Oh right WriterGreenReads other people have class and stuff. (My college courses for this semester are all online without even Zoom meetings.) Also, I mentioned this in the last fic, but since I never specify WHERE in Virginia Arya's from, her accent could be either Appalachian or Southern. Since my accent's Upper Midwestern, I don't have the local experience to specify or write either way, so I tend to leave her accent kind of vague. The fic's told largely from her perspective anyways, and she of course wouldn't notice her own accent, so I just settle for infrequent reminders of the fact that Yes, Arya Has a Southern-esque American Accent.
January 16th, 2021
Arya's POV:
"Rex, Arya? I need to talk to you."
Rex and I both froze midstride on our way out of the dancing room. Sid had been overseeing our combat practice today, and now he was waving us both over to a corner of the room as the rest of the class filed out.
That couldn't be good.
Rex and I exchanged tense glances, both asking with our eyes if the other had done something to upset our whisper-thin status quo, before turning and shuffling in the manner of reluctant students everywhere over to Sid. His eyes flicked over to the door, waiting for everyone else (even the other instructor) to leave, before he regarded us both.
"Is there something you two need to tell me?" Sid asked, folding his arms across his chest. I was heavily tempted to step on Rex's toe to remind him that no he did not, but I knew Sid would catch the movement.
"Uh, no?" I tried instead, raising one eyebrow. "Unless you mean like what we did with the Traitor earlier this week."
"Maybe." Sid's level expression didn't change. "The two of you haven't been fighting well lately. The instructor of this class asked me to come have a look, and I've noticed that your Wavelengths have fallen out of sync."
Ah…that's what this was about.
"I-its really not that bad, sir…" Rex said, and without even looking at him I knew he was anxiously tugging at his stud earring.
"Rex, you're tense around your partner." Sid said bluntly. "Your blade is heavier, you're not working with her, and she's having a harder time of dragging you around because of that. And if both me and your instructor can notice this, you can bet she can too. Arya, if you've done something to upset him, you should apologize. Rex should move like an extension of your body, not like he's afraid to let you pick him up."
Fat chance of that. I thought, resisting the urge to snort.
Perversely, despite the fact that he was the one who had dirt to ruin my life hanging ominously over my head, Rex was the more scared of us two. On my end, him exposing me to Lord Death only had the chance to go horribly wrong –there was a decent possibility that it would actually help me. But of course, I wasn't going to gamble my life and/or freedom on a "maybe", which was why I had actually complied to this whole blackmail threat to begin with.
Rex, though? In his eyes, he was blackmailing a Witch. He was actually, actively threatening one of the most dangerous members of society. There was every chance that, after this was over, I would flay him alive or something for daring to threaten me and steal my magic book. Rex probably had a million different regrets for pulling that little stunt, but at this point, he was committed.
He couldn't exactly hand over a grimoire to a Witch with a sheepish smile and a few words of apology, after all –and he couldn't hold up his end of the bargain even if I actually did find him a good partner, either, because that was letting go of what might be the only thing that kept me from dragging him out of the school and setting his grisly remains up on a pike on the walls or something. Or maybe just torturing him –I wasn't sure of the exact details, only that retaliation from a Witch (from my meta experience and from current reactions) was supposed to be both gruesome and nasty. In his eyes, no matter which way this swung, Rex would be lucky to get out of it alive. His only way out was through.
I was the one being fucking blackmailed, and yet I somehow still felt like the bully in this scenario.
"The two of you fought well together against that Traitor." Sid continued, his voice warming a little as he switched gears in his lecture. "There aren't many NOT teams as new as the two of you that can fight against an enemy of that caliber and come out unharmed. But something's changed between now and then, and the two of you need to figure out what it is and deal with it. Otherwise, you'll have to find new partners."
To my surprise –since Rex had avoided getting within six inches of me for the past few days if he could help it at all– Rex suddenly wrapped both arms around my own, like he was clinging to a teddy bear.
"W-we'll be fine." he blurted. "We're just- it was our first real combat scenario, and we're both a bit tense."
Sid's eyes slid over to me, and I pasted a weak smile on my face.
"Uh, yeah. I didn't really expect to hit the guy as hard as I did, and I've sorta been walking on eggshells with Rex ever since." I agreed. "I don't want to swing him too hard and hurt someone like that again unless I mean to."
Sid relaxed, and I felt Rex's grip correspondingly loosen on my arm. That was a weird bit of byplay between them –Sid definitely wasn't the type of guy who'd force a student to do anything they didn't want to do, but I got the impression during this conversation that somehow, he was a controlling factor in Rex's desperation to have and keep a partner. Why? Rex obviously looked up to him, but so far as I knew, both Rex's parents were alive and supportive, or at least not so abusive that Rex or someone else had mentioned it, and I had a feeling our school therapist would've told me to tread carefully in that direction, much as he had told Rex to watch out for signs of PTSD-based paranoia in me.
In any case, Sid wasn't his surrogate father, and he wasn't the sort of person who would demand that Rex fit the mode of the school, so why was Rex so tense around the idea that Sid, specifically, was questioning the strength of our partnership?
Yet another notch in the ineffable mystery of Rex's partnership status. I swear, if I hadn't been sharing the room with Ao, I'd have made a string-and-posterboard diagram about this whole intricate bullshit ages ago.
"You two look after each other." Sid said, breaking me out of my thoughts as he smiled at both of us. "There's a lot going on with those Traitors that we still don't know about, and we don't know if you might become targets again."
I hummed affirmation, Rex let go of me, and we both exited the conversation gracefully as Sid waved us off and started cleaning up. Once we were outside of the classroom and Sid's direct line of sight, Rex skipped a little sideways, increasing the distance between us, and I rolled my eyes as we kept walking down the confusingly blank corridors.
"Dude, I'm not gonna tear your heart out at any second. Chill."
Rex flinched, cutting his eyes over to me, and looked like he wanted to reply, but didn't dare to. That made sense –any retort he had was probably along the lines of "You're a Witch and I can't trust you," and to give him credit, Rex was keeping my secret as best he could. Announcing my Witchy status in the middle of the DWMA was not in line with that.
"You going to the Death Festival?" I asked, catching sight of a poster as we turned the corner. "That's only in a few weeks, right?"
It was only in a few weeks, and every day that crept by without me coming up with a new partner for Rex twisted the knot of anxiety in my stomach even tighter.
"I…" Rex adjusted his tie nervously. "I guess? What are you doing?"
I made a noncommittal noise. Honestly, I was ready to do just about anything to avoid the sudden upsurge of Traitors due to Shaula's attack, and since she'd be focusing on the combatants in the Festival, it made sense to avoid it. Granted, I didn't have anything else to do, and I wasn't making progress on any of my plans –not even my meta ones, because right now I was focusing on disentangling this situation with Rex before I committed to the long, cold game of logic between me and Medusa. Or my homework in reading up on the snippets of research Britain sent me every Friday. Or the building of my world-sigil for this universe.
I had a lot of plans that weren't going anywhere because of this one problem that I persistently couldn't solve, and that made me grumpy.
"It's the biggest event of the year, right?" I asked after a second. "With the tournament and everything."
Rex nodded.
"The winner gets to meet Lord Death in person, so the competition is pretty fierce." he said, and I tensed, then looked over at him and stepped slightly closer. I didn't go so far as to sling my arm over his shoulders, because I was pretty sure Rex would assume I was about to break his neck, but I did very carefully and deliberately clasp his shoulder.
"Okay, so I know we're on the outs right now 'cause of…mmm." I paused and hummed significantly. "But hear me out…what if we entered the competition?"
Rex gave me a flat look.
"Its EATs only." he said. "And I'm not letting you get anywhere close to Lord Death,"
Oh. Right. I'd forgotten about the EAT-only bit.
I sighed and took my hand off his shoulder, stepping away again as I shook my head.
"Never mind then. I'll just get dressed up and go trick-or-treating, I guess."
From what I remembered, a lot of those sorts of festivities started during the day here in Death City, which would be rather odd. Still, maybe getting dressed up and swiping some candy would make me feel better about the maelstrom of problems circling around me right now. Like ice cream, candy had a tendency to make the whole world seem alright again, if only for a minute or so. And besides, with all the chaos when Shaula made her move, I could probably get away with using magic to defend myself from her brainwashed minions if I had to.
I fucking deserved a treat at this point.
Rex looked anxious –he probably didn't want me out of his sight while the Festival went down, but he couldn't exactly tag along with, since we both knew that'd be a blatant effort to stop me from causing any mischief. Not that I intended any mischief, but by Rex's perspective, I was one diabolical hand-rub away from starting a massacre, or sowing the seeds thereof. He couldn't afford to let me roam free, since any evil I caused at this point was, indirectly, his fault.
Which again, like wiggling at a loose tooth with my tongue, had me going back to why he was so very desperate to keep me, specifically, as his partner, and to have a partner by extension. It just didn't make sense. Going by the idea of me being a Witch, Rex was trying to lasso a hurricane here –which I might understand if he had some kind of grand dreams to wipe out all the Kishin Eggs in the world or put himself at the top of the school, but he didn't. In exchange for keeping my valuable secret, a secret that could potentially get him expelled for knowing and not reporting, he wanted me to not officially cancel our partnership until I found him a new, better meister. That was the sum total of his benefits for this piece of blackmail, and it didn't make a lick of sense that he was willing to risk his life and potentially the lives of other people for that. It was like entering a Faustian bargain for a piece of candy: the risks outpaced the rewards by such a wide margin, it was pathetic.
So why? What was his deal, here?
It bothered me more than I liked to admit that even with my meta knowledge, I just didn't know. Rex's past history with his partner was school-wide knowledge, apparently, from faculty all the way down to his classmates, so it couldn't be that he was some kind of spy or plant that was used to dealing with Witches. He wasn't abused, he wasn't an abuser –his horrified flinch when I'd pointed out that side of this bargain made it clear that he hadn't even realized the undertones– and he certainly hadn't been in a situation where his meister might've died. This went too deep and too neurotic for it to have been a partnership that turned into a romance and then ended badly, and I couldn't think of any other reason for this behavior no matter how much I twisted my brain.
It was getting to the point that I was seriously considering saying "fuck it" and just straight-up kidnapping Rex to somewhere out in the desert some night, before tying him down to a chair and getting the truth out of him. While I wasn't even going to consider actual torture, the Witch reputation I was dragging around would probably make Rex start talking the second I brandished anything even vaguely threatening at him. I could threaten to give him cuddles with my cat Squish and he'd probably start sobbing, certain I was about to drown him in the middle of the desert with a watery familiar.
But that was a last resort. Definitely a last resort.
I'd considered wiping his memory, because I was pretty sure I could probably at least fuzz up his memories of the past few weeks enough for him to forget I was a Witch, but memory-magic as I had learned it was a tricky, delicate business, and even though our tentative friendship was basically an ashen husk at this point, I still didn't want to lobotomize the guy. Not to mention that I could only blur out general details, and if "the location of Arya's notebook" was in any way connected to "Arya is a Witch" (which it almost certainly was), Rex would also forget where he'd hidden my journal, and that obviously caused more problems than it solved.
This was a fun fucking deadlock I'd found myself in.
Still, the thought of sweets and treats reminded me of something.
"We're going to 42 Icecream." I announced as Rex and I walked down the stairs, and Rex blinked.
"Uh…why?"
"Its my birthday, and I deserve a treat from my partner." I said, and Rex blinked again, hurrying a little to catch up to me as he came even, looking at me with a certain amount of skepticism.
"Is it really your birthday, or is this some weird plot?" he asked, and I pulled out my ID card and flashed it at him. Apparently, the nine digits under my picture and name included my birthday in the last four, although they didn't give the year.
1017.
It was, indeed, October 17th.
Rex conceded defeat with a sigh, turning away as I replaced my card in my wallet and my wallet in my pocket.
"Don't they not age? What's the point of celebrating?" Rex asked as we continued walking down the steps, neatly avoiding any mention of Witches, and I shrugged.
"Maybe for others, but this is my eighteenth birthday, and by god I'm gonna make it count."
I also had a diabolical plan, which I put into action after Rex and I snagged our ice creams and I made the bold move of sitting down in one of the little booths, forcing him to either abandon me to my depraved Witchery or take a seat opposite to supervise me in this public area. I smirked behind my scoop as he sat down with a look of defeat.
"So," I began, getting Rex's immediate attention as his eyes sharpened behind his glasses. "Let's talk."
"You want to talk?" Rex said suspiciously.
"Yeah. Talk. Get to know each other." I licked my ice cream to forestall any melting drips, then continued. "I know you're eighteen, you were born and raised in Death City, you applied to the DWMA when you were 13, you had a partner before me, but you lost 'em somehow and won't talk about why. I know you like opera, some of your favorite ice cream flavors, and the fact that you fiddle with either one of your stud earrings when you're nervous. That's it."
Rex immediately yanked his hand down from his ear with a flush.
"So," I continued, kicking out my legs comfortably. "I figured we both got some questions about each other we want answered. I'll make you a deal. You can ask me one question, and I'll answer with nothing but the absolute gospel truth. Then I'll ask you a question that you answer honestly. We'll bounce questions off of each other until the ice cream runs out, and then we'll leave."
"What happens if one of us asks a question the other doesn't want to answer?" Rex asked after a moment.
"You can say 'Pass' and the other person asks a different question." I said. I debated a rule about how many passes we'd get, but fair was fair, and without thinking long and hard about how many questions I didn't want to answer truthfully, I couldn't constrain him to the same number.
Rex nodded slowly, and gave a thoughtful lick to his Neopolitan. "So, which one of us goes first?"
"I'll start." I said. "When's your birthday?"
"August 23." Rex answered, looking surprised that I had started with such a lowball question. "Um…"
He gave me a long, hard look, and it wasn't too hard to guess that he was fishing for things that could winkle out my obviously diabolical plan without alarming the storekeeper behind a counter less than twenty feet away. Or, you know, getting himself murdered.
"If you were a Witch…what kind of magic would you specialize in?" he asked after a second. Oh, that was clever –phrasing it as a hypothetical, personality-defining sort of question.
I had to tongue my cotton-candy ice cream and think for a second, though, because Witches in Soul Eater practiced magic that was themed to certain animals or concepts, and, well, my magic was pretty general. Technically I hadn't ever even officially gotten past the "novice apprentice" stage that never did magic unsupervised, but fate had conspired against me on that one by throwing me first into Black Butler, and now here.
"I'd have sigil-based magic, probably." I said after a moment. "Stuff that follows formulas and whatnot. Uh, you've got family in Death City, right? What are they like?"
Panic lashed across Rex's face, and I belatedly realized that that sounded a lot like I was fishing for potential hostages.
"Uh, never mind! Sorry! I didn't mean it like that!"
He relaxed, fractionally, in the sense that he no longer looked like he was about to leap out of his chair and bolt across the city in search of his family members.
"Ugh, badly-phrased question." I groaned. "Ummm…you were raised here, you ever traveled? Like gone on vacation or something?"
"Not really." Rex said. "You?"
"I've been to England, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, China, Spain, Russia, and a couple other places, but that was really only recently, like in the last year or so." I said. "Before that, I pretty much never left home. Why'd you not travel? Not interested, or no budget?"
"Budget." Rex answered, before narrowing his eyes. "Where'd you grow up?"
"Virginia." I answered placidly, making him blink. "What, did you think I was from the Witch Realm or something? And no, that's not my next question."
"Uh…" Rex's eyes slid over to the man behind the counter, aware of the fact that he couldn't say that he actually had thought I was from the Witch Realm, apparently.
"Anyways, Virginia." I said, smirking a little as I polished off more of my ice cream. "Did the accent not tip you off?"
Rex flushed a little.
"I thought you might be from Texas or something…" he mumbled, and I rolled my eyes.
"Honey, I ain't got the twang for Texas." I said, deepening my accent into a drawl to drive home the point. "Uh…favorite animal?"
"Raven." Rex said, and I snorted.
"You nerdy goth loser."
"Th-they're the most intelligent birds in the world!" Rex shot back, face red. "And they can learn words, just like parrots! What's your favorite animal, then?"
"Cats."
"Oh, and like that's not the most stereotypical animal in the world for a-"
I flicked my eyes urgently to the counter, and Rex changed direction.
"-um, cat-loving girl like you."
"Smooth." I deadpanned. Still, my devious plan was working nicely. While all the ice cream in the world couldn't fix our relationship now, it definitely couldn't hurt, and aside from that, planning this 20 Questions game and feeding in innocent, normal, get-to-know-you questions had gotten Rex relaxed enough that he was daring to actually rib me for what I was now realizing was indeed, technically, a very stereotypical choice. Five days or even an hour ago, Rex wouldn't have dared to question me no matter how weird or questionable my decisions were, and he certainly would have dared to make funof me.
We were making progress!
Granted, I didn't have a goal beyond "make Rex less obviously tense in my presence," but still, this was…nice. It was good to be friends again, even if Rex would immediately clam up once he realized what he was doing right now, how casual he was being with a dastardly Witch.
"How'd you get into opera, anyway?" I asked, taking a lick.
"My parents got lottery tickets to The Magic Flute, and I thought it was neat." Rex said with a shrug. "And then I downloaded a few operas for background noise while I was studying, and eventually I got curious about what the songs were actually saying and borrowed a few DVDs from the library. Kinda went on from there. Ah…what sort of music do you like?"
"Not sure." I scratched my ear. "I like what sounds nice, but I dunno what that is half the time. Um, stuff with a lot of variation? I appreciate rap for its complexity, but I don't like how the, the beat stays the same the whole time. It's the beat, right? I don't know music stuff."
Rex shrugged.
"Anyways, yeah. Um-m-mm…if you could go somewhere in the world, where would it be?"
"Italy sounds nice, and not just because its where a lot of operas are set." Rex said, flushing. "You?"
"Not sure. I've been traveling so much this past year, it'd almost be nice at this point to just sit at home and rest." I said with a sigh. "But that's not gonna happen, obviously, while I'm here at the academy. You ever had a pet?"
"No. You?"
"My family ran a horse-riding farm, but they weren't really pets. Know any languages other than English?"
"I know a bit of Japanese, since the DWMA encourages you to take a language elective. You?"
"Italian, German, French, Latin, and Greek, roughly in that order of fluency." I said, ticking them back on the fingers of my free hand. "I learned Italian and German from some friends, but the other three were for academic purposes only, so I'm not 100% on how well I could actually carry a conversation with 'em. You got any friends other than me?"
Rex tugged his earring, then realized what he was doing and let go again hastily. It was a pretty obvious answer.
Well, bang went my plan to use one of his other friends as a surrogate meister. Alas, since by virtue of them already being friends, Rex and said meister would have a jumpstart on their partnership bond.
"Anyways." he mumbled, turning red. "What about you? Did you make friends while you were traveling?"
"Did I ever!" I said. "These two guys named Romano and P- Gilbert, we were like this inseparable trio back in Europe. Romano was the dude that taught me Italian, and he swore worse than a sailor on shore leave. Like I can curse up a blue streak in Italian, my dude, and it's all thanks to him."
Rex blinked.
"Gilbert was this wild prankster –seriously, he messed around with everyone, even me when I was laid up in a hospital bed, once. He called, pretending to be all freaked out and thinking I might die, and then when I yelled at him that I was fine he laughed and told me that he knew that already. He used a spoon to flick peas at his -cousin during a family dinner, to the point where his dinner partner laid Gilbert out with a frying pan to the skull. She was wicked accurate with those things."
"She didn't." Rex said, awed.
"She did." I said. "Anyways, me and the dudes hung out for a while, but then I had to…leave, and I met this dude named Snake and this girl named Mey-rin, and we all lived together in this huge house in London. Snake loved to read, just like me, and we had this competition going where one of us would say a book quote and then the other had to guess which book it was from or admit defeat. I lost a lot."
Though that's mostly because the books I know weren't published in 1889.
"And Mey-rin was my roomie, and she was great with guns! Practically taught me everything I know about how to shoot, even though my pistol is a hella outdated model. She gave me a more modern one, but haven't really used it yet since, you know, I have you."
A silence dropped over the table as I then lowered my gaze to my ice cream and licked at it to avoid meeting Rex's eyes. Technically, I didn't even have him right now, and the knowledge of that came crashing down on our pleasant bubble of neutrality as soon as the words left my mouth. It was about damn time I stuck my foot in my mouth, I guess, since Rex had done it so often.
"I'm done with my ice cream." Rex said after a moment.
"Yeah." I said, contemplating my empty cone. "So…I guess we can go, then."
"Y-yeah."
We both got up in awkward silence, disposing of our trash in the nearby bin and walking outside without saying a word.
"You…think we can do this again tomorrow?" I asked hesitantly after a while of walking down the backlit streets, with the sinking sun branding all the adobe a deep orange. "Same time?"
"…sure." Rex said.
It was tense, but at least we'd taken a step in the right direction as far as "Rex not being terrified of me" went. Hopefully, we'd take another one tomorrow.
12.46 PM, USA Central Time