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theminecraftbee · 1 year

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"If you're in a time loop, blink twice," Scott says, sitting on the steps outside of Bertha's plaza.

"What?" Cleo says.

"I mean, I'm not stupid," Scott says. "When a witch of time is looking at me like I'm a dead man or something, clearly they know something I don't. I've read books."

"That's not how that works. Well, I mean, sometimes that's how that works," Cleo says, and they shake their head twice, trying to shake the cobwebs out of it. "What do you mean, looking at you like you're a dead man?"

Scott shrugs. "I mean, you were looking at me like... well, not someone you were getting curses from, is what I'm saying. Like how I think I look when..." He fidgets uncomfortably for a moment. Cleo grimaces. Alright, so they looked like the unstable necromancer when he's thinking about the thing that made him unstable. That's... probably bad news.

"Sort of like how your magic makes you all... you know. Emo," Cleo starts.

"Wow," Scott says.

"A side-effect of time magic is deja vu."

"You're not talking me out of 'I died in the time loop', for the record," Scott says.

"Not exactly? It's more like... See, time magic isn't just about, you know, reversing time. Really, I can't do that all that often. The universe likes symmetry. Time magic is about... making that symmetry happen, really. A lot of my spells, the big ones? They're pulling things over that happened in another life. Another universe. And even if it's not one I remember living, I still lived it, because I'm the Time Witch, so I'm all of them, sort of."

As they speak, they play with their abacus. Purple bursts of magic flicker and fade around it. The shadows are long this time of day (or maybe that's just Scott's general moody aura), and it makes the color stand out.

"So you're... what, remembering things that didn't happen?" Scott asks.

"Sort of?" Cleo says, shrugging. "They did happen. Just only kind of to me."

"Huh," Scott says.

They sit there for a while. It starts raining. Cleo would stop the rain - they normally do - but they're wearing their hat, and it would require getting up, and they had just helped deal with the Storm Witch, so they don't feel like burning bridges at the moment. They can get wet for a few minutes.

Scott turns to Cleo, rain dripping across his face.

"So why did you look at me like you loved me?" Scott says.

Cleo feels their heart in their throat. They look back at Scott, wide-eyed.

"What?" they say.

"Why did you - you know, like you loved me and lost me? Like that," Scott says.

"If I knew, that wouldn't be deja vu," Cleo says, after a moment. "It's not from this life. No time loop. Promise."

Scott shrugs. "I'll hold you to that. Will you do your rain thing, by the way? Getting all damp isn't good for my complexion."

"Making your makeup run?"

"Hey, I'll have you know these eyebags are all natural."

Cleo lifts up her wand. Sparks flicker across from the abacus to her hand, but she doesn't need the number from it anyway. She casts the spell to make the sun come out, and as the beams fall on her arms, it's warm, and she feels strangely safe. She doesn't look back at Scott, though. Neither of them say anything more.

#wcsmp #zombiecleo #scott smajor #a bee fic #anyway so i'm officially insane about wc!cleo. just so you know #anyway also obviously this is referencing cleo's other series because they're important here #because CLEO HAS MADE THEM CANON

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