Ababa

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.

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.

“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. 

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.

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