In which, finally, talking happens.
They work in silence, implementing the shortcuts from Goodwyn's notes to cut back on brewing time. The rain is white noise in Wormwood's ears, as he puts his conflicting emotions aside again to concentrate on the instructions given to him.
The timing between them is almost flawless, he proudly notes. No one watching them could tell it's the first time they effectively work together on a project. Nothing less could be expected from a pair with thirty years of amity under their belts, he supposes. It can be saved, it has to, Wormwood thinks, clinging to the way their movements seem to follow a precise rhythm, like a rehearsed dance. Wormwood has hands now, and even though they're clumsy, they open for him an unforeseen horizon on the hard work he was only ever able to observe. This, he thinks, is what he should have done from the beginning, he's right for this, it's right for them.
After a while, the potion is set and simmering, and it's only a matter of adding the last few ingredients at the right time.
Concentrating has become much harder. Something odd is happening, and Wormwood is clueless what it is. Working side by side with Cedric, like in the days that already feel so distant, gives him a sense of relief so intense it borders on painful; nostalgic of something completely new. And yet, something else is moving, twinging in his chest in the same place that horrible anger lit up like a roaring beast. As he tries to stay focused on his task of chopping up into small pieces the now soaked strips of kelp, something guides his eye to Cedric's back every time he leans forward to stir the cauldron.
Hands firmly gripping a wooden ladle almost as tall as he is, Cedric's protruding shoulder-blades become outlined through his robe as he pulls his arms back, stirring the dense contents, fluidly, hips and torso twisting like a squeezed rag to apply the necessary force. It is such a smooth line, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. It is hard to imagine that fluid, sinuous curve had to be restored with magic. He must have been in so much pain, the whole night and the carriage ride and being carried in his rough hands...
Then, the sorcerer pauses to roll up his shirtsleeves to the elbow. His left forearm, a sorry sight only a few hours earlier, now sports four white lines―scars, the raven realises, and all thought whirrs to a halt in his head. He doesn't even notice the knife nicking his thumb until a bit of sap seeps into it; then, the sting makes him look down, and the whole cutting board is red.
"Oh," he, perceptively, notes.
"Alright, just a bit more," Cedric is saying. "Hurry up with that, we must add―oh no!" The ladle flies from Cedric's hands when he glances back at him, gasping in alarm, "Wormy, your hand!"
Wormwood watches the thick red drops seep from the tender split meat of his thumb, between irritation and interest. It's just now starting to hurt, stinging and pulsing in a truly overdramatic manner for such a small wound. Just like his nails, there's no risk of him bleeding out from it, so he watches the blood run onto the charcoal skin of his hand, fascinated.
"Hold still, hold still, I'll fix you up in no time," Cedric says, in front of him in three hurried steps. He makes to lift his wand, but thinks better of it, and grabs one of the moonkelp strips instead.
Slender, glove-clad fingers close around Wormwood's hand, with no hesitation, and when Wormwood lifts his eyes Cedric is so near, enough to bump noses with. He called me Wormy, he thinks distantly, and not even the sting of the healing seaweed is enough to curb the tug of relief in his chest.
Cedric was about to use a healing spell, but then didn't. Because I told him not to use spells on me anymore, he realises. Touched, the raven watches his thumb heal up through the gel-like seaweed flesh, cupped in Cedric's hands, as if time could revert in that safe, gloved space. When he lifts his eyes again, he notices Cedric is staring down at his hand, but not at the thumb. He's looking at his broken claws, lifting his fingers to the light.
"What... happened to your nails," he murmurs, and it's not really a question.
The raven sighs. "I tried to trim them," he admits. "Just after our... talk. Didn't go as planned." Just like everything else these days.
Unexpectedly, instead of letting go at the mention of their argument, Cedric leans in close, peering up under the claws, completely unbothered at having them so close to his face.
"With the clippers? But you hate―oh no, they're all quickened!" His eyes are so wide when he looks up at him, fiery chestnut and full of incomprehension. "That's dangerous! Why would you do such a thing?"
He's so close, it makes Wormwood lose his words again. Wordlessly, the raven upends the hold, until his own palm is over Cedric's, and the pads of his fingers can brush the thin white scars on his arm.
"Atonement," Wormwood says through his touch, barely mouthing the word along. The arm gives a small twitch, skin breaking out in goosebumps under his fingers, the nullified threat of his claws. The moment of silence stretches, all breaths held.
Then, the sudden snap of a spark from the cauldron makes them jolt.
"The kelp!" Cedric gasps, arm flowing away as freshwater fish between the raven's fingers. He hurries to add the seaweed to the potion and stir. After a tense moment, the mixture changes to a lively orange liquid, and he deflates against the heavy ladle. "Alright, it is saved."
"E-excellent," Wormwood manages to say. He cradles his right hand, thumb still stinging, the whole of it feeling a little warmer. Gulping down the lump in his throat, he checks the recipe. "Now, it only needs to simmer for seven hours and twelve minutes, says here."
The sorcerer has fallen silent, staring into the cauldron's depths. The potion's glow puts coppery embers in his downcast eyes. Somehow, Wormwood knows the fate of his apology is intertwined with the fate of this potion they are brewing together, the magical fertiliser that can save the Autumn feast, and regrow their friendship like a weed, as the rabbit said. Wormwood steps at Cedric's side again, and this time Cedric doesn't move away.
"I thought you would be here, last night, gloating," Cedric says quietly. "But it seems it was quite the bad night for both of us, instead."
"Awful. But I only got lost in the forest," Wormwood hurries to answer. He adopts the same volume, as if speaking too loudly could break some enchantment laid upon them to let them talk. Sofia's observation resonated with him when she said it, so he borrows her words, "I couldn't bear to stay here, not after what happened."
Slowly, he hints at taking the sorcerer's hand again. With a noise of annoyance, Cedric pulls away before he can even move.
"Honestly, do you think I care about a few scratches?" he says, his voice still too low, and behind it the restrained force, the unfamiliar cold anger Wormwood doesn't know how to place. Cedric pulls down his sleeves in haste. "These are nothing. It took Father less than a minute to heal everything up, he didn't even notice I had them."
"But I behaved like... some mindless brute," Wormwood says, frowning in incomprehension. Cedric folds his arms tightly. "I've frightened you. I left you scarred."
"You are a raven. You can't be expected to..." he trails off, gesturing vaguely. Just an animal, Wormwood's mind supplies, rewriting his words in crueler terms, how could you ever live up to human expectations?
"Besides," Cedric spiels, with an air of wanting to change the topic, "it only scarred because of some mishap with this Protection Charm I had on, combining with this old healing spell my father likes to use even though there are dozens alternatives―but I digress."
Wormwood barely hears him, the hit from the first part still ricocheting in him.
"But," he attempts, at a loss for words. "It might be true that I acted on instinct, but I thought―"
"Wormwood, you could have covered me in scratches, for all I care!" Cedric draws in a sigh, staring down into the cauldron again, voice lower, almost a hiss, "But... taking the Family Wand, and the things you've said to me... you know me, you knew what you were doing... and if I had known you've thought so lowly of me all this years..."
From there, he cannot continue. He steps back from the cauldron, brimming with nervous energy, like he wants to run. Or weep. Or both.
"I do not think lowly of you," Wormwood tells him, voice down to a croak. "I spoke in anger. I couldn't bear that you wanted to change me back right away."
"I thought you were stuck in this form! I thought it was an accident, or some curse, done against your will―!" Cedric frets, moving to pace around the workshop. "I didn't even know you―could think just like a human, I mean I knew you were smart, but I couldn't imagine―but who would chose to be human, of all things? Who would give away wings, for this life where you get bossed around all day, and pull all-nighters at the King's whim?"
"Me, it seems," the raven murmurs. The admission weights on him, like stones on his chest, "I've wanted to talk to you for so long, and I was..."―he cannot bring himself to tell him he was running out of time, cannot confess to the shame―"I wanted you to hear me."
Cedric lets out a sort of drawn-out keen. "What we have... being my companion, sharing my life, is it really so miserable?" he asks, encompassing the lair in a desolate gesture. "I always thought... even if no one can stand me, we would still... I thought―"
"Wait, wait, it's the other way around," Wormwood walks around the cauldron to face him, halting his pacing. "I wanted my words to have power, so I said the things that I knew would upset you. What we have... I've used it against you―but I shouldn't have. I truly regret it."
Cedric looks at him for a long, long moment, standing motionless. "Is this..." he tries, "is this really you?"
Taken aback, Wormwood stutters, "It is me."
"I cannot see it." Cedric glances to his empty perch, arms flopping at his sides in a defeated shrug. "You seem so different. You judge, like all the others, and it is... as though I were still waiting for... the real you to come back to me."
Wormwood takes it, although it feels like a battering ram straight through the gut. He swallows, and picks up his sunken heart, not yet ready to give up.
"I am still the same," he croaks. He dares take the sorcerer by the shoulders, black claws on purple robe, as careful as a mother taking her pups by the scruff. "I was always like this, mean and cold and deceitful―just like you. But I am still your raven, the one you fed and taught to fly and play checkers and―"
He halts. In his hands, Cedric's shoulders are trembling, his breathing shallow, his face turned away to hide his eyes.
"Stop," he says, in a brittle whisper. "It's not the same, how can it be the same when―"
"Please," Wormwood begs, and he pulls away even though he'd want to do the complete opposite, hold tighter, not let go of him until he's seen his truth. "The only difference is that you can understand me when I speak, really. I'm still here, I'm still me." I'm still yours.
The sorcerer shakes his head, looking every bit as pained and helpless as Wormwood feels. The raven cannot think of anything else, so he goes to his knees, and looks up at the sorcerer's confused frown, into his eyes that look again lost and wide and too bright.
Cedric allows him to take his hand, so he lifts it and places it on top of his head. He bows, and it costs him, exposing the back of his neck like that, but it's only fair. He was the one to put Cedric at his most vulnerable, one way or another; but they'll be even now. The hand, its touch at once so familiar and so new, stays motionless in his hair for a long moment. Cedric must have frozen in place again.
"Feel it," Wormwood prompts, forcing himself to keep his head down. "See? It's just the same as my feathers."
The hand moves a little bit, smoothing over the thick locks in a hesitant caress. It won't find any of the wiry resistance of his old feathers, but he hopes the textural reminiscence is strong enough. Still, as soon as Cedric's hand touches him with a little more certainty, Wormwood's mind hazes, as if he had been waiting for nothing else his whole life.
"It... it is the same," Cedric notes, his voice small and full of amazement. Wormwood responds with a low groan of unabashed bliss. "But... I thought you didn't like being touched at all."
"I don't mind, if it's you," he says, more of an understatement than a lie, lifting his head a bit. With the movement, the hand in his hair falls to the side of his face, combing the flyaway locks behind his ear. Every new touch undoes him a little more. He manages to say, "I just don't like being manhandled. The same as you."
Cedric's hand halts a moment, and Wormwood fears he might have said too much. But the motion resumes and slowly, slowly, Wormwood leans forward until his forehead touches the sorcerer's belt.
He daren't press into his stomach as he used to do, and neither fold his arms around Cedric's middle to pull him closer, their trust still so fragile. He just holds still, forgetting the rough stones under his knees, the awkward hang of his arms, the uncomfortable bend of his neck. The cauldron simmers quietly behind them, consuming the minutes.
Wormwood could fall asleep there, he realizes. He could fall asleep like this every night of his lengthened life, and the thought makes his heart so light he almost cannot stand it. Back in the tower, with Cedric's hand stroking his hair as though nothing had changed, he really feels like anything is possible. I always feel stronger when I'm with my friends, Sofia told him. Like I can handle anything that comes my way. He wonders if Cedric had felt stronger, with him on his shoulder. He thinks of all the times he hasn't been there.
He doesn't fall asleep. Instead, his stomach elects to break the easy silence with a mighty rumble. This body, although strong and comfortable, needs to be fed an alarming amount. Cedric takes half a step away from him, clearing his throat, with the air of someone whose daydreaming was abruptly interrupted. The raven's chest clenches a bit at the loss.
As he raises to his feet again, Cedric gestures noncommittally to the leftover stew. "It is cold now, but by all means, have it," he offers.
"I have an inkling it's the only meal you've had in a while," Wormwood retorts, "so by all means, you should finish it."
"I'll be sick if I eat any more of it," Cedric says bluntly. A furtive glance at the portrait. "By all means, I insist."
The raven gives in. The cold stew isn't certainly the best thing he ever had, but food is food, after all. And it is a shared meal, just like yesterday's breakfast of oatmeal and raisins, and he can pretend no disaster befell them in the meantime. He uses Cedric's spoon without hesitation. In the draughty tower that has seen them at their best and their worst, he has seen Cedric bathe and change and wake up with puffy eyes and mussed hair, and he wants to think their awful familiarity has never changed, despite the changes happening around it.
"Why did Goodwyn visit, anyway?" he asks around a spoonful. "Is your mother worried?"
Cedric looks pensive for a moment, perching on the arm of the chair again. "Not that I know of. One of Father's spells broke, two days ago. A Protection Charm he put on me after my... fall, out at sea."
Cedric had never spoken much of that instance, not even with his raven. All Wormwood knows is that thirty years prior, some time before the two of them met, Cedric fell into some hole in the rocks, and barely got out alive. Wormwood had been surprised, discovering that other humans weren't as resilient as Cedric; he thought them weak and pathetic.
"Is this Charm the reason you've never been injured before?" he asks. Goodwyn being Goodwyn, he probably thought making the child invulnerable would keep him out of harm's way. How must he now bemoan the ingrained recklessness his actions brought. "And it broke the very evening you got the Wand?"
"Yes―but it cannot be the Wand," Cedric says, shooting it an accusatory glance. "As you know, I've barely touched it since he gave it to me."
Oh no, Wormwood suddenly realizes, a glimpse of snapping vine in his memory making him flinch. It was the blackberries.
Eating the fruit established the link between the bramble's leeching abilities and Cedric's magic. But how does a plant posses the power to breach a Protection Charm cast by Goodwyn the Great himself? Wormwood swallows, stew down his throat like a mouthful of glue. He allowed himself to put the disaster out of his mind for a moment, and the discomfort the thought of it brings only grew while he was otherwise occupied.
"I really didn't know my experiments were bothering you so much, or why," Cedric starts. He speaks warily, as though he didn't quite know how to phrase his thought. "But then... Father told me about the Charm he did and..."
Wormwood tilts his head at him, immediately refocusing. "And now you relate?"
A nod, somewhat hesitant. "It's not even a spell to alter my body or anything like that... and I imagine explaining it to a six year old would have been nearly impossible―I should just be thankful, shouldn't I?" Cedric glances guiltily at the portrait. "I recall almost nothing between falling and waking up, and when I did I was fine―well, too much of a coward to go outside again, but mostly fine."
"You were no coward," Wormwood says. "You climbed up a tree trunk, just to pull a young raven out, I recall."
"In wisdom, I don't take after Mother," Cedric says, with a chuckle that doesn't reach his eyes. "But, truly, I don't know what bothers me about it."
"He didn't tell you he would do it," Wormwood answers easily. "He wouldn't even try to find the words to explain, as if he considered you some object to decide for, and not a sentient being."
Cedric looks at him, running his fingers over his clothed forearm. He seems lost in thought for a long while.
Then, looking away, he asks, "Is that how I made you feel? Like a thing, instead of a friend?"
It is so direct, Wormwood doesn't know where to hide. He barely finds it in himself to nod, carefully setting the empty bowl down. Cedric's understanding leaves him disconcerted, actually: he's not usually the most insightful of characters. Is this the power of words, he wonders, of speaking the same language?
The silence that falls is ripe with things unsaid. Part of him wants to seize the moment and go over everything that happened, shed light on every single action. But at the same time, he feels it's better to let the matter rest for the moment. Cedric, too, doesn't ask him about the Wand, about how he changed forms, about the leeching of power endangering his life. I can't tell him until I know how to fix it, Wormwood repeats to himself. It's for the best.
Cedric only asks, "Will you believe me, if I promise I won't try to experiment on you again?" At his silence, he hurries to advocate for himself, "I am not under threat now, and I have nothing to gain by breaking such a promise, so you can believe me, right?"
"I can certainly try," he murmurs, feeling a tentative smile pull at his mouth.
Forgiveness is not something you do, but something you feel, the wise snakeling has taught him. And, constantly drawn in by some unknown centripetal pull, he had almost forgotten he's not only seeking forgiveness for his actions, but must also extend it himself.
Cedric has risen to check on the cauldron. "Well, then, only a few more hours to go," he says. "I'll stay here and stir when needed. You can take the bed, if you wish to rest."
The raven looks at him. He does wish to rest, but Cedric said it as though it were obvious, like he hadn't been ready to throw him out just a few hours before.
"Or... you can go to the room they gave you, I suppose," Cedric back-pedals, once again filling his silence with fretting, gesturing as if to shake his previous words from the air. "I just said it out of habit. There is nothing forcing you to spend every single moment with me now that..."
He trails off, hunching his shoulders. Still sitting on the stool, Wormwood fights the urge to get up and wrap himself around him, shield him from the world's cruelty, even from the cruelty he inflicted himself. He searches for the words to use instead.
"There was nothing forcing me when I was a raven, either," he says softly, as if he had a way to be sure.
Cedric raises hands and eyebrows at him, the picture of disbelief. "Just go and take the bed, then," he fusses. He catches the first book under his eye―The Deep End of the Potion, held upside down―and waves it energetically at him. "I'll... probably just read, anyway. Or catnap."
It takes him only the time for Wormwood to go downstairs, rinse the day off, and come back up with a blanket, and he's already asleep.
Wormwood steps closer to him, a tangle of willowy limbs curled on the armchair, with the book cradled to his chest. The raven too needs to sleep, his body heavy with fatigue, but in his chest that something keeps coiling and turning; a vague, unrestful clench as he looks over the steady rise and fall of Cedric's breathing. No more wheezing, no more blue lips, or skin as cold as ice. I won't use leeched magic anymore, Wormwood nods to himself, looking over at the black Wand still on the desk, that doesn't hold upright on its own like the original used to do.
Cedric certainly would be more comfortable on the bed, Wormwood considers, observing the angle of his craned neck, all bent against the chair's arm and tilted back. At least, he can see there is not a single blue line on it, the skin pale and smooth as usual, no trace left of his mistakes.
A lock of Cedric's fringe is tickling his nose, that twitches in his sleep. Wormwood leans in to brush it away with the tip of his claw. A draft from the open window makes the sorcerer shiver, mumbling some nonsense. Wormwood could scoop him up right now, and carry him to bed, and lend him all the warmth his changed body can produce. Would he have a good rest, cradled in his arms? Would he feel as safe, as cared for as Wormwood used to feel in his hold?
For now, the raven has no way to know. In lieu of himself, he drapes the blanket over Cedric's resting form. Then, he takes a first step away from him, walking backwards. It feels almost unnatural, putting space between them, and the idea of sleeping in their bed without him near―for a moment he really doubts that there is no enchantment over him.
Reluctant, and more than ever full of doubt, he walks down the stairs.
Feelings & Potion brewing, a match.