how can you change what is altered

[forthsofar]

Somehow, she manages to stop the bleeding, that strip of sailcloth turning into as close to a lifeline as it's possible for a thing to be. A group of them get Jamie to the ship, to something approximating safety; the pirates have seen this kind of injury before, and know more than the rest of them what to do. It's so easy to let them take control of the situation, to salvage from it what they can.

Clothes splashed with blood, Rosie wanders belowdeck, passing hammocks and coils of rope until she finds a hidden nook in the ribs of the ship. It's narrow and shadowed, barely large enough for her to fit inside, but she climbs in and sits, folding her arms around her bent knees to make herself just that much smaller. She stays there, numb and silent and waiting for whatever happens next. Her eyes close, just for a minute.

When they open again, it's to the sight of a stark white ceiling and a fluorescent light so bright it almost shocks her. There's a slow, steady beeping coming from somewhere nearby, the strange sensation of tape against the back of one of her hands keeping something in place. She lies there in confusion for another moment more, then tries to sit up, the motion slow and full of so much effort she shakes with it.

"What..." she starts, looking to one side of the bed--the hospital bed, she's at a hospital now, somehow--and then the other. "What happened to the ship?"

Comments

[forthsofar]

It's Darrow's doing and not her own, Rosie knows, but to see Sabrina's face crumple just that little bit still sends a stab of guilt through her. She'd never meant to worry any of them this badly. Once Sabrina gets into the bed, she curls in against her, the careful enfolding circle of the other girl's arms protective in a way that she needs right now.

"I don't know," she says, the unsteady swells of her emotions making her more bluntly honest than she might have been otherwise. "I feel...I know I'm alright, the doctors said as much, but I still remember everything that happened, how horrible it was, how..." She sniffles again, cheek pressed to the soft fabric of Sabrina's shirt. "I was only asleep for two days, but it felt like weeks."

[signed_sabrina]

Having Rosie awake and in her arms soothes a multitude of wounds, and though Sabrina's initially almost ginger about gathering her up, when it's clear that she can hold Rosie as tightly as she'd like, she does so. She presses her mouth against Rosie's temple, to her hair, to her forehead, as her hands smooth up and down her arms and back.

"I heard that's part of it, another one of these things that happen here sometimes. They said you'd be safe, but safe isn't everything. Were you alone?"

It's utterly terrifying, to have her Rosie, her Rosie who she feels so much like protecting from small things like asshole jocks at school, suffering beyond her grasp, and Sabrina tells herself she's not about to cry, not with Rosie needing her. "I'm so sorry, Rosie, I'm so sorry it happened."

[forthsofar]

"I know you are," Rosie says, her voice only cracking a little. "It's not your fault, I know you know that, please know that, but I'm sorry it happened too." She's careful still, but there's something almost fierce in the way Sabrina runs her hands over her, kissing every part of her she can reach. She stays tucked tightly against the other girl's chest, sinking into the contact, letting Sabrina reassure them both that her Rosie was unscathed and whole. It helps, even as it makes her think of the last glimpse she'd had of Jamie there on the ship; the ruin of where his hand had been.

She was safe, she was whole, and all she could do was hope that he had woken up in the same state.

"Safe isn't everything," she agrees softly, unable to hold back the shudder that runs through her. "It wasn't...I might've been safe here, but not there. None of us were." Rosie moves just enough to look up at Sabrina, her own dark eyes watery and full of grief. "When that happens, when people...fall asleep like that, like I did, it seems they go someplace that's not Darrow. Usually somewhere that's somebody's home, wherever they were before they came here." She exhales shakily, then continues. "This time, it was the island Jamie lived on, before he arrived in Darrow."

[signed_sabrina]

"I know, I know," Sabrina murmurs, hands moving like she might be able to further gather Rosie too her, her own limbs wrapping around her. "I wanted to try something, anything, but we were too afraid of what would happen if the magics didn't mix." She thinks her heart might break a little when Rosie looks up with those wet, sorrowful eyes, and she kisses the delicate skin there, just above the apples of her cheeks.

She's quiet, then, trying to think it through. "Jamie's a good person, so I suppose I forgive him," she says, neither serious or joking completely. "What wasn't safe? There's something about him-- he seems like he's been through a lot. I suppose you got to go through it too, didn't you?"

[forthsofar]

Rosie makes a small, heartbroken sound at those two light kisses, and all the gentleness contained therein. She'd needed that time with Nick earlier, just the two of them together while Sabrina and Charlie slept on nearby, but she needs this too. She loves them all so much, and the loss of that for so long--she knows it had only been a matter of days here, but that doesn't matter to her, only the way it had felt at the time--had left a hollowness inside her that she's desperate to fill.

"Don't be cross with him, please," she says, even knowing that Sabrina doesn't entirely mean it. "It wasn't good, what happened to all of us, but for him..." She has to stop, swallowing hard against the sudden lurch of her stomach. "For him it was worse."

Where to start with it all feels almost too daunting for a moment. "There was someone on the Island. Peter, a...a boy Jamie was friends with for a time, the person who brought Jamie there in the first place." She doesn't say Peter Pan, doesn't call the island Neverland, not knowing whether it's anything more than a story to Sabrina. Until Jamie, she hadn't ever considered it might have been real. "He's sort of...in charge there, I guess. Thinks he can do whatever he wants, and what he wants is...is to be cruel." She thinks of Peter's sharp, feral little face, the tiny pearls of his teeth and the chill look in his eyes.

"We played along with it for a few days," she continues, pulling the story out of herself bit by bit. It's easier to do, now she's held safe in Sabrina's arms. "Made sure to stay out of Peter's way when we could. Be pleasant to him, when that wasn't possible. But eventually, he tried to go after Jamie, tried to hurt him, and we had to run." Rosie takes as deep and steadying a breath as possible, steeling herself for the next part of the story. "We escaped to a beach, fell in with...well, with a band of pirates, mad as it sounds. But Peter found us, and he and Jamie fought, and--"

Her voice frays and falters, and she turns her face into Sabrina's chest as though it could hide her from the rest of what she needs to say. "And he cut off Jamie's h-hand."

[signed_sabrina]

"I can't be angry with him," Sabrina assures her. "I won't be. I know what it's like to have the place you're from," because she can't manage to call it home anymore, "wrap around the people you love here, to try to hurt you by hurting them."

She's quiet as she listens, stroking Rosie's arms, her shoulders, her back.

"Do we need to check on Jamie? He-- he's still at the Home, right? They'd take care of him. And it seems like this place, just-- to have you all afraid and in danger, but safe here, like a bad dream." She tightens her hold on the other girl. "Salem's been beside himself. They won't let him in here. He could go to the Home."

She blinks.

"Did you all fight Peter Pan?"

[forthsofar]

Rosie nods, thinking of the long month that last August had been--for all of them, but Sabrina and Nick especially--and the way one of the worst parts of Sabrina's world had come quite literally to Darrow to roost, to walk a new land in the skin of someone they all cared for. If that never happened again, it would be far too soon.

"Poor Salem," she murmurs, her mouth curving in a small and fond smile at the thought of his concern for her. Even before she'd known quite what he was, Rosie tried to treat him with as much affection and respect as she felt a witch's familiar deserved, and clearly the sentiment was reciprocated, in Salem's own way. "If he can find any news about Jamie, make sure he's..." She trails off, her throat gone tight with worry and misery again. "Make sure it really was all a bad dream, that nothing got...left behind on that island, I'd want to know." Sabrina's arms are tight around her, holding her fast, and Rosie feels more protected than she has in days.

She loves them all, so much.

There's disbelief in the question Sabrina asks next, and that's understandable; despite blundering back home into what she's still certain was some manifestation of the Professor's lifelong work of fiction, Rosie still hadn't thought Neverland or Peter Pan could be real until she'd felt the dirt of the place beneath her feet and seen that hideous, horrible boy go soaring through the air. "Yes," she says simply, because there's no other answer it's possible to give. "Jamie doesn't know it's all a...a story to a lot of us, of course, but for him it was real life. Peter Pan, Neverland, the Lost Boys. All of it."

[signed_sabrina]

"I'll have him do that," she promises, knowing that Salem is likely in the tree nearest to this very room, feeling very surly about being stuck in cat form again. "He likes Jamie, I think, or at least never complained about him."

Sabrina can't really help the way she continues to fuss over the girl in her arms, pressing kisses to her face, smoothing her hair from her neck to kiss her there too, almost feline herself in the need to make sure Rosie's alright.

"I can't imagine," she murmurs, not knowing the depth of dramatic irony in her words, "what it would be like to find out so many people know that about you."

[forthsofar]

"It'd be terribly unnerving, wouldn't it?" she agrees, sounding just a bit more like her old self. "Finding out that you weren't anything but a character in some book to people. I wouldn't like it at all." She wonders again about Anterwold, recalling the headache she'd caused herself afterwards, wondering if the place existed because Lytten had written it or the other way round. Maybe it didn't matter, if both ideas were equally as disquieting--and they were, on a certain level.

She lets Sabrina kiss her as much as she wants, leaning into each brush of her lips or touch of her hand as if to reinforce the contact, to assure her friend again and again that her Rosie is back and alive and completely safe.

"Thank you all for staying," she says, nestling against Sabrina's chest. Her eyes close for a moment, and she just lets herself breathe. "For making sure I wasn't alone."