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Puck’s heart actually tried to jump out of his throat when Sabrina ripped the eye out of Crom’s head. The moments following—catching her, channeling magic through the crystal, and watching the fallen god eat itself are a blur.
He only came back to himself once the weight of the oppressive iron aura dissipates, having to catch Sabrina for the second time within a span of less than two minutes as she passes out.
Pandemonium breaks out around him as the remaining fairies who were cowering in the rubble regain control of themselves. Sabrina is bleeding heavily from the cuts on her hands and her head has lolled to the side, utter dead weight in his arms, the only sign of life the pained furrow to her brow and the slight rise and fall of her chest.
Fighting back an extreme wave of panic, he yells for everyone to be quiet, and that he needs a healer—Moll, where is Moll?
It takes him a long moment to remember she was helping ferry everyone to the throne room. Ignoring the confusion and elation sparking through the air as everyone realizes that the threat is over, he breaks into a hurried trot and shoulders past the fae who had been in the middle of going through the doors to the great cavern.
He finds Moll helping Neri to her feet in the hall and calls out for her, not caring that he sounds half-way to frantic and close to bursting into tears.
The wolfwalker looks up, eyes widening when she sees them but, thank God, she immediately understands and meets him in the middle, scanning her glowing hands over Sabrina. The blood stops flowing from her hands, and the pained expression falters, smoothing out. Woozily, her eyelids flicker, a little flash of blue.
“Sabrina?” he asks, voice shaking slightly, desperate to see her do anything. But, after a moment, she groans weakly, eyes fluttering shut.
“What happened?” Neri says, holding her head. “Crom’s presence is gone. Where is he?”
“Dead,” he says blankly, still staring at Sabrina’s face, hoping for another moment of consciousness. “She tore out his eye. It was the pair to the original crystal and he's gone now thanks to her.”
Moll hisses out a breath. She gingerly holds up one of Sabrina’s hands, using her sleeve to wipe away some of the congealing blood. “Too much magic in t'ose cuts. She’ll scar.”
He can’t help a small, strained laugh. “Oh, she’ll love that. A part of her collection, she’ll say.”
Moll cocks her head at him for a moment, a small smile pulling at the corner of her lips before her expression turns serious again. “We need to find Una. She has a lot of explaining and apologizing t'do”
“I don’t really care,” he growls, irritation biting him at the thought of the Seelie Queen. “I need to care for my fiancee.”
“Allow me,” comes the voice of Meabh.
Turning, he finds the Princess limping towards them, looking worse for wear, but upright.
Unconsciously, he tightens his hold on Sabrina, a possessive kind of instinct that tells him not to let her out of his sight while she’s so vulnerable.
“To your rooms,” Meabh says gently, looking utterly wasted by the toll of Crom's aura but determined nonetheless. “Talk with me while we walk.”
Deciding he can live with this arrangement, he nods to Moll and Neri and keeps pace with the struggling Princess. Unlike usual, she stays quiet and lets him speak without interruption while he explains everything that happened including the witch taking Sabrina down to examine Crom's cave last night during the revel.
Along the way, she manages to scavenge two servants to come with them. He’s long finished the story by the time they file into Sabrina’s bathing chamber, the servants busying themselves with preparing the water, talking to each other in rapid Gaelic about soothing herbs and elixirs to add to the bath.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spots the nose of a brownie looking out from under one of the side tables, checking on the human they already favor. It takes him seeing the small fae and thinking of how Sabrina wanted a few working for her that he realizes just how much he could ask Una in exchange for what they did to save Magh Meall.
But, for once in the long rivalry, he doesn’t want anything from the Aos Sidhe. He just wants to be able to leave here with Sabrina on his arm, healthy and healed.
“Put her down,” Meabh says, pulling out a long bench from the wall. “I’ll get her undressed so we can wash her.” One of her eyebrows quirks. “Unless you’d rather?”
Every bit of his fairyish nature slams into the forefront of his brain demanding that he personally take care of her. But the more rational part of him argues it’d be an invasion of her privacy.
So, much as he doesn’t want to, he nods, giving Sabrina to Meabh.
.-.-.-.
By the second full day of Sabrina being comatose, he thinks he might lose his mind.
He paces the space in front of the bed over and over, absently wondering if he’ll drudge a rut into the floor. Moll and her daughter are currently coaxing something rejuvenating down Sabrina’s throat. Apparently she's showing more signs of coming around, but he won't be calm until she's speaking to him coherently.
This morning, Meabh had helped him return the rental car and worked some forgetful dust magic on the workers at the airport to give them a more flexible deal on rescheduling their tickets to get back to New York. Nothing’s stopping them from going home except for her continued state of unconsciousness. Despite all their medicines (and his kisses—hey, it could work, magic is weird that way sometimes) she’s still just sleeping continually with the occasional moment of crying out or mumbling nonsense through her stupor.
He knows from looking through her texts with her family that everyone was expecting her back home tonight. At this rate, that’s just not going to happen. As much as he knows she’d probably want to keep things a secret, he also believes they deserve to know nothing bad has happened to her. There will be questions regardless. Especially from her mother, who Sabrina had off handedly mentioned knew she was going out of the country, just not for what.
Abruptly stopping his pacing, he looks to Moll. “Can you stay with her? I need to step out for a bit.”
The wolfwalker waves him off, placing the other hand on Sabrina’s forehead to feed more healing magic into her system.
Wrenching his eyes away from her, he turns and steps out, stalking through the castle while ignoring the grateful smiles thrown his way. He wishes Sabrina would wake up. It’d be a lot easier to soak up the hero worship if he could share it with her.
Outside of the castle, he spreads his wings and flies over the town before exiting the entry cave to return to the Irish countryside. He pulls out Sabrina’s phone, going to her contacts and forces himself to select a call with her mother before he can second guess himself.
The device rings three times before someone answers, muffled voices going on behind it.
“Hey, Veronica,” he starts.
“Puck, is that you?” She already has an edge of wariness to her tone, like she knows something’s going on just on virtue of the call. She has good instincts, just like her daughter.
He decides to just rip the band aid off. “Yeah. So before I get into it, just to be clear, she’s alive.”
A sharp intake of breath. “Is there a reason she wouldn’t be?”
“Uh, well, kind of—”
“Roni, who are you talking about? What’s going on?”
There’s a small commotion, and suddenly Henry’s voice is loudly coming through the receiver. “Why are you on her phone on a long distance call?”
“Calm down, old man. It’s been a rough couple of days here in Ireland.”
“Ireland?” he snaps incredulously. “She’s supposed to be upstate at a friend’s cabin. And you’re supposed to be in Faerie.”
Puck pinches the bridge of his nose and curses the fact that he decided to do this. They could show a little gratitude that he’s talking to them at all. He is not built for this whole navigating his future in-laws thing.
But it’s for Sabrina, so he’ll just have to endure it.
.-.-.-.
The whole plane ride home, Sabrina has her head on his shoulder and a hand laced with his. This is perfect, as far as he’s concerned. He’d rather not let go of her—ever, really.
He’s starting to dread the moment they have to land.
So, of course, it happens far sooner than he would have hoped. Sparse luggage in hand, they hail a cab and get dropped off at the park.
“Oh, dammit,” she mutters under her breath as they pass a parking lot. “There’s their car.”
He squeezes her hand. “They are worried about you,” he allows generously.
She sighs. “I just don’t really know what to say. I wasn’t expecting this trip to be dangerous? I didn’t mean to save the world again?”
He can’t help but laugh at her joke, giving her a fond look and a kiss on the cheek.
Looking like she’s in slightly better spirits she lightly pushes him away. “That’s the other thing. How do we explain…us? It's pretty integral to the fact that we went to a fairy celebration together in the first place.”
He chews on his lip then sighs, wishing he didn’t have to part with this particular secret. “Your mom already knows we're together.”
She stops walking and turns on him, eyes wide. “What? How? When?”
“A couple weeks ago she came to talk to me about the fact that she saw us kissing outside my door.”
“Oh my God,” she groans, putting her hands on her face. “I can’t believe—ugh. Of course. She’s been a little bit off about things for a while now.” She looks up. “And you didn’t say anything because she told you not to?”
“No. I didn’t say anything because I knew it would only make you mad at her for snooping and not saying anything to you personally.”
“And Daphne knows, too. Red probably has known this whole time. Great. Just great! Everyone is going to be awful about this.”
“If it makes you feel any better, my mother won’t stop asking me when we’re going to get married and give her grandchildren.”
“It does not!” she squeaks, going red.
Puck snickers at her adorable blush. “Look, it’s going to be okay. Whatever they have to say about it, it’ll blow over within a few days.”
She makes a defeated sounding whine. “You’re only saying that because you’re not the one who has to live with them for the next two months.”
“I think we both know I’d gladly have you live here instead.”
“If they get too overbearing about everything, I might just do it.”
He grins. “Well, in that case, I should probably tell your dad about during the rev—”
She puts a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you dare finish that idea. Behave yourself during this conversation.”
Unimpressed, he grabs her by the wrist to pull her hand away and kisses the tip of her finger. “Fine, if you insist.”
Sighing, she starts walking again and they finally enter the portal to Faerie. The bar is mostly quiet, a few Everafters nursing tame drinks while chatting with one another.
Sabrina instantly garners attention, several patrons pausing their conversations to wave at her. She’s a bit distracted, but still waves back as they pass through the many chairs and tables.
Smug satisfaction sweeps over Puck. He desperately wants to crow something along the lines of, my future wife and Queen deserves nothing less, but she’s probably not in the mood to be teased. (Not that it’s teasing, it’s the truth.)
They soon reach the throne room, and Puck gets it over with by throwing open the door. Inside, at the counseling table, Titania sits across from Henry and Veronica who look like they were just in the middle of a tense discussion (well, tense on the humans' part, Titania looks only mildly amused).
Immediately upon seeing their daughter, they rush to her and sweep her up into a group hug that makes her look suffocated. While she awkwardly pats their backs and tells them they can calm down, she’s fine, please let her go, his own mother beams at him.
“Seems you two were busy,” she says warmly, gesturing to the back wall. Mounted above his throne, the new crystal of Colmcille (Sabrina? He’s not sure, it sounds a little strange, especially considering he still can’t think of the moment she tore out the eye without wanting to pass out—the name of the celebration, on the other hand, now that he will personally petition to get changed) glitters in the light. No big surprise that Titania did that the moment she received the spoil on their doorstep. Una may have been humbled slightly (at least for the time being) by the situation, but his mother will probably be preening about this whole thing for many, many years to come.
He’s also certain he’s about to get a lot more prodding from her about marrying Sabrina.
Sabrina’s parents finally release her, the concern and relief transforming into frustrated anger on Henry’s part. Before the man can open his mouth to say something stupid, Puck steps forward and wraps an arm around her shoulders, making her stiffen for a half second on account of the brashness.
“Before you start running your mouth,” Puck says, “take a breath for a second and consider whether you’re just mad that she isn’t shunning the magical world like you did.”
Henry’s jaw clenches, eyes caught on the gesture. “That’s not the point, she was hurt and she's been hiding—”
“I think it is,” Puck counters, fingers tightening on Sabrina’s shoulder. Suddenly, he has zero patience for her parents blaming her for just living her life. “Look, here’s the facts. She’s extremely capable and strong and not a little kid anymore—get over it. She’s only proved that more this week by not only helping soothe a centuries long feud but also by destroying a being that no one thought was possible to kill. She gets to control what she does and makes her own choices. If you’re going to ridicule and blame her for that, you can leave my Kingdom. Now.”
For a long moment, no one says anything until Veronica steps slightly in front of her husband who looks stuck between too many emotions to express anything.
“We understand that,” the woman says, elbowing Henry. “I think we’re starting to really understand that. If it’s alright with you, I think it would do us all good if we could stay for dinner and the night to collect ourselves before going home.”
Puck gives them a curt nod and looks down at his girlfriend. “Anything else to add?”
She heaves a huge sigh. “In case there was any question. We’re dating and have been for a while now. Please don’t make a big deal about it.”
Henry looks like he might actually faint.
“Of course not honey,” Veronica says firmly, “we’re happy for you both.”
Puck meets Veronica’s eyes for a second and he’s glad to see at least one of her parents finally understands he’d rather get his wings ripped off again then hurt her.
.-.-.-.
Dinner was quiet except for Titania who was all lavish praise and excitement for Sabrina. He'd watched her parents carefully for any signs of interjecting. Luckily, Veronica seems to have come around to being a good mother for her adult daughter and Henry was still in some kind of daze. That night, Puck struggles to fall asleep. After spending nearly a week sleeping next to Sabrina, his bed feels cold and empty. He wouldn’t have minded staying together, but she didn’t want to push their luck with her parents and the sort of truce they’d entered, like being more proper was a peace offering or something.
Goddamn human propriety. Damn the whole concept to hell.
After tossing and turning for a while, he gives up and spends some time checking up on his pets (who Mustardseed had thankfully taken care of despite his sighing and eye rolling, Puck swears he wasn’t that annoying at fourteen) before going to his study to mess with his latest mechanical project.
It’s something they found in Oz's old workshop and he's been dismantling everything to see if there's anything in any of the old machines that might point to the ‘wizard's’ current whereabouts since he's still—
A muffled shout of fear reaches his ears and he's out of his chair in an instant.
Her room isn't far from his, and he's at it in less than thirty seconds, stopping only when he sees someone else is already outside Sabrina’s door.
Henry Grimm meets eyes with him and neither of them seem to know what to say for a long moment.
Henry finally clears his throat. “Sounded like a nightmare. She’s gotten them a lot over the years.”
Puck nods slowly in understanding. He knows about them, of course. When visiting the family while he was still traveling with Jake he had overheard more than a few of them and she's talked to him about the night terrors.
“I…she doesn’t like me waking her up,” the man admits. “I just worry about her.”
Another, smaller, less intense cry comes from beyond the door, and Puck can’t help but wince, turning towards the noise like it was a siren's call.
“This is the part no one tells you about when you have kids,” Henry says, and although Puck is no longer looking at him, he can feel his gaze. “The ways they need you change. Dramatically.”
Puck finds it hard to come up with a response to the melancholy admission. Instead of acknowledging it he asks, “are you going to keep trying to get philosophical with me or are you going to give me a hard time when I go in there to check on her?”
He hears more than sees Henry heave a sigh. “You’re not who I would have picked.”
“Fathers aren’t very good at that,” Puck snaps before he can think the words through, grabbing the doorknob.
“But,” Henry continues saying, putting a hand on Puck’s shoulder, “you meet her where no one else can. So, maybe, what do I know.”
The concession of pride is enough of a step in the right direction that Puck doesn’t say anything else inflammatory as the hand slips away and Henry turns back towards his own guest suite, the smallest extension of trust and faith in the younger man to handle what he is no longer allowed to.
“What do you know, indeed,” Puck mutters under his breath once he’s far enough away and decides to puzzle it all out later in lieu of making sure Sabrina is alright.