2am, 16 April, 1893 — Applegate House, Cotswolds

This was perhaps the worst and most reckless idea Rosalie had ever had.

Reckless and foolish and absolutely bloody insane.

Rosalie was fully aware of her insanity even as she drew the map of the house — his house — from memory. That her memory was spotty and likely contained at least one error wasn't a factor she allowed herself to consider for longer than a minute. Rosalie needed to feel confident if she was gojng to do this, confident and brazen and a little bit crazy. Any hint of a doubt, any slight misstep, and she'd likely be caught. Either by one of the Applegates themselves or their staff.

A letter would have made more sense, Rosalie realized as she stepped through the floo and cast her disillusionment charm. Except, she didn't trust Ezra to be truthful with her on paper, not when things were what they were between them. And that was if he was even willing to read the letter, as Rosalie was convinced he'd just as soon burn it. After all she'd done, Ezra was entirely within his rights to have such little faith in and despise her. Rosalie likely would have continued to treat him with equal, if not worse, malice if she hadn't realized the truth of the situation.

The house was pitch black as she all but ran through the halls. Ezra's bedroom was upstairs in the corner overlooking the gardens, a fact Rosalie remembered only because she recalled commenting on the better view. He'd whispered that she needn't complain for she was, of course, welcomed to visit him whenever. Even under the cover of her disillusionment, Rosalie flushed at the memory.

She made only one wrong turn, going left when she should have gone right, and opened a door that she wished she hadn't. Her bedroom, or what was supposed to be her room. There was nothing about the room to indicate that it ought to have been a bedroom, not with the seemingly endless canvases thrown about and the outdated furniture pressed up against the walls. Her room, reduced to nothing but storage due to whatever plagued Ezra. She owed it to him to at least afford him the chance to try again.

To love again.

Turning from the storage room, Rosalie then quietly entered his room, removed her charm, and allowed herself no time to reconsider before throwing a crumpled up piece of parchment (that she had carried with her for explicitly this purpose) at his head.

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ezra was soundly sleeping, until he wasn't. It might have been the noise from the door that disturbed him, or the agitation of something bouncing off his forehead, or something else, but he stirred slightly. Not enough to actually take stock of the situation, but enough for his dream to slip away. He frowned, eyes still closed, and brushed his head against the pillow with a groan.

"Mmmmwhat," he muttered, still mostly asleep.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

She groaned inwardly when Ezra didn't immediately wake at the hit. Rosalie had only thought to bring one paper ball with her (she had somehow assumed he would be as light a sleeper as she) and therefore had to risk whispering to summon it back or simply whispering his name. Rosalie frowned, this was an absolutely terrible idea.

She glanced back at the door behind her. Ezra would never know the difference if she left now, the only proof of her entry was the paper ball and even that couldn't be traced back to her. Rosalie took a few steps back only to accidentally bump into the desk chair. She flinched at the noise it made, especially when the sudden unbalancing saw her bag slipping from her shoulder and landing on the carpeted floor with a soft thud.

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stunning set by Lady <3

Since he had already been partially jostled from sleep the noise was enough to startle him. Ezra opened his eyes right away, though it took a second for anything he saw to resolve itself into something sensible. He inhaled sharply and pushed himself up on one elbow from where he had been sleeping on his stomach, his cheek still sporting faint lines from the creases in his pillow.

There were any number of things that could make odd noises at night in an old country house, so even though he was awake he wasn't alarmed — until his vision fit together enough for him to realize there was someone in his room. With a sudden quick breath he scrambled into a sitting position, the comforter pooling around his lap, his loose sleeping shirt askew. He wasn't being robbed, or murdered, he determined quickly, and this wasn't an intrusion from a shadow. For one thing he still had half of a game of Ekarut on the table in the corner that he'd played with Byron before bed; for another, the glowing white of someone in feminine sleepwear was about as far from a shadow as one could get.

"Hanna?" he guessed, but the hair was wrong. A servant might have come to wake him up about something, but they would have dressed themselves first, so he was out of reasonable guesses as to who this might be. Which was just as well, because even with a dozen chances he wouldn't have guessed, "Rosie. Rosalie Hunniford. In my bedroom."

This was more than ridiculous; it was surreal. He had never had waking dreams before but supposed there must have been a first time for everything, because there was absolutely no way this was real.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

She was an idiot. A blundering fool.

There was no turning back now, not when he was now awake and alert to her presence. Not when he recognized her from her shape alone. She cast a silent lumos and held the orb of light up for him to see her better before speaking. "I know this is crazy and I'm sorry." Rosalie felt a bit delirious, how long had it been since she slept? "I - I have a lot of questions for you, and I didn't think you'd answer them in a letter and I'm a fool, I know. I just - would you be able to answer some questions for me?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

The spell surprised him, and it took a moment to put his finger on why. It was a logical thing to do, and it did give him a chance to see her better, though at first he did have to squint against the sudden brightness and even briefly raised a hand to shield his face. But there was something about it that struck him, and in the back of his mind he kept chewing it over while he listened to her.

Questions. That was an odd direction for a dream, he thought. Rosie showing up here in his head to seduce him would have been understandable — embarrassing the next morning when he woke up sweaty and hard and twisted in the sheets and had to reckon with the fact that he was still dreaming about her, but it would have made sense. Rosie showing up to say something cruel would have fit, too, if this were a nightmare. She could even have flitted in through the background of an otherwise senseless dream, saying or doing something of no consequence, because even if he hadn't seen her properly in months she was woven into the fabric of his life enough that it wouldn't have been surprising to see her slip in. This was weird, though. A dream that looked so entirely mundane, sitting in his bedroom just as it had been when he'd fallen asleep, and Rosie wanting to ask him questions.

He shrugged and yawned, not sure enough about what was happening in this dream yet to care one way or another. But then he realized what had struck him about the spell: it followed all the rules. Dreams didn't. In a dream the light level might never change until he'd thought to internally complain about it, and then it would have adjusted without any action on their part. And she'd cast the light for her sake, because he hadn't been bothered by the dim light. In what kind of dream did he figments of one's imagination have agency, and care whether or not they could see?

He tensed. "You're — really here? Actually in my room in the middle of the night? What the — how? Why? What are you — what on earth possessed you?" He glanced down at what he was wearing and clutched the blankets up tighter around his hips. He felt very aware of how much of his bare chest could be seen through the unbuttoned v at the front of his neck. "Are you insane?"

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

Rosalie was pointedly not allowing herself to look anywhere but his face. Not around the room at what might've changed since her last peek, not at the other side of his bed where she might've laid her head, not at his body. This was already intrusive enough, barging in here without so much as a letter. She didn't need to make it worse by furthering his discomfort.

She flinched at his tone. "I promise I will explain. Just please - I need to know you'll hear me out first. Please." Rosalie kept her voice low, but her nerves were certainly betrayed in her tone.

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ezra may have been dead asleep two minutes ago, but he was wide awake now and his mind was racing. He hadn't seen Rosalie since Halloween — not in any meaningful way, at any rate. They hadn't parted on good terms to say the least. He hadn't expected to have anything resembling a civil conversation with her ever again, really... and yet here she was in his bedroom. Even when they'd been happy it would have been shocking for her to have shown up in his bedroom, so given the circumstances here he had to assume she had been quite desperate. But what could possibly happened that would make her desperate to talk to him? And in such circumstances?

She was going to explain, but he had to promise to hear her out. Ezra tensed even farther. This didn't sound good. "Did something happen?" he asked in a hush — and sort of hated how obvious the concern was in his tone. Because he shouldn't care, after she'd left him; he shouldn't care, after they'd been separated for years; he shouldn't care, after the way they'd left things on Halloween; he shouldn't care, when she'd never given him the chance to explain himself back then; he shouldn't care, when she thought so little of him that she could believe he was planning to let their hypothetical child die. But if she was in his room in the middle of the night he had to think that something was very wrong, and even though he shouldn't have cared he couldn't help how it crept into his voice.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

Using the light glowing from her wand, Rosalie identified the candles on his nightstand and lit those instead. She didn't want to be perceived as threatening with her wand outstretched when she had something of this level of importance to discuss with him. That, and she also felt a pressing need to move and couldn't while holding the only light source. Part of Ezra's curse was that he saw something that scared him, Rosalie couldn't be part of that.

His question was harder to answer than she would have thought. Of course something had happened, something drastic and earth shifting had happened in that diviner's room. Rosalie had finally found an answer to a question she had asked herself for years. But, that experience hadn't happened to Ezra. There was a very real chance that he would dismiss what she saw — what she heard — and cast her out for acting this way. Rosalie would deserve it, too.

"I'm okay, if that's what you're asking." She eventually answered. Rosalie wasn't, really. Rosalie was far from anything resembling emotionally stable or okay, but that was neither here nor there. It likely wasn't what he was asking, either. Why should he care if something had happened to her? She drew a deep breath in in a rather useless attempt to settle her nerves.

"I just - I went to that new shop in Diagon Alley, the ones with the diviners? And I know this is crazy, Ezra, I know. My coming here — I know I am crossing all sorts of boundaries. I'm sincerely sorry for that, I am, and I'll go if you really want me to. I just — I didn't think you'd be receptive to letters and this is important." He didn't even have to work with her, if he chose not to. Rosalie would pass her notes off to whomever he deemed worthy and force herself to live with the unknown. It would be difficult and she would struggle with it, but such was her burden after what she'd done.

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stunning set by Lady <3

She was alright, she said, but she didn't look it. Ezra's eyes flitted to the candles as she lit them but then he looked back to her and watched her start to pace. None of this made sense. She was being a little uncharitable, too, by saying he wouldn't have responded to a letter. If he'd gotten the sense that there was something important going on surely he would have responded. If she'd been able to convey the sort of frantic energy she was currently displaying, at any rate. She had certainly gotten his attention, showing up in his room like this, and even though they'd argued at Halloween he found it impossible to be angry at her right now — he was far too focused on trying to figure out what was happening to even consider being angry.

A diviner's parlor? Ezra blinked, then sighed. "Oh." Presumably she was here because of some prediction for the future, then. This made a bit of sense, he supposed. Ezra didn't go to diviners, because he already knew what they would tell him. He could imagine what they would have told her, if she'd been asking any questions about him. He didn't know why she would bother asking questions about him in the first place, but presuming she had, there was nothing very positive they could have said.

"If you're going to tell me I'll go mad someday, I'd already assumed," he said glumly.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

"No, that's not - no." Relevant, perhaps, but not why specifically she was here. It made sense that with a blood curse altering his words that Ezra would fear insanity. She thought to make note of that but with her bag on the floor and the notebook now lost beneath the likely toppled stacks she soon decided otherwise. Ezra didn't need to see her complete lack of disorganization when she got like this.

She faced him again, still ensuring her gaze never dipped before his face as she did. "I talked to you, or a version of you I should say." Rosalie explained. "I - I was wrong, Ezra. Wrong to leave you like that, wrong to think - " she faltered then. The bravery gifted to her by her flower crown only extended so far it seemed, and Rosalie remained a coward beneath it all. Her nails dug into her palms, the pain a welcome distraction from the swell of emotion she currently faced.

"It doesn't matter what I thought - it was wrong. And I'm not - I know we can't go back, that's not... that's not why I'm here." Rosalie amended quickly. There was, perhaps, a small and still shattered piece of her that did want to reconcile. That part though could never be voiced by her, it wouldn't be fair. Life had never been fair to him.

She glanced down to the satchel at her feet. "You're cursed but not in the way I thought, right?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

The diviner bit had seemed to make sense, but as she continued Ezra was properly lost. She'd talked to... a version of him. He didn't know what to think of that information. He didn't know any spells that could actually recreate people like that, which meant she'd probably had a conversation with something someone had conjured up. It couldn't possibly have told her anything that had any relevance to the real world, could it? But whatever it had said, it had worked Rosie up quite a bit.

Then she mentioned the curse. Ezra hesitated and let the air between them get still.

"I don't want to have this conversation," he said eventually. His voice was quiet and steady. He didn't mean that he didn't want to talk about the curse, exactly — he knew better than to think he could. He meant that he didn't want to have this conversation, whatever this conversation would inevitably devolve into if she tried to press him to say things he couldn't.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

"Please." Rosalie pleaded, her heart hammering in her chest in the otherwise still room. She bent to retrieve her satchel and summoned the notebook from the destruction within. There were only a few empty pages remaining, for the book was crammed with notes and references to various texts. She floated it to him, determined not to cross more boundaries than she already had trampled tonight.

"Just, hear me out. Please. Ten minutes, and I'll go and you'll never have to hear from me again if that's what you want."

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Him hearing her had never been the problem.

But it didn't seem he had a great deal of choice. He wasn't going to chase her out of the house in his night clothes. She didn't seem inclined to go. She had levitated a notebook towards him and he reached out to take it reluctantly. He didn't open it right away, but he could tell just by the edges of the pages that it would look something like his notebooks did when he was getting obsessive about something. Somewhere along the line he'd decided that being obsessively focused on new hobbies would make them more likely to stick, as a way to chase away the shadows, but so far it hadn't proven true.

He felt a little like a hostage in his own bed, pinned to the spot by his lack of clothing and unwillingness to move the sheets any further, and ringed by her frantic pacing, but — he nodded that she could continue.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra

Rosalie breathed a sigh of relief at his approval. Turning behind her, Rosalie pulled the desk chair out and forced herself to sit. Her hands came to push upon her knees to prevent her feet from tapping anxiously on the floor. Ezra was going to hear her and then she'd go.

Ten minutes, just like last time.

She tried to calm herself enough to function as she might in the hospital, and it worked only minimally. The frantic energy she'd displayed seconds ago settled to the point that she could no longer hear her heartbeat in her ears. Then, after a steadying breath, she began explaining as rationally as she could. "The diviner I saw, they use a memory to summon the past version of the person you'd like to talk to." Rosalie had gone into it expecting to talk to Ambrose, but she'd known within seconds of stepping through the building who she actually intended to speak to. "We spoke of the night I left, and you told me that the conversation you were attempting to have was never about children at all. It was about your survival and my role in it." Whether or not that had proven true, Rosalie didn't think it mattered much anymore. Ezra was still alive somehow.

"For whatever reason, I don't think you're able to speak about the curse. If anything I've said is at all true could you try to give me some other indictation? Nod, or wave or anything?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

Maybe he was dreaming, because there was no way this could be real. Rosalie shouldn't know that he couldn't talk about the curse, because no one who knew was capable of telling her that. She claimed to have learned it from a memory of him? It was far-fetched. He'd never heard of any kind of magic that could do that, and he didn't know how her memory would have any actual insight into the situation at all, beyond what she already knew, or why it would be bound by different rules than he was if it did. But she seemed to have gleaned at least one piece of information that was accurate. No, two things — she knew something about what he'd been trying to say that night. And no one would have been able to tell her that, because the only person who had ever known what he was trying to say in that moment was him.

This simply couldn't be real. It was a dream — a wistful, weird dream. A realistic one in some senses, with the light changes and the feeling of the sheets and everything, but a fantastical one in other senses. Rosalie in his bedroom. Rosalie understanding what he'd been trying to tell her about the curse. Rosalie, having cared enough to seek out a diviner and have a conversation with a memory of him. A fantasy.

He nodded dumbly. He wasn't sure what else to do.

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~~~ but I'm stuck trying not to come off crazy ~~~

Ezra