Barnett for President. Strength and Experience. Taking back our country from magical crime, starting Day One.
He wins in a landslide. Sage doesn’t vote for him. Maybe her self-hatred can’t go quite that far. Maybe she sees it in his eyes, the spark that reminds her of Casca. The willingness to say anything, do anything, take any side, for power.
Mira doesn’t vote for him, either. She is pro-warlock rights, she declares. Would she still be, Sage wonders, if she knew how often a woman who could burn her alive with a thought was sitting next to her in class, laughing in her apartment, zipping up the backs of her dresses?
The raids do start on Day One, but they’re quiet at first.
Quiet, until the warlocks fight back.
A state of emergency is declared on day thirty-seven. It’s all anyone talks about. Is this the beginning of the end, for average citizens terrified of supernatural attackers, or has Barnett started something he won’t be able to end?
The police come to Sage’s door on day forty-nine.
“Sage McKenna. We’re simply here as a formality, as you’re a registered magic user. We know you’ve been fully cooperative with government efforts against organized crime in the past.”
I only ever named names you already knew.
She tells them she hasn’t had any contact with subversives, she doesn’t use her magic, of course, she will let them know if any violent entities try to get in contact with her, of course.
She’d like to tell them Damian Casca, get Damian Casca, but even if they believed her, well, they’ll never get Damian. He is absolute power.
They tell her things are going to be changing around here.
She doesn’t realize until they’ve left she’s been holding her breath the whole time.
“Get up, Daniel Peyroux. Hold your damn blood in your body and get up.”
It’s pain like he’s never known, he’s dying, he must be, how could he get up.
Casca stands over him, smiling. Offers a hand.
“Losing is part of the game. Until you don’t. Until you’re me. Get back up. Try again.”
The world swims around Daniel. Damian - he calls into the void. But his mentor is not there. This is no training exercise. This is a gunshot wound, right below the ribs, and Barnett’s new anti-magic police force will not be giving him a hand up to try again.
He murmurs a quick spell to hold the blood in his body, to prevent it from leaving a trail, and vanishes.
On day sixty, there is a thud against Sage’s door, and she looks out the peephole to find a man utterly drenched in his own blood.
A life on the run has aged him beyond his years, and his pale complexion is twisted in a rictus of agony as he struggles to press down on some grievous wound in his abdomen, but she recognizes him immediately.
And then she’s dragging him inside, as much to hide him as to help him. There’s a streak of blood on her door. A mark. Mark of the witch.
“Sorry -” he wheezes - “been shot, didn’t know where else to go - “
“Okay, let’s - come on, into the bathroom, we’ll get you cleaned up - how did you know where I live?’
“Motherfucker.” Sage pulls back his hands and blood pulses from his abdomen. It’s through and through, exit wound on the back side. At least she won't have to deal with deciding whether to get the bullet out, or not, but the bleeding - she shoves towels against it and blood rapidly soaks the cream-colored linens as the color drains from Daniel's face. “Danny, you need a hospital.”
“Can’t - ‘m a wanted man -“
“Well then you need Casca’s healers.”
“Don’t know - where they are - got separated - please, Lyla -”
“That’s not my name anymore. Okay, I’m going to have to put a lot of pressure, it’ll hurt.”
“‘Kay,” he says, as she plants both hands on his abdomen and leans her whole weight into the wound, but that doesn’t stop him from writhing under her hands, moaning obscenities into the tile of her bathtub, grabbing onto her shirt with bloodstained fingers to hold on for dear life.
The fight goes out of him, after a few minutes like that, silent tears mingling with sweat under half-lidded eyes, shuddery desperate gasps. Suddenly, a gasp cuts off in a strangled cry. His eyes open in panic, his mouth pants for air, but it’s not there. “Can’t - breathe -“ he rasps.
“Punctured lung,” Sage mutters, “I have to call 911, Danny -"
He shakes his head as emphatically as a dying man can.
And all at once, she feels his pain.
Not literally. It is more that she knows it, understands it. The agony of suffocation streams up her arms, every inch of Daniel's body cries out to her for relief, for oxygen - and as she feels the desperation, her magic flies from her fingers, it knits lungs together, she feels ribs mend, feels the sliced artery come together under her fingers, and Daniel breathes, gasps, the color comes back to his face.
The wound is still there. But it’s no longer deadly.
“You’re - you’re a healer -” There's shock in his eyes, and hers.
“You just - you’re - there’s only a few in the world - healers with other powers.”
“I - I - don’t know what I did - and I don’t know how to do it again -”
"Th-thank you, anyway -" Daniel makes a halfhearted effort to push himself up, and slumps back to the ground.
“Stay. Stay until you’re better. I’m going to - just - clean the blood off my door.”
Getting the bleach from the kitchen cabinet, she stares at her hands as if they belong to a stranger.