Chapter Text
About three hours in she realized, rather belatedly, that she probably should have just gone to bed. She had made some progress, sure, but she really hadn’t done all that much that she wouldn’t have been able to do in the morning had she really put her mind to it, and in all honesty it probably would have gone faster then anyway. She was tired, weary, exhausted, and all sorts of other shit that really didn’t make it all that much easier to do… well, really anything, but especially that required actual brain power.
Trying to figure out why the fuck the dust behaved the way it did, all the while fighting against her own fearful urges and everything else that was wrong with her, wasn’t exactly what she would call an easy task, and it had gone pretty damn badly so far if she was being completely honest. She had, at the very least, sort of formed the dust into a poor semblance of a mirror, but in all honesty it was terrible at best.
It was reflective, she had managed that much, but making it anything more than that seemed to be damn near impossible. No matter how much heat she blasted into the surface of the glittery powder, or how tightly she compacted it, when she ended the process it always returned to the fine dust. The absolute best that she had managed was to get all of the glitter to shine in the same direction, though all that really managed to do was make a million little green dots stare back at her whenever she looked at it from the wrong angle.
It was pretty fucking annoying if she was being honest, and it almost made her want to scramble up the dust and start all over again, but she knew that she couldn’t do that. She needed to stick with what little she had for the time being, and while that progress was limited, at least it was progress. Something was better than nothing, but sometimes it sure as hell didn’t feel like it.
She had tried not to let it phase her, she really had, but after three fucking hours of shit she simply couldn’t take it any more. There was only so much that one witch could take and she had, apparently, hit her limit. She wanted to keep working, to bash her head against the problem until it was solved in the only way that she really knew how to solve problems, but that wasn’t an option when her brain simply wasn’t cooperating with her any more.
If she couldn’t string together enough thoughts to actually try anything new then there really wasn’t any point in trying to do anything that required more than half a thought which, while annoying, did mean that she at least was allowed to go to bed. That was… well, it wasn't nice, not exactly, but it was good in its own way. She didn’t get answers, at least not yet, but she could stop thinking for a bit so that was definitely a bonus.
All in all it seemed to work out to roughly even, and so she packed up her stuff as much as she could, threw the bag of dust into the drawer with the dust from the strange obelisk, and did a quick round to make sure all of her plants were in good health before locking up the greenhouse and heading back to her dorm room. She was still upright, and it wasn’t too terribly late yet, so she figured it would be as good a time as any to wash up quickly before heading over to find Skara and get comfy for the night.
Tomorrow she could figure out what all she needed to do to fix her academic position from the hell pit that she had managed thrust it into, and fix damn near everything else with her life, but for now sleep was all that she could feel calling to her, that and a nice, hot shower. The bath earlier had helped in some ways but she was worried that if she let herself settle into another bath she wasn’t going to be able to get up, just like before.
The walk back to her room was a bit more chaotic than she would have liked, and her legs weren’t quite fully under her control just yet, but things were going better than she could have expected if she was being fully honest. It wasn’t perfect, far from it, and if she was being realistic it would be safe to say that things were worse than they had been before she had started working that evening, but it was still better than just after the nap, and in the morning, so she wasn’t really going to complain.
The room was empty when she managed to stumble in, and she quickly stripped in the blessed emptiness before shuffling into the bathroom and turning on a scalding hot shower that she could actually feel this time. That was a good sign, or at least she was pretty sure that it was, but she still didn’t let herself stay in the shower for too long because she was pretty sure that if she did her skin was going to start sloughing off. She needed to get herself in order and while a long hot shower would be nice, she knew that too long wasn’t going to go well. She was going to have to limit how long she spent if she wanted to actually get to see Skara before they fell asleep too, which she really did, and so within seven minutes she managed to extricate herself from the shower.
The cold air was a shock against her skin and she did her best to brace herself for it only to fail miserably and fall into a fit of shivers that almost brought her to the ground. She somehow managed to towel off and get into clean pajamas before that happened, but it was a far nearer thing than she would ever admit.
It was rather sad if she was being completely honest, but it was at least a sign that her body was responding to external stimuli now which was definitely a good thing. It was a good sign that she was moving in the correct direction, the very much right direction, but that didn’t mean that she was happy about it. She wasn’t happy to be a shivering mess that almost collapsed to the bathroom floor. That wasn’t exactly her best look and it wasn’t one that she wanted to bring to the table ever, but apparently that was what she had to give at the moment.
It was embarrassing and stupid and not at all who she wanted to be. She didn’t want to be a trainwreck and a disaster and the dumpster fire that she knew that she was at the moment, but what recourse did she have?
She was sick and tired of being beaten down by life over and over and fucking over again, but nothing she did seemed to prevent it from coming back around to bash her head in. She couldn’t seem to break out of the cycle of thing after thing beating her back down until she ran out of steam and was simply unable to get back up. There was going to come a point when she just couldn’t get the fuck back up, and she could feel it rapidly approaching.
Each time she could feel her bones get more and more tired, and her joints creaked just a bit more, and her muscles pulled and stretched in ways that she didn’t think that they were supposed to. Each time something new happened she could feel the ways that it fucked her over and the ways that her body tried, and failed, to respond to it. Each time it got worse and the recovery got slower and slower and slower, and each time she felt it hit her harder and harder.
She was running out of the ability to bounce back, and while she normally was able to keep herself going and coming back, over and over and over again, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep doing it. There were only so many times that she could take such horrible beatings and still manage to get back up again, and while she had managed it every single time so far, she was starting to suspect that she wasn’t going to be able to do it again.
All of those other times, all the times when she was little or really everything up until very recently, had been with The Collector’s help inside of her, keeping her alive and taking control once in a while as payment. She wasn’t entirely sure what it had been doing, or why, but it had helped in a way, and she had gone and thrown it out. She had kicked it out of her body with Amity’s help, and while she could go and blame her friend for it, she knew that it was her fault more than anyone else's.
She had been in complete and full control of the situation, at least as much as she was able to given everything, and that meant that she had been the one to pull the lever, to throw the switch, to agree to the stupid ass crazy plan that had somehow actually fucking worked, and in doing so severed her ties to the thing that had been keeping her alive. Admittedly she hadn’t known that fact at the time but it didn’t change the fact that it had very much been her choice.
There was no way that she could go and ask The Collector to just pop back in or something like that, not after the vow that she had made it swear, and while she was sure there was probably some sort of loop hole shenanigans she could come up with to get it to come back, but anything like that was going to be loose at best and probably far more stupid than she wanted to go forward with.
The Collector wasn’t exactly the sort of creature that it was smart to enter into a poorly thought out deal with, and if she was worried about finding a loophole in a binding oath then there was no way in hell that she was going to be able to do her due diligence to ensure that it didn’t manage to trick her again.
No, she had just had to face this on her own, like she always did, and that meant that she needed to pick herself up off of the ground, pull her hair back into the messy bun that at least sort of contained it, and get her ass in gear. There was tons of shit that needed to get done, more than she could reasonably count in fact, but most of it didn’t matter at the moment.
The stupid urn wasn’t trying to get her to steal it anymore, she was mostly in control of her body, and she had a way to get into her girlfriend’s room without having to discover it again, which was definitely a good thing. There was no way that she was going to be able to get much more “real” stuff done that day but she could, at the very least, get herself a good spot to sleep for the night instead of doing the work that she had thought necessary.
There were plenty of things that she could have done instead of trying to figure out what the hell that stupid dust was, and she was starting to wish that she had done any one of them instead of the stupid bullshit that she had gone off and done. It hadn’t helped at all, not really, and while she had sort of figured something out, she hadn’t really, not if she was being serious with herself.
She should have started working through the homework that always seemed to pile up when she went on one of her little half baked schemes, or just gone to sleep like a normal fucking person, but she just had to go and waste three hours on the sort of thing that made her friends roll their eyes and wonder what the fuck she was doing at such terrible hours of the night. At least Luz and Amity hadn’t returned to the room yet, which meant that she wasn't the latest owl of the bunch, but that wasn’t much of a consolation.
There was a brief moment where she considered doing something about the various problems that were piling up, but if she was being completely honest she didn’t have it in her. She was tired, really fucking tired, and Titan only knew how hard she was trying, so she was allowed to take a break. It wasn’t even a break really if she was being honest, it was just going the fuck to sleep at ten pm like a normal fucking person and not the crazy bullshit insanity that she had gotten used to for some Titan forsaken reason.
Maybe the first priority was going to be fixing her sleep schedule, though if she was being honest she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Her sleep schedule was beyond fucked, sitting somewhere in the realm of “completely and utterly demolished”, and trying to fix it was the sort of sisyphean task that she simply didn’t have the energy for at the moment. It was the sort of problem that, objectively speaking, she needed to deal with, but given everything going on it simply didn’t make the cut in terms of realistic goals.
She shuffled and shimmied her way back to Skara’s dorm room, doing her best to cling to the walls for support and avoiding any areas that she could hear any sort of noise coming from. She didn’t want anyone to see her, especially not other students, and while that meant that it took her far longer than it needed to, it also meant that she got there without ridicule which was frankly a good deal more important to her.
There were few things that she had left at the moment but her dignity, at least in the eyes of the other students, was still intact and she intended to keep it that way, no matter how much effort that took.
Even with the detours it only took her about seven minutes, maybe nine, to shuffle her way over to the hall that contained Skara’s dorm. After that it was only about three minutes of fighting her body to make sure that only her own magic came out and then she was in, and she was able to collapse into bed without a second thought.
Something about the bed was off, but she didn’t really bother worrying about that. She had gone to the right room, and the door had fucking opened for Titan’s sake, so there was no reason for her to be lying in anything but her girlfriend’s bed. There was something a little off about the smell and the feel but honestly she was too tired to care, and so she let sleep begin to claim her.
A sharp prod in her back was the first sign that she actually recognized that there was something wrong, and the second was when that prodding turned into a pair of ghastly arms gripping her from either side. That wasn’t exactly what she had been expecting in Skara’s room, and especially not in Skara’s bed, and when the first sight that met her eyes was the glowering, moon shaped face of Celine staring down at her she realized, far too late, that she had fucked up rather royally.
She didn’t even bother trying to explain, instead just letting herself get thrown out of the room and hearing the door slam behind her. When she looked back at it it was obvious and clear that it wasn’t Skara’s door, and yet somehow she had managed to confuse the two which shouldn’t have been possible. She knew which door was Skara’s, and she had been through it so many times that it shouldn’t have even been possible for her to miss it, and yet she had gone through the wrong door all the same.
It was probably just that she was tired, nothing more, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more seriously wrong going on. She shouldn’t have been able to open the door with her own magic had it not been Skara’s door, but it had opened for her with no resistance whatsoever. Sure, she had needed to filter out its magic, but that was normal now.
Something about the whole situation didn’t sit right with her, but she was far too tired to figure out just what was going on at the moment. There was no way that she could successfully figure anything out at the moment, not if she was being completely honest with herself, and the only thing that was really going to do much to help her at the moment was sleep. Sleep was the only way to get herself back on track.
She stepped over to the correct door this time, the door that had obviously and clearly been correct the entire time, and she honestly wasn’t sure how she had fucked it up. It was the right color and texture, instead of the wrong ones, and it had the correct flyers on it and the right signs of life that she recognized. It should have been easy to spot the correct door, and she shouldn’t have even needed to find it by sight, but now that she had found it correctly it was easy to open and step in.
Instead of making the same mistake twice she did a quick check of the room to ensure it was the right one, and a quick check of the bed to ensure that it was, in fact, Skara’s, before collapsing into it with all the weight of before and then some. She wasn’t sure how she had made such a horrid mistake, one that was almost certainly going to be heard by more of the school than she cared to have hear it, but there was little she could do now.
Pretty much all she could do now was go to sleep, and she let sleep claim her once more, only being woken briefly when Skara cuddled up next to her and slipped into her arms. That was a far kinder, more gentle way to be woken up, and she fell back into sleep almost immediately afterwards, a soft smile on her face.
Waking up next to Skara was a pleasant way to start the day, and as she slowly lifted up into consciousness she felt something soft tugging at her heart. It was a calm, sweet thing and she let it pull her right into Skara’s back and then some, toppling the two of them over into a tangle of arms and legs that let her press a few quick, cheeky kisses to Skara’s exposed midriff. Her girlfriend swatted at her but there was no force behind it, just laughter, and that was the best thing to wake up to.
Soft, quiet laughter, shared with her girlfriend, was the best way to start the day, especially after the hell that had been the previous evening… day… fucking three weeks. Titan her life had been fucking weirdly awful for a long time, no wonder it was starting to get to her. She needed a break, just like she always did, but for once the only thing that she could see working was just stopping. No more crazy shit, no more thinking, no more looking for solutions, just unplugging completely and letting it all burn down around her.
Yes, that had been her policy before and she had gone back on it in roughly two days, but this time she was going to do it better. This time she was going to have Skara help enforce the idea, and that would help a lot because Skara would hold her to it. Besides, it wasn’t like she could hide much of anything from her girlfriend if she was asked, which made it a hell of a lot harder for her to try and sneakily dodge questions.
All in all it was a pretty perfect solution that would ensure that she only got involved in reasonable, not self destructive situations, and while letting someone else be the judge of that wasn’t exactly her normal style, she knew that it was for the best. It didn’t feel great, but she knew that it was the only way to stop herself from doing what she always did, and she really couldn’t afford to do that any more.
She brought it up with Skara as they slowly made their way out of bed and into the day proper, and of course her girlfriend had questions, like why Willow thought it was so necessary, but she answered them all without reservation. She didn’t hold back, and she explained as much as she physically could without infringing on her friend’s privacy too much, which was more than enough to make it clear what needed to be done.
By the time they were done with the little Q and A session Skara was more than happy to just do it and help, which was really fucking nice because it meant that she had a bit of a safety net. It wasn’t the sort of thing that absolutely guaranteed she wouldn't slip up again, but it meant that she had a person, her person, there to help her and call her out on it if she started to stumble.
That alone would be enough to help her at least recognize when there was a problem that she was starting to fall into which was honestly half the battle, if not more. It was nice to know that she could count on someone to help her out, even if the knowledge that she was relying on somebody else was terrifying on a level so far deep within her that she couldn’t even begin to decipher where it was.
She was going to do her best not to worry about it too much but she knew that it was going to hit her a bit harder than she wanted it to. It was going to be a difficult new reality to accept but she was trying and that was going to have to count for a hell of a lot because that was pretty much all she could do at the moment. Acceptance was the first step, though, so she was just going to have to count on it to carry her the rest of the way.
It was a strange position to put herself in but she needed to do it to ensure that she didn’t fall down into the same pits that she had practically been throwing herself into time and time again. That just wasn't an option, not if she wanted to keep being a person who could actually live and function, so it was time for drastic measures.
She and Skara kept together in quiet companionship as they made it through their mornings together, and by the time they needed to split to head to their respective classes she was feeling significantly better. It wasn’t like all her problems had magically disappeared but she felt like they were either ignorable or manageable which really helped when trying not to let things overwhelm her.
Things were still overwhelming, at least a bit, but it was easier to process everything after spending the early morning with her girlfriend. It also meant that she was entering the day happy which helped more than she could say. There was no way that she would be able to get through any of it if she was dead tired and pissed, angry, or even just sad, so walking in with at least the remnants of a smile helped a lot.
She let her classes be the quiet backdrop to her thoughts, a pleasant distraction keeping the more potent thoughts away from her mind and letting her get back to the beginnings of a schedule that would hopefully allow her to return to some semblance of normalcy. It wasn’t going to last, she could already feel it, but she was going to try anyway because it mattered to at least shoot for a normal life. She couldn’t keep running at full steam all the time or she would burn herself and everyone around her.
The stupid green thing that had decided to take up residence inside of her could go ahead and fuck off for all she cared because she wanted to live a relatively normal life, and that didn’t include ancient, powerful creatures that took over her time and energy.
That really wasn’t so much to ask, was it?