Ellegaard had been expecting Magnus to be going around as if absolutely nothing was wrong, blowing stuff up, being his usual explosive self, and maybe causing even more mayhem than usual.
So she was surprised to see him standing there and literally doing... nothing.
He was staring at the smoking remains of the room he'd blown up the day previously from the doorway, staring blankly into the room but not actually seeing it. He hadn't crossed his arms, wasn't tapping one foot on the floor, wasn't leaning on anything, he didn't even have a facial expression. He was just... staring.
"You alright?" she asked, quirking her eyebrow at his back curiously.
Magnus jumped and nearly fell forward, spinning around to see the redstone engineer with wide eyes. Upon realizing who she was, he relaxed and crossed his arms at her. "Since when have you been so sneaky?"
"I wasn't sneaky at all. You were just lost in thought. What were you even thinking about?" she asked, moving so that she stood next to him.
"Stuff."
Ellegaard arched her eyebrow at his monosyllabic answer. "Stuff."
"Stuff." He didn't exactly seem like he wanted to elaborate.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment, unsure of what to say to one another.
"Well, we have been standing here in perfect silence for thirty seconds and you haven't insulted me, teased me, or left the room altogether," Ellegaard broke the silence abruptly, "is this about Gabriel getting amnesia?"
Magnus stared at Ellegaard as if she came from outer space. (Not that they knew what outer space was... oh forget it.) "Gabriel?"
The redstone engineer shrugged at his bewildered expression. "Yeah. Forgetting your entire life is a pretty big d-"
"You actually think this is about Gabriel?" Magnus's hands had clenched into fists, and he was still staring at her in disbelief.
It was Ellegaard's turn to stare at him as if he came from outer space. "What else would it be about?" she asked, tentatively. "Is... it the Witherstorm, or-?"
She was cut off by him grabbing her by the shoulders, eyes blazing with anger and... something else. Pain? "You just nearly got killed by that thing, Ellegaard! And you might still die, you're in terrible shape! I mean, I know Gabriel getting amnesia is bad, but he can make new memories or get his old ones back, but, Ellie, you might die!"
She'd flinched back a step, and was now staring at him in shock. He released her shoulders and took a step back, looking away, the pain becoming extremely evident now. "You might die," he repeated, crossing his arms. "And we might not have time to fix that."
"But... you hate me," Ellegaard finally replied, staring at him in complete shock. "You've always hated me... why would you care if I lived or died?"
Magnus's arms tightened on his own forearms. "You... actually think that?" He looked away. "Yeah, we rub each other the wrong way a lot... but I don't want you to die." He blinked unsurely, hands tightening again. "I'd never want you to die."
He stared resolutely at the wall for a minute, letting the silence between them stretch out one minute. Two minutes. Right when he was just going to leave, she replied in the tiniest voice he'd ever heard her speak in, "I don't want you to die either."
He looked back at her to see Ellegaard's hands starting to shake in fear. "I don't want any of us to die. Not you, not Gabriel, not Soren, not Jesse, not Olivia or Petra or any of them, I don't even want Ivor to die, I-" She choked, and now tears began to fall down her cheeks like rain trickling a path down the window. She put her trembling hands to her mouth, trying not to outright sob but making little choking sounds. When she finally regained her voice, she eked out, "I don't want to die."
Magnus's arms jerked, before he let them down. There was a moment's pause before he finally moved forward and did something he hadn't done in ages. He hugged her. He wrapped his arms around the slightly shorter woman and pulled her to his chest.
Ellegaard finally began to cry in earnest, body shaking violently with silent sobs as she desperately tried to stop herself but failing. Magnus just kept his arms around her in a comforting way, in a way that he couldn't put into words but that his actions could speak volumes for.
Neither of them knew how long they stood there for. It could've easily been three minutes, but then again it could've been six hours. They didn't say anything the whole time.
They didn't say anything when the two of them broke apart, before they smiled a bit at each other, the redstone engineer reaching up and mopping away a few of the remaining tears on her cheeks.
They still didn't say anything when Magnus reached out and squeezed Ellegaard's hand.
Jesse sat with Olivia, Axel, Petra, Lukas, Maya, Jace and Reuben in the kitchen. She'd made herbal tea silently before handing it out, adding a few spoonfuls of sugar to hers before taking a sip. Honestly, for someone who couldn't actually cook, she wasn't terrible at making drinks. There wasn't much conversation, but it wasn't a sad silence or a tense silence.
It was just silent.
"I can't believe that everything could go so wrong. Even in an alternative path to the future," Maya finally sighed, setting down her now-empty mug.
"I was right." Everyone looked at Lukas. He hadn't even touched his mug. It was cold by now. He was just staring at it as if he was thinking about drinking it but at the same time too sick to drink it. "I was right." The second repetition was so soft that it was nearly whispered.
Jesse sighed at last, staring into her own half-full cup. She could really have done with another one of Ivor's calming potions- her nerves were completely shot right about now. "At least everyone's still alive so far, right?" she asked, tentatively. "It could be so much worse."
Lukas slammed his palm onto the table, making some of the cups rattle and some of the occupants of the room flinch. "Ellegaard might die. Gabriel's completely lost his memory. And who knows what's going to happen this time around? If one of us get taken by the Witherstorm this time around-!"
"We'll think of something, I'm sure," Jace spoke up, having not had any of his own cup of tea and having instead given it to Reuben, the pig occasionally lapping at the mug of herbal tea with apparent enjoyment. "We have to. We have to stop people from dying on us all."
"But we still have to watch them die before we can do that," Olivia said softly.
There was a very long, very tense silence at that, before Maya sighed and drank the rest of her drink. "I'm not sure I want to watch the next episode right after that one. The suspense is killing me, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep myself from crying if I do. I'm going to look for Gill. See you all later."
Setting down the mug, she got up and walked into the hallway. Another silence permeated the room, Jesse taking a sip of her drink, before slowly setting the mug down with a decisive thud, not looking up from the drink even as everyone turned to look at her. "So what are we going to do about Aiden?" she asked, in a low voice.
"Aiden?" Axel looked puzzled. "What about him?"
"Did you see how he was pushing Maya and Gill around while we were watching the episode?" Jesse pointed out, taking another sip of her lukewarm tea. "We can hardly just let him keep doing it; for all we know he might end up hurting someone by accident."
"You mean like how he punched me in the jaw and you in the face," Lukas muttered darkly, staring at the table. Jesse absentmindedly fingered her cheek again, wincing slightly as she probed the bruise too hard.
"So what can we do about it?" Olivia asked, frowning a bit at the memory.
"We could invite her to sit with us," Petra suggested. "Like we did with Lukas. It would at least keep her out of Aiden's reach physically, for the most part anyway."
"That could work," Axel said thoughtfully, before frowning as another thought occurred to him. "But what if she says no?"
"She could sit in my armchair," Petra said decisively. "Since I'm sitting with you guys, I'm not exactly using it."
Jesse nodded and opened her mouth to continue, but right then there was a loud crash from the armor room. It was both an area used for sparring, but there were a couple furnaces behind a fenced-off area to smelt iron ingots and such.
The whole group glanced at each other worriedly, before Jesse was the first to jump off, abandoning the rest of her tea on the table and bolting out of the room. Petra was hot on her heels as the two of them skidded into the armor room to see Maya pressing her back to the wall with a shocked expression, one of the furnaces tipped over, hot coals scattered all over the ground, and Aiden and Gill pretty much screaming at each other, their voices mingling together into an incomprehensible babbled mess. Gill reared back, eyes blazing with fury, drawing his fist back to hit Aiden in the face.
Aiden struck first, shoving Gill in the chest and making the boy lose his balance. Gill staggered before falling, hands landing right on the hot coals. Immediately, he let out a choked cry of pain, anger turning to pain as the blazing coal burned his hands with an angry hiss.
Cassie skidded into the room a moment later from the other direction. She took one look at the scene in front of them before rushing forward and grabbing Aiden in a hug, heaving him back away from Gill and keeping him trapped against the wall as he tried to break out of her grip.
Gill got back to his feet, obviously about to give the now-trapped Aiden a piece of his mind, but Jesse lunged out and grabbed one arm and hauled him back. Maya quickly dashed back over and grabbed the other arm, and Petra shoved a now-violently struggling Gill against the fenceposts, as far away from Aiden as possible.
"Gill. Gill!" Maya was yelling at him to try to get through the violent haze clouding his mind. "Cut it out! Calm down!"
"Excuse my language," and everyone turned to see Em standing in the doorway with a shocked expression on her face, "but what the hell just happened here?"
"That would be a good thing to know," Lukas said, stepping into the room himself with a faint expression that Jesse couldn't identify on his face. Jace stepped in as well, his expression a near mirror-image of Lukas's.
Maya shook her head as the boy that she, Petra, and Jesse had pinned to the fence took a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself down. Aiden pointed over Cassie's shoulder. "He shoved me and knocked over the furnace!" he yelled accusingly.
"You burned my hands!" Gill snapped back, struggling to keep his temper to at least a lower level.
"The two of them got into a fight," Maya interrupted before Aiden could spit a response back at him. "I don't know what about, but when I got here they were full-out yelling at each other. I asked Gill what was going, Aiden called me a-" She paused. "... well, something not too polite, and then Gill shoved him. Aiden tripped and knocked over the furnace, and, well... Jesse and Petra saw what happened," she finished, glancing at the boy she was still pinning down.
Jesse slowly let go of Gill's arm, moving in place to stand between Aiden and Gill defensively, hands up placatingly. "No more fighting. Got it?" she asked, tentatively.
When she got no response, she continued, "Gill, I'll help you track down Ivor to fix your hands up. Cassie, can you get Aiden... someplace where nobody will get injured or harmed in any way, shape, or form? Maybe cool him down if it's possible?"
Cassie nodded. Jesse glanced back at her friends in the doorway. "Um, Lukas can come with me... Jace and Petra can clean up all of these burning coals," she glanced at said coals, "Maya and Em can try to find some coal for the furnace and put it back up, and... I don't know, do we need to make lunch or something?"
Olivia shrugged from where she was in the doorway. "I dunno, I was thinking of making a chore list so everyone gets a turn of making dinner or lunch. I don't know how, but the chests get restocked every night at like midnight or something, because they were full again this morning when Maya and I were making breakfast. But, anyway, we could make a chore list for cooking and stuff?"
"Okay, you do that. Try to put people in threes or fours, making food and cleaning and stuff like that will probably go quicker if you put them in groups," Petra nodded, glancing at Jesse and Jace. When those two simply shrugged at the suggestion agreeably, she clapped her hands together. "Welp. Let's get to it, then."
Slowly, the group split up, Gill's adrenaline rush having faded and now cradling his hands gingerly as Lukas and Jesse headed down the hallway, Reuben oinking and tagging along behind the group.
A/N: Welp, next chappie'll probably also be a (cough long cough) filler chapter, since this is starting to get a tad bit long.
So, I was in the countryside all of yesterday and most of today, hence the (very late) update. But, hey, better late than never, right?
RQTC: Countryside or city?
Countryside. Countryside countryside countryside. Ignoring the slow Wifi, it's absolutely beautiful.
S4SH4L4SH4theGaMeR101: (rubs head) That good, or... bad?
LunarStarsMoons: Pretty succinct description of the situation xD
AquaK13: (laughs) / Omg same here!
Emily The Avenger: Well, so far anyway (wiggles eyebrows)
Darkbeast Dend: (shrugs slightly) I'm not sure I'll check it out; I don't know anything about Team Crafted. / (shrugs) He's not stupid. Just confused. / I was in a place with spotty/crappy wifi, so I didn't really feel like it xD
RapidSammi: (cracks up) Awww. I would take it off, but... yeah, duct tape is painful.
sailor. mikuchan: Oh my god, thank you for pointing that out -_- FFN derped out on me.
rebekahtpe: (laughs) I'm not sure anyway. / Oh my god, yes xD / RQLCA: It was her senior year prank.
DynamiteHunter6: (laughs) / Yeah, I got so pissed when that happened. / (thumbs up) / Invisible by Christina Grimmie, Ancient History by Set it Off, and Heathens by Twenty One Pilots. The list changes all the time. / ... that... is actually a good question. / No problemo!
mEEplePeoPLe: Umm... hard to explain, actually. xD / Toni42, NoItsBecky, GirlOfMyOwnWorld, ChoyofBonk, and Harry Leferts. / Yes to the Twitter, no to the Facebook. I don't use Twitter much though.
LunarStarsMoon: That's good, though, because that means I can give them to you x3
LittleAngelbun: (gives you more)
Rabbits rule: (keeps petting you) / (laughs) I don't drink coffee much. / It has no possible allergens in it... / (smacks Fluffy gently)
TheLadyIanite: Oh! Thanks, I'm glad you liked it :3
Emily The Avenger: Oh god don't make me cry xD
x.X. A.L. X.x
