Archive of Our Own

Sara ducks behind a crumpled, wrecked car. She puts her free hand to her ear. “Ray, do you have eyes on Zari or Charlie?”

“No,” he answers, panting. Last she saw him, he’d been hit, too—a blackened scar of metal spat up sparks across the shoulder of his suit. She can hear pain in his voice as he asks, “Nate?”

No reply.

Sara sifts through the chaos of the last few moments. “He was with Mick, fighting the fairies.”

“They must be jamming our comms within a certain radius. I always thought fairies were supposed to be nice.”

“Guessed these ones missed the memo.” Sara presses her eyes shut for a moment. Far away, she can hear the roar of the heat gun and the clang of steel. “What’s your twenty?”

“I’m in the warehouse, trying to find where they put John.”

“Good plan. I’m gonna go track down the rest of the team, and then—”

Before she can finish, a hideous, screeching giggle splits through the air. “Got them, caught them!”

“See the changeling! See her stuck!”

“Oh, she’s all run out of luck!”

“Shit,” Sara says.

“What?” asks Ray.

“Get Constantine’s ass out here.” She switches off the comm.

Rhyming? Never a good sign.

Pushing herself back into a crouch, she edges her way along the asphalt until she can peek through the car’s glassless back window. In the flickering lights of the street lamps, three figures stand amid the swarming mass of pint sized, needle-teethed fairies. To the right stands a woman, skin pickle-green, with sleek black hair, a button nose, and rows of luminescent shark teeth exposed in a leer. Beside her, Sara makes out a skeletal figure, pudding-thick blood pulsing inside their ribs. Dark streams run down their femurs and pool below them. On the skeleton’s other side, a short man in a red hat laughs, his burning eyes dancing.

Two bodies sprawl at their feet.

Zari and Charlie.

“We trick them, changeling,” says the woman. “Did you forget? I say, come, look at my sweet fen…and then—”

“She’ll pull them down,” finishes the man. “Down deep. Stay in bed tonight, bairns! Jenny Greenteeth’s on the creep!”

The smaller fairies cackle.

“Cut the storybook shit,” moans Charlie, head angling off the ground. “It might get a kick out of the punters, but it was never for you, Redcap.”

The man’s smile drops. He kicks her viciously, but some part of Sara relaxes; if Charlie can quip, she can breathe. It’s Zari’s stillness that’s scarier.

“As I was saying,” continues the hag, once Redcap steps back again, “we’re fairies, child. We trick. You slip into the bed of some poor babe and we steal them away, while you get fat on milk and honey and their parents never. Find. Out.”

“But you forgot that. You got caught,” gloats Redcap. “No treat for you.”

The skeletal mess makes a glugging, watery noise that Sara can only hope isn’t a laugh.

“How about we remind you how this works? We’ll play a game. One of you—“ she extends a dripping hand over the curled-up Charlie, then moves it to Zari— “will get to go back to Mother, and glut on milk and honey till the tit runs dry. The other one…well, we’ll steal you away.”

“She decides,” says the skeleton. They extend a slick, glistening arm and point right at Sara’s hiding spot.

“Bloody Bones!” giggles the woman. “What a good idea. Come out! Come out!”

Dread clogs Sara’s chest. She steps out from behind the car. “Let them go,” she commands.

“Hard to give orders with that splinter in you,” says Bloody Bones. They grin, blood spilling over their lipless mouth and down their jaw.

Sara refuses to glance down at the forearm-sized bone shard lodged in her side. “You don’t want me to have to repeat myself.”

“You have to pick one, fair-hair! Eenie-meenie-miney-moe…”

“Or they both go.”

“Back to the rhyming,” croaks Charlie. “Just kill me already.”

For all the utter ridiculousness of the situation, though, Redcap bends down and leverages a large rock from the ground. He lifts the slab like paper, preparing to drop it on top of Charlie’s head. Bloody Bones crouches, blood sloshing onto Zari’s shirt, and brings their teeth almost to her chest.

“Come now, mother-hen,” taunts Jenny Greenteeth. “Real child or changeling? Pick one! Trick one!”

Sara bites her tongue. Too many pixies crowd the way between her and the three ringleaders for a straight-up assault, and her throwing knives had proved useless.

Options. She needs options.

“Pick one!”

She steps forward. “I’m not gonna play your game. I’m their captain—you want to take someone, you take me.”

“No, no, no.” Bloody Bones nearly has her skin between their teeth. Redcap’s grip on the stone shifts. “One of them.”

Sara stares at Zari and Charlie. The rock. The gleam of light against hair and teeth and bone.

“Ah, would you look at that,” says John Constantine. “And Ray was worried we’d miss the fun.”

-

Rope lashes Sara’s wrists behind her back as she stumbles through the dark forest. Wind blows her hair wild around her face and sticks crack beneath her footsteps. If she slows her pace, the cold barrel of Ivo’s gun juts into her spine, urging her to speed up. Oliver and Shado follow behind, prodded onwards by guards of their own.

She swallows. “Anthony, you got what you wanted,” she says, voice breathy and high. She turns to face Ivo—to look up at the square jaw and tousled hair of the man who’s spent months playing both savior and jailer. “You can let them go.”

Harsh white flashlight beams glare off her face.

“If you ever cared about me…”

“But I do care about you, Sara,” he says, tone so unbearably even. “Which is why I won’t choose to kill you. But he might!” He points out at Oliver, standing like a hanged man in the chalky glow.

“What are you talking about?”

Sara’s knees meet dirt as Ivo forces her to the ground. Shado drops to her side. Both of them kneel between the men as pawns, not people. Sara doesn’t know this girl and doesn’t know this clearing and doesn’t know why there’s asphalt beneath her shins.

“Time to choose, Oliver. Who lives, and who dies.”

More happens, more words. Oliver yells and Ivo counts and Sara’s ears fill with a deranged, inhuman giggling. She lifts her chin. Blood and tests and screams and everything she’s done to others just so she could live; it’ll all be pointless, now. Maybe it was always pointless. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the bang of the gun.

And then Oliver throws himself past her, shaggy hair a swaying mess, yelling no and the world swoops as a gunshot blasts in her ear. She opens her eyes—weren’t they already open?—and stares up at the green-skinned and red-eyed Ivo, furious and desperate and hoping beyond hope there’s a bullet in her head. Oliver’s gone.

She looks behind her.

Zari kneels, eyes shut. Beside her, Charlie lays flat, the back of her head blown away.

-

“–you go, Captain,” Gideon is saying. “The infection has been cleared from your system.”

Sara squints against the bright lights of the medbay. She pushes herself to a sitting position, ignoring the dull pain in her abdomen and the brutal headache pounding behind her eyes.

“Charlie and Zari?” she rasps. “The team?”

“Oi, oi, Sara.” Charlie waves at her from the next bed over, smile cheeky and broad. “We made it in one piece. No thanks to Jenny, many thanks to John-o.”

Sara stares at her. Giggling in a crowded parking lot. Flashlight beams in a forest. Blood and guns and matted hair and stillness. Lying flat.

“Hey, boss, you alright?”

She forces herself to look around—to take in the grey walls and constant hum of her ship, the rustling of Charlie’s breathing and the brightness of her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, grimacing. “Yeah, fine.”

Charlie winces sympathetically. “Next time you want some extra calcium, maybe chug some milk instead.”

“Hey, this is a sex-positive ship. Don’t shame a girl for wanting to get boned.”

Charlie laughs. “Fucking hell, mate.”

Sara tries for a tired smile. “How are you?”

“Healing’s a little harder when you’re stuck in one body, but Gid’s been a gem. Fixed me right up.”

“You’re welcome,” says Gideon.

Charlie winks at the ceiling.

“That’s good,” Sara says. “You had me worried there for a second.”

“I did? How about you, not mentioning you were hurt till you up and toppled over? Nearly gave Ray an embolism. Funniest expression I’ve seen on him yet.”

“I had a femur in my stomach,” she grumbles. “Wasn’t exactly being subtle.”

“For the record, Captain, I believe it was a tibia.”

Sara shares a look with Charlie, deadpan. “Thanks, Gideon.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Charlie grins.

“And Zari? Where’s she?”

“She took a bit of a knock to the head, but she woke up a bit before you. Convinced Gideon to let her sleep off her ouches in her quarters. She’s fine, just a bit shaken up.”

“Mm,” says Sara. “I should check in on her.”

“Captain Lance,” intones Gideon.

“Check in on her later, sure, fine.”

Charlie swings herself down off their bed, testing her bare feet against the cold metal flooring. When they hold her weight, she steps a couple steps closer.

“What, no scolding for her?”

“Charlie’s injuries have healed. Yours require more rest.”

“Right.”

Truth be told, Sara doesn’t know if, lacking an adrenaline-provoking crisis, she could make it to Zari’s quarters anyway. Her side feels like an appetizer that was skewered with a legbone for a toothpick. The panic from the dream won’t stop clinging to her lungs.

Still, the stupid AI doesn’t have to be so right all the time.

Charlie sticks her hands deep into her pockets, shoulders pushed back. Her eyes shift uncertainly. “So,” she says, “Jenny’s a real treat, i’n she?”

“Who is she? Who were the others?”

“Jenny Greenteeth, Redcap, Bloody Bones. They’re some fairy tales, the kind you use to scare your kids—don’t wander, or Jenny Greenteeth’ll get you.” She purses her lips. “Friends from the inside.”

“Didn’t seem friendly to me.”

Real child or changeling? Pick one! Trick one!

“Lot of people aren’t happy about my new…crew.”

Sara waits, assessing. Letting the silence pry whatever Charlie wants to say out of her.  

“All I wanted to say is…it would’ve been really easy for you to just let them have me.”

Charlie, flat on her back, Ivo’s gun still ringing.

“We don’t do that,” Sara says.

Charlie looks up and away. “A month ago, you lot were trying to kill me.”

“A month ago...” Sara wets her lips. “Charlie, we were wrong. We were wrong about magical creatures, and we were wrong about you.”

Charlie’s teeth flash, an incredulous not-really-a-smile. “What?”

Sara bites back a you heard me. She forces herself to meet Charlie’s gaze and repeats, “We were wrong. We were wrong for what we did to you.”

“You’re joking.”

“You want jokes, you go to Zari.”

Charlie squints. “You’re apologizing to me?”

Sara sighs. “Look, ironic as it is, I can’t change the past. Not what we did, not what we thought. But we’re all learning to do better. You help us learn. So…” She flicks her gaze to the ceiling and back. “Yeah. We owe you an apology. We’re…. I’m sorry.”

They hold each other’s eyes for a moment.

A slow smile creeps across Charlie’s face. “You don’t just have a heart. You’re a softie.”

“Don’t.”

 “Oh,” she taunts, grin impossibly wide. “You are. You’re a total sap.”

“I’m taking it back now.” Sara crosses her arms, ignoring the ache in her side. “Apology rescinded.”

“Nope, no backsies. You said, ‘Charlie is a delight and the best thing to happen to this ship and I love her.’”

“When?”

“Thirty seconds ago.”

Sara puts a hand to her ear, pinky and thumb extended. “Hi, Jenny? We met at the parking lot, I’m Sara—no, sorry, I don’t think that drink will work out. But I do have this shapeshifter you might be interested in, and she’s all yours.”

Charlie laughs. “What, ol’ Jen’s not your type?”

“Too many teeth.”

Charlie crinkles her nose and leans up against the medbay bed, knocking shoulders lightly. “I don’t know, they’re kind of sexy, really.”

“Please tell me you never—”

Charlie zips her fingers along her mouth, twists them, and throws away the key.

“Oh, gross. Get out of my medbay.”

“Your medbay?”

“My ship, my medbay.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n Sap.” She swings a lazy two-fingered salute.

“Redcap, you can go ahead and drop that rock on her now.”

“You can keep talking like I’m gonna forget that you care about me, but I won’t. Genie’s out of the bottle.”

Sara rolls her eyes. Hearing a hiss, she turns her head just as the medbay doors slide open.

“Oh, hey guys!” Ray stands in the doorway, looking from one of them to the other. “Came to check in on you. And, uh, also to tell you, Sara, that the results from that test you had me run before the mission came in.” He waves a tablet with one hand.

Charlie cocks her head. “Anything interesting?”

Ray brightens, walking in properly. “Yeah, actually! I initially thought the material was some sort of hydrophobic polymer, but the breakdown demonstrates that the polymer itself isn’t hydrophobic, it’s the graphene-based sealant they used—”

“Right,” Charlie says, straightening. “And that’s my cue.”

Ray blinks.

“Too many three syllable words for me, mate. I’ll leave you both to it.” Charlie claps Sara on the shoulder. “See ya around, Captain. And, uh, thanks. For…yeah.”

“Charlie.” They make eye contact. “We don’t give up our own,” Sara says. “And you’re one of our own, now. For better or worse.”

There’s a pause.

“Probably worse,” reflects Ray.

Charlie narrows her eyes. “Worse for who?”

“You,” says Ray, as the same time as Sara answers,

“Me. Now get out, before we both have to get bored to tears by graphenes.”

With a final grin, Charlie takes the offered escape.

Ray comes around and pulls a chair up next to Sara. “What was that about?”

Forest clearing, parking lot. Rock, gun.

(She’s not Oliver, and Charlie’s not Shado. She won’t strip her of agency by treating her as a helpless victim, and she won’t blame herself for choices that she didn’t have. She’ll take responsibility for the things she has done instead. She’ll own up and apologize. She respects the hell out of Charlie, and she’s gonna show it.)

To Ray, Sara shakes her head. “Ah, nothing.”