AN~ Fair warning: there is absolutely no plot development this chapter. On the other hand, there is SIGNIFICANT Puck/Sabrina dynamic development, which, ya know, is what I started this fanfic FOR so I guess that's all right...
The news of the return of the Book of Everafter was met with utter silence.
"That's a good thing, right?" Karen asked, looking between their grave faces. "Why do you all look so serious?"
"It means they got into our house twice," Sabrina said. "Nobody's supposed to be able to get in, not even from the backdoor of the mirror, without permission."
"Plus like it means they know we're looking for them," Daphne added.
"That might be a good thing," Uncle Jake said. "If they're getting nervous, they might slip up."
"Or they'll just get really cautious and we'll never find them," Puck said dourly.
"Would that be too bad?" Karen asked. "You can fix things if you have the book, right? Maybe that'll be the end of it."
Sabrina shook her head. "There's a reason we keep the book locked up. Power like that... it's addictive. Gets inside your head, twists things. Whoever it was, they're gonna wanna do other things after this. And they might be more dangerous."
"Plus we can't just unmake all of you Everafters; it's not that simple," Daphne pointed out. "And you're gonna have to learn how to deal with that still."
"And we don't know how they did it," Sabrina pressed along the line of safety. "If they can get into our house, or if there's some new magic out there, it could be really dangerous. Even if whoever did this didn't want to hurt anyone, what if someone else gets their hands on it? It'd be chaos."
"Besides," Puck added. "It just doesn't make sense. Why would they steal it and make all these Everafters and then just put the book back? That's so dumb! I wanna know who did this so I can ask them what the heck they were thinking!"
Sabrina rolled her eyes and very pointedly did not laugh along with Daphne and Karen. Puck was not funny, and letting him think he was would only encourage him. And as long as she was stuck to him, she wanted him to feel as un-encouraged as possible. Anti-encouraged. Discouraged.
... She maybe needed to get more sleep. In her defense, sleeping on the living room floor without a full range of mobility was kind of hard.
"Okay, so we have to find out who did it still," Karen nodded. "But shouldn't you still be at least a little glad it's back?"
"It just makes things harder, really," Uncle Jake said. "Now we can't even run a magical trace, which I was working on figuring out how to do. Plus now we have to worry about finding a new place to keep the Book. One that actually nobody else can break into."
"Have fun," Puck said, grinning at Uncle Jake. He leaned closer to Sabrina and stage-whispered, "So glad that's not my job."
"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are," Sabrina told him, straight-faced. She would not laugh, she wouldn't, she wouldn't.
Puck just grinned at her. "Keep telling yourself that, Grimm. I know it's just 'cause you don't want to admit you're in love with me."
Now that was so dumb it didn't even merit a reply.
"Anyway," Daphne said pointedly, "I wanted to tell the grown-ups."
"I'm a grown-up," Uncle Jake pointed out.
Daphne gave him a dubious look.
"I am!" Uncle Jake protested. "Got a driver's license and everything."
"In two years, Sabrina'll have one of those," Daphne said.
"Plus less than a week ago you and Puck had a farting contest," Sabrina put in.
Uncle Jake grinned sheepishly. Sabrina was glad, to be honest. And Uncle Jake who was doing immature stuff with Puck was a lot better than last year's Uncle Jake, who spent half his time mourning his dead girlfriend and the other half of his time being scarily intense. Sabrina didn't want to admit that Puck's behavior was good for anything, but it had been good for Uncle Jake. He seemed happy now. A lot of the time, at least. And anything was an improvement over how he'd been, even if he'd never really get over Briar.
Too bad Uncle Jake's serious side hadn't rubbed off on Puck in return.
"We should put a guard on the Book," Sabrina said, jumping trains of thought suddenly. "Until we figure out something more permanent."
Daphne nodded, then shouted, "Nose goes!"
Sabrina, used to Daphne's obsession with the nose game, immediately put her free finger on her nose. Puck didn't.
"Idiot!" Sabrina said, taking her finger off her nose to smack him as he looked around in confusion.
Everyone else already had their fingers on their noses, even Karen, who looked almost as confused as Puck. Sabrina wondered whether they had the nose game in Britain or if Karen was just too old for it.
"What?" Puck asked.
"The last person to put their finger on their nose has to do it!" Sabrina explained tersely. "And we're freaking stuck to each other, so the fact that you couldn't figure out how to put your finger on your nose means that I have to get stuck doing the boring thing too." She turned to Daphne and said, "I call redo."
Daphne shook her head with a little smirk. "Too late," she said. "You gotta call redo within the first minute."
"You just made that rule up," Sabrina grumbled, but she pulled Puck off to go watch the book anyway.
They went up to the mirror, which now had no guardian (probably making it easier to break in), but had been refurbished by Bunny before she gave up her eyes to Baba Yaga. The place no longer looked quite so much like a long hallway. Instead it was several hallways. Much easier to reach something that would have been at the far end now, but also much easier to get lost in. Still, nobody had really wanted to keep the trolley, and getting rid of it without reorganizing was definitely out of the question.
The book was behind a Grimms-only door still, so Sabrina put her free hand (thankfully the correct one- what if there was a Grimm who'd lost their right hand who wanted to open the door?) in the stone hollow, and they went in to stare at the Book.
It was sitting on its pedestal, closed. The room was empty. If Sabrina hadn't known the Book had been gone, she'd think the room was completely untouched. Only the lack of dust suggested that anyone had been here in the past year, let alone week, and nowhere in the Hall(s) of Wonders got dusty.
Sabrina and Puck settled themselves against the wall to wait.
It got boring very, very quickly.
"Let's open it," Puck suggested, his tone excited and sly.
"How about no," Sabrina countered.
"Come on," Puck wheedled.
Sabrina just settled herself more firmly into the floor in case Puck decided to get up and open it whether she wanted to or not.
"We can read all the new stories," Puck said. "That's useful for the case, right? We'll know who all the new Everafters are."
"We'll get in trouble."
"When has that ever stopped you?"
"When it was something you wanted to do."
Puck glared at her. "Ha ha."
Sabrina shrugged. "Last time I dealt with that book was way more trouble than it was worth," she said. "I'd really rather let someone else do it this time around so we don't end up playing out Sleeping Beauty or something by accident."
Puck shuddered. "Yeah never mind."
For a few blessed minutes there was silence. Sabrina could almost ignore Puck sitting next to her.
Then Puck spoke up. "This is so boring," he complained.
"Why do you think I didn't want to do it?" Sabrina demanded. "If you'd just known about the stupid nose game, we could be doing something fun right now! Or at least interesting!"
Puck sneered at her. Sabrina rolled her eyes, and for a few minutes there was silence. It wasn't fun. In fact, it was downright boring, but still, Sabrina grieved the silence when Puck spoke again.
"Well, you've gotta keep me entertained somehow, Grimm."
"Like that's ever been my job."
"No, but it'll be your problem if I have to start entertaining myself." Puck grinned at her, eyes full of mischief. "You know how much you like it when I make my own fun."
Sabrina stared at him. "Was that a threat, you spoiled princeling?"
"'Threat' is such and ugly word," Puck said nonchalantly. "Kinda like your face."
Sabrina rolled her eyes and didn't rise to the bait. "Fine. How do you want to be entertained?"
Puck shrugged. "Tell me what you've been doing with yourself."
Sabrina gave him a look of complete confusion. "You want me to what?"
"Tell me what you've been up to," Puck repeats. "It's not a difficult concept, Grimm."
"Well I spent the past few days stuck to you, so forgive me for being a little confused about why you wanna hear about things you were there for."
Puck groaned and knocked his head against the wall. "Not like- no, Grimm, not what we've been doing. What you're doing. With your life. Being normal and stuff in the city."
Sabrina was slightly less baffled.
"Well?" Puck asked eventually.
So Sabrina told him. She told him about school and therapy and how she'd actually made a few friends. She told him about trying out for the softball team because her mom wanted her to. She told him that she'd started self-defense classes at the community center. She told him about how her mother was stopping by Faerie every week or so to try to help things, and that sometimes she went with him. She told him about how sometimes she still hated magic, but that it wasn't as bad now. She told him about what she was learning in school, and about what movies she'd seen.
It was surprisingly easy to talk to Puck about all this. They'd been through so much together that even though he was an annoying little creep a lot of the time, she felt like he knew her better than most of her few friends at school. So the words just flowed right out of her, and she found herself spilling a lot of personal things to him.
The weird part? The weird part was that Puck listened. He listened and didn't make any smart remarks or laugh at her stupid teenage girl problems, and he didn't look bored.
It was almost like he was genuinely interested in what she was thinking, feeling, and doing. And that was just... strange. It made Sabrina uncomfortable in all kinds of ways, and happy in a few ways that made her even more uncomfortable. She found she was very aware of their hands wrapped in each other, and of the way her elbow brushed his forearm (his arms were so long; he was so tall) every time she breathed.
"So... you?" she asked eventually. "What have you been doing?"
Puck shrugged. "Working with Jake. Nothing too interesting."
Sabrina laughed a little, trying to ignore the heat she could feel coming off Puck's body in comparison to the cold of the wall behind her. "And like what I just told you was?"
Puck shrugged again, brushing her shoulder in passing. Sabrina fought the urge to lean into the touch.
"C'mon," Sabrina urged, very pointedly not looking into why she was so interested suddenly in what Puck had been up to. She was just doing the polite thing, that was all. Continuing the conversation. She might as well keep things amicable as long as they were stuck like this. "Gotta pass the time somehow, right?"
"All right," Puck agreed without much enthusiasm.
He told her about his adventures with Jake, which sounded pretty exciting to Sabrina. Not something she'd want to do, sure. In fact, kind of the opposite of what she wanted to do with her life: dangerous and completely unpredictable. Still, it sounded like the kind of thing Puck loved. He got to steal things and tick people off and go all over the place and be completely immature all over Europe. She had no idea why he hadn't wanted to tell her about it.
She shivered particularly fiercely, and Puck stopped speaking to look at her. "Is it cold in here?" he asked.
Sabrina nodded.
"I can't tell," Puck said. "Do you wanna... like, move around or something? Warm up?"
Sabrina just looked at him.
"What?" Puck asked eventually, looking uncomfortable.
"Stop being nice," Sabrina said. "It's weird."
Puck grinned. "Okay, fartface."
"Much better, amoebabrain."
There was a beat of silence, and then Puck said, "Are you sure we can't just look in the book?"
Sabrina groaned. Not this again. "No. We definitely can't."
Puck tugged at her hand, trying to stand. "C'mon. It'll be warmer inside."
"Oh so we're going in the book now?" Sabrina asked, arching an eyebrow. She tried and failed to cross her arms, getting all tangled up in Puck's wrist in the process. "I thought you just wanted to look?"
"I'm bored," Puck whined.
"Tough cookies," Sabrina snapped. "Besides, with my luck we'd end up in like, The Snow Queen or something, and I'd freeze to death. You don't wanna have to drag a frozen corpse around, do you?"
Puck grinned at her, and it made Sabrina's breath catch in her chest (probably just a whiff of bad breath. His face was awfully close to hers after the debacle that had been her trying to cross her arms). "Actually, that sounds pretty cool," he said. "I could, like, whip you at people if they ticked me off. And I'd have space."
Sabrina snorted. "In this family, that'd be a blessing."
Puck grinned harder. "Especially right now." He paused, then said, "That's assuming I didn't just cut you off me. I mean, you'd be dead."
"Like you'd be able to resist an excuse to carry a rotting corpse around," Sabrina said.
"Very true," Puck agreed.
Sabrina started to say something else witty, then stopped. Puck wasn't being nice, exactly, right now, which was good. It always worried her when he was nice because it usually meant he wanted something, or he was gonna be extra nasty later. But he wasn't being completely obnoxious and unbearable. He was being... fun. Just his normal goofy self, but not annoying the crap out of her like usual. It was nice.
In fact, if Puck acted like this all the time, she might actually not hate being stuck to him.
That thought was terrifying.
Sabrina was just getting back into the swing of the regular world, learning how to balance it with Everafters and magic and craziness. She was about ready to accept that she could have a steady, stable life and interact with crazy magical people. She was starting to think she could be happy like this. She was not ready to have her worldview shaken again. And Puck being an obnoxious jerk who was more worth fighting with than anything else was a very important pillar of how the world as she knew it functioned. Sure, maybe for a little while it had seemed like they could be... something, but then he'd left and when he'd come back it had been one giant fight, and she'd cemented him as an immature brat in her brain.
"Grimm?" Puck asked, peering at her. "Something wrong?"
Sabrina glared at him. "No. You're just a d-bag, that's all."
Puck twisted his face at her, pulling back a little. Sabrina sort of felt guilty for the combination of hurt and confusion in the expression, but she ignored the twisting in her gut. It was better than the feeling of her chest tightening of the earlier panic.
"What did I do now?" Puck asked.
Sabrina looked pointedly at their clasped hands.
"But-" Puck's forehead wrinkled kind of like a confused puppy's might, and he started again. "But you were... that was days ago, and you were just- I thought-"
"What?" Sabrina snapped harshly. "You thought 'cause I was being kinda decent earlier that I'd forgiven you? Newsflash, Puck! We're still freaking stuck to each other! I'm never gonna be okay with that! So just stop trying to make peace with me or whatever it was you were doing! It's not like we're ever gonna be friends!"
Puck drew back, his eyes going wide for half a second before he started smirking at her. "Yeah, of course, Grimm." He let out a small bitter laugh. "I never thought we were. I just wanted to see how long I could play you like I actually cared."
"Well you failed," Sabrina snapped. "I don't give a crap what you think of me and I never have."
"Good!" Puck shouted. "That's the way I want it!"
"Good!" Sabrina yelled back. At some point they'd ended up standing, and they were now glaring into each other's faces.
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
Now is about when Sabrina would normally have stormed off to her room. Unfortunately, she couldn't really do that right now. She was stuck to this guy, and it made the dramatic end to their fight really anticlimactic. Their glares softened up a little and they stretched as far from each other as they could get, studiously Not Looking at each other. There were no slamming doors, though, or stomps, or echoing silences. Sabrina just felt... empty. A little sad.
And still very scared.
It wasn't the absolute gut-clenching terror of before. In fact, on a scale of Sabrina's fear, it was't very high at all. She'd faced down imminent death more than once, and she could deal with a stupid boy. But it was unsettling, and she couldn't make it go away. And it was a different kind of fear, one she didn't know how to ignore until she'd dealt with it.
She'd tried her normal method: attack it until it was gone, and that hadn't helped at all. Puck was still here, and she was still totally freaked.
A knock on the door startled Sabrina out of her thoughts, and Daphne poked her head in. "Hey, guys, Mom wanted- whoa. What happened to you two?"
"Nothing," Sabrina snapped, Puck echoing her half a beat later.
"Oh-kay," Daphne said, raising her eyebrows. "Well, um, anyway, Mom says you two have been stuck here long enough and I should take over."
Sabrina headed for the door without looking at Puck and said, "Thank God. It's freezing in here."
The walk back out of the mirror was frigid, neither of them saying a word. Sabrina wished he'd just be nasty to her again (oh no she was really going absolutely crazy what was wrong with her). It'd be easier to deal with than the hurt radiating off him, disguised as anger.
And what did it say about her that she knew the guy well enough to be able to tell these things about him? Two, three years ago, she'd have had no idea that he was feeling anything but despise for her.
Now, though...
Now she knew he didn't hate her, even if he acted like it sometimes. She knew that, as much as she hated the pranks, he didn't do them out of malice. It was a very small part of her brain that knew this, a part that was usually easy to ignore in favor of her outrage. But she knew it, still. And she knew he was angry because he didn't hate her, and she'd snapped at him when he was being... well, kind of nice. Sort of fun, really. She could tell she'd hurt him. She knew what a Puck with his feelings hurt looked like. When had that happened?
And how could she turn it back off?
AN~ So yeah hopefully we'll get some plot development within the next few weeks. But IN OTHER NEWS THE SISTERS GRIMM SERIES IS TURNING TEN IN FOUR DAYS! And we're throwing a celebration! You should all participate it's been pretty awesome and fun so far! We want it to be like a fandom-wide party. PLEASE PARTICIPATE!
8NoHollabackGirl: So I know you have an actual account but I'm too lazy to go find it so yeah you get an in-chapter review reply hope that's cool. NONONO TELL ME YOUR GUESS I wanna see how I'm doing at mystery stuff.
Emily Wagner: Thanks very much!
Guest: Eventually. Promise.
Hi: I did NOT update soon and for that I am really sorry I wanted to update but like JOB and LIFE and stuff.
mary: I think you got something backwards there because Wilhelm is the one Sabrina and Daphne are descended from. Also I know nothing about the actual lives of the Brothers Grimm and am working of fanfiction here so I'm not altogether concerned with factuality. Not to rain on your parade or anything.
Also nope, I don't abandon fics! I just take time because life.
NinjaofAwesome: ^-^
Puckabrina: I updated! Sorry it took so long!
