With hands full of vegetables, Sabine’s hip pushed the unlocked front door open, she always meant to lock it before she left-- but it was seemingly just one of those things you’d never remember no matter how many times you told yourself to. Thank God for the boys, or this place would never be secure and all it would take is one malicious-intending creature for their little home to be in chaotic ruin.
“I’m home,” she hummed, not expecting an answer, but better safe than sorry in letting them know that if they were there, they were no longer alone. The slight, seeming ever-present, smile on her lips faltered slightly when she entered the kitchen, brows pulling together in confusion when she caught glimpse of the potted purple plant on the table. Did Gabe get her flowers? Micah could have, but it seemed more of a Gabe thing to do. So her smile returned, growing much wider as she hastily tossed the ingredients for tonight’s meal on the counter and approached the wonderful smelling hyacinth.
Catching glimpse of the note, her delicate yet hard-worked fingers plucked it from between buds, scanning it over with a hum. Thank you. Said in many different ways and different times; rushed handwriting bringing her slight pause. Definitely Gabe. Really, he said it far too often, and she knew he meant it, but letting them into her home was just as much, if not more, a favor to her as it had been to them. But why does this... this sounds like a goodbye?
“Gabe?” She called starting towards his room. “Micah?” Brown hues caught glimpse of Micah’s cracked door as she approached Gabe’s door, knocking lightly and calling his name a couple more times before creeping it open to peek inside. His bed was made, the blank room offering nothing visibly except the various plants he’d let her store in there. “Gabriel?” And then her gaze fell onto the closet with it’s door slid open; the empty closest.
Slightly panicking, like she did so well, she rushed to Micah’s room to find the same fate before returning to the kitchen to reread the note. They were okay, right? They had to be-- he wrote a note. They were just... gone? Did they leave her, were they in danger? Was it something she had done? She hadn’t done enough.
Her mind raced a mile a minute, confusion etched amongst her features as she stood there staring into a damn flower. Memories began playing inside her head; playing back the moment she’d first met them-- they were extremely quiet, which worked well for her talkative nature. And they looked terrified. Not the kind of terrified for poor defenseless children, but the terrified look of feeling trapped... a terror she new all too well.
For someone who hated the idea of being chained to a place or group of people, Sabine would never openly admit how lonely it all was. She’d made the decision to leave on her own when given the chance by Maeve, and she never regretted it, she just... she didn’t know. The grass would always be greener on the other side, and you can’t have it both ways.
But she did have it both ways, the second she offered her place to the Tabors. Then, she got her freedom to not choose and she got to experience the closeness a family brought. She thought back to the times she’d been a mess and both of them had been there for her, to the countless meals shared over, probably, meaningless conversation.
They weren’t dead, and you can bet your ass she’d be out looking for them in just a moment to find out what happened; to make sure they weren’t in danger. But she felt a pang of familiarness shoot through her at the realization that they weren’t coming back. This wasn’t just a ‘spend the night camping’ sort of thing, the thing she was used to. This was a ‘get the hell out of Dodge’ scenario. The frequently empty house now seemed bigger, as if she could physically watch it grow, the walls forming into iron bars that now felt more like a place to rest your head than a home. And there, in the overwhelming silence, Sabine felt herself begin to be swallowed whole by a feeling she despised; the feeling of being alone.
