Thanks to me we went out looking for a dinner table around mid-afternoon. Imagine Adagio’s amazement when my sage advice about going when we did turned out to be bang on the money and everywhere we looked was deserted.
Getting a table was easy! Wasn’t I a smart?
She let me pick, which was pressure on me given that my experience with what Adagio liked to eat was whatever I’d had lying around at home. I settled for somewhere that looked to cover all possible angles and which wasn’t too fussy about dresscode, because I was still wearing the clothes I’d slept in. And been kidnapped in.
I didn’t look great. Should probably have showered.
Adagio, conversely, looked fantastic. Hey, I can admit that. Girl looked like she ate sunshine and shat rainbows. I am not even kidding, she looked radiant. Given what I’d managed to keep her from doing to the other two - something bad, presumably - this was a stark and sudden change.
A lot recently had been stark and sudden, really.
She was back to holding my hand, too. She’d done it on the walk to the restaurant and kept doing it after we’d been seated, reaching across to hold it over the table every now and then. I did not complain about this or even point out that she’d done it. Seemed the most sensible course of action to me, just keeping quiet and letting her get on with it.
But, you know, other than the ever-escalating level of physical contact with occasional flourishes of unsettling mood swings and dangerously casual and possibly even punitive use of her returning powers, Adagio was actually kind of back to where I knew her. Which is to say like she was when she and I had first met, without the shyness on her part.
Or the melancholy that came from having just had your magical abilities shattered in front of everyone. That’d take the wind out of anyone’s sails. Especially if you then run off and it rains on you. Like it had to Adagio. Poor Adagio.
So actually it was better, now. She was better. No wonder she looked so bloody happy about life in general, so happy it was even rubbing off on me a little bit. She was nice to hang around with! I was almost able to forget her unusual and alarming behaviour.
Up until a waitress came to take drinks orders and smiled at me while doing so, earning herself a paint-stripping glare from Adagio for her troubles and hurrying off quickly once she’d written down what we wanted.
This was probably something we were going to have to talk about. Or rather, something I was going to have to bite the bullet and talk to her about. Because, despite everything, I did still have somewhere about my person a sliver of actual, bonafide concern for her welfare, and something was clearly up with her.
It wasn’t going to be fun, but it had to be done.
I was the one who reaching for her hand that time, which certainly got her attention. She stopped monologuing in dreamy tones about revenge and blinked, looking at me perplexedly.
“Sorry, was I going on?” She asked, blushing.
Seriously, I could probably spit in her drink when it arrived and she’d apologise to me but if I did something crazy like shake Aria’s hand she’d put me in a box and then rip Aria’s arm off. That’s not normal. Even if it might be a little hyperbolic.
“Are you okay, Adagio?”
“Huh? Am I okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, I haven’t known you for a huge amount of time but you seem a bit, uh, high-strung.”
‘High-strung’ seemed the most diplomatic way of putting it.
“I do?”
“Well - and don’t take this the wrong way - you but did kind of get a little angry with Aria and Sonata back there. Like, kind of scary angry. ‘Threatened to compel them to do something to teach them a lesson’ angry.”
“Did I?”
This was not Adagio deliberately missing the point of what I was saying. With every question she asked of me she looked more confused and more worried, her eyes widening. I gave her hand a squeeze.
“You didn’t actually do anything, before you think you did. We left to grab this table before they all got snapped up. Just in the nick of time!”
The place was basically empty, but my point stood.
She sat in silence a moment or two, staring at me, and then blinked again, slowly, some of the tension that had been building in her melting out again, shoulders sagging.
“That was on purpose, wasn’t it? You got us to leave before I did anything.”
“Uh, maybe?”
This was the kind of answer that had the potential to go very badly for me, I felt, so I winced just in case. Fortunately, Adagio wasn’t looking at me anymore and was instead staring at the table. Or rather through it.
“I don’t - I wasn’t thinking straight. I was just so angry. Can’t - can’t even really remember why. And then you said we should go and I felt better. And we went.”
Adagio went quiet, thinking deeply.
“Once the gem has fixed everything should be okay. Won’t be long now,” she said, idly playing with the thing as she mentioned it. That got me to look down. I double-took.
Even I could see that there was a problem with the gem. Parts were still obviously missing, which was one thing, but those parts that had fixed back into place had not done so evenly. The whole gem was looking very lopsided, and even ‘fixed’ as it was, the cracks where it had shattered were obvious.
Sometimes they sparked, usually when Adagio got more animated when she spoke. Sparked quietly, yes, but still enough for me to notice. I had wondered what that snapping sound had been.
That couldn’t be good.
Her hand pulled out from under mine and she rested her chin on her palms, letting out a long breath. Then, seeing my concern - I hoped I looked concern - she laughed, once, and closed her eyes.
“I’m tired. I think you were right about the strain, heh. Guess I’m not all better yet. I was just so excited to have my powers back. Even a little bit! Do you - do you think maybe I should take it slower?”
She was deferring to me on this?
“It’s not really my area of expertise, Adagio.”
“I know, but, well, you saw what I was doing - what I was going to do - and you stopped me. If you hadn’t been there…”
Clearly there was no way she could think of ending that sentence that she wanted to think about, so it just kind of dwindled away to nothing while she sat there with an expression of distress.
Okay, look.
Yes Adagio may have leveraged my obliviousness over Sunset’s feelings to stoke her jealousy and then feed on it to restore life to her magical gem in a successful effort to regain her manipulative powers.
Yes Adagio then used those same powers to put me to sleep so she could then bundle me onto a bus and take me somewhere without my express consent and yes she was consistently invading my personal space on, like a minute-to-minute basis. These things were all true.
But I still felt bad for her! Girl’s under a lot of pressure! The pressure of providing for her sisters and also the figurative pressure of her magic coming back. I have no idea what that must be like. Confounding, one assumes.
Before, back when she’d been normal and a regular non-magic person, she’d been lovely! Great fun to hang around with. It was only really once that gem of hers started coming back to life that she went a little funny. And she seems to realise that, too! So there is a problem! It’s not just my imagination.
And let’s just...leave aside the whole ‘Sunset’s feelings’ things because I still have no idea what to think about any of that and I have enough on my plate as it is.
I reached out across the table again and very delicately took hold of both Adagio’s hands this time. She noticed, blushed, and let me do this. So much contact these days! The things I have to do! Is this what normal people have to do all the time?
“Hey, relax,” I said, which got a tiny fragment of a chuckle of her at least. “Taking it slow might be an idea. No need to rush into anything, huh? You got cash - good job, by the way - so why not just take it easy for a day or two?”
“I - do you think that’s okay?” She asked, biting her lip.
“Most people go their whole lives without using their magical powers to make other people do things,” I said, and I was gratified to see her give me a particularly mild condescending look. That could only mean improvement. Sunset did the same thing.
“No, I mean, won’t that just be wasting time? Shouldn’t I be leading? Doing stuff?”
“We just said it’d be best to take it slow. And hey, the others were squatting when we found them, this is a definite step up. Let them enjoy it. Hell, let yourself enjoy it, Adagio. If you burn yourself out where will that leave you? Or them?”
Or me? Other than with an escape route.
Why was I helping her, exactly?
All of this discussion was derailed at that point by the return of the waitress bearing drinks and asking us if we were ready to order, which reminded both Adagio and myself that we had not even glanced at what was on offer to eat.
Sheepishly, we asked if would be so kind as to give us another five minutes.
“Thank you,” Adagio said after a maybe a silent thirty seconds of consideration, looking at me over the top of her menu.
“Hmm? What? What I do?”
“Just, for everything really. For helping me out in the first place, for still being nice to me even after you heard what I did, for helping me now even after I kind of took you against your will…”
There was no good way of spinning that, and Adagio seemed to realise this. She lost the thread for a moment, cleared her throat, and then carried on:
“You’re a nice guy. Interesting in a sometimes kind of confounding and confusing way and I can’t really work out what’s going on in your head, but nice. And I’m sorry for using you and then dragging you out here. It’ll all work out alright. I promise. I’ll be a good friend, I’ll really try.”
“That’s very sweet of you to say, Adagio,” I said, unable really to come up with anything better.
A lot of what Adagio had said - well, just the point about learning of past misdeeds and remaining cordial, really - was quite similar to what Sunset had said to me, now that I thought about it.
Was that significant? Did I just attract the friendly attentions of a certain kind of magical girl? Or was this all a series of horrendous coincidences?
Did it matter?
Probably not. It was what it was and I was where I was. Trying to ponder whether some cosmic force beyond my understanding was moving the pieces around for shits and giggles would get me nowhere.
One thing at a time, just do my best to make sure everyone comes out of this happy.
The waitress came back. I had not been reading the menu, I’d just been staring at it. I had no idea what to order and Adagio had already placed hers. I couldn’t send the waitress away a second time! I panicked! I blurted out something without thinking. I had no idea what it was and while on the outside I was smiling at her politely while handing the menu back inside I was screaming.
I really had to pay more attention to things.