22 July, 1892 — Fairy Court Ball, Wellingtonshire

The problem with a ball in the trees — he had never thought of it before, because he wasn't sure he had been to an outdoor ball like this before. The invite was really for Cecilia, Ezra had decided. This wasn't his usual crowd, the party wasn't his usual scene — at first he'd been a little baffled by his inclusion here, but after hearing someone remark on how the hostess was hoping to see her son married soon it made a little more sense. Cecilia was the sort of person someone might want to marry. She wasn't moody (like Ezra) or crazy (like Byron) or odd (like their father) — or at least, she had managed not to be known for any of those things. So the invitation had probably been for her, and the rest of the family had been included because there was no way to politely exclude them. Some part of him had probably known that before they'd arrived, too, he thought. If he'd thought he was being invited for his own merits, he probably would have skipped it. He wasn't much of a mind for socializing, lately, and it didn't seem likely he'd be able to corner anyone and get them to play his tile game at a fairy-themed garden ball.

But he didn't think his situation was dire enough at the moment that he ought to derail Cecilia's chances for his sake. A ball in the trees was a novelty, and when he first arrived Ezra didn't see the problem with it. The shadows were flitting through his peripheral vision, but he could grin and bear it for an evening, and Cecilia could have her night to shine, and then when he got home he could see about cornering someone for a game. He'd need to drive them back a little farther before he could sleep tonight, Ezra thought; when they were this close, he had trouble keeping his eyes closed, no matter how exhausted he was. But it was nothing he hadn't dealt with before; he'd had them closer before, and he could manage. He could get through this and go home and then clean things up.

Dancing outdoors with fairy-lights bobbing and swaying around the crowds, moving with the music, made even the ordinary shadows look more sinister — they acted less predictably, with the movement and the inconsistent light. And the backdrop of the trees was an uneven canvas to paint them over, which meant that Ezra's shadows faded out of view almost as soon as he caught sight of them, which actually made it that much easier to ignore them. He was a little anxious, a little suspicious, just because of how everyone's shadows were moving — but not any more than was usual for him, these days. He was seeing shapes where none existed — reaching hands in gnarled tree branches, gaping maws in the rough gaps in bark — but he could shake those off and put his focus back on the party easily enough.

He watched Cecilia take the dance floor and turned to go refresh his drink, and that was when Ezra realized the problem with a ball in the trees. With everyone's shadows skipping unpredictably, he'd lost sight of his shadows. The last grasping hand he'd thought he'd conjured out of a gnarled tree branch was, in reality, a grasping hand — and it was alarmingly near. They'd crept up all around him, while he was pretending they were still buried in the trees, and now they were suffocatingly close at hand.

"I have to go," he told a friend, without preamble. "Tell my family, will you? I'm ill." He must have looked it, pale in the face and suddenly hollow-eyed, because his friend didn't question the excuse at all. The shadows would follow him home, of course — they followed him everywhere — but home was a safer place to fend them off. If he stayed here, surrounded by people, surrounded by society, he might end up having some sort of very public breakdown, the way his brother had. At home, if he ended up raving, at least someone would be home sooner or later to sympathize.

He intended to floo back home, but the fireplace was on the other end of one of these paths through the woods, if he remembered correctly. Ezra took a deep breath to steel himself, watching the shadows swirl menacingly around the edges of the path. I'm coming whether you like it or not, he thought — trying to bolster himself into defiance as a substitute for the bravery he currently did not feel — and plunged down the path.

Ten steps down the trail, all light except the moon overhead was gone. It was an unnatural darkness, Ezra suspected. The lights from the party behind him should have carried this far, and should have faded out more gradually than they had. There were shadows behind him, blocking his way back to humanity. He knew they were there, so he didn't need to turn to look. Seeing them would not improve his situation.

The problem with a ball in the trees was that at some point in the night one had to contend with the trees. There wasn't much moonlight here, filtering down through all the branches. It made it difficult to find his footing on the path, and he stumbled into a branch or two as he walked. It made it harder to discern the vague shapes of branches and roots from the fluid shapes of the shadows as well, which meant that any time he stubbed his boot against a root or brushed his shoulder on a branch he sprang back in alarm, worried he had come into contact with one of those things. A thought occurred to him which seemed too plausible not to be fact: if one of the shadows touched his heart, he would die.

If, a very small voice in the back of his mind pointed out. He'd thought if they touched him, not when. That was good. There was some hope for him, still. He just had to get through the woods.

Just as he'd thought this, the moonlight dulled. Ezra stopped on the path, paralyzed with anxiety as he tried to determine what that might mean. Were there shadows above him, blotting out the moon? Could they succeed in hiding all the light from him, leaving him trapped in the darkness here? If that happened there would be nothing at all to prevent his walking straight into one of them. He was never going to make it out of here, he thought with a sinking feeling. This was where it ended, a stone's throw away from a ball in the trees where his sister was presumably still enjoying her evening. Skin clammy and hands shaking, he felt his way towards the nearest tree and put his back to it. If he was going to lose his ability to see, he would rather be sure of where he was first.

And maybe this was a blessing, in a way, the lack of light. Maybe if he was going to die, if it was inevitable, it would be better not to see it.

He pressed his back to the tree until he could feel the roughness of the bark even through his suit, closed his eyes, and tried to breathe deeply.

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Rosalie Hunniford

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   Rosalie Hunniford

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Patience, a virtue Rosalie had once sworn to possess none of, was something she had prided herself on mastering throughout the first year of her junior healing career. Unlike units like spell damage or magical bugs where their injuries and illnesses seemed to worsen by the second, plants and potions rarely worked so quickly. There were those that did, of course, like when poor Mr. Hastings tried to treat himself at home and mixed too many potions together, but those instances were rare and few between.

Which meant, Rosie shouldn't have felt as panicked as she did while navigating the dimly lit maze. There was, at the absolute minimum, at least one way out, she needed only to find her way back to the entrance and she would be freed. However, the entrance was too many twists and turns ago and she hadn't thought to mark her way. She was lost, hopelessly so.

She spotted a bench a short way down the path and decided to sit there until she'd gathered her wits about herself again. A few minutes, that was all she needed to collect herself and then she would somehow find her way out.

She heard the footsteps approaching her before she saw the man and, at first, she didn't recongize him. Not when his usually bright expression had become one masked with such intense fear. The look was so incredibly dissimilar that Rosalie would have swore the man to be a stranger and not her once love. "Ezra?" She called out, stepping towards where he had plastered himself to the tree. That she used his name wasn't something she even registered at present, though she would likely apologize for doing so later.

She stopped only when she was within arms reach of him and quickly casted a quiet lumos so that he might see her better. "What is it? What's happened?"

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Ezra heard his name and his first thought wasn't that someone had joined him in the woods but rather that the shadows had acquired voices, or he had started experiencing auditory hallucinations. That's never happened before, he thought without particular alarm, not because the sentiment created no cause for alarm but rather because he had no room for escalating emotion. His breath was already ragged, despite his efforts to make it deep and purposeful. His heart was racing. He suspected that when one of the shadows touched him it would send a chill through him, like touching a ghost, but he also wasn't sure he would notice with his eyes shut; he already felt frigid and stiff. It wasn't until the light shown on his face that he realized this couldn't be the shadows' doing. They didn't deal in light.

He opened his eyes and squinted. It was such a sudden contrast that it was impossible to see anything for a second except the light itself. He was grateful he'd pushed back against the tree, because the solid wood at his back was the only thing keeping him oriented. His head was swimming. Someone had found him in the woods. Someone was holding a light up near him. Someone was asking what had happened. Ezra couldn't answer, of course, even if he'd wanted to — he couldn't explain this to anyone, and without understanding the nature of the shadows it was impossible to convey the urgency of the situation. But he'd have to say something, because someone was asking — someone who sounded concerned.

The face on the other side of the light finally took shape as his eyes adjusted, and Ezra's brows lowered in confusion. "Rosalie?" he asked, mistrusting it — this was the sort of thing that the shadows would do, if they had moved on from menacing stalking and into the realm of hallucinations.

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Her heart began to race as she continued observing him. There was only one other occasion that she saw him panicked and those were under such different circumstances it couldn't possibly be that. (Distantly, she realized it very well could be similar circumstances, as she made it a point to avoid the society pages these days in fear of what she might see.) She scanned him over as best she could in both the dim lighting and with him fully clothed but saw no cause for such behavior.

"Yes, it's me, Rosie." Your Rosie. She extended a hand so he might reach out for it if he so chose. (Was it okay to touch him if he was obviously ill? Where did the line between healer and ex-fiance exist?) "Are you ill? What happened?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

If Rosalie was really here — he was not yet convinced that she was — this was quite a conundrum. He hadn't spoken to her in a year or longer, and these weren't exactly the best circumstances under which to catch up. On the one hand, her being here was better than an unassociated passerby, because she knew people who knew him. If he wanted help, he could ask her to go and find one of his siblings, or a friend, and she wouldn't need him to explain who they were or what they looked like. On the other hand, he had the sense that it would be harder to talk to her than to a stranger. Whatever cover story he came up with probably wouldn't have been very believable under any circumstances, but a stranger might at least decide not to bother questioning him on it. He suspected Rosalie would mind being lied to.

But he was going to lie to her anyway. He didn't have any other options. Fortunately she'd given him a viable suggestion, and it sounded better than anything he was going to come up with on his own, so he latched onto it. "Ill, yeah. I think so. Stomach bug, maybe," he said, wondering if there was any kind of bug that would fully explain the way he looked or felt at the moment.

She had extended a hand to him. Ezra blinked down at it, considering. It could have been a trap — something the shadows thought would be alluring enough for him to reach for. Maybe they needed him to move towards them, to close the final gap and really touch him. They'd taken the light away, but he'd stopped against the tree — and then they'd conjured up this trap instead, because they knew he was going to stay still and they'd have to try something else. It made sense — or at least, he could make it make sense. Being able to touch someone else did sound enticing, both as a method of grounding him and because he suspected her hand would be warm, but was it enticing enough to take the risk?

He shivered against the tree and kept his hands where they were at his sides. Maybe he ought to test her somehow, ask her to do something that a hallucination wouldn't be able to do, but he couldn't think of what that might be. If he could imagine asking her to do it then he could imagine her doing it just as easily, couldn't he? Perhaps this was a self-defeating test.

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While Ezra was undeniably unwell, she was immediately skeptical of it being caused by a stomach bug. She had experienced what felt like an infinite amount of those with gastrointestinal issues by now, and only those terrified of vomiting had an expression of fear with pale skin. Normally, they just appeared fatigued and weak.

She thought to press the subject (that's obviously not it, so what's wrong?) but that was the role of a wife or friend, of which she was neither. No, she hadn't even spoken to him in over a year at this point. She saw him a few times out of her peripherals, but she never approached him as she did last year. She couldn't, not when his biting words still echoed in her ears on her worse days. Ezra didn't want her involved in her life, so Rosie had made it a point to remain out of it. Even if he claimed he didn't mean it or he apologized for it, the damage was done.

"Here, there's a bench right over there," Rosie explained gently as she casted a small glowing orb to hover over the bench. She'd get him seated and then figure out how to go about getting him help, which meant she still needed a way out of this maze. "Are you okay to walk? I can help you."

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stunning set by Lady <3

I can help you. If Rosalie were really here it was a sensible offer to make; Ezra would have done the same if he were trying to help someone who was supposedly ill. But he had not decided yet whether he believed she was really here, and if this was a hallucination it made sense that it contained yet another nudge towards physical contact. He hadn't taken her hand, so she'd brought it up again, hoping he would be tricked into reaching for her. He glanced briefly in the direction of the light orb she'd cast, but he didn't really care about the bench; if she was real, then it didn't matter where she was taking him. Instead, he looked straight into her eyes, trying to read something there that could help him.

The pair of them had been separated now nearly as long as they'd been together. He'd forgotten the exact hue of her eyes, but these looked right, familiar in the way that well-worn clothes could be. How unfair it would be if it turned out his shadows had a better memory for her than he did.

"I can walk," he said, feeling his way through the sentence as he spoke. "Once I'm sure. I..." Ezra hesitated, on the cusp of the point of no return. There were several ways that this could go horribly wrong for him, but he couldn't think of any other way to prove to himself that she was safe. "I'm trying to figure out if you're really here, or whether you're part of the curse. Whether you're trying to help me or kill me."

If she was one of the shadows, she wouldn't have any trouble understanding him.

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The lies Ezra was spewing were so barbed and direct that Rosie knew instantly they couldn't possibly be true. She cheeks grew rosy at the more vulgar suggestions he made but mercifully, she otherwise maintained her composure. (Later, she would run the conversation over and over again until she could understand what sparked the sudden change in him.)

"You loved me, Ezra. I never questioned that." She stated despite knowing the latter half to be false. Rosie had questioned his love time and time again as she struggled to comprehend why he would betray her so terribly. Normally, she came to the conclusion that he had loved her so intensely that not revealing the secret was his only way of keeping her. This time, though, she was wondering if her doubts were possibly true.

Her hand remained suspended in the air between them so that she might remain ready to catch him should he fall. "Please, let me help you. I'll get you seated and then find someone to take you to the hospital. I know the healers there now, they're good — they can help, okay?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ezra blinked at her response. It was so far from what he'd expected that it took him a second to even parse it, which meant —

Which meant this was really Rosalie. He grabbed for her hand with sudden desperation, as though he expected it to be withdrawn if he didn't take it immediately. He wrapped one hand around hers firmly and then took a staggering step forward to put his other hand against her upper arm, more or less curling himself around her. It was everything that he'd expected: her skin was warm, soft, alive; she was solid, grounding. He only barely stopped himself from tucking his head down against her neck — inappropriate, unacceptable, the sort of thing that would get them both into trouble if anyone were to see, but it was hard to remember any of that when it seemed like she was the only thing tethering him to reality.

He closed his eyes, took a breath, and tried to reorient himself. Rosalie was really here, and he was holding onto her.

"Not the hospital," he mumbled. He opened his eyes again but only looked at her neck. He did not especially want to look towards the trees and see how close the shadows were now. "I need to go home."

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Despite feeling prepared to catch him, the suddenness of his hands on her arms had her stumbling slightly. "It's alright, you're okay." Rosalie promised as she righted herself and looked toward him. If she hadn't already suspected him to be lying, the way he clung to her as though she was the only life raft on a violent sea would have spoken volumes. However, all his touch served to do was heighten her already panicked nerves and senses of something being well and truly wrong.

The issue was now that Rosalie still had no idea how to guide them out of the maze. And, with him clinging so tightly, she didn't think leaving him safely on the bench in order to find help was an option. (Never mind that she'd then need to find the bench again.) She could send up an emergency flare, but then everyone would see that they were alone together and with their history that certainly couldn't happen. Which left one option - apparating them out.

Except, Ezra was so out of sorts that Rosie was terrified she'd splinch him somehow with the attempt.

She'd never felt so useless.

"You need help." Rosalie insisted, looking over at him briefly before looking back at the fork in the path. The two paths, however, differed only minimally to the increasingly panicked healer. Ezra was ill - something was horribly, terribly wrong and she didn't know where to go. "Right or left?" She then murmured, more to herself than him.

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"I need to focus," Ezra said in rebuttal, with a soft shake of his head. He didn't expect her to understand — in fact he knew her understanding would be impossible — but a hospital was the last thing that would help him at the moment. They wouldn't be able to find anything the matter with him — at least not anything that they could fix. The best case scenario was that they delayed him from getting what he actually needed while they poked and prodded him and tried to figure out what was the matter. The worst case scenario was that they deemed him mad and filed some paperwork that would make its way back to the Ministry and see him lose his job. Urquart was understanding, as bosses went, but he was certainly under no obligation to keep someone employed if he had reason to doubt their sanity.

He thought he could feel her pulse between his fingers. A sign that he was holding far too tight, or an indication that her heart was racing with nerves? Probably both. He'd put her in quite a situation, and now (from her perspective) he was refusing help, which likely didn't put her any more at ease.

"I'm so glad you're here," he said, still not looking past her collar. "I'm so glad you're real."

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Focus? Rosie thought with a wild sense of bewilderment. Of all things, focusing wasn't the sort of help she imagined him needing. Focus on what, anyway? There was plenty to look at at this party, the lights, the fairy nonsense. Ezra wasn't making any sense, leading Rosie to suspect he was suffering from some sort of delirium.

She was still debating between the two paths (to the left was better lighting, to the right music) when his comments registered. It was definitely delirium then if he was suffering from some sort of hallucination. Had he always suffered from hallucinations? Rosie knew so little of healing when it involved the mind and none of her training provided any suggestions on what to do if the patient was suffering while lost in a bloody maze.

"I'm here, I'm real." Rosalie promised wholeheartedly, turning in his grasp so that she could face him. There was hardly any room between their heads, inches at most, but she didn't care what others would say if this would help him. She rested her free hand on his cheek, just as she had after their first kiss. "Focus on me, okay? I'm here." Rosie urged softly.

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stunning set by Lady <3

Her instruction to focus on her was so ridiculous that Ezra could have scoffed. As though he had done anything else since he'd recognized her on the other side of the wandlight. As if he could do anything else, with his head the way it was right now. When they were together, talking to her had driven the shadows back — would it still work? He hadn't had any opportunities to test it. They'd hardly spoken since the night things ended. The first time, at the Valentine's Day party, he'd played a game right beforehand; the second time — well, did fighting with her even count? There wasn't any rhyme or reason for these things — in any case, if there had been any difference in the shadows afterwards he hadn't noticed it.

She had reached up to put her hand on his cheek. Ezra met her eyes again and thought a kiss would do it. Talking to her might or might not work anymore, now that they'd been separated so long, now that they no longer had a future to look forward to together... but her lips were right there, close enough that they were practically already sharing the same breath. He glanced at her lips, and even leaned a hair closer to her before he caught himself. Whether it worked for him or not, it wasn't fair to her. A kiss meant something — especially between two people like them, with a painful history and no future. It wasn't something he could bandy about cheaply.

He stood up straighter, pulling his face away from her palm and letting go of her hand, though he kept his grip on her upper arm for the moment to keep himself stable. "I'll be alright," he said, more for his own benefit than for hers. "I've been through worse."

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Rosie was certain he was going to kiss her. She watched as his gaze dipped towards her lips and back up again in silence, the heat of his cheek blazing through her palm. A kiss between them could never be labeled as simple or a distraction, not when their history was what it was, but she was willing to try all the same. Nothing would change, he would still remain cursed and lost to her, but at least she could have parted from him knowing she tried to help.

It was cruel of her to turn towards him, she realized with a start when he abruptly pulled away. Cruel because he was suffering and she had only made it worse with her desperation to help. Cruel because he no longer wanted to kiss her (no longer wanted her in his life) and there she stood putting them into a compromising position. "I'm sorry. That was - " too much. "I'm sorry." She repeated too quickly.

Rosie frowned at him then. What was happening to him that he had suffered through worst than this? Or was he referring to their split? She took a step back from him, allowing him the room he obviously was asking for with both his words and actions. "I'm not leaving you like this. Once we're out of the maze I'll summon help for you and go. I'm sorry. I didn't mean - I was only-" Rosie broke off then, unable to keep attempting hopeless explanations. Obviously, she had no intentions of reconciling. Obviously, he would never want for any such thing. (I'm so happy you're here, echoed in her ears.) She shrugged then a bit uselessly and sighed, "I' sorry."

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ezra didn't even know what she was apologizing for, when she started. The hand on his cheek had felt like quite the natural progression from the way he'd been curling around her arm. If anyone had overstepped, it was him — egregiously and repeatedly. He owed her the apology, not the other way around. And even if she had overstepped, did she really think that she needed to apologize for it? Could she possibly believe that he wouldn't have welcomed anything like that with open arms?

He knew he ought to have moved on by now. They'd been separated almost as long as they'd been together. His mother had been nudging him to move on last year. Everyone he knew, his friends and colleagues, assumed he had moved on. And most days, he could make a passable show of it, even to himself. But the relationship he'd had with Rosalie wasn't the sort of thing people moved on from.

"Shh," he said as he let his hand drop from her upper arm down to her elbow. He didn't have the mental energy for any more articulate refutation of her apology than that. "I didn't ask you to leave."

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The panic of never escaping this maze — of Ezra slipping into a state of unresponsive delusion — swelled so intensely in her chest that Rosalie had to bite back a scream of frustration. She had to get him out of here, whether it was to the floo or the party or the garden at her grandmother's estate (her safe haven) she didn't care, she just needed to get him out. Then, they could maybe discuss what sort of worse he meant and why he was refusing the hospital. (She refused to consider that Ezra wouldn't elaborate on both subjects.)

"Are you stable enough for me to apparate?" Rosie managed to ask through the fear in her chest. The two paths still loomed before them as she stood too scared to take the wrong one. "I don't know my way out."

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stunning set by Lady <3