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“Why can’t you be more like your sister?”
Sabrina looks up, meeting Ms. Smirt’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Her caseworker’s eyes are sharp, brows lowered severely enough that, a million years ago, it would’ve made Sabrina uncomfortable. But her parents have been gone for sixteen months. Sixteen months of rough hands and rattling door knobs and realizing her lungs don’t hold as much air as they need to. Sabrina turns her chin up.
“If I was more like her, she’d be more like me,” Sabrina says.
Smirt scoffs a little, eyes shifting back to the road. Daphne is asleep, head in Sabrina’s lap, hair splayed over her cheek and little hand curled in the fabric of Sabrina’s overlarge jeans. Her fingernails are dirty.
The houses keep getting worse. They spent the last two weeks out in the countryside; roosters screeching them awake, fire ants crawling up their clothes. Daniel, the man who took them in, didn’t want them. His wife did, but she’d died right after the paperwork went through, and somehow they still ended up in the tiny bedroom she’d set up for them. Sabrina thinks it could’ve been nice, once. Before his wife--Janie--died. Before the dust staining the walls, and the empty beer bottles wailing to each other on the front porch, and the dead deer hanging off the barbed wire fencing. Before the pictures of a pretty, grinning woman on the shelves had been punctured, glass cracking underfoot and blood staining the wooden frames. Sabrina hadn’t needed to sneak out, this time. She waited up, took Daphne and slipped down the stairs. Daniel was sitting in the living room. He hadn’t been watching T.V. or reading a book. Just sitting. He met her eyes, briefly. Nodded once. She and Daphne walked out the front door and he didn’t call them back.
Sabrina sucks in a deep breath, shaking off the image of the mangled deer twisted around the wire fence. It was stupid of it to try so hard to come into Daniel’s farm, anyways. The crops were dead, and the barns were empty. Whatever solace it had been looking for had long since drained away.
“It’s just going to get worse, you know.”
Sabrina looks up. Smirt is still looking at the road, but her knuckles seem tighter on the wheel than they did a second ago. A million years ago, Sabrina might’ve said that there wasn’t any worse. A million years ago, she would’ve said that rock bottom was her silent kitchen in the dark, report card hanging from a fridge that wouldn’t be opened again. Sabrina knows better, now. It can always get worse.
“I know,” she says.
Smirt shakes her head. “Clearly you don’t. You’re not just ruining your own chances. You’re ruining hers.”
Sabrina’s jaw clenches. She curls her arm tighter around her sister and feels her brows dig a rut through her face.
“I’m not giving up on my parents,” she says. Sabrina tries to keep her voice even, but it’s even the way a truck is even when running over gravel. Somewhere, something crackles, and the pressure applied isn’t enough to keep it quiet.
“You think they’d want this? For you to drag Daphne around like a ragdoll, playing escape artist until you’re too old or your file has too many marks for anyone to want you? There’s a future for you where you miss these days, kid.”
Sabrina has thought the same thing a thousand times, but it’s different hearing it voiced. She lets out a sharp breath, fighting against the pressure on her chest, the invisible heel grinding into her sternum. Sabrina shoves the fear down and reaches for the more familiar anger, feels it creak in her chest like old steel. Her tongue goes sharp again.
“Fuck you,” she says.
Smirt doesn’t get angry, though. The pinching fingers don’t reach back like they usually do and the car is quiet. She just looks at Sabrina for a long time. Sabrina thinks she can see pity in her eyes, and she turns away to keep from crying.
“Nobody will want to help you,” Smirt finally says.
Sabrina knows this, too.
Sabrina startles awake, heart shuddering in her chest like an old car engine. She takes a deep breath, swipes her hand over her face. She glances over to where Red and Daphne sleep on their bunkbed, chests moving slowly up and down. Daphne’s mouth is open just a little and half of her blankets are on the floor. She looks peaceful.
Quietly, Sabrina gets out of bed and slips downstairs. She doesn’t bother with the lights. She knows which boards and steps creak even in the dark, and her eyes adjust quickly to the thin streams of moonlight catching on the books tossed on the living room couch.
Over time, it’s become easier to detect the sheen of magic. It’s something too-sweet, candy apples covered with hardened sugar that’ll crack your teeth if you bite down too hard. Its tug has become less insistent over time, but Sabrina can still feel it. She can feel it now, stretching over the house like a cotton candy cocoon.
She can also feel where it has loosened, either by time or by prying fairy fingers. The kitchen window slides open silently, and she drops outside, hesitating only a moment when she realizes she forgot her shoes. Sabrina shrugs and closes the window nearly all the way before moving further into the woods behind the house. The night is cool, and the grass and pine needles scratch at the soles of her feet. Up ahead, thousands of stars wink at her between the canopy, and she can make out a couple of Puck’s pixies hiding amongst the branches as well. One buzzes up to her curiously, and she waves it off before it has a chance to think about biting her.
In the quiet, the memory turned nightmare begins to peel at the edges of her thoughts. For a second the crunch of leaves under foot is glass beneath the heel of shoes that are two sizes too big. For a second the wind shifts from cool to biting, her fingers numb and blue as she tries to keep Daphne awake out of fear of what will happen if she falls asleep. For a second she’s ten and eleven and twelve again, and the entire world is sharp and horrible, and she knows that it will only get worse.
Sabrina steadies herself on a tree. Ridges of bark lap at her hand and she holds on to the ache until it pulls her back into the rustling forest.
“Fuck you,” she whispers.
She keeps walking. Sabrina isn’t sure where she’s going, letting her feet lead her wherever the ground is soft and the air smells like torn leaves.
She never told her parents. It would only make them feel guilty, knowing just how much they missed. They’re still grieving over the lost years, the birthday parties and loose teeth tucked somewhere dark where nobody bothered to record or take pictures. How would they feel knowing just how much they missed? The time Sabrina broke three of her fingers trying to wriggle out of Ms. Miller’s grasp. The time Mr. Carter got so drunk she shoved a dresser in front of the door and stayed up all night gripping a bat. The time Sabrina was so old she forgot what it was like to be soft.
She can’t tell them; what good is her years of practice sneaking around creaky floorboards if it doesn’t apply to creaky subjects as well? Daphne was sheltered from the worst of it. Sabrina made sure of that. And if Daphne is alright, Sabrina isn’t complaining.
Sabrina stops walking, a bemused smile aching at the corner of her mouth. For a second she’s eleven again, but for once it doesn’t hurt.
The dark water of the swimming pool ripples gently in the midnight breeze. Sabrina has no idea how the water manages to stay clean; she suspects magic, as she doubts anyone is coming out here to clean it. Curling weeds tuft up where the concrete crumbles into untamed grass. She steps into the clearing and onto the diving board, sitting down at the edge and letting her toes dip into the water. The ripples go out to the very edges, and she moves her feet back and forth, slow, studying the reflection of the stars in the water.
Her breath catches in her throat, sitting by the abandoned swimming pool, and it feels as if something impossibly heavy is crushing her chest; as if the sky itself is pulling down to press her in with its vastness. She thinks of Daniel’s deer, hanged by its own hunger for greener pastures because it didn’t know there was nothing beyond the barbed wire. Her chin tightens; she hangs her head and stares at her reflection. It’s warped by the moving water, and further disintegrates when her eyes begin to well up.
“I’m supposed to be better, now,” she tells her smudged reflection. The forest is silent. Sabrina hiccups and cries, but even here, in the dark, alone, she hides her face and tries to be quiet.
“Grimm?”
Sabrina tries to swallow her tears, turning back to see Puck standing behind the diving board. His hair is mussed from sleep, and she silently curses whichever pixie ratted her out.
“Hey. Do you, uh, need something?” she tries.
Puck offers her a sad smile and takes a step closer. “You know you don’t need to do that with me, right?”
God, Sabrina hates how well he knows her. She manages to hold it together for three entire seconds before her shoulders cave in and she starts to sob. The diving board trembles as Puck moves to sit next to her, arm pressed to hers, his own bare feet dipping into the water. She leans against his shoulder. His silence is full of familiarity, and it’s more comforting than anything he could have said to her. She cries, and he’s there.
After a while she feels hollowed out enough for the wind to come back in. Sabrina feels the cool air scoop her out and the exhaustion settles like a thick blanket over the sore parts.
“I feel like as your subjects, the pixies shouldn’t be so eager to narc,” Sabrina says.
“That only applies to my own dirty secrets. I couldn’t trick people very well if I didn’t know what all they were up to, could I?”
Sabrina swipes at her nose, laughing. “I don’t know if I’d call crying into a swimming pool in the middle of the night a dirty secret.”
“Careful, blondie. Only the best conmen know not to pass up any information, no matter how seemingly inconsequential. I’ve got more on you than you’ve got on you.”
“That didn’t make sense.”
“Your mom doesn’t make sense.”
“Nice one.”
“Thanks.”
They sit in quiet for a while, the only sound being the gentle splash as they move their feet in the water. Sabrina can feel the words carving at the inside of her throat, but she’s hesitant to let them go. After several tries at turning the acid on her tongue into something she can put into the air, she turns and opens her hand, palm up, where it’s been resting on top of her knee. Wordlessly, Puck takes it and squeezes, his thumb moving across her knuckles. Sabrina bites her lip, takes a deep breath, and lets the acid out.
“Do you remember that night, after the fighting was done, when I told you about-about the foster houses?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Puck says.
Sabrina nods. “Do you remember our caseworker, too?”
Puck squeezes her hand a little tighter. “Yeah.”
Sabrina nods again, trying to work past the muffled panic strangling her vocal cords.
“Um. I, uh, I dream about it sometimes. About her, and the houses.”
“Nightmares?” Puck says.
“Yeah,” Sabrina whispers shakily. She wets her lips and stares at the water.
“I feel like I’m supposed to be better now, y’know? Like, it happened a while ago. I’m mostly fine now. I don’t have to see any of those people again. But…God, Puck. Sometimes it feels like I’m still there. Trying to keep my sister alive. Trying not to fuck everything up, and then fucking it all up anyways. And I guess it all turned out alright, sort of, in the end. We’re alive, right? But I…I’m still so angry. Even in my dreams. And it’s awful, sometimes it feels like it’ll just burn everything else right out of me. And sometimes it feels like it already has. Like I spent so much time teaching myself how to be a hardass that I forgot how to be soft. Maybe I just forgot how to get to that part of me, but maybe it’s just gone. It isn’t coming back. And what then? I’m good at being angry. I’m good at fighting, and protecting my family. But the fighting is done, and I’m still…I’m still a fucking soldier. What am I doing here?”
Sabrina shuts her mouth tight, trembling at how much spilled out. She never means to do this, but it’s always building in her gut. Stripping her bones of marrow, peeling her sinews apart and stringing her nerves up somewhere she can’t reach. And Puck makes it too easy; he already knows, somehow. In the middle of the night, the ghosts of their younger selves pressing in, she feels as if they are the only people in the entire world. In the after, and the quiet, her belly opens up; the mangled deer rears its head and she finally peels up the rotten bandages to look at the wound.
Puck sucks in a sharp breath, hand stilling against her own. He says her name, once, then stops. Then he moves to hug her, and she wraps her arms around him very tightly.
“You’re here because you’re more than what you bring to a fight,” Puck says into her hair. “And I’ve seen you be soft. It’s still there, I promise. Even when it gets hard to find, it’s there. Being angry isn’t always bad. It helps, when you’re trying to be brave. But you don’t have to be brave all the time. Remember when I said I’d be angry for you, back then?”
Sabrina sniffles and nods into his shoulder.
“I can be brave for you too, ‘Brina. I promise. You tell me what you’re feeling, and I’ll take some. We can drag it around together, dead-horse style,” he says fiercely.
“The expression is beating a dead horse,” she says.
“Well, we can beat the shit out of whatever you’re feeling, too. If you think it’ll help.”
“None of that made any sense at all,” Sabrina laughs, even as she hugs him closer. His speech was stilted but genuine, meaning spilling out between words that aren’t quite right for what he’s trying to tell her, but she knows. She knows just like he does.
He doesn’t say anything more, but his fingers catch in her hair and she feels his pulse tap her forehead where it’s pressed to his neck. She imagines it is morse code, leaping to fill the gaps where Puck can’t quite reach, and the vastness of the sky lifts to be replaced by something bigger and closer.
“Thank you, Puck,” she whispers.
Puck turns his face into her hair. “Yeah, Grimm.”
After a moment Sabrina pulls back to wipe her face. Puck takes her hand again and something in her chest eases.
“What does the old lady say about all of this?” Puck says.
Sabrina shrugs a shoulder, flicking water up with her toes.
“I haven’t told her.”
Puck hesitates. “Who have you told?”
Sabrina looks up at him with a rueful smile. Puck’s brows draw together and his shoulders tick down.
“Why?”
“I can’t,” she says.
“Not even about the houses?”
“It’s hard. They’ll just feel bad, and so will Daphne, and I don’t want to make another mess.”
“God, Sabrina…” Puck says. “All this time?”
Sabrina’s smile goes a little wobbly. “All this time,” she murmurs.
He wraps his arm around her shoulders.
“You should tell them.”
Just the thought makes her throat close up, and she shakes her head. “I feel like it’s too late at this point. Like…”
Sabrina rubs her nose with the heel of her palm, blinking tears down cheeks that feel chapped and too hot.
“I’m just tired. I’m tired of thinking about it.”
Puck nods. “Maybe talking about it will help you stop thinking about it.”
Sabrina glances up at him, brow raised. “Since when are you for talking about problems?”
“Hey, I’ve gotten very wise and emotionally mature in my old age,” he says.
Sabrina smiles. “Yeah, okay, stinkpot.”
“Okay, bubble head.”
Sabrina runs her fingertips over Puck’s callouses. She’s got the same ones from her sword’s hilt, from throwing one too many punches. Carefully, slowly, she imagines telling her parents. She imagines the discomfort and the hurt and the guilt. She imagines dredging up a lifetime worth of sharp words and sharper hands.
She imagines her lungs expanding, chest emptied of the graveyard she’s kept as a filing system, a place where she keeps everything she grieves for privately. She imagines letting it air out.
“Would you stay with me, if I did?” she murmurs.
Puck rests his head on top of hers, and her vision blurs. “Of course, Grimm.”
Sabrina bites her lip, face trembling, and nods.
“Okay.”