Normally, Sophie was pretty well insulated from the thoughts of people milling around the city-- she'd trained at it long enough, shutting the noise and smells and sights out, and the Academy, though unfamiliar, had the small blessing of its protections, everything beyond the fence shut out in more ways than one.
There were exceptions. Sophie had an ominous feeling settle into her chest early in the day, stubborn and unshakeable; she hadn't had any flashes of precognition since before the attacks on her people, and had hoped then it meant no more trouble was coming for them. The more likely answer had been trauma, and that enough had been broken off and lost that some part of Sophie had turned back in on itself, to sleep until she needed it again, maybe, or to die. But this was familiar. Someone was in trouble. It wasn't making itself clear to her how, yet, or what, if anything, Sophie could do about it, but she'd known as sure as she knew her own self that something bad was making its way towards her friends, her family, her house.
She was braced in the way that only people who know what the worst that could come looked like ever braced themselves, nervously checking her phone-- no news from Lisbeth, nothing about Ayala-- no new messages at all-- waiting for the other shoe to drop. The catalyst. No one else seemed to be as distracted as she was, but the feeling snowballed, and Sophie stayed close to home, even as everyone else scattered to their day jobs, their classes, errands, and friends. Here. It will be here. Be ready. You need to be here. So when he crossed the gate, the flood of all the quiet whispering feelings Sophie'd been having suddenly tuned into crisp focus, loudloudloud bloodbloodblood and familiar, and Sophie felt a sick lurch in her stomach-- she hadn't anticipated this, she wasn’t ready, she wasn’t prepared for more loss-- "Gixx."
Sophie dropped the laundry she'd been folding, scarcely registering the basket spilling over onto the floor, sprinting down the hallway of the girls' dormitories past the paintings and echoes of secrets bound up in the drywall, shoving through doorways and focusing in on the knot of pain and drive and the taste of blood that marked Gixx's mind on the porch, past the foyer, into the parlor.
Even with all that, it took seeing him to fully process that all that, that he was even there to hear, meant Gixx wasn't dead. It felt like another punch to the gut, and Sophie's hands started shaking, and she froze, pausing for a split-second in the doorway. Her go-to worry was death; it always had been, but never moreso than now, and it was a terrible thing to realize had been strangling her only now that it had loosened enough for her to breathe a little easier. "I felt you coming," she managed to get out, and ran the rest of the way to him, red-stained and injured and not at all out of the woods even in the safety of the witches' cottage.
Gixx was wounded. Sophie wasn't a healer, and didn't even know what to begin checking, or how. Her thoughts flared crackling and vicious and spanned as far as she could reach for a moment, searching for whatever or whoever had done the damage-- it wouldn't have followed him, but if it had-- it would be very, very sorry, very shortly. Sophie wasn't satisfied, but that wasn't the priority; so, she recoiled the skein of her mind back in from the angry probing wave it had cast, and reminded herself, again, to breathe. That he wasn't dead. That this wasn't a battlefield. That no one was here but her, and him, and this was the closest to safe they could get. "You're alive," Sophie said, though she wasn't sure if the reassurance was directed at Gixx or at herself. She clutched one of his hands, and, not entirely sure why, brought it up to her own face, kissed the palm of it, pressed it against her cheek. You’re not alone. You’re alive. He’s alive. He’s not going anywhere. "I should-- Gixx. You need help. I should call somebody. You're hurt."
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