signed_sabrina | [after; marcus]

When Sabrina finally leaves the apartment building, after she's able to keep from pressing herself to the closed door of Nick's apartment and weeping, after the promise to meet up with Charlie and Rosie as soon as she can, it's morning. Not long after dawn, and thankfully it's not too hot or too busy yet. Salem insists on being carried, and she thinks it must be so the little purring mechanism of his feline body can be pressed to her own broken heart.

Maybe that's a selfish way to put it, when she has Charlie, when she has Rosie, but there's so many things she's lost, in losing Nick.

Her eyes are heavy and she knows they're rimmed in red, another reason she's glad the streets are fairly empty. She cries into Salem's fur, very quietly, on the sparsely populated train, and spares a moment to stare at her phone. Just as she's about to attempt a text to Marcus, about coming home early this morning, about what's happened, a message pops up from Dan, simply informing her that he's made sure Marcus will be waiting for her. Benefits, somewhat, of living with a psychic.

She almost sits down on the path up to the house, remembering how she'd found Nick here that day, only nudged forward by an insistent familiar. Sabrina finally gets herself through the door, shockingly exhausted, and when she calls out for Marcus, it's with a sob in her throat.

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Marcus appreciates what Dan has done, waking him and making sure he's ready for when Sabrina gets home, and when she walks in the door, he's dressed, tea is brewing, and Trass is there, too, nudging his big head under Sabrina's arm. The wolf has lost people, too, and Marcus is of the mind he understands it just as well as the rest of them do.

"Come on, duck," he says in a gentle voice when he rounds the corner to the front door. He moves forward, collecting her into his arms and he wants to get her sitting down, wants to get her tea and a blanket and a safe space to cry in if she needs, but first he has to do this. Has to give her whatever small comfort he's able when he wraps his arms around her and pulls her against him.

Sparing a moment to press a grateful little kiss against the wolf's head, Sabrina drops her bag, lets Salem bound inside to yowl.

Why does the grief feel closer to her here, instead of where Nick lived?

The answer comes a moment later, as Marcus pulls her into a hug, and she goes easily. Here she doesn't feel the same stinging degree of guilt, she's not trying to think about how to balance her feelings. And so the tears are immediate, loud and wracking and painful.

"He's gone," she sobs. "He's gone and I can't reach him, I can't save him, he's back in Hell--"

It's Nick, then, not Charlie, though Marcus doesn't know if one or the other would be better or worse. No matter what, there's pain, and a deep sense of loss, something he can't solve for her, no matter how badly he might want to. Instead he only holds her, smoothing a hand over her back and feeling every one of her words as he might a knife against his skin.

She can't save Nick and Marcus can't fix this for her.

"I know," he says softly, stroking her hair now, keeping her close. "I know, duck, I'm so sorry."

Even as she feels a stab of guilt for it, Sabrina finds it so much easier to let herself cry, to let the loss be felt purely as it is-- that she's lost Nick, a part of her heart, that she doesn't know if she'll see him again, that as far as she knows he's gone back to suffer, for her own sake. She's so grateful for Marcus, who won't have his own sense of loss or worry about how it might affect the now, other than the part where she, where all of them hurt.

The storm of weeping is long and intense, and by the time she can finally draw breath, Sabrina can barely stand.

"I don't know," she hiccups, "what to do."

"For now, you let us take care of you," he answers, meaning himself and Dan, Salem and Trass. Her friends. Anyone who is willing and he's sure there are many. There's nothing else to be done. Though they all love her, they can't fix this, they can't bring Nick back or take away her pain, and so Marcus just leads Sabrina toward the living room, toward the sofa, where he helps her sit down.

"Just rest for now," he says, sitting with her. "You're exhausted."

Sabrina leans into his side, feeling the tears on her face again, even if her breathing has slowed and evened out. "I dozed with Charlie and Rosie a bit, none of us slept, I think. Somehow it seems worse to go to sleep and wake up, and know he's gone."

After having done a slow, loud circuit of the house, Salem joins the both of them on the couch, making certain to march across Marcus's lap before curling up in Sabrina's.

"How did you do it?"

To this day, Marcus isn't entirely sure how he did it. By the grace of God, most likely, and by the hands of his friends. By the care of Neil and Kat, who made sure he ate and showered and lived his life as best as he could in the moment.

"I trusted those close to me," he says. "Not all that long ago, I would have shut myself away, but instead I asked Neil and Kat to come. They stayed with me. I think they got me through."

He certainly hadn't done anything special himself. It was really all down to them.

[after; marcus]

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