Chapter 9
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Twenty minutes and a good deal of emotional trauma later, I manage to get my new unwanted lingerie into my bag – after telling Marle flatly that no, I was not going to model them for her – get the Epoch back, and get out of the castle.
I am now speeding merrily along toward Magus' castle, having executed the time change already.
I take this moment to ask myself exactly why I am going there.
Stupid self, it's to return his sunglasses!
That sounds like an awful lot of work for a guy who's just going to snarl at you, doesn't it?
You got anything better to do this evening?
Ooh! I know! I could spend it with my husband, I suggest to myself sarcastically.
And Ariana, too, myself asks sarcastically.
Damn it. I hate it when I'm right.
Okay, fine, I'll go. But I'm going to go train for a while first. That way, killing small, innocent creatures will burn off some of my energy and frustration, and I'll be less likely to deck Magus the second he opens his mouth.
A pause.
Well, a little less likely.
At this point, I catch sight of the castle looming ominously on the horizon, and I land outside the underground passageway leading to it.
What a pain in the ass to go through every time you need to leave to go buy milk.
Of course, Magus doesn't strike me as the type to leave for anything too often. Or at least, to take the passageway to do it instead of just using magic to leave.
I will say this, though: it's a wonderful deterrent for visitors.
This is driven home with painful clarity as a pack of some sort of spiky, slimy things leap out of the walls and attack.
Great.
Six against one.
Thanks, guys.
Oh, well. I've always said that I wouldn't be one of those women who got married and stopped being useful.
Time to put my money where my mouth is.
Mmm…money.
And now it's time to take the gold pieces out of my mouth and focus on fighting off these aggravating little creatures in a far-too-dark underground tunnel.
Hey, it's still easier than spending the evening at home, trying to keep my temper in front of Isaac.
Unfortunately, while I am counting my few blessings, the collective patience of the creatures is exhausted, and they attack as a unit.
"Ow!" I shriek as one of them attacks my ear with its sharp little teeth, and two others apply equally sharp little claws to my back and neck.
I whip around, hoping to dislodge the little things, which works a little too well and dislodges a good amount of skin with them.
"Ow! Dammit!" I bellow, taking aim at the first of the monsters.
Of course, I hit it effortlessly, since you'll recall that I didn't stop being useful once I got married, and then I take aim at another one, and then another, and then another, until the whole pack of them are dead.
However, it seems that these little monsters had called for backup some time before their untimely demise, and soon I'm swamped with the things again.
Somewhere between the fourth and fifth batch of them, I notice that I'm starting to feel a bit dizzy. This, of course, makes it a wee bit difficult to aim, but I still manage to take out batches six through nine, making a mental note as I do so to check one of the dead creatures' little fangs for a venom of some sort. Somehow, I doubt I'd be feeling this unsteady without something like that.
Then, after wiping out the remainder of them with a timely recollection that I do indeed have access to magic, particularly a nicely powerful Flare spell, I begin to notice that the ground is a lot closer than it was a minute ago…
…and that I'm being shaken awake by a hand that doesn't really care about being gentle enough not to jolt my aching head painfully.
"Will you get up?" the voice fumes.
Reluctantly, I turn over slowly and open my eyes just as slowly.
Immediately, I wish I hadn't.
I'm beginning to get a little embarrassed at Magus' tendency to show up when I'm at my absolute worst.
Devastated by my husband's cheatin' heart, spying on my husband and his mistress in a motel room, collapsed to the ground from varying injuries courtesy of Sunny M's own security system, what's next? Dead drunk and dancing naked on a table?
"Gee, sorry," I snap sarcastically, struggling into a sitting position. "I didn't mean to inconvenience you by being unconscious."
"What were you doing down here anyway? Don't you have people to spy on?" he demands, seizing my arm and dragging me to my feet.
"Hey, if you keep being a smart-ass, I won't give you back your sunglasses," I warn, if a little weakly.
"Stay where you are," he commands wearily.
"How 'bout no?" I suggest sweetly, standing up.
He sighs in annoyance as I stagger a bit, and wraps an arm about me in a gesture that would be supportive from anyone else, but is merely grudging from him.
"You'd better come inside with me."
"Damn right, I'd better come inside if you ever want to see your sunglasses again!"
"For all I care, you could have kept them," he says with an awkward shrug as we start toward the end of the tunnel.
"Great," I grouse. "I don't suppose you could have told me that before."
He glares down at me.
"Does anything ever shut you up?"
"Nearly passing out usually does it," I reply cheerfully. "You shouldn't have woken me up."
"My mistake. Next time I'll let you die down here."
"That's not looking so bad right now, believe me."
As he comes to a dead stop, no pun intended, and gives me a scathing glare, I wonder briefly if that sounded a little more plaintive than it should have, and hasten to correct my error.
"I just meant, because anything's got to beat listening to your bitching."
"I'm not the one doing the bitching," he says with a nasty little smirk, my words reanimating him enough to head toward the exit of the cave again. "Now, shut up and keep walking unless you want to wake up everything in the next cave, too."
"You should really just get a security alarm and ditch the underground network of caves," I inform him seriously.
"I'll look into it."
"No, you won't."
"No, you're right. I won't. It's usually good for keeping away unwanted visitors," he adds, eyeing me meaningfully.
"Okay, okay, I'm going," I huff, wrenching my arm away from him.
Damn.
This could end badly.
"I meant to do that," I inform Magus coolly from the ground, where I am currently sprawled out.
He gives another annoyed grumble, behind which I am certain is a smug little smile at my misfortune, and seizes my arm.
"Ow!" I shriek as he hauls me from the ground. "I think I'll stand on my own next time."
"You're welcome," he says, sounding nearly huffy.
"Thank-you," I say far too sweetly to possibly be mistaken for genuine gratitude.
He mutters a string of words that I'm pretty sure would turn my mother's hair white coming from anyone but her, and then glares down at me again.
"Just follow me."
So, deciding that I have been enough of a bother to my unwilling host, I do so with no further protests.
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"Dragging you out of these situations you get yourself into is a lot more trouble than it's worth," Magus grouses fifteen minutes later as he slides a cup of tea toward me over the table between the chair that he is currently occupying and the couch that I am currently occupying. "I try to get an evening's peace, and the next thing I know, I have to haul you inside after you've passed out from blood loss because you can't fight off a few bats."
I set down my teacup and glare at him long and hard.
"First of all," I begin icily, "I did not pass out. I was aware the whole time – sort of. I just couldn't get up. Secondly, I did not pass out of blood loss. With the size of these scratches, it would have taken a lot longer to lose enough blood to pass out. Third, I got a little wobbly – but didn't pass out, mind you – because of the venom those little creatures had in their fangs, and I'd really appreciate it if you could give me something for it. I don't really want to try driving home like this; this stuff in your blood is worse than alcohol."
"There really is nothing in the world that will shut you up, is there?" he sighs with the air of a man who has lost all hope.
"I don't know," I reply snippily. "How much was I talking during the fight with Lavos after it pumped me full of needles?"
I could almost swear that he turns a little green at this.
"You know how to turn a phrase, don't you? Now, shut up, drink your tea, and wait there."
With that, he stands up and exits the library, leaving me alone to sip away at my tea, nearly spill my tea, set down my tea, curl up on the couch, and fall ignominiously asleep.
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An hour or so later, while slurping away at the contents of a coffee mug, I am musing to myself that I really must drop by here more often. After all, Magus may be a jerk, but he sure does make a damn good cup of coffee.
"So, how about telling me why you're really here?" Magus suggests as he plunks down next to me on the couch.
I experience a definite dose of déjà vu.
"What do you mean?" I ask innocently.
"I don't believe that you came here to return my sunglasses any more than I believe you came here three days ago for small-talk. Been destroying any more property?" he asks with a smirk.
"Actually, no," I reply in a sweet, beautiful tone. "I just thought that you got away a little too easy night before last. You were supposed to stick around and cheer me up, right?"
"Technically," he agrees, looking a little pained.
"There you go! I'm helping you repay your karmic debt."
"I'd sooner believe the sunglasses story."
"Well, that's your choice. Either way, here I am. And obviously, I can't leave until I stop seeing double from the venom."
"I did give you something for it," he points out, indicating the rag tied clumsily around my arm, which is aching oddly.
I grimace.
"I thought so. It feels like a needle. Still, I'm not bleeding enough to justify this, am I?" I ask, removing the rag. There is a tiny dot of blood welling up on my arm, right at the joint.
He is in the process of turning away huffily, so I roll down the (inconveniently close-fitting, thank-you Marle, for your impractical taste in clothing) sleeve of my sweater, make sure my skirt is still making some pretence of covering me decently, and sigh.
"Thank-you for taking the time, though," I add as an afterthought.
"You didn't have to thank me. Your gratitude is clear," he grumbles.
I smirk silently at this for a long time, during which he drains his coffee cup and fills it again, and we say not one blessed word – or one unblessed word, for that matter – to each other.
I heard once that if you can sit in silence with someone for a half an hour and be perfectly comfortable, you can be good friends with that person, but if you can't, you'll never be friends and shouldn't try.
I wonder if that guy ever met Magus.
It's much more comfortable to sit in silence with him than to actually talk to him.
Still, I have a bit of news to relate that will probably annoy him beyond belief and it's burning a hole in my mind to keep it a secret any longer.
"I met with her," I say casually, busying myself with stirring more sugar into the dark liquid in my cup.
He barely glances at me.
"With Marle? Yes, I know."
"No, not with Marle. Unless Marle's been sleeping with my husband, too."
This gets his attention.
"Please explain."
"I got a real, live 'please' from the king of the Mystics?! The wonders never cease!" I gloat.
He glares at me, his coffee mug forgotten and dangerously close to tipping over and giving him a nasty burn in a place that I'm too polite to mention by name.
"Just tell me what you're going on about. Because it sounds to me like you've confronted your husband and his woman, and I would like to know what changed your mind."
"I didn't confront them," I tell him beamingly. "I found her in the middle of the road, bleeding profusely, with a broken bone. So I took her home and patched her up."
He mulls over this for a time.
"Who made her bleed? Was it your loving and sensitive husband, by any chance? Or is this Lucca-Speak for 'I chased her down and pummelled the hell out of her'?"
"Of course not!" I shoot back hotly. "It was her husband, if you must know."
"Then I assume he's found out about them."
"Unless he just didn't like her outfit that morning."
"Your flippancy is unbelievable."
"Yeah, and your expression looks like you've got a pole up your ass," I shrug. "What's your point?"
"At any rate," he says carelessly, "you obviously haven't considered the likely result of her partner finding out about her extra-marital activities with your husband."
I eye him suspiciously.
"Which are?"
"She won't be seeing him again."
"I don't know," I sigh mournfully. "She did seem pretty in love."
"People don't have affairs for love. They have affairs for the obvious benefits of a bit of variety in their sex lives. No one who has an affair knows the meaning of love at all."
"Oh, is that what happened to you?" I ask carelessly.
Seconds later, I wish I hadn't.
"I'd advise you to remember whose home you're invading right now," he growls, his nose less than half an inch from mine. "I'd also advise you to remember which of us is stronger."
"Fine, fine, sorry," I grumble to hide my discomfort, extricating my arm from his grip and distancing myself by rising from the couch to inspect some of his books.
Then, as his pre-tantrum words sink in, I turn slowly.
"Do you really think this means they'll stop seeing each other?"
"Your husband would be putting himself in danger of being pounded flat by this other woman's husband. Do you honestly think he would risk such harm to his precious self?"
I hate to admit it, but Magus makes a very good point. Slowly, I feel warmth that has been absent for the last few days, washing over me.
"Then everything's fine! If he's going to break it off with her, everything will go back to normal!"
"Until the next time he spends a little too long talking to the pretty girl in the shops," Magus snorts.
I glare at him.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He sighs, and I could swear that something leaves his expression that has always been there. He looks serious, pensive, and not at all mocking or cruel.
"You may pretend to be hardened and cynical, but you had the kind of faith in this man that you'll never get back again."
"This was just a bad time for us," I mumble, looking down. Somehow, a Magus without his mocking, sarcastic smirk is a lot more uncomfortable than a Magus threatening to throw me out of his house, but not before giving me injuries to match Ariana's. "It happens to every couple. It will get better."
It has to, right?
I mean, it couldn't get any worse.
I'm sure tomorrow morning, Isaac will come clean with me about everything that's happened, and assure me with tears of remorse, that I am the only woman he will ever need, the only woman that he ever really needed, only his old habits and insecurity didn't know it before.
The stakes are even higher than before, because now, if I'm wrong, Magus will make a point to gloat at me until I rip his face off and feed it to his little fanged security system.
Hey, the violence that I can no longer visit upon Ariana has to be redirected somewhere, right?
"Now that the immediate threat of an obvious adulterer sleeping with this girl has been removed, you don't plan to confront your husband at all?" Magus asks, pulling me out of my gruesome little fantasy world. "Just clarifying."
"That would really screw up my friendship with his mistress," I reply after pretending to consider the idea carefully on my way back to the couch.
"I'm sure it would be a tremendous loss."
"She seems really nice," I continue, mostly to irritate him.
"Are you insane?!" he sputters.
I guess it worked.
"Please clarify," I request.
"You're talking about the girl who is currently in the process of ruining your marriage."
"Ah, but we've just established that she won't be doing that anymore, because my husband is a damn coward."
"And this is the man you're talking happily about staying with?"
"Yup," I reply cheerfully. "Hey, everyone has their faults."
"Yours is having no common sense behind that huge brain of yours," he grumbles.
"Coming from you, that sounds like a compliment."
"I just find it odd that someone with your admittedly impressive intellect has no idea how to handle her own life."
At this, I freeze. Then, after carefully, slowly, and deliberately setting down my coffee cup, I turn, just as carefully, slowly, and deliberately, to eye him poisonously.
"And exactly how should I be handling it?"
"You know how. You should have confronted that man immediately, instead of wallowing in self-pity and anger, waiting for a confession from an obviously chronic liar. But you seem to be enjoying yourself, so who am I to criticize?"
"Enjoying—!" I sputter. "You asshole! You have no idea what this is – forget it. Why even talk to you? I should have known it was stupid from the start."
"Where are you going?" he asks wearily as I rise abruptly and start toward the door.
I turn to glare at him once more.
"Crashing the Epoch in a ball of flame doesn't look so bad right now. Thanks for the coffee. I'll leave you alone now."
"Don't be an idiot," he orders. "You'll get yourself killed. Get back here."
"Bye, Magus."
Ignoring his further, rather unenthusiastic protests, I leave the library and make my way down the dark, shadowy hallway to the front doors.
I really need a more cheerful place to hang out.
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A/N: Geez, how pathetic am I? I actually got queasy and dizzy writing four lines about that damn antidote needle. ^_^()
Still, a long chapter, and stuff happened this time! Sort of.