Chapter 6
Lesso opens her eyes, and for a second, she’s disoriented. The world swirls in colors, a mess of sunlight and shadows. She blinks, blearily, and turns around to gauge her surroundings.
They’re in the Schoolmaster’s office, which is where Lesso thinks they had stepped into the portal when they entered the quest. It’s been a long time, and the details of their departure are fuzzy. The world focuses itself, and she lets herself take in the scenery for a moment.
It is odd being back here. The office is familiar, but familiar in the way an old photograph is, a memory that seems almost true but fuzzy in the details and around the corners. And she’s forgotten little details: the way the sun streams in through the windows, the way the Storian’s book is laid on the counter just under its own spotlight, the sounds of pen scratching against paper.
Which reminds her.
“Fucking pen,” she murmurs, intending to go over and do something: snap it in half, break it, rip the book its working on. She stands up, and everything goes white for a split second.
She falls back down, gasping.
Something else she’d forgotten: her leg. When she tries to stand up, a spark of pain so bright it is like a flash of lightning shoots up her body, and Storian above, that is so familiar yet foreign too. One breath, two breaths, and the pain is gone as though it never appeared in the first place. It was always like this, the pain. Here in a flash, gone in the next. Sometimes, it strikes so hard the few seconds are nearly a century. Others, it merely aches. Each day is spinning a twisted lottery.
She pushes herself up again, gingerly testing her weight on her leg, grabbing the cane that lies next to her. Another spark of pain shoots up her entire body, and she hisses, sweat already beading on her hairline. Today isn’t going to be a good day then.
She lets herself stand for a second, barely having time to get out a prayer before the pain disappears again. How did she ever get used to this?
She sucks in a sharp breath as she tries to take a step, and her leg burns as though she’s being burned. It’s familiar, the sensation of burning, as though someone is pressing a hair iron on above her knee. Suddenly she just wants to sit down and weep. She’d gotten used to being able to run and walk and jump, and now? Having it taken away from her? It’s nearly worse than losing it the first time. This time, she had known her time was limited, and yet her weak psyche had still allowed herself to get used to it, and now she’s paying for her lack of diligence.
Oh, the Storian is cruel. So, so cruel.
Something shuffles next to her, shaking her out of the overwhelming wish to just close her eyes and never wake up again. She turns, grimacing again as a fresh wave of pain overtakes her when she puts her weight on her leg.
“Princess?”
Sitting up, shaking her head of golden curls carefully, her eyes still glazed over, is Dovey. Not the Magic Mirror. Her profile is sketched by the kiss of sunlight from the windows behind her, and this, slowly looking more lucid: this is Clarissa Dovey, in her full glory.
Lesso’s eyes trail down of their own accord, and she snaps them back up quickly when she realizes. She’d almost forgotten how Dovey looked with a body instead of a ring of silver surrounding her face. In the afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows, Dovey is set on fire, all of her touched, encased in gold.
“Are you–” Unconsciously, Lesso had tried to take a step to go to her, to step a bit closer to see Dovey’s face, suddenly unused to the way that she couldn’t see directly what Dovey is feeling as golden curls hang low and obscure Dovey’s face. She winces, but bites back the hiss that threatens to pass through her lips. She stops short, hoping Dovey didn’t see her move, and holds her breath while the stab of pain dulls.
Unfortunately, Dovey notices.
“Lesso?” The former Good dean is standing, her steps uncertain and shaky as she crosses to where Lesso stands. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine–” Dovey drops.
She bounces back after a moment, her face flushing with embarrassment. Lesso marvels at that: the way the pink of her cheeks shines through her tan, the way Dovey is covered with colors now, not just the monochrome silver of the mirror. The red tint is painted across defined cheekbones, and it suits Dovey, the color. The gray of silver had never suited Dovey, Lesso thinks distractedly. Dovey has always been a rainbow of colors made to sparkle brilliantly in the sun.
“Sorry, I’m just- Wow. Legs.” Dovey says, with a small, high laugh conveying her mortification.
Lesso raises an eyebrow and clears her throat, hoping her voice is steady. “Yes, princess. Legs. Congrats on getting them back.” The last word shakes, just a little, but Lesso cuts herself some slack. Dovey will notice, she doesn’t doubt it, the same way she noticed the faint red flush on Dovey’s cheeks. She wonders if she should feel embarrassed to be so vulnerable in front of her nemesis, but:
“Are you okay?” Dovey presses again, staring up concernedly into Lesso’s face. “You’re very pale.”
Lesso manages a tight smile. “Fine.” She clutches her cane tighter as she subconsciously shifts and a faded sensation of pain clutches her leg. “Were you always so short, princess?”
In a way, she seems to slip back into her routine almost immediately. It’s not that hard, she finds, to slip on the mask she’s constructed over the years to hide the pain she is always in, to nearly be able to convince herself that she doesn’t hurt. She nearly wants to laugh at that: real world, not quest world, and yet here in real world is where she has to conjure up fake stoicism to hide all of the million expressions that she can’t show.
“Don’t change the subject.” Dovey’s eyes flicker down to her cane, and Lesso forcedly loosens her grip on the silver head. “Do you want to sit down?”
“I- ah,” Lesso says, deciding that it might be for the best if she sits down. The pain is making her vision darken around the corners, and fainting is certainly very unbecoming for a newly returned Dean for Evil. The pain disappears when she eases herself back down on the cushions, the minute her weight leaves her leg, and Lesso wants to roll her eyes at it. Dovey watches her carefully, and at times seems to want to reach out and assist her. In the end, though, Lesso sits down just fine.
“Stop fretting, princess,” Lesso says, praying her own coloring returns to normal soon. She can’t tell if she’s pale since Dovey’s face no longer reflects hers, but she would place good money on the fact that even if she isn’t pale, Dovey will see the sweat beading on her hairline. “I’m fine.”
Dovey ignores her. The silence that swallows them isn’t uncomfortable, and the crackle of the fireplace bathes the silence in a feeling of warmth. It is promising, though, and Lesso prepares herself for the questions she knows Dovey will want to ask.
“Is that why you ran so much?” Dovey asks, quiet, after a moment. “At Snow White’s castle.”
Lesso sighs and looks into the fireplace. She can’t seem to find a way to avoid this question. Maybe it’s because of the pain that’s making her head spin, maybe it is because this close, Dovey smells like lavender, flowers blooming after a rainstorm. She presses a finger to her knee, hoping the pain will staunch the thoughts about purple flowers running rampant in her mind. She winces.
“Never mind that,” Dovey says quickly and kneels down before Lesso. “Can I?” Her fingers hover over Lesso’s leg, and even though Lesso should say no, should be getting up and telling Dovey to scram, while biting back the pain and pretending she’s fine, because that is what she does best, after all, she doesn’t.
Maybe it’s because of the way Dovey smells. Mirrors don’t smell, but Dovey smells like sunshine on a lavender field, and it’s making Lesso’s head spin. Or maybe that’s the pain. Either way, Lesso just leans her head back and nods once, thinking maybe Dovey won’t see the quick nod anyway.
She can feel Dovey’s nimble fingers rolling up her trouser leg, and she closes her eyes, waiting for the moment the cool air hits her knee and Dovey realizes what she is, the monstrous thing Rafal carved out of her. She strains her ears and listens.
Cool air hits her knee, and nothing happens.
Nothing. Dovey’s breath doesn’t hitch, her fingers don’t slow, and for all Lesso can tell from the way she’s pressed up against the sofa Lesso is leaning on, her body doesn’t stiffen.
“Does ice help?” Dovey says, and Lesso strains to hear something, anything in Dovey’s voice. Pity, sympathy, anything.
Instead, she hears an unfaltering coolness, and when she lifts her head back up to meet Dovey’s eyes, it is all she sees in Dovey’s eyes as well.
Chocolate dipped in honey; she remembers describing Dovey’s eyes to Snow White. She was right, but not entirely so. There are other tones in Dovey’s eyes, tones that Lesso can’t even begin to describe, notes of other flavors that aren’t nearly as sweet and simple.
“No.” Lesso shakes her head, daring a glance at her knee. It hasn't changed. It is still red, covered in a gnarly scar that seems almost like a snake is curling over it, guarding it jealously. The pain pulses, but her knee, mangled though it is, looks strangely peaceful.
Lesso looks up into Dovey’s eyes, just quick enough to catch the glimpse of something that disappears under a mask of composure as soon as Dovey’s eyes meet Lesso’s. “Now you know all of my secrets, princess,” Lesso says, attempting to sound light. “I suppose I’ll have to murder you.” She winces a second too late, the words reminding her of the temptation, so great, like candy dangled in front of an infant, to pick Dovey up and smash her to pieces, just so Evil can finally, finally win.
Dovey’s fingers ghost over Lesso’s knee, as though she wants to touch but doesn’t know how to. “I-” Dovey shakes her head, her golden curls bouncing around. In spite of the pain, Lesso has to admit that Dovey draped in gold is truly a sight to behold. It’s such a change from the silver she was as a mirror. “Will you tell me how to help?”
“There’s not much to do but get used to it,” Lesso shrugs, laying her head back against the pillows. She feels a shift somewhere, then feels the light coolness of Dovey’s Good magic, working against the wound.
She chuckles without lifting her head. “That won’t work, princess. This is blood magic. Neither your magic nor mine will heal it.”
“Does it help a little, at least?” Dovey asks, and a crack in her voice lets Lesso hear a sliver of desperation. It confuses Lesso; they’re no longer stuck in a foreign world on a quest together. Why does Dovey care about whether or not she hurts?
Still, Lesso says, even though it doesn’t, “Yes.”
They’re quiet for a moment, Dovey working her magic gently around the wound, with practiced precision but also a cautiousness that tells Lesso Dovey’s magic is nearly as dusty as her walking abilities. Still, Lesso doesn’t stop her. What’s the worst that could happen?
“Will you tell me how you got this?” Dovey interrupts the silence, her tone deep but quiet. There is no demand behind the question; somehow, Lesso knows that she could make a joke, deflect, and Dovey would think nothing of it, wouldn’t press.
But the truth can be a burden sometimes, especially when it is hidden in lies and pain. Lesso bore her burden alone for a very long time, for even longer than she’s known Dovey. And suddenly, selfishly, Lesso wants to relieve herself of the burden.
“It’s a long story,” she warns, letting Dovey have the chance to leave, to rescind her kindness or her pity, if that is all it is.
“I’m here.” Dovey says simply, and her fingers continue to brush over the raised skin on Lesso’s knee.
“Didn’t you hear some of it from Sophie’s lips already?” She remembers the feeling of gratification that had nearly overwhelmed her when Dovey had stepped out from behind the bookshelf and rather than question Lesso if any of what Sophie said was true about Gavaldon, about Rafal, Dovey had just stepped right up next to Lesso without a single glance her way. She hadn’t felt safer, not exactly, not in front of the blood red magic curling around Sophie’s finger like smoke, but she had felt calmer.
“I’d rather hear it from yours.”
Lesso takes a deep breath. It isn’t a long story, perhaps, in the literal sense. But it is long, nonetheless, to her.
“Rafal believed that Evil’s True Love had to be full of pain and hurt.” She begins, thinking she’ll at least give Rafal some context. “And he had high expectations for his protegee. So, when I failed, spectacularly, I might add, he decided to try out his newfound skills on me.”
Isn’t it odd, the way her story lasted for years, the way her story felt like she lived it for millennia, and yet she tells it all in less than five sentences?
She gestures at her knee blindly. “Hence, blood magic scar. It won’t go away, princess. And it won’t change. It’ll always hurt.”
Dovey is quiet.
“That wasn’t a long story,” she says, finally, just as Lesso is beginning to wonder if even the three sentences about Rafal were enough to scare her off.
“It felt like forever.” Lesso informs her bluntly, and Dovey’s fingers pause for a nearly imperceptible second before they continue their path around Lesso’s knee.
“So,” Dovey says, her voice almost a whisper. “Is there any way I can help at all?”
Lesso sits up and looks at her. In the firelight, Dovey’s eyes are red-rimmed, and whether they are crying for Lesso or for the girl she was, Lesso doesn’t know. But she sees the way Dovey’s fingers float over her scar, and Lesso knows her touch would be gentle, tender, if she let her touch it. Dovey is so close, pressed up against Lesso’s leg as she murmurs incantations, and Lesso knows Dovey isn’t just asking about the scar.
The thought is still terrifying, after all these years. Somewhere along the way, she really, truly, got used to being seen as whole in Dovey’s eyes. Her scar, lying there between them, is a rude awakening. Should be a rude awakening to Lesso, if not to Dovey.
This is reality. This is not the quest the Storian sent them on. This is real. This is their lives.
Lesso takes a deep breath to steady herself.
“No.” She tugs her pant leg down, and before she can grunt in pain, stands. It feels like she yanks her leg out of Dovey’s hands, even though she never touched it. There are spots of darkness in her vision as Lesso forcibly sets her leg down on the floor and retrieves her cane, but she ignores them, remembering at least how to do that. “Bilious needs a good beating, I’m sure.” She throws, an explanation for her sudden change in demeanor, and she knows it is not enough but it is all she can give right now.
She strides to the Schoolmaster’s office door, remembering as she walks which positions hurt the least and which ones make her nearly faint from pain, and throws the door open.
Her resolve fails only once, when she turns back to look, and Dovey is still kneeled, on the floor, frozen in her position.
The image nearly makes Lesso’s resolve fail again, and she flees before it can. She had a man to murder and a job to take back, even if it is a weak excuse, and she intends to do that.
“Bilious!” Lesso bellows as she storms into her rooms. He doesn’t answer, and one look around her chambers shows that he hasn’t been in there. The cleaning wolves, too, have done a splendid job of maintaining her things in their original state. There isn’t any more dust covering her things than when she left.
She raises an eyebrow. The chances of him not jumping at the first chance to take over her rooms as dean? Slim. Very, very slim. She wonders what game he’s playing at this time. Carefully, she runs a finger across her desk, and nothing pops out to kill her. Perhaps Bilious has mellowed with time, she thinks, and smothers a chuckle. She’s feeling almost hysterical, the added pain and knowledge of being back here making the room a little brighter than usual.
She turns on her heels, grips her cane just a little harder, willing herself to toughen up. For all that is Evil, she’s dealt with this pain for long enough that it shouldn’t bother her anymore. It simply should not, and she’s pissed at the way her body seems to have forgotten that.
She charges down to Bilious’ rooms, ignoring the pain the way she does best, and pushes in without announcing herself. The man is there, frowning as he looks down at something, and he jumps at her entrance. In his defense, though, he hid his jump very well, so that even Lesso almost didn’t notice it.
“Bilious.” Lesso states, calmly. “Where are the student registers?”
He frowns at her. “I thought you were going on your quest.”
“I want the student registers and—” Lesso cuts herself off. Her brain backtracks. “What did you say?”
“I said,” Bilious says, standing up and raising an eyebrow at her. “I thought you were going on a quest or something.”
Lesso stares at him. He looks back at her, defensive but even, and she reads no deception in his eyes. Fuck. She turns on her heel and heads out, leaving Bilious in her wake, and heads straight back up to the Schoolmaster’s tower.
Dovey isn’t there when she gets back, but the Storian is, and she is very, very close to ripping the stupid pen out of the air the way one of the Readers did and snapping it in half. She doesn’t.
Instead, she growls down at it, and listens as the Storian confirms what she already knew: “Lady Lesso storms back into the Schoolmaster’s tower after realizing that her time spent away in her quest was merely hours, if not minutes, in her world. She—”
“Fuck.” She whispers, again, and turns out once again. All of this movement is making her head nearly spin with pain, but she grits her teeth and sticks it out. It’s not impossible; she’s done all of this before, lived with this pain before, and she’ll be fucking Good before she can’t do it again. The trip up to Dovey’s room, though, is slow, and if she barks at more than one fairy on her way there, she blames the fairies for getting in her way.
She knocks.
“Who is it?” Dovey’s voice, chirpy the way she is known for, answers her, before the door opens and Dovey is standing in front of her, a smile plastered on her face. The smile flickers when she sees Lesso, but she recovers before Lesso can really be sure whether or not it was just a trick of the light.
“Lesso,” Dovey’s voice is cheerful, certainly, but there’s an undertone of something darker about the way she says Lesso’s name.
“Hey princess,” Lesso supplies and grins crookedly at her. “You going to let me in or something?”
“I thought you had to go beat up Professor Manley.”
Lesso shrugs. “Guess what? Turns out I won’t have to do that anymore.”
Dovey narrows her eyes at her, and even though this isn’t the right time to be distracted by this, Lesso still doesn’t catch what Dovey says.
“What?”
Dovey’s glance at her has lost all of the former darkness and is now instead, just humorous. “I said, do you want to come in?”
Lesso goes in.
Dovey takes the news that they’ve been gone for barely a day well, better than Lesso, at least. She just stares down at the table between them woodenly, as though she’s been frozen. “So,” she says, finally, just when Lesso is about to start worrying about her, “All of it was just…”
“I know.”
Lesso thinks about the way Snow White grew, the way she went from being a frail sprout, shivering in the wind, to a soaring eagle commanding the winds, the way Edmund would disregard all propriety and play pranks on her, the way even the cook was kind to her, and she detests the Storian more than ever. Nearly two decades of their lives, of laughter and tears, joy and pain, and it was all for less than a day in their world.
Storian above, they didn’t even get to say goodbye to Snow White. She thinks about the young woman waking up, not seeing either of them at the breakfast table, then going to their rooms and finding… Finding what? Nothing, or dead bodies manufactured by the Storian to look like them?
She’s suddenly viciously grateful that they had that conversation about Dovey and Lesso leaving a few years back. At least that way, Snow White will know she wasn’t abandoned, will know that Lesso and Dovey would never just leave her.
“Storian…” Dovey rubs her eyes. “And Snow White? Belle? I—"
“She knew we were leaving.” Lesso tries and fails to believe that that is enough. She is no stranger to Death. They know each other well enough by now, with Lesso courting it year after year as she sends out raven after raven telling parents about dead children. But even then, each time Death knocks on her door, her insides are doused with ice water. And none of her students were Snow White. None of her students ever combed her hair, slept in her bed, loved her the way each glance Snow White sent her told her about. “At least she knew.”
“Belle didn’t,” Dovey counters quietly, “Edmund didn’t.”
“Princess…”
“Don’t,” Dovey says, breathless as though something monumental has been sucked out of her. She isn’t as familiar with Death, but she has known it in passing as well. Still, Lesso can’t help but wonder if Dovey is about to have a panic attack, and in a flash she is up and next to Dovey on the loveseat. Pain bites at her leg, and she ignores it.
“It’s okay, princess. Breathe.”
Dovey shakes her head. “I’m fine.” She finally looks at Lesso, her eyes dark. “They’re all going to be okay. I know that.”
Lesso searches her eyes, sees the way Dovey isn’t comforting herself either, and bites back a snort.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Lesso says, chortling now. “It’s just…” She trails off as another wave of hysteria overtakes her. “We’re probably the only people to ever be able to talk about their death while being alive,” she manages, finally, and bends over with laughter. She doesn’t know what she finds funny, but the laughter pours out of her like water out of a spring, and it must be better than tears, right?
Dovey watches her, not joining in, and before Lesso knows it, Dovey’s wrapped her arms around her and Lesso is enclosed in the smell of lavender and Dovey. She thinks about trying to get out of Dovey’s embrace, because the mantra she established doesn’t hold true now. This isn’t quest world anymore, and Dovey is the nemesis she should have destroyed. But she feels Dovey’s fingers trace patterns on her back, and Lesso hasn’t cried since the time Rafal whipped her so hard her back was in tatters for months. But tears come, leaving her the same way the laughter rips itself out of her, and Dovey doesn’t say anything at all.
It feels weird, standing behind the stage, waiting for all the students to line up on the sides. It feels like a century has passed since she’s done this, and in a way, a century has passed.
She looks to her side. Dovey is chewing her lip, though now her lip is crimson colored instead of glass, and Lesso cannot see herself reflected in Dovey’s face. It is still odd to see Dovey up and around, in her heels, with a body.
Lesso’s eyes trail down, and snap back up because she realizes, once again, that Dovey has a body now.
“Deep breath, deep breath,” Dovey is chanting to herself, quietly and quickly, so quickly Lesso is worried for a moment. Hesitantly, she lifts a hand and lays it gently on Dovey’s shoulder. She feels the way Dovey flinches, and she squeezes gently once before letting go.
“We’ve done this a million times.”
“I know.”
“You’re breathing like you’re running a marathon, princess, are you sure you know?”
Dovey takes a deep breath and rolls her eyes at Lesso. “Thank you so much for your words of reassurance, I feel so much better now.”
“I try to be of service.” Lesso pulls her hand back and turns to face the crowd, straightening her shoulders. “Well, grace and beauty first.”
Dovey nods. After an expectant second, though, Dovey doesn’t move, and Lesso turns to her with her eyebrow raised.
“Grace,” Dovey gestures at the way Lesso is sitting, “and beauty,” Dovey says, letting her eyes trace Lesso’s face. “I could hardly think of a better way to describe you.”
Blushing fiercely, Lesso whispers, “If you wanted me to go first, you could’ve just said.”
She stands before she catches Dovey’s reply, and yells, “SILENCE!” The room falls so quiet you could hear a pin drop, and Lesso smiles, a self-satisfied smirk. She’s still got it.
“To those of you who have re-enrolled, welcome back, you little devils,” She begins. “To those of you who are new, I am Lady Lesso, former Dean of the School for Evil. Beginning this year, though, I am now your co-Schoolmaster.”
This isn’t a sentence she says lightly. After they announced that, surprise surprise, the Storian took them away for barely a day for their quest, there had been grumbling on both sides of the table when it came to deciding who was going to be the new Schoolmaster. The former Good teachers complained that Lesso had betrayed them, the former Evil professors snarked that Dovey was too soft for any of their students, and in the end it was Anemone who stood up and said, annoyed and dismissive, “Why can’t they just be co-Schoolmasters, for Storian’s sake?”
Dovey steps forward, and they’re close enough that they’re nearly pressing each other. It’s comforting, this closeness. This is familiar, something that they’ve always had, a disregard for personal space in public, and Lesso sinks into the routine of it. If they stand a little closer this year than usual, no one notices.
“And I am Professor Dovey, former dean for the School of Good and current co-Schoolmaster. We know you have a lot of questions about how this year will go. We’ll answer them in time.”
“Normally, at this point,” Lesso carries on easily, “We would have a display of talents from the winning school of last year. But in acknowledgment of the changes that have been to this school since then, this year, we have forfeited that tradition in favor of creating a new one.”
“Former Evers,” Dovey calls, and the students, who though dressed in the same uniform as the students across from them, are all on the right of Dovey and clearly Evers, stand at attention.
“Former Nevers,” Lesso says, and the students with hunchbacks and stinkeyes rise to meet her.
“If you sit in the second or fourth row, please stand and move to the other side of the auditorium,” Dovey carries on. There is a rumble of discontent, but Dovey continues, undeterred. “From now on, students, we shall not be split by the binary belief of pure Good or pure Evil in this world.”
“Future villains and heroes,” Lesso says, above the murmurs and the annoyed grumbling, “You have been selected to change the world. Whether you do that for Good or for Evil will no longer be because of a title given to you upon your entrance into this school.”
“What makes Good and what makes Evil are not the titles that we clung to once,” Dovey continues, “But the actions that we take, and the words that we speak. The world of story needs both, but from this point onward, what you become will be your own making.”
“Now,” Lesso smirks. “MOVE IT!”
Her shout works wonders, and even the reluctant students move quickly. Lesso chances a smirk at Dovey, and Dovey rolls her eyes right back at her. The students arrange themselves in rows quickly enough, and even though their expressions spell identical expressions of disgust, they nevertheless aren’t split as cleanly down the middle anymore.
“So,” Lesso rubs her hands together, not flinching at the spark of pain that shoots up her leg when she lifts her cane up and puts weight on it. “Who has questions?”
The first week is difficult, tumultuous, and Lesso has no time at all to consider the consequences of her return. She has curriculums to fight over, textbooks to correct, and the few, fleeting moments she manages to capture with Dovey are confined to staff meetings that end up with both of them screaming at one another and Lesso’s hair just slightly more insane than usual.
“That is fucking bullshit,” Lesso spits out, ignoring the way Dovey recoils at the language. She taps her silver coated nails against the table, deciding not to stand up in the same instant. “You can’t seriously be thinking about making a History of Beauty class. Do you even agree with that, beauty teacher?” The second question is addressed at Anemone, who, like the rest of the staff, witnesses their brawls silently.
“History, not beauty,” Dovey bites back before Anemone can respond. “Think of it like art class.”
“What the fuck is the point of art class?” She wants to rip her hair out at the roots. “What are the villains supposed to do, paint their enemies to death?”
“Art is what we create, Lesso! Every single story, every single fairytale, that is art! How can you claim art isn’t important?” Dovey shoots back, sparks flying from her eyes. The other teachers watch warily as Dovey rises from her seat, gesturing wildly around the room. “We are the embodiment of art!”
“If I may,” one of the Good, former Good, Lesso corrects herself in her mind, injects, “I think–”
Lesso slams her cane into the floor, and the teacher flinches. “No. We’re here to combine our curriculums. History of Beauty is undoubtedly a class that is entirely created for the heroes.”
“Aesthetics are important to a good villain, though,” Bilious says, quietly. “For scaring the shit out of their nemeses.”
“What if we created another class and made both of these classes electives? Something like History of Poisons,” Anemone adds on, the other teachers nodding along with them.
In spite of herself, Lesso thinks it’s a good idea. And from the way Dovey is sitting down as well, she can tell that Dovey agrees as well. “Fine,” she bites out, still bitter. “Since it was your idea, though, beauty teacher, you and Bilious can figure that shit out on your own.”
Anemone shares a look with Bilious, but neither of them seem to be particularly ready to try her, so they agree. Lesso stands, biting back a grunt, and is about to dismiss the meeting before she catches Dovey’s eyes, and knows Dovey wants her to stay just a little longer. So she sighs again, sits back down, and lets Dovey dismiss the teachers.
“What?” She asks, the minutes the last of the teachers file out of the room.
Dovey waves her hand, her finger glowing before the doors slam shut, and Lesso feels the low hum of a silencing spell on the walls settle in her bones. It makes her sit up, just a little straighter. Dovey wouldn’t be looking for privacy unless it was something related to their quest. “What?” She repeats, less hostile this time.
“You need to stop,” Dovey informs her bluntly, sitting down after she’s sure her spell worked. She meets her eyes, and from the ire in brown irises Lesso can tell this is something Dovey has been waiting to tell her for a long time. “You’re being unreasonable, rash, and we need to work together right now. We need to present a united front.”
“Or,” Lesso growls back. “Or you could stop thinking about things only from your goody-two-shoes perspective and listen to the rest of us for once. You realize you’re teaching future villains as well right now, right?”
“Is it because of your knee?” Dovey asks, abruptly.
“What?”
“Is it because of your knee that you’re so ready to blow a fuse at everyone these days?” Dovey repeats, looking her dead in the eyes. “I’ve heard about how many students you’ve sent to the Doom Room, Lesso, for the smallest infractions. Beatrix told me she was sent to the Doom Room for refusing to wear pants.”
“First of all,” Lesso rolls her eyes hard at the idea of the former Queen Bee of the Evers going to Dovey to snitch, “Petticoats aren’t exactly the best dueling outfits. And she wouldn’t change, so she had to learn a lesson. Secondly, my knee is fucking fine. I’m fucking fine. I don’t need you worrying about me.” Lesso doesn’t bother trying to soften her voice. She hates the idea of Dovey thinking of her as so weak as to succumb to a little pain, and if it wasn’t Dovey sitting in front of her right now, she’d be walking away or attacking right now.
“I know you don’t,” Dovey replies, evenly. “But there are other ways to get students to behave that don’t involve torture.”
“What torture?” Lesso snorts. “I literally just made her take off her makeup and walk around all day without it.”
“It was torture to her, and you know it.” Dovey gives her a look. “Don’t even try to pretend like you don’t.” She ignores Lesso’s protests and continues without missing a beat. “Is it because today is Snow White’s birthday?”
Lesso stares at her, shocked. She doesn’t know why, but she’s never thought of Dovey as direct. Dovey is subtle, tries her best to be comforting and nice, and while being nice doesn’t necessitate indirectness, it often results in it. So to hear Dovey address this day, today, so boldly, “I doubt it.”
“I know you miss her,” Dovey continues, seemingly intent on being as blunt as possible. “I miss her.” Her voice softens then, but she carries on, her voice growing stronger with each word. “But we’re here now. We need to focus on the students, and you fighting me about everything isn’t helping us.”
Lesso slumps, unconsciously. “I know.” She runs an irritable hand across her eyes. “I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry.”
“Hey,” Dovey’s hand reaches out, covering hers. In the week since school started, that has been how they communicate, with quick touches and caresses where there is no time for communication or reminiscing. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Thank fucking Storian.”
“Come by my rooms?” Lesso raises an eyebrow, about to make some sort of insinuation, and Dovey cuts her off with a knowing look. “I miss being able to talk to you all the time.”
Lesso blinks. Warning bells begin to chime in her mind, screaming at her to run away, and the devil on her shoulder who speaks in eerily familiar tones tells her that she doesn’t deserve this, that she’s broken and whatever friendship Dovey is trying to extend to her isn’t hers to keep. But the cadences of the words are an irritation now, an unwelcome reminder of the times she played lieutenant to a man who tried his damn best to ruin her.
“Finally discovered I’m your nemesis and decided to poison me, princess?” She throws it out there casually, wondering if Dovey knows more that she has let on, and receives her answer when Dovey doesn’t so much as flinch at the information.
“No. That’s more your style. I’d probably try to nice you to death.”
Lesso laughs out loud for the first time since the school year started, and it feels good. “Never let anyone tell you you aren’t self aware, little dove.”
Lesso brushes her fingers against the spines of the old books, and watches in disdain as the Storian continues to weave its words into the page. “Why are we here, princess?” She asks, her tone bored.
“The Storian needs time to finish its stories,” Dovey says, distracted as she watches the pen as well. She’s wearing a rose-pink gown today, and in the sunlight she looks as though she is blooming from the very wooden planks underneath them. The diadem set in her hair is gold, small, and much less pronounced than it would have been had Dovey chosen this outfit before they went on their quest. Lesso looks down at her platform boots, and concedes that they have both certainly learned some things from their quest. She shudders at the thought of trying to fit her foot back into the high-heeled boots she used to favor, and wonders why she used to flay herself alive with each step every day. “And our story should be finished today.”
“And you know that because…?”
“It was in the letter the Storian gave us sending us on the quest,” to her credit, Dovey doesn’t give Lesso a look that she probably would deserve for not reading the paper that the Storian gave them before the quest. In Lesso’s defense, though, she hasn’t been back in her room for over a decade, and she didn’t really care about that paper in the first place. It would be more miraculous if she had been able to find the Storian’s instructions. “Our revised tales should be written into the textbooks two months after we return. If we returned, of course, but I tried to ignore that part.”
“Ah,” Lesso replies, unsure where this conversation and this ‘revised textbook’ nonsense could be going. “And that’s something we need to be here for because…?”
“This is the moment we are written into the history books!” This time, Dovey does give her a look. “This is the moment that all of our hard work in our quest becomes solid.”
Lesso scoffs. “I don’t need a story to tell me what I did.”
“It’s for the students, too,” Dovey tells her, less impatient than Lesso would be in this scenario. “We have learned a lesson. They need to learn it as well. And they’ll do it through what the Storian is finishing right now.”
“First of all,” Lesso holds up a finger. “What lesson?”
Dovey looks at her like she’s stupid. “You said it yourself, Lesso! How else do you think we returned?”
“I don’t understand. We returned because the Storian decided we needed to return.”
“No.” Dovey corrects firmly, “We returned because you realized, and then helped me realize, that we are neither Good nor Evil. We are simply human, and that is what the Balance is all about.”
Lesso raises an eyebrow. She can see where Dovey is coming from, but she hates the idea of the Storian acting as some sort of mentor when all it did was make the two of them attached to people that they will never get to see again. “Or, hear me out, the Storian was just being a dick, as usual, and didn’t want us to get to see Snow White’s wedding.”
“Oh, Storian,” Dovey turns away from her, and at first, Lesso thinks it could be because of irritation before she realizes that Dovey is taking deep breaths.
“I-” Lesso cuts herself off. She takes a tentative step towards Dovey, but thinks better of touching her before continuing, “Hey, princess. You’re right. More lessons to be taught to the little fuckers back at school.”
Dovey takes another deep breath, nods, and turns back to watching the Storian with a singular focus that feels more intense that the situation really warrants. Lesso watches with her, watches her more than the pen. Their shared office space is still, the only movement the pen scratching paper, and the silence is nearly filled to the brim with anticipation.
Dovey doesn’t move from her perch at her desk even when the dinner bells chime, and Lesso taps a finger on her desk only to receive a blank shake of Dovey’s head. “I want to stay here,” Dovey says, quietly. “You go ahead.”
Lesso frowns. That’s something else that’s been bothering her since they returned. Dovey doesn’t eat. Or rather, she eats, but so little that Lesso isn’t sure if it really counts as eating, and though she is in no way emancipated, Lesso worries. She wonders, in her private moments, if it is because as a mirror Dovey didn’t need to eat, and getting back into the habit of consumption is more difficult than it looks. “You need to eat.”
“I’ll be fine, Lesso. It’s just dinner,” Dovey waves a dismissive hand in her direction, her attention still focused on the words written by the pen. “Go.”
The dining hall is bustling with movement and people, but only Anemone notes, quietly, “Is Clarissa not coming?”
Lesso sneers at her plate of mashed potatoes. “No.”
The beauty teacher nods, and a moment later a plate of food floats down in front of her. Lesso looks up, confused, and Anemone says, as a way of explanation, “Clarissa’s favorites.”
“I’m not her caretaker,” Lesso bites out as she makes note of the peas and beef. The rice is pushed to the corner, and there is very little.
“I know,” Anemone shrugs and cuts into her own steak with her knife neatly, a perfect contrast to Sheeba Sheeks tearing into her meal with her hands. It still isn’t hard to tell who was Evil and who was Good, even though the differences are mostly superficial. Lesso suspects it will take a lot longer than a few months for the differences to even begin to fade away. “But you share an office. It’s convenient.”
Lesso thinks about complaining, but in the end, she snarfs down another mouthful of her own rice, ladles a little more food onto Dovey’s plate, and balances the plate carefully with her magic on her way back to the Schoolmaster’s tower, repurposed for her and Dovey to use as a shared office.
The Storian’s story is finished when she returns back to the tower, and Dovey is reading the still being bound book as though it is a holy script, so Lesso just sets down the food next to her. She doesn’t watch Dovey finish the plate, but each time she looks up there is just a little less food.
“Thank you,” Dovey tells her, before they close the lights for the night. She hovers the empty plate in the air with her magic, and there is a sheepish look on her face as she continues, “I didn’t notice…”
“Don’t get used to it,” Lesso waves a hand, and the lights close behind them.
She finds out, slowly, over the next few months, that Dovey likes apples, grapes, oranges, but she hates blueberries and won’t eat anything that has chicken in it. She also learns that Dovey eats more readily when she is doing something else at the same time, and if any of the other teachers who come up to their office at times for meetings notice the cookie jar that Lesso keeps stocked on Dovey’s desk, they don’t mention it.
Only once does anyone mention it, actually.
“Are these–” The beauty teacher withdraws her hand from the cookie jar not a second too late, as Lesso’s cane flies out and lands right where her hand was, and Anemone jumps back. “What the hell, Lesso?”
“Cookies,” Lesso replies to her unasked question and withdraws her cane. “Which student did you want to talk to me about?”
Anemone doesn’t try to stick her hand into the jar again, and neither do any of the other teachers or students.
Bilious storms into her rooms. “Lesso,” he growls, but before he can get another word out Lesso’s waved her finger glow and ejected him from her rooms.
“What did we say about manners,” Lesso tsks, and takes too much joy from the way Bilious grits his teeth and knocks, before she nods and lets him in. “What?”
“Are you fucking the Good dean?” He asks, bluntly.
Multiple responses run through Lesso’s mind in the instant it takes for her to stand and press her cane up against Bilious’ jugular. The first is to deflect and threaten, her normal approach to any questions that border on being inquisitive about her. The second is to murder, which is her normal approach to Bilious Manley. The third is to ask, careful not to show the quiet desperate curiosity she holds, where he got that conclusion from.
“I’ll give you a chance to rephrase that,” she says, calmly, as the silver tip of her cane presses harder into Bilious’ throat. The morbid curiosity gets the better of her, and she growls before she can rethink her existence: “And explain.”
“We’re-” He coughs, and just so that she can understand him better she inches her cane away, just a little. To his credit, he didn’t actually flinch when she leveled her cane at him, and he doesn’t flinch now. “Not blind,” he finishes, his eyes never wavering from hers. “You’ve been all over one another since you came back from whatever pathetic excuse of a quest the Storian sent you on.”
“Huh.”
Have they been all over one another?
She did often accidentally spend the night at Dovey’s, if only because Dovey had an exorbitant amount of Camelot wine, something that Lesso, if no one else, can appreciate. Dovey did spend all of her lunch time in Lesso’s rooms as well, because Dovey discovered the chocolate pie recipe that Lesso stole from the cook.
“Bilious,” Lesso decides to say in the end, “If I hear even a whisper about me or Dovey’s personal life in the halls, I will be very, very annoyed.” She leaves the rest of the threat unvoiced, and trusts from the way that Bilious turns pale and bites his tongue that he remembers what she is capable of. He leaves in a flurry of dirty leaves and the putrid smell of rotting.
The ravens outside of her window croak, and for a second Lesso wonders if maybe Snow White will show up, smiling and telling her to be nice, knowing just a little more than Lesso would tell her. The wind blows a little harder, and the fallen leaves begin their dance.
She picks up her pen and writes Dovey a note. The paper she folds into an airplane and she sends it flying through her window. It glides across the leaves, jumps and skips over the rough patches of wind, guided by her magic, and Lesso wonders if maybe it’s time for her to stop running.
She runs an unconscious hand over her knee, tapping the coiled, scarred skin with her metal nails one by one, and it doesn’t hurt so much as prick, a reminder of what she gave up when she returned to the real world. She thinks back to her note, flying out to Dovey now, soaring towards her.
‘Meet me at the bridge after lights out tonight.’
She’s never stopped running, she knows. Dovey told her she knows she loves running. And it’s true, Lesso does, loves the way her hair is able to streak behind her, the way the wind feels between her fingers, the way the world bends to her feet. But she’s been running for a long time, ran even harder than before when Rafal carved the hissing snake into her knee.
She taps another finger over the pant leg that covers the monstrosity, and it almost echoes, as though now, finally, the scar on her leg is no longer hiding a snake within the wrinkled skin. Now, finally, it feels as though it is empty, ready for something else, something less insidious to inhabit it.
Dovey’s reply returns in the form of a paper dove and, in a flowery cursive Lesso traces a finger over before she realizes what she’s doing, responds in the affirmative.
After she yells at enough students to make sure they’re all in bed when they should be, Lesso makes her way out of her room. The night air is brisk, and the bridge is empty when she arrives, so she stands and looks closely at the structure for the first time. It is long, winded, designed specifically for students and teachers not to cross. To separate and divide. Quiet steps interrupt her thoughts as they make their way towards her, and Lesso doesn’t turn. She knows the gait. So, she waits, and begins to wonder how she can find the funding to rebuild the bridge so that their schools can be one not just in curriculum.
When Dovey doesn’t make a sound for what feels like hours, however, stopping somewhere behind Lesso, Lesso begins to wonder if something is wrong. Swirling her glass of wine in her hand, she whirls around, planting her cane to stabilize herself. She barely notices the pain.
“Stare any longer, princess, and I’ll have to charge rent.” Lesso raises an eyebrow at the gold-clad dean. Ever since they had returned, it is like Dovey made a point out of being as golden as possible, to make up for the years she was silver and hadn’t had a body. The thought, not uncommon for Lesso, still makes her heart pang, and she decidedly moves on from the thought.
“My, my,” Dovey returns, holding her own glass of wine in one hand and a bottle in the other. She sets the bottle down on the ground and steps next to Lesso. “Self-flattery?”
Lesso tapes her temple. “Eyes on the back of my head.”
Dovey hums, and takes a long sip from her glass. Lesso watches her, mesmerized by the way her lips flatten against the rim of her cup. Then she turns to look at Lesso, a sparkle in her eyes. “Pot, meet kettle.”
A year ago, Lesso would have run away from the conversation right then. “Who’s self-flattering now?”
Dovey just shakes her head at her. A comfortable silence falls over them. Lesso wonders what Dovey is thinking, if she’s registering how they’re close enough to be brushing up against one another’s clothes, but not close enough to be touching. Lesso remembers when that was her most vivid wish, and she searches the night sky for a reason why it might have been fulfilled. She’s never been lucky, and even now she still falls into the hole of thinking she’s Evil. She knows what Dovey will say if she tells her that, though, can picture the way Dovey’s brows would curve together and her mouth would flatten with displeasure.
“So,” Dovey breaches the peace, finally, first, “What did you want to speak about?”
Lesso doesn’t rip her eyes away from the night sky. The crude words that she would respond with normally suddenly seem too harsh and bold in the night, and so she just says, evenly, “Bilious thinks there’s something going on between us.”
“Ah.” Dovey replies, infuriatingly unreadable. “And what did you say?”
“You know. Threats, the likes.”
Dovey hums and continues, “Sounds like you had it covered.”
“Yeah.”
Thinking back, she did. She doesn’t really know why she penned the note to Dovey now. She just knows that she had to when she first heard, because the words that Bilious said so roughly had been like the finish line of a marathon to her.
Dovey doesn’t make a move to leave, though, even when it is obvious that is all Lesso has to say to her about this topic, and a companionable silence falls over them once again.
“You know what Belle told me, while we were reading about philosophy?” Dovey asks after a while, looking down into the abyss that separates the School for Good and the School for Evil.
“What?” Lesso says, taking a sip of her wine, clutching her cane. Her body still can’t adjust to being back in a broken form, and the pain is still almost overwhelming even now. It had taken her a decade to remember that she didn’t hurt, to not have to steel herself each time she does something; she hopes it won’t take a decade for her body to remember it does hurt.
“She said that true Good is not turning Evil even when things aren’t going their way. True Evil is not turning Good even when things are going their way.” Dovey finishes her glass, and stares, as though entranced by the simple glass creation.
Lesso stares a little while too, at the way the moonlight caresses Dovey, hugs her in a soft glow, and tries not to inch too close. Then she drains her glass, chucking the thing into the rushing waters below. “Bullshit. There’s no way she said that.”
“She did. You underestimate her,” Dovey replies, still looking at the glass. She pauses, and as though making a decision, looks back up to look Lesso in the eye. “Do you still believe that some people don’t deserve True Love?”
Lesso looks down. She can’t see her glass where she threw it down, anymore, but the rushing waters fill the silence of the night, and she is willingly lured into the trap she knows Dovey has set for her. “Do you still think Charming deserves True Love? Even after all he did to us? To Snow White? Belle? Hell, even fucking Ariel?”
Dovey steps just a little closer, so that in the soft breeze of the night air they are sharing their body warmth. The fabric of Dovey’s dress brushes against Lesso’s empty hand. It is soft, silk.
“He did bad things.” She finishes her drink, too, and sets her cup down on the edge of the bridge. “I can’t and won’t make excuses for him. But True Love is not something deserved. It is a right.”
Dovey turns towards Lesso, and waits until Lesso turns to face her before saying, softly, as though her words were not taking a hammer to everything Lesso was and is, “You deserve True Love, Leonora.”
And Lesso is so entranced by the starlight that is captured in Dovey’s eyes, the way her name doesn’t sound like a terrible thing coming from Dovey, that she does not realize Dovey is leaning in until Dovey speaks again, her breath soft on Lesso’s lips, as though afraid any more would scare Lesso away.
It should terrify her. It should remind her of the darkness that another pair of lips had once whispered to her. But Dovey stands so close her silk brushes Lesso, and yet still she does not touch Lesso, and Lesso knows that Dovey is giving her this gift, letting her choose to fall willingly. If Lesso makes the next step, it will be her decision entirely, her responsibility, and for a second Lesso misses Snow White with her entire being, because she remembers a time when Snow White also stood like this, balancing on a precipice, just waiting for Lesso to let her in.
“Thy shield of sorrow hides not only thy own heart from its palpitations, stepmother. It hides it also from the beating of others that yearn to be close.”
Fuck, the girl is too wise.
“I love you,” Dovey whispers, her eyes glittering like the thousand brilliant facets of the heart Lesso thought she had taken a shredder to years ago. “And if you do not believe yet, I will believe for the both of us.”
Lesso stares, struck dumb, and Dovey waits. Waits, patiently, close enough that Lesso could touch her if she moved even a millimeter but not touching her, waits until Lesso can finally hear the thumping of a heart unlocked from its shackles.
The thumping is loud. It’s like church bells, ringing in the night, and it shatters every last inhibition Lesso ever held. And still, Dovey waits, not a single ounce of uncertainty, not a single trace of anxiety in her eyes, the same Dovey that used to have panic attacks at nearly everything. Instead, there is only softness, a drug that threatens to drag Lesso under and never let her out, something beautiful and careful and so, so whole.
Lesso presses their bodies together and captures Dovey’s lips with her own.
The kiss destroys her. It breaks down everything, a tsunami of something too tender to name rushing around the broken bricks of Lesso’s walls, and with a soft tug, all the walls come tumbling down. They fall, and Storian above, Lesso can’t regret it.
Fucking Good. Always winning.
Later, after Dovey tugs her unceremoniously towards the former Good tower and into her rooms, Lesso tells Dovey, breathless, “True Love’s kiss is a cliche. You know that, right?”
Dovey looks up at her, and the hint of a whine touches her voice. “Does that mean you don’t want me to kiss you again?”
Lesso contemplates poking fun at the way Dovey assumes this is True Love, but she can picture the way Dovey will lean away from her, the way tears will fill her eyes and threaten to emerge. She can picture the way Dovey will stay away from her for the coming weeks, every look a cry of betrayal. What hurts even more is the way she can picture, as clearly as though Dovey were still a mirror and showing her a vision, the way her Dovey will hide behind the mask of the professor, will speak to Lesso with unfailing professionalism and an even tone while side-stepping each move Lesso makes to touch her.
She’s never forgotten the scars Dovey peeled back for her during their quest. She’s never forgotten the way that Dovey told her, she wasn’t whole, that she believed she didn’t deserve love because of who she chose to love. Those are thoughts she knows better than anyone, and she knows that they don’t disappear. They hide and they become less painful, but they are there, lurking under the murky waters, waiting to drag you under the moment that you let your guard down.
True Love’s kiss is a cliche. What will it do to heal them? What will it do to make her forget about the way kisses used to be given to her as a way of making up for pain, to make her forget the way love used to be a dirty word that stank of lies and deceit? What will it do to make Dovey forget the way she was branded and left alone, told she could be nothing but a side character in someone else’s story?
Lesso isn’t a Good person. She has no intentions of being one. In fact, she knows better than anyone how to hurt, how to sprinkle salt into a wound and twist a wound until it aches like it will never stop. But she’s not stupid enough to crush what is precious, to not recognize what is important.
“Never,” Lesso settles for, and pulls Dovey back in for a bruising kiss.