happilyeverbeginning | Say that you want me every day/That you want me every way (scrooge x magica)

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Say that you want me every day/That you want me every way (scrooge x magica)

It had been one week since the "disloyalists" were punished, and the effects were still being felt. Slave and comrade alike were terrified to be in Magica's presence, lest they say the wrong thing to set her off and receive anything similar to what the husband and wife had gone through. No one was even sure what they had done - there were plenty of rumors, but the only thing anyone was sure that those two somehow proved they didn't belong in the coven.

It was perhaps because of this overwhelming fear that very few took notice that the formally ranked lowest slave, Scrooge McDuck, was being allowed privileges even highly-respected witches had yet to achieve. The castle library was filled to the brim with books, scrolls, parchments, some of it old as time itself. They had languages from around the world, scientific concepts that many couldn't fathom, and untold power lurking in the chapters. In the wrong hands, this room could've been used to destroy all the witches and warlocks in the land.

But it was in Scrooge's hands, so why worry? With her duties done for the day, Magica headed for the library - enjoying the shriek that came out of an older slave that accidentally made eye-contact with her - to see him. Her future husband was set to arrive soon, and as a result she wanted to spend as much time with her real lover as possible - that she'd be admitted, anyway. She also wanted to check up on his progress - surely a brilliant mind like his could improve leaps and bounds with the right setting. (Plus, she was a smidgen jealous that some musty tomes got him more excited than seeing her naked form, dammit all to hell.)

She knocked twice before entering. "I do hope I'm not interrupting anything."

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Even though he had access to the library, he made sure to take extra care with his duties to ensure that the quality of his work didn't suffer. He wanted to be above reproach so that if someone found out what he was being allowed to do, Magica could point at his hard work to show he was being rewarded with more responsibilities.

He hadn't had time to sit down and read yet, but he was making headway cleaning up the library. He'd started by cleaning everything that wasn't a book or shelf which had taken quite a bit of time. The amount of dust and neglect had been atrocious, and he was reasonably sure that the entire thing would've been set ablaze the moment a fire was lit in the fireplace due to how filthy the chimney had been.

Only once that was done, each book and scroll was carefully removed from the shelves and checked for damage including that from insects. He was starting quite a collection of which items were damaged and would need to be looked at for potential repair. Anything that was still in decent condition he left in stacks on the floor before the shelves he found them on.

At the moment, he was giving the bookshelves a solid clean and polish just like what had been done to the rest of the library. The place already looked a hundred percent better even with all the books, scrolls, and so on neatly stacked on the floor. He glanced over from his perch on one of the ladders, cleaning cloth and furniture wax in hand.

"Good afternoon." He paused, glancing over her shoulder to see if anyone was with her. "Magica."

He was getting better about using her name when they were alone, but it still took some mental effort to get past the hangups. At times he ended up calling her "Mistress Magica".

Edited 2018-09-23 03:00 (UTC)

For half a second, Magica almost thought she was in the wrong room - it hadn't looked this pristine in ages! She gawked a bit stupidly before composing herself. Mortals were capable of amazing things, when left to their own devices. It made them formidable foes, even if those of the magic would always be superior.

She locked the door behind her to guarantee privacy, nodding once in approval at hearing her name. It was a slow and steady process to have it said, and they had eternity as far as she was concerned. After another impressed glance around her, she walked toward him.

"All this in just a few days? I must say, even with all my faith in you, you still exceeded my expectations. And with all your other chores finished on time with the same level of completion... you will earn much in this castle, with this kind of determination."

"I'm not finished yet," Scrooge said modestly. "I still need to finish cleaning the shelves and then start sorting everything before putting them on the shelves."

He pointed towards a large collection of items that had clearly seen better days.

"Those are everything that had obvious damage: broken spines, torn pages, insect damage, and so on. I didn't know where to take those for repair."

He then pointed to an odd little collection of wax seals to one side of it.

"A large number of the scrolls were completely ruined to the point where they crumbled when I touched them. I don't know if the seals that were on them can help you any, but I felt it might be worthwhile to save them. At the very least they can be melted down and reused."

Edited 2018-09-24 00:30 (UTC)

Magica walks to the piles to inspect them, cupping her chin in thought. "We do have a specialist in this area who might be able to lend us a hand repairing the damage... he's a greedy one, but what's a treasury if it's never spent once?" Add that to her list of things to do.

After that, she idly picks up one of the wax seals. No great loss here, she assumed something like this would happen. Funny, this one looked rather familiar...

... And her eyes widen, realizing that once upon a time, this scroll held the names of the children she - she suddenly crushes it in her hand. "We can always make new ones," she said a little quickly."Give those old biddies something to do." She lets the crushed remains drop from her hand, willing them to burn and vanish before they hit the floor.

After a deep inhale, she regains her composure, glancing back at Scrooge. "Has anyone given you trouble over your new responsibilities?"

The reaction to the wax seals unsettled Scrooge. What had she seen that had upset his mistress so?

However, he didn't risk asking. If she wanted to tell him, she would.

"No, ma'am," he said honestly, shaking his head. "Most of them see it as me being forced to do extra work that they don't have to do. Slaves don't have much use for books."

Which had been something she had encouraged over the centuries. A good way to keep your opposition down was to deny them the ability to gain knowledge that could prove useful.

But surely giving one slave access to such knowledge wouldn't hurt - especially this one. "Very good. The Destelfink should take care of anyone who does, but I could always use someone for target practice." A little laugh, because other people's lives are exactly that - merely tools. If all the other slaves died, it'd be annoying, but they'd merely grab another set. They were a dime a dozen.

Only Scrooge mattered.

"Bad work should be punished... and good work should be rewarded." And there it was, the big reason she came. "Come down here."

Scrooge set his rag and furniture wax on the shelf so he would know where to start from. Then he climbed down the ladder and walked over to Magica.

He wondered what exactly she would reward him with this time. It really wasn't obvious most of the time.

Once he was close enough, Magica wrapped her arms around his neck for a casual kiss, as if this was a perfectly normal relationship. Granted, Magica's sense of "normal" was probably fairly warped to begin with.

"Now then... what would make your life easier?" She had a feeling if she flat-out asked him "what do you want", his mind wouldn't be able to come up with anything. He needed gradual steps to find his desires, no matter how small or trivial. "You've earned great favor with me."

Given Scrooge's relationships were trysts with mistresses and potentially to be breeding stock in the future, "normal" was out of the question on that front. He kissed her back without hesitation.

Then he hummed in thought, glancing around at the books stacked high as he tried to figure out what he could possibly need.

"Probably a new scrub brush," he admitted. "Once everything is back on the shelf, I'll need to give the floor another good scrubbing due to what comes off of the books. Then one I have's bristles are about worn out. It took ages to clean the floor the first time."

It was good that she hadn't asked him what he wanted because he would've automatically told her that all he wanted was her comfort and happiness. Which, admittedly, wasn't entirely true. Fall was already upon them and winter would be here soon enough. He'd already started to figure out that he had been given the draftiest part of the slaves' quarters. He would've loved to have had even one more thin blanket to help fight off the chill.

Wouldn't he be surprised to learn that stock-breeding would be permanently banned for him - but that was talk for another time.

"That can be arranged," she replied after hearing his boring, quaint answer. And that would have been the end of it...

Except. She raised an eyebrow, a thought occurring.

"... Is it worn out because you worked so hard, or because you were given bad equipment from the start?" She knew the McDucks were lowest on the ladder - admittedly, she had made sure they stayed that way - and bullying was common among the slaves, desperate as they were for any chance to feel superior when they were bugs under the feet of magics.

The castle was soon going to learn that Scrooge was not allowed to be a target.

"It wasn't the best from the start, but I managed to replace some of the bristles with horse hair from the stables," he admitted, trying to keep just how bad a condition the scrub brush had been in when he'd received it. "I just wore it out using it."

"Hm." She wasn't entirely sure she believed him. He was already reluctant about telling her what he wanted - did the same apply to what he didn't want? She thought ruthlessly torturing his former owners had proved that she was devoted to him, but maybe it hadn't been enough.

Not once did it occur to that, maybe, Scrooge didn't want people tortured for his sake.

"Perhaps it's time I personally inspected the slave conditions myself, if all our tools are so worn down." And so she could see if they really were saddling Scrooge with the worst of it. "We can't have you doing your best with shoddy leftovers. And look around you - you've already made so much progress with what you've got." See, it was perfectly logical, and had so little to do with getting revenge for his sake.

Did he want revenge? Oh yes. He had enjoyed seeing the couple that had painted the stonework red with his blood after that vicious beating getting their comeuppance. He was the product of a twisted, cruel world, after all.

However, he didn't want his fellow slaves being tortured for bullying because of the ripple effect: They would know he was getting preferential treatment and would find indirect ways of making his life a living hell. Being given a broken scrub brush was an easy fix if a bit annoying. The hex on his collar might protect him from bodily harm from others, but there were ways to arrange making his life a nightmare without directly drawing the hex's backlash.

He preferred the open petty bullying given that alternative.

"It would be useful not just for me," Scrooge said, not realizing what she was up to. "A lot of the tools used by the slaves are rather old."

"Aren't you a thoughtful one." A playful tap of his beak. "I'll admit, we of the magic tend to lose track of time, given how long we live. A year for you is almost like a minute to us." A wave of her hand. "In that sense, we don't realize how long physical objects last. We do need these little reminders now and then."

In addition, high-ranking sorceresses like herself wouldn't check them anyway. That was for low, mortal people to do.

"I've even lost count of how old I am." A little laugh... which dies, as something dawns on her.

"... How old are you?"

"I'm fairly certain I'm twenty-five," he answered.

"Fairly certain" because he'd been the only one to really keep any sort of track. Slaves were typically first bought when they were five years old. He had kept track of the number of winters since then.

"I honestly don't know when exactly I was born, but I guess that it must have been in the fall."

"And that's young for mortals... right?" Magica tried to think of how long twenty-five years was. To her, it was short. But, after doing the math... a strong-willed mortal could live up to one hundred years. But slaves weren't supposed to have strong wills, so that probably had an effect of their life-span. This wasn't something she had ever thought about in great detail before - after all, she didn't care.

Her eyes darted about as she kept adding, dividing, subtracting. Maybe if she really control of things here, Scrooge could live to be one hundred.

But then he'd die. And that... that was unacceptable.

He'd already spent 1/4 of his life. How fast would the other third go? Fear welled up in her stomach - it was a foreign feeling. This needed to be fixed. "I... I need to start researching." She almost staggers, because this was something that had never been done before, so far as she knew. She needed to make a mortal... immortal. "Have you read anything here? Even just a glance?"

"I think so?"

He watched her distress climb all over her face, growing more worried by the moment.

"Not yet," he said. "I've been trying to get everything cleaned and organized. Everything was pretty much shoved randomly onto shelves."

He took her hand in his and wrapped an arm around her back to steady her. Something was very, very wrong.

"How about you take a rest while I get you some tea?"

It was taking all of Magica's mental strength not to fall to her knees. Where did she even begin looking for such a spell? Would it even be a spell, or a hex? Curse? Potion? Those of the magic had long lives merely by being born, how did one transfer that? How long would it take to find a way, if a way existed? Would it be too late?

She almost didn't hear Scrooge at first. No, she had to find it. She would find it. If a way didn't exist yet... she'd make a way. She'd use the other slaves as experiments. And if each and every single one of them died to make it happen?

That was an acceptable loss.

"I... I can't rest. Not now." Who knew when ever again? "Have you began organizing them? Are they in any order at all now?"

He shook his head and attempted to be firm, knowing he was treading on thin ice: "I have to insist that you take a moment to rest. Whatever it is can wait."

She looked dreadful.

Hearing him actually take a stand with her, however small, was enough to jar her. She blinked at him, surprised, before taking a breath.

"... Very well. But... just for now." She ran a hand down her face, trying to get herself to a chair. "One cup. That's all I'll allow."

He was taking a stand for her. That was what made the difference.

There was nowhere in the library that she could sit down, so he guided her back to her personal drawing room. He adjusted his grip in the open areas, however, to something less intimate. He was already pushing his luck by touching her publicly.

As soon as he'd sat her down, he hurried off to retrieve the tea. However, he made sure to add a few drops of whiskey to help her relax. In addition to that, he brought a plate of cucumber sandwiches. She'd looked like she'd been about to faint, so some food might help.

When she was alone, Magica thought. She'd have to throw herself into her research - something she hadn't done in ages, since nothing had ever been so dire. The other magics would be suspicious, and if they found out the reason for her research, they would question her leadership. They'd need to be distracted - or led to think she was doing something else.

Yes, that could work... a lie powerful enough for them to believe.

She looked up as he returned, eyes falling to the sandwiches. Always going and above. She wouldn't lose him, she'd die first.

"All your other chores will now be suspended. The library will be your only concern until further notice."

That was surprising, but she did say she had something she urgently needed to research. It made sense.

"Yes, Mistress," he said, slipping back into his servant role as he set the cup and saucer down on the table before also setting down the sandwiches.

Magica took the cup and had a long, steady sip. Would the curse she put on his bloodline interfere with the plan? It was too important to leave out. Maybe she could locate other McDucks and experiment on them. There had to be a good handful out there somewhere.

"The organization is the most important part of the library. I need to be able to find what I need at a moment's notice..." She trailed off as she realized he'd actually need to understand the contents of what was inside the books and scrolls and such in order to do that. He could read, but could he understand?

"... Go to the library and pick a tome. Any of them, I don't care which."

He didn't bother asking why. She had to have a reason for it.

Instead, he did as ordered, picking up a small tome from the top of one of the stacks, mentally bookmarking where it had come from. He returned to her drawing room and held it out to her.

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