Enjolras had picked Addie up from Pagemaster on Friday afternoon. (Yes, in that lime green monstrosity of a vehicle that he still loved to hate.) The entire car ride, Enj had made casual conversation with Addie – the sewing projects he’d been working on at Time & Again, the weirdness going on with Alison, how awful it had been to watch her work until her fingers were raw and practically bleeding –
But Addie only seemed to be partially listening.
Enjolras had never been shy about being confrontational. If anything, he had always been direct to a fault. Since arriving in Dunwich, he had developed a little more tact while addressing more delicate subjects. Right now, unfortunately, he was outright ignoring the elephant in the room.
After they’d reached the Coffee Green and collected their drinks, Enjolras would find a table near the window. Perhaps, some sunlight would help lift Addie’s spirits.
“So.. what inspired you to remodel Pagemaster?”
Addie took to her seat like she had taken to her coffee: indifferently, absentmindedly, wondering if she should've gone back over the wards in the stockroom for a third time. The lull in conversation hadn't helped. At least with Enjolras talking about Alison and the clothing shop, she could nod and hum thoughtfully, and make it seem like she was listening.
Now, she was caught red-handed. "Hm?" The remodel. Right. "Spring cleaning, I suppose." Addie raised her cup of coffee to her lips and blew over the surface, always too eager to let the thing cool on its own. "Doesn't the season make you feel restless?"
Outside the Green's tall windows, the wind blew dead leaves through the street. Not very spring-like at all.
Spring cleaning. Enj wasn’t sure if he believed that. Did it really take days to dust shelves and clear away clutter?
He sipped his own coffee as a form of biting his lip on the matter. He wasn’t here to antagonize Addie Don’t ask about it, Enj.
Enj’s skeptical expression softened into something more relaxed over Addie’s question. Maybe she was ready to have a real conversation instead of.. whatever had been going on.”I’m always restless, Addie.” He paused, then asked, “Is that what’s been going on with you? You feel restless?”
"You are?" Addie arched her brow. "You hide it pretty well." Better than her, clearly. People kept asking how she was doing. Almost like they could sense… something.
Damn her for being surrounded by perceptive types.
Well. She was damned already, whatever Strange had done all those months ago. Clearly Dunwich wouldn't break the streak that as the last few centuries of her life.
"I'm…" She curled her hands around her cup. "Tired, I guess. Of everything." And angry. So, so angry. At everything and everyone around her. At herself, mostly.
He shrugged. “Being with Richie helps.” Which it did. Without Richie, Enjolras was fairly certain that he would have gone mad by now. It wasn’t just the fact that Richie was a fun, exciting person to be around. It was also the fact that Enjolras had never been in a relationship before. It posed a puzzle for him to solve, challenges that he had never been faced with before.
But being with Richie didn’t save him from being restless, even if it was a great distraction.
Enjolras could feel his heart break for Addie over her confession of being tired. It was difficult not to be, he supposed, with as much as the town liked to throw at them. Being stuck within the perimeters of Dunwich certainly didn’t help. In short, Enjolras was fully aware that there was little that could remedy that feeling.
“This place excels in its ability to wear us down. You must want to go home, don’t you?”
"Home?" Addie looked at him like he was crazy. "Home is a god with a hardon for my soul and a man who loves me and doesn't remember my name. I have no home." Not for hundreds of years. No friends, no lovers who'd know her for more than a single night.
"The only thing I have there is the knowledge that I'll survive whatever gets thrown at me." She couldn't die. And pain was only pain, in the end. It came and it went. "But I had to go and let a wizard make a deal with a god on my behalf when I came here… and now I don't even have that."
She leaned back in her seat, glaring at the street outside. "Doesn't it bother you, knowing you could be gone tomorrow? Or Richie?" Or any of them? And there was nothing anyone could do about it.
“All that waits for me at home is death, and yet, I still miss Paris. It fills me with dread whenever it occurs to me that I may never see it again.” He didn’t particularly miss the barricade, but he did miss Cafe Musain. He also missed having a purpose, which he very much had in Paris. There was no social uprising to manage here in Dunwich. Though one could argue that there was a war to fight upon the town itself. A war where there was likely no victory for the Mistakes.
“I don’t fear for myself, but I do fear for you. And Richie, and all of those that I care for. Every time I see an error message, I’m terrified that I’ll recognize the name attached to it. Losing Sabrina was difficult. It was cruel of Dunwich to send her away so soon after finally freeing herself from the sea god. But fretting over such things isn’t productive either, is it?”
But the feeling of being powerless was infuriating. That, and he knew that it wasn’t easy to simply switch off concern. He reached across the table to touch her arm, trying to draw Addie’s attention away from the window and back to him.
He succeeded, though Addie's gaze was flinty as it met his. "Maybe it would've been less cruel if it snatched her away sooner. Save us all from getting caught in the middle." As she had done, suspended in midair in the bookshop for a day, with no memory of the time wasted and no help forthcoming. Nothing but the sensation of drowning, over and over and over again.
She blinked and moved her arm out from under Enjolras's hand. "Fretting and doing nothing is pointless, I agree. It's been a whole year and what have we achieved here? Playing house?" she scoffed. "We're a bunch of lemmings surrounded by cliffs. And the most powerful among us have done fuck-all to change that. Which I guess means maybe they weren't so powerful after all…"
Enj couldn’t argue with that. He’d been drawn in as well, the sea god getting into his head and forcing him to sleepwalk out to the lighthouse and cut his own hand open. Not his favorite Dunwich memory by far.
Enj couldn’t particularly argue with Addie’s second point, either. Magic wasn’t something he understood. Even now, he only begrudgingly admitted it was real because of the countless times it had been shown to him here in Dunwich. Its existence was undeniable. He knew that there were sorcerers in town. Witches who claimed to have great power. But none of them could control Dunwich – it was still very much the other way around.
He leaned closer, asking, “So what do you propose we do, Addie?”
It was a genuine question, delivered with the utmost earnesty. Because if change was a possibility, then he was here for it. He just didn’t really know how to go about it. Overthrowing a monarchy sounded easier than overpowering whatever it was that brought them there in the first place.
Addie shrugged. "Take control." As if it was that easy. No. As if it could be. With the right tools and the right incentives. With the powerful forces that harassed them brought under their thumb. "I've been reading through the books that keep appearing in the restricted section at Pagemaster. Grimoires, occult tomes, and others… Couldn't make sense of them, at first, but I'm getting better.
"And I'm training with some of the witches here." She scoffed and sipped her coffee, now lukewarm instead of piping hot. Well, there was a spell for that, too, wasn't there? Addie ran her hand over the surface of the cup and murmured a few words. The threads of magic that flowed through Dunwich were easy to grasp, harder to bend to her will. But she could be persuasive enough to warm up her coffee.
"The ones who'll have me, anyway." The others could get fucked, as far as she was concerned. "Waiting around for this place to treat us kindly is a pipe dream. And I'm done with dreams."
Enjolras was quiet while he listened. Initially, he debated trying to talk Addie out of her idea. It was dangerous, tampering with that sort of thing. Magic in general was something that Enjolras was opposed to, purely because it lacked a scientific explanation. Anything that could occur with just a simple gesture and pulling invisible strings couldn't be trusted.
Which Addie had just done to warm her coffee.
Enj breathed out a heavy sigh. Maybe he was in the wrong here. Maybe Addie had a point. Taking matters into their own hands was the only way for change to occur. And in order to do that around Dunwich, one had to fight fire with fire.
After a very long pause, Enjolras finally broke his sullen silence. "Do you think.. if there were more of us, it would better our chances of taking control?"
"It can't hurt them, that's for sure." Addie ran a fingertip along the rim of her cup. "Diana and Sabrina are gone, their magic with them. That's two fewer people who can do anything about the threats we face here. What happens when the rest vanish on us? When that box they put Sabrina's sea god into has no one around to keep it locked tight?"
She arched her brow. "I don't know about you, but I'm not going to wait for someone to save me. Not when it's perfectly possible to do it myself." Possible, that was to say, but maybe not entirely safe.
So what? No one had ever accomplished much playing it safe. Enjolras had led a revolution; he'd know that better than most.
It was clear from the look on his face that Enj hated to admit it, but Addie was right. He knew that Sabrina had been a force to be reckoned with. Without her, they were lacking in the magical defense department. The last thing he wanted to feel was helpless in the face of danger, especially if those he cared about were at risk. Enj’s fingers drummed the table.
“Is there some sort of.. beginner’s course for magic?”
He wasn’t even sure if that was how it worked - if anyone could learn that skill, or if one had to be magically inclined in order to pick it up.
Addie cocked her head. "Is there a beginner's course for doing the right thing?" Or revolution? She didn't have to say the quiet part out loud. What she knew of Enjolras's background was enough to help her steer the conversation – and hopefully nudge him across the line between tacit agreement and action.
"I meet with Bryn, sometimes. But mostly I study alone. And I practice." It was why the bookshop closed earlier and earlier, even as the days got longer and longer. "Some of the witches I spoke to would tell you that you need to be chosen, to be special, to belong to their club. Bullshit. I've lived three hundred years without an ounce of magic. Six weeks and I can conjure and summon and cure. If I can do it, anyone can."
Including Enjolras. Maybe especially him.
"Join me sometime." Addie shrugged. "Maybe we can figure it out quicker together."
“Perhaps, it would be beneficial if there were someone you could practice with.”
And by someone, he meant himself and his eyes conveyed as much. Enj was still a touch apprehensive, but mostly because he didn’t fully understand what he was signing up for. But one thing was certain: he was willing to overcome that apprehension in favor of change.
Enj was also some part amused with himself. In his year of living in Dunwich, he had fought tooth and nail to keep magic out of his life. Now here he was, not only willing to learn about it, but willing to wield it. But he was intent on not being useless again - not against a sea god or anything Dunwich brought upon them.
Enjolras’ fingers stilled upon the table. His decision was made. “Why wait? Why not now?”