Thistle and Stone [Chaennie]

Chapter 24

QUIET

It ended with silence. It stretched between them until it felt almost too dense to breach. Eventually, Roseanne pulled Jennie's hand into hers and Jennie let it lay there. She felt Roseanne's fingers against her palm, felt the uncertain shaking of her hand. When she finally stood, Roseanne didn't move. She waited silently as Jennie made copies of Croaker's notes. Jennie knew she wanted to say something else. She could sense Roseanne's anxiety on the edge of her tongue.

As she worked, Jennie fought the urge to smooth things over. A part of her wanted to play the mediator, but she couldn't bring herself to try. Instead, the pages filled her vision, Suzy Bae's name written tidily beside Roseanne's, the elaborate spell staring mockingly back at her.

"It was the incantation, by the way," she murmured. Roseanne watched her, confused.

"He didn't properly construct the incantation. The structure of his Latin was off. He linked the curse successfully to you, but not Suzy. It latched onto the next woman who touched it."

Roseanne nodded, trying not to register the surprise on her face. "I'm sorry, Jennie."

Jennie could barely handle the gentleness in her voice. She wished Roseanne would yell, smash something, anything. The softness made it worse. Instead, they hugged, tight but stiff. They murmured a few goodbyes, a 'I'll check on you soon' from Roseanne, 'I just need a few days,' from Jennie, and Roseanne was gone. Jennie still felt the warmth of her chest against hers and swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

She made a space for herself on her rug and spread out the notes in front of her, cocooning herself in the safety of parchment. Amidst the storm in her head, the isolation made her feel safe. She forced herself to read Croaker's notes through the fog. It was all there, laid out for her in detailed writing. Croaker was painstaking in his research, and she found his records of their initial meeting, read about the glow that circled their hands when they first touched, the relief he saw on their faces. She read for hours, seeing her behaviour—her life—through Croaker's analytical eyes. It felt unreal, pushing her to disconnect from what she read.

He had manufactured so much of it. If he wasn't able to control how the initial curse reacted, he made sure to control just about everything else. Jennie read about him putting Suzy on the case, making sure the three of them would be alone. He wanted to see how Roseanne and Jennie reacted to her presence, and his notes on the outcome were detailed. Their living conditions, their work environment, even their trip to Skye. Croaker's invisible hand pushed and pulled at them and he recorded every instance of how they reacted to the bond and how it affected their magic.

Hours later, when Jennie was satisfied that she could recall the detail of every page when her eyes closed, she laid back against the rug and fell into a disturbed sleep.

-

It was nearly morning when Roseanne stumbled back to her flat. After leaving Jennie's, she had found the darkest and grimiest Muggle pub she possibly could and drank until the sharpness in her chest blurred and ebbed into a dull ache. She thought about finding Baekhyun but didn't know if she could endure seeing his worried and kind face. She wanted anonymity – wanted to melt into a worn leather seat and become another forlorn face in the back of the pub. Roseanne left only when she was forced to, the soles of her boots sticking to the floorboards as she walked.

She apparated home after finding a quiet and empty alleyway to do so, knowing full well it was daft and a little dangerous. Before her feet even hit ground, she knew something was off. She sensed a presence in her home as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The figure on her sofa slowly came into view.