A/N: Sorry for the holdup on this chapter, and thanks to Sophie and csiaddict2 for reviewing the last chapter. It's always nice to hear what people think.
Dinner had been awkward that night, the air heavy with unasked questions and unspoken worries. As it was, very few people had spoken at all. They had unwittingly branched off into small groups around the long table. The entire house ate together in what used to be the great hall. It was unusual for the entire household not to take part in the same general conversation, but the air of tension the new arrivals brought to the table split the household into groups, each holding separate and private conversations. Within Sara's group of friends and close followers, the CSI team was split into their own small group, talking about work and the change in the magical world. Sara's group consisted of Rhea, Violet and Rain, and Jordan. Victoria had sought out her magical friends after she gleaned that Sara's conversation would revolve around the political.
"They've caused some upheaval." Violet waved her fork in the direction of the CSI team.
"Really?" Rain looked surreptitiously over her shoulder. "I hadn't noticed." Violet poked her with a utensil and hid her smile.
"Are they really that prejudiced against mortal changeovers?" Jordan looked down the table much more openly than Rain had, but nobody noticed.
"They don't see them as changeovers. In the eyes of everyone at this table, they're still mortal." She saw Jordan open her mouth to protest and shook her head. "Everyone, Jordan. Even you. Even me."
Jordan looked down at the table and traced the wood with her finger. As harsh as Sara sounded, Jordan knew she wasn't lying. There wasn't anyone who could look at the CSI team and think they belonged in the magical world. But Jordan also knew that Sara needed people on her side who she could trust, and even if she couldn't trust her colleagues' magical skills, she could still trust them as people. That was why Jordan had sought them out in the first place after she had heard how bad the situation with the Ruler was getting. Part of the problem, she knew, was that Sara wouldn't admit to herself that she had let it get this bad. Her life in the mortal realms was for Victoria, and she didn't like to admit that there were harsh consequences to that life. Consequences that, for the most part, she didn't even know about.
"Will they work alongside them?" Rhea waved her hands towards the magicals and CSIs respectively to differentiate them in her mangled sentence.
"If I tell them to, they'll have no choice." Sara sighed and massaged a temple. "They're honour bound to do what I say."
"If you order them around, do it carefully." Rhea murmured. "Last time you were here, they were bound in a different way. They were bound because you were all there was. Now, if you anger them, they'll leave." She looked inadvertently towards the window. "You're no longer the only choice."
It was just beginning to get dark on the roof when Jordan found Sara later that night. She was sitting on the side of a parapet, her feet dangling down into darkness with the reckless abandon of an immortal. Jordan sat much more carefully, within an I-fall-and-you-catch-me distance of Sara. Though her friend had to know she was there, she didn't acknowledge her presence with as much as a blink in her direction.
"I know." Jordan said finally, quietly. "I know how much you're going through."
"Of course you do." Sara laughed mirthlessly. "Why do you think I've been hiding all this from you?"
"At first I thought it was to protect me, but then Violet told me how bad it's gotten…"
"This is why." Sara's eyes were pleading when she looked at Jordan for the first time, and ringed with damp, red skin. "I can't deal with the emotionality of you being here. I can only have one person inside my head right now, and that person has to be me."
"You need help." Jordan said quietly, candid as only she could be. "And if it's not going to come from somebody here, it's going to come from me."
"It's not that I need help," Sara muttered. "I just don't…"
"Want to be here? Want to be the Ruler?"
"No, that's an honour, obviously. It's complicated." She sighed, and Jordan looked at her expectantly. Sara looked back with a newly hardened expression.
"Remember how I said I only needed one person in my head?" She asked, and this time her voice had the unmistakable tone of an order being given. "That person cannot be you."
"It won't be." Jordan let out an exasperated sigh. "But I am fighting with you. Side by side, the way it should be."
"And I appreciate it." Sara turned her head away and looked off into the dusk.
"This is a nice spot you've got up here. Good view, perfect for sniping enemies, and with just enough life threatening height to be exciting. You really know how to pick 'em."
Sara let out a short, surprised burst of laugher, as if she couldn't fathom how it had come from her. "It's not that exciting. I can jump off this roof."
"You would say that."
"It's not hearsay." Sara smiled even wider. "I've done it."
Jordan's grin dissolved from her face. As near-indestructible as Sara was, jumping off roofs wasn't a good idea for anybody.
"When was it?" As much as Jordan hated to see Sara's rare smile wiped from her face, she needed to know whether she needed to lock the roof access.
"Not recently." Sara said, then saw Jordan's face and continued with a heavy sigh. "It was around the time Victoria started growing into her powers. When she realized all that she could do."
"What happened?" Jordan kept her voice soft, not demanding anything from her friend.
"Nothing big. She was just experimenting, trying out her powers, discovering their functions, figuring out how to employ them, and the Ruler's people were putting some heat on my people, and Rhea was being kind of vicious..." she shrugged and looked down at the ground wistfully. "I landed it, you know. Triple backflip in the air and came down on my feet."
"But you won't try it again." No matter how much Sara enjoyed using her strange, incomparable powers to do unimaginable things, Jordan had to be firm. Sara shook her head in confirmation.
"I was darker then." She said. Jordan nodded and took her friend's hand, but didn't say anything. Between the two, right then, nothing needed to be said.
A/N: As always, nothing much to say here except thanks for reading and please review! See you next chapter.
