April 3rd, afternoon, 1894 — High Street Modiste's

Ezra was, obviously, nervous.

He had been here for forty minutes already, so that he could be sure that everything was ready ahead of the time he'd told her to arrive. There was a ritual circle sketched out in chalk on the ground and an incantation scrawled on a piece of parchment in his pocket. Everything was ready — all he needed was the ring. The ring and the girl.

He paced. The shop was closed to customers until he'd given them permission to open; until his work was finished. Two of the forgotten women had already been returned. The third — the one he was maybe, perhaps, probably, in love with — was due to arrive any minute now.

He ran one hand through his hair. He ran the edge of his thumb along the inside of his ring finger, where a wedding band would be if he'd ever gotten married. He didn't want to remember her — but he knew that was the him of the current moment, the him that already didn't remember her. He knew that in a few short moments, that might change — but right now he didn't want to remember.

The door chime rang and Ezra poked his head around a rack of example fabrics. "Over here," he called. "This was the epicenter, this spot."

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Rosalie Hunniford

  

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Rosalie had sat up for most of the night fidgeting with the ring. Its weight was so instantly familar, the feel of it so perfectly right, that Rosalie almost couldn't believe four years had passed since she last held it. Regardless of what Ezra decided, she wouldn't touch it again after the ritual. She couldn't, otherwise she might then succumb to the thought of wearing it again. And she simply couldn't. Not when their time together had faded as surely as a sunset at the end of a long day.

The early morning hours saw her fretfully tossing and turning. This version of Ezra despised her. He saw her only as a selfish, cruel creature and not as his. This version of Ezra wouldn't think to retrieve a fallen bracelet or follow the foolish impulse to approach her at a costume party. He wasn't burdened by years of heartache and grief. Eventually, Rosalie gave up on sleep altogether, too consumed by the questions swirling through her head to drift off at all.

In the end, she was late to arrive at the modiste. The circles beneath her eyes were so uncharacteristically deep, her normal expression of neutrality dipped into an almost permanent frown. She ought to be happy that she was getting her life back, instead she felt as though she was heading to a funeral.

Rosalie didn't speak as she neared the epicenter. She looked only at the set up, at the papers and circles, at the reflection off the floor. A heavy pit of dread settled in her stomach, a lump formed in her throat. Finally, after a long minute, she dared to look up at him. "I have a sister, Delphine." She told him solemnly. "I wouldn't be asking you to remember me if it weren't for her. After my brother-" the lump grew at the memory of Ambrose, at the remembrance of red that bloomed around his head, "- I can't leave her alone."

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stunning set by Lady <3

Her demeanor was doing nothing at all to help his nerves. She was acting as though this was going to be the end of the world for both of them. Ezra had spent the last twelve hours trying to convince himself that wasn't the case, that he was probably blowing things out of proportion because he didn't have the memories to bound him. He'd told himself he was letting his worst fears and his imagination get the best of him, and this was probably in reality a mundane sort of thing that would perhaps be uncomfortable to remember but not as upending as he expected. Now she was saying she had considered not returning to her life, to spare him remembering. This was not at all encouraging.

"I didn't ask you to do that," he pointed out, stiff because he was having trouble figuring out what the appropriate tone was to respond to a comment like that. "I wouldn't have asked you to do that."

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"I know." Rosalie offered in response. Ezra had never asked anything of her beyond happiness together. He never even demanded to know why she left, the truth simply revealed itself at the most inopportune of times. He had been good to her, for her, and Rosalie had abandoned him. The guilt of that single action rose up in her chest until she felt as though she might choke on it. "You -" she stopped herself before the thought could become another sad truth shared.

A beat passed before she reached into her pocket and withdrew the ring. Even if he didn't take it back, Rosalie wouldn't keep it. She'd sell it and donate the money to some charitable cause or throw it into the lake for the sirens to find. Anything — anything — other than holding onto a memento of a crushed dream. "What do we do now?" She asked at a near whisper.

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stunning set by Lady <3

She almost said something, but didn't. Ezra tried to pretend he hadn't noticed. He wasn't very good at pretending, he didn't think, not in this context... but at least he wasn't going to comment on it. He didn't want to start a conversation about what she was thinking or feeling. It would be easier for both of them, probably, to just stay focused on the task itself. The practical bits. One foot in front of the other.

So that was what he did. He knelt at the edge of the chalk circle he'd drawn, with the ancient symbols strewn around the edge. He was careful not to smudge the chalk, and he didn't try to touch the ring. "Put it here," he said, tapping a blank section of floorboard in the center of the circle. "You'll put your hands here and here," he said, with more taps. "I have the incantation written down. I'll read it out and you'll repeat it. It's a fairly long one." His voice as he described the process was as close to toneless as he could manage, as though if he could create a dearth of emotion during this part of the interaction it would counterbalance whatever he felt after the ritual was complete.

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Rosalie did as instructed, her feeling of apprehension growing once the ring was out of her hands. She hadn't allowed herself to consider the possibility of the ritual failing, of her family forgetting her existence entirely, but now that she was teethering on the edge of remembrance she was blindly terrified. There was no alternative plan in place for her, she had no nest egg stashed, no lies spun to craft a new life from. Rosalie would be left entirely destitute should this fail.

She knelt where instructed, her palms clammy and heart racing. "What if -" Rosalie started, her voice shaking with the fear now in her chest. This morning she'd been able to focus only on her guilt, on the grief she will have inflicted upon him again. Rosalie wished she could somehow go back to that and process through the rest of it all. "If it doesn't work, what happens then?" She managed to finish, her hands still on her lap.

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stunning set by Lady <3

If it didn't work? Then it bought Ezra another day or so to figure out what to do about the problem she presented, the threat she posed. That was his first thought, but of course that wasn't right, because if it didn't work he'd have to devote all of his time and attention to figuring out why it hadn't, not worrying about himself. His first priority had to be getting everyone who had lost their place in the world restored, and not just because it was his job. The stakes were higher for them than they were for him; they had more to lose. He just had to keep himself from doing anything stupid. (Which didn't sound that difficult, when you put it like that — but in his present state of mind Ezra thought proposing to anyone in the first place sounded monumentally stupid, and the evidence that he had once done so was sitting plainly on the floor between them). l

"It will work," he said. "It's already worked once, for one of the others. There's no reason to suspect it would be any different now." No reason to suspect that his presence here would impact it, was the subtext. This wasn't the sort of magic that reacted with emotion, at least not as far as he could tell.

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For one of the others - Miss Broadmoor, Rosalie assumed. The streak of jealousy she'd felt days ago flashed through again, leaving a strong taste of bile in her mouth in its wake. She had no right to feel jealous, no claim on him beyond their shared memories, but she felt it pulsing in her veins all the same. Ugly and green and entirely unfair given what she did with Mr. Greengrass in the workshop last week.

She swallowed against the lump in her throat and nodded. Miss Broadmoor had her memories back, the ritual worked. Those were the important factors to keep in mind. Cautiously, Rosalie leaned down to place her hands where instructed. "Alright, I'm ready whenever you're ready to begin."

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ezra wasn't sure he was ready, but there wasn't any sense in putting it off. It would only delay the inevitable, and the extra few minutes he might buy himself by stalling wouldn't change anything on his end, only make things more uncomfortable for her in the meantime. He took a breath. "Alright," he started, unfolding the parchment which contained the incantation. "You'll see some of these figures glow, at various points — that's all normal. The —" He snagged on the word ring. "— your focal item might move a bit, or it might not. Just repeat after me and I'll tell you when it's ended." He looked at her for another half-second to see if she was going to raise any questions, and when she didn't immediately speak up he turned his attention to the parchment and began to read off a few words at a time, giving pauses for her to repeat the phrases.

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The instructions seemed easy enough: repeat the incantation, ignore the glowing symbols, focus on the ring (not 'focal point' as he phrased it). Rosalie could do this, she'd do this and then everything would go back to normal.

The first few repetitions went smoothly. It was the last, when the ring seemed to jump up at her causing Rosalie to flinch, that something went awry. Her legs shifted beneath her, her skirts causing a singular break in the chalk circle. Still, Rosalie didn't stop the repetitions.

When it was finally over, Rosalie sat back on her haunches, the ring still in the circle between them, and waited for Ezra to speak.

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stunning set by Lady <3

This ritual was not like the last one. To an outside observer it might seem the same: same words, same runes drawn on the floor, similar events and reactions. To Ezra, it felt very different. When he was roughly a third of the way through the incantation he'd copied down he started to feel gentle tugging at the corners of his mind — the feeling that there was something there, just out of sight, and that if he turned his attention to it he could figure it out. He didn't think this was the experience everyone had during the ritual, but not everyone was sat directly across from someone they should have remembered while it was happening. The memories were in the process of coming back, and someone else might have them return and never even realize they were gone at all. Ezra was constantly being confronted with the extent of what he was missing, while he sat across from this woman who was repeating the incantation. He had to force himself to focus only on the ritual, because otherwise he wasn't sure they would get through it.

Halfway down the page he had his first flash of memory, as he glanced across the ritual circle at her and saw how her hair fell down in front of her forehead: he could see her on another day, in another outfit, somewhere outside and sunny, leaning over in the same way and looking down at... something indistinct, something outside the edge of the memory, but he could see the way her hair fell in the same way across her brow.

For the rest of the ritual Ezra tried not to look up at her, to keep those flashes at bay. They were just a distraction — but even without looking her direction they kept coming. Once he glanced at one of her hands and could suddenly feel so clearly the warmth and pressure of her hand resting on his that he couldn't help but jerk his hand back, nearly dropping the parchment in the process. Finally they finished the incantation, and though Ezra had said before he was going to tell her when it was over, he found himself at a loss for words.

Because he remembered her. He remembered everything.

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She waited a minute.

Then two.

She stayed silent even when his hand jerked back and the parchment waved about in the air. She didn't look at him, didn't dare to when one look would spell the entirety of her future. Instead, Rosalie focused on the runes drawn on the floor, on the pattern of the carpet, on the sound of her heart in her ears. It had worked, she felt certain of that. Otherwise the new version of him would've said something by now, his manners too well bred to leave her in the silence for longer than necessary.

When the fourth minute of silence stretched on, Rosalie finally looked from the carpet to the door. It was entirely plausible that now that he remembered he wouldn't want to speak to her. Perhaps she ought to go, to flee as she had the night she ruined their dreams, and spare them both the conversation that was to come. He would blame her for going, just as he was right to do, but at least she wouldn't have to hear again it wouldn't have changed anything. At least she wouldn't have to face the things she revealed to him throughout the course of these last few days.

Except, Rosalie couldn't bring herself to stand. Not when things were entirely uncertain still. Not when he hadn't at least acknowledged that the ritual had worked.

Finally, when the fifth minute of silence began, Rosalie whispered, "Ezra, please."

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stunning set by Lady <3

"I'm sorry," he blurted out immediately when she spoke, before she'd even finished the word please, because he knew he'd been quiet for far too long. He knew he should have said something, but what could he possibly say? The space between them felt too big and too full to penetrate with words.

He'd been trying to collect all the facts since she'd told him the truth about the nature of their relationship a few days ago, and the facts had looked so bleak. He'd been in love with her and probably still was. When she'd left, he'd had the worst several months of his life and had nearly died. She had chosen to leave him, even though she still loved him, and she might again. It was damning, and pointed to one conclusion: being with her was an unconscionable risk. There was no reason to chance it, knowing the damage she had caused once and could cause again. But now that the ritual was completed he had new information, something that he hadn't been aware of when he'd been collecting facts. He'd expected that he would feel this way to some extent, of course — he'd expected that his judgement would be clouded by emotion once he remembered her. But he hadn't expected new facts, and now he had one. Something that Rosie hadn't been able to tell him, and which he would have had no way of deducing without his memories: being with her made the shadows go away.

"— I can't —" he tried, but his attempt to form a complete sentence was entirely ineffective. He couldn't figure out what to do with all of this. A week ago he'd been living with the knowledge that the shadows left when Rosie was around, but that she was gone and he would never have her with him again — but a week ago he hadn't known that she was still in love with him.

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   Rosalie Hunniford

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I can't.

The statement was broken, forced even. Rosalie had known Ezra would need time to readjust to this reality, to come to terms with the memories again and be able to have a conversation with her. She had known this, and still the rushed apology and broken words words left her feeling entirely shattered. Like a glass vase thrown against a concrete wall. A pained sigh escaped her then as she forced herself to ask, "is there anything else we need to do? For the ritual?"

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stunning set by Lady <3

Ezra shook his head. He still wasn't looking at her, but now it had nothing to do with trying not to stir up memories; now he didn't want to give her any clearer view of the expression that must have been on his face. He raised his right hand to brush against the outside of his left arm as though trying to comfort himself, though he didn't think that was exactly the impulse he was feeling. It was more like he wanted to feel as though he had a handle on something, and gripping his own arm was the closest proxy he could achieve.

"No," he muttered. "No, the ritual's done."

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The ritual was done, and he wouldn't (couldn't?) look at her. "Ezra, I - " She began and stopped, too uncertain of both herself and the situation to voice the apology stuck on her tongue. It was cruel to force him to remember this, cruel and unfair and downright miserable.

Her hand shook as she brushed the hair that had fallen into her face back behind her ear. Rosalie thought to ask about the ring again or if he wished her to leave or what they were to do now but voiced none, stuck as she was in her hope to not harm him more.

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