By the time they got back to the mortuary, Nick's head was a mess. Yes, he'd just discovered that at some point he'd died but he had no idea how. Sabrina knew, but one look at her told him that she really wasn't ready to talk about it.
Which was inconvenient, but he wasn't going to push her. She'd talk to each of them when she was ready, he could wait it out.
But for now, he wanted to find Roz. Her door was closed, so he knocked, trying not to seem too anxious. Even if that was a lot to take in. Even if he didn't think there was anything that was really going to make this better or even make sense until he had a chance to talk to Sabrina. At least him and Roz were having the same experience right now, as messed up as it was.
And it was messed up.
The revelation of the death circle in the forest and who could pass through it had left Roz stunned. The rest of the time there had gone by in a haze, and she still barely remembered coming back to the house. She knew she had been with Sabrina and Nick, but she had been walking ahead of them, and when she got to the house she had gone straight to her room and closed the door.
She was sitting on her bed, an anxious Phoebe in her lap when the sound of someone at the door met her ears. It took her a few seconds to react, being lost in her own thoughts. How had she died? When had she died? That would be something she should damn well remember.
Roz slowly got to her feet, Phoebe in one arm and went to the door. She had no idea who it was, but her reaction was going to depend on who was there. When the door opened to reveal Nick, her anxiety dropped just slightly. She didn’t have to gear up for whatever talk was coming with Sabrina just yet.
She didn’t say anything, just turned and went back to her bed, leaving the door open for Nick to come in.
Nick followed Roz and sat down on the side of her that was free of Phoebe, then turned his head toward her.
"So this is news," he said, picking up on her anxiety. A month together in Dark Vallo and they were both good at that. Really, what surprised him most at the moment was that he couldn't remember it. Unless something had happened after he arrived, and did Vallo work like that?
Without answers, he didn't have much else to say, so he just asked, "How are you?"
At first she thought it had been because of her brief stint as a statue, but Roz was pretty sure she had never been officially dead from that incident. Whatever else it could have been, she didn’t know. Sabrina didn’t come from an earlier point in time from them, which means they were both missing something.
“We died, Nick. And we don’t remember it.” Why didn’t they remember? What had happened to them. “Why don’t we remember it?” clearly the death hadn’t stuck. It was something Roz might be able to cope with given how crazy her life had been over the last year or so, but there was so much unknown that was frustrating and upsetting her.
“She lied to me.” Roz said softly at a minute. “I know she was probably just trying to be Sabrina and protect me, but I asked her what other big news we needed to know and she lied.” Roz hated lies. These days she was much harder to lie to, but it wasn’t impossible.
"Yeah I have no idea what happened," Nick admitted. "Not looking forward to that conversation either." But he was going to have it and sooner rather than later. "She may have been protecting herself too," he offered, picturing the look on Sabrina's face. "I'm not defending that just…"
He shrugged, not knowing what the appropriate way to handle this was, so he took his cue from Roz and pulled her into a hug. Nothing he was going to say would make this any better so he was probably better off remaining quiet.
“Did she say anything to you at all?” Sabrina and Nick had been closer together, and Roz had left them when they reached the house. If Sabrina was going to talk to anyone first, it would probably be Nick. Logically, she knew Nick was right, she might have been protecting herself too, but that didn’t make it hurt less.
She accepted the hug gladly, hugging him back with her free arm, and resting her head on his shoulder. She took a few seconds to just breath, closing her eyes and trying to will herself not to get upset. “There’s so many different times in the past year any of us could have died, I can’t even guess what might have happened.”
"Nothing," Nick confirmed. "I'm as surprised as you are, though less surprised that she knew and kept this a secret."
But Roz was right. He couldn't pinpoint one time over the last year that they both may have died. There were too many opportunities for that, which caused him to laugh slightly. "How messed up were our lives that we can't just say, oh must have been then?"
He fell silent for a moment and then added, "I'm glad you're here." He knew Roz was more eager to get back home than he was, but she'd become one of his best friends, and he selfishly didn't want to lose that.
That was a good way to put it, surprised, but not surprised. Roz nodded in agreement at that statement. “That sounds like Sabrina.” She carried so many secrets, just when Roz thought her friend had to be running out of them, another popped up, but this time it involved her and Nick.
Phoebe jumped down from Roz’s arm, sniffing her way across her lap toward Nick, temporarily distracting Roz from her thoughts.
“Very, very, messed up.” But also if she’d never known Sabrina, she never would have found out the truth about her family. For all she knew the town could have ended when Lucifer first tried to unleash hell onto Greendale. “I’m surprised any of us still managed classwork.”
She still desperately missed home. Her family, Harvey, Theo, Robin, the school. There was a lot she didn’t have, and she basically just took it day by day, and today was just a bit harder. “I’m glad you’re here too.” at least she had two people she was close to, which was so much better than no one.
"Hey there, Phoebe," Nick said, scritching at the lynx's head as she made his way to him. "As far as anyone knows at least, you're still back home," he said to Roz. "So this may be the best of both worlds."
Either way, it was definitely good to not be alone. Especially during moments like these. And while they may not have known why they could enter the circle, at least the answer was in reach. It would have been so much worse without Sabrina there.
Phoebe’s response was to chirp a meow, and then lay down between them, purring rather loudly. It had to be nice to be a cat. Roz reached out to gently pat Phoebe’s back, sighing slightly. “For other me.” she said under her breath. It was still odd to think of another version of her, just living her life as normal back home. Whatever normal was with the Eldritch Terrors. She didn’t mean to be a downer, but it was hard to be here. “I know you and Sabrina are happy here. I want that for you. I like the schools, and thanks to this place I have Phoebe. But being here every day without...everyone else that I love, it hurts. Now this secret coming out…” she cut herself off with a shake of her head.
She didn’t have the same thing to hold onto as the other two. At the same time she felt selfish for thinking like that, because she was happy for the two of them. And seeing them happy also made her feel just a little bit better, even if it wasn’t perfect.
"Yeah, I'm sorry, Roz," Nick replied. Things would be different without Sabrina, just like how he was trying to work out a way to get the both of them home before they made it out of the snowglobe.
"I know it's not the same, but we are here…" There wasn't much else he could do or say that would change anything, but Nick did momentarily tighten the hold he had on her. "And we'll figure this new… news out and how to deal with it. We always do." He was right, she knew that, but she wasn’t at that point just yet. She was still upset, and Roz needed to be upset. Roz lifted her head, wiping away tears that were threatening to spill over. “I know, we will eventually.” she said with a nod.
“But not right now.” she needed to find a way to deal with now. “I think I need to go for a walk.” she pushed herself off from her bed, picking up her jacket from her chair. “I can’t just sit here right now.”
"Want company?" he asked. "Or just Phoebe?" Because Nick had a feeling the lynx was tagging along.
“You can come.” she said with a nod. “I don’t need to be alone, I just need to do something.” She put on her jacket, and grabbed her bag and threw it over her shoulder. “I figured I’d walk in the forest a bit...in the opposite direction of the death circle.” Because that was the last place she wanted to be at the moment.
"Yeah, let's avoid that," Nick agreed. That was the last thing either of them needed. Or to deal with zombie squirrels. But it seemed he was right about Phoebe, and Shadow for that matter. Both familiars seemed to feel the need to accompany their humans.