[ @evernighted | salem \\ ozma ]
Getting into the headmaster's office was easy. Insultingly easy. What, are they trying to say that their plan is so complete that they needn't fear her arrival? Or are they truly underestimating her that badly?
She scowls, sitting in their chair, facing the window behind their desk, waiting to hear the sound of the elevator heralding "Ozpin's" arrival.
Well. If they are underestimating her, it'll be to their detriment.
When finally they arrive - and she knows it's them, she would know their soul anywhere - she turns around in the chair, hoping to startle them.
"You're four thousand one hundred seventy years old today," Salem says, "if you care to remember your original birthday. This," and a gesture to the box she'd set upon the desk, which contains a small hummingbird pin that will fit in place of the cross on that scarf they've taken to wearing, "is little more than a commemoration to over four thousand years of your failures. That's all, Ozma."
They know, before she turns, before stepping into the office, before the elevator doors even slide open, they know Salem is inside. Perhaps it's something to do with the red still, still threaded in their aura even now, perhaps only a prickle of huntsman's intuition—or maybe the heart just knows.
"…Hello, Salem," they say, trying to press the longing note out of their voice and rather failing; but then again, what's one more failure after over four thousand years spent failing?
It is their birthday. Originally. They're astounded she's troubled herself to remember it, all this time. (But then, they still remember hers, and their sad little vault of unsent letters gets longer every year. So.)
They'd been leaning on the Long Memory as they rode the elevator up, and it clicks lightly against the floor while they cross the desolate expanse between the lift and the desk. Headmaster Pascal had cluttered the space with comfortable seating and potted plants and free-standing bookshelves during his tenure; Ozma had it all cleared out as soon as they received the appointment and left the whole office stripped bare, nothing but the desk and their seat and a couple of extra chairs and the ever-churning clockwork overhead.
When they reach her, they flick the Long Memory shut and set the collapsed handle, with deliberate care, down on the side of the desk—more than their arm's length from the small box she's placed at the center. (Her eyes are so very red; purest crimson, dimmed in their memory by the march of time and ceaseless gristmill of their curse. They could look and look and be lost in her gaze forever.)
Exhaling, Ozma moves to stand opposite her. Their fingertips settle feather-light on the box, though they can't quite bring themself to look away from her to open it. Not yet. Not when their heart breaks again to see her.
Just a little more time. Please, please.
…Distantly, belatedly, it registers that they probably ought to feel afraid; for their students and faculty, at least, even if they can't find it in themself to care at all what happens to them.
"Four thousand, one hundred seventy isn't exactly what one might call a traditional milestone," Ozma says, quietly. "Much as I appreciate your… ill-wishes, what's the occasion?"
