From the Ashes of Victory: The Complete Series, page 122
part #0 of From the Ashes of Victory Series
Vita fished out her wallet and produced the fare. "I see. Then consider that lesson your gratuity," she said, and handed it over. "Good day."
Left little choice by the attentions of six witches but to accept, the driver doffed his cap in thanks and beat a hasty retreat to the sanctuary of his cab and set off again.
"I've had my basic competencies questioned enough for one lifetime," Vita said to the questioning looks that followed. "I won't stand for it here, of all places."
She stared after the retreating cab, and only once the gate had safely closed behind it did Vita turn away.
From Victoria's first step over the threshold, the brand-new dormitory both looked and smelled it. Everything the eye fell to was spotlessly clean, the way things never were again no matter how much they were cleaned or how well-maintained. The woods of the floor and furniture were completely free of nicks and scratches, the wallpaper perfectly smooth with no bubbles or discolouration, still strong with the smell of glue. Whites were whiter, blacks blacker, the deep green of the curtains richer than it would be even a month from now. The metal accents on all the light fixtures and doorknobs were polished to a mirror gleam, the doors themselves swung freely, yet the hinges were tight enough they stayed open without need for stoppers. The rugs were still thick and full, so much so Victoria had to fight the urge to collapse atop one of them.
Having Katya on her heels and the promise of a new bed waiting kept Victoria on her exhausted feet. Between walking, cabs, late busses and even later trains, it had taken seven hours to cross a distance of 90 miles, and this close to the end of her journey, it required an act of willpower to keep moving.
The run-up to her final thesis defence had been nightmarishly stressful and she hadn't let herself relax an iota until the moment she'd been presented her diploma, which she clutched in its green leather tube so that it couldn't get away and somehow invalidate her near-decade of work. Completely irrational, she knew, it was also precisely how tired she was.
But she had done it. She was finished, and now she was a doctor of physics; Doctor Victoria Ravenwood, DSC. A life's pursuit at its successful conclusion, it wasn't the world-ending explosion of elation she had been expecting. She was undoubtedly happy, but more than anything she was relieved that it was over. It felt more akin to staggering over a finish line, falling through the tape and breaking it with her face on her way to the dreamless void of sleep.
But there was still a ways to to go before that could happen, and she wasn't the only one who had been working herself to the bone as of late.
"It turned out very nice," she said as she looked about. "It was just a foundation the last time I saw it."
"On time and under budget. Sveta saw to that," Katya said.
They'd had to go through four contractors before they found an honest one, giving them all a little taste of what Sveta lived through with everyone she met. As they had become the only contractors the Longs would award work to, and with the airfield and factories in a state of continual expansion, honesty had proven to very much be the best policy.
Katya guided Victoria down the hall to the narrow staircase that would lead them to the the top floor, where the elder witches all had their rooms—save Carice and Niamh, who both had lodgings elsewhere. Victoria mounted them with enthusiasm, her trunk floating along behind like a dog who'd sworn more loyalty to its mistress than gravity. Even loaded with as much as she could cram into it and still manage to secure the latches, it took barely any concentration to levitate and guide it.
"When did you have time to practice?" Katya asked as they gained the landing at the top.
"I found the time, in all the little gaps in my schedule. Probably when I should have been eating or sleeping, looking back on it," Victoria said dryly. "It feels good to use it for something so mundane."
"Mundane? You should see it from my angle," Katya said.
"I see it from all angles."
"Oh, don't get metaphysical with me now Doctor, you've only been home ten minutes. Just say you like having the chance to show off," Katya said, shooting a look over her shoulder that Victoria found herself unable to parry.
"I like having the chance to show off."
"There. Was that so hard?"
The top floor was unique from the other three in that it had only four doors lining its hall rather than eight. Two rooms on a side, they were arranged in suites with shared private bathrooms between each pair. The pale pinewood flooring was designed to work with the bare white walls to reflect as much light as possible. Right now it was daylight, but as the home of eight Manifested witches, darkness would only be dispelled with witchlight, as there was no artificial illumination of any kind on the fourth floor.
As they passed the first door on the right, Victoria paused to look down at the temporary tag hanging from the shiny brass doorknob.
MILLIE & ELISE
"I don't suppose she beat me home?"
Shaking her head, Katya moved ahead to open the next door down. Pushing it wide, she motioned for Victoria to pass.
She gave the living room only the most cursory of glances before letting down her burden without so much as a sound, asking Katya with a look the question she couldn't bring herself to give voice to.
Sighing, Katya held open her arms. "We don't know. That's the honest answer."
Victoria's lip twitched as she gnawed at the inside. She only stopped when she tasted blood. "Elise?"
"Has faith that her beloved will return unharmed."
"And do you share that faith?" Victoria asked pointedly.
"I want to. She and Niamh have never failed to return."
"There's always—"
Katya cut her off with a slashing hand. "I know. Believe me, I know. But thinking any other way would mean getting nothing done, so I have to, all right? I don't want to hear it."
"Very well," Victoria said, and lifted the lid on her trunk.
Katya sighed. "I wish I had an answer for you, and I wish that the lack of one wasn't tearing me up inside. These last few months have been… I have to relieve the pressure where I can, even if it means a bit of wishful thinking."
"I can't deny indulging in the same. I don't hold it against you. When was the last time you received word?"
"A week ago, when they met with Josephine about rumours coming out of Germany."
Victoria nodded, staring down into her effects, the top layer a chessboard of perfectly-folded black and white shirts. Lifting a black one, she shook it out, but quickly lost interest in something as inconsequential as what to do with her laundry. Things far more important demanded her thoughts. "I should see Elise."
"Her shift ends at nine."
For the sake of Katya's own mental health, she couldn't think about who wasn't there. Vita was. Finally. For good. Katya knew it was true, because for the first time in eight years, she got to watch Vita unpack. After living out of suitcases or wearing what she had left behind every time she came home, it was the simple act of taking things out of her trunk and putting them away properly that signalled Vita's permanent return. A second wave of relief washed over Katya all at once, forcing her to sit down on Vita's bed.
"Are you all right?" its owner asked.
Katya blinked away the honest answer. "Not used to all the stairs yet."
"Sometimes it felt like the university was nothing but. I don't think I've ever been in better condition, considering," Vita said as she lifted out another shirt to reveal stacks and stacks of paper. Books, files, folders, on top of which were several sets of bound envelopes, all with Vita's university address on the front. Some written in Selene or Millie's hand, others Katya didn't recognise. The topmost she very much did.
"You kept my letters?" she asked, reaching down to pick it up. It was from February of this year, only five months earlier, but she hadn't the foggiest memory of what she'd written.
Vita gave it a long, meaningful look, as though the paper was delicate crystal in the hands of a gorilla. "Now that it's over, I can admit… there were days when it was very difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Days when it all became too much, and my fatigue outstripped my motivation. On those days, I only had two places of refuge: magic and letters from home. But too often I would shrink down to escape, to ignore the larger world by not even being able to comprehend it. I could dance among the spheres and not be stared at, whispered about, doubted, maligned, dismissed… there was no fight to be had there. Only peace and more knowledge… all I wanted, sometimes, but I found it becoming… addictive, and I needed your letters more than I ever told you. You saved me from that realm once, and many times since, even if you were unaware. You may open it, if you wish."
Katya pulled the creased and crinkled paper out and unfolded it. The ink was blotchy in several random places, completely illegible. "Did you spill something on it?"
"Only tears," Vita said, her voice distant. "Good, bad… I missed you terribly, but I needed to be reminded why I was working so hard."
"I missed you too," Katya said, her throat tightening against how much.
"Thank you. And I'm glad I did."
"I am, too." A thunderbolt of jogged memory struck, and Katya snapped her fingers. "Oh! I have something for you, on that tick."
Sliding from Vita's bed, Katya padded over to her room and produced from it a pair of slim packages, still in their plain brown packing paper. She handed them to Vita with wide, expectant eyes.
"These are for me?" Vita asked.
"Yes. Open them," Katya said with a little gesture of encouragement.
Vita wasted no time tearing into the larger of the two, revealing a plate of glass in a gilt-edged wooden frame. "What is this for?"
Katya nodded to the tube propped up against the chest of drawers. "Your diploma, Doctor. I expect you'll want to hang it in our office. In fact, I insist you do so. Give it a bit of gravitas."
"Well, who am I to say no to the boss?"
"Very funny. Next!" Katya said, taking the empty frame and setting it aside.
'Next' was a photograph, expertly mounted in a wooden frame lacquered so black it looked like metal. Looking up from it was Vita, flanked by Katya and Elise, in front of the wall of ivy that was the signature feature of the University of Sherwood's library. Vita was in her crimson-and-grey graduation gown, complete with mortarboard. She looked happy beyond belief, yet only as Katya looked at it now did she notice how tired Vita was behind the smile. There was just as much relief as pride in it, much the same as there was when Katya looked at herself, in the photo or the mirror.
"How did you get this so quickly?" Vita asked, holding the picture up for a better look. It was slightly grainy, the way all photos of witches were, none more than Manifested ones, but well-framed and lit. "And in colour? This must have cost a fortune."
"I've met a lot of photographers in this job," Katya said, "I knew the right one."
"It was very thoughtful, thank you. This goes in the office, too," Vita said, brushing against Katya as she set it on the bed alongside the diploma frame.
"As if you won't be seeing enough of me as it is."
Vita laughed. "I will have to explain to everyone who comes in why my hair is so long in it, though."
"You're not keeping it like this?" Katya asked, playfully flipping the edge off of Vita's shoulder.
"Absolutely not. In fact, I must ask if you have some time free right now."
"I cleared my afternoon for you."
Or rather, Alex did, Katya didn't say.
"Splendid. Would you do me the honour of ridding me of it?" Vita asked, eyeballing the hair grazing her shoulder like it was doing so without permission. "I'd like to feel like me again. Oh, and…" she rummaged through her trunk and pulled out a mangled pile of dresses, smashed flat under the weight of things she actually valued, "if I can't get these to go up completely, I'd like you to burn the ashes."
Victoria stepped back into the living room, hair dripping and feeling marginally closer to human, even if she had been forced to use Katya's shampoo. She smelled… not unpleasant, she had to admit, but if it meant that she would soon get to feel like Victoria again, she would submit to all manner of floral aromas.
"I don't think I've ever seen a more spotless bathroom than that."
Literally. There weren't even any fingerprints on the taps, and only a lack of air in the lines gave away that they'd ever been used before. She still had misgivings about having a window over the bathtub, but had been overruled three to one on that particular design element.
"Why is your alarm clock on the table?"
"Alex forced me to sleep in this morning," Katya said as she herded Victoria towards a low table sat at the foot of Katya's bed, complete with a mirror and an array of cosmetics spread across the top.
For as little as Victoria had thought she'd cared about appearances, she had been dealt a swift lesson in how much she had been lying to herself when she'd been stripped of a choice in the matter. She hadn't appeared in Magic magazine since adopting the university dress code without stuffing her hair under a hat, refusing utterly to be photographed for public consumption in her reviled 'normal' state.
'Normal.'
What did that even mean anymore? Who was Doctor Ravenwood now that the proverbial war was over? She had only sought to win it, and truth be told, she had no plan for what to do with her victory now that it had been achieved.
But as she had only been declared the victor a week earlier, she gave herself permission to admit that answers would likely only come with time and a great deal of consideration.
It was time that made her sit down before the mirror with a great exhale and studiously avoid looking into it. Her gaze roamed everywhere else, but as their flat had yet to be decorated in any meaningful way, there wasn't much to look at beyond piles of boxes. So with a resigned breath, she turned back to her reflection, eyes moving fractionally as she considered what she saw.
"You're 32," she said, barely loud enough to hear. She had to remind herself every time she looked in a mirror, or risk forgetting the truth her face concealed so well. Looking down at her hands, her fingers flexed beneath skin that stretched smooth and snapped back as taut as it had started.
She looked up to see inquiry on Katya's face.
"It was hard enough to be taken seriously as the only woman in my graduating class," Victoria said, "but defending my thesis alongside the others who had started with me… I looked like a child. Graduate school aged them. Standing in front of those wigs and mortarboards, they looked like they'd earned their places there. I had to work twice as hard backwards in a dress, but I looked exactly as I did the day I arrived."
Katya nodded her vigorous agreement as she began running her fingers through Victoria's wet hair, clawing it into some semblance of order before it could snarl itself into knots.
Tingles spidered up Victoria's spine with every drag of Katya's fingertips across her scalp. Physical displays of affection had never been a part of Victoria's life before Katya, and other than the occasional hug from Millie, it was still true. But with fingers in her hair and the warmth of Katya's weight occasionally pressing against her back, Victoria found that she'd missed being touched.
That Katya was the only one who ever did so with any regularity was perhaps not entirely coincidental.
Victoria sat up a little straighter, her shoulders a little farther back. "The other doctoral students understood, anyone who saw my work or was privy to my research understood. But others…" Victoria's chest rose and fell in a long, contemplative breath. "Third generation Ravenwood, the only woman, looking too young to be wearing that robe and cap… the words 'special treatment' were whispered a hair too loudly in my presence on more than one occasion."
"Bollocks," Katya spat, fetching a brush from the table.
"Agreed. But every day in the dining hall… do you know what it reminded me of?"
Katya shook her head.
"The asylum."
The brush paused mid-stroke, Katya unwilling to break eye contact.
"The way the heads would turn when I walked in. The conversations that would either die off or start suddenly when I sat down. But in the asylum, the others quickly started ignoring me when they realised I wasn't dangerous," Victoria said, punctuating it with an ironic snort. "At school, it never stopped. Less pervasive, perhaps, but it continued right up until the last meal I ate in that place. I don't know what that says about the parties involved."
"That one saw you for who you are, and the other as a threat?"
"As a woman, or a witch?"
"Does it matter?" Katya asked as she resumed brushing.
"Yes. My reputation for being able to stop bullets and throw airships around may have spared me worse than whispers and glances, but others won't be so lucky. They won't have witchlights to dazzle people into silence, or be able to make others swallow their skepticism by leaving the conversation by walking through a wall."
She'd only done it once, impulsively, the first month. The transition from living amongst her sisters to being plunged into the cold, unforgiving waters of male-dominated academia and scientific rigour had not been a smooth one, made orders of magnitude worse for being the first woman admitted to the university, to say nothing of being a practitioner of magic. Science was for men, witchcraft for women.
Few knew what to do with someone who could do both.
When Victoria found Katya's eyes again, they were pensive, and not entirely focussed on what they were doing. "Vita… do you still think about that place? The asylum?"
"As little as I can."
"Do you still have the nightmares?"
"Not in many months. Why?"
Katya's brush strokes were slow and contemplative, and Victoria found her breathing falling into cadence with them. "I guess you're mentioning it reminded me that we haven't slept in the same room since Christmas. I've always hated the idea of it happening and you waking up all alone."
"It wasn't… pleasant, no." They had grown less frequent and less intense, taken over by fears of missing classes or not graduating on time, but she had never been able to shake them completely.
