BETHANY HAWKE + SAM WADDINGTON (SOLAIRE)
BETHANY SETS SAM ON FIRE. THEN HEALS HIM.
PG | COMPLETE
It had been a week, and it was only Tuesday.
The nightmares that had been plaguing Sam Waddington’s sleeping brain had intensified, sure, but after he had somehow managed to shock his roommate half-senseless, the frightening dreams had scarcely mattered. Sam had never been an aggressive person, nor particularly a spiritual one, but somehow he had managed to produce a lightning bolt that found its target (Gary) as surely as if he had thrown it. That he had made lightning happen didn’t make sense, not by the laws of nature or by any other system of governance. Something was wrong. The most upsetting thing? Sam didn’t know if the origin of the wrongness was from the lightning, or the dreams, or the normal life he was desperately trying to attempt in the meantime.
Then came the flamingos. He’d gotten a call on the radio that there was some sort of disturbance in the center of town, and since he’d been near there, he’d stopped by. Silver flamingos! In Colorado! What little he knew of flamingos included the facts that while they weren’t flightless, long distances were impossible, they weren’t silver, and they certainly didn’t attack… which these did. Awfully. He was still picking feathers out of his hair when he knocked on Liz Johnson’s door, wondering if he was cursed. That’s what the dreams said, anyhow: that he was cursed. Sam was beginning to take it seriously.
Liz had been quiet lately - so quiet that he was beginning to think that she had gotten herself a boyfriend and was trying to introduce the topic in as kind a way as possible. But they were still friends, and he had been pecked at by a psychotic tropical bird, and he was pretty sure she’d know if flamingos carried rabies or whatever-the-hell.
“Hi,” he said as the door opened, dishevelled and annoyed. Sam found another feather from the back of his ear. “So did you know that a group of flamingos is called a flamboyance of flamingos? Because I just learned that. Because they’re trying to take over downtown. Got a bandaid?”
Liz (Bethany, now, in her own head) hadn’t been aware of the flamboyance of flamingos or, really, anything. She was at the point of remembering Thedas, and with talking to the other people aware, there was no point in hiding behind the fact that she might be crazy. She normally would have been at work during the day to experience any flamingo attacks, but opted for several days of emergency leave instead.
Not even for an emergency, really, but Bethany had never been good at lying or hiding things. And causing mass-panic wasn’t high on her to-do list, so she’d been stuck avoiding everyone in fear of saying the wrong thing. Sam and Garrett were the hardest to avoid, with Marcus right on their heels - on account of being her roommate.
But even without mass-hysteria, she was left with no working magic, yet a memory of having said-magic. Unfortunately for her, things were still a bit muddled in that area, and it left Bethany sitting in her pink bunny PJs, in the middle of her living room, trying to pull up some magic without a focus.
Sam being at her door wasn’t what she expected, and she visibly jumped at his appearance, looking him over with a incredulous look on her face. “Um. There’s flamingos in Colorado? Did they escape from the zoo?” Even if she didn’t want to open the door, she found herself doing just that so he could enter.
“No one knows where they came from. And they’re silver, not pink, and they’re pissed.” Sam entered the apartment and took a seat on the arm of the couch, crossing his arms over his chest. Keeping to himself physically was as much about their past relationship as it was about the fact that he didn’t want to zap her, but as soon as he was about to launch into griping about his day, he noticed her pajamas, and her general state of… discomfort.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and stood back up, wincing. “I-- Are you sick?” A glance at the clock told him that she should still be at work; he’d thought it was too early for her to be home but-- “I didn’t mean to bust in like I did. I just didn’t think.” That much was true. There were other things on his mind rather than Liz’s work schedule, and when upset, he was the kind of person who liked company rather than withdraw.
“Uhh, yes?” Bethany winced slightly and followed behind him, standing awkwardly with arms crossed over her chest. “No. I’m not. Just- had some vacation days to use up so I was being lazy and watching netflix.” On the TV that was currently off. She really was bad at lying.
Opting for doing something she knew well, she grabbed a first aid kit from the kitchen and brought it over to the coffee table so she could survey his wounds. Sitting down next to him, she rifled through the container and pulled out some alcohol swabs and bandages - even though she had a nagging feeling she could take care of the wounds without. “Show me on the doll where the flamingo hurt you.”
He snorted with a half-smothered laughter and rolled up his uniform sleeve. The cut was nothing nasty and he’d had worse after a day of hard yardwork, but sue him; he liked being doctored. Liz’s excuse about her staying home registered in his mind as a lie, and not even a good lie, but Sam wasn’t really in the place to check her on it. She was being kind, and he’d thought about taking time off himself to shake these dreams. Maybe go camping. Who knows.
“Gary’s recovered, by the way,” Sam added. Guilt was written on his face. He’d written about the lightning incident yesterday, of course, so Liz was at least aware that her brother had been zapped with enough force to power a television, but he nonetheless felt like talking a lot to mask her usual effect she had on him when she was so close. “I’m still so-- I have no idea what happened. It must have been some sort of freak electrical accident.” He didn’t believe that. But what was the alternative? Magic? “I guess we’re lucky it didn’t set anything on fire, or put him in the hospital. But still. Things… aren’t right.”
It was a vague statement, and it sounded like more of a question than anything of certainty. His eyes flicked to hers, curious if she would agree blithely or… well. He supposed the alternative was agreeing seriously.
Bethany nodded, quietly inspecting his arm as she ran her fingers over it. It felt wrong, as if she wasn’t supposed to touch someone that wasn’t actually hers (and never had been), but it was still familiar because the feelings she’d had previously hadn’t faded away. It made her sigh a little, frustrated at the entire situation. “I talked to him this morning and he was in pretty good spirits. Aside from asking if you were an alien.” The last part made her smirk, since she knew at least a potential reason behind the zapping - but she hadn’t known Sam well enough before to make a definitive answer to that.
“Things are… weird.” She did agree, solemnly and quietly. She ran an alcohol wipe over the pecking marks, slowly, trying to stall or figure out exactly how much she should say. Sam talking about fire seemed to trigger something in her, though, and her eyes lit up at the same time as her hands did, a magical fire engulfing her fingers as she touched him. It was gone as quickly as it hit, but no doubt the scorching pain was there. “Oh-! Oh Maker-- God! Bother.
“An alien.” Sam was more amused than concerned; he and Gary at least had already worked through all initial panic and recrimination to the point where the whole ordeal leaned toward the funny side… at least because Gary hadn’t been seriously hurt. “If that’s true, at least I’ll never have to fly coach again.”
So she agreed. That things were weird. That wasn’t a surprise, not exactly - Sam knew her well enough to know that being in pajamas at four-thirty in the afternoon on a work day was deeply atypical behaviour for her - but it at least made him feel a little less alone. He was just about to comment to that effect, and perhaps say something positive about how at least they were going through the weirdness together, when fire came out of nowhere and lapped up his arm. It was out in a flash, but the pain screamed almost immediately. “Christ.” Gritting his teeth, Sam registered in some functioning corner of his brain that Liz had said Maker, and that the air stunk because his arm hairs were singed. “What th-- was that you?? Was that me? Where did that--”
“Oh god-” Bethany wasn’t usually one to panic, years in Thedas merging with years of nursing experience usually left her unflappable. But seeing the pain on Sam’s face and her own magical panic of not necessarily being able to control (which was a fear of hers) it, she was flying fast right into panic-mode.
All she could think of was making it feel better - she had burn cream in the first aid kit, but her hands were still hovering above Sam’s arm as if she could just do something that way.
“I don’t- I’m not-” With a deep breath, she tried to calm herself, but all that came out was a strangled breath. WIth it, her hands turned a glowing green, and Bethany almost yanked them away thinking it was going to be some acid or poison or something equally terrifying, but the cooling sensation radiating from her onto Sam’s arm, mending it quickly. There it was. She breathed out a sigh of relief, and looked up at Sam through her eyelashes. “.... Things are really weird.”
Sam had been in the middle of telling her that it was okay, he was fine, it wasn’t a bad burn from MAGICAL FIRE when Liz’s hands turned green and the pain… turned off. It was not unlike the feeling of running ice over his arms, only the cool, soothing feeling remained, and by the time her glowing hands were back in her lap, his arm was barely red. It was a strange, dizzying feeling, turning his arm this way and that and still smelling singed hair and yet the burn was gone - hell, the fire was gone - and turning to see her expression torn between relief and concern.
Sam had gone through a lot of training in his life, from his time in the army to his police work. It took a lot to rattle him to act rashly, or say something before thinking. And so he took a breath, once more glancing at his arm - nope, still fine - before licking his lips and saying:
“Hey, thanks for that. Been uh… been able to do that long?”
Bethany’s eyebrows raised as she looked over at him, still both relieved and surprised over the whole course of events. One of the main things she did remember was a fear of losing control, and demons. Demons were terrifying. There were memories of others being possessed and of mages being stripped of their everything. It made her apprehensive enough that she tucked her hands in on her lap and just shrugged.
“No? And.. yes?” She knew she promised to keep quiet, but there was no way she was getting out of this without explaining at least some of it. And if she knew Sam as well as she thought she did, he was even tempered enough to get it. “It’s hard to explain. But we aren’t the people we think we are. Not really.”
It should have sounded like nonsense. Sam had questioned drug addicts, liars and the mentally unstable many times in his line of work, and he could tell all manner of falsehood apart from truth. But Liz wasn’t a liar, and while her mood had been erratic, she wasn’t on drugs or ill. He was certain of that. In fact, her words almost sounded like an affirmation, as if she had answered a question that he hadn’t asked out loud.
He held her gaze, considering. He knew a million platitudes off the top of his head to reassure her that all was as it was supposed to be, and had even more questions, but instead he asked: “Are we safe?”
Because he loved his family. He adored teasing Dwayne, and making Kermit go monosyllabic with irritation. He loved his roommate with a fierceness, loved the people he worked with and for, and he loved the woman who had just set him on fire even if he pretended not to. Sam couldn’t wrap his head around being someone different, but he instinctively rejected a reality in which his loved ones were rendered… false? He wasn’t sure if false was the right word, but he was sure of violence, and its constant, sneaky presence. And if someone or something was messing with their lives, he wanted to know what would be needed of him. The train of thought felt foreign, familiar, and utterly exhausting.
Bethany shook her head, but not as a negative, more with an unsure lilt as she shrugged at the same time. She didn’t have a lot of answers for him - no one did, and was left with a lot of the same questions. Or, specifically, that one. “I don’t know.”
She tucked her feet under her and leaned away, making sure to keep a distance between them, as things started coming out. She’d already hit a level of sad in realizing most of her memories were fabricated here, especially as more came back to her. Thedas hadn’t exactly been a happy place, but things were simpler here. “I don’t know a whole lot, honestly. I just know that we’re all from different… places, and recently we’ve been living in a place called Atlantis. But this place is new, for all of us, and we’re stuck here thinking we’re people that we’re not.” She paused, then smiled a little. “My name is Bethany, by the way. But Liz still works, since I know that’s what you know.”
Sam appreciated the honesty, even if it meant that he didn’t have much to go on. Oddly, in a way he couldn’t explain, this process - remembering, feeling out of place and wrong inside his skin - was familiar. It was as if he had done this before. He dismissed the sensation as deja vu, or at the very least useless in the moment. Instead, the corner of his mouth quirked in a sincere, if shell-shocked grin.
“Bethany,” he repeated, and then: “that might take me a while to remember, but I’ll do my best.” The stab of sadness that accompanied the realization that he was meeting her - for the first time - had to be pushed down. He still remembered their first date - they’d gone to a diner for dinner and missed the movie they’d planned to see, they had talked so much.
And that hadn’t happened.
Exhaling, Sam focused on the sea of questions he had, and chose one: “Does Gary know?” Sam could get by with playing dumb with his acquaintances, but his roommate was perceptive.
“It’s okay if you forget,” Bethany assured, voice still soft and gentle. She wasn’t good at information overloads just like she wasn’t very good at lying. She’d never been the type of person that handled making others feel bad, for any reason, unless it was Darkspawn. Or demons. She was good at pissing them off.
Maker. What a weird combination of thoughts.
She winced again, though, at his question of Gary, and shook her head. “Not really. I wasn’t sure what to tell him, if I even should. They obviously don’t want to cause mass-panic, and I don’t think he’ll panic but… he’ll understand when he remembers.” She gave Sam a tentative grin, “That was, of course, until you zapped him.”
“I still have no idea how that happened!” Sam protested, as much to keep things light as anything. He wasn’t the greatest for long, serious conversations, and if Liz - Bethany was willing to give him an out, he’d take it. Miming the same motion he’d done the last time a lightning bolt had appeared in his hand (very similar to throwing a football, now that he thought of it) he thought lightning lightning lightning... but of course nothing happened, not even a zap.
Rubbing his arm where the flamingo had gotten it, he made as to leave. Sam didn’t want to leave; he knew as soon as he left her door he’d be questioning what she had said and telling himself that he had misremembered her glowing hands, and the way fire had appeared and disappeared so quickly. “At least we’ve both got a good nurse when we manage to injure ourselves. I’ll try to keep that happening to a minimum.”
Bethany followed after him, but lagged behind a little, arms crossed over her chest in something of a defensive move - not because she felt threatened by Sam, never, but just unsure about everything. Not to mention she was still just wearing her pajamas. “Just… try to take it easy, okay? And I’ll do the same thing. I’ll let you know if I have any other answers later, since I wish I knew more.”
“I appreciate it,” he answered, because any new information seemed like it would be vital in understanding why they were in this strange land and what it wanted of him. He stood by the door - the correct term would likely be “dilly-dallied”, given his lack of rush and proficiency of hesitation - but eventually after tossing her an expression caught between worry and something unreadable he opened the door and saw himself out. “I’ll see you later. Bethany.”