Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Suitcase kept its own concept of morning.

Time within the winding halls of the magical space seemed to run at random; while one second was still one second, inside or out of the checkerboard finish, it was the norm to find the "sun" where it shouldn't be. It could be day, it could be night, it could be raining, it could be snowing… The Suitcase decided what the weather would be, and today it had chosen, in a rare act of propriety, to match. The golden beams of morning light streaking through the windows of the dining hall were a perfect copy of those gracing the grand marble facades of the Foundation headquarters in which it sat.

Vertin was more than capable of recognizing a gift when it was given to her. She was still weak, abominably so, and despite the ministrations she'd received from both Laplace med-techs and an extremely enthusiastic Miss Sotheby, her legs still did not feel right. The Suitcase was taking pity on her, she could sense it with an ephemeral certainty, but Vertin was far too tired to even think of refusing it.

It was early enough that most of the other members of the newly-officially christened Team Timekeeper were still asleep, or rousing in the privacy of their rooms. The long dining table was bare, empty of occupants and dishes save for two. She was one, of course, and few would be surprised by the other.

Sitting silently across from her, Sonetto twirled her fork through her fingers absently like she would her wand. She was trying not to stare, really trying, but between her obvious concern and the years Vertin had known her, she didn't stand much a chance of staying undetected. The poor girl's eyes would dance between her steadily cooling pancakes and Vertin, and her fork would spin faster and faster.

"Sonetto?" Vertin asked, trying to suppress a smile. She'd waited long enough to put the poor girl out of her misery.

The St. Pavlov Foundation's star pupil - or runner up, if you asked a particular(ly benevolent, gracious, et cetera) source - jumped in her chair like there'd been a gunshot. Kudos to her elite training, Sonetto's hand clamped down on the fork like a vice, keeping the utensil from becoming a deadly projectile. Any hope of suppressing a smile vanished as Sonetto straightened herself in her seat. "Y-yes, Timekeeper?"

"Are you going to start eating? Your breakfast will be frozen stiff before you take a bite at this rate." Vertin said wryly, before disguising her impish glee by taking a sip from a glass of orange juice.

"Oh, well…" Sonetto looked down at her food like she'd just noticed it for the first time. "I'm… not sure if I'm as hungry as I thought."

Vertin frowned as she put the glass down. She didn't really want to argue the point, but she could feel herself chafe at it. Far too much fuss all because of her, really. As far as her body would comfortably allow, she shuffled in her seat as she tried to find a new angle to take. Sonetto watched her move, and seemed to almost shrink a little in her seat, shoulders tightening and arms closing in over her torso.

Vertin sighed lightly, the words having come to her at last. "I know-"

From the pocket of her jacket, draped lovingly over her chair, came a sharp pulse. Bzz-bzz-bzz. Bzz-bzz-bzz.

Sonetto blanched, her already pale face losing what color it had left as she sat up at attention. She pushed back on her chair, eliciting the terrible grinding sound of wood on tile floors, but Vertin waved her to stay before she could stand. The Timekeeper reached for the pocket with well-practiced acuity and grace - even fatigue and broken legs could not dissuade years of instinct - and smoothly extracted the light tan colored brick from where she had stored it.

The device, for that was what it was, pulsed incessantly and irritatingly into her palm as Vertin flipped the cover open. The buzzing stopped as the pale green screen found life, and its face was marred by electronic black scratches. The scratches became words, images, all proudly displayed below the small seal of Laplace stenciled into the case. A single letter, larger than its cousins, stared back at Vertin as it waited for a response. Her heart sank as she glanced up at Sonetto. "It's Madam Z."

A fragile respite was ending.

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The car came to a halt at the gates of the St. Pavlov Foundation's School of Primary Defense of Mankind. The campus had been built well before the turn of the millennium, and perhaps once it had possessed a parking garage or lot for which vehicles of the modern world could rest. It certainly hadn't in 1913, however, and the "Storm" had long washed such infrastructure away, for better and for worse.

The vehicle Vertin and Sonetto sat in was an anachronism in about as many ways as anything could be, a 1996 Honda Civic that had gone from an unexceptional personal vehicle to a vital resource overnight. Its coming and goings were highly restricted, both to preserve its well-being and to prevent accidentally disrupting history by giving any would-be automotive engineers a few unearned insights. Fortunately, the route between the Foundation's headquarters and the SPDM was both short and rigidly controlled, allowing the metal beast to stretch its legs without worry.

The driver, well trained to not ask questions, put the Honda in park and turned his head to look back at his two passengers. "We're here, ma'am," he informed politely as always, making uneasy eye contact with the girl at least half his age sitting behind him.

"Thank you," Vertin replied with an equally respectful smile. She undid the seat-belt buckle carefully, glancing fleetingly at her assistant as she did the same. A moment later, they were both out of the car, Suitcase clutched tightly in Vertin's hand. The car's engine thrummed as it cautiously backed up the way it came down the brick path, and suddenly the two were alone again, standing in front of the imposing iron bars that had once been their home, school, and cage.

Beyond the gate lay the campus as Vertin remembered it. All of the structures were where she left them, from the dorms to the lecture halls, from the library to the guardhouse. If she was to be struck blind at this very moment, she knew in the deepest depths of heart that she could pace every meter of the school by heart. She could even find her way back to her small little room, nestled away in the depths of the Girl's Dormitory, like she had left it but a day ago. It felt as if nothing had changed over the last four years, hard as that was to quantify anymore. Even the distant sounds of children at school and at play were the same, giggles and cries by the students being met by the sharp commands of instructors.

Sonetto took a single, sharp breath through her nose, setting her jaw as nostalgia assaulted her as well. She seemed to be trying to find something to say, some comment to break the ice, but words were not availing her. Sensing Vertin's attention, she turned her head just enough to look back and offer a tight, almost pained smile.

"Ah, very good!" A voice called out to them from the other side of the bars. The order of things reasserted themselves with a silent violence, as they always did. The Timekeeper straightened her back, eyes and head aimed piercingly straight ahead.

Approaching at a speed that could only be classified as "imperial" was a rotund man with glasses and a walking cane. He wore his silver hair in a way that seemed almost genetic for tenured professors, kept short and parted high over his forehead like waves. His suit was well pressed and barely creased, and pinned to his chest was the gold circle badge of the Foundation. The Principal of the SPDM seemed to have barely aged since last Vertin had seen him, which felt somehow intensely frustrating, and it took more focus than she expected to push the feeling back into its box.

"I'm very glad that you could come at short notice," the Principal continued, his voice keeping its steady and official cadence as he reached for his pocket and retrieved the keys to the gate.

Vertin glanced again at Sonetto before responding. "Of course. Madam Z said that it was an emergency?"

The gate was managed open, creaking in complaint at being moved. The Principal smiled, though the gesture did not extend to his eyes. "We can speak details in my office. Please, come in, come in."

There was nothing left for it but to begin. Vertin nodded curtly, and obeyed, one foot falling after another. Once she and Sonetto were through the portal, the gates were less than gracefully sealed once more. The Principal fumbled with the keys again, locking the entrance tight, before returning them to his pocket. At a pace that suited him, he moved past the two girls and began to walk the way he had come, back towards the SPDM's administration building. Silently, Vertin and Sonetto followed.

Neither dared to look anywhere other than forward.

Chapter Text

The principal's office seemed to exist at an intersection of Vertin's perception. It was much as she remembered it from ceiling to floor, perhaps even down to the bulb. The SPDM seemed to have access to a veritable trove of them despite the crises, ensuring that the next generation of Arcanists would be subjected to the same sterile, cold lights that hers had. She wouldn't be surprised if the dust was exactly where it had been the last time she had stood before the principal's desk, every mote having made itself comfortable well before there was ever a "Storm."

Some part of her mind kept shrinking her where she stood. The dimensionality of the room seemed to warp in her cognition, like it was pressing down on her head until she was the right size, the right age, to make the dissonance disappear. The rest of her saw the room as it always had been - a strange little contradiction, an allowed indulgence. A mahogany desk, gently engraved, was hardly the standard-fare for Foundation office furniture, and certainly neither was the luxuriously plush leather chair that the headmaster was now lowering himself into.

"Please, make yourselves comfortable," the principal said, though every person in that room knew full well there were and had never been any other chairs. He rested his cane against his desk, and took a long breath before straightening his shoulders to face his two former students. "I trust it is understood that this matter is highly confidential?"

"Of course." Vertin replied automatically. With effort, she was able to work in at least a hint of the proper deference into her tone. "Sonetto and I were taught proper procedure here." A little flattery went a long way.

The principal smiled in a way that passed for warmth by SPDM standards. "Ah, yes, so you were." One could be forgiven for thinking that he had taught them such himself. "It is a… delicate subject, after all."

"Anything involving the 'Storm' is."

The master of the SPDM seemed to somehow lose balance while sitting, his eyes widening further than Vertin had thought the man possible as he recoiled at the word. No satisfaction could reach her face, but she felt it, somewhere behind her heart. "Th-" He shook his head, like a boxer recovering from a blow, and his silver hair bounced about with him in sympathy. "Yes," he restarted, his imperial face now kingly grave. "We do believe it may be related to that."

"Sonetto and I specialize in 'Storm' related matters." Vertin added comfortingly. Again, the little bulb of satisfaction shivered when the principal had to restrain a second reaction to the taboo term. "Can you describe the situation for us?"

As soon as the words left Vertin's mouth, Sonetto went for her wand. Not offensively, to cast or to harm, but as a quill, lifting its point into the air like she was pressing it against a board. The Assistant to the Timekeeper had a memory second to none - once written, it would never leave her mind. The principal watched her, half-fascinated, and was at least gracious enough to wait for Sonetto's nod to continue.

Well, close. He waited for the nod, then a moment after, as he took in another breath to steady his nerves. "We… believe the phenomenon may have been ongoing for some time. Perhaps a couple years." He was trying to look at Vertin, but his eyes kept flicking over to study Sonetto's elegant movements of her wand as she traced every letter and every word diligently. "It had been mostly dismissed as a rumor, you see, a children's ghost story."

"I see." Vertin replied politely. She resisted the urge to ask a clarifying question; men like him hated to be interrupted any more than was respectful.

"Children can be superstitious. They can have nightmares, vivid ones, and Arcanists such as you both are already quite volatile." The man continued his preamble, talking circles around the problem. It was a miracle he had the strength to even report it to Madam Z. "However…" He huffed, leaning forward conspiratorially. "The opinion of the SPDM has had to… adjust."

"Adjust?" She repeated, quizzically.

The principal did not reply, instead reaching for one of his desk's drawers. There was a gentle scraping sound, old wood brushing ungracefully against old wood, then the rustle of paperwork. He produced without flourish a manila envelope, kept sealed by a band of red string. The scraping sound resounded again as he placed, then slid, the envelope to Vertin.

She did not wait for permission to pick it up, approaching his throne and stealing it away without room for a fuss. Her opposite seemed all but happy to relinquish it to her, leaning back in his seat as she began to undo the string with a finger. It was unmarked, save for the official seal of both the Foundation and the SPDM stamped into opposite corners. No label, no ominous description of contents, not even a useful beware! scrawled on the front in blood. It could be mistaken for any other parcel traveling to and from the SPDM, save for how compulsively it had been bound shut.

At last, her patience won the battle, and the string dangled uselessly off of where it had been secured, defeated. Vertin opened the envelope and reached inside, and was surprised to find only a few documents waiting for her. Most were paper, bound thinly together, but one had that tell-tale smooth quality of a photograph. Polaroid? Handheld cameras were probably still in use in the SPDM, though by now they had to be running into a shortage of film. She slid the contents out gingerly into a waiting hand, emptying and then returning the paper container onto the principal's desk.

The documents were a report, and not a long one. Maybe three or four pages at most, a standard incident report written in the SPDM's style.

Internal review.

No, it's not even that.

The report was written in two styles, one the steady hammering of a typewriter, the other a shaky scrawl that seemed to belong to someone jostled free of professionalism. It had all the tell-tale signs of being made by a teacher - the perfect spacing, the lack of drift up or down on the page as the pen moved - but the way that the lines seemed to waggle, and the circles seemed to flatten at random, spoke to a profound distress. This was the testimony of someone who had been scared half to death.

She flipped through the pages quickly. Now was not the time for a full review, but the appearance of diligence would at least head off any complaint from the man watching her like a lion from his den. It was dizzying to even pretend to scan through it all - the back-and-forth from steady type to terrified pen made her head spin. It was a relief to be "finished" with the packet, and to rifle it back so that she could examine the thing that really interested her.

Her hunch was correct. Staring back at her was a photograph, straight from the mouth of an instant camera. The image was fuzzy, the edges blurred by a shaking hand, and it had that aggressive colorization that came with a flash. Vertin frowned as she studied it, trying to parse what she was looking at. It was one of the hallways in the girl's dormatory, and crowded with students. Some were running, towards or away from the camera, and others seemed frozen in place, arms curled over their chests with fright. A moment of panic, captured forever in film.

Sonetto saw it first. Vertin hadn't realized that she had started to peer over her shoulder until she heard the gasp. She turned to see her already pale face sheet white, eyes wide. "Sonetto?" Vertin asked cautiously. "Are you alright?"

Sonetto had faced death a dozen times in Chicago, staring down the leader of Manus Vindictae herself, wand held high. Vertin had only seen that composure seriously slip once, as she had teased her during their sojourn through the city's outskirts.

Slowly, the Assistant to the Timekeeper reached out towards the picture, wand pointing at a single blurred silhouette amongst the rest. Vertin followed her gaze, and felt the warmth leave her body as she saw it finally too.

A girl, her posture casual, her pace easy, her uniform tidy.

A girl, the chaos of the hallway visible through her, her face warped - but not her hair.

"… Isabella?"