signed_sabrina | listen to the wind blow (down comes the night)

Her text had been upset and frantic to the point of incoherence and Charlie had dropped what he was doing and borrowed the keys to Newt's truck. It was a pattern that he hated every time it repeated - not because he'd begrudge Sabrina any comfort that she needed, but because he hated that shit happened to make her keep needing it.

He kills the engine and jumps straight out of the truck, heading for the front door and ringing the bell, pulling out his phone at the same time to send a quick text.

It's only me.

Sabrina has been sitting numbly on the couch, watching Salem as he stalks about the living room (and makes some truly strange and awful sounds). She keeps her arms wrapped around herself, and watches her phone.

She'd texted Charlie.

She knows he'll be here.

No matter how Nick has shaken her faith in so many things, she knows that Charlie will be here soon.

When the bell rings, she's quick to the door, opening it and barely giving Charlie a change to get through before she's burying her face, nearly sheet white with pink-rimmed eyes, into his chest.

Rosie would like to say that she was out the door and on her way to Sabrina's the second her friend's text buzzed through, full of anguish and confusion and pain. In truth, it took her a few minutes--most of them spent in slightly frozen horror, trying to make sense of what the other girl was even saying, how such a thing could be. The time for trying to understand it will come, she knows, and it's that reminder that starts her feet moving, lets her scrawl a note left on the kitchen counter for Neil (At Sabrina's--something happened, may not be home tonight), sends her hurrying out to the bus stop for the route that will take her up into the countryside.

Once the bus lets her off, she's running as fast as she can, up the slightly twisting road that leads to the cabin. Reaching the front door, she knocks once, then again, breathing hard. "Sabrina? Sabrina, it's me, it's Rosie."

As always, as ever, he wraps his arms around her, holding her close against his chest, murmuring comforting nonsense into his hair. "What's wrong, sweetheart?" he says. "What did he do?"

Sabrina can't even quite push through the shock to cry again, and trembles in his arms as she shifts to be able to speak. "I still don't understand," she whispers. "He told me he-- he was tired of me. He broke up with me." The whisper is tiny, numb.

The door swings open, and it's Salem who greets Rosie with a cacophony of noise, managing to sound both affronted and deeply upset as he trots off toward Sabrina's room-- most likely announcing her arrival.

Sabrina's on the bed, on top of her bedclothes, back to the door and curled up as tightly as she can manage. None of it makes sense; it's so wrong, and so against every talk they've had, every kiss and embrace.

She wants to cry, or to scream, but she feels frozen. She can't even make herself turn around to face Rosie, just sucks in a shaky breath.

Rage washes through him, similar to what he'd felt when David had broken up with Rosie but hotter, this time, so much hotter, because it's Sabrina who's sobbing in his arms. "Nick?" He frowns, trying to puzzle through how that can possibly be a thing that's happened. "I...I don't understanding, Brina. He did what?"

"I don't understand either," she whispers, still in that tiny, broken voice. "I went to see him and he was-- he was mean, and I argued with him and he broke up with me. He's tired of me, and of my- my drama."

She pulls in another breath and it's a great gasping sob.

"I don't understand."

That it's Salem answering the door concerns her all the more, something cold settling in the pit of her stomach as she follows him through the house and down the hall to Sabrina's door, left ajar only enough for her to see a sliver of the miserable scene inside. Carefully, slowly, Rosie pushes it open.

"Oh, Sabrina," she breathes, looking down at the small, shattered thing Sabrina's been reduced to. Still careful, still slow, she goes to the side of the bed, then climbs up, curving herself around the other girl. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

None of that sounds right. He's seen Nick with Sabrina, the way that he lights up when she's there, and none of that fits with the image in his head.

"I..." He can't say anything to make it better. All that he can do is hold onto her. "Come on. Let's go inside."

Sabrina lets him move her, so long as she has hold of him in some way, wherever he will, whether to the couch or all the way to her room. Apparently calmed or relieved in some way that Charlie's here, Salem has moved to a windowsill, where he can watch the road with a lashing, thumping tail.

It's somewhere around here that Sabrina comes apart, all the pieces she'd been holding in place tumbling down, and she's crying so hard she can barely breathe.

Sabrina gulps in a breath of air, again, as if each inhale pains her.

For a moment, she's completely still, her muscles stiff and her frame rigid, and then she manages to release that same wet punch of air. She can't make herself turn to face Rosie just yet, but she reaches for her hands, her arms to cling onto as she tries to make the words come out.

"I don't understand," she whispers. "How-- how can he not love me anymore?"

Rosie doesn't say anything at first, knowing the struggle Sabrina's going through, sensing it in every shaking breath. She'd gone through it herself, not long at all ago--even now, there's still a dull sort of ache deep within her, the last traces of the hurt David had caused her before she'd run sobbing from his house. That had been bad, but this? This is so much worse. This is Nick, the boy Sabrina had loved and lost, and been determined to go to Hell for the sake of.

Rosie never would have done half of that for David, even before she'd learned what she did about him.

When Sabrina laces their fingers together, when her hands curl around Rosie's arms, she moves just slightly, just enough to hold her friend a little more tightly. "I wish I knew," she says, her voice just as soft as Sabrina's. "I'm so sorry, I wish I knew."

If Charlie notices how clearly pissed off Salem is, it's at the back of his mind, as he guides Sabrina through the house and into the relative safe haven of her bedroom. Gently, he brings her to sit down on the bed with him. He holds her while she weeps, stroking slow circles against her back with one hand.

He's got plenty that he needs to say to Nick Scratch, but that'll wait.

It only comes to her when she's cried herself out, when the feelings are no longer drowning her, leaving her to cling onto the people she still has. She's alone, Salem prowling the property-- only because there's overlap in people spending time with her. Curled up on top of her bed, having turned over only to find herself staring at a picture of herself with Nick, one bright and sunny day after the winter had faded. There are other pictures, Charlie and Rosie and Marcus, and others too, and she finds herself following two thoughts to their end.

The first is that she's so lucky, even if she will eventually lose the mortals in her life, to have them now.

The second is that she doesn't understand Nick's change in heart towards them, and it tugs at her mind in a way that his new disdain for her can't. His feelings for her are too painful to examine, but there's something that doesn't fit.

He'd studied her father's work, after all. He'd agreed with her about the need for witches and mortals to be side by side, and not just because it had made her happy. And there had been no faking the warmth and shine in his eyes when she'd brought him to Baxter High, no faking the wonder of it.

It's not like him. None of this is like him.

None of this is Nick.

None of this is Nick.

She sits up, feeling like she's struggling to push to the surface of a very dark ocean. God, maybe it's just stupid, desperate hope, but this makes sense more than anything. Something's wrong. She'd known it before and had been too caught in her hurt to pursue it.

Sabrina's up and moving before she knows it, gathering the candles, the pendulum, making the tea that tastes awful but is a Hilda-approved favorite to promote divination. She and Salem are in the ring of candles in her room, the picture of Nick on the floor, and when she asks the questions, she knows.

Show me, she commands, and she sees the Acheron Configuration, and she sees the face settle behind Nick's features. The spell breaks and even with the lingering image of the devil looking out from behind Nick's eyes, she's so relieved and glad. Relived and glad and then furious and terrified too.

She goes to throw up the rest of the bitter tea, and then begins to send texts.

She's not sure how long that first storm of tears lasts, only that she's suddenly so tired she can barely move-- not that it stops her from crawling into Charlie's lap and pressing her face into his neck. He's so good, she thinks vaguely, and takes a long, slow breath.

"I-- I should have seen it coming, but I didn't," she whispers. "I still don't."

"He's never... talked to me like that," Sabrina admits, in a small, dull voice. "I didn't think he had a mean bone in his body, honestly." She's hardly aware of the slow, steady course that the tears make down her cheeks, vaguely feeling them as they find their way along her neck and collarbone before finding the bed.

"He-- he didn't say anything to you?"

Slowly, feeling as if her limbs are full of wet sand, she turns to Rosie, her eyes huge and dark and swollen.

"I didn't think he did either," she says, and it's the truth. Everything he'd ever said about knowing Sabrina, loving her, all of it had practically shone with affection; every word, every gesture and look. To think that had been nothing more than an act turns Rosie's stomach. "He was always so nice. To you, to Charlie, to...he went to find me in that horrible dungeon after only knowing me a matter of weeks, that's..." She huffs out a breath, confused and sorrowful and already growing furious at him. How dare he. How dare he do this to Sabrina.

She stops herself there; what Sabrina needs now is not rage, but sympathy and consolation. She can provide that, better than she can anything else. Rosie lets the other girl turn within the circle of her arms, and when they're face to face, she lets go of her only long enough to smooth back a fallen lock of her pale blonde hair. "He...no."

She thinks back on the times she'd seen him over the past week, trying to recall any change in his demeanor, any clue of something amiss. "We went to coffee last week, the day after...well, the day after everything with David," she says, her brow furrowing as she sorts through her memory of the afternoon. If there's anything missing, any gaps smoothed over by another's hand, she's as unaware of them now as she had been when they occurred. "I'd gotten the time wrong, thought we were meeting at one rather than two, but he was...we went to the boardwalk, spent some time on the beach. It was the same as it always is."

Rosie looks down at her friend, wishing she could do more, say more, fix everything the way Sabrina had when she'd charged into David's house. "He did seem...distant, maybe? When I saw him after the play, the night I went to watch him and Neil and Charlie. I thought he was just tired, or still a little caught up in, you know, being Oberon. Something like that."

When she's not up at the house, when it's Charlie or Marcus or someone else spending time with Sabrina instead, providing their own comforts, Rosie still keeps her phone close. Sometimes she's just sending distractions, pictures and texts, funny stories or silly jokes; other times, something more substantive, reminders of her love and care in the face of all the lingering bleak confusion that Nick's betrayal had wrought. It's not much, none of it really is, but it's what she can provide.

She'd tried to do something else, too, some furious confrontation a few nights previous. Somehow, she can't grasp the details, just a sense of something wrong that her mind skitters away from just as she starts to contemplate it. She knows she tried; lets that be enough for now.

When her phone pings, Rosie's sitting on the couch with Beau, a heating pad slung over her shoulder. She'd done something to it the other day, something else she can't quite recall, and it still hurt. Seeing that the text that's just come through is from Sabrina, though, gets her moving as it always does. While it's just words on a screen, there's an urgency to them, something frantic. She unplugs the heating pad and bundles it away, gulps down another dose of ibuprofen, and then she's out the door.

Once there, Rosie knocks at the front door, then tests the knob and finds it unlocked. "It's just me," she calls, pushing her way inside. She can see a dim glow in the hall, in the direction of Sabrina's room, and she heads toward it.

"This doesn't make any sense."

He'd come straight over when he'd gotten Sabrina's text. Salem lets him in and he makes a beeline for her room, appearing in the door way with his phone in his hand. "You...I need you to walk me through this. Because it doesn't make any sense to me."

Because he's mortal, he knows that. There are things that he just doesn't know because they aren't possible, not where he comes from.

Charlie curls around her, one hand cradling the back of her neck, knees up to pull her in tighter against him.

"Why would you have seen it coming?" he says. "It doesn't make any sense."

The Sabrina that looks up at her-- sitting cross-legged on the bed with a book in her lap, the remains of her spellcasting on the floor, her eyes still vaguely pink-rimmed but now bright and alert-- is far from the heartbroken girl who had been curled up there only a few days ago. She gives Rosie a small, grim smile, and pats the bed beside her.

"So, I kept thinking... this isn't like Nick. I just couldn't get past it. And I had this feeling, and... I'm not giving up. That's not Nick. I believe in Nick. I trust Nick."

She waves her hand at the floor.

"Rosie, it's not him."

Sabrina's on her bed with a large, witchy-looking book in her lap, one Charlie might recognize from one of the worst days she's ever had. Even if it doesn't contain further information she can use, somehow-- somehow it seems like it might inspire her.

She holds out her hand to him, because she needs him more than ever.

"What didn't make sense was Nick acting like a completely different person. This-- I did the spell, but I know I'm right. That's what this feeling has been all along."

Magnus loves texting, but at a certain point, face to face interaction is required. Especially in something like this.

He knows about possession. He knows about Lucifer. He knows about Greater Demons. And if what he understands from Sabrina in true, she's going to need all the help that she can get.

So he portals to her apartment, knocks on the door before letting himself in (magically, if the door is locked) and strolls right in, like a man on a mission.

"Alright, explain this to me again, using small words. I want to make sure I've got this correct."

Marcus is in the kitchen when she brings back her tea cup and he glances in her direction, wishing all the while there was more he could do for her. Nothing can cure heartbreak, however, so all he can do is be here for her while she deals with everything Nick has done. He doesn't understand it and he's angry about it, but he had felt something was off when he was speaking to Nick after the performance in the park. Something had been different and while he hadn't been able to quite place it, he's now prone to blaming it on whatever prompted Nick to end things with Sabrina.

But when she comes into the kitchen, there's something in her expression other than the heaviness she's been wearing lately. She looks angry and yet somehow... more focused. As if there's a task at hand.

"All right, duck?" he asks as she goes to the counter with the cup. Something has changed.

listen to the wind blow (down comes the night)

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the devil you know

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Re: the devil you know

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Re: the devil you know

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