Title: Observation
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: PG
Length: 900 words
Content notes: Mentions attempted murder?
Author notes: I think this pretty much manages to stand as a whole thing? It's a companion to what is currently chapter 19 - which will be chapter 16 in the revised version when I eventually finish it and start posting - of Protecting You, the obscenely long Clef/Umi fic which refuses to end... ('Comm' short for communicator - long-distance video calls.)
Summary: Umi and Clef are off at an international political conference, someone's trying to kill them, they've just called home because they've worked out a part of the ~how~ and now Ferio's worried.

oOo

Ferio sat back in his chair when the Comm screen went dark, smile fading away again as he considered the conversation he’d just had – and the one he’d just witnessed, which was rather more, and rather different. Clef and Umi were…

Well. He wasn’t shocked the two of them were getting closer. There were more than a few quiet bets running on whether the two of them would come back from the Conference as a couple. (He’d got his own money pledged in one with Caldina, only mostly in jest.) It was no secret, that their Master Mage was letting Umi closer than he had done anyone else for centuries – he just didn’t seem to have noticed, yet.

Or… he hadn’t noticed before, at least.

But that wasn’t so worrying as the fact that he seemed to be dragging Umi down into the self-sufficient, over-protective kind of behaviours which had been wearing Clef out since Emeraude had summoned the Knights, at the very least, and only getting worse the more he was personally targeted.

“But… they volunteered up information when I asked for it.” Ferio muttered to himself, still looking up at the wall-sized screen, the blank sheet of crystal reflecting the flicker of lights from the various bits of equipment scattered through the Guardroom behind him. “They didn’t want Ascot to know, either of them, but that-“ he had to wince, because it was a little too obvious why they might feel protective of the boy they were both fond of – but not in the way he might have preferred at least one of them to do. Especially if it was his error which had given someone the information they needed to put together a bomb decided to rip their magic apart.

Negation. He shuddered to even think the word, and he was no mage – but his sister had been. He remembered the nightmares she’d had when the old man who looked after them in the day had first read a story with it in – a rather dark old tale, which ended in banishment for the guilty party, and an ill-advised attempt on Emeraude’s part to make a nightlight with a stone which ended up with her bed on fire. To take magic and cancel it out, undo it – unmake it – was anathema to any Cephiran. Power in their land was the heart, the self and the will of the mage who used it. To make a nothingness of their magic was to do more than just murder; it was eradication.

The very moment that nightmare was brought to life, Clef should have been calling through to them – or at least as soon as he and Umi were safe. But instead he had avoided telling any of them about it… and Umi had helped him. And that meant that either subconsciously neither of them felt safe yet, or the two of them were going to learn each other’s bad habits and become a nightmare in their own right.

Ferio didn’t know which idea was worse.

Unless… something else had happened, something which had shaken Clef even more than the negation being thrown at them had managed. Given both Clef and Umi had looked honestly bewildered when they realised it hadn’t been mentioned, there was a small voice wondering at the comfortable way they had been gathered so close to each other to talk. But if they had ended up in bed together already, Ferio rather thought they’d have tried being a little more subtle about it than calling home in their pyjamas!

What else could possibly rattle Clef so much that he would just forget to mention something as important as a bomb laced with negation-magic? Because whatever conspiracy was targeting the two of them out there, some very powerful people must be caught up with it, and someone among them knew enough about Cephiro to attack with a threat designed to terrify whoever it didn’t kill outright. (That both Umi and Clef were more likely to fight back when scared had apparently been overlooked. The perpetrators were probably going to rue that, soon enough.) Ferio didn’t know much about the worlds outside of Cephiro, but even he knew that anti-mage weapons were a controversial topic; to have them aimed at the Representative of Cephiro meant that either someone needed them badly out of the way, or there was a personal grudge at play.

Whichever it was, it spelled trouble.

Up until his confirmation as Castellan this past week, Ferio’s involvement with Cephiro’s politics had been pretty informal. But now he had a seat on the Council, and full control of the Castle and grounds, the seat of Cephiro’s government. Both of those gave him a voice and a set of responsibilities, to watch for any threat and try to prepare for it.

…It looked like he had some homework to get on with.

(And he wished that he could ask Fuu for help with this, because she was far more familiar with the kinds of international politics which Cephiro was getting herself embroiled. But she was almost thrumming with tension these past few months, with those big exams coming up, and a choice of what to do with her life resting on her results. He loved her too much to push; she would come to Cephiro one day, of that he was sure.

The achingly lonely years it might take before she was ready to leave her family and do so were something he was prepared to cope with. But he was going to make sure Cephiro was well and whole for her to choose it, when that time came!)

oOo