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It was the little things, Sabrina found, that made her realize she wasn’t the girl who pulled into Ferryport Landing with nothing but her sister and the dwindling hope she’d ever see her parents again. It was the way she craved a slice of blueberry cobbler from the Blue Plate Diner or how she knew exactly sixteen ways to effectively kill a man with her bare hands. It was the way she knew the woods she’d met Puck in like the back of her hand or how she could find her way to all the graves of the people she loved and lost without looking.
However, it was really in the way she breathed and bled and slept that made her realize she wasn’t as human as the rest of her family.
Even now, after Mr. Clay had made them into Everafters, undying and eternally young, the rest of her family remained as they always had been. Her sister was still a wiz at magic and magical items. Basil was still a redhead, though he was starting to grow into the whole head of the reddest hair she’d ever seen since the photos of her grandmother had reappeared. And of course, her parents were still endlessly stubborn.
It grated on her that she was the only one who could scarcely recall who she had been and what she had been before this. Before Mirror. When the magic mirrors had exploded and sunk into her skin, the magic flowing through her blood made her sick. So ill that she could barely stand. Bunny Lancaster had said that if she could defeat Mirror, expelling the pent-up energy in her body, it would free her. Or she’d die.
But then Mirror was gone, and the sight Sabrina had developed hadn’t.
At first, Sabrina had ignored it. With the war over, rebuilding the town (and their house) came first. In the face of all that had happened, Sabrina could ignore the itch in her mind telling her there’s more to this than you know. You can’t ignore me forever. But Sabrina had more to do and a life to get back to.
That didn’t mean it was easy. She knew her relationship with her parents had shifted. When they had returned from their slumber, Sabrina had been so relieved. She had thought she could go back to being a kid. That she could turn away from the responsibilities thrust onto her at an age too young and too naive.
But time had burnt her childhood away. The scars of the foster homes were branded into her skin. The walls she’d built up over the nearly two years they’d spent being bumped around from abusive home to abusive home had worn her down. The dog catching, the handcuffs, the tiger. Daphne had been by her side the entire time…but Sabrina had felt the weight of her parents’ absence. The weight to take a hit when a foster parent got too aggressive, too unpredictable. She knew Daphne didn’t know. She’d made sure Daphne wouldn’t know.
Trying to switch gears, especially after taking control of a whole damn army during the war, to being a child after losing her entire childhood in one fell swoop, was nearly impossible. She wasn’t a kid. She couldn’t be.
Now, despite their arguments that had ensued into the war, Daphne was still willing to defer to Sabrina over their parents (at least when Sabrina was making sense and being reasonable). It wasn’t obvious at first. Henry was still of the opinion that they could leave and forget this ever happened. But for Sabrina, she’d made up her mind for once. She’d made up her mind, watching the mirrors melt silver ink into her skin, that she didn’t want to leave anymore. People she had looked up to, people she had loved, had died for this town, for her future, and for each other. She couldn’t leave now.
Sabrina’s new resolution had endeared her endlessly to Daphne. They’d talked about it late one night, when Daphne had left her and Red’s shared room and crawled back into sleep next to Sabrina. Sabrina knew they’d both been plagued by nightmares. Images of Briar Rose being flung by the dragon. Watching Mr. Seven and Morgan’s wedding, only to lose Mr. Seven right after. Burying them both. Leaving Morgan behind.
Daphne had slid her hand into Sabrina’s. “I can’t get it out of my head.”
“I know what you mean.” The silence lingered between the two of them. Sabrina aimed her eyes at her newly rebuilt ceiling. She couldn’t turn away from the mural Red had painted, after telling Sabrina that she deserved something happy. “It lingers. I don’t think it will ever get away from us. We will grow up, or grow old. Or we won’t. We’ll live for a long time. When I smell coffee, I’ll still remember Briar. See her face in my mind. The joy in her voice when she found the ring. When I see Morgan in town, or Mordred, I’ll remember her and Mr. Seven's wedding. The dress I wore, and the vows they made. Even Mirror. The sound of his voice, the way he called me Starfish with such affection in one moment, and then the look of sheer madness in his eyes when he possessed Granny Relda. It will be a long time before I find myself leaving this town. Physically or emotionally.”
With a shaking breath, Daphne gripped Sabrina’s hand like she’d disappear. “You don’t want to leave? Like dad? Forget Ferryport Landing and the Everafters and the war, and move back to New York?”
“I don’t think I could. At least, not yet. People died for us to be here. For us to be safe. For us to take this town back,” Sabrina’s eyes traced the painted flowers Red had chosen specifically for her. Bluebells and red roses. Forget-me-nots and purple hyacinths. Nasturtium and marigolds. Yellow zinnia and lilacs. Periwinkles and honeysuckle. Fitting, Sabrina thought, considering honeysuckle is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “This is my home. I’ve lost so much to be here. To be alive. And let’s face it, Daph, we’re Everafters now, too. Things are different from what they were.”
“I know.”
“We’re different.” I’m different. Sabrina couldn’t bear to say the words out loud. The rush of her blood in her ears, the stretch of her skin. She could feel it, but she couldn’t say it.
“I know.”
Sabrina let them lie in silence, the light of the moon peeking through the clouds, illuminating the room slightly. For a moment, Sabrina felt like she was ten again. Like she was still living in a brownstone in the city with her parents and her sister, and she had hope for the future.
“I’m sorry,” came out in a whisper as Daphne broke the quiet that settled between them. “For doubting you. I thought–”
“That’d I’d agree with dad. That we should move on. I would’ve, once upon a time. But then we were at war. And life changed.”
Her sister lay still next to her. The two of them were suspended in time together. “You were my parent. I didn’t realize it, but that’s who you had to be. I didn’t understand why you were so suspicious, so critical, so stubborn. Mom and dad had never been like that. My memories of them were perfect, and you always kept it that way. And then dad came back, and I guess I didn’t understand until all I could think about when I stared at him, saw the look in his eye, and the way he was standing, was you.”
The pitter-patter of Sabrina’s heart brought chills to her arms. Her eyes felt heavy, and the moon cast a silver sheen across everything in sight. There were a thousand things Daphne could have said. A thousand ways this could have gone. And yet–
“Dad’s trying to protect us from a threat that doesn’t exist. You were trying to protect us from one that did.”
“Yes. I was.”
“And you never wanted me to lose who I am to understand why you were trying to protect me.”
“No. That’s what big sisters do.”
“That’s what parents do. And that’s what you were. My parent. Even with Granny Relda, you had every right to be suspicious, and I never let you.”
“At least you were right to trust her, in the end.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hurt you by getting mad when we didn’t agree on everything.”
“I lied to you. Several times. I stole from you, didn’t trust you enough. I wasn’t able to believe in people the way you were.”
“True. But it’s not like I was as mature as you had to be. You let me trust people, you let me trust period. If you hadn’t taken all the pain and anger, I would’ve been too bitter to believe anyone could be good. You gave away your ability to trust so I could keep mine.”
Sabrina blinked, feeling tears sliding down her cheeks. In the haze of her sight, she knew what they were. Silver. Hearing Daphne understand, like really understand her, felt like the rock in her throat was starting to loosen its grip. The hand Daphne held was probably gripping back too tightly. She could feel the shards of magic swirling in her fingertips. She felt breakable, as breakable as the mirrors that haunted her sight.
“I’d do it again, you know. Even if you hated me forever. Even if we had never gotten mom and dad back, and it was just you and I at the end. I’d do it again.”
“For me.”
“For you.”
“I love you, ‘Brina.”
“I love you too, Daph.”
Sabrina hadn’t had a nightmare the rest of the month.
Of course, even though the sisters worked out some of their unspoken anger and pain, that didn’t mean they had with their dad. Their conversation only made it easier for them to trust one another, to be honest about what they wanted and didn’t want. It helped their relationship, especially in the face of Henry’s latest ploy.
With the house rebuilt, they were now housing over 10 people. Sabrina, her siblings, her parents, Granny Relda, Uncle Jake, and Puck, Mr. Clay and Red, Pinocchio, and Buzzflower all had rooms. And of course, room for Elvis to toss himself around freely without breaking everything. Granny had even requested Boarman and Swinehart to build in a few guest rooms along with a dedicated library. Which is where Sabrina was when it all went down.
“Daphne!” Henry said sternly, face turning redder by the minute while having a staring contest with his youngest daughter. “You aren’t being realistic. You don’t even have a proper teacher right now.”
Daphne, of course, gave back as good as she got. “You’re just scared, dad! You’re not thinking clearly because you’re not even considering anything Granny said. We can’t just pack up and leave. And anyway, she still has custody of us, so it’s not like you can just bring us back without her. And she won’t leave.”
The two of them had decided to duke it out at the library entrance as Sabrina unpacked all the family journals and books they’d written. Why they decided to do this here instead of literally anywhere else in the house, Sabrina didn’t understand.
Well–she did–but she was going to pretend for as long as physically possible that everything was alright, that she was just a normal girl that didn’t have to grow old because she was now (technically) not just a human girl anymore. She didn’t even need to listen to them argue to know the six possible realities of this conversation.
One. Henry would get so frustrated that he’d literally storm off in a huff with a red face right in the middle of a sentence.
Two. Or Daphne would.
Three. Veronica would step in and send both of them to their rooms. Sabrina could see her outline etched in silver lingering in the kitchen, waiting to decide depending on how loud it go.
Four. Basil would find a way in and interrupt them, demanding someone pay attention to him. He’d been doing it more and more when he realized literally everyone was too much of a pushover for him not to agree to his big green eyes and sad little pout. He was a master at the puppy dog eyes.
Five. Sabrina would tell them to quiet down in the library or leave. Or she’d just take Daphne’s side and tell her dad to drop it, triggering possibility one.
Or six–
“Bask in my presence, minions!”
Puck would break it up simply by existing. Technically, he and Uncle Jake were meant to be visiting the Andersen triplets and their older brother. No one had expected them to be back, but Sabrina knew better. She’d see them make a last-minute decision, dragging the Andersen clan up to meet them instead.
Neither Puck nor Jake had called ahead. But Sabrina didn’t want to stress Granny Relda out anymore, so she’d already gotten the guest rooms ready. It might be hard to explain later, when someone eventually asks, but Sabrina could just say she could smell Puck coming even from 2,903 miles away. Of course, detailing the exact distance would freak them out, so she’d need to remember to keep her mouth shut on that.
Sabrina didn’t even look up from her task. She was labeling the bookcase of journals by date. Granny Relda may be okay with the randomized order they’d kept the books in before, but Sabrina could appreciate being able to find things quickly.
“Puck–” The vein in her dad’s head was throbbing.
“Puck!” Daphne veered off course from her next screaming match to launch herself at him.
Sabrina knew this was for the best. The next words out of her dad’s mouth would’ve been you’re just a kid, and you’re not mature enough to understand, and you need to grow up, all of which could’ve irreparably damaged their relationship. Sabrina loved her dad, had missed him endlessly when he was gone, but the fact is he no longer really knew them. Not like they knew each other. Sabrina knew what got under Daphne’s skin, not for lack of messing up over and over again and finding out.
Anyway, Puck had picked her sister up to swing her around. “Marshmallow! I’ve brought presents. And Jake brought people.”
“Of course he did,” Henry muttered, but all three of them decided to ignore it.
The distraction of guests at least made both of them behave. Sabrina was forced to abandon her task to get dragged into introductions and reunions, and all the emotional stuff. Too bad she liked it.
Jake came in, Buzzflower on his arm, and suddenly Sabrina was being pulled into the living room. There was food and tea, and strange little milky desserts Granny Relda said were mishti sweets from India. Sabrina ended up with mango ones and had to steal the entire tray. It wasn’t often she liked Granny’s food, so she’d take what she could get.
The Grimm clan and co brought noise levels to an all-time high. The house was alive again. Of course, herding about fifteen people in for dinner was a whole Herculean task, but that was another story.
After dessert, Sabrina crawled onto the roof. The Andersen triplets were great. She finally got to talk to someone around her own age. Isa might be two years older, but she was someone who just got Sabrina in a way none of the other Ferryport Landing kids did.
Isa was just as snarky, just as sarcastic, but in a way that told Sabrina she was comfortable in her own skin. She was confident. She knew she was an Andersen, and she was proud of it. She respected Sabrina’s magic intolerance, her boundaries on topics, and she’d been willing to be upfront about anything and everything Sabrina asked.
Her brothers were nice, too. Mateo was a jokester, so he and Puck got along like a gas fire. Sabrina dreaded the day they decided to compete in an all-out prank war. Diego was more reserved than his siblings. He was more book-focused and kept his more erratic siblings on track. He reminded Sabrina of her mom. Level-headed and cool under pressure, but still able to toss a right hook if the occasion called for it.
Of course, Sabrina surprisingly found a friend in their oldest brother, Gabriel. He’d come up to her after dinner to chat. Their conversation was short, but the look in his eye gave Sabrina pause. It was the same one in her own.
He’d explained that their parents had separated when he was young, and his mom had died when he turned nineteen. Their dad had fucked off to god knows where in his heartbreak, leaving Gabriel behind to raise three six-year-olds. It had been nine years since then, and the burden of being both their sibling and their parent was like a physical weight.
Sabrina could see the slump in his shoulders and the invisible pressure of Atlas pushing him to his knees. He recognized it in her. “Game recognizes game,” he joked. “At least I was on my way to being an adult.”
“Ten isn’t the best age, that’s for sure.”
“Foster care?”
“Yep.”
“Mmm. Some case worker tried to get me to drop the triplets there. Said I was too young, too stupid, too alone.”
“You didn’t listen.”
“Best decision I ever made.”
They looked over to where Mateo and Puck were playing an aggressive game of cards with Diego and Red while Daphne egged everyone on. Pinocchio was standing behind them, holding Basil, a look of absolute confusion on his face.
“Same.”
Having turned thirteen, Sabrina could hardly believe this was her life now. From a family of four to one that included most of a town. The whiplash made her dizzy.
Breathing in the fresh air rolling off the Hudson, the buzzing in her head calmed down.
Sabrina knew most of the house was asleep. It had been a long week, with moving furniture back in, finishing bedrooms, and dealing with things in town. Having guests who traveled from across the country was just another reason people knocked the hell out. Only a few people were kept awake by the moon and the stars.
One of them was crawling out of her window.
Puck could’ve flown up or down or something else. But she could only see him seeking her out in her room. They’d grown enough from that first month after the war to know each other.
At first, she remembers, when he said Jake asked him to leave, she’d felt her heart drop into her stomach. The thought of another person leaving her was almost too much. She was still twelve, felt the sting of abandonment like every breath of air in the winter or the ache in her arm from where she’d broken it. But he’d promised to come back.
And so far, he had.
They’d done some variation of this each time he came back. As the house was being rebuilt, they would meet up wherever they could. Sometimes at Fort Charming, sometimes on Mount Taurus, and sometimes down by the docks.
When the house was nearly done, Sabrina had taken great pains to relearn how to sneak about. The floorboards still creaked, and the walls still echoed, so she found herself going back to her orphanage roots. Puck, of course, never had any qualms about making a ruckus. But when it came to their routine, their tradition, he’d gone out of his way to make sure it was their own.
He claimed it was because he didn’t want Henry to come after him with a hammer or something, but she was well aware that they both enjoyed their late-night chats. While his room was still as magical as ever, there was something in the gentle quiet of her newly finished room that they both found achingly normal. With everything else in their lives: the buzz of magic that oozed off Daphne and Uncle Jake, Red’s new internal roommate, and of course, the reality of Sabrina and Puck’s new normal; finding a moment or two together in her room blocked out the chaos, if just for a moment.
The boy in question settled down to her right, close enough to touch. She could feel the heat of his skin in the chill of the summer night.
Years ago, they could barely sit in the same room, let alone in silence. Sure, they weren’t in a room anymore, but it spoke to the changes they’d gone through. Both personal ones and the ones they’d faced head-on together.
Puck spoke first, quietly launching into his and Jake’s latest adventure. How they’d veered off course to visit the Andersens. How Jake had gone quiet one of the nights and officially told Puck how Briar died. He knew, but the reality of seeing it had been burned in Sabrina’s mind for months now. The sounds and the pain in her heart. Puck knew she died because of the dragons, but he hadn’t known the full story from Jake’s mouth.
In the light of that revelation, Puck shared his own fears. How he’d felt when Sabrina had almost fallen off the water tower. The echoes of Charming’s evil brother crawling out of the margins of the Everafter book to choke her. The weakness she’d loathed to publicly display when she had just been sliced open with the magic mirrors.
“But I know you, ‘Brina. You’re made of stronger stuff now,” Puck said jokingly, jostling her shoulder.
A pit was forming in her throat. Sabrina’s smile dimmed, and three scenarios appeared in her sight. Variations on how this conversation could go flashed in her mind. One where Puck didn’t believe her and brushed it off. One where he took it too seriously, and the one she hoped for. The one where he said I figured, but you’re still you, and didn’t love her any less for it.
She sucked in a deep breath. It’s now or never. “I wish that were true.”
“It is!” Puck turned his head towards her, tilting it questioningly. When she refused to look him in the eye, his gaze became pinched. “Unless you don’t think it is. What’s really going on then?”
“I’m not human anymore.”
“Yeah, the big bad made you and the gang into Everafters. You know this.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She let her eyes fall shut, lips trembling. “You remember when the magic mirrors shattered?”
Puck tensed beside her. “Yeah. You got infected with magic.”
“Yes. And Bunny told me that the only way for me to maybe live was to expel all the magic from my body. She was sure I’d die otherwise.”
“But you didn’t die.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But…”
“But it changed me. The mirrors have never truly left me. The magic has never truly gone away. I don’t know how or why I’m not dead, considering I was basically overdosing on magic, but it’s like the parts of me that were human were replaced by the remnants of the Council of Mirrors. That their abilities became mine, but with less control. I feel breakable, like if you dropped me, I’d shatter into a million pieces.”
Her voice became desperate, and Puck tried to make a noise, but she waved him off.
“I bleed silver now, Puck. It’s not normal!”
She reached to the side, pulling out one of the daggers Snow had given her after the war. Before Puck could make a sound, she sliced open her left palm, letting the silver blood finally flow out.
“What the!” Puck gripped her hand, yanking the dagger out of her hands. He let her go for a moment, yanking the bottom of his shirt until it split in two. He eyed the silver blood pooling in her hand for the quickest moment before gently dabbing away the blood. He wrapped her hand tightly, tying the knot on the back of her hand.
Heartbeats passed, and Puck slumped into her shoulder for a moment.
“Moving forward,” Puck began weakly, lifting his head up, “Can you promise me you won’t slice open your skin to prove your point? I wouldn’t want to keep ripping my shirt off for you.”
Sabrina snorted, shaking her head with a smile. “Sure. It was just for dramatic effect, you know? I thought you’d appreciate the flair, considering you’re from a Shakespeare play.”
“Yeah, sure, ‘Brina. Totally believe you.”
Her smile fell a little. The look in his eye softened. “Puck, I just didn’t know how else to explain it without showing it. I mean, a little over a year ago, I was just a normal girl. Sure, my parents were missing, and sure we were being bounced around to abusive foster homes, but I was human. I didn’t believe in fairytales and myths and legends. And now? I’ve killed a giant, led an army, got betrayed, lost people, and become something that isn’t human. I’m not even supposed to touch magical items, but now it’s like one is in my body. I can see things, more things than I want. Like every possible option Granny thinks of for dinner. Where people are in the house. How someone will move when they come at me. It’s on an unending loop in my head, one that I just can’t turn off.”
Her head fell back, eyes closed.
“I’m not human anymore. I was just a naive, normal girl. And now–”
“I don’t care.” Puck interrupted her, eyeing her hand. “You’re still Sabrina Grimm to me. One half of the Sisters Grimm. You’re my best friend and my worst enemy, and we can spend the rest of our abnormally long lives figuring out what that means. But this?”
He reached out and grabbed her hand, effectively turning her towards him. In her quietest voice, she let out a, “Puck. ” But he just shook his head, so she let him continue.
“This just means we have something else to talk about. Something else to consider. But it doesn’t change who you are. Not to me.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
“Do you understand me, ‘Brina?”
She nodded, and his hand moved to brush the tears away. She could see his own, normal and clear, and the difference between the silvery ones spilling onto his hand.
“I understand.”
He let him pull back for a moment. Not enough that she moved too far from him, just enough to suck air back into her lungs and lean against him, hip to hip.
“Thank you,” She whispered. “For not hating me.”
“I could never hate you.”
“And I could never hate you.”
For a while, they just sat in silence, bodies pressed against one another. Up this high, she could feel the cool air on her face, flowing in through her hair. It was freeing, knowing that someone else knew. Someone she trusted. And to know he trusted her back in spite of the change. You knew how he’d react. You just allowed the other scenarios to cloud your judgment. This is someone who came out of a literal foul-smelling cocoon after nearly dying for you. He couldn’t care less that you’re not human. Barring you losing every aspect of you that makes you, you know, you, he literally is fine with you changing and growing. He’s literally growing up for you. What you are is the least of his worries.
In the aching light of the moon, Sabrina had to ask. “You promise me, no matter what, you’ll always come back?”
She could feel Puck’s gaze on her. She knew in the right light, it almost looked like she was covered in silver dust. Instead of responding right away, he caught her off guard. Taking her hand back into his own, he turned his body fully towards her so they could be eye to eye. In response, she did the same.
In spite of their slightly antagonistic relationship, they meant something to each other. They would always mean something to each other. But Sabrina knew Puck’s answer. Whether it was the faint echo of a grin etched in the silver of her vision or the sound of his voice in the back of her mind. She knew.
“‘Brina,” Puck whispered. “I promise. No matter how many times I leave, I’ll come back.”
She couldn’t help it. The tension eased in her shoulders, and the breath she let out was shaky. Letting go of his hand, Sabrina threw her arms around his neck and yanked him close. He went freely. Slowly wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his face into her shoulder. After everything, after almost losing one another over and over, they had to believe the other would always come back. No other option was acceptable.
“Thank you.”
In the silvery gaze of the moon, the two of them didn’t let go.