Adrian Blackwood

It wasn't so far into the evening yet that the skies darkened, but the sun was certainly beginning to drift towards the horizon when her green feet touched the soil of Adrian's grove. Pam had spent most of the remaining hours of Friday, and most of today, fulfilling her own responsibility: to fix the damage she had done to Slaughter Swamp, and perhaps even take a few steps towards healing the damage those who'd come before her had.

They'd moved the bodies of the lamia zombies from the swamp, cleared out what was broken and dead. She and Harley had talked, and laughed, and resolved some things they'd left in the air for too long. ("I will run from conflict as long as I can rather than turn around and face it," she'd admitted, and she and Harley had promised to tell each other everything - even the harsh truths that hurt.)

Truly healing Slaughter Swamp was a project of months and years, not days. There'd been too much harm done even before she came along. But there was more harm she was actively responsible for - more damage that was in her power to fix.

And so she came here, looking up at the ruin of the Grove. "Oh, Adrian," she said quietly, to the empty air. "I'm so sorry."

Underneath her feet, buried seeds and half-dead plants were already beginning to rally.

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"It's not your fault," Adrian said, his arms full of the wilted remains of his garden. "I knew what I was doing. What I was risking. I chose to do it anyway. I didn't want to see you die."

His laugh was a bit wry. "That didn't exactly go to plan, either." A beat. "Hi, Pam."

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"Hello."

She hadn't bothered to strip down to human for this visit. Pam's body was still vibrant with vegetation and flowers, Maryland-native species already taking root in her hair.

"You shouldn't have had to pick up after my mistakes," she said. "I'm here to help fix them. If you're okay with that."

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"I would argue I was helping a friend," Adrian said. "...But yes. I am very okay with it." He waved at the faded Grove around them. "There's not a lot I can do for it right now. I'm hoping the Grove's rest in the winter will give it a little more energy to work with in the spring."

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"It's fall, so bringing it fully back into bloom is going to work against it," Pam said. She looked down at her feet. "But I can help coax it back to where it's supposed to be."

The grass under her feet grew greener. Firmer. It spread out around her, each blade perking back up.

Further and further and further, and here and there something else awakened, marigolds and asters adding little pops of yellow across the grove.

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"Everything in its own time," he agreed. Autumn was a time for harvest and respite, not flowering. "I..."

And then he stopped, watching Pam's powers at work, his Grove perking up like...well, like flowers after rain.

"Great Forest..." he whispered.

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"I missed this," Pam said quietly. She let her feet carry her onwards. "All the little things that grow..."

Her hand settled over the first tree on her path. "And the big."

She coaxed the sap back into its bark, its bones. Not enough to grow leaves that would simply wither and freeze in winter, but enough to imbue it with life. I'm sorry, she whispered into it, pheromones and skin against the wood.

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It was Adrian's heart oak; beneath the roots she could feel Adrian's own power, weaker than it should be, the heartbeat fluttering and irregular.

It drank down the power that Pam offered, strengthening beneath her touch, a thread of it flowing down to that knot of Adrian below, and she could feel the beat stabilize.

From behind her, Adrian took a deep, steadying, relieved breath.

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"This would be easier in spring," Pam said, louder now. "You'll still have to tend it, keep a keen eye on it. But I don't think you'll struggle with that."

She didn't pull her hands away until she felt that heartbeat, strong and steady, underneath her fingertips.

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Lydia saw Adrian standing outside on her approach and flung the box she was carrying into the forest in a not at all suspicious manner. Hopefully Boston's new microphone would survive the experience.

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"Great Forest, that feels a lot better," Adrian said, his hand splayed on his chest, directly over the hollowness beneath his ribs.

Sorry, Pam, he'd pay attention in a moment. He just needed to appreciate the feeling of his heart beating regularly again.

Edited Date: 2025-11-08 03:10 pm (UTC)

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Alerted by a noise, Adrian turned around and spotted Lydia. "Hey!" he called, giving her a small wave. He looked oddly tired, more tired than she was used to seeing him. "Hi, Lydia. Come to find out what happened?"

Or did you, y'know, have a different reason for stopping by the Grove today?

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Yes! That! Definitely! And hopefully Adrian hadn't listened to the radio and noticed that it made no mention of him frying his poor Grove at all, or wondered what that noise that alerted him to her presence was, ahem.

"Well," she said delicately as she looked around at the damage. "It must have been quite a spell." Lydia Bennet, master of understatement.

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"A literal lifesaver," Adrian said. "Though, less a spell and more a reckless throwing about of magic, according to Boston."

Not that Adrian disagreed. Though that had been the kindest way his familiar had described it during the ensuing rant.

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"A lifesaver?" Lydia repeated. Because from what she understood of how his Grove operated, it looked more like he'd been at least half trying to kill himself, but Boston had probably already covered that in the rant. "Oh! Is Dr. Isley all right?"

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Pam's expression softened - and a hint of guilt snuck further into the lines under her eyes. "It really is your heart," she said.

She let herself open up to the Grove around her. To listen. To find out where Adrian's arteries ran - where the flow had stopped, stilted, suffered.

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Listen, don't bring other consequences into this, Lydia. He was fine, everything was fine, nobody needed to worry about anything else, okay?

(Boston had, in fact, ranted about that extensively. Also with just cause.)

"She's doing great," he said. "Better than great, actually. It was a hell of an experience, yeah, but it's one of those 'alls well that ends well' kind of things."

Just, uh, maybe don't look too closely at the Grove. For reasons.

"How're you?"

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"Well, yeah," he said. "Did you think I was joking when I said, 'The heart of a witch is the Blackwood, and the heart of the Blackwood is the witch'?"

Because that definitely sounded literal and not like figurative magic nonsense, Adrian, honestly.

His heart under the oak strengthened and Pam could feel it radiating outwards, all over his Grove - not like his own mycelial network, honestly. Under her touch, plants regrew, the earth enriched itself again, and the magic that had gotten so thin and weak, replenished. A transfusion of life into the struggling forest. That copse over there, that rill of a brook, even that profusion of vines and weeds, his heart led to so many places that cried out for aid and were rewarded with new growth.

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"Honestly," Pam said, "That sounded like poetry."

A little ring of flowers formed right around her feet. A few crept their way up Adrian's heart-tree.

New life. New growth. Not all of it was the same as what had died here; Pam couldn't whisper back into existence that what had already passed. But she could give the soil around her the power to do what nature always did, to take what was dead and forge something new out of it.

She thought of the marsh, born again with her. Of the strange town she had found in its depth. Of the look of Adrian's grove when she had entered. Dead or dying, yet with the strength to rally.

She could feel the heartbeat underneath, a pounding rhythm. She suspected that the echo would linger with her, and she'd hear it whenever she set foot on the island.

He'd almost given it up for the sake of her own monstrous heart.

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He'd almost given it up for a friend. Who sometimes did monstrous things, yes; but was, in her own way, trying to make things better. And who learned (slowly and begrudgingly, true) from her mistakes.

"Poetry, but with a core of truth," he said, still idly rubbing at his chest. "From a Blackwood point of view, I shouldn't have done it. But I don't regret it."

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Lydia was looking rather pointedly around the Grove, in fact. Of course you had to do this to your poor Grove when autumn began the downhill slope toward winter, Adrian. Of course. "I suppose that's something," she said. "Are you well?"

'What am I supposed to do with your cat if your Grove doesn't make it through the winter in this condition?' was apparently a little too blunt even for Lydia.

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"I tend to think of all of this in scientific terms," Pam said. "Burying your own heart - it shouldn't make sense."

She let the flow of life - the active exchange of chemicals and pheromones - trickle down as Adrian's Grove took over and found its own way. "Magic always hurts my head," she admitted.

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Adrian just stared at her for a moment. And then he began laughing. "Pam, what do you call what you're doing right now?"

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"I'm..." The way he trailed off before he found a word was probably telling. As was his pallor, more pronounced today than it had been the night before. "...coping?"

So did making it into a question, most likely.

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