A/N: I looked at this and I decided it needed thorough reworking. The old version is still up, though, and will remain so because I got some lovely comments on it and I don't want to take it away in case people still want to read it. This sure was a crazy but interesting process.
Quiet. For the first time in hours hushed whispers had replaced the clash of battle and the sizzling magic in the air. There were no screeching creatures in the sky and no monsters sprouting from the earth to destroy Alfea along with all of its inhabitants, temporary and permanent.
Faragonda's reactions were lagging and her eyelids were heavy with the temptation of sleep that reverberated through everyone like an unreachable dream during the calm before the storm. War never ended so quickly and mercifully. Her students and friends were all kept on their toes patrolling the grounds or scrambling for the nearest cluster of people to seek some comfort in numbers in anticipation of a new wave of monsters at any moment. And she herself ended up wandering the halls of Alfea aimlessly.
Her movements echoed around her building up in her the impossible to suppress urge to whirl around and unleash her magic on the non-existent threats setting it off. It was just the flow of energy through the school that had been as natural to her as her own bloodstream before the monsters had turned Alfea into a battleground.
Each step was like an explosion of stimuli in her mind she had to cushion until an actual presence came into the focus of her senses. Right at the center of the pattern she'd crisscrossed all over the building. She'd known Griffin was here, in the darkest, most remote end of the surviving part of the school. She'd hardly let her out of her sight ever since the witch had arrived with her students and she'd still missed the intent leading her to Griffin's preferred hideout.
They hadn't spoken to each other except in regards to strategy and synchronization in the midst of the battle but words would be redundant. The lines marred Griffin's face as if they'd been carved there for centuries instead of a few days ago and the tension held her spine stiff even where she was leaning heavily against the wall. The unshakable exhaustion had infected everyone hours prior, days even. But Griffin had isolated herself–in stark contrast with everyone else's instinct of banding together–where the only thing surrounding her was the continuous pulse of energy through Alfea's walls and the dark sky hanging above them like an omen. She'd dived into battle like a fearless warrior only to scurry away at the monsters' retreat as if meeting a concerned look would scar her beyond repair.
Faragonda approached her with slow but loud steps and a purposefully schooled expression. She'd accomplish nothing if she startled Griffin or gave a reassuring smile that would be taken as a weapon aimed at Griffin's heart. It was already hard to tell if it was beating at all with how sluggishly her chest moved – as if she had to force it to expand for air instead of slowing it down in a fight against the panic. One more thing to set her apart from the others and it was all her doing when she didn't let anyone close enough to pull her out of the emotions so strong that they overflowed. She'd rather drown and threatened everyone in her proximity with the same.
Griffin didn't look at her but raised her chin and straightened her shoulders as if to resist the weight of the invisible armor she piled on herself.
Even at her listless pace, Faragonda would smack face-first into the absence of Griffin's golden eyes on her frame and she'd already taken damage in the battle. Her fingers still twitched where Alfea's destroyed tower ached in her mind like a ripped off limb and her ears rang with the pained cries of her injured students. Her heart was skipping too many beats her eyes tried to replace with the tears stinging them just at the thought of losing Griffin any further than she already had – whether physically or emotionally. But if she didn't try to take care of Griffin, then no one would. Least of all Griffin herself.
"We have to talk." Faragonda placed a hand on the windowsill. It was as close as Griffin would let her come to snatching her attention away from keeping up her calculated facade.
"Talk about what? About the biggest mistake I've made in the past fifteen years?" Griffin's voice wasn't cold or harsh. It was empty as she pointedly kept her tone even and her movements contained. Her arms were crossed as if to trap the rest of her in a cage and her gaze remained cemented on the wake of the battle outside.
Faragonda flinched to fill the void that Griffin's lack of reaction left between them. She was so impossibly still for someone who'd jumped back so far in the past just to let it crush her after the miracle of being able to stand after yet another battle, in the face of the upcoming one, too. Faragonda had to remind herself that even witnessing that was a privilege Griffin had taken away from her after their own fight.
"What is there to talk about? I think we both know what happened," Griffin contradicted Faragonda's unspoken relief on cue. Her stubbornness was more painful than a locked and loaded weapon in her hand pointed at Faragonda when the only target here was Griffin herself. As if there weren't enough monsters out for her head already and she had to be the one taking herself away from Faragonda just to twist the knife in an extra bit.
"You wanted to believe that they were better. That they weren't like... them," Faragonda had to suppress a shiver. Not just at the chilling memories, but also at the bitter smile taking over Griffin's face that filled her with the need to grab her friend and shake her.
The Ancestral Witches' magic still wormed its way into people even though they should have been gone like everything else they'd taken from the people of the Magic Dimension. Finding the link between the two trios of witches hadn't been hard. The decision Griffin had taken after that, though, had been a monument of strength even for someone like her who'd always followed her own moral compass in spite of the entire universe that was against her. She hadn't budged in the face of trauma and grief either.
"And where did that get us?" Griffin asked, a dry, humorless chuckle escaping her before the despair made her voice a little too high-pitched for both their liking. She bit her lip too vehemently in contrast with the rest of her body language.
"Wishing to give someone a chance was never the problem."
She'd failed to give reassurance the one time Griffin had asked it of her. She wasn't making that mistake again. Regardless of the other mistakes that had been made on either side. A lot of things could have been different but they weren't.
"If I hadn't saved your life back then, I would've never forgiven myself. No matter what came afterwards. How could I have turned my back on you when I'd seen you and all that you are?" her nails audibly scratched against the windowsill to carve into it her seriousness. She couldn't stress it enough in the silence that had wrapped them.
Griffin had quieted down, her head slightly bowed as she swallowed – whether under the load of the many terrible things she'd done, working for the Ancestral Coven, or that of Faragonda's late declaration of faith in her. Griffin had conflated her refusal to give the three young witches a chance–for her own peace of mind–with lack of belief in her. A horrible oversight that had hung over their heads for far too long. Especially in the face of their possible death. Protecting their hearts would hardly matter if one of them stopped beating soon.
"I actually wanted to talk about us." Faragonda hesitated, fingers falling motionless at the windowsill at the threat of pricking herself to blood on Griffin's dismissal. As if the years of silence didn't ring hollow in her chest where she'd stuffed her passive hope instead of the words Griffin had refused her. This could be her last chance. Their last chance. "I missed you."
Griffin turned at that, her lips parted like she hadn't decided what would be allowed to leave them. Faragonda wasn't sure if the witch wouldn't laugh at her.
"Jumping from my biggest mistake right to the second best?" she asked instead and the forced amusement of the words was like a slap in the face. Maybe it would've been better if she'd laughed at her. "If you're trying to make me feel better, Fara," the pet name made her heart flutter, "it's not working."
Griffin looked back to the gray skies outside as if the depressing bleakness of their surroundings was better than the ghost of closeness stuffed between them. Using it as a barrier was the most effective defense when reaching through it would freeze Faragonda's blood if she couldn't clasp Griffin's warmth in her palm on the other side.
"Why not?" she asked, holding on to the edge of the windowsill for support, to anchor herself there.
Griffin didn't answer. Her unblinking golden gaze lingered on Faragonda painfully. She remained motionless like a statue even amidst the flow of Faragonda's emotions that flung her forward into Griffin's cool facade with no regard for the consequences of that collision. Not with the battle that was coming for them.
"I'm still your frie-"
"Because I abandoned you," Griffin snapped at her, turning so rapidly that Faragonda's wound-up mind instantly jumped on the offense, a harsh startle betraying her if the magic rushing into her hands hadn't. "I am the reason why you had to miss me," Griffin fired out as she met her distress head-on as if she deserved it. Her eyes were gleaming with regret pushing to become tears but she wouldn't let it. "I was stubborn and I didn't want to fix our friendship," she looked down as if wishing for the floor to swallow her. "Even though I missed you, too."
Faragonda's powers surged all over again, this time with the charge of pure joy Griffin had released into her heart. Even if magic was no help against the shame crushing the precious words into a whisper.
"I was quite stubborn myself," Faragonda stepped closer, flexing her fingers to will the frantic energy in them away. A touch was all she needed to close the abyss between them. "What's important is that... we're here for each other now," she'd grab Griffin and pull her into her embrace if she weren't risking suffocating her. They'd both started the fight and the end had to come from both of them. "We're in this together, okay?" she took Griffin's hand in hers, drawing the witch's gaze to her as well and breathing turned easier with the tears gone.
Griffin gave her a faint smile that may as well have been a response to her naivety and nodded, squeezing her fingers. Even through her glove, she soaked Faragonda's flesh through with her warmth to send her heart jumping in her throat faster than the battle raging outside their doors. But the fight between her and Griffin was over and they were standing together with only peace and quiet between them, and not the angry, stubborn silence of the years they'd spent avoiding each other. Now she just had to hope that they wouldn't be pulled apart by death in the next few hours.