Work Text:
oOo
There was a wide window ledge in the oldest part of the library, hidden in the back of the wide round room behind the towering shelves, that Clef had turned into a wide window seat with the help of several pillows (appropriated from other places), and a length of material that had probably been intended for someone else’s outfit. (Several outfits, if they were Caldina.) The light was warm and soft here, and the air still and hushed.
The memory of this room had lingered strongly in the heart of Cephiro, and it had been so very easy to call it back into place, once the world was stable again. The shelves were mostly empty still, as they gathered together the books locked in trunks and storage gems with any and everything else, pushed into the storerooms and locked tight for safekeeping as the world crumbled. The Clerks should have been there to catalogue and sort as things were flung in, but they had suffered so heavily in the war with Zagato; they were the record-keepers and the secret keepers, and had known the truth of the legend. It had been their burden to keep it safe, but everyone had known it was their task: Zagato wanted them gone before their knowledge could help those who would fulfil Emeraude’s wish. Others had tried to prise the secrets of becoming a Knight, of the location of Eterna, from them; saving the Pillar must have seemed a sure way to gain wealth and status.
And the Clerks… those who had been sworn, who knew the truth, were generally given to thoughtful arts over martial or magical. They were ill-suited to defending themselves, but still so many of them had been unable to stand the long struggle without attempting some form of action. The kind Clef had been bound by his vow to Emeraude not to take, and the kind he knew was useless; his own taking arms against Zagato could never have gone well, but that did not make hiding from the chaos any easier. And in all of that, the last head of the Clerks had brought him the stone holding the lawcodes of Cephiro, the oldest histories, and entrusted it to him; he was better able to defend it, Mehari had said, and she had smiled at him wryly before taking up arms and doing what she could to keep the chaos from harming the people, before Zagato’s minions found her.
(Clef had never let himself ask who had killed her, or any of the others who had fallen. Zagato had claimed many lives, and mostly those under him had threatened instead. But Alcione had killed, and LaFarga…)
(He set the thought aside, again, and went on.)
So many of the Clerks had died, and none of them had given up the truths they were bound to hold. It had left a ruined Guild behind, nearly every Master gone; the new Head of the Guild – a man called Sirion – was struggling to gather them enough to keep track of all the changes happening to Cephiro now, to the Council taking its newly empowered shape. They had no time to reclaim their Library and find the books which should fill the shelves, and so Clef brought any volumes he came across and did what he could, waiting for the day he would hand back what had been entrusted to him.
(And that trust was a point of contention, too. He had carried a burden which should have been theirs, and Sirion was finding it hard to accept. Clef could only hope time would let that tension ease, as he had nothing else left he could offer them, if the return of their records was not enough.)
Clef spread his papers and books out among the pillows and hoped that today would not be the day they chose to reclaim their territory, particularly when he was curled up so informally with the records that lay at the heart of their task. Sirion had looked at them, when Clef came to give them back, and had shaken his head slowly.
“Take them to the Library. They belong there. We… are not ready to take back what once was ours.” We are not yet worthy of that trust, came the undertone, and Clef’s hands had tightened uncertainly on the worn bindings. Then Sirion looked at him, a strangely blank expression in his eyes. “And you will need them to research the changes you are making to the Council and the deep laws of Cephiro.” He said, and that message came across clear – Clef would be getting no help from the battered Guild to do his research.
(Research which was still ongoing, though the Council had been in place for nearly three years; there were still things they had missed buried in the laws of Cephiro, and he had tasked himself with finding them all, whenever he won an afternoon free enough to return to it. The Library had a few more books, but still only a handful of visitors as yet.)
He had to admit to lurking in the library rather frequently. Clef didn’t like working in his office, people were always interrupting him. And they always expected him to be working on what they needed done, right now.
…Maybe he needed to find a second office and not tell anyone about it.
Late afternoon sunlight fell over his lap and danced on the gilding and the metal clasps of the books he held, the old leather covers worn but still richly coloured, deep blues, and greens, and reds. No one raised their voices. No one demanded he teach their child, or not teach someone else’s. No demands that he eradicate all the monsters, weeds, homeless, poor, rich, in Cephiro.
He sighed, when he heard someone walking through the room, but he had no right to chase anyone else out. But of all the people it might have been, it was none of them he might have expected.
They hadn’t been expecting the knights today. Clef blinked at Umi as she walked between the shelves. “Bad day at school. …May I join you?” She asked, quietly.
He nodded, and moved some of the papers away so there was room on the seat. Umi looked tired, grey under the gold of her skin, and there were dark shadows around her eyes. She sat down next to him, close enough that he could feel the warmth down his side, toed her shoes off and curled her legs up beneath herself.
Clef hesitated, but in the end he said nothing and went back to the histories he was reading through, trying to dredge out old laws that they could put into use while this new form of government was scrambling into being. The sunlight was warm on the back of his neck. Umi had a book too, one of the textbooks he’d seen her working through before. It lay open on her lap, the incomprehensible words running across the pages in all the wrong directions, with pencil notes here and there among them. She wasn’t turning the pages quickly; she lingered on each of them, her fingers pressing running repeatedly over the corners.
The cushions he had appropriated were soft, deeply embroidered things; they matched the richly dyed leather of the books in the shelves, blues and greens and wine reds. The late afternoon sun was shafting down across the room through the dust motes in the air, and the entire room was quiet.
Slowly, Umi slid sideways until her arm brushed his, and then she stilled, waiting. Clef kept reading, though his attention was resting on her, now, more than the pages before him. He might have said… something, but the words would not come; Umi was about as easy to handle as his magic, which was to say not at all. The wrong words might do harm he could not repair, and that would be worse than… anything.
When he made no objection, she leaned a little more, curling against him in slow fractions until her head came to rest on his shoulder, and the long trails of her hair spilled down over the books in his lap. He brushed it back, carefully, and kept reading.
The rustling as his hands moved on the old paper was the only sound in the library apart from their breathing. Umi wasn’t pretending to read her text anymore. Her eyes might even have been closed; he couldn’t tell, her face hidden behind the veil of her fringe.
The back of his neck was beginning to feel too warm, but he didn’t move away. Even as the weight against his shoulder grew heavier he only leant further into the cushions, turning a fraction so that Umi’s head was less precariously balanced, and her even, deep breaths blew across his collarbone, which was less ticklish than down the neck of his top.
(And he was glad of his larger form, in one way; he could not have made so convenient a resting place for her before he had changed. But this body wanted to react to that soft heat brushing over his skin, and it took a great amount of concentration to quell it.)
The sun dipped closer to the horizon, until the sky was on fire with it, and he let her sleep until the bell rang for dinner being served below, then reached across somewhat awkwardly and patted her hand until she blinked awake, and pulled back, flushing. “I- um, I-“ She stuttered, then stopped, looking down and biting her lip.
At least the greyness had faded. She looked far more like herself, under the blush. “…Nightmares?” He asked, quietly.
The memory of a sleepless night several years ago lingered between them, and she met his eyes. “Yes.” She said, plainly, and her honesty always startled him. “I dreamt… that we had been too late, that Cephiro had died before we came back, and there was nothing I could do. That you… everyone…” She shrugged, and now when she looked out of the window it wasn’t to avoid him. “I needed to see she was safe, but I had to go to school first. And then I got told off for not paying attention… It was a bad day.”
“But you feel better now?”
She smiled, looking over the scenery. “Yes.” Was all she said, but it was enough.
“Good. Because I’m going down to eat before Ascot comes hunting for me again – he’s getting inconveniently good at tracking spells. Will you go back to Tokyo, or will you join us?”
“Back to Tokyo, but thanks for the offer.” She stood and slipped her shoes on, tugged her clothes back into place with deft fingers and collected her book and bag all in one long elegant motion as he watched. “I promised I’d be home to eat tonight – Hikaru and Fuu will be waiting in the entrance hall, and after I dragged them all the way here… Well, Hikaru wanted to visit Eagle, and Fuu won’t admit anything but she didn’t complain either – anyway, I’ll have to run, but it should be fine. …Thanks, Clef. I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you, I just…”
“It’s fine. You look better for it.” He said, waving a hand. “What are friends for, if not being backrests?”
Umi grinned, and that, finally, was a normal expression on her face. “I don’t know, but Hikaru always growls when I lean on her – I’ll see you soon!”
She darted out of the room and away, back to the others, and Clef smiled all the time he was tidying his books away, ready to come back to.
The Library was quiet, but it wasn’t empty. The books on the shelves stood as a promise of others to come, and the people who would read them, love and use them. Every day this land healed a little more, and every day she grew more and more beautiful to see.
He glanced out of the windows one more time, and then left to rejoin the rest of the Castle.
oOo