Come to find out
I'm a can on a string, you're on the end

October, 1889 — Dru's House

Mor apparated onto the sidewalk outside Dru's house with a crack. It was mid-morning, and she was supposed to be dressing for her wedding. She was not wearing her wedding dress. Mor was wearing a long coat over her nightgown, and her slippers, and had put her hair up but had not done anything else to make herself look like she was ready for the world.

Mor's father had anti-apparition restrictions on her house, but she knew how to undo his spellwork, and usually managed to come back home before he noticed. She expected he would notice today, but it was hardly going to be his largest problem. She walked up to Dru's Wellingtonshire door, knocked resoundingly on the door, and told the housekeeper with a smile that she was here to see Mrs. Drusilla Pettigrew.

This was Mor's first time showing up unexpectedly since Dru had married. She did not care what Albert Pettigrew thought of it. She knotted her hands together in her lap and rotated her rings together, with a particular focus on her engagement ring — Brooks was going to want it back. It did not occur to her that Dru may be busy, getting ready to attend Morrigan's wedding.

She looked up at Dru, when her friend entered — Mor's eyebrows were drawn together with real worry, rather than her usual expression of being vaguely worried. "Drusilla," Mor said, soft — she was aware that she looked entirely unkept, as if she had not slept as well as her state of dress, and she wondered if Dru was going to guess.

Drusilla Pettigrew

  

Dru was in her bedroom considering three sets of earrings and wishing she had pressed Morrigan for more specific details about what she was wearing today. She wanted to look her best, but only to a point; it would have been rude to outshine the bride. The amber teardrop earrings were the safest choice. They were the lowest profile of the three pairs which would compliment her dress. She was eyeing the silver ones with yellow quartz, wondering if she could get away with it. Not that she suspected Morrigan would begrudge her whatever she wore, but there was no need to give people cause to talk.

She was interrupted in her deliberations by the housekeeper. It was a good thing she recognized Mor; Dru wouldn't have come down for anyone else. But Morrigan being in her parlor on the morning of her wedding was serious business, and Dru went to her at once. The state of her appearance only confirmed what Dru had already suspected: things were dire.

Unfortunately, Mor's life was such that this did not immediately narrow things down. It could have been to do with some of their magic. One of the rituals gone wrong, but so slowly they didn't notice until now. Pressing new discoveries about something the rest of them were researching. Or it could have been something to do with her curse. New information come to light, or new developments she could feel inside her. If Morrigan died, Dru thought with a concealed shiver, she was taking them all with them; they'd Vowed to save her. They were supposed to have more time.

It could have been him, too, she allowed; the groom could have died or run off or been arrested for treason. Comparatively, anything that could have happened with him stood much farther down her priority list than things that had happened to Morrigan.

"Darling," she answered, equally soft. She swept across the room, in her elegant wedding-guest dress but with her hair still down and still free of any accessories, and reached out to take both of Mor's hands. "My darling."

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   Morrigan Selden

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ty MJ <3

Drusilla looked beautiful; she may have competed with Morrigan, had more decided to wear her blue-and-white wedding gown here. Not that Mor would have minded, of course — she'd already expected Drusilla's jewelry to be coveted by all of the women in attendance, and Dru was not wearing it yet.

She squeezed Drusilla's hands, and met her eyes. How to explain herself? She had not decided it until she had come here, although it had been a nagging thought for their entire courtship, their entire engagement — the toll she could take on him, whether or not she wanted to.

"I love him," Morrigan admitted. Brooks knew this, and she sometimes thought it was obvious — whenever he entered a room, Mor had a hard time looking at anyone else. If she did not love him, she would not have bothered with this — if she did not love him, she would have married him.

  

This was not the earth-shattering revelation she had expected. Her brows drew closer as the faintest suggestion of a frown appeared at the corners of her nose; not quite touching her mouth yet. She did not understand why this was worth invading her home on the morning of the wedding. Not that she minded; she would sooner have ordered her husband out than turned Morrigan away, and nevermind that it was his home. But this was not something Mor made a habit of, arriving unannounced and in obvious distress, and she had not yet explained it.

"And he loves you," she agreed. She felt reasonably confident of this, based on how he'd behaved during the engagement, but even if she hadn't she would have said it now. Everyone was in love on their wedding day. Dru had probably even professed to being in love with Albert; who remembered?

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ty MJ <3

Not for the first time, Morrigan wished that she could pull Drusilla into her skin and bare her soul. Such an action would have its own risks — Dru would see the traitorous Doubt around Mor's own ritual — but then she would not have to find the way to explain herself, because Dru would already understand. She rubbed her thumbs in circles on the back of Dru's hands.

"So I cannot marry him," Mor voiced.

  

Ah.

Dru allowed the frown to flourish. This was the ordinary sort of nerves, then — or as ordinary as it got, with people like them. Dru hadn't experienced them, and by the time she'd married there had been no one left to hover over her shoulder while she prepared in the morning and warn her that she might, but one heard stories. In novels, people were always wracked with anxiety before getting married; sometimes in real life the wedding was delayed for some minutes while a relative soothed a last minute flare-up of doubts. Dru supposed she ought to be flattered that she was the one in this position; having been chosen to reassure. She moved to the sofa and took a seat next to Morrigan, still holding her hands. She knit her brow while she thought through what to say — mostly concerned about choosing the right words for the sake of not wasting time. Mor had a wedding to get to, and quite a bit of preparation still to do, by the state of her. But that was alright — Dru knew a spell to make the circles under her eyes disappear. Spells to smooth over someone's appearance, to hide the turmoil taking place at home, were a Rowle specialty.

Carefully, Dru sifted through everything she knew about Mor's situation and tried to pinpoint the thing that would be weighing on her mind most heavily at the moment. There were the rituals, obviously; she might be worried that marrying would give her less freedom to participate, or to continue research — that she would fail her Vow. She might worry that Brooks would find out, or that she would have to admit it to him, and he would judge her. This was an ill-placed anxiety, if that was what was driving this. In Dru's experience, husbands were only as involved in one's life as one allowed them to be.

Then there was the curse. They had never explicitly discussed it, but Dru had intuited that Morrigan wouldn't have children until she'd broken her curse — she spoke about her own ancestors with enough venom that it was clear she disapproved of their choices to carry on with life as best they could and ignore it all. Once she was married she would face pressure to have children, but that was all right too, Dru thought. They'd simply have to break the curse. If Brooks loved her, then he mightn't care about delaying children for a year, or two, or three.... but then, she would have to tell him something to put him off. This was back to the beginning: the anxiety that he would find out more than Morrigan wanted him to know, and that he wouldn't approve of their methods.

"Mor," she began delicately. "You do know — what they say about there being no secrets between husband and wife. You know that's not true." She gave her friend a meaningful look. "You won't have to tell him."

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   Morrigan Selden

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ty MJ <3

Drusilla was frowning at her, and the corners of Mor's mouth tugged down slightly in response. She knew that technically Dru was telling her the truth, but they were treading close to untouchable territory — to suggest that Morrigan wanted a more intimate marriage than Dru's was to suggest that there was something lacking in Drusilla's.

But Dru was right — she didn't have to tell him. Mor nodded, slow, in understanding. She did not have to tell him. She knew, from her mother, that there were risks to not telling him and to telling him.

"I should have waited until after my ritual," Morrigan said, "We don't know how much time it'll bring me."

  

Dru smiled at that, sly; the expression of someone who already knew the punchline before it was said. This sentiment at least was not difficult to parse. It was so thoroughly Mor, and therefore easily countered.

(She had taken the position by default of convincing Morrigan to proceed with the marriage, but not out of any particular fondness for the groom or belief in the strength of the union. Rather, she had woken up this morning assuming the marriage was a forgone conclusion and had not yet dissuaded herself of the fact, and if Mor was going to have a wedding today she would feel better about it if she looked a little more put together than she did presently.)

"As much time as you want, darling," she said, with the confidence of someone who had gotten exactly what they wanted. "You'll be immortal, if you like."

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ty MJ <3

Immortal; now that was tempting. Mor's lips twitched again, a slight smile. There was a time that she and Dru had been the same, both courting a half-life in some way or another — but Dru had defeated her devil, and Morrigan had not.

(Sometimes Mor wished that Dru's father was still alive, if only because Morrigan would not have regretted killing him.)

She squeezed Dru's hands. "I want him to have a normal life," Morrigan said. Brooks had been abandoned by his family, had scrapped a life together, deserved a wife who could be fully present and give him her whole life — Morrigan could not do that. Even when her ritual was done, she would still owe her friends, still have her habits — still, always, be halfway between life and death.

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   Drusilla Pettigrew

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set by Bee

Drusilla's expression softened, though it was never hard with Morrigan. She thought she understood where this was heading, now.

"With a normal woman?" she asked. Dru had no intention of letting Morrigan die from her curse — not leastwise because that would have doomed all the rest of them, too — but even presuming the curse was broken tomorrow, Morrigan was never going to be normal. If that was what she had herself hung up on, maybe where this was headed wasn't to the altar after all. This was what one might describe as an irreconcilable difference.

"He'll be missing out." She arched her eyebrows.

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   Morrigan Selden

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ty MJ <3

A huff of air came out of Mor's mouth in her best attempt at a laugh, (it was hard to manage a good laugh, this morning.) "Oh, but she'll make him happy," she said, even though the thought made her heart squeeze uncomfortably around its edges.

"You know how I am — talking about family trees and spending all my time trying to find old books," Morrigan jested, "I was practically made to be a spinster."

  

Dru cocked one corner of her mouth up in a corkscrew smile. "No," she chided, squeezing both of Mor's hands. "You were made to be fearsome." Spinster had the sound of failure; Mor had not failed to secure a match, and she was not the sort of person who failed generally. She had been dealt a difficult hand in life, but she and Dru were twin souls: they soared higher than their circumstances. Perhaps someday one of them might even deign to be normal — but she hoped not.

"But if you don't marry him," she continued after a moment, the mischievous look in her eye fading and her expression becoming more solemn, "It will be spinsterhood, you know. Because people will talk, and you oughtn't to expect another offer. Is that what you want?"

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ty MJ <3

Spinsterhood, no other offers. She would be dependent on the men in her family forever, even if she completed her ritual. Her tolerant father, her stepmother and the half-brothers that Mor largely liked but did not want to spend forever with. Her brother, who knew it was a risk to get close to her, and so refused. The mirth in her eyes vanished, and she met Dru's eyes.

But — she would have no daughters. She would not propagate the curse, and she would not make Brooks sad when she refused to have children.

(And maybe — maybe someday, when Mor won, when she completed her ritual. Maybe he would forgive her. She should have delayed the wedding; she should have acted first.)

"But I'll never really be alone," she said.

  

"Of course not!" Dru exclaimed, too quickly to have possibly given the matter the slightest consideration. There really wasn't much to think about; there was only one thing to say in a situation like this. And Dru had no intentions of imminently abandoning Morrigan to complete seclusion, either. But someday Dru was going to be a society matron, orchestrating teas with other mamas to discuss the marriage prospects of her children; Morrigan would have no role to play there. Someday Dru might be the First Lady of England, if she had a whim to spur Albert towards some political ambition (she suspected she could stir him to anything; she fancied her husband was quite devoted to her, whether or not it was true). Someday she might be hosting grand balls and accepting disguised favors from people with political aims, who wanted her to put in a good word with her husband — Morrigan would not be there. Someday Dru might be a chairwoman of the Hogwarts Board of Governers, if she fancied, or a leading philanthropist helping draw up plans for new buildings and amenities. Now she was vaguely bloated from her first pregnancy and mostly still confined to home, but this was a stepping stone; someday she might have real influence and power. And Morrigan would be — at home with her books.

These were not the sorts of things friends talked about.

"Of course you won't," she said again, tone reassuring.

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WC:244

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   Morrigan Selden

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ty MJ <3

So she would not marry him, then. A deep sadness settled in Mor's chest, but more than anything she could feel relief — her nerves were settling. Her eyebrows settled, too, and she wiped her palms on her coat to dispel of any sweat. Her engagement ring was upside down.

"I do not suppose that you've any idea what I'm supposed to do to let him know," Mor said, jesting even though her voice was a titch higher than normal. "Should I just — not go?"

  

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set by Bee

Dru hadn't the faintest idea how to answer that. Certainly she had no experience with this situation upon which to draw. Mor's tone was jovial, though — at least on the surface — so Dru offered her a rueful smile in return. "I do believe that would send quite a clear message," she agreed. As to a more serious answer — "You might write him, I suppose, but only if you want to. No one will know how it's done except you and him," she pointed out. "It's too late to do anything to keep the guests from arriving."

After a beat, she asked thoughtfully, "Will you keep the ring?"

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ty MJ <3