lookinside (lookinside) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2020-09-26 21:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | #april 2018, ophelia, ophelia x sebastian, sebastian |
Who: Sebastian and Ophelia
Where: The Cemetery
When: Saturday Afternoon, Early April
Status: Complete
As the snow started to melt and spring tried to make an appearance, Sebastian was faced with the cold, hard truth that time was passing and that nothing had changed. The coven had either failed to bring back his mother or they hadn’t even tried. It was unclear to him which, but the result was the same. Brianna McCarthy had been gone long enough that Sebastian knew he should have accepted it by now, and yet he was still looking for a way to change reality. If she was still alive in that hellhole of another world, he wanted to save her. It was probably a sign of a budding savior complex, but he couldn’t let it drop. And that was why he’d dragged Phee out to the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon.
If there was no one alive that knew a spell that could help his mother, maybe there was someone dead. Seeking out Baron was probably a stupid move, but Sebastian had run out of other ideas and this was all he had left. He didn’t know if she was still out there, but if she was, then he thought maybe he’d feel her or… something. He hadn’t fully formulated a plan, but he felt like he’d figure it out once they found her. It was a longshot, but it was better than giving up completely. Sebastian parked the car outside the gate, then paused, anxiety building. This was a bad idea, but it was the only one he had.
It was a bad idea, a stupid dumbass idea, but Phee was there anyway, because she couldn’t let Sebastian do it alone. She’d already tried to talk him out of it, when he brought her the idea, but it hadn’t worked. So there she was in the car, cold dread sitting like a stone in her stomach. There were so many what-ifs, so many ways this could go wrong, but she couldn’t let her brother take this kind of risk by himself. He needed backup, or at least a witness in case he got kidnapped again. She’d packed all she could into a backpack to do some protective spells, trying to be prepared, but Phee really hoped they just found nothing. Why would Baron help them anyway, even if she could?
Once they stopped, she looked over at Sebastian, her expression a bit grim. “Sure you want to try this?” she asked in a murmur. Phee wanted their mother back too, but she’d more or less given up hope that would ever happen. It wasn’t acceptance, really, more like resignation. But if their dad and the whole coven couldn’t get Brianna back, what hope did they have of finding the solution?
“No,” Sebastian said with a mirthless laugh. “But it’s all I can think of at this point. And I don’t feel like I can stop until I’ve tried everything.” His father’s voice rang out in his head, a reminder that they weren’t quitters. This probably wasn’t what he had in mind, but if it worked, then maybe they could actually get somewhere with saving Brianna. If she was still alive. Bash knew how unlikely that was at this point, but she was a witch and hopefully that was working for her. Sebastian turned off the car and hopped out, waiting for Phee to do the same before locking up the car and circling around it to walk towards the gate of the cemetery.
Resigned that this was going to happen one way or another, Phee got out of the car to join him on the walk. As much as she wanted to hone her own magic, she honestly hoped that nothing came of this. She wanted to think that Baron was completely gone, that the coven had banished her spirit to hell or destroyed it or whatever the hell had happened. And if that wasn’t the case? Well, she would do everything she could to keep her brother safe and un-possessed. Phee slipped her bag over her shoulder and tucked her hands in her pockets as they walked through the quiet cemetery. At least it was a nice day, that was something, and they seemed to have the place to themselves. She didn’t try to fill the silence, trying to focus on pulling in energy from the plants around them.
It was weird to step into the cemetery and not fear the spirits within. Ever since he’d been possessed, Sebastian had worried about it, never really getting answers as to how it happened in the first place. Could any ghost possess a person? Or did they have to be an uber powerful witch or a demon? He figured it had to be the latter, otherwise anyone who set foot in a graveyard would be in danger, but Bash hadn’t been to the cemetery any time around when he’d been possessed. He wasn’t even sure this was the place to check now, but if it wasn’t, then he didn’t know where. Baron was most likely gone for good, banished to wherever the coven had sent her. Thinking it about it brought on confusing thoughts of the afterlife and what it meant for them, or for his mom especially. Was her spirit even on this plane? His mind was distracted as they wandered through the graves, looking for one that stood out, or felt right. Bash expected it to be a feeling more than anything. If Baron was there, he was sure that he’d know.
It felt risky to be there, just because it was the Point Pleasant cemetery. She wasn’t terribly worried about being possessed, but that wasn’t the only threat that existed. Maybe it made Phee a pussy or something, but she didn’t feel super confident in her defensive magic capabilities. Lessons with their father had stopped when Brianna disappeared and he seemingly checked out of their lives. She knew a few spells, had written everything she’d learned from Zania down in her book, practiced some ... she just hoped they didn’t run into any trouble. “It’ll probably be in the oldest section,” she murmured to Bash as they looked through rows of graves. She wasn’t terribly familiar with the cemetery layout, but the headstones were getting progressively more weather-worn and the dates were reaching further back. If that was the pattern, Baron had to be toward the very back, right?
Sebastian nodded, his eyes scanning the graves as they walked. “So many of these names look familiar,” he muttered. “I never thought about it, but it’s like the whole town is buried here.” There was probably a section that had their family’s entire line, along with the rest of the six. How many of the graves around them belonged to witches? How many were powerful enough to come back? It made him wish he knew more about their history, but now all his sources of information had run dry. “Does Zania ever talk to you about the history of this town? Or like… how people even learn spells that aren’t passed down to them?” Because that’s how he felt he and Phee were now, witches without anything to inherit. Maybe someday their father would show an interest in them again, but by then he’d probably be gone. How was he supposed to learn anything new then?
Phee also knew there were a lot of magical bloodlines in this cemetery -- she wondered vaguely if that had anything to do with how creepy it always felt. Like maybe all the dead witches imbued the place with some kind of dark power, or made it more attractive to dark things. She glanced at Sebastian when he spoke again and shook her head a little. “Not really, not about the history,” she said. “I haven’t like, asked her though. I bet she knows a lot. There are spell books out there though, besides family grimoires. I guess that’s how some witches have to learn.” She felt a similar sort of pessimism toward them learning more from their father, and it was depressing. Phee just felt lucky to have an in with the Castells. She eyed Bash for a second. “I can talk to her about maybe doing some lessons with both of us, if you want. Her or Nic. Now that things are kinda ... different, at home.”
“It’d be great to get our hands on one,” Bash said of the spell books. He knew there had to be some, but he didn’t know where to look. Maybe it was something Zania could provide. She sold more than tea, didn’t she? He felt a little weird about taking lessons from them after what had happened with Reagan and Caius, but maybe he could come to a better arrangement this time. He didn’t know what he could offer them, certainly nothing like what Phee could do, but he knew they couldn’t teach him for free. “If you don’t mind asking… yeah, I’d like that.” Zania seemed to be knowledgeable, at least. He didn’t know much about Nic. Sebastian stopped and stared at a gravestone, somehow surprised to see the name Baron and know it wasn’t what they were looking for. Of course she wouldn’t be the only Baron in the cemetery, but it also made him realize he didn’t even know her first name. When he saw another, a sinking feeling came over him. “This isn’t going to work,” he muttered.
Phee wasn’t concerned with having some way to pay the Castells back, they could figure that out later. Maybe they would just take pity on the poor McCarthy kids, effectively orphans and never really taught about their abilities before now. No matter what, she hoped they could work something out. She and Sebastian deserved the chance to hone their natural skills. Looking at the ancient-looking gravestones, Phee started to see the problem. She wasn’t sure exactly who they were looking for either. She hadn’t been allowed to be very involved in the fixing of her brother’s possession. She kept walking, squinting at the stones she passed, looking for something that stood out as familiar. “I wonder if we can appeal to our own damn ancestors,” she mused, glancing back at Bash. “We’d probably get more help from them.”
“That was kind of the idea, but you’re probably right. Any of the others might be better options. She was just the only one I thought might be available,” Sebastian said. “I was thinking… she’d wanted to help mom, when that creature attacked her. I’m sure her reasons were selfish, but…” He shrugged, unable to understand the witch that had been living inside his head. She’d had far more access to his thoughts than he’d had of hers. “But you know, Reagan and Caius found me using some of her bones. Or someone’s bones. I assumed they were hers. Now I’m wondering where they got them and if we could do something similar. Not with bones—I don’t wanna dig anything up—but if Mom’s family had a grimoire, shouldn’t we have everything we need to find it?” They didn’t need their ancestor’s blood or bones or whatever. They had their own. “Or,” he said, mind going another direction. “We could try and appeal to grandpa. Think he’d teach us?” He was mostly joking. Mostly.
It was easy for Phee to forget that Baron was technically their ancestor, Phee hated her so much. That had been how she’d been able to possess Bash and everything in the first place, but it didn’t feel like anything that malevolent could be related to their family, at least in Phee’s brain. She had a little ‘duh’ moment at what he said, shaking her head at herself slightly. She paused at one of the weathered headstones to touch some weeds that were trying to climb it, sending them back down into the earth, then glanced back at Bash with a little smile. “I bet he would love to,” she said. “If we could find him.” It seemed like a bad idea to just go poking around randomly in the spirit world, and maybe their grandfather wasn’t reachable at all, but it was better than trying to call for Baron. “I dunno about finding mom’s grimoire though ... we could try, I guess. Would it be crazy if it was just like, in the house?” She huffed a chuckle at that idea. Brianna probably hadn’t even known where it was when she’d gone missing.
"We could hold a seance," Sebastian smiled. It was easy to joke about when he knew it was impossible--they didn't know how to do such a thing and anyone that did was probably smart enough not to tell them how. While Sebastian doubted anyone that close in ancestry would be malevolent enough to do them any harm, he suspected poking around in the spirit world was dangerous business. The chances seemed high that they'd find the opposite of what they were looking for. "If Mom had it, she'd have told us. Or at least told dad. Not that he'd have said shit." He knew James kept his at the office somewhere, but he doubted he'd ever get his hands on it. "Wouldn't surprise me if Mom's was just thrown out, or is sitting on a shelf with cookbooks somewhere obscure."
As curious as she would be to talk to one of their dead ancestors, Phee was not comfortable trying to do such a thing on their own. They’d been burned enough by the spirit world, she thought. “You really think she would have?” she asked Sebastian, arching a meaningful eyebrow. “There’s so much shit they kept from us, I wouldn’t trust either one of them to tell us anything.” Maybe that sounded bitter, but Phee was feeling pretty fucking bitter these days. She was furious at their father for the way he was acting and that he’d pretty much just foisted them onto their grandmother, and a more irrational part of her was angry with her mother for leaving them. Not to mention everything they’d gone through as mother and daughter that would never be resolved now. She moved away a few paces, taking a deeper breath to try and settle those feelings.
As soon as she said it, Bash knew Phee was right. Brianna wouldn’t have shared the book with them. It was more likely that she’d have burned it before they were even born, back when she was sure that their family was cursed. He had a tendency to cling to the good stuff, sure that his mother would have handled this situation vastly different than his father. She wouldn’t have abandoned them, even if she’d been helpless to save their father. But she wouldn’t have shared more magic with them either. Sebastian would’ve expected the chance to learn would’ve died with his father, but it turned out that had happened regardless. “No, you’re right. We’d have a better chance of finding it if some aunt or uncle buried it in the woods somewhere,” he said with a bitter huff. He stopped walking and looked around the cemetery, at all the names on the headstones. Their mother didn’t even have a grave. They didn’t have a body. It was still so hard to accept she was probably dead and that they should move on. A grave would make it real, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for that.
Phee would’ve agreed that Brianna would handled all this differently if she’d been the parent left behind, but she couldn’t be sure that it would’ve been a lot better. Their mom would have been more present than James was, of course, but would she be okay herself? Would she be helping them learn magic? Or would she shut it all down even more and keep them locked up in the house to try and protect them? Phee didn’t know. And now she supposed they would never find out. They were effectively orphaned, and it was all up to them now. Phee was choosing to do whatever the fuck she wanted and be angry. It was easier than truly grieving. Phee reached out to touch some more weeds trying to climb a grave marker, but instead of sinking back into the earth and disappearing like the others had done, they withered and turned black. She frowned a bit as the rot seemed to spread to the grass around it. That wasn’t at all what she’d meant to do. A bad feeling in her stomach, she walked away from it, rubbing her hand on her jeans. “So are we done here?” she asked Bash with a note of false impatience.
“Yeah,” Bash sighed. “Sorry for dragging you out here.” It had been a long shot, but it was still disappointing, even if succeeding was probably dangerous. It just highlighted how little they knew and how incapable they were—he hadn’t even known which grave he was actually seeking out. The only other place he’d thought to look was somewhere in the woods, a place he’d only seen for a few minutes before being possessed again, and that was even less to go on than the cemetery. It was time to start accepting that their mother was gone, but all that did was make him mad all over again. They should have been able to save her. Magic wasn’t worth anything if it couldn’t help the people they cared about.
Phee could hear the defeat in her brother’s voice and immediately felt bad. It was easier to focus on that than her magic doing things she didn’t want it to do anyway. She walked in closer to Sebastian and slipped her arm through his to hug it to her side. Phee briefly rested her head on his shoulder. “Don’t apologize,” she murmured. “I wanted to come with you, and it was worth a look.” It had been a reckless, half-formed idea, but Phee wasn’t going to say that. She understood, she wanted to help their mother too. They just weren’t equipped, and if the coven couldn’t do it ... Phee didn’t know. Outside of trying to make some deal with entities they didn’t understand, they were stuck. “Let’s get milkshakes on the way home,” she suggested. “This bullshit calls for ice cream.”
She was lying through her teeth, but it still made Sebastian feel better. She’d come with him despite her misgivings and he knew as well as she did that successfully finding Baron would likely do more harm than good. Milkshakes wouldn’t make everything better, but they would help. He squeezed her arm back and returned the hug, resting his head on hers for a second. “There’s been so much bullshit lately, I could make myself sick on milkshakes,” he huffed. “But yeah, let’s do that. Milkshakes and fries.” And then an extra work out, but that was just to make up for eating horribly. It might even make him feel better. Working out usually did.
Phee was always going to try to back him up unless he was doing something suicidally dangerous. Her brother was the only one who truly understood what she was going through, and she felt close to him on a different level these days. Trip had been calling more, but it wasn’t the same. Sebastian was there living it every day. They had to have each other’s backs. Phee turned them to start walking back toward the entrance, her arm still through his. Junk food definitely wouldn’t fix it all, but maybe they could grab a brief sense of normalcy for themselves, sitting in Moxie’s and slurping down empty calories. Those moments were more precious than they’d ever been before.