I sat there, stunned.

“I didn’t think there was anyone who felt that way about me in the mundane world...”

“Not to be too hard on you, but you can be pretty thick-headed when it comes to the feelings others might have towards you.” She took another sip of her coffee before restating that. “No, you’re very thick-headed about that”

“Really?” I answered. “Why would anyone feel that way towards me in the first place? There’s no reason for them to possibly love me.”

“...”

“What?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I just...don’t understand. I can’t think I know anyone stupid enough to feel that strongly about me. Especially enough to do weird spells and stuff, in a world where magic is viewed as ‘Fake.’ I just can’t see that being a thing.”

“Is this on purpose?!? How can one woman be so clueless? How can you not see what you have? Is that like, a thing people do in your world? I don’t think so, the only people who act they way you do are air-headed Mary Sues in crappy trash novels! It’s like you’re willfully ignorant of this whole thing! You freeze up and act like nothing is happening. Just like how you acted with Elizabeth! I can only imagine the trail of broken hearts you must have left behind back in your home world.”

“I wouldn’t say I was unaware of her feelings.” Fuck, I’ve never been good with this stuff. What was she even getting at anyways? This was like she was trying to dig deep into my mind, a plumber looking for the source of a leak. I’m not sure I like how that feels. Hm, actually, wouldn’t a drain snake work better? If you’re trying to dig into someones mind… no, that’s silly. I wonder what plumbing was even like in the cities here, a lot of places in the past had surprisingly complex sewer systems…

A hand grabs my shoulder. “Don’t get lost in your thoughts on me. I’m here, not in your mind. Talk to me. You always retreat inwards when you don’t want to face things, and it scares me... ”

I paused. She was right. I would always do this, just retreat into my head rather than dealing with uncomfortable truths. Maybe something is wrong with me. Am I that incapable of confronting other’s emotions? Do I just block things out and retreat into my own little world whenever I don’t want to deal with anything? It must be some weird way of coping with the world, like how I would always escape into books growing up. Is that a… Oh, it really is a problem.

“Sorry...”

Mary sighed, her expression smoothing as she pulled me in for a hug. “I’m not aware of any reason for you to be apologizing… I just let my emotions get the better of me for a bit.” I hugged her back. It was comforting, experiencing the warmth. A smell like lavender drifted up from her hair, flooding my nostrils like a breeze on a temperate summer day. I savored the feeling. But at the same time, I felt guilty.

It’s time to be honest to myself. I know how Mary feels about me. There would have to be something wrong with me if I didn’t pick up on it at some level. Just like all the other times I just...saw someone’s obvious affection towards me and just treated it like you would the smell of cleaning supplies in a government building. It’s there, you know it’s there if you focus on it, but how often does anyone actually go out and say “hey, this smells like government-made disinfectant?” It’d be one thing if it was with someone like Liz or any of the students I tutored, but with Mary it’s...different.

“You’re tensing up.” Mary said, concerned. “I know you tend to space out, and I let it be for a while, but I really would like you to talk to me more. If you’re comfortable with it.” She hugged me tighter, her strength flowing into me, and it gave me the courage to speak.

“I… know how you feel. I’ve known how you feel for a while now. And… It’s made me feel guilty, on multiple levels.” Pulling the words out of my head felt like yanking rusted nails out of a board. No, like playing tug of war through a hole in a wall, with an invisible opponent trying to take the rope completely and hide it away from the world for some ungodly reason. “Sorry...”

“Why would you feel guilty?” Mary asked, still holding on to me.

I gave the metaphorical rope made up of words in my head a tug. I’m unsure why, but a voice in my head was screaming that it’s vitally important that Mary, of all people, should understand. “You feel this way about me, and I just went along like everything was fine and dandy. You invited me into your home, helped teach me things, and in a way it felt like I was just taking advantage of your feelings. No one likes a freeloader, after all, and it feels like that’s what I’ve been doing. But that’s just the surface level guilt...” At that phrase it felt like the train of thought, the words I needed to speak to Mary, were being yanked out of my consciousness like a lamp cord caught in a vacuum cleaner brush. I yanked back at the figurative cord, regained the words, and managed to speak.

“Sort of like the free-loading thing… I don’t feel like I deserve any of this. I don’t deserve to have people feel the way you do about me. I don’t even understand why people would feel that way towards me. I can go along with everything on the surface, going through the motions of normalcy to an extent, but if anyone shows any interest in my I ignore it. More than that, it’s like my mind steals away the very though that that emotion is something I’m allowed to reciprocate. It’s like I have no real...” The thoughts were being actively dragged away. “Sorry… lost my train of thought. What I meant to say was...” everything felt like it jumped for a bit. “..nothing.” I finished. That happened pretty often when I tried to talk about this kind of thing.

This is why I never talk about emotions and stuff; it causes a nasty gross sensation like there’s a sheet of glass between myself and the world, with my body buried in a weird translucent gel that dulls the actual feeling of… everything? Reality? Maybe that’s why I fell out of conventional “reality” in the first place. On some level this feeling of disconnect has always been there. Keeping me apart, separate, from the experiences other people would share. Yes, I fell into this world, this world of magic, monsters, violence, death, fantasy, Gods roaming about, good and bad witches, but deep down, it felt just as unreal as everything else in my life.

That really was how I was before ending up here. I just sort just...drifted. I drifted through school growing up, drifted through the Marines, drifted through undergrad, and was drifting through college. I would put on the face expected of me in public, which despite my tendency to space out was a rather convincing face, all things considered. But I was watching it all, as an outside observer looking in, like it was all the life of someone else. Someone like that, like me, doesn’t deserve to have feelings like Mary’s directed towards them. It’d be like loving a doll or a fictional character. Loving something that “exists” but is not real. Of course I’m not real, I’m just going through the motions, acting like I have interests, thoughts, feelings. Making someone as wonderful as Mary put up with that would be a sin worse than anything else I could commit. Not that I’m not guilty of other things. I can hear the judge full of righteous fury declaiming from the back of my mind from the high bench, smashing his gavel, guilty, guilty, guilty, as if I didn’t already know that. Of course I know that, I’ve always known that, I don’t consciously think about it twenty four seven because it’s a statement of fact, common knowledge that I’m nothing, I’m worthless, I’m a sack of shit, that there’s nothing I truly deserve. This past time since I’ve gotten here is the same as any other time in my life, the warmth can’t be real, shouldn’t be real, never was real, the feelings I felt towards Mary, that deep down in my heart I felt are something I shouldn’t have had the pretension of feeling it’s disgusting it’s worthless, it’s-

I felt a hand stroking through my hair, softly, gently. I inhale, taking in the scent of lavender. I hear Mary wordlessly humming a tune, and as I focus on the melody, somehow nostalgic and familiar, awareness and sensation returns to the rest of me. The careful tenderness of her hand, the pressure of her other arm against my back, the sounds of nature out the window mixing with her voice. I inhale again, lavender and coffee mixing together with the background smells of the kitchen, fixing me in place, helping to keep me here, now, on the surface, present. I feel Mary’s heart beat, and I can sense the feelings behind her actions as if it was as palpable as sight, smell and sound.

I still don’t understand why she feels this way towards me. Part of me is afraid I never will be able to understand it. But she’s here, right now, and her feelings are real. Ignoring them like I have been is unfair to her.

“M-mary?” I manage to squeak out.

“Yes?”

“I-I’m sorry...”

“It’s okay. You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m here for you. As master and apprentice... no, as Mary and Rose… you don’t have to speak if you don’t want to, but I’m here for you.” She murmured, going back to stroking my hair. This moment was bliss, so much so that I was afraid it couldn’t be true. The feelings of warmth I had felt the past month had scared me more than any monsters or bandits I had faced off against. In this world of magic that was the thing that had felt the most fantasy-like. And I was afraid. Afraid I’d wake up, and be back in my world, my bubble set apart from the real world. But these fears are something I need to face. Even if things, emotions, feelings, thoughts, may feel unreal, I need to acknowledge that they are.

“Mary?”

“Yes, Rose?”

“I love you.” The hand stroking my hair stopped. My breath caught in my throat at that.

“I love you too.” Okay, my ability to breath is back. Mary held me tighter, almost seeming like she was trying to squeeze the air out of me. I held her back, savoring the feeling of her in my arms. She pulled away slightly, since I was still holding her too tightly for her to get any further. She looked me in the face, briefly, then...kissed my cheek, blushing. Seemingly too embarrassed to keep looking at me, she buried her face in my shoulder. She said something muffled, but I could just barely make out the words. “I can’t believe you managed to say it before I could.”

I’ll be honest, I completely agree with her, but that’s still a bit harsh.