Work Text:
Adaine Abernant was fine.
When she closed her eyes to trance, there were no dragons or gods or lunch ladies with bent and bloodied ladles lurking beyond her lids. She was fine.
As long and she held her breath so it couldn’t catch in her lungs and kept her eyes trained on the crack in the paint in her ceiling and didn’t move so they couldn’t see her and her father was dead and her mother in a forest thousands of miles away and they couldn’t get to her and—
“Adaine?” Aelwyn’s voice launched her from her head and she blinked and she wasn’t looking at the crack anymore and there wasn’t enough air in her lungs and fuck why did she stop looking at the crack why couldn’t get get enough air in her lungs why couldn’t she stop this she was supposed to be fine.
“Adaine, are you okay?” Aelwyn’s voice came again, gentler this time. And she was! Once she found the crack in the ceiling again and remembered how to hold her breath and didn’t move it would all be okay and nothing could get her here and she’d be fine. Please, let her be fine.
Aelwyn’s voice was in her ears again or maybe it was a message or maybe she imagined it and Aelwyn was downstairs or in Leviathan or out on one of her walks. But no. Aelwyn is here at the top of their bunk beds, her brow creased over with worry. And it would have made Adaine spiral more but she wasn’t already spiraling, she wasn’t, so how could it make her spiral more because she wasn’t spiraling she wasn’t spiraling she wasn’t spiraling—
“Addy, you’re not breathing, can you breathe with me?” And Aelwyn was next to her, holding Adaine’s hand so gently to her own chest and Adaine was trying she really was. But every time she tried to breathe it never worked and if she didn’t breathe at least she wasn’t hyperventilating.
“Adaine, dear, I’m going to make my hands cold, okay?” And then Aelwyn was doing something with her hands and oh gods was she going to cast a spell on me? But she didn’t even have time to spiral about that because Aelwyn was grabbing her hands again and gods above why are they so cold?
“Just focus on my hands, okay? Can you feel how cold they are?” The most she could do was nod shakily, doing everything she could to focus on the feeling. Cold. Cold hands. Aelwyn’s hands were cold. They were on her top bunk and Aelwyn’s freezing hands were squeezing her own. She let out a shuddering breath and the next one came easier, the desperate choking feeling starting to abate.
“Another deep breath for me,” Aelwyn whispered, moving Adaine’s hand back to her chest. “Good, good just like that.”
Adaine felt her shoulders slump, the tension bleeding out of her body as her breath finally evened out and exhaustion stepped in to take the crush of anxiety’s place. She was so tired, even keeping herself upright felt like an unfathomable chore. Almost as if her mind had been read, she felt Aelwyn’s arm wrap around her shoulders, pulling her down, guiding her to rest her head over her sister’s heart.
Her eyes closed of their own accord, as she relaxed into her sister’s embrace, feeling Aelwyn’s hands as the card through her hair. Her sister—the sister she should have had for sixteen years. She clutched tighter at Aelwyn’s shirt; her sister’s here. They have forever to keep being sisters.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Aelwyn asked, using her free hand to brush a tear off Adaine’s cheek.
Adaine just shrugged, staying silent for a long moment. “I was just thinking about the letter from the Court of Stars and then mum and then I just—“ she choked on her words, halfway to a sob. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Adaine.” Her voice was strong, steady. The voice of a sister who banished the unicorn in the nightmare forest, the sister who painted nemesis wards on the walks on their room in beautiful glowing blue. “We’ll kill mum and then it’ll be us forever, okay? No more Abernants to stand in your way.”
She didn’t trust herself to respond, but her fists loosened from their vice grip on Aelwyn’s shirt, even if they didn’t release completely. It was like a mantra: her sister was here, they were going to kill their mum, things would be okay. Her sister was here, they were going to kill their mum, things would be okay. Over and over again until she could believe it.
“Do you think you could trance? Things will feel better after you rest, my love.” Even if she knew it was true, she shook her head, even as the urge of rest tugged at her. “I promise I’ll be here, I’ll make sure nothing happens to us.”
And even if she didn’t trance for a long time, she was with her sister; could feel Aelwyn’s abjurative ward humming around them, tucked away at the top of their wizard tower. It was enough.
She was going to be just fine.