March 29th, 1891 — Greengrass Home

Ford had mostly been pushing the episode with Darrow to the back of his mind since it had happened, refusing to deal with it or even really think about it. It was easy to do, because things had actually resolved much more neatly than he’d thought they would. Brownhill didn’t file a report for the theft of anything from his observatory. He hadn’t seen Darrow since they’d parted ways when the snow cleared. He still didn’t know what the magic was that Darrow had cast on him, or what had been in the potion he’d brewed afterwards, but Darrow had been right when he’d said that it wouldn’t affect Ford’s daily life. So far, it hadn’t. The episode at Macnair’s home, however, had made Ford realize that he wasn’t really as good at compartmentalizing it as he thought he was. He needed to deal with it, if not in a legal, turn-Darrow-over-to-the-authorities way than at least internally, for his own peace of mind. He needed to get to the bottom of it, and to understand what had happened.

Which was going to be tricky, because Ford knew that Noble was his greatest resource on that front, and Noble and he hadn’t really talked since their fight after dinner. They were making polite conversation around the house, because they couldn’t avoid that, but there was a sharpness in Noble’s tone that made Ford wary of trying to talk to him about anything more. He’d wanted to apologize several times already, but — well, honestly, he was trying to think of what advice Noble would have given him if he was having this conflict with anyone else. Noble had said good when Ford had told him he was fighting with Clementine. They need to respect you. It was only the conviction that had their places been reversed, Noble would have done the same thing (or something similar enough in spirit) that had let Ford hold off this long on trying to make amends, but he hated living in a house where he was constantly reminded that he and Noble were fighting.

He headed down to Noble’s workshop that evening feeling like the only thing inside his torso was nerves. Ford had once made fun of Verity for treating the workshop like it was some sort of secret lair she wasn’t permitted to visit, but Ford hadn’t been down here since their fight. He knew trying to push his rather tenuous ‘authority’ into Noble’s business matters  might have been a step too far — it was certainly farther than he'd ever gone before. Official status aside, he often felt that he and Noble were more like partners at the helm of this sinking ship than anything else — or he'd thought that up until the dinner party, anyway. Things were different now. All of which to say: he didn't know if he was welcome here anymore, and he was hesitant to find out.

Ford opened the door just wide enough to slip inside, and he lingered just on the other side of the door once it had closed behind him. "Hey," he said, almost like it was a question.

  

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He felt even more vaguely smothered in the Greengrass home than he’d been before the dinner party. Retreating to his workshop felt a little like surrendering, but this wasn’t really his house anymore, they’d taken it over.

He didn’t really need to be down here this evening; the antidotes just needed another forty minutes to finish brewing, and Noble was confident enough in his skills that normally he would have at least considered going into the house to spend time with his siblings. Right now, though, he would rather watch the ingredients bubble together as he waited to bottle them than go inside to manage his expressions around the rest of them.

He hated this. He’d only really made it through the past year because he and Ford were on the same side, and their ongoing fighting — the sharpness he couldn’t manage to entirely edge out of his voice — had Noble miserable. Lying to his brother the way he was also grated, he didn’t like it — this felt different than lying about the Daffy thing, because that was at least partially for her. This was for Noble, entirely, and he couldn’t let go of it. He didn’t think he wanted to let go of it.

Noble looked up from the cauldron when he heard the door open. It had gotten darker outside when he was in here — the workshop, windowless and kept illuminated by balls of magical light, was sort of like its own biome — and he’d lost track of it. He also hadn’t expected to see Ford here, today, when things were still weird. Something had to be up with one of the girls, then. Fucking great.

“Hey,” Noble replied; he gestured vaguely at the stool for guests that leaned against the table where he sorted ingredients. 

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The gesture towards the stool was as much of an invitation as he was going to get, and Ford was grateful for it. He moved the stool out from the table, though he had no real desire to sit. He leaned one arm against it instead and watched Noble out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his mood. Whatever his brother was thinking, though, he had to get on with his questions. Ford doubted that Noble would allow him to just loiter here without speaking for long; he might think Ford had somehow gotten it into his head to come down here to supervise.

"I wanted to ask you a potions question," he admitted a little reluctantly. "Can you tell from the ingredients what sort of thing a potion would do?"

  

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This… wasn’t what Noble had expected. He tilted his head and considered. The retort I thought I didn’t know what I was doing popped onto the tip of his tongue but he restrained it, more because he was curious than because he wanted to refrain from any hostilities.

“Usually,” Noble said, “Sometimes different combinations interact differently, but, yeah, usually.”

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"Okay," Ford said with a nod. He'd expected that Noble could, but it was good to have the confirmation not just that his brother was capable of it but that he wasn't entirely adverse to answering Ford's questions on the subject.

He didn't know all of the names, was the other problem. Ford glanced around the workshop, at the shelves full of ingredients. Taking a breath, he moved towards one of the shelves and grabbed a vial of something that looked familiar. He glanced back at Noble for his reaction, wondering if this was crossing a line.

  

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Noble’s eye twitched involuntarily as Ford plucked a vial off the shelf. It was less about his current irritation and more about a carefully-ordained organizational system — he didn’t really want people touching these things.

“Wait, um,” Noble said; he stepped out from behind the simmering cauldron to come behind his brother, “Point them out to me and I’ll set them down here. It’s — I have an alphabetical system.” He didn’t want to have to justify interrupting, but felt like he had to — what if Ford thought that one of the ingredients was volatile and they were back in that same fight?

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Ford tensed at his brother's wait, wondering if he was going to put up a wall at this or maybe even ask Ford to leave entirely. What he said was something Ford could work with, though, and it didn't even seem like an unreasonable restriction born out of this tension they'd been nursing for over a week.

"Okay, sure," he agreed, turning his attention back to the shelves. "This. That one. This…" he began, moving through and pointing things out as he saw them. He'd probably forgotten a few, but hopefully Noble could at least give him a vague idea of what they'd do. This was the first potion Darrow had brewed, the one he'd taken himself that had caused such a dramatic change in his demeanor. One key ingredient was missing, but since Darrow had made such a fuss over it at least Ford knew the name.

"... and witch's ganglion leaves," he concluded. He crossed his arms and leaned against one of the countertops. Ford bit his lip and his eyes sliding from the pile of ingredients to his brother, waiting for his assessment.

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Noble plucked the ingredients off of the shelves as Ford indicated them, leading to a weird assortment beneath them. Bat wing, standard ingredient, moonstone powder &mdash (not the moonstone powder he was worried about, but the smaller replacement vial he’d purchased for when he tried to figure things out) — and several other familiar vials were assorted on the shelf, in the same rough order as Ford had pointed them out. The longer they were going about this the more curious Noble got — Ford didn’t really know much about potions, so this whole interaction was weird.

He wished his brother had mentioned the ingredient amounts, but the assortment so far were a pretty fair indicator.

The last bit caught him off guard. ”Witches’ ganglion leaves?” Noble repeated, a little s. They were rare — very rare, so while Noble had a small vial around he didn’t know anyone else. ”You’re sure?”

He bent to find the Ws and ran his eyes over the ingredients, finally settling on the right vial. Noble plucked it off the shelf and squinted at it — it was empty. It wasn’t supposed to be empty, and Noble held it up in front of his face, as if doing so would make more of the leaves appear.

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Noble's reaction surprised him, and if he hadn't been so sure Ford might have doubted himself. Macnair had identified it too, though, when the boggart had taken the form, so it wasn't as though Darrow had lied to him.

"That's the only one I'm really sure of," he admitted. "I might be wrong about some of these others. But, yeah. Witch’s ganglion. With the big beating heart bulb in the middle and all the leaves," he continued. He'd tried to make note of everything Darrow had used, but he hadn't asked for as much help finding these ingredients as he had for the second potion, so Ford knew he'd probably missed some. That, and it had been nearly a month since he’d seen them.

  

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“Huh,” Noble said, although whether he was reacting to the empty vial or to Noble’s words he couldn’t say. He wouldn’t put witches’ ganglion in a pain potion — it was a rare enough ingredient that they didn’t know much about it, and pain potions could be weird.

And he didn’t know why this vial was empty.

He set it down on the table. “Well, the rest of this has it pretty much set up to be some sort of pain potion.”

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Ford's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "That can't be right," he said quietly, frowning at the ingredients. It wasn't that he didn't trust Noble's expertise (no matter what he'd said last week), but this just didn't make any sense. The potion had a night-and-day difference on Darrow; it couldn't have just been a pain potion. Could it? Darrow had said he was sick, but Ford had never believed him, any more than he'd believed his early lie about needing help for a dying patient. Ford chewed the edge of his thumbnail for a moment, thinking.

"Is there anything —" he started, but found himself unable to finish. Is there anything wrong with Billy Darrow, he'd been trying to ask, but suddenly his tongue felt too heavy to form words.

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Noble shrugged; he was sure enough on this that it wasn’t even worth taking the bait of Ford’s confusion. He didn’t usually make pain potions — most of his non-Hospital clientele were in the market of love potions and other bullshit, and most of what he made for hospital employees was in the realm of antidotes et cetera — but he was confident anyways.

“Is there anything what?” Noble asked, raising an eyebrow at Ford.

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Much as he would have liked to have replied, Ford's tongue still wasn't working. He felt like he'd gotten a mouthful of something that wasn't edible, and it was making it impossible to do anything with his mouth other than focus on not swallowing it. If he didn't know for a fact that there wasn't anything in his mouth he might have stuck his tongue out to try and get whatever it was off, but he expected that would only make him look crazy and wouldn't help at all.

"— do you have water down here?" he asked, and somehow had no difficulty with those words.

  

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Noble frowned. “Uhm — yeah,” he said, eyebrows drawing together with concern. “One second.” He crossed the room to grab a pitcher of water off of the back shelf — this was just full of potioneering textbooks and various items — and conjured a glass. Noble poured the water in and brought it back to Ford.

“Are you okay?” he asked, finally.

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The feeling in his mouth was starting to fade even before Noble reappeared with the water, but he took it anyway and took a long drink. Ford felt better after having drank it, and as the feeling left he was able to start trying to think about what it was and where it had come from. This wasn't a thing that happened to him, normally, so there was something —

Noble asked him a question and Ford looked over with surprise, as though he'd forgotten Noble was standing there. It was obvious from the look on his face that he was worried, and — well, Ford couldn't have that. Not after last week, when he'd realized how unfair it was to try and share all of this with Noble and he'd determined to shoulder the rest of it himself. If he was trying to give Noble less to fret over, fewer things to potentially push him over the edge, the last thing he needed was for Noble to start worrying about Ford.

"Fine," he said briskly, though he wasn't sure he was. He set the water glass down, still half full, and pushed himself off the counter he'd been leaning on. "There's a second potion I wanted to ask about."

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Noble frowned. Obviously something was wrong with his brother — but maybe he’d forfeited a right to learn about it when he’d fainted at dinner. He swallowed back his concern, although his eyebrows were still a little arched with it.

“Sure,” he said, “What’s the other one?”

If Ford didn’t want to tell him what was going on, he could find out — he was sure he could find out — Ford would tell him eventually if he couldn’t. Noble didn’t think his brother would be able to navigate through this alone. Especially if it involved potions.

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