forthsofar | Entries tagged with nick

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?"

She's kept quiet about it. Not because of any worry or concern, not because she feels as though she's done anything wrong--indeed, in a way this feels the furthest thing from incorrect. There's just been a lot to think about, thoughts and feelings and needs that she's been turning over in her head and trying to parse out on her own before she brings them up with either Nick or Sabrina. She'll need to, because they're the cause of it all, the ones that sparked that odd blossoming warmth within her as they asked questions that held just the barest edge of command behind them.

It could be that she's understanding it all wrong, her relative inexperience turning words murmured in the heat of passion into something that feels more weighty than it is. But somehow, she doesn't think so. Whether she's misunderstood or not, though, Rosie wants to be sure of herself, and sure of what she wants. As she'd been told before, so many times, that's the only way this works.

After a few days of thought, she's ready to open the conversation, and given that they already had plans this afternoon, Nick seems the perfect person to start with. Settled on his couch and entwined under a blanket, they watch--well, mostly--the season premiere of that awful witch show Nick had fallen in love with during his convalescence, the both of them laughing and shouting things at the screen. Once it's over, Rosie reaches for the remote control, clicking the television off.

"Nick," she says softly, a flutter of uncertainty starting up in the pit of her stomach, something she tries to ignore. She turns in his arms until she can press a kiss to his mouth. "Could I...there's something I wanted to talk to you about." Realizing how that might sound only once it's out, her eyes widen, just slightly. "Something...I think it's something good, I promise."

Just like last year, the return of Movies in the Park was one of the main topics of chatter that day at school: groups of people making plans or shouting lines back and forth at one another in the hallway; gossip about who was going with whom (or who might say they were going and forgo the movie for other, more private entertainments); a few intensely enthusiastic people from the AV club discussing going in costume as one character or another. Strange though it was, as Darrow traditions went it seemed, at least, fairly innocuous. Especially after the summer that’s just passed, things like that seemed more and more of a rarity the longer she stayed in the city.

For a moment, Rosie considers attending herself, but when she hears that Charlie and Sabrina had already made plans to go--and that the movie scheduled for tonight was one of the blood-soaked horror films Sabrina loved so much--it’s all too easy for her to drop the idea entirely. Her offer to spend the evening at Nick’s is met with a lack of resistance, especially from Sabrina, that she might have thought suspicious under any other circumstance. Relieved as she is at having avoided a night of watching wholesale cinematic slaughter, though, she barely pauses to question it.

Hardly notices, too, the slight spark in Sabrina’s eye and the quiet look of planning both her best friends exchange as they turn away at the end of the lunch period.

When she gets to Chelsea that night, it’s just in time to say a quick hello in the lobby to Sabrina and Charlie on their way out. They’d done things like this on numerous occasions over the last two weeks, briefly checking in or updating one another on how Nick was feeling; this time, at least, it’s for a slightly lighter and easier reason. Rosie waves them happily out the front door of the building, then takes the familiar elevator ride up to the top floor and lets herself in to Nick’s apartment.

“Shift change,” she calls out to him, laughing a little. “Let me just put my bag down, and then I’ll be…” She trails off, noticing the neat pile of things on the coffee table: takeout menus, DVD cases with cover art that looks nearly as lurid and gory as that of the movie playing in the park, even a set of disposable cups and plates and a folded picnic blanket. And, prominently displayed, a note in Sabrina’s familiar handwriting exhorting them both to Have fun tonight!

“Oh, good grief.”

With Sabrina still recovering from all she'd had to do to save everybody, they set up a bit of a rotation in her stead, the two of them; quiet and watchful and dedicated, making sure that Nick's not left alone until she can be at his side. Rosie gets to the apartment as soon as she can, letting Charlie go to see Sabrina or head home to Newt and Kavinsky, and he does the same for her, letting her check back in with Neil. It works, because it has to.

When she arrives, Nick's sleeping--or maybe drifting, dosed up with the pills they'd given him at the hospital. Rosie checks on him, just to make sure, then busies herself with things she knows are just helpful distractions: washing the dishes they'd dirtied already; separating out the few real pieces of mail from the junk and advertisements that had piled up in what she carefully thought of as Nick's absence; staring at the book she'd brought with her and managing only to read the same two sentences, over and over again. She's putting on water for tea when she hears him start to stir. Carefully, she goes down the hallway and stops in the doorway to his room, looking in on him lying on the bed.

Something about the juxtaposition feels familiar, if distantly, a connection her mind tries to grasp and can't. She'd done this a few times already since Nick had come home, after all; that might be all it is.

"I'm here," she says, smiling faintly. "The kettle's on, if...there'll be tea, soon."

There's so much less she can do, in comparison, and Rosie knows that all too well. No magical shattering of bone, no cold and swirling wind, no holding him resolutely in place with the clench of a fist or a murmured string of Latin. All she really has is her anger and shock that it had happened at all, that Nick had been--could ever be--so vile about it.

It's not much, not at all. But maybe it's enough. She owes it to Sabrina to try, at the very least.

She doesn't really have a plan, either, something she only thinks about once she's stormed into the lobby of Nick's building and stabbed her finger viciously at the call button for the elevator. Maybe she doesn't need one. Maybe all she needs is her fury, her love for Sabrina...and the key she still has, silver and shining, on the keyring in her purse. Once the elevator comes and she gets inside, she works the key off the ring; if nothing else, she'll just throw it at him. It's not like she'll need it ever again.

Rosie arrives at the tenth floor, charging out and down the hallway. She doesn't even hesitate, just unlocks Nick's door and flings it wide. The lights are on, dim and golden in the living room and bedroom, signs that he has to be here--not that she wouldn't have waited, seething and furious, until he arrived back home again.

"Nicholas," she snaps, in a voice that for a minute sounds far too commanding to be her own. In any other circumstance, it might have made her smile. "Get out here and explain yourself immediately."

[[tw for gaslighting & dubious consent in the thread]]

There was nothing wrong, exactly, with the furniture in their new apartment. Some of it came with the unit, while others were ones Neil planned to bring one floor down from his old, smaller place. All serviceable, even if some of it was a little plain. It’s just that none of it was hers, a realization that only struck Rosie once her few belongings from the Home--all she had in the city, all she had in the world--were packed up in a dismally small amount of boxes in the corner of the dormitory, awaiting transport to Candlewood the next day.

She’d gone out then, intending only to spend an hour or so in the Törgt showroom--just to look around, to get some possible ideas for how to make the best of what they already had. But she’d found one piece, then another, and it had made so much sense to think about getting another bookshelf, and the desk chair in her bedroom wasn’t comfortable at all… Before long, Rosie had a slip of paper scribbled with product code numbers and a growing awareness of two things: she was about to spend a truly breathtaking amount of money, and she hadn’t the slightest idea how she was going to get any of the things she planned to buy home with her on the bus.

“You know, we offer a delivery service,” said one of the salespeople standing nearby; mostly out of helpfulness, Rosie hoped, than a slightly grasping desire to take advantage of her clearly overwhelmed state. Whatever the impetus, though, the suggestion was a good one, and she followed him to the counter, coming away a few minutes (and several hundred dollars) later with all her furniture ordered and a FLÅTTEPÄK delivery scheduled for tomorrow.

The next day, after completing the last of her discharge paperwork with Matron Robin and getting David’s help to move her few boxes from the Home to the apartment, Rosie settled in, listening for the sound of the buzzer as she made space for the things she’d so impulsively purchased. It took less time than she expected. Going to the door, she opened it wide, pausing at the sight that greeted her: not a hallway full of burly movers toting furniture, but one single, slightly weedy-looking deliveryman with a pushcart full of long, flat boxes.

“You Wilson?” he asked, starting to pull the dolly past her into the apartment. “Got your Törgt stuff, where’dya want it?”

“I think there’s been a mistake,” she said, utterly baffled as the man started piling the boxes in the middle of the living room floor. “I ordered...I ordered quite a lot of furniture, what is this? What are you doing?”

“Yeah, you got the FLÅTTEPÄK service, right? That’s this. Instructions should be in each box, hardware, everything you need.” Rosie froze, staring at him in disbelieving, dawning horror, and he snorted--a reaction she found more than a little distasteful even in the midst of everything else. “Most people have fun putting it all together. It’s one of those...like a bonding experience thing. Oh, and I’m gonna need a signature, kid.”

What could she do? She signed. And then, once he had taken his cart and gone, the door shut tightly behind him, Rosie went back to the stack of boxes and burst into hysterical, embarrassed laughter. Taking out her phone, she sat down on the floor, the boxes behind her, and took a selfie, texting it out to all her friends with a brief if frantic message: Does anyone know how to build furniture? Help!!!

Before they--so reluctantly--went their separate ways, returning as best they could to the familiar patterns and places of their life before the snow and goblins and all they'd suffered, Nick had pressed a key to his apartment into her hand. She'd been confused, and pleased, and a little uncertain, but she hadn't tried to give it back. Charlie and Sabrina, of course, already had ones of their own; in a way, perhaps it made sense for her to have one too.

After everything.

She'd put it, silver and shining, on her keyring and tried not to think too much of it. If nothing else, it was sure to come in handy the next time some absurd peril descended upon the city--or, as was the case today, if her knock to his front door went unanswered. Huffing a soft sigh, she put the bag with the now-clean clothes she'd borrowed from him on the ground and dug through her purse.

"Nick? Are you home?" she calls as she pushes the door open, looking around at the empty living room. "I know I should've texted, but I had to come over here anyway to look in on someone's cat on the third floor, so..." She can hear music coming from somewhere deeper in the apartment; still holding the bag of clothes, Rosie wanders towards it.

The combination of relief and exhaustion after her rescue meant that Rosie slept without dreams at first, safe within the warmth of the apartment and giving in to the driving need it seemed all of them had just to be close now that Nick and Sabrina's plan had worked and they were free. But--too soon--she moves from something deep and dreamless to a more fitful slumber. She dreams then, a nightmare that feels all too real and finds her a prisoner once more, surrounded by the glittering, leering eyes of the goblins. She tries to sing; knows somehow that she has to to save herself and Charlie and all the rest, but no notes come.

Pretty bird's been broken, laughs one of the goblins, its hand latching around her throat. Only one use for broken birds. All at once, they're in the hot, filthy kitchens, the goblins holding her down on the worktable as one of them raises a cleaver, honed to a razor's edge. Its voice was sweet but its flesh is sweeter, it taunts as she opens her mouth in a silent scream, as the blade starts its downward arc and the other creatures cheer.

Rosie wakes with a gasp, alone and trembling in the middle of Nick's bed. She sits there for a few minutes, trying to calm her racing heart and convince herself again of her safety. Hearing the faint sound of something from down the hall--a laugh track, maybe, or piece of music--she gets up and wanders towards it.

When Rosie came to, her head still aching and the memory of Nick's lost and desperate shouts ringing in her ears, it had been within the hot, filthy confines of the kitchen dungeons, the other prisoners--including Charlie, frantic at his own capture and how Sabrina had suffered during it--caged around her. It had been terrifying; foul, small creatures traipsing in and out, tormenting them with blows and threats alike, the ceaseless heat of the oven. Some people had even been taken away and brought back again, shaken and shaking, while others never seemed to return at all.

That had been bad, but what followed was somehow worse.

Through magic or mischief or some dark and fell knowing, their captor had learned of her. Or perhaps just of her voice, pure and sweet and clean. Master wants you, pretty bird, the goblin had rasped, leering at her as it unlocked the door, as it and two others dragged her out with sharp-nailed hands tight on her wrists. Lucky little black-haired bird, freed from the pie. She'd fought and screamed and wound up beaten for her trouble, their swinging fists and heavy clubs landing everywhere but her face until they dragged her away sobbing to place her in the throne room in another cage, more opulent than the last. When she'd seen the figure sitting on the throne, she'd screamed again, loud and terrified. Then, after another blow and a booming command, begun to sing.

Rosie doesn't know how long it's been going on, how long she's been here, one performance bleeding into the next, small creatures passing by when her captor is gone to pinch and poke at her or tell her the vilest and most frightening things. Long enough that her voice is nearly broken. Long enough that she doesn't cry as much as she had before, when it was all new and frightening.

She's alone now, one of those rare moments, sitting slumped at the floor of the cage and just waiting. When she hears the sound of footsteps coming closer, she turns her head towards them, staring listlessly for a moment before she grips the bars of her cage and pulls herself up again, readying herself for another song or something worse.