forthsofar | oh when the clouds swirl and all the world is waking with the wind

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neil

oh when the clouds swirl and all the world is waking with the wind

It's only once it's all over, once Nick's been delivered into the far more capable hands of a doctor at Darrow General and there's nothing to do but wait and hope, that Rosie lets herself think about going back home. She could stay, she knows; clean off the dried and drying streaks of blood on her skin as well as she can in the bathroom by the emergency waiting room, look for something clean to wear in the hospital gift shop, stay with the remainder of the same small group that had convened outside the bar only a few hours ago. Maybe she even should, but the thought of a shower, of clean clothes that are her own, of seeing Neil and knowing that everything they'd just done had kept him safe too--all of that is enough to make up her mind.

She makes Charlie promise to text once there's more news, promising him in turn that she'll come back as soon as she can. Someone drives her to Candlewood, drops her at the door. There's a long mirror on one of the lobby walls by the elevator, some attempt at elegance or class that doesn't really fit with the rest of the building; spotted and streaked though it is, it's clear enough that Rosie gets her first proper look at herself. What she sees--rust-colored smears on her forehead and shins, hands gone crimson, stains on her blouse and skirt--makes her go pale and sends her stomach lurching unpleasantly. When the elevator chimes open, it's empty, a small miracle that she doesn't dare question, and she rides up to the eighth floor in silence.

Rosie unlocks the door to the flat, slipping inside as quietly as she can. Now, she just needs to get to the bathroom, get the door locked behind her and the shower on without Neil realizing she'd ever been gone in the first place. Once she's clean, she'll be able to face him, to start explaining what still seems to her more than a little unexplainable.

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Neil doesn't know what is happening, but he knows something is.

It began during the run of the Shakespeare plays, a couple weeks ago now. He thinks of how effusive and kind Nick was, the first few times they really talked, and then he thinks of the strangely cold, dismissive boy that played Oberon, and he knows that something happened. He knows, through gossip in the other actors, that something happened between Nick and Sabrina, and there was definitely the word break up--which strikes Neil odd, because he knows Sabrina and Charlie were together; was she seeing Nick to the side? And he remembers Rosie coming home one evening, quiet and rattled, but unwilling to speak of what happened, so he hadn't pressed.

But he's been on the cusp of things. He's not sure if that's because he's older than the lot of them or if it's because he's just not knotted in the same way they are to each other. In any case, he knows something's wrong.

So when Rosie's out and Neil can't get a hold of her, he worries. He tries texting her. He paces. He calls Harry just to have a calming voice tell him not to worry, though he knows that's a silly thing to make him do.

Nothing's coming back that she's gone--no unknown number responses to the texts or anything like that--so all Neil can do is fret, until she finally walks through the door. He doesn't even see the blood at first. He's just overwhelmed to see her. He launches out of the couch and strides across the room to the door, hauling her into a hug.

"Jesus Christ," he breathes against her hair.

She has a brief, hysterical thought--No, Neil, as much the opposite of that as you can get--that's followed soon enough by ones more practical, apologies for the mess or for stealing away almost all of their dishtowels from the kitchen, warnings that he probably doesn't want to be holding her as tightly as he is right now. She doesn't say any of them out loud, just melts into the circle of his arms, her eyes filling with tears.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," she says, sagging a little against his chest as he keeps holding her. "All of us are, I promise, we're..." She sniffles. "It's not my blood."

She sags into him, and he loosens his grip a little but not enough to let her slump or anything. He just needs to take a look at her, which is hard when he's holding her like some sort of lifeline.

And then she says that and Neil utters quite possibly the most hysterical noise he's made since he arrived in Darrow over two years ago.

"Whose is it?"

Her nerves are so frazzled, so completely shot, that she only just manages not to burst out laughing when he makes that strangled, frantic sound. "Nick's," she says, looking up at him as much as she can with how they're pressed together. It's not the complete answer, she knows; there'd been blood slicking the floorboards before the fighting had begun, a pile of...something behind the bar that Rosie had only glimpsed briefly--and even that had nearly made her turn and be sick--but it's true enough.

"He's...we took him to hospital, he's still there, Charlie said he'd text when there was more news." She takes another shaky breath, feeling herself start to tremble as everything catches up with her again. Or maybe that's him. Maybe that's both of them. "Sabrina had to stab him, to...to save him, to save Darrow. I'm sorry, none of this is making any sense, I know, I'm sorry."

"Jesus Christ," Neil mutters again, like it makes any difference. He remembers so many people being haunted by nightmares, and the terror of being taken up the mountain, and somehow this is all so, so much worse than any of that. Of course it is. He rather likes Nick, and he knows Rosie does too--a fact that had put a damper on his own liking, for the better--and so of course knowing anything bad has happened is a terrifying prospect.

He considers her for a second. One thing at a time.

"I'll help you wash up," he says, a clinical, friendly offer because at least he can assure that he's got no interest in her like that. "Or you can and I'll make you something hot and strong to drink. I think you need it."

"I can manage a shower by myself," Rosie promises him, though it comes out sounding more unsteady than she'd have liked. At least from where they're standing, it's not that far a trip to the bathroom. Reluctantly, she starts to pull away, out of the close, protective circle of his arms. In what feels like the first bit of good fortune she's had all day, the blood that's on her clothes had dried enough that none of it's visible on Neil's shirt, and Rosie breathes a soft, relieved sigh.

"I'll...I'll shower, and change, and then I'll tell you everything. Over the strongest, hottest drink you can make, because you're right." Somehow, she manages to smile. "I need that more than anything."

"Okay," Neil says. He sounds shaky, frightened, but he could do this and Rosie could too. She has a plan in motion, and he helps to straighten her up a little bit so she can head toward the bathroom.

Once she's under her own momentum, he heads into the kitchen. A hysterical, idiotic part of himself wants to text Gabriel or Harry or Poison, Guy maybe since both he and Rosie know him, just to have some second voice of reason and a person that will be willing and able to act as balm for the both of them.

He doesn't. He sets the kettle up, grabs the tea out of the pantry and a bottle of gin out of one of the cabinets. For a moment he stands there stupidly as well. With the water going, he's got nothing to occupy his racing thoughts.

Rosie goes into the bathroom, pressing the lock on the door once it's shut--and only realizing after it's happened that she'd even done it in the first place. She leaves it and strips, cranking the water as high and hot as it'll go before pulling the shower curtain to the side and stepping in.

She's only sick once, when a clot of something dislodges and falls from her hair. As quietly as she can manage, she turns to vomit over the drain so it's washed down almost as soon as it's out.

After she's clean, the water running clear rather than red, Rosie stays beneath the spray for a few minutes, unwilling to give up the warmth and enclosure of their narrow bathroom. She'd made a promise, she knows, and it's one she intends to keep. No matter how hard it is. After another minute, she reaches out and turns off the water. Getting her towel from the rack, she dries off, then wraps it around herself and unlocks the bathroom door again, stopping just before she drops her bloodied clothes in the hamper. She takes them to her room instead, putting them in a corner for the time being, then gets dressed in a loose t-shirt and a pair of her pajama pants.

Padding back down the hallway, Rosie goes to the kitchen and back to Neil's side. "Thank you," she says, sounding somehow old and extremely young at the same time. She wraps her arms around him again, holding tight.

Neil half turns in her grip and wraps her in a tight hug. He's still rattled, but trying desperately to hold it all in. This isn't about him. He's trying to be better--a better friend, a better person--than he's been at previous moment. This is a time when Rosie needs nothing besides support.

Still, these are his friends too, or at least they're close enough that he considers them friends. And it's terrifying, after everything else they've all gone through.

"Let's sit down. Tea's almost done steeping. It's chamomile. I've got gin for it."

Rosie nods her agreement at the suggestion, even as she stays clinging to him for another minute or two. She's numb and frantic all at once, feeling herself on the edge of crying or screaming or laughing like a maniac or simply falling into a shocked and prolonged silence, unsure what part of that is going to win out once she starts talking. After spending so long pushing it all away as best as she can, focusing only on the grim immediacy of each task before her--save Nick, stop the bleeding, get him to the truck, to the hospital, to someone who knows what they're doing--it seems as though any of them might be possible.

Eventually, she lets go, pushing up onto her toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. "On the sofa?" she suggests, taking one of the mugs from the counter. The small table and chairs they'd set up in the corner of the kitchen is closer, but less comfortable, making her decision an easy one. On a day like this, and for a conversation like the one she's about to have, she thinks they'll both need all the comfort they can get.

After letting Neil pour a more-than-healthy slug of gin into her tea, Rosie moves to the living room, trusting him to follow. When she sits on the couch, it's with her back pressed to the juncture of the sofa arm and the back cushion, something a little cradling and secure. As she waits for him to settle, she takes a sip of her tea, grimacing a little at the grassy and slightly medicinal taste of the chamomile and gin combined.

"I'm not sure what the best way to start is going to be," she admits, looking over at Neil. "But I'll just...it's all going to sound completely mad, and I'm sorry for that, but it's going to be true. All of it."

Neil does follow, putting onto a tray his own mug, the teapot, and the bottle of gin. He grabs the container of Darrow-brand fig newtons (figgy-rollups, what a ridiculous name) from the pantry shelf near the entrance to the kitchen, and brings them along too.

When they've settled, he lets her figure out how she wants to preface. The idea that whatever this all is will sound mad almost makes him laugh.

"Rosie," he said softly, "we live in a pocket universe filled with people from all over time and space. There were manifested nightmares a few months back. We were both kidnapped by some sort of snow-devil or whatever. There's--I mean, I can handle a lot of crazy. You know? It's awful, but I don't think I can get surprised anymore."

He sipped his tea, also heavily doctored with gin, and then took one of her hands to squeeze gently. "Just...start at the beginning."

Though it's all gently meant and she knows it, Rosie can't help a slight prickle of annoyance at the way he seems to explain the oddity that is Darrow to her. Of course it's a strange place, with bizarre and often-frightening things happening every day; if anything, she thinks that ought to add an extra emphasis to the fact she's even cautioning him in the first place about everything that happened with--and to--Nick. This had gone beyond anything she'd ever expected of the city, and with Nick still in the hospital, it's not even truly done yet.

She lets it go, this brief irritation, too tired and grateful for Neil's company to maintain it for long. "I know," she says, squeezing his hand back. "I just had to say it, before anything else."

Taking another sip of her tea, Rosie considers where and how to begin. "As far as Sabrina was able to determine--she did a spell, a week or so ago, after Nick broke up with her." She doesn't bother trying to explain the web of Sabrina's relationships; it's not really hers to discuss, after all, nor is it particularly important in the larger scope of all she has to tell. "As far as she could tell, last month Nick got one of those horrible little gifts Darrow decides to send sometimes, something from home. In his case, it was this...magical device. She called it an Acheron Configuration. It's a kind of puzzle box, I think? But it can also be used to...to keep things locked up." Rosie shudders faintly. "Like a prison. And when this thing got to Darrow, and when Nick found it, it broke and let out what was inside."

She stops, already frustrated with herself for talking around the biggest piece of the story, muddying the details for her own comfort. If she's going to do this, she has to do it properly. "Not what. Who." Rosie looks up at Neil, her face pale but utterly serious. "It was the devil. Lucifer, Satan, whatever you want to call it. The actual devil, and he broke out of the Acheron and...took Nick over."

Neil shuts up. He can see the momentary frustration, and he knows he has that terrible habit, and so he holds his mug and lets her speak, because she knows. The horrors they've been through, and more than that all these things she's just been through. So he sits and lets her talk.

It doesn't really make sense. Puzzle boxes and things inside them, prisons. The Devil, but that doesn't make any sense either. Not because he doesn't believe in the Devil, that's hardly the problem. There's been too much nonsense all over this place to not believe in the Devil, though Neil still has his hesitations about God and faith and all the rest of it.

"...he was possessed?"

"Essentially," she says. Rosie can hear the faint and frightened bafflement in Neil's tone, a sound not at all dissimilar from the way she'd sounded when Sabrina had explained it all to her. In a way, it's almost a comfort. "Nick was still...I don't know if you'd call it his soul, it might be something different when it's a witch or a warlock. But everything that makes Nick who he is, it was all still there, just...shut away."

Rosie thinks of that moment in the bar, just before Sabrina plunged the lance into his side. Nick--the real Nick this time, in control of himself just long enough for the plan to work--had sounded so small and shattered, his voice raw from weeks of screaming within the confines of his own head. She looks down at her mug for a long moment, blinking away a fresh round of tears.

"At first, he tried to be Nick," she says. "To pretend and avoid suspicion, I think, while he...figured out where he'd landed. What he wanted to do, or how. He did the play, spent time with Sabrina...for god's sake, I even went to coffee with him." Rosie swallows hard, choking back a sudden wave of revulsion at the memory, hazy though it was. "Not that he was very good at any of it."

Neil thinks of Nick, meeting him at Pride and then at the start of rehearsals, and how he'd been as the plays went on, and he feels a little stupid about it. If he's honest, the shift in how he was acting had come off as stress, and there was plenty of that going around. Hot, agonizing days in the wake of the cold and stress, and Neil's not happy to admit that he was distracted, anyway.

"Managed enough," Neil points out, not a critique of Rosie or Sabrina, but of all of them in a way. And none of them. He sips his tea.

"So...so then...he stopped pretending to be Nick, he must have? And that's..." Neil looks at Rosie like he might be able to see the faint stain of blood on her. At least, he can see it in the memory, and he's not sure if that's better or worse.

"Well enough to fool us for a time," she concedes, hating herself a bit for even allowing it. No matter how true it was. Rosie takes a few more sips of tea, as much for comfort as to give herself the space to think. "He stopped pretending," she echoes, nodding once. "Or became more...himself, I guess. Cruel and hurtful, trying to destroy whatever good things he could of Sabrina's."

The way Neil looks at her then, searching and hesitant and maybe even a little afraid, settles something cold and guilty in her chest. Maybe this was too much; maybe she was going about it all wrong. But she couldn't not tell him, not when he meant so much to her, not after all the trust they'd already put in one another.

She just had to keep going, extracting it all from within herself like something foul and poisonous, and hope they'd both feel better by the end.

"Sabrina was important to him," Rosie continues. "Back in Greendale, where she and Nick are from, back in their world, there was a prophecy or something that...that Sabrina was going to bring about the apocalypse." It feels like betraying a confidence even saying that, even though it's the truth, and that cold stone of guilt inside her gets a little heavier. "It didn't work there--Sabrina and her friends stopped it from happening, I guess, but Lucifer thought maybe...maybe here, it might."

She laughs once, faint and without mirth. "Second time's the charm, maybe. So, he broke up with her as Nick, and after that's when she did that spell I told you about and found out Nick was Lucifer or Lucifer was pretending to be Nick, or--" Rosie cuts herself off, waving one hand in a frustrated, flailing gesture of impatience. "Whatever, you know what I'm trying to say." She takes another steadying drink from her mug, minding the harsh bite of the gin and the taste of the chamomile less and less the more she has of it.

"I don't know if he figured out that Sabrina was planning to try and defeat him like she did back home, or if he just decided it was time to take over Darrow, but this morning he...called to her, I suppose? Broke into some bar downtown, I don't even remember the name. But we all went with her, when it was...when it was time."

It all sounds a bit wild and mad, but like Neil's already said, this is a place full of nightmares from back home, and demons kidnapping people in the middle of snow storms, and all the other ridiculous things that happened in a place like this.

And it's terrifying. The scattered way that Rosie speaks, the obvious rattle to her nerves, and that everything was just happening around him without him knowing a thing about it.

The mention of a bar makes Neil fidget a little. He doesn't ask her what it was, because she's just said that she can't remember. Not one of the clubs, then, since they've gone to a couple of them. But he hopes it's not Harry's. He'll text him later, check in. Right now is about Rosie.

"Can I give you a hug?" he asks gently. She looks like she could use it, but she's also been through a lot just now. He doesn't want to add to the stress of everything else.

Rosie sees that twitch, brief as it is, the flash of concern for someone other than her that crosses his face. Concern for Harry, probably, or his bar or club or whatever it is he's got set up downtown. Even though there's a certain oily distantness Rosie gets from him sometimes, the few mornings their paths have happened to cross--almost like he doesn't want her around, even though he's the one in her apartment, which strikes Rosie as terribly rude--she knows Neil cares about him.

It wasn't his bar. Or, she doesn't think it was. She wishes she could be sure.

There's a reassurance on her tongue, something vague given her uncertainty but meant to soothe and calm; then Neil speaks instead, and the question's barely out before she's nodding. "Please," she says, again sounding so very young and so terribly old all at once. Setting aside her mug, she all but climbs into the circle of Neil's arms, practically into his lap. It's close and intimate and if it were almost anyone else, she might have been embarrassed by how desperately needy it is. Right now, it's very hard to care.

"I know it was so much worse for Sabrina," she says, her face buried in Neil's shoulder as he holds her. "She was the one who had to stab him, stab her boyfriend, but...after it was done, Charlie and I had to try to keep Nick alive and that was..." Rosie lets out a small, broken sob. "There was so much blood, and everything I did just seemed to hurt him further."

Neil wraps her up tight, holds her close, presses a kiss against her head. He holds her, lets her sit on his lap and just tangles up with her like he can take the hurt and terror away. He can't, but he can share it, while she murmurs the horrors she's gone through and seen.

His fingers tangle into her curls and he rocks them both gently, closing his eyes. It's a touch that his mother used to give him, until he was too old for it. It's one that Charlie gave him back at Welton on more than one occasion, when things became too much and there was nothing else but to be held and cry as quietly as he could.

"But...he's okay now?" They got him to a hospital, and he's as okay as he can be, until they know different. "So you didn't hurt him more. You helped him. You all did."

She cries a little as she's held, her tears spotting the soft fabric of Neil's shirt, but there's something a little cleansing about it after everything that's happened today. When he sways, she moves with him, letting the motion soothe her further along with the touch of his fingers in her hair. If all of it reminds her of other small moments of gentleness in the aftermath of something awful only a few months ago, of being held close by a different boy until she fell asleep in his arms--and if that reminder sparks some kind of realization--it's only distant for now.

"He's okay now," she says, echoing Neil's words like the repetition will make them true. "Or will be, I think. They had to...I think he'll need to rest at home for a time, let the stitches heal, but." She sniffles. "Better than the alternative." That Nick's still alive at all still seems to her more due to the work of the doctors than her own clumsy attempts, but she doesn't have the energy, or the will, to argue with Neil about it now.

Lifting her head from his shoulder, she smudges a kiss against his cheek instead. "Thank you for this."

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oh when the clouds swirl and all the world is waking with the wind

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