"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.
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I love how like, ambiguous so many Studio Ghibli 'couples' are. They're primarily male/female duos, and it's clear how much they love and care for each other, but more often than not it's never explicitly stated to be romantic. And their bonds aren't treated any less for it.
Idk it's just something I've always held close to my heart as someone who grew up not feeling romantic attraction the way most do, it made the characters feel more relatable and human to me, and while I still didnt fully understand my identity (didn't know being aro was a thing), it helped me better reconcile with it. And I feel that's incredibly important.
(And not just from an aro perspective. portrayal of m/f friendships is rare and something we desperately need more of)
Yes, they love each other deeply, but they don't need to kiss or be a couple for that love to be agknowledged and treated with importance. It's not any less than it would be if they weren't platonic. Hell, it doesn't even need to strictly be platonic or romantic. It could just be somewhere in between and that's okay.
Studio Ghibli fr out here making the most alterous duos I've ever seen.
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