One moment, Nick had been there, teasing her about her lopsided pancakes. The next moment he’d simply been gone. She’d tried to locate him with her necklace, wondering if Vallo was being weird again somehow and had whisked him off somewhere else. But it wouldn’t find him, never teleporting her to where he was. She’d held out hope for a few moments, waiting for someone to alert that others had suddenly gone missing as well on the network, but those seconds turned to minutes and Shadow’s whines only grew louder.
It was the disappearance notification that truly cemented what had happened though.
She’d dropped the phone as soon as she’d read it, not really comprehending any of it as she sunk to the ground. Her vision was blurry almost immediately, chest aching as she sobbed, clutching tightly to the wolf who whimpered at the loss of the warlock.
Nick had gone back to die and there was absolutely nothing she could do to fix that. The lights flickered before shattering altogether, sending the apartment and the rest of Vallo city into complete darkness.
Roz was packing up her desk in the cubical she shared with the other interns when the lights of the city went out. She paused slightly, and looked around the office. There was immediate hushed conversation of confusion as people tried to figure out what was happening. When there didn’t appear to be an immediate threat or reason for them to be worried, someone called from across the room “The whole city has gone dark!”
Staff members trickled over to the window, and by the time Roz reached it, the backup generator lights had kicked in. Roz automatically pulled out her phone to check the network for notifications. If something was going down, chances are it would be reported there before anyone else.
As soon as she read the disappearance notification she knew exactly what caused the blackout.
“I have to go.” She said in a rush to one of the other interns, her body starting to move before her mind had time to process what that notification really meant. She grabbed her bag off her desk, and ran for the stairs. As soon as she was free from the wards that kept her from teleporting in and out of the offices, she teleported herself to Sabrina and Nick’s apartment.
She didn’t bother to knock, pushing open the door and letting herself in. “Sabrina?” She called as soon as she was through the door. She found her immediately without needing an answer. Hurrying over to her, Roz dropped to the ground beside her and wrapped her arms around her friend as best as she could, the right words to say lost to her.
Sabrina didn’t have any words either at first, just deep hiccuping sobs, each one leaving her more breathless than the last. She let go of Shadow as soon as Roz was beside her and clung to her best friend, needing to anchor herself to the other girl. This was worse than when she’d dreamed of her own death, of Nick’s appearance in the Sweet Hereafter. They’d had a taste of a future together, had begun planning for one, putting all of the pieces together after finally beginning to heal from their inevitable fates back home. But it was all gone, ripped away in the blink of an eye.
There would be no Ripley Scratch.
She would never be Sabrina Scratch.
Because Nicholas Scratch was no more.
He was gone and he was dead.
Sabrina sobbed harder, pressing her face into Roz’s shoulder as she hiccuped, not quite able to catch her breath. “I can’t…” She didn’t know what to do, how to deal with this if he wasn’t there. The only way she’d been able to move past their deaths was because he’d been there, they’d been together and were going to have a better future in Vallo.
But there was no better now.
There was no future.
None that Sabrina wanted.
It was impossible to imagine the pain Sabrina must be feeling at this point. She didn’t even want to try. She understood death, she understood what it was to mean someone she loved, Roz could remember the funeral for Sabrina, and then Nick in her own world. Losing her best friend had been soul crushing, she couldn’t remember a time when it hurt to breathe and it had been impossible to understand what was happening more than that.
Pulling Sabrina as close as she could manage, Roz held on tightly, switching between ‘I got you’ and ‘breath.’ Sabrina didn't have a choice in if she could or not, she had to. She had to face whatever was coming next, but that was entirely unhelpful. That would come later. Right now she had to feel what she was feeling and didn’t need to be fed anything ‘it’s okay’ lines, because it sure as hell was not okay.
She could, and she had to. Sabrina had to go on living, no matter how much it hurt.
Roz's eyes shifted to Shadow, laying on the ground next to them and looking about as emotionally broken as Sabrina currently was. She knew there were rules around familiars in their home world, but Shadow was from this one, so hopefully things were different.
She had to squeeze her eyes shut, blinking back tears and taking in a deep breath to focus herself. Nick was her friend, a close one, she loved him like she loved Theo. This hurt. It hurt all over again, only worse now because she hadn’t been as close to Nick in their world as she was here.
Roz remained largely silent, letting Sabrina cry for as long as she needed to cry. It wasn’t until after she had started to grow a little more quiet that she said anything at all. “What do you need me to do?” She could call Lucifer, or Dan, or Ambrose. Whatever it was Sabrina needed.
She wanted Roz to get Nick back but Sabrina knew that was impossible. There was no way her friend could retrieve the warlock. Except… the other Strange that had been there had been trying to do something similar, hadn’t he? Ripping holes in Vallo to pull someone into this world. Sabrina wasn’t entirely sure. That whole event was a blur and he hadn’t been successful, ending up only really hurting people including himself.
Sabrina wanted to rip the fabric of time and space open and bring Nick back. She wanted to not care about how doing so would affect Vallo, to not care about the consequences that would come from trying to upset the world in such a fashion. If it had been half a year ago she might have tried to do it, but all of the anger that had built up, egging her toward that path, deflated out of her just as quickly.
“I don’t...” Sabrina didn’t know what she needed or who to even ask for at that moment. None of them could fix what had happened or help ease the pain that had her heart in a vice grip. “I just want him back.”
Why had Vallo even brought him there in the first place just to rip him away from her? From all of them? How was that fair to him? A chance at life so viciously cut short all over again. “I thought--I thought we had...Ripley. We were supposed to have her.”
They were supposed to have more time. Decades at the very least.
Why had she gotten to see that little girl only for her to lose both of them within a month of each other? The possibility of that child had slipped through her fingers, any chance of a future obliterated.
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Sabrina’s words might be less daunting to hear if Roz didn’t have any reason to believe that she would go to extreme lengths to be with Nick. But she did. Sabrina went to extreme lengths to save the people she loved. It was something Roz both loved about her and was terrified of.
The only person who had the ability to bring Nick back to Vallo was Vallo itself. Even Dr. Strange wouldn’t have succeeded if he had tried. People came and went all the time, altering the course of their lives, and those they cared about, were on in a flash. Maybe Nick would come back, maybe he wouldn’t. They couldn’t live in a state of ‘maybe,’ that wouldn’t be living at all.
“You have to.” she said gently. She wasn’t being harsh, but the fact of the matter was, Sabrina had to be here. There was only one other way out and that was not an option. She had to hope that Sabrina’s and Nick’s time here together showed them that much. “You’re here, and there’s no changing that. You have to go on living.” Which was probably the hardest thing to consider at the moment. But hopefully she knew Nick would want that. Sabrina had a future here. It wasn’t the future she had been planning, but that was real life. Things changed and a lot of the time it wasn’t fair. But she still had good things here. Things to hold onto that were worth it.
“Sometimes reality sucks, but you have to find a way to keep going.”
She didn’t want to, not entirely sure how she was even supposed to keep going when all of her thoughts kept going back to Nick. Was he alone in the Sweet Hereafter now? That hadn’t been the case when Sabrina had been pulled years back but their story had continued on back home. There was no continuing it now. It was just over. Finished. Complete. She didn’t want him to be alone. Not when that was one of the things he feared the most, being alone and unloved.
Sabrina wrapped her fingers around her necklace, willing it to bring her to him, for the network post and her own eyes to be wrong. But nothing happened, there was nothing that she could do for now. Nothing but cry and grieve for everything that she’d lost. But maybe she could figure something out later on, some way to fix this. There had to be something out there that could help her.
Slowly she pulled back from Roz and let Shadow rest his head on her lap again. He wasn’t allowed to die now that Nick was gone, but Sabrina didn’t think that was how it worked with familiars in Vallo.
“I want my dad.”
Roz watched her carefully, watched her hold the necklace, but nothing changed. It wasn’t going to change. Sabrina knew that, she didn’t need Roz to tell her that. Roz just needed to make sure that nothing bad happened next. Sometimes there was room for drastic actions. Sometimes there was not. If Nick was trapped in hell again, Rosalind would go right now with Sabrina to get him back. But unfortunately a trip to hell might as well be a walk in the park compared to the obstacle in place now.
Getting Lucifer was something she could do. But Roz wasn’t going to leave Sabrina alone to go and find him. But she could get Salem to do it. She looked around the room, finding the cat in question in seconds. “Salem, can you go get Lucifer?” She didn’t quite understand the relationship Salem and Lucifer had, other than Salem loved to cause him harmless grief. But she was pretty confident this version would come the second Salem asked him to.
She watched the cat take off to get the requested angel, before turning her attention back to Sabrina. “He should be here soon. I’m not going anywhere until he’s here.”
All Sabrina could do was nod at that. There wasn’t much else to do. She was exhausted, her bones feeling heavy inside of her. Breathing might have become easier now that she’d stopped crying for the moment, but her heart still felt heavy in her chest. Everything felt heavy to her for her and she laid her head down on top of Shadow’s, hugging the wolf tightly. She wanted to promise that they would get Nick back but Sabrina knew how hollow that would sound.
Promises meant little in Vallo. They were at the mercy of its games.
Her mind spun with possibilities as she let anger curl around her grief, tugging her toward things she could try to do. But Shadow whimpered, and she could feel Salem’s disapproval, tugging her right back to the crushing weight of sadness taking over again. There was time for plotting later maybe. All she could do now was grieve for everything that had been so quickly stripped away.
“Thank you,” Sabrina finally murmured. For staying with her in that room and just not having been whisked away by Vallo as well. She didn’t know how she would have handled it if both Nick and Roz had left at the same time. It was probably better not to think too hard about that possibility.
She carefully moved up beside Sabrina and Shadow, staying close to try and offer some measure of comfort while they waited. There wasn’t anything else to really say right now. Words were useless. Roz reached out to place hand on Sabrina’s shoulder, keeping a light grip while her thumb moved back and forth in what was hopefully some sort of comforting touch.
“Of course.” she responded softly. Sabrina didn’t need to thank her for staying. She would always show up when Sabrina needed her.
Roz kept her focus on Sabrina, on every little action she did, just because if she allowed herself to get lost in her own thoughts at the moment she would start crying too. Every time her eyes started to water, she brushed it away before they could become tears. Lucifer would arrive soon and then Roz would figure out what to do with herself from there.