The Keepers' Evil

Six: Sebastian told me a little of what happened when you were young

Song- Arsonist's lullabye: Hozier

Trigger warning for major descriptions of domestic and child abuse.

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"Sebastian told me a little of what happened when you were young. It sounds as if you had no choice."

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Although my body was physically bone dry, my mind was soaked with the mental images of Isidora's tears. There was a deep, tortured need inside of me to hold her, brush her tears into nothing, protect her like she needed.

I couldn't do that now, that ability was taken by decades of distance and six feet of ground, but I could take her honour and wear it like the crown it was. It would have to be enough. Isidora's crown may have slipped from her head, but it fell right into my hands and the diamonds glittered as brightly as they ever had.

Sebastian didn't look up at me, not at first, he simply leant over the pensieve with his arms locked tight, staring into the portal that was Isidora's mind. His hair flopped in front of his eyes that clamped themselves shut every few minutes and his arms shook against the stone walls of the basin. Entering someone else's life through their memories, even for a few seconds, was like being them, and I wondered if Sebastian had just experienced the emotions of losing a sibling a little too close to his own loss.

"She's just like me." Oh, Sebastian, don't say that.

Sebastian forced himself away from the pensieve with so much force I thought the basin may topple over with its weak age. Each step of his anxious pace left a small tap on the stone slabs, his heel digging into the silence that Isidora refused to release.

"We didn't learn anything about the magic." He continued to pace, ruffling his tumbled locks every now and again, his flustered cheeks pulsing red as his brain prepared to combust with how many emotions he was carrying that weren't his.

"It's not all about the magic, Sebastian," at least for me that was true.

"We could've practically touched the pain in her heart, it was that alive." I wasn't convinced by Sebastian's painfully slow nod, it was like his brain said Madeleine wants you to agree, so agree. I knew he wanted more, that his hand was reaching for Anne but couldn't quite get there, that he wanted a shred of information to obsess over so that he felt like he had something.

"Sebastian," the little flurry behind my tone was enough to make him turn to face me, his eyes immediately flickering to that look once more. The bulge I felt in my throat whispered to me that I didn't want Sebastian to look at me like this, I didn't want his mind to default back to this muddle of feelings whenever he looked at me.

"I will figure this out. I will save-"

Sebastian didn't see at first, nor did he notice my eyes narrow behind his shoulder.

"You will not, Madeleine, I swear to Merlin!" Ominis' hand clutched the end of his wand as if he were about to defend himself from us.

This is what we've become, Sebastian.

"Ominis."

His name on Sebastian's tongue was an entire sentence in itself. It carried the hurt, the surprise, the guilt like all the punctuation marks in the world would.

Ominis' almost platinum hair wasn't neatly fixed to perfection like it always was; there were strands out of place, brushed just out of his eyes which were crying with the strain of keeping us all afloat.