Chapter Text
When he kisses her, Aisha tastes like mints. She's shyly admitted once, as they laid in the humid grass after a swim, droplets still running down their bodies and chest panting from racing each other from one side of the lake to the other, that she chews on them like crazy because she's paranoid about bad breath. It made him laugh so hard he snorted in the middle of her kiss and that in turn made her laugh and next thing Grey knew they were nose to nose, bodies still shaking with the aftershocks of giggles, and her cold minty breath against his mouth.
Everything is easy with Aisha and it shouldn't be. He's lying about who he is and what he does, but nothing feels like a lie. He tells her he's tired of feeling his entire family's expectations on his shoulders and it's a lie (is it, though?) and she squeezes his hand and tells him about her desperate desire to prove herself right to her family. How they're just expecting her downfall, to take her back with a fond i-told-you-so and put her back into the family engine, a cog back in its place. She asks him if he's got siblings and she shakes her head; he tells her he's got only one older brother who passed away before he was born, the looming shadow his existence casts over his life and the expectations his parent's have placed on him. None of it is even a lie.
Then it all goes to shit.
Should've seen that coming, eh? Too good to be true, doomed from the get go. He lied and used her, so his apologies fell on deaf ears. He broke her trust, stomped over it. He brings back Sky from the dead and his payback is having Sebastian murdered before his eyes and he wants to resent her, but it's too damn hard when she's the only one who extends him enough grace to ask "are you okay?", when Grey does sneak back in Alfea just to see her. He's not sure what he's expecting, to be slapped across the face, some closure, resolution?
She's crying and she's hugging him and it's so easy , the words are tumbling out his mouth before he has a chance to think them through "I'm sorry about lying and I'm sorry about Bloom-" thumbs soaking up the tears running down her cheeks, "it was not your fault, it was Sebastian's, it's mine -"
Aisha shakes her head and presses her lips over his to shut him up. It's more for her benefit than it is for his. He's the only comfort she has right now and if he takes the blame and places it on himself... What sort of friend would it make her? So Grey lets her cradle her childish guilt, while he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer, kisses the tear tracks on her cheeks and presses his nose to her temple, inhales her. She smells like the sea, salt water and longing, and he feels like he's not drowning in grief for the first time in a long time.
Everything is easy with Aisha and it shouldn't be.
"You should probably go..." her head is pressed to his chest, fingers half intertwined and legs locked. If he closes his eyes and focuses, Grey can feel the steady thump-thump of her heart, in the same way she's probably hearing his, "before they come looking for me."
He doesn't mention they've been sitting on the edge of the river for nearly six hours now and that no one has come. It had crossed his mind before — seeing Aisha butt her head between Bloom and Stella, back when they were dating and he'd pry until she opened up — how crucial she actually is for their little group of troublemakers, but how little thought she's spared. It infuriates him, he won't ever say it aloud. It's hypocritical of him, at best, to be angry on her behalf, when he's done far worse and broken her heart in ways her friends could only dream to achieve. Selfishly, he keeps his mouth shut.
"Ten more minutes," Grey mumbles, wrapping his arms around her and bringing her up, so he can press a kiss to her forehead, then her nose, "give me ten more minutes."
Aisha huffs, presses herself closer to him, "if Silva catches you here-"
"Ten more minutes without you catastrophizing," he chuckles, then bites her earlobe, "ten more minutes of us just being... Us. Not Aisha of Andros, the fairy who transformed-"
"Oh, don't remind me," she wrinkles her nose, "I haven't even thought of the implications -"
"Not Grey Owens, the blood witch," he nuzzles her cheek and Aisha melts into his arms, walls coming down in one swift swoop. She's so rational all the time, that when she looks at him with walls all down and alarmingly naiveté in her eyes, Grey can almost feel his own feet sinking deeper into their romance. Her hold getting stronger over him, protection jumping up. He wants to save her, to protect her, and it's so terrible to wish that when he's probably the worst thing that could ever happen to her.
"Hey," Aisha thumbs his chin, forcing their eyes to meet, "Grey?"
He shakes his head, moves it so he can nibble at her finger, "I'm fine."
She rolls her eyes, leans in and kisses him, "yeah, sure you are."
She's right and he can't stay, even if getting up from their spot feels like an insurmountable task. It's dark already, she needs to get back behind Alfea's walls and to her life and he has his crew to get back, a lie to come up with. He's dragging his feet and Aisha giggles like a schoolgirl when Grey grabs her by her belt buckle for the second time when she tries to leave and pulls her in. Her eyes turn into little squished lines when she laughs, he loves it.
"You have to let me go, we're go- I'm gonna be in trouble," Aisha bats his hands off her waist and glares at him, but there's no seriousness behind her stare, "Grey."
"Text me?"
It's so silly to ask that. Equal parts mortifyingly adolescent and a horrible idea considering they're on opposite sides of the war, Aisha knows all of this and she pauses, bites her lip and then nods.
"I'll text, but you have to go," he doesn't move, she scoffs, raises her eyebrows in that judgmental manner, " now."
"Fine," he raises his hand, grabs his abandoned jacket from the grass, "fine. I'm leaving. Forever."
"Don't say that," Her voice is sharp and he straightens up, all boyish charm vanishing. Grey nods, puts his jacket on.
"Text me... I'll answer..." I'll come. Just ask and I'll come around, is what he truly means. She nods briskly, then walks away.
When Sebastian passed away — was exploded in a bunch of million pieces by the girl Grey loves and her troupe of fairies — he left a role to be filled.
Sebastian Valtor was many things. A blood witch leader, a historian, a fanatic, a murderer... A nerd, an older brother, incredibly funny and loyal and loving. All these conflicting things into one man and most days Grey hates him just as much as he loves and misses him. Sebastian taught him how to drive. Taught him how to knock out people with his powers. Taught him how to lead.
No one asks him directly, but they look at Grey with hungry and desperate eyes once Sebastian goes mad and finally explodes. They have no idea of what to do and he's just freshly turned eighteen and the thought they want him to lead is hilarious, to say the least. He can barely lead his love life, let alone hundreds of people… A cause, a crusade!
Grey ignores the urgent stares and focuses on keeping himself alive. Taking people under his wing and caring for everyone is only gonna get him killed. He keeps his head down and tries to find himself honest work down in Ostera, the closest town to Blackbridge.
A month later, three blood witches are executed on national television. They frame it as a win. He punches the waiter who works alongside him, who celebrates by high fiving his buddies and loudly declaring he’ll buy the whole pub a round, so hard that the guy ends up in a hospital.
He's got bruised knuckles and a split eyebrow when Aisha texts him "are you up?"
Grey doesn't think she realizes how suggestive her wording is, it makes him snort, his ribs ache, "Yeah, I'm up. How are you?"
"If I have to hear another word out of Stella's mouth I'm going to drown her."
"That's silly," he grins to himself, and can almost see the way she's frowning and pouting at her phone. Stella has been the topic of their conversations many times before. Before. The blonde can get under Aisha's skin like no one else can, "you're a water fairy, they'll figure it was you too easily. Bury her behind the greenhouse."
For a second he thinks he crossed a line, then Aisha sends him three laughing emojis and he can almost feel her frustration vanishing.
"How are you? Where are you?"
"I'm fine," he lies, knowing she already knows about the previous night's special on TV, " don't worry about me."
"Have you met me?" Aisha texts back, followed by an eyeroll emoji. He curls up in his cot, he's crashing on a friend's floor. The small house is packed with unhoused blood witches, he's hungry, his head hurts and they're all rationing on pain medication, the promise of harder times in the future.
He glares at his phone battery. 10%.
"I have to go. early start tomorrow at work," Grey says, berating himself for lying to her yet again. This time around she won't forgive shit. He can't bring himself to say the truth, "we'll talk tomorrow?"
" Yes," her answer comes in too quickly, "text me about your day, I wanna know."
"I will," he promises, then clutches the phone to his chest and takes a pained breath, trying to picture up her face and not the three blood witches they saw on TV, handcuffed by runic limiters, faces covered in bruises, eyes defeated.
It's a defeat Grey feels deep in his bones.
He tells people he's an orphan, but that's not exactly true.
Grey might as well be, the Owens were Valtor's followers, not Sebastian's but the old man. The even crazier motherfucker.
They didn't want a second son, they wanted a replacement to the first one and when Grey failed to measure up as a soldier, he ceased being of any importance. They were soldiers and he was a burden.
To Sebastian, he was a brother. A follower, yes, but Sebastian never forced his hand and Grey thinks of it when he finds himself falling to the government propaganda.
The smear campaign Queen Luna is running on Sebastian must be costing a fortune. An unofficial, bullshit, docu series comes out and quickly becomes all everyone talks about. It's made by an independent group, no ties to the crown. They have some tidbits on the Queen — she collaborated with General Hale and she didn't properly investigate Aster Dell —, but it's all brushed off with a wave of hand. It pales against the lies told about Sebastian, the criticism to the crown is only there to create the illusion of neutrality.
Aisha grabs him by the lapels of his jacket and forces him into a hug as Grey bursts into the old shepherd house all but shaking with anger, doing the ramblings of a mad man, "None of what they're saying is true! He wasn't like that, he was many things- He did many things, but-"
She's pulling him into a hug and for a split second Grey hates her, but then her fingers are carding through his hair and she's pressing her forehead to his and whispering, "don't do the crown's dirty job for them. They want you angry , they want you antsy," she presses her lips to his cheek, "anger makes you blind, makes you dangerous and that's what Luna wants."
Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.
It's violating to have even his anger be weaponized against him. Grey is sure Aisha can tell, because she pulls back to look him in the eyes and then flinches.
"I'm sorry-"
"No," he shakes his head, forces the air through his nose and then looks at her. She's got permanent dark circles under her eyes and her smile doesn't quite reach it. The sadness from before has vanished, but the grief hasn't. Put in the backburner, become a staple part of her personality. It makes his stomach clench, when he thinks of her laughing in the lake and splashing water his way and complaining non stop about Bloom's snoring and the fact she found Sky in their dorm again and- "C'mere," he wraps his arms around Aisha's waist and kisses her.
She's shy and that will never cease surprising him. He pushes her further inside the house and Aisha hesitates as her fingers go to his jacket, then she pushes it down his shoulders, fingers shaking. Grey smiles, takes her hand in his and plants a kiss to her palm.
"Relax," he whispers, leaning in, "it's me, it's just me-"
"You have got to stop asking me to relax," Aisha scoffs, but there's a giggle in her voice and she falls on the bed with a huff, her whole face turning a shade darker as she blushes, "I- Stop, stop," her legs snap closed as Grey kneels on the ground in front of her and he pauses, then nods and slumps on her lap, resting his chin on her thigh and looking up at her.
"What is it?"
"I can't," She's so nervous and scared, her heart is racing and he could probably hear it from across the room, "everything is wrong and I don't- Not yet."
She doesn't trust him, it's the plain truth. He stomped on her trust and she might be in love with him still, but she doesn't trust him with yet another piece of her and can he blame her? Not really.
He sighs, presses a kiss to her thigh and falls sit on the ground, slotting himself between her legs and letting his head fall back, "everything's fucked."
"Tell me about it," Aisha snorts, kissing the top of his head and combing his hair, "you're not mad."
"No," he turns his head enough to brush his nose against the inside of her wrist, "I can wait forever, I'm a very patient man. All blood witches are."
She flinches, then tugs on the roots of his hair so he's leaning back and looking at her upside down, "don't say it like that... Like you and I are different species ."
He snorts, "might as well be," there's bitterness coloring his words, a horrible mood he doesn't want to taint her with, but that chases him everywhere he goes. Maybe it's just hunger, he hasn't eaten in a while. Aisha squeezes his shoulders.
"We're not," she moves on the bed, so her legs are framing each side of his body, "we're the same and soon everyone's gonna... Come to their senses, wake up."
He doesn't believe that for a second. Not the part about people realizing, but the bit about them being the same. Not when he feels like some sort of squashable insect most of the days.
Stealing comes easy.
Food is a commodity he doesn't feel one bit guilty about taking, not for himself, definitely not for others. Hell, in fact he feels proud .
Willa, a blood witch he's known since he was a kid and who picked a fight with him when Grey decided to go to Alfea and Sebastian was supportive — with his own inner motives, Grey now knows, and he reminds himself of it whenever rose tinted nostalgia tries to drag him down —, is the one giving him and six other blood witches shelter. She's nineteen and she's got a pregnant bump and looks fucking gaunt and Grey doesn't feel one bit bad when he sacks a grocery store in Blackbridge and comes back with boxes of food.
She frowns and holds up the pasta package, "where did you get this?"
"I got pickles too," he answers, cheeks stuffed with oreos, teeth black. Grey circles her, holds up the jar of pickles in front of her face and watches as Willa's suspicions melt off as her cravings and prayers are answered.
"I don't need to know," she decides and Grey chuckles, opens the jar and hands it to her. He pretends his chest doesn't squeeze as he hears her little, "thanks, Grey."
It's the first night in a very long time that he manages to sleep and his dreams aren't haunted by Sebastian's death or the execution or Aisha ...
He wakes up in the break of dawn, then looks around the living room. The two couches are occupied by three teenagers, they can't be older than 16. Near the fireplace, Ethan, a much older blood witch that has always been pro peace and who's taking the violence from the crown in stride. He hasn't said a word in a long time. Curled up around Grey, Jessie and Kira, he's known them for far too long. Jessie's got a hot head and bruised knuckles that match Grey's, Kira doesn't say much but anyone can feel her anger from across a room. She lost her parents in the Alfea invasion. Grey and her don't talk.
"They look up to you," Willa's boyfriend, Chris, says as Grey follows him outside. He's gotten Grey a temporary job at a mill and they're getting in the truck, "all of them do, Sebastian always made it clear you were gonna be his-"
"Right," Grey shuffles in his seat, scoffs, "because blood witches have such an amazing track record picking their leaders. I'm a kid , I shouldn't be leading shit."
Chris is just twenty, he's not a soldier. He was in Sebastian's crew, but ran before the fight in Alfea, when Willa found out she was pregnant. He's a smart fella. He drums his fingers against the steering wheel, "I guess," he shrugs, "it's still your birthright."
Among orphans and bastards, the idea of birthright is laughable.
"Hate to break it to you, but Sebastian and I weren't really related-"
"I mean, because you're from Aster Dell," Chris scoffs, as if to say he's not stupid, "most of us weren't born there, almost no one survived and the few who did, they're uh-"
"Domestic terrorists and completely fucked in the head?"
Chris laughs, "but you're not. It helps that Sebastian backed you too, that you were close-"
"Sebastian went insane. Led us to slaughter in a fairy school," Grey points out, hoping he's not the only one who can see how outlandish it is to support any of Seb's choices after what happened.
Chris rolls his eyes, stops at the red light and turns to face Grey, "that was just in his last months," he says quietly, "most of us knew him our entire lives... And we don't buy into all the crown's bullshit."
They're making a martyr out of the guy, Grey realizes, blood suddenly running cold.
"Yeah well, still doesn't mean I want to lead you people anywhere," Grey frowns at his lap, refuses to meet Chris' eyes and flinches as he hears a sigh:
"You people?"
Aisha : Today I woke up and I could swear I heard Bloom snoring.
Aisha: I never thought I could miss that.
"How's the search?" Grey asks, as he lies in the cabin's little bed next to Aisha and counts the ceiling's wooden beams. She's got her face pressed to his chest, he's shirtless, and is scavenging for moles.
"Dead end," her voice is rough, Aisha's in a difficult mood and Grey wants to make her laugh, but he knows better. Anger and resentment sometimes are as good a comfort as any, "I don't understand why she couldn't just let us... Help, you know? It's like Bloom came to Alfea already having decided she needed to do everything on her own. Main character syndrome."
He snorts, traces a hand down Aisha's back and then trails it up slowly, smiling to himself as her skin gets covered in goosebumps, "sucks to be the supportive character is your own story, uh?"
"Tell me about it," Aisha groans, pressing her lips to his skin, "I mean, the worst part is that she wasn't even wrong, right? Everything that has ever happened, Rosalind, Seb- Everything, it was all because of the Dragon Flame. She truly was the main character and we're like headless chickens running around without her. I'm at loss."
"Please," Grey scoots on the bed, forces Aisha to meet his eye, "don't try to convince me Bloom was the brains of your outfit, I met the girl," it's mean spirited, it earns him a smile, a shove to his chest.
"Maybe not the brains, but certainly the heart," she moves on the bed, bumping her nose with his, "do you have any ideas that could help? Anything?"
Sometimes Aisha asks him things and he thinks how easy she makes it to lie to her. How hard it is to keep himself honest, like it's not in his nature.
"Sebastian opened the portal via ancient magic," he answers her, pushing a twisted out hair strand away from her eyes, "so I'm guessing it would require ancient magic to open it again. You won't find that in Alfea."
"Luna won't let us near the royal archives," Aisha slumps, her forehead meets his lips, her chin on his sternum, "I thought of that."
"Luna is not the only one who had ancient texts," Grey whispers in her ear and then squeezes her to him as Aisha's head snaps up, a new hopeful flicker in her eyes.
He curses himself as that tiny, dying spark sets his whole body ablaze.
"Would you..."
"I'll try," he promises and then lets out a strangled noise as Aisha smashes their lips together.
Back when Sebastian was alive, Grey could barely go anywhere without needing to explain himself. It started as brotherly concern, quickly moved into obsessive control. No longer Sebastian masked his questions as “just send me a heads up”, they became “where are you? Send a report by 5.”
Grey didn’t remember enlisting himself to any army, that was the funny part.
So when Willa knocks on the open bathroom door and pokes her head in to tell him there’s gonna be a political rally that night and they’re all going, Grey is quick to dismiss it.
“I have no interest in joining anyone’s war,” he tells her and the woman’s eyes get that stony look that is very reminiscent of when she used to push him face down in the mud when they were kids. Like she’s studying him.
“Funny,” she deadpans, pats his bicep, “you keep calling yourself a kid and I don’t believe you, but then you say shit like this…”
He rolls his eyes, glares at her in the mirror, “you got anything you wanna tell me?”
There’s a pause, Willa measuring him up and down and Grey turning his chin up, waiting for the words they can both hear in the air. A slap to the wrist, a spat on the face…
“We’re gonna be back by midnight, lock ‘em doors.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grey nods, and doesn't disclose he’s got no plans to stay in either.
The mansion they used to squat in with Sebastian has been seized by the crown and it's a kamikaze mission to show up there. Especially without anyone covering his back. However, he rationalizes, it’s been months. Surely the crown has better places to sink their resources in than paying a security detail to an abandoned building?
Like producing a phony documentary or setting out bounties for their heads or buying more runic limiters, or-
There’s a specialist outside the mansion, kicking stones, bored out of her mind.
Grey takes her out with a tap of her shoulder, the woman never even sees him.
It’s too easy , but he soon finds out why. The whole place was scrubbed clean. Anything of value, the crown took. Old books, trophies, any sort of record of their members…
They took the fucking grocery’s list that had been tapped to the fridge and they took the portraits off the walls, the sheets off the beds.
Grey’s room was on the third floor, with the other war orphans even though he wasn’t one of them. He shared his bedroom with three other boys, two bunk beds squeezed in. They’re all dead. Boyd died in a mission while Grey was in Alfea and Johnny and Victor died in Alfea. One taken by a specialist, the other…
He hasn’t talked of this out loud and he never will, but Grey was never entirely sure how Sebastian had enough energy to open the portal in the first place. It didn’t make any sense to him, that was why he wanted the Dragon Flame, right?
He blames five missing bodies, of their own, on Sebastian and he’s gonna carry this secret to his grave.
Sebastian’s room is on the fourth and last floor. Grey hasn’t been inside it in years and he can’t help but wonder if the current state of it is a product of the Solarian soldiers turning it upside down or of Sebastian’s own declining mental health.
For starters, there’s no bed in the bedroom. There are runic scribbles all over the walls and flooring, in chalk. In the center of the room, a rotting wet spot. No signs of water damage on the ceiling.
“Fuck…” Grey breathes out, resting against the wall and taking in the horror scene. This is the type of scary material that would sway people into thinking Sebastian was a loony extremist. Which he was.
He ponders how many people have seen this, if the other blood witches did… The Solarian soldiers certainly did, no wonder none of the specialists or fairies have questioned the crown’s narrative. Against this much evidence? Did the room make it to the docu series?
There are no books to bring back to Aisha, Grey leaves the mansion empty handed and defeated. Cursing his own blind loyalty to his brother, cursing the Dragon Flame and his own girlfriend…
“Where were you!?” Willa exclaims as he crosses the threshold of the house. It’s past midnight by a lot, nearly dawn, he had counted on it to sneak back in. Instead, he’s met by the whole household.
Kira and Jessie have their heads pressed together, giggling and gossiping. Ethan is drinking by the fire, curled up on the abandoned armchair. Tonight Grey realizes Ethan is only fifty years old, not that it is a small feat — blood witches don’t live long. Sebastian was only thirty six and he was practically ancient —, but normally the man looks so dead inside that he could easily pass as seventy.
“I was-”
“GREY!” One of the boys exclaims. Harry. He can’t be older than fifteen and his cheeks are red as if he’s been drinking all night. He’s the more talkative of the trio, and it shows as he interrupts whatever Willa was about to tell Grey in order to say, “you should’ve been there tonight! It was amazing!”
“What was amazing?” he sits down near the fire, on the ground, and Chris wordlessly passes him a large chipped mug, filled with wine.
“There was this man-” Harry says and his best friend, Corey, interrupts by saying “his name was Ian.”
“Ian, right, I know- So Ian. Tonight was sucking balls and then he came in and started talking about the crown and-” he’s stumbling over his own words, Grey doesn’t need to hear the rest. He’s heard this same type of fanaticism before, it reminds him of Dane talking about Rosalind. It reminds him of Luke talking about Dane.
Nothing Harry says impresses him, but Grey doesn’t let his opinion show on his face, because for the first time in a long time, his people are smiling . He can’t remember the last time this happened. The young boys are going on and on about how amazing Ian-The-Blood-Witch was and his speech abilities, how he had a room of despondent war fugitives come alive in an uproar.
Grey chuckles as he hears Harry imitate the man, turns his head and rests his forehead to Willa’s knee. She flinches for a second, then cards her fingers through his hair, leaning in half to whisper, “personally, I thought he was full of shit.”
Grey grins up at her, lets his head rest fully against her leg and closes his eyes.
“We’re blood witches ,” Kira says, joining Harry and Corey in their childish ravings, “they’re only hunting us because they’re scared of us, why the hell are we hiding in the shadows? We should be giving them reason to fear us.”
Sounds like a direct quote.
Aisha: I miss you.
Aisha: Did you happen to find anything? I’m running low on options and morale.
Aisha: Sorry. I didn’t mean to text as if I’m saying I miss you because of your help. I miss you AND I could use a hand, these things are not related.
Aisha: can you text back and shut me up before I dig a hole for myself?
Aisha: okay, you’re clearly busy. But text me when you can, any hour.
One would think the Otherworld would be more developed, given half its population is magical. One would be wrong.
Grey’s job at the mill is moving a ridiculous amount of weight, hundreds of pounds ceaselessly, so the iron can be melted into steel slabs. There are earth fairies who could move what takes him a whole evening, in a matter of minutes. Earth fairies work in the mill alright, except inside of big cushy offices. The weakling ones, the ones that didn’t come with a recommendation letter from Alfea, but have powers nonetheless, work in sorting. Top of the factory-ground hierarchy.
Him and Chris, they haven’t told anyone they’re blood witches. It’s hard enough landing a job without any powers or training, let alone with a bright stamp of pariah on their foreheads.
Grey is hunched over his plate of food, gobbling it down and trying not to think too hard about the remaining six hours of work, when Chris sits in front of him with a cheshire smile.
“What?”
“Some of the guys and I are getting out early for a rally, are you coming?”
“A rally?” Grey frowns, then shakes his head, “Willa didn’t mention it.”
“It’s not for the kids,” Chris rolls his eyes, stares at him expectantly, “are you coming?”
“No,” Grey scoffs, glares at Chris’ empty plate and thinks the man is smarter than this. Their supervisor is glaring at their table, from across the room. Any minute sitting down instead of slaving over the rocks is seen as a minute wasted, Grey couldn’t care less what the guy thinks, “I like having a job, I’m not gonna skip and risk being fired… For what? To hear the new cult leader give a well rehearsed pep talk? I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.”
“So what’s the plan?” Chris leans over the table, nearly plants an elbow on his untouched beans and vociferates, “bury your head in the sand until they kill us all?”
“What’s yours? Get a little rag tag group together and try to assassinate the queen?” Grey whispers back, his voice dripping venom. They’re sitting at the end of the table, not arm to arm with other’s, but this is still extremely risky, “then when the Solarians get your ass, who’s gonna raise your kid? Your plan is the product of too many violent movies, it’s fiction. My life sucks, but it’s reality, not a fairy tale.”
Chris stares at him for a second too long, then shakes his head, “Sebastian was wrong, you’re no leader material.”
“Yeah, I’ve been saying,” Grey rolls his eyes, drops his fork with a clatter and gets up, “glad we’re finally on the same page.”
Five of them leave early, each one complaining of a different illness, at different stages of the day.
Grey focuses on his job and the fact his workload just doubled thanks to these jackasses. He focuses on keeping one foot in front of the other and not in the searing headache he has or the fact his back is burning and that he can hear a weird mix of Andreas-Saul-Sebastian telling him his posture is wrong when carrying the iron rocks out of the quarry and into the mill.
It’s nearly clocking out hour when one of the men — a regular human, not a blood witch, definitely not a fairy — stumbles and goes down like a sack of potatoes. Cardiac arrest, Grey can hear it even though he’s ten steps behind the guy, the blood pumping and meeting… Meeting nothing. Heart hiccupping, then stopping. The lack of noise, except for gasping breath.
He doesn’t move, frozen in place even as others rush to the fallen guy, shoulders thumping against his because he’s in the way. He could do something, but that would risk revealing his nature as a blood witch, probably ending up hurting his friends too. He could do something, but does he even want to? Last man Grey saved from death was part of the group who brought the downfall of his brother, it brought him nothing but an exile order away from the woman he loves.
“Call for medic!” another guy yells at the crowd forming, he doesn’t recognize him, the guy’s also human — Grey can tell simply by his frenetic heartbeat, the adrenaline he can feel thickening up the man’s blood, the panic coloring his words, the lack of magic scent mingled in his sweat.
Grey drops to his knees, shoves the other man to the left, “you’re doing it wrong,” he says briskly, as an explanation, before cupping his hands together and putting his entire weight as he sings Staying Alive in his head. Heel pressing in the man’s sternum, compressing non stop… It’s not working. There’s nothing moving inside the guy. The brain can go up to five minutes without oxygen, if Grey closes his eyes and focuses, he can feel the electric current within the man diminish. Dying out, light by light.
“Medic is nearly here, kid, you’re doing real good,” says the other man, the human who was helping and who has no idea the fella lying on the ground is gonna be dead in two minutes if Grey doesn’t do something. He pinches the nose of the corpse-to-be, tips his head back and blows in his mouth, in rhythm with Grey’s pushes.
It does nothing .
Grey closes his eyes and stops pumping, tunes out the other guy’s horrified shriek and then focuses on the blood. Stale, thick. It’s like reaching for something that’s just a hair out of reach. Whole body stretching, willing the force of the air he’s breathing out will be able to close that small gap between him and the object.
His fingertips brush it, the blood moves an inch , then stutters and stops — Someone tries to touch him, push him out of the way, the words “YOU’RE KILLING HIM, MAN!” — and Grey shoves them back, anger burning his stomach. He opens his eyes and stares at the man, past the stained sweaty uniform and the gasping horrified expression in his eyes and the fish-belly paleness…
All the blood moves with the crushing sound of a waterfall. An elastic release, the pressure in his temples being let go off, the contraction in his hands around the man’s wrist easing up as the no-longer-a-corpse lets out a breath and chokes with air.
Tears bubble up, sting his eyes and Grey falls from the bent on his knees position down on his ass. He plants his elbow on his knee and gulps against the knot in his throat, focuses on the crazy, arhythmic thump-thump of the guy’s heart. His chin wobbles, he waves away the sudden influx of thanks and cheers.
“Owens,” his boss says, as Grey makes his way towards the exit of the factory, the queue already forming in front of his bus, the almost-dead guy having already been shipped away in an ambulance, “come in early tomorrow, we have to talk.”
“Yessir,” Grey nods, ducks his head and then dozes off all the way home.
He’s still buzzing as he makes his way to the upstairs bathroom, strips down his clothes and waits for the shower to warm up. His head is spinning and he feels slightly nauseous and jittery, fingers clammy as he clicks on Aisha’s contact and rereads her last messages.
He types a quick “Hey, how was your day?” then sets his phone down on the sink and enters the warm shower.
Grey’s dead on his feet and starving as he dries off and slips into his ratty sweats, picks up his phone and meets four texts from Aisha:
Aisha: Can we meet??
Aisha: Pls, something happened, Musa is hurt.
Aisha: I can’t stay in the suite, its driving me crazy. I’m gonna be in the shepherd’s. Pls come.
Aisha: Why aren’t you answering??
She’s been clearly crying, her eyes are bloodshot and she’s shaking like a leaf as Grey enters the abandoned shepherd’s house. He wonders why no one has put a security detail on his place yet, he would if he was headmaster.
Aisha lunges at him, arms around his neck and all but yelling “took you long enough, get inside!”
She’s rough and on edge, shutting the door behind them and her fingers dragging on his face, then down his chest, as if she needs to check he’s unharmed.
“Aisha, Aisha ,” he closes his hands around her wrists, pulls her closer, “What happened?”
“Musa’s been working with the specialists, she- She- We told her- I told her this was stupid. She’s a fairy, she should act like a fairy-” she rambles on, talking around the issue and he pulls her to the creaky bed, pushes her sitting down and kneels on the ground in front of her. Grey presses a kiss to her palms.
“Breathe, start from the beginning.”
“Musa and I fought, about Bloom, of course,” Aisha’s voice is suspended of all emotion, trembling under its weight, “of course, that’s all we ever fight about. Stella and I want to bring her back and Terra, Flora and Musa- I don’t know what they want. To respect her wishes?” she scoffs, Grey frowns and pushes a braid away from her face, behind her ear.
“So you fought.”
“And she left. On a stupid specialist mission- and- And they- The whole group-” her voice shakes, Aisha’s dark eyes well up with tears and she sniffles pitifully, trying to bite them down, “attacked by blood witches,” her voice is so small, Grey takes a second to hear her.
Then his stomach freezes over.
“Attacked by blood witches?” he parrots, while his mind is chanting nopleasenopleasenopleaseno-
“Ye-yeah,” Aisha sniffles again, “between Blackbridge and Ostera- They were just detail for some freaking politician, it wasn’t- It wasn’t important - Nothing was supposed to happen!” Then the tears spill and Aisha pulls her hands from his weak grasp, using them to shield her face away, shoulders shaking with sobs.
“Did anyone get hurt?” His voice doesn’t sound like his own, Grey clears his throat. Shakes his head, because no .
“Were you not listening!?” Aisha snaps, angrily, and before he can elaborate that he means the blood witches , she continues, “Musa has a huge gash across her face and we don’t know if she’ll wake up! They killed everyone else, Grey!”
“For what?” Confusion colors his words and she pulls back, bewildered, “what did they want- What did the specialists-”
“You cannot be serious right now,” Aisha scoffs, pushing him away and getting up, “you’re victim blaming Musa? The specialists who were only doing their job? These fucking blood witches murdered a group of seven in cold blood, Grey! What the hell-”
“I’m just saying, you don’t have any decent intel, right? Musa is knocked out, the rest of them are dead- Who’s to say it was even a blood witch…?”
“Witnesses!” Aisha’s tone goes up a note, her whole face turning a shade darker as blood rushes to her cheeks, “people saw them!”
“And how convenient that they saw it was a group of blood witches! The big bad wolves outside their windows!” He doesn’t mean a word he’s saying, he knows it was his people, and had already known Chris was about to do something stupid that morning. However he’s angry and defensive and he was riding high until Aisha called. He’s regretting coming, after feeling good about himself for the first time in so long.
“So the witnesses were lying and who attacked Musa’s group? The crown?” Aisha glares at him, “listen to yourself, why would the crown sabotage its own mission?”
“Why would the crown lie about Sebastian killing Rosalind? Why would the crown put a bounty in our heads? Why would they execute one of us-”
“US?!” Aisha exclaims, as Grey gets up from the spot he had been frozen in, “Now it’s us ? Did you participate in Musa's attack?”
“What…?” Grey reels at the accusation and blinks quickly as he struggles to understand what she’s saying, “you think I would… What? No! Aisha, what the fuck, listen to yourself! You’re accusing me of being paranoid, but that’s the pot calling the kettle, I’ve given you no reason to doubt my loyalty-”
“Oh yeah, except for the four months you lied about who you were and when you helped your psycho cult leader kidnap one of my friends!” Aisha rolls her eyes, “oh, let’s not forget when your little extremist group invaded my school and hurt hundreds of us, killed dozens! It’s the opposite of what you said, Grey, you have given me no reason to trust you!”
“So what are we even doing?!” Grey slams his hand against the stone wall and the whole room shakes, a testament to how flimsy its foundation is, “why have we been seeing each other, Aisha? You’re not gonna forgive me, right? Not unless I deny who I am . So… We’re just wasting time with each other?”
Her jaw clamps, lips smacking closed and Aisha’s dark eyes cast down, body shaking as she bites down her conflicting words. He can almost hear it, as if said out loud. Rational side, yes. Her heart, no .
His heart, no .
The silence stretches for a second too long and Grey swallows the sudden knot in his throat, then forces his voice to work, “Aisha?”
She shakes her head, half turns her body away from him and presses her knuckles to her lips, muffling a strangled sob.
“You’re ruining everything.”
“ Aisha ,” he insists, wanting to hear her say it, “are we? Just a grand waste of time? Do you even care?”
“Do you even care if Musa is hurt?” She says after a small pause, not looking at him, staring at a spot in the rotten wooden floor, “or have we been fooling each other?”
“I care if you’re hurt,” he says as a way of compromise and Aisha takes a sharp breath, then nods. It stings like a slap, so Grey says angrily, “do you care if they’re lying? If my people are hurt?”
If he’s wounded, Aisha is furious, because there’s a fire burning as she turns to look at him and says coolly, “I care if you are lying.”
He nods, tugs on his shirt that is suddenly suffocating him, then crosses the room towards her.
She flinches.
It burns in the pit of his stomach like an ulcer and Grey hesitates a second, before letting his hands come up and cupping her cheeks, pulling her in. For all her anger, it’s clear she was expecting a fight, not this , because she melts under his touch and allows him to pull her to his chest. He sniffles, then presses a kiss to the top of her head.
“Take care, Aisha,” his voice is rough, squeezed out and her fingers curl in his jacket, keeping him put.
“Grey-”
“Take care,” he repeats, tilts her head up and forces their eyes to meet. He’s not gonna see her again, this much Grey knows. They were fooling themselves. Her bottom lip trembles, chocolate eyes filled with tears that fall as she nods her head, forcing out a watery smile.
“You too.”