Chapter Text
It was early evening and the sun was just about to set over your darkened alley. You were leaning against the wall, lazily examining your nails as you pretended not to notice as a small figure approached, standing only a little straighter as the monster drew near. You steeled yourself for what was about to come, both knowing and not knowing what was going to happen. You knew your duty, but you had no idea that day would be oh so much different to any other day. That day, your future was about to be rewritten.
“You're the witch aren't you?” they asked, voice trembling and eyes wide.
“I am. What of it?” you made your voice purr in the way that you'd practised for hours on end, just to get the perfect inflection down pat. You'd heard something similar on TV one night and had liked the way it sounded. Bold and just a touch intimidating. Just the image you tried to project.
The witch hides in darkness and shadow, playing death like a game. Everyone knows the stories. An abomination, no human should ever wield magic. Magic was for the monsters. So what did that make you?
You.
A witch.
The witch.
Enough with that pretentious shit. Why you’d ever thought of that stupid slogan you had no idea. Yeah sure, you had magic, so did the monsters, not to mention that you were far from the only human with magic! Just because you were human didn't mean you were any different, not really. Even if yours was a rare vein of magic. The small monster in front of you was almost frozen with fear and it occurred to you that it looked very young. Young and terrified.
You took a moment to take in their appearance, the yellowish scales covering their small body. They were bipedal, standing up straight on their hind legs with no problems, but you noticed that they didn’t have arms. They also had larger, spike like scales running down their spine tight up to the tip of their tail.
“My friend- some humans jumped us and she... they killed her.” oh god, the little thing was shaking like a leaf. “I came straight here! Please, help her! You can do it right? I heard some of the other kids talking, you're the witch that can bring people back! She didn't do anything wrong... we were just playing!” great, now they were crying. You couldn’t deal with crying children. Not from lack of experience, more like you just hated seeing their snot drenched faces and red rimmed, puffy eyes. Kids shouldn’t feel like that, kids shouldn’t have to suffer.
You leant down and hugged the kid, holding them close as you muttered “I'll see what I can do. Can you show me where it happened?” they nodded, turning around and dashing off, forcing you into an awkward half run half jog to keep up. You could have gone faster, but you had to let the child in front to show you the way. Every so often your guide would trip and fall flat on their face. Did they always do that or was it because they were scared? Well, so much for your aloof and distant persona. You just wanted to help this frightened child.
A few minutes later you found yourself standing at the entrance to a small park, looking down at a tiny pile of dust. The kid hung back, clearly disturbed by what was left of their friend. Or by what you were about to do. Without wasting any more time you crouched down, resting on your haunches. You took a small pinch of the dust between your fingers, inspecting it carefully and ignoring the lump in your throat. It had barely been fifteen minutes since they'd been killed. Your nose scrunched up a little as you closed your eyes and reached into death.
It was always strange to feel death, it felt almost liquid, but cold and everywhere all around you, like a layer of ice trying to freeze you from the outside in. Most of the monsters soul was still gathered near place she’d died, clearly reluctant to move away. The rest of the shattered soul had been thrown farther afield. Great, you'd have to summon them all back before you could even think about restoring the soul and the body. Why were souls so complicated? You could feel a faint itch beginning to form between your eyes as you grabbed hold of the closest fragment of the soul, at least you had something decent to work with. Humming tunelessly, you cast out your mind like a net, reeling in any soul fragments you found, before carefully weaving them back together. God, monster souls always took forever to fix. It took your complete focus, despite this being one of the easier ones. Kid's souls were always reluctant to move on, especially when the way they died was violent or traumatic.
You'd almost bound all the fragments together when you became aware of a faint entity watching you, not in reality, or in life since death to you was very much real, you'd have been blind to that from where you were, but in death. You brushed it off as another lingering soul, some souls could stay drifting near life for years, decades even. They never usually seemed aware of your presence though. No use in dwelling on it.
One small mercy was that the dust was all together still, not having been blown or kicked far away. This meant that the body itself started to re-form the moment the last piece of the soul had been bound, you just had to hold it together until the body was whole enough to accept it. That was easier said than done, as fragments of the soul often tried to break away from the rest. It was always worse the longer the creature had been dead. You offered a silent thank you to the friend who'd run straight to you when this monster, a rabbit as you could now tell, had been killed. Another thing that had taken some practice. Timing. You had to know exactly when to release the soul into the body. Too early and it would shatter, too late and you risked your soul. Yeah, no wonder people were afraid of what you could do. It was a miracle you hadn't gotten yourself killed.
Speaking of the dead, you could feel the soul pulsing softly in your grasp, almost like you were holding a beating heart, but one that was made purely of energy, the very culmination of a being, not flesh and blood like an actual heart. You waited only a fraction of a second longer before you released it, snapping back from death as you followed the soul and found your way back to the real world. You were just in time to watch the rabbit as she took her first shaky breath. It had worked. The monster was alive again.
The kid who'd brought you here ran past you in a blur, almost knocking the rabbit clean over as they threw themselves at their friend and started crying all over again. It was fully dark now. You always lost track of time when you were dealing with death. You couldn't just leave a couple of kids out alone at night, especially since those louts who'd straight up murdered one of them were probably still hanging around out of sight. You hoped for everyone's sake that they'd stay out of sight. Maybe that was just you being paranoid, but it was still a chance you were reluctant to take.
“Hey kids,” both the sobbing monster children turned to look at you. You were pleased to note that they looked at you with none of the fear or suspicion that you were used to. “It's late. I'll walk you back home.” You'd lost any semblance of your aloof persona by now, no use trying to keep it up when it wasn’t needed. You were weak against kids and you darn well knew exactly who was to blame for that unfortunate weakness. “you two go on ahead, I don’t know the way.”
You thought it was cute how the kids wouldn't leave each other’s side as you followed wordlessly behind. Trying to pretend you weren't exhausted was difficult to say the least, magic was exhausting. That was a known fact, the bigger and more difficult the magic was, the more tiring for the user. You were happy to note that you knew where you were, sometimes people led you to unfamiliar areas and you'd get lost. Always fun for a witch with a poor sense of direction to be spending the night on foreign turf. No danger
You hung back when the pair eventually turned and ran up a driveway, both spun round at the last moment and waved (or bobbed up and down as the armless one did, since, y'know, they had no arms to wave with… they got the message across well enough). The rabbit girl knocked on the door. You were happy, no, you were elated that this had gone well, the monster killers weren't to be seen anywhere and you'd managed to bring the girl back without incident. You didn’t know exactly what had happened other than what the little yellow monster had told you and it wasn’t your place to pry, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
It only took a few seconds for the door to be flung open and two more figures to appear in the light of the doorway. The first was an older, rabbit, its face contorted with worry, the picture of a frightened and anxious parent. The second was smaller, another child. They looked more human than monster, but from where you were standing you could only see a vague silhouette. You didn't get a good look at them until they ran out to throw themselves at the two kids. Your heart turned to ice as they turned and looked straight at you, there was only a brief moment where your eyes locked before you turned on your heel and ran.
Dammit, why now?
You'd know that striped jumper anywhere.