signed_sabrina | (no subject)

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rosie

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The thing is, this is the third time in less than a year that her parentage has come into play, in some awful way. She can't take credit for the Darkness, but Lucifer was her own mess, and she can't be certain how her influence has impacted Marcus.

Even if she's not causing it, she thinks she probably makes it worse. If it weren't for her promise to Charlie, and that awful night in the Necropolis, she thinks she might do something stupid. She might already be doing something stupid, knowing that she's hiding out here at Sam's warehouse, instead of going home with anyone, but she feels a little like anyone handling her is bound to be hurt at this point.

Luckily or not, however, it doesn't seem like Sam's tiny punk girlfriend particularly worries about these things. Sabrina admits to having been distracted for a full fifteen minutes from the possession situation by questions and the desire to probably make poor Sam insane with said questions on handling Satanic influences on relationships.

She does not fight it when her phone is taken by said tiny woman, and remains brooding on the floor, unaware of the call made to Rosie, or the directive to come pick her up.

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Seeing Sabrina's name pop up on her phone's screen, she'd answered the call with all the care and concern she could muster--only for her expression to change to something startled as the semi-familiar voice on the other end laid out what she expected to have happen in clipped, Scandinavian tones. "Of course, Mi--Lisbeth. I'll be right there." Ordinarily, Rosie makes free and frequent use of her student bus pass when she needs to go further in the city than she can comfortably walk; today, she flags down a cab, giving the address for the warehouse to the driver and asking him to go as fast as you can, please. It's something she'd always wanted to say, having seen it in a film once, but somehow under these particular circumstances quite a bit of the shine's gone out of it.

As the cab driver wends his way through the city, Rosie calls Neil at work, luckily catching him on his break. "We're having a houseguest," she informs him, her tone one that brooks no argument. "Sabrina. Probably I'll order something in for dinner, I can...oh. Alright, maybe we'll see you in the morning, then." That settled, she puts her phone back in her pocket, watching out the window as the houses and shops give way to something more industrial.

They reach the warehouse, and Rosie tells the cab to wait in the same firm, decisive voice she'd used with Neil--and when that doesn't quite work, offers him double the usual fare, which does. Thank goodness for savings, she thinks, ringing the doorbell and waving at the camera she can see up near the rafters of the building. There's a clunk of the lock disengaging, and the door swings open. She enters, going down the hall and into the main room, where she can see a very familiar form huddled on the floor.

"Sabrina," she says, sinking down next to her. Carefully, she reaches out a hand, laying it gently on the slope of her friend's shoulder. "I've...come home with me? Just for tonight."

Sabrina hadn't planned to be in a sad puddle of witch when any of them came here, and had started in more of a morose sprawl. But she's tired, and that's led to being curled up a bit more, and when Rosie appears with no warning, all she can be is grateful.

"I didn't want to go to any of the places where you all live," she says quietly. "In case it showed up, and then it would be different, it would be changed." She turns and leans into the warmth of Rosie's body, breathes the scent of her in slowly.

After a moment or two, she says, "But I'd like to be with you, I'm just going to keep thinking things if I'm not. You'll tell the boys we're going, and where to find us?"

"Oh, darling," she says as Sabrina pulls herself up a little, something seeking and needy in the way she burrows against Rosie's side. There's a stupid kind of nobility in the things she says, the way she'd chosen to sequester herself here out of some desire to save the rest of them, but they need her close as much--more, maybe--as she thinks she needs to be away. She wraps her arms around Sabrina's shoulders, guiding her a little more against her front as she presses a kiss to the side of her face. "I understand, I do."

Sabrina accepts the invitation with a lack of resistance Rosie might have thought suspicious, if it wasn't for the drawn look in her face and the morose darkness of her eyes, but a yes is a yes and Rosie isn't about to let her change her mind. "I'll tell them everything. Whatever you want them to know," she promises. "There's a taxi waiting outside, or better be, for what I paid him." She manages a smile, then kisses Sabrina again, holding her tight for a moment before she lets go and gets up, helping the other girl to her feet.

"Come on."

Stupid nobility is an excellent way to describe some of Sabrina's impulses, and that's something Sabrina herself would have to admit to-- but for now, she's more than happy to press further into Rosie's arms. She wants to be with them, thinks that maybe it's the only place she can find peace, but so much of her refuses to give even an inch to the darkness, let it have any place she finds sacred.

"That I'm with you and I want to see them too, and I'm sorry for not just going home with any of you right away," she says, in a voice that's clearly reciting, even as she climbs up from the floor. "It was ready to trade with me so easily, and I just-- what if it found me? What if it found me and we got rid of it, but that place wasn't okay ever again?"

She's not sure she's making sense, but she's becoming more aware by the second that old wounds have been opened up by the appearance of this demon.

Ignoring any strange looks from the driver, she's nestled into Rosie as immediately as she can be, once both are seated, and she presses her face into Rosie's chest and closes her eyes.

Rosie keeps quiet, letting Sabrina talk; the act of it seems to be beneficial, somehow, that slow scattering of thoughts and feelings that don't need to be cobbled together into a cohesive whole right now. Still, bits of it settle like something cold in her own gut, this talk of trading and bargains to be made. It sounds too much like what she'd heard of Nick's sacrifice back home, the one that got perverted here in Darrow when it had all happened again--and with a far lengthier and more destructive result. Rosie has no powers, nothing useful that she thinks can be used to stop such a thing, but she knows in her heart she'd do everything capable to keep it from occurring again to another person she loves.

Glimpsing Lisbeth as they leave the warehouse, Rosie catches her eye, mouthing a silent thank you over Sabrina's head as she leads her towards the still-waiting taxi. Once they settle, once Sabrina's curled in against her once more, Rosie reminds the driver of her address and turns her attention back to the girl in her arms. "You don't have to be sorry," she says at last, combing her fingers through Sabrina's hair as she rests against her chest with her eyes closed tight. "That...I understand that. Not wanting to put us in danger, not wanting to have any of the places you know tainted by whatever's got Marcus."

She glances up at the driver, looking for any curiosity or reaction, but in the manner of so many Darrow natives accustomed to the strangeness of the city and the equally baffling oddity of its transplanted inhabitants, he simply keeps his eyes on the road.

"But we need you, we need to know you're here and safe and alright. You're..." She pauses, her throat gone tight. "You're our Sabrina."

Sabrina just nods, breathing in Rosie's scent, her warmth, reminded again how the truest of the evils try to isolate her, try to get her alone and away from the constancy of the people that love her.

"That other part of me, it reacted to the demon. I wanted to tear it to pieces, I could feel the same feelings from when I was still his Herald, before the Apocalypse. Like I probably could tear it apart if I tried. And it wanted to trade."

All of this is whispered, and she exhales slowly.

"I need to be with you all, I need to remember I'm your Sabrina."

Rosie doesn't know if Sabrina's whispering so they're not overheard or because the things she says are too bleak to be said fully aloud--or both, which seems all too likely--but she listens closely either way, her hand still moving through the other girl's hair, slow and steady and comforting. "I think there's very little you couldn't do," she says. "Herald or no Herald. But you shouldn't have to do this. I...I don't want you to, and I don't care if that's selfish to say."

It's a little harder to hold back her sob then, combined with the hot prickle of tears in her eyes, but she manages. "And we'll remind you you're ours, as much as you need us to. However you need us to."

"I don't have to," Sabrina whispers. "Marcus... begged me not to, and I don't think I would have, I would have remembered. I would have remembered all of you." She knows it's true, even as she's shaken by how easy it would have been to give in. "I can help, I want to help, I just have to make sure I don't get lost."

She's thankful when the taxi rolls to a stop, mostly because the only thing she can manage is to lean up and kiss Rosie, cupping her cheek. Anything else she'd like to say, she thinks it can wait until they get inside.

Rosie clings to that hope as well. That Sabrina will remember, that she'll come back to them after whatever fight needs to happen--this time, and the next, and the next, she thinks, with a quiet and brief bitterness--still mostly unscathed. Maybe lost, for a little while, but easily found once more by the people who love her.

Still with one arm curved around the other girl, Rosie takes out her phone, sending a text to Nick and Charlie--not exactly the message Sabrina had dictated as she got up from the floor, but close enough and full of the details both boys need to hear. She'll keep her safe tonight, and one of them may do so tomorrow, and just like that, they'll get through until this is all over. Not until things return to normal, because it's clearer and clearer to Rosie that they'll never really have that at all.

She returns that sweet, sorrowful kiss as the taxi rolls to a stop outside Candlewood, pouring all her affection into it before she has to pull away. After paying the driver, she slides out of the car behind Sabrina and leads her inside, through the lobby and into the elevator. If she looks for any sign that the thing wearing Marcus is here, if she listens for the buzz of an insect swarm, it's only at the back of her mind; someplace she dares not acknowledge. Even so, she doesn't feel truly assured until they're at the apartment with the door locked behind them.

"So," she says as they stand there together, still with their arms wrapped around each other. "We're here now."

Rosie isn't the only one keeping an eye out as they head inside and up to the apartment itself, though Sabrina's far more aware of it. She doesn't entirely feel as if she's awake, though, until they're behind the locked door and she's completely settled in Rosie's arms.

"Thank you," she murmurs, kissing the corner of Rosie's mouth, and then she disentangles herself long enough to put a hand on the door. A gentle pulse of energy washes into the wood as she speaks an incantation of the protective sort. The least she could do, after all, but the fierce protectiveness that seems to rise up when Rosie's involved agrees with the idea.

"Can we just go curl up in your bed?" The corner of her mouth curls up. "No funny business, I just think I probably should rest while I can."

Rosie's heart both swells and breaks a little, hearing that low murmur of words as Sabrina presses her hand to the door. There's protection there, and love, but just once Rosie thinks she'd like their problems to be the kind easily kept at bay by nothing more than the metal of a deadbolt.

She manages a smile when she hears Sabrina's question, nodding as she reaches for her hand and threads their fingers together. "Neither of us are much in the mood for that, I don't think," she says, steering them towards the narrow hallway off the living room. "But just resting together sounds...it's what we need." Rosie lets go of Sabrina's hand once they're in her room, going to her dresser and pulling out a clean set of pajama pants and a soft cotton camisole. "In case you want to change," she says, laying them on the bed with a faint little smile.

Sabrina's suddenly exhausted, as if it has to do with just admitting that she's done trying to carry it on her shoulders. Maybe that's what it is, and the idea of dressing in Rosie's own clothes suddenly seems so dear that her eyes prickle with tears.

She nods, not trusting her voice.

And then, with only a slight tremble to her fingers, she starts to undress herself, her own clothes falling to the floor.

She'd been getting her own set of pajamas from beneath her pillow, but when she turns around again Rosie sees that quick little nod and the way Sabrina's eyes shine, and her heart breaks just a little more. Though at this point they've seen each other in just about every state between fully dressed and completely nude, as Sabrina starts to undress Rosie gives her what space she can without leaving her alone in the room.

Quietly and quickly, both girls change into softer, lighter things; once finished, Rosie pulls back the covers on her bed and climbs in, moving over to the far side to leave space for Sabrina. "Come on," she says, holding the blankets up a little so Sabrina can crawl beneath them.

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