Chapter Text
The sound of her own voice, scratchy and low as it was from the strain of the screaming, was barely recognizable to Tara now.
“Please, Isabel! You have to listen, there is still time!” the first drops of rain pattered on her forearms as they gripped tightly the shoulders of the girl in front of her, who laid supine in a shallow grave.
On paper, she had done everything right. After waking up from her failed attempt to drag Isabel out of the midnight realm herself, she’d chased down Marco and Polo. Demons of their kind never could resist a challenge— so she gave them one. They’d run a race through the dark woods with dire stakes. If the unholy twins won, Tara would drink the luna juice again, go to her grave willingly, give Mister Melancholy what he wanted… but, if they lost, they had to lead her to Isabel.
She didn’t know what she had been thinking, really, risking her life like that. She hadn’t been thinking. If there had been a split-second decision against leaving Isabel there, declaring her a lost cause, then it was unconscious, entirely. One thing was for sure: her track skills, dormant since she had quit the team and started using it as a cover to fight demons with her best friend, were still enough to beat those two chuckleheads in a foot race.
She found Isabel, and dug her out of the ground. Cringing, she carefully placed the girl’s still-beating heart back in-between her ribs. Her own heart, reunited with her not too long ago still felt alien to her, weakly pumping what blood it could through her body. She ignored it.
Still, even when she had done everything right, she feared it wouldn’t be enough.
Tara knew deep down that the other girl wouldn’t be able to come back until she rejected the midnight realm– really, truly, decisively, severed all ties to it. Even if she was out of the ground now, even if her heart barely, barely, beat— had Tara gotten to her in time? Could Isabel still choose life from the death grip of the midnight realm?
She had tried to convince her from the inside, with no luck. Now, she prolonged her life out here, and did the closest thing she ever had to praying. “Izzy. Isabel,” she said, her voice softer– still hoarse and desperate, but quieter. “You’re dying.”
At that, the other girl stirred. Just for a moment, just for a brief window of time— Then, dashing all of Tara’s hopes, seemed to fall comatose just as, if not more deeply, than before. She pressed her head against Isabel’s chest and waited.
It was a long, long ten minutes before anything more happened. Increasingly pouring rain came down on the both of them, turning the grave’s loose dirt into slippery, ill-defined mud. Tara held her friend, whose breath was becoming more shallow by the second. When she could gather up the courage to speak, she whispered hard-won words of encouragement, urging her to come back, to be brave, to hold on.
She felt that she herself would pass out any minute, the strain on her body and her psychic energy threatening to be too much to bear– she could save some energy by using less of her power to hide her and Isabel from prying eyes. She knew Marco and Polo would be too busy sulking about their lost race to come after them, but she feared being found by Mister Melancholy in this state more than anything.
If she could just hold her focus long enough for Isabel to come back, everything would be okay.
It was when Tara had almost entirely given up hope that Isabel woke up. It happened all at once, a raucous coughing fit, a bolt upright.
Then, there was her best friend: looking like death, and perfectly, gloriously alive, her dark brown eyes shining with fear and determination.
“...M-Maddy?” the newly-awake girl spat out, dribbling out of her mouth diluted luna juice and dirt.
The incorrect name didn’t phase Tara. It didn’t matter. Not now.
“Isabel.”