a talent for it and that art teachers always praised her – usually the only teachers in schools who didn't see Ella as a ticking bomb, actually.

But then she got older, grew up a little, and realize that a fucking watercolor painting wasn't going to change anything in her life. Art is subjective and Ella isn't any kind of Picasso, not really. Being better than other ten year olds doesn't mean that she would have any kind of future in art, and as the foster homes got worse and Ella closed herself off more, she left the escape of art behind along with all her other childhood fantasies.

She doesn't know why she's in a darkened art studio right now, other than the fact her feet had led her here. The chemical scent of turpentine is sharp in her nose, and down the hall she can hear the distinct churn of a kiln firing up. She has a sense-memory in her hand of how it feels to curl her fingers around a paint brush and finds herself disappointed when she idly picks one up. It isn't the same. Her hand feels out of place, too big and clumsy in comparison to the ghost of her younger self. Her lip curls and she tosses the brush back onto the table.

She shouldn't be here.

Ella turns around, intent on slinking out of the building to find another place to marinate in her frustrations, and stops short. Professor Silversmith is standing in the doorway, an imposing force with pitch-dark eyes and feathers in his hair who had somehow managed to sneak up on her. She hadn't sensed him at all; still can't actually, even though she knows he's something, probably something magic. She barely has a chance to process his sudden presence – and remember that he's an art professor – before he begins speaking in that stone-rumbling voice of his.

"You still have such breathtaking anger," he intones gravely. "I thought that might have changed by now."

"Yeah, well, it hasn't," Ella says stiffly.

"You give up too easily and you ruminate on the wrong things," he decides.

Ella's temper flares, sudden and brisk, right alongside her magic, the unseen force swelling through the studio to rattle easels and send paintbrushes clinking onto the ground. "Nobody asked you," she snaps.

Silversmith doesn't seem the least bit bothered by her lack of self-control. "How can you possibly see anything clearly when you look only through a lens of rage? You're blinding yourself, and in doing so, limiting yourself from discovery."

"What, did you get that off a fortune cookie?" she snarks, crossing her arms over her chest. It's off-putting how right Silversmith is, but she isn't about to acknowledge that out loud. Instead, she digs her fingertips into the flesh of her arms, hard enough to bruise in the hopes that the pain might shock her system – her magic – back into compliance.

It works, for the most part.

"You even limit yourself from hearing wisdom," the professor adds, like Ella is some kind of intensely interesting specimen of dysfunction.

"I don't want your wisdom." Ella glares at Silversmith, the words slipping past her lips acidic. "I don't even know you but you act like I should just listen to you and take your advice."

"My advice is very good for those who are honest with themselves."

Ella nearly gapes, but reels the expression back in with a scoff. "I am honest. I am honestly telling you to fuck off, Professor."

Silversmith seems amused, a tiny tilt to his mouth that might be a smirk, though his eyes remain as fathomlessly flat. "Be that as it may, you might want to reconsider the outlet for your emotions. Containing your anger will not work indefinitely and with your magic, an unchecked temper could be…devastating."

"I'm fine," she spits out. But even as she says it, she knows that she's lying. She hasn't been fine in a long time, maybe never. And the thing with her magic is getting worse and she isn't any closer to understanding why.

Silversmith looks at her knowingly. "Was that honesty, or do you continue to be in denial?"

Ella bites back the retort on her tongue when Silversmith steps back out of the room. She stands in the studio for a long while after he leaves, glaring at nothing with the sort of disgruntlement she mastered at a young age. Angry that she's angry. Mad at her temper, at her irreverent nature, at her first instinct to push any help away. Pissed that she's this fucked up. Ella stays that way, simmering and stewing in her ire until she has enough of a grip on herself that she doesn't feel like her magic will burn right out of her skin.

Then, she picks up a lone block of wood left on a table shoved against a wall. The block is just big enough for her hand, maybe three inches by four, probably pine. She doesn't know why she picks the wood up, but she takes it with her as she leaves the studio, along with the wrong-footed disparity creeping along her conscious as she goes.

Her magic skitters in her veins, reacting to what she cannot place and what she cannot name. All she knows is that her magic is as volatile as her temper.

Emotions have always been hard for her. She knows that.

Ella is fine not putting too fine a point on her emotions for as long as possible – but with magic, with the way her magic works, with how she's got this sixth-sense so in-tune with everyone and everything, she can't really be as willfully ignorant as before. She can't ignore her emotions. Not easily, at least.

Mostly, she tries not to think too hard about anything, tries not to linger on the thoughts that make her so upset. Her mother, dead because of her; her father, unknown, herself, unwanted.

But sometimes – sometimes – when she thinks, it isn't anger that comes bubbling to the surface. It's chaos, a whirlwind storm of black guilt and self-loathing and blind hatred so sharp she feels crazed but it. Sometimes, it ends in the pale, silvery scars lining her most tender hidden places; thin reminders on the side of her rib, the back of her knee, the dip of her hip, the thin underside of her wrists. Sometimes, it's evidence of release never found, evidence of her weakness. It's blood she can't forget and a misplaced memory of that soothing burn as her skin breaks apart; it's feeling something that isn't anger beyond her control, and it's not good, of course it's not good and she knows that, but she can't forget those fleeting moments of silence, either.

Because those times – rarer now than a year ago – are precious in a way. Those are the times when she's not waking up in a cold sweat, mind churning through horrible memories like the worst slideshow in the world. Drenched in her own panic, she can't forget the feel of hands on her, bruising and grasping; pain, like a twisting knife caught under her ribs; terror as she runs from that house and her clothes are ripped, and something is burning and she doesn't know if it's her or the house. Her nightmares always leave a bubble of panic hot behind her lungs – and some days she can ignore it, but some nights are worse than others. And she never, ever talks about it. She pushes it down, pretends it doesn't exists, trades fear for anger and moves on.

It isn't healthy, the way rage feels more right than any other emotion. But Ella doesn't do well with anxiety and everything else is as terrible as suffocation.

But in the warped cage of her mind, she keeps a tight hold on all the terror that has made her, pulling the stains close and losing herself in them – so that she wouldn't ever make the same mistake again, so that she wouldn't ever get too comfortable.

Because comfort is a trap – a death sentence.

Maybe she's too angry, too fucked up beyond belief, but she's still alive, even when she doesn't want to be, and that is something.

It's something.

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Later, in the silent safety of her dorm, Ella stares at the block of wood she nicked from the art studio. She doesn't know why she brought it back or why she can't seem to put it down – but her fingers itch and there's an idea lurking in the back of her mind that keeps her in a state of almost-wonder. Driven by the tether-hook curiosity creeping alongside her awareness, Ella reaches for the pocket knife balancing on her knee.

The blade scrapes down the sawed-edge of the block, wood shavings fluttering down onto her bedspread. It isn't the right kind of knife for this sort of work, the blade too dulled on one side, but she manages to round off the block into a shape almost like a sphere. The rough-hewn wood rolls in her hand and she can almost see a shape hiding between the grains.

She's never whittled before, but she finds that the impulse isn't a bad one.

Ella is a force of destruction in the world, she knows that implicitly. But it feels good to create something, even a shitty wooden ball.

She turns the wood in her hand again, setting the point of the knife into the center – and stops at the familiar sound of a beak tapping her window. Ella waves her hand at the locking mechanism, her magic lunging to the surface to sear oh-so-hotly against the ring on her finger, and she winces, even as Raven flies into the room. Her familiar takes in the mess on her bed with a pointed lack of judgement, and begins to preen her feathers without comment.

Minutes pass in near-silence, the cold chill of autumn and a whisper of wind permeating the room. Ella leaves the window open anyway, her thoughts drifting almost as mindlessly as the leaves the fall to the campus ground.

And then a long-winded howl rips through the nighttime – and it is her wolf again, she knows it without a doubt. Ella isn't stunned for long, dropping the knife and the wood and scrambling to the open window. She sticks her head out, searching futilely for the wolf, even though by the sounds of it, he's deep in the forest and once again so far out of her reach.

He howls again, another sound of angst, of mourning, of pain.

Ella's lips twist in response, because of pain she has many thoughts. She sets her eyes on the thin sliver of moon overhead and, almost as if talking to her wolf, she says, "You and me are the same, I think. Pain reminds us that we're still alive."

The wolf doesn't howl again that night.

She tells herself it's stupid to think he might have heard her, but she can't shake the feeling that he did.

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A/N: I swear, I'm trying to get the redux up as quickly as the original, but life has taken a sledgehammer to my schedule. I'm working on it. On the brighter side, most of the reorganization of the story is done, I think, so I shouldn't be trying to crawl out of my skin as I try to fit random arcs together into something that would make sense in book-format.

As always, be brutally honest. I can take it.

~Rae

EDIT 1/28: Typo fixed. Thanks all!