PRIDE (Leona x Reader) [Twisted Wonderland]

Chapter 12

You and Leona examined the nearby shelves. The only way up to the key would be to climb them. They didn’t look like they would be very sturdy, even without the excess objects neatly arranged atop. Worse, this section was more chaotic than the others. Some of the lower shelves, of which the theme seemed to be glass cubes, were cut off at odd parts, or inexplicably empty. Some of the cubes had broken, and one had been filled with some sort of blue oil that was dripping down onto the shelf below and soaking into the wood. For someone who supposedly cared so much about his collection, Sam didn’t seem to have cleaned or dusted in months.

“He probably hasn’t even been in here since the school term started,” Leona mumbled.

“Running his shop must be busying,” you defended neutrally, frowning. It felt wrong to bash the innocent man you were stealing from. “But can you not just fly up there with magic?”

“I don’t have a broom.”

Oh. That did explain the witches in the stories always riding around on them. The image gave you a chill, so you didn’t make any suggestions to try to find one.

“You’re better at climbing than me,” you decided, giving him a warm but expecting look. 

His expression actually seemed to shift at the compliment, and you wondered if he was holding back some smug grin. “I am,” he said, “But I don’t think you could lift me.” He pointed at the largest of the cubes, one filled with rocks and sand and adorned with a shoddy paper sign that was only half taped. You couldn’t read the writing, it was smudged and might not even have been English. “That’s probably our best route.”

He was right; climbing that thing would avoid most of the more fragile or jutting objects, along with most of the blue oil spill. It was three shelves worth in height, low enough for you to climb up on if he gave you a boost. You’d still have to do a bit of shimmying once you got to the top, though; you didn’t think you could quite reach the key from there. Honestly, you would have rather let him do it, but it was you that needed this so you could hardly turn down the one job that he’d given you.

“Okay.” You approached the large cube and dug your fingertips around the top of it for a grip. Leona boosted you onto it, and managed to get into a partial sitting position where you could pull yourself up and stand, leaning a bit to the side to avoid the shelves above you from hitting you in the head. You grabbed on to one of them for support. You really hoped that these things would hold.

Slowly and carefully, you began to climb. It took a lot of effort just to pull yourself from one shelf level to the next. You couldn’t quite see the key from this angle, but you knew it was somewhere at the very top. At one point, you gambled to look down, and felt your heart rise into your throat at the dizzying height you’d acquired. Leona stood mutely below you, watching with a serious expression. You tried not to think about all the ways you could die if your fingers were to slip. You really should’ve just asked him to do this.

Once you made it high enough to see the layer just below the key, you called out to him below you. “Leona? Which one is it?”

“It’s to your right,” he said. You stuck your hand over the ledge and felt around. Moving to the tips of your toes felt dangerous, but you did what you had to to reach the object, which felt larger now in your hand. You grabbed it and took a quick look. It was the key. 

You felt relieved, and a little excited. Butterflies fluttered in your stomach. “I got it!” You scooted to the side and started to make your way down. You took a step below you and moved to put your left foot beside it, when you heard it scratch. The shelf slid down and out of place, and you made a sound of panic.

The plate beneath you ceased holding your weight in an almost immediate fashion, so you had no choice but to hold on with your arms as the entire vertical array bucked and slanted beneath you. “Oh, oh no-” you cursed the shelving’s poor design and squeezed your eyes shut, holding on for dear life and pressing yourself as close to the damaged shelving as possible. Your breathing quickened, your fingers started to slip. You heard a bout of crashing beneath you, and the shattering of glass. You heard Leona call out your name.

You didn’t know if the shelf above you gave out, or if your fingers just slipped, but the next thing you knew you had no purchase, and were plummeting downward in a free fall. 

For a brief moment, you thought you were going to die.

But you landed, not entirely painlessly, on something softer than you had expected to. You open your eyes and adjusted to the horrific mess of your surroundings. You’d landed on— Oh! You scrambled to get off of Leona, and to make sure that he was okay. He’d caught you, sort of, but your weight had knocked him to the ground. There was broken glass surrounding you both, and you wondered if he’d made some attempt to scale the crumbled shelving to save you. 

“Leona! I’m sorry—!”

He let out a muffled grunt and sat himself up. “Don’t apologize,” he grumbled, licking some blood from his lip. Oh, did he bite his tongue? He sounded like he’d had the breath knocked out of his lungs. There was more blood, too, down on his leg, and a piece of glass that had clearly cut through his uniform to slice at his calf.

“Are you okay?” you clamored worriedly. He stood up and rejected all of your efforts to approach him with a hand.

“I’m fine,” he spat. 

“You’re bleeding!” 

He shook his head as if denying it. “I’m fine, it’s just a scratch.” He looked you up and down while you frantically switched between moving closer and moving away.

You shook your head, and said in a small voice, “there might be glass in it, or it might be infected!” You had little to no medical knowledge, since there’d been no one to really teach you. You did remember Mrs. Linkin once yelling at you to tie it with a cloth when you had gotten a similar wound before; and then yelling at you again when you’d ruined a perfectly good shirt. But if he had glass in the wound, what did you do if he had glass in the wound? “We should— we should find someone who knows how to fix it,” you said. “Is there a doctor—”

“I don’t need a doctor,” Leona huffed plainly. “I’m perfectly fine.” He stood up, not even flinching when he pushed his weight to his legs. That was good, right? It meant none of his bones were broken.

You weren’t sure if it was panic, guilt, or just pure adrenaline that flooded your chest and made your tongue feel dry and heavy. You nodded at him. He was okay. You were okay. Your thoughts were sharp and your vision was blurry, but you were fine.

Leona looked at you like he wanted to say something. He watched you, lips parted, and you squeezed the item in your hand to keep yourself grounded. “You got the key,” he said. “That’s good.”

“Yeah.” You held it out to him, shuffled a little, let your arm drop when he didn’t immediately reach for it.

“We should get out of here,” he said.

The noise of all the shelves crashing had been loud. If anyone had been nearby, they would have heard it. You nodded and began looking for the exit. “It was that way,” you said. Leona followed behind you out of the building, through the disabled lasers and out the front door. You peaked at him a few times, to check if he was limping or seemed in pain, but his expression was schooled into only the average amount of bothered, which was less of an emotion and more of a resting product of his features.

Luckily, no one was waiting for you when you got outside. You looked to Leona in questioning. “Um, what now?”

He watched you, and you wondered if your whisper had been too quiet to hear. “We should head back to the dorm. It’s late.”

You felt partially relieved when he said it. Now that you had the key, you should have been able to get back home whenever you wanted. But you didn’t feel ready for that, now. Maybe it was all the excitement of the taxing day weighing on you, or maybe it was the soreness from falling who-knows-how-many feet, onto someone else’s body. You told yourself that it was both, and went gladly back to the Savannaclaw gateway with Leona.

Well, tried to, at least. You only made it halfway.