#dawnning

“Felix, you tit,” Sarah snaps, seeing the text notification on her phone, “you can’t just ring all of bloody Clone Club for drinks; what the hell will Bobbi think?”

“She’s known us for years - served me my first legal drink, as you may recall - what’s she gonna do: call the cops because we discovered you’re actually a triplet?”

Felix grabs her round the shoulders, his thumbs digging hard into the muscle, and Sarah wonders briefly, absently, when exactly his hands got so big.

He shakes her, he hugs her, he shakes her again, and Sarah thinks she hears - somewhere, far off - the whisper of a question, or maybe several, “What the hell were you doing all the way out here, Huxley station, are you out of your bloody mind, how much have you had to drink?” all rattled off within the space of a breath.

She glances over her shoulder, towards the railing and the tracks below, towards where Beth had just been and gone, and wonders, seriously, whether she’s absolutely lost her mind.

139. You are filthy with your victory.

–

Another Friday night, another set of bloodied knuckles and bruised cheekbones and a split lip, another victorious grin as Sarah slips in through Felix’s open window (his is right next to the tree, so she has to make her escapes and entries through his bedroom).

Felix can’t ignore the bitter taste in his mouth as he cleans up her cuts and scrapes, trying not to grimace as she describes every deplorable act in tonight’s series of fistfights; finally, he drops his hands (and hers) and glares right into her face.

“And what happens when - not if, when - you lose, Sarah? What happens when it’s your face pummeled into the pavement or your unconscious body in the gutter? You make me sick,” but what he doesn’t say is just how much of that sickness is from worry.

75. The prospect of dying sounds absurd.

–

Sarah’s first real beating comes as a surprise - especially since she’d always done the beating before, since most people could barely touch her without hitting the ground immediately afterwards - and it’s one that Felix can’t bring himself to chide: he suddenly finds that he’s terrified.

Sarah’s limp is so pronounced that she has to stagger in (loudly) through the front door, sagging against the door jamb, a hand pressed to her ribs, upper lip gleaming with fresh blood from her nose, bruises beginning to bloom on her cheeks and neck and around both eyes.

Felix had never seriously considered the fact that one day, Sarah might not come home - and little did he know that the first time, that first egress, would come just days later when Sarah decided to skip town to avoid the boys who did this to her (at least until she was recovered enough to give it back and more).

4. Live in the world you’ve made.

–

Felix can’t decide whether to grin or snarl or grimace or merely cock an eyebrow; being presented with Sarah bloody Manning in the flesh, in his favorite seedy bar (ignoring the fact that it was her favorite seedy bar first), smelling and sounding and looking so achingly familiar (and yet not, somehow older and strange and distant in a way he can’t quite place), has thrown Felix alarmingly off course.

He agrees with S, he didn’t use to, but after the shite Sarah pulled with that last disappearance, how could he not?

Sarah won’t ever get to see Kira again, at least not if S has anything to say about it, and Felix isn’t necessarily sure that’s a bad thing, even as he wraps his sister in a big hug and endures her sloppy kisses and melts with just how much he fucking missed her.

192. He is not a real person.

–

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, Sarah, "Felix mutters, giving her half-packed bag a kick, "and with him, of all people: Vic the Dick…”

Sarah rounds on him, but her glare softens at the sight of his rounded shoulders and his slight pout; she gives his arm a playful punch, replying, “It’s only for the night, yeah?”

And then she doesn’t come back and Felix can’t help but wonder, as the months tick by, whether Vic the Dick finally became a very real threat.

Felix finds Sarah crushed between two strangers, all hands, lips, and the slice of exposed skin above her hips; she’s giddy with too much alcohol, and he’s suddenly angry - so, so very angry.

He shoves his way between them, extracting Sarah with a hand around her bicep, dragging her free of the throng and out into the cold night, her protests falling on deaf ears.

By the time Felix releases her, the anger has simmered away (he remembers the bruises she used to get in the same place his fingers dug in), and he wraps her in a hug, her nose pressing almost painfully against his shoulder, reminding him that she’s still here: real and solid and his.