He was quick to try an alleviate her concerns, but it came across as dismissive rather than reassuring. He only intended to injure him, but Ben's intentions were only one variable in what made up a duel. She was more or less now leaning against the doorframe, her hand leaving the doorknob so she could wrap one arm around her waist while the other one wrapped over her chest, her hand on her shoulder.

"And what of Mr. Macmillan?" she asked, "What do you intend to do if he tries for more... severe results?" Dionisia did not want Ben to be murdered, and neither did she want him to become a murderer. Although she knew Ben's interest in her was likely no greater than his interest in any other women he'd slept with once, she had a reason to be invested in his well-being—they had a son together. Elliott.

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   Reuben Crouch

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Ben watched her body language shift and subconsciously mirrored it. He crossed his arms across his chest, not defensively but wearily. "You don't know him," he said, shaking his head. "There's nothing to worry about. He probably won't make it through a shield charm." Ben didn't actually know much about Macmillan beyond his experiences with him at that weird theatrical thing several years ago and his interaction on Monday night, but he certainly didn't seem the type to be good at offensive magic. He was too simpering to do anything aggressive. He hadn't even contributed much to their brawl, except to fight dirty by kicking Ben below the belt — and they'd have seconds to prevent him from doing anything underhanded.

"I used to be a cursebreaker, you know," he said, with a shrug. "I'll be just fine, I promise."

  

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Now, the thought of Ben roughing up a rascal was - probably something she ought not to think about. In any case, her worry was lessening with each addition to his explanation, but she knew she would not let it go until she'd learned that the duel had come and gone and Ben was still here.

"And I am a mediwitch," she said, matter-of-factly, "It is in my nature to be concerned." Despite her words her lips tilted up into a soft smile, and her she unwrapped her arms from around her chest. Her hand found the doorknob again, but did not turn it just yet.

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   Reuben Crouch

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Oh, a mediwitch — had he known that about her? The corner of his mouth twitched up briefly. "You wouldn't happen to know of anyone who'd want to stand-by as a healer for a duel, would you?" he asked lightly. It wasn't exactly the sort of thing healers lined up for, after all. It was illegal, and healers as a general class tended to be very by-the-book types. Mediwitches perhaps less so, since she'd had a child out of wedlock and then invited Ben into her home to meet him, but still.

It occurred to him only after he said it that the implication that they might be in need of a healer might distress her, or at the very least she might not consider it a very funny joke, given the circumstances. "Sorry," he said in a much more sober tone. "Not a great joke, probably. Timing's all off."

  

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Dionisia narrowed her eyes, the smile on her lips ensuring she meant it playfully. She was sensitive, but more to other people's emotions than with her own; there was no way she could have survived her job all these years if she found a mere comment distressing.

"I'm afraid Mr. Keene would not allow a healer with a such a reputation to stay employed there for very long," she responded, her tone unexpectedly warm, "but you'd be best checking the Spell Damage ward, if it's any help." Rather than give him a chance to talk about it any further (because she really did not want to talk about it, even if she was willing to joke briefly) she reached out and touched his arm before falling silent and pushing the door to the nursery open.

The room was dark, and the sound of music was much louder from the moment the door cracked open. The wallpaper was white and green, although the color was not so visible in the artificial darkness. There were shelves around the room, a few buckets of toys, and all across the wall were decorations of dragons and broomsticks and cauldrons that seemed to glow and glitter in the darkness. In the back corner of the room was a crib—and inside the crib, Elliott.

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She reached out to touch him, just briefly, and it was a strange touch. It wasn't the first time that she'd done it (well, obviously; he'd fathered her child) because she'd been brushing up against him fairly frequently during his last visit and had even reached over and touched his arm in this same fashion once or twice. This felt different, though. Maybe it was just the moment, and the conversation they'd just had about dueling — which wasn't a light thing to talk about, no matter what jokes he made, and it was dangerous, despite all his reassurances. Maybe it was that slight tension in the air carrying over into this and making it feel different. Maybe it was something about her that was different. Maybe it was something about him.

Then she opened the door, and Ben's breath hitched slightly as though he expected to see Elliott right there on the other side of the frame. Of course that was silly. What he saw first was just a room. He looked at Elliott's mother briefly for permission, and after an encouraging glance he went in. He walked as softly as he could, so as not to wake him, and in a few short steps he was hovering at the edge of the crib, looking down at his sleeping son.

He stood for a long moment just looking. Elliott's hair was falling across his forehead in a way that made him look so big, suddenly — like a proper kid instead of a toddler. He had his mouth open while he slept. He was adorable.

"Thanks for this," he eventually said, keeping his voice quiet enough not to disturb Elliott.

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   Dionisia Fisk

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Dionisia followed behind Ben at a short distance, wanting to give him a moment alone with Elliott. Her gaze softened as she watched him from behind as he peered down into the crib, and a smile crept onto her face. There was something so satisfying in knowing that Ben cared for Elliott, something that caused a rush of warmth through her chest and sent her heart fluttering. She stepped to Ben's side after a moment and peered down at her son. Was it wrong of her to feel guilty for being able to see him like this every night? Ben had his own family with his wife, and she tried to tell herself that Elliott could not possibly be the center of his universe, but it always felt like that when she watched him watch their son.

"You can pick him up," she whispered in response, her hands coming to a rest atop the metal bars. "He might stir, but he'll fall back asleep." Elliott was cranky when sleep was withheld from him, but he generally slept soundly at night—at least nowadays.

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   Reuben Crouch

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Ben was hesitant at her suggestion, because Elliott looked so peaceful asleep in his crib, and because this felt... very intimate. It was one thing for Elliott to have fallen asleep in his arms before, when he'd already been sitting in his lap to read and play, but to just hold him while he was sleeping... it was unbalanced, was the thing. Elliott wouldn't be getting anything out of that, so it would just be for him, for Ben's own peace of mind, and he didn't know that he deserved that. He didn't really have a relationship with his son to speak of; he was just a man who'd visited one time and talked about broomsticks with him. If he was going to keep coming and visiting him moving forward, Ben wasn't sure it was a good precedent to set, using the boy for his own emotional comfort like that — he wasn't his parent, didn't have the right. If he wasn't going to visit anymore — if something unexpected and terrible happened on Friday — he certainly didn't have the right to share that burden with a sleeping toddler, or with his mother.

"That's alright," he deflected, taking a step back from the crib. "I don't want to risk waking him, if he's tired.

  

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Dionisia didn't even consider the possibility that he would turn the offer down. He'd been so eager to sit next to Elliott before, so bright and sunny when Elliott had plopped down on his lap for even a few minutes of reading. It was not just the refusal that prompted a confused look, but the way he'd stepped away from the crib entirely, as if the whole reason he'd come wasn't to spend a few minutes with Elliott.

Rather than protest, Dionisia turned back towards the crib and reached down. Elliott slept on his back, so it was not at all difficult to wrap her arms around his body and lift him up out of the crib. Like she'd said, he stirred and made a cooing noise, his hands instinctively reaching for whatever he could grab—in this case, the sleeve of her dress. His eyelids fluttered open, but closed just as quickly, and squished his cheek against Dionisia's shoulder. Dio looked back at Ben reassuringly and stepped towards him, trying to stand at an angle where he could see Elliott's face.

"He's a good sleeper, you know. I thought children were supposed to cry all night, and I used to be scared that I'd never sleep between him and my work, but - he doesn't fight bedtime most days," she said, reaching up to gently smooth Elliott's hair back over his forehead. Then again, she looked back up at Ben. "You can hold him, you know. He - he is yours, too."

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Ben's body stiffened as she went to the crib and picked him up in spite of what Ben had said. He would have been willing to take a step back if she'd suggested it, simply because she was Elliott's mother and would have known best, but rather than accepting that same rational for stepping forward he felt a flash of irritation. She was explaining about how well he slept, as though that had been the actual issue and not just what Ben had said to deflect from the issue. Maybe she really hadn't understood what he'd meant, when he'd stepped back, or maybe she was only pretending not to have understood in order to force this in the direction she wanted it to go, rather than what he wanted.

"No, he's not," Ben said firmly, not reaching to take Elliott from her. "Not in the way you mean." He could come here and interact with Elliott and form a relationship with him, sure. He'd loved having a chance to do that before and would have wanted to do it again, as often as the opportunity presented itself. But a moment like this wasn't about Elliott, or their relationship. It was just about Ben. His feelings, his thoughts, his comfort. The fact that he could die soon. The appeal of being able to hold on to someone small and precious for a moment to feel grounded. Elliott wasn't a thing to be used, or a means to an end, and it felt morally wrong to try and seek that sort of comfort in a child he'd only barely started to get to know. He wasn't Elliott's parent. He hadn't earned a moment like this.

"I think I should go," he said abruptly.

  

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At his response Dionisia felt a pang hit her chest, as if she'd been hit by a stunning spell. Her brows briefly knitted in confusion, but her expression softened slowly and her lips parted open but no words escaped. It was a look of confusion, of hurt, of uncertainty—too many emotions, both for herself and for her son's sake. There are plenty of things she could have excepted from Ben Crouch—things she should have expected, given his reputation—but none of them involved rejecting Elliott.

She was met by the urge to lash out, to ask him why he would have stayed once he heard that Elliott was asleep, or why he'd come with her up the stairs and confided in her in the hall when he had no intention to interact with Elliott at all. But she didn't, because she knew that acting on that emotion would have done more harm than good in the long term. She was better than that.

Instead she cradled Elliott tighter to her chest, taking comfort in the warmth of his tiny body and the steadying rhythm of his breathing. "I only meant... I do not mean to force you into a role you don't want." The words came out a touch more defensively than she wanted, because it wasn't as if she was trying to replace Ari with Ben, and she'd told Zelda just that days earlier. She did not want Ben thinking that was the case. It was far from a conventional situation, but why should Elliott only have one or the other?

She reeled back her emotions, knowing that any outburst of emotion would only make him wand to leave more. "I don't think you should go." As the words left her mouth she realized the duality of their meaning. She swallowed a lump she hadn't been aware was there, took a shaky breath, and stepped an inch closer. "It would make me feel better if you didn't." It was about her then, or at least it appeared that way, but Dionisia was not thinking that way. Her mind was on Elliott, on Ben, on the duel.

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Ben's chest felt tight. He heard what she was saying, about not forcing him into a role he didn't want, but didn't really absorb it. He was here, standing in the nursery, but suddenly he felt like he was somewhere else, too, watching this happen from far away. Elliott looked so big, the way she was holding him — pressed up against her you could really see how big he was compared to an adult, and he covered her whole torso and then some, not a baby at all and certainly not the baby from the pictures in the hallway.

Something was different. He didn't know what. Maybe it had something to do with seeing her holding Elliott and knowing how simple it would be to reach out and take him. Maybe it had nothing to do with Elliott at all. She was asking him not to leave and he felt himself nodding, agreeing, before he'd had to chance to even process what she was saying. The air seemed to have gone out of the room and although his lungs were working and he could feel his chest falling and rising he wasn't sure whether he was breathing.

"Yeah," he said, so apparently he was breathing because he could speak. "Yeah. I'm — I'm gonna —"

He didn't finish his sentence; instead he made a vague gesture towards the door of the nursery to signal his intention, then left the room. Passing through the doorway from the nursery to the hall was like breaking the surface of the water after he'd been diving. He gasped, breathing more deeply, then leaned against the wall. He still couldn't think, still didn't feel as though he was here in his body yet, but he could breath. He raised one hand to his temple and ran it slowly through his hair, trying to just focus on that: just breathing.

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   Arthur Pettigrew, Dionisia Fisk

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MJ made this <3

She wasn't sure what changed, what triggered it. As she told him, she was a mediwitch; she'd seen plenty of things since being allowed to join the force at age seventeen, and panic attacks was something that she saw more frequently than actual injuries. It was not uncommon to for people to panic when they were injured, even if it was as simple as a sprained wrist; just the thought of something being different or inconvenient was enough to send some into one. Her grip loosened on Elliott and the he stirred in her arms, but she was more focused on the look on Ben's face—the blank nodding, the staring straight ahead, the way his chest rose and fell increasingly deeper. She had done this to him, and she hadn't meant to. In fact, she wasn't sure what the root of it was, all things considered. The idea of holding Elliott? The thought of being a father? Was it the duel? Her comment about her not wanting him to go? She didn't know, but her heart ached for him.

He fled the room, and Dionisia made no immediate attempt to go after him. He needed to breathe, he needed a moment, he needed space. She looked down at Elliott, carefully extracted his hand from her sleeve, and placed him in his crib as gently as she could. He stirred and cooed, in a half-awake, half-asleep state, but Dionisia moved away from him, knowing the sound of cries would likely only worsen Ben's condition.

She walked towards the door, conscious of each step she took as she listened for him. He hadn't run down the hallway; she knew her house, and the floorboards creaked so loudly that she could hear anyone walking on them from any place in the home. She cracked the door open and peeked into the hallway, and she was right; Ben was there, leaning up against the wall opposite from the door. He ran a hand through his hair and she caught a glimpse of the side of his face. Slowly she opened the door and put one foot into the hallway.

"I know you're overwhelmed," she spoke, using the same soft, feminine, soothing voice she might use for a patient in distress, "but you're not alone. You're doing a good job taking deep breaths. It will pass." She stepped fully out into the hallway and closed the door behind her, but stayed against it, her arms folded over her chest the same way they'd been earlier. She wanted to make herself look small, non-threatening—especially since she wasn't sure if she was the source of his panic or not.

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   Arthur Pettigrew

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Breathing was — helping, maybe. He wasn't really sure. It was making him feel more here, bit by bit, but coming back down into himself only made it worse. His chest was still tight and his stomach felt tight now too, like he might be sick, except he knew he wouldn't be. His head was spinning. He looked up at the ceiling and tried to breath more slowly, and that — helped, maybe. He honestly wasn't sure.

He was aware of her moving out into the hallway again, so that was a sign that he was coming down, he thought. Just being aware of another person was progress. He nodded at her reassurance, then took another deep breath.

"Yeah," he said, nodding again. "Yeah."

  

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Her heartbeat quickened as he looked up to the ceiling, and she wasn't sure if she was anxious about his well-being or about what would happen once he was well. At worst he might curse her for - something, because she'd had people do that to her when she was trying to help them through a panic attack, but more reasonably she expected him to say that he was grateful for the opportunity to see Elliott but couldn't do so no more. She didn't want that. She'd invested too much energy—lied too much—for that too happen.

And she liked him—as a person. She liked that he liked Elliott, and that Elliott had taken to him just as easily.

She could have asked him something. She probably should have. Trying to hold a casual conversation with someone in the middle of a panic attack could provide a sense of normalcy, but there was nothing normal about this conversation; anything she said could trigger him further, and she didn't want that.

"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere," was what she came up with in the end, because he was calming himself down and he wasn't hyperventilating, but it still felt - off. There were things she would have rather said, but things she couldn't.

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He was feeling more present now, and though he still didn't feel good he did feel as though whatever that was had passed — or was passing, or would pass soon, or something. He was getting through this, and he was still breathing.

"Yeah," he said, with another nod. "Yeah, I — thanks. For that." Rather inarticulate, but the best he could manage at the moment while his head was still spinning. She'd know what he meant, because she seemed to have locked in on what was happening right away, maybe before he'd even realized that there was something the matter.

"Sorry," he said after a moment. "I don't know — I don't know what that was. Sorry."

  

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