Chapter Text
…without the other.
Clarissa is tired, and the only other person who might understand is dead.
The war is over. Everything is over. So why, then, is nothing the same?
Lesso’s face is cold. So cold. Clarissa has not ever been so close to her, or been allowed so close to her; it feels nearly like a betrayal. But she cannot bring herself to let go.
Once there was a fairy tale just like this; it was called The Tale of Sophie and Agatha, and in it the princess kissed the witch back to life. But Clarissa is no princess, and this has never been their story to tell. Their story to have.
It has been a long time, she thinks distantly, since she believed in fairy tales.
“Professor,” someone says behind her, and Clarissa pulls herself together to face them. Another shadow of Lesso: the way she knows, though not through personal experience, how to set her jaw. How to keep her head up.
It’s Agatha. Muddied, exhausted, but beautiful all the same. “They told me to come get you,” she says. “The other teachers. But… I’m just going to sit here.”
Clarissa does not trust her voice not to waver, so she nods, clasps Lesso closer. Agatha sits down across from her, dragging her bloodstained trousers back through the soil, eyes downcast.
“I’m sorry,” she says, something old and terrified haunting her voice. From her, it sounds genuine.
It was Sophie lying here once. It was Agatha who brought her back.
“How did you do it?” Clarissa rasps.
“Make a wish, Professor,” Agatha says, more wise and more weary than anyone her age should be. “You never know.”
Clarissa laughs, and it’s so bitterly sharp that even she jolts in surprise. “Would you be disappointed, Agatha,” she says, “if I told you I don’t believe in wishes anymore?”
Agatha’s voice is very small. “It’s the only thing we can do, Professor. Have hope. Have faith. Have despair, maybe.”
This child. She was Clarissa’s greatest hope. She still is, to this day. And there— Sophie, waiting at the sidelines, eyes fixed on Lesso’s unmoving body. She does not cry. She seems to be waiting; for what, Clarissa doesn’t know.
These two children, who still believe in hope. These two children she and Lesso raised up into who they are today. Equal and opposite and saviours of each other.
Clarissa sighs, soft, and leans to press a kiss to Lesso’s brow. One last promise. One last piece of faith. Both Agatha and Sophie, respectfully, look away.
Her kiss shimmers, in the evening shadows. It glitters on Lesso’s pale face. It is a wish and a blessing and a hope.
And then— in stolen breaths, in stolen time, but real—
Leonora Lesso comes back to life.
There is not much that makes sense, after that.
Lesso wakes in fits and gasps; her eyes flutter and fall and fight their way open again. When Clarissa catches her hand, it’s trembling, shaking. When Lesso struggles her way into a seated position, they can all hear something break.
Agatha and Sophie cluster around them, though they hang back; the whole battlefield seems to turn their way. Tedros comes bounding over; Merlin follows hastily in his wake, and it is his careful spellwork that seems to let Lesso slump, finally still, into Clarissa’s arms.
“Lady Lesso?” Sophie finally demands. “Are you— are you—” She’s practically shaking with nervous energy.
“Hush,” Merlin says sternly, and she falls silent.
Lesso blinks up at her, once, twice. Then: “Clarissa.” Her voice cracks, a little, like the splinter of metal through bone. Of bone through flesh.
“Yes,” Clarissa says softly.
Lesso grasps her wrist in a silent question; her fingers are ice-cold. When Clarissa pulls her to her feet, she stumbles. She was never one to show weakness. But she’s alive. But she’s alive, and that is all Clarissa can ask for.
Lesso does not recover.
The wound never fully heals; and nothing else really does, either. On the first day she makes it halfway to her office— Clarissa’s office— before she starts coughing blood, painting her pale hands red as she presses them to her mouth. Clarissa is the one to fetch the parcel on her desk.
Her dress. No letter. No will. But they both know what it means.
“You planned this,” Clarissa says. It could be an accusation. It sounds more like a plea.
“One way or another,” Lesso says, “Evil had to pass into better hands than mine.”
“And you would condemn me to work with Sophie?” Clarissa huffs. “Really, my dear. If you have any grievance with me, you could just have said so.”
“You are not good at avoiding the subject, Clarissa,” Lesso sighs. “But if you insist.”
“You wanted to die,” Clarissa says quietly. “Is that what you want me to say?”
Lesso runs her fingers down the fresh bloodstain on her dress. Her fingerglow sputters with amethyst sparks, and the blood does not go away. “I suppose I did,” she says, finally. “I suppose, if you had not survived, neither would I have expected to.”
“Lesso,” Clarissa says helplessly.
Lesso shrugs. “We don't have to worry about that anymore, do we, princess?” Her tone is light, mocking, dismissive. There is blood at the corner of her mouth.
“You're not good at avoiding the subject, either,” Clarissa murmurs.
“Then I suppose,” Lesso says, “it is a good thing that we understand each other anyway.” She smiles, briefly. It is fierce in its bravery.
So this is how Lesso settles into retirement, after it all. She stays in the School. It is nearly unthinkable for her to leave, and impractical, besides. She advises Sophie and she bothers Clarissa and she heals, slowly and painfully. Some days she can barely move until Merlin attends to her, or until Clarissa sits with her through the darkest hours of the night. She bears it with an eerie grace, all the same.
Lesso gives up the mantle of Dean of Evil, gives up her deep purple dress to Sophie; she dresses in black and white and grey suits, a silhouette of intimidation. She carries a cane, to catch herself when she stumbles. She laughs more often and more loudly, speaks with a sharp airy delight to her voice. Nothing else could hurt her. Nothing more could hurt her.
Sophie is the new Dean, and more often than not Lesso turns her away when she comes asking for help. Clarissa thinks she puts too much trust in the girl; but Good is Good, and Evil is Evil, and she has to trust Lesso if nothing else. It is a rocky partnership, but it is made easier by Lesso’s presence, a mediator and a critic to both of them in equal measure.
And Clarissa sees Lesso, every day, and tries not to think of her death. It is a losing battle. But then again, they have always been losing, the two of them. They have always been losing to each other.
Today Lesso lingers at Clarissa’s desk, worrying at a sugarplum between her fingers. “You don’t regret it,” she says keenly.
“Should I?” Clarissa questions, looking up to meet Lesso’s distant gaze. “I thought it was obvious that I would not. You know me, my dear.”
“...If you did,” Lesso says, finally, “you would not be the person I know, would you? Sentimental to a fault. Was it that hard to let go?”
“What am I without you?” Clarissa asks.
“Evil lives on without me,” Lesso answers, dry and direct. “Evil thrives without me. I doubt you would have to look far, Clarissa.”
“What am I without you?” Clarissa repeats, softer.
Lesso stares down at her; her face is more open than it ever has been. Bare. Disarmed. Clarissa has never loved her so desperately.
“Must we always be Good and Evil? Must we be enemies, even now?” she asks, and the well-worn argument comes out something like a plea. The same, and yet irrevocably changed. “Must you make me say it?”
Lesso has learned, over the years, how not to be cruel. “No,” she says, quiet, tender. Lets Clarissa take her shaking hand.
Clarissa says it anyway, in the end. “More than Good or Evil,” she confesses, “I value you, Lesso. Leonora.” It is a cruel thing to ask of someone; to bear the knowledge of this faith, this trust. Of a demand that will inevitably slip past the lines of what has been defined for them. Even crueller to try to say so much, and yet leave so much unsaid: I value you, it was you, it was always going to be you.
It is a good thing, then, that Clarissa has learned a little about how to be cruel.
Lesso does not reply. But her grip is firm and she holds fast. An anchor, an assurance, an answer.
It is not, by any means, romantic, the way they go about it. It would not seem so right if it was. Lesso, after all these years, still delights in tormenting Clarissa. And Clarissa, for her part, is too involved in the fight to ever withdraw. But there are kinder moments, more often. A game of chess, a shared meal, a brush of shoulders. Something that can be left unsaid.
There is something tender in this understanding they share. This is what Clarissa has learned, about love: it is quiet. It is subtle. It is made of faith. It is to know, implicitly, that they are always right where they belong. It is to change the other by loving them. To not demand anything else of that love.
It is to be disarmed; but, Clarissa thinks, this is not something she has to fight for.
There is something kind in being the one thing the other does not have to fight for.
This life, this love, it could be kind.