with flowers and my love both never to come back

[signed_sabrina]

Sabrina sits on the edge of her bed, just barely aware of the warm, furry lump of familiar pressing into her ankle. She tastes salt on her tongue, and though her heart roars with the wind coming through where Charlie's disappearance had gashed it open. Not the hurricane now, no hellfire crackling in her fingertips-- she's in a place that's still silent and suspended, feeling the sensation of tears rolling fatly down her cheers but little else.

She keeps from total freefall, from screaming and letting righteous anger and grief take her, by thinking about how she's waiting for Rosie. Rosie's on her way, and then Rosie will be with her, and they'll be together, pressed so that they can feel each other breathe. Too much thinking about anything else starts her down a line of images that she supposes might be seen as melodramatic, even if the appeal to her.

For so many reasons, she can't give in and let herself be consumed. Rosie would be burned too, and that it's Charlie, ridiculously kind Charlie, who they've lost, tightens cranks up her resolve.

Salem leaps from her feet and runs yowling to the sound of the door opening, and Sabrina thinks about how Rosie will be here soon, to hold and be held.

Comments

[forthsofar]

Sabrina pulls the covers up, closing them both in and shutting the world out. In the wake of the last few hours, it feels like the only possible choice. Staying close, Rosie closes her eyes as Sabrina's fingers trace over her skin; it feels like being mapped, being committed to memory for some later date when even this goes away. As quickly as possible, she rejects that thought. Based on the way Sabrina's fingertips shake, the tension that ripples through her body, she thinks the other girl's doing much the same.

"I'll stay," she promises. "I should...we should spend time with Newt and Kavinsky, too. We can't forget about them."

[signed_sabrina]

"We can do that," she agrees, even as there's a thump at the end of the bed that can be only one goblin-cat. "Help go through any belongings he left behind." There's some clothes she knows she wants, knows she's going to need to be able to wrap herself in during those times when she and Rosie have to be apart.

Sabrina's quiet for a while then, in the slowly warming cocoon with Rosie in her arms and Salem at their feet.

"He... he'll go a good place," she whispers. "I mean, if he goes home, there are people that love him there. I think he'll be happy. He can't really help but be loved, and if for some reason it weren't true, that would offend the universes so much they'd open up and we could walk in and change that."

It's a strange, murmured rambling, but she can't find the energy for the wracking sobs locked away somewhere inside.

[forthsofar]

She nods, making a small and miserable sound of agreement. It's just as horrible as when it was Nick, this idea of someone who'd been so present--so precious--reduced to nothing more than a pile of things to be gone through, mementos they might take home with them because it's all they have left. Salem settles on their feet, a small and surprisingly heavy weight, and it feels like being further grounded to the earth.

Everything else Sabrina says is true; she knows it's true, because she knows Charlie, but it doesn't stop what she says next. "But there are people who love him here," she sniffles, her voice cracking on the word before she drags in a long, shuddering breath. "Why do they get him and we don't?"

[signed_sabrina]

"That's the question, isn't it," Sabrina answers, wrapping herself tighter against Rosie again. "Whether there's any rhyme or reason to it. Whether that matters. I-- I don't know. I mean, I could have answered that question back when I was part of why bad things happen, but there's no answer here."

She buries her face in Rosie's hair, breathing in the scent, her own voice fragile and brittle with tears. "But it doesn't matter right now. Because even if we knew, it wouldn't hurt less. He'd still be gone." There's a noise from the familiar at their feet, and then a cat-shaped form wiggling up the bedclothes.

[forthsofar]

Salem yowls and treads on them, moving closer, and Rosie's glad for the distraction of his paws along her back, his foot pressing into the soft line of her side. She holds Sabrina more tightly, letting her press her face into her hair and cry. "You're right," she says. "It doesn't matter. I just wish it not mattering made it hurt less."

[signed_sabrina]

Sabrina just nods, still not trusting herself to do much more than let the tears leak from under her closed eyelids. This one hurts all the more for knowing how utterly rare and unique the connection was among worlds; it hurts all the worse to know the feeling and push away the possibility she could be feeling it again with the loss of Rosie someday, or that she might leave Rosie to it.

By this time, Salem has started to insinuate himself under the covers, bullying his way to sprawl on top of them with a bit of upset chatter.

"Do you think we just go back to where we came from?" she whispers. "Do you think we remember?"

[forthsofar]

"I like to think we do," Rosie says, because even if she doesn't know it for a fact--and right now, she wishes more than anything she did--it's something she has to believe. "If someone can wake up one morning here having remembered things from home, then the same has to be true in reverse. It has to. Even if it's not right away."

She swallows hard past the sudden lump in her throat, blinking hard as she shifts to press her face further into Sabrina's hair, her lips brushing the curve of the other girl's ear. "We can't forget each other. Any of us. Not Nick, not Charlie, not...not you or I."