a one-way ticket (emma, jag, sunny, coby, curnen)

[st_ackeddeck]

Her first reading with the deck Jag had given her had pointed Emma in the right direction for crafting her counteroffer. She'd gone, on her own, back to the Goblin Market and found the fairy who'd told Jag they could send him home.

It turned out True Sight was even more valuable to an ambitious fairy looking for an advantage than Emma had expected, and an hour after their negotiations were finalized, she walked out of Faerie, her eyes haunted and red rimmed from tears, carefully guarding a sprig of pale purple sweetpea flowers she carried. When chaos of the fairy realm was replaced with the cacophonous greens of the Irish Hills room, exhaled in relief, and then hurried back to her rooms.

"Jag?" she called out as the door to their suite shut behind her. They only had until moonrise, and she had no idea when that would be.

Comments

[st_artandstoke]

"I don't even know..." Jag shook his head. "I don't know if it'll work. Where it might send us." Something had settled inside him, when they'd both taken a flower. Now that he wasn't afraid they might be left behind, though, all that was left to think about was what lay ahead. What did home even mean to the Fae?

[st_rummer]

Keeping the flower stemmed pinched between his fingers, Coby reached out, an arm around each of them to pull them into a hug. "We gotta get outta this place," he sang softly, and tried to remember this moment, the feel of the three of them together, before who knew what would happen next.

[st_oneswidow]

Curnen laughed shakily, letting herself be pulled into the embrace. Would home mean going back to Rob? Would it mean she'd be back in Needsville, right there in front of the fucking post office porch where her father's rocking chair should--would--be standing empty? But... "Fuck, I may never see you again."

[st_artandstoke]

Jag's arms tightened around them as Curnen gave voice to his own fears. Even if he did see them again, it likely wouldn't be them. He knew this better than most, with this Emma plucked from before they had met. Curnen hadn't come from London at all, and Coby had come from a different time than Jag. There was a painful lump in his throat now, but he forced words out. They weren't big words, but he meant them in a way that tore at his heart. "I'll miss you both so much."

[st_rummer]

Coby was trying not to think about how they didn't know what would happen when they went home. Or what that even meant to some fairy asshole. Because, fuck, this place was killing them.

But they might never see each other again.

He pressed a kiss to Curnen's temple, and then to Jag's, and with his voice going rough with tangled emotions, "We all found our way to London before." Well, some version of them had. "We can... We'll find each other. Somehow."

He wasn't watching, but he felt something as the flower in his hand faded, upwards into shimmering dust and floated away, then the world seemed to tilt and fall out from under him, tugging Jag and Curnen out of his arms.

[st_oneswidow]

Curnen had been prepared to go home--back to Rob or back to Needsville, who the hell knew--but this she had not been prepared for at all. She had not been ready for the sight of a strange city, for the ghosts of images assailing her especially when she was so sure that none of them had anything to do with her.

She was losing her mind again, only this time she could tell it was happening.