Soldier On

by Ababa_Nerb

Summary:

"Out of all the places you could live, you chose Pelican Town?"

"I didn't exactly have a choice."

Freshly discharged from the Ferngill military should be a relief, now that the war is over. But Safiya finds that surviving nine hellish years as a child soldier and battle mage is only half the fight in life. With nowhere to go but her dead grandfather's farm, and no family to speak of, she arrives in Pelican Town. Armed with nothing but PTSD and a fierce will to survive, she goes through the painstaking ordeal of relearning how to live.

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Chapter 1

Here’s the thing about war –- there are no more orders to follow when the fighting’s stopped. And for Safiya, that’s an entirely new war. Ferngill and Gotoro were both guilty of using child soldiers to make up squads of battle mages and field medics, finding and using children as young as fourteen.

Twenty-three, and for the last nine years, war is all Safiya has known. She knows how to bring enemy soldiers to their knees, how to mend a wound in a pinch, how to lead a squadron of her own, but she’s lost beyond that. Her magic is strong, and war had only made her magic stronger, the other magicians she knew had also grown stronger in the war, but few were as familiar with the front lines as she was.

When the war ends, albeit on tense terms, the world is surprised, and most of the people Safiya knew during her time in the military know exactly where home is for them now that they’ve been sent home for reunion and reintegration.

But Safiya is set adrift.

“Here you are, Colonel,” Her commanding officer says, smacking her in the face with her release papers where she’s laying on her cot in the barracks, “You’re free to go.”

Safiya nods her thanks, nine years of disuse outside of barking orders and short briefings has rendered her voice useless. She reads her dismissal papers soundlessly, and even though she’s glad to be going home - especially when she knows that most infantry won’t be going home for another six months at least - she doesn’t even know where home is anymore.

She packs her things quietly, her personal belongings are military issued uniforms and a ceremonial saber, everything else she’d brought with her as a fourteen year old girl lost to the person she’d become in the war. Her pack had been light when she’d been drafted and deployed as a girl, and it was even lighter now. The feel of her half empty pack bouncing against her back as she leaves the military base has a pang of melancholy racing through her, made even worse when she collects a stack of letters from the administrative office on her way out.

Most of them are from her grandfather, her mom’s dad, and she tears open the newest one right there in the administrative office, then quickly wishes she’d waited to get on a bus to open it.

To my dearest Saf,

It pains me to know that you did not get to see your mother again before she passed, that this war has taken so much from you at such a young age. Even moreso, I am sorry that I do not get to see the woman you’ve grown into.

In the event that you’re reading this, it means that I have passed and joined your mother on the other side of the veil. I hope that I do not see you there anytime soon.

My dear girl, you have always been strong, but you’re allowed to be weak in the peace. I know you haven’t known peace in many years now, and I cannot imagine how long you’ve gone without a moment's respite by the time this war comes to an end. So, assuming the war has ended by the time you read this, do this old man a favor— enjoy the peace, my girl. Revel in it as I know you haven’t in many years, and then find peace for yourself.

Enclosed in this letter is the deed to the farm. Our farm. The Valley is full of magic, if you remember, and Atwood Farms is rich with it. I think, like Yoba, that the magic in the Valley is benevolent, and you will find exactly what it is that you need. I can only hope that I’m right about this, but as you know all too well, my dear Saf, magic is fickle.

Perhaps you should ask Rasmodious about it should you move to Pelican Town? I’m sure he’d be delighted to indulge you.

If you do choose to come to the farm, know that it’s still being maintained. Rasmodious has been kind enough to make sure that all of Atwood Farms will be taken care of. It shall remain exactly as it did when you were a girl, and as it does now.

Find peace here as I did, and as your mother did.

All my love,

Grandpa

PS — Call Lewis and let him know you’re coming, dear girl. And tell him and Willy I say hello.

She really wishes she’d stepped away to read it as tears brim in her eyes, but they do not fall. She takes the first bus she can out into the Valley, and she curses at the price of the ticket for the connecting bus ride into Pelican Town. But she forks the fifty dollars over anyway, and she sits and has the worst lunch she’s ever had in the bus station terminal.

It’s all vending machine food, stale trail mix and a flat cola, and she realizes how strange she must look, still dressed in her combat uniform as she hunches over her crappy meal as she dials the number listed on the town’s website she’d found on her phone.

She’s half-tempted to turn to the few people in the terminal and tell them that if they think she’s strange now, then they should also know that this is her first time using a cellphone since she was fourteen. The technology has changed since then, and while she’d had a touch screen as a girl, flip phones had still been pretty much the norm when she was drafted. Now, her phone scans her face to unlock, and the touchscreen is nowhere near as clunky as she’d remembered them being as a kid.

The line rings maybe three times before Lewis picks up, his gruff voice jovial as he answers, “This is Lewis, with whom am I speaking to?”

Safiya has to clear her throat before she starts - get her vocal chords at least a little warm to save Lewis from the grate of her voice, “This is Safiya Atwood, I’m calling in regards to Atwood Farms. My grandfather, William, left me the deed.”

She hears a quiet clattering over the line, and as she strains her ears, it sounds like he might be in a bar, “My goodness, Safiya, it’s good to hear your voice! Are you looking to sell the old farm?”

Safiya nods, humming into the receiver as she chews on a handful of stale nuts, “Thank you, but no, I’m actually looking to move onto the property. I’ll likely be there by sundown today. I was hoping you might have the keys?”

There’s another scuffling in the background, a door creaks and shuts, “Uh- Yes, I do. I’ll meet you at the bus stop around sundown, Miss Atwood.”

She mutters her thanks, and the call ends with a quiet beeping in her ear. She leans back on the bench as she picks at the crappy trail mix, sighing as she waits for the bus. The silence is weird, now, having spent so many years listening to the sound of gunfire and combat going on around her.

It’s unsettling, really, as she watches people walk past her, just living their lives. Most of them not even batting an eye at her appearance, or even really caring that it’s so quiet. Hell, the hissing of the bus’ hydraulic brakes has Safiya jumping in her seat when it pulls into the bus stop. But nobody else bats an eye at her.

She takes a seat near the back of the bus, which is empty save for the maybe ten people scattered about, and they all give her as much of a wide berth as she gives them. She ignores the odd stares she gets, settling in to look absently out of the window. She knows she must look strange, still in her military issued mages combat uniform, the deep black and brilliant gold detailing would give away her status in the chain of command if any of these people cared. But it’s the dead of winter, and most of these people have either just finished up some last minute Winter Star shopping or are heading home to spend the holiday with their families.

Safiya hasn’t celebrated any holiday since she was thirteen, but she can still remember the distinct joy of unwrapping gifts so painstakingly wrapped by her mother and grandfather. And though she’d never participated in the yearly tradition of brewing a hot cup of tea to drink out of their finest china, she had burnt her tongue on many cups of hot cocoa as a girl.

It feels like forever ago now, a glimpse of the past through the break in the treeline as the bus flies down the highway — another piece of her lost to the war. Shot to pieces and left to be buried in the mud of the battlefield.

The world moves on though, and the bus comes to a halt at its first and only stop between Grampleton and Pelican Town, in another rural town called Pine Valley. Where Grampleton is quaint and cozy in a touristy way, with all of its original downton architecture intact and well maintained; Pine Valley is Grampleton’s pothead cousin. Safiya had heard her mother make the joke a hundred times over as a girl, when she hadn’t quite understood the joke, but as an adult, the joke is an apt comparison.

There’s nobody left when the bus pulls out of Pine Valley, Safiya the lone passenger on yet another lonely journey.

It reminds her vaguely of when she’d first been drafted. Most mages lived out in the countryside in larger towns, or out in the boonies. But Safiya had spent most of her childhood in Zuzu, with her mother. Smaller towns and villages might have a few mages, or even whole families, but most anybody with any affinity for the arcane tended to stay away from cities — where the magic became too muddied with other people's energies to do anything useful with it. But Safiya had felt the magic strongly in Zuzu, not as strongly as she did out in the valley, but she’d felt it there — humming just below the surface, some wild untamed thing, so different from the smooth flowing calm that mages were used to out in the valley.

So, she’d been a rare breed in a breed already rare in its own right. One of the few mages that the government had been able to find in cities, and she had been the only passenger for that bus ride too. Armed with nothing but the shaky promise she’d made to her mother.

I will not relent.

The promise had followed her through her brief military training, and at some point in her training, the mantra had changed to soldier on.

It plays in her head even now. As the sun begins to set and paints the sky alight with brilliant shades of red and gold, and as the bus rolls to a stop next to a beaten down bus at a bus stop that looks more like a patch of dirt on the side of the road. There’s no need for those words now, she reminds herself, as she collects her few things and steps off of the bus, but it repeats regardless.

There is no one waiting to greet her at the bus stop when she steps off of the bus, the driver wasting no time to shut the doors and make a sharp u-turn back to where he came from, but she doesn’t mind. She knows that if she were to follow the path West she’d stumble across Atwood Farms, and the tiny village center is off to the East.

She doesn’t move. Instead, she opens the side pocket of her bag, grabbing for the carton of cigarettes she’s been carefully smoking her way through for the last two seasons. For every mage she knew, every single one of them had their fix in the military. The single pack was the first she’d ever laid hands on, given to her by her commanding officer just before the war had come to a ceasefire. The first time in years since their barracks had seen any real use outside of the bare necessities for living.

She’s been savoring them since.

The sun has only just begun to set, but Safiya knows it only takes forty-five minutes at best for the sky to go completely dark, and she keeps an eye on the dirt road leading into the village square as she holds the cigarette between her lips and lights it up with a small flame on her fingertip. The smoke burns on the way down, particularly bad in the cold, even worse with so much snow on the ground.

Snow is good, the colonel, the soldier, inside of her says, Harder for the enemies to sneak up on us. Crunchy. Visibility is high with the snow.

She tells the colonel to shut up and let her enjoy one of her last few cigarettes before the carton is empty and she goes back to living the cigarette free life she’d been living before. The colonel doesn’t shut up, she smokes her cigarette anyway and sends it off in a plume of smoke and ash when she’s finished with it, letting the wind carry away the remnants for her.

It’s as she watches the tiny specks of black and gray be carried off by the wind that the crunching of footsteps meets her ears. The colonel yells for her to get low, to grab for a rifle, raise a shield, shoot off a quick blast of fire, anything, and she forces herself to ignore it. To curl her hands up tight at her sides and just observe the squat old man walking down the dirt road.

“Miss Atwood?” He calls to her, the same jovially gruff voice she’d heard over the phone some hours ago, and it takes her a moment to realize that this must be Lewis. So much older than she remembers him being.

“Yes, sir,” She addresses him stiffly, though she does not salute, her hands relaxing at her sides, “Am I right to assume you’re Lewis?”

“That would be me,” He nods happily at her, stretching his hand out towards her for a handshake when he reaches her, she just puts her hand over his, gently pushing his outstretched hand back towards him.

“I’m rather jumpy with my recent dismissal,” She says, tone apologetic, and she hopes that is enough explanation for him, not wanting to get into the details of how she could very well accidentally kill him with how on edge her magic is. Not knowing friend or foe in this new battlefield off of the battlefield.

Lewis nods again, smiling wider, and she relaxes upon seeing he takes no offense to it. It’s maybe the most pleasant interaction she’s had all day, not having to worry or explain away the quirks of war, “Thank you for your service, Miss Atwood.”

Scratch that.

Safiya internally cringes to her grave and back, “Ah, sure,” She mutters, and her fingers tap at her palms, “It, ah, it’s really not anything you need to thank me for.”

Especially not when it hadn’t exactly been her choice to go out and fight in a war she didn’t care about. Not when she was fourteen, and especially not now, not when the war is over. The casualties on both sides had been brutal. Good people had been lost for a conflict that hadn’t needed the force either side had responded with.
But—

“Here we are,” Lewis says, rifling through the pockets of his well-worn coat, pulling out a keychain she immediately recognizes as her grandfathers, the Junimo charm handcarved by her grandmother some decades ago, “Billy left these in my care. He’d always hoped you’d be ‘round some day to get ‘em.”

Safiya clears her throat, finding it suddenly hard to swallow around the thick, viscous, lump in her throat as she eyes the little Junimo keychain. Originally painted granny smith green but faded with time and chipped in places from being dropped, and the small chip of yellow paint from when her grandfather had set his keys on the still wet paint of her childhood paintings.

“Well,” She manages to get out, voice gone thin and reedy, “I’m sure he’d be pleased that I came back at all.”

It’s a morbid joke, one that usually gets laughs in the barracks in the warzone, but Lewis doesn’t laugh. He just chuckles awkwardly, handing the keys to her and avoiding touching her bare hands with any part of him.

“Billy loved you dearly, Miss Atwood,” Lewis says after clearing his throat, “He’d be happy you’re here, no matter where you were.”

Here. Not here, here.

Here. Like, alive, here.

“Ah, right,” Safiya agrees, and she wonders how much bigger the lump in her throat can get, “I suppose you’re right.”

“O’ course I am,” Lewis laughs, a hand on his belly like he’s Santa off the clock, “Your grandpa was my best friend, you know!” Her lips tilt up in the smallest of watery smiles, and Lewis smiles at her from beneath his thick mustache, “Anyway, Miss Atwood, I must be gettin’ back now. Have a happy Winter Star.”

She watches him go, snow crunching under his boots as he walks away, and she stares at the faded Junimo charm on her keychain. It’s weighty, if only in sentimental value, and she rubs her thumb over the faded green wood and the yellow spot of paint, a bruise of color.

She sighs, turns on her heel and makes the short walk through the snow to Atwood Farms.

Chapter 2

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Sebastian, for all the shit he talks about Winter Star and how much he hates the holiday, loves Winter. So much, in fact, that when he was younger, a teenager freshly burdened with the costs of insurance and a license, had dated a girl he met in Zuzu solely for her name - Winter. It hadn’t mattered that he didn’t really even know her, or like her, but her name was Winter, and at the time, it had seemed it would all work out based only on the fact that she was named after his favorite season.

He enjoys the crunch of snow under his feet, and the way his cigarettes particularly burn down his throat and into his lungs, filling him with heat, and he loves being able to don layer upon layer of swathes of black fabric. 

A true emo, as Sam and Abi would tease.

They tell him as much, the night before Winter Star, when he comes traipsing into the saloon, shaking snow from his hair because he doesn’t believe in wearing a hat to keep his head and ears warm when his hair is long enough to do the job. 

“Yoba, Sebastian,” Abi laughs when he joins up with them in the game room, a lukewarm beer waiting for him on the small table next to the couch, still capped, “If it weren’t for the fact I see you all the time, I’d think high school you just walked through the door!”

She makes the same joke every Friday, and every time, Sam laughs, and Sebastian indulges her teasing with a soft upward curl of his lips and a roll of his eyes.

And maybe, back when he was in junior high, and even his freshman and sophomore years of high school, he would agree, and say that he was emo. Mostly because at the time he thought it was cool to be emo and edgy. Now, though, it was mostly just long outgrown angst and the comfort that the varying shades of black and grays brought him. That, and it fit his aesthetic. 

After all, he’d reasoned, what girl doesn’t like a guy who knows how to play the dark and mysterious angle? There are plenty of girls out there with broken bird syndrome who’d love to have sex with him if they think it’ll fix him. 

And it does, for the thirty minutes it takes him to cum. 

“Uh-huh,” Sebastian says with a brief roll of his eyes, uncapping his lukewarm beer and taking a swig. It's as awful as it always is, beer never his favorite, but it's cheap, and he can't be picky if he wants to move out to the city, “At least I don't look like I only shop at Hot Topic,” He snarks back at them, gesturing to Abi’s alt-goth aesthetic and dyed hair and Sam’s band tee and ripped jeans.

Abi folds her arms across her chest defiantly, glaring at him as she begins to berate him for his commentary. But Sebastian shrugs it off, chuckling lowly as he maneuvers around her to grab his cue off of the wall. Sam groans, knowing what’s coming when Sebastian racks the balls, the blonde’s inevitable beat down for the night rapidly approaching as Sebastian takes another swig of his beer.

“Whatever, man,” Sam groans to him as he grabs his own cue and leans against the pool table, “We can’t all attract girls who are fucked in the head.”

“And we can’t all be good at pool,” Sebastian snarks back as Abi sniggers on the couch behind Sam, chiming in on Sebastian’s generally poor taste in the girls he likes to fuck. It’s a poor jab, Sebastian knows, because Sam has made it clear that he expects his Friday night to go pretty much the same every week. 

With Sebastian ever victorious, a proud, but subtle smirk on his face while Sam gets himself a consolation drink. 

But tonight’s a little different, because for as willing as Sam is to play pool, the blonde has bigger things happening in his life. The world has bigger things happening. Come Spring, all frontline infantry get to go home. Come Spring, his dad will be home. 

So, tonight, Sam gives Sebastian no fight, he lets Sebastian steamroll him, the blonde not giving any mind to his sloppy shots. 

“C’mon,” Sebastian groans when he pockets another winning shot, “You’re making this too easy, man.”

“Like the girls you fuck?” Abigail teases from where she’s hunched over the Journey of the Prairie King game console, her purple hair spilling over her shoulder as she furiously mashes buttons. Sebastian sneers at her, his lips curling over his canines as she ignores him while Sam chuckles quietly and nurses a beer – the best alcohol his crappy wages at JojaMart can buy in Pelican Town.

“ Exactly like the girls I fuck,” Sebastian drawls, and she shifts her focus away from the old arcade game long enough to flip him off.

“Sorry,” Sam laughs as his closest friends begin waving their middle fingers in the air at each other. Almost reminiscent of their high school days. “I’ve just got stuff on my mind right now. I’m not here.”

“Whatever, man,” Sebastian says, an imperceptible smile tugging at the corners of his lips as he slaps a hand over Sam’s back, “I’ll just kick your ass next week,” He chuckles, the tiny smile that is his trademark breaking into a half-smile. 

“Sure.” Sam agrees, and his beer is bitter all the way down.

 

—

 

When Safiya was still in an active combat zone, she’d learned all too quickly the killer that Winter is. That the cold is a far more miserable way to go than the heat of Summer. She could still remember creeping through the snow, her belly pressed to the freezing powder as it kept coming down, her gun over her back and the cold melting and seeping through the front of her uniform as she hunted desperately for rabbits. Or just a rabbit. Even a bunny. Just something to fill her belly for the night.

She’d been fifteen then, and her mom had still been alive. Her fingers had turned purple with cold, and it was only luck and a good healer that kept her from getting frostbite and losing her fingers entirely. But she’ll never forget the cold of those first few weeks on the frontline, when she’d been separated from her squadron in the middle of the woods across enemy lines. 

She’d sworn to herself that if she lived to see the next morning, that she’d find a way home. Even if it meant deserting her post. Even if it meant dying at the hands of a government that could care less about her.

But she’d actually made it through several mornings after that, several rabbits caught and eaten. Her fingers stained with blood and fire sputtering weakly in her palms in a last ditch effort to keep herself from dying. She’d lost most of the feeling in her fingertips, and no amount of healing had been able to fix it.

Not that it mattered to her. She’d made it out. Made it back and regrouped with a ballistics squadron that wasn’t hers by any means. They’d sent her back to where she belonged, escorted by a man who’d taken pity on her because he had a son her age. 

So, yes, Winter is brutal. But even more brutal is stifling the urge to go out into the snow and hunt down every piece of game she can find until the wilderness within a three mile radius is picked clean. 

It’s Magnus that stops her, with meals that magically appear in her fridge. Even though she doesn’t need them. Though, he’d said something similar when she’d made her way to his tower on her second day in town to thank him. 

And she finds herself trudging through the snow to Magnus’ again, when she’s found yet another meal in her fridge. A serving of pasta so large it could feed a whole squadron for a day.

“Magnus,” She demands to his door, and she doesn’t knock, her hands shoved deep into the old winter coat that had once been her moms, because she knows that he knows exactly who’s at his door, “Let me in. Now.”

The door creaks open, and Magnus’s magic stings her nose, smelling like old parchment and ink. It’s invitation enough, and she tromps through the door, magicking her boots dry as she kicks them off at the door. Because she’d almost killed him when he’d yelled at her the first time she tried wearing her shoes into his home. 

One side of Magnus’ mustache is still shorter than the other from where she’d singed it off. 

Whoops.

“What are you doing here?” Magnus demands as she steps into his living room, a massive cauldron bubbling in one corner of the room, and he materializes in a swirl of purple and flash of light on his couch. 

Safiya quirks a brow at him as he crosses one leg over the other, and whatever lingering feelings of superiority he had over her dissipates when she sees his socks on display.

“You know why I’m here,” She says simply, shrugging off her coat and draping it over the back of one of his chairs before she takes her own seat.

“Indulge me, child.”

“My fridge has become increasingly cluttered.”

Mostly true. She’s been steadily eating what he gives her, but not at a rate to keep up with the three plus meals a day he magically piles into her fridge. Because no matter how good the food he sends her is, nine years of the limited diet she had doesn’t go away in a week.

“Then you aren’t eating well, clearly,” He brushes off, a hand waving minutely through the air, and the cauldron bubbles loudly in the corner as it’s stirred by an invisible force. 

“Magnus,” Safiya begins, her sharp gaze fixating on him, “I appreciate your concern. But I have it handled from here. I’d call you if I needed you.”

“No, you would not.”

No, she would not.

“You and your mother,” He tuts, shaking his head, his hat wiggling just slightly without his magic to hold it down, “Always refusing help from others.”

Safiya has to physically bite her tongue, swallowing down the words that are bubbling up in her throat the same way the cauldron bubbles ferociously in the corner and wafts a haze of fragrant smoke through Magnus’ tower. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that she would have taken any help she could get, anything to get home. 

But now, she is home. And there’s no one left.

“I don’t need it, Magnus,” Is what she says instead, her jaw a hard line, schooled into the same cold hard-faced expression she’d worn as a Colonel. The same face she’d worn to give orders, her voice a soft bark in the quiet of the tower.

Magnus’ face goes slack for a moment, and she wonders if his face looked the same when she and her mom had moved to Zuzu, or when her grandpa died. Then his face is as it always is, a cool surface of wise indifference, but Safiya knows his eyes. Knows her grandpa’s best friend, knows her mom’s would-be savior, her would-be savior.

The guilt hits her like a bullet to the gut, knocking the wind out of her and leaving her laid out flat on her back. 

“But I do appreciate it,” Safiya amends, voice gone soft, and she feels all thrown out of balance as she meets Magnus’ eyes again.

He only heaves a sigh, a hand pinching at his nose as he squeezes his eyes closed, “You and your mother, child…” He mutters, opening his eyes again and Safiya can feel his mind trying to prod at hers. Like a dry paintbrush feathering over a canvas – touching, but never leaving anything behind. 

“Magnus,” She growls sharply, tossing her mind at him in pointed barbs, but not touching, “Get out of my head.”

“You’ll forgive me if I’m curious,” Magnus chides, chuckling softly as he withdraws from her mind, “I only want to know what happened to the girl that used to beg me to take her down to see the Lunaloos every Summer. I just want to make sure you're taken care of.

“The same way I wanted to make sure your mother was taken care of. I cannot… I failed your mother. I cannot fail you, too.”

Safiya sighs, all the anger bleeding from her, as the wizard who is - from what he’d told her as a girl - a few centuries her senior hits her right in the gut again, “What happened to Mom… that was no one’s fault,” Safiya says stiffly, but her voice wavers, a watery undertone as she swallows down the lump in her throat. “What can I do to ease your concerns, Magnus?”

“Eat the food I send you,” He chuckles softly, and if there’s a watery glint to his eyes, Safiya pretends to not to see, “And go introduce yourself to the villagers.”

“Technically, they’re townspeople,” She interjects.

“However you’d like to call them,” He sighs, pointing a finger at her, “I want you to make it a point to talk to them. Many of them had been good friends with your mother and grandfather. And I refuse to let you hermit yourself away from the world.”

“I have already seen much of the world,” Safiya says softly, “I have lost a good piece of me to it. It is no one’s fault but my own should I choose to make a hermit of myself.”

“Safiya,” He says sternly, and he’s suddenly standing only a few feet in front of her. His bright purple gaze piercing through her soul, “I do not ask things, not of anyone. But please—”

“Fine,” She agrees sharply, the palm of her hand to him, “Make me a list or something. But quit sending me food. Got it?”

So, Safiya trudges back to the farm, lighting up a cigarette - leaving only ten more in the carton - to burn its way down her throat as she tucks the journal Magnus had given her against her ribs beneath her mother’s old coat. There are twenty-eight names, and it’s disturbing that Magnus knows enough about all of them to be able to give each person in such a tiny town their own pages.

But it’s also endearing, if only because he’d given her the information in hopes it would help her.

Notes:

there was a point in time when this fic was going to have chapter titles, but i very quickly learned that was a terrible idea bc my need to have perfectly witty chapter titles and my ability to come up with witty chapter titles are not equal.

Chapter 3

Summary:

safiya's very first trip into town goes poorly. tw: semi-graphic depictions of violence, ptsd, flashbacks

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Safiya manages to hide away in her farmhouse for another three days, dodging Magnus’ attempts to force her into socializing against her will with the most powerful warding spells she knows. Her house and the majority of the property covered in layer upon layer of invisible shields, designed to steer people away without even a thought about where they’d been going in the first place.

Three days of paranoia ridden solitude.

Three days of nearly burning the house down when the foundation settles, every shadowy corner has her jumping with magic crackling in her palms. She can’t make toast, not after she’d accidentally shot a hole through it when her toast had popped up the other day. Three days of falling asleep sitting up, her back pressed to the door drifting asleep and startling awake at every noise. Three days of begrudgingly eating the leftovers in her fridge, belly bloating with fullness for the first time since she was fourteen. Three days of searching through the attic, an actual flashlight in her hand, because she can’t trust herself to not set the dusty space on fire when something shifts in the corner of the dark room. Three days of avoiding her reflection in the bathroom mirror because she sees someone else in the glass.

It’s miserable, and she feels worse than she did when she was a frontline soldier. 

The only upside is having an actual bathroom. With a shower that she doesn’t have to share with twenty other women at a time. Not to mention taking an actual bath. 

The bath that she’d fallen asleep in. And then woken up with her teeth chattering when she’d turned the water to slush in her sleep, when she’d dreamed of a Gotorran mage who’d tried to melt the flesh clean from her bones. There’s still a bright red scar down her left forearm from where he’d managed to get his fire to pierce through her ice, pulsing and glowing erratically. 

Three days of holing herself away, Magnus tapping incessantly on her shields, before the old wizard in his not as old tower gets his way and Safiya has to make the short trek into town so she doesn’t starve to death.

“Can’t fucking stand you,” She curses in the direction of the tower, middle finger raised spitefully as she zips her mom’s old coat all the way up to beneath her chin. The stiff collar brushing awkwardly against her jaw as she pulls her long dark hair out from the jacket, the loose waves falling limply in the cold.

The farm is still covered in a thick blanket of snow, and whether Magnus actually followed through on maintaining the farm since her grandfather’s passing has yet to be seen. Not that it really matters, she knows she’ll have work to do either way. The coop and barn are still standing off in the distance, also covered in snow, and there’s a pang of sadness as she envisions the animals her grandpa used to keep when she was a girl. 

Can still remember the two black and white Holstein cows he’d gone through the painstaking process of teaching her how to milk, can still remember processing jug upon jug of milk with her mom. Can remember the two meat cows he’d had - and then never again when she’d cried into a bowl of beef stew - beautiful Herefords. Named Bread and Butter, because her grandpa thought it was funny. 

It had been so lively here, when she was a girl. Atwood Farm was never short of life, always chock full of it. Even in Winter, it had never been quiet. She’d had snowball fights with her mom on days like this, the two of them slinging snow back and forth without any magic until he grandpa came barreling towards them, magic brimming in his hands to make the game all that more fun.

It’s silent now, though. Only Safiya’s quiet sigh and the crunching of her boots through the snow and the creaking of the metal gate at the end of her driveway as she leaves, dropping the shields around her property as she does. Swearing that she can hear the ghost of laughter behind her.

Pelican Town remains relatively unchanged in the nearly ten years it’s been since she’d last seen it. There’s a new doctor in the same old clinic, Pierre’s is right where it had always been, and the Saloon still wafts the smell of something mouthwateringly good through the square, even when Gus hasn’t opened for the day.

It’s different all the same, though. Safiya trying not to flinch when Pierre’s door rattles loudly shut behind her as she waves the snow off her boots with a flick of her hand. The clumps of white dissipating into thin air as she grabs a wire shopping basket and swallows hard.

When’s the last time I was in a grocery store?

The thought fills her head, a little too abruptly for her comfort, as she picks an aisle - packed full things in colorful packaging. Nine years of MREs in beige and white packaging, and food so bland she’d forgotten all about this . 

Forgotten all about fresh fruit, laid out in neatly done displays in the produce aisle. And chips, in flavors that didn’t even exist before she’d been drafted.

And-

“Naomi?” A voice chimes politely from behind her, a hand tapping against her shoulder. 

Safiya startles, body suddenly cold and heart somewhere in her throat as she leaps halfway across the aisle, hands blooming with color and basket forgotten on the floor. She suddenly regrets wearing her moms old coat, even though she hates the military issued coat she’d arrived here in. Because at least in her coat, she has full range of motion. Unhindered ability to kill.

Enemy. Enemy. Enemy. Her mind screams at her in the voice of the drill instructor who’d hated her and she’d hated right back. Kill or be killed. Kill them first. 

And in her own voice, I don’t wanna die. 

“Oh!” The voice says again, and Safiya’s eyes clear, mind calming as she focuses on the woman who stands on the other end of the aisle. She’s got the most vibrant green hair Safiya’s ever seen, and a face stretched tight with fear as Safiya remains on guard.

“Caroline?” Another voice calls, male, footsteps rushing towards the commotion. 

It takes Safiya another few seconds to extinguish her glowing hands, the absolute terror on the face of the woman across from her is the same as the Gottoran girl she’d killed one muggy summer. A girl who’d been even younger than her, but trying to kill Safiya with all she’d had. Safiya was seventeen, then, and her hands had tingled with lightning still sparking over her fingertips, the girl seizing on the muddy battlefield below her. 

She’d also had green hair, though not as vibrant. Probably due to the same reason most people dulled in active combat. Safiya could still hear her choking on her own blood, wide, pale eyes staring desperately up at Safiya, mouthing words in a language she didn’t understand. 

“Naomi?” The male voice cuts through, and Safiya blinks, and she’s back in the aisle of a grocery store, shopping basket on the ground with her things scattered around it. And the green haired woman from before peering at her from behind a brown haired man in glasses.

“Naomi?” The man asks again, like he can’t believe his eyes, head tilting as she stares back at them. Shame curling like a hot iron in her gut.

“That was my mom,” Safiya says, quietly, afraid that if she speaks any louder her magic will make even her voice a deadly weapon, “I’m Safiya.”

Safiya creeps forward, hands kept splayed low as she approaches her abandoned basket, like she’s approaching a wild animal. Her hands shake as she puts her few things back into the wire basket, and her hands still feel tingly as she fumbles a jar of dill pickles back into the basket.

“I’m sorry,” Safiya says, addressing the green haired woman from where she remains crouched in the middle of the aisle, “You startled me. I hadn’t meant to scare you.”

Safiya pulls her face into what she hopes is a reassuring smile.

“It’s alright,” The green haired woman says, stepping out from behind her husband - or, Safiya thinks he’s her husband - waving a gentle hand through the air as she approaches Safiya, “You just got here a week or so ago, right? I’d be jumpy in a new place, too.”

Safiya gives the woman a tight-lipped smile, standing up with her basket gripped tightly in her hands, “Yes. I’m taking over Atwood Farm.”

“That’s perfect!” The man interjects, striding forward and jutting his hand towards her, “I’m Pierre. If you're looking for seeds, my shop is the place to go. I'll also buy produce from you for a good price! A little agriculture could really inject new life into the local economy!”

And resell them for double the price. Safiya thinks, watching as Pierre’s eyes gleam with desire that is uncannily similar to bloodlust. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Safiya says, nudging his hand back towards him the back of her hand, “It’d be smarter if we don’t shake hands,” She tells him, a little apologetically, but he ignores her, grabbing her hand in both of his and shaking vigorously.

“Don’t be silly,” He chuckles, and Safiya can feel her magic roaring beneath her skin. Can taste in the back of her throat and smell it in the air around her. Her instincts screaming at her.

Safiya’s lip curls as she snatches her hand back from him, the man yelping when she discharges a short burst of fire from her fingertips. “Do not touch me,” She snarls in the same voice she’d used as a colonel, her voice a blade of its own. “Understand?”

Pierre nods, cursing beneath his breath as he cradles his singed hand to his chest. He turns sharply on his heel, pushing past the green haired woman who’s staring with wide eyes at Safiya.

“I’m Caroline,” The woman says after a long moment, Safiya turning towards one of the shelves with her eyes screwed shut as she mentally berates herself. “Our town doctor, Harvey, next door, he served seven or so years ago.”

“Thanks.” Safiya responds, breathless, as she rests her forehead against one of the cool metal shelves, “How did you know my mom?” She asks, grasping for anything to fill the awkward silence and pull her mind away from the barely-there smell of burnt skin.

“You don’t remember?” Caroline asks, and Safiya’s dares to glance at her, “Your mom and I were good friends before the two of you moved away to Zuzu.”

“Well, it’s been a long nine years for me,” Safiya supplies, only a little bitter as she skirts her way around Caroline and towards the singular check-out counter, “There’s a lot I don’t remember anymore.”

Caroline says nothing else, just purses her lips and gets Safiya checked out. And Safiya stares at the counter, refusing to look Caroline in the eye, afraid of what either of them might see in the other’s face. 

Caroline slides her two bags of groceries over the counter, and Safiya swipes her card through the card reader that’s probably been there since she was a girl.

“It’s okay,” Caroline utters softly. Safiya’s fingers curl gingerly around the plastic handles of her bags, unsure if she can trust herself. “Pierre’s ego is probably more hurt than his hand, Nao- Safiya,” Safiya cringes at the stumble, and her regret for wearing her mom’s old jacket only grows, “Pelican Town’s glad to have you. And… I just want to say, thank you for your service.”

Safiya wants to set herself on fire as she nods politely at Caroline, shoves her card into the back pocket of her ill-fitting jeans - also her moms - as she thanks Caroline as quickly as she can and ducks back out into the cold. Grocery bags clutched tight in her fingers.

She vows to not go back into Pierre’s until it's Spring, and she doesn’t have to wade through the snow if she needs to make a terribly executed escape again.

 

—

 

It’s Tuesday, Sebastian notes absently as he types through yet another line of code, dying for a cigarette - or a blunt, either’s fine at this point. Or, he thinks it’s Tuesday. He can’t be sure, time and sleep lost on him as he pounds out his larger fourth project in two weeks.

But, it must be Tuesday. Because he can hear Abigail upstairs, blabbering some benign thing to his mom about something her mom told her to pass along before she’d left her house. So, it’s Tuesday, he reasons, because Abigail always comes over on Tuesday at one o’clock, like clockwork, to pester him. 

But- No, it is, He assures himself, tapping his phone awake just to check the date. A little annoyed that his life is so routine that he knows the date and time solely on when one of his friends comes over to cure her own boredom. 

“I fucking hate that I’m right, sometimes,” He curses under his breath, flicking his tongue against his teeth just to hear the piercing there clack. Forcing his attention back to his code for the few precious moments he has before Abi comes clomping down the stairs in her platform boots that are shit for any weather other than pleasantly warm and sunny. He downs another gulp of cold coffee, shuddering as it goes down and fingers flying across his keyboard, desperately trying to get a few more lines done when he hears the telltale noise of Abi’s boots hitting the top of the basement steps. 

He gets two more lines of code before Abi comes crashing through his door, reminding him of why he’d become such a stickler for locking his door when he wanted some alone time. She doesn’t knock, never has, probably never will, and if she cares that he’s working, it doesn’t show. 

He just barely manages to save his work by the time Abigail’s got both hands on the back of his gaming chair, pulling him away from his desk and spinning him towards her. “Seb!” She exclaims, her face inches away from his, “You’ll never believe this,” She laughs, squealing with glee as she lets him go to dance around his room. Her boots thumping loudly on the wooden floor of his basement room.

Sebastian sighs, pushing himself back towards his desk to fish a cigarette from his desk drawer, “What won’t I believe?” He asks begrudgingly, spinning the spark wheel of his lighter with practiced ease, holding his cigarette between his lips as he shuts his computer down.

“The new farmer burned the shit outta my dad this morning!” Abigail squeals, jumping wildly with glee until her foot wobbles on the landing, “Oh my Yoba, Seb! It’s incredible. Dad was bein’ a real dick this morning, too.” Abigail continues, surging forward as his eyebrows raise, “Oh,” She laughs, nearly cackling, “Karma is real, Seb. This is the greatest day of my life!”

There was a time, back when the two of them were in high school, and Sebastian was shamelessly horny, and Abigail wanted nothing more than to piss off her parents, that he would actually give a shit about whatever Abi has to say. Partly because he had enjoyed her company more, then, but mostly for sex.

He also hadn’t had a job, then. 

But Sebastian indulges her anyway, one of his closest friends, because she is Abigail and he is Sebastian, and he will indulge her the same way she indulges him and Sam, “What d’you mean, the farmer burned your dad? Must’ve been spitting fucking fire if it got to good ol’ Pierre.” He drawls, sounding just interested enough to keep her from complaining as he takes another deep drag of his cigarette. Relishing in the way it burns on the way down.

“No, Seb,” She says, on her feet again, hands pressed to the arms of his chair as she leans over him. Grinning so hard it’s a wonder her face hasn’t split in two, “The farmer literally burned my dad! Like-” She squeals, reeling back and gesturing wildly at her right hand, “ Burned , burned. Flames- Came from the farmer’s hands!”

“Get out,” Sebastian says pointedly, actually pointing at his bedroom door as his lips pull into an annoyed frown, “Don’t waste my fucking time on this kinda shit, Abi. You know I have shit I need to get done.”

“No, you fucking do not ,” She snorts, pulling away from him in a huff as he blows a puff of smoke in her face, and falling back onto his bed, “And I’m serious , Sebby!”

He glares sharply at the nickname, something reserved only for his mom to call him.

“ Sebastian ,” She quickly corrects, holding her hands up in faux surrender, “And I’m serious.”

He raises a skeptical brow at her, ashing his cigarette in the broken bottom half of what was his favorite coffee cup turned ashtray, “The other week you said you saw a shadow person.” He reminds.

“And I did ,” She protests.

“Abi,” Sebastian sighs, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together over his stomach, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose and flicking his tongue piercing over the backs of his teeth. “Not that I don’t believe you. But everyone knows that anyone who can channel magic is off fighting against Gotoro. It’s just not even fucking possible, Abs. And even if there were some random new mage , of all fucking things, in town. You’d think more people would know by now. Because that would mean soldiers are coming home. 

“And you and I both know they’re not, because Sam hasn’t said jack shit about it. And don’t go mentioning this to him, either.” He says harshly, jabbing in her direction with the index and pointer fingers of his right hand, “Don’t go getting his hopes up when nothing’s been made official.”

“Fucking-” Abi sighs, exasperated as she meets his hard gaze, “Fine. Whatever.”

He nods once, turning his chair around and booting his computer back up, a silent demand for her to leave.

“... Wanna have sex?” She offers after a moment, trying to peer over his shoulder as he opens up his coding program.

He points to the door without looking away from his screen, “No. Now get out so I can work.”

Notes:

i dislike abi. can you tell?

Chapter 4

Summary:

safiya goes to dinner. she hopes magnus is proud.

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Winter comes and goes too quickly, for Safiya, because as soon as the snow’s melted, Magnus is at her door. Well, more accurately, at the South gate to her property, his magic banging against her carefully crafted shields. 

Let me in , He demands, voice booming in her head, his magic stinging at her nose even without being anywhere near his visage. Gilmore Girls is playing in the background on her old TV. She’d found the whole collection on CD in the attic - wrapped in gift paper for a Winter Star she hadn’t been around to see.

No, She fires back, but drops her shields anyway. 

Magnus is at her door only seconds later, and he knocks once before her door swings open for him and he strolls into her home. The door slamming shut behind him so hard it makes the windows rattle and Safiya flinch.

“You have been here for nearly two months,” Magnus starts, and Safiya pauses the CD player just as Luke shoves Jess into the lake, “And you’ve been to the store three times, you’ve interacted with no one, and your mailbox is full beyond full.” 

Safiya blinks at him, expecting more.

“Child.”

“Magnus.”

“You need to get out of the house,” Magnus says, and it’s more of an order than it is a suggestion, “There are people here who care about you. Who have known you since you were a little girl.”

“Who haven’t seen me for more than a decade,” Safiya retorts, “I haven’t lived here since I was like, six, Magnus.”

“That is not an excuse.”

Safiya sighs, long-suffering, and meets Magnus’ bright purple gaze, “First,” She begins, holding up her index finger, “Do not slam my door. Second,” Another finger goes up, “I have left home on more than one occasion. I go sit on the docks and I’ve been waiting for Joja to clear the landslide so I can go check out the old mines.”

“You haven’t interacted with anyone, Safiya.”

“I’ve interacted with you, and Caroline, and Pierre,” She says, lips a flat line of disinterest, “I’ve burned two of those people, and almost burned the other. That’s a pretty shit ratio, isn’t it?”

Magnus purses his lips, sighs through his nose, and says, “Leave your shields down, at least.” His tone leaves no room for argument, and if not for the fact that he’d made it very clear - despite his attraction for her mother - he wasn’t her father, it almost sounds like he could be her father.

Safiya sighs, “Fine.”

 

---

 

 

Sam, despite his knowing that Jodi and Vincent rely so heavily on him with his father gone, often finds himself wishing that his number had been called in any of the previous drafts since he’d turned eighteen. He knows that he should count himself lucky, to be twenty-four, twenty-five in Summer, and never had his number called for the draft. Six years, going on seven, of luck that he knows other people would have killed for.

If it weren’t for the fact that Jodi and Vincent needed him, he would have enlisted as soon as he’d been able. He knows, logically, that he would hate being in the military, he’s wild in a way that the military would quickly squash out of him. Knows his mind is scattered. So scattered that he wears different colored hair ties on his wrist in an attempt to keep his mental to-do list in order. 

He knows that if he ever told his mom that he had even an inkling of desire to enlist, join his fathers fight, that she’d laugh. Would remind him that he leads the town in community service hours, his short-term memory is crap, and that he can’t leave. Because, who would take care of Vince if you weren’t here, Sammy?

So, he’d stayed, worked some twenty hours a week at JojaMart, prayed to Yoba his number would be called during Sunday service, and taken Vincent down to the beach every Tuesday, Thursday, and weekend during Summer since he was seventeen. He’d gotten into all the trouble he possibly could without getting arrested, and worked hundreds of hours of community service.

He’d handled every single one of Vincent’s tantrums since his dad was deployed, had also been crossing his fingers and counting down the days until their dad came home. He’d been checking the mailbox every day for the last seven years, hoping to bring in a letter to soothe Jodi and Vincent’s nerves. 

He’d forget everything else. Forget to buy more milk, or put the eggs back in the fridge. But he’d never, not once in seven years, forgotten to check the mailbox. And he’d never forget the day his dad was allowed to come back home.

 

---

 

 

It’s only a few days after Safiya lets her shields drop that she really regrets the decision. She’s outside, on her hands and knees in freshly tilled dirt, trowel in hand and digging pockets into the earth to haphazardly dump strawberry seeds into.

She wonders, as she covers the seeds and holds her hand above the small pile of dirt to douse the soil with water magic, if this was what her grandfather had done with his time when she’d been gone. There are several large sheds next to the old greenhouse, which needs several panes of glass to be replaced, and each shed is packed full of equipment. 

She knows, that when she was little and she and her mother used to live with him, that he’d start his mornings with coffee and the portable radio blasting classic hits. He used to start his mornings by greeting the animals, radio left to play on the front porch, and then he’d spend the rest of his day tending to his fields. He’d had a state of the art sprinkler system then, and only half of it remains now, but he’d still taken the time to examine all of his crops with the utmost care.

She shakes the thought away, moving to the next patch of dirt, dumping more strawberry seeds into the little hole she’d dug, and dousing it with water. It’s repetitive and boring, but she can’t bring herself to put music on. Still too paranoid to let her guard down. So she listens to the birds sing in the trees that line her property, a sound that she hadn’t realized she’d missed.

She plants the last of her strawberry seeds, and rocks back onto haunches. Tilting her head up to the sky, she breathes. For the first time in nine years, Safiya lets herself breathe.

She must look stupid, she thinks, sitting in the middle of her field and covered in dirt. Must look ridiculous staring up at the sky with her hands in her lap.

“Excuse me,” A voice calls, a hand knocking against the metal gate to her farm, “D’you mind if I come in?”

Safiya shoots to her feet, body moving before she can even think, and her boots scuffle through soil as she puts more distance between herself and the gate to her farm. 

You’re safe , She reminds herself, and there’s a little spark of pride that she’d managed to keep her magic simmering just below the surface, rather than exploding out of her hands, There’s nobody here to hurt you.

“Uh,” She hesitates, squinting against the sun as she approaches the gate, avoiding trampling her fields anymore than she already has, “Sure,” She agrees, Magnus’ words buzzing in the back of her brain, “Come on in.”

The metal gate squeaks open, and she approaches the stranger just as they come through the gate. She holds a hand above her eyes, blocking the sun from her eyes as she takes in the new person - man, rather. He’s dressed in a military uniform and a spike of panic races up her spine, her brain immediately jumping to the assumption that Ferngill’s military wasn't as done with her as she’d thought. 

But she recognizes this man. Could never forget the face peering down at her, his hand held to his forehead in a salute.

“Colonel Atwood,” He says stiffly, apparently having also recognized her.

Safiya’s eyes go wide, brain stumbling for words before she gets to, “At ease.” Her hand raised, palm out, in a gesture she hopes is casual.

This man, she swore she’d never forget. Her forever numb fingers a guarantee that his service would never be forgotten in her mind. After all, how could she forget the man who’d abandoned his squadron just to escort her back to the nearest outpost.

“I remember you,” She says after a moment, when he says nothing else, “Your squad saved my life.”

He chuckles, a little stilted, just like she does. The sound having been lost some time ago. “I’m glad to see you soldiered through.”

This pulls a bark of laughter from Safiya, and she wonders somewhere in the back of her brain how screwed up she must be if it’s crappy barracks jokes that have her laughing, “It was either that or die, right?” She chuckles back, lips pulling in an awkward half-smile.

“Right,” He nods, and his shoulders loosen into a slow curve instead of the square line they’d been, “I’m Kent,” He introduces, and he doesn’t offer his hand to her - knows better than to shake the hand of a military mage.

“Safiya,” She returns, nodding politely at him. There’s another beat of awkward silence, “Right,” She clears her throat, “Was there anything you needed?”

“Right,” He coughs, and they’re just two soldiers standing across from each other in Safiya’s yard again, “My wife, Jodi, had told me there was a new farmer out here. I figured I’d come by and introduce myself.”

Safiya chuckles, awkward and unsure of what to say next, “Well,” She dredges the words up, “Thanks for coming by. It was a pleasure to meet you. Again.”

He dips his head, and she watches his hand come halfway up for a salute before he forces it back down at his sides, “My wife is hosting a dinner party,” He tells her, and she blinks at him, “It would be my honor to have you there, Colonel.”

Safiya blinks again, brain struggling to process his request. But she finds herself nodding dumbly anyway, unsure how to say no to the man that had saved her life when she was only fifteen. “I’ll be there,” She promises, as he tells her his address and to come by around six.

He salutes her one last time from the other side of her gate, and she dismisses him with a salute and quick nod of her head. She returns to her dirt and her strawberry seeds, ready to fix what she’d trampled over, and she tries to let the tension bleed out of her again.

 

---

 

 

Sebastian doesn’t know why Sam would invite him over for dinner. Not when Kent had just gotten home. He’d assumed the Freeman family would have wanted more time to themselves.

“Mom’s makin’ a big deal ‘bout it.” Sam had explained to him, sprawled across the couch in Sebastian’s room as the two of them passed a joint back and forth, “Dad was goin’ round town this mornin’ to say hi to all the neighbors.”

Sebastian hummed noncommittally as he took another deep drag off the joint, and he’d wondered absently how the hell Sam’s got more of a country drawl than he does despite being from the city. 

“Anyway,” Sam continued, and Sebastian had blinked blearily at him. Sam’s red-rimmed blue eyes blinked back at him, “Mom said I gotta ask a friend over…”

Sam was often smarter than Sebastian gave him credit for, he had to admit. Because his best friend had him figured out a little too well. If Sebastian had been sober, he would’ve told Sam to fuck right off and have Abi over for dinner. Leave him out of it. 

But he’d been high. 

And now he’s in one of his nicer pairs of jeans, a clean jacket fished from his closet, smoking a cigarette on his way to Sam’s house. He actually can’t remember the last time he’d met Sam’s dad. If Kent would even remember him. 

It doesn’t matter. Not like Kent would remember him after so many years away. 

“Dude’s brain is probably fried,” He mutters to himself, smoke billowing from his lips before he takes another drag of his cigarette. 

Sebastian stubs out his cigarette at the end of Sam’s street, chucks the butt into Haley and Emily’s garbage can. He hopes that the early Spring breeze is enough to get most of the cigarette smell off of him, and loops towards the river in front of Sam’s house to buy himself some time. 

But the riverbank is occupied. And by someone he doesn’t know. 

She’s dressed in a formal military coat he’s only ever seen on TV, thick swatches of deep black embroidered with gold - a mages coat. Her dark hair a sort of blue-black he hasn’t seen before spilling across her back as she lights up a cigarette.

Her eyes cut briefly towards him, and he feels a little like he’s being hunted in the quick second she drags her gaze over his body. He silently curses at the jolt it sends through him, his dick twitching in his pants over a girl who’d looked at him like he was gnat.

He realizes that holy shit Abi wasn’t lying , because there’s no tell-tale click of a lighter. Just a tiny flame dancing on her index finger as she lights up. He blinks at her, before he turns sharply on his heel and heads towards Sam's house.

Jodi shouts at him from the kitchen to take off his shoes and coat at the door, and he knows better than to ignore her. He’d been on the receiving end of her wrath after walking across her clean floors with dirty shoes only once before, and he wasn’t in a hurry to relive it anytime soon. 

“Hey, man,” Sam greets, and it must be Sebastian’s imagination, but the blonde’s smile is strained when he claps him on the back as Seb toes off his shoes, “Thanks for coming.”

Sebastian nods, shrugging Sam’s hand off of him and he lets his best friend drag him into the cramped dining room kitchen combo, where Vincent is sitting proudly in his father’s lap and chattering away.

“And yesterday, I found this super huge bug in the woods with Miss Penny and Jas,” He can hear the little boy saying, Vincent’s arms splaying wide to emphasize the size of the bug he’d caught. Kent nods along, and he looks a little pained when he smiles at his youngest son.

Jodi is at the stove, mashing a massive pot of potatoes as three other things continue warming on the stove, and there’s a roast in the oven. Or, he thinks it’s a roast. It smells like a roast. 

“Sebastian’s here,” Sam announces as he shoves Seb into the middle of the room, and Vincent cheers as he leaps from his dad’s lap to grab Sebastian by the hand to tug him towards Kent. 

Jodi looks up from her pot of mashed potatoes just long enough to say hello, and he offers a strained smile in return when he sees the poorly veiled anxiety in her eyes at the fuller house. 

“Look, look, Seb,” Vincent cheers as he pulls him along, “Dad’s home!”

Sebastian nods, and he watches Sam approach his mom with his hands splayed out and gesturing at the stove from the corner of his eye, “I see that, Vince,” He chuckles, nodding at Kent as Vincent climbs back into the older man's lap. 

Jodi curses quietly by the stove, and Sebastian turns his head just in time to catch the sight of Sam backing away from her, saying something he can’t hear. And while Sebastian could admit that his home life wasn’t short of arguments, his house was never this chaotic. 

Not when Sam is stumbling over one of Vincent’s toy cars and gripping the door jam to keep himself from falling on his face. Or with how Kent seems to be getting increasingly uncomfortable with every pop of the stove. Or with how Jodi seems to be getting increasingly frustrated with the potatoes on the stove.

Yeah, Sebastian’s house has got its own share of crazy. But it’s nothing like this. He can handle his mom and Demetrius going at it and yelling at each other for hours on end. Can handle arguing with Demetrius, especially now that he and Maru are on better terms. 

But this . 

He’s not built for this . 

The doorbell rings, and Kent is on his feet in an instant, depositing Vincent at Sebastian’s feet as he beelines for the door. Yelling over his shoulder, “I’ll get it.”

“Okay-!” Jodi huffs, nudging past Sebastian and Sam as she begins depositing dish after dish onto the table. More than usual, for some reason. 

“Thanks again,” Sam mutters to Sebastian as they move out of Jodi’s way, Sam redirecting Vincent into the living room to play for a minute while Jodi fusses over the table settings.

“It’s a fu-freaking madhouse in here,” Sebastian responds, keeping his voice low as they take up space in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “I’ve never seen your mom so worked up, dude.”

Sam nods, and Sebastian’s attention finds its way to the front door. Where Kent is helping the same girl he’d seen smoking by the river out of her coat, leaving her in ill-fitting dark jeans and a pale blue t-shirt with faded graphics on it. 

Not what he’d expected to be under that military coat.

“Is she…?” Sebastian asks, leaning towards Sam as he nods at her, and the faintly glowing and pulsing scars on her arms.

“Military?” Sam finishes for him, “Yes.”

Holy fucking shit , He thinks, watching as Kent seems to relax at another military presence in the house, he and the new farmer speaking in low tones as the older man gestures at Vincent, Abi wasn’t fucking lying. Yoba damn it.

“Dinner’s ready,” Jodi yells from the kitchen, and then everyone is shuffling into the kitchen, Vincent darting between Sam and Sebastian from where they stand in the entryway to claim his seat next to his dad. 

The mage takes a carefully measured glance around the room, and once everyone else has taken a seat, she finds a place right next to Sebastian. Two outsiders at a family dinner they have no business being a part of. 

Jodi huffs out a smile, as she takes her seat next to Kent, and as she stretches out her hands in a silent request to say grace, Sebastian can only focus on the two unlit candles in the middle of the table. And the stranger sitting on his left, who makes no move to grab his hand for grace when he offers it.

“It’s better that you don’t,” She tells him, her lips pulling taut in what Sebastian thinks is meant to be an apology. Her eyes flick from his hand to his face, and he’s once again startled by the sharpness of her gaze.

“Right, no worries,” He mumbles, his hand falling to the table.

She says nothing else, and if she offers a silent prayer while Jodi says grace, Sebastian can’t tell. Her eyes having fixated on a spot on the table, while his gaze stays on her. 

“Yoba bless us,” Jodi finishes, and he nearly jumps at the thought of having been caught staring at the strange new farmer sitting next to him at his best friend’s dinner table. Vincent is already serving himself as fast as he can, even as Jodi quietly scolds him for not waiting for their guests.

“It’s alright,” The farmer tells Jodi, when she chuckles apologetically in their direction, “He’s still growing.”

“See, Ma,” Vincent says with a proud grin, stacking his plate with more food than he’ll be able to eat - even Sebastian knows. “‘S okay, ‘cuz ‘m growin’!”

Kent grumbles quietly to Vincent as he takes the serving tongs from his youngest son's hands and passes them over to Sebastian. Who promptly offers them to the farmer, who shakes her head no and lets him have first - technically second - go at the food on the table.

She actually makes it a point to go last it seems, even having a polite fight with Jodi over it. And even once every body’s plates had been filled, Sebastian had watched from the corner of his eye as she watched them. Waited for everyone to get at least a few bites down before she began eating her own meal.

Weird , He thinks with a shrug, sharing a sidelong glance with Sam before returning his focus to his food before Jodi could start a conversation.

“So,” Jodi starts, looking at the farmer, “Safiya, right? Kent says you served together?”

Sebastian can’t help it, his head whipping towards the farmer, towards Safiya, as Sam chokes on his water next to him. Because, Holy Shit, Abi was right.

Notes:

life has been crazy. i have more chapters written, that i'll post once i get further along in my writing schedule. once the holiday season is over i'll have more time to write, so expect more stuff come next year.

(also for anyone who's seen arcane season 2, you'll understand what i mean when i say the finale brought my creative process to a shocking halt. i'm still sobbing abt it)

Chapter 5

Summary:

dinner gets lit. literally.

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Safiya has been a lot of things in her life, has spent a lot of time scared shitless, and even more time high on adrenaline. Her heart had felt like it was going to beat straight out of her chest when she’d been drafted and shipped overseas to the Gottoro Empire. But sitting at the Freeman’s dinner table is scarier than she thinks it should be. 

Especially not when Kent’s wife and youngest son begin digging into all the finer details of being a mage.

“How long was it you served for?” Jodi asks, and Safiya wonders how rude it would be if she chose to leave and escape the wide-eyed gazes of Kent’s eldest son and his dark haired friend.

“Nine years,” Safiya supplies anyway, because Yoba damnit, Jodi can cook .

Next to her the dark haired guy sputters, Kent’s eldest son patting him on the back as he leans around his friend to peer at Safiya with wide eyes, “And you’re how old?”

“Twenty-three, twenty-four this fall,” She answers, slicing off another bite of the fish on her plate as the table goes quiet with a soft gasp from Jodi. Kent continuing to mow down on his food. 

Safiya chooses to ignore the slack-jawed faces around the table, instead eyeing the elaborate candlesticks in the center of the table, watching the way the little flames flicker on the candles. 

“I thought you’d be older,” Vincent remarks around a mouthful of mashed potatoes from next to Kent, “But you’re only kinda old. Huh,” He shrugs, ignoring the way Jodi and Sam hiss at him and smile apologetically in her direction.

“Only kinda,” She agrees.

“Did you ever get the chance to see your mom again before she died?” Jodi asks, a little suddenly, and now it’s Kent’s turn to hiss across the table, “I just mean, Kent got leave every six months up until the last few years of the war. Was that… an option for you?”

Safiya knows the answer to this question,  nine years of never ending combat is evidence enough. But she hesitates, because they’re all looking at her like she’ll give them some kind of comfort. Like they’re all silently praying that the government had shown her some kind of kindness.

Kent knows the answer too, she realizes, when he answers for her, “Mages don’t get leave.”

“We get leave when we’re dead,” Safiya jokes on a knee-jerk reaction. It’s what she’d been told her first real night in the barracks, and a joke that had been tossed between mages the few times they were allowed to get together. “Or when the other guys are dead.” She chuckles thinly, Kent laughing with her.

To his credit, the dark haired guy next to her also chuckles, a thin smile on his face when she glances at him.

Fuck, that was kinda funny, His voice rings through her mental shields, and Safiya blinks, staring at him for another second, before turning her attention back towards her plate. She’d forgotten all about the occasional errant thought that people could broadcast without even meaning to. 

Nobody in any of her squadrons had had much to broadcast. It hadn’t been an issue for years. 

But he’s just reminded her.

“Morbid,” He tells her through a quiet chuckle, Sam leaning around him to beam a wide smile at her.

“Got any more jokes?” The blonde asks her, even as Jodi scolds him for it.

“No.”

“Oh.”

Jodi clears her throat, and Safiya meets the woman’s gaze trying to look at least a little apologetic. Her oldest son and his friend offering quiet sorrys.

“That’s too bad,” Jodi tells her, reaching across the table to try and touch her hands, Safiya jerking her hands away and folding them in her lap, “I remember when Naomi moved back in with her father after she got sick. They both loved you so much, they used to tell us all kinds of stories about you. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

Sam nods, quickly swallowing down a bite of his food as Safiya’s appetite all but leaves her. 

“Oh,” Safiya manages to choke out, “I’d had no idea.”

“Jodi,” Kent mutters lowly, ducking his head to speak into his wife’s ear. Probably to tell her the one rule most soldiers have beaten into them during the war. Don’t think about what you’re missing out on back at home. 

“Oh, er, sorry, Safiya,” Jodi stutters out, getting to her feet and turning so fast the candlestick falls over, “Let me just get us some dessert! I made a pink cake!”

Not that Safiya has the capacity to care when the woman’s just knocked a lit candle over into a pile of napkins that’s rapidly catching fire.

“Shit,” Sebastian curses, leaping away from the table, Sam and Kent ushering Vincent away as Safiya launches to her feet, knocking her chair to the floor. Jodi shrieks, dropping the cake onto the counter before she snatches Vincent by the shoulders.

“Just- I got it,” Safiya says, as Sam dives for the cabinet beneath the sink in search of the little emergency fire extinguisher. She stretches a hand over the small fire on the table, and the flames go leaping into her hand, disappearing entirely, and leaving her feeling uncomfortably warm.

“Oh my, Yoba,” Jodi gasps out, a hand to her chest, the other wrapped tightly around Vincent, “I’m so sorry- I hadn’t even-”

Safiya nods along, “It’s— It’s fine,” She says, and her skin is crawling with heat, “Thank you, so much, for the meal,” Safiya continues, briefly bowing her head before heading towards the door, grabbing her coat from the rack by the front door and ducking out. She darts away from the house and towards the river, crouching on the riverbank and shoving a hand into the still cold water.

With the other hand, she fishes a cigarette from her coat pocket, holds it between her lips, and lights it up with the smallest flame she can produce on her fingertip. Then, she lets lose a small torrent of flames in the river, steam billowing up into her face until her body has cooled again and it doesn’t feel like her blood is fucking lava.

“That’s a neat trick,” A voice remarks from behind her, her whole body going tense as she fights the urge to turn and attack. 

She only hums, rocking back to sit on the river bank, her legs curled up to her chest and her toes in the muddy bank. Wait- shit, her shoes.

“You forgot these,” Another voice chimes, Kent’s oldest son, and he crouches next to her on the river bank to pass her shoes back to her, “I’m Sam, by the way,” He supplies as she takes her shoes back.

“Thanks,” Safiya mutters, smoke billowing from her nose, “I’m Safiya.”

“We know that,” Sam’s dark haired friend reminds, taking up the spot on her other side as he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his own coat pocket.

“Mm,” She hums, if only a little sardonically, fighting the urge to roll her eyes as she takes another long drag of her cigarette, “Right.”

Sam, to his credit, rolls his eyes and chuckles for her, “The ray of sunshine there is Sebastian,” He tells her, Sebastian flipping him off as he searches his pockets for his lighter.

“Here,” Safiya says, holding one flaming finger up towards Sebastian, “Might as well put the party trick to use, huh?”

If he hesitates, she doesn’t see, can only feel the press of the cigarette to her finger for a moment before he withdraws. She lets her hand fall back down into her lap, taking another drag of her cigarette just as a plume of smoke goes into the air next to her.

“So, out of all the places you could live,” Sebastian begins, smoke furling from his lips when she turns just enough to look at him, “You chose Pelican Town?”

“C’mon, man,” Sam whines, reaching for Safiya’s shoulder before pausing and letting it fall back to his side, “It’s not all that bad.”

“It is,” Sebastian argues, cigarette dangling from his lips as he glares at his friend, “This is a dead end town and you know it. There’s nothing here.”

Safiya stares at him for a moment, Sam apologizing softly behind her, telling her it’s really not that bad. But their minds are wide open, their thoughts bouncing and sliding off her mental shields.

And no matter how good a person is at lying, it doesn’t matter if their thoughts can bounce around in her head without them even meaning to. 

“I didn’t exactly have a choice,” She tells Sebastian, fixing her gaze on him just to see if he’ll squirm. He does, “And you’re right, there is nothing here.”

Except the farm and the memories of the only people who have ever loved you. Those are here. Her brain supplies, not even remotely helpfully. There was another, She reminds herself, watching on as Sam and Sebastian begin slinging insults at each other. Sam in animated hand motions and wild, broad sweeps of his arms, which Sebastian meets with a slow drawl and showy plumes of smoke. 

“Don’t listen to Seb,” Sam laughs, as he once again makes a half-baked movement to touch her that he quickly bails on with a briefly faltering smile, “He likes to pretend we have no fun here in the Valley.”

“We don’t,” Sebastian drawls lazily.

“Then why haven’t you moved, huh?” Sam counters, smiling like he’s won.

“Because he’s scared,” Safiya answers for Sebastian, “Scared he’ll fail and have to come back. Scared to leave everything he knows, too, “ The words just spill out of her, his thoughts still loud and clear against her mental shields.

“What the fuck?” Sebastian demands, as Sam gapes at her and begins to laugh hysterically — Oh my fucking Yoba, I knew it! Abi owes me so much money for this! — which is met with a sharp glare and a hissed, “You fucking bet on me?!”

Sam only howls with laughter, pulling his phone from his pocket to shoot off several texts in a row. “Sorry,” Safiya says, not sounding even a little apologetic, “But you should learn to keep your thoughts to yourself.”

“What the fuck do you mean, keep my thoughts to myself ?” Sebastian demands, mocking her as he parrots her words back to her, “They’re my thoughts.”

“Very noisy thinker, you are,” Safiya remarks absently, as she reduces the butt of her cigarette to ash, letting the wind carry the tiny remnants away, “It’s a mage thing,” She elaborates when he opens his mouth again, “People tend to broadcast their thoughts, it’s particularly bad in people with anxiety. They never seem to shut up. And you –” She leers, index finger pointing to his head “Have an internal voice so damned loud you might as well have been standing outside my window with a boombox over your head in the middle of night.”

Sam snorts as Sebastian’s face goes beet red, and even though his face twists with anger, Safiya can hear his thoughts loud and clear.

What the fuck what the fuck whattheactualfuck, His mind says, She can’t be fucking serious. What else did she hear? Did she even fucking hear anything if it’s a mental thing? Oh no. Fuck, Sebastian, don’t think about anything else. Especially not the porn you’ve got queued up to watch tonight.  

When the rapid onslaught of brief thumbnails and two second clips porn starts is when she slams her shields closed so hard even Sebastian seems to flinch. Wincing and furrowing her brows when she tosses a stern, shut the fuck up , into his mind.

“I’m going home,” Sebastian announces, throwing his cigarette butt down into the mud and stomping it out, before flushing an even deeper shade of red when he picks it up to put into a little pocket ashtray he pulls from his jacket.

Oh, shit , Safiya thinks, Sam still laughing as he tries to dissuade Sebastian from leaving, I think I just fucked up .

“Oh, man,” Sam laughs, but he still frowns a little at the sight of his friends black clad back halfway across the town square, “Fuck– I haven’t seen Seb that embarassed since high school. Thanks for the laugh, Saf.”

Saf, I think I'm in love with you. Says the voice she can’t quite remember the sound of, but remembers the softness of the hands and lips attached to it.

There’s my Saf! Her grandfather had cheered, laughing even as she tossed himself into his arms whenever she and her mom came for a visit.

You’ll come home, Saf. I know you will. Because you’re my brave, beautiful girl. You’re my daughter, and you and I are nothing if not relentless , Her mother had told her, promised her, the day she’d been drafted. There was still birthday cake in the fridge, her candles blown out only a few days prior to the soldiers who’d come and knocked on their apartment door to take her away.

“Don’t call me that,” She snaps at Sam, guilt coiling in her belly as she stands up, her jeans coated in mud and shoes in hand, “And tell your friend that I really am sorry. I hadn’t meant to embarrass him.”

“Right,” Sam nods, shooting to his feet. Safiya curses him to hell and back for the way she has to crane her neck to look him in the eye, for the way he looms , not because he means to, but because he’s just that tall, “No problem, Safiya. And, look, Seb’s just a private dude in general,” He remarks, a hand on the back of his neck, “But he’ll get over it in like, a week, when he has his next hook-up out in Zuzu.”

She hums, looking away from him and towards Cindersap, where she can see the very top of Magnus’ tower over the treetops, “Right. Well, either way, I am sorry.”

“You don’t sound all that sorry.”

“I’m not sorry that he was basically shouting into mind. I am sorry for embarrassing him. Sort of.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Sam sucks in a breath then, and it’s really a wonder he’d only broadcasted a few thoughts into her mind during the night, because he seems anxious. Or, at least his energy seems anxious. “Look, pretty much everyone in town goes down to the saloon Friday evenings. If you really wanna apologize to Seb, you can find him there.”

Safiya nods, huffing through her nose and shuffling her feet in the mud, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chapter 6

Summary:

with the weather warming and summer rapidly approaching a couple decent harvests under her belt, Safiya dreams of someone she thought she’d forgotten

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

content/trigger warning(s): there is a very minor character death in this chapter, it's only brefly alluded to, but just in case - if you wish to skip this scene i've marked it with bolded astericks (***).

I wanna go home.

It’s the only thought in her mind, even as she hits the ground hard, the world tilting on its axis as she falls. Her nose is bleeding, the taste of iron staining her mouth and dying her lips crimson. But she gets up anyway, her uniform stained with mud, and runs towards the Gotoran soldiers on the other side of the battlefield anyway.

I can’t die here.

She’d made a promise to her mother, four years ago now, and there was no way in hell she was going to break that promise. Not now. Not ever. 

So she’d follow her orders, lead her company into battle as planes flew overhead. The whistling of bombs and the thundering aftershocks of the planes zipping past loud enough to feel like her brain is rattling in her brain. She’d watch for the sky for flares, and pass along orders to her subordinates.

And she wouldn’t die. Not here. 

Not when there’s a brand new badge on her breast, another stripe on her shoulder. Not when she’d survived long enough to see herself become a Captain. 

A hand on shoulder, “Kill them dead, Saf,” A voice she can’t quite remember, but a grin she’ll never forget. A boyish charm that he hadn’t lost even after four years of this. A name she’ll never forget, even if she tried.

“Captain Parker,” She acknowledges softly as he presses a hand to her shoulder, the sting of his magic hitting her nose, the blood already ceasing to flow. 

Can’t die when he won’t let her.

“I won’t always be around to patch you up, you know?” He teases, fire bursting from his palm as he aims to kill the approaching Gotoran soldiers.

“Says who?” She demands through a huff of something she can maybe call laughter. Shoving him out of the way as she lets loose a volley of flaming arrows from her fingertips, each one finding its target in the chests of her enemies. “Not the Ferngill Republic, I’m sure.”

“Bad time to be joking, don’t you think?” But he laughs anyway, dark energy sparking around him as he engages another Gotoran soldier. The dark cold radiating off of him chilling Safiya to the bone.

“Maybe.”

It is a bad time to be joking, in the middle of war, bullets whizzing past and magic stinging her nose. But she smiles - knows she shouldn’t - because she feels, for the first time in a long time, her age.

Feels eighteen, and probably looks batshit crazy, as she grins broadly at him. There is dried blood on her lip, and her uniform is mud stained, and she's in the middle of a fucking battlefield, but she feels almost normal.

“Come on, Bennett, you know you love a good laugh,” Safiya chides teasingly, lips pulling with glee as her hands light up with fire.

“You'd be right, Saf.”

 

---

Safiya startles awake, her bedroom ice cold and frost creeping up her windows. It’s also unnaturally dark, even with the curtains flung wide open on the window that faces the mountain to the back of her house. It’s with another start that she realizes she’s the source of the dark and cold in the room, energy pulsing in her chest.

“Fuck,” She gasps out, hands pressing to her chest as she curls in on herself, trying desperately to tamp the magic back down. “ Fuck fuckfuckfuck!”  

Her chest tingles with cold, and she curses herself up and down as she floods her system with fire, turning her blood so hot it feels like lava. She can’t remember the last time she’d lost control so badly. Maybe when she was a little girl, and she and her mother had lived out here, on the farm with her grandpa.When he’d taught her to bend towards the sun and away from the deep dark that liked to lurk within the Valley. Back when he’d press his warm hands - they were always warm - to her shoulders, and even in the middle of Winter, it’d feel like she’d spent the whole day playing on the beach at the peak of Summer.

“Fuck,” She murmurs again, screwing her eyes shut and trying to remember who she is. Tries to force the colonel in her to leave her alone for five Yoba-damned minutes, please! Tries to remember who Safiya is.

Not Saf. Not Colonel Atwood. Safiya. Just Safiya.

Only Safiya.

“Fuck,” She hisses, forcing herself out of bed and moving herself into the living room. Trying, in some terrible, crappy half-assed way to remove herself from her own mind.

There's frost in the hall, too, and it melts where she steps. Her blood still a rolling boil beneath her skin as she settles herself down on the floor in front of the fireplace.

It's not lit, the early Spring is plenty warm enough for her not to need it. But she's tempted to light it anyway. Set herself on fire, too.

Maybe.

She could. Knows, somewhere in the back of her mind, that if she let go of the very careful hold she keeps on the magic in her veins, let it consume her, that she could be nothing but ash on the breeze in under two minutes.

“But how pathetic would that be,” She scoffs at herself, sticking her hand into the fireplace and lighting the few remaining charred logs on fire.

---

The military base barracks in Gotoro were never quiet. Always boots on the ground, soldiers on patrol, quiet chatter where anyone can spare it. Laughter, too, to keep themselves sane.

But Safiya’s ears are preoccupied with the crackling of the fire in front of her, and the hand that's been playing with her fingertips for the last hour.

“You know they won't be happy if they find us, right?” Safiya asks, voice barely even a whisper of sound.

In another life, she ponders, she'd be whispering the same words in the comfort of a bed. Or maybe the back of a car. But instead, she whispers them next to a fire in a military base overseas. 

“Won't they don't know won't hurt ‘em,” Bennett whispers back, positively beaming at her, and he smiles so brightly that she squints at him even in the low light of the fire as he squeezes her hand tightly in his. 

She can’t help but wonder, though, if what she knows will hurt her. If she’s making a mistake just by allowing this . This lack of distance, this vulnerability her drill sergeants and senior officers had warned against. 

“Right,” She agrees after a moment, hoping against hope that he’s right.

“Saf,” He implores, voice feather light as boots approach their tiny hideaway tucked between tents. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”

She only nods, and forces herself to stare into the fire instead of him, grips his hand tightly in hers. It’s a good lie that he tells the both of them, a good lie he tells his subordinates, a good lie to get themselves through the sight of lifeless bodies.

And on nights like this, when the death toll is low, and their commanding officers have loosened the reins enough that they can sneak around the military base, it’s almost believable. She can fool herself into believing the boots patrolling the base is really the sound of her mother walking the hall in their Zuzu apartment. That she’s a high school senior or maybe a college freshman, and Bennett’s the boyfriend she snuck home.

“Saf,” He says again, pulling her focus back to him. “You’re going to make it through.”

“I know.”

---

The heat is sweltering. Summer rapidly approaching and the cool breeze that accompanied Spring is already gone. But she’s thrown herself into her fields, thin patches of ice on her pulse points as she tills the land in preparation of Summer seeds. 

Her grandpa would have pestered her about sunscreen by now, but Safiya likes the way the sun heats her skin. Makes the flesh feel tight where the sun beats down on her. That, and she hasn’t worn a proper pair of shorts and a tank top since she was thirteen.

There’s also still the lingering cold in her chest from that morning, her bedroom windows still defrosting. So, she reasons, if she gets a sunburn from her lack of care, then that’s the price to pay if it helps drive out the ice that’s settled in her veins.

It’s not even noon yet, the sun still taking its sweet time reaching its apex in the sky, but it beats down on her regardless. Makes the jagged red line of the scar on her forearm pulse in the heat, drawing power straight from the source. 

If her scar throbs with dull pain she ignores it in favor of throwing the blade of her hoe into the soil, turning over a new plot of fresh dirt. She drags the blade through the plot she’d marked until her shoulders ache, sweat beading across her brow and slicking her baby hairs to her forehead.

And to think, her grandpa had done this pretty much every day until he died. 

She huffs softly at the thought. Her time in the military had been exhausting, taxing her in ways she hadn’t yet known. Her mind never quite silent, her body never fully at rest, but she’d never felt her muscles burn like this. She could remember how they’d ached when she’d first gone into basic training, and how the aching never left her. Just settled into her bones, burrowed deep into the marrow of her soul.

But she’s aching a new way now. Maybe with some weird semblance of pride. Maybe grief, as she rests her hands on her hips and surveys the farm.

Much the same. Much changed.

Just like her.

Her Spring crops are still going strong, even though a few leaves have begun to wilt in the warmer weather. Her strawberries on their last bloom of the season, parsnips nearly ready for harvest, and enough potatoes to call herself a communist. 

The barn and coop are still empty, and she knows she should probably wade through the pond on the South side of the property to pull out any trash that’s likely blown in there despite Magnus’ spells.

There’s not actually any trash in there , She tells herself, trudging back to the toolshed on the side of the house to put the garden hoe away. You’re just looking for a distraction.

I’ll take it either way, She snarks back at herself, lips pulling into a sneer as she argues with her own voice.

 

---

***

It’s a particularly hot day in Gotoro. The sun beats down on her hotter than anything she’s felt in her life. Ice magic melts to water as soon as it's been let go of, mud spots just slightly softer patches of dirt.

Which is, maybe, probably, definitely good for Safiya. Of all the elements, she wielded fire best, could always tame the wild flickering flames of power that licked along the inside of her ribs and up her breast. 

Not so great for Bennett. Ironic, considering his disposition. Always so sunny.

But where there is light, there is dark. All things in balance. Always.

So she blazes her way through Gotoran soldiers, and the guilt that had once threatened to drown her over taking a life is now just a dull tugging in her belly. Magic flares wide on the front lines, fire meeting fire, or the freezing cold of the void grabbing at soldiers from their own shadows.

And her hands are sticky with warmth, hands pressed to wet fabric, and she’s crying. Can’t even remember why. Can’t even remember why she’d gotten down on her knees, let her plain infantry soldiers cover her ass when she was meant to be saving theirs. 

But she can remember the hand gripping at her forearm, searching for her hand. Blindly. Desperately. 

“ Please .”

She doesn’t even know who said it. Whose voice came out a broken, shattered plea. Can’t seem to get a quick healing spell right, even as she mumbles the words as fast as she can, pours everything she has into her hands, into a gushing wound.

But magic can’t combat the growing panic in her chest.

 

***

 

---

There’s someone at the Southern gate. She doesn’t need magic invisible barriers to tell her about the person rattling at her gate for once. The barking is an alarm all on its own.

Safiya startles from where she kneels in the soil, fingers covered in dirt from where she’d been fumbling with the sprinkler system. The iridium sprinkler heads fickle, and the plastic water lines even more so.

She panics, only for a moment, mind rushing back to the barking of the military dogs that had once snapped their teeth at her when she was caught after curfew one time with Bennett. Or even worse, the Gotoran dogs who’d happily rip into her flesh if she wasn’t careful on the battlefield. Bennett had once proudly shown her the pink divot in his calf from when he’d been bitten by a Gotoro hound. She’d grimaced while he laughed. 

She’s hated dogs ever since.

But it’s no Gotoran hound that comes bounding towards her as she digs her fingers firmly into the soil surrounding the sprinkler head. Wrapping tightly around the PVC piping and willing her magic to settle down in her feet and not in her hands. 

“Ope!” A woman laughs as she trails after the dog that comes running straight for her. A little thing, with paws too big for its body, and a tail that sounds like a whip as it wags ferociously in the air. Its whole body wiggling as it tosses itself down in the dirt next to Safiya. 

The dog’s a boy, made glaringly obvious when it rolls onto his back to wriggle happily in the dirt and pant happily at Safiya. He’s all black, a sleek short coat that’s quickly losing its shine as he continues to roll in the dirt, tail now whacking rhythmically into the side of Safiya’s thigh. 

“Sorry,” The woman who’d been chasing him laughs, stopping a few steps away from where Safiya refuses to let go of her PVC sprinkler lines. “He’s a quick little bugger!”

Safiya nods mutely, cold flaring in her hands so fast she catches it too late, and the pipe in her hand swells and cracks. Water leaking between her fingers and turning the soil to mud.

“You should leash him,” Safiyia mutters, throat suddenly dry as the water continues to seep through her fingers. Mud beginning to stick to her knees and splattered against her thigh as the dog continues to play happily beside her.

“Ah, maybe,” The woman shrugs, and heat flares somewhere deep in Safiya’s bones, “I’m Marnie, by the by. I own the ranch on the South side of your property!”

This woman is too cheery for someone whose dog just ran off from them. Or maybe that’s just what bad pet owners are like, too damned happy for their own good, and their problems are also your problems whether they mean them to be or not.

“...Right,” Safiya says dryly, eyeing Marnie carefully. The woman is scruffy, even by Safiya’s standards. Mousy brown hair pulled back into a frizzy ponytail, her jeans stained in various shades of browns and yellows. Safiya sighs, already done with whatever conversation this is supposed to be. “Look, is there something you need? Because I have every intention of getting my sprinklers fixed.” Then, intentionally pointed.  “Today, preferably.”

The woman nods along happily, that cheery smile never leaving her face, “Right! Of course!” She agrees, and then couches down into the dirt with Safiya. “I actually came by to tell you ‘bout that little fella,” she says brightly, though she is being remarkably dim, and Safiya considers just letting her pipes completely burst and going inside. 

She could live a happy life as a hermit, she reckons.

“See, he’s been wanderin’ ‘round your property,” Marnie continues, and Safiya weighs hermithood a little more heavily in her mind. “And I was thinkin’ it’d be a real shame if he didn’t have a home.” 

Oh no, I don’t like where this is going. Safiya thinks, gaze flicking between the dog and Marnie. 

“And while I’d usually just adopt him myself, I just don’t have any space for him, I’m afraid.” 

Yoba kill me now.

“So! I was thinkin’ that you could use some company and you’d take him in ‘cause I just can’t stand thinkin’ of an animal as sweet as him spendin’ his time in the shelter!” Marnie yammers on at a mile a minute, and Safiya’s gut turns as the older woman continues talking. 

It turns again when the woman fiddles mindlessly with the sprinkler head, and water gushes between Safiya’s fingers. 

“You know!” Marnie laughs, letting go of the sprinkler. “I don’t even know anythin’ ‘bout sprinklers to tell ya the truth!”

Oh, for the love of all that is holy. Yoba, please - Safiya pleads, screwing her eyes shut and forcing herself to take a deep breath as a spray of water soaks the front of her shirt, Get this woman the hell away from me.

“I don’t know why I thought I’d sit down with ya!” Marnie continues, sitting back and letting the seat of her jeans get soaked through with mud and dirty water. It’s becoming clear where the other stains come from. “I only came over here to ask ya if you’d take that little thing in!” She jerks her chin in the direction of the puppy, and Safiya can feel the way her face goes slack.

Oh, fuck that noise. Absolutely not- Her brain supplies helpfully, her hands squeezing the PVC pipe even tighter, water spraying between her fingers as the sprinkler head begins to sputter weakly from whatever the fuck Marnie did to it. 

“Sure,” her mouth says, lips curling into a tight smile that makes her cheeks hurt. “I’ll take care of him!”

What the fuck did I just say?  

“You probably have a ton of stuff you need to get done,” Safiya continues in a voice so sweet it makes her sick. “I’ve got it all handled here! Why don’t you just head out early?”

Marnie nods, mirroring Safiya’s grin in a way that isn’t strained the way Safiya’s is, and the dog yaps happily as it gets to its feet. Safiya’s smiling, but she’s pretty sure that her soul is leaving her body as the dog shakes the mud from its body, specks landing on her face as Marnie laughs gleefully.

Yoba, please just put me out of my misery, Safiya begs, muscles in her jaw feathering with irritation as her smile falters. 

Marnie stands, but makes no move to leave.

Safiya promised herself she wouldn’t ever do the things she’d done in Gotoro here on her grandfather’s farm. Had sworn it the moment she’d gotten that letter in the middle of Winter. Had told Magnus that she’d try , Yoba damnit, to get along with her neighbors. To get along with the townspeople even though Magnus was complete and total hypocrite. 

The longer Marnie stands on her property though, the harder it is for Safiya to keep her promise. 

“Wonderful!” Marnie cheers, clasping her hands together, mud spraying against Safiya’s face and flecking in her hair, “What’re you gonna name him?”

Safiya laughs, high and reedy with incredulousness.“What?”

Marnie nods like it’s obvious, laughs like Safiya’s just told her a joke. “Well he’s gotta have a name, of course!”

Safiya inhales through her nose, sucks up some mud with it and her face aches from holding her smile for so long as she laughs along with Marnie. And it sounds as fake as it is. “Right!” She wheezes out. “You’re so right!

Marrnie nods enthusiastically, gesturing wildly for Safiya to continue. Safiya finds the thought of becoming a hermit increasingly comforting. She turns away from Marnie to look at the puppy, now happily frolicking through her small field and snapping at the few butterflies that flit amongst her leafy green crops.

“Uh…” Safiya hesitates, coming up empty on dog names. “D.O.G?”

It’s shot down before Safiya can even turn to look back at Marnie for some semblance of approval. There’s another moment of silence, Safiya staring at the dog happily running around her field and yapping when the sprinklers start their third cycle of the day.

Water gushes between Safiya’s fingers, the definitely broken sprinkler head sputtering wildly. There’s no hope for keeping herself dry now. Dark muddy streaks running down her face as she takes a spray of water to the face.

Yoba, what the fuck am I supposed to name a dog? She thinks, turning her head to look at the animal that had been shoved on her and to avoid another wild spray of water.

She wracks her brain for an answer, deliberately blocking out the sound of Marnie’s voice yammering on and on and on about what she’d name the animal if the choice was hers. Gertie, Glebo, Gru, Yogi, Packino were all on the never ending list of Marnie’s animal names.

“You know, I have a dog back home,” Bennett drawled, legs splayed out in front of him as he leaned back on his elbows, “He’s nothing like the military hounds.”

“I sincerely doubt it,” Safiya scoffed, tapping the heel of her boot into the ground, “But tell me about him anyway.”

“His name’s Atlas.”

“I’ll call him Atlas,” Safiya blurts, cutting off Marnie’s long spiel about how she can just look into an animal's eyes and know what their name is. The dog barks in response, bounding back towards her with his tail whipping through the air.

“Ooh!” Marnie cheers, clapping her hands together. “I think Atlas is a perfect name for you, boy!” She tells the dog, leaning down and scratching the dog behind the ears before turning back to Safiya. “If you have any questions or need any help just come by and ask me! I’m always around!”

Safiya nods, anxious to get this woman off of her property again. Marnie turns on her heel and flounces - as much as a woman of her age can - back to the Southern gate, leaving Safiya to sit in the mud, water still running through her fingers and sprinkler head spraying water in inconsistent directions. Atlas wagging his tail as he pants up at her.

“What the fuck am I going to do with you, huh?” She demands of the dog, who barks happily in response, as if to say, Fuck if I know, I’m just happy to be here.

Safiya sighs, finally letting go of her sprinkler line and getting soaked head to toe and heading back towards the house to turn off the water line, “Come on,” She tells Atlas, “Let’s go Google you, I guess.”

Notes:

an additional scene:

The following day, Safiya makes the begrudging trip to the South side of the farm with Atlas to go to Marnie's. She dreads it the whole walk, hates the way Atlas keeps weaving between her legs and nearly trips her every other step.

But she goes.

Because of course she does.

The bell above the door jingles, and Safiya steels herself for what will likely be another incredibly annoying conversation.

There's no one there.

"Always around my ass," Safiya scowls, and make the trek back home empty handed.

Chapter 7

Summary:

the beach episode nobody asked for except it goes great for everyone but sebastian

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Sebastian hates the heat. Hates the way it makes the fabric of his shirt cling to his skin, the way sweat crushes his hair to his face. Hates how he’s forced out of his hoodies and long sleeves into t-shirts.

But even still, Sam manages to drag him down to the beach. Sebastian rolls his jeans up to his calves and carries his shoes in one hand before he even steps onto the beach. Whereas Sam doesn’t give two shits if he gets sand in his sneakers, or if sand manages to get kicked up onto his board shorts.

Sebastian actually can’t remember if he ever liked the beach as a kid. He remembers loving the beach in Winter. When it had been just him and his mom, before Demetrius had moved in and fucked it all up. He’d loved the snow on the beach, weird, but so beautiful. He’d loved building snowgoons with his mom, sand and snow sticking to their gloves and pants.

He hadn’t minded it then, the sand sticking to him at every possible chance.

But he certainly minds it now. Huffing irritably as he sits himself down at the end of the dock while Sam dives straight in. He’d probably mind it less if he’d remembered to bring a joint or two with him, take the edge off in the way cigarettes can’t.

“Dude,” Sam drawls from where he’s treading water, waves lapping at his shoulders. “Could you at least pretend to not be miserable for an hour?”

“Not my fault it’s hot as balls out here,” Sebastian retorts, pushing his hair out of his face.

“Not my fault it’s hot as balls,” Sam mimics in a high falsetto and a roll of his eyes. “Maybe dress for the fucking weather and it wouldn’t be so hot?”

They both know that’s the logical answer, that Sebastian is sometimes too committed to the bit to let go of his jeans even in weather so hot he thinks he’s literally sweating his balls off. At least he’d ditched his hoodie for the day, he’d actually ditched it as soon as the weather had turned warm enough to be considered Summer. Even the general coolness of his room can’t keep him safe from the heat.

“Whatever,” Sebastian scoffs, dangling his feet over the edge of the dock just enough to let the tide splash against the piling and up onto the exposed skin of his calves.

“Look, man,” Sam huffs, deciding that floating on his back with his hands on his belly like some blonde, oversized otter, is better than treading water. “If you’re that miserable you can either get in and go for a swim. Or you can go home and be miserable while your mom and Demetrius get into it.”

Again.  

Sam doesn’t have to say it for Sebastian to hear it. Frankly, Sebastian doesn’t want to hear it. They’d argued about Maru’s education and career choices before they’d cycled to his living situation. 

Demetrius arguing that if Sebastian was going to continue living there, especially now that he’s twenty-five, he should either pay more rent to contribute to the household or move out. His mom had screamed back that he shouldn’t be paying rent at all, that there was no sense in pushing their son - her son - away.

“Fucking-” Sebastian huffs, getting to his feet and yanking his shirt over his head and stepping out his jeans. “I don’t like you,” He tells Sam pointedly, jabbing a finger in the blonde’s direction.

His half-hearted insult goes unheard, his friend some thirty feet away and diving down into the water. Sebastian only huffs again, making sure his clothes are far enough from the edge of the dock so they don’t either blow in or fall in, before diving in after Sam. 

The water is cooler than he’d thought it would be, it always is in Pelican Town. But it’s a welcome reprieve from the burning summer heat. He’ll probably end up regretting the swim by the time he falls asleep hunched over his desk, but Sam’s right, this is far better than sitting at home and listening to his mom and Demetrius fight over his and Maru’s lives.

Salt stinging his eyes, Sebastian paddles after Sam, who’s swimming all the way out to the bright red swimming buoys in the distance. Probably to make a lap and get some exercise out of the swim, or just to get further away from the dock.

“Yoba, dude,” Sebastian huffs when he catches up to Sam at the buoy, the both of them hanging on to the rope that connects the bright plastic buoys that mark the edges of the safe swimming zone. Although, none of it’s all that safe considering there’s never a lifeguard on duty except on busier tourist days, when Lewis has Alex work as the sole lifeguard on duty. “Not even gonna wait for me?”

Sam shakes his head, kicking his legs hard to push himself out of the water to hook an arm over one of the buoys, “Nah, man. I’m waiting for you to swim faster.”

“You had a thirty foot lead on me, asshole,” Sebastian sneers, still trying to find his breath and cursing himself for smoking so damned much.

Sam only shrugs, entirely nonplussed as Sebastian tries to get his lungs to do their damned job as if he doesn’t smoke several times a day. Or worse yet, like he doesn’t regularly chainsmoke multiple times a week.

“Funny,” Sam sighs, shaking his head and spraying water into Sebastian’s face, “I distinctly remember a time when that didn’t matter. It’s almost like you smoke a pack a day and sit at your computer twenty-four-seven.”

Sam doesn’t even give Sebastian the time to respond, pushing off from the buoy in a gentle swell of water and heading back to shore.

“Wha- Okay, hold on,” Sebastian protests, swimming after him and finding his strokes to be coming back easier to him. Muscle memory kicking in from the Summer’s he’d spent as a kid racing Sam and Abi to the buoys and back several times over. “I only smoke, like, half a pack a day,” Sam turns to look at Seb with a raised brow, “ Maybe .” Sebastian tacks on. 

“ And ,” Sebastian continues as Sam begins to pull away, forcing Sebastian to quicken his pace to keep up. “I have a real job. So at least I have an excuse for sitting at my desk all day.”

Sam only shakes his head, continuing to set a good pace back to the beach, where a new figure is standing on dock furthest from Willy’s shop, staring out into the sea. Staring at them . 

“You know I have a job too, right?” Sam asks, stopping at the halfway point between the beach and the buoys to level Sebastian with a look that might be disbelief, or maybe hurt, if Sebastian cared enough to dig beneath the easy-going smile his friend always seems to wear. 

“You know that’s not how I meant it,” Sebastian sighs petulantly, and if he didn’t need his arms to tread water, he’d be crossing them defensively over his chest. “I just- You know, it’s Joja.”

If Sam’s mad at him, he doesn’t show it, instead just choosing to laugh it off, “Yeah, I know. One day I’ll have a real job too, asshole.”

Sebastian is lucky. He knows that to be a fact, even as Sam turns and begins swimming to shore again, leaving Sebastian to get his ass in gear and follow after him. Because he knows, that if it were anyone else, he wouldn’t get away with the things Sam lets him say to him. 

Hell, no one else is willing to drop whatever they’re doing to be a good friend like Sam does. He hadn’t even texted Sam to let him know he was on his way over when his mom and Demetrius had shifted their arguing to his life choices. And Sam hadn’t even cared. Just toted Sebastian along for the ride.

He’ll never tell him that, though.

Sebastian just continues to paddle after Sam, his arms raising and cutting through the water in the streamlined breaststroke he’d begun leaning towards in high school when his lungs couldn’t handle the strain of swimming a proper front crawl with his face in the water. 

Sam doesn’t have that problem, but he still keeps his face out of the water as he swims towards the shore. Sebastian follows him blindly, eyes trained on his friends back without paying any real attention to his surroundings. He’ll get to shore when he gets to shore, he figures. 

He figures wrong. Swimming into Sam’s back as he stops to tread water again, looking at the docks again, and the figure sitting at the very end.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Sebastian demands, shifting to tread water a few feet away from Sam and follows his gaze to the dock where- 

Oh, no.

She notices them in the same breath that Sebastian recognizes her. Different without her long military coat and the glow of a cigarette between her lips. Way different when he realizes she’s standing on the end of the pier clad in shorts and a bikini top.

There’s an immediate panic, as Sam waves brightly at Safiya and swims faster towards the shoreline, that has Sebastian’s mind blinking back to the moments by the river after dinner at Sam’s. Where she’d voiced his internal monologue wholly stone faced as she breathed down a cigarette.

“-might as well have been standing outside my window with a boombox over your head-” The memory of Safiya drawls in his head, and anger burns at him. Heats his chest as he watches her head distantly turn in Sam’s direction, his direction, and wave minutely back at Sam.

Perhaps it’s also embarrassment, too, that has his ears burning as Sam approaches the docks, treading water to speak with Safiya as she takes a seat at the end of the dock to hear him better. 

“Your buddy didn’t strike me as the summer type,” He hears her say distantly as he swallows what indignation is welling up in him to swim past her and Sam towards the shore.

“He’s not,” Sam agrees, looking towards Sebastian, who’s pointedly ignoring them.

If he’s broadcasting his thoughts to her, she makes no move to acknowledge him, her eyes focused on Sam as she makes conversation with him. From a distance, it looks like she’s got large swathes of colorful neon tattoos on her forearms, across her ribs, and thin lines of color extending from beneath her shorts on her left thigh. 

But as he swims closer, giving himself a wide berth as he returns to the beach and debates whether or not he should wait for her to leave to collect the clothes he’d left on the dock or not, that he realizes the glowing neon on her body aren’t tattoos at all. He’s seen plenty of tattoos before, has a few of his own, and he’s never seen any of them pulse and flicker.

“We missed you at the Saloon,” He hears Sam say as he bites the bullet and decides to head down the dock to collect his things. “You know there’s no hard feelings, right?”

That’s a blatant fucking lie if I ever heard one, Sebastian thinks, lips pulling into a scowl.

Safiya’s gaze turns on him, eyeing him knowingly as she speaks to Sam, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Shit, she definitely heard that. Sebastian’s internal monologue blurts, and he feels frozen in place, just standing there on the dock in his boxers, and- Oh, shit, I’m in my boxers. Fuck me. This girl’s a fucking curse.

“I had some stuff come up,” Safiya continues, turning her attention back to Sam, who’s hoisting himself out of the water with his forearms braced against the dock. Like some kind of merman. Or a lifeguard-surfer-dude-type in a cheesy coming of age summer romance movie. “So it all works out anyway.”

Sam’s mouth drops in a silent ‘oh’ of acknowledgement, “Well, you know, if you ever need some help on the farm my dad and I are always around,” he informs as Sebastian edges closer to the conversation, his pile of clothes so close . “Honestly, I think Dad could use something to do,” And then Sebastian’s worst fears are realized when Sam turns to him. “Don’t you think, Sebastian?”

Yoba fucking damn you, Sam.

“Probably,” Sebastian mutters, forcing himself to take a seat on the edge of the dock as far away from them as socially acceptable.

Safiya’s looking at him again, all sharp eyes and glowing scars. He hates it. Like he’s being held under a microscope and being pulled apart. It’s like he’s in high school all over again. Being picked apart, but a million times worse and somehow even more intense despite her not having even said anything yet. 

“You don’t like me,” She says after a moment, and her lips pull minutely into something that could maybe be called a smile.

Sebastian flounders for something to say, and Sam says something about how that’s just the way he is, that he’s a softy deep-down. But she’s right, he doesn’t like her. At all . Which isn’t a new thing for him. He’s hated plenty of people, disliked even more of them, but it’s rare that anyone ever calls him out on it. 

And he’s never , not once been called out so blatantly by a girl. 

In Zuzu, the girls he’d met in bars had acknowledged that he maybe didn’t like them, that he was really only interested in getting his dick wet. But that had only ever seemed to make them more eager to please.

But Safiya is entirely nonplussed. Maybe even pleased.

He likes it.

“I don’t know anyone who likes somebody rooting around in their heads,” Sebastian scowls, but there’s no real venom to it.

She only sighs and shakes her head, “Like I said, it doesn’t quite work that way. If I wanted to look through your head you’d know,” she tells him, tapping a finger to her head.“But for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Sebastian shrugs, turning away from her and grabbing his clothes from where he’d left them on the dock to pull his pack of cigarettes from where he’d left them in his jeans pocket.

Sam is beaming, Sebastian doesn’t even have to look to know it. He can feel it, even as he deliberately ignores his best friend to focus his attention on flicking his lighter on.

“So,” Sam says, drawing Safiya’s attention back to him. “I heard from my mom who heard from Marnie that you’ve got a dog now?”

Sebastian looks back over at them now that the attention is off of him, and is surprised to see Safiya’s face twisted into an annoyed frown. 

“More like foisted upon me,” Safiya agrees, her frown growing into a scowl. The bright red scar on her forearm glows brighter, flashing with light for a moment, and the air around her seems to swelter, “Damned dog has been driving me insane.”

Sebastian’s cigarette lights significantly easier now.

“Dad seemed surprised you’d agreed to it,” Sam tells her, and he doesn’t recoil from the heat she puts off the way Sebastian does. If anything, he almost leans into it, “Mentioned something about mages and military dogs?”

That’s about all Kent does these days, though, Sebastian has noticed. He’ll only mention things, brief, tiny glimpses into what war had been like. Never anything more than an odd one-off statement or remark. 

“We don’t get along,” Safiya supplies, which is marginally clarifying.

Sebastian can’t help himself, can’t seem to keep his mouth shut, as he blurts, smoke billowing from his lips, “Then why don’t you just get rid of it?”

It comes out more scathing than he’d meant it to, and if she cares she doesn’t show it. Sam frowns sharply at him, silently scolding him. Sebastian can’t tell if it’s for his tone or for suggesting getting rid of the dog.

Safiya shrugs, “I don’t know.”

But it sounds like she does know. Something in her voice tugging his mind just so, like when he’d been a little kid going to the doctor's office with an ear infection and asking if he’d really have to take the medication he’d been prescribed. The discharge nurse saying, I don’t know, you’ll have to check with the doctor , but the way it’d been said had made it clear that she knew. Like he knew, too.

Sam is saying something again and Sebastian misses it as he continues to stare at Safiya, the edges of his brain turning fuzzy the longer he stares at her. The longer he turns over the barely there inflection of her voice when she’d answered his question. He wonders if he should quit smoking.

But his mind sharpens with alarming clarity when Safiya stands up, unbuttons her shorts - fuck, she’s hot - and dives into the water to join Sam. 

“You coming, dude?” Sam asks, nodding to where she had resurfaced some twenty feet away, blue-black hair plastered against her skin. The glow of the scar on her forearm visible even from the dock as she treads water. 

Sebastian thinks he nods, stubbing out his half-smoked cigarette against the dock. “Sure, man, just gimme a minute,” He mutters, putting his cigarette back in the carton.

Sebastian doesn’t get back in the water.

 

Chapter 8

Summary:

safiya gets played like a cheap kazoo by a nine year old

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

It’s official: Safiya likes Atlas. The dog, not the Greek titan who’d held up the sky. 

She really shouldn’t be so proud. She’d only taught him to sit and stay and not poop inside the house. But she understands the appeal now. 

Although, she thinks that some of that pride might be in part because Kent had made it a habit to come over to the farm every other day and he thinks that the dog’s her loyal servant. He likes to tell her that he’s only coming over to make sure she’s still alive and kicking, that he thinks she must get lonely out on the farm all by herself, but Safiya knows it’s because he doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

Kent’s brought Vincent with him today, the little boy apparently not having school. And Atlas is perhaps the happiest dog Safiya has ever seen.

Vincent’s happy too, if the squeals of delight are anything to go by.

“You know, you don’t have to keep coming out here, right?” Safiya asks Kent as she carefully tugs a handful of potatoes out of the ground and sets them in the basket between them. Her second harvest since moving in, and she has more produce than she knows what to do with. She’s certainly glad for the help, but Kent is… well, he’s not young. “I’m perfectly alright on my own, Freeman .”

Kent shakes his head, wiping the sweat from his brow as he pauses his wrestling match trying to get a parsnip out of the soil. “It’s good for me to get out of the house. Jojo gets a little high-strung when I’m around the house too much.” The way he says it sounds more like he’s the one having his mind pulled so taut he’s going to snap. “And I don’t know what to do with myself these days.”

Safiya rolls her eyes, wincing as a particularly shrill shriek of joy from Vincent pierces the air, Atlas following suit with a weak howl. She can’t even argue with Kent, as the two of them continue harvesting her crops. She’s spent her days tending to her fields, fixing the fences on the pasture in preparation for the day she eventually acquires herself some farm animals. 

Hell, she’d gotten a letter from Willy - the fisherman that lived on the docks, if her vague childhood memories were right - about going to see him that she still hadn’t made an effort to follow through on. She supposes she should count herself lucky that the fisherman hadn’t been there the day she’d gone swimming in the ocean with Sam. Even if the Sam part had been entirely unplanned. 

“Well, I’d tell you to get a hobby,” Safiya says dryly, grunting with effort as she yanks on a parsnip., “But I don’t have a ton of room to talk.”

Kent shakes his head, his hands buried in a patch of potatoes - it’s like a fucking magic trick, the way the potatoes keep coming. “This is hobby enough,” he tells her, the barest hints of a smile on his face, “‘Sides, it’s good to relax every now and then, you know.”

Safiya doesn’t know, actually. She spends the majority of her day out in the sun, tending her crops, roaming the property - Kent tells her she looks more like she’s patrolling it, the few times he’s caught her doing it - and finding new tricks to teach Atlas.

The last time she’d even passed through town was when she’d gone swimming, and she’s not keen on doing that again anytime soon. Not when she can live off potatoes from now until Winter. 

You’re not in communist Germany , Her stomach had complained on her fourth night of some form of potatoes for dinner, We need sustenance that’s not fucking potato . 

But just like the Ferngill Republic and Gottoro Empire, she and her stomach had reached a stalemate. Potatoes it would be. The thought of potatoes for dinner isn’t even half as appealing as the thought of the takeout food Magnus had gotten her from the Saloon when she’d first arrived, though.

“I relax plenty, if that’s what you’re implying,” Safiya scoffs, taking a break from pulling vegetables from the ground to stare questioningly at him. Her brows knit together as she tries to decide whether he’s trying to tell her something and she’s just failing to read between the lines or not.

Kent shrugs, decisively ignoring her to put all his attention on pulling produce from the ground. Safiya scoffs with disbelief, shaking her head as she goes back to work. They settle into companionable silence like that, wordlessly harvesting produce as Vincent and Atlas enjoy her farm more than she does.

Nearly an hour later, Kent asks her, “Have you thought about putting a range up?” 

Vincent is sprawled out across her front porch with a strawberry lemonade he’d helped himself to from her kitchen. Atlas lays with him, his head - that’s grown increasingly massive since he’d been pawned off on her - laying on the boy's belly. 

“Something like what they used to keep for the mages on base.” Kent presses when she fails to respond.

Safiya knows what he’s talking about. She and Bennett had used the ranges often. Though, it had been more of an excuse to see each other with a military-sanctioned excuse at their disposalble. The last thing they’d wanted after quite literally fighting for their lives on the battlefield was to fend for their right to basic human connection.

She’s even thought about it before. Considered clearing out a patch of her property to just dirt so she could really let loose. But, she’d actually never even liked the ranges. She’d hated going to the range during basic training, even when her drill sergeant hadn’t been screaming in her ear. Hated it even more when she was deployed. She would have much rather been falling face-first into the shitty cots in her quarters, although a canvas tent isn’t much in terms of quarters. 

But she’d gone. Like clockwork, every day she had off of the field, she’d go to the ranges. And every day, Bennett met her there.

She only went for him.

“No,” Safiya mutters, dusting her dirt- covered hands off on her jean shorts. “I heard the mines are open again. I might go check that out.”

Behind her, on the porch, Vincent groans loudly, whining like the child he is, “Dad, can we go yet? I don’t wanna miss game night with Mom because you won't stop talking !”

Kent scolds him, tells him if you want to get home faster you should come over here and help us harvest these vegetables! Which is promptly met with I hate vegetables! Eugh!

“Game night?” Safiya questions when Vincent trudges over with a groan, wedging his fingers beneath a head of cauliflower and pulling on it until it snaps. Albeit in half, but whatever.

“Vincent,” Kent scowls, shaking his head at Vincent even though Safiya doesn’t even blink an eye at the loss, “Either do it properly or there won’t be game night at all.”

She’s pretty sure Vincent rolls his eyes, but he listens to his father, moving over to the remaining parsnips in the ground to yank them out.

“We do game night on Friday ‘cuz that’s when Sammy goes to the Saloon for his game night. And fair’s fair.” Vincent tells her haughtily, which is funny enough on its own, but is made even funnier when he yanks the parsnip from the ground and stumbles a few steps backwards. There’s no stopping the soft snicker of laughter Safiya lets slip as Kent coughs into his shoulder to disguise his laughs. 

Vincent frowns at her, chucking the parsnip at her as he crosses his arms over his chest, “Laugh all you want, but you don’t even have a game night! You don’t go to the Saloon with everyone else because you’re weird .” he says it like it’s a challenge, and for him it’s probably as much as a taunt as it is a challenge. 

And for some stupid reason, Safiya rises to the occasion, “Actually,” she begins, her tone matching his as she leans in close, a sharp smile splitting her face, “I was going to go to the Saloon after you and your dad left. So ha stinkin’ ha!”

Just like when she’d acquired Atlas, she regrets the words as soon as they leave her mouth, What the fuck is wrong with me? But Vincent beams at this, and Safiya wonders if she’s made an even bigger mistake than she’d thought.

“Sam owes me a pizza!” Vincent cheers, and it dawns on Safiya that she’s been played. Not even played well. By a nine year old. Like a cheap fucking harmonica. 

“Welp,” Kent says, and she can’t tell if he’s angry or trying to hold back laughter as he stands up and hauls Vincent over his shoulder shrieking with laughter. “I think it’s time we head on out,” Safiya has half a mind to tell him, no, the fuck it’s not, “I’ll see you in a couple of  days, then.”

Safiya curses herself, curses the war, curses Magnus, curses her crops. Mostly though, she just curses herself for being played like a Yoba damned fifty-cent arcade kazoo. She waves goodbye to Kent and Vincent regardless, hauls her baskets of produce into her arms and heads for the farmhouse, whistling for Atlas as she climbs the porch steps.

He rushes past her into the house, nearly knocking her over when she walks through the doorway. Jumping happily with his still-too-big-for-his-body paws on her legs as she walks her produce to the kitchen counter.

“Enough,” she tells him, when he jumps up high enough to jostle some potatoes from her arms. Eight potatoes spill onto the counter, leaving spots of dirt in their wake, and she huffs. “Go play or something.”

Atlas whines, deciding instead to lay dutifully at her feet in a soft huff. His too-big-for-his-body head resting on his equally disproportionate paws.

Cute , She remarks absently, dumping her potatoes into the sink and turning the water on. He’s a good dog, she has to admit. She likes his warmth, even when he gets underfoot while she tries her damndest to pretend she’s a functioning adult and use her kitchen for its intended purpose. He’s a steady dog, all things considered. He hadn’t flinched or even barked the first time she’d shot up in bed, heart pounding in her throat and blood rushing in her ears, magic trying to burst from her seams. 

He’d only hopped clumsily into her bed from his own on the floor. Pressed his wet nose into her cheek. And just… sat. 

And he loves her as much as an animal can, she thinks. He’s always happy to see her, whether it’s morning and she’s just woken up or if she happens to cross paths with him on her route along the property line while he explores.

“You’re a good boy, Atlas,” she says softly, so soft she doesn’t even recognize the voice as her own. But Atlas does, his tail noisily smacking against the floorboards as he beams - as much as dog can - up at her.

Safiya can’t help the small smile that stretches across her face. It feels funny, makes her cheeks hurt, and yet it feels good . She likes the way the facial muscles hurt, and the ache feels like an achievement she hadn’t even known she’d wanted.

Her chest is warm, in the most pleasant way – the warm bed sheets and freshly baked bread kind of way – as she begins scrubbing the dirt from her potatoes to prepare them to be dumped into the shipping bin on the East entrance of her property.

Sebastian’s voice is in her head, his low smoky drawl floating around her brain, asking, “Then why don’t you just get rid of it?”

And she’d lied to him, then. Sitting on the docks and putting off more heat into an already hot day. Told him she didn’t know. To some degree, she hadn’t. Had refused to admit what he seemed to already know.

But she knows. She’d known from the first cold press of that wet nose to her cheek at two in the morning, from the way he’d ran circles around her when she’d walked his first food bowl to what would become his spot in her kitchen, and she knows it now, the back of his ribs pressed to her calves.

She liked being needed. And she liked having the company.

 

---

“For the love of Yoba,” Sam groans, and Sebastian isn’t sure if it’s because he’s sunk not one, but two, billiard balls in one shot. Or because Abigail has chosen to ignore Sam’s long-winded and incredibly convoluted description of Safiya to hunch over the Praire King game console., “Abi, I talked to you for all of two minutes. Give it a fucking break with the game. You’re not gonna beat it, dude.”

Abi glares at the screen, mashing the arcade game buttons so aggressively it’s more impressive that the buttons don’t stick than it is that she immediately dies. The machine makes a sad noise as the 8-bit cowboy dissolves on screen.

Her purple hair whips through the air as she turns towards Sam, jabbing her index finger at the blonde, glossy black fingernail polish glinting in the saloon lighting, “Just like you’re never gonna beat Seb! Or how no one’s ever gonna beat you off except your hand, Samson .”

Even Sebastian recoils at that, grimacing as Sam’s brow furrows. Yeesh .

“What the fuck, Abi?” Sam asks after a moment, and he almost sounds genuinely hurt. 

Abi blinks, and she laughs a little, feigning ignorance. “Relax, Sam, I was just joking,” she tells him, turning back to the arcade game and mashing the start button with her purple-painted middle finger. “Besides, you know how I get when I’m on my period!”

That gets an eyeroll out of both men. She’d used the same excuse last Friday when she’d made too low of a blow at Sebastian about his work.

“We know how you get when you’re being a bitch,” Sebastian scoffs beneath his breath., Sam scowls at him, but if Abi hears him, he’s ignored in favor of Prairie King.

Sam just shakes his head at the both of them, refocusing his attention on the game of billiards he’s been consistently losing since they were teenagers. Sebastian watches the blonde carefully survey the pool table, only a few balls left, and he watches Sam huff a quiet complaint at what will soon be yet another win under Sebastian’s belt. 

Sam makes a half-hearted shot, cue tip scratching against the pool table felt, the cue ball clacking lazily into a striped ball. It changes next to nothing, and Sam knows it. He only moves out of the way, leaning against his pool cue as Sebastian lines up his next shot.

There are several things Sam knows are facts: His dad is not the same man he was before he was deployed, his mom doesn’t have the mental fortitude to be a parent all of the time, Vincent feels more like a son than a little brother, and Sam will always lose at pool.

The last fact is only reaffirmed by Sebastian sinking his next three shots, calling the eight ball pocket, and sinking that shot too.  

“Good game, man,” Sam says, plastering a grin across his face, clapping a hand to Sebastian’s shoulder. 

Another fact: Sam is tired of losing. 

Sam is just tired, period. He’d hoped his dad coming home would take some of the pressure off of his shoulders. Had hoped his mom would be able to step up and be more present for Vincent. But his dad is just another thing to worry about. 

Being around his dad is like walking on eggshells, always being careful of what he says, of how loud he’s being. He hasn’t been able to plug his guitar into his amp in weeks. The last time he’d been able to really play, his dad had come bursting into his room and nearly tackled Sam to the floor.

Then, there’s the knowledge that his dad can manage being around Vincent better than he can around his oldest son. 

It should make him happy. He should be happy. He knows he should be happy. Happy that Vincent gets to spend time with his dad — with their dad. 

He’s happy, he tells himself, as he puts his cue stick back in the rack and heads to the bar counter. Maybe a cheap beer, bought on even cheaper JojaMart wages, will make him feel better, help remind him that he could have it so much worse. 

Gus greets him with a smile. The heavyset man behind the bar always seems jovial, and Sam often wonders how he does it. How Gus’ smile is always so genuine - whatever woes the man might have inconsequential - when Sam sometimes struggles to plaster on his own.

“What can I getcha, Sammy?” Gus asks as Sam slides some money over the counter, the Saloon door opening and shutting behind him - another patron coming in for a drink on Gus’ busiest night of the week.

“Just a beer,” Sam says, trying his hardest to return Gus’ smile with a beaming one of his own.

Gus nods, then looks just past Sam and asks, “And for you, little lady?”

Little lady? Sam thinks, bewildered, trying to think of anyone Gus has ever called ‘little lady.’   There’s no one in town Gus ever refers to with any modicum of affection beyond his typical cheer. Gus refers to everyone by name, or maybe a nickname, and Sam knows Gus is plenty proud to be part of the community. 

But terms of endearment? 

Never.

“Can I get a shot of vodka?” Safiya’s voice says from behind him. His head whips towards her, maybe faster than he should have, his neck popping as he stares down at her.

“Sure thing, little lady,” Gus says, disappearing behind the bar again to pour their drinks.

Safiya meets Sam's gaze, sidling up next to him at the bar counter. Her lips pulled into that same barely-there smile he’d seen on the docks nearly a week ago. He only blinks at her.

“...You came,” he says after a moment, nearly forgetting to slap a smile on his face. His hand hovers over her shoulder for a moment, forgetting he can’t clap her in a bid to show his excitement like he can with anyone else.

She nods, lips pursing as she eyes his hand - which he very carefully withdraws and shoves back into his pocket.

Shit , He can’t help but cringe, I keep forgetting I can’t touch her.

“I did,” she agrees finally, giving him a cursory once over. “Make sure you tell Vincent I was here when you get home.”

What? Sam thinks, even as a huff of bewildered laughter rumbles in his chest. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to say. He’d thought she’d maybe mention coming to finally properly apologize to Sebastian - not that he thought that his friend really needed one anymore.

“You’re, uh, not here for Sebastian?” he asks tentatively, hand rising to rub at the back of his neck.

He’s met with a soft frown and a shake of her head, “No. I think your buddy gets plenty of attention as is.”

“So…?” he prompts quietly, just as Gus returns with his beer, her shot, and a plate with a burger and a heaping pile of fries. 

Safiya downs her shot all in one go, slides the glass back over to Gus, then points to the burger with a raised brow. Gus nudges the plate closer to her as he takes the shot glass back. Sam wonders if he’s missing out on some serious telepathic conversation, and if there’s any way for him to get in the loop. 

Their silent conversation is short-lived. Safiya takes the plate with a begrudging sigh, and Gus beams at her. 

“I’m here ,” Safiya begins, voice dripping with ire - the bottle cap of Sam’s beer goes flying when he twists the cap off a little too harshly, “Because your little brother said I'm weird not to come out on Fridays like everyone else.” Sam snorts, but quickly hides it as a fake cough when her eyes cut harshly to his. “And I’m…” she sighs, and Sam has never seen someone so annoyed with themselves. “...Spiteful. Apparently.”

He shouldn’t laugh, knows he should probably just be nice and tell her that that’s just the way Vince is, and she’d be better off not paying him any mind. But he does laugh. Loud, raucous laughter that has him gripping the bar for stability as he blatantly laughs in her face.

“He’s a kid,” he tells her, still choking on laughter, and she looks only half-annoyed as she jams a fry into her mouth. “He’s literally nine. You know that, right?”

“I’m very spiteful, then,” she says around a fry.

“In that case,” Sam sighs, shoulders still shaking with laughter, “I’ll make sure to tell Vincent you came out.”

She nods, cramming another fry into her mouth as he takes a swig of his beer, “You might also want to bring a pizza home for the kid?” she suggests, voice lilting as she carefully smashes the burger on her plate flat. “He said you owed him one,” she continues, not even waiting for Sam to respond as she picks up her burger and examines it with more interest than Sam’s ever seen. Then, with what’s definitely a teasing little upward pull of her lips and an amused hum, “Don’t tell me you’re making bets against me, Freeman. Everyone knows to bet on a mage, we always manage to do the impossible.”

Sam has half a mind to wonder if she’s putting on a show, too. To wonder if the tiny intonations and even smaller smiles are things she’s practiced in the mirror a hundred times. To wonder if she’s playing the same subtle game he is.

Sam decides he doesn’t care. Because she’s being kind to him, even if it’s in a strange sort of way that he doesn’t quite have figured out. 

So he beams at her, and the tug of the muscles in his cheeks and jaw doesn’t feel quite so forced. 

And even better? She smiles back. 

“Do you wanna come play pool with us?” he asks her, nodding his head in the direction of the game room. “Maybe you’ll have better luck beating Sebastian than me.”

He’s entirely ready to be shot down. For her to take another bite of her burger and shake her head at him. In fact, he expects her to. 

He doesn’t expect her to drop her food back onto her plate and shove it to the far side of the bar counter. Nor does he anticipate the minuscule smile as she tips her head in a silent gesture for him to lead the way.

“Sounds like fun,” she says, and she follows him to the game room.

 

Chapter 9

Summary:

revelations abound

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

The game room reeks of magic. The sting to her nose so shocking it has her taking a few steps backwards, away from Sam’s tall back in front of her, and doing a careful sweep around the Saloon. 

Odd, She muses to herself, and she feels like she’s been tossed into one of the threat assessment drills that she’d been put through about a hundred times between bouts of active combat, I didn’t smell any magic at the bar.

Assess & Address. The colonel in her reminds sharply, and she lets her own magic pool in her hands, heat building in her palms as she drags her eyes across every person in the room. But there’s nothing. Not a single person out of place, and the most exciting thing anyone in the bar is doing is downing another glass of whatever’s struck their fancy for the evening.

“Everything okay?” Sam asks from behind her, his hand hovering over her shoulder once more, “You look like you’re going to kill someone.”

Safiya nods, blows out a breath she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding, and the magic in her hands dissipates into nothingness once more, “Yeah,” she says, turning back towards him and following him into the game room, “Just thought I smelled something funny.”

Sam frowns, head tilting in confusion as he sets his beer down on one edge of the pool table. Sebastian nods politely in her direction from where he’s bent over the pool table, racking the balls and setting the cue ball in its place.

“Abi,” Sam calls, grabbing a pool cue from the rack and passing it over to Safiya, “This is Safiya. The mage I was telling you about.”

Abigail whips around at that, arcade game entirely forgotten, pixelated noises of defeat eking out of the machine as she sets her sights on the two men with a hand on her hip. “You mean the mage I told you about?” She scoffs, and Safiya just stares and wonders why she looks so familiar, “I told Sebby about it forever ago, remember? When my dad got totally burned back at the start of Spring?”

“Don’t call me that.” Sebastian grumbles, and Safiya’s nose is stung again by the sharp smell of magic as he breaks the balls.

“It was late Winter, actually,” Safiya corrects simultaneously, and the purple haired girl only scoffs a quiet, Whatever, it happened didn’t it?

“So, you’re like, an actual mage?” Abigail asks, quickly rounding the pool table to press into Safiya’s space, “Did you fight people? Ooh! Kill anyone? When did you get drafted? Eighteen, right? Can you use magic right now? Do you know the wizard in the tower?”

Safiya thinks she’s got whiplash just from the speed at which Abigail asks questions of her, and the girl just keeps pressing ever closer into Safiya’s space. Safiya shifts away from her, and she wonders if she could whack the crazed girl over the head with her pool cue and be home before anyone is any the wiser. 

“Could you back the fuck up?” Safiya snaps at her when she presses even closer, “I’m not some kind of fucking exhibit at the Zuzu City Zoo.”

Sam chuckles awkwardly, carefully squeezing himself between the two of them and letting Safiya retreat to the other side of the pool table, where Sebastian is waiting impatiently for someone else to take their turn.

“How’s the dog?” Sebastian asks as she leans over the pool table, lining up for a shot she knows she’ll make - regardless of how shit she is at pool. Sam is quietly scolding Abi - Yoba’s tits, Abs, you can’t just get up in her grill like that - while Sebastian maintains a healthy distance.

Her cue scratches the velvet, the cue ball bounces haphazardly into a solid, and despite looking like an entirely impossible shot, she sinks it, “Atlas?” She asks, despite not owning any other dog. He hums an affirmative, deciding they’ll play pool with just the two of them, leaving Sam and Abi to argue quietly.

“He’s doing good,” she tells him, nose wrinkling as the smell of magic stings her nose, and he pockets another ball. “He’s grown on me.”

He nods. Safiya lines up her next shot.

“Wanna tell me why you reek of magic?” She asks, once again doing a shit job of actually shooting pool. It’s cheating, if anyone were to actually know about it, but she’s not above using magic to do the heavy lifting.

She sinks it. Sebastian stares.

“What?”

“Magic,” she says again, staring expectantly, as if the pieces will just snap into place for him, “You smell like it.”

She emphasizes her point with a tap on her nose. He scrunches his in response.

“Dude, I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Sebastian scoffs, bumping her out of his way with the rounded end of his cue stick, “In case it wasn’t clear, I’m not a mage.”

Safiya shrugs, watches him pocket another ball with more ease than is natural. Her nose continues to sting with the smell of magic, and he sinks the remaining balls on the table.

Her grandfather’s words come to her, his scrawling penmanship on the letter attached to the deed to her farm: The Valley is full of magic. She wonders just how full.

 

---

 

She doesn’t ask him to, but Sam walks her home. And to her great chagrin, so does Abigail.

“So, you really served?” Abigail asks her as they walk across the town's cobblestone square, towards her father’s store. 

“I did,” Safiya confirms, even as Sam shoots Safiya an apologetic smile. “For nine years.”

She could ditch them, Safiya finds herself thinking when Abigail’s mouth opens again to ask another benign question. She could ditch them and live the rest of her days in a happy hermit hood. No one would bother her except for Magnus. And really - that was fine with her.

 “So you’re like, what, twenty-seven now? If you were drafted at eighteen?” Abigail asks, and Safiya wonders where the fuck this girl gets off asking her about the war.

 “I was fourteen,” Safiya tells her, trying her hardest not to sneer, “I’m only twenty-three.”

 “Oh,” Abigail blinks, pausing her already slow pace to stare at Safiya, “I’m twenty-one. Just turned last Fall.”

 This is what Magnus had pressed and pushed and encouraged her so hard for? To be asked meaningless questions and dragged into even more meaningless conversation about how this girl - who looks suspiciously like Magnus the longer Safiya looks at her - turned twenty-one last Fall. By Yoba’s left ass cheek, she was going to strangle Magnus.

 “Good for you?” She means to just say it, but the words come out sounding more like a sardonic question than the dry jab she’d meant it to be.

 The three of them fall into silence again, once again setting off across the town square. In the distance, Safiya can just barely make out the wraith-like figure that is Sebastian, walking along the river towards the mountain path. 

 It’s peaceful, actually. She can see the stars so clearly out in the Valley, she’d forgotten to look for them in Gotoro. Can clearly see the big and little dippers, the thick swathe of light that makes up the milky way, and a few more she can’t even remember the names of. 

 It’s nice, and Safiya can’t remember the last time anything had been ni-

 “They really drafted you at fourteen?” Abigail’s voice cuts through, and Safiya has to actually shut her eyes and count down from ten.

 “Abi, dude,” Sam hisses, and there’s a quiet scuffle followed by Abigail’s whispered Ow!

 “Do you think I’m lying?” Safiya asks, eyes sliding open again to stare sharply into Abigail’s green ones.

 The girl shrugs, purple hair sliding off of her shoulder, “Well, kinda,” She admits, and there’s no shame in her eyes for her blatant prying and incessant questioning, “There’s no way they want, like, little kids going to fight in our wars.”

 “Abi!” Sam says sharply, and both girls jump. Safiya stares wide-eyed as the first coherent thought she’s gotten from the blonde rips through her mental shields. I wish she’d just quit trying to get a fucking rise out of everyone.

 Sam says something else to Abigail, but it seems like that one thought was just the start. The mental floodgates have been opened, and every thought that weighs on Sam’s mind is very suddenly weighing on hers.

 “What? I’m just asking some questions!” Abigail defends, though it sounds more like a whine, as she crosses her arms over her chest, “It’s not that big of a deal, Samson.”

 Sam’s mouth opens again, and Safiya watches wide-eyed as he speaks in sharp tones that would have gotten him so so far had he been drafted. Abigail meets Sam’s gaze, even if it takes craning her head back to stare up at him in shocked defiance as he looms over her. 

 And for a split second, Safiya doesn’t see Sam.

 “It’s fine,” Safiya says, just as Abigail opens her mouth for some cheap retort.

 “No,” Sam denies, mouth set in a firm line. Such a strange sight compared to the man she’d spent nearly half a day swimming in the ocean with. He’d been all smiles then, and maybe the occasional errant thought or feeling would slip into her mind. Little anxieties he’d hidden behind a beaming smile.

 “It’s fine,” Safiya repeats, more firmly this time. She steps around Sam to look Abigail in the eye, “I was drafted at fourteen. I have the dog tags and paperwork to prove it. Ferngill conscripts mages as early as thirteen. A weapon is a weapon, regardless of age.” 

 They aren’t words she’d ever thought she’d be saying. Let alone to a girl who acts more sixteen than twenty-one. Sam winces, barely holds back a glare as Abigail gawps at her.

 “I would recommend you don't repeat your insipid round of questions with anybody else like me,” Safiya spits, openly glowering at the girl. She takes a few steps away from Abigail, Sam trailing tentatively after her while tossing his own glare in Abigail’s direction. “Any other mage would be far more open to showing you exactly what it means to have fought in Gottorro.”

 Abigail scowls as Safiya turns sharply on her heel, stalking out of the small town square and towards the dirt path home. Sam walks with her even still.

 

---

 

 

Magic, Safiya’s voice taunts on his way home, her voice sounding more like a teasing snarl than the simple quiet she’d actually spoken the words. You smell like it.

 The mere concept had made him angrier than it should. He’d realized as much when he’d stomped the whole way home and then paced the bank of the lake near his home for an hour and a half after the fact. 

 He’d managed to smoke his way through half a pack of cigarettes, too. 

 Fuck me, I just bought these! He’d cursed, but then her words had dragged through his mind again, and he was cursing her instead.

 Magic, while not an entirely unfamiliar concept, was rare - at least to Sebastian’s understanding. Every person with even a modicum of magic ability had been shipped off to Gottoro as soon as they were old enough. It had been that way since even before Sebastian was born. 

 To be born with magic was a curse.

 He had enough evidence of that fact in Safiya. Kent was also plenty proof that he had no interest in going to war. So even if his number not being called in the draft meant he’d have no luck for the rest of his life - which it didn’t - he’d take it.

 But to be told he smelled like magic - what the fuck does magic smell like? - by someone who would know? 

 That was a personal offense he hadn’t even known about.

 Or more accurately, a terrifying thought he could have gone the rest of his life without ever knowing. 

 After all, it had been one thing to have dodged the draft. Even if it had only been just barely a couple of times. But it was another entirely to be told that if anyone with the nose for it had even got a whiff of him, he would have been shipped off long before he was eighteen.

 The thought alone leaves him winded. Gasping for air and clutching at his chest. Terror seizing him by the throat and squeezing. Crushes his throat until he’s dropping to his knees, muddy lake shore seeping through the fabric of his jeans.

 He wouldn’t have survived the war. 

 He knows he wouldn’t. Swears it.

 And it dawns on him. There, in the mud, knees soaked and cold, face wet. 

 This must’ve been what it felt like for Safiya.

 But worse. Several hundred times worse.

 And that scares him too. Grips him and takes him for everything he has. Because he could have just as easily been her. Or Kent, he realizes with a start. Could have been wrung out of everything he was and left to come home an empty shell of who he was. Who he is. 

 It takes him another half hour of kneeling in the muddy lake shore to pull himself together and walk home on tingling feet. His half-smoked pack of cigarettes left crumpled and forgotten in the mud.

 He walks home in the dark, mud flinging off of him with every step. 

 “Seb?” Maru asks when he passes her in the hall on his way down to his basement. “You’re all muddy. Are you okay?”

 “Fine.” He answers distantly, trudging down the stairs, muddy footprints left in his wake.

 I’ll visit her in the morning. He decides as he tosses himself into bed, muddy jeans and all. I’ll ask her what she meant.

 Sleep doesn’t find him that night.

 

---

 

 

“Wow!” Sam whistles softly, stopping at the gate while Safiya continues towards the farmhouse and stops a few feet away from him. “This place is looking really good!”

 Safiya nods, watching him survey the farmland she’d spent so much of her time carefully restoring. Her crop field is largely empty, especially after enlisting Kent and Vincent’s help to harvest everything but a few heads of cauliflower.

 “I haven’t been by the farm since I was a kid,” Sam tells her, remaining on the other side of the gate. “I used to come by with Mom sometimes.”

 Am I allowed to go on to her property? Sam’s voice drags across her mind, and she watches as he fidgets with the latch on the gate. I don’t wanna overstep. Not when she’s been so friendly all night.

 Safiya tilts her head at him before tilting it back towards the farmhouse. “You’re allowed to be here,” she tells him, and she can only hope she doesn’t look all sharp lines and harsh edges when she pulls her lips into a thin smile. 

 “I don’t wanna intrude,” Sam insists, eyes wide and waving a hand at her. 

 He’s giving her the chance to back out, she realizes, and her smile grows a little wider.

 “You aren’t.”

 Sam beams, the gate creaks as he bumps into it, and he takes his first hesitant steps onto the farm in years. Safiya softens, can feel the hard edges that she knows are her shoulders smooth out into soft, sloping lines.

 “I don’t bite,” she tells him, and there's a smile in her voice that has Sam following after her at a quicker pace. “Neither does Atlas.”

 Sam somehow manages to smile wider, watching as she presses her fingers to her lips and whistles while she takes a seat on her porch. She whistles like a midwestern dad in a grocery store, the sharp noise even louder than he was expecting.

 “Magic,” she explains, as if sensing his question when he takes a seat a few feet away from her. “It’s like a built in cheat code.”

 Sam nods, watching as a ball of black streaks across the property, running straight for the porch. It’s all happy barks, and the closer the form gets the better he can see a tail whipping through the air behind it - a dog, he realizes, upon spotting the floppy ears bouncing as it barrels towards Safiya.

 This must be Atlas, he thinks, watching with a broad smile as the dog bowls into Safiya.

 “This is Atlas,” she confirms for him, pushing the dog's wet nose away from her face when Atlas snuffles at her. “Atlas,” she says to the dog, taking his massive head and turning it in Sam’s direction. “This is Sam. Sam, Atlas.”

 Atlas barks at him, climbs out of Safiya’s lap to begin intensely snuffling at Sam. He licks at Sam’s fingers, presses his nose to Sam’s neck before huffing and laying down between the two, tail still wagging and thumping against the porch.

 “He likes you,” Safiya says, petting a hand over one of Atlas’ big ears. “He loves your dad, too.”

 “Should I tell him that?” Sam asks teasingly.

 She considers it for a second, a faux grimace tugging at her lips as she nods and says, “I think he already knows.”

 Sam chuckles, can’t even help himself as he shifts to be propping himself up on his elbows. Safiya watches him the whole time, and for a fleeting moment he can’t help but notice the way she looks at him like he’s somebody else. Her lips ticking into a soft little smile that he just knows isn’t really for him.

 “Wanna tell me why you were really pissed off at your friend?” Safiya asks after a moment of silence, forcing her gaze off of him and down to Atlas who’s rolled onto his back and begun huffing expectantly.

 Sam obliges the dog, rubbing his hand over a lean belly.

 “Abi’s just…” He mulls it over a moment, carefully weighing the words in his head - a bitch, a brat, not a good friend? His mind supplies immediately. All true, but not things he’s particularly keen on airing out. “She’s difficult sometimes. But she can have her moments.” He settles on instead.

 Safiya smiles and - fuck, she’s pretty when she’s not so tense - looks knowingly up at him. She blinks, long lashes kissing the tops of her cheeks as she turns her head and looks out over the farm.

 “You know,” Safiya sighs, huffing a laugh through her nose. “You should fill your own cup some time.”

 Sam blinks, jaw going slack with shock. She grins again, because apparently her sharpness, her likeness to a blade extends far deeper than the hard lines of her body, goes beyond the way she carries herself. It’s way down in her bones, Sam realizes, because even though her sharp lines have smoothed into soft arching curves, her tongue is its own blade.

 “My cup is full,” Sam lies, and he’s not even sure who’s lying to. “I’ve got it good here. I’ve already got more than my fair share of luck and full-cupness by not getting drafted.”

 She stares, icy grey-blue eyes boring into his hazel green. He decides that the lie was for him.

 “It’s…” She begins, mouth twisting shut as she considers her next words. Once again, she looks at him like he’s someone else. “It’s okay to want things,” she says finally, and her eyes look less like sharp flashes of steel and more like the sky just after rain. “Even the things you think you’re not supposed to.”

 The words hit him harder than they should. Like he’s been thrown off a cliff, and her words the rocky outcropping below. She apologizes, then, but he doesn’t even remember seeing her lips move as she stands, Atlas following after her.

 “Sam,” she calls to him from the half-open door into her house, and he turns sluggishly towards her. She offers him a look that he thinks is meant to be reassuring, and the porch light flickers on. “You’re not Atlas.”

 He doesn’t understand. Doesn’t know what her dog has anything to do with him, because of course he’s not a dog. He knows he’s not a dog.

 But she doesn’t elaborate, and the door clicks solidly shut behind her, the quiet click-slide of the deadbolt following just after it. 

Sam’s glad she turned the light on for him. 

 

Chapter 10

Summary:

progress forgotten, something destroyed

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

Sebastian wakes up - though ‘gets up’ would be more accurate, seeing as he hadn’t really slept that night - at seven the next morning. Fueled not by his need for coffee or thoughts of a project that’s rapidly nearing its due date, but by rage. Rage that had stoked a fire in him so hot he’d been up all night, glaring up at his ceiling, sleep evading him as he picked and bit at his lip so hard it split and bled.

Realistically, he knows he’s maybe being more angry than he should. After all, he’s got plenty of people in his DMs on social media, enough matches on Tinder. He could have just blown off steam and taken his frustrations out on whatever superficial bitches on the internet were waiting for him on his phone.

But no . He’d spent his night swinging between bouts of silent rage that had him boring holes into his ceiling with his eyes or curling up on his side, looking up war statistics that made his stomach twist he didn’t have any interest in naming. Rinse and repeat.

His anger only grows when he stands, his jeans stiff with the mud he’d left caked on him when he tossed himself into bed last night. It flakes off of his jeans, falls out of his bedding, in dry flakes.

It’s enough to force him out the door without brushing his teeth, a change of clothes, or even a cup of coffee. The mountain air is crisp in his lungs this early in the morning. 

Dirt path crunching beneath his shoes, the tongues twisted to the side after having slept in them, dried mud flaking off with every fury fueled step forward, Sebastian makes his way down the mountain path. 

Years ago, back when William Atwood - Safiya’s grandpa, affectionately nicknamed Billy - had still been alive, Sebastian would make the walk down to the farm nearly once a week. The old man had let him cut through his farm to get to Sam’s when he was a kid. Had slipped him crates of produce to take to Jodi on his way to Sam’s. Then he slipped him another on his way home to take to his mother.

He’d stopped when the old farmer’s adult daughter had come to live with him. Turned frail and bitter with some kind of cancer, and Sebastian had feared her. Had been terrified by the hollow gauntness of her cheeks, made even more pronounced by high cheekbones and strong bone structure. 

Like her daughter . He noted absently, pausing at the top of the mountain path above the highway. He could look all the way South to the Gem Sea, and better yet, straight across the sprawling wooded property of Atwood Farms. 

His mother had made the trip down more than once, usually with Caroline or Jodi, armed with various dishes and a book for their weekly book club. He’d let Sam and Abigail come over, and Abigail would laugh meanly about the sickly state of William’s only child. Sam would frown, Sebastian would laugh with her, and his gut would twist with guilt.

He’d peered into the large picture window on the Western side of the house a few times, when William’s daughter became so sick that it was clear her end was coming much sooner rather than later. His mom had gone over everyday, accompanied by the other women of the town, to sit at her bedside, and help William in the few ways they could.

He’d never seen a man look quite so sad as William had in those final days. Had never seen a person so sick, either. William’s daughter must have been beautiful before her health declined, but Sebastian had only ever seen her hooked up to tubes and wires, skin sallow and paper thin.

He’d never even learned her name.

There’s no gate on the North side of the farm, the mountain path had been carved out of the cliffside, and Sebastian figures that that must have been gate enough at the time of construction. He doesn’t really care.

Not when he spies Safiya coming out of one of the old chicken coops, her dog - a massive black thing - following behind her. The dog only sits for a moment, huffing at the back side of her knee before taking off, squeezing beneath the coop’s fence line and running off towards the wooded area on the North-West side of the farm.

Later, Sebastian thinks he must be crazy, to storm over to her, despite knowing she’s jumpy, that she could kill him in an instant. But anger fuels him, he thinks maybe it always has, and he stomps up to her, knuckles rapping a little too harshly against the side of the coop.

Safiya ignores him. Only popping a hip and folding her arms over her chest as she stares at the outside of the coop.

Acknowledge me, dammit! He thinks, glaring daggers as he raps his knuckles against the coop once more.

“Hey,” Sebastian snaps, when she still doesn’t respond. “I need to talk to you.”

Nothing.

Not even a blink in his direction.

What the fuck?! He curses, walking furiously around the small fence line set up around the coop to come in through the gate. Does she not fucking hear me? Can she not see that I need to fucking talk to her?

“Are you ever quiet?” She asks when he enters the small pen intended for chickens she doesn’t own. “You never shut up,” She continues, taking a few steps forward to crouch down and inspect the barely peeling paint of the coop. Then, turning her head just enough to eye him from over her shoulder, “Do you?”

Sam and Abi would argue otherwise , he grumbles, lips pulling into an even deeper scowl when she refocuses her attention on the coop. Sebastian forces himself to suck in a breath, to wave wayward thought away, to tell himself that the likelihood of Safiya killing him is very very low.

“Last night,” He starts, anger bubbling even hotter when she does nothing, only picks a small sliver of wood from the coop’s doorway, “You said I smelled like magic. What the fuck does that-”

“-How much does your mother charge for renovation jobs?” She interrupts, flicking the sliver of wood away. “Do you have any idea?”

What the-? Well, it depends on the job, his mind immediately supplies. Years of working for and helping his mother promote her work and securing jobs for her already at work. That’s not even the fucking point !

She makes some kind of huffing noise, then, and he thinks it might be a laugh, “Right, I know , it depends on the job,” she responds, getting to her feet and finally turning to face him. “But, say, if I needed the flooring redone. What’s the estimate on that?”

Sebastian growls at her. Actually, literally, growls . Teeth bared and all as his anger burns ice cold in his chest. “I don’t fucking know ,” He grits out, and she offers him a tiny upward quirk of her lips.

“I think you do ,” She muses, and if he weren’t so fucking mad he’d think the way she’d smoothed her face into a demure pout was pretty. “In fact, I think, that if you were to give me an estimate right now, it wouldn’t be much different from your mothers.”

I hate her, he thinks viciously. Hates her so much he feels like he’s foaming at the mouth, like she’s tossed gasoline on him and set him on fire with her stupid flaming fingers. And Yoba, his chest burns with it. He’d thought, after that day on the beach, he could learn to tolerate her. 

But no. Instead, he stands only four feet away from her in an empty chicken pen, and the only thing he can think is, I want to snuff her out.

“So,” She continues, and her face shifts into a barely there goading smile. “What’s your estimate?”

“Fuck you,” He spits faster than he even registers the words leaving his mouth. 

“No, thank you.”

Yoba, he’s freezing now, anger blooming so brightly in his chest he can feel it spreading into his hands. 

“You said I smelled like magic last night,” He grinds out, and she nods minutely. “What the fuck was that supposed to mean?”

Safiya gives him a small smile, shrugs a little, and his anger glows a little brighter in his chest. His fingers are freezing, his blood is ice in his veins.

“It means you smelled like magic,” She shrugs, and he hates how casual she is about it. “Just like you do now.”

Sebastian’s not sure who moves first - or at least, that’s what he’ll tell his mom. But he is sure that he positively explodes. He lunges towards her, tackling her backwards and bowling the both of them into the chicken coop - wood splintering and falling down around the both of them. Ice explodes from his hands, arcing towards her when he reels back and moves to pin her hands. 

“Tell me you’re lying!” He roars, when she lets him hold her hands above her head. Ice splinters and moves in sharp fractals around her wrists, spreads across the bare dirt ground of the chicken coop. 

Safiya says nothing, only meets his gaze with a cutting one of her own. Her teeth are bared, glaring daggers at him down the delicate bridge of her nose. Stares him down like he’s an enemy.

He remembers, as flames lick her palms and as her body heats the air around them - the ice over her wrists rapidly melting away as magic meets magic - that she’s trained. That he’s not. That she had survived a war, had survived people doing the exact same thing he’s doing and worse. 

That she could kill him.

“Magic doesn’t lie,” she snarls, leveraging her hips up into the air and tossing him over her head to land facedown in the dirt of the coop. She rolls, scrambling to her feet and straddling his hips to pin his arms behind his back.

He still feels freezing, even as her hands - no longer like molten lava against his skin - hold his hands firmly in place. She leans down over him, and - Yoba he hates her - twists a hand in his hair to force him to stare at the ice spread across the dirt of the coop. To make him see the frost climbing up the walls.

He could throw her off of him. Could just roll over and have her pinned again. She’s smaller than he is, stands several inches shorter, and weighs less too. He only screws his eyes shut instead, groaning sharply when she tugs on his hair again, hisses in his ear, “Open your eyes and look .”

He doesn’t have to. Knows he doesn’t have to. He could very well lie there, face down in the dirt with Safiya sitting on top of him until the ice melted. But he obeys anyway, pries his eyes open to stare at the ice crystals that line the coop. 

Fear warms his chest again, the ice in his veins melting to make way for red-hot terror.

“You’re fine,” Safiya tells him, loosening the grip on his hair to smooth it down as she gets off of him. Somebody whimpers, and Sebastian lies to himself and tells himself it was her. 

“What the fuck?” Sebastian gasps, flopping onto his back as she sits herself at his hip.

Safiya nods, takes her bottom lip into her mouth as she nods along in thought.

“What the fuck ?” He says again, staring at her as she thinks. “Am I - fuck, I hate you - Am I gonna get drafted?”

The cold fury in his veins returns when she openly furrows her brow and laughs incredulously, “What? No.” She huffs, laughing at his expense even as terror washes his face even paler than usual. “Not if you don’t ever register,” she tells him, “Or have someone else register you. Which I don’t care enough to do,” He’s ninety percent sure she only tacked the last bit on for his sake. “And even if I did care, the war’s over now. It literally doesn’t even matter.”

Sebastian nods mindlessly, breathlessly, as the freezing cold in his veins slowly ebbs away.

Next to him, Safiya shifts, drawing her legs up her chest and resting her chin on her knees, whispers, “You’re fine.” 

This is so fucking far removed from fine, he snorts internally, Shooting ice from my Yoba-damned fingers is not normal.

“You’ll get used to it,” She tells him, and he groans.

Sebastian lies there, getting dirtier by the second as the frost beneath him melts and the mud on his jeans is softened by the new mud in the coop. Safiya shifts again next to him, getting to her feet and nudging him with the toe of her boot - the same beaten leather ones from the first time they’d met, he notes absently.

“Get up,” It’s an order he realizes, her boot nudging his side again. A little harder than the first time. He swats blindly at her legs, fingers brushing over shins as he rolls himself onto his back.

He wants to be angry at her, Yoba he is angry at her. Hate burns him from the inside out, the same way terror still grabs him by his throat and holds him still as she crouches down to put her face directly over his. 

Fuck, he’s tired. The cold is still bleeding from his body. Like he’s just done a polar plunge minus the plunge. And Safiya - the fucking bitch , he growls internally - has the nerve to look down her nose at him like he’s the gunk on the bottom of her shoes.

“Come on,” She says, jamming fingers into his ribs. “Get up. You’re filthy.”

He bats her hands away, groaning weakly and rolling pushing himself up onto his elbows. He gives her the nastiest glare he can manage, brows furrowing and lips twisting into a sneer that she returns with force.

“Shut the fuck up,” He snaps at her, and Safiya raises a bored brow at him. 

He sees it now, as she rises to her full height again, stares at him with unfeeling force in her eyes, how she’d been able to survive the war. Sees what he would have had to do if his number had been called during the draft. Or if he’d known about the magic in his veins. 

Because for as much as Sebastian likes to play at being numb, at putting on a show of cool indifference. He’s no match for Safiya. After all, how else could she grab him by his bicep to haul him to his feet and force him to stand around the side of her house to hose him down like a dog?

Or maybe he’s just tired. 

Yeah. He’s just tired. Why else would his bones feel like lead and like his head’s been stuffed full of cotton?

“Magnus will get in touch with you soon, I’m sure,” She tells him, when she turns the water spigot shut, leaving him drenched and feeling like a drowned rat. It takes him far too long for his brain to process the words.

“Who?”

She sighs, turning and pointing at the very top of the wizard’s tower in the distance. Dark blue roof tiles cutting over the tree tops and piercing the sky. 

I didn’t even know he had a name… Sebastian thinks as Safiya begins coiling up the hose to put it back on its wrought iron hanger attached to the siding of the farmhouse. 

He actually hadn’t even known there was really a wizard. Had thought it was just another made up story he’d believed in as a kid when he would play in Cindersap with Sam and Abi. He’d never thought that the whispers in town could be true.

“Hey,” Safiya calls to him, snapping her fingers in his direction to pull her attention back to her. “Unless you’re gonna attack me again, can you leave? I have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the coop you trashed.”

Huh? His mind reels, mentally tripping over himself as he tries to piece the last half-hour of his life back together. Safiya’s annoyed huff and pointed jerk of her chin in the direction of the coop - the structure beginning to cave in on itself over the gaping wound they’d made when he tackled her through the wood. Oh. Shit. The coop. I did that, didn’t I?

“Yeah,” Safiya affirms, her annoyance apparent. Once again, he’s kicking himself for not keeping a better hold on his own thoughts with her. “You did.”

The coop makes an awful groaning noise, and Sebastian spins around just in time to witness it collapsing in on itself with slow little snapping noises. Wood planks splintering apart and sticking up at odd angles as the structure collapses in a sad heap, dust kicking up as it hits the ground. It looks like an open fracture, the faded red paint skin where the raw wood exposed in the collapse is bone.

Safiya makes an equally terrible noise behind him, some small stifled noise that he doesn’t know how to name. He can only stare wide-eyed at the coop, continuing its slow slow slow collapse, his feet frozen in place as she rushes past him.

“No,” He hears her say, and it sounds like the noise has been punched out of her. “No, no. Nonononono. Please , no.”

Her voice shakes, high and brittle, such a small sound coming from someone he’d only ever known to speak in steady cadences. His gut absolutely wrenches when she makes a noise somewhere between a pained whimper and a sob.

He hates her for it.

Hates that she sniffles as she crouches down in front of the remains of the coop. 

“Get out,” She demands, as if suddenly remembering he’s there. There’s no harsh snap to her voice, just something soft and vulnerable. He hates her for that, too.

But he doesn’t argue. Tries his hardest not to look at her or the way her shoulders shake when he skirts around her and leaves her property the same way he came. 

No, he just hates her the whole way home instead.

Notes:

so, fun fact about me: i cannot edit to save my life on my phone. another fun fact about me: i was without my laptop charger (rip me) for roughly a month so i'm sitting on four chapters (that i wrote on my phone - it was hell. let's not ever talk about it) that need to be edited.

Chapter 11

Summary:

alternately titled: safiya can't catch a fucking break

Notes:

A quick word about AI -
I do not support the use of AI, nor do I condone or consent to any of my works being scraped to train AI. This work is first and foremost
a free fanwork, and should be appreciated as intended. Which is to say by real live humans in fandom spaces - not by AI.
Humans, enjoy!

The sudden eruption of noise had Sam up and on his feet faster than he thought possible. 

His father’s voice in tandem with a loud, slamming sound and the subsequent clinking of metal and glass. A fist slamming down on the countertop — a force hard enough to rattle the dishes still drying in the rack beside the sink.

He didn’t know what was going on. The last thing he heard from his parents suggested that they were planning to watch a movie. How they’d gone from debating what film to the turn on straight into full-volume shouting… he didn’t want to know. 

One step into the hallway, and he was hit with the smell of popcorn. 

So why was Dad screaming?  

The opening credits of a movie were still playing on the TV, and his mother was popping popcorn. They should’ve been having a nice time. A cozy night in — the closest thing to a date night his father could manage since coming home from the war. Sam was even watching Vincent, keeping him busy in his room, giving his parents space — time without their youngest son barging into the room demanding attention, interrupting their conversations. 

They shouldn’t be fighting. 

He’d only taken one look into the kitchen, and he was sure the view would haunt him for years to come. Kent, who stood just as tall as Sam, looming over Jodi as he bellowed into his wife’s terror-stricken face. 

Sam didn’t recognize the monster inhabiting his father’s body. It couldn’t be Kent. His father wouldn’t treat his mother this way — he was sure of it. 

He truly looked like a monster standing under the soft incandescent lights in the kitchen, yelling so hard his face had flushed red, shadows drawing harsh lines across his face.

Sam didn’t even think about it as he stepped  over the threshold and into the kitchen — but maybe he should have. He stepped between his mother and father, to create some space and break this fight up before Vincent could decide to wander out of his room in search of the source of the racket. But the moment his body moved in to shield his mother’s, Kent’s rage redirected onto him. 

“Dad. You need to stop,” Sam had started, voice soft and placating. The same voice he’d been using with his mom for the last eight and a half years. “You’re gonna freak Vin-”

It happened so fast he’s not even sure it happened at all. One second he’d been looking at his dad, hands gingerly reaching for the older man’s shoulders – gently trying to calm him down. The next, he was looking at the half-open blinds on the kitchen window as heat and pain bloomed in his jaw.

Sam thinks he hears his mother’s voice, but he can’t understand what she’s saying over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears or the deafening volume of his father’s voice. Kent’s still yelling — as if the blow to his son’s jaw hadn’t made his rage crystal-fucking-clear. 

Fuck, it hurts. It throbs in time with the hammering of his heart against his ribs. 

Kent still isn’t done.

He reaches for him, still hellbent on making Sam pay for coming between them. How dare he protect his mother — his innocent, defenseless mother? How dare he do exactly what his father demanded of him before he shipped out for the war? 

Protect his mother. 

Take care of his family. 

Be the man of the house. 

Maybe his father should have made it clear that responsibility didn’t include protecting them from the shell of a man that returned home from the war. Maybe then Sam wouldn’t have gotten between them. Maybe Sam wouldn’t be stuck halfway between feeling like a father figure and a brother to the little boy in the other room. 

He needs to get Vincent out of here. 

That’s all he can think as he backs out of the kitchen, a hand pressed to his jaw — it feels so hot. Is it supposed to be hot? 

He’s not even sure how he manages to turn the knob on Vincent’s door with the way his hands tremble, or how he’s able to wrangle his little brother into the closest clean shirt he could grab before forcing the both of them out of the door — bare feet stuffed into untied sneakers because there isn’t time for socks or laces when Vincent’s close enough to hear the crashing sounds coming from the kitchen. 

“Sammy, where are we going?” Vincent’s little voice trembles as Sam pulls him along behind him.

Yoba. Sam doesn’t even know. Hadn’t even thought about it. Couldn’t think about it over the pain in his jaw, or the raw terror of being struck by Kent - did his dad even hit him? What happened?  

He doesn’t know. 

He just knows he’d forced the two of them from the house, had taken his brother’s hand and started marching them toward Cindersap Forest.

“You’re gonna play with Jas for a while.”

It feels like the bones in his face are crunching as he speaks. 

He’s certain his father punched him, now. He’s scared to roll his tongue over his molars, afraid the teeth will be loose or even missing. 

Vincent says nothing. Just follows Sam to Marnie’s ranch, runs off to Jas’ room the moment they step inside the cramped ranch house, completely bypassing Marnie who gasps with surprise from behind her shop counter when they come in.

“Please watch him,” Sam blurts before Marnie can even say anything. He has to press a hand to his jaw again as he speaks because it feels like his jaw isn’t where it’s meant to be, like if he doesn’t hold it in place, it’ll never be right again. One of his bottom molars grates against his top row of teeth as he speaks and the taste of iron floods his mouth. He’s going to be sick. 

His vision blurs. Why is everything blurry? What the fuck is even happening? It gets worse each time he tries to blink his eyes back into focus. Yoba, what the fuck is wrong with me?

“Sam, hon, are you alright?” Marnie gasps, her hand flinging up to cover her own mouth. “You’re bleeding, Sam—“

Sam shakes his head and the movement makes the world feel as if it’s tilted on its axis. His hand cups his jaw but it hurts too bad to speak. He can’t explain himself to Marnie, even if he did know what’s going on. 

All he can manage is a broken plea. “Please keep him here. Don’t let him go home.”

He’s out the front door before Marnie can even respond.

He doesn’t even know what he’s doing. He’s on autopilot, not a single thought in his mind now that Vincent’s safe. There’s nothing left to think about. Nothing else matters. He acts on instinct, bolting away from Marnie’s ranch in a dead sprint, heading toward the southern gate of Safiya’s property. His hand presses against the underside of his jaw to ease the stabbing pain that rattles his bones with each long stride. 

He fumbles with the gate, blurry vision and shaky hands making the simple latch near impossible. He manages to get it to cooperate with his trembling fingers after a couple attempts. He leaves it hanging wide open as he runs towards the farmhouse.

Atlas barks as Sam approaches, running out ahead of him to come between his owner and the sudden intruder that’s heading straight for her. 

Safiya is on the ground, kneeling in front of her coop. Or, what’s left of her coop. He wonders what happened to Old Man Atwood’s old chicken coop as he comes to a stop next to her. He hunches over with his hands on his knees, and he nearly gags when he sees a tooth fall from his mouth along with a steady stream of blood and spit as he gasps for air.

“Sam?!” Saifya scrambles to her feet. She looks like she's been crying. Her eyes are red-rimmed and nose tinged the palest of pinks. A fresh wave of concern floods her face - pinches her brows together and pulls the corners of her lips down. 

He doesn’t know how to feel about that.

He shakes his head, hand still pressed to his aching jaw, waves a hand at her. Don’t worry , he wants to tell her.

“Sam?” She tries again, and he’s shocked when she reaches for him, grabs him by the shoulders and examines him. “Sam, what happened? Tell me what happened.”

He nods, then immediately pauses and shakes his head. The crease in her brow deepens. He watches as a muscle in her jaw feathers, can see her visibly trying to keep herself softer for his sake. 

One of her hands moves from his shoulder, thin fingers reaching towards his face and wiping away the wetness on his cheek.

“Shit,” Sam finally manages, grunting in pain at the way his jaw moves. “Am I crying?”

Safiya nods, eyes flicking between the bright red mark blooming over his jaw and the tears on his cheeks. “Sam,” his name leaves her lips in a way he’s never heard anyone else say it. “What happened?”

He croaks something unintelligible out, points in the direction he came. “Dad,” he tells her, putting everything he has into making the single syllable as clear as possible. 

Has to make sure the most important piece of the story is understood: his dad did this. 

She nods once, and takes off in the direction Sam came from. Leaves him frozen in confusion, stunned by her lack of verbal response. She’s just leaving him here. But he came here because he wants to be with her. So he finally starts moving, stumbling after her, still cupping his jaw in his hand. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to take his hand away from it — if it’ll ever feel like the bones are where they’re supposed to be again. 

He wonders what he’s going to do about his missing molar. He lost a tooth, saw it fall into a pool of blood in the dirt inches away from Safiya’s foot.

Safiya is faster than Sam has any hope of being, his long legs working against him when he can’t seem to get his own limbs to do what he needs them to. He thinks she’s faster than him regardless, though. She’d spent the better part of her life running towards things Sam couldn’t even comprehend.

The nice thing, he supposes, is that she’s steady. That she slows and doubles back to make sure he’s still following her, looking up at him with a look he can’t place. Concern and worry he recognizes, but there’s something else that lingers in the crease of her brow and the purse of her lips. 

“Have Marnie take you to the clinic,” she tells him when the ranch house comes into view. She’d doubled back for him again, as if she was afraid he’d keel over and die if she left him unattended for too long.

But her concern is fleeting and the pain in his jaw is dizzying, and there’s not enough time for him to pick apart the tiny imperceptible movements of her face. Not enough time before she leaves him behind again.

He wants to follow after her, to make sure his dad won’t hit her like he’d hit him. But she’s gone before he can even find the words to protest, and Marnie’s already outside ushering him into her house with a hand on his back.

Yoba, his jaw hurts.

The door of 1 Willow Lane slams open, swinging wide and bouncing off the wall with enough force to rattle the window panes. There’s arguing in the kitchen, quiet simpering yells of defense drowned out by harsh bellows.

 

Sorry about your floors, Jodi . Safiya apologizes, shutting the door behind her and making her way towards the kitchen. Vincent’s bedroom door is still open and Safiya can catch a glimpse of clothes strewn haphazardly on the floor. Toys left on the floor. 

 

Sam’s door is open, too, and as she passes by the tinny sound of a handheld console catches her ear. Theme music playing and fizzling out as death snatches the pixelated character over and over and over again. Left to die on top of Sam’s bedspread in their rush to get out of the house.

 

She rounds into the kitchen, and she can’t help but wonder if this is the same scene Sam had walked into before he’d taken his little brother and fled. Jodi, cowering but still trying to be brave, her cheeks mottled red with tears, her wrists turned red with the force of Kent’s grip.

 

There’s glass on the floor, broken pieces of porcelain littered amongst the clear shards that have been scattered across the floor. Jodi’s feet are bleeding, Kent’s white socks are slowly turning pink.

 

Kent is a monster she knows all too well. A towering, glowering thing, eyes wild and defensive. An animal, backed into its cage with nowhere to run. She knows the sharp lines on his face, has seen them a hundred times before. Has had to sit behind plenty of soldiers, lock her legs around their waists and loop her arms under their armpits and her hands around the backs of their necks. 

 

Has had other people hold her the same way.

 

But Jodi hasn’t. Doesn’t know the beast that’s in her kitchen. Doesn’t know the monster that’s taken her husband by neck and squeezed . Jodi doesn’t know, and Kent is so far gone that he can’t tell her.

 

“Kent!” Safiya shouts, glass crunching beneath her boots as she wedges herself between the two, faces Kent’s fury head-on. Meets his seething expression with a glower of her own. “Enough,” she spits up at him as she shoves Jodi further out of the way.

 

Kent snarls at her, lips pulled back to bare his teeth. His fist whips back, reels so quick Safiya can’t process it and her need to keep her own head on straight. He clocks her cheek, just below her eye, and pain blooms ice cold then lava hot. 

 

Safiya’s on fire now. All the way down to her soul, she’s burning. Burns so hotly, so brightly, that she knows that when the fire’s finally died there will be nothing left. Only a charred husk will remain.

 

She reels back, head turning with the force of the blow. But her hands are reaching for him just as quickly as he’d moved to punch her, and pain blooms in a familiar ache in her knuckles when her fist connects with his jaw. Hits him in the same place he’d hit Sam. Hits him just as hard, finds herself glad when he spits a tooth from his mouth and lunges at her.

 

“Fuck you ,” She snarls on instinct, lets Kent hit her again, a fist to her ribs with so much force she swears she hears them crack and her breath is gone in an instant. He follows the blow with a kick to her knee, and it takes everything she has to stay standing. Takes even more to keep her hands from bursting into flame. 

He only hits her again, this time in the jaw, nails her in the same place he’d nailed Sam and she’d nailed him.

 

“Freeman,” she barks at him, reaching blindly for whatever she can get her hands on when he tackles her to the ground. She must be the heat of the sun, because Kent grunts in pain when her fingers scrape across the skin of his neck. “Stand down. Now.”

 

She doesn’t even know if he hears her, can swear he doesn’t when his hands wrap around her throat and squeeze . 

 

She’s definitely on fire now. Burning as bright as the sun as black spots her vision. Burns so hotly in her chest she’s not even sure she can survive it as she holds Kent’s gaze, takes in the blood smeared across his lip and the swelling in his jaw. 

 

Safiya explodes. Right there on the kitchen floor with Jodi screaming at Kent to stop, she comes apart at the seams. Sebastian’s explosion of ice in the coop is nothing compared to this. 

 

He’s a cheap firecracker next to her. If he was a grenade then she’s a fucking nuke.

 

Her right fist makes one sharp arc through the air, blazing a white-hot trail through the air, and connects with more force than she’s meant with Kent’s side. She swings again, her left hand moving to grab a fistful of Kent’s shirt to hold him still as she swings again and again and again . 

 

He lets her go, pushes away from her like he’s been burned - and he has , his shirt singed and scorching where her hands have touched. She follows after him, refuses to let him go until she’s got her forearm locked tight around his throat and forces herself to breathe. He turns, trying to shake her off of him, and only manages to shove her back into the oven. 

 

Glass shatters, rains down over her head and digs into her skin when he shoves her further back into the oven door with a grunt. She takes it anyway. Lets him thrash in her tight headlock she has on him until he begins to still and his pulse lulls under her forearm.

 

She forces herself to take a breath. Hold it for one, two, three seconds. Let it go. Press her forehead into the wide expanse of Kent’s back and take shuddering breaths while he squashes her between him and the oven door. Forces herself to breathe through the sharp stabbing pain in her ribs.

 

She forces him still as she lets his head go, mutters her thanks when he doesn’t immediately reel his head back to smash his skull into her nose. Squeezes him tighter when she forces him into the hold they both knew all too well. 

 

Forces him to breathe, too. Counts beneath wheezing breaths the way they’d been taught in basic training. Taps her fingers to the back of his neck when her voice fails her, throat aching and rasping from where he’d throttled her.

 

“‘M sorry,” Kent slurs after several long moments, and Safiya refuses to let him move even when he tries to shift away. “I didn’ mean t’... ‘M okay now.”

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Safiya snarls at him between wheezing breaths, fails to hide the way her voice shakes and shudders. Her tight grip on him relaxes. Her arms looped under his armpits and back around to the back of his neck falling until the backs of her knuckles scrape against the tile floor. “Get a hold of yourself.”

 

Faintly, she registers the sound of the front door opening and shutting, quiet voices in the living room, glass crunching underfoot as someone enters the kitchen.

 

“I didn’ mean to,” Kent tells her, shifting off of her to let the new person examine her. “I jus’... lost it.”

 

“Your son is missing a tooth because of you,” she hisses, her ribs burning when she leans towards him to glower at him. 

 

“These things can happen with PTSD,” another voice chimes, and brown loafers come to a stop where Safiya’s feet are spread on the floor. Pressed dark brown slacks too, then glasses, a mustache, a carefully neutral face fill her vision. “I’m Harvey, the town’s physician. Is it alright if I take a look at you?”

 

He speaks in the same even cadence as the field medics, she notes absently. 

 

“Caroline said you served?” Safiya asks, another set of footsteps rushing through the living room and into the kitchen. A girl, this time, maybe only a few years younger than Safiya, carefully pressed shoulder length hair, dark skin, and a voice just as even as Harvey’s.

 

“I did,” Harvey confirms, nodding in the direction of his partner as she begins checking over Kent’s injuries. Safiya grimaces when the girl prods gently at the angry red skin through the singed holes of Kent’s shirt. “This is Maru, she’s more than capable of managing any medical care either of you may need.”

 

Safiya doesn’t even give a shit if the girl’s qualified or not. Some of the best medics she knew in Gottorro had no education other than what they’d learned since being forced into a med tent and made to learn or let their comrades die.

 

“I’m a mage,” she tells him, and it’s really all he needs to know if he had served as a medic.

 

“I know.” He nods, smiling kindly at her.

 

“Okay,” she sighs, head tipping back to rest on the glass of the oven door behind her. His hands are frigid on her skin, but whether that’s from her skin still being too hot or from him having the trademark ice cold hands of a medic she’s not sure. “Good.”

 

His fingers prod gently at the bright red handprints wrapped around the column of her throat, apologizing when she winces and hisses. Apologizes some more when she curses and gasps for air when he presses the pads of his fingers carefully against her ribs. Apologizes again when he tells her that he needs to take her to the clinic for an x-ray.

 

Kent mumbles another apology when the two of them are hauled to their feet. Maru looping an arm around Safiya’s waist when Kent proves to be too heavy and too unsteady on his for her to manage without being crushed.

 

“Thanks,” Safiya rasps to the girl, tripping over her own feet when Maru slowly walks her over the kitchen threshold.

 

“No need,” Maru assures, offering Safiya a smile and holding a little firmer to help her right herself. 

 

But there is a need, Safiya can’t help but think, because Maru doesn’t need to help Safiya walk, but she does anyway. She doesn’t need to help Safiya out of her clothes and into a hospital gown when they get to the clinic. 

 

There’s no real need for Maru to be so kind, and Safiya tells her as much.

 

“Sure there is,” Maru had responded breezily once she’d gotten Safiya settled as comfortably as possible in one of the clinic beds. 

 

And maybe the kindness - the careful softness - is necessary. If only to keep Safiya docile for as long as she was in the clinic, but Safiya can’t find it in her to complain about it. Not when the fire in her has dwindled down to nothing but some barely warm charcoal and the lingering scent of smoke in the air.

Notes:

also the hugest of thanks to heyjae (go read ballad in the blood spill if you haven't already) for helping me and inspiring the fuck outta me. this chapter straight up wouldn’t exist without her. receipts below lmao
me: ayo? killing myself??
jae: stopppp lmao
Jae: wait I’ve read almost all of this
Me: too late, i’m already deceased. Like bennett lmao.

Chapter 12

Summary:

Magnus’ looping and curving script had once been something she’d coveted as a little girl. She’d rush to her mom’s side whenever he sent a letter to them in their Zuzu city apartment in the years after they’d moved out of the valley. She’d once spent hours of her time copying his penmanship, hoping to someday be able to write as elegantly as he did.

She’d learned, and then the skill had proven useless when she’d been drafted. The looping curves and arching lines were entirely unnecessary for her station. For any military station.

Now, Magnus’ elegant penmanship mocks her.

Three ribs. One cracked, two broken. All on the right side. Several dozen apologies, one cheese and broccoli bake, and two days later. Harvey lets Safiya go home.

Sam offers to walk Safiya home, Jodi insists she let him, Safiya slips out of the clinic door when no one’s looking. She can’t stand to look at Sam for too long, not when his jaw is still bruised black and blue and his dad’s recovering in the room next to hers. She can’t stand the way Kent refuses to look her in the eye even after she’s accepted his apology. 

So, she lies, when Sam offers to walk her home after he’s done visiting his dad - who blatantly refuses to look at him, guilt eating him from the inside out and leaving him hollow. Tells Sam that she needs to use the bathroom, that she’ll be back in a minute and they’ll walk back to her place.

It only takes her three minutes. Maru gives her a worried stare at the front desk but fills the prescription Harvey had written for her anyway. She doesn’t argue when Safiya signs herself out of their care.

“Um, just send the bill to me,” Safiya tells her, pen scratching across paper as she signs her name on the last line on the final page. She pushes the paperwork back over the counter towards Maru. “I left my wallet at home. I’m sorry.”

There’d been no time to grab it, and while she might trust Marnie enough to feed Atlas, she certainly doesn’t trust her to go into her home to find her wallet.

“There is no bill,” Maru tells her, offering her a kind smile as she takes the paperwork, and flicks through it to check Safiya’s signature. “Harvey took care of it for you,” she explains, filing away the paperwork. “Things could have been a lot worse if you hadn’t done what you did. Consider it a thank you from Harvey and I.”

Safiya stares dumbly for a moment, words escaping her before she manages to mumble, “Oh. Well, thank you.”

Maru nods, and Safiya slips out the front door just as Jodi calls her name from behind the clinic doors.

The walk home is quiet, and her body aches in ways that are so familiar in the worst ways. Harvey's a good doctor, but he’s not magic. He can’t patch the hundreds of little scratches on her body from where glass had pierced her skin, and he can’t do anything for her ribs beyond sending her home hopped up on pain meds and strict instructions to rest.

But that’s all Safiya’s done for the last two days.

Rest.

She’d sat propped up in a clinic bed, talking with Sam when his pain meds had kicked in and he could talk without his jaw feeling like it was in agony. Eating the bland food Maru or Harvey brought to her bedside - sugar-free applesauce, tasteless jello, and stale carbs. 

She’d had enough rest, thanks. 

If her throat still ached - the bruising faded to mottled yellows and blues - or her ribs had her gasping and gritting her teeth in pain if she moved too fast. That was her problem, and rest wasn’t going to make her feel any better about it. 

She has other things to take care of. A collapsed coop to examine, a dog to feed, fields to till, feelings to pack up and bury deep deep deep down to unearth at a later date. And if she’s unlucky enough, a trip to Magnus’ tower - or even worse, a visit from Magnus. 

She’d be happy to go home and ache, let her lungs and throat burn with every breath, if it meant she didn’t have to sit in the clinic and be on the receiving end of the half-sad half-thankful half-pitying looks. She couldn’t do any more apologies, not from Sam with his jaw still black and blue and hopped up on pain meds. Or from Jodi, who was still taking tender steps. 

For fuck’s sake, she could barely look at Kent any more than he could look at her. Can’t stand seeing the monster they share laid bare for the both of them to stare at. 

No, some wounds don’t heal, she’d decided on the walk home - gravel crunching beneath her feet. Some wounds fester and bleed and never heal. They grow black and yellow with infection and they spread until there’s nothing left to fix. 

Until no amount of healing or medicine can mend what’s broken. 

She couldn’t stand to look at Kent. Couldn’t bring herself to look at the bruises that had bloomed across his jaw from where she’d hit him. Or to look at the blistering burn marks she’d left on his skin - Yoba, his whole torso was all bandages after what she’d done to him.

She knows she shouldn’t feel bad. Should be happy that everyone walked out of Kent’s breakdown alive. That she should enjoy the feel of the sun on her skin, and the birds chirping in the trees. 

But there’s no joy in knowing tragedy, no matter its depth.

So, for now, she’ll lick her wounds at home - in peace. She’ll let the bitter, aching parts of her fester in isolation. And tonight, she’ll curl up on the bathroom floor with Atlas and let him carry the brunt of it for her. 

“Fuck!” 

The curse rings through the air just as Safiya begins unlatching the farm gate. The distinct noise of metal grating against metal she’d come to find solace in is gone as she pushes it open. 

She doesn’t even have it in her to care. Doesn’t have the energy to spare to worry about dropping down in the dirt and gravel. Can’t bring herself to listen to the barking orders of the colonel that lives in her head - she wants it gone.  

If she dies just past the threshold of the gate to her farm, she dies there. At least she’ll have the solace of knowing the Earth can swallow her whole, and maybe her body will make for a nice bed of flowers. Or a particularly nice patch of grass. That’d be nice.

But no. She doesn’t die just two steps from the farm gate. Of course not. No, she just continues her trudge towards the farmhouse, ready to change out of the plain white shirt and scratchy grey pants she’d been discharged from the clinic with. 

The cursing returns in force as she approaches the farmhouse, followed by the rapid thwacking of a hammer on wood and Atlas barking at the source of the noise.

She doesn’t want to ask. Doesn’t want to know. She could just… keep on walking. The porch steps are right there, only three more steps and she’s there. She doesn’t need to know. She can go inside, and curl up on the floor - no one will even know but her. 

“Fucking—!” The cursing returns, and Safiya forces herself to take a breath, forces herself to not look at anything that’s not the door. “Stupid— motherfucking— piece of shit! Fuck you, you piece of shit! Agh!”

The door is right there! She screams at herself, curses herself to hell and back when her feet refuse to move. Just- take the six steps it takes to get to the door!

It would be so easy, to just keep walking, so much simpler if she ignored the buzzing in her ear that told her to turn towards the noise. It would be so much simpler if she were just Safiya. 

“Fuck me,” she growls beneath her breath, giving in to the demands of the colonel and stepping away from the porch steps. She curses herself the entirety of the short walk to the coop, loathes the way her body aches with each step - a punishment of its very own.

She doesn’t know what to expect, honestly. Doesn’t expect anyone to be cursing at the top of their lungs and kicking planks of frost-dusted wood. She expects Atlas, of course, her quiet watchdog who approaches her with a tail wagging so fast it audibly whips through the air, pressing his nose to her hip and snuffling happily.

She doesn’t expect Sebastian to be at the center of it all. His white t-shirt soaked through with sweat - and melted frost if the quiet crackling of his hands is any indication. Doesn’t expect him to have carefully taken apart her coop, and salvaged the few pieces they hadn’t destroyed when he’d tackled her through the wood paneling. Doesn’t expect him to have a whole pile of fresh lumber sitting to the side as he finishes his demolition.

But he’s there, fixing the problem he’d created even as frost builds on everything he touches.

“What are you doing?” Safiya asks, watching as the hammer fumbles from his fingers clattering loudly against the wood planks laid out in front of him. Fighting the gentle uptick of her lips when he actually jumps, feet leaving the ground as he whips towards her.

She stares expectantly at him, her brow raising as he drags his eyes over her. He licks his lips, silence settling over them, and she can see his brain working as he decides on what to say.

She almost hopes he'll just answer her question - ignore the state she's in and tell her why he's working on her coop.

“What the hell happened to you?” He demands instead, eyes narrowing as he scrutinizes her, his lips pulling into a scowl that Safiya returns with an unamused press of her lips into a firm line and a raised brow.

“I got into a fight with Kent,” She answers, waving a hand at him in a silent prompt for him to answer her question now. She knows she should explain, should tell him that Sam had shown up just after he'd left, bleeding and begging for help.

She can't find the energy to.

He doesn’t answer. His brows snapping together as fury quickly rises to color his cheeks. 

Of course, you fucking would. Can’t have a family of your own so you had to go wreck someone else’s, didn’t you?

She can feel his mind drag across hers, and this time, the slew of words he thrusts at her can’t be anything but intentional. With his lips curled into a sneer and anger flashing in his eyes as he packed up his toolbag, and he didn’t need to be hurling insults against her mind for her to know exactly what he was thinking.

I knew I was right to fucking hate you.

“It wasn’t like that,” Safiya tries, voice almost pleading as she takes a halting step towards him. 

“Oh,” he snarls, flinging a hand in her direction that leaves her covered in a thick dusting of frost. “Like I’d believe you.” He spits the words at her, and Safiya can’t help but wonder if she’ll be making a swift return to the clinic. 

She wants him to, though. Wants him to believe her. Hopes that he sees her as more than the monster she knows she is.

But his wrath strikes something in her, shakes the colonel in her awake with freezing hands. The colonel reacts with white-hot fury.

“I don’t have to fucking explain myself to you,” she hurls back, letting her skin warm just enough to melt the frost off of her. “I owe you nothing.”

His sneer only grows, and he meets her single halting step with three long strides that have him coming to a stop directly in front of her. He’s so close the toe of his beaten work boots touch the toe of Safiya’s worn leather ones.

“I beg to fucking differ,” he leers, leaning down so his face is in hers. "I think you owe me fucking big time."

She only leans in, so close his breath fans across her face as he speaks, and she’s sure the favor will be returned as she utters, “Get out. Now.” She doesn’t even point, doesn’t care what gate he came through to get onto her property. Only cares that he leaves. Now. 

“Gladly,” He snarls so much force behind the one word that spittle flecks across her face. 

She watches, fingers curling beneath the leather of Atlas’ collar - the dog pressed firmly to the side of her leg - as Sebastian packs up the last of his tools and tosses the bag over his shoulder. 

She turns as Sebastian does, the two of them on diverging paths as they begin their walks home.

Once inside, the door firmly locked and dead-bolted shut with the curtains drawn shut in the windows, Safiya curls up on the bathroom floor and pretends that her eyes don’t water when Atlas settles his head on her hip. Pretends her ribs don’t ache and her throat doesn’t burn as she forces herself to swallow down her tears. 

Pretends she isn’t exhausted.

---

Two days later, Safiya wakes up to a letter on her bedside table. The deep purple stationary and shimmering gold ink reek of magic, and she doesn’t need to look at the sender's information written in looping penmanship on the envelope to know exactly who’d sent it. 

Magnus’ looping and curving script had once been something she’d coveted as a little girl. She’d rush to her mom’s side whenever he sent a letter to them in their Zuzu city apartment in the years after they’d moved out of the valley. She’d once spent hours of her time copying his penmanship, hoping to someday be able to write as elegantly as he did.

She’d learned, and then the skill had proven useless when she’d been drafted. The looping curves and arching lines were entirely unnecessary for her station. For any military station. 

Now, Magnus’ elegant penmanship mocks her. Makes the bitter piece of her rise and swell in her chest to whisper in her ear that she deserved more - that she could have been so much more.

The bitter, acidic piece of her isn’t enough to keep her from grabbing the letter from her nightstand, rolling over onto her side, and tearing open the thick pewter blue wax seal. She wishes it was, though. Wishes she didn’t feel obligated to listen to what he had to say to her, wishes he didn’t care about her so much.

Safiya, my dear girl,

It has come to my attention that you’ve gotten yourself into all varieties of trouble recently.

That’s good. I’m glad you’re doing as I had asked when you arrived in Winter, even if you do happen to hit a few obstructions in your stride.

I am also aware that there have been changes to the magical presences in the Valley, and that you are in need of medical attention beyond that of which the good doctor in town has given you.

As such, to spare you from more pain than necessary, I will be paying you a visit later this morning.

Sincerely,

Magnus Rasmodious

She would have preferred taking the walk through Cindersap than having him come to her. At least out in his tower, she had somewhere to run if he pressed too hard. She had the excuse of a farm that needed to be maintained if she went to his tower. She could hide behind the ache in her ribs, or the bruises adorning her throat.

But in her own home, there was nowhere to run and hide. No place was safe from Magnus’ prying eyes. Or his prying mind. 

But there was no choice, no way to turn him away. Not when he blinked into existence in her living room just as she’s sitting down with her lunch - a reheated piece of the broccoli and cheese bake Jodi had gifted her in the clinic - and filled the room with the scent of patchouli and left her nose stinging with magic. 

Safiya lurches, and hisses when her ribs jostle uncomfortably, her lunch tumbling to the floor in a wet splat. Melted cheese and chunks of broccoli flecking across the wooden floorboards and landing on her feet.

“The door is right there!” Safiya hisses, grunting in pain as she leans back into the couch, a hand pressed to her ribs. “Can’t you owe me the common courtesy of knocking, Magnus?”

He waves a hand and the mess of her lunch is gone. Floor cleaned and dishes being washed in the sink by an invisible force and filling her nose with the sting of magic. The only evidence it had even happened is the cheese speckled across her feet and ankles.

His eyes meet hers with an intensity that’s hard to withstand, vibrant purple clashing against her icy blue. Then, before she can even speak he’s kneeling in front of her, wiping away the food remnants from her feet with the edge of his robes. 

“No,” he finally says, standing back up to look down at her as he observes her injuries. Concern and sorrow fill his eyes so quickly she has to screw her eyes shut and pretend he isn’t there. Has to pretend that he doesn’t look at her the same way she knows he’d looked at her mother. “Not for this. Courtesy can be foregone in these circumstances, don’t you agree?”

She doesn’t, but there’s no point in voicing it.

“Magnus,” Safiya says, a hand held palm out in the most placating effort she can manage. “I’m fine.”

His eyes fall to her neck, and she ducks her head in a poor effort to hide the necklace of blacks, blues, purples, and yellows. She looks awful, she knows.

“You do not look fine,” Magnus shoots back, eyeing her apprehensively.

“Well, I am.”

Magnus sighs, shoulders slumping forward but he lets it go. Safiya offers him a thin-lipped smile of thanks, and he returns it with a fond crinkle of his eyes.

“Just like your mother,” he sighs with a shake of his head, taking a seat atop her coffee table. 

“Always so self-sufficient, the two of you.”

She really doesn’t want to talk about this. Not right now. She doesn’t have it in her to think about her mother in the same house she’d died in. Can’t even bring herself to venture up into the attic to go through the maze of boxes - all filled to the brim with her mother’s things.

“Magnus, please.” She pleads, and Magnus lets that go too.

The room fills with awkward silence, and Safiya wants to rip her hair out when Magnus begins to bounce his leg. The heel of his boot tap-tap-tap-tapping an incessant rhythm against the hardwood floors. 

She watches as his mustache and goatee twitch, his mouth opening and closing as he weighs his next words. His fingers lace and unlace and she wonders if he wishes that they’d had this conversation in his tower instead of her home, too.

“Say it,” Safiya demands when he opens his mouth again before shutting it with a sharp click.

He looks over her head, through the window behind her to her empty crop fields and the orchard in the distance. He hesitates, and if the roles were reversed, she knows he would already be trying to pry into her mind. She gives him the courtesy of not doing that.

“Your dog,” he finally spits and she raises a disbelieving brow at him.

“Atlas,” she informs flatly.

“He has bonded quite well to you.”

Safiya blinks. She’d certainly hope so, she only feeds him several times a day and lets him sleep in bed with her instead of on the floor. “...Okay?”

Magnus only clicks his tongue and nods once, silence quickly filling the room again. Safiya decides to do the hard work for him.

“You want to talk about Sebastian, don’t you?” She asks, watching his hands wring together as he takes a furtive glance over his shoulder towards the mountain.

He nods once, his tall hat bobbing with the motion, and sighs with relief.

“He came into his abilities rather suddenly,” Magnus states, as if Safiya wasn’t already painfully aware. Her coop was evidence enough of that fact. “He’ll need a teacher,” he continues, looking pointedly at Safiya.

“No.”

“Child, he needs a teacher,” Magnus continues sternly. “The danger he poses— an untrained mage running around could have disastrous consequences—”

Safiya rolls her eyes, sitting upright to meet Magnus’ shocking purple gaze. “Okay,” she huffs, lackadaisically waving a hand through the air, letting the tiniest sparks of magic flow through her fingers. Hazy wisps of blue floating in the air where her fingers pass, “So you teach him, then. You’re more experienced than I am.”

“Child,” Magnus chides, his hands tightly lacing together in his lap. She watches as his lips twitch and his knuckles go white as he mulls over his next words, “Whatever feelings you may have for this boy-”

“- the very strong ones of dislike? What about them?”

“- It is your responsibility,” Magnus pushes on, glaring pointedly at her. “And… it would be good for you to perhaps form a bond with the boy.”

“No,” Safiya says, voice going sharp as she crosses her arms over her chest. “As far as I’m concerned he's not my problem, Magnus. If you’re so concerned, you can teach him yourself.”

“I do not see what the issue is—”

“The issue is that he hates me,” she argues. Jabbing a finger at Magnus’ chest she continues, “And I-”

“Enough!” Magnus barks, cutting through the complaint lying on her tongue before she can even speak it. His hand smacking her finger away from his chest. “You will help this boy, child. You will speak to him.”

Safiya scowls, rage twisting hotly in her throat. She clamps down hard on the urge to scream. To shout at Magnus until her voice is gone. To tell him that she'd tried and it had bit her in the ass.

“No,” She rebukes firmly, clenching her fist so tight her nails draw blood from her palm as she clings desperately to her ability to keep her voice steady. “I won’t. He-“ She gestures with a sharp jerk of her chin towards the mountain in the North. “Isn’t my fucking problem.”

“You are being petulant,” He shoots back immediately, and Safiya’s not sure if the tightness in her throat is anger or imminent tears. “You understand the gravity of this situation. You, of all people, understand how important it is to maintain control. I had thought you were better than this.”

It’s like he’s spat acid in her face. And all at once, Safiya is sixteen again, her commanding officer screaming in her face. Spittle flecking over her cheek, her upper lip, and her chin. 

She’s fourteen, being dragged away from her mom, tears streaming down her face kicking and screaming, and loaded onto a military bus.

“Well, I’m not,” Safiya yells, control lost and consumed by everything she isn’t. “I’m not better than this! This is as good as it fucking gets, Magnus.” 

She spits his name like an insult. He reels like he’s been slapped. Her lungs are on fire.

“Your mother would want-”

Anger flashes white hot, the image of her mother - her mirror image - flashing in her mind. Her mother, whose last spoken words to her only child had been to tell her to be careful, and to be happy. Her mother, who had only wanted the best for Safiya.

“Don’t you dare,” Safiya bellows, screams it at the top of her lungs as a hot tear rolls down her face. “Don’t you dare bring my mother into this!”

“Naomi wouldn’t argue this,” Magnus yells back, cloak billowing as he throws his arms out. “You have a responsibility to uphold. This boy needs to be taught and you will teach him!”

There aren’t enough words that Safiya could say against him, aren’t enough insults under the sun. So she settles on the thing she knows will hurt the most.

“Get out.” She spits, lips pulled back in a snarl as she musters all the hate she has in her body to glare at Magnus.

“You cannot–”

“Get. Out.” She snarls, pushing to her feet and ignoring the burning ache in her side. Ignores the way her throat aches and her voice rattles as she looms over where he still sits on her coffee table. 

And then, her most damning words leave her mouth. Words she knows Magnus has heard before. Has had hurled at him by her mother before she slammed the door behind her. 

“Leave, and don’t come back. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

Magnus stares up at her, lips parted and eyes gleaming with shock and hurt all in one. “Safiya, please. Do not do this.”

“Get out, Magnus,” she hisses, pointing sharply towards the door. “I won’t ask you again.”

She doesn’t move from her position, not even as he stands and pushes the coffee table back. Not when he inches past her, an apology in his eyes that she blatantly ignores in favor of stoking the fire within her that has kept her warm for nine years.

She stays there, standing in front of the couch long after he leaves, the click of the door shutting behind him sounding more like she’s just sealed herself in a tomb of her own making. Regret and sorrow push at the edge of her vision, and she can’t fight the tremble of her lips as she sinks back down onto the couch. 

She wishes Bennett was here.

Notes:

as always, thank you so much for reading! and a massive thank you to Jae, my platonic life partner and wonderful beta reader (i couldn't do this without you pookie <3)

Chapter 13

Summary:

It’s wonderful, the way the weight on his chest dissipates when she turns to him and smiles in the way that is distinctly her. An odd quirk of her lips and crinkle of her eyes.

She looks at him like he’s someone else. Like he’s more than just Sam. And he can’t get enough.

Sebastian’s anger burns so hot in his chest it makes his fingers ice cold. He’d been mad enough when he’d decided to slink down to the farm to apologize, pissed at himself for even feeling bad. But then Safiya hadn’t been there. 

Not the day after he’d tackled her through the coop. Not the day after either. 

Then he’d been pissed at her for not showing up when he’d gone out of his way to spend hours waiting around her property. Going to Pierre’s and buying dog food to feed Atlas when he’d noticed his bowl on the porch going empty for the second day in a row.

And on the third day, he’d decided that if she wasn’t going to show up on her own property that he’d just fix the coop and she’d get the fuck over it. That he’d fix the coop, she’d take away the ice in veins — melt it down into nothing with her fire, and he’d go about his life.

But no . She’d shown up, halfway through the day. Limping and bruised to hell, she’d shown up. Of course, she had. Had shown up, had demanded to know what he was doing instead of thanking him . 

And when he’d made the effort to bridge the gap, to smooth things over between them. To ask if she was alright, even though she very clearly fucking wasn’t . She’d dropped yet another bomb on him. Had shot him full of bullet holes right there in front of the carefully demolished coop.

“I got in a fight with Kent.”

Because of course, she had. 

Because she’s a soldier . A weapon of war.

And he’s no better. Not when he’d flung a hand at her, cold freezing his veins, letting loose a flurry of frost and ice on her - even though he hadn’t meant to do it. He was no better, pressing into her space to leer down at her, his breath on her face.

He’d hoped she would rise to the challenge he’d presented. Had hoped that she’d snarl in his face, and would prove herself as the monster he knew her to be. Had wished - foolishly, cruelly - that he’d get to add to her collection of bruises.

She hadn’t flinched beneath his scathing gaze, had met him head-on, looked into his eyes with tempered anger and hollow nothingness, and then told him to leave. He’d only wondered if he shouldn’t have packed up his tools so quickly. If he should have let her explain what she’d meant until he was already home and steeped in anger.

And he let himself steep in it. For nearly a week. He sat at his desk and typed furiously through his work. Spent even more time at his desk just hating her. 

Then, in a bout of anger, he’d typed her name into his browser search bar. Ready to add fuel to the fire. But there had been nothing. No public records in the last nine years, no social media. 

Nothing.

Then he’d tried her mom’s name. Because what mom isn’t posting their kid on social media? 

And there she was. Naomi Atwood . An exact copy of her daughter, beaming into the camera in her profile picture, a little girl wrapped in her arms - wearing the same smile. 

The first post was as expected, an obituary, probably posted by someone else after she’d died. 

Then a few from the last years of her life that she’d spent at the farmhouse - and it made Sebastian sick the way she got healthier the further back he scrolled.

The years between Naomi moving back to the farm and Safiya’s draft show up on Naomi’s page. There’s a four-year gap between her last photo with Safiya - just a girl smiling broadly at the camera from behind a birthday cake - and her first post announcing her diagnosis.

But Safiya’s everywhere , in the years before her draft. Every single post, every photo, it’s all of Naomi’s girl. Like she’d treated her page as a personal scrapbook - dedicated solely to one subject. The girl Naomi posts about is nothing like the one living just at the bottom of the mountain in that farmhouse. 

The girl in the pictures is so bright it almost hurts to look at. In every photo, she’s laughing, and in the few sparse videos - shot on crappy phone cameras - she’s laughing . The girl her mother documented in such massive detail - thousands of photos in a public folder labeled ‘ Saf ’ - is not the one he knows. 

This girl, the one who smiles at the camera and makes witty jokes as she banters with her mom behind the camera, died a long time ago - he realizes. This girl, who squeals with laughter on his screen as she plays in the sprinklers down at the farm, her grandfather laughing with her and spraying her with the hose, is gone. The more he sees — photos of her in a Zuzu city apartment, proudly showing off the eggs she’d collected from the coop at her grandfather’s farm - the very same one he’d destroyed - the more his stomach twists into knots.

She’d been a kid once, too. Her face, cheeks full with baby fat and glowing with health, is everywhere. 

He has to force his eyes away from his computer screen, fingers fumbling against his keyboard as he hastily presses escape . But the images linger, that bright toothy grin lurking in the back of his mind. 

“It wasn’t like that!” Her voice cries, and he hates that he can remember the plea in her voice as she’d reached for him. Hates that he wonders if the bone-deep exhaustion had extended far beyond the fight he’d assumed she’d instigated.

Hates even more that he wonders if she’d been telling the truth. To some weird, twisted degree. 

Hates that he fumbles with his phone, hands feeling ice cold as he types out a hasty message.

 

Sebastian

Hey man, care if I come over?

Read 1:28 PM

 

Sebastian watches the message immediately flip to read. Then hates the way his heart pounds in his chest and frost forms on his fingers as he watches the three bubbles bob as Sam types his response.

Sam

Now's not a great time.

Sorry.

Read 1:28 PM

 

Sam’s never turned him down before. He’s always let Sebastian waltz in and out of his life whenever he pleases - like a cat. Sebastian can’t help the furrow in his brow, even as the piece of him that burns at Safiya jumps with glee at the mere thought that he’d been right.

 

Sebastian

I heard about your dad

You good?

Sam

It could’ve been a lot worse

Safiya pretty much saved our lives

Read 1:29 PM

 

Sebastian can feel his heart stutter to a stop. The ice in his veins melting away to nothing as his world is flipped on its axis. Flipped by six little words.

The screaming, raging part of him is suddenly quiet, and his chest hollows with shame so intense he wheezes for breath. His phone clatters noisily to the ground, a corner hitting his foot as his hands rise to his face.

Sam’s text stares up at him from the floor, and his mind floods with the image of Safiya, standing only a few inches in front of him, her face painted with some kind of hollow anger as he’d leered down at her. Her neck had been a ring of mottled blues and yellows, her cheek still swollen and bruised varying shades of purple. 

It’s misery, knowing that she’d tried to tell him. And he hates the way the guilt eats at him.

---

Sam rolls onto his back with a heaving sigh. No matter how he’d tried, no matter which way he’d tossed and turned, his bed wasn’t as comfortable as it had been. 

He’s supposed to be resting. Harvey had told him that he should eat before taking the meds he’d been prescribed, and then rest after taking his meds. 

But he can’t sleep.

Not when Kent is back in the house - even if he has confined himself to his and Jodi’s bedroom. 

Can’t sleep when his door is left open, too scared to close it now that they’ve let the fox back into the henhouse. Not when Vincent is playing in the living room, or Jodi shuffles past with limping steps and a plate of reheated casserole from Granny Evelyn. 

He knows his dad feels bad. That Kent had gotten down on his knees and gripped at Jodi’s hands when she’d visited him in the clinic. He’d heard his dad begging to speak to him in the days leading up to being discharged from the clinic. 

But Sam just couldn’t do it. 

He’d hoped, that when it eventually came down to it, that Safiya would be there again. That she’d be there to wrangle the beast he had no chance of learning. But he hasn’t spoken to her in days. She’d disappeared without a word when she’d been discharged, and Maru had been the one to let him and Jodi know that she’d already gone home.

He can’t even call her . He’d realized, days too late, when his fingers had hovered over his phone screen, reaching to press that green button and call a number that didn’t even exist.

He’d talk to Sebastian or Abi if either of his friends had the empathy required for the situation. Or the knowledge. Or the bravery to step in when shit hit the fan.

But they don’t. Not for this.

He feels like a ghost, just standing in his room, or sitting on his bed. Waiting for something – anything – to happen while he drums up the courage to pluck mindlessly at his guitar.

And then his first day back at JojaMart rolls around. A week isn’t enough time to recover from what he’d been through, what his family had been through — what Kent had put them through.

But Joja doesn’t give a flying fuck about him or his family.

Morris cares even less. Tells Sam to make sure he keeps the bruised side of his face away from customers. Sam doesn’t bother arguing that he’d just been in the clinic last week.

He just slides his headphones on and begins to sweep up and down the store.

He’s halfway through his shift when Shane taps him on the shoulder. He jumps, already tugging his headphones off as he whips around.

Sam pretends not to notice the way Shane grimaces at the mottled bruising on his jaw.

“You’ve got a visitor over in aisle five,” Shane tells him, sounding annoyed he’d had to deliver the message at all. Sam watches as his older coworker turns and shuffles back down the way he came.

Sam sighs, jaw aching as he pretends to sweep his way over to aisle five. The quiet drone of the fluorescent bulbs fills his ears without his headphones on, and the noise alone makes him wish he’d taken another dose of painkillers before he’d left home.

But then he turns the corner into aisle five, and his headache is gone in an instant. Because Safiya is there, crouched down over a bag of dog food, her left index finger tracking the ingredients list as she pinches her lips together with her right hand.

“Safiya?” Sam asks, kicking himself the moment her name leaves his mouth. Because there’s no one else in town who looks quite like she does, and because he’d recognize her anywhere - he thinks.

It’s wonderful, the way the weight on his chest dissipates when she turns to him and smiles in the way that is distinctly her. An odd quirk of her lips and crinkle of her eyes.

She looks at him like he’s someone else. Like he’s more than just Sam. And he can’t get enough.

“Sam,” she greets, lips parting into something closer to a real smile when he crouches down next to her in front of the dog food. She scans him over in the same way she had when he’d shown up bruised and bleeding, her smile faltering minutely when her gaze passes over his jaw. “You’re healing up nice.”

It's a nice lie she tells him, because they both know his jaw is still a mottled mess of purples and yellows. But Sam devours it anyway, his lips stretching into a broad grin that makes his jaw ache and his chest warm. 

He’s never been so happy to see another person in his life. Even happier when he realizes the ring of bruises around her neck have faded away to nearly nothing, like nothing had ever happened at all.

“I haven’t seen you since…” Sam says, voice unsure as he watches her read the info label on another bag of dog food. “I’ve been wanting to call you. Make sure you were okay.”

Safiya looks back at him, her eyes soft with something Sam thinks is an unspoken apology as her lips pull into a minute frown. Her hand rises, and he watches - maybe more intently than he should - as she carefully presses her fingertips to his bruised jaw, and soothing warmth floods the area.

“I figured you could have used the space.” She says, and Sam can’t tell if he’s hallucinating the feeling of her thumb rubbing soothing strokes along his jaw and swiping over the corner of his lip. 

He’s never seen someone so pretty until now, he thinks. Has never seen someone so beautiful as she is when she lets herself be soft like this. He hopes - foolishly, naively, far too early into knowing her - that he can see her just like this for the rest of his life.

So beautiful .

“I’m sorry to have made you worry.” She murmurs, and this time Sam is sure that her thumb is drawing soothing swipes against his skin. That this is no hallucination. No trick of his mind. 

Sam wants to kiss her. For a whole myriad of reasons, Sam wants to kiss her. 

“It’s okay,” Sam tells her, and means it with every fiber of his being. His hand rising thoughtlessly to keep her hand pressed to his face. “I’m just glad you’re alright.”

It’s okay, because you’re here now and I will never be able to thank you.

He expects her to flinch away, for whatever delicate moment they’d built up to fall apart, but she stays. Smiles warmly at him, and once again he can’t shake the feeling that she looks at him like he’s so much more than he is.

“Me too.”

“Samson!” Then the moment’s broken, Morris barking down the aisle at Sam as Safiya quickly withdraws her hands and her warmth. Sam sighs, and Safiya offers him a sympathetic look as his boss yells down the aisle at Sam, “I don’t pay you to just sit around. Get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam sighs, getting back to his feet. But Safiya’s hand shoots up to grab his before he can get anywhere.

“You still haven’t helped me pick out the best dog food you have here,” Safiya says, louder than she needs to as she chances a furtive glance back towards Morris. “ Sir ,” she tacks on, the corner of her lips pulling upwards as Morris immediately backtracks and leaves the aisle.

Sam grins at her, crouching back down next to her as he raises his middle finger in the direction Morris had gone. He can’t help but chuckle when she returns his smile, though not as big.

“You’re really something, you know that?” Sam laughs, pulling a bag of dog food off of the shelf and reading the ingredients without really knowing what he’s even looking for. 

He should probably ask, but she’s still smiling at him. He doesn’t want her to stop smiling at him.

“Oh, so I’ve been told,” she drawls, voice trailing off in a soft chuckle. She leans into Sam’s side, peering around him to read the ingredients with him. 

“I don’t actually know anything about dog food,” she admits after a moment, a quiet giggle escaping her as Sam tries and fails to hide his snort of laughter. 

“Oh, well,” Sam laughs, drawing in close to whisper in her ear, “Neither do I.”

She laughs with him, still not full-fledged laughter, but the closest thing to it he’s heard in his entire time knowing her. It’s maybe the best sound he’s ever heard. His new favorite sound, better than any song he’s ever heard or written. 

Now that he’s heard it, he wants to put it on repeat and listen to it on a never-ending loop. A redundant concept, but one he could live with so long as he got to hear that laugh.

“Ah,” she sighs, her cheek pressed up against his bicep. It takes everything in him to not touch her. To leave his hands exactly where they are so long as she’ll stay right here . “I probably need to talk to Marnie, don’t I?”

He knows she’s talking more to herself than to him, but he answers anyway.

“Probably.”

She sighs again, this time more annoyance than the quiet relenting sigh she’d given earlier, and her cheek presses further into his arm as she loops her arm through his. Linking them together at the elbows.

Sam takes it as an invitation - knows he probably shouldn’t - his free hand coming to clasp softly over her forearm. So much smaller, compared to him, and warmer, too.

“If I asked you to come to Marnie’s with me, would you?” She asks, and Sam doesn’t even know how that could even possibly be a question. He’d go anywhere with her, for her, whatever. 

He just knows that he loves the feeling of her pressed close to him, of her skin beneath his palm, and how precious it is to touch her without her flinching away. 

Yoba above, he’d follow her into the depths of Hell so long as he got to hold her like this. Hold her at all.

“Yes.” He answers, resolute and smiling down at her. He’s so close, too close, but she lets him. 

Lets him crowd in close enough that the tip of his nose just barely brushes her cheekbone.

She smiles back, lips clicking against gum as her face stretches into a full-fledged smile. She grabs at him with her free hand, twisting and pulling in the front of his shirt as she holds on to him.

“Really?”

“Absolutely,” he whispers, and he can’t seem to stop himself from crowding into her space. Can’t help the way her gravity just sucks him in.

He wants to kiss her. Right here. In the middle of the Joja aisle.

He wonders if she’d let him.

“You want to kiss me so bad,” she murmurs to him, tilting her head just enough so that her lips feather over the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you?”

He does. So badly, he does.

Slowly, carefully, like he’ll ruin it if he moves too quickly, he nods. His nose brushing the side of hers as she presses closer. Encouraging him – daring him – to take what he wants from her.

Then, even as he watches her eyes light up, he asks, “Is that okay?”

She laughs quietly at him, and he can feel the noise in his chest with how close she is. Can feel the way her lips stretch into a smile against his face.

“Sam,” she chuckles, drawing back to look him in the eye. “If I wasn’t okay with it I never would have brought it up.”

“Oh.” Oh!

There’s no talking himself out of it now. Not when she’s so close. Not when she’s given him permission to have this. 

He worries for only a second that she’ll regret this later. That she’ll disappear again if he kisses her. 

But those thoughts die the moment his lips meet hers.

Later, Sam will kick himself for kissing her in the pet aisle of JojaMart, but that worry doesn’t even cross his mind as he gathers her face in his hands and presses his lips to hers.

He doesn’t have it in him to worry about Morris or Shane or Claire walking past to see him kissing the most wonderful girl he’s ever known. 

No. Those worries are flung out the window when she wraps her arms around the back of his neck to meet him in full force. 

Yeah , he thinks, his hands moving to grasp at her waist, tugging her closer as he dips his tongue past her lips. I’ll be okay even if I only get this.

Even if I only get this one moment with her, I’m luckier than I deserve.

“You’re only as lucky as you earn,” she murmurs against him. Nipping at his bottom lip as her fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. “Luck has no part in this.”

“I’d still say I’m pretty lucky.” He laughs, pulling away just to look at her. 

Yoba, he could look at her all day. She’s so pretty like this. So soft with her kiss-swollen lips and hair rumpled from where he’d pulled her in close.

“Yeah,” she sighs, grinning when he presses the tip of his nose to hers. “Me too.”

Notes:

posting twice in one night? i must be losing my fucking mind or something.
as always, thank you for reading and the most massive of thanks (and a fat smooch) for Jae, for being my beta reader and screaming with me about these characters!

Chapter 14

Summary:

nobody is who they think they should be, but here they are anyway

Notes:

uhhh... so, see that smut tag?? yeah, that becomes relevant this chapter. hooray!

Safiya doesn’t know what she was expecting. Doesn’t know why she’d let herself think that kissing Sam would feel even remotely close to kissing Bennett.

She hates that he’d kissed her exactly like Bennett. Hates that she lets them both believe that they’re people that they aren’t. Let’s Sam think that he’s really the one she wants, and lets herself pretend that Sam is Bennett.

She should have told him no. Should have stepped away the moment his thoughts, his unfettered desire to kiss her, skittered across her own mind. 

Mostly, she knows that Sam deserves better, and that she’s a liar.

But she just can’t help it. No more than Sam can help it. It’s not Sam’s fault that he looks and acts so much like Bennett. 

Just like how it’s not Safiya’s fault that she can’t let go of a dead man.

She can’t help that every time she looks at Sam all she can see is beautiful, brilliant, Bennett. Can’t help that it’s so easy to pretend that Sam is Bennett as he walks with her from the farm to Marnie’s.

“You know, you really didn’t have to come,” she tells him, brushing past him as he holds the Southern gate open for her. 

“I told you I would,” he laughs, gate clanking shut behind him as he keeps pace beside her. The sun’s hitting him just right so early in the evening. When she looks up at him the light haloes his head in a way that makes him look just as radiant as the man she loves to pretend he is.

She needs a cigarette.

Itches for a cigarette. Craves the burn of acrid smoke filling her lungs and scratching at the back of her throat. Even as she smiles up at him, falls into his gravity, basks in his warmth, she craves it. Maybe the feeling of acrid smoke curling in her lungs might make her heart ache just a little less when she looks at Sam.

“Well,” she sighs, unable to keep the curve of her lips to herself when he beams down at her and links their pinkies together. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Safiya curls her pinky a little tighter around his. Guilt coils tighter in her belly when Sam squeezes back even tighter. 

She wonders what Bennett would say. If he’d be upset to know that even after three years she still can’t let him go. If he’d be angry - seeing her walking side by side with a man that could be mistaken for his brother or close relative at first glance.

Or maybe he’d be happy for her. 

She hopes he’d be mad.

“Is this okay?” Sam asks, and she’s only vaguely aware of the feeling of his fingers lacing through hers. His palm dwarfing hers by comparison as he squeezes her hand in his. “I like being able to hold you,” he murmurs, almost as an afterthought.

She wonders if he’d even meant to say it.

She doesn’t really know. But she likes the way his hand feels in hers, how gentle he is as he rubs his thumb over the back of her hand. She likes the feel of his callused fingertips pressing feather light against her skin.

“Yeah,” she says, lacing her fingers tighter in his. “This is okay.”

She thinks he’s beautiful - just as beautiful as Bennett had been - when he opens the door to Marnie’s for her. Guides her in with a gentle hand on her back. Even more beautiful when he leans down to greet Marnie’s niece, Sam had told her in a hushed whisper when the girl had left them alone at the feed counter, when they walk through the door. 

“You’re good with kids,” she remarks absently, smiling softly in the direction the girl had gone.

She’d always imagined Bennett to be good with kids too. 

When she was still in Gottoro, when she’d had the promise of Bennett at her side, she’d always imagined she’d have kids, by now. That her arms would be full and heavy with a bundle so small, but so warm.

She’d hoped for it. Dreamed about a future that felt a million miles away, kept it burning in her chest as the one thing that kept her moving forward. 

“Yeah, well,” Sam chuckles, leaning down to speak softly in her ear as he winds a careful arm around her waist, “don’t tell my mom, but I practically raised Vincent.”

Safiya believes it. She remembers the way his little brother had clung to him the few times he’d been allowed into the clinic for a visit. 

It’s praiseworthy, what Sam has done for his little brother – what he’s done for his mother – she thinks. She never would have been able to do the same. 

“That must have been hard,” she says and means it.

Sam just shakes his head at her, and she relishes in the way he shuffles closer so that she’s nearly tucked against his side.

“Nah,” he starts, mouth a lopsided grin. She watches with near morbid curiosity at the way his eyes go out of focus, remembering something she’ll never know. “I loved it. Even when it felt like I didn’t, I did.”

“I think I can understand that.”

She wants to understand it the way he does, though. So badly, she wants to know that kind of love too.

But Marnie comes out from the kitchen before either of them can say anything else, and Safiya watches on as Sam talks with the older woman.

She’ll never understand it, she thinks. Even with Sam at her side, a twenty-five pound bag of dog food in his arms as they walk back to the farm. 

She’ll never understand it and she isn’t sure she wants to unless it’s with Bennett.

And all she can think, as he holds the south gate open for her and helps her make space in her cupboards for the bag, as he takes her hands in both of his and kisses her knuckles when he sits her on the kitchen counter, is: 

Sam deserves so much better. 

But Safiya is selfish, and she pulls his lips to hers with her hands tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck and her knees pressed into his sides.

---

For all the shit Abigail spews, Sebastian had never expected her to be right about a wizard living out in the woods. Not like that really matters when there’s an actual wizard waiting for him out at his usual smoking spot by the lake. Royal purple cape and all.

It’s a shit time for Abigail to be right. Every time she’s been right since the beginning of the year has only spelled bad news for Sebastian. He wishes she’d be wrong, at least about the magic stuff. His life would be so much easier.

“The young Sebastian, I presume?” the wizard asks, and Sebastian wonders if he’d be quick enough to run back inside before the wizard catches him.

He doubts it.

“I’m gonna guess Safiya sent you?” Sebastian asks, resigning himself to the conversation.

“Rather she refused to come herself,” the wizard answers, fingers strumming absentmindedly through his purple goatee. Yoba, it’s almost obnoxious how purple it is . 

Sebastian can’t say he blames her. Not that he wants to see her either.

“I’m Rasmodious,” the wizard says after a moment, and just like Safiya, he doesn’t offer his hand either. “Although I’m sure you’ve heard Safiya refer to me as Magnus.”

Sebastian doesn’t bother giving his name, not when it’s clear Rasmodious already knows it. He has a feeling it wouldn’t matter whether the older man knew his name or not.

“She mentioned you might show up,” he says, fumbling for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. Because there’s no way in hell he’s getting through this conversation without a smoke.

“Yes, well,” Rasmodious sighs, nose crinkling in disgust as Sebastian lights up, “it is my job to be aware of any arcane activities in the Valley.”

Of course it is.

And then- “Look, if this is about the coop—”

“It’s not about the chicken coop the two of you destroyed following your awakening.”

That makes it worse, somehow. He’d almost prefer for it to be about the coop. That Magnus had come to avenge Safiya so Sebastian could use it to put more distance between the two of them. Between him and the awful tugging in his chest every time Safiya enters his line of sight. 

Put distance between him and the magic he knows to be ruinous. 

“I’m not magic,” he blurts, fingertips gone ice cold as he grips his cigarette between them. “The coop - it was a mistake. But I’m not magic.”

It’s a lie. Yoba knows it’s a lie. There’s fucking frost on his fingers, his cigarette put out by the cold. 

Rasmodious’ lips pull into a minute knowing smile, and it reminds him of Safiya. Of the snarling yells and insults he’d spat at her as they’d crashed through the coop. Of the icy cold that had seemed to come from his very marrow. Of the groaning splintering of wood as the coop collapsed in on itself.

It reminds him, in a way that makes his stomach churn and his mouth taste like ash, of the way Safiya had begun to cry.

“Please don’t draft me,” he begs next, cigarette tossed to the ground as he clasps his hands together. 

“You’re not a registered mage,” Magnus tells him evenly, far more reassuring than the measured detachment in which Safiya had said it. “And even if you were, the war is over - albeit on unsteady terms.”

She didn’t lie. Not once. She didn’t lie to him. 

“No, she didn’t lie,” Magnus affirms softly, “even when she very well could have. She didn’t lie. Naomi’s girl is a lot of things, but she isn’t a liar.”

His heart is hammering in his chest. Hard enough that he has to wonder if Magnus can hear it. Wonders if Magnus can see his guilt the way he feels it crushing his chest. If the guilt will crush his ribs together hard enough to splinter and pierce through his lungs. 

He almost hopes it does.

“I didn’t seek you out because the two of you wrecked an insipid chicken coop,” Magnus continues, and Sebastian forces himself to suck in a breath. Forces himself to stave off the guilt and focus on this great, inescapable force that has crashed into his life. “I sought you out to inform you that you’re to meet with me every other day. You must learn control, boy,” he spits it like it’s an insult. It probably is. 

“If you cannot control yourself, the gift that you were lucky enough to be born with and foolish enough to suppress for so many years, you will be nothing more than a problem to be taken care of at best. A danger to everyone around you at worst.”

It’s mechanical, the way Sebastian forces himself to nod. To keep his feet planted right there and not turn around and run as fast as he possibly can back into his house. He’s not even sure he could run if he tried. 

Because no matter how much he wants to, guilt has him frozen to the bone. Fear freezing him all the way down to his core. 

He wants to ask what this means for him now. What this means for his mom. For Maru. For Demtrius - as much as he doesn’t like his stepdad. Because his family are good people. Better people than him. 

It’s the middle of summer, and Sebastian is freezing.

“I- So-” He stumbles over the words, his tongue leaden in his mouth as his brain slogs through the cold. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“But you have.”

Sebastian’s in the coop again, and Safiya’s glaring up at him, indignant fury piercing through him above the delicate line of her nose. Her wrists are covered in ice, and he knows, anger someplace far removed, that the cold must hurt. That there must be splinters in her back the same way there’s splinters in his hair.

Then there’s the genuine look of hurt, after she’d hosed him down and gotten the mud off of him, when the coop had collapsed. He hadn’t noticed it then, the way her brow had furrowed and twisted with some kind of absent agony, but he sees it now. 

“It was an accident,” Sebastian tells Magnus, forcing his vision to focus somewhere behind the older man’s shoulder. Forces himself to stare up at the mountainside and count trees.

“An accident that could have killed anyone else,” Magnus says, far too calmly.

He thinks he’s panicking, he can’t tell. His vision tunnels until all he can focus on is one of the embroidered details on Magnus’ hat. It looks like a constellation, or a rune maybe. 

He’s freezing, so cold his teeth begin to chatter. 

“You must learn control,” Magnus says again, taking a tentative step towards him. “I’m not asking you, Sebastian. I am telling you.”

Sebastian watches as Magnus reaches into his robes and produces a small scroll of parchment.

“You are to meet with me,” Magnus says, and when Sebastian doesn’t take the parchment he steps forward to shove it into Sebastian’s trembling hands. “Every day, for two hours at noon. Do you understand?”

Sebastian forces himself to nod, his fingers gripping the parchment so hard it begins to crumple.

Magnus is gone in the next breath. Sebastian no longer wants a cigarette.

---

Maybe it’s too fast. Maybe it’s too much too soon. 

But Sam’s already here. Already in Safiya’s bed with her pants lost to the floor and his own left in the living room. She’s so warm beneath him, his hands cradling her ribs as he ducks his head down to press his mouth to the side of her neck.

“So pretty,” he murmurs into her skin, relishing in the way he can feel her pulse stutter against his skin. “So warm.”

She giggles quietly, her ankles pressing into the back of his hips as she wraps her arms around him.

“Sam,” she whispers, tugging on his hair to pull him away just far enough to slip her shirt over her head. “Please.”

Sam is a lot of things. He leads the town in community service hours and wears brightly colored hair ties on his wrist in hopes of keeping his mind in order. Sam is his father’s son, in the way he loves deeply, infinitely. Instantly.

He wonders, as Safiya drags his mouth down to her chest, as his fingers tweak and pinch and pull one nipple while he rolls the other against his tongue, if this was all it had taken for his dad to know that he wanted to be with his mom forever.

“Sam,” Safiya sighs above him, nails scraping softly against his scalp as her thighs clamp down on either side of his ribs. “Yes.”

Yes . Sam agrees, moving his mouth to her other nipple. I want to be with you forever.

He wants to breathe in the smell of her; campfire smoke and cinnamon and something sweeter. Wants to huff it down deep in his lungs, breathe it in until it sticks so he won’t ever be without it. 

“Tell me what you want,” Sam murmurs against her breast, soft flesh giving way as he rests his chin against her.Spit slicks his chin as he looks up at her.

“You,” she pants, and Sam smiles at the way her fingertips dig into the dips between his ribs as she drags him up towards her. “Just you.”

He smiles wider when he kisses her and she whines so sweetly when he licks into her mouth. His hand finds her jaw, tilting her head towards him as he presses closer, slots his hips between her legs and lets her feel the way he wants her . 

“I can do that,” Sam murmurs, bracing himself on the arm by her head as he loops his fingers beneath the waistband of her shorts. “I can give you that.”

His knuckles brush against her hip bone, his eyes find hers, bright blues meeting piercing icy greys that have been tempered by pleasure. He smiles when she nods her assurance, and he kisses a line down her body. Mouths reverently at the glowing blue scar lines on her ribs and dips down to her left thigh to kiss softly at the neon yellow scar that spiderwebs across her skin.

He sucks a bruise into her hip bone as he slides her shorts and underwear down her legs. The both of them laugh when they get tangled around her ankles and Sam has to tug them the rest of the way off before flinging them across the room.

And maybe it shouldn’t be so easy, to fumble and tug his underwear down with one hand while he drags the fingers of his other through Safiya’s wet heat. Maybe it shouldn’t be so simple, so wonderful, to drop his mouth down into her and lap at her like a man starved.

But it is. It’s easy and it’s worth it when her thighs clamp down around his head and he can hear his pulse rushing in his ears. 

“Can I-?” Sam asks, voice rasping and heady with want. He prays, silently, desperately, that she’ll say yes. That she’ll feel the hard, pulsing length of him against her calf, his own arousal leaking onto her skin.

“Yes,” she nods, and Sam is entirely enamored by the heave of her chest, breasts rising and falling with each breath. “Please, Sam. Yes .”

It’s easy. To lean down, lick the sheen of sweat from her skin, press his lips to her heart as he slides slowly, oh-so slowly , into all encompassing, feverish heat.

He wants to thank her, thinks that he probably most definitely should. But the words are squeezed out of him, lost to the strangled groan he buries in the column of her throat.

He kisses the skin there instead. Kisses up her throat, where his father had bruised her in a different way, up to her lips as he presses inch by delicious, delirious inch into her heat.

“Thank you,” he whispers into her skin. Murmurs it against the glowing neon of the scar that runs the length of her forearm.

“You sound stupid,” Safiya tells him, but she’s smiling and her hands are in his hair and her hips rock up against his. “You’re welcome, anyways.”

He knows it. Can feel it in the way she welcomes him in. The way she squeezes and flutters around his cock as he pulls back and rocks his hips back into her.

He knows he sounds stupid, especially as a low groan escapes him in some vague form of her name. Knows that now is a terrible time to be thanking her. An even worse time to be hoping and wishing that she’ll let him stay.

“Sam,” Safiya whispers, forearms pressed into the divots between his shoulder blades. Her chest is pressed to his, and he can feel every brush of her stiff nipples against him with each push and pull of his hips.

He’s not sure he can even give a coherent response. So he settles for occupying his mouth with the soft skin behind her ear and humming in response. She whines for him, her back arching off the bed and pushing her further into him.

His hands grip at her waist, trembling with desire as he loses his rhythm just long enough to buck wildly into her. “Fuck,” he groans, biting down at the junction of her neck and shoulder. 

“Sam,” she repeats, hand grabbing blindly for his to guide it down between them. She presses his thumb to her clit until the message sinks in and his thumb begins to rub tight circles over the bundle of nerves.

He can feel it, the way she coils tight around him, her fingers digging into his skin. Can feel it when her already almost too-hot heat kicks up a notch and her hands begin to leave burning trails of heat wherever she touches him. 

“Cum for me,” he begs, flicking his thumb as quickly as he can over her clit, his hand gripping her hip so hard it’s bruising. He needs her to come, needs her to tip over the edge before he does.

He whispers the plea into her ear over and over, his lips pressed to her temple as he begins to lose his pace. His hips stutter as she squeezes down tight - almost too tight - around him.

“Fuck,” he hisses, pressing his mouth to hers as his hips shudder to a stop and his orgasm hits him. “That’s it.” 

She huffs something he doesn’t catch beneath him. Her legs unwinding from around his waist as she slumps into the bed with a quiet whine.

“Thank you,” she whispers, her nose pressed to his collarbone.

“Thank you ,” Sam replies, a hiss escaping the both of them as he slips his softening dick from her.

“You sound so stupid,” she mutters again, with a teasing pull of her lips.

Sam can live with that. Can live with sounding stupid. Because being honest is sometimes stupid, he thinks, and Safiya’s worth sounding stupid for.

So worth it, he decides, as he rolls off of her and she immediately follows him to curl up against his side. 

And yeah, maybe it’s too soon. Maybe it’s all happening too fast. But Sam is pretty damn sure that he loves her.

Because this is right . So right, to be curled up in her bed, still sticky with sweat and sex. He can feel it, in some piece of his soul, that this is right. That he’s meant to be right here, with her pressed against him, her breath fanning across his ribs as she falls asleep.

No, Sam thinks, arm wrapping around Safiya’s waist to press her closer to him. Not too soon. This is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.

Chapter 15

Summary:

The moment stretches, and she wishes he’d leave faster. That he’d turn and walk out the door instead of taking the few extra seconds to look at her with silent judgment in his eyes. Wishes he’d go so she doesn’t have to look at him. So the sick, twisting feeling of guilt that’s clogging her throat would go away.
She’s choking, and she wishes he’d leave so she can breathe again.
“I love you," he repeats.
Firmly, this time. Like he means it.
There’s a silent plea in the beat that follows: Say it back.

A month slips through Safiya's fingers like the finest grains of sand on the banks of the Gem Sea. The time passes in the blink of an eye—merciless, unyielding, pausing for no one. The clock keeps ticking. Life carries on.

A month happens like it's nothing. 

In the grand scheme of things, when compared to her twenty-something years, a month should be too short to amount to much of anything. But when she takes a step back and reflects on the past few weeks, she can see how much has changed. Can see the way she's changed.

Piece by piece, she's unraveling her feelings for Bennett from her feelings for Sam. She's separating the feelings into two distinct things, untangling the threads that have tied Sam and Bennett together in her subconscious mind.

They aren't the same person. She knows that. She's always known that. But a month—as short as it may seem—has been enough time for Safiya to start appreciating the differences between Sam and Bennett.

Sam hates tea.

Tea was all Bennett liked to drink.

Sam serves his own plate first.

Bennett always made sure she ate first.

Sam gels his hair with a brand that Bennett had hated. 

Bennett had loved pickles, she’d watched him devour whole jars in a single sitting. Sam hates pickles, she’d laughed at him when he’d sneered at the jar sitting in the back of her fridge.

Bennett would have shoved her out of the way to get to them.

Sam introduces Safiya to obscure music from some small bands that he’s seen play in the city.

Bennett listened to whatever came on the radio, he'd given up on following the bands he'd liked before he was deployed. Though Safiya remembers he’d spent more time with his ear pressed up against her chest to listen to her heart while she listened to the radio.

He’d claimed the soft lull of her heart in his ear was more soothing than anything that they could play on the radio. Nothing was better to Bennett than knowing that she was alive. That the brief moments they could steal with each other were real and not some figment of his imagination.

Somehow, Sam is far clingier than Bennett ever was. He’s over at her house nearly every day. If he’s not at the farm with her, then he’s texting her. If he's not right beside her, then her phone is usually buzzing in her pocket or on the deck railing as she goes about her day.

Sam is kind. So sweet to her in a way that has become less reminiscent of Bennett and something more distinctly Sam. 

Sam keeps spare hair ties on his wrist just in case she needs them—for the not-uncommon moments when she's forgotten to pull her hair up off the back of her neck before she's gotten to work, when she's kneeling in the soil with her hands too filthy to touch her hair. That's what I'm here for, Sam says. And then he's there, right when she needs him, gathering her hair into the best ponytail he can manage. Not because he has to, but because he wants to. Because he's Sam. Because that's just how he is.

Bennett used to press his freezing cold fingers to the back of her neck in the warmer months. His mouth would press to the soft spot behind her ear and he’d tell her that they’d make it through. That she’d make it through. 

Bennett was right. Of course he was.

It makes her skin itch if she thinks about it for too long. All the ways that Sam and Bennett are and are not the same. Makes her head ache when she lingers on the way that she keeps Sam for the pieces of him that remind her of Bennett.

She doesn’t need a medic or a doctor or whoever to know she’s unhealthy. 

But she’s learning. Can feel it in the way her chest warms instead of aches when Sam comes to see her when he’s gotten off his shift at Joja. Can feel it in the way she’s begun to like drawing him close when he spends the night in her bed.

Loving Sam is easy, in a simple, sugary-sweet domestic way that’s entirely unfamiliar to Safiya. She’ll never tell him.

They don’t talk about his dad. Or the way Sam’s jaw sometimes still aches and twinges. She’d asked him once, and she’d never seen Sam go so still.

She hasn’t asked since.

Sam wakes before she does this morning. An early shift at Joja has him up before her, but she wakes when he shifts next to her in bed. 

It’s a simple slip of the tongue, and maybe it’s a testament to how well she’s taken to him. A display of how comfortable she’s gotten in his presence, that through the haze of sleep, she calls him by the wrong name.

“You going already, Bennett?” she murmurs, voice still thick with sleep as she curls an arm around his bicep. “Stay a lil’ longer?”

She feels the slip long before her words register in her mind. Feels the way Sam goes stiff next to her and Safiya’s mind reels as it reconciles with the knowledge that the man in her bed is not Bennett.

“I —“ she flounders, blinking sleep from her eyes as cold panic and boiling embarrassment seep into her bones. “I didn’t mean—“

Sam pulls away, his arm slipping from her loose hold on him. She doesn’t need to look to know that his eyes are shining with hurt and a special brand of betrayal she doesn’t quite understand. But she looks anyway, and it hurts just as bad as she expected.

“I have to go,” Sam tells her, leaning in just long enough to press a feather-light kiss to her forehead.

“I’m sorry," she whispers, fingertips scraping his side as she fists the sheets so tightly her knuckles go white.

He looks at her a moment longer, sliding out of bed to look down at her. She hates the way she feels so small, curled up in her own bed, as his bright blue eyes bore into her. 

She can see the judgment in his eyes, the careful way he weighs his words on his tongue before he’s even spoken them. 

He reminds her of his father. 

A soldier, already picking apart his enemy.

Then, in an instant, he’s Sam again. All warm eyes and easy smiles and the soft brush of his hand on her shoulder as he presses a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth.

“I love you,” he says, and Safiya can feel her heart stutter to a sickening stop at the words. “I’ll see you after I get off work. Okay, Saf?”

He reminds her of Bennett again. The nickname coming from Sam’s mouth makes her cringe, sounding too close to a man that is somehow so similar and nothing like him.

But she supposes he’s earned the nickname. The same way she’d earned the hurt look in his eye when she’d called him by the wrong name.

He can have Saf, she reasons, finding his gaze and offering him a reserved smile and apologetic eyes.

“Of course, Sam,” she mumbles. “I’ll see you later.”

The moment stretches, and she wishes he’d leave faster. That he’d turn and walk out the door instead of taking the few extra seconds to look at her with silent judgment in his eyes. Wishes he’d go so she doesn’t have to look at him. So the sick, twisting feeling of guilt that’s clogging her throat would go away.

She’s choking, and she wishes he’d leave so she can breathe again. 

“ I love you," he repeats. 

Firmly, this time. Like he means it. 

There’s a silent plea in the beat that follows: Say it back .

Bennett had never had to ask. He never doubted if I loved him or not. Can’t Sam see that he wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want him to be? She wonders, staring up at Sam and avoiding his eyes. Can’t stand the plea in them that makes his blue eyes shine with hurt and disappointment that she doesn’t know how to face.

She can’t bring herself to say it back. Just tucks her hands close to her chest, counts the quick thuds of her heart beating against her ribs. Wonders if her heart ever beat this fast when she’d been in active combat. She’s sure it has, but she can’t remember it hurting quite like this.

“I’ll see you later?” she asks, and she’s never felt so small beneath another man’s gaze.

He says nothing. 

She thinks it’s only fair that the only response she gets is the sound of the front door shutting behind him when he leaves.

Safiya wishes for Bennett.

---

A month in, and Sebastian can’t tell if he hates or appreciates Magnus. Usually, it’s a little bit of both.

Magnus is old, Sebastian knows. The wizard had made that fact more than clear every time Sebastian had questioned his teaching methods.

How old, Sebastian doesn’t know, but old enough and knowledgeable enough that he’s made real, tangible progress. His fingers don’t freeze over, cold creeping into his veins every time his heart rate starts to rise. 

He can smell it now, too. The sharp tang of magic that had given him away to Safiya before he’d even known for himself. He can smell it on his walk up the stone steps to Magnus’ tower. Gets slapped in the face with it every time the door swings open and Magnus’ voice scrapes across his mind, demanding that he come in.

Today is no different from any in the last month. Sebastian blocks off two hours in the afternoon, tells his family he’s going out, then makes the long walk down to Cindersap. Part of him wishes he could still cut through the old Atwood farm, but he’d sooner kill himself than have any kind of interaction with Safiya. 

He doesn’t even want to think of looking her in the eye. Especially doesn’t want to see her and give her the satisfaction that she’d been right . That her nose hadn’t lied, and that day in the chicken coop hadn’t been some freak accident.

He’s almost glad that it wasn’t, though. Not that he’ll ever admit it.

Because he’s come to like his new schedule. He likes going to Magnus’ tower and reading through old books on magic history. It feels a little like he’s doing research for a new Solarion campaign, and the quiet hum of power beneath his skin has become less of a terrifying promise and something almost soothing.

“You’ll get used to it.” Safiya had told him. 

She'd been right about that.

The door swings open just as Sebastian is climbing the top step, and for once, Magnus stands in the doorway. Waiting. 

“Come,” Magnus orders, blinking out of view and reappearing two steps behind Sebastian. 

Magnus doesn’t wait to see if he’ll follow, just continues his quick pace down the steps and out into Cindersap the way Sebastian had just come. Which feels a little ridiculous, considering Magnus could’ve just called or texted or popped a letter into existence on his desk before he’d left home. 

But Sebastian has learned that he doesn’t get a choice anymore. That wherever Magnus tells him to go, he’ll go. That Magnus is as fickle as the magic in his veins, and it’s easier to do it this way than it is to fumble blindly for answers on his own.

“You never leave the tower,” Sebastian points out as he trails after Magnus, feeling more thirteen than twenty-five. 

Magnus ignores him. Simply presses on without a single word or backwards glance until they’re coming to a stop at the South gate of Safiya’s property.

Damn it.

Sebastian wonders if fumbling blindly would really be so terrible after all.

“Safiya is a wellspring of knowledge." Magnus pauses, his hand hovering over the latch on the gate. “Too smart for her own good, that girl. Like her mother. But like you, she is also young and unrefined in her magic.”

Sebastian blinks. She’d seemed pretty refined with her magic to him. She seemed just as sensitive to arcane energies as Magnus, if not more so. As a teenager, she’d been refined enough to be one of the lucky few to survive active combat. Refined enough to knock him on his ass in her chicken coop. The fury in her eyes still burns even in his memory.

“Safiya hates me."

Sebastian remembers the way Safiya snarled and spat at him the last time they’d spoken, her neck adorned in a collar of mottled purples and yellows. She'd been exhausted. She had just saved his best friend’s life, his second mother's life. He'd never seen somebody look so beaten down. He could have tackled her to the ground all over again like the day they'd destroyed her chicken coop, and she probably wouldn't have been able to stop him.

He doesn’t know if she even would have tried to stop him. 

And he’d had the nerve to say it had been her fault. 

She’d thrown him off her property immediately after.  

And I can’t blame her for it.

“We mages live a long time,” Magnus says, finally moving and pushing the gate open. “It’s often more effort than it’s worth to hold a grudge.”

Sebastian really wouldn’t blame her if she did decide to hold a grudge. He would hold a grudge. Even if it wouldn't be worth it in the end, even if holding on to that anger ended up burning him instead, he’d probably still hold onto that grudge. 

But Magnus knows Safiya better than he does. Sebastian has seen the proudly displayed photos of her and her mother in Magnus’s living room. He knows that whatever connection Magnus has to Safiya runs deeper than just a family friend. 

Maybe he's right. Maybe she's better at forgiveness than he is.

So Sebastian follows. Because he doesn't really have a choice.

The air ripples against his skin as he crosses the property line onto the farm. He can taste the magic settling heavily at the back of his throat, stinging at his eyes. Ahead of him, Magnus clears his throat, like the magic in the air is clogging his throat, too. 

The farm has changed in the month and a half since he’d last been here. With Summer reaching its peak, the crops that Safiya had been planting when he’d blown her chicken coop apart have hit maturity. The fields are bursting with color. There’s a melon patch that looks meticulously cared for, the pale pink fruit bigger than any he’s seen in recent years at Pierre’s or at Joja. The reddest tomatoes and peppers he’s ever seen - even when it had been Old Man Atwood’s - hang heavy on the trellis.

She has new tree saplings dotting the Western fence line now, too. 

It’s beautiful, a clear work of devotion. 

I wouldn’t ever take her to be the nurturing type.

But it's clear that he was mistaken.

Safiya's dog barks at them from his spot on the porch, and he looks even bigger than the last time Sebastian had seen him. Another example of her nurturing side, he realizes. 

The dog doesn’t move—doesn't come charging at him to say hello. The last time he’d been here, the dog had barreled toward him, jumping on him and licking at his face. But now, he just stays sitting on the porch as they approach with his tail thudding softly against the wood. 

“Hi, boy,” Sebastian greets, bending down to scratch behind his ears while Magnus goes ahead to knock on Safiya’s porch. “Have you been a good dog? You're a big boy now, aren't you?”

Atlas huffs and leans up just enough to lick at his chin. He assumes that the dog’s been good, all lean muscle and big enough now that Sebastian would cross the street if he saw Safiya walking with him from the other direction.

Magnus calls Safiya’s name through the door, the dog only whines softly and moves away from Sebastian to make a loop around the porch before lying back down again. 

“I guess we’re supposed to wait,” Sebastian laughs, taking a seat on the porch step as Magnus huffs and takes a seat next to him.

“This is unbecoming.”

As the minutes tick by, Sebastian grows restless—uneasy. 

He's getting used to the taste of magic on the back of his tongue, and the peculiar heaviness that coiled itself around his shoulders the moment he stepped onto Safiya's property. He still feels like he's slowly suffocating, but it hasn't killed him yet, so he's sure he'll be okay. 

Magnus can feel it, too. He's certain of that. Can feel the tension rolling off the man sitting beside him. He reasons that if Magnus isn't concerned by the pervasive threatening energy in the air they're breathing, then there must not be any cause for concern. If they were in danger, he's sure Magnus would've already done something. He doesn't know what, exactly. But he's fairly confident that, if they needed to leave, they already would've left by now.

Sebastian doesn't feel safe, but he's willing to accept that most of the feeling is all in his head. He's imagining the danger. Manifesting physical sensations out of nothing but the intensity of his emotions.

He's anxious, that's all.

And restless. Antsy. On edge.

Okay, maybe he's panicking a little bit.

Just waiting is driving him crazy, eating away at what's left of his patience—a virtue he wasn't blessed with in the first place. 

She infuriates him. Sebastian is afraid to face Safiya after his patience has already worn thin. 

The last time that happened…

His eyes dart across the field to survey the remains of her grandfather's chicken coop—a tangible reminder of what happens when Safiya gets under his skin, of just how dire the consequences might be if it ever happens again.

What's left of the coop stands out in stark contrast to the flourishing fields.

"Should we do something?" Sebastian asks, bouncing his leg, eyes still fixed on the pile of debris.

Magnus's gaze dips down, focusing on Sebastian's knee as it continues to bounce, vibrating the porch steps beneath them with his anxious energy. With a single glance, Magnus compels Sebastian's leg to stop moving.

"What do you propose we do?" Magnus asks, relieved their shared seat is no longer shaking beneath them. 

He tracks Sebastian's gaze to the destroyed chicken coop.

Magnus rubs his temples. "I fear that Safiya would be less than pleased when she returns home to find that we've taken it upon ourselves to decide what is done with the coop." He exhales a heavy sigh, angling his face up toward the sky. "I agree, something should be done. But Safiya may already have plans to build something in its place. We shouldn't interfere."

No she doesn't. My mother is the only carpenter in town. If Safiya had plans to build something, I'm sure Mom would've mentioned it.

“Safiya is temperamental,” Magnus continues, stroking absentmindedly at his goatee. 

She’s also one of the most productive people I’ve ever fucking met.  

He thinks she’ll be pissed either way. Frankly, she’ll probably be mad that they’re here at all, and Magnus is right. They need Safiya, he needs Safiya to teach him the things that Magnus can’t.

“So we wait, then,” Sebastian sighs, shifting to rest his elbows on his knees and stare at the space between his feet.

“We wait,” Magnus agrees.

“She’ll be pissed we just sat here,” Sebastian mutters.

“Or she’ll be just as upset that we tampered with her things without her permission,” Magnus points out with a small hum.

Sebastian can’t argue that, not when they’re not even supposed to be here at all . Magnus wouldn’t have dragged them all the way out to Safiya’s place for nothing, and if they’re meant to ask her for help then he’d be stupid to do anything that would make her hate him anymore than she already does. 

I guess we’ll wait.

---

Sam is tired of losing. Tired of always being second best. Tired of always having to settle for whatever’s left of the pile instead of getting first pick. 

And he’d won—or, at least he thought he had—with Saf. Her smile is reserved just for him, a beautiful thing that he’d won and could keep entirely for himself. 

She’s the one thing he lets himself be selfish with. The one thing he wants to hoard just for himself. She lets him be selfish, wants him to take what he wants from her, and give only whatever he’s willing.

And he wants to give her everything. Wants to wake up next to her every morning for the rest of his life, feel her breath curling against his ribs when she settles against his side every night. 

He’d thought she’d wanted that, too. He thought they’d settled into an easy routine - his hands in her hair as he curls toward her, pressing his lips against hers in a fervent display of his love. Her fingers wrapping around his forearm, tugging him closer. 

“You going already, Bennett?”  

And yet, he still loses. He's still second best. 

He’s happy that he has her at all . Even if it means she calls him by the name of another man. Even if he has to swallow his pride and accept coming in second place, losing to some guy he’s never even met or heard of before now. 

She’s cheating on you, some wicked part of him sneers.

He scrubs his mop a little harder across the permanent black streak in the tile floor of JojaMart, taking his frustration out on the stain that's never going to fade. None of this will fade. 

None of it matters. You don’t fucking matter. You’ll always lose. Even when you think you’re winning, you’re losing. 

So much of a fucking loser your girlfriend can’t even call you the right name while she’s cheating on you.

Even the hopped-up guitar and drums blasting through his earbuds aren’t enough to distract him from the sickening twist of jealousy in his belly. 

She wouldn’t , he reasons, pausing to screw his eyes shut and blow out a long breath. 

She wouldn’t cheat . 

He’s seen her recoil and flinch away from the slightest touch when they go to the store together. He's watched her brace for impact every time his mother greets them at the front door of his house. 

She’s softened since they first met, he knows, but a knife is still a knife no matter how dull. They say a dull knife is much more dangerous than a freshly-sharpened blade.

She’s become palatable enough that Vincent is just as excited as Jodi when Sam tells his family that Safiya’s coming over for dinner. 

Then why did she call you Bennett?

“Geez, man,” Shane chuckles as he nudges past him, a crate of Joja-branded mayo in his arms. “The fuck did the floor do to you?”

The question shakes him awake, suddenly acutely aware of his hands wrapped too tight around the mop handle, and his thoughts go clattering to hidden pockets of his brain like billiard balls. Shane smells like alcohol, and normally it’d be off-putting, but today it has him itching for a drink. 

“It’s nothing, dude,” Sam says, going back to mopping the floor with mechanical efficiency. 

Shane studies him for a long moment before shrugging and setting his crate of mayo on the floor, then kneeling beside it. His movements are just as robotic as Sam's, driven more by muscle memory than active intention. 

“Trouble in paradise, huh?” Shane laughs when Sam’s gotten halfway down the aisle, his back turned to him. 

“What?”

“Can’t say I’m surprised.” Shane continues, and Sam can feel his heart drop down into the bottoms of his feet. “Military types just aren’t a good match for us regular folks. I’d just cut my losses if I were you. Before shit gets too crazy.”

Heat rises in Sam’s chest, something automatically defensive and wounded on Safiya’s behalf. On his dad’s behalf. 

Because yeah, Shane might be right. Saf might be fucking crazy beneath it all, her brain wired differently after so many years of fighting for her life. Sam knows his dad is. After what they've been through, he thinks they have the right to be a little crazy.

How fucking dare he? How dare he insult the bravest people Sam’s ever known when he can’t even get his shit together long enough to be sober for his fucking kid ?

He shrugs his shoulders, offering a half-hearted explanation, excusing away her flaws like a reflex. “Saf’s been through a lot."

Sam wonders if this is how his mom felt when she’d explained why his father had lost his fucking mind on movie night—if her excuse had felt like second-nature, like muscle memory, like something she did without even thinking. If it had become a reflex, the words bubbling out of her before she could stop them.

The truth made him whole, yet carved him hollow at the same time. 

“We’ve all been through a lot,” Shane scoffs, cans clanking against each other as he makes room on the shelf for more jars of mayo.

“She’s been through a lot,” Sam repeats, more firmly this time, even as his hands shake. “More than most of us will ever go through. She’s seen things that you and I will never understand. And I’m fucking fine with that.”

Shane spares him a long glance. Sam resists the need to squirm. 

“Are you?” 

Sam doesn’t know. Not really. He’s already resigned himself to it anyway, though. The same way his mom has.

Because, like his mom says, love persists through any hardship. 

He knows that's the truth. His parents have proven it to be true. Because after everything they've been through, his parents are still together. They still love each other with everything they have to give. 

And Sam knows that he loves Safiya—maybe a little more than he should, if he's honest with himself.

He loves her the way his mom loves his dad. Too much. So much it hurts, sometimes. Loves her so much that she could spit in his face and cut him open and he’d still love her.

He loves her too much for his own good, really. He’d carry the world on his shoulders for her if he could, even if it killed him.  

But he knows that he’s tired of losing. The thought of losing this— losing her— makes him sick. He loves her too much to lose her, too much to even consider what it'd be like if he lost her someday.

Love persists, sometimes blindly, and Sam will too. Because he knows that, eventually, it’ll even out in his favor. 

“Yeah, man,” Sam nods, turning away to begin mopping the rest of the aisle as fast as he can. “‘Course I am.”

---

She doesn’t know why she does it. There’s no real logical or reasonable explanation for it, but Safiya goes to Harvey’s. She thinks it’s out of habit, the colonel in her seeking out a medic because she knows that there’s something wrong with her.

There must be, if she’s calling Sam by the wrong name and hoping for some piece of Bennett to come back to her after nearly three years. There has to be something wrong with her for her to be this way when Sam is greater than anything she knows she deserves.

“Well,” Harvey says, clicking his tongue as he reads through her chart, “You’ll be glad to know you’re in great physical condition. Exceptionally healthy, actually.”

She doesn't feel glad. 

Her gaze meets Harvey’s flatly as he takes a seat on his round doctor’s stool.

“It took me years to adjust,” he tells her kindly, “The things we see… they’re hard to forget. But there’s nothing wrong with you, Colonel.”

She winces at the title. Nobody’s called her that in months. Hasn’t had to think about stripes and badges on her shoulder for longer than she’d ever thought possible only a year ago.

“You don’t have to call me that,” she says, mouth twisting into a grimace, “I’m not a colonel anymore.”

“And I’m not a medic anymore,” he jokes kindly.

“No,” she huffs with a soft shake of her head. “Just a doctor now, right?”

“Just a doctor now.”

She supposes it should be that simple. That neither of them are who they were overseas. The titles, badges ironed and pinned on uniform sleeves, mean nothing now.

He’s just a doctor. Just Harvey, he tells her.

And she’s just Safiya.

Whoever the hell that might be.

“These things take time, Safiya,” Harvey tells her, softer than any medic she’s ever interacted with. Almost consoling as he offers her a thin lipped smile. “Sometimes it helps to talk about it, you know?”

She doesn’t know. She hasn’t talked about the war, about Gotorro, about just what she’d done in the name of her country with anyone - not even Kent. 

“I used to…” she hesitates, swallowing hard as she presses her tongue to the backs of her teeth, the words clogging her throat. “I used to talk to Bennett. About these things. He and I…”

Her hand fumble in her lap, gesturing weakly as if that will make the words leave her any easier.

Harvey understands anyway.

“You were close.” He says, not a question. Just a simple fact, like he knew just as well as she knew and all of their comrades knew that she’d been Bennett’s and he had been hers once upon a time.

“Very.”

Too close sometimes. Too dependent on each other to make it through to the next day. Two people clinging to each other while they drowned, hoping that at least one of them would get to survive it.

Close doesn’t even begin to describe it. Close doesn’t describe, can’t describe, the way her chest splits apart - leaves her hollow and broken - every time she thinks about him. Doesn’t describe the way she knew his body better than she knew her own for the longest time.

Bennett had been her lifeline, had been the one thing - the only thing - she’d been able to trust for seven years. She would know his touch, his voice, his smell in a room of a thousand people.

She knows him still.

Still knows what the curve of his smile feels like against the hollow of her neck, can still feel his hands - cold and callused and tender in a way reserved just for her - on her skin. 

She still knows how to make his tea the exact way he’d liked it. Still remembers where his body used to ache the most after the hard days. Knows the lyrics to his favorite song even though she’s never actually heard the real thing.

She doesn’t want to.

Harvey clears his throat, lips pressed together in a worried line beneath his mustache, “Is he…?”

“I burned his body,” Safiya answers stiffly, chest splitting open and caving in on itself as emotion threatens to clog her throat and choke her out.

She can still remember the way the flames had curled over his body. The way the bright reds and oranges had licked at his uniform, blonde hair singing and turning black as flesh tightened over bone, and the smell .

Safiya would never forget the smell. Or how she still wished she would have kissed him one last time before she’d set him aflame.

Instead she just hopes that her fire had kept him warm on his trip through the Veil. Hopes that her love might have been felt on his way through.

She doubts it. 

The thought is nice, though.

The last time she’d had this conversation was with her commanding officer and there’d been more tears then. “Along with whoever else hadn’t made it.”

“I’m sorry.” He sounds it, too. Genuinely sorry, as if he would have been able to change it.

“Aren’t we all?” She chuckles ruefully.

“No.” He says, and she knows exactly what he means. “But we should be.”

She leaves with a piece of paper tucked in her pocket, and promises Harvey that she’ll go to the Mullner’s house and introduce herself to George and Evelyn.

Eventually. For now, she just wants to go home and stare at Bennett’s dog tags tucked into her bedside drawer next to hers.

Notes:

a massive massive thank you to Jae for being my beta reader and letting me rant at you about this fic and others. i love you pookie!
also feel free to come scream with me over on tumblr (@ababanerb) or discord (@ababa_nerb)! i'm always glad to have more people to scream with