Misery Loves Company | B&M
@king-of-the-city-mg
Even though she’d hugged Davina until she was blue in the face, had stroked her hair and touched her hands, held her face between her hands and apologized profusely, no amount of reassurance from the young witch managed to alleviate Bonnie’s guilt. They’d spent hours together, testing Davina’s magic, seeing what new powers were at her disposal, if any at all. Every few minutes she’d pause their excavation through magical depths to hug Davina again, to tell her one more time how relieved she was that she wasn’t dead, to apologize for not being able to save her.
Bonnie could tell by Davina’s stern dismissals and unyielding reassurances that she was losing her patience with her, but she couldn’t help it. Davina had died. DIED. D-I-E-D. She’d been sacrificed to the Nemeton and she’d been ALONE for it. As if blood sacrifice wasn’t bad enough, Davina had gone to her death without anyone to hold her hand or fight for her, no one had even known to weep for her, and it made Bonnie sick to her damn stomach.
There were days that Bonnie felt like there was only one reason she’d inherited magic in the first place: to protect her friends. It was why she practiced so fervently, why she was so hungry to learn more. She wasn’t going to lose anyone because of her own ignorance, because she was powerless to protect them. And yet…
Gnawing absently at her thumbnail, Bonnie strolled the halls of Marcel’s compound in search of the exit. Davina was tired and Bonnie had grown more distracted the longer the night went on. So they’d stopped while they were still ahead, and Bonnie had hugged Davina one last time before wishing her a good night. Distracted by the sinkhole of her thoughts, she hadn’t been paying attention to where her steps were taking her, or if she was even getting any closer to the exit. It wasn’t until she’d meandered past an open door, a hoodie and hunched shoulders barely registering in her periphery, that her mind snapped back into focus.
She backtracked to the doorway and saw Marcel hunched over a bar in what looked like his office space. Not completely without manners, she rapped her knuckles on the doorway before stepping over the threshold and striding up to the bar to join him. There was a glass of amber liquid in front of him, and a half drunk bottle nearby.
Without waiting for an invitation, or giving him the chance to tell her to leave him alone, Bonnie eased into the chair next to him. She grabbed an empty glass and set it down in front of her, muttering, “I’ll have one of those.” A finger tapped lightly at her empty cup and she gave him an expectant look, a challenge in her expression, an advisory that she wasn’t going anywhere so he really shouldn’t waste his breath in trying.