Well, here's to living in the moment
'Cause it passed.

Late March, 1888 — Crowdy Memorial Library

Not seeing Elsie was the worst thing in the world. What was it people said: absence made the heart grow fonder? More like absence drove you mad, maybe. It wasn't as though they'd seen each other often before being found out, but now the separation - staying away intentionally - felt even worse, maybe because the possibility of a next time had already spiralled down the drain.

It wasn't all Lucinda Cavanaugh's fault. If anything, Tybalt was quietly grateful to her, because her bite did not appear to be quite as bad as her bark. It was still the off-season, but he hadn't been fired, as far as he knew. He had not been chased down by an angry Beauregard mother, which was also something. If anyone else in Elsie's family had found out, Tyb was unaware.

She was still working at the library as usual, too. He knew this because he was here, restless at a library table - here to see her. It had felt wrong, ending the evening so abruptly without seeing Elsie again at all, curiosity and concern steadily burning a hole in his head at what might've happened to her since. He'd wanted to write. But writing was hard, and Tybalt would much rather get to have this conversation in person.

He'd waited as long as he possibly could (over a month) because he didn't want to risk a repeat of the quidditch party situation, and even though they needed to talk - they had to, when everything felt unfinished and unresolved -  the new resolutions simmering at the back of his mind kept reminding him that this might well be the last time they saw each other, really, if he tried to do things properly and things still did not work out.

The swell of apprehension and uncertainty was broken by relief when Tyb finally caught sight of Elsie not far away. He pushed up from the table, tucking a book under his arm - a feeble excuse, since he'd barely glanced at it - before he wandered in her vague direction, waiting for her to see him. When she did, he shot her a brief smile and a furtive quirk of his eyebrow, an expression that said can we talk?

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Elsie's life was blissfully boring. The library kept her busy, though it didn't occupy all of her time, she let it eat up as much as she possibly could. After falling ill last month because of the stress following the quidditch party, she'd forced herself to get it together, to put on a happy face and just deal with it. For all outward appearances she had absolutely nothing to be upset about. Internally she was a wreck, but she couldn't tell anybody why or how. The only person she could have talked about it to was no longer an option, or so she assumed, considering their lengthy stretch of silence.

They were good at that though, ignoring the fact that they should probably talk about something. Elsie just wasn't sure if this was intentional, if Lucinda had said something or maybe she should just let it go. Nothing made much sense and she hated that almost as much as she  hated not knowing what to do. No amount of research or reading could help her figure out the answer to this puzzle.

So she just had to push through, wait to see if Tyb would make the first move or if she would inevitably have to write to him. For all she thought her bravery was just underlying, she was terrified of finding out this had an outcome she couldn't handle. Those thoughts didn't creep into her subconscious as much as they had in the previous month, but Els still found herself thinking about it randomly every now and then. It happened often enough that she'd just thought she'd seen him at a library table with a book. That had been a rare enough occurrence in school even with her copious amounts of prompting to study, on his own it was near impossible.

Unable to help it, she cast a second glace in that direction and found that she hadn't been hallucinating. With the wind knocked from her, she could only watch him approach in mild shock. By the time she recovered enough to notice his expression, she motioned for him to follow her to a quieter set of stacks. Once there, she fixed him with a helpless, questioning look, torn between holding back tears and flinging herself at him, neither of which would do either of them any favors.  

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MJ always makes her so pretty

Merlin, it was like she’d seen a ghost. Maybe he should have come sooner.

Only, here he was now and he still didn’t know what to say to her. Tybalt followed her, trying to look outwardly casual to the world, like he’d just asked for a librarian’s assistance and that was all, but he was clutching at the book under his arm so hard he wouldn’t be surprised if he left it with a dented cover.

The shelves she’d taken him to were deserted - probably filled of some topic too dull for anyone with a life to care about - but she was still at work and there was still a chance that they would be seen or overheard, so they were still bound by the rules. (The same rules that had bound them up into knots, knots like this one, knots that - now had to be undone and re-tied, differently.)

“Hi,” Tybalt settled for saying, first, with a tight-lipped, sorry smile. He stepped closer, close enough to reach out and squeeze her hand - briefly and subtly, but. Still. “I - had to see you,” he breathed, surveying her as if that would be enough to learn everything he’d missed of the aftermath and the last month. “I would’ve come earlier, but... I didn’t want to - to -” he trailed off with a shrug. Get her into more trouble? Fumble over his words, before he’d thought through everything her cousin had said? And yet here he was, damn it, still fumbling.

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All she could do was smile weakly at his greeting, returning the squeeze of his hand on hers all to quickly before letting go. He looked decidedly still-employed, if that was a thing a person could look like, which was good. She'd been keeping an ear out, knowing Harvey would have likely said something if Tyb had been let go from the team, but hadn't heard anything. So far that was the only reassurance she'd gotten, aside from her conversation with Lucinda earlier in the month that at least her cousin wasn't saying anything to anyone else. It was a small victory in an otherwise hopeless battle she couldn't even begin to fight.

Elsie still had no idea what to say in the situation, countless hours of thinking about it had left her more frustrated than anything else and no closer to a real solution to the problem. "I understand." Neither one of them knew what they were doing, there had to be time to let the dust settle, but they did also need to know what to do next. Part of the reason she'd been unable to come up with some idea of what to do was because she couldn't make a decision on her own. This required the two of them figuring it out together and though the stacks of the library were not the ideal place, what else could they do?

The question of what to say still remained. They lacked the privacy to speak candidly and Elsie still didn't know exactly how to put into words what she was feeling, but she had to find something. "I'm sorry." Was all she could think of to start. Sorry Lucinda had threatened his job, that she'd cornered him after Elsie had left, that everything had gotten ten times more difficult, that she hadn't written, the list when on and on.

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MJ always makes her so pretty

Tybalt sighed and stuffed the book he was holding into a gap on the nearest shelf - only temporarily, but that alone was still probably enough to make Elsie cringe - because he didn't want to accidentally lose hold of it and draw attention to where they were. As soon as he'd put it down, though, his empty-handedness felt clumsy and awkward, and much as he wanted to reach out for her hand again, he couldn't.

Sorry, she said? His face pulled into something like surprise at her apology, honestly perplexed about why she thought she had anything to say sorry about. "Why are you sorry?" It was on form for Elsie, of course, but that didn't mean he was going to blindly accept it. "None of it was your fault," he reasoned out gently. Not at all. "It was mine. And I'm sorry." He had been the one to sneak off after her - if she'd just spent the party alone in the library, nothing would have happened. If he wasn't always the one coaxing her into situations where they could get caught... If he hadn't spent the last few years thoughtlessly risking her reputation at every turn, they wouldn't be here now. This had been a warning, though. A wake up call. He got it, now. And it was most definitely his fault.

"How have things been, at home?" He murmured next, eyeing her carefully. She'd smiled a little, but there were telling lines on her forehead; he knew what anxiousness and worry looked like on her, and - if he were honest - hadn't expected any different. Still, Lucinda Cavanaugh had told him that she wouldn't tell Elsie's mother, and he was praying that she'd kept that promise. Had the two of them talked since? Had Mrs. Cavanaugh related anything he'd said, after Elsie had left the room? Had she had to deal with more lecturing or more wrath?

He hoped not.

Besides, they'd learned their lesson, Tyb thought.

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Elsie was torn between and exasperated sigh and a chuckle when he shoved the book in the entirely wrong place. Instead, she furrowed her brows and tilted her head as if to question his argument without actually doing so. This was so like them it was painful. They were both at fault and both sorry, but that didn't help them to move forward, if that was something they were going to do. "I think we can share responsibility for this." She said it quietly, but in a tone that was meant to express she really didn't want to argue about it. They didn't have too much time here, there was no point in wasting it.

"And I'm specifically sorry Lucinda threatened your job." That had weighed really heavily on Elsie in the aftermath of everything. Waiting for the other shoe to drop had been been terrifying. The very last thing she would have wanted was for this to rebound negatively on quidditch, especially when it was so incredibly unrelated. Thankfully it seemed Lucinda had been satisfied just scaring them into submission and hadn't found the need to follow through on her threats.

At the mention of home, Elsie was brought back to their current predicament and their precious little time to figure it out. "Fine, nothing different." Lucinda's threat of telling her mother was almost as scary, though Elsie would have likely lived with that. It wouldn't have been fun or easy, but she could have survived. Luce had made her point on several levels it seemed, but she hadn't go so far as to make them irrevocably miserable. "Is everything alright with you?" Els hadn't heard anything, but she wasn't exactly in touch with the wild world of quidditch aside from what she heard from Harvey and loosely keeping track of Tyb's team.

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MJ always makes her so pretty

Tyb sighed, a silent admission of fine, okay. Elsie would have felt guilty even if she had had nothing to do with it at all, but at the very least she had heard his owning up to it, and so couldn’t pretend he blamed her. Not even a little.

His face twisted into a wry expression when she mentioned her cousin, and how she’d brought quidditch into it. Of course Elsie hadn’t heard the rest of their conversation - hadn’t felt the whiplash of his career being threatened one minute and the next being offered a drink, hadn’t seen Mrs. Cavanaugh settle into... well, one could not call it softness. Relative calmness, perhaps. Frankly, Tybalt wasn’t sure how to explain any of that conversation even now. Had it been a test? Had he passed it? He hadn’t the faintest idea. Maybe Lucinda had relayed it to Elsie since then, all his confessions and all.

He raised his eyebrows slightly at the fact that nothing had been different with her - though her cousin had resolved not to tell Elsie’s mother, so there was that. As for him, well - “Yes!” Tyb said brightly, managing a grin. “Still playing quidditch, s’far as they’ve told me.” But he wouldn’t be for much longer, he reminded himself, and the grin faltered. He’d have left quidditch already if he were brave. And until things changed there, well -

Things had to change with this. “Except...” he added slowly, and suddenly wondered whether he was brave enough for this.

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Relief washed over her to know that Lucinda had left her threats as well, threats and nothing more. Frankly she'd been terrified, worried herself physically sick over it in the week or so afterward. It had been so bad she'd gone and fainted on Mr. Adlard right here in the library. It might have been avoidable, if she'd been able to pluck up the courage to write to Tyb and find out what had happened after she left. Time had gone on though, and the more she'd thought about it, the less she wanted to know. It was eating at her though, she'd be lying if she said it wasn't.

Unable to figure out what to say next, Elsie watched him carefully as he started a sentence and stopped, leaving her hanging on that one word. She hated that her first reaction was dread. It crept over her, slowly replacing any relief she'd come to feel.

"Except?" She prompted gently, eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly. She reached for the book he'd held, if only to remember to put it away in the proper place- and for something to occupy her hands. Elsie tried to hold herself together, by holding the book in her arms, as if it would do the trick.

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   Tybalt Kirke

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MJ always makes her so pretty

What would he have given for her to help him out a little here, and not leave it all to him to say? She must know what he was edging towards: it was the only real option they had. Or, if not that, the only sensible option - and that was the only acceptable Elsie option, after all.

He watched her pluck the book back off the shelf, cradle it in her arms in front of her, eyes big and blue as ever, and expectant, too. Tyb wanted to say nothing at all. He wished he could shrug it off, snap the sudden tension in the air with a joke, forget anything that needed to be said or done and spin right back into the fantasy world they'd been living in for so long.

"Except, well -" he murmured, wondering what all her silence since the quidditch party had been trying to say, and what she had been thinking through it. It'd be nice if she had a better idea, but. Maybe she was expecting this one. Be nice if she could meet him halfway, though... Tybalt studiously avoided her gaze. "She was right about some things. Your cousin." It would be worse next time. Irrevocably worse. "So we, uh, probably shouldn't do that again, probably shouldn't - see each other."

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   Evelyn Abercrombie

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Elsie hadn't known what to expect, not really. Even for all her book smarts, she wasn't terribly real-world smart, clearly. Of all the things she thought he would say, that was not it, but maybe she should have? It wouldn't have been any easier to handle, she realized, but looking at it now, it was... logical. For once, Tyb got points for that. It wasn't like she hadn't considered it herself over the last few weeks, but it always ended up getting dismissed just as quickly as she thought of it.

It still hurt.

Closing her eyes just for a brief second, Elsie took a deep breath, trying to hold it all together. Her shoulders slumped and she clutched the book in her hands tighter in an effort to ground herself. If she let the emotions overwhelm her now, she'd be sunk. When she looked at him again, she knew she couldn't argue. "Right." Her voice caught and she tried to push it all down. It wasn't as if she had an argument here. She couldn't possibly ask him to choose between quidditch and her, that was ridiculous. He'd worked so hard to be where he was and he deserved it. To have Lucinda threaten to take it all away was certainly eye-opening.

"If that's what you want, that's-." Elsie fumbled for the right word, biting her lip, trying not to open the flood gates. "It's alright." She said finally, for lack of anything better.  

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MJ always makes her so pretty

Her response was flat and almost entirely non-descript, her tone a little tremulous. He’d be able to tell more from her face, he imagined, if only he could bear to look.

Instead, he looked at the aisle of shelves behind her, and down at her hands curled around the book, like he hadn't seen them that way a hundred times before.

“You know it's not what I want,” Tyb protested, chancing a glance upwards, in hope that she wouldn't think he was happy about this. The dull acceptance of her alright was not the answer he’d been looking for, either: he had half-slung his hopes upon Elsie having some smart idea he just hadn't thought of, that she might stand up to him the way she’d stood up for herself that night.

But she didn't, and it was probably for the best that she didn't, because Tybalt knew better than to think he had enough control of his selfishness to not give in instantly. Giving up quidditch, giving up Elsie, both at once - it’d be character-building. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

“Not forever,” he added lamely, “I don’t mean forever, just - until things are different.” Since he did not yet have a strict time plan of when that would be - and if he had, Tybalt could hardly pretend it to call it soon - he wasn’t sure how much he believed himself. Elsie was a patient person, sure. But that patient, for him? It seemed unlikely.

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There was an overwhelming hopelessness pressing down on her and Elsie had no idea what to do. It was miserable really and she hated this feeling. Elsie sighed softly when he protested. It should have made her feel better, but it didn't, the reality of the situation really settling over her. Hugging the book in her hands tighter, Elsie agonized over what to say, but everything she came up with had such finality to it, she couldn't bring herself to loose the words.

Not forever, he said, but she knew better. She didn't doubt him, of course she didn't, she had absolutely no reason to over the course of their relationship. However, Elsie understood the circumstances would cause them to drift. Without having those moments to keep them going, everything would simply slow until it stopped. They couldn't risk it though, they had gotten lucky it was Lucinda who'd walked in on them, even if she went about the whole thing terribly.

"I know," She managed finally, but it was barely more than a whisper. "I don't know what else to do, either." Her tone and the small smile she managed were both resigned, tinged with sadness and she hated that too.  The circumstances were not ideal and there was nothing they could do about it, not now. Just until things were different, but Elsie wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that.

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MJ always makes her so pretty

He swallowed at the glum silence, and then at her words, which were about as glum as the silence. If she didn't know what else to do, then it meant she understood where he was coming from, and Tyb supposed that was good. He certainly wasn't going to be responsible for ruining her public reputation, and that was that.  

He'd risked it enough times before. "We had a good run though, didn't we?" He murmured, forcing a grin, about as close to a joking tone as he could manage. They'd had... probably more than their fair share of luck, over the years. Tybalt only wished all that history felt like it had any weight to it, like it had meant something.

To the outside world, that was. All those times meant so much to him they were a boulder in his chest. It felt like the end of Hogwarts all over again, a future that loomed hazy on the horizon, a sheer precipice without any hint of a landing. Leaving Hogwarts had only been a change though, so this, now, did not have to be an end.

Now that he had managed to look at her, Tybalt was dreading having to look away, because that would mean - he - he didn't know when next he'd see her, at all. He could try and explain what he was going to do - he had already decided, after all - but he was not about to risk Elsie talking him out of it, because he knew she would. "Give me time," he said instead, trying to be reassuring but releasing a hefty sigh all the same, "and I'll figure something out. Promise."

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   Elsie Kirke

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Elsie could feel the tears stinging at the corners of her eyes and so all she could do was nod, a small, sad smile on her lips. She didn't trust her voice anymore, it would catch and break and so would she if she let it. As much as she wished they had another solution, there simply wasn't. Els had the strong feeling he was alluding to using this time to figure things out, until things were different, all he needed was time, but it wasn't an unlimited resource, no matter that she'd wait forever if he asked her to. And she would, she supposed, but she had this overwhelming feeling that it would't amount to anything.

"Just don't," Elsie started quietly, still hardly trusting her voice, unsure of what she wanted to say, exactly. They'd never had and endgame and that had been fine for a while. Now they'd been forced to grow up, to see the reality of the situation and she knew what that would mean for him. If he were going to figure something out, even in time, it meant his quidditch days were over and she wouldn't let him do that. Not now, not for her. "Please don't do anything you're going to regret later."

She didn't want to jump to conclusions, nor was she even sure he'd considered it- except that she knew him. Even if they hadn't discussed it, after Lucinda had all but thrown it back in their faces, they'd both been thinking about it. If they were to ever attempt something official and substantial, things would have to change and that would start with him having to find a more supportive job, but she wanted him to do that on his own time, when he was ready to, not because he had to.

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   Tybalt Kirke

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MJ always makes her so pretty

Christ, he could sense that she was on the verge of tears - but she couldn’t cry, because then he wouldn’t be able to leave her like this. But she knew, she clearly at least had an inkling, of what was going through his mind, her next sentence made that plain. Whether her cousin had said something to her, it had been the likeliest option dictated by logic, or she just knew him well enough to guess, Tyb wasn’t sure, but he looked away uncomfortably.

It was very well and easy for Elsie to say please don’t do it, but... what choice did he have? If he did nothing, he was going to lose her anyway, and how was that an option? “‘Course I won’t,” Tybalt promised, the lie barefaced and cheerful, looking back at Elsie like leaving quidditch was akin to a walk in the park, like he had the faintest idea what he was going to do with himself without it.

Anyway, it was his decision, not Elsie’s, and Elsie had been risking a great deal more than he had all this time already, so it was about time for it to be his turn to sacrifice something. “You know me, I don’t do regret,” he joked, determined to leave this conversation on a bright note, if it was to be their last one for a while.

But even that thought made the false cheer flicker in his eyes, crashing through him like the sky falling in. Glancing over his shoulder first to be certain no one was watching, he stepped forwards and tucked an arm around Elsie to pull her in towards him. He held on for a moment, and then pressed a careful kiss to her cheek and pulled back, murmuring, “Except this, maybe.”

He should go, before he gave her the chance to argue.

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   Elsie Kirke

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Elsie didn't want to doubt him, but she also didn't know that she could handle this. Even if things worked out in the long run, there was no way for her to know he wouldn't come to regret it later and she would be the one to blame. That she knew she couldn't handle. No, his career wouldn't come to and end because of her, not this early. Unfortunately the only way she could think of to stop it was unreasonably harsh.

Feeling her breath catch in her throat when he pulled her in, Elsie closed her eyes, taking it in, as brief as it was. It was all she was going to have for a long while. It took all of her willpower not to let the tears fall when he pulled back; if anybody was going to regret this, it was her. "I meant what I said at Lucinda's, Tyb." She murmured, not quite able to look him in the eye. "I don't," Merlin she sucked at lying. "I'm never going to be cut out for marriage or anything like that. You can't quit quidditch on the hope that someday I might be." She would have, someday, for him, but would have a long time off in the future, if at all after this. He deserved to make the most out of his career and she was going to try her hardest to make sure it happened.

"Maybe this is just it for us." Oh Merlin it ached to even think about it. Her eyes finally flickered to his, but the heartbreak behind them was going to ruin her intentions, so she looked down again. "It was a good run while it lasted." Els managed, echoing his previous sentiments.

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   Tybalt Kirke

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MJ always makes her so pretty