Chapter Text
Sarah
Northern California
It hurt.
Leaving Fort Salem had hurt .
More than Sarah had been expecting it too.
Maybe it was because the base had been her home for so very long, before it was Fort Salem. Even if her home now sat next to her in the form of red hair and sleep laden eyes.
Sarah was pretty sure that the hurt wasn’t because of the place, even if she did find herself missing it. No, she was damn sure it was because of who she had left behind. Ana…she hadn’t had a family in so long, not until Anacostia. And she had left her daughter.
It had been all she could think about the entire drive from Salem to the California border, Anacostia’s face as it had been the last time Sarah had seen her. When Ana had laid between Sarah and Tallulah, clinging to them both tear stained and heartbroken.
That- that is what made this so hard.
Because Tallulah didn’t necessarily teach her to love again, she had only reminded her to show it and to feel all the rest alongside it. Tallulah had opened that pandora’s box of feelings and loss and grief and joy and everything else there was to feel.
Sarah hadn’t realized that it had been Anacostia who had taught her to love again until she was holding her bleeding, broken daughter on the floor of a parking garage.
And Sarah had left her, it didn’t matter the reason- she had left.
“Ofina, my love you need to rest. You’re spiraling, I can feel it..”
She hadn’t noticed Tallluah waking up beside her. They had been driving for over 30 hours. In almost complete silence, minus the occasional comment from one of the passengers. They only stopped when necessary, taking turns behind the wheel. Nicte hadn’t said anything to her, at least not outside of the occasional mocking comment. She had expected more, though she wasn’t complaining.
It was well past midnight, and for the past hour the other three occupants of the car had been sleeping soundly leaving her to her thoughts and the blessed silence, at least until her guardian had awoken likely due to Sarah’s own circling feelings. She cursed herself for not blocking that gold thread, for not providing some peace for Tallulah after dragging her into this.
Worry gently nudged down the bond, as if trying to drown that self-loathing.
“Pull over, we can find a motel alright? You haven’t slept in an actual bed in nearly a week my love.”
Oh goddess, Tallulah was right. The cots in the warding circle had been her bed for who knows how long as she had healed, and the time she and her guardian had spent hiding in her room before they left base was far from leisurely sleep…a bed did sound oddly nice after everything.
Which is how they found themselves in a rundown inn a few miles off the interstate. Melody was the one to go in and hand over the cash in exchange for two rooms. Her niece and Nicte took one. She ignored the unnamable look from Nicte as Tallulah took her hand and gently led her into the second, shutting the door behind them..
Tallulah had pulled her gently into the tiny shower, stripping her with that care and comfort Sarah had somehow, so very quickly, grown accustomed to. And when they were clean, her hair and scarred neck gently washed, Tallulah had pulled her from the steady stream of water and led her still naked to the bed.
It wasn’t her bed.
But it was her home that was wrapping tightly around her, her home that was forcing every undeserved wonderful feeling down the bond tethering them together.
It wasn’t her bed, but it was enough. Because of Tallulah pulling her tightly into her arms.
“Sleep my love, I will stay awake. My eyes are yours for tonight Ofina.”
It was what Sarah hadn’t realized she was waiting for, that promise of safety.
She was asleep before her next breath left her.
“Okay but like…how?” Sarah groaned, banging her head against the steering wheel. The entire 33 hour drive the days before had been small talk that hadn’t involved her at all, between long bouts of blissful silence. And Sarah had been fine with that.
Apparently it wasn’t going to last.
“How what Melody?” She managed to say through her gritted teeth. That silence, she wanted it to come back. She should have known it wouldn’t last.
“How the fuck did you end up so…young?” Her niece asked yet again from behind her, sticking her head between the seats currently occupied by herself and Nicte who was looking at the black lock box at her feet like she was tempted to try opening it.
Tallulah was asleep, her head safely resting in Melody’s lap as her niece's fingers ran through the red hair.
“I told you before we left, and I am telling you again. I am not going to talk about it.”
“Batan, move your damn foot!”
“Move your arms!”
Sarah wanted to cry as silence fell, as Tallulah’s seemingly eternal amusement flooded through the bond. It stretched to a point she hoped it would remain- that blissful silence. Sarah liked the silence.
“I…wait, that…that was a joke right?”
“Shuddup Clary.”
“Uh-huh thats what I thought. Oh shoot the golden arches! Hey uh, can we drive through McDonalds?”
“So, you and dimples Sarah…how about we talk about that since every other subject on the face of the damn Earth seems to be off limits.”
Melody cackled from behind the wheel as she ate another French fry. Sarah just buried her head in red hair and sighed heavily. Until that question, Nicte had been content to ignore her. Even if Melody hadn’t.
“What can I say Batan, this mouth ain’t just smart it’s goddamn talented .”
Silence, and then her own mouth was moving before she could stop it-
“Tallulah!”
She sounded aghast to her own ears, could feel those ears turning red at the tips and she felt all of 15 again. Nicte Batan was howling in the passenger seat, Melody barely able to reign herself in enough to drive the damn car without killing them all.
This whole idea was terrible, they should have just stayed on base. Maybe executed Nicte. Publicly. That would have been fun.
Tallulah just smiled at her, damn that smile. She would do just about anything for that ridiculous dimpled grin.
“Sorry my Ofina, but I mean, at least she doesn’t think I’m doing the sex thing with Nessa.”
Melody was no longer laughing, perhaps the only positive aspect of this godawful conversation.
“I’m sorry what? Who the hell thinks you’re fucking my mom ?”
“Everyone does Melody. Literally everyone.”
Goddess above and death below, this…somehow this was the worst torture she had ever suffered through. And she had suffered quite a lot of torture.
Six more hours, and then she would get to take this irritation off on the Camarilla. And put some of those tricks her big mouthed guardian had taught her during their spars to good use.
Tallulah wasn’t lying about the talented mouth though.
She had proven that before they left the motel, twice. The first time since before her throat had been burned open by the woman in front of her.
And holy hell the power boost Sarah bore within her already seemingly endless work core was like nothing she had ever experienced in her life.
Sarah Alder felt utterly weightless as her storm gathered to her call in the dark night sky, blinking the stars from sight. She could feel Nicte’s wary gaze on her as her work swelled and sparked through the air. Sarah ignored it, and looked to where Tallulah was carefully strapping her sword and scourge to her belt. Her own scourge, her first gift from her guardian, was already attached to her own side.
“You are actually taking a sword. Into a fight.” She watched Tallulah wink at Nicte.
“Yup. Hey Mel, can you hand me that box at your feet?” Tally called towards the front of the SUV as she dug through her duffle for what Sarah assumed was a spare scourge. Melody moved, grabbing the heavy box and hefting in from the car.
“Fuck Tals what is in this thing?”
Her guardian just grinned, a chaotic look. One that Sarah found herself mirroring as Tallulah’s contagious amusement ripped through the bond.
Whatever the code was, was carefully punched into the locking mechanism, and when it opened-
“Well shit, that is- what the hell?” Nicte muttered, taking in the honestly shocking variety of weapons resting in the box at the same time Sarah did. She found herself pinching the bridge of her nose before she could stop.
“Tallulah, please tell me you didn’t have all of those in your barracks where anyone could find them?”
The slight guilt through the bond was answer enough, the silence only more damning.
“I mean…they were locked?”
“My darling Tally Craven is that a pike?” Goddess Melody sounded far too excited. Tallulah’s guilt vanished in an instant, replaced by unbridled excitement as she tucked knife after knife into every available place on her being.
The fallen angel was readying herself for the fight to come, just as Sarah was.
Her thunder hummed through the sky as she took a knife for herself.
Blood was everywhere.
She was drenched in it, utterly and completely drenched. Granted, the hole her lightning and Tallulah’s chaos had put through the roof above them wasn’t helping, given the fact her rain was pouring into the building as well.
She stood side by side with her guardian, who was somehow even more bloodied than she was. Sarah's feet as firmly planted as they could be on the slippery floor. It was a violent, bloody, quick fight. The first one that she had truly fought with Tallulah in in almost 3 centuries.
And it was thrilling.
She screamed, in time with Tallulah. Her lightning bore down upon the man approaching, just as the scream that bore Chaos’ power ripped through another leaving only shreds in its wake.
Tallulah’s scourge was a blur as it moved, Sarah’s own scourge swinging just as she had been taught over the past months. It was easier in this body, this young powerful form that was wholly her own.
There were bodies surrounding them, and more falling as they defended their companions. They had found the weakest structural point in the blueprints Nicte secured. They had snuck in, not getting caught until they were already working on their endgame- bringing the entire building to the ground with every camarilla bastard still inside.
And when they were caught she and Tallulah had been the ones that moved forward as Nicte and Melody had continued to work quickly behind them, trying to bring the building down.
One by one their enemies fell. Some to her, most to Tallulah.
But Nicte and Melody hadn’t given the signal, and she could feel the worry rising in both her and her guardian.
“Sarah, go!” Lulah screamed at her, drawing her sword and approaching the onslaught still moving toward them. Sarah went.
Sarah ran to her niece's side, where Melody stood singing as she faced the weakest point of the building. Her voice was warbling with the weight of the seed she used, the off canon that Sarah knew she shouldn’t know as Nicte did the same on her other side.
Sarah joined her in song, reaching down down down into that bottomless well as the storm raged harder above them.
But her song was different from the other two, seed after seed, layer upon layer as she created a new sound. Or at least one that was new to her, a gift from a girl both far too old and far too young. A song given to Sarah Alder to protect the favored daughter of the Goddess herself with.
And the very foundation the building sat upon shook.
“Fuck, I think that’s our cue- out, now!”
She grabbed her niece at Nicte’s panicked shout, pulling Melody through the shaking building back down the hallway they had come through as Tallulah followed.
“RUN!” A command, even without her grace Tallulah’s voice held power. Her guardian walked backwards behind them, down the body littered hallway. She could hear the unearthly scourge Lulah bore singing through the air behind them as she undoubtedly added more bodies to the carnage.
As she guarded them on their escape.
Guarded her.
They barely made it out of the building, Nicte first then Melody as Sarah shoved her through the small side entrance they had broken in through barely fifteen minutes earlier.
The building shook, and crumbled from within as the two of them ran. Sarah didn’t follow, she turned and waited until her guardian came. Except Tallulah didn’t come out behind them, and all Sarah could feel was panic wholly her own as the screams of men and women rang over the sound of the falling building.
“ Lulah !”
She could see the building falling, she could feel the ground beneath her feet opening as if to have her join it. There was a flash of ginger before she was thrown to the ground behind her by a sturdy force. Far out of reach of the swallowing Earth she herself had caused.
She didn’t see the building fall into the ground, or the derby go flying. She didn’t see the lightning that she didn’t even know she had summoned, striking anyone who tried to escape as the stones and wood of the building were buried within the earth that sealed closed atop it.
She didn’t see any of it. She was lost in the furious brown eyes above her, the Méníshè spilling from her guardians lips.
“When I say run, you run.”
Anacostia
Fort Salem
Anacostia Quartermaine groaned as she woke to the early morning light peeking through her window, stretching a hand across her bed to-
Nothing. The space next to her was cold.
It was like he had never been there at all.
She wasn’t even sure when it had started, not really. He was…beautiful. In every way, not just his looks.
But he was also Tally’s brother, and she was content to leave it at that.
And then, all those months ago, she had asked him to teach her how to fight-truly fight. The way her baby sister knew how, and he had said yes.
She wondered if he knew it was mainly a distraction, one meant for both of them. Her from this war, and him from whatever caused him to look so sad when he thought no one was looking.
She knew Melody’s teasing about their new friend shouldn’t have bothered her. She knew that the way everyone on the damned base looked at him like he was the tastiest thing on the menu shouldn’t have made her so…jealous. She knew that his flirting shouldn’t have made her feel the way it did, that stomach flipping happiness. She knew was better than all of that, thought she could get over that stupid crush.
But then he had started showing her how to fight, he had taught her things she hadn’t known possible in the span of a few hours at the side of her mothers lake. And then, when she had grown too tired to keep going, he had drawn Tally’s black and platinum scourge and moved on his own. Every silent step and swing was like a dance, and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen…it was utterly Holy.
Until he had broken that holy silence with a burdened scream. A sound that the forest and land seemed to shake with.
Until he had fallen to his knees with a silent sob, dropping the scourge no mortal hand could seem to touch without burning, his palms open and limp on the damp grass as his head fell to his chest.
Until she had knelt in front of him without thinking and taken his face in her hands, lifted it to meet his eyes, and brought their foreheads together the way her mother so often had her when she was young. The way Tally so often did to those she loved.
She had sat there with him like that beside the lake, brow against brow. Just breathing until the sun had risen and danced its brilliance over that water. It was in that silence she found herself understanding what Tally meant when she said that the Earth lived on the grounds of Fort Salem. The way it felt beneath her, how it seemed to breathe somehow.
It felt like the holiest of communions, to be there. With him.
“My Mother asked me to care for her. And I failed to even take care of myself.”
Anacostia hadn’t been all that surprised when he had shown up at the door to her quarters the next night. She hadn’t been surprised when he agreed to a drink.
He had thanked her again, as they sipped the wine her mother had no doubt spent an absurd amount of money on.
“ Where I failed to guard my baby sister…you, Anacostia Quartermaine, succeeded. She is everything to me ya know. My favorite person, the only family I have left, and you saved her. She loves you.”
She was utterly and completely stunned when she had gently pressed her own lips against his without thought, as he had opened the door and moved to leave when their drinks finished, when he had raised one hand to gently cup her cheek.
He had been the one to pull away before she could deepen that kiss- with a gasp that rattled her to her core. He had been the one to press their foreheads together, his hand still resting so warm on her cheek. They had stood there; half in her room, half in the hallway of her barracks where anyone could see them. They stood there without a care in the world.
She had been the one to pull him back to her without saying a word.
She had been the one to pull the door closed behind him.
But he had been the one to keep coming back. It was him who showed up at her door again nearly every night after, when he wasn't off doing who knows what on those nights he would disappear. At least until the attack at the testing center, the attack on her. Then he spent every night at her side in the infirmary until she was released.
They didn’t stop, even as days turned to weeks turned to months…and they also didn’t talk about it. Not with each other and definitely not with anyone else. They didn’t talk about them-if they even were a them. She wasn’t sure if they were even anything more than decent friends who were having sex- really good sex.
Most nights that he showed up at her door were spent sparring by Sarah Alder's warded lake, before returning to her room and ending the night with pleasure unlike anything she had ever known, and those nights were wonderful and exhausting and utterly exhilarating.
But there were other nights, ones that were spent simply talking as they laid in her bed. He was there until she would inevitably fell asleep. Sometimes he was there when she awoke.
Those were her favorites, though she would never admit it. Those nights that she spent talking with him- learning about his family and about her favorite sister and about...him.
Ana didn’t know if Tally had figured it out, the fact she and Theli had- that they were- that she was- well…she suspected her chosen sister knew, or that she at least suspected. Goddess Tally was so fucking brilliant. It had only been three days and Ana missed her so much.
She missed her mother so much.
Anacostia groaned as she shook the circling thoughts from her head, and glanced toward the clock on the bedside table- 0500.
Fuck.
She groaned again, her hand moving from the empty spot beside her to rub her tired eyes.
She had four meetings before the farce of a funeral for her Mother, followed by the one for her sister. And then a late lunch or dinner after, with what remained of her makeshift family still on base. It had grown, her little family. Somehow since Tals had come barreling into her life with a tank top in hand and scars on her back, she had found herself with more of a family than she ever knew was possible. That late lunch was the only thing she was really looking forward to.
Sarah Alder being dead meant the workload had tripled for the majority of high ranking officers. Especially herself, Nessa, and Petra. Thank the goddess for the seven women who had refused to leave their standing as the worlds most dedicated secretaries. Without the ex-biddies, Ana was pretty sure the US Army would have already collapsed. She had to give Chloe credit, the woman was a force to be reckoned with. And somehow she was putting up with Izadora’s weird ass fussing and endless questions over the broken biddy bonds.
Ana’s shoulder ached as she sat up, the cursed wound thrumming with discomfort…the late night sparring likely hadn’t helped that either.
It had been getting worse in some ways, making her nauseous at the worst of times without notice, simply burning at others. She could barely train with Theliel sometimes, when every swing made her dizzy. She hadn’t told anyone, especially not Genevieve- she didn’t want to worry her. Not with her already so worried about Melody and Tally and Sarah. At least that is what Ana told herself.
Her promotion to Captain had been a blessing in disguise, a desk job. One that she would never admit to anyone that she was grateful for when the burn in her shoulder caused her to want to puke every time she swung her scourge for more than five minutes.
She had one hour before she needed to be at her desk. She moved with a groan out of her comfortable bed, showering quickly and pulling on a clean uniform before heading out the door.
She knew she should eat…she still didn’t. Food hadn’t exactly sounded appealing, not since her mother and her sister had left 3 days earlier. Maybe longer- fuck definitely longer.
Besides, there was someone she wanted to see before being stuck in an goddess damned office for the entire morning.
Theliel was exactly where she had expected him to be, sitting in front of that wall of white that Izadora was so obsessed with and Tals claimed felt like Sarah Alder. He was meditating, his preference to sleep or so he said. She had no idea where he had found the lieutenants uniform, she wasn’t going to complain though.
He didn’t look up as she silently entered the room, but he did smile. And that was all she needed to sit beside him and take his hand into her lap.
They sat like that for a while. Him deep in meditation and her listening to the Necro’s bustling about on the other side of the door that she had locked upon entering and playing with the utterly still warm hand in her lap as she watched the rippling wall.
The Mycelium…it felt like Sarah, it felt like her mother .
She hadn’t even noticed till her mother was gone and she had escaped alone into this room after the announcement of Sarah Alder’s death had been made.
“‘Costa?”
Her head whipped around.
“I asked if you had eaten?”
Ana hadn’t even realized he had moved, hadn’t noticed that he was staring at her. There was worry gleaming in those beautiful lilac eyes, worry that she was quick to banish with a small grin and a raised brow.
“Would you believe me if I said yes?”
He grinned at her, and fuck-what Ana would do to see that smile on his face all the time. Theliel stood gracefully, reaching a hand for her good arm and gently pulling her up when she accepted it.
He didn’t let go.
“Absolutely not. You, Anacostia Quartermaine, just like our dear Tallulah, are a truly terrible liar.”
As it turned out they didn’t make it to the mess hall for breakfast before her meeting.
They made it to a storage closet in one of the barracks buildings halfway there though.
And having him lift and push her against a wall, both of them laughing for the first time in so long as a broom clashed loudly onto the floor, well it was definitely worth missing a meal over for that alone. And the power that made her feel volatile in the best way was pretty nice too.
He left her at the back door to the admin building where her new office was waiting within…after helping her fix her hair, and honestly that gesture shouldn’t have done what it did to her chest.
She was late to her first meeting.
The new head of Vice President Silver’s protection detail, and thus Penelope’s, was not.
“Anacostia Quartermaine, it’s been a while. A Captain huh?”
The fakest smile of her life found its way onto her face before her brain even processed who it was in front of her. At least the hours of diplomacy lessons her Mother had made her sit through weren’t totally wasted, but she was going to puke. She should have picked up the damn phone, should have checked the name on the time slot, anything at all- Oh Goddess, oh Goddess, oh Goddess.
“Sterling Woodlot, I didn’t know you got promoted. Congratulations.”
Fuckity fuckin fuck.